The Church Fathers · c. 400–500; several recensions
The Falling Asleep of Mary
Transitus Mariae
Anonymous
What it is
The apostles are carried on clouds from wherever they are preaching to Mary's bedside in Jerusalem. She dies without pain, her soul is received by her Son, and the body is taken up before it can be buried — in some versions after a hostile bystander's hands are severed at the bier.
Why it lasted
There is no scriptural account of Mary's death, and the Assumption has no basis outside this literature. The Gelasian Decree condemned it and the feast kept spreading; every later doctrine of the Assumption traces to these narratives.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
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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