**4. Conclusions**

We could highlight some direct results in a summary of the two analyses carried out in this article on texts and images.

Numerous Church Fathers and medieval theologians designate the Virgin Mary as the gate of Heaven or the door of Paradise to highlight her capacity for mediation and intercession before her divine Son in favor of humanity.

Based on the doctrinal tradition established by the Fathers and theologians in this regard, numerous medieval hymnographers composed countless canticles, antiphons, and liturgical hymns in which they exalt Mary as the open "gate of heaven" (*ianua Coeli*), "door of Paradise" (*porta Paradisi*), and as its equivalent concepts "mediator", "intercessor", or other similar titles referring to Mary's powerful mediation before her divine Son in favor of humankind.

Many hymns underline that Mary's saving faculty derives from her privilege as the virginal mother of God the Son. So, being the mother of the Savior, who is also the Supreme Judge, she is in the best condition to intercede on behalf of the human gender.

On the other hand, those ideas of the liturgical hymns—and, of course, those of the Church Fathers and the theologians who inspired them—were reflected during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in a series of sculptural and pictorial artworks that show the Virgin Mary as the gate of Heaven, and as a mediator before God in favor of the faithful.

In this article, we bring to light three iconic modalities in which Mary is represented as a mediator and intercessor of humanity under the metaphor of "gate of Heaven or door of Paradise": the *Deësis* or *Deisis* in the scene of the Last Judgment, the figure of the Virgin with her Child at the entrance of the temple, and third, the Virgin framed by a door or arch in the scenes of the Annunciation.

Medieval Christianity nurtured the faith of those mostly illiterate populations with two great resources: words and images. The words were expressed, above all, in the sermons of the ecclesiastics in the temple, and these, in turn, fed on the texts of the Bible (Old and New Testament), the Church Fathers, and theologians. To these primary textual expressions of the priests before the illiterate faithful were later added the lyrics of the songs, antiphons, and liturgical hymns that, although written in Latin and also being indecipherable for the illiterate majority, could be explained by the ecclesiastics on the occasion of the celebration of the Mass, or during processions, ceremonies, and devotional acts. Based on such explanations, it seems reasonable to conjecture that few of those uneducated medieval Christians would be ignorant of the basic meanings of such popular antiphons as the *Salve Regina* or the *Regina Coeli laetare*, even if they were not able to read/translate each of their Latin words.

One last important conclusion is necessary: these statements of the liturgical hymns and those sculptural and pictorial images centered around the metaphor of Mary as *porta Paradisi* are in perfect harmony. After all, what the liturgical hymns poetically proclaimed reflected the thousand-year-old exegetical tradition of the Church Fathers and medieval theologians on Mary's universal mediation symbolized by the *ianua Coeli* or *porta Paradisi* metaphors. Additionally, on the other hand, the ecclesiastical hierarchy could not miss the opportunity to "catechize" its illiterate faithful through that "catechism in stone or paint" materialized in those sculptures and paintings that iconographically represented Mary as the gate of Heaven.

Thus, both texts and images affect the spirit of the believer with the same catechetical effectiveness. In this way, after seeing the material sculptures or paintings of the Virgin "gate of Heaven" upon entering the temple and hearing the immaterial enouncements of the liturgical hymns sung there, the faithful could be super-assured in a solid thesis of the Christian faith: Mary is the effective mediator before God, and the believer must resort to her to obtain goods on this Earth and eternal salvation in Heaven.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
