Abstract
Writing at the close of 1499, Erasmus believed that he had discovered at last a true haven across the Channel for humanist scholars. This was a realm, it seemed, in which the ideals of intellectual study might be fulfilled: a Christian and scholarly devotion to return ad fontes in order to complete the thorough scrutiny, commentary, stylistic analysis, and translation of texts from antiquity with a view to enriching the cultural, ethical, and religious life of the wider society. The many and diverse interests of this learned community in pedagogy, public service, and ambitious intellectual endeavour were deeply anchored in the study of literae humaniores as they had been set down by ancient pens. In particular, in their promotion of the studia humanitatis (influenced by writers such as Seneca, Pliny, and Plutarch but, above all, Cicero) Erasmus and his fellow scholars across Europe remained at pains throughout their careers to stress the life- and spirit-enhancing potential of the study of eloquence, of the renewal of ancient wisdom through translation and commentary, and of intellectual debate and exchange in the pursuit of true piety and moral perfectibility.
But, you ask ‘how does our England please you?’ […] I say that I have never found a place I like so much. I find here a climate at once agreeable and extremely healthy, and such a quantity of intellectual refinement and scholarship, not of the usual pedantic and trivial kind either, but profound and learned and truly classical, in both Latin and Greek, that I have little longing left for Italy, except for the sake of visiting it. When I listen to Colet it seems to me that I am listening to Plato himself. Who could fail to be astonished at the universal scope of Grocyn’s accomplishments? Could anything be more clever or profound or sophisticated than Linacre’s mind? Did Nature ever create anything kinder, sweeter, or more harmonious than the character of Thomas More?
‘To Robert Fisher, London 5 December 1499’.1
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Notes
Querela pacis undique gentium ejectae profligataeque (A Complaint of Peace Spurned and Rejected by the Whole World, written 1516, pub. 1517), trans. Betty Radice. See Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 5, vol. XXVII, ed. A. H. T. Levi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 298–9.
John Colet, Ioannis Coleti Opuscula Quaedam Theologica. Letters to Radulphus on the Mosaic Account of the Creation, Together with other treatises, ed. and trans. J. H. Lupton (London: Bell & Sons, 1876), 31. In this context, see also Juan Luis Vives, Opera Omnia, ed. Gregorio Majansius, VIII vols. (Valencia: 1782–90), V.255
Erasmus, The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 1356–1534 (1523–1524), trans. R. A. B. Mynors et al., Collected Works of Erasmus vol. X (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 65. In this context, see also, William Hugh, The troubled mans medicine (1546), sig. A4r.
Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 35.
See Thomas More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. S. J. Edward Surtz et al., vol. IV (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1965), 3.
See Galen, On the Elements According to Hippocrates, ed. and trans. Phillip de Lacy (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996), 8.11–13, 9.18–19, 13.8, respectively pages 127, 133, 151.
See Juan Luis Vives, The Passions of the Soul. The Third Book of ‘De Anima et Vita’, intro. and trans. Carlos G. Noreña (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 4, 85, 120.
In this context, see also Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in Ten Books, ed. R. D. Hicks, vol. II (London/New York: William Heinemann/G. P. Putnam, 1925), 215–6.
Translation from J. A. Fernández-Santamaria, The State, War and Peace. Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance 1516–1559 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 51. Original Latin text: Vives, Opera omnia, ed. Gregorio Majansius (Valencia), V.187.
John Colet, Ioannis Coleti Enarratio in Epistolam S. Pauli ad Romanos. An Exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ed. and trans. J. H. Lupton, reprint of 1873 ed. (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1965), 22, 88.
Vives, The Passions of the Soul, 3. For the broader discussion in antiquity of these matters, see, for example: Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in Ten Books, ed. R. D. Hicks, vol. II (London/New York: William Heinemann/G. P. Putnam), VII.110, 215–6; Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, III vols., trans. Richard M. Gummere (London/New York: William Heinemann/G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), I:409, 419, 421, III:333.
R. S. White, Pacifism and English Literature. Minstrels of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), esp. 54–5, 111–22.
Juan Luis Vives, Selected Works of J. L. Vives, vol. VIII: De Officio Mariti, ed. C. Fantazzi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 123.
Quoted in Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor. More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496–1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), 66, 69
Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529), bk. IV, ch. 7. See Thomas More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler et al., vol. VI pt. I (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1981), 369.
Thomas More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Louis L. Martz et al., vol. XII (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1976), 6–7.
Thomas More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. John M. Headley, vol. V, pt. 1 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1969), 691.
See Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus vol. VIII: Letters 1122–1251 (1520–1521), trans. R. A. B. Mynors et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 286.
William Roper, The mirrour of vertue in worldly greatnes. Or The life of Syr Thomas More Knight, sometime L. Chancellour of England (1626), 37–8.
Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais de Montaigne, ed. J.-V. Leclerc, II vols. (Paris: Garnier): vol. II, bk. II, ch. xxxi (s.d.), 102. Translation: ‘No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does’. See Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), 810.
See Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus vol. XIV: Letters 1926–2081 (1528), trans. Charles Fantazzi, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 197.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. Joan Rivieres (London: Hogarth Press, 1973), 14.
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Hiscock, A. (2015). ‘Man Is a Battlefield within Himself’: Arms and the Affections in the Counsel of More, Erasmus, Vives, and Their Circle. In: Downes, S., Lynch, A., O’Loughlin, K. (eds) Emotions and War. Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137374073_9
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