THE CORPUS OF Marian laments from medieval Bohemia (approximately corresponding to the area of what is today the Czech Republic) does not, in many respects, reach the variety of devotional motifs, poetic strategies, and pragmatic schemes known from similar corpora from other European regions. The indigenous Bohemian laments also appear slightly later than did the planctus in France, Italy, and Germany, the manuscripts with the extant versions of the individual compositions coming from the fourteenth century, though it is presumed that some of them could be transcriptions of earlier works. Such comparably later occurrence of Marian lament in Bohemian literary tradition parallels the situation with other forms of writing, since, before 1300, literary production in the Czech lands was rather scarce in comparison with that of Western Europe (with outstanding exceptions of, for example, the Codex Gigas, the largest extant illuminated manuscript from medieval times, or the thirteenth-century tradition of German minnesäng cultivated in the Bohemian royal and aristocratic courts). In the first decades of the fourteenth century, with the introduction of the Luxembourg ruling dynasty to the Czech throne in the person of John the Blind (1296‒1346) and particularly of his son, Emperor Charles IV, Bohemia experienced an unprecedented cultural and economic upswell. Combined with favourable historical conditions, such as the Great Famine and the pandemics of the Black Death, which erased perhaps up to sixty percent of the population of Europe during the first half of the fourteenth century, but bypassed the Czech kingdom, the fourteenth century in the region saw breath-taking development in architecture, sculpture, panel and mural painting, and book illumina tion, as well as writing. An ambitious political, devotional, and cultural programme, enthusiastically supported by the Emperor and his circle of elite intellectuals, authors, and artists from all parts of Europe, this cultural boost was intended to raise Prague, the country's capital, to the position of the religious centre of medieval Europe, second only to Jerusalem.

Roudnický plankt (Lament from Roudnice)

Roudnice nad Labem, Lobkowicz Library, VI Fd 5, Poemata, one separate leaf of paper. Edition: Škarka, Antonín, “Roudnický plankt,” Listy filologické 79 (1956): 187‒94. Translation author's (vv. 17–56).

Plankt nebo žaloscenie matky božie u veliký pátek (Planct or Lamentation of the Mother of God on Good Friday)

Prague, National Library, XVII F 30, Milíčʼs Prayers, fols. 167r–170v, www.manuscriptorium.com. Edition: “Plankt nebo žaloscenie Matky Božie u Veliký pátek.” In Malý výbor ze staročeské literatury: podle rukopisův c. k. knihovny vysokých škol pražských XIV.–XVII. století posud z větší části netištěných, edited by Ignác Jan Hanuš (Praha, 1863): 56–60. Translation author’s.

Pláč svaté Mařie (Lament of Virgin Mary)

Prague, National Library, XXIII G 92, The Manuscript of Hradec Králové, fols. 51r–61r, www.manuscriptorium.com. Edition: “Pláč svaté Mařie.” In Hradecký rukopis, edited

Pláč Marie Magdalény (Lament of Mary Magdalene)

Prague, National Library, XXIII G 92, The Manuscript of Hradec Králové, fols. 25r–51v, www.manuscriptorium.com/. Edition: “Pláč Marie Magdalény.” In Hradecký rukopis, edited by Adolf Patera (Praha, 1881): 77–145. Translation author's (vv. 1–8, 75–96, 471–502).

Planctus Mariae

Prague, National Library, XIV A 17, Passionale quod dicitur Cunegundis abbatissae, fols. 11r‒17v, www.manuscriptorium.com. Edited by Pavel Spunar in Kolda z Koldic. Tractatus mystici ‒ Mystické traktáty, 31–47. (Praha: Oikoumene, 1997). Czech translation: Vilikovský, Písemnictví českého středověku, 41‒43. Translation author’s, with the assistance of Tomáš Weissar.

