No More Learning

Now verse I draw from quiver rude;
O grace, let me a poet prove.
In praise I sharpen blunted pen
To cry the Virgin's praise again.
But, oh, that words would harmonize
In style with that which I do prize.
Vile, brief, and rude though writing be, In praise of you, it's oratory.
And all the writer bums become
Like tongues of angels, cherubim.
If all the world turned into quills
And atoms scribes, for all their skills
is host could not her praise reveal
Nor even match the Virgin's heel.
As many scribes as there are leaves, Rocks, pebbles, groves, or dripping seas Could not the Virgin worthily
Describe in all eternity.
If scribes were numbered with the stars at twinkle in the face of Mars
Or drops of rain that on earth fall,
e matter's weight would crush them all. To praise, therefore, love urges me
e Virgin in her majesty;
And mildly she calls me to stand,
e o ered reed to take in hand. But I that pen accept with fear; To her dictation I adhere, Incapable of nding sense,
With her support my sole defense. My reed is blunt and rather slow; My love lukewarm, my thinking low. A student rude, I take my seat
To write that which she says is meet. 112
But why was it so di cult to write about Mary? Surely, as the sixteenth-century reformers would insist, everything that one needed to know about her had been encompassed in her response to the angel's greeting (Luke 1:38: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord"): namely, that she was humble and obedient, a true handmaiden (ancilla) of God, most likely engaged in housework when the angel arrived. 113 What more needed to be said? In a word: everything. Praising Mary, or so her medieval devotees contended, was more than simply a matter of showing the proper respect to the woman in whom God had taken up his dwelling on earth. It was in a very real sense an exercise in praising God, for it was a er all he to whom she had given birth.
What did it mean to say with the prophet Jeremiah, "the Lord has created a new thing on the earth: a woman shall compass a man" (31:22), when that "man" was himself the Creator of heaven and earth? Or with Ecclesiasticus, "he that made me rested in my tabernacle" (24:12), when that "tabernacle" was the space of the Virgin's womb? Visually, the magnitude of the mystery is perhaps best expressed through contemporary iconography of the mappa mundi. For exam- ple, in the monumental map made in the late thirteenth century for the Bene- dictine convent at Ebstorf in Lower Saxony, the world itself is shown as the body of Christ with his head, hands, and feet peeking just over the oceanic frame, and in the late thirteenth-century map now in the cathedral at Hereford, as it was originally framed, Gabriel and Mary stood on either side of the world, enclosing the creation in the moment of the angel's greeting. 114 Representations of Christ as Creator such as those that appear as frontispieces for a number of the more lav- ishly illustrated thirteenth-century Bibles moralise? e make a similar point: Christ enthroned holds the cosmos in his bosom with his le hand while he measures its dimensions with an architect's compass in his right. 115 And yet, it was in just this way, or so her devotees marveled, that Mary had carried Christ in her womb and supported him as a baby on her lap, just as they beheld her doing every day in the sculpted and painted images before which they knelt in prayer. 116
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e miracle was not just that a virgin had become pregnant and given birth, but rather that he who was the Creator of all things had entered into his own creation--the Artist into his Work--by way of one of his own creatures and, further, had lived for nine months in her womb. What kind of artist (artifex) not only could, but would be willing to become subject in this way to the material limitations of his own art? It would be as if the Oxford philologist J. R. R. Tol- kien (d. 1973) were somehow not simply the author of e Lord of the Rings, but there in the story with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, struggling their way into Mordor; or with Eowyn and Merry, ghting the Witch King to the death; or with Pippin trying to persuade Gandalf to come to Faramir's aid. But, again, this is what medieval Christians believed: that the Maker had somehow entered "into the thing that He [had] made . . . than which He is beyond measure greater," like the "singer into his tale or the designer into his picture. How"--or so the devout Catholic Tolkien imagined his artistic subcreation the woman Andreth wonder- ing as she whispered of this hope to the Elf Finrod--"could He the greater do this? Would it not shatter Arda [the world], or indeed all of Ea? [creation]? "117
Medieval Christians wondered much the same thing. How could the Maker of heaven and earth enter into his creation--physically, materially, corporeally, historically--without shattering the very thing he had made? eir answer: through Mary. "O Lady," Anselm of Canterbury marveled in the third of the three great prayers that he wrote in her praise, "you showed to the sight of all the world its Creator whom it had not seen. . . . [By] you the elements are renewed, hell is redeemed, demons are trampled down and men are saved. . . . O woman full and over owing with grace, plenty ows from you to make all creatures green again. " Over and over again in his prayer, Anselm emphasizes that it was Mary through whom the Creator of all things came into the world. She it was who was the "gateway of life, door of salvation, way of reconciliation, approach to recovery" and "the palace of universal propitiation, cause of general reconciliation, vase and temple of life and universal salvation. " For Anselm, the metaphors invoked through Mary's many titles were hardly as passive as some more recent critics of this traditional imagery have argued, but paradoxically-- awe-inspiringly--active. 118 Mary was no mere passage to be taken and then for- gotten, no mere vessel to be lled and then discarded by God. Rather, as both container (aula, vas, templum) and way (porta, ianua, via, aditus) she was herself an agent in making God visible to his creatures: "You showed to the world its Lord and its God whom it had not known. " Without Mary, God would have remained invisible, "Father of all created things," yet still "only ruling invisibly over them all. " rough Mary, God revealed himself to the world as at once its Creator and Redeemer: "God who made all things made himself of Mary and
thus he refashioned everything he had made. . . . So God is the Father of all cre- ated things, and Mary is the mother of all re-created things. . . . For God gave birth to him by whom all things were made and Mary brought forth him by whom all are saved. " According to Anselm, it was for this reason that "nothing equals Mary, nothing but God is greater than Mary": Mary, as vessel, as way, was the human, creaturely agent of the Creator's entry into his creation. 119
Hildegard of Bingen--or, rather, her heavenly voice--explained the mystery perhaps most succinctly: " e blessed and ine able Trinity showed itself to the world (se mundo manifestauit) when the Father sent into the world his Only-Begotten, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin, so that humans, born so diversely and bound by so many sins, should be brought back through Him to the way of truth. "120 More lyrically, again in Hildegard's words--or rather those of the chorus of Heaven praising the Virgin through whom the Trinity was made visible to the world:
O splendid jewel, serenely infused with the Sun!
e Sun is in you as a fount from the heart of the Father;
It is His sole Word, by Whom He created the world,
e primary matter, which Eve threw into disorder.
