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

aura of dubiousness about them. Focusing on reliable, biblical texts, one could seek greater knowledge of the early stages of Christ’s life through careful study of Scripture, by linking together passages that directly deal with the Christ Child with verses from different parts of the Bible that seemed applicable to him. Medieval Christian scholars viewed many passages from the Hebrew Scriptures as prophecies of, or encoded references to, the child Jesus, and such typological readings were transmitted to broader audiences.¹¹ Another approach, one that seems to have yielded a more diverse outcome, was the retrospective application of the New Testament’s presentation of the adult Christ to Jesus’ boyhood, according to the common view that famous or saintly people were biographically consistent over the course of their lifetime. So, for example, if Jesus when he was a preacher spoke of himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29), then it only stands to reason that the child Jesus would have been like that, too. On the other hand, the adult Jesus’ conflicts with the Jewish authorities suggested to some medieval Christians that he likely experienced opposition from Jewish elders (or those who were to become such) early on: just as he healed a blind man on the Sabbath using moistened clay (John 9:1–15), so also in his childhood, one might have reasoned, he fashioned clay birds at a riverside in violation of the Jewish day of rest.¹² Related to this notion of biographical consistency is the popular belief that people destined for greatness give signs of this early on, as baby Hercules famously did when he killed the snake insidiously placed in his cradle.¹³ Yet not everyone was willing to take a more fanciful approach to Jesus’ childhood, or, on the other hand, had the training and leisure to study the Bible’s numerous (both clear and subtle) references to Christ as a way to discover something about his childhood. A conservative yet still somewhat creative approach was for a Christian to meditate prayerfully on scenes or episodes from Jesus’ early life, which are mentioned in the canonical gospels and commemorated in the liturgy, using his or her imagination to yield further details, which, if not completely accurate in a historical sense, were at least conducive to devotion. One could also aspire to supernatural communication with Jesus and Mary themselves, who might graciously reveal information about Christ’s childhood or help one reenvision it, as it transpired long ago within the household of the Holy Family and the village in which they lived—details that would have otherwise remained hidden. In short, medieval Christians who wished to gain a greater imaginary hold on the early part of Jesus’ life clearly had a variety of approaches at their disposal; besides turning to the apocrypha, they could study Scripture, pray and meditate, and also think of Jesus’ youth in terms of more contemporary constructs (such as late medieval ideals of masculinity).

      A Shift in Medieval Christians’ Response to the Divine Child

      In the patristic and early medieval periods, religious writers focused not so much on the early events of Christ’s life as a way to draw Christians closer to Jesus, but on the paradox of the Incarnation—of God condescending to become a human being—surely a great cause for wonderment.¹⁴ How was it possible for Mary’s womb to contain the Lord of the universe, who is “the wondrous sphere that knows no bounds, that has its centre everywhere and whose circumference is not in any place”?¹⁵ Another paradox frequently propounded by early writers was the transformation of the Eternal Word into an infans—literally, one who does not speak.¹⁶ While Christians during the first fifteen hundred years of the Church continuously wondered at God’s becoming a child and the paradoxes that followed thereon, it seems generally to be the case that, starting around the late eleventh century, more attention was paid to Jesus’ humanity per se—that is, not simply as a way to highlight the contrast between Christ’s divine and human natures. The experience of wonder arguably shifted in emphasis, with less weight being given to the intellectual stupefaction resulting from the awareness of paradox and more to the delight produced by the approachability of a God who became a lowly infant and simple child.¹⁷ In one of his Christmas homilies, the eleventh-century Italian monk and reformer Peter Damian, who is sometimes seen as a herald of the new concentration on Christ’s humanity, evinces the emotion of wonder as he calls attention to the Christ Child’s humanity, yet, at the same time, he does not seem to foster an emotional or imaginative interaction with the baby Jesus. Damian thus seems to stand at the end of a long tradition of Christ-directed piety:

      Who would not be astounded that he who is not held in by the vastness of heaven is laid in a narrow manger? He who clothes his elect with the stole of immortality does not despise being covered by base rags. He who is the food of angels reclined on the straw of beasts. He who quells the storms of the sea … awaits the precious drops of milk from the Virgin’s breast…. The little infant who is tightly bound in a child’s swaddling clothes by his mother is the immense one who, with his Father, governs the rights of all things. O how great were the castellated palaces of the world’s kings … and yet he who chose the manger as the crib of his Nativity despised all those things…. He wished to be cast down so that he might carry us to the heights; he became a poor person in this world, so that he might present us partakers of his riches. Dearly beloved brothers, ponder the humility of our Redeemer with all the contemplation of your soul.¹⁸

      Damian in this passage is concerned with eliciting a response of loving gratitude and joy based upon an intellectual and imaginative realization of what the Incarnation really means: Christ deigned to become a poor and powerless child so that he might generously share his divine wealth with lowly human beings. Who would have thought of such a thing!

      In the following century, the eloquent Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, in one of his sermons for the Vigil of Christmas, claimed that the belief that God united himself with humanity and that a virgin became a mother was itself a cause of wonder, since it entailed the coupling of faith and the human heart, which, by implication, is naturally inclined to disbelieve the pairing of polar opposites. Bernard uses striking language to speak of these three conjunctions, stating, for example: “Majesty compressed himself to join to our dust (limo nostro, literally, ‘our mud’) the best thing he had, which is himself…. Nothing is more sublime than God, nothing is lower than dust—and yet God descended into dust with great condescension … a mystery as ineffable as it is incomprehensible.”¹⁹ Further in the sermon, Bernard reconsiders the wonder implicated in belief in the Incarnation, asking rhetorically: “Are we to believe then that the one who is laid in the manger, who cries in his cradle, who suffers all the indignities children have to suffer, who is scourged, who is spat upon, who is crucified … is the high and immeasurable God?”²⁰ Though Bernard here briefly mentions concrete aspects of Christ’s babyhood, he does not urge his audience to savor such homely details. Elsewhere, in a sermon for Christmas day, he leads his reader to a more personal reflection on the lowliness of Christ’s Nativity: “I recognize as mine the time and place of his birth, the tenderness of the infant body, the crying and tears of the baby…. These things are mine … they are set before me, they are set out for me to imitate.”²¹ In this passage, while he praises God’s wisdom, Bernard focuses on the example of asceticism provided by the infant Word; God did not become human by assuming the form of a strong man—in the view of many, the most impressive type of human being—but “became flesh, weak flesh, infant flesh, tender flesh, powerless flesh, flesh incapable of any work, of any effort.”²² The helplessness of the baby Jesus, lying in the manger, underscores the weakness of all human flesh, including that of monks who were supposed to discipline their body continually, in order to overcome pride and subdue fleshly desires.

      Though Bernard approaches his subject rhetorically rather than scholastically, he shares a sentiment with high-medieval intellectuals who wondered at the tenderness of infants’ bodies. I refer here to how some scholars pondered why God, the author of nature, made it much easier for the babies of animals to move about on their own and seek food. The new Aristotelianism that partially prompted such questions may very well have led to greater reflection on the human nature of Jesus, who was thought to have truly passed through the early stages of the human life cycle. In other words, Jesus was believed to have experienced what other babies, children, and adolescents experienced—to be like us in all things but sin (Heb. 4:15).²³ Another possibility was that Jesus simply gave the appearance that he was developing, as he non-dramatically bided his time until undertaking his adult mission.

      Thus far, I have sketched out