Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England (review)

Jeremy Schmidt begins by tracing the development of melancholy from its early Florentine Renaissance association with genius to the late sixteenth century understanding of melancholy as a disease caused by the excess of black bile. Schmidt's brief summary of the four bodily humours fails to mention the effects of the different seasons on them. A detailed examination of the Hippocratic phenomena would have given the reader a clearer indication of melancholy as a medical illness. Instead, Schmidt summarises his notion of melancholy by identifying it 'as a pattern of thought, mood and behaviour' that 'was determined not only by the condition of the body, but also by the state of the soul' (p. 2). This leads to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century's obsession with melancholy that Schmidt terms 'the age of hypochondriac melancholy' (p. 3). He links the development of melancholy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century through an analysis of a philosophical and religious moral cure, which has previously been ignored by historians.

The opening chapter charts the development of the healthy soul through Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Schmidt identifies the basic Stoic dichotomy between reason and passion, where passions are dispensed with by the sober rational soul. This is contrasted with Augustine's woeful soul that can only be alleviated 'through the aid of divine grace' (p. 22). This skilfully introduces the main religious theme of Schmidt's study.

Chapter Two identifies melancholy as a disease afflicting both body and soul. A philosophical approach to treating the melancholic may avoid full blown madness. Schmidt criticises Michel Foucault who in Madness and Civilisation (1965) advocates that curing melancholia by passion is a moral cure. Schmidt calls this 'a category mistake' (p. 41) indicating the incongruity of passion with morality. However, the indulgence and sublimation of passion in the medieval and Renaissance courtly love tradition resulted in the dichotomy between bestial love and a divine spiritual love. A discussion of the courtly love tradition would have also added depth to Schmidt's discussion of Thomas Willis' notion of melancholy or love-melancholy caused by unrequited love.

The book gains pace in Chapter Three's discussion of religious melancholy, a condition that blames the classic symptoms of sorrow, sadness, fear and despair on the Devil. This enabled Early Modern writers to castigate opposing religions, and emphasise a cure based on the repentance of the humble soul. Schmidt further develops this argument into a consideration of gender. He convincingly transforms the Early Modern negative notion of women as being weak, irrational and susceptible to uncontrollable desires into positive traits required of the meek Christian believer.

Chapters Four and Five continue the discussion of religious melancholy through a critique of 'enthusiasm'. This is an early seventeenth century term where the human psyche is possessed by a spirit. Enthusiasm acknowledges the increasingly active role of the clergy in the philosophical cure of religious melancholy. In a striking close-reading, Schmidt assesses Gilbert Burnet's Discourse of Pastoral Care (1692) through 'the conjunctive "yet"' (p. 101). He reads the repetitive use of 'yet' as indicating a religious social community emphasising the importance of the minister in treating enthusiasm. However, the English Calvinist writer Richard Baxter separates religious melancholic from the general sufferer who pretends to be afflicted spiritually, an important distinction Schmidt discusses in detail to the point where the melancholic is blamed entirely for the condition.

In Chapters Six and Seven the demon-afflicted conscience disappears from melancholic language. This is in the wake of the seventeenth and eighteenth century's polite society that introduces two similar afflictions: female hysteria and male hypochondria. Hypochondriac melancholy, Schmidt argues, shifts melancholy from being the concern of the clergy and churchgoers to the physicians and their wealthy patients. The reason is that hypochondria and hysteria have valuable medical and financial currency...