Holy Anorexia

That is a claim about diagnosis rather than about people, and it is testable in one direction. In 2014 medical researchers published an account of a woman in her sixties, born in Chicago, who had entered a convent at thirteen and restricted her eating in the hope of achieving sainthood. She was dismissed from religious training over concerns about her health, her malnutrition caused amenorrhoea and probably limited her growth, and at sixty-six she weighed sixty pounds. She is described in the literature as a case of anorexia mirabilis.

Why holy anorexia had no fasting boys

Three names cover the same behaviour, in three registers:

• anorexia mirabilis, Latin for miraculously inspired loss of appetite, and the term reserved for medical circles
• inedia prodigiosa, meaning great starvation
• fasting girls, the colloquial name, commonest during the Victorian era

The practice was almost entirely female, and the material gives the reason without softening it: women imitated the suffering of Christ during the Passion by fasting, because voluntary pain through fasting was available to them, while holy men suffered through physical punishment. There were no fasting boys.

It was not approved. Religious authorities generally did not regard the behaviour as holy, and women with it were known to defy their superiors' orders to eat. In several documented cases the refusal to eat preceded any involvement in religious life rather than following from it.

How common holy anorexia was among the saints

The documentation narrows in three steps:

1. records exist for about two thirds of the holy women recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as saints, blesseds, venerables or servants of God who lived after 1200
2. more than half of those show clear signs of anorexia
3. extensive and highly reliable documentation is available for about two dozen

That is an extraordinary proportion for a category of person defined by holiness rather than by illness.

Which women the holy anorexia record names

Catherine of Siena fasted for long periods and by the end of her life ate only the single consecrated Host of the daily Eucharist. She defied her superiors' orders to eat, claiming illness. In the month before she died at thirty-three she lost the use of her legs and her ability to swallow. She also inserted sticks into her throat to trigger her gag reflex and induce vomiting.

Marie of Oignies deprived herself of sleep, favoured bread stale enough to make her gums bleed, chose poverty despite a wealthy family, abstained from sex despite being married, eventually ate nothing but consecrated Hosts, and died at thirty-six. She and Beatrice of Nazareth both said the smell of meat made them vomit and that the slightest whiff of food closed their throats entirely.

Columba of Rieti cut her hair to avoid an arranged marriage, refused food before entering religious work, ended on the Eucharist alone, wore a hairshirt, slept on thorns, and died at thirty-four.

Wilgefortis is the earliest reported case and is legendary rather than historical: a princess who starved herself and took a vow of chastity to avoid an arranged marriage, prayed to be made ugly, was rejected by her suitor accordingly, and was crucified by her father for wrecking the match.

Pelagia of Antioch died of extreme asceticism, emaciated past recognition. Therese Neumann took no water and no food but the Eucharist from 1926 until her death in 1962.

Angela of Foligno ate the scabs of the poor. Catherine of Siena once drank pus from a sick woman's sore.

Whether holy anorexia was piety or illness

Caroline Walker Bynum, in Holy Feast and Holy Fast in 1988, argues that anorexia mirabilis was a legitimate form of self-expression rather than misdiagnosed anorexia, with motives set against the modern disease paradigm, and reads Julian of Norwich and other anchorites as using fasting as a means of communing with Christ. She also proposes intensive fasting as a means of gaining control in a staunchly patriarchal society.

The refusal of all food except the Eucharist carried a specific meaning at the time. A body existing for long periods without nourishment demonstrated the separation of body and spirit and the greater strength of the spirit, and the reported fasts ran from months to years, impossibly, which added to their standing rather than undermining it.

Whether there is historical continuity between anorexia mirabilis and anorexia nervosa is disputed among both medieval historians and psychiatrists. Some argue for continuity; others hold that anorexia mirabilis should be understood as a distinct medieval form of female piety inside its own historical context.

One further reading is offered. Fasting could function as a route toward masculinity in a patriarchal society, since female desert ascetics were considered holier than their male counterparts precisely because strict diets had removed the traditional physical signals of femininity. Nagata, Ganson and Austin note the modern parallel, that anorexia nervosa diagnoses are higher among transgender than cisgender people, attributing it to body dysmorphia.