Is there a resemblance between the contemporary anorexic teenager counting every calorie in her single-minded pursuit of thinness, and an ascetic medieval saint examining her every desire? Rudolph M. Bell suggests that the answer is yes.
"Everyone interested in anorexia nervosa . . . should skim this book or study it. It will make you realize how dependent upon culture the definition of disease is. I will never look at an anorexic patient in the same way again."—Howard Spiro, M.D.,
Gastroenterology"[This] book is a first-class social history and is well-documented both in its historical and scientific portions."—Vern L. Bullough,
American Historical Review"A significant contribution to revisionist history, which re-examines events in light of feminist thought. . . . Bell is particularly skillful in describing behavior within its time and culture, which would be bizarre by today's norms, without reducing it to the pathological."̵...
Customer Reviews:
2 of 38 found this review helpful:
Do not bother reading this book., 2002-06-17
This book typifies the problem of our patriarchal society. Not only is it poorly researched, but I find the writing self-indulgent and empty. Bell's understanding (or lack there of) of anorexia is insulting to humanity.
17 of 18 found this review helpful:
The present as window on the past, 2002-05-01
Bell compares modern descriptions of anorexia nervosa with the recorded behavior of some of the best-known Italian female saints from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. He argues that Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and other holy women were not only victims of a disease, but also in a way victims of a medieval Christian culture which allowed young women no other way to experience the disease's effects than as symptoms of religious fervor.
Bell's attitude toward his sources is capricious - sometimes he treats his medieval sources as literal truth, sometimes as distorted, agenda-ridden hagiography. They are, undoubtedly, a bit of both. Nonetheless, it is obvious that these holy women were more likely than their male counterparts to practice ascetic - even bizarre - food rituals in lieu or excess of other ascetic behavior. In this respect, Bell's book necessarily suffers in comparison with Caroline Walker Bynum's _Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women_, for Bynum spends a great more deal of time considering the phenomenon of female fasting in the both its broad medieval and specific Christian contexts. Still, Bell's argument for a connection between the rise of "holy anorexia" and the development of the mendicant orders is an intriguing bit of historical cause and effect.
Bell's methodology suggests that the "bizarre" behavior of women so removed from our own time is actually very familiar. While the argument itself falls flat at times, he does shed new light on an issue which could otherwise too easily be dismissed as spiritual excess.
22 of 28 found this review helpful:
Holy Anorexia, 2000-03-27
This book is an excellent historic study of women possesed with piety, most of these women were nuns from the 14-15th century. They expressed a dedication to Christ through an aesthetic lifestyle that included starvation, self-inflicted torture, mystical hallucinations and extreme self-denial. The women who starved to death gained a martyr like status. A facinating book!
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