the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
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Chapter 14
Penetrating the Void: Picturing the Wound in
Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
Vibeke Olson
In Hans Memling’s late fifteenth-century painting, Man of Sorrows (Figure 14.1)
the beholder is presented with a characteristic late medieval devotional motif:
an image of the suffering Christ (Christus patiens) supported by his sorrowing
mother and surrounded by the instruments of his torture. Cut and bleeding, he
displays the wounds in his hands and side, and the blood that flows from them,
in a literal interpretation of the opening lines of the Salve plaga lateris, a prayer
to the Holy Side Wound: “Salve plaga lateris nostri redemptoris / ex te enim
profluit fons rosei coloris” [Hail wound in our savior’s side / a fountain of rosy
color flows forth from you].1 With one pierced hand, Christ supports and draws
attention to the gaping hole in his chest as he turns his other hand palm up to
catch the river of blood flowing from the deep dark void. The Virgin weeps
behind her son, and nails, whip, spear, sponge, and tormentors flank the central figures, engaging the beholder in a meditative Passion dialogue. Although
the sorrowing Virgin and the instruments of torture depicted in this painting
are integral components in the overall devotion to Christ’s Passion, emphasis
on the side wound in particular, and multivalent audience response to it,
emerged as a powerful new component of late medieval devotional practice
that increasingly sought a more direct and emotional involvement for the
believer.2 The wound was first and foremost the source of Christ’s redemptive
1 Cited and translated in John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the
Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 161.
2 This desire grew, in part, out of the fourteenth-century devotio moderna that encouraged
devotees to take part in sacred events as active participants. Scholarship on the devotio moderna is vast. Noteworthy studies include: John H. van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the
Common Life: The ‘Devotio Moderna’ and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Wybren Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the
Low Countries: The ‘Modern Devotion,’ the Canonesses of Windesheim and Their Writings, trans.
David F. Johnson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004); A.G. Weiler, “Recent Historiography on
the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions,” Archief voor de gescheidenis van de Katholieke
Kerk in Nederland 27 (1985): 161–175; R.R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with
Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004306455_016
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Figure 14.1 Hans Memling. German/Flemish c.1430/40–1494. The Man of Sorrows in the
arms of the Virgin 1475 or 1479, Oil and gold leaf on wood panel, 27.4 × 19.9 cm.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1924
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
315
blood, but at the same time it was also an intrinsic object that could exist on its
own, a liminal threshold or gateway that signified the transition between secular space (the here and now of the beholder) and sacred space (salvation
and life-everlasting). It was also a performative space3 that simultaneously
performed for the believer (it bled) or was acted upon through tactile interaction (touching or kissing), thereby inviting participation on the part of the
devotee.
While Christ’s side wound was traditionally included as part of the larger
Passion contemplation, in the later Middle Ages, art and devotion increasingly
focus on the wound alone, even to the point of abstracting it from the body
itself. Devotion to the wounds and blood of Christ reached a crescendo in the
late medieval period, which is evidenced in the abundance of blood relics, the
many sermons, prayers, and poems devoted to Christ’s wounds, the numerous
affective visions in which the visionary beheld, partook of, or penetrated
the wound, not to mention the multitude of images depicting the gaping
wound in Christ’s side and the blood that issued forth from it.4 Moreover, in
3 Erika Fischer-Lichte has defined a performative space is one that opens up possibilities for
relations between actors (or in our case images) and audience. See: Aesthetik des Performative
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 187.
4 There is no lack of scholarship on Christ’s wounds and blood. Among the more significant
contributions to the discussion are: Eleanor McCullough, “‘Loke in: How Weet A Wounde is
Heere!’: The Wounds of Christ as a Sacred Space in English Devotional Literature,” in Through
a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, ed. Holly Faith
Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo, and Jens Zimmermann (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press,
2010), 25–37; Nancy Thebaut, “Bleeding Pages, Bleeding Bodies: A Gendered Reading of British
Library MS Egerton 1821,” Medieval Feminist Forum 45.2 (2009): 175–200; Caroline Walker
Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and
Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2007); David S. Areford, “The Passion
Measured: A Late-Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ,” in The Broken Body: Passion
Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, ed. A.A. MacDonald, H.N.B. Ridderbos, and R.M.
Schlusemann (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 211–38; Karma Lochrie, “Mystical Acts, Queer
Tendencies,” in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and John A.
Schulz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 180–200; Flora Lewis, “The Wound
in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response,” in
Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Jane H.M. Taylor and Lesley Smith
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 204–229; to cite but a few. In this volume, see:
Salvador Ryan, “‘Scarce Anyone Survives a Heart Wound’: The Wounded Christ in Irish Bardic
Religious Poetry,” 291–312, Virginia Langum, “‘The Wounded Surgeon’: Devotion, Compassion
and Metaphor in Medieval England,” 269–90, and Albrecht Classen, “Wounding the Body and
Freeing the Spirit: Dorothea von Montau’s Bloody Quest for Christ, a Late-Medieval
Phenomenon of the Extraordinary Kind,” 417–47.
