HAEC PORTA DOMINI. EXEGESES OF SOME GREEK CHURCH

This article aims to highlight a large amount of exegeses proposed from 5th to 10th century by many Fathers of the Greek-Eastern Church on the shut gate (porta clausa) of the temple revealed to Ezekiel during the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon: a closed door facing East, through which God enters and leaves without opening it, and which, after entering and leaving through it, He left closed forever. Regardless of their respective formulations, all these Christian thinkers agreed on this unanimous interpretation: this Ezekiel’s porta clausa is a double and complementary metaphor of Christ and Mary, since it is an eloquent dogmatic symbol that means simultaneously the virginal divine maternity of Mary and her perpetual virginity, as well as the supernatural conception and birth of Jesus from the virginal womb of Mary.


INTRODUCTION
During his long research into the primary sources of Christian doctrine, the author was discovering with growing surprise the immense amount of exegetical commentaries with which numerous Church Fathers and medieval theologians interpret the eastern door of the temple described by the prophet Ezekiel in his book. This finding led the author to search satisfactory answers to this surprising reiteration and coincidence of those exegeses. The current article is, in fact, a partial result of that search. To give clues to the problem, it is convenient to remember the original narration of the prophet.
Ezekiel refers in his book that, at the 25 th year of the captivity of the Jewish people in Babylon, he had a revelation in which Yahweh made him see the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem after the destruction of the previous one. In the context of the detailed description of all parts, measures, ornamentation and ceremonies that would distinguish this future Temple, 1 Ezekiel refers to its eastern gate or portico in these terms: Now well, even if at first glance the prophet's data on this gate facing East are likely factual, nevertheless the Greek and Latin Church Fathers and medieval theologians interpreted from early date this Ezekiel's cryptic text in a double key, Christological and Mariological at the same time. All these Christian thinkers assumed that the mysterious eastern gate revealed to the prophet is a clear symbol of the womb of the Virgin Mary when conceiving and giving birth to God the Son incarnate, while preserving her virginity forever thanks to the divine power. In fact, they interpreted this closed gate with a double Christological and Mariological projection, as a simultaneous and complementary metaphoric figure of both the Virgin Mary's divine maternity and her perpetual virginity, as well as of the supernatural conception and birth of Jesus.
The uncountable patristic and theological exegeses on Ezekiel's porta clausa spread over more than a thousand years, since at least the 4 th century until the 14t h . Nonetheless, this relevant Mariological and Christological interpretation, emphatically asserted by many influential authorities of Christian doctrine, has been surprisingly eluded by some historians of Christianity, especially those experts in Mariology 3 and in Marian iconography. 4 This is also the case, for example, of Fernand Cabrol 5 and Henri Leclercq 6 in their monographic entries on the Annunciation in the Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, 7 as well as Igino Cecchetti in a similar entry in the Enciclopedia Cattolica. 8 2 Ezek. 44.1-3. Bible, International Standard Version [ISV]). See also Ezek. 44.1-2, in Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam. Nova editio (Madrid: La Editorial Católica, 2005[1946), 847.
3 Among the many authors specialized in Mariology, see, for example, E. Dublanchy, "Marie", in Cabrol, Leclercq, ed Due to the extraordinarily large amount of Eastern and Western Christian exegeses on Ezekiel's shut door, the author will analyze in the current paper only the exegeses that many Fathers of the Greek-Eastern Church provide between the 5 th and 10 th centuries on the aforementioned shut door.
