Chapter 11 : Imitation – tenth feature of the gratitude we owe 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) |
§ 13. How she must be imitated by men and women in Religious Orders
The Holy Virgin was a Religious[1]
1 I thought at first it would be sufficient to state that the Holy Virgin was a most perfect model for those in the religious life and that she was lacking in no sort of perfection. I have decided, however, that it would be appropriate to say a little more about the outstanding examples that she has given to both men and women in Religious Orders, befitting their state of life.
Footnotes
[1] Religious : noun - A person bound by religious vows or devoted to a religious life. 1651 “Dame Mary Roper..was a much younger Religious.” T. Matthew, Life Lady L. Knatchbull (1931) ii. i. 87. [OED 2.]
2 Firstly, people would be rash to deny that the Holy Apostles – who received the first fruits of the spirit and were to be Masters of all Christian holiness – were called to the perfection of the Evangelical Counsels which they sealed and confirmed by vows. St Jerome[1], writing against Jovinian who was a sworn enemy of all religion, quoted St Peter who, in speaking of himself and his companions, used the following words[2]: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee. This shows that :
The Apostles had not only left all their possessions and therefore embraced poverty, but also their wives so as to embrace perpetual chastity; they counted themselves moreover followers of the Saviour to whom they had vowed obedience.
St Augustine makes this point expressly[3] and it is confirmed by the Angelic Doctor[4] who quotes the excellence of the vow which was to ennoble all the Apostles’ actions, representing the highest and sublimest of all the Counsels. This being the case, does it not give us all the more reason to allow that the Holy Virgin – the rule and idea of every perfection, and the mistress of the Apostles themselves – should have been raised to this eminence by a special privilege due to her status as MOTHER OF GOD, which comprehends in itself all imaginable holiness?
Footnotes
[1] Lib. I.
[2] Matt. xix. 27.
[3] Lib. XVII Civit., c. 4.
[4] I-II, q. 88, art. 4. Vide Alvar. Pelag., lib. II de Planctu Ecclesiæ, c. 56 ; Suar., t. III de Relig., lib. III, c. 3, etc.
3 Secondly, St Thomas, whose teaching here is beyond reproach, tells us[1] that:
even though, strictly speaking, it was the Saviour who was to raise aloft the standard of perfection, that did not prevent His Holy Mother from possessing its foundations within herself,
any more than it stopped her from having the plenitude of grace in the second degree before indeed she had conceived him, even though Jesus Christ was to be the source of whom St John was one day to say in remarkable words[2]: We saw Him full of grace and truth.
Footnotes
[1] III p., q. 28, art. 4.
[2] John i. 14.
4 In the third place, we learn from Abbot Rupert[1] and from Denis the Carthusian[2], that:
The Holy Virgin founded and ruled over a Congregation of Virgins in the city of Jerusalem sometime after the death of her Son. There were some one hundred and twenty members who spent their lives in the continual practice of the virtues proper to the religious state.
No one will find this strange who considers that the primitive Church, like a field freshly watered with the precious blood of the Saviour, to use the words of Saint Jerome[3], was wondrously fruitful in holiness and that everywhere the sacred seeds of Evangelical perfection were sprouting. Palestine, Syria and Egypt were very quickly filled with these heavenly plants and persons of both sexes who, having abandoned all things, changed cities into deserts and deserts into cities, creating true images of Paradise here on earth. St Paul invited all the men and women he could to dedicate themselves to God and to consecrate their chastity to Him, with no fear of the persecutions that such actions could provoke for the Church in general and for himself in particular. Accordingly, St Martha who was formed by the hand of the MOTHER OF GOD and instructed in her school, founded similar Academies of honour in Avignon and in Tarascon. St Iphigenia, miraculously delivered by the Apostle St Matthew from death in a fire prepared by her own father, was preserved so that she was able extend the realm of religious chastity. She took charge of two hundred Virgins[4] who dedicated themselves to following the Lamb, the unique Spouse of Holy Virgins. Eventually, countless men and women flocked to the white banner of virginity which the MOTHER OF GOD had unfurled.
Footnotes
[1] Lib. V in Cant.
[2] In I Sent., dist. 16, q. 2.
[3] Epist. 13.
[4] Petrus de Natalib. in catalog., lib. VIII, c. 101.
5 In the fourth place, since the essence and nature of the religious life consists properly speaking in the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience – and in the solemn profession made by candidates – it is not difficult to show how the Holy Virgin embraced these three virtues to a perfect degree as a Religious, along with all the others which accompany them and make up the sweet harmony of the Evangelical Counsels.
© Peter Bloor 2026
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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 Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.
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