Holy hand miracle! On this Christmas Eve Eve, I thought it would be great to share a Medieval Christmas legend. Like Christians today, Medieval Europeans celebrated “Christ’s Mass” with community festivities that were connected to the story of Jesus’ birth. Illustrated here in this late fifteenth-century miniature painting is a special moment that with a hasty glance might look like a modern Christmas card: it even says “Peace on Earth” in the Latin inscribed horizontally in the upper left side.
However, squint a bit and you will see that the woman on the left has no hands. That is because they are bleeding stumps, dripping right down towards the baby on the floor — That would be Jesus. He’s on his mother’s billowing bedclothes, and we note that Mary is fully dressed, calm, and flat-bellied only moments after giving birth. But Mary’s ability to pull a Princess Kate isn’t the miracle featured here.
Instead, it’s about the handless woman, whom Medieval people thought to be a person named Salome, one of two midwives that helped Mary give birth. According to the ultra-popular _Golden Legend_, a compilation of saints and miracle stories put together between 1259-1266, Salome didn’t believe that Mary was a virgin. And so she was divinely cursed: Salome “wished to examine her [Mary – to see whether she was a virgin due to a false conception that a virgin woman would have an intact hymen that could be detectable]; thereupon her hand withered and died”.
However, Salome (who deserved to have her hands fall off, the story implies) was saved because “an angel appeared and bade her touch the child; and immediately she was cured”.
Maybe Hallmark won’t be scripting this Christmas miracle story for screen any time soon.
Sources:Illustration Morgan Library Book of Hours, France, Paris, MS M.7 fol 14r. Golden Legend, excerpt taken from http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu, “The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ December 25”. Christmas entry from_Medieval Folklore_, Carl Lindahl et al., 2002, Oxford UP
