Infant Jesus Research Articles

Church-Naming Practices among Eastern Rite Catholics in the United States

References Attwater, Donald. Dictionary of Mary. London: Longmans, Green, 1957. Attwater, Donald. Dictionary of Saints. London: Bruce Oates and Washboume, 1938. Attwater, Donald. Saints of the East. New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons,1963. Brunn, Stanley D., and James O. Wheeler, “Notes on the Geography of Religious Town Names in the U.S.” Names 14 (1966): 197–202. Faris, Rev. John D. Chancellor of the Diocese of St. Maron (Brooklyn, New York). Letter to the author, 9 Jan. 1985. Fortescue, Adrian. The Uniate Eastern Churches. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957. “Infant Jesus of Prague.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. 1967 ed. Leighly, John. “Biblical Place-Names in the United States.” Names 27 (1979): 46–59. Magosci, Paul Robert. “Eastern Catholics.” Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Ed. Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Official Catholic Directory, 1980. New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1980. Rogers, P. Burwell. “Naming Protestant Churches in America.” Names 11 (1963): 44–51. Solovey, Meletius Michael. The Byzantine Divine Liturgy. Washington, DC: Catholic U of America P, 1970). Stump, Roger W. “Pluralism in the American Place-Name Cover: Ethnic Variations in Catholic Church Names.” North American Culture 2 (1986): 126–40.

Salvation, the Flesh, and God in Michel Tournier's Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar

Michel Tournier's novel Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar reveals his heterodox conception of Christianity. Its account of the birth of Christ implies that the Old Testament teaches one to reject the flesh but that the New Testament revalorizes the body, and this idea is supported by the changes in the magi when they see the infant Jesus, for each wise man learns to accept or rightly to value the flesh. An alternative to accepted Christianity is shown allegorically through Sangali's tale of the mythical king Barbedor, in which the Holy Spirit is more important than Jehovah or Christ. This idea is further developed in the story of a fourth wise man, Taor, who represents man unaffected by Old Testament doctrine and who is actually saved by the Holy Spirit rather than by Christ. Despite Tournier's claim to having written a Christian novel, the book puts the Holy Spirit rather than Christ at the center of the religion it presents.

Milton and his Muses

Students reading the Nativity Ode sometimes find Milton unconvincing and unconvinced in his satisfaction with the birth of Christ. They know of course that the crucifixion was still to come, and they know that Milton knew it, but they mean something more than that. They mean that, in the Ode, the cost of the new dispensation is too high; they mean that the passing of the pagan gods is attended by too much feeling, by nostalgia and regret. They mean that the gap between the Heav'n-born child / All meanly wrapped in the rude manger and the alarming figure of power who Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew is too wide to be taken comfortably in stride. And they may be absolutely right. I want to suggest that Milton is trying to do two things in the Ode, and that the two things are not the same thing, are not even clearly or comfortably congruent one with another. Briefly, the one thing is a prefiguring of Paradise Regain'd, with a divine hero and discomfited devils; the other is a prefiguring of L'Allegro and II Penseroso, the apparent opposition that we do not so much choose between as assimilate, in an almost dialectical fashion. The one is the gesture of a Christian idealist, for whom the infant Jesus is God's only-begotten son and man's redeemer; the other, of an amoral artist, for whom elegant design carries everything before it. The first point clarifies itself; the second may not, but becomes clearer in terms of the recognized relationship between the Nativity Ode and the fifth Latin elegy, Adventum Veris, presumably written earlier in the same year as the Ode. My point is that the relationship is not just general but, in certain respects, precisely and neatly antithetical. The one is spoken by a premature but practising Christian, the other by a thorough-going pagan. In the one, earth voluptuously lays bare her fertile bosom, in order to wanton appropriately with the sun, her lusty paramour; in the other, she woos the gentle air to hide her guilty front with innocent snow, covering her foul deformities. In the one, the old gods are banished from their accustomed haunts; in the other, we pray that the gods not forsake their sylvan home, that every grove may long have its own appropriate deities. In the one, semi-bestial forms-the brutish gods of

