The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England / Ellen M

The grief of God This page intentionally left blank The Grief of God IMAGES OF THE SUFFERING JESUS IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND ELLEN M. ROSS New York Oxford • Oxford University Press 1997 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Pans Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1997 by Ellen M. Ross Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ross, Ellen M., 1959— The grief of God: images of the suffering Jesus in late medieval England / Ellen M. Ross. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-I9-5I045I-X 1. Suffering of God—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600—1500. 2. God—Mercy—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600—1500. 3. Jesus Christ—Crucifixion—Art. 4. Christian art and symbolism— Medieval, 500—1500—England. 5. Christian literature, English (Middle)—History and criticism. 6. England—Church history—1066—1485. I. Title. BT153.S8R67 1997 252.96—dc2o 96-5502 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Mark This page intentionally left blank Preface For the medieval Christians considered in this book, the blood flowing from the wounds of Jesus Christ is the love of God literally poured out onto all human- kind. Divine compassion rains down upon humanity in the shedding of Jesus Christ's blood, and viewers are invited, as The Prickynge of Love expresses it, to enter into the joy of the Godhead through the bloody wounds of Jesus' flesh. Drawing on artistic, literary, and devotional sources in late medieval England, I explore the transformative power of Jesus' wounded body as it manifests divine presence and love in the world. The Crucifixion was not an event of the past for the authors and artists considered here; rather, it was a living sign of God's merciful love for humanity. I analyze how medieval persons were brought to new understandings of their re- lationship to God and to neighbor by encountering the bleeding flesh of the wounded Jesus. I further examine the lived, performative spiritualities by which believers imitated the suffering of Jesus. The spiritual authority gained by imi- tating the enfleshed God—through sacramental life, prayers for the dead, liturgical role-playing, and even christological self-wounding—enabled medieval Christians to function as powerful advocates for those who were seeking divine mercy. My study explores the theological complexity and emotional sophistication of medieval piety. My concern is not with medieval theology per se but with analyzing the religious and cultural dimensions of medieval portrayals of the viii Preface suffering Jesus. The christological images under review here make up a "rhetoric of appeal and response" by which viewers and readers were encouraged affectively to experience the full meaning of God's love definitively demonstrated through the Passion of Jesus, As the Abingdon Missal's depiction of the Crucifixion (see fig. 2.9) demon- strates, the suffering of Jesus Christ was an act of a trimtarian God's love for humanity. In the Abmgdon image, the dying Jesus hangs on the cross, and the dove (the Holy Spirit) hovers above, looking up toward the First Person of the Trinity, the Father. The First Person reaches out his hands, both offering Jesus to the world and receiving Jesus to himself, saying, as The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ puts it, "Come my sweet son. ... I shall embrace you in my arms and take you into my bosom." It was not Jesus Christ's rising from the dead that captivated the imagination of medieval Christians but rather the miracle that God became enfleshed in order to suffer on behalf of humanity. My thesis is that it is the Crucifixion of Jesus that is the focus, one might say the obsession, of late medieval culture: God bled and wept and suffered on the cross to manifest the full mercy of divine compassion, I thank Syracuse University Press for permission to republish as part of chapter i my article, "Suffering, the Spiritual Journey, and Women's Experience in Late Medieval Mysticism," in Maps of Flesh and Light, edited by Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 45—59, and I thank the Ameri- can Academy of Religion for permission to republish in chapter 4 part of my article, "Spiritual Experience and Women's Autobiography: The Rhetoric of Selfhood in 'The Book of Margery Kempe,'" Journal of the American Academy of Re- ligion 59 (1991): 527—44.1 express my gratitude to those whose work and lives have inspired me: Geri and Donald Duclow, Richard Kieckhefer, Ann Matter, Ber- nard McGinn, Barbara Newman, Virginito a Reinburg, and Darice