La Vie dans les plis : l’utérus marial dans quelques sermons catholiques français du XVIIe siècle

Gothic stainglasses are sometimes described as symbols of the Virgin’s hymen: they transform sunrays’ appearance without diminishing their light. For obvious reasons of bienséance, Mary’s birthing is not represented as such in early modern sermons. However, the locus generationis of a body which is “begotten, not made” keeps being questioned well beyond the Middle Ages. Therefore, Mary’s uterus is evoked by a vast and complex metaphorical network: combining images of jail, blood, and sanctuary, preachers try to convey the idea of a figurative space, which symbolizes Incarnation, and announces Jesus’s tomb and his liberation. Flipping the images of the humiliating prison and painful narrowness, they make Mary’s uterus a paradoxical space, an hortus conclusus whose very darkness is a promise of light.