[page 16]

Judith Davis (1)

The Miracula Mariae and
May Festivals of the Middle Ages

The role of the Virgin Mary as a surrogate for the pre-Christian mother-goddess, forbidden by the Church but not forgotten by the people, has been amply documented. Proclaimed Theotokos or God-bearer in the fourth century, Mary was celebrated in apocrypha and legend; by the end of the thirteenth century she was enshrined in thousands of stories, told in exempla, prose and verse narratives, sermons and lyrics. She functions in many of these stories as a worker of miracles, powerful and often autonomous, who rescues and revivifies her children. In the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, (2) a series of 40 plays which constitute a significant segment of the 14th French century drama that has come down to us, we discover depictions of the role of Mary that carry on this ancient tradition.

These plays were produced for a middle-class audience of skilled craftsmen and their spouses. The craftsmen were members of a Parisian goldsmiths’ guild; one of its confratemities (a society within the guild concerned with religious and charitable enterprises) commissioned and sponsored performances of the miracle plays during their annual meetings, almost every year from 1339 and through 1382. (3)

Written by a number of anonymous authors, the Miracles vary in length from 800 to more than 3,300 lines, arranged in octosyllabic couplets. Each play features a scene in which rondeaux are sung, most often by the angels who accompany the Virgin Mary while she descends to earth from her heavenly home. Fourteen of the 40 plays are followed by a poem written in praise of the Virgin; these poems had been proclaimed winners in a poetry competition that took place each year either before or after the performance. (4) Over the 40-year period when the plays were performed, the hired playwrights developed sophistication in handling plot, characterization, stage direction, special effects, and other dramatic techniques.

All of the plays seem to have been staged in a meeting hail on a platform approximately 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep. On the platform stood the various “mansions” of cathedral drama, with the mansion of heaven raised about six feet off the floor on scaffolding which was hidden [page 17] by draperies or--for spring and summer performances--by trees and flowers. (5)

The dramatic Miracles are part of the astonishingly abundant lore attributing wondrous deeds to the Virgin. All of them fulfill the requirements which Augustine laid down for the miraculous: “that which appears wonderful because it is either hard or impossible, beyond hope or ability.” (6) They represent theatrically the intervention of the holy--God, Jesus, Mary and the saints--in human affairs. As instances of those rare moments when the divine and the human share the same stage, their implications are both mythic and archetypal. As in all cases when the divine touches the human, the effects of Mary’s miracles are ambivalent and mysterious, warning and affirming, hiding and revealing, death-dealing and life-giving.

In the Miracles, Mary, as Queen of Heaven (that is, the partner of God as King) performs miracles for her children--all of them desperately in need of her intervention. In the plays, she acts as the advocate of both sinners and saints. She comes herself to deliver the illegitimate child of the abbess; calls back a sinful nun to her life of former virtue; saves from burning a woman who had her son-in-law killed; even pardons the mother of a pope who has boasted that he and her other two Sons in the cardinalate have made her reputation greater than Mary’s. She also avenges the death of a faithful Servant; consoles John Chrystostom, unjustly accused of lust and infidelity against his king; bestows one of her relics on a holy bishop; elevates a merchant to the ranks of her own nobility (if not royalty) by crowning him herself; protects the daughter of the king of Hungary from the wrath of her lecherous father; resuscitates a child whose mother has been falsely accused of killing him; and prevents the devil from claiming a child who has been “sold” to him by a frantic mother.

As Moshe Lazar has observed, at times Mary “saves them in spite of themselves...she puts an end to the adversary’s actions,” ensuring the “reward of the good character and the punishment of the bad, the total defeat of the Enemy.” (7) In these plays there is no question of the reality of sin: it is omnipresent, either in the protagonists or the antagonists, and it is the eternal opponent (embodied in Satan and his agents) against which Mary, her heavenly Father/Son, the angels and the saints wage war. Although sin may be omnipresent, goodness is omnipotent. Mary and her cohorts always win; although her protéges suffer, they do not incur eternal damnation. In dramatic terms, Mary “serves various functions...she takes initiatives, pleads, sermonizes…By her presence and her actions Notre Dame constructs the didactic infrastructure of the play[s].” (8)

