The Lutheran transformation of passion devotion, 1520–1560, and lessons for today

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines how early Lutheran authors transformed three pedagogical strategies prominent in late‐medieval passion books: the use of Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as models for feeling in relationship to Christ; graphic depiction of Christ's wounded body; and the practice of “composition of place,” that is, imagining oneself in the scene of the crucifixion. It argues that early Lutheran authors transformed these strategies to equip lay Christians to endure temporal setbacks and persecution; they were to find Christ's body in the present, in themselves and their neighbors, and to discern invulnerability and triumph underneath the apparent opposite. This article commends practices of imagined relationship to Christ and of reading the present through the passion for Christians and the church today. Equally important are the warnings about human vulnerability to deceit found in these texts, which insist on the interconnection of discernment, feeling, and relationship.