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

Aelred advises the recluse on how she should decorate her cell so as to avoid vanity; by sticking to the bare essentials, she will conform her lifestyle to that of her heavenly spouse, “who became poor although he was rich and chose for himself a poor mother, a poor family, a poor little house also and the squalor (vilitas) of the manger.”⁸² The recluse ought to recall Christ’s sacrifice as well as his childhood. By having a crucifix on the altar, specifically a representation of Jesus with outstretched arms, she will undoubtedly be reminded of his love for her.⁸³ On the whole, Aelred emphasizes the idea that Christ is the recluse’s spouse, even as he employs the image of Jesus as mother, specifically by prompting the recluse to imagine a maternal Christ nursing her with his naked breasts.⁸⁴

      It is in Part Three of the epistolary treatise that Aelred focuses on the life of Christ in a brief and basically linear fashion. Aelred does not simply summarize the course of Jesus’ life but serves as a virtual tour guide, imaginatively leading the reader from one place to another in the Holy Land—locations once graced by Christ’s presence. Imaginatively entering into Jesus’ life, the recluse is to carry out the actions that Aelred recommends as a sort of stage director, at times telling her to pause, and at other times rushing her on to the next site, in order to commemorate another event. Marsha Dutton, seeking to distinguish between the two Aelredian works under discussion, says that the treatise addressed to Ivo urges imitation of Christ, whereas that addressed to his sister fosters a participatory experience of Christ, through the reader’s envisioning of herself as a companion of Jesus and also of Mary.⁸⁵ In my view, though these texts may be said to have different emphases, in reality they overlap a good deal. For example, the reader of the De Jesu puero duodenni is, like the reader of the De institutione inclusarum, encouraged to imagine what it would have been like to experience the presence of the Christ Child, as well as his absence. Admittedly, however, the treatise for Ivo centers on a metaphorical finding of the boy Jesus in the Temple as the ultimate goal of one’s spiritual journey, which in its various stages imitates Christ’s physical development. The focus of the De institutione inclusarum, in contrast, is on the literal details of Jesus’ childhood and the latter part of his life; Aelred’s sister is instructed to enter into the drama of Christ’s earthly life and have an imaginatively tactile experience of him, rather than ponder how her life metaphorically parallels that of Christ. The point of such meditations, Aelred states, is to increase the recluse’s love of God by providing a foretaste of Jesus’ sweetness through imagined intimacy with his historical person.⁸⁶

