From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The word“Incubus” can name an oppressive experience in sleep, imagined as a weight riding or sitting upon the sleeper.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe early disease catalogue places Incubus among disorders associated with the brain’s parts, beside vertigo, apoplexy and the falling sickness.
- In this edition“Incubus” becomes “nightmare oppression” in the anatomical and sleep catalogues, “the nightmare” in the diet and regimen passages, and remains “incubus” alongside “witch-ridden” in the explanation of imagination.
- A place to readIncubus in the classification of diseases of the head
Meaning
“Incubus” can name an oppressive experience in sleep, imagined as a weight riding or sitting upon the sleeper. “Witch-ridden” gives the supposed assailant and bodily relation explicitly. In Burton’s medical passages the person feels almost suffocated; the name does not by itself decide whether the cause is a spirit or a bodily disturbance. His discussion of imagination expressly substitutes humours for the imagined old woman.
The paired “Incubi and Succubi” names supposed sexual spirits in demonological accounts. The supplied edition explains the incubus as taking the male sexual role and the succubus the female role. Burton also prints singular “Incubus and Succubus” and the form “Succuba.” The related Latin “Succubas” has a different local application in a catalogue of human sexual practices: there the rendering understands women taking a receptive role, not a class of demons. Form, construction and context matter more than a uniform supernatural label.
Use in the book
The early disease catalogue places Incubus among disorders associated with the brain’s parts, beside vertigo, apoplexy and the falling sickness. Dietary and sleep discussions give the label a physiological setting. Hare frequently eaten is said to bring on Incubus, and sleep after hard-to-digest food or on a full stomach is said to increase it alongside sleepwalking and terrifying dreams. The qualification concerning frequent eating belongs to the dietary claim; the catalogue is neither a modern diagnosis nor independent evidence that the named foods cause the condition.
A different medical scheme places Incubus under falling-sickness: Burton reports Paracelsus’s four principal disease classes and their followers. Ravelascus then claims that curing any principal disease cures all its subordinate diseases. Burton calls this therapeutic conclusion too general.
The imagination passage explains the experience more fully. Humours and gathered vapours trouble the sleeping person’s imagination. When sufferers lie on their backs they suppose an old woman sits heavily upon them, almost stifling their breath; Burton then says nothing harms them except the gathering of bad humours. The woman is the content of the supposition, not the agent of the asserted explanation. His continuation discusses sleepwalking and trance through faculties and spirits, and subsequently combines imagination with demonic illusion in accounts of witches’ journeys. The internal explanation of this particular nightmare should not be enlarged into a denial of all supernatural activity everywhere in the book.
The later advice against Incubus brings diet, posture and mental images together: a light, easily digested supper, avoidance of lying on the back, and avoidance of frightening daytime thoughts or bedtime talk. The continuation explains that waking conversation can shape sleeping imagination. This is Burton’s historical regimen, whose conjunction of bodily and imaginative conditions helps explain his use of the word.
The supernatural sense has a genuinely different development. In the spirit survey, Cardan is reported to attribute sexual desire, transformations and service to magicians to incubi and succubi. Water spirits may also appear as Succuba and allegedly marry mortal men. The Third Partition then asks how far love’s power extends. Its first claims about spirits are conditional: if the accounts are true, there is some probability that they too are enamoured. Burton records Weyer and others’ denial that such intercourse occurs and their explanation through fantasy, before assembling contrary authorities and narratives.
The continuation prevents leaving Burton at the opening conditional. He says he will subscribe to Lactantius’s account of angels and women, recounts further alleged supernatural unions, and finally judges the disputed matter likely on Lipsius’s appeal to examples and confessions. He also permits the alternative of devils’ trickster priests. His movement towards assent remains dependent on the limits of his evidence: stories, transmitted claims and confessions do not independently establish supernatural events. A claim about events at Louvain is part of the Lipsius material, not Burton’s report from his own town.
A later quotation from Chaucer makes a friar the only Incubus needed where elves once walked. The supernatural sexual threat becomes a satirical description of a human religious figure. Burton’s following anecdotes concern alleged sexual access secured under cover of exorcism and pastoral care. At the end of the work, “Incubos” returns within a Latin catalogue of beings supposedly repelled by gemstones, expressly qualified by “if the records of the ancients are to be believed.” The same word thus crosses medical experience, disputed demonology, anticlerical satire and conditional remedy lore.