As illustrations of her power, and examples of the ambivalent--if not contradictory--effects wrought by her intervention, let us consider two plays from the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages: one gracious and appealing (L’Enfant ressuscité or The Child Restored to Life), [page 18] and the other odd and less attractive (Jehan le Paulu or John Paul the Hermit). (9)

In Miracle 1, L’Enfant ressuscité, a childless couple who have prayed to the Virgin are blessed with a beautiful infant son. While the father is absent on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Mary, the weary mother takes a bath with her infant and falls asleep in the tub with the child who slips from her grasp and drowns. Imprisoned and condemned to die by burning for her negligence, the mother prays to Our Lady, and when her husband arrives home--on the eve of her execution--he adds his prayers to hers. They are heard; at the hour of her death, she asks to see her dead child once more, and after a prayer to Mary she kisses her son good-bye. At her kiss, he beings to cry and she calls upon the assembly to “consider the favor that God and the Virgin Mary have shown here [today]. My child lives: listen to him howl!”(10)

L’Enfant ressuscité derives its basic theme from the story of one of the miracles which the Virgin Mary was reported to have performed at Laon in the twelfth or thirteenth century; later the miracle was associated with the church of Notre Dame de Liesse. (11) In this play, prayers to the Virgin appear early; in lines 62-69 we hear the Hail Mary and a request to “keep me from harm/ and give me the grace to live” (12) from the chambermaid Agnesot. Soon thereafter (72-86) the barren woman’s husband prays to the “Treasure of Consolation/ Sovereign lady of the heavens.” (13) Almost simultaneously (100-135) we see the woman herself praying to the “Most sweet and honored Virgin/ Who bore the fruit of Life [itself]”(14) for the same favor. God and Our Lady enter at the end of her prayer; this is the only miracle of the 40 in which they appear so early.

God’s speech gives the audience a premonition of the mixed blessing of a favorable answer to prayer: “The woman has conceived a child/ ...And whether [it will bring] her happiness or harm/ I shall not tell you./ But it will be for the salvation/ Of them both” (151, 153-157). (15) After she has been brought to trial for the death of her child, the woman realizes the doleful possibilities of God’s favor (883-887): “Indeed, it appears that I did not know/ What I asked for/ Since that one [thing] that I received/ Brought me shame and sorrow/ And death [here] on earth.” (16) Her husband also acknowledges the pain of receiving what one requests as he prays to Mary after hearing of his wife’s imprisonment (1329-1330): “But if this is how you [page 19] understand me,/ This child has cost me too dear.” (17)

In this play, Mary resolves the ambivalence of God’s gift. She assures the grieving father (1425-1432) that this incident is only a trial; that God will give him such joy that it will doubly compensate his sorrow. At the end of the play, when the child revives, it is obvious to the presiding Count and all his court that Mary has worked the miracle; he responds to the infant’s cry (1581) with an apostrophe to the Virgin (1587-1589): “Ah! Sweet and merciful Virgin,/We must serve and praise you./ We must adore you with [all] our hearts.” (18) From her seat in heaven, Mary gives credit to God (1801-1807); but the audience knows (and probably God knows) that it was she who gave back life and hope to three of her children. Her power and her role are paramount.

The Miracle de Saint Jehan le Paulu, l’hermite has been called “strange…characterized by flights of high mysticism and scenes of comic triviality.” (19) Tempted by the devil, John the hermit rapes and then kills a young woman (the daughter of his king) who, lost and far from home, has sought shelter in his hermitage. His repentance and penance win him the favor of God and the Virgin, who answer favorably his prayers for her resuscitation. In the company of the king and his hunting companions, John calls to the king’s daughter in the well into which he has thrown her body; she responds and is brought out to her father’s great joy. Two rondeaux address both Mary and God, who seem to share power equally in this play.

Claude Gaignebet and Jean-Dominique Lajoux, playing on the etymological or homonymic connections between poilu or “covered with hair” and Paulu the proper name, see in the history of this unhappy saint a mythic combination of the elusive medieval “wild man” and the hairy anchorite of penitential legend. (20) The sources of this story lie deep in the folklore surrounding those solitary souls who retired from the world to avoid temptation but found--like Saint Anthony--that temptation followed them.

