Pilgrims and Prostitutes: Costume and Identity Construction in Twelfth-Century

Liturgical Drama
Author(s): Andrew J. Gibb
Source: Comparative Drama , Fall 2008, Vol. 42, No. 3, Special Memorial Issue in Memory
of Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Fall 2008), pp. 359-384
Published by: Comparative Drama

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23038071

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 Pilgrims and Prostitutes: Costume and
Identity Construction in Twelfth-Century
Liturgical Drama
Andrew J. Gibb

Compiled sometime
Benedictine in the
monastery last quarter of the
at St.-Benoit-sur-Loire, thetwelfth century at the
Fleury Playbook
contains the record of a highly unusual theatrical event.1 It is found in
the Raising of Lazarus, a play that scholars believe may have originated
at Fleury.2 The action begins conventionally enough with Christ and his
disciples dining at the house of Simon. But not long after the play begins,
Mary Magdalen enters the scene "in habitu ... meretricio," or, "costumed
like a streetwalker."3 The dignified Latin of the original text does not
seem to capture fully the shocking quality of the staged performance it
describes, that of a pious cleric entering the church dressed like a prosti
tute. One might reasonably ask what the assembled congregation would
have made of such a spectacle. Or for that matter, what the monk-actors
could have been thinking by presenting it. The mystery deepens when
we consider the monks' peculiar staging choice in the context of the
heretofore established costuming techniques prescribed for liturgical
dramas. For at least two centuries, in tropes such as the visitatio sepulchri,
Mary Magdalen and other female characters had simply been represented
through the artistic draping of priestly vestments near to hand.4 But the
phrase "habitu meretricio" would seem to indicate clothing not likely to
be found in the sacristy, and therein lies the shock value of the didascalia.
But in addition to appearing somewhat bizarre to the modern eye, they
also document a contemporary costuming revolution: they are the first
known examples in medieval theater of a prescribed costume that was
not a liturgical vestment.

359

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360 Comparative Drama

The monks of Fleury did not restrict their costuming innovation

to Lazarus alone. In another of the Playbooks scripts, Peregrini, a male
character appears "ad modem Peregrini"—in the manner of a pilgrim—an
outfit that includes a tunic, a hat, a staff, and significantly, a leather purse
or wallet.5 Representing a pilgrim with that particular accessory is another
innovation attributable to the monks of St.-Benoit-sur-Loire.6 With its ap
pearance in the didascalia, the mystery of the Fleury costuming practices
grows not only deeper, but darker—for the researcher is confronted with
the intriguing and disturbing fact that, in the long history of medieval
liturgical theater, the first two characters ever represented through secular
costume are a prostitute and a man with a wallet.
Why nonliturgical costuming arose when it did, and why the practice
was inaugurated in such a seemingly unexpected fashion, is the subject
of this essay. The tendency among medieval theater scholars has been to
situate the Fleury plays within a progressivist narrative that charts suc
cessive attempts toward "realism." Dunbar Ogden labels the Fleury inno
vations "realistic touches." Similarly, Theodore Komisarjevsky speaks of
"more realism in the matter of costumes" as the Middle Ages progressed.
Karl Young writes of other plays in which liturgical vestments were
"supplemented by realistic or symbolic objects," and about how in one
case "realism is increased when the angels are provided with wings."7 But
that interpretation attributes modern aesthetic sensibilities to medieval
dramatists and denies the highly symbolic nature of medieval theater. A
desire for realism is not a suitable explanation of a choice by medieval
monks suddenly to incorporate individualized costuming into their the
atrical presentations. Fleury's revolutionary theatrical conventions must
have arisen from conditions and concepts unique to twelfth-century
France. I argue that the Fleury monks' choice to forego universalizing
liturgical vestments in favor of particularized secular garments reflected
a contemporary fascination with identity construction. I further contend
that the characters of the pilgrim and the prostitute served as gendered
role models for contemporary audiences in their construction of new
social identities.

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Andrew J. Gibb 361

I. The Twelfth-Century French Renaissance

Twelfth-century Europeans experienced a host of economic and political
changes that generally improved their material conditions, while simul
taneously undermining many of their traditional social arrangements.
A critical development of the period was a significant increase in trade.
Partly driven by the Mediterranean exchange spurred by the Crusades,
the rise in commerce was also facilitated by a greatly strengthened system
of roads.8 Manufacturing became increasingly viable with the expansion
of trade.9 All of those developments contributed to the growth of cities.
At the same time, advances in agriculture led to a lessening of feudal
restrictions on peasants. The result was a more mobile workforce, many
of whom migrated to the new centers of trade and manufacturing.10 The
concentrated wealth of the urban hubs made possible great centers of
learning, where scholars began to mine the wisdom of the ancients and
explore new ways of looking at the world. Primarily due to geography,
twelfth-century France benefited the most from all of those developments.
For that reason, what some historians have labeled "the Renaissance of
the Twelfth Century" is sometimes referred to more specifically as "the
French Renaissance."11
The average twelfth-century Frenchman and Frenchwoman were
thus recent arrivals to the city, were engaged in a new trade, and enjoyed
a surplus of wealth that, no matter how meager, would have staggered
their parents. They were also regularly exposed to the learning of the new
schools through the sermons of preaching clerics.12 As they experienced
both unimagined opportunities and the swift erosion of their traditional
way of life, they doubtless thought a great deal about how they fit into the
new order of things, and how they ought to represent themselves. One
would expect to find evidence of a good deal of such soul-searching in the
artistic and philosophical expressions of the time. And in fact, many liter
ary historians have done so. Colin Morris, for example, argues that twelfth
century Europeans were preoccupied to an unprecedented extent with
explorations of personal identity, a phenomenon he sees as a crucial step
in the development of European Individualism. He is careful to distinguish
between what he calls "political individualism," which arose at a later date
out of concerns about the rights of individuals vis-a-vis their government,

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362 Comparative Drama

and a twelfth-century individualism that he defines as "self-awareness

and self-expression ... the freedom of man to declare himself without
paying excessive attention to the demands of convention or the dictates
of authority."13 Morris finds evidence of that brand of individualism in a
wide range of twelfth-century artistic and philosophical developments,
including autobiography, private confession, portraits, romances, satire,
and mystical theology. Although he does not directly address theater, his
thesis might easily be applied to that art form. "Individualism" of course
is a famously debatable and debated concept, but fortunately for the
purposes of the present study, no definitive assertions need be made.
Whether or not the social developments of the period were critical to
the rise of Western Individualism, they certainly afforded twelfth-century
Europeans unprecedented freedom in the self-construction of new identi
ties. The particularization of costuming in the Fleury plays can be read as
a dramatic manifestation of a wider twelfth-century preoccupation with
identity construction.
But just why that preoccupation should manifest itself theatrically
through the figures of the pilgrim and the prostitute is a problem that
requires deeper analysis, though one can begin with a consideration of
the same economic conditions that drove the timing of the innovation.
The changes afoot in the twelfth century allowed for an unprecedented
increase in physical and social mobility for Europeans in general, though
some benefited more than others. Those who were positively affected
pursued their newfound mobility in a number of ways, many of which
reflected and reinforced the contemporary interest in the exploration and
expression of personal identity. Two such practices, pilgrimages and con
spicuous fashion displays, are dramatically represented in the Fleury scripts
through the figures of the pilgrim and the prostitute. What is more, the
specific emphases on the pilgrim and the prostitute in the Fleury Playbook
indicate the gendered nature of the twelfth-century's project of identity
construction. Prostitution was an occupation almost solely identified with
women in the Middle Ages.14 By contrast, pilgrimage was largely a male
endeavor.15 The two character types represented dramatic paradigms of
identity construction: the pilgrim specifically male and the prostitute
specifically female. That men should be provided with an ostensibly holy
example and women a seemingly sinful one is a problematic arrangement

