This painting by the late Ukrainian artist Ostap Lozynsky portrays a handful of episodes from Passion Week: Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, the Last Supper, the Kiss of Judas, Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, Peter’s denial (represented emblematically by the rooster), Christ taking up his cross, Christ being nailed to the cross, the Crucifixion, and the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.
From liner notes of PRIMEMOVER by Joshua Stamper. Pinch to zoom, or if on a computer, right-click and open the image in a new tab to enlarge.
Joshua Stamper is “a transdisciplinary artist and composer whose work explores hiddenness, revelation, ephemera, and archive.” Commissioned by Resurrection Philadelphia, his “Stations: Is It I” composition collages spoken “words of prayer, cursing, praise, fury, hope, despair—from disciples, politicians, priests, crowds, soldiers, the curious,” all parties connected to Jesus’s final week. The texts are taken from scripture.
The cacophony is stressful. Maybe you turned off the recording before it finished, unable to bear it. I encourage you to stick with it for the full four minutes and twenty-one seconds, as a way of sitting with the discomfort and chaos of Christ’s passion, of entering into this story that’s at the center of the church’s proclamation.
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Alqosh, Iraq, 1723, from a Syriac Gospel lectionary. Collection of the Dominican Friars of Mosul (DFM 13, fol. 43v). Digitized in collaboration with the Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (CNMO), Ankawa, Erbil, Iraq.
Made three centuries ago at a monastery in Iraq, this is one of three figurative paintings from a Syriac Gospel lectionary, the other two depicting Thomas touching Jesus’s wounds and the apocryphal saint George defeating a dragon. While the scribe is named in the manuscript as ʼEliyā bar Yaldā, the artist, if he is a different person (as they usually were), is not identified.
I love the fanciful coloration! Yellow and orange for the donkey, and a tricolored road of yellow, blue, and green. Plus, in the background, fruiting tree branches that climb and curl. The red striations on the figures’ necks and faces are, as far as I know, an idiosyncratic aesthetic choice of the artist’s; they may signify blood running through the veins, or perhaps the marks are simply decorative.
While the donkey is shown in profile, clopping along toward Jerusalem’s city center, Jesus rides sidesaddle and is oriented toward us, his eyes meeting ours. He holds a scroll in one hand, signifying that he is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies (most directly in this moment, Zechariah 9:9), and his right hand, which is heavily stylized, I can only assume is raised in a gesture of blessing, as it is in many other images of this subject.
At his feet, the people spread their cloaks, a sign of reverence.
Addendum: The following video of Palm Sunday celebrations in Iraq showed up in my Instagram feed a few hours after I published this blog post, and I thought it fitting to add.
LISTEN: “Hosanna! (Matthew 21:9 & 11)” by Frank Hernandez, for Steve Green’s Hide ’Em in Your Heart: Bible Memory Melodies, 1990 | Performed by Susanna and Rosalia, 2026
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna in the highest Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna, this is Jesus
Blessed is he (blessed is he) who comes in the name of the Lord Blessed is he (blessed is he) who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna in the highest Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna, this is Jesus
Hosanna (Hosanna) Hosanna (in the highest) Hosanna (Hosanna) Hosanna, this is Jesus
I learned this song two years ago when two girls from my church, sisters, sang it during the offertory for our Palm Sunday worship service. I asked them if they’d be willing to reprise their performance for my blog, as I love the sweetness of their voices together, and they obliged. They are thirteen and eleven years old.
Palm Sunday is an especially great day to utilize the children’s voices in your congregation for music or other parts of the liturgy, as Matthew mentions in his account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem that “when the chief priests and the scribes . . . heard the children crying out in the temple and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became angry and said to [Jesus], ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself” [Ps. 8:2]?’” (Matt. 21:15–16). “Hosanna” is an expression that in this context means something like “Hooray for salvation!,” as John Piper puts it.
The enthusiasm of the masses upon Jesus’s arrival in Judea’s capital city for Passover, and especially their ascription to him of the messianic title “Son of David” (not to mention “prophet” and “wonderworker”), raised the hackles of the temple leadership. He was a threat to their authority and status and to their understanding of the scriptures. So they purposed, in collusion with Rome, to put him to death.
Other than the second one, captioned with a copyright notice, all photos in this article are my own.
When visiting the Landesmuseum (State Museum) in Hanover, Germany, last fall, I was struck by a monumental medieval altarpiece depicting thirty-six scenes from the life of Christ. Scholars refer to it as the Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel) after the now-lost large gold repoussé plaque, originally designed (most likely) as an antependium in the twelfth century, that was once at the center of its inner display, depicting Christ seated in a mandorla flanked by the twelve apostles.
The “Goldene Tafel” (Golden Panel), made for the church of St. Michael’s monastery in Lüneburg, Germany, ca. 1420–30. Tempera and gold leaf on oak, each panel 231 × 184 cm (overall 231 × 736 cm). Landesmuseum Hannover, Germany, WM XXIII, 27. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
One of the most important northern German works in the International Gothic style, the altarpiece was created in the 1420s for the high altar of the newly built Benedictine monastery of St. Michael in Lüneburg. It was the work of carpenters, sculptors, and two painters, one from the circle of the Westphalian artist Conrad von Soest, and the other probably based in Cologne or even Lüneburg.
The Golden Panel altarpiece, in its original design, had two pairs of hinged wings that could be opened or closed over a fixed central shrine, offering three possible configurations. The shrine, irrecoverably robbed in 1644 and 1698, housed the monastery’s treasury, especially its reliquaries, displayed in a cabinet of twenty-two richly decorated rectangular compartments surrounding the eponymous, aforementioned “golden panel.” This main body of the altarpiece (called the corpus) was dismantled in 1792–94 and its remaining objects melted or sold. The predella (base) has also been lost.
However, the wings, replete with panel paintings and figural sculptures, have survived to the present day and, having been restored in 2016–19, are proudly displayed at the Landesmuseum Hannover for visitors to enjoy. When you enter the gallery, you are greeted with the full cycle of thirty-six painted scenes (nine per panel) from the life of Christ, read from left to right in long rows. Then you can walk behind to see the panels’ other sides, which would not have been simultaneously on view to the monks of St. Michael’s with the altarpiece’s original construction.
