AFTERWORD

Summary

The aim of this book has been in part to trace the role of compassion in early modern conceptions of physical suffering. I have argued that early moderns located the meaning of pain in its ability to arouse compassion in others, but also that the nature of this compassion was contentious, the circumstances under which it is to be applauded a matter of controversy. Can humans suffer with Christ? Are they capable of understanding his pain in such a way that true compassion with him is possible? Should we feel pity for the pain of other human beings? If so, how much and what kind of pity, and for whose suffering? Should anyone, or should any category of human beings, be excluded from compassion? Can pity serve as an instrument for creating social cohesion? Can compassion with Christ serve as a model for interhuman compassion? Can it be made to serve secular purposes? These are all questions with which the early modern writers I have discussed tried to grapple. John Donne is haunted by the impossibility of truly understanding or sharing in Christ's Passion, and of representing it in verse, while George Herbert, Richard Crashaw and Aemilia Lanyer present poetry as enabling a uniquely immediate and tangible way of engaging with Christ's suffering. Moreover, their understanding of the Passion has fundamental consequences for the way in which they see human suffering.