356 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



of heaven by the side of her Son. 1 Still stronger are 

 the fourteenth-century plays in their language of de- 

 votion. The Himmelfahrt Maria adopts the speech of 

 the Song of Songs, and as God raises the Virgin from 

 her grave their words are those of earthly lovers and 

 not of spiritual beings. All the erotic expressions which 

 the fourteenth-century female ascetic applied to her 

 bridegroom Christ are used in this play by the Virgin 

 to her Son. 2 Christ declares that his daughter and 

 bride shall rule the kingdom of heaven, while the angels 

 proclaim that, as empress, her will shall be eternally 

 fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven. 3 Christ then gives 

 her crown and sceptre, with full power over the Devil, 

 whereon the Virgin informs all mortals that she has 

 taken upon herself the attributes of godhead. 4 In 

 another play of the Day of Judgment we find the 

 Virgin seated at the right hand of Christ helping to 

 judge the world, while her claim to save any sinner 

 who has appealed to her before his death is at once 

 admitted. Elsewhere she asserts for herself control of 

 all the elements and of all living things. 5 



1 B, vol. ii. p. 143. 



2 A, pp. 78-80. Compare Arnsteiner Marienleich (circa 1140), ' Godes druden,' 

 and the English hymn Surga mea sponsa in Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, 

 E.E.T.S., p. 1. Also see the Latin hymn Ave stella matutina, line 19, sponsa 

 del electa (Mone, No. 533), and compare such phrases as summi sponsa creatoris, 

 soror dei et filia, parens patris, nata prolis arnica, sponsa soda dei patris et filia 

 S2)onsa Christi mater et filia, etc. (Ibid. Nos. 355, 462, 547, 548, etc. ), for 

 the Virgin. The St. Trudperter Hohenlied distinguishes three brutloufte in the 

 Song of Songs, one of which is the marriage of God to Maria. A twelfth-century 

 Gedicht von der Hochzeit (ed. Karajan) describes this marriage at length. 



3 See A, pp. 61, 82. 



4 Ibid. pp. 84-86. In P the Virgin has absolute control over the devils, and 

 threatens to lay them in bonds (Part I. pp. 31-35). See also M, p. 112. 



5 B, vol. i. pp. 288, 298. In the sixteenth-century folk-book, Thai Josaphat 

 (Simrock, Bd, xii.), which is almost identical with this play, these parts are 

 carefully omitted! See also Old English Miscellany, E.E.T.S., Doomsday, p. 



