There’s a cool series of books from the early 1900′s called Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, which of course you’re all going to go run to archive.org and books.google.com to check out. Anyway, as the name implies, it’s a series of volumes collecting medieval hymns (in Latin, and not in translation).
One of the volumes is on “rhyming psalters”, ie Psalters of the Virgin Mary, ie rhyming rosaries and chaplets. Fr. Jacobus Merlo Horstius, the Paradisus Animae guy, has two rosaries in it: a Life of Jesus in 5 decades, and a Life of Mary.
Anyway, way at the back of the book there’s a versified chaplet “De S. Maria Magdalena”. Somehow people missed this during the whole Magdalenian frenzy a few years back.
“Ave, pia Magdalena” is how it starts. (This seems to be a popular starter, as there’s also “Ave, pia Katherina”. Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters has a lot of cool stuff, too.)
Hey, I LOVE those books! I looked through them a lot working on my senior thesis (luckily for my eyes I was at a library that had print copies), but I was really happy to find them online too because it makes searching so much easier.
I love the Analecta too… they are so utterly awesome!!!
It’s official. We are teh g33x.
Totally…