The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture

With a Critical Edition of 'O Vernicle'

Lisa H. Cooper, Andrea Denny-Brown, Lisa H. Cooper, Andrea Denny-Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409456766
• eBook ISBN: 9781351894616
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: Literature

The Arma Christi, the cluster of objects associated with Christ's Passion, was one of the most familiar iconographic devices of European medieval and early modern culture. From the weapons used to torment and sacrifice the body of Christ sprang a reliquary tradition that produced active and contemplative devotional practices, complex literary narratives, intense lyric poems, striking visual images, and innovative architectural ornament. This collection displays the fascinating range of intellectual possibilities generated by representations of these medieval 'objects, ' and through the interdisciplinary collaboration of its contributors produces a fresh view of the multiple intersections of the spiritual and the material in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It also includes a new and authoritative critical edition of the Middle English Arma Christi poem known as 'O Vernicle' that takes account of all twenty surviving manuscripts. The book opens with a substantial introduction that surveys previous scholarship and situates the Arma in their historical and aesthetic contexts. The ten essays that follow explore representative examples of the instruments of the Passion across a broad swath of history, from some of their earliest formulations in late antiquity to their reformulations in early modern Europe. Together, they offer the first large-scale attempt to understand the arma Christi as a unique cultural phenomenon of its own, one that resonated across centuries in multiple languages, genres, and media. The collection directs particular attention to this array of implements as an example of the potency afforded material objects in medieval and early modern culture, from the glittering nails of the Old English poem Elene to the coins of the Middle English poem 'Sir Penny, ' from garments and dice on Irish tomb sculptures to lanterns and ladders in Hieronymus Bosch's panel painting of St. Christopher, and from the altar of the Sistine Chapel to the printed prayer books of the Reformation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Arma Christi: The Material Culture of the Passion
• 1 The Arma Christi before the Arma Christi: Rhetorics of the Passion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
• 2 Figure and Ground: Elene’s Nails, Cynewulf’s Runes, and Hrabanus Maurus’s Painted Poems
• 3 Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage in an Early Fifteenth-Century Arma Christi Roll
• 4 The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi: The Evidence of Morgan B.54
• 5 The Arma Christi and the Ethics of Reckoning
• 6 Memorial Technai, St. Thomas the Twin, and British Library Additional MS 22029
• 7 Arma Christi as Landscape in Hieronymus Bosch’s Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child
• 8 Liturgy and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: Reframing the Arma Christi
• 9 The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• 10 Early Modern Afterlives of the Arma Christi
• O VERNICLE: A Critical Edition
• Index