ROBERT BURTON ON THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND COIMBRA

This article explores the ambiguous attitude of Robert Burton towards the Jesuits, focusing on his peculiar reading of the Commentarii Collegii Conimbri‐ censis Societatis Iesu. After a contextualization of the detraction of the Society of Jesus in Philosophaster, a lengthy teatral play, I will pass in review the Scholar’s references to the articulation of melancholy in the Coimbra textbooks throughout the Anatomy of Melancholy. In order to recognize and understand the specificities of Burton’s reading, marked by selective adaptations and imprecisions, I will essay a presentation of the Conimbricenses’ doctrine on the temperaments. I argue that, despite its richness, whose echoes in Burton’s famous work are a fainted testimony, Manuel de Góis approach remained an obliterated episode in the medical and intellectual history of melancholy. This path will enable an understanding of therapeutic and organizational framework that underlies (and supplements) the Coimbran teaching. As it will become clear, this valences and applications of the Commentarii were largely ignored by Burton. Ironically, a significant part of his knowledge of distant lands, his travelling by “map and card” and his socioeconomic views on China, essential for the transition from an observation of melancholy into a melancholic observation, as reflected on the resort to satire and utopia as therapeutic means, benefited from the Jesuit’s mobilization of their pedagogic formation in overseas missions.


Introduction
Robert Burton (1577Burton ( -1640 was an English scholar and Vicar that spend most of his secluded life at Christ's Church (Oxford), devoting himself to an extensive study of melancholy. Mostly due to the pedagogic and religious dimensions of his work, Burton's stance on the Jesuits has received some attention. Although his interspersed approval of the various Jesuits is widely recognized 2 , more detained studies on Burton's understanding of the Society of Jesus stressed his negative attitude towards the scholastic methods of teaching and, in alignment with the national sentiment, his suspicions regarding its political aims 3 . Burton's observations on religious melancholy dismiss "man's invention of a community of love -and -hate" 4 , a "dissociable society" (AM III.4.1.2, p. 332). According to Burton, the Society of Jesus was founded on reverie and, through the dissemination of superstitious "popery", acted as an agent of political sedition 5 . Despite its considerable augmentation and revisions since its publication in 1621, in its latter editions the Anatomy of Melancholy preserves the echoes of those reproaches.
However, the Oxford scholar displays a double debt towards the Society of Jesus, in particular to the collective enterprise of the Conimbricenses.
The first one is inherent to a work composed in the first half of the seventeenth century, whose encyclopaedic ambition required the use or at least the mentioning of Jesuit's treatises and coursebooks, especially the Commentarii, conceived as a support for the Coimbra Jesuit Aristotelian Course [CJAC]. It is a testimony of the historiographic richness of Burton's Anatomy, an inquiry that, unveiling the filaments that compose the thread of melancholy, touches on everything that concerns the human being, including its organic, psychic and spiritual dimensions. We must note how, among the Conimbricenses, melancholy figures in the discussions concerning the bodily dimension of the soul, referring, as it occurred in Aristotle, a certain inborn way to be affected and react. But in contrast with the other temperaments, not only is melancholy synonymous with a medical condition, it also reflects the temporal tension of human existence. In fact, the centrality of melancholy in the Commentarii can only be understood if we look beyond what seems a mere doxographic exposition, inserting its disputes in the vaster goals of the Society of Jesus, the therapeutic and the edificatory. Burton is perfectly aware of the theoretical framework of the Coimbran comments on Aristotle, however he appears to ignore both its therapeutic articulation of spiritual exercises and its contribution to the organized "activism" 6 of the Jesuits. As to the edificatory face of the Society of Jesus, Burton acknowledges part of his debt, recognizing how, by exposing other forms of social organization, the geographic and ethnographic documents provided by the missions benefit his utopian proposals for the expurgation of melancholy from the body politic. But he seems oblivious of how that chapter the scientia de Anima devotes to the temperaments contributes, through a practical application whose roots go back to the founding of the Society of Jesus, to overcome various challenges posed in those overseas missions.
Nonetheless, Burton's use of the Jesuit's knowledge exceeds their particular glossing of a topic of Ancient and Arabic Medicine that, due to its instantiation of the disputes over free -will vs determinism, the relation between the body and mind or the debate over the material constitution and immortality of the soul, was receiving renewed attention in early modern Philosophy. The experiential and apostolic dimensions of the Jesuitical project, well expressed in its major thinkers, some of them also missionaries in the East Indies, contribute to Burton's oscillation between a conventional "observation of melancholy", which examines its causes and explores possible paths of cure, and a more creative register of "melancholic observation" of his own society, part of the political discontent that remains latent in his major work. Burton's veiled tribute may be considered a distant reflection of a project that, since its inception, considers self -knowledge and the perfecting of oneself to be a condition for the concretization of the larger transformative goals 6 Characterizing the Jesuitic missions with such anachronistic term is a way to recall Sloterdijk's thesis according to which the Jesuits were the "first subjects of the Modern Age" Id., In the World Interior of Capital, trans. W. Hoban (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 59. According to the philosopher of Karslruhe, by introducing a forth vow concerning the readiness to serve, the Society of Jesus empreended an audatious affirmation of the primacy of practice over theory. Contrasting with other "quietist" movements of Counter--Reformation, such enterprise propiciated a new spontaneous and "dishinibited" subjectivity, cf. Id., In the World Interior of Capital,[59][60][61] of the devotio moderna, extending theoretical and religious contemplation to the service of the other.

Philosophastri
At first sight, Burton's attitude towards the Jesuits is one of utter despise, one that dismisses both his frequent resort to the satirical alibi of Democritus Junior and the more subtle manifestations of ironic scorn. In the decades that precede the publication of his views on religious melancholy in the third partition of the Anatomy of Melancholy, the Oxford scholar was fully aligned with the anti -Catholic sentiment that pervaded a large part of English society in the aftermath of episodes such as the Babington Plot (1586), the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada (1588) or the Gunpowder Plot (1605). Those vivid memories of a Catholic menace towards "English religion" and sovereignty were frequently rekindled as it occurred in the marriage treaty that united the leading protestant and catholic crowns, the so -called "Spanish match", in the aftermath of the war in the Palatinate.
In his second play, a lengthy Latin comedy entitled Philosophaster (1606, 1615), performed before James I in the occasion of his visit to Oxford, Burton exposes a debased image of the Jesuits, focusing on their relation to civic life and political power.
The play ridicules a new emergent type of academic philosopher that, in the words of Eugenio Garin is an ass "whose sole mission is to put other asses in circulation" 7 . That type serves Burton to point at two distinct targets. The first one is the Catholic domination of universities, and the preservation of scholastic methods of teaching and argumentation, as epitomized by the Jesuits' control of preaching and education 8 . This certainly explains the choice of the Iberian Peninsula as the place of action as well as the presentation of characters hard to identify in the English academia. But an internal critic is also at work, one that alludes to the causes of a growing sentiment of discontent, one of the "malcontent types" that emerge in English drama at the end of the sixteenth century 9 .
