THIS book constitutes an attempt to reintroduce to English readers a cycle of old tales in which their ancestors took great delight—a by-way of mediaeval literature which, from one cause or another, is now practically unknown except to professed students of folklore and hagiography. This cycle, the Miracles of Our Lady, or, to give it its terse and technical name, the Mary-legends, is formed by a large group of religio-romantic stories, linked together by no closer tie than the fact that the virgin Mary supplies the supernatural element in each. Varying between the extremes of mysticism and melodrama, and belonging to many periods and places, from England to Egypt, from the fourth century to the fifteenth, they have yet contrived to assemble themselves together, and even to acquire a certain family likeness. Their number is astonishingly great : in the Analecta Bollandiana over four hundred are indexed. In such a mass of material there is much, of course, which is monotonous, unedifying, or otherwise unsuited to the general reader; but nearly all these legends, whether they be
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historical, allegorical or — as is often the case - pious adaptations of secular folk-tales, are full of interest for the student of mediaeval manners and Christian mythology.
Though now almost entirely forgotten, for over four centuries, The Miracles of Our Lady occupied a very prominent place in popular literature. They are the fairy tales of mediaeval Catholicism; the result of the reaction of religion on that spirit which produced the romances of chivalry. These tales bring us to the Courts of Paradise, but the atmosphere is still that of the Courts of Love. By turns homely and heroic, visionary and realistic, they do in literature that which the Gothic sculptors do in art; make a link between heaven and earth, give actual and familiar significance to the most awful mysteries of faith, and set the Queen of Angels in the midst of her faithful friends.
As other fairy tales, behind their apparent if adorable absurdities, carry a secret message for those who can pierce the veil, so in these legends great mysteries are often concealed. It was in this form that those mysteries were able to come out from the cloister and spread themselves in the world; for it was amongst the people that the Mary-legends prospered, and to the people that they were primarily addressed. They adorned sermons, they provided subjects for poetry, painting and sculpture, they were a part of the texture of the common life.
In England, where devotion to Our Lady has always flourished, her miracles were well
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known and greatly loved They are sculptured in the arcading of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, and painted in the margins of Queen Mary's Psalter, and other masterpieces of the English illuminating schools. Unfortunately, however, few were written in the English language. The early collections, made for the use of preachers, or for the edification of those lords and ladies in whom the troubadours had roused a passion for romance, are always either in Latin, the language of religion, or in Norman-French, the language of the Court. These Latin and French MSS. still exist in great numbers in most of the great European libraries; sometimes alone, more often bound up with prayers, tracts, homilies, and miscellaneous religious tales. They begin to be common in the twelfth century, are most numerous in the thirteenth, and come to an end at the close of the fifteenth century, the doomsday of so many simple and delightful things.
The most complete collections of the Mary-legends were made in France. There, in the thirteenth century, the Dominican friar, Vincent of Beauvais, brought together in the seventh book of that dull but careful compilation, the “Speculum Historiale,” all the most popular and best known of Saint Mary's miracles. There also in the same period Gautier de Coincy, a monk of the Abbey of Saint Medard at Soissons, wrote in rhymed couplets of an adorable naivety his “Miracles de la Sainte Vierge.” Whilst Vincent is a mere compiler, and does nothing
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to improve the generally terse and arid style of the original from which he worked, Gautier is a poet, in love with his subject, which he adorns with innumerable fancies, quaint poetic details, rhapsodies and invocations full of fire. All lovers of old poetry should know his book. In him, I think, the Mary-legends found their finest expression. Neither his predecessor, the twelfth-century poet Adgar, with his barbaric Norman-French verse, nor his fifteenth-century follower, Jean Mielot, who wrote for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy “Les Miracles de Nostre Dame,” in pretty but insipid French prose, approach his level.
Here and there, however, amongst the more fragmentary Latin
collections, we find a writer whose vivid style and sharp sense
of detail places his work in the first rank. It is in such
fragmentary collections that many of the best stories, omitted by
the great compilers, are hid in MS. Sermons, histories of the
religious orders, and those books of anecdotes which every
mediaeval library possessed. Here one often finds significant
variants of the more widespread tales; additions and alterations
made to suit the tastes of the individual or community for whom
the MS. Was written. Few modern editors would care to take the
liberties which these mediaeval scribes allowed themselves.
