Women priests website

Engelbert of Admont

ca 1250 - 1331 AD

in Treatise of the Graces and Virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Tractatus de Gratiis et Virtutibus B.M.Virginis), published in B.Pez, Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, Augsburg 1721.

After studying at the universities of Prague and Padua, Engelbert became the abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Admont in Styria. Engelbert was one of the most learned men of his times. He wrote on moral and dogmatic theology, philosophy, history, political science, Holy Scripture, the natural sciences, pedagogy, and music. His 32 works include titles such as: Origin, Growth and Decline of the Roman Empire; Free Will; Why People Lived So Long before the Deluge; God's Providence; The Condition of the Deceased; a Mirror of Virtue for Kings; Whether a Wise Man should marry a Wife.

Text quoted in French by Réné Laurentin (in Maria, Ecclesia, Sacerdotium, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris 1952, pp. 177) and translated into English by John Wijngaards.

Mary was ordained for priestly functions

‘The Blessed Virgin, alone among us, alone among all, because she was worthy of it, was chosen in advance and consecrated [=ordained] above every part and priestly grace for this function: to conceive the body of the Lord through the operation of the Holy Spirit and form in herself by her own proper action, not just bread and wine, but her own virginal body and blood,.... and to engender it and touch it and envelop it with her limbs and to nourish it until finally, standing upright next to the cross, at the same time when her son [was making his sacrifice], she offered for us to God the body itself of her son; and through her compassion she joined to it her own body and soul according to the words of Lk 2,35: “A sword of pain will pierce your soul”. ’Treatise of ... Blessed Virgin Mary, part III, ch. 6.

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