The Anatomy of Melancholy

Magallianus the Jesuit will allow no discussion with a heretic, insisting on severity and rigour: we ought not to answer them with words, but to set up gallows. And Theodosius is praised in Nicephorus, book 12, chapter 15, for silencing all heretics.

Bernard, in Letter 190, would use the law of the club, fire and sword against heretics: compel them, stop their mouths with blows rather than disputation, refute them with fists rather than reasons. And this is their ordinary practice.

Another group is correspondingly mild on the other side. To avoid all resentment, contentious wars and disturbances, they would establish general toleration in every kingdom, with no fine at all and no one put to death for religion or conscience. The French historian de Thou strongly favours this; our recent Socinians defend it; Vaticanus upholds it against Calvin in a long treatise on behalf of Servetus; so does Castellio, and others.

Martin Ballius and his companions maintained this opinion in France not long ago; Beza refutes their error in a substantial volume. The middle course is best: what Paul prescribes in Galatians 1, if anyone should be overtaken by a fault, restore that person in a spirit of gentleness, using every kindly means and gentle admonition.

But if that has no effect, after a first and second warning, avoid the heretic: he must be excommunicated and delivered over to Satan, as Paul did with Hymenaeus. An incurable wound must be cut away with the sword. What Hippocrates said in medicine I may well say in theology: What iron does not cure, fire cures.

As for the common people, restrain them by laws and fines, burn their books and prohibit their private religious meetings: once the cause is removed, the effect will soon cease. But for prophets, dreamers and such ignorant, simple people whose minds are disturbed through fasting, excessive meditation, religious scrupulosity or melancholy, the best means of restoring them to a sound mind is to change their way of life and combine discussion, threats, promises and persuasion with medical treatment.

Hercules of Saxony had such a prophet entrusted to his care in Venice. The man believed he was Elijah and insisted on fasting as Elijah had done. The physician dressed someone as an angel, who said he had come from heaven to bring divine food. In this way he stopped the man’s fast and administered medicine; through the intervention of this counterfeit angel the man was cured.

Rhazes, the Arabian physician, in his Comprehensive Book, book 1, chapter 9, speaks of a man in a similar condition who complained to him and asked for help. I asked him, he says, what was wrong. He replied: I am constantly meditating on heaven and hell, and think I see and speak with fiery spirits, smell sulphur, and so on. These ideas carry me away so completely that I can neither eat nor sleep nor attend to my business. I cured him, says Rhazes, partly by persuasion and partly by medicine, and have treated many others in the same way.