The Meditations on the Life of Christ (Latin : Meditationes Vitae Christi or Meditationes De Vita Christi; Italian Meditazione della vita di Cristo) is a fourteenth-century devotional work, later translated into Middle English by Nicholas Love as The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ .
The work's precise date of composition, and its author, has occasioned much debate. [1] Until the late nineteenth century, it was traditionally ascribed to Bonaventure. Once it was realised that the work was not by him, the ascription was changed to pseudo-Bonaventure, and was judged to be of unknown Franciscan authorship.
The editor of the critical edition of the Latin Meditations associated it with a John of Caulibus (Latin : Johannes de Caulibus), [2] an attribution also appearing in the work's most recent English translation. [3] An argument has been made that the Latin work was written around 1300 by Jacobus de Sancto Geminiano, who is also identifiable as the leader of a revolt of Tuscan spirituals, one of the Fraticelli, in 1312. [4] [5] It has also been argued that the original version was composed in Italian, perhaps by an Italian nun of the order of Poor Clares. [6] [7]
The work's popularity in the Middle Ages is evidenced by the survival of over two hundred manuscript copies, including seventeen illuminated ones. [8] The popularity of the work increased further with early printed editions, with a surviving Venetian blockbook of 1497. [9]
The work's detailed evocations of moments from the life of Christ and his mother may have influenced early Trecento art. It has also been credited with inspiring the great increase in depictions of the Veil of Veronica from the late 14th century. [10]
Richard of Saint Victor was a Medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian and one of the most influential religious thinkers of his time. A canon regular, he was a prominent mystical theologian, and was prior of the famous Augustinian Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.
Thomas à Kempis was a German-Dutch canon regular of the late medieval period and the author of The Imitation of Christ, published anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c. 1418–1427, one of the most popular and best known Christian devotional books. His name means "Thomas of Kempen", Kempen being his home town.
Hugh of Saint Victor, was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.
William of Conches was a French scholastic philosopher who sought to expand the bounds of Christian humanism by studying secular works of the classics and fostering empirical science. He was a prominent member of the School of Chartres. John of Salisbury, a bishop of Chartres and former student of William's, refers to William as the most talented grammarian after Bernard of Chartres.
Ludolph of Saxony, also known as Ludolphus de Saxonia and Ludolph the Carthusian, was a German Roman Catholic theologian of the fourteenth century.
Thomas Gallus of Vercelli, sometimes in early twentieth century texts called Thomas of St Victor, Thomas of Vercelli or Thomas Vercellensis, was a French theologian, a member of the School of St Victor. He is known for his commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and his ideas on affective theology. His elaborate mystical schemata influenced Bonaventure and The Cloud of Unknowing.
Anglo-Latin literature is literature from Britain originally written in Latin. It includes literature written in Latin from parts of Britain which were not in England or English-speaking: "Anglo-" is used here as a prefix meaning British rather than English.
Nicholas Love, also known as Nicholas Luff, was first a Benedictine and then a Carthusian monk in medieval England, and became the first prior of Mount Grace charterhouse in Yorkshire. He was the translator and reviser of a popular devotional treatise which was used by the Church authorities to counter the teaching of John Wycliffe. In his later years he convinced Henry V of England to attempt to reform Benedictine monasticism in England, but died before measures could be taken.
The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an adaptation/translation of Pseudo-Bonaventure's Meditations on the Life of Christ into English by Nicholas Love, the Carthusian prior of Mount Grace Priory, written ca. 1400.
Stephen of Bourbon was a preacher of the Dominican Order, author of the largest collection of preaching exempla of the thirteenth century, a historian of medieval heresies, and one of the first inquisitors.
Pseudo-Bonaventure is the name given to the authors of a number of medieval devotional works which were believed at the time to be the work of Bonaventure: "It would almost seem as if 'Bonaventura' came to be regarded as a convenient label for a certain type of text, rather than an assertion of authorship". Since it is clear a number of actual authors are involved, the term "Pseudo-Bonaventuran" is often used. Many works now have other attributions of authorship which are generally accepted, but the most famous, the Meditations on the Life of Christ, remains usually described only as a work of Pseudo-Bonaventure.
