Our joy and deliverance is brought into the Temple!

Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Happy feast day to any one attached to the Julian calendar. Today I noticed this passage from the Matins in the second sedalion:

Even  before  thy  conception  thou  wast  consecrated  to  God,  O  pure  one,  and,  having been born on earth, thou hast now been offered to Him as a gift.

The Church Slavonic text is: 

Пре́жде зача́тия, Чи́стая, освяти́лася еси́ Бо́гу/ и, ро́ждшися на земли́, дар принесла́ся еси́ ны́не Ему́,/ исполня́ющи оте́ческое обеща́ние.

I'll eventually get to more obvious and straight forward passages that deal with Mary's immaculate existence from the moment of her conseption but this passage is no less interesting. 

The English translation is fine but the word "consecrated" doesn't really translate the word "освятилася" fully, so I'd translate it like this: "Before thy conception, O pure one, thou wast sanctified unto God". Yes, it is almost the same thing but the word consecrated in modern English gives the impression that it simply refers to the fact that God chose or set her aside before all ages (which is also true). The Greek word used is καθηγιάσθης, which is from the same root as καθαγιάζω. Now, the word for sanctification is ἁγιασμός, which is the same root as ἅγιος, i.e. holy. The English "consecration" really connotes making something sacred The word καθαγιάζω is used twice in the Bible. 2 Maccabees 1:26 reads: "Receive the sacrifice for all thy people Israel, and preserve thy own portion, and sanctify it.". The Vulgate translates sanctify as 'sanctifica' from the verb 'sanctifico', i.e. to make holy. Russian Synodal Bible also reads 'sanctify' and in Church Slavonic - освяти - make it holy, sanctify it. Another mention is Leviticus 27:26, "The firstborn, which belong to the Lord, no man may sanctify and vow: whether it be bullock, or sheep, they are the Lord's". A lot of translations also have 'dedicated' or 'consecrated', and this brings us to the question of what dedication or consecration of something is. The use 'sanctify' makes it clear that this act means to making something saintly, holy or sacred and not just setting something or someone aside for something special, as the same canon lets us know, calling the Theotokos "sanctified treasure of the Lord".

Why am I writing all of this? No, I'm not trying to read the Immaculate conception into everything. At the same time, I am not trying to avoid it either (obviously). The phrase "Before thy conception... thou wast sanctified (consecrated)" reads differently if you pay close attention to both cannotations of those words. She was made holy before her conception and after she was born, offered to the Lord as a gift. Any stain on the animal being sacrificed makes it unfit: "If it have a blemish you shall not offer it, neither shall it be acceptable" and  "The man that offereth a victim of peace offerings to the Lord... shall offer it without blemish, that it may be acceptable: there shall be no blemish in it". Thus, the same canon refers to her as "Pure and undefiled one" (ode 3) and "the  unblemished  ewe-lamb" (Glory: after sedalion), "unblemished  heifer" (ode 5).

Is this not worshipping Mary? Well, this blog is not dedicated to polemics with the Protestants, so I am going to leave this question aside. However, it should be said that though Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice, in the Byzantine tradition we do not just ask Mary to pray for us, we ask the Mother of God to save us, because she is "the mediatress of salvation" (sedalion of the canon) and even more emphatically: "Thou  art  our  glory  and  salvation" (Glory: after sedalion). Does any one think that Byzantines did not realize that Christ was the Saviour, not Theotokos? Yes they did but they also knew of the close connection between Christ's sacrifice and that of Mary: "Thou art the  deliverance,  thou  art  the  joy  of  all,  thou  art  our  restoration,  through  whom  the  Uncontainable One shall appear unto me contained" (ode 5). Byzantine outlook is very hierarchical, that is why they had no problem with words that sound a bit excessive to a Western ear, which is especially clear (I think) in this passage from the canon: 

O pure Theotokos, as thou hast the most radiant beauty of purity of soul and art full  of  the  grace  of  God  from  heaven,  with  the  ever-existent  light  thou  dost  ever  enlighten  those  who  cry  out  with  joy:  Truly  thou  art  more  highly  exalted  than  all,  O  pure Virgin!

One should also notice how the canon says phrases such as: "Birthgiving  which  passeth  understanding" or "Strange   is   thy   birthgiving". What's so strange about it, given the fact that she was born like any other person? Well, I am not going to speculate about Mary's pre-purification but I do suspect that her birth and the following were related for the author of the canon:

Rejoice,  O  most  immaculate  Mother  of  God,  by  whom  we  have  been  delivered from the primal curse, coming to share in incorruption!

Anyhow, if you want to find some food for thought when pondering Mary's being the most-immaculate one, the one who became the new Eve by being without the primal curse, or even the controversial Co-Redemptrix, look no further than Byzantine hymnography. 

Rejoice, O thou  fulfillment of  the  Creator's dispensation!

