The Anatomy of Melancholy

Cities are likewise laid waste by wars, fires, plagues, floods, wild beasts, declining trade, blocked harbours, and the sea’s violence. Antwerp can bear witness in recent times, Syracuse in ancient times, Brindisi in Italy, and Rye and Dover here at home; so can many cities that today fear the sea’s fury and struggle against it, as the Venetians do, at immense expense.

But the commonest maladies arise from the people themselves: first, when religion and the worship of God are neglected, changed by innovations, or altered; where people neither fear God nor obey their ruler; where atheism, self-indulgence, sacrilege, simony, and all such impieties are freely practised, that country cannot prosper. When Abraham came to Gerar and saw a wicked land, he said that surely there was no fear of God in that place.

Cyprian Echovius, a Spanish writer on places, praises Borcino above all other Spanish cities: “There was no beggar there, no poor person, and so on, but everyone was rich and prosperous.” He gives the reason: “They were more religious than their neighbours.” Why was Israel so often plundered by its enemies and carried into captivity, if not for idolatry, neglect of God’s word, and sacrilege—even for the fault of a single Achan? What, then, should we expect, with our multitudes of Achans, church robbers, and patrons who sell church appointments? How can people hope to flourish when they neglect their religious duties and live, for the most part, in self-indulgence?

Other public grievances harm the political body as a whole: changes in laws and customs, violations of privileges, widespread oppression, sedition, and so on, as Aristotle, Bodin, Botero, Junius, Arniscus, and others observe. I will only touch on the chief ones. “Inability to govern,” “disorder,” confusion, bad government: these arise from unskilled, idle, grasping, greedy, unjust, reckless, or tyrannical magistrates—from fools, ignoramuses, children, the proud, wilful, biased, and imprudent; oppressors, scatterbrains, and tyrants, unable or unfit to administer such offices.

Many noble cities and flourishing kingdoms are laid waste in this way. The whole body groans beneath such heads, and all its members must suffer—as those fine provinces in Asia Minor and elsewhere groan today beneath the burden of Turkish government, and the vast kingdoms of Muscovy and Russia beneath a tyrannical duke.

Who ever heard of more civilised, wealthy, and populous countries than Greece and Asia Minor, “abounding in every kind of wealth, in inhabitants, strength, power, splendour, and magnificence”? Or that marvel among countries, the Holy Land, which in so small an area could sustain so many towns and cities and supply so many fighting men? Egypt, another paradise, is now barbarous, deserted, and almost waste under the despotic government of an imperious Turk: “It is crushed beneath an intolerable yoke of slavery,” as one writer says.