Iconophages: A History of Ingesting Images

In this adroit English-language debut, Koering, an art history professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, surveys the long and surprising tradition of how “figured representations” have been ritualistically consumed. Focusing on Christian traditions, Koering cataloging a startling array of substances that have been ingested to harness the “healing” power of the original object. He covers water poured over divine sculptures to gain their “charge”; dirt and dust from holy sites mixed with saliva for a “medicinal paste”; and scrapings from stone sculptures mixed into food. Christian notions of the “incorporation” of human and divine led 13th-century Franciscan theologian Pierre de Jan Olieu to write of scriptural study that “God... wants the spiritual and intellectual to be chewed, savored, and transmitted within us,” though anti-Catholic reformers in the 16th century pilloried such notions and rituals as “sign[s] of a deviant relationship with God.” But “eating” images remained key in the Christian tradition, later shifting to more palatable options such as communion wafers. Koering treats his subject with scholarly rigor without losing his visceral delight in its inherent bizarreness. The result is a unique and fascinating consideration of the meaning and power of art, food, and ritual. (Aug.)