MDMD(11): A Kindness of the Almighty

[Dave Monroe]

"Is this, like the Bread and Wine, a kindness of the
Almighty, sparing him a sight he could not have
abided?  What might that be, too merciless to bear?"
(M&D, Ch. 16, p. 171)

First off ...

"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and
blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the
disciples, and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.' 
And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to
thm, sying, 'Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood
of the new testament, which is shed for many for the
remission of sins'" (Matthew 26:26-8)

And then, from Catherine Gallagher and Stephen
Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2000),  Ch. 3, "The Wound in the Wall," pp.
75-110 ...

"... the larger questions about the status of memorial
representation and presence that inhere in the
doctrine of the Eucharist.... its doctrinal
point--that one should learn to look with the eyes of
faith past appearances to a reality invisible to the
senses ...." (p. 83)

"... a vivid image of the ocular proof tht tantalized
Christianity in the wake of the elaboration of
eucharistic orthodoxy.  Orthodoxy obliged the faithful
to believe that what they saw (and, at least once a
year, tasted and swallowed) was not what it manifestly
appeared to be; that their direct experience was at
the utmost remove from the truth.  The distance
between sense experience and higher reality could be
transcended by the faith that bound individual and
community to God, but, judging from the widespread
stories of miraculously bleeding Hosts, this
transcendence left an intense residual desire for
confirmation.  Such confirmation was on rare occasions
given, as if in reward for exceptional piety. to the
blessed: hence, for example, Colette of Corbie
received a vision of 'a dish completely filled with
carved-up flesh like that of a child.'  But it came
more frequently and disturbingly to those who showed,
even inadvertantly, some doubt: a story, related in an
anti-Protestant tract by an English Jesuit of the late
sixteenth century, tells of one such person, an
English gentlewoman who travelled to Rome for the
Jubilee Year.  Upon her arrival, the woman went

to Father Parsons, who was her Confessor: and he
administring vnto her the blessed Sacrament (which in
the form of a little Wafer, hee put into her mouth)
obserued shee was long chewing, and could not swallow
the same: whereupon he asked her, whether shee knew
what it was shee receiued?  She answered, Yes, a
wafer.  At which answer of hers, Father Parsons beeing
much offended, he thrust his finger into her mouth, nd
thence drew out a piece of red flesh, which after was
nailed vp against a post in a Vespry or priuate
Chappell within our Lady-Church: and though this were
done about some twenty yeeres since or more, yet doth
that piece of flesh there remaine to bee seene, very
fresh and red as it euer was.

"The proof of the Real Presence here comes not as a
reward for perfect faith, but as a rebuke to imperfect
faith, a polemical version of Jesus' words to
'doubting Thomas': 'Thomas, because thou hast seen me,
thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed' (John 20:29).
   "Theologians argued that the fact that one could
not ordinarily see God's flesh and blood in the Host
was a sign of God's grace, since it would be horrible
to experience in the senses what one was actually
eating.  This is why it so often falls to unbelievers,
heretics, and Jews, caught in the act of profanation,
to encounter the true nature of the Eucharist." (pp.
98-9)

This from a discussion of Paolo Uccello's (1397-1475) 
Profanation of the Host, the predella ("the long
rectangular panel situated beneath the main panel" [p.
85]) to Joos van Gent's (ca. 1460/80) Communion of the
Apostles, decorating an altarpiece in the Palazzo
Ducale in Urbino, Italy.  So if you happen to be in
the neighborhood ...

But see as well ...

Marin, Louis.  "The Body-of-Power and Incarnation
   at Port Royal and in Pascal; or, the Figurability
   of the Political Absolute."  Fragments for a
   History of the Human Body, Vol. 3.  Ed. Michel
   Feher, et al.  New York: Zone, 1989.  421-47.

On the problematics of signification posed by the
Eucharist in Enlightenment sign theory (i.e., the Port
Royal Grammar).  Flesh 'n' blood or representation
thereof?  And so forth ... 

But, again, why that "sight" Mason "could not have
abided?"  "What might that be," indeed, "too merciless
to bear?" ... 

"Her eyes have broken into white, and grown pointed
at the outer ends, her ears are back like a cat's."
(M&D, Ch. 15, p. 164)

"She bares her Teeth, and pales, and turns, drifting
away, evaporating before she is halfway across the
slain forest." (M&D, Ch. 16, p. 172)

[and, again, the ecological theme there ...]

"At times he believes he has almost seen black Fumes
welling from the Surface of her Apparition, heard her
Voice thickening to the timbres of the Beasts...the
serpents of Hell, real and swift, lying just the other
side of her Shadow...the smell of them in their long,
cold Waiting...." (M&D, Ch. 16, p. 172)

Why does he "gaze, at such moments, feeling
pleasurably helpless" (ibid.)?  What's the deal here
with Mason & Rebekah?  Or, at any rate, with Mason &
"her plainly visible Phantom" (ibid.)? Let me know ...

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