The invitation to contribute to the special strand of the International Medieval Meeting at the University of Lleida in June 2018, “Emotions in the Middle Ages: A Historiographical Appraisal,” provided an opportunity to explore the medieval Latin Quis dabit (also known by the longer title, the Liber de passione Christi et doloribus et planctibus Matris eius) for the insight that it offers into the history of emotions in the Middle Ages.1 With respect to this subject, the text has received little attention.2
1 A Singular Text
I became aware of the Quis dabit and, more generally, the representation of emotions as an aspect of medieval culture and in need of critical investigation,
The medieval author’s device of presenting the passion, crucifixion and post-resurrection appearance of Christ from the point of view of Mary means that the narrative is able to show her relating these events emotionally. Much is presented from Mary’s inner self: her anxiety, grief, sorrow, and even despair. She is presented as overpowered by her emotions, and there is no suggestion of a personal belief or confidence that all things will be well. Her state of mind changes only when Christ appears to her after his resurrection. Presenting Mary in this state of mind, what we would term hopelessness or despair, goes against the traditional, orthodox view that, despite her grief, Mary remained constant in her belief in the resurrection. Figure 4.1 illustrates this idea. This is an image from a fourteenth-century English book of hours (London, British Library, ms Egerton 2781, f. 17r). Mary is shown holding the resurrection standard and embracing the church and the host in a chalice, while the disciples are in attitudes of grief and despair. A prayer serves as a commentary on the image: “Hail and rejoice most holy lady and forever virgin Mary, you who on Holy Saturday, while the apostles were in doubt, alone remained
London, British Library, ms Egerton 2781, fol. 17r
photo: © british library
2 Passion and Despair
The presentation of Mary in this Anglo-Norman and Middle English text raises questions: what is the source or precedent for the idea of Mary as narrator and what is its purpose? More importantly, why present Mary in this unorthodox
In response to the question of the source of the idea of Mary as narrator of the passion, it is helpful to turn to the Latin Quis dabit or Liber de passione Christi et doloribus et planctibus Matris eius.9 This provides a model for the Anglo-Norman and Middle English Complaint of Our Lady referred to above. It is Mary’s account of the events of the passion, and it is highly probable that this text was one of the main sources for the tradition out of which Latin and vernacular texts such as the Complaint of Our Lady grew.10 For it is generally agreed that the Quis dabit is among the most widely used devotional texts from the European Middle Ages, and one that had considerable influence on Latin and vernacular devotional writing.11 In some respects, the extent of the popularity of the Quis dabit is probably similar to that of the Latin narrative of the life of Christ known as the Meditationes Vitae Christi (mvc), which was widely copied and used in its Latin version and also translated into European vernacular languages.12 The Quis dabit may survive in more Latin manuscripts than
In order to evaluate the importance of the Quis dabit as a mirror of medieval religious culture, it will be helpful first to locate it in the context of the emergence of the cult of Mary or the cult of the Virgin; second, to explore the structure and organisation of the Quis dabit and ways in which its dynamics – the relationships of the parts to the whole – complicate our reading of the text; and third, to assess what an investigation of the Quis dabit is able to contribute to our understanding of what emotions represented in medieval devotional or spiritual literature.
