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148 chapter seven to reach physically: “I could see with the utmost clearness, off to the right, the mountains of the region about Lyons, and to the left the bay of Marseilles and the waters that lash the shores of Aigues Mortes, altho’ all these places were so distant that it would require a journey of several days to reach them. Under our very eyes flowed the Rhone” (1898: 59, 313, 316). Petrarch was still medieval-minded enough to turn his thoughts from the view before his eyes to a consideration of the spiritual significance of his climb.With a copy of SaintAugustine’s Confessions to guide his thoughts, he sternly reproached the vanity of his ascent,proclaiming,“How earnestly should we strive,not to stand on mountain-tops, but to trample beneath us those appetites which spring from earthly impulses” (1898: 319; see further Quillen 1998: ch. 3). Self-discipline was of more value than worldly dominance.Nonetheless,he had had his moment of visual epiphany and the world had opened up before his eyes. On the way up MontVentoux Petrarch and his younger brother met a shepherd who had also once climbed the mountain:“We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some fifty years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars” (1898: 310).The shepherd said nothing,notably,about the glorious view from the top.Indeed he might have made the ascent blindfolded for all the visual impact it seems to have made on him. What he recalls are the intimate muscular and tactile experiences of the climb. This emphasis on the tactile could be found in the name of the mountain itself, which signified“windy”(308).The contrast,perhaps by design on Petrarch’s part, is thus striking between the sweeping view attained by the visionary poet and the aches and scratches that impressed themselves on the body and memory of the humble shepherd.When Petrarch ascended MontVentoux he seemed to have at least temporarily left the old tactile mentality,signified by the shepherd,behind. For a moment he was the first modern man with the first modern sensorium. The Decline of Sacred Touch The sense of touch first fell from grace in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve took hold of the forbidden fruit after being expressly warned by God that it was hands-off.The second fall of the sense of touch—which was less of a fall than a gradual displacement from social centrality—began in the later Middle Ages. It was at this time that practices of visual contemplation increased in importance ,preparing the way for the more eye-minded culture of modernity (see Denery 2005). Classen_Text.indd 148 3/15/12 2:48 PM The ModernTouch 149 The growing desire of the public to see the consecrated host—the body of Christ—is an important indication of this cultural shift toward prioritizing visual experience.The practice of the elevation of the host during Mass instituted at this time responded to and fostered this desire. In some churches where the rood screen might block the view of the host, “elevation squints” or peep holes were made so that communicants would not be denied their moment of visual fulfillment. In larger towns dedicated host-watchers would go from church to church seeking to catch as many glimpses as possible of the elevation of the host in one day.This was not mere religious sightseeing:viewing the consecrated host was widely believed to confer considerable benefits,including protection against fire, hunger, and disease. The new feast of Corpus Christi, instituted in the thirteenth century, fed the popular desire to see “the body of Christ” by displaying the host during processions and within churches. Such practices emphasized the importance of visualizing the Divine rather than entering into direct contact with it.This sensory and ritual shift would make some churchmen distinctly uneasy.The Eucharist was “instituted as food, not as an item of display,” Nicolas of Cusa scolded in the fifteenth century (Kieckhefer 1987: 98). However, in contrast to the numerous times in which believers would see the Eucharist, the times when they actually consumed it might well be few and far between (Muir 2005: 171, Biernoff 2002: 140–44). Not...

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