The Inedia of Thérèse Neumann

Ennemond Boniface, a twenty-five-year investigation

The most detailed source on the inedia of Thérèse Neumann is the book by the French canon Ennemond Boniface, published by P. Lethielleux, Paris (© Dessain et Tolra, 1979; legal deposit: 1st quarter of 1980). Boniface claims a long and methodical investigation:

« En vingt-cinq ans, j'ai fait cinq enquêtes, de plusieurs semaines chacune, tant sur Thérèse Neumann elle-même que sur les phénomènes qu'elle présentait. » — Ennemond Boniface, Thérèse Neumann, la crucifiée de Konnersreuth devant l'histoire et la science, P. Lethielleux, Paris, 1979, p. 19^[6]

He notably spoke for three and a quarter hours, on 6 July 1955, with the parish priest Josef Naber, confessor and spiritual director of Thérèse since 1909^[7]. This same Naber gives him the most absolute formulation in the entire case:

« Il rappelle volontiers qu'il donnerait sa vie pour attester l'authenticité absolue de cette incroyable abstention perpétuelle de toute nouriture solide ou liquide. » — Fr. Josef Naber, quoted by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 36 (the misspelling "nouriture" is that of the edition)^[8]

This documentary breadth has a downside that the article must address head-on: Boniface is not a neutral outside observer, but a declared defender of the authenticity of the case. His book remains valuable for identifying witnesses, documents and controversies; his broadest conclusions — such as extending the fifteen-day examination to thirty-six "uninterrupted" years — belong more to his advocacy than to any new experimental data, and the article points this out whenever this distinction matters.

Boniface also indicates a line of archives that neither of the two sources consulted allows one to open directly: "the personal diary, notes and archives of Fr. Naber, which he inherited, as well as those of Dr Gerlich and Ferdinand Neumann"^[9] were reportedly held by Johannes Steiner, whose French edition of the master book on Thérèse Neumann appeared in 1963. This documentary collection, if it survives, would remain the best route to the original report of the 1927 examination.

Joachim Bouflet, a later critical synthesis

The second, more recent source is the Encyclopédie des phénomènes extraordinaires dans la vie mystique by the historian Joachim Bouflet, whose volume 2 (2015) devotes a five-page entry to Thérèse Neumann, under the title "Theres Neumann or the proof through the teeth". Bouflet produces no new examination: he explicitly refers to Boniface and to his own 1999 monograph for the details of the 1927 setup^[10]. His own contribution lies elsewhere — a strict definition of the term "inedia", a more rigorously dated chronology, and a methodological honesty that does not hesitate to acknowledge the limits of the case, as the rest of this article will show.

A third witness, cited by the two above rather than consulted directly for this article, deserves mention for the moderation of his judgment. Baron Erwein von Aretin, favourable to the case, nevertheless refuses to make the inedia the centre of his admiration for Thérèse Neumann:

« l'absence de nourriture de Thérèse n'était après tout qu'un phénomène extérieur secondaire » — Erwein von Aretin, quoted by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 78^[11]

This safeguard, coming from a witness who was otherwise convinced, is worth keeping in mind throughout the rest of the article: to study the inedia rigorously never amounts to reducing the person of Thérèse Neumann, or her spiritual life, to this single alleged biological feat.

A peasant "the sturdiest in the land"

Before the illness that would turn her life upside down, the witnesses questioned by Boniface describe a robust young woman: she had "a reputation for being the sturdiest in the land"^[30], able to handle sacks weighing 50 to 75 kilograms on her own^[31]. This pre-morbid sturdiness is no anecdotal detail: it rules out projecting onto the young Thérèse of before 1918 the frailty of the woman who, eight years later, would stop eating.

The 1918 accident and the years of illness

The medical starting point of the case is a trauma that occurred in 1918. Boniface dates it to 10 March^[32][33]; Bouflet, for his part, places the incident on 10 April 1918 and describes it as "a very severe wrenching of the back: dislocation of the second and third lumbar vertebrae, with strangulation of a central nerve cord"^[34]. The two sources agree on the year and the severity of the trauma, without either reproducing the original medical record that would allow the two dates to be settled.

A first hospitalisation, from April to June 1918, comes to an early end. Bouflet reports that Thérèse cut the stay short herself because the diet prescribed by Dr Gœbel was unbearable to her, despite supplements smuggled in by her sisters and friends: "she said they were letting her starve to death"^[35]. The detail is worth noting: at that date, nothing hints at any predisposition to refuse food — quite the opposite.

The hysteria certificate of 27 February 1920

The following years see blindness and partial paralysis develop. On 27 February 1920, Dr Seidl draws up a certificate of "severe hysteria with blindness and partial paralysis"^[36], countersigned by three colleagues, Drs Gœbel, Franck and Hitzelsberger^[37]. This document, most often invoked by the case's critics, must be presented without downplaying its force: it is this same Seidl who, seven years later, will head the inedia inspection. Boniface argues that it was a document aimed at administrative purposes, intended to support a disability pension application, and that Seidl orally retracted its diagnostic scope during an interview in August 1931^[38]. No written retraction, however, is reproduced in the sources examined for this article: the 1920 certificate remains a genuine piece of the file, not an obstacle definitively removed.

