MEMB. III.
Prognostics of Jealousy. Despair, Madness, to make away themselves and others.
Those which are jealous, most part, if they be not otherwise relieved,
[6155]proceed from suspicion to hatred, from hatred to frenzy, madness,
injury, murder and despair.
[6156]A plague by whose most damnable effect.
Divers in deep despair to die have sought,
By which a man to madness near is brought,
As well with causeless as with just suspect.
In their madness many times, saith [6157]Vives, they make away themselves
and others. Which induceth Cyprian to call it, Foecundam et multiplicem
perniciem, fontem cladium et seminarium delictorum, a fruitful mischief,
the seminary of offences, and fountain of murders. Tragical examples are
too common in this kind, both new and old, in all ages, as of [6158]
Cephalus and Procris, [6159]Phaereus of Egypt, Tereus, Atreus, and
Thyestes. [6160]Alexander Phaereus was murdered of his wife, ob
pellicatus suspitionem, Tully saith. Antoninus Verus was so made away by
Lucilla; Demetrius the son of Antigonus, and Nicanor, by their wives.
Hercules poisoned by Dejanira, [6161]Caecinna murdered by Vespasian,
Justina, a Roman lady, by her husband. [6162]Amestris, Xerxes' wife,
because she found her husband's cloak in Masista's house, cut off Masista,
his wife's paps, and gave them to the dogs, flayed her besides, and cut off
her ears, lips, tongue, and slit the nose of Artaynta her daughter. Our
late writers are full of such outrages.
[6163]Paulus Aemilius, in his history of France, hath a tragical story of
Chilpericus the First his death, made away by Ferdegunde his queen. In a
jealous humour he came from hunting, and stole behind his wife, as she was
dressing and combing her head in the sun, gave her a familiar touch with
his wand, which she mistaking for her lover, said, Ah Landre, a good
knight should strike before, and not behind: but when she saw herself
betrayed by his presence, she instantly took order to make him away.
Hierome Osorius, in his eleventh book of the deeds of Emanuel King of
Portugal, to this effect hath a tragical narration of one Ferdinandus
Chalderia, that wounded Gotherinus, a noble countryman of his, at Goa in
the East Indies, [6164]and cut off one of his legs, for that he looked as
he thought too familiarly upon his wife, which was afterwards a cause of
many quarrels, and much bloodshed. Guianerius cap. 36. de aegritud.
matr. speaks of a silly jealous fellow, that seeing his child new-born
included in a caul, thought sure a [6165]Franciscan that used to come to
his house, was the father of it, it was so like the friar's cowl, and
thereupon threatened the friar to kill him: Fulgosus of a woman in
Narbonne, that cut off her husband's privities in the night, because she
thought he played false with her. The story of Jonuses Bassa, and fair
Manto his wife, is well known to such as have read the Turkish history; and
that of Joan of Spain, of which I treated in my former section. Her
jealousy, saith Gomesius, was the cause of both their deaths: King Philip
died for grief a little after, as [6166]Martian his physician gave it out,
and she for her part after a melancholy discontented life, misspent in
lurking-holes and corners, made an end of her miseries. Felix Plater, in
the first book of his observations, hath many such instances, of a
physician of his acquaintance, [6167]that was first mad through jealousy,
and afterwards desperate: of a merchant [6168]that killed his wife in
the same humour, and after precipitated himself: of a doctor of
law that cut off his man's nose: of a painter's wife in Basil, anno 1600,
that was mother of nine children and had been twenty-seven years married,
yet afterwards jealous, and so impatient that she became desperate, and
would neither eat nor drink in her own house, for fear her husband should
poison her. 'Tis a common sign this; for when once the humours are stirred,
and the imagination misaffected, it will vary itself in divers forms; and
many such absurd symptoms will accompany, even madness itself. Skenkius
observat. lib. 4. cap. de Uter. hath an example of a jealous
woman that by this means had many fits of the mother: and in his first book
of some that through jealousy ran mad: of a baker that gelded himself to
try his wife's honesty, &c. Such examples are too common.
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