I should be in bed, but since it is a summer's night I am staying up longer than is sensible. This night, moreover, is the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, one of few saints in Latin Christianity whose earthly birthday is celebrated, and moreover as his main feast. The eve of Saint John is an important time in European folklore, and there are numerous traditions associated with the night between June 23 and June 24.
Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, John the Baptist was a famous and popular saint, mainly due to his appearance in the Bible and his important role in the life of Christ. Several churches were dedicated to him, and his iconography made him a recognisable figure in medieval art. He is typically depicted as a wild-haired man dressed in a camel hide, usually holding an image of the Lamb of God, being, as he was, a forerunner for Christ.
Due to this iconographical tradition, I was rather surprised to come across a rather different representation in March, when I was researching a collection of saints' lives printed in Lübeck in 1492, namely the Passionael by Steffen Arndes. This was the second edition of Passionael, and the printer had commissioned a new set of woodcuts. For the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, the woodcut does not depict the desert hermit typical of medieval iconography. Rather, it highlights the birth of the saint, or rather his childhood. His sainted mother, Elizabeth, is lying in bed while the holy child is bathed by a maid, a situation that neither maid nor child seems very happy about. It is a sweet domestic scene, perhaps reflecting the secular audience of the collection, namely the merchants and artists of Lübeck.
While I was surprised by this iconography, it was not completely novel the world of late-medieval Latin Christian art. The birth of John the Baptist was recounted in the Bible, and it was part of an expanded narrative commemorated through liturgical celebrations in the Middle Ages. From the late fourteenth century onwards, the Latin Church put greater emphasis on the feast of the Visitation of Mary (July 2), and it was established a compulsory feast at the Council of Basil (1431-49). The Visitation commemorated her visit to John's mother Elizabeth while they both were pregnant. According to tradition, John gave a joyful leap in his mother's stomach when he sensed the approach of the coming Messiah. Consequently, the scene depicted in Passionael fits well within the development of the cults of both Mary and John the Baptist in the later Middle Ages.
One curious thing about the woodcuts in Passionael, however, is that this particular scene was also used for the chapter on the birth of the Virgin Mary, Nativitas Mariae, on September 8. The viewer is only asked to imagine that the mother who has recently given birth is Anne rather than Elizabeth, and that the baby boy in the bath tub is rather the baby girl who would grow up to become the mother of God. The reuse of this woodcut is perhaps primarily due to practical matters, an opportunity to pay for one less item, or perhaps to save time. But it is also a reminder that the reception of iconographical information is flexible. The readers and viewers of Passionael would eventually encounter both these woodcuts and recognise them as the same - after all, these two feasts are not that far apart in the liturgical calendar - but they would have no problem letting this image represent one occasion on one day and another occasion on a different day. The identity of mother and child changes as the occasion changes, but the scene remains the same because that scene encapsulates what is being celebrated on both occasions, namely the birth of a figure central to the life of Christ. This kind of flexibility requires a kind of pragmatism and iconographical literacy that is often overlooked by modern viewers, inculcated as we are that art needs to be individual and unique. As a consequence, we often underestimate the artistic understanding of the people of the Middle Ages.
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