Page:Of the Tumbler of Our Lady - tr. Kemp-Welch - 1904.djvu/17



HE Miracles here done into English are for the most part from the collection made in the thirteenth century by Gautier de Coinci, a monk of St. Médard, near Soissons. Of this once royal abbey of the Frankish kings, the goal of many a pilgrimage, hardly a trace now remains, the crypt being all that is left of its former grandeur. The MS. which enshrines most of these delightful stories is in the Séminaire at Soissons, and is a glorious specimen of the limner's art of the thirteenth century. Each story has its appropriate illustration on a diapered background of gold, blue, and red, the whole being prefaced by a full-page illumination of surpassing beauty, such as could only have been conceived in the soul of a fervent worshipper. The stories