War, ideas and public opinion

The previous chapters centred on interpretations of public events to a greater or lesser extent guided from the court but we need to know how far knowledge of public affairs spread throughout society; in other words, how was the informed non-political observer to make sense of war in public policy during the Renaissance? Printing gave a further purchase to the intellectual critique of war that developed from the medieval just war doctrine and the exploration of ancient texts. The early years of Francis I saw intellectual circles across Europe engaging in a formidable critique of war. Erasmus's Dulce bellum inexpertis of 1515, the Institutio of 1516 and the Querela pacis of 1517 were known in France, but how widely disseminated were they? There was no separate edition of the Querela in France after 1530. By 1559 and the placing of Erasmus's works on the Index (limited to expurgation in 1564), his very name was a problem and they seem to have been little read later in the century. Indeed, the Querela was not fully translated into French until 1924. Despite Erasmus's complimentary remarks in the Querela on France as the citadel of Christendom and hopes placed in Francis I's desire for peace, his ambiguous ideas on the just war – including the view that an unjust peace is better than a just war – and condemnation of bellicose prelates, aroused hostility. Moreover, his strictures, both in the Dulce bellum and the Querela, on the futility of dynastic war and his insistence in the Institutio on the idea that war must always be a last resort, could hardly have won him many friends in high places (and this despite his apparent resiling from his earlier pacifism by 1530). Louis de Berquin's lost translation of the Querela was condemned in 1526 (the assumption being that a vernacular text was more harmful). When edited translations did appear later in the century they cut out attacks on the clergy and some of Erasmus's strictures about war with the Turk. The first reasonably close adaptation in French had to await Charles Sevin's Complainte de la paix of 1570. In this case, Erasmus's conception of war as a civil war within Christendom was peculiarly suitable for the circumstances of 1569.

Other cases illustrate the range of earlier Erasmian influences.