Scribit Mater

Mary, Mother of the Word, became an icon for excellent communication during the English Middle Ages. This engaging work explores the literature that established Mary as headmistress of the liberal arts and exemplar of perfected speech. Given Englands rich and extended practices of Marian piety, Georgiana Donavin focuses her research solely on English writers, from the Anglo-Saxon period through the Late Middle Ages. In the writings of John of Garland, John of Howden, Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Margery Kempe, and several anonymous lyricists and playwrights, Donavin illuminates Marys position as the great teacher of trivium studies and muse of various discourses. Scribit Mater begins with a survey of medieval English representations of the Virgin Mary as a wise and studious woman. It demonstrates how diverse authors imagined the Virgins holy speech to be the highest sign of her wisdom. These authors venerated Mary as a Christian Lady Rhetorica because they were taught to read and compose by studying Marian services and hymns, they heard Marys mellifluous speech in renderings of the Magnificat and other popular lyrics, or they saw the Virgin Birth as the purest articulation of the Word. They appropriated Marys rhetorical powers in many forms: in university textbooks teaching students to imitate the Virgins oratory, in meditations describing the Virgins body as a holy grammar, in short lyrics extolling the Virgins beautiful voice, in long narrative verse seeking the Virgins inspiration and illumination, and more. While Scribit Mater highlights different medieval English understandings of the Virgins sapient eloquence according to class, education, and gender, it demonstrates long-standing and widespread traditions acknowledging and celebrating the Mothers verbal prowess.