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Still accepting abstracts for ICMS 2019 session “The Manger-Crib in
Medieval Culture and Beyond” (sponsored by the Marco Institute -- please send abstracts to Mary Dzon: [log in to unmask])
“And this shall be a sign unto you….” What kind of sign is the Babe lying
in the manger? And how did medieval people – Christians, Muslims, and Jews – respond to the notion of the baby Jesus lying in a crib? From the earliest days of the new religion, Christians regarded the manger as an image profoundly subversive of human values,
indeed, as central to Christian discourse on poverty, humility, meekness, as well as power. Patristic and medieval writers saw the narrow manger, Jesus’ first receptacle on earth, as foreshadowing his sacrificial death on the Cross. The manger was commonly
conflated with the altar, while the ox and the ass were viewed as reverent worshippers, who fed upon the Eucharist. Later, the image of the manger increasingly became a symbol of the human heart itself, the locus of humanity’s intersection with the divine,
not necessarily within a sacramental context. This panel will examine varieties of approaches to the manger in the Middle Ages up to, and even extending into, the Reformation, when full-scale manger scenes became more and more popular and elaborate. Although
older studies exist on the history of the manger/crib/cradle in art and devotion, and on the manger scene’s development, current critical focuses on material culture, gender, and the history of emotions, as well as animal studies, could also be brought into
play when considering this central image in the canonical infancy gospels – an image that reappears in many medieval and later sources. Papers on the topic of the manger in theology, art, apocrypha, or literature are invited.