In medieval manuscripts, the Quis dabit is most often attributed to that most famous of Cistercian monks, Bernard of Clairvaux, and in the Middle Ages it was firmly believed to have been written by Bernard himself. Modern scholarship has concluded that Bernard was not the author but that the text is by an Italian Cistercian, Oglerius de Tridino (1136–1214), who was first monk, then abbot, of Locedio near Milan in the Piedmont region. As well as circulating as a distinct text, the Quis dabit appears as one of thirteen meditations or episodes in the life of Mary the mother of Christ, in a work by Oglerius de Tridino, known as the Tractatus in laudibus Sancte Dei Genitricis, which dates from 1205. The questions that the Tractatus raises about the origin and status of the Quis dabit are not relevant here, but it is suggestive that the Tractatus survives in very few manuscripts while the Quis dabit as an independent text was widely copied in the Middle Ages and used directly and indirectly for vernacular literature.13
It is important to emphasise that the Quis dabit grew out of monastic, specifically Cistercian, meditational or devotional writing. Another related cultural context for the Quis dabit is the emergence of the cult of the Virgin Mary. Kati Ihnat’s book, Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews: Devotion to the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Norman England (Princeton, 2016), argues that the cult of the Virgin originated in Anglo-Norman Benedictine monasticism of the twelfth century, and that this was the basis for the cult of Mary in medieval Europe.14
The second part of this essay explores the dynamics of the Quis dabit, that is, how the different parts and narrative strategies of the text combine to generate meaning. As noted above, in the Middle Ages, the Quis dabit was incorporated into the canon of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux. This is not surprising given that Bernard is cast as a principal character in the text, which is conceived first
It is helpful to explore the dynamics of the text in terms of an underlying structure of eight parts:17
- 1.Prologue (ll. 1–58).
- 2.The Virgin’s account of the passion from the arrest of Christ, including the road to Calvary, the fixing of Christ on the cross, and the visualising of Christ crucified (ll. 59–122).
- 3.Christ’s words from the cross to the Virgin and the apostle John (ll. 123–45).
- 4.Grief of the Virgin and John for the dying Christ (ll. 146–63).
- 5.Death of Christ and the grief of the Virgin (ll. 164–203).
- 6.Deposition; the Virgin’s despair (ll. 204–23).
- 7.Two passages of commentary (ll. 224–50).
- 8.Burial of Christ, and Mary’s grief (ll. 251–299).
The title, Quis dabit, comes from the incipit or opening sentence of the text: “Who will give water for my head and a shower of tears for my eyes?” (“O quis dabit capiti meo aquam, et oculis meis imbrem lacrimarum … (l. 1)”). The sentence is taken from the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah, 9:1, and there introduces Jeremiah’s grief for the suffering of his people. In the context of the Quis dabit, the speaker, St. Bernard, prays that he will have the power to weep, to such an extent that Christ will appear to him to console him in his grief (“ut possim flere per diem et noctem, donec seruo suo Dominus Ihesus appareat consolans animam meam (ll. 2–3)”). He draws a parallel with the grief of Mary, who followed Christ to his crucifixion and prays to her to “pour out to me the tears that you shed at Christ’s passion. And in order that I may pour out my feelings more fully about the passion of your son, our God and Lord, let us speak to one another in turn so that my tears may be more abundant.”18
3 Cistercian Spiritually and Affective Meditation
The Meditationes Vite Christi (mvc) referred to above is the best-known example of a medieval text that uses rhetorical strategies designed to generate or encourage affective meditation. This is from the fourteenth century, but an important precedent is found in a text from the mid-twelfth century, the De Institutione Inclusarum by Aelred (1110–67), abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. A recent Modern English translation uses the title A Rule for the Life of a Recluse.21 In both the mvc and the De Institutione Inclusarum, a narrator serves as an intermediary and encourages the reader to imagine and feel the emotions of the Virgin as she witnessed and responded to the passion of Christ. The significant difference between these two texts on the one hand, and the Quis dabit on the other, is that one of the principal characters in the opening dialogue in the Quis dabit, that is, Bernard, prays to be able
It is important to recognise that it is a male figure – albeit an exceptional male figure, St. Bernard – who asks a woman – albeit an exceptional woman, the Virgin Mary– to help him experience the intensity of grief that the Virgin experienced during the passion and death of her son. Furthermore, the emotions of intense grief are presented as essential for the spiritual experience of knowing Christ. This is the theme of Bernard’s prayer at the beginning of the text. Paradoxically, however, the emotions of grief and the ability to weep are seen as exclusively human. The Virgin says to Bernard: “because I am now glorified, I cannot weep” (“Sed quia iam glorificata flere non possum (l. 53)”). Yet here, the emotional responses generated by grief, which are characteristically human, and not divine, are nevertheless understood as the means to the spiritual, something that is above human experience. This is one of the central paradoxes of the text: the intensely human leads to the intensely spiritual. It is plausible that this paradox is a feature of the design of the text and something that it self-consciously exploits.22
My whole voice had almost perished, but I poured out the sorrows and sighs of my grief. I wanted to speak but grief destroyed my words because the great pain in my heart called back as yet unfinished the words that I had already conceived in my mind while the words strove to be formed by my mouth. The voice of my sadness sounded abroad declaring the wounds of my mind. Love produced words that seemed harsh, for the tongue, the mistress of the voice, had lost the power of speech.23
This is an extended metaphor about the impossibility of expressing grief. Yet, paradoxically, what follows is speech or an expression of grief by the Virgin. Here again the dynamics of the text depend on a paradox, and, in this instance, it can be argued that the paradox is purposeful and part of the design of the text itself. The Quis dabit reveals a picture of profound human emotion in ways that few medieval texts are able to do; the Virgin’s grief is laid bare for the audience. At the same time, the text is highly rhetorical. Its author was well practised in the arts and devices of persuasion. Grief is difficult to express, and it is a commonplace that one needs to turn to others literally “to find the words to express what one feels.”