I. THE PATRISTIC TRADITION IN THE GREEK-EASTERN CHURCH ON EZEKIEL'S PORTA CLAUSA FROM THE 5 TH TO THE 10 TH CENTURY Toward the end of the 5 th century or beginning of the 6 th the theologian and hymnographer Jacob of Serugh (ca. 451-521), a prestigious writer of hymns and homilies in verse in Syriac, interprets over and over with obsessive insistence the shut eastern gate of Ezekiel in Mariological and Christological sense. Thus, in a homily in honor of Mary, he paraphrases the text of the prophet, 9 and then says apodictically: The Virgin Mary is the shut gate of prophecy, That the Lord Messiah left shut, after joining the world through it. By going through this gate, the Lord did not open it; Ezekiel, son of Hebrews, is a witness to this [miracle] together with us. 10 The Syriac bard emphasizes the idea that God entered the world through the gate of the birth (the vulva) by his own will, but leaving well shut the gate of virginity; for, if the sanctuary whose gate Ezekiel saw shut means the Virgin Mary, that implies her virginity not being violated. 11 This writer then proclaims that the Messiah is holy, and Mary is his holy House, because the gate truly shut means that she kept intact for ever the signs or seals of her virginity, as seen by Ezekiel: he saw a gate, because through it a man (God the Son incarnate) entered, and he saw it shut because in exiting (at his birth) He did not break the seals of her virginity. 12 9 Jacobus Sarugensis, At once the Sarugensis highlights once more insistently that God the Son came into the world at birth by the gate of the newborns (the maternal vulva), and when exiting He did not open this gate, since He himself foreshadowed his Virgin Mother in the form of a gate splendidly shut, as it was revealed to Ezekiel. 13 Then he comes on by explaining that, like Jesus in being conceived and giving birth did not open the human gate (the uterus and the vulva), the virginal seal of Mary remains inviolate; the Virgin's womb is explained by the shut gate of Ezekiel, so since this gate is shut, her virginal womb remains sealed. 14 The hymnographer then goes on insisting that, as God said that this gate will not be open any more, and as everyone says that nobody will break the virginal seals, that means that the Word of God sealed the womb of the Blessed Virgin, so that he did not broke the signs of virginity when being conceived or being born. And, for it is God who entered through the Virgin's gate, He did not break the seal or the signs of her virginity, because, as seen by Ezekiel, God himself passed through it and it will remain shut for ever. 15 And shortly after this hymnographer continues by explaining that the gate revealed to Ezekiel as being shut when God passed through it means that God in his divine condition did not open it when passing through it. 16 For this reason, the writer explains: If someone who was not God should enter through it [this gate] It would be necessary that it be opened, as he would not be able to enter through it remaining shut. And, as this gate is truly guarded by the Lord that passes through it, He himself shut and sealed it, ordering that it will not be opened never more. 17 Portam vidit, quia per portam hominum intravit; clausam autem vidit, quia exiens virginea non solvit signa." (Ibid.  55. 17 "Si alius qui Deus non foret per eam deberet ingredi, necesse esset ut aperiretur: ipsa non aperta intrare nequiret. Cum vero sit ea porta Domino ingredienti custodita, At once, leaving the symbolic dimension, Jabob of Serugh reports that Mary was preserved in inviolable virginity in her childbirth, when giving birth miraculously to God: if she had given birth to a man who was not God, he would have broken the signs of her virginity, which a simple man cannot preserve when being delivered. 18 And some verses later this author persists in these ideas: It was convenient that she [Mary] remains in virginity, With which it would be certified who was the father of his Only-Begotten Son. The Wonder that enlightens us dwelt in a chaste womb; For, if in exiting [at birth] he violated the seals [of virginity], he would not be the Wonder. He should enter the world through a shut gate, as it is written; If, on the contrary, he opened it, he would not be the Lord nor God. 19 And right away the hymnographer goes on saying that, as Christ, wanting to be born actually, safeguarded the signs of his mother's virginity, everyone profess that Jesus is the Lord and the Wonder. So Ezekiel can rejoice for this mother that remained virgin, just the same that he saw as the shut gate through which Christ, sent by the divine Father, came to visit the world, and that, being God the Son, was not opposed in any way by this accessible gate. 20 Then, noting some verses later that "the Strong of the centuries [God the Son] entered the world through a shut gate / to pursue tacitly the tyrant [the demon, sin] that devastated the earth", 21 the Sarugensis clarifies this idea some stanzas later, saying: The Virgin was pure when the beam of the Father dwelt therein, And virgin when the child grew in her womb. The Virgin conceived [carried] the strong that carries the world, And was a virgin engendering the virtue of the Father. […] Mary is a Virgin and her virginity is eternal. Blessed be the one who increased the decorum of the pure virgin in childbirth. 22 ipse clausit signavitque edicens se non aperuisse." (Ibid.). 18 Ibid. 19 "Oportebat eam in virginitate permanere, quo certa foret quis esset Unigeniti sui Pater. In casto sinu habitavit Portentum nos illuminans; si autem egrediens sigilla violasset, non fuisset Portentum. Clausam per portam debebat in mundum intrare, ut est scriptum; si autem reserasset, non esset Dominus ac Deus." (Ibid., 56). 20 Ibid. 21 "Fortis saeculorum per occlusam portam in mundum intravit, ut tacite insequeretur tyrannum qui terram vastavit." (Ibid., 59-60). 22 Ibid.
