Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium

The Ambiguity of Religious Experience

Youval Rotman

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780674057616
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674973114
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient History

In the Roman and Byzantine Near East, the holy fool emerged in Christianity as a way of describing individuals whose apparent madness allowed them to achieve a higher level of spirituality. Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium examines how the figure of the mad saint or mystic was used as a means of individual and collective transformation in the period between the birth of Christianity and the rise of Islam. It presents a novel interpretation in revealing the central role that psychology plays in social and historical development.

Early Christians looked to figures who embodied extremes of behavior—like the holy fool, the ascetic, the martyr—to redefine their social, cultural, and mental settings by reading new values in abnormal behavior. Comparing such forms of extreme behavior in early Christian, pagan, and Jewish societies, and drawing on theories of relational psychoanalysis, anthropology, and sociology of religion, Youval Rotman explains how the sanctification of figures of extreme behavior makes their abnormality socially and psychologically functional. The sanctification of abnormal mad behavior created a sphere of ambiguity in the ambit of religious experience for early Christians, which brought about a deep psychological shift, necessary for the transition from paganism to Christianity.

A developing society leaves porous the border between what is normal and abnormal, between sanity and insanity, in order to use this ambiguity as a means of change. Rotman emphasizes the role of religion in maintaining this ambiguity to effect a social and psychological transformation.

PART I

SANCTIFIED INSANITY

Between History and Psychology

1

The Paradox That Inhabits Ambiguity

I am aware that the man who is said to be deluded may be in his delusion telling me the truth, and this in no equivocal or metaphorical sense, but quite literally, and that the cracked mind of the schizophrenic may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people whose minds are closed.

—RONALD D. LAING, 1960*

This chapter presents a unique historical phenomenon from Byzantine society: the figure of the holy fool (Greek: salos). The historical analysis of such a phenomenon brings into question our ability as scholars to fully comprehend its use and function. Our modern mind sees the existence of such a figure as a paradox that challenges the field of historical research. In this chapter we shall present this paradox, and argue that analyzing it forces us to acknowledge the gap between contemporary mental and social definitions and the mental and social definitions of the society which forms our object of research.

What Is a “Holy Fool”?

The etymological source of the word salos, which appears in Greek sources from the fifth century A.D. on, is far from certain.¹ It was used in Byzantium to designate a madman, and was applied to religious persons who feigned madness in order to achieve a high level of spirituality by fulfilling Paul’s verses:

If any man among you seems to be wise [Greek: sophos] in this world, let him become a fool [mōros] that he may be wise, for the wisdom [sophia] of this world is folly [mōria] in God’s sight. (1 Cor. 3:18–19)²

In the same epistle Paul continues:

We are fools [Greek: mōroi] for Christ’s sake, while you are such sensible [phronimoi] Christians. (1 Cor. 4:10)³

The meaning of these verses is clear: wisdom and folly as we perceive them are cultural constructions of this world, not the true wisdom and folly in God’s eyes, in fact quite the opposite. Moreover, the fervent revolutionary believers are those who challenge the social conception of being sensible (Greek: phronimos), that is, normal social behavior. By becoming fools for Christ’s sake they follow in the footsteps of Jesus.⁴ “Folly” seems to point to what is considered abnormal, unwise, and not sensible in the eyes of society, which here means following a new and revolutionary religion to the extreme.⁵ Paul’s meaning is clear: do not be content with being Christian, but fight to change the order of the world. Once Christianity was adopted as a state religion in the fourth century, Paul’s revolutionary transformation of ideas would seem to have succeeded. Nevertheless, this did not mean that the battle between what is normal and abnormal, wise and fool, and we can also add sane and insane, was over. Paul’s words had a follow-up by those who chose to read him literally, raising the immediate question: How can one become a fool? Is folly a state that someone can consciously choose to adopt and abandon at will? In the late antique Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophtegmata Patrum) this question is formulated in the following manner:

A brother asked his elderly spiritual father [abba]: “How does one become a fool [Greek: mōros] for the Lord’s sake?” The elder said to him: “There was a child in a coenobion who was given to a good elder so he might bring him up and teach him the fear of God. The elder would say to him: ‘When somebody reviles you, bless him; and if you are sitting at table, eat what is decaying and leave what is good and, if you are to choose a garment, leave the good one and take the one that is worn out.’ ‘Am I a fool that you tell me to behave like that?” the child said to him. ‘I am telling you to do those things for this reason that you may become “a fool for the Lord’s sake,” so that the Lord may make you wise,’ said the elder. The elder showed what one does to become ‘a fool for the Lord’s sake,’ you see. . . .”

. . . An elder said: either escape people, or mock the world by making yourself a fool in many ways.⁶

This passage appears as an actual guide for young novice monks, and is presented as a way to escape the world and withdraw to an inner state, thus mocking the world of people, that is, society. This is precisely what another monk does when making himself a fool. By laughing instead of talking, he manages to stay by himself and is left alone by those who come to ask for his guidance.⁷

In this way abnormal behavior acquires a hidden spiritual meaning known only to the person who chooses to live it.⁸ The individual abnormal way, here clearly an abnormal social and mental state, serves as a means both to be left alone and connect to the divine.⁹ These two objectives are closely connected: holy fools act abnormally in order to disconnect themselves from society, but since this is done for a spiritual reason, their behavior bears a spiritual message to society. This is precisely the double message in Paul’s phrase: flee from people or become a fool in order to mock the world, and through this you will become a spiritual magnet for society.

