Rachel Fulton
Department of History
The University of Chicago
Spring 1997
THE PASSION OF CHRIST
This is a graduate-level colloquium intended to introduce
students to one of the most problematic aspects of medieval European piety: the
devotion to the suffering Christ. From the twelfth century, the bleeding, dying
God-man was to become ubiquitous in art and literature, his paradoxical
suffering exciting both heretical skepticism (Cathars and Lollards) and pious
imitation. Meditation on the grief of the incarnate Savior was instrumental in
defining European attitudes towards the suffering of all other human beings,
and the desire to experience the narrative of his passion stimulated contact
with the Other (Crusade and pilgrimage), dramatic reenactment (Corpus Christi
plays), and historiographic imagination. Long recognized as one of the key
symbols of medieval European culture, the passion of Christ has in recent years
attracted increased scholarly attention both as image and narrative. Our goal
in this course will be to survey this literature in order to answer the
following questions: Why did medieval Europeans turn in the twelfth century
from a devotion centered primarily on the Cross and the triumphant divinity of
Christ to one centered on his passible humanity? What effect did this new
emphasis have on the idea and exercise of compassionate empathy? What conceptions
of history and allegory, truth and fiction underpinned this emphasis on the
historical suffering of God? How did devotion to the passion structure time and
space? What effect did the emphasis on God's death have on those who were
considered historically responsible for his death? And, most importantly, how
are we as historians to evaluate this devotional emphasis on suffering and
torture? As Ellen Ross has recently stated the question,
ŇIs not the suffering Jesus image really about a tyrannical
God of judgment who cruelly demands the torture of the "Beloved Son"
as satisfaction for humanity's wrongs? Is not the visage of Christ in agony in
fact a reflection of a religious world of gloom and fear, a sign of the
"dark ages," of an angst-ridden society terrified by death and
mesmerized by a bloody and tormented figure who is a constant reminder of the
fate that awaits unrepentant sinners? Or, alternatively,... is this fascination
with the suffering Jesus not attributable to excesses in devotional practice which
manifest the decline of medieval culture? Is this devotion to a wounded God not
excessive and even maudlin? And is the piety of the wounded Jesus not
theologically naive and so enamored of Jesus' humanity as to have lost sight of
his divinity?Ó (The
Grief of God, pp. 4-5)
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
This is primarily a reading course. Each week we will be
reading and discussing a number of primary and secondary sources. In order to
facilitate these discussions, students will be asked to prepare a number of formal
presentations in the form of book reviews and text analyses. These
presentations will be assigned at the first meeting. For their final paper
(10-12 pages), students will choose either a literature survey or an analysis
of a primary text. These papers will be due on the last day of finals week
(Friday, June 13).
BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore:
Sarah Beckwith, Christ's Body
Thomas Bestul, Texts of the Passion
Caroline Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption
Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social
Thought
Karl Morrison, "I am You"
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain
Aelred of Rievaulx, Treatises and Pastoral Prayer (Cistercian
Publications)
Angela of Foligno, Complete Works (Paulist Press)
Bonaventure, Soul's Journey. Tree of Life. Life of
St. Francis (Paulist Press)
Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises (Cistercian Publications)
Julian of Norwich, Showings (Paulist Press)
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (Penguin)
READING ASSIGNMENTS
April 1: The Story and its
Interpretation (Modern and Patristic)
Matthew 26-27; Mark 14-15; Luke
22-23; John 18-19
April 8: The Devotion to the Cross
Giles Constable, Three Studies, pp. 145-68
Erich Auerbach, "Sermo Humilis"
Adolf Katzenellenbogen, "The Image of Christ in the
Early Middle Ages"
Joseph Szoverffy, "Crux fidelis," "Venantius
Fortunatus," and "Early Hymns"
J.A.W. Bennett, Poetry of the Passion, pp. 1-31
Christopher Chase, "Christ III, Dream of the Rood, and
Early Christian Passion Piety"
tienne Delaruelle, "La crucifix dans
la pitâ populaire et dans l'art, du VI au XI sicle"
Dominique Iogna-Prat, "La croix, le moine et
l'empereur"
April 15: The Humanity of Christ
Anselm of Canterbury, Oratio
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons 20 and 43
on the Song of Songs
Aelred of Rievaulx, De institutis
inclusarum
David Aers, "The Humanity of
Christ: Reflections on Orthodox Late Medieval Representations," in Powers of the
Holy, pp. 15-42
Giles Constable, Three Studies,
pp. 169-93
R.W. Southern, Making of the Middle Ages, pp. 221-57
Caroline Bynum, "The Body of
Christ in the Later Middle Ages," in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 79-117
Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art
and Modern Oblivion
M.D. Chenu, "Nature and
Man—The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century," in Nature, Man and Society, pp. 1-48
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, pp. 143-73
Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls,
pp. 89-121
April 22: Empathy and Compassion
Ekbert of Schnau,
Stimulus
amoris (PL 158:748-61; PL 184:953-66)
Edmund of Abingdon, Speculum ecclesie
Arnold of Bonneval, De septem verbis
domini in cruce (PL 189:1677-1726)
Ogier of
Locedio, "Quis dabit capiti meo aquam"
Dialogus beatae Mariae
et Anselmi... (PL 159:271-90)
Vita beate virginis Marie et
salvatoris rhythmica
Bonaventure, Life of Francis
Karl Morrison, "I am You"
Hans Belting, The Image and its Public
Thomas Bestul, Texts of the Passion, pp. 111-44
Caroline Bynum, "... And Woman
his Humanity," in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 151-79
Giles Constable, Three Studies, pp. 194-248
April 29: The Liturgy of the Passion
Meditatio
... per septem diei horus, PL 94:561-8
Francis,
"Office of the Passion," in Francis and Clare, pp. 80-98
Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual
Exercises, pp. 122-46
Y.
