Sacrifice and Ascesis: the Taboo of Meat and the Holy Child

In The Ancient Life of Symeon the Younger we find a representation of sanctity in forms and stylistic elements which had been by then largely codified; there is no need to show the process of ascetic construction of the « sanctified » body, the process is instead stressed as something naturally taken for granted; it represents a kind of holiness defined, so to say, ab origine. Sanctity here is in fact not represented as in fieri, but rather as in actu. Symeon the Younger does not in fact need to « make an ascetic of himself », as he is one even before being born: it is his body, or rather his bodily habitus, which first of all becomes a sign of this; a body which « makes choices » even before the saint has acquired the faculty of speech. And it is indeed in relationship to the body – as the instrument and place where the « correct choice » seems to be ontologically be situated – that the theme of abstention from sacrificial meats is developed.