Chapter 13 : The Twelfth Star or Splendour of 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).
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| Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020) |
How she is the honour of earth and of Heaven
§ 9. She is God's world
1 I feel very sorry for the ancient philosophers, especially for the Platonists, who developed such depths of understanding of the world and understood so much but without discovering what would have allowed them entry into a world of holy thoughts and would have enabled them to stay on the strait and narrow path of truth. They spoke of a world of archetypes or exemplars, serving as the ideas or templates from which all other things are drawn: the beauty of all things that are beautiful, a set of all possible perfections. They discussed a world of the intellect, recalling the angelic nature which they divided into various orders, giving to each one their proper and different offices. They spoke of the wonders of the elements of the world, taking in the heavens, the four elements and the mixed beings derived therefrom. In short, they envisioned a little world which, they argued, led to others where they found the perfections of these three categories, imitated through participation. What causes me to feel sad at heart, however, is that they had no knowledge whatsoever of that which we are to encounter in this discussion, the contemplation of which would have brought them such sweet consolation and delight – as well as profit. I mean by this world that glorious Virgin, to whom I give not only the name of world, but what is much more, the name of God’s world. In support of what I say, I shall quote the pious Saint Bernard[1], who declares that:
the Father, in company with the Son, took possession of her and dwelled within her as the Creator within His universe, the Emperor within His Empire, the Father within His family house, the High Priest within His Temple, the Spouse within His nuptial chamber; with that as a point of departure, the Most High created her expressly to be for Him a special world.
Saint Anastasius the Sinaite, Patriarch of Antioch[2], had said long before him that:
The Saviour’s normal place of abode[3] was with His Blessed Mother, considering her to be for Him a whole world in herself and to be His special world.
Before both of these writers, Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus[4] had called her an abode equal to Heaven and earth – but the author of the incomplete work on Saint Matthew could not allow her to be called the equal only of our great world; her, I say, who had compassed in her womb the One whom the immensity of the heavens could not enclose.
Footnotes
[1] In her houses shall God be known, when he shall protect her.et seq. Ps. XLVII. 4-8.
[2] What follows is a paraphrase of various verses in Lamentations ii.
[3] Ps. XLV. 6.
[4] Ps. XLV. 6.
2 The Holy Fathers had thought that it would be doing too little to say simply that the MOTHER OF GOD was like a world apart, and their position was strengthened by several solid reasons. Saint Bernard, whom I quoted a little earlier, highlights the connections as follows:
She was like a solid element, founded on justice and holiness; she was watered by divine wisdom, refreshed by the winds of holy desires, illumined and warmed by the fire of charity; God set within her soul, as in a firmament, the Sun of reason, the Moon of knowledge, and the stars of every sort of virtue; a Sun which produced in her the light of the knowledge of God; a Moon that with the stars lit up the night of action.
Saint Bonaventure[1] applies to her the following words from Ecclesiasticus[2]: Who hath measured the height of heaven, and the breadth of the earth, and the depth of the abyss? He goes on to say that:
All this belongs to Mary, who is a Heaven through the purity of her life, through the light that shines from her good example, and through the heavenly influence of the help she gives, but especially because she is the seat and throne of God with a better title than Heaven itself; she is the most fertile earth who bore the fruit of life; in short, she is a bottomless abyss of goodness and mercy.
Saint Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople[3], had already found delight in the same idea, saying:
Just as the stars are like the tongues of Heaven, in the same way the good works and example of the Virgin are voices that announce her great qualities; and just as our bodies cannot survive without breathing, so too our souls could not live without Mary’s protection.
They all in their own way aim to say what Arnold of Chartres (Abbot of Bonneval) taught in explicit terms[4] when he said that:
Just as the busy bee gathers nectar from all the flowers in the garden, in the same way God in forming the most sacred Virgin has gathered for her all that was most excellent among His creatures.
Would you not agree that the Holy Spirit has pleased Himself to represent for us in the book of Proverbs the manner in which this wondrous gathering took place? The Holy Virgin Speaks under the figure of wisdom[5], saying: when Almighty God measured out the heavens and set limits to the extent of the depths, when He suspended the sky beneath heaven and established waters on the Earth, when He placed shores around the seas and confined the rivers within their banks, forbidding them to go beyond these boundaries, when he laid the foundations of the lowest and rudest elements, I was with him already, forming all things.
This great Craftsman from the beginning had intended to make a complete world in me and of me alone, and consequently He placed within me every perfection that could be suited to a simple creature; and as the other creatures passed through His mind, He picked out the most beautiful and the best elements for me. His will was for me to be a throne for him like the Heavens, incorruptible like them, ordered and compassed in my movements like them; His will was for my heart to be more capable of containing His grace than all the depths of the sea; my help should be no less necessary for mortals than the very air they breathe in order to live; and I should hold back the force of the storms and tempests that rage against them with no less power than the sands of the seashore which withstand and throw back the fury of the waves; and that I should be the very centre of all things, more so than the earth itself; in short, that everything should be found within me, but in a way more incomparably excellent and purified than in these pieces of elementary and corruptible matter.
Footnotes
[1] Speculi B. Virg., c. 1.
[2] Ecclus. i. 2.
[3] Orat. de Dormit. B, Virg.
[4] Tract, de Laudibus Virg.
[5] Prov. viii. The lines in italics here are a paraphrase by the author of selected Scriptural verses.
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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.
The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
© Peter Bloor 2025
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