Synagoga as Mother in Ekbert of Schönau’s Stimulus amoris

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that the (understudied) twelfth-century Stimulus amoris text, which notably describes Christ’s body as aborted matter from the womb of his mother Synagoga, was a key influence on later medieval devotional culture and its gendered anti-Judaism, and accordingly the article provides a close analysis of this striking passage. The article discusses the text’s usage of material from Isaiah, Job, and the Gospel of John, exploring the implications of each according to Christian typology and the supersession, and argues that Christ and Synagoga should in this way be recognized as an alternate, but equally important, form of the “Jesus as Mother” trope usually applied to Christ and Mary.