Thesis
Reference
Covering and Discovering the Body in medieval theology, drama and literature
BRAZIL, Sarah Jane
Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between clothing and embodiment and how this relationship might be constructed in medieval texts. The central argument of the work is that clothing is meaningful beyond social and cultural parameters. As such, clothing must be considered in relation to more intimate facets of the embodied condition, i.e. the pertinent boundaries which define both physical and metaphysical beliefs attributed to a particular body.
The title of the work, Covering and Discovering the Body, is intended to draw out the interplay between clothing's practical, material function, and its ability to make apparent more subtle, intimate aspects of that body.
BRAZIL, Sarah Jane. Covering and Discovering the Body in medieval theology, drama and literature. Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2015, no. L. 832
URN : urn:nbn:ch:unige-758454
DOI : 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:75845
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:75845
Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.
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Thèse de doctorat ès lettres
Covering and Discovering the Body in Medieval Theology, Drama and Literature
UNIVERSITE DE GENEVE Faculté des lettres, Département d’anglais
Sarah Brazil Février 2015
Directrice de thèse:
Professeur Guillemette Bolens
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...………...……….……. III NOTE ON DATES, TEXTS AND IMAGES ..………..………... IV
INTRODUCTION ………..………..……… 1
CHAPTER 1: CONCEPTUALISING THE FALLEN BODY THROUGH CLOTHING IN EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA ………...….…... 15
SECTION 1.1: THE EXEGETICAL HISTORY OF GENESIS 3.21 ……….………. 19
SECTION 1.1.1: POSTBIBLICAL AND RABBINIC EXEGESIS ON THE ‘TUNICS OF SKIN’ ……….. 21
SECTION 1.1.2: CHRISTIAN READINGS OF THE ‘TUNICS OF SKIN’ ……….. 31
SECTION 1.2: EARLY ENGLISH STAGINGS OF THE FALL ………... 39
SECTION 1.2.1: THE YORK, N-TOWN, AND CHESTER PLAYS ………..……… 42
CHAPTER 2: TRACING THE DIALECTIC BETWEEN GRAVES CLOTHES AND BODY AT THE MOMENT OF RESURRECTION ………... 59
SECTION 2.1: SIGNALLING PRESENCE: THE SOUDARION AND THE GOSPEL OF JOHN ……….... 62
SECTION 2.2: BINDING AND LOOSING: AUGUSTINIAN INTERPRETATION ……….……… 79
SECTION 2.3: TRACING THE ICONOGRAPHY OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION ……….………. 94
SECTION 2.4: NON EST HIC: THE VISITATIO SEPULCHRI ………...110
SECTION 2.5: ENTER THE BODY: THE SECULAR RESURRECTION PLAYS ……….. 121
CHAPTER 3: JESUS’ SANDALS AND THE ‘SHOES OF HEAVENLY DESIRES’ …………..….. 137
SECTION 3.1: THE AFFECT AND THE FOOT: FROM AUGUSTINE TO MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE ……….……….140
SECTION 3.1.1: AUGUSTINE, THE FAULTY AFFECT, AND CORRUPT MOTION ………..…. 140
SECTION 3.1.2: AFFECT AND THE FOOT FROM SCHOLASTICISM TO LATE-MEDIEVAL LITERATURE ………..… 148
SECTION 3.1.3: THE DIRTY/WOUNDED FOOT AND SPIRITUAL SHOES ……….…………. 161
SECTION 3.1.4: CONTINUATION OF PROTECTIVE SHOES IN THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE ………..……. 166
SECTION 3.1.5: SHOEING THE AFFECT IN MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS ……… 173
SECTION 3.2: CHRIST’S UNLOOSABLE SHOE-TIES IN THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE …………...…………...… 183
CHAPTER 4: THE CORPOREALITY OF CLOTH ……….….. 201
SECTION 4.1: VERRES’ CLOTHING AND PERCEPTUAL SIMULATION ………..…….………….... 204
SECTION 4.2: THE CLOTH RELIC, OR, TRANSFERRING EMBODIMENT ……….... 210
SECTION 4.2.1: THE SAINTS’ CLOTHING ……….. 212
SECTION 4.2.2: THE CORPOREALITY OF THE CLOTH RELIC ………..……..………... 220
CONCLUSION ………. 227
WORKS CITED ………...………… 229
APPENDIX ……….... 248
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Lukas Erne, Sarah-Grace Heller, Elizabeth Robertson and Pamela King for kindly agreeing to read this thesis, and for the time they have offered; to my friends and family who have been my bedrock throughout the years, and without whom I would not have reached the end of this process; to Susie Gebhardt, who taught me the value and purpose of questions, and the true meaning of curiosity; to Ioana Balgradean, whose intellect and kindness were essential for me to continue with this project, but which I will value long beyond it; to my parents, whose love and support has made so much possible; to Martha, Yassin and Susie, for the support in those final moments; to my supervisor Guillemette Bolens, to whom I owe so much, not least in believing in this project and giving me the intellectual freedom to take it where it needed to go, but also for keeping me on track when necessary. She has been a fountain from which I have constantly drawn, but which has never been emptied.
I dedicate this work to the memory of my mother, Helen Brazil.
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NOTES ON DATES, TEXTS AND IMAGES
I quote Latin and Greek sources from Jacques Paul Migne’s Patrologia Graecae and Patrologia Latina unless the text in question is unavailable in this form. I abbreviate these works to PG and PL in footnotes. I maintain the spelling and capitalisation of the original languages from the editions of the text. I also maintain the collusion between letters (‘u’ and
‘v’ as well as ‘j’ and ‘i’ in all texts cited, including Middle English works. I amend ash (‘æ’) to ‘ae’ in quotations. In accordance with the Modern Humanities Research Association guidelines, I omit ampersands and superscript. Dates refer to the first publication of the edition. I have endeavoured to provide a copy of the images mentioned, but only include the examples for which I have been granted permission by the institution in question.
1 Introduction
A thirteenth-century Middle English homily divides clothing into two classifications as a means of explaining the relationship the Christian body has to baptismal garments.
The text reads: ‘Bicumeliche wede ben tweire kinne, lichamliche and gostliche’, meaning that becoming clothing is of two kinds: bodily and spiritual.1 This categorisation of clothing into physical and non-physical is one way of approaching Christian conceptualisations of clothing, which plays an intrinsic part in the life of a body that is in flux from the time it is born until long after it dies. Indeed, clothing is especially pertinent at the principal moments of transition experienced by each body, with dress communicating the significance of such changes. The consequences of the Fall, that seminal event in Judeo-Christian history, has Scripture define the transition from pre- to postlapsarian as the inability of human bodies to remain without clothing.