In contrast to the early appearance of God and Mary in the Enfant resusscité,the first other-worldly being to appear in this play is the devil, who arrives soon on the scene (line 39) to complain that Jehan is too holy. Disguised as a helpful servant, Huet by name, l’ennemi is accepted by the hermit and even becomes a kind of confidant. When the king’s daughter is lost near their hermitage, neither Jehan nor she can resist the power of the devil. In this play, we have no indication that Mary hears the girl’s prayers for comfort and solace (389-410); ironically, at the end of them, the first person she meets is the diabolical Huet. Jehan, after being tempted by Huet, prays to Mary: “Ah! Queen of heaven, in these woods/ I thought to attain salvation/ But [instead] I have incurred my damnation/ Everlasting in soul and body/ Unless you come to my [page 20] aid,/ Virgin, in whose grace I hope” (669-674). (21) He realized that God may damn him; only through Mary can he find salvation. He resolves to live like an animal in the hollow of a tree.

After seven years, God hears Jehan’s prayers and sends Mary to say that he will be pardoned. The tree in which he has enclosed himself--as “dead to the world” of human beings--becomes a tree of life as Our Lady, again described as she “Who bore the sweet fruit of Life” (861), approaches it with the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Jehan is suspicious of the vision, but Mary reassures him, promising him “such great benefits/ As will move you to marvel” (900-901). (22) He emerges from the womb-like hollow of the tree at the call of an infant, also named Jehan. This child may be seen as a figure of John the Baptist, whose call to repentance is attested in Luke 3:10-18 and who may be seen as prefiguring the later Christian wild man living in the forest as a hermit. (23) Answering the child’s call, Jehan is ready to confess his sin and join the human race once more. At his confession, the king forgives him; Jehan then asks Mary in her mercy to let them see the young woman he has killed (1368-1369). God tells him to call to her in the well (a symbol of eternal life in John 4:5-29 and a legendary source of healing in the middle ages); he does and she replies. The king’s first response is: “Ah! Sweet lady.../ Glorious virgin, / My heart leaps for joy!” (1491-1493). (24) The young woman reveals that she has been with Mary all this time, and her father promises Jehan a bishopric, thanking “the glorious queen/ In whom I have found such favor/ To have recovered by [her good graces]/ The child whom I had lost” (1595-1598). (25)

Mary’s role in this play is to balance with mercy and favor what has been lost through sin and its punishment. She has transformed the tree-hollow into a place where life is regained; Jehan comes forth reborn.

Mary’s ability to renew life, both natural and supernatural, is attested in the many scenes of preservation, restoration, and resuscitation in the Miracles. In Miracle 1, the child is destined for the devil is miraculously saved for baptism when Mary pleads her case like a true advocate in the tribunal of her son. In Miracles 4, 12, 15,26, and 32, a woman is preserved from undeserved death on account of Mary’s intervention. In Miracle 5, about the birth of Christ, a woman named Salome is punished by the loss of her hands for her disbelief in his divinity; when she repents, Mary sees to it that her hands are restored. Miracle 6 depicts the loss of St. John Chrysostom’s right hand due to the machinations of the devil and the pride of a king; the Virgin restores it to him. In Miracle 13, Libanius, the seneschal of the emperor Julian, is cruelly tested by his heavenly mother, who demands the sacrifice of an eye as the condition for her appearance to him. He gladly agrees to lose both eyes out of love for her. His devotion is such that she restores his sight--in heaven, where she takes him with her.

[page 21] Even more impressive than Mary’s capacity to preserve or restore lost limbs is her power to bring the dead to life--a power usually attributed to God alone but extended in the middle ages to his mother. As Hélène Luedtke has observed: “In the eyes of the faithful at that time, God, in choosing Mary as his mother, not only elevated her above all other women but somehow accorded her a kind of sovereignty over Himself. No mother, no Son, they reasoned.” (26) Three miracles--15, 23, and 30--feature one or more resuscitations.

