The Anatomy of Melancholy

As Ammianus describes her in book 14, she is the queen of causes and the governor of events: now she pulls down the proud, now she raises and encourages the good. He gives Eusebius as an example; Nicephorus, in his Ecclesiastical History, book 10, chapter 35, gives Maximinus and Julian.

Terrifying examples of God’s just judgement, wrath and vengeance appear throughout histories: some people were eaten alive by rats and mice, such as Popiel II, King of Poland, in the year 830, with his wife and children. A similar story is told of Hatto, Archbishop of Mainz, in 969, likewise devoured by these vermin,

a story which, although the Jesuit Serarius disputes it with twenty-two arguments in his History of Mainz, book 4, chapter 5, Trithemius, Münster, the Magdeburg historians and many others report as true. I find another such example in Gerald of Wales’s Journey through Wales, book 2, chapter 2—and where does one not?

Yet despite all these terrors of conscience, these frequent and frightening punishments, or whatever else may cause or worsen this dreadful affliction in other religions, I see no reason at all why a Papist should ever despair or be troubled by his sins. However dissolute a wretch, notorious a villain or monstrous a sinner he may be, he can receive free pardon and complete remission of all his sins from that treasury of indulgences and merits which the pope administers.

There are so many general pardons for ages to come—for forty thousand years to come—so many jubilees, such frequent releases from the prison of purgatory for all souls, whether now living or after the body’s dissolution, so many particular Masses said daily in different churches, and so many altars consecrated for this purpose,

that if a man has money or friends, or will make the effort to visit such an altar, hear a Mass, say a prescribed number of Our Fathers and perform such and such a penance, he cannot go wrong. It is impossible for his mind to be troubled or for any scruple to disturb him.

Besides, the Schedule of Fees of the Apostolic Chamber, first published to raise money in the days of Leo X, that grasping pope, and since circulated for the same purpose, sets such low rates and grants dispensations for every offence—perjury, murder, incest, adultery and so on—for so many grossi or dollars. It seems to me enough to invite anyone to sin and provoke someone to offend who otherwise would not.

Such comforting remission, so lenient and easily obtained a pardon, so ready to hand and secured at such little expense and effort—I cannot see how anyone with friends among them, as I say, or money in his purse, or at least the will to seek relief, can come to harm or become distressed; how he can despair, be in danger of damnation or be troubled in mind.