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

the Virgin and Child are so numerous and frequently include the theme of Mary’s compassion, a common feature of late medieval piety. In addition, Birgitta was a popular saint throughout Europe and had a definite impact on late medieval English devotional culture, to which I give some priority in this study. Readers of this book who are interested in other mystics who had a special devotion to the Christ Child are invited to pursue some of my references and those of other scholars. Along similar lines, I do not explore representations of the child Jesus in a wide range of Middle English literary texts, but only mention (apart from the Middle English poems on Christ’s apocryphal childhood, which I examine in some detail) a sampling of Middle English works that deal with the beginning of Jesus’ life. These include a few Middle English lyrics, some late medieval biblical plays, and also Mandeville’s Travels. Elsewhere, I explore how Christ’s youth is handled in the well-known and highly regarded Middle English poem Piers Plowman, in which William Langland depicts the young Christ as a knight in training eager to fight against the devil in a tournament. By insisting on the Child’s having restrained himself from exercising his divine power for many years, and by exaggerating Jesus’ youthfulness at the wedding feast of Cana, Langland’s poem arguably addresses issues that are raised by the apocrypha.⁸²

      The interaction among the sources I examine in this book is complex, because we are not just dealing with the intertexuality of apocryphal and other written narratives; we must also consider the (in many cases mutual) influences wielded by oral tales, visual representations, and the popular traditions surrounding actual and imaginary places and objects. I move into less strictly textual domain in the latter part of Chapter 4, where I briefly deal with the legend that Mary made Jesus’ seamless tunic when he was still a boy and that it increased in size as he grew up. This legend was associated with a particular place, the Priory of Sainte-Marie in Argenteuil, which, from the middle of the twelfth century, claimed to have the relic of Jesus’ tunic. A distant yet important source for this legend was the apocryphal version of the Annunciation, which describes Mary as spinning thread when she conceived Jesus in her womb—a detail commonly depicted in Byzantine art.⁸³ Since the notion of Mary as a textile worker was probably transmitted in multiple ways and also broadly reflects the social conditions of women in the pre-modern world, I would not venture to propose only one source—the apocrypha—for the legend that the Virgin made the seamless tunic at the beginning of Christ’s life. Nevertheless, the apocrypha clearly played a role in the spinning of this pious yarn, so to speak.⁸⁴

      On the whole, my study indicates that the apocryphal infancy legends were sources of both information and inspiration for writers (and artists) of the later medieval period. There were a variety of possible responses to the apocryphal material: some people apparently took these legends seriously, while others seem to have regarded them lightheartedly, or at least tolerated them as pious fiction. Still others—we may infer—tried to counteract them by offering alternative views of Jesus’ childhood. Even when they met with disapproval, the apocryphal legends had the effect of drawing attention to the vexed questions of whether Jesus behaved in a normal fashion during his boyhood and whether he developed gradually like other human children.⁸⁵