Toward the end of the 5 th century or beginning of the 6 th , Philoxenus of Mabbug, bishop of Hierapolis (ca. 440-523), declares that, as well as the angel Gabriel came down from heaven to earth and, when finding shut the gate of Mary's house, entered through it without opening it, in the same way the Lord Christ came from heaven without damaging anything of the heavenly home (Mary); so that, as well as Gabriel came to the Virgin flying with their wings of spirit, the Lord Jesus lived in her, after coming flying with the wings of the Holy Spirit. 23 At the beginning of the 6 th century the Greek monk and theologian St. Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (456-538), says in a homily that the Word of God, exceeding any way, had entered wonderfully and unusually into our world by a divine and royal gate, i.e. by virginity, born in human flesh by means of the power of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mother of God. 24 Perhaps for the same years the monk, theologian and aristotelian philosopher Leontius of Byzantium (ca. 485-ca. 543), endorses in a controversial treatise against the Nestorians the dogma of Christian orthodoxy that, being truly shut the gate of the virginity of Mary, the truly natural body of the divine Christ was born to the world through the intact vulva of the Virgin, after the Spirit of the Word inhabited her virginal womb by a supernatural virtue. 25 A little later Leontius of Byzantius explains more precisely this thesis when pointing out that, at his spiritual birth by the intact vulva of the Virgin, the Word of God brought about the qualities of his flesh, in the same way that, when entering without flesh by the maternal vulva, he was not compressed; and, having been infused by his goodness in the Virgin when being conceived, He who lacked flesh, was formed fleshly in a divine way of Mary's flesh, and from her he joined the flesh (the human nature) to him (to his divine nature In the first half of the 6 th century the Syrian Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485ca. 555/562) sets in a poetic hymn a suggestive parallel between two gates, in pointing out that in the Epiphany Mary did open the gate (of her house) and received the procession of the Three Magi, without opening the gate (of her virginity) by which Christ alone entered. She did open the gate of her house to the Magi, she, who was the virginal gate accessible to Christ without being ever stripped of the treasure of chastity, did "open" (in the sense of "allowed access through") the gate of which the other Gate (of Heaven), who is the eternal God made a new child, was born. 28 In another song this poet emphasizes that Jesus Christ was foreshadowed by the prophets by means of several symbolic figures, some prophets calling him the manna and its containing vase, other the flower sprouted from the root, while other appointed the mother of Jesus as the flower, rod, gate that is "open" (in the sense of "accessible") by the power of the Holy Spirit and remaining shut afterwards, so that it can be said that a virgin gave birth, and after childbirth remains virgin again. 29 And finally in another hymn Romanos expresses: When hearing these things, the immaculate Virgin appeared and went on ahead.
To whom the elderly [Simeon] told her: All the prophets proclaimed to your Son, whom you conceived without semen. A prophet also had cried on you. And he announced the miracle of the fact that you exist as a shut gate, oh Mother of God, since the Lord entered and exited through you, and the gate of your virginal integrity was not open or injured. One who is the only one who benignitate se in Virginem infundit, ex ipsa qui sine carne erat se carnaliter formavit divino modo, et ab ipsa carnem sibi copulavit." (Ibid., 1670-1671).
