Juan Correa de Vivar
The Prophet Jeremiah
1522-25
Oil on panel
Museum of Santa Cruz, Toledo
The prophecy on the banderole reads novum creavit dominus super terram femina circundabit virum hiere[mias] 31, "The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: a woman shall compass a man" (Jeremiah 31:22). These words follow "Return, O virgin of Israel" in the previous verse, so the "compassing" means Israel's renewed embrace of the Lord and his ways. However, Christians also took the text as a prophecy of the coming of Christ. Thus Nicholas of Lyra: "This [compassing] was fulfilled in Mary, who at the moment of the incarnation encompassed Christ, the one perfect in knowledge and virtue, in her womb" (Glossa Ordinaria, IV, 794). Theodoret of Cyrus interpreted the return of the "virgin" as the age of grace, "in which by means of the virgin's parturition she gave a Savior to the whole world" (ibid.).
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Source: Wikimedia Commons
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