Holy Week: Sweet Son

LOOK: The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna

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There’s much to look at in this painting. I want to focus on Jesus’s grieving mother under the cross to our left.

In Renaissance art of the Crucifixion, Mother Mary is often shown swooning, supported by John or by one of her female companions. Here she’s with a group of four women—the other Marys—two of whom wrap an arm around her to bolster her up when her legs give out. Her son has just died, and she can’t bear to look.

This work was painted by Andrea Mantegna between 1457 and 1459 as the central element of the predella (base) of the high altarpiece at San Zeno in Verona, Italy, a monumental work of art. In 1797, French Napoleonic forces plundered the altarpiece and brought it to Paris; the country returned the three main panels to Verona in 1815 when Napoleon lost power, but they kept the three predella panels, which are on display in museums: The Crucifixion at the Louvre, and The Agony in the Garden and The Resurrection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours.

LISTEN: “Swete Sone” | Words: Anon., 14th century (before 1372) | Music by Katharine Blake, 1998 | Performed by Mediæval Bæbes on Worldes Blysse, 1998

This song is in Middle English. If you’re reading along with the lyrics, you’ll want to know that the letter thorn, þ, says th; and u makes a w or v sound.

Suete sone, reu on me, & brest out of þi bondis;
For [nou] me þinket þat i se, þoru boþen þin hondes,
Nailes dreuen in-to þe tre, so reufuliche þu honges.
Nu is betre þat i fle & lete alle þese londis.

Suete sone, þi faire face droppet al on blode,
& þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode;
Hou may þi modris herte þolen so suete fode,
Þat blissed was of alle born & best of alle gode!

Suete sone, reu on me & bring me out of þis liue,
For me þinket þat i se þi detȝ, it neyhit suiþe;
Þi feet ben nailed to þe tre—nou may i no more þriue,
For [al] þis werld with-outen þe ne sal me maken bliþe.

Source: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv.MS.18.7.21, fol. 120r (DIMEV 5089); as transcribed by Carleton Brown in Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century (1924)

MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

Sweet son, have pity on me, and break out of your bonds;
For I think I see through both your hands
Nails have been driven into the tree, so painfully you hang there.
It would be better if I fled now and abandoned all these lands.

Sweet son, your beautiful face is dripping with blood,
And your body beneath is bound to the cross;
How will your mother’s heart endure [the suffering of] such a sweet child,
Who was born most blessed of all and was the most goodly of all!

Sweet son, have pity on me and deliver me from this life,
For I think I see your death approaches quickly;
Your feet have been nailed to the tree—now I may never prosper,
For without you, all this world can never make me happy.

These three monorhyming quatrains are from John of Grimestone’s commonplace book, where he jotted down material for sermons; it’s unknown whether they’re original to him or compiled from some other source. (For other lyrics I’ve featured from this notebook, see “Undo Thy Door, My Spouse Dear” and “Love Me Brought.”)

In the poem, written in Mother Mary’s voice, Mary reveals a premonition she’s had of her son being nailed on a tree to die. (At least that’s how I read it, mainly because of the “I think I sees.”) She agonizes over this nightmare and asks Jesus that if it be true, to deliver her from this life, as she won’t be able to endure the sorrow of losing him.

Verses like these really humanize Mary, a woman who, faithful as she was to God’s unfolding plan, felt the intense parental pangs that inevitably accompany witnessing one’s child being brutalized and killed.

The poem has been set to medieval-style music by Katharine Blake, the founder of Mediæval Bæbes, a classical chart–topping British music ensemble celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year.

The song opens with an unaccompanied solo voice singing in free time. In the second half of the first stanza, additional voices enter, as well as a strummed instrument. Then with “& þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode,” the tempo quickens; a 2/4 meter takes shape and regularizes, with percussion keeping the beat; and the volume amplifies with twelve women now singing. With the final stanza, there’s once again a softening as the song returns to a single vocalist and the instrumentation drops out. This movement from weary pain, Mary barely able to speak it aloud, to foot-stomping anger, which her friends join in solidarity, and back to solitary desolation captures different shades of grief.

For a wholly a cappella solo rendition, see this performance by Ariana Ellis: