ABSTRACT
In recent years, the Virgin’s lament at the cross has been the subject of a number of excellent studies, including several by Niki Tsironis as well as earlier studies by Henry Maguire and Margaret Alexiou.1 These scholars (and others) have drawn our attention to the importance of this topic for understanding the development of Marian piety as expressed in the art, literature and liturgies of Byzantium, focusing especially on the post-iconoclastic period as a time of particular significance.2 The consensus of these investigations seems to be that the traditions of Mary’s central role in the events of the Passion and Resurrection and her elaborate lamentations belong primarily
1 N. Tsironis, ‘The lament of the Virgin Mary from Romanos the Melode to George of Nikomedeia’ (unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of London, 1998); eadem, ‘George of Nicomedia: convention and originality in the homily on Good Friday’, in E.A. Livingstone, ed., Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies, Studia Patristica 33 (Leuven, 1997), 573-7; eadem, ‘Historicity and poetry in ninth-century homiletics: the homilies of Patriarch Photius and George of Nikomedeia’, in M.B. Cunningham and P. Allen, eds, Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, A New History of the Sermon 1 (Leiden, 1998), 295-316; M. Vassilaki and N. Tsironis, ‘Representations of the Virgin and their association with the Passion of Christ’, in M. Vassilaki, ed., Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Athens and Milan, 2000), 453-63; N. Tsironis, ‘From poetry to liturgy: the cult of the Virgin in the Middle Byzantine period’, in M. Vassilaki, ed., Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2005), 91-102; H. Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton NJ, 1981), 91-108; M. Alexiou, ‘The lament of the Virgin in Byzantine literature and Modern Greek folk song’, BMGS 1 (1975), 111-40. See also I. Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary became the Meter Theou’, DOP 44 (1990), 165-72, esp. 169-70; B. Bouvier, Le mirologue de la Vierge: Chansons et poèmes grecs sur la Passion du Christ, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 16 (Rome, 1976).