Burton was inspired by the founding of the Colegio -Universidad de la Purísima Concepción in 1548, an institution that according to its standards and regulations aimed to be a peer with the renowned universities of Salamanca and Alcalá. The action of the play takes place in Osuna, a remote town of Andalusia where Duke Desiderius establishes the new -built University and attempts to settle a community of scholars and students to whom are "given not just benefits, but also an appropriate stipend and other necessities" 10 . Burton contrasts the munificence and pedagogic autonomy conceded to the Spanish scholars with the economic and pedagogic constraints experienced by him and his fellow academics. Wrongly counselled, in his uncontained generosity the Duke accepts all applicants who exhibit their specialty 11 . Identified as a "jesuita" at the beginning of the play 12 , Polupragmaticus, the leader of the Philosophasters, presents himself to the Duke as "a grammarian, a rhetorician, a geometrician, a painter, a wrestling coach, augur, rope walker, physician, magician. I know it all. Or if you prefer, I am a Jesuit. That sums it up" 13 . From this comic presentation of a mountebank's act where a self -proclaimed dexterity replaces classical knowledge, Burton will retain the theme of disguise. This will allow him a deeper analogy with the Gunpowder Plot 14 . It refers a wicked usage of the mask that reduces its transformative powers to a means of dissimulating private enjoyment. A condemnation that will contrast with Burton's literary holding of Democritus mask, a gesture made to allow a compulsive expression of truths. Aequivocus, the servant of Polugramaticus, provides an account of his master's behaviour: "Where does he not go? Here, there, everywhere he wanders at night, through every neighbourhood of the city. And at all hours of the night, now dressed as a man, now as a woman, putting on all sorts of disguises -those of a bawd, a midwife, sometimes even a soldier. I think Proteus is not more mutable than he nor a fox more cunning or clever" 15 . This idea of duplicity is recovered and reinforced throughout the Anatomy where the typical Jesuit is depicted as a "notorious Bawd, & famous Fornicator, lascivum pecus, a very goat" (AM I, p. 57). The public mask of the preacher of continence is abandoned and, disguised in their own habits or those of pp. 9-52 Revista Filosófica de Coimbra -n. o 59 (2021) "souldiers, courtiers, cittizens, Schollers, Gallants, and women themselves" they satisfy their secret desires 16 .
But along the subscription of the typical tropes and images of anti -catholic propaganda 17 , Burton points to a more subtle target. We may speculate on the lexical and phonic similarities between "Osuna" and "Oxonia" [Oxford] as a sign of a veiled critique to the intense transformations of the English universities. In their process of a larger population of students and the accommodation of new formative purposes lead to serious pedagogic and scientific changes. The play develops a (no -so veiled) critic to the King's patronage and his professed commitment with the academics 18 . The new demands of teaching, reduced to an instrumental function of certification for court offices, culminate into a degradation of the social value of true scholarship and, inevitably, to the deterioration of working conditions of the academics. The presentation of the pseudo -learners, including not just the students but also the lecturers, anticipates Burton's more reflective account of the impact of the "secularization" of the University in the Anatomy of Melancholy 19 .
Interestingly, similar complaints over the degradation of working conditions and the exhaustion of the teaching staff were common at the second half of the sixteenth century, also in Portugal 20 . In Coimbra, along with the exponential increase of students, the situation was exacerbated by the "imperious need to send missionaries to the ultramarine nations" 21 .

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
Although influenced by Bacon's denunciation of a "degenerate learning" occupied with "vermiculate questions", Burton's critique of scholasticism is 16 "Howsoever in publike they pretend much zeale, seeme to be very holy men, and bitterly preach against adultery, fornication; there are no verier Bawds or whoremasters in a country" (AM III.2.2.5,p. 129 primarily "stylistic", a refusal of the monotony of logic exercises inspired by Petrarch, Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, among others. Beyond the aridity of syllogistic disputations, Burton searches a finer style able to expose the passions of the soul unconstrained by the science "à la mode des Geométriens" (Montaigne, Les Essais II, 7). His humanism relies on a rediscovery of classical culture and the gospels, tendencies that, allied with the new challenges posed by the pedagogic and evangelising activities in eastern countries, were pervading the studium conimbrigense, most notably in the works of confrater Pedro da Fonseca, the Portuguese Aristotle 22 . Burton's debt to the Conimbricensis' understanding of melancholy and the Jesuit educative and apostolic missions that enable his safe traveling "in map or card" (AM I, p. 18) 23 -inspiring a comparative approach to the customs of different people -, is implicitly recognized in various places of his magnum opus.
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton's monumental work, is mainly composed through laborious centos, weaving together an immense array of ancient and early modern scholarship. Burton claims that the erudite nature of the book must not obstruct its practical purpose, the cure or relief of the wide variety of symptoms he comprises under the general term "melancholy". To satisfy that desideratum, his personal experience of the disease will enable an engaged reading of medical textbooks, both ancient and new, grating a live critique of their proposals. This lifelong project required from Burton a herculean effort to extend his expertise as a priest and a scholar of humanities pp. 9-52 Revista Filosófica de Coimbra -n. o 59 (2021) -"by my profession a Divine, and by mine inclination a Physitian" -into a great diversity of disciplines convoked to the treatment of an ever -expanding melancholic constellation. Burton tends to conclude that, in view of the shortcomings of medical theories and the insanity of the world, the rectification of mental suffering was ultimately a question of personal effort and devotion. However, despite his recognition of the singularity of each "case", the Anatomy of Melancholy supplies a pastoral plan of self -discovery and salvation in God's law. Instead of a simple exposition of the ancient and current views on causes and cures of melancholic passions, theories and clinical histories of melancholy are part of a transformative dialogue with the reader, his "fellow traveller". This is not without consequences to his historiographic method, marked by imprecise references, citations by heart and even corruption of the sources, errors that, most of the times, are subproducts of a rhetoric strategy of questioning.
Along the editions of the Anatomy the majority of the sections devoted to the analysis of the six non -naturals remained unchanged. The exception was the "perturbations of the mind". The passional disturbances have a decisive role in the melancholic illness, altering the krasis. In accordance with the aristotelic -theophrastic tradition, after subsiding, some violent passions like shame, anxiety or anger provoke a sudden depletion of the vital heat of the heart, affecting the general quality of the animal and vital spirits. The same occurs with the two proverbial affections of melancholy -fear and sorrow 24 -psychic expressions of the cold and dry qualities of black bile. A vast constellation of passions and social conditions seem to be propitious to the acquisition of melancholic illness, what Burton terms its "adventitious" (opposed to "congenite") forms. These include causes like education, calumnies, loss of liberty, poverty, and a "heap of other accidents".
Moving beyond the Aristotelian hypothesis 25 , Rufus of Ephesus pointed to intellectual efforts, especially those characterized by an incessant musing around a single subject, as causes of melancholy that affect those with excellent complexion 26 . In his treatise on melancholy, Ishaq Ibn Imran, one of the Islamic guardians of ancient Greek medicine which contends that Rufus account of melancholy exceeds those of Hippocrates and Galen, will retain 24 Aphorism VI. 23: "ἢν φόβος ἢ δυσθυμίη πουλὺν χρόνον διατελέῃ, μελαγχολικὸν τὸ τοιοῦτον". this idea of an overburden of the rational soul: "if doctors, mathematicians, or astronomers meditate, brood, memorize and investigate too much, they can fall prey to melancholy" 27 , to which he will add the excessive yearning for God 28 . Along with the excessive study and curiosity of the literati, mentioned by Constantine's De melancholia 29 , in great part a translation of the work of Ibn Imrān, and eliciting Ficino's theorization of a professional illness in De Vita, Burton is particularly attentive to the imaginative distortion or fixations associated with erotic and mystical arousal, as causes of an excessive consumption of the vital spirits.
In the subsection on the "Passions and Perturbations of the Mind, how they cause Melancholy." (I, 2, 3, 1), the Oxford scholar indicates Suárez as one of the authorities that showed how the imaginative magnification of some passions occasions durable changes in the corporeal part of the soul ("Imaginatio movet corpus, ad cujus motum excitantur humores, et spiritus vitales, quibus alteratur" (AM I.2.3.1, p. 252). This conviction is central to Burton's understanding of the habitual (or acquired) melancholy and explains how some patterns of behaviour or thought can pervert the normal and healthy reactions to external and inner impressions. He points, with his characteristic imprecision, to the XVIII section of the Disputationes metaphysicae (18. s1, a.25), but that idea figures in the disputation devoted to the habits (XLIV), more precisely in the section XII where Doctor Eximius discusses the corruption of the habits (arts. 21 -23) proceeding from the analysis of the role of "phantasmate" on the sensitive and intellective species (arts. 13 -16). The possible degradation of the imaginative faculty is considered an accidental source of corruption of intellective habits as powers of the soul of the "intellectus possibilis".
