Honorius of Autun: part III

Ezekiel the Prophet of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

(7) The Closed Door of Ezekziel.

Ezekiel xliv. 2 ' Porta haec clausa erit: non aperietur, et vir ~

transibit per eam: quoniam Dominus Deus Israel ingressus est

per eam.

Honorius, co!. 905, 'Ezekiel beheld a door always shut, through  which the King of Kings alone passed and left it shut. The blessed Mary is the gate of heaven, for, before the birth and during thebirth, she was a virgin, and remained a virgin after the birth.'

The Virgin " says the poet;' ' is this closed door, which for a hidden reason, had closed unto men.'

haec est ilIa porta clausa,

quam latente deus causa

clauserat hominibus.

The whole meaning of the vision of Ezekiel, which was 0ne  of the main medieval arguments for the perpetual virginity of Mary, is expounded more fully in a twelfth-century rimed Office."

Maria clausa porta,

quam nemo aperuit,

princeps ille, qui transivit,

deus et homo fuit,

nec ingressu nec egressu

violavit clausulam,

sed, quam prius non habebat,

sumpsit carnis fibulam,

sic togatus tanquam sponsus

                        suo procssit thalamo.

The closed door is, therefore, not merely a symbol of the virgin birth of Christ, but of the perpetual virginity of Mary, both before, during, and after the birth. It was so used by Ambrose.

These examples are sufficient to show that, as the Church found the figure of Christ everywhere in the Old Testament, so it discovered everywhere the types of His mother and the symbols of her virginity. If, therefore, in the. divine writings, God had so honored Mary by manifesting through the prophets her virginity and her destiny as the mother of the Savior, it is clear that the allegorical exposition of the Scriptures contributed greatly to the position which she occupied in Christian theology. It can have caused no scandal when a Franciscan admirer wrote in her honor a Te Deum in this manner:

            
            te matrem laudamus, te virginem confitemur ;

te aeterni patris, stella maris, splendor illuminat ;

tibi omnes angeli, tibi caeli et universae potestates,

tibi cherubin et seraphin humili nobiscum voce proclamant,

virgo, virgo, virgo virginum sine exemplo,

ante partum et in partu et post partum.