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Versus de pelegrino


The Versus de pelegrino or Verses about the Stranger is a medieval Latin drama composed by an anonymous playwright of Vic c. 1130. The Versus is a short piece of only forty lines on the meeting between Mary Magdalene and the glorified Jesus Christ on the road as recorded in the Gospel of John (chapter 20). It is a follow-up to the Verses pascales de tres Maries and was probably designed as a liturgical drama for Easter Vigil as well.

The opening lines, spoken by the Magdalene, are an adaptation of the third chapter of the Song of Songs. In the Vetus Latina and in one manuscript grouping of the Vulgate this chapter has the rubric Mariae Magdalenae ad Ecclesiam: Mary Magdalene to the Church. The Vic dramatist evidently picked up on this allegorical exegesis and adapted it to his theme. As the play opens, Mary is searching a garden for the tomb of Christ. First some angeli (angels) and then an ortolanus (gardener) ask her why she is weeping and for whom she is looking. She mistakes the gardener for Christ when he says to her "Mary, Mary, Mary!" and she responds "Raboni, raboni, master!" The drama does not incorporate a sequence of her on the road meeting Christ, but jumps to her return to the garden from meeting him. There she scoffs at the gardener who deceived her and, meeting the discipuli (disciples), relates to them the fact of Christ's resurrection and the empty tomb. The disciples do not hesitate to believe her, Marie veraci (truthful Mary), over the "whole deceitful multitude of Jews" (Iudeorum turbe fallaci). The play ends on a prayer, sung by a chorus (choir), and the Greater Doxology.


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