Suárez addresses the question of melancholy in his De anima, a treatise published posthumously, in the same year of the first edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy, which probably remained outside the scope of Burton's reading. In that work, Suárez essays a confrontation between the current medical conceptions that, based on Galen, hold that black bile grows "sorrow, fear and desperation" (De Anima, V, c.5, a.18, p. 769), and the controversial view, originated from (pseudo) Aristotle's Problem XXX.1, that melancholia "est apta ad ingenium" ( 83 -4. tentative reading of poetical expressions of suffering, particularly grief and unrequited love, as sources of an "émergence du se sentir soi même" 30 supposed to convoke philosophical self -reflection, the association between the harms of black bile and philosophical achievements or revelations is absent. Today attributed to Theophrastus, that text contrasts with all the known definitions of the problems related with black bile in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, diverging from their medical terms 31 . Supported in Averroes, Suárez rebukes the Galenic theory for assuming a direct transference of the external qualities of the black bile into the psychic dispositions. He essays an "organicistic" explanation to resolve the opposition, allowing for the possibility of genius. When heated to a moderate level, atra bilis loses its (natural) damaging qualities, promoting an "optimal diffusion of the animal spirits" 32 . Suárez is particularly attentive to the way the different temperaments affect sensitive perception, and how the transformation of the earthly qualities of black bile enables a heighten sense of touch, sign of greater intelligence 33 , a thesis also reappraised in the Coimbran Commentary on De Anima 34 . We must bear in mind that Suárez writes his De Anima between 1572 and 1575, around the period of composition of the Coimbran Commentarii whose final editing, under the new directives of the Superior General Claudio Acquaviva, was attributed to Manuel de Góis in 1580 35 . Inscribing themselves in the hylemorphic tradition both Suárez and Góis address the two parts of the dispute and the nascent polemic around the innateness of talent [ingenium], in both cases articulating it with the use of the internal faculties of the soul.
The attention to the passions of the soul, not circumscribed to fear and sorrow but encompassing all of those that entail a reflexive self -affection, is decisive for Burton's concept of acquired melancholy, overcoming what he will consider, along the successive editions of the Anatomy, a shortcoming of the contemporaries medical theories that, like Th. Bright's Treatise of Melancholie (1586), only consider the material cause of melancholic illness, ie. the quantity and quality of black bile. In his book devoted to the Passions of the 32 "sic ergo melancholia a propria natura extracta conducit ad ingenium, optime disponendo corpus ad diflfusionem spirituum animalium" (De Anima, III, c.29, a.7, p. 702).
Mind (1601) Thomas Wright, another Jesuit, provided a new understanding that explores how passions, particularly the magnification of the imagination, provokes bodily unbalances that retroact on the experience of illness 36 . In Burton, the personal experience of illness transcends the external observation of symptoms and accounts, enabling a "phenomenological" observation of its intentionality: "They get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing" (I, 8). It implies a method of raising the observation of a phenomenon above an exterior description. A similar notion pervades the philosophical anthropology of the Conimbricensis, obeying Góis' imperative: "probatur autem eius veritas tum ipsa experientia…" (Etd4q3a1p36). In the aristotelian -thomistic tradition, experientia of a given subject refers a certain conformation of the potencies of the soul to it , an activity which may be optimized 37 . The Coimbrans take experientia as the mother of philosophy and come to explore its diverse aceptions in their pedagogic enterprise 38 . Far from restricting it to personal experience, they consider experientia to be a necessary condition for the acquisition, testing and validation of scientific knowledge. This attitude leads to the revision of established assumptions of the tradition, especially in the fields of geography, cosmography and astronomy.

The "philosopher of Conimbra".
A first reference to the Coimbra commentators appears in the initial partition of The Anatomy of Melancholy, in the context of an inquiry on the causes of melancholy which sustains that by "knowing them (…) [we] may better avoid the effects, or at least endure them with more patience" (AM I.3.3.1, p. 419). After his exposition of the causes of the three types of melancholy -head, hypochondriacal and general -, Burton mentions a symptom of all those forms; the obstinate attachment to the lost object, opportunity or person. However, there is a problem in his attempt of categorization. These symptoms, as it often occurs in melancholy, are also causes, since they provoke (or retroact in further) biopsychic disturbances 39 . Stored in the memory 36 Cf. e.g. Christopher Tilmouth, "Burton's 'Turning Picture': Argument and Anxiety in The Anatomy of Melancholy", Review of English Studies 56 (2005) Revising Aristotle's cardiocentrism in accordance with the medical opinion that became dominant 42 , the closing comment on that little book of Aristotle essays a physiological answer to the question "why do lovers become demented" "amantes amentes". Love, as the other affections of the "spirited soul" has its origin in the heart [a corde oriuntur], grounded in the impression caused by the perception of the loved one -a conversio ad phantasmata -, or in a longing that re -enacts the phantasmata imprinted in the memory. When Phantasia lacks adequate action of the ratio particularis or the vis aestimativa, the imaginative construction of the loved individual, retained as a personal image formed of "imago rei intelligendae", is, in Burton's terms, "misconceived" or "amplified", occasioning a significant expenditure of vital heat. The Commentarii provide a description of the organic movements involved in the feelings associated with a particular affection, focusing on the physiological necessity of some bodily signs, for instance blushing and tears. However, their understanding requires the deductive analysis of the scientia de anima since "the organic potentiality has its ultimate expression in the soul" 43 . Love and friendship are psychic expressions of those movements or impulses, whose species require the illumination of the agent intellect and the rules of the possible intellect 44 . In the answer to the questions posed before the consideration on the insanity of lovers, this higher regulation of the efficient cause of the movements of the soul is considered to be active in social reflexivity, i.e. moralization, particularly in the evaluation of decency [pudor] of corporeal and perceptive changes (Vmc8a6p92). In that sense, the feeling of shame is an indicator of a noble soul that, instead of indifferent or resigned with his own defects, cares for his faults [curam defectus] and hopes to correct them (Vmc8a8p93). Their normative assumptions seem based on the Neoplatonism conception of love as a form of spiritual harmony, particularly in Ficino's De Amore, but here with the prevalence of memory as a potency that allows the intellective appraisal of the singular.
Regarding the student [scholastico], object of reflexion in the commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia, a similar physiological explanation is offered. The increased agitation provoked by their excessive efforts, -ob assiduitatem in studiis, atque uigilias -originates a degradation of the spirits (Mrc9p16). Causing an excessive dryness of the brain, that condition prevents the use of the higher potencies of the soul, especially phantasy and a sound memory. A swift imagination, able to retrieve the images provided by the external and internal senses, a memory that stores and curates the images imprinted according to reason, are the requirements for the scholar's performance. Alluding to the commentaries on De Anima, Góis notes that phantasy and memory must not be conceived as "passive potencies", "destined by nature to receive the species", instead they intervene and transform the perceived species of the sensitive memory, creating new relations and forms (Soc2p39). This is why "the schools of philosophers" only admit students blessed with a "swift talent" [celeri ingenio] provides them with a fast and acute imagination, and fluent discourse, that is to say, those that "manage remarkably the functions of the estimative potency" (Soc2p39 -40). However, per se, an innate talent is insufficient to excel in studies. In alignment with Ficino, a hygiene of the habits must be supplemented by continuous and oriented exercise 45 .
If we take into account the precedent observations, we will see that it is hardly by chance that, in the next paragraph, Burton addresses a problem that, although mentioned, remains dormant throughout the Anatomy; "Why melancholy men are witty, which Aristotle hath long since maintained in his problems ; and that all learned men, famous philosophers, and lawgivers, ad unum fere omnes melancholici, have still been melancholy, is a problem much controverted." (AM I.3.3.1, p. 421). In fact, the Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis societatis Jesu are far from ignoring the Aristotelian tradition inaugurated by the Problemata Physica: "constat eos, qui ingenio claruerunt, sive in philosophiae studijs, sive in Republica administranda, sive in carmine pangendo, aut artibus exercendis, malancholicos fuisse, ut Herculem, Aiacem, Bellerophontem, Lysandrum, Empedoclem, Socratem, atque Platonem" (GcIIc8q4a2p462). They add Cicero's hesitant remark that, in light of such high achievements, perhaps he shouldn't be so harsh on himself on the occasions he was gloomier (Tusc. Disp. I, XXXIII). Such "melancholicorum laus", attributed to Ficino's De triplici vita and the commentaries of Tomás Rodrigues da Veiga (1513-1579 46  : "las buenas habilidades vienen de necessidad del perfecto y buen temperamento, del corrompido y dañado no se esperan sino obras corrompidas y dañadas. Y assí tengo por impossible en buena philosophía (aunque that innate abilities may directly derive from the humours, particularly from "melancholia naturalis", which remains associated with animic torpor (GcII-c8q4a3p464).