4 Orthodox Spiritual Emotions?
Through the fault of one man all his descendants perished; all now are saved through the merit of one man […] Woman, do not weep, do not
mourn, most sweet mother. I do not desert you; I will be with you for all time. But, according to the flesh, I am subject to the power of death; according to my divinity, I am, I was, and I will be immortal and without sorrow.24
This passage is a lesson in the basics of orthodox theology of the redemption, and it is remarkably free from emotion. Indeed, Christ tells his mother not to weep and that she should not be mourning or grieving for him. This part introduces a different voice and different perspective into the text. It is the voice of reasoned theological argument. It contradicts what has gone before and any sense of the value and purpose of affective devotion. St. Bernard is shown at the beginning to want to understand and feel something of the emotion of the Virgin at the crucifixion of Christ so that he might understand and feel love for Christ. In this third part of the Quis dabit, however, the value of desiring to establish emotional bonds with the suffering Christ is implicitly questioned, and in its place are the facts of Christian doctrine. In this way, Part 3 introduces a further complication into our reading of the text.
The remainder of the text does not use Mary as narrator, but there is no doubt that what is related about her state of mind is to be understood as the expression of the Virgin’s emotions, as if the second part is enough to indicate that all the other parts that convey the Virgin’s emotional responses are personal. Another complication is that the fourth, fifth, and sixth parts of the Quis dabit, leading to Christ being taken down from the cross – the Deposition – take no account of what is said in Part 3. In this sequence, the grief of the Virgin is shown to be more intense, and it culminates in the sixth part with what can only be described as a state of absolute despair. That this is the effect that this part of Quis dabit had on some medieval readers is shown by the addition in some manuscripts containing the text – dating from as early as the mid-thirteenth-century– of the idea that the Virgin was in an emotional state of such hopelessness or despair that she wanted to commit suicide: “… nothing else remains (for me) but that I should kill myself because I am not able to live any longer. Come to me and pour out again your holy spirit upon me.”25
Whoever wants to say so, let him say, if he can, how great was the grief that the Virgin endured. I do not believe that it is possible to describe her grief; nevertheless, this grief was right [or appropriate], demonstrating as it did the extent of her love. She did not despair, but piously and justly mourned the one whom she as a virgin bore; she grieved at the death of the just one, maintaining hope, nevertheless, that he would arise on the third day.27
As has been pointed out, it is a commonplace in medieval religious writing – and the theme is expressed visually (Figure 4.1) – that from Good Friday to Easter, the Virgin maintained the faith of the Church in the resurrection of Christ while others doubted. For much of the time, the text shows the depth and intensity of the Virgin’s emotions, her grief, leading, as it would seem in the sixth part, to despair. Then, at this point, the text says that she maintained hope and faith in the resurrection. It is difficult to reconcile these different points of view in a reading of the text, and it is significant that this passage – Part 7 – does not appear in some later witnesses of the Quis dabit, as if not all medieval scribes and readers could accommodate these two contradictory perspectives on the Virgin’s grief.28
Another point of orthodoxy that Part 7 invokes is that, because of their nature, angels do not experience grief:29
