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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/39487-8.txt b/39487-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c7d5e70 --- /dev/null +++ b/39487-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2322 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Against War, by Erasmus + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Against War + +Author: Erasmus + +Release Date: April 20, 2012 [EBook #39487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + THE HUMANISTS' LIBRARY + Edited by Lewis Einstein + + II + + ERASMUS + AGAINST WAR + + + + + ERASMUS + AGAINST WAR + + + [Illustration] + + + WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY + J·W·MACKAIL + + THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS + BOSTON, MDCCCCVII + + + Copyright, 1907, by D. B. Updike + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Introduction ix + + Against War 3 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The Treatise on War, of which the earliest English translation is here +reprinted, was among the most famous writings of the most illustrious +writer of his age. Few people now read Erasmus; he has become for the +world in general a somewhat vague name. Only by some effort of the +historical imagination is it possible for those who are not professed +scholars and students to realize the enormous force which he was at a +critical period in the history of civilization. The free institutions and +the material progress of the modern world have alike their roots in +humanism. Humanism as a movement of the human mind culminated in the age, +and even in a sense in the person, of Erasmus. Its brilliant flower was of +an earlier period; its fruits developed and matured later; but it was in +his time, and in him, that the fruit set! The earlier sixteenth century is +not so romantic as its predecessors, nor so rich in solid achievement as +others that have followed it. As in some orchard when spring is over, the +blossom lies withered on the grass, and the fruit has long to wait before +it can ripen on the boughs. Yet here, in the dull, hot midsummer days, is +the central and critical period of the year's growth. + +The life of Erasmus is accessible in many popular forms as well as in more +learned and formal works. To recapitulate it here would fall beyond the +scope of a preface. But in order to appreciate this treatise fully it is +necessary to realize the time and circumstances in which it appeared, and +to recall some of the main features of its author's life and work up to +the date of its composition. + +That date can be fixed with certainty, from a combination of external and +internal evidence, between the years 1513 and 1515; in all probability it +was the winter of 1514-15. It was printed in the latter year, in the +"editio princeps" of the enlarged and rewritten Adagia then issued from +Froben's great printing-works at Basel. The stormy decennate of Pope +Julius II had ended in February, 1513. To his successor, Giovanni de' +Medici, who succeeded to the papal throne under the name of Leo X, the +treatise is particularly addressed. The years which ensued were a time +singularly momentous in the history of religion, of letters, and of the +whole life of the civilized world. The eulogy of Leo with which Erasmus +ends indicates the hopes then entertained of a new Augustan age of peace +and reconciliation. The Reformation was still capable of being regarded as +an internal and constructive force, within the framework of the society +built up by the Middle Ages. The final divorce between humanism and the +Church had not yet been made. The long and disastrous epoch of the wars of +religion was still only a dark cloud on the horizon. The Renaissance was +really dead, but few yet realized the fact. The new head of the Church was +a lover of peace, a friend of scholars, a munificent patron of the arts. +This treatise shows that Erasmus, to a certain extent, shared or strove to +share in an illusion widely spread among the educated classes of Europe. +With a far keener instinct for that which the souls of men required, an +Augustinian monk from Wittenberg, who had visited Rome two years earlier, +had turned away from the temple where a corpse lay swathed in gold and +half hid in the steam of incense. With a far keener insight into the real +state of things, Machiavelli was, at just this time, composing The Prince. + +In one form or another, the subject of his impassioned pleading for peace +among beings human, civilized, and Christian, had been long in Erasmus's +mind. In his most celebrated single work, the Praise of Folly, he had +bitterly attacked the attitude towards war habitual, and evilly +consecrated by usage, among kings and popes. The same argument had formed +the substance of a document addressed by him, under the title of +Anti-Polemus, to Pope Julius in 1507. Much of the substance, much even of +the phraseology of that earlier work is doubtless repeated here. Beyond +the specific reference to Pope Leo, the other notes of time in the +treatise now before us are few and faint. Allusions to Louis XII of France +(1498-1515), to Ferdinand the Catholic (1479-1516), to Philip, king of +Aragon (1504-1516), and Sigismund, king of Poland (1506-1548), are all +consistent with the composition of the treatise some years earlier. At the +end of it he promises to treat of the matter more largely when he +publishes the Anti-Polemus. But this intention was never carried into +effect. Perhaps Erasmus had become convinced of its futility; for the +events of the years which followed soon showed that the new Augustan age +was but a false dawn over which night settled more stormily and profoundly +than before. + +For ten or a dozen years Erasmus had stood at the head of European +scholarship. His name was as famous in France and England as in the Low +Countries and Germany. The age was indeed one of those in which the +much-abused term of the republic of letters had a real and vital meaning. +The nationalities of modern Europe had already formed themselves; the +notion of the Empire had become obsolete, and if the imperial title was +still coveted by princes, it was under no illusion as to the amount of +effective supremacy which it carried with it, or as to any life yet +remaining in the mediaeval doctrine of the unity of Christendom whether as +a church or as a state. The discovery of the new world near the end of +the previous century precipitated a revolution in European politics +towards which events had long been moving, and finally broke up the +political framework of the Middle Ages. But the other great event of the +same period, the invention and diffusion of the art of printing, had +created a new European commonwealth of the mind. The history of the +century which followed it is a history in which the landmarks are found +less in battles and treaties than in books. + +The earlier life of the man who occupies the central place in the literary +and spiritual movement of his time in no important way differs from the +youth of many contemporary scholars and writers. Even the illegitimacy of +his birth was an accident shared with so many others that it does not mark +him out in any way from his fellows. His early education at Utrecht, at +Deventer, at Herzogenbosch; his enforced and unhappy novitiate in a house +of Augustinian canons near Gouda; his secretaryship to the bishop of +Cambray, the grudging patron who allowed rather than assisted him to +complete his training at the University of Paris--all this was at the time +mere matter of common form. It is with his arrival in England in 1497, at +the age of thirty-one, that his effective life really begins. + +For the next twenty years that life was one of restless movement and +incessant production. In England, France, the Low Countries, on the upper +Rhine, and in Italy, he flitted about gathering up the whole intellectual +movement of the age, and pouring forth the results in that admirable Latin +which was not only the common language of scholars in every country, but +the single language in which he himself thought instinctively and wrote +freely. Between the Adagia of 1500 and the Colloquia of 1516 comes a mass +of writings equivalent to the total product of many fertile and +industrious pens. He worked in the cause of humanism with a sacred fury, +striving with all his might to connect it with all that was living in the +old and all that was developing in the newer world. In his travels no less +than in his studies the aspect of war must have perpetually met him as at +once the cause and the effect of barbarism; it was the symbol of +everything to which humanism in its broader as well as in its narrower +aspect was utterly opposed and repugnant. He was a student at Paris in the +ominous year of the first French invasion of Italy, in which the death of +Pico della Mirandola and Politian came like a symbol of the death of the +Italian Renaissance itself. Charles VIII, as has often been said, brought +back the Renaissance to France from that expedition; but he brought her +back a captive chained to the wheels of his cannon. The epoch of the +Italian wars began. A little later (1500) Sandro Botticelli painted that +amazing Nativity which is one of the chief treasures of the London +National Gallery. Over it in mystical Greek may still be read the +painter's own words: "This picture was painted by me Alexander amid the +confusions of Italy at the time prophesied in the Second Woe of the +Apocalypse, when Satan shall be loosed upon the earth." In November, 1506, +Erasmus was at Bologna, and saw the triumphal entry of Pope Julius into +the city at the head of a great mercenary army. Two years later the league +of Cambray, a combination of folly, treachery and shame which filled even +hardened politicians with horror, plunged half Europe into a war in which +no one was a gainer and which finally ruined Italy: "bellum quo nullum," +says the historian, "vel atrocius vel diuturnius in Italia post exactos +Gothos majores nostri meminerunt." In England Erasmus found, on his first +visit, a country exhausted by the long and desperate struggle of the Wars +of the Roses, out of which she had emerged with half her ruling class +killed in battle or on the scaffold, and the whole fabric of society to +reconstruct. The Empire was in a state of confusion and turmoil no less +deplorable and much more extensive. The Diet of 1495 had indeed, by an +expiring effort towards the suppression of absolute anarchy, decreed the +abolition of private war. But in a society where every owner of a castle, +every lord of a few square miles of territory, could conduct public war on +his own account, the prohibition was of little more than formal value. +Humanism had been introduced by the end of the fifteenth century in some +of the German universities, but too late to have much effect on the rising +fury of religious controversy. The very year in which this treatise +against war was published gave to the world another work of even wider +circulation and more profound consequences. The famous Epistolae +Obscurorum Virorum, first published in 1515, and circulated rapidly among +all the educated readers of Europe, made an open breach between the +humanists and the Church. That breach was never closed; nor on the other +hand could the efforts of well-intentioned reformers like Melancthon bring +humanism into any organic relation with the reformed movement. When mutual +exhaustion concluded the European struggle, civilization had to start +afresh; it took a century more to recover the lost ground. The very idea +of humanism had long before then disappeared. + +War, pestilence, the theologians: these were the three great enemies with +which Erasmus says he had throughout life to contend. It was during the +years he spent in England that he was perhaps least harassed by them. His +three periods of residence there--a fourth, in 1517, appears to have been +of short duration and not marked by any very notable incident--were of the +utmost importance in his life. During the first, in his residence between +the years 1497 and 1499 at London and Oxford, the English Renaissance, if +the name be fully applicable to so partial and inconclusive a movement, +was in the promise and ardour of its brief spring. It was then that +Erasmus made the acquaintance of those great Englishmen whose names cannot +be mentioned with too much reverence: Colet, Grocyn, Latimer, Linacre. +These men were the makers of modern England to a degree hardly realized. +They carried the future in their hands. Peace had descended upon a weary +country; and the younger generation was full of new hopes. The Enchiridion +Militis Christiani, written soon after Erasmus returned to France, +breathes the spirit of one who had not lost hope in the reconciliation of +the Church and the world, of the old and new. When Erasmus made his second +visit to England, in 1506, that fair promise had grown and spread. Colet +had become dean of Saint Paul's; and through him, as it would appear, +Erasmus now made the acquaintance of another great man with whom he soon +formed as close an intimacy, Thomas More. + +His Italian journey followed: he was in Italy nearly three years, at +Turin, Bologna, Venice, Padua, Siena, Rome. It was in the first of these +years that Albert Dürer was also in Italy, where he met Bellini and was +recognized by the Italian masters as the head of a new transalpine art in +no way inferior to their own. The year after Erasmus left Italy, +Botticelli, the last survivor of the ancient world, died at Florence. + +Meanwhile, Henry VIII, a prince, young, handsome, generous, pious, had +succeeded to the throne of England. A golden age was thought to have +dawned. Lord Mountjoy, who had been the pupil of Erasmus at Paris, and +with whom he had first come to England, lost no time in urging Henry to +send for the most brilliant and famous of European scholars, and attach +him to his court. The king, who had already met and admired him, needed no +pressing. In the letter which Henry himself wrote to Erasmus entreating +him to take up his residence in England, the language employed was that of +sincere admiration; nor was there any conscious insincerity in the main +motive which he urged. "It is my earnest wish," wrote the king, "to +restore Christ's religion to its primitive purity." The history of the +English Reformation supplies a strange commentary on these words. + +But the first few years of the new reign (1509-1513), which coincide with +the third and longest sojourn of Erasmus in England, were a time in which +high hopes might not seem unreasonable. While Italy was ravaged by war and +the rest of Europe was in uneasy ferment, England remained peaceful and +prosperous. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life were indeed the +motive forces of the court; but alongside of these was a real desire for +reform, and a real if very imperfect attempt to cultivate the nobler arts +of peace, to establish learning, and to purify religion. Colet's great +foundation of Saint Paul's School in 1510 is one of the landmarks of +English history. Erasmus joined the founder and the first high master, +Colet and Lily, in composing the schoolbooks to be used in it. He had +already written, in More's house at Chelsea, where pure religion reigned +alongside of high culture, the Encomium Moriae, in which all his immense +gifts of eloquence and wit were lavished on the cause of humanism and the +larger cause of humanity. That war was at once a sin, a scandal, and a +folly was one of the central doctrines of the group of eminent Englishmen +with whom he was now associated. It was a doctrine held by them with some +ambiguity and in varying degrees. In the Utopia (1516) More condemns wars +of aggression, while taking the common view as to wars of so-called +self-defence. In 1513, when Henry, swept into the seductive scheme for a +partition of France by a European confederacy, was preparing for the first +of his many useless and inglorious continental campaigns, Colet spoke out +more freely. He preached before the court against war itself as barbarous +and unchristian, and did not spare either kings or popes who dealt +otherwise. Henry was disturbed; he sent for Colet, and pressed him hard on +the point whether he meant that all wars were unjustifiable. Colet was in +advance of his age, but not so far in advance of it as this. He gave some +kind of answer which satisfied the king. The preparations for war went +forward; the Battle of Spurs plunged the court and all the nation into the +intoxication of victory; while at Flodden-edge, in the same autumn, the +ancestral allies of France sustained the most crushing defeat recorded in +Scottish history. When both sides in a war have invoked God's favour, the +successful side is ready enough to believe that its prayers have been +answered and its action accepted by God. + +Erasmus was now reader in Greek and professor of divinity at Cambridge; +but Cambridge was far away from the centre of European thought and of +literary activities. He left England before the end of the year for Basel, +where the greater part of his life thenceforth was passed. Froben had made +Basel the chief literary centre of production for the whole of Europe. +Through Froben's printing-presses Erasmus could reach a wider audience +than was allowed him at any court, however favourable to pure religion and +the new learning. It was at this juncture that he made an eloquent and +far-reaching appeal, on a matter which lay very near his heart, to the +conscience of Christendom. + +The Adagia, that vast work which was, at least to his own generation, +Erasmus's foremost title to fame, has long ago passed into the rank of +those monuments of literature "dont la reputation s'affermira toujours +parcequ'on ne les lit guère." So far as Erasmus is more than a name for +most modern readers, it is on slighter and more popular works that any +direct knowledge of him is grounded on the Colloquies, which only ceased +to be a schoolbook within living memory, on the Praise of Folly, and on +selections from the enormous masses of his letters. An Oxford scholar of +the last generation, whose profound knowledge of humanistic literature was +accompanied by a gift of terse and pointed expression, describes the +Adagia in a single sentence, as "a manual of the wit and wisdom of the +ancient world for the use of the modern, enlivened by commentary in +Erasmus's finest vein." In its first form, the Adagiorum Collectanea, it +was published by him at Paris in 1500, just after his return from England. +In the author's epistle dedicatory to Mountjoy he ascribes to him and to +Richard Charnock, the prior of Saint Mary's College in Oxford, the +inspiration of the work. It consists of a series of between eight and nine +hundred comments in brief essays, each suggested by some terse or +proverbial phrase from an ancient Latin author. The work gave full scope +for the display, not only of the immense treasures of his learning, but of +those other qualities, the combination of which raised their author far +above all other contemporary writers, his keen wit, his copiousness and +facility, his complete control of Latin as a living language. It met with +an enthusiastic reception, and placed him at once at the head of European +men of letters. Edition after edition poured from the press. It was ten +times reissued at Paris within a generation. Eleven editions were +published at Strasburg between 1509 and 1521. Within the same years it was +reprinted at Erfurt, The Hague, Cologne, Mayence, Leyden, and elsewhere. +The Rhine valley was the great nursery of letters north of the Alps, and +along the Rhine from source to sea the book spread and was multiplied. + +This success induced Erasmus to enlarge and complete his labours. The +Adagiorum Chiliades, the title of the work in its new form, was part of +the work of his residence in Italy in the years 1506-9, and was published +at Venice by Aldus in September, 1508. The enlarged collection, to all +intents and purposes a new work, consists of no less than three thousand +two hundred and sixty heads. In a preface, Erasmus speaks slightingly of +the Adagiorum Collectanea, with that affectation from which few authors +are free, as a little collection carelessly made. "Some people got hold of +it," he adds, (and here the affectation becomes absolute untruth,) "and +had it printed very incorrectly." In the new work, however, much of the +old disappears, much more is partially or wholly recast; and such of the +old matter as is retained is dispersed at random among the new. In the +Collectanea the commentaries had all been brief: here many are expanded +into substantial treatises covering four or five pages of closely printed +folio. + +The Aldine edition had been reprinted at Basel by Froben in 1513. Shortly +afterwards Erasmus himself took up his permanent residence there. Under +his immediate supervision there presently appeared what was to all intents +and purposes the definitive edition of 1515. It is a book of nearly seven +hundred folio pages, and contains, besides the introductory matter, three +thousand four hundred and eleven headings. In his preface Erasmus gives +some details with regard to its composition. Of the original Paris work he +now says, no doubt with truth, that it was undertaken by him hastily and +without enough method. When preparing the Venice edition he had better +realized the magnitude of the enterprise, and was better fitted for it by +reading and learning, more especially by the mass of Greek manuscripts, +and of newly printed Greek first editions, to which he had access at +Venice and in other parts of Italy. In England also, owing very largely to +the kindness of Archbishop Warham, more leisure and an ampler library had +been available. + +Among several important additions made in the edition of 1515, this essay, +the text of which is the proverbial phrase "Dulce bellum inexpertis," is +at once the longest and the most remarkable. The adage itself, with a few +lines of commentary, had indeed been in the original collection; but the +treatise, in itself a substantial work, now appeared for the first time. +It occupied a conspicuous place as the first heading in the fourth Chiliad +of the complete work; and it was at once singled out from the rest as of +special note and profound import. Froben was soon called upon for a +separate edition. This appeared in April, 1517, in a quarto of twenty +pages. This little book, the Bellum Erasmi as it was called for the sake +of brevity, ran like wildfire from reader to reader. Half the scholarly +presses of Europe were soon employed in reprinting it. Within ten years it +had been reissued at Louvain, twice at Strasburg, twice at Mayence, at +Leipsic, twice at Paris, twice at Cologne, at Antwerp, and at Venice. +German translations of it were published at Basel and at Strasburg in 1519 +and 1520. It soon made its way to England, and the translation here +utilized was issued by Berthelet, the king's printer, in the winter of +1533-4. + +Whether the translation be by Richard Taverner, the translator and editor, +a few years later, of an epitome or selection of the Chiliades, or by some +other hand, there are no direct means of ascertaining; nor except for +purposes of curiosity is the question an important one. The version wholly +lacks distinction. It is a work of adequate scholarship but of no +independent literary merit. English prose was then hardly formed. The +revival of letters had reached the country, but for political and social +reasons which are readily to be found in any handbook of English history, +it had found a soil, fertile indeed, but not yet broken up. Since Chaucer, +English poetry had practically stood still, and except where poetry has +cleared the way, prose does not in ordinary circumstances advance. A few +adventurers in setting forth had appeared. More's Utopia, one of the +earliest of English prose classics, is a classic in virtue of its style as +well as of its matter. Berners's translation of Froissart, published in +1523, was the first and one of the finest of that magnificent series of +translations which from this time onwards for about a century were +produced in an almost continuous stream, and through which the secret of +prose was slowly wrung from older and more accomplished languages. +Latimer, about the same time, showed his countrymen how a vernacular +prose, flexible, well knit, and nervous, might be written without its +lines being traced on any ancient or foreign model. Coverdale, the +greatest master of English prose whom the century produced, whose name has +just missed the immortality that is secure for his work, must have +substantially completed that magnificent version of the Bible which +appeared in 1535, and to which the authorized version of the seventeenth +century owes all that one work of genius can owe to another. It is not +with these great men that the translator of this treatise can be compared. +But he wrought, after his measure, on the same structure as they. + +It is then to the original Latin, not to this rude and stammering version, +that scholars must turn now, as still more certainly they turned then, for +the mind of Erasmus; for with him, even more eminently than with other +authors, the style is the man, and his Latin is the substance, not merely +the dress, of his thought. When he wrote it he was about forty-eight years +of age. He was still in the fullness of his power. If he was often +crippled by delicate health, that was no more than he had habitually been +from boyhood. In this treatise we come very near the real man, with his +strange mixture of liberalism and orthodoxy, of clear-sighted courage and +a delicacy which nearly always might be mistaken for timidity. + +His text is that (in the translator's words) "nothing is either more +wicked or more wretched, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war." War was shocking to Erasmus alike on every side +of his remarkably complex and sensitive nature. It was impious; it was +inhuman; it was ugly; it was in every sense of the word barbarous, to one +who before all things and in the full sense of the word was civilized and +a lover of civilization. All these varied aspects of the case, seen by +others singly and partially, were to him facets of one truth, rays of one +light. His argument circles and flickers among them, hardly pausing to +enforce one before passing insensibly to another. In the splendid +vindication of the nature of man with which the treatise opens, the tone +is rather that of Cicero than of the New Testament. The majesty of man +resides above all in his capacity to "behold the very pure strength and +nature of things;" in essence he is no fallen and corrupt creature, but a +piece of workmanship such as Shakespeare describes him through the mouth +of Hamlet. He was shaped to this heroic mould "by Nature, or rather god," +so the Tudor translation reads, and the use of capital letters, though +only a freak of the printer, brings out with a singular suggestiveness the +latent pantheism which underlies the thought of all the humanists. To this +wonderful creature strife and warfare are naturally repugnant. Not only is +his frame "weak and tender," but he is "born to love and amity." His chief +end, the object to which all his highest and most distinctively human +powers are directed, is coöperant labour in the pursuit of knowledge. War +comes out of ignorance, and into ignorance it leads; of war comes contempt +of virtue and of godly living. In the age of Machiavelli the word "virtue" +had a double and sinister meaning; but here it is taken in its nobler +sense. Yet, the argument continues, for "virtue," even in the Florentine +statesman's sense, war gives but little room. It is waged mainly for "vain +titles or childish wrath;" it does not foster, in those responsible for +it, any one of the nobler excellences. The argument throughout this part +of the treatise is, both in its substance and in its ornament, wholly +apart from the dogmas of religion. The furies of war are described as +rising out of a very pagan hell. The apostrophe of Nature to mankind +immediately suggests the spirit as well as the language of Lucretius. +Erasmus had clearly been reading the De Rerum Natura, and borrows some of +his finest touches from that miraculous description of the growth of +civilization in the fifth book, which is one of the noblest contributions +of antiquity towards a real conception of the nature of the world and of +man. The progressive degeneration of morality, because, as its scope +becomes higher, practice falls further and further short of it, is +insisted upon by both these great thinkers in much the same spirit and +with much the same illustrations. The rise of empires, "of which there was +never none yet in any nation, but it was gotten with the great shedding of +man's blood," is seen by both in the same light. But Erasmus passes on to +the more expressly religious aspect of the whole matter in the great +double climax with which he crowns his argument, the wickedness of a +Christian fighting against another man, the horror of a Christian fighting +against another Christian. "Yea, and with a thing so devilish," he breaks +out in a mingling of intense scorn and profound pity, "we mingle Christ." + +From this passionate appeal he passes to the praises of peace. Why should +men add the horrors of war to all the other miseries and dangers of life? +Why should one man's gain be sought only through another's loss? All +victories in war are Cadmean; not only from their cost in blood and +treasure, but because we are in very truth "the members of one body," +"redeemed with Christ's blood." Such was the clear, unmistakable teaching +of our Lord himself, such of his apostles. But the doctrine of Christ has +been "plied to worldly opinion." Worldly men, philosophers following "the +sophistries of Aristotle," worst of all, divines and theologians +themselves, have corrupted the Gospel to the heathenish doctrine that +"every man must first provide for himself." The very words of Scripture +are wrested to this abuse. Self-defence is held to excuse any violence. +"Peter fought," they say, "in the garden,"--yes, and that same night he +denied his Master! "But punishment of wrong is a divine ordinance." In war +the punishment falls on the innocent. "But the law of nature bids us repel +violence by violence." What is the law of Christ? "But may not a prince go +to war justly for his right?" Did any war ever lack a title? "But what of +wars against the Turk?" Such wars are of Turk against Turk; let us +overcome evil with good, let us spread the Gospel by doing what the Gospel +commands: did Christ say, Hate them that hate you? + +Then, with the tact of an accomplished orator, he lets the tension relax, +and drops to a lower tone. Even apart from all that has been urged, even +if war were ever justifiable, think of the price that has to be paid for +it. On this ground alone an unjust peace is far preferable to a just war. +(These had been the very words of Colet to the king of England.) Men go to +war under fine pretexts, but really to get riches, to satisfy hatred, or +to win the poor glory of destroying. The hatred is but exasperated; the +glory is won by and for the dregs of mankind; the riches are in the most +prosperous event swallowed up ten times over. Yet if it be impossible but +war should be, if there may be sometimes a "colour of equity" in it, and +if the tyrant's plea, necessity, be ever well-founded, at least, so +Erasmus ends, let it be conducted mercifully. Let us live in fervent +desire of the peace that we may not fully attain. Let princes restrain +their peoples; let churchmen above all be peacemakers. So the treatise +passes to its conclusion with that eulogy of the Medicean pope already +mentioned, which perhaps was not wholly undeserved. To the modern world +the name of Leo X has come down marked with a note of censure or even of +ignominy. It is fair to remember that it did not bear quite the same +aspect to its contemporaries, nor to the ages which immediately followed. +Under Rodrigo Borgia it might well seem to others than to the Florentine +mystic that antichrist was enthroned, and Satan let loose upon earth. The +eight years of Leo's pontificate (1513-21) were at least a period of +outward splendour and of a refinement hitherto unknown. The corruption, +half veiled by that refinement and splendour, was deep and mortal, but the +collapse did not come till later. By comparison with the disastrous reign +of Clement VII, his bastard cousin, that of Giovanni de' Medici seemed a +last gleam of light before blackness descended on the world. Even the +licence of a dissolute age was contrasted to its favour with the gloom, +"tristitia," that settled down over Europe with the great Catholic +reaction. The age of Leo X has descended to history as the age of Bembo, +Sannazaro, Lascaris, of the Stanze of the Vatican, of Raphael's Sistine +Madonna and Titian's Assumption; of the conquest of Mexico and the +circumnavigation of Magellan; of Magdalen Tower and King's College Chapel. +It was an interval of comparative peace before a long epoch of wars more +cruel and more devastating than any within the memory of men. The general +European conflagration did not break out until ten years after Erasmus's +death; though it had then long been foreseen as inevitable. But he lived +to see the conquest of Rhodes by Soliman, the sack of Rome, the breach +between England and the papacy, the ill-omened marriage of Catherine de' +Medici to the heir of the French throne. Humanism had done all that it +could, and failed. In the sanguinary era of one hundred years between the +outbreak of the civil war in the Empire and the Peace of Westphalia, the +Renaissance followed the Middle Ages to the grave, and the modern world +was born. + +The mere fact of this treatise having been translated into English and +published by the king's printer shows, in an age when the literary product +of England was as yet scanty, that it had some vogue and exercised some +influence. But only a few copies of the work are known