2. The seventeenth-century historian Thomas Le Roy (sacristan of Mont-Saint-Michel from 1646–48) described the cross in his Les curieuses recherches du Mont-Sainct-Michel, 2 vols., ed. Eugène de Robillard de Beaurepaire (Caen: Le Gost-Clérisse, 1878), 1:106Google Scholar. Le Roy states that Abbot Hildebert I had this monument erected soon after the miracle had taken place, and that it was continually maintained and periodically repaired by the monks of the abbey through the fourteenth century. Le Roy himself claims to have seen the cross in the seventeenth century, by which time it remained submerged by the tides except on rare occasions.

3. In a fragmentary late medieval liturgical play from Mont-Saint-Michel, the end of a script for the performance of this miracle (presumably by monks of the abbey) is found. This text is edited by Eugène de Robillard de Beaurepaire as Les miracles du Mont Saint-Michel: fragment d'un mystère du XIVe siècle (Avranches: A. Anfray, 1862), 22–24.Google Scholar

4. See the appendix at the end of this article for a chronological list of edited versions of the Peril, including full bibliographical citations. Although I have endeavored to locate all of the printed versions of the miracle, there may well be additional ones that I have not uncovered.

5. In his study “Les ‘doublets’ en hagiographie latine,” Analecta Bollandiana 96 (1978): 261–69Google Scholar, the most thorough examination to date of this phenomenon, Baudoin de Gaiffier noted that Hippolyte Delehaye was the first to point out the frequency with which medieval hagiographers borrowed vignettes—and even entire vitae—from one another. Ibid., 261–62.

6. Although angels were technically sexless, scriptural depictions of them as men and iconographical traditions that portrayed angels as male ensured that Michael was generally coded as male. Representations of Saint Michael in the medieval manuscripts and lead pilgrims' badges of Mont-Saint-Michel show him as a winged male warrior armed with a lance, shield, and sometimes the scales of judgment (with which the archangel was believed to weigh the souls of the deceased). On scriptural and iconographical depictions of angels and their influence on the medieval clerical—and popular—imagination, see Keck, David, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28–36.Google Scholar

7. In the past fifteen years the literature on the relationship between gender and sanctity in medieval thought has grown dramatically. The pioneering work of Caroline Walker Bynum on high-medieval women saints in Northern Europe (Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987])Google Scholar and that of Wemple, Suzanne (Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500–900 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981])Google Scholar on early medieval Francia remain influential. Two more recent important works by McNamara, Jo Ann (Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millennia [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996])Google Scholar and Tibbetts Schulenburg, Jane (Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998])Google Scholar have mined the huge numbers of medieval biographies, or vitae, of women saints in order to identify broader trends in the changing definitions of gendered sanctity over the course of the Middle Ages. Much attention has lately focused on holy women and their male amanuenses, with a particular focus on the question of male projection of ideals onto their subjects; recent approaches to this topic are exemplified by the collection of essays in Mooney, Catherine M., ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in particular Mooney's excellent introduction and her essay on Saint Clare of Assisi. On gender and devotion to particular saints' cults in the later Middle Ages, see the essays and bibliographical references in Riches, Samantha J. E. and Salih, Sarah, Gender and Holiness: Men, Women, and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 2002).Google Scholar

8. Medieval misogynistic views that depicted women's sexuality as uncontrollable and polluting have been explored in several recent studies; for surveys of medieval clerical views of men and women's sexuality and relevant bibliography, see Salisbury, Joyce, “Gendered Sexuality,” in A Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bullough, Vern L. and Brundage, James A. (New York: Garland, 1996), 81–102Google Scholar, and Schulenburg, , Forgetful of Their Sex, chapter 5, “‘Golden Wombs’: Motherhood and Sanctity.”Google Scholar

9. On the value of miracles as sources, Ruth Mazo Karras observes that “if there exists such a thing as a general European medieval mentality, the exempla and miracle stories are among the best places to look for it.” See Karras, , “The Virgin and the Pregnant Abbess: Miracles and Gender in the Middle Ages,” Medieval Perspectives 3 (1988): 112–32 (at 112).Google Scholar

