The Sixth Wound of Christ depicted in actual size. Unrecorded engraving.
[Metric relic] / [Wounds of Christ]. Joannes de Backer. Dit is de wonde en maet der schouder Jesu Christi dear hy syn Cruys op droeg sy was dry vingeren diep soo wie dese met devotie aen siet ende daghelyckx eenen Pater Noster en Ave Maria leest die sal vertoost wordern tot Saligheyt in wat lyden dat hy is als het verthoont is aen den H. Bernardus. S.l. [Antwerp]: Joannes de Backer, s.a. [second half of 17th century]. [9.8 x 6.1 cm], [1] f. engraving with contemporary hand color. Creased, dusty and tones, rubbed, colors rather faded.
Unrecorded 17th-century engraving—here in contemporary hand-color—depicting in its true size the so-called Sixth Wound of Christ. The engraving is signed by the understudied Antwerp printmaker Joannes de Backer, who was active in the late 1600s (see E.-H. van Heurck, pp. 107-8).
The Dutch text below the (quite stylized) image of the Wound can be translated: “This is the wound—in its true size—on the shoulder of Jesus Christ, where he bore His Cross, which was three fingers deep, and whosoever contemplates it with devotion and says a Pater Noster and Ave Maria during the day will be comforted to salvation by what He suffered as it was shown to St. Bernard.”
Devotion to Christ’s Five Wounds (right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot, and side) was orthodox and widespread in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. But the claim made by this print—that Christ suffered a sixth, semi-secret wound from shouldering the Cross—is apocryphal, as is the suggestion that St. Bernard promoted indulgenced prayers related to the wound (see Rudy, p. 76).
The print is headed by Latin quotes from Bernard and Augustine (“Domine Jesu Christe Fili Dei vivi orat S. B.”; “Per obedientiam restituat vitae S. Aug.”). Below the Wound is Psalm 73, verse 12 (“Deus autem Rex noster ante saecula operates est Salutem in medio terrae”). Surrounding the Wound is the Dutch text “Door de bitterheyt van u wonder. Vergeest Heere alle myne sonden. Door u lyden ende Doodt. Staet my by in allen noodt” (“Through the bitterness of your miracle, forgive, Lord, all my sins. Through your suffering and Death, stand by me in all distress”). At the center of the Wound is the Sacred Name of Jesus encircled by the text of the Titulus (“Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judeorum”).
The print is an interesting example of a ‘metric relic.’ Metric relics offered the faithful a connection to Christ, Mary, saints, holy places, etc., by replicating for contemplation the precise size of, e.g., Christ’s wounds, the Holy Nail, His height, the dimensions of the Holy Sepulcher, etc. Metric relics thus form a category of some importance to the history of art, with its emphasis on chains of orthodox copies passed down in the form of icons, iconographs, models, and the like. Metric relics proliferated in manuscript during the Middle Ages and were quickly produced in print with the rise of 15th-century woodcut technology with its ability to produce identical copies accurately reproducing the measure of the objects in question. (See below for a bibliography on metric relics.)
This print is not recorded in the standard repositories of Antwerp devotional prints (i.e., University of Antwerp [Ruusbroec Institute Library] and at the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht.) although the subject is known from copies by 18th-century Antwerp engravers.
K. M. Rudy, Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts; E.-H. van Heurck, “Les images de dévotion Anversoises,” De Gulden Passer, vol. 8 (1930), pp. 67-166; X. Barbier de Montault, “Les mesures de devotion,” Revue de l’art chrétien, vol. 32 (1881), pp. 360-419; N. M. Mandziuk “Drawn to Scale: The Medieval Monastic’s Virtual Pilgrimage through Sacred Measurement,” in E. Kelley and E. Richards Rivenbark, eds., Binding the Absent Body in Medieval and Modern Art, pp. 73-92; H. Van Asperen “‘As if They had Physically Visited the Holy Places’: Two Sixteenth-Century Manuscripts Guide a Mental Journey through Jerusalem (Radboud University Library, Mss 205 and 233),” in The Imagined and Real Jerusalem in Art and Architecture, J. Goudeau, M. Verhoeven, and W. Weijers, eds., pp. 190-214; K. M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, pp. 97-107; R. Ousterhout, “‘Sweetly Refreshed in Imagination’: Remembering Jerusalem in Words and Images,” Gesta 48 (2009), pp. 153-268; D. S. Areford, “The Passion Measured: A Late-Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ,” in The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, A. A. MacDonald, H. N. B. Ridderbos, and R. M. Schlusemann, eds., pp. 211-38; J. Pieper, “The Garden of the Holy Sepulchre in Görlitz,” Daidalos 58 (1995), pp. 38-43; A. D. Jacobi, “Heilige Längenmasse: Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der Amulette,” Schweizer Archiv für Volkskunde 29 (1929), pp. 1-17 and 181-216.