The Blessed Virgin Mary

Elfric imagines how the Virgin Mary went to her eternal home.

When Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1916), came to preach on August 15th, the Feast of the Repose of Mary, he was unusually tightlipped. Some of what was passed around he regarded as legend, but he was sure of one thing: that Mary did not go home to heaven all on her own.

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The Virgin Mary and her son team up to get the best out of some careless monks.

In this ‘good cop, bad cop’ story from the early 14th century, Christ and his mother team up to use a bit of psychology to get through to some beloved but sloppy monks.

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Three fishermen let their tongues run away with them, and were left counting the cost.

On August 15th each year, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, that is, the death of the Virgin Mary. One of the oldest churches in the world, the Panagia Ekatontapyliani on Paros, was involved in a remarkable series of events on this day in 1931.

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Once a year, regular as clockwork, the little snakes slither into the convent for a Feast of the Virgin Mary.

Every August, on a great feast of the Virgin Mary, small snakes slither into the chapel of a tiny village on the Greek island of Kefalonia. There is a curious story behind it, going back to the days when Greece was under the Ottoman Empire, and pirates roamed unchecked among the islands.

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A widow cast her precious icon into the sea rather than see it dishonoured by government agents, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

In the days of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (829-842), it was illegal to possess religious art depicting people. Houses were searched, and offenders saw their precious icons destroyed with dishonour.

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