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Some Medieval Elements and Structural Unity in Erasmus' The Praise of Folly
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
In the course of editing and annotating Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly for the forthcoming Amsterdam edition of his complete works, I have come to believe that the 461 years since its first publication have produced only two original commentaries on the Moria. In 1515 a fairly thorough commentary, almost as long as the work itself and of a sort usually reserved for ancient works, was published with The Praise ofFolly. Reprinted eleven times during Erasmus’ lifetime, it has retained some currency, though not much, because it was reprinted in the Leyden Opera omnia of 1703-06. Though it goes under the name of Girardus Listrius, we know from one of Erasmus’ letters that he himself wrote part of it—how much we do not know. The second major commentary was that by I. B. Kan, published at The Hague in 1898. In our own century some useful information and suggestions have been provided by Maurice Rat and Hoyt Hudson. The rest, alas, is not silence, but (as Douglas Bush once said about Shakespearean criticism) fearless repetition.
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References
1 van der Haeghen, F., Bibliotheca Belgica: Bibliographic Générate des Pays Bas, re-edited by Marie-Thérèse Lenger (Brussels, 1964)Google Scholar, II, 874-883.
2 J. Austin Gavin and Thomas M. Walsh, ‘The Praise of Polly in Context: The Commentary of Girardus Listrius,’ Renaissance Quarterly, 24 (1971), 195.
3 In his commentary on Pierre de Nolhac's French translation, Paris, 1936.
4 In the notes on his English translation, Princeton, 1941.
5 Lewis, C. S., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954)Google Scholar, PP- 20-26.
6 F. Raby, J. E., A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, n, 193, 238-239, 245, 249; and Baldwin, R., The Unity of the Canterbury Tales, Anglistica v (Copenhagen, 1955)Google Scholar, 20-25. In his Ecclesiastes, siue de ratione concionandi, Opera omnia (Leyden, 1703-06, hereafter cited as LB), v, 868B, Erasmus mentions the kind of proem actually employed by Folly and gives a medieval illustration of it (Prudentius, Passio Petri et Pauli, Peristephanon, XII, 1-4, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum LXI, 420).
7 Pace Albert Hyma in his review of Payne's book in Renaissance Quarterly, 24 (1971), 242-244. See Payne, pp. 228-229, and Surtz, Edward, S.J., The Praise of Pleasure (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 102–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Kan, pp. 116-117. All English translations are my own. They are based on the Latin of my final text (derived from a collation of all editions printed in Erasmus’ lifetime), but for convenience I refer to the corresponding pages in Kan's edition.
9 Les quatre premiers Quodlibets, ed. M. de Wulf and A. Pelzer (Louvain, 1904), p. 6.
10 Questiones super decern libros Ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris, 1513), Bk. vm, q. 23, fols. 189-189v.
11 Sententiae m, dist. 12, 3.
12 Quodlibeta, ed. J. Hoffinans, IV (Louvain, 1924), 208-210.
13 The discussion is part of a set of questions on Books I-IX of Aristotle's Metaphysics (fols. 1-49) in Peterhouse MS.152 (Cambridge University), fol. 8V: ‘Queritur utrum deus uere sit asinus…. Omne tale per essentiam prius et uerius est tale quam quod est tale per participationem. Sed isti asini particulares sunt asini per participationem, deus uero est asinus per essentiam, quoniam omne tale per participationem reducitur ad tale per essentiam. Si igitur asini particulares sunt asini per participationem, tunc reducuntur ad aliquid quod est asinus per essentiam, et illud uel erit ydea Platonis uel deus. Nunc autem non est ponere ydeas Platonis. Quare deus erit asinus per essentiam…’ (I have expanded abbreviations and supplied capitals and punctuation). I owe this reference to the kindness of Prof. Charles Ermatinger of St. Louis University. In his letter to Dorp in defense of Erasmus’ Moria (The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth Rogers [Princeton University Press, 1947], pp. 38-40), Thomas More attacked Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicaks, using examples that demonstrate an intimate acquaintance with the enemy. Prof. Richard Sylvester remarks that in this letter ‘what he [More] is really doing is to use “dialectic” against itself by redefining the term so that it will embrace a level of rational discourse available to all men and not merely to the academic schools’ ('Thomas More: Humanist in Action,’ Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. O. B. Hardison [University of North Carolina Press, 1966], p. 130).
