WI: Mad Priesthood

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In ancient times, oracles, mediums and other spiritual figures often used bouts of madness to convey communion with gods or spirits. "Divine Madness", some historians have called it.
What if it was the same sort of tradition was adopted as doctrine by the Catholic Priesthood?
What sort of effect might this have had on the early church and potential the study if mental illness in middle ages?
 
Minor problem... I don't think those priests were possessed or influenced by gods or angels, but were products of things like cannabis. So to get the same effect, we would just have stoned priests. I don't think this will help the Catholic church in the long run...
 
Minor problem... I don't think those priests were possessed or influenced by gods or angels, but were products of things like cannabis. So to get the same effect, we would just have stoned priests. I don't think this will help the Catholic church in the long run...

Well maybe poppy usage, as say a part of the Catholic Communion rite, could be a potential way to interject it into church tradition?
 

fi11222

Banned
In ancient times, oracles, mediums and other spiritual figures often used bouts of madness to convey communion with gods or spirits. "Divine Madness", some historians have called it.
What if it was the same sort of tradition was adopted as doctrine by the Catholic Priesthood?
What sort of effect might this have had on the early church and potential the study if mental illness in middle ages?
I think this is completely impossible or, in other words, that it would result in a "Catholic Church" which would have absolutely nothing to do with what those words mean IOTL.

Very early Christianity did have a tradition of "divine madness": speaking in tongues and prophesying. Already in the Epistles of Paul (the earliest know Christian texts) there is a marked reluctance to accept those practices. As time went by, this reluctance became utter rejection. And for good reason. Later Christianity is focused on "orthodoxy", i.e. unity of teaching. The idea is simple: two different Christian preachers should say the same things. Otherwise, splinter groups will inevitably appear and eventually mutual accusations, outright fighting (riots over religious matters were common) and puzzled believers. Christianity as we know it built itself around this line of thinking during roughly the first 5 centuries of the current era.

Of course, this absolutely rules out stoned or delirious priests. How can you guarantee the orthodoxy of such people ?

Naturally, one can imagine that this idea of "orthodxy" does not emerge and that some judeo-greek religious current(s) develops while maintaining ecstatic practices. But this is no longer Christianity and certainly not the Catholic Church.

The reason Christianity developped around the idea of orthodxy probably has a deeper reason that just an effort to maintain harmony within the community. The Christian Gospel is about a crucified leader, i.e. a failure. The whole point is to imbibe this story in order to plunge oneself into a mood of defeat and submission. Drug-induced ecstasy is at the opposite end of the psychological spectrum. Apart from the occasional bad trip, being high is about feeling superhuman, invincible, detached from the weaknesses of human life. And mental illness can be anything. From the perspective of the listener, it is essentially random. If Christianity's mental discipline of defeat had been allowed to mingle with drug-induced boasts of superhumanity and/or quasi-random mentally ill noise, it would probably have been drowned in the pandemonium and we would most likely never have heard of it.
 
IIRC, several of the famous Greek oracular sites stood on fracture zones issuing volcanic gasses. The oracle was probably 'High as a Kite'...
 
. The whole point is to imbibe this story in order to plunge oneself into a mood of defeat and submission. Drug-induced ecstasy is at the opposite end of the psychological spectrum. Apart from the occasional bad trip, being high is about feeling superhuman, invincible, detached from the weaknesses of human life. And mental illness can be anything. From the perspective of the listener, it is essentially random. If Christianity's mental discipline of defeat had been allowed to mingle with drug-induced boasts of superhumanity and/or quasi-random mentally ill noise, it would probably have been drowned in the pandemonium and we would most likely never have heard of it.
That's actually a fairly recent view, came with the black plague if I'm not mistaken.
Before, it was not as much a focus on Christ suffering but on Christ victorious.
Christianity is also about hope and paradise and all that.

You had a tradition of mystics in the XVIth century, Ignacio de Loyola or Therese d'Avilla for example
 
That's actually a fairly recent view, came with the black plague if I'm not mistaken.
Before, it was not as much a focus on Christ suffering but on Christ victorious.
Christianity is also about hope and paradise and all that.

You had a tradition of mystics in the XVIth century, Ignacio de Loyola or Therese d'Avilla for example
In imagery, the suffering christ appears first in the 9th century. Before that time he is mostly depicted as pantocrater, all-knowing.
 
Eastern Orthodox Church did acknowledge something like this until recent times. Maybe still do. It is called iurodstvo. But while venerated to some extent (and persecuted for another) it was pointedly outside the hierarchy of the Church. Madmen, real or imitated do not organize.
 

fi11222

Banned
That's actually a fairly recent view, came with the black plague if I'm not mistaken.
Before, it was not as much a focus on Christ suffering but on Christ victorious.
Christianity is also about hope and paradise and all that.

You had a tradition of mystics in the XVIth century, Ignacio de Loyola or Therese d'Avilla for example
Victorious Christs are a feature of Medieval Christianity and especially the Byzantine Church (Christ Pantocrator).

But this is not how Christ is viewed in the earlier strata of the Christian Faith. From Paul to St. Augustine, the defeat and humiliation of the crucified savior is at the forefront. Of course, this defeat in this world, translates into a victory in the next. But here and now, it is the defeat that counts. Because the defeat of Christ as an earthly king (a Barabbas-like figure, as everyone sees him) is the defeat of every sinner. It is the bedrock of repentance.
 
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