Many if not most of the medieval nativity lyrics collected in Douglas Gray's
"English Medieval Religious Lyrics" will be known to church choristers (or
ex-church choristers), thanks to Britten and others. I especially love this
one:
Ther is no rose of swych vertu
As is the rose that bar Jesu
Allelyua.
For in this rose conteynyd was
Heven and erthe in lytyl space,
Res miranda.
Be that rose we may weel see
That he is God in personys thre,
Pari forma.
The aungelys sungyn the sheperdes to:
'Gloria in excelcis Deo.'
Gaudeamus.
Leve we al this worldly methe,
And folwe we this joyful berthe;
Transeamus
- the particularly clever thing about it is that it juxtaposes two linguistic
worlds, the Latin and the vernacular, but the Latin crosses over into the
vernacular in the angels' song in the fourth verse so that we hear it not as
commentary or authority but as quoted speech: a figure for the irruption of
"heven" into "erthe".
In this literature, the nativity is used to insinuate a doctrinal and
theological content into a realm of intense and intimate emotion: the marvel
("res miranda") of what can be "conteynyd...in lytyl space", of the meeting
of "heven and erthe" in the human infant, are made to illustrate Christ's
divinity. It is a very potent (and in its own way lovely) form of
apologetics.
Dominic
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