27 Theodosius Alexandrinus, Sermo quem dixit Pater noster ter beatus Abbas Theodosius, in Álvarez Campos, ed. Corpus Marianum Patristicum, 1981, Vol 5, 186-190. 28 "'Nunc ergo accipe, venerabilis, accipe accipientes me: in illis enim sum tamquam in brachiis tuis. Et a te non recessi, et illis assisto'. Ipsa autem aperit portam et accipit magorum turmam: aperit portam non aperta ianua, quam Christus solus penetravit; aperit portam aperta et (non privata umquam castitatis thesauro. Ipsa aperuit portam ex qua genita est porta, puer novus, ante saecula Deus." (Romanus Cantor, Hymnus 10,9, in Álvarez Campos, ed. Corpus Marianum Patristicum. 1979, vol, 4/2, 137-138 In the second half of the 6 th century, the monk Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch ( † 593), in a sermon on the three women who brought spices to the tomb of Jesus, says about that: In the same way that He [Jesus] was born while the virginal closures [of Mary] remained shut, so also he rose from the shut tomb: and, as well as the Only-Begotten Son of God was made the firstborn of a mother, so He was also made the firstborn [resurrected] from the dead. Because, as well as at his birth He did not break in any way the virginity of his mother, so when resurrecting He did nor break the seals of the tomb. 31 And in another sermon on the baptism of Christ, Gregory of Antioch, after indicating that Jesus proceeds from Mary's womb as the bridegroom comes out of his happily nuptial chamber, argues that with his conception He honored the conception of all humans, that at birth He entered the world through the gate of Mary's virginity without breaking her virginal closures, and that after the childbirth He sealed the virginity of his mother. 32 Toward the 6 th century an anonymous hymnographer, after stating in a hymn that the Lord showed to prophet Ezekiel a shut gate in the atrium, telling him that it will always be shut because God will pass through it, 33 expresses in another canticle in lyrical terms: In another hymn this unknown poet, after proclaiming that today Ezekiel must rejoice, for his prophecy about the shut gate through which the Lord would pass was fulfilled completely, wishes to explain that Mary is this shut gate, since Christ entered through it to the world and He did not open it. 35 In the first decades of the 7 th century the Byzantine poet George of Pisida ( † 641) says that men saw the bridal seal of the miraculous birth of Christ, or better said, the mystic key of the gate that allowed God to exit, into which the Word entered without flesh, and from which, exiting already with flesh (incarnate), he kept well shut and sealed this gate, as He had found it. 36 Toward the middle of the 7 th century the hagiographer and bishop Leontios of Neapolis (ca. 600-ca. 670), speaking on the presentation of Jesus in the temple, expresses that Jesus at birth did not open the vulva of Mary, as do other people, for He kept shut the gate of his mother's virginity, as prophesied by Ezekiel with the gate shut for ever, through wich the Lord enters and exits. 37 For this reason, this power of exiting without opening the gate and leaving it shut after the exit demonstrates that one can call Christ -even before being conceived-Holy and Son of God, as he was declared by the corroborating testimony of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. 38 In that same century Theotecnos, bishop  38 "Qua ergo ratione in iis constituta qui aperiunt, in eo possint procedere, qui non aperuit, sed clausam portam reliquit? Ac neque nunc primum opus habebit sanctum appellari, quod ante etiam conceptionem, Sanctum, ac Dei Filius, cum Patris, tum Spiritus sancti testimonio, fuit declaratum." (Ibid.). 39 Theotecnos, Encomium Assumptionis sanctae Deiparae, in Álvarez Campo, ed. Corpus Marianum Patristicum, 1979, Vol. 4/2, 371-382. Toward the end of the 7 th century Anastasios of Sinai (ca. 630-post 700), abbot of Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, exposing one of his dogmatic questions begins by noting that the prophetic vision of the gold candelabrum carrying seven candels means the virginal conception of the incarnate Word of God, because the candelabrum means the incarnate Son of God who comes to bring the light; and the fact that it is made of gold means that his mother Mary remained virgin after childbirth. 40 Then after writing out the prophecy of Ezekiel on the shut east-facing gate through which only the Lord entered and exited, Anastasios clarifies that this gate means the maternal uterus, as Job testifies when complaining to God why He did not shut the gates of his mother's womb. 41 Two or three decades later St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (ca. 650/60-ca.730/33), in a sermon on the Presentation of Mary to the temple, proclaims that today -that is to say, at this early consecration of the Virgin to the Lord-the open gate of the divine temple (in Jerusalem) receives the one who enters through it as the shut eastern gate of Emmanuel. 42 The Constantinopolitan prelate then asserts that Ezekiel, by the revelation of the Spirit of God, narrates the praises of the east-facing gate of the temple and that, remaining shut, allows the passage of God; 43 he concludes that then the gates ( 43 "Adesdum, Ezechiel altiloquus, vivifici Spiritus a Deo datum volumen tenens, atque illius portae laudes enarra, quae ad orientem respicit, quaeque, obsignata manens, transitum Deo praebet." (Ibid., 298).