Related entries
Daemon and genius; Demonic apparitions; Imagination; Sleep and waking; Dream; Obsession and possession; Love; Familiar
Places to read
- · paragraph 12–16Incubus in the classification of diseases of the head
- · paragraph 7–13Cardan’s incubi and succubi; the water-spirit “Succuba”
- · paragraph 42–44diet and the claim concerning frequent consumption of hare
- · paragraph 24–26sleep circumstances and nightmare oppression
- · paragraph 9–12the witch-ridden sleeper and Burton’s humoral explanation
- · paragraph 5–7Incubus under falling-sickness in Paracelsus’s scheme, followed by a disputed general-cure claim
- · paragraph 38–40the historical regimen and daytime thought in dreams
- · paragraph 49–58conditional claims, explicit denial and supporting narratives
- · paragraph 1–15subsequent assent, alternative priestly deception and the quoted Louvain evidence
- · paragraph 33–35“Succubas” in a human sexual catalogue
- · paragraph 70–74the Chaucerian Incubus as friar and allegations of religiously mediated sexual deception
- “Incubos” and the conditional gemstone claim
- Unnumbered Table“Incubi and succubi 438,” a supplied lookup to the sexual-spirit discussion
In this edition
“Incubus” becomes “nightmare oppression” in the anatomical and sleep catalogues, “the nightmare” in the diet and regimen passages, and remains “incubus” alongside “witch-ridden” in the explanation of imagination. These renderings follow the particular use; they do not identify every occurrence with one present-day disorder. In “if they lie on their backs, they suppose,” both the condition and the verb of supposition remain crucial to agency.
The sexual-spirit pair is retained as “incubi and succubi,” while the Table explains it as male and female demons that have intercourse with humans. “Succubas” is rendered “women who take the receptive role” in the distinct Latin sexual catalogue. Chaucer’s quoted “Incubus” remains “incubus,” its human target made clear by the preceding friar. The modern rendering is the supplied edition’s interpretation, not a second primary witness. No fresh collation of Cardan, Weyer, Chaucer or the other cited historical texts is claimed here.
incubus · Incubus · local use 1
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Oppressive nightmare experience in the historical disease catalogue.
Context: Burton lists affections of the brain’s parts; no exact modern diagnosis is asserted.
Source: original body
Source wording: Caro, Vertigo, Incubus, Apoplexie, Falling sickness
incubus · Incubus · local use 2
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Nightmare oppression attributed to frequently eating hare.
Context: The meat is the grammatical cause in Burton’s dietary claim; frequency qualifies the eating.
Source: original body
Source wording: it breeds Incubus, often eaten, and causeth fearful dreams
incubus · Incubus · local use 3
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Nightmare oppression among disturbances attributed to unsuitable sleep conditions.
Context: Sleep by day, after difficult food, or with a full stomach is the proposed precipitating context.
Source: original body
Source wording: fearful dreams, Incubus, night walking
incubus · Incubus · local use 4
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
The oppressive nightmare addressed by the proposed sleep regimen.
Context: Burton’s historical advice coordinates diet, posture and frightening thoughts.
Source: original body
Source wording: fearfull and troublesome dreams, Incubus and such inconveniences
incubus · Incubus · local use 5
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
The imagined sexual spirit used satirically for a friar.
Context: Chaucer quotation applied in Burton’s anticlerical account; he refers to the limiter.
Source: original body
Source wording: There needs no other Incubus but he
incubus · Incubos
Printed “Incubos” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Meaning: Incubi, spirits imagined to oppress sleepers; Latin accusative plural Incubos.
Here: Spirits imagined to oppress sleepers, among beings allegedly warded off by stones.
Context: Conditional authority of ancient records explicitly limits the gemstone claim.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: ad Lemures, Stryges, Incubos, Genios aëreos arcendos, si veterum monimentis habenda fides
Modern rendering: to ward off ghosts, witches, incubi and spirits of the air, if the records of the ancients are to be believed
Word and construction: Ad with arcendos supplies the purpose to ward off; the listed beings are its objects. Incubos is the indexed accusative plural. Si and habenda fides retain the condition that the ancient records are to be trusted; English are completes the Latin elliptical obligation construction.
incubus · Incubus · local use 6
Printed “Incubus” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Meaning: An oppressive nightmare experience.
