“Miraculous Fasting” in Early Modern Europe: A Study in the History of Philosophy

Between March and September 2025, Michele Merlicco carried out a postdoctoral research project at the University of Siegen, funded by the Heinrich Hertz-Stiftung and conducted under the supervision of Professor Mario Meliadò. The project investigates the phenomenon of prodigious fasting in early modern Europe, focusing on reports from the mid-sixteenth century onwards of young women said to have survived for exceptionally long periods, sometimes months or even years, without food or drink. Unlike medieval ascetic fasting, these episodes were not grounded in recognized religious practices or medical frameworks and were therefore difficult to classify within existing early modern categories of bodily regulation, health, and spiritual discipline.

The research examines how philosophers and physicians interpreted such cases within broader debates on life, nutrition, imagination, and bodily functioning. It focuses on medical, philosophical, and theological texts published between Simone Porzio’s De puella germanica (1542) and John Reynolds’s A Discourse upon Prodigious Abstinence (1669), with particular attention to widely discussed cases such as Margaretha Weiss in Germany, Jeanne Balan in France, and Martha Taylor in England. This project forms part of a longer-term research agenda on the history of hunger-related disorders in the early modern period.

Alongside archival and philological research, the project involved extensive dissemination activities. Preliminary results were presented at seminars and workshops between March and June 2025 (University of Pavia; University of Siegen) and at international conferences in July 2025 (Society for Renaissance Studies, Bristol) and September 2025 (FINO Graduate Conference, Pavia). A central event was the organisation of the international conference Feasting and Fasting. A Philosophical History of Nutrition, held at the University of Siegen on June 26, 2025, which provided a forum for interdisciplinary discussion on fasting and food abstinence. The research will result in an academic article and will contribute to a planned special issue devoted to the philosophical history of nutrition.

Michele Merlicco is a Research Fellow at the University of Pavia, within the ERC project NEWWORLD – Renewing the World: A Philosophical History of Early Modern Ecology. He has carried out research and teaching activities in France (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Germany (Universität Siegen), and Italy (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici; Università di Macerata). His work focuses on the history of Renaissance philosophy and the history of mental illnesses. He is the author of several contributions published in international journals and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Bruniana & Campanelliana.