Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  29. Auerbach shows that the ambivalence is expressed by the very term passio: “Those who stress the distinction between the two meanings ‘suffering’ and ‘passion’ have not understood the dialectical relation between them in the Christian use of the word—for God’s love, which moved him to take upon himself the sufferings of men, is itself a motus animi without measure or limit” (“Excursus: Gloria Passionis,” 70). For the ambivalence of the strong emotions that Christ’s passion evoked in the later Middle Ages, see Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 92.

  30. The attention given to the face of Christ is connected to the importance of the Veronica in this period. See below, p. 96.

  31. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 418, n. 54.

  32. First appearing in the twelfth century, this new attitude toward Mary’s compassion is defined more explicitly in the thirteenth century through the affective mysticism of St. Francis and his followers, especially Bonaventure, and progressively increases until the attribution of the role of co-redemptrix to Mary herself. For the evolution of the doctrine of Mary’s compassion, see André Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin: études d’histoire littéraire (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1932), 505–14; Otto Von Simson, “Compassio and Co-redemptio in Roger Van Der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross,” Art Bulletin 35 (1953): 9–16; Sandro Sticca, Il Planctus Mariae nella tradizione drammatica del medio evo (Sulmona: Teatro Club, 1984), 131–51; for bibliographical information, see Marrow, Passion Iconography, 252, n. 41.

  33. See Donna Spivey Ellington, “Impassioned Mother or Passive Icon: The Virgin’s Role in Late Medieval and Early Modern Passion Sermons,” Renaissance Quarterly 48, n. 2 (Summer 1995): 227–41. In the Red Scripture, Mary’s suffering is so intense that it is presented as similar to infernal punishments, like Christ’s. Her invocation to death as a way to end her agony in lines 30–312 is identical to what the damned continuously said in the Black Scripture. Her last words, “Per gran dolor delenguo e tuta me desvenio” (“I droop in great suffering and pine away”), are identical to what the damned said in Black Scripture, 883.

  34. Bynum points out that the concept of Mary as the flesh of Christ was so strong that it suggested that, as the Logos preexisted the Incarnation, so the humanity of Christ also preexisted the Incarnation in the sinless humanity of Mary (“Body of Christ,” 100–101). The same idea is at the base of the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption: Christ cannot be fully in heaven unless the body of Mary is also with him because otherwise his resurrection would be incomplete. See Rachel Fulton, “The Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs in the High Middle Ages” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1994).

  35. See Bynum, “Female Body and Religious Practice,” 222–38. The conception that body was an essential part of the human person was common in contemporary philosophical discussions. In contrast with the Platonic definition of man as soul, beginning with the fathers of the Church, Christian thought conceived the human being as a union of body and soul. Even those like Hugh of St. Victor or Robert of Melun in the twelfth century who endorsed a more Platonic conception did not identify the human person with the soul but tended to treat it as an entity composed of body and soul. See Richard Heinzmann, Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele und die Auferstehung des Leibes: Eine problemgeschichtliche Untersuchung der frühscholastichen Sentenzen- und Summenliteratur von Anselm von Laon bis Wilhelm von Auxerre (Münster: Aschendorff, 1965); idem, “Was ist der Mensch? Zu einer Grundfrage des mittelalterlichen Denkens,” Theologie und Philosophie 49 (1974): 542–47. With the increasing assimilation of Aristotelian philosophy, scholastic thinkers progressively strengthened the unitary character of the person. No theologian would have defined it as a soul using a body. What mattered was the human character of the composite, for which both elements were equally important. See Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 135–36 (and n. 59 on p. 135 for bibliography).

