disease, and modernity has allowed us to ignore what is arguably the more compelling half of the addiction story, which becomes evident through study of early modern writings: addiction represents a singular form of commitment and devotion, worthy of admiration as much as censure.
Addiction as Devotion
One of the early examples of the term “addiction” comes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from a line in Shakespeare’s Othello: in celebrating a military victory, the play’s Herald tells the soldiers “each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him” (2.2.5–6).31 In other words, each man can choose to follow whatever activities he pleases. Yet the term “addiction” is deployed widely before this Othello reference, and the play’s engagement with theories of addiction—as Chapter 4 will discuss at length—is more complex than the lexicographical gloss credits. Addiction is not, it turns out, mere inclination.
Invocations of addiction begin to cluster in printed texts from the 1530s, as in the work of George Joye, who produced the first printed translation of several books of the Old Testament. The prophete Isaye, translated into englysshe (1531) offers one of the earliest usages of the term, in a context entirely familiar to modern readers. Joye warns, “Wo be to the haunters of dronkenes which ryse erly to drinke, continuinge in it tyl nighte being hot with wyne: in whose bankets there are harpes and futes taberet & pype washed with wyne.”32 These “haunters of dronkenes” will suffer divine retribution: “The helles haue opened their unsaciable throtes and their mouthes gape beyende mesure that thither mought descende pryde, pompe, riches and al that are addicte to these vices.”33 Joye’s warnings at once recall the familiar medieval and early modern schema of the seven deadly sins and predict the century’s broader legislative and conceptual interest in pathological addiction.
While the invocation of drinkers, “addicte to these vices,” anticipates both the modern definitions of “addiction” in relation to substances and the railings of puritans who attack drunkenness, Joye uses the term more expansively as well. In The Psalter of Dauid in Englyshe (1534), he warns of mortal men “addict to this worlde” and against the ungodly who are “addycte unto wyckedness,” and “addicte and all giuen to wickedness.”34 He also praises the faithful follower of God as an addict, asking God to “make faste thy promyses to thy servant which is addicte unto thy worshyppe.”35 Further, in The Unitie and Scisme of the Olde Chirche, Joye insists on the unity Jesus preached, with the faithful “addict unto none but to christ.” He writes Jesus hoped that his apostles “thorow love might consent and godly agree being all one thinge in christe, and that there be no dissencions nor sectis in his chirch unto no creatures being addict unto none but to christe hir spouse dedicatinge hirself.”36
This range of the term’s appearance—to signify excessive drunkenness, inclination to wickedness, overattachment to worldly pleasure, as well as devotion to God and Scripture—suggests its broad association with forms of attachment. Furthermore, the term’s appearance in early translations of the Bible and polemics surrounding the Reformed faith indicates its link to religious controversy. Specifically, in the context of post-Reformation England, the term appears most frequently to describe one kind of dedication: to God and the church. In the wake of theological debates following Henry VIII’s break from Rome, addiction becomes a sign of study, commitment, and piety, as well as a signal of false attachment to, and dangerous tyranny of, the Pope or Antichrist. Thus, in the 1540s the term appears repeatedly in church histories by writers such as John Bale, Polydore Vergil, and Thomas Becon. Bale, for example, writes of those “addict to their supersticyons,” and specifically those “Antichristes addict to the supersticiouse rytes of the heythens in their sacrifices, their ceremonies, their observations, their holy dayes, theyr vygils, fastinges, praynges, knelinges & all other usages contrary to the admonyshement of Christ.”37 Here addiction signals an attachment to material aids to worship, which were associated with the Roman church. Vergil, too, condemns those “wholy addict to the honoryng of their false goddess,” while praising those “men of the laye sort geven and addicted to praiers.”38 The answer, as Philip Nicolls counsels his readers, is to “addict youre selves to the meaneynge of the scripture.”39
Reformed writings overtly celebrate addiction as an intense mode of devotion and commitment, even as they express concern for misguided addictions to the improper faith. Following the etymology of “addiction” as ad + dīcere (to speak, to declare), these writings trumpet a model of addictive living that is at once an invitation and a prescription. The Elizabethan “An Homilee of good workes” (1571), for example, encourages addicting oneself to prayer as a means of pleasing God. Those who “did eyther earnestlye lament and bewayle their sinfull lyues, or did addict them selves to more fervent prayer” learn that “it might please God to turne his wrath from them.”40 Such positive invocations of addiction also fill those guides encouraging modes of pious living, as Humphrey Gifford writes in A posie of gilloflowers (1580). In his “Farewell Court” of poems, he counsels his readers to “cast away the vile and vaine vanities that the wicked world accounteth as precious, and addict all their doings towards the attainement of lyfe euerlasting.”41 Barnabe Googe encourages, in his translation of Marcello Palingenio Stellato’s Zodiac (1565), the addict to dedicate himself specifically to prayer: “The mind wel purgde of naughty thoughtes, / in fervent sprite to praye: / And wholly to addict himselfe / the heavenly state to finde / And all the cares that fleshe doth give, / to banishe from his minde.”42
Even as these guides to pious living encourage addiction, at the same time writers acknowledge its difficulty. Not just anyone can achieve it. The popular text Of the Imitation of Christ (1580) encourages parishioners toward addiction, for example: “Learne to contemne outwarde things and to addict thy selfe to spiritual; so shalt thou perceave the kingdome of God to come into thee.” Nevertheless, the author concedes the challenge of this charge, writing how “fewe there be which addict themselves to the studie of celestial things, because fewe can withdrawe themselves, wholie from the love of this world.”43 In The glory of their times (1640), Donald Lupton acknowledges the struggle by pondering Christ’s fortitude in pursuing addiction: “How did hee addict himselfe to watching, fasting, prayer, and Meditation?”44
The historian Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles (1577), draws upon the language of these pious writers, a migration from religious to secular texts that speaks to the scope of addiction’s invocations. Holinshed praises those devout, spiritual leaders who are capable of addiction, writing of “the reverende Fathers of the spiritualtie, and other godly men addict to vertue, unto whome the setting forth of Gods worde hath beene committed.”45 More specifically, he praises King Edward the Elder as “in his latter dayes beeying greatly addicted to devotion and religious priests.”46 In A direction for the health of Magistrates and Studentes, the reader similarly learns the value of addicted leaders, for the virtuous ruler must “ernestly addicte himself to the studie of Morall Philosophie and of the sacred Scriptures.”47 These secular texts adopt a language of devotional addiction as a means of educating readers on the attributes of good rulership.
Addiction requires a natural disposition and ability; it is not purely a matter of hard work or instruction. As John Huarte writes in The examination of mens wits (1594), if a “child have not the disposition and abilitie, which is requisit for that science whervnto he wil addict himselfe, it is a superfluous labour to be instructed therein by good schoolemaisters.”48 Therefore, even as religious prescriptions follow the etymological invitation of addiction as a mode of speech or a form of command that they offer to their pious readers, these writers also understand addiction as an inclination that the individual both does and does not control. Their readers might attempt the form of addictive devotion counseled in the texts, but as theologians expound—most prominently Jean Calvin, as Chapter 1 discusses
