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

While these are certainly key pieces in the puzzle, they cannot stand alone as embodiments of medieval piety toward the Christ Child. Indeed, I suspect that the shortness and unpredictability of such supernatural encounters may, at least at times, have been frustrating to medieval Christians who wanted to enter more deeply into the mysteries of Jesus’ childhood—to advance along the quest for deeper knowledge of the divine child. When Jesus appears in the host as an infant or slightly older boy, the description we get of him usually emphasizes his amazing beauty, but it is nevertheless often tantalizingly nondescript; concomitantly, the duration of the vision or heavenly visitation is usually very short. Moreover, such mystical experiences were regarded as gifts rather than as something one could willfully lay claim to, though they could definitely be prepared for, especially by pious meditational reading, interaction with related artworks, pilgrimage to shrines, and attentive participation in the liturgy.

      Margery Kempe, whom I mentioned earlier, felt the frustration of not having her wishes for a mystical experience with the child Jesus come true. Once when she saw some Italian women with babes in arms, who turned out to be, not surprisingly, just ordinary human infants, her “mende [was] so raveschyd into the childhod of Crist, for desir that sche had for to see hym, that sche mith not beryn [endure] it.”³² Nor did Margery, despite her imitation of earlier holy women, ever see the baby Jesus in the host, as he is said to have appeared to many female saints. Even though it may have seemed like a disappointment to her, Margery could still return to the devotional books she had access to back in England, which likely included a version of St. Birgitta of Sweden’s revelations, which, as we shall see, shed much light on the Christ Child. And if Margery was curious and persistent enough, she could have learned of the apocryphal tales of Jesus’ childhood, which at that time circulated in English and were also rendered artistically.

      One of the reasons that medievalists have not pressed very far beyond such previous studies,³³ extremely worthwhile and indeed essential though they are, is that the attention of scholars interested in medieval religiosity has been directed elsewhere. That is, recent studies on medieval devotion to the humanity of Christ have focused almost exclusively on the Passion of Christ and medieval Christians’ sacramental access to it through the Eucharist—the figure of the suffering Jesus, who, driven by love and exhausted from physical abuse, hangs on the cross, offering his body both as a propitiatory sacrifice and as spiritually nourishing food.³⁴ Without a doubt, medievalists’ focus on the Man of Sorrows is both understandable and justifiable, given the centrality of this figure in the later Middle Ages.³⁵ One valuable area of contribution within this latter field has been the recent work done on the anti-Judaic aspects of medieval treatments of the Passion and their unfortunate social consequences.³⁶ Equally important has been the recent scholarship on devotion to the Virgin Mary in the medieval period, which has tended to focus on medieval approaches to the compassion she felt on Calvary or tales of her miraculous interventions in medieval people’s lives. In their concern about the undeniable historical meaning and importance of Mary, these studies often gesture at, if not actually grapple with, contemporary feminist/gender issues.³⁷ Such contemporary concerns have probably resulted in more attention being paid to the medieval Virgin Mary than to the medieval Christ Child, even though interest in historical or other types of childhood studies has grown over the last fifty years or so. Still, medievalists do not seem to have felt a strong exigency to explore the medieval Christ Child more thoroughly. This deficiency largely accounts for the synthetic and interdisciplinary nature of the present study, which (though limited in scope) aims to bring together and explore some of the ways in which medieval Christians imagined Jesus in the early part of this life.

