conversion and enrichment through Christ’s spiritual gifts that is central to Aelred’s overall moral interpretation of the Temple episode. To be more precise: in this middle section, Aelred speaks of the presumed, eventual conversion of the Jews at the end of the world and of God’s bestowal of graces upon the Gentiles, near to Christ, in the meantime. Rather surprisingly (considering that the figures of Mary and Ecclesia were often conflated and opposed to that of Synagoga),43 Aelred recasts Jesus’ parents as the Jews who are separated from Christ and ineffectively searching for the Messiah among their own people. In his imaginative reworking of the biblical episode, Aelred goes further by transforming the Jewish teachers in the Temple, with whom Jesus is eventually found conversing, into the Gentiles, and the Temple into the Church, into which Jesus’ parents enter only after a period of time. Regarding Jesus as the Lord who will ultimately unite the Jews and Gentiles, Aelred speaks of the twelve-year-old Christ as an embodiment of both the Old and New Laws: the Ten Commandments and the dual mandate to love God and neighbor. As the verbum abbreuiatum sed consummans (“the Word that is abbreviated but sums up”; cf. Rom. 9:28; Isa. 10:23), Jesus brings the Law of Moses to perfection.44 Like other medieval Christian scholars, Aelred is confident that the Jews will ultimately come over to Christ.
Since this treatise focuses heavily on the young Jesus’ separation from his parents and kindred, rather than his reunion with them, it is not surprising that the middle section of this work centers on discord among people. Aelred thus seems to seize upon (or perhaps be carried away by) the dramatic potential of the episode, going so far as to position himself as a sort of spokesperson for the Christ Child vis-à-vis the Jews, to whom he speaks reprovingly. He bluntly informs them that Christ has “cast away his heritage,” and proclaims that Christ’s “beautiful face … is hidden only from those of your own house.” Finding fault with the Jews for failing to recognize Christ, Aelred derogatorily contrasts them with the ox and the ass at the manger, who laudably recognized their master (Isa. 1:3).45 Aelred depicts himself as not having success as a mediator with regard to either party; it is especially difficult for him to appease Jesus, whom he describes as crudelissimus (“utterly cruel”) toward his own people.46 In this scenario, the Christ Child, whose immovability is made worse by the essentially unalterable biblical past, seems unwilling to make the initial gesture of reconciliation. Alluding to Matthew 12:46, Aelred says that even though the boy Jesus “certainly” (certe) was told that his mother and brethren were looking for him, he still did not go out of the Temple to meet them.47 Instead, he waits inside until, after three days, his relatives finally come in, which for Aelred signifies the Jews’ eventual conversion to Christianity, in the third age of the world.
Although the abbot may zealously wish the Jews to be reconciled with Christ and for them to enjoy spiritual prosperity, he portrays the young Jesus as coldly stern toward his family members and associates who are looking for him. He also portrays the Jews as hostile, specifically by claiming that they cast an evil eye on those to whom (presumably the adult) Christ showed mercy. To be more precise, Aelred imagines Jesus criticizing the Jews more generally for their ill-will: “you raged at my gifts, you were envious at my compassion, and since your evil eye (nequam oculus; cf. Matt. 20:15) grudged the penitent, blinded by envy (livor), it was unable to see the author of its own salvation.”48 As noted in subsequent chapters, Thomas Aquinas and Birgitta of Sweden similarly called attention to Jewish envy when they imagined how Jesus might have been received by the Jewish community around him.49 Going further than Aelred, these later authors imagine ill feelings being directed at the boy Jesus himself. As I explain in the following chapter, the apocryphal infancy legends circulating in the later Middle Ages undoubtedly create a cultural rift between Jesus and the Jewish community into which he was born. Although Aelred, in the middle section of his treatise, may be alluding to the actual tension he imagines to have existed between Jesus and the Jews of his day, the abbot, taking a broad view of things, envisions the future healing of the current division between Christians and Jews.
