3

Signs of Death: The Sacrificial Christ

Child in Late-Medieval Art

elina gertsman

Introduction

A manuscript produced around 1488 in the Gross-Frankenthal Mon-

astery of St Mary Magdalene (The Hague, KB, 75 G 70) contains, on
folio 88r, an arresting image inscribed within the only historiated initial
found in the book (see figure 3.1).1 Within the letter ‘B,’ seated on a red
cushion, the naked Christ Child holds a cross in his right hand. The
brown wood of the cross, drawn in a harsh silhouette, contrasts dra-
matically with the flesh of the Child uncertainly outlined against the
page. His left hand raised in a half-blessing, half-pointing gesture, the
Child looks away from the viewer, his knees vulnerably spread apart,
his skin translucent white. This is an image of the Schmerzenskind, the
Child of Sorrows – a figure that became quite familiar in late-medieval
manuscripts, inscribed as it was within a variety of contexts – prayer
books, gospel books, and antiphonaries, among others.2 The images
in which Christ displays or carries a small cross, holds scourge and
reed, or is pierced or surrounded by five disembodied wounds conflate
Christ’s infant vulnerability with his adult sacrifice, and therefore play
with juxtapositions of innocent childhood and torturous death, visceral
helplessness and harsh punishment, open defencelessness and signs of
inflicted pain.
The Child of Sorrows imagery is interwoven into an intricate icono-
graphic web: it is related to, among many others, the images of the
Christ Child as Salvator Mundi, which often feature the Child standing
alone on the open tomb or sitting on a cushion with a cross-topped
orb in his hand;3 the New Year Wish prints, a type of greeting card,
which depict him surrounded by all manner of objects, some joyous
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  67

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.1  The Christ Child Holding a Cross, from Thomas à Kempis, Dialogus
noviciorum (Book I-IV) and other texts, Monastery of St Mary Magdalene, 1488,
The Hague, KB, 75 G 70, fol. 88r. (Reproduced with permission of Koninklijke
Bibliotheek.)

and some that reference his future Passion as well as the Resurrec-
tion;4 and the rich and varied series of images that figure the so-called
Proleptic Passion – a representation of Christ’s Infancy that carries
signs of his suffering and death. Such signs can be explicit – as in the
Buxtehude altarpiece (c. 1410), where the Christ Child, seated at his
mother’s feet, interrupts his reading in order to contemplate the in-
struments of his future torture and death (here the cross, the nails, the
spear, and the crown of thorns) – or implicit – as in Jan van Eyck’s
Lucca Madonna (c. 1436), which likens the Virgin to the altar, and the
nursing Christ Child, seated on a piece of fabric, to the host placed on
a corporal.5
While interest in the imagery of the Proleptic Passion was awakened
as early as the mid-twentieth century,6 more recently Alfred Acres has
completed two particularly important essays on the topic: in 1998,
he explored the implications of the crucifix hanging above the shed
in Rogier van der Weyden’s Columba Altarpiece (c. 1455), and in 2006,
68  Elina Gertsman

he published a wide-ranging study of what he terms ‘hauntings’ of

Christ’s childhood.7 In these narratives, Acres suggests, ‘intimations of
evil at Christ’s infancy are often accompanied by imagery or inklings
of his death.’ So, in addition to the all but invisible demon who lurks
in the shadows of a shed, Hugo van der Goes includes a sheaf of wheat
and a vase decorated with vines in the foreground of the Portinari Al­
tarpiece (c. 1476–9), which allude to the body and blood of Christ.8 Im-
ages of the Schmerzenskind isolated from such Infancy narratives do not,
however, stop at allusive and premonitory signs; instead, in dramati-
cally fracturing and collapsing the temporal framework, they explicitly
articulate the Child’s future sacrifice. If the minuscule crucifix in Rogier
van der Weyden’s Columba Altarpiece hangs ominously yet discreetly
on the outer wall of the shed where the Nativity has occurred, and if
the demonic presence in Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece is
subsumed into the shadows, the Child of Sorrows is a much more un-
equivocal and overt image. Inscribed within an ambiguously indeter-
minate space that allows little visual distraction, the Child consciously
presents the instruments of his torture to the beholder: the visceral ap-
peal of such an image plays on the most basic emotions of the viewer,
its meditative call spiked by the unbearable content – the suffering of
the innocent, exposed, naked infant.
So shocking to modern viewers, the image of the Child of Sorrows
was, however, much less so for late-medieval beholders, accustomed as
they were to visual and verbal narratives that joined together Christ’s
infantile body and the spectacle of his adult sacrifice, whether implied
or made explicit. Monastics at Gross-Frankenthal would have been pre-
pared for the Schmerzenskind folio, trained to recognize its complex and
immediate allusions to other instances of the adult-child conflations.
The purpose of this essay is to place the Child of Sorrows within the
context of such figurations, and to introduce it, therefore, as an integral
part of late-medieval discourse that sought to bring together and juxta-
pose the imagery of innocence and the imagery of suffering.

Sacrifice Prefigured

In addition to those mentioned above, the image of the Schmerzenskind

exists in close relationship with a number of iconographies that fea-
ture Christ as an infant or a toddler, and make an explicit statement of
his sacrifice; perhaps most striking among those are the Presentation
in the Temple and the Appearance of the Christ Child in the Eucharist.
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  69

The source of the former can be found in Luke’s account that conflates
the narratives of two Jewish ceremonies: the Presentation and Redemp-
tion of the Child, and the subsequent purification of the Child’s mother
(Luke 2:22–39).9 In her 1946 study, Dorothy Schorr clearly demonstrates
that the depiction of the Presentation in the Temple can capture vari-
ous moments in the narrative: the earliest known image that deals with
the subject, for instance, the fifth-century mosaic in Santa Maria Mag-
giore, takes the meeting with Simeon outside, and altogether dispenses
with the altar, a requisite furnishing of the Presentation.10 This is what
Schorr identifies as an Eastern tradition; in Western imagery, as early
as the eighth century, the familiar configuration appears: Christ is held
above the altar by his mother, while Mary and Simeon (and varying
other figures) flank him. The Child’s position above the altar clearly
indicates the role of his body as a sacrificial offering; Joan Holladay
draws attention to a thirteenth-century Bible moralisée (ÖNB, Codex
Vindobonensis 2554) in which the scene of the Presentation (fol. 27v) is
juxtaposed with the Leviticus 2:9 image of the bread offering. The text
glosses the visual comparison by drawing parallels between the bread
and Christ both being offered to God.11
This parallel is especially well-marked in the images in which Christ
actually stands on the altar, the position that underscores the conflation
of his body with the implements of the Mass, the chalice and the paten,
and therefore with the substances they contain. Such a Christ Child ap-
pears in the south tympanum of the west facade at Chartres: carved
standing precisely in the middle of the altar, he signifies the bread and
wine that will displace his body in subsequent Masses (see figure 3.2).
In discussing the Chartres Presentation scene, sandwiched neatly be-
tween the Nativity below and Mary Enthroned above, Adolf Katzenel-
lenbogen points to the new developments in Eucharistic theology that
took place in the twelfth century, citing William of St Thierry’s assertion
of Christ’s ‘material flesh.’12 The processional antiphon ‘Adorna tha-
lamum,’ sung at Chartres on 2 February – the day when the Presenta-
tion was celebrated – included the line that defined the sacrificial role
of this material flesh: ‘Holding him [Christ] in his arms, Simeon pro-
claimed to the peoples: “He is the Lord of life and death and the savior
of the world.”’13 Similarly, St Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sermon on the
Purification of Mary, wrote: ‘Offer your Son, O hallowed Virgin, and
present to the Lord the blessed Fruit of your womb. Offer the holy and
God-pleasing Victim to make reconciliation for all of us. Undoubtedly
the Father will accept this new oblation, this most precious Victim, of
70  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.2  Presentation in the Temple: the Christ Child as Sacrifice, Incarnation
Portal (detail), Chartres Cathedral, west facade, right portal, 1145–55. (Photo:
author.)

Whom He says Himself: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well

pleased.”’14
In the immobile stance of the Chartres Child, Katzenellenbogen sees
the permanence of the conception that Christ’s ‘true body is forever the
reality of the Eucharist.’15 This reality is visualized again in the four-
teenth-century Presentation scene carved on the high altar in Cologne:
the Christ Child, figured as a toddler, stands upon the altar, his right
hand raised in blessing, his waist encircled by a piece of cloth held by
Simeon. Holladay cites the Child’s frontality, his nakedness, his ges-
ture, and the cloth that resembles a corporal to argue that the Child, in
fact, represents ‘the totality of the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood
in the Mass.’16 Although some visual narratives of the Presentation
in the Temple deny Christ the role of the willing victim, others, even
those that lack the rigidity of the Chartres scene, indicate the Child’s
willingness to take the place of the sacrifice. For example, in the ÖNB
Bible moralisée he leaps out of Mary’s hands, joyfully hopping on top
of the altar, and in the fifteenth-century panel painted on the interior
of the Morlaix Vierge Ouvrante, the Christ Child moves readily into
the grasp of Simeon, whose hands are draped in order to properly
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  71

receive the ‘host.’17 Like the Gross-Frankenthal Schmerzenskind who

willingly holds the cross in his right hand, seemingly undisturbed by
its macabre implications, this Christ Child gladly accepts the role of
the sacrifice.
In order to underscore the sacrificial rhetoric of the Presentation in the
Temple, which, itself, never included a wounded child with instruments
of his future martyrdom, late-medieval artists included prefigurative
Old Testament images within their paintings, which spelled out the
theme of sacrifice in no uncertain terms. The suffering of Isaac, bound to
the altar by his father, comes most readily to mind: although Isaac was
a young man when Abraham designated him as a sacrifice to God, he
is usually represented as a child in these scenes. In Stephan Lochner’s
Darmstadt Presentation in the Temple (1447), also called Purification of the
Virgin (see figure 3.3), Abraham and Isaac appear in the carving on the
front of the altar, while a vulnerable naked Christ Child presides above,
sitting upon a blue cloth and held by Simeon; the altar also features the
Alpha and the Omega, the letters that, quite clearly, refer to Christ’s ulti-
mate sacrifice.18 Similarly, the scene of Isaac’s sacrifice is represented on
the altar on the Master of the Life of the Virgin’s Presentation in the Temple
(c. 1460). Carved in marble, Abraham poised to strike Isaac is positioned
precisely above Simeon, who is passing the Child back to Mary. The
echoing between the figures is unmistakable: here, the sacrifice of Christ
is enacted through the sacrifice of another child.19

Sacrifice Enacted

The south tympanum at the royal portal at Chartres, to quote Margot

Fassler, offers ‘a foreshadowing of the Christian sacrifice of the Mass,
displayed in terms of Christ’s first days upon earth.’20 Although the
narrative is firmly set in the Infancy, in the Presentation in the Temple
scenes the Child foretells his fate, his recurring sacrificial role, as he ap-
pears in place of the host and wine at the Mass. The images of the Christ
Child who appears during an actual, not implied, Mass are, in fact, quite
plentiful in medieval visual and theological discourses: here, the Child
manifests himself on the altar not to designate his future death but to
participate in the ongoing act of sacrifice. Miri Rubin provides a brief
register of instances in which the Christ Child was ‘viewed, chewed,
adored, sacrificed’; those, much like the images of the Proleptic Passion,
‘linked the Nativity and the Passion, birth and death.’21
The conflation of Christ’s body and the host through the doctrine
of transubstantiation has its ultimate source in John 6:51, in Christ’s
72  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.3  Stefan Lochner, Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 1447, Hessisches
Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. (Photo in public domain.)