1926: the mystical phenomena, then the alleged disappearance of hunger

Boniface dates the beginning of the mystical phenomena properly so called to 5 March 1926 — the stigmata, the ecstasies of the Passion every Friday^[39]. This date must not be confused with the start of the fast: as the detailed chronology below shows, the food abstinence set in through distinct stages between 1922 and 1927.

Popular legend sums up the case in a single formula — "thirty-five years without eating or drinking" — which masks a gradual story, in several quite distinct stages. In a letter to her former schoolteacher, dated 27 May 1923, Thérèse Neumann herself describes, in the first person, the origin of the ailment:

« About three days before Saint Nicholas's Day, I was struck by a slight paralysis of the neck, so that I could only take liquids. » — Thérèse Neumann, letter of 27 May 1923, cited by Ennemond Boniface, Thérèse Neumann, la crucifiée de Konnersreuth devant l'histoire et la science, P. Lethielleux, Paris, 1979, pp. 287-288^[40]

She continues: "This situation grew worse to the point that on Christmas Day I could no longer swallow a single drop of water. It lasted 12 days"^[41] — then, on the eve of Epiphany, "my throat opened just enough for me to swallow at least a little water"^[42], and "shortly before Easter, I was again able to swallow a little, but no food because of my stomach"^[43].

This first-hand testimony — the closest autobiographical document available on the onset of the ailment — rules out a simplistic presentation of the kind "thirty-five years without a drop of water since Christmas 1922": as early as Epiphany 1923, Thérèse recovers the ability to swallow a little water. Joachim Bouflet, moreover, confirms that inedia, strictly speaking, does not begin on that date:

« Inedia, in the strict sense of the term, is the absolute deprivation of all nourishment, liquid or solid. It is distinct from fasting, and even from extremely severe forms of abstinence that existed in early monasticism. It cannot be equated with anorexia, whose effects as well as causes are radically different. » — Joachim Bouflet, Encyclopédie des phénomènes extraordinaires dans la vie mystique, tome 2, Le Jardin des Livres, Paris, 2015, p. 13^[44]

This definition excludes the period 1922–1926, during which nutritive liquids persist, albeit in small quantities. A note by the parish priest Josef Naber, dated 1 March 1931 and relayed through Johannes Steiner, sets out what followed:

« Thérèse declares that at the first vision of the Transfiguration of Christ (6 August 1926), she left all hunger and thirst on Tabor. » — Curé Josef Naber, note of 1 March 1931, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 177^[45]

Naber does, however, add a qualification that nuances the formula: "From 6 August 1926 until Christmas of that year, Thérèse took, and only at her mother's insistence, a little liquid — amounting to at most a cup, over the course of a week — but she had to vomit it straight away"^[46]. Then: "From Christmas 1926 to September 1927, Thérèse received only a little water for communion [...] After September 1927, she swallowed no further food, nor any drink, not even a drop of water"^[47].

Questioned under oath in January 1953 by the ecclesiastical commission set up by Mgr Josef Schröffer, Thérèse Neumann herself confirms this two-stage timeline:

« Since Christmas 1926, I have lived without any intake of food or drink. During the period from Christmas 1926 until September 1927, I received Holy Communion with a small spoonful of water. Since 1927, I have done without that spoonful of water. » — Thérèse Neumann, sworn deposition, January 1953, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 450^[48]

From Christmas 1926 to her death on 18 September 1962, the interval is about thirty-five years and nine months — which allows the customary expression "thirty-five years", on condition of never forgetting the reservation of the communion water. Bouflet, who counts from 6 August 1926, prefers to speak of "thirty-six years (1926–1962)"^[49]. Both formulas are defensible; they simply date a different threshold.

Finally, as for excretions, Naber places their complete cessation much later than the start of the fast: "The eliminations through the bladder and intestines, which at the end had become very rare (a little water about every 15 days and, every two or three months, with great difficulty, a little mucus from the intestines), ceased completely at the beginning of 1930"^[50]. This last marker is crucial for what follows: the July 1927 examination, described below, will precisely measure eliminations that still existed at the time.

The following table summarises this progression:

A Commission Requested by the Bishop of Regensburg

Bouflet precisely identifies who commissioned the inspection: "Msgr Anton von Henle, Bishop of Regensburg, instructs Dr Seidl, chief surgeon and director of the hospital at Waldsassen and district medical officer, to carry out a rigorous investigation into the inedia of the stigmatic"^[51]. Boniface confirms the choice of Seidl and details his role: "district medical officer" and "chief physician-surgeon at the Waldsassen hospital"^[52] — a choice deliberately unfavourable to any indulgence, since this same Seidl had signed, seven years earlier, the 1920 certificate of hysteria.

Four Nurses from Mallersdorf, Chosen, Trained, Sworn In

The protocol involves four Franciscan nuns from the Mallersdorf Sisters of Charity congregation. Boniface describes them as follows: "He had carefully chosen, from among many others, four qualified nursing nuns, particularly well-informed and well on their guard against the subtle tricks of neuropaths, whom they were, moreover, accustomed to treat"^[53]. They received four days of detailed instructions from Seidl and swore an oath before an episcopal commission, both before and after their mission^[54]. Their names, however, are given in neither of the two sources examined for this article — a gap that only the original record, not found to this day, could fill.

A Protocol in Twelve Points

The anti-fraud setup, summarised by Boniface, covers the main avenues of domestic food fraud. Sacramental confession itself is suspended for the duration of the observation, so that Thérèse is never outside the simultaneous gaze of at least two nurses:

"Thérèse Neumann must not be left alone for a single moment, whether by day or by night, whether at her home, at church, or outdoors. Lavatories may not be used throughout the whole observation period, stools being collected in a basin." — Protocol of the July 1927 inspection, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 181^[55]

The mouth-rinsing water is measured before use, recovered, and then measured again; the water accompanying the communion host is likewise measured. The protocol adds: "All excreta: urine, vomit, stools shall be collected, measured or weighed before being sent at once to the doctor for analysis"^[56], and: "Body weighings, temperature readings and pulse observation shall be carried out continuously"^[57]. Blood samples are to be taken from the stigmata and the earlobe, with haemoglobin measurement; Fridays — the days of the Passion ecstasies — are subject to reinforced observation; photographs are taken; religious and social behaviour is noted; the doctor must be called without delay in case of any doubt^[58].

Fifteen Days and Fifteen Nights under Continuous Double Guard

According to Boniface, the inspection took place very precisely from 12:30 on 13 July 1927 to 13:00 on 28 July:

"fifteen consecutive days (exactly from 12:30 on 13 July 1927, to 13:00 on the 28th of the same month) during which, two at a time and at least two of the four sworn nurses, they never took their eyes off Thérèse Neumann for a second, by day or by night." — Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 182^[59]

The exact duration calculated from these times is 360 hours and 30 minutes, which Boniface rounds to 360 hours^[60]. Seidl himself carried out unannounced visits, sometimes accompanied by other observers, and was kept constantly informed by telephone; the record is said to have noted nine particularly important checks, several of them at night, none of which is described in detail by the available sources^[61].

One discrepancy must honestly be pointed out: in a later letter, Naber summarises the same observation by speaking of "fourteen days"^[62], where the calculation by hours yields fifteen full days. The difference is most likely due to a different method of counting — full days versus intervening nights — rather than a substantive contradiction; no document allows a choice between the two formulations, and both must be kept as the sources give them. A second discrepancy concerns the starting day itself: Boniface gives 13 July at 12:30^[63], whereas sources independent of his investigation date the start of the observation to 14 July — only the original record, not found to this day, would allow this to be settled (see the table of discrepancies).

What Was Ingested: Neither Absolute Zero nor a Normal Diet

The quantitative result reported by Boniface must be quoted exactly, for it determines the entire vocabulary of this article — with this reservation, which the article makes its own: no daily table of these measurements, nor any description of the scales or the weighing conditions, is reproduced in the sources examined. Boniface writes: "during these fifteen days and fifteen continuous nights, Thérèse had not absorbed the slightest trace of solid or liquid food, save the host, moistened at the time, of her daily communion"^[64], then puts figures on it: "about 0.33 gram of host and 45 cm3 of water (about three tablespoons, that is, a few drops per day)"^[65] — that is, roughly one-eighth of a host given each day.

This formula must govern the rest of the article: this is not a literal absence of all ingested matter, but an extremely severe quasi-abstinence from food and water, reported by Boniface as measured. Another passage in the same book asserts, concerning the total alleged duration: "For thirty-six years, she had not absorbed the slightest solid food, with the exception of about two and a half grams of unleavened bread — consecrated — each day"^[66]. Applied to fifteen days, this figure of two and a half grams per day would give 37.5 grams — an order of magnitude a hundred times greater than the 0.33 gram reported as measured in 1927. This arithmetic contradiction belongs to the very text of Boniface; the article retains the figure from the inspection itself rather than the synthetic formula on page 175 — without this amounting to validation of the record, which has not been found to this day.

Weight, Blood, and the Assessment of Dr Ewald

The most frequently cited result is the weight stability reported by Boniface: "her weight was found rigorously the same on 28 July at 13:00 as on the 13th at the same hour"^[67]. Boniface specifies: "Her normal weight at that time was 55 kilos. On Friday evening she weighed only 51, and on Sunday morning 55 again"^[68] — a four-kilo oscillation, linked to the blood loss of the Friday ecstasies, fully compensated within two or three days. No daily table of these weighings, nor any description of the scales or the weighing conditions, has been found in the sources examined for this article.

The analysis of the blood drawn from the stigmata and the earlobe "revealed no trace of abstinence"^[69] — a wording whose laboratory, measured parameters, and method are left unspecified, and which, in the current state of the documentation, remains difficult to interpret with the rigour of a modern clinical report.

