Question XXV. Whether it is fitting that the mother of God be noble according to the flesh?

QUESTION XXV. Whether it is fitting that the mother of God be noble according to the flesh?

From this inquiry is made concerning the nobility of the Virgin. It is asked whether it is fitting that the mother of God be noble according to the flesh.

§ I. And it seems that not. 1. By that saying of the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 1:26: Not many wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble, etc. But he chose and pre-chose the most blessed Virgin especially. Therefore she ought to have been ignoble.

2. Likewise, the Gloss on that saying: "For the humble God came seeking the humble, not the high."

3. Likewise, in the same place: "He did not choose kings, or senators, or orators, but commoners, poor men, unlearned men, fishermen." Therefore, since the most blessed Virgin was chosen before all these, before all these she ought to have been ignoble, poor, and plebeian.

4. Likewise, it seems a greater humiliation on God's part to be incarnate from an ignoble woman than from a noble one.

But if this is conceded. On the contrary: 1. The more something is elevated upward, the more it can be pressed downward; for the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley; therefore the more something has been elevated upward by nobility and dignity, the more it can descend through humility. But the most blessed Virgin was of the deepest humility; therefore she ought to have been of the highest dignity and nobility. Hence Augustine says: "She would never have been exalted above all the choirs of Angels unless she had been humbled beneath all men."

2. Likewise, Bernard says: "For one placed on high not to think high things," as above. But the most blessed Virgin was most dear to God; therefore she ought to have been high and not to think high things, but to consent to the lowly.

3. Likewise, Bernard says: "Who would not bear pride more tolerably in a rich person than in a poor person?" But humility is nobler in a rich person than in a poor person; but humility in the most blessed Virgin was most praiseworthy. Therefore, if humility is nobler in a rich person than in a poor person, then she was among the noble and rich.

4. Likewise, Jerome says that services are less pleasing the more they are owed. But services are more owed in servants than in freeborn persons. Therefore they are less pleasing in the former than in the latter, and more in the freeborn. But the services of the most blessed Virgin, which were of the greatest servitude, such as payment of census, profession, and the like, were most pleasing to God; therefore they were in a most noble person.

From these things it seems that it is fitting that the most blessed Virgin was most noble. That she was so is manifest: the nobility of a thing consists and is considered in three things, in cause, substance, and efficacy. In cause, if it takes its beginning from a noble origin; in substance, if it possesses a noble substance and property in itself; in efficacy, if it produces noble effects from itself. Therefore the most blessed Virgin was most noble, as the daughter of the prince, in whom God chose for himself a peculiar people and distinguished it from others, namely Abraham, from whom she herself descended in the forty-first generation. In substance, because she had in herself both the perfection of nature and the fullness of grace. In efficacy, because she generated God himself from herself. Therefore in all things in which nobility is considered, the most blessed Virgin is found noble in the highest degree.

§ II. Alongside this it is asked: in what does nobility according to the flesh consist? Because it is said that nobility is nothing other than aged riches; therefore it seems that it consists in riches. According to this, however, the most blessed Virgin would not have been noble, because she was poor and generated from poor parents.

It also seems that this nobility is not from things. Likewise it is neither from the body nor from nobility of bodily complexion; for kings and princes are found who are called noble and yet, according to the flesh, exist with a melancholic and phlegmatic complexion; and conversely, peasants are sanguine and choleric. Therefore nobility is not drawn from the body.

Likewise, it seems not from the soul either. For souls are not from the stock; therefore the soul of the son has nothing of nobility from the father or from the soul of the father.

Likewise, Seneca says that an atrium full of images of ancestors does not make nobility, because what is before us is not ours, for they did not live for our glory. And he wishes to prove, as all who speak in this matter do, that only he is noble whom his own virtue ennobles. Nobility alone is that which adorns the soul with morals. And thus it seems that nobility according to the flesh is nothing.

§ III. To this we say that the blessed Virgin, according to every mode of dignity, perfection, and nobility, ought to be and was most noble and most worthy in the highest degree.

Therefore it should be noted that, as was touched on in the opposite, the complete nobility of genealogy consists in three things: in liberty of condition, in dignity of office, in holiness of life. Liberty of condition is considered in three things, namely in cause, in substance, and in efficacy. With the liberty that is in cause or origin, the most blessed Virgin was most free, as the daughter of the prince to whom God said: In Isaac shall your seed be called ¹. But Isaac is not the son of the handmaid, but of the free woman. Likewise, to the father: You are a prince of God among us ². Likewise, to the daughter: How beautiful are your steps in sandals, daughter of the prince ³! that is, your works in the examples of the saints, whom you imitate and surpass all; and thus she was most free in cause. In substance, which immunity from sin and fullness of grace make free, she was also most free. Hence: Hail, full of grace ⁴. For he who commits sin is the slave of sin ⁵. So conversely: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ⁶. Therefore the blessed Virgin herself is the seed of Abraham. She never served sin, fulfilling that Apostolic saying: So begin, so speak, so act as those beginning to be judged by the law of perfect liberty ⁷. And thus she was most free in substance, she who never committed sin and was full of grace. She was also most free in passive and active efficacy; for it is said to servants: If the Son shall free you, you will be truly free ⁸. And according to the Gloss liberavit is put for libertavit. Therefore if a servant who is the servant of the Son is set free, much more was the mother of the Son most free. Likewise, if truth frees those whom it illumines, it freed rather her who generated him. Likewise, in active efficacy she was most free. For she is the one through whom every creature has been freed from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the grace of the sons of God, where every lordship ceases, where the servant is free from his lord.

