is increased by each of them witnessing the other suffer, which likewise happens at the crucifixion,255 but on this occasion they pacify and comfort each other as the pain presumably subsides. As did Bonaventure in the Lignum vitae, the author of the Meditationes vitae Christi emphasizes that Jesus “began to suffer for us” at that time (that is, at the Circumcision).256 Jesus’ suffering and self-abasement are in fact highlighted throughout the text, even before this incident. For example, the author earlier remarks that Jesus humbly cloistered himself in Mary’s womb, “just like everyone else.” The reader is urged to “feel compassion for him [in the womb] that he reached so great a depth of humility.” In addition, she is informed that Jesus “was in ongoing affliction” from the moment of his conception until his death, and that his continual mental anguish, especially at the thought of the loss of souls (to the devil), was even greater than his physical suffering.257 When describing the Holy Family’s return from Egypt, the author claims that it was even more difficult than the journey there (which, as other texts emphasize, was an unexpected, anxiety-ridden flight from murderous pursuers), since the seven-year-old Jesus was too big to be carried the whole way and too small to walk very far. The author then references Psalm 87:16 as a prophecy of Jesus’ childhood (as did Bonaventure earlier): “O noble and delicate child, king of heaven and earth, how hard you have labored for us, and how early you have taken on those labors!”258 By eliciting the emotion of compassion for both the adult and child Jesus, the Meditationes vitae Christi certainly did much to promote affective piety for its Poor Clare readers and other late medieval Christians.
The Poor Clare reader is encouraged to experience delight as well as sorrow when meditating on the childhood of Christ, and to relate to the Boy on a simple level, as if she were a gentle child in his presence. At Greccio, Francis of Assisi may very well have interacted in such an intimate way with the Christ Child who, as I have already recounted, seems to have miraculously appeared during the Christmas Eve Mass celebrated there. In his Vita secunda, Thomas of Celano says that Greccio was the place where the saint “recalled the birth of the Child of Bethlehem, becoming a child with the Child (factus cum Puero puer)”—an intriguing comment upon which the author unfortunately does not expand.259 Citing this latter passage, Leah Marcus remarks that Francis was “far from scorning puerility.” Speaking of medieval Franciscans more generally, she claims that they “sought to infuse Christianity with a childishly playful spirit”; their “mingled gaiety and reverence” was “quite consciously childlike in its spontaneity and lack of decorum.”260 While Francis may be considered childlike on account of his simplicity, playfulness, and sense of wonder, he may also be thought to have become “a child with the Child” in a deeper sense, perhaps experiencing, as if vicariously, some of the divine child’s lowliness and abasement. Although we cannot pin down his meaning, it is fair to say that Thomas of Celano’s phrase “factus cum Puero puer” is echoed by the author of the Meditationes vitae Christi in the chapter on the Flight into Egypt, which instructs the reader to “become a little girl with the little child.”261
The chapter from the Meditationes vitae Christi dealing with the Flight to Egypt is worth examining more closely, since the author proposes much fruit for meditation regarding the seven years that the Holy Family spent in exile. To instill compassion in the reader, the author tells her what the family did to earn their living during that time. Implying that Joseph, an old man, brought home only a modest income as a carpenter, the author says that Mary plied the distaff and needle—a scene depicted in an illustrated Meditationes vitae Christi in Latin (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, fol. 24v, bottom register; fig. 11) and also in an illustrated Italian version (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ital. 115, fols. 41r and 43r).262 When he was old enough to do so, the child Jesus acted as his mother’s agent in her home-based sewing business, returning the items she finished and sometimes suffering rude treatment from her clients. Immediately after being told how the Holy Family supported themselves, the reader is prompted to consider what Mary did whenever she became aware that her growing boy was hungry (whether this was between meals or more continuously is unclear): as a solicitous and loving mother, Mary must have deprived herself of food in order to feed her son. Having given the reader a few glimpses into the Holy Family’s humble and close-knit domestic life, the author invites her to delve more deeply into Jesus’ boyhood, telling her to make use of the material he has given her, as she sees fit:
Enlarge on it … and be a little girl with the child Jesus, and disdain neither such humble activities nor meditating on what seems childish. For they are thought to produce devotion, enkindle love, induce compassion, bestow purity and simplicity, add to the strength of your humility and poverty; preserve intimacy, and produce unanimity (conformitatem facere), as well as raise your hope…. Do you see how many good results derive from [such meditation]? As I said, become like a little girl with the little child (sis … cum paruulo paruula) and grow with him as he grows.263
As Robert Worth Frank, Jr., points out, this enumeration of the good effects that will result from such a meditative exercise is a “large order, and an important statement.”264 While modern readers tend to respond to the Meditationes condescendingly, claiming that it fostered only a sentimental type of piety,265 the anonymous author here claims that the activity he proposes will have a profound spiritual effect. Not merely a game of make-believe aimed at triggering a fleeting emotional response, meditation on Jesus’ boyhood will enable the devout reader to become like the Child himself. She will not only grow in the virtues that the young Jesus manifests, she will also achieve a greater oneness, or familiarity, with Christ through the process of imaginatively concentrating on him and his experiences.266
Frank cites a passage from the following chapter of the Meditationes vitae Christi (which deals with the Holy Family’s return from Egypt) to illustrate the text’s effectiveness at “increasing love and preserving familiarity.”267 The reader, who, in her imagination, has already visited the Holy Family in Egypt, is told to go back there before they leave and then accompany them on their journey.
When perchance you have found him outside with the children, he will catch sight of you and run up to you immediately; for he is so friendly and easy to talk with and caring (curialis, lit., “courteous”). Kneel and kiss his feet, and sweeping him into your arms with a hug, find a bit of sweet respite with him. Then he will say to you, “We’ve been given permission to return to our own land, and tomorrow we must leave. You’ve come at a good time, because you will be going back with us.” Answer him at once that you are overjoyed at this; and that you hope to follow him wherever he goes (Rev. 14:4). In conversations like these you can take your delight with him.268
Figure 11. The fall of the idols in Egypt (upper register); Joseph and Mary at work (lower register), in an illustrated manuscript of the Meditationes vitae Christi. Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, fol. 24v (fourteenth century). By permission of the President and the Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
The charm of the child Jesus, who is here brimming with friendliness, is quite inviting. Students of medieval literature might usefully contrast the imaginary interaction between the Poor Clare reader and the Christ Child in this scene with the strained relationship between the jeweler-narrator and his deceased daughter in the Middle English poem Pearl. Though she had died at age two, the deceased girl around whom the poem centers appears to her father in a vision as a young maiden. Her demeanor is certainly more mature than what we would expect of one who, just a short while ago, was a little girl: she maintains her reserve and seems lacking in compassion, as she explains her new, exalted status as a bride of Christ. Toward the end of his dream vision, the narrator, after being coldly admonished by his daughter for his excessive grief and inability to understand basic Christian teachings, is nevertheless granted the privilege of seeing her in the heavenly Jerusalem, her new home, as she participates in a procession
