Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews: Devotion to the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Norman England. By Kati Ihnat . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. xii + 305 pages. $45.00.

Horizons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 526-528
Author(s):  
Rene Kollar
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Anglo Norman

Michael Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018, pp. 216, 96 color ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 305-306
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Lower Body ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Coffee Table ◽  
Dark Blue

This book appeared first in French in 2000, was then translated into English in 2001, and has now been reprinted, obviously for good reasons, considering the excellent cultural-historical or anthropological information presented here, and the large number of high-quality color images. This could easily be a much sought-after coffee-table book, since even the cover, showing the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child, both surrounded by a host of angels, all dressed in dark blue (except for Jesus, whose lower body is covered with a blanket in gold), taken from the Wilton-Diptych (ca. 1389), National Gallery, London, dazzles us. Scholars, however, will also enjoy the critical discussion of the color blue, which is focused primarily on the Middle Ages, but takes into view as well antiquity and the early modern and modern age.

Miracles of the Virgin in Middle English, ed. and trans. by Adrienne Williams Boyarin. A Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Peterborough, Ont., 2015, 164 pp., 12 b/w ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 291-291
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Present Book ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
South English Legendary ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Miracles Of The Virgin

The admiration and worship of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages was simply paramount, both in clerical and in secular literature, in the visual arts, and in music. Mary <?page nr="292"?>appears countless times in legendary literature, and so also in Middle English. She might produce miracles and help miserable people in need if they pray hard enough. Those stories were ubiquitous all over medieval Europe, as Williams Boyarin comments, referring to Latin, French, Anglo-Norman, Provençal, Italian, Spanish, Castilian, Arabic, and Ethiopean (10). I wonder, however, what the difference between Spanish and Castilian might be, and why German, French (Gautier de Coincy) or Swedish, Polish or Czech texts are missing entirely in this list. Nevertheless, the focus of the present book rests on Middle English examples, such as those contained in The South English Legendary, in the Vernon Manuscript, and in the collection produced by the printer Wynken de Worde in 1496.

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