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When our first child was due, in 1997, the date of his expected birth (though not of his actual birth) was the Second Sunday of Easter. Even though it's not his birthday, it's a day that has gained added personal significance from this fact. The day is also known as Quasimodo Sunday from the first words of the introit, "quasi modo" ("after the fashion of" or "like"):

Quasi modo geniti infantes, alleluia: rationabiles, sine dolo lac concupiscite, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Like newborn babes, alleluia, desire the rational milk without guile, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Or, as the King James translates it: As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word.

When I mentioned the due date to my old tutor he exclaimed with delight, "Why, then you can call him Quasimodo!" It's not a suggestion we entertained seriously, but now that I've told our son about it he seems disappointed at the missed opportunity.
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Baby Jesus at the breast

For the past week or so I've been busy, in an inefficient and mentally diffuse manner, with translations for the catalogue of a major exhibition about Rogier van der Weyden, kicking off in September.

Van der Weyden was Philip II's favourite old master; well, he was a lot of people's favourite old master. He conveyed the emotions of biblical episodes with a vividness that helped people imagine what it must have been like to be there - a big part of late medieval and early modern devotional practice.

In the course of background work for the translating (that is, actually trying to find the pictures being described) I came across the above picture on wikipedia, which assures me it's out of copyright (and since the original is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I imagine they're right - it's not one of the thousands of images that somebody "liberated" from behind the National Portrait Gallery's firewall)

The user statistics for this blog show that a fair number of the people who stumble across it do so by googling for pictures of Our Lady either pregnant or breastfeeding - something I blogged about in Advent last year. So I thought I'd add this one, for their benefit.
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Feast of the Immaculate Conception

And for the occasion the Daily Gospel Online provides the text of a Marian hymn by Saint Ephraem (c.306-373), with the line "She suckled him who gives nourishment to the peoples". Dignity of breastfeeding and whatnot.
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Jesus grew in Mary's womb and was fed at Mary's breasts

A week ago I was in the church of St Martinus, in Sint-Martens-Bodegem, for the first time ever. I didn't have a camera with me, or I would have snapped a shot of the statue of a visibly pregnant Mary that stood before the altar. By chance there have been news reports about another such statue (it must be said, much more visibly pregnant) in America. And reading the report just linked to (following a link from this blog) I was struck (and it seems I was not the only one so struck) by the claim that representations of a pregnant or breastfeeding Mary were uncommon in art because considered undignified. (This is perhaps why there are so few images of Jesus being born in a stable or nailed to a cross?)

If such representations really are uncommon, I have been fortunate enough to see a disproportionate number. Not so very far from here is the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Halle, whose miracles were written up by none less than Neo-Stoic philosopher Justus Lipsius. The church is one of the very few in the Low Countries to retain anything of its medieval interior, thanks to the Virgin's saving it from the Calvinist forces who attempted to surprise the town in 1580.

And on wikimedia commons: the best such painting imaginable:



This is without even considering representations of pregnancy which "peep", such as this or this...
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