From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The word“Religious Melancholy” names Burton’s disputed subdivision of melancholy continually concerned with religion and divine objects.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe early medical list calls one form “divine or religious fury,” assigns it more properly to melancholy and promises separate treatment.
- In this edition“If they have been precisely given” becomes “If they have been strictly religious”: religious is supplied from the context of the prior disposition.
- A place to readA melancholy divine is a clergyman; the defence of writing across professions does not make every cleric’s illness religious in object.
Meaning
“Religious Melancholy” names Burton’s disputed subdivision of melancholy continually concerned with religion and divine objects. His original marginal sentence explains “still conversant about Religion”: still means continually. The category includes excessive observance, deficient religion and despair of divine mercy. It embraces several kinds of bodily, emotional, moral and theological judgement rather than one present-day diagnosis. “In defect” means through deficiency, not an unfinished description of melancholy.
Related words need their local objects. “A melancholy divine” means a melancholic clergyman, not necessarily someone whose melancholy concerns God. “Religious persons” can mean members of religious orders, as in a polemical explanation of ordinary love melancholy. Religious can also praise the piety of people whom Burton regards as physically vulnerable. Conversely, an alleged divine cause of disease does not by itself identify the religious subdivision: divine judgement is invoked in his account of disease more generally.
Use in the book
The early medical list calls one form “divine or religious fury,” assigns it more properly to melancholy and promises separate treatment. The later category belongs to the Third Partition’s account of love, with God as its object. Burton distinguishes accepted love melancholy from the disputed religious subdivision: all, he says, acknowledge a notable symptom, some a cause, but few a species. His claim to have no distinct predecessor is immediately qualified by Sassonia, Foreest and Plater. Sassonia’s quoted “Melancholia Erotica,” love melancholy, divides its objects between God and women, while allowing that some will refuse the religious branch the name melancholy. Plater calls the kind very frequent and says that treating it often greatly hindered him. Burton’s short English restatement preserves frequency but omits that difficulty.
The alleged ancient precedents are not a seamless taxonomy. At the passage, Burton’s body derives a second kind from a first; the Aretaeus-attributed margin instead calls another kind different from the first or second. Its religious self-wounding and otherwise-sound conduct do not establish Aretaeus’s division of love melancholy. The same paragraph recruits Plato’s inspired madness into the argument for religious folly. Burton’s English says that Apollo’s priests at Delphi and those at Dodona benefit the Greeks in frenzy but never when sane; the Latin margin’s seers and priests bring them few or no benefits when sane. These differences belong to Burton’s argumentative assembly, not to a newly verified agreement among his authorities.
Religious inclination gives the symptoms their direction. The synopsis describes the religious person as having visions, prophecy or mental trouble; the fuller account makes these thoughts follow previous devotion and the bodily humour. In the earlier account the person now believes himself inspired, now damned. Such claims are reported experiences, not authenticated revelation or a judgement of salvation. “Precisely given” therefore means previously strict or scrupulous in religion. Neither the conditional construction nor Burton’s humoral explanation makes every devout person ill.
The language of madness also changes with the speaker and the value assigned to inspiration. Burton defends Christians against hostile names such as fanatici, while his imagined Democritus condemns his own age’s “religious madnesse,” including conflict and empty profession. He positively approves “a divine furie, a holy madnesse” and the Bernard-attributed Sanctam insaniam, holy madness, in good people; he refuses the inference that God himself undergoes passions and warns against mistaking the nature of this folly. “A divine ravishment” elsewhere accompanies a humoral explanation of exceptional intellectual ability, while the ensuing authorities dispute bodily and demonic explanations. The golden-chain image of higher beauty also uses divine fury positively. These are significant alternatives to the condemning force of fury in the disputed disease category.
Love of God is the positive foundation of the religious section. Burton praises divine beauty before discussing deviations. He expressly denies that genuine divine worship or love can be excessive: the excess branch concerns misplaced zeal, unnecessary observances and claims to merit beyond duty. True religion supplies courage, comfort and hope; superstition torments. Accordingly, the two extremes are not simply too much and too little feeling. Deficiency includes people who fear God too little and despairing people who distrust mercy too much, because the latter lack hope or trust.
The classification is confessional and often hostile. Burton names pagans, Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Christian sects, yet “some of us” and his criticism of his own church prevent a simple division between diseased outsiders and healthy insiders. The accusation can embrace the totum compositum, the whole compound person: brain, heart, will, understanding, soul and faculties. Later he also describes people as cætera sani, sound in other respects, with imagination impaired on one subject. The comet image makes the restriction memorable. These whole-person and restricted descriptions stand beside one another; they should not be regularized into a single modern clinical account.
Causes extend from institutions and teachers to bodily habits and supernatural agency. The synopsis distinguishes influences from others from dispositions and practices in the sufferers. The developed polemic makes priests, rulers and sect leaders instruments of deception, but Burton expressly allows many sincere religious politicians before attacking most of those he represents as cynical manipulators. He assigns ignorance three roles at once: cause of superstition, symptom, and madness itself. Blind zeal is likewise discussed as both symptom and cause. A role called causal in one sentence should not silently replace the other relations.
