Behind the Episode: Ball of Burning Men

In the “Burning Men” episode, I mentioned that I went down a glass delusion rabbit hole. After some consideration, I decided to include what I learned about the peculiar delusion. It could be argued that glass delusion can be connected to the popular culture of the period.  The condition was common enough in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that it had made it into the period’s poetry and stage plays.[1] Charles VI was the most famous instance of this in the medieval period, but there were many others after that. One man was recorded to believe his butt was made of glass and he was afraid to sit down “lest he broke his ‘crackling hinderparts’”.[2] Over the course of a century, depictions of glass delusion appeared not only in certain medical records, but also literature, art, and theater during the period.[3] While we cannot really medically diagnose Charles VI and his mental health, historians continue to study the phenomenon to explain possible reasons why the glass delusion was so prominent. Gill Speak is the historian who is most notable in her research on the glass delusion phenomenon. In her article, "El licenciado Vidriera" and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe, she states that glass delusion was connected to the theological beliefs, the popularity of melancholy in literature during the period, and the medicinal belief that the body was a container for the soul that could be broken.[4] In other words, there is a good argument that glass delusion and melancholy occurred as an expression of mental illness that we cannot accurately identify and took the form of being made of glass due to the popular beliefs of the time period.

[1] Gill Speak. “‘El Licenciado Vidriera’ and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe.” The Modern Language Review 85, no. 4 (1990): 850.

[2] Gill Speak, “‘El Licenciado Vidriera’ and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe,” 851.

[3] Gill Speak, “‘El Licenciado Vidriera’ and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe,” 850-865.

[4] Gill Speak, “‘El Licenciado Vidriera’ and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe,” 863.