the key to heaven

[ursula]

I'm trying to figure out whether a seventeenth-century motto, "Crux Christi clavis coeli," is a quotation from someone else. Web-surfing suggests that it may be an adaptation from St. Augustine; can anyone confirm this? Did Augustine ever write that the cross of Christ is the key to Heaven, and if so, where did he do so?

Comments

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

It be a shorter version of this:

Matthew 16:19:
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

:s/be/could be

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

Though that doesn't mention the cross, hrm.

[ursula]

It's not close enough to count as a direct quote, though there's obviously a connection: the Vulgate has "et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum" rather than "clavis caeli".