We now come to the final section of this lengthy paper: PATRISTIC INTERPRETATION OF GEN. 3:15 PT. 2.

St. Prudentius

(d. after 405) 

Our next witness is from Spain. In a section of his poem Cathemerinon, St. Prudentius tells the story of Gen. 3. In regard to verses 14-15, having spoken of the Incarnation of the Word from the Virgin, he writes:

This was that ancient hatred, this was the fierce enmity between the asp and man, which, now that the serpent is prostrate, is crushed under the woman’s feet. For having merited to bring forth God, the Virgin makes all poisons powerless.44 

In this obvious use of Gen. 3, 15, as all admit, the Virgin Mary is “the Woman,” who gave birth to Christ, the Seed; and she it is who crushes the serpent under her feet. She does this precisely by her virginal conception of the Seed. All these ideas are quite traditional. We must note, too, that Prudentius had ipsa in his Bible.

Isidore of Pelusium

(d. ca. 435)

Isidore was a priest of Pelusium in Egypt, famous for his piety and for his competence in the Scriptures. Many of his letters are known for their treatment of exegetical questions, in which he follows the School of Antioch, rather than the allegorism of Alexandria. In regard to our question he writes:

The Seed of the Woman, the one whom God commands to be hostile to the serpent (Gen. 3, 15b) is Our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the Seed of the Woman who alone was born from her in such a manner that no life-germ of man intervened, and chastity was not lessened.45 

Isidore expressly identifies the Woman’s Seed as Christ, and he does so precisely because He is the only one who was conceived of a Virgin. But thereby he at least equivalently identified the Woman as Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ. Lest we overlook it, for him, too, “her Seed” points to a virginal conception of the Seed.

Hesychius, Priest-monk of Jerusalem

(d. after 450)

Though little is known of the life of this Hesychius, we are informed that he was held in high repute as a priest and preacher in Jerusalem. The Greek Church venerates him as a highly competent interpreter of Sacred Scripture as well as a saint. He is thought to have written a commentary on the whole Bible. In two of his published sermons on the Blessed Mother he treats of Mary as the Second Eve, who through her virginal Son conquered the Dragon. In the first of these he dwells at length on the greatness of Mary as Mother of the Only-begotten Son of God, who is described as the opposite of Eve, removing as she did the curse that had been placed on Eve and all women. Here he contrasts, as was customary, Lk. 1, 28ff and Gen. 3, 16, not 3, 15. But in the next sermon he writes:

Do you not see how great and of what kind is the dignity of God’s Virgin Mother? For the Only-begotten Son of God, Maker of the world, is carried by her as an Infant, and He refashioned Adam and sanctified Eve, He deposed the dragon and opened paradise, the while protecting the seal of the womb.46 

In other words, the virginal conception itself and birth of God’s Son were a means for destroying the devil and restoring grace to Adam and Eve. Mary, therefore, was instrumental in this work of redemption. But does the author here allude to Gen. 3, 15? Yes, there is an idea-allusion to Christ’s victory over the serpent inasmuch as He is the virginal Child of Mary. True, the words are not from Genesis. That the devil is called the dragon is from Apoc. 12, 7-9; that he is said to have been “destroyed by Christ” is got from Paul’s idea that the diabolical powers were “destroyed” by Christ (1 Cor. 15, 24) or that death was “destroyed” (2 Tim. 1, 10), or that the Antichrist will be “destroyed” by Christ (2 Th. 2, 8). But the idea of a virgin mother making it possible for Christ to destroy Satan comes from Gen. 3, 15, unless perhaps from Apoc. 12, 7-9, with an allusion from there to Gen. 3, 15.

This interpretation is confirmed by another passage in this same sermon, in which he comments on Is. 7, 14:

Behold the Virgin! Which one? The distinguished of all women, the elect of all virgins, the excellent ornament of our nature, the glory of our race, the one who freed Eve from shame and Adam from the threat, and decapitated the boldness of the dragon.47 