This theological setting was matched by Byzantine texts, moral tales, and stories of the saints’ lives, which took up the theme of insanity itself and elaborated it into a peculiar type of sanctity: the holy madman, the holy salos. Though traditionally translated in today’s English as “fool,” the salos’s sanctity did not consist only of acts of foolery, but also of acts of madness. The folly, mōria, which Paul talked about, was expressed by the act of presenting oneself to one’s society as insane, a salos.

The earliest story that has come down to us about this sort of case is an account from the fifth century of a nun, a salē, a madwoman (the Greek feminine of salos) in a remote Egyptian monastery in Tabennisi. Palladius narrates this tale in his collection of stories from the fifth century about holy men and women in the Egyptian desert:

In this monastery there was another maiden who feigned folly [Greek: mōria] and demon-possession [Greek: daimona]. The others felt such contempt for her that they never ate with her, which pleased her entirely. Taking herself to the kitchen she used to perform every menial service and she was, as the saying goes, “the sponge of the monastery,” really fulfilling the Scriptures: If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. She wore a rag around her head—all the others had their hair closely cropped and wore cowls. In this way she used to serve. Not one of the four hundred ever saw her chewing all the years of her life. She never sat down at a table or partook of a particle of bread, but she wiped up with a sponge the crumbs from the tables and was satisfied with scouring pots. She was never angry at anyone, nor did she grumble or talk, either little or much, although she was maltreated, insulted, cursed, and loathed.

Now an angel appeared to Saint Piteroum, the famous anchorite dwelling at Porphyrites, and said to him: “Why do you think so much of yourself for being pious [Greek: eulabēs] and residing in a place such as this? Do you want to see someone more pious than yourself, a woman? Go to the women’s monastery at Tabennisi and there you will find one with a band on her head. She is better than you. While being cuffed about by such a crowd she has never taken her heart off God. But you dwell here and wander about cities in your mind.” And he who had never gone away left that monastery and asked the superiors to allow him to enter into the monastery of women. They admitted him, since he was well on in years and, moreover, had a great reputation. So he went in and insisted upon seeing all of them. She did not appear. Finally he said to them: “Bring them all to me, for she is missing.” They told him: “We have one madwoman, a salē, inside the kitchen”—that is what they called the afflicted one [Greek: paschousa]. He told them: “Bring her to me. Let me see her.” They went to call her, but she did not answer, either because she knew of the incident or because it was revealed to her. They seized her forcibly and told her: “The holy Piteroum wishes to see you”—for he was renowned. When she came he saw the rag on her head and, falling down at her feet, he said: “Bless me!” In similar manner she too fell down at his feet and said: “You bless me, lord!” All the women were amazed at this and said: “Father, take no insult. She is a madwoman, salē.” Piteroum then addressed all the women: “You are the madwomen, salai! This woman is my and your spiritual mother [Greek: ammas]”—so they called the spirituals—“and I pray that I may be deemed as worthy as she on the Day of Judgment.” Hearing this, they fell at his feet, confessing various things—one how she had poured the leaving of her plate over her; another had beaten her with her fists; another had blistered her nose. So they confessed various and sundry outrages. After praying for them, he left. And after a few days she was unable to bear the praise and honor of the sisters, and all their apologies was so burdensome to her, that she left the monastery. Where she went and where she disappeared to, and how she died, nobody knows.¹⁰

In this story, which to us is read as a folk tale, a Byzantine version of a Cinderella story, the plot is constructed by using two basic elements: the simulated, fake madness and its concealment.¹¹ It is clear that one cannot exist without the other: a simulated madness cannot but be kept concealed, otherwise there is no story. However, the story is not presented as a fictional work. In contrast to folk tales, the moral agenda of hagiography is completely conditioned by its aspiration to historical authenticity; otherwise, these would not be saints’ Lives, but fictional legends.¹² In other words, the moral function that such texts played as religious exempla defined their genre, and determined the way in which the author presented the facts. The narrative had to be presented as a real and true historical story. However, a story about someone who feigned madness but concealed it is impossible to tell without access to this person’s hidden motive. This is why such narratives always include a third figure who knows, or is exposed to, the truth about the hero, and reveals it in due course to the surrounding society. This is also the case in one of the most elaborated texts dedicated to such a person to come down to us in the Life of Symeon salos, composed in the seventh century by Leontius, bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus.¹³

To summarize very briefly a text of around fifty folios, this is the story of a young man who becomes a fervent Christian monk and withdraws with his close friend to the desert, leaving behind his previous social life. After twenty-nine years of monastic life in the Dead Sea desert he decides to become a madman for Christ’s sake. He leaves the monastery for the city, where he performs a continuous state of madness in public. Being unaware of the fact that his insanity is simulated, the inhabitants of the city think him a madman and treat him as such. This second part of the text is characterized by a literary tension that the author constructs, which confronts Symeon’s conscious actions of madness with his spectators’ reactions. Being unaware of his spiritual consciousness, they treat him like an ordinary madman. The reader, however, is placed in the position of the omniscient observer, and learns about Symeon’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: Insanity and Religion
• Part I. Sanctified Insanity: Between History and Psychology
• Part II. Abnormality and Social Change: Early Christianity versus Rabbinic Judaism
• Epilogue: Psychology, Religion, and Social Change
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index