Between fasting and religious suicide: A reconsideration of the practice of endura in medieval heterodox Christianity, 1273–1324

(Pre-print by the permission granted by Guidelines for Authors of the target journal.)

This article reconsiders medieval inquisition evidence on endura, a strict form of fasting observed in a heterodox Christian milieu in southwestern France during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Usually following the consolament – an adult baptism by the laying on of hands – it often ended in death, leading some scholars to view it as religious suicide. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of all known real-life cases, we examine afresh its geographical spread, diet, duration, and outcomes, alongside the sociodemographic profiles, health, terminology, motivations, and attitudes recorded. Attentive to variation in witnesses’ accounts, we stress instructions and social pressure over eschatological belief alone, and argue that endura resists reading either as fully institutionalized dissident practice or as inquisitorial fabrication.