Drama, Performance and Touch in the Medieval Convent and Beyond

Abstract

We begin by evoking an image that is almost certainly familiar: a depiction of Mary Magdalene encountering the risen Christ, at the moment at which he tells her noli me tangere-conventionally translated today as 'touch me not'. 1 Throughout the Middle Ages this moment was repeatedly portrayed, 1 Reimund Bieringer explores the resonances of the Greek and Latin versions of this utterance, and the interpretative difficulties manifested within its long tradition of translation, 'Noli me tangere and the New Testament: