Fat Monks

[poliphilo]

According to Pip Patrick (article in Current Archaeology 198) the stereotype of the fat, jolly monk has some basis in fact.

Pip did a study of skeletons from a number of medieval cemetries in London and found that monks "were five times as likely to develop some form of obesity-related joint disease as their secular counterparts."

Nice to find science (for once) confirming rather that debunking myth.

Comments

[dadi.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. I get this too. I have spent a week in a monastery once, a "fasting healing experience", and have to say that the atmosphere appealed very much to me and somehow awakened distant impressions/memories.
Nowadays those places are a little bit too ascetic for my taste though. I am sure this was not the case in the past :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I had a friend once who was a probationary monk- a jolly, Friar Tuckish little man. He didn't stay the course.