Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages 9789004409422, 2019026047, 9789004409415

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Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages

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Commentaria Sacred Texts and Their Commentaries: Jewish, Christian and Islamic

Founding Editors Grover A. Zinn Michael A. Signer (ob.) Editors Frans van Liere Lesley Smith E. Ann Matter Thomas E. Burman Robert A. Harris Walid Saleh

Volume 12

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/comm

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Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages Edited by

Jane Beal

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beal, Jane, editor. Title: Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages / edited by Jane Beal. Description: Leiden ; Boston : BRILL, 2019. | Series: Commentaria, sacred texts and their commentaries : Jewish, Christian, and Islamic, 1874-8236 Volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019026047 | ISBN 9789004409415 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004409422 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ–History of doctrines–Middle Ages, 600-1500. Classification: LCC BT198 .I45 2019 | DDC 232.09/02–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026047

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1874-8236 ISBN 978-90-04-40941-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-40942-2 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Acknowledgements vii Illustrations xi Abbreviations xii Contributors xvi Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages Jane Beal

1

1

Jesus and the Psalms: the Witness of the Latin Liturgical Sequence Nancy van Deusen

2

The Miracles of Jesus in the Writings of the Venerable Bede George Hardin Brown

3

The “Hælend” and Other Images of Jesus in Anglo-Saxon England Larry Swain

4

Christ as an Early Irish Hero: the Poems of Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan 76 Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

5

The Teaching Logos: Christology and Tropology in Theophylact of Ochrid’s Interpretation of New Testament Parables 100 Thomas Cattoi

6

“I Am”: the Glossa Ordinaria on John’s Gospel Linda Stone

7

Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus in the Medieval West Rob Lutton

8

The Unicorn as a Symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages Jane Beal

9

Godly Bridegroom and Human Bride Andrew Galloway

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Medieval Affective Piety and Christological Devotion: Juliana of Mont Cornillon and the Feast of Corpus Christi 203 Barbara Zimbalist

11

Imitatio Christi and Authority in the Lives of St. Francis Donna Trembinski

12

Vision and Sacrament: Christ’s Humanity in the Spirituality of Gertrude the Great of Helfta 240 Aaron Canty

13

Christ as Turning Point in Dante’s Commedia 255 Vittorio Montemaggi and Lesley Sullivan Marcantonio

14

Jesus and the Christ in Two Middle English Psalm Commentaries Michael P. Kuczynski

15

Jesus as ‘Mother’ in Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love Julia Bolton Holloway

16

Translation Debates and Lay Accessibility in the Meditationes Vitae Christi and Middle English Lives of Christ 310 Paul J. Patterson Bibliography Index 367

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Acknowledgements The New Testament describes how Jesus, before he was crucified, washed his disciples’ feet. When Jesus comes to wash Peter’s feet, Peter asks, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” He seems to feel in the moment that it is not right for Rabbi Jesus, his master and teacher, to wash the feet of a student. Jesus replies, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand” (John 13:7). These words resonate with my experience. So often, I do not realize the fullness of what is happening in any given moment, but later, I come to understand. The experience is rather like the experience of a gardener when she plants a seed. Maybe she knows what kind it is, and anticipates that a certain kind of plant or tree, flower or fruit, will grow from it. But she doesn’t know precisely how it will grow, or exactly what the growing thing will look like, for plants and trees may be of similar kinds, but each one is unique. As the editor of Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, I have felt a little bit like a gardener. I didn’t make any of the seeds that led to the chapters in this book, but I tended them. I tried to do my best to bring them to fruition. I am very thankful to the contributors to this volume who have worked with me in a vast garden of ideas in order to create this book: Nancy Van Deusen, George Hardin Brown, Larry Swain, Tomás O Cathasaigh, Thomas Cattoi, Linda Stone, Rob Lutton, Andrew Galloway, Barbara Zimbalist, Donna Trembinski, Aaron Canty, Vittorio Montemaggi, Lesley Sullivan, Michael Kuczynski, Julia Bolton Holloway, and Paul Patterson. We began our work together in 2014, and five years later, it is good to see the results. The idea for this book first began to grow when I was editing Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from the Exodus to the Renaissance (Brill, 2014). I have long been interested in the history of ideas, and in reception aesthetics, especially in the medieval period. Producing Illuminating Moses proved to be a meaningful opportunity to consider the reception of the founder of Judaism, Moses, in diverse medieval cultures and writings. The natural sequel seemed to me to be a book about Jesus, the originator of Christianity. I began discussing this with the members of the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (SSBMA), but many of us felt overwhelmed by the prospect of producing a book about the reception of Jesus in the Middle Ages. The subject was too vast; the materials available for analysis, over-abundant. At the same time, we recognized an irony: despite the undeniable impact of Jesus on medieval history, literature, and culture, there have not been many recent academic conference sessions, conferences, or books in medieval studies dedicated to exploring how ideas about Jesus were received and developed

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in the Middle Ages. We could see this just by glancing through the conference programs for the International Medieval Congress (Leeds, England), the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, Michigan), and the Medieval Academy of America as well as by browsing the books at the booksellers’ stalls at our favorite medieval conferences – not to mention the more usual scholarly methods that involve searching libraries bookshelves and databases. We noticed that some of our undergraduate, graduate students, and junior colleagues did not seem cognizant of the tremendous impact of ideas and interpretations of Jesus in our shared field of study. Could we contribute something significant to the discipline of medieval studies if we collaborated on a book about Jesus in the Middle Ages, one that might lead to greater awareness and appreciation of such a vast, if ironically neglected, subject? The work of three other prominent medievalists who have written on the reception of Jesus in medieval cultures suggested that, at the very least, the attempt would be worthwhile. As is well known, Carolyn Walker Bynum’s book Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (1984) has been influential for thirty-five years. Two scholars have recently followed in Bynum’s footsteps: Rabia Gregory in Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform (2015) and Mary Dzon in The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages (2017). Like Bynum, Gregory, and Dzon, I wanted to acknowledge that Jesus was understood in medieval Christian cultures, especially contemplative communities, as mother, bridegroom, and child, but also in a variety of other roles acknowledged inside and outside of the cloister: as the “anointed one” in the Psalms, a miracle-worker, a healer, a hero, a parable storyteller, the Logos, and the “I Am,” who could be compared in his incarnation to a unicorn or, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, a griffin (whose two natures are likened to Christ’s humanity and divinity), and who influenced spiritual practices by many medieval Christians (exemplified by such men as Saint Francis and such women as Gertrude of Helfta and Julian of Norwich who lived in imitatio Christi), and whose very name, abbreviated IHS, was considered sacred and whose crucified body was remembered in the sacrament of the Eucharist and the Feast of Corpus Christi. I began to inquire with a number of medievalists I knew about whether they might be willing to write on these subjects, and to my surprise and delight, they were. With the hope that, together the contributors, I could cast more light on the reception of Jesus in the Middle Ages, I proposed the book project to the board of Commentaria, which oversees a significant academic series published by Brill. The proposal was subsequently approved and the book invited. As the editor of Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, I am very thankful to the mem-

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bers of the Commentaria board and Brill for forming the partnership with me that has allowed this book to be produced. As the book progressed, I thought it would be a good idea for the contributors who were writing chapters to have an opportunity to meet and discuss their work in person. I am thankful to Elizabeth Teviotdale and her team, who share the responsibility of coordinating sessions at the International Congress in Medieval Studies held annually at the University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, for approving our SSBMA conference session on “Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages” for the May 2018 Congress. The participants in the roundtable included Aaron Canty, Barbara Zimbalist, Donna Trembinski, Larry Swain and Paul Patterson as well as Frans van Lière, my co-presider. The session provided a wonderful opportunity for an exchange of ideas, but it was memorable for other reasons, too. (I think I will never forget the moment in that session when, as I stood up to discuss the unicorn as a symbol for Christ in medieval culture, a bright red fox walked past the giant windows of the Lefevre Room in Valley II and disappeared into the rainy, green woods that were growing on the university campus that May!) In all, it was a valuable session, and I value those who work hard to make the Congress happen each year. At that Congress, I also had the opportunity to meet Rob Lutton of the University of Nottingham, who joined the contributors to the volume when I had the chance to invite him. His chapter on the sacred name was the last chapter to be added to the volume. I am thankful to him for coming on board. Many others deserve special mention here for their contributions to this book. I am particularly thankful to Frans van Lière in his role as series editor for answering questions, making suggestions, and providing overall guidance. My research assistants at the University of La Verne for this project include Brenna von den Benken, who compiled the bibliography and list of indexing terms, and Carmen Vargas, who completed the index once the proofs were available. To both of them, I am thankful for their cheerful diligence and close attention to detail. My gratitude must also be extended to the in-house editors at Brill, especially Marcella Mulder: Marcella, it is a pleasure to work with you on another book, and my thanks to you and your team are truly heart-felt. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to include both black-and-white and full-color figures in this book. My own chapter in this volume was supported in its development by access granted to Shields Library at the University of California, Davis. I am thankful to those who ensured that access by appointing me to the position of Associate Researcher in English: my senior colleague, Professor Margaret Ferguson, and the then chair of the UC Davis Department of English, Professor Liz Miller. Roberto Delgadillo, a librarian for the faculty in the College of

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Arts and Humanities at Davis, has remained a valued source of intelligence, humor, and good-natured support as I have chased down information needed for this book (not to mention, other books!). Thank you, Roberto, for your help in the process: may you be ever-blessed. At the University of La Verne, where I currently work as a professor, I am very thankful to my interim department chair, Gerard Lavatori, and the deans of the College of Arts & Sciences, Lawrence Potter and Brian Clocksin, and Provost Jonathan Reed for research funding that was provided in support of my work on this book. It enabled me to pay my research assistants and to have access to computer hardware and software accommodations (including voice-dictation software) necessitated by my tendinitis. Frankly, this support has been invaluable. I am truly grateful. Finally, I would like to thank my close friends and family members for the support they have given to me personally during the years that I have been working on this book. At first, many of them were surprised that the unicorn was a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages, but now, they know that is so beyond any shadow of a doubt! (They have heard quite a lot about how so from me, I admit.) To my parents Rudy and Barbara Holthuis, my brothers and sisters, and my dear friends Pastor Miguel Rodriguez, Stacey Jones, Tina Torres, Cheryl Hiatt, Michelle Smoler, and Elaine Padilla, thank you so much for your prayers, love, and friendship. I dedicate this book to my nephew Elijah Phoenix Nehemiah Beal, who was born March 23, 2016 while this book project was slowly growing into the form it now has. Today, at nearly three years old, Elijah is a little drummer-boy – already a musician like his father and a dancer like his mother – and he is a delight to everyone who meets him. I hope someday he will enjoy the fact that this book is dedicated to him as well as the garden of ideas about Jesus that are within it like plants and trees, flowers and fruit. Elijah, I have written about the Unicorn as a symbol for Christ in this book, but the Phoenix was a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages, too. Since that is one of your middle names, I promise to write something about how the Phoenix became a symbol for Christ. Meanwhile, Elijah, I love you! Jane Beal University of La Verne

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Illustrations 1.1a 1.1b 1.1c 1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

8.1 8.2 8.3 14.1

Examples: The sequence and the Psalms 42 Examples: The sequence and the Psalms 43 Examples: The sequence and the Psalms 44 Example II: collection of sequences or sequentiarium from the manuscript, Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Palatina lat. 857, f. 70v, indicating how sequences were copied together as a Liber, as, of course, the psalter. 45 Example III: from the manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Palatina lat. 501, f. 14r, shows the sequence positioned between the florid, what we would consider melismatic, Alleluia, calling to mind the Old Testament through the use of a Hebrew word, Alleluia, and its Psalm verse, and the reading of the Gospel. Note the resemblance of the sequentia as it appears without music notation with the following example, a psalter. 46 Example IV: from the Wycliffite Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Bodley 554, f. 69r, with divisions and initials in a format also common to sequences within the sequentiarium. This example brings up still another feature that the Psalms have in common with sequences, the commentary, which can be clearly seen. Sequences with commentaries also occur, thus joining the immense Psalm commentary literature; and the commentaries are included for the same purpose, namely, to elucidate obscure allegorical references and expressions. 47 Example V: Barcelona, Archivio de la corona de Aragon, Ripoll Ms 767, f. 77v, a fragment which can be identified by its final line, a characteristic eschatological statement of the Christian’s presence before God: “Post hec vite spacia deique; frui gracia. Amen.” 48 “The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn” 176 “The Lady and the Unicorn” (“Sight”) 184 Detail from “The Lady and the Unicorn” (“Sight”) 188 Marginal notes on archbishop of Canterbury John Peckham’s condemnation of certain heresies concerning the dead body of Christ in the bottom margin of Peter Lombard’s Commentarium in Psalmos (13th c. MS from the Howard-Tilton Memorial University, Tulane University) 290

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Abbreviations Books of the Bible Cited with Their Abbreviations Daniel Deuteronomy Exodus Ezekiel Genesis Hosea Isaiah Jeremiah Job Joshua Leviticus Numbers Proverbs Psalms Ruth Song of Solomon

Dan. Deut. Exod. Ezek. Gen. Hosea Isa. Jer. Job Josh. Lev. Num. Prov. Ps. or pl. Pss. Ruth Sg.

Apocrypha Wisdom of Solomon

Wis. of Sol.

New Testament Acts of the Apostles Apocalypse Ephesians Galatians Hebrews John 1 John Luke Mark Matthew

Acts Apoc. Eph. Gal. Heb. John 1 John Luke Mark Matt.

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Abbreviations 1 Peter Romans Revelation

xiii 1 Pet. Rom. Rev.

Versions of the Bible Authorized (King James) Version Douay-Rheims Version Septuagint New Testament Old Testament Vulgate

AV or KJV DV LXX NT OT Vulg.

Other Abbreviations AAR AC ACMRS A.D. AS ASE BCE BL c. or ca. CCSL CCCM CE Chap. col. d. DIL DJM ed. EETS EQ FA: ED

Aids for Study of Religion (Oxford University Press Series) Assisi Compilation Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies anno Domini Acta Sanctorum Anglo-Saxon England Before the Common Era British Library circa Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis Common Era Chapter column died Dictionary of the Irish Language Dulcis Jesu memoria edited by Early English Text Society English Quarterly Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong et al. 3 vols. New York, London, Manila: New City Press, 1999-2001.

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xiv

Abbreviations

FAS

Francisci Assisiensis: Scripta ed. Carlo Paolazzi. Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 2009. Fontes Franciscani, ed. Enrico Menesto, Stephano Brufani, et al. Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncula, 1995. Folio Jesus Christ Jesus Index of Middle English Verse Latin Bonaventure, Legenda maior Legend of the Three Companions Médiathèque de l’agglomération Troyenne (formerly Bibliothèque municipale, Troyes) Middle English manuscript manuscripts note (endnote or footnote) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Old English Notes Oxford English Dictionary opera citato (in the works cited) old series Order of Saint Benedict Patrologia Graeca Philomena in Raby’s edition of Hovedon’s works Patrologia Latina page pages recto Thomas of Celano, Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul Reprinted Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages Saint State University of New York sub verbo Teaching Association for Medieval Studies translated by University College Dublin verse

FF fol. IHC IHS IMEV Lat. LM LTC MAT ME MS MSS n. ODNB OEN OED op. cit. o.s. O.S.B. PG Ph. PL p. pp. r. RDS Repr. SISMEL SSBMA St. SUNY s.v. TEAMS trans. UCD v.

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Abbreviations v. vv. Vol. Vols. VP

xv

verso verses Volume Volumes Thomas of Celano, Vita prima

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Contributors Jane Beal University of La Verne George Hardin Brown Stanford University Aaron Canty St. Xavier University Tomás Ó Cathasaigh Harvard University Thomas Cattoi Graduate Theological Union Andrew Galloway Cornell University Julia Bolton Holloway University of Colorado at Boulder Michael P. Kuczynski Tulane University Rob Lutton University of Nottingham Vittorio Montemaggi King’s College, London Paul J. Patterson St. Joseph’s University Linda Stone Cambridge University

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Lesley Sullivan Marcantonio University of Notre Dame, Indiana Larry Swain Bemidji State University Donna Trembinski St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia Nancy van Deusen Claremont Graduate University Barbara Zimbalist University of Texas, El Paso

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Introduction

Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages Jane Beal

But in the eternities, Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear. O, be prepared, my soul! To read the inconceivable, to scan The million forms of God those stars unroll When, in our turn, we show to them a Man. Alice Meynell, from “Christ in the Universe”1

∵ It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Jesus on medieval literature and culture.2 According to the teachings of the Church, from his Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary, he was uniquely the Son of God and Son of Man: fully human, fully divine. He was believed by many people from the first century onward to be the Jewish Messiah, called the Christ (“the Anointed One”), born to inherit the throne of David, Israel’s most revered king. The teachings of Jesus, in parables and sermons, were preserved in the canonical Gospels,

1 Alice Meynell, “Christ in the Universe,” in Poets’ Life of Christ, ed. Norman Ault (Oxford, 1922; repr. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2003), 271-71. 2 Among medievalists, there has been a recent increase of interest in this subject. After considering the influential study of Carolyn Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), see also the valuable contributions of Rabia Gregory, Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2015) and Mary Dzon, The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_002

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with the record of his Passion: the sufferings he experienced that led to his Crucifixion, when he was put to death by being nailed to a Roman Cross. Followers of Jesus in the early centuries believed that later he miraculously rose from the dead, an event called the Resurrection, which then was celebrated annually throughout the Middle Ages by Christians at Easter. The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus were considered, by Christians, to be signs that confirmed that Jesus was the Savior of the world from sin.3 Sin (hata, Hebrew; hamartia, Greek), or “missing the mark,” was understood as disobedience to God that had separated humanity from close relationship to God. Sin began, according to Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, an act later called the Fall.4 After this, death entered the world. Jewish law (torah) required annual animal sacrifices from Jewish people to atone for sin. First-century believers in Jesus, however, came to believe that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, being without any sin himself, and that he willingly laid down his life at the Crucifixion to redeem (or “buy back”) humanity from sin and death because of his great love (hesed / agapé / caritas) for all people. The paradox of Christ’s divinity and humanity was inspirational to many communities of people, beginning with his Jewish disciples in the first century. These disciples grew to include more Jews and converted pagan peoples living in the Roman Empire who began to call themselves “Christians” at Antioch in Syria.5 Led in part by the Apostles James, the brother of Jesus; Peter, the foremost disciple of Jesus; and Paul, a Pharisee and a Jewish rabbi who converted to Christianity after the death of Jesus, Christians undertook missionary efforts to tell people who had never heard “the good news” (evangelium / gospel) about Jesus.6 This led to the conversion of large numbers of people from their old religions to the newly emerging faith called Christianity.

3 For a general history of Christianity, see, for example, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 2010), winner of the Cundill Prize in History, esp. Part II “One Church, One Faith, One Lord? (4 BCE – 451 CE) and Part IV “The Unpredictable Rise of Rome (300-1300).” 4 Gen. 3. Perhaps the most influential theologian on the subject of the Fall was Augustine, who discusses it in many of his writings, including The City of God Against the Pagans. For analysis of Augustine’s views of the Fall, see, for example, T.D.J. Chappell, “Explaining the Inexplicable: Augustine on the Fall,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXII/3 (1994): 869-884. 5 See Acts 11:19-16. 6 On evangelism by early Christians, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, Vol. 1 and 2 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

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Following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to the Church in the fourth century A.D., the Roman Empire became nominally Christian. Whereas people previously had been converting to Christianity from the lower orders of society, and suffering terrible persecution for their refusal to worship any other gods, now a “top-down” model emerged in which Christianity was the religion of empire.7 This impacted the farthest reaches of Rome, including outposts in Europe and England, where Christian missionaries traveled to establish churches and teach newly converted people how to be faithful Christians. In 597 A.D., for example, Pope Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine of Canterbury to convert the English.8 As belief in Christ took hold, and the power of Christian empire and ecclesia began to have a formative impact on medieval culture, the Christological ideal – the idea of Jesus as the perfect Savior – began to shape all aspects of medieval life. The material culture of the period provides rich evidence for this in the form of churches and cathedrals, monasteries and abbeys, and sculpture and stained glass as well as the micro-architecture of tombs, altars, and reliquaries.9 These structures, small and large, became the setting or parts of the setting for elaborate liturgies: worship services conducted by priests for clergy and lay-people alike. The very divisions of society reflected the impact of beliefs that developed from the Christological ideal: within the clergy, there were those devoted to the active life (priests) and the contemplative life (monks and nuns); outside of the clergy, lay-people engaged in the life of the Church through the sacraments, which defined their existence from the cradle to the grave. The understanding of time itself was re-structured according to beliefs about Jesus, so that the major seasons of liturgical year of the Church reflected the eternal life of Christ: Advent, which honored his birth; Epiphany, 7 See MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, esp. Part IV “The Unpredictable Rise of Rome (300-1300).” 8 One of the primary sources of our understanding of Pope Gregory’s commissioning of St. Augustine of Canterbury to undertake a mission to convert the English is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, chap. 23. The standard Latin edition with facingpage English translation is by Colgrave and Mynors, but other versions can be readily accessed online, as here: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0627-0735,_Beda _Venerabilis,_Ecclesiastical_History_Of_England,_EN.pdf. For a contemporary history, see Anthony Marrett-Crosby, The Foundations of Christian England: St. Augustine of Canterbury and his Impact (York: Ampleforth Abbey Press, 1997). 9 See Roger Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture, Oxford History of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. chap. 9 “The Language of Architecture,” 191-212, and Nicola Coldstream, Medieval Architecture, Oxford History of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. chap. 5 “Symbolic Architecture: Representation and Association,” 149-74.

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which recognized his appearance to the first Gentiles, the Wise Men from the East who visited him after his birth; Lent, which memorialized his temptation in the wilderness and ended with Holy Week, focused on his Passion; Easter, which celebrated his Resurrection; and Pentecost, which welcomed the coming of the Holy Spirit.10 In these seasons were major holy days, like Christmas (the Christ-Mass) and the Feast of Corpus Christi, which honored the birth and body of Christ respectively. Also added were holy days in honor of the family of Jesus, especially his mother, Mary, and the followers of Jesus, his disciples and the saints (“holy ones”) of the Church, including martyrs and virgin-martyrs. Everything about time in the Middle Ages was understood in terms of the Christological ideal. Just as concepts of time were restructured by Christian belief for Christian communities, so were concepts of place: from world geography down to the local parish church, every place was understood in relationship to Christ. Mappaemundi, beginning as early as those found in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, depicted a tripartite map of the world with Asia at the top (when oriented eastward) and Europa and Africa underneath. These continents were assigned to Shem, Japeth, and Ham, the sons of Noah, respectively, and surrounded by ocean waters. Jerusalem was placed in the approximate center, and sometimes Adam and Eve and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were included at the top in Asia. In elaborate maps of the world, Christ might be depicted over the world, as in the Psalter Map, or with his head at the top, his hands at the sides, and his feet at the bottom of the round world-map, as in the Ebstorf Map.11 These dramatic representations of Christ’s reign over the world and the way it had its continued existence within the body of Christ were used for contemplation in monastic, ecclesiastical, and even political settings. Not only the grand scheme of the world, but local churches and grand cathedrals – to which medieval Christians came for mass, major religious 10

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Scholarly resources on this subject include Thomas Heffernan and E. Ann Matter, eds. The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2001); Richard Pfaff, Medieval Latin Liturgy: A Select Bibliography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) and Richard Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For a brief overview, see Joanne Pierce, “Medieval Christian Liturgy,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias (May 2016). Available at: http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore /9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-84. On the Christian symbolism of medieval mappaemundi, see J.B. Harley and David Woodard, The History of Cartography, Vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), chap. 18 “Medieval Mappaemundi,” and Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (London: British Library, 1999).

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holidays, and significant life events – were laid out in a design meant to bring to remembrance the Cross of Christ, Judeo-Christian history, and the future Paradise promised to believers. Medieval churches were built in cruciform shape, with the nave (or body of the church) recalling, in part, Noah’s ark and the church on earth; the chancel, and that which was beyond the chancel, recalling the church in heaven. In the much larger and grander cathedrals, the doors symbolized the entrance into heaven; the pillars, the Apostles and the Prophets. Sometimes, one wall stood for the Old Testament, and the other wall, for the New Testament; sometimes, one side focused on the Gospel and the other on the Epistles.12 When they could be afforded and included, stained glass windows depicted both biblical stories and saints’ lives. The light that came through the windows was considered as the presence of God: “God is light, and there is no darkness in him.”13 In even the poorest church, there was always an altar and a Cross at the front, where the memorial of Christ’s death, the Eucharist, was celebrated in each mass. The Stations of the Cross were found in many churches as well. Indeed, every aspect of art and architecture in a medieval church or cathedral was concentrated, ultimately, on the central importance of Jesus. Churches were typically built at sites specifically recognized as holy, or set apart, because of historical and miraculous events that people believed had taken place on those sites. Medieval people took journeys of devotion between such churches and holy sites in a tradition of pilgrimage. Three of the most famous pilgrimage sites featuring enormous, beautiful, and highly symbolic churches were at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Rome in Italy, and Jerusalem in the holy land.14 As early as the fifth century, Egeria’s Itinerarium leaves a record of one woman’s travels in the holy land; as late as the fifteenth-century, Margery Kempe’s Book gives us another record of a woman

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Scholars of medieval architecture have analyzed these facts in great detail. See, for example, R.A. Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. chap. 9 “The Language of Architecture,” 191-212, and Nicola Coldstream, Medieval Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) esp. chap. 5 “Symbolic Architecture: Representation and Association,” 149-74. See also Conrad Rudolph, “The Architectural Metaphor in Western Medieval Artistic Culture: From the Cornerstone to The Mystic Ark,” The Cambridge History of Religious Architecture, ed. Stephen Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 1 John 1:5. For insight into the practice of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, see Larissa Taylor, et al., Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2009), and Brett Edward Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader, Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

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who made the journey from England through Santiago, Rome, and Jerusalem and back again.15 In every place, pilgrims said their prayers, listened to priests and monks say mass, and vividly imagined, in many cases, the life and death of Jesus. The prayerful, contemplative (and sometimes visionary) life was regularized in the monastic tradition. Especially in the earlier Middle Ages, the Benedictine Order had tremendous influence, fostering a Rule for communal Christian living; later, the mendicant preaching orders, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, developed, and many other orders proliferated as a result of reform movements and inspiring, saintly leaders.16 Monks and nuns in diverse orders of the church took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, pledging themselves to live as sponsae Christi or brides of Christ.17 At the heart of the contemplative prayers and evangelizing sermons of these men and women was the message of the gospel: the “good news” that concerned the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Special books guided the both contemplative life in the monastic environment and lay devotion outside of it. These included the Bible and standard types of books made from parts of the Bible, such Psalters, containing the Psalms, and evangelaria, containing the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.18 Books of Hours contained many references to the scriptures as well as prayers intended to be said at set times of day as well as specific liturgical seasons. The Tres Riches Heures de Duc de Berry is an example of a particularly beautiful and expensive Book of Hours used by a nobleman for his prayers, but many of the Books of Hours seemed to have noblewomen as their intended patrons, for these survive not only in Latin but also in vernacular languages. The 15

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In addition to Egeria and Margery Kempe, several other women made pilgrimages in the holy land, about whom we have extant records, including Helena, Paula and her daughter Eustochium, Pega, Bridget, Guthrithyr, Margaret, Isolda, Birgitta and her daughter Catherine, Rose, and Julia. See Julia Bolton Holloway, “The Bible and Women Pilgrims” available at http://www.umilta.net/egeria.html. For an introductory overview, see Kristina Krüger, Monasteries and Monastic Orders: 2000 Years of Christian Art and Culture, ed. Rolf Toman (H.F. Ullmann, 2012); for a special focus on the monastic orders in late-medieval England, see Janet Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000-1300, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). For discussion of the “bride of Christ,” see Gregory, Marrying Jesus (2015) as well as chapters by Beal, Galloway, and Canty in this book. See Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964); Susan Boynton and Dianne J. Reilly, eds., Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2011); and Frans van Lière, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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Books of Hours were particularly focused on Marian devotion, and included an emphasis on those moments in the life of Jesus in which the Gospels particularly note that Mary was involved, especially the Annunciation, Nativity, and Crucifixion.19 In addition, medieval Bible commentaries expounded the Christological meaning of scripture verses. The Glossa ordinaria was particularly influential in the high Middle Ages. The arrangement of words on the page of a Glossa ordinaria manuscript was visually effective: the biblical text was central and commentaries from the Church Fathers and later, influential church theologians was given around the passage. Nicolas of Lyra’s comments were given at the bottom of the page in some cases.20 The glosses consistently interpreted the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, as prophesying the birth, life, death, resurrection, and divinity of Christ. Another genre, the biblia pauperum or Bibles of the Poor, related the Old Testament to the New Testament through the use of a standard set of typological images. For example, if an image of the Crucifixion was central to a page of a Bible of the Poor, it was usually paired with an image of the Sacrifice of Isaac on one side and an image of Moses uplifting the bronze snake on a pole on the other side. Like the Glossa, the biblia pauperum placed Christ in the center.21 When these biblical books were read, it was often in a particular mode or style known as lectio divina: divine reading. This involved silence, meditation, praying, and deeper contemplation. Readers looked for four levels of meaning in scripture: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical.22 Even when the

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To view several examples of medieval Books of Hours, and thus to see several manuscript images associated with Marian devotion and the early life of Jesus, including the Annunciation and the Nativity, see “Medieval Books of Hours” (accessed 4 April 2018): http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/inventory. See also the advanced tutorial in order to become familiar with the structure and content of the Books of Hours: http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/learn#advanced/. For discussion, see Lesley Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary, Commentaria Series (Leiden: Brill, 2009) and David A. Salomon, An Introduction to the Glossa Ordinaria as Medieval Hypertext, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012). To see the image, consult Avril Henry, Biblia pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition (Cambridge: Scolar Press, 1987); for analysis, see Jane Beal, “Mens tua hortus meus est: Christ and the Canticle Bride in the Biblia pauperum,” Integrité: A Journal of Faith and Learning 14 (Fall 2015): 3-19. Also available at https://issuu.com/mobap/docs/integrite_fa2015/5?e= 4286098/34938510. See Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages and Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Vol. 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc, Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998).

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literal sense was not obviously about Jesus, the other senses often revealed him. When medieval readers (and listeners) brought their devout imaginations to the scriptures, they often experienced biblical stories as if they themselves were present at the events described, especially events from the life of Jesus. Indeed, Bibles and biblical books were used to foster affective piety and personal devotion to the name, the body, and the person of Jesus. The IHS monogram came to be regarded as sacred.23 The whole body of Christ, the five wounds of Christ, and the sacred heart of Christ were the subject of devotional art, meditation, and worship. Famous, somatic experiences by medieval Christians devoted to Christ’s body include the stigmata of St. Francis, the pregnancy of Birgitta of Sweden’s heart, and Julian of Norwich’s Showings of the Passion.24 These experiences were neither exceptional nor unique. The memorial of the death of Jesus in the Eucharist was the central rite of the Church with which all medieval Christians were familiar, and it elevated the body of Christ for their eyes to behold. The doctrine of transubstantiation arose in this period, and many medieval people believed that the bread became the body of Christ in the Eucharistic rite.25 The focus on Jesus pervaded many other kinds of literature as well, including lives of Christ, found as singular books and in universal chronicles, sometimes evincing a special interest in his childhood; saints’ lives, such as those found in the Legenda aurea; legends of the Harrowing of Hell and the virgin-martyrs; Latin devotional hymns and vernacular poetry, like the Dream of the Rood and The Vision of Piers Plowman. Even medieval bestiaries, which were in part scientific in nature, featured both literal descriptions of animals

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On the cult of the Holy Name and the significance of the IHS monogram, see the chapter by Lutton in this book. On the stigmata of St. Francis, see the chapter by Zimbalist in this book. For discussion of the mystical pregnancy of St. Birgitta’s heart, see Claire Lynn Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy, Studies in Medieval Mysticism (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001), chap. 3 “Mystical Pregnancy and Prophecy in the Revelation: Birgitta’s Identification with the Virgin Mary,” 85-108. On Julian of Norwich, see The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, eds. Nicolas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) and Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s “Showings”: From Vision to Book (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. chap. 5 “Reconceiving the Imago Dei: The Motherhood of Jesus and the Ideology of the Self,” 107-34. See also the chapter by Holloway in this book. On the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation and its acceptance in the thirteenth century, see Gary Macy, “The Dogma of Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45:1 (1994): 11-41.

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and allegorical interpretations of their significance that directly tied them to Christ.26 The unicorn, tamed by the Virgin, stood for his Incarnation; the lamb, interpreted as the agnus Dei, for his innocence of sin at the Crucifixion; the phoenix, for his Resurrection. The lion recalled reference to the Lion of Judah in the Bible; the lion was interpreted as a figure for Christ the King. As even this brief survey suggests, the idea of Christ permeated medieval culture. The impact of ideas about Jesus was both broad and deep, affecting medieval people rich and poor, lay and monastic, young and old, male and female. The primary source of information about Jesus was the Bible, especially the four gospels, but medieval Christians interpreted the whole Bible – both before and after the gospels – as primarily about Christ.

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The Life of Jesus in the Middle Ages

The understanding of the life of Jesus that medieval people inherited came first from the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – but not exclusively from one of these books. Rather, harmonies of the gospels circulated in the period, in written form but also in oral and pictorial forms: sermons, stories, stained glass, manuscript miniatures, and so on. Because most medieval people could not read, their understanding of the life of Jesus came from oral tradition and the teaching of the educated elite who could read, that is, the clergy of the Church, who related the life of Jesus to the laity at set times during the liturgical year. Thus, for most medieval Christians, many details from the gospels concerning the birth of Jesus (related in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke) were celebrated at Christmas, and many details from the gospels concerning his Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection (related in all four gospel books) were recalled during Holy Week and Easter. These high church holidays meant the birth and death of Jesus were very well known to almost every Christian in the Middle Ages from the time that tribal people in England and Europe were converted and churches were established in their countries. In the high and later Middle Ages, the increasing Marian devotion among medieval Christians meant that the details of the Annunciation and the Nativity were the special focus of attention not only during Advent and the Christmas season, but also in the devotions encouraged by Books of Hours. These 26

On medieval bestiaries in general and the figure of the unicorn as a type of Christ, see the chapter by Beal in this book. Several relevant bibliographic references appear in the footnotes to that chapter.

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books were produced in both Latin and the vernacular for monastic and noble readers, and especially for women, who found them to be of special interest.27 Iconographic pictures of the angel Gabriel with a lily outstretched toward the Virgin Mary, dressed in blue and reading a book while a dove descended toward her ear, heart, or womb, were ubiquitous in Books of Hours and art displayed in churches. So too were images of the Nativity featuring Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus in a manger, the ox, the ass, the angels, and the shepherds. The Adoration of the Magi featured in other images in remembrance of the gospel story of the three gentile wise men who followed a star and came to worship Jesus as an infant, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, reputed to stand for (and to foreshadow) his kingship, his priesthood, and his sacrificial death for humanity.28 Images of Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt were also common, images which recalled the time when Herod ordered the murder of all baby boys under the age of two in Bethlehem and the family fled into nearby Egypt. There were certainly regional variations in what medieval lay Christians would experience in the liturgy (or Books of Hours, for that matter) and thus “know” or “remember” about the life of Jesus. Although the Roman Rite came to predominate in the west, the Sarum Rite (associated with Salisbury Cathedral in England) was one such regional use that emphasized slightly different lectionary readings, performances of the mass, and worship rituals. For example, the Mass of Holy Innocents celebrated on December 28th in the Sarum Rite to memorialize the death of the children of Bethlehem was particularly elaborate in comparison to the Roman Rite, which did not emphasize the event.29 Thus in England, medieval Christians were vividly aware of this event from the childhood of Jesus. Medieval people inherited a wide variety of stories and images of Jesus as an infant, child, and young adult.30 The biblical gospels hardly address the

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Virginia Reinburg, “‘For the Use of Women’: Women and Books of Hours,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2009): 235-40 and Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England, trans. Charity Scott-Stokes, Library of Medieval Women (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006). On the flight of the holy family into Egypt, see Matt. 2:1-23. For an introductory overview of the differences between the Roman Rite and the Sarum Rite, see “Sarum Rite” in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (accessed April 4, 2018: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13479a.htm. For further detail, see also Matthew Cheung Salisbury, The Secular Office in Late-Medieval England, Medieval Church Studies 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). Albrecht Classen, ed., Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality (Berlin and New York, N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter,

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childhood of Jesus – Luke mentions only one childhood story between his infancy and his baptism; the other gospel writers say nothing at all.31 This was probably due to the fact that the life of a young Jewish boy growing up in Nazareth would have followed an unexceptional pattern in a community shaped by Torah and tradition, which would have been familiar enough to early Jewish readers or gentile converts of Judaism or Christianity not to need explanation in the gospels, which are focused on the events of the Passion narrative. However, usually medieval Christians were removed from an awareness of the rhythms of Jewish life and the Jewish liturgical year, so they “filled in the gap” left by the gospels’ silence about the childhood of Jesus with stories about the Christ-Child, some miraculous and others surprisingly humble, domestic, and familial, to which they could relate and with which they could empathize.32 For medieval people, the gospels proved fruitful sources for understanding many other key moments in the life of Jesus, however. Among these moments were his baptism, temptation in the wilderness, calling of the first disciples, first miracle at the wedding in Cana (turning water into wine), and miracles performed and teachings given during his three-year ministry in Judea and Galilee. During the Middle Ages, these highlights from the ministry of Jesus were conveyed orally, in writing, and in art. Medieval Christians meditated on images and words that recalled these moments from the life of Jesus to their imaginations vividly.33 The teachings of Jesus were conveyed to medieval lay people, in various ways, and many medieval Christians would memorize portions of scriptures attributed to Jesus. Familiar aspects from the teachings of Jesus included the Beatitudes, which might be memorized along with the Lord’s Prayer,

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2005). Cf. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Luke 2:41-52 “The Boy Jesus at the Temple.” The Lucan narrative also relates earlier events from the infancy of Jesus not found in other gospels: his circumcision and his presentation at the Temple. Mary Dzon, “Joseph and the Amazing Christ-Child of Late-Medieval Legend,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York, N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 135-58. On this process in monastic environments and medieval culture generally, see Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed., Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, repr. 2008) and The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, repr. 2000).

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Ave Maria, and Ten Commandments. The Sermon on the Mount was widely known, with its emphasis on the importance of the attitude of heart as well as the rectitude of action (e.g., angry intentions are as morally evil as murder; lust is as morally wrong as adultery) and its exhortations to love enemies and give to the poor, but not to be anxious or judge others.34 Many of the parables of Jesus were also well known among the laity. By the later Middle Ages, the best-known parables were the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Workers in the Vineyard, and Lazarus and the Rich Man.35 Like the teachings of Jesus, many of the miracles of Jesus were passed on from one generation of Christians to the next, both formally and informally in story, sermon, art, architecture, and biblical books of different kinds. Medieval Christians meditated on images of the miracles of Jesus in community as well as on interiorized images within individual memories – and they sang songs that deeply implanted the memory of the teachings and miracles of Jesus in their psyches. That Jesus could make blind men see, lame men walk, walk on water, feed the five thousand, and raise Lazarus from the dead were all taken as events that truly occurred and as signs that Jesus was who he said he was and who medieval Christians believed him to be: fully human and fully divine, the Son of Mary and the Son of God. In the Middle Ages, many of the miracles of Jesus recorded in the gospels were also believed to be performed by the saints who loved him and were in turn empowered by him, in fulfillment of Jesus’ words: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to my Father.”36 So the

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The Sermon on the Mount can be found in Matthew 5-7. Concerning sermons on the Beatitudes, which would have been composed by the learned but heard by the unlearned Christian laity, see Carolyn Muessing, “Preaching the Beatitudes in the Late Middle Ages: Some Mendicant Examples,” Studies in Christian Ethics 22:2 (2009): 136-50, which considers the influence of commentators on the Sermon on the Mount, such as Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Bernardino of Siena. These parables are recorded in Luke 15:11-32, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 10:1-13, Matthew 20:1-16, and Luke 16:19-31. For an outstanding study of how thoroughly the parable of the Prodigal Son permeated medieval thought and culture, see Pietro Delcorno, In the Mirror of the Prodigal Son: The Pastoral Uses of a Biblical Narrative (c. 1200-1500), Commentaria Series (Leiden: Brill, 2018). On the allegorical uses of the parables of Jesus in the Middle Ages, see Stephen L. Wailes, Medieval Allegories of Jesus’ Parables (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 1987). John 14:12.

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cults in honor of the saints were extensions of the honor paid to the one who answered their prayers: Jesus.37 The culmination of the ministry of Jesus in his Passion was a special focus not only during the Holy Week that ended the season of Lent and began the season of Easter, but every time medieval Christians looked at a crucifix, which could be writ large in a church or held in their hands in miniature as they prayed. The Eucharistic rite reminded them of the Passion as well. The Passion narrative is the major focus of all four gospels, and it was the major focus of Christian devotion in the Middle Ages as well. The story of the Passion of Jesus unfolds in the gospels with the triumphal entry to Jerusalem before Passover, the cleansing of the Temple, and, in Matthew’s gospel, the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”38 Jesus tells a story about the widow’s mite and gives a series of revelations about the signs of the end times, his Second Coming, and the Last Judgment. The gospels and gospel harmonies that survive in medieval Latin and vernacular gospels also tell of the thirty pieces of silver that Judas took to betray Jesus, the Last Supper in the Upper Room and the beloved disciple, John, who laid his head on his rabbi’s breast at the meal. They tell of the night journey to the Mount of Olives and the betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane, Peter’s denial of Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, the trials before the High Priest Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate, followed by descriptions of the way Jesus took to the Cross and the way the daughters of Jerusalem who mourned over him as he went to his Crucifixion on Golgotha, the mount of the Skull. The gospel chapters on the Crucifixion provide poignant details, including those about the penitent thief who was beside Jesus, and Jesus’ mother Mary and his disciple John who were at his feet; the darkness that covered the land when Jesus died and the piercing of his side by soldier when blood and water poured out; the removal of Christ’s body from the Cross and the burial of his body in the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea.39 John’s gospel tells of the 37

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On the socio-historical complexities of the medieval Christian understanding of the saints and their miracles, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Enlarged Edition, The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). See also James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward, eds., The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Matt. 22:37. The reference to the Harrowing of Hell in 1 Peter 3:19-20 is greatly elaborated in the gospel of Nicodemus, which was received and believed by many in the Middle Ages as a factual account.

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appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene in the garden tomb as well as of the restoration of Peter’s faith when Jesus ate fish with him on a beach by a fire after his resurrection. Indeed, the details of Jesus’ suffering, Crucifixion, burial, death, Harrowing of Hell, Resurrection, appearances to Mary Magdalene and the disciples and many others, and Ascension into heaven were precious to devout believers in the Middle Ages. They were commonly known in medieval Christian communities, regardless of individuals’ particular level of doubt or devotion. While the gospels were the main source of information about Jesus, they were not the only biblical source. In the Middle Ages, Peter’s vision of clean and unclean animals, when he heard the voice of the Lord telling him to kill and eat, was known; Paul’s visionary encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus was famous.40 These incidents recalled in the book of Acts gave the clear sense to medieval Christians that Jesus continued to intervene in the lives of believers on earth even after his Ascension. Representations of Jesus as Lamb, Alpha and Omega, and supernatural King and Bridegroom in the book of Revelation, and their connections to the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible (esp. Daniel), were known and widely re-imagined in medieval art of all kinds.41 Indeed, medieval Christian interpreters of scripture saw the whole of the Hebrew Bible as foreshadowing the coming of Jesus. Reading for four levels of meaning (i.e., the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses of scripture), they often interpreted figures from the Old Testament as pre-figurations of Christ in the New: thus, Paul reveals Jesus as a kind of “second Adam” in his letters, and Matthew’s gospel represents Jesus as a kind of “New Moses.”42 Comparatively obscure figures like Melchizedek from Genesis, the captain of the armies of the Lord who appeared to Joshua, and the fourth man who 40 41

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On Peter’s vision, see Acts 10; on Paul’s conversion, see Acts 9. On the image of Jesus as a supernatural king, compare Dan. 10 and Rev. 1. See also Richard K. Emmerson, Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts (University Park, Penn.: Penn State University Press, 2018) and Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), esp. Randolph Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore: Patterns of History in the Apocalypse,” 72, which opens with a description of an apse mosaic in Rome in S. Clemente (ca. 1120s) of Jesus on the Cross surrounded by images from many scenes of daily life. Although Paul does not use the words “second Adam,” per se, to describe Jesus, Paul’s theological references to Jesus alongside Adam in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45 inspired later writers to use the title, which was known to the Middle Ages therefore. On Jesus as the “second Moses” in Matthew’s gospel, see Larry Swain, “Moses: A Central Figure in the New Testament,” in Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance, ed. Jane Beal (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 59-80.

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appeared in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, as well as Boaz from the book of Ruth, were interpreted as figures for Christ.43 Prophecies of Israel’s future king and messiah found in the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as well as the twelve minor prophets, were interpreted as referring to Jesus. The Psalms, too, were read as prophesying the things that were fulfilled in the person, words, and deeds of Jesus.44 In short, medieval Christian interpretation of the Bible saw Jesus in virtually every biblical book, and medieval Christian art reflected typological connections between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

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Jesus from the Gospels to the Renaissance

Jaroslav Pelikan traced the influence of Christ’s life by focusing on specific images of Jesus emphasized in different eras and cultures: his book, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1985), has proved to have an enduring impact.45 The chapters of his book consider Jesus as “Rabbi” and the Jewishness of the New Testament in relationship to the tradition of Israel in the first century; as “turning point of history” in the first and second centuries; as “the light of the Gentiles” in the second and third centuries; as “the King of Kings” in the transitional time between the pagan Roman Empire and the Christian Empire of the 4th-century; and as the “Cosmic Christ” of the Christianized Platonic philosophy of the third and fourth century. By the fifth century, especially to Augustine, he was “The Son of Man” and “The Son of God” incarnate. For the Byzantine culture in the eighth and ninth centuries, he was “The True Image.” In tenth and eleventh centuries, in the medieval West, Pelikan depicts how Jesus was adored as “Christ Crucified.” With the emergence and establishment of the monastic movement in medieval Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, especially in the Benedictine tradition, he was “The Monk Who Rules the World.” For medieval contemplatives of the same period, he was

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Gen. 14, Josh. 5, and Dan. 3. On the interpretation of the Psalms in the Middle Ages, including their Christological interpretation, Nancy van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, SUNY Series in Medieval Studies (New York, N.Y.: SUNY, 1999) and Annie Sutherland, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also the respective chapters by Van Deusen and Kuczynski in this book. Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985, repr. 1999).

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“The Bridegroom of the Soul.” Francis of Assisi saw him as the ideal “Divine and Human Model.” By the time of the Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Jesus was perceived as “The Universal Man” and “The Mirror of the Eternal.” With the religious wars of the Reformation came a new emphasis on Christ as “The Prince of Peace.” Whereas the Crusades and the holy wars had been sanctified in the name of Jesus in the past, now there was a resurgence of pacifism and a desire for an end to religious conflicts. Not surprisingly, in the Enlightenment era, Jesus was seen as “The Teacher of Common Sense”; in the Romantic idealism of the nineteenth century, as “The Poet of the Spirit.” In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he has been reified as “The Liberator” by such influential figures as Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.. In his final chapter, Pelikan calls Jesus “The Man Who Belongs to the World” because of the influence of Jesus’ life and message in Asia, Africa, and around the globe, beyond the borders of what traditionally has been known as Christendom. While it is possible to argue with the details of Pelikan’s overview, and to note that many “images” of Christ were highly valued throughout the history of cultures – and that one image was not necessarily consistently privileged over others in specific centuries – still his book is keenly insightful. In a sense, this book, Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, follows in the footsteps of Jesus through the Centuries. Like Pelikan’s book, it is ordered chronologically, though it concerns fewer centuries: the 6th to the 16th. It is specifically in the medieval time period that the book seeks to provide greater insight into how a diverse variety of Christian cultures, primarily in western Europe, England, and Ireland, received images and ideas about Jesus. In several ways, the book expands and nuances Pelikan’s well-known characterizations of the understanding of Jesus in the Middle Ages. The contributors to Illuminating Jesus explore a wide variety of texts, practices, and cultural artifacts from the Middle Ages in order to present a series of complex pictures of the way medieval people saw Jesus. Several themes can be traced through the chapters in this book, and certain chapters can be related to others in worthwhile pairings and groups. Thus, for example, the book includes two chapters on Jesus in the Psalms, those by Van Deusen on Jesus in the Latin liturgy (6th c.) and Kuczynski on Middle English commentaries on the Psalms (14th c.). Medieval perceptions of Jesus in the Psalms are discussed in intervening chapters, including mine on the unicorn as a symbol for Christ in the period. In the Middle Ages, Jesus clearly emerges in the Psalms as worthy of spoken and sung worship. The acculturation of Christ’s image in medieval Anglo-Saxon and Irish societies is considered in chapters by Swain and Ó Cathasaigh, with an empha-

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sis on Christ’s role as healer and hero respectively, while the turn toward the humanity of Jesus in medieval expressions of affective piety is considered in chapters by Lutton, Galloway, and Zimbalist. The theme of imitatio Christi, and an exploration of the way medieval saints lived out this theme in practice and influenced medieval readers of their hagiographies, appears in chapters on Saint Francis by Trembinski and Gertrude of Helfta by Canty. Literary analysis of the impact of the life of Jesus on the writings of significant, canonical authors of the Middle Ages is developed in chapters on Dante by Montemaggi and Sullivan and Julian of Norwich by Holloway. Special attention is paid to the reception of the biography of Christ in the period (Patterson) and to Jesus’ miracles (Brown) and parables (Cattoi). His names, too, as the subject of special devotion in the period, receive particular discussion in chapters on the “I Am” in the Glossa ordinaria (Stone) and the cult of the Holy Name, often abbreviated IHS (Lutton). Many other connections between chapters could be elaborated, but at their core, the reception and understanding of Jesus in the Middle Ages is central to all of them. The chapters are ordered chronologically, from the sixth to the sixteenth century, to help readers to see how medieval ideas about Jesus developed over time. In her chapter, “Jesus and the Psalms: The Witness of the Latin Liturgical Sequence,” Nancy van Deusen (Claremont Graduate School) shows that the Psalms were regarded as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments in which medieval people believed was revealed the life and death of Christ. She sees the bridge-function of the Psalms as primary, and she argues that the Psalms can be described as modi or “ways of moving,” which are identifiable by certain genre characteristics that relate, in their various expressions, to emotion. She reminds us that the Psalms were read at four levels of meaning in the Middle Ages – literal/historical allegorical, tropological, and anagogical – and greatly influenced other medieval literary genres, especially the planctus or lament. She focuses her analysis on the identification of the genre(s) and generic functions of the Psalms for the medieval audience presented in the work of Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus, a sixth-century civil servant, served at the Gothic court in Ravenna, Italy; after his retirement, he founded his Vivarium monastery school on his family estates on the shores of the Ionian Sea, where both hermetic and cenobitic monks lived. Cassiodorus wrote his Institutiones to help govern the communal life and education of his monks, and he wrote his Expositio Psalmorum (also called the Expositiones) to help shape the devotional life monks living at the Vivarium. Van Deusen sees the bridge-function of the Psalms and its modi as particularly well-articulated in the writings of Cassiodorus, who, among other things, interpreted the literal

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or historical sense of the Psalms as pointing to Christ: modo passione et de resurrection Domini salutaria praedicantes. In his chapter, “The Miracles of Jesus in the Writings of the Venerable Bede,” George Hardin Brown (Stanford University) observes that the Anglo-Saxon monk of Wearmouth and Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (c. 672-735), deals with miracles extensively in his voluminous extant writings. Brown notes the influence of Jerome and Gregory the Great on Bede’s thinking about the miracles of Jesus depicted in the scripture: while Bede saw no particular cleavage between biblical times and his own when it came to the possibility of miracles (per Gregory), he did acknowledge they were less frequent and less necessary, because physical miracles were replaced by spiritual cognates (per Jerome). Bede is a believer in the fundamental reality of miracles as signs that revealed Christ’s divinity in Christ’s own time, and those miracles demonstrated Christ’s authority over the natural world and his loving care for people. Bede sees the thirtyseven miracles of Jesus recorded in the Bible as the foundation for later miracles, including recent and local miracles in his own Northumbrian England. In his chapter, “The Hælend and Other Images of Jesus in Anglo-Saxon Literature” (6th-11th c.), Larry Swain shows that as Anglo-Saxons, and Northern European Germanic tribes in general, were converted to Christianity, they saw Jesus not only as a warrior but also as a healer. By the ninth century, Jesus emerged as a champion who defeats the Norse gods, and Christianity emerges as a belief system that subsumes Scandinavian mythology. At the same time, Germanic culture was transformed in such a way that Christian values became more prominent: the suffering Christ is particularly seen as “the Healer,” “Hælend” being the word most frequently used to refer to Jesus in extant Old English literature. The Anglo-Saxon understanding of Jesus as healer affects the role of kings in Anglo-Saxon culture, and it shapes the direction of literature as well, beginning as early as “The Dream of the Rood.” In his chapter, “Christ as an Early Irish Hero: The Poems of Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan” (8th c.), Tomás Ó Cathasaigh (Harvard University) focuses on two Christian poems by the eighth-century, Irish-language poet Blathmac. He demonstrates the Irishness of the narratives of both poems, which are addressed to the Virgin Mary and invite her to join the speaker in mourning for her “beautiful hero”: Jesus. The poet relates the life of Christ as a heroic biography, using the terms of traditional Irish storytelling in verse. As Ó Cathasaigh shows, the poet imagines the relationship of Christ to the Jews in terms of the institutional framework of early Ireland, that is, in terms of relationships based on kinship, with Christ being related to the Jews through their mother, and with Jesus being in the contractual relation of a lord (flaith) to his clients (céili).

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In his chapter, “The Teaching Logos: Christology and Tropology in Theophylact of Orchrid’s Interpretation of New Testament Parables” (11th c.), Thomas Cattoi (Graduate Theological Union) considers a Byzantine writer, Theophylact of Ochrid (1055-1107 AD), and his interpretation of parables from the gospel of Luke, including the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, among others. These readings synthesize the allegorical strand of interpretation that began particularly with Origen, and was further developed in Chalcedonian teaching and the monastic tradition of lectio divina. But Theophylact never detaches his readings from the “incarnate Logos,” that is, from the Jesus of the first-century that medieval people understood to have told those parables. Cattoi argues that Theophylact’s readings reflect his pastoral responsibilities, avoiding difficult speculation and emphasizing the Christocentric nature of the parables, which Theophylact sees as epitomizing the whole of the Old and the New Testaments. Significantly, Theophylact influenced both Aquinas and Erasmus. In her chapter, “‘I Am’: The Glossa Ordinaria on John’s Gospel” (12th c.), Linda Stone (Cambridge University) considers the seven “I am” statements of Jesus recorded in the gospel of John that were commented upon in the twelfthcentury Glossa ordinaria. She shows that the twelfth-century glosses reflect church teachings about Jesus, in that they are cited from a number of church fathers and theologians, but she also shows that the twelfth-century compilers of the Glossa made changes that reveal how the Church was addressing contemporary social and spiritual challenges of medieval Christians. She argues that the exegetical choices and changes of the glossators illuminate Jesus and influence understanding of Jesus up until the Reformation. In his chapter, “Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus in the Medieval West,” Rob Lutton (University of Nottingham) considers the cult of the Holy Name in the context of late-medieval affective piety from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. He notes the distinctiveness of the devotion to the name of Jesus, even from other forms of Christocentric devotion, such as meditation on the passion of Christ. He considers its development in religious orders, its promotion to the lay populace by the preaching of the mendicant orders, and the papal support the cult received. Lutton shows how the fourteenth century witnessed dissemination of Holy Name theology into vernacular languages, thus reaching a wide audience that became devoted to the Name. He considers both the mystical and controversial aspects associated with the cult, especially the IHS monogram, and concludes that “devotion to the Name of Jesus seems, therefore, to have continued to be valued for the opportunities it offered for spiritual advancement and protection and for intense emotional and psychological experiences, as well as its accumulated social and political benefits.”

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In my chapter, “The Unicorn as a Symbol of Christ in Medieval Culture,” I (Jane Beal, University of La Verne) consider literary traditions that led to later medieval interpretations of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ. I begin by reviewing references to the unicorn in the Vulgate, noting that the Latin unicornus was a translation of the Greek monocerus and the Hebrew re’em and commenting on how what that word meant – exactly what kind of creature it referred to – changed over time. Those biblical verses were commented upon in the Glossa ordinaria, where the “virgin capture of the unicorn” motif from ancient mythology came to be associated with the incarnation of Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This Christian allegorical reading of the virgin capture of the unicorn had its origins in a literal, scientific understanding, presented in the Physiologus, a text that was translated into Latin and the vernacular languages of medieval England and Europe. The Physiologus influenced the medieval bestiaries, where the comparison of Christ to the unicorn and Mary to the virgin who captured him became a standard, widely circulating interpretation that influenced medieval poetry and art, including the fifteenth-century tapestries series that have been combined and called The Lady and the Unicorn. The Le Viste family of Lyon, who commissioned the series, demonstrated their own lay affective piety in their choice of symbols. In his chapter, “Godly Bridegroom and Human Bride,” Andrew Galloway (Cornell University) considers the medieval understanding of Jesus as the Bridegroom of the Church and of the individual human soul from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. He describes the origins of this thinking in the depiction of Israel as God’s bride in the Hebrew Bible, especially in Hosea and Jeremiah, and he considers medieval interpretations of the lovers in the Song of Solomon as representative of Christ and the Church. He studies how these interpretations influenced the development of devotional practices among medieval Christians, highlighting the contributions of Bernard of Clairvaux. He then focuses his analysis on the visionary experiences of medieval holy women who saw themselves as married to Christ. His special attention to literary evidence of sponsa Christi ideals in English writing is particularly valuable. In her chapter, “Medieval Affective Piety and Christological Devotion: Juliana of Cornillion and the Feast of Corpus Christi” (13th c.), Barbara Zimbalist (University of Texas, El Paso) considers the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi in the thirteenth century. The veneration of the body of Christ emerged in the cultural context of increasing interest in the humanity of Christ. The feast itself was championed by Juliana of Mont Cornillion, a Norbertine canoness in what is now Belgium, who helped to formally establish it within the Church’s liturgical calendar. Juliana’s own personal devotion

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serves as a key case study for understanding broader trends in late-medieval Christian affective piety. In her chapter, “Imitatio Christi and Authority in the Lives of Saint Francis,” Donna Trembinski (St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia) considers twelfth and thirteenth century lives of St. Francis of Assisi and the way their authors sought to represent Francis as an imitator of Christ. Famous scenes from the life of Francis, such as preaching to the birds and kneeling before the seraphim as he received the stigmata, suggest that Francis, like Christ, was humble and, to some degree, that he suffered like Christ and with Christ by sharing his five wounds. Francis’ own writings suggest he primarily wanted to be identified as a follower of Christ, but later biographers sought to identify the saint more closely with Christ himself, in part to establish the validity of the mission of the Franciscan Order in the face of external pressures and internal disagreements. In his chapter, “Vision and Sacrament: Christ’s Humanity in the Spirituality of Gertrude the Great,” Aaron Canty (St. Xavier University) presents a valuable case study of medieval female affective piety and devotion to Christ, this time from thirteenth and early fourteenth century Germany: Gertrude the Great of Helfta. Gertrude, a Benedictine nun, had many visions of Jesus, who appeared to her as an infant, young man, weak pilgrim, and a bridegroom. Canty’s chapter focuses on Gertrude’s perception of Christ humanity in the sacramental and liturgical contexts in which her visions took place. As recorded in her book, Legatus memorialis abundantiae divinae pietatis (known in English as The Herald of Divine Love), Gertrude experienced a unique vision of her spiritual marriage to Jesus at the age of twenty-five, and she was particularly devoted to the heart and wounds of Christ throughout her life. Her bridal mysticism is part of the broader tradition of Brautmystik in Germany and Europe. In their co-authored chapter, “Christ as Turning Point in Dante’s Commedia,” Vittorio Montemaggi (King’s College, London) and Lesley Sullivan (University of Notre Dame, Indiana) consider how Christ is revealed as the “animating principle” of Dante’s poetry. They focus particularly on Purgatorio 30 when Dante the dreamer encounters Beatrice and awakens to Christ in a new, essential way. By glancing back to the beginning of the Commedia, in Inferno 1, and forward to the ending of the Commedia, in Paradiso 33, the authors show that Dante’s whole journey is in fact Christic: “a journey towards the recognition of Christ as the essence of human personhood and as the center around which creation turns as love.” Dante the poet’s intention in representing his journey in this manner appears to be the hope that his poem, through Christ, will have a salvific effect both for himself and his readers.

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In his chapter, “Jesus and the Christ in Two Middle English Psalms Commentaries” (14th c.), Michael Kuczynski (Tulane University) picks up where Nancy van Deusen began this book: with a consideration of the life of Christ in the Psalms. Kuczynski focuses especially on the fourteenth-century English commentaries on the Psalms, one by Richard Rolle and then the same commentary as revised by Wycliffites. As he is careful to show, the Jesus of Rolle’s commentary reflects the commentator’s own status as a Yorkshire contemplative (d. 1349) while the Christ of the Wycliffite revision is as active as the Lollard audience for whom the commentary was intended. As Kuczynski suggests, these do not need to be seen as opposed portraits, but interpreted as complementary, for Jesus is both the “soul’s ardent suitor” and the “world’s heroic champion.” In her chapter, “Jesus as ‘Mother’ in Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love,” Julia Bolton Holloway considers the visions of Jesus experienced by Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English anchoritess. In 1373, Julian had epiphanies or showings of Jesus during a period of severe illness, when she was thirty years old, which she caused to be written down in two versions (one longer and one shorter). In these visions, Julian reports vividly that she saw Mary singing to Jesus before he was born, she saw the trauma of the Crucifixion, and she saw, as it were, the unfolding drama of a parable about a relationship between a Lord and his Servant – among other visions. Holloway argues that when these visions are taken together, they present a kind of Englished gospel, written by a woman – a gospel that is particularly concerned with gender inclusivity: that is, with including men and women, who are “oned” in Christ. In his chapter, “Translation Debates and Lay Accessibility in the Meditationes vitae Christi and Middle English Lives of Christ,” Paul Patterson (St. Joseph’s University) nuances scholar Eamon Duffy’s assertion that affective meditation on the Passion of Christ “leveled” differences between the laity and the professed religious or somehow “democratized” devotion to Christ. Patterson does so by considering that Latin devotional texts contained the most fully developed theology of affective piety but that these were not always translated into vernacular languages. When they were, they were often simplified in some respects and changed in others, becoming more bluntly directive of how the lay reader ought to practice devotion. Patterson examines key differences between the Latin Meditationes vitae Christi and Middle English lives of Christ, especially Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and A Mirror of Devout People (both Carthusian texts), especially in the role a Christian’s imagination should play in moral reform and meditative worship. He thereby examines the debates that helped to shape fifteenth-century English devotional culture.

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Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages 3

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Invitations to Readers and Scholars

Each one of the chapters in Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages could easily be developed into a book in its own right. Indeed, one of the hopes seeded in this book is that its publication will inspire other scholars who read it to undertake new studies of one of the most influential figures to be found in the history of the Middle Ages: Jesus. Specific foci and themes could be elaborated fruitfully. For example, this book has a chapter on the treatment of Jesus’ miracles in the writings of Bede, but what of the whole life of Jesus in Bede, or Jesus’ miracles in the writings of other early Latinate English writers? The chapter included here on the influence of Jesus on one Irish poet hardly begins to scratch the surface of the influence of Jesus on medieval Irish poetry, and the complex exegesis of the Glossa ordinaria deserves further consideration, beyond just the “I Am” statements in John, to a full examination of how thoroughly Jesus is integrated into the Christian allegorical interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. More can be investigated. The chapter on the unicorn in this collection could be part of a study showing how the life of Jesus is represented in medieval bestiaries, especially in connection to the animal figures of the oyster, the pelican, the lamb, the phoenix, and the lion. On the model of Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, the chapter on Francis could be expanded to consider Christ among the Franciscans, and indeed, in a series of books, on the Augustinians and Cistercians and so on.46 The translation and transmission of the life of Christ in vernacular texts in the time when manuscript culture gave way to print begs further attention, especially in England in the period between the Constitutions of Arundel when vernacular Bible ownership was forbidden without special ecclesiastical permission and the advent of Tyndale’s law-breaking translations. If a whole Bible in English was not to be had, how did English people get Bible stories in their own language? Certainly the life of Christ was hidden in Caxton’s English version of the fourteenth-century Polychronicon, but there were other texts that conveyed similar stories.47 So still more can be learned.

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Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998). I have made this point in the conclusion to my book, John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon (Tempe, Ariz and Turnhout: ACRMS/Brepols, 2012). The life of Jesus is extensively told in the universal chronicle tradition, which, regretfully, could not be covered in this book.

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Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that the life of Jesus had more influence on the Middle Ages than any other life. As was noted earlier in this introduction, the events in it were famous, and they were recalled in countless ways in multiple media in many medieval cultures: in writing, in stone, in stained glass, sculpture, and song, in paintings and tapestries, in bejeweled reliquaries, in nearly everything that could be made by a human hand. The power of Jesus’ sermons and parables, miracles and ministry, shaped the way many medieval people thought and felt, lived and died, as individuals and in communities. These are some of the reasons behind the writing of this book, a collection of thoughtful approaches – like matches set to a candle wick – that try to begin to illuminate Jesus. By illuminating the Christological ideal of Jesus, however faintly, this book aims to show how and why Jesus mattered to the Middle Ages. Other readers and scholars may later make this light brighter, so that it may be easily seen in the field of medieval studies. After all, this book is only one lamp.

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Chapter 1

Jesus and the Psalms: the Witness of the Latin Liturgical Sequence Nancy van Deusen

The place of the Psalms in the intellectual, spiritual, and, perhaps most obviously, in the liturgical, culture of the Middle Ages cannot be overestimated.1 One learned to pray, read, speak well, and deal with the modes of textual communication, that is, the historical/literal, allegorical, tropological, and eschatological, ways of recognizing the figurae that indicated “manners of moving” through thought and word. Even political discourse, well into the fifteenth century, was strongly influenced by the priorities, phrases, even peculiarities of the Psalms.2 The Psalms had it all, in alternation: literal references to the history of the Children of Israel, and to David’s life, an abundance of allegorical allusions, tropologies to be pondered, and acted, upon—commands, such as “praise,” “sing,” “give thanks”—and, finally, references to future states, such as Psalm 16:11, “Thou wilt shew me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore,” or, perhaps, one of the most familiar, Psalm 23:5, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”3 A “profuse font, from which freely gushes forth the largesse of divine mercy,”4 the Psalms have everything: oppositional states of emotional sub-

1 For some aspects of the importance of the Psalms in medieval culture, see The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy van Deusen (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). 2 See Michael P. Kuczynski, “The Psalms and Social Action in Late Medieval England,” in The Place of the Psalms, op. cit. pp. 173-195. 3 “King James” version of the psalter. 4 This is Cassiodorus’ expression: “. . . mare ipsius quorundam psalmorum fontibus profusum, divina misericordia largiente . . . ” (cf. Corpus christianorum series latina, ed. M. Adriaen, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori, Expositio psalmorum, 2 vols [Turnhout, 1958] I, p. 3). Cassiodorus (d.? 575 A. D.) is so well-known that even today he is included in most standard English dictionaries, such as editions of Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language; his importance is attested to by the fact that he is mentioned and/or quoted twentyeight times under sixteen categories in the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 15, 47, 66. 69, 422, 423, 424,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_003

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stance, often in juxtaposed pairs, of joy-grief, contentment-anger, revengedelight. The alternation between emotional states and corresponding motions of thought proved to be a most productive concept for the organization of the Mass celebration; the sheer fecundity as a resource of the Psalms encouraged the long medieval tradition of Psalm commentaries, but also gave impetus to medieval genres such as the lament (planctus).5 In addition, perhaps one of the most essential reasons, as well, for the importance of the Psalms theologically in the Middle Ages was that the Psalms were regarded as constituting a conceptual bridge between the Old and New Testaments, preparing the way for, and reiterating references, allusions to, and even facts concerning, Christ’s life and death, in preparation for the four gospels of the New Testament. Not only is this feature of the Psalms the focus of this volume, but this present contribution will prioritize the bridge-function, the primacy of transition for a medieval liturgical genre, designated, I believe, by Cassiodorus in the preface to his Expositiones on the Psalms as a “PsalmSong.” In the preface to Cassiodorus’ Liber expositio psalmorum, the writer has much to say about the Psalms, both as a group, and, being somewhat of a pedant, divided into categories according to type and usage. With the psalter, celestial sweetness, as honey, is tasted by the spirit—a certain suaveness, that imbibed, counteracts the harshness of the activities of daily life.6 Further, the psalter is the apple that can be eaten without a loss of innocence, as was the case with the first man, Adam.7 Indeed, we have here in the Psalms a “shining book,” the word as lamp to the eyes, an antidote for the wounded heart,

427, 429, 541-542, 575, 629, 831, 832, 836, 837, 892, 1007, 1175, 1176. As mentioned below, footnotes 5, 23, his importance is also evidenced by the number of extant manuscripts of his works. 5 The importance of Cassiodorus’ expositiones on the Psalms is attested to by the extensive list of extant manuscripts included in the Corpus christianorum series latina edition, vol. I, pp. viii-xii. 6 Edition, p. 3: “. . . cum psalterii caelestis animarum mella gustassem, id quod solent desiderantes efficere, avidus me perscrutator immersi, ut dicta salutaria suaviter imbiberem post amarissimas actiones. Sed familiaris incohantibus occurrit obscuritas, quae variis est intexta personis et velata parabolis.” The Psalms as an inchoate, obscure, or as Augustine implies, congested, mass, more than indicating incomprehensibility, deals with the Scriptures as a dense resource, as a forest, full of available material that must, however, be patiently and avidly worked over. In this extended passage at the onset of Cassiodorus’ preface to his Liber expositio psalmorum, Augustine is brought together with Homer. 7 Not only is Cassiodorus referring to the corruption of Adam and Eve, Genesis 1, but also Song of Solomon, as well as a topos used by Ovid, Cicero, and others.

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a honeycomb for a productive and satisfactory interior life, spiritual centering, in short, how much there is of sensual beauty and consoling, of pacifying medicine contained in the psalter as a whole (Liber psalmorum). Cassiodorus then writes of “modes,” or “ways of moving,” that is, the “mode” in which the tempestuous spirit is transformed, “turned around,” into a whole way of life that is “limpid” and tranquil (tropological mode), the “mode” of the future, i.e. the eschatological mode, in which God promises salvation to those who believe, as well as promising one day to judge the earth, the mode of “tears of repentance” for sin, of supplication for mercy to deal with recognized faults, the mode of the “thundering of reverent, sacred, oration” [preaching], the mode of profound virtue [substance] attached to the Hebrew alphabet [the concept of varied and diverse figurae], the mode of the passion and resurrection of the Lord, preaching salvation, the mode of devout lamentation or deploration (modo lamentantium deploratione piissimi), the mode of the repetition of verses (versuum) in which the sacrament is extended [to all], the mode of the gradual miraculous ascent of songs (canticorum) in which, afterward, the felicity of supernal praise is inherent, of “blessed abundance, of inexpressible desire, of stupendous profundity.” So the Psalms can be described as modi, or “ways of moving” that are identifiable according to characteristics, and which also contain, or are attached to, in their various and diverse moments, emotional substance. We see here four modes of movement, the historical, literal (modo passione et de resurrectione Domini salutaria praedicantes), the allegorical (modo hebraei alphabeti virtute profundi) in which a characteristic figura, or alphabetical letter, accesses internal substance (Psalm 119), and, as indicate above, the tropological mode of command, change, and result, as well as the eschatological mode of future events to be anticipated. The use of the concept/term “mode” is prominent, as well as the concept figura in modis, and, in addition, the delineation of categories that not only could be recognized within the Psalms, but would become genres in the Middle Ages, such as lament/planctus. We will revisit this important topic of the modes of movement and meaning. A sweet miracle, undamaged by the corruption of the world, in which resides permanent dignity, enhanced, always, by the most pure pleasantness. . . How miraculous that from this [the Psalms] flows this sweetness in singing (suavitas ad canendum). The sweet-sounding instrument (organum), [that is, the psalter] emulates the human voice, imitates the sound of the grandiloquent clamor of trumpets, the cithara’s voice composed of a vibrant mixture of strings; however, many music instruments

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van Deusen have been seen to have been put in motion, now are to be explicated by “rational substance,” (per rationales substantias). Indeed, it is being shown to us that the parrot and the blackbird, who, when they attempt to imitate our words, which they then produce, are known to ignore all of the modes. A bland melody (melos) attracts the sense (animos) but it does not compel one to fruitful and productive tears; strokes the ears, but does not arouse by the hearing to supernal [heights]. We are touched in the heart then, if we say to the ear, ‘set forth to apply ourselves’ to what is read in the Psalms: Blessed is the people that knows jubilation, and also, For the Lord is King over all the earth, praise wisely, praise with understanding (psallite sapienter).8

So the varied and diverse modes in juxtaposition and alternation attract, enlighten, refresh, and, hence, yield results. These are not “parroted” words, rather words within a stream (in viam) of meaning, acknowledgement, affirmation, and persuasion. There is an absence of superficiality and of banal repetition. Cassiodorus goes on to classify “divisions” of Psalms: I. Diverse prophets of which little is said, but by which we are able to be instructed by the Davidic Psalms, II. The reason for titles in the Psalms, repeated rather like the names of authors, III. What is significant is at the end, in finem which also is frequently found in the titles. What follows is a list of questions and answers, of categories and descriptions: IV. What is “the psalter,” and what can be said to be “Psalms?” V. What is a “Psalm?” VI. What is a “canticum?” VII. What is a “psalmocanticum?” VIII. What is a “canticumpsalmum?” IX. Concerning this five-fold division, X. Concerning the unification of the inscripted titles, XI. What is a diapsalma, XII. That in which all five volumes of the psalms are decisively interwoven, so that they surely ought to be considered one integrated

8 Edition, I, pp. 5-6: “Dulcedo mirabilis, quae saeculi corruptionibus non acescit, sed in sua permanens dignitate, gratia semper purissimae suavitatis augetur. . . ” Quam mirabilis autem ex ipsis profluit suavitas ad canendum. Dulcisonum organum humanis vocibus aemulantur, tubarum sonitus grandiloquis clamoribus reddunt, vocalem citharam viventium chordarum permixtione componunt, et quidquid ante instrumentis musicis videbatur agi, nunc probatur per rationales substantias explicari. Verumtamen nequaquam nobis, ut psittacis merulisque vernandum est, qui, dum verba nostra conantur imitari, quid tamen canant, noscuntur modis omnibus ignorare. Melos siquidem blandum animos oblectat, sed non compellit ad lacrimas fructuosas; permulcet aures, sed non ad superna erigit audientes. Corde autem compungimur, si quod ore dicimus, animadvertere valeamus, sicut in psalterio legitur: Beatus populus qui intellegit iubilationem. Et iterum: Quoniam rex omnis terrae Deus: psallite sapienter (Psalm 46.8).

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book (unus liber).9 In conclusion, that is, XIII. “In which manner Christ the Lord is being perceived, sensed, within the Psalms.”10 Cassiodorus, in what appears to be his patient manner, always concerned with details and relating carefully to a potential—and perhaps actual— reading audience, proceeds to elucidate each of his categories and answer all of the questions he raises. He relates many and diverse “modes of grace” setting up rich rewards, bringing into his discussion as examples, Noah’s ark, Abraham’s sacrifice [of Isaac], the crossing of the Red Sea, the prophetic visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, as well as Solomon and Daniel, through the clouds, and the voice of Moses. Still another consideration: How is it, then, that David, directed by the Holy Spirit calls him “Lord,” how is he [i.e. Christ] his “son”? (Si David in Spiritu vocat eum Dominum, quomodo dicitis quod filius eius est?)11 This said, we recognize what is evident, that through the Holy Spirit, the Psalms contain prophetic utterances, most of all concerning Christ. Voice and sound come up again and again, as God speaks to Moses, David speaks of “his Lord,”

9

10

11

Edition, I, p. 6: “Primo: de prophetiae diversis speciebus nihilominus est dicendum, ut quae sit ista davidica possimus distinctius edoceri. Secundo: cur in psalmorum titulis quasi auctorum nomina diversa reperiuntur. Tertio: quid significet in finem, quod frequenter invenitur in titulis. Quarto: quid sit psalterium vel psalmi quare dicantur. Quinto: quid sit psalmus. Sexto: quid sit canticum. Septimo: quid sit psalmocanticum. Octavo: quid sit canticumpsalmum. Nono: de quinquefaria divisione. Decimo: de unita inscriptione titulorum. Undecimo: quid sit diapsalma. Duodecimo: utrum in quinque voluminibus psalmorum sit secundo contextio; an certe unus liber debeat nuncupari.” These categories with basic questions constitute the essence, not only of Cassiodorus’ preface, but also as basic principles for the study of the Psalms. Edition, I, pp. 6-7: “Tertiodecimo: quemadmodum in psalmis sit de Christo Domino sentiendum.” Cassiodorus goes on to write briefly of how the Psalms can be digested, as well as “divine eloquence,” closing this introduction with “laus Ecclesiae.” “We come now to these premises in order, Christ being preeminent.” Christ here is presented in the context of an ongoing present as the Psalms are read and dealt with, i.e. digested. Psalm 2:6-8, v. 12: “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. . . Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” Psalm 110:1: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” quoted by Jesus in Mathew’s Gospel, 22:41-45: “When the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ: whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand til I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (AV).

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further on in Cassiodorus’ discussion, the voice of God again is heard as Jesus is baptized in the Jordan. Voice and sound again come to the fore in the topic of titles of the Psalms; they are names of music instruments that, with appropriate voice, present with great rejoicing supernal grace (not an unusual final line, in finem, for the Psalms): in organis, citharis, nablis, typanis, cymbalis, tubis propriaque voce in magnam iucunditatem supernae gratiae personarent.12 It appears then, that all five categories that follow, that is, psalterium, vel psalmi, psalmus, canticum, psalmocanticum, canticumpsalmum, are either all music instruments, or a specific kind of song. It is the Psalmocanticum that appears to be most complex, yet productive for an inquiry into the topic of Jesus within the Psalms—and the influence of this topic during the Middle Ages. Psalmocanticum is a “connecting psalmsong” the copula, that also “personifies” divine connection. What does this psalm-song connect? We will see, as we deal with this psalm-song, the “connecting song,” the mediator, of the mass liturgy. There are many reasons for considering that this psalm-song of Cassiodorus is the template for the sequence within the mass liturgy, the connecting link between the Old and the New Testament for nearly seven hundred years during what we know as the Middle Ages—and later as well. What is the “sequence?” Certainly this a twenty-first century, not a medieval, question, since the importance of the sequence, based on its manuscript transmission—the sheer volume of Latin manuscripts containing significant collections of sequences—attests to the enormous presence and influence of this liturgical genre, as well as its perceived importance. Judging by the manuscript transmission of the sequence, the category (as we will proceed to define it) was not only consistent within the Mass celebration of significant and celebrative feast days; but it was indispensable to the correct and appropriate procedure of the Mass liturgy. The reasonableness or logical position of the sequence, reflected in the term, rationalia, or the rationale of the Mass, connected the Mass liturgy at its mid-point, just before the reading of the Gospel, followed by the Eucharistic Celebration or the Canon of the Mass. The liturgical sequence, as manuscript entity, liturgical priority, and indicator of intellectual and spiritual culture, was ubiquitous throughout the Latin manuscript tradition of the Mass, beginning with the ninth, to the early years 12

These instruments are divided into three parts: the human voice according to certain modulation, and bringing together into the same vicinity consonance within melody. This passage is full of terms / concepts that become a vocabulary for describing music throughout the Middle Ages, and much later as well.

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of the seventeenth century and well into printed liturgical books. The impact of its textual format, use of the Latin language, as well as its melodic characteristics even upon, for example, what is classified today, generally speaking, as “folk music”—however one might differentiate this as the “music of ordinary people”13—as well as upon the composition of the entire range of Western notated music, is vast. The sequence, in every respect can be regarded as a resource—a quarry of materials—ceremonially in terms of ritualized meaning, theologically and philosophically, in terms of the formulation and content of its texts that present, and expound upon, crucial theological topics one century after the other, musically, in terms of what can be viewed as an infinitude of melodic formulations, and compositionally, with respect to the careful construction of text-music relationships. It seems clear that one made good use of this resource during the many centuries regarded as the medieval period, as broadly defined as possible. Further, one can also point to the fact that the sequence as a category obliterates what are often considered to be period boundaries such as the “Middle Ages,” since it was sung and copied into collections well into seventeenth century, and published within early printed liturgical books. The impact of the melodic formulations to be found in this rich resource of the sequence upon the folk melodies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a topic to be explored. An important reason for, and impetus to, the composition and use of the sequence during the approximately seven centuries of its proliferation is its consistent position between the Alleluia with its verse taken in many cases from the psalms,14 thus bringing to mind the Old Testament, and the Gospel reading from the New Testament in preparation, step by step, for the Eucharistic 13

14

What might be considered the “music of the folk” is by no means easy to define. See, for example, the introduction to László Dobszay and Janka Szendrei, Catalogue of Hungarian Folksong Types, Arranged According to Styles (Budapest: Zoltán Falvy, 1992), 7, in which Dobszay, referring to Riemann Lexicon, Sachteil, 522-5, MGG 8, 746, discusses “song-like manifestations within the broader realm of folk music, in other words the vocal manifestations that possess a certain closedness, an independent musical and primarily melodic message, and in most cases are strophic in character . . . However, there is no sharp borderline between songs and other strata of music,” gives evidence for the difficulty of defining what exactly might be considered to be “folk music.” “Alleluia,” and “Amen” are the only Hebrew words frequently used in the mass liturgy; they occur in the psalms (as is pointed out by Cassiodorus in his extensive and influential commentary on the psalms), and, by their usage, access the Old Testament. The two words frame the sequence, as it occurs following the singing of the Alleluia, and as the sequence often concludes with Amen. The characteristic conclusions, final lines, or explicits, of the sequence will be discussed in detail below. See also van Deusen, “Verbum bonum Deo natum Considered within the Sequence as a Genre and its Manuscript Context,” in Letters from Paradise: The Cult of John the Evangelist at the Dominican Convent

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celebration of the Communion, the Canon of the Mass liturgy. The sequence, in as many ways, apparently, as possible, formulates this connection between the Old Testament and the New, by means of rubrics in which the Alleluia is reiterated, often before the sequence, even by its most typical name, that is, sequencia, or pro sequencia, referring, by the same designation, to the Gospel reading that is to immediately follow, Sequencia evangelium sancti johanne. The sequence also theologically brings together, in a constant play of association, the “Old Man,” Adam, with the “New Man,” Christ, Eve with Maria, the synogoga with the ecclesia. This parallelism is made even more obvious by musical parallelism, as each melodic line is repeated once. Finally, the transitional function of the sequence within the incremental ceremonial time-lapse of the mass ceremony is emphasized by its particular, unique, compositional “way of moving.”

1

The Sequence within the Mass Ceremony

The Mass ceremony is constructed of component parts that alternate with one another, leading logically to the “Lord’s Supper,” Communion, or the Eucharist, as the culmination of the Mass celebration. Through an interlocking, interrelated, system of “ways of moving” or modes (manneriae), of which there are four, the mind is refreshed by the perceptible differences (differenciae), the use of different prioritized music intervals, between all four systems of modes (or senses, as another common expression); as well as the memory being activated by the mental process of discerning and remembering these ways of moving through intellectual, textual, and melodic, material (materia, substancia, cantus).15 From a vast, unlimited, resource of all conceptually possible

15

of Paradis bei Soest, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Houghton Library Studies (Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). For an overview of the component parts of the Mass ceremony, with the Alleluia, Sequence, leading to the Communion or Eucharist, see van Deusen, Cultural Context, 61-63. See also Willi Apel, Gregorian Chant, 3rd ed. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1966), chap. 2: “The Structure of the Liturgy,” 6-32, esp. the table on p. 26, which is still the most concise, useful, account of the Latin Mass liturgy. Materia, substancia, cantus, natura are coequivalent terms, with no distinction made between unseen and seen substance. Unseen and seen substance are perceived to be in a proportional relationship to each other. This is a considerable difference to the common mentality today of differentiating between seen “matter” and what is unseen, usually regarded as “spiritual.” There are significant reasons for this equivalence. One of the sources is the influence of Chalcidius’ Latin translation of, and especially commentary on, Plato’s Timaeus, in which the commentator makes a point of what he considers to be the fact

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and available sound substance, it was conceivably, and also practically, possible to differentiate diverse manners of dealing with, organizing, and identifying, movement within sonic substance with respect to the voice speaking and thereby using sound, or the voice producing tones within a melody.16 Further, movement of thought was also generated, that is, one, conceivably also thought about the words as well as the tones that were being emitted. How were these modes differentiated? through means of their relevant, recognizable, consistent, and characteristic figurae. One “way of moving,” or modus (translation of Greek pathos into the Latin language) had to do with whether a given component part of the Mass dealt with an action or with commentary on an action. “Action” cantus such as the introit, the offertory, or the communion, generally maintained a relationship between syllable of text and tone that comprised one to three tones per syllable. On the other hand, for contemplation cantus such as graduals, alleluias, and, during the Middle Ages, also some of the verses of the offertory, one notices many tones per syllable. In addition to these two syllable/tone relationship modi, cantus that recited the psalms, as they occurred in the psalter, generally used one tone (hence, a “psalm tone”) for an entire unified passage of text (that usually expressed one concept or line of thought), and again, hymns presented a fourth mode of syllable/tone arrangement in which tones changed, constituting a recognizable step-wise melody that could also be easily retained within the memory. So, within the component parts of the mass proper, taking into consideration those parts that changed from day to day, depending upon the season of the year, and the topic of the specific day, there were four modes or ways/manners of movement dealing with syllable/tone relationships: one to three tones per syllable, many tones per syllable, one tone for many syllables, and one tone per syllable, but with a change of both tone

16

that anima (materia, substancia, natura) should be regarded as both seen, as well as unseen, substance, thereby proceeding to the substantial, hence illustrative, value of what can be received by the auditory perception, namely, sound as unseen substance. See van Deusen, “In and out of a Latin Forest” and “Silva” in The Cultural Context of Medieval Music (New York, NY and Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2011), as well as chap. 4, “Understanding Herder: Medieval Conceptualization of Sound as Material and the ‘Stuff ‘of Composition,” in Old Stones, New Music: Material Culture, Music, and Central Europe (forthcoming). The relationship of Chalcidius’ discussion of the properties of sound and music education, particularly with respect to the discipline of music is the topic of a forthcoming book, van Deusen, Chalcidius, the Commentator and the Medieval Discipline of Music. Augustine observes that sound is the common substance for both spoken word and musical tone. See articles De musica and De grammatica in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand Rapids, Mich. and Cambridge, U.K.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999).

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and syllable. The concept of figura can be seen here in terms of the figurae of the alphabetical letters of the text (also litterae), as well as the figurae of music notation. Lines, eventually, placing tones on a certain pitch that could be read easily, are still another example of the concept of figura, differentiating specificity within the generality of sound substance. Still another aspect of the concept of figura was present in that each portion of the text with tone, usually approximately what could be sung/said on a normal breath, was also unified by a specific delineatory figura, for example, the figura of “the blessed or happy man” (delineated, for example, in Psalm 1,1). Psalm 1 exemplifies parallel lines, each approximately the length of a normal speaking phrase taken on a normal breath (this is the Greek cento, translated Latin punctum): Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly Nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; And in his law doth he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season; His leaf also shall not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so; But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: But the way of the ungodly shall perish.17

17

English translation: AV of the psalter. The concept of cento, translated into the Latin punctum as a mental, conceptual, module, reinforced by the physical reality of speaking or singing using one standard breath of air, is structural to the Psalms, therefore, as well, for all of the parts of the Mass that employ the texts of the Psalms. The concept of cento, punctum, can be accessed by the possible English translation, “chunk.” That the concept is structural to Homer, Virgil, used for Christian purposes by Proba, and repeated by Isidore of Seville, is a topos, often repeated, and used in a conclusive manner, to explain reflection concerning, and the placing together in a masterful fashion, the building blocks of composition. See van Deusen, “A Theory of Composition and its Influence,” in: Theology and Music at the Early University: The Case of Robert Grosseteste and Anonymous IV (Leiden, New York, and Köln: Brill, 1995), 127-145, esp. 132; cf. Robert Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, Richard C. Dales, Servus Gieben, O.F.M.Cap., eds., Auctores Britannici medii aevi VI (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), 34-35, who points out the use of the term by Homer,

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Another of the four systems of modes dealt with the movement of tones themselves. The same music substance, namely, approximately two octaves, was consistently in use, but in different ways, or with different melodic gestures, and also with a different focus—again, the concepts of difference, identification, and alternation are invoked repeatedly. These melodic modi were not scales of step-wise tones proceeding upwards or downwards as a ladder. Rather, significant melodic gestures or movements were made recognizable and clear by means of appropriate figurae, that is, tones presented by characteristic, consistent, linear, indicators. Hence, Mode I is indicated by a signal figura, (d upward to a), punctum to virga, immediately indicating a way of moving described as Mode I, the primus, or, with the Greek allusion to the concept of characteristic human habits (Latin, habitus) as indicating an entire group of people identified by certain “ways of moving,” the “Dorian Mode.”18

18

Virgil, and later Christian writers. The term, cento, is often given in modern lexica, such as The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 220-221, as referring to a “patchwork,” hence, within a derivative sense of “re-use,” and even “haphazard;” but this is the result of a contemporary misunderstanding of a pre-twentiethcentury concept of composition in which new compositions involved placing together of pre-existent substance. Mastery was demonstrated, not with “originality,” but rather with carefully and effectively working with available material substance, both mental and sensory, that was already present for the use. Cento / punctum / chunk together with terms that signify “joining,” such as copula, copulate, are pivotal, related, concepts for understanding medieval composition, although often not included for the reason given above, in modern editions, translations, and indices, of medieval works. See also van Deusen, The Cultural Context of Medieval Music, op. cit. 29-32. See van Deusen, The Harp and the Soul: Essays in Medieval Music, Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music, III (Lewiston and New York, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), “The Problem of Matter, the Nature of Mode, and the Example of Melody in Medieval Music Writing,” 1-45, and, on differentiae, 22-23. Due to the fact that the concept of figura has not been sufficiently investigated or understood, the use of Greek names for these ways of moving has been alleged to invoke a connection to “Greek Music Theory” surviving during the medieval period. This is not the case, although the connection is asserted time and time again in the textbook publishing activity particularly in North America. Guido of Arezzo makes the point that the provenance of a given person (figura) is immediately apparent by the manner of moving of that particular person, thus identifying him (or perhaps her) from the generality of common human substance. “Just so, the modes can be immediately identified by the figurae that indicate their ways of moving: An example of the ways in which properties and individualities of the modes, as I have indicated, can be perceived and heard, is made by the fact that people can be recognized by their ways of moving. One can say, this one is a Greek, that one is a Spaniard, this one a Latin, that one a German, and this one, indeed, as point of fact, from Gaul. And the diversities of these various modes can be adapted to states of the mind so that a single mode such as the second authentic mode, attracts broken, leaping figurae, or the plagal

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There are four manneriae or ways of moving that deal for the most part with step-wise melodic movement. When there is a “leap” of more than a step-wise motion, as is the case with Mode I, Dorian, the leap of the d upward to a is an important indicator or marker of that way of movement. These hallmarks of modes, indicated by figurae, were recognizable and utilized—and would have been instantly available to any, even marginally, musical person. The third system of modes had to do again with music and text relationships, but with another component for alternation. Again, there are four ways of moving, or modes: music and text with liturgical action (introit, offertory, communion), text without music with liturgical action (preface, other parts of the Canon of the Mass), music with text with contemplation/commentary (gradual, alleluia, several of the parts of the ordinary of the Mass such as the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), and, finally, textual contemplation without music (prayers). What is important here is that all of the component parts of the Mass celebration have a place, a purpose, and identifiable classification. They can all be accounted for, as well as understood; and there are four systems in operation–in alternation–during the entire Mass celebration. This alternation between all four systems of the four modes encouraged active attention, participation, and presented musical and textual substance for mind and body as one sang and spoke. Writers on the modes during the medieval period emphasize that one also had a personal relationship to the ways of moving of the modes—that some appreciated and were drawn to one mode over another depending upon the way the mode felt in the mouth, whether higher or lower, much as one might prefer sweet over salty tastes. The senses, then, were joined in the singing of the modes, namely, the senses of sight, of hearing, and the invocation of the sense of taste.19 Finally, the fourth system of moving deals with the texts, most of which were taken from the Psalms, carved up into pieces, taken out of their context within the psalter, and re-aligned; or taken from the prophetic books of the Old Testament, such as the prophet Isaiah. These four modi, again, identified by characteristic figurae, had to do with whether the text could be perceived

19

of the fourth authentic mode, and its plagal demonstrates pleasantness, and so on for the other modes.” See van Deusen, The Cultural Context of Medieval Music, 127-128, 132n8, 136. One wonders where Guido had placed himself in order to witness the diverse peoples of Europe move past. The ways of moving, or modes, are described in practical and comprehensible terms, not as abstractions, or as an inheritance from a remote past. See “The Problem of Matter, the Nature of Mode and the Example of Melody in Medieval Music Writing,” in van Deusen, The Harp and the Soul: Essays in Medieval Music, 1-45, esp. 11-12.