Dr Ewald, described by Boniface as a "staunch opponent of the mystical thesis," nevertheless offers this judgement on the nurses and the record of proceedings:

"The Four Sisters of Mallersdorf made an extraordinarily good impression on me; they had been skilfully chosen; from a medical point of view they left nothing to be desired. They certainly could not have been fooled [...] As far as I had knowledge of their record of proceedings, it was objective, unassailable, and bore witness to the soundest critical judgement." — Dr Ewald, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 184^[70]

The phrase "as far as I had knowledge" does, however, counsel caution: it suggests that Ewald may not have had access to the entire file — a reservation the article cannot gloss over. Josef Klosa, in his own book, quotes another extract from Ewald's report concerning a technical detail of the setup: the inspection of the bed.

"Thérèse Neumann's bed was not only thoroughly inspected at the start of the control, but the inspection was moreover carried out every day, not, as one might think, by the parents, but by the Sisters. Neither the doctor nor the Sisters were of the view that one could suppose any errors of observation had been made regarding the intake of food." — Dr Ewald, cited by Josef Klosa, Das Wunder von Konnersreuth, Paul Pattloch Verlag, Aschaffenburg, 1974, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 474^[71]

The limit acknowledged by Seidl himself

Perhaps the most decisive point in the whole file is this one: the doctor who directed the control himself defined, with a methodological rigour remarkable for its time, what his experiment proved — and what it did not prove:

"even if it were demonstrated that Thérèse Neumann was eating again, it would no less remain indubitable that, during the fifteen days that his own experiment had lasted, she had taken no food." — Dr Otto Seidl, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 180^[72]

This sentence fixes the proper epistemic scope of the Mallersdorf control: fifteen days observed and documented, not thirty-five years scientifically proven. Boniface himself, however, takes that step in his conclusion: "By this rigorous and continuous control of 360 hours, the question of Thérèse Neumann's total abstinence has been definitively settled"^[73], before adding that "the investigation, in reality, lasted uninterrupted — for 36 years — and the investigator's name was legion"^[74], invoking the family, visitors, and the neighbourhood. This extension deserves to be named for what it is: an apologetic inference on the author's part, distinct from a second controlled experiment. The following table separates the two levels.

Who are the witnesses in this file?

The inedia file draws on some ten actors whose functions and degrees of independence differ greatly. Distinguishing them avoids treating as equivalent a sworn deposition, a personal conviction, and a mere reported impression. Unless otherwise stated, the judgements of Ewald, Thurston, Gerlich, Urban, and Diener are known here through Boniface (and Klosa via Boniface), whose original works were not consulted directly for this article: they are therefore not presented as independent corroborations verified against the documents.

Beyond the fifteen days: the longitudinal evidence, neither proof nor fiction

Why the check was never repeated

After July 1927, no new continuous, protocol-based observation of the same kind was conducted. Thérèse's own reluctance to be placed in medical care is attested even before the 1927 check: she "confided to Father Fahsel that she was afraid of clinics"^[75]. This fear, real as it was, must not however be confused with a refusal in principle of all verification — the rest of the file shows that she subsequently gave her consent to several examination proposals put forward by the ecclesiastical authority. Boniface gives the main reason for the refusal to repeat the residential check, attributed to Thérèse's father:

"Father Neumann had only consented to an investigation of 15 days and 15 consecutive nights on the formal promise that no further medical investigation would ever be carried out on his daughter." — Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 392^[76]

Curate Naber confirms this account in a 1938 letter: "Father Neumann is ready to declare under oath that the vicar general of the time, in order to win him over to the investigation, promised him that afterwards she would be left in peace. 'Well then!' says the father today, 'I kept my word, I allowed the investigation to go ahead; now it is the episcopal authority that must keep its word.'"^[77]

To this motive is added a more personal one. Ferdinand Neumann reproaches Dr Ewald for having taken advantage of the 1927 check to verify, without authorisation, his daughter's virginity:

"During the examination ordered by your predecessor, Professor Ewald had ascertained, without my knowledge and without the slightest authorisation from my daughter, that her virginity was intact. She had to submit to this verification without being able to protest. [...] Throughout all these years, modesty has always prevented her from saying anything about it." — Ferdinand Neumann, letter to the bishop, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 441^[78]

He concludes: "This puts an end, once and for all, to the controversies, whatever they may be, concerning a new medical examination"^[79]. This letter illuminates, without scientifically justifying it, the origin of the family's refusal: it was not an irrational fear of verification, but a specific grievance about the way the first investigation had been conducted.