He formed the Word in you as a human being,
And therefore you are the jewel that shines most brightly, rough whom the Word breathed out the whole of the virtues, As once from primary matter He made all creatures. 121
What Hildegard sought to capture in her music, medieval sculptors attempted to convey visually in statues in which Mary's abdomen or chest is inset with a polished crystal, the Christ-child within shining forth from her body like the very sun. 122 In Hildegard's imagery, Mary is at once material and transparent, the luminous matter (lucida materia) in which the Word took human form and through which he breathed forth his virtue into the world. She is the creature through whom God entered into his creation, the "prime matter of the world" (prima materia mundi), which Eve had perturbed. Like a jewel sparkling in the sun, Mary was infused with light, lled with God. And yet, as a sequence by the Augustinian canon Adam of Saint Victor (d. 1146) for the Feast of the Nativity (Christmas) put it, the Son came forth from her without shattering her, that is, without breaking the seal of her chastity, just as a crystal "moistened and placed in the sunlight emits a little spark of re" without breaking. 123 Here Mary's unbro- ken seal of virginity stands in for the whole of creation, which God, its Maker, miraculously entered without destroying it, like light shining through a jewel.
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Container of the Uncontainable
Mary was a mystery which, it would seem, only metaphor could adequately con- tain, if, that is, the metaphor were expanded to include the whole of heaven and earth and everything--animal, vegetable, and mineral, natural and arti cial-- therein. "Not only heaven and earth," or so the anonymous early thirteenth-cen- tury author of a series of sermons on the antiphon Salve Regina put it,
but also other names (aliis nominibus) and words of things (rerum vocabulis) ttingly designate the Lady. She is the tabernacle of God, the temple, the house, the entry-hall, the bedchamber, the bridal-bed, the bride, the daughter, the ark of the ood, the ark of the covenant, the golden urn, the manna, the rod of Aaron, the eece of Gideon, the gate of Ezekiel, the city of God, the heaven, the earth, the sun, the moon, the morning star, the dawn, the lamp, the trumpet, the mountain, the fountain of the garden and the lily of the valley, the desert, the land of promise owing with milk and honey, the star of the sea, the ship, the way in the sea, the shing net, the vine, the eld, the ark, the granary, the stable, the manger of the beast of burden, the store-room, the court, the tower, the castle, the battle-line, the people, the kingdom, the priesthood.
Nor was this all:
She is the sheep, the pasture, the paradise, the palm, the rose, the river, the draught, the dove, the column, the clothing, the pearl, the candelabra, the table, the crown, the scepter, the bread, the oil, the wine, the tree, the rod, the cedar, the cypress, the plane-tree, the cinnamon, the balsam, the myrrh, the frankin- cense, the olive, the nard, the crocus, the reed, the pipe, the pen, the gum, the sister and mother.
"Indeed," the already long-winded preacher apologized, "that I might brie y con- clude, all Scripture was written concerning her and about her and because of her, and for her the whole world was made, she who is full of the grace of God and through whom man has been redeemed, the Word of God made esh, God humbled and man sublimed. "124
As Richard of Saint-Laurent and his contemporaries read the scriptures, it would take a book--indeed, many books--just to begin to elucidate all of the gures of Mary contained therein. It took Richard twelve: one to establish the angelic salutation as the model for all addresses to the Virgin Mary; one to explain why and how Mary ought to be praised by her servants; four to list the privileges,
virtues, beauties, and names of Mary; and six to enumerate all of her gures in heaven and on earth mentioned in the Bible. According to her medieval devo- tees, not just scripture, but all of creation was re ected in Mary, "the mirror of great purity," as the German minnesinger Heinrich von Meissen or Frauenlob (d. 1318) put it, "in which God saw himself from the beginning. " "I was with him," Frauenlob has Mary declare, echoing Wisdom 7:26, "when he formed the whole creation; he gazed at me with desire unceasing. "
I carried him who carries earth and sky and yet am still a maid.
He lay in me and le me without labor. Most certainly
I slept with ree--
till I grew pregnant with God's goodness.
And what goodness!
I am the eld that bore in season
wheat for the sacred mysteries. . . .