      To be sure, we would have a much better understanding of medieval piety if we knew what it was about the figure of Mary that inspired, among many other things, a young man to wed himself to her, solemnizing the dedication of his heart to this lovely lady by placing a ring around the finger of her effigy. The Praemonstratensian canon Hermann-Joseph of Steinfeld (d. 1241) indeed performed this ritualistic and deeply meaningful gesture in his youth, if we can believe his hagiographer.³⁸ Yet Hermann-Joseph also played with the Christ Child when he was a boy, having been invited to do so by Mary (who supposedly communicated with the pious youth through a statue of the Virgin and Child). As we shall see, in the later Middle Ages, many people interacted with the child Jesus, sometimes on a one-on-one basis. An animated statue of the Virgin and Child comes into play in another tale, a Miracle of the Virgin found in a thirteenth-century manuscript: when a nun was at prayer, the Christ Child spoke to her and instructed her sometimes to say “Ave benigne Deus” to him (by implication not simply the “Ave Maria” to his mother).³⁹ Although medieval Christians sometimes seem to have focused on either Mary or the Christ Child, these figures were thought to be inextricably intertwined on account of their perpetual maternal-filial relationship.⁴⁰ Arguments in favor of Mary’s bodily Assumption in fact drew attention to her loving care of and constant companionship with her son during his lifetime, implying that it would be impossible for Jesus not to reciprocate his mother’s love by having her beside him in heaven.⁴¹ That Mary and Jesus are closely linked by an enduring bond is likewise conveyed by an exemplum recounted in the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, an immensely popular collection of saints’ lives from the thirteenth century: a woman who wanted to liberate her imprisoned son devised a novel yet effective plan. She detached an image of the baby Jesus from a statue of the Virgin and Child, took the effigy home with her, and locked it in a cupboard in order to force Mary to help her regain her son. This the Virgin promptly did, in order to recover her own beloved child.⁴²

      To sum up: in this section I have shown how there has previously been no broad-ranging study of the child Jesus as a focus of devotion and curiosity specifically in the Middle Ages, though a number of studies dealing with related aspects of medieval piety (and Christianity more generally) have explored important aspects of the medieval Christ-Child cult. Scholars interested in the ideas and social realities surrounding childhood in the Middle Ages have also touched upon this central figure within medieval culture.⁴³

      Studying the Christ Child and Medieval Childhood

      At the outset, it is worthwhile stating my view that, given the inherently theological character of medieval images of and legends about Christ, they seem to have only a limited capacity to shed light upon medieval childhood (a difficult, though rewarding area of research, due to the relative scarcity of medieval sources focusing on children or childhood). Nevertheless, studying the medieval Christ Child can give us some indication of how medieval adults thought of and treated children.⁴⁴ An example of this occurs in the vita of Ida of Louvain, a thirteenth-century Cistercian nun, which tells of a vision that Ida had one night, in which a lovely-looking boy Jesus, wearing a full-length seamless tunic, appeared to her sister who had badly mistreated her that very day. Climbing onto her bed, he proceeded to “overpower her with his punching fists and kicking feet.” He also “added bold outspoken words, in which he took her to task for the stupidity and wickedness behind her upbraiding of her sister [Ida],” who was accustomed to caring for him.⁴⁵ This vita provides another naturalistic view of Christ as a normal human child (though in a more positive sense), in its account of Ida’s vision of being privileged to assist St. Elizabeth, Jesus’ aunt, in bathing him. First the women arranged the bathtub and the other things that were needed: “Then Elizabeth, along with Ida, carefully sat the Infant in the lukewarm water to be bathed. Seated there, this Choicest of Children cupped his hands and clapped on the water—as playing children will do. He toyed with the waves he stirred and he splashed [water onto] the floor all around.”⁴⁶ Commenting on this passage, social historian David Herlihy remarks that “the male author of this life had clearly observed babies in the bath, and noted the delight which real mothers took in washing their infants.” ⁴⁷

      Just as sources dealing with the Christ Child have the potential to reveal medieval perceptions of children and attitudes toward childhood, so the study of medieval childhood helps situate medieval representations of the boy Jesus within the broader culture. For instance, knowing that swaddled babies, in medieval art, look very similar to deceased infants (who are similarly shrouded) helps us appreciate why the Christ Child in Nativity scenes is frequently depicted tightly swaddled, lying on a block-like, almost tomb-like manger. Such images represent the newborn Jesus