Baptism, the sacrament which offers ‘rebirth’ into the Church and the possibility of redemption, is accompanied by a white garment which should be kept spotless, i.e., free from sin by the baptised person throughout their mortal life; and after death, each believer anticipates having this garment transformed into a ‘garment of grace’, the sign that they are saved and resurrected. Of course, not all of these clothes can be considered
‘becoming’. The ‘garments of skin’ given to Adam and Eve by their condemnatory creator have been termed ‘wretched’ and ‘ugly’ by Church Fathers. But even if beauty is not an issue, it can also be said – as it can for the other two garments mentioned – that none is fully ‘bodily’ or ‘spiritual’, or to phrase it another way, literal or figurative.
1 Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century, ed. by Richard Morris, EETS (Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1975), p. 95.
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To say that either the ‘cloth of baptism’ or ‘garment of grace’ is a representative example of the categories offered in this homily for clothing would be to omit a substantial aspect of the full significance of each one. For while the cloth of baptism can be composed of concrete, material constituents, it is also imbued with a considerable spiritual dimension. If baptism is understood to be a cleansing of the soul from Original Sin, affording the possibility of redemption, then this white cloth stands for the impeccable state of the soul in a figurative capacity. But this spiritual sense, expressed through the figurative, also depends heavily on the material (or literal). In order to preserve the soul in a state fit for redemption, one must not sully this garment with sinful actions, thus drawing on the everyday reality of cloth and its propensity to be dirtied. Similarly, the garment of grace might, on face value, be described as a completely spiritual garment because it is one that is added to the body after resurrection, and is thus totally disconnected from earthly, material life. Yet the
‘putting on’ of this garment also rests heavily on the idea of putting on something material, allowing its intangible form to be conceived of by an action so unmistakeably related to clothing. The two best examples of ‘bicumeliche’ clothing in a Christian context defy rigid classification, as many other examples throughout this thesis will also be shown to do.
The examples of clothing examined in this thesis reveal how the body was perceived in medieval thought. As has just been mentioned, all of the examples given are related to moments of significant ontological change for the body or soul, with the pertinent focus of much of this thesis being the Christian body and the key instances of physical and spiritual transition it experiences. The employment of clothing at particular moments of alteration in how the body is understood (be that fallen, redeemed, or resurrected), as well as the concurrent spiritual dimension woven into this
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physical change, suggests that clothing is particularly efficacious at signalling such moments. Another assumption that this thesis makes is that this efficacy is the case primarily because of the relationship that clothing has to the body, being a part of its daily, lived experience.
Clothing is something to which the body is connected in a sensory capacity by feeling the contact of fibre on skin. It can significantly aid or impede motion and it locates a body within its specific socio-cultural parameters, allowing that body to interact with others. Clothing is thus deeply connected to the embodied condition of the individual, an essential part of what it means to have a body, whatever the specific ramifications are. This work does not intend to deliver a comprehensive history of ‘the body’ through clothing, but to consider histories of ‘the body’ as they are constructed by texts via clothing. Each example chosen is a means of explaining an event or concept that can be, and has been, rendered in many other ways, with clothing selected by certain thinkers to articulate something that would otherwise remain abstract and vague.
The conceptual is also a significant focus of this work, with the aim being to explore exactly how clothing can aid the mind to grasp the abstract. Once again, the connection of clothing to body must be taken into account, for the body has been shown by a wealth of researchers to play a crucial role in cognition, and clothing is connected to the body in such endeavours. Indeed, one may ask the question: What type of knowledge employs clothing as a means of understanding abstract concepts? But in doing so, one also must ask the question of how clothing is related to the body in each instance. Drawing on the substantial neurological research on the area to assert this point, Guillemette Bolens writes that ‘human cognition is rooted in the reality of bodily
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experience’.2 Bolens further asks: ‘What type of knowledge enables us to understand a smile described by Marcel Proust.’ The reply comes in the form of an exploration of the pertinent facets of embodied cognition that afford the comprehension of this facial expression, with kinesic and kinesthetic knowledge as well as perceptual simulation key to this.3 Embodied cognition theories overwhelmingly argue for the individual’s ability to perceive and engage with the world in processes that envision a collaborative mind and body. The key areas of this collaboration will thus be outlined, with a view to understanding how clothing can be seen to participate in such processes.
Firstly, Bolens defines kinesic knowledge as ‘our human capacity to discern and interpret body movements, body postures, gestures, and facial expressions in real situations as well as in our reception of visual art’.4 Kinesthesia, meanwhile, as defined by Alain Berthoz, is ‘the ensemble of information provided by muscular articulatory proprioceptors and by the motor commands of locomotion’.5 Bolens also asserts that these two types of intelligence work together: ‘Kinesic intelligence is grounded in kinesthesia and brings together neurophysiological and sociocultural parameters that underlie all human interactions.’6 Kinesis, meanwhile, although linked to and dependent on kinesthesia, differs from the latter in that it ‘refers to the interactional perception of movements performed by oneself or another person in relation to visuomotor variables such as the dynamics, amplitude, extension, flow, and speed of a gesture or the relation of limbs to the rest of the body’. Kinesthesic sensations ‘cannot be directly shared, whereas kinesic information may be communicated’.7 The role of
2 Guillemette Bolens, The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), p. 5.
3 Bolens, p. 1.
4 Bolens, p. 2.
5 Bolens, p. 2, quoting and translating Alain Berthoz, Le Sens du Mouvement (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997), pp. 130, 32-38.
6 Bolens, p. 2.
7 Bolens, pp. 2-3.
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both in the perception of bodily movements is thus essential, with kinesic perception informed by kinesthetic empathy. The ability of the perceiver to understand the movements or actions of another is further underpinned by perceptual simulations. ‘A perceptual simulation in neuroscience is the reactivation of a type of knowledge that is sensorial (i.e., derived from sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell), motoric (i.e., kinesic, kinesthetic, proprioceptive), and introspective (e.g., pertaining to emotions and mental states)’.8 A final term which needs definition is ‘kinetic’, which ‘refers to aspects of movements that may be objectively measured’. Unlike kinesis, which ‘pertains to interpersonal gestures’ that cannot be measured, the kinetic involves movements that are situated within the laws of physics, be it ‘a Newtonian apple falling from a tree, or of a human body elevated by a lift’.9
This wealth of corporeal knowledge is usually prereflexive. However, it can be drawn on reflexively in specific instances to engage with and comprehend concepts, which are regularly framed with reference to this type of knowledge in order to be understood. Bolens further highlights that tropes such as metaphor are regularly formulated to include such specifically corporeal information when conveying abstractions: ‘Many researchers claim that “linguistic meaning is grounded in bodily activity” and that abstract concepts often contain motor information.’10 The targeting of such concrete and available knowledge to explore abstract concepts can thus be seen as an integral part of the way tropes, and indeed language, function. What is also necessary to mention, and crucial for a study which focuses on the literary, is that ‘the brain also simulates perceptual and motor actions when they are signified verbally’ and that ‘[l]anguage comprehension appears to be interconnected with the sensorimotor
8 Bolens, p. 6.
9 Bolens, p. 10.
10 Bolens, pp. 6-7.
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experiences implied by the text one reads or the words one hears’.11 This means that the same processes which allow a body to understand the movements of another are to some extent the same when it comes to hearing such actions relayed through speech or when reading a book.12
An example which has already been mentioned will aid the demonstration of these points. The Christian event of transgression in Paradise is most commonly, and acceptably, termed ‘the Fall’. While no physical or literal fall takes place in the Genesis narrative, the loss incurred by Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of the forbidden tree is retrospectively envisaged via sensory and motor information. The sensory relates to the pain an individual can infer from the action of crashing to the ground, and the motor, a failure in the body’s capacity to maintain balance and walk correctly. Drawing on these dual facets of this most unwelcome of bodily movements conveys the enormity of what is lost for humanity in that moment, thus clarifying how the body can help to make sense of the abstract. Similarly, as I will argue, the use of clothing within the texts explored in this thesis can be seen to frequently engage specific types of knowledge in order to produce perceptual simulations. Staying with the example of the Fall, as Chapter One will demonstrate at length, the exegeses which attempt to render the event explicable frequently rely on clothing to do so. In the case of Jewish exegesis, this is not done in the conventional manner of receiving clothing from God after the event.
There is, in fact, a thread of interpretation which envisages this moment as a stripping of prelapsarian clothing, facilitating the discovery of the new human condition. Once again, something happening to the body is used to convey a concept and sensorial and motor information are variously drawn on to elicit perceptual simulations. The rapid
11 Bolens, p. 11, citing Sian L. Beilock and Ian M. Lyons, ‘Expertise and the Mental Simulation of Action’ in Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation, ed. by Markman, Klein and Suhr (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009), pp. 25-26.
12 For a discussion of action verbs see Bolens, pp. 36-39.
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and shocking removal of clothing calls on the reader’s sensorial knowledge of both what this removal would feel like as well as the ensuing environmental factors that would be experienced. The reverse action of gaining clothing, as both Scripture and Christian commentary attest, sees the skin of another creature placed on the skin of Adam and Eve. The sensation of the ‘dead animal skins’ evokes a feeling that should be alien to the body, but that would have been experienced by many a ‘fallen’ human. The act of covering the genitals with fig leaves is also frequently accompanied by a crouching action in narrative and iconographic elaborations, where the inability of the first parents to remain upright serves as a motoric indicator of their debased condition.
Clothing, in all of these variously shaped coverings, engages with such aspects of corporeal knowledge and this is how it becomes meaningful within a text.
In Chapter Two, I explore Augustine’s process of articulating the resurrection of the body, which is by means of loosening clothes at the point where they prevent motricity. Using Lazarus in an allegorical mode of interpretation, Augustine employs the Matthean metaphors of ‘loosing’ and ‘binding’ in relation to the former’s grave clothes. When they remain tight and bound, the body’s motoric incapacity signals its inability to resurrect, while the reverse situation sees clothing play an integral role in the process of achieving corporeal resurrection. Augustine thus draws on clothing’s capacity to allow or prevent motion as a means of conveying the correct state of being necessary for resurrection to be granted. This is furthermore achieved by drawing on the kinesic knowledge of the reader as well as eliciting precise perceptual simulations related to motion.
Motricity is of further concern in Chapter Three, with the motion of the foot regularly used as a metaphor for the movements of the affective, or emotional, faculty of the soul. The foot is declared the barometer for the body’s affective state as far back
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as Plotinus, and medieval theologians understood the limb to be particularly prone to sin as a consequence of the Fall. Such divergences from correct action are depicted by the foot’s incapacity to keep the body balanced, its likelihood to stumble, and the inevitability that it will be dirtied through its inescapable contact with the ground. This sensory and motoric knowledge is later combined with a shoe in order to conceive of the possibility of preventing such actions. A different use of the shoe within this chapter sees it employed as a metaphor for the Incarnation. One means of conveying the mind’s incapacity to grasp such an intangible concept is also through the execution of motor skills. Exegesis regularly comes to the same conclusion – that the process of incarnation cannot be understood – and articulates this by means of comparing the failure of human reasoning to a failure of the hand to untie a shoe-strap, a skill usually mastered in childhood. The fact that the strap remains closed conveys the incapacity of human thought to penetrate such knowledge, with the shoe the principal device of enunciating this for numerous theologians.
Chapter Four centres on clothing that is used to elicit the sensory and introspective knowledge of the reader in order to condemn a particular figure as depraved and corrupt. The master orator Quintilian proposes an example of the trope enargeia, which sees the clothing and posture of the disgraced Roman politician Verres work in tandem to present a pathetic image of a decrepit man. What is so significant about this example is that Quintilian explains the trope, which was conceived of in an approximate sense throughout the Middle Ages, in similar terms to what neurological research mutatis mutandis has called perceptual simulation. Precise bodily positions are described through verbs, but the production of a full and fleshed out image of Verres – the hallmark of the trope – relies on clothing, its sensory interaction with the body and the range of introspective responses provoked by this contact. While the second half of
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this chapter features a very different type of body, many of the same approaches are taken. Clothing is presented by many key early Church Fathers as participating in the embodiment of the saint. This predominantly takes the form of cloth having the capacity to heal the infirm, but also, in the case of the cloth relic, features a cloth that bleeds when cut, thus drawing on the kinesic and sensory knowledge of the reader in order for them to comprehend the value of this piece of fabric.