own words: ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if
any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I
will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The miracle of Christ’s
adult body materializing during the Mass is well known through
the account of Pope Gregory’s vision: the Church Father beheld the
suffering Christ while praying for a sign of the Real Presence in the
Eucharist that would convince a doubting member of his congrega-
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  73

tion. The appearances of the infant Christ in the Eucharist do not have
quite such a glorious pedigree, but they are numerous: in her essay
in this volume, Leah S. Marcus cites a variety of sources that record,
expound upon, and engage with the miracle of the Eucharistic host
turned child during the Mass.22 By the thirteenth century, the miracle
became firmly rooted in the minds of medieval men and women, so
much so that Thomas Aquinas discusses it quite matter-of-factly in the
Tertia pars of his Summa Theologiae (q. 76, a. 8): ‘Whether Christ’s Body
Is Truly There When Flesh or a Child Appears Miraculously in This
Sacrament?’23 For Aquinas, the miracle that occurs – ‘when occasion-
ally in this sacrament flesh, or blood, or a child’ is seen – can be logi-
cally explained in a twofold way: ‘Sometimes it happens on the part
of the beholders, whose eyes are so affected as if they outwardly saw
flesh, or blood, or a child, while no change takes place in the sacra-
ment.’ On the other hand, the transformation may actually take place,
or, as Aquinas terms it, ‘exist outwardly,’ if everyone in the audience
witnesses the miracle at the same time, and for a considerable period
of time. ‘Nor does it matter that sometimes Christ’s entire body is not
seen there,’ continues Aquinas, ‘but part of His flesh, or else that it is
not seen in youthful guise, but in the semblance of a child, because
it lies within the power of a glorified body for it to be seen by a non-
glorified eye either entirely or in part, and under its own semblance or
in strange guise.’24
An image from the Breviary of Aldersbach (c. 1260, Staatsbibliothek
Münich, CLM 2640, fol. 15v), roughly contemporary with Aquinas’s
Summa, shows just such a glorified body, a miracle that takes place at
the Mass (see figure 3.4). Here, clearly, the actual transformation takes
place before the three witnesses gathered in front of the altar, as the
priest raises the host and simultaneously opens his hands, releasing
the small figure of the Christ Child. The Child moves upward, directly
toward God the Father, who stretches his arms to receive him. This is
a communal miracle, shared not only by the participants of the Mass,
but also by the beholder of the image. The Christ Child’s body is itself
intact, but the signs of his suffering are neatly arranged on the altar
next to the candle: a chalice with wine turned into blood, and a small
crucifix, which explains the action that takes place on the altar in no
uncertain terms. The equation between wine and blood is made all the
more obvious by the fact that the Christ Child uses the host as a kind
of a springing platform for his return to the Father: we simultaneously
see two manifestations of his body – that of bread and that of flesh.
74  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.4  Christ Child in the Eucharist, Breviary of Aldersbach, ca. 1260, Staats-
bibliothek Münich, CLM 2640. (Reproduced with permission of the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek Münich.)

A similar communal witnessing occurs – not surprisingly – on altar

frontals,25 as well as on the pages of another thirteenth-century manu-
script, Le estoire de sent Aedward le rei (CUL Ee.3.59, fol. 21r): St Edward
the Confessor, next to Earl Leofric, receives a vision of the Child in the
Eucharist. The story is recounted in William Caxton’s ‘Englished’ ver-
sion of The Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives originally compiled
in Latin by Jacobus de Voragine.26 King Edward finds himself in St Pe-
ter’s in Westminster during the Mass, accompanied by Earl Leofric:

Earl Leofric kneeled behind the king and saw with his bodily eyes our
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  75

Lord Jesus Christ between the priest’s hands, appearing in the likeness of
a glorious child or beauteous person, which blessed the king with his right
hand. And the king, which was greatly comforted with the sight, bowed
down his head, and with great devotion and meekness received the bless-
ing of our Lord. Then the earl arose to tell the king, supposing that the
king had not seen it, but he knew the earl’s intent and bade him stand still,
‘for that thou seest I see, and him I honour.’27

This miracle is reserved for Edward and Leofric – the Child does not
swiftly escape the priest’s hands to join his Father, but instead turns to
face the king to bless him. If the breviary miniature showed the dual
presentation of Christ as bread and as child, in the St Edward illumi-
nation the Child replaces the bread (the chalice remains standing on
the altar), and the priest raises him in lieu of a host. In this way, again,
Christ’s sacrificial presence authenticates the wine in the chalice as
blood. This authentication is most stunningly figured in the Mystical
Vision miniature from the fourteenth-century Queste del saint graal man-
uscript (BNF Arsenal 5218, fol. 88), in which the knights of the Round
Table witness the emergence of the Christ Child from the chalice during
the feast.
Although patently laced with sacrificial rhetoric, such appearances
of the Christ Child seem rather benign. Similar miracles have been re-
corded in the various accounts of female visionaries: Ida of Louvain,
a Cistercian nun, saw the Child in the host, and occasionally played
with him as if he were her own baby, while Mary of Oignies, a Beguine,
saw the Child in the priest’s hands bathed in pure light and marvel-
lous beauty.28 Yet, balancing the joyful miracles were the macabre ones:
Blessed Joan Mary de Maillé, a Franciscan tertiary, saw the suffering
Christ Child in the elevated host, blood pouring from the wounds
that pierced his hands, feet, and sides.29 It is these accounts of the ap-
paritions of the Christ Child, therefore, that are particularly resonant
with the Schmerzenskind imagery, delighting in rather more dramatic
versions of the miracles. In Ugolino di Prete’s late-fourteenth-century
Miracle of the Saracens fresco at Orvieto cathedral, the imprisoned priest
celebrates Mass before the infidels, and, as he raises the host, it turns
into a veritable Child of Sorrows: naked, confronting the viewer, and
holding a cross (see figure 3.5). The priest in Ugolino’s fresco faces the
beholder, as does the Christ Child: the viewer, by visual implication, is
included among the sceptical crowd, which only recently mocked the
priest, witnessing the miracle.30
76  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.5  Ugolino di Prete, Miracle of the Saracens, Orvieto Cathedral, mid-four-
teenth century. (Photo in public domain.)

