Chapter 4

Time in Narrative: The Teleology of History Meets the Timelessness of God “in plenitudo temporis”

And thenne spak spiritus sanctus in gabrieles mouthe

To a mayde þat hihte marie, a meke thyng withalle,

That oen Iesus, a Iustices sone, most iouken in here chaumbre

Til plenitudo temporis tyme ycome were.

—Piers Plowman, 18.123–26 ~ B.16.90–93

To a mayde I demytted me

ffor no chalange sholde be

Wel dernely sho kepte me

Tyl I my tyme wolde se

ffourty wokes saue v. dawes

To fulfulle þe olde lawes

—“Long Charter,” ll. 15–20

and yet cowth I not taken therin ful vnderstondyng to myn ese at that tyme; for in the servant that was shewid for Adam, as I shal seyn, I saw many dyvers properties that myten be no manner way ben aret to single Adam. And thus in that tyme I stode mekyl in onknowyng for the full vnderstondyng of this mervelous example was not goven me in that tyme.

—A Revelation, 51.67–72

WHILE TIME MIGHT not necessarily be a central topic in a given narrative, of course a narrative cannot help but take some stance with regard to the passage of time, even if only because narratives present themselves through a process of interpretation over time. For writers interested in the Incarnation, diverse ways time can be represented in narrative offer useful perspectives from which to view the nature of the hypostatic union: the cascading outpouring of God’s love may be depicted as an event leading to other events, for example, but also (and at the same time) as a relationship of divinity and humanity. As a moment in time, the Incarnation marks God’s physical entrance into human history, while as a state of being—God and man united in the person of Christ—the hypostatic union exists both within history and outside the passage of time. Medieval writers therefore looked to make sense of the Incarnation by simultaneously holding time-bound and timeless views of the hypostatic union in mind: both the self-oriented time of lived human experience and the transcendence of divine providence, God’s instantaneous understanding in an eternal present (while the latter can perhaps be grasped as a concept, although with great difficulty, it cannot be experienced directly except by God). In addition, writers consider the Incarnation from a point of view grounded in the distal deictics of history (God’s personal entrance into human time in that place, at that time, or there, then) as well as from one working outward from the present moment (the Incarnation’s import for any individual at a given time, framed in proximal deictics: in this place, at this time, or here, now). Since a poet may usefully exploit the tension implied by the conjunction of there/then and here/now to highlight the special import of time with respect to the Incarnation, an Incarnational poetic may engage the there/then historicity of scripture as part of the experiential here/now linked to characters acting within a narrative, or to readers of the narrative, as is the case in the examples in this chapter (from Piers Plowman, A Revelation, the “Long Charter,” and the lily crucifixion).

While the way in which an Incarnational poetic works as a structure is properly the topic of Chapter 5, here I wish to consider how poetic form may deliberately and simultaneously embrace both historical and transhistorical perspectives to draw out the Incarnational possibilities latent in a “full word.” The concept of “plenitudo temporis,” “the fullness of time,” is linked in scripture to Mary’s pregnancy (Gal. 4:4). Plenitudo temporis thus picks up on and extends the notion of plenitude I examined earlier when I discussed Capgrave’s desire to speak “pleynly” regarding the Incarnation.¹ The passages I examine in this chapter are self-reflexive on the issue of time, as they are with regard to growth in understanding over time. These passages do not promise that a full understanding of the Incarnation will be achieved through reading about it, but rather that such understanding may be glimpsed, as in an enigma, in a sort of pregnant thought. For the issue of time as enacted in and through narrative, plenitudo temporis therefore offers an especially useful mnemonic.

The Paradox of Temporal Fluidity in Narrative

In passus 18 of Piers Plowman, time bears theological significance specific to the Incarnation. Passus 18, like the two passus that follow it, invites meditation on a historical view of time (a human perspective) alongside a transhistorical one (God’s perspective). While the initial topic of the passus is charity (this passus begins with the well-known Tree of Charity sequence), Langland’s thought experiment conspicuously relies on rapid and elastic fluctuations in his treatment of time.² His striking phrase “plenitudo temporis tyme” (126), “the moment of the fullness of time,” draws on Gal. 4:4: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.”³ In Gal. 4:4, plenitudo temporis signals God’s entrance into human time. However, exegetical tradition also recognized plenitudo temporis as the beginning of Jesus’ public life. Because passus 18 links the Incarnation and the life of Christ linguistically through the phrase “plenitudo temporis,” the implications of that association warrant special attention. My specific interest here is in how Langland uses the teleology of narrative to enable temporal fluidity within narrative without rendering the narrative unintelligible. The master stroke, in this instance, is his doing so by focusing on time in a way that highlights theological implications of plenitudo temporis while simultaneously drawing on historical and transhistorical understandings of time. To see how this works, we need to begin with the opening of passus 18.

As with the “figuratively” passage in passus 16, which I considered in relation to Augustine’s enigma,⁴ Langland’s focus in passus 18 is on what charity is and how it may be found. Here, however, that focus is supported by his attention to varied ways in which he can represent the passage of time within narrative. A substantive difference between Will’s question about charity in B and in C is important. In B, Will asks Anima what charity is: “Ac 3it I am in a weer [doubt] what charite is to mene” (B.16.3). Anima answers with a brief allegory of the schematic sort, a static description of a “ful trie [excellent, proven] tree” whose trunk is “ruþe [pity],” leaves “lele [ faithful] wordes,” and so forth (B.16.4–6).⁵ In C, however, Will asks Liberum Arbitrium to show him the way to charity (18.1–3):

“Leue liberum Arbitrium” quod y, “y leue, as y hope,	dear; believe
Thow couthest teile me and teche me to charite, as y leue?”6	believe
Thenne louh liberum Arbitrium and ladde me	smiled; led; [instructive] stories
forth with tales

Liberum Arbitrium does not tell Will where to go, or sketch a diagrammatic allegorical picture, or show him a destination, but instead accompanies him there in person, telling him unspecified things on the way in the form of stories. Their destination is a tree called “trewe loue” (9), a useful part—but only a part—of the answer to Will’s question about charity, and the tree’s description at first suggests allegory of the static, diagrammatic sort. Appropriately, however, the answer to “teach me the way to charity” must be enacted in and over time, as lived human experience. Liberum Arbitrium’s action in accompanying Will while teaching him the way is, in itself, an example of charity, a work of “hendenesse” [courtesy] (13), of “helpe-hym-þat-nedeth” (13) through “benigne speche” (11), and is followed by Will’s thanks “that 3e me hider kende [taught me the way here]” (17).

I suspect most readers read these opening lines fairly rapidly to “get the picture,” as it were, without thinking too deeply about whose agency is implied by diverse parts of the tree, although it soon becomes clear, as others have remarked, that in C the tree is not a “picture model,” to use David Aers’s term, or pictura, to use Mary Carruthers’s. Nevertheless, some aspects of the allegory remain ambiguous. Given the complex way Langland has treated charity all along, and given the challenging lines that follow, it is worth considering whose love is indicated in the name of the tree called “trewe loue.” God’s, for humanity? God’s, in creation? God’s, enacted through humanity? God’s, enacted through Christ’s humanity? Humanity’s, toward God? Humanity’s, toward humanity? Are we prompted to consider an abstract understanding of the essence of faithful love? Are we to think of any and all of these simultaneously? Because no distinction is made, the text allows for all.⁷ Similarly, while the tree lives through loving looks, Langland does not specify whose gaze enables the tree to thrive (18.9–11):

“The tree hatte trewe loue,” quod he, “the trinite hit sette.	is called;planted
Thorw louely lokynge hit lyueth and launseth vp blosmes,	loving looks; lives; brings forth blossoms
The whiche blosmes buirnes benigne speche hit calleth.”	these blossoms men call gracious speech

The “louely lokynge” might naturally be understood as human glances;⁸ however, the context additionally and simultaneously allows for a reading in which the Trinity lovingly watches the tree’s growth, where the loving action of planting the tree enables further and spreading loving actions, so the growth of the tree makes visible the emanative growth of love in lived experience. In this emanative aspect, the planting metaphor works in a similar fashion to the Incarnational “plonte of pees” I discussed earlier, and indeed both the name “trewe loue” and the fact that this tree is grafted offer potential for meditation on the nature of the hypostatic union.⁹ The doubleness implied by the graft is replicated in the macaronic form of these lines, which bring both Latin and English together when Latin names that resonate with Incarnational significance appear amid the vernacular: cor-hominis, ymago-dei, caritas. Might this be a typological moment, setting up for the story of the Incarnation that is to come barely a hundred lines later? If we are perhaps encouraged to consider how Christ as Trewlove is “planted” by the Trinity within humanity, the associative reference—if so it is—to the hypostatic union is fleeting, however, and not the main point here.¹⁰ The focus of Liberum Arbitrium’s answer was the agency that enables life and growth: any associative link to the hypostatic union only enriches our understanding of that agency.

As the narrative continues, the poet persists in envisioning charity as experiential and transformative. The fact that time by nature cannot stand still is implied in the choice of metaphor: Will sees not just a tree, but the growth of a tree that flowers (“launseth vp blosmes,” 10; “in flouryng tyme,” 35) and bears fruit (“and þerof cometh a goed fruyt,” 12; “til hit waxe rype,” 42; “sonnere wollen rotye [rot],” 60). For effectiveness, the metaphor relies on the very fact that these stages of growth are common to all fruit trees, not particular to this singular tree, and also that growth is seasonal. Further, a season progresses in one direction only: first the tree blossoms, then it fruits, then the fruit falls. While some of these may occur at the same time on one tree (fruiting while blossoming, for example), the sequence cannot be run in reverse: although seasons recur cyclically, time moves only forward.

