Kissing and embracing

Use in the book

The extended account of kisses begins by treating them as powerful incitements. Burton compares kissing to a song’s recurring refrain, an assault, infection and fire. Proœmium aut anticœnium, “a prelude or appetizer,” gives it a preparatory role: a kiss may awaken desire for something further. Other quotations make it continually renewable, so that pleasure starts again rather than reaching a final end. These are literary and moral representations, not clinical claims about the transmission of illness.

The metaphors also change value. In the account attributed to Castiglione, lovers exchange hearts and spirits through their lips; the union is said to be more of mind than body. Ambrosian kisses then summon divine sweetness, nectar and honey. Yet Burton turns immediately to the bitter aftertaste of aloes, gall and hellebore. The Catullan comparison belongs to a stolen kiss and its hostile aftermath, as the edition explains. Lines attributed to Buchanan ask why soft arms and deceitful kisses lure the speaker into a trap. The sweetness of a gesture does not settle its sincerity or consequences.

Burton expressly limits the denunciation. There are honest kisses, he says: charitable, friendly, modest, dutiful and ceremonial ones. Kissing and embracing are gifts of nature; the acts he is censuring are excessive and lascivious. He then invokes severe theological claims in an escalating conditional question about immodest behaviour. Those compressed claims must not be treated as a universal doctrine that every marital kiss is sinful. The edition points out that Aquinas distinguishes intention and denies that kissing and touching are mortal sins in themselves; the sweeping Ledesma claim remains unverified. Burton himself breaks off the excursion and restates his aim: to trace the progress of burning lust.

The gestures have different roles elsewhere in that progress. Familiarity, conversation, kissing and colling allegedly turn initial dislike into affection, illustrated by Burton’s version of Benedick and Beatrice. The earlier courtship instructions attributed to Achilles Tatius treat a woman’s lack of marked resistance as a cue for further approach. That is the literary stratagem being reported; it does not establish consent. In the symptoms, a lover repeatedly returns to kisses when words fail. In the catalogue of extravagant names, suaviolum, literally little kiss, becomes an endearment bestowed upon the beloved; in the verses attributed to Marullus, meum supplies my. In the attempted cure by separation, authorities advise avoiding kisses and then every reminder of the beloved. Finally, the marriage argument welcomes a wife’s clipping and ends by requiring union according to both parties’ desires.

Embracing is also proposed as a remedy. In the earlier discussion of recreation, bodily embraces join the sensory pleasures attributed to Epicurus as means of banishing grief. Burton endorses Cicero’s objection to this medicine. He reports Favorinus and Stobaeus as highly approving, while most of the more permissive physicians allow it in certain cases, especially for such patients. The continuation attributes to Fonseca a proposal involving sexual pleasure and pressure regardless of willingness. These are competing historical opinions about treatment.

Nor does every kiss in the book belong to erotic pursuit. A reported woman explains her kiss of an unattractive sleeping man as reverence for the beauty of his soul. Burton names her Magdalen and him Alanus; the edition identifies the better-known Margaret–Chartier anecdote and records doubts about its chronology. The jealousy discussion permits greeting kisses under the condition of no indecency, and an unverified St Francis anecdote illustrates a charitable interpretation of familiar kissing. These passages challenge the jealous observer’s automatic inference of sexual wrongdoing.

The prefatory satire supplies less benign social uses: a prince kisses a pope’s toe in a hostile picture of submission, worshippers kiss Paxes, ritual peace objects, and a false friend kisses a hand while wishing its owner harm. Burton’s religious and political evaluations belong to his polemic. The original marginal proverb “Kissing goes by favour” transfers the distribution of kisses to honours and offices: Burton consoles rejected candidates by saying that these are not always awarded for merit. His natural philosophy transfers kissing and embracing to plants: neighbouring olive and myrtle clasp roots and branches, while palms allegedly bend together and farmers carry kisses between them. The imagery interprets reported natural affinity through lovers’ gestures. At the devotional end of the work, embracing becomes willing acceptance of divine love, and God’s own embrace figures the welcome offered to sincere penitents.

