The Miracle of the Pregnant Abbess

Download The Miracle of the Pregnant Abbess PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 562 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Miracle of the Pregnant Abbess by : Eric T. Metzler

Download or read book The Miracle of the Pregnant Abbess written by Eric T. Metzler and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin

Download Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317126092
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin by : Robert Boenig

Download or read book Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin written by Robert Boenig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin, Patricia Timmons and Robert Boenig present the first English translation of a twelfth-century Latin collection of miracles that Berceo, the first named poet in the Spanish language, used as a source for his thirteenth-century Spanish collection Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Using the MS Thott 128, close to the one Berceo must have used, Timmons and Boenig provide both translation and analysis, exploring the Latin Miracles, suggesting how it was used as a sacred text, and placing it within the history of Christians' evolving understanding of the Virgin's role in their lives. In addition, this volume explores Berceo's reaction to the Latin Miracles, demonstrating that he reacted creatively to his source texts as well as to changes in Church culture and governance that occurred between the composition of Latin Miracles and the thirteenth century, translating it across both language and culture. Accessible and useful to students and scholars of medieval and Spanish studies, this book includes the original Latin text, translations of the Latin Miracles, including analyses of 'Saint Peter and the Lustful Monk,' 'The Little Jewish Boy,' and 'The Jews of Toledo.'

Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile

Download Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472107230
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (72 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile by : Louise Mirrer

Download or read book Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile written by Louise Mirrer and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Groundbreaking study of the impact of gender and religion in the power struggle behind medieval Spanish texts

ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama, vol 52-53

Download ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama, vol 52-53 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : First Circle Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0991976029
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (919 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama, vol 52-53 by : Robert L. A. Clark

Download or read book ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama, vol 52-53 written by Robert L. A. Clark and published by First Circle Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama is an academic journal devoted to the study of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at Western University (www.uwo.ca). For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org. The Ritual Life of Medieval Europe: Papers By and For C. Clifford Flanigan Guest Editor: Robert L. A. Clark Chief Editor: Mario B. Longtin Volume 52-53 is a double issue honouring the memory of C. Clifford Flanigan. It consists of the unpublished articles of Professor Flanigan, and articles in tribute by his friends and colleagues in the field.

Spiritual Economies

Download Spiritual Economies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812204557
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Spiritual Economies by : Nancy Bradley Warren

Download or read book Spiritual Economies written by Nancy Bradley Warren and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its creation in the early fourteenth century to its dissolution in the sixteenth, the nunnery at Dartford was among the richest in England. Although obliged to support not only its own community but also a priory of Dominican friars at King's Langley, Dartford prospered. Records attest to the business skill of the Dartford nuns, as they managed the house's numerous holdings of land and property, together with the rents and services owed them. That the Dartford nuns were capable businesswomen is not surprising, since the house was also a center of female education. For Nancy Bradley Warren, the story of Dartford exemplifies the vibrancy of nuns' material and spiritual lives in later medieval England. Revising the long-held view that fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English nunneries were impoverished both financially and religiously, Warren clarifies that the women in female monastic communities like Dartford were not woefully incompetent at managing their affairs. Instead, she reveals the complex role of female monasticism in diverse systems of production and exchange. Like the nuns at Dartford, women religious in late medieval England were enmeshed in material, symbolic, political, and spiritual economies that were at times in harmony and at other times in conflict with each other. Building on emerging cross-disciplinary trends in feminist scholarship on medieval religion, Warren extends ongoing debates about textual and economic constructions of women's identities to the rarely considered evidence of monastic theory and practice. To this end, Spiritual Economies emphasizes that the cloister was not impermeable. As worldly forces such as economic trends and political conflicts affected life in the nunneries, so too did religious practices have political impact. In breaking down the convent wall, Warren also succeeds in breaching the boundaries separating the material and the symbolic, the religious and the secular, the literary and the historical. She turns to a wide range of sources—from legislative texts, court records, and financial accounts to devotional treatises and political propaganda—to explore the centrality of female monasticism to the flowering of female spirituality and to the later Middle Ages at large.