Thérèse herself had consented to a hospital check

The objection "she refused all verification" must be corrected in the light of the available documents. According to Naber, Thérèse personally accepted the proposal of a clinic examination put forward by the Holy Office; it was her father who opposed it:

"After a few moments Thérèse came and explained to her father, with the greatest peace of soul, that Rome wanted her to be examined, that she had agreed and had signed. Then her father flew into a passion, explaining that this was not how things were done." — Curate Josef Naber, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 491^[80]

Naber adds that the father later said he was ready to discuss the matter under certain conditions, but "after a short while, we were informed that the conditions were not accepted"^[81]. A second letter from the Holy Office followed, "written in an entirely different tone from the previous one": the diocesan bishop was invited to propose a new examination to Thérèse, without formally ordering her to undergo one^[82]. A diocesan Relatio of 12 October 1928, held in the central archives of the Diocese of Regensburg, confirms this distinction:

"The report then deals with the sufferings of the Passion, the absence of food and the wish of the Episcopate to have her examined in a clinic, to which Thérèse consented, but not her father." — Diocesan Relatio of 12 October 1928, summarised by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., pp. 507-508^[83]

Bouflet, more broadly, attributes the refusal "to the parents", for fear of seeing Thérèse treated "as Anna Maria Goebel had been"^[84] — a precedent which the sources reviewed for this article do not allow to be detailed any further. The two accounts agree on the essential point: the request for an independent hospital check was made, and it came to nothing.

Professor Hubert Urban's scientific proposal (1944)

The most important testimony for establishing the precise limits of the file comes from an observer sympathetic to the case but rigorous in his method: the neuropsychiatrist Hubert Urban, former director of the neuropsychiatric clinic of the University of Innsbruck. After a visit on 12 and 13 October 1944, made possible by an accident that allowed him to examine Thérèse both as a doctor and as a psychiatrist^[85], Urban writes:

"The personality of Thérèse Neumann herself and of those around her leaves me not the slightest doubt as to the truthfulness of her total abstinence. No excretion of urine or faecal matter contradicts this fact…" — Hubert Urban, "What I saw at Konnersreuth", Psyché, no. 89, March 1954, p. 177, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 416^[86]

On hysteria, he adds: "as a professor of neuropsychiatry, I state that after having seriously examined Thérèse Neumann, my medical conscience obliges me to say that she is not, and has never been, hysteric. For I know of no intermittent hysteria"^[87]. But Urban does not stop at his personal conviction. He himself sets out, with a clarity equalled by no other witness in the file, the protocol that is lacking:

"It would be a matter of establishing new radiographs and of checking once again the absence of food by means of an examination of metabolic exchange. The findings can only be established in a hospital. A control commission would have to be set up, made up of specialists belonging to different circles, with different conceptions […]" — Hubert Urban, Psyché, no. 89, March 1954, pp. 181-182, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., pp. 417-418^[88]

None of the sources reviewed for this article shows that this hospital counter-verification was ever organised. To this day, it is the most important methodological gap in the file: a doctor sympathetic to the case, of recognised expertise, precisely formulated the experiment that would have settled the matter — hospital, metabolic balance study, pluralist commission — and that experiment never took place.

Why the Martini observation (1928) is not a counter-expertise

A frequent confusion deserves to be dispelled. In March 1928, Professor Martini observed Thérèse for a few hours, spread over half a day, at the request of Bishop Buchberger. Boniface precisely delimits the actual scope of this observation:

"It must first be noted that the Martini observation covered none of the essential phenomena of Thérèse Neumann, such as perpetual fasting, the stigmata considered in themselves, ecstasies, visions, xenoglossy, the gift of prophecy, ecstatic communions… etc." — Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 398^[89]

He specifies: "Professor Martini's intermittent observation, which spread over half a day, covered only Thérèse Neumann's general behaviour during a bloody ecstasy and, more particularly, the process of the stigmatic bleeding"^[90]. Even if Martini's notes were to be unfavourable as regards the bleeding, they would therefore not invalidate the dietary measurements of July 1927: their subject matter was simply not fasting.

This observation nevertheless yielded an important chronological detail, confirmed the following year by Dr. Froelich: Thérèse's natural needs had not yet disappeared in 1928. "Visitors were asked, in 1928, at certain times, to leave the room, because Thérèse was often afflicted by an urgent need to urinate; the complete cessation of all excretory need dates only from 1930"^[91]. This milestone confirms, from a distinct source, the chronology already established by Naber.

Longitudinal medical indicators: dentition, entourage, activity

In the absence of a second continuous check, the file relies on several indicators observed over time. None of them, taken in isolation, is equivalent to the 1927 protocol; together, they make a prolonged fraud harder to sustain.

Dr. Diener's dental report (1964)

Diener, the dental surgeon who treated Thérèse from 5 May 1931, describes an unusual oral condition:

« les dents détruites et ayant pris toutes sortes de formes brillaient, étaient lisses et sans dépôt. L'uniformité de l'aspect de tous ces restes de dents était unique en son genre. Je croyais voir des pierres sous une cascade. » — Docteur Diener, report published in 1964, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., pp. 476-477^[92]

He links this observation to the year 1926 and to the absence of bacterial flora introduced by food: "This stagnation of decay could not have occurred if the normal bacterial flora had been present in the mouth [...] For it is human food that carries the micro-organisms that destroy teeth"^[93]. But Diener himself refuses to turn this observation into certainty: "these statements do not carry one across the threshold leading from a likelihood bordering on certainty to the absolute certainty that Resl took no food"^[94]. Bouflet, taking up this same report under the title "the proof through the teeth"^[95], adopts a more assertive tone than the reserve expressed by Diener himself — the dentition must be presented as a favourable indicator, not as autonomous proof.