FROM THE EARLY Christian period up to the later Middle Ages, the Virgin Mary is an omnipresent figure in medieval religious practise and culture. From her withdrawn, hieratic representation as the Queen of Heaven in late Antiquity and the first centuries of the medieval era, Mary would gradually grow closer to the terrestrial experience of her devotees, firstly of the religious women and men in monastic communities, and later, from the thirteenth century onwards, also of the lay believers. To all of them, Mary increasingly appeared not only as a graceful Regina Coeli, but also as a loving, caring, and suffering Mother of God. The various images of Mary reached medieval Christians by way of different cultural media through which veneration of the Virgin was expressed and experienced. Marian liturgies, prayers, hymns, sermons, sculptures, relics, Books of Hours, and other textual, visual, and performative media, all contributed to the establishment of the various faces of Mary as a virgin, bride of God, mother of the Saviour, second to Christ in salvation history, Porta Coeli, a gateway to heaven through whose advocacy devotees could approach the Lord with their prayers without fear of rejection. Part of this Marian imagery was also her rendition as Mater Dolorosa, a mother desperately lamenting the death of her son on the cross, as represented in various types of Marian Lament.

As indicated earlier, the planctus Mariae was one element of this all-encompassing Marian veneration, occurring in the paraliturgical context as part of the Easter celebration during the Paschal Triduum; as part of the Passion plays performed during the longer period of time from the Holy Week to the end of the Easter octave; as part of the individual and collective acts of piety carried out by members of convents and other religious communities, and equally by devoted individuals such as anchorites, recluses, and well-off aristocratic women and men who did not belong to any organized group, cultivating their spirituality in their courtly and urban homes or in the solitude of their anchorages. Marian Lament was interwoven in the complex web of various devotional practises and idioms related to the Virgin Mary and her Son, most importantly the com-passionate devotion to the Passion discussed in the previous chapter, and the eucharistic devotion closely related to it.

THE FIGURE OF the Virgin Mary ranks among the most prominent figures of medieval Christian culture, and, for that matter, Christian culture in any historical period from the institution of the Church in the first centuries of the first millennium until the present. A woman who bore the Son of God, she can be counted among similar figures, divine and non-divine, in other religions, such as the Phrygian Cybele, Greek Rhea, Roman Magna Mater, or Indian Parvati. Through them, the appearance of the divine in the world is likened to the basic human experience of (giving) birth, elevating the concept of motherhood to a universal theological principal. While sharing some characteristics with these instances of maternal deity, the Christian Virgin also appears to differ substantially from them in several ways. Most importantly, the mother of the Christ is not conceived of as a deity but, on the contrary, her humanity is emphasized to underscore the paradoxical nature of the Christian god who decided to take on himself the human condition, to the extent of being born to the world in flesh and even of dying the most terrible death on the cross, in order to redeem the sins of humankind. As Theotokos or Deipara, the god-bearer, Mary, in Christian thinking, symbolizes and accentuates this ultimate proof of God's love for man. She also creates a powerful and meaningful link between theological discourse and the lived experience of ancient and medieval Christian believers. The abstract notions of the redemption of sin and the dogma of one god in three persons become concretized and more familiar in the image of the Virgin giving birth to the Son of God, and suffering together with him in the moment of his death. This introduces into Christian doctrine universal elements of the human condition such as affectionate relationships between parents and children, grieving over the death of loved ones, or being subject to an authoritative vocation. The Mother of God thus bridges the gap between the human and the divine, sharing, on one hand, Christ's divine status, as his coredemptrix, co-saviour, while she nonetheless remains palpably human in her motherhood of the divine child, which leaves her vulnerable and exposed to experiences very much like her earthly devotees.

THIS WORK IS an outcome of several years of research on the medieval lamentations of the Virgin Mary. I researched the Bohemian laments in my dissertation on medieval Bohemian literature and performance, defended at the Department of Theatre Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic in 2017, and published it two years later with the Filosofia, Prague, thanks to the financial support of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. I have also dealt with the Bohemian laments in several studies published in English in scholarly publications in the Czech Republic and abroad. This book would not have been written without the encouragement of Pamela King, who gave me the confidence to write it and invaluable assistance in the whole process. It would also not have been written without the financial support of the Academy of Sciences from the AV 21 Strategy Programme. I was assisted by a large number of colleagues and friends in my research on the Marian Lament as a genre, as well as in preparation of this book, especially Tomáš Weissar, who helped me with the reading and translation of the Latin laments and liturgical manuscripts. Furthermore, discussions with him often made me aware of important points that I would otherwise have missed. Similarly, I am very grateful to Pietro Delcorno for his valuable suggestions and for the opportunity to publish part of my research in his project on the Central European Passion Devotion. I am also indebted to Jan Hon, Martin Bažil, and Klára Škrobánková for their help with the translation of the German, French, and Polish laments, respectively. I thank Alena Sarkissian and Martin Bernátek for their helpfulness and the space they gave me to work on the book, magnanimously limiting the scale of my other duties. I thank Evina Stein for her help in deciphering the illegible rubrics in the Lament of Roudnice, and Hana Vlhová-Wörner for drawing my attention to the evidence from Bohemia of the performance of a Marian composition in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. My special thanks go to the anonymous reader of Arc Humanities Press, whose valuable comments were of immense help and spared me some embarrassing mistakes. All possible errors that remain in the text remain my sole responsibility.

