In the face of scant biblical information about the background and life of Mary, the virginal mother of Jesus Christ, Byzantine theologians relied on a variety of sources including apocryphal texts, homilies, hymns, and exegetical commentaries. Literary attempts to recount and celebrate Mary’s entire life story emerged somewhat late in this tradition. It was John Geometres who produced the most sophisticated, in theological and rhetorical terms, of the surviving texts. In the words of Maximos Constas and Christos Simelidis, this Life of the Virgin is “arguably the single most important witness to Marian doctrine and devotion ever produced in the Byzantine world” (viii).
The present edition and English translation represents an invaluable contribution to the fields of Byzantine literature, Mariology, and Eastern church history. Scholars will now be able to study a text that captures the complexity and sophistication of full-blown Marian celebration in the Middle Byzantine period. The edition is reliable, complemented not by a critical apparatus but by helpful notes, and the translation elegantly conveys John Geometres’s high literary style while remaining lucid and readable. This book represents an indispensable addition to any library of Byzantine, and indeed Western medieval, Mariology.
Mary B. Cunningham
Speculum
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