effective way to defeat the Turks, once they have seen shining forth in us
Christ’s teaching and example, once they realize that we are not greedy for
their empire, we have no thirst for their gold and no desire for their posses-
sions, but seek nothing at all beyond their salvation and the glory of Christ.’
Erasmus advocates an attempt to win the Turks over‘by letters and pamph-
lets’. However, those who seek to engage the Turks theologically and intellec-
tually mustfirst prepare themselves by being instructed in what Erasmus
describes as‘the whole philosophy of Christ’the (philosophia Christi).Eras-
mus proposes theEnchiridionfor this job, since it had‘been written for this
purpose’.^24
Erasmus’sEnchiridionspoke to an immediate need among his contempor-
aries to return to the basics of the Christian faith as well as any external threat
posed by the Turks. Both require the same remedy:‘And so it must be
impressed upon all men that there is a goal towards which they must strive.
And there is only one goal: Christ, and his teaching in all its purity.’^25 To attain
this goal it was necessary to wage spiritual warfare.
In the opening paragraphs of theEnchiridion, Erasmus clearly articulates
his belief in supernatural enemies.^26 The Christian needs to be alert, Erasmus
writes, because‘we are ceaselessly under attack by the armour-clad forces of
vice, ensnared by so many wiles, beleaguered by so many treacheries. In
sleepless vigils, wicked demons keep watch over your head, bent on your
destruction, armed with a thousand stratagems and a thousand devices for
inflicting harm upon us.’^27 The Christian soldier is also‘attacked by this world,
which according to the words of St John is given over entirely to vice’. Just as
significant as these two external threats, however, was an internal threat:
we bear within us in the innermost parts of our being an enemy more familiar to
us than the members of our own household or our closest friends, and for that
reason all the more dangerous. Yes, it is that old, earthly Adam... He must be
watched with a hundred eyes lest he lay open the fortress of God to the demons
of hell.^28Erasmus reiterates, therefore, the traditional three enemies of the pious Chris-
tian: the world, theflesh, and the devil.^29 Given the imminent threat posed by
(^24) Erasmus,Enchiridion77. (^25) Erasmus,Enchiridion77.
(^26) Despite Erasmus’s propensity for‘dissimulation’and his preference for allegorical inter-
pretation (see below) I am accepting his writings on the supernatural in theEnchiridionas
representing what they claim at face value, following James D. Tracy in‘Erasmus among the
Postmodernists’, in Hilmar M. Pabel (ed.),Erasmus’Vision of the Church(Kirksville, MO:
Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1995), 9–12. More on the meaning of thephilosophia
Christibelow.
(^27) Erasmus,Enchiridion 24 – 5. (^28) Erasmus,Enchiridion25.
(^29) Or, as he will later describe them:‘the three relentless enemies, theflesh, the world, and the
devil’. Erasmus,Enchiridion58.
124 Darren M. Provost