Century

Use in the book

The central example is ‘Mizaldus cent. 5. 77.’: the fifth collection of a hundred, item 77. It appears in the further reading on lycanthropy, after reports of people who believe themselves animals and Burton’s suggestions about transformation stories. The term locates material; it does not affirm a literal change of a human body into a wolf. Nor does understanding it authenticate the whole bibliography. The supplied note distinguishes Augustine’s discussion of transformations from Burton’s printed chapter number and leaves other abbreviated references unresolved.

The objects counted change with the book. Ruland’s third Cent., case 91, is a hundred of cures or medical cases in a reported witchcraft story. Camerarius’s centur. 7 identifies a hundred of birth horoscopes, followed by nativities 6 and 7. Original margins also cite Lipsius’s first Cen. of letters, letter 50, and Erasmus’s fourth thousand, seventh hundred. The latter gives no individual adage number. These divisions organize different kinds of reported material; their precision is not itself proof of the medical, astrological or satirical claims they accompany.

Emblem references use the same arrangement. ‘Camerarius Embl. 26. Cen. 2.’ locates emblem 26 in the second hundred, beside the image of a bull made gentle by a fig tree and its application to soothing words. A correct explanation of the citation structure must still leave individual source difficulties visible. Elsewhere the ass-and-mule story has a printed Camerarius locator that the supplied note compares with differently numbered and differently narrated material. The medical list’s ‘Amatus, Lusit. cent. 66.’ is also retained as unusual and unresolved, not silently converted into a plausible-looking reference.

Outside citations, century is an expansive count. Burton says he might cite a century of authors for and against antimony, after contrary reports of benefit and near-fatal harm. Might is important: the sentence declines a possible enumeration, rather than supplying exactly one hundred names. He then closes with a conditional comparison whose judgement depends on prescriber, use and patient. Stibium, especially antimony, retains that medical dispute in full. Later ‘I could repeat centuries of such’ offers hundreds of further examples of lovers’ admiration before turning to their servitude. Neither passage measures historical time.

Two boundaries prevent automatic expansion. The margin attached to Rhazes prints Cent., but the supplied editor understands it as Continens, a work-title, not a collection of a hundred. Conversely, the modern column’s chronological century can translate a different original word: sæculum in the Harpsfield quotation, or its abbreviation sæc. in the adjacent citation. That quotation combines certainty about Ursula’s blessedness with uncertainty about her history. Honour and nobility, nobilito, explains the ennobling verb in this same quotation; sæculum supplies its chronological object here. Explaining the time-word does not settle the religious controversy or the chronology.

Related entries

Neoterics: the relative dating of authors, distinct from the number of items in a collection.

Prognostics: the interpretation of signs and outcomes in medical texts.

Lycanthropy: the belief, reported cases and qualified transformation stories surrounding the Mizaldus citation; lycanthropia · Lycanthropia · local use 1–V005.

Geniture: numbered birth-chart examples, especially geniture · local use 3 in the shared passage.

Stibium: the antimony controversy and conditional judgement, antimony.

Honour and nobility: the ennobling verb in the shared Harpsfield quotation, nobilito.

Emblem: the devices and images located by the numbered emblem collections.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 30–32; note 1226Erasmus’s fourth thousand and seventh hundred.
2. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraphs 25–29; Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraph 28Mizaldus’s fifth hundred, item 77, within the transformation-story bibliography.
3. Subsection 5. The Soul and Its Faculties · paragraphs 22–24; note 1654a hundred of Lipsius’s letters.
4. Subsection 3 Witches and Magicians: How They Cause Melancholy · paragraphs 52–54; Subsection 4. The Stars as a Cause. Signs From Physiognomy, Metoposcopy and Chiromancy · paragraphs 13–16hundreds of cures and birth horoscopes.
5. Section 3. Member 1. Subsection 1. Symptoms or Signs of Melancholy in the Body · paragraphs 11–13; note 4331Cent. interpreted as Continens.
6. Subsection 2. Concerning the Patient · paragraph 39; note 5102the printed emblem locator and its editorial qualification.
7. Member 6 Subsection 1 Disturbances of the Mind Corrected Through the Sufferer’s Own Efforts in Resisting as Strongly as Possible and Confiding His Grief to a Friend and So Forth · paragraphs 33–35; note 6143the second hundred of emblems.
8. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraphs 5–8; Subsection 2 Single Substances That Purge Melancholy Downwards · paragraphs 27–29the possible hundred authors on opposing sides; the citation to “century 66” remains unresolved.
9. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraphs 88–92, 1–2hundreds of examples, followed by love’s servitude.
10. 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 3–4chronological centuries translated from the Latin age-word.