The scale model in the following photograph gives you a good sense of the three distinct viewing states that were originally possible.
View 1, the closed view, juxtaposes a scriptural type and antitype: the brazen serpent in the wilderness, raised on a pole for the life of the people, and the crucifixion of Christ.
Numbers 21:4–9 tells of how, wandering the desert after God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites complained about how life was better before. As punishment for their ingratitude, God sent poisonous serpents into their camp, and fatalities ensued. The people realized their sin and repented, asking Moses to intercede with God for relief. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent and lift it high on a pole, and to instruct the people that if they are bitten, to look on the sculpture and they will be spared.
In John 3:14–15, Jesus interpreted this story as foreshadowing his being raised on a cross to bring healing: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he told Nicodemus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
The anonymous artist shows the gleaming snake on a tau cross that mirrors the one Jesus hangs on in the opposite panel. The lower banderole reads, from the Vulgate, “Peccavimus quia locuti sumus contra Dominum et te ora ut tollat a nobis serpentes” (We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents). I can’t make out the text on the upper banderole, other than aspexerit, “shall look,” but presumably it communicates God’s antidote to the snake bites.
And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord. And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near. (Douay–Rheims)
Almost all English translations say instead that Moses’s face “shone” or “became radiant,” interpreting qaran as horned with rays of light. This artist splits the difference and shows, growing out from under Moses’s hat, two bony protrusions that are luminous!
The Crucifixion scene shows a Roman spearman piercing Jesus’s side to confirm his death, while Jesus’s mother, two other Marys, and the apostle John mourn under his right hand. A centurion in the crowd exclaims, “Vere Filius Dei erat iste” (Truly this man was the Son of God).
When these two outer panels were opened in their day, they would reveal view 2 of the altarpiece (pictured at top of article), or the first open view, displaying scenes from Jesus’s infancy, passion, and resurrection across four panels.
The Annunciation; The Visitation; The Nativity; The Raising of Lazarus; Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; Christ Carrying His Cross; Christ in Distress; The CrucifixionThe Annunciation to the Shepherds; The Circumcision of Christ; The Adoration of the Magi; Christ Washing His Disciples’ Feet; The Agony in the Garden (2); The Deposition; The Entombment; The Harrowing of HellThe Presentation in the Temple; The Massacre of the Innocents; The Flight to Egypt; The Arrest of Christ; Christ before Pilate; Christ before Herod; The Resurrection; The Holy Women at the Tomb; The AscensionChrist among the Doctors in the Temple; The Wedding at Cana; The Baptism of Christ; The Flagellation of Christ; Ecce Homo; The Mocking of Christ; The Descent of the Holy Spirit; The Death of the Virgin; The Coronation of the Virgin
I’ll share a few of my favorite scenes.
The Nativity features what I call the industrious Joseph motif [previously], as rather than sitting off to the side with his head in his hands, as he’s commonly shown, Jesus’s dad is hard at work trying to make his family comfortable. He pumps a bellows to supply air to the small fire he has going, either to warm his wife and child or, as he does in a handful of other medieval German Nativities, to cook a simple meal. Mary reclines with the infant Christ on a woven straw mattress while angels peek in from over a curtain to adore him.
The Last Supper I found especially charming because of how the apostle John shelters under Jesus’s cloak, relaxed, secure. The image of John resting on Jesus’s breast rose to popularity in fourteenth-century Germany, a commemoration of the two’s bosom friendship and a call to, like John, abide in Christ. It’s based on the description in John 13:23, which says that at Jesus’s last meal, at Passover time, “one of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining close to his heart.” This verse alludes to the typical eating posture assumed at ancient Greco-Roman banquets, at which men reclined with their heads near a low table and their feet pointing away from it. But in Christian interpretation it has come to signify, more than simply a seating arrangement, the proximity of John to the heart of Christ.
In the Golden Panel’s Last Supper, Jesus enfolds John much like a mother hen would her chick (cf. Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34), his garment like a wing. Even in this moment before his greatest trial, when most would be inclined to turn inward, Jesus shows concern for those he loves—he covers, protects. And nourishes. He stretches his hand across the table, laid with dishes of lamb and fish, to feed Judas a morsel of bread that resembles a eucharistic wafer. He sups with the man he knows will betray him. He does not turn him away.
Further along in the narrative, the scene of Christ carrying his cross with the help of Simon of Cyrene stands out to me because of the man pulling Jesus’s hair as he walks. The cruel mocking and assault continue outside the courtroom and en route to Golgotha.
Called Christus im Elend (Christ in Distress) or Christus in der Rast (Christ at Rest), the subject depicted in the bottom center of the far left panel first started appearing in northern Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century. It shows Jesus sitting pensively, usually on a stone, waiting for his cross to be raised.
In the Golden Panel, Jesus, naked, bleeds all over while the soldiers roll dice and fight over who will get to keep his seamless tunic. The two men in the foreground, one with a flagrum tucked in his belt, tumble and tear at each other, pulling and biting, exemplifying the human penchant for violence that will culminate in the killing of God’s Son. (The basket of hammer and nails that has been procured for the task sits temporarily off to the side.) Combative and puerile, this is the humanity Christ has come to save.
The interior Crucifixion painting is fairly standard, but oh, isn’t it lovely? One notable feature is how Christ’s blood flows from his side, his final wound, down to his groin, where he received, at eight days old, his first wound, the cutting off of his foreskin in a ritual circumcision. Scholars such as Leo Steinberg have remarked how this diversion of the blood’s natural path (which would be to the right thigh) was an intentional device some painters used to connect these two sheddings of blood, and thus the incarnation and the atonement.
Moving two pictures down the line, the Entombment scene caught my eye because of the tender care shown to the dead Christ before he’s laid to rest. Nicodemus anoints Christ’s wounds with myrrh and aloes, applying them with a spatula, while Joseph of Arimathea, who has donated his tomb, prepares to enshroud the body.
In a quintessential Easter scene, three faithful women come to the burial site after the Sabbath to complete the anointing ritual, only to find a finely feathered angel perched atop the skewed lid of Christ’s now-empty sarcophagus. Mary Magdalene, holding a golden jar, points into the vacant space as if to ask, “Where’s my Lord?” To which the angel responds that he is risen!
