Medieval Insanity doesn't seem as obvious upon closer inspection

[trenton]

I have recently stumbled into this topic when exploring mythology. I started with hero archetypes, then villains, and then monsters. As I followed the origin of monster stories, I came to the medieval ages to find what on the surface looked like blatant insanity. Upon closer inspection, I started to realize that the apparent insanity wasn't as obvious as it first appeared. It has raised some interesting philosophical questions in terms of what we consider obvious and why.

A few of the monsters I started exploring were vampires and werewolves. I understood that the witch trials already had a bad reputation, but I learned that in addition to that there were also werewolf trials, pig trials, and beetle trials. Firstly, the vampire panics were explainable by ignorance concerning the decomposition process of the body. The process resulted in the appearance of nails and teeth continuing to grow, bloating which looked like feasting, and blood appearing in the mouth as a consequence of decomposition. Sometimes the bodies would appear fresher than expected, which appears to be the origin of vampire stories of blood sucking monsters.

Furthermore, the mental state of the people during this time period is explainable by food poisoning. Ergotism didn't have an understood cause. However, the fungal infection on rye often caused people to develop vivid hallucinations and delusions. This would explain the outsized fear of supernatural entities causing mass suffering if there was no way of confirming the existence of germs during that time period.

The most interesting part in my opinion were the pig trials. Animals were believed to have held moral standing to face human judgment for breaking the law. It sounds obviously crazy, but I started looking more concretely. The most difficult pig defense trials involved a pig entering a cottage due to hearing the sound of a crying infant. The infant was kept in a cradle near snout level. The pig would then eat the baby while the parents were doing long labor elsewhere. Pigs were often able to do this because cottages often didn't have doors and pigs commonly roamed freely. Pigs killing children happened frequently enough that it was considered as normal as babies dying from disease. This creates a weird contradiction in terms of how we determine if an animal has moral agency or not if we cannot experience what it is like to be an animal. This question isn't as easily answered from my point of view, although there might be a known explanation I haven't seen yet. Personally, I can see why someone would think that my cat has the capacity for willful moral agency because she jumps on the counter only at night when nobody is looking, but jumps down immediately and runs upon being discovered and therefore stopped doing it during the day.

The pig trials start to almost seem reasonable given the need for legal documentation of the cause of death, separating it from a death caused by human action. This would include issues such as killing a dangerous animal, similar to contemporary euthanasia for dangerous animals. It would include penalties for the owner if this animal has repeatedly shown violent behavior. It starts to look like the only crazy thing is the added layer of moral judgment to the pig with much of the behavior otherwise mirroring what we would expect for a dangerous animal that needs to be put down. The part that threw me off though was when I read about how confessions were extracted from animals. The idea was that a pig would publicly have its limbs mutilated. If the pig squirmed or squealed, then that counted as a confession and therefore met the gold standard of proof of guilt for that time. Much of the pig trials seemed almost reasonable until I looked at how confessions from animal defendants were extracted and interpreted.

I also have a hypothesis regarding shadow figures and sleep paralysis that I intend to explore later. I had nightmares with shadow figures myself and I am connecting to demon stories. It included the incubus and the succubus as sex demons who raped people while they were sleeping. This corresponds to my nightmares of being sexually assaulted by shadow figures during sleep paralysis, and this phenomenon is probably linked to real sexual abuse perpetrated by humans in many cases resulting in nightmares from PTSD. Shadow figures appear to represent a persons deep insecurities, hence they might also be satanic figures trying to harvest your soul. I believe I may have found an intersection between modern understanding of trauma, sleep disorders, and mythology which explains why ancient people would have attributed the phenomenon to actual demons. The advantage of blaming a demon is that the demon cannot be punished in the same way as a human who could therefore shift blame to things like demons who deceived a child. This would therefore allow the child molester to avoid accountability by gaslighting children into believing that it was an actual nightmare with a well known demon to explain it rather than the human actually being responsible for molesting the child. This sounds like something a child predator would realistically do in these circumstances.

If you are interested in exploring apparent insanity in medieval reasoning, are you able to find things that almost seem reasonable given the circumstances? How do we know animals don't have moral agency in their actions? How would you explain phenomenon if you didn't know germ theory? These seems like a rich topic in terms of how we know what we know and why people believe crazy things.