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Andrew J. Gibb 363

that I will address at length. It is also important to note that, although the
two characters are both manifestations of the same cultural developments,
they never actually meet in the pages of the Fleury Playbook. They inhabit
the same space but never side-by-side, like two faces of a single coin. It
is therefore useful to treat them each more or less individually, before
considering them together.

II. Meretrix

Any understanding of the importance of the Fleury Mary Magdalen

to scenographic history is hampered by the fact that we have no hard
proof of exactly how she was represented onstage. Unlike most medieval
costuming rubrics, which detail the vestimentary items to be used and
specify how they are to be arranged, the Fleury manuscript simply states
"in habitu ... meretricio."16 The lack of elaboration seems to assume that
the reader needs no further description; that anyone will know what a
prostitutes attire should look like. One could assume that the writer does
not imply a familiarity with the appearance of actual prostitutes, but rather
an acquaintance with hagiographic imagery of the pre-conversion Mary.
After all, the Magdalen was one of the most beloved saints of the medieval
period. But as Katherine Ludwig Jansen has pointed out in The Making of
the Magdalen: "Although a popular theme in sermons and sacred drama
of the Middle Ages, and unlike the baroque period, the Magdalen's vani
ties were not well represented in medieval art. In only two Italian fresco
cycles [from the fifteenth century] is her voluptuous pre-conversion life
depicted, and then, with reserve."17 Given such a scarcity of contempo
rary sacred imagery, it would appear that readers and/or audiences of the
Fleury Raising of Lazarus had a more direct knowledge of the appearance
of streetwalkers. And indeed, although the audience at Fleury may well
have found a prostitute an unusual sight within the church, they most
likely would have considered her a familiar one outside of it.18 Historians
of medieval prostitution generally agree that the trade was common in
the twelfth century, and that it was generally, if reluctantly, accepted by
society and the ecclesiastical establishment.19 From the twenty-first
century perspective, conditioned as it is by centuries of state regulation and
religious condemnation of sex work, it may seem strange that the starkly

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364 Comparative Drama

authoritarian and deeply religious society of medieval Europe should

condone prostitution. And indeed, at no time in the Middle Ages was the
activity celebrated or encouraged; it was always considered a sin and a
disreputable practice. But medieval views of sexuality generally did not
stress the individual responsibility that is such an important component
of today's mores. In the Middle Ages, many people subscribed to what
Ruth Mazo Karras has called the "hydraulic model" of human sexual
ity: the dangers inherent in trying to dam the uncontrollable torrent of
sexuality justified prostitution as a "lesser evil." Without the safety valve
of prostitution, men might be tempted to engage in rape or homosexual
ity.20 In addition to such philosophical imperatives, financial interest on
the part of authorities often played an important role in the acceptance
of prostitution. Many towns during the Middle Ages operated public
brothels, institutions that contributed considerable sums to city treasur
ies. At certain times and places the Church itself, acting in its capacity
as feudal landlord, took in rents from brothels, even as it denounced the
employees of such establishments from the pulpit.21 It should be noted
that no record exists of any such arrangement between the monastery at
St.-Benoit-sur-Loire and the local sex industry. But there is no reason to
believe that the Fleury monks and their lay congregation did not share
the age's ambivalent feelings about prostitution.
Whatever the local realities were, the manner in which Mary's costume
is prescribed is significant. The simple statement of the didascalia, "in
habitu ... meretricio," can be read as evidence that, in the area of twelfth
century St.-Benoit-sur-Loire, prostitutes could easily be identified by their
clothing. The historical record points to two possible explanations of that
apparent uniformity of dress among the regions sex workers. The first is
the presence of a distinctive badge. Modern scholars are probably most
familiar with medieval methods of segregating populations via badges
through the record of contemporary regulations aimed at Jews.22 Jeffrey
Richards has argued that those prescriptions, although not initially aimed
at prostitutes, encouraged a similar use against that group.23 Although
the legal prescription of badges for prostitutes was not common before
the fourteenth century, it is possible that such laws merely codified an
already established practice.24 Jacques Rossiaud has noted that by the
mid-thirteenth century, a red shoulder knot was a common badge in

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Andrew J. Gibb 365

French cities. Called the aiguillette, that cord was said to have a biblical
inspiration: it imitated the red rope used by the prostitute Rahab in the
Book of Joshua.25 The common use of such a badge would certainly have
made it easier for the Fleury monks to costume Mary Magdalen. The
actor could have worn the traditional cope and amice combination, and
simply attached the badge. Such a symbol might have sufficiently indicated
meretrix to the audience, without requiring the priest to wear anything
too racy.
A second possibility, potentially of greater interest, is that the costume
was of a much more elaborate nature. Perhaps prostitutes were easily
recognizable through clothing choice rather than a badge. If that was so,
what might such a costume have looked like? Although it is impossible to
know for certain, a contemporary description of French prostitutes can
provide us with some clues. A twelfth-century account, written by the
Arab observer Imad ad-Din, relates the arrival of a group of "Frankish"
prostitutes in the Holy Land. He describes them as "tinted and painted"
and says that "each one trailed the train of her robe behind her."26 An
other contemporary example of the association of a long-trained dress
with prostitution can be found in Richeut, a vernacular poem composed
sometime around 1170. It is frequently cited as an important text in the
development of the fabliau, an often bawdy popular form that took shape
in France during the latter part of the twelfth century.27 The poem re
lates the adventures of its title character, Richeut, a well-to-do prostitute.
In one episode, Richeut takes her illegitimate son to church to see him
christened. The local townsfolk are scandalized, but not so much by her
appearance in a holy place as by the excessively long train of her dress.28
Imad ad-Din's mention of cosmetics is also significant. Although the
Fleury Lazarus makes no specific mention of makeup, another script from
the Playbook indicates a need for pigments of some sort. The Peregrini
calls for Christ to display his wounds. In his discussion of the staging of
that play, Dunbar Ogden conjectures that "no doubt Mary Magdalen uses
such coloring when she appears in the Raising of Lazarus!'29 A number of
later medieval dramas that depict episodes from the Magdalen's life include
scenes in which she purchases beauty products.30 Katherine Ludwig Jansen
points out that the association of Mary with cosmetics was a medieval
innovation, a connection made by churchmen elaborating upon classical

