Collected in a late fourteenth-century manuscript known as the Cangé manuscript, the forty Miracles de Notre-Dame par personnages, composed and performed between 1339 and 1382 by the Saint-Eloi confraternity of goldsmiths, are currently available in their original language on-line at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The beauty of the hard-copy subject of this review, the first volume of a projected three-volume work by Bezançon and Kunstmann, is its beautiful modern French translation of these dramas, making them easily accessible to readers not familiar with ancien français or moyen français. Such a translation will be valuable to scholars who wish to survey medieval theater in general, and study a specialized collection of plays dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular.
Volume I under review here contains the first sixteen plays, covering the years 1339-1355, along with a bibliography, and an index of character names and place names. Each miracle play is prefaced by a structural and thematic description along with original sources of the story, and some historical context.
These particular Marian plays deserve more attention by medievalists and students of drama, affording insights into medieval mentalities that are both revealing and amusing. Angels Gabriel and Michael shuttle regularly and exhaustively between heaven and earth at Mary's order, singing rondeaux in her honor. Devils regularly roam the earth seeking the perdition of God-fearing individuals. Latin is intermingled with the language of daily life, as some plays include Latin Bible verses translated and explicated. Such sermons are sometimes a part of the play itself, as in Miracle II, "Ici commence un miracle de Notre-Dame: comment elle fit accoucher une abbesse que son clerc avait mise enceinte," or sometimes sermons precede the play as a kind of preview of coming attractions. Take for instance Miracle VI, "Ici commence un miracle de Notre-Dame au sujet de Saint Jean Chrysostome et d'Anthure sa mère, comment un roi lui fit couper le poing et Notre-Dame lui refit une nouvelle main." Here, the introductory sermon's reference to falsely accused Suzanna from the Old Testament prefigures the play's protagonist as innocent male victim of a false accusation of rape.
In this volume of plays, we meet greedy popes and bishops, lascivious nuns, and miscreant judges. Barren couples lose their children to the devil or to overlaying. Wives are falsely accused of adultery. Typically the miracle entails an eventual rejection of one's sins and new-found faith in God's mercy through Mary. Occasionally we find spectacular miracles of a cut-off hand that regrows, as in the play about St. Chrysostom, or of vision restored to gouged-out eyeballs, as in the character of Libanius in the play about the Emperor Justinian.
Several miracles address childbirth and child rearing. In Miracle II, the Blessed Virgin delivers the pregnant abbess of a child, after taunting her as a "pauvre sotte." The midwife Salomé experiences the paralysis of both hands when she expresses doubt about the birth of Jesus to a virgin (Miracle V). In Miracle I, a married couple mutually take a vow of chastity. The husband, incited by the devil, rapes his wife who promises to give any resulting child to the devil. Just as she saved Theophilus from his bargain with the devil, Mary here delivers the woman and her child from a foolish oath.
In Miracle VIII, "Le pape qui monnaya le baume," dated 1346, we read the drama of a pope who releases a bourgeois from his obligation to Saint Peter to daily supply balm for the lights in the church dedicated to the saint. This service to Saint Peter was inherited by the bourgeois, descendant of a warrior who incurred the obligation in exchange for divine protection during battle. After greasing the palms of a greedy sergeant-at-arms, the bourgeois is granted an audience with the pope who is only too willing to accept a monetary payment to relieve the bourgeois of his onerous inherited duty. A nightmarish visit by Saint Peter himself convinces the pope of the need to repent of his greed, and beg for God's forgiveness with Mary as mediator. Was this play interpreted as a critique of indulgences, papal dispensations, simony?
What collection of plays would be complete without at least one story about a lowly naïve young maiden who catches the eye of a king? This volume also includes that theme, but the maiden in question is no innocent wallflower. Miracle IV, "La femme du roi de Portugal" (1341), is preceded by a long sermon extolling marriage and using the institution as an analogy for the relationship between the soul and God. In this play, the king coincidentally meets and falls in love with the daughter of a chatelain during a hunting trip. Following his proposal of marriage, the young girl agrees to a pre-nuptial tryst and gives the king a key to her chamber. The seneschal dissuades the king from such dishonorable behavior, only to take advantage himself of the key and the girl. When the maiden discovers the deception, she takes her cousin's advice and decapitates the deceitful seneschal. Given that she is no longer a virgin, her wedding night with the king requires a female substitution, none other than her cousin who, once she has had a taste of royal wedded bliss, refuses to give up the royal bed. The queen dispatches her by tying the usurper to the bed, and setting it on fire, once the king has risen. Pricked by pangs of remorse, the queen confesses, only to have her confessor make impure demands upon her in exchange for observing the seal of confession. Rebuffed, he denounces the queen to the king, who condemns his wife to death. Finally, it's time for the Virgin to swoop in. Curiously, she does not scold the queen, but instead blames and threatens the king with death because his young wife committed all these sins on his account. The play concludes with the king and queen giving up their kingdom to live in religious poverty.
The concluding play in this volume, Miracle XVI, "La mère du pape" (1355), tells a tale about the consequences of unbridled pride. The protagonist comes to believe that her status as mother of a pope and two cardinals places her above the Blessed Virgin. When she understands the gravity of her sin of hubris, she eventually confesses to her son the pope who imposes the following penance: a ten-year pilgrimage, spending no more than one day in any one place. Devils attempt to trick her into prematurely ending her penance. Persisting, the papal mother is finally exhausted and near death. A lowly mule driver begs a priest to administer the last rites to the dying woman, only to be rebuffed for such a ridiculous request made during a horribly stormy night. Finally, Our Lady, moved to compassion, brings the woman's soul to heaven and orders that a chapel be built upon her grave. This play demonstrates most clearly one of the didactic functions of theater: it allows for dissemination of sacramental doctrine, explaining and demonstrating the components of the sacrament of penance in particular, even as it highlights the failure of some clergy to perform compassionate sacramental acts.
In summary, this volume is highly recommended both for its collection content and its scholarly format. The authors have offered a wonderful resource to the medieval studies communities by making more accessible a dramatic corpus that has much to teach us about the ways in which the Middle Ages viewed human failings and forgiveness, connections with the divine, and those institutions charged with protecting souls.