Rokseth, "La Liturgie de la Passion vers la fin du X sicle"
Dominique Gagnan, "Office de la
Passion: Priere quotidienne de saint Franois d'Assise"
Sarah Beckwith, Christ's Body, pp. 22-77
Caroline Bynum, "Women Mystics
and Eucharistic Devotion," in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 119-50
Pamela Sheingorn, "The
Sepulcrum Domini: A Study in Art and Liturgy"
Barbara Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece
Marion Glasscoe, "Time of
Passion: Latent Relationships between Liturgy and Meditation in Two Middle English
Mystics"
May 6: History and Fiction
Bonaventure, Lignum vitae
Meditationes vitae
Christi
James Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 44-67
Hans Robert Jauss, "The
Communicative Role of the Fictive," in Question and Answer, pp. 3-50
Jacques Le Goff, "Past/Present,"
in History and
Memory, pp. 1-19
Hayden White, "The Value of
Narrativity," and "The Metaphysics of Narrativity," in The Content of
the Form, pp. 1-25, 169-84
Paul Ricouer, "Interpretive
Narrative," in Figuring the Sacred, pp. 181-99
M.D. Chenu, "The Symbolist
Mentality," and "Theology and the New Awareness of History," in Nature, Man and
Society, pp. 99-145 and 162-201
Giles Constable, "A Living
Past"
May 13: Mystical union
Angela of Foligno, Complete Works
Julian of Norwich, Showings
Bridget of Sweden, Life and Selected
Revelations
David Aers, "The Humanity of
Christ: Reflections on Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love," in Powers of the
Holy, pp. 77-104
Caroline Bynum, "Women's
Stories, Women's Symbols," "The Mysticism and Asceticism of Medieval
Women," "The Female Body and Religious Practice," in Fragmentation and
Redemption, pp. 27-51, 53-78, and 181-238
D. Pezzini, "The Theme of the
Passion in Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich"
Laurie Finke, "Mystical Bodies
and the Dialogics of Vision," in Maps of Flesh and Light, ed. Ulrike Weithaus,
pp. 28-44
Sixten Ringbom, From Icon to
Narrative, pp. 11-71
May 20: Enacting the Passion: Drama
and Pilgrimage
a) Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
Sarah Beckwith, Christ's Body,
pp. 78-111
Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of
Devotion, pp. 47-65
Denise Despres, Ghostly Sights,
pp. 57-86
Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh,
pp. 167-202
Ellen Ross, "She wept and cried
right loud for sorrow and for pain," in Maps of Flesh and Light, pp. 45-59
b) English Mystery Plays, ed. Peter Happâ (Penguin), pp. 409-551
V.A. Kolve, The Play
called Corpus Christi, pp. 175-205
Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery
Plays, pp. 238-268
Mervyn James,
"Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town"
Lynette Muir, Biblical
Drama of Medieval Europe, pp. 126-43
J.W. Robinson, "The Late
Medieval Cult of Jesus and the Mystery Plays"
Leah Sinanoglou,
"The Christ Child as Sacrifice"
C. Zika, "Hosts, Processions and
Pilgrimages in Fifteenth-Century Germany"
May 27: The Jews as Christ-Killers
Thomas Bestul, Texts of the
Passion, pp. 69-110
David Nirenberg, Communities of
Violence, pp. 200-30
James Marrow, "Circumdederunt me
canus multi: Christ's Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late
Middle Ages and Early Renaissance"
Jeremy Cohen, "The Jews as the
Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition from Augustine to Jerome"
William Jordan, "The Last
Tormentors of Christ"
S. Rohrbacher, "The Charge of
Deicide: An Anti-Jewish Motif in Medieval Christian Art"
June 3: Torture
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain,
pp. 161-243
Thomas Bestul, Texts of the Passion, pp. 145-64
Caroline Bynum, "Material
Continuity, Personal Survival and the Resurrection of the Body," in Fragmentation and
Redemption, pp. 239-97
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 3-69
Douglas Gray, "The Five Wounds
of our Lord"
PRIMARY LITERATURE
Aelred of Rievaulx.
