Part II : The Crown of Power : Chapter 1 : 4

Chapter 1 : Understanding the basis of Part II

The Holy Virgin was created only because of and for the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, otherwise she would never have been.

Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020)

There would have been no Holy Virgin if the divine Word had not become incarnate : 1st reason

 4   Once this truth has been accepted we can proceed further and agree that unless sin had made its appearance the divine Word would never have taken our human nature (at least by virtue of the eternal decree that has been revealed to us). In the same way, if there had been no Jesus Christ there would have been no Mary, and she would never have been – except in the sense of being numbered with creatures that were possible. 

I draw my first reason in support of this proposition from the authority of Scripture and the Holy Fathers who teach that she was made expressly to serve the Word Incarnate, as appears from the words of chapter 8 of the book of Proverbs, which the Church applies to the holy Virgin, where it is said that the Lord created her the beginning of his ways for His works[1]. Now if these words carry any weight in so far as they are applied to the holy Virgin, it must necessarily follow that the principal aim that God had in the creation of Mary was to make use of her help in restoring His works, as I mentioned in passing during Part I[2] and which I will demonstrate more fully throughout Part II of this work. Her role was to serve and to help Him who was to have the principal role in the great work of our redemption. From this I conclude that were the principal cause of her creation to have been absent, the earth would never have had the happiness of enjoying her wonderful presence. Now it is not part of my intention to attach too much importance to the word Create or Creation, but I do believe the Holy Spirit had a reason for using this type of language in the text and the Holy Fathers, moreover, often speak in this way when discussing the appearance of the Virgin in creation. I admit that I feel strongly inclined to believe that they acknowledged the force of this interpretation, and that they believed the MOTHER OF GOD did not come from the flesh of Adam the sinner, but that she had been planned and made expressly for the Word Incarnate by a divine decree that came after Adam’s fall had been foreseen. 

The blessed  Proclus, one of the Fathers who defended so courageously the honour of the Virgin at the Council of Ephesus, made use of this word in a speech he gave about the Nativity of our Lord at the same Council, where he says of our Lord that:

she who had been created without stain of sin could not besmirch Him when communicating our nature to Him.

Here is what Saint Isidore says for the feast of the Assumption in his Mozarabic Missal : 

God created her so pure that His Son could emerge from her without any adverse impact upon the exceptional purity that He had bestowed upon her.

Saint Anselm[3] uses the words Conception and Creation interchangeably when discussing the Virgin.  Holy Church addresses the following words to her[4]:

 

Him who created thee 

Thou feedest first with thy sacred breast. 

One of the arguments that I find particularly persuasive on this question is something that Saint Bernard said, not as a throwaway remark but as a result of due consideration following a particular study of the question. He starts by saying that[5]:

He who had made man, desirous of being made man Himself, was obliged to choose amongst all women a mother not only pleasing to Himself but one befitting His status and nature.

Then, as though he had not used the correct language, he continues in the following terms:

Why am I saying that He was obliged to choose her? It would be better to say that He was obliged to create her anew. It was truly in no way befitting the Majesty of Him who was to be born of her that God would use an old design and let it be reworked, like an old house that has been repaired and renewed, so as to be made available for the use of the Word Incarnate. Reason demands that she should have been made by an express command of God and dedicated for this noble end alone.

This was the understanding at the Council of Basle[6], when it was said that:

The Son of the Father made her to serve as Mother for Him here on earth.

The holy Idiota[7] Uses even more precise language:

She was made so that God might dwell in her as in His Temple.

And why would Mary have been created, asks Saint Ephrem[8], if there was no question of there being a God incarnate? 

I have been told that Saint John Damascene received a special grace when he spoke of her in the following language[9]:

Thy life transcends the laws of nature, not because any account is taken of thyself (for thou wast not made for thyself), but on account of Him for whom thou didst receive it, so as to cooperate in the salvation of the world and in the eternal plan for the Incarnation of the divine Word, and our divine filiation[10].

Footnotes

[1] This reflects the Septuagint text which says: The Lord made (ἔκτισέν) me the beginning of his ways for his works: Prov. vii. 22.  The Fillion Bible follows the Vulgate in preferring possessed me rather than made me or created me, whilst acknowledging the Hebrew verb qânah might mean either. [Note: The Fillion Bible was translated by Louis-Claude Fillion (1843-1927). Fillion was ordained priest in 1867 and was later a professor of Scripture and Hebrew. In October 1893, he was named to the Catholic Institute of Paris, where he held the chair of exegesis of Scripture. Ten years later he was appointed member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission].

[2] Chap. 2.

[3] Homil. 2 de Conceptione, citata a Joann. Bachono in IV, d. 2, q. 3, art. 2.

[4] From O Gloriosa Domina (O Glorious Lady):  the famous Marian hymn sung at Lauds on Feasts of Our Lady in the Roman Breviary. It forms the second part of the hymn Quem terra, pontus, aethera written by Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers (530-609).

[5] Homil. 1 in Missus.

[6] Sess. LVIII : Ipsam fabricavit Filius Dei Patri, ut esset mater ejus in terris.

[7] Contempl. de B. Virgo, c. 2. Idiota (here meaning private) is a nom de plume of a pious and learned writer, probably Raymundus Jordanus.

[8] Serm. de Transfigur. Christi.

[9] Orat. 1 de Nativit. Virg.

[10] divine filiation: The French text here has déification.

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam. 

© Peter Bloor 2025