ABSTRACT
It was a cruel, biting winter in Constantinople, and Andrew the Fool, an early Byzantine holy man sleeping rough on the streets, was slowly freezing to death. But just as he began to lose consciousness, he experienced a lovely warmth, and a sensation of golden light. An angel came, who took him on a two-week tour of the Other World, during which he thawed out completely. He saw the marvellous garden of paradise, the joys of the blessed, the wonders of the firmament, the angelic host and even the throne of God. But there was one heavenly being he never saw: the Mother of God. At the end of Andrew’s journey, the angel explained why:
Our distinguished lady, the queen of the heavenly powers and Mother of God, is not present here, for she is in that vain world to support and help those who invoke God’s only Son and Word and her own all-holy name. It would have been appropriate to show you her abode, which is splendid beyond description, but there is no time left, my friend, for by the order of the Lord you must return whence you came. 2
This tiny passage in the tenth-century Life of Andrew the Fool is easy to overlook, but its implications are striking. Mary could have been living a glorious, quiet life in heaven in her splendid house, but the author of Andrew’s Life, Nikephoros, is certain that she spends at least some of her time coming to the aid of those on earth. The passage describes Mary almost as a bodhisattva, the Buddhist conception of a perfectly enlightened being who voluntarily and
1 I would like to acknowledge the help of many kind correspondents who have generously shared references: above all, Annemarie Weyl Carr, and also Leslie Brubaker, Averil Cameron, Kate Cooper, Dirk Krausmüller, Derek Krueger, Kallirroe Linardou, Eunice Maguire, Henry Maguire and Stephen Shoemaker. Thanks are due also to Judith Herrin, whose mention of the opening passage from the Life of Andrew the Fool in a graduate seminar at Princeton piqued my interest, and inspired this study, just
selflessly defers nirvana so long as others continue to suffer. Out of compassion, such bodhisattvas roam the earth, rescuing the distressed, assuming whatever form might be necessary to reach them. Many have remarked on similarities between the medieval and modern cult of Mary, in her aspect as Mother of Mercy (Madonna della Misericordia), and the cult of the bodhisattva Kuan Yin, who began to be represented in female form as the goddess of compassion and mercy in China from about the twelfth century ce.3 Countless legends recount the acts of mercy performed by Kuan Yin on earth, often in disguise.4