At this point, Will asks Liberum Arbitrium two questions: what kind of wood are the props made from? What is the name of the tree? Both are framed as real-world, material queries, and both elicit instead a metaphysical response, an allegory with its own narrative timeline existing independently of the time-line governing the conversation between Will and Liberum Arbitrium, a conversation, we might recall, that is taking place in a dream.¹¹ In this part of the allegory, the tree’s life cycle initially correlates with the life of an individual: the tree’s “flouryng tyme” (35) seems to be the equivalent of youth. Yet as this allegory unfolds, the time scheme transforms. When the fruit (of charity) ripens (42), the fiend tries to destroy it (43). Taken together, ripeness and the fiend suggest the end of one’s lifetime, but the progression of the narrative, wherein “bagbitares [slanderers] and braulers [brawlers] and . . . bolde chidares [scolders]” attack and shake the tree (46–47), shifts away from the tree-as-lifetime scheme. The weapons in this fight—the props supporting the tree—are not linked here to the life cycle of an individual, nor to an imagined life cycle of charity itself: indeed, each weapon would be useful at any and all times in one’s life. A doubled or multiple notion of time results, with the tree-as-lifetime-of-the-individual running simultaneously with a consideration of what charity is and how it works. On the one hand, we might say that such parallelism is simply and obviously an aspect of the other-pointing-ness of allegory, a doubled running of time both within a narrative and outside the localized conditions of narrative. Here, though, where Langland wants to call attention to God’s time and human time, to the historical moment as well as its timelessness, the doubling of time bears theological significance that speaks to humanity’s relationship with God.

In response to Will’s request to taste the fruit, Liberum Arbitrium calls in Elde, or old age, and the allegory explicitly invokes life-cycle time in a new way.¹² From the scheme in which the products of the tree—flowers, fruit—indicate a stage in an individual’s life by analogy with the life cycle of the tree, Langland shifts to a scheme in which an allegorical figure representing a stage of life, old age, acts directly and bodily on the tree.¹³ The allegory further takes on a surprisingly historical dimension, with the fruit suddenly identified specifically as biblical figures largely drawn from the Old Testament (“Adam and Abraham and ysaye [Isaiah] þe prophete, / Sampson and samuel and seynt Iohann þe Baptiste,” 112–13). Presumably, this is a representative rather than comprehensive list of the “holy men” the devil was hoarding up “in limbo inferni” (115). Given the rapidly changing signifiers, one might easily feel it is a bit of an understatement for Will to say that the tree is “a propre [distinctive, unusual, excellent, appropriate] plonte” (100)!

As other scholars have noted, the presence of John the Baptist is potentially jarring, because he seems out of place—or, more properly, out of time. He is Jesus’ contemporary, yet appears among these Old Testament figures at a moment in narrative time immediately before Jesus is born.¹⁴ Allegory of Augustine’s enigma sort encourages us to keep guessing at significations, to fit this piece of the puzzle with the ones we had before. In this case, that moment of puzzlement foregrounds the distinction between Old Testament history and New Testament history just before Langland introduces the Incarnation (which, as fulfillment of prophecy, bridges the two). He does so in vivid, startling, evocative terms that conspicuously attest to the importance of the event. Liberum Arbitrium led Will to the tree while telling him stories, as I noted earlier. Similarly, with the introduction of Old Testament and New Testament histories, Langland shifts to a narrative mode that calls attention to its own storytelling properties: the Incarnation will be told as a story—a New Testament story—to be followed up immediately by further New Testament stories of the life of Christ.

The time-referents of the allegory have shifted in other ways, too. Now being ripe indicates being at the point of death (cf. also 20.412), whereas earlier in the allegory, ripeness signified a place in the hierarchy of merit: those most in the sun ripened soonest through “þe hete [heat] of þe holi goest [Holy Spirit]” (75). Given this new focus on mortality, why would Langland choose Elde, rather than Death, as the personification who shakes down the fruit?¹⁵ For one thing, old age fits within traditional taxonomies of the stages of life, the sort of scheme used to good advantage in, for example, another alliterative poem of Langland’s day, The Parlement of the Thre Ages.¹⁶ The main point of Elde shaking down the fruit must surely be that individuals die and are carried off by the devil. However, death is not limited to the aged, as everyone knows; indeed, that very point is voiced compellingly by the old man who is attacked by Death in The Parlement of the Thre Ages, for instance.¹⁷ More cogently for Langland’s purpose, Elde continues the established cognitive framework based on time, whereas an allegorical character named Death would shift the focus away from time to the dichotomy of life and death just at the moment when Langland is about to highlight God’s entrance into human time, the Incarnational moment.¹⁸ Indeed, Langland reserves his theologically informed consideration of the strife between life and death for greater effect in the joust/Crucifixion and then the harrowing of hell, both in passus 20.¹⁹

“Thenne,” as Langland puts it, lingering deictically over the historical moment of the Incarnation, “thenne” the theologically difficult concept of the hypostatic union manifests itself in an unusual and provocative sequence of verbs of action: “seized,” “hit out,” “flew,” “seek out,” “rob” (118–21). The Incarnation—the startling action of Libera Voluntas Dei (“the free will of God”)—is startlingly expressed in concrete verbs of motion, with Langland’s daring thought here paralleling the previous actions undertaken by Liberum Arbitrium when he wielded the three props of the tree against the attack of the worldly winds and the fiend (25–52). In B it is Piers who seizes the middle prop [i.e., Second Person of the Trinity] and throws it after the fiend, enacting the Incarnation; in C, it is Libera Voluntas Dei, a character who appears and acts in this passage only, and only in C (18.117–22):

Thenne moued hym moed in magestate dei	anger/mind/will; in the majesty of God
That libera voluntas dei þe laughte myddel Shoriare	seized
And hit aftur þe fende, happe how hit myhte.	hit out at; happen as
Filius by þe fadres wille fley with spiritus sanctus	the Son; flew; the Holy Spirit
To go ransake þat ragman and reue hym of his apples	seek out; [false] accuser; rob
That thorw fals biheste and fruyt furste man disseyued.	promise; first; deceived

“Thenne” might seem a sequential follow-on to the robbing actions of the devil in line 115: the devil seized the fruit so then the free will of God seized the prop. However, the main force of the time sense here appears rather to be “at that time,” or “there, then,” closer to “in the beginning,” or even perhaps a kind of story-time marker, like “in those days” or “it came to pass,” and indeed the story of the Incarnation that follows, and Christ’s life after it, bears strong markers of being narrative.²⁰ A particular story is being told, but a story of import to a wider Christian community, recalling again that Liberum Arbitrium led Will to the tree while telling him stories, presumably useful ones. The narrative style suggests that that time, then, bears theological significance for this time, now.²¹

Rather than moving ahead with further action, lines 120 and 121 reiterate the action of lines 118 and 119 in new terms but just as forthrightly: the free will of God seized and hit; with the Father’s will, the Son flew with the Holy Spirit to seek out and rob. The Son’s rightful robbing of the devil to recover the fruit (121) interlaces the story of the Incarnation with the story of the Fall, even though on a historical level the presence of John the Baptist on the tree in line 113 would render such a time sequence unintelligible, at least in terms of human lives. The story here is one of recovery, a rightful anger against a wrongful robbery achieved through deceit: the robber robbed, the guiler beguiled.²²

“And thenne . . .” Langland continues to linger over the moment of the Incarnation (123). Is this a retelling of the same action as above, or an extension of it, perhaps shifting the mode of discourse?²³ The text does not specify. In any case, the emanative action here is all of a piece, from the initial “Thenne” of line 117 through the ensuing lines on the Incarnation and the life of Christ until Will wakes up at line 178. The Holy Spirit speaks through Gabriel, giving localized, aristocratic context to the Gospel of Luke’s account of the Annunciation, and introducing a complex consideration of plenitudo temporis, a concept drawn not from Luke but, as I mentioned earlier, from Gal. 4:4 (18.123–36):

And thenne spak spiritus sanctus in gabrieles mouthe	spoke; the Holy Spirit
To a mayde þat hihte marie, a meke thyng withalle,	was called; meek
That oen Iesus, a Iustices sone, moste iouken in here chaumbre	a certain; must perch; her
Til plenitudo temporis tyme ycome were	the moment of the fullness of time
That elde felde efte þe fruyt or full to be rype24	when old age [would] fell again; before
That iesus sholde iouste þerfore by iugement of Armes	joust for it; judgment
Who sholde fecche this fruyt, the fende or iesus suluen.	fetch; fiend; himself
The mayde myldeliche tho the messager grauntede	mildly then
And saide hendely to hym, “lo me his hondmayden	courteously
For to worchen his wille withouten eny synne:	work; any
Ecce Ancilla domini &c.”	Behold the handmaiden of the lord (Luke 1:38)
And in þe wombe of þat wenche was he fourty wokes	weeks
And bycam man of þat maide mankynde to saue,	save
Byg and abydyng, and bold in his barnhoed	big; enduring; childhood
To haue yfouthte with þe fende Ar fol tyme come.	fought; fiend; before full time

In its mode of telling, the Incarnation story appears as if it will be unfamiliar, in a mode similar to a mythical story or a fairytale (a certain Jesus, a maiden called Mary).²⁵

Gabriel’s speech is rather extraordinary. The aristocratic elements—the joust, Mary’s courtesy—offer context localized to Langland’s day and to the poem. In Luke’s account, Gabriel’s explanation of what will happen has none of Langland’s focus on the contest with the fiend, centering instead on Mary’s wonder and the angel’s responsiveness to her concern (Luke 1:28–37).²⁶ The question of “how shall this be done?”—so central to the Gospel—is entirely lacking from Langland’s account, however. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the difference in the initial focus of each speech: the Gospel’s famous greeting “Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum” seems to be taken a bit for granted in Langland’s version, its resonance perhaps to be found back in lines 4 to 9, where the tree called “trewe loue,” a descriptor with Christological associations, grows graciously in “cor hominis” (the heart of man): Mary is gratia plena, full of grace (Luke 1:28), and “trewe loue” will grow within her.²⁷ The Gospel’s emphasis on fullness, with its prefiguration of pregnancy, remains in Langland’s telling, but plena shifts to the plenitudo of plenitudo temporis, from Gal. 4:4–5:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law:

That he might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons.

In Galatians, the fullness of time is clearly the moment of Incarnation, which Paul links to fulfillment of the law.²⁸ But in Langland’s telling the fullness of time has its own appropriate time, “the fullness of time’s time,” a time that Langland additionally associates with the Crucifixion and the Harrowing, as I quoted more fully above.