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to have actually happened at some particular time (historical books of the Old Testament such as Judges, Kings, or from the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles), give indication, by recognizable figurae, that another understanding must be applied to the text (the Psalms, as containing many examples of this modus, as well as a good deal of the Gospels, especially the parables of Jesus). This is the allegorical modus, and is quite possibly the most difficult modus to deal with, since it involves some background as well as practice in reading, a consideration of, or reflection upon, what one has read, and an acquaintance with the allusions presented. The third modus dealt with the implications of both the literal as well as the allegorical ways of understanding, namely, the tropological modus, involving the reader’s response to what had been presented. The Latin language makes this modus clear in the use of the imperative mode, with commands ending with the figura or litterae—the injunction to “praise God,” to sing (cantate), to worship (psallite). This mode is analogical in that it brings out analogies in terms of appropriate, or analogous, action in view of what has taken place. The Pauline Epistles contain countless tropologies or such injunctions, for example, to give thanks, to pray without ceasing, to discern the will of God. Finally, the fourth way of moving dealt with end-times, that is, revelations of things to come (Old Testament book of Daniel, New Testament book of Revelation, as examples of this eschatological way of moving). The modes: 1) text / tone relationship, 2) tone to tone relationship, 3) action to contemplation relationship, and 4) the four ways of thinking about, dealing with, and coming to terms with, the text, all operated simultaneously, needed to be considered, and were changing constantly from one portion of the Mass liturgy to the next. Further, the differentiae or differences between each of the four modes within the four systems of the modes were clearly indicated by figurae. Figura is a tool for indication itself, and for assessing difference and identity. All of this is well-known. The literature, for example, on the four interpretational, or hermeneutical, modes or senses is a comprehensive, and for the most part, a carefully thought-out, body of writing.20 Why need one investigate still again these four underlying systems of modes? There are three reasons for this. First, to emphasize the interaction of all of the parts of the Mass in their alternation with each other. Secondly, modes have been described as

20

See especially Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de L’écriture, 2 vols. (Paris, 1959). These four systems of modes, with musical examples can also be consulted in van Deusen, The Cultural Context of Medieval Music, esp. 63-66; but the structure of the Mass in terms of its component parts has been amply described.

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either melodic or textual; that all four of these systems have been brought together within the Mass has not been emphasized clearly, yet it is crucial to the understanding of the sequence and its particular role of connection. Mention has already been made of the transitional function of the sequence within the logical time-lapse of the Mass liturgy. This topic requires further consideration. That the sequence constitutes a bridge within the incremental forward movement of the Mass liturgy is emphasized by its use of a mixed textual interpretational mode, that is, commencing with the allegorical mode, proceeding for some time employing that mode, often with many allegories in close proximity,21 culminating within the final pair of lines with the eschatological mode, or the Christian’s presence before God at the end of time in company with the ecclesia, or congregated host of Christian believers.22 The use of the eschatological mode, in many and varied references, prepares the way, logically, for the reading of the Gospel and the presentation of the way of salvation. This mixed modal situation, that is, the allegorical mode culminating with the eschatological view of the future, or the mode of incremental, measured time of life in this world, transitioning into the imagined timelessness of eternity, is reinforced not only by mixed melodic modes, but also a unique coalition of syllable and tone. The sequence is unique as it alternates with the other component parts of the Mass liturgy. Indeed, we have here a remarkable mirror into the medieval capacity for myriad, logically-related details; a nexus of seemingly circumstantial interactions that, nevertheless, all give evidence to sense of purpose, a conceptualization of proportion, balance, and design and a clearly directed onward course of movement. Example I: Sequence Promissa mundi gaudia

21

22

A commentary to the Bible is often required in order to understand the repeated, frequently highly sophisticated, allegories, on the one hand, from the Old Testament, followed, usually together with the melodic repetition, with a parable from the New Testament. See also Nancy van Deusen and Marcia L. Colish, “Ex utroque et in utroque: Promissa mundo gaudia, Electrum, and the Sequence,” in Nancy van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, op. cit. 99-131, esp. 99, “Nowhere, perhaps, do we find the medieval textual imagination responding so effectively to a task at hand as in the devising of nuances of expression used within the sequence for making the same crucial point of connectedness, of bringing together, of transition, and of relationship.” This point has been made in several publications, noted above, that is, van Deusen, “The Use and Significance of the Sequence,” Musica disciplina XL (1986), 5-47, “Sequence Repertories: A Reappraisal,” Musica disciplina XLVIII (1994), 99-123, at 103-106, and “Verbum bonum Deo natum Considered within the Sequence as a Genre and its Manuscript Context,” op. cit. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Cassiodorus’ Preface to His Psalm Commentaries and the Sequence

What is the origin of this design? Since a great deal of the Proper of the Mass liturgy is taken from the Psalms, either in terms of the recitation of entire Psalms in the order in which they are given in the psalter (Psalm recitations as verses), or in parts taken out of context and re-combined (for example, the introit), one might consider looking to the Psalms, as well as important commentators on the Psalms, such as Augustine and Cassiodorus, for their influence. We have noticed that Cassiodorus, in a preface to his commentaries on the Psalms, states that the psalter is as a taste of celestial honey for “minds” (the use of the plural animarum is important here: not one mental attitude is referenced, but the implication of the varied and diverse states of mind that can be found alternating with one another in the Psalms). But the Psalms are also an obscure, seemingly inchoate, thicket—for Augustine, a congestion—of substance, also concealed under the covering or veil of parables and allegories that are ambiguous and require interpretation. They also require time and patience, since the most obvious meaning may not be the more important.23 The sequence, as well, is full of allegories, such as those to be noticed in Promissa mundi gaudia, for which a biblical commentary referencing both Old and New Testaments is not only desirable, but necesary. The sequence begins with “the rod of Iesse” that budded and gave fruit (Virga Iesse florida fructum dedit), Gideon’s fleece (Gedeonis vellera ros in infudit), the stone that the builders rejected (Lapis ille reprobus iunctus parietibus), the miracles of Elisha the prophet restoring life to the son who had died, and the rod that swam,24 connected with the heel (foot) of the woman that would crush the serpent, a mountain of mountains cut away without human hands, the heart raised up by

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24

That Cassiodorus’ Expositio psalmorum, transmitted throughout the Middle Ages together as a Liber was of seminal importance is borne out by the list of quotations indicating acquaintanceship, and, especially, extant manuscripts from the eighth to thirteenth centuries, in M. Adriaen, Magni Aurelii Cassiodori, Expositio psalmorum, I, v-xx. One notable quotation from this list (at VII), is that of Notker Balbulus, De interpretationibus divinarum scripturarum II (PL 139, 995): “In cuius [libri psalmorum] explanationem Cassiodorus Senator, cum multa disseruerit, in hoc tantum videtur nobis utilis, quod omnem saecularem sapientiam, id est schematum et troporum dulcissimam varietatem in eo latere manifestat.” (p. vii). One of the earliest manuscripts of Cassiodorus’ commentaries is St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 200, 201, 202, which contain the entire Liber (9th century). Notker Balbulus of Sankt Gallen (ca. 841-914) has been credited with having produced a Liber sequentiarum. Cf. Wolfram von den Steinen, Notker der Dichter und seine geistige Welt, 2 vols. (Bern: Francke, 1948). Schemata are figurae indicated in the CCSL edition by the editor in the margins as SCHE. There are several hundred schemata or figurae within Cassiodorus’ psalm commentaries, and this is true, as well, of the sequence. Gideon, cf. Judges 6, 36-40; Heliseus (Greek)/Elisha, cf. II Kings 4, 32; 6, 5. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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the good word (verbum bonum), followed by a direct allusion to the Israelites in the desert eating the bread of angels (panem angelorum). The sower sowing “true seed,” the new replacing the old; the king taking spoils, and able to take them into his tabernacle in the sun; the earth produces a worm that ruins Jonas’ shade, the truth of the land of Syon, that Emmanuel has appeared, sent for the salvation of Israel, a light shines brightly as the woman ascends, the electrum seen by Ezekiel sparkles.25 And now we leave the allegories primarily from the Old Testament behind, and move on eventually to the final future sense and the culmination of the sequence, the Christian’s presence before God as a community: Tot beneficia sacra Leticia recolit ecclesia, die ista Deo sit Gloria ex cuius gratia speramus celestia, alleluia. 25

Electrum, commentary of Jerome on Eziekiel; Christ is the “electrum,” This was Marcia L. Colish’s contribution to a joint paper, “Ex utroque et in utroque,” p. 110ff, who notes the importance of this concept in Virgil (as amber), Ovid (a person weeping tears of amber), Pliny the Elder, who, in his Natural History, devotes the most attention to this concept, Statius, fifth-century Christian poet Prudentius, and Isidore of Seville. “When Jerome looked for language in which to describe Ezekiel’s vision in Latin, he chose electrum, Latinizing the Greek found in the Septuagint. For Jerome out of the north is species electri (Ezekiel 1.28). Later in Jerome’s translation, the prophet sees the similitude of a man, seated upon a throne of sapphire seemingly covered with fire from his loin on down and with electrum, or a brightness like the species electri, from his loins on up” (Ezekiel 8,2). Colish points out at this point the “opacity” of this allusion, but that nevertheless, as the first commentator on the book of Ezekiel, Jerome placed the term/concept on the “exegetical agenda” to be taken up by Bede, John Scottus Eriugena in his commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, Rupert of Deutz in his De sancta Trinitate. Colish points out, however, an independent understanding of the chemistry of alloys, in which Tertullian “harnesses electrum to two related arguments, which in both cases a definition of electrum as an alloy of gold and silver is crucial. On the one hand, he wants to defend the full humanity of Christ as a central doctrine of the Christian faith and as the foundation of the belief in the resurrection of the body in the life to come. On the other, he insists on the point that neither the divine nor the human nature of Christ was altered in the hypostatic union. . . ” “Now if the substance of Jesus were a mixture of two elements, body and spirit, a mixture like electrum, made up of gold and silver, and it begins to be neither gold, that is, spirit, nor silver, that is, flesh, then Jesus would become something else and the statement that He was made flesh would become meaningless. . . . For another, neutral, thing emerges from both of these elements, a third sort of thing, and different from both of them.” (Tertullian, Adversus Praxean 27.8, ed. A. Kroymann and E. Evans, CCSL 2 [Turnhout, 1954], 1199, which is taken up by Gregory the Great in his Homeliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam, In Hiezech. 1, Homelia 2.14 (ed. Marcus Andriaen, CCSL 142 [Turnhout, 1971]), 25-26: “Quid electri species, nisi Christus Iesus mediator Dei et hominum designator? Electrum quippe, ex auro argentum ad claritatem crescit, aurum vero a suo fulgor pallescit.” See the extensive reference apparatus, in op. cit., 128-131. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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It is plain to see that the sequence is the copula of the mass liturgy, using a mixture of two modes or ways of moving, the allegorical, culminating with the eschatological, without compromising the identity of either mode. In this sense, the sequence, as connection, comprises yet a third entity, the mediator, connector, or, in using a term that was rich with significance—and which also is found in the sequence we have analyzed, the electrum of the mass. The sequence then, rooted in the Psalms, personifies Christ. It is not an easy “song.” This one is also a “long song.” One, sometimes fairly obscure, allegorical reference to Old Testament prophets, miracles, tests, and details (such as Jonas’ “worm” ruining his shade, which he laments even after being rescued from the stomach of the whale) is followed immediately by a New Testament allusion. The vocabulary is rich, the references far-reaching, the connecting links between Old and New Testaments constant. What is the rationale of the sequence within the Mass liturgy? It is increasingly clear as one reads through this extensive interrogation both of many of the principal events of the Old Testaments, joined to the person and work of Christ as the connector between God and Man, fusing such a connection by his very person and presence in the world, in fact, by himself; that the sequence is a “connecting song”—the copula of the Eucharistic liturgy, as Christ is the connecting link to salvation and to “eternal glory”—Cassiodorus’ “psalmocanticum,” the copula. Alluding repeatedly to Christ, comparing the work of Christ to Old Testament prophetic messages using one allegory after the other, the “psalmsong” or sequencia not only illustrates the “alloy” of human and Godly substance, but stands for, and exemplifies, even, as Cassiodorus states, personifies, Jesus in preparation for The Lord’s Supper, or communion, the climax, even crisis, of the Mass liturgy. The sequence, then, provides a window onto the richness, as well as the careful logic, of the Mass celebration, beginning with the introit of the day, proceeding through prayer, praise, and supplication, to the connecting link of the entire liturgy, bringing to mind the incredible mystery of Christ, the God-Man, fully divine, yet fully human, the electrum of the Old Testament book of the prophet Exekiel, as well as uniting the Psalms to the New Testament reading of the Gospel, following immediately thereafter, as preparation for the Communion or Lord’s Supper. Rather than a more or less mindless exercise in daily or weekly conventional time-lapse, the sequence, psalmocanticum poised at the climax of the Mass, presented Jesus as the culmination of the Psalms.

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Figure 1.1a Examples: The sequence and the Psalms

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Figure 1.1b Examples: The sequence and the Psalms (cont.)

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Figure 1.1c Examples: The sequence and the Psalms (cont.)

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Figure 1.2 Example II: collection of sequences or sequentiarium from the manuscript, Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Palatina lat. 857, f. 70v, indicating how sequences were copied together as a Liber, as, of course, the psalter

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Figure 1.3 Example III: from the manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Palatina lat. 501, f. 14r, shows the sequence positioned between the florid, what we would consider melismatic, Alleluia, calling to mind the Old Testament through the use of a Hebrew word, Alleluia, and its Psalm verse, and the reading of the Gospel. Note the resemblance of the sequentia as it appears without music notation with the following example, a psalter

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Figure 1.4 Example IV from the Wycliffite Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Bodley 554, f. 69r, with divisions and initials in a format also common to sequences within the sequentiarium. This example brings up still another feature that the Psalms have in common with sequences, the commentary, which can be clearly seen. Sequences with commentaries also occur, thus joining the immense Psalm commentary literature; and the commentaries are included for the same purpose, namely, to elucidate obscure allegorical references and expressions

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Figure 1.5 Example V: Barcelona, Archivio de la corona de Aragon, Ripoll Ms 767, f. 77v, a fragment which can be identified by its final line, a characteristic eschatological statement of the Christian’s presence before God: “Post hec vite spacia deique; frui gracia. Amen.”

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Chapter 2

The Miracles of Jesus in the Writings of the Venerable Bede George Hardin Brown

Bede, in his commentaries on the gospels and in his sermons, deals extensively with miracles.1 In that he is particularly a disciple of the monastic pope Gregory the Great. With Gregory, Bede stresses the importance and meaning that the miracles recorded in the gospels had not only for the primitive Church but for all believers. The bedrock of belief is bolstered by Christ’s miracles as related in the Scriptures. For Bede those miracles also serve as the link to recent and local miraculous events in his Northumbrian England. That link is, however, complex since Bede’s treatment of the relationship between Christ’s miracles reported in the gospels and those of subsequent history is intricate. McCready discusses the question at length, but he rightly remarks that “like Gregory the Great Bede saw no fundamental cleavage separating biblical times from his own,” even though he is less apocalyptic and recognizes the end time did not and has not occurred.2 However, as Bede asserts, “There is no doubt that what often happened in days gone by, as we learn from trustworthy accounts, could happen in our time too through the help of the Lord, who has promised to be with us to the end of the age.” With Gregory Bede holds that “miracles are not as frequent or as spectacular now as they once may have been,” but unlike Gregory he distinguishes the purpose and rationale of modern miracles from their function in the New Testament. Bede, however, follows Jerome in surmising that the physical miracles performed by Christ and the apostles have now been replaced by spiritual cognates.3 God is present in his wondrous works as he was in Christ’s lifetime even if miracles are less necessary and frequent in established Christian life.

1 Bede’s extensive direct quoting from the Fathers and his incorporating their exegetical comments in his commentaries on Mark and Luke is indicated by his own marginal citations, with the quoted texts set in italic font in the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina edition, vol. 120. 2 William D. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994), 78. 3 McCready, 83, 85.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_004

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It is important to realize, moreover, that Bede’s understanding of the miraculous, relying on his knowledge of biblical texts, especially the gospels, and patristic writings, differs somewhat from more recent common concepts.4 The modern idea of miracle to many means a phenomenal event inexplicable by natural or scientific laws. But as understood by Augustine and the other patristic authorities followed by Bede, miracles were actions beyond the ordinary functioning of nature but done in nature, not as a closed system but open to God’s various interventions. John the evangelist designates these as “signs” or “works” of God’s power, “symbols of Jesus’ teaching or as a revelation of his glory.”5 For Bede as for the Fathers these “signs” or “works” occur by an extraordinary confluence of events so arranged by divine Providence. And for the late antique and medieval Christian and therefore for Bede one major element of a miraculous event is the suddenness with which a cure or transformation occurs that normally might only happen over a period of time. Striking examples are Christ’s sudden cure of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:30-31; Luke 4:38-39), his instantaneous healing of the leper (Mark 1:40-42; Luke 5:12-13), as also the cure of the paralytic (Mark 2:3-12; Luke 5:17-26). If Christ effects a miracle in stages, then there is a special reason for that, as in the gradual cure of the blind man in Bethsaida, (Mark 8: 22-26), to whom full vision was restored after a second laying on of Jesus’ hands, by which is indicated that spiritual blindness like the man’s physical blindness is cured in gradual, distinct stages.6 Additionally, Bede’s complex and sensitive discussions of the miracles of Jesus in his biblical commentaries on Mark and Luke and in his liturgical homilies on the gospels emulate the examples of Fathers of the Church by recognizing beyond the physical event of Christ’s miracles a deeper, mystical significance. He thus follows Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great in adopting Origen’s practice of providing allegorical interpretation of Biblical detail alongside the literal, historical reading. As Lawrence Martin has well noted, “the way in which Bede interrelates biblical texts is often highly creative and 4 On the biblical and patristic understanding of miracle see, for instance, the topic in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), #89-95. After presenting an excellent bibliography on the topic, the article then discusses the Biblical Notion of Miracle, followed by Modern Criticism of Gospel Miracles, and the Meaning of Miracles in the Gospels (the Synoptics, John, and Acts of the Apostles). 5 The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), NT124. 6 Bede, Opera Exegetica, in Lucae Evangelium Expositio, in Marci Evangelium Expositio, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120: 534-35 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960; McCready, Miracles and Venerable Bede, 22-23.

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for the listener/reader it can be extremely demanding as well as rewarding.”7 Bede not only interrelates biblical texts, but indicates how the allegorical comprehension of a text reinforces and actually augments the literal sense. For example, discussing Mark 6: 50-51, in which Christ in the stormy sea climbs into the boat and the wind ceases,” Bede insists, It should not be wondered at that in the Lord’s boarding the boat the wind ceased. For in whatever heart God by his grace of love is present soon all the concentrated hostilities of vices and of the adversarial world or of the malign spirits are quieted. [Nec mirandum si ascendente in nauiculam domino uentus cessauit. In quodcumque enim corde Deus per gratiam sui adest amoris mox uniuersa uitiorum et aduersantis mundi siue spirituum malignorum bella compressa quiescent.]8 This is an example of how Bede’s monastic and personal insight and interpretation fit within the orthodox exegetical frame; he skillfully integrates traditional Scriptural commentary with new insights. So, uniting earlier patristic exegesis with medieval monastic interpretation, Bede elucidates not only the literal, historical significance of Jesus’s miracles but also the extended allegorical significance of them. As the examples below indicate, Bede’s procedure is traditional and carefully grounded in authoritative precedent, but at the same time allows space for fresh insights and interpretations of the biblical texts. The historical result was that his commentaries received universal acceptance in the Western Church. Because Bede’s writings make up about a quarter of the selections in the two-volume homiliary (collected sermons) compiled by Paul the Deacon at Charlemagne’s request for the edification of priests throughout his empire, Bede’s homilies were widely studied in the early middle ages. Lawrence Martin notes in his introduction to Bede’s Homilies that although “Paul’s two-volume homiliary did include a wide range of authors from both east and west, the writer who supplied the greatest number of readings was Bede,” with fifty-seven selections, about onequarter of the total homiliary.9 Their influence has lasted through the ages.

7 Lawrence T. Martin, “Bede’s Originality in his Use of the Book of Wisdom in his Homilies on the Gospels,” in Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio (Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University Press, 2006), 191. 8 In Marcum II, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120: 1163-67 lines 1163-67; my translation. 9 Martin, ed., Introduction to Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels, I:xiv.

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Bede’s Latin even in English translation is elevated, so that his insightful exegesis may seem formally remote to the contemporary reader, but reflecting on his elegant text rewards richly with insightful meaning. Scholars dealing with the general topic of miracles in Bede’s works have included some discussion of miracles performed by Jesus within that more extensive topic.10 Here, however, we are concentrating specifically on Bede’s treatment of Jesus’ miracles as related in the gospels. In each instance Bede first describes the historical occurrence and literal result of a miracle done by Christ before indicating its extended symbolic significance. For example, after discussing Christ’s feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Bede identifies the five loaves with the five books of Moses and the two fishes with the Psalms and the Prophets.11 This is an example of how Bede’s interpretative sense makes a detail meaningful with allegorical significance. In his Homily I:14, treating the gospel text used in the liturgy following the Feast of the Epiphany, Bede speaks eloquently about Christ’s taking part in the Marriage Feast of Cana and his first recorded miracle in which he changes water into wine (John 2: 1-11). Bede affirms against heretics like Tatian and Marcion, who disparage marriage, that Christ’s presence and blessing at the marriage celebration indicate Christ’s approval of marriage, though he does note that virginity is superior to marriage. As a monk writing primarily for clerics Bede inserts the comment that virginity is superior to marriage since Christ was born of a virgin.12 First Bede points out the literal significance of this miracle, in which he honored the marriage party “by the presence of his power” [“hos suae uirtutis presentia honorat”].13 Bede then insists that the figural meaning presents a higher joy (“Sed altior est caelestium Laetitia figurarum”),14 for that expresses the union in which Christ is the divine bridegroom and the Church his bride. Then he adds: 10

11 12

13 14

See especially William D. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994), but also Paul Cavill, “‘Signs and Wonders’ and the Venerable Bede,” EQ 88:1 (1988); 3-42; Joel T. Rosenthal, “Bede’s Use of Miracles in ‘The Ecclesiastical History,’” Traditio 31 (1975): 328-35, C. Grant Loomis, “The Miracle Traditions of the Venerable Bede,” Speculum 21 (1946): 404-18; Bertram Colgrave, Bede’s Miracle Stories,” in Bede, His Life, Times, and Writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thomson (Oxford, 1935, rpt. 1969), 201-29. Many others dealing with Bede also discuss in passing his treatment of miracles. Beda, In Marcum 2 CCSL 120, lines 936-62; Beda, In Lucam 3, lines1295-1309. Beda, Homilia 1.14 post Epiphaniam. Bertram Colgrave, “Bede’s Miracle Stories,” in Bede, His Life, Times, and Writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935; New York, Russell and Russell, repr. 1969), 201-29, 295. Beda, Homelia I. 14, CCSL 122:95, line 15; Bede, Homilies, trans. Lawrence T. Martin and David Hurst, Homily I.14 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cisterician Publications, 1991), I:134. Beda, Homilia I. 14, CCSL 122:95, line 16. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Thus it was not by chance, but for the sake of a certain mystical meaning, that he came to a marriage celebrated on earth in the customary fleshly way, since he descended from heaven to earth to connect the Church to himself in spiritual love. His nuptial chamber was the womb of his incorrupt mother, and from there he came forth like a bridegroom to join the Church to himself. [Non igitur casus sed certi gratia mysterii uenit ad nuptias in terra carnali more celebrates qui ad copulandam sibi spirituali amore ecclesiam de caelo descendit ad terram cuius quidem thalamus incorruptae genetricis uterus fuit in quo deus humanae naturae coniunctus est et ex quo ad sociandam sibi ecclesiam tamquam sponsus processit.]15 Moreover, “the friends of the bridegroom “(Mt. 9:15, Lk. 5:34) and of the marriage (Mt. 2:19) “are each and every one of the faithful.” (“singuli quique fidelium eius sunt”) and function as attendants at that sacred rite.16 Bede then proceeds to assign in detail suitable mystical and typological meaning to the miracle Christ performed in changing the water in the six containers, hydrias, into wine.17 Water represents knowledge of sacred scripture, which both cleanses its hearers from the stain of sins, and gives them drink from the font of divine cognition. The six vessels in which it was contained are the devout hearts of the holy, whose perfection of life and faith was set before the human race as an example of believing and living properly through the six ages of this transitory world, up to the time of the Lord’s preaching. [Aqua autem scripturae sacrae scientiam designat quae suos auditores et a peccatorum sorde abluere et diuinae cognitonis solet fonte portare; uasa sex quiobus continebatur corda sunt deuota sanctorum quarum perfectio uitae et fidei exemplum recte credenda ac uiuendi proposita est generi humano per sex saeculi labentis aetates, id est usque ad tempus dominicae praedicationis]18 After noting the propriety in the jars being made of stone because “the inmost hearts of the just are strong,” like the stone featured in the Book of Daniel and Zachariah, and that the water is like the Scriptures before the wine of Christ’s coming, Bede points out: 15 16 17 18

Bede, Homilies, Homily I.14, I:135. Homily I. 14, 135; Homilia I, 14, line 33. Homily I. 14, 136; Homilia I, 14, line 45 “mysterio”, line 55 “typice.” Homily I. 14, 137-38; Homilia I, 14, lines 98-104. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Brown The Lord could have filled empty hydrias with wine, since in the elementary stages of the world’s creation he created all things out of nothing, but he preferred to make wine from water in order to teach that he had not come to cancel and repudiate the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them, nor to do and to teach other things through the grace of the gospel than what the law and the prophets of scripture had indicated that he would do and teach. [Et quidem potuit dominus uacuas implere hydrias uino qui in exordio mundanae creationis cuncta creauit ex nihilo sed maluit de aqua facere uinum quo typice doceret non se ad soluendum improbandumque sed adimplendum potius legem prophetasque uenisse neque alia se per euangelicam gratiam faceret docere quam legalis et prophetica scriptura eum facturum doctorumque signaret.]19

Jesus ordered the jars to be filled to the top, for there was no time among the ages of the world that was without its holy teachers, who either by their words or their examples, or by their writings, opened up the way of life to mortals. [quia recte intellexerunt nullum fuisse tempus saeculi a sanctis alienum doctoribusque siue uerbis siue exemplis siue etiam scriptis uiam uitae mortalibus panderent.]20 These few examples from the homily are, of course, only a minuscule part of Bede’s detailed comments on the gospel text, but I hope indicate, even in a small way, the process by which he so meaningfully glosses every line. Elsewhere, Bede draws attention to ways the miracles Jesus perform exhibit the truth of his Gospel through striking deeds. For example, when Christ rebuked and expelled the demon from the man in the synagogue (Mark 1:21-27) the onlookers were amazed. Bede explains, “they were roused to investigate what they had heard. Indeed, it was for that purpose that miracles were performed, whether by the Lord himself in his assumed humanity or by the power that he committed to the disciples.”21 In another example, Christ’s marvelous calming the storm on the lake and his walking on the waves, Bede notes that with this miracle Christ manifested his mastery over nature; in addition, because his body was free from the weight of sin, he was able to quiet the forces 19 20 21

Homily I.14, 139. Homily I.14, 144. Beda, In Marcum 1, CCSL 120:448; McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, 111.

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of evil symbolized by the storm.22 Bede points out that even though such control of nature by Christ greatly impressed the disciples, they only later recognized the full significance of the miracle. The miracles signify much more than momentary, astonishing or heroic feats. As McCready summarizes: In the miracle of the loaves and fishes, says Bede, Christ demonstrated his creative lordship; in calming the storm he showed his mastery of nature; in walking on the waters he revealed himself to have a body free from the weight of sin. Despite all this, however, the disciples were still not able to grasp that he was God in human form. They were astonished by the wonders he performed, but were not able to see them for what they were: a revelation of his divine majesty.23 Bede’s writings thus invite a basic and a theologically nuanced understanding of Jesus’s divine powers. The challenge of the more theologically nuanced understanding is even more evident in Bede’s interpretation of Christ’s healing of the sick and raising of the dead, in which the allegorical interpretation of an incident can differ notably from the physical reality. For example, using sickness or death as examples of the Lord’s spiritual healing and the cleansing of even mortal sin that brings death to the soul does not mean that the literally sick or dying person described in the text was sinful. Nevertheless, a person’s sickness or death can represent a soul’s vice. So Bede interprets Christ’s physical healings as also indicating his powers to heal from sin. Just as Christ was able to cure physical even mortal ailments he can cure the sinful soul even though mortally afflicted. In this, Bede is following Christ’s proving action, as recorded in the gospels, Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2: 8-12, Luke 5:20-25, where he forgives the paralytic’s sins, and at Pharisees protests of doubt, cures him physically. McCready has summarized Bede’s basic interpretations.24 The deaf mute of Mark 7:31-37 is a representation of the person who neither hears nor speaks God’s words.25 The blind man cured in the next chapter, Mark 8:22-26, represents the Lord’s providing vision to the spiritually sightless.26 More difficult, the three physical

22 23 24 25 26

In Marcum 2, CCSL 120:518-19; McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, 112. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, 112, citing Beda, In Marcum 2, CCSL 120:518-19. Miracles and the Venerable Bede, 108-9. Beda, In Marcum 2, CCSL120, lines 1432-1501. In Marcum 2, lines 1786-1852.

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resurrections that Christ effected represent three types of spiritual regeneration. First, his resurrection of the synagogue leader’s daughter signifies Christ’s restoration to spiritual life of those from Israel as well as of many Gentiles (Romans 11:25-26).27 The dead girl, who on the literal level appears to be guiltless, nevertheless represents allegorically through her physical demise the sinner who consents to sin or delights in sinful prospects but is restored to spiritual life by the Savior. Since the girl was dead but not yet interred, she represents those who have sinned in their hearts even though they have not actually performed the deed. The son of Nain’s widow, however, whose body has been carried outside the city, represents the more serious case of a person who has not only sinned in thought but actually enacted sin. However, just as Christ revived the young man and restored him alive to his mother, so a sinner genuinely repentant can be restored to a life characterized by grace within the unity of the church The third and most dramatic example of restoration to the life of grace is Lazarus, who, already dead for four days, stinking, and entombed, is brought to life by Christ through the intercession of his sisters, who represent the prayerful pleading of the devout for the sinner. Lazarus, who was called forth from the tomb, symbolizes the habitual offender, buried under a heap of sins. However, even the notorious sinner can be restored to spiritual life if pious thoughts, like those of the devout sisters of Lazarus, are present to intercede with the Redeemer. Bede asserts that the mark of most of Christ’s miracles is their sudden effect in contrast to the time usually needed for full recovery. For example, when Jesus “stood over” Simon’s mother-in-law, who was suffering from a raging fever, and “rebuked the fever,” it immediately left her and “she got up and began to serve them.”28 Bede goes on to recount that Jesus healed the leper suddenly and, after that, with equal suddenness the paralytic.29 Bede notes that in healing the leper Christ touched him contrary to the Mosaic law, showing his superiority to the law and to normal hygienic concern.30 Bede also points out that most of Christ’s miracles are indeed instantaneous, but when they are not, it is for a good reason. For instance, Jesus gave the blind man in Mark 8:22-26 complete vision only gradually to indicate that spiritual blindness has to be cured in stages.31

27 28 29 30 31

In Marcum 2, lines 261-303. Luke 4:39; Mark 1:30-31; Beda, In Marcum 1, CCSL120:449; 2, Beda, In Lucam, CCSL120:11. Beda, In Marcum 1, CCSL120:450-5; Beda, In Lucam 2, 120:117; Beda, In Lucam 2, CCSL 120:22; Beda, In Marcum 1, CCSL 120:457. In Marcum 1, CCSL 120:451. In Marcum 2, CCSL 120:.534, lines 1794-96.

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For Bede, Jesus, the Son of God and supreme master of all history, could and did modify and control events in order to establish his divine authority and manifest his loving care. Some of those registered events were extraordinary and powerful, others were quotidian and less striking, but all revealed the Lord at work. However, Jesus’ thirty-seven recorded miracles were especially worth consideration and elucidation because they literally displayed his power and love and allegorically on the large scale the complex meaning of the acts.

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Chapter 3

The “Hælend” and Other Images of Jesus in Anglo-Saxon England Larry Swain

By the time the Augustinian mission reached the shores of Kent in 597, conflicts over the identity of Jesus as Christ had been all but resolved in Late Antique Christianity’s struggles to define the faith. Some of those conflicts involved defining how Christ (e.g., “the Messiah,” “the Anointed One”) was separate from or the same as Jesus the human person and exactly how this divine-human compact worked. For the Anglo-Saxons, and for Northern European Germanic tribes as a whole, those issues were unimportant. As Jesus was presented to them, he was inseparable from Christ and was inseparable from the Trinity. Nonetheless, over the Early Medieval Period significant changes develop in the understanding and presentation of Jesus to the peoples of northern Europe. The earliest and perhaps most important is the name Jesus is given in the vernacular languages beginning in Anglo-Saxon England: Hælend and its cognates, meaning “healer.” The warrior Jesus is also an important consideration in the Germanization of Christianity. In the ninth century, a new message emerges as Jesus competes and defeats the Norse gods and myths; at the same time, a different process emerges: what might be called the Christianization of Germanic culture wherein Christian suffering, more traditional Christian values rather than those of a warrior culture become more important, transforming even the role of medieval kings. Each part will be examined in the following pages.

1

Christ as Healer

By far, the most common Old English word or name for Jesus is Hælend. The term is defined as “healer, savior” in the Bosworth Toller dictionary, an issue to which we will return shortly. Often Hælend appears alone as a name, often in conjunction with the definite article, signifying a title. Most often in a homily or biblical translation, this is the Old English term to use for many words referring to Jesus: Jesus, Christ, Jesus Christ, and salvator are the chief examples.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_005

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The name derives from the past participle of hælan, which means “to heal, to save (in the sense of healing, making hale)” and is related to the adjective “hale” and the noun “health.”1 The -end ending is a word-formation tool in Old English, added to make an agent, and often used to create agent nouns from past participles of active verbs. Thus, the word means “a healer.”2 Here the scholar encounters something of a difficulty. The Bosworth Toller dictionary is slowly being superseded by the Dictionary of Old English project at the University of Toronto. These lexicographers have defined Hælend as specifically referring for the most part to Jesus Christ or the Savior.3 The difference between these two lexicographical tools in defining this term has in large part to do with a shift in the methodology employed in delimiting the semantic fields of morphemes between the late nineteenth to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This difference, however, also illustrates an important issue in Old English with regard to Jesus, the Hælend. That issue may be phrased as follows: when and why did the past participle of the verb “to heal” become the name and title for Jesus glossing the Latin salvator. The answer to this is not very simple. As is well known, the name “Jesus” is a Latinization of Hebrew ‫ ְיהוֹֻשַׁע‬Iησoυσ, in Greek, itself a transliteration of the Hebrew ‫( ֵישׁוַּע‬Yeshua), a shortening of the earlier form ‫( ְיהוֹֻשַׁע‬Yehoshua), which our modern English Bibles render Joshua. It is the meaning of the name “Jesus,” though, that captured the attention of the church fathers and early Anglo-Saxon writers. Yehoshua means “God saves,” a combination of the Tetragrammatan (YHWH) with a verb ‫ ישי‬yasha) meaning “to save or rescue.” Thus, “God saves.” Key information about the meaning of the name of Jesus was widely available to late antique and medieval readers. Moses changes Joshua’s name in Numbers 13 commemorating God’s salvation of Israel; this name change is mentioned again along with a reference to the meaning in Sirach (aka Ecclesiasticus) 46:1-2. In a work titled in Latin Interpretatio Hebraicorum Nomium and ascribed to Philo of Alexandria, the Greek author specifically mentions

1 The Dictionary of Old English adds a further definition, “to save.” Many, if not most, of the instances of the verb in this posited usage 1) are late tenth century and later, well after the association of Hælend with Latin salvator and the like and 2) are most often in translations from Latin. Other instances of this sense not translating Latin are easily translated as “heal” rather than “save,” such as at Dream of the Rood line 84. 2 See Bosworth, Joseph, “Hǽ lend,” in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. March 21, 2010. Accessed December 23, 2016. http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/017889. 3 Dictionary of Old English: A to H online, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey, et al. (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2016).

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the change of name and its meaning.4 Origen knew this work and added to it names of the New Testament. Origen’s work influenced Eusebius of Caesaria who composed his own work on Biblical names. St. Jerome knew both Origen’s work and Eusebius’; he edited and added to create his own influential Liber Interpretationis Hebraicorum Nominum.5 Eusebius’ work was translated into Latin. The Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, Pseudo-Philo’s work, Eusbius’ work, and Jerome’s work were all available in Latin to the early medieval interpreters of the Bible; thus, the equation of “Jesus” with “God saves” was firmly established. The Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament contains a number of names whose meaning the text explains, especially when there is a name change. The authors of the New Testament continued this tradition. And so did the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons enjoyed word games. The Old English Riddles demonstrate this clearly; naming conventions and the importance of names is also evident.6 While so far as is known there were no known He-

4 Philo, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, ed. Charles Duke Yonge (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993, repr. 2008) and Philo, On Flight and Finding. On the Change of Names. On Dreams, ed. F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934). In addition to the train of tradition outlined subsequent to this note, this text was also translated into Latin in the Late Antique period and was available in Anglo-Saxon England. 5 Jerome, S. Hieronymi Presbyteri. . . Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos, Liber interpretationis hebraicorum nominum, Commentarioli in Psalmos, Commentarius in Ecclesiasten, eds., Marc Adriaen, Germain Morin, and Paul de Lagarde. (Turnholt: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1959). 6 On the importance of word-play in Old English see Frederick Robinson, “The Significance of Names in Old English Literature,” Anglia 86:14-58. See also Frederick, “Some Uses of Name Meanings in Old English Poetry,” Neuphilologishe Mitteleiungen 69 (1968):161-71. Eugene R. Kintgen, “Wordplay in The Wanderer,” Neophilologus 59 (1975): 119-27. J. R. Hall, “Perspective and Wordplay in the Old English Rune Poem,” Neophilologus 61 (1977): 453-60; Janet Bately, “Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” in Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, 2 vols., ed. Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens (Collegeville, Minn.: HMML, Saint John’s Abbey and University, 1979), 1:233-54; Stewart, Ann Harleman, “Inference in Socio-Historical Linguistics: The Example of Old English WordPlay,” Folia Linguistica Historica 6 (1985): 63-85; Lawrence T. Martin, “Bede’ s Structural Use of Wordplay as a Way to Truth,” in From Cloister to Classroom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder, Cistercian Studies 90 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1986); Alfred Wollmann, “Early Christian Loan-Words in Old English,” in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L.A.J.R. Houwen, and A. A. MacDonald, Mediaevalia Groningana 16 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995); Eric Gerald Stanley, “Playing upon Words I,” Neuphilologishe Mitteleiungen 102:339-56; and ibid., “Playing upon Words, II,” Neuphilologishe Mitteleiungen 102 (2001): 451-68.

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brew readers in Anglo-Saxon England, the explanation of the meaning of the name of Jesus was not lost on Old English authors. The locus classicus for word-play on Jesus’ name is Matthew 1:21. In that verse, the angel of the Lord is appearing to Joseph in a dream and informing him that he is about to become a father through miraculous means. Furthermore, the boy’s name is to be Jesus, “God saves,” because he will save his people from their sins. In Aramaic or Hebrew, as pointed out above, the name “Jesus” and the verb “save” would share the same root. When translated into Greek, however, that etymological connection is lost. The Greek text reads: Tέξεται δὲ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν· αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν.7 “She will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” A reader/auditor who is not aware of Hebrew or Aramaic would not grasp the linguistic wordplay nor its theological significance. At least since the second century, Church doctrine taught that Matthew was the first gospel written and that it was originally written in Hebrew. This derives directly from the subapostolic writer Papias, whose writings are not extant. Several early writers, however, cite Papias’ statement, including Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian, and later, Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome. Papias was a disciple of the apostle John, or so Irenaeus informs his readers, and if true. his testimony goes back to the first century. Papias states: περὶ δὲ τοῦ Ματθαῖου ταῦτ’ εἴρηται· Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ’ αὐτὰ ὡς ἧν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος. Concerning Matthew, he writes: “Matthew wrote the oracles of the Lord in Hebrew and each interpreted (or translated) as best he was able.”8 This lore becomes part of church tradition and so the name “Jesus” meaning “God saves” becomes part of that tradition as well. The problem is the same when the biblical text is translated into Latin. The Latin Vulgate reads: Páriet autem fílium: et vocábis nomen ejus Jesum: ipse enim salvum fáciet pópulum suum a peccátis eórum.” The Latin text of the Vulgate follows the Greek text for the most part. As in Greek, the linguistic connection between Jesus’ name and its meaning is a connection that does not occur in Latin. So once again Jesus’ name is transliterated. There is a slight difference in most Latin texts that is worthy to note. Rather than as in the Greek text where the name Jesus is explained with the verb σωζω “swzw” “to save,” the Latin text contains a variation seldom noticed: rather 7 German Bible Society, Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (Deutsche Biblelgesellschaft). http://www.nestle-aland.com/en/read-na28-online/text/bibeltext/lesen/stelle /52/ (last accessed August 12, 2017). 8 Eusebius Caesearae, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. G. Bardy (Lyon: Sources Chretienne, 1955).

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than the verb “to save,” the Vulgate uses the verb facio, to do, to make and the adjective salvum safe, unhurt, preserved. A literal translation of the phrase in the Vulgate would be: “. . . name Jesus, for he will make his people safe from their sins.”9 The grammatical structure of the Latin sentence in Matthew 1:21 encourages the Old English translator. Combine that syntactic structure with the meaning discussed above and the love of word play, and the name Hælend becomes an obvious choice. Though late in the period when the name for Jesus, Hælend, is already traditional, Aldred’s gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels at Matthew 1:21 translates the Latin text: “. . . genemne đu nama is hælend đa ilca ec forđon hal doeđ he gegewerccas folc his.” “You will name him Hælend because he will make his people hale.”10 The connection between the name Hælend and “hal” reflects the meaning of the name, at least as Anglo-Saxons understood it, as well as utilizes word play between the adjective and the past participle. Unlike the Latin and Greek translations, however, the literal meaning of the Old English restores the semantic wordplay that is present in the background of the Matthean text, albeit with a shift in semantic emphasis, the linguistic connection between hal and Hælend is made obvious.11 That is to say that in the Matthean text in Hebrew and Aramaic Jesus (Yeshua) is to “save” as in Old English Hælend is to hal, while having different semantic fields, the etymological relationship between name and meaning (and theological significance) is the same. The gospel glosses are not the only texts that make these identifications. Ælfric of Eynsham repeats this identification often. Catholic Homilies I.6 is one example: “þæt is iesus: & on urum gereorde hælend: for þan þe he gehælde his

9

10

11

In addition to the Vulgate, most Vetus Latina manuscripts containing this verse also have this reading. Three exceptions are Codex Bezae d, Codex Sangallensis δ, and Codex Bobbiensis k. These three follow the Greek text with a verb “to save,” explaining the meaning of the name. “Hale,” “whole,” “health,” “holy,” “heal” are all etymologically related in Germanic languages. By way of further comparison, modern English “salve” does not come from Latin salvo, but is a Germanic root. London, British Library, Cotton ms. Nero D.IV fol 29v. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts /FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Nero_D_IV. The gloss to the Rushforth Gospels reads: þu nemnest his noma hælend he selfe soþlice he gehæleþ folc his from hiora synnum following the secondary reading in the Vetus Latina mentioned previously. The West Saxon Gospels at Matthew 1:21translate the Vulgate as follows: Witodlice heo cenđ sunu ond þu nemst his name Halend. The text leaves the subordinate clause out of the equation. The West Saxon Gospel text transcribed from London, British Library, Royal ms. 1.A.XIV fol. 34r. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_1_a_xiv_fs001r.

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folc fram heora synnum.”12 “That is Jesus and in our tongue Hælend: because he healed his folk from their sins.” The Old English Martyrology likewise remarks on this connection on January 1, the liturgical feast of the Naming of Jesus.13 These examples, however, are rather late in the history of the Christianization of England. The change from “God saves” as the understood name of Jesus in the Matthean text to Haelend, Healer, as the vernacular name of Jesus in Old English must have come before it becomes so frequent in tenth and eleventh century texts. Even the late ninth century martyrology is late for these purposes. The first reference to Jesus as Hælend comes from the seventh century poem Dream of the Rood, line 25, where Hælendes treow, “the Healer’s tree,” is used to describe the cross. If then Jesus is already known by Hælend that early, the identification and use of hal, halian, and Hælend for “saved, to save, and Savior” must have already occurred. It is difficult to trace how early this understanding of the person of Jesus entered into Anglo-Saxon thought since most of the early Anglo-Saxon texts that speak of Christianity were written in Latin. Nonetheless, they may give us some idea of how this developed. The Venerable Bede would be a likely place to find the equation of Latin salvator with Old English Hælend. Regrettably the equation is not in Bede. Bede does discuss the meaning of Jesus’ name regularly. In his sermon on the Naming of Jesus (Homilia I.6), Bede cites Isidore of Seville in saying: “Iesus hebraice latine salutaris siue salvator dicitur.”14 “Jesus in Hebrew is said in Latin ‘healthful’ or ‘savior.” It is this phrase from Isidore that may have given the AngloSaxon church the idea to translate “Jesus” as Hælend. Salvator is defined as a savior, a preserver, and is used by the Latin fathers, the Vulgate, and medieval writers to translate the Greek σωτηρ, “soter,” savior. Salutaris on the other hand, indicates health, well-being, wholeness. It is this difference in semantic fields that may have suggested to the Anglo-Saxons a somewhat different approach and understanding of Jesus.

12 13 14

Aelfric, Æelfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Peter Clemoes, Early English Text Society, First Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Rauer, Christine, Old English Martyrology (Woodbridge. D S Brewer, 2016). Bede, Bede the Venerable: Homilies on the Gospels, Book 1, L.T. Martin (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991). Isidore, Book 6. The previously mentioned sermon by Ælfric is dependent on these sermons by Bede; obviously the former supplies the vernacular name of Jesus whereas the latter does not. Further, another possible influence is Augustine of Hippo’s theology of sin outlined in Confessiones and Civitas Dei: sin and evil are “twisted” or un-whole good; salvation in that sense then would be to make the twisted straight, the broken or wounded whole. Both Isidore and these Augustinian works were available to Bede and possibly earlier.

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Bede does not mention the Old English wordplay in his surviving works. In the Commentaria in Lucam, Bede discusses the meaning of Jesus’ name with numerology.15 Even though Bede is in fact quite interested in Hebrew meanings of names and words, including Jesus and Christ in his theology, very much reading the New Testament into the Old, he eschews delving into his native tongue.16 Given Bede’s choice of language, Latin, and other Anglo-Saxon writers working in Latin, the choice of Hælend for the name of Jesus emphasizing a healing aspect did not come from the monastic or Latin Christological concerns. It is more probable that the choice was made for evangelical reasons, even if suggested by Isidore’s phrase. As Bede illustrates in his lives of Cuthbert, while the nobility received some catechetical instruction, especially those taught Latin, the people received little. Bede’s ideal bishop traveled his diocese teaching the lay people in their own language as much as ministering to monks, priests, and nobility.17 In fact, one of the earliest episodes in the Vita Prosa illustrates to Cuthbert the need for catechetical teaching to the laity in Northumbria in their own language, an objective for which the good saint prays earnestly in that chapter. It is likely then that Hælend is chosen as the vernacular presentation of Jesus in order to aid Christian conversion and education of the early Anglo-Saxons. There is additional evidence that suggests that, at least for the laity, the notion of the “savior” being a “healer” is the most important attribute of Jesus. The first evidence for this is the use and presence of the læcdomes, or “charms,” which were apparently widely used in Anglo-Saxon culture. Many of these charms deal with healing or health of humans, animals, or the land itself. Thus, the charm for unfruitful land invokes Domine, using the Latin word as a magical incantation. The charm known as the Nine Herbs Charm by modern scholars mentions divinities three times. At line 32a, Odin is described as defeating a snake with “nine glory rods” of herbs. A few lines later witig Drihten, the wise Lord, is mentioned as creating two herbs while he hung and suffered 15 16 17

Bede, In Lucam, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnout: Brepols, 1960). See discussion on Lk. 2:11. Fleming, Damian. 2013. “‘Jesus That Is Haelend’: Hebrew Names and the Vernacular Savior in Anglo-Saxon England,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 1: 26-47. In specific reference to Cuthbert, see Bede, Two Lives of St. Cuthbert: A Live by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), especially noteworthy is chap. 3, 161-64. For fuller discussion of Bede’s views, see Carole Newlands. “Bede and Images of Saint Cuthbert,” Traditio 52 (1997): 73-109. Since Alan Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal of Reform,” in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Patrick Wormald (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 130-53, a great deal of work has been done on Bede’s notions of reform and the place of bishops and abbots in that reform.

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on the tree. This could be a reference to either Jesus on the cross or to Odin hanging on the world tree, an issue to which we shall return. Regardless, it shows the association of the divine with healing herbs and charms. Finally in this charm, Christ is said to have stood over illness, Crist stod ofer adle.18 These are but examples. Although there are charms and similar literature that use Jesus, Christ, and the Christian “Lord” in other contexts, such as finding lost cattle, the association of Jesus with healing in the context of popular religion is well-established.19 During the Anglo-Saxon missions to the continent, the same emphasis on Jesus as healer is clearly seen in The Heliand. This text is an adaptation into Old Saxon of the Diatesseron harmony of Tatian from the 2nd century. In an early ninth century context, it is thought to be a work whose principle aim is to reframe the gospel story into a Germanic context as both a didactic text and a text to aid in conversion of the Saxons.20 In this endeavor, the names that are used to describe Jesus are illustrative of what is vitally important to the audience. The text knows the names/terms “Jesus,” “Christ,” and the like, but the poet chooses to give Jesus’ name as “Heliand.”21 Perhaps more important is the fact that the poet calls Jesus/Heliand the heleandero bezt, “the best of healing men,” four times throughout the text. The only other epithet used more often is barno bezt “best of children.” Four times the poet calls him “the healing Christ.” The poet also uses the term neriando Crist four times as well; nerian in Old Saxon is defined as “to heal.” This emphasis on the healing power, and deeds, of Jesus illustrates the importance that healing had for the Germanic populace during this conversion period.22 18 19

20

21 22

Dobbie, E. V. K., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1968), 120. Jolly, Karen Louise, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Edward Pettit, Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585: The Lacnunga, Vol. 1-2 (Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellon Press, 2001); Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore, and Healing (Hockwold-cum-Wilton Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003); Olson, Lea “Latin Charms of Medieval England: Verbal Healing in a Christian Oral Tradition,” Oral Tradition 7 (1992), 116-142. Dennis H. Green, “Three Aspects of the Old Saxon Biblical Epic Heliand,” in The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century, eds. Dennis H. Green and Frank Siegmund (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003). 256. Cathey, J. E., Heliand Text and Commentary. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2012), 36, li 266. It should be noted too that the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatesseron also names Jesus as Heilant, the cognate form of Heliand and Hælend. Harrison, Perry. Conversation with the author, 2017.

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In addition, the Heliand poet emphasizes the healing miracles of Jesus. The poet excises many of the miracles recorded in the Diatesseron and chooses instead to focus on certain miracles. Of the thirty-one miracles in Tatian’s harmony, the Heliand poet chooses thirteen. Of that thirteen, seven deal with healing the sick or raising the dead. Further, two of the healing miracles are sections of the epic that the poet uses to demonstrate key elements of Christology. In fitt 28, the healing of the lame man, the poet emphasizes Christ’s divinity in terms that the ninth century would understand. In the healing of the men born blind, the poet expands on the the nature of sin and salvation. In fact, it is in that scene too that the poet at last engages in epic address, speaking directly to the audience of the poem for the first and only time, a principle feature of epic poetry.23 That the poet chooses that moment of healing blind men to address the audience on the nature of Jesus is an important reshaping of the gospel material to suit the poet’s catechetical purposes. The Heliand is important in this study in that it provides a window on Anglo-Saxon missions not otherwise afforded to us. The Carolingians in converting the Saxons relied heavily on Anglo-Saxon monastic foundations, particularly that of Fulda, where the Heliand was likely written. One may speculate that Old English biblical poems such as Genesis A and Exodus influenced and inspired biblical literature of the Saxons, Genesis B and The Heliand. The source text for the latter, Codex Fuldensis, spent time in Anglo-Saxon England in the late seventh and early eighth centuries before coming to Fulda where that version of Tatian’s Diatesseron had an influence on readings in the Lindisfarne Gospels among other texts.24 Certainly the term “hælend” as the name of Jesus, and which the Anglo-Saxons seem to have invented, would have been exported to Saxony as it is not the most obvious term to translate Latin salvator or the semantically unknown Jesus. Little wonder then that in efforts to convert and educate the lower classes in particular, a divine Healer would be of more interest and usefulness than a warrior Christ.25 This explains the choice of hælend as the name and title of Jesus Christ, Salvator in Old English. It is next to impossible to offer a 23 24 25

Perry Harrison, Divine and Diabolical Power in Old English and Old Saxon Literature. (PhD Dissertation, Baylor University, in process). Brown, Michelle Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), 167. Ronald G. Murphy, Saxon Savior: Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth Century “Heliand.” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) discusses the “warrior-hero Christ” in some detail. See also Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 99-102. James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (New York [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996) 169-70. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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simple, direct account of early medieval views of the sick and disabled. Primary sources are few. Specialized vocabulary does not seem to have been used or preserved. On the other hand, in all pre-modern societies, the need for healing and good health was keenly felt; in Anglo-Saxon England, one need only look to the previously mentioned charms, remedies, herbals, and other books to demonstrate that there was a strong interest in health and well-being.

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Christ as Warrior

Speaking of the “warrior Christ” in the previous paragraph, this is another prevalent view of Jesus in the Anglo-Saxon period and in early medieval Germanic society as a whole.26 As Margaret Schaus observed, “The spread of Christianity to northern Europe required a shift in the gender of Christ to the warrior masculinity that was the ideal there.”27 In Germanic society, the relationship between lord and thegn was a personal one. If we take Beowulf and other heroic poetry and the images of society therein at something of a face value, the literature presents us with lords who all but live with their retainers constantly. The thegn is given shelter, lands, and income. To some degree, this image is confirmed in the historical documents, even as royal power becomes more centralized. In all, the relationships here are largely kin based and certainly personal. Most of the heroic vocabulary that is borrowed and then used to describe Jesus comes from vocabulary used to describe and name both human leaders as well as pre-Christian divine figures: waldend, hlaford, frea, dryhten, cyning, and similar terms.28 In addition to using a common vocabulary, Christian and Germanic imagery becomes fused.

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27

28

Such a view is rooted in the biblical text. In addition to Christian Old Testament references to God as a warrior, especially in the Psalms, the New Testament also contains multiple such references to Christ. See in particular Ephesians, especially chap. 4, and the book of Revelation’s depiction of the warrior Christ at the final battle of Armageddon, among other passages. For treatment of a medieval theology, see Alison Finlay, “The Warrior Christ and the Unarmed Hero,” in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, ed. Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986) 19-29. Margaret Schaus, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 312 and Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 9-38. It should be noted that this is not unusual. Even in the Hebrew Bible, terms and names for kings are also used of the divine. This is true of the Norse tradition as well, both pre-Christian and Christian. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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In the Dream of the Rood, a late seventh, early eighth century poem, imagery of the Germanic warrior is fused with the person of Jesus. Told through the eyes of a “thegn,” the cross on which Jesus died, the reader is presented with the thegn’s point of view. The Rood in relating the crucifixion first depicts itself as one of Christ’s warriors, ready to fell all his enemies (li. 35-38). Repeatedly the cross states that he was obedient to the Lord and did not dare disobey. The Rood’s statements and viewpoint are similar to the views of the speaker in the later poem, The Wanderer. There too the warrior/speaker remarks on his obedience to his lord, and mourns the lord’s death. There too, it is the thegn who speaks. In addition to the Rood’s role as a thegn in the poem, the Rood describes Jesus in warrior terms. The “warrior” strips himself, ascends the cross himself, and there hangs on the tree. Warriors are described as taking Christ down from the cross and interring him in an “earth-hall,” and there mourning in a scene reminiscent of the burials in Beowulf. The vocabulary and scene depicted in the poem illustrate an image of Jesus as warrior.29 A poem seldom discussed in this vein is titled Descent into Hell preserved in the Exeter Book. The poem creatively relates the story of the Harrowing of Hell, based on The Gospel of Nicodemus, a second century text that had a wide influence on Late Antique and Medieval theology, informing the Holy Saturday liturgy.30 The Anglo-Saxon poet is fairly faithful to his source. Jesus approaches the gates of the city of Hades or Hell and in spite of demonic reinforcements, all give way before Him. There is no battle. Yet the Old English poet is able to introduce warrior imagery in his description of Christ calling

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Michael D. Cherniss, “The Cross as Christ’s Weapon: The Influence of Heroic Literary Tradition on The Dream of the Rood,” ASE 2 (1973): 241-52; Kathleen E. Dubs, “Hæleð: Heroism in The Dream of the Rood,” Neophilologus 59 (1975): 614-15; M.L. del Mastro, “The Dream of the Rood and the Militia Christi: Perspective in Paradox,” American Benedictine Review 27 (1976): 171-86; Anne L. Klinck, “Christ as Soldier and Servant in The Dream of the Rood.” Florilegium 4 (1982): 109-16; Alison Finlay, “The Warrior Christ and the Unarmed Hero,” in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, ed. Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), 19-29. Katherine Anne Smith Collet, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in Anglo-Saxon England” (Diss. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1982) – DAI 42A: 4822; Antonette diPaolo Healey, “Anglo-Saxon Use of the Apocryphal Gospel,” in The Anglo-Saxons: Synthesis and Achievement, ed. J. Douglas Woods and David A. E. Pelteret (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), 93-104; C.W. Marx, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in Old and Middle English,” in The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus, ed. Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 158 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1997), 207-59.

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him: Sigebearn (Victory-Child), Heofona Helm (helm of heaven), cyning (king), and similar words of the warrior ethos. Even late in the period, depictions of Jesus as the “warrior” continue, or at least were revived in the Viking period. One important tale in this regard is preserved in the late twelfth century Chronicle of Waltham Abbey.31 The Waltham Chronicler relates how Tovi, a Christian Dane circa 1035, discovered on his land a crucifix carved in black marble. He had it brought to Waltham, established a chapel and installed two priests and richly endowed the place. Tovi’s wife adorned the crucifix with her own jewelry. Tovi himself girded the crucified Christ with his own sword. Tovi’s act in this instance is an act of devotion. Just as his wife is devoting her jewelry to be melted down, the gold giving the crucifix a golden crown and the jewels decorating the cross, a physical manifestation of the gold and jewel encrusted Rood of the Dream poem, Tovi’s draping of his sword on the crucifix is also an act of worship and honor of Jesus on the cross. There can be little better evidence of a warrior’s devotion to Jesus than this image of a warrior nobleman sacrificing his sword to adorn an image of Jesus. A few decades later Harold Godwinson was on his way to London after the Battle of Stamford Bridge and stops at Tovi’s chapel, according to the Waltham Chronicler. There, the king worshipped, and the later legend recorded that as Harold worshipped with bowed head, the head of Jesus also bowed sorrowfully gazing on the head of the king, taken by the priest who witnessed it as a sign of what was to come at Hastings. It is the moment, though, of a warrior king returning victorious from battle worshipping at a crucifix draped with a warrior’s sword that captures the attention. Sadly, we have little evidence of such personal devotion based on warrior culture, but these two instances of eleventh century warrior adoration demonstrate that the same culture that gave rise to the Dream of the Rood in the seventh and early eighth centuries survives to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. One of the issues in discussing the image of Jesus as warrior is that modern scholarship calls this image “the warrior Christ” or something similar, distancing the concept in some way from the real life of the people offering their devotion. It must be recalled that for this understanding of Christ to resonate meaningfully in the Anglo-Saxon church, it must resonate with the cultural mores it adopts and adapts. The thegn-lord relationship was a highly personal one in which what holds society together is the thegns’ loyalty to the lord and 31

Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall, eds., The Waltham Chronicle: An Account of the Discovery of Our Holy Cross at Montacute and Its Conveyance to Waltham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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the lord’s loyalty to this thegns. The glorification of battle that resulted in lands and wealth was not simply a poetic nicety preserved for us in Beowulf, Hildebrandslied, and other such texts. Rather, it was the structure of society, romanticized, glorified, and embellished in the literature. As such, these descriptions of Jesus as warrior should not be taken as a “theology,” but rather as deeply personal devotions with an image of Jesus adapted to Germanic warrior culture. At both ends of the Christianization process, the visionary of the Dream and the examples of Tovi and Harold demonstrate that personal devotion clearly.

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Jesus and the Norse Myth

A related image to the “warrior-Christ” and likewise syncretistic, is the fusion of Odin and Jesus. The tale of Odin who sacrificed himself in Yggdrasil, sacrificing himself to himself, is recorded in Havamal in the Poetic Edda. Odin is said to have hung in the world tree for nine days before falling and receiving the runes. Depictions of Odin in the tree have his arms outstretched. It was easy for Christians and pagans to fuse the image of Odin’s arms outstretched in the tree with Jesus’ arms extended on the cross. A very clear example of this fusion is one of the Jelling Stones. The Jelling Stones were created by Harold Bluetooth to honor his parents shortly after he converted to Christianity in Denmark in the tenth century. On one of the stones is a male figure with his arms extended outwards, entwined in twisting vines. The figure is clearly identified in this instance since the figure has a nimbus behind its head clearly identifying it as Christ. But without that signal, the depiction of just such a figure would have been very familiar to a Norse audience. Such imagery where the only major difference between Odin and Jesus is the nimbus would make transitions between one religious faith and the other. The Gosford Cross is another example of this dual image.32 On the east side of the cross is a panel that depicts three figures, one large male with arms outstretched, and below him a second male figure and a female figure. The panel has been interpreted as a depiction of either the death of Balder or the crucifixion of Christ. Regarding the former, the large figure would be Balder

32

Thomas H. Ohlgren, “The Crucifixion Panel on the Gosforth Cross: a Janusian Image?” OEN (1987) 20.2 (1987): 50-51; Lilla Kopár, “The Colorful Fabric of Time: Contemporary Reception and Intellectual Background of Viking-Age Stone Carvings on the Example of the Gosforth Cross,” in ‘What, Then, Is Time?’ Responses in English and American Literature, ed. Tibor Fabiny, Pázmány Papers in English and American Studies 1 (Piliscsaba, Hungary: Pázmány Péter Catholic University, 2001), 46-55.

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with Loki and a Valkyrie depicted underneath. In Christian terms, the large figure would be Jesus crucified with Longinus and Mary Magdalene underneath. Both Longinus and Mary were understood as symbols of the gospel being taken to the Gentiles and so would fit the context of the newly converted Norsemen in Northumbria in the late ninth or early tenth centuries. On the Isle of Man is a stone cross known as Thorvald’s Cross. Usually dated to the mid-tenth century, the cross depicts a figure on one side with a spear pointed downward toward the wolf eating his foot with a raven or eagle upon his shoulder, a Celtic cross in the background. This image is usually interpreted as Odin at Ragnorok being eaten by Fenrir. The reverse side depicts another human figure treading on snakes with another man holding a book nearby; this is taken to be Christ defeating Satan. Often the cross is taken as syncretism, but rather than fusion, it is a work that distinguishes Norse religion from Christianity and shows the latter triumphing over the former. Christ in the Christian myth is successful in his battle against the devil and evil; Odin and the Æsir are defeated at Ragnorok. Returning to the previously discussed Dream of the Rood, the central scene of that poem is clearly the ascent of the tree by the warrior Jesus (li. 39-45). In that scene, the vocabulary and depiction use no explicitly Christian vocabulary or descriptions. Were it not for the surrounding text, the dreamer, contemplation of sin, the juxtaposition of gory tree with gold and jewel encrusted cross, the scene could be Odin’s ascent into Yggdrasil just as easily as a depiction of the warrior Jesus. One in fact might argue that it was originally a part of the Odin myth that the poet has recast to describe Christ. It would be a literary appropriation showing Christ’s success in a way similar to that of Thorvald’s Cross.33

4

Transformation of the Warrior

Christus Victor, Christ the Victor, is a popular late antique and medieval perception of Jesus’ success on the cross-overcoming sin, death, and the devil. This image of Jesus as the victorious warrior as described above begins to change in the ninth century. Already this early, the roots of the suffering Jesus that will be preeminent in the twelfth century and later medieval culture are beginning to grow. This transformation inverts the popular and early image

33

Leslie Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New History (London: The British Museum Press, 2012), 44-45.

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of Jesus as a warrior and hero into a Jesus who at least at first examination is anything but a warrior. Warriors have weapons, as the eleventh century Tovi demonstrates above, supplying Jesus with a warrior’s sword. In the gospels Jesus has no weapons; it is suffering that is deemed his victory throughout the New Testament. The instruments of Jesus’ suffering become his “weapons” in the arma Christi tradition which first appears in the ninth century. The arms of Christ are the instruments of Christ’s torture, sometimes as simple as the cross, spear, crown of thorns, and flail with which he was tortured; in later traditions, often as many as twenty different implements are depicted. In the Utrecht Psalter, a ninth century Carolingian manuscript, at Psalm 21, the artist depicts the cross, spear, flail, and crown of thorns illustrating a psalm that was understood as a prophecy of the crucifixion. This psalter came to England and influenced late Anglo-Saxon art including the eleventh century Harley Psalter and the twelfth century Eadwine Psalter, both of which reproduce the image for Psalm 21. Instruments of torture are in this artistic depiction transformed into weapons of a victorious warrior who succeeds not through battle but through suffering. Another significant transformation of perceptions of kings and Jesus begins in the late ninth century and into the tenth and involved royal political theology. All over Northwestern Europe, nomenclature and thought changed from perceiving the king as the rex vicarius Dei to rex vicarius Christi, king as substitute of God to substitute of Christ. One of the results of this changing conception in royal imagery is a change in how the royal person was conceived. In England, this is best illustrated by Abbo of Fleury’s work on Edmund of East Anglia. Abbo imports to England notions current in Frankia and under some debate there about the king as vicar of Christ and what that meant in contrast to the older, sacral war leader model. This discussion, however, fits well into current political discussions in the reign of Æthelred II. During the reign of Æthelred II the Vikings returned to England for the first time in thirty years. Æthelred’s father, Edgar the Peaceful, had not had to deal with the Vikings during his rule, 959-975. Edgar had supported the Benedictine Reform and with the aid of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Æthelstan, Bishop of Winchester, had set the church in England on a new path. The Vikings do return, attacking first in 982 and in most years of the next decade; then in 992, they are constantly in England until the reign of Cnut brings peace in 1016. Æthelred’s initial policy is to do nothing: in the early years of the Viking raids, there seems to be no official policy or response. Some of the nobles seem to have been frustrated with that response and took matters into their own hands mounting armed responses, which ended disastrously for the English.

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One possible explanation for this apparent silence is the understanding of the king as the image of Christ. While Jesus is perceived as a victor over sin, death, and the devil, his weapons, as stated previously, are weapons of suffering and torture rather than weapons of war. This lead to a position argued by the English Benedictine Reformers that kings should not lead their forces into battle. This is a significant change from kings like Alfred, his daughter, son, and grandson, all of whom fought the Vikings in person, less than a century before Æthelred II. Abbo as he tells the tale of St. Edmund, king of East Anglia, states in his prologue that he heard the tale from Dunstan in 984. Dunstan at that point is the chief counselor for the king as well as the leading ecclesiastic. The tale that Dunstan supposedly relates about Edmund is that the king of East Anglia when faced with the Viking Great Army passively and willingly gave up his weapons, traded his life in the hope of converting the pagan Viking hoards, and was martyred. The Vikings first use Edmund for target practice, filling his body with arrows like St. Sebastian, then they torture him and finally they behead the king. Abbo peppers his text with references to the Jesus’ suffering in the gospels. Edmund, in giving up his arms, is speaking with his bishop who has counseled him to give up his crown and flee. Edmund’s initial reply to the Vikings is that he will follow the example of Christ, and he as a Christian king will not submit to a heathen king unless that king and his followers become Christian.34 Edmund is taken before Ingvar, and this is compared to the trial of Jesus before Pilate, his tortures compared to the tortures Jesus underwent, and in the end his death is said to “have followed the footsteps of Christ.”35 Edmund sacrifices himself for the greater good in an imitatio Christi explicitly forsaking martial responses: no army, no weapons, no defensive gear. This image of the king suffering as Jesus suffered is a vastly different image than the Jesus in Dream of the Rood. The development from an image of Jesus willingly and willfully ascending the cross to die as a warrior to the submissive, passive, suffering Christ is a significant change; both images involve terminology and imagery that involve kingship as the apex of a warrior society. Underlying both termini is the emphatic notion of Jesus as Healer. This is exemplified most clearly, in my view, in the cult of St. Edward the Confessor, son of the previously mentioned Æthelred and the last Anglo-Saxon king. 34

35

Michael Winterbottom, ed., Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972). Available online http://torrencia.org/edmund/home.htm, chap. 9. Ibid., chap. 11.

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Even during his lifetime whispers of Edward’s sanctity were spread abroad; this in part was Edward’s reaction to being forced to marry Edith Godwinson, with whom he refused to consummate the marriage. Edith, in her biography of her husband, relates his sanctity, his desire to have a celibate and holy marriage, undoubtedly making her transition to a nunnery much easier under the new regime of William the Conqueror. In any case, both during his lifetime and especially after his internment, there are several miracles attributed to Edward. Later, these miracles will give rise to the tradition of the “royal touch” wherein the king would touch the ill, particularly the poor, and heal their diseases, particularly scrofula.36 This notion of the “royal touch” becomes widespread among the English and the French during the late medieval and early modern period.37 William of Malmesbury discusses the miracles of Edward the Confessor; William is explicitly clear that those who attribute Edward’s miracle working power to his regalis hereditate, his royal heritage, rather than his sanctity are mistaken. What William’s comment illustrates, however, is that there were those in the late eleventh and early twelfth century who did in fact believe that it was because Edward was royal that he was able to perform healing miracles. Regrettably, William does not offer any further background on why folk would associate thaumaturgy and royalty, nor does any other contemporary writer. Modern discussions examining the tradition of the “royal touch” also show a remarkable lack of curiosity on the origins of the belief. A very probable suggestion of the origin of the belief of royal thaumaturgy stems from the development in political theology discussed above. If the king is seen as the vicar of Christ, and if as in Abbo and Dunstan’s tale, kings in some way participate in the sufferings of the hælend, the healer of body and soul, it is a very small step from such an understanding of the royal person to the king thought to be performing Christ-like actions, vicarius Christi. Certainly, during the eleventh century concepts of royalty and kingship are in

36 37

Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (New York, NY: Dorset Press, 1989), Bk. I. In Shakespeare’s time, the earliest king to whom this healing touch is attributed is Edward the Confessor, and though Shakespeare is dependent upon the historian Holinshed for his information, the playwright nonetheless makes the tradition his own in Macbeth where the saintly Edward stands in stark contrast to Macbeth. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Aragorn and his healing hands in Return of the King likewise is a twentieth century literary treatment of this motif.

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significant flux, especially as the Investiture Controversy became significant just after Edward the Confessor’s lifetime.38 The combination of the sacerdotal as well as regal roles of the king predate the Christian era, and even in early medieval political theology, the fusion of the royal and priestly functions in the person of the king are common: the Anglo-Saxon writer Cathwulf explicitly attributes this fused role to Charlemagne and his son, Louis the Pious, who in his “Admonition to the all the Orders of the Kingdom” states that God has installed him as king to protect the realm and the church. Secular kingship is thus understood as Christian ministry modeled on Jesus himself. This understanding of kingship is accompanied by the development of the anointing kings, and the increased sacralization of the royal person at the same time results in deemphasis, and eventual disappearance, of the approval of the Witan, the king’s council. This results in more centralization of power on the person of the king through the period resulting eventually in the early modern notion of the divine right of kings and their highly sacral nature. As we see in the Peasants’ Revolt in England of 1381, even questioning the order of society (king and nobles at the top, church, and everyone else at the bottom) is seen as a challenge to divine law. It is vital to see that this begins with an Anglo-Saxon author, Cathwulf, in the eighth century and culminates with the last Anglo-Saxon king, Edward. With Edward, the king as “vicar of Christ” guiding both secular and religious institutions in the kingdom and with Jesus in the vernacular understood primarily and fundamentally as the “Healer,” the next logical conclusion is to attribute to the king the primary understanding of Jesus’ role, healing. It is with this notion that this study comes full circle. While much more could be said regarding Anglo-Saxon literature, art, theology, and political thought, this overview of Jesus from healer, the Hælend, through the warrior Christ transformed to the suffering Christ and the application of these ideas to royalty and the resulting royal touch provides a framework for further study. 38

Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300-1450 (New York, NY: Routledge, 1996; repr. 1998, 2005, 2012), 52.

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Chapter 4

Christ as an Early Irish Hero: the Poems of Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

The eighth-century Irish-language poet, Blathmac son of Cú Brettan, is the author of two remarkable poems on Christ, addressed to the Virgin Mary. Our only witness for them is a seventeenth-century manuscript held in the National Library of Ireland.1 Irish scholars were unaware of their existence until they were discovered in 1953 by Nessa Ní Shéaghdha.2 James Carney published an edition and translation in 1964.3 Carney observes that “Blathmac writes in Irish terms. He deals with Palestine in the beginning of the Christian era, but his vision is essentially a vision of Ireland.”4 I propose in what follows to focus on the Irishness of Blathmac’s narrative. He invites Mary to join him in keening her “beautiful hero”: he presents the keening of a lord or hero as the social norm, and complains that the Jews did not permit the apostles to perform the requisite funerary ritual. He presents the life of Christ as a heroic biography, using the terms and categories of traditional Irish narrative. Moreover, he sets the relationship of Christ to the Jews in terms of the institutional and conceptual framework of early Ireland: the relationship is based on kinship, Christ being related to the Jews through their mother; and on the contractual and reciprocal relation of a lord (flaith) to his “clients” (céili). We know very little about Blathmac. The ascription in the manuscript gives the names of his father and grandfather: Blathmac mac Con Bretan maic

1 For a description of the manuscript, see Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland. Fasc. 2 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1961), 66-68. 2 See David Stifter, “The Language of the Poems of Blathmac,” in Pádraig Ó Riain, ed., The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan: Reassessments. Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 27 (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 2015), 47. 3 James Carney, ed. and trans., The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan together with The Irish Gospel of Thomas and A Poem on the Virgin Mary, Irish Texts Society 47 (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, 1964). 4 James Carney, “Poems of Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan,” in James Carney, ed., Early Irish Poetry (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1965), 53.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_006

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Conguso do Feraib Rois do-rigni in ndúthracht-sa do Mairi & dia mac (“It is Blathmac son of Cú Brettan son of Congus of the Fir Rois [who] has made this devoted offering to Mary and her Son.”)5 The Fir Rois were a population group in South Ulster; Cú Brettan’s death is recorded in the Annals of Ulster as having occurred in 740.6 James Carney observes that Blathmac in the first poem prays that he will live to be old, and infers that “he was young or youngish when he wrote, which may conceivably have been in the lifetime of his father, that is, before 740. However that be, if we date the poems to 750 there can be no great error.”7 The poems indicate that Blathmac was a cleric, acquainted with the scriptures and some apocryphal material. He clearly had some training in the composition of Irish verse, something which was “[p]art of the necessary equipment for an Irish monk with pretensions to learning.”8 The content of the poems, and a comparison of them with Félire Óenguso “The Martyrology of Óengus” (usually dated c. 800),9 has prompted the suggestion that Blathmac was a member of the “movement” or tendency in the early Irish church known as the culdees (Irish céili Dé).10 These poems are all that we have of Blathmac’s work. Unfortunately, the manuscript has suffered considerable damage as well as the loss of some leaves, so that the second poem is incomplete. The first poem comprises 149 quatrains; of the second, 110 quatrains have been included in the standard edition; further fragments of 44 quatrains (nine of them actually being complete) have subsequently been published.11 As usual in early Irish, the poems have no titles.12 In the absence of a title, the convention is to refer to early Irish poems

5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12

Carney, The Poems, 2. The ascription of the second poem is simply In Blathmac cétnae (“The same Blathmac,” Carney, The Poems, 50). The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131), ed. and trans., Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies: 1983), sub anno. James Carney, “Poems of Blathmac,” 45. In the Introduction to his edition, Carney had said: “We may take it that the period of [Blathmac’s] maturity, and consequently of the composition of these poems, fell at latest somewhere in the years 750-70” (Carney, The Poems, xiv). Carney, The Poems, xv. Whitley Stokes, ed., Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1984). Carney, The Poems, xv. Brian Lambkin, “Blathmac and the Céili Dé: A Reappraisal,” Celtica 23 (1999): 132-54. On the céili Dé in general, see Westley Follett, Céili Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages, Studies in Celtic History 23 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006). Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, “The Poems of Blathmhac: The ‘Fragmentary Quatrains,’” Celtica 23 (1999): 227-30. Félire Óengusso is one of a small number of exceptions to this.

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by their first line, but Blathmac’s poems are treated somewhat differently: they are usually spoken of either as a single sequence or individually as the first and second poem, respectively.13 In the first poem, Tair cucum, a Maire boíd, the poet invites Mary to come to him so that together they may “keen” her son: Tair cucum, a Maire boíd, do choíniuth frit do rochoím; dirsan dul fri croich dot mac ba mind már, ba masgérat. Co tochmurr frit mo di láim ar do macind irgabáil; Ísu con-atoí do brú, nícon fochmai th’ógai-siu. (Come to me, loving Mary, that I may keen with you your very dear one. Alas that your son should go to the cross, he who was a great diadem, a beautiful hero. That with you I may beat my two hands for the captivity of your beautiful son: your womb has conceived Jesus – it has not marred your virginity.) (ll. 1-8). The second poem, A Maire, a grian ar clainde, is expressly presented as a sequel to the first, the keening having already been done: A Maire, a grian ar clainde, a mba moí mo chélmainde do mac coínsimmaar – scél maith! – sech is bithbéo, is bithflaith. (Mary, sun of our race, when mine was mystic utterance (célmainde) we keened your son – well and good; he lives eternally, is eternal prince) (ll. 597-600 II).

13

Carney numbered the lines of the poems in a single sequence; citations from the second poem in what follows are marked by adding Roman numeral II to the line numbers. Translations of the text are Carney’s, except where otherwise indicated.

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Both poems refer to successive events in the life of Christ, but in the first of them the emphasis is on his suffering and death, and on the need to lament what has been done to him, whereas the second stresses Christ’s lordship, his resurrection, his ascension, and the promise of his second coming.14 The thematic contrast between the two poems is indicated in their respective opening quatrains: that of the first poem laments the crucifixion, whereas that of the second celebrates the eternal life and reign of Christ in Heaven. The contrast between the two poems is highlighted in Blathmac’s use of the word célmainde. Carney notes that célmainde, usually célmaine, which ordinarily means “omen, warning, portent,” seems to be used by Blathmac in the sense of “mystic utterance, utterance.”15 The (mystic) utterance mentioned at the beginning of the second poem is evidently the keening of Christ in the first poem. Later in the second poem, the word is used not of elegy, but of eulogy: Is ed mo chélmainde nglé: is rí do mac na nemdae; is aí grian asa gel tlacht, is aí a n-éscae n-étracht. Is lais do-midethar med na secht nime im rícheth; is a lám ro-sert indib in fidchill do chainrindib. (This is my clear announcement: your son is king of the heavens. His the brightly clothed sun, his the gleaming moon. He owns the extent that he marks out of the seven heavens about the kingly seat; it is his hand that has strewn in them the gaming-board of beautiful stars.) (ll. 761-68 II).16

14

15 16

For some observations on distinctions of tone and theme between the two poems, see Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, “Devotional and Liturgical Themes in the Poems of Blathmac,” in The Poems of Blathmac, ed. Ó Riain, 159, and the authorities there cited. Carney, The Poems, 141. Célmainde is used once more by Blathmac, this time of the story (scél) of Christ’s triumphant Harrowing of Hell (l. 746 II). On the image of the gaming-board in ll. 767-68, see Carney, Blathmac, 146, note 767-768, and especially Carney “Poems of Blathmac,” 52-53. See also Séan Ó Coileáin, “James Carney,” in Ó Riain (ed.) The Poems of Blathmac, 22-24.

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Ó Cathasaigh Keening Christ

Blathmac’s invitation to Mary to join him in keening her son places him securely in her company, virtually as an equal in grief.17 In the last six quatrains of the first poem (ll. 573-96), he repeats the invitation to Mary, maisrígain (“beautiful queen”), lië lógmar laindrech, [. . . ] máthair in mórchoimdeth (“shining precious jewel, Mother of the great Lord”), to come to him so that they might keen “the bright Christ.” Had Blathmac power over the people of the world, men, women and children would keen with beating of hands the king who created the stars. But since he does not have that power, he would himself lament her son, if only she would come on a visit to him. As is required in early Irish poetry, the final quatrain echoes the first, and the last line of the poem is virtually identical with the opening one. As James Carney and others have noted, it also signals at the outset the Irishness of the poem. English “keen” (as in “keening”) derives ultimately from Old Irish coín-, as in coínid “laments, bewails (the death of)”; coíniud “act of weeping, lamenting.”18 English keen as a verb means “to wail in lamentation, especially for the dead”; as a noun, “a loud, wailing lament for the dead.”19 Coíniud also denotes “elegy, lament,” referring to a literary composition. This meaning is not noted in the Dictionary of the Irish Language, but Blathmac himself attests to it towards the end of “Come to me, loving Mary,” when he says of that very poem cách gébas in coíniud nglan / ra-mbiä a thuarastal (“anyone who shall say the full keen shall have his reward,”, ll. 571-72).20 In his first quatrain, Blathmac calls Mary’s son a hero, using the word gérat. The same word occurs later when Christ is described as his heavenly father’s gérat, which Carney in that context translates “beloved son.” Another word for “hero,” galgat, also occurs twice in the first poem, both of them in the context of keening. In the second quatrain, it becomes clear that what Blathmac has in mind is ritual lamentation, which in Ireland was accompanied by

17

18 19 20

On keening as a “dramatic device” in this poem, see Carney, “Poems of Blathmac,” 46-49. See also Brian Lambkin, “The Structure of the Blathmac Poems,” Studia Celtica 20-21 (1985-86): 67-77; Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, “The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature,” Peritia 5 (1986): 128-130; Alexandra Bergholm, “Keening in the Poems of Blathmac,” in Sacred Histories: a Festschrift for Máire Herbert, ed. John Carey, Kevin Murray, and Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 2-13; and Brian Lambkin, “Blathmac’s Bithchuíniu: Perpetual Keening and Migration,” in P. Ó Riain, ed., The Poems of Blathmac, 119-55. DIL. s.vv. caínid, caíned. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, s.v.. There is a comparable instance at l. 538; see below.

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clapping the hands. Central to Blathmac’s project is his dismay that Christ was not keened in the period that should have been set aside for grieving after his death: nád leth for Críst gubae mór / céin ron-dét bith fo dobrón (“that a great funeral lamentation did not spread over (the body of) Christ during the time that was granted for being in great sorrow,” ll. 495-96). He complains Cenid relcset Iudei sin, / coíniud Críst dia sainmuintir (“the Jews did not suffer that Christ should be mourned by his own people,” ll. 509-10), and draws a contrast with normal (Irish) practice: Coíntir galgat cach duini sluaig fer ocus banchuiri; nícon ralad foíd fri foíd for colainn Críst, in gelmoíth. As-oirc cech teglach co lí bassa fora tigernai; lámchomart for corp Críst glain nícon reilced do apstalaib. (The (slaying of the) hero of every individual of the host of men and women is mourned; no cry meeting cry was raised over the body of Christ, the bright and gentle one. Every splendid household beats hands over their lord; beating of hands over the body of pure Christ was not permitted to apostles.) (ll. 497-504) The keening of Christ is given a cosmic dimension: To-celt grian a soillsi sain, ro-coíni a flaithemain, luid dianteimel tar nem nglas, búiristir rian trethanbras. (The sun hid its own light; it mourned its lord; a sudden darkness went over the blue heavens, the wild and furious sea roared.) (ll. 241-44) Yet Blathmac would have thought that God’s elements no coíntis cruth bath má / in fer trisa torsata (“[they] should have keened in a stronger manner the man by whom they were created”, ll. 263-64). In the immediately preceding quatrain, he says:

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Ó Cathasaigh Ba deithbir do dúilib Dé muir mas, nem nglas, talam cé ce imro-chloítis a ngné oc coíniud a ngalgaite. (It would have been fitting for God’s elements, the beautiful sea, the blue heaven, the present earth, that they should change their aspect when keening their hero.) (ll. 257-60)

We see in that quatrain the characteristically Irish tripartite division of the cosmos – the sky (or heaven), the sea, and the earth.21 There is also the striking notion that Christ is in some sense the “hero” of each division of the cosmos (and hence of the whole). The poet goes on to speak of the forbearance of God the Father at the crucifixion of his only-begotten son; the notion seems to be that the Father did not reveal to the elements dismay at the crucifixion of his son, ol ro-coínset cen dúiri / dia festais a degdúili (“for had his good elements known, they would have keened swiftly,” ll.267-8). Forbearance is further exemplified (though not on this occasion so called) in reference to Christ’s heavenly Father’s inaction in the face of Christ’s passion and crucifixion: nacha toroíd inna ré / d’anacul a géraite (“that he did not send the heavens to protect his beloved son,” ll. 291-2). Carney points out that dia festais “had they known” in line 268 can hardly be taken literally: “It has already been made clear in the preceding verses that the elements did in fact know and mourn. They are restrained from extreme vengeance only by God’s patience.”22 The explanation I think is that while it is true that the heavens and the sea mourned their lord, that action is not the complete cosmic upheaval that might have been expected. The wonder is Nád torchair nem ina chenn, / nachad loisc in teine tenn, / nachad báid rian romro lir (“That the sky did not fall on them, that great fire did not burn them, that the great ocean did not drown them [. . . ],” ll. 269-71); [n]achad sloic in talam trom / cuain truaig do-géni mórglonn (“[t]hat the heavy earth did not swallow them, the miserable pack who committed a great crime,” ll. 273-4). The Irish professional poet expected his patron to reward him handsomely for his work, and if he did not, the poet would satirize him, with potentially destructive effect. The Christian, or at least the clerical poet, would have Christ as his patron – we have an early example of that notion in the surviving verse of Colmán of Cloyne, who expects his heavenly patron to reward him for his 21 22

See Liam Mac Mathúna, “Irish Perceptions of the Cosmos,” Celtica 23 (1999): 174-87. Carney, The Poems, 125, note to line 273.

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poem with divine grace (rath).23 Blathmac, for his part, seeks a threefold reward for his coíniud. He blesses God for giving him the power to compose it: Bendacht for Dia ro-hír dam / in coíniud do-futhracar (“A blessing on God who has granted me the (power of making this) keen I wish for,” ll. 537-8). As against that translation, however, it has been suggested that Blathmac is here crediting God with the authorship of the poem,24 and it should be noted that the Irish text literally means “God who has bestowed the keen upon me.” Blathmac in any case claims that the coíniud will increase the purity of any righteous man who hears it. He asks Mary for her intercession: Rom-bet mo théor aicdi lat, a Maire mass muingelnat; at-ethae, a grian na mban, ót mac conid-midethar. (Let me have from you my three petitions, beautiful Mary, little brightnecked one; get them, sun of women, from your son who has them in his power). (ll. 549-52) For himself he seeks long life and eternal salvation (ll. 553-6). Those who recite the full poem in the prescribed manner are to be saved from Hell: Cach oen diamba figel se fo lige ocus éirge ar imdídnad diänim tall amail lúirech co cathbarr. Cách nod-géba do cach deilb i troscud aidchi Sathairnn acht rob fo déraib cen meth, a Maire, níb ifernach. Fri tuidecht do maic co feirc cona chroich fria ais imdeirc, 23 24

See Calvert Watkins, “The Etymology of Irish Dúan,” Celtica 11 (1976): 274-5. Lambkin, “Blathmac and the Céili Dé,” 133. Lambkin cites this feature as one of the points of similarity between the poems of Blathmac and Félire Óengusso. In the latter, Óengus declares that it was not human knowledge that composed his poem, but the “angelic aid” of Jesus the King (Stokes, Félire Oengusso, 268.)

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Ó Cathasaigh ara soírthar lat in tan nach carae nod-coínfedar. (Everyone who has this as a vigil-prayer at lying down and at rising for unblemished protection in the next world like a breast-plate with helmet; Everyone, whatever he be, who shall say it fasting on Friday night, provided only that it be with copious tears, Mary, may he not be for Hell. At the angry coming of your son with his cross on his reddened back, that at that time you save any friend who shall have keened him.) (ll. 557-68)

Blathmac’s desire that his poem should be like a breast-place recalls the type of prayer called lorica in Latin, lúirech in Irish, supplications for protection against evil “which had a remarkable vogue in mediaeval Ireland.”25 In his boldest move, the poet goes as guarantor (aitire) that cách gébas in coíniud nglan / ra-mbiä a thuarastal (“anyone who shall say the full keen shall have his reward,” ll. 571-2). Aitire, here translated “guarantor,” actually denotes what is known as a personal surety. Suretyship was a significant institution in early Irish society: “in the absence of a state-administered system of justice, much of the responsibility for the enforcement of contracts is borne by private individuals acting as sureties.”26 The aitire was one of three types of surety: he guaranteed the performance of an obligation with his own person: if the principal defaults, the aitire must surrender himself to the aggrieved party. Blathmac for the most part uses legal terminology with considerable precision, but the intricate procedure followed by the aitire can scarcely be in question here.27 It is nevertheless remarkable that the poet should appropriate for himself the function of guaranteeing the delivery of the award that 25

26 27

James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical. An Introduction and Guide. With notes by Ludwig Bieler (New York, N.Y.: Octagon Books, 1966), 254. Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, “Devotional and Liturgical Themes,” 158, notes that Blathmac’s words echo those of St. Paul (1 Thess. 5-8) where he declares Christians to have “the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” She notes further that in comparing his work to a lúirech, Blathmac echoes the words of Cú Chuimne in his early eighth-century Marian hymn Cantemus in omni die: Induamus arma lucis loricam et galiam / ut simus deo perfecti suscepti per Mariam. (“Let us put on the arms of light, the breastplate and helmet, so that taken up (from the ground) by Mary we may be perfected to God.”) Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Early Irish Law Series 3 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988) 167. For an account of the procedure, see Kelly, Guide, 172-3.

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the poet beseeches Mary to request of God. As Carney has put it, “Blathmac involves Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the reader in an intricate process of Irish Law.”28 Blathmac declares that Christ must be keened perpetually: Mairc ro-char mac ríg nime, ad-chondairc a chrólige; cith cách ro-choalae a chlú forda-tá a bithchuíniu. Alas for the one who has loved the son of the King of Heaven and who has seen him lying in blood; even all those who have (merely) heard his fame, it is incumbent upon them to keen him perpetually (ll. 529-32).29 The perpetual keening of the first poem is counterpoised in the second by perpetual praise of the risen Christ: Dot mac canair ar ceól ngnáth, a molthae hi cach oentráth: ‘Is noeb, is noeb, is noeb glan, in Coimdiu, Dia na n-arbar’. Is samlaid canair a nnuall nádcon airchíuir bes bithbuan: co tairbirt, cen deilb ndúre, co filliud cech oenglúine. (To your son is sung our constant hymn, his praise at every hour; ‘Holy, holy, holy, pure is the Lord, God of hosts.’ Thus is sung the eternal hymn that has never withered away: with inclining posture, with no face of gloom, with the bending of every single knee.) (ll. 789-96 II)

28

29

Carney, “Poems,” 47. In Féilire Oengusso, the poet acts as surety for the saints who have blessed everybody who will recite the poem: “I am surety for the grace of him who shall sing it every day. I testify without lies that he will be in the eternal Kingdom,” (Stokes, Féilire Oengusso, 272, qu. 165). On perpetual keening, see Lambkin, “Blathmac’s Bithchuíniu,” 147-55.