Bolens’ claim that ‘sensory and motor information “contributes to the ‘full’
representation”’ of abstract concepts that can thus be successfully married with clothing in order to achieve the same goal, though this is not the case for every use of clothing included in this work.13 The one that stands in the starkest contrast is the case of a body that is not fully human. The resurrection of Christ, as argued in Chapter Two, is conveyed by means of the grave clothes which are pertinently separated from his body in order to signify that the event has taken place. No motor, sensory or any other type of corporeal knowledge is evident in the Gospel narrative and this body is treated in a manner like no other until the twelfth century. From then onwards, in iconography and secular drama, the resurrection is presented in the form of a bleeding body striding forth out of the tomb, stepping on the backs of the soldiers who fail to contain it.
Clothing in such instances is more a device to reveal wounds, but again does not function in relation to the body in the manner of the majority of examples.
The cognitive process of conceptualisation, so integral to understanding these figurative uses of clothing, is further outlined by Bolens, who, drawing on the work of Lawrence Barsalou, explains:
13 Bolens, p. 16.
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Concept retrieval is a dynamic process, and conceptual representations tend to be idiosyncratic and situated. ‘Much research across multiple literatures demonstrates that concepts do not produce the same representation over and over again across situations. Instead, a concept produces one of many possible representations that is tailored to the current context.’14
My conjecture in relation to the use of clothing in the representation of concepts is that it is dynamic, meaning that clothing is one possible way of conveying meaning. The moment of Adam and Eve’s transgression can thus be conceived of as a fall or a stripping, just two potential configurations amongst many others. What places clothing in an ideal position to carry such meaning is that it is physically and culturally connected to the body, meaning that it can draw on kinesic, sensorial and introspective knowledge in order to convey perceptual simulations that will aid the endeavours of the writer in question. What this thesis intends to prove, then, is that such dynamic, contextualised uses of clothing are employed in order to explain the abstract, with the body underpinning the meaning of cloth in most cases.
Such an approach is predominantly interested in the heuristic significance of clothing and takes a step back from the hermeneutic. There has been much excellent work in the field of clothing studies to locate its various socio-cultural roles by archaeologists, costume historians and literary critics, most of whom are working with either a material object or the textual representation of one. Stella Mary Newton’s 1980 publication, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, which explored aristocratic dress by drawing on historical evidence such as royal accounts and chronicles, opened up what has since become a dynamic field of study. Historical record was later combined
14 Bolens, p. 14. Quoting Lawrence Barsalou, ‘Situated Simulation in the Human Conceptual System’, Language and Cognitive Processes, 18 (2003), 513-62 (p. 537).
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with archaeological evidence in Textiles and Clothing, c. 1150-1450 (2001) by past and present curators of the Museum of London, whose work has helped to trace the history of fabric and dress in late-medieval England. Laura F. Hodges’s Chaucer-centred publications facilitated a shift into the sphere of literary analysis. Both monographs, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (2000) Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (2005), strove to place the dress of Chaucer’s characters within its historical and material, as well as textual context. Brill’s 2012 Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c.450-1450, has furthered historic, archeological and literary knowledge of clothing, as it also lists textual as well as historical items of dress.15 While these varied publications interrogate the various items of clothing found in their sources, this work rarely encounters a stable entity. Most of the clothes that comprise this thesis are interspersed with conceptual aspects and are rarely described in the kind of detail that would afford a clear image of exactly what is being discussed. As largely conceptual entities, what is important is how they function and in what contexts. In this sense, I hope to add to an already dynamic field of study by offering a different perspective on the highly sophisticated historical importance of clothing within thought.
The four chapters in this thesis are closely connected by predominantly exploring one facet of the Christian body or the body of Christ. Chapter One, as mentioned, investigates the employment of clothing in exegesis of the Fall and in
15 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, Eng,: Boydell & Brewer, 1980). Textiles and Clothing, c. 1150-1450, ed. by Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard and Kay Staniland (Woodbridge, Eng,: Boydell & Brewer, 2001). Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (Woodbridge, Eng,: Boydell & Brewer, 2000); Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Dress in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Woodbridge, Eng,: Boydell & Brewer, 2005). Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c.450- 1450, ed. by Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
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medieval drama and literature, and surveys how particular uses of clothing made their way onto the early English stage from the fourteenth century onwards, but also pays attention to the dramatic potential offered by clothing. The examples given are not related to costume history but to textual articulations of clothing, and the effect these have on the dramatic works in question.
Chapter Two traces the function of the grave clothes left in Christ’s tomb after his resurrection, from the Johannine Gospel narrative through to late-medieval iconography and drama. While clothing plays a central role in the expression of this event in the Gospel, this function is not maintained in later manifestations. The changes to the understanding and worship of Christ’s body are argued to be integral to the changing relevance of cloth, and even though the details of his grave clothes are retained in some instances the signifying power is greatly compromised. This example is a rare case of the body not aiding or underpinning the meaning of clothing, but rather interfering with its capacity to make the event of resurrection explicable. The other part of this chapter contains the only instance of human resurrection included. Augustine’s exegesis is a particularly clear example of how cloth can aid the conceptual and his account of corporeal resurrection as a ‘loosing’ of cloth is deployed with rhetorical flourish.
Chapter Three focuses on shoes and their increasing significance in relation to the foot, and the metaphorical associations both accrue, from Late Antiquity onwards.
The shoe becomes intrinsic to the protection of the foot from spiritual disorder, and the initially separate but later joint theological significance of each metaphor is traced throughout this chapter, with medieval literature being of central importance to how these ideas develop. The second part of this chapter focuses on metaphorical redeployments of the sandal metaphors variously used by John the Baptist in the
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canonical Gospels. The recycling of this metaphor as a means of conveying the ungraspable doctrine of the Incarnation posits shoes in a central role in which they communicate the theological conclusions reached in the texts in question. As mentioned before, it is the incapacity of the hand to untie the latchet of the sandal that becomes the central means of articulating the limitations of the theologians’ logical endeavours.
