AS I WAS interviewing the nuns of La Maigrauge in April 2018, sister C told me that she would enjoy incorporating ceremonies like the Elevatio and Visitatio in her house's own Easter liturgy. Sisters B, A, and D further reflected on their sepulchre and on the long-lost knowledge as to its use: perhaps the abbey of La Maigrauge, too, had performed Elevatio and Visitatio ceremonies in the Middle Ages? With their comments, the sisters highlighted the adaptability of the Barking dramatic liturgical ceremonies. Indeed, as mentioned in the introduction to this book, Elevationes and Visitationes were performed in numerous men's and women's religious houses throughout Europe. They would have been familiar to a multitude of nuns, to their clergy, and parishioners.

None of the many recorded medieval conventual versions of the Elevatio and Visitatio are precisely the same as the Barking one. The Ludus paschalis from the Benedictine Abbey of Origny, for instance, contains rubrics and some chants in the vernacular. The Marys buy ointment from the merchant and Mary Magdalen and the Angel communicate in French. The Troyes and Origny Visitationes' rubrics are also in the vernacular instead of Latin. The Wilton Abbey Visitatio includes a mention of Christ who percutiat capud eius spiculo (should strike her [Mary Magdalen] head with a weapon), and it seems to imply that the priest representing the angel at the tomb also represented Christ: "Angelus. Si tu scire vis quisnam ego sum ihesus vocitor" (Angel: If you want to know who I am: I am called Jesus). Furthermore, these houses used their abbey church in their own way during the two ceremonies. In Poitiers, for example, the angel and abbess went in medio choro (to the middle of the choir) at the beginning of the Visitatio and the sepulchre had a fenestram (window) that seems to have given on to the outside of the church. These nunneries all had a specific relationship with their clergy and enjoyed a unique status.