I am the throne the Godhead
never ed--since God slipped inside. . . . All that the prophets prophesied--
of me alone their words were said. 125
Whether clerical hyperbole expressing an underlying ambivalence about elevat- ing a mere woman to such heights of cosmic and theological signi cance (as at least one recent scholar has put it), or blasphemy, making Mary (as the sixteenth- century reformers would have it) equal to God, the one thing such metaphorical and titular exuberance, once tapped, could hardly be was restrained. 126
For Richard of Saint-Laurent, there was seemingly nothing to which Mary, "the tabernacle and the triclinium of the whole Trinity," could not be compared. 127 the moon, the horizon, the morning star, the dawn, the daybreak, the morning, the light, the day, the cloud. She was the earth, the threshing- oor, the plain, the eld, the mountain, the hill, the desert, the rock. She was the fountain, the well, the stream, the river, the torrent, the water, the pond, the riverbed, the bucket, the lake, the jug, the shell, the canal, the pipe, the aqueduct, the bath, the sh- pond, the pool, the vein, the spring water, the cistern. Nor were her gures lim- ited to things in the natural world. She was the ark, the throne, the chair, the
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litter (ferculum), the settle, the tribunal, the seat, the teacher's chair (cathedra), the footstool, the couch, the rest, the dwelling, the storeroom, the nest, the cell, the medicine chest, the treasure chest, the library, the temple treasury, the wom- en's quarters, the place, the granary, the mill, the oven, the kiln, the forge, the pal- ace of the highest emperor, the court, the tabernacle, the bridal bed, the house, the temple, the city, the camp, the castle, the village, the tower, the rampart, the wall, the ship, and the ark of Noah. And (in one of the most elaborate images of all) she was the garden enclosed praised by the Beloved in the Song of Songs, along with all of its delights, fragrances, owers, herbs, trees, and birds. Mother, beloved, sister, dearest one, daughter, bride, wife, widow, good woman, virgin, virago, prince, queen: Mary bore all of these titles in her relationship with God, along with those of the celestial, terrestrial, built, and cultivated world. 128
Hard as it may be to believe, there were those who might argue that even Richard had not been encyclopedic enough in his scope. For Frauenlob, the Virgin was also the weasel who "bore the ermine who bit the snake," the lion's roar "that roused its cub from death's rst ood," the re "in which the phoenix renewed its youth," and the Grail "that healed the noble King's great woe. "129 For Jacobus de Voragine, she was likewise the bee, the dove, the ivory, the elephant, the chicken, the lily, the pearl, the sheep, the mirror, and the eece, not to men- tion (as Richard had) the almond, the cedar, the cypress, the galbanum, the olive, the palm tree, and the rose. As Jacobus explained: "For just as according to the philosophers, those things which are scattered among the animals by nature are gathered together in human beings through reason, like simplicity in the dove, kindness in the lamb, liberality in the lion; so all the graces which are given to others are gathered together in Mary at the same time. "130 Accordingly, for the fourteenth-century Dominican compiler of the French Rosarius, Mary was the panther (or leopard) in her temperance, the swallow in her desire for contem- plation, the stork in her lo iness of life, the ewe in her suitability for sacri ce to God, the whale in her protection of others, the lark in that she was full of grace, the salamander in her adaptability, the bee in her sweetness, the swan in her song at death, the nightingale in her nobility, the pigeon in her removal from the world, the tortoise in the hardness of her shell, the dromedary to the camel that is Christ, and the falcon in the gentility of her heart and body. 131 Not to be outdone, the English Franciscan Walter of Wimborne likewise composed, in addition to his lengthy Marie Carmina, a 164-stanza poem in Latin inspired in part by the images compiled by Richard in his De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis, hailing the Virgin as (among other things) phoenix of virgins, key of heaven, maidenly gem, room (zeta) of the Word, abyss of honey, saw of death, incense of heaven, shield of sinners, and wagon of God. 132
To be sure, such e orts to describe Mary in all her referential glory could, if the Spirit so willed, lend themselves to what some might call a certain elitist (a. k. a. educated) obscurantism, but their point was not mere--or not merely-- showing o . 133 Rather, and rather more modestly, they were an attempt to capture in nouns or names (nomina) that which all the words in the world could not hope to describe. ere are four reasons, Jacobus contended, that God's human creatures are not able to praise Mary su ciently. First, on account of their weak- ness; second, on account of their unworthiness; third, on account of her dignity; fourth--and, arguably, most important--on account of the insu ciency and poverty of words, "because suitable words do not exist for us (verba idonea nobis de ciunt). "134 As Dante, arguably the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, perhaps in all of Christendom, excused himself for not describing the Virgin more fully in his Paradiso,
And even if my speech were rich as my imagination is, I should not try
to tell the very least of her delights. 135
Indeed, or so one anonymous fourteenth-century Flemish poet somewhat mischievously suggested, arguably the greatest praise one might give to Mary would be to admit that he could never praise her enough. As the poet set the scene, "once there were three masters, pro cient in learning and chosen in wis- dom," who met one day to discuss how best they might praise the Virgin. e rst, Albert of Cologne (that is, Doctor Albertus Magnus [d. 1280]), argued that if all the owers, grass, herbs, beasts, and even the stars of heaven were to have tongues and could speak as wisely as the masters from Paris to the Danube, they could not thank her or praise her virtues and nobility enough. e second, Henry Formater (that is, the Doctor Solemnis Henry of Ghent [d. 1293]), argued that if every drop of water in the seas and rivers, every grain of sand, all the rain, hail, and snow which has fallen since the beginning of the world had tongues and could speak as wisely as the masters from Paris and Montpellier, they could not thank her or praise her chastity and virtue enough. e third, Jacob van Maerlant (d. ca. 1300), the hero of the piece despite the fact that he wrote not in Latin but in Dutch and was no philosopher but merely a poet, argued that if all the sh in the sea, the worms in the ground, the beasts in the forest, the birds in the air, and the crops in the eld had tongues and, moreover, even if they were joined by all the saints, angels, apostles, confessors, martyrs, and virgins, who then did nothing but speak her praises with a hundred thousand tongues, every one the wisest in the world, still they could not thank and praise the Virgin enough.
