Description

The story of the Assumption of Mary, as the feast is called in Western Christian tradition, is described in the 13th-century book Legenda Aurea. Christ comes to the Mother of God to take her soul, in the form of a child, to heaven. The disciples have gathered and are gathered around the bier.

If Christ has taken his mother’s soul, the apostles want to bury the corporeal shell. The procession is then disturbed by Jefonias, who wants to knock over the bier. Because he touched the Ark – from which Christ came forth – with his hands, his hands are cut off by the Archangel Michael. After his immediate conversion, the hands regrow.