By the fourteenth century, stories of the Child bearing signs of his

Passion became favourites among sermon writers: many of these were
tales of conversion, many carried anti-Semitic rhetoric (a point to which
we will return later), and some presented the miracles in terms of pun-
ishment for the impious. To the latter belongs the story about an irrev-
erent judge recorded in the Gesta Romanorum and retold by John Mirk
in his Festial:

Then, one day, as this judge sat in his court, in sight of all men, there came
in the fairest woman that they ever saw … and brought a fair child in her
lap, bloody and completely tortured [slain?]. And she said to the justice:
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  77

‘Sir, what do they who did this to my child deserve?’ Then said the justice:
‘They deserve death.’ Then she answered and said thus: ‘You and your
men with your horrible oaths have dismembered my son Jesus Christ …
Wherefore, you shall have your own judgment’ … Then immediately, in
the sight of all the people, the earth opened and the judge fell down into
hell.31

In this particular account the Christ Child’s wounds are not paralleled
with the breaking of the host, as in so many Eucharistic miracles, but
are inflicted anew upon the innocent child through the men’s swearing.
The responsibility here, as in the Child of Sorrows image, shifts upon
the audience presented with the visual or verbal example of Christ’s
suffering: the Child is injured not only for humanity’s past sins, but also
by the ones committed in the present. The wounds of the Child are the
basis for meditation: meditation on one’s own transgressions; medita-
tion on Christ’s suffering endured for those transgressions; meditation,
finally, on the path to forgiveness forged by this suffering. In this, the
image of the Schmerzenskind is indebted to another image informed by
Eucharistic devotion and by the concept of the Real Presence in the sac-
rament: the representation of the Man of Sorrows.

Sacrifice Transfigured

During the Mass at Corbenic, the twelve knights of the Queste del saint
graal witness the transformation of the host into the Christ Child, and
the subsequent transformation of the Child into a crucified Christ with
bleeding wounds.32 If paused midway through the miracle, this trans-
formation could very well become the image of the Gross-Frankenthal
Child of Sorrows: the suffering of the adult Christ accompanied by the
instrument of his torture, transposed upon the small Child. The two
themes, the Schmerzenskind and the Man of Sorrows, echo one another
with reverberating force: one prefigurative, another redemptive, both,
whether seen in small private objects or larger, public images, were de-
signed to foster a particular kind of personal devotion.33
Like the Schmerzenskind, the image of the Man of Sorrows does
not record a specific moment in the Christological narrative, nor is it
a miracle visualized, but an iconic devotional image, an image made
for meditation and contemplation, intended to establish a dialogue be-
tween the beholder and Christ.34 Master Francke’s Hamburg Man of
Sorrows image (c. 1440) is fairly typical in this respect, although here
78  Elina Gertsman

symbols of judgment – the white lily and the sword – replace the instru-
ments of torture that usually accompany the Imago Pietatis (see figure
3.6). On Master Francke’s panel, a half-length Christ, his gaze downcast
and his lips parted, stands before the beholder. The thumb of his left
hand is pulling at a string that ties two ends of the cloth around his
shoulders; his right hand is stretching the skin around his side wound.
Blood pours down from the wound in ghastly drops; it radiates in a star
pattern around the puncture in Christ’s right hand, and drips down the
forearm out of the gash in the left hand. Blood, too, streams from under
the crown of thorns encircling Christ’s head. The inner lining of the
white cloak held by angels echoes the red of the all-pervading blood:
the mantle, in effect, is Christ’s flayed skin. This hybridity of cloak and
skin underscores the desire for tactility inherent in the devotional
practices of the Late Middle Ages, and exemplified by the fourteenth-
century Meditationes vitae Christi, a Franciscan devotional text that
exhorted the pious reader to experience the Passion through all the
senses.35 In discussing Franciscan crucifixion piety, Sarah Beckwith
quotes John of Grimestone’s ‘I wolde ben clad in Cristes skin’ in order
to point to ‘Christ’s body as a traverse between inside and outside that
informs its dynamic coding [through] the metaphorization of the skin
as a bodily costume.’36 Christ’s visualized body becomes a threshold
for the pious engaged in meditation.
The contemplation of Christ’s body is here aided by the dissolu-
tion of narrative elements around the central figure and the emphatic
magnification of Christ’s body, which allows the viewer to focus on
the wounds, and, therefore, to enter into an intimate space of the devo-
tional image.37 However, if Master Francke’s Man of Sorrows is pushed
into the viewer’s space, the half-length portrait all but encroaching
upon the beholder, the Child of Sorrows images pull back, revealing
the Schmerzenskind’s entire body. For example, in the marginal image to
Sext in the Hours of Eternal Wisdom, in the late fifteenth-century Book
of Hours from Delft, the naked Christ Child is represented on a patch
of grass in front of the cross, holding a scourge and a reed, his entire
body exposed to the viewer’s gaze.38 This figuration is akin to images
of the Man of Sorrows that appeared predominantly in Germany, often
in wall painting, and even more frequently in sculpture. A late-four-
teenth-century mural from the Minorite church in Stein, for instance,
shows a full-length view of Christ’s body flanked by reeds, a lance,
and a spear with a vinegar sponge, and backed by the cross (see figure
3.7). Christ raises his hands to display his wounds that are, nonetheless,
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  79

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.6  Master Francke, Man of Sorrows, ca. 1430, Kunsthalle, Hamburg. (Re-
produced with the permission of Art Resource.)
80  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.7  Man of Sorrows, late fourteenth century, Stein, Danube. (Reproduced
with permission of Klangraum Krems Minoritenkirche; photo: Florian Schulte.)

