Each year on Aug. 5 the church liturgical calendar commemorates the dedication of St. Mary Major (in Italian, Santa Maria Maggiore), one of the five great ancient basilicas in Rome, and ...

St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995). The Life of the Virgin Mary, The Theotokos, written and compiled by Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: 1989). The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the ...

The icon, by pious tradition painted by St. Luke, first came to Rome from the East in the fifth century, when Mary was declared the Theotokos — Mother of God — at the Council of Ephesus in 431.