to exist; and it +was never reprinted. It was not until nearly three centuries later, amid +the throes of an European revolution equally vast, that the work was again +presented in an English dress. Vicesimus Knox, a whig essayist, compiler, +and publicist of some reputation at the time, was the author of a book +which was published anonymously in 1794 and found some readers in a year +filled with great events in both the history and the literature of +England. It was entitled "Anti-Polemus: or the Plea of Reason, Religion, +and Humanity against War: a Fragment translated from Erasmus and addressed +to Aggressors." That was the year when the final breach took place in the +whig party, and when Pitt initiated his brief and ill-fated policy of +conciliation in Ireland. It was also the year of two works of enormous +influence over thought, Paley's Evidences and Paine's Age of Reason. Among +these great movements Knox's work had but little chance of appealing to a +wide audience. "Sed quid ad nos?" the bitter motto on the title-page, +probably expressed the feelings with which it was generally regarded. A +version of the treatise against war, made from the Latin text of the +Adagia with some omissions, is the main substance of the volume; and Knox +added a few extracts from other writings of Erasmus on the same subject. +It does not appear to have been reprinted in England, except in a +collected edition of Knox's works which may be found on the dustiest +shelves of old-fashioned libraries, until, after the close of the +Napoleonic wars, it was again published as a tract by the Society for the +Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. Some half dozen impressions of +this tract appeared at intervals up to the middle of the century; its +publication passed into the hands of the Society of Friends, and the last +issue of which any record can be found was made just before the outbreak +of the Crimean war. But in 1813 an abridged edition was printed at New +York, and was one of the books which influenced the great movement towards +humanity then stirring in the young Republic. + +At the present day, the reactionary wave which has overspread the world +has led, both in England and America, to a new glorification of war. Peace +is on the lips of governments and of individuals, but beneath the smooth +surface the same passions, draped as they always have been under fine +names, are a menace to progress and to the higher life of mankind. The +increase of armaments, the glorification of the military life, the +fanaticism which regards organized robbery and murder as a sacred imperial +mission, are the fruits of a spirit which has fallen as far below the +standard of humanism as it has left behind it the precepts of a still +outwardly acknowledged religion. At such a time the noble pleading of +Erasmus has more than a merely literary or antiquarian interest. For the +appeal of humanism still is, as it was then, to the dignity of human +nature itself. + +J. W. Mackail + + + + +AGAINST WAR + + + + +DULCE BELLUM INEXPERTIS + + +It is both an elegant proverb, and among all others, by the writings of +many excellent authors, full often and solemnly used, Dulce bellum +inexpertis, that is to say, War is sweet to them that know it not. There +be some things among mortal men's businesses, in the which how great +danger and hurt there is, a man cannot perceive till he make a proof. The +love and friendship of a great man is sweet to them that be not expert: he +that hath had thereof experience, is afraid. It seemeth to be a gay and a +glorious thing, to strut up and down among the nobles of the court, and to +be occupied in the king's business; but old men, to whom that thing by +long experience is well known, do gladly abstain themselves from such +felicity. It seemeth a pleasant thing to be in love with a young damsel; +but that is unto them that have not yet perceived how much grief and +bitterness is in such love. So after this manner of fashion, this proverb +may be applied to every business that is adjoined with great peril and +with many evils: the which no man will take on hand, but he that is young +and wanteth experience of things. + +Aristotle, in his book of Rhetoric, showeth the cause why youth is more +bold, and contrariwise old age more fearful: for unto young men lack of +experience is cause of great boldness, and to the other, experience of +many griefs engendereth fear and doubting. Then if there be anything in +the world that should be taken in hand with fear and doubting, yea, that +ought by all manner of means to be fled, to be withstood with prayer, and +to be clean avoided, verily it is war; than which nothing is either more +wicked, or more wretched, or that more farther destroyeth, or that never +hand cleaveth sorer to, or doth more hurt, or is more horrible, and +briefly to speak, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war. And yet it is a wonder to speak of, how nowadays +in every place, how lightly, and how for every trifling matter, it is +taken in hand, how outrageously and barbarously it is gested and done, not +only of heathen people, but also of Christian men; not only of secular +men, but also of priests and bishops; not only of young men and of them +that have no experience, but also of old men and of those that so often +have had experience; not only of the common and movable vulgar people, but +most specially of the princes, whose duty had been, by wisdom and reason, +to set in a good order and to pacify the light and hasty movings of the +foolish multitude. Nor there lack neither lawyers, nor yet divines, the +which are ready with their firebrands to kindle these things so +abominable, and they encourage them that else were cold, and they privily +provoke those to it that were weary thereof. And by these means it is come +to that pass that war is a thing now so well accepted, that men wonder at +him that is not pleased therewith. It is so much approved, that it is +counted a wicked thing (and I had almost said heresy) to reprove this one +thing, the which as it is above all other things most mischievous, so it +is most wretched. But how more justly should this be wondered at, what +evil spirit, what pestilence, what mischief, and what madness put first in +man's mind a thing so beyond measure beastly, that this most pleasant and +reasonable creature Man, the which Nature hath brought forth to peace and +benevolence, which one alone she hath brought forth to the help and +succour of all other, should with so wild wilfulness, with so mad rages, +run headlong one to destroy another? At the which thing he shall also much +more marvel, whosoever would withdraw his mind from the opinions of the +common people, and will turn it to behold the very pure strength and +nature of things; and will apart behold with philosophical eyes the image +of man on the one side, and the picture of war on the other side. + +Then first of all if one would consider well but the behaviour and shape +of man's body shall he not forthwith perceive that Nature, or rather God, +hath shaped this creature, not to war, but to friendship, not to +destruction, but to health, not to wrong, but to kindness and benevolence? +For whereas Nature hath armed all other beasts with their own armour, as +the violence of the bulls she hath armed with horns, the ramping lion with +claws; to the boar she hath given the gnashing tusks; she hath armed the +elephant with a long trump snout, besides his great huge body and hardness +of the skin; she hath fenced the crocodile with a skin as hard as a plate; +to the dolphin fish she hath given fins instead of a dart; the porcupine +she defendeth with thorns; the ray and thornback with sharp prickles; to +the cock she hath given strong spurs; some she fenceth with a shell, some +with a hard hide, as it were thick leather, or bark of a tree; some she +provideth to save by swiftness of flight, as doves; and to some she hath +given venom instead of a weapon; to some she hath given a much horrible +and ugly look, she hath given terrible eyes and grunting voice; and she +hath also set among some of them continual dissension and debate--man +alone she hath brought forth all naked, weak, tender, and without any +armour, with most soft flesh and smooth skin. There is nothing at all in +all his members that may seem to be ordained to war, or to any violence. I +will not say at this time, that where all other beasts, anon as they are +brought forth, they are able of themselves to get their food. Man alone +cometh so forth, that a long season after he is born, he dependeth +altogether on the help of others. He can neither speak nor go, nor yet +take meat; he desireth help only by his infant crying: so that a man may, +at the least way, by this conject, that this creature alone was born all +to love and amity, which specially increaseth and is fast knit together by +good turns done eftsoons of one to another. And for this cause Nature +would, that a man should not so much thank her, for the gift of life, +which she hath given unto him, as he should thank kindness and +benevolence, whereby he might evidently understand himself, that he was +altogether dedicate and bounden to the gods of graces, that is to say, to +kindness, benevolence, and amity. And besides this Nature hath given unto +man a countenance not terrible and loathly, as unto other brute beasts; +but meek and demure, representing the very tokens of love and benevolence. +She hath given him amiable eyes, and in them assured marks of the inward +mind. She hath ordained him arms to clip and embrace. She hath given him +the wit and understanding to kiss: whereby the very minds and hearts of +men should be coupled together, even as though they touched each other. +Unto man alone she hath given laughing, a token of good cheer and +gladness. To man alone she hath given weeping tears, as it were a pledge +or token of meekness and mercy. Yea, and she hath given him a voice not +threatening and horrible, as unto other brute beasts, but amiable and +pleasant. Nature not yet content with all this, she hath given unto man +alone the commodity of speech and reasoning: the which things verily may +specially both get and nourish benevolence, so that nothing at all should +be done among men by violence. + +She hath endued man with hatred of solitariness, and with love of company. +She hath utterly sown in man the very seeds of benevolence. She hath so +done, that the selfsame thing, that is most wholesome, should be most +sweet and delectable. For what is more delectable than a friend? And +again, what thing is more necessary? Moreover, if a man might lead all his +life most profitably without any meddling with other men, yet nothing +would seem pleasant without a fellow: except a man would cast off all +humanity, and forsaking his own kind would become a beast. + +Besides all this, Nature hath endued man with knowledge of liberal +sciences and a fervent desire of knowledge: which thing as it doth most +specially withdraw man's wit from all beastly wildness, so hath it a +special grace to get and knit together love and friendship. For I dare +boldly say, that neither affinity nor yet kindred doth bind the minds of +men together with straiter and surer bands of amity, than doth the +fellowship of them that be learned in good letters and honest studies. +And above all this, Nature hath divided among men by a marvellous variety +the gifts, as well of the soul as of the body, to the intent truly that +every man might find in every singular person one thing or other, which +they should either love or praise for the excellency thereof; or else +greatly desire and make much of it, for the need and profit that cometh +thereof. Finally she hath endowed man with a spark of a godly mind: so +that though he see no reward, yet of his own courage he delighteth to do +every man good: for unto God it is most proper and natural, by his +benefit, to do everybody good. Else what meaneth it, that we rejoice and +conceive in our minds no little pleasure when we perceive that any +creature is by our means preserved. + +Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were the very image of +himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide +for the wealth of all creatures. And this thing the very brute beasts do +also perceive, for we may see, that not only the tame beasts, but also the +leopards, lions, and other more fierce and wild, when they be in any great +jeopardy, they flee to man for succour. So man is, when all things fail, +the last refuge to all manner of creatures. He is unto them all the very +assured altar and sanctuary. + +I have here painted out to you the image of man as well as I can. On the +other side (if it like you) against the figure of Man, let us portray the +fashion and shape of War. + +Now, then, imagine in thy mind, that thou dost behold two hosts of +barbarous people, of whom the look is fierce and cruel, and the voice +horrible; the terrible and fearful rustling and glistering of their +harness and weapons; the unlovely murmur of so huge a multitude; the eyes +sternly menacing; the bloody blasts and terrible sounds of trumpets and +clarions; the thundering of the guns, no less fearful than thunder indeed, +but much more hurtful; the frenzied cry and clamour, the furious and mad +running together, the outrageous slaughter, the cruel chances of them that +flee and of those that are stricken down and slain, the heaps of +slaughters, the fields overflowed with blood, the rivers dyed red with +man's blood. And it chanceth oftentimes, that the brother fighteth with +the brother, one kinsman with another, friend against friend; and in that +common furious desire ofttimes one thrusteth his weapon quite through the +body of another that never gave him so much as a foul word. Verily, this +tragedy containeth so many mischiefs, that it would abhor any man's heart +to speak thereof. I will let pass to speak of the hurts which are in +comparison of the other but light and common, as the treading down and +destroying of the corn all about, the burning of towns, the villages +fired, the driving away of cattle, the ravishing of maidens, the old men +led forth in captivity, the robbing of churches, and all things +confounded and full of thefts, pillages, and violence. Neither I will not +speak now of those things which are wont to follow the most happy and most +just war of all. + +The poor commons pillaged, the nobles overcharged; so many old men of +their children bereaved, yea, and slain also in the slaughter of their +children; so many old women destitute, whom sorrow more cruelly slayeth +than the weapon itself; so many honest wives become widows, so many +children fatherless, so many lamentable houses, so many rich men brought +to extreme poverty. And what needeth it here to speak of the destruction +of good manners, since there is no man but knoweth right well that the +universal pestilence of all mischievous living proceedeth at once from +war. Thereof cometh despising of virtue and godly living; thereof cometh, +that the laws are neglected and not regarded; thereof cometh a prompt and +a ready stomach, boldly to do every mischievous deed. Out of this fountain +spring so huge great companies of thieves, robbers, sacrilegers, and +murderers. And what is most grievous of all, this mischievous pestilence +cannot keep herself within her bounds; but after it is begun in some one +corner, it doth not only (as a contagious disease) spread abroad and +infect the countries near adjoining to it, but also it draweth into that +common tumult and troublous business the countries that be very far off, +either for need, or by reason of affinity, or else by occasion of some +league made. Yea and moreover, one war springeth of another: of a +dissembled war there cometh war indeed, and of a very small, a right great +war hath risen. Nor it chanceth oftentimes none otherwise in these things +than it is feigned of the monster, which lay in the lake or pond called +Lerna. + +For these causes, I trow, the old poets, the which most sagely perceived +the power and nature of things, and with most meet feignings covertly +shadowed the same, have left in writing, that war was sent out of hell: +nor every one of the Furies was not meet and convenient to bring about +this business, but the most pestilent and mischievous of them all was +chosen out for the nonce, which hath a thousand names, and a thousand +crafts to do hurt. She being armed with a thousand serpents, bloweth +before her her fiendish trumpet. Pan with furious ruffling encumbereth +every place. Bellona shaketh her furious flail. And then the wicked +furiousness himself, when he hath undone all knots and broken all bonds, +rusheth out with bloody mouth horrible to behold. + +The grammarians perceived right well these things, of the which some will, +that war have his name by contrary meaning of the word Bellum, that is to +say fair, because it hath nothing good nor fair. Nor bellum, that is for +to say war, is none otherwise called Bellum, that is to say fair, than +the furies are called Eumenides, that is to say meek, because they are +wilful and contrary to all meekness. And some grammarians think rather, +that bellum, war, should be derived out of this word Belva, that is for to +say, a brute beast: forasmuch as it belongeth to brute beasts, and not +unto men, to run together, each to destroy each other. But it seemeth to +me far to pass all wild and all brute beastliness, to fight together with +weapons. + +First, for there are many of the brute beasts, each in his kind, that +agree and live in a gentle fashion together, and they go together in herds +and flocks, and each helpeth to defend the other. Nor is it the nature of +all wild beasts to fight, for some are harmless, as does and hares. But +they that are the most fierce of all, as lions, wolves, and tigers, do not +make war among themselves as we do. One dog eateth not another. The lions, +though they be fierce and cruel, yet they fight not among themselves. One +dragon is in peace with another. And there is agreement among poisonous +serpents. But unto man there is no wild or cruel beast more hurtful than +man. + +Again, when the brute beasts fight, they fight with their own natural +armour: we men, above nature, to the destruction of men, arm ourselves +with armour, invented by craft of the devil. Nor the wild beasts are not +cruel for every cause; but either when hunger maketh them fierce, or else +when they perceive themselves to be hunted and pursued to the death, or +else when they fear lest their younglings should take any harm or be +stolen from them. But (O good Lord) for what trifling causes what +tragedies of war do we stir up? For most vain titles, for childish wrath, +for a wench, yea, and for causes much more scornful than these, we be +inflamed to fight. + +Moreover, when the brute beasts fight, then war is one for one, yea, and +that is very short. And when the battle is sorest fought, yet is there not +past one or two, that goeth away sore wounded. When was it ever heard that +an hundred thousand brute beasts were slain at one time fighting and +tearing one another: which thing men do full oft and in many places? And +besides this, whereas some wild beasts have natural debate with some other +that be of a contrary kind, so again there be some with which they +lovingly agree in a sure amity. But man with man, and each with other, +have among them continual war; nor is there league sure enough among any +men. So that whatsoever it be, that hath gone out of kind, it hath gone +out of kind into a worse fashion, than if Nature herself had engendered +therein a malice at the beginning. + +Will ye see how beastly, how foul, and how unworthy a thing war is for +man? Did ye never behold a lion let loose unto a bear? What gapings, what +roarings, what grisly gnashing, what tearing of their flesh, is there? He +trembleth that beholdeth them, yea, though he stand sure and safe enough +from them. But how much more grisly a sight is it, how much more +outrageous and cruel, to behold man to fight with man, arrayed with so +much armour, and with so many weapons? I beseech you, who would believe +that they were men, if it were not because war is a thing so much in +custom that no man marvelleth at it? Their eyes glow like fire, their +faces be pale, their marching forth is like men in a fury, their voice +screeching and grunting, their cry and frenzied clamour; all is iron, +their harness and weapons jingling and clattering, and the guns +thundering. It might have been better suffered, if man, for lack of meat +and drink, should have fought with man, to the intent he might devour his +flesh and drink his blood: albeit, it is come also now to that pass, that +some there be that do it more of hatred than either for hunger or for +thirst. But now this same thing is done more cruelly, with weapons +envenomed, and with devilish engines. So that nowhere may be perceived any +token of man. Trow ye that Nature could here know it was the same thing, +that she sometime had wrought with her own hands? And if any man would +inform her, that it were man that she beheld in such array, might she not +well, with great wondering, say these words? + +"What new manner of pageant is this that I behold? What devil of hell hath +brought us forth this monster. There be some that call me a stepmother, +because that among so great heaps of things of my making I have brought +forth some venomous things (and yet have I ordained the selfsame venomous +things for man's behoof); and because I have made some beasts very fierce +and perilous: and yet is there no beast so wild nor so perilous, but that +by craft and diligence he may be made tame and gentle. By man's diligent +labour the lions have been made tame, the dragons meek, and the bears +obedient. But what is this, that worse is than any stepmother, which hath +brought us forth this new unreasonable brute beast, the pestilence and +mischief of all this world? One beast alone I brought forth wholly +dedicate to be benevolent, pleasant, friendly, and wholesome to all other. +What hath chanced, that this creature is changed into such a brute beast? +I perceive nothing of the creature man, which I myself made. What evil +spirit hath thus defiled my work? What witch hath bewitched the mind of +man, and transformed it into such brutishness? What sorceress hath thus +turned him out of his kindly shape? I command and would that the wretched +creature should behold himself in a glass. But, alas, what shall the eyes +see, where the mind is away? Yet behold thyself (if thou canst), thou +furious warrior, and see if thou mayst by any means recover thyself again. +From whence hast thou that threatening crest upon thy head? From whence +hast thou that shining helmet? From whence are those iron horns? Whence +cometh it, that thine elbows are so sharp and piked? Where hadst thou +those scales? Where hadst thou those brazen teeth? Of whence are those +hard plates? Whence are those deadly weapons? From whence cometh to thee +this voice more horrible than of a wild beast? What a look and countenance +hast thou more terrible than of a brute beast? Where hast thou gotten this +thunder and lightning, both more fearful and hurtful than is the very +thunder and lightning itself? I formed thee a goodly creature; what came +into thy mind, that thou wouldst thus transform thyself into so cruel and +so beastly fashion, that there is no brute beast so unreasonable in +comparison unto man?" + +These words, and many other such like, I suppose, the Dame Nature, the +worker of all things, would say. Then since man is such as is showed +before that he is, and that war is such a thing, like as too oft we have +felt and known, it seemeth to me no small wonder, what ill spirit, what +disease, or what mishap, first put into man's mind, that he would bathe +his mortal weapon in the blood of man. It must needs be, that men mounted +up to so great madness by divers degrees. For there was never man yet (as +Juvenal saith) that was suddenly most graceless of all. And always things +the worst have crept in among men's manners of living, under the shadow +and shape of goodness. For some time those men that were in the beginning +of the world led their lives in woods; they went naked, they had no walled +towns, nor houses to put their heads in: it happened otherwhile that they +were sore grieved and destroyed with wild beasts. Wherefore with them +first of all, men made war, and he was esteemed a mighty strong man, and a +captain, that could best defend mankind from the violence of wild beasts. +Yea, and it seemed to them a thing most equable to strangle the +stranglers, and to slay the slayers, namely, when the wild beast, not +provoked by us for any hurt to them done, would wilfully set upon us. And +so by reason that this was counted a thing most worthy of praise (for +hereof it rose that Hercules was made a god), the lusty-stomached young +men began all about to hunt and chase the wild beasts, and as a token of +their valiant victory the skins of such beasts as they slew were set up in +such places as the people might behold them. Besides this they were not +contented to slay the wild beasts, but they used to wear their skins to +keep them from the cold in winter. These were the first slaughters that +men used: these were their spoils and robberies. After this, they went so +farforth, that they were bold to do a thing which Pythagoras thought to be +very wicked; and it might seem to us also a thing monstrous, if custom +were not, which hath so great strength in every place: that by custom it +was reputed in some countries a much charitable deed if a man would, when +his father was very old, first sore beat him, and after thrust him +headlong into a pit, and so bereave him of his life, by whom it chanced +him to have the gift of life. It was counted a holy thing for a man to +feed on the flesh of his own kinsmen and friends. They thought it a goodly +thing, that a virgin should be made common to the people in the temple of +Venus. And many other things, more abominable than these: of which if a +man should now but only speak, every man would abhor to hear him. Surely +there is nothing so ungracious, nor nothing so cruel, but men will hold +therewith, if it be once approved by custom. Then will ye hear, what a +deed they durst at the last do? They were not abashed to eat the carcases +of the wild beasts that were slain, to tear the unsavoury flesh with their +teeth, to drink the blood, to suck out the matter of them, and (as Ovid +saith) to hide the beasts' bowels within their own. And although at that +time it seemed to be an outrageous deed unto them that were of a more mild +and gentle courage: yet was it generally allowed, and all by reason of +custom and commodity. Yet were they not so content. For they went from the +slaying of noisome wild beasts, to kill the harmless beasts, and such as +did no hurt at all. They waxed cruel everywhere upon the poor sheep, a +beast without fraud or guile. They slew the hare, for none other offence, +but because he was a good fat dish of meat to feed upon. Nor they forbare +not to kill the tame ox, which had a long season, with his sore labour, +nourished the unkind household. They spared no kind of beasts, of fowls, +nor of fishes. Yea, and the tyranny of gluttony went so farforth that +there was no beast anywhere that could be sure from the cruelty of man. +Yea, and custom persuaded this also, that it seemed no cruelty at all to +slay any manner of beast, whatsoever it was, so they abstained from +manslaughter. Now peradventure it lieth in our power to keep out vices, +that they enter not upon the manners of men, in like manner as it lieth in +our power to keep out the sea, that it break not in upon us; but when the +sea is once broken in, it passeth our power to restrain it within any +bounds. So either of them both once let in, they will not be ruled, as we +would, but run forth headlong whithersoever their own rage carrieth them. +And so after that men had been exercised with such beginnings to +slaughter, wrath anon enticed man to set upon man, either with staff, or +with stone, or else with his fist. For as yet, I think they used no other +weapons. And now had they learned by the killing of beasts, that man also +might soon and easily be slain with little labour. But this cruelty +remained betwixt singular persons, so that yet there was no great number +of men that fought together, but as it chanced one man against another. +And besides this, there was no small colour of equity, if a man slew his +enemy; yea, and shortly after, it was a great praise to a man to slay a +violent and a mischievous man, and to rid him out of the world, such +devilish and cruel caitiffs, as men say Cacus and Busiris were. For we see +plainly, that for such causes, Hercules was greatly praised. And in +process of time, many assembled to take part together, either as affinity, +or as neighbourhood, or kindred bound them. And what is now robbery was +then war. And they fought then with stones, or with stakes, a little +burned at the ends. A little river, a rock, or such other like thing, +chancing to be between them, made an end of their battle. + +In the mean season, while fierceness by use increaseth, while wrath is +grown great, and ambition hot and vehement, by ingenious craft they arm +their furious violence. They devise harness, such as it is, to fence them +with. They invent weapons to destroy their enemies with. Thus now by few +and few, now with greater company, and now armed they begin to fight. Nor +to this manifest madness they forget not to give honour. For they call it +Bellum, that is to say, a fair thing; yea, and they repute it a virtuous +deed, if a man, with the jeopardy of his own life, manly resist and defend +from the violence of his enemies, his wife, children, beasts, and +household. And by little and little, malice grew so great, with the high +esteeming of other things, that one city began to send defiance and make +war to another, country against country, and realm against realm. And +though the thing of itself was then most cruel, yet all this while there +remained in them certain tokens, whereby they might be known for men: for +such goods as by violence were taken away were asked and required again by +an herald at arms; the gods were called to witness; yea, and when they +were ranged in battle, they would reason the matter ere they fought. And +in the battle they used but homely weapons, nor they used neither guile +nor deceit, but only strength. It was not lawful for a man to strike his +enemy till the sign of battle was given; nor was it not lawful to fight +after the sounding of the retreat. And for conclusion, they fought more to +show their manliness and for praise, than they coveted to slay. Nor all +this while they armed them not, but against strangers, the which they +called hostes, as they had been hospites, their guests. Of this rose +empires, of the which there was never none yet in any nation, but it was +gotten with the great shedding of man's blood. And since that time there +hath followed continual course of war, while one eftsoons laboureth to put +another out of his empire, and to set himself in. After all this, when the +empires came once into their hands that were most ungracious of all other, +they made war upon whosoever pleased them; nor were they not in greatest +peril and danger of war that had most deserved to be punished, but they +that by fortune had gotten great riches. And now they made not war to get +praise and fame, but to get the vile muck of the world, or else some other +thing far worse than that. + +I think not the contrary, but that the great, wise man Pythagoras meant +these things when he by a proper device of philosophy frightened the +unlearned multitude of people from the slaying of silly beasts. For he +perceived, it should at length come to pass, that he which (by no injury +provoked) was accustomed to spill the blood of a harmless beast, would in +his anger, being provoked by injury, not fear to slay a man. + +War, what other thing else is it than a common manslaughter of many men +together, and a robbery, the which, the farther it sprawleth abroad, the +more mischievous it is? But many gross gentlemen nowadays laugh merrily at +these things, as though they were the dreams and dotings of schoolmen, the +which, saving the shape, have no point of manhood, yet seem they in their +own conceit to be gods. And yet of those beginnings, we see we be run so +far in madness, that we do naught else all our life-days. We war +continually, city with city, prince with prince, people with people, yea, +and (it that the heathen people confess to be a wicked thing) cousin with +cousin, alliance with alliance, brother with brother, the son with the +father, yea, and that I esteem more cruel than all these things, a +Christian man against another man; and yet furthermore, I will say that I +am very loath to do, which is a thing most cruel of all, one Christian man +with another Christian man. Oh, blindness of man's mind! at those things +no man marvelleth, no man abhorreth them. There be some that rejoice at +them, and praise them above the moon: and the thing which is more than +devilish, they call a holy thing. Old men, crooked for age, make war, +priests make war, monks go forth to war; yea, and with a thing so devilish +we mingle Christ. The battles ranged, they encounter the one the other, +bearing before them the sign of the Cross, which thing alone might at the +leastwise admonish us by what means it should become Christian men to +overcome. + +But we run headlong each to destroy other, even from that heavenly +sacrifice of the altar, whereby is represented that perfect and ineffable +knitting together of all Christian men. And of so wicked a thing, we make +Christ both author and witness. Where is the kingdom of the devil, if it +be not in war? Why draw we Christ into war, with whom a brothel-house +agreeth more than war? Saint Paul disdaineth, that there should be any so +great discord among Christian men, that they should need any judge to +discuss the matter between them. What if he should come and behold