Renaissance humanists, in the words of Charles Trinkhaus,‘fully believed in
God’s providential care for man’s well-being in this world and the next, His
planned beatification, even divinisation of those upon whom His grace
shone’.^15 Trinkhaus argues further that‘the new vision of man in this period
[i.e. the Renaissance] found its inspiration in a revival of the patristic exegesis
of the Genesis passage:‘And He said: Let us make man in our own image, after
our likeness.”’^16
More than anyone, Erasmus can be credited with making widely known the
educational ideals that lay at the heart of Renaissance humanism as an
international movement. His view of thestudia humanitatisis neatly sum-
marized in the adagelectio transit in mores(‘reading shapes moral character’).
While this goal corresponds to the educational ideals of humanists going back
to the ancient Greeks, however, it is more than mere character formation. The
goal of spiritual warfare for Erasmus corresponds to the eschatological telos
of society: the true fulfilment of human nature in communion with God and
one another.
Based on his earliest writings, which were educational treatises, he quickly
became the best-selling author of the early sixteenth century. One of his
earliest works,first published in 1500 and entitled theAdages, was a collection
of proverbial sayings of ancient authors, followed by Erasmus’s commentary.
It was enormously popular, and Erasmus would spend most of the rest of his
life revising and expanding this work. In his commentary that followed the
proverbial sayings, we get insights into Erasmus’s views on his contemporary
society, government, and the church.
One notable example is the adageDulce bellum inexpertis(‘War is sweet to
those who do not know it’). In his commentary on the adage, Erasmus began
to develop the anti-war sentiment and pacifism for which he would become
famous.
However, although he was a voracious opponent of warfare in early modern
Europe, Erasmus’s pacifism extended only to the natural realm. He steadfastly
believed that malevolent spiritual forces threatened the Christian faith and
that it was the duty of pious Christians to take up arms against these forces,
taking seriously the apostle Paul’s exhortation to the church in Ephesus that
‘we wrestle not againstflesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places’.^17
While elements of spiritual warfare permeate virtually all key works of
Erasmus, the most extensive description of his understanding of spiritual
warfare is found in one of his earliest and most celebrated books, the
(^15) Charles Trinkhaus,In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Human-
ist Thought, vol. 1 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), xix.
(^16) Trinkhaus,In Our Image, xix. (^17) Ephesians 6:12 (KJV).
122 Darren M. Provost