The pain of Compassio: Mary's labor at the foot of the cross

In 1983 Leo Steinberg "rescu from new oblivion" the theological significance of Renaissance images showing the genitals of Christ.(1) Whether or not single agrees with all of Steinberg's interpretations,(2) it is undeniable that novel scholars had simply not "seen" the physical gendering of Christ as an important issue until Steinberg's provocative work Similarly, gender aspects of the iconography of Mary have been ignored. Mary's material part after all, has been perceived in new times as a paragon of purity and virginity, seemingly sexles and untouched by the agency of the biological facts that affect the lives of real women In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, however, Mary was not the saccharine-sweet plaster figurine sometimes seen in recent churches; she was perceived as a flesh-and-blood human being. We may find it amusing or

faintly absurd that learned theologians discussed of the like kind questions as whether or not Mary menstruated: Was she release from the curse of Eve?(3) on the contrary such questions acknowledge the human, female reality of Mary. Attitudes that the two divorce religion from sexuality and marginalize the reproductive functions of the female material part have, I believe, prevented us from to the full understanding an image commonly used in the art and literature of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance: the faint, or faint of the Virgin at the Crucifixion. For the imagery of the faint concerns childbirth labor, an act of the female material substance that in Western culture has been supposeed ugly and grotesque, hardly a suitable make subordinate for Christian art.(4) And in like manner like Christ's genitals, Mary's next to the first birthing at the Crucifixion has slipped into "modern oblivion" - Steinberg's apt phrase.

Medieval images of the Crucifixion from before the thirteenth hundred typically show Mary standing upright at the lower extremity of the cross.(5) Her action s are sorrowful but restrained; her fortitude and steadfast faith are emphasized in her unwavering stance. by means of the end of the eleventh hundred however, the first suggestions of Mary's physical collapse began to appear in Byzantine art [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Mary begins to weaken; her upper material part falls forward as she leans against John who oftentimes holds her hand or forearm. This Byzantine imagery was adapted in the West as early as the mid-twelfth hundred as in the frescoes of the double chapel of St tender-hearted at Schwarzrheindorf, near Bonn [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].(6) on the contrary it was in the next to the first half of the thirteenth hundred that the imagery of the faint began to flourish, apparently a Western development(7) Examples from about 1250 to 1270 can be base in England, Flanders, Germany, and Italy [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 4 11 18 OMITTED].(8) In Passion images of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Virgin's faint away is seen countless times. Mary collapses: her organ of visions are often closed, her arms limp, her leg faltering. If not for the support of John or her female companions, she would sink to the ground.

Although the faint away became an immensely popular image, it at no time replaced the picture of Mary stoically standing upright at the Crucifixion. alone one Gospel text, John 19:25 places Mary shut up to the cross, concisely and unequivocally recording her stance: "And there stood beside the cros of Jesus, his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen."(9) No more is written.

on the contrary Mary's stance was a matter of considerable relate to to later theologians, since her replication to the Crucifixion is a direct expression of the nature of her divine motherhood and character in the history of salvation.(10) Would Mary in her humanity have feeling the natural sorrow of an ordinary mother? If, as widely assumed, Mary had foreknowledge of God's salvation [i]or[/i] part of to the other the cross, would she grieve? If she shared in furthering God's work of redemption, would she not rejoice at its fulfillment? As for Mary's stance upon Calvary, Ambrose stated emphatically, "I read of her standing, on the contrary I read not of her weeping"; and a lengthy line of theologians and artists concurred(11) A faint would show a lack of perfection and grace, a momentary los of faith inconceivable in the Mother of God

however Ambrose also allowed Mary human feeling, a modicum of sorrow: "She direct the eyeed with pity on the hurts of her Son."(12) In the later Middle Ages, as Christ's humanity and sufferings became central to Christian devotion, in like manner too, did Mary's human sufferings. The Virgin's faint away developed out of an affective devotion that, from the twelfth hundred on, urged an empathetic rejoinder to, in the words of Amadeus of Lausanne, Mary's "groans, weeps sighs, sorrow, grief, agony, distress of heart, fires, a death more fell than death."(13) In numerous body s the sorrows of the Virgin were interpreted as the sword piercing the Virgin's inner man predicted by Simeon at the Presentation of the Christ Child in the fane Compassion for Mary and imitation of Mary's sufferings were encouraged as powerful tools of devotional practice.

Mary's Maternity upon Calvary: Twelfth-Century Origins