Question XI. Whether the Evangelist ought to have said, To a Virgin

Question XI. Whether the Evangelist ought to have said, To a Virgin.

After this inquiry is made about what he says: To a Virgin ¹.

§ I. And it seems that he ought rather to have said to a woman, for this reason. 1. Liberation ought to be through the same genus through which damnation entered: as death through man, so life through man; and as perdition through a woman, so salvation through a woman. But although Eve was a virgin, nevertheless throughout she is called woman where perdition is treated; therefore our most blessed Virgin ought to have been called woman where our liberation is treated. 2. Likewise, everywhere this conception is figured as that of a woman and not of a virgin; therefore, since the figure ought to correspond to the thing figured, and conversely, here where that conception is announced, she ought to be described under the name woman. The major and minor are clear in different ways in many places. Proverbs XXXI, 10: Who will find a strong woman? etc. That strong woman is the most blessed Virgin, who joined the final ends, namely deity and humanity, into one person, by begetting wisdom, which reaches mightily from the end of deity to the end of humanity. Likewise, Luke X, 38: Jesus entered a certain town, and a certain woman, etc. It is agreed that she who received the Lord was the most blessed Virgin. Likewise, Blessed are you among women ² is said of Jael in figure of our Lady. Likewise, Esther: And the king loved her more than all women ³. Likewise, in the Gospel: A woman mixed three measures ⁴. That woman was the most blessed Virgin, who mixed three measures, that is, deity, soul, and body, and the leaven was the Virgin's faith, as blessed Bernard says. And thus it is manifest in all the figures of that conception that our Lady is described under the name woman; therefore also here woman ought to be named. 3. Likewise, the Lord in the Gospel frequently calls her woman ⁵, and every action of his is our instruction; therefore the Evangelist too ought to call her woman. 4. Likewise, in this announcing the prophecy concerning the Incarnation of the Son of God is fulfilled; but that is prophesied most expressly by Jeremiah, saying: A woman shall surround a man ⁶. Therefore if there she is prophesied under the name female, then here too woman ought to have been named. 5. Likewise, all other announcements of births were made either to men only, as to Zechariah, or to women and men, as in Isaac and in Samson. Therefore since the whole wheel is thus in the middle of the wheel, that is, the New Testament in the Old Testament, no announcement ought to have been made to a Virgin.

§ II. 1. Likewise, it seems that this announcing ought to have been made to a man. Hence the Apostle, First Corinthians XI, 3: The head of the woman is the man. Hence sense and illumination descends from the head to the body and not conversely; therefore it seems that revelation ought to descend to the woman from the man who is the head. 2. Likewise, the Apostle says, First Corinthians XIV, 34 and 35: Let women be silent in the Churches; ... let them ask their husbands at home. Therefore revelation ought to become known to women through men. 3. Likewise, after the birth of the Son of God this was done when the Angel appeared to Joseph in sleep, saying: Take the child and his mother ⁷, etc., where the revelation of the flight seems to pass from Joseph to the Lady. If this was so after the birth of the Son of God, when she was most worthy, then rather before. 4. Likewise it is asked: since she is a singular virgin among all and endowed with many privileges, why is a mark of singularity not added, so that it would say to a certain virgin?

§ III. Response. To this one must note that the beginning of sin is from woman under the aspect of woman. For Eve did not destroy us insofar as she was a virgin, but insofar as she was joined to the man with whom, having been coupled, she begot. For, as Augustine says, original sin as such is born from the wound of concupiscence, which is connected with the commixture of seeds; and she who came to cure the wound ought not to lie under that wound. Furthermore, temporal generation is an image of eternal generation. Hence, as eternal generation is from one remaining incorrupt and undivided, so temporal generation ought to be from one incorrupt, that is, from a virgin. And thus it is clear that the account of woman was fitting for the origin of perdition, and the account of virgin for the origin of salvation.

§ IV. Solution of the objections. As to what is objected, that all figures were made under the account and name of woman, and all announcements were made to men and women and not to a virgin: it must be said that figures and prophecies, containing a half-full light, all fall short of the light itself. Hence no figure in fact could fully express this announcing to a Virgin, because no other virgin was ever going to conceive, and until this Virgin virginity was cursed and shameful. But this Virgin removed the shame of virginity and consecrated virginity; hence she was the beginning of the blessedness of virginity. And thus she is Virgin of virgins, who without precept and without counsel, without example, offered to God the glorious gift of virginity, for which, by imitation, the Virgin generated all virgins to God. Therefore whatever usefulness or dignity could be attributed to women before her had to be done under the account of woman and not virgin, so that the blessing of virginity might be reserved for the most blessed Virgin, as mother of virginity, for a privilege proper to herself. But the prophecies which speak of the person of the most blessed Virgin herself, in the most excellent prophecies, call her now virgin, now woman. Isaiah calls her virgin: Behold a virgin shall conceive ⁸. Jeremiah calls her female: A woman shall surround a man ⁹. This is to signify that the mother of God would have both the integrity of virginity and the fecundity of a woman.

Likewise, because she was going to be the virgin who abolished the sin of the woman, and because this virgin was singular among all virgins, as having neither a prior like herself nor a subsequent one, therefore she is sometimes figured under a mark of singularity as a certain town, etc., and a certain woman, etc. But because she truly alone had virginity in the highest degree, as will be clear below, therefore she is named virgin antonomastically without addition. For this Virgin was the cause and principle of all the other Saints by the highest purity of virginity, immunity from sin, impossibility of sinning, having virginity with fecundity, mother of the holiest man, mother of the Creator, mother of God and of corporeal man, spiritual mother of all human beings, mother of the worldly machine, mother of angelic restoration.

As to what is objected, that this announcing ought to have been made through the mediation of a man, we respond that the announcing belongs to the same one to whom the generation belongs. Hence for those whose generation was from the commixture of man and woman, their announcement ought to have been made to men and to women. But the announcing of him ought to have been to the Virgin alone, who alone was born from the Virgin alone. Nor was Joseph the head of the most blessed Virgin, especially as to this conception, which came into her not from him into her, but entirely from the Holy Spirit into her. But that after the birth of the Son the Angel announced the flight to Joseph is a mystery: before the birth and conception nothing concerning that Son pertained to Joseph; but after the birth the most blessed Virgin and the poor Son of God needed the work of at least one servant. Therefore the Angel is sent to Joseph to enjoin on him the service he was about to do; and because he was ready in faith and prompt in obedience, he needed a light illumination, as in dreams, which he received from the Angel, so that he might know what he should do, not so that he might intimate to the most blessed Virgin what was to be done. She knew before he did whatever pertained to his blessedness or to the necessity of acting. Nor did she need for this any go-between, either human or Angel, because she had in her womb him who is Teacher and Master in heaven.