ABSTRACT
The late medieval “Loving Soul” was a composite of the bride of the Song of Songs, the bride of the Lamb in Revelation, and the protagonists of courtly romance, who came to represent an individual Christian convert. In the last half of the twelfth century, a new genre of devotional books emerged which packaged essential information about creation, theology, and salvation within the loving Soul’s marriage to Christ. By the fourteenth century, a relatively uniform master narrative had emerged: the “Loving Soul” is invited (by Christ or an angelic messenger) to marry Jesus, then learns how to serve her spouse while preparing for a wedding in heaven. This narrative mixed dialogue from the biblical books of Psalms and the Song of Songs, episodes from Christ’s life, and passages from Revelation and the letters of Paul to build a mnemonic frame relating the bible to human morality. Undressing the bride, redressing her in a fine gown, crowning and placing a ring on her finger, and even the use of rope to bind the lovers together paralleled the closely related rituals of monastic initiation and secular marriage, and also recalled Christ’s death on the cross. The bride of Christ became a pedagogic device for training new members of religious communities in twelfth-century Germany. By the fifteenth century, fragments from this narrative migrated to print, painting, song, and fashion. From these fragments, I first shall outline and then use the medieval master narrative of the bride and groom’s courtship to reconstruct the
1 “Dair nae so bydde ich mit allen vlijſſe vnd begerte mit allen mynen crafften dat du lieue sele vnd alle godes vrunde geystleichen vnd werltlichen, edel vnd onedel, vrouwen vnd man off wye sy synt die sich der lere dyß boichs gebeſſeren moegen endelich vnd ernstlich got oug mich bidden wyllen ich sy leuendich off doyt vur eynen oitmodelichen broder Otten van Passouwe ſent franciscus ordens wyllent leſmeyster zo Basel.” Otto von Passau, Die vierundzwanzig Alten, oder Der goldne Thron (Cologne: Johann Koelhoff the Elder, May 26, 1492), A iii v. The same plea is present in most of the extant manuscripts. Wieland Schmidt, “Die vierundzwanzig Alten Ottos von Passau,” Palaestra, no. 212 (1938): 28-9. It appears in one of the earliest extant manuscripts, numbered 24 in Schmidt’s study, which was owned by Strasburg Dominicans and is now Hamburg University Library, MS theolog.
