FALL/WINTER 2025
Light Enough to Ascend
“‘What do I care for food? I have a kind of food unknown to those you order me to go to. Does a man live by bread alone?’”
—Saint Catherine of Siena, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena
Violetta Balkoff
Art: How Much More, 2025. Madelyn Kellum. Courtesy of the artist and Cheremoya; Photo: Evan Bedford.
God visited Catherine of Siena in romantic, erotic visions.1 She took a vow of virginity. They were to be married in the Kingdom of Heaven. While God would reach down to Catherine, blessing her with promises and His presence, Catherine’s flesh tethered her to Earth. She begged Him to kill her.2 Christ told Catherine that she must wait. But Catherine was impatient. Instead of waiting, she spent her entire life chipping away at her body. She would eat nothing but the eucharist,3 flog herself with chains until blood ran.4 In essence, Catherine practiced a slow suicide. Yet as her body weakened from extensive starvation, her soul ate deliciously.5 Her self-destruction would be rewarded with heavenly crowns.6 This suffering was an imitation of the cross (imitatio Christi) and a ritual of purification.7 Catherine starved herself the same way she remained a virgin: she refused to let anything unholy (sinfully pleasurable) enter her.8
As a result, Catherine was a walking, decomposing, living miracle.9 Doctors marveled at her survival.10 Raymond of Capua, her confessor and hagiographer, asserted that nothing but divine will could’ve enabled Catherine to endure such extreme hunger.11 Starving herself was her act of love,12 and for her love, she wanted to die.13 In the end, God granted his mortal bride’s wish.14 Catherine starved herself to death in 1380. In 1461, Pope Pius II made Catherine of Siena a saint. Her severed head remains as a relic in her hometown, Siena. The rest of her fragmented body—her finger, right foot, rib, shoulder blade, etc—is scattered across Europe. For the last 700 years, Catherine of Siena’s cult has venerated the body she once fought so hard to destroy. A martyr for her faith, Saint Catherine of Siena remains an exemplar of devotion.
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In recent years, alongside the popularization of restrictive eating disorders,15 historians and psychologists have grappled with St. Catherine of Siena’s eating disorder (or lack thereof). Some go so far as to claim that St. Catherine of Siena’s hagiography is one of the first documented cases of anorexia. In his book Holy Anorexia, Rudolph Bell proposes a diagnosis of “anorexia mirabilis,” or holy anorexia, which slightly deviates from the modern diagnosis of “anorexia nervosa” for its differing cultural context; in cases of holy anorexia, “the suppression of physical urges and basic feelings — fatigue, sexual drive, hunger, pain — frees the body to achieve heroic feats and the soul to commune with God,” writes Bell. Ultimately, “Each [anorexic, holy or nervous,] pursues her externally different but psychologically analogous, culturally approved16 objective with fanatical, compulsive devotion.”17 Integral to Bell’s analysis is that psychological analogy between anorexia mirabilis and anorexia nervosa, a claim that is often disputed.
In Holy Feast and Holy Fast, to date the most thorough study regarding the significance of food within medieval Christendom, historian Caroline Bynum disagrees with Bell firstly on grounds of inadequate evidence: “The first problem [with diagnosing medieval women with anorexia] is the most obvious: our information about the behavior of these women is often too fragmentary to allow us to ‘diagnose’ (or classify) them properly or to extrapolate from behavior to cause.”18 While this point is valid given the incredibly limited scope of medieval texts available, Bynum takes her fervent rejection of Holy Anorexia a step further in the epilogue of Holy Feast and Holy Fast. She writes, “The notion of anorexia nervosa… should not be wrenched from its modern context and applied to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, so I would argue that medieval symbols, behaviors, and doctrines have no direct lessons for [today].” This is because, according to Bynum, “they were produced by a world that has vanished.”19 Of course, Bynum is correct to identify anorexia nervosa as a modern diagnosis that exists within the context of the modern world, but her conclusion oversteps its bounds. The medieval world has not “vanished.” Though cannibalized and distorted, residue from the past will forever stick to the present.
