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

eventual conversion to Christianity, in the third age of the world.

      Although the abbot may zealously wish the Jews to be reconciled with Christ and for them to enjoy spiritual prosperity, he portrays the young Jesus as coldly stern toward his family members and associates who are looking for him. He also portrays the Jews as hostile, specifically by claiming that they cast an evil eye on those to whom (presumably the adult) Christ showed mercy. To be more precise, Aelred imagines Jesus criticizing the Jews more generally for their ill-will: “you raged at my gifts, you were envious at my compassion, and since your evil eye (nequam oculus; cf. Matt. 20:15) grudged the penitent, blinded by envy (livor), it was unable to see the author of its own salvation.”⁴⁸ As noted in subsequent chapters, Thomas Aquinas and Birgitta of Sweden similarly called attention to Jewish envy when they imagined how Jesus might have been received by the Jewish community around him.⁴⁹ Going further than Aelred, these later authors imagine ill feelings being directed at the boy Jesus himself. As I explain in the following chapter, the apocryphal infancy legends circulating in the later Middle Ages undoubtedly create a cultural rift between Jesus and the Jewish community into which he was born. Although Aelred, in the middle section of his treatise, may be alluding to the actual tension he imagines to have existed between Jesus and the Jews of his day, the abbot, taking a broad view of things, envisions the future healing of the current division between Christians and Jews.

      I have already emphasized how Aelred treats the incident in the Temple as a historical event only to a certain extent, given that he also approaches the episode metaphorically as well as allegorically. Aelred’s novel yet rather spare speculations about the Boy’s activities in Jerusalem are worth considering more closely, especially since they have significant points in common with other medieval sources dealing with Christ’s childhood. After briefly wondering about the practical aspects of Jesus’ staying behind in Jerusalem, Aelred conjectures that, on the first day, the Boy went up to heaven to consult his Father about “the ordering of the redemptive work he had undertaken (suscepta dispensatio).”⁵⁰ Such a novel speculation (not apparently inspired by any legend in circulation) implies that the child Jesus already knew of the mission for which he was sent, an idea that finds expression, in different ways, in other medieval sources.⁵¹ Careful not to impute any ignorance to Christ as he engages in this divine and heavenly conference, Aelred adds that Jesus consulted his Father, “not in order to learn what he already knew from all eternity,” but “to defer” to him, to “offer him his obedience, [and to] show his humility.”⁵² Far from imagining the young Jesus wandering around Jerusalem, Aelred claims that on the second day of the Child’s brief retreat from his parents, Christ informed the angels of God’s plan to make good the loss of their numbers due to the rebellion of the bad angels. Only then, on the third day, did he “gradually” give the Jewish scholars some insight into “the promise contained in Scripture,” that is, the Father’s plan for the redemption.⁵³ Aelred interprets the Child’s answering of questions, as well as his listening to and questioning of the teachers, as a sign of his humility—of his choosing to act “as a boy who learns.”⁵⁴ Yet, at the same time, the boy Jesus instructs the doctors in a subtle way, seeking to shed some light on divine matters without causing alarm or offense.

      Despite his tactfulness vis-à-vis the learned doctors, Aelred’s Christ Child could still be considered an exceptional boy and also a puer-senex (a boy endowed with the maturity of an adult). The abbot emphasizes how the fellow pilgrims to Jerusalem were drawn to the Boy, attracted as they were to the “signs of heavenly powers shining forth” from him, as well as the Christ Child’s revelation, in some way, of “the mystery of the wisdom that saves.”⁵⁵ Aelred also calls attention to the Boy’s serious demeanor and weighty speech, by which “the boys of his own age are kept from mischief.”⁵⁶ Despite such details, which clearly distinguish Jesus from ordinary boys, in this treatise he is in no way portrayed as preternaturally odd or obnoxious, as he is in the apocrypha (and as some children are in medieval saints’ vitae).⁵⁷ Toward the end of the first (that is, historical) section of the treatise, Aelred directly, though briefly, touches upon the issue of what Luke meant when he said that Jesus “advanced in wisdom” (2:52). Although he offers two views, without explicitly endorsing one and discounting the other, he seems to believe that Jesus did not actually advance in wisdom, since he states that “what can be said of God in his nature could be said of Christ, even when he was in his Mother’s womb.”⁵⁸ Yet Aelred acknowledges the alternative view, which relies upon the argument that if Christ lacked the fullness of beatitude during his life, then he probably also lacked wisdom in his youth.⁵⁹ In any case, Aelred does not spend much time on this vexed question, stating that he is concerned with devotion rather than theology.⁶⁰

