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THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
MEMB. III. Whether it be lawful to seek to Saints for Aid in
this Disease.
That we must pray to God, no man doubts; but whether we should pray to saints in such
cases, or whether they can do us any good, it may be lawfully controverted. Whether their
images, shrines, relics, consecrated things, holy water, medals, benedictions, those divine
amulets, holy exorcisms, and the sign of the cross, be available in this disease? The papists on
the one side stiffly maintain how many melancholy, mad, demoniacal persons are daily cured at
St. Anthony's Church in Padua, at St. Vitus' in Germany, by our Lady of Loretto in Italy, our
Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries: Quæ et cæcis lumen, ægris salutem, mortuis vitam,
claudis gressum reddit, omnes morbos corporis, animi, curat, et in ipsos dæmones imperium
exercet; she cures halt, lame, blind, all diseases of body and mind, and commands the devil
himself, saith Lipsius. "twenty-five thousand in a day come thither," quis nisi numen in illum
locum sic induxit; who brought them? in auribus, in oculis omnium gesta, novæ novitia; new
news lately done, our eyes and ears are full of her cures, and who can relate them all? They have
a proper saint almost for every peculiar infirmity: for poison, gouts, agues, Petronella: St.
Romanus for such as are possessed; Valentine for the falling sickness; St. Vitus for madmen, &c.
and as of old Pliny reckons up Gods for all diseases, (Febri fanum dicalum est) Lilius Giraldus
repeats many of her ceremonies: all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, love,
and sorrow, virtue, honour, liberty, contumely, impudency, had their temples, tempests, seasons,
Crepitus Ventris, dea Vacuna, dea Cloacina, there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the
draught, or jakes, Prema, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all offices. Varro
reckons up 30,000 gods: Lucian makes Podagra the gout a goddess, and assigns her priests and
ministers: and melancholy comes not behind; for as Austin mentioneth, lib. 4. de Civit. Dei, cap.
9. there was of old Angerona dea, and she had her chapel and feasts, to whom (saith Macrobius)
they did offer sacrifice yearly, that she might be pacified as well as the rest. 'Tis no new thing,
you see this of papists; and in my judgment, that old doting Lipsius might have fitter dedicated
his pen after all his labours, to this our goddess of melancholy, than to his Virgo Halensis, and
been her chaplain, it would have become him better: but he, poor man, thought no harm in that
which he did, and will not be persuaded but that he doth well, he hath so many patrons, and
honourable precedents in the like kind, that justify as much, as eagerly, and more than he there
saith of his lady and mistress: read but superstitious Coster and Gretser's Tract de Cruce, Laur.
Arcturus Fanteus de Invoc. Sanct. Bellarmine, Delrio dis. mag. tom. 3. l. 6. quæst. 2. sect. 3.
Greg. Tolosanus tom. 2. lib. 8. cap. 24. Syntax. Strozius Cicogna lib. 4. cap. 9. Tyreus,
Hieronymus Mengus, and you shall find infinite examples of cures done in this kind, by holy
waters, relics, crosses, exorcisms, amulets, images, consecrated beads, &c. Barradius the Jesuit
boldly gives it out, that Christ's countenance, and the Virgin Mary's, would cure melancholy, if
one had looked steadfastly on them. P. Morales the Spaniard in his book de pulch. Jes. et Mar.
confirms the same out of Carthusianus, and I know not whom, that it was a common proverb in
those days, for such as were troubled in mind to say, eamus ad videndum filium Mariæ, let us see
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