View 3 (Partial): Sculptures of the Saints
View 3 of the Golden Panel altarpiece—the fully open view, saved for important feast days—cannot be replicated because the shrine that formed the corpus is lost. But flanking the shrine would have been two wings that have survived largely intact, displaying polychrome wood sculptures of twenty (mostly male) saints and, in the intermediate row, smaller statuettes of six female saints (the other six are missing).
The identities of the main figures are listed below. The ones I couldn’t confirm but for which I proffer my best guess are followed by a question mark.
Top left: John the Baptist, Thomas(?), Matthew, Simon(?), George
Top right: Mary Magdalene, Lawrence (deacon), Benedict, Cyriacus (deacon), Michael
Bottom left: Madonna and Child, Peter, Paul, James the Lesser(?), James the Greater
Bottom right: Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Jude (Thaddeus)(?), Andrew, Philip
In the sculpture of the Madonna and Child, Mary holds an inkwell that Jesus dips his pen into as he writes on a scroll. How delightful! It’s a rare iconography but one that’s shared by the Tintenfassmadonna in Hildesheim Cathedral, sculpted around the same time.
The figure to the right of Mary is Peter. He holds a handle with a dowel hole on the underside; originally, a set of keys was attached to it and hung down.
The diminutive figure above Mary is Catherine of Alexandria, identifiable by the fragmented wheel she holds, a symbol of her martyrdom.
To learn more about the Golden Panel, see the book Die Goldene Tafel aus Lüneburg, edited by Antje-Fee Köllermann and Christine Unsinn (Michael Imhof, 2021), from the Niederdeutschen Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte (Low German Contributions to Art History) series. Only three of its twenty-five chapters are in English; the rest is in German. It’s highly technical, the product of an interdisciplinary research project carried out from 2012 to 2016. There’s not much in it about the actual content of the images. But it provides ample color illustrations, which I always appreciate, as well as stylistic comparisons, historical inventories, and more.
Holy Week starts this Sunday. Per usual, I’ll be publishing daily art and music pairings during that period (so, too, during the Easter Octave), but here is some additional art and music, and a theological reflection, for the occasion. You might also consider spending time with the Holy Week Playlist I curated on Spotify.
TENEBRAE SERVICE: Good Friday, April 2, 2021, Good Shepherd New York: Not all churches host a service on Good Friday, but for me, it is one of the most meaningful services of the year and helps make Easter all the more potent and celebratory. It wasn’t until 2011 that I attended my first Good Friday service—of the Tenebrae variety, Latin for “darkness,” meaning we started with multiple lit candles, and they were gradually extinguished throughout the evening, symbolizing the Light of the World dying out. If you’re curious about what such a service might look like, here’s a great example from 2021, from Good Shepherd New York. Filmed during the pandemic, it was a digital-only offering. As is typical, it combines song and scripture readings to tell the story of Christ’s death. Some Tenebrae services include a brief homily, but this one does not. I’ve included a list of time stamps to the songs below.
1:15: “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason
6:26: “I Need Thee Every Hour” by Annie Hawks and Robert Lowry
24:28: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend
31:08: “Remember Me” by Paul Zach
35:50: “Were You There?,” African American spiritual (with a watercolor by Soyoung L Kim, inscribed with Isaiah 53:11a: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied”)
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INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FOR GOOD FRIDAY: The one Facebook group I belong to is Liturgy Fellowship; I joined when I was a worship planner and stick around because of the many great resources, especially musical ones and ideas for marking holy days as a congregation, that are shared by Christians across denominations. One post I made note of is from Andrew Kerhoulas, the associate pastor at Grace Mills River in Mills River, North Carolina. As a prelude for their 2023 Good Friday service, he said, Grace Mills River musicians played an excerpt from the fifth movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Here’s the full movement, performed by cellist Bingxia Lu and pianist Jackie Tu:
“The piece is avant-garde and not a little abrasive to those with pop music sensibilities,” Kerhoulas wrote to the group. “But once you know that it was written in 1941 by a French prisoner of war while in a German prison and first performed for fellow prisoners, it takes on depths of meaning. So too the cross: It is grotesque and horrific, but it becomes meaningful and even beautiful when you know the occasion—the deeper story—in which Jesus gave up his life.”
The church concluded its Good Friday service with a string quintet postlude, “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter, played to the dimming of lights. Again, the following performance is not from Grace Mills River, but rather by Louisa Fuller, Natalia Bonner, John Metcalfe, Chris Worsey, and Ian Burdge for the fifteenth anniversary edition of The Blue Notebooks album.
Some people think that music used in Christian worship as a focal piece (i.e., not in the background) needs to have words to be worshipful and productive. I strongly disagree. Instrumental music conveys beauty and sets a mood and, yes, even communicates—often that which is difficult to express verbally. I love Grace’s thoughtful inclusion of these two modern and contemporary pieces from the classical tradition in their community’s observance of Good Friday.
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ART COMPILATION: “Crucifixion: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts” by Levon Ounanian: This compilation brings together thirty-one Armenian miniatures of Christ’s passion. (Miniatures are painted illustrations in a manuscript, so called not because they’re small, though they usually are, but because artists often sketched them using a red lead pigment called minium.) According to the author, of the 31,000 Armenian manuscripts currently listed around the world, about 6,000 of them contain miniatures, not to mention the many more that contain non-narrative decoration.
Mesrop of Khizan (Armenian, active in Persia, ca. 1560–ca. 1652), The Nailing on the Cross, from an Armenian Gospel book, 1609. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arm. d.13, fol. 13v. Click to view the fully digitized manuscript.
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SONG: “Saare Paap” (सारे पाप) (All Sins), performed by James Bovas: In this video, James Bovas [previously] performs a Hindi version of a Malayam song about the Crucifixion. The Hindi lyrics and English translation were supplied to me by the Indian gospel media production company Sarah Creation.