However, in the cosmologic discussions over Saturn's regency, where it is deemed the "star of the melancholic" [Saturni sydus melancholicos, & tetricos; caeteraque similiter] (CoIIc3q9a1p186), that theory according to which "duo esse melanchoricum genera" (GcIIc8q4a3p463) is suspended. Referring to the first part of Albertus Magnus' Summa de creaturis (de quatuor coequeuis), Ptolemy and Abu Maʿshar [Albumasar], they contrast the cold and dry of Saturn with the sanguine qualities of Jupiter, the warm and moist (CoIIc3q3a2p165) 48 . The Conimbricensis seem convinced that, despite the contemplative favours of the most distanced among the errant stars, in consonance with William of Auvergne's conjunction of Christian cosmology and Islamic astrology, the ability to "withdraw men from the pleasures of the body and the agitations of the world" 49 , its associations with the solitary, the old and the miser, retained by Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus (IV, 8), prevail.
In discussing the physiological dimension of passional movements of the soul, still in the same section of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton makes another reference to the Conimbricensis, now regarding the Tractatio aliquot problematum ad quinque Sensus Spectantium. This proves that, along with the volumes already cited, Burton was acquainted with the Commentaries in tres libros de Anima which includes, along with the Tractatus de Anima Separata authored by Baltasar Alves, that Treatise written by Cosme de Magalhães. Burton quotes that: "the voice of such as are afraid, trembles, because the heart is shaken (Conimb. prob. 6. sec. 3. de som.)" (AM I.3.3.1, p. 422), but a complete quote would be: "why does the voice of the fearful and the wrathful trembles so as the chin? A [nswer]. Because the heart is severely shaken by the heat that emanates, and therefore many beats are produced, gaste más papel en su Examen de ingenio el doctor Sant Juan en traer exemplos para probar su opinión) que pueda ningún melanchólico hablar latín sin lo saber, ni philosophar sin lo haber aprendido." (Velásquez, Andrés. so as in the vocal chords" 50 . The citation is evidence of a selective reading which emphasizes the emotional upheavals of the heart, trivializing the physiological effects on the vocal chords [laxis chordis]. In this free adaptation of the original text, so typical of the Anatomy, Burton also supresses the mentioning on the wrathful [iratorumque], in order to identify fear as a passion typical of the melancholic temperament. Without relating them to melancholy, in the preceding paragraph Cosme de Magalhães had explored stammering and lisping, relating them to coldness affecting the organ of speech. According to the Coimbran commentator, while animals such as griffins and starlings twitter with different levels of agility, only humans, due to their resort on verbal language, experience stutter 51 . Curiously, right after the quotation, Burton identifies those speech difficulties as melancholic symptoms and, following Girolamo Mercuriale and Elias Montaltus, provides a similar explanation based on the oscillations of temperature and humidity 52 . Paduan Aristotelianism was extending the scope of natural philosophy and psychology through the evidences resulting from dissection, analysed independently from the logic organization of the textual tradition. Burton, had a copy of Pomponazzi's De naturalium effectuum causis (1556) and, at some points, seems to side with an heuristic circumscription to the material causes of the disease, suspending the questions that regard the immortal rational soul. But a similar tendency may be found in the Conimbricensis. Along with the references to Fracastorius' Turrius sive De Intellectione Dialogus (1555), incursions on Vesalius' anatomical studies on the referred Treatise on the problems concerning the five senses, are proof of a will to supplement the commentaries of the De Anima, where the experiemental method is considered (AnIIc11q1a1p254), with the new evidences provided by contemporary anatomy and physiology 53 , part of an ongoing and prolonged revision of the humoralist paradigm. 50 "Cur trepidantium, iratorumque vox tremula est, ac etiam mentum? Quia emigrante calore cor conquatitur, unde ictus multi suit, sicuti in laxis chordis" (Qss3a6p551). 51 Updating its terms but preserving the spirit of the text, we could say that speech impairments make clear that the human being has no language, he is in language.
52 An attribution that goes back to Rufus of Ephesus' Melancholy, a lost work of two books recomposed from latter commentaries of greco -roman and arabic medicine. The association with stammering is consistent with the aristotelic depiction of the impulsive nature of the melancholic. In Rufus it appears as one of the symptoms of encephalic melancholy, resulting from the increase pressure of the pneuma in the head: "they generally speak fast, they lisp, and stammer, since they cannot control their tongue" Rufus  .4.1.4). In the second partition of the Anatomy of Melancholy, devoted to "cure of melancholy", right at the beginning of his famous "Digression of the Air" Burton counts the "Conimbricenses" (AM II.2.2.3, p. 35) among the inquirers on the uses of magnetism, an expertise we can confirm in various points of the Commentaries on "practical physics" 54 , particularly on De generatione et corruptione (GcIIc3q2a2p368). The geographic perplexities over the magnetic poles lead to a review of the greatest achievements of navigation. Latter in the same section, Burton mentions the "philosophers of Conimbra" as contributors to the clarification of the questions presented by Bodin in Theatrum Universae Naturae (1605), in the context of Ficino and Pico's Hermetic -Cabalist doctrine on the relation between the two worlds, macro and microcosmos. The Oxford scholar testifies a knowledge of the distinctive research of the Coimbra commentators on the influence of the "empyrean heavens" on the sublunar world (e.g. CoIIc5q2a1p214) 55 , exposed in the commentaries In Quatuor libros de Coelo Aristotelis Stagiritae.

Conimbricensis on Melancholia.
The textual exegesis of the Conimbricences is guided by the auctoritates, but its frequent adoption of an apologetic style does not prevent them to address the medical, philosophical and theological problems of their own time. It is therefore unsurprising that, in the context of their exploration of Aristotle's natural philosophy and moral psychology, they positioned themselves in the "Intellectual Traditions of Melancholy" 56 . Góis' "scientia de anima" recognizes three states of the soul -united with the body, separated from the body and in itself -(AnIprq1a2p7). However, the science of the soul is highly dependent on the study of Physics: "(…) since concerning a 'me- respective level of happiness in each of them (…)" 57 . Burton recognized that project but only tangently. More than four centuries later, that incursion which considers a physiological theory and its pragmatic application (Phprq3a1--3p25 -7), remains little known. Altough certainly grounded on the problems regarding the constitution and quantification of the body, it is never fully detached from a regimen of the soul.
Regarding melancholy, following authors such as Arnau de Vilanova and the school of Montpellier (Bernard de Gordon), the Coimbrans consider two main types of problems: 1) the natural tendencies of the melancholic constitution or temperament and 2) the contribution towards a best knowledge of oneself.
An important dispute in early modern medicine concerned the ontological grounding of the disease. For the Coimbrans it was clear that in melancholic disease the powers dependent upon the brain become unpaired, particularly the sensus communis and the imagination. But it was vital to know whether the excess and corruption of the humours, which affected the various "seats" of the soul, would prove the corruptibility of the immaterial soul.
D. Duarte's manuscript on the affections -Leal Conselheiro (1435/38) -, particularly his personal experience of melancholy when facing the pressures of governance, is a landmark of the protohumanist culture in Portugal. But since it remained inaccessible, Duarte's lively description of depression has no historiographic resonance in the Conimbricenses, but its reading enables a contrast with the more circumspect inspection of the passions that characterizes the latter. Regarding the remarkable similarities between Duarte's and Burton's phenomenological accounts 58 , they are mainly explained by their proximity to modern forms of narrating a personal path of metanoia.
