Behold, the King of Heaven and Earth Is Born

Cursor Mundi, Pepysian Gospel Harmony and Stanzaic Life of Christ draw on the Gospels to portray Jesus as king of heaven and of Israel at his birth. The infant Jesus appears as a hero battling with and defeating the devil. Miracles attend his birth, and he is greeted with awe and wonder. The selected fourteenth-century works share the pastoral purpose of instructing lay and clerical audiences about the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, about redemption, and about the articles of faith that all Christians are expected to know and affirm. Because these writers focus on Christ’s power, the Nativity does not invite tender contemplation of the infant Jesus, nor is narrative space given to Mary’s maternal joy. The selected works create Mary as an indispensable witness to Jesus’s two natures, and to the sacred meanings of the Incarnation, Annunciation, and Nativity. These works also demonstrate an anti-Jewish orientation to the Nativity, in that Judaism fulfills its historical purpose when Christ is born king of Israel. The writers contribute to a religious culture in which discourses about Judaism serve the needs of Christian theology and historiography. The chapter introduces the selected works for readers unfamiliar with them, and analyzes their treatments of Christ’s early life, discovering common tropes and theological instructions as well as differences among the texts.