Since Hippocrates until the 18th century, physicians considered melancholy a chronic disease caused by the overabundance of black bile (atra bilis), mythical ‘humour’ whose existence is refuted by scientific medicine. The article describes the aetiology, nosography, and therapy of this disease, presented in André Du Laurens’ treatise Second discours auquel est traicté des maladies melancoliques et des moyens de les guerir (1597), as well as the conceptions of Marsilio Ficino expressed in De vita triplici (1489). Referring to the ideas contained in Problem XXX attributed to Aristotle, the Florentine philosopher develops the idea of the relationship between the melancholic humoral predisposition and the creative genius. Ficino proposes the conversion of the harmful force of melaina chole into creative energy: melancholia generosa. The ‘priests of the Muses’ can escape the evil influence of their patron Saturn through intellectual and artistic activity.

The author analyses the selected 12th and 13th-century French Arthurian romances as an example of locus medicinalis, i.e., the meeting place of literature and the medical knowledge of the time, where literary fiction intersects with the medical reality, for which melancholy was one of the major challenges. Like medicine, literature takes up the challenge, by seeking to describe the symptoms of melancholy, to define its causes and above all to propose an effective treatment to relieve it. In the romances analyzed, the concept of melancholy is similar to that of acedia, the vice of the soul manifested by boredom, indifference, fatigue, and exhaustion of the heart. The condition was attributed to the activity of the demon of acedia, called daemon meridianus by Cassian and Evagrius of Pontus. In the Arthurian romances analyzed in the article, in which acts of psychological and spiritual nature are of main importance, the treatment of melancholy is based on the holistic Christian vision of man, according to which the state of mind, soul, and body influence each other. Cathartic tears, memory healing, friends’ support, the presence of the beloved, joy that chases away sadness, prayer, conversion, confession, and pilgrimage prove to be more efficient than theriac, electuary, or any medicine.

The paper analyses medieval Tristan romances by Béroul and Thomas of Britain in the light of Evagrius of Pontus’doctrine of acedia. The starting point is the concept of ‘Noonday Demon’: understood by Evagrius as the devil tempting the monk into acedia –a state of listlessness and spiritual torpor. It is used today to describe a ‘midlife crisis’ affecting married men in their erotic and sexual behaviour. The analysis tends to prove that the confusion between these two meanings can be traced back to the medieval Tristan legend, especially in Thomas’ version: in fact, Tristan’s supposed melancholy resembles acedia as defined by Evagrius, with its essential characteristics: instability, inconstancy, desire of novelty and perpetual dissatisfaction.

Narcissus appears as imbued with melancholy both in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Middle Ages, the association between this figure and melancholy can be perceived in its various uses. But the Narcissus who seems the most melancholic is the one that Jean Froissart includes in Joli buisson de jeunesse, profoundly modifying the Ovidian myth. The researchers consider this one to represent the archetype of the lover. However, the author of the paper suggests that Froissart goes beyond the domain of love and the theme of courtly love: it is no longer the question of the inaccessibility of the object, nor exclusively of the loss of the object, but of any loss inherent in the passage of time. The association of narcissism with mourning entails the nostalgia that seems specific to Froissart’s work since it is found, in different forms, both in his Chronicles and in his lyrical work.