10. Miracles might be preached as part of a campaign to promote a particular shrine and its saint or as illustrative anecdotes within sermons devoted to specific moral lessons. For instances of medieval religious communities sponsoring preaching campaigns, see Sumption, Jonathan, Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 152–53Google Scholar. Benedicta Ward describes the widespread dissemination of the miracles of famous medieval sanctuaries such as Santiago de Compostella in Northwestern Spain in her Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982)Google Scholar, chapter 6: “Miracles and Pilgrimage.” On the rise of the exempla collection as an important tool of medieval preachers in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, see Little, Lester, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (reprint Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 192.Google Scholar

11. See, for example, the twelfth-century Old French translation of the Michael-version by Saint-Pair, Guillaume de in his Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, ed. Francisque, Michel (Caen: A. Hardel, 1856), lines 3, 532–715Google Scholar, and the anonymous thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman version of the Peril as a miracle, Marian, La deuxième collection Anglo-Normande des miracles de la Sainte Vierge et son original, ed. Kjellman, H., 2nd ed. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1977), ch. 7, pp. 314–15.Google Scholar

12. These are as follows: Guillaume de Saint-Pair, Roman du Mont Saint-Michel; an anonymous Anglo-Norman verse version, Manuscrits français number 375, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; de Berceo, Gonzalo, Milagros de Nuestra SenoraGoogle Scholar; da Voragine, Jacobus, Legenda AureaGoogle Scholar; Alfonso X of Castile, Cantigas de Santa Maria; The South English Legendary; an anonymous exemplum collection entitled Ci nous dit; Gobi, Jean, Scala coeliGoogle Scholar; and Miélot, Jean, Miracles de Nostre Dame. For modern editions of these works, see the appendix at the end of this article.Google Scholar

13. Signori, Gabriela, “La bienheureuse polysémie,” in Marie: Le culte de la Vierge dans la société médiévale, ed. Dominique, Iogna-Pratt, Eric, Palazzo, and Daniel, Russo (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), 611–14Google Scholar. There is a rapidly growing body of scholarship on preaching, focused primarily on the later Middle Ages. Joan Young Gregg has edited and commented on a number of exempla that contain clear messages about proper and improper devotional practice, gender roles, and the treatment of non-Christians in her Devils, Women, and Jeivs: Reflections on the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997)Google Scholar. On the genre of the sermones de sanctis, which involved the preaching of saints' Lives and miracles according to the liturgical calendar, see Ferzoco, George, “Medieval Sermon Collections on Saints,” in Preacher, Sermon, and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn, Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 279–91.Google Scholar

14. Angels were believed by medieval theologians to have been created prior to the existence of sex difference, ushered in by the creation of the first man and woman; for an overview of medieval theories of the angelic creation from Saint Augustine onwards, see Keck, , Angels and Angelology, 16–27.Google Scholar

15. On lying-in rituals, see Lee, Becky R., “Men's Recollections of a Women's Rite: Medieval English Men's Recollections Regarding the Rite of the Purification of Women After Childbirth,” Gender & History 14 (2002): 224–41 (esp. 227–28)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and McMurray Gibson, Gail, “Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval Childbirth,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999): 7–25.Google Scholar

16. The offering of special prayers or candles—the lengths of which were determined by the circumference of the pregnant supplicant's midsection—to these saints were common birthing-chamber rituals. See Schulenburg, , Forgetful of Their Sex, 230–31.Google Scholar

17. This early miracle collection is edited as an appendix to Roy, Le, Les curieuses recherches, 1:873–92Google Scholar. On the dating of this early collection and the monastic life at the Mont in this period, see Lelegard, M., “Saint Aubert,” in Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 5 vols., ed. Laporte, J., Foreville, R., Baudot, M., and others (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1966–1993), 1:29–52 (at 37–41).Google Scholar

18. The version in the eleventh-century miracula of the abbey is edited in Roy, Le, Les curieuses recherches, 1:888–90Google Scholar, and that in the Roman du Mont Saint-Michel at lines 3, 532–710.

19. Although it is difficult to determine the extent to which the Latin miracula would have been made available to pilgrims, the preface to the Roman du Mont Saint-Michel explicitly states that it was composed with an audience of lay pilgrims in mind. Ibid., lines 5–20.

