The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Jews of old tested their maidens “by a thin membrane” called the hymen. Laurentius in his Anatomy, Columbus in book 12, chapter 16, Capivaccius in book 4, chapter 11, On Disorders of the Womb, Vincentius Alsarius of Genoa in the fourth hundred of his Medical Questions, Hieronymus Mercurialis in his Consultations, Ambroise Paré, and Julius Caesar Claudinus in Response 4 extensively refute this, as well as the test “by rupturing veins so that blood flows”: they maintain that it is no adequate proof.

Yet others defend it: Caspar Bartholin in his Institutes of Anatomy, book 1, chapter 31; Pineau of Paris; Albertus Magnus in On the Secrets of Women, chapters 9 and 10; and so on. They think the others speak too much in women’s favour.

Ludovicus Boncialus, in his work on women, book 2, chapter 2, “maintains that the natural constriction of the lips of the womb, in which they claim virginity consists, can be produced by astringent medicines; and even if they have been deflowered, cunning women,” he says, “deceive us in these matters. Alsarius Crucius of Genoa says the same in almost the same words. So does Avicenna, book 3, fen 20, treatise 1, chapter 47; Rhazes, Continens, book 24; and Rodrigo de Castro, On the Nature of Women, book 1, chapter 3.”

An old bawd of a nurse in Aristaenetus—like that Spanish Celestina, “who made five thousand virgins into women, and by her art as many women into virgins”—comforted a beautiful girl she knew who wept and lamented that she had been deflowered and, now about to be married, feared it would be discovered. She replied reassuringly, “Do not be afraid, daughter,” and so on: Fear not, daughter; I will teach you a trick to remedy it. But these matters take us off the path.

What is the purpose of all those astrological questions—“whether she is a virgin, whether she is chaste, whether she is a sexually experienced woman”—and those strange, absurd tests in Albertus Magnus; in Baptista Porta’s Magic, book 2, chapter 21; and in Wecker’s On Secrets, book 5, using stones and fumigations to make women urinate and confess I know not what in their sleep? Some jealous brain first devised them.

And to what passion should we attribute those severe laws concerning jealousy, Numbers 5:14, and adulterers, Deuteronomy 22:22, among the Hebrews, among the Egyptians—read Boemus, On the Customs of Peoples, book 1, chapter 5; for the Carthaginians, chapter 6; for the Turks, book 2, chapter 11—among the ancient Athenians and the Italians of today? Under these laws people are to be severely punished, cut to pieces, burned—burned alive—buried alive, with various ordeals of purgation and so on. Are these not so many symptoms of incredible jealousy?

We may say the same of those Vestal virgins who carried water in a sieve, as Tatia did in Rome, in the eight-hundredth year from the city’s foundation, before the senators; and Aemilia, “an innocent virgin,” who ran over hot irons, as Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, did while the king himself watched, and similar cases.