Abstract
The visual relationship that Humanum Genus has with the audience shifts again between his ascent to Covetousness’s scaffold after line 1237 and his eventual entrance to the castle and meeting with the virtues at line 1696. After the last of the sins—Accidia (Sloth)—has ascended to Covetousness’s scaffold in the northeast at the request of Humanum Genus, Humanum Genus summarizes his situation as thus:
“Mankynde” I am callyd be kynde,
Wyth curssydnesse in costys knet.
In sowre swettenesse my syth I sende,
Wyth sevene synnys sadde beset.
Mekyl myrthe I move in mynde,
Wyth melody at my mowthis met (1238–1243)
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Notes
John D. Richardson and Destin N. Stewart, “Medieval Confession Practices and the Emergence of Modern Psychotherapy,” Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 12.5 (July 2009), 475.
Quoting M. Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 42.
Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “The Etiquette of Pre-Reformation Confession in East Anglia,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 17.2 (1986), 158.
Theodore Erbe, ed., Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, Extra Series 96 (London: EETS, 1905), 228–229. Schmitt, “Medieval Theatre in the Round?” 299: “The homily tells us that Mary was the castle that Jesus entered into; ‘for just as a castle has various properties that belong to a castle that is big and strong, so had our lady various virtues that made her able before all women to receive Christ… Our lady was as strong as a castle, and resisted the assault of the fiend’s machinations.’ And the homily continues, ‘just as a castle has a deep ditch to strengthen it, so has our lady a ditch of meekness so deep down into the earth of her heart, that no man can go over it… If the ditch be full of water, it adds even more strength to the castle; this water is compassion that a man has for his own guilt or for any other man’s diseases. This water had our lady, when she wept for her son’s passion and for his death so much, that when she had wept all the water that was in her eyes, she wept blood over this ditch, like a drawbridge that shall be drawn up against enemies, and let down to friends that will keep this castle. By this bridge ye shall understand obedience.’”
For an account of the manuscripts of the English translation, see R. F. Weymouth, “Bishop Grosseteste’s Castle of Love,” Transactions of the Philological Society, 8 (1862–1863), 48–66. James McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, notes, “The Castle of Love is a modern title, given to the work by S.H Thomspon. A title found in one of the 19 manuscripts is ‘Carmen de creatione mundi’—‘A song about the creation of the world,’ and it would have indeed likely have been sung” (149).
Kari Sajavaara, ed., Robert Grosseteste, The Middle English Translations of Robert Grosseteste’s Chatau D’Amour (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1967).
Scherb notes that “According to Mercea Eliade, to define the four points of the compass—the four horizons of the immediate sensible universe—is also to define the centre of things.” Victor Scherb, Staging Faith, 152, referencing Mercea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1959), 32.
Bevington David, “Visual Contrasts in the N-Town Passion Plays,” Mediavalia, 18 (1995 [for 1992]), 417.
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© 2015 Andrea Louise Young
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Young, A.L. (2015). The Castle of Light. In: Vision and Audience in Medieval Drama. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137446077_4
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