us now +through all the world, warring for every light and trifling cause, +striving more cruelly than ever did any heathen people, and more cruelly +than any barbarous people? Yea, and ye shall see it done by the authority, +exhortations, and furtherings of those that represent Christ, the prince +of peace and very bishop that all things knitteth together by peace and of +those that salute the people with good luck of peace. Nor is it not +unknown to me what these unlearned people say (a good while since) against +me in this matter, whose winnings arise of the common evils. They say +thus: We make war against our wills: for we be constrained by the +ungracious deeds of other. We make war but for our right. And if there +come any hurt thereof, thank them that be causers of it. But let these men +hold their tongues awhile, and I shall after, in place convenient, avoid +all their cavillations, and pluck off that false visor wherewith we hide +all our malice. + +But first as I have above compared man with war, that is to say, the +creature most demure with a thing most outrageous, to the intent that +cruelty might the better be perceived: so will I compare war and peace +together, the thing most wretched, and most mischievous, with the best and +most wealthy thing that is. And so at last shall appear, how great madness +it is, with so great tumult, with so great labours, with such intolerable +expenses, with so many calamities, affectionately to desire war: whereas +agreement might be bought with a far less price. + +First of all, what in all this world is more sweet or better than amity or +love? Truly nothing. And I pray you, what other thing is peace than amity +and love among men, like as war on the other side is naught else but +dissension and debate of many men together? And surely the property of +good things is such, that the broader they be spread, the more profit and +commodity cometh of them. Farther, if the love of one singular person with +another be so sweet and delectable, how great should the felicity be if +realm with realm, and nation with nation, were coupled together, with the +band of amity and love? On the other side, the nature of evil things is +such, that the farther they sprawl abroad, the more worthy they are to be +called evil, as they be indeed. Then if it be a wretched thing, if it be +an ungracious thing, that one man armed should fight with another, how +much more miserable, how much more mischievous is it, that the selfsame +thing should be done with so many thousands together? By love and peace +the small things increase and wax great, by discord and debate the great +things decay and come to naught. Peace is the mother and nurse of all good +things. War suddenly and at once overthroweth, destroyeth, and utterly +fordoeth everything that is pleasant and fair, and bringeth in among men a +monster of all mischievous things. + +In the time of peace (none otherwise than as if the lusty springtime +should show and shine in men's businesses) the fields are tilled, the +gardens and orchards freshly flourish, the beasts pasture merrily; gay +manours in the country are edified, the towns are builded, where as need +is reparations are done, the buildings are heightened and augmented, +riches increase, pleasures are nourished, the laws are executed, the +common wealth flourisheth, religion is fervent, right reigneth, gentleness +is used, craftsmen are busily exercised, the poor men's gain is more +plentiful, the wealthiness of the rich men is more gay and goodly, the +studies of most honest learnings flourish, youth is well taught, the aged +folks have quiet and rest, maidens are luckily married, mothers are +praised for bringing forth of children like to their progenitors, the good +men prosper and do well, and the evil men do less offence. + +But as soon as the cruel tempest of war cometh on us, good Lord, how great +a flood of mischiefs occupieth, overfloweth, and drowneth all together. +The fair herds of beasts are driven away, the goodly corn is trodden down +and destroyed, the good husbandmen are slain, the villages are burned up, +the most wealthy cities, that have flourished so many winters, with that +one storm are overthrown, destroyed, and brought to naught: so much +readier and prompter men are to do hurt than good. The good citizens are +robbed and spoiled of their goods by cursed thieves and murderers. Every +place is full of fear, of wailing, complaining, and lamenting. The +craftsmen stand idle; the poor men must either die for hunger, or fall to +stealing. The rich men either stand and sorrow for their goods, that be +plucked and snatched from them, or else they stand in great doubt to lose +such goods as they have left them: so that they be on every side +woebegone. The maidens, either they be not married at all, or else if they +be married, their marriages are sorrowful and lamentable. Wives, being +destitute of their husbands, lie at home without any fruit of children, +the laws are laid aside, gentleness is laughed to scorn, right is clean +exiled, religion is set at naught, hallowed and unhallowed things all are +one, youth is corrupted with all manner of vices, the old folk wail and +weep, and wish themselves out of the world, there is no honour given unto +the study of good letters. Finally, there is no tongue can tell the harm +and mischief that we feel in war. + +Perchance war might be the better suffered, if it made us but only +wretched and needy; but it maketh us ungracious, and also full of +unhappiness. And I think Peace likewise should be much made of, if it were +but only because it maketh us more wealthy and better in our living. Alas, +there be too many already, yea, and more than too many mischiefs and +evils, with the which the wretched life of man (whether he will or no) is +continually vexed, tormented, and utterly consumed. + +It is near hand two thousand years since the physicians had knowledge of +three hundred divers notable sicknesses by name, besides other small +sicknesses and new, as daily spring among us, and besides age also, which +is of itself a sickness inevitable. + +We read that in one place whole cities have been destroyed with +earthquakes. We read, also, that in another place there have been cities +altogether burnt with lightning; how in another place whole regions have +been swallowed up with opening of the earth, towns by undermining have +fallen to the ground; so that I need not here to remember what a great +multitude of men are daily destroyed by divers chances, which be not +regarded because they happen so often: as sudden breaking out of the sea +and of great floods, falling down of hills and houses, poison, wild +beasts, meat, drink, and sleep. One hath been strangled with drinking of a +hair in a draught of milk, another hath been choked with a little +grapestone, another with a fishbone sticking in his throat. There hath +been, that sudden joy hath killed out of hand: for it is less wonder of +them that die for vehement sorrow. Besides all this, what mortal +pestilence see we in every place. There is no part of the world, that is +not subject to peril and danger of man's life, which life of itself also +is most fugitive. So manifold mischances and evils assail man on every +side that not without cause Homer did say: Man was the most wretched of +all creatures living. + +But forasmuch these mischances cannot lightly be eschewed, nor they happen +not through our fault, they make us but only wretched, and not ungracious +withal. What pleasure is it then for them that be subject already to so +many miserable chances, willingly to seek and procure themselves another +mischief more than they had before, as though they yet wanted misery? Yea, +they procure not a light evil, but such an evil that is worse than all the +others, so mischievous, that it alone passeth all the others; so abundant, +that in itself alone is comprehended all ungraciousness; so pestilent, +that it maketh us all alike wicked as wretched, it maketh us full of all +misery, and yet not worthy to be pitied. + +Now go farther, and with all these things consider, that the commodities +of Peace spread themselves most far and wide, and pertain unto many men. +In war if there happen anything luckily (but, O good Lord, what may we say +happeneth well and luckily in war?), it pertaineth to very few, and to +them that are unworthy to have it. The prosperity of one is the +destruction of another. The enriching of one is the spoil and robbing of +another. The triumph of one is the lamentable mourning of another, so that +as the infelicity is bitter and sharp, the felicity is cruel and bloody. +Howbeit otherwhile both parties wept according to the proverb, Victoria +Cadmaea, Cadmus victorie, where both parties repented. And I wot not +whether it came ever so happily to pass in war, that he that had victory +did not repent him of his enterprise, if he were a good man. + +Then seeing Peace is the thing above all other most best and most +pleasant, and, contrariwise, war the thing most ungracious and wretched of +all other, shall we think those men to be in their right minds, the which +when they may obtain Peace with little business and labour will rather +procure war with so great labour and most difficulty? + +First of all consider, how loathly a thing the rumour of war is, when it +is first spoken of. Then how envious a thing it is unto a prince, while +with often tithes and taxes he pillageth his subjects. What a business +hath he to make and entertain friends to help him? what a business to +procure bands of strangers and to hire soldiers? + +What expenses and labours must he make in setting forth his navy of ships, +in building and repairing of castles and fortresses, in preparing and +apparelling of his tents and pavilions, in framing, making, and carrying +of engines, guns, armour, weapons, baggage, carts, and victual? What great +labour is spent in making of bulwarks, in casting of ditches, in digging +of mines, in keeping of watches, in keeping of arrays, and in exercising +of weapons? I pass over the fear they be in; I speak not of the imminent +danger and peril that hangeth over their heads: for what thing in war is +not to be feared? What is he that can reckon all the incommodious life +that the most foolish soldiers suffer in the field? And for that worthy to +endure worse, in that they will suffer it willingly. Their meat is so ill +that an ox of Cyprus would be loath to eat it; they have but little sleep, +nor yet that at their own pleasure. Their tents on every side are open on +the wind. What, a tent? No, no; they must all the day long, be it hot or +cold, wet or dry, stand in the open air, sleep on the bare ground, stand +in their harness. They must suffer hunger, thirst, cold, heat, dust, +showers; they must be obedient to their captains; sometimes they be +clapped on the pate with a warder or a truncheon: so that there is no +bondage so vile as the bondage of soldiers. + +Besides all this, at the sorrowful sign given to fight, they must run +headlong to death: for either they must slay cruelly, or be slain +wretchedly. So many sorrowful labours must they take in hand, that they +may bring to pass that thing which is most wretched of all other. With so +many great miseries we must first afflict and grieve our own self, that we +may afflict and grieve other! + +Now if we would call this matter to account, and justly reckon how much +war will cost, and how much peace, surely we shall find that peace may be +got and obtained with the tenth part of the cares, labours, griefs, +perils, expenses, and spilling of blood, with which the war is procured. +So great a company of men, to their extreme perils, ye lead out of the +realm to overthrow and destroy some one town: and with the labour of the +selfsame men, and without any peril at all, another town, much more noble +and goodly, might be new edified and builded. But you say, you will hurt +and grieve your enemy: so even that doing is against humanity. +Nevertheless, this I would ye should consider, that ye cannot hurt and +grieve your enemies, but ye must first greatly hurt your own people. And +it seemeth a point of a madman, to enterprise where he is sure and certain +of so great hurt and damage, and is uncertain which way the chance of war +will turn. + +But admit, that either foolishness, or wrath, or ambition, or +covetousness, or outrageous cruelty, or else (which I think more like) the +furies sent from hell, should ravish and draw the heathen people to this +madness. Yet from whence cometh it into our minds, that one Christian man +should draw his weapon to bathe it in another Christian man's blood? It is +called parricide, if the one brother slay the other. And yet is a +Christian man nearer joined to another than is one brother to another: +except the bonds of nature be stronger than the bonds of Christ. What +abominable thing, then, is it to see them almost continually fighting +among themselves, the which are the inhabitants of one house the Church, +which rejoice and say, that they all be the members of one body, and that +have one head, which truly is Christ; they have all one Father in heaven; +they are all taught and comforted by one Holy Spirit; they profess the +religion of Christ all under one manner; they are all redeemed with +Christ's blood; they are all newborn at the holy font; they use alike +sacraments; they be all soldiers under one captain; they are all fed with +one heavenly bread; they drink all of one spiritual cup; they have one +common enemy the devil; finally, they be all called to one inheritance. +Where be they so many sacraments of perfect concord? Where be the +innumerable teachings of peace? There is one special precept, which Christ +called his, that is, Charity. And what thing is so repugnant to charity as +war? Christ saluted his disciples with the blessed luck of peace. Unto his +disciples he gave nothing save peace, saving peace he left them nothing. +In those holy prayers, he specially prayed the Father of heaven, that in +like manner as he was one with the Father, so all his, that is to say, +Christian men, should be one with him. Lo, here you may perceive a thing +more than peace, more than amity, more than concord. + +Solomon bare the figure of Christ: for Solomon in the Hebrew tongue +signifieth peaceable or peaceful. Him God would have to build his temple. +At the birth of Christ the angels proclaimed neither war nor triumphs, but +peace they sang. And before his birth the prophet David prophesied thus of +him: Et factus est in pace locus ejus, that is to say, His dwelling place +is made in peace. Search all the whole life of Christ, and ye shall never +find thing that breathes not of peace, that signifieth not amity, that +savoureth not of charity. And because he perceived peace could not well be +kept, except men would utterly despise all those things for which the +world so greedily fighteth, he commanded that we should of him learn to be +meek. He calleth them blessed and happy that setteth naught by riches, for +those he calleth poor in spirit. Blessed be they that despise the +pleasures of this world, the which he calleth mourners. And them blessed +he calleth that patiently suffer themselves, to be put out of their +possessions, knowing that here in this world they are but as outlaws; and +the very true country and possession of godly creatures is in heaven. He +calleth them blessed which, deserving well of all men, are wrongfully +blamed and ill afflicted. He forbade that any man should resist evil. +Briefly, as all his doctrine commandeth sufferance and love, so all his +life teacheth nothing else but meekness. So he reigned, so he warred, so +he overcame, so he triumphed. + +Now the apostles, that had sucked into them the pure spirit of Christ, and +were blessedly drunk with that new must of the Holy Ghost, preached +nothing but meekness and peace. What do all the epistles of Paul sound in +every place but peace, but long-suffering, but charity? What speaketh +Saint John, what rehearseth he so oft, but love? What other thing did +Peter? What other thing did all the true Christian writers? From whence +then cometh all this tumult of wars amongst the children of peace? Think +ye it a fable, that Christ calleth himself a vine tree, and his own the +branches? Who did ever see one branch fight with another? Is it in vain +that Paul so oft wrote, The Church to be none other thing, than one body +compact together of divers members, cleaving to one head, Christ? Whoever +saw the eye fight with the hand, or the belly with the foot? In this +universal body, compact of all those unlike things, there is agreement. In +the body of a beast, one member is in peace with another, and each member +useth not the property thereto given for itself alone, but for the profit +of all the other members. So that if there come any good to any one member +alone, it helpeth all the whole body. And may the compaction or knitting +of Nature do more in the body of a beast, that shortly must perish, than +the coupling of the Holy Ghost in the mystical and immortal body of the +Church? Do we to no purpose pray as taught by Christ: Good Lord, even as +thy will is fulfilled in heaven, so let it be fulfilled in the earth? In +that city of heaven is concord and peace most perfect. And Christ would +have his Church to be none other than a heavenly people in earth, as near +as might be after the manner of them that are in heaven, ever labouring +and making haste to go thither, and always having their mind thereon. + +Now go to, let us imagine, that there should come some new guest out of +the lunar cities, where Empedocles dwelleth, or else out of the +innumerable worlds, that Democritus fabricated, into this world, desiring +to know what the inhabitants do here. And when he was instructed of +everything, it should at last be told him that, besides all other, there +is one creature marvellously mingled, of body like to brute beasts and of +soul like unto God. And it should also be told him, that this creature is +so noble, that though he be here an outlaw out of his own country, yet are +all other beasts at his commandment, the which creature through his +heavenly beginning inclineth alway to things heavenly and immortal. And +that God eternal loved this creature so well, that whereas he could +neither by the gifts of nature, nor by the strong reasons of philosophy +attain unto that which he so fervently desired, he sent hither his only +begotten son, to the intent to teach this creature a new kind of learning. +Then as soon as this new guest had perceived well the whole manner of +Christ's life and precepts, would desire to stand in some high place, from +whence he might behold that which he had heard. And when he should see +all other creatures soberly live according to their kind, and, being led +by the laws and course of nature, desire nothing but even as Nature would; +and should see this one special creature man given riotously to tavern +haunting, to vile lucre, to buying and selling, chopping and changing, to +brawling and fighting one with another, trow ye that he would not think +that any of the other creatures were man, of whom he heard so much of +before, rather than he that is indeed man? Then if he that had instructed +him afore would show him which creature is man, now would he look about to +see if he could spy the Christian flock and company, the which, following +the ordinance of that heavenly teacher Christ, should exhibit to him a +figure or shape of the evangelical city. Think ye he would not rather +judge Christians to dwell in any other place than in those countries, +wherein we see so great superfluity, riot, voluptuousness, pride, tyranny, +discord, brawlings, fightings, wars, tumults, yea, and briefly to speak, a +greater puddle of all those things that Christ reproveth than among Turks +or Saracens? From whence, then, creepeth this pestilence in among +Christian people? Doubtless this mischief also is come in by little and +little, like as many more other be, ere men be aware of them. For truly +every mischief creepeth by little and little upon the good manners of men, +or else under the colour of goodness it is suddenly received. + +So then first of all, learning and cunning crept in as a thing very meet +to confound heretics, which defend their opinions with the doctrine of +philosophers, poets, and orators. And surely at the beginning of our +faith, Christian men did not learn those things; but such as peradventure +had learned them, before they knew what Christ meant, they turned the +thing that they had learned already, into good use. + +Eloquence of tongue was at the beginning dissembled more than despised, +but at length it was openly approved. After that, under colour of +confounding heretics, came in an ambitious pleasure of brawling +disputations, which hath brought into the Church of Christ no small +mischief. At length the matter went so farforth that Aristotle was +altogether received into the middle of divinity, and so received, that his +authority is almost reputed holier than the authority of Christ. For if +Christ spake anything that did little agree with our life, by +interpretation of Aristotle it was lawful to make it serve their purpose. +But if any do never so little repugn against the high divinity of +Aristotle, he is quickly with clapping of hands driven out of the place. +For of him we have learned, that the felicity of man is imperfect, except +he have both the good gifts of body and of fortune. Of him we have +learned, that no commonweal may flourish, in which all things are +common. And we endeavour ourselves to glue fast together the decrees of +this man and the doctrine of Christ--which is as likely a thing as to +mingle fire and water together. And a gobbet we have received of the civil +laws, because of the equity that seemeth to be in them. And to the end +they should the better serve our purpose, we have, as near as may be, +writhed and plied the doctrine of the gospel to them. Now by the civil law +it is lawful for a man to defend violence with violence, and each to +pursue for his right. Those laws approve buying and selling; they allow +usury, so it be measurable; they praise war as a noble thing, so, it be +just. Finally all the doctrine of Christ is so defiled with the learning +of logicians, sophisters, astronomers, orators, poets, philosophers, +lawyers, and gentles, that a man shall spend the most part of his life, +ere he may have any leisure to search holy scripture, to the which when a +man at last cometh, he must come infected with so many worldly opinions, +that either he must be offended with Christ's doctrines, or else he must +apply them to the mind and of them that he hath learned before. And this +thing is so much approved, that it is now a heinous deed, if a man presume +to study holy scripture, which hath not buried himself up to the hard ears +in those trifles, or rather sophistries of Aristotle. As though Christ's +doctrine were such, that it were not lawful for all men to know it, or +else that it could by any means agree with the wisdom of philosophers. +Besides this we admitted at the beginning of our faith some honour, which +afterward we claimed as of duty. Then we received riches, but that was to +distribute to relieve poor men, which afterwards we turned to our own use. +And why not, since we have learned by the law civil, that the very order +of charity is, that every man must first provide for himself? Nor lack +there colours to cloak this mischief: first it is a good deed to provide +for our children, and it is right that we foresee how to live in age; +finally, why should we, say they, give our goods away, if we come by them +without fraud? By these degrees it is by little and little come to pass, +that he is taken for the best man that hath most riches: nor never was +there more honour given to riches among the heathen people, than is at +this day among the Christian people. For what thing is there, either +spiritual or temporal, that is not done with great show of riches? And it +seemed a thing agreeable with those ornaments, if Christian men had some +great jurisdiction under them. Nor there wanted not such as gladly +submitted themselves. Albeit at the beginning it was against their wills, +and scantly would they receive it. And yet with much work, they received +it so, that they were content with the name and title only: the profit +thereof they gladly gave unto other men. At the last, little by little +it came to pass, that a bishop thought himself no bishop, except he had +some temporal lordship withal; an abbot thought himself of small +authority, if he had not wherewith to play the lordly sire. And in +conclusion, we blushed never a deal at the matter, we wiped away all +shamefastness, and shoved aside all the bars of comeliness. And whatever +abuse was used among the heathen people, were it covetousness, ambition, +riot, pomp, or pride, or tyranny, the same we follow, in the same we match +them, yea, and far pass them. And to pass over the lighter things for the +while, I pray you, was there ever war among the heathen people so long +continually, or more cruelly, than among Christian people? What stormy +rumblings, what violent brays of war, what tearing of leagues, and what +piteous slaughters of men have we seen ourselves within these few years? +What nation hath not fought and skirmished with another? And then we go +and curse the Turk; and what can be a more pleasant sight to the Turks, +than to behold us daily each slaying other? + +Xerxes doted, when he led out of his own country that huge multitude of +people to make war upon the Greeks. Trow ye, was he not mad, when he wrote +letters to the mountain called Athos, threatening that the hill should +repent except it obeyed his lust? And the same Xerxes commanded also the +sea to be beaten, because it was somewhat rough when he should have +sailed over. + +Who will deny but Alexander the Great was mad also? He, the young god, +wished that there were many worlds, the which he might conquer--so great a +fever of vainglory had embraced his young lusty courage. And yet these +same men, the which Seneca doubted not to call mad thieves, warred after a +gentler fashion than we do; they were more faithful of their promise in +war, nor they used not so mischievous engines in war, nor such crafts and +subtleties, nor they warred not for so light causes as we Christian men +do. They rejoiced to advance and enrich such provinces as they had +conquered by war; and the rude people, that lived like wild beasts without +laws, learning, or good manners, they taught them both civil conditions +and crafts, whereby they might live like men. In countries that were not +inhabited with people, they builded cities, and made them both fair and +profitable. And the places that were not very sure, they fenced, for +safeguard of the people, with bridges, banks, bulwarks; and with a +thousand other such commodities they helped the life of man. So that then +it was right expedient to be overcome. Yea, and how many things read we, +that were either wisely done, or soberly spoken of them in the midst of +their wars. As for those things that are done in Christian men's wars they +are more filthy and cruel than is convenient here to rehearse. Moreover, +look what was worst in the heathen peoples' wars, in that we follow them, +yea, we pass them. + +But now it is worth while to hear, by what means we maintain this our so +great madness. Thus they reason: If it had not been lawful by no means to +make war, surely God would never have been the author to the Jews to make +war against their enemies. Well said, but we must add hereunto, that the +Jews never made war among themselves, but against strangers and wicked +men. We, Christian men, fight with Christian men. Diversity of religion +caused the Jews to fight against their enemies: for their enemies +worshipped not God as they did. We make war oftentimes for a little +childish anger, or for hunger of money, or for thirst of glory, or else +for filthy meed. The Jews fought by the commandment of God; we make war to +avenge the grief and displeasure of our mind. And nevertheless if men will +so much lean to the example of the Jews, why do we not then in like manner +use circumcision? Why do we not sacrifice with the blood of sheep and +other beasts? Why do we not abstain from swine's flesh? Why doth not each +of us wed many wives? Since we abhor those things, why doth the example of +war please us so much? Why do we here follow the bare letter that killeth? +It was permitted the Jews to make war, but so likewise as they were +suffered to depart from their wives, doubtless because of their hard and +froward manners. But after Christ commanded the sword to be put up, it is +unlawful for Christian men to make any other war but that which is the +fairest war of all, with the most eager and fierce enemies of the Church, +with affection of money, with wrath, with ambition, with dread of death. +These be our Philistines, these be our Nabuchodonosors, these be our +Moabites and Ammonites, with the which it behooveth us to have no truce. +With these we must continually fight, until (our enemies being utterly +vanquished) we may be in quiet, for except we may overcome them, there is +no man that may attain to any true peace, neither with himself, nor yet +with no other. For this war alone is cause of true peace. He that +overcometh in this battle, will make war with no man living. Nor I regard +not the interpretation that some men make of the two swords, to signify +either power spiritual or temporal. When Christ suffered Peter to err +purposely, yea, after he was commanded to put up his sword, no man should +doubt but that war was forbidden, which before seemed to be lawful. But +Peter (say they) fought. True it is, Peter fought; he was yet but a Jew, +and had not the spirit of a very Christian man. He fought not for his +lands, or for any such titles of lands as we do, nor yet for his own life, +but for his Master's life. And finally, he fought, the which within a +while after forsook his Master. Now if men will needs follow the example +of Peter that fought, why might they not as well follow the example of +him forsaking his Master? And though Peter through simple affection erred, +yet did his Master rebuke him. For else, if Christ did allow such manner +of defence, as some most foolishly do interpret, why doth both all the +life and doctrine of Christ preach no other thing but sufferance? Why sent +he forth his disciples again tyrants, armed with nothing else but with a +walking-staff and a scrip? If that sword, which Christ commanded his +disciples to sell their coats to buy, be moderate defence against +persecutors, like as some men do not only wickedly but also blindly +interpret, why did the martyrs never use that defence? But (say they) the +law of nature commandeth, it is approved by the laws, and allowed by +custom, that we ought to put off from us violence by violence, and that +each of us should defend his life, and eke his money, when the money (as +Hesiod saith) is as lief as the life. All this I grant, but yet grace, the +law of Christ, that is of more effect than all these things, commandeth +us, that we should not speak ill to them that speak shrewdly to us; that +we should do well to them that do ill to us, and to them that take away +part of our possessions, we should give the whole; and that we should also +pray for them that imagine our death. But these things (say they) +appertain to the apostles; yea, they appertain to the universal people of +Christ, and to the whole body of Christ's Church, that must needs be a +whole and a perfect body, although in its gifts one member is more +excellent than another. To them the doctrine of Christ appertaineth not, +that hope not to have reward with Christ. Let them fight for money and for +lordships, that laugh to scorn the saying of Christ: Blessed be the poor +men in spirit; that is to say, be they poor or rich, blessed be they that +covet no riches in this world. They that put all their felicity in these +riches, they fight gladly to defend their life; but they be those that +understand not this life to be rather a death, nor they perceive not that +everlasting life is prepared for good men. Now they lay against us divers +bishops of Rome, the which have been both authors and abettors of warring. +True it is, some such there have been, but they were of late, and in such +time as the doctrine of Christ waxed cold. Yea, and they be very few in +comparison of the holy fathers that were before them, which with their +writings persuade us to flee war. Why are these few examples most in mind? +Why turn we our eyes from Christ to men? And why had we rather follow the +uncertain examples, than the authority that is sure and certain? For +doubtless the bishops of Rome were men. And it may be right well, that +they were either fools or ungracious caitiffs. And yet we find not that +any of them approved that we should still continually war after this +fashion as we do, which thing I could with arguments prove, if I listed +to digress and tarry thereupon. + +Saint Bernard praised warriors, but he so praised them, that he condemned +all the manner of our warfare. And yet why should the saying of Saint +Bernard, or the disputation of Thomas the Alquine, move me rather than the +doctrine of Christ, which commandeth, that we should in no wise resist +evil, specially under such manner as the common people do resist. + +But it is lawful (say they) that a transgressor be punished and put to +death according to the laws: then is it not lawful for a whole country or +city to be revenged by war? What may be answered in this place, is longer +than is convenient to reply. But this much will I say, there is a great +difference. For the evil-doer, found faulty and convicted, is by authority +of the laws put to death. In war there is neither part without fault. +Whereas one singular man doth offend, the punishment falleth only on +himself; and the example of the punishment doth good unto all others. In +war the most part of the punishment and harm falls upon them that least +deserve to be punished; that is, upon husbandmen, old men, honest