The Crucifixion Analysis

On May 8th, 1373, an anchoress named Julian of Norwich asked God for a sickness that would bring her close to death in order to gain a “more trew minde” of Christ’s crucifixion (Julian of Norwich 53). Through bodily visions of the Passion, Julian yearns to gain a better understanding of Christ’s “bodily peynes” and thus to “suffer with Him” (48-49, 50). In these visions, Julian witnesses several grotesque events during Christ’s crucifixion: the crown of thorns piercing Christ’s skin and causing him to bleed, the copious outpouring of Christ’s blood, and the bleeding, gaping wound on his side. While each of these scenes focus on the movement of blood out of Christ’s body, they also pay particular attention to the openings through which the blood
As Christ’s blood exits his body through a wound, this movement of blood visually mimics the act of menstruation and thus positions Christ’s wound as a feminine orifice (Julian of Norwich 473-74). The outpouring of blood continues to the point that Julian believes that if it were a physical substance, it would cover the bed she is laying in, which thus illustrates the blood’s potential to contaminate upon exiting the body (479-80). However, as Julian assesses this vision, she reads it as an expression of God’s love and the abject nature of Christ’s menstruating body shifts. Julian states that Christ’s blood is as “plentiuous as it is most pretious”, which positively correlates the amount of blood that Christ produces with “the vertue of [God’s]/pretious love” (485, 87). In addition to its correlation with God’s love, Julian applies the outpouring of blood to the Harrowing of Hell. Instead of Christ’s soul descending into Hell to give salvation to trapped souls, it is Christ’s blood that descends: “[t]he pretious / plenty of His dereworthy blode descendith downe into Helle and braste her bands / and deliveryd al that were there which longyd to the curte of Hevyn” (488-90). Subsequently, the blood ascends from Hell, washes over the entire earth to rid “al / creaturs of synne”, and then ascends into Heaven, from where it flows “evermore” (491-92, 495). Through this vision, the Medieval association of menstrual blood with waste and excrement is reversed as Julian presents the outpouring of Christ’s blood from his wound, which represents the menstruating body, as procreative, non-excremental, and, in the case of Christ’s body,