20. Of the thirteen stories contained in the collection just three are acts of mercy or healing: the Peril story and two additional accounts of healings performed by the relics of Bishop Aubert of Avranches, the legendary founder of Mont-Saint-Michel. The remaining ten narratives describe acts of vengeance and displays of power on the part of the archangel. For the full collection of narratives, see Roy, Le, Les curieuses recherches, 1:873–92.Google Scholar

21. I have adopted the distinction between “acts of power” and “acts of mercy” from Benedicta Ward's study, Miracles and the Medieval Mind. For a more detailed explanation of these classifications, see Ward, chapter 3: “Miracles at Traditional Shrines: St Faith, St Benedict and St Cuthbert.”

22. On the development of the pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel and the cult of the archangel at the abbey in this period, see Labande, E. R., “Pèlerinages au Mont Saint-Michel pendant le moyen âge,” Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 3:237–50Google Scholar, and Allen Smith, Katherine, “An Angel's Power in a Bishop's Body: The Making of the Cult of Aubert of Avranches at Mont-Saint-Michel,” Journal of Medieval History, 29 (2003): 347–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. On the “marialization” of miracles in this period, see Philippart, Guy, “Le récit miraculaire marial dans l'Occident médiévale,” in Marie: Le culte de la Vierge, 566–67Google Scholar. For two such instances of the Virgin supplanting Saints Peter and James in stories originally associated with the cults of these two saints, see The Stella Maris of John of Garland, ed. Evelyn Faye, Wilson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), 169–70 (n. 14), and 199–200 (n. 50).Google Scholar

24. The other three miracles in the series are “the Jewish boy,” “Theophilus,” and “Julian the Apostate.” On the “Elements-Series,” see the still important article by Southern, R. W., “The English Origins of the ‘Miracles of the Virgin,’” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958): 176–216Google Scholar, which is supplemented in important ways by Jennings, J. C., “The Origins of the ‘Elements Series’ of the Miracles of the Virgin,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1968): 84–93.Google Scholar

25. Malmesbury was rededicated to the Virgin under the abbacy of Aelfric (ca. 965–77), whose Marian writings would certainly have been known to William of Malmesbury; Evesham had been dedicated to the Virgin at its foundation in the eighth century. On devotion to the Virgin in Anglo-Saxon England more generally, see Clayton, Mary, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), (see 133–37 for the trend of rededicating churches to the Virgin after the tenth century). Clayton's analysis of the Marian homilies of Aelfric and Fulbert and discussion of the place of miracles in these texts is at 235–52.Google Scholar

26. According to J. C. Jennings, Dominic of Evesham's collection (which slightly predated and strongly influenced William of Malmesbury's own Marian miracula) represents a turning point in the development of Marian miracles, since “no longer are St. Basil, St. Cyriacus or St. Odo of Cluny given predominance, but the Virgin's miracles have been extracted from their Lives and she has been raised to primary importance.” See Jennings, , “Origins of the ‘Elements-Series,’” 91.Google Scholar

27. Michael was credited with the weighing of souls and the guardianship of heaven (tasks also sometimes assigned to Saint Peter), while the Virgin was imagined to intercede on behalf of sinners who would otherwise be condemned, originally by pleading with the archangel (or Peter) and in later centuries by dropping her rosary into the scales to tip them in the sinners' favor. On the tradition of this association in Anglo-Saxon England, see Clayton, , Cult of the Virgin, 253–54Google Scholar; for the development of this belief and its iconography more generally, see Mâle, Emile, Religious Art in France: The Twelfth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 413–14Google Scholar, and Fournée, Jean, “L'archange de la mort et du jugement,” in Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 3:76–87.Google Scholar

28. Interestingly, the “croix des grèves” was located at the halfway point between Tombelaine and the larger Mont-Saint-Michel. Paul Gout provides a convenient map showing the relative positions of Tombelaine and the cross vis-à-vis Mont-Saint-Michel in his Le Mont Saint-Michel, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Colin, 1910), 1Google Scholar: plan III (facing page 38). On the Virgin's shrine at Tombelaine, which was founded in 1137 and consisted of a priory and pilgrims' church staffed by monks from the nearby abbey, see Dubois, Jacques, “Les dépendances de l'abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel et la vie monastique dans les prieurés,” Millenaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 1:662–65.Google Scholar