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At which--somewhat predictably, given the circumstances--the great scholastic philosophers Albert and Henry declared Jacob their master "because you have spoken the praise of Mary better than we did. is we admit. "136
Under such circumstances, even the language of scripture might come to seem inadequate. e great Franciscan Doctor Seraphicus Bonaventure of Bagnoreg- gio (d. 1274) put the mystery this way in the rst of the sermons that he preached for the Feast of the Annunciation:
Because the mystery of the incarnation of the Lord is so secret and deep that no understanding is able to seize it, no tongue able to unfold it, the Holy Spirit, con- descending to human weakness, wished that it be described by many metaphors (metaphoris), by which as if led by the hand, we might come to some knowledge of it. For, according to the Apostle [Romans 1:20], "the invisible things of God are made comprehensible through those visible things that have been made. "137
"A rod shall come forth out of the root of Jesse, and a ower shall rise up out of his root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him" (Isaiah 11:1); " e Lord will give goodness, and our earth shall yield her fruit" (Psalm 84:13); "He who created me rested in my tabernacle" (Ecclesiasticus 24:12). According to Bonaventure, all of these visible things (root, rod, and ower; the earth and her fruit; the tabernacle in which the Creator rested) were ways of attempting to express the same incomprehensible mystery: how the immensity of the eternal majesty con ned itself in Mary's womb. As the Mother of God Mary was the temple in which "the whole Divinity dwelt corporeally" (cf. Malachi 3:1). 138 She was the house of David in which "the true David, Christ, dwelt and dedicated to himself and blessed for all eternity" (cf. 2 Kings [Samuel] 7:29). 139 And she was the ark of the covenant in which "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden because in her she contained the esh of Christ" (cf. 2 Chronicles 5:8). 140 Indeed, as Bonaventure understood it, without Mary, that "wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High" (Ecclesiasticus 43:2), the whole universe would be deformed: "For if you take the Mother of God from the world, in consequence you take the incarnate Word, without which the deformity of sinning and the error of sinners would remain. "141
Nor was it only Mary whom Divinity had infused. Isaiah heard the seraphs sur- rounding the throne of the Lord calling, " e whole earth is lled with his glory" (Isaiah 6:3), which is to say, the humanity of the Son of God " lled the most sacred womb of the Virgin and in consequence the whole universe. . . . [and] that plenitude which was in the Virgin Mary over owed into the whole Church. "142 Filling the Virgin's womb, God the Creator over owed in his goodness to su use
the whole of creation, now transformed in both grace and meaning. "He who created me rested in my tabernacle" (Ecclesiasticus 24:12), that is, Bonaventure explained, he who was Creator was also the inhabitant of that which he had cre- ated because he was both God and man, Alpha and Omega. Inhabiting the Vir- gin corporeally, he likewise rested sacramentally in the tabernacle of the militant Church (that is, the Church on earth), while at the same time resting spiritually in the tabernacle of the faithful soul as well as sempiternally in the tabernacle of the celestial court. " us," Bonaventure argued, "what is said [in this text] is true in every mode, namely literally, allegorically, morally, and anagogically. "143
Full of Grace
It would be hard to imagine--would it not? --how such an indwelling could not have had some e ect on the Virgin, other than her giving birth, although many since the sixteenth century have insisted that it did not, that Mary was "just a housewife" who was obedient to God. Perhaps the most contested e ect of this indwelling since the mid-nineteenth century, and thus in the modern historiog- raphy of her cult, has been her preservation whether before or a er her concep- tion from sin. 144 For Mary's medieval devotees, however, the e ects included not only her spiritual, but also her intellectual state, o en to what some would later ridicule as a preposterous extent. Never mind (although the debate was a erce one) whether she was conceived without original sin or only sancti ed in her mother's womb, what did the Virgin in whom the Creator of all things had made his dwelling know? According to the thirteenth-century Mariale, sive CCXXX quaestiones super Evangelium of Pseudo-Albert the Great, everything: Mary had knowledge of all of the mechanical arts, especially those having to do with weav- ing, and all of the liberal arts, including those of the trivium (grammar, rheto- ric, dialectic) along with civil and canon law, physics and medicine, and those of the quadrivium (music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry), not to mention theology and all the matter of Peter Lombard's Sentences, the textbook of the Scholastics. 145 As Hilda Graef writing in the mid-twentieth century somewhat dismissively commented, "had the author lived in our own time he no doubt would have added aeronautics and nuclear physics"--and why not? 146 Moreover, Pseudo-Albert would insist, Mary had not only perfect knowledge of the Incar- nation "through grace and singular experience," but also perfect knowledge of the Trinity "without mediation," as well as knowledge of her own predestina- tion; of souls and spirits, angels, and demons; of the scriptures, what ought to be done and what ought to be contemplated; of all creatures "through nature,
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grace, and contemplation"; and of "evening and morning," that is, rst and last things. Indeed, Pseudo-Albert concluded, "there was nothing of which she was ignorant," whether of action or contemplation, by nature or grace; rather, her knowledge of all things was perfectly complete. 147
e German poet Heinrich von Mu? geln (d. 1369) would concur. In his Der meide kranz ( e Virgin's garland), the seven liberal arts plus Philosophy, Medicine, Alchemy, Metaphysics, and eology meet at the court of Emperor Charles IV (d. 1378) in Prague to debate which among them is to hold the place of honor as a jewel in Mary's crown. As Charles judges the case, eology is nec- essarily the victor, for her truth surpasses that of all of the other arts. Philosophy "speaks of corruption and generation and the rightful operations of Nature," but eology speaks of the one who rules over and nourishes Nature. Grammar "uses words and teaches the parts of speech," but she forgets that Word "which became esh in the maiden and which never separates itself from the divine essence. " Arithmetic counts and measures everything from the sands of the sea to the stars of heaven, but eology describes "how the king allowed himself to receive num- berless wounds for our sake. " Music "lured God into the depths of the heart" so that he "took on humanity from the maiden," but she did not master that tune that was "composed on the cross by the child of the maiden and the Word of God. " Astronomy teaches the movement of the stars and what events will hap- pen in the future: "For that reason," she argues, "I may stand in the crown of the Virgin who spun three persons out of one Word, painlessly; the rays of the sun did not break her glass. " But eology teaches about him "who has embedded the stars into the grail of heaven and who may pull them down again. "148 And so forth. All twelve arts in the end are nevertheless admitted to adorn the Virgin's garland, for each, while itself inadequate to the task of describing her in full, contributes to the understanding and praise of the Virgin, she who gave birth to the Truth surpassing all human arts.