By comparison, a similar system of imagery is at work in the A-text of the “Long Charter,” where Christ emphasizes in technical terms the security of the means by which he gained legal authority to write such a charter: with his birth, he tells us, he made a seisin, the technical term for physical possession of land or real property, in order to secure his property for a proper conveyance. This statement comes at the very beginning of the poem (emphasis added):

ffro my rych I cam a doun	kingdom
To seche þe fro toun to toun	seek you from
Min erytage þat is so fre	heritage; noble/extensive/generous
In þ1 myschef to 3euon it þe	give
[whan] þat 3efte I 3euon sholde	gift; give
I dede as þe lawe wolde	did; required
To a mayde I demytted29 me	humbled/descended
ffor no chalange sholde be	so that
wel dernely sho kepte me	secretly/privately; she
Tyl I my tyme wolde se	[= the fullness of time]
ffourty wokes saue v. dawes	forty weeks less five days
To fulfull þe pe olde lawes
Þe mayde was trewe mylde & fre	noble; generous
Sho receyued me for þe
By my manhede and my grace	manhood
Thus cam sesyng furst in place	seisin [possession]

“I came down from my kingdom,” he says, “to seek you from town to town in order to give you my unencumbered [also: noble] heritage [of everlasting life in heaven] to remedy your misfortune. When it came time to give the gift, I did as the law required: I humbled myself to a maiden [was conceived] so there could be no legal challenge [to my possession of humanity]. She nurtured me privately until the end of my term, forty weeks less five days, in order to fulfill the old laws.” Enfeoffed of mankind, he thus gains his human estate by physical possession over a period of time, the gestation in the womb. The “seisin” of humanity takes place in the Incarnation as Christ takes on human flesh (“by my manhede”) when Mary is overshadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit (“by . . . my grace”). Although this passage contains no Latin lines, it seems to recast the two scriptural phrases: “by . . . my grace” recalls “gratia plena,” “full of grace,” the angel’s greeting (Luke 1:28), and “Tyl I my tyme wolde se” translates “plenitudo temporis” (Gal. 4:4). Such manipulation of language, not a slavish adherence to the letter of the Latin but a transformation of the spirit of the text for its new situation in an English poem, indicates that this poet appears at times to think through Latin terms, as Langland does. It would be interesting to know whether or not any other vernacular poems take a similarly legalistic view of gratia plena and plenitudo temporis. Both Piers Plowman and the “Long Charter” make a point of mentioning the typologically significant forty weeks of gestation; the “Long Charter” does so in a liturgically meaningful way (tied to Lent).

To this point, then, the temporal fluidity of the narrative in passus 18 has gone something like this. Will asks Liberum Arbitrium to show him the way to charity, and Liberum Arbitrium brings him to the tree, which is growing, blossoming, and fruiting in ways the poet addresses both as a hierarchy of merit and as the life cycle of an individual. The notion of tree-as-life-cycle-of-an-individual runs along simultaneously with the notion that the tree schematically demonstrates what charity is and how it works. Elde, a stage in the life cycle, acts on the tree, which now has a historical dimension in its fruit. Then comes the Incarnation, and then a fuller narrative of the Incarnation, and in the midst of this passage is plenitudo temporis.

The judicial focus of “a Iustices sone” (125) ties in with the legalistic and redemptive focus of the Galatians passage (“made under the law . . . that he might redeem them who were made under the law”). The striking thought that lies behind “plenitudo temporis time” is all the more evident if we translate the Latin into English: “the fullness of time’s time.”³⁰ In Langland’s use, fluidity and compression of time encourage us to contemplate power veiled in the Incarnation, to consider how this power is correspondingly revealed in the life of Christ and in the Crucifixion.

While the “devil’s rights” aspect of passus 18 to 20 has been widely discussed, Langland’s focus on the appropriate time,plenitudo temporis, deserves a closer look: what exactly does it mean to say Jesus “yfouthte with þe fende Ar fol tyme come” (136)?³¹ If “the fullness of time” is taken in Galatians’ sense as the moment of Incarnation, the fight would have to come before Mary conceives. Indeed, we might then read lines 117 to 119 as describing that very fight, which happens before “Filius by þe fadres will fley with spiritus sanctus” (120):

Thenne moued hym moed in magestate dei

That libera voluntas dei laughte þe myddel Shoriare

And hit aftur þe fende, happe how hit myhte.

For this reading, however, we must also contend with line 126, which clearly shifts plenitudo temporis to after the gestation, whether at birth or at the Crucifixion (as perhaps suggested by the mention of the joust, which does not come until passus 20), or even perhaps at the Last Judgment (suggested by the word “judgment” itself in line 128).³² I do not think we need to trouble ourselves too much over the shifting signifiers here, however. I will not belabor the point that Langland does not set up a systematic, one-to-one correspondence between plenitudo temporis and Incarnation; while the two remain associatively linked throughout, this allegory, as we have already seen, is no pictura. Lines 119 (“hit aftur þe fende”), 128 (“sholde iouste þerfore”), and 136 (“To haue yfouthte with þe fende”) set up a relationship between the Incarnation and Crucifixion, on the one hand, and the Harrowing with its parliament of the devils on the other. Line 127 continues the problem from the earlier episode: why Elde and not Death? Here, perhaps, we might hear a resonance of “the old enemy,” the devil.³³

In any case, the focus on the appropriate time,plenitudo temporis, bridges the story of the Incarnation (lines 117 to 135) and the story of Christ’s life (lines 135 until Will wakes up at 178), in which Liberum Arbitrium teaches Jesus the physician’s profession, “Til plenitudo temporis hy tyme aprochede” (137–38), “until the fullness of time’s high [= appropriate, but also exact or precise] time approached.”³⁴ Given the legalistic and judicial imagery of the Incarnation passage, the shift of focus to the life of Christ as the training of a physician might come as a bit of a surprise. To be sure, the imagery ties in with the common trope of Christ as physician and also resonates with other medicinal imagery in the poem. More urgently, it anticipates the Samaritan in passus 19, an episode later in narrative time but not strictly speaking an event in the life of Christ, as the Gospel tells it (Luke 10:25–37), although in Piers Plowman it is clear we are to see Christ in the Samaritan (and the parable was commonly interpreted in this way).³⁵ In passus 18, Jesus is trained to be a physician, and then in passus 19 we (and Will) see him being one, though not in his own “life” in a narrative sense (such as a saint’s life, a vita, or a hero’s life, a geste), but in an abstracted time outside of the narrative of his life as physician we already read in passus 18.

Is the Incarnational plenitudo temporis out of place, then, in line 138, in the life of Christ, and what is “plenitudo temporis hy tyme”? In passus 18, Christ is tutored by Liberum Arbitrium, who teaches him “lechecraeft” [how to be a doctor] (18.137) “[t]il plenitudo temporis hy tyme aprochede” (18.138)—approached, but had not yet come.³⁶ “My time is not yet come”—but there is a sense in which it both has, and has not. Even in the Gospels, a full revelation of Christ’s nature and its significance for humanity is repeatedly deferred. Here in passus 18, we are told who he is, but he cannot be recognized fully, much as Will earlier saw him “but figuratyfly” (16.296).³⁷ The deictics of revelation continually shift the moment of “now” to “not yet,” promising in each time a further time yet to come that will fulfill its prefiguration, a revelatory moment when we will discover there was a prefiguration, making the future moment of here/now a time when Christ’s divinity will be made known not “in enigmate” but “facie ad faciem (16.296a). “[P]lenitudo temporis hy tyme” suggests that the fullness of Incarnation is worth thinking of in conjunction with the plenitude of lived human experience. If the revelatory moment when Christ’s divinity will be made known fully is yet to come, in the context of passus 18 there is nevertheless a sense in which he is known already in this passage by his works (of charity), some of them happening before he is born (hitting out at the fiend; the Incarnation itself), and some foretold by a shifting sense of time (the joust, the judgment). “God is charity” (1 John 4:8), and “loue shal lepe out aftur into þis lowe erthe” (14.85).³⁸

This being so, we have left to account for the fact that in C, Liberum Arbitrium is the one who teaches Jesus to be a physician (in B, Piers Plowman teaches him).³⁹ The cognitive framework that supports the metaphor of Christ the physician was anticipated back in the Tree of Charity section, where it appears in the sense of ministration rather than healing per se. Because the ministration framework is not salient when first introduced, it would be easy to miss seeing how Langland has prepared the way for this version of the life of Christ, and for the Samaritan. Similarly, because a complex narrative structure intrudes between Christ as physician and Christ as Samaritan, and that complex structure (Faith/ Abraham/herald/priest—Hope/Moses/spy/levite—Charity/Jesus/Christ/Samaritan) requires considerable cognitive processing in order to follow the taxonomies, it would be easy to lose track of the ministration framework. Nevertheless, the ministration framework is important to understanding “plenitudo temporis hy tyme,” so it is worth a closer look, and for that it is necessary to revisit some early lines of passus 18.

