Reviews

Abstract

Both Sara Beckwith's and Carol M. Meale's books originally appeared as hardbacks in 1993 and have now been reprinted in paperback. Dr Beckwith's book, which was warmly received on its first appearance, explores the ambiguities and paradoxes of the many ways in which Christ's body functioned as a symbol in the later Middle Ages: as the crucified and suffering body on which piety and devotion centred; as the Corpus Christi venerated in the Eucharist; as the Church, the body of Christ; and as homologous with society itself, so often imaged as a body organised hierarchically with a head and subordinate limbs.