This painting of a young angel by Klavdio encapsulates both the beauty and pain of religious melancholy. There is some light shining down on her from above, but there are also shadows falling across the left side of her body that makes her pure white wing look black. She had a basket of beautiful flower petals, but they are spilling out and strewn all around her on the floor. She gazes below her with a somber face, unable to lift her face toward the light.

This painting, aptly titled "Melancholia", is a visual representation of the religious melancholy that was experienced by many throughout history. Followers of many religions suffered through dark periods of melancholy, fasting, and mourning their sins in hopes of one day reaching salvation at God's mercy. Some may wonder why they would subject themselves to such torture of their souls, but they all believed the eternal reward of salvation and heaven was worth their suffering. Although they suffered from extreme melancholia, there was a beauty in trying to earn God's favor that kept them going.

Cassian was one of the first authors in the early Christian church who provided insight into the religious melancholy of monks who lived in solitude in Egypt during the years between 390 and 400 CE. These monks would spend each day in their individual cells, praying and meditating in utter solitude to God. The act of repeating these same actions every day without interacting with the outside world drove many of the monks into a spiritual sloth, termed "acedia". The monks were supposed to resist this sin of apathy by persisting in their meditation and prayers until they overcame the acedia. If they were unable to resist the temptation to leave their cells, Cassian wrote that they would never be able to return to their perfect profession. If they did overcome the acedia, they experienced union with God and extreme joy for persisting in their spiritual hardship.

Another less literal example of spiritual melancholy is displayed in Dante's Inferno. The story is based on a journey through the levels of hell on the way to reaching heaven. Dante expounds on the many sins that can cause one to stumble and be subjected to eternal life in hell, and he describes the painful suffering that exists for those who do not follow God. Inferno can also be viewed as a metaphor for how religious people may see those around them sinning in life, but if they refuse to give in to temptation, they can make it to heaven.

One of the first stories I thought about when I first saw Klavdio's "Melancholia" was Young Goodman Brown. In his story, he has a beautiful young wife named Faith with pink ribbons in her hair. She represents the happiness and fulfillment of a life with God, but he becomes overtaken with melancholy that causes him to be delusional and suspect everyone around him of meddling with evil. I imagine he viewed her somewhat like this angel: beautiful and surrounded with light, but with a darker side that she cannot remove.

In Julius Rubin's Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America, he compares religious melancholy to a mental prison. In the days of the desert monks, they were subjected to physical cells to meditate on spiritual things. As Protestantism began to develop, religious followers mourned the idea of being unworthy of God's love and His salvation. Many felt like they were surrounded by temptations and snares they may not be able to escape, and it felt like the devil was lurking at every corner for their downfall. Rubin asks an important question at the beginning of his book: "How is it that they as believers could succumb to the experience of being forsaken by God, in terror of the withdrawal of divine love?" (Rubin 3). I believe the answer to this question is the beauty of their cause. They were suffering in hopes of one day attaining unity with the Lord and spending eternity in heaven. These thoughts alone helped those with religious melancholy to persevere through the darkness in hopes of earning the love and grace of God.