Dutch humanist philosopher
and theologian, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was the illegitimate son of a
priest and was himself forced into a monastic life by his guardians. It the
monastery at Steyr his lifelong passion for Latin began, and he quickly
outstripped the ability of his tutors. He escaped the monastic life in his late
twenties and proceeded to travel and study widely. He eventually came to
England and struck up a friendship with Thomas More [I’ll introduce him on the
next list of thinker], which lasted until the latter’s death at the hands of
Hendry VIII. It as whilst making his way to England on a subsequent visit from
Italy that he conceived his best known work, In The Praise of Folly. Arriving at More’s house in London, he
quickly committed it to paper and published it, with More’s support, in 1509.
In The Praise of Folly has a dual purpose. On
the one hand, Erasmus uses it as a vehicle for satire against the offices and
institutions of the Roman Catholic Church, for which he had developed a deep
hatred during his time at Steyr. He attacks the monastic orders and their
conception of worship as consisting in “the
precise number of knots to the tying on their sandals.” With more venom he
goes on, “It will be pretty to hear their
pleas before the great tribunal: one will brag how he mortified his carnal appetite
by feeding only upon fish; another will urge that he spend more of his time on
earth in the divine exercise of singing psalms… but Christ will interrupt: ‘Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees,… I left you but one precept, of loving one
another, which I do not hear anyone plead that he has faithfully discharged.’”
This introduces the
central theme of Erasmus’s Folly,
namely his concern with religion as a
worship “from the heart,” that has no
need of the offices and intermediaries supplied by the Church. True religion,
Erasmus insists, is a form of Folly, in the sense that it is simplistic and
direct, not convoluted with unnecessary sophistications and dogmatic doctrine.
For Erasmus, religion is based on a thorough-going humanism, understood in its
classical sense, as a confidence in human reason to know and worship God. In similar
vein, Erasmus was no friend of scholasticism, nor indeed of the philosophical
fathers of his day, Plato and Aristotle, Erasmus’s hero was St Augustine, from
whom he took the doctrine that reason
must be the servant of faith. Apart from In the Praise of Folly and his later Colloquia much of his work consisted in Greek and Latin translations of the Bible.
Erasmus had enormous
influence on ushering in the Reformation, but surprisingly, in the struggle
between the Catholics and the Protestants, the latter of who were undoubtedly
closer to Erasmus’s religious ideas, he eventually sided with the Catholics.
This apparent contradiction reflects his somewhat timid nature. He could not
condone the violence of the Lutherans, preferring to attach the Catholics with
words rather than actions. When More was executed by Hendy VIII for refusing to
accept his supremacy over the Pope as head of the Church of England, Erasmus is
quoted as saying, “Would More have never
meddled with the dangerous business, and left the theological cause to the
theologians”, a quote that brings into sharp relief the difference between
his character and the uncompromising, incorruptible nature of More.
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by
Philip Stokes, 2012. Also watch YouTube’s ‘Desiderius
Erasmus: Short Biography’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMXPnFaQk5I]
Lord, Give
Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)
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