A Hermit's Cookbook: Monks, Food and Fasting in the Middle Ages

How did medieval hermits survive on their self-denying diet? What did they eat, and how did unethical monks get around the rules? The Egyptian hermit Onuphrios was said to have lived entirely on dates, and perhaps the most famous of all hermits, John the Baptist, on locusts and wild honey. Was it really possible to sustain life on so little food?

The history of monasticism is defined by the fierce and passionate abandonment of the ordinary comforts of life, the most striking being food and ...