In the Tree of Charity sequence, Will asks basic questions about the tree (is the fruit all of one kind? why are there three degrees representing types of life if we are taught there are two forms of living, active and contemplative?). Liberum Arbitrium responds by on the one hand looking backward to humanity’s birth, repeatedly making reference to Adam, and on the other anticipating humanity’s salvation through the Incarnation and the ministrations of Christ, two stories he is shortly to relate. First, regarding the nature of the fruit, Liberum Arbitrium likens Adam to the tree and the rest of humanity to apples.⁴⁰ Answering the question about forms of living, Liberum Arbitrium continues his praise of virginity, again mentioning Adam as he explains that virginity was the first fruit of God’s creation (18.90–94). The examples of virginity following Adam are pitched toward ministration. By “clenneste men and fayreste” (18.94) Liberum Arbitrium suggests he might have clerics in mind, who “Shollen serue for þe lord sulue [himself]” (18.95), where “serve” enacts more than one sense.⁴¹ Clerics “stand in for” Christ on earth, or serve in his place, but they also “serve as” Christ in the sense that they minister to his people’s health, an aspect of Jesus’ life on earth about to be told in this passus (Christ the physician) and to be taken yet further in passus 19 with the ministrations of the Good Samaritan (or Charity, or Christ). Similarly, the “Maydones and martres” are described as having “ministrede hym here on erthe” (18.96), that is, they served/helped/rendered aid to Christ on earth (the antecedent for “hym” is “þe lord sulue” in line 18.95).⁴² The complex layering of Langland’s thought sets up the metaphor he will introduce three “scenes” later, after Elde shakes the tree, after the Incarnation, within the life of Christ. What does it mean that Free Will teaches Christ to be a physician? Just before the scheme of Faith, Hope, and the Samaritan (i.e., charity), we see charity ministering in human dimensions, in the full potential of human action, both in the hierarchy of merit represented by fruit on the tree and in the life of Christ. At the point when Liberum Arbitrium teaches Jesus to minister, the poem also instructs us to read typologically, closely attending to events as they unfold in narrative time but additionally seeking connections across and beyond the realm of narrative time, to see how “plenitudo temporis tyme” will unfold. As we come to know, Elde’s felling the fruit and the fruit’s ripeness will be related to the joust; the joust will be related to the gestation; the fight “Ar fol tyme come” (18.136) will be related to learning “lechecraeft . . . / Til plenitudo temporis hy tyme aprochede” (18.137–38).⁴³

While this investigation of plenitudo temporis in passus 18 to 20 has taken a long time to consider, it is difficult to break off even here, for portions of the narrative I have not yet mentioned continue to investigate the fullness of time in new dimensions, with the implications of time’s fullness doubled, or trebled, or more. Here is Abraham, for example, who acts within the narrative as the historical figure but also figuratively as faith, and as a herald, and as a proto-priest. More than most passages in Piers Plowman, this section, in all its rich suggestiveness, has tantalized critics disposed to attempt fourfold allegoresis. It is tempting to note how levels of meaning proliferate even when one restricts the historical aspect of the allegory to its fourteenth-century context only. Perceiving Abraham as a herald encourages us to think of the aristocracy; considering his role as an early model for priesthood invokes ecclesiastical hierarchy and appropriate clerical behavior, a precursor here to the priestly behavior of the Good Samaritan. The text repeatedly encourages us to pull back from such burgeoning possibilities, however, to think of the Old Testament Abraham. For example, we hear Abraham say the truth of Christ’s sacrifice has not yet been revealed to him (“I leue [believe] þat ilke [same] lord thenketh [intends] a newe law to make,” 18.264). Yet even this move toward grounding the story in history gestures toward Abraham’s many levels of signification: just his saying “I leue” expresses an article of faith, and we are back to considering how the character exemplifies the abstraction. Beyond these possibilities, I have not touched on the liturgical time sequences of these passus. In their architectural, multidimensional grandeur, these passus are perhaps somewhat Dantesque, but they are very Langlandian indeed in their grounded-yet-flexible method of signifying.

Langland’s fluid narrative of the Tree of Charity works by association: one thought leads to another, and the narrative morphs and adjusts according to the progress of Langland’s transformative thought. In Julian’s exemplum of the lord and the servant, by contrast, the outline of the narrative does not change over time, although Julian’s understanding of it does, and that understanding is grounded in two historical moments (the Fall and the Incarnation) that Julian comes to consider as if they occurred in an abstracted location outside of historical time and place. Her thought comes across as strikingly deliberative, rich in its depth. Nevertheless, Julian holds back a few details from her first telling of the example in order to reveal their significance later, when they can achieve greater effect (the appropriate time). This technique renews the initial narrative but does not lead to new narratives; rather, Julian considers and reconsiders a single narrative for its plenitude of meaning. While her narrative addresses God’s actions within and not bounded by time, her deliberation highlights human thought as a construct of time.

Deictics of Timelessness and Placelessness in Julian’s Example of the Lord and the Servant

In chapter fifty-one of A Revelation of Love, Julian’s “example” of the lord and the servant shifts the story of the Fall out of history by abstracting the moment of the Fall and the (historically later) moment of the Incarnation: in her thought experiment, the two exist in parallel, or, more precisely, simultaneously in the same action.⁴⁴ Here I wish to consider how Julian emphasizes the experience of interpretation through the manner in which her narrative unfolds. In the process, she meditates on the implications of the hypostatic union. Her complex exposition puts into play a fluidity of doubleness that engages simultaneous dualities, including how an incomplete understanding at a present moment points to the potential for a full understanding at a future (if repeatedly deferred) moment, how the actions of the servant illuminate a congruity between Adam and Christ, and how the figure of the servant further elucidates what it means to be human by concurrently embodying individual and collective humanity. While it might seem that Julian seeks to approximate the instantaneous manner in which God comprehends history (because she sees Adam, Christ, and all Christians together in the servant at the same time), her way of telling the story also suggests that she is interested in how human understanding develops over time. Her thought experiment investigates the very human experience of interpretation, which for Julian, as for her readers, must take place in and through time.

In the narrative, the “example” itself is prompted by Julian’s desire to understand what sin is. She has been considering sin and salvation, and recognizes that sin is real. However, in her visions, she has not seen it: “I saw our lord God shewand to us no more blame than if we were as clene [and] as holy as angelys be in hevyn” (50.16–18).⁴⁵ So she asks God for clarification: “If I take it thus, that we be not synners ne no blameworthy, it semyth [seems] as I shuld eryn [err] and faile of knoweing of this soth [truth]. And if it be so that we be synners and blameworthy, good lord, how may it than ben that I cannot sen [see] this sothnes in the [you], which art my God, my maker, in whom I desire to sen al trueths?” (50.27–31). The exemplum comes as a response to her desire to know why she cannot see sin. Briefly, her first telling of the story goes like this: she sees a lord sitting on the ground, with a servant standing before him, ready and desirous of doing the lord’s will. The lord sends the servant out, and the servant runs eagerly, but in running falls into a ditch from which he cannot rise. For the servant, the worst experience is that he feels his pain without comfort. All the while, the lord is looking on him lovingly and with comfort, but the servant cannot see that it is so. The lord desires to reward his servant and change his harms into honors, greater ones than the servant would have had if he had not fallen.

The meaning of this narrative is the subject of Julian’s attention throughout her very long chapter fifty-one and the following chapters that consider, among other theologically complex topics, substance and sensuality (which I discussed in Chapter 1) and the trope of Jesus as mother, for which her work is well known. Julian says she understands the servant to be Adam, but notes that certain aspects of the narrative do not quite apply to Adam:

and yet cowth [could] I not taken therin ful vnderstondyng to myn ese [ease] at that tyme; for in the servant that was shewid for Adam, as I shal seyn, I saw many dyvers [diverse] properties that myten be no manner way ben aret [attributed] to single Adam [Adam alone]. And thus in that tyme I stode mekyl [much] in onknowyng [doubt, “unknowing”] for the full vnderstondyng of this mervelous example was not goven me in that tyme . . . (51.67–72)

She later comes to see that these puzzling aspects of the story become intelligible if she thinks of Christ as well. The congruity Julian perceives between Christ and Adam in the person of the servant is nevertheless a source of great wonder for her, and in this respect her “example” differs from an exemplum as it might be used in preaching, which could more straightforwardly point toward a moral or behavior to be emulated.⁴⁶ In Julian’s practice, congruity is apt but not so obvious as to be banal, so it requires a certain puzzling through, for which the reward is astonishment and pleasurable wonder at the aptness.⁴⁷ In her view, God writes history like a poet using figurative language, it seems. In this respect, her technique is interesting to consider in conjunction with Aristotle’s views on metaphor, wherein the best metaphors are apt but not obvious, because obvious ones are boring and difficult ones uninteresting.⁴⁸

The key for both Julian and Aristotle lies in similitude and depth: the deeper one goes into the implications of the example, the more surprising—and pleasing—suitable congruities become. Pleasure is to be found in similarity, but for similarity there must also be difference. As with “figurative” language, where another sense runs in parallel to the “literal” sense, here too the otherness runs pleasingly in parallel, as Julian’s commentary repeatedly reminds us (e.g., “. . . and this was of that other shewyng; and now my vnderstondyng led agen into the first, both kepand in mynd” [51.46–48]). Importantly, much of chapter fifty-one is centered on experiential processing, or comprehension: what and how Julian saw, in and through time, and how she came to understand it. Nevertheless, at this point, “both kepand in mynd” refers to a process during the vision, not after it. She presents her vision as an active (rather than passive) reception, an interpretative experience grounded in dualities that help her to further her understanding of the relationship between divinity and humanity.

The “double understondyng” (51.165) of Julian’s interpretative process works much like the cognitive salience and backgrounding I discussed earlier, but her thought seeks a simultaneous processing of figure and ground, a real conceptual challenge.⁴⁹ For example, in the servant she sees “a continuant labourer of leng tyme” (51.182), whom she later identifies as Adam, but at the same time “it semyd that he was anew, that is to sey, new begynnyng to travellyn [working], which servant was never sent out aforn [before]” (51.183–85), a quality she associates with Christ. Her vision in her present time concerns two previous moments in historical time (the Fall and the Incarnation), as understood with timeless significance. God’s actions in time and Julian’s understanding over time are precisely the issue, in this “example” as well as elsewhere. That point is made consistently throughout the text, as Julian explicitly discusses how she experienced two “shewyng[s]” (51.47) (modes of visionary perception), and how she later came to understand the experience. She calls these “gostly in bodily lyknes” and “more gostly without bodyly lyknes” (51.9–10): a spiritual vision in bodily form, and a more spiritual vision without bodily form.⁵⁰ The line I quoted in my previous paragraph provides another example of Julian setting aside the dichotomy of figure and ground: “ . . and this was of that other shewyng; and now my vnderstondyng led agen into the first, both kepand in mynd” (emphasis added). The clause “this was of that other shewyng” denotes “more gostly without bodyly lykness” (in this case, the lord’s plans to glorify the servant). The clause “led agen into the first” corresponds to “gostly in bodily lyknes” (the lack of comfort in the prostrate servant).