Chapter Four explores key instances where the proximity between clothing and body is exploited by texts. The first example considers the efficacy with which clothing can aid the process of making mental images that have a strong emotional dimension, in order to ensure that these images are rhetorically successful. Such images are evoked cognitively by choosing items of clothing which are recognisably inappropriate for a man to wear and enhancing this social faux pas through corporeal elements such as the sensory and the introspective. Touch is of central concern in the second section of this chapter, which explores a moment in Christian history when the cloth relic was of pertinent value. Direct touch between the saint and their clothing allowed the power of the one to permeate the other, with writers of miraculous events often conveying this transference by engaging kinetic knowledge, which will be explained in more detail, most overtly through the physics of liquids. When touch is less direct, as in the case of the small relic lowered into the tomb of the saint – the brandea or palliola – the physical attributes taken on can be also related to liquid in order to render this spiritual transference comprehensible, or the cloth can take on the pain of the martyr and bleed when cut. Connecting all facets of this chapter is the intersection between body and cloth and the fact that clothing becomes crucial to the construction of the embodiment in question.
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The following chapters do not offer a definitive history of clothing’s conceptual power within the texts considered, but the variety of works which draw on clothing in this manner bespeaks its capacity to convey abstractions, to work in a figurative mode while maintaining a foot in the literal. The aim of this work, then, is to provide a cross- section of examples to prove this point, showing that clothing is an efficient tool when trying to convey the obscure, be that an ontological transition, the transference of saintly powers, or something related to the condition of one’s God. But it must also be borne in mind that in such instances, clothing cannot be restricted to rigid categorisation – be that figurative/literal, or physical/spiritual – while doing so.
Clothing’s ability to transcend such classifications is what makes it such a pregnant vehicle for conceptual thought. And whether it covers the body when conveying meaning, or, by its loss facilitates the discovery of a new dimension, clothing’s intimate connection to the body affords the modern eye a glimpse into how the human body may have been understood in the Middle Ages.
15 Chapter One:
Conceptualising the Fallen Body through Clothing in Early English Drama
The ‘tunics of skin’ from Genesis 3.21 (henceforth Gen 3.21) are the last point of direct contact between the first humans and their creator. Given as preparation for their newly mortal life, the sensory experiences such as pain, cold, and hunger that await them, these coverings can be interpreted as the final gift from God to his disobedient creations.
The material reality of these clothes, however, is that they are made from the skin of another creature. This facet of their materiality and animality undercuts the status of these clothes, introducing the possibility that they function as a sign for the newly debased condition of the body, which is now incapable of living without them. The ambivalence of the ‘tunics of skin’, caused not only by the point at which they are given to Adam and Eve, but also by the nature of their composition and the uncertainty of their function, is something that has resonated with exegetes, both Jewish and Christian. The proliferation of possible meanings that have been attributed to these skins, moreover, indicates that they occupy an uncomfortable position in the thought of both religions, continually impacting contemporary understandings of clothing and its relationship to the body.
This chapter is about those very skins, how they were understood and in what manner they were presented on the early English stage.16 Indeed, the extant plays are indicative of the complex exegetical history the ‘tunics of skin’ had, for none of the plays engage with clothing in the same manner as another. Furthermore, the granting of
16 I use the term ‘early English’ in relation to the drama predominantly discussed in Chapter One and Two to refer to what is usually called ‘medieval drama’. Medieval, however, is not a very accurate term, for many of the manuscripts which contain the works that are considered to be ‘medieval’ postdate the medieval period. Early English drama, then, is a term which includes such works within its remit.
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clothing to the first parents is not even envisaged in two out of three early English plays and the only play which does present the tunics is contained in a manuscript that dates from the sixteenth century. The use of clothing within the plays of the Fall suggests the influence of a wide network of both literary and theological sources and the aim of this chapter is to explore what these are and how they fed into the conceptualisations which found their way onto a variety of early English stages. The principal argument of this chapter, connecting the theological and dramatic, is that clothing is used in order to interrogate the consequences of losing grace, which suggests that it acts as a bridging point between an intangible, unknowable concept, and the process through which such knowledge can be conveyed to the fallen human.
Whether clothing is lost or gained, whether the progenitors leave the stage clothed or naked, clothing in all instances is used to make apparent their changed ontological state and the degraded corporeal condition to which they are now subject.
In the aftermath of the Fall, this item is named as humanity’s first material artefact and is one that will forever remain with them in their earthly lives. Its ambivalent biblical function as either punishment or last direct act of kindness continues the ambivalence of humans as being the only creatures that cover their natural body. Their radical detachment from the life into which they were created is continually evoked through this change in bodily status, with clothing both a literal, material accompaniment and a symbolic indicator of this altered state.
The addition of the ‘tunics of skin’ to the fallen body, as mentioned above, is just one of several possible uses of clothing in exegesis of the Fall. Early Jewish interpretations of Gen 3.21, for example, insist on the presence of a prelapsarian clothing which betokened the first humans’ blissful state and which was forcibly removed as a consequence of their breaking of God’s precept. Whether grace is to be
17
understood by the presence of some form of clothing or its absence denoted by the skin of an animal, clothing is used in a range of configurations in order to explicate the intangible sense of what was lost. Clothing can be simultaneously symbolic and functional, being tied to the body in both a pragmatic as well as a social dimension. It can be metaphorical while still having a material reference point and is an almost ubiquitous cultural tool to employ within figurative language. Clothing is thus capable of being an ideal vehicle for abstract thought as it is physically and conceptually linked to the body, making it capable of approaching notions such as what it means, in embodied terms, to have or to lose divine favour.
These ideas are crucial to the dramatic manifestations of the Fall that make their way into early English drama from the fourteenth century onwards. By exploring the concepts that have been transmitted through time and across different theologies and philosophies, I propose that these plays were rich in the deployment of ideas that pre- dated them by over a millennia and a half, but that they did so in an adaptive and dynamic manner. The body is crucial to the dramatic enterprise and staging the event of the Fall reveals much about what the particular society that produced these plays thought about their own corporeal condition. What must be kept in mind, however, is that the evidence of early English drama is fragmentary and does not afford a detailed picture of contemporary dramatic activity. The extant plays have very different transmission histories and cannot, as a consequence, be considered to be directly comparable to each other. Furthermore, the surviving works are only a sample of the vernacular drama that was performed in late-medieval England. As such, no firm conclusions can be drawn about the place of these configurations of the fallen body, but
18
they do provide glimpses into the possible variability of co-existing configurations that permeate art, literature, theology and drama.17
Before an overview of the exegetical works that laid the ground for late-medieval conceptualisations of the fallen body is given, the use of grace within this work must be established for it is not explicitly mentioned in the text of Genesis. Grace is what is understood to have been lost in the event of transgression in these exegetical works, making it essential to consider in this work. Part of the problem of considering the relevance of grace, however, is the difficulty one encounters in attempting a definition.