The bodily account joins fasting, solitude, diet, melancholy and the Devil’s supposed exploitation of them. Burton claims that none of the listed visions, apparitions and related experiences occurs without bodily or environmental causes, forerunners or concomitants. This is a universal claim in his text; it does not make all the named relations identical. He also allows contemplation, temperance and ecstasy to elevate the soul: “a divine melancholy” can be beneficial. Abuse is what becomes “a cause and symptome of Religious Melancholy.” Guaineri’s “Religious person” is a member of an order, qualified by excessive superstition, solitude or fasting. The body predicts that such a person will certainly become melancholy; the Latin margin specifies excessive fasting and a confident judgement that the person is melancholic, without the body’s explicit future development.
Reported explanations retain their own force. Fracastoro is made to call all the named prophetic women, Sibyls and false prophets “meer melancholy,” using melancholy as a predicate of people. Weyer and Arcolani are then associated with “a sole cause” in wording that also joins the Devil, fasting and solitude. The supplied modern’s sufficient interprets the difficult sole; it does not authorize erasing the combined agencies. Burton subsequently questions whether the purported Sibylline prophecies existed. His statement that narratives about Saint Francis’s stigmata and monastic visions “may justly be referred” to melancholy remains a proposed attribution. The fictional comparisons and the Jesuit “chamber of meditation” belong to polemical persuasion and alleged examples, not independently verified observations.
Symptoms and prognostics encompass communities as well as individuals: attachment to one’s own sect, hatred of others, obstinacy, extraordinary beliefs and destructive zeal. “Religionis acti Furiis” means driven by religion’s Furies, a mythological personification; “irreligious Religion” names practices judged to defeat true religion. Burton oscillates between Democritean laughter and Heraclitean grief. His standards of belief are themselves confessional: alongside attacks on credulity, he requires faith without demonstration in what he regards as Christian mysteries. The prognostics reach persecution, warfare and devastated countries, while admitting shared fault even among those considered best. These are theological and political judgements as well as descriptions of personal distress.
Treatment contains a sustained tension between toleration and coercion. Burton reports proposals for common religion, selective assent and toleration without adopting them all. He calls his own position a middle course while opposing unrestricted toleration and allowing fines, burning books and suppressing meetings. The medical analogy of cutting or burning does not make the policy harmless. He then distinguishes prophets and dreamers whose minds he regards as disturbed, recommending changed living, debate, threats, promises, persuasion and medicine to restore them ad sanam mentem, to a sound mind. The reported cure in the next paragraph uses a fabricated angelic message alongside medicine. Rhazes’s patient speaks of God and angels in the Latin margin; Burton’s body substitutes heaven, hell and fiery spirits. Burton finally says at least some people burnt as prophets or dreamers should instead have received treatment in Bedlam. This alternative belongs to his historical institutional judgement.
The deficiency branch goes beyond unbelief as a stated doctrine. The Melanchthon-attributed monstrosam melancholiam and venenatam melancholiam, monstrous and poisoned melancholy, characterize atheism or impiety in moral and theological language. Burton repeats the descriptions in English. He stages objections to religion through reported voices, then answers them; the objections are not his settled conclusions. He can use Seneca against denial of God and then call him “as mad himself” for the necessity attributed to Stoic fate, which Burton thinks would constrain God. Such madness is a polemical verdict on a position.
Practical hypocrisy receives equally strong attention: people may profess faith, display virtues and attend worship while living by contrary aims. Burton nevertheless reserves knowledge of hearts to God and asks who can examine them. “Their melancholy is at hand” predicts future affliction under divine judgement, rather than merely reporting that all such people already suffer the same illness. Atheism, idolatry, heresy and hypocrisy share a root in his account but grow differently and require “several cures and remedies,” meaning distinct remedies. The hoped-for return ad sanam mentem through theological argument is qualified by “si fieri posset,” if it could be done, and by the admission that arguments often achieve little.
Despair brings further distinctions. Some writers divide it into final and temporary: the final kind is described as incurable and assigned to reprobates, whereas temporary rejection of hope and comfort may afflict the best believers. Burton still calls the temporary kind a grievous sin. Later he denies that a distressed person can therefore judge himself, or another, finally rejected. Melancholy and despair often concur but do not always do so; much melancholy lacks terror of conscience, although Burton also says melancholy may itself suffice to produce that terror. Bodily instrument, conscience, education, preaching, divine permission and demonic agency remain distinguishable explanatory roles. Sufferers’ assertions of damnation are not converted into the article’s verdict.
The ending preserves recovery and charitable judgement alongside severe examples. Particular fatal reports do not establish a universal prognosis. Burton allows impaired will to alter the judgement of an act and commends the cooperation of divines and physicians. His pastoral demands are qualified by the distressed person’s inability to respond, requiring help adapted to the case. The continuation through the final paragraph joins theological consolation to bodily misperception, bounded demonic agency, medicine, counsel, company, occupation and renewed hope. Religious melancholy is therefore not a final pronouncement on someone’s salvation, and its historical remedies are not present-day health advice.
Related entries
Melancholy; Religion and superstition; Love melancholy; Enthusiasm; Ecstasy; Genus and species; Despair; Faith and assurance; Grace; Conscience; Zeal; Precise; Fear; Sorrow
Places to read
- · paragraph 14–DJR-6-22A melancholy divine is a clergyman; the defence of writing across professions does not make every cleric’s illness religious in object.
- · paragraph 12–DJR-7-16Hostile names applied to Christians, including fanatici, are reported and resisted.
- · paragraph 7–DJR-9-16Democritus imagined in the present age: religious madness, confessional conflict, separatism and opportunism.
