STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY

VolumeXCVI Summer, 1999 Number3

Blasphemy and the Grotesque in

the Digby Mary Magdalene
by Victor I. Scherb

LASPHEMY could take many forms in the Middle Ages, includ-

B ing the profanation of the divine name (whence our modern

word "profanity") as well as impious or irreverent acts.' Al-
though in modern times the definition has narrowed to denote only
verbal acts, in the medieval period its definition was broader: blas-
phemy was to say the unsayable, to enact the unthinkable. While it was
the standard charge leveled against heretics, pious authors could also
use the accusation of blasphemy to define and localize the sacred. In
The Book of Margery Kempe, for example, Margery describes how she re-
proved the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury:
And, as pei comyn in-to pe halle at aftyr-noon, ther wer many of pe Erchebys-
shoppys clerkys & oper rekles men bope swyers & 3emen whech s,voryn many
great opis & spokyn many rekles wordys, & pis creatur boldly vndyrname
hem & seyd pei schuld ben dampnyd but pei left her sweryng & oper synnes
pat pei vsyd.2
Margery's vigor in reproving others for their "rekles wordys" is-along
with her dietary customs, manner of dressing, frequent pilgrimages,
cries and sobbings-a practice that helps to mark her out (at least in the
1 OED, 2d. ed., s. v. "blasphemy: On late medieval perceptions of blasphemy, see
Edwin D. Craun, "'lnordinata locutio': Blasphemy in Pastoral Literature, 1200-1500,"
Traditic 39 (1983): 135-62.
2 The Book of Margery 'K,,mpe, vol. 1, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen,
EETS o.s. 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 36.

225

© 1999 The University of North Carolina Press

226 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
persuasive strategies of her text) as a holy person. If their blasphemy
is a sign of their damnation, Margery's use of speech is, conversely, a
sign of her salvation and spiritual power.
The Digby Mary Magdalene contains a similar contest between blas-
phemous and spiritually potent speech, a dualism that can be usefully
related to modern critical conceptions of the grotesque, particularly as
writers like Mikhail Bakhtin, Aron Gurevich, and David Lawton have
articulated them.3 This drama, usually localized in East Anglia in the
last quarter of the fifteenth century, exploits the power of blasphemous
speech and behavior to define the sacred by distortion, a distortion
that both marks off the blasphemous and manifests the sacred by pro-
voking a display of divine power.' In two scenes at the pagan temple
in Marseilles, the Digby Mary Magdalene dramatizes the grotesque by
presenting a blasphemous version of church hierarchy, liturgy, and
contemporary devotional practice in a manner that both clarifies and
celebrates Mary's sanctity.
Critics have long noted the apparent blasphemy in the Digby play.
Nearly twenty-five years ago, Robert Weimann pointed to what he felt
were elements of the "popular tradition" in the scenes at the pagan
temple in Marseilles; he particularly focused his attention on Hawkyn,
the high priest's servant:
as servant to the cultic presbyter, Hawkyn represents a style of topsy-turvy-
dom .... The fact that the presbyter appears as a pagan priest hardly detracts
1 Wolfgang Kayser I races lhe lerm ·grotesque· 10 fifteenth-century Italy, where ii was
coined to refer lo a classical omamenlal slyle lhal had come lo lighl with lhe excava•
lions of Nero's Domus Aurea in Rome. II later came to be applied 10 mixtures of forms
and categories of things, often with an unsettling aspect: "a world in which the realm
of inanimale lhings is no longer separated from lhose of planls, animals and human
beings and where lhe laws of stalics, symmelry and proportion are no longer valid" (The
Grotesque in Art and Littrature~ trans. Ulrich Weisstein !Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1963; reprinl, New York: Columbia Universily Press, 1981 ], 21). Also see Geoffrey
Galt Harpham. 011 the Grotrs,iue: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Mikhail Bakhlin, Rat,,lais and His World, trans.
Helene lswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University l'ress, 1984), esp. 1- 58; Aron Gure-
vich, Mediet,al Popular Culture, trans. Janos M. BAk and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cam•
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), ·176 - 210; David Lawlon, 8las1"1cmy (Philadel-
phia: University of Philadelphia Press, 199)).
• For the dating of the play, see Donald C. Baker, introduction to Tire Late Medieval
Religious Plays of &dleia11 MSS Digby 133 a11d E Mus,o 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L.
Murphy, and Louis B. Hall, Jr., EETS o.s. 283 (London: Oxford University Press. 1982),
xxxvi-xl. Line numbers lo this edition will be given parenthetically in the text. On local-
izing lhe text, see Richard Beadle, "Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Later Medi•
eval Norfolk," in Jwgio11alism in Late Medi,mal Ma,111scripts and Texts, ed. Felicity Riddy
(Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), 101, 107.
 Victor I. Scherb 227