The testimony of Anne Spiegl

Anne Spiegl, who states that she lived ten weeks with Thérèse and accompanied her on her stays in Eichstätt, provides a longitudinal observation distinct from the official check:

« Je restai 10 semaines auprès de Resl. Je pouvais entrer à n'importe quel moment et sans frapper dans sa chambre ; je l'aidais à nettoyer sa chambre. [...] C'est moi qui l'aidais à faire et à défaire sa petite valise ; je n'y ai jamais rien trouvé de suspect. » — Anne Spiegl, cited by Josef Klosa, Das Wunder von Konnersreuth, 1974, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 475^[96]

She also reports a revealing kitchen scene: "I stirred the food with a spoon and said to Resl, who was beside me: 'Taste it and see if I've seasoned it enough' and I held out the spoon to her. But she shook her head"^[97]. This testimony broadens the file beyond the family home: unannounced access to the room, outings, a suitcase opened with nothing suspicious found. It does not, however, prove ten weeks of continuous surveillance — only the absence of any suspicious behaviour as noticed by a non-specialist observer.

An active life, incompatible with survival through immobility

The alleged inedia corresponded at no point to survival through complete rest. Boniface notes that "anyone could see her doing the normal work, even the lowliest, of the farm and the fields"^[98], and reports a personal observation: "a load of wood, which I saw her put down herself, briskly, without any help"^[99]. Her typical day included gardening, tending the church, visits to the poor and the sick, housework, nocturnal adoration from midnight to one o'clock, correspondence until about four o'clock, and then Mass at seven^[100]. Bouflet confirms this datum from his own source: "It is all the more remarkable that, all her life, Theres Neumann was a very active woman, engaged in multiple physical and intellectual occupations, and not a bedridden stigmatist"^[101].

The surveillance of an entire village

A final register of proof is social rather than medical. Questioned by Boniface, an unnamed innkeeper replies: "Do you believe that, for as long as this has been going on, no one, here, and above all in her own house, would have noticed anything?"^[102]. Boniface concludes: "Thérèse Neumann lived, in practice, under constant surveillance"^[103]. Around 1971, Thérèse's brothers and sisters signed before one M. Sträter a sworn declaration, reported by the parish priest Josef Schuhmann in a letter dated 18 December 1973:

« Il y a deux ans que les frères et sœurs de Thérèse Neumann ont souscrit une déclaration tenant lieu de serment devant M. Strater que, depuis 1926 à son décès, leur sœur n'a ni mangé ni bu. A l'exception de transpirations, on ne pouvait pas constater d'excrétions. » — Josef Schuhmann, letter dated 18 December 1973, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 510^[104]

This family declaration, gathered nearly ten years after Thérèse's death, must be received for what it is: a late and emotionally engaged testimony, not a documented day-by-day surveillance.

What these indicators do not replace

None of these elements — dentition, activity, entourage, village — is equivalent to continuous surveillance comparable to that of July 1927. They reduce the plausibility of a crude and prolonged fraud without, by construction, making it impossible, and above all without substituting for the metabolic examination that Urban demanded. Even Naber, the witness most favourable to the case, acknowledges this limit in his 1938 letter, commenting on an episcopal declaration of 10 December 1937:

« Dans la déclaration du 10 décembre 1937 de l'Ordinaire épiscopal, il est dit que l'enquête de 1927 n'a pu fixer les faits que pour l'époque. Cela va de soi. De même une enquête effectuée en 1938 ne fixerait les faits que pour les semaines que durerait ladite enquête. » — Curé Josef Naber, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 486^[105]

The confessor most committed to defending the case thus admits, without evasion, the temporal limit of any closed experiment — however rigorous. It is the same principle that governs this entire article.

Anorexia Nervosa: An Explanation That Suffices on Its Own No Further

The hypothesis most frequently put forward to explain the refusal of food is anorexia nervosa. Bouflet treats it seriously, but does not retain it as a sufficient explanation:

"There is no anorexia nervosa, nor any disgust for food: until the end of 1931, the throat condition preventing swallowing, Theres cannot mechanically eat; from 1926 onwards, she has neither hunger nor thirst, nor does she suffer from any appetite disorders. [...] Attempts at feeding by gastric tube would only result in violent and painful vomiting." — Joachim Bouflet, op. cit., p. 43^[106]

Neither of the two sources examined, however, provides any dated medical account of these tube-feeding attempts, nor the names of the doctors involved. Bouflet himself does not close the question of a psychological component in the initial refusal:

"One cannot, however, rule out the possibility of an unconscious refusal to eat, a kind of reflex defence against the suffering caused by the ingestion of solid, or even liquid, food." — Joachim Bouflet, op. cit., p. 63^[107]

And he concludes with an admission of complexity that holds methodologically for the entire case: "The question of the very causes of the inedia thus proves to be singularly complex [...] it remains, at the present time, still very difficult to pinpoint the determining factor"^[108]. One must here clearly separate two distinct questions: the cause of the initial refusal to eat, where a psychosomatic mechanism is not excluded, and the physiological question of survival, especially with regard to water, over several decades — which the anorexia hypothesis explains no better than the others.