29. J. C. Jennings suggested that Guillaume de Saint-Pair's version of the Peril was “the original version of the ‘Childbirth at Sea’ story” appropriated by Dominic for his collection. The secure daring of the Roman du Mont Saint-Michel to the early part of the abbacy of Robert de Torigni (1154–86), however, seems to rule out the possibility that Dominic of Evesham was familiar with Guillaume de Saint-Pair's version of the Peril. For a fuller examination of Dominic of Evesham's collection and its sources, see Jennings, , “Origins of the ‘Elements-Series’”Google Scholar; on the dating of the Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, see Blacker, Jean, “Monastic History in a Courtly Mode? Author and Audience in Guillaume de Saint-Pair's Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel and the anonymous Histoire de l'abbaye de Fécamp,” in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers From the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Donald, Maddox and Sara, Sturm-Maddox (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1994), 261–99.Google Scholar

30. Italics mine. Canal, José A., ed., “El libro ‘De miraculis Sancte Mariae’ de Domingo de Evesham/' Studium legionense 39 (1998): 268Google Scholar: “Refertur vero a quibusdam sanctum Michaelem archangelum quondam suum peregrinum sublevatione aquarum liberasse a periculo maris, sed hanc mulierem Domina mundi in ipsis fluctibus liberavit a periculo mortis.” Dominic's acknowledgement that the Peril, rendered as a miracle of the Virgin, is in a sense a “stolen” miracle, is repeated in several later redactions of the tale, including the mid-twelfth-century “Pez” collection, a slightly later grouping of stories contained in the unpublished British Library MS, the poet Adgar's collection contained in British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C X, ed. Neuhaus, C. as Adgars Marienlegenden (Heilbronn: Aschersleben, 1886), 22–23Google Scholar, and the thirteenth-century Liber Mariae of Gil de Zamora, edited as “Cincuenta leyendas por Gil de Zamora,” ed. Fidel, Fita, Boletín de la Real Academica de la Historia 7 (1885): 37 (120–22)Google Scholar. Although he undoubtedly knew Dominic's collection well, his contemporary William of Malmesbury recorded his own Marian version of the Peril without any reference to a preexisting redaction of the story involving Saint Michael.

31. On the differences between medieval and modern scholarly approaches to multiple versions of a text, and the increasing tendency of modern medievalists to place value on multiple redactions, see Ashley, Kathleen and Sheingorn, Pamela, “Introduction: Reading Hagiography,” in Writing Faith: Text, Sign, and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Lifshitz, Felice, “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. These are the versions in the eleventh-century miracula of Mont-Saint-Michel and the Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel.

33. Roy, Le, Les curieuses recherches, 1:888Google Scholar; Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, lines 3, 550 and 3, 592.

34. Roy, Le, Les curieuses recherches, 1:888Google Scholar: “Ipsa vero eundem sanctum majori succensa desiderio ut hoc facerent urgere coepit omnimodo. Cuius ille tandem devictus precibus cum suorum aliquibus ad eundem Sancti Michaelis locum est profectus.”

35. Ibid., 889: “Pelagus itaque altius accrescens in immensum quasi quemdam circa earn profundissimum effecit puteum: nee una gutta sui introrsus per totum ipsius circuli defluente spatium. … Talis, itaque ut sic dictum sit, tuta munimine valli, ibidem iam secura peperit, enixumque puerum ejusdem pelagi undis abluit quod ad abluendum ut aqua hauriri poterat.”

36. Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, lines 3, 687–95: “Seignors, oiez; / Si vos dirai cum sui guarie, / Se dam-le-Deu me benéie. / Tant cum la mer ici esteit, / Avis me fut que il aveit / Une cortine entor mei blanche / Molt plus assez que nois sor branche; / A semblance de mur esteit, / La mer passer ne la poieit.”

37. Biblical precedents of angels as “a burning fire” (Ps. 103:4) probably inspired these descriptions of apparitions of the archangel at Mont-Saint-Michel, which appear in chronicles and miracle stories from the eleventh through fifteenth century.

38. Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, lines 2, 859–60: “cum un brandon / Qui est espris tot environ.”