Later in the chapter Julian refers again to this passage explicitly to collapse the two modes of experience into one moment in time. Having just explained what she understood the lord’s sitting on the earth to mean and what the colors and qualities of his face and clothing signified (the “this” of the following quotation), she comments on the instantaneous quality of her cognitive processing: “And this was shewid in a touch [instant] wher I sey ‘Myn vnderstondyng was led into the lord,’ in which I saw him heyly enioyen [greatly rejoicing] for the worshipful restoring that he wil and shal bring his servant to be [by] his plenteous grace” (51.159–62). Unexpectedly, however, quite a lot else intrudes between her explanation of what she initially perceived and her more precise explanation of what she saw “more gostly without bodyly lykness”: the remainder of the initial “shewyng” (to 51.62); the vanishing of the “shewyng” (51.63) and God’s leading her understanding “in syte [vision] and in shewing of the revelation to the end” (51.64); her marveling over what she had seen and aspects she could not understand (51.64–75); three processes that helped her to make sense of the “example,” some of these taking place nearly twenty years after the original showing (51.75–101);⁵¹ the identity of the lord as the Father and the servant as Adam, but Adam in the sense of a man as representative of all of humanity (51.102–17); the beginning of her understanding of how God perceives sin (51.117–22); the meaning of the place in which the lord sat, and of his clothes, and the colors of them, and his demeanor (51.122–59). This long deferral makes the immediacy of “this was shewid in a touch” (51.159) rather a surprise, and certainly necessitates the context she goes on to give (“wher I sey ‘Myn vnderstondyng was led into the lord’ . . .” [51.159–60]). This technique comes across as a circularity of thought that continually leads Julian back to her initial vision, a process of considering and reconsidering that seems to forward her further understanding. Such circularity fits with how many scholars view Julian’s thought. Certainly she presents the process as a ruminative one, and there seems no reason to doubt that it is so. Nevertheless, perhaps of even more interest is the deliberate care with which she reserves a crucial aspect of how she experienced what she did, revealing it a considerable time after she tells about the moment she experienced it. Before her nearly twenty years of further thought, at the moment when her experience switched from “gostly in bodily lyknes” to “more gostly without bodyly lykness,” she knew instantaneously quite a number of things about what the vision signified, with respect to God. When she tells about the immediacy of her perception only at this later moment in her text, she highlights the importance of time in human understanding even as she makes the vision itself more memorable; this technique prompts us to go back to reread the moment to which she refers.

Yet a full understanding of the “example” is not available even then: for Julian, as for Langland, the narrative defers completion, reaching beyond the written words to incorporate the reader’s lived experience, and experience-to-come, as part of the story: “This booke is begunne be [by] Gods gift and his grace, but it is not yet performid, as to my syte [sight]” (86.8–9). At the same time as her “shewyng” of the servant draws together significant dualities, she acknowledges the limitations of this mode of understanding, or perhaps of any mode of human understanding. The servant cannot see the lord’s loving nature clearly, nor can he perceive how the lord thinks of him (“neither he seith [sees] clerly his lovyng lord, which is to him ful [very] meke and mylde, ne he seith trewly what himself is in the sygte of his lovyng lord,” 51.112–14).⁵² At this point she invokes the Pauline enigma via the root metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, highlighting the role of time in comprehension: “And wel I wote [know], when these ii [the servant’s perception of God’s nature, and how God views the servant] are wysely and treuly seyn, we shall gettyn rest and peas [peace] her in parte, and the fulhede of the bliss of hevyn, be [by] his plentivous grace” (51.114–17). She later goes on to link comprehension and the experiential present moment with respect to God’s gracious response to the limitations of human understanding: “And what tyme that he of his goodnes will shewin hym to man, he shewith him homley [intimately, with familiarity] as man; notwithstonding I ne saw sothly, we owen [ought] to knowen and levyn [believe] that the Fader is not man” (51.143–46).

While the process of reading and rereading marks one important time-based duality at play in the “example,” the concept of iterated work—reading and rereading, working and reworking toward the repeatedly deferred clear sight of God—also resonates with the second duality I noted earlier: the servant as Adam and as Christ. Julian sees a doubleness in the labor of the servant, who is both a longstanding retainer accustomed to work (the longevity Julian identifies with Adam) and a new hand being sent out for the first time to begin a work he has not previously undertaken (the newness Julian links to Christ’s humanity). Just as she had held back mentioning the instantaneous nature of her experience, she also reserves a detail crucial for understanding this duality. In her initial telling, the lord sends the servant on an unspecified errand. Midway through chapter fifty-one, Julian reveals that the servant goes out after “a tresor in the erth which the lord lovid” (51.185–86). The servant’s part in initiating the action is greater in this retelling than in the opening lines of the chapter: the servant seeks this treasure because “The wisdam of the servant saw inwardly that ther was on [one] thing to don which shuld be to the worshipp of the lord. And the servant for love, haveing no reward to hymselfe ne to nothing that might fallen on him, hastely he stirt [started] and ran at the sendyng of his lord to don that thing which was his will and his worship” (51.176–81). This treasure, she finds, “is a mete [food] which is lovesome and plesant to the lord” (51.187–88), and so, she says, the servant takes on the hardest sort of labor, working as a gardener.⁵³

The laborious work of the servant is generative and agricultural as well as domestic and hospitable, producing both drink (from “swete flods,” 51.197) and food (“plenteous fruits,” 51.197) for the lord. This passage, so central to Julian’s new understanding of the example, remains intriguingly ambiguous with regard to several important points:

Ther was a tresor in the erth which the lord lovid. I mervelid and thowte what it myte ben. And I was answered in myn vnderstondyng: “It is a mete [ food] which is lovesome and plesant to the lord.” For I saw the lord sitten as a man, and I saw neither mete ner drynke wherwith to servyn hym; this was on [one] mervel. Another mervel was that this solemn lord had no servant but on, and hym he sent owte. I beheld, thynkyng what manner labour it myte ben that the servant shud don. And than I understode that he shuld don the gretest labor and herdest travel [work] that is—he shuld ben a gardiner; delvyn [dig] and dykyn, swinkin [work] and swetyn [sweat], and turne the earth upsodowne, and sekyn [seek] the depnes, and wattir the plants in tyme. And in this he shuld continu his travel and make swete flods to rennen [run], and noble and plenteous fruits to springen, which he shuld bryng aforn [before] the lord and servyn hym therwith to his lykyng. And he shuld never turne agen till he had dygte [prepared] this mete al redye as he knew that it lekyd the lord, and than he shuld take this mete [ food], with the drinke in the mete, and beryn it ful worshipfully aforn the lord. And al this tyme the lord shuld sytten on the same place abydand [abiding] his servant whome he sent out. And yet I merveylid from whens the servant came; for I saw in the lord that he hath wythyn hymselfe endles lif and al manner of goodnes, save that tresor that was in the erth and that was groundyd in the lord in mervelous depenes of endles love—but it was not all to the worship till this servant had dygte [prepared] thus nobly it, and browte it aforn him, in hymself present; and without [surrounding] the lord was nothing but wildernes. (51.185–210, emphasis added)

Similar imagery of fecundity in nature would have been available to Julian from the initial chapters of Genesis, of course, where the topic of agricultural work is introduced (by reference to its lack) before the creation of Adam.⁵⁴ I am interested here particularly in three aspects of the servant’s work: his “sekyn[g] the depnes” and “watir[yng] the plants in tyme,” and his preparation of the food and drink for the lord.

The first action described as part of the servant’s work is his vigorous and strenuous digging, which leads to or is a part of seeking the deepness, which leads to or is a part of watering the plants in time. All this work causes the “swete flodes” to run, and these, together with the servant’s cultivating, give rise to plentiful fruits. The fruit and water initially might seem to represent sufficient sustenance as found in nature; however, Julian pointedly notes that the servant prepares them before he brings both together for the meal. In Sloane but not in Paris, the wording of the description of the meal is strikingly technical: “he shuld take this mete, with the drinke in the mete, and beryn it ful worshipfully aforn the lord.”⁵⁵ With Sloane offering the difficilior lectio, “with the drinke in the mete” deserves serious consideration. Julian is working through the doubleness she sees in the servant, transitioning here from Adam to Christ. The details of the meal are not particularly appropriate to Adam except in a general way (perhaps as an Old Testament-style sacrifice), but they are appropriate to Christ in a very specific way, a way that relies on food and drink, wells of (cleansing) water, and fruitfulness. If we think through the agricultural work of the servant from the perspective of Christ rather than Adam, the plants nurtured by the servant’s “seeking the deepness” and “watering the plants in time” would correlate to humanity, the courteous gift Julian later envisions the Son giving to the Father (chapter fifty-five). In that context, the “flodes” suggest the very common Christian imagery of the blood and water flowing from the side of the crucified Christ.⁵⁶ While “sekyn[g] the depnes” is turning over the soil according to the “gostely in bodyly liknesse” sense, with respect to the life of Christ the meaning of this action doubles: seeking the experience of being human, where earth signifies human flesh (so seeking deepness is like pondus amoris, cf. Langland’s Incarnational “plonte of pees”), and journeying through the depths of hell after Adam and the others (i.e., the harrowing of hell, which comes up just after this [51.226–27], and it is important to remember that in chapter twelve it is Christ’s blood that harrows hell (a “swete flode”?). In chapter twelve, Julian had already drawn attention to God’s creation of flowing water to be used by humanity; close examination of this passage is helpful for considering the similar imagery in chapter fifty-one. While she does not spell out how flowing water is to be used, the context suggests it is for cleansing, and possibly also for drink (“to oure bodily ease”). She compares the created waters to Christ’s blood, which is more efficacious than water:

