The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch

Ordeals by Fire

ATouchable God 43 Some of these practices had their roots in earlier centuries when consecrated hosts were often carried by travelers, used for healing, or buried with the dead. SaintAugustine,for example,relates the circumstance of a blind man being healed by having a poultice made of the Eucharist applied to his eyes.Another instance of such extra-official use of the elements of the Eucharist was the practice of signing solemn documents using pens dipped in“the blood of the Saviour”—consecrated wine.By the high MiddleAges,however,such usages had come to be regarded as inappropriate.The Eucharist was kept safeguarded under lock and key and grave sanctions imposed for any illicit handling. The increased reverence paid to the Eucharist in the late MiddleAges led to the practice of the elevation of the host during Mass, at which point all worshippers were to fall on their knees in adoration.In the thirteenth century a feast especially dedicated to the Eucharist, Corpus Christi, was instituted that centered on the exposition and adoration of the consecrated host.This feast, with its associated processions,plays,and pageantry would become one of the most popular festivals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, while Corpus Christi gave people plenty to see, it did nothing to increase tactile access to the Eucharist that it celebrated. Indeed, as will be discussed later, the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi can be seen as part of a cultural shift in emphasis from the tactile to the visual mediation of the divine. Ordeals by Fire The importance of entering into physical contact with a sacred person or object in the MiddleAges,beyond the satisfaction of thereby acquiring firsthand knowledge of it,lay in the popular understanding of the nature of touch.Medieval philosophy confirmed what bodily experience made evident:the action of touch is reciprocal, one cannot touch without being touched in return. In the case of temperature, one cannot touch coldness without becoming colder or heat without becoming hotter. AsThomas Aquinas put it, “The hand touching something hot gets hot” (1970: 131).The power of the sacred was understood to function similarly to heat. By touching a source of spiritual “heat” one became, at least temporarily, spiritually “hot” oneself. No other form of sensory engagement could offer this transfer of power. The sacred, indeed, was often conceptualized as fiery in the MiddleAges, and fire was accorded certain attributes of the sacred: it could transform, destroy, regenerate,and purify.In medieval cosmology fire was considered to be the purest and highest of the elements.This notion was inherited from antiquity when, as Augustine wrote,fire might be perceived not only as an element,but as“endowed Classen_Text.indd 43 3/15/12 2:48 PM 44 chapter two with life and wisdom” and as “actually God” (cited by Le Goff 1984: 10). No doubt other pre-Christian traditions about the sacrality of fire also contributed to its potent symbolism in the MiddleAges. As powerful as it was,however,worldly fire could not compare to the holy“fire” contained in sacred bodies, which had its source in Heaven. In story after story, when it came to a contest between saint, relic, or consecrated host and earthly fire, the former emerged victorious. Churches caught fire but the consecrated hosts within them remained unburnt.When heretics tried to throw hosts into the fire they met with the same result—or else with the transformation of the host into the Christ child. On one occasion Saint Dominic reputedly placed a host in a fire himself to prove its supernatural character to the incredulous.As regards saints, the Romans were said to have found Saint Agnes unburnable, whereupon they were obliged to dispatch her in an ordinary way with a sword. Saint Patrick escaped unscathed when his hut was set on fire while Catherine of Siena was not burnt though she fell on red-hot coals.The fact that there were notable exceptions to the supposed fireproof nature of saints—such as the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc—does not seem to have undermined popular belief in the notion. Relics were said to display similar fireproof qualities and might even be used to ward off fires. In the twelfth century, for instance, a man claimed he had driven fire away from a house with a relic of Becket tied to the end of a pole (Finucane 1995: 25). When the question arose,as it did at times...