rather understated when we compare them with other late-medieval

images of the Imago Pietatis veritably drowning in blood.39 Christ turns
away from the viewer, deep in contemplation; his eyes are, however,
open.
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  81

We find fourteenth-century mural representations of the Child of Sor-

rows as well: at the monastery of Wienhausen near Celle, the Schmerzens­
kind appears on the second-floor hallway wall. The adult body of the
Man of Sorrows is replaced with the chubby flesh of a child, and the
cloak is stripped away to reveal the vulnerable limbs, but the general
structure of the image remains: Christ, in a space of collapsed time, is
simultaneously a toddler and a victim of torture, holding a whip and
reeds in his crossed hands, his cruciform halo stark against the expanse
of red. This expanse is nothing less than a blood-red heart impaled on
the sword held by St Paul. Turning away from the beholder, the Child
appears to contemplate his Passion, thereby inviting the viewer to do
the same.
The Christ Child enclosed in the Sacred Heart, an image meant to
evoke God’s love for humanity, is here transformed into the image of
Schmerzenskind, a transformation not at all uncommon: we frequently
see the combination of the suffering Child confined within a pierced
heart and, often, surrounded by four other wounds, in manuscript il-
lumination and woodcuts. So, a woodcut from Upper Rhine, created
between 1450 and 1465, has the Christ Child stand within the wounded
heart holding reeds and a scourge, the cross with nails behind him, and
hands and feet with round wounds in each corner of the print. Similar-
ly, a fifteenth-century gospel book shows the Child clasping a scourge
and a reed, sitting within a heart impaled by a sword and a lance that
pierce the four disembodied wounds (see figure 3.8).40 The image is po-
sitioned against the backdrop of Christ’s and Mary’s crowned names,
similarly pierced by the same lance and sword; the drawing is made in
pale brown washes, and the red of the heart and the wounds appears
stark against the page. Unlike the Man of Sorrows who suffers from
the wounds, the Christ Child, although inscribed within the pierced
heart, is here removed from the bloody gashes – they are taken out
of his body and transformed into separate entities. Here, then, the im-
age of the Schmerzenskind is conflated not only with the iconography
of the Sacred Heart but also with another devotional theme that re-
ceived widespread popularity in the Late Middle Ages, the image of
Christ’s Five Wounds.41 Christ’s body, therefore, is here fragmented; as
Caroline Walker Bynum has demonstrated, such fragmentation carried
the weight of personal responsibility as well as an inherent Eucharistic
implication: it ‘underlined the horror of the Crucifixion by representing
Christ himself as fragmented by our sins, but in such [devotional im-
ages] pars clearly stands pro toto; each fragment of Christ’s body – like
82  Elina Gertsman

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.8  The Hague, KB, 75 E 9, fol. 1v, The Christ Child Holding Scourge
and Reed, with the Five Holy Wounds, Gospel Book, Utrecht, Monastery Vre-
dendaal, Canons Regular, Ghijsbert Beynop (scribe), 1472. (Reproduced with
permission of Koninklijke Bibliotheek.)

each fragment of the eucharistic bread – is the whole of God.’42 Christ

is here represented thrice: as the Child who, for the transgressions of
humanity, will endure torment signified by the instruments of Passion;
as the disembodied wounds that fragment his adult flesh; and as his
name, punctured by the sword and the lance. The wounding of Christ’s
and Mary’s names, the bleeding gashes, the Child of Sorrows – this is a
potent mixture for one devotional image that is sure to draw an empa-
thetic response from the viewer, to evoke requisite sentiments of piety.

Reverberations

The aspect of suffering implied or directly figured in the images of the

sacrificial Child was designed to trigger such an empathetic response;
in addition, the conflation of childhood and adulthood – the juxtaposi-
tion of the vulnerable flesh of an infant and the implication of sacrifice
endured by this flesh – set such images apart from others. A common
medieval view of childhood held that infants were not quite human
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  83

yet, and all but indistinguishable from animals who are unable to walk
upright and speak properly. Bartholomaeus Anglicus underscores the
importance of the latter when discussing the traits that last until the
child is seven years of age: in the translation of John Trevisa, ‘suche a
child hatte [is called] infans in latyn, þat is to mene “nouʒt spekynge,”
for he may nouʒt speke noþir sowne his wordes profitabliche.’43 Al-
though Philippe Ariès would have his readers believe that childhood as
such never existed in the Middle Ages, and that children were seen as
tiny adults,44 this view has since been challenged: medieval literature
since at least the thirteenth century clearly treats children – those in the
infantia stage, younger than seven years of age – as creatures not yet
self-aware, creatures that can feel but not do much else.45 Bernard de
Gordon, a Montpellier physician and university professor active in the
later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, argues, in his Regimen
sanitatis, that children ‘live, as it were, a bestial life’ inasmuch as they
do not ‘care about anything except pleasures.’46 Similarly, a fifteenth-
century Scottish poem ‘Ratis Raving’ likens a small child to an animal:

Rycht as a best, child can no mare

bot lauch ore gret for Joy & care.
Na best has thai twa propriteis
bot seid of mankind, as thow seis.
This eild has kind of grovin thing,
and as best it havis feilinge.47

[Children, being just like animals, cannot do anything more than they, ex-
cept laugh or cry for joy or care. No animal has these properties except the
seed of mankind, as you see. The age of childhood has the nature of things
that grow, and it has the same sensory perception that animals do.]