  36. In the same way as in the expressions referring to Christ’s pain (11. 70, 159, 179, 189), the prefix “stra” for the superlative suggests the intensity of Mary’s love for Christ (11. 269, 333–34) and of her pain (11. 226, 252, 282, 290). In line 230 her “doler” is even “stradurissimo”: not only is the prefix “stra” ungrammatically added to the superlative “durissimo” but the same expression “stradolere” defines the pain of Christ’s hands when they are nailed to the cross (1. 159: “le man ge stradolevano”) and his suffering limbs (1. 179: “In si no ha el membro ke tut no ge stradoia”). The same terms—“doia,” “angustia,” “angoxa,” “pena,” “dolor”—refer to both Christ’s and Mary’s sufferings. Moreover, often the very same phrases define both Mary and Christ: see, for instance, Christ’s “dolur dexmesurai,” his enormous suffering for the nailing of his feet and hands in line 154 and Mary’s “doi dexmesurae” and “dolor dexmesurao” in lines 225 and 248; or Christ’s “dolur angustïusi” in line 158 and Mary’s “dolor angustievre” in line 142. In line 177 the expression “Oi tormentosa angustia, oi doia sover doia,” which commonly described the infernal pains in the Black Scripture, refers to Christ’s crucified body, while in line 289 “Oi dolorosa angustia, oi doia sover doia” defines Mary’s tortured body.

  37. One of the most famous examples is the fifteenth-century Descent from the Cross by Roger Van Der Weyden, now in the Prado. As Mary swoons, her body assumes a position almost identical to that of the dead Christ. Thus Mary in her compassion becomes nearly as important to the composition as the figure of Christ. See Von Simson, “Compassio and Co-redemptio,” 10–11.

  38. Bonaventure, De assumptione B. Virginis Mariae, sermo 2, in S. Bonaventurae opera omnia (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1901), 9: 161.

  39. In the almost contemporary Meditations on the Life of Christ of the Pseudo-Bonaventure, Mary’s compassion under the cross is greatly highlighted (chaps. 74–80). In chap. 78, the identification of Christ’s passion and Mary’s compassion is acknowledged by Christ himself, who speaks to the Father and says that Mary, too, is on the cross with him: “Pater mi, vides quomodo affligitur mater mea. Ego debeo crucifigi, non ipsa; sed mecum est in cruce. Sufficit crucifixio mea, qui totius populi porto peccata; ipsa nihil tale meretur.” S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, ed. A. Peltier (Paris: Ludovicus Vives, 1868), 12: 606.

  40. “To take the discipline” meant to take part in self-flagellation. For the extensive diffusion of this practice among both lay and religious people in the late Middle Ages, see Emile Bertaud, “Discipline,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1957), 3: cols. 1302–11. Since the last decades of twelfth century, the spirituality of Humiliati was characterized by a strong importance given to penitence, whose practices emphasized the valor of physical suffering and humiliation: according to André Vauchez, “Plus profondément, la pénitence comme état de vie se traduit par la recherche de la nudité, du dépouillement et de la souffrance physique.” “Pénitents,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 12, part 1: cols. 1010–23); quotation at col. 1020.

  41. In the thirteenth century, belief in Mary’s bodily assumption (which became dogma only in 1950) was very common and was followed by Bonaventure, among others, in his sermon De assumptione B. Virginis Mariae. In the passage from the De peccatore cum Virgine mentioned before, Bonvesin is explicit and says that Mary is in the court of heaven “with our flesh” (11. 114–15). In the fifth glory of the Golden Scripture, the poet continuously stresses the beauty and the splendor of the faces of the “pure queen” and of Christ. The adjective “clarissima” in line 365 suggests that Bonvesin is referring to the splendor of their resurrection bodies because claritas was one of the four dowries of the glorified body. Through emphasis on Mary’s clarity, Bonvesin is underlining not only her presence in heaven, but also her bodily assumption to it. For the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption, see Fulton, “The Virgin Mary and the Songs of Songs,” esp. chap. 3; and Martin Jugie, La mort et l’assompti
on de la Sainte Vierge: étude historico-doctrinale (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1944), esp. 363–407. For Bonaventure’s sermon, see Bynum, “Material Continuity,” 257. See also Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward: 1963–65); and Mirella Levi-d’Ancona, The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, Monographs on Archeology and the Fine Arts 7 (New York: College Art Association of America in conjunction with the Art Bulletin, 1957). Not only will Dante the poet explicitly affirm that Mary and Christ are in heaven with their glorified body, but he also imagines St. John telling the pilgrim to divulge the doctrine on earth: “With the two robes in the blessed cloister are those two lights only which ascended; and this you shall carry back into your world” (Par. 25: 126–29).

