The Anatomy of Melancholy

And how do they usually occupy themselves? They sit down to eat and drink, lie down to sleep, and rise to play. Where are their worth and ability? In a few coats of arms: eagles, lions, serpents, bears, tigers, dogs, crosses, diagonal bands, horizontal bands, and similar baubles, which they commonly display in their galleries, porches, windows, on bowls, platters, coaches, in tombs, churches, on people’s sleeves, and so on.

If he can hawk and hunt, ride a horse, play cards and dice, swagger, drink, swear, smoke tobacco gracefully, sing, dance, dress fashionably, court and please his mistress, spout grandiose nonsense, behave arrogantly, sneer, strut, despise others, and perform a little more theatrical, apish courtesy than the rest, he is an accomplished, well-qualified gentleman—“splendid praise indeed!” These are their chief occupations, this their highest recommendation.

What, then, is gentility, this parchment nobility, but what Agrippa defines: a refuge for knavery and wickedness, a cloak for evil and detestable vices—pride, fraud, contempt, boasting, oppression, deceit, lust, gluttony, malice, fornication, adultery, ignorance, and impiety? A nobleman, then, is likely, as he concludes, to be an atheist, an oppressor, a sensualist, a dupe, a fool, an ignorant idiot, a mere exterior, a glow-worm, a proud fool, an absolute ass, “a slave to his belly and groin”: a slave to his lust and belly, “strong only in lust.”

As Salvian observed of his fellow-countrymen, the Aquitanians in France, “as they were foremost in titles, so also in vices.” And the Cabinet du Roy, their own writer, distinguishes the others: the nobles of Berry are mostly lechers; those of Touraine, thieves; those of Narbonne, greedy; those of Guyenne, counterfeiters; those of Provence, atheists; those of Reims, superstitious; those of Lyon, treacherous; of Normandy, proud; of Picardy, insolent, and so on. We may conclude generally: the greater the men, the more vicious.

Finally, as Aeneas Sylvius adds, they are mostly miserable, foolish, filthy fellows, like the walls of their houses: fine outside, foul within. What do you boast about now? What are you gaping and marvelling at? Do you admire him for his fine clothes, horses, dogs, handsome houses, manors, orchards, gardens, and walks? Why? A fool can own all this as well as he; whoever thinks him a better man, a nobleman, because he has it is himself a fool. Now go and boast of your gentle birth.

Presumably this is what makes the Turks today scorn nobility and all those blustering, inflated titles that so swell people’s heads—unless those who first acquired the honour sustain it by some outstanding quality or exceptional worth.