The bestial characteristics of young children, often depicted in the nude

whether verbally or visually, stand in stark contrast with the adult wis-
dom that characterizes the Christ Child who undergoes his sacrifice
while still in the infantia phase.
Besides evoking devout sentiments, the images that repeatedly fea-
ture the Christ Child’s sacrificial flesh not only habituated late-medieval
viewers to seeing the figurations of a tormented child, but trained them
to recognize allusions to the Christ Child in the imagery of other suf-
fering and dead children.48 So, in a fifteenth-century fresco at Meslay-
le-Grenet, which otherwise figures a conventional Dance of Death,
the infant, about to be snatched by the morbid skeleton, is placed in a
84  Elina Gertsman

cradle. The cradle itself is painted around a pre-existing sculpted con-

secration cross, made in the shape of a round Eucharistic host with a
cruciform stamp within. Positioned as he is almost directly across from
the altar, the Dance of Death infant takes on a double meaning: not only
is he a victim in the equalizing carnival of the danse macabre, but he is
also an evocation of the figure of the Christ Child as a sacrificial offer-
ing, a theme that resonates quite effectively with other frescoes in the
small church: the Gossiping Women at the Mass and Passion scenes in
the apse.49
Similarly, imagery rooted in anti-Semitic lore that sprang up around
the deaths of Christian children – from Saint William of Norwich in
the twelfth century to Simon of Trent in the fifteenth – makes explicit
connections between these children and the suffering infant Christ.50
The so-called ritual murders (along with their variant, blood libel, in
which the child’s blood was to be procured for foul ceremonies) in-
volved the abduction, the torture, and the ultimate death of the child;
the outlandish legends were concocted to showcase the cruel nature
of the Jews.51 William’s substitution for the Christ Child is emphatic:
he was, according to Thomas of Monmouth’s Life and Passion of Saint
William of Norwich, crucified.52 Other tales that centre on bloodletting
are not quite as obviously Christological in nature, although the anti-
Semitic legend of Simon of Trent, as it was depicted in late-medieval
woodcuts, is mnemonically connected to various representations of the
Schmerzenskind. Friedrich Creussner, in the late 1470s, depicts Simon,
allegedly murdered by the Jews in Trent in 1475, as a vulnerable child
undergoing mocking and bloodletting at the same time as he imitates
the crucified Christ; the Nuremberg Chronicle, in 1493, picks up on this
depiction, conflating imagery of the Eucharistic miracle, blood libel,
and crucifixion (see figure 3.9). Here, Simon is placed on a table that
replaces the altar; pierced by sharp instruments, he bleeds into a vessel
that clearly stands for the sacramental chalice; his arms are pulled apart
to depict him in a crucifixion pose.53 In the later narrative sequence,
Simon is seen as a corpse: an indulgence woodcut from Munich (ca.
1479) has him lying on an almemar, surrounded by instruments of his
Passion much as Christ is surrounded by the arma Christi in contempo-
rary prints; while the Child of Sorrows displays his body, Simon’s body
is put on display: he is already dead (see figure 3.10). Each implement
of Simon’s torture, too, follows the function of the arma Christi – each
is carefully delineated in order to indicate to the beholder specific in-
stances of Simon’s suffering.54
 Image Not Available

Fig. 3.9  Martyrdom of Simon at Trent, woodcut by Michael Wohlgemuth, from

Liber chronicarum mundi, Nuremberg, 1493, inv. 118 239 D. (Photo in public do-
main.)

Image Not Available

Fig. 3.10  Blessed Simon Martyr, colored woodcut, ca. 1479, Germany (Nurem-
berg?), Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, 118 239 D. (Reproduced with
permission of Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich.)
86  Elina Gertsman

In analysing the ritual murder tales, William F. MacLehose mentions

visionary apparitions of the Christ Child in the Eucharist, and points
to the fact that ‘the [murdered] child stands in for Christ as a sacrifi-
cial offering in a reenactment of the Crucifixion, owing to his status
as an innocent creature who believes in Christ and to the murderers’
occasional belief that he is Christ.’55 The conflation between the adult
and the infant Christ here paints the Jews as confirmed Christ-killers
who re-enact the murder and thereby blur the distinction between the
Christ Child and the Christian children they allegedly sacrifice. Indeed,
according to the trial proceedings, Simon ‘died crosswise at the hour
of Christ’s crucifixion and hanged his head to the side.’56 Viewers were
trained to see the Schmerzenskind in the woodcuts that figured Simon
of Trent, just as they were given cues for instant recognition of the
Christ Child under the guise of the Dance of Death infant at Meslay-
le-Grenet.57 The eye, familiarized with the image of the sacrificial child,
translated visual knowledge into intellectual knowledge, and triggered
a complex web of mimetic association and recollection.58 By the end of
the fifteenth century, the Child of Sorrows in his many guises appeared
to viewers on the walls of parish churches and monastic enclosures,
in privately owned manuscripts and widely circulated woodcuts; his
body, put on display, evoked their compassion, asked for their empa-
thy, inflamed their imagination, and guided their devotion.

NOTES

  1 The manuscript contains Thomas à Kempis’s Dialogus noviciorum, books

1–4, along with other texts.
  2 For a brief discussion of this iconographic theme as it appears in a variety
of contexts, see Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2, 196–7. In the Konin-
klijke Bibliotheek collections, for instance, we find a number of examples:
for a Schmerzenskind included in an antiphonary, see 75 A 2 / 6, fol. 72r;
for a gospel book, see 75 E 9, fol. 1v; for prayer books, see KB 31, fol. 205r
and 131 G 5, fol. 70r (in the latter case included in the Short Hours of the
Cross).
  3 Such a naked Child seated on a red pillow and holding a cross-topped orb
appears, for instance, in two late-fifteenth-century prayer books from Hol-
land (KB, 76 G 9, fol. 117v and KB, 135 E 19, fol. 127v) accompanying the
Prayer to the Sweet Name of Christ. On the devotion to the Holy Name,
see Biasiotto, History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name. There
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  87