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late medieval visual representations, the wound itself appears to have taken on
a new life, so to speak, as it translocated from its contextual position on Christ’s
body onto the manuscript page or broadsheet, allowing for a new affective,
non-narrative mode of devotional experience for the believer.5
That the side wound in particular was to be understood as an object for
contemplation is signaled in Memling’s painting through Christ’s gesture: he
offers his wound to the beholder, framing it in his hand between thumb and
fingers, while he holds his other hand palm-up to catch for the spectator the
rivulets of blood flowing forth from the wound. This idea of presenting the
wound as an object for devotional contemplation is further elucidated in
scenes such as folio 237v of the late-thirteenth century Hours of the Passion
(Figure 14.2) in which Christ opens his tunic to reveal his side wound to a nun
who kneels in veneration of it, or folio 329 from the Psalter and Hours of Bonne
of Luxembourg, painted before 1349 (Figure 14.3) in which two figures (likely
Bonne and her husband John) kneel in prayer before an animate Christ on the
cross who gestures to the wound in his side, his finger graphically penetrating
the lesion.6 In each of these images, the wounded Christ appears corporeally
before the devotees as an “active image,”7 one that was intended to focus
the devotee’s attention on the wound, thereby stimulating an emotional
and somatic response through affective contemplation of Christ’s suffering
and wounds. Images like these visually and directly echo medieval textual sen5 Elina Gertsman examines this kind of translocation in a late fifteenth-century German woodcut printed in Ulm. See: “Wandering Wounds: the Urban Body in Imitatio Christi,” in this
­volume, 340–65.
6 On the images from this manuscript, see: Lewis, “The Wound in Christ’s Side,” 211–212; Annette
Lermack, “Pilgrimage in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg,” in The Art, Science and
Technology of Medieval Travel, ed. Robert Bork and Andrea Kann (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2008), 104–109; Florens Deuchler, “Looking at Bonne of Luxembourg’s Prayer Book,” The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 29.6 (February, 1971): 267–278.
7 An active image or imago agens is one that stimulates memory and has the capacity to move
the viewer. See: Jill Bennett, “Stigmata and Sense Memory: St. Francis and the Affective Image,”
Art History 24.1 (2001): 1–16, at 3. Cicero in his Rhetorica Ad Herennium (the most important
text of its kind in the Middle Ages) states: “Imagines igitur nus in eo genere constituere oportebit quod genus in memoria diutissime potest haerere. Id accidet si quam maxime notates
similitudines constituemus; si non multas nec vagas, sed aliquid agentes imagines ponemus
…” [We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that adhere longest in the memory. And we
shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many
or vague, but active…]. Cicero, Ad C. Herennium de ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium),
trans Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 3.22.37, 220–221, cited in
Peter Parshall, “The Art of Memory and the Passion,” The Art Bulletin 81.3 (September 1999):
465–472, at 457. Italicized for emphasis.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
317
Figure 14.2 Christ displaying his wound to a nun, Initial D, Hours of the Passion,
1275-1300. Illuminated manuscript, 115 × 80 mm. The British Library,
London (MS. Egerton 945 col. 237v) © The British Library Board.
timents, such as those expressed by Peter of Limoges (†1306): “Forame quod
nos attente debem frequeter aspicere est latus Christi proferatu in cruce […]
Intret igit unusquis domus sciete sue mentis oculo Christi vulnera contemplet
ut christo passo suo modelo formes” [The opening which all of us should pay
attention to and look at frequently is Christ’s side pierced on the cross. […] Let
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Figure 14.3 Attributed to Jean le Noir, Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg. Folio 328r.
Crucifixion with Bonne and Jean, Duke of Normandy kneeling before the cross.
Before 1349. Tempera, grisaille, ink, and gold leaf on vellum, 4 15/16 × 3 9/16 in.
(12.6 × 9 cm). The Cloisters Collection, 1969 (69.86). The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, NY, USA. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
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each and every person enter the house of his conscious and consider Christ’s
wounds with the eyes of his mind, so that in his own small measure he might
conform himself to the suffering Christ].8 At the same time, images such as
these served as heuristic devices triggering memories of the events of the
Passion for the devotee.9 That images were clearly understood to have the
power to evoke memory and elicit affective devotional responses is explored in
numerous medieval texts. Among those who commented on the efficacy of
images, Bonaventure (1221–1274) noted that “omnes creaturae istius sensibilis
mundi” [all created things of the sensible world] (i.e. images), though simulacra et spectacula “likenesses and images” were “nobis ad contuendum Deum
proposita et signa divinitus data” [divinely given signs set before us for the purpose of seeing God].10 Further, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) wrote that images,
should be used “ad excitandum devotionis affectum qui ex visis efficacius incitatur quam ex auditis” [in order to excite the feeling of devotion, which is more
effectively excited by what it sees than by what is heard].11 Echoing Aquinas,
the Dominican priest John of Genoa († c. 1298) noted in his Catholicon (c. 1286)
that the function of images was threefold:
Prima as instructionem rudium, qui eis quasi quidbusdam libris edoceri
videntur. Secunda ut incarnationis mysterium et sanctorum exempla
magis in memoria nostra essent dum quotidie oculis nostris representantur. Tertia ad exitandum devotionis affectum, qui ex visis efficacius exitatur
quam ex auditis.
8
9
10
11
Peter of Limoges, De oculo morali, 7.A.7. English translation in Peter of Limoges, The Moral
Treatise on the Eye, trans. Richard Newhauser (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, 2012), 59–60.
On memory in the Middle Ages, see: Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of
Memory in Medieval Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M.
Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). On memory and
the Passion, see: Parshall, “The Art of Memory and the Passion.”
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis ad Deum, 2.11, cited in David Freedberg, The Power of
Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), 165.
Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum: Commentaria in librum III, dist.9,
art. 2, qu. 2, sol. 2. English translation in Susan K. Hagen, Allegorical Remembrance: A
Study of “The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man” as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 103.
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[First for the instruction of simple people, because they are instructed by
them as if by books. Second, so that the mystery of the incarnation and
the examples of the Saints may be the more active in our memory through
being presented daily to our eyes. Third to excite the feelings of devotion,
these being more effectively aroused by things seen than by things heard].12
Moreover, by removing the image of the wounded Christ from its traditional
narrative and temporal setting, time and space are collapsed and the beholder
is free to interact with the scene in a non-linear, non-narrative fashion and to
tailor the scene according to his or her own needs and desires. This makes the
devotional experience more interactive by being direct, unscripted, and individualized. In other words, Christ was neither far away in time and place, nor
fixed within a particular moment of an historical event, but present before the
beholder in his or her own time and his or her own place.