While full of the knowledge of the Creator and his creation, Mary was like- wise, as the angel had put it, "full of grace," a fullness only intensi ed by the fact that "the Lord [was with her]. " All virtues, Pseudo-Albert would contend, were embodied in her--faith, hope, charity, justice, obedience, worship, penitence, prudence, fortitude, perseverance, temperance, chastity, sobriety, modesty-- along with the gi s of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2-3), the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11), and the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). 149 She had the graces of healing, working miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of scriptures (1 Corinthians 12:9-10). And she was an apostle, a prophetess, an evangelist, and a pastor (Ephesians 4:11). 150 She also, of course, had a perfect body, perfect complexion (warm and dry), and perfect health, and,
therefore--Pseudo-Albert reasoned according to contemporary physiologi- cal theory--black eyes and black hair. 151 At her death, she was (as the Church sings) "exalted above all the choirs of the angels," because she possessed all the properties of all the hierarchies of the angels. Likewise, she was "blessed among women" because she possessed "in the highest degree all singular blessings singu- larly, and all universal blessings universally," including the blessings of Adam and Eve, of Abraham on Isaac, of Jacob's blessings on his sons, and Balaam's blessings on Israel. 152 In short, as Albert the Great's fellow Dominican omas Aquinas would put it in his commentary on the angelic salutation, the Virgin "surpasses the angels in her fullness of grace, which is greater in her than in any angel. . . . Grace lled her soul . . . Grace over owed into her body [ tting it for the con- ception of God's Son]. . . . [And] grace over ows from her onto all mankind.
"153
Leaving to one side later anxieties about how far one could or should go in praising the Virgin, perhaps we may now begin to appreciate how, from the per- spective of her high and late medieval devotees, even hyperbole might come to seem inadequate. As the thirteenth-century Franciscan Conrad of Saxony put it in his popular meditation on the angel's greeting:
e grace of which [Mary] was full was certainly immense. An immense vessel (vas) cannot be full, unless that is also immense wherewith it is lled. Mary was a vessel beyond measure (vas immensissimum), since she could contain Him who is greater than the Heavens. Who is greater than the Heavens? Without doubt He of whom Solomon says: "If heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built? " (3 Kings 8:27). It was not indeed the house which Solomon built, but she who is signi ed by that house, which could contain God (sed domus per illam signi cata Deum capere potuit). You, therefore, O most immeasurable Mary (immensissima Maria), are more capacious than the Heavens, because "he whom the Heavens cannot contain was carried in your womb. "154 You are more capacious than the world, because He whom the whole world cannot contain, "being made man, was enclosed in you. "155 If Mary's womb then had such immensity, how much more had her mind? And if so immense a capacity was full of grace, it was tting that that grace which could ll so great a capacity, should also be immense. Who can measure the immen- sity of Mary? . . . . Mary is a heaven, as much because she abounded in heavenly purity, heavenly light, and other heavenly virtues, as because she was the most high throne of God. . . . Mary was also the earth which brought forth for us that fruit of which the same Prophet says: " e earth has given its fruits" (Psalm 66:7). Mary is also an abyss in goodness and deepest mercy; whence she obtains for us the mercy of her Son, as it were "an abyss calling upon an abyss" (Psalm 41:8). 156
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For Conrad and, indeed, the majority of his contemporaries, it was inconceivable that one might praise Mary "too much," as if it were even possible to praise her, like God to whom she had given birth, enough. Never mind how (although, of course, they were certain that she had been a virgin), Mary had carried in her body the Author of the World. To minimize Mary would be to suggest that one might minimize God.
Of course Mary was "full of grace"; of course she enjoyed all of the gi s of the Holy Spirit; of course she was lled with nine plenitudes--the over owing of grace, the illumination of wisdom, the fruits and riches of a good life, the anoint- ing of mercy, the fecundity of the divine o spring, the perfection of the universal Church, the fragrant sprinkling of sweetly scented fame, the re ection of the divine glory, and the joy of eternal happiness--surpassing even the plenitudes of the nine orders of angels. 157 "She alone," as Conrad put it, "above all creatures was in the body most familiar with God. For, what was never granted to any other creature, nor will ever be granted again in eternity, she bore God for nine months in her womb, she nourished God 'from her breasts full of heaven,' for many years she sweetly brought up our Lord. "158 "She, who is our moon and our lamp, was illuminated by the Lord," her mind lled with the light of wisdom before she conceived him, her body with Wisdom a er her consent. 159 Her body was the house lled with the majesty of the Incarnate Word on the throne of whose mind the Lord sits (cf. Isaiah 6:1); therefore, Conrad explained, "it is said in the third book of Kings (8:11): ' e glory of the Lord had lled the house of the Lord. ' "160
And who is this Lord who is "with [her]"? Generally speaking (generaliter), he is the "Lord of all creatures," "of all things visible and invisible," who has made Mary "the universal Lady of all things--the Lady, I say, of heaven and the Lady of the world. "161 More speci cally (specialiter), he is a "most loving, most just, most sure, and most renowned Lord" of his rational creatures, loving in his in nite mercy, just in his judgments and equity, sure in his delity, renowned over all the earth. 162 Most particularly (singulariter), however, he is the Lord who inhabits the singular court of Mary's body and soul, in relation to whom Mary is at once Daughter of the Lord Father, Mother of the Lord Son, Bride of the Lord Holy Spirit, and Handmaid of the Lord ree-and-One. 163 As such, she is accordingly the dawn (aurora) irradiated by the Eternal Sun and preparing for his rising (Song of Songs 6:9); the rod (virga) smoking with incense (Song of Songs 3:6), owering with virtues (Numbers 17:8), golden to the perfect and contemplative (Esther 15:15), and iron to demons and sinners (Psalm 2:9), from which the ower foreseen by Isaiah (11:1) sprouted; and the Queen (regina) of the Eternal King, entering into his glory (3 Kings 10:1-2). "Behold, therefore," Conrad concluded, "O most sweet Virgin Mary; behold, truly 'the Lord is with
you,' as the sun is with the dawn going before it, as the ower is with the owering rod, as the king is with the queen entering in. "164 Mary, in other words, de nes (encompasses, makes visible) God because it is she--as Daughter, Mother, Bride, Handmaid, Dawn, Rod, and Queen--whom he is with.
