Unpacking the ‘Glass Myth’ That Made Medieval King Imagine His Frame Would Shatter

Across the 12 months 1400, the French king Charles VI started to show off various nerve-racking behaviors that finally earned him the nickname “Charles the Mad.” Amongst those behaviors, he refused to let somebody contact him and started dressed in particular garments with iron rods sewn into them. 
The rationale? He allegedly believed his frame used to be made from glass and susceptible to shattering, making him the primary recorded sufferer of a mental situation known as the “glass fable.” 
Greater than 600 years later, Charles VI’s fable has grow to be the topic of a large number of social media posts and fashionable YouTube movies. For instance, in an X publish (archived) made on June 6, 2024, a person reposted some other, previous merchandise concerning the historical past of hysteria, including a screenshot of the primary two sentences of the Wikipedia web page for “Glass fable.” That repost had gained round 7,400 reposts and 75,000 likes on the time of this writing.

(X person @Interrobang_2)
The phase of the Wikipedia web page visual within the repost learn:
Glass fable is an exterior manifestation of a psychiatric dysfunction recorded in Europe basically within the past due Center Ages and early fashionable length (fifteenth to Seventeenth centuries). Other people feared that they had been made from glass “and subsequently prone to shatter into items.”

Day after today, a Tumblr person posted a screenshot of that repost appearing each the unique publish and the Wikipedia screenshot. The Tumblr publish had gained round 13,700 reblogs and 19,300 likes on the time of this writing.
The X publish and the screenshot of it that used to be shared on Tumblr are the most well liked appearances of the glass fable on social media to this point, however they’re in no way the primary. 
The earliest point out of the fable Snopes used to be in a position to trace down used to be a Reddit publish made on Jan. 17, 2009, which had the headline “The Glass Myth” and consisted of a hyperlink to the Wikipedia web page (the model of the Wikipedia web page visual on that date can also be accessed right here).
Over the next years, the glass fable used to be the topic of a slightly secure movement of posts totally on X and Reddit. Many of those consisted of descriptions of the fable ranging in duration from unmarried sentences to multi-post threads.
Different posts consisted of customers merely pointing out that they had been excited about the glass fable.
I’m by no means no longer excited about the glass fable %.twitter.com/pGi6Jkkbor
— Glass Bead Gamer (@GrillPillMax) June 13, 2023

In a couple of circumstances, web customers tried to make funny memes concerning the glass fable, none of which went directly to flow into broadly. 
Charles VI had glass fable and had iron rods sewn into his garments to offer protection to himself
byu/YunoFGasai inHistoryMemes

Except for the few examples of comic story memes, nearly all of social media posts about glass fable categorical authentic pastime in and amusement on the fable, normally with out wondering whether or not it used to be in reality an actual ancient phenomenon. 
How did the web expand this pastime in a centuries-old psychological well being dysfunction? And is the ideas shared in such posts correct, within the sense that it displays the present ancient and clinical figuring out of the glass fable? 
To respond to those questions, Snopes dove into the historical past of the meme in addition to the accuracy of on-line descriptions of the glass fable.
Sluggish and Stable Expansion
The glass fable hasn’t ever had a actually viral second. As an alternative, on-line pastime within the ancient phenomenon seems to have grown organically because the 2009 Reddit publish, which is the earliest securely datable look of the glass fable on social media that Snopes has been in a position to spot.
One issue that looks to have influenced on-line pastime within the glass fable is the e-newsletter of articles at the dysfunction by way of conventional and virtual media shops. 
The weblog io9 (now a part of era weblog Gizmodo) printed a piece of writing at the glass fable in September 2014. The next 12 months, in Might 2015, the BBC concurrently launched a radio program and corresponding BBC Information mag article concerning the fable. Historical past.com adopted with their very own soak up December 2017. In 2018, JSTOR Day by day, the public-facing arm of the virtual educational library JSTOR, printed a piece of writing concerning the glass fable with hyperlinks to related scholarship in JSTOR’s collections.
Round the similar time, various creators on YouTube started liberating video content material concerning the fable. The earliest instance, produced as a part of the reliable HowStuffWorks account’s “Science at the Internet” sequence, used to be uploaded on July 15, 2015.  

