So were the Venetians when their forces were defeated by Louis, king of France. The kings of France and Spain, the pope and the emperor had all conspired against them at Cambrai, and the French herald declared open war in the Senate: “Loredan, doge of the Venetians,” and so on. They had lost Padua, Brescia, Verona, Friuli and their mainland territories, and now had nothing left but the city of Venice itself; “and they thought they must fear for the city itself,” says Bembo. The loss of that too was to be feared: “so great a grief suddenly seized them all as never before,” and so on. They were plunged into pitiful misery, never before in such lamentable distress.

In 1527, when Rome was sacked by Bourbon, the common soldiers made such havoc that beautiful churches were turned into stables, ancient records and books used as bedding for horses or burned like straw; relics and costly pictures were defaced, altars demolished, rich hangings, carpets and so on trampled into the dirt.

Their wives and loveliest daughters were raped by every base scoundrel, as Sejanus’s daughter was by the executioner, publicly, before their fathers’ and husbands’ eyes. The daughters of noblemen and the wealthiest citizens, intended for princes’ beds, were handed over to any common soldier and kept as concubines.

Senators and cardinals themselves were dragged through the streets and subjected to agonising torture to make them reveal where their money was hidden. The rest, murdered in heaps, lay stinking in the streets; infants’ brains were dashed out before their mothers’ eyes. It was a lamentable sight to see so splendid a city so suddenly ruined, and rich citizens who had formerly lived amid every pleasure sent begging to Venice, Naples, Ancona and elsewhere.

Those proud palaces that just now boasted their summits up to heaven were cast down as low as hell in an instant. Whom would such misery not make discontented?

Terence the poet drowned himself, some say, because of the loss of his comedies in a shipwreck. When a poor man has gone hungry through many meals and scraped together a small sum, only to lose it in an instant; when a scholar has spent many hours studying to no purpose, his labours lost, and so on—how could it be otherwise?

I may conclude with Gregory: “As deeply as love of worldly things moves us while possession lasts, so fiercely does grief burn when it is taken away.” Riches do not give us as much joy in possessing them as they torment us when they are lost.

Next to sorrow I may also place those events that bring on fear. Besides the terrors I have already touched on, and many other fears, which are infinite, there is superstitious fear, one of the three great causes of fear in Aristotle, commonly aroused by portents and ominous events, which greatly trouble many of us. (“My mind forebodes some evil, I know not what.”)

For example, if a hare crosses our path as we set out, or a mouse gnaws our clothes; if three drops of blood fall from someone’s nose, the salt falls towards them, or a black spot appears on their nails, and so on. These and many similar things are discussed at length by Delrio, volume 2, book 3, section 4; Agostino Nifo in his book On Auguries; Polydore Vergil, On Prodigies, book 3; and John of Salisbury, Policraticus, book 1, chapter 13.

They are so deeply affected that, through the sheer force of imagination, fear and the Devil’s cunning, they bring the misfortunes they suspect down upon their own heads. What they fear shall come upon them, as Solomon foretells in Proverbs 10:24 and Isaiah declares in 66:4. If they could disregard and despise these things, they would not happen: “Their power rests in our belief, as the severity of an illness does in the thoughts of the sick.” They grow stronger or weaker according to the greater or lesser firmness of our belief.

“So-and-so pays the penalty,” says Crato of one such person; “if only he did not draw it upon himself!” He is punished, and is himself the cause of it.

“While we flee our fate, we fools run straight into it.” The thing I feared, says Job, has fallen upon me.

We may say the same of those troubled by their fortunes, or by evil destinies foreseen: “Foreknowledge of misfortunes torments many.” Foreknowledge of what is to come tortures many people, when astrologers or sorcerers predict it “because of an angry heaven,” whether it is a misfortune or death itself. This often happens by God’s permission: “Because they fear the demon,” says Chrysostom, “God therefore allows it to happen.” Severus, Hadrian and Domitian can testify to this; Suetonius, Herodian and the other historians tell strange stories about their fear and suspicion in such matters.

Montanus, consultation 31, gives an example of a young man made exceedingly melancholy in this way. Such fears have always tormented mortals, in every age, because of lying oracles and deceitful priests.

There was a spring in Greece, near Ceres’ temple in Achaea, where the outcome of such diseases could be learned: a mirror was lowered on a thread, and so on. Among the Cyanean rocks at the springs of Lycia was the oracle of Apollo Thyrxeus, where every fortune was foretold—sickness, health or anything else they wished. Thus ordinary people have always been deceived about future events.

Even today, “Fear of future events torments the Chinese exceedingly.” This foolish fear grievously tortures them in China, as Matteo Ricci the Jesuit tells us in his account of those countries. Of all nations, they are the most superstitious and most tormented in this way, placing such trust in their diviners “that fear itself makes the prediction credible”: fear itself, and imagination, cause it to come true.