From Augustine's Confessions, Book 10.31 (Chadwick translation):[a]
"There is another 'evil of the day', and I wish it sufficed for the day [Matt. 6:34]. We restore the daily decay of the body by eating and drinking, until in time you destroy both food and stomach [1 Cor. 6:13], when you will kill need with a wonderful satiety and when you clothe this incorruptible body with everlasting incorruption [1 Cor. 15:53]. But at the present time the necessity of food and drink is sweet to me...
"My pains are driven away by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are a kind of pain, which burns and can kill like a fever, unless the medicine of sustenance brings help. Because this cure is granted to us, thanks to the consolation of your gifts, by which earth and water and sky minister to our infirmity, a calamity can be called a delight...
"I hear the voice of my God giving command: 'Your hearts shall not be weighed down in gluttony and drunkenness' [Luke 21:34]..." (bible citations inside square brackets in original).
The denial of good food and drink and other sensual pleasures to Lecter, due to his being imprisoned, is God's way of punishing him for disobeying the command given in Luke 21:34 (quoted by Augustine above); for Lecter, while free, was a connoisseur of fine food and wine, and also of human body parts and organs.
During Starling's first visit to Lecter, he says to her (regarding a test questionnaire she had given him), "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans, and a nice Chianti."
a. St. Augustine. Confessions. Trans. with introduction and notes Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. pp. 204-207.
[UPDATE 1/9/11: See part 8 of the Hannibal Rising analysis on this blog, for a listing of the reasons why Lecter is a cannibal.]