In this edition

‘Mizaldus cent. 5. 77.’ becomes ‘Mizaldus, fifth century, item 77’. Century remains the collection’s name and item makes the lower-level locator explicit. The short cent. therefore aligns with century, not with the entire author-title-number string. Other contexts use hundred: Cent. in Ruland’s reference becomes Hundred, and centur. in the horoscope reference becomes hundred. The noun after it or the cited work supplies what is being counted.

The English expansions of Lipsius, Erasmus and Camerarius in the accompanying note, the accompanying note and the accompanying note belong to the editorial translation of quoted original margins. They are not extra sentences of Burton’s original prose. The original abbreviation in the accompanying note instead receives the editorial expansion Continens. In the body, century and centuries become hundred and hundreds when counting possible authors or examples; chronological century in the Harpsfield passage is a rendering of sæculum. These separate routes explain why one modern lookup word can lead to different original forms and senses.

century (bibliographical hundred)

A collection or numbered division of one hundred items, such as observations, cures, letters, adages, horoscopes or emblems; not a hundred-year date in these citations.

Grammar: Printed abbreviated nouns cent., Cent., cen., Cen. and centur.; the abbreviation alone does not disclose a Latin case, which is not reconstructed here.

Original margin: “Erasm. Chil. 4. cen. 7.” Supplied note translation or expansion: “Erasmus, fourth thousand, seventh hundred”. A hundred-division within the fourth thousand of Erasmus’s Adages. The margin accompanies satirical claims about musicians. The division is a locator, not evidence that every musician is mad. Cen. gives hundred and Chil. thousand; the fourth and seventh numbers belong to separate levels. No individual adage number is printed.

Original text: “Mizaldus cent. 5. 77.” In the modern column: “Mizaldus, fifth century, item 77”. A reference to the fifth numbered hundred and its seventy-seventh item. Burton offers further reading on lycanthropy and transformation stories. An accompanying note explains the division without verifying every nearby reference. Cent. supplies century, 5 supplies fifth, and 77 supplies the item number; item is made explicit by the modern. The whole citation is context, not the meaning of cent. alone.

Original margin: “Lips. Cen. 1 ep. 50”. Supplied note translation or expansion: “Lipsius, first century of letters, letter 50”. A hundred-letter collection, first division, letter fifty. Original marginal citation beside reported opinions about souls and animal reason; the English expansion is editorial, not original English by Burton. Cen. is century; first and letter 50 correspond to 1 and ep. 50. Of letters explicates the collection, supported by the note’s explicit definition.

Original text: “3. Cent. Cura 91.” In the modern column: “third Hundred Cures, case 91”. A numbered hundred of reported cures or cases in Ruland. A reported magical-illness anecdote, not an authenticated clinical history or proof of witchcraft. Cent. gives Hundred; Cura gives the case designation, while Cures clarifies the collection’s subject. Third and 91 come from the numbers.

Original text: “Camerar. hor. natalit. centur. 7. genit. 6, & 7.” In the modern column: “Camerarius, in his seventh hundred birth horoscopes, nativities 6 and 7”. The seventh hundred of birth horoscopes, followed by two numbered nativities. Examples offered as proof of astrological rules; their occurrence in a collection does not verify the rules or the named cases. Centur. supplies hundred; hor. natalit. identifies birth horoscopes; genit. supplies nativities. The whole modern bibliography must not gloss centur. alone.

