Introduction

Abstract

In one of her revelations of love, the fourteenth-century anchoress Julian of Norwich sees “a figure and likenes of our foul dede [dead] hame that our faire, bright, blissid Lord bare for our sins.”² “Hame,” from Old English “hama,” means “a skin, integument, membrane.”³ Crucified Christ takes onto himself the full weight of human sin, suffering, and mortality by putting on our dead skin; in so doing, in the terms of a medieval motif, his own skin is transformed into a lasting testament of a new covenant between God and mankind, bringing hope of eternal life. The dense tissue of associations of skin in medieval culture, however, leads Julian to think not of Christ’s skin stretched as parchment on the frame of the cross, as it does in poems belonging to the “Charter of Christ” tradition, but rather “of the holy vernacle of Rome.”⁴ This is Veronica’s veil with which she wiped away Christ’s sweat as he carried his cross to Golgotha, now tattooed with the form of his beautiful face and the palimpsest of the “brownehede and blakehede, reulihede [wretchedness] and lenehede [emaciation]” of the mortal skin he sacrifices his own to save.

skyn bytokens lufe [love]

Bridget of Sweden, Liber Celestis ¹