Affinity and consanguinity

Use in the book

The inherited passages present bonds that fail under pressure. In the satire on quarrels, neither marriage ties nor blood relationships can restrain resentment if offence or self-interest intervenes. The scholarly applicant similarly pleads family connection as well as competence, but the patron refuses advancement to a man without money; even if he receives him into the household, long service precedes reward. These are obligations disregarded and claims resisted, not assertions that family ties have no meaning. The later consolation for a rejected applicant reverses the vantage point: appointments are not always awarded for merit, and family connections may help the successful rival. Still later Burton says that neither marriage nor blood can restrain “us” when property or self-interest is threatened, including his own company in the indictment.

Affinity can also unite people whose characters differ. Alongside shared study, service or misfortune, a marriage connection can make disputants combine against a third party. Blood relationship is separately called a natural cause of affection between parents and children and among relatives. Yet Burton’s confident maternal example compresses Isaiah’s more qualified formulation, and the very next paragraph supplies harsh parents, disobedient children and sibling discord. The bond is an expectation against which failures are judged, not a guarantee. Friendship is preferred to marriage or blood ties only “if” one accepts Nepos’s judgment; Burton turns an account of shared character into a maxim. His later claim that religious allegiance can outweigh both family connections likewise belongs to a conditional, confessional account of conversion, not a neutral description of Muslims.

Marriage kinship is also a public and economic arrangement. In the argument against excessively severe parental restrictions, Burton attributes to Plato the advice neither to avoid poor connections nor seek rich ones, especially where no pressing reason or serious impediment requires refusal. His dynastic examples expose another pressure: the emperor’s wish for a marriage alliance leads to the reported childhood betrothal of Simonida, whose unequal match Burton criticizes. Giovio’s Galeazzo example makes foreign marriage alliances splendid but ruinously expensive. The ages, costs and historical details remain attributed reports rather than independently verified facts.

An enlarged company of relatives by marriage appears among the benefits in the twelve-point case for matrimony attributed to Jacobus de Voragine. Burton’s subsequent English calls them kinsmen, less explicitly specifying the marriage connection. The later counter-parody turns the wife’s friends into an expense; it is introduced as an exercise, not silently adopted as the sole verdict. The continuation weighs good and bad marriages. The Latin and English enumerations therefore belong to a staged argument, rather than an unconditional endorsement of every claimed advantage.

The wider meanings are just as important. The affinity between a political body and a household is an analogy of government and scale, with reported authorities behind it; their alleged common lifespan is not an established law. Medical affinity similarly marks resemblance: some writers combine madness and melancholy, but Burton chooses to treat them separately, and elsewhere admits that his three species overlap and are difficult to distinguish. The question “What affinity have these two?” asks about a relevant connection between intercourse and melancholic humour. It introduces strict qualifications to preceding historical claims of benefit, rather than endorsing a general remedy. Finally, the Latin postscript’s conditional claim that Democritus Junior is akin to the elder philosopher concerns literary spirit and the threatened retaliation of wit, not verified descent. A further Latin use makes participation the issue: parents are accused of denying their children any share in what youth brings. The plural affines belongs to a negated infinitival construction, “nor have anything to do with” those experiences. Burton interweaves a young man’s complaint in Terence with his own attack on parental restrictions; the denial is the position he criticizes.

Related entries

Dowry and jointure: The property settlements accompanying marriage and the scholar’s metaphorical lack of a dowry.

Bowels: Affection and compassion expressed through bodily language.

Friendship: Friendship and the qualified comparison with family ties.

Marriage: The competing cases for and against marriage.

