Saints for Supper
Alexander Bevilacqua, 26 December 2024
Iconophages: A History of Ingesting Images
by Jérémie Koering, translated by Nicholas Huckle.
Princeton, 480 pp., £30, October,978 1 890951 27 6 Show More
by Jérémie Koering, translated by Nicholas Huckle.
Princeton, 480 pp., £30, October,
“... Some time in the sixth or early seventh century, a woman in Constantinople was suffering from severe abdominal pain. One night she crawled out of bed and dragged herself to the part of the house where frescoes of the Christian martyrs Cosmas and Damian had been painted on the wall. ‘Leaning on her faith as upon a stick’, she dug her fingernails into the plaster, then dissolved the scrapings in water and drank the resulting brew ... ”