- · paragraph 29–DJR-12-35Approved divine fury and holy madness, the refusal to attribute passions to God, and the warning against misconstruing spiritual folly.
- Unnumbered First Partition synopsisSymptoms follow inclination; the religious person’s revelations and prophecy are synoptic descriptions.
- · paragraph 36–DJR-22-39Divine or religious fury in the early medical list, assigned more properly to melancholy.
- · paragraph 30–DJR-26-34Conscience, the Regulus syllogism and the forward reference to religious melancholy.
- · paragraph 49–DJR-27-52The postponed category within the division of melancholy.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-28-15Divine judgement as an alleged cause of disease, distinguished from religion as the object of a particular melancholy.
- · paragraph 43–DJR-31-21Demonic causation and religious distress; reported ancient cosmic rule, its rejection, God’s permission, bodily mediation and uncertainty about possession.
- · paragraph 18–DJR-60-25Divine ravishment, learned ability and competing humoral and demonic explanations.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-61-9Prior religious devotion directs symptoms; inspiration and damnation are the sufferer’s changing beliefs.
- · paragraph 8–DJR-63-14Religious and virtuous women within the bodily account; moral worth does not determine the alleged physical susceptibility.
- Unnumbered Third Partition synopsis, supplied position [405]The Third Partition’s synopsis: excess, defect, agents, symptoms, prognostics and treatments.
- · paragraph 38–DJR-109-3The golden chain and divine fury drawing souls towards higher beauty; Burton’s Lucian attribution remains unresolved.
- · paragraph 39–DJR-116-44Religious persons means members of orders in a polemical account of ordinary love melancholy; almost and commonly qualify the reported claims.
- · paragraph 17–DJR-151-29Contested subdivision, all/some/few, religious inclination, Sassonia and Plater, and different claims in the Aretaeus body and margin.
- · paragraph 30–DJR-152-15Divine beauty and love of God as the positive foundation for the ensuing classification.
- · paragraph 16–DJR-152-36True love cannot be excessive; excess and deficiency, religion’s consolations, superstition and the whole composite person.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-153-14Religious differences and self-directed criticism of Burton’s own church and Reformed communities.
- · paragraph 15–DJR-154-15Alleged external agents and religious policy: the distinction between many sincere rulers and most of the cynical politicians Burton subsequently attacks.
- · paragraph 16–DJR-155-9Priests, sect leaders and followers as alleged instruments; the confessional and social scope of the accusation.
- · paragraph 10–DJR-155-46Ignorance, pride, misplaced learning and the claim that ignorance is cause, symptom and madness itself.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-156-25Fasting, solitude and bodily conditions; approved divine melancholy versus abuse; monastic status; combined causation; qualified attribution of visions and polemical allegations.
- [659], 660–663Symptoms, blind zeal as cause and symptom, religion’s Furies, the faith required for Christian mysteries, and irreligious religion.
- · paragraph 35–DJR-159-23Catalogues of strange practices, visions and collective religious behaviour; Burton’s comparisons and allegations remain attributed.
- · paragraph 24–DJR-160-26Sect leaders and followers, obstinacy and hostility; the historical examples extend beyond an individual patient.
- · paragraph 27–DJR-160-51Otherwise sound: the comet image of restricted impairment; persecution, war and shared confessional fault.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-161-27Toleration and coercion; Burton’s middle course, suppression, threats and promises, deceptive and medical treatment, Rhazes’s patient, and the Bedlam comparison.
- · paragraph 28–DJR-162-51Deficiency, monstrous and poisoned melancholy, reported objections to faith, arguments against unbelief, and the charge of madness against Seneca’s determinism.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-163-25Practical hypocrisy, God’s knowledge of hearts, future punishment, distinct remedies and the conditional, often ineffective goal of religious argument.
- · paragraph 26–DJR-163-43Definition, objects and causes of despair; final incurable despair versus temporary despair among the best believers.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-164-56Natural and supernatural explanations, the non-identity of melancholy and despair, conscience, education and preaching.
- · paragraph 1–DJR-166-4Trial, doctrinal controversy, symptoms and particular fatal outcomes; the reports do not establish a universal course.
- · paragraph 5–DJR-166-21Charitable judgement, recovery, divines and physicians, the two-antidotes difficulty, and help fitted to the sufferer’s ability to respond.
- · paragraph 22–DJR-168-51Extended consolation: sin, mercy, faith, predestination, temptation and the refusal to judge oneself or another finally rejected.
- The closing continuation: bodily misperception, limited demonic agency, qualified remedies, counsel and medicine, occupation, company, hope and caution.
- Unnumbered Table · paragraph 161Demonic causation as a historical Table retrieval heading.
- Unnumbered TableLove and hatred as historical Table retrieval headings.
In this edition
“If they have been precisely given” becomes “If they have been strictly religious”: religious is supplied from the context of the prior disposition. “Religious Melancholy in defect” becomes “Religious Melancholy from Deficiency”. “Some divide it into final and temporal” becomes “Some divide it into final and temporary despair”: despair is supplied from the subject, and temporal describes duration rather than a contrast with spiritual affairs.
Body and margin require separate reading. Sassonia’s marginal Latin names God, fasting and vigils where Burton’s body speaks of prayer and fasting. The Aretaeus body and margin differ over the relation between kinds. Guaineri’s margin does not contain the body’s full prediction or all its qualifications. Rhazes’s patient, rather than Rhazes himself, is the speaker of the reported first-person imagining and thinking about God and angels; the physician supplies the enclosing consultation and cure narrative. Editorial translations and explanatory wrappers inside Burton-labelled notes are not themselves original marginal wording.
