Analysis
The Versus is alone among the liturgical dramas of the Middle Ages in its choice of subject matter. The Epitalamica, composed probably later that century at the Monastery of the Paraclete, is a non-dramatic treatment of the same theme, probably derived from the Versus if its relict dramatic feature are any indication.
Besides the Song of Songs and John 20, the Versus relies on the Gospel accounts of the Jews spreading lies that Christ had not risen but merely been stolen from his grave. Outside of the Bible, the anonymous dramatist borrowed a verse form from the north Italian Latin ballad Foebus abierat (c. 1000), in which a lady sees a mirage of her lover's face and embraces it only to find it disappeared. This ballad had made its way to the Abbey of Ripoll by the twelfth century and would have been accessible to a dramatist working there or at Vic. This composer also drew on an earlier twelfth-century piece, the Victimae paschali, for the scene of Mary and the disciples. This borrowing became commonplace in thirteenth-century Easter drama, but the Vic play may be its first dramatic adaptation.
The Versus is written in asclepiadic strophes, quatrains, monorhymed but with lines of varying length. The music for the play survives (the whole thing was sung) in Aquitainian neumes and its melodic structure mirrors its poetic. The play is preserved along with the Verses pascales in codex 105 of the Episcopal Museum of Vic.
Read more about this topic: Versus De Pelegrino
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