A fourteenth-century manuscript page depicting the so-called arma Christi
beautifully demonstrates that the wound was to be understood both as one of
the integral components of the meditation on the Passion and as a devotional
object in and of itself (Figure 14.4). The page is divided into thirty-eight compartments and a visual referent to an instrument of the Passion or some other
emblematic part of the Passion story appears in each one; for instance, the
hammer, the nails, the whips, the crown of thorns, and, toward the bottom, the
side wound, which stands alone, a-corporeal as an object for contemplation
and devotion. The wound is thus removed from its chronological and narrative
context as well as from its physical context on Christ’s body.13 Seeing a wound
presented as a distinct object, existing apart from a body, likely would have
raised few, if any, eyebrows for the medieval beholder. Nor would a medieval
beholder have been concerned with the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition
of two wounds, the wound as a singular object alongside the wounded body
of Christ represented just two frames away. This duality of wounds visually
reinforced the idea that Christ could be present in multiple locations simultaneously, as in every communion wafer while at the same time residing bodily
12
13
Italics mine. John of Genoa (Joannes Balbus), Catholicon (Venice: 1497), V. vr. Cited and
translated in Michael Baxendall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A
Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988), 41 and 161. Also cited by Bennett, “Stigmata and Sense Memory,” 2.
It appears this way in numerous examples, one being at the bottom of a folio in the fourteenth-century Bohun Hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS, Auct. D.4.4), where it is the
largest of the 11 compartmentalized images, a solitary red gash that dwarfs the other
images on the page, bodies included.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
321
Figure 14.4 Arma Christi, c. 1360-75. Illuminated manuscript, 455 × 310 mm. The British Library,
London (MS. Royal 6 E VI f.15) © The British Library Board.
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Figure 14.5 Attributed to Jean le Noir, Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg. Folio 331r.
Holy Wound of Christ flanked by the “arma Christi”. Before 1349. Tempera,
grisaille, ink, and gold leaf on vellum, 4 15/16 × 3 9/16 in. (12.6 × 9 cm). The Cloisters
Collection, 1969 (69.86). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA.
Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source:
Art Resource, NY.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
323
in heaven.14 The centrality of Christ’s wound became increasingly paramount
in personal devotion, and this is visually confirmed further on in folio 331 of
the Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg (Figure 14.5) where the prominent and gaping red wound hovers, this time with no bodily counterpart,
between the instruments of the Passion. In these examples, the supporting
narrative elements of the story, the depiction of Christ’s physical body and the
instruments of the Passion, are further detached from the wound. It is the
wound itself that increasingly becomes the main focus of the devotional
image. Without a doubt, one of the crucial turning points that led to this
increased focus on Christ’s wound was the Council of Constance (1414–18), at
which time the communion cup was denied to the laity.15 Denial of the cup
and its contents to the devout likely fueled the desire for alternative means of
experiencing the miracle of Christ’s blood, and the image of the wound, the
source of Christ’s salvific blood, was the ideal agent for sensory interaction.
The wound was part of Christ’s body as well as an object that existed apart from
it. Singular and removed from its corporeal context, as an object, the wound
could be visualized, venerated, touched, partaken of, and even penetrated by
the faithful in an infinite variety of fluid scenarios involving the senses and that
were freed from the constraints of biblical narrative and time.
The desire on the part of the devout for direct and intimate contact with
Christ’s blood and wounds is clearly demonstrated in numerous medieval
devotional strategies that sought to make the religious experience more
intensely personal by way of the senses. In his Life of St. Edmund, the English
Benedictine monk, Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259), recounts the interaction of
St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (1175–1240) with a crucifix on his
deathbed:
Ipso igitur sacramento venerabiliter ut decuit celebrato, vir sanctus ex
manu ministrantis crucem arripiens, mira devocione loca clavorum sanguineo colore rubricata ori et oculus imprimens, frequenter et morose
deosculabatur et lacrimis uberrimis irrigavit. Maxime tamen vulnus lateris lanceati diu suggens et lambens hiatum vulneris, suspiriis sermonem
prorumpentibus […] Cuius devocio et devocionis modus sensibus
14
15
See: Karmen MacKendrick, “The Multipliable Body,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval
cultural studies 1.1–2 (2010): 108–114; and Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and
Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone
Books, 1992) for more on this idea of multi-location and fragmentation.
See: Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. 63–82.
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astancium non minimam de novitate generarunt, nam merito generare
poterant, admiracionem.16
[Then, when the sacrament had been administered with due reverence,
the holy man seized the cross from the hand of the minister, and with
wonderful devotion pressed the places of the nails, which were colored
blood-red, to his mouth and eyes, constantly and sorrowfully kissing
them and moistening them with copious tears. Above all, for a long time
he sucked and licked the gaping wound in the side of the figure. […] The
manner of his devotion produced no little astonishment in the bystanders, not least on account of its novelty].17
St. Edmund’s behavior may have caused wonder and astonishment in his audience, but embracing and licking representations of Christ’s wounds became
fairly common. The fourteenth-century Middle English treatise, A Talkyng of
þe Loue of God confirms:
I souke of his feet […] i cluppe and I cusse as I wood wore. I walewe and i
souke i not whuche while and whon I haue al don ȝit me luste more.
Þenne fele I þat blood in þouȝt of my Mynde as hit weore bodilich warm
on my lippe and þe fleach on his feet bi fore and beo hynde so softe ans
so swete to cusse […]
[I suck the blood from his feet […] I embrace and I kiss, as if I was mad.