Certain holy women with her, of whom there were few, and a small number of men who lamented for Christ, mourned with the Virgin mother. At the same time there were angels mourning with her, mourning if indeed it was possible for them to mourn. They mourned with pious and just grief. They were suffering with her, in grieving for Christ in his death and rejoicing that through him the human race was redeemed. They wept, as I think, troubled most severely in mind because they saw the mother of Christ bound by such grief. Oh, who among the angels or archangels, against their nature, would not weep when contrary to his nature the immortal God lay dead as man? I believe, because of this, and I say, that they wept if they were able to weep. But just as it was possible for God to die, having assumed man, so it was possible for the blessed angels to mourn the death of their Lord.30
Although it is not in the nature of angels to weep or feel grief, it is believed that they wept for the death of Christ. This reference makes the Virgin’s profound grief understandable, and, at the same time, endorses the characteristically human act of weeping or lamentation. In this one event of universal significance – the death of Christ – divine beings expressed human emotions, and, for the audience, this has the effect of validating the expression of human emotions as an act of devotion.
While Joseph and Nicodemus were laying down the Lord in his tomb, the sad mother wished to be buried with her son. She clung to her beloved, embracing him with all the tenderness of her love, and kissing him warmly she said “Pity me, pity me at least, my friends! Leave him to me a little longer so that I may see his face without this veil, so that in seeing
him I may be comforted a little. Do not so quickly hand him over to the tomb; give him to his wretched mother that I may have him with me, or at least his dead body. Or, if you place him in the tomb, bury me, a wretch, with him, because after he has gone, I will always grieve.”31
This is a picture of profound grief and despair.
What might the Quis dabit suggest about how the representation of emotions could function in medieval devotional or spiritual culture? As argued above, the Quis dabit is built around paradoxes and contradictions and therefore lends itself to different readings. One of the most striking features is the extent to which the text exposes the suffering and tormented mind of the Virgin, her inner emotional turmoil. This is the most affective aspect of the text. Mental suffering is characteristic of the way female religious experience is often portrayed in the Middle Ages, from the Virgin to the English mystic Margery Kempe and other late medieval holy women. It has been argued that portraying women’s religious experience as highly emotional was a male construct, and ultimately misogynous.32 I am not convinced that this is true for the Quis dabit, for the grief of the Virgin is shown to be something that no less a figure than Bernard of Clairvaux longed to experience. The text places a high value on the human emotional experience of grief, and it is not exclusively female. The Virgin’s grief is conceived in human terms, that is, in the terms of love for a member of one’s family: son, father, husband. This is one of the controlling paradigms of the text.
The principal contradictions or paradoxes within the dynamics of the text emerge because of Parts 3 and 7, which express orthodoxy. In Part 3, in his words from the cross, Christ compels Mary not to weep, and explains the purpose of his death in the scheme of redemption. This is orthodoxy, the “right opinion” or “correct understanding” of the redemption. In Part 7, we are told that the Virgin’s very human reactions were tempered all the while by faith in the resurrection, another instance of orthodoxy.
