Mary-verse of the Teutonic Knights

Description : This dissertation, first printed in 1943, is one of several studies which deal with Mary-Verse in a specific literary movement or in a certain author and which trace the history of Mary-Devotion. It thus helps within its narrow range to enlarge and clarify the expanding picture of the role which the Blessed Virgin Mary occupies in medieval writings. The presentation of the material is at times ponderous. Inconsistencies, irregularities, vagueness and in accuracy in references to texts, quotations, lines, pages, etc., are often annoying. The extremely great numbers of errors in typography and orthography are particularly disturbing. The outstanding scholarship on Deutschordensdichtung has been done by Walter Ziesemer and a few others, and Sister Mary Ellen follows them for her background material. These scholars have all agreed that an ardent Mary-Devotion flourished in the Teutonic Order {Deutschorden), but Sister Mary Ellen specifically justifies this assertion in the light of the literary productions of the Teutonic Knights. She has, then, investigated only the metrical writings of the Teutonic Knights (over 200,000 lines) in their most prolific literary period, the fourteenth century, to determine the amount of Mary-Verse therein and to ascertain the position of Mary in this religious poetry.