Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages

321 Pages·2006·4.22 MB·English

by  Ann W. Astell

EATING
BEAU
EATING BEAUTY

EATING BEAUTY
THE EUCHARIST AND THE
SPIRITUAL ARTS THE MIDDLE AGES
OF
ANN ASTELL
W.
Cornell University Press Ithaca & London
Publication of this book was made possible,
in part, by a grant from Purdue University.
Copyright © 2006 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission
in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street,
Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2006 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Astell, Ann W.
Eating beauty: the Eucharist and the spiritual arts of the Middle Ages
! Ann W. Astell.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4466-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-5017-0434-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Lord's Supper-Catholic Church-History of doctrines-Middle
Ages, 600-1500. 2. Lord's Supper-Catholic Church-History of
doctrines-16th century. 3. Aesthetics-Religious aspects-Catholic
Church. 4. Food-Religious aspects-Catholic Church. 5. Spiritual
life-Catholic Church-History of doctrines-Middle Ages, 600-1500.
6. Spiritual life-Catholic Church-History of doctrines-16th
century. I. Title.
BV823.A77 2006
248.09' 02-dc22
2006006245
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In Memoriam
Tom Andrews, Poet
(1961-2001)
Brother, I speak these words
to your sleep. Your mouth is watched.
-Tom Andrews, "The Brother's Country"
'God teaches
by inconvenience'
(the Middle Ages
listening)
-Tom Andrews, "Triptych: Augustine of Hippo"

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations Vlll
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xv
1. "Taste and See": The Eating of Beauty 1
2. The Apple and the Eucharist: Foods for a Theological Aesthetics 27
3. "Hidden Manna": Bernard of Clairvaux, Gertrude of Helfta,
and the Monastic Art of Humility 62
4. ''Adorned with Wounds": Saint Bonaventure's Legenda maior
and the Franciscan Art of Poverty 99
5. "Imitate Me As I Imitate Christ": Three Catherines, the Food of Souls,
and the Dominican Art of Preaching 136
6. The Eucharist, the Spiritual Exercises, and the Art of Obedience:
Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Michelangelo 190
7. Weil and Hegel: A Eucharistic "Ante-/A nti-Aesthetic" Aesthetics? 227
8. To (Fail to) Conclude: Eucharists without End 254
Appendix 261
Bibliography 265
Illustration Credits 287
Index 289
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
following page 104
1. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Madonna and Child, ca. 1535
2. Berthold Furtmeyr, Eva und Maria, ca. 1481
3. Salvador Dali, The Sacrament of the Last Supper, 1955
4. Mary A. Zore, Bread of Angels Mandala, 2002
5. Vision of Saint Bernard during Mass, late fifteenth century
6. Pater Noster Table, ca. 1400
7. Domenico Veneziano, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, ca. 1445
8. Domenico Veneziano, Saint John in the Desert, ca. 1445
9. Lazara Bladi, People of Peru Paying Reverence to Saint Rose, 1668
10. Angelino Medora, Santa Rosa, 1617
11. Michelangelo, Florentine Pieta, ca. 1552
FIGURE
Saint Bonaventure's Long Life of Saint Francis 107
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When one begins to think, really to think, something rapturous happens. An
event of wonderment (OE wundor) occurs-often traumatically, in the form of
a wound (OE wund)-and one begins a quest, even as one is carried offby it. The
old cliche of the "train of thought" comes alive when one realizes that one has
been transported in this way, from station to station, toward an unforeseen des­
tination that was somehow always already there in the beginning, implicit in the
question itself. When one comes home, one has been altered by the journey, so
that the arrival back is different from the setting out. True thought for this rea­
son can never really be circular, but the image of the circle can nonetheless be an
icon-a mandala-for a thought that leads beyond itself.
Most of this book was written in Washington, DC, in the academic year 2001-
2002. During that same year, the manuscript of Joan of Arc and Sacrificial Au­
thorship (2003) went into press. Both books deal, albeit in different ways, with the
combined topics of religious experience, especially as represented in the lives of
saints, and artistic production-the holy and the beautiful.
Those readers familiar with my Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990) will
be struck by a similarity in structure between that book and this one, finished
fifteen years later. In that first book I showed how the biblical figure of the
Solomonic Bride had four different faces in medieval commentaries-faces that
corresponded to the spiritual ideals of the exegetes who identified themselves
with her. In Eating Beauty a single scriptural story-that of the Fall in Genesis­
stands as the basis for four different interpretations of the first sin, each of them
entailing the discovery of an appropriate remedy, a virtuous way back to an orig­
inal beauty. In this book the Eucharist itself is seen as both the living source of
those remedial virtues and the artistic image of the perfection to which they lead.
The books written in the interim between my first book and this one-Job,
Boethius, and Epic Truth (1994), Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (1996), and
Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (1999 )-all concerned themselves in
one way or another with the sophisticated allegorical modes of reading and writ­
ing that derived from scriptural exegesis and flourished in the literature of the
High Middle Ages. My inclination has been to oppose a static, dualistic under­
standing of allegory, which divorces literal meaning from spiritual significance.
My fascination has been not with what divided the different levels of meaning
synchronically from one another, but with what connected them diachronically,
even across wide gaps, in the minds of medieval readers and writers. I have tended