Julius Cesar was an epileptic. There are many evidences about it and there is not any author I know who actually denies it. Of course the Romans did not say that he was epileptic, but said he had a sacred illness that put him in contact with the gods. Julius Cesar probably believed this himself, and it is very probably that epilepsy was one of the reasons to actually increase his self esteem. Nowadays, however, there is not any author who argues that he was actually touched by the gods and that epilepsy is just a modern interpretation of the phenomenon. Of course none of us actually believes in the Roman gods, they are just poetic figures used time to time as metaphors…
In the case of Margerie Kempe, however, her evident anorexia is read as some spiritual other thing. Of course she and her contemporaries read it as some religious fast and put much of spiritual content in it, but, even with its spiritual content, that was anorexia. Nowadays, anorexia is socially encouraged with the name of “diet” and actual diets really become alimentary disorders with enough similarities with Margerie’s disorders. Fasts were also socially encouraged during the Middle Ages, and the line that separated the pious fast from the alimentary disorder was equally thin.
Why we cannot say that Margerie had anorexia in a pious version, just as we say that Cesar had epilepsy in his own Roman version, but epilepsy on the bottom line?
