Saturn and melancholy: studies in the history of natural philosophy, religion and art

I

Saturn and Melancholy Studies in the History of Natural P hilO$Ophy Religion and Art by Raymond !'libansky Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl

~erm :;lii~fi:Slh(}.~

der Vl1 ivt"r:;il,'11

Tomh o f Robert Burton, Chriilt Church Cathedral, Oxford

ln~tt l l1 t

I\, 1Lin :okr

\ .

KRAUS REPRI NT Nendelnf Liechtenstein

1979

,

.,

Preface to Reprint

SfIturn and Melancholy has been out of print for a long time. Following requests from scholars in many countries the book is now made available again. Much could be added to it. especially in the Hght of recent studies in the his tory of ancient medicine. However

this would hardly be possible without affecting the balance of the whole. Since neither of my co-authors is alive - Erwin Panofsky di.ed in March 1968. - I considered it best to leave the work in the fqrm in which it first appeared fifteen years ago.

R.K. First Publisbed 1964

©

Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd 1964

Oxford, February 1979.

~

Ger,,; o n ; i:i~

Portraits of Melancholy as a Single Female Figure in the Manner of DOrer Typical Portraits of Melancholy in Late Medieval Almanacs

24'

Appendices

The Intellectual Background of the New Doctrine

.4

Marsilio Ficino

254

I The Polyhedron in "Melencolia !" II The Meaning of the Engraving B70

'

290

3'7 317

3 Melancholy in Portraits of Saturn or of his Children

Chapter II "Melancholia Generosa"

2:prcssion in Pythagorean philosophy, but more particularly because the Pythagoreans regarded the number four as specially significant. They used to swear bv four, "which holds the root and source of eternal nature"6; and not only nature in general, but rational man in particular. seemed to them governed by four principles, located in the brain. the heart, the navel and the phallus respectively.' Even the soul was later on envisaged as fourfold, enclosing intellect, understanding, opinion and perception (V<M, hna-niIJ,1l, 5~a, a~a&rJaI5).1 The P ythagoreans themselves did not evolve a d~trme o~ four humours, but they prepared the ground by postulatmg a senes of tetradic categories (such as, for instance, those already mentioned ; earth, air, fire and water; spring, summer, autumn and winter).8 In this system, once it was evolved, the four humours could easily be accommodated. Above all, they defined health as the equilibrium of different qualities, and sickness as the predominance of one- a concept truly decisive for humoralism proper. • Duu.s. Ff'il/inl .• Anonyme Pythagorecr. B15: d. THI'tO SMYIUIABl1S. ed. E. Hiller. Le:ipzi( 18 78.

p. 91. 4·

I Dn:Ls. Frail"'.' Pbiioiaus. B13· t

DI ELS.

F'ag ..... Anonyme Pythagorec:r,

• THIIO S MyItNAH US, ed. cit., pp. 93 sqq.

1115 ·

§I]

5 Alcrnaeon of Croton, a Pythagorean doctor who lived about 500 B.C., declared that "equality of rights (t1aus (DI aLS, F~.., ..... A27) considered blood a cause of illness. whll~ the d ivision of bile into ..0 ~ and ~''''' (as in De.. ippIU o j Cos) or in to ~.. l..o.; and ~"I'I),...... (as in Ep;.u"'iu I, calle S, HIPP()UA't.IIS, VOL. I, p. 196, ed .

.teA4

w. H. S. J ones, London 1923) SCCUUl to have been known to some 'JIIppocrateana·. These references are isolated, howevu- tllose in Dex.ippus and in EpUkmiQ are definitely not older than the work D~pl #W>_ ""'pQttro~d here too ~ is a t=dency to include them in the cosmological .~. In a ny case. that the doctrine oonbi ned in n~pl ;.:.._ ""',..:....0. rather than any other gained the day (d. WUJ..)lANN, cp. cit.• pp. ~ .sqq.) was due to the fact .that it was the one to make this Inclu~ion complete and to present the 1yJtem with Imp{e!lSive llimplicity. .. '[h ""I. ,1,0lIl.,

cap. 4 ; we folJ.ow GALaN, COIII_"I. I, 20, COfp. tNIl. Gr., V, bi, I , p . 33.

