The Anatomy of Melancholy

Now when those other circumstances of time and place, opportunity and persistent solicitation, combine, what will they not accomplish?

A favourable opportunity can win the most reluctant woman, If he chooses his moment so wisely that he is sure not to fail; Then he who loves her playful humour, and skilfully blends his dalliance, Makes the love that swims in her eye dive into her heart.

At plays, masques, great feasts and banquets, for example, one man singles out his wife to dance, another courts her in his presence, a third tempts her, and a fourth slips into her favour with a pleasing compliment and a sweet smile, ingratiating himself with a double-entendre. So did that merry fellow in the satirist with his Glycerium, “sitting beside her and affectionately pressing the inside of her palm,”

You may freely take what my garden contains, If you give me what your garden contains,

and many such things, and so forth. And then, as the poet says,

She cannot long remain chaste Who is assailed on every side.

For after a great feast, “In wine a woman often fails to recognize her own man.” Noah, says Jerome, “exposed in drunkenness the nakedness he had covered for six hundred years in sobriety.” Lot slept with his daughters when drunk, as Cinyras did with Myrrha,

For what does drunken Venus care?

The most sexually restrained may be overcome. Or if, in another way, they keep bad company, those who are modest in themselves and dare not transgress, “encouraged by others, grow shameless and bold, and acquire a bad habit.”

One woman corrupts marriage for the sake of gain; Another, herself transgressing, wants many companions in her disease.

Or if they live in suspect places—an ill-reputed inn, near brothels, near monks or friars, Nevizzano adds—where there are many tempters and solicitors, idle people who frequent their company, it may give reasonable grounds for suspicion. Martial long ago inveighed against women who feigned illness to go to the baths; for in this way, often,

Leaving her husband behind, She arrives a Penelope and leaves a Helen.

Aeneas Sylvius issues a warning against princes’ courts, because there are “so many handsome young men making promises,” so many splendid suitors to tempt her, and so on. “If you leave her in such a place, you will probably find her in company you dislike: either they have come to her, or she has gone to them.”

Kornmann makes a sceptical joke in his lustful Country: “Is a maiden’s chastity considered untouched when scholars frequently visit her?” And Baldus the lawyer continues the mockery: “When a scholar,” he says, “speaks with a girl, he is not presumed to be saying the Our Father to her.” When a scholar talks privately with a maiden or another man’s wife, it is presumed that he is not saying an Our Father.

Or if I see a monk or friar climbing a ladder at midnight into a maiden’s or widow’s bedroom window, I shall hardly think he is going there to administer the sacraments or hear her confession. These are the ordinary causes of jealousy, which intensify or diminish as their circumstances vary.