Teaching of the Assumption of Mary became widespread across the Christian world, having been celebrated as early as the 5th century and having been established in the East by Emperor Maurice around AD 600.

[9] In a homily, John Damascene (675–749 AD), citing the third book of the Euthymiac History, records the following: St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.

[13] Yet numerous features indicate that the Liber Requiei Mariae, or the Obsequies of the Virgin, as the text is called in Syriac, is even older than this ancient manuscript alone would suggest.

[14] Most significantly, the Six Books Dormition Apocryphon provides compelling evidence for an early cult of the Virgin nearly a century before the events of the Council of Ephesus.

[21] Other works that mention the assumption of Mary are the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century.

It is also found in the apocryphal book De Transitus Beatae Mariae Virginis, falsely ascribed to Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to Denis the Areopagite.

[28] Scholars of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum "argued that during or shortly after the apostolic age a group of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem preserved an oral tradition about the end of the Virgin's life".

Simon Claude Mimouni and his predecessors have argued that belief in the Virgin's Assumption is the final dogmatic development, rather than the point of origin, of these traditions.

[29] There is a large number of accounts of assumption of the Virgin Mary, published in various languages (including Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic).

[2] The apostolic constitution adds: "All these proofs and considerations of the holy Fathers and the theologians are based upon the Sacred Writings as their ultimate foundation."

Father Jugie, expressed the view that Revelation 12:1–2 was the chief scriptural witness to the assumption:[32] And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child ...This passage, Epiphanius proposes, may indicate that Mary did not die as other human beings, but somehow remained immortal, although he makes clear his own uncertainty and refrains from advocating this view.

Among the many other passages noted by Pope Pius XII were the following:[35] The Bible mentions two prominent figures, Enoch and Elijah, who were taken up to heaven, serving as important precedents for the assumption of Mary.

In the 12th century, the German nun Elisabeth of Schönau was reportedly granted visions of Mary and her son which had a profound influence on the Western Church's tradition.

In her work Visio de resurrectione beate virginis Mariae relates how Mary was assumed in body and soul into Heaven.

Six months after the private audience granted to Gilles by the pope, Pius XII himself proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of body and soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.

That does not mean, however, that she is dissociated from the rest of humanity and placed in a wholly different category: for we all hope to share one day in that same glory of the Resurrection of the Body that she enjoys even now.

[54] The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, which seeks to identify common ground between the two communions, released in 2004 a non-authoritative declaration meant for study and evaluation, the "Seattle Statement"; this "agreed statement" concludes that "the teaching about Mary in the two definitions of the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception, understood within the biblical pattern of the economy of hope and grace, can be said to be consonant with the teaching of the Scriptures and the ancient common traditions".

His 1539 polemical treatise against idolatry[56] expressed his belief that Mary's sacrosanctum corpus ("sacrosanct body") had been assumed into heaven by angels: Hac causa credimus ut Deiparae virginis Mariae purissimum thalamum et spiritus sancti templum, hoc est, sacrosanctum corpus ejus deportatum esse ab angelis in coelum.

The Western Church adopted this date as a Holy Day of Obligation to commemorate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a reference to the belief in a real, physical elevation of her sinless soul and incorrupt body into Heaven.

Assumption Day on 15 August is a nationwide public holiday in Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chile, Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia,[63] Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, East Timor, France, Gabon, Greece, Georgia, Republic of Guinea, Haiti, Italy, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of North Macedonia, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Monaco, Montenegro (Albanian Catholics), Paraguay, Philippines (Maragondon, Cavite),Poland (coinciding with Polish Army Day), Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Tahiti, Togo, and Vanuatu;[64] and was also in Hungary until 1948.

[23] The Assumption became a popular subject in Western Christian art, especially from the 12th century, and especially after the Reformation, when it was used to refute the Protestants and their downplaying of Mary's role in salvation.

[67] Angels commonly carry her heavenward where she is to be crowned by Christ, while the Apostles below surround her empty tomb as they stare up in awe.

[67] Caravaggio, the "father" of the Baroque movement, caused a stir by depicting her as a decaying corpse, quite contrary to the doctrine promoted by the church;[68] more orthodox examples include works by El Greco, Rubens, Annibale Carracci, and Nicolas Poussin, the last replacing the Apostles with putti throwing flowers into the tomb.