Idolatry and images

Use in the book

The frontispiece already distinguishes a portrait from an idol. The kneeling figure is “on his Idol fixt,” absorbed in worship and tormented between hope and fear; Burton both condemns and pities him. The author’s own “Image,” by contrast, presents his face and clothing. Art cannot adequately express his mind: the writings must disclose that. The continuation denies vanity and says the printer insisted upon the portrait. An appearance made public is not thereby a claim to divine honour.

Other images serve other arguments. God’s image in human beings expresses the dignity of soul and faculties; the later “decayed image of God” is impaired but explicitly still remaining. Poets’ and painters’ images show imagination inventing forms, whereas the image of King Duff belongs to an alleged magical operation. Burton’s next paragraph denies inherent power to the spells and signs and assigns deceptive agency to the Devil. The images apparently seen by distressed people, on the other hand, are explained through internal vapours, eyes and brain. These historical explanations must not be flattened into a single theory of images, and the optical discussion’s continuation still permits demonic deception.

Artistic viewing can instead be commended. In the recreations of study, Burton repeats an attributed claim that seeing a statue by Phidias may dispel care. The edition identifies the authority as Dio Chrysostom, not John Chrysostom, and explains that Burton broadens Dio’s particular example. This is an illustration of consolation, not a verified instantaneous treatment. Elsewhere covetousness is the “Image” and epitome of melancholy: the word means a representative embodiment, and no visible picture is needed.

The sustained religious argument concerns how gods are made. Burton first reports the deification of rulers and benefactors, quoting deificare homines, “to deify people,” and follows it with his own account of the Devil entering temples, statues, tombs and altars. Maximus of Tyre’s ensuing account is different: a good person’s soul becomes an intermediate spirit who helps friends and guards mortals. “So they will have it” marks Burton’s distance, and “or the divel in his likeness” is his intervention in the reported vision. The ancient intermediate spirit is not automatically an evil demon in the account being reported.

The examples then vary the alleged motive. Poets are said to make gods as children make dolls. Proculus announces Romulus’s ascent to heaven to pacify the people; the edition notes that Burton turns Livy’s less categorical report into a firmer story of murder and deception. Syrophanes erects his son’s statue, and servants decorate it to appease the father’s anger until the son is worshipped “by little and little.” Flora’s benefaction and the supposed wish to make her festival acceptable furnish another explanation; Alabanda’s deification of Rome becomes political flattery on one side and arrogance on the other. These are Burton’s assembled explanations and valuations, not an independently established history of the origins of religion.

The material argument turns upon the relation between work and maker. Images are carved and gilded in wood, iron, ivory, silver, brass and stone. The Horatian fragment remembers a tree-trunk; the Seneca-attributed sentence says worshippers honour wooden gods while despising their craftsmen. Burton’s English compresses that reversal into “they adore work, contemn the workman.” The Tertullian-attributed conditional goes further: without human favour there would be no gods. “Stupid statues” here means lifeless statues, not unintelligent people. Their susceptibility to nesting animals and dirt is recruited to ridicule the divinity ascribed to them.

The next paragraph juxtaposes human manufacture with claims of heavenly origin. Burton describes images in animal and human configurations and repeats the report that local people believed Minerva’s image had fallen from the sky. His descriptions mix traditions and retain his hostile adjectives; the edition does not harmonize them. He then attacks the conduct and vulnerability assigned to gods in myth, quotes the challenge “If they are gods, why do you mourn them?”, and recounts Diagoras using Hercules’s image as cooking fuel. The “thirteenth labour” is the anecdote’s joke: an object praised as divine is made useful as material.

The final turn concerns the worshipper. After distinguishing religion’s humanizing effect from superstition’s brutalizing effect, Burton conditionally invokes a maxim attributed to Plotinus: “if that of Plotinus be true,” worship aims to make people like its object. He then asks whether idolaters must become blocks and stones, or worshippers of pagan gods become devils. The maxim, its conditional introduction and the Christian premise that the nations’ gods are demons are separate parts of the inference. The rhetoric is moral and theological, not a claim about literal human petrification; the next paragraph develops the alleged torment of superstition.

Erotic writing both transfers and reverses this religious vocabulary. The mistress called an idol receives devotion preferred to the gods’ favour; the surrounding mock religion makes appetite itself a divinity. The earlier joke is more elaborate: idols and mirrors fall in love when their beautiful mistresses look at them. “In this kind” marks erotic idolatry, and “if you will believe Poets” signals literary extravagance. The following Latin poem and Burton’s separate English version give feeling to what begins without feeling. These are figures for beauty’s commanding power, not evidence that statues are alive.