Richard Sharpe,, Hon. was a British historian and academic, who was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. His broad interests were the history of medieval England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history, including the practices of palaeography, diplomatic and the editorial process, as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England.
Reginald of Canterbury was a medieval French writer and Benedictine monk who lived and wrote in England in the very early part of the 12th century. He was the author of a number of Latin poems, including an epic entitled Malchus, which still survives.
The Vita Christi, also known as the Speculum vitae Christi is the principal work of Ludolph of Saxony, completed in 1374.
Hegemonius or Pseudo-Hegemonius was a 4th-century Christian who is known only from his presumed authorship of the Acta Archelai, a work on Manichaeism preserved only in Latin.
"Traditionally attributed to Hegemonius, the Acta Archelai is the oldest and most significant anti-Manichaean polemical text. Originally composed in Greek in the fourth century, it has survived mainly in a near contemporary Latin translation - substantial section of the Greek version has however survived in the Panarion of Epiphanius. The Acta gives a fictional account of a debate between Mani and Archelaus, the Christian bishop of the city of Carchar in Roman Mesopotamia as well as an important summary of his teaching on cosmogony and a highly polemical version of Mani's life. The work would later exercise enormous influence on anti-Manichaean writings in both Late Antiquity and Middle Ages."
Thomas of Hales, also known as Thomas de Hales, was a thirteenth-century English Franciscan friar and ecclesiastical writer of intellectually progressive prose and poetry in three languages: Latin, French, and English. Thomas of Hales was one of very few Franciscan lyricists of the mid to late thirteenth century. His "career is an importantly the day witness of the literary culture of ... mid-thirteenth-century England. Few other writers show hiEngland, and his works put him at the forefront of the movement towards affective piety, vernacular literacy, and textual scholarship based on university methods. His English poem Love Rune is frequently anthologized. He is believed to come from Hales, Gloucestershire. A few works of his survive. One, in Latin, is a life of the Virgin Mary called De vita seu genealogia Beatae Virginis Mariae, which survives in a thirteenth-century copy once in the library of the abbey of St Victor. It draws from the Gospels, Apocrypha, patristic texts, and the visions of Elizabeth of Schönau. This was his most popular work, and while it is not theologically adventurous its spirit and organization reflect ideas and methods then popular in university settings. Its approach to Mary's life falls in line with trends in affective piety.
Affective piety is most commonly described as a style of highly emotional devotion to the humanity of Jesus, particularly in his infancy and his death, and to the joys and sorrows of the Virgin Mary. It was a major influence on many varieties of devotional literature in late-medieval Europe, both in Latin and in the vernaculars. This practice of prayer, reading, and meditation was often cultivated through visualization and concentration on vivid images of scenes from the Bible, Saints' Lives, Virgin Mary, Christ and religious symbols, feeling from the result. These images could be either conjured up in people's minds when they read or heard poetry and other pieces of religious literature, or they could gaze on manuscript illuminations and other pieces of art as they prayed and meditated on the scenes depicted. In either case, this style of affective meditation asked the "viewer" to engage with the scene as if she or he were physically present and to stir up feelings of love, fear, grief, and/or repentance for sin.
The Four Daughters of God are a personification of the virtues of Truth, Righteousness/Justice, Mercy, and Peace in medieval Catholic religious writing.
The Vida de Jesucrist is a literary work by Francesc Eiximenis in Catalan written in Valencia possibly between 1399 and 1406, though the important scholar Albert Hauf dates it to 23 June 1403. It was dedicated to Pere d'Artés, who was a kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Crown of Aragon, whom Eiximenis had already dedicated the Llibre dels àngels.
Wendy R. Childs is Emeritus Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of Leeds.
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