Aves in the Psalms
But how does one praise the human woman in whom Divinity dwelt? (It is impos- sible to overstress how mind-boggling this question is, banal as the idea of the Incarnation has become some two thousand years a er the conception and birth of the one whom Christians call Lord. ) According to Mary's medieval devotees, faute de mieux with a list, ideally one prefacing every attribute or title--just as the angel had--with "Hail! " Such lists are perhaps most familiar to more recent Chris- tians in the form of devotions like the Litany of Loreto, formally approved by Pope Sixtus V in 1587 but well attested in older versions from the twel h century at the latest, when the recitation of the Ave Maria was already gaining in popularity, as liturgical historian G. G. Meersseman has shown. 165 Even by the twel h century, however, this practice of hailing Mary in all her attributes and titles was centuries old, going back to the very origins of the formal cult of the Virgin in the East fol- lowing Mary's o cial recognition at the council of Ephesus in 431 as eotokos or "Mother of God. "166 Perhaps the most telling--certainly the most liturgically resonant--product of this recognition was the magni cent twenty-four-strophe hymn in Greek famously sung standing ("Akathistos") over the course of single night in thanksgiving for the deliverance of the city of Constantinople from its Avar and Persian besiegers in August 626. 167 By the ninth century, as Meersseman has shown, the "Akathistos" hymn with its twelve groups of twelve greetings to the Virgin, each punctuated by the paradoxical refrain "Ave, sponsa insponsata" (Hail, bride unwedded), had been translated into Latin, most likely by the Greek Christophorus I, bishop of Venice under the Franks (803-807). 168 At about the same time, similar greeting hymns began to be composed in the West, including the much-loved "Ave maris stella" (Hail, star of the sea), subsequently adopted as the hymn for Vespers in the O ce of the Virgin. 169 In the tenth century, such com- positions o en took the form of meditations on the various titles of the Virgin arranged according to the letters of the alphabet: "Auroram. . . . Beatam domum. . . . Columbam. . . . David praecelso parientem lium. . . . Egressa virga Jesse de radice est. . . . "170 From the twel h century, however, it became the custom to compose whole "psalters" of Aves, each verse recalling a corresponding verse or image from the Psalms. 171 While such "Mary-psalters" have been o en invoked as precursors to
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the later fourteenth- and eenth-century recitation of the rosary, particularly its numbering of Aves in imitation of the Psalms, what is surely these psalters' most striking characteristic is their painstaking e ort--psalm by psalm--to salute the Virgin in all her titular abundance. 172
To take but one example: the earliest as well as one of the most popular of these psalters would appear to come from the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny, although at least one early thirteenth-century manuscript (London, British Library, Arundel 157, fols. 146-159) attributes it to Anselm of Canterbury. 173 e Arundel version includes, among others, the following preparatory prayer sug- gesting the psalter's purpose:
Suscipe, regina celi, que mente deuota Cantica de psalmis o ero sumpta sacris. Cumque salutaris in eis et magni caris Pauperis atque mei sis memor et miseri.
Queen of heaven, accept these songs
that devoted I o er om the sacred psalms.
And when in them you are saluted and magni ed, be mindful of me, miserable and poor. 174
e psalter itself consists of 150 salutations, from "Ave, porta paradysi" (Hail, gate of paradise) (Psalm 1) to "Ave, li; salve, mater" (Hail, son; greetings, mother) (Psalm 150), including "Ave, templum sanctum dei" (Hail, holy temple of God) (Psalm 5), "Ave, lucerna seculi" (Hail, lamp of the age) (Psalm 10), "Ave, virgo pulchra tota" (Hail, all beautiful virgin) (Psalm 25), "Ave, domus uberta- tis" (Hail, house of plenty) (Psalm 35), "Ave, simplex ut columba" (Hail, simple as a dove) (Psalm 54), "Ave, terra ferens fructum" (Hail, earth bearing fruit) (Psalm 66), "Ave, prima columpnarum" (Hail, rst of columns) (Psalm 74), "Ave pulchra sicut luna" (Hail, beautiful as the moon) (Psalm 80), "Ave, ancilla domini" (Hail, handmaid of the Lord) (Psalm 85), "Ave, virgo, celi porta" (Hail, virgin, gate of heaven) (Psalm 96), "Ave, ovis centesima" (Hail, one hundredth sheep) (Psalm 99), "Ave, virga iustitie" (Hail, rod of justice) (Psalm 109)--and so on, from psalm to psalm, with no apparent logic other than that of pairing each salutation with a verse from the Psalms. e point is not, however, as in the meditations that would later come to be associated with the various decades of the rosary, to recall particular events in Mary's or her Son's life, but rather, as the prefatory prayer suggests, to salute and magnify the Virgin through the Psalms. If there is a fullness here (which there most de nitely is), it is not that of
narrative, but rather that of praise, the Psalms that God so loved to hear provid- ing the structure for praising his Mother, and vice versa, the Aves giving occa- sion for praising God. e rst few verses may give us a taste of the way in which this interwoven praise works. 175
e psalter begins:
Et erit tanquam lingnum (sic) quod plantatum est, secus decursus aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo. (Psalm 1:3)
And he [or she] will be like a tree (lignum) that is planted by running waters which will give its uit (fructum) in its time.
e accompanying Ave provides, as it were, the gloss:
Aue porta paradysi lignum uite quod amisi.
Per te michi iam dulcessit, et salutis fructus crescit.