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366 Comparative Drama

and early church treatises on the sin of vanity, tracts that gendered the
vice as primarily female.31 Cosmetics also appear as an important plot
device in at least one of the episodes of Richeut,32 Such sources point to
the possibility that, far from appearing in a simple cope with a red cord
attached, the priest playing Mary may have entered the church fully rouged
and trailing an extended train. However remarkable that idea may seem,
it is nevertheless the case that the possibility better fits the dating of the
various documents. Imad ad-Din's account is older than, or contemporary
to, the Fleury manuscript, whereas there is no hard evidence for badges
of prostitution dated before the thirteenth century. Evidence of later me
dieval dramatic practice also supports this radical costuming possibility.
Jansen draws our attention to a fifteenth-century ecclesiastical vestment
that depicts Mary in an elaborately draped garment with fantastically
long sleeves. For Jansen, "[t] he theatricality of the scene suggests that its
representation was influenced by sacred plays."33
I have proposed what seem to be the two most likely scenarios for the
costuming of Mary in the Fleury Raising of Lazarus. But both possibili
ties only explain how audience members may have identified a character
as a prostitute through costume. Neither addresses the question of how
or if women viewing the presentation might have constructed their own
identity through the figure of the staged prostitute. At least two signifi
cant medieval discourses about women, one religious and the other legal,
worked to encourage that identification.
The genesis of those discourses can be located in twelfth-century
transformations in the status of women. The economic changes of the
twelfth century that gave rise to urbanization profoundly affected the
lives of women in all classes and occupations. Women were just as likely
to migrate to the cities as their male counterparts. Many came with a
husband or married soon after arriving, and they frequently labored
alongside their spouses. Medieval businesses were generally organized
along family lines, and the wives and daughters of tradesmen were in
many cases valued members of the workforce. The untimely death of a
male proprietor could and did sometimes lead to his wife's inheritance
of the business.34 Wealthy merchants' wives, who did not have to labor as
intensely, benefited from the greater freedom of movement and educa
tion that became possible through the profits from increased trade.35 For

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Andrew J. Gibb 367

the poorer classes of women, urbanization generally offered less positive

opportunities. The greatest proportion of city dwellers, men and women
alike, were poor former peasants, caught in a perpetual migration cycle
between the manors and the city slums.36 Many of these desperate souls
were women who chose (or were forced into) prostitution as a means of
breaking the cycle.37
Although the new agency afforded to women by the economic and
demographic changes of the twelfth century was unevenly distributed,
any gain was made at the expense of male hegemonic control. Men gener
ally did not take well to the lessening of their dominance, but they were
constrained to some extent in their retaliation, at least against women of
the nobility or the emerging bourgeoisie. But female prostitutes, doubly
marginalized by their gender and the nature of their work, were fair game.
As a target they symbolized not only female economic power, but also
female sexual independence. Attributing the supposed sins of prostitutes
to womankind in general could and did become an effective method of
ideological control. As Ruth Mazo Karras has written:
It was not only the distrust of money (and hence the fear of feminine venal
ity) that made the prostitute such an important figure in medieval culture's
control of women. It was also her independence. Any woman who was not
under the direct control of a man—any woman who remained single and
earned her own living, or indeed any married woman who earned her own
living as well—was a threat to masculine control.... Labeling some women as
prostitutes was a way of deterring others from undesirable behaviour.38

A prime example of such "undesirable behavior" was the conspicu

ous display of fine clothing. The same economic forces that drove the
geographical and social migration of twelfth-century women exposed
them to previously inaccessible supplies of goods, including a wealth of
fabrics and apparel items. Women in a position to explore and reinvent
their identities could and did choose to express themselves through
clothing. Those who did so most often possessed enough ready cash for
such luxury items. Thus, respectable women of the noble and merchant
classes habitually wore cosmetics and long trains.39 There is consider
able evidence to suggest that men in power were displeased with such
conspicuous demonstrations of increasing female independence and, as
might be expected, churchmen led the way in the ideological response.

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368 Comparative Drama

Recall the sumptuously attired Magdalen embroidered onto the vestment

of the fifteenth-century cleric as the archetypical image of vanity.40 A
textual example from the same period is the conduct manual titled The
Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry, a collection of stories believed to
have originated in earlier church exempla, or short narratives inserted
into a sermon to illustrate a point.41 The book is full of misogynist tales
about sinful women, a pertinent example being the story of "A Priest's
Vision of His Mother." In that story, a priest is confronted with a vision of
his deceased mother, who is now suffering torment because of her many
earthly sins. She explains the reason for one of the painful tortures she
endures: "my burning skin is drawn off me and trailing behind because
while I lived on earth I wore dresses with excessively long trains."42 The
graphically violent imagery of the piece is common in such clerical at
tacks on medieval female vanity. The exemplum is also typical in that it
links that vanity to female sexuality: the priest s mother also confesses her
"lecherous kissing" and "the two children I bore in adultery."
The preachers' task of associating conspicuous dress with deviant
sexuality was made easier by the well-documented tendency of prosti
tutes to join their social betters in indulgent display. As Nickie Roberts
writes: "A prostitutes earnings often enabled her to adopt the trappings
of a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle; this was a social sin as much as
a sexual one, in the eyes of the scandalized burghers."43 The supposed
difficulty in distinguishing the streetwalker from the society matron was
often cited as an argument for the regulation of the prostitute's dress.44
That regulation often took the form of sumptuary laws. The primary intent
of those legal codes was to discourage conspicuous consumption and to
shore up increasingly blurred class distinctions, but they often included
clauses specifically aimed at legislating the clothing of prostitutes. In
some cases, the laws prescribed badges or specific fabric colors in order
to visually segregate prostitutes. Elsewhere statues denied prostitutes
the right to wear particular items of clothing. Leah Lydia Otis cites a
decree issued by the bailiff of Pezanas in 1320, by which prostitutes were
forbidden to wear "long dresses trailing on the ground."45 But the legal
restrictions placed upon prostitutes also served to define the boundaries
of suitable behavior for the respectable women who were the purported
beneficiaries of the prostitutes' marginalization. Nowhere is that double