from the blasphemy, for all the accoutrements of Christian priest remain: the
sermon, the parish, the bells that Hawkyn must ring, and the altar that he must
prepare, all in "grett solemnyte." 5
For Weimann, Hawkyn and characters like him subvert, or "put ow3t
of rule," "their master or the representative of Virtue."• These inver-
sions of late medieval religious practice thus become examples of what
Anthony Gash has termed a "counter-theological" level, where the
·concentration on material needs and the nonsense style defers the
frightening prospect of damnation." 7 Such approaches would see the
scene at Marseilles as subversive of standard late medieval religious
practices, perhaps echoing Lollard criticisms.8
Twentieth-century critics have theorized about the possible mean-
ings of apparently blasphemous acts, often linking them to carnival and
festivity in early modern culture. Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of "gro-
tesque realism," for example, has as its "essential principle" the degra-
dation "of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to
the material level, to the sphere of the earth and body."• Furthermore,
Bakhtin suggests, "To degrade also means to concern oneself with the
lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive
organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, con-
ception, pregnancy, and birth." 10 While provocative, Bakhtin tends to
oversimplify a complex social dynamic, sometimes in puzzling ways;
for example, he associates seriousness and order with official culture,
while parody, carnival, and grotesque realism are manifestations of
the comic spirit, the exclusive province of the folk." Much of his evi-

s Robert Weimann, Sho~sp,are and the Popular Tradition in th, Theater, ed. Robert
Schwartz (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Universily Press, 1978), 141.
6 Ibid., 141-42.
7 Anthony Gash, ·Carnival Against Lent: The Ambivalence of Medieval Drama; in

~diew.l Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1986), 77.
8 ~ Weimann, Shak,sp,art and tlie Popular Tradition, 142. For a critique of approaches
that tend to emphasize the subversive power of carnival, see Clifford Davidson, "Car-
nival, Lent, and Early English Drama," Research Opportunities in R,naissance Drama 36
(1997): 123-42.
9 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 19-20.
•0 Ibid., 21; also see Bakhtin's "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Dis-ourse," in The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist, University of Texas Press Slavic Series , (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1981), 41-83. According to PeterStallybrass and Allon White, •Grotesque realism uses the
material body-flesh conceptualized as corpulent excess-to represent cosmic, social,
topographical and linguistic elements of the world" (The Politics and Poetics of Transgres-
sion !Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 8- 9).
11 "Carnival• and its related term, "carnivalesque; are particularly problematjc, For
228 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
dence, however, is drawn from an educated Latin tradition. 12 Aron
Gurevich has enabled us to modify Bakhtin's view by emphasizing the
interconnectedness of what the earlier writer distinguishes as official
and unofficial culture.13 Gurevich also expands Bakhtin's idea of the
grotesque to include forms other than the comic, seeing it, in fact, as
a fundamental concept of medieval religious aesthetics. In particular,
Gurevich draws our attention to how the
synthesis of extreme seriousness and tragedy, on the one hand, and of the
tendency to maximum lowering, on the other, was in essence part of Chris-
tian dogma, in whkh the concept of the Incarnation united the divine and the
human in their extreme maniJestation . . .. The confrontation of body and soul
and of earth and heaven was central to medieval aesthetics and was expressed
especially in the grotesque, in both art and literature.••
The grotesque aesthetic that Gurevich outlines here- one that is both
confrontational and integrated-is strongly evident in the Digby Mary
Magdalene, a play that consistently juxtaposes the fleshly to the spiri-
tual, the carnivalesque to the Lenten." As Gurevich notes, "the profa-

Bakhtin, they seem 10 connote "whatever is unofficial, unprogrammcd, unsublimated,

uncensored, unstratified, and irrepressible. Whatever isn't officially right, is carnival"
(Thomas J. Farrell, "'Introduction: Bakhtin, Liminality, and Medieval Literature; in Bakh-
ti11 and Medieval Voices, ed. Thomas ). Farrell [Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
1995), 5).
12 Martha Bayless points to the abundance of humor, satire. and parody in the litera-
ture of the educated elite. Furthermore, she asserts, "Bakhtin's claim that such literature
is the product of an oppressed cadre within the elite cannot withstand historical scrutiny.
It is now known, for instance, that a number of the goliards, until recently thought to be
the disaffected riffraff of the clergy. were among the prominent and influential members
of the ecclesiastical establishment" (Parody i,, tire Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition [Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996), 18o).
13 Gurevich, Mediei.,al Popular Culture, 177-So.
14 Ibid., 181.

15 Many of the more ele\'ated sequences in Mary Magdalene are balanced by those that
locus the audience's attention on the body. At Simon's house. for example, the Seven
Deadly Sins' exorcism lrom Mary is Immediately succeeded by the entrance of "the Bad
Angyll ... [lroml hell wyth thondyr" (691, stage directions). Later, the king of devils
beats not only his immediate subordinate but each of the Seven Deadly Sins in tum:
"Here xall ~•Y ser"a all ):>e seuyn as ~ey do ):>e /rest" (739. stage directions). The physical
violence culminates when "l>e tother deyllys sett ):>e howse on alyere, and make a sowth
[smoke!" (743, stage directions). Beatings, whippings, and burnings all work to focus the
audience's attention on the physical and material in a way that forms a carefully pat-
terned contrast to the play·s more spiritual moments. Although critics have tended to
locus on patterns of dramatic imagery involving food and feasting. the bodily violence
of the play is also worthy of critical attention. On food and feasting imagery, see Theresa
Coletti, "The Design of the Digby riay of Mary Magdalene," Studies it1 Philology 76 ( 1979):
315- 25; and Susannah Milner, "Flesh and Food: The Function of Female Asceticism in
the Digby Mary MPgdale11e," Philological Quartrrly 73 (1994): 385-401.
 Victor I. Scherb 229

