Download or read book Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium written by Youval Rotman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Roman and Byzantine Near East, the holy fool emerged in Christianity as a way of describing individuals whose apparent madness allowed them to achieve a higher level of spirituality. Youval Rotman examines how the figure of the mad saint or mystic was used as a means of individual and collective transformation prior to the rise is Islam.