The Old Hungarian ''Lamentations of Mary'' (OHLM) () is the oldest existing Hungarian poem. It was copied in c. 1300 into a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

, similarly to the first coherent Hungarian text, the '' Halotti beszéd'' (''Funeral Oration''), which was written between 1192 and 1195. Its text is a translation or adaptation of a version of the poem, or rather "

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is calle ...

", that begins ''Planctus ante nescia'' and that was very widespread in medieval Europe. The speaker of the poem is

Mary, mother of Jesus Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...

as she laments the crucifixion of her son,

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

while being at the side of his cross on

Calvary Calvary ( la, Calvariae or ) or Golgotha ( grc-gre, Γολγοθᾶ, ''Golgothâ'') was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was said to have been crucified according to the canonical Gospels. Since at least the early mediev ...

. As such the poem constitutes an element of

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

religious poetry. Its interpretation has been much discussed in Hungarian

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

, and the meaning of some words and phrases remains disputed. Pais Dezső's interpretation is given herein, but it also relies on earlier relevant results.

The text of the poem

External links

* The text of the Lamentations of Mary in its original orthographic form and its version normalized according to the Modern Hungarian spelling are available in th
Old Hungarian Corpus
{{Hungarian literature History of the Hungarians 12th century in Hungary Hungarian language Medieval documents of Hungary