Roger Haight writes: ‘The word “grace” is one of the most common in the Christian vocabulary. At the same time, it is probably the most slippery word to define.’ The difficulty in pinning down a solid definition of the term is largely owing to the fact that the English word derives from the Latin gratia, which itself is a translation of the Greek charis, and that ‘the New Testament authors used charis “to render several Hebrew words conveying meanings reducible to three main ideas: condescending love, conciliatory compassion and fidelity”’.18 While the Hebrew equivalent chēn is not found in Genesis chapters 1-3, the presence of some form of favour by God is eminently articulated by the text and picked up on by its exegetical writers, as is its loss.
It is from this perspective that I draw on the idea of ‘grace’, which, despite its complex
17 The complexity of the transmission history of the plays was recently brought to my attention by Pamela M. King in a talk hosted by the University of Lausanne, ‘Cross-examining the Witnesses: the Anomalous Primary Sources for the Canon of English Medieval Plays’, 26 November, 2014. King will deal with the problems offered by the extant plays in the Ashgate Research Companion to Early Theatre (forthcoming 2016), of which she is editor.
18 Roger Haight, The Experience and Language of Grace (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p. 6. The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms records thirty one entries regarding grace, displaying the multiplicity of senses that have developed from the numerous linguistic origins as well as the differing theological senses proposed by various Christian groups. The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, ed. by Donald K. McKim, 2nd edn (Louisville, NY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), pp.
137-39. Stephen Renn notes seventy instances of the Hebrew noun chēn in the Old Testament meaning
‘grace’ or favour’ and writes that ‘when predicated of Yahweh it indicates the free and unconditional granting of his blessing’. In relation to the New Testament, the Greek noun charis ‘is the dynamic Greek equivalent for the Hebrew term […] found about 150 times’. Expository Dictionary of Bible Words, ed.
by Stephen D. Renn (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005), pp. 447-48.
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history of transmission, best conceptualises the relationship that was imagined to exist between God and his human creations and then irreparably, yet not completely, damaged by their disobedience.
Grace is given a concrete form time and again in exegesis, as well as in the Genesis text itself. This concrete form predominantly takes the shape of clothing, which is both owing to the fact that much of the exegetical tradition is constructed around the
‘tunics of skin’ of Gen 3.21, but also, I argue, because clothing is particularly efficacious in clarifying moments of change related to the condition of the body. Indeed, the catastrophic change to the embodied condition of Adam and Eve is rendered explicable by virtue of the changes evident in the body as well as the coverings employed to elucidate this transition. This clothing, however, must be noted for its predominantly spiritual or conceptual form, which on the one hand suggests that it is more akin to the abstract and figurative, yet on the other cannot be detached from the material reality of cloth and its relationship to the body. This suggests that clothing is something that cannot be rigidly stratified into figurative or literal, but one that rests in between the two forms, drawing on them both in order to relate a difficult concept that is made even more difficult by virtue of its connection to the divine. This lack of clear stratification is something that will be seen time and again in both exegesis and dramatic text, as will now be explored and delineated.
1.1: The Exegetical History of Genesis 3.21
When thinking of how early English drama would present the moments following the first parents’ transgression, one would be forgiven for assuming that Gen 3.21, which states: ‘And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them’, would be a definitive guideline for staging the seminal moment in biblical
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history.19 The translation of this verse into play-text, however, is only to be found in Chester’s Creation and Fall. The leaf containing this episode is missing from the sole text recorded in the unique Towneley manuscript, as it is in the A version of the Norwich Grocer’s play. Moreover, both the N-Town and York Fall of Man plays present the event differently, even from each other. My argument in relation to this spectrum of dramatic possibilities is that each play draws on a different aspect of the available exegetical models that developed from post-biblical exegesis onwards, and which, through various literary forms, made their way into early English dramatic texts.
This section will analyse how the body’s movement from prelapsarian glory to liminal
‘lapsarian’ state and beyond was dealt with in exegesis particularly related to Gen 3.21 and how such works could have contributed to the configurations of the body that are found in the plays.
Gen 3.21 is a verse with extraordinary biblical and exegetical importance because it identifies an irreparable difference in the condition of existence that Adam and Eve experience. In exegesis, the verse has been subjected to an enormous range of interpretative possibilities because the ‘tunics of skin’ prove to be sticking points for both Jewish and Christian interpreters. For different reasons, the tunics create conflict with fundamental beliefs about Scripture or essential doctrines of the faith. Such obstacles must thus be borne in mind when exploring the vast network of exegesis that has been produced around this single verse. Throughout the following section, I will trace the history of how the tunics have been understood in Jewish and Christian thought, while also considering certain Neoplatonic interpretations where relevant.
19 The Holy Bible: Douay Version, < http://www.drbo.org/goto.htm> [Accessed January 23 2012].
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1.1.1: Postbiblical and Rabbinic Exegesis on the ‘Tunics of Skin’
Beginning with the Jewish post-biblical exegetical texts and the later rabbinic works, it should firstly be noted that there are significant difficulties with ascertaining the exact sources or dates for the ideas that will be outlined. This, as will be seen time and again, is largely owing to the fact that the earliest scriptural interpretations began as oral traditions, with the written commentaries cited here being much later compilations.
This is a prevalent issue for the Jewish material, given that much of the post-biblical exegesis recorded in the extant pseudepigraphical (meaning attributed erroneously to a certain author) and apocryphal texts is dated much later than it most likely began. Even still, these works are widely accepted as being the oldest in Jewish exegesis and are considered to be of great significance both in terms of what they say about early Jewish thought and the influence they had on the later rabbinic Targum and Midrash.
Jewish interpreters experienced many problems with the ‘tunics of skin’ given to Adam and Eve in that seminal moment in Scripture. The most significant problem raised by this verse was that it caused a conflict within the order of scriptural events if the ‘tunics of skin’ were to be understood as animal skins. If an animal was slaughtered in order to cover the bare bodies of Adam and Eve then death had entered the world before its allotted time, which was believed to be after Cain had murdered his brother Abel. This problem of temporal order is at the centre of the significant rewritings of Gen 3.21 perpetrated in both the early post-biblical exegesis and the later rabbinic Midrash and Targum, which find a host of ways to solve the problem. Most of these rewritings use clothing in order to counter the problem, but the ways in which this is done are most unexpected.
