Full Description
The cult of the Christ Child flourished in late medieval Europe across lay and religious, as well as geographic and cultural boundaries. Depictions of Christ's boyhood are found throughout popular culture, visual art, and literature. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture is the first interdisciplinary investigation of how representations of the Christ Child were conceptualized and employed in this period.
The contributors to this unique volume analyse depictions of the Christ Child through a variety of frameworks, including the interplay of mortality and divinity, the medieval conceit of a suffering Christ Child, and the interrelationships between Christ and other figures, including saints and ordinary children. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture synthesizes various approaches to interpreting the cultural meaning of medieval religious imagery and illuminates the significance of its most central figure.
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Infancy of Scholarship on the Medieval Christ Child
Mary Dzon and Theresa Kenney
SECTION ONE: The Christ Child as Sacrifice
The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the English Cycle Plays
Leah Marcus
The Manger as Calvary and Altar in the Middle English Nativity Lyric
Theresa Kenney
Signs of Death: The Sacrificial Christ Child in Late Medieval Art
Elina Gertsman
The Christ Child in the Tree: The Motif in the Thirteenth-Century Wood-of-the-Cross Legends and Arthurian Romances
Nicole Fallon
SECTION TWO: The Christ Child and Feminine Spirituality
Birgitta of Sweden and Christ's Clothing
Mary Dzon
Women Wielding Knives: The Circumcision of Christ by His Mother in an Illustrated Manuscript of the Meditationes vitae Christi (Paris Bibliothèque Nationale de France MS. ital. 115)
Holly Flora
Ihesus ist unser!: The Christ Child in the German Sister Books
Richard Kieckhefer
SECTION THREE: The Question of the Christ Child's Development
The Holy Tooth: Dentition, Childhood Development, and the Cult of the Christ Child
William MacLehose
'The Ink of Our Mortality': The Late-Medieval Image of the Writing Christ Child
Mary McDevitt
Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus
Pamela Sheingorn
Epilogue
Miri Rubin
Manuscripts Cited
Works Cited
Contributors
Index
