Any church father quotes calling Mary queen?

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I did a quick search using Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (a database of most Greek texts from Classical to Byzantine), and the earliest reference amongst the Greek Fathers to Mary as Queen seems to be from Athanasius’ Sermo in annuntiationem deiparae (“Sermon on the annunciation of the mother of God”):
Καὶ ἐπεὶ αὐτὸς βασιλεύς ἐστιν ὁ ἐκ τῆς Παρθένου γεννηθεὶς, καὶ αὐτὸς Κύριος ὁ Θεός. Δι’ αὐτὸν καὶ ἡ τεκοῦσα αὐτὸν βασίλισσα, καὶ Κυρία καὶ Θεοτόκος, κυρίως καὶ ἀληθῶς δογματίζεται.
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Since he who has been born from the virgin is king, the Lord himself is also God. Because of this, she who has borne him (Jesus) is also properly and truthfully declared Queen, also Lady and Mother of God.
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Note: the attribution for this sermon seems to be spurious in that Athanasius may not have written it. Nonetheless, it’s the earliest reference in the TLG corpus.
 
@Bithynian

Thank you for that information. Did you find a time frame for that appellation?
 
St. Ignatius, St Ambrose, St. Leo the Great
St.Gregory the Great, St Ambrose, St.Crystosom, St. Basil, St
Clement of Rome ~and that’s just a few.

🦋
 
Minks said:
Did you find a time frame for that appellation?
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I can’t find information on the textual history of that particular sermon, so I just assumed it was contemporary pseudepigrapha. That is, not written by Athanasius, but written sometime in his lifetime. However, since it wasn’t cited by Pius XII in Ad caeli reginam, it might be too spurious.
Katie777 said:
Google is your friend 🙂
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Insofar as I know, none of those authors have ever referred to Mary as Queen (whether βασιλίς or βασίλισσα). For example, our only surviving text by Clement of Rome (his epistle to the Corinthians) doesn’t even mention Mary.
 
We must remember, though, that the most common, everyday realities of those days may have been so taken for granted that they’d always exist, that they were seldom mentioned. Some parts of Christian life weren’t discussed in early assemblies or “on paper” (lol!) until they’d been challenged.

It could be that if Christians from those days were to come alive today, they would be shocked by facets missing from our lives that had been engrained as a part of theirs. We’ll likely never know the details, but we do need to remember that practices which they may have considered essential could have become lost from both practice and memory in later centuries.
 
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