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Book Cover
E-book
Author Bynum, Caroline Walker, author.

Title Holy feast and holy fast : the religious significance of food to medieval women / Caroline Walker Bynum
Published Berkeley : University of California Press, [1987]
©1987

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 444 pages, 30 pages of plates) : illustrations
Series The new historicism : studies in cultural poetics
New historicism.
Contents Religious women in the later Middle Ages. New opportunities ; Female spirituality : diversities and unity -- Fast and feast : the historical background. Fasting in antiquity and the high Middle Ages ; A medieval change : from bread of heaven to the body broken -- Food as a female concern : the complexity of the evidence. Quantitative and fragmentary evidence for women's concern with food ; Men's lives and writings : a comparison -- Food in the lives of women saints. The low countries ; France and Germany ; Italy -- Food in the writings of women mystics. Hadewijch and Beatrice of Nazareth ; Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa -- Food as control of self. Was women's fasting anorexia nervosa? ; Food as control of body : the ascetic context and the question of dualism -- Food as control of circumstance. Food and family ; Food practices and religious roles ; Food practices as rejection of moderation -- The meaning of food : food as physicality. Food and flesh as pleasure and pain ; The late medieval concern with physicality -- Woman as body and as food. Woman as symbol of humanity ; Woman's body as food -- Women's symbols. The meaning of symbolic reversal ; Men's use of female symbols ; Women's symbols as continuity
Summary In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and ha
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 303-419) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Food -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History of doctrines -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
Women -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500.
Social history -- Medieval, 500-1500.
Food habits -- History -- To 1500
Christianity.
Food habits.
Medicine, Medieval.
Food habits -- History
Christianity
Feeding Behavior
History, Medieval
Christianity.
RELIGION -- Christian Life -- Spiritual Growth.
RELIGION -- Christian Ministry -- Discipleship.
HISTORY -- Medieval.
Medicine, Medieval.
Christianity.
Food habits.
Social history -- Medieval.
Women -- Middle Ages.
Christendom.
Vrouwen.
Eetcultuur.
Alimentation -- Aspect religieux -- Christianisme.
Habitudes alimentaires -- Histoire -- Moyen-âge.
Femmes -- Histoire -- Moyen-âge.
Genre/Form History.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780520908789
0520908783
0585326487
9780585326481
9780520057227
0520057228
128007891X
9781280078910
9786613520180
6613520187