The Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers. Ed. from the Text Published by William Caxton (1491) by A lexandra Barratt and Susan Powell (Middle English Texts, 61). Heidelberg: Winter, 2021.

• Diana Denissen

The Fifteen Oes, a collection of – originally Latin – prayers that each begin with the words “O Ihesu,” were immensely popular in the medieval period. The fifteen prayers are structured around the sayings of Jesus on the cross and the devotion to the Holy Name, but they also include other imagery that can be connected to, for instance, the Cult of the Wounds. In the eleventh prayer, the speaker asks Christ to “hide me euer after in the holes of thy woundes (in the hollow places of your wounds)”. The last prayer also includes the image of Christ as a mystic vine when the shedding of his blood is represented as if it ‘had be threst out of a rype cluster of grapes’.