Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/208

 Thus religious emotion always tended to be transmuted into images. Mystery seemed to become graspable by the mind, when invested with a perceptible form. The need of adoring the ineffable in visible shapes was continually creating ever new figures. In the fourteenth century, the cross and the lamb no longer sufficed for the effusions of overflowing love offered to Jesus; to these is added the adoration of the name of Jesus, which occasionally threatens to eclipse even that of the cross. Henry Suso tattoos the name of Jesus over his heart and compares himself to the lover who wears the name of his beloved embroidered on his coat. Bernardino of Siena, at the end of a moving sermon, lights two candles and shows the multitude a board a yard in length, bearing on an azure ground the name Jesus in golden letters, surrounded by the sun's rays. The people filling the church kneel down and weep with emotion. The custom spreads, especially with the Franciscan preachers. Denis the Carthusian is represented in art holding such a board in his uplifted hands. The sun as a crest above the arms of Geneva is derived from this usage. The ecclesiastical authorities regarded the matter with suspicion; there was some talk of superstition and of idolatry; there were tumults for and against; Bernardino was summoned before the curia, and the usage was forbidden by Pope Martin V. About the same time a very similar form of adoring Christ under a visible sign was successfully introduced into the ritual, namely, that of the monstrance. To this also the Church objected at first; the use of the monstrance was originally forbidden except during the week of the Corpus Christi. In taking, instead of the original form of a tower, that of a radiant sun, the monstrance became very like the board, bearing Jesus’ name, of which the Church disapproved.