nation of sacred things and blasphemy can be understood as the carni-

valized side of religiosity." 16
In the Digby play's pagan temple, however, the grotesque defines the
religion and language of the non-Christian and the alien by parodying
and inverting Christian practice in a carnivalesque, implicitly blasphe-
mous manner. Accorctingly, the play recalls David Lawton's analysis of
blasphemy in Western culture in which what "is at stake is community
and identity formation."" The accusation of blasphemy thus becomes
a rhetorical gesture. For Lawton, "blasphemy defines difference," a
charge that defines those identified as blasphemers as outside of the
community.•• In this sense it is hardly surprising that cultures often
tend to identify otherness with blasphemous activity. In Lawton's in-
quiry this has particularly been true of the Christian characterization
of Judaism, a characterization in which "the enemies of true believ-
ers ... are rejected en masse, as a body, and reconstituted textually
in a monstrous carnival body of the beast with 'seven heads and ten
horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name
of blasphemy' (Revelations 13:1)." 19 A similar process is at work in
the Digby Mary Magdalene, in which the playwright uses blasphemy to
imagine pre-Christian paganism. In the first temple scene the drama-
tist characterizes the pagan priest and his boy in a way that unites the
blasphemous to the sacred, presenting paganism as a grotesque ver-
sion of late medieval Christianity. In the second temple scene, however,
Mary's character allows the dramatist to distinguish the sacred from
the profane; in this sequence blasphemy both localizes the holy and
helps to authorize Mary. By juxtaposing the grotesque activities of the
pagan priest and his boy to Mary's pious words and behavior, the au-
thor highlights her sanctity and her important place in the foundation
of Western Christendom.

• ••
To find grotesque elements in Mary's story is hardly surprising, for
the grotesque to some degree characterizes Magdalene's story as the
Middle Ages understood it. As related in the Legenda Aurea and its
many redactions, Mary was born into worldly power as the daughter
of noble parents and the sister of Martha and Lazarus. According to

•• Gurevich, !kditval Popular Culture, 197.

11 Lawton, B/aspmmy, 21.
18 Jbid .. 86.
19 fu'd
l ·• 50.
230 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
Jacobus de Voragine, while the prudent Martha was entrusted with the
maintenance of the family estates, Mary had "so entirely ... abandoned
her body to pleasure that she was no longer called by any other name
than 'the sinner.' " 2°From this fleshly extreme she then rebounded, by
being forgiven by Jesus at Simon's house, by having her brother Laza-
rus restored from death to life, and by being present at the Crucifixion.
The first witness to the risen Christ, Mary then journeyed with her sis-
ter and brother to Marseilles, where they converted the king and queen.
In the final phase of her life, "Saint Mary Magdalen, moved by her
wish to live in contemplation of the things of God, retired to a moun-
tain cave which the hands of angels had made ready for her, and there
she dwelt for nearly thirty years." 2' A general upward movement, one
that contrasted the fleshly and spiritual extremes, was thus inherent in
Mary's story as it came to be understood in the Middle Ages.
The po,verful pull of opposites in Mary's story made it an extremely
attractive one in the later Middle Ages, especially in East Anglia where
the Digby Mary Magdalene was probably performed. She figured in
local iconography, and local writers frequently refer to her.22 Julian
of Norwich, for example, describes how she desired to "haue bene
that tyme ,vith Mary Mawdeleyne and with othere that were Crystes
Ioverse, that I myght have sene body lye the passionn of oure lorde.'' 23
Osbem Bokenham, an Augustinian friar from Clare in Suffolk, wrote
one of his Legendys of Hooly Wummen about her. Margery Kempe's Book
reveals her intense devotion to Mary Magdalene," even to the point of
stressing that her amanuensis "gan to wryten in pe 3er of owr Lord am.
cccc. xxxvj on pe day next aftyr Mary Maudelyn." 25 Margery thus im-
plies that her spiritual history is somehow closely connected to Mary's,
211 Tlie
Golder, ugend of f•cobus de Vor•gine, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Pipperger,
2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1941), 2: 356. For the humanist Clichetove's
early sixteenth-century description of the popular perception of her as •an extravagant
wanton; see Mimi Still Dixon,· 'Thys Body of Mary': 'Femynyte' and 'Inward Mythe'
in the Digby Mary Magdalene: Medineualia 18 (1995 (for 19921): 227.
" The Golde11 Lrgend, trans. Ryan and Pippcrger, 2: 36-0.
22 Clifford Davidson notes a screen painting of her at Wiggenhall ("The Middle En-
glish Saint Play and its Iconography," in The S.i11t Play in Medieval Europe, ed. Clifford
Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 8 (Kalamazoo: Medieval In-
stitute Publications, 19861, 74).
"A Book of Showings to tlie Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. Edmund Colledge and James
Walsh, Studies and Texts 35, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1978), i: 201-2.
24 See Susan Eberly, "Margery Kempe, St. Mary Magdalene, and Patterns of Contem-
plation," The Dou•nsid, Reui,w 107 (198')): 209-23.
"The &tOlc of Margery Ktmpe, ed. Meech and Allen, 6.
 Victor 1. Scherb 231