I roll and I suck I do not know how long. And when I am sated, I want yet
more. Then I feel that blood in my imagination as it were bodily on my
lips and the flesh on his feet in front and behind so soft and so sweet to
kiss].18
In these textual examples, the desire for somatic interaction with Christ and
his wounds and, moreover, the longing to taste and partake of his salvific blood
is a fundamental part of the devotees’ interactions with the object of the cruci16
17
18
Vita Sancti Edmundi Auctore Matthaeo Parisiensi, in C.H. Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon: A Study in Hagiography and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 269.
English translation in Matthew Paris, The Life of St. Edmund, trans. and ed. C.H. Lawrence
(Oxford: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1996), 155.
A Talkyng of þe Loue of God Edited from MS Vernon, Bodleian 3938, and Collated with MS
Simeon Brit. Mus. Add. 22283, ed. and trans. M. Salvina Westra (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1950), 61, cited in Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 2.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
325
fix.19 In each case, the protagonist embraces, kisses, licks, and sucks the
bleeding holes in Christ’s body, and the longed-for reward for this physical performance is intimate contact with the divine and the hope of salvation.
The performative focus found in texts like these is further encouraged in
images of Christ’s wound presented to the beholder as a devotional object that
was meant to be touched and to be kissed. One such example is an indulgenced20 fifteenth-century German woodcut (Figure 14.6), which instructs the
devotee to kiss the wound: “Das is die leng und weite der wünden Cristi die Im
sein h. Seiten gestochen wart an dem Creitz wer die mit reü und laid aüch mit
andacht küsset als oft er das thüet hat er 7 jar ablas von dem pabst INNOCENTO”
[This is the length and width of Christ’s wound which was pierced in his side
on the cross. Whoever kisses the wound with remorse and sorrow, also with
devotion, will have as often as he does this, seven years indulgence from Pope
Innocent].21 In this print, wound and body conflate so that wound is body, signified by the flanking pierced hands and feet, the sudarium22 head and the
little cross in the center of the wound, which, “40 mals gemessen macht die
leng Cristi in seiner Menschait wer das mit andacht küsset der ist den tag
beheit vor dem gächen tott und vor eim schlag” [measured forty times makes
the length of Christ in his humanity whoever kisses it with devotion shall be
protected from sudden death or misfortune].23 The wound, and by extension
the body, is a tactile object to be touched and kissed by the devotee who was
invited to physically participate and interact with it. The reference to the true
measure reinforces the idea that this is Christ’s wound and Christ’s body, not
merely an abstracted representation.24 Touching or kissing this image is, to the
believer, the same as touching or kissing the real thing.
19
20
21
22
23
24
Such behavior may in some ways be seen as an offshoot of what was known as “blooddrinking”; the ritual act of drinking wine which had come in contact with a relic or reliquary. See: Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages,”
Church History 71.4 (2002): 685–714, at 691 and 702.
An indulgence is the remission of a period of time spent in purgatory granted by the pope.
In the case of this print, an indulgence is granted for following the directive on the print,
which is seven years for each remorseful kiss placed on the image of Christ’s wound.
Areford, “The Passion Measured,” 233.
Sudarium refers to one of several relics of Christ’s true image, or Holy Face, miraculously
transferred to cloth. Of these, the Veronica is in the Vatican collection. For more on images
of the Holy Face, see: The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed.
Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Florence: Electa, 2000).
Areford, “The Passion Measured,” 223.
It was not uncommon for images of the wound to be presented as the “true measure” that
lent them certain veracity, see: Areford, “The Passion Measured.” Also, according to
326
Figure 14.6 The Wounds of Christ with the Symbols of the Passion, c. 1490.
Woodcut, hand-colored in vermilion, green, and yellow; mounted on
sheet that covers manuscript on verso. Overall: 12 × 8.1 cm (4 3/4 × 3
3/16 in.) overall (external frame dimensions): 39.4 × 31.8 cm (15 1/2 × 12
1/2 in.) Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.831. Photo courtesy of the
National Gallery of Art Washington.
Olson
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
327
The act of kissing or touching was an essential part of the affective devotional experience, as prescribed in such devotional treatises as Aelred of
Rivaulx’s (1110–1167) Rule of Life for a Recluse (c. 1160–1162), in which he instructs
his reader to behold, to follow, to weep, to hide, and to kiss.25 Likewise, the
fourteenth-century Meditations on the Life of Christ invites the reader to imagine him or herself as a participant in the events of Christ’s life – to be present,
to see, to touch, to hold, and to speak with the holy personages as if he or she
were there. Similarly, images of Christ’s wounds invite the beholder’s participation, urging them to be present with, and to somatically experience, the real
presence of Christ’s flesh and blood. Some, like the woodcut, directly instruct
the devotee on the manner of interaction with the image before them, while
others, such as folio 110v of the mid-fifteenth-century Loftie Hours (Figure 14.7),
simply present the image without specific instructions for engagement, so the
beholder is free to formulate his or her own mode of interaction with it. In this
particular example, the depiction of the wounds prefaces a prayer to the five
wounds of Christ, a devotion that gained popularity in the later Middle Ages.26
All references to biblical narrative through the representation of Christ’s physical body and the instruments of his Passion have disappeared, and the focus is
solely on the bleeding wounds floating a-corporeally – visual signifiers of suffering on the page. Red gashes streaming with blood drops, they show evidence
of having been touched by the lips or fingers of the devotee (note in particular
the abrasion of the pigment in the lower two wounds) as he or she recited the
prayer to the five wounds on the page opposite.27 The wounds become the
stage upon which a devotional act takes place. Presenting the wound out of
corporeal context required the beholder to engage his or her imagination and
senses and to respond affectively, performatively, and intimately. The nonnarrative, a-corporeal depiction of the wound encouraged the development
of individualized responses unique to each devotee who might build upon
25
26
27
Bynum, “If made to the dimensions supposedly given in a vision or brought from the Holy
Land, an image of the wound was Christ.” Carolyn Walker Bynum, “Violent Imagery in
Late Medieval Piety,” German Historical Institute Bulletin 30 (Spring 2002): 3–36, at 20.
