Melancholy and the Care of the Soul

Jeremy Schmidt is in the Department of History at the University of Victoria, Canada

• Contents: Introduction: Melancholy, language, and madness; Therapeutic languages: ancient moral philosophy and patristic Christianity; Melancholy among the passions in 17th-century thought; The pastoral care of melancholy in Calvinist England; Anglicanism, melancholy and the Restoration critique of 'enthusiasm'; The 'Puritan tradition'? Nonconformist practical divinity and the critique of 'enthusiasm'; From religious despair to hypochondria: the languages of melancholy transformed; Curing Augustan hysterics: morality, politics and religion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'Jeremy Schmidt reminds us that melancholy and depression have rarely been mere disorders of the body or the mind, that they affect the whole person and display moral, religious, cultural and social dimensions. Through a study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English writers, including physicians such as Thomas Willis and George Cheyne, Anglicans such as Simon Patrick, and nonconformists such as Richard Baxter, he helpfully focuses our attention upon the religious and moral dimensions of souls in anguish. It was only later that an exclusively medical language suppressed the languages of consolation. He suggests that priests and philosophers need to be brought back into the care of the melancholy.' H. C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia, USA 'Melancholy and the Care of the Soul is an original and important reassessment of madness and religion in early modern England. Jeremy Schmidt gracefully elucidates the intertwining of medicine, religion, and moral philosophy in the creation of the melancholic individual, whose "disease of the soul" was a product of the wider cultural crisis of the seventeenth century. Highly recommended.' Anita Guerrini University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. ’... this well-researched book successfully re-evaluates Early Modern melancholy in a manner that invites further study.’ Parergon ’Jeremy Schmidt's book is a fine analysis of melancholy as a species of madness in nearly the full gamut of its early modern complexity...’ ISIS ’... this book sets out the broad history and contexts of the intertwining of religion, melancholy and moral philosophy with clarity and sound scholarship, as well as an astutue awareness of what is at stake for the present in our engagements with madness in the past. Anyone working on the history of mental disorder in this period will find this an invaluable addition to the literature.’ History of Psychiatry ’This is captivating reading.’ Care Management Journal ’While J