The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages. Mary Dzon
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author also makes use of the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which he (wrongly) refers to as a writing of Jerome, in order to tell how Mary divided the hours of the day when living in the Temple during her girlhood.280 The author arguably also incorporated a few apocrypha-related details (without explicitly designating them as such) in order to reinforce his depiction of the Christ Child’s piety. He mentions, for example, that the boy Jesus must have drawn water from a well for his mother—a scenario that appears in the apocrypha.281 Not only is the number of these details very small, but their traditional and legendary quality means that they were practically canonical; this is especially the case with the widespread belief that the idols fell down when the Christ Child entered into Egypt with his parents.282 Significantly, with the exception of the incident just mentioned, that is, the fall of the idols, which is depicted in one of the few surviving illustrated copies of the Meditationes (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, fol. 24v, top register; fig. 11), apocryphal legends concerning Jesus’ purportedly numerous childhood miracles are not incorporated into the narrative, not even the benign miracles, such as the Child’s commanding of a tree to bend down so that his mother might be refreshed by its fruits.283 In an aside, the anonymous Franciscan author actually reveals his disapproval of the apocrypha, probably as a body of legendary lore that others took so seriously, or at least found so appealing, when he says, when treating the Flight into Egypt: “because so little that is authentic can be found, I am not going to bother to relate the events that happened to them in the desert and along the way.”284 This remark clearly implies that he is aware of the apocryphal infancy stories (a number of which are set on the Flight to Egypt), yet has consciously chosen to disregard them in the composition of his narrative.
That the Franciscan author’s primary concern is to produce an affective response is evident from his treatment of the biblical episode in which the boy Jesus stays behind in the Temple. The majority of this chapter (which, significantly, is short, compared to Aelred’s handling of it in the De Jesu puero duo-denni describes the anguish that Jesus’ parents experienced upon realizing that he was lost and when they were searching for him with much difficulty. Echoing Aelred’s musings on the Child’s physical well-being during those few days, the Franciscan author briefly suggests that Jesus found food and lodgings at a hospice. In addition, he notes the Boy’s humility in listening to “the learned doctors, serene of countenance, wise and reverent … as if ignorant.” The author also points out Jesus’ humility in returning home with his parents, even though the Boy had stated his intention to focus on his Father’s business.285 Probably not incidentally, in this retelling of the Temple episode, the teachers’ response of amazement at the Boy’s speech (Lk. 2:47) is not at all mentioned. It was presumably this particular aspect of the story that seemed to justify the apocryphal authors’ presentation of Jesus as a wonder-child, a depiction out of sync with the Franciscans’ focus on their own self-abnegation and that of Jesus, their model of ideal human behavior.
Significantly, the idiosyncratic chapter from the Meditationes vitae Christi on what Jesus did from age twelve to thirty is much longer than the chapter on the episode about the Finding in the Temple.286 The Bible’s silence on what Christ did for so many years is here remedied by a Franciscan reconstruction of the young Jesus as a good-for-nothing, who purposely sought the scorn of those around him by doing nothing remarkable. The young Jesus is said to have withdrawn from the public, engaged in prayer, and carried out domestic chores. He is not portrayed as playing with other boys or even as going to school—the main activities ascribed to the Christ Child in the apocrypha, which are also things we would typically expect to hear about children. The author presents biblical support for this view of Jesus’ unimpressive youth: the comments of Jesus’ contemporaries, when he later began his public ministry, that he was merely the son of a carpenter (Matt. 13:55); John the Baptist’s role as his precursor, which would have been unnecessary if Jesus had already begun preaching and distinguishing himself in other ways; and the fact that the Evangelists wrote nothing about this period of Christ’s life. The adult Jesus’ description of himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29) also makes this depiction seem plausible, as does the way in which Jesus spoke of himself as the brother of his fellow human beings (John 20:17, Matt. 25:40)—biblical passages that are explicitly cited in this chapter. In addition, the anonymous author clearly has in mind Luke’s comment, at the end of his account of the Holy Family’s visit to the Temple, that the twelve-year-old Jesus went home with his parents and “was subject to them” (Lk. 2:51), which he cites at the outset of the chapter dedicated to Jesus’ hidden years.287
The emphasis of the Meditationes vitae Christi upon the self-abnegation of the young Jesus is clearly an attempt to fashion his persona according to the model of Francis of Assisi. The saint’s desire to be perceived as a fool is strikingly illustrated by a detail Thomas of Celano includes in his Vita prima.288 Francis was clearly a talented preacher, for “even without preparation … [he] used to say the most amazing things to everyone.” Although he was apparently able to do so, Francis did not always preach impromptu. Even the absence of Francis’s anticipated preaching had a powerful effect, as Thomas attests: “Sometimes [Francis] prepared for his talk with some meditation, but once the people gathered he could not remember what he had meditated about and had to say. Without any embarrassment he would confess to the people that he had thought of many things before, but now could not remember a thing … [H]e would give a blessing and send the people away with this act alone as a very good sermon.”289 In a similar way, the young Jesus of the Meditationes vitae Christi paradoxically did amazing things by doing (or saying) nothing worth recording in Scripture, apart, of course, for the incident in the Temple, which the anonymous Franciscan author relates (in chapter 14) mainly to instill compassion for Mary in the reader. In this following chapter (15), the author switches gears, as it were, by claiming that, although Jesus had originally shown considerable promise after his return with his family from the Temple (cf. Lk 2:52), thereafter he did nothing commendable until the beginning of his public ministry. This led his neighbors to conclude: “He is an idiot, a no-good [person], foolish, and stupid.”290 Emphasizing the scorn that was directed at the young Jesus, the author adds: “He had no formal schooling, and among the people he was generally thought of as oafish and unbalanced (grandis et captivus).” Significantly, although this Franciscan Jesus seems incredibly passive, he nevertheless retains a faint trace of the vigor traditionally associated with Christ (especially in the earlier Middle Ages), when the anonymous author comments that the young Jesus wielded the paradoxical “sword of humility” in order “to bring low the haughty enemy.”291 But even this detail, because of its emphasis upon Christ’s self-emptying (that is, the Son’s putting aside of his glory in becoming human, and a poor and powerless one at that), can be seen as characteristically Franciscan.
Jaime Vidal effectively summarizes, and also offers a rationale for, the Meditationes vitae Christi’s treatment of Jesus’ inconspicuous youth when he says: “The hidden life at Nazareth has hidden from his people the wonders which the Infancy Narrative has shown to us, and thus made possible the Messianic secret and the possibility of rejection.”292 The overarching theme of the chapter in which the Franciscan author ponders what Jesus did from age twelve to twenty-nine is that Christ is a Deus absconditus (Isa. 45:15), a passage that is explicitly quoted in this chapter.293 As we shall see in subsequent chapters of this book, many medieval Christians believed that Jesus kept a low profile during his childhood and believed that this was not accidental but that he chose to do so for good reasons.
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