ABSTRACT
M. R. Bell's book Holy Anorexia includes an account of the life of the late-thirteenth-century Dominican nun Benvenuta Boianni, whose biography has come down to us through the notes taken by her confessor. Benvenuta embarked on her ascetic career in the conviction that she could achieve union with God only by following the path of suffering. The masochistic determination by which Benvenuta characterized her life first became evident in adolescence: from the age of 12, she began to practise systematic self-flagellation and to bind her body tightly with a rope that cut into her flesh and injured it. Writing of her childhood, she describes herself as a little girl who was seemingly bright, good and bursting with health, who apparently deserved the appreciation of adults. After a long series of failed attempts at political and social action, and at the height of an acute and profound intellectual crisis, she felt the intense presence of God.