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The demeanor described in those lines – bending the head, cheerful countenance and genuflection – is very different from that which accompanies the performance of the keen, as described in the first poem. In particular, the distortion of the face which Lambkin has shown to be a feature of Blathmac’s description of keening30 is understandably contrasted with the cheerful countenance accompanying the singing of Christ’s praise.

2

Depiction of Christ

It has been shown that the lives of many traditional heroes follow a more or less uniform plot or series of motifs, which Jan de Vries has called “the pattern of an heroic life.”31 De Vries describes the status of the pattern with regard to the life of an individual hero as follows: It is not necessary that the lives of all heroes should contain the complete series of these motifs. Yet one always has the impression that a hero’s life is the more or less complete reflection of a pattern in which these elements have their fixed places. Moreover, it appears that the same applies to the contents of myth as well as of fairytale, so that it is possible to draw up a scheme or pattern to which myth, heroic legend, and fairy-tale conform in broad and general outline.32 The first scholar to delineate such a pattern was J. G. von Hahn:33 on the basis of the biographies of fourteen heroes, he proposed his “Aryan Expulsion-andReturn Formula,” which has thirteen motifs, divided into three sections Birth, Youth, and Return and Death, and which has been summarized as follows: In each case, the hero is born illegitimately, out of fear of the prophecy of his future greatness is abandoned by his father, is saved by animals and raised by a lonely couple, fights wars, returns home triumphant, defeats his persecutors, frees his mother, becomes king, founds a city, and dies young.34

30 31 32 33 34

Lambkin, “The Structure,” 75. Jan de Vries, Heroic Song and Heroic Legend (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). De Vries, Heroic Song, 210. Johann Georg von Hahn, Sagwissenschaftliche Studien (Jena: Mauke, 1876). Introduction by Robert A. Segal to Otto Rank and others, In Quest of the Hero (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), vii.

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Many years later, the psychoanalyst Otto Rank produced a study of the pattern based on fifteen biographies, including Moses and Christ, thus establishing that the pattern was not exclusively “Aryan.”35 In 1934, Lord Raglan published his paper “The Hero of Tradition,” which was embodied in a slightly revised form in his book, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama (1936).36 Alan Dundes sets out in parallel columns the patterns of von Hahn, Rank and Raglan.37 Raglan’s pattern comprised twenty-two incidents. Of these, Dundes argues that seventeen might be discerned in the life of Jesus:38 (1) [V]irgin mother, (4) unusual conception, (5) hero reputed to be son of god, (6) attempt to kill hero, (7) hero spirited away [flight into Egypt], (8) reared by foster parents [Joseph], (9) no details of childhood, (10) goes to future kingdom, (13) becomes “king” [cf. the mock title of king of the Jews: INRI], (14) “reigns” uneventfully for a time, (15) prescribes laws, (16) loses favor with some of his “subjects” (e.g. Judas), (17) driven from throne and city, (18) meets with mysterious death, (19) at the top of a hill, (21) the body is not buried, and (22) he has a holy sepulcher.39 I have argued elsewhere that the formulation of the heroic biography offered by Jan de Vries provides the soundest framework for further investigation.40 In the manner of a folktale analysis, he sets up a ten-item sequence from I. The Begetting of the Hero, to X. the Death of the Hero. Within the sequence variant motifs are given and examples cited from many traditions. For example, at I. The Begetting of the Hero, four variant motifs are noted: the mother is a virgin [. . . ]; the father is a god; the father is an animal, often the disguise of a god; the child is conceived in incest.41 Lisa Lawrence has shown that six of de Vries’ 35

36 37

38 39 40 41

Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, trans. F. Robbins and Smith El Jelliffe (New York, N.Y.: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing, 1914). Reprinted Rank and others, In Quest, 1-86. On Moses as traditional hero, see Robert D. Miller II, “Roles of Moses in the Penteteuch,” in Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance, ed. Jane Beal (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 19-36. See Lord Raglan, “The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama, Part II,” in Rank and others, In Quest, 87-175. Alan Dundes, “The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus,” in Rank and others, In Quest, 188-9. Note that this item is omitted from the reprint of the essay in Alan Dundes, Interpreting Folklore (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1980). The numbers are Raglan’s. Alan Dundes, “The Hero Pattern,” 235. Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1977), 6. De Vries, Heroic Song.

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items are found in the biography of Christ recounted in the Gospels,42 and I may add that all of them are found also in Blathmac. Irish literature presents numerous specimens of the heroic biography. There are king-heroes and martial heroes,43 and there are also heroes among the saints.44 The individual realizations of the pattern tend to reflect the function and competence of the hero in question. An exception to this is the pagan god Lug who, as hero among the gods, is omni-competent. Christ shares this quality: he is king, bishop, and sage (ll. 27-28); abbot to his apostles and disciples (l. 107); superior in healing to any physician, (ll. 149-56); ferr fáith, fisidiu cech druí (“better [. . . ] than prophet, wiser than any druid,” l. 27); more vigorous than any wright (or “carpenter”), more just than any judge (ll. 30-32). Christ’s martial qualities are briefly mentioned in the first poem: Con-gart cuci popul mbras / ba hairdairc a óclachas: / da apstal déc diambu ab [. . . ] (“He called to him a stout band of people whose warrior qualities were renowned: twelve apostles [. . . ],” ll. 105-07). As translated that passage sees him as the leader of a warrior band.45 The martial qualities are more robustly extolled in the second poem. Prophesying the avenging of the sufferings of the Christian martyrs, Blathmac declares: Ar as-réracht Ísu án, isin bithflaith is bithslán; dos-fí in soismid sluagach, in coscrach, in cathbuadach. (For splendid Christ has risen: he is eternally safe in the eternal kingdom; the leader with great hosts, the triumphant one, victorious in battle, will avenge them.) (ll. 1025-28 II) It is in his account of the Harrowing of Hell, however, that Blathmac most lavishly celebrates Christ’s martial heroism:46

42 43 44 45 46

Lisa Lawrence, “The Irish and the Incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish Poems of Blathmac.” (Diss., Harvard University, 2002), 42. See Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, The Heroic Biography, 8-11. See Alwyn D. Rees, “The Divine Hero in Celtic Hagiology,” Folk-Lore 47 (1936): 30-41. An alternative translated is possible: “He called to him a stout band of people (his warrior qualities were renowned): twelve apostles” [. . . ]). Carney “Poems of Blathmac,” 54, notes that the topic gives the poet “an opportunity to present Christ as an Irish military hero.” For a valuable discussion of the sequence, see Lisa Lawrence, “The Harrowing of Hell in the Poems of Blathmac and the Gospel of - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Robu coscrach diä chur, a gleten fri diäbul; demun truag ro-decht a blat, tucad airi a mórbrat. Is do mac Ísu ro-lá ima muin secht slabrada ocus cotn-áraig – ní gó! – i n-íchtur a thegdaiseo. Táraill iarum a chorp leis ó ru-llá de in móirgreis, ocus as réracht – scél nglé! – diä Cáscc iar tredensea. A chorp crochtae ba buaid dó, ro-cés testin fínfolo, ní tánaic bréntu ná cruim i n-aimsir a adnacuil. Iarna chrochad frisin éo do-cuaid i tír na mbithbéo; ó ránaic rícheth cen mrath ad-cotathae dagothrath. Ce ro-chés galar n-endaig is chath isnaib hifernaib, a chuimne la Críst ní mó bith aibritiud cotulto. (He was victorious from fighting that, his battle with the Devil. Miserable Devil, his strength was crushed; a great prey was taken from him. It is your son, Jesus, who cast seven chains about his neck and bound him (no falsehood!) in the depth of his dwelling. Nicodemus: Dependence or Convergence?,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 15 (1995), 117-28. See also the discussion of “The Heroic Christ (harrower of hell)” in Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth Century, Studies in Celtic History 20 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002), 151-60. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Ó Cathasaigh He then returned to his body when he cast off the great attack, and he arose (bright tidings!) on Easter day after three days. His crucified body was his victory; he suffered the shedding of winelike blood; no corruption or worm came to him at the time of his burial. After he had been crucified on the cross he went into the land of the ever-living; when he reached untreacherous heaven he received good nursing. Though he suffered a shameful affliction and battle in Hell, Christ’s memory of it was no more that had it been a wink of sleep). (ll. 697-720 II)

Christ on earth had the generosity of a king: he practiced gelgart nglé (“bright gleaming hospitality”, l.109); ba rian robartae rígi / dia n-aithigtis ilmíli (“he was a sea in a spring-tide of kingship to whom many thousands used to flock” ll. 115-6). After the Harrowing of Hell, he ascended into Heaven and became rí na nemdae (“king of the heavens” l.762). Blathmac evidently regarded himself as a storyteller: he uses scél (“story”) for several of the episodes that he recounts in the poems.47 In presenting the life of Christ as a heroic biography, he uses the terms and categories of traditional Irish narrative.48 The medieval Irish poets classified their tales according to their titles, such as “Cattle-Raids,” “Wooings,” “Destructions.” Some of the titles denoted crucial episodes in the heroic biography, others dramatic and often cataclysmic events in society. The transcendental mysteries of conceptionand-birth and death – entering into life and departing from it – are richly represented in the sources. The Irish tale of conception-and-birth is known as compert,49 that of violent death as aided.50 Both of these terms are used by Blathmac.51 The conception-and-birth of the hero is always anomalous. Christ’s incarnation is called a compert (here spelled combairt) early in Blathmac’s first poem: Prímgein Dé Athar fri nem do mac, a Maire ingen; 47 48 49 50 51

See Lambkin, “Structure,” 76. See Lisa Lawrence, “The Irish and the Incarnation, 42. See “Births” in Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961), 213-43. See “Deaths” in Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 326-41. See Lambkin, “The Structure,” 76.

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ro-láithreth hi combairt glain trí rath spirto sechtndelbaig. (The first-born of God, the Father, in Heaven is your son, Mary, virgin: he has been begotten in a pure conception through the grace of the Septiform Spirit). (ll. 21-4) After the introductory quatrain, the second poem proceeds with an extensive account of the Annunciation, and the conception-and-birth of Christ. Blathmac reminds Mary that the angel Gabriel came as a messenger from God to woo her, using the word tochmarc, which occurs in the titles of the Irish wooing tales. He beautifully expresses the mystery of the Incarnation: Ba mad-birt gein soír samdae, Ísu uasal adamrae; con-atail denus it brú, ro-boí-sium ret tuistin-siu. (How well that you bore a noble, summer-like being, Jesus, sublime, renowned; he slept a while in your womb, but he existed before your very begetting) (ll. 629-32 II) As a boy, Christ’s heroic character is manifest in his being [m]aisiu, meldchu, mó macaib (“more beautiful, more pleasant, and bigger than other boys” l.33). His youth is endangered leading to the Flight into Egypt (ll. 73-92). For Blathmac, the crucifixion is Christ’s aided “violent death” (l. 247). The aided is crucially important in the biography of the Irish martial hero: In the creation of the heroic identity of the hero, it is in a sense ultimately more important to be killed than to kill, which is why the character of an heroic tradition may be charted as faithfully in the traditions of the deaths of its heroes as in the endless concatenation of their battles and exploits.52 It will be recalled that Christ is twice called gérat, and twice galgat, both meaning “hero,” and all in the context of his death. Brian Lambkin has made the

52

Proinsias Mac Cana, The Learned Tales of Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1980), 29.

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attractive suggestion that in that usage, Blathmac is “making a connection with Irish secular tradition where the hero is defined as one who nobly dies a violent death.”53 A singular feature of Christ’s heroic biography is that his deeds do not end with his death. In some formulations of the heroic biography, the hero is driven from home in childhood, but later returns, overcomes his enemies, and seats himself on the throne. Von Hahn, as we have seen, called the pattern “The Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula.” Blathmac does not explicitly describe Christ’s sojourn on earth as exile, but the depiction of his return to Heaven, when he has vanquished the devil, is in the heroic mold: Sirsan dot mac – dígrais dál! – ron-ailt-siu a oenurán, arbar sluaig, in méit di huaill, dochum ríchid iar mórbuaid. Céin-mair ro-chualae clais cóir síl Ádaim ima senóir oca atlugud co glé dia coimdith a tesaircne. Deithbir döaib fáilte de fri tórmach a muintire, fri mac a flatho fire, fri loegán a slánsíde. (Happy for your son whom you have reared alone (excellent occasion!) the fine host, the greatness of pride, as they come towards Heaven after a great victory. Happy he who has heard the harmonious choir of the race of Adam led by their ancestor, clearly thanking their Lord who had saved them. It is fitting that they [in Heaven] should joyfully welcome the increase to their household and the son of their true chief, the darling of their safe otherworld dwelling.) (ll. 721-32 II).

53

Lambkin, “Structure,” 71.

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The welcome accorded by the heavenly hosts to mac a flatho fire (“the son of their true chief”) resonates with the heroic biography of the Irish king-hero, Cormac mac Airt. Having been exiled as a child from the seat of kingship where his father had reigned, Cormac trumps the false judgment of the incumbent king with a true judgment. He is instantly recognized as mac na fír-fhlatha (“the son of the true ruler,”) and the men of Ireland consequently elevate him to the kingship.54 In describing Heaven as a safe otherworld dwelling (slánsíd),55 Blathmac has recourse once more to an Irish concept: síd designates an otherworld abode of gods and goddesses, and is a predominant feature of a rich body of vernacular literature. Having been duly recognized as the Son of God, Christ was granted power in Heaven: Do Día athair, ríg inna ríg, / ó do-áirib a chaíngním / do-ratad cumachtae nglan / i nim ocus i talam (“When he recounted his fair deed to God, the Father, king of kings, he was given full power in Heaven and earth” ll. 741-4 II); do-roígu a ríglepaid, / desid co mbuaid ocus bruth / for Dé athar desinriuth” (“he chose his kingly seat; he sat with victorious valour on the right-hand side of God, the Father” ll. 750-2 II).

3

Christ as Sister’s Son

James Carney has said that Blathmac “deals with Palestine in the beginning of the Christian era, but his vision is essentially a vision of Ireland.”56 The relationship between Christ and the Jews is expressed in terms of the Irish social code. The individual freeman in early Ireland owed his social status to two institutions, kindred and the contractual relationship of lord and client. Thus, between Christ and the Jews there is a bond of kinship, since Christ is related to the Jews through his mother, and there is also the contractual relationship between Christ as flaith (lord) and the Jews as céili (clients). The general rule in early Irish law was that the children of a recognized marriage belonged to the father’s family.57 The rights of the maternal kin in relation to the children were strictly limited. There were exceptions to this rule: if the child’s father is an outsider who has come to live in the jurisdictional entity of the mother, his legal standing depends upon his wife, and the child belongs to the mother’s kindred. There were in addition certain 54 55 56 57

Vernam Hull, “Geneamuin Chormaic,” Ériu 16 (1952), 84. The form that occurs in the text is the genitive slánsíde. Carney, “Poems of Blathmac,” 53. What follows here is based on Ó Cathasaigh, “The Sister’s Son.”

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unions that “were of so transitory a nature as to involve no change in the woman’s family membership.”58 The son of such a union would also be a sister’s son. The sister’s son was known in early Irish as nía or gormac, and his mother’s brother was known as amnair. The most celebrated sister’s son in Irish literature is the Ulster hero Cú Chulainn; his mother’s brother was Conchobor, king of Ulster, but he was also regarded as sister’s son to the Ulstermen as a whole.59 In the Irish version of the War of the Gods, Bres is the sister’s son of the whole pantheon to whom he is related through his mother. Similarly, Christ, being the issue of the non-carnal union of Mary and the Holy Spirit, is sister’s son to the Jews. Indeed, he is described elsewhere as sister’s son of mankind.60 Blathmac reminds us time and again that Christ was the Son of God: mac Dé bí (“son of the living God);” Mac Dé Athar do nim (“son of God, the Father in Heaven”); and so on. Emphasis is also laid on Christ’s kinship, through his mother, with the Jews: Ba din tuaith sin terglainn uaig / do glanchombairt a geluain (“it was from that people that he (God) chose a virgin to conceive his white lamb”, ll. 385-6). Two sequences in Blathmac’s first poem dwell on the inappropriate treatment of Christ by his maternal kin (máithre). The first of them begins with the assertion that the Jews grew envious of the beneficence and miraculous powers of Mary’s son, and consequently fobrithe do-beirthe dó / níbu choindfe chobfolo (“the reward that used to be given to him was not a fitting thing in blood-relationship”(ll. 175-6). In the course of a description of the Passion, the poet says: Ar-gab do chenél do mac, a Maire na ssroigliset; atn-ortat in sim uaine co ndornaib tar gormgruaide. Ba gním col, ce no láithre, do-gníth fris – a fírmáithre, crochad doïb-sium ind fir do-dechuid dia tesorcain.

58 59 60

D. A. Binchy, “The Family Membership of Women,” in D. A. Binchy ed., Studies in Early Irish Law (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1946), 184. Ó Cathasaigh, “Sister’s Son,” 142. Ó Cathasaigh, “Sister’s Son,” 142.

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(Your people seized your son; Mary, they flogged him. There struck him the green reed and fists across ruddy cheeks. It was a hideous deed [. . . ] that was done to him: that his very motherkin should crucify the man who had come to save them.) (ll. 181-8) The second sequence begins with Blathmac’s telling us precisely what he is doing: A scél ad-chuäd co glé is do chairiugud Iudae dég ro-crochsat – caín fethal! – corp Críst, maic a ndeirbsethar. (The story I have told clearly is for the purpose of censuring the Jews; for they have crucified (beautiful form!) the body of Christ, their sister’s son.) (ll. 397-400) The heinousness of their transgression is spelled out in the following quatrain: Ainbli gnúisi, condai fir ro-fersat in fingail-sin; céin ba diïb a máthair ba diäll for fírbráthair. (Of shameless countenance and wolf-like were the men who perpetrated that kin-slaying; since his mother was of them it was treachery towards a true kinsman.) (ll. 409-12) Fingal, slaying a member of one’s own kindred, was a horrendous crime. It was the duty of a murdered man’s kin to exact either vengeance or compensation from the killer. But fingal could not be accommodated in the early Irish system of compensation, and the crime could not be avenged by other members of the kin, since that would entail fingal on their part.61 The description of the perpetrators of fingal as “wolf-like” is apt, especially when the victim of the crime is a sister’s son. The sister’s son who resided with his mother’s kindred was required to be filial in his conduct towards them.

61

See Fergus Kelly, A Guide, 127.

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It is narrated, for example, of an early Irish legendary warrior, Cet, that he grievously injured his sister’s son when it was prophesied that the boy would be unfilial to his mother’s kin. The mother condemned Cet’s act as “wolfish” (condae), and Cet conceded that it was so.62 Christ, for his part, was filial (or as Carney has it “dutiful”) in his relations with the Jews. Indeed, Blathmac says in his second poem that it is from Christ that true filial piety is to be learned (ll. 689-90 II). It is true that in this latter instance the reference is to Christ’s demeanor to his father in heaven. Likewise, a reference to the filial character of Christ’s love of his kindred (ll. 737-8 II) seems to have to do with the household of heaven. But the notion of Christ as exemplar of filial piety is clearly established, and the repudiation of it by his maternal kin makes the Crucifixion all the more wolfish.

4

Lord and Client

The second aspect of the Irish social code that Blathmac sees in the relationship of Christ and the Jews is the bond of clientship.63 This contractual bond was instituted when a person of high status gave a fief (rath) to another person, the acceptance of which signified the recognition by the recipient (thenceforth the céile “client”) of the lordship of the donor (the flaith, “lord”). The client must return a counter-gift to the lord in the form of food-rent, winter hospitality, and certain services. In the context of Blathmac’s work, it should be noted that the client was obliged to carry out certain duties in the event of the lord’s death. These include digging the lord’s grave-mound, paying a deathlevy, and attending a commemorative feast.64 This is of course consistent with Blathmac’s assertion, [a]s-oirc cach teglach co lí / bassa fora tigernai (“every splendid household beats hands over their lord”, ll.501-02). As Blathmac sees it, the contractual relationship between Jesus and the Israelites had its origin in the covenant (cotach) which God made with Abraham (ll. 311-2), and in fulfillment of which he granted them Tír Tairngiri (“the Promised Land”, ll. 357-8): [r]osn-ír thír as deg din bith (“[h]e endowed them with the best country in the world” (l. 381). The act of endowing here is expressly the conferring of rath: the Irish is ro-ír, where -ír is the past tense of 62 63

64

See Ó Cathasaigh, “Sister’s Son,” 157. On the institution of clientship, see Fergus Kelly, A Guide, 26-33. The most recent treatment of clientship in Blathmac’s poems is by Liam Breatnach, “Legal and Societal Aspects of the Poems of Blathmac” in The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan: Reassessments, ed. Pádraig Ó Riain, 104-18. See Kelly, A Guide, 30.

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ernid “grants,” which is used in particular of the lord’s granting of a fief to a client; rath is the verbal noun of ernid. In accepting the Promised Land, the Jews acknowledged God’s lordship and became his clients. The contract that is in question at this point is of course with God the father, but Blathmac goes on to intimate that the Jews were Christ’s clients as well: Cenmothá, mac Dé athar, Críst ar ruiri rígrathach, ronda-hír meinic iar sin áilib ilib adamraib. (Besides that the son of God the Father, Christ, our royal gracious king, had granted to them after that many wonderful requests.) (ll. 413-6) The verbal form used here is again -ír, and the related rath is found in the expression ar ruiri rígrathach. Carney translates this as “our royal gracious king,” “royal gracious” being his rendering of rígrathach. This word is a compound of ríg- “royal, kingly,” and rathach, an adjective derived from rath. Now Irish rath is also used to denote “grace” in a religious sense, and this is perhaps what prompted Carney’s translation. But since the word is used in the context of Christ’s abundant gift-giving, it seems to me that rígrathach could plausibly be taken to mean “kingly in the bestowal of gifts (or fiefs).” The likelihood is that the poet would entertain at one and the same time both the secular and the religious connotations of rath. In the Christian adaptation of the Irish institution of clientship, the céile is the believer, and Christ is the flaith who bestows grace (and other gifts) upon him; the client in turn was required to render service unto him.65 Evil men, on the other hand, were clients of the devil, céili drochluige, literally “clients of (a lord of) bad oaths” (l. 1024 II). [M]uinter ndiäbuil “the followers of the devil” (l. 968 II) are drochcéili na dothchernne “the wicked clients of a bad lord’” (974). For Blathmac, all of the Jews were clients of Christ, and their slaying of him was a violation of their contractual obligations to him: Tuidecht fri Críst, mac Dé bí, doïb ba rind fri giallnai; ressa na ríginse se: ba sénae iar n-aitite. 65

In the late eighth and early ninth centuries, some Irish ecclesiastics become prominent as céili Dé “clients of God.” As we have seen, Blathmac may well have been one of them.

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Ó Cathasaigh (Opposing Christ, the son of the living God, was for them the opposing of a spear-point to (justly imposed) subjection; in the sayings of this kingly island: “it was denial after recognition.”) (ll. 393-6)

What Carney translates as “(justly imposed) subjection” is in fact a word for clientship: opposing a spear-point to clientship is the taking up of arms by a client against his lord. As for the technical expression “denial after recognition,” this refers to the repudiation of the contract of clientship after it has been solemnly entered into.66 In early Ireland the king was seen as the highest grade of lord. Blathmac therefore sees Christ’s subjects as his clients: Cach feb tecomnacht in rí do Iudib ara célsini, batar moíni do mogaib; ro-coillset a cobfolaid. Every advantage that the King had bestowed upon the Jews in return for their clientship was wealth to slaves; they have spoiled what was allotted them (ll. 421-4).67 God did not immediately punish them for their transgression (ll. 453-4), but vengeance eventually came with the dispersal of the Jews: Cenél do-rigni in sin atá foraib orbbadail; is ainces ngalair cen tráig a mbith cen flaith fo bithphláig. The race who did that suffer dispersal of heritage; their being without a kingdom under eternal plague is a sickly undiminishing misery (ll. 465-8). The legal significance in this context of orbbadail, translated “dispersal of heritage” by Carney, has recently been elucidated.68 A compound of orb 66 67 68

For more on this, see Breatnach, “Legal and Societal Aspect,” 111-12. “They have spoiled what was allotted them” is preferred here to Carney’s “they violated their counter-obligations,” following Carey, “Three Notes,” Celtica 20 (1988), 128. Breatnach, “Legal and Societal Aspects,” 114.

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“patrimony” and fodail “dividing,” it refers specifically to land being divided up by others as a result of failure by clients to live up to their obligations, the clients here being the Jews. The themes of kinship and clientship are interwoven in the text, whereas for present purposes I have examined them as separate strands. In adapting the Gospel story to the norms of early Irish society, Blathmac has given us a highly original work. The legal terminology, not all of which has been referred to here, does not impede the flow of his narrative. The dominant notes are deep devotion to Christ and compelling sympathy with Mary’s suffering at the slaying of her son by her own people. The poems are addressed to Mary, and Blathmac “appreciated the resonant manner in which the Crucifixion could be described in conversation with the person most touched by it: the mother of the suffering hero.”69 69

Mari Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 109.

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Chapter 5

The Teaching Logos: Christology and Tropology in Theophylact of Ochrid’s Interpretation of New Testament Parables Thomas Cattoi

The purpose of this paper is to explore the Christological reading of New Testament parables in the Byzantine tradition through a close reading of some excerpts from the exegetical writings of Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (1055-1107). Theophylact’s writings are particularly significant as they bring together the allegorizing tendency of the Origenist tradition, the Chalcedonian teaching on the hypostatic union, and the monastic tradition of lectio divina, to develop an approach to scriptural exegesis that is uncompromisingly Christocentric, but at the same time emphasizes the ethical and transformative dimension of the text. Theophylact was grounded in the great tradition of the Cappadocians, but he could also speak to the common man and show the ongoing relevance of the gospel message – a quality that makes his writing accessible even to less theologically sophisticated readers. This essay will focus on Theophylact’s reading of some parables in the gospel of Luke, and show how his tropological reading of the gospel, as with Clement of Alexandria centuries before him, was never detached from the presence of the incarnate Logos, who is its channel, its paradigm, and its ultimate ontological ground. In his most popular work, The Praise of Folly, Erasmus of Rotterdam develops the notion of mōria (‘divine folly’), reflecting on the words of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians: ‘For the preaching of the cross is folly for those who perish . . . and the wisdom of this world is folly with God’ (1 Cor. 1: 18; 3, 19).1 Erasmus was relying on a commentary on the Pauline corpus whose author many believed to be a certain ‘Vulgarius,’ but whose precise identity was not known. Scholars of Erasmus traced echoes of this commentary in other of his works, such as his Annotations on the New Testament.2 Its author was none other than Theophylact of Ochrid, who was born a Greek on the island of 1 See Michael A. Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (London: Duckworth, 1980), pp. xxixxii, 144-52. 2 See Robert D. Sider, Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), xlii, 185 (index).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_007

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Euboea between 1050 and 1060 and who, after the customary cursus honorum in Constantinople and a career as a court rhetorician, was enthroned as the Archbishop of Bulgaria in Ochrid in the year 1089 or 1090.3 As head of a church that had become autocephalous relatively recently, but also as the chief representative of Byzantine political authority in the region, Clement was in a highly sensitive position.4 These challenging circumstances did not prevent him from authoring a number of important theological works that proved to be influential in the East as well as in the West, making his oeuvre one of the most important channels of the transmission of Greek theological thought to the ‘Latin’ cultural sphere. Theophylact’s skills as a rhetorician and preacher were clearly of the first order; in his correspondence he mentions his promotion to ‘leader of the rhetoricians’ (koryphaios rhētorōn), and we know that around 1085 he was appointed tutor to Prince Constantine Doukas, heir presumptive to the throne and son of Maria of Alania, the Georgian spouse of former emperor Michael VII.5 Constantine passed away in 1095 without ever succeeding to the throne, but Theophylact continued to remain in the good graces of the former empress, who in the tradition of disgraced royal women had joined a convent while remaining deeply involved in ecclesiastical and political intrigue. It was at the behest of Maria, who according to some sources even visited Theophylact in his see when the latter was struck by an illness,6 that the archbishop of Ochrid 3 The most detailed overview of Theophylact’s life and work available in English is an essay in Dimitry Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), Ch. 2, 34-82; see also the Introduction in The Explanation of the New Testament by Blessed Theophylact, Vol. 1: The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Matthew (House Springs, Mo.: Chrysostom Press, 1997), 1-12. Sources in other languages include Alice Leroy-Molinghen, “Prolégomènes à une edition critique des ‘Lettres’ de Theophylacte de Bulgarie ou de l’autorité de la ‘Patrologie grecque’ de Migne,” Byzantion XIII (1938), 253-262; Vsevolod A. Nikolaev, Feodalni οtnosheniya ν pokorenata at Vizantiya Bulgariya, otrazeni ν pismata na Teofilakt Okhridski, Arkhiepiskοp Βύlgarski (Sofia: Bulgarska akademiia na naukite, 1951); Branko Panov, Teofilakt Okhridski kakο izνor za srednovekovnata istοrija na Μakedοnskiοt narοd (Skopje: Kultura, 1971). Theophylact’s works comprise Vol. 123-26 of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca. 4 On Byzantine officials in Bulgaria around this time, see Gennady Litavrin, Bolgariya i Vizantiya v XI-XII vv. (Moscow: Izdadel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), 265-93. On clerical and political patronage in Byzantium, see Michael Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy: Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 5 See Theophylact, Epistulae (PG 126, 309; 509); also Paul Gautier, Théophilacte d’Achrida: Discours, traités, poésies (Thessalonica: Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 1980), 12-22. 6 See Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, 35-9; also M. Mullett, “The ‘Disgrace’ of the ExBasilissa Maria,” in Byzantinoslavica 45 (1984), 202-11. As Obolensky observes, Theophylact’s correspondence contains a curious superabundance of medical information about his physical ailments and those of his next of kin.

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authored his commentary on the gospels. Theophylact remained in Ochrid until the end of his life, dying after the year 1110. Theophylact was a Greek hierarch administering a Slavic church; his bishops were most likely Greek, and the Greek language was used for the liturgy in the cathedrals and at most urban churches, but Church Slavonic was routinely employed at the parish level. From his extant works, we know that Theophylact was a great admirer of Clement of Ochrid as well as Cyril and Methodius.7 His attitude towards his flock was therefore marked by the desire to encourage the development of a local (contextual theologians would say ‘inculturated’) church, but also by a sense of his duty to preserve and transmit the Greek Byzantine culture that had shaped him and whose intrinsic superiority he presumably upheld as a given. His scriptural commentaries are thus a paradigmatic example of Byzantine homiletics; at the same time, they distil the hermeneutic and conceptual sophistication of centuries of theological reflection on Scripture, and articulate them anew in such a way as to be accessible to a broader readership. His Bulgarian audience, for the most part, had little familiarity with the Trinitarian and Christological disputes of the previous centuries, or with the works of figures such as the Cappadocian fathers or Maximos the Confessor. As a result, in Theophylact’s commentaries we find a type of theological vernacular, which preserves the depths of insights of one thousand years of tradition, but is able to cross the major cultural chasm dividing their author from their audience. It was this very accessibility that ensured that excerpts from Theophylact’s commentaries would be cited by Aquinas in the Catena Aurea,8 and that his reflection on Paul’s letters would find their way into Erasmus’ library. In the twentieth century, another influential bishop of Ochrid, the Serb Nikolai Velimirovic, claimed that Theophylact’s commentaries were ‘the finest after John Chrysostom,’ and can still be read with edification.9 7 Most of what we know about Theophylact’s pastoral work comes from his extensive correspondence; 130 letters from his time as archbishop of Ochrid are available in French translation in Paul Gautier, Théophilacte d’Achrida:lettres (Thessalonica: Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 1986), and in English in Margaret Mullett, Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). See also Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, 45-57; while some passages (such as Letter 96, in Gautier, 485) are very critical of what appeared to be a case of Bulgarian dishonesty, Theophylact’s attitude towards the Slavic people that he pastored appears to be generally balanced and benevolent. 8 Thomas Aquinas uses Theophylact frequently throughout the Catena Aurea; by way of example, see for instance Mark. 6, 6; 7, 31-7; Luke. 1, 1-4; 5-6; 2, 51-2. See Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, Vol. 1-4 (Oil City, Penn.: Baronius Press, 2013). 9 See Nikolai Velimirovic, The Prologue From Ochrid (Birmingham, England: Lazarica Press, 1985), Vol. 4, 393.

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What was Theophylact’s theology? The archbishop of Ochrid lived and worked during a period that has received only scant attention by Western scholars. The schism between the Latin and the Greek churches had culminated in the excommunications of 1054, around the time of Theophylact’s birth, making this period of high interest for church historians; nevertheless, scholarship often neglects the actual theological debates of the time, as if a speculative hiatus had opened up in the wake of the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843, only to be lifted around the early fourteenth century at the time of the Palamite controversies.10 In 1986, Basil Krivocheine’s work on Symeon the New Theologian introduced Western readers to the work of this major mystic and poet from the beginning of the second millennium.11 The work of Theophylact, however, has only recently been brought to the attention of Western readers. As we read his scriptural commentaries, we enter the mind of a major Byzantine churchman who lived and worked at a time when major doctrinal issues had been settled, and the work of bishops and monastics was one of preservation, systematization, and development in continuity. This is not a time of major conceptual originality; the theological architecture has been laid and is no longer liable to change. Writers like Theophylact use the resources of the tradition to emphasize particular theological points or achieve specific pastoral goals. Their work is like the harmonization of a melody which others have handed down to them, but which can achieve ever new sonorities every time it is performed. Theophylact’s exegetical work can be situated in the tradition of spiritual reading of the sacred text whose roots can be traced all the way to the work of Origen in the third century of the Christian era, and whose influence continued well beyond – and in spite of – the condemnations of 543 and 553.12 Origen’s vision, while reflecting the subordinationist tendencies from the preNicene era, was profoundly Christocentric: the eternal Logos was the ground and source of the countless multitude of the logoi spermatikoi, the ‘seeds of the Word’ that guide and structure creation’s movement towards its eschatological goal, but are also present throughout the books of Scripture, all of which 10

11 12

See John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1987), 193-209; also his St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1974). Basil Krivocheine, In the Light of Christ: Symeon the New Theologian (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1987). The secondary literature on Origen is immense; for an introduction to his theology, cosmology, and anthropology, see Jean Daniélou, Origen (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1948). The sixth century Origenist condemnations are discussed in John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, Ch. 3, 47-69.

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have a hermeneutic anchor in the event of the incarnation.13 Of course Origen lived and worked before the canon of Scripture was set in the early fourth century; for him and his contemporaries, ‘Scripture’ was largely synonymous with the Septuagint and with a variety of other writings that included not only the four gospels, but also works such as the Book of Jubilees or the Shepherd of Hermas. Origen’s preoccupation with the centrality of the Logos served a clear apologetic purpose, inasmuch as the Logos’ presence in the cosmos and in the inspired writings of sacred Scripture secured the unity of the cosmos and the unity of Judeo-Christian revelation against the meaninglessness and chaos of plurality and fragmentation. Blending together insights from Stoic thought, the neo-Platonic reflection on causality and the Johannine discourse on the Logos, Origen turned the incarnate Christ into the guarantee of creation’s and Scripture’s inner cogency and coherence. Later authors such as Ephrem the Syriac or Maximos the Confessor would substantially develop Origen’s insight and view the cosmos and the Old and New Testament as ‘garments’ that the Logos puts on at will, like the garment of flesh in the incarnation.14 This Christocentric grounding of the unity of Scripture is central to the Greek theological tradition that Theophylact represents, and it undergirds his Explanations no less than his writings on the Pauline corpus. There is, however, another aspect of the Origenist legacy, and one that is even more crucial for understanding Theophylact’s exegetical strategy: Origen’s legitimization of a plurality of interpretations of the sacred text. Unlike most early authors such as Athanasios and Cyril, but also unlike most post-Chalcedonian authors such as Maximos the Confessor or Theodore the Studite, Theophylact’s exegesis focuses on the tropological or hortatory dimension of the sacred text, without occasionally indulging in readings that are more overtly allegorical. How did these different levels of interpretation relate to each other? Origen’s exegetical strategy is outlined in greatest detail in De Principiis Book 4, Ch. 2-4.15 Origen engages in a qualified retrieval of ‘gnostic’ anthropology, which envisaged the existence of a plurality of human ‘types’ classified according to their intellectual and spiritual potential. While a plurality of positions can be traced in the works of different ‘gnostic’ authors, there was a substantial agreement as to the existence of an ontological – and thereby spiritual – hierarchy that distinguished ‘carnal’ individuals (sarkikoi) from others that are ‘psychic’ (psychikoi) and a higher élite of ‘spiritual’ beings 13 14 15

See Daniélou, Origen, 252-62. See Maximos the Confessor, Amb. 10 (PG 91, 1127-33); Ephrem, Hymns on Faith, trans. Jeffrey Wickes (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2015), 4; 44. See Origen, De Principiis, Book 4, 2-4 (PG 11: 303-25); also, Daniélou, Origen, 139-74.

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(pneumatikoi). Members of these different anthropological classes have varying degrees of divine receptivity. In this system, ‘carnal’ people are turned solely towards the pleasures of the flesh, ‘psychic’ individuals can engage in the practice of the virtues even though they cannot attain a knowledge of the divine, and ‘spiritual’ beings can leave behind the things of this world and achieve an unmediated union with the divine. Origen’s preoccupation with individual self-determination (autexousiotēs) ensured that he would free this vision of its deterministic strictures. In his anthropological vision, where human beings are just one category of ‘rational beings’ (logikoi) alongside angels, demons, and stars, all individuals can move up or down this ontological ladder: someone can start off in life as ‘carnal,’ but once she is exposed to the message of the Gospels, she can advance and become ‘psychic,’ and perhaps, after a prolonged period of practice of the virtues, she will even ascend to the heights of ‘spiritual’ contemplation.16 Origen, not unlike many of his fourth-century monastic followers like Evagrios, used this anthropological paradigm to argue for the legitimacy of a plurality of textual interpretations: the same text will disclose a different message to different readers reflecting their varying degrees of spiritual development, and indeed, may even offer different insights to the same readers at different times of their life. In this perspective, ‘carnal’ individuals cannot ascend beyond the letter of the text; ‘psychic’ readers are receptive to both the literal meaning and the moral implications of the text; finally, ‘spiritual’ readers can discern its more advanced allegorical meaning, which more often than not uncovers the presence of the eternal Logos in the pages of Scripture. It is especially this last way of reading that found favor with the Alexandrian school of exegesis to which Origen belonged, and which ensured that the early Church Fathers, free of the limitations posed by literal contradiction, could offer dozens of distinct allegorical interpretations of the same inspired passage. If Origen distinguishes three different meanings of the scriptural text, it is nevertheless the case that his focus is much more on the allegorical reading of the text, to the point that sometimes the ‘literal’ meaning is opposed to a broadly defined ‘spiritual’ meaning that encompasses the tropological and the allegorical dimensions. As Origen and most other early Christian authors – with the possible exception of John Chrysostom – wrote primarily for a monastic, or at least a highly theologically-literate audience, they could safely assume that their readers could immediately ascend from the letter of the text to the heights of allegory. The moral dimension of Scripture, therefore, could legitimately remain marginal. 16

For an introduction to Origen’s cosmology, see Daniélou, Origen, 209-20.

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Theophylact’s situation when writing his Explanations, however, was different from that of Origen and the early authors who drew inspiration from him. His role as hierarch in a region that was culturally alien ensured that pastoral concerns would always gain the upper hand. As a result, throughout his reflections on the four gospels, Theophylact consistently foregrounds the tropological implications of the text, which go beyond the mere letter of the story, but stop short of the arduous theological speculations that one finds for instance in Ephrem’s Hymns or Maximos the Confessor’s Ambigua. At the same time, his reflections on the four gospels emphasize that Christ – the eternal Logos – is the teaching voice behind every page of Luke or John; it is Christ – the divine Wisdom – that grounds the enduring moral relevance of a text, whose import goes far beyond the mere chronicle of past events; and it is Christ – the incarnate Savior – who is the model of the dispassioned soul, the one in whom the passions are definitively ordered to the nous informed by the divine commandments. The Explanation of the Gospel of Luke is arguably the most apposite text to illumine this aspect of Theophylact’s exegesis, given its wealth of parables unmatched by the other Synoptic gospels.17 If we turn to the story of the Good Samaritan, we see how Theophylact presents this parable as a call for mercy and at the same time he presents Christ’s salvific work as the paradigm of the neighborly love that individual believers are expected to show to each other.18 Christ answers the question of the judge, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ – which in Greek has the literal meaning ‘who is close to me?’ – by telling the story of a man robbed, beaten up by thieves, and rescued by someone at the margins of society. Theophylact makes the very simple point that while the judge presumed that he could only be neighbor to someone as righteous as he presumed himself to be, all members of humanity must be neighbors to all, “not by location, but by the disposition of [their] hearts and by [their] care for others.”19 Yet, the archbishop of Ochrid grounds his reading of the story in the classic vocabulary of spiritual warfare when he notes that the victim of the robbers was walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, and therefore from a higher, cooler place symbolizing apatheia towards a lower place that is suffocating with heat, adumbrating the soul oppressed by the passions. The thieves, of course, are the demons, who attack humanity as it plunges towards sin, robbing it of the

17

18 19

The rest of this paper will use the English translation by Fr. Christopher Strade published as The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Luke, Vol. III Blessed Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament (House Spring, Mo.: Chrysostom Press, 2007). Ibid., 117-20 (commenting on Luke 10: 29-37). Ibid., 118.

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garment of holiness and wounding it with sin. And yet, why was humanity left only half-dead? Because it hoped to be redeemed by Christ. In a typical exegetical move, the priest and the Levite who pass by and do not intervene represent the law and the prophets unable to offer any real help. As the gospel says that the Samaritan “journeyed” and came to the victim of the robbers, Theophylact views this as symbolizing Christ’s free decision to become incarnate; Christ is the one who “was made a curse for our sake”20 and is called a Samaritan.21 Christ is thus the protagonist of this parable and the model of neighborly love. If the Samaritan pours oil and wine over the man’s wounds, it is because the oil symbolizes Christ’s teaching, exhorting us to virtue by the promise of good things, whereas the wine is the teaching that exhorts us to virtue by the fear of punishment. In a classic Alexandrian move, however, Theophylact suggests that perhaps the wine and the oil also symbolize Christ’s divinity and Christ’s humanity, as the oil tempers and softens the wine’s sting when poured onto the wound.22 The inn is then likened to the Church, and the innkeeper is thus a figure of anyone holding an important position in the Church, such as the apostles and later all bishops and priests who are left with the two coins of the Old and the New Testament. The Church, under the guidance of pastors like Theophylact, is obviously the place where Christ’s call to neighborly love can come to fruition. Another interesting blend of a parable’s Christological and ethical readings can be found in Theophylact’s commentary on the story of the servants waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding.23 The servant is of course a figure of every Christian, who is called to a life of virtue and contemplation as he waits for the return of Christ at the end of time. The simultaneous pursuit of theōria and praxis that is the backbone of the Christian life is symbolized by the call to keep one’s loins girded – therefore being always ready to do the work of the Master – and to keep the lights burning, – therefore letting the intellect be filled by the Logos so as to engage in a proper discernment of spirits. Echoing Evagrios’ teaching on the stages of the spiritual life, Theophylact also tells us to first gird our loins and then keeps our lamps lit because the practice of the virtue precedes and necessarily paves the way to the practice of contemplation, which is the enlightenment of the intellect.24 The notion of the light of God shining in our purified nous is a leitmotif of monastic authors

20 21 22 23 24

Gal. 3: 13. John 8: 48. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 119. Ibid., 153-6 (commenting on Luke 12: 35-40). See Evagrios, De Oratione (PG 79: 1166-98).

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from as early as the fourth century, and Theophylact’s retrieval of this concept is in perfect continuity with the tradition. The reason why the servants, and by extension all Christians, are called to this life of virtue and discernment is of course the fact that Christ may return at any time – and indeed, he may return as servant, or as thief. To those servants that waited for him, the Lord will come as a servant, making them recline – therefore giving them eternal rest – and then rewarding them with an abundance of good things. In this life, servants who keep watch, – and therefore engage in ongoing discernment of spirits, – can never find ease, but in the next, when they will enjoy eternal apatheia and incorruptibility of the flesh, they will finally be able to rest, and God will be for them “all in all.”25 Theophylact interprets the second and the third watch as the three ages of man – youth, maturity and old age – or as periods in one’s life characterized by particular challenges, such as the death of one’s children or the loss of one’s goods; some non-believers may respond by falling into a ‘deathlike slumber’ and fall into the sin of despair, but the faithful would never react to such tragedies by acting against the Lord’s commandments, and therefore the Lord will set before them a table full of spiritual gifts. Christ is thus the example of service and spiritual obedience, who shall reward those who persevere in their fidelity to the law of God. At the same time, and quite unexpectedly, Theophylact also understands the thief in the story to represent Christ; while some think him to be the devil, who is coming to steal the souls of the sleeping servants, Theophylact connects this passage with the Pauline verse warning us that “the day of the Lord shall come like a thief in the night.”26 Like a robber breaking into a house, Christ will come and find us alert or distracted, and he will reward us or punish us accordingly. As in the earlier parable, the incarnate Christ narrates a story, but he is also the model of righteous action and the guarantee of the eschatological fulfillment of the parable’s promises. Continuing in the same vein, Theophylact writes at length about the parable of the hundred sheep and the parable of the prodigal son.27 The Pharisees treated the publicans with contempt and were equally critical of Christ’s welcoming attitude towards sinners, but Christ chooses to treat “those who slandered His love for mankind with the same love that He showed to the publicans.”28 To this aim, he told them two parables about God’s inexhaustible

25 26 27 28

Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 155. 1 Cor. 15: 28. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 192-204 (commenting on Luke 15: 1-32). Ibid., 192.

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mercy, so as to “curb their vexation at His great outpouring of goodness.”29 If a shepherd experiences such joy after finding a sheep – a creature lacking the light of reason – how much more joy can there be then when a rational man who went astray is embraced again by the love of the Father? Theophylact juxtaposes two readings of the parable of the hundred sheep: one views the ninety-nine as the righteous and the lost sheep as the sinner, and the other views the hundred sheep as the whole “rational” creation, and the one “rational sheep” that went astray is humanity as a whole. This second reading identifies the ninety-nine sheep with the angelic choirs safely ensconced in the heavens, symbolized by the wilderness that is removed from all worldly concerns. In the same way as the shepherd goes out to search for the lost sheep, the eternal Logos chose to come into the world of men and bear our infirmities and our sins so that he could carry us back to paradise to praise God in the company of the angels.30 Theophylact clearly shows that Christ’s descent into the flesh is the ultimate paradigm of mercy – a mercy that enjoins us to let go of all attachments and forgive our enemies even if this comes at a considerable personal cost. The story of the woman who had lost a coin that follows the story of the lost sheep merely reinforces this conclusion: in an interesting twist, Theophylact identifies the woman with the Wisdom of God, who is no other than the eternal Logos. In this perspective, the lamp lit by the woman is the very flesh of Christ shining with the light of divinity and casting away the darkness of sin. The coin that is lost is again sinful humanity; indeed, Theophylact adds, in the same way as every coin bears the image of an earthly king or emperor, the coin of humanity bears the image of the eternal Father. The friends and neighbors of the woman who come to rejoice with her are once more the heavenly powers that are forever the closest to God.31 Theophylact’s reading of the story of the prodigal son shows again his indebtedness to Origen’s anthropological vision and the Alexandrian master’s preoccupation with self-determination. First of all, Theophylact identifies the man and his two sons with the eternal Father and the two portions of humanity – the righteous and the sinners. The older son had to be righteous, because righteousness, which belonged to the Father from all eternity, was bestowed on all humanity at creation; the younger son, instead, had to be sinful, because sin came into the world after creation was already complete. Sin is paradoxically a novelty within God’s plan for the universe; thus, the younger son is sinful, “because the sinner is an innovator, a revolutionary, and a rebel, who defies 29 30 31

Ibid., 192. Ibid., 192-3. Ibid., 193.

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the Father’s will.” The distinction between the two sons is thus rooted in their ontological constitution, which their actions merely reflect and exemplify; it is the younger son’s rebellious nature that brings him to approach his father and ask for the “portion of property” that falls on him.32 The term used for “property”, however, is none other than ousia – a concept with a multilayered history that Theophylact exploits in surprisingly creative ways. The basic philosophical meaning of the Greek word ousia is ‘essence’ or ‘substance,’ but in ordinary speech ousia was also associated with one’s own possessions or estate. Theophylact blends these two meanings, so that humanity’s very being is actually defined by what it most intimately possesses: its nature, created in the image and likeness of God, and ultimately his rational nous which Theophylact also calls logikon. In addition, this nous “is always accompanied by his free will (autexousia), for all that is rational is inherently self-governing”;33 the implication – in perfect continuity with Origen’s criticism of certain gnostic positions – is that when we were created, God gave us power over our own ousia, so that we could do with it as we saw fit. It is important to note that this gift was given to all of us in the same measure, so that there is no privileged, more ‘spiritual’ category, but some chose to use this generous gift rationally – in accordance with the logos – while others set out to squander it senselessly. The ‘rational’ use of the ousia is of course in line with our own logos spermatikos, but also with the salvific vision of the eternal Logos, who bestowed reason on us so we could come to partake of the divine life. In this perspective, the younger son is an example of anyone who misuses one’s own ousia, going into a “far country” and placing oneself away from the presence of God.34 Theophylact envisages the goal of the spiritual life as the integration of all our faculties under the nous, echoing Origen’s suspicion of ontological difference and plurality,35 though he qualifies it by affirming the value of ordered multiplicity as constitutive of God’s creation. “Squandering” the logos by choosing sin entails a scattering (diaskorpizein), discarding virtue which is “a simple and single entity” and embracing its opposite vice which is “a many-branched complexity.”36 As he leaves the logos behind, the prodigal son “joins himself” to the citizen of another country, a passage Theophylact

32 33 34 35 36

Luke 15:12. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 194. Ibid., 195. See Daniélou, Origen, Ch. 3, 47-69. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 195. Theophylact explains this point by pointing out that courage is “simple,” while its opposite can take “two forms,” cowardice or recklessness.

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interprets as the choice to become subservient to a demon.37 Once you enter this state of irrationality, you are bound to “feed the swine,” or in other words, commit more and more evil deeds that keep you away from God. Within this hermeneutic framework, conversion amounts to regaining possession of one’s logos (analogizomai). He who repents of his sins realizes that he was no longer in control of his ousia, and returns from his wanderings “outside reason.”38 For Theophylact, however, the culmination of behavior according to the logos is love for God; those who fail to love their Father in heaven are not fulfilling the highest potential of their nature. Theophylact distinguishes those who follow God’s commandments out of fear – like slaves – from those who do so out of their desire for a reward – like hired servants, – and then contrasts both with those who obey the Father out of love, like the prodigal son after his return to his home. The parables tells us then that the father sends his servants to clothe his son in a festive robe, put a ring on his hand, and slaughter the fatted calf. For Theophylact, Christ is teaching us that those who turn to the Father receive his blessings through the sacraments: the robe symbolizes the sacrament of baptism that bestows incorruption, the ring indicates the perfection of chrismation, and the slaughter of the fatted calf foreshadows the death of Christ on the cross as well as the sacrament of the Eucharist.39 It is through participation in the logos through the nous that we are introduced into the divine life, but it is through participation in the logos through the Eucharist that we are deified and become partners of God’s inexhaustible love. Theophylact develops another interesting reflection around the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Indeed, his reading of this parable is one of the most detailed of this volume of the Explanations, and one of the few instances where Theophylact actually offers a tropological as well as a more strictly ‘allegorical’ reading.40 The well-known story – and Theophylact emphasizes that this is not something that truly occurred, “as some have foolishly imagined”41 – follows another parable on the correct use of money; it is thus clearly addressed to those believers who are “in the world” and therefore have to make use of the world’s goods. At the same time, this is a story about divine mercy, where the incarnate Word teaches his audience about the divine plan for humanity’s eternal destiny: those who show no pity and give no alms to the poor 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 196. Theophylact observes that swine are unable to look upward because of the shape of their eyes, therefore symbolling the sinner’s inability to turn to God. Ibid., 196. Ibid., 200-1. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 212-8 (commenting on Luke 16: 19-31). Ibid., 212.

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shall be punished, whereas those who suffer their lot patiently in this life will be rewarded. Theophylact notes that Jesus mentions the poor man’s name – Lazarus – and omits that of the rich man, something he associates with the fact that the names of the righteous are recorded in the Book of the Life.42 When the poor man dies, the angels carry him into Abraham’s bosom, whereas the soul of the rich man descends into Hades in a location where he can see the poor man across “a great gulf”.43 Theophylact claims that this parallels God’s decision after the Fall to place Adam in a place directly opposite Eden, so that he would keep constantly in mind the extent of his loss. Interestingly enough, Theophylact also asserts that this passage counters the Origenist belief that at some point the torments of hell shall cease, and “the sinners shall be reunited with God”; Abraham affirms that it is impossible to cross over from the side of the sinners to the side of the righteous, and clearly, Theophylact quips, “Abraham is more trustworthy than Origen.”44 It is noteworthy how Theophylact inserts this condemnation of Origen’s teaching of apokatastasis in the context of a typically Origenist exegetical exercise; but if his emphasis on the moral sense sets him apart from earlier Greek authors, his embrace of Origen’s hermeneutic method together with a rejection of the underpinning cosmology is perfectly in line with the post-Chalcedonian condemnation of Origenism in the sixth century. Theophylact’s commentary on this parable, however, grounds the tropological interpretation of this story in the allegorical, or perhaps more accurately, he blurs the boundary between the two.45 The story of Lazarus and the rich man ends with the latter asking Abraham to send the former to his family so that his siblings could repent and not follow him to this place of suffering. Abraham answers that if the rich man’s family does not listen to the law and the prophets, they will not listen to people who have returned from the dead. The key to understanding this passage is the fact that Christ, the incarnate Logos, is the culmination and the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and as such all believers are bound to listen to Christ’s words. The Scriptures, which are Christ’s own message, “are a lamp and a light,”46 and when the light shines, error is seen and discovered. Theophylact then moves to a different level of interpretation and argues that the rich man symbolizes the Jewish people, who received kingship as well as priesthood from God, both of which are signified

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Cf. Ps. 69:28. Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to Luke, 214. Ibid., 215. Ibid., 216-8. Ibid., 217.

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by the purple and fine linen the rich man wore every day, and who offered daily sacrifices in the temple, symbolized by the rich man’s sumptuous meals. Lazarus, of course, symbolizes the Gentiles, who were covered with the sores of sin and were tormented by dogs representing demons. Lazarus could not enter the house of the rich man, in the same way as the Gentiles could not enter the temple of Jerusalem, and he tried to feed on the crumbs, the “rational food” falling from the table, like the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15.47 In a typical supersessionist move, Theophylact notes that the Jews “died to God” when they rejected Christ, whereas Lazarus “died to sin”; as a result, the Hebrews “burn with the flame of spite,”48 and are envious of the fact that the nations have now been accepted into the bosom of Abraham. According to this line of interpretation, when Lazarus asks for a drop of water and his request is denied, this indicates that the Jews would like to receive a drop from the sprinklings of the old Temple sacrifices, so as to be able to claim that the latter are still in force. After the coming of Christ, these sacrifices are no longer in force; since the contemporary Jews are rejecting Christ’s messianic claims, they are no longer listening to the law and the prophets.49 While the acceptance of Christ’s teaching and of his salvific work clearly underpins Theophylact’s reading of this parable, the last exhortation to his readers goes back to one more ethical reading of the text: the reader, Theophylact warns, must not overlook the needs of the mind out of a desire to attend to the pressing needs of the flesh. The mind should not be allowed to “wander outside,” a clear call to watchfulness or discernment, or to “lie idly on the ground,” being thereby enslaved to the passions, but should rather be allowed to “lead within,” thereby governing the lower parts of the soul, so as to be able to act in line with God’s commandments.50 The reading of these different parables evidence Theophylact’s pastoral priorities; his exegetical strategy eschews sophisticated speculation, but is characterized by a consistent Christocentric angle that grounds and structures

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Ibid., 217. Ibid., 218. While the supersessionist reading of this particular passage appears to be original to Theophylact, the hermeneutic strategy that views events or figures from the old dispensation as foreshadowing Christ’s redemptive economy is part and parcel of the patristic tradition of lectio divina, as outlined for instance by Origen in De Principiis, Book 4, 2-4 (PG). Theophylact’s deployment of supersessionist tropes is in fact far less virulent than the analogous hermeneutic moves by Origen himself or by Cyril of Alexandria; see Robert L. Wilken, Judaism and the early Christian mind; a study of Cyril of Alexandria’s exegesis and theology (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971). Ibid., 218.

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his ethical reading of the text. As the eternal Logos, Christ is the author of the totality of Scripture, which encompasses both Old and New Testament. As the incarnate Christ, who is present in history and continues to be present in his Church, he becomes the hermeneutic key that uncovers the salvific import of the whole trajectory of human history. The parables of the New Testament, with some prime examples in the Gospel of Luke, epitomize the Christocentric and tropological import of the whole of Scripture, as they are, at least in Theophylact’s understanding, Christ’s very own utterances, bypassing even the mediation of the inspired authors that characterizes the vast majority of Scripture. Theophylact’s Christocentrism and his focus on the moral sense of the sacred text ensured that his writings would appeal not only to Aquinas during the Latin Middle Ages, but also to authors such as Erasmus, who at the beginning of the modern era were starting to distance themselves from the more extravagant allegorizations of the patristic and medieval periods. For Theophylact, in the gospels we hear the teaching voice of the Logos, and it is in the parables that Christ’s moral injunctions shine forth most compellingly.

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Chapter 6

“I Am”: the Glossa Ordinaria on John’s Gospel Linda Stone

“I am the bread of life” declared Jesus to the crowd that had gathered around him on the day following his miraculous feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes.1,2 The crowd’s request for more of that same bread elicited from Jesus what was to be the first of the seven declarations, found in John’s Gospel that have been called the “I am” statements, assertions through which Jesus directly illuminated and defined his salvific role as the source of eternal life for humanity.3 These pronouncements would be the subject of extensive exegesis from Christianity’s earliest times, appearing both directly in patristic commentaries on John’s Gospel and, indirectly, in other exegetical works or sermon writings, many of which would eventually be sieved and sorted in the twelfth century for inclusion in the compilation of a series of glosses on John’s Gospel. Via that selective process, the compiler of these glosses would not only shed light on his own interpretation of Jesus’ statements, but, in so doing, would also illuminate some of the theological and social challenges facing the Church in the twelfth century. Moreover, the glosses on the “I am” statements would not remain trapped within the amber of their manuscripts, but would themselves be sifted and used by later exegetes, in works such as the Gospel concordance of Zachary of Besançon (d.1155), the postillae of Hugh of St Cher (d.1263) and eventually into the postillae of Nicholas of Lyra (d.1349).4 While the phrase “I am” is, of course, common in speech, it is also recognised to have had a solemn and sacral use, both in pagan religious writings and

1 I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Jane Beal and Professor Lesley Smith for giving me the opportunity to be part of the “Illuminating Jesus” project. 2 John 6:35, “Ego sum panis vitae”; John 6:1-34. All biblical references are taken from the Vulgate and/or the Douai-Reims translation. 3 The Gospel according to John, vol. 1, (I-XII), trans. Raymond E. Brown (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 534. 4 Zachary of Besançon, In unum ex quatuor, PL 186, 11-620; Hugh of Saint-Cher, Biblia Latina, vol. 6, Basel: Johann Amerbach, 1498-1502. The edition is not paginated and subsequent references are therefore tied to the relevant biblical quotation; Nicholas of Lyra, Biblia Latina cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra, vol. 4, Venice: Johannes Herbort, 1481. The edition is not paginated and subsequent references are therefore tied to the relevant biblical quotation.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_008

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in the Old and New Testaments. In the latter, the synoptic Gospels and Revelation do contain instances of Jesus referring directly to himself, for example, “It is I, fear ye not” (Mark 6:50) and “I am Alpha and Omega” (Rev. 1:8).5 It is, however, principally in John’s Gospel, where Jesus’ use of “I am” is followed by an explanatory and figurative use of a grammatical nominal predicate, the particular purpose of which has been defined as Jesus’ revelation of his relationship with humankind.6 There are other instances within John’s Gospel, where “I am” is used without such a predicate, or where it is not directly expressed but may be understood.7 Such instances have produced some scholarly debate on whether these too should be included as further “I am” statements. However, it is now generally accepted that there is a core seven such statements, found in twelve verses, where the addition of the predicate illuminates Jesus’ salvific and revelatory role vis-à-vis humanity. The seven statements contained in the twelve verses are: “I am the bread of life” linked with “I am the living bread” (John 6:35 and 6.51), followed by “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12 and 9:5). Chapter 10 of John’s Gospel contains the statements, “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10.7), linked with “I am the door” (John 10.9) and “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11 and 10:14). The remaining statements are “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), ‘I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and Jesus’ references to the vine which are “I am the true vine” (John 15:1), and “I am the vine” (John 15:5).8 Jesus’ reference to bread, for example, has been defined as revealing the way in which he would be the provider of eternal nourishment. The six further statements appearing in subsequent verses have been defined as showing the way in which Jesus’ role, as light of the world, would reveal the truth of eternal life, as well as the way in which he would be the means through which humanity could come to that eternal life, defined in his references to his resurrection, his truth and as the vine, while, in his role as the door and the shepherd, Jesus would lead humanity to that life.9 5 Gospel according to John, 535-38. 6 Gospel according to John, 534-35. 7 John 8:58, “Amen, amen dico vobis, antequam Abraham fieret, ego sum”; John 18:5, “Dicit eis Jesus: Ego sum.” 8 Gospel according to John, 534; John 6:35, “Ego sum panis vitae”; John 6:51, “Ego sum panis vivus”; John 8:12, “Ego sum lux mundi”; John 9:5, “Sum lux mundi”; John 10:7, “Ego sum ostium ovium”; John 10:9, “Ego sum ostium”; John 10:11, “Ego sum pastor bonus”; John 10:14, “Ego sum pastor bonus”; John 11:25, “Ego sum resurrectio et vita”; John 14:6, “Ego sum via et veritas et vita”; John 15:1, “Ego sum vitis vera”; John 15:5, “Ego sum vitis.” For the significance of the number 7, see Lesley Smith, The Ten Commandments: Interpreting the Bible in the Medieval World (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 57-58. 9 Gospel according to John, 534.

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The Christian exegetical tradition relating to these statements has its roots in some of the earliest Christian writings. Raymond E. Brown, for example, identified echoes of Christ’s reference to “I am the living bread” in the Epistle of Barnabas, written circa 70-135 CE.10 Christian exegesis in the early Middle Ages on John’s Gospel, and thus the “I am” statements too, included the sermons written by Augustine (d. 430), while Carolingian exegetes writing on John included Alcuin (d. 804) and John Scotus Eriugena (d.877). Later writings include the commentary on John written by Anselm of Laon (d. 1117).11 While other Christian exegetes such as Gregory the Great (d. 604), Bede (d. 735) and Heiric of Auxerre (d. 876) did not write specific commentaries on the Gospel, they did often use the “I am” statements in their sermons.12 It would be a mix of these patristic, Carolingian and contemporary exegetical works that would be used, in the twelfth century, to compile the various interlinear and marginal glosses on John’s Gospel, a glossed text that would form part of the general collection of glossed books of the Bible, eventually known as the Glossa Ordinaria.13 The impetus behind the compilation of such glossed books in the twelfth century was the teaching requirements of the burgeoning cathedral schools, as scholars tried to render the swathes of earlier exegesis more easily accessible.14 The extant manuscripts of the various glossed books, estimated to be in excess of 2,000, give witness to their reputed extensive and widespread use, with the glossed texts of John’s Gospel, alone, extant in at least 214 manuscripts.15 Anselm of Laon has normally been identified as the driving force behind the 10

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John 6:51; Gospel according to John, 282; “Epistle of Barnabas,” in The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed., trans. and ed. Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 11.10-11, 417. Augustine, In Iohannis evangelium tractatus, ed. R. Willems, CCSL 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954); Alcuin, Commentaria in S. Iohannis evangelium, PL 100: 737-1008; John Scotus Eriugena, Homilia et Commentarius in evangelium Iohannis, ed. Édouard Jeaunneau, CCCM 166 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008); Anselm of Laon, Glosae super Iohannem, ed. Alexander Andrée, CCCM 267 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Gregory the Great, Homiliae in evangelia, ed. Raymond Étaix, CCSL 141 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Bede, Homeliarum evangelii, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); Heiric of Auxerre, Homiliae per circulum anni, ed. Riccardo Quadri, CCCM 116 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). Lesley Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 1. Margaret Gibson, ‘The Twelfth-Century Glossed Bible,” Studia Patristica 23 (1989): 243. Mark Zier, “The Development of the Glossa Ordinaria to the Bible in the Thirteenth Century: The Evidence from the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,” in La Bibbia del XIII secolo: storia del testo, storio dell’esegesi, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli and Francesco Santi (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzo, 2004), 156, fn. 5; Alexander Andrée, ‘The Glossa Ordinaria

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glossing of the books of the Bible, and with the glossing of John’s Gospel in particular.16 However, Alexander Andrée, analyzing the close textual flow between Anselm’s commentary on John’s Gospel and the subsequent glosses, has proposed that Anselm wrote only the commentary, while the glossator of the Gospel was more likely to have been a later Laon scholar.17 Regardless of the glossator’s identity, it is clear, textually, that extensive use of Anselm’s commentary was made in the glossing of the Gospel, but it is also clear that the commentary was not the only source used. Textual analysis of the glosses on the “I am” statements shows that they also included, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, the works of, among others, Heiric, Alcuin, Bede and, of course, Augustine.18 In the process of mining those earlier exegetical writings for the most apposite interpretations, phrases and comments to explicate the teaching on John’s Gospel, the twelfth-century glossator was making choices regarding what should be included and what should be omitted, sometimes choosing just one or two pithy points, sometimes choosing lengthier extracts, which he then opted to abbreviate, edit or amalgamate.19 However, while the wording of the original exegetical sources may have been amended and/or melded together, the glossator frequently chose to remain consistent with the tradition of long-established Christian exegetical interpretation, as demonstrated by the glosses on Jesus’ statement, “I am the light of the world.”20 In the Gospel of John, the themes of light and darkness are often used to represent good and evil. Jesus’ role as light of the world was thus to be the incarnate, revelatory life-giving light that would dispel the darkness of sin, but only for those who followed him. Those who failed to follow Jesus would be

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on the Gospel of John: A Preliminary Survey of the Manuscripts with a Presentation of the Text and its Sources (suite et fin),” Revue Bénédictine 118 (2008): 317-33; Alexander Andrée, “Anselm of Laon Unveiled: The glosae super Iohannem and the Origins of the Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible,” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 237. Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 32. Andrée, ‘Anselm unveiled’, 233-34, 228. I wish to express my gratitude for the meticulous source research carried out by Professor Alexander Andrée in his edition of Anselm of Laon’s Glosae super Iohannem. My investigation of the sources for the glosses on the “I am” statements has been greatly aided by his work. Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 41. John 8:12, Vulgate: “Iterum ergo locutus est eis Jesus, dicens: Ego sum lux mundi: qui sequitur me, non ambulat in tenebris, sed habebit lumen vitae”; Douai-Reims: “Again therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying: I am the light of the world: he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

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destined to remain in that darkness.21 The struggle facing exegetes in their interpretation of Jesus’ claim to be “light of the world” was thus first to establish and clarify the way in which Jesus, despite being in fleshly form, could be such a light, and then to emphasise the importance to Christians of the way in which, by following Jesus, they could avoid the dangers of sin. It was Augustine who used the phrase nubem carnis, (“cloud of flesh”) in his tractate on this verse, to explain that, while Jesus was surrounded by a cloud of flesh, such flesh should not be despised, since, although it hides the light, the flesh does not do so in order to obscure, but, rather, to moderate the light.22 Furthermore, Augustine was also an advocate for Jesus’ comment qui sequitur me (“who follows me”) being an order, and thus to be obeyed.23 Bede subsequently followed Augustine’s two themes, adding that, by obeying such an order, there need be no fear of the darkness of future damnation.24 Alcuin chose to incorporate both Augustine and Bede’s themes and wording, a choice followed by Heiric and subsequently by Anselm.25 For his interpretation of Jesus’ statement, the twelfth-century glossator also maintained these exegetical themes, opting to use brief interlinear glosses to highlight the need to obey Jesus’ order, and to emphasise the dangers of not so doing. It is the interlinear gloss above non ambulat (“walketh not”), which follows the idea of the importance of obedience to Jesus’ instruction not to walk in darkness, while tenebris (“darkness”) has an additional gloss to emphasise that darkness represents ignorance or sin.26 Furthermore, the interlinear gloss on habebit (“shall have”) also highlights that the benefit of having Jesus’ lifegiving light will accrue both now and in the future.27 It is the longer, marginal gloss that echoes Augustine, describing Jesus as being encompassed in a cloud

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Gospel according to John, 344. Augustine, Tractatus, 313, “Noli contemnere nubem carnis; nube tegitur, non ut obscuretur, sed ut temperetur.” Augustine, Tractatus, 315, “quibus verbis aliud est quo iussit, aliud quod promiti, faciamus quod iussit.” Bede, Homeliarium, 183, “qui meis modo iussis et exemplis obsequitur non timebit in futuro tenebras damnationis.” Alcuin, Commentaria, 856A; Heiric, Homiliae, 524-25; Anselm, Glosae, 148-9. Biblia Latina cum Glossa Ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the editio princeps Aldoph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, vol. 4, ed. K. Froehlich and M. T. Gibson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992) (hereinafter “Rusch”); Rusch, 244, interlinear gloss (col. b), above “non ambulat” is “iussis exemplis obedit”; above “tenebris” is “ignorantie vel peccatorum.” While the Rusch edition has some quirks, it does provide a uniform text with which to work (see Smith, Glossa ordinaria, 13). Where necessary, for comparison purposes, various appropriate manuscripts have been used. Rusch, 245, interlinear gloss (col. a), above “sed habebit” is “nunc et in futuro.”

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of flesh, and expands the reference to state that it is precisely this covering that allows Jesus not only to bring light to men but also to dismiss their sin.28 Given the multi-layered nature of the earlier exegetical comments on Jesus’ statement, it is not possible to state definitively which individual sources were being used by the twelfth-century glossator for his exegesis.29 It is, however, possible to show how the glossator chose to maintain an exegetical continuity with his predecessors in his interpretation of Jesus’ revelatory, light-giving role. Furthermore, it is also possible to see how the glossator, through his choices, melded the various sources together to emphasise to twelfth-century Christians just how dependent they were on Jesus to save them from sin. There were, however, occasions when the glossator chose not to adhere to the established exegetical path. Instead, he opted to use an anomalous source or to make a specific, purposeful change to the wording of an underlying exegetical comment. The consequence was a strengthening or clarification of the earlier source and/or the biblical quotation. In his statement, “I am the resurrection and the life”, made to Martha, subsequent to the raising of Lazarus, Jesus revealed how he was to be the means for Christians to gain eternal life.30 For the particular phrase in this “I am” verse, etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet (“although he be dead, he shall live”), the glossator opted, rather than using the usual sources for John’s Gospel, to use an atypical exegetical source – an exposition on the four Gospels, written by an early medieval Irish exegete, known as Pseudo-Jerome.31 It should be noted that, while there is no contemporary corroboration for a copy of the Expositio being held at Laon, there is evidence for the presence of early medieval Irish scholars as well as evidence for the use of their works by the twelfth century glossators.32

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Rusch, 245, marginal gloss (col. a), “Ego sum lux mundi quae nube carnis tegitur et sic tolleranda hominibus efficitur unde et peccata possum dimittere et etiam hominem illuminare.” For a discussion on general problems with source identification problems within the glosses, see Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 41-44. John 11:25, Vulgate: “Dixit ei Jesus: Ego sum resurrectio et vita: qui credit in me, etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet”; Douai-Reims: “Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live” (Gospel according to John, 434). Pseudo-Jerome, Expositio quatuor evangeliorum, PL 30, 531-590; Anne K. Kavanagh, “The Ps.-Jerome’s Expositio IV evangeliorum,” in The Scriptures and Early Medieval Ireland, ed. Thomas O’Loughlin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 125-31. John J. Contreni, The Cathedral School of Laon from 850-930: Its Manuscripts and Masters (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1978), 3; Alexander Andrée,” The Glossa Ordinaria on the Gospel of John: A Preliminary Survey of the Manuscripts with a Presentation of the Text and its Sources,” Revue Bénédictine 118 (2008): 124.

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The glossator chose the allegorical comments from the Expositio that highlighted the three occasions when Jesus raised individuals from the dead – the widow’s son at Nain, the daughter of Jairus, and Lazarus.33 The death that took place in the house (Jairus’ daughter) was allegorized as the heart, the death at the gate (the widow’s son) was defined as the mouth, while Lazarus’ tomb was defined as the work and habit of sinning.34 While the roots of Pseudo-Jerome’s comments are present in Augustine,35 it was Pseudo-Jerome’s allegories, not present in Augustine, that were the exegetical choice of the twelfth-century glossator. This choice of a specific snippet, from an uncommon source, allowed the glossator to illustrate that Jesus, by raising not only Lazarus, but also others from the dead, was the resurrection and the life for the many, not just the few. Moreover, by incorporating the allegorical references to the heart, mouth and work, the glosses also illuminated how Jesus’ offer of eternal life was available to those twelfth-century Christians willing to believe in him, even if they were sinners in thought, word, or deed. The glossator would not only hunt down the most apposite extract for his exegetical interpretations of the “I am” statements, he would also, on occasion, make changes to the wording of the underlying text in order to illuminate a particular point, as illustrated by a small, but telling alteration to the wording that had been used by earlier exegetes on Jesus’ statement, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”36 Jesus, having declared that night was soon to come, made this statement, as he was about to heal a man blind from birth. It is this miracle story, highlighting the triumph of light (insight) over darkness (wilful blindness),37 which led exegetes, from Augustine, through to Alcuin, Heiric and Anselm to include in their exegesis on this statement, a reference to the “night of the wicked”, emphasizing night’s associations with darkness and thus with evil.38 The twelfth-century glossator, however, chose to make a particular change to this earlier exegesis, by substituting impiorum (“wicked”) with infernalis

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Luke 7:11-17; Luke 8:52-56; John 11:1-45; Pseudo-Jerome, Expositio, PL 30, 583C-583D, “in domo, id est in corde: in porta, id est, in ore: in monumento, id est, opera.” Rusch, 251, marginal gloss (col. b), “Etiam si mortuus. Tres mortuos suscitavit ihesus unum in domo id est in corde secundum in porta id est in ore tercium in monumento id est in opera et consuetudine peccandi.” Augustine, Tractatus, 421. John 9:5, Vulgate: “quamdiu sum in mundo, lux sum mundi”; Douai-Reims: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” John 9:1-4; Gospel according to John, 379. Augustine, Tractatus, 384, “nox ista impiorum”; Alcuin, Commentaria, 878B, “nox ista impiorum”; Heiric, Homiliae, 483; “nox ista impiorum”; Anselm, Glosae, 177, “nox impiorum.”

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(“infernal”).39 This change is not a quirk of the Rusch edition, nor is it a scribal error, since the wording is consistent in other manuscripts.40 The phrase “infernal night” has been identified as having been used in the writings of Avitus of Vienne (d.c. 519), and, in particular, his poem on the Fall of Man, with its phrase “from those now long buried in infernal night.”41 There is evidence that Avitus’ poem was available to the twelfth-century glossator and moreover, that it was used for teaching, since there is an extant ninth-century manuscript, still held at Laon, containing marginal notations showing that it had been used for teaching purposes.42 The change in wording, with its evocation of hell, seen as a tortuous separation from God, brought a contemporarily relevant emphasis to Jesus’ statement; the “infernal night” would face all those who failed to believe in Jesus.43 By invoking the general idea of hell, rather than the more specific “wicked” into the exegesis on Jesus’ statement, the glossator was thus able to illuminate more powerfully to all twelfth-century Christians the hellish risk of allowing sinful darkness to triumph over Jesus’ light of eternal life. The glossator’s choices to make such changes to wording or to use additional, perhaps uncommon texts, or indeed choosing simply to maintain straightforward exegetical continuity, thus all reinforced or strengthened the interpretation of Jesus’ “I am” statements. In so doing, the glossator shone a consistent, sometimes stronger exegetical light on Jesus’ role as the provider of eternal life and, in the process, often emphasized Christianity’s total dependence on this role.44 The glossator’s changes and choices, with their increased exegetical emphasis on the salvific role of Jesus, however, also revealed something else – they shone a light on the contemporary context in which the glosses were

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Rusch, 247, marginal gloss (col. b), “Quamdiu sum. . . nox illa est infernalis. . . ” Troyes, MAT, MS 1092, f. 29v, marginal gloss (col. b), “nox est illa infernalis”; Cambridge, University Library, MS Nn.2.38, f. 39v, marginal gloss (col. a), “nox est illa infernalis.” Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 943; Avitus of Vienne, Avitus: The Fall of Man, De spiritalis historiae gestis libri I-III, edited from Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS.273, ed. Daniel J. Nodes (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), 41, “adque infernali iam dudum nocte sepultis.” Daniel J. Nodes, introduction to Avitus: The Fall of Man, De spiritalis historiae gestis libri I-III, edited from Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS.273, ed. Daniel J. Nodes (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), 10. Arnold Angenendt, “Fear, Hope, Death, and Salvation,” trans. Theo Riches, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. John H. Arnold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 297-98. Gospel according to John, 534; The Gospel according to John, vol. 2, (XIII-XXI), trans. Raymond E. Brown (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 678.

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being compiled. Such choices reflected the way in which the Church was being faced with various secular and spiritual challenges as the twelfth century evolved.45 In light of these challenges, it was paramount that Christian society be warned of the perils of deviating from the Church’s teaching. Where better, using the glosses, to illuminate and disseminate such warnings than in the teaching being undertaken in the flourishing schools of the twelfth century? Beryl Smalley observed how exegetes constantly strove to make the authoritative text agree with the ideas of their time.46 She further commented that the glossed books of the Bible provided the best way to pull out or extract the glossators’ thoughts.47 By considering the glossator’s textual choices in John’s Gospel, it becomes possible to see those efforts and thoughts. Jesus’ statement, “I am the bread of life”48 was glossed primarily using the text of Anselm’s commentary on John’s Gospel, which itself was sourced from a sermon of Heiric.49 The gloss states that Jesus was able to give eternal life, because he had been shaped by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the oven of the womb of the Virgin and had been given to the world in order to banish the famine of those ignorant of God.50 The gloss illuminated the way in which Jesus, as the living bread, would provide eternal nourishment to those who would follow him.51 Nevertheless, the choice to include references to the Incarnation, taken virtually word for word from Anselm, illuminated something else – the way in which the Church, in the twelfth century, was being challenged to rationalise or justify the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth.52 45 46 47 48

49 50

51 52

Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1995), 51-62. Beryl Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 30. Beryl Smalley, “Les commentaires bibliques de l’époque romane: glose ordinaire et gloses périmées,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale Xe-XIIe siècles 4 (1961): 22. John 6:35, Vulgate: “Dixit autem eis Jesus: Ego sum panis vitae: qui venit ad me, non esuriet, et qui credit in me, non sitiet umquam”; Douai-Reims: “And Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger: and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.” Anselm, Glosae, 113; Heiric, Homiliae, 418. Rusch, 239-40, marginal gloss (col. b-col. a): “Ego sum panis vitae. Potero dare vitam quia sum panis vivificans igne spiritus sancti in clibano uteri virginalis coctus et formatus et mundo ad pellendam famen ignorantiae dei donatus.” “Coctus” appears to be a peculiarity of the manuscripts used in the preparation of Rusch, since it does not appear in various twelfth-century manuscripts, e.g. Troyes, MAT, MS 1092, f. 19r, marginal gloss (col. b), “in clibano virginalis uteri formatus”; Cambridge, University Library, MS Nn.2.38, f. 24v, marginal gloss (col. a), “in clibano uteri virginalis formatus.” Gospel according to John, 534. Abulafia, Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 78-87.

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The glossator could have chosen not to include such a reference; for example, of the other usual exegetical sources, neither Alcuin nor Augustine discussed the Incarnation in their exegesis on this verse.53 Nevertheless, the glossator opted to follow Anselm’s more recent commentary, with its reference to the Virgin Birth. Moreover, he also made two small but significant changes to Anselm’s text, electing to use formatus and donatus rather than, respectively, deformatus and datus. Replacing deformatus with its potential to imply spoiled or marred, with formatus, bearing a more straightforward meaning of formed or shaped, and also carrying an Old Testament resonance, (e.g. Isaiah 43:10, ante me non est formatus Deus, “before me, there was no God formed”), the possible risk of the Incarnation being open to a negative misinterpretation was thus eliminated.54 Similarly, the decision to change the text from the generic datus to the more specific donatus with its meaning of gift, or sacrifice, accentuated the sacred nature of the Incarnation.55 Accordingly, the glossator’s choice of exegetical text and the related textual changes drew out and emphasized, to those being taught in the twelfth-century classroom, the doctrinally-acceptable concept of the Incarnation.56 Furthermore, these choices also confirm Smalley’s comments; they reveal how, in his exegesis, the glossator was addressing the concerns and debates of his time. The glosses related to the verse containing Jesus’ statement, “I am the door” also reveal a further challenge facing the Church – the rise of heresy.57 Jesus’ statement, made in response to a group of Pharisees who had been questioning him in relation to a miracle curing a blind man,58 illuminated the way in which Jesus portrayed himself as the door leading to salvation, a door through which all must pass to be saved.59 Emphasising that it was the Church that provided the route to Jesus’ salvific gateway, the wording of the marginal gloss, resonating in part with Anselm’s commentary, on “et ingredietur et egredietur 53 54 55 56

57

58 59

Augustine, Tractatus, 255-56; Alcuin, Commentaria, 830A. Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, 532, 768. Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, 604, 610-11. Regarding the uses of the glossed books of the Bible, see Lesley Smith, “Medieval Glossed Psalters: Layout and Use,” Bodleian Library Record 21 (2008): 53; for the teaching of the Gospels in the twelfth-century, see Beryl Smalley, The Gospels in the Schools c. 1100-c.1280 (London: Hambledon Press, 1985). John 10:9, Vulgate: “Ego sum ostium. Per me si quis introierit, salvabitur: et ingredietur, et egredietur, et pascua inveniet”; Douai-Reims: “I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures”; Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, trans. and ed., Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 23-28. John 9:1-41. Gospel according to John, 394.

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et pascua inveniet”, explained that ingredietur (“he shall go in”) represented the importance of living, through faith, within the Church, while egredietur (“shall go out”) represented the eventual benefits of eternal life.60 The roots of this exegesis on John 10:9 spread from Augustine, into Alcuin and then into Anselm.61 However, the interlinear gloss on egredietur (“shall go out”) added a further interpretation, the purpose of “shall go out” was to fight against the heretics.62 This phrase is not present in Anselm’s commentary on this verse nor is it present in earlier related exegesis. Augustine did make reference to various heresies, but beforehand, in his exegesis on John 10:1,63 a reference also echoed by Alcuin,64 while Anselm’s comments on John 10:1 stated that it was neither the proud Jews nor the pagans who were allowed to enter through Christ, the door.65 It is possible that the glossator’s choice of wording may have come from an, as yet, unidentified earlier source. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a reference to fighting against heresy has a contemporary resonance to it, which fits with Smalley’s comments reflecting the glossators’ ideas and thoughts and also highlights the way in which the glosses could disseminate, into twelfth-century society, the Church’s responses to such challenges. This gloss regarding the fight against heretics also provides evidence for the dissemination of such ideas stretching into the later twelfth century and beyond, as later scholars made use of the glosses in their own exegetical comments on the “I am” statements. However, it must be noted that Alexander Andrée and Mark J. Clark have both recently highlighted the need for caution when seeking to identify the exegetical roots of textual similarities present in both the twelfth-century glosses and later writings on John’s Gospel.66 Bearing these warnings in mind, there are, however, still occasions when it is obvious that the glosses themselves have been used, and the gloss on John 10:9 with its reference to heretics is a case in point. 60

61 62 63 64 65 66

Rusch, 249, marginal gloss (col. b), “Vel ingredietur in ecclesiam ut hic vivat per fidem unde post dicit ut vitam habeant et egredietur de ista vita ut in aeternum vivat”; Anselm, Glosae, 188-89. Augustine, Tractatus, 397; Alcuin, Commentaria, 563A-563D; Anselm, Glosae, 188-89. Rusch, 249, interlinear gloss above “egredietur” (col. b), “egredietur ad pugna contra hereticos.” Augustine, Tractatus, 390. Alcuin, Commentaria, 883C-884A. Anselm, Glosae, 185, “per hanc ianuam non intrant iudei adversus Iesum superbientes, non intrant pagani. . . .” Alexander Andrée, Tristan Sharp, and Richard Shaw, “Aquinas and ‘Alcuin’: A New Source of the Catena Aurea on John,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 83 (2016): 3-20; Mark J. Clark, “The Biblical Gloss, the Search for Peter Lombard’s Glossed Bible and the School of Paris,” Mediaeval Studies 76 (2014): 57-113.

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Zachary of Besançon, a canon of St Martin at Laon, made frequent, albeit unacknowledged, use of the glossed books of the Bible in the composition of his widely-circulated Gospel concordance, Unum ex quatuor, written circa 1140-45.67 His use of the glosses on “I am the door”, not only echoed their references to eventual salvation via the Church, but his choice to retain the glossator’s reference to the fight against heresy is perhaps a reflection of the Church’s ongoing concerns in the mid-twelfth century with the continuing rise in heretical challenges.68 Zachary’s phrasing is sufficiently similar to that of the glosses, in emphasising both Jesus’ role in providing a route to everlasting life, and the need to confront heresy, to feel that Zachary was primarily using the ideas and wording of the glosses, rather than relying purely on other exegetical works.69 Similarly, the Dominican scholar Hugh of Saint-Cher, writing his Postilla in totam bibliam (c. 1229-44), also used the same phrase, regarding the fight against heresy, in his interpretation of “I am the door.”70 Hugh’s use of the glossed books of the Bible within his own work has been well-documented and discussed.71 His choice to include such a reference is perhaps unsurprising, given the Dominican Order’s focus on preaching against heresy.72 Hugh’s initial interpretation of Jesus’ statement followed the pattern of earlier exegesis by focusing on the role of the Church in obtaining future salvation, but with the additional comments, accentuating the need for study, reading and listening to preaching, a further reflection of Dominican religious focus.73 His second interpretation, however, directly identifying his source as the gloss, vel secundum Glo. (“or according to the Gloss”), and, using wording very similar to that of the glossator, emphasized the importance of treading the path, through faith, to eternal life, while his interpretation of egredietur (“shall go out”) retained the exact wording of the twelfth-century gloss advocating the ongoing need ad pugnam contra haereticos (“to the fight against heretics”).74 Hugh 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74

Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 199. Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 55. Zachary, Expositio, PL 186, 422B-422C, “Aliter: Ingredietur credendo, operando egredietur ad pugnam contra haereticos. Amplius: Ingredietur Ecclesiam, ut hic per fidem vivat, quia justus ex fide vivit. Et egredietur etiam per ostium fidei Christi de hac vita, ut in aeternum vivat.” Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 220; Hugh of Saint-Cher, Biblia Latina, John 10:9, (col. b). Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 220-23. Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 96. Hugh of Saint-Cher, Biblia Latina, John 10:9, (col. b), “Et pascua inveniet per studium et lectionem vel audiendo predicationem”; Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 96. Hugh of Saint-Cher, Biblia Latina, John 10:9, (col. b).

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may have chosen to use many sources for his interpretation of John’s Gospel and the “I am” statements, but clearly the glosses still retained an exegetical relevance both for illuminating Jesus’ salvific role and for illuminating those challenges still facing the Church in the first half of the thirteenth century. Writing some hundred years later, Nicholas of Lyra chose not to mention heretics in his commentary on Jesus as the door to salvation, although he had included refutations of heresy elsewhere in his commentary on John.75 However, what did resonate with the glosses was Nicholas’ emphasis in his commentary on Jesus as the door, stating that ingredietur (“he shall enter in”) led to faith, while egredietur (“shall go out”) led eventually out of this world into glory (i.e. eternal life).76 Moreover, as with the twelfth-century glosses, their exegetical predecessors and with Hugh, Nicholas stressed that this entry and exit into salvation was only available to those faithful to Jesus and to the Church.77 Unlike Hugh, Nicholas did not always identify his sources and therefore his use of the twelfth-century biblical glosses is not always clear, refracted as they may have been not only via earlier patristic sources but also via post-twelfth-century works such as Hugh’s postillae.78 While the secular and spiritual challenges facing Nicholas in the fourteenth century may have differed from those facing earlier exegetes, his interpretations of John 10:9 reveal how he continued to illuminate Jesus’ salvific relationship with humankind in much the same way as his exegetical forbears. If, in his “I am” statements, Jesus was illuminating his role in relation to humanity’s eventual eternal life, then the twelfth-century glosses on those statements continued that illumination. By standing on the shoulders of their exegetical predecessors, the glosses lit up the right path which would lead obedient Christians away from the darkness of sin and on into the light of eventual salvation. However, by means of the various textual choices that had been selected, and the subtle changes that had been made to those earlier exegetical sources, the glosses also shone a light on something else – they revealed the context in which the Church, in its teachings, was addressing the various 75 76 77

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Lesley Smith, “The Gospel Truth: Nicholas of Lyra on John,” in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 231. Nicholas of Lyra, Biblia Latina, John 10:9, (col. a), “ingredietur hic ad fidem. Et egredietur ex hoc mundo ad gloriam.” Nicholas of Lyra, Biblia Latina, John 10:9, (col. a), “quia officium ostium est salvare ea qui sunt intra domum et quia per ipsum sit ingressus et egressus et sic est de Christo qui per ipsum fideles salvantur et servantur.” Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 225-26; Lesley Smith, “The rewards of faith: Nicholas of Lyra on Ruth,” in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 56.

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social, economic and spiritual challenges that were taking place in the twelfth century. The thoughts and ideas contained in those twelfth-century glosses, illuminating Jesus with their exegetical choices and changes, would shine on even until the eve of the Reformation.79 79

Smith, Glossa Ordinaria, 238-39.