Regardless of whether St. Catherine of Siena qualifies for a modern diagnosis of anorexia, contemporary media poses self-starvation with similar religious rhetoric, and contemporary anorexics starve themselves in parallel ways. The language of purity, obedience, and devotion have long been utilized by advertisers to connect weight loss commodities with their audiences' religious sensibilities. A 2003 study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzed advertisers’ frequent use of specific words including “temptation,” “heaven,” “purity,” and “sin” to advance a connection between eating (or not eating) and moral, religious values. The conclusion of the study found that “[s]uch messages identifying eating with guilt or reward could precipitate ‘atypical’ eating disorders in vulnerable subjects, invoking the historical associations with extreme religiosity and anorexia.”20 Since 2003, online spaces for eating disorders have dramatically increased in number, size, and influence. First there came the web fora, then proana21 Tumblr, and now edtwt22 X reigns supreme. The nature of social media is such that these are not isolated communities — content posted for a disordered audience frequently spreads elsewhere. While not every creator intends to promote their condition, the regurgitation of moralizing rhetoric doubtlessly impacts viewers in the same way that advertisers' rhetoric has been proven to. As stated in the Journal’s 2003 study, this proves particularly significant for vulnerable and impressionable individuals — for example, a teenage girl.
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At thirteen, Tumblr taught me how to be anorexic. “Proana’s” prime had waned, but I was sucked in all the same. My life was marked by rituals of self-destruction. I fasted and purged with earnest devotion. I strove for thinness, fantasizing about the distant day I would reach my ultimate goal weight. I thought life would be heavenly from that day on: in a thin body for the first time in my life, I would finally be beautiful (and thus accepted and thus loved). My labor’s fruit was miraculous, intoxicating, and fundamentally impossible to achieve. After years of slow suicide, I eventually deleted my account. It was a symbol of recovery and abandonment of the anorexic fantasy. But unlearning what you’ve been taught is easier said than done.
Many years later, as a student at Brown University, I relapsed. Like my early teenage self, I indulged in starvation-centric social media, now on X’s edtwt. At the time, it seemed like the natural continuation of my personal trajectory — a return to my true self. It was my best kept secret. Of course I understood the absurdity and hypocrisy of starving myself. I listened when well-informed and well-meaning people said that both patriarchy and capitalism23 wanted me small. I remembered my therapist telling me that “there is nothing more feminist than refusing to diminish yourself.” Girls I admired chose recovery as a radical act. I did not.
In a Brown University class called “Sex, Power, and God,” I became fixated on repeated hagiographical descriptions of female saints starving for salvation. Reading St. Catherine of Siena’s hagiography (as well as that of Angela of Foligno, Marie D’Oignies, Christina Mirabilis, among others) was eerily familiar. Centuries separated us (anorexics) from them, and yet malnutrition, ritual, diction, and devotion bridged the gap between us. I found the parallel language and logic to be particularly striking. For these saints, self-starvation was—in part—an act of purification. Like the saints, many edtwt users claim that self-starvation cleanses them.24 They firmly hold onto the belief that only through this process of purification can they finally achieve bliss, both internally and socially. I’d be lying if I said that I never understood what they meant. Having existed in a categorically obese body for most of my early life, I learned what was to be gained through self-starvation. With time, I learned what was to be lost. I saw myself destroyed, as all who keep going eventually do.
St. Catherine of Siena, resisting treatment for her diminished state, exclaimed, “‘What do I care for food? I have a kind of food unknown to those you order me to go to. Does a man live by bread alone?’”25 The final question is rhetorical: a man does not live by bread alone. Food may feed his body, but faith feeds his soul.
Many women in both the medieval26 and modern27 world have attempted to tame their flesh for the benefit of their souls. When reading hagiographies of fasting female saints next to posts made by today’s anorexics, a lineage illuminates. Regardless of diagnoses, the story of feminine self-starvation continues. This is perhaps best exemplified by the narrative of purpose: the faith which feeds the soul. From medieval Christendom to the present, the purpose of self-starvation—ascension to heaven28—has remained intact, despite obvious variations on the definition of “heaven.” St. Catherine of Siena and her ilk were seeking entrance into Christian heaven and unity with Jesus Christ. Contemporary anorexics seek a seemingly non-religious heaven on earth: life in a thin body. For both groups, self-starvation is their key to the golden gates. In this way, both contemporary anorexics and medieval “holy anorexics” have sacrificed their body, health, and life for a promise. For many, the only promise that this sacrifice clearly fulfills is that of their death.29
1 “‘I want the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ,’ and lo, as so often happened, the Lord Himself appeared to her, determined to satisfy her, and, drawing her mouth towards the wound in His side, made a sign to her to sate herself to her heart’s content on His body and blood. She did not need to be invited twice, and drank long from the rivers of life at their source in the holy side; and such sweetness ascended into her soul that she thought she must die of love” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 170-171).
