transaction of the kind; and of {315} all the intermediate historians
and ecclesiastical writers not one gives the slightest intimation that
any rumour of it had reached them[119].

[Footnote 119: Baronius appears not to have referred to this
history of Euthymius, but he refers to Nicephorus, and also to a
work ascribed to Melito, c. 4, 5. Nicephorus, Paris, 1630. vol.
i. p. 168. lib. ii. c. 21. Baronius also refers to lib. 15. c.
14. This Nicephorus was Patriarch of Constantinople. He lived
during the reign of our Edward the First, or Edward the Second,
and cannot, therefore, be cited in any sense of the word as an
ancient author writing on the events of the primitive ages;
though the manner in which his testimony is appealed to would
imply, that he was a man to whose authority on early
ecclesiastical affairs we were now expected to defer.]

Another authority to which the writers on the assumption of the Virgin
appeal, is that of Nicephorus Callistus, who, at the end of the
thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, dedicated his
work to Andronicus Palæologus. The account given by Nicephorus is this:

In the fifth year of Claudius, the Virgin at the age of fifty-nine, was
made acquainted with her approaching death. Christ himself then
descended from heaven with a countless multitude of angels, to take up
the soul of his mother; He summoned his disciples by thunder and storm
from all parts of the world. The Virgin then bade Peter first, and
afterwards the rest of the Apostles, to come with burning torches[120].
The Apostles surrounded her bed, and "an outpouring of miracles flowed
forth." The blind beheld the sun, the deaf heard, the lame walked, and
every disease fled away. The Apostles and others sang, as the coffin was