Our gratitude goes to Sherry Mohr, who uncovered this prayer by the Empress Theodora Palaiologina (13th century). It is found at the start of the Typicon of Lips, a handbook and last will and testament of the Empress for the organization and protocols of the convent she led.
O Mother, who painlessly begot the living Word of God and who after giving birth was still a most pure virginal treasure, your Son, who is God, has procured and granted us many and considerable blessings, he who is our Savior, because he is truly Jesus and God with us—such is the eminent and venerable meaning of the word Emmanuel according to Saint Isaiah—he who brought us from nothingness into existence, who has constantly procured our well-being, who has honored us with reason, who has endowed us with perception and intelligence so that we may discern realities, who has through them separated us from the animals of the earth and who has imposed on them as ruler man who reigns by God. What then shall we render to the Lord in exchange for all that He has bestowed upon us, He who added to the act of creation His Providence and who has never yet to this day withheld the abundant sources of His blessings upon us since He rounded the heavens, divided time, spread the air, unrolled the earth beneath, and established man as a spectator of visible realities? Surely, these things too are great and worthy of the extraordinary power that created and contains them, and to speak like the great David: "Who will ever know His mercy and His faithfulness?" But what a blessing has not the beneficent coming of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High who took you under his shadow bestowed upon us in your person, when he prepared for himself, without stain or change, a temple endowed with reason and life in your most holy virginal womb, and when he was born of you without a father in time, he who was born of the Father without a mother before the ages! Yes, what blessing has not He granted us in your person, as I have said, who also gave us all other blessings, when he erected you like a ladder and threw you like a bridge that allows the human race to ascend or pass to heaven.
Would the whole of heaven be fused into a single voice, it could not, I believe, explain or worthily praise the truly divine greatness of this gift. Who, indeed, will express the power of the Lord? Who will be able to make all his praise resound? What tongue will be able to recount, O gracious Mother of the Word God, the continual manifestations of God in your person, thanks to which the foundation of faith in God remains unshaken, the strongholds of impiety crumble, and the holy religion founded by Christ remains firmly established on the foundation of the apostles? Who can expound the magnificence of your miracles? Who can recount the wonders that have occurred at different times? Who will proclaim your mighty deeds or celebrate the astonishing interventions by which you strengthened the empire, crushed revolts, and established the most Christian people in the hope of a happy future existence?
...Therefore, relying on this matter to the tongues of the angels, tongues naturally suited to praise and glorify your greatness and to intelligently celebrate your immaculate purity, which surpasses the highest and most venerable Thrones and the Cherubim, because of your affection and kindness toward us, I confine myself to bringing you in return a most fervent love that urges me to return to you, who, with your only and firstborn Son, nourishes for the human race a love filled with solicitude and salvific will. And the impressive and immense dignity of your divine motherhood is for me a subject of most pleasant conversation and continual meditation; your holy childbirth inspires in me an intense and most pure happiness and pleasure, and nothing is more pleasant for me to hear and recount than the wonders and mysteries concerning you and the perpetual flow of blessings that God grants us through you. Furthermore, I know that nothing in us is worthy of your holiness, which exceeds all expression and all conception, nor of Him who begged from you the dough from which we are kneaded, in us where nothing belongs to us, but everything belongs to God, even we ourselves. For you, who brought forth the Word, who is immaterial beyond all expression, have for this reason obtained fullness and perfection, and the goods of this fleeting world are worthless to you.