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Andrew J. Gibb 369

purpose more evident than in the example, cited by James Brundage, of

the city of Perpignan. In that southern French town, civic leaders enacted
a sumptuary code that specifically exempted prostitutes. Such a tactic
was no doubt intended to force respectable women to forgo conspicuous
display, lest they be mistaken for prostitutes.46
Through such negatively inflected discourses as church exempla and
legal codes, both of which associated fine clothing with prostitution, the
male power structure sought to subvert one of the most readily avail
able tools by which women could express their increased social status.
But neither respectable women nor prostitutes were obliged to accept
those negative associations, and the continued appearance of such texts
throughout the Middle Ages indicates that many women refused to do so.
Nevertheless, evidence of women's interiorization of those discourses can
also be cited. The thirteenth-century clergyman Jacques de Vitry wrote
and preached often about proper gender roles and sexual deviance.47 One
of de Vitry's favorite subjects was the life of Marie d'Oignies, a twelfth
century saint who proudly refused to wear hair braids, jewelry, or fashion
able clothing, choosing instead to dress in a hair shirt and simple wool
garments.48 But women disposed to accept the sinfulness of conspicuous
display did not need the example of a contemporary saint. After all, they
already had the premier archetype of redeemed modesty near to hand in
the figure of Mary Magdalen, the first woman to renounce her vanity for
the love of Christ. The status of Mary Magdalen as Christianity's most
representative penitent was growing in the twelfth century, as is testified
to by the increasing number of penitential hymns composed for her feast
day.49 Perhaps because the Magdalen's symbolic power relied upon her
reputation as a past sinner, her specific connection to prostitution was
not downplayed as she rose to prominence, but rather amplified. As the
penitent prostitute Mary came to increasingly dominate the popular
mind, a Pan-European movement arose that was aimed at redeeming sex
workers. Twelfth-century preachers endorsed various redemptive projects,
many of which focused on marrying off prostitutes. In the early thirteenth
century, the high-ranking churchman Rudolph of Worms founded a mo
nastic order that recruited exclusively from among repentant prostitutes.
The Penitent Sisters of Blessed Mary Magdalen received papal approval
in 1227, and soon houses appeared in cities all over Europe, particularly

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370 Comparative Drama

in France and Germany. The white habits worn by the former prostitutes
became vestmentary symbols of redeemed womanhood.50
It is worth returning to the two possibilities I have advanced for the
costuming of Mary, in order to conjecture how they may have acted upon
female audience members. In the first instance, which I will term the "ai
guillette scenario," women spectators would have been presented with the
traditional costuming of the redeemed Mary in simple cope, but with the
addition of a red cord. The aiguillette was the sign of a very specific sin,
but could also act as a general indication of a sinful state. It could func
tion as a simple yet powerful semiotic device, as all that would separate
Mary from her redeemed self would be the badge. The ease with which
she could remove the badge mirrors the ease with which the twelfth
century Christian woman could remove her sin through confession. It is
no coincidence that, although she is costumed as a prostitute, the audience
sees Mary in her moment of conversion. She rushes onstage, throwing
herself at Christ's feet, begging for forgiveness.51 She thus models through
her actions the behavior of a properly penitent and submissive woman
Through the traditional costume underneath the badge, she would also
model an interior identity as a modest and pious woman, despite the
outward sign of her sin.
The second, or "long-train," scenario models identity much more
ambiguously. The congregation was aware of the details of the story
being presented and knew that they were viewing an impersonation of
a prostitute. In the aiguillette scenario, an idealized vision of a redeemed
Mary is presented; her only mark of shame is the badge that is obviously
not the accessory of a respectable merchant s wife. By contrast, the long
train scenario presents the bourgeoise with a prostitute in her own image.
Mary is represented through exactly those outward signs that most signal
women's newfound social influence, her clothing. And while costume
prompts the female audience member to self-recognition and identifica
tion with the sinning woman, the plot situates Mary at her moment of
redemption. Through this one-two punch, the meaning is conveyed: your
sinful extravagances are Mary's, give them up just as Mary is doing.
In either case, the redeemed (or at least redeemable) Mary was the
model the twelfth-century monks of St.-Benoit-sur-Loire provided to
female parishioners who were fashioning a new identity within a rapidly

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Andrew J. Gibb 371

changing society. The choice of a prostitute as an exemplar was critical to

their project, a mission that might almost be described as psychological
warfare. Of course, many medieval women, like their male counterparts,
probably sought exactly such clear-cut instruction from their church. They
may well have identified closely with the Fleury Mary, especially after her
redemption and later appearance at the tomb of Lazarus, by which time her
sinful tresses would surely have been exchanged for more modest ones. In
her dual role of quintessential sinner and archetypal penitent, Mary could
fulfill a wide range of functions for playwrights and spectators alike.
The Raising of Lazarus is not the only text in the Fleury Playbook
that links respectable women with prostitution. The Tres Filice or "Three
Daughters," one of the manuscripts St. Nicholas plays, also makes that
connection. That script, however, does not draw a negative association
through costuming, but offers through plot an almost sympathetic under
standing of the hard economic factors that may have pressured contem
porary women into prostitution. An early mystery play, Tres Filice tells the
story of a recently impoverished man and his three devoted daughters. It
opens with the father's address to his daughters, in which he shares with
them the sad news that he has lost all of his fortune and does not know

how they will survive. His eldest suggests that the daughters support the
family through prostitution; the second argues that to do so would bring
damnation; the third implores her father to trust in the mercy of God.52
They are spared the necessity of endangering their mortal souls when
St. Nicholas makes a timely appearance. What is of particular interest to
this study, however, is not the play's happy ending, but the staging of the
debate. At one level, it is a theological discussion about the pros and cons
of prostitution. At another it is a burgher s nightmare of lost fortune and
respectability. And at yet another level, it speaks to the very real possibili
ties that could have faced members of the Fleury audience. In all three
interpretations, the play dramatizes the uncertainties generated by the
volatile social and economic changes of the day. One can argue that it
also models behavior, especially for the women in the crowd. But if so, the
message is a mixed one, due to an interesting dramaturgical choice. In an
earlier version of the play from Hildesheim, the debate happens exactly
as I have related it, at which point St. Nicholas intervenes to save them
all. That construction tends to favor the response of the third sister, as if

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372 Comparative Drama

God is rewarding them all for finally arriving at the right decision.53 But
in the Fleury version, the narrative is expanded. The first daughter makes
her suggestion and convinces her father, at which point Saint Nicholas
anonymously tosses money into the house.54 Shortly thereafter a suitor
shows up and marries the first daughter, and the miraculous money must
be used for the dowry, leaving the father and the other two daughters
destitute again. This cycle begins again with the second daughter, and
after that the third. In this fashion, each viewpoint is equally rewarded,
including the first. In the Fleury adaptation, a daughter s offer to enter into
prostitution to save her family is treated as a sacrifice worthy of the saint's
grace. The moral of the story is thus murkier than it is in earlier versions.
The plot of the play encapsulates an understanding of prostitution that is
less dualistic and judgmental than that presented through the costuming
conventions of Lazarus. Although the play probably did not originate at
Fleury, the monks there chose it for adaptation. Its inclusion with the
Raising of Lazarus in the Fleury Playbook not only bears out Karras's
assertion that medieval attitudes about prostitution varied across cities
and time periods, but also demonstrates such variances within a single
place and time.55 Furthermore, the relatively large proportion of scripts
in the Fleury Playbook that feature past or potential prostitutes (two out
of only ten plays) indicates a particular fascination with the ambiguous
figure among the twelfth-century inhabitants of St.-Benoit-sur-Loire.
The Tres Filice is also significant to the present analysis because it
infers the use of money as a prop. Such money imaginatively connects,
on multiple levels, the prostitute represented by the long-trained dress or
red cord with the pilgrim represented by the purse. The first connection
is literal: money is what customers (including erring pilgrims) exchange
for the services of prostitutes. But money also symbolically represents the
accumulated wealth of contemporary Europe that made possible both con
spicuous fashion display and widespread pilgrimage. The new prosperity
that could be measured in part by an increase in available specie was what
enabled the twelfth-century project of identity construction.56 Money lay
at the center of a nexus of possibilities for both men and women, and all
kinds of paths—both good and evil—led from that nexus. Thus money
could bring salvation to a father and his three daughters, as in Tres Filice,
or could tempt a soul into sin, as is the case in another St. Nicholas drama

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Andrew J. Gibb 373

from the Fleury Playbook, Tres Clerici. Although that play contains no
prostitute, it does show a woman willing to commit sin for profit. It also
prominently features a pilgrim character.