and to an extent, Margery's career parallels Magdalene's in the Digby

play. Both works offer flamboyant narratives of women whose lives
bridge the gap between the profane and the sacred, the flesh and the
spirit. Both Margery and Mary are powerful speakers who are instru-
mental in the formation of a new spiritual community, and both works
betray an intense anxiety about the heterodoxy of exactly this pro-
cess.26 In response, both Margery and Mary in the Digby play carefully
defer to male authority (e.g. Margery to her confessor and Mary to St.
Peter), and both employ what we might call the rhetoric of blasphemy.
In Margery's case this can be seen in her frequent upbraidings of those
she meets for taking the Lord's name in vain; in the Digby play, in the
contrast between Mary's speech acts and those of other characters."
The grotesque and the blasphemous are, of course, significant ele-
ments in other medieval plays. Figures like New Guise, Noawadays,
Nought, and Mischief in Mankind consistently and frequently abuse
Mercy, the clerical figure who ultimately must drive the vices from the
playing area in order to save Mankind from despair. When Mischief
interrupts Mercy's sermon with a parody of Mercy's aureate, biblically
based language, Mercy upbraids him: "Ye hen culpable / To interrupte
thus my talkyng delectable." 28 Although he stops short of calling them
blasphemers, Mercy tells all the vices that their "ydyll language ye
shall repent." 29 Similarly, the First Detractor from the N-Town "Trial
of Joseph and Mary," who had questioned Mary's virginity, comes to
"repent / Of my cursyd and fals langage!" 30 Even more tellingly, the
charge of blasphemy is central to the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,
another late fifteenth-century East Anglian play. In it a group of Jews
purchase and then torture a consecrated Eucharist in ways that seem
deliberately designed to recall the crucifixion. Making visible what is

26 On Margery as the founder of a spiritual community, see Lynn Staley, Margery

K£mpes Dissenting Fictions (Universily Park: Pennsylvania State Universily Press, 1994).
Anxiety about the exlent of spiritual power allowable to women can be found in both
England and France during the later Middle Ages, and divided opinions can be found in
both orthodox and helerodox wrilers. See Alcuin Blamires, "Women and Preaching in
Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints' Lives," Viator 26 (1995): 135 - 52.
"For an analysis of the way in which Mary Magdalene •embeds the \\lord in the
simplest speech acts," see Jerome Bush, "The Resources of Locus and Platea Staging: The
Digby Mary Magdalene," Studie.s in Philology 86 (1989): 154.
28 Mank'ind, in The Macro Plays, ed. Mark Eccles, EETS o.s. 262 (London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1969), Lines 64- 65.
29 lbid., line 147.
30 "The Trial of Mary and Joseph" in The N-Tow11 Play, ed. Stephen Speclor, 2 vols.,
EETS s.s. 11-12 (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1:150, lines 366-67.
232 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
customarily hidden in the Christian mass, the Eucharist then mani-
fests its divine power in a variety of miracles. In one of these, which
occurs after the Jews have placed the Host in an oven, "the ovvyn must
ryve asunder and blede owt at the cranys, and an image [shall) appere
owt with woundys bledyng."" The "image" (either a human actor or
an iconic representation of some sort) then asks the Jews, "Why blas-
pheme yow me? Why do ye thus?/ Why put yow me to a newe tor-
mentry?" 32 In their doubt and parody of Christian belief, these Jews are
the archetypal blasphemers. Again, as with Margery or in the Digby
play, blasphemy allows sanctity to manifest itself.
In the Digby Mary Magdalene, blasphemy and the grotesque are most
strongly linked during two brief scenes at a pagan temple in Mar-
seilles, the locus to which the scene shifts immediately after Jesus'
post-Resurrection appearance to Mary. The pagan temple is a recurrent
feature of Magdalene's story; we find it in the Legenda Aurea, Boken-
ham's Lyf of Marye Maudelyn and in the nearly contemporary French
play, La Vie de Marie Magdaleine, which was probably performed near
Lyon about 1500." The Digby dramatist, however, vastly elaborates
its significance, both by placing it within a coherent pattern of action
and by adding the figures of "an hethen prest and hys boye," Ha\vkyn
(1142, stage directions). Rather than have them literally take the Lord's
name in vain, the playwright instead emphasizes their "heathenness"
by having them perform a grotesque, implicitly blasphemous parody
of church customs. The Digby pagans have a far simpler religion than
the one portrayed in the French play, which incorporates a graded hier-
archy of gods including Apollo, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Diana,
each of whom is addressed by the appropriate member of the duke's
entourage.34 The pagan temple of the Digby play instead offers a mono·
theistic religion much closer to Christianity, albeit an inverted one.

