Conscience

Use in the book

The early reflection on morality affirms a secret awareness of our destination at birth, suggests that some ideas do not come from outside, and calls for inquiry into mechanical actions and an inner mold. These different degrees of assertion matter: the paragraph does not present a finished proof of an innate moral code. By contrast, the cagot passage distinguishes possessing faith, law and religion from possessing conscience. External religious illumination can coexist with a deficient inward light.

The comparison between the wise person’s mind and conscience gives both examinations, afflictions, shame and resolutions. Self-correction is therefore an activity shared by intellectual and moral life. Finally an unattributed reported voice says that even a strongly held opinion failed to satisfy conscience—or inner sense. Conviction and inward assent can pull apart. Taken together, these passages resist treating conscience as either whatever one firmly believes or a mere synonym for religious conformity.

Places to read

1. I, p. 50, entry begun p. 48, no. 2, ¶19Awareness of destination within an inquiry into moral foundations.
2. II, p. 687, entry 2, ¶1Faith, law and religion do not guarantee conscience.
3. II, p. 750, entry 10, ¶4Mind and conscience share examinations and resolutions.
4. II, p. 868, entry 9, ¶1Inward dissatisfaction persists despite a strongly held opinion.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses “secret awareness” in the early passage but “conscience” in the moral comparisons. It retains the parenthetic alternative “or my inner sense” and the unfinished quotation in the final witness. “Bigot” for cagot refers here to misconceived devotion, not necessarily modern group hostility.

Self-examination

French: examen.

Examen in the wise mind is compared with examination of conscience, alongside affliction, shame and firm resolutions. The English translation keeps the possessive repetitions and reads fermes propos in that context as resolutions. The analogy does not prescribe an unmentioned devotional schedule or identify thought with sin.

Places to read: II, p. 750, entry 10, ¶4.

Use in the book

Traherne uses it in the account of actual sonship. God gives the power to see, know, and love; the Holy Spirit brings that power into righteous exercise. The person makes a conscience of prizing heaven and earth as God prizes them. An apparently inward act of valuation thus becomes accountable conduct. Esteem is not merely taste, and the world's neglect is not morally indifferent. The phrase also prevents the book's language of enjoyment from sounding like permission to follow any passing pleasure: delight must answer the objects' real worth.

Places to read

1. I.99Actual sonship includes making a conscience of valuing things in the divine likeness.

In this edition

The idiom means to act conscientiously about a responsibility. The meditation does not develop a separate psychological faculty or a theory of guilty feelings.

Use in the book

Guérin wishes to be seen by others as he is before God. Their esteem is painful when it seems to conceal the truth of his inward condition, and he imagines the Last Judgment’s disclosure of consciences brought into the present. This desire for transparency should be read alongside the later defense of the soul’s secrecy: disclosure and reserve answer different needs, not one permanently settled ethic of self-exposure.

Remorse can attach to small actions as well as grave self-judgments. While plucking new leaves, he imagines the life they would have enjoyed, feels regret, and continues cutting. The passage records the gap between tenderness and conduct with unusual precision. Later he fears that his mind advances beyond its earlier products while his moral life remains at the level of old actions.

The final issue is consequently formation, not confession alone. He complains that schooling never taught the greatness of soul or the conduct of moral sense. Intellectual attainment cannot substitute for an education of character; nor does intellectual limitation excuse moral stagnation.

Places to read

1. 9 May 1833 · ¶1Remorse for plucked leaves coexists with the hand continuing its ravage.
2. 23 March 1834 · ¶2The wish for public disclosure of conscience expresses distress at undeserved esteem.
3. 27 March 1835 · ¶4Marie’s quiet example gives value to an inward treasure not publicly displayed.
4. 4 June 1835 · ¶1Moral education and daily improvement become distinct from intellectual development.

Translation in this edition

At 23 March 1834 · ¶2 the English “secrets of conscience” is explicitly moral. By contrast, “consciousness of a permanent, somewhat stormy sadness” at 20 January 1834 · ¶1 translates conscience as awareness, not guilt. Searching the English noun alone will miss this French ambiguity.

Use in the book

Judgment, conduct and inward witness

In the account of understanding, conscience is one of three innate intellectual habits, alongside synderesis and the dictate of reason. Their offices are distinguished through a practical syllogism. Synderesis supplies the moral principle, the dictate applies it, and conscience reaches the judgment justifying or condemning action. Regulus’s promise to his captors illustrates the structure: the conclusion approves keeping his oath, even though it was given to an enemy. Conscience therefore has an approving office as well as an accusing one.

The preface uses “make a conscience of their doings” positively of honest people whom worldly society calls fools for refusing its opportunism. The same idiom turns negative when shameless people “make a conscience of nothing”: they feel no moral restraint. Burton’s metaphor of cauterization makes the conscience seared and insensible. Neither use means merely that someone happens to feel anxiety.

The defense of satire makes an offended reader’s “guilty conscience” the sore spot that causes him to flinch. This is a rhetorical claim that taking a general accusation personally reveals a fault. The original marginal defence is more qualified: protest betrays conscience or at least fear. Its alternative cannot be reduced to certain guilt. It should not silently become an infallible psychological test; the later religious discussion expressly describes self-accusation without sufficient cause. A first-person medical testimony has a different witness: “My conscience bears me witness” belongs to Villanovanus as quoted by Burton, in a reported cure with borage wine. The “I” is not Burton claiming to have treated or observed the woman himself.

