TY - BOOK ID - 14050867 TI - Insanity and sancity in byzantium : the ambiguity of religious experience AU - Rotman, Youval AU - Harvard University PY - 2016 SN - 9780674057616 PB - Cambridge, Mass. ; London Harvard University DB - UniCat KW - Psychology and religion KW - Mental illness KW - Religion and sociology KW - Christian saints KW - Holy fools KW - Religious aspects KW - Social aspects UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:14050867 AB - "Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium aims to understand how the use of psychological abnormality functions in deep societal transformations, producing a major shift in the religious, cultural, mental, and social aspects. The book examines a particular set of religious phenomena, in a broadly defined period and area - the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East between the birth of Christianity and that of Islam - and seeks to reach conclusions on the nature and function of abnormal behavior sanctified by society. Taking as a starting point a particular type of saint of Orthodox Christianity, the holy fool, the person who feigns madness, and investigating other types of saints who portray abnormal behavior, such as the martyr and the ascetic, the book reveals the ambiguous character of the boundary between sanity and insanity. It explains the significance of this ambiguity to the religious experience as a motor of social movement, and sets it at the core of the socio-religious transformation that changed the Antique civilization into a world of medieval societies."-- ER -