The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium

F The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium Texts and Images vzantine cult of the tudies to Byzantium. Edited by Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunni...
Author: Cora Lee
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The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium Texts and Images

vzantine cult of the tudies to Byzantium.

Edited by Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham

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Mary at the Threshold: The Mother of God as Guardian in Seventh-Century Palestinian Miracle Accounts Derek Krueger

Three early seventh-century Palestinian monastic texts attribute to the Theotokos the power to regulate women's access to sacred space. The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos, Antony of Choziba's Miracles of the Theotokos at the Monastery of Choziba, and the Life of Mary of Egypt prompt inquiry into the Virgin's role as guardian or doorkeeper in early Byzantine Christian imagination, policing the boundaries of orthodoxy, gender, the Eucharist and redemption. In these narratives the Virgin figures not as an open and concave space, but rather as the threshold of space, the limen separating the sacred and the profane. 1 The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos, completed before AD 619, recounts one woman's attempt to enter the Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem. 2 The story highlights the Theotokos' s control over sacred boundaries. On the night of Holy Sunday (probably the eve of Easter), Kosmiane, the wife of a patrician named Germanos, tried to enter the 'holy and life-giving sepulchre of our Lord Jesus Christ' in order to worship. 'When she approached the sanctuary (it:pacĀ£1ov), our Lady the holy Theotokos, met her in visible form (6cp8aAflOqJavw