Love and Courtship in the Convent: St. Agnes and the Adult Christ in two Upper Rhine Manuscripts

Abstract

Two manuscripts, both dating about 1300, from convents in the Upper Rhine contain a group of illuminated initials and border medallions that depict St. Agnes of Rome as the bride of a loving adult Christ. The portrayal of Agnes as Christ's bride in any form is an unusual subject, occurring almost exclusively between about 1450 and 1520 in northern Europe and presenting Christ in his infant form, similar to the common iconography for St. Catherine of Alexandria. These much earlier manuscripts present the scene in a completely different manner and derive from very different visual conventions than the later examples. The imagery in one manuscript relates to that of Ecclesia wedding Christ as found in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Bibles, while the imagery in the other derives from the iconography of a late medieval poem, "Christus und die minnende Seele." This illustrated poem, extant only in later manuscripts and early printed versions, can be traced back to older originals dating from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries, which were known in Upper Rhine convents. The article considers why such an unusual representation of Agnes might have appeared in these convents and suggests an explanation relating to both the consecration ceremony for nuns and the distinctive conventions of a feminine spirituality that were common at that time throughout Europe, and were especially prevalent in Germany.