Aelred of Rivaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum MS Bodley 423, in Aelred of Rivaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum: Two English Versions, ed., John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, EETS o.s.
287 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), chapters 14–16, 17–25.
Douglas Gray, “The Five Wounds of Our Lord,” Notes and Queries 208 (1963): 50–1, 82–9,
126–34, 163–8.
Martina Bagnoli of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, in which this manuscript is
housed, pointed out the abrasion in “The Role of Touch in Medieval Devotion. Really?”
(paper presented at the College Art Association annual conference, New York, NY, February, 2013).
328
Figure 14.7 The Five Wounds of Christ, The Loftie Hours, mid-fifteenth century
(Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS. W.165, fol. 110v)
Olson
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
329
contemporary devotions to the wounds and the Holy Blood, memories of the
events of the Passion, biblical texts, or visionary experiences in creating their
own personal narratives and dialogues. Devotion to the visual object of the
wound is, thus, fully a part of the performative zeitgeist of late medieval piety
and its emphasis on imaginative, emotional, and physical interaction.
Through the act of kissing the wound, the devotee’s lips touched and tasted
the blood of the savior, responding perhaps to Aelred’s instructions to drink
from Christ’s bleeding wounds;28 the words of the Psalm: “Taste and see that
the Lord is sweet” (Psalm 34:8);29 or imitating the mystics who drank from the
bleeding wound in Christ’s side as did the fourteenth-century Sister Eite of
Kirchberg who experienced “such exceptionally high grace that she was given
to drink from our Lord’s living wounds.”30 Among the most renowned of the
mystics who drank from Christ’s side was Catherine of Siena (1347–80). In her
vision, Christ drew her to his side:
Applicansque dextram ad collum virgineum, et ipsam ad lateris proprii
vulnus approximans. Bibe, inquit,filia, de latere meo potum, quo anima
tua tanta suavitate replebitur, quod etiam in corpus, quod propter me
contempsisti, mirabiliter redundabit. At illa cernens se positam ad fistulam fontis vitae, sacratissimo vulneri os applicans corporis, sed longe
amphus os mentis, ineffabilem et inexplicabilem potum hausit per non
parvae morae spatium, tam avide quam abunde.31
[With that he tenderly placed his right hand on her neck, and drew her
toward the wound in his side. ‘Drink, daughter, from my side,’ he said,
‘and by that draught your soul shall become enraptured with such delight
that your very body […] shall be inundated with its overflowing good-
28
29
30
31
De Institutione Inclusarum, 14, 22.
For more on this subject, see: Rachel Fulton, “‘Taste and See That the Lord is Sweet’ (Ps
33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West,” The Journal of Religion 86.2 (April 2006):
169–204.
Gertrude Jaron Lewis, By Women, For Women, About Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany, Studies and Texts 125 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, 1996): 131. Albrecht Classen examines the experiential devotion to wounds in in
the work of Dorothea von Montau. See in this volume: “Wounding the Body and Freeing
the Spirit,” 417–47.
Raimundo Capuano, “Vita S. Catharinae Senensis,” in Acta Sanctorum, 30 April (Paris: V.
Palme, 1866), part 2, chap. 4, 3.903.
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Olson
ness.’ Drawn close […] to the outlet of the Fountain of Life, she fastened
her lips upon that sacred wound […] and there she slaked her thirst.]32
Other visionaries, like Mechthild of Hackeborn (†1298/99), “sucked the sweetest fruit from the sweetest heart of Christ, which she […] put in her mouth,”33
as did Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246) who also “sucked such sweetness”34 from
Christ’s bloody wound. The Blessed Aldobrandesca of Siena (c. 1249–
c. 1309), focusing on an image of the crucifix, “saw a single drop of blood issue
from the image’s side. She received it on her lips and tasted its extraordinary
delicacy and sweetness.”35 In each of these instances, contact with the wound
drew forth Christ’s blood and his blessing, constructing the wound as a kind of
fountain or well that offered the believer knowledge, fulfillment, and salvation
through partaking of the blood that issued forth.
The Great Cross (the remaining parts known today as the Well of Moses,
1395–1403) from the Chartreuse de Champmol was a life-sized, three dimensional representation of this idea. Christ crucified hung from the cross above
32
33
34
35
The Life of Catherine of Siena by Raymond of Capua, trans. and ed. Conleth Kearns (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1980), 155–56.
“Ibi etiam de corde Christi suavissimo e suxit dulcissimum fructum, quem assumens de
corde dei in os suum posuit.” Liber gratiae spiritualis visionum et revelationum beatae Mecthildis virginis devotissimae, ad fidelium instructionem, Liber II, cap. 16, (Venice, 1558), 150,
trans. Bernard McGinn in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350 (New York: Crossroads, 1998), 279; and cited in Fulton, “Taste and See That
the Lord is Sweet,” 179.
“In ipso ostio ecclesiae ei Christus cruci affixus cruentatus occurrit: deponensque brachium cruci affixum, amplexatus est occurrentem, et os ejus vulneri dextri lateris applicavit. Ubi tantum dulcedinis hausit, quod semper ex tunc in Dei servitio robustior et alacrior
fuit.” Thomas Cantimpratensis, “Vita piae Lutgardis,” in Acta Sanctorum, 16 June (Paris: V.
Palme, 1867), vol.1, chap. 1:13, 3.193. English translation in Thomas of Cantimpré, Thomas
of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives. Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres and Lutgard of Aywières, ed. Barbara Newman, trans. Margot H.