Treatises and
Pastoral Prayer: On Jesus at the Age of Twelve. Rule of Life for a Recluse and
the Pastoral Prayer. Intro. David Knowles. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian
Publications, 1971.
Angela of Foligno.
Complete Works.
Ed. and trans. Paul Lachance. New York: Paulist Press, 1993.
Bonaventure. The Soul's Journey into God. The Tree of
Life. The Life of St. Francis. Trans. and intro. Ewert Cousins. New York:
Paulist Press, 1978.
pseudo-Bonaventure.
Meditations on
the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century.
Trans. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1961.
Bridget of Sweden.
Life and
Selected Revelations. Trans. Albert Ryle Kezel. New York: Paulist Press,
1990.
Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Trans. Regis J. Armstrong and
Ignatius C. Brady. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.
Gertrude of Helfta.
Spiritual
Exercises. Trans. Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis. Kalamazoo: Cistercian
Publications, 1989.
J.K. Elliott. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection
of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993.
The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel. Trans. and commentary by G. Roland
Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Jacobus de
Voragine. Legenda
aurea. Trans. Willian Granger Ryan. The Golden Legend. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993.
Julian of Norwich.
Showings.
Ed. and trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.
Margery Kempe. The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. B.A.
Windeatt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
SECONDARY LITERATURE: BOOKS
Aers, David and
Lynn Staley. The
Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in Late Medieval English
Culture. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The
Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.
Beckwith, Sarah. Christ's Body: Identity, culture and society
in late medieval writings. London and New York: Routledge, 1993
Belting, Hans. The Image and Its
Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion.
Trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer. New Rochelle, New York: Caratzas, 1990.
Bennett, J.A.W. Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve
Centuries of English Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Bestul, Thomas. Texts of the
Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and
Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New
York: Zone Books, 1991.
Chenu, M.D. Nature, Man and
Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the
Latin West. Selected, edited and trans. by Jerome Taylor and Lester K.
Little. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Constable, Giles. Three Studies in
Medieval Religious and Social Thought: The Interpretation of Mary and Martha.
The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ. The Orders of Society. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Despres, Denise. Ghostly Sights:
Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim
Books, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage
Books, 1979.
Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theater of
Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Heffernan, Thomas J. Sacred Biography:
Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988.
Hooker, Morna D. Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament
Interpretations of the Death of Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994.
Jauss, Hans Robert.
Question and
Answer: Forms of Dialogic Understanding. Trans. Michael Hays. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Kieckhefer,
Richard. Unquiet
Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Kolve, V. A.
The Play
Called Corpus Christi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.
Lane, Barbara. The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental
Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.
LeGoff, Jacques. History and
Memory. Trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992.
Lochrie, Karma. Margery Kempe and
Translations of the Flesh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1991.
Marrow, James H. Passion Iconography in Northern European Art
of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of
Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative. Ars Neerlandica I. Kortrijk:
Van Ghemmert, 1979.
Morrison, Karl. "I Am You": The Hermeneutics of
Empathy in Western Literature, Theology, and Art. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988.
Muir, Lynette R. The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Nirenberg, David. Communities of
Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996.
Perkins, Judith. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative
Representation in the Early Christian Era. London and New York: Routledge,
1995.
Ricoeur, Paul. Figuring the
Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Trans. David Pellauer, ed.
Mark I. Wallace. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.
Ringbom, Sixten. Icon to
Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-Up in Fifteenth-century Devotional
Painting. Abo: Abo Akademi, 1965.
Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late
Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain:
The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press,
1985.
Southern, R.W. The Making of the Middle Ages. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art
and in Modern Oblivion. London: Faber, 1981.
Sticca, Sandro. The Planctus
Mariae in the
Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. Trans. Joseph R. Berrigan. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Weithaus, Ulrike,
ed. Maps of
Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993.
