The Middle English Translation of the Transitus Mariae Attributed to Joseph of Arimathea: An Edition of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 26

THE LATIN SOURCE AND THE TRANSITUS MARIAE TRADITION

Oxford, All Souls College, MS 26 contains only one text, an unpublished Middle English translation—or more probably a copy of a translation¹—of the Latin De transitu beatae Mariae virginis attributed to Joseph of Arimathea. Pseudo-Joseph of Arimathea's De transitu is related to the larger family of apocryphal Transitus Mariae legends detailing the Virgin Mary's final days, death, and Assumption in soul and usually also body that spread throughout the Eastern Christian world by at least the fourth century and in the West by at least the sixth.

The number of redactions of the Transitus Mariae legend is vast, with versions of the narrative surviving in Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, and Latin manuscripts, as well as in a number of late medieval vernaculars. Pseudo-Melito of Sardis's Latin Transitus Mariae (B1 and B2) is the most widely disseminated of the Western texts, and its composition is generally dated to sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries. The latest of the Latin texts is the narrative attributed to Joseph of Arimathea, titled Transitus A by Constantine Tischendorf.² The Transitus Mariae legends are often grouped into two families, respectively, the Palm of the Tree of Life and the Bethlehem and the Burning of Incense. The Joseph of Arimathea narrative belongs to the Palm of the Tree of Life family, as it includes the episode of the angel's delivery of the palm of paradise to Mary and the palm's place in the burial procession and use in the healing of the Jewish attackers who attempt to turn over Mary's funeral bier. We can identify the English translator's source text as being similar to the manuscript C version (in Tischendorf's classification)³ of Pseudo-Joseph of Arimathea's narrative because the Middle English translation opens and closes with the reminder that anyone who writes, reads, or hears this text, whether they be lay, clerical, or female, will be protected by God from illness and other dangers.⁴

Pseudo-Joseph of Arimathea's redaction is, as Mary Clayton notes, among the least understood of the redactions of the Transitus legends.⁵ This has led, among other disagreements, to some dispute over the date of the text. Simone Claude Mimouni suggests a date in the seventh century. Stephen J. Shoemaker prefers the wider range of 550–750. Boguslaw Kochaniewicz has made a case for a twelfth-century, French Cistercian origin, while M. R. James argues that the Joseph of Arimathea version was a late Italian fiction (no earlier than the thirteenth century).⁶ Pseudo-Joseph's Transitus is distinct because it is the only narrative of the Latin textual family to include the episode of Apostle Thomas's late arrival to the Valley of Josaphat. Thomas is absent during Mary's death and burial but sees her rise bodily to heaven, receives her girdle, and is tasked with giving proof of Mary's ascension to the rest of the apostles, who angrily confront him for missing the holy event. Thomas, who needed something tactile to believe in Christ's Resurrection, is here tasked with providing other believers with a tangible witness to the Virgin's bodily Assumption.⁷

Joseph of Arimathea's role in Christian history⁸ is further solidified in this redaction of the Transitus legend, as it is his responsibility to house and protect Mary after the death of her son,⁹ to announce her impending death to her kin, and to record this holy event and preach its significance as long as he continues to draw breath. Details from the account attributed to Joseph of Arimathea are included in Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea summary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary; the main aspect the Dominican compiler incorporates is the late arrival of the Apostle Thomas and his reception of Mary's girdle. The Legenda Aurea does not credit Joseph of Arimathea as the source of this detail...