In her miracles, Mary delivers the bodies of her servitors from death; she delivers their souls from eternal damnation or--if they are holy--eases their way into Paradise. She performs this celestial midwifery (the French “sage-femme” would translate Mary’s role more expressively and suggest her wisdom as well) with consummate skill. In one instance--Miracle 2--Mary acts as a terrestrial midwife as well, personally assisting the childbirth of a fallen abbess. The abbess is absolved of her sin as well as delivered of a son; the power of motherhood is absolute in this play which celebrates both spiritual rebirth and physical new birth. The theme of delivery or deliverance runs through fourteen other miracles--numbers 7-9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 27, 31, 33, 36, and 37--in addition. Each of these deliveries, as in the case of St. Jehan the hermit, follows a painful labor in which Mary’s servant tries to avoid or expiate sin.

Some records dating from the fifteenth century, as well as internal indications in the plays themselves, suggest a connection between the role of Mary as life-giving mother and her place in May festivals of the late middle ages. I would suggest that the large body of popular legend and devotion to Mary which served to inspire the quite varied dramatic productions of the Miracles de Nostre Dame, was related to and served to perpetuate one of her less well-known roles: that of a Christian “Queen of May.”

Professor Runnalls has noted the existence of a “confrairie du May,’ formed...in 1448...the ‘May’ of the title on the first day of May and planted a tree in the Parvis of the Eglise Nostre Dame.” (27) A later source notes that on May 1, 1499, in addition to the “entire tree, fully leafed out,” the goldsmiths offered “a [moving] architectural model of a tabernacle suspended from the top of the church vault” to which they attached on the first of May “sonnets, rondeaux,and other kinds of verse.” Still later (1553) on May 1, they presented scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, and “these paintings, called ‘little mays,’ became the property of the masters who had commissioned and paid for them.” In the seventeenth century, the goldsmiths initiated a series of larger paintings for “great mays nearly four meters high; the custom was discontinued only in the eighteenth century.” (28)

[page 22] These scanty references to obviously persistent practices support the continuation of folk traditions already ancient when the plays were written: customs that had begun centuries before the first performance of the Miracles and continued for more than 150 years after the last. The association of May, trees and a mother-figure is archetypal. (29)  Millennia of pre-Christian practices (including mime and drama) celebrated spring and the greening of the earth. Grace Frank notes that “In ancient Ostia the carpenters’ guild carried a tree in the Magna Mater procession.” (30) Roman citizens celebrated the Floralia in honor of Flora, the “goddess of flowers and springtime...which sometimes involved licentious dramatic productions and games.” Temple pillars were entwined with blossoms, and “[c]hildren fashioned small statues of Flore, which they decorated with blossoms. With the advent of Christianity, these ‘May-dolls’ became crude images of the Virgin Mary.” (31) Mary’s presence at Christ’s death on the cross (depicted in many medieval works of art as a tree with green branches) helped to convert the archetypal image of the dying deity. Many celebrations of Mary’s role as his mother, moreover, used the old symbols; May-fests featured flowers and either entire trees or branches of greenery. The first day of May occasioned a “masque de feuilles” in France, preserving the Celtic (Beltaine) custom of cele;brating the beginning of summer; this tradition continued well into the twentieth century. Combats and debates between winter and spring date back to the ninth century; this seasonal strife was reflected in poetry competitions (such as those whose successful efforts appear in the Miracles), in which the winner received a crown of green as well as financial rewards. (32) The symbols connected with the summer life-force (the grace of God) over winter death-sleep (the power of evil) appear again and again in these plays--despite their bourgeois origins and concerns--with a spirit of renewal and revitalization which emphasizes their celebratory purpose and connects them with the ambiance of May.