  42. For an iconographic study of the doctrine of compassion, see von Simson, “Compassio and Co-redemptio”; and C. M. Schuler, “The Swords of Compassion: Images of the Sorrowing Virgin in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1987).

  43. See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 208–24. For the deep emotional relationship between devotional image and beholder in the later Middle Ages, see Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotion,” Viator 20 (1989): 161–82.

  44. Contemporary devotion to Mary was a way to move toward Christ. See Rosemary Hale, “Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs in Late Medieval German Spirituality” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992), 33. For Mary as mediatrix between God and man, see Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 106; Fulton, “Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs,” Viator 27 (1996): 85–116, esp. 87–89; Spivey Ellington, “Impassioned Mother,” 297.

  45. In the Golden Scripture, at the end of several glories the blessed say what has the merit of their beatitude and therefore indicate correct behaviors to the listeners. Most behaviors are the same as in these final lines of the Red Scripture, such as penitence in the first and twelfth glories, fasting and affliction of the body in the first and eighth, poverty, humility, and misery in the first, third, and tenth.

  Time Is Short: The Eschatology of the Early Gaelic Church

  1. Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy, 4 vols. (Dublin: HMSO, 1887–1901), ii, 56: Uamon mór for feraibh Erenn ria feil Eoin na bliadhna-sa, co rothesairc Dia tria troisctibh comarba Patraic ocus cleirech n-Erenn archena.

  2. For discussions see Louis Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic Lands (London: Sheed and Ward, 1932), 271–76; Charles Darwin Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 23–37; and two works by St. John D. Seymour, who made the field his special interest: “The Eschatology of the Early Irish Church,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 14 (1923): 179–211, and Irish Visions of the Other World (London: SPCK, 1930).

  3. James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, vol. 1, Ecclesiastical, ed. Ludwig Bieler (1929; rep. Dublin: Pádraic ó Táilliúir, 1979), 733.

  4. R. E. McNally, “The Imagination and Early Irish Biblical Exegesis,” Annuale Medievale 10 (1969): 5–27.

  5. Some useful studies are St. John D. Seymour, “Notes on Apocrypha in Ireland” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 26 (1926) C: 107–17; David N. Dumville, “Biblical Apocrypha and the Early Irish,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 73 (1973) C: 299–338; Martin McNamara, Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975); D. Greene, F. Kelly, and B. O. Murdach, The Irish Adam and Eve Story, 2 vols. (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976).

  6. Rodulfus Glabrus, Historiarum Libri Quinque (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 52–54 (Bk II, Chap. 2), where Brendan becomes an Anglo-Saxon native of East Anglia.

  7. Benedeit, The Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan, ed. Ian Short and Brian Merilees (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 4.

  8. Irenaeus, Contra Haereses Libri Quinque, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus Seriesgraeca, 166 vols. (Paris, 1857–66), 7, cols. 433–1223; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Paladin, 1970), 27.

  9. St. Patrick, His Writings and Muirchu’s Life, ed. A. B. E. Hood (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978), 23: “quem credimus et expectamus adventum ipsius mox futurum, iudex vivorum atque mortuorum.”

  10. Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and other documents, ed. Michael Winterbottom (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978), 143–44.

  11. Leslie Hardinge, The Celtic Church in Britain (London: SPCK, 1972), 72; and S. Columbani Opera, ed. G. W. S. Walker (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957), 41.

  12. Würzburg University Library MS M. th. f. 12, cited from Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, 2 vols. (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, rep. 1975), 1: 559; after Hardinge, The Celtic Church in Britain, 72.

  13. James Carney, The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1964), 80–84; the verses are dated to the period 750–70.

  14. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica in Charles Plummer, ed., Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896): Fursa at 1: 163–68, and Drythelm at 1: 303–10. The Vision of Fursa was popular and translated into Irish, see the edition by Whitley Stokes in Revue Celtique 25 (1904): 385–404.

  15. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson, Adomnán’s Life of Columba (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 188.

  16. Nennius, British History and Welsh Annals, ed. John Morris (Chichester: Phillimore, 1980), 75.

  17. Whitley Stokes, The Tripartite Life of Patrick with Other Documents Relating to That Saint, 2 vols. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1887), 1: 116: “muir mór do tuidecht tar hÉrinn secht mbliadna riambrath.” The contemporary tract known as the Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagal (see n. 37) claims that St. Patrick and St. Martin were jointly responsible for preventing a lake of fire and a lake of water from engulfing Ireland.