Related entries

Love: Natural, human and divine uses of affection.

Heroical love: The gestures as causes, symptoms and objects of avoidance.

Beauty: Attraction to a face, a feature or spiritual excellence.

Courtship and wooing: The sequence of approaches and responses.

Dancing: Performed kisses and the spectators’ response.

Jealousy: Suspicion and charitable interpretation.

Marriage: The welcomed embrace within the concluding argument.

Charity: The Christian kiss and divine welcome.

Favour and feature: Personal preference in the allocation of honours and offices.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 10–11papal homage and ritual kissing of pax objects in Democritus Junior’s hostile catalogue.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 1–3the hand-kiss of a professed friend concealing hostility.
3. Subsection 4 Cheerfulness, Merry Company, and Pleasing Sights as Remedies · paragraphs 35–40; note 6312bodily embraces in a disputed remedy, Cicero’s endorsed objection, differing approvals and the coercive sexual continuation.
4. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults, Slander, Mockery and the Like · paragraphs 3–6; note 7166the proverb transfers kissing by preference to honours and offices; its explanation is editorial gloss.
5. Subsection 2 Love’s Origin, Object, Definition and Divisions · paragraphs 6–8natural sympathy and olive–myrtle embraces, with the limits of the reported authorities.
6. Subsection 3 Honourable Objects of Love · paragraphs 39–43spiritual beauty and the doubtful anecdote of a reverential kiss.
7. Section 2 Member 1, Subsection 1 Love Melancholy: Its Ancestry, Power and Reach · paragraphs 27–30trees represented as lovers and farmers carrying kisses between palms.
8. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraphs 18–19the lip as suaviorum delubrum, a shrine of kisses, followed by revealed and hidden kisses.
9. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 17–21courtship stratagems, proximity, kissing and colling; fiction offered as an observation of passion.
10. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 27–44assault and prelude, repeated kisses, spiritual mingling, sweetness and bitterness, deception and harm.
11. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 45–51the explicit concession for virtuous kisses, excessive acts, conditional theological claims, and return to Hero and Leander’s courtship.
12. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 39–42kisses and embraces within the Dionysus–Ariadne performance, whose spectators infer real affection.
13. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraphs 1–5continual kissing as a reported sign; coiling means embracing.
14. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraphs 75–79little kiss as a pet name; the Marullus attribution remains unresolved, and the following Rodomont example’s tender language does not exhaust its coercive narrative.
15. Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraphs 1–4avoidance of kisses expands into avoidance of reminders in the historical treatment of love melancholy.
16. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 46–48a wife’s clipping and the concluding appeal to both partners’ desires.
17. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraph 8; Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 12–14reported social customs, greeting kisses and the explicit condition against indecency.
18. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraphs 47–49charitable interpretation contrasted with punitive jealousy; the Francis anecdote remains unverified.
19. Its Object, God; What His Beauty Is; How It Attracts. The Parts and People Affected · paragraphs 8–10embracing divine love as wholehearted acceptance.
20. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 37–39God’s figurative embrace of the sincerely repentant.

In this edition

“Conference, kissing, colling” becomes “talking, kissing, embracing”; “kissing and coiling” likewise becomes “kissing and embracing.” “The clipping of a wife” becomes “a wife’s embrace.” These translations recover a shared bodily sense without conflating every context. The distinct phrase “kiss coming and going” becomes “kisses on arrival and departure.”

The Latin images retain their component meanings. In suaviorum delubrum, shrine belongs to delubrum and of kisses to suaviorum. In proœmium aut anticœnium, the two nouns offer different comparisons, prelude and appetizer. In libenter amplexatur, “he gladly embraces him,” gladly comes from libenter; the subject and object are supplied from the divine welcome of the penitent. The edition independently renders that Latin phrase and retains Burton’s following English explanation, “he will receive him.” In Meum suaviolum, “My little kiss,” the possessive is separate from the diminutive. The marginal proverb about favour is retained in the note rather than translated in the main column. Its notes also keep doubtful sources visible rather than silently making Burton’s theological or anecdotal compilations exact.

