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Things: Objects and Agency in the Trial and Crucifixion Plays

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The Circulation of Power in Medieval Biblical Drama

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

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Abstract

Few aspects of medieval culture are as focused on objects—physical things—as is the devotion to the Passion of Christ. Medieval representations of the Passion sequence, both visual and verbal, fetishize the objects associated with the suffering and death of Jesus to an extent rarely encountered elsewhere. Indeed, texts and images together coalesce around these objects in “imagetexts” featuring various assemblages of the arma Christi and other objects meant not only for contemplation but also for affective identification with the Passion. 1 As Caroline Walker Bynum observes, the line between these objects and their images or representations could be blurry; she cites a Bohemian Crucifixion painting that “has bits of the cross and of the arma Christi embedded in it. The painting makes the Crucifixion present not only by representing it but also by displaying in it supposed fragments of the objects that were used on Golgotha.”2

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Notes

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Sturges, R.S. (2015). Things: Objects and Agency in the Trial and Crucifixion Plays. In: The Circulation of Power in Medieval Biblical Drama. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137073440_3

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