Conscience may also assure trust rather than guilt. In the praise of a confidential friend, Burton recommends someone “of whose conscience we are assured as our own”: someone whose integrity makes disclosure safe. The consolations against defamation call a good conscience a continual feast, sustaining inward peace despite public hostility. These uses explain why conscience cannot be defined only as tormenting self-awareness.

The preface’s “so much science, so little conscience” opposes learning to moral conduct. In the satire of clerical advancement, acting contra conscientiam, against conscience, means approving what one inwardly judges wrong for personal fortune rather than the flock’s salvation. Burton first exempts good churchmen and universities from his condemnation. Poverty supplies another pressure: many people would have been upright if want had not driven them to act against conscience. The counterfactual matters; the passage does not say that poverty necessarily abolishes moral judgment.

An upright person’s conscience remains free even when the body is put in chains. This is inward freedom, distinct from a government’s permission to practise religion. “Conscience towards God” means mindful regard for God in the apostolic counsel about suffering undeserved wrong: the quotation expressly contrasts punishment for one’s own faults. Later, true religion gives “peace of conscience” amid persecution. Burton distinguishes such assurance from superstition and depicts a salutary fear that expels destructive fear.

The related Latin adjective makes awareness more precise. Powerful patrons are conscii, aware of the means of their advancement; wrongdoing is supplied by the narrative, not built into the adjective. In a love tag, night is conscia, privy to love and rest, personified as their confidante. A scholar who slept through his wedding night is conscious of no wrongdoing yet ashamed of his inactivity: the joke distinguishes harming nobody from fulfilling every obligation. By contrast, Orestes declares himself conscius of committed wrongs in his answer to Menelaus. These differing objects prevent aware from becoming a fixed synonym for guilty.

Another image concerns damaged character rather than anxious feeling. The advice attributed to Bernard contrasts fine clothes with “a torn conscience”; the margin’s conscientia pannosa is a conscience in rags. Outward luxury conceals inward moral poverty. The precise Bernard attribution remains unverified in the supplied note.

Religious conviction and its government

The religious partition exposes political manipulation of conscience: superstition can terrify people into obedience even when rulers use it as a screen for their own ends. This is Burton’s account of cynical government, not his assertion that every religion is false. The cited maxim says that even false religion may serve such ends provided it is believed true; that condition is essential. The later discussion of toleration uses conscience for religious conviction and practice: states may allow people to “enjoy their consciences,” while some writers oppose coercion or punishment on that ground.

Burton does not simply adopt the strongest toleration position he reports. He calls a middle course best, beginning with gentle correction but proceeding to exclusion, legal restraints, fines, burned books and prohibited meetings; he then distinguishes the treatment of people disturbed by melancholy. His response thus differs from the strongest liberty he has reported. The examples themselves have limits: Pliny’s policy permits punishment after refusal to recant, and Maximinus’s reported toleration is qualified by its insincerity. Burton also notices the disparity between tolerating outsiders and persecuting disagreement within one’s own religion.

To act “for conscience sake” is to act from a believed obligation. Burton describes subjects voluntarily undertaking religious practices that armies or laws could not impose, while accusing their superiors of directing that conviction to private ends. Sincerity of motive does not settle the practice’s truth or justice. His “matters of conscience” include followers’ scruples and rigorists within his own church who treat vestments and ceremonies as binding issues, although he calls them indifferent. To “binde the consciences” is to impose religious obligation: his hostile history of fasting moves from recommendation to prescribed foods and finally to threatened damnation. The later image of confessors who “play upon their consciences” makes conscience an instrument manipulated through persuasion and fear. These are Burton’s polemical claims; his sarcastic inference about Catholic freedom from despair is not a reliable comparison of illness rates.

Conscience also testifies to God’s existence in Burton’s argument for natural religious knowledge. Here it names inward awareness more broadly than judgment on a particular act. His apparently universal claim is qualified in the next paragraph by a few places said to have no god; he subsequently limits pagan knowledge to a confused glimpse, distinguished from revelation. The argument must be read with those qualifications rather than converted into an independently verified account of every culture.

Scruples, bodily constitution and genuine guilt

“Conscientia scrupulosa” is a conscience troubled by excessive doubts. Burton quotes Navarrus connecting it with a melancholy constitution and explains bodily interference through the image of a skilled worker with defective tools. Yet melancholy and despair do not always coincide, and much melancholy occurs without distress of conscience. He also allows melancholy alone sometimes to cause terror of conscience. These are overlapping but distinguishable conditions in his historical account. The supplied note observes that Burton’s “sufficient cause” is stronger than Perkins’s formulation of an occasion rather than direct cause.

The cases make selective disturbance visible. A merchant becomes convinced that keeping wheat too long has damned him, though he remains judicious in other matters. Montalto’s nun is sound in other respects but has suffered distress of conscience for years and believes herself damned. These are the sufferers’ beliefs in reported cases, not the article’s verdict on their salvation; Montalto, not Burton, is the first-person physician in the latter account.

Metaphors distinguish opposed failures. “Cheverel consciences” stretch like supple leather to accommodate misconduct, whereas tender consciences are easily wounded. The claims about which occupations and ages possess such consciences are attributed historical generalizations. The Latin margin’s largiorem, broader or more accommodating, describes the same moral latitude without the leather image, but its exclusion of certain occupations is stronger than the body’s seldom. The merchant just described is a useful counterweight to the claim that merchants are seldom troubled. Preaching can add injury: Burton criticizes pastors who magnify small or morally indifferent acts into unforgivable offences. The most devout hearers, those with least reason for alarm, may suffer most from misunderstanding. Burton calls for preaching both judgment and mercy: indiscriminate comfort can also harm. His English calls terrifying preaching more harmful, whereas Erasmus’s quoted margin says he does not know which danger is greater.