45 "Haec Maria Dei Genitrix est, commune Christianorum omnium perfugium […] Coelorum porta, per quam solus transivit coelorum Dominus, nimini ante postve pervium concedens ingressum. "Haec Maria Dei Genitrix est, commune Christianorum omnium perfugium […] Coelorum porta, per quam solus transivit coelorum Dominus, nimini ante postve pervium concedens ingressum." (Andreas another sermon on the Annunciation this author proclaims that Mary is trully blessed, for, as prophesied by Ezekiel, she is the shut gate through which only God passes, and which will be again shut. 46 In his Oration 12 on the Dormition of Mary, Andrew of Crete affirms that she is, among other values, the dignity of the royal, celestial gender, the Levitical rod of Aaron, the root of Jesse, the east gate of Christ, who was born of a high Orient (God the Father). 47 And in another oration on the same Marian event, this author recalls once again that Mary was prophesied by Isaiah when saying that a Virgin will conceive in her womb, and that a stem will spring from the root of Jesse, from which a flower would blossom; and she also was prophesied by Ezekiel when proclaiming her as the shut east gate through which only the Lord would enter and pass, remaining then shut forever. 48 More or less at the same years the influential theologian and polygraph St. John of Damascus (675-749), in a sermon on the Annunciation, dedicates to Mary three metaphorical praises for her perpetual virginity: for being the only Virgin of virgins, because she remained a virgin before childbirth, at childbirth and after childbirth; for being the only shut gate between the gates; and for being the only city provided with defensive towers between all cities. 49 In the first homily on the birth of the Virgin, the Damascene says that today the gates of the sterility (her sterile mother Anna) have been opened, and the divine and the virginal gate (Mary) was born, from which and through which God who is above all entered the world in the form of a body. 50 And a little later this writer points out with greater precision: Today this East-facing gate has been raised, through which Christ enters and exits; and it will be a shut gate, in which Christ is installed, the gate of the sheep, And, wile in the same homily, in one of whose excerpts he praises the bodily organs of the Virgin Mary, the Damascene designates her as "the gate of God resplendent with perpetual virginity", 52  Toward the middle of the 8 th century the theologian and bishop John of Euboea asserts poetically that, "without needing human hands, the palace of the King of heaven has been built, and this palace in Paradise has an east-facing gate, and nobody, except God alone, passes through that gate, and it will be a shut gate." 55 By the end of the 8 th century or beginning of the 9 th St. Epiphanius the Monk, in a sermon in honor of the Virgin, affirms that Mary had the virginity and continence, but not with temptations such as other women, having these virtues by nature, as a unique and extraordinary privilege above other women. 56 Such a privilege is precisely what, according to this monk, means the prophecy of Ezekiel on the gate always shut through which only God enters and leaves, keeping it shut forever. 57 Toward the middle of the 9 th century the Sicilian liturgical poet Joseph the Hymnographer (ca. 816-886), in a canon in honor of Mary asks her to rejoice for being the only gate by which only God passed, who destroyed with his delivery the locks and the gates of Hell; she, being very worthy of all praise, is the divine entrance of all who are saved. 58 In another Marian hymn, after praising her as "the Gate of grace, that opened the gates of heaven to the mortals", he asks her to open to himself the gates of penance and release him from the gates of death. 59 In another similar canticle he calls Mary "the inviolate", designated by the prophet Ezekiel as the gate not accessible to anyone and by which only the Creator passed, leaving it shut, as it was before the delivery. 