Holy Feast and Holy Fast: Food as Control of Self in the Middle Ages
Food as a Socio-Biological Mechanism of Control
Gender Disparity in Anorexia Nervosa: Hilde Bruch, in Eating Disorders (), observes that anorexia is significantly less frequent in males. She attributes this to the psychological effects of male sex hormones during pubescence, which provide powerful sensations of aggressive self-awareness and self-assertion. Conversely, girls are more likely to develop a "slave-like" attachment to the mother and attempt to solve psychological impasses through body manipulation.
Social Significance of Food: Food is central to medieval women’s religiosity because it is a woman-controlled social resource. Cross-culturally, food preparation is predominantly a woman’s role.
Historical Evidence of Gendered Cookery: The -century French cookbook, the Viandier, assumes basic cookery (cabbage, leeks, veal with saffron and pepper) is known by all women and their mistresses. This contrasts with male authors and chefs in wealthy households who formalized cookery but kept it separate from domestic common knowledge.
Men’s Hostility and Food Control: Medieval men often viewed women’s control over food with suspicion and hostility. The Decretum of Burchard of Worms (compiled between and ) lists female spells involving food manipulation, such as adding menstrual blood, semen, or dough kneaded with buttocks to a husband’s meal to alter sexual ardor.
Biological Analogy of Providing: Novelist Elias Canetti posits that through lactation, a woman is the essential food provider. He defines a mother as one who "gives her own body to be eaten," first in the womb and then through milk.
Hierarchies of Consumption: In medieval Europe, eating was stereotyped as male, and preparation as female. Banquets were often sex-segregated. Cookbooks suggested "heavy" foods (meat) for men and "lighter" foods for women, partly because meat was believed to aggravate lust. History suggests women, as preparers, were often viewed as not needing to eat at all.
Religious Renunciation and Economic Realities
Food as a Renounceable Resource: In the later Middle Ages, a period valuing world-denial, women found it easier to renounce food because they controlled it. It was more difficult to flee a family or deny sexual relations to a husband than to stop eating.
Charity and Service: Food distribution was the least ostentatious way for women to serve the poor. Slipping out of a kitchen with food was a culturally acceptable form of asceticism.
The Effectiveness of Manipulation: If food avoidance or distribution became acute enough to disrupt the woman’s role as preparer, it could be used as a powerful tool for manipulating social relations.
Gendered Renunciation Patterns: Since late medieval spirituality valued renunciation, genders gave up what they controlled: men renounced money, property, and progeny; women renounced food.
Institutional Barriers: Scholars note that women like Clare of Assisi and Mary of Oignies, who wished to follow mendicant poverty, were often prevented by families or authorities from wandering and begging. Fasting became a substitute for other forms of stripping the self.
Substituting Fasting for Wealth: Christina the Astonishing (according to Thomas of Cantimpre) gave up food because she had nothing else to give for Christ. Beguines and laywomen, such as Margery Kempe and Catherine of Siena, refused food provided by family wealth as a way to renounce the world while remaining at home.
Comparative and Cultural Perspectives on Fasting
Religious vs. Political Fasting: Fasting as a religious activity is typically feminine, whereas fasting as a scientific experiment or political protest is typically masculine.
Global Examples: - Eskimos: Husbands fish while wives fast for a good catch. - Old Testament: Judith, Esther, and Sarah are prominent models of piety through fasting. - India: Women fast for the benefit of male relatives; Mahatma Gandhi notably learned fasting from his devout mother. - Ireland/England: Fasting has a history as a legal procedure ("fasting to distrain") to gain restitution. The fast of Massachusetts and Virginia colonists was the first modern mass political protest by fasting.
Analyzing the Anorexia Nervosa Clinical Model
Modern Historical Debates: Some historians argue anorexia nervosa emerged in the century, while others see it in earlier figures like the bearded saint Wilgefortis (associated with hirsutism). Catholic scholars earlier in the century distinguished between "natural" (pathological) and "miraculous" (supernatural) fasting.
Paradigms of Inedia (Inability to Eat): Medieval writers recognized several causes for not eating: 1. Supernatural: Miraculous or demonic inspiration. 2. Natural/Physiological: Seen as an illness (e.g., Colette of Corbie, Walburga). 3. Fraud/Delusion: Careful unmasking of those seeking prestige.
Case Studies in Medieval Inedia: - Roger Bacon: Argued a woman’s survival without food was a "work of nature" based on an elemental balance where nothing was excreted. - Joan the Meatless: Allegedly used natural skill to distinguish consecrated hosts because she could bear no other food. - Lidwina of Schiedam: Claimed she deserved no praise for abstinence because she was physically unable to eat.