Burton calls conscience of a grave offence the last and greatest cause of this distress. That ranking concerns genuine guilt; it does not establish the accuracy of every subsequent self-accusation. His metaphors make it a ledger preserving offences, a mill grinding through their memory, an oven that continually burns, and finally an entire legal apparatus of witness, prosecutor, officer, jailer and judge. The gaze of Juno’s statue illustrates inescapability; a corrupt earthly judgment cannot silence inward accusation. But within this same sequence, scrupulous people magnify minor faults or find cause where none exists. Conscience’s accusatory force and the accuracy of a particular accusation therefore remain separate questions.

The Third Partition synopsis places seared consciences under deficient religion, while excessive fear and despair occupy the other side. In the despair outline, guilty conscience occurs among causes and “horror of conscience” among symptoms; an extreme prognosis is followed by treatment rather than left as the final word. The earlier conscientiæ carnificina, torture of conscience, belongs to Erasmus’s personified Folly and her supposed exemption of fools. That satirical privilege is a different kind of claim from a physician’s case.

At the opening of the causes of despair, the “worme of conscience” pictures remorse as something that gnaws. Burton assigns the devil an agency under divine permission and recalls Nemesis; the ensuing biblical examples include temporary affliction. Neither that image nor the merchant’s conscientiæ stimulis, pangs or goads of conscience, establishes final abandonment by God. The merchant’s conviction that lost wheat has damned him remains his own belief, alongside otherwise sound judgment. Just before this, the wounded conscience stands beside a grieved heart and a mind darkened by black fumes arising from terrors. That description joins bodily and theological language in an account of the whole soul’s affliction; the preceding distinction still allows temporary despair in the best believers.

From accusation to consolation

The symptoms of despair ask what medicine, surgery or worldly resources could soothe a troubled conscience. This rhetorical extremity is followed by an actual treatment programme. Generally medicine and counsel must cooperate; counsel must be suited to the person and the cause, and the discussion draws on Protestant and Catholic writers of “cases of conscience,” works addressing particular moral and religious difficulties. Human counsel, he adds through Culmannus, is ineffective unless God’s word accompanies it. His historical pastoral prerequisites are specific: the recipient must be prepared, humbled, confessed and examined for disposition, degree of distress and capacity to receive advice before remedies are applied. The earlier abbreviated title “Cases of Consc.” cites Perkins on imagination and fearful self-application, showing that casuistic writings enter his account beyond cases of established wrongdoing.

The promises of forgiveness apply to believers truly penitent and desirous of reconciliation. In the prayer attributed to Anselm, conscience recognizes deserved condemnation, yet divine mercy surpasses the offences. The continuation then lets an afflicted person object that his conscience is seared and repentance impossible; Burton answers that the case need not be despaired of. A little later “Thou never mad’st any conscience” belongs to another accumulating self-accusation introduced by “thou replyest.” It is not a list of crimes Burton establishes against a particular reader. The subsequent answer distinguishes unwanted thoughts, resistance, temporary assent and a settled consenting will.

Being “touched in conscience” names inward remorse in those who truly repent and desire reconciliation; the invitation’s breadth operates within those stated conditions. Near the end, the marginal Vastatâ conscientiâ, with conscience devastated, leads to a sense of divine wrath. Burton answers the sufferer’s extremity through mercy, justice and trial. An experienced sense of wrath is therefore not an independent judgment that the sufferer has been finally forsaken.

Related entries

Synderesis; Reason; Faith and assurance; Satisfaction; Venial sin; Temptation; Will and nill; Despair; Religious melancholy; Memory; Scruple

Places to read

1. Conscientious conductAn ironic defense of honest people
2. Learning and moral conductScience contrasted with conscience
3. Conscience and satireThe reader’s alleged self-betrayal, qualified by the marginal alternative of fear
4. The practical syllogismMoral principle, application and concluding judgment
5. Folly’s exemptionTorture of conscience in a literary conceit
6. Advancement against inward judgmentQualified clerical satire, contra conscientiam and conscii
7. Want and counterfactual integrityMany who would have been upright act against conscience under pressure
8. Casuistry and imaginationPerkins’s abbreviated title and fearful self-application
9. Trustworthy friendshipIntegrity permitting disclosure
10. Freedom within chainsInward security despite external imprisonment
11. Mindful of GodEnduring undeserved injury, distinguished from punishment for one’s own fault
12. A continual feastGood conscience against defamation
13. A quoted medical witnessVillanovanus’s testimony, not Burton’s
14. Conscience in the religious synopsisSeared conscience, causes, symptoms, prognosis and treatment
15. Rags beneath fineryTorn conscience and conscientia pannosa
16. Night as confidanteConscia as shared knowledge, without moral self-accusation
17. Awareness without a committed offenceHeinsius’s scholar and the distinction between wrongdoing and unfulfilled duty
18. Religious assurancePeace of conscience and fear that expels fear
19. Political controlConscience terrified through superstition
20. Conviction as a motiveFor conscience’s sake, voluntary action and its alleged direction by superiors
21. Inward awareness of GodNatural knowledge, admitted exceptions and its limits
22. Obligations of followersMaking a matter of conscience in Burton’s polemic
23. Practices made bindingReported religious scruples and their disputed objects
24. An imposed religious prohibitionConscience against drinking in a polemical travel narrative
25. Scruples within Burton’s churchCeremonies he calls indifferent made matters of conscience
26. Binding consciencesFasting from recommendation to threatened damnation
27. Toleration and Burton’s responseReligious conviction, qualified historical examples, reported liberty and the coercive limits of the proposed middle course
28. Seared consciencesMoral insensibility
29. The prelude to despairTemporary and final despair, wounded conscience and the transition to causes
30. Scruples and bodily disorderThe worm image, temporary affliction, definitions, distinctions, cases and the stretching-conscience image
31. Tender consciences and harsh counselMisread Scripture, indiscriminate preaching and the balance of judgment with mercy
32. The inner prosecutionGuilt, unfounded scruples, ledger, mill, oven, legal offices and the statue’s gaze
33. Conscience as an instrumentPlaying upon followers through persuasion and terror; sarcastic claims about despair
34. Extreme distress and a reported caseRhetorical helplessness; Montalto’s nun and variable symptoms
35. Combined care and cases of conscienceMedicine, fitted counsel, the required word of God and specified pastoral preparation
36. Mercy and repentanceConditional promises and the prayer attributed to Anselm
37. The sufferer’s objections answeredThe accusation’s speaker and the distinction between unwanted thoughts and settled will
38. Devastation and its answerFelt wrath, mercy, justice and trial

