PDF format (1.55 Mb) - The Ex-Classics Web Site

THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
new, as it shall seem to them best. To proceed, if the earth be 21,500 miles in compass, its
diameter is 7,000 from us to our antipodes, and what shall be comprehended in all that space?
What is the centre of the earth? is it pure element only, as Aristotle decrees, inhabited (as
Paracelsus thinks) with creatures, whose chaos is the earth: or with fairies, as the woods and
waters (according to him) are with nymphs, or as the air with spirits? Dionisiodorus, a
mathematician in Pliny, that sent a letter, ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the
earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000
stadiums, might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts. Or is it the place of hell, as
Virgil in his Aenides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our
divines think? In good earnest, Anthony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian College, in
Milan, in his great volume de Inferno, lib. 1. cap. 47. is stiff in this tenet, 'tis a corporeal fire tow,
cap. 5. I. 2. as he there disputes. "Whatsoever philosophers write" (saith Surius) "there be certain
mouths of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland,
where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living: God would
have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such
punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God." Kranzius Dan. hist. lib. 2. cap. 24.
subscribes to this opinion of Surius, so doth Colerus cap. 12. lib. de immortal animæ (out of the
authority belike of St. Gregory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen, who derive as much from
Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Hiera, and those sulphureous vulcanian islands) making Terra del Fuego,
and those frequent volcanoes in America, of which Acosta lib. 3. cap. 24. that fearful mount
Hecklebirg in Norway, an especial argument to prove it, "where lamentable screeches and
howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors; fiery chariots are commonly
seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out."
Such another proof is that place near the Pyramids in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirm this as
the resurrection, mentioned by Kornmannus mirac. mort. lib. 1. cap. 30. Camerarius oper. suc.
cap. 37. Bredenbachius pereg. ter. sanct. and some others, "where once a year dead bodies arise
about March, and walk, after awhile hide themselves again: thousands of people come yearly to
see them." But these and such like testimonies others reject, as fables, illusions of spirits, and
they will have no such local known place, more than Styx or Phlegethon, Pluto's court, or that
poetical Infernus, where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c., to which they ferried
over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, compendiaria ad Infernos via,
which is the shortest cut, quia nullum a mortuis naulum eo loci exposcunt, (saith Gerbelius) and
besides there were no fees to be paid. Well then, is it hell, or purgatory, as Bellarmine: or Limbus
patrum, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of it) or Ignatius parler?
Virgil, sometimes bishop of Saltburg (as Aventinus anno 745 relates) by Bonifacius bishop of
Mentz was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt
whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell, or so contracted it, that
it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius
that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely
confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the
fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends
east and west, they met at Delos. But that scruple of Bonifacius is now quite taken away by our
latter divines: Franciscus Ribera, in cap. 14. Apocalyps. will have hell a material and local fire in
-42