सारे पाप और दाग ममटाकर, मुक्क्त देने के मलए मुक्क्त दाता ने बहाया, खून अपना क्रूस से खून के प्यासे भेडियों ने, आके घेरा यीशु को मारे कोिे टोकी कीले, धारे ननकली ज़ख्मों से मेरे मन तू याद कर ले, क्यों सहे दुुःख यीशु ने तेरा खानतर जान देकर, दी ररहाई यीशु ने श्राप सारे लेके मेरे, दे दी मुझको आमशषे यीशु के पावन लहू से, भाग्य मेरे खुल गए
To remove all the stains and sin, and to give salvation The Redeemer shed his blood on the cross Bloodthirsty wolves surrounded Jesus He was scourged, nailed, and a stream of blood issued forth from his wounds O my soul, never forget why Jesus suffered! He gave his life to set you free He took all my curses and gave me all the blessings By the holy blood of Jesus, my destiny changed forever
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ESSAY: “The Path from Death to Life” by Kurt Koch, Plough, March 30, 2024: A Catholic cardinal reflects on the dark side and the bright side of Holy Saturday. “As the day Jesus rested in the grave, Holy Saturday is the day of God’s concealment and silence in history,” Koch writes. “And yet, Holy Saturday also has a hopeful and joyful aspect. . . . [On this day] Jesus traveled to [Hades,] the place of greatest loneliness – a place completely bereft of any human relationships – and stirred the souls and limbs trapped by rigor mortis with the warming love of God. He transformed their grave into a place of new life.” This essay is anthologized in the revised and expanded edition of Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough, 2026).
Helmut Stephan Diedrich (German, 1937–), Kreuzfall, 1964. Lithograph, edition 62/100.
You fall, sparrow-bone, God-eyed leaf, black hair of ox, kernel of wheat, gold blown from the stalk. You lift wood, trudge, and lurch, your back pulped. You would spit up the cup-dregs for relief—
but no, you want not; you believe your master’s dream. You toss your dreams like chaff to the breeze. You lift wood. You fall,
thin coin,
widow’s all,
copper seed into the mouth of the box. She brushed you a hundred times, so good to hold, but better to drop. Wood weights you, snapped bone, wind-flung leaf. You fall.
This poem was originally published in Christianity and Literature 59, no. 2 (Winter 2010) and is anthologized in Imago Dei: Poems from Christianity and Literature, ed. Jill Peláez Baumgaertner (Abilene Christian University Press, 2012). Used by permission of the poet.
Originating in the Middle Ages, the Stations of the Cross is a Christian devotional practice in which participants commemorate the journey Jesus took down the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows) to his death—either on location in the Holy Land, physically following a demarcated route, or, more accessibly, in their imaginations, through the aid of images or meditative texts. Traditionally, there are fourteen stations, the third, seventh, and ninth of which are “Jesus falls.” At these stopping places, Christians reflect on the crushing weight of sin and wood, on Jesus’s intensifying exhaustion, and yet, too, on his perseverance to get up each time and, pushing through the debility, to continue his trek to its fatal, foreordained end.
In his poem “Sparrow Lament,” William Woolfitt alludes to Jesus’s three falls on his way to Golgotha: “You fall,” “You fall,” “You fall.” He uses a string of metaphors from the natural world for the falling Christ: He’s a sparrow bone (spat out by a predator?), a floating leaf, a shed bovine hair, a grain of wheat blown loose from its stalk. These are wistful images of solitariness, passage, decease—and yet the descriptor “God-eyed” indicates that the path Christ is on is governed by divine providence.
The sparrow reference, given further weight by its use in the poem’s title, evokes Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 10:28–31: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
The Father has willed the Son to drink the bitter cup of suffering and death, which, despite Jesus’s distressed plea less than twenty-four hours prior that the cup be removed, he downs in trust, casting off any dreams he had for living into old age. As he carries out his calling, he stumbles, he falls to the ground—but not apart from the will of his Father.
In the middle of the poem, the lineation—the arrangement of words using lines and line breaks—mimics a downward motion. Like the drop of the storied widow’s coin into the offering box (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 21:1–4). Most biblical interpreters assume that Mary, Jesus’s mother, was a widow by the time Jesus started his ministry, since Joseph is never mentioned in any of the Gospel accounts after the episode of Jesus disappearing in the temple at age twelve. Woolfitt refers to Jesus as “widow’s all”—Mary’s everything, her firstborn son, whom she sacrificially gives to the world, knowing God will bless her gift. She doesn’t hoard this dear treasure of hers. She surrenders him to God’s greater plan.
It wasn’t an easy choice to make. Mothers instinctively want to hold on to their children, and tight. Many intrusively fear dropping them as infants and would do anything to spare them pain. Well, Mary drops her son, on purpose. She relinquishes him, “copper seed,” whose death bears fruit, yields dividends.
William Woolfitt is a writer across the genres of poetry, fiction, and essay. His poetry collections are The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go (Belle Point, 2024), Spring Up Everlasting (Mercer, 2020), Charles of the Desert (Paraclete, 2016), and Beauty Strip (Texas Review, 2014). He is an associate professor of creative writing at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and two children. He founded and edits Speaking of Marvels, a blog that features interviews with authors of chapbooks, novellas, and books of assorted lengths.
There are hundreds of creative works I could feature on the topic of Christ’s wounds. Here are just a few of note.
ARTICLE: “‘Your body is full of wounds’: references, social contexts and uses of the wounds of Christ in Late Medieval Europe” by Johanna Pollick, Emily Poore, Sophie Sexon, and Sara Stradal: In this three-part collaborative essay, I was most intrigued, in part because of its newness to me, by the first section, “The flowering wound: Christ’s heart in Princeton University, MS Taylor 17,” in which Dr. Johanna Pollick explores a small English illuminated devotional book, dating from around 1500, that portrays Christ’s wounds as wells. For help in interpreting these images, she turns to medieval literary traditions as well as to the Carthusian Miscellany.
Wounded Heart of Christ as the Well of Lyfe, England, ca. 1500. Princeton University Library, MS Taylor 17, fol. 10v.
Dr. Grace Hamman writes about MS Taylor 17’s extraordinary “well of lyfe” page in Jesus through Medieval Eyes (and for InterVarsity’s The Well), which is what brought me to this essay. The hand-colored image shows flowers—labeled “pyte” (pity), “loue” (love), and “charyte” (charity)—springing forth from the wounded heart of Jesus. The verse prayer at the top reads, “Well of lyfe that ever shall laste / My herte in thee make it stedfast.”
