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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Most readers of the account of Raphael's visit to Eden in Book v of Paradise Lost center their interest on the exchange of greetings between Raphael and Adam, which illustrates the sense of order and hierarchy so significant in the poem. The importance for both theme and structure of the angel's address to Eve, which immediately follows, has, however, been overlooked. Eve rises to greet her heavenly guest, and the narration continues:
1 All citations from Paradise Lost in my text are to The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1952, 1955).
2 Denis Saurat remarks that mention of Mary as the Second Eve is to be understood merely as the expression of the physical fact of her motherhood of Christ; Milton, Man and Thinker (New York, 1925), p. 176. B. J. Rajan gives two contemporary references to the Second Eve, in Swan's Speculum Mundi and in Crashaw; Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader (New York, 1948), p. 146. C. A. Patrides calls attention to Milton's mention of the parallel and refers to statements of it in Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine; “Milton and the Protestant Theory of the Atonement,” PMLA, LXXIV (March 1959), 7, 10. Joseph A. Summers refers to it significantly but incidentally in “The Voice of the Redeemer in Paradise Lost,” PMLA, LXX (December 1955), 1083, 1087.
3 In Of Prelaticall Episcopacy he refers to two passages by Irenaeus (which will be cited below) stating the Eve-Mary analogy and singles out for contradiction two points there made: that the obedience of Mary was the cause of salvation and that Mary was the advocate of Eve; The Works of John Milton, Columbia edition, ed. Frank A. Patterson, 18 vols., (New York, 1931–40), in, 94. If Irenaeus was in error in this case, Milton argues, his authority cannot be used to uphold episcopacy.
4 Milton's direct reference to the two passages in Irenaeus is proof that he knew at least one patristic statement on the Second Eve; his general knowledge of the Church Fathers suggests that he probably knew others as well. No doubt he was familiar with Renaissance statements of the doctrine. Certainty on his immediate sources is less important for an appreciation of its use in the poem than an awareness of the tradition, which in this article is studied at its fountainhead.
5 Sermo 289, In Natali Joannis Baplistae, 2, in Patrologia Lalina (hereafter cited as PL), ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1878–90), 38: col. 1308; De Agone Chrisliano, xxii (24) (PL, 40:303). Translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.
6 Expositiones in Evangelium secundum Lucam, ii, 28 (PL, IS: 1643).
7 'Epislola xxii, 21 (PL, 22: 408).
8 Adversus Haereses, lxxviii, 18, in Patrologia Graeca (hereafter cited as PG), ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1857–66), 42: 727–730. My references are to the Latin texts.
9 Adversus Haereses, iii, 32, 4 (PG, 7: 958–9S9). In this and the following quotation I have used the translation by Walter J. Burghardt in “Mary in Western Patristic Thought,” Mariology, ed. Juniper B. Carol, Vol. i (Milwaukee, 1954),112.
10 Adversus Haereses, v,xix, 1 (PG, 7: 1175–1176; Burghardt, loc. cit.).
11 Tertullian, De Came Christi, xvii (PL, 2: 827–828).
12 John Damascene, Homilia 2 in Nativitate Beatae Virginis Mariae, 5 (PG, 96: 687). Among similar comparisons made by the early Church Fathers may be cited the following: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, xii, 15 (PG, 33: 742); John Chrysostom, In Natalem Christi Diem (PG, 56: 392); John Damascene, Homilia 1 in Nativitate Beatae Virginis Mariae, 7 (PG, 96: 671); Justin, Dialogus cum Tryphone, 100 (PG, 6: 710–711); Gregory of Nyssa, In Diem Natalem Christi (PG, 46: 1147). For further references and discussion, Mother Mary Christopher Pecheux, O.S. U.see La Nouvelle Eve, Bulletin de la Société Française d'études Mariâtes, 3 vols. (Paris, 1954–56), or the two chapters by Walter J. Burghardt, “Mary in Western Patristic Thought,” cited above, ii. 9, and “Mary in Eastern Patristic Thought,” in Mariology, ed. Juniper B. Carol, Vol. ii (Milwaukee, 1957).
13 Arnold Williams discusses Renaissance attitudes towards certain aspects of the parallel in The Common Expositor (Chapel Hill, 1948), pp. 128–130, 134.
14 A Preface to Paradise Lost (London, 1942), p. 117.
15 Pales, an ancient Roman deity, was occasionally thought of as masculine but usually as feminine; see, for example, Ovid's Fasti, where she is a goddess who receives chaste offerings from virginal altars (Fasti, iv, 725–731). Diana was patroness of both hunting and virginity; the latter aspect is more in keeping with Eve's situation in this passage than is the former.
It should be noted that the “fair Virgin” of ix.452 is not Eve but part of an extended simile; the phrase may, however, be part of the general preparation for the references to Eve's innocence.
16 Sermo 289, In N atali J oannis Baptistae, 2 (PL, 38: 1308).
17 Homilia 2 in Dormitionem Beatae Virginis Mariae (PG, 96: 727). Cf. Milton's De Doclrina Christiana, i, xi (Works, xv, 182), where gluttony is mentioned among the components of original sin.
18 Dialogus cum Tryphone, 100 (PG, 6: 710–711).
19 Ambrose, Epistola Ixiii (23), 33 (PL, 16: 1249–1250), Ildefonse, Sermo xii, De Sancta Maria (PL, 96: 280).
20 E. M. W. Tillyard's revised viewpoint on the crisis of Paradise Lost, stated in his Studies in Milton (London 1955), is typical of renewed critical interest in the last part of the epic. For a defense of the last two books in particular see F. T. Prince, “On the Last Two Books of ‘Paradise Lost’, ” Essays and Studies (English Association, New Series), xi (London, 1958), 38–52.
21 PMLA, LXX, 1082–89 (seen. 2).
22 Adversus Haereses, iii, 32, 4 (PG, 7: 958).
23 Irenaeus, Demonstratio Apostolicae Praedicationis, 33, trans. Joseph P. Smith, in Ancient Christian Writers (Westminster, Md., 1952), XVI, 69. Milton would not have known this particular text, for it was discovered only in 1904 (ibid., p. 4). The ideas are substantially the same as those stated in Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses, but the expression that “mortality be absorbed in immortality, and Eve in Mary” seems particularly apt for Paradise Lost.