2 “‘Why, O most beloved Lord, do you allow this contemptible body of mine to keep me away from your embraces? In this wretched life I find nothing that attracts me. I seek no other but you, I love nothing but you, for if I love anything it is for your sake that I love it. Why, then, by a worthless body must I be prevented from enjoying you? O, my most merciful Lord, release my soul from this prison and free me from this mortal body!’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 185-186)
3 “‘I feel so satisfied by the Lord when I receive His most adorable Sacrament that I could not possibly feel any desire for any other kind of food’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 156); “‘What do I care for food? I have a kind of food unknown to those you order me to go to. Does a man live by bread alone?’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 107).
4 “Catherine rose gaily up against herself, against her own flesh and blood, lacerating her body with an iron chain until the blood flowed” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 90); “Just think, reader, what degree of perfection this soul must have reached if she was prepared to draw blood from herself three times a day to render to the Lord ‘blood for blood’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 55).
5 “She gradually reached a state of total abstinence almost unheard of in our times. But if her body took nothing, her spirit fed most sumptuously in its stead” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 156); “[Catherine was] satisfied, though fasting, empty without but full within, dry to look at but inwardly watered by the rivers of living water and at all times full of life and happiness” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 157).
6 “‘It is through suffering that I shall enjoy a more sublime version of God’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 192).
7 “From the cross He called down to the holy virgin, ‘Catherine, my daughter, you see how much I suffered for you? Do not be sad, then, that you must suffer for me’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 94).
8 “Her purity and abstinence, which destroyed all the pleasures of the flesh as being unlawful” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 360).
9 “Her poor body, now weighed down with every kind of infirmary, was reduced to mere skin and bone and seemed not to be alive but already devoured by the grave; nevertheless she went on walking about, praying and working, seeming to everyone a walking miracle rather than a creature of nature” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 318).
10 “It always seemed to me that her whole life was a miracle, for what was visible before our eyes was something that could not possibly have taken place as the result of a natural process, as I was told plainly by the doctors I took to see her” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 52).
11 “In the end it was given her, not as a result of habit or natural disposition, but as I hope, God willing, to explain more fully later, through a divine miracle, to reach such a point that though her wasted body was plagued by complaints and subject to labours that others would never have been able to endure, nevertheless the vital juices were not consumed within her” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 52).
12 “‘With joy I have chosen the way of suffering and shall endure these and any other persecutions in the name of the Saviour for as long as it shall please Him to send them, in fact I shall enjoy them.’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 93-94).
13 “‘For the honour of your Name and your holy Church I will gladly drink the chalice of passion and death—which, as you yourself know, I have always desired to drink, ever since with the help of your grace I began to love you with all my mind and heart’” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 317).
14 “And now we come to the last act of patience, in the course of which, enduring for the love of Christ and His Holy Church a hard and bitter death, she equalled and surpassed the merits of the martyrs… Catherine has gained the double crown, of martyrdom by desire and martyrdom by blood” (Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 383)
15 “Anorexia nervosa” was clinically recognized in the 1870s, but it wasn’t until 1970 that scholars regarded anorexia as an independent diagnosis. Since then, scholars have paid increasingly closer attention to the disorder. Many have attempted to grapple with the complex mix of psychopathological and sociological determinants. Unsurprisingly, increased scholarly interest and awareness of anorexia correlated with increased rates of diagnosis. The spike in diagnosed anorexia rates comes from numerous confounding factors: clinical recognition, media coverage, and incidence all increased in recent decades. The elements contributing to an increased incidence of anorexia are incredibly complex and often disagreed upon. One study at the British Journal of Psychiatry posited that anorexia is best understood “as heterogeneous disorders with complex multifactorial aetiology, involving the interaction of genes and the environment, particularly social factors.” Alongside scholarly interest, the contributing “social factors” have ballooned since the 1970s. Thinness has been prioritized as both a marker of beauty and health. With the advent of the internet, mass media has parroted this idea at an unprecedented scale. Thus when I refer to “the popularization of restrictive eating disorders,” I am referring to increased scholarly interest, diagnostic rates, contributing social factors, and media coverage from 1970 until today. (Dell’Osso, Liliana, Marianna Abelli, Barbara Carpita, Stefano Pini, Giovanni Castellini, Claudia Carmassi, and Valdo Ricca. 2016. “Historical Evolution of the Concept of Anorexia Nervosa and Relationships with Orthorexia Nervosa, Autism, and Obsessive–Compulsive Spectrum.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 12 (July): 1651–60. doi:10.2147/NDT.S108912), (Collier, D. A., and J. L. Treasure. “The Aetiology of Eating Disorders.” British Journal of Psychiatry 185, no. 5 (2004): 363–65. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.185.5.363).
