Seeing as Believing: Beholding the Image in Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady
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This article argues that John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady participates in the late medieval debate surrounding orthodoxy by promoting the benefits and potential of devout beholding of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ represented in images. Against the Lollard criticism of religious images, Lydgate supports the orthodox stance that meditation upon images can heighten the viewers’ devotion. Following Nicholas Love’s emphasis on reading and imagining the textual contents as if they can be seen and heard, Lydgate presents a verbal portrait of the Virgin Mary during key moments of her life up to the birth of Jesus Christ. The two groups of women devotees of the Virgin Mary in the poem, the handmaids and the midwives, are examples that demonstrate the proper mode of beholding such verbal portraits. Through them, Lydgate stresses the spiritual benefits that can be reaped from the act of seeing. With their beholding of the Virgin, the handmaids and the midwives become exemplary figures who proclaim their faith in a public manner. Thus the Life of Our Lady reveals the poet’s position in regard to the conflict surrounding orthodoxy in late medieval England.
Abstract
This article argues that John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady participates in the late medieval debate surrounding orthodoxy by promoting the benefits and potential of devout beholding of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ represented in images. Against the Lollard criticism of religious images, Lydgate supports the orthodox stance that meditation upon images can heighten the viewers’ devotion. Following Nicholas Love’s emphasis on reading and imagining the textual contents as if they can be seen and heard, Lydgate presents a verbal portrait of the Virgin Mary during key moments of her life up to the birth of Jesus Christ. The two groups of women devotees of the Virgin Mary in the poem, the handmaids and the midwives, are examples that demonstrate the proper mode of beholding such verbal portraits. Through them, Lydgate stresses the spiritual benefits that can be reaped from the act of seeing. With their beholding of the Virgin, the handmaids and the midwives become exemplary figures who proclaim their faith in a public manner. Thus the Life of Our Lady reveals the poet’s position in regard to the conflict surrounding orthodoxy in late medieval England.
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