Here: Oppressive nightmare assigned to the falling-sickness class in Paracelsus’s fourfold disease scheme.
Context: Burton reports Paracelsus’s classification and its followers; the following generalization that curing a principal disease cures all its subordinate diseases belongs to Ravelascus and is judged too general by Burton.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: To the Falling-sicknesse, belong Palsy, Vertigo, Cramps, Convulsions, Incubus, Apoplexie
Modern rendering: under epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, cramps, convulsions, nightmare, apoplexy
Word and construction: Falling-sicknesse becomes epilepsy and Incubus becomes nightmare within the wider list. The modern elliptical under construction corresponds to the original belong relation; these are historical categories, not claims of modern diagnostic identity.
incubus / witch-ridden
Printed “Incubus, or Witch-ridden” (English; phrase).
Oppressive sleep experience imagined as being ridden by a witch.
Context: The old woman is supposed by the sufferer; Burton asserts humours disturb imagination instead.
Source: original body
Source wording: Incubus, or Witch-ridden (as we call it)
incubus and succubus · Incubi and Succubi
Printed “Incubi and Succubi” (Latin terms joined by English and; phrase).
Meaning: Incubi and succubi: supposed sexual spirits taking male and female roles respectively, as explained by the supplied editorial note.
Here: Supposed sexual spirits, male-role and female-role respectively in the edition’s explanation.
Context: Cardan is said to ascribe sexual desire and other powers to these beings.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: (Incubi and Succubi)
Modern rendering: the incubi and succubi
Word and construction: The Latin plural terms are joined by English and. The modern rendering supplies the definite article the while replacing the original parentheses with its wider sentence punctuation.
incubus and succubus · Incubus and Succubus
Printed “Incubus and Succubus” (Latin terms joined by English and; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Incubus and Succubus
Meaning: The incubus and succubus, supposed sexual spirits in male and female roles.
Here: Supposed spirits in a conditional argument for love’s reach beyond ordinary creatures.
Context: Burton’s conditional continues through the catalogue to then there is some probability; later passages move towards assent.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: incubi and succubi
Word and construction: The original singular labels Incubus and Succubus become the modern plural pair incubi and succubi. English and joins the Latin terms. The extended conditional is separately described, since modern true follows the catalogue.
incubus and succubus · Incubi, Succubi
Printed “Incubi, Succubi” (Latin; phrase).
Meaning: Incubi and succubi, alleged sexual spirits.
Here: The alleged sexual spirits whose accounts the named opponents dismiss as fables.
Context: Burton reports the denial of Biarmannus, Weyer and others, then introduces opposing authorities.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: all such relations of Incubi, Succubi, lyes and tales
Modern rendering: all such accounts of incubi and succubi are lies and fables
Word and construction: The indexed Latin plural pair occurs within a wider English clause. Modern and joins the comma-separated pair, and are supplies the predicate omitted in the original elliptical continuation. All qualifies the accounts dismissed by the named opponents, not Burton’s final conclusion.
succuba
Printed “Succubas” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Succubas
Meaning: Succubas: accusative plural of succuba, a woman lying beneath or taking a receptive role; the supplied edition chooses that human application here.
Here: Women taking the receptive sexual role in the supplied interpretation of this human catalogue.
Context: Latin list within Burton’s hostile survey of sexual practices; not automatically spirits.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: women who take the receptive role
Word and construction: The modern descriptive phrase unpacks the Latin noun’s receptive-role sense and feminine plural, with women as the supplied human referent in this catalogue. It is not a second original explanatory clause.
succubus
Printed “Succuba” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Citation: The family heading succubus is distinguished from the exact printed feminine form Succuba; retain that form without silently replacing it with succubi.
A female-form sexual spirit within the water-spirit account.
Context: Trithemius is cited for predominantly female appearances; Paracelsus for alleged marriages.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: as Succuba, or otherwise
Modern rendering: as succubi or otherwise
Word and construction: The modern rendering regularizes printed Succuba to plural succubi within the plural water-spirit account. As and or otherwise retain the alternatives; the original spelling/form remains recorded separately.