The introductory chapter of Theresa Tinkle's Imagining Jesus Christ in Middle English Literature, 1275-1475, addresses head-on the main theme of the book, that is, the notion of hypostatic union, which claims the dual nature of Jesus as both fully man and fully God. Rather than strictly following this understanding, Tinkle contends that medieval religious writers toy creatively with it, enabling a rich variety of representations of the divine. She also deconstructs the idea, promoted by Rosemary Woolf, Gustaf Aulèn, and others, that a major historical change takes place in the twelfth century which witnesses a radical transformation in the representation of Christ from heroic king to passive victim. Chapter 1's title, “Vernacular Christology,” echoes Nicholas Watson’s revitalization of the term “vernacular theology,” initially used by Bernard McGinn, but without considering the way in which it has been refined and discussed subsequent to his 1995 Speculum article, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitution of 1490” (Speculum 70 [1995], 822-64).
The introductory chapter signposts the aims of the overall book in several instances. It aims to show how medieval religious writers think about Jesus Christ, interpret Scripture, and selectively highlight articles of the faith they consider useful to their communities. It insists on presenting Jesus’s two natures and in doing so, its focus on hypostatic union in a corpus of vernacular text extends and refines scholarly discussions on the idea of redemption in a less well-studied body of literary works. Finally, it aims to highlight writers’ strategies in portraying Jesus in literary and dramatic works from a multiplicity of perspectives.
Richard Kieckhefer’s monograph, The Mystical Presence of Christ, 2022, covers similar ground to Tinkle’s monograph in showing different forms of Christophany with Christ fulfilling different roles, such as disciplinarian, bridegroom, and instructor. Kieckhefer insists on the fact that medieval scholars’ focus on the humanity of Jesus distorts his representation in most medieval texts, in which he is most often described as being both fully human and divine. I am not sure that Tinkle offers a counter-argument to Kieckhefer: her book, rather, corroborates his points concerning the balanced representation of Jesus’s two natures in medieval Italian and German religious texts (7).
Chapter 2’s focus on the nativity in Cursor Mundi, The Stanzaic Life of Christ,and Pepysian Gospel Harmony validates the continuing defense of hypostatic union by showing the way in which the Nativity in those texts is not displayed in order to elicit affective responses but rather reverence due to the newly born king, inviting the readership from the start to conceive of his two natures. While Cursor Mundi addresses both clerical and lay readers and provides both theologically ambitious and more simple instruction, it avoids stimulating the emotions and prompting affective devotion to the Christ Child. Perhaps influenced by the Apostles’ Creed, it insists on explaining and commenting upon hypostatic union. The Stanzaic Life of Christ, which highlights the kingly nature of the Christ Child, supports the notion of supersession by showing how the incarnation marks the end of Israel’s legitimate existence while at the same time recognizing the necessity of Judaism for the existence of Christianity. The Pepysian Gospel Harmony makes an equally strong case about the inseparability of Jesus’s human and divine natures by offering a plain narrative that closely follows Scripture. These texts show the richness of English vernacular religious production by intentionally following a non-affective mode and inviting their audience to develop a theologically more refined understanding of hypostatic union.
The third chapter adds the Northern Passion and Southern Passion to Cursor Mundi and the Stanzaic Life in its continued discussion of the double nature of Christ, but this time as represented in the Passion events. Considering the complex psychological evolution from early infancy to adulthood, it is not surprising to see the authors paying more attention to the humanity of the adult Christ and his capacity to express a multiplicity of feelings. Yet, these texts, despite the strong affective responses the Passion could generate, retain a focus on the double nature of Christ. The Southern Passion, compiled c. 1275-85, maintains a balance between earthly and heavenly perspectives, with Jesus represented both as victim and the final judge. Compassion inSouthern Passion triggers anti-Jewish sentiment, which testifies to English prejudice against the Jewish community a few years prior to their expulsion in 1290 (66-7). Cursor Mundi was composed after 1290 and as a result pictures the Jews in a less directly threatening way. Christ in Cursor Mundi appears most often as king and judge, not someone to be pitied but instead admired and revered on account of his heroic deeds. Northern Passion instead mitigates Christ’s royal attributes to focus more specifically on his salvific mission. Tinkle argues that these texts maintain the concept of the God-king within the narrative of the Passion, offering an alternative perspective to affective responses that focus on Christ’s suffering and pain.