are numerous representations of the Christ Child as the Saviour of the

World produced in the fifteenth century both north and south of the Alps;
see Wentzel, ‘Christkind.’ Steinberg interprets these images as a product
of intense focus on ‘God’s humanation … characteristic of Renaissance
thought’ that ‘assigned the government of the world and its redemption to
the Infant who had yet to achieve the Passion and Resurrection,’ The Sexu­
ality of Christ, 42.
  4 On the references to the sacrifice in such New Year’s greetings prints see,
especially, Schreiber, Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure, vol. 1, passim; Heitz,
Neujahrswünsche des XV. jahrhunderts; and Spamer, Das kleine Andachtsbild,
vom XIV. bis zum XX. Jahrhundert, 43–9.
  5 On such implied images of Mary as a tabernacle, and Christ as the Eucha-
ristic sacrifice upon her lap/the altar, see Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece,
esp. 14–24 on the Lucca Madonna. On the Buxtehude altarpiece, see the
essay by Dzon in this volume.
  6 See, e.g., Schapiro, ‘“Muscipula Diaboli”’; Philip, ‘The Prado Epiphany by
Jerome Bosch’; and Walker, ‘The Demon of the Portinari Altarpiece.’
  7 Acres, ‘The Columba Altarpiece and the Time of the World,’ and ‘Porous
Subject Matter and Christ’s Haunted Infancy.’ See further Areford’s entry
‘The Virgin Nursing the Christ Child’ (no. 82) in Parshall and Schoch, eds,
Origins of European Printmaking, 266–8.
  8 Acres, ‘Porous Subject Matter,’ 257. Further on the Eucharistic theme of
another one of Hugo van der Goes’s paintings (Nativity), see Lane, ‘“Ecce
Panis Angelorum.”’
9 See Rosenau, Jewish Ceremonial Institutions and Customs, 139–43.
10 Shorr, ‘The Iconographic Development of the Presentation in the Temple.’
Recently, Steigerwald argued that the figure of the man appearing in the
Santa Maria Maggiore mosaic is not Simeon but Joseph; see ‘Noch einmal:
Zur Darstellung Jesu im Tempel am Triumphbogen.’
11 Bible moralisée, trans. Stork, comm. Haussherr, fol. 27v; see Holladay, ‘The
Iconography of the High Altar in Cologne Cathedral,’ 477. Cardile ex-
plores the theme of the Presentation when discussing imagery that figures
the Virgin in a priestly role and Eucharistic symbols inherent in such rep-
resentations, in ‘Mary as Priest.’
12 De sacramento altaris, ch. 9, PL 180:356: ‘Sed materialis caro Christi, cum
sit sacramentum illius spiritualis carnis, tamen vere est caro Christi.’ Dis-
cussed in Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral,
14.
13 Fassler discusses the antiphon and explores the importance of connections
between entrance ceremonies that took place at Chartres and iconography
88  Elina Gertsman

of the portal, ‘Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana

at Chartres,’ esp. 510–13.
14 St Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘In Purificatione Mariae,’ translated in Saint Ber-
nard on the Christian Year, 122.
15 Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs, 14.
16 Holladay, ‘The Iconography of the High Altar,’ 478–9.
17 On the Morlaix Vierge Ouvrante, see Gertsman, ‘Performing Birth, Enact-
ing Death,’ esp. 92–3, for a discussion of the Presentation scene and its
sacrificial rhetoric. Conversely, in an early-fourteenth-century image from
Cologne, Christ twists in his mother’s arms, turning away from the altar,
while in a fifteenth-century Flemish Book of Hours, the Presentation in the
Temple, which takes place in the church, lacks the altar altogether (Glasgow
University Library, Sp Coll MS Euing 3, fol. 81v).
18 In Lochner’s other Presentation panel in Lisbon, Simeon sheds tears; it has
been suggested that his weeping indicates grief over the Child’s future fate;
see Levine, ‘An Iconographic Oddity in Stefan Lochner’s Lisbon “Presenta-
tion in the Temple.”’ Shorr similarly points to a fourteenth-century ivory
with the Presentation scene, which shows Mary in mourning over the fate
of Christ, ‘The Iconographic Development,’ 26. Mary’s sorrow at the mo-
ment of Presentation in Byzantine art has been discussed in Maguire, ‘The
Iconography of Symeon with the Christ Child in Byzantine Art.’
19 This link is also made in late-medieval vernacular literature; Rubin cites
an excerpt from a fourteenth-century poem that compares the offering of
Isaac with the host, Corpus Christi, 136. The same is true for biblical plays
about Abraham and Isaac; see, among others, Woolf, ‘The Effect of Typol-
ogy on the English Medieval Plays of Abraham and Isaac’; and Kolve, The
Play Called Corpus Christi, 70–5.
20 Fassler, ‘Liturgy and Sacred History,’ 513.
21 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 135–6.
22 ‘The Christ Child as Sacrifice,’ reproduced in this volume. See also Browe,
Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters, 100–11; and Rode, ‘Studien zu
den mittelalterlichen Kind-Jesu-Visionen.’
23 For a discussion of Aquinas’s argument and other theological debates on
the nature of Eucharistic transformation and its visual effect, see ch. 4 of
Bynum, Wonderful Blood, esp. 86–90.
24 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Prov-
ince, 5.2455–6.
25 See the embroidery antependium from Mechlin, in the Cluny Museum,
Paris, as well as a German altar hanging at the Metropolitan Museum,
New York, both made in the fourteenth century. On the former, see de  
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  89