And after this I saw, beholding, [Christ’s] body plentiously bleding in seming of the scorgyng, as thus: the faire skynne was brokyn ful depe into the tender flesh with sharpe smyting al about the sweete body; so plenteously the hote blode ran oute that there was neither sene skynne ne wound, but as it were al blode. And whan it come wher it should a fallen downe, than it vanyshid; notwitstondyng, the bleding continued a while til it migt be sene with avisement [attention]. And this was so plenteous to my sigt that methowte, if it had be so in kind [nature] and in substance [(Aristotelian) “substance”] for that tyme, it should have made the bed al on blode and a passid over aboute. And than cam to my minde that God hath made waters plentivous in erthe to our service and to our bodily ease, for tender love that he hath to us, but yet lekyth him better that we take full homely [in a very familiar manner]⁵⁷ his blissid blode to washe us of synne; for there is no licor⁵⁸that is made that he lekyth [likes] so wele to give us; for it is most plentivous as it is most pretious, and that be [by] the vertue of his blissid Godhede. And it is our kinde [nature] and alblissfully beflowyth us be the vertue of his pretious love. The dereworthy blode of our lord Iesus Criste, as verily as it is most pretious, as verily it is most plentivous. Beholde and se. The pretious plenty of his dereworthy blode descendid downe into helle and braste her bands and deliveryd al that were there which longyd [belonged] to the curte [court] of hevyn. The pretious plenty of his dereworthy blode overflowith al erth and is redye to wash al creaturs of synne which be of gode will, have ben and shal ben. The pretious plenty of his dereworthy blode ascendid up into hevyn to the blissid body of our lord lesus Christe, and there is in him bleding and praying for us to the Father—and is and shall be as long as it nedith. And evermore it flowith in all hevyns enioying the salvation of al mankynde that arn there and shal ben, fulfilling the noumber that failith [completing the number that (now) falls short]. (12.4–33, emphasis added)⁵⁹

As in chapter fifty-one, in chapter twelve her meditation on the imagery of flowing water leads to her consideration of the harrowing of hell, here effected by the blood of Christ.⁶⁰ This imagery further resonates with her insight regarding Christ’s thirst (chapters 17, 31, 43, 75). Indeed, her treatment of Christ’s thirst in chapter seventy-five echoes significant imagery from chapter fifty-one, linking God’s thirst, his flowing generosity, and his gifts that are treasured and hidden within himself:

Pite in love kepith us in time of our nede, and longing in the same love drawith us into hevyn; for the threist of God is to have the general man into him, in which thrist he hath drawyn his holy that be now in bliss; and gettand his lively members, ever he drawith and drinkith, and yet he thristith and longith. . . . And not only we shall recevyn the same bliss the soule aforne have had in hevyn, but also we shall receive anew, which plenteously shal be flowing out of God into us and fulfillen us; and this be the goods which he hath ordeynid to geve us from without begynnyng; these goods are tresurid and hidde in hymselfe; for into that time, creature is not myty ne worthy to receivin them. (75.7–27, emphasis added)

The phrase “gettand his lively members” perhaps recalls the Pauline body of Christ of 1 Cor. 12, which Julian evokes in chapter fifty-one;⁶¹ in any case, Julian stresses life here (“lively members”), in contradistinction to the death from which the blood of Christ rescues Adam (and others).

With this whole imagistic sequence of Julian’s thought in mind, the agricultural motivation for the phrase “watering the plants in time” is worth a second look. Julian begins her description of the servant’s laborious digging and delving with generative imagery, and continues it with the suggestion of a stark opposition between life and death, since what happens if one does not water plants in time?⁶² Similarly, what happens if one does not eat or drink? The “swete flodes” and “plenteous fruits” ensure that we are cognitively primed to be thinking of the life-saving properties of food and drink, by the time we get to “with the drink in the mete.”⁶³

In its eucharistic implications, “The drink in the food” suggests the furthest extension of what Julian has in mind for the salvific work of the servant, and perhaps anticipates her later reference to Christ dwelling within the soul as “heyest bishopp” (67.10). Such eucharistic implications are borne out by her understanding of the servant as Christ as well as Adam, divinity and humanity conjoined, a revelation she emphasizes in a parallel construction:

In the servant is comprehendid the second person in the Trinite; and in the servant is comprehendid Adam: that is to sey, al man. And therfore whan I say “the Son,” it menyth [signifies] the Godhede which is even [equal (in status or quality)] with the Fadir, and whan I sey “the servant,” it menyth Crists manhood which is rythful Adam. (51.212–17)

As is typical of Julian’s sensitive treatment of language, “comprehendid” here both suggests how Julian understands (and by extension, her readers ought to understand: “it menyth”), and the expansive significance of what she comes to understand: comprehensive in the sense of all-encompassing, or circumscribing, which is a quality both of the sort of vision she has observed and of God himself. Julian’s technique of holding back detail for this later moment thus reinforces dualities of experience while highlighting the distinction between showing and interpretation. That focus on dualities appropriately comes just where she begins to investigate the doubleness of the hypostatic union, divinity and humanity conjoined. Further, she takes the doubleness of the servant to signify both the specificity of a single person (Adam as a distinct human individual; Jesus as an individual living in the world) and the generality of human community, encompassing both “each of us” and “all of us.”⁶⁴ Indeed, she extends the Pauline notion of Christian community as the body of Christ imaginatively, moving beyond “he is the hede and we be his members,” a mode of thought that subordinates parts of the body to its whole, to the more daringly direct assertion that collectively “all mankynd that shal be savid” are Christ’s humanity: “. . . all mankynd that shal be savid be [by] the swete incarnation and blisful passion of Criste, al is the manhood of Criste; for he is the hede and we be his members” (51.258–60). In its conceptual breadth and its imagistic malleability, this way of thinking about Christ’s humanity comes close to Langland’s treatment of the figure of Piers Plowman. The brief reframing of the Pauline body of Christ also recalls her earlier insight that “we be his corone” (22.24), the courteous gift of the Son to the Father: the “tresor” (of humanity) the servant sought comes to be transformed to “worshipps” presented to the Father by the Son (and then returned again to the Son from the Father).⁶⁵

To this point I have discussed three dualities Julian perceives in the “example”: how an incomplete understanding at a present moment points to the potential for a full understanding at a future (if repeatedly deferred) moment, how the actions of the servant illuminate a congruity between Adam and Christ, and how the figure of the servant further elucidates what it means to be human by concurrently embodying individual and collective humanity. These have relied on a parallel sort of cognitive processing, “x” alongside “y.” To draw forth the doubleness she perceives in the servant, Julian further emphasizes dualities that not only run in parallel but also point up the Son’s position as mediator, the midpoint between the Father and humanity, a unifying middle.⁶⁶ After she tells the “example” for the second time, with the new detail of the “tresor,” she repeatedly draws attention to the material substance of the servant’s clothing, or “Adam’s kirtle” (51.252, 51.267, 51.308), which she comes to see transformed into “a fair, semely medlur,” as she calls it, a beautiful and suitable cloth of mixed nature that by the end of chapter fifty-one epitomizes a rich layering of her thought centered on the hypostatic union.

Early in chapter fifty-one, she uses the same word to describe the mingled emotions in the lord’s loving gaze on the prostrate servant: “The fair lokyng shewid of a semely medlur which was marvelous to beholden: that on was ruth and pety, that other was ioye and bliss” (51.131–33). This duality comes at a moment in the narrative before her insight into the servant as both Adam and Christ, yet anticipates the redemption. She links the “ruth and pety” directly to “the falling of Adam” and the “ioy and bliss” to “his dereworthy Son” (51.136–37). The lord’s mingled yet loving gaze, comprehensive in its understanding as in its completeness (“The merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher fulfilled al erth,” 51.138–39) accompanies Adam into hell (“and descendid downe with Adam into helle,” 51.139), where Julian momentarily leaves him while she considers God’s gracious response to the limitations of human understanding.⁶⁷ She turns to interpreting aspects of the lord’s demeanor, in the course of which she slips in a reference to the mingled nature of humanity, recalling the creation of “mankynd, which is medlid with erth” (51.152). That “medlid” looks backward in her narrative to the mingled (positive) emotions of the lord, which had also anticipated the historical moment of the Incarnation of “his dereworthy Son,” as we have already seen. Key to her doubled understanding of the servant is the Son’s transformation of humanity, the “tresor” the servant runs to get and prepare to the “worship” of the lord, and she uses “medlur” to reinforce both the link between Adam and Christ and the transformative action of the Incarnation, with the cloth reference imagistically recalling the material, fleshly aspect of humanity.⁶⁸

Let me return here, briefly, to Julian’s introduction of “tresor” into the “example,” for another cluster of imagery important to the incarnate nature of Christ, imagery centered on the earth in which the servant digs as he does his work. We have already seen that Julian associates the created nature of humanity with the earth, following the imagery of Genesis. The work of the servant, recall, was to “delvyn and dykyn, swinkin and swetyn, and turne the earth upsodowne, and sekyn the depnes, and wattir the plants in tyme” (51.194–96). Julian locates a deepness in several other places, notably within the lord himself, in the field where the treasure is to be sought, in the “slade” into which the servant falls, and in hell, where she momentarily leaves Adam as she continues to consider the details of her vision. As she ponders the nature of the “mete” that is the “tresor,” she perceives a deepness in the lord that is related to the “tresor”:

. . . I saw in the lord that he hath wythyn hymselfe endles lif and al manner of goodnes, save [except for] that tresor that was in the erth—and that was groundyd in the lord in mervelous depenes of endles love—but it [the treasure] was not all to the worship till this servant had dygte [prepared] thus nobly it, and browte it aforn him, in hymself present⁶⁹ . . . (51.205–10)