Could a Fraud Have Gone Unnoticed for Thirty-Five Years?

The objection of social plausibility is stated by Boniface himself in all its force, before he answers it:

"If Thérèse Neumann was 'fooling everyone,' as the saying goes, one would have to admit that, for more than thirty-six years, she managed to eat and drink, as well as to attend to her bodily evacuations, without anyone, ever, either in Konnersreuth or anywhere else, ever noticing." — Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 321^[109]

This plausibility argument — combined with the village and family surveillance described above — genuinely weighs against the hypothesis of a crude and continuous fraud. It does not, however, replace experimental verification: it is precisely because the article distinguishes between the two registers of evidence that it can give this argument its true value, without making it say more than it can.

The Hanauer Objection and the Controversy in the German Press (1970s)

In the 1970s, the priest Josef Hanauer published a highly critical book on the Konnersreuth case, widely relayed by the German press. Boniface reports that Hanauer accused Thérèse of having eaten and drunk normally, including alcohol, as part of an organised family fraud. None of the sources examined for this article gives a named witness, a date, or a document directly supporting this accusation: it must be noted as a genuine historical controversy, not as an established counter-investigation.

An earlier critique, published in La Semaine de Lyon on 13 January 1933, sets out a more measured demand — a clinical placement, along the lines of the professional faster Giovanni Succi:

"The doctors, jovial and no friends to mythomaniacs, would like to take a close look at this undernourished woman competing with the former faster Succi, who could never last more than 50 days — and even then while drinking as much water as there is sand in the Sahara... But Thérèse remains prudently in her hole." — La Semaine de Lyon, 13 January 1933, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 384^[110]

This column, polemical in tone, illustrates a genuine objection contemporary with the events: despite Mallersdorf, some were still calling, six years later, for a proper clinical placement — the same demand that Urban would make in 1944, with no greater success.

Marginal Hypotheses

The history of the controversy has also produced explanations that Boniface himself refuses to take seriously: "People wondered, for example, without joking, whether Thérèse Neumann might have taken up vampirism [...] or whether she was contenting herself with solar or astral nourishment [...] But these are idle tales that do not deserve examination"^[111]. These hypotheses do not belong to serious scientific debate; they are mentioned here for the complete history of the controversy, not as objections to be refuted.

Herbert Thurston: A Careful Critic Convinced by the Fortnight

Herbert Thurston, an English Jesuit renowned for his methodical skepticism toward mystical phenomena, held — according to the excerpts reproduced by Boniface, the original work not having been consulted directly for this article — that the fast of Konnersreuth was established within the limits of the observed period:

"It is unthinkable that it could be disputed: the fortnight of observation of Thérèse Neumann proved, to the satisfaction of all impartial persons, that she consumed, during this period, neither food nor drink. Strikingly, the very marked loss of weight, which occurred during the Friday ecstasies, was each time recovered over the course of the following two or three days." — Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, Gallimard, ed. 1961, p. 438, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 438^[112]

Boniface also reproduces two shorter formulas by Thurston: "What appears established beyond any doubt is Thérèse's complete fast" and "I have never expressed the slightest doubt as to the authenticity of Thérèse's fast, nor of her stigmata"^[113]. Thurston's wording — "during this period" — confirms, in a critic who was otherwise very demanding, the same limit as that set by Seidl: the fortnight, not the decades. Boniface, however, disputes Thurston's interpretation regarding communion after 1927, asserting that "from 1927 onwards, she could no more swallow the smallest fragment of a host than a whole host. It was always a whole host that was presented to her and it entered into her without swallowing"^[114] — a claim that belongs to the separate dossier of eucharistic phenomena, and which must be presented as Boniface's thesis, not as an established clinical fact.

The Testimony of Fritz Gerlich, Who Came as a Skeptic

The journalist Fritz Gerlich entered the case as a declared opponent, with the intention of exposing a "fraud"^[115]. He obtained "authorization to investigate freely, on the spot, and to carry out whatever checks he deemed necessary"^[116], and Boniface notes: "Five days later, he returned from it literally shaken"^[117]. In 1931, he was still framing the issue in the form of a question, not of certainty assumed in advance: "Are there facts such as inedia and visions, legally established?"^[118]. He himself reports a scene of communion:

"The parish priest placed a whole host on the tip of her tongue [...] Suddenly, the host had disappeared. [...] she made no swallowing movement [...] She was given no water." — Fritz Gerlich, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 279, referring to Gerlich, vol. I, pp. 166-167^[119]

Prudence of the Episcopate: Neither Validation nor Condemnation

The constant attitude of the diocesan authority deserves to be highlighted. Boniface reports that in 1937:

"following an in-depth investigation, entrusted in 1937 by the Holy Office itself to a professor of theology at the Vatican, specially dispatched to Konnersreuth [...] she had given — in writing — her assent to all the experiments that the religious authority would have deemed necessary." — Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 37^[120]

Neither the name of the theologian sent by Rome, nor the content of his report, nor the copy of Thérèse's written consent are reproduced in the sources examined for this article: this 1937 investigation must therefore be retained as a genuine piece of the dossier — a continuing Roman interest, distinct from the control at Mallersdorf alone — without its exact content being possible to elaborate further. None of the sources shows that a new dietary control followed this investigation. The episcopal declaration of 10 December 1937, already cited by Naber, explicitly limits the scope of the 1927 control to its own period^[121] — a methodological prudence that the diocese never renounced, either to validate or to condemn the phenomenon.