The HowStuffWorks video had gained round 9,800 perspectives on the time of this writing. Next movies at the subject gained considerably upper view counts: A video posted by way of YouTube account Colossal Skull in Might 2021 has been considered greater than 461,000 occasions; some other, posted by way of Youtuber Professor Graeme Yorston in July 2022, gained round 123,700 perspectives. A newer video, posted by way of vlogger Jules Dapper in April 2024, has been considered round 146,000 occasions as of this writing.
It is tough to quantify how a lot affect any of those articles and YouTube movies had at the public consciousness of and pastime within the glass fable. Alternatively, there are some indicators that every new piece of content material helped the subject construct momentum on-line. For instance, the checklist of resources that Dapper incorporated beneath her 2024 YouTube video starts with hyperlinks to the 2017 Historical past.com article and the 2018 JSTOR Day by day piece. 
What Historians Need to Say
For probably the most section, the details about the glass fable introduced in social media posts and fashionable YouTube movies intently follows analysis executed at the subject by way of skilled historians like Gill Discuss, who in 1990 printed two separate articles which can be nonetheless observed as authoritative introductions to the glass fable.
In his articles, Discuss walks readers during the medieval and early fashionable proof for the glass fable. The earliest case Discuss identifies is Charles VI, who Discuss and later authors have retrospectively recognized with the glass fable. The proof for this prognosis is a brief passage from the “Commentaries” of Pope Pius II, who used to be born greater than 30 years after Charles VI died. The passage reads in complete:
Every now and then he [Charles VI] concept he used to be made from glass and would no longer let himself be touched. He had metal rods put into his clothes and secure himself in all varieties of ways in which he would possibly no longer fall and destroy.

This will not be sturdy proof by way of fashionable requirements, however historians have normally authorized Pius’ description of Charles VI’s signs as evidence of the primary authentic case of glass fable. Snopes has discovered no examples of historians arguing by contrast interpretation.
Except Charles VI, Discuss’s proof for ancient examples of glass fable falls into two large classes. The primary class is composed of accounts written by way of physicians within the sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries about nameless sufferers, that means we have now little or no details about who maximum ancient glass-delusion victims had been. Essentially the most well-known of those accounts, which Discuss suggests a minimum of one of the vital different accounts will have been in response to, used to be written by way of the Dutch doctor Levinus Lemnius and reads as follows: 
Any other [patient] concept that his buttocks had been made from glass, in order that he did the whole thing whilst status, fearing that if he sat, he would destroy his rump, and the glass would fly into items.

There also are various fictional accounts of glass fable, maximum of which date to the Seventeenth century. Essentially the most well-known is “The Glass Graduate,” a tale by way of “Don Quixote” creator Miguel de Cervantes, which used to be first printed in 1613 and eager about a fictional younger pupil with glass fable. 
Many on-line “deep dives” into glass fable declare the dysfunction used to be a mental reaction to the newness of glass in past due medieval and early fashionable Europe. This clarification does no longer seem in both of the articles by way of Discuss, who as an alternative concept glass fable used to be basically brought about by way of a pathological reaction to Christian concepts of purity. 
Alternatively, the concept glass fable evolved on account of the larger presence of glass in past due medieval and early fashionable Europe, which is normally attributed to the historian of psychiatry Edward Shorter, is a valid idea. 
People have produced glass items for round 4,000 years, however technological advances that happened in Venice within the 14th and fifteenth centuries led to a huge building up within the availability of glass throughout Eu markets. Those advances additionally resulted within the availability of recent kinds of glass like cristallo, which used to be utterly colorless and clear. 
Regardless of the larger availability of glass within the past due medieval and early fashionable length, it used to be nonetheless a pricey luxurious product. Some YouTubers, akin to Dapper at across the 03:02 timestamp of her video, embedded underneath, have attached glass’s exclusivity to the truth that the dysfunction best turns out to were reported in rich or skilled sufferers. 