wives, +young children, and virgins. But if there may any commodity at all be +gathered of this most mischievous thing, that altogether goeth to the +behoof of certain most vengeable thieves, hired soldiers, and strong +robbers, and perhaps to a few captains, by whose craft war was raised +for that intent, and with which the matter goeth never better than when +the commonweal is in most high jeopardy and peril to be lost. Whereas one +is for his offence grievously punished, it is the wealthy warning of all +other: but in war to the end to revenge the quarrel of one, or else +peradventure of a few, we cruelly afflict and grieve many thousands of +them that nothing deserved. It were better to leave the offence of a few +unpunished than while we seek occasion to punish one or two, to bring into +assured peril and danger, both our neighbours and innocent enemies (we +call them our enemies, though they never did us hurt); and yet are we +uncertain, whether it shall fall on them or not, that we would have +punished. It is better to let a wound alone, that cannot be cured without +grievous hurt and danger of all the whole body, than go about to heal it. + +Now if any man will cry out and say: It were against all right, that he +that offendeth should not be punished; hereunto I answer, that it is much +more against all right and reason, that so many thousands of innocents +should be brought into extreme calamity and mischief without deserving. +Albeit nowadays we see, that almost all wars spring up I cannot tell of +what titles, and of leagues between princes, that while they go about to +subdue to their dominion some one town, they put in jeopardy all their +whole empire. And yet within a while after, they sell or give away the +same town again, that they got with shedding of so much blood. + +Peradventure some man will say: Wouldst not have princes fight for their +right? I know right well, it is not meet for such a man as I am, to +dispute overboldly of princes' matters, and though I might do it without +any danger, yet is it longer than is convenient for this place. But this +much will I say: If each whatsoever title be a cause convenient to go in +hand with war, there is no man that in so great alterations of men's +affairs, and in so great variety and changes, can want a title. What +nation is there that hath not sometime been put out of their own country, +and also have put other out? How oft have people gone from one country to +another? How oft have whole empires been translated from one to another +either by chance or by league. Let the citizens of Padua claim now again +in God's name the country of Troy for theirs, because Antenor was sometime +a Trojan. Let the Romans now hardily claim again Africa and Spain, because +those provinces were sometime under the Romans. We call that a dominion, +which is but an administration. The power and authority over men, which be +free by Nature, and over brute beasts, is not all one. What power and +sovereignty soever you have, you have it by the consent of the people. And +if I be not deceived, he that hath authority to give, hath authority to +take away again. Will ye see how small a matter it is that we make all +this tumult for? The strife is not, whether this city or that should be +obeisant to a good prince, and not in bondage of a tyrant; but whether +Ferdinand or Sigismund hath the better title to it, whether that city +ought to pay tribute to Philip or to King Louis. This is that noble right, +for the which all the world is thus vexed and troubled with wars and +manslaughter. + +Yet go to, suppose that this right or title be as strong and of as great +authority as may be; suppose also there be no difference between a private +field and a whole city; and admit there be no difference between the +beasts that you have bought with your money and men, which be not only +free, but also true Christians: yet is it a point for a wise man to cast +in his mind, whether the thing that you will war for, be of so great +value, that it will recompense the exceedingly great harms and loss of +your own people. If ye cannot do in every point as becometh a prince, yet +at the leastways do as the merchantman doeth: he setteth naught by that +loss, which he well perceiveth cannot be avoided without a greater loss, +and he reckoneth it a winning, that fortune hath been against him with his +so little loss. Or else at the leastwise follow him, of whom there is a +merry tale commonly told. + +There were two kinsmen at variance about dividing of certain goods, and +when they could by no means agree, they must go to law together, that in +conclusion the matter might be ended by sentence of the judges. They got +them attorneys, the pleas were drawn, men of law had the matter in hand, +they came before the judges, the complaint was entered, the cause was +pleaded, and so was the war begun between them. Anon one of them +remembering himself, called aside his adversary to him and said on this +wise: "First it were a great shame, that a little money should dissever us +twain, whom Nature hath knit so near together. Secondly, the end of our +strife is uncertain, no less than of war. It is in our hands to begin when +we will, but not to make an end. All our strife is but for an hundred +crowns, and we shall spend the double thereof upon notaries, upon +promoters, upon advocates, upon attorneys, upon judges, and upon judges' +friends, if we try the law to the uttermost. We must wait upon these men, +we must flatter and speak them fair, we must give them rewards. And yet I +speak not of the care and thought, nor of the great labour and travail, +that we must take to run about here and there to make friends; and which +of us two that winneth the victory, shall be sure of more incommodity than +profit. Wherefore if we be wise, let us rather see to our own profit, and +the money that shall be evil bestowed upon these bribers, let us divide it +between us twain. And forgive you the half of that ye think should be your +due, and I will forgive as much of mine. And so shall we keep and +preserve our friendship, which else is like to perish, and we shall also +eschew this great business, cost, and charge. If you be not content to +forgo anything of your part, I commit the whole matter into your own +hands; do with it as you will. For I had liefer my friend had this money, +than those insatiable thieves. Methinks I have gained enough, if I may +save my good name, keep my friend, and avoid this unquiet and chargeable +business." Thus partly the telling of the truth, and partly the merry +conceit of his kinsman, moved the other man to agree. So they ended the +matter between themselves, to the great displeasure of the judges and +servants, for they, like a sort of gaping ravens, were deluded and put +beside their prey. + +Let a prince therefore follow the wisdom of these two men, specially in a +matter of much more danger. Nor let him not regard what thing it is that +he would obtain, but what great loss of good things he shall have, in what +great jeopardies he shall be, and what miseries he must endure, to come +thereby. Now if a man will weigh, as it were in a pair of balances, the +commodities of war on the one side and the incommodities on the other +side, he shall find that unjust peace is far better than righteous war. +Why had we rather have war than peace? Who but a madman will angle with a +golden fish-hook? If ye see that the charges and expenses shall amount +far above your gain, yea, though all things go according to your mind, is +it not better that ye forgo part of your right than to buy so little +commodity with so innumerable mischiefs? I had liefer that any other man +had the title, than I should win it with so great effusion of Christian +men's blood. He (whosoever he be) hath now been many years in possession; +he is accustomed to rule, his subjects know him, he behaveth him like a +prince; and one shall come forth, who, finding an old title in some +histories or in some blind evidence, will turn clean upside down the quiet +state and good order of that commonweal. What availeth it with so great +troubling to change any title, which in short space by one chance or other +must go to another man? Specially since we might see, that no things in +this world continue still in one state, but at the scornful pleasure of +fortune they roll to and fro, as the waves of the sea. Finally, if +Christian men cannot despise and set at naught these so light things, yet +whereto need they by and by to run to arms? Since there be so many +bishops, men of great gravity and learning; since there be so many +venerable abbots; since there be so many noble men of great age, whom long +use and experience of things hath made right wise: why are not these +trifling and childish quarrels of princes pacified and set in order by the +wisdom and discretion of these men? But they seem to make a very honest +reason of war, which pretend as they would defend the Church: as though +the people were not the Church, or as though the Church of Christ was +begun, augmented, and stablished with wars and slaughters, and not rather +in spilling of the blood of martyrs, sufferance, and despising of this +life, or as though the whole dignity of the Church rested in the riches of +the priests. Nor to me truly it seemeth not so allowable, that we should +so oft make war upon the Turks. Doubtless it were not well with the +Christian religion, if the only safeguard thereof should depend on such +succours. Nor it is not likely, that they should be good Christians, that +by these means are brought thereto at the first. For that thing that is +got by war, is again in another time lost by war. Will ye bring the Turks +to the faith of Christ? Let us not make a show of our gay riches, nor of +our great number of soldiers, nor of our great strength. Let them see in +us none of these solemn titles, but the assured tokens of Christian men: a +pure, innocent life; a fervent desire to do well, yea, to our very +enemies; the despising of money, the neglecting of glory, a poor simple +life. Let them hear the heavenly doctrine agreeable to such a manner of +life. These are the best armours to subdue the Turks to Christ. Now +oftentimes we, being ill, fight with the evil. Yea, and I shall say +another thing (which I would to God were more boldly spoken than truly), +if we set aside the title and sign of the Cross, we fight Turks against +Turks. If our religion were first stablished by the might and strength of +men of war, if it were confirmed by dint of sword, if it were augmented by +war, then let us maintain it by the same means and ways. But if all things +in our faith were brought to pass by other means, why do we, then (as we +mistrusted the help of Christ), seek such succour as the heathen people +use? But why should we not (say they) kill them that would kill us? So +think they it a great dishonour, if other should be more mischievous than +they. Why do ye not, then, rob those that have robbed you before? Why do +ye not scold and chide at them that rail at you? Why do ye not hate them +that hate you? Trow ye it is a good Christian man's deed to slay a Turk? +For be the Turks never so wicked, yet they are men, for whose salvation +Christ suffered death. And killing Turks we offer to the devil most +pleasant sacrifice, and with that one deed we please our enemy, the devil, +twice: first because a man is slain, and again, because a Christian man +slew him. There be many, which desiring to seem good Christian men, study +to hurt and grieve the Turks all that ever they may; and where they be not +able to do anything, they curse and ban, and bid a mischief upon them. Now +by the same one point a man may perceive, that they be far from good +Christian men. Succour the Turks, and where they be wicked, make them good +if ye can; if ye cannot, wish and desire of God they may have grace to +turn to goodness. And he that thus doeth, I will say doeth like a +Christian man. But of all these things I shall entreat more largely, when +I set forth my book entitled Antipolemus, which whilom when I was at Rome +I wrote to Julius, bishop of Rome, the second of that name, at the same +time, when he was counselled to make war on the Venetians. + +But there is one thing which is more to be lamented then reasoned: That if +a man would diligently discuss the matter, he shall find that all the wars +among us Christian men do spring either of foolishness, or else of malice. +Some young men without experience, inflamed with the evil examples of +their forefathers, that they find by reading of histories, written of some +foolish authors (and besides this being moved with the exhortations of +flatterers, with the instigation of lawyers, and assenting thereto of the +divines, the bishops winking thereat, or peradventure enticing thereunto), +have rather of foolhardiness than of malice, gone in hand with war; and +with the great hurt and damage of all this world they learn, that war is a +thing that should be by all means and ways fled and eschewed. Some other +are moved by privy hatred, ambition causeth some, and some are stirred by +fierceness of mind to make war. For truly there is almost now no other +thing in our cities and commonweals than is contained in Homer's work +Iliad, The wrath of indiscreet princes and people. + +There be those who for no other cause stir up war but to the intent they +may by that means the more easily exercise tyranny on their subjects. For +in the time of peace, the authority of the council, the dignity of the +rulers, the vigour and strength of the laws, do somewhat hinder, that a +prince cannot do all that him listeth; but as soon as war is once begun, +now all the handling of matters resteth in the pleasure of a few persons. +They that the prince favoureth are lifted up aloft, and they that be in +his displeasure, go down. They exact as much money as pleaseth them. What +need many words? Then they think themselves, that they be the greatest +princes of the world. In the meantime the captains sport and play +together, till they have gnawed the poor people to the hard bones. And +think ye that it will grieve them, that be of this mind, to enter lightly +into war, when any cause is offered? Besides all this, it is worth while +to see by what means we colour our fault. I pretend the defence of our +religion, but my mind is to get the great riches that the Turk hath. Under +colour to defend the Church's right, I purpose to revenge the hatred that +I have in my stomach. I incline to ambition, I follow my wrath; my cruel, +fierce and unbridled mind compelleth me; and yet will I find a cavillation +and say, the league is not kept, or friendship is broken, or something +(I wot not what myself) concerning the laws of matrimony is omitted. And +it is a wonder to speak, how they never obtain the very thing that they so +greatly desire. And while they foolishly labour to eschew this mischief or +that, they fall into another much worse, or else deeper into the same. And +surely if desire of glory causeth them thus to do, it is a thing much more +magnificent and glorious to save than to destroy; much more gay and goodly +to build a city than to overthrow and destroy a city. + +Furthermore admit that the victory in battle is got most prosperously, yet +how small a portion of the glory shall go unto the prince: the commons +will claim a great part of it, by the help of whose money the deed was +done; foreign soldiers, that are hired for money, will challenge much more +than the commons; the captains look to have very much of that glory; and +fortune has the most of all, which striking a great stroke in every +matter, in war may do most of all. If it come of a noble courage or stout +stomach, that you be moved to make war: see, I pray you, how far wide ye +be from your purpose. For while ye will not be seen to bow to one man, as +to a prince your neighbour, peradventure of your alliance, who may by +fortune have done you good: how much more abjectly must ye bow yourself, +what time ye seek aid and help of barbarous people; yea, and, what is more +unworthy, of such men as are defiled with all mischievous deeds, if we +must needs call such kind of monsters men? Meanwhile ye go about to allure +unto you with fair words and promises, ravishers of virgins and of +religious women, men-killers, stout robbers and rovers (for these be thy +special men of war). And while you labour to be somewhat cruel and +superior over your equal, you are constrained to submit yourselves to the +very dregs of all men living. And while ye go about to drive your +neighbour out of his land, ye must needs first bring into your own land +the most pestilent puddle of unthrifts that can be. You mistrust a prince +of your own alliance, and will you commit yourself wholly to an armed +multitude? How much surer were it to commit yourself to concord! + +If ye will make war because of lucre, take your counters and cast. And I +will say, it is better to have war than peace, if ye find not, that not +only less, but also uncertain winning is got with inestimable costs. + +Ye say ye make war for the safeguard of the commonweal, yea, but noway +sooner nor more unthriftily may the commonweal perish than by war. For +before ye enter into the field, ye have already hurt more your country +than ye can do good getting the victory. Ye waste the citizens' goods, ye +fill the houses with lamentation, ye fill all the country with thieves, +robbers, and ravishers. For these are the relics of war. And whereas +before ye might have enjoyed all France, ye shut yourselves from many +regions thereof. If ye love your own subjects truly, why revolve you not +in mind these words: Why shall I put so many, in their lusty, flourishing +youth, in all mischiefs and perils? Why shall I depart so many honest +wives and their husbands, and make so many fatherless children? Why shall +I claim a title I know not, and a doubtful right, with spilling of my +subjects' blood? We have seen in our time, that in war made under colour +of defence of the Church, the priests have been so often pillaged with +contributions, that no enemy might do more. So that while we go about +foolishly to escape falling in the ditch, while we cannot suffer a light +injury, we afflict ourselves with most grievous despites. While we be +ashamed of gentleness to bow to a prince, we be fain to please people most +base. While we indiscreetly covet liberty, we entangle ourselves in most +grievous bondage. While we hunt after a little lucre, we grieve ourselves +and ours with inestimable harness. It had been a point of a prudent +Christian man (if he be a true Christian man) by all manner of means to +have fled, to have shunned, and by prayer to have withstood so fiendish a +thing, and so far both from the life and doctrine of Christ. But if it can +by no means be eschewed, by reason of the ungraciousness of many men, when +ye have essayed every way, and that ye have for peace sake left no stone +unturned, then the next way is, that ye do your diligence that so ill a +thing may be gested and done by them that be evil, and that it be achieved +with as little effusion of man's blood as can be. + +Now if we endeavour to be the selfsame thing that we hear ourselves +called,--that is, good Christian men,--we shall little esteem any worldly +thing, nor yet ambitiously covet anything of this world. For if we set all +our mind, that we may lightly and purely part hence; if we incline wholly +to heavenly things; if we pitch all our felicity in Christ alone; if we +believe all that is truly good, truly gay and glorious, truly joyful, to +remain in Christ alone; if we thoroughly think that a godly man can of no +man be hurt; if we ponder how vain and vanishing are the scornful things +of this world; if we inwardly behold how hard a thing it is for a man to +be in a manner transformed into a god, and so here, with continual and +indefatigable meditation, to be purged from all infections of this world, +that within a while the husk of this body being cast off, it may pass +hence to the company of angels; finally, if we surely have these three +things, without which none is worthy of the name of a Christian +man,--Innocency, that we may be pure from all vices; Charity, that we may +do good, as near as we can, to every man; Patience, that we may suffer +them that do us ill, and, if we can, with good deeds overcome wrongs to us +done: I pray you, what war can there be among us for trifles? If it be +but a tale that is told of Christ, why do we not openly put him out of our +company? Why should we glory in his title? But if he be, as he is in very +deed, the true way, the very truth, and the very life, why doth all the +manner of our living differ so far asunder from the true example of him? +If we acknowledge and take Christ for our author, which is very Charity, +and neither taught nor gave other thing but charity and peace, then go to, +let us not in titles and signs, but in our deeds and living, plainly +express him. Let us have in our hearts a fervent desire of peace, that +Christ may again know us for his. To this intent the princes, the +prelates, and the cities and commonalties should apply their counsels. +There hath been hitherto enough spilt of Christian man's blood. We have +showed pleasure enough to the enemies of the Christian religion. And if +the common people, as they are wont, make any disturbance, let the princes +bridle and quail them, which princes ought to be the selfsame thing in the +commonweal that the eye is in the body, and the reason in the soul. Again, +if the princes make any trouble, it is the part of good prelates by their +wisdom and gravity to pacify and assuage such commotion. Or else, at the +least, we being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a +little move us. The bishop exhorteth us (if ever any bishop did Leo the +Tenth doth, which occupieth the room of our peaceable Solomon, for all his +desire, all his intent and labour, is for this intent) that they whom +one common faith hath coupled together, should be joined in one common +concord. He laboureth that the Church of Christ should flourish, not in +riches or lordships, but in her own proper virtues. Surely this is a right +goodly act, and well beseeming a man descended of such a noble lineage as +the Medici: by whose civil prudence the noble city of Florence most +freshly flourished in long-continued peace; whose house of Medici hath +been a help unto all good letters. Leo himself, having alway a sober and a +gentle wit, giving himself from his tender youth to good letters of +humanity, was ever brought up, as it were, in the lap of the Muses, among +men most highly learned. He so faultless led his life, that even in the +city of Rome, where is most liberty of vice, was of him no evil rumour, +and so governing himself came to the dignity to be bishop there, which +dignity he never coveted, but was chosen thereto when he least thought +thereon, by the provision of God to help to redress things in great decay +by long wars. Let Julius the bishop have his glory of war, victories, and +of his great triumphs, the which how evil they beseem a Christian bishop, +it is not for such a one as I am to declare. I will this say, his glory, +whatsoever it be, was mixed with the great destruction and grievous sorrow +of many a creature. But by peace restored now to the world, Leo shall get +more true glory than Julius won by so many wars that he either boldly +begun, or prosperously fought and achieved. + +But they that had liefer hear of proverbs, than either of peace or of war, +will think that I have tarried longer about this digression than is meet +for the declaration of a proverb. + + +FINIS + + + OF THIS VOLUME + WHICH IS EDITED BY JOHN W. MACKAIL + WITH TYPES & DECORATIONS + BY HERBERT P. HORNE + CCCIII COPIES WERE + PRINTED + + [Illustration: OPTIMUM + VIX SATIS] + + BY D. B. UPDIKE + AT THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS + BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS + IN THE MONTH OF + AUGUST + MCM + VII + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Against War, by Erasmus + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 39487-8.txt or 39487-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/4/8/39487/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Against War + +Author: Erasmus + +Release Date: April 20, 2012 [EBook #39487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE HUMANISTS’ LIBRARY</span><br /> +Edited by Lewis Einstein</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">II</span></p> +<h1><small>ERASMUS<br /> +AGAINST WAR</small></h1> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">ERASMUS<br /> +AGAINST WAR</span></p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/fronttitle.png" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY<br /> +J·W·MACKAIL</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"> +THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS<br /> +BOSTON, MDCCCCVII</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">Copyright, 1907, by D. B. Updike</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="center">CONTENTS</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Introduction</td> + <td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Against War</td> + <td> </td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_t.png" alt="T" /></span>he Treatise on War, of which the earliest English translation is here +reprinted, was among the most famous writings of the most illustrious +writer of his age. Few people now read Erasmus; he has become for the +world in general a somewhat vague name. Only by some effort of the +historical imagination is it possible for those who are not professed +scholars and students to realize the enormous force which he was at a +critical period in the history of civilization. The free institutions and +the material progress of the modern world have alike their roots in +humanism. Humanism as a movement of the human mind culminated in the age, +and even in a sense in the person, of Erasmus. Its brilliant flower was of +an earlier period; its fruits developed and matured later; but it was in +his time, and in him, that the fruit set! The earlier sixteenth century is +not so romantic as its predecessors, nor so rich in solid achievement as +others that have followed it. As in some orchard when spring is over, the +blossom lies withered on the grass, and the fruit has long to wait before +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>it can ripen on the boughs. Yet here, in the dull, hot midsummer days, is +the central and critical period of the year’s growth.</p> + +<p>The life of Erasmus is accessible in many popular forms as well as in more +learned and formal works. To recapitulate it here would fall beyond the +scope of a preface. But in order to appreciate this treatise fully it is +necessary to realize the time and circumstances in which it appeared, and +to recall some of the main features of its author’s life and work up to +the date of its composition.</p> + +<p>That date can be fixed with certainty, from a combination of external and +internal evidence, between the years 1513 and 1515; in all probability it +was the winter of 1514-15. It was printed in the latter year, in the +“editio princeps” of the enlarged and rewritten Adagia then issued from +Froben’s great printing-works at Basel. The stormy decennate of Pope +Julius II had ended in February, 1513. To his successor, Giovanni de’ +Medici, who succeeded to the papal throne under the name of Leo X, the +treatise is particularly addressed. The years which ensued were a time +singularly momentous in the history of religion, of letters, and of the +whole life of the civilized world. The eulogy of Leo with which Erasmus +ends indicates the hopes then entertained of a new Augustan age of peace +and reconciliation. The Reformation was still capable of being regarded as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>an internal and constructive force, within the framework of the society +built up by the Middle Ages. The final divorce between humanism and the +Church had not yet been made. The long and disastrous epoch of the wars of +religion was still only a dark cloud on the horizon. The Renaissance was +really dead, but few yet realized the fact. The new head of the Church was +a lover of peace, a friend of scholars, a munificent patron of the arts. +This treatise shows that Erasmus, to a certain extent, shared or strove to +share in an illusion widely spread among the educated classes of Europe. +With a far keener instinct for that which the souls of men required, an +Augustinian monk from Wittenberg, who had visited Rome two years earlier, +had turned away from the temple where a corpse lay swathed in gold and +half hid in the steam of incense. With a far keener insight into the real +state of things, Machiavelli was, at just this time, composing The Prince.</p> + +<p>In one form or another, the subject of his impassioned pleading for peace +among beings human, civilized, and Christian, had been long in Erasmus’s +mind. In his most celebrated single work, the Praise of Folly, he had +bitterly attacked the attitude towards war habitual, and evilly +consecrated by usage, among kings and popes. The same argument had formed +the substance of a document addressed by him, under the title of +Anti-Polemus, to Pope Julius in 1507. Much of the substance, much even of +the phraseology of that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>earlier work is doubtless repeated here. Beyond +the specific reference to Pope Leo, the other notes of time in the +treatise now before us are few and faint. Allusions to Louis XII of France +(1498-1515), to Ferdinand the Catholic (1479-1516), to Philip, king of +Aragon (1504-1516), and Sigismund, king of Poland (1506-1548), are all +consistent with the composition of the treatise some years earlier. At the +end of it he promises to treat of the matter more largely when he +publishes the Anti-Polemus. But this intention was never carried into +effect. Perhaps Erasmus had become convinced of its futility; for the +events of the years which followed soon showed that the new Augustan age +was but a false dawn over which night settled more stormily and profoundly +than before.</p> + +<p>For ten or a dozen years Erasmus had stood at the head of European +scholarship. His name was as famous in France and England as in the Low +Countries and Germany. The age was indeed one of those in which the +much-abused term of the republic of letters had a real and vital meaning. +The nationalities of modern Europe had already formed themselves; the +notion of the Empire had become obsolete, and if the imperial title was +still coveted by princes, it was under no illusion as to the amount of +effective supremacy which it carried with it, or as to any life yet +remaining in the mediaeval doctrine of the unity of Christendom whether as +a church or as a state.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> The discovery of the new world near the end of +the previous century precipitated a revolution in European politics +towards which events had long been moving, and finally broke up the +political framework of the Middle Ages. But the other great event of the +same period, the invention and diffusion of the art of printing, had +created a new European commonwealth of the mind. The history of the +century which followed it is a history in which the landmarks are found +less in battles and treaties than in books.</p> + +<p>The earlier life of the man who occupies the central place in the literary +and spiritual movement of his time in no important way differs from the +youth of many contemporary scholars and writers. Even the illegitimacy of +his birth was an accident shared with so many others that it does not mark +him out in any way from his fellows. His early education at Utrecht, at +Deventer, at Herzogenbosch; his enforced and unhappy novitiate in a house +of Augustinian canons near Gouda; his secretaryship to the bishop of +Cambray, the grudging patron who allowed rather than assisted him to +complete his training at the University of Paris—all this was at the time +mere matter of common form. It is with his arrival in England in 1497, at +the age of thirty-one, that his effective life really begins.</p> + +<p>For the next twenty years that life was one of restless movement and +incessant production. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> England, France, the Low Countries, on the upper +Rhine, and in Italy, he flitted about gathering up the whole intellectual +movement of the age, and pouring forth the results in that admirable Latin +which was not only the common language of scholars in every country, but +the single language in which he himself thought instinctively and wrote +freely. Between the Adagia of 1500 and the Colloquia of 1516 comes a mass +of writings equivalent to the total product of many fertile and +industrious pens. He worked in the cause of humanism with a sacred fury, +striving with all his might to connect it with all that was living in the +old and all that was developing in the newer world. In his travels no less +than in his studies the aspect of war must have perpetually met him as at +once the cause and the effect of barbarism; it was the symbol of +everything to which humanism in its broader as well as in its narrower +aspect was utterly opposed and repugnant. He was a student at Paris in the +ominous year of the first French invasion of Italy, in which the death of +Pico della Mirandola and Politian came like a symbol of the death of the +Italian Renaissance itself. Charles VIII, as has often been said, brought +back the Renaissance to France from that expedition; but he brought her +back a captive chained to the wheels of his cannon. The epoch of the +Italian wars began. A little later (1500) Sandro Botticelli painted that +amazing Nativity which is one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> of the chief treasures of the London +National Gallery. Over it in mystical Greek may still be read the +painter’s own words: “This picture was painted by me Alexander amid the +confusions of Italy at the time prophesied in the Second Woe of the +Apocalypse, when Satan shall be loosed upon the earth.” In November, 1506, +Erasmus was at Bologna, and saw the triumphal entry of Pope Julius into +the city at the head of a great mercenary army. Two years later the league +of Cambray, a combination of folly, treachery and shame which filled even +hardened politicians with horror, plunged half Europe into a war in which +no one was a gainer and which finally ruined Italy: “bellum quo nullum,” +says the historian, “vel atrocius vel diuturnius in Italia post exactos +Gothos majores nostri meminerunt.” In England Erasmus found, on his first +visit, a country exhausted by the long and desperate struggle of the Wars +of the Roses, out of which she had emerged with half her ruling class +killed in battle or on the scaffold, and the whole fabric of society to +reconstruct. The Empire was in a state of confusion and turmoil no less +deplorable and much more extensive. The Diet of 1495 had indeed, by an +expiring effort towards the suppression of absolute anarchy, decreed the +abolition of private war. But in a society where every owner of a castle, +every lord of a few square miles of territory, could conduct public war on +his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> account, the prohibition was of little more than formal value. +Humanism had been introduced by the end of the fifteenth century in some +of the German universities, but too late to have much effect on the rising +fury of religious controversy. The very year in which this treatise +against war was published gave to the world another work of even wider +circulation and more profound consequences. The famous Epistolae +Obscurorum Virorum, first published in 1515, and circulated rapidly among +all the educated readers of Europe, made an open breach between the +humanists and the Church. That breach was never closed; nor on the other +hand could the efforts of well-intentioned reformers like Melancthon bring +humanism into any organic relation with the reformed movement. When mutual +exhaustion concluded the European struggle, civilization had to start +afresh; it took a century more to recover the lost ground. The very idea +of humanism had long before then disappeared.</p> + +<p>War, pestilence, the theologians: these were the three great enemies with +which Erasmus says he had throughout life to contend. It was during the +years he spent in England that he was perhaps least harassed by them. His +three periods of residence there—a fourth, in 1517, appears to have been +of short duration and not marked by any very notable incident—were of the +utmost importance in his life. During the first, in his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span>residence between +the years 1497 and 1499 at London and Oxford, the English Renaissance, if +the name be fully applicable to so partial and inconclusive a movement, +was in the promise and ardour of its brief spring. It was then that +Erasmus made the acquaintance of those great Englishmen whose names cannot +be mentioned with too much reverence: Colet, Grocyn, Latimer, Linacre. +These men were the makers of modern England to a degree hardly realized. +They carried the future in their hands. Peace had descended upon a weary +country; and the younger generation was full of new hopes. The Enchiridion +Militis Christiani, written soon after Erasmus returned to France, +breathes the spirit of one who had not lost hope in the reconciliation of +the Church and the world, of the old and new. When Erasmus made his second +visit to England, in 1506, that fair promise had grown and spread. Colet +had become dean of Saint Paul’s; and through him, as it would appear, +Erasmus now made the acquaintance of another great man with whom he soon +formed as close an intimacy, Thomas More.</p> + +<p>His Italian journey followed: he was in Italy nearly three years, at +Turin, Bologna, Venice, Padua, Siena, Rome. It was in the first of these +years that Albert Dürer was also in Italy, where he met Bellini and was +recognized by the Italian masters as the head of a new transalpine art in +no way inferior to their own. The year after Erasmus left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span> Italy, +Botticelli, the last survivor of the ancient world, died at Florence.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Henry VIII, a prince, young, handsome, generous, pious, had +succeeded to the throne of England. A golden age was thought to have +dawned. Lord Mountjoy, who had been the pupil of Erasmus at Paris, and +with whom he had first come to England, lost no time in urging Henry to +send for the most brilliant and famous of European scholars, and attach +him to his court. The king, who had already met and admired him, needed no +pressing. In the letter which Henry himself wrote to Erasmus entreating +him to take up his residence in England, the language employed was that of +sincere admiration; nor was there any conscious insincerity in the main +motive which he urged. “It is my earnest wish,” wrote the king, “to +restore Christ’s religion to its primitive purity.” The history of the +English Reformation supplies a strange commentary on these words.</p> + +<p>But the first few years of the new reign (1509-1513), which coincide with +the third and longest sojourn of Erasmus in England, were a time in which +high hopes might not seem unreasonable. While Italy was ravaged by war and +the rest of Europe was in uneasy ferment, England remained peaceful and +prosperous. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life were indeed the +motive forces of the court; but alongside of these was a real desire for +reform, and a real if very imperfect attempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span> to cultivate the nobler arts +of peace, to establish learning, and to purify religion. Colet’s great +foundation of Saint Paul’s School in 1510 is one of the landmarks of +English history. Erasmus joined the founder and the first high master, +Colet and Lily, in composing the schoolbooks to be used in it. He had +already written, in More’s house at Chelsea, where pure religion reigned +alongside of high culture, the Encomium Moriae, in which all his immense +gifts of eloquence and wit were lavished on the cause of humanism and the +larger cause of humanity. That war was at once a sin, a scandal, and a +folly was one of the central doctrines of the group of eminent Englishmen +with whom he was now associated. It was a doctrine held by them with some +ambiguity and in varying degrees. In the Utopia (1516) More condemns wars +of aggression, while taking the common view as to wars of so-called +self-defence. In 1513, when Henry, swept into the seductive scheme for a +partition of France by a European confederacy, was preparing for the first +of his many useless and inglorious continental campaigns, Colet spoke out +more freely. He preached before the court against war itself as barbarous +and unchristian, and did not spare either kings or popes who dealt +otherwise. Henry was disturbed; he sent for Colet, and pressed him hard on +the point whether he meant that all wars were unjustifiable. Colet was in +advance of his age, but not so far in advance of it as this. He gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span> some +kind of answer which satisfied the king. The preparations for war went +forward; the Battle of Spurs plunged the court and all the nation into the +intoxication of victory; while at Flodden-edge, in the same autumn, the +ancestral allies of France sustained the most crushing defeat recorded in +Scottish history. When both sides in a war have invoked God’s favour, the +successful side is ready enough to believe that its prayers have been +answered and its action accepted by God.</p> + +<p>Erasmus was now reader in Greek and professor of divinity at Cambridge; +but Cambridge was far away from the centre of European thought and of +literary activities. He left England before the end of the year for Basel, +where the greater part of his life thenceforth was passed. Froben had made +Basel the chief literary centre of production for the whole of Europe. +Through Froben’s printing-presses Erasmus could reach a wider audience +than was allowed him at any court, however favourable to pure religion and +the new learning. It was at this juncture that he made an eloquent and +far-reaching appeal, on a matter which lay very near his heart, to the +conscience of Christendom.</p> + +<p>The Adagia, that vast work which was, at least to his own generation, +Erasmus’s foremost title to fame, has long ago passed into the rank of +those monuments of literature “dont la reputation s’affermira toujours +parcequ’on ne les lit guère.” So<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span> far as Erasmus is more than a name for +most modern readers, it is on slighter and more popular works that any +direct knowledge of him is grounded on the Colloquies, which only ceased +to be a schoolbook within living memory, on the Praise of Folly, and on +selections from the enormous masses of his letters. An Oxford scholar of +the last generation, whose profound knowledge of humanistic literature was +accompanied by a gift of terse and pointed expression, describes the +Adagia in a single sentence, as “a manual of the wit and wisdom of the +ancient world for the use of the modern, enlivened by commentary in +Erasmus’s finest vein.” In its first form, the Adagiorum Collectanea, it +was published by him at Paris in 1500, just after his return from England. +In the author’s epistle dedicatory to Mountjoy he ascribes to him and to +Richard Charnock, the prior of Saint Mary’s College in Oxford, the +inspiration of the work. It consists of a series of between eight and nine +hundred comments in brief essays, each suggested by some terse or +proverbial phrase from an ancient Latin author. The work gave full scope +for the display, not only of the immense treasures of his learning, but of +those other qualities, the combination of which raised their author far +above all other contemporary writers, his keen wit, his copiousness and +facility, his complete control of Latin as a living language. It met with +an enthusiastic reception, and placed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span> him at once at the head of European +men of letters. Edition after edition poured from the press. It was ten +times reissued at Paris within a generation. Eleven editions were +published at Strasburg between 1509 and 1521. Within the same years it was +reprinted at Erfurt, The Hague, Cologne, Mayence, Leyden, and elsewhere. +The Rhine valley was the great nursery of letters north of the Alps, and +along the Rhine from source to sea the book spread and was multiplied.</p> + +<p>This success induced Erasmus to enlarge and complete his labours. The +Adagiorum Chiliades, the title of the work in its new form, was part of +the work of his residence in Italy in the years 1506-9, and was published +at Venice by Aldus in September, 1508. The enlarged collection, to all +intents and purposes a new work, consists of no less than three thousand +two hundred and sixty heads. In a preface, Erasmus speaks slightingly of +the Adagiorum Collectanea, with that affectation from which few authors +are free, as a little collection carelessly made. “Some people got hold of +it,” he adds, (and here the affectation becomes absolute untruth,) “and +had it printed very incorrectly.” In the new work, however, much of the +old disappears, much more is partially or wholly recast; and such of the +old matter as is retained is dispersed at random among the new. In the +Collectanea the commentaries had all been brief: here many are expanded +into <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span>substantial treatises covering four or five pages of closely printed +folio.</p> + +<p>The Aldine edition had been reprinted at Basel by Froben in 1513. Shortly +afterwards Erasmus himself took up his permanent residence there. Under +his immediate supervision there presently appeared what was to all intents +and purposes the definitive edition of 1515. It is a book of nearly seven +hundred folio pages, and contains, besides the introductory matter, three +thousand four hundred and eleven headings. In his preface Erasmus gives +some details with regard to its composition. Of the original Paris work he +now says, no doubt with truth, that it was undertaken by him hastily and +without enough method. When preparing the Venice edition he had better +realized the magnitude of the enterprise, and was better fitted for it by +reading and learning, more especially by the mass of Greek manuscripts, +and of newly printed Greek first editions, to which he had access at +Venice and in other parts of Italy. In England also, owing very largely to +the kindness of Archbishop Warham, more leisure and an ampler library had +been available.</p> + +<p>Among several important additions made in the edition of 1515, this essay, +the text of which is the proverbial phrase “Dulce bellum inexpertis,” is +at once the longest and the most remarkable. The adage itself, with a few +lines of commentary, had indeed been in the original collection; but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span> +treatise, in itself a substantial work, now appeared for the first time. +It occupied a conspicuous place as the first heading in the fourth Chiliad +of the complete work; and it was at once singled out from the rest as of +special note and profound import. Froben was soon called upon for a +separate edition. This appeared in April, 1517, in a quarto of twenty +pages. This little book, the Bellum Erasmi as it was called for the sake +of brevity, ran like wildfire from reader to reader. Half the scholarly +presses of Europe were soon employed in reprinting it. Within ten years it +had been reissued at Louvain, twice at Strasburg, twice at Mayence, at +Leipsic, twice at Paris, twice at Cologne, at Antwerp, and at Venice. +German translations of it were published at Basel and at Strasburg in 1519 +and 1520. It soon made its way to England, and the translation here +utilized was issued by Berthelet, the king’s printer, in the winter of +1533-4.</p> + +<p>Whether the translation be by Richard Taverner, the translator and editor, +a few years later, of an epitome or selection of the Chiliades, or by some +other hand, there are no direct means of ascertaining; nor except for +purposes of curiosity is the question an important one. The version wholly +lacks distinction. It is a work of adequate scholarship but of no +independent literary merit. English prose was then hardly formed. The +revival of letters had reached the country, but for political and social +reasons which are readily to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span> be found in any handbook of English history, +it had found a soil, fertile indeed, but not yet broken up. Since Chaucer, +English poetry had practically stood still, and except where poetry has +cleared the way, prose does not in ordinary circumstances advance. A few +adventurers in setting forth had appeared. More’s Utopia, one of the +earliest of English prose classics, is a classic in virtue of its style as +well as of its matter. Berners’s translation of Froissart, published in +1523, was the first and one of the finest of that magnificent series of +translations which from this time onwards for about a century were +produced in an almost continuous stream, and through which the secret of +prose was slowly wrung from older and more accomplished languages. +Latimer, about the same time, showed his countrymen how a vernacular +prose, flexible, well knit, and nervous, might be written without its +lines being traced on any ancient or foreign model. Coverdale, the +greatest master of English prose whom the century produced, whose name has +just missed the immortality that is secure for his work, must have +substantially completed that magnificent version of the Bible which +appeared in 1535, and to which the authorized version of the seventeenth +century owes all that one work of genius can owe to another. It is not +with these great men that the translator of this treatise can be compared. +But he wrought, after his measure, on the same structure as they.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span>It is then to the original Latin, not to this rude and stammering version, +that scholars must turn now, as still more certainly they turned then, for +the mind of Erasmus; for with him, even more eminently than with other +authors, the style is the man, and his Latin is the substance, not merely +the dress, of his thought. When he wrote it he was about forty-eight years +of age. He was still in the fullness of his power. If he was often +crippled by delicate health, that was no more than he had habitually been +from boyhood. In this treatise we come very near the real man, with his +strange mixture of liberalism and orthodoxy, of clear-sighted courage and +a delicacy which nearly always might be mistaken for timidity.</p> + +<p>His text is that (in the translator’s words) “nothing is either more +wicked or more wretched, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war.” War was shocking to Erasmus alike on every side +of his remarkably complex and sensitive nature. It was impious; it was +inhuman; it was ugly; it was in every sense of the word barbarous, to one +who before all things and in the full sense of the word was civilized and +a lover of civilization. All these varied aspects of the case, seen by +others singly and partially, were to him facets of one truth, rays of one +light. His argument circles and flickers among them, hardly pausing to +enforce one before passing insensibly to another. In the splendid +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span>vindication of the nature of man with which the treatise opens, the tone +is rather that of Cicero than of the New Testament. The majesty of man +resides above all in his capacity to “behold the very pure strength and +nature of things;” in essence he is no fallen and corrupt creature, but a +piece of workmanship such as Shakespeare describes him through the mouth +of Hamlet. He was shaped to this heroic mould “by Nature, or rather god,” +so the Tudor translation reads, and the use of capital letters, though +only a freak of the printer, brings out with a singular suggestiveness the +latent pantheism which underlies the thought of all the humanists. To this +wonderful creature strife and warfare are naturally repugnant. Not only is +his frame “weak and tender,” but he is “born to love and amity.” His chief +end, the object to which all his highest and most distinctively human +powers are directed, is coöperant labour in the pursuit of knowledge. War +comes out of ignorance, and into ignorance it leads; of war comes contempt +of virtue and of godly living. In the age of Machiavelli the word “virtue” +had a double and sinister meaning; but here it is taken in its nobler +sense. Yet, the argument continues, for “virtue,” even in the Florentine +statesman’s sense, war gives but little room. It is waged mainly for “vain +titles or childish wrath;” it does not foster, in those responsible for +it, any one of the nobler excellences. The argument throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span> this part +of the treatise is, both in its substance and in its ornament, wholly +apart from the dogmas of religion. The furies of war are described as +rising out of a very pagan hell. The apostrophe of Nature to mankind +immediately suggests the spirit as well as the language of Lucretius. +Erasmus had clearly been reading the De Rerum Natura, and borrows some of +his finest touches from that miraculous description of the growth of +civilization in the fifth book, which is one of the noblest contributions +of antiquity towards a real conception of the nature of the world and of +man. The progressive degeneration of morality, because, as its scope +becomes higher, practice falls further and further short of it, is +insisted upon by both these great thinkers in much the same spirit and +with much the same illustrations. The rise of empires, “of which there was +never none yet in any nation, but it was gotten with the great shedding of +man’s blood,” is seen by both in the same light. But Erasmus passes on to +the more expressly religious aspect of the whole matter in the great +double climax with which he crowns his argument, the wickedness of a +Christian fighting against another man, the horror of a Christian fighting +against another Christian. “Yea, and with a thing so devilish,” he breaks +out in a mingling of intense scorn and profound pity, “we mingle Christ.”</p> + +<p>From this passionate appeal he passes to the praises of peace. Why should +men add the horrors<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[Pg xxix]</a></span> of war to all the other miseries and dangers of life? +Why should one man’s gain be sought only through another’s loss? All +victories in war are Cadmean; not only from their cost in blood and +treasure, but because we are in very truth “the members of one body,” +“redeemed with Christ’s blood.” Such was the clear, unmistakable teaching +of our Lord himself, such of his apostles. But the doctrine of Christ has +been “plied to worldly opinion.” Worldly men, philosophers following “the +sophistries of Aristotle,” worst of all, divines and theologians +themselves, have corrupted the Gospel to the heathenish doctrine that +“every man must first provide for himself.” The very words of Scripture +are wrested to this abuse. Self-defence is held to excuse any violence. +“Peter fought,” they say, “in the garden,”—yes, and that same night he +denied his Master! “But punishment of wrong is a divine ordinance.” In war +the punishment falls on the innocent. “But the law of nature bids us repel +violence by violence.” What is the law of Christ? “But may not a prince go +to war justly for his right?” Did any war ever lack a title? “But what of +wars against the Turk?” Such wars are of Turk against Turk; let us +overcome evil with good, let us spread the Gospel by doing what the Gospel +commands: did Christ say, Hate them that hate you?</p> + +<p>Then, with the tact of an accomplished orator, he lets the tension relax, +and drops to a lower<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[Pg xxx]</a></span> tone. Even apart from all that has been urged, even +if war were ever justifiable, think of the price that has to be paid for +it. On this ground alone an unjust peace is far preferable to a just war. +(These had been the very words of Colet to the king of England.) Men go to +war under fine pretexts, but really to get riches, to satisfy hatred, or +to win the poor glory of destroying. The hatred is but exasperated; the +glory is won by and for the dregs of mankind; the riches are in the most +prosperous event swallowed up ten times over. Yet if it be impossible but +war should be, if there may be sometimes a “colour of equity” in it, and +if the tyrant’s plea, necessity, be ever well-founded, at least, so +Erasmus ends, let it be conducted mercifully. Let us live in fervent +desire of the peace that we may not fully attain. Let princes restrain +their peoples; let churchmen above all be peacemakers. So the treatise +passes to its conclusion with that eulogy of the Medicean pope already +mentioned, which perhaps was not wholly undeserved. To the modern world +the name of Leo X has come down marked with a note of censure or even of +ignominy. It is fair to remember that it did not bear quite the same +aspect to its contemporaries, nor to the ages which immediately followed. +Under Rodrigo Borgia it might well seem to others than to the Florentine +mystic that antichrist was enthroned, and Satan let loose upon earth. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[Pg xxxi]</a></span> +eight years of Leo’s pontificate (1513-21) were at least a period of +outward splendour and of a refinement hitherto unknown. The corruption, +half veiled by that refinement and splendour, was deep and mortal, but the +collapse did not come till later. By comparison with the disastrous reign +of Clement VII, his bastard cousin, that of Giovanni de’ Medici seemed a +last gleam of light before blackness descended on the world. Even the +licence of a dissolute age was contrasted to its favour with the gloom, +“tristitia,” that settled down over Europe with the great Catholic +reaction. The age of Leo X has descended to history as the age of Bembo, +Sannazaro, Lascaris, of the Stanze of the Vatican, of Raphael’s Sistine +Madonna and Titian’s Assumption; of the conquest of Mexico and the +circumnavigation of Magellan; of Magdalen Tower and King’s College Chapel. +It was an interval of comparative peace before a long epoch of wars more +cruel and more devastating than any within the memory of men. The general +European conflagration did not break out until ten years after Erasmus’s +death; though it had then long been foreseen as inevitable. But he lived +to see the conquest of Rhodes by Soliman, the sack of Rome, the breach +between England and the papacy, the ill-omened marriage of Catherine de’ +Medici to the heir of the French throne. Humanism had done all that it +could, and failed. In the sanguinary era of one hundred years <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[Pg xxxii]</a></span>between the +outbreak of the civil war in the Empire and the Peace of Westphalia, the +Renaissance followed the Middle Ages to the grave, and the modern world +was born.</p> + +<p>The mere fact of this treatise having been translated into English and +published by the king’s printer shows, in an age when the literary product +of England was as yet scanty, that it had some vogue and exercised some +influence. But only a few copies of the work are known to exist; and it +was never reprinted. It was not until nearly three centuries later, amid +the throes of an European revolution equally vast, that the work was again +presented in an English dress. Vicesimus Knox, a whig essayist, compiler, +and publicist of some reputation at the time, was the author of a book +which was published anonymously in 1794 and found some readers in a year +filled with great events in both the history and the literature of +England. It was entitled “Anti-Polemus: or the Plea of Reason, Religion, +and Humanity against War: a Fragment translated from Erasmus and addressed +to Aggressors.” That was the year when the final breach took place in the +whig party, and when Pitt initiated his brief and ill-fated policy of +conciliation in Ireland. It was also the year of two works of enormous +influence over thought, Paley’s Evidences and Paine’s Age of Reason. Among +these great movements Knox’s work had but little chance of appealing to a +wide audience.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[Pg xxxiii]</a></span> “Sed quid ad nos?” the bitter motto on the title-page, +probably expressed the feelings with which it was generally regarded. A +version of the treatise against war, made from the Latin text of the +Adagia with some omissions, is the main substance of the volume; and Knox +added a few extracts from other writings of Erasmus on the same subject. +It does not appear to have been reprinted in England, except in a +collected edition of Knox’s works which may be found on the dustiest +shelves of old-fashioned libraries, until, after the close of the +Napoleonic wars, it was again published as a tract by the Society for the +Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. Some half dozen impressions of +this tract appeared at intervals up to the middle of the century; its +publication passed into the hands of the Society of Friends, and the last +issue of which any record can be found was made just before the outbreak +of the Crimean war. But in 1813 an abridged edition was printed at New +York, and was one of the books which influenced the great movement towards +humanity then stirring in the young Republic.</p> + +<p>At the present day, the reactionary wave which has overspread the world +has led, both in England and America, to a new glorification of war. Peace +is on the lips of governments and of individuals, but beneath the smooth +surface the same passions, draped as they always have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiv" id="Page_xxxiv">[Pg xxxiv]</a></span> under fine +names, are a menace to progress and to the higher life of mankind. The +increase of armaments, the glorification of the military life, the +fanaticism which regards organized robbery and murder as a sacred imperial +mission, are the fruits of a spirit which has fallen as far below the +standard of humanism as it has left behind it the precepts of a still +outwardly acknowledged religion. At such a time the noble pleading of +Erasmus has more than a merely literary or antiquarian interest. For the +appeal of humanism still is, as it was then, to the dignity of human +nature itself.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">J. W. Mackail</span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">AGAINST WAR</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>DULCE BELLUM INEXPERTIS</h2> + + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_i.png" alt="I" /></span>t is both an elegant proverb, and among all others, by the writings of +many excellent authors, full often and solemnly used, Dulce bellum +inexpertis, that is to say, War is sweet to them that know it not. There +be some things among mortal men’s businesses, in the which how great +danger and hurt there is, a man cannot perceive till he make a proof. The +love and friendship of a great man is sweet to them that be not expert: he +that hath had thereof experience, is afraid. It seemeth to be a gay and a +glorious thing, to strut up and down among the nobles of the court, and to +be occupied in the king’s business; but old men, to whom that thing by +long experience is well known, do gladly abstain themselves from such +felicity. It seemeth a pleasant thing to be in love with a young damsel; +but that is unto them that have not yet perceived how much grief and +bitterness is in such love. So after this manner of fashion, this proverb +may be applied to every business that is adjoined with great peril and +with many evils: the which no man will take on hand, but he that is young +and wanteth experience of things.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>Aristotle, in his book of Rhetoric, showeth the cause why youth is more +bold, and contrariwise old age more fearful: for unto young men lack of +experience is cause of great boldness, and to the other, experience of +many griefs engendereth fear and doubting. Then if there be anything in +the world that should be taken in hand with fear and doubting, yea, that +ought by all manner of means to be fled, to be withstood with prayer, and +to be clean avoided, verily it is war; than which nothing is either more +wicked, or more wretched, or that more farther destroyeth, or that never +hand cleaveth sorer to, or doth more hurt, or is more horrible, and +briefly to speak, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war. And yet it is a wonder to speak of, how nowadays +in every place, how lightly, and how for every trifling matter, it is +taken in hand, how outrageously and barbarously it is gested and done, not +only of heathen people, but also of Christian men; not only of secular +men, but also of priests and bishops; not only of young men and of them +that have no experience, but also of old men and of those that so often +have had experience; not only of the common and movable vulgar people, but +most specially of the princes, whose duty had been, by wisdom and reason, +to set in a good order and to pacify the light and hasty movings of the +foolish multitude. Nor there lack neither lawyers, nor yet divines, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +which are ready with their firebrands to kindle these things so +abominable, and they encourage them that else were cold, and they privily +provoke those to it that were weary thereof. And by these means it is come +to that pass that war is a thing now so well accepted, that men wonder at +him that is not pleased therewith. It is so much approved, that it is +counted a wicked thing (and I had almost said heresy) to reprove this one +thing, the which as it is above all other things most mischievous, so it +is most wretched. But how more justly should this be wondered at, what +evil spirit, what pestilence, what mischief, and what madness put first in +man’s mind a thing so beyond measure beastly, that this most pleasant and +reasonable creature Man, the which Nature hath brought forth to peace and +benevolence, which one alone she hath brought forth to the help and +succour of all other, should with so wild wilfulness, with so mad rages, +run headlong one to destroy another? At the which thing he shall also much +more marvel, whosoever would withdraw his mind from the opinions of the +common people, and will turn it to behold the very pure strength and +nature of things; and will apart behold with philosophical eyes the image +of man on the one side, and the picture of war on the other side.