Against War

CONTENTS


Introduction ix

Against War 3




INTRODUCTION


The Treatise on War, of which the earliest English translation is here
reprinted, was among the most famous writings of the most illustrious
writer of his age. Few people now read Erasmus; he has become for the
world in general a somewhat vague name. Only by some effort of the
historical imagination is it possible for those who are not professed
scholars and students to realize the enormous force which he was at a
critical period in the history of civilization. The free institutions and
the material progress of the modern world have alike their roots in
humanism. Humanism as a movement of the human mind culminated in the age,
and even in a sense in the person, of Erasmus. Its brilliant flower was of
an earlier period; its fruits developed and matured later; but it was in
his time, and in him, that the fruit set! The earlier sixteenth century is
not so romantic as its predecessors, nor so rich in solid achievement as
others that have followed it. As in some orchard when spring is over, the
blossom lies withered on the grass, and the fruit has long to wait before
it can ripen on the boughs. Yet here, in the dull, hot midsummer days, is
the central and critical period of the year's growth.

The life of Erasmus is accessible in many popular forms as well as in more
learned and formal works. To recapitulate it here would fall beyond the
scope of a preface. But in order to appreciate this treatise fully it is
necessary to realize the time and circumstances in which it appeared, and
to recall some of the main features of its author's life and work up to
the date of its composition.

That date can be fixed with certainty, from a combination of external and
internal evidence, between the years 1513 and 1515; in all probability it
was the winter of 1514-15. It was printed in the latter year, in the
"editio princeps" of the enlarged and rewritten Adagia then issued from
Froben's great printing-works at Basel. The stormy decennate of Pope
Julius II had ended in February, 1513. To his successor, Giovanni de'
Medici, who succeeded to the papal throne under the name of Leo X, the
treatise is particularly addressed. The years which ensued were a time
singularly momentous in the history of religion, of letters, and of the
whole life of the civilized world. The eulogy of Leo with which Erasmus
ends indicates the hopes then entertained of a new Augustan age of peace
and reconciliation. The Reformation was still capable of being regarded as
an internal and constructive force, within the framework of the society
built up by the Middle Ages. The final divorce between humanism and the
Church had not yet been made. The long and disastrous epoch of the wars of
religion was still only a dark cloud on the horizon. The Renaissance was
really dead, but few yet realized the fact. The new head of the Church was
a lover of peace, a friend of scholars, a munificent patron of the arts.
This treatise shows that Erasmus, to a certain extent, shared or strove to
share in an illusion widely spread among the educated classes of Europe.
With a far keener instinct for that which the souls of men required, an
Augustinian monk from Wittenberg, who had visited Rome two years earlier,
had turned away from the temple where a corpse lay swathed in gold and
half hid in the steam of incense. With a far keener insight into the real
state of things, Machiavelli was, at just this time, composing The Prince.