  18. Kenney, Sources, 376.

  19. Whitley Stokes, ed., “Colloquy of the Two Sages” (Immaccalam in dá Thuarad), Revue Celtique 26 (1905): 4–64 (p. 48). The same seven years might be intended when later in the text, following the signs of the birth of the Antichrist, there are seven dark years when the lights of the heavens are not visible until the Final Judgment.

  20. Opera, ed. Walker, 39 and 49, after H. P. A. Oskamp, The Voyage of Máel Duin (Groningen: Walters-Nordhoff, 1970), 80–81.

  21. A useful discussion of these voyage tales and their symbolism is in Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961), 314–25.

  22. An early study is by Alfred Nutt, “The Happy Otherworld in the Mythico-Romantic Literature of the Irish,” in Kuno Meyer, ed., The Voyage of Bran son of Febal to the Land of the Living, 2 vols. (London: A. Nutt, 1895), 1: 101–331. See also Christa Löffler, Voyage to the Otherworld Island in Early Irish Literature (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1983).

  23. Canice Mooney, The Church in Gaelic Ireland, 13th to 15th Centuries (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1969), 44.

  24. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 325.

  25. James Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1955), 286.

  26. Meyer, Voyage of Bran, 30. The text can be dated linguistically to the seventh or eighth century, but the language is archaic and is employed as the standard against which archaisms in other texts are measured; see Vernon Hull, “Two Tales About Finn,” Speculum 16 (1941): 322–33, esp. 323.

  27. Charles Plummer, Irish Litanies (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1925), litany no. 18, after Oskamp, Voyage of Máel Dúin, 82.

  28. Carl Selmer, Navigatio Sancti Brendani abbatis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press
, 1959), 56.

  29. Charles Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 1: 115; the name Ailbe is rendered phonetically as Heluei.

  30. Whitley Stokes, ed., “The Voyage of the Húi Corra,” Revue Celtique 14 (1893): 22–69 (p. 56). The date of the tale is uncertain. The extant text seems to be eleventh century, but the composition of the original might have been as early as the eighth century; a survey of opinions is given in Kenney, Sources, 740–41. More recently it has been suggested that the Ailbe episode should be dated prior to the Viking Age; see Oskamp, Voyage of Máel Duin, 18.

  31. Selmer, Navigatio, 78–80.

  32. For example, the prophets Elias and Enoch linger in the Land of Promise according to the Voyage of Snedgus, but according to the Vision of Adomnán they are in Paradise.

  33. The tract is preserved in Oxford, Bodleian MS Rawlinson B 512, f. 97r.b 14–23; it is noticed in Stokes, Tripartite Life, 1: xxix–xxx.

  34. Stokes, “Colloquy of the Two Sages,” 48.

  35. Stokes, “Voyage of the Húi Corra,” 60.

  36. Oskamp, Voyage of Máel Dúin, 57, 172; Selmer, Navigatio, 70–76.

  37. Whitley Stokes, “The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Biagla,” Revue Celtique 9 (1888): 14–25.

  38. In Lebor na Huidre, ed. R. I. Best and Osborn Bergin (Dublin: Hodges for the Royal Irish Academy, 1929), 302–4; trans. T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, ed. C. W. Dunn (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), 488–90. See also P. Mac Cana, “The Sinless Otherworld,” Ériu 27 (1976): 95–115; and Carney, Studies, 287–88.

  39. Nennius, British History, 75.

  40. W. Stokes, “Voyage of Snedgus,” 20.

  41. W. Stokes, “Voyage of Húi Corra,” 44.

  42. This text has been edited several times, but not in works now conveniently available; the most accessible is the diplomatic edition by Best and Bergin in Lebor na Huidre, 67–76, (p. 69). A translation made by Whitley Stokes in Fraser’s Magazine for February 1871, 184–94 is reprinted by his sister Margaret Stokes, Three Months in the Forests of France: A Pilgrimage in Search of Vestiges of the Irish Saints in France (London: G. Bell, 1895), 265–79 (p. 268). For a discussion see Kenney, Sources, 444–45.