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The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the middle ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother's land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope with it. Brian Murdoch traces the story's probable origins in medieval England or France, and its later appearance in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, down to Thomas Mann and beyond.

Gregory I [Pope] --- Christian hagiography. --- Hagiographie chrétienne --- Gregory, --- Legends. --- Gregorius (Legendary character) --- Incest in literature --- Christian hagiography --- Hartmann, --- 235.3 "04/14" --- 235.3 GREGORIUS --- Hagiografie--Middeleeuwen --- Hagiografie--GREGORIUS --- Hagiographie chrétienne --- Gregorius peccator --- Hartmann, - von Aue, - active 12th century. - Gregorius

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A study of the use of medieval literary texts to explain the Fall and Redemption, the universality of original sin, and the identity of mankind with Adam and Eve. 'The Fall of Adam and the redemption of mankind has been one of the central myths of Western European civilisation for nearly two thousand years; any increase in our understanding of the way in which it has been understood and represented is an increase in our understanding of the whole of European sensibility. This is what the author has achieved in this book... Despite the immense amount of information that is given, the author's own prose has such clarity and fluencey that noone could help but be informed and entertained.' JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES. The theme of 'Adam's Grace' is the interplay of theology and literature across a wide range of genres and vernaculars: in particular, the use of medieval literary texts to explain the balance of the Fall and Redemption, the universality of original sin, and the identity of mankind with its first parents, Adam and Eve. The process begins with the Christian tradition of apocryphal Adam-lives, which live on and develop in many vernaculars. Later, Adam is used as a literary model, on whom many well-known Christian figures of the middle ages - knights, popes, emperors, kings and saints - can be seen to be based. They include Gregorius, the "medieval Oedipus", whose case demonstrates the resolution of the paradox of the 'felix culpa'; Parzival, searching for the Holy Grail and for God in the hostile world into which he has been ejected; and the many medieval figures (literary and even historical) associated with the legends of leprosy, blood and healing which reflect the sacrifice in the Redemption. The last part of the book looks at the drama, first of all the medieval representations of the Fall and the Passion, and then the rather different portrayal of Adam on stage in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. BRIAN MURDOCH is Professor of German at Stirling University.

Fall of man in literature --- Literature, Medieval --- Redemption in literature --- History and criticism --- Fall of man in literature. --- Redemption in literature. --- History and criticism.

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"This study aims to provide new interpretations of three major German plays about war in the twentieth century by looking at them through the lens of the medieval English Everyman play, moving them away from their historical contexts and highlighting their broader philosophical importance. The plays are Ernst Toller's Hinkemann, Wolfgang Borchert's Draussen vor der Tür (The Man Outside); and Max Frisch's Biedermann und die Brandstifter (The Arsonists); Hugo von Hofmannsthal's adaptation of the medieval Everyman play is also touched on "--

Drama --- Thematology --- German literature --- anno 1900-1999

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