IF WE ASKED for the generic characteristics of medieval and early modern Marian Lament, major difficulties would arise with providing any working definition of the genre that would be neither intolerably general, nor unproductively narrow. Though various definitions have been suggested, most of them seem to overlook or deliberately exclude one or more types of text which other authors regard as belonging to the group. Therefore, while there is general agreement that the genre is primarily defined by its content, i.e. the lamentation of the Virgin over the suffering and death of her son, there is much less agreement on which particular texts and groups of texts should be counted under the umbrella term “Marian Lament”; some scholars are even hesitant to call Marian Lament a distinctive genre.

One body of definitions stems from understanding the planctus Mariae as a type of song (i.e., a literary and musical genre), related to other medieval planctus or laments, both Latin and vernacular, such as dirges for the dead (Totenklage), female mourning, biblical planctus, complaintes dʼamour, etc. John Stevens sees Marian Lament as a sub-genre of medieval lament, defining it as dramatic or semi-dramatic compositions featuring the lament of the Virgin Mary. According to Stevens, the planctus Beatae Virginis Mariae represents “the most important type of planctus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries [which] appears in all European countries,” that is, not defined by its verse structure, as it can appear either in the form of a sequence or a lai. This view has been supported by other scholars, such as David Hiley, who categorizes the early Planctus ante nescia and Flete fideles animae as sequences with paired strophes which, nevertheless, resemble the secular lai because of the length of their strophes and their varied length and rhythm. Similarly, Janthia Yearley has it that the typical form of Marian Lament is that of a sequence and lai, underlining the relation of words and music in the planctus Mariae as a genre intended primarily for singing.

IN THE PREVIOUS chapters, Marian Lament has been presented as one of the dis-cursive formations of medi eval Marian devotion, closely related to affective and Passion piety, as it was cultivated by Cistercian, Franciscan, and Dominican theo logians and preachers from the twelfth century onwards all over Europe. It has also been presented as a sort of “fluid genre” overlapping substantially with other forms of medieval textual, visual, and cultural praxes, including Marian and Passion (para-)liturgical celebrations, private devotional techniques, the idiom of (the commentaries on) the Song of Songs, dramatic liturgical and paraliturgical representations, or the motivic and poetic appara-tus of courtly literature. The dialogic nature of Marian laments was identified as one of the distinct qualities that render the genre as inherently participatory, encouraging its pious target audience to experience the represented events as “real,” and, therefore, be able to deeply empathize with the Virgin Mary's experience of the suffering and death of her son, and even to imitate her attitude in feeling affectus and compassio as she did, in order to seek unification with the saviour, and, ultimately, salvation. This chapter, focusing on the ways in which the planctus Mariae could have been performed and experienced, discusses the particular ways in which the faithful recipients were enabled to partake in the drama of salvation through their own bodies, entering into direct interaction with the divine, in the figures of the Virgin and Christ, through song, speech, movement, and touch.

It has already been noted that Marian Lament existed in medi eval culture in various performative contexts. As an optional item, it may have been included in the Good Friday liturgy as a part of the Mass of the Presanctified, usually before the Reproaches (Improperia), Christ's complaints about his people that were chanted by the priest at the beginning of the mass, or during the Adoration of the Cross. As a paraliturgical item, the planctus could be included in the ceremony of the Deposition of the Cross, staged either during the Mass of the Presanctified, or, more commonly, after it, preceding or following the Vespers of the Divine Office.