Anorexia Mirabilous: Pious Woman's Practice (as it relates to Jehanne)

In a paper in first semester, I discussed food and consumption as a means of control for the medieval woman.

• One one hand it provided the lower class female control over her husband - she could poison her husband's food if she wanted to since she had a direct relationship to his food through preparation.
• The restriction of food was also a popular means of control for the medieval woman. The practice of restricting one's own food intake for spiritual purposes was known as anorexia mirabilous, and it was practiced by pious women.

Pious women would starve themselves in the name of God, which was an assertion of power in itself over their bodies and their religion. These women would accept only the Eucharist (in Catholic churches) and therefore be cleansed of everything but the Body of Christ. These women believed that doing this would elevate their position, placing them on almost the same level as the priest as they would be empty of all else but Christ. Their body became a cavity for Christ rather than an item to be subjugated, used and taken by men and patriarchy (although the image of a woman’s body as a cavity for Christ still suggests female passivity…).  This practice was carried out by “miraculous maids” – it was a practice that went along with the ideology of ascetics. These women would wear hair shirts, sleep on beds of thorns and partake in  life-long virginity. It was a self-mutilating and self-deprecating practice.

 

One of the most famous women to practice this behaviour was Catherine of Siena. She would consume only one spoonful of herbs per day aside from the Eucharist, and if she consumed anything else she would force herself to throw it up by shoving a tree branch down her throat. Many of the women practicing this anorexia mirabilism died by starvation (but that was alright because she was sacrificed in the name of her faith).  This practice was deemed heretic during the renaissance and began to phase out, but the practice itself did not go away, merely the reason for practicing. No longer spiritual, the practice translated itself into "disorders" such as we know them in twentieth century -  anorexia and bulimia nervosa. HOWEVER, while these medieval practices of starvation and deprecation are only arguably the precedent for current day eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, there is something to be said for the parallels between the practices.

So Jehanne might have been aware of this practice and partaken in it? Interesting. Would account for her boyish body and lack of menstruation.