By supplementing the commentaries of Aristotle's natural philosophy with contemporary medical themes, the Jesuitical textbooks were looking for a complete account the human being, including his "animal" functions. However, they are careful in maintain their discussions aligned with pivotal religious dogmas 59 . While this is certainly the case with the Jesuits of Coimbra, their account of human physiology and anatomy entails, like the incursions 57 Santiago de Carvalho, Dicionário do Curso Filosófico Conimbricense, p. 342. 58 These afinities are all the more surprising if we take into account that almost two centuries separate the authors and that it was impossible for Burton to access the catamnestic testemony of the Portuguese monarch. Cf. Kimberley S. Roberts and Norman P. of D. Duarte and Burton in melancholy, a therapeutic dimension. However, it differs from those works in a significant manner. Its consideration of the "negative" affections and moods conforms to a sanitary procedure of self--improvement, an approach certainly influenced by De habitu et constitutio-ne… (1561), the famous work of Levinus Lemnius (1506Lemnius ( -1568 where the Dutch physician advised on the ways to improve one's complexion through the "non -naturals". Therefore, Góis refuses the indulgences so common in Duarte's exploration of the delights associated to the ills of love 60 or the bittersweetness of Burton's 'melancholizing', thereby satisfying both pedagogic and a theological resolutions 61 . This similarity to a "catalogue of sins", a rational categorization of the psychophysical states and attitudes, is certainly not casual. It fulfils a further purpose that attains to the administration and organization of the Society of Jesus, exposing, in the words of C. Casalini, the "real problem of the temperaments in the Society: the problem of government" 62 . This enabled the recognition of the aptitude of the (exceptional) melancholic towards charismatic positions of preaching and leadership. However, facing the late sixteenth century radicalization of the correlation between certain temperaments and the pedagogic requirements of each individual proposed by Juan Luis Vives's De Anima (1538), the Jesuitical teaching, Coimbra included, followed Antonio Possevino's Cultura Ingeniorum (1593), in its critique of a "positivistic" reading of the temperaments (vide infra). Along with its medical, therapeutic and theological goals, the theoretical discussion of the temperaments undertook by the Coimbra Jesuits, may had a practical application deemed central to the strategy of the Society of Jesus 63 . Their tweaking of a millennial doctrine, attentive to how the climatic, geographic and dietetic factors affect and mould individual constitution, a medical language which pervaded early modern "body politic", could benefit the Society's organization in a wide variety of social, political and cultural contexts. pp. 9-52 Revista Filosófica de Coimbra -n. o 59 (2021) Mobilizing much of the wisdom of the early fathers on spiritual guidance 64 , especially the "conferential" model of Cassian, since their inception the spiritual exercises where adapted to age, condition and studies of each individual, but also to the "constitutional type" 65 . The Directorium in Exercitia Spiritualia (1599) presents orientations based on nearly sixty years of observations on the application of the spiritual exercises by three general congregations and "a transregional network of Jesuit missionaries". Therefore, it presents a "science of the self" 66 attentive to the complexio, in particular the cautions the spiritual directors must have towards the melancholic 67 . In the following year, Claudio Acquaviva, also responsible for the regulation of the Jesuit colleges (the ratio studiorum), publishes Industriae pro Superioribus Societatis Jesu ad curandos animae morbos (1635 [1600]), which may be read as a complement for the Directorium drawing on the analogy between the bodily and spiritual diseases and their distinctive ways of treatment. Attentive to the monastic wisdom of Cassian and Saint Gregory, Acquaviva privileges a prophylactic approach that counters the epidemic character of some animi perturbationes. The identification of these -establishing a modus indigandi morbum (c.1, p.14) -is deemed decisive for the success of the missions.
Self -knowledge is an important goal of the exercises, achieved through the practice of self -examination complemented by the honest account of one's worries, under the ideal of complete disclosure of the soul. This confessional practice is considered by Acquaviva as a medicine of the soul, but it is far from restricted to moral catharsis and comfort. From the outset, the interventions are conceived to optimize the Society's operations, providing a careful selection of the personal traits of the Members more suitable to particular missions and assignments. In the final chapter of his book, devoted to the difficulties [scrupuli] of melancholia, Acquaviva begins by stating that given the abundance and quality of the writings on melancholy "it isn't necessary to say more" (c.18, p. 116 prevent the isolation of the Member burden by the disease and the active support to enliven her faith (p. 117). Among the personal characteristics, the temperaments assume a central importance since they enable a reliable model to assess one's physical, cognitive and moral characteristics. This is evident in the gathering and processing of the information of each Jesuit operation. Every three years each college or mission should send to the curia catalogi, a first [Catalogous primus] containing general information of each Member of the society -including provenance, age, health, studies and current function -, a second [Catalogous secundus] providing an account of the character and abilities of each Associate and a third one [Catalogous Tertius] reporting the economic situation of the mission. The catalogous secundus, also called "secretus" since it referred to each individual by a numerical identifier, is of central importance to understand the application of the doctrine of the temperaments. It required the assessment of various items: "ingeniousness, intellect, prudence, experience, ability to profit from studies, natural complexion and talents" 68 .
Articulated with personal traits, the bodily temperaments provided a grid for the description of the Associates of the Society, particularly the missionaries, with a referential for a better way to appraise themselves 69 . Loyola had already pointed not only to the importance of the awareness of the distinctive traits of one's temperament, but also to how these could help in the recognition of the character of the others with which the Jesuit interacts enabling the recognition of universal signs of the human genus, prelinguistic traits that would favour the understanding of the indigenous. That recognition enables the adaptation of one's behaviour to the character of the other, something that can be decisive in diplomatic and commercial relations 70 . At the same time, pp. 9-52 Revista Filosófica de Coimbra -n. o 59 (2021) the triennial catalogues displayed the ideals of self -observation and correction to which one should aim, in the words of P. Quattrone: "[c]hoosing these dimensions was a way of providing visibility to those aspects of the soul which were important in making the good 'soldier', the good teacher, the good 'manager': in short, the good Jesuit" 71 . The use of the temperaments is not circumscribed to managerial decisions on hierarchies or bureaucratic calculus of the fitness of each Member for a particular task. A considerable number of the Associates are aware of the importance of this "profiling" and, in their requests to change their assignments and/or roles, or in order to integrate particular missions, allude to their own complexion, articulating terms and assumptions that were pervading common language. In one of the numerous indepta litterae that came to us, M. Valladares indicates his melancholic ingenio, tormented by his present college studies, to justify his application to a more practical mission in Mexico 72 .
Since its inception, the Society remained cautious on the admissions of melancholic Members, but they were tolerated in various positions. In fact, according to M. Massimi: he "[w]ho possesses good wit associated with the prevalence of the choleric and melancholic humours is predisposed to functions more distinctive of the Jesuitical charisma, such as preaching, ruling and teaching" 73 .
A prime example of their views is given in Commentarii in duos libros Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione. In the second book, they resume the discussion on the vulgatis mundi elementis initiated in the commentary in quatuor, libros de Coelo (pp. 357ff). They sustain, in accordance with the critique moved by Hippocratic medicine to Ionian naturalism and Empedoclean speculation, that the traditional elements -air, fire, earth and water -, constitutive of the platonic cosmos (Ti. 86a ff), are not, by themselves sufficient to explain human complexions nor their decay. The Conimbricentheir talk, use the same manner with them, because such ways will be gratifying to them. 'I became all things to all men.'" Antonio T. sis subscribe the ancient doctrine of the right mixture of the elements in the organism, but instead of an instantiation of traditional elements, the creation and maturation of the human creature is materially dependent on the humours. The humours, whose hepatic secretion is discussed (GcIc5q4a1), retain the primal qualities of the traditional elements, and, in accordance with their respective quantity, they form the four main temperaments which, following the tradition inaugurated by Avicenna, can originate hybrid forms such as "melancolia sanguinea". Inspired in Isidore de Seville's De Natura Rerum, the diagram "Mundus--Annus -Homo" 74 , captures the relation of the typical complexions with the cosmic elements (aër, ignis, terra & aqua) the natural cycles (ver, aestas, autumnum & hiemem) and the stages of human life (pueritia, iuventutem, virilem aetatem & senectutem): sanguineous, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic (e.g. GcIIc8q6 -7p465 -9) 75 . This scheme retained by the Coimbrans, had already been adapted by the Roman College in their instructions. Inspired on the Timaeus and De Coelo, in works such as De ordine universi et de principiis naturae ad imitationem Timaei Platonici (Roma, 1585), Andréa Bacci (1524-1600) reiterated the relation between the macrocosmos and microcosmos, conceiving synoptic tables (engraved by Natale Bonifacio) on the influence exerted by the stars on all the worldly elements, including the humours. Following his iconographic research H. Saffrey stated that it is probable that "at a certain moment (…) the Jesuit professors of the Roman College (…) have adopted Bacci's table as a pedagogical instrument for their teaching" 76 .
