An exquisite dwelling place

What with the busyness of term and then catching covid almost as soon as it was over, I rather neglected this little blog, but now that I've recovered and had a bit of a break, I'm returning with a post in honour of my patron saint, St Anne, whose feast day was last month. A lot of Catholics know St Anne as the saint to pray to if you're looking for a spouse: "Anne, Anne, send me a man as fast as you can!" I must admit to having prayed the novena to her myself for that intention. She's definitely looking out for me as here I am a few years later, having just celebrated my first wedding anniversary. However, she is much more than that: you'll notice that she is often depicted with a book, teaching Our Lady to read, and is the patron saint of educators as well as unmarried women. As someone who spends her days with books and loves teaching, St Anne is a wonderful patron for me!

A St Anne 'Selbdritt' which I saw at the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg, dating from 1515-20 by Hans Wydyz - note the book in her lap.

In honour of St Anne, I thought I would share a French chant royal I've worked on which brings in St Anne. It was composed by Clément Marot and presented at the 1521 puy in Rouen, a poetry competition in honour of the Immaculate Conception, so not long after the sculpture above was made. The poem is illustrated with this miniature in BnF Fr 1537, a manuscript containing some amazing illuminations! You can see the full manuscript digitised here.

BnF Fr 1537 f42r

You might be wondering exactly where St Anne and Mary are in this image... The refrain line in the poem is 'La digne couche où le roy reposa' or, 'the worthy bed on which the King reposed'. The poems tells of a King who, wanting to vanquish His Enemy, ordered a pavilion be put up, and in that pavilion, a bed be built. Working on a figurative level throughout, it is only at the very end that the poet reveals how this conceit works, though hopefully the readers and listeners will have worked it out before then! I'm going to give my translation of the first two strophes of the poem in which St Anne appears as well as the envoy at the very end. I've based my text on a transcription of BnF Fr 1537 (42v-43v), but you can find the full French text in Defaux's edition of Marot's Œuvres poétiques p127-129 (though it differs slightly from the text in the manuscript).

When the King, out of great desire and care,

Decided to vanquish the Enemy

And draw from their dark prison

Those of His Host who had suffered great tourments

He sent his quartermasters to Judea

To take lodgings in a well-built place

Then commanded them to erect in a simple form

A pavilion as an exquisite dwelling place

In which he proposed they set up

His camp bed, named as such in the Council,

The worthy bed on which the King reposed.

In the pavilion there was lavish decoration

Showing through Whom our sin are remitted

It was the cloud, encompassing in its enclosure

The Closed Garden, promised to all mankind

The Great City, seen from the highest heavens

The Royal Lily, praised with the Olive

With the immovable Tower of David

Through which the most skilled Labourer

In such a noble place installed and supported

(Fulfilling the saying of the Sybil)

The worthy bed on which the King reposed.

[A further three strophes describe the bed, its covers and characteristics]

Envoy 

Prince, I take in my infantile understanding,

The Pavilion to be sterile St Anne,

The King to be God, who dwells in heaven

And Mary to be (true as the Gospel)

The worthy bed on which the King reposed.

Hopefully now the illumination makes a bit more sense! Many of the poems presented at these poetry competitions begin either with the Fall, or God making plans to save mankind: here we have a king who wants to defeat his enemy and save those imprisoned. In terms of salvation history, this would be God wanting to defeat Satan and free mankind. The Incarnation is how He chose to do this, so the next step in understanding the poem is working out how that is represented here. The King sends his quartermasters to prepare his lodgings and this would usually refer to the Virgin Mary, whose womb was His dwelling place. However, here it is a little more complicated as there is both a pavilion and a bed! It becomes fairly clear that Mary is the bed: the bed itself is where God rests, and the refrain in these poems, called a palinod, is generally a metaphor for Mary or her Immaculate Conception. Furthermore, the poems presented at the puy often mention the Council of Basel, where Mary in 1438 was declared to have been conceived without the stain of sin, so referring to the bed in relation to the Council would cement in the mind of a listener accustomed to the tropes of this kind of poetry that Mary is that 'digne couche'. 

In the second strophe, it is emphasised that the pavilion encloses Mary by giving her titles from the Song of Songs, such as the Closed Garden, or the Tower of David. Identifying Mary as the City (which along with links between Mary and the heavenly Jerusalem is also a motif from the Song of Songs 3:2-2) is particularly interesting for my research on the relationship between Mary and urban spaces! Marian poetry is full of images of enclosed spaces representing Mary's body or womb: in this poem it is doubled and Mary's body is enclosed by something else, in the cloud of the Immaculate Conception. Ecclesiasticus 24:5-7 in which Wisdom talks of her existence mentions these clouds, and in the Middle Ages, Mary came to be increasingly associated with the figure of Wisdom from the Old Testament. So the pavilion which surrounds the bed that is Our Lady and in which the Immaculate Conception took place must therefore stand for St Anne. The double-enclosure of St Anne and Mary's womb is part of what makes this poem interesting as it adds in an extra layer of dwelling places. In so many of the poems presented at the competition, dwelling places such as buildings, rooms or gardens refer almost exclusively to Mary, so including the pavilion and the bed makes the reader or listener think even more carefully about the wonder of the Incarnation. In adding in that extra layer, an audience must think more carefully to understand the poem, and thus marvel even more at the wonder of the Incarnation.

St Anne and St Joachim kiss at the Golden Gate, from Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Misc. 476 f6r

What we know of St Anne mostly came from the Proto Gospel of St James, which tells us that Anne and Joachim had been unable to conceive a child - hence her being called 'sterile' in the envoy. This reminds us that Mary's conception, like Christ's, was miraculous: in the initial above, we see St Anne and St Joachim embracing at the Golden Gate, traditionally seen as the moment of Mary's conception. It was only through God's grace that the barren couple were able to conceive. St Anne's story was transmitted widely in the Middle Ages through the Legenda Aurea, a collection of saints' lives by Jacobus de Vorgaigne. 

This poem reminds us of Anne's holiness, and how she, like Mary, was chosen and created by God as part of His great plan to save us. The pavilion is described as an 'exquis domicille', or, exquisite dwelling place. If the mother of God is to be conceived in Anne's womb, Anne herself must be special. As well as illustrating the importance of Mary in our salvation, this poem therefore highlights the significance of her mother, insisting that she, too, was part of God's plan to save us from the very beginning. St Anne is no afterthought, but integral to His plan: no mere vessel through which Our Lady was conceived and born, but lavishly decorated and intimately connected to God and His mother. 

                                                       St Anne teaching the Virgin to read from Bodleian Library MS Buchanan e. 8 f144v

The image above comes from a Middle French Book of Hours, and the miniature shows, as so many others do, St Anne teaching Mary to read. You can see from the closeness of their hands the intimate relationship that the two women enjoyed. Such images were common in Books of Hours, and remind us that St Anne played an active role in Mary's upbringing, helping to form her into the woman who was so receptive to God's grace. She would have been involved in the lives of her daughter and of Christ, and so God marked her out and favoured her. Asking St Anne's intercession - whether it be for a spouse, for help with studies, or indeed any intentions we have - thus means asking Christ's own grandmother to intercede with us. When we think of the intimacy of their relationship, of course it makes sense to ask her to pray for us! 

I particularly enjoyed coming across this poem, given that St Anne is my patron saint, and providentially, I am studying for my DPhil at St Anne's college. I hope reading a little about this poem might help you to think a little more about the grandmother of Our Lord and inspire you to seek her intercession!