Afterword

Abstract

Masculine power is both attractive and problematic in early Christianity. Christ’s renunciation of wealth, power, and status makes him an uneasy role model for late Roman and medieval men of faith. His teachings about the value of humility over pride, poverty over wealth, and submission over dominance collide with antique Roman culture and continue to jar against the social norms of medieval Europe. Suspended on thousands of crucifixes throughout Europe, Christ at once enacts a self-sacrificial divine love and watches over the rise of a hierarchical church, the consolidation of a militant papacy, and the amassing of ecclesiastical wealth. The image of the crucified Lord creates the possibility of a counterhistory within the institutional church: a subversive narrative in which the most perfect man eschews conventional social power, and calls upon his followers to do likewise. Medieval men can find easier role models in scripture (Moses, Paul), and the majority clearly do just that. Yet the example of Christ persistently challenges those who aspire to imitate him, confronting them with difficult questions about the relationship between the church and dominant culture, about the basis of their own social authority and institutional power. In response, some exegetes fashion for themselves childlike or feminine personae that express a spiritual authority distinct from traditional modes of social power.