The Anatomy of Melancholy

Low birth is a great disgrace in some people’s eyes, especially if they are wealthy, hold office, and rise in public life. Then, as he observes, if their birth does not match their position and that of their colleagues, they are deeply embarrassed and ashamed of themselves. Some scorn their own father and mother, disown brothers and sisters along with their other relatives and friends, and will not let them come near while they are displaying their grandeur. They think such beggarly beginnings disgrace their greatness.

Simon in Lucian, after acquiring a little wealth, changed his name from Simon to Simonides because so many of his relatives were beggars, and burned down the house where he was born so that no one could point it out. Others buy titles and coats of arms and force their way into ancient families by every means: falsifying pedigrees, appropriating armorial shields, all because they do not want to appear low-born.

The reason is that a company of people who are all outward show so admire this gentility and give it such honour. Among Germans, Frenchmen, and Venetians, the gentry scorn the common people and will not allow them to marry into their families. They keep them down and use them like so many asses to carry burdens.

In everyday talk and quarrels, the most insulting and abusive name we can attach to a man, or the first we give him, is “low-born rogue,” “beggarly rascal,” and the like. Yet in my judgment this should trouble people least of all their grievances. Of all vanities and follies, boasting of gentle birth is the greatest. What do they brag so much about, claiming such superiority as if they were demigods? Birth?

Has confidence in your ancestry made you so bold?

It is a nonentity, a mere flash, a ceremony, a trifle, a thing of nothing. Consider the beginnings, present condition, progress, and end of the gentry, and then tell me what it is. Oppression, fraud, swindling, usury, knavery, pimping, murder, and tyranny are the beginnings of many ancient families. One man has been a bloodsucker, a murderer of his own kin, the death of many a helpless soul in unjust quarrels and rebellions; he has made many an orphan and poor widow, and for that he is made a lord or an earl, and his descendants gentlemen forever after. Another has been a bawd, a pimp to some great man, a parasite, a slave; he has prostituted himself, his wife, or his daughter to some lustful prince, and for that he is raised to high rank.

Tiberius advanced many to honours in his time because they were notorious whoremongers and heavy drinkers. Many enter this parchment roll, as one writer calls it, through flattery or swindling. Search your ancient families, and out of a multitude you will scarcely find any, as Aeneas Sylvius observes, “who do not have a criminal origin”: whose beginnings were not wicked.