LUDOLPH of SAXONY. The Life of Jesus Christ: Part One – Volume 2, Chapters 41-92, translated by Milton T. Walsh. Cistercian Studies vol. 282. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2019. Pp. xix + 833. $79.95 cloth. ISBN 978-0-87907-282-7. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

This second installment of Milton Walsh’s projected four-volume translation of Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi completes Part One of this massive fourteenth-century compendium, adding 52 chapters to the 40 found in the previous volume. It takes for granted that its readers will have read its predecessor already, with only a prefatory list of source abbreviations (well over a hundred) preceding the translation, evidently on the assumption that there would be no need for even an editorial note referring back to the informative introduction to the entire project.

The material included here follows the Matthaean sequence in the main, covering the Gospel story from just after the Sermon on the Mount to immediately prior to Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16:13 ff. (though for some unknown reason the material from Matthew 12 is transposed to follow what is found in chapters 13 and 14). Synoptic (and Johannine, for chapter 6 of that Gospel) parallels are integrated into discussions of all relevant passages, with occasional comments on apparent discrepancies (for example in chapter 92 Ludolph notes that where Matthew 15:39 has Jesus coming to “the coasts of Magadan,” Mark  8:10 says he came to “the parts of Dalmanutha,” and points out that Augustine considers that these are two names for the same place, while other commentators suggest that they are neighboring territories and that Jesus came to the area “where the two regions met” [822]); but generally there is little concern about problems with harmonizing the accounts. Unique Lukan and Johannine passages are usually inserted in extensive blocks (chapters 59-63, 76-87), again with little difficulty in creating smooth transitions between the different versions. (In moving from the long sequence of Jerusalem material in John 7-10 [cc. 82-86] to Galilee for the concluding chapters of Part One, based on Matthew and Mark, Ludolph simply remarks that the scribes and Pharisees, after unsuccessfully trying to trap Jesus at the temple, followed him back to Galilee, though of course in the Synoptics Jesus himself had not yet left Galilee for his journey to Judea.)

            Ludolph’s customary manner of discussing each Gospel passage remains the same as in the earlier chapters. He typically begins by integrating the actual words of scripture into an expanded description that combines paraphrase and commentary, frequently extensive, to unpack the meaning of the text and when necessary to explain any obscurities encountered. This leads into more detailed and discursive reflections, drawing on and quoting liberally from the entire range of patristic and medieval homiletic and exegetical writings, above all the Latin Doctors Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose and Gregory, their Eastern contemporary John Chrysostom and their successors Bede and Bernard, as well as lesser known authorities such as Theophylact, and numerous more recent sources never cited by name, such as Nicholas of Gorran and Michael de Massa. As in the previous volume, Walsh does a superb job in providing references for virtually all sources, named or unnamed, authentic or misattributed, documenting just how thoroughly Ludolph had absorbed and made available to his readers the riches of the exegetical resources from the earliest days of the Church up to his own time. As in the earlier chapters, Ludolph makes little use of legendary or apocryphal materials, and the few times he does provide such information, he either distances himself from the report, as in chapter 75 where he notes that “it is said” that the woman who blesses the womb and breasts of Christ’s mother (Lk. 11:27) was a servant of Martha named Marcella (566), or presents it on the authority of a respected figure without necessarily endorsing it, as in relating the report of Eusebius in chapter 49 that the woman healed of the flow of blood in Matthew 9:20 ff. was from Caesarea Philippi and later set up a statue in her courtyard commemorating the event (106). 

Ludolph’s passion for systematic organization is evident in his love for lists, sometimes simply quick summaries, as when in chapter 63 he associates the seventh hour at which the royal official’s son was healed (Jn. 4:52) successively with seven illuminations of Christ the Sun of Justice, with the seven liturgical hours, the seven gifts of the Spirit and the seven steps of conversion (349-51); sometimes forming the main structure of the chapter’s reflections, as in chapter 53 (167-79), which describes in detail the six reasons why the Lord exhorts his disciples not to fear death (Mt. 10:28-33), or the following chapter (180-99) which discusses five obstacles identified by Jesus to becoming a disciple (based on Mt. 10:28-33, with separate consideration of the Lukan version of the first two of these obstacles, inordinate love of family and possessions).

The latter part of most chapters focuses on what is referred to as the spiritual (or sometimes “mystical”) interpretation of the text, largely consisting of presentation of what is traditionally called the moral or tropological sense, the application of the lesson to the concrete lives of the audience, but also frequently drawing on allegorical readings of the text, as when in chapter 45 the foxes and birds of Matthew 8:20 are equated with deceit and vainglory (56); such identifications are often based on supposed etymologies of personal or place names, as in chapter 65 when the healing of Naaman is recalled, his name interpreted as “decorated” or “provoking me,” his Syrian nationality as “exalted” and his immersion in the Jordan as submission to the “river of judgment” (400). These sorts of application of course usually have little basis in the text itself (though occasionally, as with the serpents and doves of Matthew 10:16 representing prudence and simplicity [145-46], they are clearly intended by the scriptural author), but nevertheless can provide important and authentic insights, if not into the literal meaning of a passage, nevertheless into the process of authentic spiritual development. Each chapter is concluded with a prayer based on the preceding reflections, a way of responding to the word of God with heartfelt words to God.