Gate of paradise, tree (lignum) of life that I have lost.
rough you for me already the uit (fructus) of salvation becomes sweet
and grows.
While the rhyme scheme of the Ave emphasizes the loss of paradise (paradysi/ amisi) as against the increase of sweetness (dulcescit/crescit), the pairing with the psalm verse focuses the attention on the tree and its fruit: Christ is, of course, the fruit that Mary bore. Accordingly, it is she who is the Tree of Life on which the fruit ripened, an image recalling at once the Tree of Life in the garden of paradise (Genesis 2:9) and the Cross-Tree from which Christ, the fruit of salvation, hung. As Conrad of Saxony put it, citing Revelation 22:2: " e tree of life (lignum vitae) is Mary, the mother of life; or the tree of life is the tree of the Cross; or else the tree is Jesus Christ, the author of life, who is also the fruit of life. "176 According to Richard of Saint-Laurent, the running waters by which the tree is planted may be read as, among other things, streams of scripture, wisdom, and grace that help ripen the fruit, that is, make it available to humankind. 177
e psalm admonishes:
Apprehendite disciplinam nequando irascatur dominus et pereatis de uia iusta. (Psalm 2:12)
Embrace discipline (disciplinam) lest the Lord be angry (irascatur) and you perish om the just way (uia).
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Aue morum disciplina, uita uia, lux diuina. Iram dei mitigasti quando Christum generasti.
Hail, discipline (disciplina) of customs, way (uia) of life, light divine. You so ened the anger (iram) of God when you gave birth to Christ.
Here the parallels are between Mary's discipline in its divine inspiration (disci- plina/divina) and between her act of generation and the so ening of God's anger (mitigasti/generasti). Somewhat surprisingly, Mary, rather than Christ, is here "the way" because it is she who mitigated God's anger against sinners through her teaching and habits; likewise, she shows sinners the way to the path of justice by giving birth to God's Son.
e one praying cries out:
Voce mea ad dominum clamaui et exaudiuit me de monte sancto suo. (Psalm 3:5)
I have cried (clamaui) to the Lord with my voice and he heard (exaudiuit) me om his holy mountain (de monte).
And the Virgin hears:
Aue uirgo cuius clamor nostri fuit pius amor.
Qui de monte exauditur uerbum carni cum unitur.
Hail, virgin, whose shout (clamor) was pious love for us,
Which was heard (exauditur) om the mountain (de monte) when the
Word was joined to esh.
According to Conrad, Mary is the "holy mountain" because it is she from whom the stone, Christ, was cut without hands (cf. Daniel 2:45), and because she is lo y in her life and manners and excellent in her merits. 178 Her shout (clamor) of love (amor) which the Lord heard (exauditur) from his mountain was the con- sent that she gave to the angel's words: "Let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38), at which the Word became esh (unitur) in her womb. Likewise, the Ave suggests, she is a mountain for others from which they may li their voices to God.
e psalmist prays:
Signatum est super nos lumen uultus tui domine; dedisti leticiam in corde meo. (Psalm 4:7)
Lord, let the light of your face (uultus tui) set its mark (signatum est) upon us; you gave me gladness in my heart.
On which the Ave re ects:
Aue cuius refulgentem splendor patris fecit mentem. De splendore reuultus tui fac signentur serui tui.
Hail, the one whose mind the splendor of the Father made to re ect
[a shining light].
Let your servants be marked (signentur) with the splendor of your counte-
nance (vultus tui).
Mary's mind (mentem) shone with a great splendor (refulgentem) because it was there that the Lord rested on his throne. 179 Indeed, as Conrad explained, citing Bernard of Clairvaux: "Heavenly Wisdom built for himself a house in Mary: for he so lled her mind that from the very fullness of her mind her esh became fecund, and the Virgin by a singular grace brought forth that same Wisdom, covered with a garb of esh, whom she had rst conceived in her mind. "180 Because, moreover, her mind was so marked by her contempla- tion of God, her face shone in likeness to her Son's, whose mirror she was both in spirit and in esh. 181 A er the Son, indeed, she was the true light (as Richard put it) "illuminating all those who come into the world. "182 Likewise, her servants are marked by her and lled with joy when "irradiated by her life and example" and "illuminated by her patronage and mercy," they are incited to good. 183
e psalmist rejoices:
Introibo in domum tuam domine; adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum et con- tebor nomini tuo. (Psalm 5:8, with changes)
I will enter into your house, O Lord; I will worship in your holy temple (templum sanctum) and I will confess your name.
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Aue templum sanctum dei ad quod currunt omnes rei. Vt ab hoste liberentur a quo capti detinentur.
Hail, holy temple (templum sanctum) of God, to which sinners run, at they may be liberated om the enemy by whom, taken captive, they
have been detained.
