medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
As well as 'Arma Christi', 'Medieval Man of
Sorrows' would be a useful search term for the proliferation of images of the
suffering Christ in the later middle ages (without the 'medieval', it seems to
bring up iTunes).
Someone else, no doubt, will remember better than I
do whether the copious weeping of Margery Kempe was as a result of meditating on
the suffering of Christ.
I'm sure others will know better than I of
sermons/writings on contemplating the Passion and empathizing with BVM (Ignatius
is a bit late but was he basing his exercises on earlier practice?) but I am
sure images such as the Pieta and the position of Mary on Rood screens - and
even some processional crosses - must have elicited some kind of empathetic
response from those seeing such images?
And when did the 'sorrowful mysteries' of the
Rosary come in?
Rosemary Hayes
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 9:26
AM
Subject: Re: [M-R] meditation on
crucifixion / sorrows of Mary
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion
and culture
As
far as we could work out from what survived, the wall paintings from the
church at Llandeilo Talybont were
structured around a sequence of
the Instruments of the Passion, possibly with bits of text to aid in
meditation. That all got a bit blurred in the reconstruction wall paintings
but I'm fairly confident it was there in the originals.
There's also a lot in the medieval Welsh poetry to the roods
which would count as meditation. Christine James has described Tomas ab Ieuan ap Rhys’s poem to the rood at
Llangynwyd as ‘a compressed Crucifixion narrative’; it includes Christ’s
washing of his disciples’ feet, Judas's kiss, the nailing to the cross, the
offer of vinegar and the piercing of Christ's side. She notes that Hywel ap
Dafydd ap Ieuan ap Rhys took a similar approach at Brecon. (This was in an
email to me - she's published on the topic but in
Welsh).
Maddy
Dr Madeleine Gray PhD, FRHistS
Reader in Church
History/ Darllenydd mewn Hanes yr Eglwys
School of Humanities and Social
Sciences /Ysgol Ddyniaethau a Gwyddoniaethau Cymdeithasol
University of
South Wales/Prifysgol De Cymru
Caerleon Campus/Campws
Caerllion,
Newport/Casnewydd NP18 3QT Tel: +44
(0)1633.432675
http://www.southwales.ac.uk
http://twitter.com/penrhyspilgrim
http://twitter.com/HeritageUSW
http://twitter.com/USWHistory
'We
all cherrypick the past but you have to be aware that you're cherrypicking'
(Ruth Goodman)
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
After mid-15th-century you could also consider the ubiquitous visual aids
to meditation on the Passion, often cheaply-produced small woodblock prints.
The Arma Christi or Instruments of the Passion type, for example, featured
symbolic representations of various elements in the Passion story (Veronica's
veil, nails, dice, the cock that crew, &c.) to guide the reader's memory
through meditation of the Passion narrative. Here is an example:
Searching "arma christi" in Google Images turns up quite a lot of images,
many medieval, but perhaps one of our art historians can suggest something
more scholarly. -- Paul
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