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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions…

What have they not made ordinary people believe? Things impossible in nature, things beyond belief! What devices, traditions and ceremonies have they not invented in every age to keep people obedient and enrich themselves? They profit from minds held captive by superstition, as Livy says.

Those ancient Egyptian priests took all sovereign power into their hands. Knowing, as Curtius suggests, that nothing rules a multitude more effectively than superstition; when captured by empty religion, even unruly women obey seers better than leaders—that ordinary people will obey priests sooner than captains, and nothing is more powerful than superstition, or better than blind zeal, for ruling a crowd—they so terrified and deceived them that the account is scarcely believable.

Almost every nation has been stupefied in this way. Among our Britons and the ancient Gauls the Druids have lorded it over people; the Magi in Persia; philosophers in Greece; Chaldeans among eastern peoples; Brahmans in India; gymnosophists in Ethiopia; the Turditanes in Spain; augurs in Rome; Apollo’s priests in Greece, the Phoebades and Pythonissae, through their oracles and apparitions; Amphiaraus and his companions; and now Muslim and pagan priests. What can they not accomplish? In what way do they not make fools of the world?

So everywhere, among all peoples and in all places, as Scaliger writes of Muslim priests, that tribe which ministers in sacred matters trims the people’s hopes to the dreams they themselves invent. So cunningly can they deceive ordinary people in every place and country.

But above all others, that high priest of Rome, the mother of that monstrous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing pope who now rages in the West, that three-headed Cerberus, has played his part. His religion today is pure policy: a state composed entirely of superstition and cunning, needing only cunning and superstition to maintain it. He uses colleges and religious houses as effectively as forts and castles, and accomplishes more today

through a company of scribbling parasites, fiery friars, zealous anchorites, hypocritical confessors, and those Praetorian soldiers, his Janissary Jesuits—that unsociable society, as Langius calls it, the Devil’s last effort and the excrement of the age—who now stand in the front line of battle, seek to monopolize and engross all other learning, and lord it over theology,

They alone receive the wounds of the whole war,

and fight almost alone (for the rest are merely his camels and asses), than he could ever have accomplished through garrisons and armies. What princely power or penal law, however strict, could force people to do what they will voluntarily endure for conscience’s sake? To abstain from all meat, refrain from marriage, rise to pray at midnight, whip themselves, practise astonishing fasting and penance, abandon the world, choose poverty, render canonical and blind obedience, lay down their goods, fortunes, bodies and lives, and offer themselves at their superior’s feet, at his command?

What instrument is as powerful as superstition? They see this very well, yet have no religion themselves. For the first principle of that secret theology which rules among them, as Calvin rightly suspects, and the course and conduct of their lives prove, is that there is no God. They hold that there is no God, as Leo X did, Hildebrand the magician, Alexander VI and Julius II: outright atheists.

The common proverb among them confirms it: The worst Christians in Italy are the Romans; among Romans, the priests are the most dissolute; the wickedest priests are promoted to cardinal; and the worst man among the cardinals is chosen pope—that is, an Epicure, as popes for the most part are, unbelievers and Lucianists, for this is what they think and believe. They consider what is said of Christ to be fable and fraud, and everything about heaven and hell, judgement day, Paradise and the immortality of the soul to be

Empty rumours and meaningless words, A story like an anxious dream.

Dreams, trifles and old wives’ tales. Yet, like so many whetstones that make other tools cut but do not cut themselves, although they have no religion at all, they will make others exceedingly devout and superstitious. With promises and threats they compel them, extort from them, and lead them by the nose like so many bears in a line.

Their purpose is not to spread the Church, advance God’s kingdom, seek his glory or the common good, but to enrich themselves, enlarge their territories, dominate people and force them to live in awe and subjection to the See of Rome. What else do they care about? If the world wishes to be deceived, let it be deceived; it is fitting that it should be so.

What Augustine cites from Varro in defence of his Roman religion we may apply still better to them: many things are true which it is not useful for the people to know; many are false, yet it is expedient for the people to think otherwise. Some things are true and some false, and for their own purposes they will not let the credulous common people recognize them.

