ABSTRACT

Christian rapture, interpreted with the help of the teachings of Socrates, furnished the Moria with its climactic end. Folly describes an ecstasy as 'very, very like dementia'; it is akin to being 'out of one's mind'. The fusion of Christian ecstasy with platonic mania became almost complete. That privileged rapture of St Paul's, those rare raptures which, for Erasmus and so many others, are 'very, very like dementia', were seen as the Christian expression of the highest form of the four manias recognized by Socrates. The vital importance of 'mad' rapture for Paul is clearer in the Greek original than in the Vulgate. Paul's Greek would recall to the minds of many a Humanist that similar contrasts between the 'man of sound mind' and the man given over to a divine mania can be found in Plato.