Hayden Hagerman 

Marquette University

Disambiguating the Virgin Mother: Odes 19 and the Case for its Reception in Clement and Ambrose

Who is the Virgin Mother of Odes 19? The ambiguity of reference has not been lost on readers of Odes, either ancient or modern. Yet few have been willing to let the ambiguation remain. This pattern of “disambiguation,” I argue, was first set forth in Clement of Alexandria. While scholars like Lattke, Lavalle, Harris, and Mangina have noted similarities between Clement’s Paedagogus 1.42 and Odes 19, I contend for literary dependence, a fact born out in the mutual use of breastfeeding and milk imagery and shared quaternity of Father, Word/Son, Holy Spirit, and Virgin Mother. Clement disambiguates the Virgin Mother of Odes 19 by prioritizing one potential referent (the Church) over another (Mary), and in so doing undermines the symbol’s multivalence. By contrast, Ambrose of Milan preserves two referents, Mary and the Church, in his use of the Virgin Mother image in his Commentary on Luke.  Although he does not let one image be dissolved into the other, he nevertheless also “disambiguates” the Virgin Mother, and thereby quiets further resonances of the symbol (e.g., Eve, Christ, the individual soul)—resonances which, I argue, ought to properly (i.e., exegetically and theologically) be admitted and preserved.