The Anatomy of Melancholy

Crales, a Serbian prince, as Nicephorus Gregoras relates in book 6 of his Roman History, was an eager suitor to Eudocia, the emperor’s sister. Although her brother very much wanted the marriage, she could not bear the man, for he had had three previous wives, all shamefully ill-treated.

But the emperor, still “valuing Crales’s friendship highly,” because he was a powerful prince and a troublesome neighbour, greatly desired an alliance by marriage. To that end he betrothed his own daughter Simonida to him, a little girl of five; the man was forty-five, five years older than the emperor himself. Such unequal and ill-suited matches can wealth and a splendid fortune bring about.

Yet that is not all: it is not only money. Sometimes, at the other extreme, vainglory, pride and ambition do as much harm as miserable greed itself. If a yeoman has an only daughter, he must marry her above her birth and station—to a gentleman, indeed! Her large dowry makes her too good for someone of her own rank, he supposes.

A gentleman’s daughter and heiress must marry at least the eldest son of a knight baronet; and a knight’s only daughter must marry a baron himself, or an earl, and so on upwards: her great dowry deserves it. Thus, striving to add higher rank to their wealth, they ruin their children. Many troubles follow, and they often destroy their families.

Paolo Giovio gives the example of Galeazzo II, that noble duke of Milan: “He sought foreign marriage alliances, splendid indeed in their royal pomp, but harmful and almost fatal to himself and his descendants.” He married his eldest son, Gian Galeazzo, to Isabella, the king of France’s sister; but she was “so costly to her father-in-law that she cost him two hundred thousand gold pieces.” Her reception at Milan was so expensive that it almost ruined him.

His daughter Violanta married Lionel, duke of Clarence, the youngest son of Edward III, king of England. But “at his arrival such wealth was poured out with such astonishing generosity that it seemed to surpass the splendour of the wealthiest kings.” He was welcomed with such incredible magnificence that a king’s purse could scarcely have borne it.

For besides many rich gifts of horses, weapons, silverware, money, jewels and so on, he gave a single dinner for Lionel and his company, at which there were thirty-two courses and so much food left that “the dishes taken from the table would suffice for ten thousand people.” But soon afterwards Lionel died, “devoting himself to his new bride and untimely banquets,” and so on; and, at great loss to the duke, the celebration was over.

Thus titles, honours and ambition can make many splendid but unfortunate marriages, with ulterior motives on every side, even though both parties are unsound in body and mind, utterly unwilling, averse and often ill-suited. So love is banished, and in the end we suffer for it. But perhaps I have been too expansive on this subject.