The same theme shows up in another late fifteenth-century English lyric in MS Arundel 286 at the British Library, which appears in modern compilations under the title “The Wounds, as Wells of Life” or “The Wells of Jesus’ Wounds”:
Ihesus woundes so wide Ben welles of lif to the goode, Namely the stronde of his syde That ran ful breme on the rode. Yif thee list to drinke To fle fro the fendes of helle, Bowe thu doun to the brinke And mekely taste of the welle.
Jesus’s wounds so wide Are wells of life to the good, Namely the stream from his side That ran fiercely on the rood. If thou list to drink, To flee from the fiends of hell, Bow thou down to the brink And meekly taste of the well.
Trans. Victoria Emily Jones
And in a late fifteenth-century gold ring, also from England, engraved with a Man of Sorrows image and hieroglyphs of Christ’s five wounds, labeled “The well of pitty, the well of merci, the well of confort, the well of gracy, the well of everlastingh lyffe”:
SONG: “Deep Were His Wounds” by William Johnson, 1953: This midcentury hymn is composed of three simple stanzas: The first half of each meditates on Jesus’s cruel death on the cross, whereas each second half (“But . . .”) celebrates the healing, freedom, and eternal life that death wrought.
>> Music by Leland B. Sateren, 1958: I like this tune, called MARLEE, but it’s difficult to sing congregationally. Here’s a soloist, Sarah Gulseth, singing it for her church’s 2011 Good Friday service, accompanied on organ by Luther Gulseth:
>> Music by Vito Aiuto, 2008: I was first introduced to “Deep Were His Wounds” through the Welcome Wagon’s debut album, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, “a ramshackle singalong enterprise of a Presbyterian pastor (the Rev. Vito Aiuto) and his wife (Monique) wrestling out the influences of folk music, religion, popular culture, and church tradition.” Mood-wise, Aiuto’s tune wouldn’t work as well for Good Friday—even given the paradox of that day, it’s too bright, in my opinion, for that somber observance. But it’s great for throughout the year, especially for churches that favor a contemporary/folksy style of music.
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CANTATA CYCLE:“Membra Jesu Nostri” (The Limbs of Our Suffering Jesus) by Dieterich Buxtehude: Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637–1707) was a Danish German organist and composer of the mid-Baroque period. For Good Friday 1680, he composed a cycle of seven concerto-aria cantatas. The texts of the aria sections are taken from the medieval Latin hymn “Salve mundi salutare” (Hail, the World’s Salvation) by the Cistercian abbot Arnulf of Leuven (ca. 1200–1250), whereas the concerto section texts are Old Testament quotations. The following video is a 2004 performance from Payerne, Switzerland; see the YouTube video description for further credits. The video includes English subtitles, but you can also read the lyrics (with translation) here.
The cycle begins by paying homage to Christ’s wounded feet (“Ad Pedes” = “To the Feet”), and then progresses upward to his knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and finally, face/head. Traditionally, Christ’s wounds are enumerated as five: a hole in each foot, a hole in each hand, and a hole through his side/heart (from the centurion’s spear). But Arnulf meditates on seven distinct body parts of Christ’s that were injured on Good Friday.
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ARTWORKS:
>> The Five Wounds of Christ by Fernand Léger | Commentary by Albert Hengelaar: This visual meditation is about the architecture and interior decoration of the Sacré-Coeur in Audincourt, France, a product of the Art Sacré movement, a Catholic art renaissance spearheaded by the French Dominican Order from 1919 to the 1950s. The centerpiece of the church, sited above the high altar, is a stained glass window depicting the five wounds of Christ shining like suns—one of seventeen windows the artist Fernand Léger designed to encircle the space in a strip.
Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), The Five Wounds of Christ, 1950–52. Stained glass window, Église du Sacré-Cœur (Church of the Sacred Heart), Audincourt, France.
>> The Great Wound, aka Go On, Wounded Healer by Jack Baumgartner | Commentary by Sam Kee: In this Substack post, Sam Kee unpacks a drawing by his friend Jack Baumgartner [previously], which shows that “there is life in His [Christ’s] wounds, and He pours His life into our wounds.” The drawing started with the roman numeral V, which stands for the five wounds of Christ. The circumference is one large wound that encompasses five smaller wounds, eye-like, each one weeping blood. Other symbols that Kee analyzes in the drawing are wheat, grapes, fig leaves, seashell, fire, heart, and womb. “Go on” is a refrain that Baumgartner uses often in his work, a mantra for persevering in the faith, for continuing on the path.
Jack Baumgartner (American, 1976–), The Great Wound, 2024. Drawing from the series The Diary of a Tree Standing on Its Head.
Kee concludes with an original ekphrastic poem.
You can purchase an archival reproduction of The Great Wound from Baumgartner’s online shop. I encourage you to explore his website as well. I admire how his work is somehow both mystical and earthy, rooted.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
—Zechariah 9:9
In German-speaking lands from the tenth to sixteenth centuries, many Christian communities would celebrate Palm Sunday by processing through the streets with a painted wood sculpture of Christ astride a donkey, called a Palmesel (pronounced PALM-ay-sul), German for “palm donkey.” Mounted on a wheeled cart and often escorted by children, the sculpture would move around town through crowds who had gathered from nearby villages and hamlets for the inauguration of Holy Week, the period of the Christian liturgical year that commemorates Jesus’s last days. The procession included the singing of hymns and the strewing of palm branches and outer garments along the Christ figure’s path, in imitation of the crowds that greeted Jesus when he entered Jerusalem for his (unbeknown to them) final Passover.
Christus auf dem Palmesel (Christ on the Palm Donkey), Franconia, ca. 1520–30. Polychrome linden wood, 148.5 × 166 × 54 cm. Skulpturensammlung, Bode-Museum, Berlin, Inv. 7710. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]Palmesel illustration by the German chronicler Dominikus Debler, ca. 1800
Generally, the Protestant Reformers, with their emphasis on sola scriptura (scripture alone), didn’t like religious pageantry or images, as they believed they promoted idolatry. So when the Reformation swept through Germany in the 1500s, it destroyed many Palmesels. Another wave of destruction hit in the late eighteenth century when, influenced by the Enlightenment, temporary episcopal and synodal decrees in some localities banned “theatrical representations” of liturgical events, including Palmesel processions. Nevertheless, some 175 late medieval and Renaissance Palmesels, either partial or whole, have survived to the present day. The vast majority are in museum collections, no longer in active use.