The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays

IN one of the most bizarre, yet very common miracles of the Middle Ages, the bread of the Eucharist is transformed between the very hands of the priest at Mass into a small living child, then slain and dismembered before the eyes of the congregation. Commentators identified the child as the Infant Jesus and often cited such miracles as proof that the Mass is an actual re-sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. But why should He appear as a child rather than the adult who died on Calvary? This question is more than a minor doctrinal quibble, for it widens out immediately into a much larger issue the issue of just what impact the myriad pictorial and verbal images of the Christ Child had, or were expected to have, on a medieval popular audience. Works like the pseudoBonaventura's widely-read Meditationes Vitae Christi emphasize the Child's humanity. They seek to kindle a joyous form of devotion by bringing Him to life as a winsome infant and inviting the reader to a sentimental response. But the miracle of the host become child is based on a harsher parallel tradition. Medieval writings, from early Latin tracts to late English popularizations, persist in conflating the Incarnation and the Passion, in fusing the Babe of Bethlehem and the sacramental Victim of the Mass. Materials from this tradition regularly appear in the English Corpus Christi Cycles, but have been just as regularly ignored by critics.' It would be easy to overemphasize the sacramental motifs in English medieval drama, thus freezing a living art form into the rigidity of a theological treatise. But to bypass these themes entirely, however fleetingly they appear, is to miss subtle overtones which would reach any fifteenth-century viewer at all familiar with vernacular sermons and devotional manuals. The Second Shepherds' Play makes particularly skilled use of the child-host motif. By approaching the play through this tradition, we can more clearly recognize the artistry of the Wakefield Master and more fully appreciate the thematic unity which critics as recent as Eleanor Prosser have denied his work.2 The Vitae Patrum tells of an aged and saintly Egyptian monk who found himself unable to believe that the bread of the Sacrament is indeed the body of Christ. Two of his fellow monks expostulated with him in vain, then prayed for divine revelation and accompanied him to Mass. When the loaves were placed on the altar, it seemed to the three monks that a little Boy lay there. As the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel of God came down from heaven and stabbed the Child with a knife, catching His blood in a chalice. When

Serenade for Baritone and Orchestra; Rout for Soprano and Orchestra; Hymn to Apollo; The World Is Charged with the Grandeur of God; A Prayer to the Infant Jesus

Serenade for Baritone and Orchestra; Rout for Soprano and Orchestra; Hymn to Apollo; The World Is Charged with the Grandeur of God; A Prayer to the Infant Jesus

SYNTHETIC RESIN—A NEW ANTACID FOR TREATMENT OF PEPTIC ULCER

SINCE the invention of celluloid by Hyatt in 1869 the synthetic plastics industry has extended so widely that it touches on almost every sphere of science and industry. Synthetic plastics, such as acrylics, vinylite, cellophane, nylon and bakelite 1 are now employed as surgical appliances, instruments, sutures and dressings, but the plastics have not been used in clinical medicine. We are now studying a plastic substance commercially known as amberlite IR IV, a synthetic resin which is chemically allied to bakelite, and in this paper 2 will describe its effect on peptic ulcer. DESCRIPTION OF RESINOUS PLASTICS Natural resins have been known and used since antiquity. Miastic and storax, natural resins, were employed by the Egyptians in preserving their mummies, and frankincense, a natural resin, was among the gifts of the Magi to the Infant Jesus. During the Renaissance, Rembrandt and Da Vinci were known to have improved their paintings

Radiodiagnosis in Infants: Volume I, Pelvis and Lower ExtremitiesRadiodiagnosis in Infants: Volume I, Pelvis and Lower Extremities. By Manuel and ArceFrancisco, Radiologists to the Infant Jesus Hospital, Pediatric Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid, and Asylum of San Rafael. Preface by Dr. SunerD. Enrique, Ordinary Professor of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine of Madrid. A volume of 285 pages

Radiodiagnosis in Infants: Volume I, Pelvis and Lower ExtremitiesRadiodiagnosis in Infants: Volume I, Pelvis and Lower Extremities. By Manuel and ArceFrancisco, Radiologists to the Infant Jesus Hospital, Pediatric Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid, and Asylum of San Rafael. Preface by Dr. SunerD. Enrique, Ordinary Professor of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine of Madrid. A volume of 285 pages

Smallness of the Infant Jesus

Smallness of the Infant Jesus