This dual conception of melancholia was far from clearly distinguishable to thinkers of the time; the two were intertwined, and in most cases “original” melancholia was also considered to be a mental illness. The interpretation of melancholia produced by St. Hildegard of Bingen or William of Conches went beyond other interpretations customary at the time: although they associated it with sin and with evil, in the last analysis they used it as a metaphor for humankind’s originally conflicted, precarious condition. This melancholia did not have its own special manifestation: the sorrow referred to by Hildegard, who was supposedly a melancholic herself, was not the “sadness” of the mentally ill but a consequence of the inevitable fate of being cast into the world and being created. Humankind elected sin of its own free will, says Hildegard, thereby predating Kierkegaard, who likewise brought the notion of “fear and trembling” into the context of original sin: Adam tasted the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, but along with freedom he also chose to sin. According to Hildegard also, sin and free will were deeply connected (the nonmelancholic Anselm of Canterbury argued that only God and the good angels were free, whereas humankind was totally predetermined), and by relating melancholia to freedom of choice (even if in a condemnatory tone), she threw open a perspective on the interpretation of melancholia that was to resonate well beyond her own times. As long as it operated as a closed system, Roman Catholic theology, as has been seen, was able to integrate melancholia to a good purpose: by declaring that opposition and reticence, discernible at the root of every case of melancholia, were tantamount to madness and mental illness, this theology ultimately glorified itself. In the eyes of the general public as well, melancholia was irrational degeneracy. Medieval melancholics were the victims of a paradox, and the contradiction was not permitted to unfold, whereby it could have self-destructed through its freedom, but instead was ignored. Hence, the manifold modes of treatment that were proposed for melancholics, none of them radical, since in the end one could hardly abolish by purely physical means a condition that had been branded theologically. Treatments included “medications” like the flesh of an old cock, a ram’s head, a wolf’s heart, the water of the Nile, goat’s milk, whey, and also herbal remedies, such as “a simple potion of hellebore” (already in Strabo’s time hellebore was recommended against madness), bugloss (which was used in Homer’s Odyssey to bring forgetfulness to those suffering from the malady), melissa, borage, black salsify, cockscomb, marigold, lupin, artemisia, centaurea, pennyroyal, endive, wild chicory, dandelion, and fumitory.
The derivation of melancholia from original sin placed the illness in a new light. It extended to everyone; the sadness, the desperation, the thrownness (Geworfenheit), and the desire to be elsewhere were transformed into a normal state of being, a condition that has been impossible to rectify since man has existed. The state of being human is “incurable”; the deep chasm between a person’s createdness and grace is unbridgeable. In parallel with the medieval notion of melancholia, following the turn of the first millennium the view became ever more common that if inner conflict and self-alienation were common states of existence, shared by all of us, then they ought to be “made use of.” It did not matter whether this would be against God or to his glory; all that was important was that the torrent of doubt that estranges people both from God and from themselves should gain legitimacy. This judgment of melancholia in itself was medievaclass="underline" the daring view had not yet been born that melancholia not only provided an opportunity for an alternative take on existence but was also just as autonomous, self-supporting, and therefore unassailable as the well-known “ordinary” way of looking at things. Although in relation to ecstasy St. Bonaventure writes of “a divine melancholy” and “a spiritual wing” (Burton, Anatomy, partition 3, sec. 4, member 1, subsec. 2, 343), which proves that he is far from regarding melancholia as just a mental sickness. But in general the era still spoke of melancholia disapprovingly, which is why he thought of ecstasy differently from the Greeks: he saw it not as a “stepping out of” but as a “stepping into” the Christian realm. The story of Jesus, no less, justifies this view. Jesus’s disciples in Capernaum considered him deranged because he stepped out of (that is, neglected) a regular style of living.6 In Jesus’s case, stepping out of or standing beside himself (ecstasy) meant at one and the same time stepping out of the earthly realm, which is to say, stepping into God’s kingdom. Bonaventure’s “ecstatic melancholia” is good only insofar as it diverts attention from worldly vanities: if it encourages that, then it is a testimony to God’s love.7 If the Aristotelian scheme of melancholia ever cropped up, it was interpreted also in that spirit toward the end of the Middle Ages. It was first mentioned by Alexander Neckam around 1200 and not much later by Albertus Magnus, but both of them took the edge off the original concept. William of Auvergne, the thirteenth-century bishop of Paris, likewise made reference to Aristotle, but reinterpreted him in a Christian manner: melancholia liberated people from sins of the body and enlightened them: “This complexion withdraws men from bodily pleasures and worldly turmoil. Nevertheless, though nature affords these aids to illumination and revelation, they are achieved far more abundantly through the grace of the Creator, integrity of living, and holiness and purity” (quoted in Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 73). Melancholy was a form of asceticism, and William saw it as a desirable state exclusively in that sense: he had heard about many pious men whose “most fervent wish was to be afflicted by melancholia, since that surely strengthened spiritual goods” (quoted in Günther Bandmann, Melancholie und Musik. Ikonographische Studien, 104).
This conception of melancholy remained within the bounds of the Christian interpretation of existence. That positive perception nevertheless represented a kind of countercurrent against the prevailing view. With the appearance of St. Francis in the thirteenth century, the rigid separation of nature from spirit came to an end; all phenomena of existence became equally important, and this was evident not only for ordinary all-embracing faith but also for the sensual take on the world. Sensual diversity (that is, the profusion of the world) did not preclude divine unity; and the focus on the individual, which had started to gain ground in Europe, signaled the cracking of a closed system of beliefs. Antiquity’s interpretation of melancholia obviously found a breeding ground in between those cracks. If the Middle Ages began to regard melancholia as a disease of the mind, then in the last analysis it managed to hide the cracks, but when melancholia was analyzed as a positive state of being, the cracks were not hidden from posterity’s gaze but were in fact made more visible. If melancholia is regarded as an illness, then it will be seen as dangerous by society, and for that reason — and there are plenty of examples of this in more recent history — it will be invested with collateral political significance. Melancholics themselves, however, do not in the least think of themselves as being either ill or subversive. Their mournfulness and despair relate not to one or another, possibly adjustable or rectifiable, form or manifestation of human contact or institution, but to existence in general, and therefore they are not pinning their hopes on any remedy. A judgment of melancholia hinges on whether one tries to put oneself in the shoes of a melancholic or treats him purely as an object. One has the impression that toward the close of the Middle Ages an ever-increasing number of people strove to recognize the legitimacy of the melancholic interpretation of existence — but for that to happen, the whole culture had to move. The revival of Hellenistic astrological explanations for melancholia laid the groundwork for that earthquake.