Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Jean de Gagny (d. 1549) on the “Woman” in Revelation 12

  

As regards his exegesis of Apc 12, (Gagny, Scholia, 1550: In Apocalypsin Joannis Apostoli, 274r-278r) Gagny shows no understanding of the dynamics of the text and only the absence of any comment on Apoc 12.6 would suggest that he sees the flight of the woman described there as simply an anticipation of the fight in Apc 12.13. As for the symbolic meaning of the woman, Gagny prefers her to stand for the church, but he does include a second exegesis (printed in smaller characters, 277r-278r.), with the woman as the Virgin Mary, who gives birth to Christ, who is then persecuted by Herod, or the dragon.

 

His main “ecclesiastical interpretation of the chapter naturally has certain details in common with Colladon. Thus both take robed with the sun to mean “having put on Christ” (Gagny specifies [274f.] “through baptism”), and both interpret the moon at her feet to mean “having no regard for earthly things” (Gagny adds Ruper of Deutz’s exegesis of the moon standing for “heretical doctrines,” also put forward as a possibility by Sebastian Meyer). (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 84)