Imagine a prayer that goes on and on (and on and on), praising Mary
in every imaginable way – her
virtues, her role in salvation, her intercessory power
– layered up with both Latin and the vernacular. That’s exactly
what a sister of the women’s convent of Thalbach in Bregenz copied
into her Prayerbook during the Counter-Reformation. This prayer isn’t merely words on a page. It's designed to be a rhythmic, repetitive, almost musical
meditation intended to draw the devotee into an intimate encounter
with Mary. Short vocative lines pile up while the regular Latin refrains echo
repeatedly, creating a devotional experience that teaches both prayer-giver and her audience by the shaping of affect
– through rhythm, phrasing, and structural repetition. What follows is
a closer look at how this multi-section Marian prayer works, how it
structures attention, and how it combines reflection, rhythm, and
affect to bring the devotee closer to the Virgin.
In the last third of
the Thalbach Prayerbook (Bregenz VLB Hs 17), there are ten folios
devoted to a single multi-section prayer to the Virgin (fol.
237–247). It’s a rosary prayer, centered on eleven (!)
recitations of ten statements each of the Ave Maria, plus another
dozen at the very beginning, so by the end, the devotee will have
spoken 122 of them.
In between, the
compiler provides “meditations” in strophes of seven to ten
lines, each offering anaphoristic variants of Mary’s virtues.
Strophes 1–4 establish Mary’s status and role in salvation
history (Queen, Virgin, New Covenant); strophes 5–9 emphasize her
participatory suffering and intercessory power, and the collect at
the end pivots to a direct intercessory “ask.” Thus, like many
rosary prayers, the sequence of strophes adopted here creates a
pedagogical rhythm. First the devotee experiences awe, then empathy,
then personal petition, with the culmination in the Collect with its
request for personal salvation.
To my ear, the
framing of the prayer is much like a litany, in which the call-out to
each of the saints ends each and every time with an “ora pro
nobis,” pray for us. But here, instead of the “pray for us,” an
ask, the prayerful punctuation at the end of each line serves as a
reminder to Maria of her connected status with the divine. The phrase
– adopted and repeated 84 times (plus another 122 times in
the refrain) – comes from
the Ave Maria itself, as Gabriel reveals to her that “the
Lord is with thee” (der
her[r] ist mit dir):
o
kaiseryn und ain künigin aler künig der her ist mit dir
o
du lob aler gelobiger
sohn der her ist mit dir
o
du aler übertreffenlichste künigin der himel der her ist mit
dir
o
aler tůgenden vol der her ist mit dir...
O empress and a queen of all rulers [kunig], the Lord is with you
O you tribute of the praiseworthy son, the Lord is with you
O you exquisite queen of heaven, the Lord is with you
O you who are full of all virtues, the Lord is with you...
In
that first strophe, notice that the devotee repeatedly addresses Mary
with the intimate “du” form; this is a Mary seen in deeply
personal terms as an intimate of the prayer-giver. Moreover, the
similar beginnings and endings of lines make for an almost meditative
incantation. As we see further down, the prayer consists of slight
variations on a set of common themes. One or perhaps two lines per
stanza might vary the form, but once a stanza establishes a pattern,
the other lines tend to reinforce it. (See Table 1, below)
The
effect is like change-ringing in a bell tower, where a set of fixed
patterns is subtly shifted with each repetition to create movement
and variation within a strict structure. Each line both mirrors and
modifies the last, so that the rhythm feels familiar yet never
static, drawing the devotee’s attention deeper into the text. This
interplay of repetition and variation turns the prayer into a
dynamic, almost musical experience, in which the voice, the mind, and
the imagination are guided through the nuances of Mary’s virtues
and roles.
 |
| Table 1: Marian Attributes and Repetition Patterns in Der Herr ist mit dir (Thalbach Prayerbook, fol. 237ff) |
As
Table 1 shows, the various strophes work their way through elements
of the Virgin’s importance. First, she is important and highly
placed, serving as empress, queen, intermediary (Strophe 1). She
became so as a Virgin (Strophe 2). Her presence was predicted by the
prophets, and can be analogized to the good things that sustain human
existence – house, city, garden, fountain, fruit (Strophe 3). She
is the beginning of the new covenant, as witnessed by the
announcement of the Angel Gabriel (Strophe 4).
Here,
the devotee is asked to pause and meditate on what that announcement
of Gabriel meant. To support that contemplative moment, the
vernacular translation of the Ave Maria is provided.
bis
gegrußet vol genad der her ist mit dir / du bist gesegnet ob aler
frowen und gesegnet ist die frucht dines lieb Jhesus cristus.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. / Blessed art thou
among women, / and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ
That
becomes a moment of sectional pause as well, while the devotee
recites two decades of Ave Marias, ten in Latin and another ten
recapitulating the vernacular version.
