Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
- 2 Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
- 3 The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health
- 4 Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
- 5 The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
- 6 The Legacy of the Trotula
- 7 Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty
- 8 Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
- 9 Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
- 2 Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
- 3 The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health
- 4 Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
- 5 The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
- 6 The Legacy of the Trotula
- 7 Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty
- 8 Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
- 9 Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Church teachings against gluttony and the inherently sinful nature of women may have affected dietary recommendations for health. The virtues of fasting and avoidance of meat were extoled by the Church as a means to control bodily appetites, although a strong anti-feminist tradition in ecclesiastical literature reveals a long-held belief that women by nature were particularly prone to sinful behaviour, as well as tempting men to sin and lust. De secretis mulierum will be examined as a particularly egregious example of anti-feminist literature. Other anti-feminist literature, such as the Distaff Gospels and some fabliaux will also be examined.
Keywords: gluttony, fasting, anti-feminist writing, De secretis mulierum, Distaff Gospels, fabliau
As mentioned in previous chapters, the Church had much to say about how the virtues of fasting and meat avoidance contributed to the spiritual health of both men and women. This chapter examines the conflict between recommendations for bodily health and spiritual health, highlighting the sometimes uneasy compromise between medical and ecclesiastical dietary recommendations, particularly for women. The Church regularly condemned gluttony; for some early Church Fathers, it might be the primary sin. Evagrius Ponticus (345-399 CE, Ibora, Turkey) declared around 365 that not just gluttony, but an overt lack of restraint in glorying in fine food was the principle vice left to us by the sins of Adam (Rowley 2006, 79). It showed a lack of self-restraint, and could lead to other, perhaps even more grave, sins. Gluttony was condemned for both men and women, but since women's bodies were more often associated with sin in and of themselves, rhetorically (at least for the early Church Fathers, going back to the sin of Eve) admonitions to fast and eat sparingly were often directed towards women specifically. Women's bodies were already considered to be polluted, and responsible for tempting men towards sin and pollution. They were also related to unrestrained sexuality. The ancient Greeks are probably responsible for this to some degree, as their medical theorizing found that women, cold by nature, craved the heat of a man through intercourse.
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- Information
- Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle AgesBalancing the Humours, pp. 175 - 194Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020