The opening prints “MEMB. 4.”; the modern corrects it to Member 1 within Section 4. The synopsis and body also differ in their numbering for despair, as the supplied notes explain. First Partition synopsis numbers here are scan locators; the Third Partition’s [405] is a supplied position, corresponding to. The later printed 651 is retained as 651 [659], distinct from the earlier correctly positioned page 651. The modern column is a reading aid, not independent primary authority or proof that Burton’s quoted sources have been freshly collated. Enthusiasm, reprobation and the soul’s faculties retain their historical meanings.
a sole cause
Printed “a sole cause” (English; phrase).
Sole means only or acting alone; here it qualifies melancholy’s claimed causal role in wording that also joins the Devil, fasting and solitude.
Context: Burton reports Weyer and Arcolani after Fracastoro, then questions whether the purported Sibylline prophecies existed. The modern sufficient interprets the difficult sole without proving an exclusive single cause.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: melancholy is a sole cause, and the Divell together, with fasting and solitariness
Modern rendering: melancholy is a sufficient cause, together with the Devil, fasting and solitude
Word and construction: Sole is rendered sufficient in the supplied modern; the original conjunctions preserve the combined agencies and circumstances.
Supplied words note: Sufficient is an interpretive rendering of sole, not a second primary witness or authority to erase the printed wording.
ad sanam mentem · local use 1
Printed “ad sanam mentem” (Latin; phrase).
To a sound mind, the goal assigned to the proposed management of prophets and dreamers regarded as disturbed.
Context: Burton combines changed living, discussion, threats, promises, persuasion and medicine; the preceding policy includes suppression and the following case uses deception.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: reduce them ad sanam mentem
Modern rendering: restoring them to a sound mind
Word and construction: Ad marks the goal, sanam modifies accusative mentem, and reduce supplies restoration. This is a phrase key.
Supplied words note: Them refers to the qualified sufferers just described; restoring renders reduce, not the Latin prepositional phrase alone.
ad sanam mentem · local use 2
Printed “ad sanam mentem” (Latin; phrase).
To a sound mind, qualified by if it could be done, as the hoped-for outcome of theological refutation.
Context: Burton commends apologetic arguments while admitting that they often achieve little; this is religious persuasion framed as a cure.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: si fieri posset, ad sanam mentem
Modern rendering: if it could be done, to a sound mind
Word and construction: The Latin prepositional phrase supplies the goal; si fieri posset makes its attainment conditional.
Supplied words note: It supplies the impersonal construction; sound mind is distinct from Burton’s subsequent English better mind.
approaching melancholy
Printed “their melancholy is at hand” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: their melancholy is at hand
Approaching misery or affliction, represented as the future punishment of hypocrites.
Context: Burton predicts an accounting and divine wrath; he is not merely reporting that all outwardly devout people are currently melancholic. The preceding paragraphs reserve knowledge of hearts to God and ask who can examine them.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Their melancholy is close at hand
Word and construction: At hand means approaching or near; melancholy takes its force from the predicted plague and curse.
Supplied words note: Close articulates nearness; their refers to the hypocrites described in the preceding sequence.
cetera sani
Printed “cætera sani” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: cætera sani
Sound in other respects: sani is masculine plural, with cætera an accusative of respect, limiting the supposed impairment to one field.
Context: Burton’s comet simile combines a restricted psychological description with sectarian invective.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: otherwise sound
Supplied words note: Otherwise makes the accusative of respect cætera idiomatic; sani is masculine plural, describing people as sound in other respects.
devout and religious
Printed “devout and religious” (English; phrase).
Devoted to religion before melancholy directs thought towards fasting, prophecy, salvation and damnation.
Context: The implicit subject is the melancholic person of the preceding account. Claims of inspiration and damnation belong to that person’s varying thoughts, not verified revelation or a verdict on salvation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: If devout and religious
Word and construction: The adjectives specify prior inclination; if supplies the condition.
Supplied words note: The subject is implicit in both short phrases and supplied by the preceding person-and-inclination discussion.
distinct religious remedies
Printed “several cures and remedies” (English; phrase).
Distinct remedies for religious and moral errors that share a root but develop differently.
Context: Burton differentiates atheism, idolatry, heresy and hypocrisy by growth, symptoms and occasions; some reject disputation as the best means of reclaiming them.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: must have several cures and remedies
Modern rendering: require different cures and remedies
Word and construction: Several means different, not simply a number of treatments; must becomes require.
Supplied words note: Different explains the older several, and the preceding named categories supply the subjects.
divine fury · a divine furie
Printed “a divine furie” (English; phrase).
Approved spiritual transport or inspired folly, assigned to saints and good people.
Context: Burton expressly approves this sense but denies that it makes passion an attribute of God; the next paragraph warns that people commonly mistake its nature.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: a divine furie, a holy madnesse
Modern rendering: a divine frenzy, a holy madness
Word and construction: Furie contributes frenzy; holy madness is a coordinated description, not a separate assertion of illness.
Supplied words note: No new subject is supplied; the saints are named in the full sentence.
divine fury · a divine Fury
Printed “a divine Fury” (English; phrase).
Inspired elevation drawing the soul towards innate, incorruptible beauty.
