FANATICISM. – The term *fanaticus* is etymologically connected with *fanum* ‘temple’, so that *fanaticus* would be equivalent to ‘belonging to a sacred temple’ (CIL, V, 3924).
In its modern sense, fanaticism is the condition of those who, believing themselves invested with a religious, civil, or social mission, in addition to a singular tenacity in their ideas, resort to every means, even violent ones, to make them prevail.
The first, as far as is known, to be called *fanatici* in Latin were the priests of Bellona (CIL, VI, 490, etc.), who on certain days of the year would dance furiously, tear their flesh, and finally, falling into a frenzy, would prophesy the future to the bystanders. The same title was later applied to the Galli of Cybele (Juvenal, *Sat.*, 2, 112), and to devotees of other deities (CIL, IV, 2155; VI, 2234). The term was then used to indicate anyone possessed by a deity or subject to a divine inspiration (Cicero, *De divin.*, 2, 57).
From the pretense of divine inspiration, it follows that these individuals uphold their ideas to the point of imposing them by force and violence. Two concepts thus converge in the initial meaning of fanaticism: one essential, the other consequential. Fanatics are essentially those inspired by divinity, visionaries, the enlightened. They uphold their visions or inspirations by every means at their disposal, even to the worst extremes. The strictly religious use of the word expanded into common usage to signify being possessed by an idea, not only in the religious sphere but also in the profane, and acting in conformity with it, whether appropriately or not.
In the study of this phenomenon, which affects the individual but more often a group of people, one encounters a sort of hybrid ground involving medicine, history, psychology, and theology.
If one were to classify it within the frameworks currently in use in legal medicine, the fanatic would be a paranoiac in whom the content of the delusional idea consists of mystical or religious representations in general, patriotic, reformist, or revolutionary. At the root of all these varieties is always a delusion of grandeur, megalomania, egocentrism, from which errors of judgment and conflict with the environment arise; the hallmark is the uncontrolled use of means to make one’s own idea prevail. In the religious sphere, this individual already has a consecrated name in the Gospel, the pseudo-prophet, and a recent historical figure is the well-known Davide Lazzaretti of Arcidosso (cf. Lazzareschi, *David Lazzaretti, il Messia dell’Adriata*, Brescia 1945).
Fanaticism may have historical, environmental, physiological, and psychological causes. But one perennial causal element is ever-present: the passion that is, in itself, intolerant in every kind of fanaticism.
Even in mental contagion, which often sows this kind of religious, political, or social delirium—so much so that fanaticism is more a social than an individual phenomenon—passion plays a large role, since it has been shown that those most susceptible to contagion, after paranoiacs and paranoids, are the so-called passionate types, according to Heymans’ characterological classification.
This explains why, if one remains within the bounds of truth, the phenomenon is impossible for a normal individual. And even if the Catholic Church has been accused by its adversaries of fanaticism—so much so that the very development of Christianity in the first three centuries, the martyrs, the great mystics and ascetics, the rise and development of the Crusades, the punishment of heretics through recourse to secular authority, and other phenomena of the collective life of the Church have been presented as products of fanaticism (cf. G. Mascherini, *L’intolleranza e i suoi presupposti*, Torino 1909, pp. 31, 150, etc.; *Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology*, ed. J. M. Baldwin, I, p. 223)—this can only be explained by an arbitrary interpretation of the facts, by the abnormality of individuals, or generically by doctrinal or practical deviations of some members of the Church.
On the other hand, sects, secret societies, factions, particularistic groups that are not open to broader ideals and visions, and that operate through almost mysterious procedures, are the fertile ground for manifestations of fanaticism. Here we are not speaking only of religious sects or factions, but also of civil and political ones. A kind of fanaticism is chauvinism, a degeneration of patriotism.
Manifestations of fanaticism in politics are linked to the various forms of ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ extremism, exaggerated and often merely verbal expressions of the socio-political positions of left-wing parties. Thus in ‘subversivism’, i.e., the negative aspect of revolutionaryism, marked by a systematic opposition to government, hostility toward state authorities, the stirring up of tension among the masses, actual or at least potential violence, and the disintegration of public order; in ‘statolatry’, an attitude of overvaluation of the functions and powers of the state, surrounded by an idolatrous myth of the state itself as an absolute entity to which all must submit; in nihilism, in anarchist movements, in terrorism of any stripe that employs the combined destructive and intimidating effect of systematic violence pushed to its extreme consequences.
Last in chronological order among the F. is the sculptor Cosimo (b. Rome 1620–d. 1688). Having executed, independently of Bernini, the stucco decoration of the central nave of St Peter’s, Cosimo worked from 1647 alongside Pietro da Cortona until 1669. In 1656 he produced the bas-relief of the Deposition in S. Maria della Pace and in 1660 the tomb of Cardinal Widman in S. Marco. In collaboration with C. Ferrata he carved numerous statues for the Roman churches of S. Maria Maggiore, the Gesù, S. Giovanni in Fonte, etc. Even these works, completed after the death of Pietro da Cortona, clearly express Cosimo’s formula of dependence on his second master.
FANCELLI, FAMILY — Altarpiece of S. Biagio, by Pandolfo F. in collaboration with Stagi — Pisa Cathedral.