The Virgin Mary of the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages embodies Villon’s images of Mary as lady of the heavens, regent of the earth, empress of the marshes of hell--and even high Goddess. (33) It is very clear in all of her appearances that she is the mother, daughter and consort of the triune God. As such, her role in the Miracles is very different from the ones assigned to her in the late medieval Planctus Mariae, which Sandro Sticca describes as those of compassionate coredemptrix (34) and pathetic or lamenting mother. In the Miracles, she whose son [page 23] has died and risen lives in glory with him; therefore her role, despite the brevity of her appearances on the lower stage, is a major one: she sets in motion the denouement, and it is by her actions the conflict of the play is resolved. According to Yvette Fallandy, “The Miracles are intended to exemplify the extent of the Blessed Virgin mercy and power, and in a majority of the plays she is the most important character.” (35)

Eminent scholars of the theatre, past and present (e. g. Petit de Juleville, Emile Roy, Johann Huizinga, Glynne Wickham, Grace Frank, and Gustave Cohen) have commented on the association of sacred ritual with dramatic presentations and poetic or artistic competitions. This paper has demonstrated the authenticity of that perception. In the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, we can experience the association because of the plays’ deep mythic and archetypal themes: the cosmic struggles between good and evil, light and darkness, life and death; the transformation of winter, sin and barrenness through summer, grace and fertile vitality, and over all, the presence of the beneficent and glorious Great Mother, rejoicing in her children.

Works Cited

Fallandy, Yvette Marie. “A Reexamination of the Role of the Blessed Virgin in the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages.” Philological Quarterly 43.1 (1964): 20-26.

Frank, Grace. The Medieval French Drama. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1960.

Gaignebet, Claude, and Jean-Dominique Lajoux. Art profane et religion populaire au moyen age. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985.

Jung, C. J. Symbols of Transformation, trans., R. F. C. Hull. 2nd ed. 1967. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.

Lazar, Moshe. “Satan and Notre Dame: Character in Popular Scenario.” A Medieval French Miscellany. Ed. Norris J. Lacy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Publications, 1972. 1-14.

Luedtke, Hélène. Les Croyances religicuses au moyen age d’après les pièces du theatre des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Lausaime, 1911; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977.

“May Day.” The American Book of Days. 3rd ed. New York: Wilson, 1978.

Paris, Gaston, and Ulysse Robert, eds. Les Miracles de Nostre Dame Par Personnages. 8 vols. Paris 1876-93; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1966. Vol. 5.

[page 24] Penn, Dorothy. The Staging of the “Miracles des Nostre Dame Par Personnages” of MS. Cangé. New York: Publications of the Institute of French Studies, Columbia University. n.d. [1933].

Runnalls, Graham A. “Medieval Trade Guilds and the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. Part One: Guilds, Confréries and the Theatre in Medieval France. Part Two: The Parisian Goldsmiths and the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages.” Medium Aevum 39.3 (1970): 257-287.

______,ed. Le Miracle de 1 ‘enfant ressuscité. Geneva: Droz, 1972.

Stadler-Honegger, Marguerite. Etude sur les Miracles de Notre-Dame par personnages. Paris 1926. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975.

Sticca, Sandro. The ‘Planctus Mariae’ in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. Trans. Joseph R. Berrigan. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Villon, Francois. Oeuvres. Ed. Auguste Longnon. 4th ed. Paris: Champion, 1967.