Parents and children: Expected family affection and parental judgment.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 23–25marriage and blood ties fail under the stated conditions of offence and self-interest; the surrounding satire contrasts professions with conduct.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 18–20political and household bodies compared, with attributed claims about scale, distress and lifespan.
3. To the Reader Who Misuses His Leisure · paragraphs 2–4the conditional Latin postscript makes Democritus Junior akin to the elder in spirit and satirical power.
4. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraphs 19–21resemblance between historical disease categories, reported disagreement and Burton’s decision to discuss them separately.
5. Subsection 4. The Species or Kinds of Melancholy · paragraphs 53–55the three species’ affinity, intermixture and acknowledged difficulty of discrimination.
6. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 27–29the scholar’s frustrated claims of family connection and competence, the penniless applicant and conditional service to a patron.
7. Member 2. Retention and Evacuation Corrected · paragraphs 4–6alleged sexual remedies followed by the question of connection, explicit exceptions and limits; historical claims rather than practical guidance.
8. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults, Slander, Mockery and the Like · paragraphs 3–5consolation after rejection, family influence and the qualification that offices are not always awarded by merit.
9. Member 2 Subsection 1 Human Love, Which Varies With Its Objects: The Useful, The Pleasant and the Honourable · paragraphs 45–47property disputes overcome marriage and blood ties; Burton’s first-person plural includes himself and his readers.
10. Subsection 2 Pleasant Objects of Love · paragraphs 10–12shared character contrasted with circumstantial bonds, including marriage, that can unite people against an outsider.
11. Subsection 2 Pleasant Objects of Love · paragraphs 16–18blood relationship and expected parental affection, the compressed Isaiah example and immediate counterexamples.
12. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable and Honourable · paragraphs 28–32the conditional preference for friendship, Burton’s adaptation of Nepos and the following poetic distinctions.
13. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 78–80parents’ obstruction of marriage and youthful experience; the negated Latin participation phrase adapts and interweaves Terence’s speech.
14. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 85–87restrained parental judgment and marriage kinship without a preference for wealth; the Latin Plato formulation is in note 11074.
15. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 41–45refusal, political pressure and the unequal Simonida match, followed by ambition and the cost of foreign dynastic alliances.
16. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 19–34the attributed pro-marriage list, separate English version, counter-parody and renewed weighing of the two sides.
17. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraphs 7–9family ties used as a comparison for religious allegiance within Burton’s confessional polemic; the conversion condition must remain explicit.

In this edition

The inherited pairs are “affinitie” → “marriage tie” and “consanguinitie” → “blood relationship”, followed by “affinity, consanguinity” → “kinship by marriage or blood”. The last rendering shares kinship between the two qualifying phrases and supplies their alternative construction with or. These equivalents preserve the distinction; affinity in those passages does not merely mean personal sympathy.

“Affinitie” → “family connections” in the appointment discussion is broader wording, with marriage connection still included. “Affinity” → “connected by marriage” recasts a noun as a description of persons. The Latin “affinitas” → “relationship by marriage” and the marginal “pauperum affinitatem” → “kinship with the poor” retain the same core relationship, while “externas affinitates” → “foreign marriage alliances” makes the political arrangement explicit. The margin is aligned with its own editorial translation, not mistaken for a separate English sentence in Burton’s body.

For the extended sense, “Great affinity there is betwixt a Political and Oeconomical body” becomes “A political body and a household body are closely akin”: the whole construction is recast, and great contributes closely. “What affinity have these two?” becomes “What connection have these two?”, preserving the question. In the postscript, Latin adjectival “seniori Democrito saltem affinis” becomes the noun construction “at least a kinsman of the elder Democritus”, with an English article supplied. These uses prevent a marriage-only definition from being imposed on every occurrence.

affinis

Printed “affinis” (Latin; lemma).

Related or akin: Latin affinis, here figuratively associated with another person’s spirit.

Here: Affinis is a nominative singular adjective with seniori Democrito, to the elder Democritus; saltem means at least. The modern recasts the adjective as the noun phrase a kinsman, supplying the article.

Context: The mock threat begins if Democritus Junior really is what he claims; affinity to the older philosopher is a literary/personality comparison, not a demonstrated genealogy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: seniori Democrito saltem affinis

Modern rendering: at least a kinsman of the elder Democritus

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Latin adjective affinis becomes a kinsman; seniori Democrito supplies of the elder Democritus and saltem at least. The English article accompanies the noun recasting.

affinis · affinium

Printed “affinium” (Latin; lemma).

Of relatives through marriage: genitive plural of substantival Latin affinis.

Here: Dulcis means dear or sweet; turba a company or crowd; affinium specifies relations acquired by marriage. The article The is supplied in the modern noun phrase.

