Title: THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY: Condemned as Heretical by 2 Popes in the 5th and 6th Centuries
Please provide the specific quote where the Popes denounced the belief in the Assumption of Mary as heresy. Denouncing a book or group as heretical is insufficient as the Arians are heretical, but they believe that Christ was crucified.
But what if an Arian had written a treatise on Jesus being a created being, and a pope had condemned the treatise by name, adding an extra comment that the book was about Jesus being created? According to the article for which this thread is titled, that is exactly what happened. The article states that the treatise named below was listed among those anathematized by Pope Gelasius:
Liber qui apellatur Transitus, id est Assumptio Sanctae Mariae, Apocryphus (Pope Gelasius 1, Epistle 42, Migne Series, M.P.L. vol. 59, Col. 162).
The book was called "The Transition." Apparently Gelasius
added for clarity that the subject of the book was the Assumption of St. Mary. It would be odd to add that clarification if the Assumption was not the target of the anathema. It would be like condemning an Arian book to hellfire and then noting it's main topic was Jacob's Ladder. It would make no sense.
Here is a direct link to the article:
http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/assumption.html
Thus one is left with the strong impression the teaching, not just the author, was anathematized.
Nevertheless, Campion rightly points out that it remains possible this is a "composition fallacy," or in more colloquial terms, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, treating the entire composition as condemned, when in fact only some of it may have been the true focus of the anathema. However, in that event, one would expect there to be a counteracting true teaching of the Assumption, as there was with the deity of Christ, designed to preserve the correct version of the teaching against some erroneous version. But until such a corrective is produced, at least somewhat contemporaneous to the decree of anathema, the presumption must lean in favor of papal rejection of the entire content to the extent it either contradicted the extant doctrinal standards of that period, or else was simply regarded as wholly spurious.
Peace,
SR