16 Bell’s claim that self-starvation was “culturally approved” is a reference to a status-quo of religious fasting within medieval Christendom. Food asceticism and Lenten fasts were “culturally approved” practices of faith, particularly because both allowed one to imitate Christ. Just as accepting food via the eucharist unified one’s flesh with God’s, denying food via fasting connected one to Christ’s suffering body. But Bell later contradicts himself when analyzing St. Catherine’s vitae, given that her extreme fasting was widely unpopular and discouraged. Through a broad claim about all female anorexics, Bell describes Catherine’s fasting as a form of rebellion: “The female anorexic behavior pattern involves… a seemingly obedient and submissive girl (but one who herself thoroughly defiant) rebels against the world around her in a desperate effort to establish a sense of self” (Bell, p. 55). This generalization on its own has issues, as generalizations often do. But Bell’s incongruence on whether “holy anorexia” was acceptable or unacceptable indicates that even Bell himself did not fully agree with his own analysis.
17 Bell, Holy Anorexia, p. 13, 20-21.
18 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, p. 204.
19 Bynum, p. 299.
20 Griffin and Berry. 2003. "A Modern Day Holy Anorexia? Religious Language in Advertising and Anorexia Nervosa in the West”.
21 Meaning “pro-anorexia,” though many users, including myself, would claim that they were searching for community more than attempting to promote anything.
22 Meaning “eating disorder Twitter.” The platform formerly known as Twitter is now Elon Musk’s X, but the original community name stuck regardless.
23 Deeply intertwined but often argumentatively separated.
24 “Starving is just cleansing and purifying your body when you really think about it everyone on edtwt is on an enlightenment journey”; “Eating is weakness. Eating is dirty. Starving is strength. Starving is clean.”; “I wanna starve until there is nothing left of me I wanna starve until I am pure.”
25 Raymond, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, p. 107.
26 Within the lives of religious men and women, fasting existed in the intersection between food and penitential asceticism—both of which were more heavily associated with women than men. Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell’s study of 864 saints from 1000 to 1700 found that all types of penitential asceticism (including fasting) were significantly more common among women than men. Further, preachers in the Middle Ages advised fasting disproportionately to women than to men. This follows a greater trend of medieval preachers associating women with food practices—such as food charity, fasting, and eucharistic favor. Analyzing the vitae of religious men and women indicates that fasting in particular was more prominent among women than men, especially throughout the high and late Middle Ages. But this must be taken with a grain of salt. Almost all of our information on medieval women was penned by male biographers, creating a problem of perspective and objectivity. It’s possible, if not likely, that male biographers’ stories about women often better reflect what they admired or abhorred than what the women actually did. That being said, if we were to ignore all sources that were tainted with bias, we would have no female vitae to work with. Therefore, just one grain of salt is necessary—not the whole ocean (Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women).
27 The Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders at Harvard University found the lifetime prevalence of eating disorders to be 4.07% among men and 8.6% among women. But this evidence necessitates two disclaimers: (1) all eating disorders are considered in this statistic, not just anorexia, and (2) men, non-binary individuals, and non-white individuals have been historically under-represented in studies relating to eating disorders. The general belief that eating disorders are gendered feminine and racialized as white overlaps with both social and sampling bias. While the best evidence we have points to higher rates of anorexia among women than men, more research (particularly on men, non-binary, and non-white people) is needed to properly understand the connection between gender and anorexia (Deloitte Access Economics. 2020. The Social and Economic Cost of Eating Disorders in the United States of America: A Report for the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders and the Academy for Eating Disorders. June).
28 While anorexics are not a monolith in pathology nor ideology, this branch of anorexic rationalization is highly prevalent. I have intentionally omitted primary sources (social media posts) to support this claim as to not cause harm to readers. The point is: this ideology is rooted in the Medieval.
29 Anorexia nervosa has a higher mortality rate than other eating disorders and a much higher mortality rate than other psychiatric disorders. In a meta-analysis overviewing 35 studies on anorexia, Archives of General Psychiatry concluded that around 5 out of every 1,000 people with anorexia die each year. 25% of these deaths are from suicide—but this percentage would be higher if suicide via self-starvation was included. The second disclaimer from footnote #27 remains applicable here. (Arcelus, Jon, Alex J. Mitchell, Jackie Wales, and S. Nielsen. 2011. “Mortality Rates in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa and Other Eating Disorders: A Meta-Analysis of 36 Studies.” Archives of General Psychiatry 68 (7): 724–731. https://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.74).