Jesus on the Gender Spectrum

This image of Jesus as a mother, as a woman, has roots in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, beginning primarily with theologies composed by Cistercian monks such as Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as the Benedictine Anselm of Canterbury [10]. Caroline Walker Bynum writes that maternal imagery was not exclusively used to refer to Jesus and God, but to also reference the leaders in the church such as bishops and apostles [11]. Anselm of Canterbury was perhaps the source of the Cistercian ideas about a maternal God, and wrote in depth in his Monologian of God as the Supreme Being. He defines the Supreme Being as a composite entity, not just of one single nature. Anselm also writes of the Supreme Being as existing without beginning or end, and as having the ability to surpass the realm of gender entirely. However, Anselm rejects the idea of describing God as a mother, because, he argues, men are superior to women [12]. At the same time however, he describes Jesus and God as the ones that give life, like a mother to a child, and as the lover of humankind (love as a sentiment being considered particularly feminine). Bernard of Clairvaux characterizes Jesus as the nurturer, like a mother feeding her child from her breast, as someone who provides and cares for her children [13].

My reinterpretation of Jesus as a Woman of Sorrows stems from a combination of the medieval debates and concepts written about previously, but also from conversations happening in a modern context. After a report on the Motherhood of God was published by the Church of Scotland, there was widespread criticism of the article from men and women alike within the church. Deborah F. Middleton wrote in The New Blackfriars a response to the outcry, echoing the statement in the report that affirms that “it is incorrect to ‘genderise’ God since gender belongs to the finite world of creatures. Our language can never describe the Divine adequately, and we can only use our human images as pointers which hint at God’s nature.” [14] If one can never pin a label upon God, why should we be able to categorize his human representation on Earth, Jesus Christ? Cannot the same divine fluidity be afforded to him?

In beginning my reinterpretation, I heavily considered exactly how I wanted to portray Jesus. Because I am in effect both the patron and the artist of this piece, I wanted it to reflect my vision of the inversion of gender, as a queer woman, and as someone raised devoutly in the patriarchal Christian church. Virginia Reinberg writes in her article "For the Use of Women": Women and Books of Hours that books of hours for women not only acted as a devotional, but as a powerful remembrance of their lives and families, with inscriptions of familial relationships, and being passed along to friends as intimate gifts. Because the book of hours as a possession was not just the pure sum of the gold leaf pressed inside, or the number of expensive inks lining the pages, it is only just that such books represent fully the patron and her wishes [15]. I wanted this illustration to represent me, and my experience of an intimacy with a Christ that resembles myself. This is why the illustration is focused on the face of Jesus, to create a sense of communion (pardon the pun) between the viewer and the daughter of God. In the original illumination, the elements surrounding Jesus and even parts of his body rising out of the tomb are distracting, they take away from the viewer's relationship with their savior. Changing the format of the piece from landscape to portrait was a choice to represent the vitality of Christ. Most of my pieces that I create outside of class are also in the portrait style, because a piece in a landscape format strikes me as static instead of dynamic, as inert. This is the opposite effect of how I would like to portray Jesus Christ. My Jesus Christ is not only resurrected, she remains human, still bleeding from her wounds. She is surrounded by the tools of her betrayal, but she has the passage of heaven rising above her, victorious against sin. This is the image to which I would feel a connection if it was in my personal book of hours.