ABSTRACT
The medieval transformation of the bride of Christ from a chaste virginal nun into a representation of the individual required the collaboration of generations of Christian teachers, patrons, and artisans. Christianity uses, changes, and is changed by communication technologies. Rather than discarding medieval accretions, early modern, and even contemporary Christians continue to reinterpret medieval iconography such as the bride’s adornment, the mirror, and the wedding dress essential to their own narratives, unknowingly elaborating on the invitation of the early medieval plainchant refrain: Veni, Sponsa Christi [Come, bride of Christ]. Contemporary American popular understandings of marriage to Jesus as sacramental, salvific, and apocalyptic originate in neither biblical verses nor in the modern American wedding industry, but in late medieval elaborations on and adaptations of the bride of Christ.