Ambrosial kisses

Printed “Ambrosian kisses” (English; phrase).

Kisses compared with ambrosia, the food of the gods, hence intensely sweet and delightful.

Here: The praise follows an attributed account of souls and spirits mingling in a union of minds; the continuation turns sweetness into bitterness.

Context: Castiglione supplies the preceding soul-union account; Burton accumulates poetic comparisons and then reverses their value.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Ambrosian kisses

Modern rendering: ambrosial kisses

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Ambrosian is rendered ambrosial; this is mythical sweetness rather than a medicinal substance.

Clipping

Printed “clipping” (English; family).

Embracing or clasping in the arms.

Here: A wife’s embrace softens the imagined severe Stoic as Burton concludes in favour of marriage.

Context: Burton expresses a hope, in an attributed passage, before advocating union according to both parties’ desires.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the clipping of a wife

Modern rendering: a wife’s embrace

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Clipping supplies embrace; of a wife identifies the embracing wife.

Colling and coiling

Printed “colling” (English; family).

Embracing or clasping someone affectionately.

Here: Bodily familiarity joins conversation and kissing in Burton’s account of affection growing between people initially at odds.

Context: Burton’s generalized account, illustrated by Benedick and Beatrice; the claimed force of proximity is not a rule of consent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: conference, kissing, colling

Modern rendering: talking, kissing, embracing

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Colling contributes embracing; conference contributes talking.

Further local use

Printed “coiling” (English; family).

Here: The lover returns to kissing and embracing when speech runs out; here the gestures are signs of desire.

Context: Burton’s symptom portrait following a literary wedding example.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: kissing and coiling

Modern rendering: kissing and embracing

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Coiling is rendered embracing.

Sense relation: The same affectionate clasping sense, in the printed variant coiling and a different argumentative setting.

Deceitful kisses

Printed “fallacibus osculis” (Latin; phrase).

With deceptive kisses: fallacibus qualifies osculis, an ablative plural expressing the means of enticement.

Here: The poetic speaker asks why an embrace and kisses are used as bait; Burton’s English version makes the trap explicit.

Context: A question in lines attributed to Buchanan, not a statement that all kisses deceive.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Quid fallacibus osculis inescas?

Modern rendering: Why lure me with deceitful kisses?

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Fallacibus osculis contributes with deceitful kisses; inescas supplies lure, and me is understood from the preceding question.

Uncertainty: The exact Buchanan poem remains unresolved.

Deceptive greeting

Printed “kisse his hand” (English; phrase).

Kiss the hand as an outward greeting or profession of regard.

Here: Burton exposes a discrepancy between friendly ceremony and a wish to harm the person greeted.

Context: Satirical description of hypocrisy; the malevolent intention belongs to the imagined greeter.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: kisse his hand

Modern rendering: kiss the hand of someone

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: His is recast as of someone, whose identity is continued by the following hostile relative clause; the possessor is retained.

Divine embracing

Printed “libenter amplexatur” (Latin; phrase).

He gladly embraces: libenter is gladly; amplexatur is a third-person singular deponent verb meaning embraces.

Here: God’s welcome of the penitent is conditional upon sincere repentance and abandonment of former ways.

Context: Burton’s consolation addressed to the despairing, not a claim that conduct and repentance are irrelevant.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: libenter amplexatur

Modern rendering: he gladly embraces him

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: He and him make explicit the divine subject and penitent object understood from the surrounding argument.

Embrace as acceptance

Printed “embrace and follow this divine love” (English; phrase).

Receive or adopt willingly and pursue this divine love.

Here: The bodily verb extends to wholehearted spiritual commitment, with all one’s powers.

Context: Burton’s exhortation attributed to Ficino, followed by a Plotinian renunciation adapted to Christian devotion.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: embrace and follow this divine love

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The metaphor and its abstract object are retained.