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Chapter 7

Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus in the Medieval West Rob Lutton

From the eleventh century onward, there was an increasing preoccupation in Western Christianity with Christ’s humanity and suffering body. This “Christocentric turn” was not just towards the bloodied human body of Christ but also towards his human name, “Jesus.” The roots of this were deep, as from the early Church onwards Christian writers had promoted personal attachment to the name “Jesus” through prayer, worship, and meditation as well as its benefits of healing, protection, and salvation. Up to the end of the thirteenth century, devotion to the Holy Name was confined largely to the religious orders and elements of the nobility but appears to have been promoted by the mendicant orders from the second half of the thirteenth century and received papal backing in 1274. From the fourteenth century, earlier statements about the Name were reworked, translated into vernacular languages and disseminated to the broader populace. Distinctive cults of the Holy Name developed in different territories that gained significant popular followings and, in time, official sanction, although not without controversy. This chapter sketches the development of these different traditions and assesses their significance. It explores the relationship of the cult of the Holy Name to other forms of Christocentric devotion, principally practices focused on the Passion of Christ. How distinctive was devotion to the Name of Jesus, and how can we explain its appeal? An important aspect of this was the development of Holy Name contemplative practices and the dissemination of mystical ideals and ecstatic experiences associated with the Name beyond the religious orders. The Name’s mystical associations cannot wholly explain its widespread popularity however, and so the chapter also explores other aspects, including the wide dissemination of the sacred monogram. Lastly, it examines the controversies that surrounded the increasing popularity of devotion to the Name of Jesus, including accusations of idolatry and conservative reactions to Holy Name enthusiasm.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_009

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Lutton The Early Development of Devotion to the Holy Name

Jesus is the Latin form of Ἰησοΰς, the New Testament Greek for Jeshua, a contraction of Jehoshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.”1 This meaning of the name “Jesus” as salvation can be seen in Matthew 1:21: “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”2 This led both St Jerome and St Augustine to accord it special status.3 It was also stressed by Origen and St Ambrose who, in commentaries on one of the most important texts in the history of the devotion, the Oleum effusum nomen tuum (“your name is as oil poured out”) in Song of Solomon 1:2, likened to the grace that resulted from the coming into the world of the Name of Jesus through the Incarnation and preaching to the sweet fragrance produced by an outpouring of ointment.4 Equally important for the development of devotion to the Holy Name in the Middle Ages was Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This cemented the power and authority of the Name and its place in Christian worship and influenced patristic statements on its power to drive out demons and to heal.5 Contrastingly, the status of “Jesus” as Christ’s given human name led to its signalling of devotional intimacy with the man Jesus and use as vehicle and object of devotion, often expressed in sensory metaphors. So, Augustine

1 D. A. Deissmann, “The Name of Jesus” in Mysterium Christi. Christological Studies by British and German Theologians, ed. G. K. A. Bell and D. A. Deissmann (London: Longmans Green, 1930), 12. On this subject, see also Larry Swain’s chapter in this volume. 2 Biblical references are to the New Revised Standard Version. 3 Jerome, Commentaria in Evangelium S. Matthaei, Lib. III, Cap. XVI, ed v. 20, PL 26, c. 118C and idem, Translatio Homilarium Origenis in Envangelium Lucae, II, PL 26, c. 274A. Augustine, In Joannis Evangelium Tractatus, CII, PL 35, c. 1896-97 and idem, Sermon 174, in 1 Tim. 1, PL 38, c. 944. See also Peter R. Biasiotto, History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name (St Bonaventure, NY: St Bonaventure College and Seminary, 1943), 20-22 and A. Cabassut, “La devotion au nom de Jésus dans l’eglise d’occident,” La Vie Spirituelle 86 (1952): 46-69, esp. 51-52. 4 Origen, First Homily on Song of Songs, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus: Series Græca, ed., J.-P. Migne, 13: 41; Ambrose, Commentarius in Cantica Canticorum, PL 15, Cap. 1, c. 1856B-1859A; Cabassut, “nom de Jésus,” 51; Biasiotto, Holy Name, 17. 5 Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. I, 6 and 67, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus: Series Græca, 11: 666 and 786. Ambrose, Hexaemeron, Lib. 6, c. 9, 74, PL 14, cc. 272A-B and see also idem, Expositio in Psalmum CXVIII, Sermon 21, PL 15, cc. 1504C-1505A. Peter Chrysologus, Sermones, Sermon 144, PL 52, c. 586.

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wrote about the Name in terms of intensity of personal experience, of its unsurpassed sweetness or delight – like honey – that can only be truly known by those who have tasted it. Commenting, in City of God, on translations of Habakkuk 3:18, he advocates the translation, “I will rejoice in God my Jesus” (Gaudebo in Deo Jesu meo) over “I will rejoice in God my salvation” (Gaudebo in Deo Salutari meo) because “Jesus” “is more friendly and sweet to name” (nomen ipsum non posuerunt quod est nobis amicius et dulcius nominare).6 The very close identification of the Name of Jesus with his person, to the point where the two are inseparable, stemming from the Hebrew understanding of the nature of names, led to the idea that those who invoke his name or hold it in their thoughts make Jesus present.7 This is implicit in Augustine’s Confessions, when he writes that the name of his saviour was fixed so deep in his heart it was as if he had imbibed it with his mother’s milk.8 A corollary of this idea is that love for the Name is identical with love for Jesus himself, something expressed in the widely rehearsed legend of the second-century martyr St Ignatius of Antioch who claimed, while being tortured, that he could not stop calling upon the Name of Jesus because he had it written on his heart, which, after his death, his curious executioners cut open to find “Jesus” written throughout in letters of pure gold.9 This identification of name with person notwithstanding, over time the Name tended to become an object of devotion in its own right. This was not least because the association of the Name of Jesus with Christ’s humanity meant that it took on new significance when, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Western spirituality developed a greater emotional intensity and focus on the physical suffering of the saviour.10 Anselm of Bec’s (d. 1109)

6 7

8 9

10

Enarrationes in Psalmos, LI, 18, PL 36, c. 612; Civitate Dei, Lib. XVIII, Cap. 32, PL 41, c. 591. Cabassut, “nom de Jésus”, 46; Irénée Noye, “Jésus (Nom de),” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, Tome 8 (Paris, 1974), col. 1109-1126, esp. 1110 and see discussion in Judith Anne Aveling, “In nomine Iesu omne genu flectatur,” The Late Medieval Mass and Office of the Holy Name of Jesus: Sources, Development and Practice (PhD Diss., Bangor University, 2015), 34-35. Augustine, Confessiones, Lib. III, Cap. 4, no. 8, PL 32, c. 686. This was also a reference to the Christian education he received from his mother (Cabassut, “nom de Jésus,” 51-52). Vita S. Ignatij scripta. Nomen Theophori, Acta Sanctorum, Feb. 1, 14 [7], c. 14C; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1993), vol. 1, 142-3. Good recent starting points are Brian Patrick McGuire, “c.1080-1215: culture and history” and Henrietta Leyser, “c. 1080-1215: texts” both in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, ed. Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 29-47 and 49-67 and McGuire, “John of Fécamp and Anselm of Bec: A New Language of Prayer” in Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Benedicta Ward, SLG, ed., Santha Bhattacharji, Rowan Williams, Dominic Mattos (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 153-65.

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use of the Name in his enormously influential Meditation II, “To Stir Up Fear,” takes up the meaning of “Jesus” as salvation and develops it into a lyrical prayer that forms the emotional climax of a soliloquy on sin and the crushing terror of God’s impending judgement. The only escape is to call on the saviour, whose name is Jesus: Jesus, Jesus, for your name’s sake, deal with me according to your name. Jesus, Jesus, forget the pride which provoked you, see only the wretchedness that invokes you. Sweet name, delectable name, the name that comforts sinners and the name of blessed hope. For what is “Jesus” if not “Saviour”? So, Jesus, for your own sake, be to me Jesus.11 Even more influential was Bernard of Clairvaux’s fifteenth sermon on The Song of Solomon on the “oleum effusum” phrase.12 This equates the outpouring of Jesus’ name with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as foretold in Joel 2:28 and of Christ’s life in saving humanity. Its most influential passages used the threefold properties of oil, namely light, food and medicine, to expound the benefits of the Name which are apprehended through three different types of action. First, the preaching of Jesus’ Name brings light to the spiritually blind through salvation. Second, meditation on the Name gives moral sustenance and fortification, protecting the affections from corruption and causing the devotee to grow in virtue and good habits. Third, in parallel with Anselm, invocation of the Name is a medicine which provides a preventative antidote to the effects of sin. In what would become a famous passage, Bernard promotes the name of Jesus as an essential aspect of the practice of ruminatio and uses sensory metaphors to stress how the Name of Jesus had become for him the key to a spiritual enlivening that once experienced made all else seem plain: Every food of the mind is dry if it is not dipped in that oil; it is tasteless if not seasoned by that salt. Write what you will, I shall not relish it unless it tells of Jesus. Talk or argue about what you will, I shall not relish it if

11

12

“Jesu, Jesu, propter hoc nomen tuum, fac mihi secundum hoc nomen tuum. Jesu, Jesu, obliviscere superbum provocantem, respice miserum invocantem nomen dulce, nomen delectabile, nomen confortans peccatorem, et beatae spei. Quid est enim Jesus, nisi Salvator? Ergo Jesu, propter temetipsum esto mihi Jesus” (Anselm, Sanctis Anselmi Liber Meditationem Orationum, Meditatio II: De terrore judicii, ad excitandum in se timorem, PL 158, cc. 724C-725B translated in The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, trans. Sister Benedicta Ward (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 224 and see introduction 74). Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, Sermo XV, PL 183, cc. 843D-848C.

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you exclude the name of Jesus. Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart.13 One of Bernard’s most important contributions in this passage was his association of the Name with the concept of jubilus, the ecstatic joy that rises up in the heart in devotion and emerges as a spontaneous shout or song.14 By making this contribution, he helped the Name to become a sort of shorthand for ecstatic religious experience. Bernard’s use of a readily apprehensible set of connected ideas and images provided a basis for Holy Name practices. Metaphors of the Name being hidden in the soul as medicine in a vase, of setting it as a seal upon one’s heart or arm, of carrying it in one’s hand, encouraged the internal work of meditative practices that deploy the Name of Jesus as text, image and object within and upon the body through imaginary acts of inscription, impression, and ingestion.15 Bernard of Clairvaux’s influence probably accounts for the establishment of Holy Name practices among the English Cistercians in the twelfth century, which can be seen in the works of Aelred of Rievaulx.16 By the end of the century, interest in the Name was a feature of monastic devotion more widely in northern England and Scotland.17 What, in time, would become one of the most well-known expressions of devotion to the Holy Name was more than 13

14 15

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17

“Aridus est omnis animae cibus, si non oleo isto infunditur; insipidus est, si non hoc sale conditur. Si scribas, non sapit mihi nisi legero ibi Jesum. Si disputes aut conferas, non sapit mihi, nisi sonuerit ibi Jesus. Jesus mel in ore, in aure melos, in corde jubilus” (PL 183, c. 847A). Translation from Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: 2: On the Song of Songs I, trans. Kilian Walsh, intro. Corneille Halflants, Cistercian Fathers Series: Number 4 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1971), 105-13. On the jubilus see Sam J. Womack, Jr., The Jubilus Theme in the Later Writings of Richard Rolle (PhD Diss., Duke University, 1961). For example: “Hoc tibi electuarium habes, o anima mea, reconditum in vasculo vocabuli hujus, quod est Jesus, salutiferum certe, quodque nulli unquam pesti tuae inveniatur inefficax. Semper tibi in sinu sit, semper in manu, quo tui omnes in Jesum et sensus dirigantur et actus. Denique et invitaris: Pone me, inquit, signaculum in corde tuo, signaculum in brachio tuo” (PL 183, cc. 847C-D). Malcolm Moyes, ed., Richard Rolle’s Expositio super novem lectiones mortuorum: an introduction and contribution towards a critical edition, 2 vols. (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1988), vol. 1: 27-64; ODNB, “Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167), David N. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004-12); Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia: 1 Opera Ascetica, ed. A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, CCCM, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), 288, 648. For example, in the Anglo-Scottish Premonstratensian and later Carthusian Adam of Dryburgh’s sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision: Christopher Holdsworth, “Adam of Dryburgh,” ODNB (2004-12); Adam of Dryburgh, Sermon 42, “Item in Die Circumcisionis Domini,” PL 198, cc. 382D-393A.

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likely produced at Rievaulx before the end of the twelfth century, namely the Latin poem Dulcis Jesu memoria (“Jesus the Memory is Sweet”). The poem’s references to devotion to the Name are less overt than one might expect, when one considers its eventual adoption as a hymn for the English office of the Holy Name in the fifteenth century. It is a good example of how works that repeated the name “Jesus” became attached to the cult as it gained momentum.18 The clearest references to the Name as object of devotion are in the second and eighteenth of the poem’s forty-two stanzas, the latter obviously inspired by Bernard: Nil canitur suauius Auditur nil iocundius Nil cogitatur dulcius Quam Iesus Dei filius.19 (Nothing is sung more pleasingly Nothing is heard more gladly Nothing is thought more sweetly Than Jesus Son of God.)20 Jesus decus angelicum In aure dulce canticum In ore mel mirificum Cordi pigmentum celicum.21 (Jesus angelic splendour Sweet song in the ear Wonderful honey in the mouth Heavenly balm of the heart.)22 “Jesus” is repeated in thirty-five stanzas overall but the overwhelming meditative focus of the mystical journey to union of the soul with God that the poem 18 19 20 21 22

R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 70; Aveling, “In nomine Iesu,” 68. André Wilmart, Le “Jubilus” sur le nom de Jesus dit de Saint Bernard, Ephemerides liturgicae, Anno. 57 (Vatican City, 1943), 146-47. Translation from Catherine A. Carsley, “Devotion to the Holy Name: Late Medieval Piety in England,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 53: 2 (1992): 156-72 at 161. Wilmart, Le “Jubilus,” 150. My translation.

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describes is upon the Passion, and use of the Name remains framed within that context.23 Dulcis Jesu memoria achieved very wide circulation throughout Europe, but its reception as an expression of devotion to the Name of Jesus was established only by the fourteenth century when the cult had developed as a result of other texts and initiatives.24

2

Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Preaching of the Name and Its Enhancement in the Liturgy

The dissemination of devotion to the Holy Name outside of monastic circles in England had begun by the early thirteenth century,25 but it was not until the second half of that century that initiatives within the western church promoted the devotion to a wider lay audience. One such initiative was the enhancement of the importance of the Holy Name in the liturgy. In 1274, Pope Gregory X’s twenty-fifth constitution, Decet Domum Dei Sanctitudo of 1272, which ordered special reverence and, specifically, bowing of the head when the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned, especially during mass, was adopted by the second council of Lyons.26 That same year Gregory wrote to the Master

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Denis Renevey “Anglo-Norman and Middle-English Translations and Adaptations of the Hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria,” The Medieval Translator 5, ed. R. Ellis and R. Tixier (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 264-83, esp. 267-9. Wilmart, Le “Jubilus,” 10-47; Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, vol. 1, 35, n., 34-7, 46-47, 61-62. Its association in many early continental manuscripts with the Bernardine concept of “jubilus” did not necessarily connect it with the Holy Name but with ecstatic experience more broadly. Anglo-Norman and early Middle English adaptations also confirm this chronology of appropriation: Renevey “Dulcis Iesu Memoria,” passim. In seeing the poem as fundamental to the development of devotion to the Holy Name, Hope Emily Allen was following this later medieval interpretative tradition: idem, “The Mystical Lyrics of the Manuel des Pechiez,” Romanic Review 9 (1918): 154-93. It is invoked to a limited extent in the early thirteenth-century anchoritic work Ancrene Wisse and the associated devotional meditations known as the “Wooing Group”: Bella Millett, Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402, with variants from other manuscripts, EETS, o.s. 325 (vol. 1) and 326 (vol. 2) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 and 2006), vol. 2, ix-xxiv, 110-111, ll. 1596-1627; Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works (Mahwah, N. J: Paulist Press, 1991), 7-15, 29-32, 245-47, 285-87; Þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd, ed. W. Meredith Thompson, EETS, o.s. 241 (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), xl-lxi, 5 (ll. 1-7), 20 (ll. 1-5), 22 (ll. 77-79). Consitutiones a Gregorio Papa Decimo in Concilio Lugdunensi, c. 25 in J. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum nova, et amplissa Collectio, vol. 24 (Venice, 1780), col. 98-9; CharlesJoseph Hefele, Histoire des conciles: d’Aprés Les Documents Originaux. Nouvelle traduction

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General of the Dominicans to enlist the Friars Preacher in the promulgation of his decree.27 Some sense of its impact can be gained from William of Pagula’s Latin pastoral manual Oculus sacerdotis that dates from the early 1320s. This counsels: “Therefore, each and every person when he hears that glorious name of Jesus, especially during the celebration of the mass, should genuflect deep in his heart by striking his breast and bowing his head.”28 John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests written in English around 1400, and based on the Oculus, similarly counsels reverence of the Name in church.29 It seems likely, therefore, that by the beginning of the fourteenth century the laity were routinely reminded of the sacred status of the Name of Jesus. The other main mechanism of dissemination, that potentially went handin-hand with the liturgy, was preaching. William of Savoy, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, for example, preached the Holy Name when he came to England in 1247.30 A number of popular thirteenth-century collections of exempla, stories used by preachers which were also read for moral instruction and entertainment, of which several were produced by the mendicants, contain Holy Name legends.31 The stories in chapter 57 of the Speculum laicorum, entitled “De Nomine Jhesu,” are typical in advocating invocation of the Name of Jesus as a defence, either against temptation, demons, or pagan enemies. One is a purgatorial vision in which a boy is protected from being seized by demons by repeating “Jesus” on the advice of a Cistercian father.32 Preaching of the Holy

27

28

29 30

31

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Française faite sur la 2. Edition allemande. . . (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 11 vols., 1907-1973), 6, Part 1, Book xxxviii, 203-4. The Bull Nuper in Concilio Lugdunensi: Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum nova, vol. 24, col. 134; Pietro Maria Campi, Dell’Historia Ecclesiastica di Piacenza (Piacenza: Bazachi, 1651), II, 456, co. 1-2. Oculus Sacerdotis, Liber Secunda (Dextera pars oculi), chap. 1, trans. in J. Shinners and W. J. Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 150. Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. E. Peacock, EETS, 31 (London, 1868, rev. 1902), ll. 289-301. Biasiotto, Holy Name, 41-5; Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols. (London: British Museum, 1910), vol. 3 (ed. J. A. Herbert), 477-8, 487 nos. 96 and 97. Biasiotto, Holy Name, 43-5; Brian J. Levy, “Cheriton, Odo of (1180s–1246),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., Jan 2008 [http ://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20545, accessed 16 June 2012]; Catalogue of Romances, 32, 487 no. 98; de Voragine, Golden Legend, vol 1, 142-3 and 353-4; Speculum Laicorum. Edition d’une collection d’exemple, composée en Angleterre à la fin du XIIIe siècle, ed. J. Th. Welter (Paris, 1914), xxiii-xxiv, xli-xliii, 10 no. 30, 9 no. 29. Speculum Laicorum, 81-2 nos. 418-21. This was a recurring motif in late medieval purgatorial visions and exempla. See, for some examples, John Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500: A Reader, Second Ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 245, 253, 254-5, 521, 525.

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Name did not focus solely on the Name’s apotropaic qualities but also on its efficacy for moral and spiritual reform. Before the fifteenth century, the evidence of actual preaching of the Name is scarce, however, and it is impossible to gauge its impact. Moreover, whereas preaching was central to the fifteenthcentury Italian cult, it does not seem to have been nearly as significant in England.33 In the thirteenth century, the Franciscans wrote a number of sermons on the Name of Jesus. Their interest in the devotion appears to have stemmed from St Francis (d. 1226) himself, and it is a theme in the sermons of St Anthony of Padua (d. 1231) and St Bonaventure (d. 1274). These display the influence of Bernard’s “oleum effusum.”34 According to Thomas Eccleston, the Franciscan minister provincial, William of Nottingham (d. 1254), “venerated the Name of Jesus with a special affection” and demonstrated his devotional interest in the life of Christ by improving upon Clement of Lanthony’s Gospel Harmony, Unum ex quatuor, and making a copy of its accompanying commentary.35 Another Franciscan, Guibert of Tournai (d. 1284), wrote the longest single coherent surviving medieval work on the Name of Jesus, Sermones de laude melliflui nominis Jesu (Sermons on the Praise of the Honey-Sweet Name of Jesus).36 It was written around the time of the second council of Lyons,

33 34

35

36

See below for fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English sermons. Biasiotto, Holy Name, 69-73, 81-2; Sermones Dominicales et in Solemnitatibus quos ex mss. Saeculi XIII codicibus qui Patavii servantur Faventibus Quinqueviris S. Antonii Arcae Curande consultis etiam Vaticano, Casanatensi aliisque exemplaribus, ed. Antonius Maria Locatelli et al. (Padua, s.a. 1885), 778-79; Antony of Padua, Sermons pour l’année liturgique, trans. l’Abbé Paul Bayart (Paris: Aux Editions Franciscaines, 1944), 59-60; S. Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, ed. R. P. David Fleming (College of St Bonaventura: Quaracchi Press, 1901), vol. 9, 49, 140, 219; ibid., vol. 8, 92, 183. “affectu specialissimo nomen Jesu venerabatur”: Fratris Thomae vulgo dicti de Eccleston Tractacus de adventu fratrum minorum in Angliam, ed. A. G. Little (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1951), 100 and Beryl Smalley, “Which William of Nottingham?,” in idem, Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), 200-239 esp. 249-52. Guibert, from Flanders, was an academic who taught in the Paris schools and probably held a chair in the arts faculty before becoming a Franciscan around 1235. Biasiotto, Holy Name, 76-7; David L. d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars. Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 144-45; David L. d’Avray and M. Tausche, “Marriage Sermons in Ad Status Collections of the Central Middle Ages,” Archives d’histoire doctrinal et littéraire du Moyen Âge, année 55, t. 47 (1980): 71-119, at 74-5; V. E. Bonifacio (ed.), Guibert de Tournai, De modo addiscendi (Turin: Publicazioni del Pontificio Ateneo Salesiano, I, Testi e studi sul pensiero medioevale, 1953), 9-13; V. P. Ephrem Longpré, ed., Tractatus de Pace auctore fr. Gilberto de Tornaco (Quaracchi, 1925), vii-xxxvi; Benjamin de Troeyer, Bio-Bibliographia Franciscana Neerlandica Ante Saeculum XVI, I. Pars Bi-

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perhaps in response to its enhancement of the Name.37 Whilst Guibert elaborates greatly on previous statements he does not substantially add to them and his discussion is largely theological in nature. An exception is the fifth sermon, which advocates practices of meditation and devotion that include the Bernardine injunction to keep the name of Jesus in one’s heart, on one’s lips, in one’s ear, and in all one’s acts.38 Guibert’s work would be an important influence on Bernardino of Siena’s preaching of the Name, but there is no evidence it ever circulated in England, for example.39 Nevertheless, the Holy Name is found in English Franciscan sermon literature of the fourteenth century, including Fasciculus morum, a popular preacher’s handbook composed around 1300. This handbook recounts the legends of St Ignatius, already mentioned, and St Godric, who defeated the devil by invoking Jesus’ name, and comments on its meaning of “saviour” and power as expressed in Philippians 2.40 Moreover, the Oxford Franciscan convent was host to two important proponents of the Holy Name in the second decade of the century. The first was another William of Nottingham (d. 1336), lector to the Oxford convent from 1312 to 1314 and then Provincial of the English order from 1316 to c. 1330. He wrote a commentary on the Gospels, based on

37

38 39

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ographica: Auctores editionem qui scripserunt ante saeculum XVI (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1974), 15-17. Longpré, ed., Tractatus de Pace, xxxv-xxxvi and idem, “S. Bernardin de Sienne et le Nom de Jésus (Suite)”, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 29 (1936): 154. Troeyer, BioBibliographia, 30-31. The printed editions wrongly attribute the work to Bonaventure: Devotissimum Opusculum de Laude Melliflui Nominis Iesu a S. Bonaventura Editum, Decem Sermones Continens, Lyon, per Magistrum Claudium Davost, alias de Troys, 1506; S. Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, ed. Bonelli, Supplentum, vol. 3 (Trent, 1774), col. 495-610. For the re-attribution to Guibert de Tournai see S. Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, ed. Fleming, vol. 9, xiv-xv; Longpré, ed., Tractatus de Pace, xxxii-xxxiii. Bonelli, col. 536. For summaries of its content see Biasiotto, Holy Name, 77-80. Renevey, “‘Name Above Names’: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection I,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland and Wales: Exeter Symposium VI, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999), 103-21 at 103 and n. 3 and 4 mentions Baudouin d’Amsterdam’s assertion (Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascetique et Mystique Doctrine et Histoire (Paris, 1937-), vol. 6 (1967), col. 1143) that a partial English version of Guibert’s tract can be found in BL Add. MS. 11748. Baudouin seems to have followed Longpré, ed., Tractatus de Pace, xxxv. This is an error, as the work is, in fact, a previously unknown English version of Rolle’s Oleum effusum, the fourth section of his Super Canticum Canticorum (see below). For a list of manuscripts of De Laude Melliflui see Troeyer, Bio-Bibliographia, 31. For Guibert’s influence on Bernardino see below. The work survives in 28 MSS: Fasciculus morum. A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. by Siegfried Wenzel (University Park, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 1-2, 178-80, 408-410, 616.

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Clement of Lanthony’s Unum ex quatuor, copied by his Franciscan namesake over sixty years earlier, which addresses the Name of Jesus. It likely arose from a series of lectures William delivered at Oxford and its popularity is attested by wide circulation up to the sixteenth century.41 The second was William Herebert, who became lector to the Oxford convent in 1317. He preached a sermon in one of the Oxford churches on the text “Dixit mater Ihesu ad eum, vinum non habent” (John 2:3) from the story of the Wedding at Cana, which includes a number of discussions of the Name that draw on numerous authorities including Bernard’s sermon fifteen. Herebert recorded his sermon in his autograph commonplace book and added a Middle English lyric at one point which extols the Name’s qualities and benefits, which he may have used when preaching.42 Whilst the Friars Minor played an important role in preaching the Name of Jesus, there was nothing essentially Franciscan about attachment to the devotion by the fourteenth century. Arch-opponent of the friars, Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, preached a sermon on the Holy Name, for the first Sunday of Advent, at Avignon during one of his three extended visits there between 1337 and 1360, probably in 1340. On “Veni, Domine Jesu” from Revelation 22.20, it draws on Bernard of Clairvaux and Anselm.43 Described by Pantin as Fitzralph’s “most devotional sermon” and by Walsh as “almost mystical in tone,” it rehearses the moral and spiritual benefits of the Name and its supremacy over all other names.44 It is quoted in entirety in the article on “Jesus” in Omne bonum, the enormous encyclopaedia, compiled from around 1360 41 42

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Beryl Smalley, “Which William of Nottingham?,” passim. London, British Library, Additional, MS 46919, fols. 159r-162v and printed in The Works of William Herebert, OFM, ed. Stephen R. Reimer, Studies and texts, 81 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987), 29-44 and 111 and see also 1-25; Andrew Jotischky, “Herbert, William (d. 1333/1337?),” ODNB; M. B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes, The Lyell lectures delivered in the University of Oxford, 1999 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 26. The lyric is at fol. 161r and is IMEV 3632.6. This survives in three manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 144, fols 212v-217r; Oxford, St John’s College, MS 65, fols 153vb-56vb; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F. infra 1.2, fols 270va-73ra) and was incorporated into another work, for which see below. Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 493, item 83; Aubrey Gwynn, “The SermonDiary of Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 44 (1937/38): 1-57 at 16, 39, 56 no. 83. William Abel Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 164 and Katherine Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate. Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 206.

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but never finished, by James Le Palmer (d. 1375), Londoner and king’s clerk, and then Engrosser, of the Exchequer.45 The entry as a whole in Omne bonum is a good example of the range of material on the Name of Jesus that would have been readily available in the libraries of religious houses, wealthier grammar schools and the universities by the late fourteenth century.46 Le Palmer displays a deep hostility to the friars in Omne bonum which must, at least in part, explain his interest in Fitzralph, but ironically he also drew on Franciscan authors including William of Nottingham (d. 1336), mentioned above.47 Other examples include a miscellaneous collection of Latin sermons produced by an anonymous English Augustinian canon, c. 1400-25, which contains a sermon on the Holy Name that displays the influence of Bernard, the Victorines, and Richard Rolle (d. 1349),48 the early fourteenth-century Yorkshire hermit and mystic who, after Bernard, made the most important contribution to the development of devotion to the Name in England. It is possible that Rolle was influenced by Franciscan teaching on the Holy Name at Oxford during his brief and aborted studies there in the 1320s but, above all else, he was a northern writer who built on the foundations of a Bernardine tradition expressed in English Cistercian writing including the Dulcis Jesu memoria. An important bridge between this earlier tradition and Rolle was John of Howden’s late thirteenth-century Latin poem Philomena (“The

45

46

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London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E VII, fol. 234r-236v; Lucy Freeman Sandler, Omne Bonum. A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. British Library MSS Royal 6 E VI – 6 E VII, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996), vol. 1, 16-26, 46, 121-25, 151 n. 111; vol. 2, 214. Previously identified as a Cistercian monk, Sandler has confirmed Beryl Smalley’s early proposal that Le Palmer was an exchequer clerk: idem, “Which William of Nottingham?,” 260. Le Palmer’s sources for the entry include, in addition to the Fitzralph, “De circumcision” from the Legenda sanctorum, Augustine’s De trinitate and Meditations, extracts on Luke 2:21 and 17:13 from Franciscan William of Nottingham’s early-fourteenth-century Gospel commentary, Bernard’s Sermon 15 on Song of Songs, Aquinas’s Liber de veritate theologie, and glosses on the Liber sextus of Boniface VIII: Sandler, Omne Bonum, vol. 1, 26-29, 121-23; vol. 2, 214. Le Palmer made his own copy of William of Nottingham’s early fourteenth-century Gospel commentary, which survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 165: Sandler, Omne bonum, vol. 1, 17-18, 46-7, 53, 112-13; Smalley, “Which William of Nottingham?,” 260-64; Pantin, English Church, 164. Jennifer Depold, “Preaching the Name: The Influence of a Sermon on the Holy Name of Christ,” Journal of Medieval History 40:2 (2014): 195-208. For a late fifteenth-century Holy Name sermon likely preached at the Bridgettine house of Syon and printed by Caxton see Three Sermons for Nova Festa, together with the Hamus Caritatis Edited from Caxton’s 1491 Edition of John Mirk’s Festial, ed. Susan Powell, Middle English Texts 37 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007), 10-18.

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Nightingale”) which, like Guibert’s De laude melliflui nominis Jesu, was written around the same time as the second council of Lyons; it was, however, a very different kind of work. Howden was chaplain to Queen Eleanor of Provence, Edward I’s mother, to whom he presented an Anglo-Norman paraphrase of his Latin poem, entitled Rossignos. Philomena is a lengthy meditation on love as exemplified in the life, Passion and resurrection of Christ that finishes with a hymn of praise to the Virgin. The material on the Name of Jesus forms a single section of thirty-one out of a total of 1,131 four-line stanzas,49 and it appears to have been inspired in part by Dulcis Jesu memoria.50 It was, therefore, an important bridge between earlier statements and the developments of the fourteenth century.51 Philomena explores the central doctrinal meanings of the Name of Jesus and its many benefits, not least its power over spiritual enemies, but it is also an exuberant celebration of the experience of Holy Name devotion and contemplation that, in both intensity and scope, surpassed everything that had been written on the subject up to that point in time. Particularly striking is the richness of its heavily Bernardine sensory imagery, for example: Cordi dulcor incomparabilis, Lumen verum, lux inscrutabilis, Panis manna magis amabilis, Dei favus inenarrabilis.52 [Incomparable sweetness to the heart, True brightness, inscrutable light,

49

50

51

52

The Holy Name section comprises stanzas 342-372: Clemens Blume, ed., “Johannis De Hovedene “Philomena” in Hymnologische Beiträge Quelllen und Forschungen, Band 4 (Leipzig, 1930), 29-31. Poems of John of Hoveden, ed. F. J. E. Raby, Surtees Society 154 (London, 1939), xviii-xxvii. The clearest parallels are as follows: DJM, st.33 cf. Ph., st. 343; DJM, st. 17 cf. Ph., st. 344; DJM, st. 18, v. 3-4 cf. Ph., st. 355, v. 1-2; DJM, st. 1, v. 1 and st. 18, v. 2-3 cf. Ph., st. 356, v. 1-2; DJM, st. 18, v. 1-2 cf. Ph., st. 366, v. 1-2 (Wilmart, Le “Jubilus,” 91-3). Rolle almost certainly knew Howden’s works and was influenced by them. A passage in the final chapter of his Incendium amoris is derived from Philomena and parts of his Meditation B are reminiscent of both that work and Cythara, another of Howden’s poems: Raby, John of Hoveden, xxiv-xxvi; Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, vol. 1, 51, 58-9, 61; Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle Hermit of Hampole and Materials for his Biography, Modern Language Association of America Monograph Series, 3 (New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1927), 420 n. 3; Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 19, 105, 108, 139, 154, 178, 190, 311, n. 5, 321 n. 19. St. 361.

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Lutton More delightful manna of spiritual food, Indescribable honeycomb of God.]53

The saturation of Howden’s stanzas in the sweetness of the Holy Name almost certainly played a part in inspiring Rolle’s development of dulcor as a category of mystical experience. Equally, Howden’s use of the concept of jubilus, such as in “Cordis amor et iubilatio, Linguae sapor et modulatio” (“Love and joyous shout of the heart, savour and melody of the tongue”),54 and repeated description of devotion to the Name as the partaking in angelic song, “iuge melos angelicum” (“perpetual angelic melody”),55 likely informed Rolle’s concept of canor and the importance of the Name of Jesus in its acquisition.

3

Richard Rolle, Henry Suso, and Bernardino of Siena: the Rise of Popular Devotion to the Holy Name in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Rolle’s contribution was to build on this Bernardine ecstatic tradition by popularising the Name as a devotional and contemplative tool and object, not least by writing about it in English, but also by raising its status by giving it a central place in his mystical schema.56 He explicitly linked the Holy Name to his categories or gifts of mystical experience: fervor, dulcor and canor.57 Fervor describes the ardent love for God that was granted to Rolle after a prolonged period of mediation and prayer, and dulcor the ecstatic sweetness of delight and “mixture of longing and fulfilment” to which this led. Surpassing these was canor, the ultimate earthly goal of the contemplative; transformation of the soul and participation in heavenly song.58 Rolle closely linked special devotion to the name of Jesus with his own attainment of these gifts in chapter fifteen of Incendium amoris:

53 54 55 56

57 58

Translations here and below my own. St. 359, ll. 3-4. St. 366 l. 1. Indispensable is Allen, Writings Ascribed, with key statements at 4, 72-77 and 100-101 and see index for multiple other references and see also Watson, Richard Rolle, 18-19, 55, 237, 243, 247, 302 n. 7, 302-303 n. 9 and Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, 1, 25-67, 83-86. Incendium amoris was probably written by 1343: Watson, Richard Rolle, 277-78, at 277 and for extended discussion of the text see 113-141; Allen, Writings Ascribed, 225-29. Watson, Richard Rolle, 68-72 and Emendatio vitae; Orationes ad honorem nominis Ihesu edited from Cambridge University Library MSS Dd.v.64 and Kk.vi.20, ed. Nicholas Watson, Centre for Medieval Studies (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1995), 14.

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From which I deduce that they are not given for merit, but freely to whosoever Christ wills. All the same I fancy that no one will receive them unless he has a special love for the name of Jesus, and so honours it that he never lets it out of his mind, except in sleep. Anyone to whom this is given will, I think, achieve this very thing.59 He thus gave the Name a privileged and controversial place in his teaching, which he developed in later works. In Emendatio vitae and The Commandment, continuous ardent meditation on the Name is the means to ascend to “singular love” and the attainment of canor, but is distinct from this highest state and is strongly associated with dulcor.60 However, Rolle’s interpretation of the Holy Name changed according to his intended audience, and if there was an overall direction to his teaching on the subject, it was towards raising the status of the Name of Jesus to the highest level of contemplative experience. So, The Form of Living, whilst promoting a range of practices and experiences, appears to equate a mode of spiritual singing of the Name with canor itself.61 In this regard Rolle went further than any other writer in his enthusiasm for the Name of Jesus as mystical object and tool, and the cult that he helped foster remained closely tied to his own authority and charisma.62 Henry Suso (d. 1366), Rolle’s German Dominican contemporary, also promoted the Holy Name as an aspect of his own spiritual journey and authority. So, his account in The Exemplar of physically carving the letters of the sacred monogram “IHS,” derived from the Greek letters for “Jesus,” into the flesh over his heart is similar in its autobiographical intensity to chapter fifteen of

59

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61 62

Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. Clifton Wolters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 93-94. “Proinde arbitror hoc nulli datum meritis, sed gratis cui uoluerit Christus. Puto tamen neminen illud accepturum, nisi specialiter nomen Ihesum diligat, et eciam in tantum honoret ut ab eius memoria numquam, excepto sompno, recedere permittat. Cui hoc facere datum est, estimo quod et illud assequetur.”: Incendium Amoris, ed. Margaret Deanesly (Manchester: Longmans, Green & Co., 1915), 190. Watson interprets this passage as amounting to the claim that devotion to the Name of Jesus was “a prerequisite for experiencing canor”: idem, Richard Rolle, 314 n. 8. Emendatio vitae, ed. Watson, chap. 11, ll. 46-53, 75-76; chap. 1, ll. 9-33, 136-79 and see Watson, Richard Rolle, 219-20 and Allen, Writings Ascribed, 245. The Commandment, ll. 212-14 in Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse Edited from MS Longleat 29 and Related Manuscripts, ed. S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson, EETS, 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 39. The Form of Living, ll. 549-625 in Prose, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, 16-18 and see Watson, Richard Rolle, 252 and Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, vol. 1, 62. Emendatio vitae, ed. Watson, 23-4; Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, vol. 1, 85-86; Ralph Hanna, “The Transmission of Richard Rolle’s Latin Works,” The Library 14:3 (2013): 313-333 at 329.

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Incendium amoris or, indeed, Rolle’s story of how he resisted temptation by invoking the Name in the Oleum effusum section of his commentary on Song of Songs.63 As was the case with Rolle and, as we will see, Bernardino of Siena, the Name of Jesus became emblematic of Suso’s authority and of his teachings as a whole, even if it was only one aspect of them. This was not least because of the status he himself gave the Name, discussing it at crucial junctures in his works and thereby advocating it as a gateway to mystical ascent.64 Aspects of Suso’s advocacy of the Holy Name are similar to Rolle’s. For example, it was during an experience very similar to Rolle’s fervor, whereby “an immense fire was sent into his soul that inflamed his heart utterly with love of God,” that he cut the monogram over his heart to express and fix this love.65 He also wrote of the sweetness of the Name, including a vision in which he is led in an ecstatic dance to the traditional Christmas Hymn In dulci jubilo and hears “the beloved name of Jesus so sweetly sung [. . . ]”.66 Suso’s self-inscription with the monogram is interpreted as the physical embodiment of his own practice of carrying the Name in his heart which he then counsels his followers to emulate through practices of constant prayer and meditation akin to Rolle’s exhortation to fasten “Iesus [. . . ] so faste in þi herte þat hit cum neuer out of þi þoght.” (“Jesus [. . . ] so fast in your heart that it comes never out of your thoughts.”)67 This notwithstanding, Suso’s advocacy of the Name was less ambitious than Rolle’s, in that as an object of devotion and meditation it is presented in his writings as a preliminary to his mystical ascent and marriage with Eternal Wisdom, whereas for Rolle it was a fundamental component throughout all stages of spiritual advancement and not something that could be reduced to specific devotional exercises. In contrast, Suso’s works prescribe Holy Name practices 63

64

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Henry Suso, The Exemplar, With Two German Sermons, trans. ed. and intro. Frank Tobin (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 70-71 recounted also in Horologium sapientiae: BL. Henry Suso, Wisdom’s Watch Upon the Hours, trans. Edmund Colledge (Washington D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 320-21. Rolle, Oleum effusum, ll. 131-53 in Richard Rolle, Uncollected Prose and Verse with Related Northern Texts, ed. Ralph Hanna, EETS, o.s. 329 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 9-11. Jeffrey Hamburger points out that Suso discusses his devotion to the Name in The Exemplar between the narrative part of the Life and the philosophical dialogue on the nature of mystical experience with his disciple Elsbeth Stagel and also in the final letter of “The Little Book of Letters” that forms the last part of The Exemplar: Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. Art and Female Spirituality in late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 263, 270-71, 273. Suso also addresses it in the penultimate chapter of his Latin masterpiece the Horologium sapientiae: Wisdom’s Watch, trans. Colledge, 320-28. “The Life of the Servant” in The Exemplar, ed. Tobin, 70-71. “Life of the Servant” in The Exemplar, ed. Tobin, 74. “Little Book of Letters” in The Exemplar, ed. Tobin, 360 and see comments by Hamburger, The Visual, 270-71. The Form of Living, ll. 611-12 in Prose, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, 18.

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which are readily accessible to the spiritual novice and those who might never rise to the heights of contemplation.68 These included the carrying of cloth badges bearing the embroidered “IHS” monogram in red silk secretly under one’s clothes – a practice reportedly pioneered by Suso’s disciple Elsbeth Stagel in response to his more extreme actions – and regular prayers to the Name of Jesus and the Virgin to accompany the Pater Noster.69 With Suso, the routinization of charismatic Holy Name experience and practice began within the canon of his own works, whereas with Rolle it was an aspect of their posthumous dissemination and the proliferation of para-mystical texts produced under their influence, especially verse prayers and short meditations but also the employment of the monogram.70 The Franciscan Observant Bernardino of Siena’s championing of the Holy Name and skillful deployment of the monogram in the fifteenth century was even further removed from the Bernardine mysticism of Rolle, but it was, nevertheless, intensely and controversially ecstatic. An important distinction was Bernardino’s mode of communication of his devotion to the Name, namely preaching, which he had begun by 1417 and perhaps as early as 1410.71 Like Rolle and Suso, Bernardino also advocated meditation on the Name of Jesus 68

69

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71

In the “Life” the self-inscription with the IHS monogram episode is one of a number of practices or “vignettes. . . [offered] . . . as models for Elsbeth and his other spiritual daughters” before the final section which deals with the higher reaches of contemplation: Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300-1500), The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. IV (New York: Herder & Herder, Crossroads Publishing Company, 2013), 204. “Life of the Servant” in The Exemplar, ed. Tobin, 173-4. The prayer is “Blessed be the name of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, and of his mother the glorious Virgin Mary, for all eternity and thereafter. Amen”: Wisdom’s Watch, trans. Colledge, Book II, chap. 7, 320-28, esp. 324. For discussion of a number of examples see Rob Lutton, “‘Love this Name that is IHC’: Vernacular Prayers, Hymns and Lyrics to the Holy Name of Jesus in Pre-Reformation England,” in Vernacularity in England and Wales c. 1350-1550, ed. by Elizabeth Salter and Helen Wicker, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 115-41. My forthcoming monograph will include a full discussion of the extensive evidence for Rollean Holy Name devotion in the long fifteenth century. For the widespread devotional use of the monogram in Netherlandish Books of Hours and other types of religious books, sometimes in association with Suso’s works in the fifteenth century, see Kathryn M. Rudy, Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), 210 and idem, Postcards on Parchment. The Social Lives of Medieval Books (New Haven and London: Yale, 2015), 154, 197, 199-223. Emily Michelson, “Bernardino of Siena Visualizes the Name of God,” in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, ed. Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman and Richard Utz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 371-404 esp. 159 but see also A. G. Ferrers Howell, S. Bernardino of Siena (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1913), 105-106.

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but not as a route to mystical ascent. His focus was much more on the apotropaic, doctrinal, moral, social and salvific benefits of the Name, and where he did espouse meditation, it was upon its theological meanings.72 As such, his teachings on the Holy Name were very much within the Franciscan tradition that reached its fullest expression in the late thirteenth century with Guibert of Tournai.73 Rolle also promoted many of the Name’s moral and protective benefits, but he was too influenced by the ecstatic Bernardine tradition to limit his advocacy of the devotion to these and too concerned to transmit his own mystical achievements to what was probably, at least initially, a somewhat small and exclusive audience of would-be contemplatives.74 The ecstatic dimension of Bernardino’s cult of the Holy Name was collective rather than individual. Bernardino’s preaching involved his deliberate and carefully stage-managed use of his “YHS” monogram to produce extravagant outpourings of emotion in his listeners, often very large crowds.75 We are told that his climactic holding aloft of the monogram tablet at the end of his sermons produced spontaneous weeping and cries of “Giesù! Giesù!” and “Misericordia!” as his listeners fell to their knees.76 Whilst these outward displays appear, in part, to have been expressions of joy and love for Jesus,77 the overwhelming impression from the descriptions is that they were outpourings of 72

73 74

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See, in particular, the discussion in Michelson, “Bernardino,” 163-70 and also Howell, Bernardino, 155-59; Iris Origo, The World of San Bernardino (First printed 1963, this ed. London: The Reprint Society, 1964), 117-21; Loman McAodha, “The Holy Name of Jesus in the Preaching of St. Bernardine of Siena,” Franciscan Studies 29:7 (1969): 37-65. On the influence of Guibert and early fourteenth-century Franciscan writers on Bernardino’s theology of the Name of Jesus see McAodha, “Holy Name,” 42 and n. 29. See, for example, the much-quoted passages in his Oleum effusum, ll. 59-65 in Uncollected, ed. Hanna, 5 and The Form of Living, ll. 610-25 in Prose, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, 18. Rolle’s audience is discussed extensively in Allen, Writings Ascribed and Watson, Richard Rolle as well as Claire Elizabeth McIlroy, English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004). For an important recent discussion of the circulation of his Latin works see Hanna, “Transmission.” On Bernardino’s preaching see Cynthia L. Polecritti, Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy. Bernardino of Siena & His Audience (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000); idem, “In the Shop of the Lord. Bernardino of Siena and Popular Devotion,” in Beyond Florence. The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. Paula Findlen, Michelle M. Fontaine and Duane J. Osheim (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 147-59; Carolyn Meussig, “Bernardino da Siena and Observant Preaching as a Vehicle for Religious Transformation,” in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James D. Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 185-203. Polecritti, Preaching Peace, 73 and idem, “Shop of the Lord,” 158; Origo, World, 121; Howell, Bernardino, 135-36. Michelson, “Bernardino,” 159; Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “The Preacher as Goldsmith: The Italian Preachers’ Use of the Visual Arts,” in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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compunction for sin, brought about by Bernardino’s preaching, which he then channelled into civic peace-making between rival parties through public rituals of reconciliation.78 This was a far cry from the individual joyful ecstasy associated with the Name by Rolle and Suso. Such collective outbursts of emotion were not unusual in fifteenth-century Europe, not least in response to preaching,79 but the intensity of response generated by Bernardino was extraordinary, and this was clearly connected to the novelty and singularity of his use of his specially designed monogram, which, as we will see, became the central point of criticism in the accusations of heresy that were made against him.80

4

The Heterodoxy of the Holy Name

There were strong similarities between the controversies that arose with regard to the English and the Italian cults of the Holy Name, and they centred on issues which help to explain the popular appeal of these cults. Indeed, it is unlikely that they would ever have attracted controversy without the popular religious enthusiasm that they generated. In and of itself the fervour of devotion to the Name of Jesus caused serious disquiet.81 More fundamental though was the perceived idolatry of the devotion. In both cases this was partly to do with popular interpretation of what were nuanced statements about the Name’s meaning and significance, but the primacy which Rolle and Bernardino attributed to it undoubtedly fueled the sort of enthusiasm and cultic exclusivity that could tip over into potentially heretical claims.

78 79 80 81

Middle Ages, ed. Caorlyn Meussig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 136; Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 105. Polecritti mentions “joy and fear” as well as spontaneous exorcisms and healings: idem., Preaching Peace, at 84 and see 74, 81. Polecritti, Preaching Peace, 76-83, 86. Ibid., 73-74. For his monogram and charges of heresy see below. Criticism of Rolle and Rollean enthusiasm for the Holy Name is discussed in Michael G. Sargent, “Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle,” Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana, 55:1, ed. by James Hogg (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1981), 160-205; Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle, 261-64, 333 n. 12 and Rob Lutton, “The Name of Jesus, Nicholas Love’s Mirror, and Christocentric Devotion in Late Medieval England,” in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Ian Johnson and Allan F. Westphall (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 19-53. For attacks on Bernardino for the singular fervour he generated with his use of the monogram see Howell, Bernardino, 154-55; Mormando, Preacher’s Demons, 105; Muessig, “Bernardino,” 195. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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In Rolle’s writings, the Name of Jesus is often synonymous with His person and with salvation, but it is also advocated as worthy of love and adoration as an object in its own right, not merely as a symbol of something else. Moreover, contemplation of the Name is positioned as superior and more advanced than meditation on the Passion in the ascent to mystical vision.82 In this regard Rolle went further than Suso, whose self-inscription with, and promotion of, the Name were thoroughly tied up with his imitatio passionis, and for whom Passion meditation remained paramount to spiritual advancement.83 Some of Rolle’s statements go as far as claiming that a certain sort of love for the Name of Jesus which, by implication, is defined in his own terms, is necessary for salvation: “Þarefore wha sall haue hele þat lufes it [the name of Jesus] noghte or wha sall bere þe frwyte before Criste þat has noght the floure?” (“Therefore who shall have salvation that loves it not or who shall bear the fruit before Christ that has not the flower.”)84 Such statements led to exclusivist Holy Name enthusiasm by Rolle’s followers. This was what so exercised another of England’s most famous mystical writers, Walter Hilton, when writing his Scale of Perfection and Of Angels’ Song in the late 1380s. In a passage which Hilton added to Book I of the Scale, he addressed concerns that appear to have been raised by his readers about the claim, “[. . . ] wretyne in sum haly mens saghes [. . . ]” (“[. . . ] written in some holy men’s sayings [. . . ]”) that unless the devotee loves the Name and experiences in it “[. . . ] gastely Ioye and delitabilite with wondirfull swetnes in þis lyfe here, ffra þe soverayne Ioy and gastely swetnes in þe blysse of hevene he sall be aliene, and never sall he come þar-to.” (“[. . . ] spiritual joy and delightfulness with wonderful sweetness in this life here, from the sovereign joy and spiritual sweetness in the bliss of

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For example, Oleum effusum, glosses the doctrinal meaning (ll. 10-12 in Uncollected, ed. Hanna, 3), equates love of the Name of Jesus with love of his person (ll. 72-93 in ibid., 5, 7), but also valorises it as object of devotion in its own right (ll. 12-21 in ibid., 3). Similarly, The Commandment moves between these different uses (Commandment, ll. 214-24 in Prose, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, 39) and The Form of Living goes furthest of all in establishing the Name itself as the focus of contemplation (for example ll. 610-25 in Prose, ed. OgilvieThomson, 18). In Ego dormio, meditation on the Name is identified as a distinct practice from passion mediation, whereas Emendatio vitae presents it as more advanced than meditation on the Passion (Ego dormio ll. 174-217 in Prose, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, 30-31; Emendatio vitae, ed. Watson, 13 and 51-2: chap. 8, ll. 1 and 14-15). See also McIlroy, English Prose Treatises, 35-6. McGinn, Harvest, 203, 212-17; Hamburger, The Visual, 271-72. Colledge, “Introduction” in Wisdom’s Watch, 23-27, 37. In “Life of the Servant,” 359-60 the Name is synonymous with the person of Jesus and in Wisdom’s Watch, 202 it is the “crucified Jesus” who is carried in the breast, heart and mind. Oleum effusum, ll. 98-100 in Uncollected, ed. Hanna, 7.

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heaven he shall be cast out, and never shall he come thereto.”)85 Hilton tried to instigate a doctrinally correct sort of Holy Name devotion and so to routinize its charisma but, judging by the sheer abundance of fifteenth-century English religious texts that appear to interpret the Name of Jesus as more than a metaphor or symbol, he failed in his pastoral efforts.86 The accusations of heresy against Bernardino of Siena were also to do with the singularity of his promotion of the Name. Although he demonstrated a keen devotion to the Virgin throughout his life and employed the cross as well as the monogram in his preaching campaigns, the primacy and power which he attributed to the Name generated even more serious criticisms than the Rollean cult in England.87 Whilst it is clear that Bernardino aimed in his sermons to provide an orthodox interpretation of the Name and the “YHS” monogram, he also made extravagant statements which appear to have been taken to their logical conclusion by enthusiasts of the cult. The most notorious of these was that Church doctrine, the Commandments, and the sacraments were worthless without the Name of Jesus.88 This was tantamount to claiming that the Name was essential to salvation, something he also implied by stating that the Name was a prerequisite for the acquisition and display of 85

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Added to chapter 44 of Scale the lines here are from Carl Horstmann ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers, 2 vols. (London, 1895-96; reprint Woodbridge, 1976, this ed. 1999), vol. 1, 293 (see 293-95 for the whole passage). See also Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, Mich.: TEAMS, Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), ll. 1213-76. The implicit reference to Rolle is clear. Hilton rejected such claims on the basis that to love the Name is to love one’s salvation (its literal meaning) and so anyone who keeps God’s commandments “sall be safe and hafe full mede in þe syghte of god [. . . ]” (“shall be saved and have full reward in the sight of god [. . . ]”). For “Of Angels’ Song” see English Mystics of the Middle Ages, ed. Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 131-36. For Holy Name enthusiasm in connection with Rolle’s works see Renevey, “‘Name Above Names’” passim and idem., “The Name Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England,” Analecta Cartusiana 130:9 (1996): 127-47 and Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, 1: 85-86 and for the proliferation of devotional texts centred on the Name see Lutton, “‘Love this Name that is IHC,’” passim; Carsley, “Devotion to the Holy Name,” passim; Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 137-38, 146-47, 178-89. On Bernardino’s devotion to the virgin see Michelson, “Bernardino,” 174-75 and Howell, Bernardino, 88, 122, 140. On his devotion to the cross see Howell, Bernardino, 99, 139; Muessig, “Bernardino,” 194-96 and McAodha, “Holy Name,” 43, 47-48. Polecritti, “Shop of the Lord,” 158. On his attempts to control interpretation see Michelson, “Bernardino,” passim and Muessig, “Bernardino,” 195-96, and for instances of popular enthusiasm see Howell, Bernardino, 153-54.

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faith.89 The accusations that led to his two trials for heresy in 1426 and 1431 questioned the primacy which he attributed to the name “Jesus” over the Saviour’s other names and over established symbols such as the cross, as well as the novelty of his new style of monogram. He was also accused of undermining the Eucharist and the cult of Corpus Christi.90 These amounted to charges of heresy and idolatry; that he stirred up the people to worship a figure rather than what it represented. This was despite Bernardino’s own defence that he stressed the value of the monogram “as a symbol rather than as a tangible presence.”91 At heart, these were precisely the same problems that were addressed by Hilton in response to the Rollean Jesus cult. The other aspects of Bernardino’s preaching of the Name that attracted criticism broadly concerned its apotropaic and offensive qualities against sin, sickness and the devil. These can also be found in Rolle as well as in other English representations of the cult but, whereas there is little sign of disquiet about such ideas and practices in England, Bernardino’s very public advocacy of the immediate power of the Name to effect miracles, cast out demons and lead sinners to repentance and reconciliation drew accusations of inciting superstition, scandal and “word-magic.”92 The orthodoxy or otherwise of such ideas and practices seems therefore to have depended as much on the nature of the audience and how they were communicated as on their substance. The singularity, accessibility, simplicity and portability of devotion to the Name of Jesus seem to have been key factors in its success. In essence, it involved repetition of and meditation on the Name, and it encapsulated a wealth of qualities and benefits that allowed the devotee a remarkable flexibility of interpretation as they performed their own ritual actions.93 89 90

91 92

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Michelson, “Bernardino,” 164. For a detailed narrative of the accusations and trials see Howell, Bernardino, 146, 149-55, 160-63, 168, 172-75, 180-86 and succinct summaries in Origo, World, 122-29 and Mormando, Preacher’s Demons, 87-89. The documents on both sides from the trials are presented and discussed in Longpré, “S. Bernardin de Sienne et le Nom de Jésus (Suite),” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 28 (1935), 443-476; 29 (1936): 142-68, 443-477. Polecritti, “Shop of the Lord,” 158 and see also Howell, Bernardino, 156. On evidence of popular knowledge and application of such properties of the Name in England see Lutton, “‘Love this Name that is IHC,’” 137-40 and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (New Haven: Yale, 1992), 234-238, 278, 283-85. For the use of Bernardino’s monogram against plague and to effect healing see Howell, Bernardino, 107, 134 and on its use against the devil and accusations of superstition and “word-magic” see Mormando, Preacher’s Demons, 87-89, 104-105 and Michael D. Bailey, “Reformers on Sorcery and Superstition,” in Observant Reform, ed. Mixson and Roest, 230-254 esp. 243-49. On the openness of interpretation afforded by ritual action see Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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A fundamental component of this success was the monogram in its various forms of “IHS/YHS,” “IHC,” and “IHU.” Rolle never explicitly advocated use of the monogram but there are strong visual elements to his exhortations to meditate on the Name, and it quickly became associated with his works and with him as a mystical author in a very similar way to Suso and, more broadly, became a vital component in the popular dissemination of the Jesus cult in England.94 In contrast, both Suso and Bernardino employed the monogram themselves, in both cases because they were interested in the way words and images could work together to teach and inspire their readers and listeners and, paradoxically, the limitations of words and images to express truth and lead to God.95 The monogram was itself an “imagetext” and so provided the perfect vehicle for such communicative experiments.96 Indeed its combination of image and text enhanced its appeal, and straddled different practices of reading, looking and meditating. It was undoubtedly an important factor in the growth of popularity of devotion to the Name of Jesus. The specific form of Bernardino’s specially commissioned and newly designed monogram surrounded by the rays of the sun in gold on a blue ground and encircled by the biblical text: “In nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur coelestium, terrestrium et infernorum” [“At the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven, on earth, and in hell”] was central to the impact of his preaching and served as visual aid and powerful reinforcement of his message.97 He was even accused of encouraging worship of the blue and gold colours rather than the letters and what they represented.98 It is telling also that his public use of the monogram tablet appears to have been prohibited by Pope Martin V 94

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See for example The Form of Living, ll. 610-625. For the association of the monogram with Rolle see Renevey, “Name Poured Out,” passim and Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, 137-38, 146-47, 178-89. For the dissemination of the monogram more broadly in England see Susan Wabuda, Preaching During the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 151-63; Hugo Blake, Geoff Egan, John Hurst and Elizabeth New, “From Popular Devotion to Resistance and Revival in England: The Cult of the Holy Name of Jesus and the Reformation,” in The Archaeology of Reformation, 1480-1580, ed. D. Gaimster and R. Gilchrist (Leeds: Maney, 2003), 175-203; Lutton, “‘Love this Name that is IHC,’” 137-40; John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 151, 154, 186-202. On Suso’s use of images see Hamburger, The Visual, 233-78 and on the monogram in particular 262-74 and McGinn, Harvest, 196, 208-11. On Bernardino’s combined employment of word and image see Michelson, “Bernardino,” 175-76, 179 and Muessig, “Bernardino,” 194-96. On the concept of “imagetext” and its application to the Holy Name see Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, 5-6, 179-95. On the commissioning of Bernardino’s monogram see Howell, Bernardino, 132-33 and for discussion of its centrality to his preaching see Michelson, “Bernardino,” passim. Michelson, 175-76; Howell, Bernardino, 156; Origo, World, 120, 122. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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in 1427 after his trial for heresy.99 Moreover, that the thirty-three articles for Bernardino’s canonization failed to mention his devotion to the Holy Name, and that it took until 1530, after longstanding efforts, for the Franciscan order to gain papal approval for a Feast of the Name of Jesus, suggest that the cult continued to generate considerable disquiet in Italy.100 This notwithstanding, many of the paintings of Bernardino made after his death depict him holding the monogram and “over time [. . . it. . . ] came to identify Bernardo completely.”101 His use of the monogram to heal party strife within the Italian civic elites and its subsequent prominent display on civic and church buildings rendered it a symbol of the fifteenth-century Italian political establishment as well as of domestic and personal piety.102 The popularity of Bernardino’s monogram was perhaps not surprising in a society that widely employed religious and secular images to signify political allegiance.103 It is likely that disquiet about Rollean Holy Name enthusiasm also delayed the cult’s full liturgical development, it taking the best part of a century for the votive mass of the Name of Jesus to be widely disseminated and an English liturgical Feast to be established.104 Harnessing its increasing popular appeal, from the late 1480s the Tudor political and ecclesiastical establishment invested heavily in the cult as “the sacredness of Jesus’s own Name was appropriated to bolster the power and prestige of the dynasty.”105 It was Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who worked with Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of York, to secure the Feast in 1488/89 and its papal sanction in 1494.106 The prominence and prestige of a new wave of Jesus guilds, 99 100 101

102

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104 105 106

The evidence for the prohibition is discussed in Howell, Bernardino, 183-86. Origo, World, 129; Howell, Bernardino, 175. Michelson, “Bernardino,” 176-78 at 178 and see Daniel Arasse, “Entre dévotion et hérésie. La tablette de saint Bernardino ou le secret d’un prédicateur,” Archaeology and Ethnology 28 (1985): 118-36. On the use of the monogram in homes and on public buildings in response to Bernardino’s preaching see Howell, Bernardino, 109, 112, 118, 136, 142-43 and Polecritti, Preaching Peace, 76-83, 86, 134-35. See Richard C. Trexler, “Florentine Religious Experience: The Storia e letteratura,” in idem, Church and Community, 1200-1600: studies in the history of Florence and New Spain (Roma: Storia e letteratura, 1987), 37-74. On the importance of badges and symbols for the signification of political allegiance in late medieval England see Matthew Ward, The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016). As argued by Renevey in his “‘Name Above Names’” and “The Name Poured Out” and see also Lutton, “The Name of Jesus,” passim. Wabuda, Preaching, 157. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, 77, 82-83; Wabuda, Preaching, 165; Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 168-69, 174, 176-77, 182-83, 198-200, 212. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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chantries and college foundations made the devotion an attractive proposition for investment by newly emergent social groups, especially well-to-do townsfolk. As Eamon Duffy remarks, although “genuinely popular,” the Jesus Mass “was also emphatically an observance seized on by elites in every community as a convenient expression, and perhaps an instrument, of their social dominance.”107 Such political and social appropriation almost certainly involved a routinization of the charisma of earlier Rollean Holy Name enthusiasm and was accompanied by the production of new works that effectively controlled the potential excesses of the cult. Nevertheless, Rolle’s statements continued to circulate in the fifteenth century, not least in those social circles that supported the Jesus Mass, and we should not rule out the ongoing employment of practices of Holy Name contemplation among the laity.108 Devotion to the Name of Jesus seems, therefore, to have continued to be valued for the opportunities it offered for spiritual advancement and protection and for intense emotional and psychological experiences, as well as its accumulated social and political benefits. If anything, it became a more important aspect of religious culture as the Middle Ages drew to a close, often closely related, but also providing a distinct alternative, to the torn and bloodied body of Christ in the devotional imaginations and daily regimes of the devout.109 107

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Duffy, Stripping, 115-16; Wabuda, Preaching, 163, 165-66; Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, 62-83; Judith Aveling, “The Holy Name of Jesus: A Literate Cult?,” in Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted. The Experience of Worship in Cathedral and Parish Church, ed. Sally Harper, P. S. Barnwell and Magnus Williamson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), 191-204, esp. 201-203. Compare, for example the highly controlled Jesus Psalter composed by the Syon Bridgettine monk Richard Whitford and first printed in 1529, with the Pore Caitif, which encapsulates some of Rolle’s most advanced statements on the Name and circulated among lay, clerical and religious readers in fifteenth-century London and beyond. On the Jesus Psalter see Lutton, “‘Love this Name that is IHC,’” 140-43 and on Pore Caitif see Sister Mary Teresa Brady, The Pore Caitif, Edited from MS. Harley 2336 with Introduction and Notes (PhD Diss., Fordham University, New York, 1954), ix-xlii; idem, “Rolle’s Form of Living and The Pore Caitif,” Traditio 36 (1980): 426-35; idem, “Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in The Pore Caitif,” Traditio 39 (1983): 456-65. There is not space here to discuss the appeal of the Name of Jesus to early Protestants but see Wabuda, Preaching, 147-77; Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Robert Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), esp. 208-209.

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Chapter 8

The Unicorn as a Symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages Jane Beal

In his fourteenth-century Latin manual for preachers, Ranulf Higden, a Benedictine monk of Chester in England, instructs preachers on ways to talk about Jesus in sermons. Ranulf specifically compares Christ to a fountain, a shepherd, a rock, a lily, a rose, a violet, an elephant, and a unicorn. Drawing on the Church’s traditions of scriptural interpretation, he also frequently compares Christ to a youthful bridegroom wooing his beloved spouse, the spouse who can be identified variously as Israel, the Church, and the individual human soul, especially the Virgin Mary.1 Ranulf uses two of these comparisons as exempla to explain how to introduce a thema in a sermon. Likewise, one can introduce a theme by a simile in nature. One is able to capture the bravest animals, an elephant and a unicorn, in this manner: the elephant becomes mild through a maiden’s song and the unicorn grows tame in the lap of a virgin. So, just like the elephant, the most brave Son of God becomes mild on account of the song when the breast of the Virgin is revealed to him; concerning this, it says in Luke, “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, the breasts that gave thee suck” (Luke 11:27). Christ was softened by the song of the Virgin, and when the angel Gabriel sang, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), he was made mild. Likewise the unicorn, i.e. the bravest son of God, he who laid waste those men and angels who opposed him and who aspired to more than 1 The tradition of interpreting the sponsa Christi in this way arises from key biblical passages (Isaiah 54 and 62, Ezekiel 16, Hosea 1-3, Matthew 9:15, Mark 2:19, Luke 5:34, Matthew 25, John 3:27-30, Ephesians 5:21-32, and Revelation 21) as well as from Origen’s second century Commentary on the Song of Songs. For discussion, see E. Ann Matter, The Voice of my Beloved: The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), Ann Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), and Jane Beal, “Moses and Christian Contemplative Devotion,” Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 305-52 and “Mens tua hortus meus est: Christ and the Canticle Bride in the Biblia pauperum,” Integrité: A Journal of Faith and Learning 14 (Fall 2015): 3-19.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_010

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was acceptable, becomes mild when he places his sacrifice in the lap of the Virgin, thereby fulfilling Isaiah, “The young man will dwell with the maiden.”2 In this passage, Ranulf develops two metaphors, wherein the signifiers are an elephant and a unicorn and the one signified is Jesus. He depicts these noble animals in their legendary relation to a virgin, but specifically, the Virgin Mary, who fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah. Ranulf’s use of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ, especially in relation to his virgin mother, indicates this connection was well known to Ranulf and other monastics living the contemplative life. That Ranulf used the connection between Christ and the unicorn in a preaching manual suggests that late-medieval preachers would have used the connection as well, thus transmitting the idea orally to the noble and common people of the laity. The idea of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ, in other words, would have been well-known by this time – a virtual commonplace.3 How did it become so, and how did the development of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ affect literature and culture in the Middle Ages? This chapter will first consider the origins of the legend of the unicorn and how it became connected to Christ and the Virgin Mary. Multiple textual traditions – biblical, classical, and medieval – influenced the development of the symbol and its significance. Once the unicorn had been transformed into a Christian symbol, the symbolic power of the unicorn had a significant influence on medieval literature, culture, and art. So this chapter will also consider several texts, both written and woven, in order to explore the meaning of Christian unicorn symbolism. While limitations of space mean this survey cannot be comprehensive, the chapter will provide a worthwhile introduction 2 Ranulf Higden, Concerning the Art of Preaching, trans. Margaret Jennings and Sally Wilson, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 2 (Paris, Leuven and Dudly, MA: Peeters, 2003), 52-53. 30-31. The Latin may be found in A Critical Edition of the Ars Componendi Sermones of Ranulph Higden, ed. Margaret Jennings, Davis Medieval Texts and Studies 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1970, repr. 1989). 3 For historical overviews of the reception the idea of the unicorn in the biblical, classical, and medieval writings, see Odell Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn (London: George Allen and Unwin and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930) as well as a critical response to that study by Allen Godbey, “The Unicorn in the Old Testament,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 56:3 (1939), 256-96; Margaret Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (E.P. Dutton and Co., 1976), esp. chap. 1 “The Unicorn in Ancient and Medieval Texts,” 11-32 and chap. 2 “The Unicorn in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art,” 33-66; and Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1977). For a select bibliography, see “Unicorn,” in The Medieval Bestiary (online): http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastbiblio140 .htm.

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to the origins and reception of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages.

1

Found in Translation?: the Unicorn in Medieval Bibles and Commentary Traditions

The English word “unicorn” is found in the Wycliffite Bible (1382-95), the Protestant King James Bible (1611), and the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1610) a number of times.4 The word derives from the Latin Vulgate “unicornus,” a translation of the Greek Septuagint monocerus, meaning “onehorned.”5 This is also the probable meaning of the original Hebrew word re’em (‫) ֶרֵאם‬, which occurs nine times in the Hebrew Bible. The Oxford English Dictionary defines re’em as “a large, horned, ox-like animal mentioned in ancient Hebrew literature, variously identified with the aurochs (Bos primigenius), the water buffalo (genus Bubalus), or the Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx), or regarded as mythical.”6 The English word given in later, post-medieval and postRenaissance biblical translations for re’em is variously “unicorn,” “rhinoceros,” or, with increasing frequency, “wild ox.” These different translations reflect the changing nature of the English language and the changing beliefs of English Bible translators. By the historico-linguistic process known as “narrowing,” the denotative meaning of “unicorn” shifted from “one-horned creature” to something much more specific: a one-horned, white horse with magical powers. Later biblical translators were aware not only of this narrowed definition, but also of the doubts that had been expressed historically and contemporarily about the scientific reality of the unicorn. This meant that the word “unicorn” was used less frequently in biblical translation, and the ecclesiastical consensus about the symbolic significance of the unicorn-as-Christ faded after the Renaissance. In

4 In one or more of these translations, the word “unicorn” appears in Num. 23:22 and 24:8, Deut. 33:17, Job 39:9 and 39:10, Ps. 22:21, 29:6, and 78:69, and Is. 34:7. Daniel 8:5 speaks of a goat with one horn, which is significant because medieval bestiaries later would consider the unicorn not only as a horse with one horn but a small goat with one horn as well. 5 Jerome both used the Latin “unicornus” and “rhinoceros” to translate the Greek “monoceros.” The different words were noted in commentaries even as the two terms often were treated interchangeably. In a 1603 printed version of the Glossa ordinaria, for example, Num. 23:22 has “rhinoceros” in the biblical text but the surrounding commentaries refer to the “unicornus.” For discussion, see J.L.W. Schaper, “The Unicorn in the Messianic Imagery of the Greek Bible,” Journal of Theological Studies 45 (1994): 117-36. 6 “Reem,” Oxford English Dictionary. See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reem.

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a sense, the unicorn was lost in translation. But before it was lost, the unicorn was found in medieval Bible translations and commentaries, including the early twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria, which preserved the biblical glosses of the Church Fathers and later commentators for a wide audience of medieval readers.7 The presence of the unicorn in the most authoritative book in the medieval Christian West, the Latin Vulgate Bible, meant that the word was well known to biblical readers and hearers. Like the rest of the Vulgate, the word “unicornus” was the subject of extensive commentary, and it was understood both literally and allegorically. The unicorn was considered to be an animal that probably existed, a belief supported in the minds of the learned by references to it in classical texts, medieval bestiaries, and, perhaps, the contemporary claims of those selling “unicorn horns” for their healing properties.8 In myriad texts, there developed a strand of thought that recognized the unicorn as a fierce beast, but one that could be gentled by a virgin and thereby captured if it were being hunted. This specific idea appealed greatly to the contemplative imaginations of medieval biblical commentators, not to mention poets and artists, who read this aspect of the unicorn as allegorically representative of Jesus because he became mild in the form of a man through his mother, the Virgin Mary, and in his vulnerable human state, was captured and crucified. This symbolism emphasizes Christ’s power, but also his humility in the Incarnation, in special relation to the Virgin’s purity. The earliest Patristic commentaries on the unicorn in the Bible, however, focus primarily on how the unicorn represents Christ’s power. The unicorn first appears in Numbers 23:22, in which God’s strength in leading Israel out of Egypt is compared to the strength of a unicorn: Deus eduxit eum de Aegypto cuius fortitudo similis est rinocerotis. (God led him from Egypt; his strength is like that of a unicorn).9 7 For valuable discussion of the Glossa, see E. Ann Matter, “The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, Vol. 1, ed. Irena Dorota Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 83-111. 8 For discussion of the unicorn in classical texts and medieval bestiaries, see the next section of this chapter. For discussion of the sale of unicorn horns (probably narwhal tusks) for medicinal purposes, see Shephard, Lore of the Unicorn, and Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries. 9 The Latin Vulgate and the English Douay-Rheims translates the Hebrew “re’em” and the Greek “monoceros” as “rhinoceros” here; two other significant early English translations (Wycliffite and KJV) translate it as “unicorn.” The commentaries in the printed edition of Glossa ordinaria from 1603, which reflect the medieval manuscript traditions, speak of the unicorn.

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The Glossa ordinaria preserves Origen’s commentary on this verse, a commentary that gives both a literal and an allegorical interpretation. Literally, God had the gloria unicornis (the glory of a unicorn) in leading Israel out of Egypt, and Egypt itself is recognized as an earthly nation (ista terrena). Spiritually, according to Origen’s enlarged scope of interrelated allegorical ideas, Egypt is de . . . seculi (the Egypt of the world) and de potestate tenebrarum (of the power of darkness) but the name of the unicorn carries his beauty (unicornis fertur, esse anima, nomen suum formatum), which is spirit. In the virtute et potentia (virtue and power) of the unicorn Christus intelligitur (Christ is to be understood). Furthermore, by extension, Origen states that Israel’s glory is like that of a unicorn. He also relates Christ’s words “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) to this verse, adding transformabit corpus humilitatis nostrae conforme corpori gloriae sue (the body of our humility will be transformed in conformity to bodies of his glory). Already in Origen the incarnate nature of the unicorn is being related to the Incarnation of Christ, and that Incarnation to the transformation of our fallen human bodies in the General Resurrection. After this, Origen affirms again in his commentary on this verse that the power (fortitudo) of the unicorn described in Numbers 23:22 is Christ’s power: Cuius fortitudo. Cuius? Christi. He adds that the one horn is one kingdom, and, spiritually, Israel is his glory.10 Origen’s second-century allegorical reading of the unicorn of Numbers 23:22, if not the earliest understanding of the unicorn-as-Christ, was certainly one of the most influential. It was supported by Christological commentaries on the appearance of unicorns elsewhere in scripture. In Deuteronomy 33:17, for example, the Latin biblical verse reads: quasi primogeniti tauri pulchritude; eius cornua rinocerotis cornua; illius in ipsis ventilabit gentes usque ad terminos terrae. (His beauty as of the firstling of a bullock, his horns as the horns of a rhinoceros: with them shall he push the nations even to the ends of the earth.)11 As with the verses in Numbers, the Glossa on this passage treats rhinoceros and unicorn more or less interchangeably. Tertullian clarifies the allegorical 10

11

Origen’s remarks on Num. 24:8, which makes the same comparison as does Num. 23:22, emphasize that the one horn stands for one kingdom. The commentary is not as extensive as it is in Numbers 24:8, but conveys a similar sense. Deut. 33:17 (Vulgate, trans. Douay-Rheims). The KJV reads: “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns.” - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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connection with Christ assertively: non utique Rhinoceros definabatur unicornis, vel minotaurus bicornis, sed Christus in illo significabatur . . . cuius cornua essent crucis extima (neither the rhinoceros nor the unicorn, or the bicornate bull, is intended here, but rather Christ is being signified in this . . . his horns are the outer parts of the Cross). Theodotian, also cited nearby, expounds on the word primogeniti, which immediately brings to his mind Christ: primogenitus mortuorum et princeps regum terrae post resurrectionis gloriam de virtute passionis adiungit cornua (the firstborn of the dead and prince of the kingdom of the earth afterwards joins together the horns of the glory of the virtue of his Passion and Resurrection).12 Whereas in Numbers, the power of the unicorn was likened to the power of God, and his horn to one kingdom, Israel, now that power is greatly exalted in horns that belong to Christ and allegorically stand for the power (virtute) of his Cross, his Passion, and his Resurrection. The Glossa on Job 39:9-10 contains little in the way of Christological interpretation, though Nicholas of Lyra does define the “rhinoceros” mentioned in these verses as a creature with one horn alio nomine vocabitur unicornis (also called by the other name of unicorn).13 Unlike in Job, in another of the poetic books, the Psalms, allegorical interpretation of the unicorn develops in new directions. This is especially true of Psalm 22, which the Gospel writers recorded Jesus to have recalled on the Cross when he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”14 Psalm 22 had a special place in the memory of the Church because of its close association with Christ’s Crucifixion: it was read in the liturgy for Good Friday. The fact that Psalm 22:21 made a direct reference to the unicorn, a word that Jerome translated as “unicorn” (not rhinoceros) in the Psalm, strengthened the association indissolubly in the Glossa commentary tradition. Interestingly, because Jerome translated the Psalter twice, once from Greek and once from Hebrew, he made changes throughout the Psalter, and he made a significant change to verse 21: salva me ex ore leonis et de cornibus unicornium exaudi me. 12

13 14

See the commentary of Theodotian and Tertullian on Deut. 33:17 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 1681-1682. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol1f _Deuteronomii.pdf. See the commentary of Nicholas of Lyra on Job 39:9 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 370. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3b_Iob.pdf. Psalm 22:1. Cf. Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34. Note that Psalm 22 is so numbered in the Hebrew Bible and Protestant English Bibles. However, it is Psalm 21 in the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation. This chapter refers to this psalm as Psalm 22, but when citing the Vulgate, the Glossa, or the Douay-Rheims, the citation is given as Psalm 21. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Beal salva me ex ore leonis et a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam. (Save me from the lion’s mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns.)15

In the commentary on this passage, however, the lion’s mouth and the unicorn’s horns emphatically do not stand for Christ, but rather, according to Augustine, for the Jews who, from singular pridefulness (singulariter superbientes), killed the Son. Nicholas of Lyra also interprets the mouth of the lion and the horns of unicorns as referring to the cruelty (crudelitatem), presumption (praesumptione) and pride (superbia) of the Jewish people.16 Thus here it can be discovered that, in medieval commentary traditions on scripture, the power of unicorn and his horn may stand not only for God, for Christ, and the kingdom of Israel, but also for those Jews who participated in crucifying Jesus. Two other passages in the Psalms, Psalm 29:6 and 78:69, refer to the unicorn. et disperget eas quasi vitulus Libani et Sarion quasi filius rinocerotis et comminuet eas tamquam vitulum Libani et dilectus quemadmodum filius unicornium (And he shall reduce them to pieces, as a calf of Libanus, and as the beloved son of unicorns.)17 In his commentary on Psalm 29:6, Nicholas of Lyra notes that Jerome uses rhinoceros in his first translation and unicorn in the second, then adds that Moses, beloved by God (a Deo praedilectus) is signified in this verse. It is only a small step after this to imagine Christ, the Second Moses, as being signified here as well. Indeed, in the “moraliter” section of the Glossa, at the bottom of the page, states: Id est Christus a Deo patre praedilectus et quasi unicornis constans (it is Christ, beloved by God, and like to a constant unicorn).18 In this

15 16 17

18

Psalm 21:21 (Vulgate, Douay-Rheims). Psalm 22:21 (KJV) reads: “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.” Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 21:21 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 578. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3c_Psalmi_a.pdf. Psalm 28:6 (Vulgate, Douay-Rheims). Psalm 29:6 (KJV) reads: “He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.” Note that Psalm 29 is so numbered in the Hebrew Bible and Protestant English Bibles. However, it is Psalm 28 in the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation. This chapter refers to this psalm as Psalm 29, but when citing the Vulgate, the Glossa, or the Douay-Rheims, the citation is given as Psalm 28. See commentaries by Nicholas of Lyra on Psalm 28:6 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 622. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3c_Psalmi_a.pdf. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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passage, the unicorn now stands for Moses and, by extension, for the Second Moses, Christ, and the emphasis is not only on the power of the unicorn but his constancy. In Psalm 78:69, however, the Glossa commentators take the allegorical significance of the unicorn to a new level of complexity, interweaving the verse with other biblical texts and theological concepts in their interpretations. et aedificavit in similitudinem monoceroton sanctuarium suum quasi terram fundavit illud in saeculum. et aedificavit sicut unicornium sanctificium suum in terra quam fundavit in saecula. (And he built his sanctuary as of unicorns, in the land which he founded for ever.)19 Augustine writes of the firma spes (firm or established hope) represented in this verse, and he relates it to Psalm 27:4.20 In a related comment in the Glossa, attributed to Euthy, the sanctuarium is identified as the Temple of Solomon. Likewise, Bede says that aedificavit templum suum, ita mundum, sicut habitaculum unicornium (he builds his Temple, thus, the world, like the habitation of unicorns).21 By extension, the sanctuarium is also considered the ecclesiam triumphans.22 Bede then goes on to say, significantly, that the unicorn non capitur, nisi veras virgines (cannot be captured, except by true virgins), and so dicitur habere 19

20

21

22

Psalm 77:69 (Vulgate, trans. Douay-Rheims). Psalm 78:69 (KJV) reads very differently: “And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever.” Note that Psalm 78 is so numbered in the Hebrew Bible and Protestant English Bibles. However, it is Psalm 77 in the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation. This chapter refers to this psalm as Psalm 78, but when citing the Vulgate, the Glossa, or the Douay-Rheims, the citation is given as Psalm 77. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire[] in his temple” (Psalm 24:7). See the commentary of Bede on Psalm 77:69 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 1037. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3c_Psalmi _b.pdf. George Hardin Brown, professor emeritus at Stanford University and expert in Bede, notes that no extant work of Bede contains this quotation attributed to Bede in the Glossa. Perhaps the quotation comes from a work of Bede no longer extant or was attributed to him in order to lend his respected authority to this key idea. See the commentary of the “Moraliter” section on Psalm 77:69 69 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 1036. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3c_Psalmi _b.pdf. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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mundissimum habitaculum (it is said that he has the most clean habitation).23 The Venerable Bede’s incorporation in his Psalms commentary of the extrabiblical tradition of the means of hunting and capturing the unicorn, which was circulated independently as well as with the Glossa, lent Bede’s authority to reading the unicorn as Christ, which was common enough, but also to reading the capture of the unicorn as a specific allegorical interpretation of Christ’s Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The unicorn makes his final biblical appearances in two of the prophetic books, Isaiah and Daniel. However, in Isaiah, as in Psalm 22, the Glossa does not interpret unicorns as Christological: et descendent unicornes cum eis et tauri cum potentibus inebriabitur terra eorum sanguine et humus eorum adipe pinguium (And the unicorns shall go down with them, and the bulls with the mighty: their land shall be soaked with blood, and their ground with the fat of fat ones.)24 Nicholas of Lyra comments that this verse refers to superbia (pride) while the “moraliter” section observes succinctly: per unicornes et tauros fignantur daemones cum eis puniendi (through unicorns and bulls are figured demons by whom they are punished).25 In complete contrast, in Daniel 8:5, where a goat (hircus, not unicornus) with a single horn is mentioned, Nicholas of Lyra sees the goat as the kingdom of the Greeks and the horn as Alexandria, literally speaking, and in the “moraliter” section, the horn is read as potestatem valde notabilem et magnam (a very notable and great power). While neither the verse nor the interpretation fit with the ecclesiastical tradition of reading the unicorn as a figure for Christ, it does relate to the popular reception of the unicorn in medieval art, where the unicorn was depicted not only as a horse with one horn but as a goat with one horn, as we will see in the discussion of medieval unicorn tapestries (below). 23 24

25

See the commentary of Bede on Psalm 77:69 in the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 1037. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol3c_Psalmi_b.pdf. Isaiah 34:7 (Vulgate, trans. Douay-Rheims). Isaiah 34:7 (KJV) reads: “And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.” See the commentary of Nicholas of Lyra and the “Moraliter” section of the Glossa ordinaria (Venice, 1603), col. 309. Available at http://lollardsociety.org/glor/Glossa_vol4b _Esaias.pdf.

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In general, in the ecclesiastical commentaries on biblical verses about the unicorn that are preserved in the Glossa ordinaria, the Latin words unicornus and rhinoceros are treated interchangeably as correct translations of the Greek monoceros. The unicorn is treated as a figure for Christ (e.g., Numbers 23:22 and 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, and Psalm 29:6 and Psalm 78:69, but not Job 39:9), representative of his power and constancy, and also is seen in relation to Moses and Solomon, which inevitably recalls Christ’s role as “Second Moses” and the one “greater than Solomon.”26 His horn is a specific symbol of power that can also represent his kingdom, Israel, as well as the power demonstrated in his Cross, Passion, and Resurrection. However, when multiple unicorns appear, as in Psalm 22:21 and Isaiah 34:7, the unicorns are interpreted as the Jews who crucified Jesus or demons who punish the children of Israel, and they are associated with cruelty, presumption, and pride. In Psalm 78, where the word referring to the unicorn is preserved in the singular (monoceroton) and the plural (unicornium) in Jerome’s two translations from the Greek and Hebrew respectively, the commentators see strong Christological implications. Bede specifically discusses the bestiary tradition of the capture of the unicorn by veras virgines (true virgins), a tradition elsewhere closely associated with Christ’s Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

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The Physiologus, Medieval Bestiaries, and the Mystical Hunt of the Unicorn

Medieval beliefs about unicorns were not only preserved in the Vulgate and medieval biblical commentaries, but in the Physiologus and later medieval bestiaries influenced by it. These books drew on descriptions of the unicorn from Greek and Roman naturalists, including Ctesias, Aristotle, Megasthenes, Aelian, and Pliny,27 and combined them with Christian allegorical interpretations. Aspects of these descriptions were passed down to the Middle Ages; those in the Physiologus were particularly influential.

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Christ is portrayed as a new or second Moses in Matthew’s Gospel and received as such in medieval Christian interpretations of the Bible. See Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance, ed. Jane Beal (Leiden: Brill, 2014). In Luke 11:31, Jesus says of himself, “One greater than Solomon is here.” For overviews of these sources, see Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn (1930), Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976), 14-15 in chap. 1 “The Unicorn in Ancient and Medieval Texts,” and Francesca Tagliatesta, “Iconography of the Unicorn from India to the Italian Middle Ages,” East and West 57 (2007): 175-191.

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As Michael Curley has described, the Physiologus originated between the second and the fourth centuries, probably from Egypt (and possibly from Alexandria specifically), after which it was translated from Greek into Latin and then into virtually all of the medieval vernacular languages of Europe. It contained approximately forty brief chapters on various kinds of beasts (as well as some plants and gemstones), describing them naturally and interpreting them allegorically. In the Middle Ages, the anonymous author (or compiler) of the naturalistic descriptions was sometimes identified with Aristotle or Solomon (as well as, in the later medieval period, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Epiphanos, and Jerome); the author of the allegorical interpretations, with Saint Basil. Today, medieval scholars are unable to identify the author with certainty, but they have clearly established that the Christian allegorist who created the commentaries also substantially re-wrote the naturalistic descriptions so that they harmonized with one another. For the anonymous author of the Physiologus, the sources were rich and varied, stemming from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Indian folklore and including specific elements from Herodotus and Aristotle as well as Pliny’s Natural History, Aelian’s Animals, and the work of Bolos of Mendes. He developed many of the allegorical interpretations of the lion, panther, pelican, phoenix, whale, and, most interestingly for our purposes, unicorn, which proved so enduring in Christian symbolic iconography.28 As a result of the influence of the Physiologus, the significance of various creatures was connected to specific Christological characteristics from history and theology. So, for example, the pelican that shed its blood to nourish its young was understood as a type of Christ crucified while the phoenix that rose from its ashes as a type of Christ resurrecting from the dead. The unicorn was interpreted as a figure for Christ’s Incarnation. The story of the “mystical hunt for the unicorn,” in which the fierce unicorn could only be captured by the gentleness of a maiden, was a key part of the allegorical interpretation. In chapter XXXVI of the Physiologus, the hunt and capture are described: In Deuteronomy Moses said while blessing Joseph, “His beauty is that of the firstling bull, and his horns are the horns of the unicorn” [Deut. 33:17]. The monoceras, that is, the unicorn, has this nature: he is a small animal like the kid, is exceedingly shrewd, and has one horn in the middle of his 28

For an overview of the reception of the Physiologus, see the introduction to Michael Curley, trans., Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), ix-lxiii. On the probable date of the original Greek and later Latin translations, see Alan Scott, “The Date of the Physiologus,” Vigiliae Christianiae (1998): 430-41.

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head. The hunter cannot approach him because he is extremely strong. How then do they hunt the beast? Hunters place a chaste virgin before him. He bounds forth into her lap, and she warms and nourishes the animal and takes him into the palace of kings.29 The Physiologus begins with a biblical reference to the unicorn in Deuteronomy, refers to the Greek etymological equivalent of unicorn, “monoceras” (“one-horned”), and then compares the unicorn himself to a goat-kid: small, shrewd, and exceedingly strong. These characteristics clearly derive from biblical tradition, including the seemingly odd comparison to a goat-kid (cf. Daniel 8:5), with the exception of the emphasis on the smallness of the unicorn, which does not.30 The description indicates that it is the unicorn’s strength that prevents his capture by hunters; only a virgin can invite him to her lap, warm and nourish him. It is likely that Bede, whose commentary on Psalm 78:69 was incorporated into the Glossa Ordinaria, reflects his reading of the Latin Physiologus. The Physiologus meditates further on the significance of the unicorn’s single horn, connecting its allegorical interpretation to two verses from the Gospels: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “For he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:69). It then connects the mystical hunt of the unicorn to Christ’s Incarnation: “Coming down from heaven, he came into the womb of the Virgin Mary . . . ‘And the word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14).”31 The unicorn’s smallness is a sign of Christ’s humility in the Incarnation; his shrewdness is exemplified by the inability of hell or the devil, or any powers or principalities, to hold him, comprehend him, or find him out. He is compared to the goat-kid because he is a sin-offering. The Physiologus cites Romans 8:3 to convey this idea. The contents of the Physiologus were incorporated into later medieval bestiaries, which were greatly expanded from forty brief chapters up to onehundred and fifty chapters, drawing on additional sources, such as chapter 12 “On Animals” of the seventh-century Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Isidore’s 29

30 31

Curley, trans., Physiologus, 51. For the Latin, see Francis Carmody Francis, ed., Physiologus Latinus, Editions preliminaires, versio B (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1939) and Carmody, ed., “Physiologus Latinus, versio Y,” The University of California Publications in Classical Philology 12 (1941): 95-134. Curley relies on the y-version, because it is closer to the Greek original, but he also incorporates translations from the Latin; he gives the Latin text in brackets in the chapters. The comparison of the unicorn to a small goat-kid is nevertheless influential as we shall see in our consideration of late-medieval tapestries depicting the unicorn (below). Curley, trans. Physiologus, 51.

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description of the unicorn identifies the elephant as the unicorn’s primary foe; it also recapitulates the unicorn / monoceros etymology and refers to the mystical hunt: The rhinoceros (rhinoceron) is named with a Greek word; in Latin it means “horn on the nose.” This is also the monoceron, that is, the unicorn (unicornus), because it has a single four-foot horn in the middle of its forehead, so sharp and strong that it tosses in the air or impales whatever it attacks. It often fights with the elephant and throws it to the ground after wounding it in the belly. It has such strength that it can be captured by no hunter’s ability, but, as those who have written about the natures of animals claim, if a virgin girl is set before a unicorn, as the beast approaches, she may open her lap and it will lay its head there with all ferocity put aside, and thus lulled and disarmed it may be captured.32 Isidore introduces an element of doubt about the mystical hunt in his aside “as those who have written about animal natures claim” (sicut asserunt qui naturas animalium scripserunt).33 Later in his encyclopedia, drawing on Ctesias, Isidore attributes the unicorn’s origin to the India of his fantasy, saying that India’s soil “produces human beings of color, huge elephants, the animal called monoceros (i.e. the unicorn), the bird called parrot, a wood called ebony, and cinnamon, pepper, and sweet calamus.”34 When he continues in the next sentence by describing India’s ivory and precious stones, including beryls, diamonds, and small and large pearls “coveted by women of the nobility,” and its mountains of gold, which cannot be approached due to “dragons, griffins, and human monsters of immense size,”35 it is clear that unicorns belong to a 32

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Stephen Barney, et al., trans., The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 252 of 247-70. In Latin, this passage reads as follows: “Rhinoceron a Graecis vocatus. Latine interpretatur in nare cornu. Idem et monoceron, id est unicornus, eo quod unum cornu in media fronte habeat pedum quattuor ita acutum et validum ut quidquid inpetierit, aut ventilet aut perforet. Nam et cum elephantis saepe certamen habet, et in ventre vulneratum prosternit. [13] Tantae autem esse fortitudinis ut nulla venantium virtute capiatur; sed, sicut asserunt qui naturas animalium scripserunt, virgo puella praeponitur, quae venienti sinum aperit, in quo ille omni ferocitate deposita caput ponit, sicque soporatus velut inermis capitur.” See Isidore, Etymologies, XII.ii.12-13, available at The Latin Library: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/12.shtml. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, XIV.iii.6-7, available at The Latin Library: http://www .thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/14.shtml. Barney, et al., trans. Etymologies, 286. Barney, et al., trans. Etymologies, 286.