The Coimbra commentators review the axes of the temperature (warm and cold) and humidity (wet and dry) stressing how their specific concretization, i.e. their mixture, in each humour, produces new virtual qualities (GcIIc3q2a2p376), something that will be accomplished with the speculations over the optimal proportion of the humours, including its ability to resurrect the body (GcIc4q24a3p174), and the composition of the holy complexion (GcIIc8q2a1p442 -3). This is a fundamental aspect of the Aristotelian strand of humoral doctrine given that, instead of a static view of the passional and active dimensions of each temperament, they emphasize their inherent 74 In: De responsione mundi et de astrorum ordinatione (Augsburg: Günther Zainer, 1472), fol. 7v. 75 On the origin and consolidation of the humoral scheme see: Erich Schöner. Das Viererschema in der antiken Humoralpathologie. Südhoffs Archiv Beiheft 4 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1964). 76 Henri Dominique Saffrey, "L'Homme -microcosme dans une estampe medico--philosophique du seizieme siecle. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), 101. instability and reactivity. The strict concept of physical health is dependent on the maintenance of an equilibrium of the humoral mixture, which once disturbed, can be re -established according to the principle of contraria contrariis curantur.
However, like in Aristotle, the Commentarii exceed a physiological medicine and advance into the realm of ethical care of the self 77 . The equilibrium in human complexion is the occasion to oppose the thesis according to which the (immaterial) soul is the sole source of disease 78 , even if some analogies between and moral and bodily "character" can be established. In this context, the Coimbrans postulate the doctrine of the golden mean in passions and moral judgments as the condition for psychological and spiritual balance (e.g. GcIIc3q5 -6). The commentaries on Ethics acknowledge how health provides a normative model for the kind of objectivity possible in ethical judgements. As stated in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, well -being and virtuous action consist in the achievement of a relative equilibrium, the first relying on the ideal correlation between complexion, environment and dietetics, the second on the contingent application of the golden mean, i.e. in temperance (Eth.N. 1006a 29 ff.; EtdIIc3a1p19).
In accordance with the doctrine of the six non -naturals, the presentation of each temperament centres on the contributions of Galen and Avicenna to the impact of dietetics in the vegetative and animal parts of the soul. The Conimbricensis are fully aware of the negative associations of the melancholic temperament. In their commentaries to On Divination in Sleep and On Dreams, where Aristotle is suspicious over the divinatory capacities attributed to the melancholic (Insomn. 460b 28 -462a 7; Div. Somn. 462b), they subscribe those doubts, stating that, in the melancholic, the feats of prophecy are fortuitous. Instead of resulting from a divine prodigy, their clear and vivid dreams must be explained by a greater sensitivity of sense perception to the external movements [κινήσεις]. The comparison and synthesis of the impressions of the various senses operated by the sensus communis, the perceptive source of the soul, remains active, but is unable to distinguish between actual perception and its remnants. Therefore, memoria sensitiva and phantasia persist long after the external senses but, favoured by the quietness of the night, cease functioning, as it occurs in sleep (Dsc4p53 -4). 78 According to Burton this idea was enunciated in the Charmides: "omnia corporis mala ab anima procedere" (AM I.2.3.1, pp. 250 -1), although the account of the cure of Zamolxis shows an integrative approach: "For all that was good and evil, he said, in the body and in man altogether was sprung from the soul [έκ της ψυχής] and flowed along from thence as it did from the head into the eyes" (156e -157a).
Medical and therapeutic tradition, Burton included, will retain the analogy between dreams and the mental delusions, pointing precisely to its involuntary retrieving of images, unreal or fictional, "products" of a phantasia whose light is insufficient to disperse the haze 79 . As it becomes clear in their commentaries on the third book of De Anima, the Conimbricensis hold that, when limited to the memoria sensitiva, imagination lacks the regulating principles of the intellective faculties, including the conditions of assent (AnIIIc3exp295) and self -reflexivity (AnIIIc3exp298) 80 . On the other hand, divine inspiration and revelation through dreams [divina somnia], visions or oracles, frequently relying in obscure symbols, should be carefully distinguished from the uncanny atmosphere of melancholic dream 81 , safeguarding a mode of communication with God (Soc4p41, Dsc3p51 -2), essential in Loyola's foundation of the Society of Jesus. However, in the context of the re -emergence of millenarian movements around the coming of the pastor angelicus, Loyola himself advised circumspection in order to distinguish between divine revelation in prophetic visions and the fruits of "confused understanding" 82 . These delusions originated in a damaged imagination were themselves a menace to the edificatory impulse for the renovatio mundi ordered by a pedagogic and therapeutic care of the soul 83 . In that sense, spi-ritual exercises and self -exam should avoid the escape into the uncontrollable domain of otherworldly revelations whose unfathomable designs were a continuous source of socio -political unrest. Instead of the lofty contemplation, inner search into oneself should lead into the humble assumption of the immediate responsibilities towards the world 84 .
In their commentaries On Sleep and Sleeplessness and On Divination in Sleep, the Coimbrans had already considered the atra bilis to be the cause of digestive difficulties, which originate black vapours that ascend to the brain obstructing its functions. According to this explanatory model of hypochondriacal melancholy that Galen seems to have adapted from Rufus of Ephesus, once they reach to the brain, postulated as the seat of emotion and movement (instead of the heart), not only do those fumes induce sleep (SvC3p23 & Svc9p33-4), they also obscure the external and internal senses of the "mind's eye" (Soc6q9p46). The commentaries on De Generatione and De Anima reiterate and expand these considerations highlighting how the cold and dry qualities of black bile, due to their reduction of the heart's vital heat make the melancholic, by innate disposition or habit, prone to psychic affections of fear and sadness ("Etenim frigiditas melancholiae, sicuti corpus reddit torpidum ac languidum, ita ad tristitiam inclinat" AnIc1q1a2p35 -6).
The commentaries proceed from the inquiry on the kind of balance that propitiates the excellency of wit [Quodnam temperamento ad excellentiam ingeni, & mentis perspicaciam magis idoneum sit], identifying the one that enables the abstraction from the passivity to the sensitive and appetitive desires (GcIIc8q4a1p461). Hypothesizing over the ideal merits of each temperament, they will subscribe Ficino's conjunction of the platonic idea that those of melancholic complexion are prone to divine frenzy and the Aristotelian--Theophrastic exploration of the psychophysical modulation of the black bile. They sustain that, when the black bile reaches an optimal temperature, through the ingestion of wine or when facing extreme probations, some melancholics are capable of the greatest achievements, particularly those that require memory and creative imagination: "ex atrabile calente attenuataque generant tenuissimos ac lucidissimos spiritus, qui ad ingenii mentis opera mirifice obseruiant" (GcIIc8q4a3p462). The commentaries make clear that such a state is momentary and, due to the abrupt decrease of temperature that ensues, may lead to various forms of insanity.
But in the Nicomachean Ethics the melancholic does not conform to such oscillation between depressive and maniac conditions associated with that latter derivation of the peripatetic school 85 . They are characterized as impulsive, those that are unable to contain their violent passions. The impairment of the deliberative capacity involved in this type of ἀκρασία is not to be attributed primarily to a dysfunction or corruption of reason, but of a propensity to follow φαντασία. This may explain why the Coimbrans consider the qualities of black bile to be disturbances to the sensus internos, and the pensive tendencies of the melancholics (Dsc4p53) may derive in obsessions, as manifest in the cases of "cogitationum tenacitas" (EtdIVq3a2p39).