Favours done to one monastic order are attributed to another;
sometimes the venue of the miracle is changed, that it may be
given a more local interest ; details
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and characters are added or eliminated at will. Thus it is that of all the chief Mary-legends endless variants exist; and also that in some cases one tale has become the mother of many others, which, all evidently springing from the same root, show strong family resemblances, and equally strong individual differences. There is, for instance, the so-called Mary-bridegroom group, in which the hero, betrothing himself to an image of the Virgin, is afterwards prevented by her from contracting an earthly marriage. This group is paralleled in folk-lore by the old tale of “The Ring Given to Venus.” Perhaps next in size and importance is the Rosary group, a family of beautiful legends centred in the idea that the Aves said by the faithful are turned to roses by Our Lady's grace. Other well-marked classes are the stories relating to the Virgin's Electuary, the Mantle of Mercy, and the Star of the Sea.
I have said that there are no Early English collections of Miracles of the Virgin. Except for one or two tales of this sort in the South English Legendary and Northumbrian Verse Homilies, England, until the time of the invention of printing, read her
Mary-legends in Latin or French. But in A. D. 1483 Caxton published an English translation of the "Legenda Aurea," and with it those Miracles of the Virgin which are inserted in the homilies on the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, and Nativity of Our Lady. These, however, are few in number; and, except for the
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very fine Candlemas story at the Purification, they are tersely and baldly told, comparing ill with his picturesque and vigorous legends of the saints. A little later, in a.d. 1514, his successor, Wynkyn de Worde, “enprynted in London in Flete strete at the sygne of the Sonne,” a tiny book of “Myracles of our Lady” — a first and last attempt to popularise a selection of the Mary-legends in the English tongue: but as his work is in black-letter, and no new edition has appeared since the sixteenth century it has not, at the present day, a large public.
So much, then, for the forms in which the Miracles of the Virgin have come down to us. In subject, they vary between the crudest sensationalism and the heights of mystical devotion; and often enough both extremes are present in the same tale, as, for instance, in “The Dove that Returned” and “The Virgin's Bridegroom.” Many are evidently local legends which afterwards obtained a wider celebrity, being concerned with miracles wrought by Our Lady at specific shrines and holy places. The great French pilgrimages of Laon, Soissons, Mont S. Michel, Chartres, and Roc Amadour, had each such a cycle of stories. From them come "The Minstrel of Roc Amadour” and “The Eyes of the Blind.” Another group relates favours shown by Our Lady to the saints. These also, in the first instance, probably arose near the shrines of the saints whom they commemorate, and, spreading with their fame, became absorbed into the general cycle of Mary-legends, losing all connection
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with their place of origin, sometimes even surviving in a vague and general form after the very names of their heroes were forgot. Thus we find compilers to whom the names of Saint Bon and the Blessed Walter of Birbech were quite unknown, relating their legends under the titles of “A certain Bishop to whom Our Lady gave a Vestment” and “A certain Knight that tarried to hear Mass.”
I have included three stories of saints in this collection — “Saint Thomas of Canterbury”, "Our Lady of the Tournament,” and “The Heavenly Vesture.” Saint Thomas, I hope, needs no introduction to English readers, though perhaps few have heard of the very practical and womanly service which Saint Mary rendered him in the choir of Pontigny church. Saint Bon, to whom she gave the Heavenly Vesture, was much venerated in the south of France in the Middle Ages. He was bishop of Clermont in Auvergne, AD 689-699, and the vestment with which the Virgin rewarded his piety was preserved in the treasury of the Cathedral of Clermont as late as the twelfth century, when it was seen and handled by Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Norwich. This legend, based on the very ancient and long-forgotten tradition that none may enter a church in the night hours lest they disturb the angels at their prayers, must certainly have had an early origin, and probably arose soon after Saint Bon's death at the end of the seventh century. The Blessed Walter of Birbech, for whom Our Lady of the
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Tournament rode in the lists, was a Cistercian monk,
beatified but not canonised, who died in the Abbey of Himmerode in the Eifel, circ. 1222. In the same century his life and miracles were written at some length by another German
Cistercian, Caesarius, of the daughter house of Heisterbach, in his "Dialogus Miraculorum."
Perhaps next in interest to the stories of the saints are the
religious folk-tales; delicious and fantastic stories, many of
them still retaining a strong Oriental flavour. These are in most
cases, like the legend of Saint Barlaam and Saint Josaphat (for
which see the "Legenda Aurea"), Eastern tales converted to the
uses of Christianity. Most of them are located in Egypt or
Constantinople, and are probably amongst the most ancient of the Mary-legends known in the West. A version of "The Christian's Surety" has been found by Mr. Baring Gould in a Greek sermon of the tenth century. It is an early example of the anti-Semitic tale, of which I have given another instance in the story here called "Gaude, Maria!" the original of the "Prioress' Tale” in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. "The Christian's Surety" is a
great favourite with the later French compilers; it appears in
Gautier de Coincy's collection, and also forms the subject of a
miracle play in "Les Miracles de Notre Dame par Personnages."
