The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 3 : § 4. 1

Chapter 3 : The Second Star or Splendour of the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

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

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

That from the beginning of the world she was announced by the Prophets and represented by ancient figures

In the previous chapter, I presented the Holy Virgin as a trial design by God when considered in relation to the Saviour, who was Himself the first actual masterpiece in the world. In comparison with the rest of creation, however, it cannot be denied that Mary was the second masterpiece by God who produced hundreds of preparatory sketches, as will be seen in the following discussions.

§ 4. On certain living and animated figures that have represented the MOTHER OF GOD, beginning with Eve, Sara and Rebecca.

 1   You would take pleasure at the sight of a young apprentice in an artist’s studio who is practising how to copy all the parts of the human body separately, with the proportions and movements of each one. He takes great pains to represent an eye looking up, another gazing down, and others looking to the side and straight ahead. You will note the artist has hundreds of possibilities for his study of the eye: one is open, the other closed tight; there are eyes which are gay, sad, modest, bold, or passionate with love, with hatred, with anger, with languor, with despair: in short, there are representations of all the soul’s sensibilities and all the motions of the heart. Once he has acquired a level of skill in this, the apprentice sets himself to depicting the various gestures and movements of the arm and the hand, the different postures and gaits of the leg and the foot. Once he has learned proficiency in showing how to portray eye movements, how to show a face in three dimensions, how to show accurately the profile of a nose and so on with regard to the rest of the body, he next tries to to join these pieces of art together so as to portray a face in its entirety, then half a body and finally the figure of a person. 

If you have understood what a painter can do in the studio where the apprentice is learning his craft, then you will have no real difficulty in picturing how God conducts Himself here amongst us. Before unveiling to the world the Holy Virgin as a master-piece for all to imitate, He placed in our hands the book of types for us to study and use in our apprenticeship. These types are found here and there and represent a particular feature or part of this beautiful person : some the eye, some the face, some the meekness, some the chastity, some the love, some the choice God made of her, some the heights of her merits, some the greatness of her power; some showed her in profile, some full on, some roughly, some making her appear more naturally. It should be noted that there may be a considerable difference between these types since the ones we have considered so far are things which have no life nor senses. The others are living persons animated by certain traits both natural and extraordinary with a different order of grace than the first group. This is all the more evident when considering that there is a closer resemblance between one woman and another than there is between a rod or an ark and a woman. Accordingly, in the remainder of this chapter I aim to present, whilst fully maintaining the reader’s interest, up to a dozen Ladies from the Old Testament who have been true types of the MOTHER OF GOD. On their faces will be seen a number of the beautiful features of the Virgin’s wondrous countenance which enraptures men and Angels. It must always be remembered with these comparisons, however, that she is unique and quite incomparable.

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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 2024