The allusion of freeing Eve from shame is to Gen. 3, 16; that of removing the threat from Adam is to Gen. 3, 17-19. So, when he speaks about Mary’s decapitating the boldness of the dragon, there seems to be a certain idea-allusion to Gen. 3, 15. The term dragon is, of course, again from Apoc. 12, 9, and perhaps the allusion is here directly to Apoc. 12, and from there to Gen. 3, 15. But in any case there seems to be an allusion to the First-gospel, with a Messianic and Marian interpretation. It is interesting to note that Mary herself is said to decapitate the dragon, obviously by her virginal conception and birth of the Conqueror, as stated previously. It is of interest, too, that in the commentary on Is. 7, 14 he should be alluding to Gen. 3, 15, implying, what is very traditional by now, the virginal motherhood in “her Seed.” If these allusions to Gen. 3, 15 are correct, and I think they are, then Hesychius is another ancient writer who sees the Eve-Mary antithesis founded on Gen. 3, 15, since in the context of the previous sermon Mary was presented as the total opposite of Eve; but she, and not Eve, is the victorious Woman of the First-gospel.

Pope St. Leo the Great

(d. 461)

Pope St. Leo the Great is witness for the Church in Rome, but in a sense for the whole Church. In his introduction to the second Christmas sermon he looks on the Incarnation as the day of our redemption. It is the day on which God gave a retort to the devil and showed His mercy toward us:

For the mystery of our salvation is recalled by the annual cycle—the mystery that was promised from the beginning, that was given in the end, and that remains without end, … For God who is all-powerful and merciful, whose very nature is goodness, and whose will is power and whose work is mercy, designated, in the very beginning of the world, as soon as the diabolic malice killed us by the poison of his envy, the remedies of His mercy, prepared for us mortal men who had to be redeemed. He announced to the serpent that a Seed of a woman would come who would crush by His power the haughtiness of the guilty head. By that He signified that Christ, who would come in the flesh, to be God and Man, who, born of the Virgin, would by His incorrupt birth condemn the violator of the human race.48 

St. Leo certainly takes the First-gospel in a Messianic sense, as a promise of the Christ’s coming in the flesh. He identifies the Woman’s Seed expressly as Christ. He has Him crush the head, the haughtiness of the serpent, namely, according to Gen. 3, 15c. He equivalently identifies the Woman as Mary, since he stresses that the Seed was born of a virgin mother. In fact, it is the virginal conception and birth of this Seed which was the undoing of Satan. St. Leo, too, agrees with all the other interpreters of Gen. 3, 15, that “her Seed” is indicative of the virginal conception of the Christ. The Woman, Mary, moreover, has an active role in the destruction of Satan, though he does not expressly apply the crushing to Mary. Finally, Gen. 3, 15 is for him the basis of the antithetic parallel between Christ and the devil. He did not draw out the parallel in regard to Eve and Mary, but it is scarcely doubtful what his view would be.

Chrysippus, Priest of Jerusalem

(d. 479)

Chrysippus was originally from Cappadocia, but he went to Palestine when he was about 15 or 20 years old. There he lived, became a monk and was ordained a priest. He is recognized as a singular writer and preacher. In his eulogy on the Blessed Virgin he has a long description of Mary’s excellence, as virgin and Mother of Christ, the Conqueror of Satan, over against Eve who was conquered by Satan. These are the pertinent words:

What then, what is the enemy of the human race likely to say to himself when now he sees us called back to the pristine adoption of sons through a woman? Does he not ask repeatedly and lament: “How does it happen that the instrument which was my colleague in the beginning, is now my enemy? A woman co-operated with me to obtain tyrannical power over the race, and a woman has evicted me from that tyrannical power. The ancient Eve exalted me, but the new Eve deposed me. Really, Eve is even now the same according to nature, though she is not Eve according to the generation. For what woman was able to give birth to such a wonderful Child, or to conceive without being subject to any corruption of intercourse? She became a mother without loss of virginity; … Rightly then have I been taken captive by her whom I conquered. On the contrary, I have in vain tried maliciously to lay ambush for her … Really, how much time I would need to narrate by what measure He who was born of her triumphed over me … Finally, though by my advice He was hoisted even on the cross, He filled me, and death together with me, with still greater shame while from the cross He made everything that was on the earth quake, and from the tomb He exposed all that was under the earth. He despoiled both me from the cross and death from the tomb, as the dead rose together with Him.