King and Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 229.
“Dumque in eo atque in imagine Crucifixi haeret defixa, gratiam istam a jesu et maria
flagitans, guttam unam sanguinis et latere imaginis suae conspexit prorumpere: quam
labiis colligens, ineffabilem suavitatem in ore sensit: atque in hujus beneficii memoriam
pingi fecit virginem matrem, depositi e cruce filii corpus inter brachia tenentem, ipsique
lateris vulneri applicantem os suum.” “Vita de B. Alda Seu Aldobrandesca, Vidua Senensi
Terth Ord. Humiliatorum,” in Acta Sanctorum, 26 April (Paris: V, Palme, 1866), chap. 2:21,
3.474. English translation from Chiara Frugioni, “Female Mystics, Visions, and Iconography,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and
Robert Rusconi, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),
137.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
331
Figure 14.8
The Coventry Ring inscribed with
the Man of Sorrows and the Five
Wounds of Christ, Gold, late
fifteenth-century (London, British
Museum, AF.897) © The
Trustees of the British
Museum.
the well, his side pierced and the blood, painted red, symbolically dripping
into the well below, from which the faithful drank.36 In this example, the body
of Christ literally functioned as the fountain, his side issuing forth blood and
water (John 19:34), his blood (the water in the well) the source of salvation for
the believer. Prayers to the Holy Side Wound further reinforce this relationship
between wound and well as in the Salve plaga lateris prayer cited above or the
variation as follows: “Salve plaga sancta nostri redemptoris/ Nam ex te fluxit
fons rosei coloris” [Hail holy wound of our Redeemer / From you flowed a rosy
fountain].37 In a more functional example, this connection between wound
and well is clearly synthesized in the late fifteenth-century Coventry Ring
(Figure 14.8) inscribed with bleeding a-corporeal representations of the five
wounds juxtaposed with the Man of Sorrows standing in a sarcophagus-cumwell surrounded by the instruments of the Passion and the following text: “The
well of pitty, the well of merci, the well of confort, the well of gracy, the well of
ewerlastingh lyffe” [The well of pity, the well of mercy, the well of comfort, the
well of grace, the well of everlasting life].38 Meditating on an image of the
bleeding wound hovering on a page or represented on a thaumaturgical
36
37
38
See: Donna L. Sadler, “The Well of Moses and Barthes’s ‘Punctum’ of Piety,” in Push Me,
Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, vol.
1, ed. Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 385–414; and Sherry Lindquist,
Agency, Visuality and Society at the Chartreuse de Champmol (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2008).
Prayer cited in Gray, “The Five Wounds,” 129.
Gray, “The Five Wounds,” 164–65.
332
Figure 14.9 Ecce Homo, c. 1450, Woodcut, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library,
Cambridge CUL MS Additional 5944 (11).
Olson
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
333
amulet,39 devotees could imagine themselves recipients of Christ’s salvific
blood, which might be sucked directly from the wound by the lips of the
believer or spilled upon them as it gushed forth, often in torrents, from Christ’s
lesions.
Representations of Christ’s wounded, crucified body disgorging a cascade of
blood were commonplace in the later Middle Ages even though, as Caroline
Walker Bynum has noted, crucifixion was not a bloody death.40 A hand-painted
woodcut of about 1450 (Figure 14.9) presents a striking and bloody image of the
crucifixion.41 Christ’s body is all but obscured behind the outpouring of blood
emanating from the wounds inflicted all over his body, with particular emphasis on the side wound that pours forth both blood and water in a visual
reference to John’s text. Images such as this recall the experiences of visionaries who, praying before a crucifix, received Christ’s blessing in the form of his
blood. For example, a twelfth-century monk from Evesham abbey spoke of a
vision he experienced before a crucifix:
The mene while as y lift vppe my nyes that were sore of weping to the face
of the crucifyxe y felte some dropys fallyng don to me. I putte ther to my
fyngerys and y wele perceyued and knewe by the rednes that hit was
blode. Alfo y behylde the right fyde of the ymage of oure lordis body and
hit wellid oute of blode […] Trewly than y toke in my hopynne hand : y
wote nere how mony dropis of that precious blode and there with diligently y anoyntid my nyes. my neris and my nofe thrillys And at the laste
y put one drope of yat bleffyd blode in to my lippys and of- the grete
defyre and deuocyon of myne herte. y fwelowd hyt doone And whether y
offendyd god in that poynt or no y wote nere The remnand ther of y hild
in my hand purpofyng to haue kept hit.42
[While I was kneeling before the image and was kissing it on the mouth
and eyes, I felt some drops falling gently on my forehead. When I removed
my fingers, I discovered from their color that it was blood. I also saw
39
40
41
42
In addition to rings such as the Coventry Ring, wounds, or the measure of the wound,
could be worn as amulets, see: W. Sparrow Simpson, “On the Measure of the Wound in the
Side of the Redeemer Worn Anciently as a Charm,” The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 30 (1874): 375–74.
Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 1–2.
An inscription notes that an indulgence of 80,000 years would be granted to a devotee
who read the prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus printed on this woodcut.
Edward Arber, ed., The Revelation to the Monk of Evesham 1196 (London: English Reprints,
1869), 31–32.
