ABSTRACT
The association of excessive religious enthusiasm with madness dates back to antiquity, but it was not until the seventeenth century that the former acquired definition as a distinct disease. In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the Anglican vicar Robert Burton (1577-1640) coined the term “religious melancholy” to describe the often intense religious experiences of Puritans and other sectarians. As the medical historian George Rosen observed in a pioneering essay on religious enthusiasm, “it is quite likely that the sectarian ranks included individuals whose mental and emotional balance was at the least precarious,” but it seems equally probable, as the historian Michael MacDonald has argued, that the “ruling elite” at times used the concept of religious insanity to discredit socially disruptive religious dissidents such as the Puritans.