The Eucharistic Meaning of the Sign, According to Thérèse Herself

The interpretation that Thérèse Neumann gave of her own fast was never physiological. She spoke of it in the language of faith:

"I do not live on nothing, I live on the Saviour… He said: 'My Body is truly food', why, if He wills it, would this not be true, even for physical life?" — Thérèse Neumann, cited by Ennemond Boniface, op. cit., p. 274^[122]

This theological interpretation must remain distinct from the medical question addressed in the rest of the article: it states what the sign, if authentic, would mean for faith; it replaces no measurement, no protocol, no clinical data.

A rigorous dossier does not paper over the real contradictions in its own sources; it names them. Six factual divergences run through the corpus surveyed for this article, and no original document to date allows them to be settled.

These discrepancies do not invalidate the dossier: they belong to the very nature of a corpus built from successive testimonies, collected over several decades, before the era of digitised archives and standardised clinical reports. To have kept silent about them would have given a false impression of certainty; naming them allows the reader to measure exactly what each claim in the dossier can, or cannot, lay claim to.

The Church has never declared, through a magisterial act, the supernatural authenticity of Thérèse Neumann's inedia. The beatification cause, opened on 13 February 2005 by Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg — Thérèse Neumann has since been a Servant of God, a status verified unchanged in October 2026^[133] — concerns the heroicity of her virtues — faith, hope, charity, obedience, humility lived to the end — not the scientific validation of an extraordinary physiological phenomenon. Believing in the authenticity of this inedia is in no way required to be Catholic; doubting it is no more a lack of faith.

What the history of the dossier does teach, however, is a method of discernment transferable to other similar cases. A fifteen-day watch, however rigorous, establishes fifteen days — not thirty-five years: it was Seidl himself, the doctor who directed the experiment, who first put it this way. Later indices — teeth, activity, family and village testimonies — strengthen the plausibility of the dossier without taking the place of continuous verification, which no authority, ecclesiastical or medical, managed to organise despite repeated requests between 1928 and 1944.

If the phenomenon is authentic, its meaning is not to prove a biological feat: it recalls, in Thérèse Neumann's own words, that the Eucharist can be, through an extraordinary gift of God, the sole nourishment of a soul. This sign, assuming it to be real, imposes itself on no one as a model to imitate: no magisterial text has ever recommended total fasting as an ordinary spiritual path. Prudence, here as with any extraordinary phenomenon, remains the rule: examine without contempt what the sources actually document, and never turn an impressive dossier into a certainty it does not provide.

The solid core of this dossier comes down to a precise window according to Boniface: 360 hours and 30 minutes, from 13 to 28 July 1927 (14–28 July according to independent sources — see the table of divergences), under the continuous watch of four sworn nurses from Mallersdorf, led by a doctor — Otto Seidl — who had himself signed, seven years earlier, a diagnosis of hysteria hardly conducive to complaisance. During these fifteen days, Thérèse Neumann would have absorbed, according to the figures reported by Boniface, only about 0.33 grams of wafer and 45 cubic centimetres of water, with no clandestine ingestion detected, and her weight would have remained rigorously identical between the beginning and the end of the watch.

What this core does not establish — and what neither Boniface nor Bouflet claim to demonstrate through it alone — is the extension of this proof to the following thirty-five years. The request for a second, hospital-based and independent, watch, formulated as early as 1928 and again by Professor Hubert Urban in 1944, never came to fruition. The longitudinal indices gathered in the meantime — the dental condition observed by Dr Diener, the daily physical activity, the testimonies of those around her and of the village — make a crude and prolonged fraud difficult to maintain, without providing the equivalent of continuous surveillance.

The Catholic reader can therefore approach this dossier without fear and without naivety: it rests on dated, named facts, sourced to the page, but it retains, to this day, a methodological limit that its own most favourable witnesses — Seidl, then Naber, then Urban — themselves acknowledged. What the Catholic faith takes from Thérèse Neumann ultimately depends neither on the resolution of this limit nor on its persistence: it rests on Christ, not on Konnersreuth.

• Servant of God Thérèse Neumann — full biography and current status of the beatification cause.
• The stigmata of Thérèse Neumann — the second major dossier in the Konnersreuth case.
• Inedia — a general overview of the phenomenon and the classic framework for discernment.
• The case of Madame R (Rolande Lefebvre) — a comparable French dossier, with hospital monitoring actually carried out.
• Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar — an inedia case monitored in a hospital setting for forty days.