even when the Child became more humanized in the later Middle Ages, he still maintained his mystique, often to the frustration of his devotees as well as to writers and artists who had little authoritative material to work with (yet, positively, much creative space at their disposal). Furthermore, the Child sometimes made known his superiority in ways that took people aback.
Figure 3. The boy Jesus appears to Chiara of Montefalco in her girlhood. Fresco by the Master of St. Clare, Chapel of the Holy Cross, Church of St. Clare, Montefalco (fourteenth century). By permission of De Agostini Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.
The medieval tendency to ascribe a surprise element to the Christ Child is clearly seen in the Life of St. Christopher that was extremely popular in the later Middle Ages: a giant with a “fearsome visage,” Christopher set out to find “the greatest prince in the world,” but after he realized that the powerful king he initially hoped to serve was not the mightiest lord of all, and that neither was the devil, he continued his search. He then came across a hermit, who instructed him in the Christian faith and assigned him a task suitable to one his size: ferrying people across a tempestuous river. After a while, the giant was graced with a mysterious visitation by the child Jesus, when Christopher answered the repeated plea for transportation from what looked like an ordinary child, standing on the riverbank. As he carried the child across the treacherous water, the giant felt his little burden on his shoulders become extremely heavy. This prompted him to remark, after he had completed his task: “My boy, you put me in great danger, and you weighed so much that if I had the whole world on my back I could not have felt a heavier burden!” Rather than thank the giant for the transportation he had been given, the Child informed him that he had just borne the Creator of the world, and his king, on his shoulders. As if the Boy’s almost unbearable weight were not proof enough of his almighty power, the Christ Child promised to work a miracle (in a short time, the blossoming of Christopher’s staff, as soon as it was implanted in the ground).112 Then he disappeared.113
In this story, the giant is transformed from being a coarse fellow who seeks to advance his own interest into a humble servant who is aware of his own weakness and later embraces martyrdom. By accepting the task to care for the unknown child, he literally accepts Christ himself (Matt. 18:5), encountering him personally in an embodied form—one of ostensible human weakness. Note too that, in this story, the child Jesus does not comfort the future saint by allowing him to experience the tenderness of his boyhood; instead, he tangibly demonstrates his power—both to acknowledge Christopher’s faithful, vassal-like service and to teach him the paradoxicality of the Son of God, about whom the giant had already heard.114 The tale, which stresses who Jesus is rather than his lovability (that is, his essence rather than his appealing qualities), reflects, in an analogous way, the shift that occurred in medieval Christians’ stance toward the divine child in the high Middle Ages: from then on, they encountered the Christ Child more personally, while continuing to acknowledge his Lordship.
A Child with Different Personae, Yet Always Lovable Lord and Savior
One of the most important goals of this book is to show that at the same time that medieval culture increasingly emphasized Jesus’ humanity—his entrance into a human family and his assumption of the human condition—it never lost sight of his unique status as the Lord and Savior of humankind and as the divine Son of God. The frequent association of the infant Jesus with the Passion—the historical sacrifice on Calvary presented anew in the Mass—underscored the Christ Child’s vulnerability and selflessness as well as his transcendence of human time and unique propitiatory power, hence his divinity. Indeed, many medieval texts and images concerned with Jesus’ childhood convey the message that his salvific mission was his raison d’être and that he had knowledge of his work of redemption—and was even eager for it—from his earliest years. Mary thus makes her son’s seamless tunic when he is still a boy, not only because it is her maternal duty to clothe her child, but also because Jesus is definitely headed for the Passion, where his clothes will be rudely stripped from him and irreverently gambled for by uncouth participants in his execution. From a broad perspective, Jesus’ wearing of the same garment in his boyhood and at the Crucifixion signifies his ontological oneness as the Savior, who is both priest and victim,115 especially considering that the Jewish high priest was thought to wear a seamless tunic.116 Such a conceptualization of a priestly Jesus is dramatically underscored in a miniature from the fourteenth-century Missale for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, cod. lat. cl. III, 111, fol. 177v; fig. 4). Here a young Jesus positioned frontally stands alone before billowy clouds of Eucharistic hosts, holding a large host in one hand and a chalice in the other, like a priest displaying the consecrated elements at the climax of the Mass, except that here the priest and the sacrificial victim are truly one and the same.117
Figure 4. The boy Jesus holding a Eucharistic host and chalice. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, cod. lat. cl. III, 111 (=2116): Missale Sancti Marci, fol. 177v (fourteenth century). By permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo—Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.
Although much further work on the medieval Christ Child needs to be done, especially on sources from the earlier medieval period, my multifaceted research thus far seems to indicate more continuity than abrupt change with regard to images and conceptualizations of the Christ Child from the late antique and medieval periods.118 Devotion toward the personages, places, and objects associated with Jesus’ birth and early life was often reinvigorated and elaborated, rather than completely invented out of whole cloth in the later Middle Ages. This can be seen, for example, in devotion to the manger, which was originally an object in the Holy Land venerated as a relic, as indicated, for example, by St. Jerome, who tells how St. Paula reverently visited the crib in Bethlehem. Privileged to be in the presence of the sacred object, Paula was prompted to “behold with the eyes of faith the infant Lord wrapped in swaddling clothes and crying in the manger.”119 For pious Christians who lived during the many centuries of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages who, for reasons of practicality, where unable to go to the Holy Land, the manger was an object they could wistfully imagine. The crusade movement and the more frequent undertaking of pilgrimages to the Holy Land beginning in the high Middle Ages probably intensified Christians’ attraction to the mysterious food bin that served as a crib for the infant God, as well as other objects and sites associated with the events of Christ’s earthly existence. In the early twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux remarked offhand, when speaking of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, that “people are more moved by the remembrance of [Christ’s] death than of his life.”120 Along similar lines, Jerusalem (specifically, Mount Calvary) was considered the exact center of the world—not Bethlehem, for all its importance in being the spot where God initiated his plan for the redemption.121 Yet all the places in the Holy Land—where Christ was born, lived, suffered, and died—were highly venerated. Moreover, one could make a mental as well as physical pilgrimage to the places and objects that had been physically touched by Christ. At the turn of the thirteenth century, Mary of Oignies envisioned Jesus as a poor boy lying in the manger,122 but it was St. Francis of Assisi who a little later popularized the crèche as a paraliturgical object, one that could be seen and touched by ordinary people in medieval villages and towns, as well as by those fortunate enough to visit or live within the great city of Rome, which was thought to possess remnants of the actual crib.
The basin in which the baby Jesus had been bathed was likewise highly valued by the Christ Child’s devotees. Writing about half a century after the death of Agnes of Montepulciano (d. 1317), a Dominican nun considered a saint, Raymond of Capua tells how she “desired with great affection to visit the lands across the sea, where our Savior was conceived, born, lived, and suffered for our salvation.” Although the Lord denied the nun’s request for distant travel, he provided some consolation
