A common delusion among schizophrenics is that the government is spying on them. Did this happen historically? Did peasants think their lord was watching them?

You may be interested in the previous thread:

Many people who suffer from paranoid schizophrenia have this fear of an overarching government conspiracy to spy on them and hide cameras and such. How would a medieval peasant with this condition be affected since they didn't have much of the technology at the time that we have now, to worry about?

It has a great /u/sunagainstgold answer and a great /u/hillsonghoods answers coming at the question from two completely different angels and being in sum, more or less, everything that this subreddit when it’s at its absolute absolute best. I might recommend reading /u/hillsonghoods’s first as it’s about the historiography of schizophrenia and then read /u/sunagainstgold’s next because it’s a detailed look at the Middle Ages.