"The enigmatic link between the natural and artistic beauty that is
to be contemplated but not eaten, on the one hand, and the
eucharistic beauty that is both seen (with the eyes of faith) and
eaten, on the other, intrigues me and inspires this book. One
cannot ask theo-aesthetic questions about the Eucharist without
engaging fundamental questions about the relationship between
beauty, art (broadly defined), and eating." from Eating BeautyIn a
remarkable book that is at once learned, startlingly original, and
highly personal, Ann W. Astell explores the ambiguity of the phrase
"eating beauty." The phrase evokes the destruction of beauty, the
devouring mouth of the grave, the mouth of hell. To eat beauty is
to destroy it. Yet in the case of the Eucharist the person of faith
who eats the Host is transformed into beauty itself, literally
incorporated into Christ. In this sense, Astell explains, the
Eucharist was "productive of an entire 'way' of life, a virtuous
life-form, an artwork, with Christ himself as the principal
artist." The Eucharist established for the people of the Middle
Ages distinctive schools of sanctity Cistercian, Franciscan,
Dominican, and Ignatian whose members were united by the
eucharistic sacrament that they received. Reading the lives of the
saints not primarily as historical documents but as iconic
expressions of original artworks fashioned by the eucharistic
Christ, Astell puts the "faceless" Host in a dynamic relationship
with these icons. With the advent of each new spirituality, the
Christian idea of beauty expanded to include, first, the marred
beauty of the saint and, finally, that of the church torn by
division an anti-aesthetic beauty embracing process, suffering,
deformity, and disappearance, as well as the radiant lightness of
the resurrected body. This astonishing work of intellectual and
religious history is illustrated with telling artistic examples
ranging from medieval manuscript illuminations to sculptures by
Michelangelo and paintings by Salvador Dali. Astell puts the lives
of medieval saints in conversation with modern philosophers as
disparate as Simone Weil and G. W. F. Hegel."
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