The Meditaciones Vite Christi as a Book of Prayer

217 Franciscan Studies 64 (2006) THE MEDITACIONES VITE CHRISTI AS A BOOK OF PRAYER The contemporary poet Kathleen Norris describes her discovery of lectio divina as an attempt “to read more with the heart than with the head, [respecting] the power of words to resonate with the full range of human experience.”1 In the fourteenth century a Franciscan friar writing for a “Poor Clare” nun gave her advice Norris would recognize. “Keep the Gospel always in your breast,” the friar, Johannes Caulibus, exhorted the nun, Cecilia. He then developed an extended reading of the Gospel for her, a conscious attempt to stimulate and engage her imagination so that this familiar story would move her to live as a disciple, to live as Mary and the other disciples had lived. While we can read his text as a homiletic enterprise,2 we must also recognize that this text functioned to stimulate Cecilia’s prayer life, specifically to stimulate her to “discursive prayer,” meditation on the Gospel in order to encounter Jesus Christ and conform her life to the lives of the disciples , especially to Mary’s life. In the fourteenth century, probably between 1346 and 1364, a Franciscan friar, probably Johannes Caulibus of San Gimignano, wrote the first extended set of meditations on the life of Jesus Christ, writing for a Poor Clare whose name he never mentions. I am going to name her Cecilia only because Johannes holds up the Virgin Saint Cecilia as her model. St. Cecilia was among the most popular models for religious women, and Johannes’ use of her name need not imply that his reader was her namesake. It seems clumsy, however, not to name the woman for whom this friar wrote. Indeed, Johannes does not name himself although Mary Taney has convinced me that he is the author 1 Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), xiv. 2 Lawrence Hundermarck, “Preaching the Passion: Late Medieval ‘Lives of Christ’ as Sermon Vehicles,” in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. T.L. Amos, E. A. Green, B. M. Kienzle (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications), 14768 , esp. 151-59. 218 MARY MEANY of the text.3 Johannes works from the four gospels to provide a detailed , imaginative reading of the Savior’s life, and his text became a seminal text for Western Christian devotion to the humanity of Christ. This is the seminal text for what Ewert Cousins has called “the mysticism of the historical event.”4 Johannes wrote the text to stimulate Cecilia’s meditation. He intended it to feed her prayer life, and reading it carefully as a book of prayer can enrich our understanding of medieval religious life. Johannes lays out his purpose for his reader in the “Prologue” and returns to this in the last chapter of his book.5 Johannes first presents St. Cecilia’s practice of choosing events from the Gospel stories of Jesus’ life which she “then stored . . . safely within the hidden recesses of her heart for her personal counseling.” He tells his Cecilia that this practice of constant rumination on the life of Jesus “strengthens and stabilizes the mind . . . , strengthens one against tribulations as with the martyrs,” and “teaches us what must be done so that neither enemies nor vices can make inroads.” Further, however, constant meditation on the Holy Life is a “sturdy platform [that] lifts one to greater heights of contemplation on [which] is found an anointing.”6 At the end of the Meditations, he reminds her that the focus of her meditation is to make herself present where Jesus is, where the events of His life took place. Later, if necessary, she can “bring into [her] meditation the moral points and references [if they are useful for] acquiring some virtue or detesting some vice.”7 He ends his book for Cecilia with a celebration of the beauty, at once spectacular and gracious, of Jesus.8 The purpose of the Meditation is to appreciate that Beauty, to contemplate the Beautiful Savior and enter His heavenly court. 3 Johannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi, ed. Mary Stallings-Taney (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), ix-xi. Hereafter referred to as MVC. References to...