Holy Feast and Holy Fast emerged as a central work in the mid-1980s in response to a widespread trend among scholars who placed apostolic poverty and chastity at the forefront. at the heart of Western Europe's vita religiosa, at the expense of attention to forms of austerity, some of which were more common among women. Bynum constructs her narrative by exploring how, although the renunciation of money and sex had a common meaning for both sexes, the main metaphor governing women's spiritual lives concerned food specifically. Bynum weaves her monograph through careful analysis of both food symbolism and food-related religious practices as described in the works of the mystics themselves and in the hagiographical vitae of the saints. Although this review focuses primarily on the latter part of the work, particularly “Chapter 6: Diet as Self-Control,” a brief overview of the preceding sections may be helpful to set the context. The work begins with Section I, 'The Background' which consists of a general overview of the social and religious history of medieval women. The first section delineates the basic societal framework for Western European women in the High Middle Ages and describes the cultural forces at work in shaping their lives. The second part of this section reviews changes in religious consciousness regarding sacramental practices and fasting, from the Church Fathers to the hagiographers of the late Middle Ages. It should be noted here that, although more attention is given to the practice of "fasting", particularly in the latter part of the work which I will examine in more detail, the "feast" in question refers more generally the “festival of love”. ' of the Eucharist that middle of paper ...... such that extreme spiritual austerities can hold their place in history because they mattered to the people who practiced them, not necessarily because they were a agent to drive change. Bynum rejects morally absolutist reconstructions of the past in favor of a more relativistic reading that delves into the imagination and subconscious of medieval writers themselves. She meets them, as much as possible, in their own environment rather than projecting modern constructions (such as “anorexia nervosa”) into the past where they are of little use to our understanding of the medieval mind. Despite his close work with the Annalist school, Bynum makes no attempt toward "total history" or a grand narrative of the past, and in this respect the work is the most honest, the most stimulating, and the most definitive for 21st century researchers who study history. the medieval spirit and its era.