The Quis dabit is preoccupied with the Virgin’s state of mind, her emotions, and examines these in minute detail. In the 1930s, in The Allegory of Love, C. S. Lewis opened up the subject of how the Middle Ages explored and presented human emotions and human psychology. For this project, Lewis adopted the concept of “courtly love” from the nineteenth-century French scholar of medieval romance Gaston Paris, but he took Paris’s ideas much further. Lewis’s principal text for his exploration of the dynamics of human emotions was the first part of the Roman de la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris, which appeared around 1230, that is, twenty-five years after the latest possible date for the compilation of the Quis dabit.33 The Roman de la Rose explores the psychology of two individuals as they experience the emotions surrounding human love for the first time. In the midst of one of the many crises that the male figure, the Dreamer or Lover, experiences, Reason enters and advises that he should abandon the folly of human, romantic love, and should cast his mind on higher things. The Dreamer at first recognises the truth of what Reason says, but nevertheless ignores Reason’s advice and continues with his love experience, which leads him into a state of hopelessness or despair, much like that of the Virgin in the Quis dabit. The nature and role of Reason in the Roman de la Rose has been a continuing subject of debate. Is Reason a figure of authority and is the Dreamer’s action in ignoring Reason an act of folly? Or, is Reason one state of mind, and is the text meant to show that human emotions are ultimately more powerful? In these respects, the Roman de la Rose can be compared to the Quis dabit. The statements of the doctrine of the redemption that make up Part 3 of the Quis dabit are of course authoritative in the sense that they reflect Christian orthodoxy, but the text also shows that human emotions and reactions are equally important as part of religious or spiritual life. The dynamics of the text work to suggest that one can know the truth of doctrine intellectually, but that the spiritual experience is more complex than that, and includes other
As for Part 7, which stresses that the Virgin maintained faith in the resurrection, I can understand why some medieval scribes or medieval editors removed it from the Quis dabit.35 I have no doubt that it is original to the text, but it seems to represent a retreat into orthodoxy from what the text had so successfully developed, namely a credible picture of human grief, and had opened up hidden depths of human emotions. I am speculating that Oglerius had begun to realise the power of human emotions and was unsure about what he had discovered and so sought to neutralise this by resorting to a commonplace of orthodoxy.
5 A Spiritual Legacy
[first stanza] His love had bound me so firmly when I could not help weeping uncontrollably that it was always in my mind that he would arise on the third day. He instilled in me the true belief and I understood how I should conduct myself. I knew well enough that in the end I should see him among all his followers. [second stanza] And yet, Bernard, I was not able to cease from weeping sorely. I wrung my hands and tore my hair when he lay dead in front of me. I say truly, and I swear to it that if angels have any capacity for sorrow, they would weep many tears because of what I saw there.36
The Quis dabit is one of those texts referred to earlier in which the author or compiler, temporarily, ignored correct doctrine or orthodoxy. Inadvertently, he had brought the subject of the Virgin’s grief to the edge of orthodoxy and taken it into an area that contradicted orthodox notions of how a figure such as the Virgin would react in grief. In the Quis dabit there is for the reader a conflict because there are two figures of authority, that is, Christ with his speech from the cross, and Mary whose account this is. One of these figures of authority is consumed by emotion and is shown to reach a state of despair.
The Quis dabit has the features of something experimental, but it was an experiment that got out of hand and implicitly challenged orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the Quis dabit seems to have struck a chord with medieval culture precisely because it appeared to give free rein to the imagination to explore the extremes of human emotion. Peter Dronke argued that it was in vernacular literature of the passion that medieval authors had more freedom to express the extremes of the emotions of Mary, but there can be little doubt that the Latin Quis dabit developed the most profound picture of the Virgin’s emotional state at the Passion of Christ.37
The text is edited with an introduction in: William Marx, “The ‘Quis dabit’ of Oglerius de Tridino, Monk and Abbot of Locedio,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 4 (1994), 118–29. Modern English translations appear in: Ogier of Locedio, In Praise of God’s Holy Mother [and] On Our Lord’s Words to his Disciples at the Last Supper, trans. Donald Martin Jenni (Kalamazoo, 2006), pp. 142–56; and Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 165–85.
I am grateful to the publisher Peter Lang for permission to reproduce here material from an earlier essay, of which this is, in part, a revised version that has been directed to the theme of the conference: “The Edge of Orthodoxy: The Virgin Mary, St Bernard and the ‘Quis dabit’,” in Fact and Fiction: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times, Essays Presented to Hans Sauer on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday – Part ii, eds. Renate Bauer, Ulrike Krischke (Frankfurt, 2011), pp. 127–39. Of recent scholarship on the history of emotions in the Middle Ages, I am indebted to: Damien Bouquet, Piroska Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages, trans. Robert Shaw (Cambridge, Eng., 2018), originally published as Sensible Moyen Âge: Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 2015); A. S. Lazikani, Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts (Cardiff, 2015); Barbara H. Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling: A History of Emotions, 600–1700 (Cambridge, Eng., 2016); Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Theories of Change in the History of Emotions,” in A History of Emotions 1200–1800, ed. Jonas Liliequist (London, 2012), pp. 7–20; Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (London, 2006).