Virgin Whore

Download Virgin Whore PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501730347
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Virgin Whore by : Emma Maggie Solberg

Download or read book Virgin Whore written by Emma Maggie Solberg and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality. Although history is narrated as a progressive loss of innocence, the Madonna has grown purer with each passing century. Looking to a period before the idea of her purity and virginity had ossified, Solberg uncovers depictions and interpretations of Mary, discernible in jokes and insults, icons and rituals, prayers and revelations, allegories and typologies—and in late medieval vernacular biblical drama. More unmistakable than any cultural artifact from late medieval England, these biblical plays do not exclusively interpret Mary and her virginity as fragile. In a collection of plays known as the N-Town manuscript, Mary is represented not only as virgin and mother but as virgin and promiscuous adulteress, dallying with the Trinity, the archangel Gabriel, and mortals in kaleidoscopic erotic combinations. Mary’s "virginity" signifies invulnerability rather than fragility, redemption rather than renunciation, and merciful license rather than ascetic discipline. Taking the ancient slander that Mary conceived Jesus in sin as cause for joyful laughter, the N-Town plays make a virtue of those accusations: through bawdy yet divine comedy, she redeems and exalts the crime. By revealing the presence of this promiscuous Virgin in early English drama and late medieval literature and culture—in dirty jokes told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, Malory’s Arthurian romances, and the double entendres of the allegorical Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn—Solberg provides a new understanding of Marian traditions.

Storyworlds of Robin Hood

Download Storyworlds of Robin Hood PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789142695
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Storyworlds of Robin Hood by : Lesley Coote

Download or read book Storyworlds of Robin Hood written by Lesley Coote and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-04-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robin Hood is one of the most enduring and well-known figures of English folklore. Yet who was he really? In this intriguing book, Lesley Coote reexamines the early tales about Robin in light of the stories, both English and French, that have grown up around them—stories with which they shared many elements of form and meaning. In the process, she returns to questions such as where did Robin come from, and what did these stories mean? The Robin who reveals himself is as spiritual as he is secular, and as much an insider as he is an outlaw. And in the context of current debates about national identity and Britain’s relationship with the wider world, Robin emerges to be as European as he is English—or perhaps, as Coote suggests, that is precisely the quality which made him fundamentally English all along.

Sanctity in the North

Download Sanctity in the North PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442691247
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (426 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sanctity in the North by : Thomas DuBois

Download or read book Sanctity in the North written by Thomas DuBois and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-02-23 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With original translations of primary texts and articles by leading researchers in the field, Sanctity in the North gives an introduction to the literary production associated with the cult of the saints in medieval Scandinavia. For more than five hundred years, Nordic clerics and laity venerated a host of saints through liturgical celebrations, written manuscripts, visual arts, and oral traditions. Textual evidence of this widespread and important aspect of medieval spirituality abounds. Written biographies (or vitae), compendia of witnessed miracles, mass propers, homilies, sagas and chronicles, dramatic scripts, hymns, and ballads are among the region's surviving medieval manuscripts and early published books. Sanctity in the North features English translations of texts from Latin or vernacular Nordic languages, in many cases for the first time. The accompanying essays concerning the texts, saints, cults, and history of the period complement the translations and reflect the contributors' own disciplinary groundings in folklore, philology, medieval, and religious studies.

Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England

Download Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350146854
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England by : David Watt

Download or read book Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England written by David Watt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'We live,' according to Adam Kotsko, 'in an awkward age.' While this condition may present some challenges, it may also help us to be more attuned to awkwardness in other ages. This book pairs medieval texts with twenty-first century films or television programmes to explore what the resonance between them can tell us about living together in an awkward age. In this nuanced and engaging study, David Watt focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the 15th century, which seems to intervene awkwardly in the literary trajectory between Chaucer and the Renaissance. This book's hypothesis is that the social discomfort depicted and engendered by writers as diverse as Thomas Hoccleve, Margery Kempe, and Sir Thomas Malory is a feature rather than a flaw. Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England explains that these authors have a great deal in common with other fifteenth-century authors, who generated embodied experiences of social discomfort in a range of genres by adopting and adapting literary techniques used by their predecessors and successors in slightly different ways. Like the twenty-first century texts with which they are paired, the late-medieval texts that feature in this book use the relationship between laughter and awkwardness to ask what it means to live with each other and how we can learn to live with ourselves.

Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature

Download Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : DS Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1843842637
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (438 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature by : Jill Mann

Download or read book Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature written by Jill Mann and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2011 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh and provocative approaches to the literature of the middle ages, offering close readings of texts from Chaucer to Henryson, and beast fable to devotional works. Jill Mann's writing, teaching, and scholarship have transformed our understanding of two distinct fields, medieval Latin and Middle English literature, as well as their intersection. Essays in this volume seek to honour this achievement by looking at entirely new aspects of these fields (the relationship of song to affect, the political valence of classical allusion, the Latin background of Middle English devotional texts). Others look again at the literary kinds and ideas most important in Mann's own work (beast fable, the nature of allegory, the nature of "nature", the relationship of economic thought and literature, satire, language as a subject for poetry) in the poets she hasbeen most drawn to (Chaucer, Langland, Henryson). All of the essays involve close readings of the most careful kind, taking as their primary method Professor Mann's repeated injunction to attend, above all, to the"words on the page". Christopher Cannon is Professor of English, New York University; Maura Nolan is Associate Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley. Contributors: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Christopher Cannon, Rebecca Davis, Peter Dronke, A.S.G. Edwards, Elizabeth B. Edwards, Maura Nolan, Paul J. Patterson, Derek Pearsall, Ad Putter, Paul Gerhard Schmidt, James Simpson, Barry Windeatt, Nicolette Zeeman

Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria

Download Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813185254
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria by : John E. Keller

Download or read book Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria written by John E. Keller and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hundreds of illuminated miniatures found in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, sponsored by King Alfonso X (1252–84), reveal many vistas of daily life in thirteenth century Spain. No other source provides such an encyclopedic view of all classes of medieval European society, from kings and popes to the lowest peasants. Men and women are seen farming, hunting, on pilgrimage, watching bullfights, in gambling dens, making love, tending silkworms, eating, cooking, and writing poetry, to name only a few of the human activities represented here. Combining keen observation of detail with years of experience in the field, John Keller and Annette Grant Cash bring to life a world previously little explored.

A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry

Download A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004698043
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (46 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry by :

Download or read book A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-07-25 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mester de clerecía is the term traditionally used to designate the first generations of learned poetry in medieval Ibero-Romance dialects (the precursors of modern Castilian and other Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula). In its time, this poetry was anything but traditional. These long poems of structured verse reappropriate the heroic past through the retelling of legends from Classical Antiquity, saints’ lives, miracle stories, Biblical apocrypha, and other tales. At the same time, the poems recast the place of their authors, and learned characters within their stories, in the shifting dynamics of their thirteenth and fourteenth century present. Contributors are Pablo Ancos, Maria Cristina Balestrini, Fernando Baños Vallejo, Andrew M. Beresford, Olivier Biaggini, Martha M. Daas, Emily C. Francomano, Ryan Giles, Michelle M. Hamilton, Anthony John Lappin, Clara Pascual-Argente, Connie L. Scarborough, Donald W. Wood, and Carina Zubillaga.

Gautier de Coinci

Download Gautier de Coinci PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Brepols Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Gautier de Coinci by : Kathy M. Krause

Download or read book Gautier de Coinci written by Kathy M. Krause and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gautier de Coinci (c. 1177-1236) was a Benedictine prior, a poet and composer, and the author of several very popular religious works, including a large collection of Miracles of the Virgin in French, which enjoyed a wide circulation during the Middle Ages. Gautier drew on multiple Latin sources for his work, embellishing and personalizing them as he adapted them to his poetic design. Conceiving of his collection of miracles as a complete work, Gautier carefully organized the tales into two books, framing each with authorial exordia and lyrics praising the Virgin. In addition to its obvious literary interest, the subsequent manuscript tradition offers a remarkable panorama of medieval manuscript production, in particular due to the fascinating combination of text, music and illustration. Bringing together a select group of scholars from multiple disciplines (including art history, musicology, and literary studies), this collection of essays explores complementary aspects of Gautier, his works, and his manuscripts. The volume offers both breadth and depth in its examination of Gautier de Coinci and his Miracles de Nostre Dame It promises to redefine Gautier studies through its interdisciplinary consideration of the varied facets of his work as it makes available to scholars and students the first interdisciplinary examination of this key figure in medieval vernacular religious culture.

Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian & Galician Verse

Download Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian & Galician Verse PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 9780813130576
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (35 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian & Galician Verse by : John Esten Keller

Download or read book Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian & Galician Verse written by John Esten Keller and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Brief narratives," or medieval precursors to the modern short story, are compositions couched in the form of a tale of reasonable short length. They began with writings in Latin and, eventually, made their way into the vernacular languages of Europe. They include the fable, the apologue, the exemplum, the saint's life, the miracle, the biography, the adventure tale, the romance, the jest, and the anecdote, among others. In Spain, the oldest extant brief narratives in written form are in verse and date from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The earliest examples include La vida de Santa Maria Egipciaca and El libre dels tres reys d'Orient. Both are concise enough to be read in one sitting and were probably read before or after meals as entertainment. In Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian and Galician Verse, John E. Keller studies the structure of the pious brief narrative, including such works at the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X and Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora, among others. He examines which narrative techniques were employed by their authors, including versification, music, and the pictorial arts as aids to narration. Using nine basic elements -- plot, setting, conflict, characterization, theme, style, effect, point of view, and mood or tone -- Keller shows how writers in medieval Spain employed more sophisticated uses of these techniques than has previously been recognized.