III. Peregrinus
The plot of Tres Clerici revolves around the three titular scholars, who stop
at an inn for the night. The innkeeper is reluctant to let them stay, but his
wife urges him to do so, and he relents. That night, as the clerks are sleeping,
the innkeeper suggests to his wife that they rob their guests. She not only
agrees, but furthermore advocates killing the young men. No sooner is
that dastardly deed accomplished then St. Nicholas arrives at the door in
the guise of a pilgrim.57 He confronts them with their crime, which they
confess. He then performs a miracle by bringing the scholars back to life,
an act no doubt comforting to future generations of academic readers.58
In this play, as in Tres Filice, the figure of the pilgrim is identified with the
righteous St. Nicholas. The association was a natural one for the monks
of Fleury. As Otto Albrecht has noted, the rise in Nicholas's popularity in
northern Europe during the eleventh century was reflected in the library
at Fleury, which contained a number of works about the saint. A notable
example was the Vita by Johannes Diaconus, upon which several of the
Fleury Nicholas plays were based.59 Additionally, the monastery at St.
Benoit-sur-Loire was intimately familiar with pilgrims, as the abbey was
the repository of the relics of St. Benedict, beloved medieval saint and
foundational figure of Western monasticism. It therefore seems natural
that Fleury s signature plays should revolve around the apparition of
St. Nicholas as a pilgrim. But it is telling that these plays depict the popular
saint engaging in the predominantly male activity of pilgrimage. For in
addition to signifying religious piety, the pilgrim was also an exemplar
of mobility. Temporarily released from his network of social obligations,
the pilgrim's spiritual wandering imaginatively mirrored the search of
twelfth-century European men for new social identities. In choosing to
represent the pilgrim through very particular, nonliturgical costuming,
the monks of Fleury offered male audience members a model of iden
tity construction that fully accounted for the social complexities of the
contemporary age.

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374 Comparative Drama

By the late twelfth century, pilgrims had become a regular sight

on the roads of medieval Europe. The general accumulation of surplus
wealth not only paid for fine garments, but financed travel of a previously
unimaginable scope. The result was a twelfth-century popular boom in
pilgrimage.60 Pilgrims from all over Europe could finally afford to make
long trips to distant locations. Sites such as Fleury benefited tremendously
from the increased traffic. The shrine of Santiago Compostela on the far
western coast of Spain, together with Rome and the Holy Land, were
medieval Europe's three most significant pilgrim destinations during the
period.61 In each of those places, grand rituals and innumerable ancillary
activities served to mark the highpoint of the pilgrim's journey. But the
distances traversed in the trek to and from the shrine, the wealth of new
experiences along the way, and the considerable time spent away from
home also contributed to the popular interpretation of pilgrimage experi
ence as one of peripatetic movement. That association was so strong that
it entered into the popular and dramatic language of the day. Alan Kendall
has conjectured that the common medieval English name for pilgrims
bound for the Eternal City,"Romers,"is the source of the modern English
verb that implies wandering, "to roam."62 The naming of the Peregrini is
itself a measure of the extent to which medieval society imaginatively
linked journeying with pilgrimage. That liturgical play recounts the ap
pearance of the risen Christ to two of his followers. The source of the
drama is Luke 24:13-35, which begins "Now on that same day [the day
of the Resurrection] two of them were going to a village called Emmaus,
about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other
about all these things that had happened."63 Obviously these men are not
pilgrims. Not only are they unaware of the miraculous birth of their new
religion, they are on the road away from Jerusalem. But to the medieval
mind, this was a story of two men having a religious experience while on
a journey, and thus a story about pilgrims, or peregrini.
As the practice of pilgrimage began to flourish, certain patterns of
standardization were established. Pilgrims guidebooks were composed,
such as the one found in the Liber Sancti Jacobi (1173), which provided
useful information for travelers bound to the great pilgrimage center
at Santiago Compostela.64 Of particular interest to the present study, a
uniform of sorts was developed, which marked the identity of the pilgrim

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Andrew J. Gibb 375

through costume. Primary components included a hat and a staff, as well

as a garment of a length short enough to facilitate walking.65 Something
very much like that outfit is indicated by the didascalia of the Fleury Per
egrini. That script begins with the entrance of the two disciples in "tunicis
solummodo et cappis, capuciis absconsis ad modum clamidis, pilleos
in capitibus habentes et baculos in manibus ferentes."66 Ogden loosely
translates the passage as "They wear simple tunics and copes, with felt
or fur hats, and they are carrying staffs; apparently the hoods are hidden
in the form of the chlamys, a cape associated with the peasantry."67 Due
to its institutionalization, contemporary audience members would have
immediately recognized the costume as that of a pilgrim. Male spectators
at St.-Benoit-sur-Loire, many of whom were likely pilgrims themselves,
would have experienced an immediate identification with the actors
before them. After all, they were literally wearing the same outfit. It is in
the Peregrini that the sharp difference between the Fleury modeling of
male and female identity appears most visible. In the case of the prostitute
characters, an uncomfortable identification is affected through costume,
but the discomfort is resolved through the plot, which clearly indicates a
proper path for women to take. The situation is reversed with respect to
the theatrical pilgrims. Male viewers were likely to proudly identify with
the pilgrim characters through a shared costume, but the main dramatic
action of the Peregrini is one of misrecognition: the disciples are on the
road away from Jerusalem when they meet the risen Christ, also in the
garb of a pilgrim, and they initially fail to recognize him. Only after the
Lord reveals himself do they reverse their course. Although the apostles
costumes indicate that they are engaged in a laudable activity, they nev
ertheless require divine guidance in order to set them on the right path.
A parallel misrecognition occurs in the Tres Clerici, when the innkeeper
and his wife are similarly blinded by St. Nicholas's pilgrim attire. In both
plays, a holy figure appears to the world dressed in the garb of a pilgrim.
Thus "pilgrim" and "saint" are equated, and distinctive costume encour
ages a positive male identity construction. But by the same token, the
plotting of the two plays configures the clothing of the pilgrim as a cloak
of disguise. When read against other contemporary discourses about
pilgrimage, the Fleury representations reveal a far more complex process
of identity construction.