The following chapter argues for similar anxieties and antitheses in representing Jesus’s two natures in Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. There is repetition in using the same strategy for this text as in previous chapters, that is, arguing against scholars who highlight the affective qualities of the text instead of discussing Jesus’s two natures. The chapter offers a counterpoint to affective readings by highlighting the significance of the theology of redemption in this work, the use of military metaphors to describe Jesus’s heroic deeds against the devil, and the contrast between his spiritual triumph and the Jews’ denigration of his divine person. Tinkle argues convincingly that the regal representations of Christ in the Mirror gain meaning if read as a measuring stick with which to assess English monarchs’ failures and successes in the fifteenth century.
Chapter 5 applies the same grid to the York Corpus Christi Play, arguing that scholarship has emphasized Jesus’s suffering humanity to the detriment of his roles as king and traitor, and has thus failed to show the way in which these can speak to fifteenth-century social, religious, and political concerns. Countering this failure with a survey of the reigns of eight late medieval English kings, Tinkle shows how the Play speaks to the crisis of kingship within which York was entangled, and compares it to Jesus’s own manufacturing of kingship, followed by an assessment of the role of traitor with regard to Jesus, the Jews, and Judas’s treason. In the Play, Herod and Pilate, among others, serve as a critical commentary on how princes and kings easily turn into traitors.
Chapter 6, “Sir John Mandeville’s God(s),” makes a convincing case for considering The Book of Marvels and Travels as a significant contribution to late medieval devotional culture. In comparison to previous texts, the Book proposes a more innovative, complex, and changing theology of redemption, represented by a set of sometimes contradictory tropes as the author moves into his narrative. As argued by Tinkle, the Book offers different and disconnected discourses about Jesus, representing him variously as a chivalric character, a man of mercy, and a God of universal salvation. Further on in the Book, Mandeville even opens up the idea of divine agency by considering divinity outside of the Christian context and describing the flesh-eating Lamorins and Brahmins positively. This idea of an all-embracing God differs importantly from the initial description by “Mandeville” of a feudal Christ strongly aligned to the ideology of the Crusades.
The final chapter summarizes several points rehearsed in most of the previous chapters, i.e., the fact that the texts investigated are founded on several historical layers of theological, doctrinal, exegetical, and pastoral information and discourses. It also rehearses the point about their representation of Jesus as a king and heroic conqueror, in addition to his hiding his divinity in order to trick the devil. These metaphors sometimes cohabit with other contradictory metaphors that represent him as a man of sorrow and sacrificial lamb. More often than not, anti-Jewish opinions are used to justify the theory of supersession. Having summarized the main points, Tinkle tests these ideas one last time by exploring their validity within the writings of Julian of Norwich, a sophisticated theologian. The test is successful, as one would have expected, with Julian ticking all of the boxes in her own subtle way.
Although Imagining Jesus Christ in Middle English Literature, 1275-1475 offers interesting insights into understudied Middle English religious texts, in my view it exaggerates the innovative dimension of its findings. The humanity of Jesus and affective responses to his suffering have indeed received a lot of attention in the last decades, but I do not think that scholars in the history of affective devotion have ever doubted or completely avoided discussing the presence of the double nature of Christ within their chosen corpuses. Also, Kieckhefer’s own monograph, The Mystical Presence of Christ, duly mentioned by Tinkle, discusses both hypostasy and Christophany and suggests ahead of Imagining Jesus Christ that one should assess the complementarity of the representation of the divine and human natures of Christ in late medieval religious literature.