Rivista Antonianum
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SUMMARY — The encomium «Cunctas haereses sola interemisti» was first adopted to ho­nour the faith and the virginity of Mary in the Annunciation and the Incarnation; at a certain moment, in the modern age, it is used also or solely to celebrate the privilege of the Imma­culate Conception; in this sense it made entry into the Bull «Ineffabilis Deus» (1854) of Pius IX. The author asks: where, when, by whom and why has such a change or extension been introduced in the sense of the encomium? On the basis of reliable documents he believes that he can offer the following answers: a) the extension of the sense of the encomium to the Immaculate Conception, at the actual stage of the researches occurs for the first time in a ritmus or an old Latin song (= CL), anonymously preserved in the MS 1.022 of the Casanatense Library in Rome; b) it might have been composed about the year 1415 in the context of the Council of Constance; c) the author might have been the Franciscan Diego Moxena, who is now identified with the namesake Diego of Valencia, renowned poet of Cancionero de Baena (= CB); d) the extension of the sense of the encomium might have been motivated by a rea­son profoundly theological, dear to the Scotist and Lullian schools: that of the intimate, «ne-cessary» connexion between the Incarnation and the privilege of the Immaculate Concep­tion; e) starting from the theological premise, Diego would have convinced his friend Fer-nand I, king of Aragon, to ask for the institution of the feast of the Immaculate Conception in the universal Church, so that the Mother of God might dispel the Schism of the West, which was considered synonymous with «cunctas haereses» or with the «prava haeresis», which denied the mystery of the Incarnation and, consequently, also that of the Church.