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7 - Out of Time: Temporality and Female Devotion in Thirteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

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Summary

In þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd [The Wooing of Our Lord], a thirteenth-century English meditation on the perfection of Christ, apparently intended for the use of female solitaries, the speaker recounts a chronology of events leading to Christ's crucifixion:

Siðen bifore pilat hu þu was naket bunden faste to þe piler . þat tu ne mihtes nowhwider wrenche fra þa duntes … Siðen o þin heaued wes sette crune of scharpe þornes … Siðen ȝette buffetet & to dunet i þe heaued wið þe red ȝerde þat te was ear in honde ȝiuen þe on hokerringe.

[Then [one considers] how, in front of Pilate, you were naked, bound tightly to the pillar, so that you could not turn aside from the blows in any direction … Then a crown of sharp thorns was placed on your head … Still then [you were] beaten and battered too much in the head with the red sceptre which was earlier placed in your hand during the mocking.]

Using preterite verb forms, she situates the action in the past, while the adverbs ‘siðen’ (thrice repeated) and ‘ear’ suggest a linear sequence of unfolding events. Following immediately on this recollection, she registers astonishment at the affective impact that it has on her:

A hwat schal i nu don? Nu min herte mai to breke . min ehne flowen al o water.

[A, what shall I do now? Now my heart may break, my eyes shed an abundance of tears.]

The shift to the present tense, its impact strengthened by the repeated ‘nu’, is no surprise; having reflected on a past event, she proceeds to detail her current response. What happens next, however, is unexpected; the intense immediacy of the speaker's emotion irrupts into her account of Christ's death, and what had been narrated as past becomes suddenly present:

A nu is mi lefmon demd for to deien . A nu mon ledes him forð to munte caluarie to þe cwalm stowe . A lo he beres his rode up on his bare schuldres … A nu haue þai broht him þider . A nu raise þai up þe rode . Setis up þe warh treo . A nu nacnes mon mi lef A . nu driuen ha him up wið swepes & wið schurges.

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Chapter
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Medieval Temporalities
The Experience of Time in Medieval Europe
, pp. 127 - 144
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2021

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