ABSTRACT
From roughly 1500 to 1700, Europe teemed with representations of madness. Ships of fools, melancholy artists, brooding scholars, obsessive lovers, mad prophets, and the divinely or demonically possessed leapt from the pages of literary, philosophical, and theological works in greater numbers than ever before. 1 Intended to entertain as much as to caution and instruct, the mad and their madnesses were highly moral reminders of the wretchedness of the human condition, the vanity of earthly life, and the glory of the kingdom of God.