But since those who are still preoccupied with earthly affairs and live according to human principles are unable to manifest through divine and immaterial first fruits the fervor of their faith in you, for you, the Mother of the Word, because of the condescension and modesty of the Word, I too, moved by love and the desire to imitate you and using our resources, have built a venerable temple for you, the temple, holy and admirable in holiness, to speak like your grandfather the great David, and I have installed therein solitary women of our chaste female sex who celebrate with hymns your person and your divine happiness, to whom I have allocated proportionally for each, taking them from the considerable gifts you have given me, what is reasonably required each year and each day by their exhaustion corporal. Moreover, I have imposed upon them a strictly cenobitic discipline, seeking by every means to procure and maintain for this divine assembly fidelity to the holy rule. And truly, they practice the ascetic life according to my hopes and vows since they made their beautiful profession in the sacred fold before God and the elect angels, and the hopes I had placed in you, Virgin Mother of God, are not disappointed here, and angelic choirs will certainly present our gratitude to you in this regard, since the Gospels assure us that they rejoice and exult over the salvation of a man.
So, it is for you, who gave birth to the great Shepherd of the sheep, that I have built, through the effect of my great love for God, this sacred sheepfold, and it is a flock endowed with reason that I have offered to you, who are the mother of the first or even of the only shepherd, according to the wise Solomon. And you, oh! Who could properly call you, Full of Grace before God, you who eclipse every spectacle and every thought, who exceed the limits of nature, you the mediatrix between God and men, and what good is there to continue, you who are truly the Mother of God in virginity and holiness, you, I say, who have kindly probed the faith of my heart, kindly accept these first fruits, do not reject my gift and do not turn your face away from your child, but grant a prosperous end to this happy beginning, spreading like Moses, you too, O immaculate one, your wings that shine with the gifts of the most holy Spirit, thus protecting this beautiful fold, always guarding, safe from the lion that prowls, seeking someone to devour and that circles the holy fences with hunger and cunning, this flock that is consecrated to your Greatness, O Virgin and Mother, transforming the femininity of this community of sisters into virile virtue, extending without interruption your all-powerful hand over this beautiful flock, so that the seducer and the serpent of old may not find among them any new Eve nor whisper in her ear lies that kill and precipitate into the trap of Hades.
May all, instead, sheltered by your most powerful protection, buzz in unison around this sacred hive, each following her impulse, shaping the fruit of virtue whose sweetness surpasses that of honey, irreproachably adoring the Most High in the holy court of God, offering him a sacrifice of praise, celebrating seven times a day the testimonies of divine justice, proclaiming the happiness of God and your greatness, rising with David at midnight to confess the judgments of the divinity that transcends all, silently raising their holy hands at night in the sanctuary, blessing the Lord God to the church from the springs of Israel, casting off what is earthly, giving wings to their spirits, in the service of the Lord, in fervor of spirit, attentive to one another to stimulate one another in charity and good works according to the divine apostle. O Mother of the Word, full of grace and sovereign princess, deign to guard and preserve this flock in these dispositions, so that all malice and all error on their part may be driven out, so that they may continually progress through purification toward purity, so that their supplications may rise and reach the ears of the Lord Sabaoth and thus from there may come to us all that is beneficial for the clergy, the empire, and the subjects of Christ, so that through this also he who governs the kingdom of Christ may govern his subjects in the most perfect piety and maintain peace and stability in the world, being kept in goodness along with all...
Such, O Mother of God and sovereign of all creation, are our thanksgivings for the past, and our supplications for the future. And grant us to dwell in the shelter of your wings during this agitated and tormented existence, because it is difficult, indeed impossible, for someone who is not protected by them and who is moreover in the midst of the world and at the heart of public affairs not to be burned by walking on hot coals, not to be scratched by thorns or wounded by swords. In this turbulent and change-loving life, may we therefore find in you, the beauty of Jacob, an ever-invincible helper, since we have anchored all the anchors of our hopes to your goodness, and in matters of our destiny, may you still be our protector before the formidable and great tribunal of your son and king, when the workers of virtue will clearly and lucidly understand the meaning of the great message announced in beautiful Nazareth concerning the ineffable incarnation
of the Word in you and the swaddling clothes of the manger in holy Bethlehem. These are the thanksgivings and supplications that we offer to you, the divine and resplendent ark of holiness.