Context: Burton attributes the golden-chain image to Lucian, mixing classical imagery and Christian creation; the exact Lucian source remains unresolved.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: with a divine Fury ravisheth our souls
Modern rendering: with divine rapture transports our souls
Word and construction: Fury supplies rapture and ravisheth transports; the positive force belongs to this higher love.
Supplied words note: The article a is absorbed into the idiomatic phrase; our souls remains explicit.
divine melancholy
Printed “a divine melancholy” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: a divine melancholy
A positively valued spiritual elevation in the qualified discussion of contemplation and ecstasy.
Context: Burton allows beneficial uses before condemning abuse; this is not synonymous with the harmful category.
Source: original body
Supplied words note: No referent is expanded in this short phrase. Divine describes the approved spiritual union in the complete sentence.
divine or religious fury
Printed “divine or religious fury” (English; phrase).
A religious form of frenzy assigned more properly to melancholy in the early medical classification.
Context: Burton reports Fuchs, Plater and Laurentius, distinguishes love and study in the list, and promises separate treatment with a Third Partition marginal route.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: another divine or religious fury
Modern rendering: another divine or religious frenzy
Word and construction: Divine and religious are alternative descriptors of this fury; another preserves its place among several listed kinds.
Supplied words note: Frenzy modernizes fury without certifying divine agency.
divine ravishment
Printed “a divine ravishment” (English; phrase).
Elevated inspiration associated with exceptional intellectual gifts, within a humoral interpretation of melancholy.
Context: Burton reports Du Laurens’s reading of the Aristotelian claim and Mercurialis’s learned patient; the continuation records competing bodily and demonic explanations of extraordinary abilities.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: a divine ravishment, & a kinde of Enthusiasmus
Modern rendering: a divine rapture and a kind of inspired possession
Word and construction: Ravishment supplies rapture; inspired possession renders the coordinated Enthusiasmus.
Supplied words note: Inspired possession explains the historical enthusiasm term, not mere eagerness.
excess of divine worship
Printed “any excess of divine worship or love of God” (English; phrase).
Burton denies that genuine love or worship of God can be excessive; excess concerns misplaced zeal and unnecessary observances.
Context: The negative qualification governs his excess branch. His adjoining rejection of perfection and supererogation belongs to Protestant polemic.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: Not that there is any excess of divine worship or love of God
Modern rendering: This does not mean that worship or love of God can be excessive
Word and construction: The full denial is aligned; it must not be indexed as an affirmative claim that loving God too much is the disease.
Supplied words note: This does not mean makes the ellipsis of Not that explicit.
fanaticus
Printed “fanatici” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: fanatici
People labelled frenzied or inspired: nominative masculine plural used in a hostile catalogue of names applied to Christians.
Context: Burton reports what opponents called Christians; he defends the people labelled, and does not endorse the insult.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: fanatics
Word and construction: The single Latin substantive is aligned; the broader hostile judgement belongs to the catalogue and its quoted speakers.
Supplied words note: No modern clinical diagnosis is supplied by fanatics.
final and temporary despair
Printed “final and temporal” (English; phrase).
Final despair is described as incurable and assigned to reprobates; temporal despair is rejection of hope and comfort for a time and may affect the best believers.
Context: Burton reports some writers’ theological division, calls temporary despair a grievous sin, and later forbids sufferers to infer their own final rejection from present distress.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: Some divide it into final and temporal
Modern rendering: Some divide it into final and temporary despair
Supplied words note: Despair is supplied from the governing subject; temporal means temporary. The final kind is separately described as incurable and assigned to reprobates.
forerunners and concomitants
Printed “forerunners or concomitants” (English; phrase).
Preceding or accompanying conditions, alongside what Burton also calls causes.
Context: Burton universally claims that none of the listed visions, apparitions and related experiences occurs without bodily or environmental causes, forerunners or concomitants. Those relations remain distinct; the Devil’s supposed use of them belongs to his explanation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: the precedent causes, the forerunners or concomitants of them
Modern rendering: their preceding causes, forerunners or companions
Supplied words note: Their refers to the visions, apparitions and related experiences in the full sentence; companions explains concomitants.
Furies of religion
Printed “Religionis acti Furiis” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Religionis acti Furiis
Driven by religion’s Furies: a mythological personification of destructive religious frenzy.
Context: Burton applies the phrase to the extreme zeal he imputes to many religious groups; the surrounding claims are confessional invective.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Driven by the Furies of religion
Word and construction: Acti is a nominative masculine plural passive participle; Furiis is an ablative of agency or instrument and Religionis its genitive qualifier. The key names the full phrase.
Supplied words note: Driven makes acti explicit; the English capitalization preserves the mythic force of Furies.
furor
Printed “furor” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Frenzy: nominative singular furor is the subject of the marginal claim about supplication or divine afflatus.
Context: The Aretaeus-attributed margin describes another kind different from the first or second; Burton’s body instead derives a second from a first. The supplied comparison does not establish a division of love melancholy in Aretaeus.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: deorum rogantium, vel afflatu numinum furor hic venit
Modern rendering: this frenzy comes upon those who petition the gods, or through divine inspiration
Word and construction: Furor contributes frenzy; hic identifies this frenzy and venit its coming. The two explanatory phrases are distinct.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Upon those makes the compressed deorum rogantium idiomatic; divine inspiration renders afflatu numinum. The translation is editorial, not original authority.
ignorance as madness
Printed “a cause of their superstition, a Symptome, and madness it self” (English; phrase).
Ignorance is assigned three roles: cause, symptom and madness itself.
