Christ's Nakedness and Bridget's Motherhood

For this post, I am going to take Professor Fulton Brown’s bait and write about the importance or lack thereof of St. Bridget’s experience as a mother in her Revelations. It seems clear to me that her experience as a laywoman and a mother is a contributing factor in some of what makes her Revelations unique. Her nativity scene seemed unique to me not because of its tenderness but because of its detail and physicality. Her description of the birth of Jesus is extremely vivid. She describes practical and physical details of birth that seem unlikely to come from anyone without firsthand experience of a birth. Joseph prepares necessities like a lighted torch. Joseph leaves the scene and Mary undresses to her tunic. Bridget describes the cloths Mary had brought with her in which to wrap the child (25). It seems that many or most other authors do not think to include such details, and it stands to reason that Bridget’s familiarity with the process of giving birth partially explains this choice on her part.

Most remarkably, she includes a very physical description of the baby—“I immediately beheld that glorious Babe lying naked and most pure on the ground, His flesh most clean from all filth or impurity….” (26). What struck me about this was that the account did not skim over the immediate aftermath of the birth. Bridget describes every moment, from when Mary is still pregnant to the parents and the shepherds adoring the child. This includes vivid descriptions all the intermediate moments of this story that are often glossed over: the time between when Jesus is born and when Mary picks him up as he lays naked on the ground and his mother kneels in her tunic, the time between when Mary picks him up and when he is wrapped in cloths as she clasps his newborn naked body to her heart (26). Bridget also points out the comparison between Mary’s painless birth and the experience of other women that usually causes them to “lose color or strength” after giving birth (27). Once again, other authors with less experience of motherhood might have been able to imagine such details, but the inclusion of them in her account still seems to set Bridget apart. Her experience of motherhood probably was a significant factor in her concern with these details.

However, the fact that her experience may have prompted her to consider these details does not negate the other reasons she may have wanted to include them. So what do they do in her narrative and how do they interplay with her other authorial concerns? I would suggest they do two things. Firstly, staying with the nativity scene, they serve to simultaneously humanize Jesus and Mary in some ways and glorify them in others. The physicality of the description of the birth emphasizes their humanity, especially Jesus’s. The inclusion of mundane details such as the need for a torch makes them relatable. At the same time, though, the inclusion of those very details also highlights the absence of other details that would normally be present in a human birth—the fluids, the sweating mother, the umbilical cord. Her narrative depiction of the nativity emphasizes the fact that Jesus “was born as I tell thee and thou hast seen” and not “in the usual way” as some would have it (28). Bridget uses minute details and vivid descriptions to emphasize both the human aspects of Mary and Jesus and the divine or supernatural.

Another aspect of Bridget’s description of the nativity comes out when one compares it with her descriptions of the passion. While Bridget’s descriptions of the passion are similar to other descriptions in their physicality and gruesomeness, it seemed to me that their connection with the physicality of Bridget’s description of the nativity produced a new emphasis and an unusually holistic view of the Christian story. At a few points, Bridget emphasizes “the shame of His nakedness” during the torments before the crucifixion (43). Bridget even explicitly connects this to Jesus’s nakedness at birth (which she describes more vividly than many authors), saying “while my Son stood as naked as when He was born, one, running up, handed Him a cloth with which, exulting inwardly, he covered Him,” (45). This connection and similarity (or identity) in the physicality of Christ’s naked body emphasizes the already great contrast between the scenes of the nativity and the passion because the meaning of his nakedness is so different in the two contexts. At the nativity Jesus’s naked body is “most pure,” the natural and human state of a newborn infant. The emphasis on nakedness in the passion as well emphasizes how this scene is the polar opposite of the glorious birth—how else could the very same nakedness come to represent the height of humiliation?

Simultaneously, though, the emphasis on Christ’s physicality (both nakedness and more generally) throughout much of Bridget’s narrative also functions to connect both of these scenes in a larger Christian narrative. The idea that at his passion Jesus was “as naked as when He was born” emphasizes that this is the same human body that we have been learning about throughout Bridget’s account. One would be unlikely to forget this, since Bridget’s continual use of very physical and human imagery for Mary and especially Jesus throughout the narrative similarly serves to continually remind the reader of the humanity of these characters and the temporal and physical continuity of their lives through their bodies. The way Christ’s physicality functions in Bridget’s narrative in the comparison between the nativity and the passion is similar to the way it functions within the nativity itself. In both cases, it serves simultaneously to emphasize the humanity of Jesus through his physicality while also emphasizing the unexpected, paradoxical, or godly aspects of the story (in the nativity, the lack of pain in the birth; in the passion, the humiliation of God itself). It also connects both scenes to the overall arc of the story through the continuity of the physical bodies.

It seems to me that Bridget’s experience as a mother comes out in her writing and, in a sense, she capitalizes on it. This does not explain away her individuality as an author and religious person with particular theological concerns and interests. Rather, she uses her knowledge and understanding as a mother to describe Mary’s experience in a way that resonates with her own interests, concerns, and ideas regarding the humanity of Mary and Christ. Her identity as a mother makes her unique among these authors but does not prevent her from also being unique in other ways.

ELM