Embracing as reverence

Printed “embrace and reverence” (English; phrase).

Cherish or receive with affection, and honour: here the stated object is the divine beauty of the soul, not the man’s bodily person.

Here: The woman in Burton’s anecdote says her kiss honours the divine beauty of the sleeping man’s soul, not his appearance.

Context: The reported woman’s explanation of Platonic love; Burton uses it in praise of virtue.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: embrace and reverence

Modern rendering: embracing and revering

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Both verbs are preserved with changed grammatical aspect. The enclosing not... but construction shifts the object from his person to the divine beauty of his soul; the narrated bodily kiss and its claimed spiritual meaning remain distinct.

Uncertainty: The anecdote is normally associated with Margaret of Scotland and Alain Chartier, but Burton prints Magdalen and Alanus; the supplied note records chronological doubts.

Embracing; disputed remedy

Printed “embracing” (English; family).

Holding another person in one’s arms.

Here: Bodily embraces appear among sensory pleasures proposed to banish grief, a remedy disputed in the ensuing argument.

Context: Burton reports Epicurus’s proposed remedy and endorses Cicero’s objection. He reports Favorinus and Stobaeus as highly approving, while most of the more permissive physicians allow it in certain cases, especially for such patients.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: touch, taste, embracing

Modern rendering: touch, taste, embraces

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The verbal noun embracing becomes the plural noun embraces; touch and taste are separate items.

Qualification: Original margin Corporum complexus means bodily embraces: corporum is genitive plural of bodies, complexus the noun embraces. The continuation attributes to Fonseca a proposal for sexual pleasure and pressure regardless of willingness. These are historical claims, not medical advice.

Greeting kisses

Printed “kiss coming and going” (English; phrase).

Kiss on arrival and departure as a social greeting.

Here: Burton contrasts reported English freedom with suspicion elsewhere, expressly provided there is no indecency.

Context: Burton’s comparative account of customs, citing Aubanus and Erasmus; national generalizations and exact intermediaries are not independently established.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to kiss coming and going

Modern rendering: kisses on arrival and departure

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The verbal phrase becomes a noun phrase after we allow.

Kiss of charity

Printed “osculum charitatis” (Latin; phrase).

A kiss of charity or Christian fellowship: osculum is kiss; charitatis is the genitive of charity.

Here: One explicit example of virtuous kissing, alongside friendly, modest, dutiful and ceremonial forms.

Context: Burton’s direct concession, I deny not, limits the surrounding denunciation of lascivious acts.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: osculum charitatis

Modern rendering: the kiss of charity

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The whole Latin phrase is matched; the is supplied in English.

Kissing and mortal sin

Printed “contactus & osculum sit mortale peccatum” (Latin; phrase).

Touching and kissing are a mortal sin, as the proposition is compressed here: contactus means touch, osculum kiss, mortale peccatum mortal sin.

Here: Burton invokes severe theological propositions conditionally to intensify a question about immodest acts, then returns to his stated purpose of tracing lust.

Context: A conditional appeal attributed to Thomas, alongside Ledesma, Jerome and Durandus; not an adequately qualified statement of Aquinas’s teaching.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: contactus & osculum sit mortale peccatum

Modern rendering: touching and kissing are a mortal sin

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern wording renders the compressed proposition; the surrounding if supplies its argumentative condition.

Qualification: The supplied note states that Aquinas II–II 154.4 denies that kisses and touches are mortal sins in themselves and distinguishes intention. The Ledesma and Durandus claims remain unverified; Jerome quotes the over-ardent-husband saying from Xystus.

Kissing as homage

Printed “kiss his toe” (English; phrase).

Touch the lips to another person’s toe as a gesture of reverence or submission.

Here: A prince’s bodily deference sharpens Burton’s hostile contrast between professed papal humility and worldly power.