Now who was the cause of all these things? Who else was it but she who gave birth to the worker of miracles of this kind? It would indeed have been better for me not to lead the ancient Eve into deceiving [Adam]; it would have been better for me not to deceive her by the serpent.”49 

The trend of thought in Chrysippus is rather clear. His whole sermon is in praise of Mary. That explains his Mary-centered attitude when explaining the First-gospel. He definitely ascribes the victory over Satan to Mary, by the very fact that she conceived and gave birth to Christ, the Victor. And he sees all this as an antithesis of what Eve did. Just as he sees Christ’s work as the antithesis of the devil’s. So we ask two questions: Does he allude to and use Gen. 3, 15 for the role of Christ and Mary as he describes it? Does he base the antithesis of Eve and Mary on Gen. 3, 15?

In regard to the first question, he certainly gathered his material about Eve’s Fall and the curse from Gen. 3. So he is in the environment of Gen. 3, 15. He wrote in Greek and consequently used the Septuagint. But one need not look for allusions to the word “crush,” because not only the Latin writers, but also the Greek writers, beginning with St. Irenaeus, interpreted “crush” as a defeat of the devil, by trampling on, or crushing his head. His statement, put in the mouth of the devil, that the devil tried in vain “to lay ambushes” for Mary is an idea-allusion to Gen. 3, 15 according to the Latin Vulgate and some Greek commentators of the Septuagint. But just before that he has the devil speak of Mary’s having taken him captive and conquered him. That is an idea-allusion to Gen. 3, 15c. The notion of defeating the devil is expressed several times in this short exposition: Mary “evicted” the devil from his tyrannical power; as the New Eve she “deposed” him. Her Child triumphed over Satan and “despoiled” him. But Mary, too, was the cause of that triumph and destruction by her virginal conception of Christ. That leads to the next allusion. Prior to his allusion to Gen. 3, 15c, as just explained, he stressed the virginal conception of Christ. Again, since in Gen. 3, 15, the expression “her Seed” precedes the idea of this Seed’s triumphing over Satan, it seems most natural to think that Chrysippus is here alluding to and explaining “her Seed” as virginal. His many predecessors, of whom he certainly knew, who saw the Woman as Mary, also laid stress on the fact that “her Seed” indicates a virginal motherhood. Later on he has the devil state very concisely, “He who was born of her triumphed over me.” That is again an allusion to and an interpretation of Gen. 3, l5bc, about the Seed, born of the Woman alone, who defeated Satan. To be noted is that here he ascribes the victory to the Seed, though above he ascribed it to the Woman, and the devil lays ambushes for her, which seems to suppose a feminine pronoun “She shall crush.” But since he had the Septuagint, and since the Greeks never read the feminine pronoun here, it is more likely that he just interpreted this part of the prophecy also of Mary because of her sharing in the struggle and triumph of the Son. He also alludes to Gen. 3, 15 by repeating the idea that the devil is the enemy of the race, and the special enemy of the Woman. That is followed by an explanation of how Mary became his enemy, namely, by evicting and deposing him. This is a word- and idea-allusion to Gen. 3, 15a, about the enmity that God put between the serpent and the Woman.

Because the allusion seemed clearest in the last part of Gen. 3, 15, about the ambushes, I started with that and worked up to the first part. But now if we start from the allusion to the enmity and work back, we can see that Chrysippus explains, by allusion, the various parts of the Firstgospel, and that in the order in which they occur in it. What more do we need for an allusion, when there are even a few word-allusions here? The conclusion seems inescapable: Chrysippus did use Gen. 3, 15 and, in an oratorical but masterful way, alluded to the sense it had received through tradition.

True, texts of the New Testament might have given him some of the ideas about Mary; for instance, Gal. 4, 4, or Apoc. 12; or Lk. 1, 26ff. One might see in these passages an allusion to the virginal motherhood as the cause of our salvation. But in none of them is that virginal motherhood linked expressly with defeating Satan, as it is in Gen. 3, 15. This too must, therefore, have been the source for his ideas. Not even Apoc. 12 has all the ideas about enmity, virginal motherhood, triumph over Satan, who lay in wait for her continuously, so well combined as does Gen. 3, 15, and as they are explained by our author. I conclude, then, the answer to the first question by saying that—in spite of the flat denial of Stys50 that Chrysippus does not allude to Gen. 3, 15, and that the text cannot be used as a proof for the Christological or Mariological meaning of Gen. 3, 15, and in spite of the wholehearted approval of this by Laurentin51—I think it indubitable that Chrysippus did make use of and allude to the First-gospel as Marian and Messianic, as Father Gallus ably defended.52 

