We are a little slow at Hermits, but a while back ago KB.com asked something about Jesus and his hotrod. And, as is wont with boys, the discussion quickly degenrated into both a peeing contest and a conversation about masturbation. At this point, JTB, in all her new-mom-idity, or mommy-ness, chided the boys for how much attention they pay to their wonder-sticks and the joys it brings, and raised the discussion to amazingly new heights.

She did jest about the Holy Prepuce. Hopefully, my irreverence won’t be too unwarranted. Wikiwonderness repeats the story of Catherine of Siena’s mystical betrothal to Christ, where it is said her marriage was sealed with a ring made of Jesus’ foreskin. (They say that they need the source, but they also cite Holy Feast, Holy Fast as a work that explores her life. And they are quite close, I don’t remember which work, but Bynum does relate the story.)¹ I don’t know, however, which is stranger. St. Catherine wandering around with a foreskin ring, or the Viennese woman who “experienced a vision in which she recieved the holy foreskin in her mouth and discovered that it tasted as sweet as honey.” (actually, he gets it from Bynum, as well, but he doesn’t cite her, except in the bibliography, where he has four of her works).²

The late Middle Ages and Renaissance were obsessed with the Incarnation (as understood in JTB’s theological disquisition) but expressed this in ways much more similar to the boys. Some mysteries are so great the only way to express them is through the profane, the argument would go.

One mainstay of this sort radical incarnation imagery is Mother Mary and/or Grandmother Anne pointing to, and sometimes caressing the Christ-child’s pudenda, as in this Hans Baldung 1511 portrayal of the Holy Family. These, though, of a cherubic Christ being coddled by saintly women, are quite well-known.

Less well known are the crucified Christ with erection paintings, As in this Lucas Cranach’s 1515-1518 painting of the Holy Trinity.

That we find this painting in complete poor taste is evidenced, possibly (do I make too much of it?) by the fact that if you want a reproduction of a Cranach Trinity painting, you have to settle for this undated one.

Yet, I would venture to say that old Cranach still echoes the Christ with erection in this painting, as well. Though the heavenly throng, and Heavenly Father are virtually unchanged, the Holy Ghost rests on Christ’s lap, and stands in for his penis.

If the Madonna and naked child paintings unequivocally proclaim that God has taken human form, and every aspect of that—see, he has a penis. These paintings, while still making claims about his humanity, speak to something different. The virility and power of Christ. In his death, he is powerful. Though dead, he, like his member, will rise and in his rising he will give life to humans.

For another Jesus hung on wood.

If you want to know more about depictions of Jesus as sexed, and a good discussion of it to boot, see Leo Steinburg’s The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion.

¹ It is indeed Bynum. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. California Berkley, 1987. 174-175.

² Muir, Edward. Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2nd. Cambridge, 2005, p. 167.

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