10

[I.

MELANCHOLY IN ANCIENT PHYSIOLOGY

I.

hum~ra1ism whic,h was to dominate the future, is no doubt due to the powerful wnter who composed the first part of n I . 0::vepWn-0v !1 Th ' Ep ,valOS . 15 system included not only the Pythagorean and E~~~oclean tetrad but also the doctrine of the qualities that ~hlhshon handed down to us-first, in groups of two, formin a l~nk between the humours and the seasons, later also a-p aJn Singly and connectin~ the humours with the Empedoclean ;ma g elements. From thIS the author of the nEpl.,vaave' ry evolved the following schema, which was to remain for~ more than two thousand years23 : .

I:',

Hum our

S~a$on

Blood

Spring

Yellow Bile Black Bile Phlegm

Summer Autumn

Winter

Qualities Wa rm and Moist

Warm and Dry Cold and -Dry Cold and Moist

Probably as eady ~s with the Pythagoreans. the four seasons had been ~atched WIth the Four Ages of Man, the latter being counted . " youth manhood and old age; or, It . eit her as boyhood a. ernative] ~. as youth till twenty, prime till about fort y, decline till about Sixty, and after t hat old age. A connexion could therefore be established without more ado between the Four Humours (and later the Four Temperaments) and the Four Ages of Man- a connexion which held good for all time and which was to be of fun~amenta1 significance in the future development of both speculation and imagery. . Through the whole of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance thiS cycle re~ained virtually unchanged, apart from some contr~versy over I t~ starting point: it could begin with "phlegmatic" ch~dhood , passmg through "sanguine" youth and "choleric" pnm~, to "melan~holic" ,?ld age (in certain circumstances returning to a second childhood ) : or else it could begin with "sanguine" youth, pass through a "choleric" period between twenty and ./

ancient writers bclieved in the genuinely 'Hippocratean' origin of n.". .'»'01 :JrOu. see above, p. 8 and note 18; in &I1y case the authol' of t bia work appeari to have n t he tim to put this doctrine In writi ng. d . FunIlICH, 09. cit ., pp. 49 • .sl sqq. ~ ~an~

ed~ FIlEPIl!CII,

~t

VI, ,..

I~i

09: .• p. d· Cf. G.AUN. D. f>kKifu Hif>J>otrMil eI PlalO1lis __ . I. Mueller, LelpzI8 1871. VOL I pp. 679 -.k d H. __ I • I ' .; 1 If Bo . . ' -.,. ~ ern..... n .... X'¥''''* .....

T .............

II IS "ght, the u ri"" in 'Antioch u$ of Athens' would -be roughly VOl.. VII, p. 101; BOO, SInn,lA"!>., p . .s~); whence ' owever, the ru brze temperam ents· should be nmitted. X--...... .

:ntemporary

wi~ ~alen .(Cal. "sir. Gr .•

II

TIlE DOCTRINE OF THE FOUR HUMOURS §I) forty and a "melancholic" period between forty and sixty, and end in a " phlegmatic" old age.'" But this combination of the purely medical doctrine of humours with a system of natural philosophy g'!-ve rise to a curious difficulty of which earlier writers were quite unconsciolls but which was later to come very much to the fore and which was never wholly resolved. On the one hand, with the exception of blood, the humours taken over from medicine were quite useless substances, not to say harmful. 2S They were excretions, " humores vitiosi", causing illness, first observed primarily in vomiting and other symptomsH; the adjectives derived from them, A~ctT@flS), XOMfJlK6s (xoA~flS), and especially ~~Ao:yxo1l.u(6S, were in origin merely descriptive of illness'; and one could only speak of t rue health when all the humours were present in the right combination, so that each harmful influence neutralised the other . On the other hand, these very substances, though regarded as in themselves causes of illness, or at least as predisposing factors, were paired with the universal (and hygienically neutral ) qualities, cold. moist, warm and dry. Each gained the ascendancy once a year without necessarily causing acute illnesses; and since the absolutely healthy man was one who was neWT ill at all (so that he must be as like every other absolutely healthy man as t wo peas in a pod, the right combination of the humours being one alone and permitting no divergencies), the physician, of all people, could not avoid the conclusion that this absolntely healthy man represented an ideal hardly ever met with in reali t yY