Now for the second question: Does Chrysippus base the Eve-Mary antithesis, which runs throughout his passage, on Gen. 3, 15? In view of what we explained, the answer must be an emphatic yes. Mary is the Woman, virginal in her motherhood of Christ, the Seed, and she is victorious over Satan, her special enemy. In that she is presented as the exact opposite of Eve. Eve was the devil’s colleague, while Mary is his enemy, as expressed in Gen. 3, 15a, to which he alludes. Eve, though she has the same physical nature as Mary, did not beget children in a virginal manner. Only Mary, of all women, did that. Again, this privilege of Mary’s is alluded to in Gen. 3, 15b, “her Seed.” Eve had been taken captive and was conquered by the devil; but Mary took the devil captive and conquered him; she evicted him from the tyrannical power and deposed him. So we conclude, if Chrysippus alludes to Gen. 3, 15 and explains it, as we think we have proved, then there can be no doubt that the Eve-Mary antithesis which is interwoven in his explanation, has as one source Gen. 3, 15, with Mary as that virginal and victorious Woman, and with Eve as the total opposite, having no part in Gen. 3, 15.

It is beside the point to say that Chrysippus used Gal. 4, 4 as the New Testament counterpart for Mary in this antithesis, and that was sufficient to establish the antithesis.53 To be sure it was; but it is not a question of what was sufficient, but of what Chrysippus gave as all the sources of the antithesis. For him not merely Lk. or Gal., but also Gen. 3, 15 was the source, just as it was also the source for the antithesis between Satan and Christ, though other passages of the New Testament could have sufficed for establishing that antithesis.

St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville

(d. 636)

St. Isidore of Seville, often called the last of the Fathers in the West, is witness for Spain. He was a collector of opinions of the Fathers, but quite competent to summarize them. In regard to Gen. 3, 15 he follows his usual method of giving various opinions:

‘I will put enmities between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.’ The devil’s seed is the perverse suggestion. The woman’s seed is the fruit of good work, by which the perverse suggestion is resisted. ‘She shall crush his head’ if the mind will exclude it in the very beginning of the evil suggestion. ‘He will lie in wait for her heel,’ because he tries to deceive at the end the mind which he did not deceive at the first suggestion.

Certain ones, however, have understood the phrase, ‘I will put enmities between you and the woman,’ of the Virgin of whom the Lord was born, because then it was that the promise was made that the Lord would be born of her for the sake of conquering the enemy, and destroying death, which was authored by him. For even what follows, ‘She shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel,’ they understand of the fruit of Mary’s womb, namely, of Christ, in this sense: “You [devil] will trip him up so that he will die; he however, having conquered you, will rise again, and ‘will crush your head.’ namely death.” That is in keeping with what David too, in the person of the Father, said to the Son: ‘You shall tread on the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample under foot the lion and the dragon’ (Ps. 90, 13). By serpents [asps] he means death; by basilisk, sin; by lions, Antichrist; by dragons, the devil.54 

Here as in other instances, St. Isidore seems to have condensed the opinions of various Fathers on whom he relied. There is no contradiction between the moral-allegorical interpretation and the Marian-Christological. Since we are interested in knowing who held the Marian interpretation, we will discuss only that. The opinion he quotes certainly identifies the Woman as Mary and the Seed as Christ. St. Isidore noted in the authors whom he consulted, what we have called attention to so often, that they saw the virginal motherhood foretold in the First-gospel in the expression “her Seed,” and they insist that through this virginal motherhood He defeated Satan, and that she shared in that victory. And so, even though he read ipsa in his Bible, he did not hesitate to ascribe the defeating of the devil to the Seed directly. We saw how Chrysippus did the same thing. And so, here too, Fischer has no warrant to change ipsa to ipse, as if the Bishop had really written ipse. Besides, he introduces his explanation of this part by saying, “For even what follows: ‘She shall crush…,’ they understand of the fruit of Mary’s womb,” as if to say: Even though the text has ‘she’, they refer the crushing of the serpent’s head to the Woman’s Seed.

