Summary “The Great Mirror”
The “Great Mirror”, as a Catholic monument in its origin, is characterized by the role assigned to it in the Mother of God, who acts here as a benefactress of the human race.
In contrast to the Byzantine legends, the western legends in which the Virgin is featured often differ in the elegance of the plot, psychologism and relative freedom and boldness in interpreting themes that sometimes bring these legends together with a secular novella. Thus, for example, in the story of how the Blessed Virgin rescued a young man from a love temptation, there are the same motives as in Pushkin’s romance about a poor knight. A young warrior, handsome and chaste, at the instigation of the devil, was kindled by a passionate attraction to his mistress, in whom, tormented, he remained for a year. And, rejecting shame, he confessed his passion to the mistress, but since she, being an honest woman, treated his confession severely, he began to suffer even more and turned with tears
The elder ordered the young man to pray a hundred times with angelic praise to the Mother of God, and then he would receive the desired relief. So the young man did during the year. When the year passed, he mounted his horse and went to the nearest church with usual prayer. Leaving the church, he saw a beautiful wife, whose beauty surpassed all wives, and she held the bridle of his horse. “Did you like my beauty?” – she asked him; he replied: “I’ve never seen such a woman.” – “Do you want to become my fiance?” – again asked his wife. “And the king would be blessed if he could become your fiancé,” the young man answered. Then the wife said, “I want to be your bride.” Come to Me. ” And, giving him to kiss his hand, continued: “Now our betrothal has taken place, then, before my son, there will be a marriage.” According to these words, the young man realized that this woman was a Virgin. And with. At that hour he became free from passion for his mistress,
In the “Great Mirror” were also secular in the spirit of anecdotes novels of domestic character. Thus, in one of them, entitled “The Wrath of Wrath is Greater than the Wrath of a Woman, nor the Hardness of Arrogance and the Insubordination of a Hard and Indomitable,” the following is narrated. One day, walking with his wife with the field, the husband said that the field was well bent; the wife, out of a sense of contradiction, objected: “It’s not bent, it’s cut” – and persistently insisted on it. The husband did not restrain himself and threw her into the water in anger, but, drowning and not being able to speak, she stretched out her hand out of the water, shewed scissors with her fingers, insisting to the end that the field was not bent, but cut.
In another narrative it is told that a certain Heinrich, a noble and rich man, had a wife who, despite being kind by nature, could not, following the example of other women, keep from not maliciously and not reproach others. Once she began to reproach Eve for disobedience. The husband persuaded his wife to stop maliciously, but, since she did not listen to him, he forbade her to swim in the dirty pool that was in the yard to try it.
His wife laughed at first, wondering how her husband might have thought that she would want to bathe in a dirty pool, but then, passing by her, she always stopped in front of her. In the end, it was so much like pulling a swim in a forbidden puddle, that somehow, leaving the bath, she bathed in it. Upon learning of this, the husband denounced his wife and took away all her outfits from her.
In connection with the first anecdote in the preface to the “Speculum Magnum exemplorum”, an indication is made that, explaining the meaning of such anecdotes, it is necessary to explain that the cases described in them are a consequence of interference in the affairs of the people of the devil.
As one of the sources, the “Great Mirror” influenced the formation in our country in the 17th century. very popular, equipped with abundant illustrations of the collection – the so-called “Synodika”, which became in Russia from the XVII-XVIII centuries. a kind of folk book, which also passed into popular literature. At this time, the usual remembrance of the deceased for the old “Synodiki” recede into the background, and for the most part they bring forward borrowed arguments and stories illustrating the situation of the need for remembrance of the deceased, or even simply entertaining stories of a religiously moralistic nature.
The “Great Mirror” also influenced some genres of oral poetry, reflected in the spiritual verse and partly in the folk legend.
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