As Bonaventure put it, Mary's womb was the temple "made by the power of the Father, adorned by the wisdom of the Son, dedicated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and lled with the presence of the Incarnate Word. "184 Jacobus would agree: the Father founded the temple, the Holy Spirit consecrated it, and the Son inhabited it. Accordingly, it--that is, Mary--is full in four ways: her womb for receiving God in the esh; her intellect for receiving the understanding of the divine light directly, not just through God's works; her a ect for hav- ing compassion on sinners "for whom she obtains God's mercy," the tempted "whom she protects from the Devil," and those leaving this world "whom she leads with her hands into heaven"; and her merit for assisting all those in the world and at judgment. 185 Likewise, for Richard of Saint-Laurent: "Mary is the temple because it is through her that we o er prayers to Christ. "186 e Ave verse likewise recalls the medieval legal tradition of sanctuary, whereby those who took refuge in a church would be safe from arrest, as well as the Virgin's fabled intervention on behalf of those who sought her protection from their captivity to the devil and sin, most notably, eophilus. 187 As the temple of God, that is, his habitation, Mary is also the house built by Wisdom (Proverbs 9:1), founded, constructed, and stabilized by the three Persons of the Trinity. 188 It is there that "I will confess your name," because it was through Mary that God as Trinity revealed himself to the world. Accordingly, as Richard put it, "the heart of the Virgin may be rightly called the tabernacle and triclinium of the whole Trinity," because the whole Trinity rested in her soul while he who was wandering as a soldier in the world rested in her esh: "For Christ about to come forth to ght against the world and the Devil armed himself in the womb of the Virgin, putting on poverty against pride and virgin esh like a shield against luxury and excess. "189
And so forth, as the titles of the individual psalms put it, in nem, "to the end. " Even though we are only to stanza ve, the reader is doubtless already wondering how much longer such an exhaustive itemization could possibly go on. And yet, even if we were to follow the psalter through its remaining 145 stanzas all the
way to the end, this is not to say that the itemizing of Mary's attributes would be in any way complete. Indeed, other psalters would emphasize wholly other verses of the Psalms and consequently di erent images and words. While certain themes would recur (for example, Mary as Tree of Life, temple, and house of God), no two psalters invoke exactly the same set of attributes or give each the same meaning. For the author of the psalter from Pontigny, for example, Psalm 2 was an occasion for meditating on the Virgin's discipline as the way of life (Psalm 2:12), but for archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton (d. 1228), it recalled rather the grumbling of the nations (gentes emuerunt) against the one to whom her body had given birth (Psalm 2:1). 190 Like the author from Pontigny, Stephen's later successor as archbishop Saint Edmund of Abingdon (d. 1242) would invoke the Virgin as "salvi c discipline" (disciplina salutaris) in his verse for Psalm 2, but for Psalm 3, he would focus on her as the "healing of our disease" (nostri salus morbi) and on the blessing (benedictio) poured out through her over the people (cf. Psalm 3:3, 9) rather than on her shout. 191 As her medieval devotees read them, the Psalms, like the Virgin herself, were inexhaustible, every word a hint as to her praise.
And yet, remarkably, for some it would seem that even the Psalms were not enough. Whether out of frustration or simply in an attempt to expand even further the scope of their salutations, other poets, for example, the Benedictine abbot Engelbert of Admont (d. 1331) and the Franciscan poet and former schoolmaster Walter of Wimborne, would dispense with the formal psalm structure altogether, retaining only (if that) the number of the psalms. For Engelbert, Mary was preeminently the rose, every stanza of his psalter beginning with the same salutation: "Ave, rosa. " But how many di erent roses he invokes!
Ave, rosa, os aestive, O Maria, lucis vivae suave habitaculum . . .
Hail, rose, ower of summer, O Mary, sweet habitation of the living light!
Ave, rosa non vulgaris, disciplinae puellaris exemplum et regula . . .
Hail, rose uncommon, example and rule of maidenly discipline!
Ave, rosa verni roris, te divini ros amoris totam sic roraverat . . .
Hail, rose of vernal dew, the dew of divine love wholly you bedewed!
Ave, rosa paradisi, per quam morbi sunt elisi. . . .
Hail, rose of paradise, through whom all disease is crushed!
Ave, rosa sola potis, ferre vim rhinocerotis et invictum capere . . .
Hail, rose alone able to bear the strength of the unicorn and to capture the unconquered one! 192
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For Walter, in contrast, like Richard of Saint-Laurent on whom he seems to have depended for many of his images, it is di cult to say what the Virgin was not:
Hail, virgin, mother of Christ,
you who by your modesty merited
to be called phoenix of virgins;
hail, virgin, whose fruit
gave to us the end of sorrow and
the limit of lamentation.
Hail, beautiful virgin,
for whose praise neither prose
nor meter su ces;
hail, virgin, turning-post (meta) of evil,
vein of life, through whom the death (theta) of foul death is accomplished.
Hail, glorious virgin,
you who are the comment and gloss
of prophetic scripture,
whose gloss lays bare
that which is veiled
by the hard shell of the letter.
Hail, virgin, key of heaven,
hail, new ship weighed down
with novel wares,
through whom on full sails
is brought the full light from heaven
to the blind and wandering.
Hail, maidenly gem,
hail, bright star of the sea,
hail, treasure-chest of the divinity,
hail, torch and lantern
whom the supernal light sets light, rebrand of eternal light.
Hail, virgin, whose womb,
diligently sealed (sigillatus),
swelled with a new growth;
without pain or torment,
the splendor and gure of the Father
wished to be born from you.
Hail, virgin, room (zeta) of the Word, chastely pregnant by chaste breath,
not impure seed;
to you worthily we o er odes,
you who knot God with mud,
and mother with virgin.
Hail, virgin, cell of the Word,
concealing the light-beam of divinity under a cloud of esh;
hail, virgin, medicine-chest of God, through whom the clouded, bleary, blind mind receives its salve.
Hail, virgin, abyss of honey,
you who drive far away the ancient gall of death and sorrow,
you who with the needle of providence joined God with mud
and the lowest with the highest.
Hail, virgin, saw of death,
whose womb is a casket
of celestial incense;
hail, virgin, whom the power
of the bountiful spirit made sacred, fortunate, and fertile. 193
"Hail, gracious virgin. . . . Hail, sweetness of the mind. . . . Hail, incense of heaven . . . Hail, shield of sinners . . . Hail, cloud shot through with the ames of Phoebus and adorned with the rainbow of divinity. . . . Hail! " And so on for 164 Victorine stanzas, through metaphors even Richard had not explored. 194
"And the virgin's name was Mary" (Luke 1:27)
How, in the end, does one describe the indescribable? Perhaps, as Walter himself suggested at the outset of the second of his great e orts to describe the Virgin (Marie Carmina), one cannot: even if the whole of creation were transformed into pens, parchment, and ink and all its creatures into scribes, one could not hope to praise adequately even the least of the virtues of the one who contained
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the uncontainable in her womb.