Context: Burton’s conclusion follows Cardano’s disparaging comparison of adults, children, women and old people; these are historical judgements, not neutral evidence of ability.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a Symptome, and madness it self
Modern rendering: their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and itself a form of madness
Word and construction: The complete predication is aligned; cause, symptom and madness are not interchangeable relations.
Supplied words note: A form of makes the predicative category idiomatic; the original says madness itself.
irreligious religion
Printed “irreligious Religion” (English; phrase).
Religion judged to defeat true religion, an oxymoronic alternative name for superstition.
Context: Burton introduces its ridiculous and horrifying symptoms within his confessional classification.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: superstition, or that irreligious Religion
Modern rendering: superstition, or that irreligious religion
Word and construction: The oxymoron is preserved; religion here denotes practices he judges religiously false.
Supplied words note: No extra object or agent is supplied.
mad theological position
Printed “as mad himself” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: as mad himself
Mad as a theological verdict against Seneca’s alleged commitment to inevitable Stoic fate.
Context: Burton first uses Seneca against denial of God, then rejects necessity that would constrain God; the verdict is polemical, not an examined clinical state.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: is just as mad
Word and construction: Mad supplies the judgement; as and himself turn the preceding criticism back on Seneca.
Supplied words note: Is makes the elliptical predication explicit; just reinforces as.
melancholia erotica
Printed “Melancholia Erotica” (Latin; phrase).
Love melancholy, divided in the quoted account between God and women as objects.
Context: Sassonia’s marginal account allows that some will refuse the religious branch the name melancholy; it names God, fasting and vigils, differing from the body’s prayer and fasting.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: Melancholia Erotica vel quæ cum amore est, duplex est
Modern rendering: Erotic melancholy, or that associated with love, is twofold
Word and construction: Erotica qualifies melancholia; the twofold claim belongs to duplex est, not the adjective alone.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Associated articulates cum amore; the normalized phrase key does not assert a separate dictionary lemma.
melancholic prophets
Printed “meer melancholy” (English; phrase).
Melancholic, used predicatively of the whole named group in Fracastoro’s reported explanation.
Context: All is explicit in Burton’s account. The following margins and caveat on the Sibylline texts must remain separate from a verified diagnosis of historical prophets.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: all your Pythonisses, Sibyls, and pseudo-prophets to be meer melancholy
Modern rendering: all your prophetic women, sibyls and false prophets are merely melancholic
Word and construction: Melancholy here describes the people, while meer contributes merely; it is not just the name of a humour.
Supplied words note: Prophetic women explains Pythonisses; false prophets explains pseudo-prophets.
melancholy and despair
Printed “melancholy and despaire” (English; phrase).
Related but non-identical conditions that need not occur together.
Context: Burton attributes distinctions to Bright and Perkins while allowing melancholy sometimes to cause terror of conscience.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: melancholy and despaire though often, do not alwaies concur
Modern rendering: although melancholy and despair often occur together, they do not always do so
Supplied words note: Although articulates though, and occur together renders concur; often and not always are both explicit.
melancholy as explanation of visions
Printed “this our Melancholy” (English; phrase).
Melancholy concerned here with religious experiences and divine objects, invoked to explain reported stigmata and monastic visions.
Context: Burton proposes this attribution for writings about Saint Francis and visionary narratives; may remains explicit, and the stories are not independently verified cases.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: may justly be referred to this our Melancholy
Modern rendering: may reasonably be attributed to this melancholy of ours
Word and construction: Referred means attributed as explanation; this our melancholy names Burton’s explanatory category.
Supplied words note: Reasonably renders justly; of ours expands our without introducing a new owner.
melancholy divine
Printed “a melancholy divine” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: a melancholy divine
A melancholic theologian or clergyman: divine is a professional noun here.
Context: Burton defends his writing across medical and clerical professions; the phrase alone does not assign religion as the object or cause of the melancholy.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: a melancholy clergyman
Word and construction: Divine supplies clergyman; melancholy modifies the person.
Supplied words note: Clergyman explains the occupational sense; the surrounding complaint concerns patronage and does not confess that Burton bought a living.
monstrosa melancholia
Printed “monstrosam melancholiam” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: monstrosam melancholiam
Monstrous melancholy, an accusative feminine singular phrase applied to atheism or impiety.
Context: Burton attributes the polemical label to Melanchthon’s On the Soul; it is not a modern diagnosis or a demonstrated belief of everyone he lists.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: monstrous melancholy
Word and construction: Monstrosam qualifies melancholiam; the normalized nominative key denotes the phrase, not either dictionary component.
Supplied words note: The supplied modern translates the Latin and then repeats Burton’s separate English gloss.
monstrous melancholy
Printed “monstrous melancholy” (English; phrase).
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: monstrous melancholy
An English polemical description of atheism or impiety, glossing the preceding Latin label.
Context: This is Burton’s English gloss of the Melanchthon-attributed phrase; the literary Giants comparison is part of his accusation.
Source: original body
Word and construction: The English and Latin remain separate attestations even though the modern renders both identically.
Supplied words note: No modern diagnostic category is supplied.
poisoned melancholy
Printed “poysoned melancholy” (English; phrase).
Citation key, Modern rendering: poisoned melancholy
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: poysoned melancholy
An English gloss of the polemical poisoned-melancholy label attached to impiety.
Context: Burton’s theological evaluation is retained without turning the metaphor into a medical finding.
