In article by Peter Stallybrass, ‘The Value of Culture and the Disavowal of Things‘, he looks at the role of Christianity in providing an aesthetic appreciation of the ordinary.

The metaphorics of Christianity concern the value of the valueless (unnourishing quantities of bread and wine). And Christianity immediately materialized this valuelessness through its scriptures, written down in codices to distinguish them from the more prestigious Jewish and pagan forms of scrolls.
…around a priceless/valueless fingernail a reliquary of gold and precious stones would be made; around the reliquary, a cathedral would be built; around the cathedral, an urban economy would develop; around that economy, new road systems would emerge that would pull large numbers of people and large amounts of money and goods along the pilgrimage routes of Europe.

Interesting point, but makes you wonder if this kind of approach was vulnerable to a Nietzchean critique, that it was just appealing to the weakest position in order to avoid the responsibility of uniqueness.