22
Of the extant pseudepigraphical works that include a particularly significant interpretation of Gen 3.21, the Apocalypse of Moses is the oldest and most relevant.20 With regard to the dating of this and other works, pseudepigraphy has been deemed to be a ‘Second Temple Jewish phenomenon’ (515 BCE-70 CE) but the extant texts are predominantly from the later end of this period.21 The earliest text survives in Greek, and Stephen N. Lambden argues that this work and the apocryphal Latin Life of Adam and Eve are ‘possibly two versions of a single original written (in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek?) between c. 20 BCE and 70 CE’.22 Early problems with interpreting the scriptural verse are evident in the significant changes that are made to the moment of the Fall.
Here recounted through the mouth of an elderly Eve speaking to her children and grandchildren, her tale of woe includes a reversal of the details of Gen 3.21, with the event articulated as a loss of prelapsarian clothing concurrent with the loss of her
‘righteous’ prelapsarian condition:
And in that very hour my eyes were opened, and forthwith I knew that I was bare of the righteousness with which I had been clothed (upon), and I wept and said to him: ‘Why hast thou done this to me in that thou hast deprived me of the glory with which I was clothed?’23
20 This work is termed pseudepigraphy as it is falsely attributed to Moses.
21 Annette Yokisho Reed, ‘Pseudepigraphy, Authorship, and the Reception of “The Bible” in Late Antiquity’, in The Reception of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11-13 October 2006, ed. by DiTommaso and Turcescu (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 467-90 (p. 489).
22 Stephen N. Lambden, ‘From Fig-Leaves to Fingernails: Some Notes of the Garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Select Early Postbiblical Jewish Writings’, in A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden, ed. by Morris and Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), pp. 74-90 (p. 78).
23 The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. and trans. by R. H. Charles, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), ii, 146.
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Eve, speaking to Satan, explicitly presents the repercussions of her transgression as a stripping, implying that the first parents were not naked as Gen 2.25 states but were covered by a ‘glory’ and ‘righteousness’, configured here as a clothing.24 Nakedness is presented as a direct consequence of disobedience, with the loss of some original clothing isolating the moment of ontological change, which Eve laments. Prelapsarian grace thus takes the form of clothing in this early Jewish text. It is a covering that protects the first bodies of the progenitors and its loss signals their disgrace.
The Apocalypse of Moses is not a unique case in Jewish exegesis and numerous later texts, believed to be inheritors of pseudepigraphy, frequently propose that Adam and Eve were dressed in their original state. Clothing is used in these texts in order to pinpoint the moment at which the Fall occurs, with its stripping from the body also evincing what the ramifications will be. The variety of possible materials that are stripped from the body also reveals the proliferation of this exegetical model, as Lambden outlines:
(1) The first couple were initially clothed in “glorious garments” […] or in the divine “glory”, “lustre” or “splendor”, in a “cloud of glory”; (2) Adam’s garments were (high-) priestly garments which were handed down; (3) the first couple were clothed in the primordial light or in
“garments of light”; (4) the garments of the first couple were made from the shining skin of Leviathan; (5) the first couple were initially clothed in
“nail-skin” garments perhaps with the implication that their clothes were smooth, tight-fitting, pearly, translucent and luminous, jewel-like or perfumed (?); (6) the first couple’s “coats of skins” (Gen 3.21) were their
24 Douay: ‘And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.’
24
fleshly skin or physical bodies; (7) the post-Edenic garments of the first couple were made from skin/and or wool of either the goat, hare, lamb/sheep or weasel, or from (fine) linen.’ 25
Scholars are largely in consensus with regard to the connections between pseudepigraphy and the later rabbinic Midrash and Targum and Marc Hirshman argues that these works are ‘the link between the Hebrew Bible and its reinterpretation in rabbinic times’.26 This link, however, has been obscured by later rabbis and Christian theologians, whose declaration of the works as ‘late or derivative’ has been disproven in particular by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.27 While dating the inception of the oral Midrash tradition has proved to be an onerous task, it has been possible to date the extant written materials with greater accuracy.28 Gary G. Porton
25 Lambden, p. 89.
26 As Marc Hirshman notes: ‘The extent and riches of Jewish literature of the Second Temple period are only now coming into sharp focus. The Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumranic and Hellenistic Jewish writings, all precede rabbinic literature and hold important clues to the development of rabbinic aggadic midrash, as do the early Greek and Aramaic translations of the Bible. They are, along with those sections of the Bible itself of the late second temple period, the link between the Hebrew Bible and its
reinterpretation in rabbinic times.’ Hirshman, ‘Aggadic Midrash’, in The Literature of the Sages, ed. by Safrai and Tomson (Assen: Fortress Press, 2006), pp. 107-32 (p. 127).
27 Reed explores the denigration of pseudepigraphy in detail and argues for the central influence that these texts have had on both later Jewish and Christian works. Citing that ‘among the Enochic pseudepigrapha […] for instance, are found writings that predate Daniel, the latest book in the Tanakh/Old Testament’, and that furthermore: ‘Research into the reception-histories of 1 Enoch and Jubilees, for instance, has suggested that these texts functioned as scripture in early Jewish communities’, it is clear that based on such evidence, these works should be considered as of great importance to the understanding of early Judaism and its influence on later traditions; This is referring to the discovery of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves at Khirbet Qumran (now the West Bank) during 1946 and 1954. Reed, p. 470.
28 The Midrashim and Targumim, like the pseudepigraphy, were also predominantly exegetical in nature.
Midrash, firstly, is an interpretive rabbinic tradition written in both Hebrew and Aramaic, whose purpose is to explain biblical text. It is generally split into two categories: halakhah, which is based on subjects of law or religious practice, and (h)aggadah, which interprets biblical narrative and focuses on theological or ethical issues and is thus the Midrash that is of greatest interest here. Shinan argues that the creation of the Midrash was located in ‘two main centres, the Land of Israel and Babylonia’ and he dates them to the second century CE, but notes that as the composition practices were oral to begin with it is often difficult to date their emergence with any great precision: ‘In the creation of aggadah and targum, a central place was afforded the oral component: they were created by heart, performed orally, and memorized from generation to generation. As a result, many changes, additions and adaptations occurred, and a great deal of time passed – sometimes even centuries – between the creation of a specific aggadic or targumic tradition and its redaction. The dating of aggadic-targumic traditions, therefore, is one of the most complex questions in modern research.’ Avigdor Shinan, ‘The Late Midrashic, Paytanic, and Targumic
25
cites that many of the oldest Midrashim have been dated to the third and the fourth centuries CE in their extant form but remains cautious about the sources of these works.29 Targumim meanwhile, present similar problems in terms of dating.30 They seem to have been edited and revised across a large period of time, preserving material that is contained in much earlier as well as later works, making it difficult to isolate their sources and thus date them effectively.31 What must also be noted about the Midrash and Targum is that the two traditions are closely linked to each other.