12189.Livy 4.30 describes people who profited from minds held captive by superstition during a public crisis. Burton uses the phrase as a general account of priestly enrichment. The rhetorical questions extend his indictment; they are not findings about every religious institution.

12191.Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander 4.10, describes Egyptian interpreters reassuring soldiers after a lunar eclipse. His sentence concerns the crowd, not specifically women. Burton’s Latin rearranges the passage and adds etiam impotentes fœminæ, retained and translated here. His ensuing English restatement is also retained.

12192.This catalogue combines priesthoods, diviners and philosophical schools. Magi are Persian religious specialists; Brahmans, Indian religious teachers; gymnosophists, “naked philosophers.” Phoebades and Pythonissae are women inspired by Apollo; Amphiaraus is a prophetic hero. Turditanes is retained as Burton’s uncertain designation, rather than silently converted into a known priesthood.

12194.Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Exercises, no. 228, is the marginal authority. The Latin concerns people who administer religious rites manipulating popular hopes through their own fictions. Burton immediately supplies his own English summary. Infatuate means make foolish, not inspire romantic attraction.

12196.The following is sustained anti-Catholic invective. “Dam” makes the pope the breeding mother of a monstrous brood; “bull-bellowing” puns on papal bulls, formal documents, and a bull’s roar. Cerberus is the three-headed hound of the classical underworld. Burton attributes the ensuing description to Sir Edwin Sandys.

12198.Anchorites are religious recluses. The Praetorian Guard and the Ottoman Janissaries supply military comparisons for the Jesuits. “Dissociable society” is a hostile play on the Society of Jesus. The Langius reference is abbreviated and its precise work and passage remain to be identified; the translation of its title is provisional.

12200.The printed attribution is Lucian. Compare Lucan, Civil War 6.204–205: tot uolnera belli / solus obit, describing Scaeva alone sustaining the battle’s many wounds. This is a related image with different wording, not an identification of Burton’s line or grounds for silently changing Lucian to Lucan. The immediate source remains unlocated. Burton applies the military image to the Jesuits as the pope’s foremost combatants.

12201.The rest are likened to beasts of burden. Burton’s list joins voluntary ascetic disciplines and religious obedience to his charge of manipulation. Flesh means meat; wilfull poverty means poverty deliberately chosen. The argument attacks the direction and motives of these practices, not merely their physical severity.

12202.The Latin, attributed to Calvin without a precise reference, accuses the inner circle of denying God. Burton then names Leo X, Hildebrand (Gregory VII), Alexander VI and Julius II. “Magician” and “atheists” are allegations within his anti-papal polemic, not established descriptions of their beliefs.

12204.Lewd here means wicked or morally corrupt. Epicure and Lucianist are polemical labels for sensuality and religious scepticism. The proverb is attributed to Sandys; Burton then turns its attack on moral conduct into a claim of secret unbelief. The sweeping assertion remains his.

12206.Seneca, Trojan Women 405–406: the chorus calls the terrors of the underworld empty stories comparable to an anxious dream. Burton borrows the dramatic speech to describe the unbelief he imputes to church leaders. The two lines and his English restatement remain separate.

12208.The whetstone comparison comes from Horace, Art of Poetry 304–305. The margin prints cotus where Horace has cotis; that reading is retained. Horace uses it of a critic who sharpens other writers’ talents; Burton turns it into an image of leaders who make others devout while remaining irreligious themselves. “Enforce from” is understood as extract or extort from them.

12209.The Latin maxim means “If the world wishes to be deceived, let it be deceived.” Burton speaks in the voice he attributes to cynical church leaders. See of Rome means the papal office and its jurisdiction.

12211.Augustine, City of God 4.31, reports Varro’s view that some religious truths should be withheld and false popular beliefs may be expedient. Augustine criticizes this policy; Burton applies the criticism to the Roman Church. Gullish commonalty means credulous ordinary people.