But as she arose from the most noble, so she was drawn from the most worthy. Therefore she was most noble in cause, substance, and efficacy. In cause there is a threefold dignity from which she was originated: royal, priestly, prophetical. The first is bodily; the second, spiritual; the third, heavenly, because to foretell future things is a gift of God. She arose from royal stock, as in David and others; patriarchal, as in Abraham and others; prophetical, as in Nathan. And thus she was most worthy in cause. Likewise also in substance: for she herself had this threefold dignity in her own substance and person. For she was the queen who stood at his right hand in gilded clothing ⁹. She was also a priest of justice, who did not spare her own Son but stood beside the cross of Jesus, as Ambrose says, not so that she might behold the death of the Son, not so that she might consider the sorrow of the Son, but so that she might await the salvation of the human race. She was also the prophetess of wisdom. I approached, says Isaiah, the prophetess ¹⁰, etc. And thus she was most worthy in substance. She was also most worthy in efficacy: for she transmitted the threefold dignity originally into the Son principally, specially into us, and after this generally; she generated the Son, who was king and priest and prophet. A king, who has written on his garment and on his thigh: King of kings and Lord of lords ¹¹. About whom alone the wise kings asked, saying: Where is he who has been born king of the Jews ¹²? A priest, who is the priest of justice, who is according to the order of Melchizedek, who through his own blood entered once into the Holy Places, eternal redemption having been found ¹³. He was a prophet powerful in work and speech ¹⁴. This threefold dignity the blessed Virgin transmitted into us, she who made us a kingdom and priesthood for God, indeed a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom, of which it is said, Luke 1:32: He shall reign in the house of Jacob, etc. Thus therefore it is clear that the blessed Virgin was of the most noble genealogy.

§ IV. But as to what is asked, what was that nobility according to the flesh: we respond that nobility according to the flesh is the transmission of carnal origin from parents according to the world, established in riches, or power, or dominion; from these, so far as it is on the part of nature, there is caused in children a likeness of complexion, conformity of morals, and imitation of action. For a poor and ignoble man, if he begins to abound in riches, begins to have more leisure for pleasures, to nourish himself with more delicate foods, and thus, with his complexion ennobled, to occupy himself with more honorable exercises, to care less for small losses, to pant less after depraved profits, to fear another's dominion less, to care less about gifts, to desire liberty more, to enter the companionships of greater persons, to join in marriage with them, and to imitate their works and morals. And thus a nature first servile and ignoble, conquered by custom, is transformed into the contrary; and the more this is transmitted from a more remote and longer-lasting root to branches, the more the inclination of nature is hardened and becomes more inseparable, so that in the children, so far as it is on the part of nature, a natural inclination toward the counsels of the parents is found. And this is added to the nobility of the flesh, which, so far as it is of its own nature, is always inclined more toward honorable and fitting things than toward base things. And this whole is true, unless freedom of judgment, or custom, or another extrinsic cause works the contrary. And thus it is clear that nobility is not only from quality of complexion, since a king or worthy person of melancholic complexion may be more bold or generous than a peasant, because of the custom of a consanguineous complexion; for although the soul is not from the stock, nevertheless existing in flesh it works more, or more strongly, more frequently, according as it is inclined more by the flesh toward something.

§ V. As to what is said, that only nobility of mind seems praiseworthy: we respond that if the quality of operation acts contrary to the nobility of origin, the deformity of operation is more vicious and more detestable, the more it is against the natural inclination of origin; and thus the vicious noble is more culpable than the ignoble. But where nobility of origin is perfected and adorned by nobility of morals and operation, each supplies the other with a defense of praise. Then the virtue of origin is shown in operation, not as if they contracted from the parent an adventitious and quickly changeable nobility, but as if they contracted a proper, innate, and owed nobility; and when virtue of mind has nobility of flesh as foundation and root, it is moved from virtue with more difficulty by dignities that are not changeable, but as if innate it is less elevated, and by humiliations that are as if more unworthy it is exalted higher; and when perhaps the virtue of mind has grown lukewarm, that nobility of flesh itself stirs it to noble things. Hence it is that when these two nobilities are joined, both are deservedly praised. Hence a double honor shone in venerable Gregory: senatorial dignity, voluntary poverty, etc. But if they are separated, nobility of flesh is not praised but blamed; for nobility of mind without nobility of flesh is praised so much the more as, also conquering its own nature, it acts laudably. A verse: I prefer that your father be Thersites, provided that you yourself are like the descendant of Aeacus and take up Vulcanian arms, than that Achilles produce you like Thersites ¹⁵.

Likewise, another: Counselor of nobles, despise double-tongued slaves.

As to what is also objected, that not many powerful according to the flesh and not many wise, etc. ¹⁶, we say that this must be understood of the preachers through whom the world was to be converted to the faith; it was fitting that they be plebeian and unlearned, lest that which God worked through grace and their ministry be ascribed to their power, or wisdom, or dignity, and thus the cross of Christ be emptied. Hence it was fitting that men not be deceived or compelled to the faith by learned words of human wisdom, nor by power of dignity, but by the simple words of simple persons cooperating outwardly, with divine power working inwardly, the humble one might be called humbly to the humble one; and thus the humble God would be exalted, and the devil who had conquered through pride would be conquered through humility. Hence the Gloss in the same place: "If the fisherman had not faithfully gone before, the orator would not humbly have followed." But he was reforming another thing through act in the mother, whom it befitted him to exalt in all the ways in which he could, and in her, from whom he assumed it, to honor in every way the nature to be united to himself. Therefore, so that his grace toward us might appear so much greater, the more inseparably he united our nature to himself, and the more multiply he adorned the medium of that union, and so that her humility would become so much deeper and more capable of greater grace, the more both fullness of grace and nobility elevated her.