The Anatomy of Melancholy

But although melancholy and despair often occur together, they do not always do so. There is a great difference: melancholy fears without a cause; despair fears on serious grounds. Melancholy is caused by fear and grief, while this torment produces them, together with the utmost bitterness. Much melancholy occurs without distress of conscience, as Bright and Perkins explain through four reasons. Yet melancholy alone may sometimes be a sufficient cause of this terror of conscience.

Felix Platter found this in his observations: some melancholy people think themselves damned, uncared for by God and not predestined, and so on. They think they are not predestined and that God has forsaken them, though otherwise they are very zealous and religious. It is commonly seen that melancholy arising from fear of God’s judgement and hellfire drives people to despair; excessive fear and sorrow often end in it.

Unbearable pain and anguish, prolonged sickness, captivity, misery, loss of property or friends, and lesser griefs sometimes produce it, as do other dreadful misfortunes. If they are not relieved immediately, says Mersenne, they doubt whether God exists: if they are not eased at once, they doubt whether there is any God. They rave, curse and become mad with despair because good people are oppressed, the wicked flourish, and they do not receive what they believe they deserve. Their inability to endure calamity brings them into this distressed condition.

Democritus put out his eyes so that he would not see the success of wicked citizens, because he could not bear to see wicked people prosper; he was therefore ready to kill himself, as Aulus Gellius writes of him.

Felix Platter has a memorable example of this kind: a painter’s wife in Basel became melancholy over her son’s death and through melancholy fell into despair. She thought God would not forgive her sins, and for four months continually raved that she was in hellfire, already damned. Once the humour is stirred up, every small thing aggravates and inflames it, according to the sufferer’s disposition.

The same author gives the example of a merchant who, after losing a little wheat he had kept too long, was troubled in conscience because he had not sold it sooner or given it to the poor. He was nevertheless a good scholar and an accomplished theologian. No persuasion could dislodge his belief that he was damned for this deed; in other matters he was very judicious and sensible.

Solitude, excessive fasting, religious meditation and contemplation of God’s judgements generally accompany this melancholy and are principal causes of it, as Navarrus maintains. For some people, associating with others troubled in this way is enough to cause distress.

Some, because of prolonged fasting, study and heavenly meditations, continually occupy their minds with sacred matters and religion, and so on. Many, says Pieter van Foreest, fall into such attacks through prolonged fasting and intense meditation on heavenly things;