The Anatomy of Melancholy

“But we complain of ancient things”; these are old; “these things happened before.” In our own time we have a new scene of superstitious impostors and heretics, a new company of actors, of antichrists, and that great Antichrist himself: a string of popes who overwhelm everything before them with their greatness and authority.

From the time they proclaimed themselves universal bishops, to establish their own kingdom, sovereignty and grandeur and to enrich themselves, they introduced a host of human traditions: purgatory, “the limbo of the Fathers and of infants,” and all that subterranean geography; the Mass, adoration of saints, alms, fasts, papal bulls, indulgences, religious orders, friars, images, shrines, musty relics, excommunications, confessions, acts of satisfaction, blind obedience, vows, pilgrimages and religious journeys.

They added many similar elaborate trifles, intricate subtleties, gross errors and obscure questions to defend and gloss over them, until the light of the Gospel was entirely eclipsed: darkness everywhere, Scripture concealed, legends introduced, religion banished, hypocritical superstition exalted, and the Church itself obscured and persecuted.

Christ and his members were crucified more, says Benzo, by a few necromantic, atheistic popes than ever by Julian the Apostate, Porphyry the Platonist, Celsus the physician or Libanius the sophist; by those pagan emperors, Huns, Goths and Vandals.

Let the Magdeburg historians, Chemnitz, Osiander, Bale, Mornay, Foxe, Ussher and many others relate what each of them did, by what means, at what times and “with what assistance” superstition reached this height, traditions multiplied and Antichrist himself attained his position.

Meanwhile, anyone who sees their profane rites and foolish customs, so superstitiously kept and strictly observed; their multitude of saints and images, that rabble of Roman deities assigned to trades, professions, diseases, people, offices, countries and places—St George for England, St Denis for France, Patrick for Ireland, Andrew for Scotland, James for Spain, and so on;

Gregory for students, Luke for painters, Cosmas and Damian for philosophers, Crispin for shoemakers, Catherine for spinners, and so on; Anthony for pigs, Gallus for geese, Wenceslaus for sheep, Pelagius for oxen; Sebastian for plague, Valentine for epilepsy, Apollonia for toothache, Petronella for fevers; and the Virgin Mary for sea and land, for all people and offices;

anyone who observes these things—their shrines, images, offerings, hanging ornaments, acts of adoration and pilgrimages to them; their creeping to crosses; the rich gowns of Our Lady of Loreto, her votive gifts, the expense lavished on images and the number of petitioners; St Nicholas Burge in France, our former shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, and those relics at Rome, Jerusalem, Genoa, Lyon, Prato and St Denis;