Miracles of Our Lady

Download Miracles of Our Lady PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813181542
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Miracles of Our Lady by : Gonzalo de Berceo

Download or read book Miracles of Our Lady written by Gonzalo de Berceo and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miracle tales, in which people are rewarded for piety or punished for sin through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, were a popular literary form all through the Middle Ages. Milagros de Nuestra Sehora, a collection of such stories by the Spanish secular priest Gonzalo de Berceo, is a premier example of this genre; it is also regarded as one of the four most important texts of medieval Spain. Difficulties in translating this work have made it unavailable in English except in fragments; now Spanish-language scholars Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash have made the entire work accessible to English readers for the first time. Berceo's miracle tales use the verse form cuaderna via (fourfold way) of fully rhymed quatrains—which Berceo may even have invented—and are told in the language of the common man. They were written to be read aloud, most likely to an audience of pilgrims, and are an outstanding example of oral religious narrative. The total work comprises twenty-five miracles, preceded by a renowned Introduction that celebrates the Virgin in rich symbolic allegory. Mount and Cash's translation is highly readable, yet it retains the original meaning and captures Berceo's colloquial style and medieval nuances. An introduction placing the miracles in their medieval context and a bibliography complement the text.

Miraculous Rhymes

Download Miraculous Rhymes PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : DS Brewer
ISBN 13 : 9781843841265
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (412 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Miraculous Rhymes by : Tony Hunt

Download or read book Miraculous Rhymes written by Tony Hunt and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2007 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first published general study of an unduly neglected writer whose stylistic legacy remains unique in the Middle Ages. The well-connected, northern-French monk and musician Gautier de Coinci (1177/8-1236) occupies an unassailable position as one of the most exceptional vernacular writers of the Middle Ages, concerning whom there is nevertheless nofull length study in English. In a meticulously planned and supervised collection of miracles of Our Lady, which survive in a remarkable number of manuscripts, some beautifully illustrated, Gautier deploys his outstanding talentsas a composer of songs, an acerbic satirist, an audacious inventor of rich and equivocal rhymes (of a virtuosity unparalleled before the "Grands Rhetoriqueurs" on the eve of the Renaissance), a confident lexical innovator, an exuberant exponent of rhetorical wordplay, an incisive observer of contemporary society, and a man of profound personal piety. This study of word-patterning in Gautier seeks to compensate for the dearth of stylistic studies ofOld French and to examine in detail the relationship between rhetoric and religion, "courtoisie" and Mariolatry, aristocratic tastes and the way to spiritual renewal. Gautier's writing strategy is shown to be a means to rise beyond secular, aristocratic values by building on them and transcending them rather than opposing and rejecting them. TONY HUNT is a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford.

Marian Representations in the Miracle Tales of Thirteenth-century Spain and France

Download Marian Representations in the Miracle Tales of Thirteenth-century Spain and France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Marian Representations in the Miracle Tales of Thirteenth-century Spain and France by : David A. Flory

Download or read book Marian Representations in the Miracle Tales of Thirteenth-century Spain and France written by David A. Flory and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marian miracle tale of thirteenth-century Spain and France is an unusual thematic genre comprising tales, songs, poems, plays, and sermons dedicated to miraculous occurrences attributed to the Virgin Mary. While there are scholarly articles on particular aspects of this large and important body of literature, there has been no attempt to bring its principal authors together into a single scholarly study. Bringing five well-known thirteenth-century authors together -- Gonzalo de Berceo, Gautier de Coinci, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, Rutebeuf, and King Alfonso X of Spain -- the book shows how each used the Marian collections for individual purposes. Mary is portrayed in a variety of manifestations, as Mediatrix, Monitrix, Maler Dei, National Patroness, and even as something close to the troubadour's desired or unattainable Lady. Berceo was a secular priest who found an older collection of tales useful as an instructive tool. Gautier, an aristocratic monk of intellectual refinement, had a nearly exclusively artistic interest in his Marian materials, while Cardinal Jacques de Vitry -- an eminent churchman and eloquent reformer -- sought with his carefully chosen tales to bring Marianism into the fold of doctrinal orthodoxy. Rutebeuf, a minstrel, accepted the tales as popular piety and returned them to his audience in a spirit of reproach to the sometimes heavy-handed didactic use made of the material by churchmen with vested interests. Finally, the personal voice and directing presence of Spain's King Alfonso X makes of his famous Marian collection, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a part of his social and religious program for Spain. Additionally, a reflection upon the formalistcriticism of Bakhtin and Todorov suggests new possibilities for seeing within some Marian tales of the period a subtle tool for the subverting of perceived Church excesses.