39. For a reproduction of this retable, along with a discussion of its stylistic elements and probable provenance, see Blanc, Monique, Retables: la collection du Musée des arts décoratifs (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998), 60–61.Google Scholar

40. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. Von E. Scott, H. and Swinton Bland, C. C., 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1929), 2:77 (bk 8, ch. 76)Google Scholar. It should be noted that the aid of certain male saints might be invoked by medieval women in labor; for example, Michael E. Goodich has shown that fourteenth-century Italian matrons called on the Dominican Saint Peter Martyr to ease the pains of childbed, though he does not mention any cases of the saint taking an active role in childbirth miracles by appearing in the lying-in chambers of the women in question. See Goodich's, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 87–89Google Scholar. Ronald C. Finucane found that Thomas Becket and Saint Louis IX were both credited with saving several women suffering labor complications, but again none of these miracles featured either male saint appearing “in person” to the women concerned; by contrast, Finucane mentioned another case in which the husband of a parturient woman waiting outside the lying-in chamber saw an apparition of Saint Dorothy of Montau entering his wife's room, as if to assist the midwives already within. See Finucane's, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), 27–35.Google Scholar

41. For these associations, see Atkinson, Clarissa W., The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, and Wood, Charles T., “The Doctors' Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,” Speculum 56 (1981): 710–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

42. The South English Legendary, 3 vols., ed. Charlotte, D'Evelyn and Mill, Anna J., Early English Text Society 0.5. 235, 236, and 244 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956–1959), 2:407Google Scholar: “And hadde child ÞER in Þe se / and ate 3eres ende / Hol and sond wiÞ hure child / to Þis feste he gan wende.”

43. Ibid.: “And saued was in Þe deope se / Þoru grace of sein Michel / For Gode Þer nis non of 30u / Þat hure coutÞe habbe iwest so wel / Ne so iued hure ne hure child / Þat necostnede worÞ a strau / For Þei he[o] hadde viss & drinke inou / 3e witeÞ wel it was rau / And to fleote so in Þe grete se / wonder Þat heo nas ded / Sein Michel was a god wardein / wane we habbeÞ al ised.”

44. For the Glossa Ordinaria's standard interpretation of these elements, see Migne, J.-P., ed., Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, 221 vols. [hereafter PL] (Paris: 1844–1866), 114: 731–32Google Scholar. The woman clothed with the sun was also sometimes interpreted as the Virgin Mary (who was in turn a common metaphor for the Church); for an edition and French translation of several medieval Latin exegetical texts concerning this passage, see Lobrichon, Guy, “La femme d'Apocalypse 12 dans l'exegèse du haut Moyen Âge latin (760–1200),” in Marie: Le culte de la Vierge, 407–39.Google Scholar

45. On the Virgin's delivery as imagined by medieval men and women writers, see Atkinson, , Oldest Vocation, 111–13Google Scholar. The Virgin's painless delivery was celebrated in liturgical prayer as well, as in the following sequence from the English Sarum Missal: “But, O how happy and joyous, O Mary, was the dialogue between you and the angel, by which life came forth for the whole world. / But your most blessed childbirth, free from pain, seems to outshine all others. / Through which the curse of Eve was dissolved, and equally a blessing was bestowed on all women. / To whom, therefore, other than you, consoler of all women, shall desperate pregnant women, groaning with tears, flee?” This text is translated by Murray, Jacqueline in Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2001), 410.Google Scholar

46. Gibson, , “Scene and Unseen,”Google Scholar and Coletti, Theresa, “Purity and Danger: The Paradox of Mary's Body and the En-Gendering of the Infancy Narrative in the English Mystery Cycles,” in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. Linda, Lomperis and Sarah, Stanbury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).Google Scholar

47. On the theme of the Virgin as midwife, see Karras, , “The Virgin and the Pregnant Abbess,” 122–24.Google Scholar

48. For the details of medieval nativity plays as performed in fourteenth-century northern France, see Penn, Dorothy, The Staging of the ‘Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages” of MS. Cangé (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), 29.Google Scholar

