Desiderius Erasmus was the most popular, most printed and arguably most influential author of the early sixteenth century, read in all nations in the West and frequently translated. By the 1530s, the writings of Erasmus accounted for 10 to 20 percent of all book sales in Europe.Galli, Mark, and Olsen, Ted. 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, 343. "Undoubtedly he was the most read author of his age."
His vast number of Latin and Greek publications included translations, paraphrases, letters, textbooks, plays for schoolboys, commentary, poems, liturgies, satires, sermons, and prayers. He is noted for his extensive scholarly editions of the New Testament and the complete works of numerous Church Fathers. A large number of his later works were defences of his earlier work from attacks by Catholic and Protestant theological and literary opponents.
His work was at the forefront of the contemporary Catholic Reformation and advocated a spiritual reform program he called the "philosophia Christi" and a theological reform agenda he called the Method of True Theology. It provided much of the material that spurred the Protestant Reformation, the Anglican Reformation and the Counter-Reformation; the influence of his ideas continues to the present. (publisher's abstract)
Following the Council of Trent, which endorsed many of his themes, such as his theology on Free Will, many of his works were at times banned or required to be expurgated under various Catholic regional Indexes of prohibited books, and issued anonymously or bastardized with sectarian changes in Protestant countries. Many of his pioneering scholarly editions were superseded by newer revisions or re-brandings, and the popularity of his writings waned as pan-European Latin-using scholarship gave way to vernacular scholarship and readership.
Notable writings Erasmus wrote for both educated audiences on subjects of humanist interest and "to Christians in the various stages of lives:...for the young, for married couples, for widows," the dying, clergy, theologians, religious, princes, partakers of sacraments, etc.
According to historial Erika Rummel "Three areas preoccupied Erasmus as a writer: language arts, education, and biblical studies. ...All of his works served as models of style. ...He pioneered the principles of textual criticism."
He usually wrote books in particular classical literary genres with their different rhetorical conventions: complaint, diatribe, dialogue, encomium, epistle, commentary, liturgy, sermon, etc. His letter to Ulrich von Hutten on Thomas More's household has been called "the first real biography in the real modern sense."
The only works with enduring popularity in modern time are his satires and semi-satires: The Praise of Folly, Julius Excluded from Heaven and The Complaint of Peace. However, his other works, such as his several thousand letters, continue to be a vital source of information to historians of numerous disciplines.
Adages (1500-1520)
Erasmus found early publishing success with his collections of sayings the Adagia (Adages) and the Apophthegmata."No humanist inhabited, cultivated, and chased after ancient proverbs with as much passion as Desiderius Erasmus."
With the collaboration of Publio Fausto Andrelini, he made a collection of Latin proverbs and adages, commonly known as the Adagia. It includes the adage "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." He coined the adage "Pandora's box", arising through an error in his translation of Hesiod's Pandora in which he confused pithos (storage jar) with pyxis (box).
Examples of Adages are:
more haste, less speed. a dung beetle hunting an eagle. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The most disadvantageous peace is better than the justest war. Bidden or unbidden, God is always there.
Erasmus is also blamed for the mistranslation from Greek of "to call a bowl a bowl" as "to call a spade a spade",Etymonline: spade(n.1), accessed 2019-08-05 and the rendering of Pandora's "jar" as "box".
Erasmus later spent nine months in Venice at the Aldine Press expanding the Adagia to over three thousand entries; in the course of 27 editions, it expanded to over four thousand entries in Basel at the Froben press. It "introduced a fairly wide audience to the actual words and thoughts of the ancients."
An English version was selected and translated by Richard Taverner.
Handbook of the Christian Knight (1501)
Erasmus's more serious writings begin early with the Enchiridion militis Christiani, the "Handbook of the Christian Knight" (1501 and re-issued in 1518 with an expanded preface—translated into English in 1533 by the young William Tyndale). (A more literal translation of enchiridion—"dagger"—has been likened to "the spiritual equivalent of the modern Swiss Army knife.")MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Viking, 2010, 599. In this short work, Erasmus outlines the views of the normal Christian life, which he was to spend the rest of his days elaborating.
He has been described as "evangelical in his beliefs and pietistic in his practise.""Erasmus is so thoroughly, radically Christ-centered in his understanding of both Christian faith and practice that if we overlook or downplay this key aspect of his character and vision, we not only do him a grave disservice but we almost completely misunderstand him."
The Praise of Folly (1511)
Erasmus's best-known work is The Praise of Folly, written in 1509, published in 1511 under the double title Moriae encomium (Greek, Latinised) and Laus stultitiae (Latin). It is inspired by De triumpho stultitiae written by Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli. A satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and in the Western Church in particular, it was dedicated to Sir Thomas More, whose name the title puns.
