Saintly Self-Starvation and its Authorizing Witnesses

In my current research project I analyse the ways in which hagiographical sources present the extreme fasting of medieval female saints as something that was done in front of others (e.g. the women’s male confessors, sceptics and fellow religious women). This public aspect has largely gone unnoticed in previous studies on saintly self-starvation. Yet, in order to become saints religious women needed an audience to interpret their deeds as indications of holiness. Thus, the fact that hagiographers describe the extreme fasting of aspirant saints as something that was seen and confirmed by other people is of significance in understanding medieval ideas concerning the ways in which female holiness should be authorized.

In this paper I will focus on matters of spectatorship and authority by analysing the reported self-starvation from a performative point of view. I will be paying attention to the ways in which saints are described to have interacted with various audiences. By comparing the performances of self-starvation in the medieval sources with the public aspects of other forms of self-starvation ― such as political hunger strikes in which spectatorship creates a power relation between the eyewitnesses as accomplices and the starving person ― I will discuss the various roles of the audiences with regard to power and authority in the medieval ideas of fasting as a marker of female holiness.