Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain: Materiality and the Flesh of the Word

Tiffany Beechy’s monograph Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain: Materiality and the Flesh of the Word examines the interaction between Irish and Roman Christianity in the portrayal of Incarnational doctrine in British sources from this period. Beechy builds on the work of scholars such as Johanna Kramer (Between Earth and Heaven: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Literature, Manchester University Press, 2014) and Cristina Maria Cervone (Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), clarifying how the relation of the Word to words (both revealed and concealed in the material world) in early medieval Britain was not metaphorical but metonymic and participatory. Beechy’s methodology—combining study of material culture, codicology, theology, and close reading—provides new insights into the source material and its complex and multifaceted theology.The introduction is theologically and theoretically dense. Not only does it cover the fundamentals of Incarnation doctrine but also how the Insular portrayal of Incarnation differed from its Roman counterpart, and the way in which the two variants coexisted and merged in early medieval Britain. Beechy argues in favor of a “double Incarnation,” in which the Word not only took on human flesh but also the form of the words of the Gospel. Men cannot grasp divinity directly but only through an imprint. The Hisperic or Irish style differed greatly from the Roman sermo humilis (humble speech) by employing highly wrought poetic language that bears the capacity to partake of and participate in the Incarnation, the divine articulate enigma.Chapter 1, “Supereffability and the Sacraments of Christ’s Humanity,” explores the “supereffability” of Christ’s divinity in relation to vernacular language in the Insular tradition. Insular writers such as Bede, Aldhelm, and Cynewulf all relate poetic language to the sacrament of Christ’s flesh, through which poetic words can embody the Word. The “sacraments of Christ’s humanity” refer to a property of Incarnational substance, which can be traced to the remains of the Lord’s body in the world or words that he spoke. Beechy notes how Insular writers are more positive than those influenced by the Roman tradition on the subject of Christ’s humanity, framing it as something he lacked before and gained in the process of Incarnation. In this chapter, Beechy describes how vernacularity and Christianity is yoked together by Bede in the Historia ecclesiastica: Bede uses the story of Cædmon to join sacred truth with vernacular verse; England is thus revealed as blessed within the divine plan since God chose an Englishman and vernacular verse as vessels for divine teaching. Meanwhile Cynewulf links the prophecy of Christ’s Incarnation with conception in Christ II in a way that invokes and enacts Incarnational poetics.Chapter 2, “Seeing Double: Representing a Hypostatic Union,” explores Christ’s dual nature as mystery and object of contemplation through the Book of Kells. Beechy shows that there is a systematic logic governing the representations of Christ’s duality in the Book of Kells, one that extends mediation on Christ’s existence to the double Incarnation of the Gospels, linking both body and scriptural words to the sacraments of Christ’s humanity. The words partake of the flesh of the Word in a way that makes the words themselves sacramental. This is achieved through illuminations that conjoin Christological elements, as well as four gospel incipits that form a meditation on the gospels and feature key structural elements that make changes to the idea of the Word made flesh. There are also several initials in which Christ himself appears to speak, either as himself or as speaking lions. The gospel word is an iteration of Christ, linked to his ascended person just as surely as the substance of the Eucharist, connecting humanity to his divinity through the materials and words he left behind.Chapter 3, “No Idea but in Things: Aesthetics and the Flesh of the Word,” considers how material objects (and people) become transformed because they came into contact with Christ’s holy, Incarnate body. After a consideration of Adamnán’s De locis sanctis, which concerns the perceptible representatives of the divine in matter, Beechy discusses the Holy Land’s physical properties as a living book inscribed with the Word. Beechy focuses primarily on the Mount of Olives, the center of Incarnational power, not only by being the place at which Christ spoke the Pater Noster but also connected with the assumption of Mary (as exemplified through Blickling Homily XIII). Mary is described as a container and vessel for divinity through Christ’s association with her womb, both literally (as her son) and artistically (through the mandorla shape, which is associated with the vagina, the wounds of Christ, and the Eucharist). As Mary was glorified through her contact with Christ’s body, the privileged contact the Cross has had with the Incarnate body also renders it exalted or glorified. In The Dream of the Rood both Cross and Mary become contact relics, serving as beacons of Incarnational presence for humankind as representatives of the created, material world.In Chapter 4, “Concealing is Revealing, Part 1: Opacity and Enigma in the Wisdom Tradition,” Beechy stresses the multiplicity of the Word through three separate traditions of Insular wisdom poetry. In the Twelve Latins, Virgilus Maro Grammaticus advocates that any word has twelve variants. As such, he stresses different views on or approaches to the truth as opposed to singular and authoritative answers. Aldhelm’s Enigmata creates opaqueness and defamiliarizes the landscape of the world so that we may perceive its textures and thus affirm the meticulousness of creation and its multiplicity. Finally, Beechy considers the Solomon and Saturn tradition, which contemplates the relation of the Word to the cosmos and to the holy language of scripture and liturgy, with a specific emphasis on the Pater Noster. All three traditions treat the Incarnational enigma as a mystery, both revealing and concealing at the same time.The final chapter, “Concealing is Revealing, Part 2: The Shadow Manuscript in the Margins of CCCC 41,” ties the monograph together thematically. It returns to topics previously discussed in other chapters, such as the depiction of Mary and the palm twig (chapter 3), the Mount of Olives and the Ascension, and the Old English Solomon and Saturn (chapter 4), but by retaining focus on one manuscript (in this case Cambridge Corpus Christi College 41), in a similar vein to chapter 2’s focus on the Book of Kells. The main text of CCCC 41 contains a vernacular translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica that indirectly connects the English people to the Incarnation, as Beechy discusses in chapter 1. At the center of the CCCC 41’s marginalia is Christ, deployed in ways that stress his metonymic connection to humanity and his role in the manifest creation. The marginalia contain charms, homilies, and prayers, all of which embody Christ the Word in Latin, Old English, and a mix of the two.The main strengths of Beechy’s monograph reside in her clear descriptions of the Incarnation and the detailed and varied analysis that encompasses the multiplicity of Incarnation doctrine in an approachable manner. Her codicological analysis of chapter 2 on the Book of Kells is particularly compelling and accessible. However, the final chapter, overly long and dense, makes it difficult to retain information about each individual text described and their contents. Noting the presence of the soul-and-body homily in the Vercelli Book (as Vercelli IV) would have strengthened the argument for the presence of Incarnational themes in this codex.Beechy’s Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain provides a valuable study of the Insular Incarnation, complementing Kramer’s 2014 book on the Ascension, and is a substantial addition to the growing study of vernacular theology.