60 In a new hymn the holy bard of Sicily prays the Virgin that, in her condition of gate through which nobody has access, to open to him the gates of the penance and direct him toward the straight roads. 61 In another liturgical poem Joseph the Hymnographer labels Mary "a gate inaccessible (in the metaphorical sense of "without sexual access"), which leads to God"; the he insists in asking her to open the gates of penance to him, erasing the stains of his sins with her mercy, before asking her, being herself "the gate of God", to display the divine entrances to his miserable soul, through which he can enter by means of the confession and the absolution of his sins. 62 In another Marian poem he points out that Ezekiel saw her (being the Mother of God) as the gate by which the sun of glory (Jesus) passed, who snatched the man from corruption; 63 then the lyrical hymnographer invokes Mary in these devoted terms: CAURIENSIA, Vol. XV (2020) 615-633, ISSN: 1886-4945-EISSN: 2340-4256 most refulgent nuptial chamber of God, tabernacle in which the glory is manifested; ark, urn, and altar. 71 In an umpteenth poem Joseph the Hymnographer praises the Virgin Mary in these terms: Mother of God, we call you the Spiritual Gate of the Light, through which Christ, appearing beautiful with the splendours of the divinity, entered next to us, hidden under the stole of flesh, invisible as God, but visible with our human form. 72 In that same 9 th century the bishop George of Nicomedia, in a writing about the conception of Mary, states that, in being fixed with this conception the King's gate by which no one else can pass, also Who will pass through it (Jesus) is prepared, making thus beforehand passable to us the gates of heaven. 73 Finally, at the beginning of the 10 th century, Peter, bishop of Argos ( † post 922), in a homily on the conception of the Virgin, says that the east-facing gate whose access, according to Ezekiel, is reserved only for Christ, is built at the very moment of the Mary's begetting. 74 CONCLUSIONS Since the early 4 th century, and for at least a millennium, a very large group of Church Fathers and medieval theologians of Greek and Latin Church placed special emphasis on interpreting the doctrinal meanings of the shut eastern gate of the temple that the prophet Ezekiel foresaw in a revelation.
This article, restricted in its research focus solely to the field of Greek-Eastern Patrology from 5 th to 10 th century, highlights an eloquent unanimity of opinions in all these authors when interpreting the aforementioned excerpt from Ezekiel in a simultaneously Mariological and Christological key, which consolidated thus a continuous and concordant exegetical and dogmatic tradition on the matter.
In fact, all these ecclesiastical writers of the Greek-Eastern Church promote, one after the other with obsessive insistence, two fundamental, complementary interpretations. First of all, the Ezekiel's sentence, by which God entered and exited, without opening it, through the east gate of the temple, which was shut and should remain shut, means Jesus' conception (He entered through the gate) and birth (He exited by the gate) of Mary's virginal womb (the gate was shut and remained shut in both cases without being violated). Second, the prophet's statement according to which "This gate is to remain shut. It will not be opened. No man is to enter through it, because the Lord God of Israel entered through it, so it is to remain shut", is unanimously interpreted by all those ecclesiastical writers as a clear confirmation of Mary's perpetual virginity, for no man -nor even her husband Joseph-will ever have intercourse with her, after the incarnate Son of God entered (was conceived) and exited (was delivered) through her. Both concordant interpretations are summarized in the consolidated dogmatic tradition of the Greek-Eastern and Latin Church according to which Mary was a virgin before childbirth, virgin in childbirth, and virgin forever after childbirth.