ABSTRACT
By following an extreme and quite rare form of Christian ascesis, the ‘fools’ – lunatics, that is, for Christ’s sake – o en found themselves beyond the limits of what was socially and religiously acceptable.1 eir stereotyped behaviour, which even today is recognized as a symptom of mental illness, featured sudden swings from aggression to extreme exhilaration, refusal to wear clothing, disregard for rules of propriety and hygiene and aimless wandering; owing to such behaviour, their contemporaries considered them possessed and treated them as social outcasts, a fact which helped them gain eternal life. eir saintliness was known to only a few – perhaps only to their biographer or to no one at all – and the statistically improbable possibility of a saint lurking behind any outcast and possessed person undermined the certainties of social conventions, stressing the deceptiveness of appearances.
