Everything about Religio Medici totally explained
Religio Medici (
The Religion of a Doctor) is a book by Sir
Thomas Browne, which sets out his spiritual testament as well as being an early psychological self-portrait. In its day, the book was a European best-seller and brought its author fame and respect throughout the continent. It was published in 1643 by the newly-qualified physician after an unauthorized version of his writings on the
Christian virtues of
Faith,
Hope and
Charity had been distributed and reproduced with added text.
Samuel Pepys in his diaries complained that the
Religio was "cried up to the whole world for its wit and learning", and its unorthodox views placed it swiftly upon the
Papal Index Librorum Prohibitorum in
1645.
Although predominantly concerned with Christian faith, the
Religio also meanders into digressions upon
alchemy,
hermetic philosophy,
astrology, and
physiognomy. Whilst discussing
Biblical scripture the learned doctor reveals a penchant for esoteric learning, and confesses, for example, that "I have often admired the mystical way of
Pythagoras and the secret
magicke of
numbers."
Browne's
latitudinarian Anglicanism equally allowed him to declare: "the severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of
Hermes."
A rare surviving contemporary review by a distinguished member of the Parisian medical faculty,
Gui De Patin (1601/2–72) indicates the considerable impact
Religio Medici had upon the intelligentsia abroad:
'A new little volume has arrived from Holland entitled Religio Medici written by an Englishman and translated into Latin by some Dutchman. It is a strange and pleasant book, but very delicate and wholly mystical; the author isn't lacking in wit and you'll see in him quaint and delightful thoughts. There are hardly any books of this sort. If scholars were permitted to write freely we'd learn many novel things, never has there been a newspaper to this; in this way the subtlety of the human spirit could be revealed'.
A translation into German of the
Religio was made in 1746.
In the early nineteenth century
Religio Medici was "re-discovered" by the English Romantics, firstly by
Charles Lamb who introduced it to
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who after reading it exclaimed, "O to write a character of this man!"
Thomas de Quincey in his
Confessions of an English Opium Eater also praised it, stating:
'I don't recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature. It is a passage in Religio Medici of Sir T. Browne, and though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophical value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects'.
In the
twentieth century the Swiss psychologist
C.G.Jung used the term
Religio Medici several times in his writings.
Though little read nowadays, in
Virginia Woolf's opinion
Religio Medici paved the way for all future confessionals, private memoirs and personal writings. In the
seventeenth century it spawned numerous imitative titles, including
John Dryden's great poem,
Religio Laici, but none matched the frank, intimate tone of the original in which the learned doctor invites the reader to share with him in the labyrinthine mysteries and idiosyncratic views of his personality.
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