But did St. Isidore espouse this view, or did he merely record it without approving it, as Drewniak thought?55 If he had not approved it, he would hardly have presented it so favorably, and explained it so carefully. Besides, he would scarcely have disapproved an opinion that has such eminent authorities in its favor. The “certain ones” to whom he ascribes this view were surely his countryman, Prudentius, the letter Ad amicum aegrotum, St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, St. Leo I. That is confirmed by the fact that elsewhere he presents this interpretation as an example of a Scriptural text that is to be taken partially historically and partially spiritually (mystice figurata).56 He does not explain there what is to be taken in the literal historical and what in the mystically figurative sense. But it seems that the Woman is a figure of Mary, as the serpent is the figure of Satan. In this passage he also has ipsa, which confirms the fact that he read ipsa in his Bible and wrote it in the preceding quotation. The Bishop of Seville must then be listed as holding the Marian and Messianic sense of the First-gospel.

Conclusion

I hope this study disclosed the fact that there were clear witnesses for the Marian interpretation of the First-gospel in every section of the Church, in practically every age from the beginning. The first explicit interpretation of Gen. 3, 15, that of Irenaeus, was Marian as well as Messianic; it stressed the virginal conception of the Woman whose Offspring was called “her Seed”; for that very reason he thought the Virgin Woman had a very intimate share in the work of salutary recapitulation; and in so doing, he opposed the Virgin Woman to Eve. Before the Council of Nicea there is another clear and strong voice in favor of the Marian sense in Africa: St. Cyprian. St. Justin is at least a probable witness to it in Palestine and Rome. Between the Councils of Nicea and Ephesus there is the certain Marian explanation of Serapion in Egypt, Ephraem in Syria, Pseudo-Jerome in the West, Epiphanius in Palestine and Cyprus, Prudentius in Spain; and the probable witness of Ambrose in Milan. After Ephesus there are the certain voices of Isidore of Pelusium in Egypt, Leo the Great in Rome, Chrysippus in Jerusalem, Isidore of Seville in Spain; and the probable voice of Hesychius in Jerusalem. There was not enough space in this study to consider a number of other probable witnesses to the Marian interpretation.

This interpretation which was so unhesitatingly proposed from the beginning and was so well known in all parts of the Church, was never openly opposed by any writer of the patristic age. True, many of the greatest Fathers interpreted our text in an allegorical-moral sense. But that is not equivalent to a denial of the Messianic or Marian sense; in fact, their explanation often presupposes at least the Messianic interpretation.

Throughout our analysis of the ancient writers we called attention to the fact that they say the virginal motherhood was disclosed in the expression of “her Seed”; and that, in fact, they frequently identified Christ and Mary as the Woman and her Seed precisely by this note. And those who expressed themselves on this point held it with the same certainty as they held the Marian interpretation itself. For them the two aspects go hand in hand.

Furthermore, with almost equal frequency they noted that Mary shared in the work of redemption precisely because she was virginal mother of the Seed, and in that way she contributed to His initial victory over Satan. Because of that a number of them pointed out that Mary is the opposite of Eve. They, in other words, used Gen. 3, 15 as one source of the Marian role in the Eve-Mary antithesis. It was because of this that the theologians of the Commission of Pius IX for the Bull Ineffabilis Deus regarded the entire patristic tradition on the Eve-Mary antithesis as an “allusive” argument in favor of the Marian interpretation of Gen. 3, 15.57 That is correct, I believe, unless one can prove the contrary for individual writers. True, they very often used Gen. 3, 16 for Eve in opposition to Mary, for whom they quoted Lk. 1, 42; but they implicitly admitted the opposition between Gen. 3, 16 and 3, 15, between the humiliated Eve and the victorious virgin mother. They used Luke instead of Gen. 3, 15 because it was a more perfect antithesis to Gen. 3, 16 even in words. Consequently, it is by no means proved conclusively, as Laurentin and Stys seem to think,58 that Gen. 3, 15 was not a Source for the Eve-Mary antithesis. Father Gallus, in his articles quoted in this study, correctly defends the relation between the two.

And so, we conclude, an interpretation of a Scriptural passage that was so openly and unhesitatingly proposed already from the second century, and which was never contradicted by any ancient Christian writer, even though it was not proposed expressly by a majority of the writers, is the correct tradition. That is what Pope Pius IX thought when he appealed to these Fathers as holding the Messianic and Marian interpretation; that is what Pope Pius XII thought when, in favor of the Immaculate Conception, he appealed to “not a few of the Fathers” for this interpretation; and when, in favor of the Assumption, he appealed to a constant tradition, from the second century on, which saw the victorious Woman as Mary, opposed to Eve, in the First-gospel.

