ABSTRACT
In the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the body gained new significance. In the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth century new types of bodily images were generated. Truth became hidden in bodies, most prominently in the secrets of the suffering body of Christ, ripped open so that its interior truth shone forth. But the truth also hid in the flesh and bones of the saints. The broken and bleeding body of Christ was celebrated through art and through piety, and made accessible in the Mass. The Eucharist became the key symbol of Western Christianity, a religious approach in which ‘a ritual which turned bread into flesh—a fragile, small wheaten disc into God’ (Rubin 1991:1) was central. Sermons, liturgy, prayers, hymns, theological expositions, drama and works of art from this period are testimonies to the revealed meanings of the Eucharist, but they are also pointers to the hidden and unspoken meanings of this ritual eating of divine flesh.