49. Penn, , Staging of the Miracles, 29, 94–95Google Scholar. In the Cangé collection these are as follows: 1 (“Infant Given to the Devil”), 2 (“Pregnant Abbess”), 5 (“Nativity”), 15 (“Revived Infant”), 18 (“Theodoric”), 29 (“Queen of Hungary”), 30 (“Jehan le Paulu”), 32 (“King Thierry”), 37 (“King's Son”), and 39 (“Clovis”). Other well-known Marian miracles involving pregnant women are the “Jewess in Childbirth” and “Incest” (in which a mother becomes pregnant by her son), both of which appear in Vincent of Beauvais (as well as multiple other medieval collections), Speculum historiale, ed. and trans. Michel, Tarayre as La Vierge et le miracle (Paris: H. Champion, 1999), ch. 7, pp. 93–95, 99.Google Scholar

50. Penn, , Staging of the Miracles, 58Google Scholar. Penn notes that irresponsible husbands are stock characters in many of these tales, “credulous and quick to suspect the infidelity of their wives,” or prone to go off on pilgrimage at inopportune moments.

51. A detailed history of the Virgin's veil, the Byzantine predecessor of the holy ceinte, and of the uses and significance of such Marian relics for women, has recently been written by Weyl Carr, Annemarie; see “Threads of Authority: The Virgin Mary's Veil in the Middle Ages,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart, Gordon (New York: Palgrave, 2001)Google Scholar. For the uses of the Virgin's clothing and milk in the medieval West, see Warner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage, 1976), 278–79Google Scholar. The Old French words are much closer than the modern French “ceinture” (belt) and “enceinte” (pregnant).

52. Schulenburg, , Forgetful of Their Sex, 230–31.Google Scholar

53. Karras, , “The Virgin and the Pregnant Abbess,” 116–19.Google Scholar

54. On the clerical compilation of Marian miracles and their “ingredients” in the High Middle Ages, see Signori, Gabriela, “The Miracle Kitchen and Its Ingredients: A Methodical and Critical Approach to Marian Shrine Wonders (10th–13th century),” Hagio-graphica 3 (1996): 277–303.Google Scholar

55. Dominic of Evesham's description, which is echoed almost verbatim in the versions of Gil de Zamora (Liber Marine, ed. Fidel, Fita, Boletín de la Real Academica de la Historia 17 [1885]: 121)Google Scholar and the “Pez” collection (Liber de miraculis Sanctae Dei Genetricis Mariae, ed. Pez, Bernard, reprint Thomas Frederick Crane [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1925], 25)Google Scholar, is as follows: “turbis ad eius limina properantibus, ac iam in medio arenae maris positis, affuit inter ceteros quaedam mulier paupercula, vicino partu omnino iam gravida.”

56. William of Malmesbury, De laudibus et miraculis S. Mariae, ed. Canal, José A. as El Libro “De laudibus et miraculis Sanctae Marine” de Guillermo de Malmesbury (Rome: Alma Roma, 1968), 159: “In mediis fluctibus locus sit amoenissimus, cui virginis manica fit thalamus, spura balsami odorem suauissimus.” The wording of this passage is strongly reminiscent of Deuteronomy 33:12, which describes how “the best beloved of the Lord shall dwell confidently within him: as in a bridal chamber shall he abide all the day long, and between his shoulders shall be rest.”Google Scholar

57. London, British Library Royal MS 2 B. VII, fol. 214r. For the identification of this miniature with the Peril story, see Warner, George, Queen Mary's Psalter: Miniatures and Drawings by an English Artist of the 14th Century (London: British Museum, 1912), 35Google Scholar. This image is reproduced in Herolt, Johannes, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ed. and trans. Swinton Bland, C. C. (London: Garland, 1928)Google Scholar, pl. II, no. 2 (facing p. 22). For additional medieval visual representations of the Peril as a Marian miracle, see Barnay, Sylvie, Le ciel sur la terre: les apparitions de la Vierge au moyen âge (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 65–66.Google Scholar

58. Vierge et le miracle, 48: “manica super earn proiecta, ita intactam a terrisono impetu maris reddidit, ut nec minima etiam gutta totius abyssi illius vestimenta contingeret.” Virtually identical descriptions are found in Dominic of Evesham, De miraculis Sancte Mariae, 268; “Pez,” Liber de miraculis Sanctae Dei genetricis, 26Google Scholar; and de Zamora, Gil, Liber Mariae, 121.Google Scholar