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fabulous, faraway land. Without biblical quotation or allegorical commentary, the science of the naturalists is implicitly called into question by the historian. This kind of doubt later develops into a form of intellectual animosity toward idea of a real unicorn, and consequently reduces the symbolic appeal of the unicorn as a Christian symbol, in later time periods.36 Isidore was not the only medieval writer to describe the unicorn. Such descriptions particularly flourished between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in texts that circulated widely in Europe and England.37 In the twelfthcentury, German Benedictine nun Hildegard von Bingen suggests in her Physica (1151-58) that many maidens, rather than one, can successfully capture the unicorn.38 French magister Alan of Lille mentions the mystical hunt of the unicorn, asleep in the lap of a virgin, in Prose I of De Planctu Naturae (modeled on the structure of Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae) and elsewhere seeks a scientific explanation for the unicorn’s capture.39 Pseudo-Hugo of Saint Victor, a contemporary of Hildegard of Bingen and Alan of Lille, draws on the description of the unicorn from in the ninth-century Physiologus in his bestiary, De Bestiis et Aliis Rebus, adding, on an either more maternal or erotic note, that the maiden uncovers her breast to draw the unicorn to her.40 The English Augustinian Abbott of Cirencester Abbey and fosterbrother of Richard I, Alexander Neckam, refers to the unicorn in his work

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Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy qtd. in Voss “Pursuit of the Unicorn.” See also the conclusion of Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930). A list of writers of such descriptions appears in Curley, trans., Physiologus, xxx; others are named in Shephard and Freeman. PL CXCVII, cols. 1317-1318. For the passage in question in English, see Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of her Classic Work on Health and Healing, trans. Priscilla Throop (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998). Noted in Freeman, Unicorn Tapestries, 23. Noted by Shephard, Lore of the Unicorn, 50: “Alanus de Insulis, who flourished at the end of the twelfth century, gives a curious explanation of the story in which the sexual interpretation is made in terms of mediaeval science. He concludes that the virgin’s power is due to a radical difference in “humours,” the calidissima natura of the unicorn being drawn irresistibly to its opposite, the femina frigida et humida. The unicorn, he says, has an excess of fervent spirits or humours which dilate his heart, and when he comes into the pure moist air surrounding the virgin he feels such relief and is so delighted by that feminine atmosphere that he lies down in her lap.” Noted in Freeman, Unicorn Tapestries, 23. For further discussion, see Florence McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 179-83.

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De rerum natura (1190).41 In his sermon “On the Nativity of Our Lord,” Benedictine monk Honorius of Autun writes, “By the beast Christ is figured, by the horn of his insuperable strength. Resting in the womb of a virgin, he was taken by the hunters, that is, he was found in human form by those who loved him.”42 Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texts describe the unicorn as well. The priest, Augustinian canon, and later Dominican monk Thomas of Cantimpré writes of unicorns in his encyclopedia, Liber de natura rerum. This in turn apparently influenced related descriptions of the unicorn in German Benedictine Albertus Magnus’ De Animalibus, French Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum naturale, and English Franciscan monk Bartolomaeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum. Jacob van Maerlant’s Der naturen bloeme is a close translation of Thomas of Cantimpre into Flemish / Middle Dutch.43 The Historia of Jacques de Vitry (1157-1217), a French priest, bishop, and cardinal, contains references as well. Unicorn descriptions appear in the fourteenthcentury vernacular work of Cornish priest John Trevisa, who translated On the Properties of Things (ca. 1397) from Latin to English, and German priest Konrad von Megenberg in his encyclopedia, das Buch der Natur (ca. 1349). Some of these sources describe the unicorn and the mystical hunt without allegorical glosses relating them to Christ, but they seem to assume the educated reader’s knowledge of the Christian symbolism. In keeping with the example 41 42

43

Curley names Alexander Neckam, without the basic details I provide here, in his introduction to the Physiologus, xxx. English translation quoted from Freeman, Unicorn Tapestries, 23. For the Latin, see Speculum Ecclesiae in PL CLXXII, col. 819. The idea that Christ-as-unicorn was “loved” appears originally in the Physiologus, which says, “‘He was loved like the son of the unicorns’ [cf. Ps. 22:21] as David said in the psalm” (Curley, trans., Physiologus, 51). The description of the unicorn by Thomas of Cantimpré is noted in Shephard, Lore of the Unicorn (1930); Thomas’ influence on other encyclopedists is noted in “Thomas of Cantimpré,” The Medieval Bestiary, http://bestiary.ca/prisources/psdetail1798.htm. For a scholarly overview of the references to the unicorn in Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Vincent of Beauvais, and Albertus Magnus as well as Pierre Bersuire (allegorical interpreter of the mystical hunt of the unicorn), Brunetto Latini (whose French Li Livre dou Trésor, a summary of encyclopedic knowledge, features a unicorn illustrated beautifully in Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 160, fol. 82r), and Cecco d’Ascoli (a fifteenth-century Italian who wrote an encyclopedic poem, Acerba, referring to the unicorn, which resulted in multiple illustrations of the unicorn in manuscripts containing the poem), see chap. D “Die Jungfrau und das Unicorn,” sect. II “Enzyklopädien und Summen,” in Jürgen W. Einhorn, Spiritualis Unicornis: Das Einhorn als Bedeustungsträger in Literatur und Kunst des Mittelalters (Munich: William Fink Verlag, 1998), 202-213. For d’Ascoli’s poem itself, in Italian, see https://web.archive.org/web/20160328171558/http://www .classicitaliani.it/trecento/ceccoda3.pdf.

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set by the Physiologus, most blend naturalistic and allegorical considerations together.44 The medieval bestiaries of the twelfth century and beyond not only relied on the Physiologus, but also tended to incorporate Isidore’s etymologies, and, on occasion, the work of other encyclopedists and naturalists. This swelled their size, necessitating further categorization: they divide consideration of animals not only by chapters, but zoological groupings (mammals, birds, reptiles, etc). Because of the concurrent circulation of the Physiologus and the bestiaries, which contained similar material, it is not always possible to discern which source is being referenced in later medieval writings. However, it is clear, at least in the case of the unicorn, that the Physiologus contributed significantly to the unicorn’s Christological symbolic interpretation, which came to be celebrated widely in medieval popular culture. A few examples of unicorn appearances in poems, songs, and artwork illustrate this popularity. The unicorn, as both natural creature and Christological symbol, appears in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture. As Helge Kökeritz has observed, the unicorn (or “anhyrne”) is mentioned in extant interlinear Anglo-Saxon psalters, the metrical Paris Psalter, and four contemporary glosses (though the Old English does not render the Latin in the same way in all manuscripts, thus demonstrating the creativity of glossators in making Old English words from 44

This tradition of an unglossed naturalistic description, that nevertheless presumes an educated reader aware of the allegorical significance, is continued in a hunting poem in Latin hexameters by a sixteenth century writer, Natalis Comes: Far on the edge of the world and beyond the bank of the Ganges, Savage and lone, is a place in the realm of the King of the Hindus. Where there is born a beast as large as a stag in stature, Dark on the back, solid-hoofed, very fierce, and shaped like a bullock. Mighty and black is the horn that springs from the animal’s forehead, Terrible unto his foe, a defence and a weapon of onslaught. Often the poisoners steal to the banks of that swift-flowing river, Fouling the waves with disease by their secret insidious poisons; After them comes this beast and dips his horn in the water, Cleansing the venom away and leaving the stream to flow purely So that the forest-dwellers may drink once more by the margin. Also men say that the beast delights in the embrace of a virgin, Falling asleep in her arms and taking sweet rest on her bosom. Ah! but, awaking, he finds he is bound by ropes and by shackles. Strange is the tale, indeed, yet so, they say, he is taken, Whether it be that the seeds of love have been sown by great Nature Deep in his blood or for some more hidden mysterious reason.” (trans. Shephard, Lore of the Unicorn, 61). Note the reference at the end of this passage to “some more hidden mysterious reason” may be taken as an invitation to allegoresis.

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the Anglo-Saxon word-hoard in order to translate the Latin).45 The Old English Physiologus poem does not mention the unicorn, but that is not to be wondered at, for it only mentions three creatures: the panther, the whale, and a bird, probably the partridge. As Curley has observed, “Quite possibly . . . this selection represents a conscious attempt on the part of the Old English poet to create a triptych of nature displaying the powers of the denizens of land, sea, and air.”46 The absence from the vernacular Physiologus, however, did not prevent the unicorn from traveling in the Latin Physiologus and entering popular English imagination, as in the case of Bede’s gloss on the Psalms (already discussed) and, as we shall see, in Aldhelm’s riddles. Aldhelm was a seventh-century monk who became abbot of Malmesbury, where he introduced the Benedictine Rule, and who later became bishop of Sherborne. He was known for his learning, for which Bede praised him in his Ecclesiastical History, and for his writings, which included a treatise in praise of virginity (De laude virginitatis) and a related Latin poem on virginity (Carmen de virginitate). Also among his writings were his Aenigmata: one hundred hexametrical riddles. Among these riddles was the sixtieth about the unicorn, “De Monocerote Grece”: Collibus in celsis saeui discrimina martis Quamuis uenator frustra latrante moloso Garriat arcister contorquens spicula ferri Nil uereor. magnis sed fretus uiribus altos Belliger inpugnana elefantes uulnere sterno; Heu fortuna ferro quae me sic arte fefellit Dum trudico grandes. et uirgine uincor inermi Nam gremium pandens mox pulchra puerpera prendit. Et uoti compos celsam deducit ad urbem; Indidit ex cornu nomen mihi lingua pelasga; Sic itidem propria dixerunt uoce latini I fear not the battles of fierce Mars, in the high hills, Though the hunter calls and his dog barks in vain, And the archer hurls his arrows of iron. A warrior armed with great strength, 45

46

Helge Kökeritz, “The Anglo-Saxon Unicorn,” in Early English and Norse Studies Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1963), 120-126, esp. 120-121. Curley, trans., Physiologus, xxix. It is worth noting that the eighth-century Old English Physiologus is the earliest translation of the Latin into a vernacular language in western Europe. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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I fight the tall elephants and fell them with a blow. But, alas, ferocious fortune tricked me in this way — Although I can slay the mighty, I am conquered by an unarmed virgin; A beautiful maiden who bares her breast may seize me And, mistress of her will, lead me to a turreted city. I am named for my single born in the Greek tongue and I am called by the same name in Latin.47 Aldhelm’s riddle emphasizes the unicorn’s strength, associating him with Mars, the Roman god of war, and opposes that strength to the elephant’s before juxtaposing it with the unarmed virgin (virgine . . . inermi) who conquers him. The irony inherent in the juxtaposition enhances the explanation of mystical hunt of the unicorn. Though Aldhelm does not directly reference Christ, the Incarnation, or the Virgin Mary, the riddle-master certainly was familiar with the allegory and may have anticipated that many in his audience were as well. Ending his riddle with reference to Greek and Latin certainly implies that he expected other monks to be among the readers or hearers his work: English monks would have known the references to the unicorn in the Psalter (which they recited daily at the canonical hours) and the Christological symbolism of the unicorn in the Psalter. A near-contemporary of Aldhelm, St. Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon monk, bishop, and eventual archbishop, who served as a missionary to Germany and the Frankish kingdom, came to be associated with the unicorn. The unicorn of St. Boniface was a symbol of solitude or the monastic life.48 A pastoral staff, supposedly his and carved to show a unicorn kneeling before Christ’s Cross, is preserved at St. Fulda’s Cathedral in Germany.49 Turning our attention fully to medieval Germany, we again find the unicorn in psalters and bestiaries, as we would expect, but also in Middle High German folk-songs: I stood in the May-time meadows By roses circled round, Where many a fragile blossom Was bright upon the ground;

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Aldhlem, Through a Gloss Darkly: Aldhelm’s Riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12. C.XXIII, Texts and Studies 98, ed. and trans. Nancy Porter Stork (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1990), 177-78. Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, 155. Shephard, Lore of the Unicorn, 80. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Beal And as though the roses called them And their wild hearts understood, The little birds were singing In the shadows of the wood. The nightingale among them Sang sweet and loud and long, Until a greater voice than hers Rang out above her song; For suddenly, between the crags, Along the narrow vale, The echoes of a hunting horn Came clear upon the gale. The hunter stood beside me Who blew that mighty horn; I saw that he was hunting The gentle unicorn – But the unicorn is noble, He knows his gentle birth, He knows that God has chosen him Above all beasts of earth. The unicorn is noble; He keeps him safe and high Upon a narrow path and steep Climbing to the sky; And there no man can take him, He scorns the hunter’s dart, And only a virgin’s magic power Shall tame his haughty heart. What would be now the state of us But for this Unicorn, And what would be the fate of us, Poor sinners, lost, forlorn?

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Oh, may He lead us on and up, Unworthy though we be, Into His Father’s kingdom, To dwell eternally!50 This song opens with roses and birds, in a garden-like landscape, in May. The presence of the nightingale, the poet’s bird, is particularly significant, as is the poet’s humility in acknowledging “a greater voice than hers” (line 11). The hunter with his horn, traditionally associated with Gabriel at the moment of the Annunciation to Mary,51 is depicted as literally standing right beside the poet. The unicorn, by contrast, is above them both. The singer asks what the spiritual state of humanity would be without the Unicorn (by whom the singer clearly means Jesus), and then ends with a prayer that the Unicorn may lead us up to “his Father’s kingdom”: heaven. Clearly, the unicorn entered folk-lore and the medieval popular imagination together with Christological symbolic significance. In France, the thirteenth-century chansonnier Thibault IV of Champagne made a song comparing himself to the unicorn captured by love in the lady’s giron (i.e., her lap or bosom): “Je suis comme licorne.”52 However, unlike St. Boniface, Thibault’s association with the unicorn is not primarily signifying monastic solitude, although it may still participate in the realm of higher spiritual meaning. An understanding of the context of the mystical hunt makes it possible to read the song for its double-meaning, expressing a desire for both the singer’s human beloved and the divine Virgin Mary. The woman is called “Dame” (Lady), but never named, preserving the mystery of her exact identity. However, it would be a mistake to suppose that every unicorn in medieval literature and art is a symbol of Christ or alludes to that symbolism. Alongside 50

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Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 82-83 in chap. 3 “Shaping Fantasies.” For the original in German, see Ludwig Uhland, Alte hoch-und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1845), II, no. 339. For additional insight on the unicorn in medieval German literary tradition, see Einhorn, Spiritualis Unicornis (1998). The hunter is also associated with God the Father; when there is more than one, the hunters may be associated in medieval thinking with the Jews who, together with Romans and all sinners, shared responsibility for Christ’s death on the Cross. See Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Pres, 1973), 154. For the entire poem in French, see song XXXIV, Alexandre Micha, trans., Extrait de Thibaud de Champagne, Recueil de chansons, traduction, présentation et notes (Paris, 1991), 85-86. Also available at http://lamop-intranet.univ-paris1.fr/baudin/documents _pdf/licorne.pdf.

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the allegorical understanding of the mystical hunt of the unicorn as representative of Christ’s Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary, there was also another tradition of meaning, represented in the Legenda aurea or Golden Legend of the thirteenth-century Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine. The Legenda aurea was an exceedingly popular collection of saints’ lives, and in it, drawing on a parable originally from the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, Jacobus interpreted the Unicorn as a figure for Death: “they that desire the delights corporeal and suffer their souls die from hunger, be like to a man that fled before a unicorn that he should not devour him, and in fleeing, he fell into a great pit . . . The unicorn is the figure of Death, which continually follows man and desires to seize him. The pit is the world which is full of wickedness.”53 So we find that Death rides a unicorn in a miniature of Jean Colombe’s Hours of Chantilly, the second part (1485), and later in the Renaissance, Pluto rides a unicorn in Albrecht Dürer’s Rape of Persphone (1516).54 In addition to the interpretive tradition associating the unicorn with death, the unicorn can play an alluring role in medieval courtly romances, but without standing for Christ at all. This multivalent signifier, the unicorn, can thus represent the mystery of the Incarnation or become mysterious in itself. Odell Shephard has summarized the extraordinary popularity of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ in the medieval church art while noting how the unicorn eventually came to influence secular art: From the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, representation of the unicorn in ecclesiastic decoration was continuous and widespread. Formerly he had been depicted chiefly in manuscripts and it is clear that his increased popularity was due in some degree to the rapid intensification of Mariolatry. Although the animal’s figure was not so much used in England as in Europe, I have seen him represented on misericords in Lincoln Cathedral, in St. George’s of Windsor, in the chapel of Durham Castle, in St. Botolph’s of Boston, and in at least half a dozen parish churches. Mrs. Jameson describes an elaborate representation of the Holy Hunt, which stands over the altar in Breslau Cathedral, and the same subject is treated in stained glass at Bourges, Erfurt, Caen, Lyons, and many other places. Representations of the unicorn on old altarcloths, corbels, and capitals are almost numberless. A subject so popular as this was certain 53 54

Qtd. in Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, 154. In Moretto de Brescia’s 1530 painting, “Justina with the Unicorn,” the unicorn may stand for Christ, chastity, or death, as St. Justina was a virgin martyr. The symbolic valence of the unicorn becomes much more complex in the Renaissance. Like the phoenix, it also was associated with Queen Elizabeth I, primarily as a symbol of purity. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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to be adopted by secular art . . . for it was only necessary to lay a slightly additional emphasis upon the theme of the hunt and to subordinate the holy symbolism in order to make the transition from sacred to profane.55 This chapter cannot explore all the relevant evidence of the popular knowledge and appreciation for the unicorn in the Middle Ages, but it will conclude by examining some of the well-known images of the medieval unicorn, which are preserved in tapestries that combine both spiritual and secular symbolism.

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Unicorn Tapestries: The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn (1480), The Lady and the Unicorn (ca. 1480-1500 or 1484-1535), and The Hunt of the Unicorn (ca. 1495-1505)

About 1480, the tapestry altar frontal known as “The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn” (Zurich, Swiss National Museum) was woven in a Swiss workshop from wool, linen, silk, and silver and gilt metal-wrapped thread.56 Its 104 × 380 cm length tells a story that is not left to interpretation. Instead, key images are labeled with Latin words and phrases that spell out the weaver’s message to the linguistically or culturally literate viewer. On one side, the angel Gabriel blows his horn, from which a scroll with the traditional words appear: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Domine tecum.57 Behind 55

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Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn, 71. It is worth noting here that unicorns appear in medieval Arthurian romances, such as Gottfried’s Tristan (12th c.), Wolfram’s Parzival (13th c.) and Le Chevalier Papegau (14th c.), in which a mother unicorn nurses a dwarf’s child after his biological mother’s death. None of these read the unicorn as a figure for Christ per se, although the context of the allegorical interpretation of the mystical hunt is important for a full understanding of the stories. Concerning the unicorn in the Welsh romance Peredur, see Brianna Daigneault, “Carw uncorn: The Unicorn in ‘Peredur,”’ Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 36 (2016), 50-65. In contrast, an Aesopian fable, “The Lion and the Unicorn,” apparently uniquely preserved in the fourteenth-century fable collection of John Sheppey, Bishop of Rochester, refers to the unicorn with no connection to the allegorical sense at all: the unicorn gives its horn to the lion, when asked for it, and is then mauled by the lion; the moral is taken from Ecclesiasticus 7: “Do not ever trust your enemy. Always protect yourself from him, even if he comes to you humble and supplicating. The truth of this is plain to see.” See Laura Gibbs, Aesop’s Fables: A New Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), #110. http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/110.htm. A full-color reproduction of this artwork appears in Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo, The Unicorn Tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, Publishers, 1998), 22-23 and, in black and white with a brief commentary, in Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (Lausanne: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1976), 50-51. These words appear in Luke 1:28, but they were also part of a prayer medieval Christians - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

Figure 8.1 “The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn” Source: Swiss National Museum - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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him are a lion with two cubs, for medieval bestiary tradition promoted the belief that lions could roar their stillborn cubs back to life, so this became a symbol of God the Father raising Christ from the dead.58 There is also an outpouring of through a red-bricked dike beside the sea with the Latin titulus: fons hortorum, puteus aquarum viventium quae fluunt impetu de Libano (“garden-fountain, well of living waters that flows rapidly from Lebanon”):59 it may allude visually to Mary’s Well, located in Nazareth, where it was traditionally believed that Gabriel appeared to Mary at the Annunciation.60 Then there is the Ark of the Covenant (archa domini) with three white flowers, presumably representing the Trinity, blooming beside it.61 Above Gabriel’s head is a star over the sea, labeled stella Jacob (the star of Jacob), which refers to the Messianic prophecy of Balaam in the Torah: I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the people of Sheth.62 The imagery also recalls another of Mary’s many medieval honorific titles, stella Maris (star of the sea), and the star that the Magi followed to find Jesus and worship him.63

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commonly prayed, one often incorporated into Books of Hours, manuscripts that also commonly depicted painted Annunciation scenes. The Books of Hours were one of the most common types of books circulating in the later medieval period, especially among women, and they shaped the interior spiritual life and thought of medieval people. For an introduction to this genre, see http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/learn. Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, 119: “According to the bestiaries, the King of Beasts was said to have three dominant characteristics: inhabiting high mountains, it erased its tracks with its tail; it slept with its eyes closed; it revived its dead whelps three days after birth. So likewise, Christ concealed all traces of his godhead when he became man. He never closed his eyes to mercy; he was raised up on the third day from the dead. The lion’s whelp as well as the lion thus came to denote the risen Christ.” Song of Songs 4:15. The earliest source for this tradition is the second-century, extra-biblical Protoevangelium of James. The site of the well is commemorated in Nazareth; it was and is a site of pilgrimage. This image also recalls Aaron’s budding staff (Num. 17:8), though another budding staff is so labeled elsewhere in the garden depicted in the tapestry. See mention below. Num. 24:17. Matt. 2.

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Before him, Gabriel holds the leash of four allegorical dogs – veritas (truth), iustitia (justice), pax (peace), and misericordia (mercy) – as he proceeds toward the closed door of a castle-like wall that encloses a garden.64 The garden is clearly the hortus conclusus of the Song of Songs that was allegorically interpreted as the Virgin’s womb.65 In the garden itself are many Christological and Marian symbols: the pelican piercing her breast to feed her young with her blood representing Christ’s Crucifixion from the allegorical bestiary tradition;66 the blossoming rod of Aaron, virga Aaron, in the midst of the other rods of the tribes of Israel;67 a medieval fountain (fons signatus) pouring out from three spouts,68 a cluster of flowers labeled humilitas (humility), and two clusters of white trumpet lilies, a traditional symbol of the Annunciation, one labeled caritas (divine love). A small, spotted unicorn leaps toward a larger-than-life Virgin Mary, robed in blue, who is taller than the walls and all the symbols around her, equal in size to the angel Gabriel approaching her. Mary grasps the unicorn’s single horn, which is pointed directly at her belly. Above her, the Christ-child with a Cross on his shoulder descends toward her head, with the dove of the Holy Spirit going ahead of him. Beside her, the first Adam bows forward as he pierces the unicorn’s breast, saying, “But he is wounded because of our sins” while below the unicorn, at Mary’s feet, Eve catches the unicorn’s blood in a chalice, saying, “And by his blood we are saved.” The unicorn’s blood in the cup represents Christ’s blood, the blood the new covenant.69 The resulting representation of the thematic interplay of sin and redemption, the Fall and the Crucifixion, is particularly appropriate to a tapestry altar frontal, which adorned an altar where Mass was said and the Eucharistic rite was celebrated.

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The source for these allegorical dogs may be the thirteenth-century PseudoBonaventuran Meditations and “medieval mystery plays in which, as a prelude to the Annunciation, these four virtues, personified, search for a sinless man who is willing to die to save mankind; when they have no success, Christ offers to be that man” (Freeman, Unicorn Tapestries, 51). Songs of Songs 4:12 Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus (“A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.”) For an introductory discussion, see Liz Herbert McAvoy, “The Medieval hortus conclusus: Revisiting the Pleasure Garden,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 50 (2014): 5-10. For an overview of the symbolic import of the pelican, see Beryl Rowland, Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), 130-33. See Num. 17:8. The Latin titulus, “fons signatus,” refers to Song of Songs 4:12, but the well of this tapestry altar frontal, with its three spouts, clearly has a Trinitarian emphasis. Cf. Luke 22:20. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Behind Mary, Gideon is depicted as a medieval knight, in shining blue armor, kneeling before the fleece while behind him, just outside the wall that encloses the garden, the burning bush also is depicted with God the Father in the midst of it and Moses looking up to God. Both the fleece and the bush that did not burn up were symbols for Mary’s immaculate conception.70 A sun with a human face shines in the corner above Moses. In the lowermost corners, on either side, black-robed nuns in white wimples kneel with clasped hands to offer their prayers to the Virgin Mary. In this fifteenth-century tapestry altar frontal, the Christian symbolism of the mystical hunt of the unicorn is clearly, even literally spelled out. The allegorical images are labeled, and the interplay of image and word ensures that there is little room for confusion or departure from the intended meaning of the tapestry-weaver or the religious patrons who requested the work. The viewers of the altar frontal, regardless of their level of Latin literacy, might understand the symbolic import of the symbolism if it were explained and might even remember the specific words in the Latin tituli if they were orally translated into the vernacular on even just one occasion. Thus only cultural literacy, not Latin literacy, would be required for general comprehension of the mystical hunt of the unicorn. While the imagery in the 1480 Swiss altar frontal is traditional, influenced by Bible and bestiary, it also appears to meet late medieval, upper-class expectations: Gideon is garbed in a medieval knight’s armor, for example, and shields bearing specific heraldic devices adorn the corners beside the kneeling nuns and one of the large towers on the wall of the garden. This combination of the sacred and secular is fairly standard in much of medieval art, for which devout members of the nobility were so often the patrons. But it is worth keeping in mind when turning to a consideration of the fifteenth-century, Flemish artwork, The Lady and the Unicorn (known in French as La dame à la Licorn), a series of six tapestries featuring at their center a lady, a lion, and a unicorn. In this series, instead of many Latin titles, there is only one in French: a mon seul desir. It appears in only one of the six tapestries, and its significance is debated, as is the mystery of the tapestries themselves. Although a virginal woman and a unicorn are depicted in these tapestries, it is difficult to read them as corresponding exclusively to the Virgin Mary and Christ: in the tapestry altar frontal, Mary’s head is surrounded by a halo to indicate her sanctity, and her garden is filled with many other traditional signs of her identity, while the Christ-child descends from heaven with the Cross on his shoulder. 70

For the biblical stories, see Judges 6 and Exodus 3. Chaucer’s words in his late fourteenthcentury Prioress’s Tale neatly sum up the symbolic interpretation of the fleece and the burning bush. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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The symbolism is clear. Unlike the tapestry altar frontal, rather than a one-toone correspondence, the images in the six tapestries participate in network of inter-connected meanings or, perhaps, in four levels of meaning. The imagery includes sacred (allegorical) and secular (literal or historical) senses in the service of the artistic representation of late-medieval Catholic virtue among the nobility. This is certainly tied to the patrons of the tapestries, the Le Viste family of Lyon, France. The Le Viste family arms are represented in each of the tapestries, indicating their patronage of these extraordinary works of art. Scholarly consensus originally held that Jean IV Le Viste commissioned them, which makes sense because he was in possession of at least three sets of large tapestries, apparently including The Lady and the Unicorn, that are mentioned in his will and were given upon his death to the eldest of his three daughters, Claude. However, there is another argument attributing patronage to Antoine Le Viste, cousin germain of Jean IV Le Viste, perhaps in honor of his affianced, Jacquelin Raguier, whom he married in 1515.71 Scholars have long doubted that these are wedding tapestries, however, because if they were, by tradition, they would represent the coats of arms of the families of both bride and groom: these six tapestries represent only the Le Viste family arms, and so it is unlikely that The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were made to honor a nuptial celebration. Since 1921, when A.F. Kendrick identified the tapestries as having been made in the medieval tradition of the “allegory of the senses,” modern viewers have been taught to read five of the tapestries as representative of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch: Sight: The Lady holds a mirror up to the Unicorn. Hearing: The Lady plays the harmonium. Taste: The Lady apparently gives a small, round, white sweet to a bird (which the bird holds in one claw while the other rests on her left hand). Smell: The Lady makes a chaplet of flowers while a nearby monkey sniffs a flower. Touch: The Lady grasps the horn of the unicorn.72 71 72

See, for example, Carl Nordenfalk, “The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985): 1-22, esp. 7-10. Images of the six-tapestry series, La dame et licorne, are freely and widely available on the internet, and images in the common domain are available from Wikipedia and Wikimedia. To see these images in the context of my analysis of these tapestries, please visit my post on the subject: Jane Beal, “Analysis of the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries,” Sanctuary Poet (https://janebeal.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/analysis-of-the-lady-andthe-unicorn-tapestries-from-the-unicorn-as-a-symbol-for-christ-in-medieval-culture-by -jane-beal/). - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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The sixth tapestry, which admittedly does not fit well with this scheme, may represent a sixth idea, such as the will (“a mon seul desir”),73 or, enigmatically, relinquishment (because the lady is placing her necklace in a casket – unless, of course, she is actually taking the necklace out of the casket). Two other different but nevertheless cogent interpretations of the The Lady and the Unicorn have been put forward in recent years. In 1997, Kristina Gourlay argued the The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series is not so much an “allegory of the senses” as it is a representation of the “iconography of love.” Looking to Richard de Fournival’s thirteenth-century Bestiare d’Amour, which contains a chivalric version of the mystical hunt of the unicorn story, she focuses on the tapestry that depicts the lady with the unicorn in her lap and develops an argument re-interpreting The Lady and the Unicorn as a story about the progress of a romance. In her scheme, “taste” becomes the initial “pursuit”: this is symbolized by the bird, read as a hawk, who represents her lover and the hunt of love motif; the small, round, white object she gives to the bird is not a sweet, but a pearl (which may represent the soul). “Hearing” becomes “harmony” in the romantic relationship; “smell” becomes “recognition,” for she is weaving the chaplet of flowers for her lover as a token of her returned affection. “Sight” becomes “capitulation,” symbolized by the unicorn in her lap; “touch” becomes “capture” when the Lady holds the unicorn’s horn in her hand and the myriad smaller animals in the tapestry are all depicted as collared. Finally, “a mon seul desir,” difficult to explain with the allegory of the five senses, becomes “resolution”: to symbolize marriage, the Lady lays aside her own “device,” her necklace, in preparation to take up her husband’s arms.74 In 2000, Marie-Elisabeth Bruel read the tapestries in terms of noble virtues portrayed as allegorical female figures in the Roman de la Rose, equating “sight” with Oiseuse (idleness), “touch” with Richesse (wealth), “taste” with Franchise (candor or freedom of the spirit), “hearing” with Liesse (joy), “smell” with Beauté (beauty), and “a mon seul desir” with Largesse (generosity).75 Bruel’s 73

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Sophie Schneelbalg-Perelman, “La Dame à la licorne a été tissée à Bruxelles,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 70 (1967): 253-278. She notes the former existence of an early sixteenthcentury, six panel artwork described in a 1548 inventory that once belonged to Prince Erard de la Marck, Prince-Bishop of Liège, and was entitled Los Sentidos: it represented the five senses and included a sixth panel with the inscription liberum arbitrium. She interprets a mon seul desir in light of the Latin in Los Sentidos, suggesting that the Lady may use her senses according to her free will or only desire. Kristina Gourlay, “La Dame à licorne: A Reinterpretation,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 130 (Sept. 1997): 215-232. Marie-Elisabeth Bruel, “La tapisserie de la Dame à la Licorne, une représentation des vertus allégoriques du Roman de la Rose de Guillaume de Lorris,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Dec. 2000): 215-232. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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model, reading The Lady and the Unicorn in terms of an influential medieval literary work, has been followed by others who have read the tapestries in light of the works of Jean Gerson and Christine de Pizan.76 According to these three major interpretations of the series as whole, as well as related studies, the Lady may represent the soul (anima) and the soul’s responses to the senses. She may represent the ideal woman, either in her virtue or her desirability as a lover (or both). She may be inspired, to some degree, by well-known medieval literary works. Furthermore, she may be intended to glorify the nobility of the Le Viste family, woo a spouse into the Le Viste family, educate the daughters of the Le Viste family in the virtues they should possess or advertise the marriageability of the young women in the Le Viste family. Recently, in her a careful heraldric study of the tapestries, Carmen Decu Teodorescu has suggested that the particular coats of arms represented in the tapestries belonged to Antoine Le Viste, not to Jean IV Le Viste.77 First noticed by Marice Dayras in 1963, the changes made to the Le Viste family arms in the tapestries were hypothesized by Carmen Decu Teodorescu in 2010 to be a “mark of cadency.” Such a mark is “used in heraldry to indicate by its addition to an armorial the birth order of a male heir. The cadency mark has been traditionally used to differentiate between different branches of a family which bear the same arms.”78 As has been observed, “Cette hypothèse est renforcée par le fait que son blazon se trouve sur la rose méridionale de l’église SaintGermain-l’Auxerrois de Paris qui a été commandé par Antoine Le Viste par un marché passé en 1532.”79 There are four distinguishing differences in this series of six tapestries: the differences are between banners, the lady’s hair length, the presence or absence of an additional woman, and the wearing of shields (or capes) by the lion and the unicorn. – Four of the six tapestries contain two banners, one square and one rectangular but split on one end into two curling scrolls, while two contain only the square banner. 76

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See Anne Davenport, “Is there a sixth sense in The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries?” New Arcadia Review 4 (2010): http://omc.bc.edu/newarcadiacontent/isThereASixthSense _edited.html and Shelley Williams, “Text and Tapestry: The Lady and the Unicorn, Christine de Pizan and the Le Vistes” (Diss., Brigham Young University, 2009). Carmen Decu Teodorescu, “La Tenture de la Dame à la Licorne: Nouvelle lecture des armoiries,” Bulletin Monumental de la Société Française d’ Archéologie 168:4 (2010), 355-67. “Cadency marks,” Heraldric Dictionary, University of Notre Dame. http://www.rarebooks .nd.edu/digital/heraldry/cadency.html. Accessed 28 March 2017. “La Dame à la Licorne,” Wikipédia (française). https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Dame_% C3%A0_la_licorne#Origine. Accessed 28 March 2017.

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– The Lady in the two tapestries with the single square banner has the long hair while the Lady of the four tapestries with the two banners has shoulder-length hair. The Lady of the four tapestries sits or stands alone between the lion and the unicorn. – However, in the four tapestries with two banners, a second woman of shorter stature appears with the central Lady in all four cases. – Interestingly, in one of the two tapestries with one banner and a longhaired, solitary Lady, the lion and the unicorn wear shields. In one of the four tapestries with two banners and a tall, short-haired Lady with a shorter woman near her, the lion and the unicorn wear shields, but ones different in shape from those in the two tapestries with a solitary Lady. In another of the four tapestries, the lion and the unicorn wear emblazoned capes. Based on these major, easily visible distinguishing differences, quite possibly there are at least two different Le Viste tapestry sets here that have been combined, received, and interpreted as a single set. There may have been additional tapestries, now lost, in either set. This idea is not new, but it is significant for interpretation of meaning. The idea that the central lady in the tapestries represents the Virgin Mary certainly has been considered, but it is not now widely accepted. This is in part because the connection with Mary is not as explicit in The Lady and the Unicorn as in other representations, like the 1480 Swiss tapestry altar frontal (discussed above), though it should be noted that some representations of the Virgin are quite simple, without halo or many identifying symbols around her. By contrast, the prominently displayed Le Viste family arms are quite explicitly and repeatedly displayed, leading art historians to investigate the historical situatedness of the works in terms of their patronage. Yet culturally literate medieval people were accustomed to understanding the stories, visual art, and architecture around them at multiple levels of meaning: literally and allegorically. It is likely that The Lady and the Unicorn participates in such a network of meaning. Literally and historically, the tapestries may pertain to the women of Le Viste family: their virtue, beauty, and desirability. At the same time, allegorically or spiritually, the tapestries can be characterized as Marian, if not exclusively about Mary, and Christian, if not exclusively about Christ. The Lady is like Mary because the women of the Le Viste family seek to emulate the Virgin. Both the unicorn and the lion are like Jesus because the chivalric male head of their household seeks to emulate Christ.80 Morally, the tapestries encourage multiple meditative practices, 80

Consider, for example, the many legends of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, several contemporary in time with these tapestries, in which the virtues of a counter-cultural Christ

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common to late-medieval lay Catholic spirituality, intended to edify the viewers with respect to guarding their senses, and thus, their souls, since the senses are gateways to the soul. Anagogically, they may represent matters unfolding in the future, including the laying aside of wealth in order to receive a heavenly crown. One image in the series particularly evokes the idea of the virgin capture of the unicorn: the tapestry most commonly called “Sight.”

Figure 8.2 “The Lady and the Unicorn” (“Sight”). Photo credit Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York (image reference: ART 49853). See also https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:The_Lady_and_the_unicorn_Sight.jpg. Source: Musée national du Moyen Âge – Thermes de Cluny

(“stealing from the rich to give to the poor”) and an innocent Marian maid are represented in two life-like, noble characters. For discussion, see Stephen Knight, Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form, and Reception in the Outlaw Myth, Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture Series (Manchester University Press, 2015, repr. forthcoming 2017), esp. chap. 7, “The Making and Re-Making of Maid Marian.”

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Here the maiden is sitting down and the unicorn is tamed in her lap, his forelegs resting on the red, upturned, outer skirt of a two-layered garment covering her left thigh while her left hand rests on the mane of his neck where the curve of his back begins. The two appear to be gazing into one another’s eyes. The maiden upholds a mirror to the unicorn, whose countenance is reflected in it. Most interestingly, the unicorn in the reflection looks out at the viewer of the tapestry. The maiden herself wears a striking hairstyle, with a straight braid rising from the top, front of her head, almost like a unicorn horn. (This style appears three times in the series: once on the taller lady of the tapestry “Hearing,” once here in “Sight,” and once in the sixth tapestry, “A mon seul desir,” in which the shorter lady is wearing it.) Symbols of fertility (rabbits) and loyalty (dogs) abound in this tapestry. The trees on either side of the central lady are reminiscent of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden: Mary’s humble obedience redeemed Eve’s original sin (sic “Eva” / “Ave Maria”). The leopard at the lady’s feet may stand for conquered sin while the lamb lying down behind the lion may represent innocence and purity.81 Particularly when this tapestry is viewed on its own, apart from the series into which it has been incorporated, it bears striking resemblance to the motif of the virgin capture of the unicorn commonly found in other medieval texts and textiles. In this case, it seems to have both a secular and sacred connotation. In fact, it may lean more heavily in the direction of the sacred than otherwise.82 An explanation for this may be found in the fact that The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series was probably not, in fact, originally intended as one series – though no doubt it has been received and interpreted as such. The differences among the six tapestries suggest that there are at least two different

81 82

On the symbolism of the lamb and the leopard in the medieval bestiary tradition, see Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, 116-17 and 114-15 and 116-17 respectively. While records show that the two elder of the Le Viste daughters married, there is no record of the marriage of the youngest, Genivieve, or indeed of anything that happened to her in adulthood. It is possible that the youngest remained unmarried, perhaps falling in love with Christ (a moment this tapestry may depict), and then joining a monastic house. It is also possible that she died young, and her parents (or her cousin) wished to remember her in terms of the virgin capture of the unicorn legend, thus thinking of her in Christ’s embrace in heaven. If this is a plausible interpretation, it may shed light on the meaning of other tapestries, esp. those in which two ladies appear: the ladies may represent a mother and daughter and thus echo the idea of the Virgin Mary with her own mother, Anna.

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series that have been combined, and there may be more than two. Certainly one of these large tapestries would have been enough for any single Le Viste household: it is difficult to imagine all six in a continuous series in one place (if that place is not the Cluny Museum). For purposes of comparison, The Hunt of the Unicorn series, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has consistently been recognized as originally consisting of more than one series that was only later combined and received as if the individual tapestries were closely related in theme and content to one another. In that series, the hunt of the unicorn is both a representation of noble aspiration and an allegory of Christ’s Passion.83 The Hunt of the Unicorn represents Christ’s Passion through the brutal killing of the unicorn by hunters and dogs. One of the tapestries in this combined series depicts a woman alluring the unicorn for a hunter blowing a horn while his dog leaps on the unicorn’s back and sinks his teeth into him so that his white side is lined with blood. Yet The Hunt of the Unicorn ostensibly ends with the seventh and final tapestry, “The Unicorn in Captivity.” Here the unicorn is chained to a tree, encircled by a fence, which is surely a picture of Christ’s willingness to be incarnated for the redemption of humanity. This captive unicorn in his garden may also be a picture of Christ’s Resurrection.

4

Conclusions

The unicorn was a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages. The unicorn signified Christ not only for the learned among the clergy, but also the less-educated nobility and commoners among the laity. The Glossa ordinaria, a highly influential interpretive gloss of Scripture, provides clear evidence that biblical passages referring to the monoceros (Greek) or unicornus (Latin) were seen in the medieval period as referring to Christ. This understanding circulated among both monastics and secular priests, who preached about the unicorn as a symbol for Christ, thus widely exposing the laity to the idea. The example of Ranulf Higden’s use of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ in his preaching manual shows just how wide-spread this idea was by the fourteenth-century: a virtual commonplace. Beginning at least as early as the Venerable Bede in the seventh century, and thus circulating among the Anglo-Saxons, the legend of the virgin capture of

83

For further discussion of “The Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestry series, see Freeman (1956) and Cavallo (1998).

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the unicorn was associated with Christ’s Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This idea derived from allegorical interpretation of the virgin capture of the unicorn given in the Physiologus and later medieval bestiaries. It became incorporated into the Glossa ordinaria, specifically through the commentary on Psalm 78:69 attributed to Bede. The idea also is reflected the riddles of Aldhelm, Bede’s contemporary. In both England and Europe, the idea of the unicorn as a symbol for Christ was represented in poetry, song, and art of all kinds, although not every unicorn was Christological in nature. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the rise of the Reformation in Germany and its influence on England and Europe, the symbolic association of the unicorn with Christ decreased in popularity, especially as learned men began to question the scientific existence of the unicorn. Yet many beautiful tapestries from this same tumultuous period of religious change continued to rely on the Christian and Marian symbolism of the virgin capture of the unicorn. This can clearly be seen in the tapestry altar frontal of 1480, which meticulously uses Latin words to connect the imagery to the allegorical sense. It can also be understood in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series, where the Christological symbolism of the unicorn is less explicit but nevertheless essential to comprehending the fuller sense of meaning being conveyed by a noble family, the Le Viste family of Lyon, France, who represent themselves as noble and faithful Christians in the art that they patronized. Like The Lady and the Unicorn series (which is actually more than one series that has been combined and received as one), The Hunt of the Unicorn series relies on its viewers’ understanding of the central unicorn as a symbol of Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection. Thus the unicorn features significantly in multiple symbolic representations of Christ’s life. As such, the unicorn meant so much more to medieval and early modern viewers of him in any context in which he appeared than he does to most modern viewers, who often see the unicorn as a fantasy, a toy, or a minor character in stories for children.84 Yet even in the reduced circumstances of modernity, the unicorn remains a powerful symbol, retaining Christological meanings first associated with it in the Middle Ages and continuing to influence the contemporary imagination.

84

The unicorn retains some of its status as a salvific symbol in stories for young adults, including C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

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Figure 8.3 Detail from “The Lady and the Unicorn” (“Sight”). Photo credit Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York (image reference: ART 49853). Source: Musée national du Moyen Âge – Thermes de Cluny

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Chapter 9

Godly Bridegroom and Human Bride Andrew Galloway

A long Judeo-Christian tradition defines the relation of God to the human beings who serve and love him as a marriage: a human wife (sponsa) and divine bridegroom (Sponsus). Initially, and to some extent fundamentally throughout, this figure expresses the commitment of a chosen people to God, an enduring covenant on both sides, although at a level of emotional intensity far beyond the Abrahamic covenant. The simile or metaphor is well established already by the time of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, wherein the people of Israel are a “wife” to God, either faithful (as in Hosea 2:22-33) or erring and adulterous (as in Jeremiah 3:8), sometimes called back to her proper husband “as a woman forsaken and mourning in spirit” (Isaiah 54:6). Early Christian writings adopted this allegory of a chosen but erring people in a range of ways. Primary was the analogy of Christ’s love for the church to a marriage, as in Ephesians 5:22-33: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it.” More allegorical or enigmatic senses appear as well. In the gospel of John, John the Baptist declares that “he that has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29). This, the only New Testament passage using the word ‘bride’ in this connection (sponsa, in the Latin Vulgate, νύμϕη, ‘newlywed bride’ in the NT Greek), leaves unclear just who the “bride” is, as distinct from the “friend of the bridegroom” who rejoices more fully in the bridegroom’s voice. Other New Testament passages mention Jesus as the “bridegroom,” thus imply but do not identify a “bride” (Matt. 9:15, Mark 2:19, Luke 5:34). The idea of loving and marrying a personified “wisdom” (sapientia, in the Vulgate Bible) appears in the book of Wisdom, in terms that Christians translated easily into humanity’s marriage to Jesus (called “Wisdom” in many Christian Trinitarian contexts): “Her [Sapientia] have I loved, and have sought her out from my youth, and have desired to take her for my spouse: and I became a lover of her beauty” (8:2). Most gloriously poetic and erotic, however, and a central witness to the interpretive network from which all these early usages derive, is the Song of Songs, whose inclusion in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles suggest a deep tradition of allegorical interpretation (whether it originated as courtly epithalamion or religious song remains an open ques-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_011

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tion). With its exotic imagery and sensuous but poignant narrative, the Song of Songs more than any other work suggests that the “marriage” between God and humanity could be a mutually desirous relationship, whose elements of longing, seduction, and delight, amid choruses of others’ celebration of that union, define the couple’s relationship as neither simply erotic love nor religious commitment in any law-driven or covenantal sense, but as long-sought consummation of mutual desire. The Song of Songs’ obscure but hauntingly beautiful similes offer this idea as a mystery, and it became a central one in the Christian tradition, opening into further intimacy with Christianity’s focus on the individual soul’s devotion to God. The purpose of this chapter is to indicate the outlines and something of the complexity of this tradition in medieval Christian literary and religious culture. Examples are chosen mainly from European and, especially, English settings, to show both key developments in the Christian west and the tradition’s capacity to metamorphose into other ideas and images, including some featuring rather different relations between God and the church or soul. For instance, the human worshipper is sometimes granted an infant’s intimacy with a maternal lactating Bridegroom; the believer’s growth of faith can be figured as a kind of gestation; defining the church that encompasses such relationships is a further challenge. But the main focus here is on the marriage of God and humanity, since this is so significant yet so alien a concept to modern outlooks that we can easily overlook it, misunderstanding the texts and images or underestimating their sophistication and self-consciousness. And although the idea of an intimate “marriage” with Christ is perhaps most familiar to modern readers through the narratives or images of women mystics or visionaries, nonetheless, this chapter will not focus simply on those, since to do so would isolate them from the larger traditions they use and obscure the many texts and outlooks that constitute the full scope of this idea. To appreciate the many works, images, and perspectives in medieval Christianity developing the idea of the godly Bridegroom and the human bride requires a wide and adventurous surveying, even if that must leave readers to locate for themselves most instances of and responses to this tradition.

1

The Church as Spouse

The idea of the church as “spouse” of God remained prominent throughout the medieval period (and beyond: some Puritans advanced this view). The feminine Ecclesia is a nubile figure in many an image from late Antiquity on. Straight-forward as that notion might seem, it could become complex. In the

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late fourteenth-century English poem Piers Plowman, the female figure of Holy Church claims a confused network of erotic and familial relationships: with God, with all individuals who might seek union with her, and with other barely visible allegorical entities. Though the bride of God, Langland’s Holy Church is also God’s daughter, her “fader the grete God is”; moreover, her lover (“lemman”) is Leaute (Lawful Faith or Loyalty). Yet God has given her Mercy “to marie with myselue.” Finally, Langland’s Holy Church declares that whoever is “merciful and leely [faithfully] me loue / Shal be my lord and I his leef [beloved] in the heighe heuene” (B.2.21-33). The complexity in these erotic relations or would-be relations suggests that being a member of the church entails varying intimacies and commitments, implying that some human beings are truer members or spouses than others, though leaving unclear whether anyone is allowed to be a spouse of God directly. Langland’s riddling allegory is rare, but for centuries writers had noted that the idea of becoming God’s “spouse” was neither a solitary nor a simple matter. In the early twelfth-century, Hugh of St. Victor’s De arrha animae (“on the soul’s earnest money” or “wedding-pledge”) hints at the paradox that we must accept that God takes many spouses though we must present ourselves with utter fidelity. As Hugh’s spokesman, Homo, reminds his questioning Anima, some goods are common (such as light), others unique. The scene of selecting a bride is imagined and allegorically explained, a literalism that partly blurs the problem of collective spouses. The “courtly ministers” (priests and guides) of the “king” (God) escort many prospective brides into the “antechamber” (the church); the king chooses just one bride to draw into the “wedding chamber.” To be chosen for such an honor the soul must coif and cleanse herself fully. Nothing shame-worthy should appear; her good works are her ointments. Turning away from this scene, Hugh shifts to the idea of a group of proper spouses. Many are called but few are chosen.1 The debate structure of Hugh’s work suggests it might have influenced the late fourteenth-century English poem Pearl. There, in another debate, a similar clash with the “normal” sense of one-to-one marital commitment appears in the shocked questions by the bereaved father meeting what seems to be the soul of his two-year-old daughter, now the eloquent and magisterial heavenly Pearl-maiden: What kyn thing may be that Lamb [manner thing That thee wolde wedde unto His wyf? Over all other so high thou clambe [climbed

1 Matt. 20:14; De arrha animae col. 965A.

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Galloway To lede with Him so ladyly lif. . . . [such a lady-like (aristocratic) life All only thyself, so stout and stif. . . [all by yourself, so bold and strong Pearl, 771-74, 779

In that poem as often, the Bridegroom is seen only obliquely and paradoxically: a bleeding Lamb who rejoices in his flowing blood, “Thagh [although] He were hurt and wounde had.” The dreamer is gratified to see, among the Lamb’s heavenly queens, his own beloved: “my little quene. . . Among her feres [companions] that was so white” (1142, 1147-50). Her fellow spouses seem to be the 144,000 virgins of Revelation, whose collective marriage puzzles the earth-bound narrator on many levels. No wonder: for one thing, in the book of Revelation those virgins are male (14:4). This is a number of ways in which Pearl alludes to the rites of the “common of the virgins” and the “consecration of the virgins,” liturgical contexts for nuns taking vows as spouses of Jesus.2 Perhaps that poem commemorates the benefaction by the poet’s wealthy patron of his infant daughter to a nunnery just outside Chaucer’s London, his lost but purified “pearl” given up to this spiritual marriage.3 I have spoken of the interlocutors in Pearl as “father” and “daughter,” and most critics would start there; but any narrow identifications of the Dreamer and the Maiden—or of their relationship—is unsettled by constant shifts in tone and the implications of this “lesson.” As they converse, their relationship, thus their subject positions, mutates into something more than father and daughter, making the poem itself something more than elegy. The poem’s “spiritual language, Ovidian love stories, and use of liturgical time”4 all celebrate the ecstatic fusion of kinds of love involved in the Maiden’s communal union with the Lamb. All this revolves around the idea of an entire church as Christ’s “bride,” whether the elite company of virgins in heaven or the church on earth to which the Dreamer awakens, where the blessing of Christ “in the forme of bred and wyne / The prest us schewes uch a day [The priest shows us every day]” (1209-10). The final, true, and pure community of the church is married directly to Jesus; the church on earth, that of the average layman like the Dreamer, leads us to that sacred marriage only indirectly through the palpable but no less wondrous “forme” of Eucharistic communion.

2 Bhattacharji, “Pearl and the Liturgical ‘Commons of Virgins.’” 3 Staley, Languages of Power, 213-51. 4 Beal, “Signifying Power of Pearl,” 53. For a survey of earlier critical views of Pearl see Eldredge, “The State of Pearl Studies since 1933.”

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The Soul as Lover

The idea of human groups married, or “as if” married, to God points to the distinctive emphasis brought in by Christianity and developed vigorously across its expanse: the idea of God’s marriage to a single, eternal, and feminine soul, no matter what the believer’s gender. This adds further complexities to any notion of a flatly patriarchal Middle Ages. The Song of Songs provided the main focus for this, spurring provocative and even scandalously erotic presentations of individual human unions with God, developed in commentary, liturgy, visionary narratives, and literary adaptation alike, and infusing much love poetry of the Middle Ages while shaped in turn by those secular traditions of love and marriage. To appreciate this phenomenon, which begins in the earliest Christian centuries and persists into the sixteenth century and beyond, modern readers need to be prepared in two ways. The first is for allegorical and theological complexity, including risky theological innovations. The second is for unparalleled sensuousness. Though these elements seem to point in opposite directions, they must be considered together; they display an outlook moving fluidly between analytical spheres and emotions in ways that modern Western (and some medieval) readers might not consider proper. In simplest terms, we may say that the erotic possibilities of the sponsa tradition are less emphasized before the twelfth century than from that century on, until the Reformation rendered the topic more suspect in “reformed” countries like England (although John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10, “Batter my Heart,” from the early seventeenth century, approaches the homoerotic violence of some Counterreformation versions of the sponsa tradition, like the sixteenthcentury poetry of St John of the Cross).5 Eight hundred years earlier, in the waning, then fall of Roman power, and with the establishing of Christian interpretive strategies as part of distinctly Christian forms of ascetic life, the emphasis fell on decoding the allegory of the Song of Songs rather than finding emotional inspiration in its amorous narrative. To pick this up in the fourth century, at an already developed stage (as indicated by earlier fragments of a commentary by Origen), we may consider the interpretation by the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, one of Augustine’s teachers. Ambrose’s analysis of the Song of Songs indicates something of the intellectual and political challenges of Christianity during the collapse of the Roman Empire. The poignant passage (Song of Songs 3:1-3) in which the female 5 See, e.g., John of the Cross’s “Noche Oscura,” stanza 7, “He wounded my neck / With his gentle hand, / Suspending all my senses” (712).

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speaker describes herself as roaming through the city yearningly seeking her absent lover, and the effusive physicality of the male speaker’s description of enjoying the woman’s breasts “fairer than wine” and her body exuding fragrances “above all spices” while her lips “drip honeycomb,” her tongue yielding its own “honey and milk,” finally rising to call her body in sum “a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, your emissions a paradise of pomegranates” (4:10-13), all become in Ambrose’s On Isaac and the Soul the basis for a rigorous assertion of Christian asceticism and political struggle. Despite the Song of Songs’ languor of erotic desire, there is no room for quietist Christians among Ambrose’s true spouses of God. “There are many who seek out Christ in a state of leisure, and find him not, but those who find him in persecutions find him quickly,” Ambrose tartly observes.6 Concerning the beloved woman’s fragrances in the Song of Songs, Ambrose remarks that the odor of justice suffuses the good soul. Such a soul is an “enclosed garden” because she / the soul is protected from beasts (presumably sins, although recalling not too distant Roman executions of Christians). She is a “sealed fountain” because the image of an invisible God is expressed by her, whose integrity of a “seal” shows her dissolution of sins.7 Even in late Antiquity, austere exegeses of “spousal” imagery are sometimes combined with erotic or maternal imagery and emotions. From the outset of Christian asceticism, celibate male writers used the sponsa tradition to identify their souls as feminine, their roles vis-à-vis God as passive, their faith as spontaneous gestation or pregnancy. Ambrose declared the mind hermaphrodite. The soul, he declared, “fulfills all the offices of both sexes in that the soul conceives and, as in marriage, gives birth. Nature provides woman with a womb in which a living person is brought to birth in the course of time. Such, too, is that characteristic of the soul which is ready to receive in its womb-like recesses the seeds of our thoughts, to cherish them and to bring them forth as a woman gives birth to a child.”8 This might seem to praise women, but Ambrose goes on to demean any aspects of the soul “associated with the female sex,” such as petulance, malice, and sensuality. Metaphorical femininity might engender indirect sympathy with women but also misogyny, allowing ascetic males to coopt women’s biological authority.9

6 7 8 9

Ambrose, De Isaac, 5, col. 515C. Ambrose, De Isaac, 5, col. 520. Ambrose, Cain and Abel, 1.47, PL col. 339A; in Hexameron, Paradise, Cain and Abel, 400. See Elliott, Bride of Christ, for a history of the sponsa tradition in terms of efforts by clerical, then lay men to control and restrict women by defining and condemning their sexuality (concluding with what Elliott sees as its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century result, the witch-hunt). Elliott does not address the topic of “intellectual male pregnancy” noted here.

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Whatever its bases the idea of the “birthing” male mind had a long and varied tradition, from Plato to Renaissance playwrights speaking of their “child” (their work) being taken from its “mother” by errant printers. The idea is fully developed by Augustine, whose magisterial work On The Trinity (c. 400-12) argues that God’s own “conception” of the Word, and the relationship between the Father and the Son by way of the medium of the Holy Spirit, is a model for how the fallen human mind works, and perhaps an ideal form of how associations between human beings in their imperfect ways faintly echoes the divine. In his explication of Psalm 137, Augustine states that the heart of a believer is “pregnant” and searching for a place to give birth (gravidum cor nostrum parturit, et ubi pariat quaerit).10 Elsewhere Augustine asserts that, just as Jesus’s mother carried him in her womb, so we should carry him in our hearts; as the Virgin was pregnant with the incarnate Christ, so our breasts should be pregnant with faith; as she gave birth to the Savior so we should give birth to praise.11 This must not endorse literal experiences of such sexuality and procreation, nor, worse, should such metaphors apply to the Trinity. The interrelations between the ontologically sequential but temporally eternal Persons of the Trinity should absolutely not be compared to a family with a child.12 The spousal metaphor needed careful controlling, and the later dismissal of Augustine’s stern limit shows how potent is its emotional interest. Wider bases for the idea of a convert’s spousal relation to God were sustained in everyday Christian baptism, from which the baptized emerged in a state properly purified for union with God, symbolized by white clothing, and more pointedly in the ancient liturgical consecration of women entering the life of professional religious orders as new “brides” of God, with rings, veils, and declarations, mentioned above in connection to Pearl.13 Yet nothing can entirely prepare us for the explosion of interest in the sponsa topic of the twelfth century. Long after Ambrose and Augustine had equipped the nascent western Church for its role as the citadel of an authoritarian religious culture, Bernard of Clairvaux pioneered daringly personal and emotional approaches to Christian worship, including the soul’s union with God. Bernard’s sermons on the Song of Songs offer remarkable developments of this.14 Genders blur, body and soul mingle. Cloistered monks, Bernard declares, 10 11 12 13 14

Augustine, Ennarrationes in Psalmos. On this tradition see further Galloway, “Intellectual Pregnancy,” 126. Augustine, Sermones past Maurinos reperti, 211. Augustine, De Trinitate 12.6.7. See Bhattacharji, “Pearl and the Liturgical ‘Commons of Virgins’”; Metz, La consecratio des vierges; Hart, “Consecratio Virginum”; Gregory, Marrying Jesus, 174-90. See Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, 123-50; Mews, “Intoxication,” 342-48.

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are the “women” of society; their socially passive role makes them particularly able to identify with the spouse of Christ (sermon 12). Devotees are the suckling infants of the Bridegroom’s breasts, which, as soon as he is kissed, swell with an abundance of spiritual milk: that is, compassion and shared joy, which we ingest (sermon 9, 10). Surely this fostered the many images of Bernard receiving the Virgin’s breast-milk, often in a shooting stream that keeps his mouth decorously separate from her breast.15 The single “kiss” between God and humanity with which the Song of Songs opens becomes, for Bernard, just one of three kisses: on the feet, on the hands, on the mouth, each representing fuller union with Christ (sermons 2-8); likely this helped produce the widespread visual tradition of Christ bending down from the cross to embrace Bernard.16 Whereas for Ambrose the “ointment” of the beloved exudes the “odor of justice,” for Bernard, it mingles the unguent of contrition (extracted from the devotee’s recollection of sin), the ointment of devotion (exuded by thoughts of divine benefits), and, most delightful, the unction of piety (confected from sympathetic regard to the wretched). This last should be smeared “over the whole body of Christ” (that is, he swiftly adds, Christ’s “mystical body”; sermon 12). Bernard was not the first to read the Song of Songs so responsively (he draws on a partial Latin translation of Origen’s commentary), but Bernard’s brilliant sermons follow and evoke emotions and sensual perspectives more daringly than recorded previously. And unpredictably. At one point, Bernard confesses that he is too miserable to continue because of the death of his brother, Gerard. How can he comment on a “canticle of love while I am submerged in an ocean of bitterness?” (sermon 26.3). So he launches into one of the most poignant laments for a dead beloved found in any period. “When anything comes up, I turn to look at Gerard as usual; and he is not there” (sermon 26.4). William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy” seems a brief threnody next to Bernard’s aria. How can we understand Bernard’s willingness to confess personal anguish while explicating his text? Perhaps it is a stroke of genius. Bernard’s digression shows that in the desire to recover those we have loved and lost lies proof of love’s strength; in its physical longing for an absent beloved is a sign of its longing for a God whose “mystical body” offers supreme consolation for the sorrowful losses of mortal flesh.

15 16

France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard, 205-37. France insufficiently notes the importance of Bernard’s sermons in this tradition. See Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 59-81. France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard, 179-203.

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A rise of interest in the Virgin Mary partly explains the new feminine emphasis in such devotional meditations.17 But new interest in human associations and connections in general is widely visible in the twelfth century. On one side, new legal fictions of corporations and the idea of the university appeared, along with new compacts for civic and mercantile authority; on another side, worldly marriage was being redefined by canon law, which explicitly stated that both partners must consent—a claim at least symbolically important, although women continued to be treated through many marriages as linchpins of property, lineage, or politics.18 Amid these changes, comparison of the Trinity to a procreative marriage, which Augustine had expressly prohibited, reappeared. The twelfth-century liturgist John Beleth made the connection directly in his influential Compendium on Ecclesiastical Offices. M. Teresa Tavormina suspects that the “marriage analogy,” allowed from Beleth’s period on, explains why the Mass of the Trinity was thenceforth performed during marriages: this shows that the Trinity itself was a key model for human marriage.19 Worldly marriage gained so much authority that, by the thirteenth century, friars sometimes compared their orders to the “order of marriage.”20 On the “religious” side, the tradition of “birthing” the Spirit, visible in Augustine’s writings, was elaborated by late-medieval writers such as Meister Eckhart in early fourteenth-century Saxony. For Eckhart, insemination and procreation aptly describe the mysterious emergence of the spirit of God deep within the soul of the true believer. From this Eckhart develops a facultative description of faith. Every experience save that of faith is produced with some external means; we have the power to see because we have eyes. But faith is born from the soul’s essence, lacking mediation, a womb made only for God’s mysterious insemination. “In the soul’s essence there is no activity, for the powers she works with emanate from the ground of being. Yet in that ground is the silent ‘middle’; here is nothing but rest and celebration for this birth, this act, that God the Father may speak his word there, for this is by nature receptive to nothing save the divine essence, without mediation. Here God enters the soul with his all, not merely with a part. None can touch the ground of the soul but God alone.”21 The focus on the soul’s ultimate union with God extends widely through later medieval writings, underpinning texts that might otherwise seem

17 18 19 20 21

Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, 151-77. See Noonan, “Power to Choose.” Tavormina, Kindly Similitude, 149. Bériou and d’Avray, “Henry of Provins.” Eckhart, sermon 101; trans. McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 414.

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salacious or merely puzzling. Eckhart’s English contemporary, the early fourteenth century Richard Rolle, wrote effusive Latin meditations on love of Christ using the focus on “song” such as his Melos Amoris. This can seem deranged in its alliterative Latin warbling, but is fully understandable in the sponsa tradition, and it is written under the Song of Song’s inspiration throughout: “I am ravished by a most pleasing love, and my languor purifies my mental music; a continuous song seizes my heart in perfect harmony. . . because ‘I languish with love’” (rapior revera amenissimo amore, languor ac lustrat modum mentalem; canor continuus corda complectit in claro concentu. . . ‘quia amore langueo’ [quoting Song of Songs 2:5]).22 Rolle’s brief English treatise for a religious woman, “Ego dormio,” boldly portrays Rolle as a pander for a quasi-sexual consummation. He will lead his female reader to the bed of Jesus (in the style of secular romance or satire such as the pseudo-Ovidian De vetula or the French Roman de la Rose): “Forthi that [since] I love thee, I wowe thee, that I might have thee as I wold, nat to me, bot [but] to my Lord. I wil becum a messager to brynge thee to his bed that hath mad thee and boght thee, Crist, the kynges son of hevyn, for he wil wed thee if thou love hym.”23 Lest we think Rolle’s ‘yeasty brew’ here more prurient than Christian,24 we may notice that the consummation of this wedding is only in death. “In this degree of love thou wil covait the deth, and be ioyful when thou hirest men name deth, for that love maketh thee as siker of hevyn when thou deyest as thou now art of deile [sorrow], for the fyre of love hath brent away al the roust [rust] of syn.”25 With this, even those who do not know the allegorical tradition of the Song of Songs might reconsider the kind of love and consummation Rolle pretends to offer so salaciously.

3

Holy Women as God’s Lovers

Richard Rolle’s female addressee would likely have known the Christian tradition and point, since she was the would-be “spouse” of God in this case. Other women by then expressed directly their interests in this. Indeed, it was nuns and beguines who, from the early thirteenth through the fifteenth century, brought the sponsa tradition to its most vivid and daring elaborations.

22 23 24 25

Rolle, Chant d’Amour (Melos Amoris), 2.232; see also Astell, Song of Songs, 105-18. Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, 26; I modernize thorns, ‘u’ for ‘v’, and the spelling of “thee.” Watson, Richard Rolle, 231. Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, 32.

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Godly Bridegroom and Human Bride

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Exhibit A is from The Flowing Light by the early thirteenth-century German Beguine visionary, Mechthild of Magdeburg, who presents the soul’s rapturous pursuit as a performable dialogue: The soul: “I must go from all things to God, Who is my Father by nature, My Brother by his humanity, My Bridegroom by love, And I his bride from all eternity. . . .” Then the bride of all delights goes to the Father of heaven in the secret chamber of the invisible Godhead. There she finds the bed and the abode of love beyond what is human. Our Lord speaks: The bridegroom: “Stay, Lady Soul.” The soul: “What do you bid me, Lord?” The bridegroom: “Take off your clothes. . . Never was an angel so glorious. . . And so you must cast off from you Both fear and shame and all external virtues. . . .” The soul: “Lord, now I am a naked soul And you in yourself are a well-adorned God. . . ” Then a blessed stillness That both desire comes over them He surrenders himself to her And she surrenders herself to him. What happens to her then—she knows— And that is fine with me.26 As well as careful staging, there is more than a hint here of courtly romance— down to the narrator’s coy refusal to provide details of the lovers’ consummation. This should tip us off to Mechthild’s sophisticated repurposing of literary traditions. Such allusiveness would protect most of her readers from vulgar misunderstanding.27 But Mechthild was playing a risky game, more so in her independent ideas, such as the dismissal here (by God himself) of “external 26 27

Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 61-62. I add speech tags for clarity. Gregory shrewdly notes that “no matter how deeply physical lovers penetrate each other, their union and their pleasure depends on distinct, intact bodies, while Mechthild’s lovers are denied pleasure so long as they retain clothing and flesh” (Marrying Jesus, 128).

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virtues.” An early fourteenth-century woman mystic, Margaret de la Porete, who speaks of longing to “go out of herself” in her love of God and who similarly rejected mere “virtue” was burned at the stake for refusing to renounce the amorality of her book. Margaret’s book was also burned, and its translations chart a history of misunderstanding as well as remarkable survival.28 Mechthild survived, but the only widespread version of her book is a Latin “translation” by an unknown Dominican friar, who packs its narratives with quotations from liturgy, placed as if those authorized quotations inspired the desires for communion with God. In the Latin version there are formal “embraces” (amplexus) of the soul by God, in the tradition of Bernardine exegesis of the Song of Songs, and the “earnest money” (arrha) of betrothal is mentioned in the Victorine metaphorical sense; but the metaphorical senses of both are swiftly explained, and there are no dramatic scenes, such as that quoted. The pungent freshness of Mechthild’s original would be wholly lost to us if the single copy of its translation into Middle High German had been lost, as was her own Middle Low German original.29 Mechthild was unique, yet hardly alone. Visionary woman after visionary woman developed daringly literal or dramatized versions of the idea of their espousal to God, from the later thirteenth-century Dutch beguine Hadewijch to the fourteenth-century Italian Angela da Foligno (whose later amanuensis describes first finding her standing in church naked, keening, before the crucified Christ), to the late-medieval English visionaries Julian of Norwich and, especially, Margery Kempe. Margery’s Book, from the early fifteenth century, describes her visions of “meddling” or “dallying” with Jesus on her bed (both verbs could also mean ‘have sex’). These women pushed the limits of any safe interpretation of metaphorical “marriage” to God, and sometimes any safe institutional boundary. Margery dedicated much effort to gaining Archbishop Arundel’s permission that she—an actual wife and mother of fourteen children—might wear publically the white virginal gown of a noviciate nun, as well as the ring given to nuns signifying their status as “spouses” of God.30

28 29 30

That is, clothing here is flesh, as well as virtues, neither necessary once the “flowing light” has dissolved the human being down to a naked soul. But Elliott, Bride of Christ, presents some signs of increasingly “literal” senses of the topos, both among some late-medieval religious women (186-88) and among clerical men who, from the fifteenth-century on, Elliott argues, cast the sexual metaphors of the sponsa tradition in more “literal” terms by adding concerns about women’s sexual congress with demons (233-79). Sargent, “Annihilation of Margaret Porete”; Newman, Crossover, 111-65. See the Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechthildianae; Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book. Book of Margery Kempe, 1.15-16 (44-50).

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Asserting her novel wishes in a time of widespread English persecutions of lay heresy, Lollardy, of which Arundel was a particularly vigorous persecutor, she too risked her life in this request for holy spousal identity. The pivot of the sponsa tradition into ever more dramatic and vivid forms does not mean these were any less religious or theologically focused. Although medieval writers and expositors were aware of the risks of scandal, blasphemy, or even heresy, that tradition shows no signs of withering, as it continued to show in Germany and the Low Countries well into the seventeenth century and the age of the printing press, with its further dissemination of visual imagery.31 In spite, or more likely because, of the transgressions involved, the sponsa tradition produced extraordinary literary, philosophical, and religious innovations. Calculation and sophistication mark the tradition as much as love, and the continual invocations of “earthly” love show awareness of the indirectness necessary to unfold the mysterious issues involved. Many medieval “literary” masterpieces depend on this indirection, such as the English early thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse for religious women, with its elaborate “wooing” by Christ in a plethora of roles and postures (including, in the tradition of Bernard, Christ stooping from the cross to kiss his beloved),32 and the contemporaneous prosimetrum French work preserved in a single manuscript, Les Cantiques Salemon, written for a Beguine community, into whose explication of the Song of Songs the writer has scattered lyrics (chansons) “sa et la” (here and there; line 68), ripe with the tropes of secular love poetry. At its heart, the sponsa tradition is sustained by the fact that it bespeaks not only the believer’s faith in and love of God but also God’s faith in and love of the believer. No matter how dangerous or painful the obstacles, the communion of human soul and divinity is a consummation God seeks as fervently as do those he loves. Margery Kempe expresses this directly, placing this explanation by Jesus among her Book’s final visions as a kind of summary of her own long pursuit as well as the entire tradition into which she vigorously sought to insert herself: Dowtyr, be not aschamyd to receyvyn my grace whan I wil geven it thee, for I schal not ben aschamyd of thee that thu schalt ben receyvyd into the blys of hevyn. . . as my derworthy derlyng, as my blissyd spowse, and as myn holy wife. . . . Thu seest wel, dowtyr, thiself, that whan thu hast receyvid me into thy sowle thu art in pees and in qwyete [quiet] and sobbist no lengar. And therof the pepil hath gret wondyr, but it thar [it ought] 31 32

See Gregory, Marrying Jesus. Ancrene Wisse, 7.161-94 (385-88), 7.217-18 (389).

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Galloway no wondyr be to thee, for thu wost wel that I far [am behaving] lyke an husbond that schulde weddyn a wyfe. What tyme that [As soon as] he had weddyd hir, hym thynkyth that he is sekyr anow [certain enough] of hir and that no man schal partyn hem asundyr, for than, dowtyr, may thei gon to bedde togedyr wythowtyn any schame er dred of the pepil and slepyn in rest and pees yyf [if ] thei wil. . . . Thu schalt have wyth me and wyth my modyr, wyth myn holy awngelys, wyth myn apostelys, wyth myn martirys, confessowris and virginys, and wyth alle myn holy seyntys al maner joye and blysse lestyng wythowtyn ende.33

33

Book of Margery Kempe, 1.86 (200-1).

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Chapter 10

Medieval Affective Piety and Christological Devotion: Juliana of Mont Cornillon and the Feast of Corpus Christi Barbara Zimbalist

During the high and late Middle Ages, a dramatic upsurge of interest in Christ’s humanity fundamentally altered the devotional landscape of European Christianity. While the gospels portray Christ’s public preaching and Passion as the two primary components of his adult life on earth, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries the crucified, suffering Christ gradually overshadowed Christ Pantocrator in the Western imagination. As devotion to Christ became more intensely focused on his corporeal identity, a corresponding emphasis on the physical suffering of his Passion resulted in a new incarnational poetic that found expression across individual and communal spirituality. This incarnational poetic encouraged an individual, emotional understanding of Christ as accessible through his humanity and imitable through affective piety, and the new ways of thinking, feeling, and imitating Christ that it fostered resulted in innovative modes of individual and communal devotion through prayer, reading, and liturgy. The institution of the feast of Corpus Christi, the proliferation of mysticism and visionary texts by and about women, and the rise of mendicant and lay movements such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Beguines, and Devotio Moderna are just a few of the countless examples illustrating how the new discourse of affective piety impacted virtually every register of religious and spiritual life. Perhaps the most well-known mode of this new spirituality, however, was the corporeal affectivity that developed within medieval women’s piety. Through physical suffering, sometimes self-inflicted, medieval women imitated Christ’s Passion, identifying with the divine through physical asceticism grounded in intensely affective, interior spirituality and corresponding somatic experience. Nor was this new affectivity limited to women alone: male confessors, scribes, clerics, and community members shared in the devotional practice, textual production, and larger liturgical developments that it both reflected and inspired. Affective devotion to Christ reoriented individual focus on the suffering savior whose compassion not only offered salvation to believers both male and female, but also provided them with models for imitative

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_012

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devotional behavior that deeply impacted devotional culture. This chapter will demonstrate the rise of affective piety through the complementary and interconnected spiritual discourses of liturgy and literature. Taking as case studies the Feast of Corpus Christi and the Vita of its founder, Juliana of MontCornillon, it shows how affective devotion to Christ fundamentally altered the devotional, liturgical, and literary landscapes of medieval Europe. Before turning to these case studies, however, a brief overview of the development and practice of affective piety situates the following discussion within the landscape of changing conceptions of Christ in the high and late Middle Ages. Affective piety, or the practice of emotionally charged devotion to Christ’s humanity, grew in popularity, complexity, and intensity between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. While also directed toward Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, affective piety focused most centrally on Christ’s birth, childhood, Passion, and death. Through images and texts depicting these episodes of Christ’s life, believers were encouraged to contemplate and meditate, and ultimately to feel an emotional response of compassion. As R.W. Southern defines the practice in his classic work The Making of the Middle Ages, affective piety or affective devotion most broadly refers to “compassionate tenderness for the suffering Christ.”1 As a mode of devotion, it encouraged practitioners to feel not only sympathy and sorrow for the Savior’s suffering, but also contrition for the human sinfulness that necessitated Christ’s sacrifice. This devotional mode became widely visible at the end of the eleventh century (with some exceptions) and grew rapidly into one of the dominant devotional modes of medieval Europe by the fifteenth century. Scholars tracing this development tend to focus on several related themes and issues: the sources and evolution of affective piety, the gendered expression of affective piety, and its textual expression across a wide and varied range of modes and genres. Critical narratives of affective piety’s development descend from the foundational work of R.W. Southern, who argued that the practice was codified in the works of two medieval thinkers: the Benedictine Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153).2 These late eleventh/ early twelfth century figures championed compassionate devotion to Christ’s humanity, emphasizing a deeply felt, emotional, and interior mode of personal spirituality. Southern argued further that this initial focus on emotion and interiority directed the expansion of affective piety during the 1 R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 237. 2 Anselm’s most well-known work focused on Christ’s Humanity is Cur deus Homo (1098); Bernard’s affective piety is most famously set out his Epistles and Sermons on the Song of Songs (c.1135).

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thirteenth century, especially through the figure and works of the charismatic and influential figure St. Francis of Assisi. Francis, a Stigmatic and founder of the Franciscan Order, stressed devotion to Christ’s Passion specifically and urged his followers to encourage affective devotion in their preaching.3 Later generations of critics have built upon Southern’s work, attending to the particular ways in which affective devotion took such decisive hold of the medieval religious imagination. Richard Kieckhefer has argued that the enthusiastic Franciscan adoption of affective piety shaped much later medieval thinking about Christ by foregrounding his Passion specifically as a centrally important locus of contemplation and meditation.4 In a similar fashion, Thomas Bestul credits affective piety with promoting Christ’s Passion as the “master narrative” of late medieval religion, which “describes the central act of human history, the redemption of mankind, in relation to which every other event in history is referred and acquires meaning.”5 More recent critics have complicated Southern’s work while continuing to acknowledge its foundational importance. Rachel Fulton’s magisterial From Judgment to Passion challenges Southern’s dating of the origins of affective piety. She argues that affective devotion appeared in the art and literature of Anglo-Saxon England as early as the ninth and tenth centuries, thus suggesting an insular tradition of affective thought that preceded the more critically acknowledged continental tradition.6 More recently, Sarah McNamer has argued that medieval affective piety originated in texts and practices of compassionate devotion associated specifically with women (about which more in the next section); her argument thus expands the textual origins of affective piety beyond the foundational works of Anselm and Bernard.7 While both Fulton’s and McNamer’s arguments have inspired critical controversy, their calls for continued analysis of the origins of affective piety have nevertheless revealed more geographically and temporally widespread devotional origins than understood by earlier scholarship.

3 For a recent biography of Francis see Augustine Thompson, Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). 4 Richard Kieckhefer, “Devotion to the Passion,” Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 89-121. 5 Thomas Bestul, “Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 24. See also his “Meditatio/Meditation,” Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 157-166. 6 Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200 (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2002). 7 Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, Penn.: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

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Furthermore, their respective arguments suggest a conceptually fluid model of affectivity, able to accommodate a wide cultural, linguistic, and temporal variety of devotional practices focused on Christ as the central figure of medieval spirituality. Perhaps most significantly, McNamer’s work in particular highlights one of the most fecund strands of affective piety in the Middle Ages: women’s affective devotion to Christ. Driven primarily by the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, an overwhelming amount of scholarly attention during the last thirty years has been devoted to medieval women’s affective piety. Though prohibited from public speech, discouraged from Latinate learning, and barred from ecclesiastical authority, medieval women participated in religious culture by imitating the central figure of medieval religious culture: Jesus Christ. In her groundbreaking studies Jesus as Mother and Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum revolutionized critical approaches to medieval women’s spiritual lives by showing how their behavior allowed them to engage with Christ in ways not always visible to modern critics.8 She argued that high medieval women were empowered through their somatic practices of affective piety. Either through participation in corporeal asceticism or by understanding their own physical pain as an imitation of Christ’s Passion, women associated themselves with Christ’s humanity and suffering. Bynum’s focus on women’s food practices and somatic devotion emphasized women’s inherent ability to imitate Christ’s Passion through the very quality which had historically subordinated them to male oversight: their corporeal difference, long figured as inferiority in Western Christianity.9 In this way, Bynum’s work offered a sweeping revision not only of the ways in which medieval women may have understood their own spiritual identity and potential, but of the centrally important role of affective piety and devotion to Christ in that spirituality. Her deeply influential view of women’s affectivity generated enormous critical response across disciplines, and many scholars focused on how women’s affectivity generated new devotional attitudes toward Christ. For example, Jeffrey Hamburger’s work on affective piety 8 Among Caroline Walker Bynum’s many studies of medieval Christianity, the most centrally concerned with affectivity and Christ are: Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984); and Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1987); The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1995). 9 Medieval attitudes toward women have received much excellent scholarship, too voluminous to overview here. For a helpful introduction to medieval ideas about women, particularly of medieval antifeminism, see Alcuin Blamires’ helpful overview in The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

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in monastic contexts extended Bynum’s work to the world of visual art and showed how meditation on visual representations of the Passion generated new devotional practices for women in Germanic regions.10 In a similar fashion, Sarah Beckwith argued that the intense literary focus on Christ’s Passion transformed the political and social discourses of late medieval England.11 And as already mentioned, Sarah McNamer’s argument for the gendered origins of affective piety suggests that women played central roles in the production and reception of some of its earliest and most influential texts— the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi—and that the emotive modes of devotion those texts encouraged promoted the performance of emotions with an explicitly gendered valence as part of the practice of affective piety.12 While Bynum’s work continues to shape ideas about affective piety as a gendered practice, scholars working in the wake of her arguments have raised important issues that continue to generate critical debate and inquiry about the way medieval believers imagined Christ. In one of the most well-known critiques of Bynum’s work, Kathleen Biddick cautions against the inherent tendency toward gender essentialism that arises from associating Christ’s corporeality with women’s somatic devotion.13 Particularly dangerous in Biddick’s view is the reduction of the category of woman to physicality and corporeality, which prevents more nuanced understanding of the construction of gender— and I would suggest, of Christ—in the medieval world. In like fashion, David Aers and Nicholas Watson have extended Biddick’s cautionary response to Bynum. Watson points out that focus on Christ’s suffering humanity tends to generate a narrow view of medieval women’s devotional experience and relationship to Christ as solely imagined through the Passion, thus neglecting other modes of Christ-centered devotion or gendered expressions of piety.14 And Aers has argued that rather than empowering women, identification with Christ’s suffering ultimately subordinates them anew by re-inscribing them

10 11 12

13 14

Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, N.Y.: Zone Books, 1998). Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1996). McNamer first published this argument as “The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Speculum 84.4 (2009): 905-955; she developed the larger ramifications of her argument in Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval ComPassion (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Philadelphia Press, 2009). Kathleen Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders: The Technologies of the Visible,” Speculum 68.2 (1993): 389-418. Nicholas Watson, “Desire for the Past,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1991): 59-97.

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within discourses of patriarchal and ecclesiastic control.15 Nor do all critics focus on women’s religiosity. Amy Hollywood argues that medieval men as well as women practiced affective piety, and that over-emphasis on female affectivity neglects men’s religious experience and relationship to Christ.16 In agreement with Hollywood, Michelle Karnes has recently challenged Sarah McNamer’s extension of Bynum’s work on the broader tradition of women’s affective piety. She argues that the origins of affective compassion are neither explicitly male nor explicitly female.17 All of these responses to Bynum’s work raise important avenues for the future study of affective devotion, even as they demonstrate the fundamental importance of Christ to medieval devotional life. The rest of this essay explores the changing ideas about Christ in medieval Europe through readings of two related texts: the Feast of Corpus Christi and the Vita of its founder Juliana of Mont-Cornillon.

1

Liturgy: the Feast of Coprus Christi

No other liturgical event more fully embodies the high medieval fascination with Christ’s humanity, corporeality, and Passion than the Feast of Corpus Christi. This moveable feast, celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday in the church year, celebrated the real presence of the Eucharist and encouraged devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.18 The Feast was developed and instituted in the thirteenth century, and Pope Urban IV declared it a universal feast in the papal bull Transiturus de hoc mundo of 1264.19 By the late Middle Ages, Corpus

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David Aers, “The Humanity of Christ: Reflections on Orthodox Late Medieval Representations,” Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 15-42. See Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York, N.Y.: Continuum, 1994). Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2011). In a similar vein, see Rabia Gregory, Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2016). For a critical overview of the Feast’s history, development, and institution see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Anne Astell, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006); and Fête-Dieu (1246-1996): 1. Actes du Colloque de Liège, 12-14 Septembre 1996 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de l’Institut d’études médiévales, 1999). For the Papal bull Transitarius, see “Appendix,” Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century, ed. Anneke Mulder-Bakker, trans. Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 298-300.

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Christi had become one of the most ideologically powerful feasts of the church year, acting as a unifying liturgical force throughout the Western church and generating rich communal traditions such as processions, festivals, and even the famous English cycle plays.20 Universally popular, it fostered continued devotional focus on Christ’s Passion. As Miri Rubin explains, “a dominant image offered for reflection during the mass . . . was the Passion, the moment of utmost suffering and giving, with its generative and generous nature, always in relation to the gift of grace which it imparted to the Eucharist.”21 The feast’s origins dramatize the ways in which the figure of Christ and the new currents of affectivity emphasizing his Passion played a central role in the devotional life of medieval people. According to the Vita of the Feast’s founder, Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, Christ sent Juliana a vision in which he explained to her the need for a new feast and commanded her to institute and publicize it. The resulting liturgy was the product of almost forty years of constant effort, on the part of Juliana and those who supported her, to obey this divine command. This communal dedication to Passion devotion ultimately surpassed even Christ’s instructions. Eventually, not just one, but three separate offices for the celebration of the new Feast were composed, authored by believers from across the spectrum of Christian life. The feast and its liturgy thus reflect the centrality of devotion to Christ for medieval Christians and demonstrate the widespread focus on Christ’s Passion and the corresponding belief in his miraculous real presence in the Eucharist that suffused all levels of high medieval religious culture. While the Feast of Corpus Christi originated in the visions of an obscure woman who struggled to maintain her position as a monastic administrator, it rapidly gained the support of figures at the highest levels of power and influence, including Thomas Aquinas and the Pope himself.22 Juliana collaborated with a young prior at Mont-Cornillon named John to produce the first Corpus Christi Liturgy, about which she had engaged in many years’ conversation

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For a fuller discussion of the Feast’s paraliturgical practices see Rubin, Corpus Christi; for an introduction to the English cycle plays, see V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966). Rubin Corpus Christi, 106. Juliana experienced a great deal of persecution and turbulence in her life, repeatedly ascending to administrative positions only to be removed from those positions and eventually hounded into exile for her rather strict (and apparently unappreciated) leadership style. For an overview of her biography see the “Introduction” to her Vita in Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century: The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame, Anchoress of Magdeburg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 145-175.

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with Eve of St. Martin and a second spiritual friend, Isabella of Huy.23 The Animarum Cibus, “a secular office intended for celebration in a church setting,” was the first of several liturgies written for the new Feast. In addition, at least two additional offices were produced between 1269 and 1320: Sapiencia [a]edificavit, a monastic office preserved in a mid-fourteenth century manuscript associated with the Premonstratensian Abbey of Strahov in Prague, and Sacerdos in (a)eternum, a secular office attributed to Thomas Aquinas and preserved in a late-thirteenth/early fourteenth century manuscript now held by the Bibliothèque Nationale.24 Each combines multiple narrative sources into new configurations as a mode of liturgical composition. Animarum cibus combines quotations from multiple patristic and medieval doctrinal texts into what its modern editors term a liturgical “pastiche;” Sapiencia [a]edificavit combines quotations from the New Testament into a new monastic office; and Sacerdos in (a)eternum combines biblical paraphrase from both Old and New Testaments into a secular office with, in at least one manuscript, a fourth nocturn for monastic use included at the end.25 This varied narrative structure suggests the deep currents of reverence for Christ and his Passion at all levels of religious culture. Furthermore, as this brief overview shows, these multiple liturgical texts vary in rhetorical mode, revealing different methods of authorial engagement with literary, doctrinal, and biblical sources. The intended audiences of these different liturgies range from lay to monastic to mixed congregations. Ultimately, however, these three liturgies demonstrate the wide appeal of the new feast and the enthusiastic response among believers, theologians, and male

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For modern critical views of Juliana, Eve, and the texts resulting from their activities, see La Fête-Dieu and Barbara Newman’s “Introduction” to The Life of Blessed Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, trans. Barbara Newman, Peregrina Translation Series 13 (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 1988). More recently, Catherine Saucier has demonstrated how Juliana’s authorial and textual milieu exemplifies a specifically Liégeois spirituality, particularly in liturgical chant. Saucier, “Sacrament and Sacrifice: Conflating Corpus Christi and Martyrdom in Medieval Liège,” Speculum 87.3 (2012): 682-723. These three liturgies are preserved in part or in whole in seven extant manuscripts. For a complete overview of criticism on the development of the three offices and their relationship to each other, as well as critical editions of each of these offices, see “Part II: Materials for the Study of Corpus Christi: Sources” in Barbara R. Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Peter T. Ricketts, The Feast of Corpus Christi (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 57-428. Walters notes that “the early Liège office as found in KB 70.E.4. . . constitute[s] a pastiche drawn from a number of authors across a period of more than two hundred years: Alger of Liège, Hugh of Saint-Victor, Gratian, and Jacques de Vitry.” Walters, et. al, Corpus Christi, 74.

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and female religious. The new Feast of Corpus Christi both encouraged and reflected increasing devotion to Christ’s Passion, while the multiple new offices encouraged and enabled many more believers to participate in that devotion. Finally, the relatively rapid development of the Feast of Corpus Christi from a local movement to a universally celebrated liturgical feast demonstrates the church’s official endorsement of new forms of affective devotion. The first ‘official’ textual evidence for ecclesiastical promotion of the new Feast was the Liègeois Bishop Robert Thourotte’s 1246 deathbed letter establishing the “Feast of the Sacrament” for the diocese of Liège. Thourotte endorsed the liturgy on which Juliana had collaborated, the Animarum Cibus, for use during the celebration of the new feast.26 In 1251, the Cardinal-Legate Hugh of Saint-Cher confirmed Bishop Robert’s 1246 inauguration of the feast by celebrating the mass at the church of Saint-Martin in Liège and reprimanding the local clergy for failing to promote the feast as Robert had wished.27 In the years immediately after celebrating the office in Liège, Hugh lent additional ecclesiastical endorsement to the feast by instituting a series of indulgences. In a brief from April 1252 he granted an indulgence for those who celebrated the Feast at the Abbey of Villers, and in a diploma from December 1252, “he established the feast for the Thursday after the octave of the Trinity with an indulgence for all penitents in his jurisdiction (Germany, Dacia, Bohemia, and Moravia) who confessed and attended church on a date and in a place where it was celebrated.”28 Hugh thus extended the liturgical purview of the Feast far beyond the diocesan boundaries of Liège.29 Finally, on 11 August 1264 Pope Urban IV (formerly Jacques Pantaleon of Liège) established Corpus Christi as an official universal feast with the Papal Bull Transitarius, which exists in multiple copies dating from 1264-1312.30 Copies and versions of the bull were sent at different times to different places with different versions of the liturgy. One copy of the earliest 1262 version of the bull was sent to Juliana’s friend “Eve, recluse of Saint-Martin in Liège,” explaining that

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30

Newman, 300-302. Schoolmeester, “Le Diplôme de Hughes de Saint-Cher,” 42-23. Schoolmeester, “Le Diplôme de Hughes de Saint-Cher,” 152. Juliana’s vita describes Hugh celebrating the animarum cibus, and his concern with honoring Robert’s wishes to celebrate the local office also suggests the first version of the liturgy; moreover, the dating of Hugh’s indulgence documents during the 1250s strongly suggests that he was specifically endorsing the animarum cibus, as the second office was most likely not produced until sometime in the 1260s. The manuscript history and development of the Corpus Christi office and liturgy is comprehensively discussed in The Feast of Corpus Christi; the social history of the feast’s development is discussed in Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi.

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Zimbalist . . . we know, daughter, that your soul has desired with great desire that a solemn feast of the most holy Body of our Lord Jesus Christ be instituted in the Church of God to be celebrated by the faithful of Christ for all time, and we therefore make it known to you for joy that we have seen fit to establish, for the corroboration of the Catholic faith, that the memorial of so wonderful a sacrament be celebrated more specifically and solemnly than the daily commemoration which the Church makes of it.31

This papal acknowledgment of a new feast—a feast with humble origins in a woman’s visions and promoted by her female friend’s “desire”—points toward the growing strength of affective devotion to Christ as a force powerful enough to shape the devotional practices of the Christian community as well as the liturgical life of the Church itself.

