Insanity, Exculpation And Disempowerment In Byzantine Law (original) (raw)
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The vocabulary of madness from Homer to Hippocrates. Part 1: The verbal group of µαίνοµαι
In Part 1 of this two-part paper, I examine the evolution of the concept of madness expressed by the various forms – verbal and nominal, simple and compound – of the verbal group of µαίνομαι in the archaic and classical periods. I point out how the divine madness is contrasted to pathological madness considered as a psychic and mental disease and foreseeable by doctors as well as curable by medications. This new procedure highlights rational knowledge of the Greeks about the cause and the medical care of madness. In Greek thought, madness represents an abundant source of tragic events. In this two-part paper, we will study the terms belonging to the verbal groups of μαίνομαι and βακχεύω, as well as the noun λύσσα and its nominal and verbal derivatives, from Homer to Hippocrates. Firstly, we will single out the meaning of the various forms, verbal and nominal, simple and compound. Secondly, we will compare them in the totality of their usages in order to bring to light the similarities and dissimilarities between them. This synchronic and diachronic study of these terms is the first to be undertaken and will enlighten our understanding of the evolution of the concept of madness from the archaic to classical period.
The History of Madness and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages: Directions and Questions
History Compass, 2014
This article explores the extent of recent publications on the history of madness and mental illness in the Middle Ages. It also argues that as this work continues, the categorical groupings of "madness" and "mental illness" deserve our close scrutiny. An exploration of both medieval and present-day categorical assumptions reveals the ways in which they shape our reading of medieval texts, of historical causation, and of social agency.
In Part 2 of this two-part paper, I examine the evolution and the aspects of the concept of madness expressed by the various forms – verbal and nominal, simple and compound – of the verbal group of βακχεύω and the noun λύσσα, its nominal and derivatives, in the archaic and classical periods. I conclude that the verbal group of βακχεύω is apt to indicate bacchic frenzy that manifests either in the celebration of Bacchos's mysteries or in the delirium instilled by Dionysos In addition, λύσσα, its nominal and verbal derivatives, refer to either a violent and wild state of soul resulting from divine intervention or pathological madness caused by a dog's bite.
Scholarship on the history of early modern madness agrees on the fact that madness was largely a family matter during the period. Not only confinement was used as a last resort, but the range of public provisions to respond to mental afflictions were eminently temporary. Furthermore, although medical practitioners developed increasingly relevant contributions in the field of diagnosis and treatment of mental afflictions, during the eighteenth century madness was still primarily identified, experienced and managed by the families. Building on these arguments, this dissertation is concerned with how early modern understandings of and responses to madness were negotiated between families, medical and legal professionals, authorities and the communities. Intersecting the history of madness and medicine with legal history, the history of the family and gender and the history of emotions, the dissertation examines the spaces in which madness made an appearance in eighteenth-century Tuscany, paying particular attention to the circulation of languages, both across legal and institutional spaces, and between lay society, medical practitioners and magistrates. Through its study of the itineraries of madness, the dissertation suggests that litigants and witnesses adapted their notions of mental affliction and changed their language according to each space of appearance. The core of the discussion is based on interdiction procedures, the civil law inquiries into mental capacity handled by the Magistrato dei Pupilli et Adulti, which are examined against criminal procedures, hospital records, medical consultations, and records of the police. The dissertation argues that the Tuscan legal framework provided open and deliberately vague categories of madness and mental incapacity derived from a long legal tradition which remained mostly unchanged. However, while in terms of legal vocabulary long-term continuities seem to predominate, eighteenth-century records show a shift in the meanings of madness, opening to new social concerns and to new codifications of familial conflict. Initially bound primarily to patrimony and financial mismanagement, the understandings of madness became increasingly open to the emotional and relational dimensions of insanity, suggesting an interesting interplay between lay and medical notions of deviance.
Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium: The Ambiguity of Religious Experience
In every period in history the definition of insanity is pertinent, and its meaning is different. We owe this perception to a large movement in the scholarship of the nineteen-sixties and seventies that changed our concept of what constitutes sanity and insanity. This scholarship examined the ways in which such concepts were formed as part of the medical, mental, social, cultural, but above all political settings. A number of important studies on psychology and psychiatry, whether in the fields of social sciences, the humanities or medicine (by Michel Foucault, Roy Porter, William Bynum, Gladys Swain, Marcel Gauchet, Franco Basaglia, among others), has radically changed the way we look at insanity. These studies brought insanity out of the individual dimension, and made it a social, cultural and political phenomenon. In a way, the wave of study of psychiatry of the sixties and seventies was a reply to the development of psychoanalysis in the first half of the twentieth century, which concentrated on the psychological dimension in the individual. These new directions of thought shifted the understanding of what constitutes insanity from the individual to the social and political dimensions. Nevertheless, they still placed the individual in the center, affected by the social settings, mental constructs and politics. This perspective was conditioned by the link between psychology and medicine, according to which the insane person was perceived as sick. The present study chooses a different line of investigation. In a way, it goes in the opposite direction in focusing on societies which sanctified what we consider today as insanity. These societies looked for spiritual values in abnormal, in-sane, behavior, and legitimized it by attributing a unique spiritual character to figures who portrayed it. In this they were changing the social and cultural norms related to abnormality and normality. A parallel process can also be detected in contemporary societies. Only few decades ago, people in Western societies who turned to healers, clairvoyants, and mediums were considered to be themselves not in their right mind. Today, not only is such behavior legitimized, but this is even becoming a norm. These so-called ‘new age’ phenomena express the invasion of the religious sphere into modern secular societies. We do not call them ‘religious,’ but ‘spiritual’ in order to reject the religious establishment and its historical framework. However, such expressions of spirituality have long been the realm of the religious sphere. The question is why secular societies today have become more and more inclined to adopt and legitimize these expressions of spirituality, and justify their functionality. 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.
The Madness of Heretics: Madness and the Early Christian Worldview (LACUS Forum 36)
Lommel, Arle. 2012. ‘The Madness of Heretics: Madness and the Early Christian Worldview’. LACUS Forum 36:195–210. Early Christianity struggled with many enemies along its path to eventual ascendancy within the Roman world. Early Church writers were often called upon to defend their faith against enemies, both external and internal. In their writings they strove to show the inferiority of alternative beliefs and demonstrate the inherent rationality and cosmic correctness of (orthodox) Christianity and the “madness” of alternatives. This study examines the occurrences of terms related to madness in a large corpus (~107 mb) of writings by 61 early Christian Fathers to understand how they used the concept of madness in their rhetoric. The results show considerable variation between authors but also show a highly significant (p < 0.001) correlation of uses of “madness” with reference to beliefs deemed heretical by the emerging Orthodox consensus. A further examination of the text demonstrates that anti-Trinitarian heresies (in particular Arianism) were those most likely to be considered mad because they represented a challenge to the cosmological concepts of early Christianity. The study thus shows that the concept of “madness” was a motivated one for early Christian writers, not merely a rhetorical label of disapprobation.