Context: This is the ninth pro-marriage argument in a list attributed to Jacobus de Voragine; Burton gives a separate English version, then stages a counter-parody as an exercise before weighing the sides.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: dulcis affinium turba

Modern rendering: The dear company of relatives by marriage

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The Latin noun phrase becomes an English noun phrase with a supplied definite article; affinium contributes of relatives by marriage, not the whole company phrase.

affinis · affines

Printed “affines” (Latin; lemma).

Sharing in or having involvement with something: plural Latin affinis.

Here: Affines with the genitive earum rerum means participants in those things; esse supplies being, nec nor, and quas secum fert adolescentia the things that youth brings with it. The full construction denies young people participation in youthful experiences; it does not describe their family relationships.

Context: Burton accuses parents of forbidding marriage and youthful pleasures, interweaving Clitipho’s complaint in Terence with his own prose. The prohibition belongs to the parents he criticizes, not to the article’s advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nec earum affines esse rerum quas secum fert adolescentia

Modern rendering: nor have anything to do with the things that youth brings with it

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The infinitival phrase affines esse is rendered have anything to do with; the negation nec remains nor and the genitive-relative construction supplies the things that youth brings with it.

affinitas

Printed “affinitas” (Latin; lemma).

Kinship through marriage: Latin affinitas.

Here: The nominative singular noun is compared with similarity of character in the preceding friendship maxim. It does not mean shared temperament; that is the competing ground of friendship.

Context: Burton restates Nepos’s explanation of a particular friendship as a maxim, and qualifies the surrounding preference with if you accept that judgment.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinitas

Modern rendering: relationship by marriage

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinitatem” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: affinitas.

Here: Affinitatem is accusative singular of affinitas, marriage kinship; pauperum is genitive plural, of or with the poor. It is what young men are told neither to avoid nor, for the rich counterpart, pursue.

Context: Burton’s Latin margin compresses Plato’s civic argument about marriage; the modern note translates that quotation.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: pauperum affinitatem

Modern rendering: kinship with the poor

Alignment scope: Original marginal Latin phrase aligned with its supplied editorial translation in the same note

Word and construction: Affinitatem contributes kinship and pauperum with the poor in the note’s quoted translation.

Modern container: note

Further local use

Printed “affinitates” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: affinitas.

Here: Affinitates is accusative plural of affinitas, here alliances made through marriages; externas supplies foreign.

Context: Burton attributes to Giovio the argument that Galeazzo’s magnificent dynastic connections proved harmful and almost fatal; the financial figures and historical title await collation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: externas affinitates

Modern rendering: foreign marriage alliances

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

affinity · affinitie

Printed “affinitie” (English; lemma).

Kinship or relationship through marriage.

Here: Affinitie names the marriage connection, distinct from the adjacent blood relationship. It is among bonds that ought to restrain hostility.

Context: Burton’s satirical complaint makes offence or threatened self-interest the condition under which these restraints fail.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinitie

Modern rendering: marriage tie

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinitie” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Family connections here include the marriage relationship. The modern wording is broader than marriage alone.

Context: Burton consoles a rejected applicant by saying appointments are not always based on merit; the qualification not always is essential.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinitie

Modern rendering: family connections

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Relationship through marriage is recast as being connected by marriage. It is a circumstantial bond, not proof of similar character.

Context: Burton says people differing in character may unite against a third party despite disagreement among themselves.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinity

Modern rendering: connected by marriage

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The original noun is recast as a participial description, connected by marriage, in the restructured list.

Further local use

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Affinity supplies marriage kinship, poor folks the poor families.

Context: Burton urges parents not to be too severe, especially without pressing reason or serious impediment, and attributes the public-interest argument to Plato.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the affinity of poor folks

Modern rendering: kinship with poor families

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Affinity is an alliance established through marriage; his refers to the neighboring prince, a relation supplied by context in the modern alliance phrase.

Context: Burton criticizes the emperor’s political arrangement of Simonida’s childhood marriage; the reported ages are retained as source figures, not independently verified.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: his affinity

Modern rendering: an alliance by marriage

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The possessive his is not separately repeated; an alliance by marriage names the relationship with the prince already discussed.

