The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages. Mary Dzon

Ages).¹²⁸

      As I have argued above, there were a host of competing and overlapping images of the Christ Child in the later Middle Ages, a multiplicity that stemmed from a number of causes, most prominent of which was the difficulty of imagining the presence of divinity, the summation of perfection, adhering in a human child, which to medieval adults bespoke development and change. The apocryphal childhood legends explored this paradoxical situation in a dramatic manner, showing the tension that could arise when a young Jesus not shy about his divine lordship interacted with those around him. Raising a number of theological issues, such legends likely inspired medieval Christians to reflect more deeply upon Christ’s early years. Whatever approach they took, medieval Christians in search of the near but elusive child-God likely felt that the issue of Christ’s childhood, which the canonical gospel writers probably bypassed for a very good reason, was always open to further exploration.

      Before turning to an examination of apocryphal infancy gospels and Birgittine materials pertaining to Mary’s relationship with her son Jesus, this study will consider well-known Cistercian and Franciscan treatments of Christ’s childhood,¹²⁹ which create an important backdrop for the other (generally later) materials discussed below. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century religious figures with whom I begin strove to make the child Jesus, who for centuries had lurked in the background of European culture, come to the fore. The Bible rather than the apocrypha was their main inspiration, yet they did not completely ignore extra-scriptural details that seemed useful in promoting devotion to the Christ Child among their fellow Christians.

      CHAPTER 2

      The Christ Child in Two Treatises of Aelred of Rievaulx and in Early Franciscan Sources

      In one of his numerous sermons on the Song of Songs, the renowned Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) invites his audience to imagine “how Mary’s husband Joseph would often take him [the Christ Child] on his knees and smile as he played with him.” This particular sermon, which momentarily turns to a scene of domestic intimacy, focuses on the verse “A bundle of Myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts” (Sg. 1:12); it is specifically the word fasciculus (“little bundle”) that prompts Bernard to think of the infant Jesus. Myrrh, the bitter herb mentioned in the verse, recalls Jesus’ sufferings, which, according to Bernard, were manifest first in “the privations of his infancy,” and then in “the hardships he endured in preaching, the fatigues of his journeys, the long watches in prayer, the temptations when he fasted, his tears of compassion, the heckling when he addressed the people, and finally the dangers from traitors in the brotherhood, the insults, the spitting, the blows, the mockery, the scorn, the nails and similar torments that are multiplied in the Gospels.”¹ Bernard mentions Christ’s infancy only briefly within this increasingly dramatic sequence,² concentrating instead on the Passion, the climax of Christ’s life, which was recounted in the Gospels with considerable detail and elaborated even further in medieval devotional texts and images. Bernard advises his fellow monks to keep the recollection of Jesus’ life and death as a “delectable bunch” between their breasts; they are to have it before their mind’s eye, especially when they experience difficulties. It is near the end of this short sermon where Bernard introduces the aforementioned image of Joseph bouncing the infant Jesus on his knees.³ Yet he finally closes not with this charming vignette, but with a more abstract reference to Christ as the “Church’s bridegroom.” This implies that the members of the Church, especially the individual monk who hears or reads the sermon, are to seek mystical union with Christ—an intimate relationship with the Godman that is both fostered by and transcends meditation on the events of Jesus’ earthly existence.

      Although it may seem strange that Bernard associates the infant Jesus with the bridegroom desired by the bride in the Song of Songs, other medieval Christians commonly thought of the Christ Child in this way. As Ann Astell remarks, in medieval texts in which the bride is interpreted as the Virgin Mary, the groom “assumes the striking form of an Infant Boy nursing at her breasts.”⁴ The Christ Child was not simply the beloved of the Virgin Mary, but also the spouse desired by Christians who sought a deeper spirituality. Such imagery is reflected in the vita for the Beguine Mary of Oignies (d. 1213) authored by Jacques de Vitry: “Sometimes it seemed to her that she held him [God] tightly between her breasts like a clinging baby for three or more days and she would hide him there lest he be seen by others and at other times she would play with him, kissing him (osculando ludebat) as if he were a child.” Mary’s biographer also notes that: “Once when she had lain continuously in bed for three days and had been sweetly resting with her Bridegroom, the days slipped by most stealthily because her joy was so great and so sweet.”⁵ In this chapter from Mary of Oignies’s vita, Jacques clearly has in mind the verse from the Song of Songs about the spouse having myrrh between her breasts, since he specifically says that the divine child who visited Mary and caused her such delight was nestled between her breasts (inter ubera commorantem; cf. Sg. 1:12).

      Bernard’s disciple Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167), who served for twenty years as abbot of an influential Cistercian monastery in Yorkshire, Rievaulx Abbey, also uses language and imagery from the Song of Songs when speaking of the Christ Child, as we shall see in considering two of his devotional treatises that deal with Jesus’ youth. An examination of these works shows that the figure of the Christ Child was employed by Aelred not simply in a sentimental way, that is, with the single goal of having his reader meditate upon and delight in the lovableness of the young Jesus, imaginatively re-presented in the here and now. The Cistercian abbot’s agenda is rather more complex, at least in the case of the treatise directed at a male reader, the De Jesu puero duodenni (On Jesus at the Age of Twelve). Yet in both cases, Aelred seeks to capture his reader’s attention by focusing on the divine child, whom one could imaginatively see and touch. In differing degrees, Aelred moves beyond the historical details of Jesus’ life, prompting his reader to engage in more abstract levels of thinking and to undergo an inner reformation—to undertake, more broadly speaking, a spiritual quest that would culminate in an ineffable experience of the divine.

      This chapter will focus on two works of Aelred of Rievaulx and on thirteenth-century texts by and about St. Francis and his disciple St. Clare, because scholars have traditionally (and rightfully so in my view) given the Cistercians and Franciscans major credit for initiating a new type of devotion to the child Jesus that became widespread in the later Middle Ages, an affective piety that was focused on the Christ Child’s hardships as well as his attractiveness and sweetness as a tender child. Yet, as we shall see, the Cistercian abbot Aelred focuses only to a small degree on the human qualities of Christ’s boyhood, preferring in his now famous treatise on the twelve-year-old Jesus to draw the attention of his monastic male reader to the process of conversion and spiritual development that he himself must undergo, a transformation that should parallel the Christ Child’s birth and growth throughout the life cycle. While Aelred’s other work to be considered below, a letter addressed to his sister, who was an anchoress, appeals more to the senses in the relatively short section on the historical life of Christ that is relevant here, the recluse is encouraged not just to imagine what the human Jesus was like at different stages of his life, but also to reflect deeply on her own status as a bride of Christ, who has turned from this world so as to prepare herself better for the next, in which the union with her beloved will finally be realized. To become more familiar with Christ in the here and now and also to make herself more worthy of being his bride, the anchoress is to imagine herself interacting with Jesus as did his mother and his other female followers featured in the canonical gospels. The recluse is also to imitate Jesus in the way he lived his life, as a poor and humble man, detached from the power structures and, to some extent, social obligations of this world (like reproduction and child-rearing). Just as such Cistercian works do much, in a literary way, with the relatively few details from the canonical gospels dealing with Christ’s early life, so do the early Franciscan sources succeed in making the child Jesus who is hidden in the Bible come to the fore. Whereas the Cistercians’ approach was more inward, that of the Franciscans was more performative and tangible (in the sense of being focused on real objects like the manger), yet in both cases