Source: original body
Word and construction: Poysoned modernizes to poisoned; both terms belong to the full phrase.
Supplied words note: The spelling is modernized without adding a poison or physical mechanism.
precisely given
Printed “precisely given” (English; phrase).
Strictly or scrupulously religious in prior disposition.
Context: Burton makes the direction of symptoms depend upon the sufferer’s inclinations and humoral constitution.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: If they have been precisely given
Modern rendering: If they have been strictly religious
Supplied words note: Religious is supplied from the contextual direction of precisely given; it is not an explicit noun or adjective in that fragment.
religiosa insania
Printed “Religiosam insaniam” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Religiosam insaniam
Religious madness, in an accusative feminine singular noun-and-adjective phrase attributed to Meteren.
Context: The Latin label supports Burton’s confessional criticism of religious conflict; the precise historical quotation remains uncollated.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: religious insanity
Word and construction: Religiosam modifies insaniam; the key is a normalized phrase, not a dictionary lemma for either component.
Supplied words note: Insanity is the supplied modern rendering; it does not import a present-day diagnosis.
religiosus
Printed “religiosum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
A religious-order member: religiosum is substantival masculine accusative singular, object of seeing.
Context: Guaineri’s original margin specifies excessive fasting and the confident judgement melancholy; the body adds superstition, solitude and an explicit prediction of becoming melancholy.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: Si religiosum nimis jejunia videris observantem, audacter melancholichum pronunciabis
Modern rendering: If you see a member of a religious order observing fasts too strictly, you may confidently pronounce him melancholic
Word and construction: Religiosum supplies the person’s status; observantem and nimis jejunia supply the qualified fasting.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Member of a religious order makes the substantive adjective explicit; may confidently gives the force of audacter pronunciabis. The margin does not literally contain he will become.
religious
Printed “religious” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Devout or pious, one of the virtues Burton allows in women overcome by the bodily constitution he describes.
Context: Burton distinguishes those he blames from those he says cannot resist; religious virtue does not itself make their reproductive disorder religious melancholy.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: sober, religious, vertuous, and well-given
Modern rendering: sober, religious, virtuous and well disposed
Word and construction: Religious is one coordinated adjective; the others retain their own senses.
Supplied words note: Well disposed renders well-given; no doctrinal object of illness is supplied.
religious contemplation
Printed “de Deo & angelis” (Latin; phrase).
About God and angels: de marks the objects of the reported patient’s continual imagining and thinking.
Context: The patient speaks in the original Latin reported by Rhazes; Rhazes supplies the enclosing first-person consultation and cure narrative. Burton’s English substitutes heaven, hell and fiery spirits.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: semper imaginor & cogito de Deo & angelis
Modern rendering: I constantly imagine and think about God and angels
Word and construction: De Deo & angelis contributes about God and angels; the preceding verbs contribute imagining and thinking, and semper continually.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: I is encoded by the first-person verbs; about comes from de; God and angels are explicit objects. The first person here is the patient replying, not the physician asking.
religious inclination
Printed “religious, hath revelations” (English; phrase).
Prior religious inclination is the heading under which the synopsis places prophetic beliefs and mental trouble.
Context: The synoptic assertions describe symptoms following inclination; they do not independently certify revelation or prophecy.
Source: original body
Locator qualification: Source record identifies these leaves as unnumbered; plain numerical passage labels are scan numbers.
Source wording, Original wording: religious, hath revelations, visions, is a Prophet, or troubled in minde
Modern rendering: The religious man has revelations and visions, is a prophet, or is troubled in mind
Word and construction: Religious characterizes the implied person; the remaining clause lists attributed experiences.
Supplied words note: The and man make explicit the elliptically described person; the prose account later frames inspiration as the person’s changing belief.
religious madness
Printed “religious madnesse” (English; phrase).
Madness attributed to contemporary religious division, empty profession and superstition.
Context: Burton imagines Democritus observing his own age and invokes Meteren; the attack later includes rigid separatists and opportunists as well as Catholics.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: our religious madnesse
Modern rendering: our religious madness
Word and construction: Religious identifies the field of the polemical madness; it is not a neutral clinical category.
Supplied words note: Our is explicit and includes the speaker’s age and community.
religious melancholy · Religious Melancholy · local use 1
Printed “Religious Melancholy” (English; phrase).
Melancholy concerned with religion and divine objects; here the title of the later division to which Burton sends readers of conscience and moral judgement.
Context: Burton supplies a forward reference after the Regulus syllogism.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: More of this in Religious Melancholy
Modern rendering: More on this in Religious Melancholy
Supplied words note: This refers back to the conscience discussion and Regulus example; on modernizes of without adding a new subject.
religious melancholy · still conversant about Religion
Printed “still conversant about Religion” (English; phrase).
Continually concerned with religion and divine objects: the reason given for the category’s name.
Context: The original marginal English supplies a naming explanation, not a claim that all religious attention is pathological.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: Called Religious because it is still conversant about Religion and such divine objects.
Word and construction: No original/modern alignment is claimed; the explanation derives from the original English marginal sentence.
Edition note: No supplied-modern comparison claimed
Supplied words note: No modern comparison is claimed. The English sentence is original marginal wording, and still means continually.
religious melancholy · Religious Melancholy · local use 2
Printed “Religious Melancholy” (English; phrase).
Melancholy concerned with religion and divine objects, proposed as a disputed subdivision within love melancholy.