      Aelred’s devotional agenda explains why he emphasizes Mary’s intense feelings on the occasion of her loss, search for, and recovery of Jesus, and why he only briefly touches upon the question of what she thought of her son’s behavior and identity, which, again, has more to do with theological issues. When, toward the beginning of the treatise, he questions both the Christ Child and the Virgin, specifically wondering why Jesus did not have compassion on his mother, and expressing his bemusement as to why Mary looked for him if she knew that he was God, Aelred seems to be finding fault with both parties. In any case, he is clearly expressing his inability to comprehend their actions and motives, as well as his astonishment that such a mix-up could have happened in the first place. Around a century later, an English Franciscan poet, Walter of Wimborne, similarly pondered the crisis caused by Christ’s lingering in the Temple, going so far as to act as Mary’s lawyer in an imaginative court case, in which the twelve-year-old Jesus is accused of impiety because he caused his mother such emotional suffering.⁶¹ Although Aelred does not exaggerate the misunderstanding between Mother and Child to such proportions, he does depict Mary as a very solicitous and dutiful mother, saying that she was “on fire with such anxiety” over the loss of her son. He also adds tender human touches, for example, by suggesting that Mary suspected that Jesus had gone off with other boys and was worried that he suffered injury from one of them.⁶² As already noted, Aelred conveys Mary’s sense of relief when she finally found her son (which echoes the exclamation of the bride in the Song of Songs: “I have found him”). He is careful, though, to point out that her negative feelings were caused more by being deprived of the delights caused by her son’s presence, than by overwhelming anxiety over his safety (which is later emphasized in the Meditationes vitae Christi).⁶³ After all, he bluntly states, Mary knew that he was God.⁶⁴ Along similar lines, Aelred remarks, in response to Luke’s comment that his parents did not understand Jesus’ words when they found him (Lk. 2:50), that Mary “could not be ignorant of any purpose of her son.”⁶⁵ This implies that she somehow knew of her son’s redemptive mission, though the abbot here says too little to indicate what he actually thought about Mary’s understanding of the young Jesus.⁶⁶ As we shall see, late medieval writers sometimes portrayed Mary as being aware of her son’s future sacrifice through her knowledge of prophecies, or learning about it early on and sometimes being reluctant to accept it as God’s will.

      While Aelred touches upon (what we might call) some Mariological and Christological issues and certainly adds some tender, human notes to the episode of the three-day separation, his main purpose in the De Jesu puero duodenni is ostensibly to foster the soul’s union with Christ, which is here symbolized by Mary’s finding of Jesus on the third day of her troubling search.⁶⁷ In the course of promoting such spiritual development, the Cistercian abbot has undeniably expanded the basic story about Christ’s staying behind in the Temple to great proportions. He achieves this not so much by adding mundane details that seem to derive from his own imagination (such as the idea the Jesus begged for food, which he mentions only briefly)⁶⁸ but by applying passages from different parts of the Bible (especially the Song of Songs) to an anecdote about Jesus’ childhood. His overall goal is to treat of the soul’s progress toward greater intimacy with and also resemblance to Christ. Indeed, in some way the treatise can be said to be not so much about the Christ Child after all, but rather about the soul of its intended monastic reader.

      While the other medieval texts I will explore in this book similarly add color to their depiction of the Christ Child by drawing on passages