In this edition

“Make a conscience of their doings” becomes “act conscientiously”; “make a conscience of nothing” becomes “feel no scruple about anything”; “never mad’st any conscience” becomes “never had any scruple.” The idiom’s ethical force stays constant while its polarity and speaker change. “Conscientia scrupulosa” becomes “A scrupulous conscience,” and “cheverel consciences” is expanded as consciences like supple leather that stretches. The friend’s conscience becomes “integrity.”

Original body, quoted voices and original marginal wording are distinguished. The prayer’s body says conscience “dictates” deserved damnation; its Latin margin says “Conscientia mea meruit damnationem,” literally that my conscience has deserved damnation. The edition preserves the difference. Likewise the medical oath is transmitted testimony, not Burton’s autobiography. No fresh collation of the named casuists, physicians or theologians is claimed.

Several translations redistribute a construction. “Enjoy their consciences” becomes freedom of conscience within the complete permission clause; the noun phrase “for conscience towards God” becomes mindful of God; the adjective conscia becomes confidante. Largiorem supplies the comparison more accommodating; the noun conscience and the verb have acquired belong to the rest of its Latin phrase. Vastatâ conscientiâ becomes an explicit once-clause, and the worm’s gnawing is an English development of the image. “Cases of Consc.” is expanded as a title, not treated as a different work.

Uncertainty in the supplied text is retained. The satire margin’s prose is associated by the editor with Erasmus although the printed attribution names Phaedrus; the subsequent verse is separately Phaedrian. In the corrupt-cleric passage, printed “ne non offendant,” literally lest they do not offend, reverses the contextual sense adopted in the modern. “Tua te conscientia salvare” receives a tentative directive rendering, but its infinitive is not straightforwardly grammatical; the following Boethian clause is also defective. The friend’s Senecan margin speaks of conversation relieving solitude where the received comparison concerns anxiety, and Burton’s English develops helplessness separately. Villanovanus’s Latin witness and Burton’s English medical account differ in details as well as wording. These are distinctions reported from this edition’s apparatus, not newly collated readings.

against one’s conscience

Printed “against his conscience” (English; prepositional phrase).

Contrary to his own moral judgment or scruple.

Context: Burton makes want a pressure that corrupts many who would otherwise have been upright. The counterfactual and many qualify the instance; the surrounding sweeping rhetoric about poverty is not an established rule that all poor people lack conscience.

Source: original body

Source wording: to do against his conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

bind conscience

Printed “binde the consciences” (English; verbal idiom).

Impose an obligation perceived as binding on inward moral or religious judgment.

Context: Burton describes a progression from recommended fasting to specified food restrictions to threatened damnation. This is his anti-Catholic argument, not an endorsement of the imposed obligation or a verified account of every Catholic practice.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: to binde the consciences upon pain of damnation

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: that it bound consciences under threat of damnation

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original infinitival to binde after so rigorously proposed becomes the result clause that it bound after imposed so rigorously. The modern supplies the result connective that and the subject it, referring back to the fasting requirement; both units retain the binding of consciences under threatened damnation.

Supplied words: that it (result-clause connective and explicit subject supplied in the infinitive-to-result redistribution)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

cases of conscience

Printed “cases of conscience” (English; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: cases of conscience

Particular moral or religious difficulties treated through deliberation and counsel.

Context: Burton includes Catholic writers among the sources of help after polemical criticism elsewhere.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

cases of conscience · Cases of Consc.

Printed “Cases of Consc.” (English; abbreviated work-title).

A title abbreviated from Cases of Conscience, a work on particular moral and religious difficulties.

Context: Burton cites Perkins on fearful self-application and imagination producing symptoms. The title’s occurrence extends the use of casuistic writing beyond advice about proven wrongdoing; the precise abbreviated locator remains uncollated in this note.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: his Cases of Consc.

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: his Cases of Conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: The abbreviated title Consc. is expanded to Conscience; the preceding possessive and title scope are retained.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

cauterized conscience · cauterized consciences

Printed “cauterized consciences” (English; phrase).

Consciences made morally insensitive, figured as tissues numbed through burning.

Context: An accusation in this passage; a later sufferer uses it as a self-accusation that Burton answers.

Source: original body

Source wording: they have cauterized consciences

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

cauterized conscience · cauterised consciences

Printed “cauterised consciences” (English; qualified noun phrase).

Consciences made morally insensible, as if seared by burning.

