Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  2. Bonvesin da la Riva was a successful and wealthy teacher of Latin in a private capacity in both Legnano and Milan. He wrote works in Latin both in prose and verse and several poems in the vernacular of Milan. For a summary of his life, see Bonvesin, Volgari scelti, 1–4. For more detailed information about Bonvesin’s life, see Luigi Zanoni, “Fra Bonvesin della Riva fu Umiliato o Terziario Francescano?,” Il Libro e la Stampa 8 (1914): 141–48; Pio Pecchiai, “I documenti sulla biografia di Bonvicino della Riva,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 78 (1921): 96–127. For a general presentation of Bonvesin’s work, see Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana dai primi secoli agli albori del Trecento, ed. G. Lazzeri (Milan: Hoepli, 1950), 137–43, 240–66; Gianfranco Contini, Poeti del duecento (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960), 1: 667–70; Pietro Gallardo, “Bonvesin da la Riva,” in Letteratura italiana: I minori (Milan: Marzorati, 1961), 1: 171–83; Aldo Rossi, “Poesia didattica e poesia popolare del nord,” in Storia della letteratura italiana (Milano: Garzanti, 1965), 1: 470–486; D’Arco Silvio Avalle, “Bonvesin da la Riva,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970), 1: 465–69; Emilio Pasquini, “La letteratura didattica e allegorica,” in La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, ed. C. Muscetta (Bari: Laterza, 1970), 1 (“Il Duecento”), part. 2: 3–111, esp. 32–54.

  3. The meter employed is the monorhymed alexandrine quatrain (aaaa, bbbb, etc.), typical of contemporary didactic poetry in northern Italy. This oral genre comes from France and consists of the translation, or rather the vernacular adaptation of middle-Latin didactic and hagiographic literature. On the technical aspects of the meter, see Avalle, “L’origine della quartina monorima di alessandrini,” in Saggi e ricerche in onore di Ettore Li Gotti (Palermo: Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani, 1962), 119–60. For information about the audience and the genre of this well-developed didactic literature, see Esther I. May, The “De Jerusalem celesti” and the “De Babilonia infernali” of Fra Giacomino da Verona (Florence: Le Monnier, 1930), 30; Umberto Cianciolo, “Contributo allo studio dei cantari di argomento sacro,” Archivium Romanicum 30 (1938): 180–83; Avalle, “Bonvesin da la Riva,” 567–68. The strong commitment to the practical usefulness of the poem could also be connected with the kind of preaching typical of Humiliati: Raoul Manselli, addressing the preaching of the Humiliati, writes that “Tout en partant d’un passage de l’Evangile, on évitait les devéloppements théologiques pour se limiter à une exhortation à la penitence, la prière, la vie de sainteté.” “Italie: haut moyen âge: mouvements spirituels orthodoxes et hétérodoxes (11e et 12e siècles),” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1971), 7, part 2: cols. 2184–93; quotation col. 2190.

  4. Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1965), 12–13.

  5. Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture: 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 343.

  6. For the allegorical comparison between Christ’s wounded body and a book inscribed in red as a means to engage the mind in sustained attention to the sufferings of Christ, see Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 91.

  7. See Giles Constable, “The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ,” in Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 208–15. For the development of the empathic attitude in the late medieval devotion to the suffering Christ, see James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk: Van Ghem-mert, 1979), 1–10; Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 90–91.

  8. For an excellent and concise study of the motifs of the contempt for the world, see Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 9–34. For a more detailed monograph, see Robert Bultot, Christianisme et valeurs humaines: la doctrine du mépris du monde, en Occident, de S. Ambroise a Innocent III (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts; Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1963–64), esp. vol. 4, parts 1 and 2. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, “Why All the Fuss About the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 22 (Autumn 1995): 14.

  9. Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. P. M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 39–46.

  10. For a thorough discussion of the theoretical problems that such a notion of identity would imply, see Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

  11. The discrepancy between the theory of theologians and the actual descriptions of the other-world was common in the eschatological narrations of the Middle Ages. Peter Dinzelbacher, “Il corpo nelle visioni dell’aldilà,” Micrologus: Natura, Scienze e Societa Medievali 1 (1993): 301–26, shows that the idea of the anima exuta as a completely spiritual being is true only in the texts of Scholastic theologians. Medieval visionary literature gives, on the contrary, clear evidence that in the common contemporary eschatological view the anima exuta (both of visionary men and of dead people “visited” by them) is generally represented by a strong insistence on its palpable and corporeal dimension. See also Claude Carozzi, “Structure et fonction de la vision de Tnugdal,” in Faire croire: modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du Xlle au XVe siècle: Table Ronde organisée par l’cole Française de Rome, en collaboration avec l’Institut d’Histoire Médiévale de l’Université de Padoue, Rome, 22–23 juin 1979 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1981), 223–34; idem, Le voyage de l’âme dans l’audelà d’après la littérature latine (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome; Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1994); Aaron Gurevich, “Au moyen âge: conscience individuelle et image de l’au-delà,” Annales 37 (1982): 255–73. For a detailed analysis of the importance of the body as an essential component of the person, see Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body; eadem, “Material Continuity, Personal Survival and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in Its Medieval and Modern Context,” in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 239–97, esp. 265–97; eadem, “The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 181–238, esp. 222–38.

