The Emperor Maurice is said to have appointed the festival of our Lady’s death (κοίμησις τῆς παναγίου καί θεομητέρος), and fixed it on the 15th August. Although this information is given by an historian of a much later date,[516] it must not be altogether set aside. Maurice may well have given official recognition to the festival, and by so doing settled the question of the day on which it was to be kept. The festival itself was, however, much older, for not only the heretical sects, which separated from the Church in the fifth century, such as the Monophysites and Nestorians, preserved this festival at the time of their separation, but most ancient national Churches, such as the Armenian and Ethiopian, have it in their Calendars. Accordingly the 15th August must have already been generally regarded in the Church as the day of our Lady’s death before the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, although not mentioned by historians of that time. We have unfortunately no information concerning the introduction of this festival in Rome. All we know is that it was celebrated there along with our Lady’s Nativity and Annunciation under Sergius I., at the end of the seventh century. About 847 Leo IV. ordained that it should be celebrated with a vigil and octave in the basilica of St Lawrence without the Walls. In the Gothico-Gallican missal of the seventh or eighth century, edited by Mabillon,[517] the festival is placed on the 18th January,[518] and not on the 15th August, as is also the case in the Lectionary of Luxeuil of the seventh century. This circumstance points to the conclusion that, independently of Byzantine influence, it was observed already at an earlier date in other parts of the Church as well, and came into existence spontaneously, so to speak. It is also noteworthy that the feast appears already with the title _Assumptio_ in the canons of Bishop Sonnatius of Rheims, composed sometime about the year 630.[519] In the canons ascribed to St Boniface some amount of vacillation is observable. By the thirty-sixth canon of the Council of Mainz, in 813, it is appointed as a feast for the whole Frankish Empire, while the earlier Council of 809 had decided nothing concerning its adoption. Among the Latins the festival did not at first bear the name _Assumptio_, but was called _Domitio_ or _Pausatio_, corresponding to the Greek title. This name left the particular object of the feast uncertain—whether it commemorated merely the decease or the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven. It was probably due to this that in the ninth century doubts as to the latter were here and there expressed.[520]