.. Forthese correlations. ct. F . BoLL. '·Die Lebensalter". in N,,,, jl1.hrbl1cMr fi2 r tfas ~llul1s,h r Aller""n, ",,,, XI (Leipzig 19 13). pp. 10 1 ,qq., with numerOUI reference5; also below, Pfl · 112 sqq. and pp. 369 "lq. While 50mt pol t-elassical authOr! e: Cl. ScriPfo" s PAY#OffCt)",jej t r_uj ,ll_/ i"l. ed. R. F (h'$TRR. Leipzig l e9), "O L. II , p . 274, 2S and p. 21h. '1 . I. Cf. Ru ful . :lnd Calen·, review of older ,",'Orks. cited below. pp. H aqq.

. 0 AI tar ., we know, the complete system of the doctrine of the fou r tt mperl mell b , correl.. ting habitu .. 1 physical and mental qualities with th e four humours, wu not fuU)' dew loped until ".1). 200 or a little I.. ter (K'C below. p. S8).

§2]

15

THE NOTION OF MELA NCHOLY: PROBLEM XXX, I

the process of separating the merely melancholic temperament from melancholic illness. For the ambiguity of psychological symptoms blurred the borderline between illness and nonnality and compelled recognition of a habitude which, though being melancholy, did not make it necessary to describe the subj ect as one who was really a sick man all the time . This peculiarity was bound to shift the whole conception of melancholy into the realm of psychology and physiognomy, thereby making way for a transformation of the doctrine of the four humours into a theory of characters and mental types. In fact we can see how even the medical writers had begun to conceive the melancholic in decidedly physiognomic and psychological terms: the lisping, the bald, the stuttering, and the hirsute are afflicted with strongly melancholic diseases,tO emotional disturbances were described as an indication of "mental melancholy,"n and finally- a constan tly repeated diagnosis- the symptoms were summarised in the phrase: "Constant anxiety and depression are signs of melancholy. "·12 2.

THE NOTION OF MEl.ANCHOLY AS REVOLUTIONISED BY T HE

PERIPATETICS: PROBLEM

xxx,

I

We are now in a position to understand the great transformation which the notion of melancholy underwent during the fourth century B.C., owing to the irruption of two great cultural influences: t he notion of madness in the great tragedies, and the notion of frenzy in Platonic philosophy. The clouding of consciousness, depression, fear and delusions, and finall y the dread lycanthropy, which drove its victims t hrough the night as howling, ravening wolves,~ were aU regarded as effects of the sinister substance .. EpidPo., II . s. I (PL Hippocr.). in

S,~jPlo,u

P~ysjo8"o ... j, i

p. 246, 18; aDd p . 247. '4 from Epidt ... . , 11,6. , : 01 Tpll.

VOl..

