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The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, and holds that the Virgin Mary "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory".
The Assumption of Mary was celebrated in the West under Pope Sergius I in the 8th century and Pope Leo IV confirmed the feast as official. Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott stated, "The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus-narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. ... The first Church author to speak of the bodily assumption of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitus of Mary, is St. Gregory of Tours." People celebrated the Assumption as part of the cult of Mary that flourished from the Middle Ages. Theological debate about the Assumption continued, following the Reformation. In 1950 Pope Pius XII defined it as dogma for the Catholic Church.