Related entries

Charity for deifying love; Simulacra for the Latin representation family and its optical and erotic contexts, especially simulacrum (plural simulacra) · simulacra and simulacra animæ expertia for the separate optical margin; Form for shaping and configuration; Religion and superstition and Religious melancholy for the broader classification. Stupid retains the wider insensibility family. Sacrifice, oblation and donaries and Relics and shrines distinguish related acts and objects.

Places to read

1. An Explanation of the Frontispiece · paragraph 9; An Explanation of the Frontispiece · paragraphs 12–13idol-directed worship and the author’s portrait; unnumbered preliminary matter.
2. Human Excellence, the Fall, Miseries and Infirmities; Their Causes · paragraphs 4–12human excellence, divine likeness and the account of its loss.
3. Subsection 7. The Internal Senses · paragraphs 18–20imagination’s artistic images beside memory and reason.
4. Subsection 3 Witches and Magicians: How They Cause Melancholy · paragraphs 51–55alleged magical instruments and the denial of their inherent power.
5. Subsection 12. Love of Money. Covetousness as a Cause · paragraphs 35–37covetousness as the image and epitome of melancholy.
6. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraphs 17–19; Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraphs 27–29internally produced appearances, optical tricks and the demonic allowance.
7. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraphs 31–33statues and other works of art as recreations.
8. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable and Honourable · paragraphs 33–35charity’s positive “deifying love,” distinguished from the making of false gods.
9. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraphs 11–15idols and mirrors as erotic worshippers.
10. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 10–13the impaired but remaining divine image.
11. 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 40–43benefactors made gods and the attributed intermediate-spirit account.
12. 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 1–15invented gods, human deification, work and maker, claimed heavenly images and satire.
13. 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 40–42the conditional imitation argument and its continuation in superstition’s torment.
14. Member 2 Subsection 1 Religious Melancholy From Deficiency: Those Affected—Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, the Worldly and Complacent, Carnalists, All Impious People, Impenitent Sinners, and Others · paragraphs 35–40appetite’s mock divinity and the mistress as idol.

In this edition

Image often remains image, but “Phidias Images” becomes “Phidias’s statues.” “Gods own Image” becomes “God’s own image,” whereas the later “decayed” becomes impaired and “yet remaining” still remains. In the magical catalogue the edition explains the King Duff figure as a harmful magical likeness; that explanation belongs to note, not to a newly discovered adjective in Burton’s noun. In the perceptual account, “as they suppose” and “which indeed are not” preserve the contrast between apparent external sight and what the speaker denies is externally present.

The manufacturing argument likewise depends on component distinctions. Gilt becomes gilded; stupid becomes lifeless; Image and statue remain the objects those adjectives qualify. Latin deificare contributes “to deify,” while homines contributes “people.” The supplied modern column translates the Seneca-attributed sentence and Burton’s separate English work/workman restatement separately, rather than pretending that the shorter English repeats every Latin component. The Latin’s unus makes the aim sole; Burton’s English “that’s the drift” is shorter, and his opening if must still govern the use of the maxim. Editorial identifications and unresolved source notices remain editorial, not additional words by Burton.

image: fashioned representation

A visible representation made by human art, including a portrait, statue or other likeness; its being an image does not by itself make it an idol.

Grammar: Count noun; singular Image/image and plural Images/images.

Original preliminary verse: “His Image to the world appears.” In the modern column: “His image appears before the world.” The frontispiece likeness presents the author’s clothed appearance, not his mind. The speaker denies pride; the next unit says the printer insisted on the likeness. Art is expressly unable to express the mind adequately. Image corresponds to image; portrait is the contextual access synonym, not an additional printed word.

Original text: “one of Phidias Images”. In the modern column: “one of Phidias’s statues”. A work of sculpture is viewed as an artistic recreation. Burton attributes the consoling effect to Chrysostom. An accompanying note identifies Dio, not John Chrysostom, and says Burton broadens the example. The alleged immediate relief is not medical verification. Images becomes statues, preserving the concrete works rather than classifying their viewers as idolaters.

Original text: “gilt Images of wood, iron, ivory, silver, brass, stone”. In the modern column: “gilded images of wood, iron, ivory, silver, brass and stone”. Made objects whose materials and makers underpin Burton’s argument against worshipping them. Burton calls worship of the objects absurd; this is his theological evaluation. Work is adored while the workman is despised. Images remains images; gilt separately means gilded. The list of materials is not the definition of image.

image: divine likeness

A likeness to God ascribed to human beings, especially their soul and powers; not a manufactured object of worship.

Grammar: Count noun in possessive noun phrase; Image/image.