Context: The synopsis places this among deficient religion, then gives excessive fear and despair as another branch. The or distinguishes seared conscience from depraved understanding; the synopsis also offers treatment, not only an extreme prognosis.

Source: original body

Source wording: such as have cauterised consciences, or else are in a reprobate sense

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

cheverel conscience

Printed “cheverel consciences” (English; phrase).

Pliable moral judgment accommodating conduct that a stricter conscience would forbid.

Context: Historical generalization associated with Lemnius; the preceding merchant case prevents universalization.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: they have cheverel consciences that will stretch

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: their consciences are like supple leather that stretches

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Supplied words: like supple leather (explanation of cheverel metaphor)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · Conscience

Printed “Conscience” (English; lemma).

An innate intellectual habit of moral judgment, concluding by justifying or condemning actions; distinct in office from the principle and its particular application.

Context: Approves here encompasses deciding moral quality, not approving evil as good.

Source: original body

Source wording: The Conscience is that which approves good or evill

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 1

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Trustworthy moral integrity, particularly reliability with another person’s secrets.

Context: Seneca’s advice as adapted by Burton; the friend is the trusted person.

Source: original body

Source wording: of whose conscience we are assured as our own

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 2

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Inward knowledge invoked as a guarantee of truthful testimony.

Context: The quoted speaker is Villanovanus, established by the preceding unit and continuation.

Source: original body

Source wording: My conscience bears me witness, that I do not lye

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · consciences · local use 1

Printed “consciences” (English; lemma).

Religious belief and practice exercised according to one’s conviction.

Context: Burton reports states’ practical toleration, then surveys and limits possible policies.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: to suffer them to enjoy their consciences as they will themselves

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: to allow them freedom of conscience as they themselves choose

Alignment convention

Qualification: The whole permission construction is aligned: suffer means allow, and enjoy their consciences is recast as freedom of conscience. The indexed plural consciences concerns religious conviction, not plural psychological faculties.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 3

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Moral memory represented as a record of offences.

Context: The succeeding mill and legal imagery describes recollection becoming self-accusation.

Source: original body

Source wording: Our conscience, which is a great ledgier book

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 4

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Inward moral judgment recognizing deserved condemnation, answered by an appeal to mercy.

Context: Speaker of a prayer attributed to Anselm; not Burton’s personal confession.

Source: original body

Source wording: My conscience (saith Anselm) dictates to me, that I deserve damnation

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 5

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Moral awareness or scruple about conduct; never mad’st any conscience denies such scruple within the sufferer’s imagined accusation.

Context: Part of the sufferer’s accumulated objection beginning thou replyest, answered by the ensuing distinctions of consent.

Source: original body

Source wording: Thou never mad’st any conscience

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscience · local use 6

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Moral awareness expressed in conscientious conduct, contrasted with mere learning.

Context: Burton’s imagined Democritus surveys professed religion without corresponding practice. Science means learning here; the verbal resemblance does not make the two nouns interchangeable.

Source: original body

Source wording: so much science, so little conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscience · consciences · local use 2

Printed “consciences” (English; lemma).

People’s inward moral and religious awareness, which fear can govern.

Context: Burton describes cynical rulers using superstition for obedience. The Latin claim is conditional: even false religion may work provided it is believed true. Neither that condition nor the distinction from sincere governors can be dropped.

Source: original body

Source wording: to terrifie mens consciences

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscience · local use 7

Printed “conscience” (English; lemma).

Inward knowledge or testimony concerning God’s existence, broader here than judgment of a particular deed.

Context: Burton argues for natural religious awareness, later admitting a few places with no god and limiting pagan knowledge to a confused glimpse. His universal language is therefore qualified in its own continuation; the claim is his theological argument, not a verified survey.

Source: original body

Source wording: our own conscience doth dictate so much unto us, we know there is a God

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscience towards God

Printed “conscience towards God” (English; qualified noun phrase).

Awareness of God and regard for duty toward him, as a motive for endurance.

Context: The apostolic quotation praises patiently suffering undeserved wrong while doing good; it expressly contrasts punishment for one’s own faults. It does not call every instance of enduring a beating praiseworthy.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: for conscience towards God

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: mindful of God

Alignment convention

Qualification: The causal noun phrase is rendered as the adjectival mindful of God within the larger when/if construction. The object God and the motive of awareness are retained; the complete paragraph supplies the condition of undeserved suffering.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscientia · Conscientia · local use 1

Printed “Conscientia” (Latin; lemma).

Awareness of one’s wrongdoing, identified as a tormenting sickness.

Context: Orestes answers a question in an attributed dramatic exchange; not Burton’s autobiographical confession.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Conscientia, Sum enim mihi conscius de malis perpetratis

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Conscience, for I know the wrongs I have committed

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscientia · Conscientia · local use 2

Printed “Conscientia” (Latin; lemma).

The speaker’s conscience or morally accountable inward self, said in this Latin wording to deserve condemnation.

Context: The speaker is the prayer-voice attributed to Anselm, not Burton making a personal confession. The original margin says that conscience has deserved condemnation, unlike the body’s conscience that dictates a judgment.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Conscientia mea meruit damnationem

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: My conscience has deserved damnation

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal quotation aligned with its supplied editorial translation, not with the modern body.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscientia · conscientiam

Printed “conscientiam” (Latin; inflected noun).

One’s inward awareness of culpability or moral fault, as allegedly exposed by protest.