Even though Shorter didn’t make this precise declare himself, it is a logical connection to attract, and it is not person who any historians have in particular argued in opposition to.
Delusions concerning the Glass Myth 
Even though on-line discussions of the glass fable are normally respectable reflections of the scholarly analysis into glass fable, two not unusual claims are not absolutely subsidized by way of the ancient proof.
The primary is the declare that the glass fable used to be as soon as “not unusual” amongst Eu elites. In reality, just a handful of exact circumstances are documented in ancient resources from the past due medieval and early fashionable length, and lots of the sufferers in those accounts are nameless. In reality, the one named ancient figures that every one historians who’ve written concerning the glass fable appear to agree certainly suffered from the situation had been Charles VI and Nicole du Plessis, a niece of the Seventeenth-century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu. 
Various fashionable on-line accounts of the glass fable additionally point out a Nineteenth-century princess, Alexandra of Bavaria, as a victim. Not like Charles VI, Alexandra did not imagine her frame used to be made from glass. As an alternative, she suffered from the fable that as a kid she had one way or the other swallowed a whole glass piano, which remained within her and would shatter if she didn’t take excessive care referring to her actions and the way other folks touched her. 
Despite the fact that Alexandra’s situation is authorized as a real case of glass fable, that brings the overall selection of named ancient figures who suffered from the glass fable between the fifteenth and Nineteenth centuries to a few, a median of lower than one case in keeping with century. Discuss, the historian, indexed 5 further past due medieval or early fashionable circumstances described by way of physicians who didn’t title the sufferers. Including the ones nameless circumstances to the overall leads to a median of best two attested circumstances in keeping with century.
Any other not unusual declare that isn’t subsidized up by way of the ancient proof is that circumstances of glass fable swiftly disappeared as soon as Europeans grew extra acquainted with glass, which will have in the beginning resulted from an over-interpretation of Discuss’s declare that he used to be best in a position to spot “two explicit (uncorroborated) circumstances of the glass fable” in fashionable occasions. 
In reality, the glass fable by no means disappeared — it is simply now regarded as one of the kinds of somatic fable, a not unusual symptom in schizophrenia and different psychological issues. Karl Jaspers, probably the most founders of contemporary psychiatry, wrote {that a} stereotypical schizophrenic affected person would possibly imagine “he’s a soap-bubble, or that his limbs are made from glass,” in his “Basic Psychopathy,” which used to be first printed in 1913. 
Round the similar time, in 1914, the British psychiatrist Charles Mercier wrote in his “Textbook of Madness” that delusions akin to “that the legs are made from glass … are not unusual sufficient.”
Signs which may be described because the glass fable were discussed in equivalent psychiatric textbooks printed right through the 20 th century and neatly into the twenty first, as within the 2022 “Basics of Psychiatry for Well being Care Pros,” which lists the conclusion “my bones are made from glass” as a not unusual somatic fable amongst schizophrenic sufferers. 
Throughout the Having a look Glass
Regardless of exaggerated claims concerning the ancient incidence of glass fable and its eventual disappearance, neither of which might be absolutely supported by way of the proof, the glass fable as a web based phenomenon has for probably the most section mirrored exact scholarship at the subject. 
On social media, this relative accuracy can in large part be attributed to the truth that such a lot of posts include screenshots of portions of the Wikipedia web page for the phenomenon. That is not to mention that Wikipedia is a competent supply in itself, however the web page’s verifiability coverage implies that a lot of its “Glass fable” web page is composed of straightforward paraphrases of analysis at the phenomenon in the beginning printed by way of certified students. 
On the identical time, Wikipedia’s coverage of continuing, ongoing revision by way of impartial volunteer editors implies that mistakes at the web page can, and feature been, corrected. A look on the statistics for Wikipedia’s “Glass fable” web page presentations that 99 separate editors have made a complete of 136 edits to the web page because it used to be created in 2008. Graphed over the years, those edits display persisted consideration to the web page because the glass fable’s on-line profile grew.

(Wikipedia/XTools.org)
A selected instance of this kind of edits illustrates how, a minimum of in terms of the glass fable, larger on-line consideration to the web page’s claims may end up in progressed accuracy. On the finish of her April 2024 Youtube video, Dapper issues out that whilst researching the glass fable she spotted that there used to be no actual ancient proof that probably the most figures indexed on Wikipedia’s “Glass fable” web page, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, ever suffered from the dysfunction. Now not lengthy after Dapper’s video went reside, a Wikipedia editor deleted the paragraphs on Tchaikovsky from the web page.
In the end, the glass fable does no longer appear to have grow to be a mainstay of web tradition via anyone “viral” second. 
As an alternative, pastime within the ancient psychological dysfunction seems to have grown organically, bolstered by way of the e-newsletter in mainstream newspapers and magazines in addition to particular pastime blogs of articles mentioning reputable ancient analysis. The content material of those articles has been interpreted and amplified on-line via various fashionable YouTube movies concerning the glass fable in addition to during the Wikipedia web page at the subject, which has been edited to take away unsubstantiated data as pastime within the glass fable has grown.

Author: OpenAI