With characteristic care and precision, Julian brings together a series of complicated theological issues here. The “tresor” is not at this point within the lord, but has its foundations in the lord, or is rooted in the lord (perhaps the agricultural lexicon privileges the latter) in a deepness like that the servant is to seek.⁷⁰ As elsewhere, Julian implies interiority with “deepness.”⁷¹ Despite the eucharistic implications of the servant’s action, any language of sacrifice is surprisingly absent here; the emphasis is entirely on the transformation the servant brings about, and the increased honor it correspondingly brings the lord. Like Langland, Julian also draws on the harrowing of hell for imagery that highlights travel over an extreme distance as a means of reinforcing the magnitude of Christ’s action; she not only maps Christ’s “fall” (the Incarnation) onto Adam’s, but also reverses the fall into an ascent, much as Langland does in the “plonte of pees” passage I examined in Chapter 3.⁷² For Julian, the action of the Fall and the action of the Incarnation coincide, emanatively leading to the harrowing: “Gods Son fell with Adam into the slade [valley] of the mayden wombe, which was the fairest dauter of Adam, and therfor [by that] to excuse Adam from blame in hevyn and in erth; and mytyly he fetchid him out of hell” (51.224–27). It may well be that Julian had the depth of hell in mind when she first worked out the servant’s initial action of “sekyn[g] the depnesse.” Certainly she later reinforces the extreme reaches of hell and of heaven when she describes the Son’s death and resurrection at the end of chapter fifty-one. By this point, her focus is on the servant envisioned as the Son and humanity together; the individuality of Adam has largely dropped away except in her evocations of his clothing (“Adams kirtle”):

And be [by] the wallowyng and wrythyng, groning and monyng, is vnderstonden that he myte never rysen al mytyly from the tyme that he was fallen into the maydens wombe till his body was slaine and ded, he yeldyng the soule in the Fadirs hands with al mankynd for whom he was sent.⁷³ And at this poynte he began first to shewen his myte; for he went into helle, and whan he was there he reysid up the grit rote [great company]⁷⁴ out of the depe depenes which rythfully was knit to hym in hey hevyn. (51.297–304)

The alliteration emphasizes the immense distance and contrast between hell and heaven (“reysid up the grit rote”; “depe depenes”; “hey hevyn”) even as Julian stresses the unity of Christ and humanity (“with al mankynd for whom he was sent”). Yet, as I showed earlier with “up” and “down,” in Julian’s usage, the deictics of place tend to model either interiority or hierarchical relationships rather than spatial ones.⁷⁵

In her next chapter, the “mervelous medlur” comes to signify the doubleness of the human condition: fallen with Adam, risen with Christ. It is interesting to note that at this point Julian does not make the comparison directly parallel (Adam to Christ, Adam’s action to Christ’s action), but emphasizes continuity between Christ’s (risen) humanity in parallel with the result of Adam’s action:

Al that shal be savid, for the tyme of this life, we have in us a mervelous medlur bothen of wele [joy] and wo. We have in us our lord Iesus uprysen; we have in us the wretchidnes of the mischefe of Adams fallyng, deyand [dying]. Be Criste we are stedfastly kept, and be his grace touchyng we are reysid into sekir [certain/ reliable] troste of salvation. And be Adams fallyng we arn so broken in our felyng on divers manner, be synes and be sondry peynes, in which we arn made derke and so blinde that onethys [scarcely] we can taken ony comfort. (52.10–18)

Julian takes particular care here to specify that the “mervelous medlur” lasts only “for the tyme of this life.” The mixed condition of humanity offers a sight of God sometimes, and a blindness other times, depending on what God offers, and this vacillation between sight and blindness she describes as rising or falling:

And of his godeness he opynyth the eye of our vnderstondyng be [by] which we have syte, sumtyme more and sumtyme less, after that God gevyth abilite to takyn. And now we arn reysid into that on, and now we are suffrid to fallen into that other. And thus is this medle [= medlur] so mervelous in us that onethys [scarcely] we knowen of our selfe or of our evyn Cristen in what way we stonden, for the merveloushede of this sundry felyng . . . And yet nevertheles whan this sweteness is hidde, we falyn ageyn into blindhede, and so into wo and tribulation on divers manner. . . . but we grutchin theragen, and duryin [persevere] in peyne and wo, prayand into that tyme that he shewith him agen to us. And thus we stonden in this medlur all the dayes of our life. (52.20–37)

Thus, in her mature thought on the example, Julian ultimately sees each individual Christian in the position of the servant, rising into sight and falling into blindness, particular but general (“we,” not “I”). The medlur is common to humanity but “mervelous” because of Christ, and the close of the passage I just quoted gives something of a nod backward to Adam’s laborious work as a gardener in its modified echoing of God’s curse in Gen. 3:17 (“all the days of your life”).⁷⁶ The way Julian manages the shifting signification of “medlur” seems very similar to the way Langland handles “Piers’s arms” (20.21) as a clothing-based system of imagery. In both cases, the striking imagery enables meditation on the complex relationship among humanity in general, the incarnate Christ, and post-Incarnation humanity.

Finally, while I have treated Julian’s use of the deictics of place already, her deictics of time in the example are especially worth close attention, particularly in comparison to Langland’s. Julian does not situate her example within current historical time as Langland does his narrative, except perhaps insofar as the lord and servant relationship is a social construct of her time. With the deictics of time, Julian moves her “mystye example” beyond a mere similitude. The other-pointing-ness of the servant in the example is not strictly speaking metaphorical or allegorical: the servant does not so much represent something on some level other than the narrative one. Nevertheless, the example’s implications for Julian’s understanding of humanity are grounded, to use the word she favors, in lived reality—Adam’s, Christ’s, Julian’s, her readers’—and the example relies on an overlay of time frames for its cumulative meaning. The servant’s dualities have real-world signification tied directly to experiential time.

In this respect, Julian’s “example” profits from being set alongside the textually self-aware “Long Charter.” In Chapter 3 I noted how the historical-yet-timeless quality of the narrative in the “Long Charter” is justified by recourse to scripture. With its self-reflexive emphasis on biblical texts that tell and foretell the story of Christ, a story also written out directly on and by means of his body, the “Long Charter” draws readers into the narrative in an experiential way, placing them in the position of the passersby addressed by Christ from the Cross via the biblical text “O vos omnes qui transitis per viam (Lam. 1:12: “O all ye that pass by the way, attend, [and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow: for he hath made a vintage of me, as the Lord spoke in the day of his fierce anger.]”). Readers are invited both to listen to the text of the charter (as Christ relates it) and to read it (gazing on his body):

Hereþ now and 3e shulle weton	hear; understand
Hou þis chartre was y wryton	how
. . . . . . . . . .
Hou many lettres þer on ben
Red and þou maist weton and sen Read; know; see
ffive thousand CCCC fifty and ten	5,460
Woundes on me boþe rede and wen	fair
To shew 3ou alle my loue dede	show
Mi self I w[ill]þe chartre rede
3e men þat gon forþ by the weye
Abideth and lokeþ with 3oure ye	eye
And redeþ on pisparchemyn	read
3if eny serwe be lyk to myn	sorrow
O uos omnes qui transitis per viam attendite
Wiþstondeþ and hereþ þis chartre rad
Whi I am wounded an al for-blad (emphasis added)

The association between the Lamentations text and the Crucifixion is an exegetical commonplace also attested in the liturgy for Holy Week. Here, however, the “Long Charter” poet has added to its effectiveness by smoothly connecting three types of temporality: a moment in historical time, the Crucifixion; a timeless moment, Christ on the Cross envisioning passersby stopping to read the charter; and a present moment, when a reader reads the words “Abideth and lokeþ with 3oure ye / And redeþ on þis parchemyn,” words within the poem that anticipate the words of the poetic charter that follows a few lines later. The transition is so suitable aesthetically that it is easy to overlook the ingenuity that draws attention to writing the charter and reading the charter as actions within or transcending historical time.⁷⁷

To return to Julian’s deictics of time, it is with the servant’s work perceived in the actions of the Son that Julian draws on the fuller implications of the fullness of time, much as Langland does. In the closing section of chapter fifty-one, the focus on time and the appropriate time escalates, eventually culminating in a series of deictics that cascade to quicken the tempo of her conclusion. When is the appropriate time for the Son to take on humanity? God knows! (when he wills it):

And thus I saw the Son stonding, sayeing in his menyng: ‘Lo, my der Fader, I stond befor the in Adams kirtle al redy to sterten and to rennen. I wold ben in the erth to don thy worship whan it is thy will to send me. How long shal I desiren?’ Ful sothfastly [truly] wist [knew] the Son whan it was the Fader will and how long he shal desiren; that is to sey, anempt [with respect to] the Godhede, for he is the wisdam of the Fader. Wherfor this mening was shewid in vnderstondyng of the manhode of Criste; for all mankynd that shal be savid be the swete incarnation and blisful passion of Criste, al is the manhood of Criste, for he is the hede and we be his members; to which members the day and the tyme is onknown whan every passand wo and sorow shal have an end, and the everlestyng ioy and bliss shall be fulfyled; which day and time for to se al the company of hevyn longyth. (51.250–63)

Much as with Langland’s “plenitudo temporis tyme,” the redemptive time of the Incarnation begins to coincide with the redemptive time of the Crucifixion and Ascension, for by the end of the passage I have just quoted, the longed-for moment is no longer quite the Incarnation itself.⁷⁸ Here, too, is the moment in the narrative when Julian chooses to declare that her understanding of the example is only nascent, “as it were the begynnyng of an ABC, wherby I may have sum vnderstondyng of our lordis menyng; for the privities of the revelation ben hidd therin, notwithstondyng that al the shewing arn ful of privityes” (51.271–74). The “not yet” quality inherent in the vignette of the Son standing before the Father, longing and thirsting to serve, merges with the “not yet” of humanity longing to experience the fulfillment of the redemption, and with the “not yet” of Julian’s (and the reader’s) experiential understanding. Like Langland, Julian associates the juncture of the divine and the human with emanative action, action that once set into motion cascades into further action:

His stertyng was the Godhede, and the rennyng was the manhede; for the Godhede sterte from the Fadir into the maydens wombe, falling into the taking of our kynde [nature]; and in this falling he toke gret sore; the sore that he toke was our flesh in which he had also swithe [great] felyng of dedly peynis [pains]. (51.280–84)

