The Medieval Church · c. 850
On the Assumption of the Virgin
Cogitis Me
Paschasius Radbertus, under Jerome's name · c. 785 – c. 865
What it is
Written to nuns at Soissons as if by Jerome, and unusually careful: the church may celebrate Mary's passing, but scripture says nothing about a bodily assumption and the apocryphal accounts of it are not to be trusted. What is certain is her glory; the manner of it is not.
Why it lasted
Read as Jerome's for seven hundred years and quoted in the Roman office, which gave a forged letter the authority to keep Western theology cautious about the Assumption until 1950. A pseudonym exercising restraint that its real author could not have made stick.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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