Remaining Friends: A Reappraisal of a Passage in the <em>St. Trudperter Hohelied</em>

Abstract

Recent work on the St. Trudperter Hohelied provides a welcome opportunity to revisit a previous attempt at interpreting this early example (from the twelfth century) of the use of friendship in the context of writing about and for women. Petrus W. Tax was kind enough to share with me privately his thoughts about a reading of the St. Trudperter Hohelied that I put forth in these pages a number of years ago (Jeep). Occasion for the following reconsideration was provided, in addition to Tax’s careful look at the passage in question, by the appearance of a long-overdue new edition and translation into modern German of the St. Trudperter Hohelied (Ohly), the Early Middle High German translation and commentary on the Old Testament Song of Songs. Ohly’s commentary on this work represents a singular and masterful accomplishment (see Jaffe 382–83n26). Tax has since published more recent thoughts on the St. Trudperter Hohelied (2006) in its relation to a Latin Pentecost Sequence. In the following, I revisit the relevant passages from my earlier essay in an effort to reassess the early evidence of friendship among women. The passage in question reads in the original German: “die zoch dir din muotir zu gemahelen / unde ze spiln unde ze liebin vriundinnin” (Ohly 16, lines 16–17). Ohly translates this into German as “Die zog dir deine Mutter auf zu Brauten und zu Gespielinnen und zu lieben Freundinnen” (53)—“Your [i.e., Jesus’s] mother raised them for You as brides and [female] companions and dear [female] friends.” Ohly’s commentary on this passage, for which, he concludes, there appears to be no direct source (theological or other), is that the nuns are portrayed as becoming brides of Christ through Mary’s intervention (611). In the larger context (see 9–28), employing typological undertones, a comparison is drawn between women in the Old Testament, educated by Eve, and those of the New Testament, raised in a superior fashion by