Robert Burton the Spiritual Physician: Religion and Medicine in The Anatomy of Melancholy

Abstract

In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-51), Robert Burton describes melancholy as a disease of the soul, stating that he will address his subject-matter both as a divine and a physician. This article explores the significance of this combined method, showing how contemporary English religious writers use it and how Burton himself develops it. Burton mixes religious and medical approaches to melancholy to a degree unique in the period. He deliberately blurs the boundaries between them, not for polemical purposes (as some historians have argued), but rather with the pastoral aim of helping his reader. While Burton departs from his sources in doing so, he creates a model of treatment which is influential on another religious writer of the seventeenth century: Richard Baxter. The article examines how this model functions throughout the Anatomy, considering in particular how his pastoral aims are reflected in his rhetoric. Burton's variations in content, style and even genre throughout the Anatomy can be understood as part of a curative response to a variable disease.