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376 Comparative Drama

The motivations for medieval pilgrimage were as numerous as the

pilgrims themselves. Some undertook the journey as penance, others as an
opportunity to experience sites of divinity and majesty and still others as an
adventure. Some pilgrims were convicted criminals who were compelled to
undertake the journey by local courts, who may have imposed the sentence
with the hope that the malefactor would never return.68 More often than
not, motives were multiple, and thus the figure of the pilgrim denoted piety
while connoting any number of possibilities. As William Melczer writes:
"[the] society of pilgrims consisted of a floating population living, for as
long as the pilgrimage lasted, on the margin of society at large, escaping
its rules by the very mobility and the relative blending of its component
social layers."69 The combination of ready cash and freedom that pilgrim
age entailed was no doubt exhilarating, and most likely did not lend itself
to the mortification of the flesh. Indeed, a whole cottage industry sprung
up around the main routes, one whose existence relied upon the moral
frailty of the pilgrims. Some of the enticements offered were of a relatively
aboveboard nature: a delicious meal or a soft, warm bed for the night. Oth
ers put the pilgrims soul in jeopardy, including prostitution. Prostitutes
were common along the pilgrim routes, some traveling with, and even as,
pilgrims.70 As Sydney Heath has noted: "There is little reason to doubt that
when pilgrimage became the fashion the scrip and staff were as frequently
assumed for the purpose of committing new sins as for the performance
of penance for old ones."71
Evidence that such attitudes about pilgrimage were widespread in
late twelfth-century France can be found in the extremely popular series
of narrative poems collectively titled Roman de Renart, a work begun by
clergyman Pierre de Saint-Cloud in exactly the same time period as the
transcription of the Fleury manuscript. The cycle chronicles the adven
tures of Renard the Fox, an amoral character who tricks his way through
life.72 Renard is sentenced to complete a pilgrimage to Rome for raping
Hersent, the wife of Ysengrin the wolf. Renard sets out, but soon becomes
distracted by the pleasures of the journey:
With staff in hand he is on his way
His long journey has begun.
He acts like a pilgrim and looks like one.
Around his neck hangs a handsome purse.

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Andrew J. Gibb 377

But he thinks it foolish to fare worse

Than he has to. If he must atone,
There's no need for doing it all alone.
He left the main road to Rome behind,
And took the first path he could find.73

What follows is a series of adventures, culminating in a hairbreadth

escape for Renard after he once again dupes his archnemesis Ysengrin.
Renard reflects upon his escapades, and decides not to continue with his
journey, for:
Visits to Rome were not required
Of many whose virtue is admired;
Worthy pilgrims, on the other hand,
May turn to sin in the Holy Land.74

Popular poets were not the only ones to question the efficacy of pilgrimage.
Twelfth-century theologian St. Bernard of Clairvaux felt that it would be
better for clergymen to find their spiritual identity at home, forsaking the
tempting road. He summed up his objection to pilgrimage with the phrase
"Your cell is Jerusalem."75 The late twelfth-century bishop of Paris agreed,
and chastised pilgrims for leaving their villages, but not their vices.76
In the light of such contemporary attitudes regarding pilgrimage, a
seemingly unimportant costuming detail from the Peregrini takes on new
significance. The disciples enter the playing space in the readily identifi
able costume of medieval pilgrims. But their uniforms are missing one
crucial symbolic piece, an accessory not seen onstage until Christ enters.
The didascalia describe the Saviors costume:"pera[m] cum longa palma
gestans, bene ad modum Peregrini paratus, pilleum in capite habens, hacla
vestitus et tunica, nudus pedes."77 The passage makes no mention of the
baculo, or staff, and does not indicate a chlamys, though Ogden thinks the
latter is probable as it would "better match his bare feet."78 Christ bears a
palm branch, symbol of the most distinguished pilgrims, "the palmers,"
who had made the journey to the Holy Land.79 But most strikingly, he
wears one item not found among the garments of the disciples: theperam,
translated by Ogden as "wallet" and Young as "purse."80
The peram refers to an accessory that was almost universally worn by
medieval pilgrims.81 Often called the scrip, this item was "a medium-size
sack or bag made usually of deer leather, surprisingly flat and hence of
questionable usefulness for holding food or anything else; normally of

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378 Comparative Drama

trapezoid shape, it was narrower at the mouth than at the base and, thrown
across the shoulder, it was secured with a leather strap."82 Combined with
the staff, the two items came to define the pilgrim to such an extent that by
the twelfth century, they became central to a church ceremony conducted
at the departure of the wayfarers. In a rite similar to the initiation rituals
of medieval knights, the pilgrims knelt before the altar, presenting their
staff and scrip for blessing by the priest.83 For the pilgrim, the insignia
peregrinorum were the equivalent to the knights sword and shield. The
ritual language of the ceremony spoke of the staff as protection against
the devil and the scrip as a symbol of "the mortifications of the flesh."84
A sermon found in the Liber Sancti Jacobi elaborates on the symbolism
of the scrip. It prescribes that the scrip be small, allowing for very little
money, so that the pilgrim is forced to put his trust in God.85 In short,
the pilgrim is instructed to hit the road with a strong staff and an empty
wallet.

But an empty wallet, no matter how symbolic of poverty, cannot help

but invoke the possibility of its opposite: a full wallet. Indeed, in order to
make it to his final destination, a pilgrim would have had to start with
something very like Renards "handsome purse." Given the often ques
tionable motivations for pilgrimage, one might expect the Fleury monks
to leave out the scrip altogether. But not only did they choose to include
it, they in fact introduced it. Why would they do so? The answer to that
question can be induced from how the monks chose to incorporate their
costuming innovation into the play. As a recognized prop of pilgrimage,
the scrip would help audiences identify with a character who wore it, and
could denote the possibility of self-discovery. But as a sign it could also be
read as a license for debauchery. In the real world, the symbolism of the
script was controlled in part through the spectacular blessing ceremony.
When staged, however, a new tactic was needed to ensure the proper in
terpretation of the scrip. An obvious solution was to associate the symbol
with the most unambiguously holy figure onstage. The didascalia clearly
indicate that it is Christ alone who wears the scrip; the two disciples do
not. Only Christ can be trusted with such a volatile theatrical sign. The plot
of the play also addresses the general instability of the pilgrim costume
as a whole. Christ is first seen wearing the pilgrim's robes as a disguise, a
staging that tends to underline the questionable connotations of pilgrim

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Andrew J. Gibb 379

garb. Following the biblical account, the disciples do not recognize Christ
until he repeats the gestures of the last supper, at which point he vanishes.
When he reappears, he has shed his pilgrim togs.86 Thus the highpoint of
the drama occurs with Christ's revelation of his resurrected, undisguised
self. The pilgrim's hat, cloak, and scrip are shown for the sole purpose of
being superseded, much like Mary's dress.
There is evidence to suggest, however, that pilgrims were not inclined
to lay aside their own garments so easily. Instead of joyfully shedding
the skins of their spiritual metamorphoses, pilgrims were more likely to
treat them as relics. Garments and insignia were carefully preserved, and
on rare occasions taken out and donned for special events. The humble
objects became signs of personal pride. And in the end, just as a knight
was buried with his sword, the pilgrim would be interred with his arms,
the staff and the scrip.87 Of course, such behavior need not be interpreted
as an act of resistance to church ideology, any more than was women's
continued indulgence in the luxury of fine clothing. But it does suggest
differences between clerical and lay interpretations of pilgrimage.