William Marx, Jeanne F. Drennan, eds., The Middle English Prose Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel of Nicodemus (Heidelberg, 1987).
On the Anglo-Norman text and manuscripts see: Ruth J. Dean, Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London, 1999), item 957, pp. 479–80. The Marx and Drennan edition (see note 3) is the first to identify the Middle English version and investigate its manuscripts. On the term “the French of Medieval England,” see: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “General Introduction: What’s in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’,” in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 1–13.
The latest manuscript of the Middle English text is dated to the late fifteenth century (Marx, Drennan, The Middle English Prose Complaint, pp. 12–13).
Yves Congar, “Incidence ecclésiogique d’un theme de devotion mariale,” Mélanges de science religieuse 7 (1950), 277–92; see also: Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary 800–1200 (New York, 2002), pp. 204–11. The manuscript that contains this image also contains one of the Anglo-Norman texts of the Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel of Nicodemus but the image occurs in the context of a book of hours.
orthos = right, correct; doxa = opinion.
For another text that appears to verge on the unorthodox, see: William Marx, “The ‘Conflictus inter Deum et Diabolum’ and the Emergence of the Literature of Law in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Thirteenth Century England xiii: Proceedings Paris Conference 2009, eds. Janet Burton, Phillipp Schofield (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 57–66.
planctibus = lamentations.
See: Pseudo-Anselm, “Dialogus Beatae Marie et Anselmi de Passione Domini,” in Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1854), 159:271–90. On the debt of the vernacular prose Complaint of Our Lady to the Quis dabit, see: Marx, Drennan, The Middle English Prose Complaint, pp. 32–6 and 137–72.
Henri Barré, “Le ‘Planctus Mariae’ attribué à Saint Bernard,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 28 (1952), 243–66; Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 247–48; Bestul, Texts of the Passion, pp. 127–34.
Iohannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones Vite Christi, ed. Mary Stallings-Taney (Turnhout, 1997). Scholarship on the mvc in its Latin and vernacular forms is extensive. See, for examples, essays in: Ian Johnson, Allan F. Westphall, eds., The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ (Turnhout, 2013) and Stephen Kelly, Ryan Perry, eds., Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe (Turnhout, 2014).
On Oglerius de Tridino, see above notes 1 and 11. For the Tractatus see: Beati Oglerii de Tridino monasterii Locediensis opera quae supersunt, ed. Johann Baptist Adriani (Turin, 1873), pp. 1–98.
See my review: William Marx, “Review: Kati Ihnat, ‘Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews: devotion to the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Norman England’,” Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 7 (2018), 333–34.
Anglo-Norman Benedictine monastic culture includes the work of Anselm who, in his “Oratio ad Christum,” conceives of Mary as one who openly weeps before the crucified Christ: Anselm, “‘Orationes sive Meditationes’,” in Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946–61), vol. 3, pp. 6–9, especially p. 8. For a translation, see: The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, trans. Sister Benedicta Ward (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 96. Anselm’s three prayers to Mary, Orationes 5–7 (Orationes sive Meditationes, pp. 13–20) give a picture close to what Ihnat has compiled.
It is important to note that the divine status of Mary was also central to Cistercian culture since all Cistercian monasteries were to be dedicated to Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth. See: Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, ed. and trans. Chrysogonus Waddell (Cîteaux, 1999), pp. 332 and 463.
The line numbers refer to the editorial lineation in the edition in Marx, “The ‘Quis dabit’ of Oglerius de Tridino.” See note 1.
“Michi tamen, obsecro, lacrimas illas infunde quas ipsa habuisti in sua passione. Et ut his affluam largius de passione filii tui, Dei et Domini nostri, uerba ad inuicem conferamus” (ll. 39–42).