Hirshman urges that they are to be read as ‘faithful allies’, explaining that ‘[a]s the
Literature’, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. by Finkelstein, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-2006), iv (2006), 678-81.
29 Gary G. Porton outlines the history of the Midrash: ‘Sifra, Mekhilta, Sifré BaMidbar and Sifré Devarim are our oldest collections of rabbinic midrash texts. Most scholars place the editing of these collections in the latter half of the third century of the common era, or in the fourth century at the latest.
The problems we face studying these collections are common to all of the rabbinic documents of late antiquity. They are collections of material, some of which may be quite old, and some of which may be much later. There are no indications within the documents as we now have them which allow us with any confidence to place the material in the first, second, third or even fourth century. We do not know who collected the traditions they contain or why. Nor can we ascertain the “editorial principles” which underlie their formation. We also do not know the sources of the material, what the editors omitted, what they changed, or what they created de novo.’ Gary G. Porton, ‘Methods of Early Rabbinical Exegesis’, in Reception and Interpretation, p. 442.
30 Targumim, according to Zeev Safrai: ‘[A]re a part of the literature of the sages whose purpose is to translate and explain the Hebrew Scriptures into Aramaic […] these Aramaic translations were especially intended for the Palestinian Jewish communities.’ Zeev Safrai, ‘The Targums as Part of Rabbinic Literature’, in The Literature of the Sages, ed. by Safrai and others (Assen: Fortress Press, 2006), pp.
243-80 (p. 243). Hirshman situates the Targumim as ‘an integral part of the rabbis’ view of [the] Bible’
because it was a requirement of the Mishna that the Targum was read alongside the Torah. Hirshman, p.
128.
31 M. G. V. Hoffman writes: ‘The presence of an early tradition does not mean that the text (i.e., a fixed text) is early. The late date of a fixed text, however, does not preclude the possibility of fixed early traditions. It seems clear that we must reckon with some flexibility in the development of the targums.
Interpretative paraphrases could be readily changed to accommodate changing situations, and written texts not possessing the same kind of sacred and authoritative character as the Hebrew text could more easily be edited. Thus the material within a targum reflects a variety of dates and places, and the dating of traditions remains problematic. Those who have used parallels between the NT and the targums to claim the antiquity of the targums and then claimed the NT’s dependence upon them have been charged with circular reasoning, but McNamara has called this a “convergence of evidence” and would put the burden of proof on those maintaining a late date. Thus McNamara gives as a rule of thumb for dating material in the Palestinian targums: “Unless there is specific proof to the contrary, the haggadah of the Palestinian Targums is likely to be tannaitic and to antedate the outbreak of the Second Jewish Revolt in AD 132”. This claim remains disputed, and we are able to work with greater security about dating with Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan to the Former Prophets.’ M. G. V. Hoffman, A Brief Introduction to the Targumim,
<http://www.gettysburgseminary.org/mhoffman/OTinNT/resources/TargumInfo.pdf> [Accessed on 2 September 2012].
26
midrash incorporated bits of targum into its work, so the targum epitomized some midrashic insights in its more expansive passages’.32
In relation to Gen 3.21, a number of earlier Midrash and Targum contain interpretations that are particular to Judaism, with many presenting the first parents as dressed in their prelapsarian condition. In Genesis Rabbah (henceforth Gen Rabbah), produced circa 450 CE, the Midrash suggests that the condition of Eve’s skin in particular was radically affected by her transgression: ‘[H]er glorious outer skin, a sheet of light smooth as a fingernail, had fallen away.’33 This stripping differs slightly from the pseudepigraphical version. The outer layer imagined to exist at the moment of creation is configured as a skin, which differs materially from what will be exposed beneath. Gen Rabbah, like other interpretations, also attributes light-giving qualities to this prelapsarian skin. The association of light with a primordial skin or clothing is extremely relevant to this study and will be considered in detail shortly.
The Pirqê de Rabbi Eliezer (henceforth Pirqê), a much later Midrash, contains similar details and is dated to the eighth or ninth century CE.34 Even with such a late date, however, this Midrash is considered to be of great importance because it contains a compendium of earlier exegetical motifs related to Gen 3.21.35 With regard to the
32 Hirshman further notes: ‘[T]he Aramaic targum was created in the same circles as rabbinic midrash.’
While their connections to other Jewish traditions are necessary to take into account, it is also important to note these exegetical works are not composed in isolation from rival philosophies or faiths. Hirshman, pp. 128-29. Shinan adds that the aggadah regularly engaged with debates against the pagan Greco- Roman world, Samaritans, Gnostics and Christianity in the defense of Judaism, elicited by the polemical stances that are taken in extant texts. See Shinan, p. 679.
33 Stephen D. Ricks, ‘The Garment of Adam in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Tradition’, in Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communications, and Interaction, ed. by Hary, Hayes and Astren (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 203-26 (p. 204). In fact, Orthodox Jews still look at their nails in the ‘habdalah’ light at the close of Sabbaths and Festivals, this being understood as the last remaining fragment of the prelapsarian body. Lambden writes: ‘It even came to be supposed, in view of the tradition that the first couple were initially clothed in “nail skin garments” (seen as a bright integument or fingernail-type coat of light), that the only post-Edenic trace of primordial clothing is the human fingernails, gazed at at the termination of Sabbaths and Festivals in the habdalah light.’ Lambden, p. 89.
34 Helen Spurling and Emmanouela Grypeou, ‘Pirkê de-Rabbi Eliezer and Eastern Christian Exegesis’, Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 4 (2007), 217-43 (p. 218).
35 Editor Gerald Friedlander writes: ‘It is not by any means definitely established that our author actually copied any of the afore-mentioned books. What is maintained, however, is the existence of some sort of
