4mayde. This word refers to Mary’s physical condition as a virgin.back to note source
17Buhsum and poure thu were, iwis. Jesus is depicted as a vulnerable child, eliciting a reader’s empathy and affective piety. On Jesus’s humility, compare A Homily on Sooth Love (art. 26), note to line 6. A stress upon Mary and Christ’s common humanity is a mark of Franciscan piety, one notably present in Thomas of Hales’s Latin life of Mary (Horrall, ed., The Lyf of Oure Lady, p. 11); see also D’Angelo, “English Franciscan Poetry,” p. 224.back to note source
18Forbysne. “example.” See MED, fore-bisne (n.), sense 1a, “an example of conduct to be imitated, a model or pattern,” derived from OE forebysen. The Orison poet stresses how Jesus is to be an example for one’s own Christian conduct, particularly forbearance when faced with adversity. The word is repeated at line 24.back to note source
24vorbysne. See note to line 18, above.back to note source
32–33Bispat thu were, and al myd wowe; / Mid on red mantel thu were byweved. “You were spat upon, surrounded in misery; / In a red mantle you were clothed.” The center of the poem pivots from extreme degradation and humiliation (Jesus spat upon) to an extreme revisualizing of the sacred moment: Jesus’s blood perceived spiritually as a royal mantle. The crune of thornes in line 34 also participates in the figuration of God’s central sovereignty.back to note source
35mixes. “vile persons, scum.” The primary meaning of the word is “filth,” even “dung, excrement,” so its use is meant to be powerful, even shocking, like the expletive “shit.” See MED, mix (n.), senses 1a and 1b (where this line is cited). See also The Proverbs of Alfred (art. 24), line 263; and The Owl and the Nightingale (art. 2), line 636 (note).back to note source
42sullych. “horrifically.” See MED, selli (adv.), sense 1b, “severely, vigorously, quickly,” where this line is cited, but the adverb also means “wondrously” and could be used as an intensifier, “to an extreme.”back to note source
45cold iren. The meditation calls for one to sense a cold, inanimate metal point piercing God’s perfect living flesh, that is, to feel it as if it were happening to one’s own flesh.back to note source
51tholeburnesse. A scribal error here loses the rhyme but not the sense. The MS reads “þoleburne, and þarto don bothe mayn and myht.” In error, the scribe recopied the last portion of line 50 (in this edition, it is omitted). Moreover, “þoleburne” should read “þoleburnesse”; on this error, see MED, thole-burdnesse (n.), “patience, submissiveness.”back to note source
57–58Jhesu, ich the grete so wysslych / As thu deth tholedest myldelich. “Jesus, I greet you as certainly as you suffered death mildly.” These lines sum up the speaker’s felt-in-the-flesh logic: Because I have attempted to understand and affectively feel the level of suffering that you, Jesus, endured for me, which you did with a beyond-human, wondrous amount of mild, patient forbearance, then my own faith is now girded and sustained to the same degree. The meditational exercise of Orison, grounded in the speaker’s own bodily sensations, is designed to actively strengthen belief in and devotion to God.back to note source