Ward, Benedicta. Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

Endnotes

1. Judith Davis is Professor Emerita of French and Humanities at Goshen College.
2. Gaston Paris and Ulysse Robert edited and published these plays, taken from the unique Cangé manuscript which consists of two volumes in the Bibliothêque Nationale de Paris, côtes 8 19-820, fonds francais. The eight-volume series appeared between 1876 and 1893.
3. Runnalls, ed., Le Miracles de / ‘enfant ressuscité (Geneva; Droz, 1972) xvi; xvii-xviii.
4. Ibid.viii-x.
5. Penn, The Staging of the “Miracles de Nostre Dame Par Personnages” of MS Cangé. New York: Publications of the Institute of French Studies, Columbia University, 1933. 13-16.
6. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. 4.
7. Lazar, “Satan and Notre Dame: Character in a Popular Scenario.” A Medieval French Miscellany. Ed. N. J. Lacy. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1972. 2-3.
8. Ibid. 3.
9. L’Enfant ressuscité appears as No. 14 in Vol. 2 of the Paris-Robert edition (1877: 281-346). It has been edited most recently by Graham Runrialls (1972). Jehan le Paulu is No. 30 in Vol. 5 of the Paris-Robert edition (1880: 89-151).I have quoted from the Runnalls edition of the Enfant and from the Paris edition of Jehan. All translations from the French are my own.
10. “Mon seigneur, regardez la grace/ Que Dieu et Ia vierge Marie/ Ont cy fait; I’enfant cy a vie./ Oez le braire!”
11. Runnells, xliv-lviii.
12. “deffendez moy d’annuy/ Et me donnez grace de vivre.”
13. “Tresor de consolacion,/ Souveraine dame des cieulx.”
14. “Tresdoulce vierge honnoree,/ Qui le fruit de vie portastes.”
15. “La femme a enfant conceu/.. .Mais se bien ou mal li fera/ Ne vous diray je nullement./ Mais ce sera au sauvement/ De touz les deux.”
16. “Mais il pert bien que ne savoie/ Que c’estoit que je demandoi,/ Car par un qu’ay eu tout seul/ Me fauldra a honte et a deul/ Mourir sur terre.”
17. “Mais se par toy m’a entendu,/ Cest enfant m’est trop chier vendu.”
18. “Ha! Doulce vierge debonnaire,/ Vous doit on servir et loer./ Vous doit on decuer aorer.”
19. Stadler-Honegger, Etude sur les Miracles de Notre-Dame par personnages, Paris 1926. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975. 97.
20. Gaignebet and Lajoux, Art profane et religion populaire au moyen age. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985. 132.
21. “E! dame des cieulx, en ce bois/ Cuiday faire mon sauvement,/ Mais g’y ai fait mon dampnement/ En ame et en corps pardurable,/ Se vous ne m’estes secourable,/ Vierge, par qui grace j’espoir.”
22. “si grant bien/ Que tu t’en esmerveilleras.”
23. Gaignebet and Lajoux, 132.
24. “E! doulce dame.../ Glorieuse vierge pucelle,/ Le cuer de joi me sautelle:”
25. “la royne glorieuse/ En qui j’ay tant grace trouve/ Que j’ay par elle recouvré/ mon enfant que perdu avoie.”
26. Luedtke, Les Croyances religieuses au moyen age d’après les pièces du théátre des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles Lausanne, 1911; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977. 28-29.
27. Runnalls, “Medieval Trade Guilds and the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages.” Medium Aevum 39.3 (1970) 282.
28. “...des orfèvres qui s’engagaient à offrir chaque premier mai, à Notre-Dame, un arbre entier et feuillu.... En 1499, les orfèvres offrirent ‘une machine d’architecture en forme de tabernacle suspendue au hault de la voulte de l’église....’ Ils y attachaient le premier mai ‘des sonnets, rondeaulx, et autres sortes de vers.’.... En 1553, on y présenta des scenes de la vie de la Vierge. Ces tableaux, dits ‘petits mays, ‘devenaient la propriété des maItres qui les avaient commandés et payés.” Extracts, unpages, typed and placed as explanatory notes in the museum of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, under a book entitled Curiosités de /‘église de Notre-Dame de Paris avec l’explication des tableaux qui ont été donnés par le corps des orfévres [sic]. Paris: Gueffier, 1753.
29. Jung, C. G. Symbols of Transformation. Trans. R.F.C. Hull, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. 242-248.
30. Frank, The Medieval French Drama. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1960. 168.
31. “May Day.” The American Book of Days, 3rd ed. New York: Wilson, 1978.
32. Gaignebet and Lajoux, 70; 186-187; 266.
33. Villon’s “Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame” begins, “Dame du ciel, regente terrienne,/ Emperiere des infemaux palus” and invokes her as “haulte Deesse” (40-41). If anything, images of Mary as an all-powerful protector become stronger over time; Villon’s ballade dates from the mid-fifteenth century.
34. Sticca, Sandro, The ‘Planctus Mariae’ in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. Trans. Joseph R. Berrigan. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press. 26-30, 85ff.
35. “Fallandy, “A Reexamination of the Role of the Blessed Virgin in the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages.” Philological Quarterly 43.1 (164): 21.