So, also, does the rather bizarre story of "The Child Vowed to
the Devil, " a tale which, like that of "The Dove that Returned," seems
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to have some affinities with the wild romances of the "Vitae Patrum".
After the folk-tales, sometimes inextricably confused with them, come the mystical and allegorical legends. It is amongst these that we find the most lovely and poetic of the miracles of Our Lady; though even such stories are not entirely free from that extraordinary blend of mockery and piety, high heaven and base earth the "love that built the cathedrals " and the "laughter
that filled them with grotesques" which seems inseparable from
Gothic art. Designed for the most part to light up some dogma or
observance of the Church, or glorify the religious life, these
are quieter, more visionary in tone, than either the folk-tales
or legends of the saints. I have already referred to the rosary
motif here represented by "The Chaplet of Roses," "The Lily," and the second part of "Sponsae Christi." In the beautiful
story of "Bread of Angels" we have an allegory of the Mass; in "The Knight of the Costrel," the sacrament of penance. To the
mystical class belong also, in some degree, "The Celestial Medicine," "The Divine Encounter," and the celebrated story of "The Nun who Desired the World." This, the original of Mr.
Davidson's "Ballad of a Nun," and M. Maeterlinck's "Soeur
Beatrice," is almost the only Mary-legend which has been treated by a writer of our own time: and for that reason I have not retold it here.
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Finally, in the legend of "The Church that is in Egypt" we have a story which stands in many respects alone. The other Miracles of the Virgin, as I have said, form a cycle, of which numerous MSS., in French and Latin, still survive. But of this tale there is no trace in any of the Western collections: only one version of it is known, an Ethiopian text, containing Miracles of the Virgin and magical prayers, now in the Lady Meux MSS. This MS. has been translated and printed by Dr. E. A. T. Wallis Budge, to whose great kindness I am indebted for permission to include "The Church that is in Egypt" in this book. In it we have a legend which puts us in immediate touch with the primitive Coptic Church. It will be noticed that it differs greatly in tone from the other Miracles, which have had time, in the course of a long descent through many MSS., to lose most of their primitive features and pick up mediaeval ones in their place. This tale has been, so to speak, isolated: as a result, it is fresh, strange, entirely un-European. It is evident, from its accurate local colour, that it was written in Egypt for the use and encouragement of the Coptic Church, and probably not later than the fifth century. Theophilus, or Philotheus, whose vision it relates, was Patriarch of Alexandria A. D. 385-412; and this story must have taken shape shortly after, if not actually during, his life. The account that it gives of the Flight into Egypt contains many details which are not found in the apocryphal
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gospels of the Infancy, the Pseudo-Matthew, and
Saint James, from which the Eastern Church obtained its history and the Byzantine artists their iconography of the life of the Virgin and the childhood of Christ. The Holy Family here go on foot; Salome, as in the Coptic History of Joseph the Carpenter, accompanies them. The incidents of the healing fountain, and the dwelling in the temple of Heliopolis, are peculiar to this legend, but the story of the two thieves appears, in a slightly different form, in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. There is little, however, in the Apocryphal Gospels to equal the circumstantial and realistic quality of the vision of Theophilus, which is full of the living and convincing touches that come only from the most intense simplicity or the highest art. It is too old to be mediaeval, for it comes from a period when the freshness of childhood still hung about the legends of the Church, and belongs rather to that eternal art of story-telling which is neither ancient nor modern, but exists wherever human life exists and is observed.