</p> + +<p>Then first of all if one would consider well but the behaviour and shape +of man’s body shall he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> not forthwith perceive that Nature, or rather God, +hath shaped this creature, not to war, but to friendship, not to +destruction, but to health, not to wrong, but to kindness and benevolence? +For whereas Nature hath armed all other beasts with their own armour, as +the violence of the bulls she hath armed with horns, the ramping lion with +claws; to the boar she hath given the gnashing tusks; she hath armed the +elephant with a long trump snout, besides his great huge body and hardness +of the skin; she hath fenced the crocodile with a skin as hard as a plate; +to the dolphin fish she hath given fins instead of a dart; the porcupine +she defendeth with thorns; the ray and thornback with sharp prickles; to +the cock she hath given strong spurs; some she fenceth with a shell, some +with a hard hide, as it were thick leather, or bark of a tree; some she +provideth to save by swiftness of flight, as doves; and to some she hath +given venom instead of a weapon; to some she hath given a much horrible +and ugly look, she hath given terrible eyes and grunting voice; and she +hath also set among some of them continual dissension and debate—man +alone she hath brought forth all naked, weak, tender, and without any +armour, with most soft flesh and smooth skin. There is nothing at all in +all his members that may seem to be ordained to war, or to any violence. I +will not say at this time, that where all other beasts, anon as they are +brought forth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> they are able of themselves to get their food. Man alone +cometh so forth, that a long season after he is born, he dependeth +altogether on the help of others. He can neither speak nor go, nor yet +take meat; he desireth help only by his infant crying: so that a man may, +at the least way, by this conject, that this creature alone was born all +to love and amity, which specially increaseth and is fast knit together by +good turns done eftsoons of one to another. And for this cause Nature +would, that a man should not so much thank her, for the gift of life, +which she hath given unto him, as he should thank kindness and +benevolence, whereby he might evidently understand himself, that he was +altogether dedicate and bounden to the gods of graces, that is to say, to +kindness, benevolence, and amity. And besides this Nature hath given unto +man a countenance not terrible and loathly, as unto other brute beasts; +but meek and demure, representing the very tokens of love and benevolence. +She hath given him amiable eyes, and in them assured marks of the inward +mind. She hath ordained him arms to clip and embrace. She hath given him +the wit and understanding to kiss: whereby the very minds and hearts of +men should be coupled together, even as though they touched each other. +Unto man alone she hath given laughing, a token of good cheer and +gladness. To man alone she hath given weeping tears, as it were a pledge +or token of meekness and mercy. Yea, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> she hath given him a voice not +threatening and horrible, as unto other brute beasts, but amiable and +pleasant. Nature not yet content with all this, she hath given unto man +alone the commodity of speech and reasoning: the which things verily may +specially both get and nourish benevolence, so that nothing at all should +be done among men by violence.</p> + +<p>She hath endued man with hatred of solitariness, and with love of company. +She hath utterly sown in man the very seeds of benevolence. She hath so +done, that the selfsame thing, that is most wholesome, should be most +sweet and delectable. For what is more delectable than a friend? And +again, what thing is more necessary? Moreover, if a man might lead all his +life most profitably without any meddling with other men, yet nothing +would seem pleasant without a fellow: except a man would cast off all +humanity, and forsaking his own kind would become a beast.</p> + +<p>Besides all this, Nature hath endued man with knowledge of liberal +sciences and a fervent desire of knowledge: which thing as it doth most +specially withdraw man’s wit from all beastly wildness, so hath it a +special grace to get and knit together love and friendship. For I dare +boldly say, that neither affinity nor yet kindred doth bind the minds of +men together with straiter and surer bands of amity, than doth the +fellowship of them that be learned in good letters and honest studies.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> +And above all this, Nature hath divided among men by a marvellous variety +the gifts, as well of the soul as of the body, to the intent truly that +every man might find in every singular person one thing or other, which +they should either love or praise for the excellency thereof; or else +greatly desire and make much of it, for the need and profit that cometh +thereof. Finally she hath endowed man with a spark of a godly mind: so +that though he see no reward, yet of his own courage he delighteth to do +every man good: for unto God it is most proper and natural, by his +benefit, to do everybody good. Else what meaneth it, that we rejoice and +conceive in our minds no little pleasure when we perceive that any +creature is by our means preserved.</p> + +<p>Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were the very image of +himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide +for the wealth of all creatures. And this thing the very brute beasts do +also perceive, for we may see, that not only the tame beasts, but also the +leopards, lions, and other more fierce and wild, when they be in any great +jeopardy, they flee to man for succour. So man is, when all things fail, +the last refuge to all manner of creatures. He is unto them all the very +assured altar and sanctuary.</p> + +<p>I have here painted out to you the image of man as well as I can. On the +other side (if it like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> you) against the figure of Man, let us portray the +fashion and shape of War.</p> + +<p>Now, then, imagine in thy mind, that thou dost behold two hosts of +barbarous people, of whom the look is fierce and cruel, and the voice +horrible; the terrible and fearful rustling and glistering of their +harness and weapons; the unlovely murmur of so huge a multitude; the eyes +sternly menacing; the bloody blasts and terrible sounds of trumpets and +clarions; the thundering of the guns, no less fearful than thunder indeed, +but much more hurtful; the frenzied cry and clamour, the furious and mad +running together, the outrageous slaughter, the cruel chances of them that +flee and of those that are stricken down and slain, the heaps of +slaughters, the fields overflowed with blood, the rivers dyed red with +man’s blood. And it chanceth oftentimes, that the brother fighteth with +the brother, one kinsman with another, friend against friend; and in that +common furious desire ofttimes one thrusteth his weapon quite through the +body of another that never gave him so much as a foul word. Verily, this +tragedy containeth so many mischiefs, that it would abhor any man’s heart +to speak thereof. I will let pass to speak of the hurts which are in +comparison of the other but light and common, as the treading down and +destroying of the corn all about, the burning of towns, the villages +fired, the driving away of cattle, the ravishing of maidens, the old men +led<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> forth in captivity, the robbing of churches, and all things +confounded and full of thefts, pillages, and violence. Neither I will not +speak now of those things which are wont to follow the most happy and most +just war of all.</p> + +<p>The poor commons pillaged, the nobles overcharged; so many old men of +their children bereaved, yea, and slain also in the slaughter of their +children; so many old women destitute, whom sorrow more cruelly slayeth +than the weapon itself; so many honest wives become widows, so many +children fatherless, so many lamentable houses, so many rich men brought +to extreme poverty. And what needeth it here to speak of the destruction +of good manners, since there is no man but knoweth right well that the +universal pestilence of all mischievous living proceedeth at once from +war. Thereof cometh despising of virtue and godly living; thereof cometh, +that the laws are neglected and not regarded; thereof cometh a prompt and +a ready stomach, boldly to do every mischievous deed. Out of this fountain +spring so huge great companies of thieves, robbers, sacrilegers, and +murderers. And what is most grievous of all, this mischievous pestilence +cannot keep herself within her bounds; but after it is begun in some one +corner, it doth not only (as a contagious disease) spread abroad and +infect the countries near adjoining to it, but also it draweth into that +common tumult and troublous business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the countries that be very far off, +either for need, or by reason of affinity, or else by occasion of some +league made. Yea and moreover, one war springeth of another: of a +dissembled war there cometh war indeed, and of a very small, a right great +war hath risen. Nor it chanceth oftentimes none otherwise in these things +than it is feigned of the monster, which lay in the lake or pond called +Lerna.</p> + +<p>For these causes, I trow, the old poets, the which most sagely perceived +the power and nature of things, and with most meet feignings covertly +shadowed the same, have left in writing, that war was sent out of hell: +nor every one of the Furies was not meet and convenient to bring about +this business, but the most pestilent and mischievous of them all was +chosen out for the nonce, which hath a thousand names, and a thousand +crafts to do hurt. She being armed with a thousand serpents, bloweth +before her her fiendish trumpet. Pan with furious ruffling encumbereth +every place. Bellona shaketh her furious flail. And then the wicked +furiousness himself, when he hath undone all knots and broken all bonds, +rusheth out with bloody mouth horrible to behold.</p> + +<p>The grammarians perceived right well these things, of the which some will, +that war have his name by contrary meaning of the word Bellum, that is to +say fair, because it hath nothing good nor fair. Nor bellum, that is for +to say war, is none<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> otherwise called Bellum, that is to say fair, than +the furies are called Eumenides, that is to say meek, because they are +wilful and contrary to all meekness. And some grammarians think rather, +that bellum, war, should be derived out of this word Belva, that is for to +say, a brute beast: forasmuch as it belongeth to brute beasts, and not +unto men, to run together, each to destroy each other. But it seemeth to +me far to pass all wild and all brute beastliness, to fight together with +weapons.</p> + +<p>First, for there are many of the brute beasts, each in his kind, that +agree and live in a gentle fashion together, and they go together in herds +and flocks, and each helpeth to defend the other. Nor is it the nature of +all wild beasts to fight, for some are harmless, as does and hares. But +they that are the most fierce of all, as lions, wolves, and tigers, do not +make war among themselves as we do. One dog eateth not another. The lions, +though they be fierce and cruel, yet they fight not among themselves. One +dragon is in peace with another. And there is agreement among poisonous +serpents. But unto man there is no wild or cruel beast more hurtful than +man.</p> + +<p>Again, when the brute beasts fight, they fight with their own natural +armour: we men, above nature, to the destruction of men, arm ourselves +with armour, invented by craft of the devil. Nor the wild beasts are not +cruel for every cause; but either when hunger maketh them fierce, or else<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +when they perceive themselves to be hunted and pursued to the death, or +else when they fear lest their younglings should take any harm or be +stolen from them. But (O good Lord) for what trifling causes what +tragedies of war do we stir up? For most vain titles, for childish wrath, +for a wench, yea, and for causes much more scornful than these, we be +inflamed to fight.</p> + +<p>Moreover, when the brute beasts fight, then war is one for one, yea, and +that is very short. And when the battle is sorest fought, yet is there not +past one or two, that goeth away sore wounded. When was it ever heard that +an hundred thousand brute beasts were slain at one time fighting and +tearing one another: which thing men do full oft and in many places? And +besides this, whereas some wild beasts have natural debate with some other +that be of a contrary kind, so again there be some with which they +lovingly agree in a sure amity. But man with man, and each with other, +have among them continual war; nor is there league sure enough among any +men. So that whatsoever it be, that hath gone out of kind, it hath gone +out of kind into a worse fashion, than if Nature herself had engendered +therein a malice at the beginning.</p> + +<p>Will ye see how beastly, how foul, and how unworthy a thing war is for +man? Did ye never behold a lion let loose unto a bear? What gapings, what +roarings, what grisly gnashing, what tearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> of their flesh, is there? He +trembleth that beholdeth them, yea, though he stand sure and safe enough +from them. But how much more grisly a sight is it, how much more +outrageous and cruel, to behold man to fight with man, arrayed with so +much armour, and with so many weapons? I beseech you, who would believe +that they were men, if it were not because war is a thing so much in +custom that no man marvelleth at it? Their eyes glow like fire, their +faces be pale, their marching forth is like men in a fury, their voice +screeching and grunting, their cry and frenzied clamour; all is iron, +their harness and weapons jingling and clattering, and the guns +thundering. It might have been better suffered, if man, for lack of meat +and drink, should have fought with man, to the intent he might devour his +flesh and drink his blood: albeit, it is come also now to that pass, that +some there be that do it more of hatred than either for hunger or for +thirst. But now this same thing is done more cruelly, with weapons +envenomed, and with devilish engines. So that nowhere may be perceived any +token of man. Trow ye that Nature could here know it was the same thing, +that she sometime had wrought with her own hands? And if any man would +inform her, that it were man that she beheld in such array, might she not +well, with great wondering, say these words?</p> + +<p>“What new manner of pageant is this that I behold? What devil of hell hath +brought us forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> this monster. There be some that call me a stepmother, +because that among so great heaps of things of my making I have brought +forth some venomous things (and yet have I ordained the selfsame venomous +things for man’s behoof); and because I have made some beasts very fierce +and perilous: and yet is there no beast so wild nor so perilous, but that +by craft and diligence he may be made tame and gentle. By man’s diligent +labour the lions have been made tame, the dragons meek, and the bears +obedient. But what is this, that worse is than any stepmother, which hath +brought us forth this new unreasonable brute beast, the pestilence and +mischief of all this world? One beast alone I brought forth wholly +dedicate to be benevolent, pleasant, friendly, and wholesome to all other. +What hath chanced, that this creature is changed into such a brute beast? +I perceive nothing of the creature man, which I myself made. What evil +spirit hath thus defiled my work? What witch hath bewitched the mind of +man, and transformed it into such brutishness? What sorceress hath thus +turned him out of his kindly shape? I command and would that the wretched +creature should behold himself in a glass. But, alas, what shall the eyes +see, where the mind is away? Yet behold thyself (if thou canst), thou +furious warrior, and see if thou mayst by any means recover thyself again. +From whence hast thou that threatening crest upon thy head? From whence +hast thou<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> that shining helmet? From whence are those iron horns? Whence +cometh it, that thine elbows are so sharp and piked? Where hadst thou +those scales? Where hadst thou those brazen teeth? Of whence are those +hard plates? Whence are those deadly weapons? From whence cometh to thee +this voice more horrible than of a wild beast? What a look and countenance +hast thou more terrible than of a brute beast? Where hast thou gotten this +thunder and lightning, both more fearful and hurtful than is the very +thunder and lightning itself? I formed thee a goodly creature; what came +into thy mind, that thou wouldst thus transform thyself into so cruel and +so beastly fashion, that there is no brute beast so unreasonable in +comparison unto man?”</p> + +<p>These words, and many other such like, I suppose, the Dame Nature, the +worker of all things, would say. Then since man is such as is showed +before that he is, and that war is such a thing, like as too oft we have +felt and known, it seemeth to me no small wonder, what ill spirit, what +disease, or what mishap, first put into man’s mind, that he would bathe +his mortal weapon in the blood of man. It must needs be, that men mounted +up to so great madness by divers degrees. For there was never man yet (as +Juvenal saith) that was suddenly most graceless of all. And always things +the worst have crept in among men’s manners of living, under the shadow +and shape of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> goodness. For some time those men that were in the beginning +of the world led their lives in woods; they went naked, they had no walled +towns, nor houses to put their heads in: it happened otherwhile that they +were sore grieved and destroyed with wild beasts. Wherefore with them +first of all, men made war, and he was esteemed a mighty strong man, and a +captain, that could best defend mankind from the violence of wild beasts. +Yea, and it seemed to them a thing most equable to strangle the +stranglers, and to slay the slayers, namely, when the wild beast, not +provoked by us for any hurt to them done, would wilfully set upon us. And +so by reason that this was counted a thing most worthy of praise (for +hereof it rose that Hercules was made a god), the lusty-stomached young +men began all about to hunt and chase the wild beasts, and as a token of +their valiant victory the skins of such beasts as they slew were set up in +such places as the people might behold them. Besides this they were not +contented to slay the wild beasts, but they used to wear their skins to +keep them from the cold in winter. These were the first slaughters that +men used: these were their spoils and robberies. After this, they went so +farforth, that they were bold to do a thing which Pythagoras thought to be +very wicked; and it might seem to us also a thing monstrous, if custom +were not, which hath so great strength in every place: that by custom it +was reputed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> some countries a much charitable deed if a man would, when +his father was very old, first sore beat him, and after thrust him +headlong into a pit, and so bereave him of his life, by whom it chanced +him to have the gift of life. It was counted a holy thing for a man to +feed on the flesh of his own kinsmen and friends. They thought it a goodly +thing, that a virgin should be made common to the people in the temple of +Venus. And many other things, more abominable than these: of which if a +man should now but only speak, every man would abhor to hear him. Surely +there is nothing so ungracious, nor nothing so cruel, but men will hold +therewith, if it be once approved by custom. Then will ye hear, what a +deed they durst at the last do? They were not abashed to eat the carcases +of the wild beasts that were slain, to tear the unsavoury flesh with their +teeth, to drink the blood, to suck out the matter of them, and (as Ovid +saith) to hide the beasts’ bowels within their own. And although at that +time it seemed to be an outrageous deed unto them that were of a more mild +and gentle courage: yet was it generally allowed, and all by reason of +custom and commodity. Yet were they not so content. For they went from the +slaying of noisome wild beasts, to kill the harmless beasts, and such as +did no hurt at all. They waxed cruel everywhere upon the poor sheep, a +beast without fraud or guile. They slew the hare, for none other offence, +but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>because he was a good fat dish of meat to feed upon. Nor they forbare +not to kill the tame ox, which had a long season, with his sore labour, +nourished the unkind household. They spared no kind of beasts, of fowls, +nor of fishes. Yea, and the tyranny of gluttony went so farforth that +there was no beast anywhere that could be sure from the cruelty of man. +Yea, and custom persuaded this also, that it seemed no cruelty at all to +slay any manner of beast, whatsoever it was, so they abstained from +manslaughter. Now peradventure it lieth in our power to keep out vices, +that they enter not upon the manners of men, in like manner as it lieth in +our power to keep out the sea, that it break not in upon us; but when the +sea is once broken in, it passeth our power to restrain it within any +bounds. So either of them both once let in, they will not be ruled, as we +would, but run forth headlong whithersoever their own rage carrieth them. +And so after that men had been exercised with such beginnings to +slaughter, wrath anon enticed man to set upon man, either with staff, or +with stone, or else with his fist. For as yet, I think they used no other +weapons. And now had they learned by the killing of beasts, that man also +might soon and easily be slain with little labour. But this cruelty +remained betwixt singular persons, so that yet there was no great number +of men that fought together, but as it chanced one man against another. +And besides this, there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> was no small colour of equity, if a man slew his +enemy; yea, and shortly after, it was a great praise to a man to slay a +violent and a mischievous man, and to rid him out of the world, such +devilish and cruel caitiffs, as men say Cacus and Busiris were. For we see +plainly, that for such causes, Hercules was greatly praised. And in +process of time, many assembled to take part together, either as affinity, +or as neighbourhood, or kindred bound them. And what is now robbery was +then war. And they fought then with stones, or with stakes, a little +burned at the ends. A little river, a rock, or such other like thing, +chancing to be between them, made an end of their battle.</p> + +<p>In the mean season, while fierceness by use increaseth, while wrath is +grown great, and ambition hot and vehement, by ingenious craft they arm +their furious violence. They devise harness, such as it is, to fence them +with. They invent weapons to destroy their enemies with. Thus now by few +and few, now with greater company, and now armed they begin to fight. Nor +to this manifest madness they forget not to give honour. For they call it +Bellum, that is to say, a fair thing; yea, and they repute it a virtuous +deed, if a man, with the jeopardy of his own life, manly resist and defend +from the violence of his enemies, his wife, children, beasts, and +household. And by little and little, malice grew so great, with the high +esteeming of other things, that one city began to send <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>defiance and make +war to another, country against country, and realm against realm. And +though the thing of itself was then most cruel, yet all this while there +remained in them certain tokens, whereby they might be known for men: for +such goods as by violence were taken away were asked and required again by +an herald at arms; the gods were called to witness; yea, and when they +were ranged in battle, they would reason the matter ere they fought. And +in the battle they used but homely weapons, nor they used neither guile +nor deceit, but only strength. It was not lawful for a man to strike his +enemy till the sign of battle was given; nor was it not lawful to fight +after the sounding of the retreat. And for conclusion, they fought more to +show their manliness and for praise, than they coveted to slay. Nor all +this while they armed them not, but against strangers, the which they +called hostes, as they had been hospites, their guests. Of this rose +empires, of the which there was never none yet in any nation, but it was +gotten with the great shedding of man’s blood. And since that time there +hath followed continual course of war, while one eftsoons laboureth to put +another out of his empire, and to set himself in. After all this, when the +empires came once into their hands that were most ungracious of all other, +they made war upon whosoever pleased them; nor were they not in greatest +peril and danger of war that had most deserved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> to be punished, but they +that by fortune had gotten great riches. And now they made not war to get +praise and fame, but to get the vile muck of the world, or else some other +thing far worse than that.</p> + +<p>I think not the contrary, but that the great, wise man Pythagoras meant +these things when he by a proper device of philosophy frightened the +unlearned multitude of people from the slaying of silly beasts. For he +perceived, it should at length come to pass, that he which (by no injury +provoked) was accustomed to spill the blood of a harmless beast, would in +his anger, being provoked by injury, not fear to slay a man.</p> + +<p>War, what other thing else is it than a common manslaughter of many men +together, and a robbery, the which, the farther it sprawleth abroad, the +more mischievous it is? But many gross gentlemen nowadays laugh merrily at +these things, as though they were the dreams and dotings of schoolmen, the +which, saving the shape, have no point of manhood, yet seem they in their +own conceit to be gods. And yet of those beginnings, we see we be run so +far in madness, that we do naught else all our life-days. We war +continually, city with city, prince with prince, people with people, yea, +and (it that the heathen people confess to be a wicked thing) cousin with +cousin, alliance with alliance, brother with brother, the son with the +father, yea, and that I esteem more cruel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> than all these things, a +Christian man against another man; and yet furthermore, I will say that I +am very loath to do, which is a thing most cruel of all, one Christian man +with another Christian man. Oh, blindness of man’s mind! at those things +no man marvelleth, no man abhorreth them. There be some that rejoice at +them, and praise them above the moon: and the thing which is more than +devilish, they call a holy thing. Old men, crooked for age, make war, +priests make war, monks go forth to war; yea, and with a thing so devilish +we mingle Christ. The battles ranged, they encounter the one the other, +bearing before them the sign of the Cross, which thing alone might at the +leastwise admonish us by what means it should become Christian men to +overcome.</p> + +<p>But we run headlong each to destroy other, even from that heavenly +sacrifice of the altar, whereby is represented that perfect and ineffable +knitting together of all Christian men. And of so wicked a thing, we make +Christ both author and witness. Where is the kingdom of the devil, if it +be not in war? Why draw we Christ into war, with whom a brothel-house +agreeth more than war? Saint Paul disdaineth, that there should be any so +great discord among Christian men, that they should need any judge to +discuss the matter between them. What if he should come and behold us now +through all the world, warring for every light and trifling cause, +striving more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>cruelly than ever did any heathen people, and more cruelly +than any barbarous people? Yea, and ye shall see it done by the authority, +exhortations, and furtherings of those that represent Christ, the prince +of peace and very bishop that all things knitteth together by peace and of +those that salute the people with good luck of peace. Nor is it not +unknown to me what these unlearned people say (a good while since) against +me in this matter, whose winnings arise of the common evils. They say +thus: We make war against our wills: for we be constrained by the +ungracious deeds of other. We make war but for our right. And if there +come any hurt thereof, thank them that be causers of it. But let these men +hold their tongues awhile, and I shall after, in place convenient, avoid +all their cavillations, and pluck off that false visor wherewith we hide +all our malice.</p> + +<p>But first as I have above compared man with war, that is to say, the +creature most demure with a thing most outrageous, to the intent that +cruelty might the better be perceived: so will I compare war and peace +together, the thing most wretched, and most mischievous, with the best and +most wealthy thing that is. And so at last shall appear, how great madness +it is, with so great tumult, with so great labours, with such intolerable +expenses, with so many calamities, affectionately to desire war: whereas +agreement might be bought with a far less price.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>First of all, what in all this world is more sweet or better than amity or +love? Truly nothing. And I pray you, what other thing is peace than amity +and love among men, like as war on the other side is naught else but +dissension and debate of many men together? And surely the property of +good things is such, that the broader they be spread, the more profit and +commodity cometh of them. Farther, if the love of one singular person with +another be so sweet and delectable, how great should the felicity be if +realm with realm, and nation with nation, were coupled together, with the +band of amity and love? On the other side, the nature of evil things is +such, that the farther they sprawl abroad, the more worthy they are to be +called evil, as they be indeed. Then if it be a wretched thing, if it be +an ungracious thing, that one man armed should fight with another, how +much more miserable, how much more mischievous is it, that the selfsame +thing should be done with so many thousands together? By love and peace +the small things increase and wax great, by discord and debate the great +things decay and come to naught. Peace is the mother and nurse of all good +things. War suddenly and at once overthroweth, destroyeth, and utterly +fordoeth everything that is pleasant and fair, and bringeth in among men a +monster of all mischievous things.</p> + +<p>In the time of peace (none otherwise than as if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the lusty springtime +should show and shine in men’s businesses) the fields are tilled, the +gardens and orchards freshly flourish, the beasts pasture merrily; gay +manours in the country are edified, the towns are builded, where as need +is reparations are done, the buildings are heightened and augmented, +riches increase, pleasures are nourished, the laws are executed, the +common wealth flourisheth, religion is fervent, right reigneth, gentleness +is used, craftsmen are busily exercised, the poor men’s gain is more +plentiful, the wealthiness of the rich men is more gay and goodly, the +studies of most honest learnings flourish, youth is well taught, the aged +folks have quiet and rest, maidens are luckily married, mothers are +praised for bringing forth of children like to their progenitors, the good +men prosper and do well, and the evil men do less offence.</p> + +<p>But as soon as the cruel tempest of war cometh on us, good Lord, how great +a flood of mischiefs occupieth, overfloweth, and drowneth all together. +The fair herds of beasts are driven away, the goodly corn is trodden down +and destroyed, the good husbandmen are slain, the villages are burned up, +the most wealthy cities, that have flourished so many winters, with that +one storm are overthrown, destroyed, and brought to naught: so much +readier and prompter men are to do hurt than good. The good citizens are +robbed and spoiled of their goods by cursed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> thieves and murderers. Every +place is full of fear, of wailing, complaining, and lamenting. The +craftsmen stand idle; the poor men must either die for hunger, or fall to +stealing. The rich men either stand and sorrow for their goods, that be +plucked and snatched from them, or else they stand in great doubt to lose +such goods as they have left them: so that they be on every side +woebegone. The maidens, either they be not married at all, or else if they +be married, their marriages are sorrowful and lamentable. Wives, being +destitute of their husbands, lie at home without any fruit of children, +the laws are laid aside, gentleness is laughed to scorn, right is clean +exiled, religion is set at naught, hallowed and unhallowed things all are +one, youth is corrupted with all manner of vices, the old folk wail and +weep, and wish themselves out of the world, there is no honour given unto +the study of good letters. Finally, there is no tongue can tell the harm +and mischief that we feel in war.</p> + +<p>Perchance war might be the better suffered, if it made us but only +wretched and needy; but it maketh us ungracious, and also full of +unhappiness. And I think Peace likewise should be much made of, if it were +but only because it maketh us more wealthy and better in our living. Alas, +there be too many already, yea, and more than too many mischiefs and +evils, with the which the wretched life of man (whether he will or no) is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +continually vexed, tormented, and utterly consumed.</p> + +<p>It is near hand two thousand years since the physicians had knowledge of +three hundred divers notable sicknesses by name, besides other small +sicknesses and new, as daily spring among us, and besides age also, which +is of itself a sickness inevitable.