"A Part of His Passion"
After this Christ shewed a part of His Passion near His dying.
I saw His sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying. And
later, more pale, dead, languoring; and then turned more dead unto
blue; and then more brown-blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead.
For His Passion shewed to me most specially in His blessed face (and
chiefly in His lips): there I saw these four colours, though it were
afore fresh, ruddy, and pleasing, to my sight. This was a pitiful
change to see, this deep dying. And also the [inward] moisture clotted
and dried, to my sight, and the sweet body was brown and black, all
turned out of fair, life-like colour of itself, unto dry dying.
For that same time that our Lord and blessed Saviour died upon the
Rood, it was a dry, hard wind, and wondrous cold, as to my sight, and
what time [all] the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that
might pass therefrom, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh
of Christ, as it was shewed.
Bloodlessness and pain dried within; and blowing of wind and cold
coming from without met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these
four,--twain without, and twain within--dried the flesh of Christ by
process of time. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, it was full
long lasting, as to my sight, and painfully dried up all the lively
spirits of Christ's flesh. Thus I saw the sweet flesh dry in seeming by
part after part, with marvellous pains. And as long as any spirit had
life in Christ's flesh, so long suffered He pain.
This long pining seemed to me as if He had been seven nights dead,
dying, at the point of outpassing away, suffering the last pain. And
when I said it seemed to me as if He had been seven night dead, it
meaneth that the sweet body was so discoloured, so dry, so shrunken,
so deathly, and so piteous, as if He had been seven night dead,
continually dying. And methought the drying of Christ's flesh was the
most pain, and the last, of His Passion.