On Thursday, March 25, historian Caroline Walker Bynum spoke about Medieval Christianity, specifically focusing on holy beds and holy families. In highlighting the Beguine Cradle and Burgundian crèche, she discussed the roles of baby Jesus dolls being dressed and placed into such cribs during the medieval era. It is through the analysis of those cribs that Bynum reflected on gender roles, form and function, and sensuality in medieval art, all of which are imbued with a sense of religion. During her lecture, Bynum established that the medieval era was a time in which male social status was changing, and females’ role in religion was changing: in focusing on Mary as the mother of Jesus, women became more central in art. With that idea in mind, Bynum explained how cribs functioned in the Middle Ages to constitute the female monastic identity. Some girls were put in cloisters when they were very young- even three or four years old. Therefore, naturally, the cribs and baby …show more content…
While at first glance the Beguine crib looks like a bed, it truly, as Bynum pointed out, represents a church. It has windows on either side that look like those on a church, and its bedposts are the spirals of a cathedral. Angels are depicted on the posts, and bells hang above the bed to represent the bells rung during the Eucharist. There is an opening under the Beguine crib that probably once contained a relic, thus making the crib sacred like a church is. Moreover, the Beguine crib has a richly embroidered bed covering: it is decorated with male genealogies of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and its pillow has imageries of the Lamb of God and the four evangelists. As a whole, a crib like the Beguine crib represents both visual ambiguity and