Assumption of Mary

The Assumption of Mary is a Catholic dogma that Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was taken body and soul into heaven, defined by Pope Pius XII on 1 November 1950 in his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus. It is celebrated on 15 August.

It leaves open the question of whether Mary died or whether she was raised to eternal life without bodily death.

The equivalent belief in the Eastern Christianity is the Dormition of the Mother of God or the "Falling Asleep of the Mother of God". In the Lutheran Churches, 15 August is celebrated as the Feast of St. Mary. A number of Anglican denominations observe 15 August under various titles, including the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin or the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The word 'assumption' derives from the Latin word assūmptiō, meaning 'taking up'.

History

Some scholars argue that the Dormition and Assumption traditions can be traced early in church history in the apocryphal books, with Stephen J. Shoemaker noting about the dating:

For instance, Baldi, Masconi, and Cothenet analyzed the corpus of Dormition narratives using a rather different approach, governed primarily by language tradition rather than literary relations, and yet all agree that the Obsequies (i.e., the Liber Requiei Mariae) and the Six Books Dormition Apocryphon reflect the earliest traditions, locating their origins in the second or third century. Richard Bauckham too, through study... dates the Six Books to the fourth century....Numerous others, including Maximilian Bonnet, Jean Rivière, and Jean Gribomont, have concluded that these narratives originate in the fourth century, if not earlier.