</p> + +<p>We read that in one place whole cities have been destroyed with +earthquakes. We read, also, that in another place there have been cities +altogether burnt with lightning; how in another place whole regions have +been swallowed up with opening of the earth, towns by undermining have +fallen to the ground; so that I need not here to remember what a great +multitude of men are daily destroyed by divers chances, which be not +regarded because they happen so often: as sudden breaking out of the sea +and of great floods, falling down of hills and houses, poison, wild +beasts, meat, drink, and sleep. One hath been strangled with drinking of a +hair in a draught of milk, another hath been choked with a little +grapestone, another with a fishbone sticking in his throat. There hath +been, that sudden joy hath killed out of hand: for it is less wonder of +them that die for vehement sorrow. Besides all this, what mortal +pestilence see we in every place. There is no part of the world, that is +not subject to peril and danger of man’s life, which life of itself also +is most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> fugitive. So manifold mischances and evils assail man on every +side that not without cause Homer did say: Man was the most wretched of +all creatures living.</p> + +<p>But forasmuch these mischances cannot lightly be eschewed, nor they happen +not through our fault, they make us but only wretched, and not ungracious +withal. What pleasure is it then for them that be subject already to so +many miserable chances, willingly to seek and procure themselves another +mischief more than they had before, as though they yet wanted misery? Yea, +they procure not a light evil, but such an evil that is worse than all the +others, so mischievous, that it alone passeth all the others; so abundant, +that in itself alone is comprehended all ungraciousness; so pestilent, +that it maketh us all alike wicked as wretched, it maketh us full of all +misery, and yet not worthy to be pitied.</p> + +<p>Now go farther, and with all these things consider, that the commodities +of Peace spread themselves most far and wide, and pertain unto many men. +In war if there happen anything luckily (but, O good Lord, what may we say +happeneth well and luckily in war?), it pertaineth to very few, and to +them that are unworthy to have it. The prosperity of one is the +destruction of another. The enriching of one is the spoil and robbing of +another. The triumph of one is the lamentable mourning of another, so that +as the infelicity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> is bitter and sharp, the felicity is cruel and bloody. +Howbeit otherwhile both parties wept according to the proverb, Victoria +Cadmaea, Cadmus victorie, where both parties repented. And I wot not +whether it came ever so happily to pass in war, that he that had victory +did not repent him of his enterprise, if he were a good man.</p> + +<p>Then seeing Peace is the thing above all other most best and most +pleasant, and, contrariwise, war the thing most ungracious and wretched of +all other, shall we think those men to be in their right minds, the which +when they may obtain Peace with little business and labour will rather +procure war with so great labour and most difficulty?</p> + +<p>First of all consider, how loathly a thing the rumour of war is, when it +is first spoken of. Then how envious a thing it is unto a prince, while +with often tithes and taxes he pillageth his subjects. What a business +hath he to make and entertain friends to help him? what a business to +procure bands of strangers and to hire soldiers?</p> + +<p>What expenses and labours must he make in setting forth his navy of ships, +in building and repairing of castles and fortresses, in preparing and +apparelling of his tents and pavilions, in framing, making, and carrying +of engines, guns, armour, weapons, baggage, carts, and victual? What great +labour is spent in making of bulwarks, in casting of ditches, in digging +of mines, in keeping of watches, in keeping of arrays, and in exercising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +of weapons? I pass over the fear they be in; I speak not of the imminent +danger and peril that hangeth over their heads: for what thing in war is +not to be feared? What is he that can reckon all the incommodious life +that the most foolish soldiers suffer in the field? And for that worthy to +endure worse, in that they will suffer it willingly. Their meat is so ill +that an ox of Cyprus would be loath to eat it; they have but little sleep, +nor yet that at their own pleasure. Their tents on every side are open on +the wind. What, a tent? No, no; they must all the day long, be it hot or +cold, wet or dry, stand in the open air, sleep on the bare ground, stand +in their harness. They must suffer hunger, thirst, cold, heat, dust, +showers; they must be obedient to their captains; sometimes they be +clapped on the pate with a warder or a truncheon: so that there is no +bondage so vile as the bondage of soldiers.</p> + +<p>Besides all this, at the sorrowful sign given to fight, they must run +headlong to death: for either they must slay cruelly, or be slain +wretchedly. So many sorrowful labours must they take in hand, that they +may bring to pass that thing which is most wretched of all other. With so +many great miseries we must first afflict and grieve our own self, that we +may afflict and grieve other!</p> + +<p>Now if we would call this matter to account, and justly reckon how much +war will cost, and how much peace, surely we shall find that peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> may be +got and obtained with the tenth part of the cares, labours, griefs, +perils, expenses, and spilling of blood, with which the war is procured. +So great a company of men, to their extreme perils, ye lead out of the +realm to overthrow and destroy some one town: and with the labour of the +selfsame men, and without any peril at all, another town, much more noble +and goodly, might be new edified and builded. But you say, you will hurt +and grieve your enemy: so even that doing is against humanity. +Nevertheless, this I would ye should consider, that ye cannot hurt and +grieve your enemies, but ye must first greatly hurt your own people. And +it seemeth a point of a madman, to enterprise where he is sure and certain +of so great hurt and damage, and is uncertain which way the chance of war +will turn.</p> + +<p>But admit, that either foolishness, or wrath, or ambition, or +covetousness, or outrageous cruelty, or else (which I think more like) the +furies sent from hell, should ravish and draw the heathen people to this +madness. Yet from whence cometh it into our minds, that one Christian man +should draw his weapon to bathe it in another Christian man’s blood? It is +called parricide, if the one brother slay the other. And yet is a +Christian man nearer joined to another than is one brother to another: +except the bonds of nature be stronger than the bonds of Christ. What +abominable thing, then, is it to see them almost continually fighting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> +among themselves, the which are the inhabitants of one house the Church, +which rejoice and say, that they all be the members of one body, and that +have one head, which truly is Christ; they have all one Father in heaven; +they are all taught and comforted by one Holy Spirit; they profess the +religion of Christ all under one manner; they are all redeemed with +Christ’s blood; they are all newborn at the holy font; they use alike +sacraments; they be all soldiers under one captain; they are all fed with +one heavenly bread; they drink all of one spiritual cup; they have one +common enemy the devil; finally, they be all called to one inheritance. +Where be they so many sacraments of perfect concord? Where be the +innumerable teachings of peace? There is one special precept, which Christ +called his, that is, Charity. And what thing is so repugnant to charity as +war? Christ saluted his disciples with the blessed luck of peace. Unto his +disciples he gave nothing save peace, saving peace he left them nothing. +In those holy prayers, he specially prayed the Father of heaven, that in +like manner as he was one with the Father, so all his, that is to say, +Christian men, should be one with him. Lo, here you may perceive a thing +more than peace, more than amity, more than concord.</p> + +<p>Solomon bare the figure of Christ: for Solomon in the Hebrew tongue +signifieth peaceable or peaceful. Him God would have to build his temple.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +At the birth of Christ the angels proclaimed neither war nor triumphs, but +peace they sang. And before his birth the prophet David prophesied thus of +him: Et factus est in pace locus ejus, that is to say, His dwelling place +is made in peace. Search all the whole life of Christ, and ye shall never +find thing that breathes not of peace, that signifieth not amity, that +savoureth not of charity. And because he perceived peace could not well be +kept, except men would utterly despise all those things for which the +world so greedily fighteth, he commanded that we should of him learn to be +meek. He calleth them blessed and happy that setteth naught by riches, for +those he calleth poor in spirit. Blessed be they that despise the +pleasures of this world, the which he calleth mourners. And them blessed +he calleth that patiently suffer themselves, to be put out of their +possessions, knowing that here in this world they are but as outlaws; and +the very true country and possession of godly creatures is in heaven. He +calleth them blessed which, deserving well of all men, are wrongfully +blamed and ill afflicted. He forbade that any man should resist evil. +Briefly, as all his doctrine commandeth sufferance and love, so all his +life teacheth nothing else but meekness. So he reigned, so he warred, so +he overcame, so he triumphed.</p> + +<p>Now the apostles, that had sucked into them the pure spirit of Christ, and +were blessedly drunk<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> with that new must of the Holy Ghost, preached +nothing but meekness and peace. What do all the epistles of Paul sound in +every place but peace, but long-suffering, but charity? What speaketh +Saint John, what rehearseth he so oft, but love? What other thing did +Peter? What other thing did all the true Christian writers? From whence +then cometh all this tumult of wars amongst the children of peace? Think +ye it a fable, that Christ calleth himself a vine tree, and his own the +branches? Who did ever see one branch fight with another? Is it in vain +that Paul so oft wrote, The Church to be none other thing, than one body +compact together of divers members, cleaving to one head, Christ? Whoever +saw the eye fight with the hand, or the belly with the foot? In this +universal body, compact of all those unlike things, there is agreement. In +the body of a beast, one member is in peace with another, and each member +useth not the property thereto given for itself alone, but for the profit +of all the other members. So that if there come any good to any one member +alone, it helpeth all the whole body. And may the compaction or knitting +of Nature do more in the body of a beast, that shortly must perish, than +the coupling of the Holy Ghost in the mystical and immortal body of the +Church? Do we to no purpose pray as taught by Christ: Good Lord, even as +thy will is fulfilled in heaven, so let it be fulfilled in the earth? In +that city of heaven is concord and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> peace most perfect. And Christ would +have his Church to be none other than a heavenly people in earth, as near +as might be after the manner of them that are in heaven, ever labouring +and making haste to go thither, and always having their mind thereon.</p> + +<p>Now go to, let us imagine, that there should come some new guest out of +the lunar cities, where Empedocles dwelleth, or else out of the +innumerable worlds, that Democritus fabricated, into this world, desiring +to know what the inhabitants do here. And when he was instructed of +everything, it should at last be told him that, besides all other, there +is one creature marvellously mingled, of body like to brute beasts and of +soul like unto God. And it should also be told him, that this creature is +so noble, that though he be here an outlaw out of his own country, yet are +all other beasts at his commandment, the which creature through his +heavenly beginning inclineth alway to things heavenly and immortal. And +that God eternal loved this creature so well, that whereas he could +neither by the gifts of nature, nor by the strong reasons of philosophy +attain unto that which he so fervently desired, he sent hither his only +begotten son, to the intent to teach this creature a new kind of learning. +Then as soon as this new guest had perceived well the whole manner of +Christ’s life and precepts, would desire to stand in some high place, from +whence he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> might behold that which he had heard. And when he should see +all other creatures soberly live according to their kind, and, being led +by the laws and course of nature, desire nothing but even as Nature would; +and should see this one special creature man given riotously to tavern +haunting, to vile lucre, to buying and selling, chopping and changing, to +brawling and fighting one with another, trow ye that he would not think +that any of the other creatures were man, of whom he heard so much of +before, rather than he that is indeed man? Then if he that had instructed +him afore would show him which creature is man, now would he look about to +see if he could spy the Christian flock and company, the which, following +the ordinance of that heavenly teacher Christ, should exhibit to him a +figure or shape of the evangelical city. Think ye he would not rather +judge Christians to dwell in any other place than in those countries, +wherein we see so great superfluity, riot, voluptuousness, pride, tyranny, +discord, brawlings, fightings, wars, tumults, yea, and briefly to speak, a +greater puddle of all those things that Christ reproveth than among Turks +or Saracens? From whence, then, creepeth this pestilence in among +Christian people? Doubtless this mischief also is come in by little and +little, like as many more other be, ere men be aware of them. For truly +every mischief creepeth by little and little upon the good manners of men, +or else<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> under the colour of goodness it is suddenly received.</p> + +<p>So then first of all, learning and cunning crept in as a thing very meet +to confound heretics, which defend their opinions with the doctrine of +philosophers, poets, and orators. And surely at the beginning of our +faith, Christian men did not learn those things; but such as peradventure +had learned them, before they knew what Christ meant, they turned the +thing that they had learned already, into good use.</p> + +<p>Eloquence of tongue was at the beginning dissembled more than despised, +but at length it was openly approved. After that, under colour of +confounding heretics, came in an ambitious pleasure of brawling +disputations, which hath brought into the Church of Christ no small +mischief. At length the matter went so farforth that Aristotle was +altogether received into the middle of divinity, and so received, that his +authority is almost reputed holier than the authority of Christ. For if +Christ spake anything that did little agree with our life, by +interpretation of Aristotle it was lawful to make it serve their purpose. +But if any do never so little repugn against the high divinity of +Aristotle, he is quickly with clapping of hands driven out of the place. +For of him we have learned, that the felicity of man is imperfect, except +he have both the good gifts of body and of fortune. Of him we have +learned, that no commonweal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> may flourish, in which all things are +common. And we endeavour ourselves to glue fast together the decrees of +this man and the doctrine of Christ—which is as likely a thing as to +mingle fire and water together. And a gobbet we have received of the civil +laws, because of the equity that seemeth to be in them. And to the end +they should the better serve our purpose, we have, as near as may be, +writhed and plied the doctrine of the gospel to them. Now by the civil law +it is lawful for a man to defend violence with violence, and each to +pursue for his right. Those laws approve buying and selling; they allow +usury, so it be measurable; they praise war as a noble thing, so, it be +just. Finally all the doctrine of Christ is so defiled with the learning +of logicians, sophisters, astronomers, orators, poets, philosophers, +lawyers, and gentles, that a man shall spend the most part of his life, +ere he may have any leisure to search holy scripture, to the which when a +man at last cometh, he must come infected with so many worldly opinions, +that either he must be offended with Christ’s doctrines, or else he must +apply them to the mind and of them that he hath learned before. And this +thing is so much approved, that it is now a heinous deed, if a man presume +to study holy scripture, which hath not buried himself up to the hard ears +in those trifles, or rather sophistries of Aristotle. As though Christ’s +doctrine were such, that it were not lawful for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> all men to know it, or +else that it could by any means agree with the wisdom of philosophers. +Besides this we admitted at the beginning of our faith some honour, which +afterward we claimed as of duty. Then we received riches, but that was to +distribute to relieve poor men, which afterwards we turned to our own use. +And why not, since we have learned by the law civil, that the very order +of charity is, that every man must first provide for himself? Nor lack +there colours to cloak this mischief: first it is a good deed to provide +for our children, and it is right that we foresee how to live in age; +finally, why should we, say they, give our goods away, if we come by them +without fraud? By these degrees it is by little and little come to pass, +that he is taken for the best man that hath most riches: nor never was +there more honour given to riches among the heathen people, than is at +this day among the Christian people. For what thing is there, either +spiritual or temporal, that is not done with great show of riches? And it +seemed a thing agreeable with those ornaments, if Christian men had some +great jurisdiction under them. Nor there wanted not such as gladly +submitted themselves. Albeit at the beginning it was against their wills, +and scantly would they receive it. And yet with much work, they received +it so, that they were content with the name and title only: the profit +thereof they gladly gave unto other men. At the last, little by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> little +it came to pass, that a bishop thought himself no bishop, except he had +some temporal lordship withal; an abbot thought himself of small +authority, if he had not wherewith to play the lordly sire. And in +conclusion, we blushed never a deal at the matter, we wiped away all +shamefastness, and shoved aside all the bars of comeliness. And whatever +abuse was used among the heathen people, were it covetousness, ambition, +riot, pomp, or pride, or tyranny, the same we follow, in the same we match +them, yea, and far pass them. And to pass over the lighter things for the +while, I pray you, was there ever war among the heathen people so long +continually, or more cruelly, than among Christian people? What stormy +rumblings, what violent brays of war, what tearing of leagues, and what +piteous slaughters of men have we seen ourselves within these few years? +What nation hath not fought and skirmished with another? And then we go +and curse the Turk; and what can be a more pleasant sight to the Turks, +than to behold us daily each slaying other?</p> + +<p>Xerxes doted, when he led out of his own country that huge multitude of +people to make war upon the Greeks. Trow ye, was he not mad, when he wrote +letters to the mountain called Athos, threatening that the hill should +repent except it obeyed his lust? And the same Xerxes commanded also the +sea to be beaten, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> it was somewhat rough when he should have +sailed over.</p> + +<p>Who will deny but Alexander the Great was mad also? He, the young god, +wished that there were many worlds, the which he might conquer—so great a +fever of vainglory had embraced his young lusty courage. And yet these +same men, the which Seneca doubted not to call mad thieves, warred after a +gentler fashion than we do; they were more faithful of their promise in +war, nor they used not so mischievous engines in war, nor such crafts and +subtleties, nor they warred not for so light causes as we Christian men +do. They rejoiced to advance and enrich such provinces as they had +conquered by war; and the rude people, that lived like wild beasts without +laws, learning, or good manners, they taught them both civil conditions +and crafts, whereby they might live like men. In countries that were not +inhabited with people, they builded cities, and made them both fair and +profitable. And the places that were not very sure, they fenced, for +safeguard of the people, with bridges, banks, bulwarks; and with a +thousand other such commodities they helped the life of man. So that then +it was right expedient to be overcome. Yea, and how many things read we, +that were either wisely done, or soberly spoken of them in the midst of +their wars. As for those things that are done in Christian men’s wars they +are more filthy and cruel than is convenient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> here to rehearse. Moreover, +look what was worst in the heathen peoples’ wars, in that we follow them, +yea, we pass them.</p> + +<p>But now it is worth while to hear, by what means we maintain this our so +great madness. Thus they reason: If it had not been lawful by no means to +make war, surely God would never have been the author to the Jews to make +war against their enemies. Well said, but we must add hereunto, that the +Jews never made war among themselves, but against strangers and wicked +men. We, Christian men, fight with Christian men. Diversity of religion +caused the Jews to fight against their enemies: for their enemies +worshipped not God as they did. We make war oftentimes for a little +childish anger, or for hunger of money, or for thirst of glory, or else +for filthy meed. The Jews fought by the commandment of God; we make war to +avenge the grief and displeasure of our mind. And nevertheless if men will +so much lean to the example of the Jews, why do we not then in like manner +use circumcision? Why do we not sacrifice with the blood of sheep and +other beasts? Why do we not abstain from swine’s flesh? Why doth not each +of us wed many wives? Since we abhor those things, why doth the example of +war please us so much? Why do we here follow the bare letter that killeth? +It was permitted the Jews to make war, but so likewise as they were +suffered to depart from their wives, doubtless because of their hard and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> +froward manners. But after Christ commanded the sword to be put up, it is +unlawful for Christian men to make any other war but that which is the +fairest war of all, with the most eager and fierce enemies of the Church, +with affection of money, with wrath, with ambition, with dread of death. +These be our Philistines, these be our Nabuchodonosors, these be our +Moabites and Ammonites, with the which it behooveth us to have no truce. +With these we must continually fight, until (our enemies being utterly +vanquished) we may be in quiet, for except we may overcome them, there is +no man that may attain to any true peace, neither with himself, nor yet +with no other. For this war alone is cause of true peace. He that +overcometh in this battle, will make war with no man living. Nor I regard +not the interpretation that some men make of the two swords, to signify +either power spiritual or temporal. When Christ suffered Peter to err +purposely, yea, after he was commanded to put up his sword, no man should +doubt but that war was forbidden, which before seemed to be lawful. But +Peter (say they) fought. True it is, Peter fought; he was yet but a Jew, +and had not the spirit of a very Christian man. He fought not for his +lands, or for any such titles of lands as we do, nor yet for his own life, +but for his Master’s life. And finally, he fought, the which within a +while after forsook his Master. Now if men will needs follow the example +of Peter that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> fought, why might they not as well follow the example of +him forsaking his Master? And though Peter through simple affection erred, +yet did his Master rebuke him. For else, if Christ did allow such manner +of defence, as some most foolishly do interpret, why doth both all the +life and doctrine of Christ preach no other thing but sufferance? Why sent +he forth his disciples again tyrants, armed with nothing else but with a +walking-staff and a scrip? If that sword, which Christ commanded his +disciples to sell their coats to buy, be moderate defence against +persecutors, like as some men do not only wickedly but also blindly +interpret, why did the martyrs never use that defence? But (say they) the +law of nature commandeth, it is approved by the laws, and allowed by +custom, that we ought to put off from us violence by violence, and that +each of us should defend his life, and eke his money, when the money (as +Hesiod saith) is as lief as the life. All this I grant, but yet grace, the +law of Christ, that is of more effect than all these things, commandeth +us, that we should not speak ill to them that speak shrewdly to us; that +we should do well to them that do ill to us, and to them that take away +part of our possessions, we should give the whole; and that we should also +pray for them that imagine our death. But these things (say they) +appertain to the apostles; yea, they appertain to the universal people of +Christ, and to the whole body of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Christ’s Church, that must needs be a +whole and a perfect body, although in its gifts one member is more +excellent than another. To them the doctrine of Christ appertaineth not, +that hope not to have reward with Christ. Let them fight for money and for +lordships, that laugh to scorn the saying of Christ: Blessed be the poor +men in spirit; that is to say, be they poor or rich, blessed be they that +covet no riches in this world. They that put all their felicity in these +riches, they fight gladly to defend their life; but they be those that +understand not this life to be rather a death, nor they perceive not that +everlasting life is prepared for good men. Now they lay against us divers +bishops of Rome, the which have been both authors and abettors of warring. +True it is, some such there have been, but they were of late, and in such +time as the doctrine of Christ waxed cold. Yea, and they be very few in +comparison of the holy fathers that were before them, which with their +writings persuade us to flee war. Why are these few examples most in mind? +Why turn we our eyes from Christ to men? And why had we rather follow the +uncertain examples, than the authority that is sure and certain? For +doubtless the bishops of Rome were men. And it may be right well, that +they were either fools or ungracious caitiffs. And yet we find not that +any of them approved that we should still continually war after this +fashion as we do, which thing I could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> with arguments prove, if I listed +to digress and tarry thereupon.</p> + +<p>Saint Bernard praised warriors, but he so praised them, that he condemned +all the manner of our warfare. And yet why should the saying of Saint +Bernard, or the disputation of Thomas the Alquine, move me rather than the +doctrine of Christ, which commandeth, that we should in no wise resist +evil, specially under such manner as the common people do resist.</p> + +<p>But it is lawful (say they) that a transgressor be punished and put to +death according to the laws: then is it not lawful for a whole country or +city to be revenged by war? What may be answered in this place, is longer +than is convenient to reply. But this much will I say, there is a great +difference. For the evil-doer, found faulty and convicted, is by authority +of the laws put to death. In war there is neither part without fault. +Whereas one singular man doth offend, the punishment falleth only on +himself; and the example of the punishment doth good unto all others. In +war the most part of the punishment and harm falls upon them that least +deserve to be punished; that is, upon husbandmen, old men, honest wives, +young children, and virgins. But if there may any commodity at all be +gathered of this most mischievous thing, that altogether goeth to the +behoof of certain most vengeable thieves, hired soldiers, and strong +robbers, and perhaps to a few captains, by whose craft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> war was raised +for that intent, and with which the matter goeth never better than when +the commonweal is in most high jeopardy and peril to be lost. Whereas one +is for his offence grievously punished, it is the wealthy warning of all +other: but in war to the end to revenge the quarrel of one, or else +peradventure of a few, we cruelly afflict and grieve many thousands of +them that nothing deserved. It were better to leave the offence of a few +unpunished than while we seek occasion to punish one or two, to bring into +assured peril and danger, both our neighbours and innocent enemies (we +call them our enemies, though they never did us hurt); and yet are we +uncertain, whether it shall fall on them or not, that we would have +punished. It is better to let a wound alone, that cannot be cured without +grievous hurt and danger of all the whole body, than go about to heal it.</p> + +<p>Now if any man will cry out and say: It were against all right, that he +that offendeth should not be punished; hereunto I answer, that it is much +more against all right and reason, that so many thousands of innocents +should be brought into extreme calamity and mischief without deserving. +Albeit nowadays we see, that almost all wars spring up I cannot tell of +what titles, and of leagues between princes, that while they go about to +subdue to their dominion some one town, they put in jeopardy all their +whole empire. And yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> within a while after, they sell or give away the +same town again, that they got with shedding of so much blood.</p> + +<p>Peradventure some man will say: Wouldst not have princes fight for their +right? I know right well, it is not meet for such a man as I am, to +dispute overboldly of princes’ matters, and though I might do it without +any danger, yet is it longer than is convenient for this place. But this +much will I say: If each whatsoever title be a cause convenient to go in +hand with war, there is no man that in so great alterations of men’s +affairs, and in so great variety and changes, can want a title. What +nation is there that hath not sometime been put out of their own country, +and also have put other out? How oft have people gone from one country to +another? How oft have whole empires been translated from one to another +either by chance or by league. Let the citizens of Padua claim now again +in God’s name the country of Troy for theirs, because Antenor was sometime +a Trojan. Let the Romans now hardily claim again Africa and Spain, because +those provinces were sometime under the Romans. We call that a dominion, +which is but an administration. The power and authority over men, which be +free by Nature, and over brute beasts, is not all one. What power and +sovereignty soever you have, you have it by the consent of the people. And +if I be not deceived, he that hath authority to give, hath authority to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> +take away again. Will ye see how small a matter it is that we make all +this tumult for? The strife is not, whether this city or that should be +obeisant to a good prince, and not in bondage of a tyrant; but whether +Ferdinand or Sigismund hath the better title to it, whether that city +ought to pay tribute to Philip or to King Louis. This is that noble right, +for the which all the world is thus vexed and troubled with wars and +manslaughter.</p> + +<p>Yet go to, suppose that this right or title be as strong and of as great +authority as may be; suppose also there be no difference between a private +field and a whole city; and admit there be no difference between the +beasts that you have bought with your money and men, which be not only +free, but also true Christians: yet is it a point for a wise man to cast +in his mind, whether the thing that you will war for, be of so great +value, that it will recompense the exceedingly great harms and loss of +your own people. If ye cannot do in every point as becometh a prince, yet +at the leastways do as the merchantman doeth: he setteth naught by that +loss, which he well perceiveth cannot be avoided without a greater loss, +and he reckoneth it a winning, that fortune hath been against him with his +so little loss. Or else at the leastwise follow him, of whom there is a +merry tale commonly told.