The commentaries on De Anima proceed from the critic to the hypotheses that maintain the possibility to treat the affections of the soul [πάθεματα], animi affectus seu perturbationes, abstracting them entirely from the body. Running parallel to this resistance to insert the study of the soul in a metaphysical outlook (PhIIc1q4a2p229), the refusal of a naturalistic understanding, points to the recognition of the distinctive operations of the human soul. This singular positioning of the human soul, raised to the level of interpreter between the inferior and the superior, is in line with Renaissance discourses on the dignity of man 86 .
In the context of the "interactivist" proclivity of early modern humoralism, the Coimbrans concentrate on the passions that are moulded by specific complexions (Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Jesu, in tres libros de Anima, Aristotelis Stagiritae (AnIc1exp15). In this context, they note the extreme "sensitivity" of the melancholic; "minimal causes" may provoke in him an overwhelming alarm. The specific definitions of the soul (and the attributions) of each science provide the occasion for the commentators to emphasize the limitations of physiologic and medical inquiries on the soul. This view is stated right at the beginning of the Prooemium which distinguishes between the goals of the physician, that applies remedies to the individual body, and those of the philosopher whose occupation with the "diseases of soul" assumes a civic, a political and a religious dimension: "sicuti 86 "La singularité de l'âme ici ne tient pas uniquement à son indépendance de la matière, mais aussi au fait d'avoir une activité propre, ce qui nous invite à lire cet ouvrage en syntonie avec l'idéal de l'exaltation de l'Homme typique de la Renaissance" (Santiago de Carvalho,"Intellect et Imagination",142). medici, qui remedia curandis corporibus adhibent, ut munere suo probe fungatur, in animorum cognitione multum operae colocant: ita ac multo potiori ratione philosopho civili, qui sanandis animi morbis studet, comperta esse debere, quae ad animi scientiam spectant" (Anprp1 -2). A similar revision of the Galenic conflation between the physician and the philosopher appears in Burton, stressing how physiological, dietetic and pharmacological knowledge and intervention must be supplemented by the wisdom of the divines, particularly in order to identify, prevent and correct the development of recalcitrant appetites and vicious habits.
In the commentaries to Nicomachean Ethics, Generation and Corruption and De Anima, albeit unmentioned, the confrontation with Huarte de San Juan's Examen de Ingenios (1575Ingenios ( , 1594 is evidenced by the terminology used and the disputes treated. Inverting the model of the souls' Ἡγεμονικόν 87 , that famous work establishes a strict correspondence between the temperaments (their dryness or humidity), the inner faculties (memory, imagination and understanding) and their specific cognitive abilities. This leads to the radicalization of the correlation between certain temperaments and the pedagogic requirements of each individual proposed by Juan Luis Vives's De Anima (1538). According to the Spanish physician, since the moment of conception, each individual has a particular temperament, ideally aligned with its social attributions, that is immutable. For the Coimbra commentators this "positivist" ideal of natural categorization and determinism was problematic since it abstracted from the psychic and spiritual dimensions of individual growth. Instead, following humanist ideals, some of them issued by Antonio Possevino in his Cultura Ingeniorum (1593), they consider that in the temperaments certain propensities -in a loose sense, ingenious -may (and should) be identified, but these should always be inserted in a relational process of self -determination: "voluntas non est res corporea, sed spiritalis". Education is devoted to a continuous path of improvement that transcends the discovery of the pure and elusive potentiality of matter. Prior to the specialization in a certain discipline or work, naturae impetu must be shaped by the requirements of the diverse fields of human sciencies [ars] and, it is safe to say, by the specific challenges identified by the organization. Therefore, by working on the intersection between the definition of personal and social goals, the discussion regarding talent may be understood as a semantic echo of the advent of the functional differentiation of modern society. Through the efforts of moral and scientific discipline, predispositions and abilities may be developed and, according to the needs, put into the service of the community. By establishing free will as the cardinal point of human individuation and action 88 , the Coimbrans demarcate from the Averroist doctrine of the unity of the intellect (AnIc1a6), and proceed to a critique of both the atheistic materialism and the Calvinist heresy of predestination.
Slight hints of neostoicism, particularly the rational exam of the affections and the constancy in public affairs, both required for the free pursuit of individual and social happiness, are noticeable. However, similarly to Burton, the doctrine of ἀπάθεια professed by the ancient stoics is deemed dangerous (Etd6q4a1p57). A full suppression of affections would render the Christian caritas unfeasible. An extreme purging of the passions could certainly avoid crude errors of the soul but, along with it, devotion and the interpersonal connection with the other, central for the pedagogic and formative processes, would be lost. Like the Conimbricensis, Burton follows the Augustinian cure or "management" of the most base or improper affections, a metriopatheia that "balance[s] our hearts with love, charity, meekenesse, patience, and counterpoise those irregular motions of envy, livor, spleene, hatred, with their opposite virtues" (AM II.3.6.1, p. 186).
For Burton's project, the importance of the Jesuits' explorations of the astral and humoral influences on the external and inner senses, including those interspersed in the Commentarii, is proportional to the growing prominence that the passions of the soul acquired in the understanding and treatment of melancholic syndromes. Still, a significant part of the references to the Jesuits concerns the political subtext of the Anatomy of Melancholy. They participate in his critique of the disfranchised condition of the scholar, his increasing distance towards the power, and his exam of the social and economic causes of melancholy. In the next section, we will see how he values their pragmatic application of humanist and Christian instruction 89 .

Burton's reading of the Jesuit missions in the East Indies.
Coinciding with the period of his lecturing at the University of Coimbra, in De virtute et statu religionis (1608-09), Suárez reflected on the founding Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. Right from the beginning, he underlies 88 "Nec quasi astrerum vis, aut climatum natura, hominum animis hos aut illos mores per se imprimat: cum vitia, & virtutes (acquisitae scilicet) coparentur nostris actibus, qui non ab aliqua externa causa naturali, sed à libera voluntate eliciuntur, imperanturve" (GcIIc8q4a1p459). 89 A contribution that will be important in his construction of a critical mirror to his own society, see my Robert Burton on the melancholic plague. the communitarian dimension of the caritas: "non significare solius Dei cultum, sed etiam officium quod hominibus cognatis et affinibus, vel alia quacumque ratione nobis conjuncti exhibemus." (1. 1.1.1, p. 3). Founded under the auspices of D. João III, that delegate in Simão Rodrigues the task of its edification 90 , the Coimbra College of Jesus had a pivotal role in concretization of that practical goal, forming the missionaries to "dilate the Faith over all parts of the word" 91 .
Although he denounces Jesuitical practices on pedagogic, political and religious grounds, Burton comes to unwittingly praise some of their achievements, most of all regarding the way their apostolic missions contributed to the expansion of geographical knowledge and cartography and the acknowledgement of eastern forms of social organization 92 . Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is a major exemplar of an observation that, despite outside the complex circuit that binds the "overseas network of missionaries" and the "network of intellectual centres" 93 , relatively autonomous centres of the Jesuit organization, benefits from the overflow of their accumulated knowledge and experience.
The more salient contribution of the Jesuit missions to the treatment of melancholy is the discovery of new minerals and plants that will update the large variety of electuaries of the "theatre of melancholy" 94 . Among other alternatives to the traditional purgatives and humectants, Burton refers to the "bezoar's stone" (AM II.4.1.4) also called "Goa" or "cordial" stone, a remedy produced by Jesuit boticaries "in response to declining availability and quality of local bezoar stones" 95 . Created by the lay Jesuit Gaspar Antonio, the secret recipe combined inert and organic elements and, like the natural stone (Lapis Bezoar orientalis), it promised the cure of epilepsy and melancholy. Its popularity persists until the late eighteen century and, along with the renewed attempts to certify the authentic stone by the Jesuit dispensary of the St. Paul's College of Macau 96 , it will raise intense commercial battles to supply their European demand 9798 . In this context, Burton restates the admiration for the work of Garcius ab Horto's (Garcia da Orta) -a Portuguese Jew formed in medicine at the universities of Salamanca and Alcalá, that set off for India to become a major figure of botanic and tropical medicine -, for his discovery of new plants whose substances could prevent and relieve grief. But Burton's usage of the contribution of the Jesuits goes much further. In fact, its major part relates with the insights gained in the establishment and maintenance of the dialogue with a different civilization. The Jesuit's approval of the intrinsic merits of some of the Gentiles' works, even when in the service of their own religion, is acknowledged in Burton's discussion of religious melancholy (AM III.4. 2.6) 99 . Their project is also considered compatible with his commended form of peaceful discovery and exchange with other civilizations, even if they sometimes may "make the trumpet of the gospel the trumpet of war" (AM III.1.1.1, p. 38), acting as "praetorian soldiers" or janissaries of the Church (AM III.4.1.2).