Original text: “created to Gods own Image”. In the modern column: “created in God’s own image”. Human excellence is described through likeness to an immortal, incorporeal being. Burton’s Christian account, not a claim that God is materially carved or painted. Imaginis Imago is translated separately and its precise theological referent remains unspecified in the accompanying note. Created to is modernized as created in; Image remains image. The following modern in the likeness explains the construction.

Original text: “that same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us”. In the modern column: “that same impaired image of God that still remains in us”. The surviving but impaired divine likeness enters the explanation of susceptibility to religious error. Burton’s theological causal account. The image is impaired, not wholly absent in this passage. Decayed gives impaired; image remains image. Still remains preserves the explicit qualification of survival.

image: artistic invention

An imagined or represented figure produced by poetic or pictorial invention.

Grammar: Plural count noun Images.

Original text: “their several Fictions, Anticks, Images”. In the modern column: “their various inventions, grotesques and images”. Poets and painters demonstrate imagination’s power through their creations. The surrounding account distinguishes the faculty’s force in artists from its harmful effects in melancholy; human reason should govern it. This is historical faculty psychology. Images corresponds to images; Fictions and Anticks supply separate items.

image: magical likeness

A representation used as an instrument in alleged magical operations, not necessarily an object receiving worship.

Grammar: Plural count noun Images.

Original text: “Images, as that in Hector Boethius of King Duffe”. In the modern column: “images, like that of King Duff in Hector Boece”. The named likeness is listed among alleged instruments of witchcraft. Burton attributes effects to witchcraft and reported authorities, but immediately denies inherent power to spells, signs and words and assigns deceptive agency to the Devil. This is not an endorsement of magical efficacy. Images remains images; the identification as a harmful magical likeness is the edition’s explanation in the accompanying note.

image: perceived appearance

A seeming visible object or likeness, which in this account may be internally produced rather than present outside the observer.

Grammar: Plural count noun images.

Original text: “they apprehend and see outwardly, as they suppose, divers images, which indeed are not”. In the modern column: “cause them to perceive and seemingly see outside themselves various images that do not in fact exist”. The contrast concerns the location and reality of apparent sights. Mercatus and Galen are invoked within Burton’s historical bodily explanation. The paragraph moves between eyes and brain. The later continuation still allows demonic deception. Images remains images. As they suppose and which indeed are not correspond to seemingly and do not in fact exist; neither qualification is dropped.

image: embodiment

A representative instance or concentrated expression of a condition, not a literal picture or statue.

Grammar: Singular count noun Image, coordinated with patterne and Epitome.

Original text: “the patterne, Image, Epitome of all Melancholy”. In the modern column: “the pattern, image and epitome of all melancholy”. Covetousness is made a concentrated example of melancholy and its miseries. Burton’s emphatic moral and medical rhetoric; all is retained. The following paragraph acknowledges a contrary opinion that covetous people are happy. Image corresponds to image; epitome is a separate reinforcing noun, not its one-to-one translation.

idol

An image or other object receiving worship which Burton condemns as misdirected or false.

Grammar: Count noun: singular Idol/Idoll and plural Idols.

Original preliminary verse: “He fasts, prays, on his Idol fixt”. In the modern column: “He fasts and prays, intent upon his idol”. The frontispiece figure directs his devotional attention to an idol. Burton’s polemical verse pictures torment between hope and fear; perhaps qualifies the ironic claim about reaching hell. The speaker also expresses pity. Idol corresponds to idol; fixt gives intent upon, not a description of the idol’s physical fastening.

Original text: “Their carved Idols”. In the modern column: “Their carved idols”. Material idols are specified as carved objects before the list of gilded images. Burton’s denunciation of humanly manufactured gods; the lexicon reports rather than adopts it. Idols corresponds to idols; carved identifies workmanship, not a universal property of everything the text calls an idol.

idol: beloved

A beloved person treated as the supreme object of devotion, using religious vocabulary figuratively.

Grammar: Singular count noun Idol/Idoll predicated of Mistris.

Original text: “she is his Idoll, Lady, Mistris, Venerilla, Queen”. In the modern column: “She is his idol, lady, mistress, little Venus, queen”. The lover’s idealizing titles make the beloved an idol; the hostile observer’s valuation is contrasted with his. Burton juxtaposes an observer’s insults with the lover’s praise. Neither valuation is a neutral description of the woman; the next poem makes the heart her temple. Idoll gives idol; Venerilla gives little Venus independently.

Original text: “The Idol which they worship and adore, is their Mistris”. In the modern column: “The idol they worship and adore is their mistress”. The mistress displaces God in Burton’s accusation against people devoted to pleasure. Moral satire in the account of deficient religion. The adjoining Plautine speaker prefers the woman’s love to the gods’; Satan and other personifications are Burton’s further allegory. Idol remains idol; Mistris separately becomes mistress. This is a person, not a statue.

idolatry

Worship of gods or images regarded by the speaker as false; a condemnatory classification in Burton’s religious argument.