31 Play of the Sar.ram,nt, in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments. ed. Norman Davis, EETS s.s.
1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), line 717, stage dire,:t ions.
n Ibid., lines 731-32.
llThe temple is implicit in the South English Legendary, ed. Charlotte d'Evelyn and
Anna). Mill, 3 vols., EETS o.s. 235, 236, and 244 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956
!for 1955)), 1:305, lines 73-78; and it is the place where Magdalene, Martha, and Laza-
rus take refuge in Osbem Bokenham's version in L,·gendys of Hooly Wummcn. ed. Mary S.
Serjeantson, EETS o.s. 206 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), line 5779. Also see
Darryll Grantley, "The Source of the Digb:,- Mary Magdalene," Notes and Queries n.s. 31
(1984): 457-59. For the French dramatic version of the temple episode, see La Vie de Marie
Magda/ei11e, ed . Jacques Chocheyras and Graham A. Runnalls (Geneve: Librairie Droz
S. A., 1986), lines 733-826.
34 La Vie de M11rie Magdaleine, lines 734-76.
 Victor I. Scherb 233
The Digby Presbyter tells his congregation, for example, to "Do yower
oferyng to Senti Mahownde, / And ye xall have grett pardon" (1205).
This follows the "Lecio," perhaps in imitation of the standard form of
the medieval Mass, when the customary time for a pardoner to preach
was after the reading of the Gospel.35 As in contemporary cathedrals
and monasteries, at the pagan temple one may see "relykys brygth"
(1232), such as "Mahowndys own nekke bon!" (1233) and "Mhowndys
own yeelyd!" (1237). The miracles these produce, however, are paro-
dic ones; Mohamed's eyelid, for example, "woll make yow blynd for
ewyrmore" (1241). Standard gestures of the Mass are reversed. Instead
of offering a benediction, for example, Hawkyn offers a curse:
Howndys and hoggys, in heggys and hellys,
Snakys and toddys mott be yower bellys!
Ragnell and Roffyn, and other in pe wavys,
Gravntt yow grace to dye on pe galows!
(1198-1201)

In some ways, the Digby dramatist's strategy seems to be similar to

that of the author of a German manuscript of the Tristabitur iustus,
an anti-Hussite parodic Mass from the fifteenth century. It purports
to quote from an office in which the Hussite faithful worship Wyclif,
their demonic leader.36 A kind of medieval disinformation pamphlet,
it portrays heretics as Satan worshipers and blasphemers, behaving
in a manner not unlike the clerk Hawkyn, who invokes "Ragnell and
Roffyn" and "pe dyvll of hell" (1172). For both the anti-Hussite propa-
gandist and the Digby author, heretics and infidels are outside of the
Christian community but- through parody and blasphemy-replicate
Christian beliefs and ceremonies.
Medieval art yields instances of strikingly similar schemes in the
presentation of other pagans. The fifteenth-century Boucicault Master,
for example, illustrated Marco Polo's account of the pagan temple at
Maabar by costuming the worshippers as religious women. According
to Michael Camille,
The artist painted the only kind of religious female he knew-nuns. They per-
form a very courtly dance in the presence of an idol whose only distinguishing
mark of evil is her blackness. To the fifteenth-century viewer what signaled

35 See H. Leith Spencer, English Pre11ching in the I.ate Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 113.
36 See Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages, 123.
234 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
evil in this scene was the disjunction between the sacred stereotype and the
irregular "wanton" dance to which they ... abandon themselves."
The idol in the illustration even holds a palm, a conventional sign
of martyrdom in Western art. The Boucicault Master thus seems to
have conceived idolatry as a grotesque, fleshly parody of the Chris-
tian homage due to saints. As in the Digby Mary Magdalene, aliens are
portrayed as grotesque versions of the self, with their religious prac-
tices existing as distorted versions of conventional Christian worship,
directed at inappropriate objects in an unseemly manner.
Within this carefully constructed context of similarity and differ-
ence, the priest's boy in the Digby play humorously debases the eccle-
siastical performances at the temple, often by emphasizing the life
of the body in a grotesque manner. The priest and his servant ver-
bally and physically abuse one another, Hawkyn especially focusing
on the priest's monstrous girth and sexual appetite. The boy, for ex-
ample, attacks his master for having "so fellyd yower bylly wyth grow-
ell, / pat it growit grett as pe dywll of hell' / Onshaply pou art to
see!" (1156-58). Furthermore, Hawkyn accuses the Presbyter of bear-
ing "Wayyts pakke" (that is, of having a fat gut) and of being of such
prodigious girth "pat nevyr horse may pe abyde / Exceptt pou breke
hys bakk asovndyre!" (1165-66). One altercation starts with the Presby-
ter's pious words, "Now, my clerke Hawkyn, for Joue of me, / Loke
fast myn awter were arayd!" (1143-44), but it quickly degenerates into
Hawkyn's question "Whatt mastyr' / Woldyst pou have j:>i leeman to
pi beddys syde?" (1149). Bakhtin has commented that "one of the main
attributes of the medieval clown was precisely the transfer of every
high ceremonial gesture or ritual to the material sphere." 36 Although
it apparently remains at the verbal level of blasphemy, Hawkyn imag-
ines a scene in which sexual congress replaces religious worship and
in which the altar becomes a mock bed on which the fuJfillment of
bodily appetites substitutes for sacramental ritual.
Mock violence further enhances the characterization of Hawkyn and
the Presbyter and keeps the audience's laughter focused on the gro-
tesque body. The pagan Presbyter, for example, promises his boy that
"I xall whyp pe tyll pi ars xall belle!" (1169), and that "Stryppys on pi
ars pou xall have,/ And rappys on pi pate!" (1176-77). The priest's fre-