[Leo Gura]

Good examples of the pre-rational worldview.

[Joseph Maynor]

Medieval life in a way was purer than we experience today.  I can get into details here regarding relation and artistry.  Attached is a good video to frame the issue.  
 

 

[trenton]

@Leo Gura I'm curious.

If you were born in a society like this, but you were as committed to truth in that life as you are in this one, then how would you go about truth seeking without having you and your followers killed for blasphemy? I would probably be beheaded just for listening for to you.

I probably wouldn't talk much and I might not even be literate if there was no school. In this situation it seems hard to avoid turning out crazy or stupid sounding.

[Basman]

Interesting.

I had a paralysis demon creeping up on me once, but I willed myself out of paralysis before it could get me. Smile dog with spider legs was grinning at me while backing off and fading away.

Edited yesterday at 01:18 PM by Basman

[trenton]

@Basman awesome! I did that too! I actually saw all kinds of monsters and I discovered that if I focus on the monster closely and don't close my eyes, I can will the monster to fade away and become nothing. If I close my eyes, then I start feeling pressure on my body and sometimes it feels like hands wrapping around my arms.

Some of the monsters I saw included the following.

Shadow figures, mechanical clowns but oddly not the one from poltergeist that most assume, ghosts, my grandma as a vampire, general grievous from Star wars which actually looked terrifying when you see that thing for real but he then transformed into the door near my bed, a redead from the legend of zelda who I escaped by flying out of my body and into a zelda like dungeon except this one had an elephant in it, and a demonic symbol with my sister smiling at me along with another nightmare with my sister storming into my room angrily.

I remember one of the shadow figures looked like a girl from school who grabbed my penis and the nightmare was about her coming to my bed while I couldn't move. Meanwhile, my older sister would often yell, scream, and badger me for hours on end to the point that I would freeze, shock, have nightmares, and so forth as I tried walking on eggshells to prevent catastrophe.

Sometimes I talk in my sleep. I started talking about Cindy who died by suicide.

I also noticed that I can consciously control my dreams by forcing myself awake by focusing my awareness on my eyelids while noticing that I am still seeing images despite my eyelids being closed. Alternatively, I can start rewinding my dreams and going back in time to earlier parts in it which delays it enough for new content to pop up. I ended up in the Simpsons in one of these dreams. It kind of looked like that arcade game with bart doing a long essay.

I also remember a really fun one in which I played the role of Sherlock Holmes, working together with Harry Potter to defeat Darth Vader. Sometimes I would go back in time or reload to the previous checkpoint when I was losing. In the end we defeated Darth vader by collapsing a building as Harry summoned his broomstick, allowing us to jump on and escape. I do remember there was a really annoying level with Malfoy though who had dementors helping him and that part was a pain in the ass which required going back to previous checkpoints to make sure I clicked the buttons at the right time.

I also had this other epic zelda like dream in which I was fighting these mutant insects with fire swords. There was a gold skulltula in it, but the best part is when I figured out how to beat the game. Once I got to the main villain, he said "if you want to stop them, then you need to hit pause." My girlfriend was like "hit pause? What is this some kind of videog-"

Then a pause menu came up and I scrolled down to quit. I selected quit. Then I woke up.

There was also this epic dream in which I fought the British who were red coats on unicycles with assault rifles in attack formation. I used a flamethrower on one of them. Eventually I ran away and one of them got my flamethrower. He then started chasing me while shooting fire at me yelling "get back here you bloody bastard!" Eventually I got away from though. Many of my comrades were lost in that brutal battle. I felt like I was going to pee myself, but I woke up in time to go to the bathroom.

There was also this really epic one in which my high school principal tried to execute me because the second paragraph of my essay sucked so badly that I was a dishonor to my school and I deserved to die for the bad paragraph on my essay. I woke up flailing my arms and legs and then I whited out the second paragraph for fear that my teacher would ruin my life over confessing my love for Alice. The essay prompt was to write about people who inspire you, so I wrote about someone who makes life feel meaningful but was afraid I would be hanged for it.