Original margin: “Camerarius Embl. 26. Cen. 2.” Supplied note translation or expansion: “Camerarius, Emblems, second century, emblem 26”. A numbered collection of a hundred emblems, with the individual emblem specified separately. The bull-and-fig-tree image is applied to kind speech; the note distinguishes the inherited allegory from independent collation of the cited emblem. Cen. gives century; 2 gives second; Embl. and 26 identify emblem 26. The note separately explains that this means one hundred emblems.

Original text: “Amatus, Lusit. cent. 66.” In the modern column: “Amatus Lusitanus, century 66”. A printed hundred-division locator with an unresolved anomalous number. The number is unusual and left unresolved in the accompanying note; the surrounding list records advocates and qualifications, not an agreed safe hellebore treatment. Cent. is expanded century, but 66 is deliberately retained. This is not an authorial correction of the citation.

century; centuries (number of examples)

A hundred, or in the plural hundreds, of people or examples; used rhetorically to suggest material the speaker could supply.

Grammar: Singular count noun century after a and plural noun centuries; objects of cite and repeat under might/could.

Original text: “I might cite a century of Authors pro and con.” In the modern column: “I could cite a hundred authors for and against it.” Burton could cite a hundred writers on opposing sides of the antimony dispute. Not a dated century and not an actual enumeration of exactly one hundred citations. The preceding adverse case and following conditional sword comparison preserve disagreement. Century supplies hundred, Authors authors, and pro and con for and against; might becomes could and retains hypothetical capacity.

Original text: “I could repeat centuries of such.” In the modern column: “I could repeat hundreds of such examples.” Hundreds of further instances of lovers’ extravagant admiration could be repeated. Burton declines further examples and moves to servitude as the next sign of love’s folly; his claim applies to both sexes here, following a separately hostile comparison of women. Centuries gives hundreds; examples makes the backward reference such explicit. Could is retained.

Cent. (Continens)

The abbreviation interpreted in the supplied note as the title Continens, Rhazes’s medical compilation; this occurrence is not a hundred-division.

Grammar: Abbreviated work-title before lib. 1. Tract. 9.; no full Latin case-ending is visible.

Original margin: “Cent. lib. 1. Tract. 9.” Supplied note translation or expansion: “Continens, book 1, treatise 9.” The note expands a difficult abbreviated title from its Rhazes context. The printed abbreviation is retained; title expansion is the editor’s contextual interpretation. The accompanying symptoms belong to historical medicine. Cent. corresponds to Continens in the supplied editorial expansion, not century. Lib. and Tract. separately supply book and treatise.

sæculum (chronological century)

An age or century in chronological history, represented as century in the supplied modern column; distinct from the counted collections.

Grammar: Sæculum is neuter accusative singular, object of nobilitavit, qualified by hoc; sæc. is an unexpanded citation abbreviation in sæc. prim. sex., rendered first six centuries without imposing an unprinted Latin case.

Original text: “Ecclesiast. hist. cap.22. sæc. prim. sex.” In the modern column: “Ecclesiastical History, chapter 22 of the first six centuries”. The cited historical span comprises the first six centuries. Burton attacks Harpsfield in anti-Catholic polemic. The note leaves the precise chapter and Ursula chronology uncollated. Sæc. contributes centuries; prim. sex. contributes first six; the title and chapter remain separate components.

Original text: “nobilitavit (inquit) hoc sæculum Ursula cum comitibus”. In the modern column: ‘“Ursula and her companions,” he says, “ennobled this century.’ The quotation places Ursula and companions within a historical age. Reported Harpsfield speech pairs confidence in heavenly blessedness with an admission of historical uncertainty; the attached margin’s year 441 is not independently certified. Hoc sæculum gives this century, the object; Ursula cum comitibus names the subject with companions. Modern reorders the subject before the verb.