A Frankenschau broadcast news segment from 2024 (see video below) reports on the Palmesel tradition, opening and closing with a Palmesel from ca. 1470 Nuremberg that’s on display year-round in the Rieterkirche St. Marien und Christophorus (Rieter Church of St. Mary and St. Christopher) in Kalbensteinberg, Germany—surprisingly, not a Catholic church but an Evangelical Lutheran one! The segment also looks at the Miltenberger Palmesel at the Stiftsmuseum Aschaffenburg and the Palmesel at the Met Cloisters in New York City. Press the CC button on the video player for closed captioning in English.
Palmesel sizes range from half-size (more intimate, and more navigable by children) to life-size. Christ is usually dressed in a simple tunic and mantle, and his feet hang bare. Sometimes he wears a crown. Typically his right hand is raised in blessing, while his left hand holds the reins—though in the first example below, it clutches a book.
Steiner Palmesel, ca. 1055. Polychrome linden wood, 176.5 × 135 cm. Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum), Zurich, Inv. LM 362. Photo: Linda Safran. [object record]Christus auf dem Palmesel, ca. 1200. Poplar wood with renewed finish, 138 × 55.5 × 52 cm. Skulpturensammlung, Bode-Museum, Berlin, Inv. 2766. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]Christus auf dem Palmesel, ca. 1310. Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Petersthal, Germany.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Upper Rhine, 1350–60. Polychrome poplar wood, 159.5 × 52.5 × 16.1 cm. Augustinermuseum, Freiburg, Germany, Inv. 10079. Photo: Hans-Peter Vieser.Palmesel, Franconia, ca. 1350–1400. Wood with paint and gilding, 96 × 34 × 82 cm. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.Photo: Victoria Emily JonesChristus auf dem Palmesel, Franconia, ca. 1370–80. Polychrome alderwood, willow, 172.5 × 61.5 × 169 cm. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Inv. PI.O.153.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Poltringen, Germany, ca. 1380. Hohenzollerisches Landesmuseum, Hechingen, Germany.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Swabia, late 14th century. Polychrome linden wood. Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Ulm, Germany, 15th century (statue), 18th century (wagon). Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, Germany.Palmesel, Franconia, 15th century. Polychrome linden wood, 156.2 × 60.3 × 138.4 cm. Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Photo: Victoria Emily JonesPalmesel, Austria, ca. 1450. Polychrome wood, 154.9 × 144.1 × 50.2 cm. Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Inv. 1977.2.Christ on an Ass, ca. 1480. Linden wood and pine, painted and gilded, 147.4 × 47.8 × 133.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.Christofel Langeisen, Palmesel (Christ Entering Jerusalem on the Back of a Donkey), 1480–90. Polychrome linden wood, 143.5 × 40.6 × 110.5 cm. Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan.Christus auf dem Palmesel, southern Germany, perhaps Swabia, late 15th century. Polychrome linden wood, 122 × 100 × 44 cm. Musée de Cluny, Paris. Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen.Christus auf dem Palmesel, southern Germany (circle of Erasmus Grasser), ca. 1500. Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany. Photo: Rex Harris.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Lake Constance, ca. 1500. Polychrome linden wood, height 190 cm. Historisches Museum, Basel, Switzerland, Inv. 1898.275.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Nuremberg, ca. 1505. Polychrome linden wood, 82 × 31.5 × 88 cm. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Germany.Christus auf dem Palmesel, Cologne, ca. 1520. Polychrome linden wood, softwood. Museum Schnütgen, Cologne, Germany, Inv. A 124. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.Photo: Victoria Emily Jones
Palmesels were living art objects engaged by people of all classes. “Unlike many museum objects from the Middle Ages,” writes a Walters Art Museum curator, “the Palmesel was accessible not just to the wealthy elite and the clergy but to all levels of society. It moved among the laypeople so that they could participate in an immersive experience of a significant event from Christ’s life in their own time and place.”
The following edited video shows a 2018 Palmesel procession, led by choirboys, wending its way through an Alpine landscape from Thaur to Rum. It’s the last of its kind in the Austrian state of Tyrol. The sculpture is modern.
In honor of Women’s History Month, here are a few creative works by and/or (in the case of Kinloch’s “Some Women” poems) about women.
ARTICLE: “A New Documentary Traces How a Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island Helped Women Break Free,”Colossal: Directed by Catherine Gund, the documentary Paint Me a Road Out of Here (2025) tells the story of Faith Ringgold’s For the Women’s House (1971), a mural commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts for the Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island. When Ringgold asked the incarcerated women what they wanted her to paint, they said, “I want to see a road leading out of here.”
Faith Ringgold (American, 1930–2024), For the Women’s House, 1971. Oil on canvas, 96 × 96 in. Commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts for the Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island; on loan to Brooklyn Museum.
Organized into eight triangular sections, the painting portrays women of various races (Black, white, Latina, Asian) in professional roles “that have not traditionally been theirs,” Ringgold says: doctor, bus driver, US president, basketball player, police officer, construction worker, drummer, priest. At the bottom, a white mother reads to her multiracial daughter words by Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, and in another scene, a bride is given away by her mother.
When Rikers Island transitioned to housing men in 1988, the women were moved to the Rose M. Singer Center, and the prison staff painted over Ringgold’s mural. Gund’s documentary chronicles the fight—by Ringgold and other artists, activists, politicians, and correctional officers—to have the mural restored, relocated, and preserved, but more deeply, the film is a “parable for a world without mass incarceration.”
Paint Me a Road Out of Here is not currently available on VOD, but here’s a list of public screenings: https://paintmearoadfilm.com/watch.
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LECTURE: “Re-Valuing Women Hymn Writers” by Dr. Lyn Loewi, St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, Washington, DC, June 11, 2023: “Women have always been making sacred music, but they are underrepresented in our hymnals. Their contribution lies in the stories they tell from the margins, away from the narratives of dominant power. In this talk, Lyn Loewi will look at the poetry women have brought to our understanding of the Sacred. From the 9th-century Greek Orthodox nun Kassia to newly written hymns, women have expanded our language for God, remembered the stories of biblical women, and spoken for other discounted voices in society.”