14 Aquinas, Summa theologica IIIa , q. 25, a. 3. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, VI (Paris, 1923), 825-826.
15 I have translated Listrius from Froben's 1532 edition (Bibliotheca Belgica E872), pp. 183-184. The passages referred to by Listrius are Cicero, De qfficiis, 1,42,150; Peter Lombard, Sententiae IV, dist. 16, 2, Patrologia Latina (Migne), CXCII, 878-879; Decretum Gratiani, dist. 88, c. xi, Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. E. Richter and E. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1922), 1, 307-309; ibid., c. xii, 1, 309-310, Augustine, quoting, Enarratio in Psalmos, Patrologia Latina (Migne)Google Scholar, xxxvi, col. 886-887; ibid., c. xiii, 1, 310.
16 St. Antoninus, Summa theologica, III, tit. 8 (Verona, 1740; repr. Graz, 1959), III, 295- 307; St. Bernardinus Senensis, De euangelio aeterno sermo xxxm, art. 1, Opera omnia (Quaracchi-Florence, 1956), IV, 140, and sermo XXXIX, art. 1-2, iv, 266-294. St. Bernardino says that the statement attributed to Chrysostom by Gratian in distinction 88 is either a rhetorical exaggeration or is simply wrong.
17 Mohl, Ruth, The Three Estates in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (New York, 1933)Google Scholar, and Peter, John, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar.
18 The sections devoted to theologians and monks (which are the two longest sections, having been greatly enlarged by Erasmus in 1514) mediate between the academic and the political surveys: Erasmus concentrates on the speculative work of the theologians and on the practical piety and preaching of the monks.
19 For example, Douglas, A. E., ‘Erasmus as a Satirist,’ in Erasmus, ed. T. A. Dorey (Albuquerque, 1970 Google Scholar), pp. 47-49. A stimulating paper on the unity of the Moria delivered by Prof. Richard Sylvester during the Notre Dame Erasmus symposium in 1970 encouraged me to think about the subject of this paper. Lefebvre, Joel, in Lesfols et la folie (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar, which I had not had an opportunity to see when I wrote this paper, gives a subtle and sensitive analysis of the interaction and interpenetration of the three parts of the Moria.
20 In an appendix to his translation (Princeton, 1941), pp. 129-143.
21 Praisers of Folly (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 49.
22 As Folly sums up: ‘In short, without me no companionship among friends, no blending of lives in marriage can be either pleasant or stable—so much that the people would not tolerate their prince, nor the servant his master, nor the maidservant her mistress, nor the teacher his pupil, nor one friend another, nor the husband his wife, nor the worker his employer, one lodger would not put up with another, one roommate could not stand another, if in their relations with one another they did not sometimes err, sometimes flatter, sometimes wisely overlook things, sometimes soothe themselves with the sweet salve of folly’ (Kan, pp. 34-35).
23 Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen (Oxford, 1906-47), II, 93.
24 Allen, II, 95.
25 Gavin and Walsh, p. 197.
26 Institutio principis Christiani, LB IV, 566E-F and 582C-D.
27 Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio, Patrologia Latina (Migne), ccxvn, col. 793,795. Durandus, Rationale diuinorum qfficiorum (Venice, 1568?), III, 1, 3, 10-11, 12-13, *5 (PP- 42-43, 49v-5o, 51v); IV, 6 (p. 67). The traditional symbolism is traced in detail by Braun, Joseph in Die liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 701-726.
28 Most recently, for example, by Kristeller, Paul O. in ‘Erasmus from an Italian Perspective,' Renaissance Quarterly, 23 (1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 11, and by A. H. T. Levi in his introduction and notes to the Penguin edition of Betty Radice's translation (1971), pp. 21-24,203-204.
29 Opus Epistolarum, ed. Allen, IV, 289.
30 Summa theologica la-nae, q. 28, a. 3. Cf. also na-nae, q. 46, a. 1. A penetrating comment made by Prof. William Gilbert when I read this paper at the Central Renaissance Conference set me to thinking about the relation of the three parts to reason.
31 In this part Folly urges men to emulate the carefree ease of animals, admires Gryllus for refusing to be changed from a pig back to a man, and alludes to happy hunters who have become like the animals they hunt (Kan, pp. 57-63, 74).