Context: The marginal defence offers conscience or at least fear as alternatives. The supplied note associates this prose with Erasmus while the printed attribution names Phaedrus; the next verse is separately Phaedrian. Neither attribution nor the alternative may be collapsed into the body’s stronger guilty-conscience claim.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Si quis se læsum clamabit, aut conscientiam prodit suam, aut certe metum

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: If anyone cries out that he is injured, he betrays either his conscience or at least his fear

Alignment convention

Qualification: The complete conditional and its alternatives align. Suam explicitly modifies conscientiam; the modern repeats his before fear, carrying the same person’s possession into the second alternative where Latin metum has no repeated possessive. Certe remains at least, so the alternatives are not collapsed.

Supplied words: his (before fear, the possessive relationship carried over from earlier suam rather than separately printed with metum)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscientia · local use 1

Printed “conscientia” (Latin; lemma).

Trustworthy inward moral knowledge or integrity, relied on when confiding secrets.

Context: The Senecan margin and Burton’s English separately commend a faithful friend. The margin continues with conversation relieving solitude, while the supplied note distinguishes the received anxiety reading; Burton’s English develops helplessness independently.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: quorum conscientia æque ac tua

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: whose integrity is like your own

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering, not the modern body.

Supplied words: is (copula understood in the Latin comparison)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscientia · local use 2

Printed “conscientia” (Latin; lemma).

One’s inward moral witness, invoked here as a source of security and consolation.

Context: The supplied note only tentatively understands the printed salvare as an injunction. The following Boethian clause is also defective; no corrected Latin or fully secure translation is being asserted.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Tua te conscientia salvare

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Let your conscience save you

Alignment convention

Qualification: Tentative editorial construction, explicitly introduced in the source note as what the opening appears to intend. Printed infinitive salvare does not straightforwardly supply Let... save; this is not a verified equal-grammar translation.

Supplied words: Let... save (tentative directive interpretation of syntactically uncertain salvare)

Notes: Original salvare is retained. The separate proba bonitas / se probantis discrepancy in the continuation is described in the accompanying note; no new witness collation is claimed.

conscientia · local use 3

Printed “conscientia” (Latin; lemma).

Inward knowledge invoked as a witness to the truth of personal observation.

Context: The first person is Villanovanus in the quoted medical narrative. Burton’s following English adds I do not lie and changes other details: the Latin says the woman had to be bound, the body that she was about to be bound. Those are separate constructions, not a single exact bilingual sentence.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Testis est mihi conscientia, quod viderim matronam quandam hinc liberatam

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: My conscience is my witness that I saw a certain matron relieved by it

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording is aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering. Testis est mihi conscientia gives conscience as witness to or for me; the modern redistributes mihi as my witness and also makes the same first-person relation explicit in My conscience. The first possessive is contextually supplied rather than a separate Latin mea.

Supplied words: My (before conscience, first-person possession made explicit from mihi and the speaker’s testimony)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscientia pannosa

Printed “conscientia pannosa” (Latin; qualified noun phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: conscientia pannosa

A conscience metaphorically clothed in rags: inward moral poverty beneath fine dress.

Context: The original marginal phrase belongs to the counsel attributed to Bernard, Letter 113; the precise source remains unverified. Burton’s English torn renders the same garment image separately.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: a ragged conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering, not the modern body.

Supplied words: a (English article supplied)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscientia scrupulosa

Printed “Conscientia scrupulosa” (Latin; phrase).

Excessively doubtful moral judgment, attributed here to a disordered natural constitution.

Context: Navarrus’s cited claim; the next units distinguish melancholy and despair while allowing interaction.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Conscientia scrupulosa nascitur ex vitio naturali, complexione melancholica

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: A scrupulous conscience arises from a natural defect, a melancholy constitution

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Supplied words: A (English article supplied before scrupulous conscience)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

conscientiæ carnificina

Printed “conscientiæ carnificina” (Latin; noun phrase).

The inward torment or butchery inflicted by conscience; conscientiæ identifies what tortures.

Context: Burton borrows the exemption of fools from Erasmus’s personified Folly. The surrounding fools-and-Stoics exemption is a literary conceit, not evidence that a modern class of people has no moral awareness.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Vacant conscientiæ carnificina

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: They are free from the torture of conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering, not the modern body.

Supplied words: They (subject supplied from the surrounding fools)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscius · conscii

Printed “conscii” (Latin; inflected adjective).

Aware or conscious of something; the plural adjective describes knowledge of one’s own conduct.

Context: Some powerful patrons know the means by which they advanced and obstruct others. The accusation is morally charged, but conscii itself means aware, not guilty, remorseful or repentant; probè supplies very well.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Preserve sequence and printed-number distinction exactly.

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: probè sibi conscii, quibus artibus illic pervenerint

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: knowing very well the arts by which they themselves arrived there

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscius · conscia

Printed “conscia” (Latin; inflected adjective).

Privy to or sharing knowledge of something; the feminine adjective personifies night as a confidante.

Context: Night knows the secrets of love and rest in the quoted tag. The word does not assign a moral conscience to the night or prove a particular lover’s guilt. Burton’s ensuing household numbers are a rhetorical illustration, not a measured frequency.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: nox amoris & quietis conscia

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: night, the confidante of love and rest

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective conscia, agreeing with nox, becomes the noun confidante. Love and rest correspond to the two genitives; the entire phrase has matching scope.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscius · local use 1

Printed “conscius” (Latin; adjective).

Conscious or aware of an act; nullius denies awareness of wrongdoing in this construction.