So much for the facts. This book, however, has not been written for the student of facts, who will naturally fly to some more learned treatise: it is offered rather to the amateur, of old
faiths and fancies, who may find here a dim picture of the City
of Mansoul as it was before the Reformation came, like some
spiritual County Council, to cleanse its streets of the
picturesque and unprofitable litter of the past. My object has
been to show something of the intimate charm
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of the mediaeval attitude towards the Virgin Mary, an attitude part-familiar, part-chivalrous, part-devout, which was far-reaching in its effect on the mental temper and artistic ideals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This was the attitude which produced such sculpture as the Gothic Madonnas of Flanders and France; such paintings as the Psalter of Saint Louis; such poems as "Veni Coronaberis". For those who wrote, read, and lived by these legends, the Virgin Mary was at once Queen, Mother, Mystery and familiar friend; not only the ineffable Mother of God, but also the very courteous chatelaine of Heavenly Syon, who would not disdain to open the window to her lovers when Saint Peter shut the door, as "The Window of Paradise" relates: the practical and resourceful Help of Christians, no less than the Mystic Rose. Less awful than the Deity, more powerful than the Saints, one might speak with "Madame Saint Mary" as woman to woman, as lover to mistress; might rely on her human sympathy in matters of the body, as well as on her mystical intercession in the affairs of the soul. Thus it comes about that a certain familiarity, a bold reliance on the patience and comprehension of the Woman, her interest in all things little and great, her desire for her servants' love, becomes mixed with the awe and reverence proper to those who invoke the Queen of Heaven. As a mother evokes in her children at once the simplest, most intimate
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confidence and also the most exalted emotion: as they come to her, with no sense of incongruity, in their most trivial necessities no less than in the most sacred moments of their lives, so "Goddes Moder and oures" received from those who were in every sense her children, simple and familiar friendship, mystical adoration, and unfailing trust. To drag back this sentiment and its literary expression from the shadow-land to which it has retreated is, therefore, the aim of this book. In writing it, I have made full use of the editorial privileges which my mediaeval predecessors always allowed themselves, and have paraphrased, rather than translated, the material from which I worked. Sometimes I have condensed, sometimes expanded; sometimes two or three different versions of a legend have been collated and the best details chosen from each. No plot except for really necessary editing has been tampered with, but the student of hagiography must not be offended if he find here and there a story, known to him in an intolerably bald, didactic, or improper form, which has been, like the kiss which Rodolphe received back from the lady, “revu, corrigé, et considérablement augmenté, "in its passage from the middle to the present age.
I must here offer my most sincere thanks to two kind friends,
without whose constant help and encouragement this version of the Miracles of Our Lady could scarcely have been made. Firstly, to Mr. J. A. Herbert, of the Department
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of MSS. in the British Museum, who first introduced me to the Mary-legends, and has throughout placed his great knowledge of the subject at my disposal, and given me all possible help. Secondly, to Mr. Arthur Machen, who read the MS., and to whose kind suggestions and criticisms it owes more than can here be expressed.
E. U.
ASOLO, May 1905.
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Bibliography
[THE following short list contains only the principal books and MSS. Which I have consulted, and does not pretend to completeness.]
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES. (All in the British Museum.)
Royal, 6 B X;
Arundel, 346, 406;
Harley, 2316;
Egerton, 612;
Additional, 15723, 27909, 32248, 33956.
PRINTED BOOKS.
Budge, E. A. T. Wallis. " Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, " &c. Lady Meux MSS. 1-5. 1898-1900.
Caesarius of Heisterbach. "Dialogus Miraculorum." Ed. Strange, Cologne, 1851.
Cowper, B. Harris. "The Apocryphal Gospels, and other Documents relating to the History of Christ. " London: 1867.
"Exordium Magnum Ordinis Cisterciensis." Migne, Patrologia Latina. Vol. 185.
Gautier de Coincy. "Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, traduits et mis en vers" Ed. L'Abbe Poquet. Paris : 1857
Hagen, F. H. Von der. " Gesammtabenteuer: alt deutsche Erzahlungen." Stuttgart: 1850.
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Jacobus a Voragine. " Legenda Aurea. " Ed. Graesse. Dresden: 1846.
Mielot, Jean. " Miracles de Nostre Dame." Ed. from the MS. in the Bodleian Library by G. F. Warner. Roxburghe Club. 1885.
"Miracles de Notre Dame par Personnages." Soc. Des Anciens Textes Francais. 1876-1881.
Neuhaus, Carl. "Adgar's Marienlegenden." Heilbronn: 1886.
"Die Lateinischen Vorlagen zu den alt-franzosischen Adgarschen Marienlegenden." Heilbronn: 1886.
Thomas de Cantimpre. "Bonum Universale de Apibus. " Douay: 1627.
Vincent of Beauvais. "Speculum Historiale. "Douay: 1624.
"Vitae Patrum." Migne, Patrologia Latina. Vol. 73.
Ward, H. L. D. "Catalogue of Romances in the Department of MSS. in the British Museum." Vol. 2. London: 1893.
Wynkyn de Worde. "Myracles of our Lady." London : 1514.
