snarp: small cute androgynous android crossing arms and looking very serious (Default)
Snarp ([personal profile] snarp) wrote 2010-06-17 12:48 am (UTC)

But the cracker is symbolic of the anxieties medieval people suffered, see! A lot of medieval European Christians got crazy and violent about hosts for the same reason that a lot of modern ones get crazy and violent about gay marriage. It's not something that has any actual, material effect on their own lives, but it symbolizes all the things that they think are threatening their culture.

(It's notable that the Vatican was often pretty upset by the violence involved in host desecration and blood libel incidents - they were generally the product of local church politics in areas that were having economic problems and that had a lot of pre-existing racial tension. The Pope at the time of the Trent incident refused to saint Simon because he thought the blood libel was insane and was afraid of encouraging more racial violence.)

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