The Adviser to a Prince
When Erasmus returned to Brussels, the warm welcome of the royal court made him more cautious than before. He took his post as private counselor seriously, without realizing that great writers are seldom equipped with the talent for statesmanship and politics. In 1516, in some haste, he wrote The Education of a Christian Prince, a book full of ideas that now seem commonplace and unwelcome, though they came before Machiavelli's views on how a king should behave. In the dedication to Charles he wrote with perfect frankness that it was by divine favor that his realm had come to him without anyone being harmed, and that if he could preserve peace and quiet in the land, his wisdom and knowledge would show to better advantage.
Like most philosophers, Erasmus considered monarchy the least harmful form of government. He was wary of the common people, whom he called a many-headed, changeable monster, disliked the public discussion of laws and politics among the crowd, and judged the disorder of revolution worse than the tyranny of kings. Yet he warned his Christian prince against piling up wealth. He held that taxes should fall on luxuries, that the number of monasteries should be reduced and the number of schools increased, and, above all, that Christian states should not quarrel among themselves and should not even make war on the Turks. By piety and virtue, he said, we can conquer the Turks sooner than by arms and soldiers; in this way the Christian empire will defend itself with the same weapon by which it was founded. War, he wrote, begets only war, whereas courtesy springs from courtesy and justice from justice. When Charles and Francis moved toward conflict, Erasmus pleaded for peace again and again. For a passing moment, to please the king of France, he praised him and asked who could entertain the thought of war with France, the purest and most prosperous part of Christendom.
The Complaint of Peace
In the Complaint of Peace (1517) he reaches the height of his eloquence and his devotion to peace. In the book's rendering, he says in substance: I pass over the catastrophes of the old wars in silence and will rest only on the wars of these recent years. Where is the land or the sea in which people have not fought in the most cruel way? Where is the river that has not been stained with the blood of the martyrs of war, the blood of Christians? Alas for this great shame! They fight more savagely than non-Christians, and tear one another more fiercely than robbers. All these wars, born of the willfulness of princes, ended in harm to the people as a whole, who never desired those quarrels. Bishops, cardinals and popes, the representatives and successors of Christ on earth, are not ashamed to take up war, the thing Christ most abhorred. What kinship is there between a bishop's miter and a soldier's helmet? O bishops, who sit in the place of the apostles, how dare you, while teaching the commands of religion and the orders of the apostles, also teach what smells of war? There is no peace, he concludes, however unjust, that is not to be preferred to the most just war.
Princes and generals may profit from war, but the mass of people gain from it only grief and loss. It may sometimes be necessary for a nation to fight in its own defense, yet even then it is wiser to buy off the enemy with money or a bribe than to dirty one's hands with war. Kings should leave their disputes to the pope. This was impossible under Julius II, who was himself a warrior ruler, but Leo X, that learned, honorable and devout pope, could judge such matters with perfect justice and preside effectively over an international court.
A Citizen of the World
Erasmus regarded nationalism as a curse that had become a yoke on the neck of mankind, and he argued with rulers for the creation of a world state, saying: I wish to be called a citizen of the world. He forgave Budé for loving France, but said that if we base our relations with things and persons on the belief that the whole world is our country, our thinking rests on a more philosophical foundation. In the age of the Reformation, when the spirit of nationalism was rising, he had the least patriotic feeling of anyone. In his view, the highest and finest thing is for a man to be worthy of the human race.
We must not expect from Erasmus a realistic picture of human nature, of the causes of war, or of how states behave. He never faced the question that Machiavelli was wrestling with in those same years: whether a state could survive if it applied to itself the moral rules it recommends to its subjects. Erasmus's work was to prune the dead branches from the tree of life, not to found a positive and self-standing philosophy.
Private Doubts and Public Faith
He did not even trust his own Christianity. He often declared that he held the religion of the apostles, and yet he doubted the existence of hell; for he wrote that those who deny the existence of God are no more godless than those who picture him as so hard-hearted and cruel. It is unlikely that he regarded the Old Testament as the word of God, since he wished from the heart for the destruction of the whole Old Testament if that would quench the fire of wrath kindled over Jerusalem. He smiled at the stories of Minos and Numa, who made people obey laws by attributing them to the gods, and probably thought the statecraft and lawgiving of Moses to be of the same kind. He expressed surprise that Thomas More accepted the arguments for personal immortality. He treated the sacrament of the Eucharist as a symbol rather than a miracle; apparently he had doubts about the Trinity, the incarnation and the virgin birth, and More had to defend him against a correspondent who announced that Erasmus had privately confessed his unbelief to him. (The book states these points as inferences from scattered remarks, and they are summarized here in the same spirit.)
In the practices of the Christianity of his day, such as the sale of indulgences, fasting, pilgrimage, penance, monasticism, clerical celibacy, the cult of relics, the praise of saints and prayer to them, and the burning of heretics, he found fault and called them into question. He explained many passages of Scripture by rational or allegorical readings, compared the story of Adam and Eve with the myth of Prometheus, and held that the Bible should not be interpreted word for word. Hell's torment he analyzed as the constant pain and unease of conscience that comes from committing sin.
He did not spread his doubts among the people, because he had no new and consoling stories to offer in place of the old myths. So he wrote that piety and religion require us sometimes to hide the truth from people; we must be careful and not always reveal it, so that it hardly matters when, where or to whom we show it; perhaps we must accept Plato's saying that a lie is useful to the people. Despite his strong leaning toward rational arguments in religious matters, Erasmus remained outwardly devout and a believer. He never gave up his love for Christ, for the Gospels, and for the symbolic rites and customs with which the Church strove to raise devotion and virtue. In the Colloquies he has one speaker say that if there is something all Christians practice that does not conflict with Scripture, he will observe it so as not to offend others.
Erasmus dreamed of replacing scholastic theology with the "philosophy of Christ," and tried to harmonize it with the thought of the great Greek and Roman thinkers. He called Plato, Cicero and Seneca divinely inspired, could not accept that these men were barred from salvation, and could hardly refrain from praising "Saint Socrates." He asked the Church to reduce the essential principles of the Christian faith as far as possible and, in other matters, to give people freedom of belief. He was not for complete toleration of all opinions (who could be?), but wanted a gentler attitude and manner of dealing with religious heresies. His religious ideal was the imitation of Christ; yet we must admit that his own conduct fell short of the Christianity of the Gospels.