Epilepsy Motif in Religious Art

Kunstgalleri, The epilepsy motif in religious art

"Introduction:

In all epochs of the history of the human race, poverty, misfortune, illness and suffering are frequently connected with higher powers, divine entities, personal deities or 'spirits'. This also applies, last but not least, to epilepsy, for whose frequently dramatic symptoms mankind has been just as unable to find a natural explanation as it has been unable to find its cause over hundreds and thousands of years.

The various names alone which have been given to this illness in medical terminology and in the vernacular in the various historical epochs are an indication of this supposed relationship between epilepsy and the supernatural: hiëra nosos (Greek) or morbus sacer (Latin): the holy illness; morbus divinus the divine, morbus deificus that created by God, morbus coelestis the heavenly illness; or morbus astralis the star and morbus lunaticus the moon illness."