Woolf, Rosemary. The English Mystery Plays. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972.
SECONDARY
LITERATURE: ARTICLES
Auerbach, Erich.
"Sermo Humilis." In Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the
Middle Ages. Trans. Ralph Manheim, foreward Jan M. Ziolkowski, pp. 25-81.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, 1993.
Chase, Christopher. "`Christ
III', `Dream of the Rood' and Early Christian Passion Piety." Viator 11
(1980):11-33.
Cohen, Jeremy. "The Jews as the
Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition from Augustine to Jerome." Traditio 39
(1983):1-27.
Constable, Giles. "A Living
Past: The Historical Environment of the Middle Ages." Harvard Library Bulletin, n.s. 1/3
(1990): 49-70.
Delaruelle,
Etienne. "La crucifix dans la pit populaire et dans l'art, du VIe au XIe
sicle." In La
pit populaire au Moyen Age, eds. Raoul Manselli and Andr Vauchez, 27-42.
Torino, 1975.
Frank, Grace. "Popular
Iconography of the Passion." Publications of the Modern Language Association
46 (1931): 333-40.
Gagnan, Dominique.
"Office de la Passion: Priere quotidienne de saint Franois
d'Assise." Antonianum
55 (1980): 3-86.
Glasscoe, Marion.
"Time of Passion: Latent Relationships between Liturgy and Meditation in
Two Middle English Mystics." In Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English
Religious Tradition: Essays in Honour of S.S. Hussey, ed. Helen Phillips, 141-61.
Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990.
Gray, Douglas. "The Five Wounds
of our Lord." Notes and Queries 208 (1963): 50-1, 82-9, 127-34, 163-8.
Iogna-Prat,
Dominique. "La croix, le moine et l'empereur: Dvotion la
croix et thologie politique Cluny autour de l'an mille." In Haut moyen-ge:
Culture, ducation et socit.
Etudes offertes Pierre Rich, ed. Michel Sot, 449-75. Nanterre,
1990.
James, Mervyn. "Ritual, Drama
and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town." Past and Present. 98 (1983): 3-29.
Jordan, William. "The Last
Tormentors of Christ: An Image of the Jew in Ancient and Medieval Exegesis, Art
and Drama." The
Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987): 21-47.
Katzenellenbogen,
Adolf. "The Image of Christ in the Early Middle Ages." In Life and Thought
in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Robert Stuart Hoyt, 66-84. Minneapolis, 1967.
Marrow, James H.
"`Circumdederunt me canus multi': Christ's Tormentors in Northern European
Art of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance." Art Bulletin 59/2 (1977): 167-81.
McNally, Robert E. "`Christus'
in the Pseudo-Isidorian `Liber de Ortu et Obitu Patriarcharum." Traditio 21
(1965): 167-83.
Panofsky, Erwin. "Imago pietatis:
Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des Schmerzensmannes und der Maria mediatrix."
Festschrift
fr Max J. Friedlaender, 261-308. Leipzig: E.A. Seeman, 1927.
Pezzini, D.
"The Theme of the Passion in Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich." In
Religion in
the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England, ed. P. Boitani and
A. Torti, 29-66. Cambridge: Brewer, 1990.
Robinson, J.W. "The Late
Medieval Cult of Jesus and the Mystery Plays." Publications of the Modern Language
Association 80 (1965): 508-14.
Rokseth, Y.
"La Liturgie de la Passion vers la fin du X sicle." Revue de
musicologie 28 (1949): 1-58; 29 (1950): 35-52.
Rohrbacher, S.
"The Charge of Deicide. An anti-Jewish motif in medieval Christian
art." Journal
of Medieval History 17 (1991): 297-321.
Sheingorn, Pamela.
"The Sepulcrum
Domini: A Study in Art and Liturgy." Studies in Iconography 4 (1978): 37-60.
Sinanoglou, Leah.
"The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the Corpus
Christi Plays." Speculum 48 (1973): 491-509.
Szoverffy, Joseph.
"Crux fidelis.... Prolegomena to a History of the Holy Cross Hymns." Traditio 22
(1966): 1-42.
Szoverffy, Joseph.
"Venantius Fortunatus and the Earliest Hymns to the Holy Cross." Classical Folia
20 (1966): 107-22.
Szoverffy, Joseph.
"Early Hymns and Sequences of the Holy Cross." Classical Folia 20 (1966): 3-17.
Zika, C.
"Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in
Fifteenth-Century Germany." Past and Present 118 (1988): 25-64.