Women and Holy Fasting in Late Medieval Europe

Abstract

Religious fasting during the late medieval period had several interesting features. First, practicing religious fasting was usually limited to women. Second, the rise in popularity of fasting coincided with the apostolic life movement, which emphasizes severe poverty and nomadic preaching in urban areas. Third, fasting was typical among urban women- as a result of their exposure to the apostolic life movement. Many scholars do not research the cause of this phenomenon. Rudolf Bell elucidated it as an eating disorder provided by their religious culture with modern psychoanalytical theory. Caroline Walker Bynum explained this problem from a different perspective. According to Bynum, fasting combined with Eucharistic devotion were means of living an apostolic life. Around the late 12th centuries, there was a severe religious movement which emphasized the poverty and preaching, however women rarely had the right to renounce money or property and were not allowed to beg and preach. Women fasted as an expression of their religious piety.<BR> Before thirteen centuries, fasting did not have the meaning of holy behavior. Fasting was understood as a penitential behavior or charity. However, in the late medieval period, just as living in poverty became a holy act, so did fasting. Extreme fasting of women became to express women’s apostolic life.