of his fellow human beings (John 20:17, Matt. 25:40)—biblical passages that are explicitly cited in this chapter. In addition, the anonymous author clearly has in mind Luke’s comment, at the end of his account of the Holy Family’s visit to the Temple, that the twelve-year-old Jesus went home with his parents and “was subject to them” (Lk. 2:51), which he cites at the outset of the chapter dedicated to Jesus’ hidden years.287
The emphasis of the Meditationes vitae Christi upon the self-abnegation of the young Jesus is clearly an attempt to fashion his persona according to the model of Francis of Assisi. The saint’s desire to be perceived as a fool is strikingly illustrated by a detail Thomas of Celano includes in his Vita prima.288 Francis was clearly a talented preacher, for “even without preparation … [he] used to say the most amazing things to everyone.” Although he was apparently able to do so, Francis did not always preach impromptu. Even the absence of Francis’s anticipated preaching had a powerful effect, as Thomas attests: “Sometimes [Francis] prepared for his talk with some meditation, but once the people gathered he could not remember what he had meditated about and had to say. Without any embarrassment he would confess to the people that he had thought of many things before, but now could not remember a thing … [H]e would give a blessing and send the people away with this act alone as a very good sermon.”289 In a similar way, the young Jesus of the Meditationes vitae Christi paradoxically did amazing things by doing (or saying) nothing worth recording in Scripture, apart, of course, for the incident in the Temple, which the anonymous Franciscan author relates (in chapter 14) mainly to instill compassion for Mary in the reader. In this following chapter (15), the author switches gears, as it were, by claiming that, although Jesus had originally shown considerable promise after his return with his family from the Temple (cf. Lk 2:52), thereafter he did nothing commendable until the beginning of his public ministry. This led his neighbors to conclude: “He is an idiot, a no-good [person], foolish, and stupid.”290 Emphasizing the scorn that was directed at the young Jesus, the author adds: “He had no formal schooling, and among the people he was generally thought of as oafish and unbalanced (grandis et captivus).” Significantly, although this Franciscan Jesus seems incredibly passive, he nevertheless retains a faint trace of the vigor traditionally associated with Christ (especially in the earlier Middle Ages), when the anonymous author comments that the young Jesus wielded the paradoxical “sword of humility” in order “to bring low the haughty enemy.”291 But even this detail, because of its emphasis upon Christ’s self-emptying (that is, the Son’s putting aside of his glory in becoming human, and a poor and powerless one at that), can be seen as characteristically Franciscan.
Jaime Vidal effectively summarizes, and also offers a rationale for, the Meditationes vitae Christi’s treatment of Jesus’ inconspicuous youth when he says: “The hidden life at Nazareth has hidden from his people the wonders which the Infancy Narrative has shown to us, and thus made possible the Messianic secret and the possibility of rejection.”292 The overarching theme of the chapter in which the Franciscan author ponders what Jesus did from age twelve to twenty-nine is that Christ is a Deus absconditus (Isa. 45:15), a passage that is explicitly quoted in this chapter.293 As we shall see in subsequent chapters of this book, many medieval Christians believed that Jesus kept a low profile during his childhood and believed that this was not accidental but that he chose to do so for good reasons.
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