GoodCatholics atPrayer 365
this sense of dependence on the Deity. One beautiful three-part Latin prayer
may be taken as typical:
O Lord Jesus Christ, I adore you hanging on the cross,
bearing the thorny crown on your head;
I ask you that your cross might free me from the avenging angel.
O Lord Jesus Christ, I adore you wounded on the cross,
given gall and vinegar to drink;
I ask you that your wounds might be the healing of my soul.
O Lord Jesus Christ, I adore you placed in the tomb,
and with the spices at rest;
I ask you that your death be the life of my soul.^114These verses not only focus on the redemptive sacrifice of the cross, but by
their vivid imagery, they make it present to the imagination and affections.
With their triple request for protection, healing, and life, they bespeak a
deep personal dependence. The rubric that precedes the prayer promises
that when the verses are recited, along with five Paters and five Aves, kneel-
ing before an image of Christ Crucified, the supplicant will receive ‘‘fourteen
thousand years of true indulgence by a grant of Pope Nicholas.’’ The text is
simultaneously a moving devotional exercise and an extraordinary promise
of expiation.^115 The prayer’s poetic and rhymed form commended it to the
user’s memory. Its formal simplicity is reminiscent of the litanic formulas so
typical of lay participation in liturgical worship. This litanic form reappears
in fifty-four epithets of Jesus, each incorporated into one line of a poem in a
manuscript from the early 1300 s. The poem’s first four invocations focus
again on the salvific power of the sacred cross:
Fruitful cross with saving power,
Watered from the living font,
Whose is the aromatic flower,
The fruit before all desired.^116Here the cross becomes a tree, which gives to humanity a saving fruit, Christ
himself. Water from the font of Christ’s body then nurtures the tree, which
- Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 2858, fol. 34 v: ‘‘O Domine Iesu Christe adoro te in cruce
pendentem,coronam spineam in capite portantem;deprecor te ut tua crux liberet me ab angelo
percutienti. O Domine Iesu Christe adoro te in cruce vulneratum,felle et aceto potatum;deprecor te
ut tua vulera sunt remedium anime mee. O Domine Iesu Christe adoro te in sepulcro positum,aromati-
busque conchietum;deprecor te ut tua mors sit vita anime mee. Amen.’’ - For similar indulgenced prayers before the image of Christ Crucified, see Modena, Biblioteca
Estense Universitaria,ms.W. 2. 40 , fol. 1 v, and Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 2530( 1308 ), fols.
32 r–v, the latter in the vernacular. - Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana,msY 5 Sup., fols. 44 r– 45 r, here the opening: ‘‘Crux frutex salvifi-
cus,Vivo fonte rigatus,Cuius flos aromaticus,Fructus desideratus.’’