Medieval Laments of the Virgin Mary: Text, Music, Performance, and Genre Liminality

Laments of the Virgin Mary represent a performative genre that offered its clerical and lay audiences of the High and Late Middle Ages a deeply inspiring, yet at the same time ambiguous, devotional experience. Through the representation of a biblical narrative, audiences and performers were reminded of the redemptive power of Christ’s death on the Cross and the decisive role of his sacrifice in the history of salvation. This process of imitatio Mariae was also designed to induce an affective response in audiences and performers, mirroring the unbearable sorrow of the mother’s mourning of her son through their own bodies and paralleling the experience of the Virgin Mary with their own familial experiences. An example of affective devotion to a suffering Christ, Marian laments render central Christian dogmas in a way that is at once highly conventional and deeply emotional in its unique combination of letter, voice, music, and gesture.