We wish, therefore, her relics to be
brought here for the protection of this royal city. But Juvenal
answered, 'In the holy and divinely inspired Scripture, indeed, nothing
is recorded of the departure of holy Mary, mother of God. But from an
ancient and most true tradition we have received, that at the time of
her glorious falling asleep, all the holy Apostles who were going
through the world for the salvation of the nations, in a moment of time
borne aloft, came together at Jerusalem. And when they were near her,
they had a vision of angels, and divine melody of the highest powers was
heard: and thus with divine and more than heavenly glory, she delivered
her holy soul into the hands of God in an unspeakable manner. But that
which had conceived God being borne with angelic and apostolic psalmody,
with funeral rites, was deposited in a coffin in Gethsemane. In this
place the chorus and singing of the angels continued for three whole
days. But {308} after three days, on the angelic music ceasing, since
one of the Apostles had been absent, and came after the third day, and
wished to adore the body which had conceived God, the Apostles, who were
present, opened the coffin; but the body, pure and every way to be
praised, they could not at all find. And when they found only those
things in which it had been laid out and placed there, and were filled
with an ineffable fragrancy proceeding from those things, they shut the
coffin.
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