Dispensed from the Society of Jesus in 1580, due to a sermon reiterating the separation between divine and temporal powers, G. Botero is an important source of the Anatomy, particularly its resort on the metaphor of the poli- tical body and the conception of economic initiative, shared by other precursors of economic liberalism like Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro (1492 -1586), Luis de Molina (1535Molina ( -1600 or Juan de Mariana (1536-1623. At the same time, albeit recognizing the need to release the religious shackles and adopt strategic action for the preservation of power, Botero's Della ragion di Stato emerges as a stronghold against Machiavelli's amoralization of the ruler's action. Along the Anatomy, the physical and spiritual health of the head of state is considered to be decisive for the preservation of the commonwealth. Burton's idealized view of China draws on chronicles based on the accounts of Portuguese and Spanish travellers, but his main source is the Jesuit father Matteo Ricci, the major figure of the first catholic missions in China, whose journals had been recently translated and commented by Nicolas Trigault in De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (Rome: 1615) 100 . Burton praises a kind of social order that promotes industriousness, enabling "peaceful" and "flourishing kingdom". From Ricci's Le lettre della Cina (1580Cina ( -1610 101 he draws the conviction that in China the selection of magistrates is not by birth but according with academic qualifications: "out of their philosophers and doctors they choose magistrates" (AM II.3.2.1, p. 140). However, closer to Ricci's treatise On Friendship (1595), Burton's encomium of the Chinese social and political organization obliterates a significant part of the missionary's account of his twenty -seven years of stay: the grim picture of its social mores and the severity of its local governors 102 . Burton's idealized view is influenced by his reading of the accounts provided by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, one of most ardent promoters of the Elizabethan politics of expansion. In his The Principal Navigations (1599), Hakluyt included a translation of chapter 33 of De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanam Curiam (1590), probably the second book printed by an European press in Macau, written (or at least translated in to Latin) by the rector of the St. Paul College, Duarte de Sande 103 . As the prefaces of Alessandre Valignano and Claudio Acquaviva make clear, its "mission" was double: the Latin instruction of those enrolled in the Seminar courses and, along with it, the presentation of the achievements of European religion and civilization to the Japanese learners. It was in the sequence of the English attack and sack of the spoils of the Portuguese ship Madre de Deus, in 1592, in the context of the naval war between England and Spain 104 , that Hakluyt obtained access to the book. Like the other chapters of De Missione, the one translated by Hakluyt as "An excellent treatise of the kingdome of China, and of the estate and gouernment thereof", consists in a colloquia between four envoys of Japanese Lords [daimyo] to Europe. Their travel from Lisbon to Rome and backwards enables a credible account of various aspects of the European countries, contributing to the intensification of contacts between the two peoples 105 . The so -called Tenshō embassy presents one of the first written accounts of the European culture observed by the eyes of a "discovered" people. Here, it is also interesting to observe how the descriptions rely, at least partially, in eastern categories that can present the "other" civilization.
Since its beginning, the Jesuit mission in the East Indies aimed for a knowledge of the other that, already in the pioneering work of Francis Xavier in the 1550's, assumes a "encyclopaedic character" 106 . Michael (Miguel), one of the "samurai boys" that participated on the journey to Europe (1582 -90), presented in the De Missione, describes China as a nation "indued with excellent wit and dexterity for the attaining of all artes, and, being very constant in their owne customes, they lightly regard the customes or fashions of other people". These praises extend to social hierarchy and a laborious industry "to be discerned in manuary artes and occupations, and therein the pp. 9-52 Revista Filosófica de Coimbra -n. o 59 (2021) Chinians do surpasse most of these Easterly nations" 107 . It is highly improbable that Burton himself believed in such bright picture, and, we must bear in mind that one of the intents of De Missione was to convince the Japanese seminarians of the superiority of the "European" religion over that of their Chinese neighbours.
Both his extensive reading of European missions in the Far East and the tendency for mirroring various opinions on a subject show that, here again, Burton is twisting his observation in order to make a point. He even compares the Jesuit missions in China and Japan with the cure by contact or perception of sacred artefacts: "Read Lippomanus, or that golden legend of Jacobus de Voragine, you shall have infinite stories, or those new relations of our Jesuits in Japan and China, of Mat. Riccius, Acosta, Loyola, Xaverius's life, &c. Jasper Belga, a Jesuit, cured a mad woman by hanging St. John's gospel about her neck, and many such. Holy water did as much in Japan, &c. Nothing so familiar in their works, as such examples" (AM II.1.3.1, p. 13).

Final remarks.
The philosophical repercussion of the Cursus Conimbricensis in the formation of major authors of continental Europe has been object of various studies. But its late and, at first, feeble, impact in England 108 , undoubtedly a result of the social and political factors that obstructed its dissemination on the British Isles, received considerably less attention.
Burton was certainly aware of his ambiguous stance on the Jesuits. On the one hand, he sees their method as obsolete and its diffusion as a menace. On the other, their practical application proves invaluable, providing a cartography of the Far East and accounts of cultures and civilizations whose economic and political organization he so admires.
A more extensive study is required in order to get a more precise understanding of Burton's framing of the contribution of the Jesuits for the candent discussion of melancholy in its medical, pedagogic, religious and political dimensions. It presents an opportunity to see how international perception of the contribution of Portuguese doctors such as Tomás da Veiga, Elias Montalvo and Amatus Lusitanus, to the understanding and relief of conditions related to (or caused by) the distemper of the black bile, must be supplemented by the Coimbran Jesuits.
Our prospective reading indicates an evolving appraisal of the scientific, moral, and pedagogic value of the Society of Jesus which may be more than the expression of Burton's eclectic propensity. This is clear if we consider the transition from a detrimental depiction of the typified figure of the Iberian Jesuit in his early plays, combining patriotism with a stereotyped view of scholasticism, and his explicit approval of individual and collective works produced by Jesuits. Although it seems unlikely that he consistently used the Commentari as sourcebooks, Burton shares with the Conimbricensis a substantial amount of the medical, moral, pedagogic and religious references, mobilized for his understanding and cure of individual and social forms of melancholy.
The CJAC proceeds from the aristotelic -thomistic interrelation of physiology and moral psychology, taking part in a larger relation between medical, philosophical and religious concepts of therapy which goes back to the Hippocratic and Platonic views on health, extending the tradition of the spiritual exercises whose specific character resonates in the contemporary conception of "Cura Personalis".
In the manner of the Flemish Jesuit Leonhard Lessius, Burton delineates two complementary courses for the amendment of melancholy: "animam per corpus" and "corpus per animam" (AM I, p. 37) 109 . If there would be any doubt of Burton's superficial knowledge of the Conimbricensis it would be dissolved by the absence of references to the central place that the cura animarum assumed in their enterprise. Also a topic of the CJAC, the greater susceptibility of black bile to demonic possession, specific impairment of the higher faculties, and the respective ways to guard against it, were considered by Burton but without reference to the course of Coimbra. This may again be explained by the limited reproduction of the CJAC in England, contrasting with their institution as textbooks of major continental universities.
The Society of Jesus and the Coimbra Comentarii, although not deepen, contribute to Burton's double project of an "observation of melancholy", with the scholastic discussions and synthesis of Hippocratic, Aristotelian and Galenic texts, and a "melancholic observation", providing a glimpse of modes of social organization nurturing an utopian exercise that proceeds from the diagnosis of the decay of British society in the first half of the seventeenth century. Cláudio Carvalho