Wallace. I am grateful to my research assistants, Wendy Cadge, Paul Crego, Rachel Graham, Jennifer Lyders, Karma Martin, Elsie Pan, and Cornelia Schiitz, and to my many students and friends who have participated in the conversations which engen- dered this book. I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Religion, Boston College, and Swarthmore College for funding travel and leave time to conduct the research that led to the writing of this volume. I am grateful to my friends and colleagues at Boston College and Swarthmore College for their support. I thank Mmda Hart at the Interlibrary Loan Office at Swarthmore College and librarians Libby Amann, Nancy Bech, Alison Masterpasqua, Julie Miran, and Steven Sowards for their patience and expertise in processing my book requests. I thank Cynthia Read, Peter Ohlm, and Paula Wald of Oxford University Press for shepherding my work through the publication process, and I thank Natalie Goldstein for her care in copyediting. I am grateful to my siblings—Seamus, for ideas and constant support; Richard, for inspiring creative endeavors; and Therese, for companionship on life's jour- Treface ix ney—to my parents, Kathleen and Jim, for ongoing encouragement, and to my aunt and uncle, Eleanor and Manny Bairos, for their celebration of life. I thank my children, Katie and Christopher, for the wonder and delight they bring me each day. I dedicate this book to Mark Wallace with appreciation for his pains- taking attention to my work and for our ongoing conversations about the Middle Ages; with warm memories of our adventures seeking keys to small parish churches in the English countryside and studying in libraries, well-known and obscure; and with deepest thanks for his poetic and enthusiastic gesture toward life—all of which have made this book possible and have brought joy to the time spent writing it. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania E. M. R. August 7996 This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction 3 Two Themes: Jesus as Agent of Divine Love and Power of Human Transformation 5 Overview of the Project 9 A Christ-Centered Culture? 13 ONE The Dynamics of Divine Appeal: The Suffering Jesus in the Literature of Spiritual Guidance 15 Sermons and Spiritual Guidance Literature 15 The Suffering Jesus and the Offer of Divine Mercy 15 The Appeal of the Suffering Jesus 17 Confession and the Individual 22 Jesus as an Advocate for Humans and the Social Dimension of the Believer's Response 28 Imitation of Jesus Christ in the Lives of Individual Believers: Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and Spiritual Anguish 31 The Spirituality of Sufferin g31 Three Types of Suffering 34 xii Contents TWO The Aesthetics of Suffering: Figuring the Crucified Jesus in Manuscripts and Wall Paintings 41 Psalters, Missals, and Books of Hours 42 The Passion Narrative as Hermeneutical Key to the Reading of Scripture 41 Suffering and Liturgical Time 44. Polysemy of the Crucifixion 45 Responding to the Wounds of Jesus 52 Wall Painting&s 5533 Church Art as Creating Christological Space 53 Wall Paintings as Christological Narrative Cycles 58 Responding to the Offer of Mercy 63 THREE Dramas of Divine Compassion: The Figure of the Wounded Jesus and the Rhetoric of Appeal in the Mystery Plays 67 Testimony to the Immensity of Divine Love 68 Varieties of Testimony 68 Identity of Jesus Christ: Human and Divine 78 Divine Compassion: Reconciliation of God's Justice with God's Mercy 8l Models for Describing How Jesus Christ Effects Reconciliation 83 Response to the Immensity of Divine Love 85 The Appeal of the Suffering Savior 85 Sacraments 88 Love of Neighbor and the Cosmos on Stage 9! FOUR Body, Power, and Mimesis: Holy Women as Purveyors of Divine Presence 95 Women's Bodies as Inscriptions of Divine Love: Margaret of Antioch and Katherine of Alexandria 96 Margaret of Antioch and the Cosmic Stuggle with Evil 9$ Katherine of Alexandria and Eruptions of the Divine 104 An Athlete of the Passion of Christ: Elizabeth of Spalbeek no Mimesis and the Liturgical Hours no Saint as Visage of Christ to the World 115 Contents xiii The Body as Parable of Divine Sorrow: Margery Kempe 117 Margery Kempe and the Medieval Milieu 117 Margery Kempe: Representative of God to Humanity 122 Margery Kempe: Representative of Humanity to God [25 Conclusion 131 Notes 139 Bibliography 169 Index 191 A section of illustrations follows p. 54 This page intentionally left blank The grief ofGod This page intentionally left blank Jntroduction The gaze of late medieval England was fixed on the broken body of a wounded and bloody Jesus surrounded by weeping bystanders.

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