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Olson
blood flowing from the side of the image on the cross […] I do not know
how many drops I caught in my hand as they fell. With the blood I
devoutly anointed my eyes, ears and nostrils. Afterward – if I sinned I do
not know – in my zeal I swallowed one drop of it, but the rest, which
I caught in my hand, I was determined to keep.]43
Blessed Giacomo Bianconi of Bevagna (1220–1301) prayed before an image of
the crucifix and hoped for a sign of salvation. As he did so, a voice from the
crucifix spoke: “Sanguis iste sit tibi in signum et certitudo” [Let this blood be a
sign and a certitude for you] and blood flowed from the wound in Christ’s side
covering Giacomo’s face and his clothes.44 The Carthusian nun, Marguerite
d’Oingt (†1310) also imagined blood bursting from the veins of Christ in droplets that fell one by one.45 In light of such texts, it is easy to imagine a devotee,
in the hope of experiencing a similar ecstatic vision, touching, kissing, or tasting the drops of blood graphically represented on eight consecutive
blood-infused pages in a little devotional book dating c. 1490 (Figure 14.10). The
devotee may have envisioned being drenched by Christ’s salvific blood while
reciting the prayers to the 5,475 wounds of Christ or the 547,500 drops blood
shed during his Passion,46 fingers, lips, or tongue grazing each raised droplet of
blood on the page. In gazing at, kissing or stroking these pages, the beholder is
wholly in the wound of Christ. There is nothing but blood on the page; all
external referents have been eliminated. The lack of narrative cues meant the
43
44
45
46
Modern English translation from “The Monk of Evesham’s Vision,” in Visions of Heaven
and Hell Before Dante, ed. Eileen Gardiner (New York: Italica, 1989), 202–203. Also cited in
Bynum, “The Blood of Christ in the Late Middle Ages,” 704. The monk’s vision parallels the
Benedictine Peter Damian’s (c. 1007–1072/73) who wrote of a visionary experience he had
meditating on the Passion (likely with a crucifix before him) in which the crucified
appeared and “with my mouth I eagerly tried to catch the dripping blood.” Peter Damian,
The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation. The Letters of Peter Damian, trans. and
ed., Owen J. Blum (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 3.129–30.
“Vita De B. Jacopo Mevanate, ex Ordine Fratrum Praedicatorum, Mevaniae in Umbria,” in
Acta Sanctorum, 23 August (Paris: V. Palme, 1868), chap. 2:29, 3.732, cited in Frugioni,
“Female Mystics,” 133.
Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 160.
For the tradition of the 5,475 wounds or the 547,500 drops blood and other calculations,
see: Andrew Breeze, “The Number of Christ’s Wounds,” The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic
Studies 32 (1985): 84–91. Further, an entry from the Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes
(1430-c. 1505) states: “The nombre of thes dropes all / I wyll reherse in generall: / VC ml for
to tell, / and xlvi ml. weel / vc also gret and small. / Here is the nombre of hem alle.” The
Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle: An Edition of Tanner MS 407, ed. Cameron
Louis (New York: Garland, 1980), 152; cited in Rubin, Corpus Christi, 305–306.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
335
Figure 14.10 The Blood of Christ from a Devotional Book, c.1480-90. Illuminated manuscript,
120 × 90 mm. The British Library, London (MS. Egerton 1821, fold 6v−7).
© The British Library Board
devotee was free to interact with blood and wound by means of a devotional
freedom that would otherwise not have been possible. Abstracting the image
of the wound further to its essential components, just color and texture, invited
the devotee to structure events or dialogues of his or her own imagining and to
physically engage with it via the senses. The affective devotional interactions
with an image such as this were seemingly limitless. For instance, it might be
approached as an aid to salvation through an imagined consumption of the
blood drops, or even a performative one by way of licking them, as practiced by
St. Edmund with his crucifix. The image could likewise function as an affirmation of belief, a tangible manifestation of Christ’s physical presence via the
tactility of the blood drops represented on the page that could be felt, stroked,
and counted. Moreover, the vastness and abstraction of the form may have
allowed it to function as an open gateway, a point of departure that invited a
devotee to enter into Christ’s wound and seek spiritual refuge.
In touching a representation of the wound, the devotee’s fingers imaginatively penetrated the threshold of Christ’s flesh in haptic imitation of Thomas
the apostle: “Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy
hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing” (John 20:27).
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Olson
The wound acts as an entry, a metaphorical gateway to belief and salvation: “I
am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in,
and go out, and shall find pastures” (John 10:9). The text of a hymn to the side
wound, which refers to it as a porta patens et profunda “a deep and open
gateway”47 supports this idea. It was a place of spiritual refuge where the faithful
would find comfort and eternal life, as attested to by William of St. Thierry (c.
1075/80–1148): “ut in latus ejus non jam digitum mittamus, aut manum, sicut
Thomas, sed in apertum ostium toti intremus usque ad cor tuum Jesu, certam
sedem misericordiae […]”48 [Now we may not only thrust our fingers or hand
into his side, like Thomas, but through that open door may enter whole, even
into your heart, the sure seat of your mercy…].49 Likewise, St. Bonaventure
(1221–1274) instructed:
Accede ergo tu, o famula, pedibus affectionum tuarum ad Iesum uulneratum, ad Iesum spinis coronatum, ad Iesum patibulo crucis affixum, et
cum beato Thoma Apostolo non solum intuere in manibus eius fixuram
clauorum, non solum mitte digitum tuum in locum clauorum, non solum
mitte manum tuam in latus eius [Ioan.20,25.27], sed totaliter per ostium
lateris ingredere usque ad cor ipsius Iesu […]50
[Draw near, O handmaid, with loving steps to Jesus wounded for you, to
Jesus nailed to the gibbet of the Cross. Gaze with the Blessed Apostle St.
Thomas, not merely on the print of the nails in Christ’s hands; be not
satisfied with putting your fingers in the holes made by the nails in His
hands; neither let it be sufficient to put your hand into the wound in
His side, but enter bodily by the door in His side and go straight up to the
very Heart of Jesus […]51
47
48
49
50
51
Guido Maria Dreves, Clemens Blume, eds., Analecta hymnica medii aevi (Leipzig: Fues’s
Verlag, 1907, rpt. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1961) cited in Friedman, Northern English Books, 164.
