Anorexia mirabilis

Lore & Background

The self-starvation practice of anorexia mirabilis was a behavior only adopted by women, particularly in the Middle Ages, as a way to imitate the suffering of Jesus in his torments during the Passion, as women preferred to experience this voluntary pain by fasting, whereas holy men experienced suffering through physical punishment. For this reason, they were often colloquially called 'fasting girls', as there were no 'fasting boys'. This colloquial naming became the most common one in the Victorian era, with anorexia mirabilis being the term used only in medical circles.

Reader's Guide

Anorexia mirabilis is primarily characterized by the refusal to eat, resulting in starvation, malnutrition, and oftentimes death. It differs from anorexia nervosa in that the disease is associated with religion as opposed to personal aesthetics, although this behavior was usually not approved by religious authorities as a holy one. People with anorexia mirabilis engaged in worrisome and bizarre behaviors designed to cause them pain, so that they might be reminded of Jesus Christ's suffering, and desired to appear unattractive in hopes of avoiding marriage and sexual contact.

Did You Know?

• The earliest reported case of anorexia mirabilis is St. Wilgefortis, an uncanonized, legendary, Catholic princess who reportedly lived sometime between the 8th century and 10th century in Galicia.
• In 2014 medical researchers published an article about an unidentified woman in her sixties, born in Chicago, Illinois, who had experienced anorexia mirabilis.

The Gendered Spirituality of Voluntary Suffering

Anorexia mirabilis was overwhelmingly a female phenomenon, a fact so striking that the colloquial nickname "fasting girls" stuck firmly in Victorian-era usage, with no equivalent "fasting boys" ever emerging. The underlying logic was rooted in how medieval Catholic culture channeled devotion through the body. Holy men expressed their imitation of Christ's Passion through physical punishment—flagellation, self-inflicted wounds—whereas women, largely confined to convents and domestic spheres, found fasting to be their primary vehicle for enacting voluntary pain. This was not a sanctioned devotional practice; religious authorities generally did not approve of it as a holy act. Yet the women persisted, often defying direct orders from their superiors to stop. The behavior was specifically tied to the desire to mirror Jesus's torments during the Passion, and in some cases the refusal to eat preceded any formal religious vocation at all. The gender asymmetry was so complete that the disorder's very identity became inseparable from womanhood in the medieval imagination.

Recurring Patterns in the Lives of the Fasting Saints

A striking thread runs through the documented cases of anorexia mirabilis, from Marie of Oignies in the twelfth century to Columba of Rieti in the fifteenth. Marie, born into wealth, chose poverty and marital abstinence, ate only bread so stale it bled her gums, and eventually subsisted solely on consecrated Hosts before dying at thirty-six. Columba, who cut her hair to escape an arranged marriage, wore a hairshirt, slept on thorns, and likewise reduced her intake to the Eucharist alone, dying at thirty-four. Catherine of Siena fasted for extended periods, defied her superiors' orders to eat, inserted sticks into her throat to trigger vomiting, and in her final month lost the use of her legs and her ability to swallow. Therese Neumann, a twentieth-century figure, consumed nothing but the Holy Eucharist from 1926 until her death in 1962. The pattern is consistent: a progressive narrowing of food intake, an ultimate reliance on the Host, a rejection of bodily comfort, and a death in the thirties or early forties.

From Legend to Modern Medicine

The historical record of anorexia mirabilis stretches from legend to clinical observation. The earliest reported case is St. Wilgefortis, a legendary Portuguese princess from roughly the eighth to tenth century who starved herself, prayed to be made ugly to avoid an arranged marriage, and was ultimately crucified by her father. Though uncanonized, she remains informally venerated. Documentation of the condition becomes far more robust in the medieval and early modern periods: studies of women officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as saints, blesseds, venerables, or servants of God who lived after 1200 AD reveal that roughly two-thirds showed clear signs of anorexia, with highly reliable records for about two dozen individuals. The condition did not vanish with the Middle Ages. In 2014, researchers published the case of an unidentified Chicago-born woman in her sixties who had entered a convent at thirteen and restricted her eating in pursuit of sainthood. By age sixty-six she weighed only sixty pounds, stood four feet ten inches tall, and suffered amenorrhea, yet showed no signs of dwarfism.

Defining the Boundary with Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia mirabilis and anorexia nervosa share a core behavioral signature—the refusal to eat leading to starvation, malnutrition, and frequently death—yet they diverge sharply in motivation and cultural framing. Anorexia nervosa is driven by concerns over personal appearance and body image, while anorexia mirabilis is explicitly religious in origin, rooted in the desire to imitate Christ's suffering. The Latin name itself, meaning "miraculously inspired loss of appetite," signals this spiritual dimension, as does the alternative term inedia prodigiosa, translating to "great starvation." People with anorexia mirabilis also engaged in what observers found bizarre and alarming: self-inflicted pain, deliberate unattractiveness to avoid marriage and sexual contact, and a defiance of ecclesiastical authority that set them apart from conventional piety. The condition was by definition linked to Catholicism, though the women who experienced it sometimes challenged the very institutions that would later canonize them. In medical circles the formal Latin term persists, while the broader public retains the older, more evocative label of "fasting girls."