On the significance of tears, see: Felix Thürleman, “The Paradoxical Rhetoric of Tears: Looking at the Madrid ‘Descent from the Cross’,” in Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History, ed. Elina Gertsman (London, 2012), pp. 53–75, see especially p. 58; Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, pp. 417–28.
Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2010).
“De Institutione Inclusarum,” in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia, I Opera Ascetica, eds. Anselm Hoste, Charles H. Talbot (Turnholt, 1971), pp. 635–82 (see the first meditation, ll. 888–1245, pp. 662–73); “A Rule for the Life of a Recluse,” trans. Sister Penelope, in Aelred of Rievaulx: Treatises & Pastoral Prayer (Kalamazoo, 1971; reprinted, 1995), pp. 41–102 (pp. 80–92). Damien Bouquet, “Affectivity in the Spiritual Writings of Aelred of Rievaulx,” in A Companion to Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–1167), ed. Marsha L. Dutton (Leiden, 2017), pp. 167–96; Bouquet, Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities, pp. 95–6; Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, pp. 417–28; Wolfgang Richte, The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses, and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England, trans. Charity Scott-Stokes (London, 2014), pp. 27–32.
The Virgin’s statement that because she has been assumed into Heaven she cannot weep, that is, express the emotions of grief physically, could suggest that all emotions are excluded from Heaven. In other words, emotions in general are to be understood as exclusively human. This idea needs further exploration, but it is useful to take the example of the Middle English Pearl in which a father, in a vision, has a dialogue with his daughter who, having died, now has a place among the daughters of Christ. While the father is driven by emotions, the daughter remarkably expresses and demonstrates no emotions of any kind. See Marx, “The Edge of Orthodoxy,” p. 137.
“Vox mea fere perierat omnis, sed dabam gemitus suspiriaque doloris. Volebam loqui, sed dolor uerba rumpebat quia uerbum iam mente conceptum, dum ad formationem pertendere oris, ad se imperfectum reuocabat dolor non minimus cordis. Vox triste sonabat oris uulnus denuncians mentis. Verba dabat amor que raucum sonabant, nam lingua, uocis magistra, perdiderat loquendi” (ll. 84–9). On a different passage, see: Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, pp. 426–27.
“Vnius ob meritum, ceteri periere minores; saluantur cuncti nunc unius ob meritum. […] Noli flere, mulier, noli flere, dulcissima mater. Non te desero, tecum ero omni tempore seculi. Sed secundum carnem subiaceo imperio mortis; secundum diuinitatem sum, fui, et ero immortalis et impassibilis” (ll. 132–38).
“… nichil aliud restat nisi ut me interficiam quia plus uiuere non possum. Succur[i]te mihi & tuum sanctum spiritum in me iterim infunde” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms 750, fol. 123r).
On representing despair, see: Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Transmitting Despair by Manuscript and Print,” in Crying in the Middle Ages, ed. Elina Gertsman, pp. 249–66; see especially pp. 249–57.
“Dicat, si potest, quicumque dicere cupit, quam Christi mater tenebat mensuram doloris. Virginis dolorem posse narrari non credo; tamen, rectus erat amoris continens modum. Non desperabat, sed pie iusteque dolebat quem genuit uirgo; in iusti morte dolebat, sperans tamen ipsum tercio resurgere die.” (ll. 227–31).
The evidence comes from the nineteenth-century printing of the Quis dabit, based on late medieval witnesses – four early printed texts – edited by: Wilhelm Mushacke, Altprovenzialische Marienklage des xiii. Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1890), pp. 41–50.
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in iv libris distinctae, 2 vols, ed. Ignatius C. Brady (Grottaferrata, 1971 (3rd edition, 1981), 1:365–66 (book 2, distinction 8, chapter 1).
