Holy women in medieval Christendom displayed their piety in ways associated with food, much more than holy men did. They miraculously survived without eating anything at all or subsisted on nothing but the Eucharist, had visions of Christ giving them the host, and spoke of drinking Christ’s blood or feeding souls in Purgatory with their own blood, according to Caroline Walker Bynum’s findings in Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Among the spectacular acts of asceticism ascribed to figures like Catherine of Siena was (readers of a nervous disposition may want to skip the rest of this sentence) the eating of lepers’ scabs and drinking of pus from their sores.