The Anatomy of Melancholy

Why does this plague, choosing luxurious homes, Enter humble households less often, While ordinary people keep their feelings sound?

Why, you ask, are poor people often free, While luxurious homes are always troubled?

Because poor people eat coarse food, work hard, and go with wool next to their skin and with little clothing. “Poverty has nothing with which to feed its love.” Guianerius therefore prescribes that his patient wear haircloth next to his skin, go barefoot and barelegged in cold weather, and whip himself now and then, as monks do—but above all, fast. Not on sweet wine, mutton and broth, as many of those gluttons do, however much they put on Lenten faces and whatever they pretend, but abstaining from every kind of food.

Fasting is a sufficient remedy by itself. For, as Jason Pratensis maintains, the bodies of people who eat plentifully and live at ease “are full of evil spirits and devils, of devilish thoughts; there is no better medicine for them than fasting.” Hildesheim, in his second collection, adds to hunger “frequent baths, much exercise and sweating,” but prescribes hunger and fasting before all the rest. Indeed, our Saviour’s pronouncement is that “this kind of devil is cast out only by fasting and prayer”; hence the Church Fathers’ extravagant praise of fasting.

“As hunger,” says Ambrose, “is a friend to virginity, so it is an enemy to lust; but a full stomach overthrows chastity and fosters every kind of temptation.” If your horse is too spirited, Jerome advises taking away some of his fodder. By this means those Pauls, Hilaries, Anthonies and famous hermits subdued the lusts of the flesh. By this means Hilarion made his ass—as he called his own body—stop kicking, as Jerome relates in his life, when the devil tempted him to such a foul offence.

By this means the Indian Brahmans kept themselves chaste: they lay on the ground covered with skins, as the Redshanks do on heather, and ate sparingly of a single dish. Guianerius would have all young men follow this practice. If that fails, Gordonius would have them thoroughly whipped or, to cool their ardour, kept in prison and fed on bread and water until they acknowledge their error and change their minds.

If imprisonment and hunger do not subdue them, then, according to Crates of Thebes, “time must wear it out; if time fails, the last refuge is a noose.” But, you will say, this is spoken in jest. Fasting, however, must certainly be continued; and just as they must abstain from the foods mentioned earlier that stimulate sexual desire or provoke lust, so they must follow the opposite diet.