XVI. O quam magnum miraculum (De sancta Maria)
The King's Humble Entrance
The King enters a humble woman's form, choosing humility above all things.
Antiphon: O what a great wonder it is that the King entered into a humble woman's form. God did this because humility rises above all things.
Eve Reversed, Heaven Adorned
Through Mary's blessedness the wickedness born from woman is wiped away, restoring every virtue and adorning heaven more than Eve once troubled the earth.
And O what great blessedness is in this form, because the wickedness that flowed from a woman this woman afterward wiped away, and built up every sweetest fragrance of the virtues and adorned heaven more than she had earlier troubled the earth.1
Read the original Latin
Antiphona: O quam magnum miraculum est, quod in subditam femineam formam rex introivit. Hoc deus fecit, quia humilitas super omnia ascendit. Et o quam magna felicitas est in ista forma, quia malicia, que de femina fluxit, hanc femina postea detersit et omnem suavissimum odorem virtutum edificavit ac celum ornavit plus, quam terram prius turbavit.
Notes
- 1 ↩que after malicia is taken as a relative pronoun (qui, referring back to malicia) rather than the enclitic -que; hence 'the wickedness which flowed from a woman'.
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