William of St. Thierry, Meditativae Oritationes, in Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae
Cursus Completus. Series Latina (Paris: Garnier frères, 1902), 180, cols. 225D-226A.
English translation from William of St. Thierry, The Works of William of St. Thierry: On
Contemplating God, Prayer, Meditations, trans. Sister Penelope, Cistercian Fathers Series 3
(Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970), 131, cited in Caroline Walker Bynum, “Jesus as
Mother and Abbot as Mother: Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing,” The Harvard Theological Review 70.3–4 (1977): 257–284, at 265.
St. Bonaventure, De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores, in Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, 10 vols
(Quaracchi: College of St. Bonaventura, 1882–1902), 8:120.
Holiness of Life, Being St. Bonaventure’s Treatise De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores, trans. Laurence Costello (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1928), 63; also in Bennett, “Stigmata and
Sense Memory,” 10–11.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
337
Aelred directed his recluse to, “Crepe in-to that blessed side where that blood
and water came forthe, and hyde the ther […] wel likynge the dropes of his
blood, til that thy lippes be maad like to a reed scarlet hood”52 [Creep into the
wound in that blessed side, from which the blood and water came forth, and
hide yourself there […] licking the drops of his blood, until your lips become
like a red scarlet hood].53 While Gertrude of Helfta (1256 –ca. 1302) was drawn
into the wound of Christ through a golden tube and there she “felt, saw, heard,
tasted and touched” things known only to her and to Christ.54
Through affective meditation on an image, a devotee could likewise penetrate the sanctuary of Christ’s wound in imitation of Thomas and the mystics.
In some instances, however, as in a hand-colored woodcut representation of
the Sacred Heart c. 1460 (Figure 14.11), penetration became physical. The wound
in this woodcut, depicted as a black void in the midst of a blood-red heart, has
been pierced (allegedly by a relic of the Spear of Longinus).55 A narrow slit has
been made through the paper allowing the devotee, should he or she desire, to
52
53
54
55
This is the mid-fifteenth-century Middle English translation of Aelred’s text found in MS
Bodley 423, chapter 14, lines 863–866, and transcribed in Aelred, De Institutione Inclusarum, 22. The original Latin text, written by Aelred c. 1160–62 reads: “Facta sunt tibi in petra
flumina, in membris eius uulnera, et in maceria corporis eius cauerna, in quibus instar
columbae latitans et deosculans singula ex sangiune eius fiant sicut uitta coccina labia
tua, et eloquium tuum dulce.” See: Aelredi Rievallensis, Opera Omnia, vol. 1, ed A. Hoste
O.S.B and C.H. Talbot (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), 671. The Middle English version is cited
here as this text is contemporary with the works of art and devotional practices being
discussed.
Modern English translation in Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca: Cornell Univeristy Press, 1995), 126.
“Inter horum suavissimam delectationem illa sensit se inaestimabiliter mirabili modo per
eamdem saepius dictam fistulam Cordi Dominico intrahi; et sic invenit se feliciter in
intimis Sponsi et Domini Dei sui. Ubi quid senserit, quid viderit, quid audierit, quid
gustaverit, quidve contrectaverit, ipsi soli notum est, ac illi qui eam tam superexcellenter
sublimen admittere dignatus est sui unionem.” Gertrude of Helfta, Legatus divinae pietatis, 3:26, 3:126, cited in Bruce W. Holsinger, Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture:
Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 247 and 398
n. 161. English translation in The Herald of Divine Love, trans. and ed., Margaret Winkworth
(New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 3.190.
This is one of several such examples of contact relics made through the touch of the spear
of Longinus. See: David S. Aerford, “Multiplying the Sacred: The Fifteenth-Century Woodcut as Reproduction, Surrogate, Simulation,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe,
ed. Peter Parshall, Studies in the History of Art, 75, Center for the Advanced Study in the
Visual Arts Symposium Papers 52 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 119–153, at
141–147.
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Olson
Figure 14.11 Sacred Heart Pierced by the Holy Lance, 1460. Woodcut, 95 × 73 mm.
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 692, fol. 73v.
Photo: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
insert a finger into the wound in a mimetic reenactment of Thomas’s performance. Moreover, the wound bleeds, as David Aerford has pointed out; the red
pigment of the heart has soaked through the paper staining the opposite
side.56 This image then performs; it is the bleeding wound of Christ and it
invites the beholder to perform along with it by physically and imaginatively
penetrating the void.
The wound, whether a graphic image or imagined vision, functioned as a
kind of performative space, a locus sanctus, which was at once a fountain, a
refuge, and a bestower of salvation. It was also a gateway, a liminal divide
56
Aerford, “Multiplying the Sacred,” 141–147.
the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space
339
marking the threshold between sin and salvation, belief and doubt, sacred and
secular. For the devotee, an image of the wound represented a means of access
to Christ’s salvific blood. Thus, through an unparalleled metamorphosis of
form into a singular and stand-alone object, the wound became the fundamental stage upon which and through which devotional performance occurred.
Presented as an a-temporal, a-corporeal, and non-narrative object, the wound
invited beholders to formulate their own multivalent devotional strategies
which included somatic experiences of seeing, touching, and tasting as well as
performative interactions that included stroking, kissing, and even penetration. The ecstatic possibilities were limited only by the imagination of the
beholder. It was the wound, visually transmogrified through the process of
abstraction and decontextualization into a visual signifier for the body and
blood of Christ, which excited the emotions of the devotee and encouraged
their affective participation. This kind of interaction, although inherently
unstructured, gained greater efficacy through the participant’s recollections of
contextualized images such as Memling’s Man of Sorrows, memories of the
Passion, and the desire to experience a sensual mystical encounter with the
divine.