Patristic A.D. 444
“He finds man in his corrupt affections become like the beasts that perish, and therefore He is laid in the manger, in the place of food, that we changing the life of beasts, might be brought to the knowledge that befits man, partaking not of hay, but of the heavenly bread, the lifegiving body.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of Luke, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on Luke 2:6-7
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1843) ↗