Loewi, who has a doctorate in musical arts, has been an organist and church choir director for over forty years. She is currently the director of music ministries at Christ Church Capitol Hill, as well as the president of the Women’s Sacred Music Project. In this talk she discusses:
The Hymn of Kassiani
“The first one ever, oh, ever to know” by Linda Wilberger Egan
“Healing River of the Spirit” by Ruth Duck (text)
“Down by the Riverside” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (arrangement)
“Balulalow” by Elizabeth Poston (music)
“Beyond the hopes and dreams of all creation” by Fr. Robert Easton (text) and Ghislaine Reece-Trapp (music)
The last few minutes of the recording, starting at 38:33, comprise audience Q&A; don’t miss the last question (41:29), where a woman expresses exasperation with all the “he/him” pronouns used for God in hymns—Loewi’s response is helpful.
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HYMNS:
When I was responsible for choosing songs for my church’s worship services, I made sure that every week I was on, at least one of the five songs we sang was written by a woman. Here are just three female-authored hymns that were part of my rotation—one (likely) from the tenth century, one from the eighteenth century, and one from the twenty-first century.
>> “Bí Thusa Mo Shúile” (Be Thou My Vision), Anon., trans. Mary Elizabeth Byrne, vers. Eleanor Hull: I can’t believe I’ve never featured this hymn on the blog before; it’s one of my all-time favorites. Its precise origins are not known. Most scholars date the original Early Middle Irish text, a lorica (prayer recited for protection), to the late tenth or eleventh century. It was translated into English in 1905 by Mary Elizabeth Byrne and then versified in 1912 by Eleanor Hull—meaning she adapted Byrne’s translation to fit a meter so that the words could be more easily sung. The music is a traditional Irish folk tune.
In this video, the hymn is sung in modern Irish by Madelyn Monaghan, a New York City–based soprano specializing in Irish traditional (Sean-nós) singing. It was for her friend’s wedding Mass. And wow, is her voice gorgeous!
>> “Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul” by Anne Steele (text) and Kevin Twit (music): Anne Steele was a Baptist hymn writer, poet, and essayist from Georgian England who published under the pen name Theodosia. Coming from a well-off family, she was educated and chose to remain single (she rejected several marriage proposals) so that she could focus on her writing, which she considered a calling. Rev. Kevin Twit, a Reformed University Fellowship pastor in Nashville and the founder of Indelible Grace, says Steele was the first significant female Christian hymn writer and the first, of either sex, to write lament hymns; over half her oeuvre, he says, deals with suffering and doubt.
Twit has set several of Steele’s hymns to music, most famously “Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul,” which Steele wrote in 1760. The solo performance above is from the January 24, 2021, worship service at Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. The names of the singer and accompanist are not given. You can also listen to the song on Indelible Grace’s 2008 album.
>> “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” by Sandra McCracken and Joshua Moore:Sandra McCracken is one of today’s leading Christian singer-songwriters, and this hymn, which she wrote with Josh Moore, is the most popular of her congregational songs. From her 2015 album Psalms, it paints a vision of the eschaton, of the new heavens and the new earth, marked by restoration, shalom, and celebration. One thing I noticed as a church music leader is how many hymns and other worship songs use first-person singular pronouns (I/me/my) and emphasize one’s personal relationship with God; those are fine and even necessary, as the book of Psalms models, but I always made sure, when making a song list, to balance them with songs that use first-personal plural (us/we/our) and that convey a more communal picture of the Christian life and of the gospel, which is at least but also much more than what Jesus did for me. This is perhaps my favorite hymn about heaven, a place of safety and rest, yes, but also where all of creation is redeemed, made new; where everyone and everything flourishes in harmony under the benevolent reign of Christ.
“We Will Feast” works well during Communion (a ritual that anticipates the marriage supper of the Lamb) or as a closer, as it sends worshippers out with a benediction, a good word—a promise of the restorative beauty to come.
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VIDEO: “Poetry Unbound: A Conversation with David Kinloch and Pádraig Ó Tuama,” Washington National Cathedral, April 26, 2021: The On Being Project in partnership with Washington National Cathedral presents Pádraig Ó Tuama in conversation with the Scottish poet David Kinloch, part of a series of interviews with contemporary poets whose work demonstrates an artistic and literary engagement with biblical narratives and characters. They primarily discuss Kinloch’s extensive “Some Women” sequence of poems from his collection In Search of Dustie-Fute (Carcanet, 2017), voiced by women of the Bible (or, in the case of the first, Jewish folklore): Lilith, Cain’s wife, Adah and Zillah, Sarah, Lot’s wife, Rebekah, Zipporah, Deborah, Rahab, the Levite’s concubine, Ruth, Bathsheba, the daughters of Job, King David’s concubines, Hannah, Martha, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the Jewish women followers of Jesus responding to the apostle Paul’s teachings.
(The conversation starts at 7:55.)
Kinloch reads three poems from “Some Women”: “First Letter of the Hebrew Women to St Paul” (15:36), “Ruth” (23:49), and “Cain’s Wife” (29:58). He also reads two additional poems from the same volume, from the sequence “Joseph’s Dreams”: “St Joseph’s Dream” (40:44) and “Another Dream” (1:08:53).
This conversation impelled to check out In Search of Dustie-Fute from the library. I like the “Some Women” sequence overall—Kinloch’s creative engagement with the stories of these women, some very little known (e.g., I had to look up “Adah” and “Zillah”!) or little thought about (like the unnamed victims of sexual abuse)—though I will warn you that it contains some profanity and crude sexual language. In the Q&A that starts at 49:09, one of the questions is about the role of shock and humor in his poetry. (Kinloch says if his poems offend, they fail.) Other questions are about the biblical literacy that he does or does not presuppose, his editing process, a character from the Bible that he wants to write about but hasn’t yet, and why he, a man, feels justified in writing from the perspective of women.
