WORSHIP AND LITURGY

Both joy and grief find an outlet iu the rehgious imagery of the late Middle Ages, suffused as it is with mystical thought, the moments of tenderness of the childhood of Christ and the dolorous episodes of the Passion. Nativities  are as common as Crucifixions. However, several themes from the Passion cycle, particularly moving and rich in meaning, were held in special favour, being directly related to    popular worship and the liturgy.
Independently of any reference to the Gospel text, Christ was imagined after the ascent to Calvary, seated at Golgotha, hands and feet bound during the preparations for the agony. Crowned with thorns, he is stripped to the waist, the mantle of derision having slipped to the ground, and he hears the marks of the Flagellation. Head bowed, mouth partly open and eyes half-closed, he seems to meditate on man’s estate, and wears an expression of restrained suffering fir to arouse commiseration. The many portrayals of the Suffering Christ or Christ in bonds, often placed in cemeteries or funerary chapels, are evidence of the fervour of the faithful for this subject, frons which they drew a lesson of resignation in the face of pain and death. In the Hospital ofBeaune a Suffering Christ was placed on a console at one end of the “Great Ward of the Poor”: it was offered to the patients’ view, like the Lastjudgment of Rogier van der Weyden, an image of faith in the Resurrection that in the past had been placed opposite, on the altar. In the late fifteenth and during the sixteenth century, statues of the Suffering Christ in wood or stone were produced in abundance in Brabant, Hainaut and several French regions such as Burgundy and Champagne. In Germany the representations laid more emphasis on the human distress of Christ put to the torture (Schmerzensmann, Christus im Elena’) , withdrawn in his sorrow, his head resting on one hand in accordance with an iconographic formula probably derived from images ofjob on his dung- hill and dlustrated sn particular by Drer in the Little Passion of 1511. Not only the expression of feehngs by the play of facial features and attitudes, but also the monumental scale and polychromy of the sculptures, often lifesize and freestanding, attempt to give the illusion of life. Indeed, to bring the divsne closer to the world of humans is a constant feature of the art of the late Middle Ages. The ceremonies in which statues played a role in the quasi—theatrical representation of episodes from the Gospels testify still more pointedly to the desire of the faithful to confer a visual form on the great mysteries of the Faith. Much written or sculptured evsdenee of the rites practised during major festsvals of the liturgical calendar is still preserved, mainly on Germanic soil. A few examples make it possible to grasp the importance of the ties between those practices and the carved images.
 On Palm Sunday, to commemorate the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, it was the custom in most German towns to carry in procession a wooden effigy of Christ on a donkey (Palmesel) and to throw clothing and palm branches on the gfound as it passed. On the evening of Holy Thursday a rehgious ceremony often took place outside the church before a sculptured representation of the Gospel story of Christ praying on the Mount of Olives (Olberg), showing Christ kneeling and the three sleeping apostles in the garden of Gethsemane. On Good Friday a statue of Christ lying dead (or else a wooden crucifix with movable arms folded back) might be placed, along with the consecrated Host, in a small, tomb—shaped structure (Depositlo) on the breast of the crucified Christ. At Easter, to celebrate the Resurrection, the Host was carried back into the tabernacle and the effigy of Christ removed from the tomb and carried in procession (Elevatio). On Ascension Thursday a crucifix or a wooden sculpture of Christ giving blessing, standing on clouds, with a suspension ring fitted on its head enabhng it to be hoisted in the air by a cord, disappeared through an opening provided in the vaulting of the church. An image of the Virgin was thus lifted up in some towns during the feast of the Assumption. At Pentecost, the same opening in the roof vault could serve for lowering a wooden dove representing the Holy Ghost, surrounded by strips of incandescent paper simulating tongues of fire.
Among these customs, occasionally recorded in very early times, as far back as the tenth century in the West for the Palm Sunday procession, some became widespread in the late Middle Ages, developing into ritual acts around the official liturgy in which laymen actively participated and which thereby gave direct expression to the popular piety of the time. But the excesses that were liable to accompany many ceremonies, the abuses of the games, songs and dances, even inside the church, were sharply reproved by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which tried to prohibit or curtail some manifestations by dissociating them from the liturgy. The mystery plays acted on the squares in front of the churches were born of that sacred theatre originally integrated into traditional liturgical rites.
Venerated or even miraculous images, the statues carried or set up during processions and ceremonies had a devotional purpoie in addition to their material contribution to the performance. They were rich in the symbolic meaning given to the Gospel scene to which they referred. On the Mount of Olives the anguished prayer of Christ offering himself to redeem humanity in dramatic contrast to the sleeping apostles recalls the prayer of the believer and his faith in Redemption. This may explain the frequency of the subject, represented apart from other scenes of the Passion in large—sized cemeteries, on funeeary reliefs applied to the walls of churches and cloisters, and on small a’abaster sculptures for private use.