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Reply to Renihan - 2 You might, perhaps, call to mind the words of one of many popular English lyrics on the subject of Christ's crucifixion. Here's a fairly typical one, from the thirteenth century. The language looks a bit uncouth, but I'll give a translation: Quanne hic se on rode ihesu mi lemman An bi-siden him stonden marie an Iohan And his rig i-suongen, And his side i-stungen, for the luue of man, Wel ou hic to wepen and sinnes for-leten, yif hic of luue kan, yif hic of luue kan, yif hic of luue kan. "When I see on the cross Jesus my sweetheart, And Mary and John standing beside him, and his back scourged, and his side pierced, for the love of man, Well ought I to weep, and renounce my sins, If I know anything of love, If I know anything of love, If I know anything of love." "When I see" - immediately you are asked to use your eyes, to see a picture. Perhaps you are looking at a painting in the church, or at the crucifix, or perhaps you are simply imagining the scene. The picture is not eleborate - we might compare it with a pencil-sketch rather than an oil-painting. There are just a few bold details: Jesus, with his back scourged and his side pierced, with his mother Mary and his disciple John standing by. The contemplation of the picture stirs your emotions: "Well ought I to weep." And this brings you to repentance, to a change of heart: "And abandon my sins." The method of this little lyric is typical of an enormous quantity of medieval verse and might be well matched to your psychology: You look at a picture, your emotions, or "affections" are stirred, and this produces a change in your behaviour. Notice, by the way, that you would have called Jesus "mi lemman", "my sweetheart". Medieval devotion frequently drew on the biblical image of Jesus as the bridgegroom, and the Church, or the individual Christian soul, as the bride. This image occurs quite often in the New Testament (e.g. John's Gospel 3:29, Revelation 21:2, 22:17). Also, a love-poem in the Old Testament called the Song of Songs was usually interpreted in the light of this image. Saint Bernard, in the twelfth century, wrote several volumes of sermons on the Song of Songs interpreting the lover as Jesus and his beloved as the Church. And so we find in medieval devotional writing a lot of frankly erotic imagery applied to Christ. In this little poem Jesus is referred to quite casually as "mi lemman" as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a man - or indeed a woman - to call Jesus his sweetheart. The relationship is taken for granted, part of the common stock of devotional language; nothing is made of it. But tomorrow we'll look at a far more explicit, and developed, treatment of this theme. Bill. P.S. You can find the poem, and a lot of others like it, in Carleton Brown, "English Lyrics of the XIII Century", Oxford University Press 1932. If you want to read a good book on medieval lyrics, try Rosemary Woolf, "The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages", Oxford University Press 1968. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%