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Justin Martyr (120-165 AD) was the first Church Father to draw an explicit comparison between Eve and Mary: "For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should … overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One that was born of her was Son of God, answered, "Be it done to me according to Thy word."
The concept of Genesis 3:15 being the Proto-evangelium or "First Gospel" is attributed to St. Irenaeus of Lyons (135-202) from his work Against Heresies: "For this end did He put enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed, they keeping it up mutually: He, the sole of whose foot should be bitten, having power also to tread upon the enemy's head; but the other biting, killing, and impeding the steps of man, until the seed did come appointed to tread down his head, - which was born of Mary, of whom the prophet speaks: 'Thou shalt tread upon the asp and the basilisk; thou shalt trample down the lion and the dragon (Psalm 91:13).'"
- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 23, Number 7 23
"Christ has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou can perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for thy head, and thou on the watch for his heel.' For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, namely from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Letter to the Galatians, 'that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Galatians 3:19).' This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle where he thus speaks: 'But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman (Galatians 4:4).' For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man born of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man's opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanqushed man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm of victory against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death."
- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, 21, 1
St. Jerome (347-420) translated the Hebrew texts while living an ascetic life in Bethlehem and completed his work in 405. St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible was the standard Bible in Western civilization for over 1000 years! He employed the word she for the epicene form in Genesis 3:15. This of course had a profound effect on Marian devotion. St. Jerome captured the meaning at the time through an expression: "Death through Eve, life through Mary." One still sees images today of Mary trampling the head of the serpent.
Mary is the co-redemptrix because of her relation to the Christ, Jesus. Without her there is no Jesus. That is also why she is the Queen of Heaven, her relation to Jesus. Even if it's supposed to be a man (Jesus) trampling the head of the serpent, Mary is part of that insofar as how she contributes to redemption by giving the second person of the Trinity His humanity, which was used to redeem us. That does not mean she's equal in performing the redemption, but that she was a unique part of it. In Revelation 11-12, take note of how St John clearly identifies a woman (the new Eve, Mary - also the Ark of the New Covenant), her seed (the Christ, Jesus) the serpent (Satan) and the enmity between them (the followers of her Son). Keep in mind that the description of the Ark in 11:19 would have continued into chapter 12 without a chapter break when it was written… meaning it is indeed Mary who is the Ark of the New Covenant. Her crown can represent the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, the 12 patriarchs, but it's absurd to say that the woman is just the Church, or Israel, because the parallels to the Proto-evangelium don't make sense then, and a symbol would not need to literally give birth.