326 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



passage as referring to the Virgin Mary, and medieval 

 art constantly represented the Mother of God as seated 

 upon a crescent with a crown of twelve stars. 1 Very 

 early also in the history of the Latin Church the term 

 Stella maris, star of the sea, was applied to the Virgin 

 Mary ; and medieval writers invariably derive the name 

 Maria from maris stella. 2 At what time these three con- 

 ceptions the Star of the East, the Woman standing on 

 the Crescent, and the stella maris became associated 

 and identified I am unable to say definitely ; but to 

 the writers, and presumably to the spectators, of the 

 great passion-plays they were interchangeable symbols. 

 The Magi in the Egerer Spiel 3 describe the star they 



1 For a graphic representation we may refer to the title - page to Diirer's 

 Maricnbilder. In a fifteenth-century Metz MS. fforae, once in my hands, one 

 miniature represented the Virgin, with the infant Saviour in her arms, standing 

 on a crescent and surrounded by a glory. This is the representation on the collar of 

 the papal robes. The crescent with a star the stella maris occurs on the banner 

 carried by one of the attendants in Martin Schbngauer's Adoration of the Magi. 

 La Resurrection de notre Seigneur (Jubinal, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 352) discusses at 

 some length, in the dialogue of the play itself, the significance of the estoille de 

 mer. The splendid description of the woman on the crescent seen by Benvenuto 

 Cellini in his well-known vision will occur to readers of his autobiography. 



2 The derivation occurs in the writings of Jerome and Isidore (see Mullenhoff 

 und Scherer, Denkmaler, pp. 375, 435). Compare the Arnsteiner Marienleich, 

 Melker Marienlied, and several sequences in the Denkmaler, pp. 109-125. Also 

 Hroswitha, ed. Barak, pp. 16, 17; Herrad von Landsberg, ed. Engelhard t, p. 124 ; 

 further Fortunatus's hymn, Ave stella maris, as well as innumerable Latin 

 hymns to the Virgin; see also W. Grimm, Konrad von Wurzburgs Goldene 

 Schmiede, p. 44, etc. 



3 See F, pp. 63, 65, 69. Compare this especially with the mediaeval folk- 

 book of the Three Kings (Simrock, Volksbucher, Bd. iv. p. 442). In the Devil's 

 Parliament we find that the Emperor in Rome saw three suns in one, and in 

 their midst a maid bearing a child. This vision immediately preceded Christ's 

 birth (Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, ed. Furnival, p. 45). A like notion 

 occurs in a very popular mediaeval book, Der Anfang der newen ee vnd das 

 passional von ihesu vnd marie leben (Sorg, Augsburg, 1476; reprinted in Liibeck, 

 1478, as de nye Ee vnd dat passional von JJiesus vnd Marien lewende, the wood- 

 cuts being chiefly copies of Sorg's). We have a paragraph entitled, "Here 

 Sibylla and Octavianus see the Child and the Maid in the Sun," the woodcut 

 shows the Sibyl and Emperor looking at a half-figure of the Virgin and Child on 



