Jesus’ manhood

Say what you will about the medievals, they had the courage of their convictions. The Son of God became man? Well, then, he had to become man from head to toe, and have a penis like other men. Edward Muir ( Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New Approaches to European History) ) writes: “in fifteenth-century Italy thoroughly Christian artists made visual allusions to Christ’s phallus, showing that the god-man had all the attributes of other men. In many paintings the Virgin Mary pointed to the penis of the infant Jesus, and some scenes of the deposition from the cross showed the outlines of Christ’s adult member beneath the obligatory cloth that hid his sex from view.

They applied the same relentless logic to transubstantiation. If this bread is Christ’s body, and we eat it, does that mean that the body of God passes through the stomach and into the intestines and out into the toilet. Transubstantiation ensured that “the stomach and bowels [became] the subject of considerable theological discussion,” and as a result the highest of high liturgical actions became dangerously near the low feasts of carnival.