Grammar: Abstract noun Idolatry/Idolatrie; idolatrie is a lower-case printed variant used elsewhere in the same condemned-worship sense.

Original text: “their horrible Idolatry”. In the modern column: “their horrible idolatry”. The term gathers the foregoing attack on manufactured gods and their mythic conduct. Burton approves the ridicule associated with Lucian and Pliny and recounts the Diagoras fuel anecdote. The precise anecdote source is unlocated in the accompanying note. Idolatry remains idolatry; horrible is Burton’s evaluative adjective, not part of a neutral definition.

idolatry: erotic worship

Excessive adoration of beauty, jocularly represented as worship; here even images become worshippers.

Grammar: Abstract noun Idolatry within the phrase committed Idolatry.

Original text: “Idols themselves that have committed Idolatry in this kind”. In the modern column: “idols themselves that have committed idolatry of this kind”. Poetic personification reverses the expected direction of worship: the object of worship itself adores beauty. The explicit if you will believe Poets qualifies the nearby mirror fantasy. The following Latin and separate English verse animate an unfeeling object; this is literary extravagance, not a report of sentient statues. Idols and Idolatry separately correspond to idols and idolatry; in this kind limits the claim to the erotic setting.

idolater

A person whom Burton represents as worshipping a false god or idol.

Grammar: Plural agent noun Idolaters.

Original text: “what shall be the end of Idolaters, but to degenerate into stocks and stones?” In the modern column: “what will idolaters come to but to degenerate into blocks and stones?” Worshippers become the target of a rhetorical inference from their objects of worship. Burton begins if that of Plotinus be true; the maxim’s sole purpose of religion and the later demon premise belong to an attributed, conditional polemical argument, not literal biological transformation. Idolaters gives idolaters; stocks gives blocks. The question’s consequence is not part of the noun’s neutral definition.

deify

To elevate a person or other entity to divine status or treat it as a god.

Grammar: Past participle deified, in passive constructions.

Original text: “Now being deified”. In the modern column: “Now deified”. The dead good person’s soul is said to become a protective intermediate spirit. Maximus of Tyre’s account, bounded by so they will have it, not Burton’s own confirmation of the spirit’s powers. An accompanying note warns that ancient daimon need not mean evil demon. Deified remains deified; being is compressed in the modern participial construction.

Original text: “so a town of houses was deified”. In the modern column: “Thus a town of houses was deified”. Burton makes the elevation of Rome into a goddess an instance of political flattery. The Alabanda account is Burton’s report and condemnatory interpretation; he blames both the givers and accepters of the honour. Deified remains deified; the subject is a city, not only a dead human.

deificare

To make gods of, or accord divine status to, human beings.

Grammar: Latin present active infinitive, governing accusative homines; infinitival subject of the reported custom.

Original text: “deificare homines qui beneficiis mortales juvarent”. In the modern column: “to deify people whose good deeds benefited mortals”. Boissard’s reported custom links deification to human benefaction. Burton calls the custom usual and then adds his demonic explanation of oracles and miracles. The precise Boissard locus remains uncollated. Deificare gives to deify; homines gives people; the relative clause states which people. No single component inherits the whole sentence.

statue

A fashioned bodily representation, here used for memorialization and, in Burton’s account, turned into an object of worship.

Grammar: Count noun: singular statue, plural statues.

Original text: “he erected his statue in his house”. In the modern column: “He set up the boy’s statue in his house”. A father’s memorial likeness is adorned by servants in the explanation of the son’s eventual deification. Burton’s story has servants seeking to soothe their master; little by little marks a process, not an initial declaration of godhood. An accompanying note leaves the narrative’s source uncollated. Statue remains statue; the modern boy’s resolves the original his from the only-son antecedent.

Original text: “stupid statues”. In the modern column: “lifeless statues”. Lifeless material objects are contrasted with the divinity assigned to them. Burton’s anti-idolatrous satire. The work/maker reversal does not claim that every sculpture is worshipped. Statues remains statues; stupid contributes lifeless and belongs to the distinct Stupid family.

deify: make godlike

To make a person like God through the perfecting force of charity, rather than to fabricate or worship a false god.

Grammar: Participial adjective deifying modifying love.

Original text: “a deifying love”. In the modern column: “a love that makes us godlike”. Charity is praised as transforming the person who possesses it. Positive Christian appraisal, bounded by the preceding claim that outward gifts without charity profit nothing. This differs from the reported or condemned elevation to divine status in R12. Deifying is expanded into that makes us godlike; us is supplied by the modern construction, not separately printed in the adjective.