Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Cannibalism is the breaking of the ultimate taboo. Yet during the later Middle Ages and early years of the Renaissance, mythological, historical, and contemporary accounts of cannibalism became particularly popular. Consuming Passions synthesizes and analyses the most interesting of those late medieval and early modern responses to Eucharistic teaching and debate that manifest themselves in the trope of cannibalism. This trope appears in texts as various as visions of the underworld, accounts of sacramental miracles, sermons, legal proceedings, and popular geographies. This book foregrounds the vexed role of the body in both late medieval and early modern religiosity, and the ways in which the boundaries of the endangered body in these narratives also reflect the rigorously defended borders of the body politic.