Context: The scholar has slept through his wedding night in the Heinsius anecdote. The margin’s legal joke says he harmed nobody and lived honestly, while asking whether he gave each their due; absence of a committed offence is not presented as fulfilment of every duty. The scholar is Heinsius’s friend, not Burton’s.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: quum nullius conscius facinoris sibi esset, & inertiæ puderet

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: conscious of no wrongdoing but ashamed of his inactivity

Alignment convention

Qualification: The Latin subordinate clause is rendered as a participial phrase; printed and becomes contrastive but. The negative nullius and the separate shame about inactivity are both retained.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

conscius · local use 2

Printed “conscius” (Latin; adjective).

Aware or conscious of something; here the object is the speaker’s committed wrongs.

Context: Orestes supplies the answer in the dramatic exchange with Menelaus. The wrongs come from de malis perpetratis, not from an invariant meaning guilty for conscius; the related word also occurs in non-accusatory and personified uses.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Sum enim mihi conscius de malis perpetratis

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: for I know the wrongs I have committed

Alignment convention

Qualification: The Latin self-awareness construction becomes for I know. De malis perpetratis names committed wrongs without an expressed agent in that passive participle; the modern relative clause I have committed makes Orestes the agent from the dramatic context and his self-accusation. That agent is contextually supplied, not the lexical meaning of conscius.

Supplied words: I have (explicit agent and auxiliary supplied in the active relative rendering of passive perpetratis)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

contra conscientiam

Printed “contra conscientiam” (Latin; prepositional phrase).

Against one’s inward moral judgment; contra marks action contrary to what conscience approves.

Context: Erasmus’s reported accusation concerns accommodating clerics who prefer their own fortune to their flock’s salvation. The opening explicitly exempts good churchmen and universities from blanket condemnation. The following printed ne non offendant reverses its context and is interpreted by the supplied modern, not silently accepted as consistent Latin.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Preserve sequence and printed-number distinction exactly.

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: contra conscientiam probant, non ut salutarem reddant gregem, sed ut magnificam sibi parent fortunam

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: approve it against their conscience, not to bring their flock to salvation, but to secure a splendid fortune for themselves

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Supplied words: it (understood object of probant)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

for conscience’s sake

Printed “for conscience sake” (English; adverbial phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: for conscience sake

Because one believes an action to be a religious or moral obligation.

Context: Burton’s polemic contrasts conduct voluntarily undertaken from inward conviction with what armies or laws could compel. The religious subject supplies the motivation, while superiors allegedly direct it to their ends; voluntary here does not certify the practices or leaders as right.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

free conscience

Printed “conscience is free” (English; predicative construction).

Inward moral freedom or innocence that external imprisonment cannot bind.

Context: Burton’s upright man remains secure through confiscation, exile and chains in a Chrysostom-derived consolation. This interior freedom is distinct from the later political permission to practise one’s religion.

Source: original body

Source wording: cast him into bands, his conscience is free

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

galled conscience

Printed “galled conscience” (English; phrase).

A conscience painfully sore or tormented by guilt or accusation.

Context: Opposed to the feast of good conscience and followed by the oven image.

Source: original body

Source wording: a galled conscience

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

good conscience

Printed “good conscience” (English; phrase).

Inward moral innocence or approval, figured as sustaining satisfaction.

Context: Consolatory response to defamation and wrongful treatment.

Source: original body

Source wording: a good conscience is a continual feast

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

guilty conscience

Printed “guilty conscience” (English; phrase).

Inward awareness of wrongdoing, made the cause of an offended reader’s flinching.

Context: Burton’s satirical defense; not independent proof that every offended reader is guilty.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: a guilty conscience

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: his guilty conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Supplied words: his (makes possessive reference explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

horror of conscience

Printed “horror of conscience” (English; noun phrase).

Dread and torment experienced in inward moral or religious awareness.

Context: The synopsis lists it among despair’s symptoms, after guilty conscience has appeared among causes. Its next items distinguish prognosis from treatment; the modern adjusts subsection numbering explicitly as the accompanying note explains.

Source: original body

Source wording: extream tortures and horror of conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

largus

Printed “largiorem” (Latin; comparative adjective).

Broader or more accommodating; the comparative describes moral latitude in conscience.

Context: The marginal generalization about occupations gives more accommodating conscience where Burton’s body uses stretching leather. The Latin’s exclusion of named occupations and generalizations about the young must remain distinct from the body’s seldom; the preceding merchant is a counterexample to universal claims.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: largiorem hi nacti sunt conscientiam

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: these have acquired a more accommodating conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: Full noun construction aligns the comparative adjective with more accommodating and nacti sunt with have acquired. The earlier Latin non versus English-body seldom is a separate contextual difference.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

make conscience of · make a conscience · local use 1

Printed “make a conscience” (English; phrase).

Treat one’s actions as matters of moral obligation and act accordingly.

Context: Positive description of honest people whom worldly society misjudges.

Source: original body

Source wording: make a conscience of their doings

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

make conscience of · make a conscience · local use 2

Printed “make a conscience” (English; phrase).

Treat conduct as a matter of moral obligation or scruple; the following of nothing denies that restraint for every deed in this accusation.

Context: Burton’s accusation against complacent professed Christians.

Source: original body

Source wording: make a conscience of nothing they do

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

matter of conscience

Printed “matters of conscience” (English; noun phrase).

Questions treated as binding moral or religious obligations.

Context: The people concerned are rigorists within Burton’s own church who object to vestments and ceremonies he calls indifferent. The phrase reports their conviction while he contests its objects. Earlier he likewise describes followers and other religious practices under this idiom.

Source: original body

Source wording: they make matters of conscience of them

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

ne non offendant

Printed “ne non offendant” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: ne non offendant

Meaning: Lest they not offend.

