Images that it is perhaps best not to use in modern sermons, no 238435.

[tree_and_leaf]

From sermon 71 in the St Georgener Predigten in the Rieder edition (1908, MTU 10), on the joys of heaven, translation mine.

"(God) shares Himself so fully with the souls that they do not desire anything other that what they have, that is God, the highest (or: excessive) good. Now you should know that Our Lord has two breasts from which the souls in heaven suck both delight and joy: that is, His pure humanity and His lovely divinity. He moves the soul from one breast to the other: if she want milk, He gives her the breast of his humanity; if she want wine and honey, He gives her the breast of His sweet divinity. Of which the prophet has said, 'Open your mouth that you may suck your fill'."

Um, yeah. (Also, what on earth is kipper win?)

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Interesting... It's not that it doesn't work as metaphor, because it's a nice clear image. It's just. Um.

Assuming the kippers to be in English, can you provide some sort of context? The OED is not helping me.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's a perfectly good metaphor, it's just that modern congregations are liable to snigger, partly because of mentioning breasts, and partly because a fairly large section is likely to find the gender-bending offensive.

The kippers are in German - the win is clear, it means wine, so kipper must be an adjective. I jsut can't find it, and I can't think of anything it's likely to be a copyists error for. The -pp- is extremely rare in German, at least of that dialect, so I'm assuming it is a mistake, but for what I do not know.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think it's the bit about each breast symbolising something different that pushes it over the edge, myself; but then I am coming to think that reading so much mediaeval theology has done something weird to my mind....

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can cope with the differently symbolising breasts (though obviously if I were in a congregation I'd probably snigger along with the non-offended half), it's just that I'm picturing the author as a sort of earnest NCT type in the meeting room upstairs at the GP's surgery.

[tree_and_leaf]

Heh. Now that hadn't occurred to me, but it makes far too much sense!

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

My Lexer gives me an own, whole lemma for kipper-wîn! I'm so impressed.

kipper-wîn: stm. cyprischer wein.

Two other entries could make sense as well, depending on the context:

kîp, -bes stm. (md. kîf) scheltendes, zänkisches leidenschaftliches wesen, eifer, trotz, widersetzlichkeit (âne kîp ohne streit, unzweifelhaft, in wahrheit); wettstreit.

kipper stm. nicht rittermässiger kämpfer.

[tree_and_leaf]

Wow, thank you! (Online Lexer was down, she said sheepishly) It's the 'cyprischer Wein', I think, though this doesn't answer the question of why Cyprian wine. Surely not the Aphrodite connection? I see I need a book about mediaeval wine...

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

You are very welcome. :)

"Surely not the Aphrodite connection?"

Afraid I can't help you there, as I don't know the whole text. ;)
But why not Aphrodite? Would be a nice supplement to the two breasts, I think...

Seeing as their Lexer is also down (so it's no help right now), you know Mediaevum (http://www.mediaevum.de/haupt2.htm), right? ;)

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, Mediaevum's a useful site!

The wine is referred to there and only there; I think it's probably something to do with the quality of the wine (particularly sweet?)

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the same thing in the Grimm dictionary. The other half hadn't heard of it so he suggested I look it up. We've got the complete dictionary (yup- all 33 volumes)

It is about the only place we've ever found the definition of our surname.

[tree_and_leaf]

We've got the complete dictionary (yup- all 33 volumes)

*envies*

Though it's also online, which is better than nothing - but I'd rather have the actual dictionary (ditto the OED!)

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

We inherited it (literally) a few years ago. Whils we did offer a lot of other books to the local library (where those they didn't want were sold by the Kilo) we decided not to offer this one. If the library could have said for definite that they did want it, that would have been different, but we weren't willing to see it sold off in their bookstore!

Don't know a damned thing about German, or sermons.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Wine, however....

Commanderia (otherwise Commandaria). Cyprus has been famous for it since the Crusades. A sweet dessert wine, similar to Malmsey or some Madeiras. Hugh Johnson cd tell you rather more.

Re: Don't know a damned thing about German, or sermons.

[tree_and_leaf]

Wemyss, you're marvellous. That is clearly it - of course it has to be a noted sweet wine, given the mediaeval obsession with sweetness as the highest term of praise (probably understandable, in a world before refined sugar).

Not so much marvellous as an accomplished toper.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Glad I cd help.

I may add that it took the palm - over the Frogs's own crus - in King Ph. Aug.'s 'Battle of the Wines', the first prize tasting in Fr history.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I am amazed by the erudition of your flist!

I know nothing of wine or German, though I'm familiar with metaphors in sermons that seem to wander off from where the preacher intended sometwhere between his mouth and their ears.

But I do have the name of the suprisingly naked nun (and wasn't that a fun google search!) from the BBC's Mediaeval Mind programme. I think, based on what I heard from the programme and slight googling, that is was Angela of Foligno. There's something about her here (http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1998/italian-html/Morrison,%20Molly.htm), in the unlikely event she's new to you.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, Angela! I knew of her, and had marked her down on the reading list, but no-one told me she stripped. Some people have the oddest priorities.

[ms-wanderlust.livejournal.com]

I swear to God, the day someone writes a worship song based around those words is the day I leave the church. Really.

[tree_and_leaf]

I shan't send them to Graham Kendrick, then ;)

Though tbh, I think the use of feminine imagery for Christ probably precludes it from being used as a worship song, anyway....

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Back Then it was OK to use breasts for food, wasn't it? Can't have that sort of shenanigans in this day and age. No one wants to think about breasts like that, do they? I mean, ew. And as for God having them - well, that's stupid. Everyone knows God's a bloke, right? And breasts are for blokes to look at. And other stuff.

So how far has feminism come since the middle ages, precisely...? It does work as a metaphor, though I'm not sure about the different breasts having different flavours; as far as I'm aware milk's milk, whichever side it comes from, and the difference lies in whether it's foremilk or hindmilk.

[tree_and_leaf]

So how far has feminism come since the middle ages, precisely...?

A long way - but I know exactly what you mean, and in some ways things have got worse instead of better. The total sexualisation of the female body's definitely a backward step.

Also, it always strikes me as odd that although, for example, the priesthood of women was plain unthinkable in the middle ages, they didn't have the modern hangup about using feminine imagery of God, and indeed of Christ - it's by no means just Julian of Norwich, or even Seuse, who tends to refer to Christ as Sophia, in quite erotic terms; even Bernard of Clairvaux uses feminine imagery of God at times (though then definitely food rather than sex related).

Come to that, I think the mediaeval church would have coped better with evolution than the nineteenth century one did.