love-melancholy

in the precedent section mention was made, amongst other pleasant objects, of this comeliness and beauty which proceeds from women, that causeth heroical, or love-melancholy, is more eminent above the rest, and properly called love. the part affected in men is the liver, and therefore called heroical, because commonly gallants, nobleman, and the most generous spirits are possessed with it. his power and extent is very large, and in that twofold division of love, those two veneres which plato and some other make mention of, it is most eminent and (par excellence) called venus, as i have said, of love itself. which although it be denominated from men, and most evident in them, yet it extends and shows itself in vegetal and sensible creatures, those in-corporeal substances (as shall be specified), and hath a large dominion of sovereignty over them. his pedigree is very ancient, derived from the beginning of the world, as phaedrus contends, and his parentage of such antiquity, that no poet could ever find it out.......

his power and sovereignty is expressed by the poets, in that he is held to be a god, and a great commanding god, above jupiter himself; magnus daemon (a mighty spirit), as plato calls him, the strongest and merriest of all the gods according to alcinous and athenaeus.
amor virorum rex, amor rex et deum, as euripides (love is) the god of gods and governor of men; for we must all do homage to him, keep an holiday for his deity, adore in his temples, worship his image (numen enim hoc non est nudem nomen [for this is a deity and not merely a name]), and sacrifice to his altar, that conquers all, and rules all.

i had rather contend with bulls, lions, bears, and giants, than with love; he is so powerful, enforceth all to pay tribute to him, domineers over all, and can make mad and sober whom he list; insomuch that caecilius, in tully's tusculans, holds him to be no better than a fool or an idiot that doth not acknowledge love to be a great god..........

the third partition, page 40-41 of robert burton's the anatomy of melancholy, seventeenth century

m swiezynski from st. francis series

m swiezynski reinterpretations of bergman's the silence