De copia (1512)
De Copia (or Foundations of the Abundant Style or On Copiousness) is a textbook designed to teach aspects of classical rhetoric: having a large supply of words, phrases and grammatical forms is a gateway to formulating and expressing thoughts, especially for "forensic oratory", with mastery and freshness. Perhaps as a joke, its full title is "The twofold copia of words and arguments in a double commentary" (). It was "the most often printed rhetoric textbook written in the renaissance, with 168 editions between 1512 and 1580."
The first part of the book is about verborum (words). It famously includes 147 variations on "Your letter pleased me very much", and 203 bravura variations on "Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you."These eulogize Thomas More (25 by name), such as: "More is inscribed in my heart in letters that no injurious time can erode."
The second part of the book is about rerum (arguments) to learn critical thinking and advocacy. Erasmus advised students to practice the rhetorical techniques of copiousness by writing letters to each other arguing both side of an issue ().
Opuscula plutarchi (1514), and Apophthegmatum opus (1531)
In a similar vein to the Adages was his translation of Plutarch's Moralia: parts were published from 1512 onwards and collected as the Opuscula plutarchi (c1514).
This was the basis of 1531's Apophthegmatum opus (Apophthegms), which ultimately contained over 3,000 aphophthegms: "certainly the fullest and most influential Renaissance collection of Cynic sayings and anecdotes", particular of Diogenes (from Diogenes Laertius.)
One of these was published independently, as How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend, dedicated to England's Henry VIII.
Julius exclusus e coelis (1514) attrib.
Julius excluded from Heaven is a biting satire usually attributed to Erasmus perhaps for private circulation, though he publicly denied writing it, calling its author a fool. The recently deceased Pope Julius arrives at the gates of heaven in his armour with his dead army, demanding from St Peter to be let in based on his glory and exploits. St Peter turns him away.
Sileni Alcibiadis (1515)
Erasmus's Sileni Alcibiadis is one of his most direct assessments of the need for Church reform. It started as a small entry in the 1508 Adagia citing Plato's Symposium and expanded to several hundred sentences. Johann Froben published it first within a revised edition of the Adagia in 1515, then as a stand-alone work in 1517.
Sileni is the plural (Latin) form of Silenus, a creature often related to the Roman wine god Bacchus and represented in pictorial art as inebriated, merry revellers, variously mounted on donkeys, singing, dancing, playing flutes, etc. In particular, the Sileni that Erasmus referred to were small, coarse, hollow, ugly or distasteful carved figures which opened up to reveal a beautiful deity or valuables inside, in particular tiny gold statues of gods.
Alcibiades was a Greek politician in the 5th century BCE and a general in the Peloponnesian War; he figures here more as a character written into some of Plato's dialogues – an externally-attractive, young, debauched playboy whom Socrates tries to convince to seek truth instead of pleasure, wisdom instead of pomp and splendor.Plato, The Symposium. Translation and introduction by Walter Hamilton. Penguin Classics. 1951.
The term Sileni – especially when juxtaposed with the character of Alcibiades – can therefore be understood as an evocation of the notion that something on the inside is more expressive of a person's character than what one sees on the outside. For instance, something or someone ugly on the outside can be beautiful on the inside, which is one of the main points of Plato's dialogues featuring Alcibiades and in the Symposium, in which Alcibiades also appears.
On the other hand, Erasmus lists several Sileni and then controversially questions whether Christ is the most noticeable Silenus of them all. The Apostles were Sileni since they were ridiculed by others. The scriptures are a Silenus too.
The work then launches into a biting endorsement of the need for high church officials (especially the Pope) to follow the evangelical counsel of poverty (simplicity): this condemnation of wealth and power was a full two years before the notional start of the Reformation; the church must be able to act as a moderating influence on the ambition and selfishness of princes.Philologist Lucca Baratta summarized Erasmus' arguments as follows: "The ignorance and poor judgement of the people, surreptitiously encouraged by the powerful, are the foundations of bad government. The king therefore needs a true counsellor, who will guide his choices rather than flatter him; so it is essential to unmask the deception of those who brand as heretics whomever seeks to bring the Church back to the road (of poverty and virtue) trodden by Christ. Only thus can abuse of the temporal and spiritual power be avoided. //It is therefore essential to recapture the original purity of the Christian message, and to follow the clear division of the roles of power, without undue mingling of the worldly and the celestial: the infidelity to Christ of the men of the Church produces only the bloated and grotesque figures of power oblivious to its own spiritual ends. There can be only one solution: the men of the Church must despise earthly goods." p. 105
The Education of a Christian Prince (1516)
The Institutio principis Christiani or "Education of a Christian Prince" (Basel, 1516) was written as advice to the young king Charles of Spain (later Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), to whom the Preface is addressed. Erasmus applies the general principles of honor and sincerity to the special functions of the Prince, whom he represents throughout as the servant of the people.
Latin and Greek New Testaments