Early-Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs and the Maternal Language of Clerical Authority

Matis, Hannah W.

doi:10.1017/s0038713413004557

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Bede follows Origen by reading the Bride as a metaphor for the Church, and the Bridegroom as a figure for Christ, a reading that both Gregory the Great and Bede popularized (Matis, 2019, 4-5). Bede argues for gender essentialism as a reading methodology and presents the Bride as the Church while emphasizing the role of the Church as its doctores: its male preachers and clergy (Matis, 2014). As Hannah Matis argues, Bede's commentary inspired Carolingian clergy to use maternal imagery for themselves to bolster their own authority, including frequent references to drinking wisdom from the 'breasts' of male authority figures (Matis, 2014, especially 373-380;Holder, 2005).…”

Section: See Whitaker (2019) Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

The birds and the Bedes: Race, gender, and sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum

Wade

2020

Postmedieval

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This article argues that Bede – like modern intersectional analysis – believed that identity categories cannot be disentangled or understood in isolation. In Bede’s commentary on the Song of Songs, skin color, gender, and religious identity intermix with metaphors of sexuality. These categories coalesce in a monumental lesson on how to read. Bede claims that reading the Song literally – perceiving Black skin, eroticism, gender confusion – means reading like a Jew and prevents readers from seeing the feminine, metaphorical level below the masculine, carnal level. This article suggests that intersectional analysis is akin to much medieval thought rather than being an anachronistic imposition on a historical text. Intersectional analysis can lay bare how medieval theologians saw identity categories as interwoven and interdependent, even while the theologians themselves entrenched hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and religious difference. For Bede, Christian interpretation is a continual process of moving from a literal outside (Black, masculine, carnal, sexual) to a metaphorical inside (beautiful, feminine, allegorical, chaste, reproductive). Once inside, however, we – like the bird passing through the hall – must return once again to the outside in an endless movement between layers that echoes theological processes of rumination and blurs the divide between the contemplative and the active life.

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Section: See Whitaker (2019) Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

The birds and the Bedes: Race, gender, and sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum

Wade

2020

Postmedieval

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“…Moreover, the saviour's hands are as monumental in scale as is his cross, calling to mind early medieval exegetical teachings on Jesus's hands as signifiers of the limitless power of God and priestly hands as markers of liturgical purity. 35 Jesus's body here is dangerously unbounded as gauged by the bodily fluids eroding the line between the inner and outer worlds of existence and the distance between the masculine and the feminine. The emission from this wound is the only blood on the page that does not obey the laws of gravity by just dripping downwards; instead, the blood from the side of the saviour seems to burst out of the pressurised, puffed-up torso to shatter the divide between Jesus and the viewer of the manuscript.…”

Section: Fecund Jesusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both wound and nipple make material Carolingian exegetical texts connecting priestly fecundity with the preaching of the 'milk' of scripture. 35 Jesus's body here is dangerously unbounded as gauged by the bodily fluids eroding the line between the inner and outer worlds of existence and the distance between the masculine and the feminine. Absent a lactating virgin, the male body provides salvific sustenance.…”

Section: Fecund Jesusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendering Dark Age Jesus

Coon¹

2016

Gender & History

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Jesus's body was visualised in strikingly gendered ways in the Carolingian world. The Jesus of the Carolingian Empire could move deftly between gendered styles, from feminised victim to hyper‐masculinised victor; at the same time, he could delicately dance between these two modes of gendered existence and do so within the space of one manuscript page. Three manuscripts produced in the ninth century contain bold images of a fleshly Jesus: the Stuttgart Psalter (c.820s), the Sacramentary of Gellone (c.800) and the acrostic poem produced at the abbey of Fulda, In Honour of the Holy Cross (c.810/830s). These codices are associated with a period of cultural flourishing known as the Carolingian renovatio, or the renewal of classical and patristic culture within the reforming agenda of the Frankish church. Each manuscript presents a Dark Age Jesus within distinct, interpretative backdrops – tortured, fecund and imperial – a divergence in style underscoring how the evangelical portrait of Jesus's body and its fluctuating gender were staged in the pastoral North for different audiences. The Carolingians did impart a series of images that defy the stereotypes of early medieval Christianity, including the idea that intimacy with a human saviour is the spiritual legacy of subsequent eras.

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The Song of Songs in the Early Middle Ages

Matis¹

2019

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Early-Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs and the Maternal Language of Clerical Authority

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

The birds and the Bedes: Race, gender, and sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum

The birds and the Bedes: Race, gender, and sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum

Gendering Dark Age Jesus

The Song of Songs in the Early Middle Ages

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