Category Archives: Blogs

“Jesus wept: and no wonder by Christ!”

“Jesus wept” – the shortest verse in the Bible (John 11:35) and the subject of a short piece on by Thomas Dixon on Umberto Eco and John Donne in the History of Emotions blog.

jesusweptThe post makes the point that “Donne is one of a very few sermon writers to discuss Christ’s tears”, though I suppose it depends what one means by “very few”. It is mentioned in the sermons of William Burton, Daniel Price, Thomas Jackson, William Ford, Samuel Smith, Gilbert Primrose and James Mabbe’s translation of Fonseca’s sermons – all published in Donne’s lifetime – and by  Samuel Otes, Thomas Adams, Daniel Featley, Peter Hausted, Anthony Faringdon and William Haughton and maybe a few others, all published prior to 1650. And there are other works – treatises, etc. – that discourse on the theme.

Still, it is, as Dixon says, a text one might have expected to have invited more exegesis, given the propensity of the age for emphasizing the less cheerful aspects of life, as evinced, for example, by the following:

As for laughter , it may be vsed: otherwise God would neuer haue giuen that power and faculty vnto man: but the vse of it must be both moderate and seldome, as sorrowe for our sinnes is to be plentifull and often. This we may learne in Christs example, of whome wee reade that hee wept three times, at the destruction of Ierusalem, at the raising of Lazarus, and in his agonie: but we neuer read that he laughed . And specially remember the saying of Chry∣sostome. Si risus in Ecclesia diaboli opus est, that is, to mooue laughter in the Church, is the worke of the deuill. (William Perkins, A golden chaine, 728-9)

Mercifully for their sanity, though, it seems the early moderns not only didn’t get overly bothered about Jesus weeping. but even, on occasion, rejected Chrysostom’s take on the whole thing:

Chrysostome indeede (for I will conceale nothing that may seeme ought to this purpose) speaking in generall tearmes saith, that Play or game is not of God but of the Deuill: and that we reade that Christwept oft, but neuer that he laughed, or so much as once smiled: yea that none of the Saints in Scripture are reported euer to haue laughed,saueSara onely,who is presently thereupon also checked for it. Which yet, saith that reuerend Father, I speake not to abandon laughter, but to bannish loosenesse.

Thus Chrysostome: which yet is not all out sound or true neither: For did not Abraham laugh too as well as Sara? and yet is he not taxed nor rebuked for so doing; nor indeed was Sara simply rebuked for laughing, but for doubting, yea if I may say so, for mocking: Abrahams laughter, as the Auncients haue well obserued, proceeded from ioy, Saraes sa∣uoured of distrust. (Thomas Gataker, Of the nature and vse of lots a treatise historicall and theologicall, 1619, pp. 215-6).

Of course, this is Umberto Eco territory, and he builds his tale on the spiritual legitimacy of laughter and question of whether, in fact, Christ did ever laugh. Dixon’s got a few other points to make; Jesus may have wept, but God is not on record as having done so, and in general tears were (and to some extent still are) perceived as “womanish”. All in all, a very good post on the early modern history of the emotions!

Blog round-up

First off, I should say I was in the middle of writing a blog post on a lecture on ecstasy (the emotion, rather than the drug, though the latter did get a couple of mentions!) that I’d been to in London when there was a bereavement in the family and everything got put on hold for a couple of months.

Then my server went and did some weird things and I lost the blog entirely for several weeks. I finally got it back, minus the draft of that post on ecstasy, which appears to be irretrievably lost in cyberspace. I’ll try to recreate it sometime, but before I get back to writing my own blog posts, I’ll start off by giving some links to one or two blogs (well, three actually!) I’ve come across that might be of interest.

First off, there’s some gruesome stuff by Caitlin Green on humiliation and death by camel. You need to scroll down to about the middle of the article to get all the sordid details:

we will take Andronicus, and we will strip him stark naked, and we will bind him to the camel’s back in such fashion that his face shall be against its rump, and we will lead him from one end of the city even unto the other. Thus will all they, both men and women, whom he hath wronged, be able to avenge themselves right well.

As Dr. Green Tells us, this is “the last recorded instance” of this punishment, which was inflicted on “the deposed emperor Andronicus I Comnenus in AD 1185″. The above is the contemporary account of Robert of Clari.

For the sake of early modernists, who will be heartened by the news, I’ll just add that the story was kept alive for Elizabethan readers by Richard Knolles, who describes it with no less detail than disapprobation in his Turkish History (1687-1700):

…having one of his Eyes put out, he was set upon a foul lean Camel, with his Face towards the tail thereof, and so (as it were in Triumph) led through the Market place, his bald Head all bare, as if it had been a dead mans Skull taken out of a Charnel House, in a short old Coat; so miserable a Spectacle, as might have expressed a fountain of tears out of the Eyes of a right hard hearted man. But the Bedlam and most insolent Citizens, especially they of the baser sort, as Cooks, Coblers, Curriers, and such like, flocking about him like Bees (without regard that he had but the other day worn upon his Head the Imperial Crown, then honoured by them as a God, and extolled unto the Heavens; that they had not long before solemnly sworn him Obedience and Loyalty) ran now as men out of their Wits, omitting no kind of Villany they could devise to do unto him; some thrust nails into his Head, some cast dirt in his Face, some the dung both of Men and Beasts, some prickt him in the Sides with spits, some cast Stones at him as at a mad Dog, and other some opprobrious and despiteful words, no less grievous unto him than the rest; amongst others, an impudent Drab coming out of the Kitchen, cast a pot of scalding water in his Face; and in brief, their outrage so exceeded, as if they had striven among themselves, who should do him the greatest Villany. Having thus shamefully, as in a ridiculous triumph brought him into the Theater, they there betwixt two Pillars hanged him up by the Heels… (p. 38 →Read on EEBO TCP)

The second link is to Susan Abernethy’s post on Titus Oates, fabricator of the so-called “Popish Plot”. She gives an account of his checkered career, which culminated in him being “stripped, tied to a cart and whipped from Aldgate to Newgate. The whippings continued the next day.”

I’ve always been fascinated by the plot, and have a page on it here. What strikes me most is the fact that that the 1689 Bill of Rights, which includes the prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment, was in part a protest against Oates’s beating (which left him with the skin hanging off his back), with scant regard for the Catholics who died or lost their homes as a result of his lies.

As a footnote to Dr. Abernethy’s post, there’s an anonymous broadside of 1681 that gives an idea of what the scandalous conduct that got him kicked out of the Jesuit college at St. Omer might have consisted of. It accuses him of whipping ‘porkers’ to arouse his ‘Beastly Concupiscence’, whereupon he ‘Tilts at ’em with his Nasty Clyster-Pipe’ (The Character of an Ignoramus Doctor, London, 1681, p. 2). Gordon Williams (A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, vol. 1, London, 1994, p. 514), says ‘porkers probably means fat youths’ and the reference is presumably homosexual.

titus-oates-whip-zz

OK, that’s enough of the sleazy, sordid and downright nasty side of early modern life! My final link for today’s post is to Laura Sangha’s entry in the many-headed monster blog to her jointly-edited (with Jonathan Willis) publication on Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources, which I have not yet perused, but which looks set to be a must for students and scholars embarking into the field in this digital age.

And now, my wife tells me, it’s time to get offline and have some curry. I’ve acquiesced, on condition it comes with a beer!