2

Literature: the Vita of Juliana of Mont Cornillon

As we saw in the previous section, the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi makes visible how new currents of devotion to Christ altered the liturgical landscape of the high Middle Ages. Yet these changes in ecclesiastical life were not the only manifestation of this new Christological imaginary—nor was that change limited to the thirteenth century. Religious literature underwent a corresponding change as a result of the rise of affective piety. Countless texts in both Latin and the vernacular offered guidance to readers on affective meditation and contemplation. Particularly within the genre of hagiography, the focus on Christ’s humanity resulted in new modes of exemplarity and sanctity grounded in affective piety.32 Following the fourth Lateran council of 1215, hagiography underwent a decisive shift in response to the rise of affective piety and the concomitant institution of the mendicant orders.33 The vitae of holy men and women, while always formulated through the imitation of the holy exemplar—Christ himself—soon began to develop along affective lines. As the reflection of these new conceptions and ideas of sanctity, high medieval hagiography revealed how deeply the new devotion to Christ impacted medieval religious life.34 31 32 33 34

Newman, “Appendix,” 298-300. Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013). André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992). - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Some of the earliest hagiographies to reflect this affective sanctity were the vitae of women known as the mulieres religiosae from the diocese of Liège.35 Chief among them is the Vita of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, founder of the Feast of Corpus Christi. The composition of Juliana’s Vita has been dated between 1261 and 1264.36 There is very little likelihood that the hagiographer knew Juliana personally, particularly in light of the dates of her life (1198 to 1258) and the text’s reliance on the oral recollections of her contemporaries as evidence of her holiness. Critical consensus reads this temporal circumstance and narrative construction as an indication that the Latin hagiographer collaborated orally with Juliana’s community members, friends, and acquaintances in the production of the Vita. The Vita thus reveals a communal view of affective piety as an acceptable model of sanctity. While Juliana’s entire Vita demonstrates her devotion to Christ, the specifically affective quality of that devotion appears most clearly in the depiction of her highly emotional response to Christ and devotional focus on his Passion, her mystical spirituality and visionary experience, and her exceptional devotion to the Eucharistic as exemplary attributes worthy of imitation. Juliana’s Vita, like the vitae of other high-medieval men and women, proceeds along familiar affective lines. She exhibits holiness at a young age and increases in piety and devotion throughout her life, often acts as a spiritual guide and example to others in her community, and finally dies a longdesired death through which her sanctity is confirmed and she is reunited with her beloved, Christ. Throughout the narrative, Juliana’s intense emotional response to Christ consistently demonstrates her adherence to this model of sanctity. For example, the Vita describes how “from the first years of her adolescence, she bestowed all her love on Christ as a virgin loving a virgin, the Son of the Virgin.”37 In this passage Juliana’s affective piety takes on the erotic overtones consistent with the Bridal mysticism emerging dynamically during the high Middle Ages. Codified most famously by Bernard of Clairvaux in his

35

36

37

For an overview of the Liègeois mulieres religiosae, see New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact ed. Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turhout: Brepols, 1999); more recently, see Mulieres Religiosae: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Since Juliana’s death is recorded as 1258 and Eve’s in 1266, the vita was produced during Eve’s lifetime but after Juliana’s death; the terminus a quo for the Latin vita thus falls two years after Juliana’s death. Newman, Life, 189. For Juliana’s Latin Vita, see Vita Sanctae Julianae Virginis, ed. G. Henschenius and D. Papebroch, Acta Sanctorum, Apr. t. I (Paris, 1866): 435-75. “A primis siquidem adolescentiae suae annis, amorem suum contulit totum Christo, Virgo Virgini, Virginis filio,” AS, 446. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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influential Sermon on the Song of Songs, bridal mysticism encouraged both men and women to imagine themselves as the Bride of Christ, often culminating in visionary or imaginative episodes of mystical marriage with Jesus in which the believer consecrated his or her virginity to Christ, sometimes even with an exchange of rings.38 This mode of devotion encouraged practitioners to direct their Passionate love toward Christ as a form of devotion and spiritual practice, borrowing the language and imagery of the Song of Songs to imagine themselves as Christ’s lover and beloved.39 While this form of spirituality proved popular in monastic and regular circles during the high Middle Ages, it remained one of the most prevalent modes of affective piety well into the Early Modern period, as demonstrated by the most famous subjects of mystical marriage and practitioners of Bridal mysticism: St. Katherine of Alexandria (whose medieval popularity flourished in the fourteenth century) and St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), who both enjoyed a mystical marriage with Christ; and St. Theresa of Avila (1515-1582), who wrote of experiencing mystical ecstasy, or union, with Christ.40 Juliana’s affective spirituality, while much earlier historically, shares not only this erotically-charged affective devotion to Christ, but also the mystical and visionary experiences through which this affective piety occurred. Juliana’s mysticism took two related forms: corporeal asceticism and visionary experience. Like many of her contemporaries, Juliana’s affective piety took corporeally ascetic form. She was one of the many high medieval women who, as Caroline Bynum has argued in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, exercised religious and spiritual agency through the bodily discourses of food and consumption.41 The Vita describes her incredible holiness manifested through an inhuman ability to

38

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For a history of bridal mysticism and mystical marriage in medieval Christianity, see Rabia Gregory, Marrying Jesus; Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); and Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500 (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, translation and foreword by G.R. Evans; introduction by Jean Leclercq; preface by Ewert H. Cousins (New York, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1987). For a helpful and succinct overview of devotion to Katherine of Alexandria in the Middle Ages see the introduction to Katherine J. Lewis, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000). For an introduction to Catherine of Siena, see Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle, eds., A Companion to Catherine of Siena, (Leiden: Brill, 2012). For an introduction to Theresa of Avila, see Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila (New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 1991, repr. 2003). Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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fast and abstain from food for thirty years. The text describes at length the “incredible” food practices that proved Juliana’s sanctity: . . . even when she ate, she had to pray to God for the ability to eat. Not only did the pleasures of appetite fail to entice her, but she was satiated by the mere thought of food. Often she asked the Lord to make her capable of eating at least a little because, if she were said to live without physical food, she would become a source of wonder to all nations. Hence she consumed the tiny amount she ate not so much to sustain her body as to display a kind of solidarity with human nature, so that people could say she did indeed take physical food, albeit very sparingly and meagerly.”42 While to modern sensibility this extreme asceticism would suggest pathological or neurotic tendencies, in the medieval imagination it demonstrated an exaggerated affectivity, an intense desire to imitate Christ’s suffering taken to a self-inflicted extreme. As her hagiographer explains, “the Holy Spirit had willed this [her habit of fasting] so people would realize she was kept alive not by ordinary natural means, but by the Spirit who replenished her”.43 Even as Juliana’s life-long fasting demonstrates the superhuman extent of her devotion to Christ, however, her devotion to the Eucharist reveals the affective logic driving that asceticism. Juliana’s visionary experiences symbolically extend her affective devotion to Christ, manifested through the abstinence from consumption and nourishment, by an inverse focus on the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist. Early in the Vita, her affective response to the Eucharist models an emotional response to Christ’s body and blood: From childhood, in fact, she began to conceive for this marvelous sacrament an affection that was far from childish. At first she felt a wonderful inner sweetness filling her spirit at the moment of sacrifice, as she began to pour out her heart like water and pray before the Most High that she might more fully experience the grace of the sweetness she had tasted. 42

43

Newman, Life, 200. “Hoc ipsum autem ut potuisset sumere quod sumebat, apud Deum precibus impetrarat. Cum enim non solum non traheretur appetitus aliqua voluptate, sed sola cibi memoria existeret saturata; saepius rogavit Dominum, ut saltem aliquantulum cibi posset sumere, ne in admirationem cunctis gentibus verteretur, si sine cibo corporali vivere diceretur. Unde hoc tantillum quod sumebat, non tam conferebat sibi corporis sustentationem, quam humanae naturae quamdam communionem; qua videlicet dici poterat uti cibo corporali, licet nimium modico et exili,” AS, 449. Newman, Life, 199. “. . . aut Spiritus sanctus hoc fieri volebat, ne illa quam repleverat, non tam ex seipso, quam communi usu naturae vivere putaretur,” AS, 448. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Zimbalist Day by day, she was rendered more capable by her vehement desire of receiving what she longed for, so that the fervor of her devotion increased until, when she was praying at the moment of consecration, she could scarcely be torn away from the torrent of her pleasure.”44

The very language of this description, particularly the vocabulary of intense pleasure and enjoyment, distinguishes the Eucharist as the appropriate location for physical, sensual, and spiritual satisfaction, as opposed to more mundane physical enjoyments such as eating or sleeping. Rather than experience any type of emotional or sensory satisfaction through quotidian human behavior, Juliana experiences pleasure only through her reception of the Sacrament. By depicting her response to the Eucharist in this way, the Vita suggests that the dimensions of Juliana’s affective piety encompasses both her spiritual and corporeal identities. As her Vita proceeds, this emphasis on the Eucharist takes on additional affective significance when it becomes the location of her visionary experiences. Juliana’s famous Corpus Christi vision functioned as the foundation for her holy reputation, and it served as both the impetus and the culmination of her affective piety. As the preceding discussion of her affective devotion and mystical spirituality show, her piety repeatedly focused on the Eucharist. The impetus for this piety was a specific vision that she received throughout her early life: the Vita recounts how, “from her youth, whenever Christ’s virgin gave herself to prayer, she saw a great and marvelous sign. There appeared to her a full moon in its splendor, yet with a little reach in its spherical body. When she had seen this sign for a long time she was astonished, not knowing what it might mean. . . ”45 As a recipient of visions sent from the Lord, Juliana participates in the long tradition of prophecy stretching back to the Old Testament. Yet unlike a biblical prophet, Juliana receives divine help interpreting her vision. After wondering for a long time what the moon missing a piece

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Newman, Life, 192. “Ad istud siquidem mirabile Sacramentum ab aetate puerili concipere coepit non pueriles affectus. Miram vero suavitatis intimae dulcedinem hora sacrificii a Spiritu sancto primitus sentiens infundi, sicut aquam cor suum coepit effundere, et in conspectu Altissimi deprecari, ut ad ampliorem gustatae dulcedinis posset gratiam promoveri. Et cum de die in diem, per vehemens desiderium, ad sumendum quod optabat capacior redderetur; adeo fervor devotionis excrevit, ut cum tempore Sacramenti orationi incubiusset, a torrente voluptatis suae vix posset avelli,” AS, 447. Newman, Life, 233. “Tempore inventutis suae, quotiens Christi Virgo Juliana orationi incumbebat, magnum sibi signum et mirabile apparebat. Apparebat, inquam, ei luna in suo splendore, cum aliquantula tamen sui sphaerici corporis fractione: quam cum multo tempore conspexisset, mirabatur multum, ignorans quid illa portenderet,” AS, 459.

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signified, “Christ revealed to her that the moon was the present Church, while the breach in the moon symbolized the absence of a feast which he still desired his faithful upon earth to celebrate.”46 This divine explication adds a new dimension to Juliana’s affective devotion to Christ and the Eucharist. Initially, Christ’s explanations of Juliana’s visions simply confirm her desire to more intensely venerate the Eucharist, explaining that “once every year, the institution of the Sacrament of his Body and Blood should be recollected more solemnly and specifically than it was at the Lord’s Supper, when the Church was generally preoccupied with the washing of feet and the memory of his Passion.”47 Eventually, however, Juliana’s affective devotion to Christ results in her role as a liturgical author and public figure, and extends her affective practices to her entire community. The Vita notes not only that “Christ revealed these things to his virgin, therefore, and commanded her that she herself should inaugurate this feast and be the first to tell the world it should be instituted,” but also recounts how, to her objections and protestations of humility, Christ “responded that by all means, she should be the one to initiate the feast, and from then on it should be promoted by humble people.”48 Ultimately, Juliana’s piety shapes the liturgical life of the religious community, as her Vita invites others into the devotion to Christ’s humanity at the heart of the affective tradition.

3

Conclusion

Juliana was not alone in her devotion to Christ. Many of her fellow mulieres religiosae practiced Bridal mysticism and corporeal asceticism, and many others experienced visions. All participated in the liturgical life of their day, and many embraced the rapidly developing currents of affective piety. Perhaps most significantly, almost all of these women exhibited a strong reverence for the Eucharist, and confirmed their own special awareness of Christ’s real presence in affective devotion, mystical ecstasies, or visions. When asked what prayers she said during the mass, for example, Yvette of Huy answers, “as though surprised at this inquiry. . . ‘do you suppose I say anything? I am preoccupied with the 46

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Newman, Life, 234. “Tunc revelavit ei Christus; in luna, praesentem Ecclesiam; in lunae autem fractione, defectum unius solennitatis in Ecclesia figurari, quam adhuc volebat in terris a suis fidelibus celebrari,” AS, 459. Newman, Life, 234. “institutio Sacramenti Corporis et Sanguinis sui quolibet anno semel solennius ac specialius recoleretur, quam in Coena Domini, quando circa lotionem pedem et memoriam passionis suae Ecclesia generaliter occupatur,” AS, 459. Newman, Life, 234. “Responsumque; est illi; quod hanc solennitatem oportebat per ipsam omni modeo inchoari, et deinceps per personas humiles promoveri,” AS, 459.

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joy and delight of Christ’s presence so that nothing escapes or empties from my mouth.’”49 Clearly, the Eucharist provided the ideal location for Ida’s affective enjoyment, as it had for Juliana. Several of Juliana’s contemporaries also recounted their visionary experiences and Eucharistic conversations with Christ. Ida of Nivelles, for example, sees Christ as a beautiful young boy during the mass, who tells her, “‘oh sweet friend, I have been showing you my humanity such as it underlies the form of the bread. This I have done not from any doubt about your faith or your readiness to believe, but from my own wish to let you know with what love, what concern, what zeal I regard yourself!’”50 Christ explains the sacrifice of the Eucharist for Ida, confirming her orthodox understanding of the sacrament and her own secure salvational status as Christ’s beloved. In a similar vein, Lutgard of Aywières sees and hears Christ during the Eucharist: Turning towards Lutgard, he said, “Do you not see how I am offering myself up totally to the Father for My sinners? Therefore do I wish that you offer yourself up totally for my sinners and turn away the zeal enkindled against them in retaliatory punishment.” The Lord Jesus said the same thing to her almost every day during the sacrifice of the mass.51 Like Juliana, Ida, and Yvette, Christ inspires Lutgard’s affective piety and helps her understand the way the sacrifice of the mass works as an eternally recurring sacrifice of Christ’s humanity. The vitae of all of these women together constituted a new corpus of hagiography, and like Juliana’s Vita, they invited readers to enter the discourse of affective piety they depicted so vividly. The liturgical and literary innovations they inspired took rapid hold of the medieval Christian imagination. These new currents of affective devotion to Christ changed devotional, liturgical and literary practice for both women and men in medieval Europe. As they continued to evolve and expand in countless texts, traditions, and devotional modes, they offered the entire Christian community new ways of imagining Christ, themselves, and each other. 49 50

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The Life of Yvette of Huy by Hugh of Floreffe, translated, with introduction and notes, by Jo Ann McNamara (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 2000), 108. Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the ComPassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut, trans. Martinus Cawley OCSO (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 64. Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, ed. and trans. Margot H. King and Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 40.

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Chapter 11

Imitatio Christi and Authority in the Lives of St. Francis Donna Trembinski

It is a truism to say that Francis of Assisi was an imitator of Christ. The most well-known medieval and modern images of the saint – Francis ministering to the lepers, preaching to the birds and kneeling before the seraphim as he received the stigmata – all underline the similarity of events in Francis’ life to Christ’s own. Like Jesus, such images argue, Francis ministered to the sick and the poor, lived a humble life, found God and joy in the simplicity of nature, and, in some measure, shared Christ’s suffering by sharing his wounds. Much of what is known about Francis’ early life supports such an interpretation. However, Francis’ own writings suggest that he did not set out to live as Jesus had, but to live as followers of Christ had. In contrast to Francis’ own intentions, however, early authors of Francis’ vitae shaped the saint’s lived experience into a narrative that identified Francis’s acts and experiences with those of Christ. These early hagiographers did so, at least in part, to emphasize Francis’ close connection to God and to mark Francis as having a clear claim to spiritual authority which emanated directly from God. In doing so, some early Franciscan authors laid the groundwork for claims that the apostolic poverty and simple life Francis advocated should be followed even in the face of pressures from the secular Church and the Franciscan leadership to regularize the fledgling Franciscan Order. There is no doubt that Jesus was a source of inspiration for Francis. Francis found the motivation to live the life of a religious before a crucifix, praying for enlightenment from God. As that enlightenment came, Francis began to follow in Christ’s footsteps, living a life of apostolic poverty, gathering disciples to him and then sending them off to preach, and, of course, receiving the very wounds of Christ. Yet the few writings of Francis we have suggest that the saint did not consciously set out to imitate Christ, rather he wished to live like the apostles had, as a follower of Jesus. Francis was always careful to remind himself and his followers that his authority as the leader of the Order was tempered by the need to respect the hierarchy of the Church and to revere the priests who celebrated mass.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_013

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Early hagiographers of Francis took a different view, finding meaning in Francis’ clear suffering by equating his experiences to those of Christ’s own. The construction of Francis’ Christ-like qualities in thirteenth-century hagiography of the saint occurred in a context of increasing division within the Franciscan Order. Some friars, perhaps especially those closest to Francis, advocated a strict observance of his Rule, especially as it related to individual and common property within the Order. These observants believed that neither individuals in the Order, nor the Order itself, should hold any property. Instead they advocated a mendicant life for all Franciscans. Others within the Order and many of those holding leadership roles, wanted to create a more regularized life for the Order, one in which friars led a more settled conventual life in priories. To some extent, the creation of narratives that demonstrated parallels between Francis and Jesus allowed hagiographers sympathetic to concerns about movements towards regularization within the Franciscan Order to imbue Francis’ more strict vision for his own Order with the support a higher authority, one derived explicitly from Christ. Such an authority clearly challenged the Church hierarchy and the Franciscan leadership. Later hagiographies, like the Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul and the Legenda maior tried to mediate between these two positions – between the Francis who was another Christ, deriving independent authority from his similarity to God himself, and the Francis who understood himself to be under the authority of the secular Church. For a person who is so often linked with Christ, Francis’ own works discuss Jesus very little and almost always in a somewhat formulaic way. To some extent, this reflects the saint’s lack of training in academic theology and perhaps a lack of schooling more generally,1 but it also suggests that much of Francis’ imitatio Christi as it is understood today is a product of later depictions of Francis and not grounded in the saint’s own writings. The earliest known work of Francis, the Letter of Exhortation to the Faithful, demonstrates his desire that people imitate the followers of Christ rather than Christ himself. Francis wrote that those who forsook their bodies, who received the Eucharist and who were penitent would receive the spirit of the Lord in them and so be the sons of God, brothers, spouses, and mothers of Christ,2 but not, it is important to note, Christ himself. Francis further outlines precisely how a person devoted to God could become such a relative to Christ – by faith and communion with the 1 On Francis’ level of education, see Oktavian Schmucki, “Francis’ Level of Education,” trans. P. Barrett, Greyfriars Review 10:2 (1996): 153-170. 2 “. . . et sunt filii Patris celestis, cuius opera faciunt, et sunt sponsi, fratres et matres Domini nostri Jesu Christi.” Francis of Assisi, Epistola ad fideles I, FAS 174, FA: ED 1.42.

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Holy Spirit, by obedience to God, and by love and devotional works.3 The implication in this letter is that, for Francis, Christ can provide some examples for action, for instance in demonstrating obedience to God just as brothers of Christ must do, but one’s proper spiritual goal in following Jesus’ example should be in acting as a follower of Christ, rather than Christ himself. Francis’ own perception of how he and his friars should relate to Christ remains consistent throughout his life. His last work, the Testament, was written as Francis was dying. It is a reflection on his life and an exhortation to his Order, which, it seems, was already moving in directions with which Francis and those closest to him were uncomfortable. Francis discusses his conversion – the Lord led him amongst lepers and showed him that what he had once thought bitter was changed into the sweet.4 He writes too, that after some time the Lord gave him brothers, and Christ himself showed him that he ought to live “according to the form of the holy Gospel.”5 Francis points to the Rule where his desire to live in accordance with the gospel is discussed more fully. The Regula bullata outlines that desire clearly at the beginning, noting “[t]his is the Rule and the life of the Brothers Minor, namely to observe [observare] the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience without things of our own and in chastity.”6 Francis’ vision, then, was not so much for members of his Order to imitate Christ as it was for them to imitate the disciples of Christ, in their mission and in their way of life.7 If Francis was not recommending following Christ, he was recommending consuming him. Indeed, the need to attend mass, to see the elevated host, and to partake of the Eucharist is perhaps the most common theme found in Francis’ surviving letters. Exhortations to receive the Eucharist are found in nine of his 25 extant letters and works.8 Francis’ phraseology in most of these works is nearly always the same and emphasizes the importance of respecting 3 Epistola ad fideles I, 8-10. 4 “Et recedente me ab ipsis [leprosis], id quod videbatur michi amarum conversum fuit michi in dulcedinem animi et corporis.” Francis of Assisi, Testament, FAS 394, FA: ED 1.124. 5 “. . . quod deberem vivere secundum formam sancti Evangelii.” Francis of Assisi, Testament, FAS 396, FA: ED 1.125. 6 “Regula et vita Minorum Fratrum hec est, scilicet Domini nostri Jesu Christi sanctum Evangelium observare, . . . ” Francis of Assisi, Regula bullata 1, FAS 322, FA: ED 1.100. 7 The work of Alfonso Marini substantiates this claim. Marini notes that in Francis’ own writings, the imperative was to follow in the footsteps of Christ rather than to imitate Christ. See Alfonso Marini, “‘Vestigia Christi sequi’ o ‘imitatio Christi’: Due different modo di intendere la vita evangelic di Francesco d’Assisi,” Collectanea Fransciscana 64 (1994): 89-119. 8 These are both versions of the Epistola ad fideles, the Epitola ad custodes, both versions of the Epistola ad clericos, the Episola ad populorum rectores, the Regula non bullata, the Regula bullata and the Admonitiones.

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the priests who say mass and preside over the moment of transubstantiation. “We must,” writes Francis in the later version of the Letter of Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, “confess all our sins to a priest and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ from him.”9 In both versions of Francis’ Letter to the Clergy that survive, Francis notes that “we know it cannot be his body without being consecrated by the word first.”10 The letter very clearly demonstrates the importance of receiving the Eucharist for salvation and that priests alone have the authority to administer it. A final common theme in Francis’ writing is obedience. Wayne Hellman counts the use of the term “obedience” 48 times in Francis’s writings, most often concerning how living “in obedience” may be considered a “prized gospel value.”11 Hellmann makes this point while noting that Francis speaks about obedience often – obedience to the Rule, to the gospel life, and to God – but he rarely speaks about the need for obedience to authority.12 A closer examination of Francis’ discussions of obedience suggests that this is not necessarily true, however. Even the Regula non bullata, the first Rule that governed the Order, collected and redacted several times between 1209 and 1221, notes that obedience to superiors within the Order was necessary, though disobedience was allowed if a superior’s order was contrary to the Franciscan (and gospel) life.13 The Regula bullata, completed in 1223, repeats this idea, but adds an injunction that the ministers not command anything against the Rule or otherwise sinful.14 This change paved the way for Francis’ final position on the subject, found in his Testament, that both he himself and every other member

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“Debemus siquidem confiteri sacerdoti omnia peccata nostra; et recipiamus corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi ab eo.” Epistola ad fideles II, FAS 190. English translation from FA: ED 1.47. “Scimus, quia non potest esse corpus, nisi prius sanctificetur a verbo.” Epistola ad clericos, FAS 140, English translation on FA: ED 1.52. See also the later recension, which repeats the phraseology. FAS 142, English translation FA: ED 1.54. Wayne Hellmann, “Authority According to St. Francis: Power or Powerlessness,” in Theology and Authority (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987), 24. Hellmann, “Authority According to St. Francis,” 24. “Et omnes alii fratres mei benedicti diligenter obediant eis in hiis quae spectant ad salutem anime et non sunt contraria vite nostre. . . ” RNB, 4, FAS 248, FA: ED 1.66. That eis refers to ministers is clear from the preceding context which discusses that ministers ought to visit their charges frequently. “Fratres qui sunt ministri et servi aliorum fratrum, visitent et moneant fratres suos et humiliter et caritative corrigant eos, non praecipientes eis aliquid, quod sit contra animam suam et regulam nostram. Fratres vero, qui sunt subditi, recordentur, quod propter Deum abnegaverunt proprias voluntates. Unde firmiter precipio eis, ut obediant suis ministris in omnibus quae promiserunt Domino observare et non sunt contraria anime et Regule nostre.” Regula bullata, 10, FAS 334, FA: ED 1.105. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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of his Order ought to obey their superiors.15 Unlike in the earlier writings of Francis, the Testament leaves little room for disobedience of any sort. Obedience to authority, especially hierarchical authority within the Order and the Church was increasingly important in Francis’ life. These three themes that link Francis to Christ, becoming an apostle to Christ, consuming Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and being obedient to Christ and those who represent him on earth reflect Francis’ absolute belief in the necessity of remaining orthodox and under the explicit authority not just of Christ, but of his earthly Church. That this was felt to be a necessity on Francis’ part is hardly surprising, given that only two decades earlier the Church had condemned a movement that, at least at first glance, looked a good deal like Francis’ own – the Waldensians. After their condemnation, Waldensians continued to preach their doctrine, becoming increasingly radical. This directly challenged the authority of the Church, and for this reason, the entire movement and those who followed it were declared heretical.16 As many recent scholars have argued, who was deemed heretical was at least as much about that individual’s or group’s challenge to ecclesiastical authority as it was about unorthodox belief. As R.I. Moore notes, “the moment when heresy was born was often, as with the Waldensians, the moment when it required that preaching should be abandoned or consulted with the permission of the diocesan.”17 The label of heresy, for Moore, was received in a moment of resistance to authority. The rise of “heresy” after the year 1000 thus had less to do with an actual increase in unorthodox belief and practice and much more to do with an increasing ability within the Church to exert its authority as believers became more invested in the idea that following the Church’s teachings was necessary for salvation.18 The idea that the medieval

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[“Brothers who are ministers and servants of other friars ought to visit and advise those brothers and humbly and charitably correct them, not ordering them to do anything which is against the soul and our Rule. But the brothers who are subordinate ought to remember that they have denied their own wills on account of God. Whence I firmly order them that they obey their ministers in all things which promised to observe for the Lord and those things which are not contrary to the soul and our Rule.”] “Et omnes alii fratres teneantur ita obedire guardianis suis.” Testament, 30, FAS 400, FA: ED 1.126. On the Waldensian movement, see, amongst others, Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170 – c. 1570, trans. Claire Davison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and the collection of articles by Peter Biller gathered together in Peter Biller, The Waldenses, 1170-1530 (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2001). R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), 281. On this shift in Christendom, after the year 1000, see André Vauchez, The Spirituality of the Medieval West: The Eighth to the Twelfth Century, trans. Colette Friedlander (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 106 passim and 120-121. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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heresy was linked far more to a refusal to acknowledge the Church’s authority than any unorthodox doctrinal belief has become widely accepted.19 Challenges to the secular Church’s authority were regarded with skepticism at best and with accusations of heresy at worst. It thus becomes clear why Francis himself emphasized the importance of priests, the Eucharist, and, at the end of his life, of obedience to authority. The similarities between the early Franciscans and Waldensians required Francis to ensure that his movement was both entirely orthodox and clearly subservient to the secular Church. This reality makes sense of the continued emphasis on the Eucharist and the important role the priest played in the miracle of transubstantiation found in Francis’ letters and other writings. It also suggests that Francis’ emphasis on obedience, not just to the gospel life but also to the authorities of his Order and the larger Church might not only be about emphasizing humility, but orthodoxy and compliance as well. For this reason, Francis’ own work suggests his relationship with Christ was one of a disciple following master, rather than an alter Christus. It is only in the hagiographies of Francis that the idea of Francis as another Christ emerges. This has long been argued by scholars beginning with Stanislao da Campagnola’s book L’angelo del sesto sigillo e l’alter Christus, published in 1971.20 This groundbreaking book argued that in Franciscan literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Francis was positioned as both the angel of the sixth seal of the Apocalypse and an alter christus. The presentation of Francis in such a way was, for da Campagnola, a result of a belief on the part of some Franciscans that the end of the world was near. In this context, Francis and the Order he founded were heralded as “a return to the evangelical ideal”21 that would usher in a new age of peace and make the current hierarchy of the Church irrelevant. Da Campagnola believes the seeds of this reading of Francis can even be found in Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima.22 The linking of Francis to Christ was further “incubated” in the Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul and became “even more explicit” in Bonaventure’s Legenda maior.23 For da 19

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In what is perhaps the most logical final step of this argument, R. I. Moore has argued that the label of “Cathar” in the Middle Ages, long thought to denote a member of a clearly defined heretical sect, was used by the medieval Church as a handy label to apply to anyone who may have challenged church authority. See R.I. Moore, The War on Heresy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2012). Stanislao da Campagnola, L’angelo del sesto sigillo e l’alter Christus: Genesi e sviluppo di due temi francescani nei secoli XIII-XIV (Rome: Ed Laurentianum, Ed Antonianum, 1971). da Campagnola, 119. da Campagnola, 137-133. da Campagnola, 142.

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Campagnola, Bonaventure’s presentation of Francis as an alter angelus and an alter Christus attempted to walk the thin line between an orthodox interpretation of Francis and his new Order working with and being obedient to the existing Church hierarchy and pleasing the more radical and even heretical elements of the Franciscan Order, who saw the traditional Church hierarchy as at best irrelevant and at worst corrupt.24 In spite of da Campagnola’s argument, there is little that directly suggests that Francis imitated Christ directly in the first official life of St. Francis, written by his official hagiographer, Thomas of Celano, just after Francis’ death. Indeed, Thomas, like Francis himself, presented the saint as a follower of Christ. Nonetheless, Thomas of Celano organized his discussion of Francis’ miracles in the same order as Christ’s own are usually presented in the gospels. Like Jesus, his first miracle in the Vita prima is turning water into wine.25 Like Jesus, and like many other saints, Francis healed the sick and the disabled, the blind and the paralyzed.26 In his miracles, or more precisely, in the miracles the Lord worked through him,27 according to the Vita prima, Francis’ life did echo Christ’s own. This was especially acknowledged in the story of Francis’ stigmata, about which Thomas wrote, “any one of the people believed it to be a great gift shown upon him if he were allowed not only to kiss, but even to see, the sacred wounds of Jesus Christ, which Francis carried on his body.”28 By his miracles and by the stigmata, the Francis of Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima did conform his life to Christ’s. And yet, Thomas was also careful to assure his audience that even while Francis imitated Christ, he also understood and respected the boundaries of priestly and Church authority. Thomas emphasizes this point directly in the Vita prima, when he writes, “[a]mongst all things and above all, [Francis] recommended that the faith of the holy Roman Church be served, venerated, and imitated. In this alone the salvation of all 24

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Indeed, da Campagnola reports that it is surprising how tolerant and inclusive Bonaventure’s Legenda maior is to Joachite attitudes, given that the previous minister general, John of Parma, had been brought before the inquisition about his Joachite beliefs and another Franciscan, Gerard of Bourgo San Donnino had been found guilty of heresy. See da Campagnola, 170. This occurs at 1:21:61, FF 336-337, FA: ED 1.236. On this, see Donna Trembinski, “Non Alter Christus: Early Dominican Lives of Saint Francis,” Franciscan Studies 63 (2005): 79-80. Twice in the Vita prima, once when Francis cures a little boy, and once when he expels a demon from a woman, Francis notes that Christ is working the miracles through him. See VP 1.23.65, FF 340-341, FA: ED 1.239-240, and VP 1.25.69, FF 343-344, FA: ED 1.242-242. “Maximum donum sibi exhiberi credebat quivis de populo, si admittebatur non solum ad deosculandum, sed etiam ad videndum sacra stigmata Iesu Christi, quae sanctus Franciscus portabat in corpore suo.” VP 2.9.113, FF 391, FA: ED 1.281.

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who are to be saved exists.”29 Here Thomas has Francis agreeing that orthodox doctrine, as decreed by the Catholic Church, is the only belief system that allows for eternal salvation. In this passage Francis encourages both orthodoxy and submission to the greater authority of the Church and its teaching. Thomas hammers the point home in his next sentence, noting that: “[Francis] revered priests and embraced with affection every ecclesiastical order.”30 The importance of Francis embracing all orders also emphasizes the subordination of his own vision to that of the Church – his Order is like all others that are deemed acceptable by Church hierarchy. The placement of Thomas’ discussion of Francis’ orthodoxy and his submission to authority is interesting too, as it comes immediately before the account of Francis’ miracles – the very miracles that suggest Francis was imitating Christ by performing them. Such a placement seems to temper the impact of the saint’s miracles. It is as if Thomas argues that the holy man works miracles just as Jesus had, but that that should not be read as granting him some status outside the Church – even as a holy miracle worker, the Francis of Thomas’ Vita prima wanted to (and did!) remain orthodox and subservient to priests and other members of the Church hierarchy. Possibly for the simple reason that it is shorter, and a synopsis of Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima, the theme of imitatio Christi is less apparent in the Vita brevior, written by Thomas between 1232 and 1239,31 even as the theme of Francis’ orthodoxy and submission to authority is emphasized more. As Jacques Dalarun’s initial study has demonstrated, there is not a great deal that is original in this new life.32 Of course the life does include how Francis, inspired by Christ’s own disciples, sent his followers out to preach with only sandals, a

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“Confundebatur haeretica pravitas, extollebatur fides Ecclesiae, et fidelibus iubilantibus, haeretici latitabant. . . . Inter omnia et super omnia fidem sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae servandam, venerandam et imitandam fore censebat, in qua sola salus consistit omnium salvandorum.” VP 1.22.62, FF 338, FA: ED 1.238. “Venerabatur sacerdotes et omnem ecclesiasticum ordinem nimio amplexabatur affectu.” VP 1.22.62, FF 338, FA: ED 1.238. The entirety of the Vita brevior has recently been discovered and transcribed for the first time. A specialist of the early lives of Francis, Jacques Dalarun, has argued based on textual and linguistic similarities between the Vita prima and the Vita brevior that Thomas of Celano authored both. His suggested date of composition is between 1232 and 1239, after Francis’ canonization but before the removal of Brother Elias as minister-general of the Order. On this newly discovered life, see Jacques Dalarun, “Thome Celanensis Vita beati patris nostri Francici (Vita Brevior) Presentation et edition critique,” Analecta Franciscana 133:1 (2015): 24ff. Dalarun’s study notes when text in the Vita brevior is original to the life.

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walking stick and one tunic.33 Still present too, are the various Christomimetic miracles Francis performed while living34 and his reception of the stigmata.35 In spite of these inclusions, however, the Vita brevior seems to suggest Francis imitated Jesus even less often than the Vita prima did. Yet, the text seems more interested than Thomas’ first life in demonstrating Francis’ orthodoxy. While the Vita prima takes the time to note that Francis embraced the orthodoxy taught by the Catholic Church and that he honored priests and affectionately embraced members of each ecclesiastical order, the Vita brevior adds to the discussion by noting new ways in which the saint was obedient and orthodox and by showing Francis as a teacher of such obedience. In addition to noting that Francis loved members of all orders and certainly respected priests, the Vita brevior notes that Francis also embraced the teachers of divine laws and taught that these priests, regular religious and experts in canon law were to “be honored by everyone above all other men.”36 These additions are interesting for several reasons. In the first place, any additions in a life that is meant to shorten or abbreviate an earlier text must be understood as significant. Thomas’ “doubling down” on Francis’ orthodoxy and respect for authority, especially teachers of divine law, could suggest that Thomas expected the growing number of schoolmen entering the Order and often taking on roles of leadership to be regarded as a voice of authority which should be obeyed. It might also suggest that the new, more educated voices in the Order were not always being so heard and obeyed. Certainly, Thomas of Celano’s emphasis on Francis’ orthodoxy over his imitatio Christi in these two early lives reflects the concerns of the leadership of the Order at the time of their composition. Both lives were written while Elias of Cortona was Minister-General, an early companion of Francis’ and his vicargeneral after Francis had removed himself from leadership, but one who did not necessarily share Francis’s devotion to absolute individual and corporate poverty. The Elias who appears in the lives of Francis was a largely successful diplomat, navigating his way through the Church hierarchy and mediating the 33 34 35 36

Thomas of Celano, Vita brevior, 39. Thomas of Celano, Vita brevior, 50-53. Thomas of Celano, Vita brevior, 59-60. Compare VP 1.22.62, “Inter omnia et super omnia fidem sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae servandam, venerandam et imitandam fore censebat, in qua sola salus consistit omnium salvandorum. Venerabatur sacerdotes et omnem ecclesiasticum ordinem nimio amplexabatur affectu” (FF 338, FA: ED 2.238) to the Vita brevior, “Omnes enim fidem sante omnium salvandorum. Sacerdotes et legis divine doctores, omnemque ecclesiasticum ordinem nimio amplexabatur affectu, docens eos super omnes ab hominibus honorari” (48).

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needs of parties within the Franciscan Order and the Church itself.37 In his time as Minister-General after Francis’ death, Elias certainly worked tirelessly to publicize Francis’ sanctified status and to grow the Order and its prestige. Many outside the Order believed he did an excellent job,38 but within discontent grew, and when he was deposed as Minister-General in 1239, the most frequently stated charge against him was his refusal to live a Franciscan life of apostolic poverty.39 Elias’ deposition was a symptom of a rift in the Franciscan Order which continued for more than one hundred years – the split between those who believed Francis wished all Franciscans to live a life of mendicancy, holding no property either as individuals or as members of the Order, and those who argued the Order should live a more settled, conventual life. Those who argued for a life of mendicancy believed that Francis himself was the model to which all other Franciscans should aspire. Many of Francis’ earliest companions subscribed to this view and as the stories compiled by the saint’s closest companions make clear, they demonstrated the rectitude of Francis’ views by showing the saint’s nearness to Jesus himself. The Assisi Compilation appears to include many reminiscences of brothers who were close to Francis during the final years of his life. They produced this rather unstructured text (or something similar to it) at the behest of Crescentius of Iesi, Minister-General of the Franciscan Order between 1244 and 1247. However, the version of the Assisi Compilation which has come down to us today, found in Perugia Biblioteca Communale MS 1046, dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century. Thus, later interpolations could be present in this manuscript that purports to a record of stories told by those close to Francis. Nonetheless many scholars deem much of the information about Francis in the text to be largely trustworthy. The stories told in the Assisi Compilation rarely discuss Francis as an alter Christus. Like Francis’ own work, and like the earlier lives, the primary way in which Francis is said to interact with Jesus is not as an imitator, but as a servant or a disciple.40 Unlike the earlier lives, there is little emphasis on 37

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On this see Augustine Thompson, Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 107, in which Thompson describes Elias as an “active and selfpossessed vicar” and John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Chicago, Ill.: Franciscan Herald Press, 1968), 103. Guilia Barone, “Brother Elias Revisited,” trans. Giles Bello, Greyfriars Review, 13: Supplement (1999), 7. Barone, 10. See, for instance, AC 58, which discusses how the bishop of Assisi directs Francis in being in service to Christ, AC 81 and 84 which again discuss Francis as being in service to Christ and AC 103 which describes the saint as a faithful disciple of Christ. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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healing miracles in the Assisi Compilation;41 instead the focus is on Francis’ gift of prophecy. Further, the stigmata are not mentioned as such at all. There is one story that does include a discussion of Francis’ wounds, but they are not explicitly compared to Christ’s own. AC 94 describes how water, which had washed Francis’ feet, cured oxen of a cattle disease.42 Only at the very end of the narrative (after the cows had been cured) does the narrator add in, as an afterthought, or perhaps a later scribal addition, that “at this time, blessed Francis had the scars in his hands, feet, and side.”43 The implication is that these were the stigmata, but this is not stated explicitly in the text. Even more interestingly, the story of Francis’ witness to the seraph, described in AC 118, does not link it to Francis’ reception of the stigmata, as Thomas of Celano’s account of Francis’ seraphic vision does. Nor is the seraph linked to the crucified Christ. Rather the Assisi Compilation discusses Francis’ practice of prayer and notes that “[f]or amongst the many hidden and manifest consolations which the Lord conveyed to him was a vision of a seraph shown to him by the Lord, from which [Francis] had much consolation in his soul between himself and the Lord in the entire time of his life.”44 Thus it is clear that for the most part, the reminiscences found in the Assisi Compilation do not engage with the idea that Francis imitates Christ or becomes another Christ. When Francis does interact with Christ in the Assisi Compilation, however, his interaction usually occurs in a narrative in which Francis’ way of life is being vindicated by Christ himself. That is, Christ is more likely to appear in narratives that are polemical in nature. In AC 16, Francis is urged by some of the brothers to allow them property in common. Francis consulted with Christ in prayer on the issue and Christ said “immediately” that he would take away all property held by the brothers, whether held individually or in common.45 In the next chapter, AC 17, the narrator describes the process of writing the Regula bullata. The author notes that Francis was writing a new Rule because “the first, which he had written with Christ teaching him, was lost.”46 Many brothers were concerned, the author tells us, that the new Rule Francis was writing would be too harsh, and they asked Elias to intervene on their behalf. Elias did 41 42 43 44

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Only one healing miracle is really recounted, in AC 95 when Francis heals a priest who subsequently returns to an impious life and is punished by God for doing so. AC 94, FF 1619-1620, FA: ED 2.196-197. “in illo tempore habebat beatus Franciscus cicatrices in manibus et pedibus et latere.” AC 94, FF 1620, FA: ED 2.197. “[N]am inter alias multas consolationes occultas et manifestas, quas sibi contulit Dominus, ostensa est sibi a Domino visio Seraphyn, de qua multam habuit consolationem in anima sua inter se et Dominum toto tempore vite sue.” AC 118, FF 1684, FA: ED 2.227. See AC 16, FF 1495, FA: ED 2.131. “Quia prima erat perdita, quam, Christo docente, scribi fecit.” AC 17, FF 1495, FA: ED 2.131. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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not want to entreat Francis to change his Rule, but he did. Upon hearing Elias out, Francis turned to heaven and complained to Christ. Jesus answered him directly saying, “Francis, there is nothing of yours in the Rule; whatever is there is all mine.”47 In this narrative, too, Christ is supporting Francis’ vision for his Order directly and personally, against prelates within the Order. These two references to Francis’ personal relationship with Jesus, positioned as they are one right after the other, are doing very particular work in the Assisi Compilation. Certainly they support the often-made argument that the authors of the AC believed Franciscans should be mendicants and that the more conventual order that was developing in the 1230s and 1240s was a movement away from Francis’ vision.48 Yet both narratives also use Christ to demonstrate the spiritual superiority of Francis’ position. In both chapters, Francis is answering concerns of the ministri, likely Franciscan brothers who were also prelates, members of the secular Church.49 In both chapters, Francis disagrees with members of the Church hierarchy. To do so, the narrators of the Assisi Compilation knew, Francis needed to appeal to a higher authority than members of the secular Church itself. Hence, Christ is called to defend Francis’ position. The narrators are depicting Francis as having a close relationship with Jesus in an effort to assert that the support for Francis’ way of life comes from a higher authority than members of the secular Church itself. Another source for early stories about Francis’ life that was composed as a result of Crescentius’ call was the so-called Legend of the Three Companions.50 As in the Assisi Compilation, the relationship between Francis and Christ is not consistently portrayed. For instance, when Francis and his companions

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“Francisce, nichil est in Regula de tuo, sed totum est meum quicquid est ibi.” AC 17, FF 1496, FA: ED 2.131-132. See David Burr’s discussion of the political orientation of the Assisi Compilation (which he calls the Legend of Perugia) and what it might suggest in terms of divisions within the Order, especially concerning individual and corporate poverty, in The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after St. Francis (Philadelphia, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 224-26. On the meaning of ministry, see « 2 minister » (par C. du Cange, 1678), in Du Cange, et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, éd. augm., Niort: L. Favre, 1883-1887, t. 5, col. 394c. http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/MINISTER2. In many ways, the Legend of the Three Companions is a difficult source to use, not least because its present form it likely dates to after the Remembrance, even as it had, in its original form, been a source for that text. Thus it must be used carefully. On the complicated source and manuscript tradition of the LTC, see amongst many others, Thompson, 166-167, and Jacques Dalarun, The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi, trans, Edward Hagman (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002), 189-204.

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travel to Rome to have the Rule approved, Francis and eleven others travel.51 As Jacques Dalarun has noted, the number, and the Legend’s insistence that Francis was one of that number, is significant, for it implies that Francis was not standing in for Christ in the story; rather, he was one of the disciples of Christ.52 Further, when the group chose a leader in the text, a sort of “vicar of Jesus,” they did not choose Francis, but Brother Bernard.53 In other ways, however, the Legend of the Three Companions highlights Francis’ close relationship with Christ and his imitatio Christi. For instance, the Legend of the Three Companions records for the first time an episode that will become commonly told about Francis, his prayer before the crucifix at San Damiano, and the crucified Christ’s response. “Francis,” Christ said to the saint directly, “do you not see that my house is being destroyed? Therefore go, and repair it for me.”54 After this direct message from the Crucified Christ, the Legend notes that through his abstinence and weeping, Francis’s life, until his death, was like Christ’s own.55 Francis’ vision of the seraph is also clearly linked to Jesus himself and Francis’ reception of the stigmata in the Legend of the Three Companions. As in the Vita prima, Francis is described as seeing a seraph, but for the first time, the Legend acknowledges that the seraph was, in fact, clearly an image of Jesus.56 Similarly, the wounds, which Francis received during his vision are explicitly linked with Christ’s wounds. “But more wonderfully, an impression of the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ appeared in his flesh,” says the Legend.57 With the exception of a note that, as in the Assisi Compilation, demonstrated that Christ taught Francis what his second Rule should include,58 the 51

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“Videns autem beatus Franciscus quod Dominus fratres suos numero et merito augmentaret, cum iam essent duodecim viri perfectissimi sentientes idipsum, dixit illis undecim, ipse duodecimus dux et pater eorum.” LTC 12.46, FF 1419, FA: ED 2.95. See Dalarun, Misadventure, 195. “‘Faciamus unum ex nobis ducem nostrum et habeamus ipsum quasi vicarium Iesu Christi ut quocumque declinare voluerit declinemus, et quando hospitari voluerit hospitemur.’ Et elegerunt fratrem Bernardum, primum post beatum Franciscum, et sicut pater dixerat servaverunt.” LTC 12.46. FF 1419, FA: ED 2.95. “Francisce, nonne vides quod domus mea destruitur? Vade igitur et repara illam mihi.” LTC 5.13, FF 1386, FA: ED 2.76. “Haec de suo fletu et abstinentia diximus incidenter ut ostenderemus ipsum post dictam visionem et allocutionem imaginis Crucifixi fuisse usque ad mortem semper Christi passioni conformem.” LTC 5.15, FF 1388, FA: ED 2.77. “. . . effigiemque Domini Iesu clarissime praetendentis.” LTC 17.69, FF 1441, FA: ED 2.108. “sed in carne eius mirabilior apparuit impressio stigmatum Domini Iesu Christi.” LTC 17.69, FF 1441, FA: ED 2.108. “Et aliam regulam, a beato Francisco Christo docente compositam . . . ” LTC 16.62, FF 1435, FA: ED 2.105.

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emphasis on Francis’ Christ-like qualities is not as clearly linked to proving that he has a higher authority than members the secular Church. Unlike the Assisi Compilation,59 the Legend of the Three Companions includes a discussion of Francis’ wish that priests always be revered by the brothers for the role they play in the transubstantiation of the Eucharist.60 Nonetheless, the effect of demonstrating a consistent special relationship between Francis and Christ, from the moment the crucifix in San Damiano spoke to him to the moment he died and the reality of the stigmata was revealed is to make clear Jesus’ special love for the saint. The last chapter highlights the effect that Francis’s closeness to Christ and his Christ-like qualities were expected to have on those who heard or read the story of his life. The chapter concludes by noting that many individuals, well-educated churchmen, as well as laymen, followed the ascetic life laid down by the footsteps of Christ and Francis.61 Though the message of Francis’ greater authority is not as explicitly stated in the Legend of the Three Companions as it is in the Assisi Compilation, the idea is inherent in much of the narrative. Thomas of Celano was tasked with pulling together the remembrances recorded in the source text for the Assisi Compilation and the Legend of the Three Companions, and other such reminiscence texts into another official life, the Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul. He wrote the life under the generalship of Crescentius of Iesi, yet in the same year Thomas finished the Remembrance, the Franciscan Order, riven by tensions and factions especially around the issue of mendicancy, chose to depose Crescentius and elect as his successor John of Parma. While Crescentius was regarded as an opponent of the more observant members of the Order,62 the newly elected John of Parma was often seen as one of their own, though he was also initially acceptable to the more conventually minded members of the Order as well. His position as a schoolman, trained in Paris, allowed him to straddle some of the divisions in the Order, at least at the beginning of his generalship. Just as it was hoped that John of Parma would mediate between the two camps, Thomas’s Remembrance surely tried to straddle and reconcile the desires of both camps, both in their vision of the saint and in their ideas about what the future of the Franciscan Order might be. The informal sources for the Remembrance described above, at times presented a Francis that challenged

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The Assisi Compilation only records that Francis himself wanted to revere priests, not that all members of the Order ought to do so. See AC 58. LTC 14.57, FF 1429, FA: ED 2. 101 See LTC 18.73. Michael Robson, Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 127. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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the authority of the Church and the leadership of the Order on some issues, especially the issue of mendicancy within the Order. Yet Crescentius, the Minister-General when Thomas wrote, clearly supported the conventual camp that argued for a less strict observance of the Regular bullata. Thomas had to tread very carefully in his new version of Francis’ life to please both sides of the divide. As in the Vita prima and the Vita brevior, the privileged position of Francis as Christ’s servant,63 friend64 and follower65 is emphasized in the Remembrance. The first book begins with these words, “Franciscus, servus et amicus Altissimi”—“Francis servant and friend of the Most High [God].”66 This is how Thomas thought Francis ought to be remembered. And yet, in this life, perhaps more than any other, Francis is also presented as an alter Christus. Thomas recounts the story of how the cross at San Damiano instructed him to go and repair his Church67 more or less as it is found in the Legend of the Three Companions. He also explicitly states that Francis acted in such a way as to show himself to be “a true imitator of his God, Christ, in all things.”68 In a particularly lovely set of images, Thomas describes how Francis was “dead already in the world, but Christ was living in him. The pleasures of the world were a cross to him, since he bore the rooted cross of Christ in his heart.”69 Like the Legend of the Three Companions, the Remembrance is explicit in suggesting that the brothers who tended to Francis’ body after his death recognized the wounds on his hands, feet, and sides as the wounds of Christ.70 But the most unambiguous reference to similarities between Francis and Christ in the Remembrance comes in a vision a fellow brother had in the hour of Francis’ death. In the vision, Francis appeared dressed in the vestments of the deacon he likely was71 and was being followed by a crowd. Several of the people in the crowd asked the brother, “‘[i]s this [man] not Christ, o Brother?’” The brother 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

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RDS 1.1, 7.12, 11.17, 12.18, 23.52-53, 42.72, 77.111, 118.159, 128.169, 163.217a, 167.222. RDS 1.1, 35.65, 131.172. RSD 57.90, 109.148, 166.230a. RDS 1.1, FF 445, FA: ED 2.241. RDS 6.10. “Verum ut ostenderet se Dei sui Christi verum imitatorem in omnibus,” RDS 162.216, FF 630, FA: ED 2.386. Mortuus erat Franciscus iam mundo, sed Christus vivebat in eo. Crux illi erant mundi deliciae, quia Christi crucem radicatam gerebat in corde. RDS 160.211, FF 627, FA: ED 2.383. “Cernebant corpus beati patris Christi stigmatibus decoratum . . . ” RDS 163.217a, FF 663, FA: ED 2.388. On Francis as a deacon see Michael Cusato, “Francis of Assisi: Deacon? An Examination of the Claims in the Earliest Franciscan Sources,” in Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life: Essays in Honor of John V. Fleming, eds. Michael Cusato and Guy Geltner (Leiden and Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2009), 11-37. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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responded, “‘[h]e is.’” But others in the crowd asked “‘[i]s this [man] not Saint Francis?’ The brother responded similarly that “it was he.” In reality, it seemed to the brother and to the crowd of those people accompanying Francis that Christ and blessed Francis were one person.”72 In spite of making a clear connection between Francis and Jesus and in spite of recording a vision in which Francis and Christ appear as a single entity, Thomas also does his best to limit the authority others might have invested in Francis by virtue of his proximity and likeness to Christ. He does so immediately after he recounts the vision discussed above, for instance. Perhaps sensing that there might be concerns around the orthodoxy of the vision, Thomas quickly defends it by saying that Francis is not unique in being one with Christ. Such a statement is not reckless (temerarius), says Thomas, “for anyone who clings to God is made one spirit with him and God himself is going to be everything in all things.”73 In spite of the somewhat incoherent defense of the vision, it seems evident that Thomas does not want to make Francis seem unique in his affinity to Christ. In this way, Thomas defends against the possibility of anyone using the vision to suggest that Francis had a special relationship with Christ that superseded the regular channels of Church authority. Thomas also makes this clear earlier in his text, when he notes Francis’ devotion to hearing mass and receiving the Eucharist. Thomas suggests that Francis wanted his brothers to revere especially the hands of priests since they were the hands that brought about the miracle of transubstantiation. He quotes the saint as often saying, “[if] it should happen that I meet with any saint coming from heaven and some poor little priest simultaneously, I would first come to the priest, and I would bear myself quickly [to him] for the purpose of kissing his hand.” In a rather funny aside, Francis adds, “[f]or I might say “Oi, Hold up Saint Laurence! Because the hands of this priest often handle the Word of life and possess something beyond the human.”74 This story is original to the Remembrance, and it is a memorable tale that purports to record 72

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“Alteri fratri vitae laudabilis, tune temporis orationi suspenso, nocte illa et hora, gloriosus pater purpurea dalmatica vestitus apparuit, quem turba hominum innumera sequebatur. A qua se plurimi sequestrantes, dixerunt ad fratrem, ‘Nonne hic est Christus, o frater?’. Et ille dicebat, ‘Ipse est’. Alii vero iterum perquirebant dicentes, ‘Nonne hic est sanctus Franciscus?’. Frater ipsum esse similiter respondebat. Videbatur revera fratri et omnium comitantium turbae, quod Christi et beati Francisci una persona foret. RDS 165.219, FF 634-635, FA: ED 2.389. “Quod a sane intelligentibus nequaquam temerarium iudicatur, cum qui adhaeret Deo unus spiritus fit cum ipso, et ipse Deus omnia in omnibus sit futurus.” RDS 165.219, FF 635, FA: ED 2.389. “Sacerdotalibus manibus, quibus de ipso conficiendo tam divina collata auctoritas est, magnam volebat reverentiam exhiberi. Frequenter dicebat, ‘Si sancto cuiquam de caelo venienti d et pauperculo alicui sacerdoti simul me contingeret obviare, praevenirem - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Francis’ own words. Here too, the work of the narrative is to demonstrate Francis’ respect for the authority of the secular Church: priests, before saints, the Remembrance says quite clearly. And as for the Regula bullata, found in both of Thomas’ unofficial sources discussed above to be taught to Francis by Christ himself, Thomas distances himself from the implications of this as well. To be sure, in Thomas’ version, Christ still teaches Francis what the Rule should entail, just not directly. Rather, Francis has a vision in which he was gathering bread crumbs from which, a voice tells him, he ought to make a single host. Perplexed about the meaning of the vision, he prayed and meditated on it the next morning, and in prayer, another heavenly voice explained that the crumbs were the words of the evangelists, and the host that he made, the Rule.75 This narrative, too, is entirely new in the Remembrance; its source, if there was one, has not survived. We can be fairly sure that Thomas knew of the tradition recounted in both the Assisi Compilation and the Legend of the Three Companions, yet Thomas chose another way to demonstrate the rectitude of Francis’ vision for the Rule. The effect of both narratives is similar: Jesus approves of Francis’ Rule, but the narrative in the Remembrance does not suggest that Francis has special insight, teaching, or support from Christ that others might not have. Rather his Rule is rooted in the gospels, readily available, the official interpretation of which must be approved by preachers trained and licensed to preach by Church authorities. The Francis in the Remembrance, then, does not challenge Church authority when writing the Regula bullata. Both Thomas’ Remembrance and John of Parma himself appear to have tried to straddle both factions of the Order. For a time, John was able to do this successfully, but his desire to live simply, and his seeming support of mendicancy, even in light of his encouragement of Franciscans entering the universities as students and teachers, soon made those members of the Order who supported a movement away from mendicancy unhappy with his leadership. He seemed, for them, too much in favor of a strict interpretation of Francis’ Regula bullata.76 As John Moorman has argued, John of Parma’s desire

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honore presbyterum, et ad manus eius deosculandas citius me conferrem. Dicerem enim: ‘Oi! Exspecta, sancte Laurenti! quia manus huius Verbum vitae contrectant, et ultra humanum aliquid possident.’” RDS 152.201, FF 618, FA: ED 2.376. RDS 159.208. On John of Parma’s generalship, see Moorman, 112-116, Robson, 85, and Burr 28-31. Burr notes that John of Parma “publicly acknowledged Franciscan decadence” (28) and in Early Franciscan Government, Rosalind Brooke argues that John of Parma was successful in having some earlier privileges regarding the holding of property rescinded – an act which would not have endeared him to the less observant members of his Order. Rosalind Brooke, Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 265. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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to return to the simplicity of apostolic poverty for the Order came to late – “friaries had been built, relaxations made, privileges granted.”77 Going backwards was impossible. Further, John’s theology was problematic, perhaps heretical. He had dabbled in the heretical views of Joachim of Fiore, a twelfth-century monk and theologian whose apocalyptic world-view came to be adopted by a group of Spiritual Franciscans in the thirteenth century.78 Angelo of Clareno, a fourteenth century chronicler of the Franciscan Order with decidedly Spiritual leanings, suggests that John’s defense of Joachim’s position on the Trinity, a position which had been condemned by the Catholic Church, forced the papacy to request his resignation.79 The man who replaced him as Minister-General, the man who came to be known as St. Bonaventure, had a tough task ahead of him. The breach between those who wanted a more strict observance of the Rule and those who wanted the Rule relaxed and a more regularized religious life still existed, and perhaps even more troubling, the Order now had to be protected against accusations of heresy – afterall, the previous Minister-General was widely known to have held some heretical views. To deal with the concern of heresy, it is possible that Bonaventure encouraged Franciscans to participate in inquisitorial procedures, a task that Franciscans had never before sought out.80 In spite of this, a faction of the Order continued to be interested in Joachimism, especially his apocalypticism.81 To mediate between the two factions within the Order was becoming an increasingly difficult task, but one Bonaventure managed for the time of his generalship – that is to say, he satisfied neither side perfectly. Like John of Parma, Bonaventure believed his Order was too lax and took steps to reign in the decadence.82 In his actions, he clearly sided with those who wished to observe the Rule strictly. Though a schoolman and extremely learned, his spirituality harkened back to the experiential spirituality of Francis. For Bonaventure, as Ilia Delio has argued, theology must be in service to spirituality, and a true understanding of theology is only possible through the grace of God,83

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Moorman, 114. See David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, passim. On this, see Burr, 29. On this see David Burr, 29-32 and Holly Greico, “Pastoral Care, Inquisition and Mendicancy in the Medieval Franciscan Order,” in Development and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies, ed. Donald Prudio (Leiden: Brill 2011), 136. Burr, 40-49. Brooke, 274-275, Burr, 34-35. Ilia Delio, “Theology, Spirituality and Christ the Centre: Bonaveture’s Synthesis,” in A Companion to St. Bonaventure, ed. J. M. Hammond, Wayne Hellmann, and Jared Goff (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 370-371. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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which allows contemplatives, as it did Francis, Bonaventure’s exemplary contemplative theologian, to conform to Christ.84 In the spiritual economy of the thirteenth century, this idea could be inherently problematic in that it suggests that an individual may come to a more full understanding of God through contemplation and union with the divine than through the teachings of the Church. This in and of itself was not a problem, however, if a revelation divulged through contemplation differed from Church doctrine, it could create a direct challenge to Church authority and the potential for an idea and individual being found heretical. For this reason, Bonaventure was also always careful to present a Francis who was subservient and obedient to the secular Church even as he also suggested that Francis lived in conformity with Jesus. Bonaventure’s preferred way of referring to Francis in his Legenda maior is as a servant of Christ. This label for the saint is used more than twenty-five times in the text. He also regularly refers to Francis as a knight of Christ and a poor man of Christ, a friend of Christ and a herald of Christ. The dominant theme of these titles is one of service to Christ rather than conformity to him. The theme of conformity is also present – indeed, it structures some interpretations of Bonaventure’s system of theology as noted above – but it is clearly subservient to the idea of service. Still, Bonaventure does include some lovely imagery of Francis transformed to Christ. In the prologue, Bonaventure writes of the stigmata as the “seal of likeness of the living God, of Christ crucified, being in [Francis’] body.”85 At the beginning of his life, Francis practiced extreme asceticism, Bonaventure writes, so that “he might divulge the cross of Christ externally which he carried internally in his heart.”86 The Francis of Bonaventure’s Legenda imitated and conformed himself to Christ. But more than that, Bonaventure’s Francis also transformed into the crucified Jesus.87 In his last illness, he was “transfixed to the cross with Christ as much in flesh as in spirit”88 and “offered by singular privilege an image of Christ’s passion and. . . revealed the beauty of resurrection.”89 84 85

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Delio, 378. Delio argues that in both the Intinerarium and the Legenda maior, Francis is held up as the ideal theologian. Delio, 388. “. . . verum etiam irrefragabili veritatis testificatione confirmat signaculum similitudinis Dei viventis, Christi videlicet crucfixi, quod in corpore ipsius fuit. . . ” LM Prologue.2, FF 779, FA: ED 2.529. “Mortificationi carnis invigilabat attentius, ut Christi crucem, quam interius ferebat in corde, exterius etiam circumferret in corpore.” LM 1.6, FF 786, FA: ED 2.535. Francis is so transformed in LM 8.1, 13.3, 13.5 and longs to be transformed in 9.2. “Christo igitur iam cruci confixus Franciscus tam carne quam spiritu . . . ” LM 13.1, FF 898, FA: ED 2.640. “. . . et passionis Christi effigiem privilegii singularitate praeferret et novitate miraculi resurrectionis speciem praemonstraret.” LM 15.1, FF 906, FA: ED 2.645. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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In spite of all of this, however, Bonaventure took pains to demonstrate that Francis always believed himself to be subservient to the Church. Thus, in the discussion of the controversial Rule, Bonaventure repeats verbatim the vision Francis saw of gathering the crumbs to make a single host and God’s explanation that the crumbs were the words of the gospels and the host his Rule.90 Rewriting the Rule, Francis did so as if the words came from the “mouth of God” himself.91 Yet Bonaventure’s life emphasizes that the Rule had the blessing and seal of papal approval.92 None of the earlier discussions of Francis’ work on the Regula bullata remind the readers that the bull had to be and was approved by Pope Honorius after it was written. Bonaventure, like Thomas of Celano in the Remembrance, described how he advised his brothers “to honor priests, and to firmly believe the truth of the faith which the Holy Roman Church holds and teaches and to confess it simply.”93 Note that Bonaventure’s addition binds the brothers to church-defined orthodoxy. A final link to establish Francis’ orthodoxy occurs in the Legenda maior when Christ is referred to as the Supreme Pontiff.94 Bonaventure also uses this title to refer to the pope in the Legenda maior.95 By placing Christ in line with popes, the leaders of the secular Church, Bonaventure is reminding his readers that the office of the papacy derives its authority from Christ himself. Popes were the vicars of Christ and as such, they were the arbiters of doctrinal orthodoxy. This idea is emphasized a final time in the Legenda maior when Bonaventure describes Francis’ preaching. Noting that the saint’s sermons were inspired by his virtue, spirit of prophesy, and “an erudition by the Holy Spirit beyond human doctrine,” Bonaventure also adds that Francis was granted the authority to preach by the Supreme Pontiff himself. Nor does Bonaventure mean Christ here, for the same “vicar of Christ” – Honorius, not Christ himself – confirmed Francis’ Rule.96 90 91 92 93

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See LM 4.11. “. . . ac si ex ore Dei verba susciperet . . . ” LM 4.11, FF 812, FA: ED 2.558. “. . . et per supradictum dominum Papam Honorium, octavo pontificatus illius anno, sicut optaverat, obtinuit confirmari.” LM 4.11, FF 813, FA: ED 2.558. “Docuit insuper eos Deum laudare in omnibus et ex omnibus creaturis, honorare praecipua reverentia sacerdotes, fidei quoque veritatem, secundum quod sancta Romana tenet et docet Ecclesia, et firmiter credere et simpliciter confiteri.” LM 4.3, FF 805, FA: ED 2.551. This occurs twice in the Legenda maior, at LM 4.11, and 13.9. Bonaventure does this six times in the Legenda maior, at LM 3.8 and twice at LM 3.9, at 6.5, 12.2 and 15.6. “Excellens namque in ipso praerogativa virtutum, prophetiae spiritus, efficacia miraculorum, oraculum de praedicando caelitus datum, obedientia creaturarum ratione carentium, vehemens immutatio cordium ad verborum ipsius auditum, eruditio eius a Spiritu sancto praeter humanam doctrinam, praedicandi auctoritas a Summo Pontifice non sine - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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In the thirteenth century, various pressures both within and outside the early Franciscan Order ensured that Francis himself and his official hagiographers clearly demonstrated his orthodoxy and his obedience to the leadership of the Order and the secular Church as a whole. Francis’ vision of apostolic poverty recalled the early Waldensian movement, declared heretical during Francis’ own lifetime at the Fourth Vatican Council in 1215. The clear emphasis on Eucharistic transubstantiation and the honor Francis insisted he and members of his Order show priests demonstrate the saint’s orthodoxy and willingness to be obedient to the Church hierarchy. These themes are found in Francis’ own writings and in Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima and Vita brevior. Even as Francis was described as receiving the wounds of Christ, such imitation of Christ did not permit him to usurp the authority of others in leadership positions, his official hagiographers suggest. In contrast, informal lives of Francis tended to use Francis’ nearness to Christ to suggest his vision for the Order was supported by an authority higher than the secular Church, Jesus himself. In spite of this use of Jesus in the Assisi Compilation, that text, in particular, downplays Francis’ imitatio Christi by disassociating the seraph from Jesus in Francis’ famous vision and by hardly mentioning Francis’ stigmata at all. This differs a great deal from the other unofficial life of Francis discussed above, the Legend of the Three Companions, which clearly articulates a Francis who had a very close relationship to Christ and bore the wounds of Christ as a sign of his special relationship with Jesus. Thomas of Celano’s Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul and Bonaventure’s Legenda maior, both official lives of Francis written when the Order was clearly divided between members who wished for a stricter observance of the Regula bullata and those who wished the Rule relaxed tried to present a Francis who satisfied both groups. To that end, the Francis in both lives is represented as entirely orthodox and subservient to members of the secular Church, even as the texts increasingly highlighted how Francis’ life and deeds echoed Christ’s own. revelatione concessa, insuper et Regula, in qua forma praedicandi exprimitur, ab eodem Christi Vicario confirmata, . . . ” LM 12.12, FF 889, FA: ED 2.629.

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Chapter 12

Vision and Sacrament: Christ’s Humanity in the Spirituality of Gertrude the Great of Helfta Aaron Canty

Medieval Christians who experienced Jesus in apparitions, visions, and locutions, while never losing sight of his divinity, came to emphasize his humanity ever more deeply. In general, such considerations included more sustained reflection on the events of Jesus’ earthly ministry, his passions and emotions, and the role of his mother, the Virgin Mary. Women religious in particular used creative and imaginative language, redolent with symbolism, to capture their experiences of Jesus’ sacred humanity; Jesus was considered not only in his infancy and in His suffering and death, but he was considered a mother, a bridegroom, and as food and drink. The thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Benedictine nuns at Helfta,1 and Gertrude the Great in particular, articulated a marked desire to meditate on Jesus’ humanity, focusing on his heart and wounds, and their visions and meditations at times led to their own hearts and sufferings being subject to theological reflection. Jesus appeared to Gertrude in a variety of ways, including as an infant, as a young man, a weak pilgrim, and as a bridegroom. She

1 On the historical context of the monastery of Helfta, see Michael Bangert, “Die soziokulterelle Situation des Klosters St. Maria in Helfta,” in “Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht”: Die Mystik der Frauen von Helfta, eds. Michael Bangert and Hildegund Keul (Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 1999), pp. 29-47 and “Die Mystikerin Gertud die Grosse und das Frauenkloster St. Maria in Helfta,” in Freiheit des Herzens: Mystik bei Gertrud von Helfta, ed. Michael Bangert (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), pp. 5-21; Pierre Doyère, “Gertrude d’Helfta” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1932-1995), vol. 6, cols. 331-339 and “Introduction” to Le Héraut, in Oeuvres spirituelles, vols. II-V, edited by Pierre Doyère, Jean-Marie Clément, the nuns of Saint-Paul de Wisques, and Bernard de Vregille (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1968-1986), SC 139, 143, 255, and 331, vol. II, pp. 9-100, esp. 9-20; Mary Jeremy Finnegan, O.P., The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1991), pp. 1-25; Laura Marie Grimes, “Theology as Conversation: Gertrud of Helfta and Her Sisters as Readers of Augustine.” Ph.D. Diss. University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Ind., 2004), pp. 1-40; and Balázs J. Nemes, “Text Production and Authorship: Gertrude of Helfta’s Legatus divinae pietatis,” in A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, eds. Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lähnemann and Anne Simon (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 103-130.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_014

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interpreted her visions as revealing the relationship among the Trinitarian Persons, God’s attributes, the relationship between creatures and God, and how God seeks the salvation of all. While Gertrude’s descriptions of Jesus possess numerous facets, this essay will focus on how she describes Jesus’ humanity in her visions and the sacramental and liturgical context in which those visions occurred.2 Although Gertrude likely contributed to Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Special Grace,3 she is known primarily on account of her Spiritual Exercises and The Herald of Divine Love (Legatus memorialis abundantiae divinae pietatis). The latter work, which recounts her experiences of Jesus, Mary, and other saints, was compiled partly by Gertrude and partly by at least one other nun and perhaps others.4 Book Two, entitled The Memorial of the Abundance 2 Broader studies and summaries of Gertrude’s theology and spirituality include Maren Ankermann, “Spielarten erlebnismystischer Texte. Mechthild von Magdeburg: ‘Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit’ – Gertrud die Grosse von Helfta: ‘Legatus divinae pietatis,’” in Europäische Mystik vom Hochmittelalter zum Barock, eds. Wolfgang Beutin and Thomas Bütow (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998), pp. 119-138; Carolyn Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 170-209 and “Religious Women in the Late Middle Ages,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, edited by Jill Raitt in collaboration with Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff (New York, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1996), pp. 121-139; Cheryl Clemons, OSU, “The Relationship between Devotion to the Eucharist and Devotion to the Humanity of Jesus in the Writings of St. Gertrude of Helfta,” Ph.D. Diss. The Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C., 1995), pp. 684-723; Peter Dinzelbacher, Christliche Mystik im Abendland (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1994), pp. 223-229; Doyère, “Introduction,” pp. 35-57; Jean Leclercq, François Vendenbroucke, and Louis Bouyer, The Spirituality of the Middle Ages, transl. The Benedictines of Holme Eden Abbey, Carlisle (New York, N.Y.: Seabury Press, 1968), pp. 447-456; Johanna Lanczkowski, “Gertrud die Grosse von Helfta: Mystik des Gehorsams,” in Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, eds. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1988), pp. 153-164; Bernard McGinn, and The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism – 1200-1350 (New York, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1998), pp. 266-282; Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, “Gottesbild – Frauenbild – Selbstbild. Die Theologie Mechthilds von Hackeborn und Gertruds von Helfta,” in “Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht”: Die Mystik der Frauen von Helfta, eds. Michael Bangert and Hildegund Keul (Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 1999), pp. 48-66; and Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, 4 vols. (Münich: C.H. Beck, 1990-1999), vol. 2, pp. 314-337. 3 On Gertrude’s contribution to The Book of Special Grace, see Doyère, “Introduction,” p. 21, Clemons, pp. 31-33, and Barbara Newman, “Annihilation and Authorship: Three Women Mystics of the 1290s,” Speculum 91:3 (2016): 591-630 at 592-604. Theresa A. Halligan, in the introduction to her edition of the Middle English translation of the Liber spiritualis gratiae, notes possible arguments against Gertrude’s contribution (see The Book of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979], p. 37). 4 See Doyère, “Introduction,” pp. 21-25.

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of Divine Sweetness (Memoriale abundantiae divinae suavitatis), was begun in 1289, with Books Three, Four, and Five following later, and Book One compiled around the time of Gertrude’s death, which may have occurred in 1302. Gertrude records in Book Two of the Legatus,5 the only part of the Legatus written “in her own hand,”6 that an experience of Jesus when she was twentyfive changed her life unalterably.7 According to the author of Book One of the Legatus, which was the last section of the Legatus to be written,8 Gertrude’s monastic life began at age four, when she was offered as an oblate to the community at Helfta, possibly after the death of her parents.9 From Gertrude’s later perspective, this time between her entrance into the community at Helfta and her “day of salvation” at twenty-five was marked by darkness, vanity, worldliness, and pride.10 On January 27th, 1281, however, she received the first of many visions of Jesus. In this particular vision, Jesus appeared to Gertrude while she was in her dormitory. He was “a youth of about sixteen years of age, handsome

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Translations of passages from Books One, Two and Three are from Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love, transl. Margaret Winkworth, intro. Maximilian Marnau (New York, N.Y. and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1993), and translations of passages from Book Four are from The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude: Virgin and Abbess of the Order of St. Benedict (London: Burns and Oates, 1876). “Post acceptam gratiam anno nono, de Februario usque ad Aprilem, revoluto die sancto Coenae Dominicae, dum inter Conventum staret expectans quousque corpus Domini deferretur ad infirmam, compulsa violentissimo impetu Spiritus Sancti, lateralem tabulam arripiens, quod corde sentiebat cum dilecto in secreto confabulans, haec ex superabundantia gratitudinis ad laudem ipsius et manu describebat in haec verba,” Le Héraut, II, prol. (SC 139, p. 226); Winkworth, p. 94. Several recent studies have treated separately, in order to distinguish Gertrude from her redactors, the authentic Spiritual Exercises and Book Two of the Legatus on the one hand and Books One and Three, Four, and Five on the other (see for a review of the literature on this topic see Anne E. Harrison and Caroline Walker Bynum, “Gertrude, Gender, and the Composition of The Herald of Divine Love” in Freiheit des Herzens: Mystik bei Gertrud von Helfta, pp. 57-76). Doyère has acknowledged that the parts of the Legatus other than Book Two give readers less direct access to Gertrude’s thoughts and language, while admitting that it is impossible to know in certain sections what material in the other parts may be directly from Gertrude or from other witnesses (see “Introduction,” pp. 21-30). See Doyère, “Introduction,” p. 23. See Le Héraut, I, 1, 1; Sr. Maximilian Marnau suggests this in her introduction to Gertrude the Great: The Herald of Divine Love, p. 6; Pierre Doyère, however, notes that the oblation of children to monastic communities during the thirteenth century was not unusual (see “Introduction,” p. 14). “Dum in vigesimo sexto aetatis meae anno in illa saluberrima mihi secunda feria ante festum Purificationis Mariae castissimae matris suae. . . ,” Le Héraut, II, 1, 1 (SC 139, p. 228); Winkworth, pp. 94-95.

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and gracious,” and he asked Gertrude why she was so sorrowful.11 While the vision continued, Gertrude found herself in the choir of the monastery where Jesus held her hand “as though to plight a troth” and exhorted her not to be afraid, saying, “I will inebriate you with the torrent of my divine pleasure.”12 Gertrude then noticed that a hedge with large thorns separated her from Jesus, and Jesus subsequently lifted her over the hedge and placed her next to him: “As I hesitated, burning with desire and almost fainting, suddenly he seized me and, lifting me up with the greatest ease, placed me beside him. But on the hand with which he had just given me his promise, I recognized those bright jewels, his wounds, which have canceled all our debts.”13 This vision provided Gertrude with a “new spirit of joyful serenity” and renewed her devotion to Christ.14 Gertrude’s subsequent visions, like her first, often involve memorials of Christ’s passion and death and portray his “divine” or “deified” heart as a particular source of the nuptial love to which Gertrude responds with love, pleasure, and enjoyment.15 In the middle of one Lent, for example, when Gertrude was sick, Jesus showed Gertrude “a stream of flowing water as pure as crystal and as solid,” issuing from his left side “as though from the innermost depths of his blessed heart”; the stream was transparent but colored with gold, which symbolized his divinity, and rose, which represented his humanity.16 Jesus often spoke to Gertrude from the cross or communicated to her without audible 11

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“Igitur in praedicta hora dum starem in medio dormitorii et secundum reverentiam Ordinis obvianti mihi seniori caput inclinatum erigerem, astantem mihi vidi juvenem amabilem et delicatum, quasi sedecim annorum, in tali forma qualem tunc juventus mea exoptasset exterioribus oculis meis placiturum,” Le Héraut, II, 1, 2 (SC 139, pp. 228-230); Winkworth, p. 95. “Quae cum audivi, vidi teneram dexteram et delicatam tenentem dexteram meam quasi haec verba pollicitando firmaret; et adjecit: ‘Cum inimicis meis terram lambisti et mel inter spinas linxisti, tandem revertere ad me, et ego torrente voluptatis meae divinae inebriabo te,’” Le Héraut, II, 1, 2 (SC 139, p. 230); Winkworth, p. 95. “Et cum hinc haesitans et desiderio aestuans et quasi deficiens starem, ipse repente absque omni difficultate apprehendens me levavit et juxta se statuit. Sed cum in manu illa, ex qua praedictum promissum recepi, recognoverim vulnerum illorum praeclara monilia quibus omnium irritantur chirographa,” Le Héraut, II, 1, 2 (SC 139, p. 230); Winkworth, p. 95. “Nam ex tunc nova spiritus hilaritate serenata in suaveolentia unguentorum tuorum procedure coepi, ut et ego jugum tuum suave et onus tuum leve reputarem, quod paulo ante velut importabile judicavi,” Le Héraut, II, 1, 2 (SC 139, p. 232); Winkworth, p. 96. See Le Héraut, II, 5, 1; II, 7, 1; II, 8, 4; and II, 23, 8. “Praetendit enim ex parte sinistri lateris quasi ex benedicti Cordis intimo sui emissionem quamdam fluvii crystallinae puritatis simul et soliditatis, quae progrediens venerabile pectus illud in modum monilis tegebat et perspicua videbatur aureo colore et roseo, qui alternatim inter se vario modo ponuntur. Inter quae Dominus subintulit: ‘Infirmitas qua

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words. Jesus’ suffering and death were so important that “she understood that meditations on the prayers or passages of Scripture which deal with the Lord’s passion are infinitely more efficacious than any others. . . for the intention of a person who calls to mind the passion of Christ bears more fruit than the many intentions of another who pays no heed to the Lord’s passion.”17 Jesus confirms this conviction personally in several visitations, and two of Gertrude’s most memorable and powerful experiences involve a profound participation in Jesus’ sufferings.18 Shortly after her “conversion,”19 Gertrude recited frequently a prayer to Jesus, part of which includes the following exhortation: “Inscribe with your precious blood, most merciful Lord, your wounds on my heart, that I may read in them both your sufferings and your love.”20 While

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nunc laboras, animam tuam in hoc sanctificavit, ut quandocumque mei causa cogitationibus, verbis vel factis aliis condescendis, nunquam longius a me progrediaris quam tibi in fluvio isto demonstratum est. Et sicut color iste aureus et roseus nitet per crystallinam puritatem, sic cooperatio aureae divinitatis meae et perfectio patientiae roseae humanitatis meae per omnem intentionem tuam placebunt,’” Le Héraut, II, 9, 1 (SC 139, pp. 268-270); Winkworth, p. 108. “Item alia vice circa Passionem Dominicam mentem gerens occupatam, intellexit quod quando aliquis ruminat orationes vel lectiones de Dominica Passione, infinitum majoris esse virtutis quam de caeteris. . . Et etiam cum aliqua legit aliquid de Passione Domini ad minus habilitat animam ad suscipiendum fructum, in tantum quod magis fructuosa est intentio talis hominis qui frequentat memoriam Passionis Christi, quam plures intentiones alterius, cui nulla est cura de Dominica Passione,” Le Héraut, III, 41, 4 (SC 143, p. 192); Winkworth, pp. 210-211. See also Les Exercices, in Oeuvres spirituelles, vol. I, edited by Jacques Hourlier and Albert Schmitt (Paris: Cerf, 1967), SC 127, VII, 332-422. Gertrude highlights the following two experiences herself in Le Héraut, II, 23, 7: “Among these favors there are two which I will mention in particular. They are the seal put on my heart with those brillant [sic] jewels which are your salvific wounds, and the wound of love with which you so manifestly and efficaciously transfixed my heart. Had you given me no other consolation, interior or exterior, these two gifts alone would have held so much happiness that, were I to live a thousand years, I could never exhaust the fund of consolation, learning, and feelings of gratitude that I should derive from them at each hour” (Winkworth, p. 130). Doyère describes Gertrude’s experience in 1281 as a “conversion,” “c’est-à-dire la découverte des réalités mystiques,” (“Introduction,” p. 14). Marnau offers a fuller explanation, “The conversion was a genuine one, but it was not from sin to virtue. It was simply a conversion from a life lived in a monastery and following a monastic rule, and so having God for its object but permitting other interests and motivations, to a life totally centered upon and given up wholly to God,” (“Introduction,” p. 8). The full prayer is as follows: “Domine Jesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, da mihi toto corde, pleno desiderio, sitienti anima ad te aspirare, et in te dulcissimo atque suavissimo respirare, ac totum spiritum meum et omnia interiora mea ad te qui es vera beatitudo jugiter anhelare. Scribe, misericordissime Domine, vulnera tua in corde meo pretioso sanguine tuo, ut in eis legam tuum dolorem pariter et amorem et vulnerum tuorum memoria jugiter in

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meditating on God’s loving condescension, Gertrude, addressing God, knew in her “spirit” that she “had received the stigmata of your adorable and venerable wounds interiorly in my heart, just as though they had been made on the natural places of the body.”21 The stigmata of Jesus’ body were such a frequent object of meditation for Gertrude that she regularly meditated on each of the wounds as she prayed Psalm 102:1-5.22 These wounds, impressed on her heart, provided for Gertrude not only healing for her soul, but they also constituted a draught from the “cup of love’s nectar.”23 A more singular wound was inflicted on Gertrude’s heart seven years after this experience of the interior stigmata. Gertrude had asked someone to pray to Jesus before a crucifix that Jesus pierce her heart with “the arrow” of his love.24 On Gaudete Sunday, after receiving the Eucharist, Gertrude beheld a painting of the crucified Christ in a book. From that image, “a ray of sunlight with a sharp point like an arrow came forth and spread itself out for a moment and then drew back.”25 On the Ember Wednesday of Advent, Jesus appeared to Gertrude and inflicted a wound in her heart, exhorting her to concentrate all her affections in his love.26

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secreto cordis mei permaneat, ut dolor compassionis tuae in me excitetur et ardor dilectionis tuae in me accendatur. Da quoque ut omnis creatura mihi vilescat, et tu solus in corde meo dulcescas,” Le Héraut, II, 4, 1 (SC 139, p. 242); Winkworth, p. 100. “In praedicta enim hora, cum memoriam circa hujusmodi haberem devotius occupatam, sensi quasi divinitus collata mihi indignissimae quae in antedicta oratione dudum petieram, scilicet intus in corde meo quasi corporalibus locis per spiritum cognovi impressa colenda illa et adoranda sanctissimorum vulnerum tuorum stigmata,” Le Héraut, II, 4, 3 (SC 139, p. 244); Winkworth, p. 100. See Le Héraut, II, 4, 4. Two other instances of Gertrude’s meditations on Christ’s wounds while praying Psalm texts can be found at the beginning of Book Four of the Legatus, where she prays Psalms 3 and 94 with Christ’s wounds in mind (See Le Héraut, IV, 2, 4-5). “[Q]uibus vulneribus animae meae medicasti, necnon mihi poculum nectarei amoris propinasti,” Le Héraut, II, 4, 3 (SC 139, p. 244); Winkworth, p. 100. “Post haec anno septimo, ante Adventum, te auctore totius boni ordinante, obligaveram quamdam personam ut singulis diebus ante imaginem crucifixi pro me orationi suae intersereret haec verba: Per tuum transvulneratum Cor, transfige, amantissime Domine, cor ejus jaculis amoris tui, in tantum ut nihil terreni continere possit, sed a sola efficacia tuae divinitatis contineatur,” Le Héraut, II, 5, 1 (SC 139, p. 248); Winkworth, pp. 101-102. “Igitur cum post suscepta vivifica sacramenta, ad locum orationis reversa fuissem, videbatur mihi quasi de dextro latere crucifixi depicti in folio, scilicet de vulnere lateris, prodiret tamquam radius solis, in modum sagittae acuatus, qui per ostentum extensus contrahebatur, deinde extendebatur, et sic per moram durans, affectum meum blande allexit,” Le Héraut, II, 5, 2 (SC 139, pp. 248-250); Winkworth, p. 102. See Le Héraut, II, 5, 2. See also Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (New York, N.Y.: Crossroad, 2005), pp. 302-303. McGinn here notes the liturgical context of this experience. For a fuller study of Book Two of the Legatus, see Hugues Minguet, “Théologie spirituelle de sainte Gertrude: le Livre II du ‘Heraut,’” Collectanea Cisterciensia 51 (1989): 147-177, 252-280, 317-338.

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In addition to these two exceptional experiences, Gertrude has occasion numerous times throughout the Legatus to meditate on and share in Christ’s suffering humanity. Book Four of the Legatus, for example, constitutes another nun’s concatenation of discourses between Gertrude and Jesus or between Gertrude and many of the saints. Especially in his conversations with her, Jesus made clear to Gertrude that her own physical and spiritual sufferings, which were many and occurred frequently, were to be an imitation and participation in his own sufferings and death. Because Jesus’ own physical weakness and suffering were expressions of his burning love for humanity,27 the sufferings Jesus bestowed on Gertrude were intended to be endured patiently and with great love on behalf of herself and sinners.28 Sufferings and sacrifices have great value insofar as they help others. Jesus singles out the instruction of others for their eternal salvation as particularly praiseworthy.29 Even more important is making reparation for the sins of others. Acts of reparation assist sinners while still on their earthly pilgrimage, but they also relieve the sufferings of those in purgatory.30 Such acts of reparation need not involve great exertion; Jesus tells Gertrude that even ameliorating bodily needs with corporal works, such as sleeping, eating, and drinking, can make, when united with God’s love, reparation for offenses against God.31 By themselves, these actions have little or no value, but when united with Jesus’ divine heart, they become precious gifts. On one occasion, Gertrude knew in spirit that the Lord took unto Himself all the good that holy souls were doing in the Church, and that, having purified and perfected it in Himself, He offered it in eternal praise to the Most Holy Trinity; and that, drawing into His Divine Heart the good works which were done for the glory of God, He ennobled and perfected them; and she perceived that, while the works united to the members of Jesus Christ operated in the soul a good of inestimable value, those which He drew into His Heart surpassed the others in perfection and excellence, even as a living man exceeds in dignity one who is dead.32

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Regarding the heat of Christ’s heart, see Le Héraut II, 7, 2; II, 8, 4; and II, 19, 1. See Le Héraut IV, 25, 8. See Le Héraut IV, 13, 2. See Le Héraut IV, 13, 3. Book Five of the Legatus contains numerous stories of how Gertrude’s prayers aided souls in purgatory. See Le Héraut IV, 13, 3. “Et statim illa cognovit in spiritu quod, quemadmodum aliquis ex nimia lassitudine concito anhelitu hiat, sic singula membra Domini sine intermissione, velut anhelando,

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When united to Jesus’ body and heart, sufferings and sacrifices affect the soul and body in profound ways. In Book Two of the Legatus, Jesus tells Gertrude that both bodily and spiritual sufferings render the soul as though “bathed in air and sunlight,” with more intense pain purifying the soul more effectively.33 Works of charity, though, which Gertrude prioritizes over sufferings, cause the soul “to shine with a pure brilliance.”34 Although the rewards of the soul, on account of its love, greatly outweigh the rewards of the body, Jesus promises Gertrude particular rewards for each member of the body that served him in love.35 One of the most noteworthy features of Gertrude’s experiences of Jesus is how she and her biographers nearly always situate them within liturgical and sacramental contexts. As Cyprian Vagaggini has observed, Gertrude and her biographers consistently mention the liturgical day on which her visions, locutions, or conversations with Jesus occurred. Despite the variety of styles within the Legatus, it is this keen liturgical and sacramental awareness that unites the various sections.36 The context is important enough that it often conditions

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intrahunt sibi omnia opera bona quae a quoquam homine peraguntur in ecclesia, et illa in se purificata et nobilitata offert semper venerandae Trinitati in laudem aeternam. Sed illa opera quae fiunt cum intentione ad laudem Dei, illa intrahit sibi Cor divinum miro et ineffabili quodam modo, ea in se nobilitando et perficiendo. Et quamvis quaelibet operatio bona ex intractu sanctissimorum membrorum Domini inaestimabilem et omnem humanam capacitatem supergredientem operentur salutem animae, illa tamen opera, quae Cor deificum suo attractu dignatur nobilitare et ad summam perfectionem in unione sui perducere, tanto sunt digniora, et per consequens etiam salubriora, quanto homo sive animal vivens mortuo cadavere dignior et acceptior reputatur,” Le Héraut IV, 9, 2 (SC 255, pp. 110-112); Life and Revelations, p. 335. See also III, 42-44 and II, 9, 14-15. The chapter and paragraph numbers follow the critical edition and not Life and Revelations, which has a slightly different literary structure. “Et rursum cum contigerit corpus per aliquam passionem affligi, ex parte membri patientis suscipit anima tamquam aerem solari luce perfusum et ex hoc miro modo clarificatur; et quanto universalior sive gravior est passio, eo puriorem clarificationem animae praestat,” Le Héraut II, 15, 1 (SC 139, pp. 286-288); Winkworth, p. 114. “[S]ed specialius afflictio vel exercitatio cordis in humilitate, patientia et similibus, tanto animae candorem colorant, quanto eam vicinius, efficacius et proprius tangunt. Sed praecipue serenatur et fulgescit ex operibus charitatis,” Le Héraut II, 15, 1 (SC 139, p. 288); Winkworth, p. 114. See See Le Héraut III, 68, 3. Vagaggini finds a literary unity especially in Books Two through Five on account the constant references to Mass, communion, the Liturgy of the Hours, and liturgical feast days (see Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy: A General Treatise on the Theology of the Liturgy, transl. Leonard J. Doyle and W.A. Jurgens (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1976), pp. 740-803). While not as frequent in Book One on account of the broader biographical character of that section, such references and allusions are present there, as well (see, for example, Le Héraut I, 3, 6; I, 10, 4; I, 13, 1; and I, 14, 2).

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what the content of the experience might be; Jesus’ words and appearances to Gertrude on Good Friday, for example, are different from what they might be on Easter or on the Feast of the Nativity.37 Mass is often the occasion for her mystical experiences, with some of her more vivid ones occurring immediately before or after receiving communion.38 Gertrude felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to begin writing about her experiences on Holy Thursday in 1289, while the Eucharist was being taken to someone who was ill.39 The vision that preceded Gertrude’s “wound of love” occurred on the third Sunday of Advent after she received the “life-giving sacrament.”40 One time when she was about to receive communion, Gertrude seemed to see Jesus descend from heaven while the saints drank from a “flood of sweetness” to quench their thirst.41 On another occasion when Gertrude was about to receive the Eucharist, Jesus appeared to her as a thirsty man seeking a drink from Gertrude. As I was lamenting my inability to help you, because, in spite of all my efforts, I was unable to wring out from my heart a single tear, I saw that you were offering me a golden cup. As soon as I had taken it, my heart melted with tenderness and a flood of loving tears gushed forth.42

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For more on the liturgical contextualization of the piety, devotion, and visions experienced at Helfta, see Anna Harrison, “‘I Am Wholly Your Own’: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta,” Church History 78:3 (2009): 549-583. See Olivier Quenardel, O.C.S.O., La communion eucharistique dans ‘Le héraut de l’amour divin’ de Sainte Gertrude d’Helfta: Situation, acteurs et mise en scène de la ‘divina pietas’ (Turnhout: Brepols/Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1997), pp. 85-154 and Clemons, pp. 275-341; 413-581. See Le Héraut II, prol. See Le Héraut II, 5, 2. “Videbaris enim tu, decus et corona coelestis gloriae, ab imperiali solio tuae majestatis suavissima quadam et lenissima declinatione demitti, et ex illa demissione quasi quaedam fluenta dulcissimi liquoris per totam coeli latitudinem diffundi, ad quae singuli Sanctorum gratanter acclinati et velut torrentis illius nectarea voluptate jucunde potati proruperunt in melos dulcisonum laudi divinae,” Le Héraut II, 19, 1 (SC 139, p. 304); Winkworth, p. 120. “Quod cum ego mihi deesse querularer nec usquam vel guttulam extrahere possem finaliter probassem, videbatur mihi quasi manibus tuis calix aureus porrigi; quem cum accepissem, subito ex suaviflua liquefactione cordis mei erumpebat impetus ferventium lacrymarum,” Le Héraut II, 11, 2 (SC 139, p. 278); Winkworth, p. 111. See Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4:5-26, which may be the scriptural inspiration behind Jesus’ seeking a drink of tears from Gertrude.

