Holy Fools in Medieval Western Europe: From Practice to Theory (XIII-XVI Century)

The Latin West was not immune to the resurgence of the “holy fool” in re, not only in its theological-exegetical stance, declined through Cenobitic monasticism of Egyptian descent and not through the Anachorite model of Syriac origins. Supposedly, it was conveyed through those texts that would hand down the very origins of monasticism: The Lives of the Desert Fathers that included the Historia Lausiaca, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers or Apophtegmata Patrum, the Pratum spirituale. In all these works only the lives of two saloi men appear – Serapion of Egypt and Mark of Alexandria – and of one salé woman – the nun of Tabenna – though they are full of dicta or short exempla in which the follies for Christ are exalted. In sixth century Europe the Vitae Patrum appeared through the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto by Rufinus, through the Historia Lausiaca by Palladium, through the Liber Geronticon by Paschasium and through the Liber Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Orientalium by Valerio of Bierzo. All of these works flowed – though only partially – in the IV book of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, that circulated both in the East and the West, as can be seen by the translations in the Greek (Pope Zachary in the eighth century), in Arabic, in Saxon, and in Norman-French. Already during the Ecumenical council of 494 Pope Gelasius would say that he had the "Vitas Patrum, Pauli, Antonii, Hilarionis, et omnium eremitorum, quos tamen vir beatus scripsit Hieronymus". The Greek texts were translated into Latin by Paschasium – important theologian of the eighth century – and found a vast circulation. An example of this can be seen in the XLII chapter of the Regula Benedicti: "Monachi omni tempore, sive jejunii sive prandi fuerit, mox ut surrexerint a coena, sedeant omnes in unum, et legat unus Collationes vel Vitas Patrum, aut certe aliquid quod aedificet audientes". During that exceptional cultural season that we usually identify as the reawakening of the twelth and thirteenth centuries these texts “escaped” from the horti conclusi of the monasteries and had wide circulation among lay devotees. The intensification of preaching in the years that preceded the birth of Mendicant orders, alongside the passagium transmarino and the reform of the Church, had the effect of raising the level of awareness of the christifideles, who would practice their faith more and more consciously. But the most widespread success came with the Mendicant friars. Through homiletics and spiritual erudition treatises that aimed at prolonging the holy conversatio far beyond confession, of the service and of the sermon, they would familiarize the believers to it through the themes of the fides and of the traditio. During these extraordinary times the myth of the ecclesia primitivae formae, through experiments of common life, found fertile terrain and flourished, finding close relations to the past and creating new ways of worshiping God. At the same time, the experience of the mystical devotion to the Creator would trickle down in a thousand streams of personal transfretatio ad divina. The desert fathers thus became magistri scriptis of Christian life that would go far beyond the monastic orders searching the infinite possibilities of the soul. This paper analyzes some christian experiences of holy madness.