37 Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and /mage-maki11g i11 Mtdiei,al Art (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 161, fig. 90.
Ja 6akhtin, Ral.,lai~and His World, 20.
 Victor I. Sdierb 2 35
quent threats do not frighten Hawkyn, who insists on keeping things
at an earthly and earthy level: "A fartt, mastyr, and kysse my grenne
[groin)!/ pe dyvll of hell was pi emme!" (1171-72).39 In response, the
Presbyter beats the boy, thus refiguring church hierarchy through the
medium of violent misrule, what Michael Bristol has termed "ritualized
thrashing and parodic travesty." 40 Again, this emphasizes the fleshly,
grotesque, and blasphemous character of the events at the temple locus,
the pagan priesthood becoming the representative of what Lawton has
characterized as "the grotesque body of the Beast [that! is a counter-
part to and reflex of the ideal body of Christian believers, the Body of
Christ.""
Although the evidence is too scant to make a conclusive connection,
the scene between these two characters exhibits features of Feast of
Fools ceremonies-features that include the jingling of bells, dissonant
singing, the repetition of meaningless words, the giving of mock bene-
dictions, the issuance of indulgences, and mock sermons." The Digby
Presbyter, for example, tells the boy to "Goo ryng a bell, to or thre!"
(1145). Furthermore, if the priest's words to Hawkyn are any indica-
tion, the singing of the two is anything but harmonious, for he criticizes
the boy for having brought him "all owt of rule" (1229). Additional
music will be supplied if the Presbyter carries out his threat to "whyp
pe tyll pi ars xall belle! / On pi ars corn mych wondyre!" (1169-70).
Like the mock pardons the pagan priest hands out to those who offer
obeisance to "Sentt Mahownde," the effect of the ringing of his strokes
on Hawkyn's arse will parody the ringing of a church bell, while the
forthcoming "wonders"-whether of pain or of gas- will parody the
miracles that cluster in holy places.
39 As with Garcio in the Towneley Mactatio Abel, the boy's rebuke or his master works
to associate the boy "with the base and scatologically centered world or the coarse fool"
(Martin Stevens and James Paxson, "The Fool in the Wakefield Plays," Studi,s in Iconog-
raphy 13 (,989-90): 68). On the s ignificance of scatological gestures and language, see
Karl P. Wentersdorf, '"The Symbolic Significance of Figurae Scatologicae in Gothic Manu-
scripts," in Word, Picture, and Spectacle, ed. Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and
Music Monograph Series 5 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), 1-19.
40 Michael D. Bristol, Carnival and TJu,at,r: Plebian Culture and the Structure of Authority
in Renaissance England (New York: Methuen, 1985), 72.
" Lawton, Blasphemy, 50.
42 E. K. Chambers, Tire Medieval Stage, 2 vols . (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903),
1:325. Central to the celebration is the inversion of status, as the inferior clergy bur•
lesqued roles and functions of the higher clergy. The exact nature of these activities is
described in more detail in a 1445 letter from the Faculty of Theology of the University
of Paris to the bishops of France (quoted in Chambers, i: 294). Also see Jacques Heers,
Files des Fous et Carnaw/s (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 177-83.
236 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
When the priest leaves to change his costume, Hawkyn begins a
mock sermon in dog-Latin," and it is here that blasphemy is most ap-
parent. This mock Latin reading, described by the boy as a "Leccyo
mahowndys," consists of a series of gnomic utterances rather than a
linear argument or narrative, and it functions in a manner that echoes
some types of parodic sermons... The dog-Latin phrases fail to form
coherent sentences, but they do invoke motifs that tend to associate
the pagan temple with blasphemy and the grotesque. Instead of the
"most high God," the boy invokes a parodic substitute: the "mighti-
est of the Saracens." The boy's reading focuses on food, sex, and the
perversion or inversion of ideal Christian religious values. The spiri-
tual food of the Christian gospel message is here refigured as a pagan,
fleshly one- the words describe a "Gormondorum alocorum" and a
"fartum cardiculorum." The playwright suggests illegitimate sexuality
in words like "Castratum," unnatural metamorphoses in "werwolf-
forum," unbridled language in "rybaldorum" and "Slavndri," and vio-
lence in "beffettorum" and "strangolcorum" (1186-97). The "Leccyo
mahowndys" threatens to reduce language, especially ecclesiastical
language, to mere sound, to "Snyguer snagoer . .. Rygour, dagour,
flapporum" (1193 - 96). As a parody of church practice, it constitutes
an in-joke on garbled and incomprehensible ecclesiastical Latin, the
"Fragmina verborum" that Tutivillus collects in the Towneley Judge-
ment play, but it also places these misspeakers outside the Christian
community and uses them to construct paganism as a blasphemous
parody of Christianity.•s
The line between parody and imitation can, of course, be an in-
distinct one, and, as the Digby editors suggest, some parts of this
sermon may have a contemporary reference. For example, "werwolf-
forum / Standgardum lambat beffettorum" (1193-94) describes were-
wolves standing guard over a flock of lambs, a common figure for a
careless priest ... The mumbled phrases themselves represent sacred
speech as gibberish and Latin preachers as buffoons. The words and

