“As Peace, am I not praised by both men and gods as the very source and defender of all good things?…Though nothing is more odious to God and harmful to man, yet it is incredible to see the tremendous expenditure of work and effort that intelligent beings put forth in an effort to exchange me for a heap of ruinous evils.” (Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace, 1517, Dolan translation)
A few years after Erasmus personified Folly in his most famous work, The Praise of Folly, he went back to Olympus and brought forth The Complaint of Peace. The goddess Peace has a lot about which to complain.
Peace begins by noting how obvious it is that people should prefer peace to war. Nature itself shows that peace is preferable to the destruction of war. Yet war is seemingly omnipresent. Looking around for allies, Peace hears the words of Christ, who bears the title “Prince of Peace.” She rushes to Christ’s followers, expecting to find opponents of war. “Yet I find that Christians are actually worse than the heathen.” The people, princes, theologians, and clergy in early 16th-century Europe were constantly at war with one another.
Peace is dismayed that Christians, from the Pope on down, have decided that war is the natural state of affairs. It would be one thing if the wars were for just causes. “Of course, I am speaking of those wars that Christians conduct among themselves. It is not our intention to condemn those who undertake legitimate war to repel barbarous invasions or defend the common good.” But that is not the most common excuse for war in the time Erasmus was writing. “It shames me to recall the vain and superficial reasons whereby Christian princes provoke the world to war.”
Read the rest at the Online Library of Liberty
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