Accusations of Suicide: Catherine of Siena and Columba of Rieti defended against charges that their refusal to eat was self-murder. Catherine redefined her behavior as an "infirmity" to argue that forced eating would be the actual suicide.
Psychological Symptoms and Body Perception
Hilde Bruch’s Definition: Anorexia as "self-inflicted starvation in the absence of recognizable organic disease and in the midst of ample food."
Mara Selvini Palazzoli’s View: Anorectics struggle against persistent hunger, consider eating degrading, and often compulsively urge food on others.
Physical and Psychological Markers: Fatigue, anemia, and amenorrhea; sleeplessness and hyperactivity; "a paralyzing sense of ineffectiveness."
Medieval Parallels: - Sensory Distortion: Dorothy of Montau and Ida of Louvain felt as if pregnant with Christ; Catherine of Genoa and Lidwina of Schiedam lost the ability to perceive fire or cold. - Hyperactivity: Catherine of Siena prepared food for her family and did laundry at night, surreptitiously substituting a board for her mattress. - Atypical Anorexia (Hysteria): Behavior including "fits" and trances. The term describes conditions like globus hystericus (choking sensations in Beatrice of Ornacieux) and opisthotonos (spine arching into a circle in Lukardis of Oberweimar).
The Cultural Evolution of Somatic Miracles
Shifting Trends: Miraculous abstinence was attributed to Desert Fathers (men) in antiquity but became almost exclusively female in the Middle Ages. This discrepancy points to cultural rather than purely biological causes.
Gender and Sickness: Sickness was a major theme in women’s sanctity. While women were only of those canonized in the later Middle Ages, they accounted for of those where patient bearing of infirmity was the central factor for reputation.
Desire for Sickness: Figures like Gertrude of Helfta, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Margaret of Ypres prayed for infirmities to last beyond the grave into imitatio Christi. Julian of Norwich specifically asked for the "grace" of sickness and a vision of the Crucifixion at age .
Bodily Manipulation Phenomena: - Stigmata: Rhythmic bleeding (often on Fridays) first appeared in women in the late century. Visible stigmata are rare in men (e.g., Francis of Assisi}. - Espousal Rings: Red marks on fingers, exclusively reported in women. - Myroblytes: Bodies exuding miraculous fluids (milk, oil) or sweet odors. Catherine of Alexandria allegedly bled milk; Elizabeth of Hungary is a famous myroblyte. - Physiological Cessation: Hagiographers noted that holy women like Jane Balam () repressed ordinary functions like menstruation, excretion, and sweating.
Dualism, Misogyny, and Revisionist Interpretation
Traditional Interpretations: Many historians view medieval asceticism as pathological masochism or dualism, rooted in a hatred of sexuality and the internalization of misogyny.
Misogynistic Frameworks: Philosophical and medical traditions defined woman as an incomplete male providing the "matter" for a fetus, while men provided the "form." Fathers of the church like Augustine used the female as a symbol of the flesh that must be subject to the male (spirit/reason).
Bynum’s Counter-Argument: Extreme asceticism was not merely self-punishment but an effort to gain power and give meaning. It served three functions: 1. Manipulation of Environment: Using the one resource (food) women controlled. 2. Rebellion against Moderation: A rejection of the high medieval church’s move toward body moderation. 3. Fusion with Christ: A literal attempt at imitatio Christi through suffering physicality. Fasting was a way to "eat" a God whose edible body was essentially perceived as female (a nursing, feeding body).
Punishment for Sexual Guilt: Some women, like Ellen of Udine (who put stones in her shoes) and Francesca Romana (who vomited after sex), used asceticism to expiate "impious and carnal pleasures" or to control a body subjected to the "marital debt."
Final Thematic Synthesis: Medieval fasting was part of a larger pattern including eucharistic devotion, food multiplication miracles, and the theology of purgatory, all revolving around the concept of the female as flesh and suffering as a redemptive activity.
Important Quotes and Main Takeaways
Quotes: - "Through lactation, a woman is the essential food provider." - "Anorexia as self-inflicted starvation in the absence of recognizable organic disease and in the midst of ample food." - "Extreme asceticism was not merely self-punishment but an effort to gain power and give meaning."
Main Takeaways: - The historical and cultural significance of food was heavily gendered, with women controlling food preparation, thereby influencing religious and social structures. - Women’s roles in fasting and food avoidance were often linked to spiritual and social power dynamics. - Ascetic practices, while viewed through a lens of pathology, often represented deeper struggles for agency and identity within patriarchal frameworks.