Alignment qualification: Contextual recasting rather than a word-for-word possessive alignment.

affinity · local use 1

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Resemblance or close relationship between things.

Here: Affinity expresses the analogy between the state and household; great contributes closely. Oeconomical concerns household government. No actual marriage relationship is asserted.

Context: Burton reports Scaliger’s scale comparison and other authors’ alleged household/state lifespans; the latter are attributed speculation, not an established historical law.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Great affinity there is betwixt a Political and Oeconomical body

Modern rendering: A political body and a household body are closely akin

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The noun construction Great affinity... betwixt becomes the adjectival predicate closely akin; the two bodies remain its subjects.

Further local use

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Similarity or close relation between historical categories of melancholy and madness, rather than family kinship.

Context: Burton reports authors who join these conditions, then expressly follows those who treat them separately. Similarity is not identity or a modern diagnosis.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: their affinity

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: affinity.

Here: Affinity names the closeness of the three historical species; such becomes so.

Context: Burton admits diagnostic difficulty because the species resemble one another and are mixed with other diseases; this is a stated limit on the taxonomy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: having such affinity

Modern rendering: so closely related

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Having such affinity is recast as the adjective phrase so closely related within the restructured sentence.

affinity · local use 2

Printed “affinity” (English; lemma).

A connection or relevant relationship.

Here: The question asks what intercourse has to do with the melancholic humour; affinity supplies connection, not marriage kinship.

Context: Burton invokes Arnoldus’s objection and qualifies preceding alleged therapeutic benefits with unless: excess seed or blood, preceding desire, or specified accustomed circumstances. These are historical claims, not advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: What affinity have these two?

Modern rendering: What connection have these two?

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

affinity and consanguinity

Printed “affinity, consanguinity” (English; family).

The paired distinction between marriage kinship and blood kinship.

Here: Affinity supplies by marriage; consanguinity by blood. The modern uses kinship once and makes the alternative explicit with or. These claims of relationship stand beside, rather than replace, the scholar’s competence.

Context: Burton satirizes a patron who withholds advancement from a penniless scholar; even conditional household employment entails long service before an appointment.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinity, consanguinity

Modern rendering: kinship by marriage or blood

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Two nouns are recast as one shared noun kinship with alternative qualifying phrases; or is supplied by that construction.

Further local use

Printed “affinity, consanguinity” (English; family).

Citation key: affinity and consanguinity.

Here: The same two family connections fail to restrain hostility over property or self-interest.

Context: Burton now says us and we, implicating his own circle and readers rather than accusing only other people; the passage remains conditional on dispute and self-interest.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinity, consanguinity

Modern rendering: marriage ties, blood relationship

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinity or consanguinity” (English; family).

Citation key: affinity and consanguinity.

Here: Affinity supplies marriage connection, consanguinity blood connection; ties is shared in the modern phrase.

Context: The preference for friendship is expressly conditional on accepting Cornelius Nepos’s judgment. The Latin that follows is Burton’s maxim-like adaptation of Nepos, not a separately established universal hierarchy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinity or consanguinity

Modern rendering: ties of marriage or blood

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “affinity or consanguinity” (English; family).

Citation key: affinity and consanguinity.

Here: The two family connections serve as the comparison for a claimed stronger religious bond.

Context: Burton’s account of welcome if someone becomes Muslim is conditional and embedded in confessional polemic, not a neutral description of a whole population.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: affinity or consanguinity

Modern rendering: relationship by marriage or blood

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

consanguinity

Printed “consanguinitie” (English; lemma).

Kinship or relationship by blood.

Here: The blood connection is distinguished from affinitie, kinship through marriage.

Context: Burton lists both as restraints broken when resentment or self-interest intervenes.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: consanguinitie

Modern rendering: blood relationship

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “consanguinity” (English; lemma).

Citation key: consanguinity.

Here: Blood relationship is called a natural cause of affection between parents, children and other relatives. It does not guarantee their conduct.

Context: Burton’s assertion that a mother cannot forget compresses Isaiah, which allows that she may; the next paragraph immediately supplies hard parents, disobedient children and quarrelling siblings.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: consanguinity

Modern rendering: blood relationship

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.