Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Idea of English Miracles of the Virgin
- 2 The Theophilus Legend in England: Mary the Advocate, Mary the Jew
- 3 The Theophilus Legend in England, Again: From the Devil’s Charter to a Marian Paradigm
- 4 The Virgin and the Law in Middle English Contexts
- 5 The Fate of English Miracles of the Virgin
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 ‘The Founding of the Feast of the Conception’ in the South English Legendary
- Appendix 2 ‘Blood on the Penitent Woman’s Hand’ (Bodleian Library MS e Museo 180)
- Appendix 3 The Charter Group Miracles and Other Short Texts from British Library MS Additional 37049
- Appendix 4 An Index of Miracles of the Virgin Collated with Existing Lists
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Idea of English Miracles of the Virgin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Idea of English Miracles of the Virgin
- 2 The Theophilus Legend in England: Mary the Advocate, Mary the Jew
- 3 The Theophilus Legend in England, Again: From the Devil’s Charter to a Marian Paradigm
- 4 The Virgin and the Law in Middle English Contexts
- 5 The Fate of English Miracles of the Virgin
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 ‘The Founding of the Feast of the Conception’ in the South English Legendary
- Appendix 2 ‘Blood on the Penitent Woman’s Hand’ (Bodleian Library MS e Museo 180)
- Appendix 3 The Charter Group Miracles and Other Short Texts from British Library MS Additional 37049
- Appendix 4 An Index of Miracles of the Virgin Collated with Existing Lists
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Quid me tantopere miraris? Ego sum maxima feminarum. Vis scire quanta?
Why are you gazing at me so intently? I am the greatest of women. Do you wish to know how great?
The Virgin Mary in The Life of Christina of MarkyateThe collective label ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ implies an easily gathered body of work, but it is unclear whether it was ever such a thing for readers of English. Paul Strohm has claimed that, by the late Middle Ages, the English term ‘miracle’ probably suggested not miracle stories generally but writings on the Virgin specifically: ‘We learn to expect that a miraculum of the early Middle Ages will probably involve miraculous cures at the tomb of a saint and that a miracle of the fourteenth century will more likely involve the Virgin.’ But he readily admits that it is difficult to tell whether this had generic force, for it is rarely clear whether the term refers to the miraculous event or to the narrative. There was an acknowledged category: Marian legends inserted into sermons or found among religious miscellanies often begin with phrases like ‘i rede in þe myraculs of oure lady’, and, in a series of tales, a phrase like ‘also in þe same boke’ might be repeated. The authors who claimed this great source volume recognized some corpus of appropriate stories, and they expected their audiences to do so as well. These narratives do tend to fit a certain mold – a character performs some special devotion but later commits some horrendous sin, or falls in with horrendous sinners, and Mary intercedes, often in extremis – but a search for any book to which authors advert yields no sure results. While numerous Latin collections of Marian miracles and copious compendia of general Marian materials were circulating in England, no surviving collection or grouping seems definitely linked to another, and attempts to trace the sources of Middle English versions of individual tales are often futile. Any story of Mary's intercession – heard or read, old or new – could fit into the notional book.
- Type
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- Information
- Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval EnglandLaw and Jewishness in Marian Legends, pp. 13 - 41Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010