Thou hast rauished my heart, with one of thine eyes, with one chaine of thy necke

Preliminary note: I'm pretty sure I have ADD and dysgraphia, so there probably will be many mistakes, which I will be correcting as I keep proof-reading. I post stuff first, because the correction stage will take too long. Hopefully, substance of the article will make up for everything.

A friend once told me something along the lines of: No, I'm either going to remain an Old Believer or become a Catholic, because Nikonians blaspheme against the Theotokos. This refered to the fact that the so-called Nikonians ended up not only denying the Immaculate Conception of Mary but also her pre-purification, which was accepted almost by everyone. You will be hard-pressed to find a person in the Orthodox circles, who can explicitely state what the teaching regarding Mary's absolute immaculate existence is. Most would agree that she had never sined but would likely say she simply did not sin by the grace of God and that any other speculation is at best a theologoumenon and at worst a heretical Latin raving. Of course, one can find many authors, who believed in Mary's pre-purification and even her immaculate conception  (IM) after the schism - Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Cyril (now Patriarch) or Demetrius of Rostov, just to name a few. For quite some time IM was if not widely-held but a popular opinion nevertheless. Though, currently it doesn't seem to be a very important theological issue, it certainly was important for the Old Believers, since even among their first generation one can find voices, who defended the Most Blessed Virgin against certain foreign novelties.

This is neither an academic, nor a polemical article (though it becames that a little bit at the end), nor a history of this teaching in the East, this is merely a very shallow overview of what Old Believers had to say about it. So with that it mind, one should start by mentioning the book called The Tablet (Skrizhal') published by Patriarch Nikon. It included a work by a Greek with Protestant education (it should be menioned that the 17th and 18th centuries  were marked by presence of a Catholic-leaning party on one side, and a Protestant-leaning party on the other), translated by the infamous Arsenius the Greek, which Nikon got through Patriarch Paisius of Jerusalem, as well as a reply by another Patriarch Paisius of Constantinople to certain questions that Nikon had.

Skrizhal', page with Paisius' reply to Patriarch Nikon

To make a long story short, the book included anti-immaculist theology (i.e. she was purified at the Annunciation), which one of the leaders of the early Old Believer movement priest Nikita (Necetas), who recieved the nickname Pustosvyat, which literally means 'empty (i.e. fake\vain\false) saint', thought to be blasphemous. He was outraged and so wrote directly to the Czar Alexei the following words: "Our most pure and most holy Lady Theotokos... did not have the original stain, for she recieved a sanctification and was prepared to become a dwelling of God even in the womb of her mother". The Big Moscow Council of 1666 sought to publish a reply. The first choice for the role of the refuter fell on Paisios Ligarides, titular Metropolitan of Gaza, who was in Moscow at the time. Surisingly he started to defend Nikita and so the Council had to pick another person to write the refutation. This person was Simeon of Polotsk. He wrote a book titled The Rod of Ruling (Zhezl Pravleniya), which was officialy approved by the Council. Interestingly enough, though it does speak in favour of Nikon's reform, it once again defended not only the teaching of Mary's pre-purification but also of her Immaculate Conception, despite the author's Protestant leanings in other respects. One of the late Old Ritualist polemicist Melnikov pointed out an inconsistency in his "Wandering Theology)" (Bluzhdayusheye Bogosloviye), since the Council approved two books with opposed theological views (we will translate some parts from Melnikov's works later). The highly complex and fascinating relationship between the Russians and different theological parties within the Greek circles deserves a separate article, so we shall leave it at that, though of course one can just call it "Latin captivity" and brush this whole period of Church history aside.

"Monk Paul of Belaya Krinitsa"

Of course this issue was overshadowed by other questions, related to first and foremost the new rituals as well as different ecclessiologies of different groups of Old Believers.  However, one can almost safely say that until the second half of the 20th century, most of them accepted the fact that the Most Holy Theotokos was conceived without blemish of the original sin. As the so-called Nikonian church drifted further and further away from the belief in the Immaculate Conception and then from the pre-purificationist position in general, some Old Believers felt it necessary to mention this issue in respect to their differnces with the "State Church". One of them was Paul of Belaya Krinitsa, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Old Rite Church in 2004, and who was one of the two monks responsible for converting Metropolitan Ambrose, the founder of Belokrinitskaya hierarchy. In order to do everything "by the books", Paul decided to aquire an official status for the monastery (though the monastery was granted all religious freedoms already by Joseph II), where the future Metropolitan would  live. In turn, to do that he had to write the Rule of this monastery. Perhaps, for the sake of not writing two books, Monk Paul  included not only regulations of the monastery but also the teachings of the priest-accepting Old Believers. On September 6th, 1844 the monks recieved an official approval from Ferdinand of Austria to bring in Ambrose and establish their hierarchy. Among other things, the Rule included the following passage about the Most Blessed Virgin (the wording might seem strange but it's only because it's quite difficult to translate late Church Slavonic as it gets pretty "baroque"):