I have already emphasized how Aelred treats the incident in the Temple as a historical event only to a certain extent, given that he also approaches the episode metaphorically as well as allegorically. Aelred’s novel yet rather spare speculations about the Boy’s activities in Jerusalem are worth considering more closely, especially since they have significant points in common with other medieval sources dealing with Christ’s childhood. After briefly wondering about the practical aspects of Jesus’ staying behind in Jerusalem, Aelred conjectures that, on the first day, the Boy went up to heaven to consult his Father about “the ordering of the redemptive work he had undertaken (suscepta dispensatio).”50 Such a novel speculation (not apparently inspired by any legend in circulation) implies that the child Jesus already knew of the mission for which he was sent, an idea that finds expression, in different ways, in other medieval sources.51 Careful not to impute any ignorance to Christ as he engages in this divine and heavenly conference, Aelred adds that Jesus consulted his Father, “not in order to learn what he already knew from all eternity,” but “to defer” to him, to “offer him his obedience, [and to] show his humility.”52 Far from imagining the young Jesus wandering around Jerusalem, Aelred claims that on the second day of the Child’s brief retreat from his parents, Christ informed the angels of God’s plan to make good the loss of their numbers due to the rebellion of the bad angels. Only then, on the third day, did he “gradually” give the Jewish scholars some insight into “the promise contained in Scripture,” that is, the Father’s plan for the redemption.53 Aelred interprets the Child’s answering of questions, as well as his listening to and questioning of the teachers, as a sign of his humility—of his choosing to act “as a boy who learns.”54 Yet, at the same time, the boy Jesus instructs the doctors in a subtle way, seeking to shed some light on divine matters without causing alarm or offense.
Despite his tactfulness vis-à-vis the learned doctors, Aelred’s Christ Child could still be considered an exceptional boy and also a puer-senex (a boy endowed with the maturity of an adult). The abbot emphasizes how the fellow pilgrims to Jerusalem were drawn to the Boy, attracted as they were to the “signs of heavenly powers shining forth” from him, as well as the Christ Child’s revelation, in some way, of “the mystery of the wisdom that saves.”55 Aelred also calls attention to the Boy’s serious demeanor and weighty speech, by which “the boys of his own age are kept from mischief.”56 Despite such details, which clearly distinguish Jesus from ordinary boys, in this treatise he is in no way portrayed as preternaturally odd or obnoxious, as he is in the apocrypha (and as some children are in medieval saints’ vitae).57 Toward the end of the first (that is, historical) section of the treatise, Aelred directly, though briefly, touches upon the issue of what Luke meant when he said that Jesus “advanced in wisdom” (2:52). Although he offers two views, without explicitly endorsing one and discounting the other, he seems to believe that Jesus did not actually advance in wisdom, since he states that “what can be said of God in his nature could be said of Christ, even when he was in his Mother’s womb.”58 Yet Aelred acknowledges the alternative view, which relies upon the argument that if Christ lacked the fullness of beatitude during his life, then he probably also lacked wisdom in his youth.59 In any case, Aelred does not spend much time on this vexed question, stating that he is concerned with devotion rather than theology.60
Aelred’s devotional agenda explains why he emphasizes Mary’s intense feelings on the occasion of her loss, search for, and recovery of Jesus, and why he only briefly touches upon the question of what she thought of her son’s behavior and identity, which, again, has more to do with theological issues. When, toward the beginning of the treatise, he questions both the Christ Child and the Virgin, specifically wondering why Jesus did not have compassion on his mother, and expressing his bemusement as to why Mary looked for him if she knew that he was God, Aelred seems to be finding fault with both parties. In any case, he is clearly expressing his inability to comprehend their actions and motives, as well as his astonishment that such a mix-up could have happened in the first place. Around a century later, an English Franciscan poet, Walter of Wimborne, similarly pondered the crisis caused by Christ’s lingering in the Temple, going so far as to