4J The phrase "dog-Latin" indicates the genitive plural added to a series of nouns.
"See Sander L. Gilman, The Parodic S,rmo11 in Europmn Pers,wctiw (Weisbaden: Cranz
Steiner Verlag CMBH, 1974), 19. As Baker, Murphy, and Hall note, however, some of the
coherence has been lost through the process of scribal transmission (211). Also see Bay-
less, Parody in the Middle Ages, esp. t 57-67 on Nonsense-Centos.
•• Tire Townel,y Ploys, ed. Martin Stevens and A. C . Cawley, 2 vols., EETS s.s. 13-14
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 1 :361, line 361 .
'6 Baker, Murphy, and Hall, eds., !Ate Medieval Religious Plays, 211, note to lines 1185-
201.
 Victor I. Scherb 2 37

actions of Presbyter and Hawkyn would not be blasphemous, and the

scene would not be funny, if their behavior were not at least recogniz-
able. The implicit criticism and blasphemy may well have added to the
scene's theatrical intensity and, oddly enough, may have added to the
impact of some potentially controversial ideas, a point to which I will
return below. The extent of the parody would have become realized
only in performance, as it would depend upon such factors as costum-
ing, gesture, and vocal style. At the same time, the very learnedness of
the passage suggests that the writer was a product of the same Latin
culture he parodies here and that the parody (especially displaced as ii
is here, to a pagan clergy) may be humorous without satirizing the con-
temporary priesthood destructively. If bad priests are being criticized,
the play as a whole contains this criticism by emphasizing a Christian
priest's sacramental power and, in particular, the power of St. Peter."
For all the scope that the playwright allows these figures of license at
the pagan temple, the later confrontation between paganism and Chris-
tianity is brief and decisive, a silencing of blasphemous utterance in the
face of the spiritual authority of Mary's preaching. Significantly, im-
mediately after Mary's sermon on the creation of the world, the King of
Marseilles leads her to the temple in order to "to se my goddys myth!"
(1537). The god cannot speak in the presence of a Christian (1546), and
its silence is followed by the coming of "a clowd from heven," which
sets "J,e tempyl on afyer" (1561, stage directions). The silences-not
only of the pagan idol but also of the Presbyter and his boy-mark the
end of the interval of linguistic license that had been briefly granted
within the world of the play. As Lawton observes, "Where God is word,
the devil is anti-word."'" Here, this is made manifest by the idol's lack
of words; elsewhere (as in the boy's mock sermon), by the perversion
of them.
Still, their words and silences are important, for they illustrate how
Nthe carnival representation of the bad serves to reflect and stabilize
the good."' 9 Their speeches highlight Mary's present sanctity, even
as their suppression both recalls and exorcises Mary's former fleshly,
sinful, and unredeemed past. Furthermore, their failure to speak and
misspeaking throw into high relief Mary's own speech, especially her
sermon to the King of Marseilles. "In principio erat verbum," she tells the
"See Bush, "Resources of Locus and Platea Staging," 153, and Coletti, "The Digby Play
of Mary Magdalene," on the eucharistic emphases in the play.
48 Lawton, Blasp/1£my, 6.

• 9 lbid., ;1.
238 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
king, in effect identifying her words with the divine logos. The speech of
the Presbyter and his boy clarifies and helps authorize Mary's present
evangelism, silencing any doubts about Mary's claim to her role of
"aposty!esse" (1381). The two thus enhance Mary's status as a powerful
speaker, one who brings the news of Christ's resurrection to the other
apostles and participates in the conversion of pagan Europe.'°
Although the play probably predates the humanist controversy over
the proper identification of Mary Magdalene, the Digby presentation
of her touches upon other sensitive issues in late medieval England.51
While Mary carefully defers to St. Peter or other male authorities about
sacramental matters such as the King of Marseilles' baptism (1680-
84) and the administration of communion (2101), she is also presented
as a powerful woman, one who teaches, preaches, and demonstrably
converts those around her. Such a position was precarious, for women
preachers were associated with Lollards and heterodoxy.52 On more
than one occasion Margery Kempe has to distinguish her "comowny-
cacyon & good wordys" and "good talys" from preaching, and one
way she does this is by juxtaposing her speech to illicit, blasphemous
speech: "I xal spekyn of God & vndirnemyn hem pat sweryn gret
othys."" Although she denies that she preaches, Margery uses the blas-
phemy of others to identify her words as both godly and powerful,
words ultimately capable both of touching her listeners' hearts and of
prophesying future events.s.
Another nearly contemporary East Anglian text, John Capgrave's The
Life of St. Katharine of Alexandria, also has a powerful woman speaker
who charges others with blasphemy in a manner that illuminates her
own sanctity. After she has bested and converted fifty pagan philoso-
phers, the pagan emperor Maxentius attempts to kill her with a torture
engine comprising four great wheels. St. Katherine prays for a miracle
to destroy the machine:

