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

were pondered with new interest and open-mindedness.⁵⁸

      A little more than a decade after the appearance of Ariès’s book on the history of childhood, Leah Sinanoglou Marcus provided a brief though cogent overview of the medieval Christ Child as background for her literary study of Early Modern childhood. Despite the fact that her summary is quite insightful and still useful, it might lead one to think that a sentimental (fundamentally Franciscan) view of the Child predominated in the later Middle Ages:

      From the beginning of the thirteenth century, the childhood of Jesus was portrayed with increasing frequency and realism. Latin nativity hymns from the fourth to the twelfth centuries are nearly all abstract treatments of doctrine just as visual depictions of the Christ Child from that period display him with hieratic formalism as the grave Incarnation of Divine Wisdom or the sacrificial Victim of the mass. But in the vernacular carols of the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (1228–1306) the new affective spirit bursts forth. Jesus is “our sweet little brother,” called by the endearing diminutives “Bambolino” and “Jesulino.”

Figure 1. The boy Jesus reverenced as king by other boys, in an illustrated Vita rhythmica manuscript. London, British Library, Add. 29434, fol. 57v (fifteenth century?). By permission of the British Library Board.

      Drawing a sharp contrast between a more intellectualized and a more affective Christ Child, Marcus sums up the emergence of a new image of Jesus by saying that, in the later Middle Ages, “the Infant Jesus leapt out of his Byzantine impassivity and became recognizably infantile, laughing, sucking the pap, or playing with fruit and toys.”⁵⁹ A new iconography definitely emerged, yet the older images did not simply disappear. While Marcus’s succinct account of the later medieval Christ Child is impressive, it involves some exaggeration and oversimplification (Jacopone is surely not conventional).⁶⁰ Images of a jocund Christ Child who noticeably laughs or even smiles are actually difficult to find.⁶¹ And evidence is lacking that Francis himself referred to Jesus as “our sweet little brother,” though the sources definitely indicate that the saint was deeply touched by the humility and lowliness that God manifested in becoming a human child. Significantly, in the twelfth- to fifteenth-century Latin and Middle English texts that I concentrate on in this study Jesus is not referred to endearingly, as far as I am aware, as “little brother.” This is not to deny, however, that some medieval authors, reflecting on mankind’s new familial relationship with God made possible through Mary’s divine motherhood, spoke of Jesus as our “brother.”⁶² In contrast to sources that call attention to the deity’s approachability on account of the Incarnation, the late medieval redactions of the apocrypha recount how Jesus’ childhood friends and the adults with whom he came into contact often called him “Lord.”⁶³ Such reverence can extend even further: in an illustrated late medieval manuscript that retells a number of the apocryphal infancy legends, the boy Jesus is shown seated on a throne and reverently crowned by two boys, while a number of other boys who surround him kneel in obeisance (London, British Library, Add. 29434, fol. 57v; fig. 1).⁶⁴

      Proceeding from, Rather than Searching for Origins

      This book, which gratefully acknowledges the contributions of previous related scholarship, which I have sought to synthesize and build upon, takes the mid-twelfth century as its starting point; it by no means aims to provide an encompassing history of the ideas, images, and emotions surrounding the Christ Child over the course of the first millennium and a half of Western Christianity, or even during the European Middle Ages. While some medievalists may choose to concentrate on the crucial turning points in medieval culture or to sort out which historical personages were most instrumental in the emergence of new developments, that is not my approach here, mainly because I am ultimately interested in the medieval reception of the apocryphal Christ Child and the relationship of the apocryphal legends to other roughly contemporary sources. I begin, in a sense, in medias res with well-known Cistercian and Franciscan saints and other figures, without giving a great deal of attention to their precursors or contemporaries, such as the numerous holy women and men who likewise embraced christocentric piety and imitatio Christi, and showed a notable degree of interest in Jesus as an infant, child, or youth.⁶⁵ I have purposefully limited my focus to the later medieval period because of the abundance and richness of the relevant sources dating from this time. As a result, I survey in this book a range of texts from the high and later Middle Ages that attempt to provide a fuller picture of the child Jesus—texts that for the most part seem intended to help their readers progress along the quest of finding the “hidden” Christ Child, and also acknowledge the impossibility of completing that quest on earth.⁶⁶ I primarily examine works that may be broadly classified as devotional literature,⁶⁷ periodically mentioning medieval exegetical, theological, liturgical, dramatic, and lyrical texts; this book thus encompasses various types of religious literature pertaining to the Christ Child, with special attention paid to works whose readership extended beyond those who were highly educated. While I give priority to late medieval redactions of the apocryphal infancy legends, I intentionally focus on an assortment of sources, both medieval and patristic, that originated from different parts of Europe, as well as the Eastern Mediterranean.⁶⁸ This study also explores, though to a lesser extent, related visual sources, and other forms of material culture, such as relics and the physical aspects of pilgrimage. My overarching goal is to provide a broad conceptual and categorical map that will amply illustrate the influence of the apocrypha on later medieval writers who attempted to reconstruct Jesus’ early years in diverse ways—a wide-ranging yet focused picture that will help frame future studies. Therefore, none of my primary sources are treated exhaustively, neither those I explore in detail, nor those I mention briefly, mainly for comparison’s sake. My aim is to argue for intertextuality—or, more specifically, a synergy among sources—rather than to produce a comprehensive and meticulous cultural history of the Christ Child throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, what I offer covers much literary and intellectual territory. It is my wish that the broad argument of this book and the numerous details contained therein will serve as a guide to other scholars, especially given the lack of previous work in this field.

      A Study of Different Identities for the Child Jesus—Commonly Linked with the Apocrypha

      To recap and forecast the major threads of this study: in a general sense, the present book shows Christians’ tendency in the later Middle Ages to regard the Christ Child as an individual with whom they could communicate, in whose experiences they could share, and whose historical interactions with others (such as his family members and neighbors) they hoped they could better understand and profit from spiritually. My exploration of the Child’s cult illustrates Christians’ desire to make progress on a quest for deeper spirituality and greater knowledge of the God-man, Jesus Christ, through the use of various texts, objects, and artworks that shed light on the hidden years of Jesus’ youth. As we shall see, certain aspects of late medieval culture were incorporated (probably unconsciously) into diverse imaginative attempts to reconstruct Christ’s childhood and youth. This imaginative appropriation is readily apparent in the case of the early Franciscans, who thought of the child Jesus as a pauper like themselves. One can also sense that, within late medieval culture, parallels were perceived between the infant Jesus and the supernatural beings of medieval folklore: incubi, changelings, and demons who appear in human form.⁶⁹

      At the same time that writers added color to their portrayals of the young Jesus by incorporating new details that stemmed from the constructs and objects with which they themselves were familiar, they relied upon ancient traditions of both a popular and theological nature. These include the belief that Christ was, at least in a non-physical sense, a perfect person from the beginning of his life,⁷⁰ an idea which, on the face of it, seems at odds with Luke’s remark (2:52) that Jesus progressed as he grew up (increasing “in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men”). The view that the Christ Child was perfect—a human fully developed psychologically, due to his divinity—can be perceived in the fourteenth-century Meditationes vitae Christi and in other sources. As Jaime Vidal points out, we might assume that the Christ Child of this Franciscan-authored