[LordFall]

Yes your point on plausible deniability for crimes is a good one on the demons in sleep. Witch trials and getting burned at the stake as also a lot of times less about witchcraft and more about power and status games. Good example is Elizabeth Woodville a queen of England who was almost executed because her marrying the King was left field that compromised the power of his right hand man the Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. So he arrested the king Edward IV and had part of her family executed for witchcraft but couldn't get to her on time before political pressure forced him to released the king.

People often got away with killing political rivals under church law by you accusing them of sorcery, black magic and witchcraft. 

Another interesting one is tea left reading/divination/fortune telling being used as a way to gossip and warn people about plots while retaining plausible deniability. Often times being the bearer of bad news gets you killed in and of itself but if you say that you saw a bad omen in Tea leaves then it's not easily interpreted as challenging the powers that be. 

Another medieval fun fact is the Catholic Church is thought to be the successor to the Roman Empire under it's improved control mechanism. Constantine I the first catholic emperor really perfected the system as one of the main ways to depose an emperor was to accuse him of tyranny and authoritarianism but all of the sudden the advent of Christianity gave the new premise of the divine mandate. The Popes in the middle ages had their armies commit all kinds of mass murders, rape and pillage.  A significant amount of them were not particularly christlike at all. 

Edited 15 hours ago by LordFall

[trenton]

@LordFall I didn't know about the fortune telling, but that does seem to be a way to avoid execution in some cases. I am somewhat baffled as to why a messenger would be killed for bringing bad news. If the bad news were never received, then the outcome would realistically lead to worse news. Maybe bad news makes the King look fallible and therefore ungodly which in turn challenges his authority.

As for the werewolf trials, apparently people suspected you of being a werewolf if you engaged in cannibalism. There were also regular wolf attacks that when put together led to the idea of man transforming in wolf. It was a specialized branch of witch hunters that targeted shepherds. Here is a quote from Google I find funny. There are several layers of irony in this 1692 case.

An 80-year-old man who testified in court that he was a werewolf who fought witches in Hell to secure good crops was ultimately laughed out of court and convicted only of minor folk magic. [1]

As for institutionalized Christianity, the contradictions seemed structurally unavoidable. Due to being persecuted early on by more dominant religions, in order to survive as a religion at all, Christianity required imperial backing. Imperial backing would therefore allow the religion to persist at all, similar to Islam which was founded on an empire. Because other religions challenge the truth of the dominant religion, the incentive is therefore to eliminate less dominate religions. The outcome is that Christianity started out as a Jewish reform movement designed to fight corruption, but by necessity became a persecutor in order to even exist today. If not for the imperial backing and mass executions, Christianity would not exist at all and would have been wiped out along with many other forgotten or abandoned religions that are occasionally mentioned only briefly. This is the basis of an entire alternative history in the event that Jesus and his followers were executed so there would be no rumors of a resurrection or if persecution continued more aggressively or if Constantine's conversion failed.

I believe Christianity survived in large part due to rumors about Jesus coming back. This pattern continues to this day with things like prophecies predicting the end of the world and constantly being wrong. I believe this applies to the resurrection myth as well due to people at that time more readily accepting such rumors as true as a consequence of these miracles being adjacent to the types of things these people would already believe anyway.

I also found that early Christians did not always think of Jesus as God himself. This idea become more popular in Rome and Greece because this culture deified beloved figures constantly such as emperors whereas the Jewish reform movement did not characterize Jesus in this way originally as it would therefore be blasphemy. Therefore, the idea that Jesus is literally God and the Holy Spirit who descended into heaven is a consequence of being filtered through multiple cultures as this wasn't always the mainstream position of Christianity. In fact, it looks like the ending might have been "forgive them father for they know not what they do." Then Jesus was executed and he never came back. That isn't very inspiring though, so in order to survive, there would have to be rumors of his return from death. This also fits with our historical findings that a man named Jesus was crucified during this time period, but news of his return didn't come until years after the three day resurrection myth. Fan fiction was also common around this period which explains the contradictions along with the politicized processed of selecting the Biblical cannon by excluding certain versions of events concerning the crucifixion and the nature of Christ.

Also, it looks like Jesus would be considered a witch if he did these things in a different time period.

