It's been a busy few weeks, despite my supposedly taking a break for Easter. I performed in a mystery play for the Oxford Mystery Cycle at St Edmund's Hall, which was great fun! I'm definitely going up in the world: having played a soul damned to Hell in the 2019 Medieval German Harrowing of Hell this time I was one of the Mourning Marys buying ointment to take to the tomb. I guess next time I'll have to be a heavenly angel to complete my ascent from Hell to Heaven!
The day began with Creation and moved all over the college (you can find a write-up of the whole day here) and finished with the Resurrection, the play I was involved with. Adapted from the Middle High German Innsbruck Easter play with Latin chants from the Visitatio Sepulchri, the play was a perfect example of the way in which we cannot simply make neat distinctions between 'secular' and 'religious' when it comes to the Middle Ages. Much of the play is devoted to the bawdy antics of a hapless merchant and his servant, Rubin, who encounter the Marys on their search for ointments. The action moves seamlessly from jokes about donkey farts on the one hand to laments from the sorrowing women on another, and back to the merchant, who gets embroiled in a disagreement with his wife, culminating in her running off with Rubin shortly followed by the announcement of the Resurrection.. I had wondered how all this would work in practice (having studied the Innsbruck play myself as an undergraduate) and was pleasantly surprised by not only how much the audience laughed at the jokes (aided by a script interwoven with an English narrator) but the poignancy of the Marys' grief. The setting of the graveyard in St Edmund's Hall aided in creating an atmosphere befitting the mourning of the Marys. The combination of tragic and comic may even seem inappropriate to a modern audience, but I found the way in which the cosmic events of Salvation History are rooted in the everyday settings of urban and domestic life to be rather fitting. Just as the divine is woven into the mundane in daily life, from saying a rosary on the way to the library, or pausing work at midday to say the angelus, so the sublime meets the ordinary in the mystery plays. You can see the Resurrection from around 53 minutes here, and indeed, all the plays are recorded and available to watch on the St Edmund Hall YouTube channel. There are some more reflections on how the the play was put together in this blog post here, including some words from Haley Flower, who did an amazing job arranging the script and directing the play.
The three Mourning Marys rehearsing: photo thanks to Henrike Lähnemann
The Mystery Cycle took place on Saturday of 0th week, and no sooner had full term begun than I had to leave Oxford to travel to Germany! I was taking part in the OFFG colloquium, an annual conference between Oxford, Fribourg, Freiburg and Geneva (this year with Bern and Lausanne represented too) for medieval Germanists to share work in progress and get feedback. I'm planning on doing another post later to share the research I presented, but for now, I thought I would share some photos of Freiburg itself. It is a beautiful city, and very appropriate for hosting a medieval conference with its visual reminders of the medieval past.
The entrance to the hotel we were staying in was just through this arch: as you can see, the wisteria was in full bloom throughout Freiburg, and was beautiful.
The spire of Freiburg's gothic Münster was so tall I struggled to get it in a single photo! I was thrilled to find that it was just a few minutes' walk from the hotel. I had been terribly anxious before travelling to Germany as it was the first time I had returned to the country since having something of a mental health crisis there, but once I arrived I went to the Münster to pray and it helped me to compose myself and, unsurprisingly, nothing terrible happened just because I was in Germany again. The Münster is dedicated to Our Lady, and I felt I had her protection whilst I was there and I know she helped me through the conference. Mary is the subject of my academic work, but definitely also its patron.
Statue of Our Lady with the Christ-child in the Münster.
I saw several other images of Mary throughout the city, of which here are just a couple:
Mary on John at the foot of the Cross outside the Martinskirche
A so-called St Anne Trinity with St Anne, Mary, and Jesus in the Augustinermuseum, by Hans Wydtz, c1515/20 in Strasbourg or Freiburg.
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A few other photos I took in Freiburg
It was a shame that I didn't have more time to explore the city as there was so much I didn't have time to see. It's definitely a city to return to at some point. Being away in the first week of term was odd and has left me feeling a little out of kilter, especially as I'm still rather exhausted from the travelling and conference. And no wonder I'm tired: I've been in a hybrid biblical Holy Land/medieval Innsbruck as well as modern day Freiburg in the last week or so! But despite my initial apprehension about going to Germany, I'm so glad I went and am looking forward to being able to do more travelling in the future.
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