      Although Aelred does not write extensively about the early life of Jesus in Part Three of the De institutione inclusarum, the relevant contents of this section are worth considering here, mainly because of their connection to details found in later medieval devotional works, some of which are discussed below. Assuming that the recluse habitually engages in the reading of Scripture, Aelred recommends that she ponder the writings of the prophets, along with Mary, who was similarly engaged in her room before the arrival of the archangel Gabriel. This view of the Virgin as reading at the moment of the Annunciation differs from what we find in the influential Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, where Mary is said to have been engaged in textile work.⁸⁷ Preferring a more contemplative Mary or at least one who uses books to enrich her prayer life, Aelred tells the recluse to imagine what “great sweetness” and fire of love Mary must have experienced upon becoming pregnant with the Lord; she is to focus on “the Virgin, whom she has resolved to imitate, and her son, to whom she is wed.”⁸⁸ Aelred tells his reader to follow Mary to her cousin Elizabeth’s home and focus her gaze on the wombs of the two pregnant women, “in which the salvation of the whole world takes its origin.” He reminds the recluse that even as a fetus, Jesus was her spouse, telling her to “embrace your Bridegroom” in Mary’s womb and Jesus’ “friend” in the womb of Elizabeth.⁸⁹ As we have already seen, medieval theologians commonly spoke of the Christ Child as a spouse. In addition, medieval Christians often envisioned Jesus as a homunculus while in the womb (that is, as a perfectly formed, yet diminutive human).⁹⁰ Building upon Luke 1:41, which notes that John the Baptist leapt in the womb of his mother when she was greeted by the pregnant Mary, Aelred further endows the fetal John with personality by making him seem on friendly terms with his cousin. Making no mention of Joseph, Aelred tells the recluse to be present with Mary at the Nativity—to observe her child with joy. Urged to become even further engaged in this domestic event, so to speak, the reader is to “embrace him in that sweet crib, let love overcome your reluctance, affection drive out fear. Put your lips on those most sacred feet, kiss them again and again”⁹¹—a piece of advice recycled in later devotional texts. Aelred clearly views imaginary contact with Christ’s feet as a way to gain access to him and to experience a foretaste of future intimacy with the divine bridegroom. Later on, along similar lines, he tells the reader to visualize Mary Magdalene kissing Jesus’ feet.⁹² The fear he automatically assumes his reader will feel when she is told to kiss the Infant’s feet may stem from her presumed sense of awe as well as her reserve, an inclination Aelred considers inappropriate in Christ’s bride. Even the otherwise bold housewife-turned-holy-woman Margery Kempe, who flourished in the early fifteenth century, felt some reserve toward Christ (though mostly because of her sense of inferiority stemming from her status as a wife). Hence when she swaddles him in a vision, she does so very gently.⁹³ Yet the Lord mystically assured Margery on another occasion, saying: “thu mayst boldly, whan thu art in thi bed, take me to the [i.e., embrace me] as for this weddyd husbond … and as thy swete sone.”⁹⁴ While not all medieval Christians intermingled erotic and maternal imagery so readily, the spousal connotation of the Christ Child, clearly present in Aelred’s anchoritic text, was in fact quite common, as already noted.

      After Aelred tells his reader to meditate on the visit of the shepherds and that of the Magi, he instructs her to accompany the Christ Child to Egypt. He then recounts the story about how the Holy Family was held up by robbers as they fled there. It is important to note that Aelred is apparently the first writer in the West to relate this apocryphal legend, which is ultimately based on a tale included in the early medieval Arabic Infancy Gospel.⁹⁵ A chapter from this apocryphal text tells how the Holy Family encountered two adult thieves on the Flight into Egypt, one of whom prevented the other from harming the Holy Family. Out of gratitude, the infant Jesus promised his mother that he would reward the good thief’s kindness, prophesying that the two men would be crucified with him, but that the one on his right, the good thief, would enter with him into Paradise. Mary vocalizes her prayer that God protect her son from such a fate, but we are not told whether the infant Jesus responds.⁹⁶ This basic story was transmitted to the Greek-speaking world (and thence to Western Europe) through an interpolation made in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.⁹⁷ Background information about the good thief is provided right after the Greek writer mentions the exchange of words between the two thieves crucified beside Christ, as recorded in Scripture (Lk. 23:39–43).⁹⁸ The apocryphal Greek text gives these thieves names: the bad one on the left is called “Gestas,” while the good one on the right is named “Dismas.”⁹⁹ The name Dismas and the tale of his early encounter with the Holy Family became well known in the West by the later Middle Ages.¹⁰⁰ This figure can be seen as one of many late medieval elaborations on the Passion story and, more specifically, as a part of the widespread devotional trend of the Proleptic Passion, which I explore in more detail below.

      Whereas Mary plays a key role in both the Arabic and Greek redactions of this legend, in Aelred’s version the emphasis is on the interaction between the good thief and Jesus as they hung on the cross in close proximity. Struck by the beauty of the Lord hanging beside him, and far from being scandalized by Jesus’ execution as a criminal, the thief in Aelred’s account, who insists on Jesus’ innocence, reminds Christ of the good deed he himself had previously done for him, several years ago. It is worth quoting this passage from the De institutione inclusarum in full since, besides positing a close connection between Jesus’ infancy and Passion, it includes a number of important details, some of which resonate with sources discussed below. In addition, this is the only apocryphal infancy legend that Aelred relates here or elsewhere, so he must have had a good reason for its inclusion. Although the recluse is initially urged to accompany the Child on the Flight into Egypt, in this case, she is not at all told to intervene in