This segment of Ludolph’s work calls attention in contrasting ways to two prominent motifs associated with the tradition of meditations on the Gospels. The first is the relative infrequency of one characteristic that is a hallmark of the genre. From the twelfth-century pioneers like Aelred of Rievaulx and Eckbert of Schönau, through the classics of the following century, St. Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae and the Meditationes Vitae Christi attributed to Bonaventure but composed by fellow Franciscan John de Caulibus, up to the culminating sixteenth-century text of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, with its teachings on composition of place and application of the senses, there is a strong emphasis on vicarious participation in the events on which one meditates, an imaginative identification with the various characters in a particular story so as to make the lesson of the events described come alive in one’s own experience. Such an approach is not completely absent in Ludolph’s work, but it appears fewer than a dozen times in the 52 chapters of this section, far less than one might expect in these reflections on the earlier phases of Christ’s public life and ministry, and in almost all cases (an apparent exception being the advice to “picture” the widow of Naim in chapter 44 [51]), these passages are not original to Ludolph but are taken from meditations by Aelred (identified as Anselm’s during this period and up to modern times) or without attribution from the Meditationes Vitae Christi, by way of the intermediary text of Michael de Massa. There is no indication that Ludolph is unappreciative of this technique of engaging the reader, but it does not appear to come naturally to him. His standard approach is considerably less reliant on imagination to produce a “you-are-there” immediacy, preferring to synthesize the insights of more than a millennium of scriptural commentary in more discursive fashion, primarily directed at the mind, but without neglecting the heart.

The second aspect is what might almost be called Ludolph’s “prophetic” critique of abuses in the Church and to a certain extent in the wider society. While his primary emphasis is on personal spiritual and moral reformation, he frequently widens his scope to provide social commentary, often scathing, in emulation of and often through extensive quotation from his patristic and medieval masters. In one instance, he takes up an entire chapter (68) excoriating clerical ambition, a kind of appendix to the final verse of John 6:1-15, discussed in the previous chapter, in which after the feeding of the 5000 Christ withdraws to the mountain to avoid being made king. In contrast, Ludolph, following the example of Bernard, Jerome and Chrysostom, warns those seeking status and glory in positions of religious authority, describing at length seven evils of ecclesial ambition, not only seeking offices, multiple benefices and access to church revenues for oneself, but promoting friends, relatives and unworthy candidates, and concluding with a condemnation of “the accursed vice of curiositas” (459), a desire for knowledge as an instrument of power rather than of spiritual insight. Such criticism recurs continually through this section: in chapter 55 (200-10) he issues a rebuke to prelates who fail to preach; more than once (cc. 51, 82) he echoes Christ’s warning against unworthy pastors in John 10; in chapter 76 (577-90) he equates the Pharisees’ preoccupation with externals with contemporary ecclesiastics’ obsession with legalistic rigidity, as well as with avaricious clerics and laypeople alike; in chapter 87 he equates the attempt to stone Christ in John 10:31 to “Christians in name only” who stone Christ, as St. Ambrose said, by undermining truth, peace and justice (761); he worries in chapter 74 that the story of the return of the unclean spirit with its companions can be applied to the Church itself when outer forms become more important than inner meaning (561). While his audience is by no means restricted to those of high status in the Church, in an age when the cost of copying such a massive work would restrict its availability to those with access to personal or institutional funds, this focus on abuses among the leadership of the Church would certainly not have been unintentional and will no doubt continue into the 88 chapters of Part Two of the Vita.

Ludolph chose to conclude the first of the two parts of his Vita just before what might be considered the high point – certainly a high point – of the public life of Christ: Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah and, in Matthew’s account, as Son of the living God. But it is also a turning point, followed immediately by the first of three predictions of the Passion as the journey to Jerusalem and Calvary begins. Thus, he has created a kind of diptych, rising action succeeded by falling action. But of course, this descent is not the end of the journey in the Gospels, nor will it be in the Vita, neither for Christ the Son of God, nor for the followers of Christ in the journey of discipleship described and mentored by Ludolph. If it is rather overwhelming to realize that after 1614 pages one has only reached the half-way point of this exhaustive (if at times exhausting) presentation of the story of Christ’s mission of salvation, the indefatigable energy of the author, matched by that of the translator, is an encouragement to a similar perseverance on the part of the reader. Part One of the Vita leaves its audience poised in expectation for what is still to come, not just in quantity but in quality, an invitation not only to reflect on but to participate in the journey to and through the cross, in the paschal mystery that is central to the tradition that Ludolph draws upon so prodigiously and passes on not only to his own contemporaries but to future readers such as Ignatius. Profound gratitude is due to Milton Walsh for making much more widely available to a contemporary English-speaking audience a work not only of notable historical significance, but, as the volumes already published make clear, one containing material of perennial spiritual significance as well.