Context: An imagined encounter in Democritus Junior’s anti-papal satire, not an authenticated account of each listed humiliation.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: kiss his toe

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The same phrase preserves the gesture and its object.

Kissing as prelude

Printed “proœmium aut anticœnium” (Latin; phrase).

A prelude or appetizer: proœmium is an introduction; anticœnium a preliminary dish before the meal; aut means or.

Here: Two metaphors present kissing as preparation for further sexual desire, alongside assault, fire and infection.

Context: Burton assembles reported comparisons, including Xenophon and Apuleius; the subsequent concession distinguishes permissible kisses.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: proœmium aut anticœnium

Modern rendering: a prelude or appetizer

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Each noun contributes its own comparison; the article a is supplied.

Uncertainty: The edition leaves the exact Xenophon and Apuleius passages uncollated.

Kissing goes by favour

Printed “Kissing goes by favour” (English; phrase).

Kisses are bestowed according to personal preference; proverbially, benefits go to those favoured.

Here: The margin transfers the choice of whom to kiss to the award of honours and offices through connections or influence rather than always through merit.

Context: Burton’s consolation for a rejected candidate; not always limits the accusation, and the preceding argument says equal candidates cannot both win.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source and modern wording: Kissing goes by favour

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The supplied note retains the English proverb. Its following explanation, favours are bestowed through personal preference, is editorial gloss, not further original wording or a body translation.

Modern container: note

Officious kisses

Printed “officious” (English; family).

Dutiful or courteous; here describing kisses that fulfil social obligations.

Here: The adjective contributes to Burton’s positive list of proper kisses, not a criticism of meddling.

Context: Burton’s concession within the erotic warning.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: officious and ceremonial kisses

Modern rendering: courteous and ceremonial kisses

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Officious contributes courteous; ceremonial and kisses retain their separate meanings.

Pax tablets

Printed “Paxes” (English; family).

Objects kissed as a ritual sign of peace.

Here: The objects belong to a hostile catalogue of Catholic observances; the act is ceremonial rather than erotic.

Context: Democritus Junior’s religious polemic; the contemptuous evaluation is his.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: kissing of Paxes, crucifixes

Modern rendering: kissing of pax tablets and crucifixes

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Paxes becomes pax tablets; crucifixes are a separate object of kissing.

Plant kisses and embraces

Printed “embrace and kiss each other” (English; phrase).

Bend and make contact, represented as the bodily affection of lovers.

Here: The reported palms reach towards one another; the next unit describes farmers carrying kisses by transferring contact.

Context: Burton’s anthropomorphic account drawn from agricultural authorities, within a catalogue of love’s universal power.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: embrace and kiss each other

Modern rendering: embrace and kiss one another

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The matched phrase retains the personification.

Qualification: Burton gives both trees feminine pronouns; the edition’s agricultural parallel describes female and male palms. His transmission is retained, not silently corrected.

Shrine of kisses

Printed “suaviorum delubrum” (Latin; phrase).

A shrine of kisses: delubrum is a shrine; suaviorum is a genitive plural, of kisses.

Here: The coral lip is imagined as a sacred place where kisses reside, in a catalogue of features that can inspire love.

Context: Burton’s erotic encomium, immediately extended by a poetic thousand revealed and hidden kisses.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: suaviorum delubrum

Modern rendering: the shrine of kisses

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The whole genitive construction is matched; the is supplied in English.

Suaviolum

Printed “suaviolum” (Latin; lemma).

Little kiss, a diminutive noun used here as an affectionate name for the beloved.

Here: The lover calls the beloved a little kiss within a catalogue of extravagant pet names; the noun names the person through the pleasing act.

Context: Verses attributed to Marullus addressing Neaera; the precise poem remains unresolved.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Meum suaviolum

Modern rendering: My little kiss

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Suaviolum contributes little kiss; the possessive adjective meum contributes my. The preceding corculum means little heart and is a separate diminutive.

Uncertainty: Burton’s Epigrams book 1 locator is retained; the precise Marullus poem has not been established.