The last interesting point I found was the pattern of terminating the line of succession while maintaining unfalsifiability which would be necessary for maintaining power and authority. This included things like Jesus is the savior, and any words added would be blasphemy. The implication is that people suspected future prophets would come, claiming similar things to Jesus, which in turn would falsify the religion. This is also identical to Islam which claimed the third and final prophet. Religion has to add finality in order to discredit other religions regardless of their content while maintaining unfalsifiability. They can then say "well Jesus could walk on water, so when you say all these crazy things and fail to walk on water, then it means your lying and should be hanged for spouting such nonsense!" Jesus among other prophets have to made Godly because if they are too human, then the religion is immediately falsifiable and therefore loses authority and power.

This is a similar trial of ordeal in those times where they would also torture pigs. If the pig squirmed and squealed, then that would be proof of a confession of guilt. Likewise there were trials like being thrown into a river where if you survived, it meant you were guilty and needed to be put to death and if you drowned and died it would mean you were innocent. Therefore if you want to die with integrity, you should kill yourself while we tell everybody you were guilty as to avoid even worse torture. So die, or die!

[LordFall]

2 hours ago, trenton said:

@LordFall I didn't know about the fortune telling, but that does seem to be a way to avoid execution in some cases. I am somewhat baffled as to why a messenger would be killed for bringing bad news. If the bad news were never received, then the outcome would realistically lead to worse news. Maybe bad news makes the King look fallible and therefore ungodly which in turn challenges his authority.

I think it's also that and also emotional control is a relatively modern thing. Men and women in history would fly into incontrollable rage all the time and even more-so if they are a powerful king with unlimited power. So many times where that got them killed a few years later because yeah precisely it's bad strategy. 

2 hours ago, trenton said:

I also found that early Christians did not always think of Jesus as God himself. This idea become more popular in Rome and Greece because this culture deified beloved figures constantly such as emperors whereas the Jewish reform movement did not characterize Jesus in this way originally as it would therefore be blasphemy. Therefore, the idea that Jesus is literally God and the Holy Spirit who descended into heaven is a consequence of being filtered through multiple cultures as this wasn't always the mainstream position of Christianity. In fact, it looks like the ending might have been "forgive them father for they know not what they do." Then Jesus was executed and he never came back. That isn't very inspiring though, so in order to survive, there would have to be rumors of his return from death. This also fits with our historical findings that a man named Jesus was crucified during this time period, but news of his return didn't come until years after the three day resurrection myth. Fan fiction was also common around this period which explains the contradictions along with the politicized processed of selecting the Biblical cannon by excluding certain versions of events concerning the crucifixion and the nature of Christ.

The coolest idea on Jesus I've heard is memetic desire by Rene Girard where Jesus's story was so different from the ones at that time and still today where usually high status powerful men were violent and destroyed their opposition whereas Jesus took the non-violent resistance route and perhaps in the story of universal consciousness literally was the saviour that brought our civilization towards human rights and liberalism even without the whole son of God context put into it. Personally I think I'm quite high consciousness but if Russians came and wanted to crucify me or give me the option to take it back and live in the status quo you can bet I am not ending up on a cross lol so good job J man maybe he did redeem us. If you haven't watched it yet the show The Chosen is about jesus and is actually entertaining and teaches good lesson. I gotta go back and finish it I watched season 1 and its actually game me a paradigm shift I thought Jesus was like a lame boring preacher but he's depicted as a wise man and also courageous action taking leader for his people so it's very fun and inspiring to watch. 

2 hours ago, trenton said:

I believe Christianity survived in large part due to rumors about Jesus coming back. This pattern continues to this day with things like prophecies predicting the end of the world and constantly being wrong. I believe this applies to the resurrection myth as well due to people at that time more readily accepting such rumors as true as a consequence of these miracles being adjacent to the types of things these people would already believe anyway.

 

Sure but I think mostly good ol fear mongering of eternal damnation will do the trick as well. Even I have said out loud I accept Jesus as my saviour in a state of random anxiety because I sort of experienced hell through a mystical experience so I'm not taking any chances even though I do mostly align with Leo's view that God doesn't really punish its beings nor judge them but you never know man cause and effect can be brutal even if God isn't that vengeful.