Her continuing explication of the vignette leads her to a concise retelling of events from Christ’s life, beginning with the Crucifixion as an explanation for the significance of “his kirtle [that] was in poynte to be raggid and rent” (51.292), his death, the harrowing of hell (the “grit rote” passage I discussed earlier), and his transformation of humanity and ascension to heaven as a reversal of Adam’s fall but the natural extension of Christ’s fall. Once again imagery of clothing predominates, but here the pace of her telling quickens as she winds up her retelling of the example, and of chapter fifty-one, punctuating the transformation she observes by emphatic deictics that locate the lord and the servant, the Father and the Son, in time and space that increasingly merge with a timeless present:

The body was in the grave till Estern morow, and from that tyme he lay never more; for then was rythfully endid the walowyng and the wrythyng, the groning and the monyng; and our foule dedly flesh that Gods Son toke on hym, which was Adams old kirtle, steyte [narrow], bare [threadbare] and short, than be our saviour was made fair now,⁷⁹ white and bryte and of endles cleness, wyde and syde [ample], fairer and richer than was than the clothyng which I saw on the Fadir; for that clothyng was blew, and Christs clothyng is now of a fair, semely [pleasing/suitable] medlur which is so mervelous that I can it not discrien; for it is al of very worshipps. Now sittith not the lord on erth in wilderness, but he sittith in his noblest sete which he made in hevyn most to his lekyng. Now stondith not the Son aforn the Fadir as a servant dredfully, unornely clad, in party nakid but he stondith aforn the Fadir ever rythe [right in front], rechely clad in blissfull largess, with a corone upon his hede of pretious richess; for it was shewid that we be his corone, Now stondith not the Son aforn the Fadir on the left syde as a laborer, but he sittith on his Fadirs ryte hand in endles rest and peace. . . . Now is the spouse, Gods Son, in peace with his lowid wife, which is the fair mayden of endles ioye. Now sittith the Son, very God and man, in his cety in rest and peace, which his Fadir hath adyte to [prepared for] him of his endles purpose; and the Fadir in the Son, and tho Holy Gost in the Fadir and in the Son. (51.304–32; emphasis added)

Just as the moment of plenitudo temporis shifted from Incarnation to Crucifixion to Ascension in lines 250 to 264 (quoted above), here too Julian shifts her temporal deictics; the historical moment (“then”) shifts to the experiential present (“now”) as Julian describes the transformation of the “medlur,” “our foule dedly flesh,” “Adams old kirtle.” That experiential present then predominates to punctuate the apt congruity of the transformation as Julian takes to highlighting the contrast between past and present by describing the past only through the filter of the present (“now”): “Now sittith not . . . but he sittith . . . Now stondith not . . . but he stondith . . . Now stondith not . . . but he sittith . . . Now is . . . Now sittith.”

In both Langland’s Tree of Charity sequence and Julian’s example of the lord and the servant, the particulars of the experiential “now” and the historical “then” prove to be key for thinking through the implications of the Incarnation. Both writers put in play a shifting of time and place that ultimately pops the narrative into an experiential present. There is a suitable aptness to the way in which the topic of time in narrative naturally flows into the topic of the poetic deep structure I wish to consider in the next chapter, whereby the poetic form encodes and enables a layering of understandings over and through time. First, though, I want to look briefly at how one non-narrative example, the lily crucifixion, similarly engages an experiential present to highlight the timeless-yettimebound Incarnational moment.

Images: The Impossibly “Simultaneous” Aspect of Reading “Simultaneous Narration”

When I introduced the lily crucifixion as a brief example of the concept of deep structure, I noted that the simultaneous narration that makes the image so effective leads to an emanative reading of the image.⁸⁰ The lily crucifixion uses the context of the moment of Annunciation to further suggest that the moment of Incarnation ought to be considered in relation to the moment of Crucifixion and to the moment of Resurrection (Figure 4, p. 199). The lily crucifixion presents the Incarnation both historically (as God’s action within time, there/then) and transhistorically (as Christ’s state of being, here/now). Moreover, the relationship the image implies is teleological in an emanative sense—ongoing, as in the leaps of Christ, wherein the Incarnation is the first of several leaps that may be understood to have been initiated by and to flow from that first leap.⁸¹ In the thought of God, of course, such flowings-forth or leaps exist simultaneously; the lily crucifixion itself offers a model for understanding such simultaneity.

The image is therefore especially useful for thinking about time in narrative, in that pictorial simultaneous narration must differ presentationally from narrative. While visual cues in an image suggest the order in which various components ought to be read (placement relative to the center, for example, or differences of scale), visual cues for narrative are perhaps more didactic (begin at the beginning and end at the end). While human perception can still only focus on one portion of the whole at a time in either case, an image perhaps suggests more seductively (if misleadingly) that a whole is being presented at once. The distinction makes me think of a card “trick” we used to play as children: you ask your victim to select several cards randomly from the deck without showing them to you, and then you reintegrate the cards into the deck without looking at them. To set up the joke (it is not really a trick), you ask, “would you like them all at once or one at a time?” and if the answer is “one at a time,” you quickly flick individual cards at the person until the deck is depleted (or until they cannot stand it any more, usually before the tenth card); if “all at once,” you throw the whole deck. The end result is the same, of course, and the joke lies in the disjuncture between the expectation that only the selected cards will be forthcoming and the actual non-trick of bombardment with all cards without selection. Nevertheless, that nondistinction between “all at once” and “one at a time” sticks in my head as being comparable to the theological point to be made by simultaneous narration in the context of Incarnation: to consider God’s perception, “all at once” makes the most sense, from a reader’s, it is “one at a time,” but the reality of the hypostatic union is the same in either case. Moreover, both card “trick” and image leave to the experiencer the work of recognizing that “all at once” is also “one at a time.” Because of the nature of the hypostatic union, the focus on time in the lily crucifixion really is different, and more theologically significant, than most instances of simultaneous narration would be: the emanative relationship is an important aspect of what is to be read in the image. So in this case, simultaneous narration does more than set episodes from a narrative alongside one another.

In this regard, I find it useful to consider an interesting case of an art historian thinking about metaphor theory to articulate his method of reading a different medieval image with theological implications, the Man of Sorrows. Bernhard Ridderbos draws on the work of philosopher Max Black to consider how “versions of the Man of Sorrows do not represent theological concepts directly, but rather refer to existing representations, between which a certain tension has been created as properties from them have been selected and fused into a new Gestalt.”⁸² Ridderbos is interested in the way the Byzantine image of the Man of Sorrows is generated by “fusing into one image elements from the representation of the crucified Christ and the representation of the Pantocrator. These two representations had certain features in common which made such a fusion possible The fusion of the two presentations had also as a consequence that certain elements were excluded . . . .”⁸³ Such a fusion of “a primary and a secondary subject” that are “two iconographical themes representing antithetical theological concepts” is analogous to what happens in metaphor, he feels:

The relationship between these two subjects can be compared to the way the subjects of a metaphorical statement are related to each other, although there seems to be a difficulty here: in a metaphorical statement the link between the two subjects depends on the distinction between literal and figurative language. Such a distinction cannot be applied to pictorial images; instead, it can be said that the “metaphorical” character of images of the Man of Sorrows depends on the distinction between conventions of realism and symbolism as these existed at the time the images were produced.⁸⁴

For this way of thinking about metaphor, the components of comparison are inherently abstract and conceptual (in this case, theological) rather than imagistic; Ridderbos is interested in a fusion of “antithetical theological concepts” (emphasis added), rather than of images per se. Nevertheless, he goes on to make a distinction between pictorial fusions and linguistic ones:

A fundamental difference, however, exists between the images of the Man of Sorrows and metaphorical statements: in the latter the interaction of the two subjects has to be enacted by the hearer or the reader; the beholder of an imago pietatis is confronted with the results of this process. This difference implies that the starting point of the beholder of such an image is opposite to that of the hearer or reader of a metaphorical statement: whereas the hearer [or] reader has to start from the subjects in order to decide which of their properties can be matched, the beholder has to start from the properties which have been fused into one image in order to decide to which subjects they belong.⁸⁵

While I am not altogether convinced that the process of reading an image of the Man of Sorrows is different from the process of generating meaning in metaphor in the way he describes, Ridderbos raises an interesting issue in asserting that the beholder must split out fused properties while a reader generates the conceptual fusion from “subjects” that are compared on the page. In his further thoughts on how experiential reading of a theologically informed image works, he raises issues remarkably similar to Julian’s:

As regards the Man of Sorrows, the relationship between evoking a personal devotional response on the part of the beholder and conveying a theological message can be clarified now with the help of our knowledge of the structure of this image. The beholder was confronted with an unusual combination: a dead figure in an upright position. With the help of other properties such as the Cross and the displaying of only half the figure, the beholder was to realise that some elements belonged to the theme of the crucified Christ and some to that of the Pantocrator. He had to conclude that this representation contained an image of the crucified Christ as an image of the Pantocrator and he had to ask himself why these images were connected in such a way. The answer was that in a theological sense the crucified Christ is the Pantocrator. Thus the delivery of the theological message of the image depended on the self-activity of the recipient.

Such an outline of the reactions expected from the beholder is schematic and suggests—wrongly—that the image was merely a riddle which had to be solved. The situation is actually quite different from that of a riddle, the characteristic of which is that as soon as the answer has been found, it is no longer interesting and in fact no longer exists. The identification of the properties of the Man of Sorrows, their relations to certain subjects and the relationships between these subjects, should not be seen as a purely cognitive activity the challenge of which was for one occasion only. The intriguing doubleness of the image could be experienced again and again.⁸⁶

While the experience of reading an image cannot be precisely the same as the experience of reading text, it is interesting to note that the sort of imagistic compressed metaphor Ridderbos describes seems closer to Julian’s textual example than to the lily crucifixion’s visual one, in part because the latter’s simultaneous narration does break out episodes from Christ’s life even as it encourages that emanative holistic reading.

In the chapter that follows, I am interested precisely in how readers are prompted to compare textual moments that are related thematically but occur at different times within the narrative, in some cases at quite a distance from one another. From considering temporal fluidity in narrative, and the compression of episodically distinct moments presented as if part of one action (“all at once”), I now move to the larger poetic structures that form an Incarnational poetic, that are both generated by and seek to represent, in their iterating pattern, the “middleness” or suffusing presence of the incarnate Christ.