Kinloch is an agnostic, so his relationship with biblical texts is different from that of one who is devout. But the Bible is not the exclusive domain of believers; Kinloch can just as well help us inhabit these stories and can derive questions or insights from them. I really appreciated hearing from him. Here’s what he had to say on the vernacular of everyday human experience:
It seems to me that there’s such distance—in terms of time, in terms of culture—between us in the twenty-first century and the people of those [ancient Near Eastern] communities. You need to find common ground so that some kind of dialogue can open up, so that you can shrink that distance. And therefore, the emphasis in all of these poems, really, is on the humanity of the people. I’m not writing sermons, I’m not writing homilies; I’m writing little dramatic monologues, mostly, and trying to make these people as believable, as real, as possible in the present moment of reading about them. My hope, I suppose, is that if people have enjoyed the poems, then maybe they might go back to those stories in the Bible. And it’s at that point that there will be an encounter with the divine, with the extraordinary. I don’t really feel that I have access to those moments of extraordinariness. All the extraordinariness is in the Bible, and I can only offer an avenue of approach to that.
It joined us together, the well; the well led me into you. No one between us but light deep in the well, the pupil of the eye set in an orbit of stones.
Within your eyes, I, drawn by the well, am enclosed.
Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz, fromCollected Poemsby Karol Wojtyla (Random House, 1982)
This contemplative poem was originally published in Polish in Kraków’s leading Catholic periodical, Tygodnik Powszechny (Universal Weekly), on May 7, 1950, when Karol Wojtyla was a twenty-nine-year-old parish priest. It’s the sixth in a sequence of eight poems collectively titled “Song of the Brightness of Water” (Pieśń o blasku wody), all reflecting on Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4.
Karol Wojtyla (1920–2005) was a theologian, philosopher, poet, and priest best known for serving as head of the Catholic Church as Pope John Paul II from 1978 until his death. He traveled more than any other pope (visiting 129 countries), helped end Communism in Eastern Europe, fostered interfaith dialogue, and promoted human rights. He was canonized on April 27, 2014. Born, raised, and educated in Poland, in 1938–39 Karol studied Polish philology (literature and language) at Jagiellonian University, but his academic pursuits were interrupted by the Nazi occupation. He avoided conscription in the German military by working as a manual laborer in a quarry—which he did while secretly taking seminary courses in Kraków from 1942 to 1946 (Catholicism was suppressed at the time) and participating in the underground theater scene as both an actor and a playwright. After graduating, he was ordained to the priesthood. Throughout the first half of his adult life—as a student, young parish priest, bishop, archbishop, and cardinal—Karol wrote and published poetry anonymously and then pseudonymously under the names Andrzej Jawień and Stanisław Andrzej Gruda. After he became pope, many of these poems were compiled into a collection, translated into English with Vatican approval, and released in book form under his given name. Karol continued writing poetry during his pontificate, but at a much slower pace. His most famous writings are in prose and include the landmark encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) on human dignity, the international bestseller Crossing the Threshold of Hope, and a series of 129 addresses titled The Theology of the Body.
Jerzy Peterkiewicz (1916–2007) was a Polish poet, novelist, and translator. In 1940 he fled his home country, arriving in England as a war refugee with no knowledge of the language. He went on to become a literature professor at London University, and in 1960, with coeditor and cotranslator Burns Singer, he published the influential anthology Five Centuries of Polish Poetry, 1450–1950. He was later chosen by a papal commission to translate the poetry of Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla).
The following excerpt is from the fourteenth-century biblical drama The Last Judgement from the York cycle of mystery plays [previously], performed annually in York, England, on the feast of Corpus Christi until its suppression by Protestants in 1569. Based on Matthew 25, this final play in the cycle was produced by the city’s guild of mercers (dealers in textile fabrics) and so is sometimes referred to as the Mercers’ Play.
I’ve chosen to feature it at this time because almsgiving—that is, assisting those in need, especially through the giving of money or goods—is one of the three pillars of Lent, and according to Matthew 25:31–46, it’s the measure by which Christ eternally blesses or damns people. It’s what separates the sheep from the goats, those who truly know Christ from those who don’t. The list of six charitable deeds in this Gospel passage—feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned—are called, in church tradition, the corporal works of mercy. A seventh, burying the dead, was added based on the book of Tobit 1:17–19.
Corporal Acts of Mercy, 1410. Stained glass window, All Saints Church, North Street, York, England. Photo: Julian P. Guffogg.
I’ve sourced the Middle English text below from the Oxford World Classics volume York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King. The glosses are Beadle and King’s.
JESUS: My blessed children on my right hand, Your doom this day ye thar not dread, [thar = need] For all your comfort is comand— [command = coming] Your life in liking shall ye lead. Come to the kingdom ay-lastand [ay-lastand = eternal] That you is dight for your good deed; [you is dight = is prepared for you] Full blithe may ye be where ye stand, For mickle in heaven shall be your meed. [mickle = great; meed = reward]
When I was hungry, ye me fed; To slake my thirst your heart was free; [free = willing] When I was clotheless, ye me clad, Ye would no sorrow upon me see. In hard press when I was stead, [When I was placed in difficult circumstances] Of my pains ye had pity; Full sick when I was brought in bed, [in = to] Kindly ye came to comfort me.
When I was will and weariest [will = distraught] Ye harbored me full heartfully; Full glad then were ye of your guest, And plained my poverty piteously. [plained = lamented] Belive ye brought me of the best [belive = quickly] And made my bed full easily, [easily = comfortably] Therefore in heaven shall be your rest, In joy and bliss to be me by.
1 GOOD SOUL: When had we, Lord that all has wrought, Meat and drink thee with to feed, Since we in earth had never nought But through the grace of thy Godhead?
2 GOOD SOUL: When was’t that we thee clothes brought, Or visited thee in any need, Or in thy sickness we thee sought? Lord, when did we thee this deed?
JESUS: My blessed children, I shall you say What time this deed was to me done: When any that need had, night or day, Asked you help and had it soon. Your free hearts said them never nay, Early ne late, midday ne noon, But as oft-sithes as they would pray, [pray = ask] Them thurt but bid, and have their boon. [They only needed to ask, and their request was granted]
For a modern performance of The Last Judgement by Handmade Performance in Toronto, see here. (The above passage is at 16:43ff.) They use a modern translation by Chester N. Scoville and Kimberley M. Yates.
Art & Theology 