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Gertrude goes on to describe how a “contemptible figure” tried to tempt her to corrupt the cup of her tears with the bitterness of vainglory.43 Many of these experiences of Jesus during Mass involve an increasing awareness in Gertrude of how she might make amends for faults, increase her virtues, or apply spiritual lessons to her interactions with her sisters or with God. Mass is also the celebration at which Gertrude learned in greater depth the full effects of receiving the Eucharist and the difference between sacramental and spiritual communion.44 Mass was so important to Gertrude that on one occasion when she was unable to be present at Mass in the chapel, on account of her illness, Jesus appeared to her in her room and even celebrated Mass for her privately.45 Although the most important sacrament for Gertrude is the Eucharist and although Mass was a privileged place for her to experience Jesus, the other sacraments were important, as well. The first of Gertrude’s seven spiritual exercises, for example, is a beautiful meditation, inspired by the rites of baptism and confirmation, on baptismal innocence and allowing oneself to be recreated constantly by God’s grace.46 Gertrude underscores the importance of confession by indicating how difficult it was for her on occasion to confess her sins to a priest.47 Inviting Gertrude to think about confession as a hot bath, which might be less pleasant than walking in a beautiful garden, God showed her that both the love and grace signified by the garden and the penitence signified by the bath are necessary for the soul to be purified from sin.48 One time, when Gertrude lamented the inability to receive sacramental absolution from a priest, Jesus reassured her that since he was both high priest and bishop, he could renew all seven sacraments in her soul at once, baptizing, confirming, espousing, consecrating, absolving, feeding, and anointing her all simultaneously.49 Another way in which Gertrude’s religious experiences of Jesus’ humanity are liturgically contextualized relates to the Divine Office. Gertrude often describes locutions or visions as occurring before, during, or after a particular office. Particularly interesting is Gertrude’s composition of spiritual exercises

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44 45 46 47 48 49

“Inter quae ad sinistram manum meam astitit quidam despicabilis, clam imponens manui meae quoddam venenatum et amarum, et ut illo injecto merum calicis inficerem compulit latenter sed vehementer,” Le Héraut II, 11, 2 (SC 139, p. 278); Winkworth, p. 111. See Le Héraut III, 38, 3 and III, 36, 1. See Le Héraut IV, 59. See Les Exercices, I, 1-34, 214-218. See Le Héraut III, 14 and III, 60. See Le Héraut III, 14, 3-4. See Le Héraut III, 60.

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that correspond to the hours.50 Jesus himself provided this basic framework to her on a certain Sexagesima Sunday. Without mentioning all the hours, Jesus responds to Gertrude’s request to build a spiritual ark within her heart by advising her to divide up her day into three parts. You can build an ark in your heart, which will be very pleasing to me; but observe carefully that there were three chambers in Noe’s ark: the birds were in the highest, men in the middle, and beasts in the lowest. Thus you should divide the day into three parts: from early morning until None return Me thanks, on the part of the whole Church, and from the very bottom of your heart, for all the benefits which I have bestowed on men from the creation of the world to the present time, and especially for the signal benefit which I confer on them by immolating Myself to God the Father daily, from daybreak until None, on the Altar for their salvation, while men employ themselves in feasting and debaucheries, without a thought of gratitude. If you therefore study to repair their faults, and supply for their lack of thanksgivings, you will gather birds into the first stage of your ark. From None until Vespers, by attaching yourself firmly to the exercise of good works, and by uniting them to those performed by My sacred Humanity, in satisfaction for the negligence and ingratitude of men, who refuse to correspond with My benefits, you will enclose men in the centre of the ark. From Vespers you may reflect and consider in the bitterness of your heart how men have the impiety to add to their ingratitude an infinity of crimes which excite My anger, and by offering in atonement the bitterness and pains which I suffered in My Passion and Death, though I was innocent; and thus you may enclose beasts in the lowest part of the ark.51

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On the historical and theological background of Gertrude’s Exercitia spiritualia, see Claire Taylor Jones, “Hostia jubilationis: Psalm Citation, Eucharistic Prayer, and Mystical Union in Gertrude of Helfta’s Exercitia spiritualia,” Speculum 89:4 (2014): 1005-1039. “Respondit Dominus: ‘Arcam mihi acceptabilissimam in corde tuo fabricabis. Sed hoc summopere pensare stude, quod arca Noe dicitur tricamerata fuisse, ita quod in summo ejus habitabant volucres, in medio homines, et in infimo pecora. Ad cujus similitudinem distingue et tu singulos dies hoc modo, ut scilicet a primo mane usque ad nonam ex parte totius ecclesiae persolvas laudes et gratiarum actiones ex intimo cordis affectu pro universis beneficiis ab initio saeculi usque in praesens ulli unquam homini impensis, et specialiter pro illo digne colendo beneficio quo quotidie ab ortu diei usque ad nonam sine intermissione immolor Deo Patri in altari pro salute humana. Quod tamen homines parvipendentes, gulae et ebrietati inserviunt, quasi omnino beneficiis meis in-

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Gertrude is thus to commemorate in thanksgiving and reparation from morning to None Jesus’ sacrifice to the Father at Mass, to perform good works in union with Jesus’ humanity from None to Vespers, and from Vespers to recall the ingratitude of humanity and to offer the suffering of Jesus in his passion.52 Elsewhere, Jesus encourages Gertrude to remember that he hung on the cross “from Sext to Vespers,”53 and from this and other conversations with Jesus, Gertrude composes elaborate meditations that make Jesus’ works, sufferings, and death their focus. Gertrude’s seventh spiritual exercise, for example, invites the beloved of Jesus to consider his imprisonment at Lauds, his condemnation and death sentence at Prime, his crowning with thorns at Terce, his crucifixion at Sext, his death at None, the gift of his soul for Gertrude and for oneself at Vespers, and his burial at Compline.54 These devotions may have derived from visions of Jesus and conversations with him that she experienced on several Good Fridays. The author of Book Four of the Legatus offers few meditations on the content of Gertrude’s visions, but the anonymous author’s account of the visions and Gertrude’s meditations describes more fully the

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grati. Pro quorum defectu, dum tuam gratitudinem cum affectu quasi ex parte eorum offerre studueris, quasi aves in superiori parte arcae mihi videris congregare. Hinc ab hora diei nona usque ad vesperam, quotidie studeas in bonis operibus te devote exercere in unione illa sanctissima qua ego omnia opera humanitatis meae perfeci in suppletionem negligentiae illius universalis, qua totus mundus pro tantis beneficiis sibi a me impensis debitis bonorum operum obsequiis mihi negligit respondere. Et hoc cum feceris, homines mihi congregare in medio arcae comprobaris. Ad vesperam autem, in amaritudine cordis retracta impietatem humani generis qua non solum negligunt homines pro infinitis acceptis a me beneficiis debitum restituere pensum sevitutis, quin insuper adjiciant diversis peccatorum generibus quotidie ad iracundiam me provocare. Pro quorum emendatione offeras mihi poenas et amaritudines meae innocentissimae passionis et mortis. Et sic pecora mihi in extrema parte arcae concludis,’” Le Héraut IV, 14, 3-4 (SC 255, pp. 156-158); Life and Revelations, pp. 342-343. The ark imagery is reminiscent of Hugh of St. Victor’s three works on Noah’s ark, De arca Noe morali, De arca Noe mystica, and De vanitate mundi, but the work of Hugh lacks the liturgical and personal elements found in this passage from Book Four of the Legatus. Situating Hugh’s spiritual theology within the context of other twelfth-century writers, Bernard McGinn notes, the curious lack of a personal element to Hugh’s spiritual writings (see The Growth of Mysticism [New York, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1994], pp. 379-380). On the importance of the literal sense for Hugh in these writings and its relation to the allegorical and tropological senses, see Grover Zinn, “Hugh of St. Victor and the Ark of Noah: A New Look,” Church History 40:3 (1971): 261-272. “Perpende quia non diutius quam a sexta hora usque ad vesperas pependerim in cruce,” Le Héraut IV, 52, 1 (SC 255, pp. 430-432); Life and Revelations, p. 459. See Les Exercices, VII, 30-587.

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last day of Jesus’ earthly ministry.55 At Prime, Gertrude remembered that Jesus was taken before Pontius Pilate, and at Terce, she reflected not only on Jesus’ crowning with thorns, but also on his scourging, his exhaustion, and the wound he received in his shoulder from carrying the cross. On another Good Friday, Jesus told Gertrude, He who follows the will of another, and not his own, frees Me from the captivity which I endured when bound with chains on the morning of My Passion; he who considers himself guilty, satisfies for my condemnation, at the hour of Prime, by false witnesses; he who renounces the pleasures of sense, consoles Me for blows which I received at the hour of Terce; he who submits to pastors who try him, consoles Me for the crowning of thorns; he who humbles himself first in a dispute, carries my cross; he who performs works of charity, consoles Me at the hour of Sext, when My limbs were cruelly fastened to the cross; he who spares himself neither pain nor labour to withdraw his neighbour from sin consoles Me for My Death, which I endured at the hour of None for the salvation of the human race; he who replies gently when reproached, takes Me down from the cross; lastly, he who prefers his neighbour to himself, lays me in the sepulchre.56 The very structure of the Divine Office invites Gertrude to meditate on the suffering of Jesus’ humanity. There is no mention of the scriptural indication, repeated in the Benedictine Rule, about praying seven times each day.57 The 55

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The author claims simply to have “gathered up some of the sparks of Divine love which flew forth from the burning furnace of the Passion of Christ upon this soul,” Le Héraut IV, 26, 3; Life and Revelations, p. 391. “Si quis alienum sensum sequitur et non suum, ille mihi captivitatem qua hora matutinali captus, ligatus, multisque injuriis affectus sum pro salute humana, rependit. Qui vero humiliter se culpabilem reddit, judicium quo hora prima multis falsis testibus accusatus et morti adjudicatus sum, mihi recompensat. Qui autem sensus continent a delectabilibus, flagella quae sustinui hora tertia mihi rependit. Et qui se subdit dyscolis praelatis, spineam coronam mihi alleviat. Qui vero laesus, primus ad pacem humiliatur, crucis mihi bajulationem restituit. Si quis etiam supra posse se extendit ad opera caritatis ad proximum, extensionem qua hora sexta in cruce acriter distentus sum mihi rependit. Qui etiam se dat ad gravamen contumeliae vel tribulationis, ut proximum retrahat a culpa, mortem meam mihi rependit quam pertuli hora nona pro salute humana. Qui autem conviciatus humiliter respondet, me quasi de cruce deponit. Qui vero proximum sibi praefert, reputans ipsum majori honore, vel commodo, vel alterius boni se digniorem, ille sepulturam mihi rependit,” Le Héraut IV, 26, 8 (SC 255, p. 256); Life and Revelations, pp. 392-393. See Psalm 118:164.

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order from Lauds to Compline follows the last day of Jesus’ earthly life before he died. The meditation on Jesus’ life in turn is what allows one to construct a mystical ark within one’s heart, thus making it conform to the organ or instrument that is Jesus’ deified heart.58 In another exercise, Gertrude finds the Blessed Virgin Mary the ideal model to imitate, one whose innocence, faith, and virginity prepared her to receive the Son of God and to offer him as a sacrifice for the salvation of humanity.59 Although Gertrude’s spirituality touches on many topics, including the Trinity, mystical union, mystical death, piety, freedom, asceticism, and purgatory, her devotion to Jesus’ glorified humanity is a dominant theme expressed throughout the Legatus. It is true that Gertrude’s love for Christ’s humanity, articulated especially in terms of His deified heart made accessible by the open wound in his pierced side, is ever elicited by meditation on the crucifixion, but the heart she adores is a living, beating, pulsing heart60 of an immortal, beloved Bridegroom who offers both misfortune and gratitude amidst adversity as signs of His loving election.61 The nuptial imagery that pervades the Legatus reinforces the spiritual importance of union with Christ’s body. Since Christ’s body is the instrument of the Son of God and indeed of the whole Trinity, union with that body – through the Eucharist and through faithful and loving sacrifices united with Christ’s saving deeds – brings about a likeness to Christ and union with Christ that can be dissolved only by sin. Jesus assures Gertrude that the grace she experiences transforms both soul and body, and 58

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See Le Héraut IV, 14, 1-2. Alexandra Barratt, in the introduction to her own translation of the Legatus, acknowledging the wide range of medieval experiences of Jesus’ heart, has preferred to consider Gertrude’s descriptions of Jesus’ heart apart from later developments in Christian piety, especially regarding the “sacred heart” of Jesus (“Introduction” to The Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness: Books 1 & 2 [Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991], pp. 7-25, at p. 22). Bertrand de Margerie, however, has shown that, although Gertrude does not use the expression “sacred heart” and although the immediate influence of the Legatus was rather limited, the broader movement of which Gertrude was a part did play an integral role in the development of later spiritual theology (see Histoire doctrinale du culte au coeur de Jésus, t.1. Premières lumière(s) sur l’amour [Paris: Éditions Mame, 1992], pp. 91-98). See also Clemons, pp. 191-224, Finnegan, pp. 131-143, and Marnau, pp. 34-36. See Le Héraut III, 46. For a parallel reflection alluding to the Hours, probably antedating Gertrude’s meditations, see Mechthild of Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, 2 vols., edited by Hans Neumann (Munich: Artemis, 1990-1993), vol. 1, VII, 18, pp. 270-271. After Gertrude rests on Jesus’ heart, he explains to her that he has two heartbeats, the first of which saves sinners and the second of which saves the righteous. See Le Héraut III, 51. See Le Héraut III, 2, where the contact from Jesus’ jeweled ring causes Gertrude physical pain in her left eye.

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he even likens her mortal condition to his on Mount Tabor when his humanity was transfigured.62 This union is such that when she acknowledges that the delight Christ offers to her body and soul is such that she can take delight in no creature apart from him, Christ affirms that he cannot take delight in any creature without her.63 Finally, union with Christ’s body is so important to Gertrude that it is the last food she wishes to receive before her death.64 The liturgical and sacramental relationship with Jesus’ crucified and glorified body, both at Mass and in the Divine Office, thus shapes and contextualizes the remarkable visions and meditations recorded and composed by Gertrude and her companions. Gertrude’s spirituality, in exploring numerous aspects of Christ’s deified humanity, expresses a serene and loving acceptance of God’s forgiveness, mercy, and goodness realized most fully in the spiritual and sacramental union with Christ. The nuptial dimensions of Gertrude’s spirituality locate her clearly within the medieval tradition of bridal mysticism (Brautmystik), but her devotion to Jesus’ wounds and heart and her liturgical consciousness are particular features of her piety. Together they articulate a devotion that focuses on Jesus’ humanity and physicality both in visionary and sacramental religious experiences. 62 63 64

See Le Héraut III, 12. Gertrude also acknowledges in Book Two of the Legatus that Christ acts on every part of the body (see Le Héraut II, 12, 1). See Le Héraut III, 50. See Le Héraut III, 35.

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Chapter 13

Christ as Turning Point in Dante’s Commedia Vittorio Montemaggi and Lesley Sullivan Marcantonio

Dante’s encounter with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, as described in Purgatorio 30, is the turning point of Dante’s narrative and the turning point in Dante’s spiritual awakening.1 It is the moment in which Christ is revealed as the animating principle of Dante’s poetics: it is the recognition of Christ in Dante’s encounter with Beatrice that provides the ultimate sense of direction in Dante’s journey, both to this point and to come. Indeed, it is in human encounter that Christ is concretely present throughout the Commedia. Christ is famously not represented or referred to directly as often as one would expect in the Commedia. Yet the light shed on the text by Dante’s encounter with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise reveals Christ’s presence in the Commedia to be pervasive: it is found in, through, as human encounter. Purgatorio 30 is pivotal in this respect: it is the moment in which Dante awakens to Christ not as external to human encounter, presence, and personhood, but as its very essence. To follow the overall shape of Dante’s own journey, the reading of Purgatorio 30 in this chapter will be prepared for by readings of passages preceding it, and it will lead to readings of passages following it. The chapter focuses, in particular, on the beginning and on the end of Dante’s journey. Indeed, Inferno 1 already offers, in the way it sets up the whole of Dante’s journey, important perspectives for reading Dante’s journey as Christic. Ultimately, Paradiso 33 all but explicitly reveals the whole of Dante’s journey to be, both narratively and meta-narratively, nothing other than a journey towards the recognition of Christ as the essence of human personhood and as the center around which creation turns as love. Thus caught between beginning and end, Purgatorio 30 reveals itself to be the moment of conscious awakening to the journey as

1 See also Robin Kirkpatrick’s commentary: “[. . . ] [u]nder Beatrice’s guidance, [. . . ] it becomes clear that Dante will only complete this task [his journey, which is meant to have a restorative effect on the world] when his whole being—body and soul, mind, emotions and perceptions—has been brought into harmony with the order of divine creation, acknowledging its utter dependence on the God who first made it.” In Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. and comm. Robin Kirkpatrick, 3 vols (London: Penguin, 2006-2007), vol. 2, 490.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_015

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Christic. It is both the center of the journey and that which makes the journey ultimately possible and meaningful. It is the moment at which Dante’s poetry awakens to itself as Christic, and therefore potentially salvific, not just for Dante but – in Dante’s consciously dramatizing all this for his readers – also for us. The path we have chosen to follow in this chapter is not the most obvious one relative to the overall question of the presence of Christ in the Commedia. Indeed, especially having acknowledged that Christ is not as directly present in the poem as one might expect, it might well appear strange that we will not be attempting to offer an overall reading of some of the central passages where Christ is directly referred to. Our primary reason for doing so is twofold. We believe, on the one hand, that given the all-pervasive significance of Christ in the Commedia, a careful reading of said passages and of their implications ultimately lies well beyond the scope of a chapter such as the present one; and we believe, on the other hand, that one of the best ways of suggesting that is to adopt the kind of approach we have in fact decided to adopt. The present chapter does not presume to be either systematic or comprehensive in its analysis of the significance of Christ in the Commedia.2 This chapter, however, offers a reading that we hope might illuminate our understanding of the centrality of Christ in the poem, and provide a fruitful invitation to a more systematic and comprehensive study of Christ in the Commedia. Our two main points of scholarly reference in approaching our topic as just outlined have been Christian Moevs’ The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy and Peter Hawkins’ Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination.3

2 For a systematic overview of the significance of Christ in the Commedia and in Dante’s work as a whole, see Kenelm Foster, “Cristo,” in Enciclopedia Dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco et al., 5 vols + Appendix (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970-1978). 3 Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press/AAR, 2005) and Peter S. Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). Although not cited in detail in this chapter, these two scholarly sources are pervasively influential on our understanding of Christ in Dante’s Commedia. In addition, aspects of our chapter also draw significantly from Vittorio Montemaggi, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology: Divinity Realized in Human Encounter (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2016), and Vittorio Montemaggi, “Encountering Mercy: Dante, Mary, and Us,” in Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person, ed. Leonard J. DeLorenzo and Vittorio Montemaggi (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2017). More broadly, the present chapter finds its scholarly context in recent interdisciplinary explorations of the theological dimensions on Dante’s work, such as found in Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne, eds, Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010); Claire Honess and Matthew Treherne, eds, Reviewing Dante’s Theology, 2 vols (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013); DeLorenzo and Montemaggi, eds, Dante, Mercy, and the

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Combined, they provide an ideal set of perspectives for engaging with the significance of Christ in the Commedia. Moevs’ work provides a compelling account of Christ as inextricably connected to the very essence of the Commedia, understood as its conscious articulating itself as a potentially salvific text: a text aiming to bring its readers to conscious awakening to their own divinity, their own partaking in the truth that is Christ. Hawkins’ work offers rich interpretive perspectives for recognizing in Dante’s work a constant, conscious engagement with Scripture and Revelation, in and through its depicting for us the human drama of Christian transformation. Taken together, these works by Moevs and Hawkins reveal how – metaphysically, poetically, metapoetically – Dante’s theological vision, and therefore the Commedia as a whole, has in essence the shape of Christ: the conscious recognition of oneself as embodied expression of God’s self-giving, creative love: the conscious recognition of the possibility for one’s work to partake in nothing other than the drama of salvation.4 In other words, the present chapter responds to the volume’s overarching theme, first of all, by suggesting that according to Dante it is Christ who illuminates human being: the truth that is God which, in becoming human, reveals to us who we are. This illumination is dramatized, in the Commedia, primarily not in the direct representation of, or reference to Christ, but rather in the portrayal of the human being’s gradual awakening to Christ as his or her own truth. This is made all but explicit in the one instance in the Commedia in which Jesus appears directly.

Beauty of the Human Person. For further scholarly contextualization of the Dantean and more general questions concerning human encounter explored in this essay, see also Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds., Levinas and Medieval Literature: The “Difficult Reading” of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009) and Heather Webb, Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). The reader is more generally referred to the various works listed in this footnote for more detailed bibliographical reference than provided in this chapter with respect to the overarching question of the theological significance of Dante’s work. 4 In line with this, we should also note that in articulating the reading presented in this essay, we take for granted the inextricable connection existing in the Commedia between Christ and creation, expressed most clearly perhaps in Dante’s conception of creation occurring in and through Christ, as found for instance in Paradiso 10.1-6: “Guardando nel suo Figlio con l’Amore/che l’uno e l’altro etternalmente spira,/lo primo e ineffabile Valore/quanto per mente e per loco si gira/con tant’ordine fé, ch’esser non puote/sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira.” [“Looking within his Son through that same Love/that Each breathes out eternally with Each,/the first and three-fold Worth, beyond all words,/formed all that spins through intellect or space/in such clear order it can never be,/ that we, in wonder, fail to taste Him there.”]

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In Paradiso 23, Dante witnesses the Church Triumphant literally illumined by the bodily presence of the Ascended Christ.5 Dante cannot withstand Christ’s light directly and, having been overpowered in this way, is able once again to withstand Beatrice’s smile, which she had withdrawn from him earlier on the journey on the grounds that Dante would have been too weak at that point to sustain it.6 What gives Dante strength to sustain Beatrice’s smile is recognition of his vulnerability with respect to Christ’s light. That same vulnerability will resurface at the very end of the journey, when Dante seeks to figure out the mystery of the Incarnation and, in failing, finds himself to be nothing other than an expression of the love that he is seeking to understand.7 In Paradiso 23, he discovers that love in Beatrice’s smile and, on Beatrice’s invitation, he is in turn able to see that same love reflected in the whole Church.8 By focusing on the Commedia’s presentation of human encounter, this chapter thus takes the lead, methodologically, from Dante’s only direct portrayal of Jesus in his poem. It is important to point out, on a further methodological note, that the first time Dante draws our attention in the Commedia to the notion itself of “illumination” is in reference to manuscript illumination.9 This can be shown to be an all but explicit meta-literary reference on Dante’s part to his conception of his own art as like manuscript illumination: it illuminates the Word of God by depicting human action and interaction as having no meaning if not by the Word, and at the same time and by the same token, as illuminating the meaning of the Word itself.10 As such, reference to “illumination” can itself in the Commedia be seen to have Christic connotations, as indicative on a metaliterary level of Dante’s awareness of his poetics: a poetics centered around human encounter as itself not having meaning if not by Christ or illuminating the meaning of Christ. In this regard, too, our chapter takes a methodological lead, in focusing on the Commedia’s presentation of human encounter, from the text of the Commedia itself.

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The Commedia itself opens, compellingly, in the midst of human encounter. 5 6 7 8 9 10

Paradiso 23.16-39. Paradiso 23.40-48; Paradiso 21.1-12. Paradiso 33.133-145. Paradiso 23.55-139. See also Montemaggi, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology, 121-135. Purgatorio 11.81 See also Montemaggi, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology, 180-189.

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Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.11 (Inferno 1.1-3) [At one point midway on our path in life,/I came around and found myself now searching/through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.]12 Just three lines into the Commedia, no one other than Dante appears to inhabit the scene.13 Yet the poem already presents us with at least two instances of human encounter. Most sharply, there is the encounter of Dante with himself. “Mi ritrovai”: in the dark wood, Dante finds himself again—he (re)awakens to his own humanity. The humanity he finds, though, is not simply his. “Nostra vita”: it is in the midst of our life, the life he shares with us, that Dante becomes self-conscious. In encountering himself, Dante encounters humanity as a whole. Dante encounters himself as lost: not the easiest of beginnings, yet already, in itself, progress. To know oneself as lost is already to know one could, in principle, be otherwise. Immediately after telling us how death-like his experience of the dark wood is—even in memory alone14—Dante informs us that [. . . ] per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. (Inferno 1.8-9) [since my theme will be the good I found there,/I mean to speak of other things I saw.] In the Commedia Dante essentially wishes to speak of goodness: not lost humanity, but humanity encountering the good anew. This, as will be seen, means that the Commedia is intended as a journey towards full recognition of humanity in and as Christ. The way Dante speaks of goodness at the very beginning of his poem refines our perception of the human encounters with which the Commedia opens. The Dante who finds himself at the beginning of the Commedia is not just the character who awakens in the dark wood. It is also the poet, who by fashioning himself as character enters into a journey of conscious self-discovery, toward goodness. In his wish to invite his readers to

11 12 13 14

The text of the Commedia is cited following Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. and comm. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, 3 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1991-1997). Translations are taken from Dante The Divine Comedy, trans. and comm. Kirkpatrick. See also Montemaggi, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology, 1-9. Inferno 1.4-7.

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share in this journey, the humanity Dante encounters apart from his in doing so is not just a general, abstract one, but the particular one of each individual human being who reads the Commedia. Having awakened to his and our humanity, Dante is able to start journeying out of the dark wood.15 He starts ascending a hill, whose summit is illuminated by the rays of the sun. Progress is impeded, however, by the sudden appearance of three beasts. The pilgrim’s first encounter with other living creatures in the Commedia is not with human beings. He is still with no immediate human company other than his own. Indeed, whatever their particular allegorical meaning,16 the beasts can be seen to externalize metaphorically the inner dispositions of character which prevent Dante making progress on his journey toward divinity, symbolized by the sun. Next, Dante gives us an image as theologically significant as anything else offered us in the poem. To describe his feelings at the prospect of having to retrace his footsteps toward darkness because of the third beast, Dante tells us: Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, e molte genti fé già viver grame, questa mi porse tanto di gravezza con la paura ch’uscia di sua vista, ch’io perdei la speranza de l’altezza. E qual è quei che volontieri acquista, e giugne ‘l tempo che perder lo face, che ‘n tutti suoi pensier piange e s’attrista; tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace, che, venendomi ‘ncontro, a poco a poco mi ripigneva là dove ‘l sol tace. (Inferno 1.49-60) [And then a wolf. And she who, seemingly,/was gaunt yet gorged on every kind of craving—/and had already blighted many a life—/so heavily 15

16

Inferno 1.10-48. See also Matthew Treherne, “Beginning Midway: Dante’s Midlife, and Ours,” DeLorenzo and Montemaggi, eds., Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person. The beasts have been variously interpreted allegorically by commentators. To survey such interpretations, see the commentaries included in the Dartmouth Dante Project (dante.dartmouth.edu). For a fresh reading of the beasts, especially as seen in the light of Dante’s encounter with Beatrice, see Kevin Grove, “Becoming True in the Purgatorio: Dante on Forgetting, Remembering, and Learning to Speak,” in DeLorenzo and Montemaggi, eds, Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person.

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oppressed my thought with fears,/which spurted even at the sight of her,/I lost all hope of reaching to those heights./We all so willingly record our gains,/until the hour that leads us into loss./Then every single thought is tears and sadness./So, now, with me. That brute which knows no peace/came ever nearer me and, step by step,/drove me back down to where the sun is mute.] The ambiguity of “sanza pace”—is it a reference to Dante or the she-wolf?— enhances the significance of the she-wolf as metaphorical externalization of Dante’s inner character.17 This, in turn, enriches the significance of the image of the greedy man that follows. Dante, here, is doing nothing less than setting out the central theological principle underlying the exploration of the relationship between humanity and divinity presented in the Commedia. The image reveals that the reason Dante is unable to go beyond the beasts is that he does not properly understand how God relates to God’s creation. At the beginning of his journey, Dante is thinking of the summit of the hill, and the possibility it symbolizes of being at one with the divine, as one would of a material possession: a thing, object, or idea a human being can desire, reach, acquire, and possess—and consequently lose. Dante is thinking of God as part of creation, as being merely one of the things that are. This is not what God is. If it were, God could not have created all there is ex nihilo. And this, as Dante will learn on his journey, would be a contradiction. If one is not thinking of the ground of all existence, itself not existing in any particular way but, as being itself, bringing everything into existence and sustaining it, one is simply not thinking of God, no matter whatever else one holds about particular aspects of divinity. Inferno 1.49-60 offers us a precise diagnosis of Dante’s spiritual ills. He is yet to properly configure his self in relation to divinity. The divine is here seen as a possession, and the self is at the center of the self’s own world, in the illusion of self-definition and self-subsistence: it does not conceive of divinity as its own existence. God is there to reach but not to be, which is to say that the self is still living in pride, not yet having undergone the radical de-centering of self entailed by humility, whereby one sees what is other than oneself—and ultimately God—not as something to possess but as the source of meaning and life. To reach such humility, another kind of journey is needed than that which the pilgrim initially attempts to undertake. Dante is thus famously rescued by Virgil, who tells him he needs to follow him and later Beatrice, on a journey that will bring him to encounter the 17

We shall return throughout the chapter to the question of peace.

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damned, the penitent, and the blessed—to consider, that is, how other human beings have either failed or succeeded in living in proper relationship with God.18 This is vital. It suggests that ultimately, for Dante, there is an inextricable connection between relating to God and encountering other human beings, and that exploring this interconnection is necessary for understanding creatureliness. This, in turn, suggests why Dante might have chosen to do theology in and through a narrative poem telling the story of such a journey. As will be seen at the end of the journey, the poem can be conceived as consciously written both in the light of and to illuminate a Christic understanding of human being.

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Turning Point

The turning point in Dante’s journey is his encounter with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise.19 At this turning point, the representation of human encounter ultimately coincides with Christ as the turning point of Dante’s journey, of the poem as whole, and of the entire cosmos, which, in human encounter, becomes conscious of itself as love. Purgatorio 30 is the beginning of this particularly crucial moment of encounter. Purgatorio 30 is indeed the turning point of the Commedia. It is the narrative and theological center around which Dante’s cosmic poem spins. The spiritual drama in this canto is driven by the tension of being at the center, a point whose significance depends on a beginning and an end, which ultimately coincide, and which in the process of doing so create the dynamics by which creatures find themselves journeying towards the truth that grounds them: a state of being in which they both are and are not their own self, a state of being in which they are utterly singular and utterly connected to the whole of creation. A magnificent procession gathers for Dante in the Earthly Paradise – an earthly counterpart to the heavenly triumph of the Church Dante will witness in Paradiso 23. Painting the sky with a rainbow as it enters, the procession includes men crowned with wreaths, dancing ladies alight with color, and mysterious non-human creatures, with all movement centered around that of a majestic chariot, pulled by a griffon, a creature which with its two natures clearly has Christic connotations. All figures in the procession are temporal

18 19

Inferno 1.61-136. See also Grove, “Becoming True in the Purgatorio.”

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manifestations of humanity’s atemporal participation in salvation history. Indeed, this is not a pageant for spectacle, but for participation. The procession comes to a stop in front of Dante, thus signaling this moment of encounter as one of revelation of Dante’s own place in salvation history.20 This is indeed the moment in the Commedia where Dante dramatizes most explicitly his point of contact with the drama of salvation. We might instinctively wish to read this as the moment in which it is ultimately revealed whether Dante is “in” or “out” of the drama of salvation. This would be inaccurate. This is, rather, the moment at which Dante will be asked to confront what the truth of Christ means for him: if Christ is truth, then there is no “out,” for in Christ all creation is one. The question is how we choose to participate. What, then, is at the center, at the turning point of the Commedia? What both is and is not? What is both singular and connected? The answer Dante gives us is consciousness of self. It is in consciousness of self that the whole of his journey turns. The journey begins in Inferno 1 not when Dante enters the dark wood, but when he comes to himself in the dark wood. What Dante dramatizes for us in Purgatorio 30 is consciousness of self both as what keeps him – us – from divinity and as the primary access point that humanity has to divinity itself. The way Dante dramatizes this for us at the center of the Commedia is through shame. Dante stands in his place in salvation history and, through Beatrice’s rebuke, is called to recall his sins with great shame.21 Through this, Dante presents us with the painful breaking point of the illusion that we exist merely as breakable beings with no ultimate, immediate connection with God, the ground of all being. The shame incited by Beatrice illuminates the union that is the ground of her relationship with Dante and of all human beings with God rather than the division caused by sin. It is only in Purgatorio 30 that the name “Dante” is spoken in the whole of the Commedia. It is the first word spoken by Beatrice to Dante, when she appears to him in the Earthly Paradise as the culmination of his journey so far: it is spoken in rebuke to call Dante to recognize his failures are truly his own, that which makes him most profoundly who he is. To recognize this is bitterly painful. It is the pain of recognizing how much we fail to live up to others’ desires for us, and ultimately, to God’s love. 20 21

Purgatorio 29.16-154. Purgatorio 30.55-31.90. The narrative force of this episode is derived, in significant measure, from the way in which it subverts prior expectations concerning Dante’s encounter with Beatrice, as defined by the references to it in Inferno 1.121-123; Purgatorio 6.46-48; 18.46-48; 27.19-54.

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A “vertical” reading of Purgatorio 30 locates self-awareness being dramatized significantly also in Inferno 30 and Paradiso 30;22 it is not something that separates the damned, the penitent, and the blessed. In each of the three cantos Dante recalls Narcissus.23 In Paradiso 30 – which marks Dante’s transition into the Empyrean, the light-love-joy, beyond space and time, that is God’s own being – Narcissus is not recalled directly.24 Dante, however, offers us the extraordinary image of a river of light which does not present Dante with his own reflection, but is soaked up by him through “la gronda/delle palpebre mie” [the arching eaves of my brow], metaphorically illuminating Dante’s growing awareness of himself as constituted by the very truth his journey is directed towards.25 In Inferno 30, Dante meets Master Adamo in the circle of the counterfeiters. Master Adamo, weighed down by his dropsied belly, legs bound, giving him the appearance of a lute, calls out to Dante with lips so parched that they have curled away from his mouth.26 Adamo’s own bloated belly should but does not make him look anew at his crime, forging coin with the face of John, baptizer with water. Instead, it is referred to as an impediment (“e l’acqua marcia/che ’l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t’assiepa!” [the bilge that swells/that belly to a hedgerow round your eyes])27 stopping him from enjoying the sight of his enemies in Hell, and as something to be used against others, as he uses his arm to punch Sinon in the face.28 The damned of Inferno 30 can only wish to “leccar lo specchio di Narcisso” [lick the mirror of Narcissus].29 22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

See also Piero Boitani, “Brooks, Melting Snow, River of Light: Inferno XXX, Purgatorio XXX, Paradiso XXX,” in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, Vol. 3, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017). See also Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Literature and Religion: The Error of Narcissus,” Religion & Literature 41.2 (2009): 29-35. Narcissus is referred to directly in the Commedia only in Inferno 30.128 and Paradiso 3.16-18. While space does not allow detailed reflection on Paradiso 3, it is important to note in the present context that a further aspect of that canto that makes it relevant to the questions explored in this chapter, is its exploration of the meaning of heavenly peace. This is then significantly recalled by Dante in Paradiso 30 – compare Paradiso 3.85-87 and Paradiso 30.100-102. See also Vittorio Montemaggi, “‘E ‘n la sua volontade è nostra pace’: Peace, Justice and the Trinity in Dante’s Commedia,” in War and Peace in Dante: Essays Literary, Historical and Theological, ed. John C. Barnes and Daragh O’Connell (Dublin: Four Courts Press, for the UCD Foundation for Italian Studies, 2015). Paradiso 30.61-90. We are profoundly grateful to Julieanne Dolan for her insight on Paradiso 30. Inferno 30.49-90. Inferno 30.122-123. Inferno 30.102-103. Inferno 30.128.

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The kind of obstruction between body and face found in Adamo -“’l viso non risponde a la ventraia” [face and paunch mismatch]30—is breached in Dante at the end of the canto. Dante is transfixed—“fisso”—by the argument of the two sinners, Adamo and Sinon; Virgil’s reprimand lances his attention, and he turns toward Virgil with great shame, “con tal vergogna,”31 Virgil’s longest silence in the Commedia thus far precedes his harsh interdiction; Dante (and perhaps, by extension, ourselves) had forgotten Virgil. Dante describes the moment thus: Una medesma lingua pria mi morse, sì che mi tinse l’una e l’altra guancia, e poi la medicina mi riporse. (Inferno 31.1-3). [The self-same tongue that bit me first so hard/that both my cheeks had coloured up, bright red,/now offered once again its remedy.] Virgil’s reprimand is a gift to Dante, and Dante’s fault against Virgil is cleansed by his shame—“maggior difetto men vergogna lava” [Less shame [. . . ] makes clean/far greater fault than yours has been].32 Adamo demonstrates congestion between body and soul which dams free movement. Incited by Virgil’s reprimand, Dante breaches such congestion, as evident in his blush: blood flows to his face as the sign of union of his physical and spiritual self. In Purgatorio 30, Beatrice’s reprimand ultimately ruptures completely Dante’s false understanding of separation and division: lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto, spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto.” (Purgatorio 30.97-99) [the ice, so tightly stretched around my core,/turned now to breath and water, issuing,/at mouth and eye, in spasms from my heart.] Beatrice’s words, spoken “with sovereign strength/[. . . ]as though she still/held back, until the last, her fieriest words,”33 interrogates Dante: Guardaci ben! Ben sem, ben sem Beatrice. Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? 30 31 32 33

Inferno 30.54. Inferno 30.134. Inferno 30.142. Purgatorio 30.70-72.

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These words seem to contradict the sense of harmony and peace spoken by Virgil upon entrance to the Earthly Paradise in referring to the moral and spiritual progress made by Dante on the journey so far.35 The heat of Beatrice’s words recalls one of Jesus’ harshest teachings in the Gospel of Luke: I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. (Luke12:49-52) When speaking about the division that he will cause, Christ does not speak about interruption to true unity, but of the destruction of false harmony. Christ will burn away false peace, reminding us that his way alone is true peace. The power of the event of Beatrice’s presence in Purgatorio 30 is this power that Christ speaks of in Luke: we are not made for peace that puts things in order but with which we avoid our own vocation. Rather we are made to greet the unexpected that calls us to a relationship with life that is more radical and profound. Instead of rejoicing in the presence of the glorified body of his beloved, Dante turns to Virgil, wishing to use Virgil’s words to describe this encounter.36 But Virgil’s words do not have a place here, and neither does 34

35 36

Beatrice’s words are in themselves strongly suggestive of divinity revealing itself through Beatrice. We are indebted here to the words of Janet Soskice, in an unpublished paper on Dante’s spiritual journeying in the Commedia: “While a number of Dante scholars discuss this as a ‘recognition’ narrative, it seems as much a ‘summons’ narrative parallel to that of Moses at the burning bush and, of course, St. Paul in Acts 9.4 who similarly is addressed by name – ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ (Recognition narratives can also, in the Bible, be call narratives; see for instance Mary Magdalene who recognizes the risen Lord only when he calls her by name.) Beatrice’s ‘I am, truly I am’ heightens the Mosaic resonances. The veiled Beatrice is one who, like Moses who had to veil his face before the Israelites, has been in the presence of the living God. She ‘truly is’ and ‘truly is’ Beatrice because wholly constituted as what she is by the grace of the One who alone truly is (Exodus 3.16). Dante by contrast is shamed and silent. Although he has repented, he has much further to go. We are at the brink of heaven but there remains a hint of hell. The frozen wastes of the Inferno find an echo in the ice stretched around Dante’s core, ice finally melted in tears of sorrow.” Purgatorio 27.139-142. Purgatorio 30.40-48.

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Virgil, if Dante is indeed to progress on the very journey Virgil himself has helped him on.37 Dante not only arrives in the Earthly Paradise with the wrongs he committed before his journey, but falls again in the moment of encounter with Beatrice. He is holding to a false peace, the idea that Virgil can help him even after he has told him that he is no longer in need of that help. As embodied in Beatrice, Christ’s message of communion is in this sense a cause of deep division between Dante and his own current sense of self. Yet it is deeply personal and strongly rooted in personal history: Alcun tempo il sostenni col mio volto: mostrando li occhi giovanetti a lui, meco il menava in dritta parte vòlto. (Purgatorio 30.121-123) [I, looking on, sustained him for a time./My eyes, when bright with youth, I turned to him,/and led him with me on the road to truth.] At the same time, it is rooted in salvation history. Indeed, it is precisely in Beatrice’s eyes that Dante will later be able to see the expression of nothing other than the mystery of the Incarnation.38 To encounter Christ is not to encounter an idea, but to encounter another human being, and to become conscious, beyond all self-centeredness, of human personhood’s rootedness in nothing other than divine love. Dante’s use of shame is intricately sophisticated, going beyond its uses to incite conversion through guilt, fear, and confession. Shame can be used as an instrument of degradation, but this is not the fullness of Beatrice’s role; her role is to break Dante down so that he may realize that he cannot be broken off. The images Dante uses to describe Beatrice as instigator of shame are bitter both for Dante and for the reader who was expecting a tender meeting of longseparated lovers. These are indeed images of a stern love but, more deeply, they are images of love as unbreakable interdependence: a mother whose stern reprimand seems overbearing to her child, and an admiral, who visits the ships in his fleet to urge them on to better work.39 In the encounter between Dante and Beatrice, shame is an instrument of illumination. Shame, as dramatized in Purgatorio 30, reveals the distance between beings while affirming the union between them. The extreme nature of Dante’s

37 38 39

See also Montemaggi, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology, 215-223. Purgatorio 31.118-136. Purgatorio 30.79-81; 58-60.

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shame affirms the intimacy of relationship with Beatrice. It intensifies contrast, like pigment on opposite sides of a color wheel. But the chromatic context of the canto is a rainbow, the sign of the Covenant, the promise to a chosen people. In such context, Dante’s shame affirms the union of all creation, in a movement towards true awareness of self and towards the interpersonal and indeed cosmic communion for which, according to Dante, we are intended. In this way, shame begins the upward movement toward an ever-evolving awareness of self, which eventuates in union with the divine. Movement towards divinity is thus for Dante not a movement towards truth as something external to ourselves, but as something that constitutes us. Indeed, we had been told in Purgatorio 25 that self-consciousness is the truest marker of our most intimate, immediate connection with God.40 As if explicitly to prepare for the environment of the Earthly Paradise, there too the rainbow is significantly part of the metaphorical texture of Dante’s poetry.41 In Purgatorio 30, self-consciousness, as initially sparked in the form of shame, ultimately coincides with the recognition of love: the love of another for us, by which we can be known better than we know ourselves, and ultimately the divine love in and as which we, like all creation, have our being.42 We here encounter again, implicitly but crucially, the figure of Narcissus. Dante turns his face away from Beatrice in shame and in doing so finds his own reflection: Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte; ma veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l’erba, tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte. (Purgatorio 30.76-78) [My eyes fell, glancing to the spring-clear brook,/but, seeing me in that, shame bent my brow./I dragged my gaze back to the grassy bank.] As painful as the experience of shame is, it is here portrayed as that by which the trap of Narcissus is avoided. It is the beginning of the movement by which, in and through the recognition of love, we journey from self-centeredness to full recognition of our divinity. Self-consciousness is what makes the journey itself possible, providing a measure of continuity across the radical discontinuity of the shock of shame. In the form of self-centeredness, self-consciousness is what keeps us from full recognition of our divinity. In the form of love, it is what grants us such recognition. The self as thus recognized both is and is not 40 41 42

Purgatorio 25.61-75. Purgatorio 25.88-99. See also Paradiso 29.13-18.

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the same self as before. It is a self de-centered and transfigured in its awareness of its interconnectedness with the whole of creation, of its particular place in the flow of salvation history. The love thus dramatized in Purgatorio 30 as the turning point of the Commedia is not, of course, merely human. It is certainly, utterly human, and makes human beings as perfect as they can be, most perfectly themselves. But if it were merely human, it could not ultimately unify the human being with the whole of existence.43 The dawning recognition of love that Dante dramatizes for us in Purgatorio 30 is the recognition of human love as expression, manifestation, embodiment, incarnation of divine love itself. That is what Dante had failed to recognize when Beatrice died – the specific accusation she makes to him in the Earthly Paradise:44 he thought the truth, beauty, and goodness that was Beatrice had been broken, severed from him and from the world, beyond any possibility of repair, recovery, or redemption. Her presence in the Earthly Paradise reveals otherwise: Beatrice, like all human beings (and as Dante himself had intuited in his own early love poetry, especially as presented in the Vita nova), is ultimately nothing other than human embodiment of divinity. Her love for Dante, expressed initially as rebuke, propels Dante into self-recognition, into recognizing himself as failing, and thus also as held by and grounded in the same love of which Beatrice is an embodiment. As presented in the Commedia, that love is most accurately understood in Christic terms. After the shock of shame and the deep moment of repentance following it,45 Dante is immersed in Lethe, the same river that had presented him with his own reflection. The immersion in Lethe erases the memory of sin as sin: all is still remembered but not as division: all is seen as part of one’s particular journey towards God.46 Once again, the self both is and is not the same. In 43 44 45 46

See also Dante’s conception of the Atonement as presented in Paradiso 7. Purgatorio 30.121-145; 31.49-63. Purgatorio 31.64-105. Immersion in Eünoé, the other river of the Earthly Paradise, enhances the memory of goodness as goodness. See Purgatorio 33.124-145. Dante reflects further on the transfiguration of memory effected by the two rivers in the cantos of the Heaven of Venus (Paradiso 8-9). A fuller treatment of the significance of Christ in the Commedia would need to include also reflection on how Purgatorio 33.130-132 resonates with the reference to the conforming of the penitents’ will to that of Christ in Purgatorio 23.70-75; and to how in turn this prepares for the reference to Dante’s will turning at one with the love that moves the sun and other stars at the end of Paradiso 33. For further reflection on Dante’s understanding of the Christic character of his poetics, as seen in connection with Purgatorio 23.70-75, see Vittorio Montemaggi, “In Unknowability as Love: The Theology of Dante’s Commedia” in, Montemaggi and Treherne, eds, Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry.

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this new state, the encounter with Beatrice, too, is transfigured. Dante is able finally to see into Beatrice’s eyes. In them, he marvels not simply at Beatrice’s own beauty but at the miraculous reflection of the griffon: Come in su lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, or con altri, or con altri reggimenti. Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava, quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta, e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava. (Purgatorio 31.121-126) [No differently from sun in mirror glass,/the twyform beast shone rays into her eyes,/displaying one and then the other kind./Reader, just think how great my wonder was/to see that creature stilled within itself/and yet – within that icon – altering.] The reflection Dante sees in Beatrice’s eyes illuminates the meaning of the griffon, and the meaning of the griffon illuminates that of Beatrice’s beauty. Beatrice stands in perfect contrast to Narcissus. The opposite of Narcissus is not one who avoids his own gaze and reflection, but rather one who meets the gaze of another. Beatrice is the de-centered self. She demands Dante’s gaze and meets it, neither looking at herself nor looking away, and Christ is revealed at the point of encounter. Here, in this union of self and other as Christ, Dante places us his readers: “Pensa, lettor”. These words not only include us in this gaze, but reveal that the author takes his rightful place in the Earthly Paradise: he understands this encounter is not limited to that of two lovers, but is open to all. To encounter Beatrice is to encounter the mystery of the Incarnation, and to encounter the mystery of the Incarnation is to recognize more profoundly the beauty that is Beatrice. Just as, in Paradiso 23, the light of Christ and Beatrice’s smile are inextricably connected – and, as in Paradiso 23, recognition of such interconnection is tied to a renewed invitation to turn with renewed attention to the rest of reality – so, too, this turning is a concrete embodiment of the turning point that is Christ in the overall structure of the Commedia. As found in the cantos of the Earthly Paradise, it is evidence of Christ as the structuring principle of a poetics centered entirely on human encounter, as defined by the crucial encounter with Beatrice.

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The Empyrean

Such interpretive perspectives on Dante’s poem are deepened by the cantos of the Empyrean, beyond space and time, where the only reality is the lightlove-joy that is God. Indeed, upon entering the Empyrean Dante once again finds himself together with Beatrice by a river, surrounded as in the Earthly Paradise by wondrous vegetation.47 Here, however, the whole scene is composed of nothing other than the unmediated unfolding of the light-love-joy that is God.48 As mentioned above, Dante bends to drink with his eyes from this river, as a child is drawn to his mother’s milk. As he does so, the river transforms itself into the rose of the blessed, the heavenly community itself, which as such is itself, too, nothing other than the unmediated unfolding of the lightlove-joy that is God.49 Unlike what had happened in the Earthly Paradise, in the river of the Empyrean Dante does not see his reflection. His seeing the river coincides with his drinking of it, which in turn coincides with a deepening of his appreciation of the human community as a whole. His journey is not yet over, however. And, before he can proceed further, Dante has to undergo another moment of unexpected change. At the beginning of Paradiso 31, he realizes that Beatrice has left his side, to be replaced by Bernard of Clairvaux. It will be Bernard, not Beatrice, who will intercede for Dante before Mary, who will in turn usher Dante into union with divinity itself. This is consistent with Beatrice’s own invitation in Paradiso 23 for Dante not to fix his attention too strongly on her. While Dante does not see his image in the river of the Empyrean, he sees it in nothing other than divinity itself. In describing his final vision of, and union with divinity in the Commedia, Dante tells us: Omai sarà più corta mia favella, pur a quel ch’io ricordo, che d’un fante che bagni ancor la lingua a la mammella. Non perché più ch’un semplice sembiante fosse nel vivo lume ch’io mirava, che tal è sempre qual s’era davante; ma per la vista che s’avvalorava in me guardando, una sola parvenza, mutandom’io, a me si travigliava. 47 48 49

Paradiso 30.46-69. Paradiso 30.38-45. Paradiso 30.91-129.

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Montemaggi and Sullivan Marcantonio Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri di tre colori e d’una contenenza; e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco al mio concetto! E questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi, è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’. O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! Quella circulazion che sì concetta pareva in te come lume reflesso, da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta, dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, mi parve pinta de la nostra effige: per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo. Qual’è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige, tal’era io a quella vista nova: veder voleva come si convenne l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: se non che la mia mente fu percossa da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. (Paradiso 33.106-145) [And now my spark of words will come more short -/even of what I still can call to mind -/than baby tongues still bathing in mum’s milk./But not because that living light on which,/in wonder, I now fixed my eyes showed more/than always as before and one sole sight./Rather, as sight in me, yet looking on,/grew finer still, one single showing-forth/(me changing mutely) labored me more near./Within the being – lucid, bright and deep –/of that high brilliance, there appeared to me/three circling spheres, three-coloured, one in span./And one, it seemed, was mirrored by the next/twin rainbows, arc to arc. The third seemed

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fire,/and breathed to first and second equally./How short mere speaking falls, how faint against/my own idea. And this idea, compared/to what I saw. . . well, ‘little’ hardly squares./Eternal light, you sojourn in yourself alone./Alone, you know yourself. Known to yourself,/you, knowing, love and smile on your own being./An inter-circulation, thus conceived,/appears in you like mirrored brilliancy./But when a while my eyes had looked this round,/deep in itself, it seemed – as painted now,/in those same hues – to show our human form./At which, my sight was set entirely there./As some geometer may fix his mind/to find a circle-area, yet lack,/in thought, the principle his thoughts require,/likewise with me at this sight seen so new./I willed myself to see what fit there was,/image to circle, and how this all in-where’d./But mine were wings that could not rise to that,/save that, with this, my mind, was stricken through/by sudden lightning bringing what it wished./All powers of high imagining here failed./But now my will and my desire were turned,/as wheels that move in equilibrium,/by love that moves the sun and other stars.] At lines 118-120, we once again find the metaphorical texture of Dante’s text informed by the image of the rainbow. Then, in lines 124-126, we once again find Dante’s poetry centering on self-consciousness: in this case, the Trinitarian self-consciousness which is the ground of all reality. At the same time, at lines 106-114, we find Dante consciously growing in his own self-awareness before divinity. Significantly, the experience is described using terms that strongly recall, in the paradoxical interplay of stability and transmutation, the reflection of the griffon in Beatrice’s eyes in the Earthly Paradise. Indeed, at the end of the Commedia we find the culmination of a poetic and a spiritual trajectory that, as suggested above, has as its center Dante’s encounter with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise. Here, at the climax of Dante’s journey, we find, in the fruitful ambiguity of lines 131-32, in divinity itself, an image that is Christ’s, the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, but also Dante’s. Indeed, line 132 can be read both as Dante gazing intently at the image and Dante recognizing in the image his own figure. In such fruitful ambiguity, Dante’s journey comes full circle, and so does our own. The juxtaposition of “nostra” and “mio” in lines 131-32 also recalls that with which the poem opens, and which we reflected upon at the beginning of this chapter. In the light of its end, the beginning of the Commedia can thus be seen already to have inscribed within it the Christic conception of human personhood around which Dante’s poetics articulates itself. At the beginning of the poem, such conception does not coincide with full, self-conscious recognition; but it does coincide with the awakening of Dante’s self-conscious journey

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towards divinity. The turning point of such self-conscious journeying is constituted by Dante’s encounter with Christ in the Earthly Paradise, as embodied in his encounter with Beatrice. As directed by such turning point, Dante’s journey is towards deeper and deeper awareness of oneself as expression of truth itself, or love. In Paradiso 33.133-36, Dante tries to understand how it might indeed actually be that the human figure is painted (illuminated?) into the Trinity, in the same color as its background. He fails. Such failure, like the shame of Purgatorio 30, is not an obstacle to his continued movement, but the precondition for Dante’s journeying to end in perfect movement itself: the love that moves the sun and other stars.

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Chapter 14

Jesus and the Christ in Two Middle English Psalm Commentaries Michael P. Kuczynski

The Vision of Christ that thou dost See Is my Vision’s greatest Enemy. Blake, The Everlasting Gospel1

∵ Crucial to the medieval understanding of the Book of Psalms was its interpretation, in Latin and vernacular exegesis, as a typological foreshadowing of Christ’s life.2 Although other books of the Old Testament were likewise explained as looking ahead in both general and specific ways to the New, the Psalter was defined throughout the Middle Ages as a unique adumbration: its 150 poems contain in an especially dense way everything that all the other books of Scripture set forth at greater length. This view, which is derived from patristic Psalter commentaries, is presented directly for a vernacular audience in the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, the first comprehensive English translation of Scripture completed at the end of the fourteenth century: Þe Sauter comprehendiþ al þe elde and newe testament and techiþ pleynli þe mysteries of þe Trinite and of Cristis incarnacioun, passioun, risyng aȝen and stiyng into heuene and sendyng doun of þe Hooli Goost and prechyng of þe gospel, and þe coming of antecrist, and þe general

1 William Blake, Selected Poems, ed. by G. E. Bentley, Jr. (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 2006), 106. 2 Teresa Gross-Diaz, “The Latin Psalter,” in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter, eds., The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 427-45.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_016

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Kuczynski doom of Crist, and þe glorie of chosun men to blisse and þe peynes of hem þat shulen be dampned to helle.3 [The text of the Psalter includes the meaning of the entire Old and New Testaments and imparts fully the mysteries of the Trinity and of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the gospel (by the apostles), the coming of Antichrist, the Last Judgment of Christ, the happiness of the chosen, glorified in heaven, and the sufferings of those who are certain to be damned to hell.]

In addition to mentioning the Psalter’s distinctive comprehensiveness, the Prologue-author makes two further points related to Christology: that the Psalms actually foreshadow the full trajectory of sacred history, through the Second Coming of Christ (parousia), and that their prophecies involve not only Christ’s own person, but also those of the members of his body, the Church – both the virtuous and the wicked – who will be distinguished at the Last Judgment. In this essay, I explore some of the richness of these insights into the character of God the Son by way of two important Middle English commentaries on the Psalms: the English Psalter translation and exegesis of Richard Rolle, a fourteenth-century Yorkshire contemplative (d. 1349), and revisions of Rolle’s commentary in the fifteenth century by anonymous followers of the heretical Oxford theologian, John Wyclif (d. 1384), who are sometimes called Lollards.4 The Wycliffites revised Rolle in imitation of his interpretative efforts: they would have admired his vernacularizing of Scripture and its exegesis. They also, however, adapted his ideas, sometimes aggressively, along their own ideological lines, in connection with Christological themes. Rolle’s English Psalter takes Peter Lombard’s twelfth-century Commentarium in Psalmos as its primary source and the Wycliffite revisions of it similarly rely on the Lombard. Rolle’s Wycliffite revisers, however, also had access to later, more innovative biblical commentaries, such as the Postilla in totam Bibliam, a literal and moral gloss on the entire Bible by the fourteenth-century Franciscan, Nicholas of Lyra.5 In adapting the Lombard, Rolle concentrates on

3 Mary Dove, ed., The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2010), 58/2007-12. 4 The term is one of opprobrium, derived either from Medieval Latin lollium (a weed) or Middle Dutch lollaert (a mumbler). 5 On Lyra’s innovations, see Gilbert Dahan, ed., Nicolas de Lyre, Franciscain du XIV siècle, Exégète et Théologien (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).

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Christ in his personal aspect as Jesus, God become man, who has an intimate spiritual relationship with each human soul. In their revisions of Rolle, by contrast, the Wycliffites invest the figure of Christ with a strong messianic character as God’s christos (“anointed one”), a theme that recalls the Psalter’s Hebrew origins and that emphasizes the Son’s exemplary kingship. They present the Christ of the Psalms less as an incarnate personal helpmate to Christians and more as a transcendent ethical model for Christian society. Theologically, of course, neither Rolle nor the Wycliffites seek to circumvent the principle of the dual human and divine natures of Jesus Christ, since it is a foundational doctrine of Christianity. Exegesis, however, is a rhetorical genre as well as a medium for orthodox teaching and its literary effects are the result of such factors as each particular exegete’s selection from his sources, modes of emphasis, and tone. Metaphorically speaking, the Psalms were for the Middle Ages an exhaustive biography of Christ – God’s most distinctive means, by inspired written discourse, of conveying the story of his Son to those creatures whom that Son came to save. As I hope to show, Rolle’s English Psalter and the Wycliffite revisions of it interpret that biography in complementary but also in subtly different ways. The texts I examine here, then, are not merely attempts to parse, in accurate theological terms, the typological significance of the Psalms. They are also imaginative engagements with the Psalter’s verbal nuances and subject – an enigmatic deity made flesh, the founder and constant focus of that faith which established and sustained the Middle Ages. As the Lombard explains in the introduction to his Commentarium in Psalmos, it is important to understand the Psalter’s prophecies in terms of the whole Christ (de Christo toto): Christ in his divinity, in his individuated humanity, as Jesus of Nazareth, and in the general humanity of all Christians, who are united with the Son mystically because they bear God’s image in their souls, despite its distortion by sin.6 Elaborating the sense of such a multivalent text of Scripture is a challenging exegetical and literary enterprise.

… Rolle chose the Lombard’s commentary as the primary source for his Middle English verse-by-verse translation and exegesis of the Psalter presumably because it was compact (its full text could be accommodated in one large folio, whereas that of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos, for instance, would 6 Commentarium in Psalmos, PL 191:59. Subsequent references appear parenthetically in the text.

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require three) and also because it was a standard university book that coordinates on the page the most authoritative insights about the Psalter in order to facilitate lectures on it. The Commentarium’s range is very wide: Peter draws heavily on the long tradition of Psalm commentary dating back to late antiquity, giving priority to the older works of Jerome, Augustine, and Cassiodorus and including newer ones by pseudo-Bede, Alcuin, and Rhabanus Maurus.7 His chief method is not to set the views of these scholars against each other, in the kind of dialectic typical of Aquinas’s writings. He does note divergent interpretations and, as Marcia Colish observes, sometimes “finds the alternative views of different authorities compatible.”8 Peter prefers to identify points of complementarity between authorities and to use their cumulative wisdom as the basis for developing a number of theological quaestiones from the Psalms. His Psalms commentary, Colish argues, is his “rehearsal for the theological teaching he develops as a systematic theologian” in such works as his famous four-book commentary on the Sentences (c.1150).9 Indeed, a fragment from a thirteenth-century copy of the Commentarium in Psalmos once owned and used in England, now in the Special Collections Department of the HowardTilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, may suggest how highly the text was regarded in ecclesiastical circles in terms of its theology of Christ and his Church. It contains on its recto marginal notes, dated by the scribe to 1286, about the Archbishop of Canterbury John Peckham’s condemnation of certain heresies concerning corpus Christi mortuum (“the dead body of Christ”); and on its verso some of Peckham’s observations concerning the behavior of negligentes prelates (“careless priests”). Rolle does not ignore the theological content of Peter Lombard’s text, but he is much more attuned in his vernacular version to its affective potential. He alters his source carefully, emphasizing as he does so the intimate spiritual relationship between Christ and the Church. For example, he explains in his own preface, adapted from the Lombard’s prologue, how The matere of this boke is Crist and his spouse, that is, haly kyrke, or ilk ryghtwise mannys saule. The entent is to confourme men that ere filyd in Adam til Crist in newnes of lyf. The maner of lare is swilke: vmstunt he spekis of Crist in his godhed, vmstunt in his manhed, vmstunt in that

7 He often accesses his three main authorities—Jerome, Augustine, and Cassiodorus— secondhand by way of the twelfth-century commentaries of Anselm of Laon (the so-called Glossa Ordinaria) and Gilbert of Poitiers. 8 Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 1:182. 9 Colish, Peter Lombard, 1:178.

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at he oises the voice of his seruauntes. Alswa he spekis of haly kyrke in thre maners: vmwhile in the person of perfite men, somtyme of vnperfite men, som tyme of ill men, whilk er in halikyrke by body noght by thoght, by name noght by ded, in noumbire noght in merit.10 [The subject of this book is Christ and his spouse, that is, Holy Church or the soul of each righteous person. Its intention is to conform those who are in Adam defiled (by sin) to Christ in newness of life. Its manner of teaching is thus: sometimes the Psalmist speaks about Christ in his divinity, sometimes in his humanity, and sometimes by using the voice of his servants. Moreover, he speaks of Holy Church in three ways: sometimes in the person of the perfect, sometimes the imperfect, and at other times the wicked, who are members of Holy Church in body but not in disposition, in name but not in deed, in number but not in merit.] Rolle’s Middle English here is nearly verbatim from the Latin, with a few minor changes that alter the tone: for example, his addition of the phrase “ilk ryghtwise mannys saule”; and his subtraction of some of the Lombard’s scholastic terminology – for instance, Peter’s double use of the taxonomic phrase in tribus modis to introduce the different ways in which the Psalms discuss first Christ the head and then the Church his members (Rolle uses the phrase “in thre maners” only once); and Peter’s grammatical locution per transumptionem (“by representation”) to describe how the Psalmist sometimes adopts in his poems the voice of the Church rather than that of Christ. These adjustments make the Lombard’s prologue slightly more colloquial and shift its emphasis away from the intellectual idea of the Psalter as a biblical book that requires careful decoding toward a literary awareness of its subtleties as a poetic account of a spiritual relationship – between Christ and each individual soul, mediated by an author, David, who was himself both an important precursor of Christ and a notorious sinner.11 Rolle is less interested in what can be demonstrated about Christ by way of the Psalms than in what can be sensed of Him within them. Rolle also increases the affective dimension of his source by introducing, across the length of the Lombard’s commentary, references to Christ by his

10

11

See H. R. Bramley, ed., The Psalter or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles, with a Translation and Exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884), 4. Subsequent references appear parenthetically in the text. I discuss David’s complex exemplary status as author of the Psalms in my book, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

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proper name, Jesus; and by embellishing the theme of Christ and the Church as sponsus et sponsa (“bridegroom and bride”), an analogy that Rolle invokes from the Old Testament’s other great poetic book – one on which he wrote a powerful Latin commentary – the Song of Songs. The Lombard almost never mentions Christ by his proper name in the Commentarium, although many of his references to Christus, of course, involve discussions of Jesus’ human nature. By contrast, Rolle’s use of the name Jesus over thirty times in his English Psalter is a deliberate strategy to personalize his commentary and by implication the Psalter itself – to make them reflect and provoke the highly charged feelings, as he understands them, that have arisen throughout sacred history between Christ and his “lovers.” In his discussion of Psalm 4 (Cum invocarem), for example, he describes in a passage commenting on the Psalmist’s statement mirificavit Dominus sanctum suum (v.4), in phrasing that has no direct source in the Lombard, how “Oure Lord Ihesu Crist selkouthid has his halogh [has made wonderful his saint], that is, ilk perfite man . . . that ȝe turne ȝow fra the luf of the warld and folow his conuersacioun [way of life]” (16). Typical of Rolle’s method is his immediate application of the exegesis to contemporary circumstances: the psalm not only contains wisdom about what Jesus has done in the past; it is also about his reader’s encounter with Jesus in her present devotional experience. I use the feminine pronoun because Rolle composed the English Psalter and other of his works for Margaret Kirkby, a female recluse to whom he provided spiritual direction.12 He implies throughout the English Psalter that she and other contemplatives like her are among the elect – living saints, who enjoy a closer relationship with Jesus in this life than most people do. This relationship is more sensual than intellectual, an intuitive participation in the life of Christ made possible by a special grace. To be sure, Jesus is the health or salvation of every soul, as Rolle explains in his exegesis of (among others) Psalms 5, 9, 53, and 66, alluding to the meaning of the name Yeshua (‫ ) ֵישׁוּע‬in Hebrew: rescuer or deliverer. Rolle observes that God made Jesus Christ known to all men by way of his incarnation (Psalm 76; Bramley 275), sending his Son as the redeemer of mankind (Psalm 110; Bramley 396); and his Son shows mercy to all those who forsake their sins (Psalm 111; Bramley 397). Everyone, Rolle implies in his commentary on Psalm 9 (Confitebor tibi Domine), has the opportunity to defeat Satan and his legions by desiring Jesus: Inimici defecerunt framee in finem; et ciuitates eorum destruxisti [v.6]. “Swerdis of the enmy fayld in end; and the cites of tha thou has dis12

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troid.” The swerdis of oure enmy ere the rebellions of the deuel, and sere errours, in the whilk he slas wreccid saules. Bot thai faild in end, that is thurght Ihesu Crist, that is end of goed mennys desire; and the cites of tha, that is ill men, in the whilk fendis regnes. . . . The folk of the deuels cites is delicious affecciouns of flescly lust, and drubild stiryngs of pryde, and ire, and lichery, that raises ilk day contekis in thaim. (Bramley 31) [“The swords of the enemy failed unto the end: and their cities thou hast destroyed.” The swords of our enemy are the rebellions of the devil and various errors by which he slays miserable souls. But these failed unto the end, that is, on account of Jesus Christ, who is the goal of each good man’s desire; and their cities, that is wicked men, in whom fiends rule. . . . The inhabitants of the devil’s cities are the sensual desires of carnal lust and the disturbed stirrings of pride, and anger, and lechery, which continually provoke quarrels within them.] In fact, however, only a few people, a spiritual elite, are capable of embracing that higher mode of sensual affection – the very opposite of carnality – displayed by the lovers of Jesus. As Nicholas Watson explains, Rolle’s vision is of human life as “the scene of a metaphysical contest between the lovers of God and of the world.”13 Those who love Jesus, Rolle notes throughout the English Psalter, are poor and beleaguered physically but also rich and triumphant spiritually. For example, in one of his comments on Psalm 21 (Deus Deus meus), adapting the Lombard’s exegesis of Edent pauperes et saturabuntur (v.27), Rolle uses his signature image of the fire of divine love: “The pore are meke men and despisers of this warld. They sall ete gastly mete in swetnes of luf and gladnes of heuen, and thai sall be fild [satisfied] foluand Ihesu Crist, and louand in brennand deuocioun” (Bramley 82). The theme permeates his writings, such as his spiritual autobiography, Incendium Amoris: “Forsoth, he þat for God solitary lyffe chesys, and it ledys in gude maner, not wo, bot fayr vertu is nere, and mynde of Ihesu name besily sall delyte” (“He who for God’s sake has chosen the solitary life, and lives it properly, knows not so much woe as wonderful strength, and rejoices continually as he recalls the Name of Jesus”).14 Such men and women, despite their manifold difficulties, remain pure in will because, as Rolle puts it in his commentary on Psalm 118 (Beati immaculati), they possess (“hafe”) the name 13 14

Watson, Richard Rolle, 160. Ralph Harvey, ed., The Fire of Love and The Mending of Life or The Rule of Living of Richard Rolle, by Richard Misyn (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1896), 29 and Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. by Clifton Wolters (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 83. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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of Jesus in thought, word, and deed both day and night (Bramley 432). Their longing for and intimate identification with Jesus is complete, unlike that of the wicked man, who is incapable of uniting his feelings with Christ’s: “Abade [awaited] he noght verraly Ihesu, bot he lufis that Ihesu lufis” (Bramley 435). Rolle’s persistent use of the name of Jesus in his English Psalter suggests a connection between this text and its aims and one of his playful, paraliturgical innovations: devotion to the Holy Name.15 The practice, which consists simply in meditative repetition, out loud or to oneself, of the name Jesus as a kind of mantra, figures in many of Rolle’s works, including some of his religious lyrics (love songs, actually) directed to Christ.16 The devotion has a special place, however, in his Latin commentary Super Canticum Canticorum, where Rolle presents himself, like the wandering speaker of George Herbert’s poem, “Redemption,” as seeking his Lord vainly in all of the wrong places: Circuivi per diviciarum cupidinem et non inveni Ihesum. Ambulavi per deliciarum voraginem et non inveni Ihesum. Cucurri per carnis lasciviam et non inveni Ihesum. [I went about through Desire of Riches, and I did not find Jesus. I walked through the Abyss of Delights, and I did not find Jesus. I ran through Lust of the Flesh, and I did not find Jesus.17] Rolle in Super Canticum Canticorum and in the English Psalter ultimately finds Christ in poverty, that is, in the midst of everything opposed to the world’s values of self-indulgence. But he also locates him, rhetorically, in the verbal allurements of Scripture while ruminating on the allegory of the Bridegroom and the Bride, whose spiritual union emboldens the exegete to call God by his proper human name. Rolle’s devotion to the Holy Name was influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux’s highly emotive commentary on the theme in one of his cycle of sermons on the Song of Songs.18 Looking forward to the end of time and, as medieval Christians expected, the conversion of the Jews, Bernard remarks on the second 15

16

17 18

Lisa Manter, “Rolle Playing: ‘And the Word Became Flesh,’” in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. by Renate Blumenfield-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Bradley Warren (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2002), 15-37. The composition of such love songs is a regular theme in Rolle’s spiritual autobiography. See Harvey, The Fire of Love, 61, 102, and especially 57: “No þinge is meriar þen Ihesu to synge.” Quoted and translated at Watson, Richard Rolle, 149. Frances M. M. Comper, The Life of Richard Rolle, together with an Edition of His English Lyrics (London: J. M. Dent, 1928), 142-3.

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verse of the Song, “‘Thy name is as oil poured out’ . . . an outpouring of Jesus’ name as God fulfills what he had promised through Joel [2:28], an outpouring of his Spirit on all of mankind.”19 That pouring out, however, as the English Psalter makes clear, has already occurred in the text of the Psalter itself, for those who can understand it properly, where David invokes God’s name within the context of personal address (nomen tuum), obsessively calling upon, declaring, fearing, glorifying, loving, and praising it.20 Each of these instances in the Psalms provides Rolle with the opportunity to introduce in his exegesis Christ’s proper name, as he does early in his commentary on the opening verse of Psalm 8 (Domine Dominus noster): “‘Lord oure lord what thi name is wonderful in all the erth’ [v.1]. The prophet in louynge [praising] bigynnys and sais, Lord of all, thou ert specially oure lord that dredis the and lufis the, thi name, that is the ioy and the fame of thi name Ihesu” (Bramley 28). In the Old Testament, God’s names are various and mysterious. Speaking to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, God calls himself simply, “I am who am” (or, in Latin, ego sum qui sum). As the Wycliffite glossator of the Middle English Psalms in Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Bodley 554 observes, commenting by way of Lyra’s Postilla on Psalm 67 (Exurgat Deus), sometimes David names God in the Psalter as essential being, one who is beyond human understanding, and at other times as a Lord whom his servants seek more personally to acknowledge: “Oure God is God to make men saaf; and outgoynge fro deþ is of þe Lord God” [v.21]. In Ebreu is set here þe name of þe Lord, Thetragramaton, þat signefieþ þe pure beynge of God wiþout consideracioun of creature, and an oþere word, Adonay, þat signefieþ ‘Lord’ comynli; and for þese twei wordis Ierom translatiþ here ‘of þe Lord God.’ Lire here.21 [“Our God is the God of salvation: and of the Lord God are the issues of death.” In Hebrew the name of the Lord, Tetragrammaton, is set here, which signifies the pure being of God without consideration of creatures; and another word, Adonai, that has the common meaning ‘Lord’; and Jerome translates both of these words here with the phrase ‘of the Lord God.’ Read here.]

19 20 21

Kilian Walsh, trans., The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Volume Two: Song of Songs I (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 106. See, for example, Psalms 74:2 (calling upon), 21:23 (declaring), 85:11 and 101:16 (fearing), 85:9 and 12 (glorifying), 5:12 and 118:132 (loving), and 73:21 and 144:2 (praising). Fol. 34v. I am grateful to the Bodleian Library, Oxford for permission to examine and quote from this manuscript. Subsequent references appear parenthetically in the text.

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Observant Jews, in deference to God’s absolute supremacy and otherness, neither say nor write the four-letter Hebrew theonym for Yahweh, YHWH. Rolle’s insistent repetition of the Holy Name in his English Psalter, by contrast, is a flamboyant and familiar overture to the incarnate Deity, Jesus of Nazareth, a God who in St. Paul’s words in Philippians 2:7 has taken on “the form of a slave,” embracing the physical and moral dangers of creatureliness in order to deepen his relationship with his creatures. In one his most curious departures from the Lombard, Rolle remarks concerning verse 27 of Psalm 68 (Saluum me fac) – “Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten” – how the Father “afflicted [Jesus] with passibility” (punyst with passibilite [Bramley 243]). The phrase has no parallel in Peter Lombard and recalls a key theological distinction from Rolle’s own Latin commentary on the Psalms that he may have borrowed from pseudo-Bede and perhaps Thomas Aquinas: between God the Father who is impassible or not subject to any change, such as feeling physical pain or the emotions of anger, joy, and sorrow; and God the Son who is, because of his mortal body and human affect.22 Rolle’s use of a technical term, passibilitas, could be an effort to assert his scholarly credentials – an allusion to the doctrine of satisfaction, whereby God, according to medieval theologians, demanded atonement for Adam’s sin by his Son’s death on the cross.23 It is also possible, however, that his embedding the term in an alliterative phrase (a common mode of rhetorical ornament throughout his English writings) is a witty way of suggesting that, as Thomas Merton writes, “It does no good to use big words to talk about Christ.”24 God the Son’s most compelling appearances in the English Psalter are in his vulnerable role as Jesus the lover. In this human capacity, he suffers on behalf of men and women as a means of drawing them into himself,

22

23

24

For the phrase “mortalitate et passibilitate” with reference to Christ in Rolle’s Latin Psalter, see D. Richardi Pampolitani Anglosaxonis Eremitae, Viri in diuinis scripturis ac veteri illa solidaque Theoligia eruditissimi, in Psalterium Dauidicum, atque alia quaedam sacrae scripturae monumenta (quae versa indicabit pagella) compendiosa iuxtaque pia Enarratio (Cologne, 1536), fol. 37r. Cf. pseudo-Bede in Bibliorum Sacrorum cum Glossa Ordinaria (Venice, 1603), 2:937, Rolle’s likely source, and at PL 93:476. For a summary of Aquinas’s views on God’s impassibility (and Christ’s passibility), see Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 173ff. See, for the classic treatment of the idea, “Why God Became Man” (Cur Deus Homo) in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 260-356. Jonathan Montaldo, ed., Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer; The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume II (New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1997), 364.

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fulfilling their deepest spiritual desires by establishing, with each of them, a personal relationship in faith.

… Just as Rolle adapted Peter Lombard’s Commentarium in Psalmos for his own contemplative purposes, the Wycliffites adapt Rolle’s English Psalter to their reformist ideological ends. These adaptations usually involve more amplification than abbreviation and at times careful qualification and even wholesale excision of some of Rolle’s efforts to humanize Christ as Jesus. Whereas Rolle’s audience for the English Psalter was limited, in the first instance, to a single female recluse under his spiritual direction, the Wycliffites’ audience for their revisions of Rolle’s work, insofar as we can speculate about its character, would probably have been a mixed readership of secular clerics and lay people. The Wycliffite revisions to Rolle survive in three distinct but interrelated manuscript versions and are not, most of them, strenuously polemical in their views.25 Rather, they explore an aspect of the human nature of Jesus that Rolle, because of his dominant personalism, deemphasizes – Christ’s status in the Psalms as a magisterial ethical authority and model. As long ago as 1938, the Yale Old Testament scholar George Dahl lamented a “trend toward minimizing both the extent and the religious importance of the Messianic element in the Psalter.”26 Despite their otherwise valuable insights, some recent scholars who study the Psalms primarily in terms of their affective literary power – for instance, by way of medieval and Renaissance Psalm paraphrases intended for private devotion – have revived this trend.27 While the Psalter certainly appealed strongly to the private feelings of many medieval authors and readers, they were also very influential in public ways. The Messiah whom they foretell is a king and lawgiver, whose advent is still eagerly expected by the Jews and whose return, at the Last Judgment, is anticipated by Christians. While Christ says famously to Pilate that regnum meum non est de mundo (“my kingdom is not of this world”), his statement also allows the 25

26 27

For an analysis of the complicated relationship between the three versions and their ideological content, see Anne Hudson, ed., Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012-14), 1: cxii-cxxix. I discuss only the first revised version in this essay. George Dahl, “The Messianic Expectation in the Psalter,” Journal of Biblical Literature 57 (1938): 1-12. See, for example, Clare Costley King’oo, Miserere Mei: The Penitential Psalms in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).

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Roman prefect to intuit that he is therefore claiming a superior, transcendent reign.28 To quote Dahl again, “All four of the Gospels concern themselves not with Jesus the man, but with Jesus the Messiah foretold by the prophets and long awaited by faithful Jews.”29 Rolle’s theme of Jesus the lover draws primarily on the Song of Solomon for inspiration, applying that text figuratively to the interpretation of the Psalms. The Wycliffite theme of Christ the Messiah, however, adheres more closely to the literal text of the Latin Psalter itself, as it was established through a long process of revision by St. Jerome, and ultimately, by way of Lyra’s wide access to Jewish sources, to the Hebraic truth (Hebraica veritas) behind it.30 For instance, in his commentary on Psalm 54 (Exaudi Deus orationem), Rolle explains, echoing St. Paul in Philippians 1:23, that the just man longs to die and rest with Christ. Longing becomes in turn the emotional focus of his entire discourse on the psalm. Commenting on verse 9 of the poem, for example – “I waited for him that hath saved me from pusillanimity of spirit, and a storm” – Rolle exploits the affective potential of insights he finds in Peter Lombard, observing how the righteous person awaits the return of Jesus Christ at the end of time with an “ȝernynge of his syght, in assiduel deuocioun and swetnes of luf” (“intense desire to see him, in avid devotion and the sweetness of love,” [Bramley 195]). In fact, the voice of the psalm, Rolle explains, is that of one such person – “cristes lufere”(Christ’s lover, [Bramley 197]). Without contradicting the basic interpretation of this psalm verse as a prophetic anticipation of the Second Coming, the author of the first Wycliffite Revision (hereafter RV1) changes Rolle’s discourse almost entirely. He refers to Christ the Messiah rather than to Jesus the soul’s beloved. His language is hardly emotive at all, instead redirecting the commentary away from an individual Christian’s personal relationship with Jesus to a social theme central to later Lollardy – the need, while awaiting Christ’s return, to endure persecution with patience. Recalling an image from earlier in the psalm, pennas sicut columbe (v.7), the Wycliffite reviser observes: Þe innocent, hauyng doufe weenges, whom no tribulacioun may make to consente to yuel, abideþ in persecucioun paciently Crist þat made him 28 29 30

John 18:38. Dahl, “Messianic Expectation,” 7-8. On Jerome and the Hebrew truth, see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (New York, N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1952), 9 and on Lyra’s use of Jewish sources see Deena Copeland, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), passim.

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saaf. For meke men affyȝen hem not in hemsilf, for þe litilnesse of her spirit, þat is þe litil miȝt of hemsilf, sufficieþ not to wiþstonde þe stormy tempestes of enemyes of treuþe.31 [The innocent, who have the wings of a dove and whom no affliction is able to induce to consent to evil, await patiently, during persecution, Christ who saved them. Meek men do not trust in themselves, because the weakness of their spirit, that is their own weak power, is insufficient to withstand the violent tempests of the enemies of the truth.] Although the Wycliffite reviser removes Rolle’s use of the name Jesus, he alludes to its etymology in his phrase, “Crist þat made him saaf,” enhancing thereby the reader’s awareness of Christ as a heavenly deliverer. His comment has a sharper eschatological tone than Rolle’s, however: those devotees of the truth, whose natural power is weak, await with eagerness their supernatural deliverance when Christ the Truth will reappear (cf. ego sum via et veritas et vita).32 Neither Rolle nor the Wycliffite reviser grounds his interpretation of this psalm verse very particularly in Peter Lombard’s Latin discourse, although each finds a point of origin there. Rolle is inspired by Peter’s observation that Christ saves us when he is excited within us, by a burning faith; the Wycliffite by his observation that we hope Christ will save us in the midst of tribulation, as he saved his apostles in Matthew 8:24-7 during the tempest at sea, a New Testament episode that the Wycliffites interpret as a figure for the threats they receive from the institutional church.33 In revising Rolle, the Wycliffite author possibly brings other authorities to bear on his discourse, although he does not name them explicitly. Augustine, for example, mentions concerning this verse in his Enarrationes the tempest as a figure for betrayal or persecution by a fratrem malum (“evil brother”), and Nicholas of Lyra, in his moral postil on the same, describes the tempestate persecutionis (“storm of persecution”) that, like a physical tempest, Christ’s apostles endured here on earth after his Ascension.34 31 32 33

34

Hudson, Two Revisions, 2:558/80-84. Subsequent references appear parenthetically in the text. John 14:6. See PL 191:510: “Sed quia extra tribulatio est, expectabam eum qui salvum me fecit. Salvat nos Christus, dum excitatur in nobis, id est dum fides ejus in nobis inardescit, eet dum videmus quae pro nobis tulerit ut et Petrus liberatus est, cum excitavit eum dormientem, dicens: Domine, perimus [Matt 8:25].” See for the Augustine, PL 36:635; for the Lyra (perhaps influenced by Augustine), Bibliorum Sacrorum cum Glossa Ordinaria, 2:825.

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Even in a poem as triumphal as Psalm 67 (Exurgat Deus), which begins with God rising up and scattering his enemies like smoke or like wax melting before a fire, Rolle finds it possible to work in the theme of the soul’s love for Jesus. His version of verse 36 – “Give ye glory to God for Israel, his magnificence, and his power is in the clouds” – daringly turns the Psalmist’s injunction into the start of a love lyric, which by the way makes the point, using grammatical apposition, that Yahweh, the aloof God of the Old Testament, is to be identified with Christ the Bridegroom: “Syngis til God, Ihesu Crist, in diletabilite [delightfulness] of luf, that steghis [rises] abouen heuen of heuen, that is abouen all highest creaturs, at the este of oure lightnynge, that he the light of is grace make rise in vs” (Bramley 237). The Wycliffite reviser, however. clarifies Rolle’s theology, transforming his emotional language into ethical discourse, and prioritizes, in his version of the comment, God the Father in his transcendence over the Son in his immanence: “Syngeþ to Crist, God and man, in purete of conscience þat steiȝeþ abouen heuene, for his name is preisable abouen al heuene. Of heuene he is kyng; to þe eeste he steiȝed up, þat is, to þe Fadre fro whom to us liȝtened [descended] þe sunne of riȝtwisnesse” (Hudson 2:624/309-13). To be sure, the Wycliffite reviser concludes his comment with a reference to Christ. This reference, though, is by way of an especially grandiose messianic title for him that occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament only at Malachi 4:2: “But unto you that fear my name, the sun of justice shall arise, and health in his wings.” The reviser’s most substantial reworking of Rolle’s affective presentation of Jesus occurs in his exegesis of Psalm 73 (Ut quid repulisti). Rolle’s comment on verse 19 – “Remember this, the enemy hath reproached the Lord: and a foolish people hath provoked thy name” – describes the conflict between Jesus’ lovers, who care deeply for him, and the person who loves sin and therefore hates Jesus, so much so that he engages in blasphemy against Christ crucified: “He . . . vpbraydid til oure lord Ihesu Crist, swerand all day, in vayne, ded [the death] and woundis and pyne that he suffrid” (Bramley 266). Peter Lombard uses this occasion in his Commentarium to attack the unbelieving Jews as Christ’s enemies. Rolle’s figurative language avoids scapegoating, allowing for the possibility that Jesus’ most belligerent enemies are not outside his Church but within it. In fact, this theme is central to RV1’s treatment of the verse too, which is almost seven times as long as Rolle’s. The Wycliffite author, however, abandons all the details of Rolle’s commentary (including his use of Christ’s proper name), preserving only his general attitude of moral correction. RV1’s commentary constitutes a short, self-contained ethical treatise on temptation and abuses in the Church, beginning:

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Whanne men ben stired aȝen synne and in wille to folowe Crist, þe deuyl, ȝif in himself he may not lette þat purpos, he makeþ his proctor man to pursue him maliciously; and so boþe þe deuyl and man, whom he haþ geten to him bi synne, enforseþ hem in a creature to put repreef to God, lord of alle creatures; and þis repreef aȝen Crist is most put to hym of men of þe chirche, for in dede þei repreuen alle þe dedes þat he dide in erþe. (Hudson 2:677/308-14) [When people are roused against sin and in their will to follow Christ, the devil, if in himself he is not able to break that resolve, he causes his agent, man, to pursue them maliciously. And so both the devil and man, whom he has won over by sin, constrain them as creatures to reprove God, who is the Lord of all creatures; and this reproof of Christ is directed against him most by men of the church, for by their actions they mock all of the deeds that Christ did while on earth.] The discourse here is congruent (although not verbally like) the title gloss on Psalm 73 in Bodley 554, derived from Lyra, which describes the Church as being held captive by fiends through sin: “Gostli, þis salm mai be expowned of cristen puple, þat it be þe preier of hooli chirche for cristen puple, which is holdun sum tyme bi fendis in þe seruage of synne” (fol. 38v). RV1 continues to particularize this reformist critique of the Church, explaining how Christ instructed his apostles to be exemplars of virtue to others and how he, “þat is name of the Fadre, is stired to do vengeaunce upon his puple for her rebellioun aȝen him” (Hudson 2:677/325-7), an interpretation likewise paralleled in Bodley 554, whose glossator observes, again translating Lyra, that Holy Church “haþ disseruyde for blasfemyes doon to þi name þat þi riȝtfulnesse be excitid to do veniaunce on hem” (fol. 38v). Whether the RV1 author was drawing directly on Lyra cannot be determined. It is clear, however, that this Wycliffite vision of a messianic Christ rejects, like William Blake in The Everlasting Gospel, a “gentle” and “humble” Jesus.35 Like Blake’s Christ, the Wycliffite avenger will return at the end of time in a chariot of fire, to deliver his people and to secure their inheritance, the Kingdom of Heaven.

… Many of the differences between the literary treatments of Jesus in Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and the Christ in Wycliffite revisions of Rolle’s text are explicable in terms of the essential opposition between the contemplative life 35

Blake, Selected Poems, 103 and 106 respectively.

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Figure 14.1 Marginal notes on archbishop of Canterbury John Peckham’s condemnation of certain heresies concerning the dead body of Christ in the bottom margin of Peter Lombard’s Commentarium in Psalmos (13th c. MS fragment courtesy of the HowardTilton Memorial Library for University, Tulane University)

(vita contemplativa) and active life (vita activa) in the later Middle Ages. On the one hand, contemplatives such as Rolle, who lived as a hermit, emphasize a solitary, interior encounter with God as the basis for the spiritual life. On the other hand, actives such as the Lollards – many of whom were secular clerics, but not in religion—locate the ground of the Christian faith in a communal, exterior engagement with God, by way of reformist thoughts, words, and deeds. Nevertheless, just as these two versions of the spiritual life were not mutually exclusive, neither are the two visions of Jesus Christ discussed in this essay, Blake’s Everlasting Gospel notwithstanding. Both visions derive from profound, exegetical reflection on the same biblical text, the Psalms. Rolle’s Jesus and the Wycliffite Christ are after all found together in the four canonical Gospels, too – in the New Testament fulfillment of the Psalter prophecies that, medieval Franciscans were fond of observing, were often on Christ’s lips. Christ quotes the Psalms both in confidence (“The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner”) and in despair (“O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me?”).36 The different aspects of the Son of God’s human character, as the world’s heroic champion and the soul’s ardent suitor, are reconciled rather than opposed in the Psalter’s comprehensive verses. 36

Ps. 117:22 at Matt. 21:42 and Ps. 21:2 at Matt. 27:46 respectively.

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Chapter 15

Jesus as ‘Mother’ in Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love Julia Bolton Holloway

Julian was a woman contemplative who lived in Norwich, England, during the reigns of Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V (1342-c.1416), and who became an anchoress at St Julian’s Church, overseen by Benedictine Carrow Priory, both close by the River Wensum. Forbidden to preach or teach, particularly under Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions,1 she writes a samizdat text of inclusive theology, that is consonant with Judaism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and proto-Protestant Wycliffism,2 sharing with us, her readers, her experiencing of God’s androgynous body knit to her own, in an autobiography she calls the Showing of Love. This for centuries had to be hidden and concealed by Brigittine and Benedictine nuns in exile from England, until it was published in 1670 by the Benedictine convert, Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.3 Few versions of the text, composed by Julian at different dates, survive. In this essay, the Westminster Cathedral Manuscript, now at Westminster Abbey, will be cited as W, followed by its foliation, the Paris Manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40), as P, followed by its foliation, its rubricated passages here in bold, the Sloane Manuscript (British Library, Sloane 2499), as S1, followed by its foliation, these being of the Long Text originally written in 1387-93, the Amherst Manuscript (British Library Additional 37790), of the Short Text originally written in 1413, as A, followed by its foliation, using the diplomatic edition by Sr. Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, and Julia Bolton Holloway.4

1 Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864. 2 This can be concluded from her endorsement by Martin Buber, Brant Pelphrey, Thomas Merton, and T.S. Eliot, Jew, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican. 3 Julia Bolton Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, O.S.B., Analecta Cartusiana 35:20, Spiritualität Heute und Gestern (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2008), pp. 248-324. 4 Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, ed. Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P. and Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), Biblioteche e Archivi 8.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_017

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This chapter will discuss the several Epiphanies, the bodily Showings, of Jesus that Julian describes in the Showing of Love. In the first we see and hear in synaesthesia Mary singing the Advent Antiphon, “O Sapientia” to her as-yetunborn Son within her, as seen, heard and felt through Julian’s senses, writing in the first person, and thus experienced virtually also through our own senses, in a Russian-dolls, mise en abyme fashion, of Christ within us, even within our womb, as we read. In the second scribal and iconographical Epiphany we witness the trauma of his Crucifixion, again through Julian’s perceptions, both of her “understanding,” and bodily as she gazes upon the as-if-menstrual/childbirthing brown and red bleeding Crucifix held before her eyes,5 but also filtered through those of Pseudo-Dionysius’ “Epistle to Polycarp” supposedly witnessing the world convulsing in earthquakes and eclipses at that event,6 while reaching back to the women’s and men’s Gospels’ witnessing, as an iconographical “Sacred Conversation.” The third Epiphany, more drama than text, is in the Parable of the Lord and the Servant where the Lord is garbed in Aaron’s and the Virgin’s azure blue, seated on the ground in the Wilderness in humility, while the Servant, who begins as Adam, Everyman and Everywoman, evolves into Jesus, first in filthy rags, standing, running, falling, then finally enthroned in shot-silk rainbow hues, God’s Son, beside God, and who includes and encloses us, writer and reader, in the Royal Kingdom of Priests,7 we being “Even Christians,” male and female, with him. The fourth Epiphany is where we find Jesus sitting in Julian’s/our soul, as King, as Bishop, as Mother, as Brother, this vision enveloped, before and after, with Julian’s terrifying hallucination of the male fiend with red hair attempting to strangle her to death. The two colors dominating the text are first red, of mortality, then blue, of eternity, not unlike the vivid twining colours of the umbilical cord at childbirth, colors emphatically used in handwritten medieval manuscript before the cheapness of the black and white printing press. Each Epiphany, each Showing, stresses the body, of flesh and of blood, of the senses, of men, of women. Each equates the mortal body and the infinite soul of Jesus as including us, both male and female.

5 Maria R. Lichtman, “‘I desired a bodylye sight’: Julian of Norwich and the Body,” Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 12-19; on Julian’s Judaism, see V.D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London: Jewish Historical Society, 1967), passim; Julia Bolton Holloway, Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. 51-74. 6 Pseudo-Dionysius, “Epistle to Polycarp,” in The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 266-269. 7 Exodus 19.6, 1 Peter 2.9, Hebrews, Revelation 1.6.

