GREGORY OF ELVIRA, St. — Flourishing in the 4th century, he was a fierce defender of Nicaea and a close opponent of Hosius of Córdoba on account of the “blasphemy of Sirmium” (357); later a staunch partisan of Lucifer of Cagliari, involved in the intransigent protest against the synodals of Alexandria (362); finally leader of the Luciferians after the death of the bishop of Cagliari (370–71). G. drew particular attention to himself after the work of P. Batiffol and A. Wilmart reconstructed his important literary heritage.
He is the first known bishop of Elvira (near Granada). A constant defender of “homoousios,” he also became an opponent of Priscillianism. His theology displays personal and initiated values in not a few matters.
His works are known: *De fide orthodoxa contra Arianos*, a powerful defense of “homoousios”; *Tractatus de epitalamio*, i.e., 5 homilies on the *Song of Songs*, the oldest Latin commentary in which, for the first time in the West, the marriage between Christ and the Church is expounded; the so-called *Tractatus Origenis de libris S. Scripturae*, i.e., 20 treatises discovered in 1900 by P. Batiffol and A. Wilmart that treat the Old Testament with allegorical exegesis and lively style; *De arca Noe*, on the Church as figured by it; *Expositio in Ps. 91*.
The personality of G. looms large in the patristic age as that of a careful and felicitous coiner of Trinitarian formulas. He is the first representative of homiletic preaching in the Latin Church; initiator in suggestive doctrinal points (such as Christ and the Church, depicted by the *Song of Songs*, the doctrine of the 7 capital sins in antithesis to the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, the beauty of the humanity of Christ). G. later inspired notable patristic figures such as Arpingius of Beja, Isidore of Seville, Beatus of Liébana, etc.