Context: Burton contrasts agreement about love melancholy with possible controversy over this subdivision.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: whether this subdivision of Religious Melancholy be warrantable, it may be controverted
Modern rendering: whether this subdivision, religious melancholy, is justified may be disputed
Supplied words note: Justified explains warrantable; religious melancholy is the stated name of the disputed subdivision.
religious melancholy · Religious Melancholy · local use 3
Printed “Religious Melancholy” (English; phrase).
Melancholy concerned with religion and divine objects, here the harmful condition of which abused contemplation is called both cause and symptom.
Context: The qualification as it is abused governs the condemnation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: But as it is abused, a meer dotage, madness, a cause and symptome of Religious Melancholy
Modern rendering: But when abused it is sheer delusion and madness, a cause and symptom of religious melancholy
Supplied words note: When makes the conditional force of as explicit; it refers back to the discussed practices and spiritual transport, whose abuse governs the condemnation.
religious melancholy as species · species or kinde
Printed “species or kinde” (English; phrase).
A distinct category rather than a cause or symptom.
Context: Burton says all acknowledge a notable symptom, some a cause, but few a species; his claim of no distinct predecessor is then qualified by named examples.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: some a cause, but few a species or kinde
Modern rendering: some as a cause, but few as a species or kind
Supplied words note: As supplies the repeated classificatory relation; the full preceding sentence says all acknowledge a symptom, some a cause, and few a kind.
religious melancholy as species · frequentissima est ejus species
Printed “frequentissima est ejus species” (Latin; phrase).
A very common kind, whose treatment the quoted physician says often caused him considerable difficulty.
Context: The first person is Plater, quoted by Burton; Burton’s ensuing English calls it frequent but omits the difficulty of treatment.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: frequentissima est ejus species, in qua curanda sæpissimè multum fui impeditus
Modern rendering: It is a very frequent species, and in treating it I have very often been greatly hindered
Word and construction: Frequentissima characterizes the species; the gerundive construction in qua curanda concerns its treatment.
Supplied words note: It supplies the understood subject; I is encoded by fui. The modern keeps the treatment difficulty absent from Burton’s English gloss.
religious melancholy in defect · in defect
Printed “in defect” (English; phrase).
Deficiency in religious belief, conduct or trust, including despair of mercy.
Context: Burton places both complacency and excessive distrust within this polemical branch.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: In the other extream or in defect
Modern rendering: At the opposite extreme, that of deficiency
Supplied words note: That of supplies the understood relation between extreme and defect; the following list specifies the religious deficiencies.
religious melancholy in defect · Religious Melancholy in defect
Printed “Religious Melancholy in defect” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Religious Melancholy in defect
The section on religious deficiency, including complacency and inadequate trust.
Context: Original heading states Burton’s historical and confessional classification.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Religious Melancholy from Deficiency
Supplied words note: From renders the classificatory in; deficiency concerns religious love, knowledge, faith, fear and hope, as the continuation specifies.
religious melancholy in excess
Printed “In excess” (English; phrase).
The branch concerned with doing what Burton considers beyond religious requirement.
Context: The original synopsis gives Burton’s evaluative scheme, not a neutral measure of religious practice.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: In excess of such as do, that which is not required
Modern rendering: In excess: among those who do what is not required
Supplied words note: Among makes explicit the relation of such as to this branch; what is not required remains Burton’s judgement.
religious person
Printed “a Religious person” (English; phrase).
A member of a religious order, qualified here by excessive superstition, solitude or fasting.
Context: The Guaineri-attributed body predicts that such a person will certainly become melancholy. It does not assert this of every devout person.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: a Religious person over superstitious, too solitary or much given to fasting
Modern rendering: a member of a religious order who is excessively superstitious, too solitary or much given to fasting
Word and construction: Religious person is the institutional designation; the following qualifications condition the prediction.
Supplied words note: Member of a religious order explains the historical sense; who is makes the descriptive relation explicit.
sancta insania
Printed “Sanctam insaniam” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Sanctam insaniam
Holy madness: an accusative feminine singular phrase naming the approved spiritual state attributed to Bernard.
Context: Burton applies the phrase to good people, while rejecting the inference he attributes to Vorstius that God himself undergoes passions.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: holy madness
Word and construction: Sanctam modifies insaniam; the normalized nominative phrase is a phrase key, not a dictionary lemma.
Supplied words note: Holy and madness translate both explicit words; the quotation’s exact Bernard source remains unverified.
totum compositum
Printed “totum compositum” (Latin; phrase).
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: totum compositum
The entire compound person, including brain, heart, will, understanding, soul and faculties in this account of superstition.
Context: Burton’s whole-person claim stands beside later descriptions of restricted impairment; his following universal social extension is theological rhetoric.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: the whole composite being
Word and construction: Totum modifies substantival compositum; both neuter singular words form the phrase.
Supplied words note: Being makes the substantive composite explicit; no modern mind-body theory is supplied.
venenata melancholia
Printed “venenatam melancholiam” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: venenatam melancholiam
Poisoned melancholy, an accusative feminine singular phrase used as a moral and theological label for impiety.
Context: The wording is attributed to Melanchthon; poisoned does not here establish actual toxic exposure.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: poisoned melancholy
Word and construction: Venenatam qualifies melancholiam; the normalized nominative phrase remains distinct from dictionary lemmas.
Supplied words note: The English is the supplied modern rendering of the Latin and is repeated for Burton’s ensuing English gloss.