In his commentary on the book of Revelation (written about AD 710-716), Bede (AD 672-735) offered the following interpretation of the "woman" in chapter 12, showing that, even as late at the eighth century, the Marian interpretation of the "woman" was not the predominant understanding:
v. 1. sign. It is the same sign which now also appears in the Church, that God is born of man.
a woman. The Church is clothed with the light of Christ, and treads upon temporal glory. “Righteousness,” he says, “will arise in his days, and abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away, or consumed.” That is, the abundance of peace will greatly increase, until it consume all the changeableness of mortality, and then death, the last enemya, will be destroyed. Or: because the same Church has partly the fruition of Christ, the Sun, in heaven, and is partly absent from the Lord, that which he says, “His left hand is under my head, and his right embraceth me,” may be understood here . . . 5. man child. Although the dragon oppose, the Church ever brings forth Christ. But he spoke of the man child as conqueror of the devil, who had conquered the woman. For who but the man child, who is “to rule all nations with a rod of iron,” rules the good with inflexible justice, breaks in pieces the bad? And this is also promised to the Church, in that it is said above, “I will give Him power over the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” For the Church, too, daily generates the Church, which rules the world in Christ. (The Explanation of the Apocalypse by the Venerable Beda [trans. Rev. Edward Marshall; Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878], 80, 82)
