The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 8 : § 1. 10-12

Chapter 8 : The Seventh Star or Splendour in the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

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)

Mary’s soul was unique in being totally free of any sin

§ 1. The MOTHER OF GOD was exempt from original sin

Second proof : drawn from the person of the Holy Virgin

 10   Now, Hesychius said that Mary’s destiny was to take down Satan’s pride and smash his horns. It is in fact true that all the Holy Fathers also teach this, as I will show more fully in the second Treatise. In the meantime, consider the words spoken of old to the serpent, which are commonly understood by the Doctors as referring to the glorious Virgin: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.[1] 

     If you study these words carefully, you will notice three important things. Firstly, as observed by St Cyprian, God uses the word enmities, which is in the plural. This points most strongly to every sort of disunity and estrangement, with no agreement, no peace and truce whatsoever. We are given to understand that she was unique in never having had any truck with Satan and his works; and from the very beginning, she declared a war to the death against him.

Secondly, God says she shall crush his head, which means nothing other than original sin. St Gregory of Nazianzus says of this : 

If a serpent is able to insert his head into a hole, however little it may be, the rest of his body is able to slide in quite easily – well, in exactly the same way, once the evil spirit has been able to to insert original sin into a soul, then it means actual sins can follow and enter in quite easily.

Or try to picture how the body of a snake still twists and struggles for a while even after you have crushed its head. This is what happens with original sin which we inherit from our parents; for though it is vanquished in the holy sacrament of Baptism,  we still suffer from its after-effects : the spirit of rebellion and dissension we feel within ourselves, and the assaults of concupiscence, which are consequences of original sin.

You may ask why Mary uses her foot to crush Satan’s head. Could this not be taken as meaning she performed this act right at the beginning of her life, for which the foot is here a symbol? There is another interpretation : God says the serpent’s head will be crushed by her heel and Satan will lay ambushes against her; this is as though God had said that the Serpent would not have the honour of meeting her at the beginning of her life, nor even of attacking her in person, as I shall show elsewhere[2]; but he will launch his surprise attacks against the persons of her descendants, namely her spiritual children who are represented here by her heel.

Footnotes

[1] Gen. iii. 15.

[2] Tract. II, c. 9, § 7.

 11   Imagine someone who has been imprisoned and whose life under lock and key is controlled by a gaoler; imagine this prisoner, feet and hands shackled, passing through the prison-gate with a halter around the neck, to be branded[1] and then banished from the kingdom in perpetuity. Imagine now this same person just one hour later receiving a Royal pardon and being sent immediately back to the Conciergerie[2] where he had been imprisoned so as to set free his fellow-prisoners and lead them out of the prison. Imagine the welcome he would be given and the friendly treatment he would receive from the keeper, in whose power he was formerly held.

I have to say that I find it difficult to believe that if the Holy Virgin had ever been for a single instant subject to Satan’s tyranny, this proud and insolent spirit would not have used this against her a thousand times. In fact, Satan would not have stopped at that but would used it against the Saviour of our souls, referring to as the Son of one of his former prisoners. Who cannot see, without needing me to point this out, that it would not have been expedient to give Satan this advantage over them?

Footnotes

[1] The French text reads: to receive the fleur du lis. This is a reference to a mark with which cutpurses and other criminals were once branded. Il a esté condamné à avoir le foüet & la fleur de lis. on luy a donné le foüet & la fleur de lis sur l’espaule. il a eu deux fois la fleur de lis. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694.  

[2] Conciergerie can mean a prison, such as the prison within the Palais de Justice in Paris.

 

 12   Let everyone who has the time examine the other titles of the Blessed Virgin which I shall discuss in the following pages and consider how incompatible they are with any sort of sin. For my part, allow me to quote a single example of praise proclaimed by the Blessed Peter Damian, which is also one of the plans God has for Mary which makes us realize that she was exempt from sin. He makes the following subtle observation :

 

God had prepared the Holy Virgin as a couch where He might rest and recover from that day of crisis which saw the fall of Angels and men, a time which had caused Him more difficulties and problems, as we might say, than anything else.

Now please tell me what sort of couch would this have been were it like the others, bristling with the spikes and thorns of original sin? Would that have been just fine for a sweet and pleasing sleep? 

Let us set the matter straight by stating that Mary was the true couch prefigured by Solomon’s bed, festooned with thorn-free roses and fragrant with heavenly scents; where nothing whatsoever might be found displeasing in any way to His sovereign Majesty.

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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