[Footnote 116:  Vol. viii. p. 281.  Le Quien, who published them
    in 1712, refers to earlier homilies on the Dormitio Virginis. 
    Jo.  Damas.  Paris, 1712. vol. ii. p. 857.] {310}

The following are among the expressions in which the preacher, in the passage under consideration, addresses the Virgin’s tomb:  “Thou, O Tomb, of holy things most holy (for I will address thee as a living being), where is the much desired and much beloved body of the mother of God?” [Vol. ii. p. 875.] The answer of the tomb begins thus, “Why seek ye her in a tomb, who has been taken up on high to the heavenly tabernacles?” In reply to this, the preacher first deliberating with his hearers what answer he should make, thus addresses the tomb:  “Thy grace indeed is never-failing and eternal,” &c. [P. 881.] By the maintainers of the invocation of saints, many a passage far less unequivocal and less cogent than this has been adduced to show, that saints and martyrs were invoked by primitive worshippers.

We find John Damascenus thus introducing the passage of Euthymius, “Ye see, beloved fathers and brethren, what answer the all-glorious tomb makes to us; and that these things are so, in the EUTHYMIAC HISTORY, the third book and fortieth chapter, is thus written word for word.” [P. 877.]

Lambecius maintains, that the history here quoted by John Damascenus was not an ecclesiastical history, written by Euthymius, who died in A.D. 472, but a biographical history concerning Euthymius himself, written by an ecclesiastic, whom he supposes to be Cyril, the monk, who died in A.D. 531.  This opinion of Lambecius is combated by Cotelerius; the discussion only adding to the denseness of the cloud which involves the whole tradition.  But whether the work quoted had Euthymius for its author or its subject, the work itself is lost; and an epitome only of such a work has come down to {311} our time.  In that abridgment the passage quoted by Damascenus is not found.

The editor of John Damascenus, Le Quien, in his annotations on this portion of his work, offers to us some very interesting remarks, which bear immediately on the agitated question as to the first observance of the feast of the Assumption, as well as on the tradition itself.  Le Quien infers, from the words of Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem, that scarcely any preachers before him had addressed their congregations on the departure of the Virgin out of this life; he thinks, moreover, that the Feast of the Assumption was at the commencement of the seventh century only recently instituted.  Though all later writers affirm that the Virgin was buried in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in the garden of Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Bethlehem, and yet observes a total silence on the subject; though in his “Epitaph on Paula,” [Jerome, Paris, 1706.  Vol. iv. p. 670-688, ep. 86.] he enumerates all the places in Palestine consecrated by any remarkable event.  Neither, he adds, could it have been known to Epiphanius, who, though he lived long in Palestine, yet declares that nothing was known as to the death or burial of the Virgin. [Vol. ii, p. 858.]