DRÁPA AF MARÍUGRÁT, THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE VIRGIN AND CHRIST, AND THE DOMINICAN ROSARY

• Main Author: Kellinde Wrightson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sion; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.456.3035; http://www.heathengods.com/library/viking_society/1997_XXIV_5.pdf

ONE OF THE MOST popular Latin religious works of the MiddleAges was the Liber de passione Christi et doloribus et planctus Matris eius which was formerly attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux but has lately been attributed to the Italian Cistercian abbot Ogerius de Locedio (1136–1214).1 Thematically, the Liber de passione Christi is what is generally known as a Planctus Mariae (‘The Laments of Mary’),2 in which the Virgin tells of the passion of Christ (the Passio) and of her own affliction and sorrow at the crucifixion (the Compassio). Throughout most of Western Europe the Liber de passione Christi was translated, or adapted, into nearly every vernacular in both prose and verse. Rosemary Woolf has commented on the frequent appearance of this text in manuscripts in medieval England (1968, 247–48), for in-stance, and similarly John Secor noted its occurrence in medieval France (1985, 322). In Iceland there survives a vernacular prose ver-sion which appears at the end of Maríu saga with the Latin title Planctus siue lamentacio beate Marie (Unger 1871, 1003–12; see also Schottmann 1973, 504–05), and two poetic versions: a skaldic poem called Drápa af Maríugrát, which is the subject of this examination, and an endrhyming poem called Maríugrátr.3 Although it cannot be determined for certain that the Liber de passione Christi was the direct source of the Icelandic Planctus siue lamentacio beate Marie, or indeed of either of the two extant poetic versions, the latter three texts are certainly part of the vernacular tradition of the