Farcy, La Broderie du XIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours d’après des spécimens authen­
tiques et les anciens inventaires, 1.117, pl. 48 (here, Saint Mark is depicted);
on the latter, de Farcy, La Broderie du XIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours (Supplement),
2.149, pl. 181; Arts of the Middle Ages, a Loan Exhibition, February 17 to March
24, 1940, 36, no. 103, pl. LI; and Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, fig. 5.
26 It is hardly a coincidence that the proliferation of such miracles in the thir-
teenth century followed the declaration, definition, and promulgation of
the doctrine of transubstantiation in 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council.
For another view, see Kenney’s essay in this volume.
27 Golden Legend, ed. Ellis, 6.19. The original Latin text does not include a
chapter on Edward the Confessor, a British saint.
28 Ida’s visions are discussed in Bynum, ‘Women Mystics and Eucharistic De-
votion in the Thirteenth Century,’ 130. For the vision of Mary of Oignies,
see Les oeuvres de Marguerite d’Oingt, ed. Duraffour, Gardette, and Durdilly,
119–21.
29 Processus canonizationis for Jane Mary of Maillé, in AASS, March, vol. 3,
758. Mentioned in Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 171.
30 Briefly discussed in Broussolle, Le Christ de la Légende Dorée, 222; Hirn,
Sacred Shrine, 127; Browe, Die eucharistischen Wunder, 101; and Lane, The
Altar and the Altarpiece, 479. The Orvieto cycle also includes a depiction of
the Christ Child holding a cross and standing next to a chalice as the priest
says the words of consecration over it. The Infant’s blood flows from his
side wound into the vessel.
31 Mirk’s Festial, ed. Erbe, 113–14 (my translation). Marcus cites additional
instances of such horrific apparitions.
32 Sir Bors: ‘Je voi que vos tenez mon Sauveor et ma redemption en sem-
blance de pain.’ Discussed in Matarasso, The Redemption of Chivalry, 163,
183 and 186.
33 Bibliography on this subject is vast: see especially van Os, The Art of Devo­
tion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe; Ringbom, ‘Devotional Images and
Imaginative Devotions’; and Kieckhefer, ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval
Devotion.’
34 On the importation of the Imago Pietatis in an icon form, and on the discus-
sion of the Man of Sorrows in general, see Belting, The Image and Its Public
in the Middle Ages, trans. Bartusis and Meyer. An excellent account of this
visual theme is also found in Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans.
Seligman, 2.197–229, as well as in Ridderbos, ‘The Man of Sorrows.’
35 Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Ragusa and Green. For a brief discus-
sion of skin as garment, see Camille, ‘Mimetic Identification and Passion
Devotion in the Later Middle Ages,’ esp. 202.
90  Elina Gertsman

36 Beckwith, Christ’s Body, 61.

37 On the iconic, timeless/siteless quality of the Man of Sorrows image see
Panofsky, ‘“Imago Pietatis.”’ On the intimacy of the dialogue between the
image and the viewer who studies Christ’s body, see Ringbom, Icon to Nar­
rative, 48.
38 The Hague, KB, 135 F 2, fol. 28r.
39 Discussed in Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2.201. Schiller also draws
attention to another representation of the Man of Sorrows – Christ as Ar-
tisan – which shows Christ attacked by various artisanal tools, each one
of which creates a new wound. This kind of representation, in fact, echoes
Mirk’s above-mentioned account about the blasphemous judge, only here
the new wounds are inflicted upon Christ by artisans who refuse to stop
work on Sunday.
40 The Hague, KB, 75 E 9, Gospel Book, Utrecht, Monastery Vredendaal,
Canons Regular, Ghijsbert Beynop (scribe), 1472.
41 For a good overview of the devotion to Christ’s wounds, see Areford, ‘The
Passion Measured,’ esp. 215–21.
42 Bynum, ‘Material Continuity, Personal Survival and the Resurrection of
the Body,’ 280.
43 On the Properties of Things, ed. Seymor, bk. 6.1, 1.291.
44 Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. Studies that dispute Ariès’s approach are
plentiful: see, e.g., Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London and The Ties
That Bound. Recent research on medieval childhood includes Schultz, The
Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages; and Orme, Medieval
Children.
45 Discussed in Oosterwijk, ‘“Muoz ich tanzen und kan nit gân?”’ at 147 and
149.
46 Cited and translated by Dzon, ‘The Image of the Wanton Christ-Child,’
36.
47 Ratis Raving and Other Early Scots Poems on Morals, ed. Girvan, 32, lines
1120–5. It has been argued, nonetheless, that children’s special nature
was seen, in the Middle Ages, as a gateway to contact with the divine; see
Kroll, ‘The Concept of Childhood in the Middle Ages.’
48 Violence perpetrated upon children becomes common currency not only
in visual but also literary medieval discourse; see Kline, ‘Textuality, Sub-
jectivity, and Violence,’ which comments on the ‘relentlessly violent repre-
sentation of children in Middle English texts’ (24). There exists, no doubt,
a connection between a profusion of late-medieval images of suffering
children and the infant mortality rate; this topic, however, lies beyond the
scope of this essay.
 The Sacrificial Christ Child  91

49 For a fuller account, see Gertsman, ‘Visual Space and the Practice of View-
ing,’ 25–7.
50 On the cult of William of Norwich, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims,
120–2.
51 For a discussion of such ritual murders see ch. 3 in MacLehose’s ‘A Tender
Age.’ See also Schultz, ‘The Blood Libel.’
52 See McCulloh, ‘Jewish Ritual Murder.’
53 For ample bibliography on Simon of Trent, see the entry by Areford in Par-
shall and Schoch, eds., Origins of European Printmaking, 210–11; in addition,
see Zafran, ‘Saturn and the Jews.’
54 Areford, ‘Blessed Simon Martyr,’ no. 82, in Parshall and Schoch, eds., Ori­
gins of European Printmaking, 208–12, at 209. In discussing this particular
woodcut, Areford suggests that its ‘power … rested to some extent on how
it subverted a familiar image of the Christ Child, turning a sweet and inno-
cent body into an ugly and abject one,’ 209–10. While this is undoubtedly
true, it seems clear that the more immediate image meant to be evoked
here is that of the Child of Sorrows.
55 MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age,’ 109.
56 Quoted and discussed in Hsia, Trent 1475, 44.
57 On conflations between German Dance of Death Infant figures and Christ,
see further Oosterwijk, ‘“Muoz ich tanzen und kan nit gân?”’ 156–9.
58 On Aquinas’s broad understanding of ‘visio,’ which included intellectual
knowledge, see Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, originally published
as Il problema estetico in San Tommaso in 1956.