The Marian interpretation of the First-gospel, in the sense that “the Woman” as virgin mother of the Messiah, is Mary, in closest association with Him precisely because of the virginal motherhood, rests on a most solid foundation in the ancient Christian writers.

REV. DOMINIC J. UNGER, O.F.M. Cap.

Capuchin College,

Washington, D. C. 

1 Cf. O. Faller, S.J., De priorum saeculorum silentio circa Assumptionem B. Mariae Virginis, in AG 36 (1946) 77f., who correctly notes the importance of distinguishing between the objective and subjective content of a writer.

2 For bibliography on the Marian interpretation of Gen. 3, 15 in the patristic age see the writer’s The First-gospel, Genesis 3, 15, in Franciscan Institute Publications, Theology Series, n. 3 (St. Bonaventure, N. Y., 1954) especially the more recent works in nn. 142 (Drewniak), 187, 205 (Lennerz), 191, 210 (Roschini), 221 (Fonseca, 266, 269 (Gallus), 281 (Stys). Besides, the writer’s own study in the work just quoted, pp. 90-235; Stan. Stys, S.J., De antithesi “Eva-Maria” eiusque relatione ad Protoevangelium apud Patres, in CTh 23 (1952) 318-365; R. Laurentin, L’interprétation de la Genèse 3, 15 dans la tradition jusqu’au debut du XIII siècle, in BSFEM 12 (1954) 77-156.

3 St. Justin, Dialogus cum Tryphone, n. 19; PG 6, 692BC, 693AB.

4 Ibid., n. 100; PG 6, 709CD, 712A.

5 Ibid., n. 102; PG 6, 712D, 714AB. Cf. T. Gallus, S.J., Quaestiones de Protoevangelio in Bulla “Munificentissimus Deus,” in Mm 17 (1955) 305-331, contains a refutation of Stys (Note 2), with whom Laurentin (Note 2) sides. Stys attempted a rebuttal in Sitne Iustinus revera auctor interpretationis christologico-mariologicae Gen. 3, 15. Responsum R. P. Tiburtio Gallus datum, in RTk 3 (1956) 70-128.

6 D. Unger, O.F.M.Cap., Sancti Irenaei, Lugdunensis Episcopi, doctrina de Maria Virgine Matre, Socia Iesu Christi Filii sui ad opus recapitulationis, in MEcl 4 (Romae, 1959) 67-140.

7 St. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 5, 21, 1-2; PG 7, 1179; ed. Harvey, 2, 380f.

8 See my First-gospel (Note 2), pp. 100-103.

9 Irenaeus, Adv. haer., 4, 40, 3 ; PG 7, 1114 ; Harvey 2, 3031.

10 Ibid., 3, 23, 7; PG 7, 694; Harvey 2, 129.

11 Cf. Unger, art cit., p. 1331., against Laurentin’s idea that Irenaeus sees only the enmity and not the victory expressed in the First-gospel.

12 See the further refutation of this, against Stys, Michl, and Laurentin, in Unger, art. cit., p. 134f.

13 AAS 42 (1950) 768. For a discussion of St. Irenaeus, as well as St. Justin, in this connection, cf. Gallus, art. cit.

14 St. Cyprian, Ad Quirinum: Testimonium adversus Iudaeos, lib. 2, 9; PL 4, 704; Hartel, CSEL 3, 1 (1868) 73-74.

15 Cf. Laurentin, art. cit., n. 167a. The Latin is in A. Lippomanus, Catena in Genesim ex variis authoribus ecciesiasticis (Paris, 1564) fol. 93r.

16 St. Ephraem, Carmina Nisibena, nn. 26 and 38; ed. G. Bickel (Leipzig. 1866) 122f., 152.

17 Idem, De Nativitate, sermo 9; ed. Assemani, Syr. lat., t. 2, 424DF.

18 Idem, Sermo de Domino nostro; ed. Th. J. Lamy, Hymni et sermones, 1 (Malines, 1882-1902) 154-156.

19 Idem, De Nativitate Iesu Christi in came, Hymnus 2, 31; Lamy, 2,

455-457. There is some doubt about the authenticity of this hymn.