V. Gendering Choice
How twelfth-century Fleury audiences or readers may have interpreted
the Fleury plays is ultimately unknowable, as their responses are not re
corded. The frustration arising from such evidentiary ellipses is common
to theater historians. In this case the absence of evidence about audience

response is particularly vexatious to the modern scholar concerned

with the problematic nature of the gendered equations of "female" with
"prostitute" and "male" with "pilgrim." In the scripts of the Fleury Play
book, it is clear that those equations encapsulated more meanings than
the obvious positive and negative implications. The Raising of Lazarus
and the Tres Filice present prostitution in distinctly different lights, but
both ultimately represent women in the positive act of turning away
from sin and toward redemption. The hallowed costume of the pilgrim
is employed as disguise in the Fleury plays, a usage that echoes contem
porary concerns about the motivations behind pilgrimage. But despite
the complexity of representation, one important distinction between the
Fleury dramatizations of women and men almost always seems to prevail.

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380 Comparative Drama

Although both the prostitute and the pilgrim serve as complex models
of identity construction for twelfth-century Europeans, a gender divide
is unquestionably apparent in the way that the act of choosing identity
is represented. Men are represented as characters with a choice before
them. But women have always already made their choice, and it is usu
ally the wrong one. Mary Magdalen first appears as a prostitute: she has
fallen long before The Raising of Lazarus ever begins. The only possible
dramatic action for her in the course of the play is to renounce her sinful
ways. The three daughters of the Tres Filice are perhaps afforded more
choice, but the first solution they light upon is the wrong one. For women
spectators, the representations of identity construction are cautionary in
nature. By contrast, the decision-making process of the men is almost
always fully represented, from the presentation of the problem, through
the consideration of various options, to a decision. When that decision is
a wrong one, as is the case with the father of the three daughters or the
innkeeper, divine intervention usually secures the man a second or even
third chance. The differences between the two gendered representations
of the decision-making process no doubt reflect certain realities of the
period. Despite a general expansion of opportunities for all, women still
had fewer choices than men, and the consequences of a wrong decision
were more dire for women. Accordingly, the monks provided women
with models for whom choice was a dangerous act, unless of course that
choice was to submit to male authority, which amounted to no real choice
at all. Of course choosing was not always portrayed as a welcome task for
men, either: witness the agonizing deliberations of the father in Tres Filice.
Nevertheless, the models for men were considerably more complex than
those provided for women.
Despite the clearly unequal power relations apparent in the plotting of
the plays, both the pilgrim and the prostitute supplied the Fleury dramas
with characters for whom choice was dramatically necessary. Ultimately,
that necessity explains the two characters' attraction for a society fascinated
with questions of identity. The choice of the Fleury monks to highlight
those characters through costuming reveals how important clothing is
to the project of identity construction in complex societies. In the eco
nomic milieu of twelfth-century France, the conscious construction and
reconstruction of identity was not only possible but necessary, and every

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Andrew J. Gibb >81

day was filled with exciting and frightening choices. The radically new
costuming techniques introduced at Fleury dramatically reflected the
uncertainties of the day. Not only did particularized costumes model pos
sible identities, but those identities were by their very nature changeable:
it is no coincidence that, in addition to the innovation of nonliturgical
costuming, the Fleury Playbook also contains the first known examples
of theatrical costume changes.88
Miami University

NOTES

1 Scholarly uncertainties surround the Fleury document. Only one of its ten scripts, Filiu
Getronis, is definitely known to have been staged, according to Karl Young, The Drama of the Medie
Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 2:351. Additionally, there is some controversy ab
Fleury s claim to the manuscript. Fletcher Collins's article "The Home of the Fleury Playbook,"
The Fleury Playbook: Essays and Studies, ed. Thomas P. Campbell and Clifford Davidson (Kalam
zoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 26-34, is an excellent encapsulation of that debate. A
the only other major contender is another French monastery only sixty-five miles away, the ex
provenance of the text is not critical to my analysis of the play's social contexts. I therefore trust in
Collins and tradition and refer to the text throughout as "the Fleury Playbook."
2 Grace Frank identifies four plays as possibly original to Fleury, the Raising of Lazarus an
the three St. Nicholas plays, in The Medieval French Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954),
Young concurs with Frank regarding Filius Getronis (Young, 2:351), but cites earlier versions of
two other St. Nicholas plays from Hildesheim (2:311,324).
3 This translation is Dunbar Ogden's, from The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Churc
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 131. Original text quoted appears in Young (2:200
who more decorously interprets the passage as "the courtesan, Mary Magdalen, appears" (2:208)
4 St. Ethelwold's Regularis Concordia, compiled sometime between 965 and 975, dictat
that the roles of the women in the visitatio sepulchri should be played in a simple cope. Later
matizations of the trope added an amice tied over the head to resemble female headgear (Young
1:249-50, Ogden, 127).
5 The original text of the Fleury Peregrini appears in Young (1:471-75). Ogden interpre
the "peram" of this passage as "wallet" (130), Young as "purse" (1:463). The traditional costumin
practice for pilgrim characters, consisting (like the women) of simple copes creatively draped, w
still being followed at other locations at the time of Fleury s experimentation with accessories
is indicated by a twelfth-century Peregrini from Sicily (Young, 1:459).
6 Ogden gives the honor to the thirteenth-century Peregrini from Rouen, but the Fleury v
sion obviously predates that manuscript (129-130).
7 Ogden, 129; Komisarjevsky, The Costume of the Theatre (New York: Holt, 1932), 56; Young
2:401-2.

8 C. Warren Hollister, Medieval Europe: A Short History, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990),
152; Robert L. Reynolds, Europe Emerges: Transition Toward an Industrial World-Wide Society,
600-1750 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 203.
9 Reynolds, 225; Hollister, 146.
10 Hollister, 146,164; Reynolds, 157.
11 Charles Homer Haskins s excellent exploration of twelfth-century literary intellectual life is
titled The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1957). In his

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382 Comparative Drama

literary history of the period, The Discovery of the Individual: 1050-1200 (London: SPCK, 1972),
Collin Morris uses the term "French Renaissance" (48).
12 R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953),
255.