  12. One of the most explicit passages is Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis, bk. 2, pt. 16, chap. 3 (PL 176, col. 584): “Quidam putant animas corporalibus poenis cruciari non posse, nisi per corpora et in corporibus manentes. Quapropter a corporibus exutas animas nullas alias poenas sustinere credunt. . . . Sed verissime auctoritate sacri eloquii et catholicae veritatis probatur testimonio, corporali et materiali igne animas etiam nunc ante susceptionem corporum cruciari.” See Carozzi, “Structure et fonction,” esp. 230–34. The proposition that the separated soul cannot be tormented by material fire was condemned in Paris in 1277. See Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 280.

  13. The senses of smell, sight, and hearing are highlighted respectively in the second, fifth, and sixth pains. These torments consist of the great stench that surrounds the sinner, of the sight of the miserable faces of the other damned and of the horrible faces of the devils, and of the doleful voices, the weeping, and the uproar that the damned are forced to bear. Insatiable hunger and thirst are the pains of the eighth “passion” where instead of bread the sinners eat burning coals and instead of water drink molten bronze.

  14. See, for instance, the words of the angels to the soul of the blessed: “You will live forever there [in paradise] before your Lord in sweetest glory, in glorious sweetness. On the Last Day, your body will greatly thrive; here it will stand with the soul in joy and splendor” (Golden Sc., 11. 69–71).

  15. For a chart that con
trasts them, see Bonvesin, Volgari scelti, 127–28.

  16. Moreover, a reflection of the idea of the four gifts is present in a number of fourteenth-century mystics, such as Marguerite of Oingt, although they cease to be called “dowries” after around 1270. For the evolution of the doctrine of the dowries, see Joseph Goering, “The De dotibus of Robert Grosseteste,” Mediaeval Studies 44 (1982): 83–101; Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 131–32, and, for Marguerite of Oingt, 335–37; and eadem, “Why All the Fuss About the Body?” 21.

  17. “Li corp de quatro cosse seran glorificai: / Plu firm ka adamanta e plu ka ‘1 sol smerrai / E plu ka omnia vox setí seran formai, / Plu prist han ess ka l’ogio e plu avïazai” (Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva, 209), my translation.

  18. Special attention is given to impassibility and clarity, while the less corporeal qualities of agility and especially subtlety are stressed less. Bonvesin emphasizes clarity and impassibility probably because they are more palpable and represent an explicit counterpart to the limitations of the earthly body.

  19. The eighth glory is one of the most interesting and consists of the celestial banquet with its “very sweet and genuine spiritual food.” But, though defined as spiritual, this food is described in very physical terms and in a very peculiar way: it is “cib glorïoso” (1. 519), glorious food, a sort of resurrection food for resurrection bodies. Not only do these “glorios vivande” (1. 550) confer impassibility on the blessed, but they are also explicitly contrasted with the earthly food as described in the Black Scripture: “In that place, there is no spoiled or mouldy or nauseous food either, or any lack of it for all time; there is no bitter or nasty or poisonous morsel, nor does it spoil or decay or disgust. Instead, it is always fresh, healthy, and perfect, exquisitely delicious, aromatic and well-seasoned, clean and pure and fair, attractive, tasty—its sweet sweet taste cannot be described” (Golden Sc., 11. 501–8). In the same way, the garments of the blessed (which are described in the ninth glory as made of silk, purple, gold, and gems) never wear out or get old, but are durable, new, and always fresh (11. 561–600).

  20. For the doctrine of the resurrection body as victory over both fragmentation and the biological change that threatened the notion of identity, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 135–37; eadem, “Why All the Fuss About the Body?” 19–25.

  21. The same idea is in the Commedia. In the heaven of the sun, Solomon affirms that with the resurrection of the body, the vision of God will increase because the human person will be finally whole. (Par. 14: 43–45: “When the flesh, glorious and sanctified, shall be clothed on us again, our persons will be more acceptable for being all complete”) When the blessed hear Solomon talking about the resurrection of the body, they are so happy that they cry an “amen” of pure joy. These lines are among the most sublime of the Commedia and express the triumphant significance of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body as a victory against decay, aging, and loss: “So sudden and eager both the one and the other chorus seemed to me in saying ‘Amen,’ that truly they showed desire for their dead bodies—perhaps not only for themselves, but also for their mothers, for their fathers, and for the others who were dead before they became eternal flames” (Par. 14: 61–66).