59. For this Classical meaning, see Glare, P. G. W., The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 934Google Scholar. On the medieval use of intacta in connection with the Virgin, see Blaise, Albert, Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevii, CCCM 27 bis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 495.Google Scholar

60. For example, the following antiphon, a short chanted prayer widely sung in her honor as part of the liturgy for the feast of the Nativity, describes the Virgin in these terms: “Hodie intacta virgo deum nobis genuit teneris indutum membris quem lactare meruit omnes ipsum adoremus qui venit salvare nos.” Corpus antiphonalium officii, ed. Hesbert, Renato-Joanne, 6 vols. (Rome: Herder, 1963–1979), vol. 3, entry number 3104, p. 256.Google Scholar

61. For the different meanings of the verb, see Lewis, Charlton T. and Short, Charles, A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews' Edition of Freund's Latin Dictionary, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 449–50.Google Scholar

62. The Virgin's role in this respect is strongly reminiscent of her association with conversion and the “purification” of non-Christian places of worship in Reconquest-era Spain and Colonial Mexico, as described by Remensnyder, Amy G. in her article on “The Colonization of Sacred Architecture: The Virgin Mary, Mosques, and Temples in Medieval Spain and Early Sixteenth-Century Mexico,” in Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society: Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little, ed. Sharon, Farmer and Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 189–219 (esp. 198–201).Google Scholar

63. Compare the wording of Psalms 68:16–17: “Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up: and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, O Lord, for thy mercy is kind; look upon me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.”

64. Dominic of Evesham, De miraculis, 268: “O quam pia es, Domina nostra sancta Maria. Succere ergo, Virgo Dei genitrix, et nobis miseris peccatoribus famulis tuis in tua misericordia sperantibus, ut non nos demergeat tempestas aquae, neque absorbeat nos profundum, neque urgeat super nos puteus os suum, se tua misericordissima pietate et sanctissima intercessione adiuti ac confortati, serviamus vero regi, qui vivit et regnat per immortalia saecula. Amen.”

65. Glossa Ordinaria, PL 113:948: “Vers. 16—Profundum. (Cas.) Peccatorum quod delugit animas, unde: ‘peccator cum venerit in profundum peccatorum, contemnit’ (Prov. XVIII).… Et si cecidisti non claudit super te puteus os suum, si non claudis os tuum, sed confitere et dic: ‘De profundis clamavi ad te, Domini,’ et evades. …” “Vers. 17—Exaudi me, Domini (Cas). Periculis hominum expositis voce eorum precatur: ‘Exaudi me Domine, quia benigna misericordia,’ non qui merui. … Suavis est tribulato misericordia, ut panis esurienti. Venit tribulatio: differt Deus subvenire, ut moveat desiderium, et sit dulce auxilium.”

66. Dominic of Evesham, , De miraculis, 268Google Scholar: “Sunt nota fratribus loci sanctae Dei genitricis miracula.”

67. For the foundation of Monte Gargano and the archangel's provision of these relics for the shrine, see Arnold, John C., “Arcadia Becomes Jerusalem: Angelic Caverns and Shrine Conversion at Monte Gargano,” Speculum 75 (2000): 567–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the relics of Michael's sword and shield at Mont-Saint-Michel, see Dubois, Jacques, “Le trésor des reliques du Mont Saint-Michel,” in Millénaire monastique, 1:501–93 (at 569–70).Google Scholar

68. For examples of this iconography from late medieval England, see Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), pl. 120–22.Google Scholar

69. I make no claim to have searched exhaustively for evidence of male saintly “midwifery” in medieval vitae; this is simply my impression, and further work on this subject will certainly offer a more nuanced reading of the evidence. My use of Thomas Becket and Louis IX as examples of male saints' interaction with parturient women is derived from the research of Ronald Finucane on their miracula that involve pregnancy and childbirth in some way. See Finucane's, The Rescue of the Innocents, 27–35.Google Scholar

70. This wonderful explanation of the appeal of miracle stories to medieval sensibilities comes from Vauchez, André, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, trans. Schneider, Margery (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 88.Google Scholar