The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400–1000: Hymns, Homilies and Hagiography. By Mary B. Cunningham

Abstract

Mary Cunningham is part of the firmament of British Byzantine studies, the author of many studies mostly concerned with Byzantine literature, not least hagiography and homiletics, as well as being unstinting in the humdrum tasks involved in societies and conferences; an accomplished Greek scholar, she has willingly devoted herself to the gruelling task of translation for many years now. From the beginning of her scholarly activity, devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, has been a frequent focus of her activity, which culminates in the book under review, a study of the Virgin Mother of God in Byzantium, early and middle, that is, from the fifth to the tenth centuries, a period that has been understood generously. It focuses on the literary evidence from the period—‘hymns, homilies and hagiography’, as her subtitle has it—and will prove indispensable for anyone wanting to understand the growth of devotion to the Mother of God and the forms that it took in this crucial period—crucial, not just for later Byzantium and for the Orthodox Churches that have their origin there, but for the Latin West, and indeed for Christianity further East, all of which owe debts to the formative period of Byzantine Christianity. As well as her linguistic and literary skills, she brings to this book an unparalleled knowledge of the rapidly expanding scholarly literature.