{"id":100962,"date":"2021-04-02T08:30:22","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T12:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=100962"},"modified":"2021-04-02T08:44:37","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T12:44:37","slug":"laura-varnam-abide-ye-who-pass-by-a-14thc-poem-for-good-friday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=100962","title":{"rendered":"Laura Varnam&#8211;\u2018Abide, Ye Who Pass By\u2019: A 14thc Poem for Good Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#39;Behold the wood of the cross: on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore him.&#39;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/GoodFriday?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#GoodFriday<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5WqqNkq00y\">pic.twitter.com\/5WqqNkq00y<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wabbey\/status\/1377909183341858816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 2, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>For<strong> Good Friday<\/strong>, I wanted to share a fourteenth-century <strong>Middle English lyric<\/strong> that I have been working on recently (from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poet. 175). It\u2019s  written in the <strong>voice of Christ<\/strong> in three stanzas and addresses the reader directly from the cross:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abyde<\/strong>, gud men, &amp; hald yhour pays<\/p>\n<p>And here what god him-seluen says,<\/p>\n<p>Hyngand on \u00fee rode.<\/p>\n<p>Man &amp; woman \u00feat bi me gase,<\/p>\n<p><strong>Luke vp to me &amp; stynt \u00fei pase<\/strong>,<\/p>\n<p>For \u00fee I sched my blode.<\/p>\n<p>(Abide, good men, and hold your peace, \/ And hear what God himself says, \/ Hanging on the rood.\/ Man and woman that by me goes, \/ Look up to me and cease your pace, \/ For you I shed my blood.)<\/p>\n<p>Christ accosts the man and woman who are on the point of passing by the cross and commands them to look up at him. This address constructs the <strong>reader as a viewer<\/strong> of the crucifixion, present at the scene, in the very manner encouraged by Nicholas Love in the popular fifteenth-century devotional text, <em><strong>The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ<\/strong>. <\/em>In the meditation for the crucifixion, Love urges the reader to \u2018take hede now diligently with alle \u00fei herte\u2019 and \u2018make \u00fee \u00feere present in \u00fei mynde, beholdyng alle \u00feat shale be done a3eynus \u00fei lorde Jesu\u2019 (\u2018take heed diligently with all your heart\u2019 and \u2018<strong>make yourself present in your mind<\/strong> [at the crucifixion], beholding all that shall be done against your Lord Jesus\u2019). The Rawlinson lyric is insistent that the reader\/viewer do this as Christ commands:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Be-hald my body or \u00feou gang<\/strong>,<\/p>\n<p>And think opon my payns strang,<\/p>\n<p>And styll als stane \u00feou stand.<\/p>\n<p>Biheld \u00fei self \u00fee soth, &amp; se<\/p>\n<p>How I am hynged here on \u00feis tre<\/p>\n<p>And nayled fute &amp; hand.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/drlauravarnam.wordpress.com\/2016\/03\/25\/abide-ye-who-pass-by-a-poem-for-good-friday\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#39;Behold the wood of the cross: on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore him.&#39;#GoodFriday pic.twitter.com\/5WqqNkq00y &mdash; Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) April 2, 2021 For Good Friday, I wanted to share a fourteenth-century Middle English lyric that<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=100962\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,570,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history","category-holy-week","category-poetry-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100963,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100962\/revisions\/100963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}