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Erasmus' Ideas of his Rôle as a Social Critic ca. 1480–1500
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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A distinctive feature of early Tudor humanism, with St. Thomas More, Erasmus, John Colet, and John Lewis Vives, was a trenchant critique of war's place in the social pattern, coupled with sustained efforts to effect peaceful reforms in England. This criticism of society not only marks their kind of humanism but was indeed destined to help shape the modern mind. On the English record, Colet appears as the pioneer, beginning with his Oxford lectures on St. Paul (1496), in which he broke with the main traditional concept of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ war, reaching a conclusion that it is impossible for evil and war to produce good or to be a Christian thing. The means Colet used to reach this view is itself notable.
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References
1 Wright, Quincy, A Study of War (Chicago, 1942), 1, 168–194 Google Scholar passim. An over-all view of this social criticism is given in Adams, Robert P., ‘Literary Thought on War and Peace in English Literature of the Renaissance’, Year Book of the American Philosophical Society (1955) (Philadelphia, 1956), pp. 272–277 Google Scholar.
2 Colet, John, An Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, tr. J. H. Lupton (London, 1873), esp. pp. 86–89,91.Google Scholar
3 Atkins, J. W. H., English Literary Criticism: the Renascence (London, 1947), pp. 34–65 Google Scholar passim; Bush, Douglas, Classical Influences in Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). Pp. 13–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duhamel, P. A., ‘The Oxford Lectures of John Colet…’, JHI, xiv (1953), 493–510 CrossRefGoogle Scholar passim; Kristeller, P. O., The Classics and Renaissance Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), p. 82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Hyma, Albert, ‘The Continental Origins of English Humanism’, Huntington Library Quarterly, iv (1940), 4, 22.Google Scholar
5 Biographers of Erasmus tend to offer scattered, rather incidental notes on his thought concerning war: see, e.g., Preserved Smith, Erasmus (New York, 1923), pp. 108, 194-196; A. Hyma, The Youth of Erasmus (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1930), pp. 216-217. Political historians usually do not relate his ideas on war closely to Tudor humanism: see, e.g., Allen, P. S., The Age of Erasmus (Oxford, 1914), pp. 164–166;Google Scholar C. Lange, L., Histoire de l'internationalisme (New York, 1919), pp. 146–176 Google Scholar passim; Renaudet, A., Érasme (Paris, 1926), p. 29 Google Scholar; Ferguson, W. K., ‘The Attitude of Erasmus toward Toleration’, Persecution and Liberty (New York, 1931), pp. 171–181 Google Scholar; L. K. Born, ‘Erasmus on Political Ethics … ’, Political Science Quarterly, XLIII (1928), 520-543 passim; Renaudet, A., Machiavel (Paris, 1942), pp. 75–79;Google Scholar Phillips, M., Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London, 1949), pp. 123–149 Google Scholar passim; Renaudet, A., Érasme et l'Italie (Genève, 1954), pp. 178–186.Google Scholar But see, in contrast, Fritz Caspari, ‘Erasmus on the Social Functions of Christian Humanism’, JHI, viii (1947), 78-106 passim, and Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954), pp. 28-49 passim
6 P. S. Allen, The Age of Erasmus, p. 164.
7 The Epistles of Erasmus, tr. Nichols, F. M. (London, 1901-18)Google Scholar, I, 82 (referred to below as Nichols); Opvs epistolarvm Des. Erasmi, ed. P. S. and H. M. Allen (Oxonii, 1906-47), 39.125-138.
8 Erasmus, Opera omnia, ed. J. Clericus (Lvgdvni, 1703-06), v, 1239-1262; cf. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 14.
9 Epistles, 39.35-50; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, pp. 207-209, 214-217. See also Epistles’ 20.109 (Nichols, 1,65).
10 Douglas Bush, Classical Influences in Renaissance Literature, p. 7.
11 Epistles, 29.35-38 (Nichols, 1, 71); cf. The Letters of Cicero, tr. E. S. Shuckburgh (London, 1904), 1,102.
12 Opera omnia, viii, 545B-552B; tr. Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, pp. 216-217.
13 Hyma, ibid., pp. 216-217.
14 Epistles, 35.50-51.
15 See Thompson, C. R., The Translations of Lucian by Erasmus and St. Thomas More (Ithaca, N.Y., 1940)Google Scholar and Mesnard, Pierre, L'Essor de la philosophie politique au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1936), pp. 128 ff.Google Scholar
16 ‘ … quod illius stylus nullius unquam cruore maduisset… \ Opera omnia, III, 1257BC.
17 Epistles, Ep. 57 (Nichols, 1,149).
18 Epistles, Ep. 55 (Nichols, 1,112). He played a practical joke on a Paris landlady.
19 E.g., in his preface (November 4, 1517) to an edition of Quintus Curtius’ De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni (in Epistles, 704.22-35; in Nichols, III, 129-130). Here Erasmus attacked the idealization of imperial tyrants by flattering historians. Far from seeing Alexander as admirable, the humanist critic viewed him as on the whole a frightful example of a ‘world-robber’, ‘drunk with ambition’, a ‘disaster to humanity’, like Achilles. He asked, what good was it to ‘this solid globe’ to be thrown into bloody confusion ‘to please one young madman’? See similarly his preface (June 5, 1517) to his edition of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars (Epistles, 586.194-197). How sharply these humanists in England were turning against dominant medieval traditions can be seen by comparing George Cary, The Medieval Alexander (New York, 1956), pp. 95-98, 227.
20 Allen, The Young Erasmus, p. 28.
21 Cf. Mackail, J. W., Erasmus Against War (Boston, 1907), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar; Appelt, T. C., Studies in the Contents and Sources of Erasmus’ ‘Adagia’ (Chicago, 1942), pp. 48–64 passim.Google Scholar As late as the 1513 edition, Erasmus' remarks occupied only four lines: see Adagiorvm chiliades tres (Basileae, August, 1513), p . 150; a copy is in the Huntington Library.
22 Hyma, op. cit. (1940), p. 11.
23 See Robert P. Adams, ‘Designs by More and Erasmus for a New Social Order’, SP, XLII (1945), 131-145.