50 For more on this aspect of the play, see Victor I. Scherb, ·worldly and Sacred Mes-
sengers in the Digby Mary Magdalene," E11glish Studies 73 (1992): 1- 9.
5I On the humanist controversy about Magdalene, see Dixon, "'Thys Body of Mary;·
225.
52 See Margaret Aston, "Lollard Women Priests?" in her Le/lards and ~formers (Lon-
don, 1984), 49- 70; and Claire Cross, • 'Great Reasoners in Scripture': The Activities of
Women Lollards, 138o-1530," Studits in Church History, subsidia 1 (1978): 359-80.
53 The Book of Margtry Ktmpe. ed. Meech and Allen, 126, 130, 126.
54 Ibid., 127: ·pe clerk whech had examynd hir be-for-tyme in pe absens of pe Ercheb-
schop, syd, "Ser. pis tale smythyth me to j>e hert"; on her power of prophe.-y, see p. 58.
 Victor I. Scherb 2 39

This aske I not for ony fere of deeth,

But for thi puple that standeth here-aboute;
Me thenketh, lord, her langage myn hert sleeth,
That j:,ei with toungis and woordis proude and stoute
Shuld blaspheme thy name, and putte in doute
This true feyth, this is, lord, my cause.55
Her prayer is, of course, answered, and the wheels are destroyed uwith
wynde and thunder." Four thousand pagans are immediately killed in
the ensuing chaos, including those that "blasphemed oure god with
cruel herte." 56 As with Margery and Mary Magdalene, this display of
divine power endorses the speaker's special relationship to God and
sanctifies her speech in opposition to the blasphemies of others.
In a manner similar to Katherine's, Mary's speech in the Digby play
is powerful because it is endorsed by divine action. In a scene not
found in other versions of her story, Mary initiates the destruction of
the temple as well as of the Presbyter and Hawkyn. The manner of
their deaths seems designed to recall specific Old Testament miracles,
including one associated with blasphemy. The text indicates that im-
mediately after the fire from heaven, "pe pryst and pe cler[k] xall
synke" (1561, stage direction), suggesting that the two disappear into
specially prepared hiding places in the ground of the playing area
or in the temple locus itself.57 Their punishment recalls that of Corah
and Abiram and their associated Levites who dared to question the
authority of Moses and Aaron (Num. 16:1- 33). As Moses tells the as-
sembled Israelites,
if the Lord do a new thing, and the earth opening her mouth swallow them
down, and all things that belong to them, and they go down alive into hell, you
shall know that they have blasphemed the Lord . And immediately as he had
made an end of speaking, the earth broke asunder under their feet: And open-
ing her mouth, devoured them with their tents and all their substance. (Num.
16:29-32) 58

55 John Capgrave, The Life of St. Katharine of Alexandria, ed. Carl Horstmann, EETS o.s.
100 (London, 1893), 382, lines 1338-43.
56 Ibid., 383, lines 1354, 1364.
S7 Such effects were not unknown in Europe. See the accounts for Paris and Lucerne
printed in The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in /he L,zter Middle Ages: Texts and Docu-
ments in English Translation, ed. Peter Meredith and John E. Tailby, Early Drama, Art, and
Music Monograph Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1983), 97.
""Douay-Rheims Version. After they have been swallowed up by the earth, fire de-
stroys 250 men who had offered incense with Corah. Both biblical elements - fire and
live burial-are present in the Digby play.
240 Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene
Mary's words similarly calJ down God's anger in order to "Pott don
pe pryd of mamentys violatt," for God should "Lett natl per pryd to
pi poste pretende" (1556, 1558). Although she does not mention the
charge of blasphemy specifically, speech acts invoking other gods are
plainly inappropriate in places "Whereas is rehersyd pi name Jhesus!"
(1559). The priest and his boy have thus blasphemed God by implicitly
questioning Mary's authority and praying to pagan gods, and they suf-
fer the appropriate biblical punishment.
This spectacular scene of destruction, encompassing not only the
temple structure but also its ecclesiastics, uses blasphemous parody to
enhance Mary's sanctity. The playwright can do this in part because
of the way in which he has used the grotesque in his portrayal of a
few significant characters, such as the pagan priest and Hawkyn. Their
two scenes together-by turns comic and unsettling-exemplify what
Gurevich has characterized as the ability of the grotesque to "evoke
merriment, but ... not destroy fear. Rather, [the grotesque) unites
them in some contradictory feeling in which we are supposed to as-
sume both sacred trepidation and merry laughter as an indissoluble
pair." 59 As pagans, they were carefully distanced from the audience's
fifteenth-century reality, but as a presbyter and his assistant, they may
also have seemed uncomfortably close. While the implicit blasphemy
at the temple undoubtedly provoked the audience's laughter, it may
also have sparked unease, even fear, at the volatile mixing of the sacred
and the profane, structure and anti-structure, self and other, even as it
threw into high relief Mary's similarly mixed status and celebrated her
sanctity.
Grotesque characters like the Presbyter and his boy become what
Lawton has called "the Other of orthodoxy, ... the mirror image that
confirms identity.""' Initiates in a blasphemous, grotesque travesty of
church ritual, they cannot be converted like the King and Queen of
Marseilles; in the Digby Mary Magdalene, blasphemous license must be
destroyed utterly. And if they are associated with blasphemy, the two
also receive one of its biblical punishments-they are swallowed up
by the earth. In doing so, however, they provide yet one more foil for
Mary's sanctity and help to establish her as a powerful figure, one au-
thorized both by the church and by her relationship to divine truth.

The University of Texas at Tyler

59 Gurevich,Medieval Popular Culture, 207.

"'Lawton, Blasphemy, 5.