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Anorexia and Religion, Part I

© Mark Stuart Ellison

In the fourteenth century, pious, skeletal females proliferated. These "holy anorexics" lived during a time when the Church was the center of society and women had negligible economic or social power. At the end of the twentieth century, the Church's influence has declined, and women in most parts of the Western world enjoy status approaching that of men. So why does anorexia still exist?

Jennifer Egan explores this question in her article, "Power Suffering" [New York Times Magazine, May 16, 1999, pp. 108-12]. Egan recounts the life of St. Catherine of Siena and notes parallels with our own era.

According to the article, Catherine's spiritual life began in 1353 when, at age 6, she had a vision of Jesus and Saints Peter, Paul and John. At 7, she vowed chastity. At 17, Catherine became a lay member of a Dominican order of chaste widows who cared for the sick and indigent. During visits to hospitals, she reportedly produced miraculous cures.

Egan notes that, in order to counteract her "demonic visions and temptations," Catherine redoubled her asceticism, which included a diet of bread, water, and raw vegetables. She also practiced blood-drawing self-flagellation three times daily.

Well-known for her religious "ecstasies," during which she remained motionless for hours, she advised kings and popes. Catherine successfully mediated disputes between warring factions and converted prisoners and other sinners.

Toward the end of her life, she attempted to reverse the effects of starvation, but by then her body had suffered too much damage. She died in 1380 at age 33.

"Modern-day anorexics, bulimics and self-injurers experience an illusion of control through disciplining or mutilating their bodies, echoing the pious self-punishments of Catherine's time," writes Egan.

Egan cites Rudolph M. Bell's book, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1985), in which he cogently argues that Catherine of Siena and many other female mystics were anorexic. Egan observes that, in the fourteenth century, female self-denial was logical: asceticism was associated with holiness, "one of the few modes of self-expression available to women- virtually their only route to power."

One passage from a modern translation of a "dialogue" dictated by St. Catherine, courtesy of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Calvin College, is particularly instructive: "...if her affection be placed principally in the penance she has undertaken, her perfection will be impeded; she should rather place reliance on the affection of love, with a holy hatred of herself, accompanied by true humility and perfect patience, together with the other intrinsic values of the soul, with hunger and desire for My honor and the salvation of souls."