13 Morris, 7.

14 To the authors knowledge, no medieval theological treatises, clerical sermons, or legal

statutes assume prostitutes to be anything other than female. Popular literary prostitutes, such as
Richeut, were also women. Charles Muscatine, The Old French Fabliaux (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1986), 4,18.
15 Accounts of female pilgrims are few, though it is likely their numbers were underrecorded.
William Melczer, ed. and trans., The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York: Italica,
1993), 48-49.
16 The term meretrix publica, as Leah Lydia Otis has pointed out in Prostitution in Medieval
Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985), was a medieval twist on classical vocabulary, almost universally recognizable by the literate
as the term for "prostitute" (16).
17 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle
Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 160.
18 Prostitutes may have been a more common sight inside the church than I assume here.
Thomas of Chobham, a British theologian who studied in Paris in the 1180s, noted the regular
visits of that city's prostitutes to the Cathedral of Notre Dame on Saturday afternoons to make of
ferings (quoted in James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987], 393). In Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the
Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1990), Jeffrey Richards suggests that some prostitutes may have
solicited trade in the churches (116).
19 In her chapter on twelfth- and thirteenth-century prostitution, Otis characterizes the period
as relatively unregulated, and notes "the acceptance of prostitution by most secular and ecclesiastical
northern French authorities" (23). Though focusing on a later period, Jacques Rossiaud, in Medieval
Prostitution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) cites the significant population
of prostitutes in a range of cities, large and small (10). Ruth Mazo Karras takes pains to point out
the unreliability of such figures, as extant records could use meretrix to describe pejoratively any
overtly sexual woman, whether or not she was engaged in sex for pay ("Prostitution in Medieval
Europe," in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage [New
York: Garland, 1996]: 243-260, at 243-44). No information is readily available on official attitudes
about prostitution in St.-Benoit-sur-Loire in the late twelfth century, though we do have Otis's
comments on the general attitudes of northern French authorities.
20 Karras, "Prostitution in Medieval Europe," 245. Theologians as distinguished as St. Thomas
Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, argued that prostitution was necessary if widespread
sodomy was to be avoided (Otis, 23).
21 Karras,"Prostitution in Medieval Europe," 244-45. See also her Common Women: Prostitution
and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41-42.
22 An oft-cited example is the decree issued by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that
required all Jews and Muslims to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians. See
for instance Emily Taitz, The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne (Westport:
Greenwood, 1994), 169.
23 Richards, 11.
24 Otis, 79-80.
25 Rossiaud, 57,78; Richards, 119.

26 Imad ad-Din,"Frankish Women of Peace and War," in Arab Historians of the Crusades, ed. and
trans. Francesco Gabrieli (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 204-6.
27 John W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France around 1200
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 36; and Muscatine, 4,18.

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Andrew J. Gibb 383

28 Episode recounted in Baldwin, 107.

29 Ogden, 130.
30 See, for example, the Passion Play from the late thirteenth-century Carmina Burana (Young,
1:522).
31 Jansen, 155-58.
32 Muscatine, 19.
33 Jansen, 160; the author's example, The Symbol of Vanity, is reproduced on p. 163.
34 Karras, Common Women, 50-51.
35 Hollister, 148-49.
36 Reynolds, 269.
37 Karras, Common Women, 48.
38 Ruth Mazo Karras, "Sex, Money, and Prostitution," in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexual
ity in the Premodern West, ed. Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996), 201-11 (211).
39 See James Laver, Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983), 60; and Francois Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal
Adornment (New York: Abrams, 1967), 174.
40 Jansen, 160.

41 Joan Y. Gregg, Devils, Women and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 87.
42 Gregg, 114-15.
43 Nickie Roberts, Whores in History: Prostitutes in Western Society (London: Grafton, 1993),
79.

44 Otis, 21-22; Rossiaud, 57.

45 Otis, 80. Brundage treats sumptuary laws in relation to prostitution throughout his work
Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. See particularly 468,476,524-25.
46 James A. Brundage, "Sumptuary Laws and Prostitution in Late Medieval Italy," in Sex, Law
and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 343-55, at 351.
47 Brundage cites de Vitry on the subjects of prostitution, sodomy, and marriage (Law, Sex,
and Christian Society, 390-91,399,450).
48 Baldwin, 8,107-8.
49 Morris, 71.

50 Jansen, 177-84. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 395.

51 The didascalia read "veniat Maria in habitu per plateum meretricio, et cadat ad pedes
Domini" (Young, 2:200).
52 Original Latin text in Young (2:316-21), along with authors summation in English (321).
53 Young, 2:311-16.
54 The original Latin didascalia read: "Proiecto auro," which Young translates as "gold is thrown
in at the window" (2:317,1.44; 321).
55 Karras, "Prostitution in Medieval Europe," 244.
56 Reynolds, 213; Hollister, 146-49.
57 Although Nicholas's costume is not prescribed by didascalia, the innkeeper addresses him
in the text as "Peregrine." Young, 2:331,1.53.
58 Young, 2:330-34.
59 Albrecht, Four Latin Plays of St. Nicholas from the 12th Century Fleury Play-book (Philadel
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), 5,14-16.

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384 Comparative Drama

60 Debra J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change (Woodbridge:
Boydell, 1998), 158-70.
61 Birch, 158.

62 Kendall, Medieval Pilgrims (London: Wayland, 1970), 22. It should be noted that the Oxford
English Dictionary disagrees with Kendall's etymology.
63 The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanoni
cal Books, New Standard Revised Version, Anglicized Text, ed. Martin H. Manser, John Barton, and
Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), New Testament, 97.
64 See William Melczer's translation, The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela.
65 Melczer, 57; Kendall, 35-36.
66 Young, 1:471.
67 Ogden, 130.
68 Melczer, 39-42; J. J. Jusserand, The English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, 4th ed., trans.
Lucy Toulmin Smith (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1950), 205. On pilgrimage as legal sentence, see
Victor Turner and Edith L. B. Turner, though they specifically deny my suggestion that municipalities
sought to do away with their social malcontents via pilgrimage (Image and Pilgrimage in Christian
Culture [New York: Columbia University Press, 1978], 195-96).
69 Melczer, 36.
70 Jusserand, 64; Roberts, 66-67.
71 Heath, Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages (1911; repr. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1971),
33.

72 Muscatine, 16.

73 Patricia Terry, trans., Renard the Fox (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1992), 145-46,11.166-74.
74 Terry, 154,11.458-64.
75 Kendall, 12.
76 Birch, 4.

77 Young, 1:471.
78 Ogden, 130.
79 Birch 77; Kendall, 11. The sign of the Compostela pilgrim was the scallop shell. Roman
pilgrims, after 1199, returned from their journey with a medal bearing the image of Peter and
Paul, or a similar medallion picturing the Veronica, one of Rome's more popular relics (Birch, 78,
Kendall, 85).
80 Ogden, 130; Young, 1:463.
81 Melczer, 58; Birch, 76; Kendall, 36.
82 Melczer, 58.
83 Birch, 76-77.
84 Melczer, 60; Birch, 77.
85 Birch, 76.

86 Young, 1:454.
87 Melczer, 59,63.
88 After renouncing her sin in The Raising of Lazarus, Mary exits, but later returns, almost
certainly in clothes more appropriate to her new identity as a follower of Christ. In the Peregrini,
Christ first appears as a scrip-wearing pilgrim, but then vanishes and reappears in clothes befit
ting a messiah.

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