20 De B. M. Virgine, Hymnus 1, vss. 6. 13-14; Lamy, 2, 524. This hymn is possibly not authentic.

21 De B. M. Virgine, Hymnus 2, vs. 7; Lamy, 2, 526.

22 Cf. Unger The First-gospel, 150f.

23 Ibid., 146-149.

24 Ibid., 167-168; and Ambrose, In Ps. 118, n. 4; FL 15, I2O1AC; Petschenig, CSEL 62 (1913) 7f.

25 St. Ambrose, In Ps. 37, nn. 8-9; FL 14, 1012D-1013C; Petschenig,

CSEL 64 (1918) 142.

26 Cf. Unger, op. cit., 165-168.

27 St. Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii, 44, 47; FL 16, 1400-1401.

28 Epistola sexta: Ad amicum aegrotum, de viro perfecto, n. 6; FL 30, 82C-84A.

29 B. Fischer, O.S.B., Vetus latina: Die Reste der Altlateinischen Bibel nach Petrus Sabatier neu gesammelt und herausgegeben von der Erzabtei Beuron (Freiburg, 1951) 68.

30 St. Optatus, In Natale Infantium qui pro Domino occisi sunt; ed. A. Wilmart, RvSR 2 (1922) 271-302; the pertinent passage is on p. 283.

31 St. Epiphanius, Panarion, n. 78; # 17; PG 42, 728; Holl, GCS 3 (1933) 468.

32 Ibid., # 18-19; PG 42, 728C-729; GCS, 468-470.

33 To facilitate reference to these sections I have inserted numbers (I, 1-2; II, 1-2) in the translation. Authors usually speak of four points of comparison that are coordinate. That is not borne out by the text, as I hope my explanation will show.

34 Cf. T. Gallus, S.J., Ad interpretationem Epiphanii mariologicam Gen. 3, 15, in VD 35 (1956) 27Sf.

35 GCS 3, 469, fn.

36 Gallus, Interpretatio mariologica Protoevangelii (Gen. 3, 15) tempore postpatristico usque ad Concilium Tridentinum (Romae, 1949) 20.

37 L. Drewniak, O.S.B., Die mariologische Deutung von Gen. 3, 15 in der Väterzeit (Breslau, 1934) 38.

38 Gallus, loc. cit.

39 Stys, art cit., 351.

40 Ibid., 352-355.

41 Gallus, art. cit. in VD 35 (1956) 277, argued correctly on this point.

42 Stys, loc. cit.

43 Drewniak, loc. cit.: Stys, ibid., 354.

44 St. Prudentius, Cathemerinon 3, vss. 146-150 PL 59, 805f; Bergman”, CSEL 61 (1926), 17.

45 Isidore of Pelusium, Epistolarum liber, 1, n. 426: PG 78, 417D.

46 Hesychius, Oratio 4, De Sancta Maria Deipara; PG 93, 1462 C.

47 Ibid., Oratio 5; PG 93, 1465A.

48 Sermo 22, De nativitate Domini, 2, 1: PL 54, 194A.

49 Chrysippus, Oratio in S. Mariam Deiparam, # 3; ed. M. Jugie, A.A., Homélies, mariales byzantines, in P0 19 (1926) 340f.

50 Stys, art. cit., 357-363.

51 Laurentin, art cit., 143, n. 204.

52 Gallus, Antithesis Eva-Maria cum Gen. 3, 15 coniuncta apud Chrysippum, in DTP1 59 (1956) 71-74.

53 Cf. Stys, loc. cit.

54 St. Isidore, Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum: In Gen., cap. 5, nn. 5-7; PL 83, 221AB.

55 Drewniak, op. cit., 82.

56 Isidore, Liber de variis quaestionibus adversus Iudaeos . . . ex utroque Testamento, c. 8, 1; ed. A. C. Vega—A. E. Anspach, Scriptores ecciesiastici hispano-latini veteris et medii aevi, fasc. 6-9 (Escorial, typ. Monasterii, 1940) p. 22.

57 Cf. Unger, op. cit., 53.

58 Stys especially in the article cited in Note 2; Laurentin, art. cit., 90, fn. 50a.

• Uncategorized