Here: The printed negative construction literally means lest they not offend. The supplied modern so as not to offend follows the surrounding argument and reverses that printed force.

Context: Burton’s Latin attack on self-interested clergy is attributed in the margin to Luther on Galatians. An accompanying note explains the contextual interpretation; no corrected Luther wording is independently established here.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Preserve sequence and printed-number distinction exactly.

Source wording: ne non offendant patronum

Modern rendering: so as not to offend

Alignment convention

Alignment scope: Contextual editorial interpretation of problematic printed Latin; not a literal component translation.

Edition note: checked against the supplied source; editorial interpretation explicitly qualified where applicable

peace of conscience

Printed “peace of conscience” (English; noun phrase).

Inward moral and religious assurance, free from tormenting accusation.

Context: Burton presents true religion as a fear that expels fear and sustains hope amid persecution. The preceding account distinguishes it from superstition; this does not equate all religious confidence with accurate judgment.

Source: original body

Source wording: he hath peace of conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

play upon conscience

Printed “play upon their consciences” (English; figurative verbal phrase).

Manipulate inward religious judgment and feeling, as though playing a tuned instrument.

Context: Burton accuses confessors of raising and lowering their followers for private advantage. His claim that Catholics therefore should suffer less despair is sarcastic polemical inference, not a supported comparison of illness rates; later he includes Catholic casuists among useful advisers.

Source: original body

Source wording: play upon their consciences with plausible speeches and terrible threats

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

scrupulous conscience

Printed “scrupulous conscience” (English; qualified noun phrase).

A conscience burdened by excessive moral doubts and self-accusation.

Context: Burton attributes the term to Foreest and describes magnified small faults or accusation where no cause exists. The margin’s knot in a bulrush makes that lack of grounds explicit; genuine guilt in the preceding paragraph does not validate each scruple.

Source: original body

Source wording: This scrupulous conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

stimuli conscientiæ

Printed “conscientiæ stimulis” (Latin; inflected noun phrase).

Stings or goads of conscience: painful inward moral self-accusation.

Context: Platter’s merchant believes that lost wheat has damned him, while retaining sound judgment in other matters. The margin gives 1566. The supposed damnation remains his belief, not the narrator’s established verdict.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: ob triticum diutius servatum conscientiæ stimulis agitatur

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: He is tormented by pangs of conscience over wheat kept too long

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering, not the modern body.

Supplied words: He (subject understood in agitatur)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

tender conscience

Printed “tender consciences” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: tender consciences

Consciences readily hurt or alarmed by perceived wrongdoing.

Context: Conditional susceptibility heightened by religious inclination and melancholy; misinterpretation matters.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

torn conscience

Printed “torn conscience” (English; qualified noun phrase).

An inward moral condition figured as shabby, torn clothing, opposed to outward luxury.

Context: Burton’s anti-adornment counsel attributed to Bernard contrasts purple robes with damaged inward character. Torn here is a garment metaphor for moral poverty, not simply another report of anxious self-accusation.

Source: original body

Source wording: a torn conscience

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

touched in conscience

Printed “touched in conscience” (English; participial phrase).

Inwardly moved to remorse and repentance for wrongdoing.

Context: Burton specifies believers who are truly penitent, grieved and desirous of reconciliation. The promise is unrestricted among that stated class, not freed from its conditions. His preceding pastoral preparation and subsequent consolation remain part of the argument.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: such as are truly touched in conscience for their sins

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: those whose consciences are truly touched by their sins

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original persons touched in conscience become consciences touched; the possessive and passive construction redistribute the same inward experience without changing the people or their sins.

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

troubled conscience

Printed “troubled in conscience” (English; phrase).

Distressed by moral and religious self-accusation.

Context: Montalto reports the nun; damnation is her belief, while other judgment is described as sound.

Source: original body

Source wording: troubled in conscience for five year last past

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

vastata conscientia

Printed “Vastatâ conscientiâ” (Latin; ablative absolute).

With conscience laid waste or devastated; the ablative phrase names an inward condition.

Context: Hemmingius’s cited margin gives a sense of divine wrath after devastation. The attached body continues the sufferer’s imagined extremity; Burton’s answer follows at 168-25 and reads affliction through mercy, justice and trial. Sensed wrath is not an independent editorial verdict of abandonment.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Vastatâ conscientiâ sequitur sensus iræ divinæ

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Once the conscience is devastated, a sense of divine wrath follows

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separately identified editorial rendering, not the modern body.

Supplied words: Once... is (English subordinate clause for the ablative absolute)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

worm of conscience

Printed “worme of conscience” (English; metaphorical noun phrase).

Gnawing remorse or inward torment, figured as a worm.

Context: Burton makes the devil an agent acting by divine permission and compares the torment with Nemesis. The following biblical examples include temporary affliction; the image is not a diagnosis establishing that every troubled person is finally forsaken.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: that worme of conscience

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: that gnawing worm of conscience

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Supplied words: gnawing (explicit development of the worm metaphor)

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.

wounded conscience

Printed “conscience wounded” (English; participial construction).

Inward moral or religious awareness painfully afflicted, figured as a wound.

Context: Burton describes despair affecting the whole soul and all its powers: wounded conscience stands alongside grieved heart and darkened mind. The fumes arise from the terrors in this sentence; the image joins his bodily and theological accounts without proving that each sufferer is guilty or finally reprobate.

Source: original body

Source wording: The heart is grieved, the conscience wounded, the minde eclypsed with black fumes arising from those perpetual terrours

Notes: Historical attribution remains Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited historical work is claimed.