      The Appeal of Jesus—a Real Child Who Is Nonetheless Divine

      As I have already suggested, one of the reasons why the Christ Child appealed to medieval Christians was that they perceived a surprising, inexplicable, and delightful conundrum resulting from God’s assumption of the form and characteristics of a little boy. Another ostensible reason was that, by becoming an infant and child, the deity became more approachable while still wielding a powerful influence upon people’s lives. The extremely popular Legenda aurea illustrates this principle in its chapter on Christmas, in which we hear that “a fallen woman, finally repenting of her sins, despaired of pardon. Thinking of the Last Judgment she considered herself worthy of hell; turning her mind to heaven she thought of herself as unclean; dwelling on the Lord’s passion, she knew she had been ungrateful. But then she thought to herself that children are more ready to be kind, so she appealed to Christ in the name of his childhood, and a voice told her that she had won forgiveness.”⁸⁶ Although Christ of course passed beyond childhood during his life on earth, he was regarded as, somehow, a perpetual child in heaven who was always willing to grant forgiveness and offer his love.⁸⁷ Bernard of Clairvaux went so far as to declare that “contact with [Jesus’] childhood is the only remedy for human sinfulness.”⁸⁸ This presupposes that Christ’s childhood is still a reality and within reach, an idea that complements Jesus’ stipulation in the Bible that, in order to enter into heaven, one must embrace childhood (Matt. 18:3). The fourteenth-century Englishman Henry of Lancaster, in fact, explicitly claims that Jesus continues to be a child in heaven, because Christ is always ready to forgive.⁸⁹ The underlying assumption that children are naturally forgiving (and, in a negative sense, inconstant, or—stated more neutrally—malleable in their interactions with other people) is reflected in a number of medieval sources. The thirteenth-century Franciscan encyclopedist Bartholomaeus Anglicus, for instance, notes (in the words of his fourteenth-century translator): “For mouynge of hete of fleisch and of humours þey ben eþeliche and sone wrooþ and sone iplesed and forȝeuen sone” (Because of the mobility of heat, of flesh, and of the humors, they are easily and quickly angered and readily pleased and quickly forgive).⁹⁰ In the same chapter, which is devoted to the characteristics of children, Bartholomaeus explains, citing the (folk) etymology given by Isidore of Seville, that the Latin word for children (pueri) comes from the Latin adjective “purus” (“pure”). This attribute obviously refers to children’s sexual inactivity (their being pristine) and is grounded in the tenderness of their newly molded flesh, but it also seems to encompass their simplicity of character and light-heartedness.⁹¹ Describing children as pure also speaks to their mental and moral status, specifically the belief that young children are not yet capable of willingly choosing evil.⁹² In the aforesaid chapter on children, Bartholmaeus goes on to say that, before puberty, “children ben neisch of fleisch, lethy and pliant of body, abel and liȝt to meuynge, witty to lerne caroles, and wiþoute busines, and þey lede here lif wiþoute care and business…. And þey loven an appil more þan gold” (children are tender of flesh, flexible and malleable in body, agile and nimble for movement, keen to learn carols [or dances], and do not engage in serious tasks, and they lead their life without care and anxiety…. And they love an apple more than gold).⁹³ Medieval adults’ desire to recover purity through repentance and spiritual cleansing and also to return, more generally, to the more carefree way of life exemplified by children (if not, more spiritually, to acquire a childlike trust and dependency on their divine Father),⁹⁴ probably helps explain to a large extent the attraction that the child Jesus held for medieval Christians.⁹⁵ Believers seem to have taken to heart Christ’s famous words: “unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3–4).

      Nostalgia of an escapist sort, rather than a healthy desire for personal reformation, may sometimes have instilled the urge to find a lost childhood. More specifically, medieval Christians may have chosen to reflect upon Jesus’ childhood in order to ignore, at least temporarily, the negative aspects of their own lives or to avoid thinking about the suffering Jesus endured as an adult. In the Life of Blessed Margaret of Faenza (d. 1330), a Vallombrosan nun, we learn that she spent a good deal of time, “perfecting her meditations on the childhood of the Savior.” She experienced such “marvelously sweet things (mirabiles dulcedines) during them” that “she did not care to pass onto Christ’s later life (ad altiora conscendere, literally, “to climb to higher things”).”⁹⁶ Perhaps feeling somewhat offended by the way she ignored his adulthood, Jesus finally told her that it was “not right to wish to taste only the honey and not the gall (de melle meo … & non de felle).” Margaret henceforth concentrated completely on the Passion, with great intensity, apparently exchanging all the honey for gall (though Christ’s rhyming of words suggests that sweetness and bitterness may go hand in hand). Other evidence suggests that at least some medieval people perceived a danger in fascination with Christ’s childhood. Once Humiliana de’ Cerchi (d. 1246), a Franciscan tertiary, was subjected to an illusion by the devil, who, “understanding her desires, showed