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Wisdom

The Westminster Manuscript8 begins with the obstetrical worshipping of the not-yet-born Child in the womb of the Virgin Mother, the echo of the Advent O Antiphon, “O Sapientia!,” “O Wisdom!,” which Mary addresses to her gestating Son within her, paradoxically herself as God’s Daughter, Wisdom, who played at God’s side at the Creating of the World.9 Julian’s Westminster incipit resonates scribally and iconographically with Marguerite Porete’s opening of The Mirror of Simple Souls in Julian’s Amherst Manuscript,10 Arnolfo di Cambio’s ‘Dormition of the Virgin’ that Dante saw on the left portal of Santa Reparata,11 Dante Alighieri’s “Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio/Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son” to that image,12 Geoffrey Chaucer’s Second Nun’s translation of it into Julian’s English,13 and Birgitta of Sweden’s vision of the Virgin birthing her Child in the Bethlehem cave, declaring to him, who humbly lies on the bare earth, “Bene veneris, Deus meus, Dominus meus et filius meus,”14 in which they give us Mary as both God’s Mother and God’s Daughter, as “oned” to her Son, 8

9

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11 12

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14

The Westminster Manuscript, now at Westminster Abbey, was edited by Sr. Anna Maria Reynolds in her Leeds University doctoral thesis in 1956, following its discovery by Betty Foucard. I rediscovered it and began its re-edition, 1991. Proverbs 8.22-31, Wisdom of Solomon 8.1, Luke 2.19. For the Romanesque iconography of the Madonna and her Child seated on the Throne of Wisdom, see Ilene H. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972). “I Creature made of the makere. Bi me. that the makere hase made of hym this Boke. Why it is I knawe nouʒt. nor I kepe noʒt witt. For why I awe it noʒt. it Suffices me þt it is. Where ynne I may knawe the diuine wisdom. And in hope warante it,” A138v. Arnolfo di Cambio, “Dormition of the Virgin,” in Arnolfo alle origine del Rinascimento fiorentino, pp. 260-1, Plate 2:16 (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2005). Dante Alighieri, Paradiso XXXIII.1-6, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), p. 543: “Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,/ umile e alta più che creatura,/ termine fisso d’eterno consiglio,/ tu sei colei che l’umana natura/ nobilitasti sì, che’l suo fattore/ non disdegno di farsi sua fattura.” Geoffrey Chaucer, “Second Nun’s Prologue,” Canterbury Tales, The Riverside Chaucer, eds. Larry Benson, F.N. Robinson (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 262. Lines 36-49 are extremely close to Julian’s theology, as well as brilliantly translating Dante’s invocation: “Thow Mayde and Mooder, daughter of thy Sone,/ Thow welle of mercy, sinful soules cure,/ In whom that God for bountee chees to wone,/ Thow humble, and heigh over every creature,/ That no desdeyn the Maker hadde of kynde/ His Sone in blood and flesh to clothe and wynde./ Withinne the cloister blissful of thy sydis/ Took mannes shap the eterneel love and pees,/ That of the trine compass lord and gyde is,/ Whom erthe and see and hevene oute of relees/ Baar of thy body—and dweltest mayden pure—/ The Creatour of every creature.” Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes VII.21.24, ed. Birger Bergh, http://www.umilta.net/bk7 .html.

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as we enter with Julian into the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel of Luke. Oure gracious & goode/ lorde god shewed me in/ party þe wisdom & þe trewthe/ of þe soule of oure blessed lady./ saynt mary. where in I vnder/stood þe reuerent beholdynge/ þat she behelde her god þat is/ her maker. maruelynge with/ grete reuerence þat he wolde/ be borne of her þat was a/ simple creature of his makyng. for this was her meruelyng./ þat he þt was her maker wolde/ be borne of her. þt is made. (W72v) [Our gracious and good Lord God showed me in part the wisdom and the truth of the soul of our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, wherein I understood the reverent beholding, that she beheld her God who is her maker, marvelling with great reverence that he would be born of her that was a simple person of his making. For this was her marveling, that he who was her maker would be born of her who is made.] The other Showing of Love versions, in the Paris, Sloane and Amherst Manuscripts, repeat this, the Sloane and Paris ‘Long Text’ Manuscripts noting often that this is Julian’s ‘First’ Showing: ¶ In this he brought/ our ladie sainct mari to my vnderstanding,/ I saw her ghostly in bodily lyknes a sim/ple mayden and a meeke yong of age/ a little waxen aboue a chylde in the sta/ture as she was when she conceivede,/ ¶Also god shewed me in part the wi/sdom and the truth of her sowle. Wher/in I vnderstode the reuerent beholding/ that she beheld her god. that is her ma/ker. marvayling wt great reuerence/ that he would be borne of her that/ was a symple creature of his making/ ¶ ffor this was her marvayling that/ he that was her maker would be borne/ of her that was made, ¶And this/ wisdome and truth knowing the gre/atnes of her maker. And the littlehead/ of her selfe that is made. made her to say/ full meekely to gabriell. Loo me here/ gods handmaiden, ¶ In this sight/ I did vnderstand verily that she is more/ then all that god made beneth her./ in wordiness and in fullhead. for aboue/ her is nothing that is made. but the/ blessed manhood of Christ. as to my syght (P8-9) [In this he brought our Lady Saint Mary to my understanding. I saw her ghostly in bodily likeness, a simple maiden and meek, young in age, grown a little above a child in stature, as she was when she conceived. Also God showed me in part the wisdom and the truth of her soul,

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wherein I saw the reverent beholding with which she gazed upon her God, who is her Maker, marveling with great reverence that he would be born of her who was a simple creature of his making. For this was her marveling that he would be born of her who was made. And this wisdom and truth, knowing the greatness of her maker and the littleness of herself who is made, made her to say full meekly to Gabriel, “Behold me here, God’s handmaiden.” In this sight I understood truly that she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and completeness for above her there is nothing that is made but the blessed manhood of Christ to my sight.] and in the Amherst ‘Short Text’ Manuscript: In this. god brought owre ladye to myne/ vnderstandynge. I sawe hir gastelye in bodilye lyekenes A Sympille/ maydene & ameeke ʒonge of Age in the stature that scho was wh/en scho conceyvede. Also god schewyd me in parte the wisdomm & the trowthe of hir saule. Whare yn I vndyrstode reuerente beholdynge þt/ sche beheld hyr god that ys hir makere mervelande with grete re/uerence that he wolde be borne of hir that was Asympille creature/ of his makynge. ffor this was hir mervelynge that he that was hir/ makere walde be borne of hir that was asympille creature of his/ makynge. And this wysdom of trowthe & knawande the gretnes of/ hir makere and the lytelle heede of hir selfe that ys made made hir for to/ saye mekelye to the Angelle gabrielle loo me here goddys hande may/dene. In this sight. I sawe sothfastlye that scho ys mare than alle þat/ god made benethe hir in worthynes & in fulheede. ffor Abovene hir/ ys nothynge that is made botte the blyssede manhede of criste (A99v.4-20) [In this God brought our Lady to my understanding. I saw her spiritually, in bodily likeness, a simple maiden and meek, young of age, in the stature that she was when she conceived. Also God showed me in part the wisdom and the truth of her soul, wherein I understood the reverent beholding wherewith she beheld her God that is her Maker, marveling with great reverence that He that was her Maker would be born of her who was a simple creature of his making. And this wisdom of truth, this knowing the greatness of her Maker and the littleness of herself that is made, made her to say meekly to the Angel Gabriel: “Lo, me here, God’s handmaiden!” In this sight I saw truly that she is greater than all that God

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Holloway has made beneath her in worthiness and in fullness of grace. For above her is nothing that is made but the blessed Manhood of Christ.]

The Long Text constantly refers back to this scene as its First Showing (P8-9, 11-11v, 13v-14, 47v-49, concluding with P128v: And that shewde he in the furst/ wher he brought þt meke maydyn before the eye of my vnderstondyng in þe sympyll stature as she was whan she conceyved. that is to sey oure hye god the souereyn wysdom of all. In this lowe place he arrayed hym and dyght hym all redy in oure poure flessch hym selfe to do the service and the officie of moderhode in alle thing [And that showed he in the First Showing, where he brought that meek maiden before the eye of my understanding, in the simple stature she was when she conceived. That is to say, our high God, the sovereign Wisdom of all, in this lowly place arrayed himself and clothed and garbed already in our poor flesh himself to do the service and office of Motherhood in all things.] However, it is not given as the First Showing in the opening index of the Paris Manuscript by the male editor who presents that instead as the Crowning of Thorns (P1). This contemplating by Mary on the Word, both as “Wisdom” and “Truth,” mirrored in turn again and again by Julian in her texts, and now also by ourselves who read her Showing, carefully reflects Luke’s Gospel 1.29, 2.19, 2.51, on Mary as she ponders on all these things in her heart, the Word increasing in wisdom and stature. This “Sacred Conversation” is an intensely feminist, obstetrical, maternal form of lectio divina. It is centred on gestation and birth, in fact, on the Body within the Body, on Life. Similarly, and for which Chancellor Jean Gerson of the University of Paris sought to condemn her, Birgitta of Sweden had written “Four Prayers,” of which the third is addressed to the Body of Christ, the fourth to the Body of Mary.15 Edmund College and James Walsh, editing this Westminster Manuscript, sneered at Julian’s repetitious words: þat she behelde her god þat is/ her maker. maruelynge with/ grete reuerence þat he wolde/ be borne of her þat was a/ simple creature of his 15

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makyng./ for this was her meruelyng./ þat he þt was her maker wolde/ be borne of her. þt is made, [that she saw her God who created her, marvelling with great reverence that he would be born of her who was a mere creating of his making. For this was her marvelling, that he who was her creator would be born of her who is made.] as ‘careless dittography’,16 and Hugh Kempster considered this Marian imagery unworthy of Julian’s virile Christology and therefore considered it an interpolation to her text by another.17 But it emphatically recurs in the Paris and Amherst Manuscripts, only being excised from the seventeenth-century Sloane Manuscripts, written by English Benedictine nuns exiled on the Continent for their Catholic faith.18

2

Crucifixion

Then, in the Long and Short Texts, though not in the Westminster Text, we have Julian’s more conventional medieval vision of the bleeding and intensely suffering Body of Christ at the Crucifixion but coupled with the less conventional and more homely similes of rain dripping from eaves, of the scales of 16

17

18

Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations: A Progress Report,” Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 406-7; A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, eds. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), I.214; II.297. Hugh Kempster, “Julian of Norwich: The Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love,” Mystics Quarterly 23 (December, 1997), 177-245; “A Question of Audience: The Westminster Text and Fifteenth-Century Reception of Julian of Norwich,” Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra J. McEntire (New York, N.Y.: Garland, 1998), pp. 272-283. For the polemics concerning Julian between Protestant and Catholic scholars see Alexandra Barratt, “How Many Children Had Julian of Norwich? Editions, Translations, and Versions of her Revelations,” Vox Mystica: Essays in Honour of Valerie Lagorio, ed. Ann Clark Bartlett, Thomas Bestul, Janet Goebel and William F. Pollard (Cambridge: Brewe, 1993), pp. 27-37; Nancy Bradley Warren, The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700 (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2010), 66-95, presents, based on Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1999), the Catholic argument. The Orthodox perception is best studied by Fr Brendan Pelphrey, Lo, How I Love Thee! Divine Love in Julian of Norwich (Spring Deer Studio, 2012), while Julia Bolton Holloway presents her Judaism in Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 51-74. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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herring, of a tawny board, and of cloth hanging in the wind, some of which can be traced to the writings of Birgitta of Sweden, and others to the executing by hanging, drawing and quartering of the “King of the Commons,” of John Litester and the Despenser Retable, at the Peasants’ Revolt, fuelled by Wyclif’s egalitarian, evangelical Lollardism.19 These visions occur to her while she and those around her thought her to be dying. She had already received the Last Rites of the Church, and now the Crucifix was brought to her to comfort her. This was customary in the Middle Ages, as we see in the Upton House grisaille painting by Pieter Breughel the Elder of the ‘Dormition of the Virgin’, where, likewise dying, she gazes upon the Crucifix–of her dying Son.20 In the quotations that follow I will show how Julian surrealistically collapses time and space, Annunciation and Crucifixion, England and Israel, in her narration of her Showing of Love, that she shares with her equally Christian (“evyn christen” [Even Christian]) readers who are thus “oned” with her in “Sacred Contemplations.” Julian had stated at the opening of her Long Text that she desired three gifts, the “first was mynd of the passion” [“experience of the Passion”] (P3, 3v, 4, 7; 1 Corinthians 2.16); the second, bodily sickness; the third, three wounds, which turn out to be St Cecilia’s (A97v). Medieval devotional practices for women consisted of such “Sacred Conversations,” of placing oneself contemplatively—in one’s “vnderstand/ing” [understanding] (P8)—at the scenes of the birth and death of Christ by identifying with the Virgin or with Mary Magdalene and other women saints, becoming them, to become within the presence of God, the Shekinah, a practice observed by St Jerome in his Epistle CVIII concerning St Paula at the Holy Places where she went on pilgrimage,21 he stating also that this could as easily be obtained in Britain as in Jerusalem.22 In chapter four (P.7-7v), Julian’s prayer for the experiencing, in mind, of the Passion, is startlingly granted during that bodily sickness she had also desired: And in this sodeynly I saw the reed/ bloud rynnyng Downe from vn/der the garlande hote. and freshly/ plentuously and liuely right as it was/ in the tyme that the garland of thornes/ was pressed on his blessed head. 19 20 21

22

Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), 26-27. Pieter Breughel the Elder, “Dormition of the Virgin,” Upton House, Bearsted Collection, National Trust. Jerome, Epistola CVIII, Opus Epistolarum diui Hieronymiu Stridonensis, una cum scholiis Des. Erasmi Rotterdami, denuo per illum non vulgari recognitum, correctum ac locupletum (Paris: Guillard, 1546). Jerome, Epistola LVIII: “Et de Hierosolymis et de Britannia aequaliter patet aula coelestis: regnum enim dei intra nos est.” - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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[And in this suddenly I saw the red blood running down from under the garland, hot and fresh, plenteously and lively, just as it was in the time when the garland of thorns was pressed on his blessed head.] The Long Text, next, surrealistically, switches to the pregnant St Mary, then even further back in time to the Annunciation. The following chapter (P9), glancingly returns to the flowing blood of the Crucifixion, In this same tyme that I saw this/ sight of the head bleidyng our go/ode lord shewed a ghostly sight of his/ homely louyng. [In this same time that I saw the sight of the head bleeding, our good Lord showed a ghostly sight of his homely loving,] switching next to God as maternally swaddling and shrouding us in love, and then the hazel-nut passage. She notes that the Passion redeems us – “and restored vs by his precious passion” [“and restored us by his precious Passion”(P10v)] – as it mirroringly does to Julian in her text. She speaks of the paradox that his flesh and blood, his “dereworthy Death. And worshipfull woundes” [“his dearworthy death and honourable wounds”], which grant us “en/dlesse life” [“endless life”]’ (P11), this from the “blessed kynde that he toke of þe maiden” [the blessed human nature he took of the Maiden” (P11v)]. For “kynde” in Julian means nature, natural, nurturing, and kind, the spontaneous, brain chemical love (oxytocin, endorphin, adrenaline, prolactin), that a mother has for her child, the love God has for Creation (Isaiah 49.15-16, John 16.21), despising nothing and no one that God has made (P12; Job 36.5, Wisdom 11.24): it is by no means the paradigm shift of Tennyson’s Darwinian connotation of “nature, red in tooth and claw.”23 At folio 13v of the Paris Manuscript Julian explains that the First Showing of the “Lesson of Love” is of Mary’s “wysdom and truth” [wisdom and truth”] at the Annunciation, referring back to P8-9 and the opening of the Westminster Manuscript, which she sees in “gostely sight” [“ghostly or spiritual sight”] (P14), while simultaneously in bodily sight she sees . . . the plenteous bledyng of the/ hede. The grete Droppes of blode felle/ Down fro vnder the garlonde lyke/ pelottes semyng as it had comynn ouʒte/ of the veynes. And in the coming ouʒte/ they were brorme rede. For the blode/ was full thycke. And in the spredyng/ abrode they were bryght rede. And/ whanne it camme at the browes. ther they 23

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Holloway vanysschyd. . . . / ¶ The plentuoushede/ is lyke to the droppes of water that falle of the evesyng of an howse after/ a grete shower of reyne that falle so/ thycke that no man may number them/ wt no bodily wyt. And for the round/nesse they were lyke to the scale of/ heryng. in the spredyng of the forhede. (P14-14v) [. . . the plenteous bleeding of the head. The great drops of blood fell down under garland like pellets. Seeming as if they came from the veins. And in coming out they were brown red, for the blood was very thick. And in the spreading out, they were bright red. And when it came to the brows there they vanished. . . The plenteousness is like the drops of water that fall from the eaves of a house after a great shower of rain, that fall so densely that no man may number them with bodily knowing. And the roundness was like the scale of herring in their spreading about his forehead.]

She describes this Showing as “quyck and lyuely and hydows and dredfulle and swete and louely” [“quick and lively and hideous and dreadful and sweet and lovely”], as a privilege like that of Mary in humility to God, and speaks of the Trinity of “thys marve/lous curtesy and homelynesse of oure fader that is oure maker in our lorde Jhesu crist. that is our broder and oure sauyour” [this marvellous courtesy and homeliness of our Father who is our Maker in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our brother and our Saviour” (P15v)]. At the Second Showing (P19v) she returns to the Crucifix vision, this time saying it is in her “bodely sight in the face of the crucifixe. that hyng before me” [“bodily sight in the face of the Crucifix that hung before me”]. Next the text abruptly switches to the vision she has of the deep sea bed, evoking the Psalms 18.16, 139.9-10 and Jonah 2.2-5 (who interestingly also cites the obstetrical psalm when in the belly of the whale), these surreal shifts resulting perhaps from the delirium of her fever as her organs shut down.24 From here she returns to this Second Showing, now seeing the face of Christ as like the “vernicle,” the Veronica veil shown to pilgrims in Rome on Good Friday,25 marvelling 24 25

James T. McIlwain, “The ‘Bodylye syeknesse’ of Julian of Norwich,” Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984), 167-80. Ritamary Bradley, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (London: Harper Collins, 1992); “Christ the Teacher in Julian’s Showings: The Biblical and Patristic Traditions,” The Medieval and Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July, 1982, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1982), 127-142. Sr. Ritamary Bradley communicated to me that she believed Julian visited Rome, seeing the Veronica Veil there.

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how the “fowle blacke dede”[“foul black deed”] of our sin in the Second Showing could so eclipse the “bles/sed face. which is the feyerest of heauyn. flower of earth. and the frute of the maydens wombe” [“blessed face which is the fairest of heaven, flower of earth and the fruit of the maiden’s womb”] of the First Showing (P21v-22).26 The twelfth chapter returns us to the Crucifixion aspects, this time going backwards to the scourging and the deep wounds breaking his flesh, that perhaps also record the memory of the executions of criminals, for instance, of Litester, King of the Commons, at the Peasants’ Revolt, being drawn, hung and quartered, the flesh torn on the broken flint Norwich cobblestones as he was dragged along behind a horse,27 which leads into her vision concerning water and blood washing away sins. She adds that this blood cleansing us is of our “owne kynde” [“own nature”] (IV Showing, P26), his blood both human and of natural love, supplicating the mercy of God for us. Following a discourse on the alternating euphoric laughter (V Showing, P27v) and crushing depression that she experiences, the text returns to the Passion in the sixteenth chapter (VIII Showing, P32-33), this time seen more than ever with the palimpsest of Litester strung on the gallows for many days and nights, his body drying in the Norfolk winds: And ther I say./ it semyd as he had bene sennyght deed/ it specifyeth that the swet body was/ so dyscolouryd so drye so clongyn/ so dedly and so pytuous as he had bene sennyght deed continually dyeng. (P33) [And where I say, it seemed he had been a week dead, it specifies that the sweet body was so discoloured, so dry, so clogged, so deadly and so piteous, as if he had been a week dead, continually dying.] The seventeenth chapter dwells on his thirst and the . . . tendyrnes of the swete hands/ and the swete feet by the grete hard/nes and grevous of the naylys the/ woundys waxid wyde and the body/ satylde for weight by long tyme han/ gyng and persyng and rausyng of þe/ heed and byndyng of the crowne, (P33v) [. . . tenderness of the sweet hands and the sweet feet by the great hardness and grievousness of the nails the wounds grew wider and the 26 27

Birgitta, Revelaciones I.52. Upjohn, Search of Julian, 26-27.

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Holloway body settled for weight hanging a long time and the piercing and raising of the head and the binding of the crown],

the description of the thorns in the flesh and its hanging like a cloth, continuing for several folios, at P34v, even speaking of his flesh “wt a tawny coloure lyke a drye bord whan it is agyd” [”with a tawny color like a dry board when it is aged”], such a board being displayed in St Birgitta’s chapel in the Piazza Farnese in Rome and seen by pilgrims, among them, Margery Kempe.28 Then the eighteenth chapter shares with Mary her compassion at her Son’s dying, extending this also to us (P36v). At folio 37 we learn of “Seynt dyo/nisi of france” (“Saint Dionysius of France,” Pseudo-Dionysius, St Denis of France), who wrote of witnessing the pains of the earth, the planets and the elements thrown into disorder, at Christ’s dying, and of his writing on an altar of the Unknown God (adapted from Acts 17.34).29 In the nineteenth chapter she refuses to look away from the Cross held before her, stating that through it is the way to the Father’s Heaven. In the twenty-first chapter, as already in the thirteenth chapter, all is turned to joy, Julian sharing in Paul’s vision of being caught up into the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12.2), learning, as in Dante’s Commedia, “loue was wtout begynnyng. is and shall be wt oute ende” [love was without beginning, is and shall be without end” (X Showing, P43v)].30 She then knits up the perichoresis of this vision at folio 44v: our curteyse lorde./ Shewyd his passyon to me in fyue/ manneres. ¶ Of which the furst is. þe bledyng of the hede. ¶ The/ seconde Dyscolowryng of his blessyd/ face. ¶ The thryde is. The plentu/ous bledyng of the body in semyng of/ scorgyng, ¶ The iiijth is. the depe drying./ theyse. iiij. as it

28

29

30

Aron Andersson & Anne Marie Franzén, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1975), 33-44, 58-59; The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech & Hope Emily Allen (Oxford: Early English Text Society 212, 1939, 1961), 95. This will be alluded to again at P158-158v, where it is more in connection with the Blackfriars Earthquake Council, 21 May 1382, at which John Wyclif was condemned through the machinations of Adam Easton. Pseudo-Dionysius, now known to have been a Syrian who lived some centuries after Christ, pretended in his writings to have been witness to the Crucifixion and to have converted at the Areopagus in Athens on hearing St Paul preach there on the altar to an unknown god, had already been unmasked by Abelard as fraudulent, but was cited over a thousand times by Aquinas, believing him to be an Apostolic Father, and revered as France’s acephalous patron saint, carrying his decapitated head about at Montmartre. Birgitta of Sweden had an important vision of him in Arras on her pilgrimage from Compostela concerning peace between England and France. Dante, Paradiso VIII.37, “Voi che’ntendo il terzo ciel movete.”

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is before seyde. for the/ paynes of the passion. ¶ And the fyfte/ is. thys that was shewyth for the Joy/ and the blysse of the passion, [our courteous Lord showed his Passion to me in five ways. Of which the first is the bleeding of the head. The second, discoloring of his blessed face. The third is the plenteous bleeding of the body as from the scourging. The fourth is the deep drying. These four, as it was said before, for the pains of the Passion. And the fifth is this that was shown for the joy and the bliss of the Passion,] ordering the seeming confusion into both coherence and paradox, “begynnynge at the swete incarnation and lasting to the bles/syd vprysyng on ester morrow” [“beginning at the sweet Incarnation and lasting to the blessed Resurrection on Easter Morning” (P45)], adding “only the maydynS sonne suffe/ryd. werof alle the blessed trynyte enjoy/eth” [“only the Maiden’s Son suffered. Whereof all the blessed Trinity endlessly rejoices.” (P45v)]. Then Julian has Jesus give the Eleventh Showing in “gostly sight” [spiritual sight], of Mary, at the Crucifixion, Julian adding that she is shown to her three times, “¶ The furst was as she con/ceyved. ¶ The secunde as she was in her sorowes vnder the crosse. ¶ And the thurde was as she is now in lykynge worschyppe and Joy” [“The first was as she was conceived. The second as she was in her sorrows under the Cross. And the third was as she is now, in liking, worship and joy.” (P48v-49)]. Julian thus interweaves, in perichoresis, and also as in mimesis with herself and us, her reader, both Mary and Jesus, the woman’s body with the man’s, into her text. Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes XII, had already so prayed to the Bodies of Jesus and Mary in her famous—and infamous—“Four Prayers,” taught her, she declares, by the Virgin, for which Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, sought to condemn her and undo her canonization.31

3

Parable

Then, having spoken of Adam’s sin as the greatest harm, rubricated so in Paris (P53), her Long Text interpolates (for it is not in the Table of Contents, nor is it one of the numbered Showings), and envisions a political/ theological

31

Jean Gerson, “De probatione spirituum,” Oeuvres complètes, ed. P. Glorieux (Paris: Declée, 1960-73), IX.177-85.

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parable concerning a Lord and a Servant where Adam in the dirty kirtle of our humanity becomes the rainbow-clad Christ to his Father in Aaron’s blue as the High Priest, as the iconographical Virgin in blue in humility, seated on the ground. Simone Martini at Avignon had been instrumental in that iconography of the “Madonna in Humility”, Cardinal Adam Easton writing at length on the Pope as the Jewish High Priest in Aaron’s blue, deriving this largely from Jerome’s Letter to Fabiola as well as from the Hebrew Scriptures,32 all this now in the very lengthy interpolated chapter 51 (93-106v). Julian speaks of it as having layers, one bodily, physical, another ghostly, spiritual, in its meanings. Physically, historically, this could be simultaneously a political allegory as much as it is a theological allegory, in the mode shown by Ernst Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies, and Erich Auerbach in “Figura,” one physical and mortal, the other theological and eternal. The Servant could be a figural allegory for the Cardinal, Adam Easton, the brilliant Norwich Benedictine, proficient in Hebrew, owning the writings of Pseudo Dionysius, who opposed and had Wyclif condemned, who arranged the double Coronation of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, daughter and sister of the Holy Roman Emperors Charles IV and Sigismund, who likely produced the Liber Regalis with Bohemian artists showing both Richard and Anne in blue robes, and who was thrown into a dungeon and tortured in Nocera, 11 January 1385, by the paranoid Pope Urban VI, the Cardinal only restored to liberty, 18 December 1389, by the succeeding Pope, Boniface IX, during which time Easton laboured to effect Birgitta of Sweden’s Canonization.33 While the Lord could also represent Urban VI/Boniface IX. Spiritually, the figures are God the Father and God the Son, as first the disobedient Adam, becoming the

32

33

Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 145-156, Figures 128-139; Adam Easton, O.S.B., Defensorium ecclesiastice potestatis, for which he read and countered Dante Alighieri’s writings on Church and State and for which Urban VI awarded him the Cardinalate of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere; John Leslie MacFarlane, “Life and Writings of Adam Easton, O.S.B.,” (University of London Doctoral Thesis, 1955), 2 vols.; St. Jerome, “Hieronymus ad Fabiolam de vestitu sacerdotum,’ ‘compulisti me, fabiola, litteris tuis, ut de aaron tibi scriberem uestimentis,” Opus Epistolarum diui Hieronymi Stridonensis, una cum scholiis Des. Erasmi Roterodami, denuo per illum non vulgari rocognitum, correctum et locupletum, III.18v-21v. MacFarlane, “Adam Easton,” passim; Julia Bolton Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, O.S.B. (Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana, 2008), pp. 137-179; Holloway, Julian Among the Books, 97-146; Andrew Lee, The Most Ungrateful Englishman: The Life and Times of Adam Easton (Self-published, 2008); Liber Regalis seu Ordo Consecrandi Regem solum, Reginam cum Rege, Reginam solam (London: Roxburgh, 1870); Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal, pp. 137-218.

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atoning Jesus, reminding us of the mirroring sculpture at Chartres where God as Creator tenderly creates Adam in his own image as the human-formed Son. ¶ The lorde that satt solemply in/ rest and in peas. I vnderstonde that/ he is god. ¶ The seruant that/ stode before hym. I vnderstode that/ he was shewed for Adam. . . ffor in/ the sight of god alle man is oone/ man. And oone man is alle man, (P97) [The Lord who sat solemnly in rest and in peace I understand that he is God. The Servant who stood before him, I understood that he was showed for Adam. . . For in the sight of God all men are one man and one man is all men and women,] followed by ¶ The place that the lorde satt on/ was symply on the erth. bareyn and/ deserte aloone in wyldernesse. /. . . ¶ The/ colour of the clothyng was blew as/ asure most sad and feyer. His chere/ was mercifull. (P97v) [The place that the Lord sat on was simply on the earth, barren and desert, alone in the wilderness. . . The color of his clothing was blue as azure, most fine and fair. His aspect was merciful.] While the Son instead is garbed as a labourer: hys clo/thing was a whyt kyrtyll. Syngell/ olde and all defautyd. dyed wt swete/ of his body. Streyte syttyng to hym./ And shorte as it were an handful/ beneth the knee. bare semyng as it/ shuld sone be worne vppe. redy to/ be raggyd and rent. (P99v) [His clothing was a white shift, single, old and all ragged, grimed with the sweat of his body, hanging tight on him and short, a palm’s length below the knee, bare seeming as if it should seem to be worn out, ready to be torn into rags.] This is followed by a description of his gardening and watering of the soil to nourish his Lord with food and drink, finding the treasure in the earth (P100v-101). Julian knits together multiple associations: that “Adam” means earth; that he was formed by God of clay; that we return ecologically, natu-

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rally, to the earth from which we come; following being nourished by it, combined with our hard labour; and that Jesus himself at the Resurrection appeared to Mary Magdalene as a gardener, undoing Adam and Eve’s Fall with his “vprysyng on ester morow” [“Resurrection on Easter Morning”] (P45). She next explains that the Servant is God the Son, equal with the Father, and at the same time, Christ’s manhood, which is Adam, ourselves, the Holy Spirit being the love between all. That, as Adam fell to death, so does God’s Son fall with him into the “slade of the meydens wombe. whyche was the feye/rest doughter of Adam” [“abyss of the Maiden’s womb, who was the fairest daughter of Adam”], into mortality, the humus, humanity, our Body in Christ’s, undoing death (P102). She even notes the “kyrtyl” [shirt] as signifying Jesus’ flesh being torn and falling into pieces, with echoes of Litester’s drawing along the cobble stones of Norwich’s streets, before his hanging and quartering,34 at the same time that both these may also reflect the torturing of the six Cardinals in Nocera ordered by Pope Urban VI and carried out by his cruel nephew, of whom only Adam would survive (P104v-105). Next, all is suddenly transformed: oure foule deadly flessche that goddys/ son toke vppon hym whych was adams/ olde kyrtyll. streyte bare and shorte./ then by oure savyoure was made feyer. . . /and rychar than was the clothing / which I saw on the fader. ffor that/ clothing was blew. (P105v) [our foul deadly flesh that God’s Son took upon him, which was Adam’s old shirt, narrow, bare and short, was then by our Saviour made fair. . . and richer than was the clothing which I saw on the Father. For that clothing was blue,] for now it is no longer stained with dirt but brilliant white and with rainbow hues. Immediately following this, in chapter 52 (P106v), and repeated in chapter 58 (P123v) comes Julian’s statement that God is Father, is Mother, is Spouse, is Brother, is Saviour, specifying God the Father as Father, God the Son as Mother, the Holy Spirit androgynously “oneing” the two, as our Spouse. Yet she never uses the feminine pronouns when speaking of God the Son as our Mother, only the masculine ones. Adding to these the neuter declaration by God as “I it am,” rubricated in the Paris Manuscript (P49, P129v, etc.).

34

Upjohn, Search of Julian, pp. 26-27.

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Then she returns to talking of our bodies: whan god shulde make mannes/ body he toke the slyme of the erth./ which is mater medelyd and ga/deryd of alle bodily thynges. And ther/of he make mannes body. ¶ But/ to the making of mannys soule he/ wolde take ryght nought. but made/ it. And thus is the kynde made right/fully onyd to the maker whych is/ substauncyall kynde unmade þt is god (P112v) [When God was about to make man’s body he took the slime of the earth, which is matter mixed together and gathered from all bodily things, and from it he made man’s body, But for the making of man’s soul he would take nought, but made it. And thus is its nature made rightfully oned to the Maker, who is substantially by nature unmade, that is God.] speaking of the soul as endlessly knit to God, “In which onyng it is made endlessly holy” [“In which oneing it is made endlessly holy” (P113)]. She later has a vision of a body, from which the soul, the animula, is released (for the iconography of this see paintings and sculptures of the ‘Dormition of the Virgin’, also Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 79, Pontifical, with the “Enclosure of an Anchoress,” and the “Anointing of the Dead,” showing the soul as a little child, leaving the mouth of the corpse): ¶ And in thys tyme I sawe a body ly/eng on þe erth. which body shewde heuy/ and feerfulle and wt oute shape and/ forme as it were a swylge stynkyng/ myrre and sodeynly oute of this body/ sprong a fulle feyer creature a lyttyle/ chylld full shapyn and formyd swift/ and lyfly. And whytter then the lylye/ which sharply glydyd vppe to hevyn./ ¶ The swylge of the body betokeneth/ grette wretchydnesse of our deadly flessch/ and the lyttylnes of the chylde betokenyth/ the clennes and the puernesse of oure soule, (P138) [And in this time I saw a body lying on the earth, which body was showed as heavy and fearful and without shape and form, as it were a swilge, a stinking mire, and suddenly out of this body, sprang a little child, fully shaped and formed, swift and lively, and whiter than the lily, which quickly glided up to heaven,] this reflecting back to a frequently misread passage in the sixth chapter:

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Holloway ¶A man goyth vppe right and the/ soule of his body is sparyde as a purse/ full feyer. And whan it is tyme of/ his necessary. It is openyde and sparyde/ ayen fulle honestly. (P12) [A man goes upright and the soul of his body is kept as in a very fair purse. And when it is the necessary time, it is opened and saved again very nobly.]

Here “sparyde” has the meaning of “stored”, “treasured”, and “soule” (in only one instance in the Middle English Dictionary being a miswriting for “foule” in connection with an infected wound), is by no means “soil” or excrement. Instead it always means the soul. Though Julian here uses masculine pronouns of the soul leaving the body at death (the anima is typically female), the passage could as well refer to gestation and child-birthing in the woman’s body, “oneing” male and female, death with life.

4

Wound

In the Tenth Showing, that to Doubting Thomas, we had seen the wound in Christ’s side, which is so large that it encloses all of us, and of Jesus’ cloven heart (P46-46v), first discussed by Mechtild von Hackeborn, whose Book of Gostlye Grace, British Library, Egerton 2006. was copied out by the same scribe as who compiled Julian’s Amherst Manuscript, British Library, Add. 37790.35 Here Julian speaks of God the Father as “substaunce” [substance], God the Son taking our flesh as “sensualite” [sensuality], taking on the Mother’s office of protecting and nurturing us as is “kynde”[natural], to a mother, but that, instead of milk, he nurtures us with Eucharistic blood (129-129v). He opens to us the wound in his side, which becomes as large as Mary’s cloak in the Servite iconography, embracing all people. Then Julian will turn this image of the wound in Christ’s side, his cloven heart, inside out, to Jesus being in our soul. This is like the Beatles’ inside-out pocket in The Yellow Submarine, or like St Catherine of Siena’s statement in Dialogue II, that so as the fish is in the sea, and the sea in the fish, so is God in us and we in God, or like Dante’s drinking 35

A.I. Doyle notes Mechtild von Hackeborn, Book of Gostlye Grace, British Library, MS Egerton 2006, owned by King Richard III and his wife, Anne Warwick, is by the same scribe as is the Amherst Manuscript, which contains Julian of Norwich’s and Marguerite Porete’s texts; Mechtild von Hackeborn, The Book of Gostlye Grace, ed. Theresa A. Halligan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979).

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the stars to see the Cosmos turn right way round, seeing God in his City as Rose, instead of the earth, as central, Paradiso XXX. For Julian has one final Sixteenth Showing, of the red-haired Fiend with an unshapely body who comes to her twice, almost strangling her, following the visit by the “relygyous person” [monk] who had asked how she had fared, she speaking of the vision of the Crucifix that bled. In between the two enveloping visits by the Fiend is another vision, of her soul as a worshipful city, in the midst of which sits Jesus, both God and man, as its Bishop and its King, spiritual and temporal, eternal and mortal (P142v-147). Here our bodies become Mary’s, while in the earlier, of Christ’s Wound, Jesus’ body had enveloped us, the One Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10.16-17, 12.12,27, Romans 12.4-5, Ephesians 4.4), Mary, Jesus and ourselves, all “oned.” These Epiphanies, these Showings (of all wound and we read and in which we share, while holding her book in our hands, just as she holds the Cosmos as if it were the quantity of a hazel nut in hers), mirror the rhythm of Jesus’ Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection in herself and likewise in ourselves, her readers. It is an Englished Bible, an Englished Gospel, written by a woman. Like Adam in Hebrew, God is both masculine and feminine, and also neither, of both genders and yet beyond gender. Particularly in the last Showing, she uses her knowledge of Hebrew, shared with the learned Cardinal of England, Adam Easton, O.S.B., of Norwich. Shadowing all these is Easton’s philological theology, from the Hebrew of the Kimhi Rabbis, Joseph and David, father and son, on God as masculine and feminine, of God as both Mother and Father,36 to be glimpsed again in Judaeo-Christian culture in Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son’s return to his Father as comforting Mother. Julian’s transvestism sees God as neither exclusively male nor female, but as both genders and as above them both, even in the inclusive declaration (into which, reading the Showing of Love, we are “oned”), of “I it am” (XII Showing, P49, etc., Exodus 3.14, John 8.58). 36

Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal, pp. 141-157; Julian Among the Books, 97-146.

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Chapter 16

Translation Debates and Lay Accessibility in the Meditationes Vitae Christi and Middle English Lives of Christ Paul J. Patterson

A focal point of late-medieval Christian devotion was the body of a man, born by divinity, once beautiful, and finally broken for the salvation of humanity. This body, the body of Christ, tortured, whipped, beaten, and dying while simultaneously giving life, became the central image of the late medieval church and the devotion it fostered. It was the body that was literally present in the Eucharist and its suffering and death was, as Miri Rubin states, “the essence of Christ’s humanity.”1 The body of Christ, therefore, held the potential to become a means of lay empowerment through devotional texts that encouraged the reader to focus on Christ’s pain and through that meditative focus to engage in a form of internal devotional practice. As Eamon Duffy argues, lives of Christ and their focus on imagining the Passion of Christ allowed for “the democratization of the tradition of affective meditation on the Passion which was the staple of the religious practice of the devout and the religious elite of late medieval England and Europe in general.”2 In vernacular affective devotion Duffy sees a leveling of devotional practice – his “democratization” – that gives the laity unprecedented access to devotional texts usually intended for professed religious. However, the egalitarian form of devotional practice Duffy describes was often tenuous, balanced between the needs of those working within the church and the restrictions placed on lay access to all forms of worship. Modes of 1 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 303. 2 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400 – c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 265. Michelle Karnes also discusses Duffy’s quotation as representative of a belief that lives of Christ expanded access of devotional texts to the laity and the learned. See Michelle Karnes, “Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ,” Speculum 82.2 (Spring 2007), 380-1. For similar arguments about the role of inward piety, see Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and Nicholas Watson, “Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997), 145-87.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409422_018

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interior worship did allow the laity some access to authoritative texts and reflective modes of devotion, but that access was limited by translators who were producing vernacular versions of Latin devotional texts. In England, where the threat of heresy influenced debates concerning lay religious practice, translations of devotional texts were often heavily mediated. As a result, texts in the vernacular did not always level the distance in meditative devotion between the clergy and the laity. Michelle Karnes makes this point when she states, “The fact that Latin, rather than Middle English, devotional literature provides the most powerful understandings of Gospel meditations gives pause to the tendency to interpret the vernacular as an equalizer, as establishing a ‘homogeneous’ religious community.”3 Rather than the leveling of clerical and lay devotional experience, translated texts often actively shaped the reader’s experience through omission and directed instruction on the proper manner of worship. But in the space between the democratizing power of devotion and the strict control of translated texts were debates, both implicit and explicit, on the proper way to present the Passion of Christ. This essay, therefore, examines the debates within translated Middle English lives of Christ in the pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition that shaped the way lay readers were instructed to meditate on the Passion. Three texts, the Latin Meditationes Vitae Christi and two Middle English translations of the Meditationes – The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and A Mirror to Devout People – take different approaches to the question of what role the faculty of imagination should take in moral reform and meditative worship. In their presentation and discussion of affective devotion, the two Middle English translations, in particular, establish inter-textual debates about the proper form of translation, the accessibility of devotional writings to lay readers, and the presentation of interior forms of devotion. Wealthy lay readers with monastic connections began to demand greater access to devotional texts. The debates around the translation of devotional texts began to shape a theoretical approach to translation that addressed questions of access and the proper forms of worship in the devotional culture that was taking shape in fifteenth-century England.

1

Meditationes Vitae Christi

The devotional texts that gained popularity during the late Middle Ages placed an emphasis on meditative devotion by asking the reader to systematically 3 Karnes, “Nicholas Love,” 383.

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imagine the suffering of Christ in a way that fostered deeply sustained interiority. These meditative texts grew out of a tradition that focused on the contemplation of the Latin words of the scriptures along with the repetition of the divine office, the psalter, and the Bible that was common in monastic settings. This traditional practice of monastic rumination emphasized reading, meditation, and prayer and came to its fruition during the monastic renaissance of the twelfth century.4 Out of monastic forms of rumination came other modes of meditation that were closer in style closer to an emphasis on the suffering of Christ that the Franciscans practiced. By the fourteenthcentury, numerous texts existed that instructed readers to imitate and, more importantly, contemplate the divine life of a god in the form of man. One of the most influential and widely read works of this genre was the pseudoBonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi (henceforth, Meditationes), an early fourteenth-century Latin life of Christ in the Franciscan tradition that was directed to a Poor Clare.5 It consists of a series of devotions organized around the life of Christ according to the Gospels and some apocryphal episodes, which are used to fill in gaps not provided by the words of scripture. By supplying episodes from the apocryphal works, the author attempts to increase the devotional experience of the reader so that even the basic tenets of the Christian faith can be recalled in a vivid way. The Meditationes relied on imagination to guide its reader into meditative modes that drive “the Gospel meditation and empowers it to move from thoughts of Christ’s humanity to those of his divinity through its own capacity to bridge material and spiritual knowing.”6 For the reader of the Meditationes, the soul is led to increasingly higher forms of spiritual contemplation and is encouraged to engage with the Gospels as if witnessing the events in person. Through the rising action of contemplation, the reader’s soul is prepared to face difficulties and is strengthened by repeated meditations on the life of Christ.

4 See Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York. N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1961). 5 The most recent editor of the Meditationes, M. Stallings-Taney attributes the authorship to Johannes de Caulibus in M. Stallings-Taney, ed. Iohannis de Calibus Meditaciones vitae Christi olim S. Bonaventurao attributae, CCCM 153 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). Accessed January 17, 2017, http://clt.brepolis.net/LLTA/pages/TextSearch.aspx?key=MIOCAC153_. Sarah McNamer also makes the case for Caulibus. See, Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Philadelphia Press, 2010). Michael Sargent suggests an anonymous Franciscan wrote the texts. See Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), intro 15. 6 Karnes, “Nicholas Love,” 388.

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Ex frequenti enim et assueta meditacione uite ipsius adducitur anima in quandam familiaritatem, confidenciam et amorem ipsius, ita quod alia uilipendit et contemnit. Insuper fortificatur et instruitur quid facere quid ue fugere debeat. [For as a result of its frequent and habitual meditation on his life, the soul is influenced toward a certain familiarity with it, confidence in it, and love for it, so that the soul despises and hold in contempt all else. Above all, it is strengthened and instructed with regard to what it should do and what it should avoid doing].7 Methods of imaginative reflection allowed the reader to experience the Passion of Christ by placing herself in the Gospel scenes and feeling the appropriate emotional response. Those methods benefitted both the author and his reader. The author gives the Poor Clare traditionally Franciscan directives including poverty, silence, humility, charity, and prayer. His role is that of a teacher and his goal is to introduce the nun to a way of meditation that will lead to a deeper contemplation of the glory of God and the life of Christ: “Ad cuius uirtutes imitandas et adipiscendas ex frequenti meditacione cor accenditur et animatur. Deinde diuina illuminatur uirtute, ita quod et uirtutem induit et a ueris falsa discerni.” [From frequent meditation, one’s heart is set on fire and animated to imitate and lay hold of these virtues. Then she is illuminated by divine virtue in such a way that she both clothes herself with virtue and distinguishes what is false from what is true].8 The themes of illumination, setting the soul on fire with passion and the gaining of knowledge, are repeated to emphasize the upward movement of the soul into higher contemplation of God and back into the humanity of Christ. Early in the Meditationes, the author expounds on the miraculous nature of the Passion of Christ and extols the desire and zeal that should accompany such devotion, “Hodie angelorum miraculorum claruit multitudo. Denique omnia que dicta sunt de incarnacione quasi hic clarius elucescunt. . . Videas nunc illa et istis meditacionibus illa coniunge.” [Today a multiplicity of angelic miracles has shown forth. Finally, all those things which were foretold about the Incarnation, shine out more brightly. . . Contemplate all this now, and put everything together in 7 Stallings-Taney, Meditaciones, prol., linea 59. Translation from John of Calibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Francis X. Taney, Anne Miller, and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1999), 1. All translations of the Meditaciones are taken from John of Calibus, Meditations. 8 Ibid., prol., linea 167-70; Meditations, 3.

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your meditations].9 Both the birth and crucifixion of Christ were central focal points of devotion for many religious writers: the command to put them together is indicative of their shared importance. Furthermore, the reader is asked to experience those important moments as if she were present in the scene. During a discussion of Mary’s Purification in Chapter 11, the reader is told, “Vade et tu cum eis: adiuua portare puerum et conspice attente singula que dicuntur et fiunt, que deuotissima sunt.” [You too go with them: help carry the boy and observe carefully each and every thing said and done because they are sacred actions].10 The reader is drawn into the scene, which places her within the biblical story. She experiences the actions described and through that experience her soul is brought closer to Mary and Christ. This model of interactive meditation is taken up repeatedly as the story of the life of Christ is told. It opens the reader to a powerful imagining of the Passion by continually placing her in intimate proximity to what is happening in each episode. The style of gently leading the religious disciple through forms of affective devotion found in the Meditationes resonated with readers and led to its widespread popularity. As John Fleming notes: “Its influence on popular lyric poetry, on the development of the vernacular drama, and on iconographic conceptions in the visual and plastic arts was both immediate and profound.”11 The Meditationes invites the reader to step into the scene to “Tu autem si ex his fructum sumere cupis, ita presentem te exhibeas his que per Dominum Iesum dicta et facta narrantur ac si tuis auribus audires et oculis ea uideres, toto mentis affectu diligenter, delectabiliter et morose, omnibus aliis curis et sollicitudinibus tunc omissis.” [Place yourself in the presence of whatever is related as having been said or done by the Lord Jesus, as if you were hearing it with your own ears and seeing it with your own eyes, giving it your total mental response].12 Extending the tradition of focusing on scriptural words found in earlier forms of monastic meditation fosters a new kind of sympathetic piety that invites the reader to become part of the scene. It also cultivates intimacy between the reader and Christ by using present tense to make immediate the experience of witnessing the graphic violence Christ suffered in his Passion. At the forefront of each devotion is a reminder of the sacrifice made by Christ and how he lowered himself to bring salvation to man. In Chapter 77, while discussing the Flagellation of Christ, the author states, “Et ut intime

9 10 11 12

Ibid., cap. 7, linea 158; Meditations, 29. Ibid., cap. 11, linea 4; Meditations, 39. John V. Fleming, An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages (Chicago, Ill.: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977), 246. Stallings-Taney, Meditaticiones, prol., linea 103; Meditations, 4. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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compaciaris ac simul pascaris, auerte autem parumper oculos a diuinitate et eum purum hominem considera.” [And so that you may be deeply compassionate and spiritually nourished at the same time, avert your eyes briefly from his divinity and think of him just as a man].13 The turn away from the divinity of Christ to his humanity demonstrates a recurring transition between Christ’s divinity and his humanity. Ultimately, the author gives the reader the tools to view the divinity of Christ through his humanity: “Redeas post ad diuinitatem et considera illam immensam, eternam et incomprehensibilem et imperatoriam Maiestatem incarnatam, se flectentem humiliter ad terram inclinantem pannos recolligentem, et se cum reuerencia et rubore similiter uestientem ac si esset homo uilissimus.” [Return now to his divinity and think of that immense and eternal, incomprehensible and imperial Majesty incarnate, bending humbly to the floor, stooping and collecting his clothing, and with reverence and blushing, dressing himself the same as if he were the lowliest of men].14 At the moment Christ, naked and about to be whipped and beaten, is humbled and ashamed, the reader is told to “return” to the divinity of Christ. This return further emphasizes how the humanity of Christ is inseparable from his divinity and that through his humanity the reader can relate intimately with the divine. As the account of the Crucifixion takes place in Chapter 78, there are two versions of how Christ was nailed to the cross. After describing three ladders that were placed around the cross, we are told that the soldiers forced “Dominus Iesus crucem ascendere per hanc scalam paruam” [the Lord Jesus to climb the cross by the short ladder]. A few lines later, the text states, “Sunt tamen qui credunt quod non hoc modo fuerit crucifixus sed cruce existente in terra eum crucifixerunt, et postea sic crucifixum eum eleuauerunt et crucem fixerunt in terram.” [Some, however, believe that he was not crucified this way, but that they crucified him with the cross lying on the ground. After they nailed him to the cross they lifted him up and fixed the cross in the ground].15 Neither method of nailing the body of Christ to the cross is given preference, but the reader is told to choose the version most effective for her meditative experience. The freedom given to the reader to look on this scene and choose is indicative of a theme throughout the work of empowering the imaginative faculties of the reader. This empowering of the imaginative faculties recalls Duffy’s democratization. The benefits the author gained from sustained reflection are passed on to the reader who may now equally benefit in her own practice.

13 14 15

Ibid., cap. 77, linea 12; Meditations, 249. Ibid., cap. 77, linea 23; Meditations, 249. Ibid., cap. 78; linea 10, 44; Meditations, 252-3. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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Patterson Translating the Body of Christ in England

In England, by the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, a cluster of Middle English lives of Christ emerged and gained widespread popularity. The translations of devotional texts and the use of vernacular language was of paramount importance to debates around the accessibility of religious texts. For those seeking entry to forms of religious practice in late-medieval England, one common approach was through lives of Christ that focused on the birth to the Passion of Christ and the emotions evoked from a sustained and reflective focus on central moments in his life. Some of the most widespread and accessible lives of Christ were not translations of the gospels or the Bible, nor were they straightforward accounts of the life of Christ; rather, they were translations of the Meditationes. These translations were often shaped by the ongoing political and religious upheaval that defined the debates concerning late-medieval devotional practice in England. Much of the focus was on the writings of the Oxford scholar John Wyclif and his followers, who called for more lay access to the Bible among other demands. With the usurpation of Richard II in 1399 and the rise of Lancastrian power with Henry IV, Wycliffite criticism of the crown became increasingly dangerous. The stability of Lancastrian rule depended on the appearance of unity and by 1401 Wyclifficism was perceived as a serious enough threat to move Parliament to ratify the De Heretico comburendo, which resulted in the burning of those identified as heretics within the same year. By 1409, Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, circulated a set of laws designed to address heresy by restricting preaching, limiting theological research, and forbidding the translation or reading of the scriptures without the permission of ecclesiastical authorities.16 The Constitutions did little to stop the writing of theological works and as political turmoil motivated a hardline response from the Lancastrians, there was an increased demand for access to devotional writings by a small circle of laity with connections to royalty and / or to monastic foundations. When Nicholas Love, the Prior of Mount Grace Charterhouse, translated the Meditationes into English, he was fully aware of the political and religious controversies and in many ways, his translation can be read as a response to 16

For more on the Constitutions, see Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70: 4 (1995), 822-64. For more on the complex role of censorship and its effects on vernacular writing see Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).

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the questions in England about access to devotional works. However, tensions exist within his translation of the Meditationes that suggest he was attempting to address multiple audiences. While his text is one of only two works that was submitted to Church authorities as required by Arundel’s Constitutions, the Latin Memorandum that appears in half the manuscripts to announce Arundel’s approval appears to date later than Love’s work.17 It is possible that Love began the work as early as 1400 and intended it for a mixed audience of both lay and professed religious readers. When discussing the Sermon on the Mount, he writes, “As þe text of þ[at] gospel opunly telleþ, & diuerse doctours & clerkes expowen it sufficiantly, þe which processe we passen ouere here for als mich as it is writen boþe in latyn & english in many oþere places.” [As the text of that gospel plainly states, and diverse doctors and clergy expound it sufficiently, by a process that we pass over here because it is written in many other places in both Latin and English].18 It appears that Love is addressing a mixed audience who are familiar with both Latin and English. But in the ‘Proheme’ to his Mirror, Love discusses the lay readers who might read his translation: “Ande for þis hope & to þis entent with holi writte also bene wryten diuerse bokes & trettes of devoute men not onelich to clerkes in latyne, but also in Englyshe to lewde men & women & hem þat bene of symple vndirstondyng.” [And for this hope and this intent along with Holy Scripture were written a variety of books and treatises by devout men, not only in Latin for clergy, but also in English for uneducated men and women and those that have a simple intellect].19 His view of the laity as “lewde” and “of symple vndirstondyng” runs through the entire work and informs many of the decisions made in translating his Latin source. It is clear that in setting out to produce a translation of the Meditationes the majority of the alterations Love makes are meant to shift the emphasis away from the empowerment of the reader to a more controlled and mediated account of the life of Christ. However, there are instances where he suggests an expansion of his source: Now take hede & beholde with all þi mynde þou þat redest or herest þis, alle þat followen, þat bene tolde, spoken or done, for þei bene ful liking & stiryng to gret deuocion. For in þis processe is þe most strengþe & gostly fruyte of alle þe meditaciones þat bene of þe blessed lif of oure lord Jesu, principaly for þe passing tokens & shewyngis in dede of his loue 17 18 19

See Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, intro 56-7. Ibid., 82. All Middle English translations are mine. Ibid., 10.

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Patterson to mankynde, wherefore here we shol not abregge as we haue in oþere places bot raþere lengh it in processe. [Now all of you that follow, have been told, spoken or acted, hear this, pay attention and focus with your entire mind for they (visions) are for pleasure and stirring to devotion. In this process is the most strength and spiritual fruit of all the meditations that are of the blessed life of our Lord Jesus, primarily for the fleeting signs and showings indeed of his love to mankind, therefore we shall not abridge as we have in other places, but rather lengthen it in this passage].20

Love expands a number of chapters throughout his work and engages with the source in ways that suggest his goal is not simply to limit the access of the laity. In his presentation of the Passion, though, Love limits the spiritual reach of his readers when he does not give them the option to ascend to the higher levels of spiritual experience. Unlike the Meditationes, Love has, as Khantik Ghosh notes, “an extraordinary degree of self-consciousness about his undertaking.”21 Through his “self-consciousness,” Love places limitations on the spiritual growth of his reader by reimagining the form of his genre. Love focuses on the material world and, as Karnes points out, “Gospel meditations are lay because they confine themselves to considerations of the material world and treat affect as an end in itself.”22 Karnes argues that the higher levels of the spiritual are negated for repeated emphasis on the material world and condition of the story being presented. Where the Meditationes consistently shifted the focus from the material to the spiritual, Love often omits passages or changes them to focus on the material realm. However, Love’s refocusing on the materiality of the Passion does not indicate a lack of engagement with the story he is relating. The Passion, as conceived in Love’s work, not only addresses concerns with the access of lay readers, but could also be a result of, as Allan Westphall and David Falls argue, an “inherent tension of a Carthusian translator / compiler composing a work for his own purposes from a Latin exemplar heavily influenced by the personal theological politics of its Franciscan author.”23 Throughout his work, he encourages the reader to a visual form of worship, though never with the immediacy of the Meditationes. For example, when describing the Crucifixion, 20 21 22 23

Ibid., 145. Kantik Ghosh, “Nicholas Love,” in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 53. Karnes, “Nicholas Love,” 394. Allan Westphall and David Falls, “Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ,” Geographies of Orthodoxy, accessed October 24, 2016, http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy /resources/?section=corpus&id=10. - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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he repeatedly tells the reader to “take hede” [pay attention] or “haue wondre” [be filled with wonder] as Christ is brought to the cross. The reader at other points is invited to “go forthe” [go forth] with Jesus, which echoes the invitations of the Meditationes. In addition, Love repeatedly tells the reader to “beholde” [look upon], a command that Sarah McNamer suggests was used “for generating a specific way of seeing. . . that had the potential for producing— in the body, as well as in the mind—an impulse toward a particular form of compassion: the protective and ameliorative action of holding.”24 She further argues that beholding was a “mode of perception that women are thought to be particularly good at” and through the commands of “beholding” the reader is asked “to imagine holding Jesus just as the Virgin holds him.”25 This form of beholding and holding, though, are rarely given the proximity of the Meditationes’ command to the reader to hold the infant while standing beside the Virgin Mary.26 While Love’s work does not elevate the reader to higher forms of spiritual meditation, it does engage with the Passion in a way that invites viewing and experiencing from a distance. For a novice Carthusian or a “lewede” [simple] lay reader, this form of affective devotion would be an ideal introduction to the spiritual life. When considering the ongoing politicization of religious practice in England when Love was creating his work, it makes sense that he would proceed through the Passion with caution. Another text in the Carthusian tradition that engages with the Meditationes appeared a few years after Love’s work. The anonymously penned A Mirror to Devout People (c. 1430), also known as the Speculum devotorum, takes a different approach to the Meditationes and its form of affective devotion. In the opening lines of the Preface of the Mirror, the author says that he promised to write “a medytacyon of the Passyon of oure Lorde” [meditation of the Passion of our Lord] for the “gostly syster” [spiritual sister] to whom he addresses the work. A Latin colophon in both extant copies of A Mirror – Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, cod. Eng. d. 1 (olim. MS 67) (ND) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.1.6 (G) – places the origin of the text at the House of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen. This evidence also suggests an anonymous Carthusian monk of the Sheen Charterhouse wrote it for a nun at the neighboring Birgittine Syon Abbey.27

24 25 26 27

McNamer, Affective Meditation, 135. Ibid., 137. Ibid., 6. While Syon Abbey was the only Birgittine house in England, the influence of St. Birgitta was widespread amongst English aristocracy, possibly due to efforts to form a peace between England and France. In 1406, Henry Lord Fitzhugh, while visiting Denmark to discuss the marriage of Henry IV’s daughter, Philippa, to King Erik, visited Vadstena and - 978-90-04-40942-2 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 03:52:45PM via free access

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The proximity of the two houses allowed them to become central in the creation and dissemination of Latin works translated into the vernacular. It appears that both religious and lay readers benefitted from the work of the two houses. Where the Carthusians focused on producing texts solely for other religious, the Syon brethren maintained a mission of public preaching and dispensing of indulgences that made the Birgittine abbey a popular site for pilgrimage. The practices of preaching and indulgences were closely linked at Syon Abbey. Worshippers were offered indulgences at Syon every Lammas Day (1 August) and could stay to hear the Syon Pardon Sermon as well.28 As lay demand for increased involvement in devotional practice through access to clerical texts met orthodox efforts to suppress access to religious writing, Syon Abbey became a site that provided greater public access to devotional practices than many contemporary religious establishments. This access to a religious center by lay people may have informed the anxiety displayed in the opening of A Mirror to Devout People. In the Preface, the author acknowledges both Love’s translation and the Meditationes, not as sources to follow, but as potential reasons not to pursue his project: “Also, I haue besteryd ofte tymys to haue lefte thys bysynesse, both for my vnworthynesse, and also for Bonauenture a cardynal and a worthy clerke made a boke of the same matere the whyche ys callyd Vita Cristi. And most of all whenne I herde telle that a man of oure ordyr of charturhowse had iturnyd the same boke into Englyische.” [I have also thought many times about leaving this business, both because of my unworthiness and also because Bonaventure, a cardinal and a worthy clergyman, made a book on the same topic, which is called Vita Christ (Meditationes vitae Christi). I considered it most of all, though, when I heard that a man of our order of Charterhouse (Nicholas Love) had

28

was impressed with the Birgittine Order. When he returned, he offered his manor of Cherry Hinton for a location to build a Birgittine Abbey. But it wasn’t until 1414 that Henry V set the foundation stone for Syon Abbey on his royal manor of Sheen as part of a plan to build three religious houses: the Birgittine Abbey, a Carthusian monastery, and a never completed Celestine monastery. Syon Abbey became a central location for pilgrimages and Margery Kempe visited Syon Abbey in 1434 to receive a pardon of Syon. For more on the history of Syon Abbey, see Topher Martyn, “The History of Syon Abbey,” in Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena: Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 4-6 October 2007, ed. Claes Gejrot, Sara Risberg, and Mia Åkestam (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2010), 9-26. For more on Margery Kempe’s visit to Syon Abbey, see Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and Her World (London: Routledge Press, 2002) and Susan Powell, “Preaching at Syon Abbey,” Leeds Studies in English, New Series XXI (2002), 229-67. For more on the Syon Pardon Sermon see R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 336-45.

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translated the same book in English].29 The apprehension over continuing his work is indicative of the changing attitudes toward devotional writing in the years following the Constitutions. Vincent Gillespie has argued that Carthusian devotional texts written in the years following Love’s work reveal a diminishing confidence and heightened anxiety about reader access. Fifteenthcentury Carthusian texts became more narrowly focused on a clerical readership with a few exceptions that made their way into the hands of a select group of aristocratic and wealthy lay readers. As a result, texts such as A Mirror to Devout People were written for the use of the Syon community by Carthusians, but possibly overseen by the Syon brethren. They were then made available to an exclusive circle of aristocratic lay readers through Syon.30 As the author continues his Preface, he describes his work not as a translation but as a harmonization. He uses the example of the Gospels, saying, “Also the doctorys of Holy Church exponen the same euangelyis þat they wrote diuerse wysys to confort the Crystyn peple.” [The doctors of Holy Church also expounded on the same Gospels so that they wrote diverse ways to comfort the Christian people].31 In the same manner the Gospels harmonize the story of Christ, so his work will accompany the Meditationes as a companion to guide the reader rather than a standard translation. In thirty-three chapters, he tells the story of the life of Christ through a number of sources, including Peter Comestor, Nicholas of Lyre, and “the reuelaciouns of approued women” [the revelations of approved women].32 The approved women, Catherine of Siena, Mechtild of Hackeborn, Elizabeth of Töss, and Birgitta of Sweden, each play a different role in A Mirror to Devout People, from giving guidance on how to recognize good visions from bad to filling in details of the life of Christ. The author draws on Birgitta’s Revelaciones to guide the reader through the events of Christ’s life and to provide details concerning Christ’s childhood. The most important use of Birgitta’s Revelaciones occurs in the twenty-second chapter of the Mirror to Devout People when the Crucifixion is described in detail. Birgitta’s account vividly portrays the dying Christ and provides a focal point on which the reader can meditate in order to experience the Savior’s

29 30

31 32

Paul J. Patterson, ed., A Mirror to Devout People (Speculum Devotorum), E.E.T.S., o.s. 346 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3. Vincent Gillespie, “The Haunted Text: Reflections in A Mirror to Devout People,” in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers, ed. Jill Mann and Maura B. Nolan (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 129-172. Mirror to Devout People, 4. Ibid., 5.

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suffering. Small details gain significance and allow for an increasing intensification of the reality of Christ’s suffering. The reader is repeatedly told to “beholden” as Christ’s body is broken with painful detail. It is clear that the author translates carefully selected passages from Birgitta’s Latin work to enhance the effect of each word used to describe the Crucifixion. He encourages the reader to experience Christ’s suffering through Birgitta’s own, highly personalized account. The continual encouragement to meditate on Birgitta’s detailed descriptions allows the author to assert a level of authority by going beyond the scriptures and providing a brutal account of what occurred at Golgotha through the eyes of the Swedish saint. He begins, “And thanne beholdyth” to indicate to the reader to pay careful attention before describing “how they drawe downe all the body be the crosse and pote þat oo legge ̀vp ́on þat othyr, and thanne iune þe too feete togyderys” [Pay attention to how they pull down the body onto the cross and put one leg on top of another and then join the two feet together]. Each detail further illustrates the tortuous pain of the Crucifixion: “And whenne they were so iunyd togyderys, they naylyde hem to þe crosse wyth too naylys, and so myche they strawfte oute thyke gloryus membrys strongly in the crosse þat alle the va ̀y ́nys and synuys tobraste” [When they were then joined together, they nailed him to the cross with two nails, and stretched out his same glorious limbs so strongly on the cross that all the veins and sinews burst]. Following further description, the author reminds the reader of his source: “Thys ys the maner how oure Lorde was crucyfyed aftyr the Reuelacyon of Seyint Brygytte” [This is how our Lord was crucified according to the Revelations of Saint Birgitta].33 The fidelity to source material and the command to pay close attention focuses the attention of the reader in order to bring about the proper meditative experience. Through the command to “thenketh” and “beholdeth,” Birgitta’s vivid account gives the reader access to Christ’s Passion and allows for the necessary affective response. The fact that the Passion is presented through the writings of Birgitta, the founder of the order to which sisters at Syon belong adds particular weight to these passages. The Mirror to Devout People addresses the Passion and the need for affective meditation by drawing on sources that would appeal to the community at Syon Abbey. It demonstrates the narrowing of its audience, which was typical for devotional texts in mid-fifteenth-century England, by specifically addressing the promise made to a sister at the Birgittine Abbey. Despite the anxiety brought on by the author’s awareness that a lay audience would have access

33

Ibid., 118.

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to his work, it confidently translates multiple passages from the Gospel into English by placing the Latin text of the Vulgate next to a Middle English translation. As the author acknowledges in his Preface, the text is addressed “to sympyl and deuout soulys þat cunne not or lytyl vn ̀dyr ́stonde Latyn and also for the deuout thynkynge of oure Lordys passyon and manhede ys the grounde and the weye to all trewe deuocyon” [to unlearned and devout souls that cannot read Latin or only understand a little Latin and also for spiritual meditation of our Lord’s Passion and humanity is the foundation and the way to all true devotion].34 These are not the same “lewede” readers that Nicholas Love addressed, but rather educated sisters of the Birgittine order who were held to a Rule that encouraged non-liturgical reading. As Ann Hutchison has noted, there were strict sanctions that limited the number of liturgical books the abbey could hold, but there were no limits on books for devotional instruction.35 The Mirror to Devout People also acknowledges its predecessors in the Meditationes and Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, yet it rarely mentions the Latin text and never again discusses Love’s text. While its structure is indebted to the Meditationes, the harmonization of the Gospels takes precedent. In short, the Mirror to Devout People is a text that is attempting to address multiple audiences through a complex weaving of intertextual authorities to bring to life the story of Christ and his Passion. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is similar in its methods and ambitions. It addresses multiple audiences, including the heresy that was at the forefront of religious debate in England, while conveying the story central to Christian doctrine. Both Carthusian texts adopt a similar style, one while translating and altering the Meditationes and the other while commenting on it and guiding the reader in how to understand the Franciscan work of devotion. Where the Meditationes lifts the spiritual faculties of the reader, both English texts mediate the growth of their readers. Through their translations, though, they made accessible one of the most important devotional texts of their time. Their translations, particularly that of Nicholas Love, played a role in shifting ideas about how to understand, process, and, most importantly, experience the birth, life, and death of God-made-man. 34 35

Ibid., 4-5. Ann Hutchison, “What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from the English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey,” Medieval Studies 57 (1995), 205-22.

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Bibliography Manuscripts Evangelium secundum Iohannem cum glossa ordinaria. MS Nn.2.38. Cambridge University Library. Cambridge, UK. Glossed Wycliffite Psalter (Later Version). MS Bodl.554. Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK. Jerome. Epistle to Demetriade, etc. Norwich Castle MS 158.926/4g.5. Norwich, UK. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, eds. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P., and Julia Bolton Holloway. Biblioteche e Archivi 8. Florence: SISMEL, 2001. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love, Long Text. Bibliothèque Nationale MS anglais 40. Paris, France. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love, Long Text. British Library MS Sloane 2499, Sloane 3705, Stowe 42. British Library, London, UK. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love, Short Text. British Library, Additional 37790, Amherst Manuscript. British Library, London, UK. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love, Westminster Text. Westminster Abbey, London, UK. Kempe, Margery. Book of Margery Kempe. British Library MS Additional 61823, Butler Bowden Manuscript. British Library, London, UK. Latini, Brunetto. Li Livre dou Trésor. Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 160, fol. 82r. Liber Regalis seu Ordo Consecrandi Regem solum, Reginam cum Rege, Reginam solam. Westminster Abbey Library MS 38. London, UK. Mechtild von Hackeborn. Book of Gostlye Grace. British Library MS Egerton 2006. British Library, London, UK. Pontifical. CCCC MS 79. Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK. Troyes, MAT, MS 1092.

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Index Aaron 176n61, 178, 292, 304 Affectivity 203, 206, 208-9, 215 Alan of Lille 167 Alcuin 117-19, 121, 124-25, 278 Aldhelm 170-71, 187 Alexandria 59, 100, 105, 107, 109, 113, 162, 164, 214 Alighieri, Dante 17, 21, 255-74, 293, 302, 304, 308 Inferno 21, 255, 259-65 Paradiso 21, 255, 257-58, 262, 264, 268, 269-71, 274, 293, 302, 309 Purgatorio 21, 255, 258, 260, 262-70, 274 allegory 41, 105, 171, 186, 190-191, 193, 282, 304 allegorical sense 180-181 alter angelus 225 alter Christus 224-25, 228, 233 Ambrose 130, 164, 193-96 Cain and Abel 194n8 De Isaac 194 Ancrene Wisse 135n25, 201 Andrée, Alexander 118 Annunciation 7, 9, 91, 173, 176, 178, 298-99 Anselm of Bec 131 Anselm of Canterbury 204 Anselm of Laon 117 Anthropology 104 Aristotle 163-64 Arma Christi 72 Arundel, Thomas 2 Assisi Compilation 228-32, 235, 239 Augustine, St. 3, 15, 39, 50, 117-19, 121, 124-25, 130-31, 160-61, 193, 195, 197, 278 De trinitate Dei 140n46 Ennarrationes in Psalmos 277, 287 authority 18, 57, 101, 130, 143-44, 162, 194, 197, 206, 219-20, 222-27, 230, 232-35, 237-39, 285, 322 Avitus of Vienne 122 Beatrice 21, 255, 258, 261-63, 265-71, 273-74 Bede 18, 23, 49, 50-57, 63-64, 117-19, 161-63, 165, 170, 186-87, 278, 284 Ecclesiastical History of the English People 3n8, 170

beguines 198, 203 Beleth, John 197 Compendium on Ecclesiastical Offices 197 Benedictine Rule 170, 252 Bereavement 191 Bernardino of Siena 138, 142, 144, 145, 149 Bernard of Clairvaux 20, 132, 133, 139, 195, 204, 213, 271, 282 Sermons on the Song of Songs 195, 213, 282 Biblical commentary 39, 50, 157, 163, 276 Birgitta of Sweden 8, 293, 296, 298, 303, 304, 321 Revelationes 293, 296, 303 birthing the Spirit 197 Blake, William 275, 289 Blathmac son of Cú Brettan 18, 76-81, 83-86, 88, 90-99 blood 13, 85, 90, 94, 162, 164, 169n44, 178-79, 187, 192, 215, 217, 244, 265, 292, 299, 300-301, 308 Boethius Consolation of Philosophy 167 Bonaventure Legenda maior 224-25, 236-39, 320 Boniface, St. 171, 173, 304 canticum/canticumpsalmum/psalmumcanticum 28, 30, 41, 134, 282 cantus 32-33 Carney, James 76-77, 80, 93 Cassiodorus 17, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 39, 41, 278 Commentaries on the Psalms 16, 22, 39, 276 Catherine (of Siena), St. 214, 308, 321 Cecilia, St. 298, 304n32 céile 96-97 céili Dé 77 célmainde 78-79 charisma and its routinization 145, 153 Chartres Cathedral sculpture 305 Chaucer, Geoffrey 192

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368 Chaucer, Geoffrey (cont.) Second Nun’s Prologue 293 Christ(ic) 21, 255-56, 258, 262, 269, 273 Lives of 8, 22, 310-11, 316 Christ-child 11, 178, 180 Christology 19, 66, 100, 276, 297 Church as Spouse 190-92, 194, 196 Cistercians 23, 133, 136, 140, 204 clientship 96-99 coíniud 80-84 Comestor, Peter 321 Commentarium in Psalmos 276, 277, 278, 280, 285, 288, 290 communion 32, 33, 36, 41, 192, 200-201, 220, 248-49, 267-68 contemplation 4, 7, 33, 36-37, 71, 105, 107, 141, 145, 148, 153, 205, 212, 237, 312-13 copula 30, 41 Corpus Christi 150, 216, 278, 307 Feast of 4, 20, 203, 204, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213 covenant 96, 176, 179, 189-90, 268 Crescentius of lesi 228, 230, 232, 233 Cross 2, 5, 13, 71, 159, 163, 171, 178, 180, 193, 302-303 crucifixion 68, 70, 72, 79, 82, 91, 251, 253, 314 Crucifixion 2, 7, 9, 13-14, 22, 96, 99, 159, 178-79, 292, 297-99, 301, 303, 309, 315, 318, 321-22 cure 50, 55, 56, 229 Daniel 14, 29, 37, 53, 162, 165 Da Voragine, Jacobus Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) 131n9, 174 David 1, 25, 28-29, 165, 279, 283, 309 death 2, 5-10, 14, 17, 26, 55, 68, 70-71, 73, 77, 79-81, 86-87, 90-92, 96, 108, 111, 121, 131, 152, 180, 196, 198, 204, 213, 225, 228, 231, 233, 240, 242-44, 246, 250-52, 253, 259, 283-84, 288, 292, 298-99, 306, 308, 310, 323 Death (personified) 174 De heretico comburendo 2 Despenser Retable 298 Deuteronomy 158, 163-65 devotion 5-9, 13-14, 17, 19-22, 69-70, 99, 129-31, 133, 134, 135, 137-42, 144-47,

Index 149-53, 190, 196, 203-09, 211-18, 227, 234, 243, 251, 253-54, 282, 285-86, 310-11, 313-14, 318 319, 323 di Cambio, Arnolfo Dormition of the Virgin 293 differentia(e) 35n18, 37 Divine Office 249, 252-53, 312 Donne, John Batter my Heart 193 Douay-Rheims Bible 156 Dream of the Rood 8, 18, 63, 68-69, 71, 73 Dream vision 21-22, 216-17, 229-35, 238-43, 247-49, 251, 254, 292-93, 297-98, 300-302, 307, 309, 318, 321 Earthly Paradise 254, 262-63, 266-71, 273-74 Easton, Adam (O.S.B./Cardinal) 304, 309 ecclesia 3, 32, 38-40, 190 ecstatic experience 129 Egypt 10, 87, 91, 157-58, 163 electrum 40-41 elephant 154, 155, 166, 171 Elizabeth of Töss 321 Empyrean 264, 271 encounter 14, 21, 59, 255, 258-63, 266-68, 270, 273-74, 280, 290 England 3, 6, 9-10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 49, 58, 61, 63, 66-67, 72, 75, 133, 135-38, 140, 148-51, 154, 167, 174, 187, 193, 205, 207, 278, 291, 298, 309-11, 316-17, 319, 322-23 enthusiasm 129, 143, 147-48, 152-53 Ephesians (book) 309 Ephesians 5:22-33 189 Epistle of Barnabas 117 eschatological 25, 27, 37, 38, 41, 103, 108, 287 Eucharist 5, 8, 13, 32, 111, 150, 178, 208-9, 215-18, 220-24, 232, 234, 245, 248-49, 253, 310 Europe 3, 9, 10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 58, 61, 63, 66-67, 72, 75, 135-38, 140, 148-51, 154, 167, 174, 187, 193, 205, 207, 278, 291, 298, 309-11, 316-17, 319, 322-23 Evagrios 105, 107 Eve of St. Martin 210 Exegesis 23, 51-52, 100, 104-106, 115, 117, 120-22, 124-26, 200, 275, 276, 277, 280-81, 283, 288 Exempla 136, 154

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Index Explanations

369 104, 106, 111

Fabiola, St. Paula 304 figura(e) 25, 27, 33-37, 304 Fire of love (fervor amoris) 143n59 flaith 18, 76, 93, 96, 97, 98 fountain 154, 178, 194 Fourth Lateran Council 212 France 173 Franciscan 6, 21, 23, 137-40, 145-46, 152, 168, 203, 205, 219-20, 222, 224-25, 228, 230, 232, 235-36, 239, 276, 290, 312-13, 318, 323 Francis of Assisi Letter of Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance 222 Letter to the Clergy 222 Regula bullata 221-22, 229, 235-36, 238-39 Regula non bullata 222 Testament 221-23 Gabriel 10, 91, 154, 173, 175, 178, 294-95 garden 13, 14, 173, 176, 178-80, 187, 194, 249, 305-306 Germany 21, 171, 187, 201, 211 Gerson, Chancellor Jean 296 Gertrude the Great of Helfta 21, 240-49, 251-54 Glossa ordinaria 7, 17, 19, 20, 23, 115, 117, 157-58, 163, 165, 186-87 Glossed Wycliffite Psalter 47 Gnosticism 104, 110 goat 162, 165 God 1-3, 5, 12, 13, 20, 27, 29-30, 37-38, 40-41, 49, 51, 55, 57, 59-61, 63, 72, 75, 82, 83, 85, 87, 91, 93, 94, 97, 98, 100, 107-113, 122-24, 130-31, 142, 144, 151, 154, 157-60, 172, 176, 179, 189-91, 193-201, 212, 215, 219-22, 233-34, 236-38, 241, 245-46, 249-50, 253, 257-58, 261-64, 268-69, 271, 276-77, 280-84, 288-302, 304-309, 313 Good Friday 159, 248, 252, 300 Greeks 162 Hælend 18, 58-69, 62-64, 66, 74-75 habitus 35 Healer 18, 58, 63, 66, 73, 75

Heavenly Jerusalem 4, 113 Hebraic truth (Hebraica veritas) 286 Hebrew (language) 2, 20, 27, 46, 61-64, 156, 159, 163, 280, 283-84, 304, 309 Heiric of Auxerre 117 Henry IV 291, 316 Henry V 291 Herbert, George 282 heresy 124-27, 147, 149-50, 152, 201, 223-24, 236, 311, 316, 323 hero 17-18, 72, 76, 78, 80-82, 86-88, 90-94, 99 Herodotus 164 heterodoxy 147 Higden, Ranulf 154, 186 Polychronicon 23 Holy Spirit 4, 29, 94, 123, 132, 178, 195, 215, 221, 238, 248, 276, 306 Holy Women as God’s Lovers 198 Honorius of Autun 168 Hosea (book) 20 Hosea 2:22-33 189 Hugh of St. Cher 115, 126, 211 Hugh of St. Victor De arrha animae 191 hunter 164, 170, 172-73, 187 hygiene 56 idolatry 129, 147, 150 imitatio Christi 17, 21, 73, 219, 220, 226, 227, 231, 239 Incarnation 1, 9, 91, 123-24, 130, 157-58, 162-65, 171, 174, 187, 258, 267, 270, 303, 309, 313 India 166 interpretation modes of 37-39 Ireland 16, 18, 76, 80, 84, 93, 98 Isaiah 15, 29, 36, 155 Isaiah (book) 124, 155, 162, 163, 189, 299 Isaiah 54:6 189 Isidore of Seville 63 Etymologies 4, 165, 169 Israel 1, 15, 20, 25, 40, 56, 59, 154, 157-60, 163, 176, 178, 189, 288, 298 Jacob 176 Jeremiah (book) 20 Jeremiah 3:8 189

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370 Jerome 18, 40n25, 49-50, 60-61, 130, 159, 160, 163-64, 278, 283, 286, 298, 304 Jesus As Mother 196, 206 Blood of 178-79, 215, 217, 222, 244, 299, 301, 308 Body of 4, 8, 13, 20, 54-55, 81, 90, 95, 129, 153, 196, 212, 215, 217, 222, 245, 247, 254, 278, 284, 290, 292, 296, 297, 306, 309-310, 315-16, 322 Devotion to 8, 17, 19, 21, 69-70, 99, 129-31, 133-35, 137-53, 203-209, 211-18, 243, 253-54, 282, 314, 323 Heart of (divine/sacred) 8, 21, 240, 243, 246-47, 252n56, 253-54, 308 Holy name of 17, 19, 129-31, 133-35, 138-53, 282 Visions of 21-22, 240, 242, 251, 290, 301, 318 Wounds of 8, 21, 219, 225, 231, 233, 239, 240, 243-45, 254, 299, 308-309 Jews 2, 18, 76, 81, 87, 93-99, 113, 125, 160, 163, 282, 284-86 Joachim of Fiore 236 Job 159, 163, 299 John (book) 23, 52, 106, 123, 125, 127, 139, 158, 165, 188, 299, 309 John 3:29 189 John, Gospel of 2, 6, 9, 13, 19, 115-21 John of Howden 140 John of Parma 232, 235-36 John of the Cross 193 journey 5-6, 13, 21, 107, 134, 143, 255-56, 258-64, 266-68, 271, 273-74 Juliana of Mont-Cornillon 204-209, 213 Julian of Norwich Showing of Love 22, 291-309 Kantorowicz, Ernst The King’s Two Bodies 304 Katherine (of Alexandria) 214 keen(ing) 76-86, 200 Kempe, Margery 5-6, 200-201, 302, 320n27 Kempster, Hugh 297 Kimhi, Rabbi David and Joseph 309 kinship 18, 76, 93-94, 99 Kirkby, Margaret 280

Index Lamb of God 9, 14, 94, 192 Lamentations 27, 80-81 Laon 117-18, 120, 122, 126 Latin 6, 8, 10, 13, 16-17, 20, 22, 25, 30-31, 33-35, 37, 52, 59-64, 66, 84, 101, 103, 114, 130, 134, 136, 140-41, 154, 156-58, 162, 164-66, 168-71, 176, 179, 186-87, 189, 196, 198, 200, 206, 212-13, 275, 279-80, 282-84, 286-87, 311-12, 317-20, 322-23 Law 2, 23, 34, 54, 56, 75, 85, 93, 107-108, 112-13, 190, 197, 227, 316 Legend of the Three Companions 230-33, 235, 239 Les Cantiques Salemon 201 Le Viste Family 20, 180, 182-84, 187 Liber psalmorum 27 lilies 178 literal 7-8, 14, 17, 20, 25, 27, 37, 50-52, 55-56, 62, 105-106, 158, 180, 195, 200, 276, 286 Litester, John 298, 301, 306 liturgy 10, 16, 30, 32, 37-39, 41, 52, 68, 102, 135-36, 159, 193, 200, 203, 208-209, 211 Logos 19, 100-114 Lombard, Peter 276-81, 284-88, 290 love 2, 12-13, 21, 51, 53, 57, 62, 96, 106-109, 111, 131, 141-46, 148, 168, 173-74, 178, 181, 189-90, 192-94, 196, 198-201, 213-14, 218, 221, 227, 232, 243-49, 253, 255, 257-58, 262-64, 267-69, 271, 273-74, 281-82, 286, 288, 299, 301-302, 306, 313 Love, Nicholas 22, 316, 320, 323 Luke (book) 50, 55, 106, 154, 165, 189, 266 Luke 5:34 189 Maneria 32, 36 Mark (book) 50-51, 54-56, 116 Mark 2:19 189 marriage (at Cana) 11, 52, 139 Mars 170-71 Mary (Magdalen) 14, 71, 266n34, 298, 306 Martini, Simone Madonna in Humility 304 Mass 4, 10, 26, 30, 32-33, 36-39, 41, 153, 178, 197, 248-49, 251, 253 Matthew (book) 55, 61-62, 113, 130, 287 Matthew 9:15 154n1 Mechthild of Magdeburg 199-200, 241 The Flowing Light 199

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Index medieval bestiary 176 meditation 7-8, 19, 22, 129, 132, 138, 141, 143-46, 148, 150, 197-98, 205, 207, 212, 240, 244-45, 249, 251-54, 310-14, 318-19, 322-23 Meditationes vitae Christi 22, 207, 310-12, 320 Meister Eckhart 197 mendicants 136, 230 Middle English 16, 22, 139, 275-77, 279, 283, 310-11, 316, 323 miracles (physical/spiritual) 11-12, 17-18, 23-24, 39, 41, 49-57, 66, 74, 150, 225-27, 229, 313 Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, The 22, 311, 323 Mirror to Devout People, A 311, 319, 320-23 mod(us/i) 17, 27, 33, 35-37 monocerus 20, 156 moral sense 112, 114 Moses 7, 14, 29, 52, 59, 87, 160-61, 163-64, 179, 283 mystical hunt of the unicorn 163, 165, 167, 171, 174, 179, 181 mysticism 21, 145, 203, 213-14, 217, 254 Name of Jesus, the and sensory metaphors 130, 132 benefits of 19, 129, 132, 139, 146 power of 16, 130, 138, 141, 149-150 repetition of 150, 282, 284 theological meanings of 19, 59, 61, 63-64, 66, 146 Narcissus 264, 268, 270 Nicholas/Nicolas of Lyr(a/e) 7 Northumbria 18, 49, 64, 71 Numbers 59, 157-59, 163 obedience 6, 27, 68, 108, 119, 184, 221-24, 239 Ochrid 19, 100-103, 106 organum 27 Origen 19, 50, 60, 100, 103-106, 109-110, 112, 130, 158, 193, 196 O Sapientia Advent Antiphon 292 papacy, the 236, 238 Parable(s) 1, 12, 17, 19, 24, 37, 39, 100, 106-109, 111-14, 174, 303

371 Lord and Servant 22, 107-108, 111, 292, 304-306 Of the Vineyard 12 Passion Of Christ 2, 4, 8-9, 11, 13, 19, 22, 27, 82, 94, 129, 135, 141, 148, 159, 163, 186-87, 203-211, 213, 217, 237, 243-44, 298-99, 303, 310-11, 313-14, 316, 318-19, 322-23 peace/ false peace 72, 147, 178, 224, 261, 266-67 Pearl 191-92, 195 Peckham, John 278, 290 Phoenix 9, 23, 164 Physiologus 20, 163-65, 167, 169-70, 187 Piers Plowman 8, 191 Pieter Breughel the Elder Dormition of the Virgin 298 Piety planctus 17, 26-27 Pliny 163 Natural History 164 Poem 18, 21, 63, 66, 68-69, 71, 76-80, 83-86, 88, 90-91, 94, 96, 99, 122, 134, 140-41, 169-70, 191-92, 256, 258-60, 262, 271, 273, 275, 279, 282, 286, 288 political symbolism 152-53, 193-94, 207, 303-304 Porete, Marguerite and Hadewijch 200 Mirror of Simple Souls 293 power 3, 24, 50, 52, 54-55, 57, 65, 67, 74-75, 80, 83, 93-94, 109-110, 130, 138, 141, 149-50, 152, 155-63, 165, 170, 172, 193, 197, 209, 266, 273, 285, 287-88, 311, 316 prayer 6, 11, 13, 36, 41, 84, 129, 132, 142, 144-45, 173, 179, 203, 216-17, 229, 231, 235, 244, 296, 298, 303, 312-13 preach(ers/ing) 6, 19, 21, 27, 53, 100-101, 126, 130, 132, 135-39, 145-47, 149-51, 154-55, 186, 203, 205, 219, 223, 226, 235, 238-39, 276, 291, 316, 320 preaching manual 155, 186 Psalms 6, 15-18, 22, 25-31, 33, 36-37, 39, 41-45, 47, 52, 159-60, 162, 170, 275-80, 283-86, 290, 300 Psalter (illustration) 45-47 Pseudo-Dionysius Epistle to Polycarp 292

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372 Pseudo-Jerome 120-21 punctum 34-35 rational(e/ia) 28, 30, 41, 49, 105, 109-110, 113 reading 7, 10, 14, 19-20, 29-32, 37-38, 41, 50-51, 62, 64, 66, 100, 103-107, 109, 111, 113-14, 126, 151, 158, 162, 165, 182, 203, 208, 224, 255, 256, 264, 300, 309, 312, 316, 323 re’em 20, 156 Reformation 16, 19, 128, 187, 193 Resurrection 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 14, 18, 27, 56, 79, 116, 120-21, 141, 158-59, 163, 187, 237, 276, 303, 306, 309 revelation/revelatory 13, 50, 55, 106, 116, 118, 120, 237, 263, 321 Revelation 14, 37, 116, 139, 192, 257, 303, 322 rhinoceros 156, 158-60, 163, 166 Richard II and Anne of Bohemia 304 Riddles, Anglo-Saxon 60 ritual 76, 80, 150 Rolle, Richard Melos amoris 198 Roman de la Rose 181, 198 Sacraments 3, 111, 149, 249 Sacred Conversation 292, 296, 298 sacred monogram 129, 143 salvation/salvific 21, 27, 38, 40, 41, 59, 66, 83, 106, 110, 113-16, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129-32, 146, 148-49, 165, 203, 218, 222-23, 225-26, 241-42, 246, 250, 252-53, 256-57, 263, 267, 269, 280, 283, 310, 314 sanctuary 161 Savior 3, 56, 59, 63, 106, 195, 204, 321 Scripture 49, 53, 102-105, 112, 114, 186, 244, 257, 275-77, 282, 294, 304, 317 self-conscious(ness) 190, 259, 268, 273-74, 318 shame 199, 263, 265, 267-69, 274 sickness 55, 150, 298 sister’s son 93-96 smile 258, 270, 273 social code 93, 96 Solomon 20, 29, 130, 132, 163-64, 286 Temple of 161 Song of Songs (book) 144, 178 Explications of 189-201, 214, 280, 282

Index Soul as Lover 193 stella maris 178 stigmata 8, 21, 219, 225, 227, 229, 231, 232, 237, 239, 245 substancia 32, 32-33n15 suffering 2-3, 14, 18, 56, 58, 71-75, 79, 88, 99, 112, 129, 131, 203-204, 206, 207, 209, 215, 219-220, 240, 244, 246-47, 251-52, 276, 297, 310, 312, 322 Suso, Henry 142-45, 147-48, 151 symbolism 155, 157, 168, 171, 174-75, 179-80, 187, 240 tapestries 20, 24, 162, 175, 179-84, 186-87 Teresa of Avila 214n40 Tertullian 40n25, 61, 158 Tetragrammaton 283 The Hunt of the Unicorn (1495-1505) 175, 186-87 The Lady and the Unicorn (“La Dame à la Licorne,” 1480-35) 20, 175, 179-87 The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn (1480) 175, 186 Theophylact 19, 100-104, 106-114 Thibault IV of Champagne 173 Thomas of Celano 224-27, 229, 232, 238-39 Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul 220, 224, 232, 239 Vita brevior 226-27, 233, 239 Vita prima 224-27, 231, 233, 239 Torah 2, 11, 176 Trevisa, John 168 tropology/tropological 17, 19, 25, 27, 37, 100, 104-106, 111-12, 114 turning point 15, 21, 255, 262-63, 269-70, 274 unicorn 9, 16, 20, 23, 154-88 unicorn tapestries 162, 175, 180 Urban VI, Pope 304, 306 Utrecht Psalter 72 van Rijn, Rembrandt Prodigal Son 12, 19, 108-111, 309 Veronica Veil 300 vice 51, 55, 110 Vincent of Beauvais 168 virga 35, 39, 178 Virgil 35n17, 40n25, 261, 265-67

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Index

373

Virgin Mary 1, 9-10, 18, 20, 76, 85, 154-55, 157, 162-63, 165, 171, 173, 177-80, 183-84, 187, 197, 204, 240, 253, 293, 319 virgins 12, 161, 163, 192 virtues 105, 149, 182, 199-200, 313 von Bingen, Hildegard Physica 167 von Hackeborn, Mechtild 321 Book of Gostlye Grace 308 vulnerability 258

warrior Jesus 58, 71 wild ox 156 Wisdom (book) Wisdom 8:2 189 Wisdom (God’s Daughter) 293-99 Wound of love 248 Wycliffite Bible 156, 275 Wycliffite(s) 22, 47, 156, 275-77, 283, 285-90, 316 Wyclif, John 276, 316

Waldensians

Zachary of Besançon

223-24

115, 126

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