There is in the Imperial Library at Paris an old copy of the gospels written on parchment, evidently of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, with the arms of Colbert on the cover. It once belonged to the church of Albi. At the end of the gospels is the Planctus, or Complainte de Notre Dame in the langue d’Oc—the old language of Southern France—full of naïve piety and charming simplicity. No one could hear unmoved the touching tone of reproach and grief it breathes throughout. It is in thirty-two stanzas, the lines of which, monotonous and melancholy, are like the repeated tollings of a funeral bell. The last words of each verse are an expression of exhausted grief—the dying away of a voice drowned in tears.…
It is entitled: “Here begins the Plaint in honor of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and the sorrow of his most holy Mother.”
“Planh sobre planh! dolor sobre dolor!
Cel e terra an perdut lor senhor,
E yeu mon filh, el solelh sa clardor;
Jusieus lan mort an grande desonor.
Ay filh, tan mortal dolor!”[48]
The cry of Ay filh!—“Alas! my
Son”—at the end of every verse is like a sob that breaks the plaint. This long wail of maternal grief, which no translation fully renders, was doubtless sung round many an effigy of the dead Christ in the dim old churches of Languedoc centuries ago, just as the people of the Pyrenees at this day gather around their dead to weep and improvise a dirge of sorrow. We were particularly touched at coming across this ancient document; for it seemed to echo the devotion to the Mother of Sorrows which we had found written all over southwestern France. Everywhere in this Terra Mariæ are churches and oratories in honor of Notre Dame de Pitié, most of which are monuments of an age as sorrowful as the holy mystery they commemorate.
It is remarkable how popular devotion turned to the Mater Dolorosa in the sixteenth century, when Christ seemed bleeding anew in this land of altars ruined and priests slaughtered by the Huguenots. Numberless are the legends of the apparitions of Our Lady of Sorrows in those sad days, which led to the erection of a great number of churches wherein she is represented holding her divine Son taken down from the cross—one of the