II.

r"xV1~a''', 1"~"rx ,ram

~ IEL;\ NCIIOLY

16

IN Al\CrENT PHYSIOLOGY

[I. I.

whose '-en' name ( ~V.Q~ = black) conjured up the idea of all t hat \\'as cd l' and noctumal. 44 This substance was SO generally accepted as the source of insanity that the verb \lEAayXo~av (with wh ich d. XOAep\o:v) was used from the end of the fifth century B.C . synonymously with l.J,a\V€oeaL (to h e mad). '''W IJOx&r\f>i. IJfAQYX~A9S:;4~ mea nt "Poor ma n, you are mad ;" Dcmosthenes' word s concerning Oly mpiodorus, "aU IJ.OVO\l &5ucQS l1JV..o. Kal ~a:y)(o1l.av 00I(WV," 46 might be translated as "one who seems not only an offender but a madman", In the fourth century B.C., the religious intuition of an earlier age was giving way to discursive scientific reason ing. and symbolic interpretations of myths are found side by side with rationalist explanations; hence it is not surprising that traits of pathological melancholy now began to be discerned in the great figures of those accursed heroes punished with madness by an insulted godhead- Heracles, Ajax and Belleiophon-whom Euripides had represented in their mythical su perhuman greatness. 47 But even for the fourth century the spell of those great figu res was strong enough to give the notion of melancholy now associated with them a nimbus of sinister sublimity. It became, as Gellius later ironically said, "a disease of heroes".48 Thus it came abou t that, associated with the myths, the melancholic disposition began to be regarded as, in some degree, heroic; it was idealised still further when equated with "frenzy" , inasmuch as the " humor melancholicus" began to figure as a source, however dangerous, of the highest s piritUal exaltation, as soon as ·the notion of frenzy itself was interpreted (or rather, re-interpreted) in this way. As is wel1 known, this transvaluation was effected by P lato. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, "if it were simply that frenzy were an evil", Lysias would be righ t; "but in fact we receive the greatest benefits through frenzy, that is, in so far as

§2)

17 it is sent as a divine gift" .o In the beginning, however, there . was nothing in Plato's thought to connect the notion of melancholy with that of the ecstasy which elevated philosopher, lover, and poet alike, to the suprarational apprehension of pure ideas. For him, melancholy meant primarily, if not actual madness, a t least moral insanity, clouding and weakening will and reason ; for he regarded it as a symptom of what he describes in the Phaedrus as the worst soul bf all- that of the tyranUO As we read in t he R epublic, "a man becomes a tyrant when, whether by nature or by manner of lile, or both, he is a drunkard, a voluptuary and a melancholic."lil . Ii! ·was Aristotelian natural philosophy which first brought about the union between the purely medical notion of melancholy and the Platonic conception of frenzy. This union found expression in what for the Greeks was the paradoxical thesis'2 that not only the tragic heroes, like Ajax, Heracles and Bellerophon, but all really outstanding men, whet her in the realm of the arts or in those of poetry, philosophy or statesmanshipeven Socrat es and Plato- , were melancholies. u THE

H PAaed,.,.j, 248E. In the Tinuuws (i' 1A eqq .) ool y the un(;QlI3Cious aide of the prophet~ ,tate seems to be linked. in some compl icated way with the function of the liver and the '·bitter'· bile. II Repwbl~,

.57)c.

a. Tbe notion of melancholy general.ly held by educated men of tbll late fourth century ~.c. ;. admirably iIIush-ated by lOme li nes of M.N ... ND ... (ed. C. J ensen, tlerlin 19291. "E.r,~phooon,. lioel 494 sqq., in whiCh the slaye Onesimul expreue:s h.UJ opi..nion of his master:

wo~d

~t...,. 0,"",", ~ "'" 'AorAl...,~, !"Mr' .u,soior, ,..t-, ..; .... ok Bo4s • . "'" H~ u,.o. X~. xoA;

1'1J,a".. ""'_'"

men with fear, unless they are very brave or very enlightened, 10 the dark colour of blad: bile generates fear, in that it darkens the sea t of rea llOn:' (V. tOC" aJJI~ti" Ill . 10, in G ... LEN (KO li N). VOL . \, 1Il, p. 19 1.) There a re countless parallels ill later literature. 'J

PlolUd ....s

..potnrbnwK" >l -m .... rt ,..tp I.• ...., cl ........... lMo ".,............ ;

~~

In F. G. Alli lllOn ', rendering (MaN ...NDu, TIY FYil