  22. What is immediately striking in Bonvesin—as in Giacomino of Verona, a member of the Franciscan Minorites who wrote two separate eschatological poems, a description of hell and a description of heaven—is the absence of purgatory. Jacques Le Goff speaks of Bonvesin and Giacomino as part of the “conservatives and traditionalists who preferred to stick to the old couple, Heaven and Hell, and to close their eyes to the newer Purgatory, the brainchild of theologian-intellectuals” (The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 333). He is certainly right to distinguish their works from new theological concerns. Regarding Bonvesin’s poem, however, some elements deserve further consideration. It is true that Christ’s passion occupies the central part of the poem because, as we will see, it creates the possibility of heaven for humankind. Bonvesin repeatedly insists on this concept in the Red Scripture. Nonetheless, Bonvesin writes at the moment at which purgatory is going to be (or has just been) made official in the second Council of Lyons (1274). He writes at the end of thirteenth century when, according to Le Goff, purgatory is “ubiquitous” and mentioned in many kinds of texts (289). Recent scholarship has pointed out that as a conception, purgatory “had existed in inchoate form since the subapostolic age, and in a more or less rationalized form since Augustine” (Barbara Newman, “On the Threshold of the Dead: Purgatory, Hell, and Religious Women,” in From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995], 109); and that, even later, purgatory was not necessarily conceived as a “third place” with a local habitation and a name, but could also be conceived as a condition of suffering both punitive and redemptive, as the very fact of suffering. Newman, “On the Threshold”; and Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press), 120–21, 183–86. See also Gurevich, “Au moyen âge,” 70–71; and Brian McGuire, “Purgatory, the Communion of Saints, and Medieval Change,” Viator 20 (1989): 61–84. I would suggest that in Bonvesin’s poem purgatory is present as the experience of physical suffering: the purifying power of pain is expressed primarily by Christ’s passion that redeems humankind and is the ultimate example of the “characteristically Christian idea that the bodily suffering of one person can be substituted for the suffering of another”—an idea that is at the base of much of the purgatorial piety of the late Middle Ages (Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 418). But purgatory is also expressed by the purifying and salvific valor that, especially through the figure of Mary, is accorded to human suffering throughout the whole poem. The Red Scripture helps one to better understand Dante’s Purgatorio and the importance that it attributes to the purging role of physical suffering. I would argue that purgatorial punishments are presented by Dante as continual reenactments of Christ’s passion and that their “efficacy” is a result of this identification. For instance, this connection is made clear in Purg. 23.70–75, in which the penitents of the circle of gluttony emphasize that the desire of purging themselves through physical pain is the same desire that led Christ to the sacrifice of the cross that saved humankind: “and not once only, as we circle this road, is our pain renewed—I say pain and ought to say solace: for that will leads us to the trees which led glad Christ to say ‘Elì’ when He delivered us with His blood.” I have analyzed the concept of “productive pain” in both Dante and Bonvesin in my dissertation.

  23. Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 89, is clear and synthetic: “Atonement came not from charitable work, nor from prayer, nor from enlightenment, but from pain. God seemed to attach more weight to love manifested in suffering than to love displayed in other ways.” For the redeeming power of pain, see Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 79–119; and Newman, “On the Threshold of the Dead,” 108–36, esp. 119–22. The importance of suffering has been underlined also by Jeffrey Hamburger, “ ‘By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them’: Image, Imitation, and the Reception of Suso’s Exemplar”, lecture, Columbia University, Branner Forum, April 21, 1996; idem, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

  24. The Milanese text of the two passages is found in Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva, respectively 52 and 233. The translation from the De peccatore cum Virgine is mine.

  25. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century works emphasize that Christ is impassibilis before the Incarnation and after the resurrection. See Erich Auerbach, “Excursus: Gloria Passionis,” in Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 89, n. 3.

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sp; 26. For an analysis of the complexity of this symbol, see Bynum, “Body of Christ,” 86–92. On blood as suffering and on the intense devotion to Christ’s blood that started in the twelfth century and increased in the centuries to follow, see Louis Gougaud, Devotional and Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages, trans. G. C. Bateman (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1927), 75–130; and Constable, “Ideal of the Imitation of Christ,” 209–17.

  27. The same idea was expressed in lines 65–68.

  28. As Bynum points out (Resurrection of the Body, 251–52), Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (part 4, chap. 10, par. 1) expresses the idea that Christ’s body on the cross suffered more exquisite pain than any other body because it was the most perfect of all the bodies. The same idea is present also in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, 3a, q. 46, art. 6. Question 46 concerns Christ’s passion. Article 6 discusses whether Christ’s passion was greater than all other pain. Thomas answers affirmatively for four reasons. The second reason is connected with the fact that Christ’s is the most perfect body and therefore experiences the most. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, trans. and ed. R. T. Murphy (Cambridge: Blackfriars; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 54: 26–27: “Secundo, potest magnitudo doloris ejus considerari ex perceptibilitate patientis. Nam et secundum corpus erat optime complexionatus, cum corpus ejus fuerit formarum miraculose operatione Spiritus Sancti.”