Then
the latter part of the prayer picks up Mary’s story with her role
as mother (Strophe 5) and as co-sufferer or “Mitleiden” with
Christ with implications for her salvific role (Strophe 6). She is
that “Veritable Virgin” who witnessed the stages of Christ’s
suffering, with his flogging, thorns, and crucifixion iterated each
in a single line (Strophe 7). Plus, she is the mother who had to
handle her own son’s body, who attended to its anointing and then
was consoled through recognition of him as arisen again (Strophe 8),
Thus, she is the veritable mother of the recognized Christ,
positioned through events to intercede in his judgment (Strophe 9).
Having
laid out the whys of Mary’s existence – her special status as
Virgin, as new covenant with God, as enduring mother who walked the
road of the Passion with her son – the devotee is now prepared for
the Collect.
The
collect, as expected, pivots to the intercessory ask: “ that you
will shield me and protect me from the pain of eternal damnation and
make me to be conveyed into the eternal joy of eternal bliss.” But
before that, it amps up the rhythm of repetition with fifteen very
short apostrophe lines:
o
du gebenedieste / o
du aler süsseste / o du aler tugenhaffigiste
/ o du aler erwirdigiste / o du aler senffmütigeste / o d[u] aler
edleste / o du aler kostbariste… junckfrow maria
o you most blessed / o you all sweet / o you all-virtuous / o you
all knowledgeable / o you all gentle / o you all noblest / o you all
precious… Virgin Mary.
These
short vocative lines, stacked one after another, build a kind of
rhythmic crescendo, until at last Mary is called upon as “the giver
of God now” and at the time of judgment, hence her capacity for
intercession.
ASSESSMENT:
The use of
vernacular alongside the familiar Latin refrain suggests a teaching
and contemplative function for the Thalbach prayer. It seems designed
to help the devotee internalize not only the words but also their
meaning, a practice encouraged in late medieval lay devotion.
Moreover, the prayer repeatedly reveals Mary as full of enumerated
virtues, unfolding them in a rhythmic sequence that combines intimacy
of address with theological weight. The prayer must also have been
fun to write; one can imagine dreaming up lists of closely-related
concepts about Mary and then sliding them around in the structure
until they fit nicely.
Structurally, the prayer resonates with
rosary practice while also standing apart from it in somewhat quirky
ways. The eleven recitations of ten statements resemble the praying
of multiple decades, though the Thalbach version is unusually
elaborate, and yields 122 invocations in total. More striking still,
the prayer suddenly shifts the devotee into the vernacular for part
of her Hail Marys, only to return again to the standard Latin. This
bilingual pivot is not typical of the rosary prayers I’ve seen, and
it hints at a distinctive local or pedagogical aim.
Similarly, the alternation between
Mary’s virtues and her life events recalls the early Dominican
“Psalter of the Virgin,” in which repeated Hail Marys were paired
with meditative reflection on her life (Winston-Allen). Yet the
Thalbach prayer differs in its form: nearly every line concludes with
“the Lord is with you,” creating a cumulative effect more akin to
a litany than to a conventional rosary decade. The proliferation of
epithets, brief apostrophe lines that acclaim Mary in superlative
terms, further intensifies its litany-like quality. We hear nearly
the same thing over and over and over again.
I see this prayer as a hybrid devotional
tool. To my eye, the prayer functions both as rosary AND as
vernacular meditation. Its repetition works on several levels. It
reinforces memory, so that the words lodge themselves in the mind. It
shapes affect, drawing the devotee into contemplative intimacy with
the Virgin (du...du...du). And it creates an important verbal rhythm,
guiding voice and body into patterned devotion, one which speeds up
like an orchestral codetta at the end.
This prayer from the Thalbach Prayerbook
thus reveals how rhythm, repetition, and affect interwove in late
medieval piety. Prayer practice, as exemplified here, is more than a
recitation of words. Instead, it employs rhythmic and formal
structures to shape the voice, the mind, and the heart toward a more
intimate knowledge of Mary and her intercessory power.
NOTE
ON TRANSCRIPTION:
I
follow the idiosyncratic spellings of the source, but supply
punctuation in my translations.
RESOURCES:
Der Herr ist mit
dir [INC: o kaiseryn und ain künigin
aler künig
der her ist mit dir EXPL: von dinem lieben sun Jhesu criste der da
regirett mit got dem vatter und mit got dem hailigen gaist und du
Junckfrow maria mit ym yn der ewigen glory amen.], from the Thalbach
Prayerbook, Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek Hs 17, fol.
237–247.
Anne
Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the
Rosary in the Middle Ages, Penn State UP, 1997.