“Quedam cum illa plorabant femine sancte quarum paruus erat numerus paucusque uirorum qui lugerent Christum simul cum uirgine matre. Erant et angeli simul cum illa dolentes, dolente tamen si poterat esse dolentes. Dolebant quidem pio et iusto dolore. Compatiebantur in morte Christo dolendo, quo redimebatur, gaudentes, genus humanum. Flebant, ut arbitror, amarissime mente turbati quia matrem Christi tanto uidebant dolore teneri. O, quis angelorum uel archangelorum contra naturam illic non flesset vbi contra naturam immortalis Deus mortuus homo iacebat? … Credo, propter quod et loquor, quia dolebant si dolere ualebant. Sed sicut possible fuit Deum per assumptum hominem mori, ita possibile fuit angelos beatos in morte dolere Domini sui” (ll. 232–50).
“Dum Joseph et Nichodemus Dominum ponerent in sepulchrum, uolebat mesta mater simul sepeliri cum illo. Hec erat innixa super dilectum suum, amplectens illum, et cum omni amoris dulcedine deosculans ipsum, dicebat, ‘Miseremini mei, miseremini mei, saltim uos amici mei’” (Job 19.21). “Illud adhuc paululum relinquite michi ut faciem illius subtracto uelamine ualeam contemplari. Nolite eum tam cito tradere sepulture; date illum misere matri sue ut habeam illum mecum uel defunctum. Aut si illum deponitis in sepulchro, me miseram, sepelite cum illo; male post eum supererit” (ll. 259–67).
Bestul, Texts of the Passion, pp. 111–44 (chapter 4, “Gender and the Representation of Women in Medieval Passion Narratives”).
The Allegory of Love was first published by Oxford University Press in 1936 and has been constantly in print. The main chapters of interest here are the first three (pp. 1–156) of which the third chapter is Lewis’s reading of the Romance of the Rose. Le Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris et Jean à Meun, ed. Ernest Langlois, 5 vols. (New York, 1965; first published 1914–24); The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton, 1971).
Damien Bouquet, Piroska Nagy (Medieval Sensibilities, pp. 128–29 (chapter 5)) refer to Gaston Paris and his formulation of the concept of “courtly love” but fail to appreciate how the dynamics of Love and Reason are played out in Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose.
See above, note 28.
“[first stanza] His loue hedde bounde me so faste/ Ϸo wepen I moste in alle wyse,/ Hit was euere in my gast/ Ϸe þridde day he scholde aryse./ Ϸe rhite beleeue on me he caste,/ And I conceyuede þe rihte asyse./ Ich wuste ful wel ate laste/ I schulde hym seo among alle hise./ [second stanza] And ȝit myȝt I not forbere,/ Bernard, forto wepe sore;/ Myn hondes I wrong; myn her I tere,/ Whon he lay ded me before./ I seiȝ wel, I durste swere,/ Ȝif eny serwe in angeles were/ Ϸei miȝte wepe mony a tere/ For þe del þat I seih þere.” “Ϸe Lamentacioun þat was bytwene vre lady and seynt Bernard,” in The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, Part i, ed. Carl Horstmann (Early English Text Society, Original Series 98) (London, 1892; reprinted 1975), pp. 297–328 (ll. 641–56). On this text see: William Marx, “The Middle English Verse ‘Lamentation of Mary to Saint Bernard’ and the ‘Quis dabit’,” in Studies in The Vernon Manuscript, ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), pp. 137–57.
“Laments of the Maries: From the Beginning to the Mystery Plays,” in Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift Klaus von See, ed. Gerd Wolfgang Weber (Odense, 1988), pp. 89–116.
Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, p. 2: “I postulate the existence of ‘emotional communities’: groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression, and value – or devalue – the same related emotions.” In their discussion of affective devotion in Aelred of Rievalux’s De Institutione Inclusarum, Bouquet, Nagy (Medieval Sensibilities, p. 96) remark: “… the rising spiritual value of emotion and, what is more, the measuring of its worth by the quality of what was felt allowed for a form of deterritorialisation. The unique communal dynamic of monasticism was far from exhausted. But by becoming more intimate, it became more universal, preparing the ground for these models to spread beyond the cloistral walls.”