</p> + +<p>There were two kinsmen at variance about dividing of certain goods, and +when they could by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> no means agree, they must go to law together, that in +conclusion the matter might be ended by sentence of the judges. They got +them attorneys, the pleas were drawn, men of law had the matter in hand, +they came before the judges, the complaint was entered, the cause was +pleaded, and so was the war begun between them. Anon one of them +remembering himself, called aside his adversary to him and said on this +wise: “First it were a great shame, that a little money should dissever us +twain, whom Nature hath knit so near together. Secondly, the end of our +strife is uncertain, no less than of war. It is in our hands to begin when +we will, but not to make an end. All our strife is but for an hundred +crowns, and we shall spend the double thereof upon notaries, upon +promoters, upon advocates, upon attorneys, upon judges, and upon judges’ +friends, if we try the law to the uttermost. We must wait upon these men, +we must flatter and speak them fair, we must give them rewards. And yet I +speak not of the care and thought, nor of the great labour and travail, +that we must take to run about here and there to make friends; and which +of us two that winneth the victory, shall be sure of more incommodity than +profit. Wherefore if we be wise, let us rather see to our own profit, and +the money that shall be evil bestowed upon these bribers, let us divide it +between us twain. And forgive you the half of that ye think should be your +due, and I will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> forgive as much of mine. And so shall we keep and +preserve our friendship, which else is like to perish, and we shall also +eschew this great business, cost, and charge. If you be not content to +forgo anything of your part, I commit the whole matter into your own +hands; do with it as you will. For I had liefer my friend had this money, +than those insatiable thieves. Methinks I have gained enough, if I may +save my good name, keep my friend, and avoid this unquiet and chargeable +business.” Thus partly the telling of the truth, and partly the merry +conceit of his kinsman, moved the other man to agree. So they ended the +matter between themselves, to the great displeasure of the judges and +servants, for they, like a sort of gaping ravens, were deluded and put +beside their prey.</p> + +<p>Let a prince therefore follow the wisdom of these two men, specially in a +matter of much more danger. Nor let him not regard what thing it is that +he would obtain, but what great loss of good things he shall have, in what +great jeopardies he shall be, and what miseries he must endure, to come +thereby. Now if a man will weigh, as it were in a pair of balances, the +commodities of war on the one side and the incommodities on the other +side, he shall find that unjust peace is far better than righteous war. +Why had we rather have war than peace? Who but a madman will angle with a +golden fish-hook? If ye see that the charges and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> expenses shall amount +far above your gain, yea, though all things go according to your mind, is +it not better that ye forgo part of your right than to buy so little +commodity with so innumerable mischiefs? I had liefer that any other man +had the title, than I should win it with so great effusion of Christian +men’s blood. He (whosoever he be) hath now been many years in possession; +he is accustomed to rule, his subjects know him, he behaveth him like a +prince; and one shall come forth, who, finding an old title in some +histories or in some blind evidence, will turn clean upside down the quiet +state and good order of that commonweal. What availeth it with so great +troubling to change any title, which in short space by one chance or other +must go to another man? Specially since we might see, that no things in +this world continue still in one state, but at the scornful pleasure of +fortune they roll to and fro, as the waves of the sea. Finally, if +Christian men cannot despise and set at naught these so light things, yet +whereto need they by and by to run to arms? Since there be so many +bishops, men of great gravity and learning; since there be so many +venerable abbots; since there be so many noble men of great age, whom long +use and experience of things hath made right wise: why are not these +trifling and childish quarrels of princes pacified and set in order by the +wisdom and discretion of these men? But they seem to make a very honest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +reason of war, which pretend as they would defend the Church: as though +the people were not the Church, or as though the Church of Christ was +begun, augmented, and stablished with wars and slaughters, and not rather +in spilling of the blood of martyrs, sufferance, and despising of this +life, or as though the whole dignity of the Church rested in the riches of +the priests. Nor to me truly it seemeth not so allowable, that we should +so oft make war upon the Turks. Doubtless it were not well with the +Christian religion, if the only safeguard thereof should depend on such +succours. Nor it is not likely, that they should be good Christians, that +by these means are brought thereto at the first. For that thing that is +got by war, is again in another time lost by war. Will ye bring the Turks +to the faith of Christ? Let us not make a show of our gay riches, nor of +our great number of soldiers, nor of our great strength. Let them see in +us none of these solemn titles, but the assured tokens of Christian men: a +pure, innocent life; a fervent desire to do well, yea, to our very +enemies; the despising of money, the neglecting of glory, a poor simple +life. Let them hear the heavenly doctrine agreeable to such a manner of +life. These are the best armours to subdue the Turks to Christ. Now +oftentimes we, being ill, fight with the evil. Yea, and I shall say +another thing (which I would to God were more boldly spoken than truly), +if we set aside the title and sign<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of the Cross, we fight Turks against +Turks. If our religion were first stablished by the might and strength of +men of war, if it were confirmed by dint of sword, if it were augmented by +war, then let us maintain it by the same means and ways. But if all things +in our faith were brought to pass by other means, why do we, then (as we +mistrusted the help of Christ), seek such succour as the heathen people +use? But why should we not (say they) kill them that would kill us? So +think they it a great dishonour, if other should be more mischievous than +they. Why do ye not, then, rob those that have robbed you before? Why do +ye not scold and chide at them that rail at you? Why do ye not hate them +that hate you? Trow ye it is a good Christian man’s deed to slay a Turk? +For be the Turks never so wicked, yet they are men, for whose salvation +Christ suffered death. And killing Turks we offer to the devil most +pleasant sacrifice, and with that one deed we please our enemy, the devil, +twice: first because a man is slain, and again, because a Christian man +slew him. There be many, which desiring to seem good Christian men, study +to hurt and grieve the Turks all that ever they may; and where they be not +able to do anything, they curse and ban, and bid a mischief upon them. Now +by the same one point a man may perceive, that they be far from good +Christian men. Succour the Turks, and where they be wicked, make them good +if ye can; if ye<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> cannot, wish and desire of God they may have grace to +turn to goodness. And he that thus doeth, I will say doeth like a +Christian man. But of all these things I shall entreat more largely, when +I set forth my book entitled Antipolemus, which whilom when I was at Rome +I wrote to Julius, bishop of Rome, the second of that name, at the same +time, when he was counselled to make war on the Venetians.</p> + +<p>But there is one thing which is more to be lamented then reasoned: That if +a man would diligently discuss the matter, he shall find that all the wars +among us Christian men do spring either of foolishness, or else of malice. +Some young men without experience, inflamed with the evil examples of +their forefathers, that they find by reading of histories, written of some +foolish authors (and besides this being moved with the exhortations of +flatterers, with the instigation of lawyers, and assenting thereto of the +divines, the bishops winking thereat, or peradventure enticing thereunto), +have rather of foolhardiness than of malice, gone in hand with war; and +with the great hurt and damage of all this world they learn, that war is a +thing that should be by all means and ways fled and eschewed. Some other +are moved by privy hatred, ambition causeth some, and some are stirred by +fierceness of mind to make war. For truly there is almost now no other +thing in our cities and commonweals than is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>contained in Homer’s work +Iliad, The wrath of indiscreet princes and people.</p> + +<p>There be those who for no other cause stir up war but to the intent they +may by that means the more easily exercise tyranny on their subjects. For +in the time of peace, the authority of the council, the dignity of the +rulers, the vigour and strength of the laws, do somewhat hinder, that a +prince cannot do all that him listeth; but as soon as war is once begun, +now all the handling of matters resteth in the pleasure of a few persons. +They that the prince favoureth are lifted up aloft, and they that be in +his displeasure, go down. They exact as much money as pleaseth them. What +need many words? Then they think themselves, that they be the greatest +princes of the world. In the meantime the captains sport and play +together, till they have gnawed the poor people to the hard bones. And +think ye that it will grieve them, that be of this mind, to enter lightly +into war, when any cause is offered? Besides all this, it is worth while +to see by what means we colour our fault. I pretend the defence of our +religion, but my mind is to get the great riches that the Turk hath. Under +colour to defend the Church’s right, I purpose to revenge the hatred that +I have in my stomach. I incline to ambition, I follow my wrath; my cruel, +fierce and unbridled mind compelleth me; and yet will I find a cavillation +and say, the league is not kept, or friendship is broken, or something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> +(I wot not what myself) concerning the laws of matrimony is omitted. And +it is a wonder to speak, how they never obtain the very thing that they so +greatly desire. And while they foolishly labour to eschew this mischief or +that, they fall into another much worse, or else deeper into the same. And +surely if desire of glory causeth them thus to do, it is a thing much more +magnificent and glorious to save than to destroy; much more gay and goodly +to build a city than to overthrow and destroy a city.</p> + +<p>Furthermore admit that the victory in battle is got most prosperously, yet +how small a portion of the glory shall go unto the prince: the commons +will claim a great part of it, by the help of whose money the deed was +done; foreign soldiers, that are hired for money, will challenge much more +than the commons; the captains look to have very much of that glory; and +fortune has the most of all, which striking a great stroke in every +matter, in war may do most of all. If it come of a noble courage or stout +stomach, that you be moved to make war: see, I pray you, how far wide ye +be from your purpose. For while ye will not be seen to bow to one man, as +to a prince your neighbour, peradventure of your alliance, who may by +fortune have done you good: how much more abjectly must ye bow yourself, +what time ye seek aid and help of barbarous people; yea, and, what is more +unworthy, of such men as are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> defiled with all mischievous deeds, if we +must needs call such kind of monsters men? Meanwhile ye go about to allure +unto you with fair words and promises, ravishers of virgins and of +religious women, men-killers, stout robbers and rovers (for these be thy +special men of war). And while you labour to be somewhat cruel and +superior over your equal, you are constrained to submit yourselves to the +very dregs of all men living. And while ye go about to drive your +neighbour out of his land, ye must needs first bring into your own land +the most pestilent puddle of unthrifts that can be. You mistrust a prince +of your own alliance, and will you commit yourself wholly to an armed +multitude? How much surer were it to commit yourself to concord!</p> + +<p>If ye will make war because of lucre, take your counters and cast. And I +will say, it is better to have war than peace, if ye find not, that not +only less, but also uncertain winning is got with inestimable costs.</p> + +<p>Ye say ye make war for the safeguard of the commonweal, yea, but noway +sooner nor more unthriftily may the commonweal perish than by war. For +before ye enter into the field, ye have already hurt more your country +than ye can do good getting the victory. Ye waste the citizens’ goods, ye +fill the houses with lamentation, ye fill all the country with thieves, +robbers, and ravishers. For these are the relics of war. And whereas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +before ye might have enjoyed all France, ye shut yourselves from many +regions thereof. If ye love your own subjects truly, why revolve you not +in mind these words: Why shall I put so many, in their lusty, flourishing +youth, in all mischiefs and perils? Why shall I depart so many honest +wives and their husbands, and make so many fatherless children? Why shall +I claim a title I know not, and a doubtful right, with spilling of my +subjects’ blood? We have seen in our time, that in war made under colour +of defence of the Church, the priests have been so often pillaged with +contributions, that no enemy might do more. So that while we go about +foolishly to escape falling in the ditch, while we cannot suffer a light +injury, we afflict ourselves with most grievous despites. While we be +ashamed of gentleness to bow to a prince, we be fain to please people most +base. While we indiscreetly covet liberty, we entangle ourselves in most +grievous bondage. While we hunt after a little lucre, we grieve ourselves +and ours with inestimable harness. It had been a point of a prudent +Christian man (if he be a true Christian man) by all manner of means to +have fled, to have shunned, and by prayer to have withstood so fiendish a +thing, and so far both from the life and doctrine of Christ. But if it can +by no means be eschewed, by reason of the ungraciousness of many men, when +ye have essayed every way, and that ye have for peace sake left no stone +unturned, then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> the next way is, that ye do your diligence that so ill a +thing may be gested and done by them that be evil, and that it be achieved +with as little effusion of man’s blood as can be.</p> + +<p>Now if we endeavour to be the selfsame thing that we hear ourselves +called,—that is, good Christian men,—we shall little esteem any worldly +thing, nor yet ambitiously covet anything of this world. For if we set all +our mind, that we may lightly and purely part hence; if we incline wholly +to heavenly things; if we pitch all our felicity in Christ alone; if we +believe all that is truly good, truly gay and glorious, truly joyful, to +remain in Christ alone; if we thoroughly think that a godly man can of no +man be hurt; if we ponder how vain and vanishing are the scornful things +of this world; if we inwardly behold how hard a thing it is for a man to +be in a manner transformed into a god, and so here, with continual and +indefatigable meditation, to be purged from all infections of this world, +that within a while the husk of this body being cast off, it may pass +hence to the company of angels; finally, if we surely have these three +things, without which none is worthy of the name of a Christian +man,—Innocency, that we may be pure from all vices; Charity, that we may +do good, as near as we can, to every man; Patience, that we may suffer +them that do us ill, and, if we can, with good deeds overcome wrongs to us +done: I pray you, what war can there be among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> us for trifles? If it be +but a tale that is told of Christ, why do we not openly put him out of our +company? Why should we glory in his title? But if he be, as he is in very +deed, the true way, the very truth, and the very life, why doth all the +manner of our living differ so far asunder from the true example of him? +If we acknowledge and take Christ for our author, which is very Charity, +and neither taught nor gave other thing but charity and peace, then go to, +let us not in titles and signs, but in our deeds and living, plainly +express him. Let us have in our hearts a fervent desire of peace, that +Christ may again know us for his. To this intent the princes, the +prelates, and the cities and commonalties should apply their counsels. +There hath been hitherto enough spilt of Christian man’s blood. We have +showed pleasure enough to the enemies of the Christian religion. And if +the common people, as they are wont, make any disturbance, let the princes +bridle and quail them, which princes ought to be the selfsame thing in the +commonweal that the eye is in the body, and the reason in the soul. Again, +if the princes make any trouble, it is the part of good prelates by their +wisdom and gravity to pacify and assuage such commotion. Or else, at the +least, we being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a +little move us. The bishop exhorteth us (if ever any bishop did Leo the +Tenth doth, which occupieth the room of our peaceable Solomon, for all his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>desire, all his intent and labour, is for this intent) that they whom +one common faith hath coupled together, should be joined in one common +concord. He laboureth that the Church of Christ should flourish, not in +riches or lordships, but in her own proper virtues. Surely this is a right +goodly act, and well beseeming a man descended of such a noble lineage as +the Medici: by whose civil prudence the noble city of Florence most +freshly flourished in long-continued peace; whose house of Medici hath +been a help unto all good letters. Leo himself, having alway a sober and a +gentle wit, giving himself from his tender youth to good letters of +humanity, was ever brought up, as it were, in the lap of the Muses, among +men most highly learned. He so faultless led his life, that even in the +city of Rome, where is most liberty of vice, was of him no evil rumour, +and so governing himself came to the dignity to be bishop there, which +dignity he never coveted, but was chosen thereto when he least thought +thereon, by the provision of God to help to redress things in great decay +by long wars. Let Julius the bishop have his glory of war, victories, and +of his great triumphs, the which how evil they beseem a Christian bishop, +it is not for such a one as I am to declare. I will this say, his glory, +whatsoever it be, was mixed with the great destruction and grievous sorrow +of many a creature. But by peace restored now to the world, Leo shall get +more true<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> glory than Julius won by so many wars that he either boldly +begun, or prosperously fought and achieved.</p> + +<p>But they that had liefer hear of proverbs, than either of peace or of war, +will think that I have tarried longer about this digression than is meet +for the declaration of a proverb.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">FINIS</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">OF THIS VOLUME<br /> +WHICH IS EDITED BY JOHN W. MACKAIL<br /> +WITH TYPES & DECORATIONS<br /> +BY HERBERT P. HORNE<br /> +CCCIII COPIES WERE<br /> +PRINTED</p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/backtitle.png" alt="OPTIMUM VIX SATIS" /></div> +<p class="center">BY D. B. UPDIKE<br /> +AT THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS<br /> +BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS<br /> +IN THE MONTH OF<br /> +AUGUST<br /> +MCM<br /> +VII</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Against War, by Erasmus + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 39487-h.htm or 39487-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/4/8/39487/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Against War + +Author: Erasmus + +Release Date: April 20, 2012 [EBook #39487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + THE HUMANISTS' LIBRARY + Edited by Lewis Einstein + + II + + ERASMUS + AGAINST WAR + + + + + ERASMUS + AGAINST WAR + + + [Illustration] + + + WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY + J.W.MACKAIL + + THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS + BOSTON, MDCCCCVII + + + Copyright, 1907, by D. B. Updike + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Introduction ix + + Against War 3 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The Treatise on War, of which the earliest English translation is here +reprinted, was among the most famous writings of the most illustrious +writer of his age. Few people now read Erasmus; he has become for the +world in general a somewhat vague name. Only by some effort of the +historical imagination is it possible for those who are not professed +scholars and students to realize the enormous force which he was at a +critical period in the history of civilization. The free institutions and +the material progress of the modern world have alike their roots in +humanism. Humanism as a movement of the human mind culminated in the age, +and even in a sense in the person, of Erasmus. Its brilliant flower was of +an earlier period; its fruits developed and matured later; but it was in +his time, and in him, that the fruit set! The earlier sixteenth century is +not so romantic as its predecessors, nor so rich in solid achievement as +others that have followed it. As in some orchard when spring is over, the +blossom lies withered on the grass, and the fruit has long to wait before +it can ripen on the boughs. Yet here, in the dull, hot midsummer days, is +the central and critical period of the year's growth. + +The life of Erasmus is accessible in many popular forms as well as in more +learned and formal works. To recapitulate it here would fall beyond the +scope of a preface. But in order to appreciate this treatise fully it is +necessary to realize the time and circumstances in which it appeared, and +to recall some of the main features of its author's life and work up to +the date of its composition. + +That date can be fixed with certainty, from a combination of external and +internal evidence, between the years 1513 and 1515; in all probability it +was the winter of 1514-15. It was printed in the latter year, in the +"editio princeps" of the enlarged and rewritten Adagia then issued from +Froben's great printing-works at Basel. The stormy decennate of Pope +Julius II had ended in February, 1513. To his successor, Giovanni de' +Medici, who succeeded to the papal throne under the name of Leo X, the +treatise is particularly addressed. The years which ensued were a time +singularly momentous in the history of religion, of letters, and of the +whole life of the civilized world. The eulogy of Leo with which Erasmus +ends indicates the hopes then entertained of a new Augustan age of peace +and reconciliation. The Reformation was still capable of being regarded as +an internal and constructive force, within the framework of the society +built up by the Middle Ages. The final divorce between humanism and the +Church had not yet been made. The long and disastrous epoch of the wars of +religion was still only a dark cloud on the horizon. The Renaissance was +really dead, but few yet realized the fact. The new head of the Church was +a lover of peace, a friend of scholars, a munificent patron of the arts. +This treatise shows that Erasmus, to a certain extent, shared or strove to +share in an illusion widely spread among the educated classes of Europe. +With a far keener instinct for that which the souls of men required, an +Augustinian monk from Wittenberg, who had visited Rome two years earlier, +had turned away from the temple where a corpse lay swathed in gold and +half hid in the steam of incense. With a far keener insight into the real +state of things, Machiavelli was, at just this time, composing The Prince. + +In one form or another, the subject of his impassioned pleading for peace +among beings human, civilized, and Christian, had been long in Erasmus's +mind. In his most celebrated single work, the Praise of Folly, he had +bitterly attacked the attitude towards war habitual, and evilly +consecrated by usage, among kings and popes. The same argument had formed +the substance of a document addressed by him, under the title of +Anti-Polemus, to Pope Julius in 1507. Much of the substance, much even of +the phraseology of that earlier work is doubtless repeated here. Beyond +the specific reference to Pope Leo, the other notes of time in the +treatise now before us are few and faint. Allusions to Louis XII of France +(1498-1515), to Ferdinand the Catholic (1479-1516), to Philip, king of +Aragon (1504-1516), and Sigismund, king of Poland (1506-1548), are all +consistent with the composition of the treatise some years earlier. At the +end of it he promises to treat of the matter more largely when he +publishes the Anti-Polemus. But this intention was never carried into +effect. Perhaps Erasmus had become convinced of its futility; for the +events of the years which followed soon showed that the new Augustan age +was but a false dawn over which night settled more stormily and profoundly +than before. + +For ten or a dozen years Erasmus had stood at the head of European +scholarship. His name was as famous in France and England as in the Low +Countries and Germany. The age was indeed one of those in which the +much-abused term of the republic of letters had a real and vital meaning. +The nationalities of modern Europe had already formed themselves; the +notion of the Empire had become obsolete, and if the imperial title was +still coveted by princes, it was under no illusion as to the amount of +effective supremacy which it carried with it, or as to any life yet +remaining in the mediaeval doctrine of the unity of Christendom whether as +a church or as a state. The discovery of the new world near the end of +the previous century precipitated a revolution in European politics +towards which events had long been moving, and finally broke up the +political framework of the Middle Ages. But the other great event of the +same period, the invention and diffusion of the art of printing, had +created a new European commonwealth of the mind. The history of the +century which followed it is a history in which the landmarks are found +less in battles and treaties than in books. + +The earlier life of the man who occupies the central place in the literary +and spiritual movement of his time in no important way differs from the +youth of many contemporary scholars and writers. Even the illegitimacy of +his birth was an accident shared with so many others that it does not mark +him out in any way from his fellows. His early education at Utrecht, at +Deventer, at Herzogenbosch; his enforced and unhappy novitiate in a house +of Augustinian canons near Gouda; his secretaryship to the bishop of +Cambray, the grudging patron who allowed rather than assisted him to +complete his training at the University of Paris--all this was at the time +mere matter of common form. It is with his arrival in England in 1497, at +the age of thirty-one, that his effective life really begins. + +For the next twenty years that life was one of restless movement and +incessant production. In England, France, the Low Countries, on the upper +Rhine, and in Italy, he flitted about gathering up the whole intellectual +movement of the age, and pouring forth the results in that admirable Latin +which was not only the common language of scholars in every country, but +the single language in which he himself thought instinctively and wrote +freely. Between the Adagia of 1500 and the Colloquia of 1516 comes a mass +of writings equivalent to the total product of many fertile and +industrious pens. He worked in the cause of humanism with a sacred fury, +striving with all his might to connect it with all that was living in the +old and all that was developing in the newer world. In his travels no less +than in his studies the aspect of war must have perpetually met him as at +once the cause and the effect of barbarism; it was the symbol of +everything to which humanism in its broader as well as in its narrower +aspect was utterly opposed and repugnant. He was a student at Paris in the +ominous year of the first French invasion of Italy, in which the death of +Pico della Mirandola and Politian came like a symbol of the death of the +Italian Renaissance itself. Charles VIII, as has often been said, brought +back the Renaissance to France from that expedition; but he brought her +back a captive chained to the wheels of his cannon. The epoch of the +Italian wars began. A little later (1500) Sandro Botticelli painted that +amazing Nativity which is one of the chief treasures of the London +National Gallery. Over it in mystical Greek may still be read the +painter's own words: "This picture was painted by me Alexander amid the +confusions of Italy at the time prophesied in the Second Woe of the +Apocalypse, when Satan shall be loosed upon the earth." In November, 1506, +Erasmus was at Bologna, and saw the triumphal entry of Pope Julius into +the city at the head of a great mercenary army. Two years later the league +of Cambray, a combination of folly, treachery and shame which filled even +hardened politicians with horror, plunged half Europe into a war in which +no one was a gainer and which finally ruined Italy: "bellum quo nullum," +says the historian, "vel atrocius vel diuturnius in Italia post exactos +Gothos majores nostri meminerunt." In England Erasmus found, on his first +visit, a country exhausted by the long and desperate struggle of the Wars +of the Roses, out of which she had emerged with half her ruling class +killed in battle or on the scaffold, and the whole fabric of society to +reconstruct. The Empire was in a state of confusion and turmoil no less +deplorable and much more extensive. The Diet of 1495 had indeed, by an +expiring effort towards the suppression of absolute anarchy, decreed the +abolition of private war. But in a society where every owner of a castle, +every lord of a few square miles of territory, could conduct public war on +his own account, the prohibition was of little more than formal value. +Humanism had been introduced by the end of the fifteenth century in some +of the German universities, but too late to have much effect on the rising +fury of religious controversy. The very year in which this treatise +against war was published gave to the world another work of even wider +circulation and more profound consequences. The famous Epistolae +Obscurorum Virorum, first published in 1515, and circulated rapidly among +all the educated readers of Europe, made an open breach between the +humanists and the Church. That breach was never closed; nor on the other +hand could the efforts of well-intentioned reformers like Melancthon bring +humanism into any organic relation with the reformed movement. When mutual +exhaustion concluded the European struggle, civilization had to start +afresh; it took a century more to recover the lost ground. The very idea +of humanism had long before then disappeared. + +War, pestilence, the theologians: these were the three great enemies with +which Erasmus says he had throughout life to contend. It was during the +years he spent in England that he was perhaps least harassed by them. His +three periods of residence there--a fourth, in 1517, appears to have been +of short duration and not marked by any very notable incident--were of the +utmost importance in his life. During the first, in his residence between +the years 1497 and 1499 at London and Oxford, the English Renaissance, if +the name be fully applicable to so partial and inconclusive a movement, +was in the promise and ardour of its brief spring. It was then that +Erasmus made the acquaintance of those great Englishmen whose names cannot +be mentioned with too much reverence: Colet, Grocyn, Latimer, Linacre. +These men were the makers of modern England to a degree hardly realized. +They carried the future in their hands. Peace had descended upon a weary +country; and the younger generation was full of new hopes. The Enchiridion +Militis Christiani, written soon after Erasmus returned to France, +breathes the spirit of one who had not lost hope in the reconciliation of +the Church and the world, of the old and new. When Erasmus made his second +visit to England, in 1506, that fair promise had grown and spread. Colet +had become dean of Saint Paul's; and through him, as it would appear, +Erasmus now made the acquaintance of another great man with whom he soon +formed as close an intimacy, Thomas More. + +His Italian journey followed: he was in Italy nearly three years, at +Turin, Bologna, Venice, Padua, Siena, Rome. It was in the first of these +years that Albert Duerer was also in Italy, where he met Bellini and was +recognized by the Italian masters as the head of a new transalpine art in +no way inferior to their own. The year after Erasmus left Italy, +Botticelli, the last survivor of the ancient world, died at Florence. + +Meanwhile, Henry VIII, a prince, young, handsome, generous, pious, had +succeeded to the throne of England. A golden age was thought to have +dawned. Lord Mountjoy, who had been the pupil of Erasmus at Paris, and +with whom he had first come to England, lost no time in urging Henry to +send for the most brilliant and famous of European scholars, and attach +him to his court. The king, who had already met and admired him, needed no +pressing. In the letter which Henry himself wrote to Erasmus entreating +him to take up his residence in England, the language employed was that of +sincere admiration; nor was there any conscious insincerity in the main +motive which he urged. "It is my earnest wish," wrote the king, "to +restore Christ's religion to its primitive purity." The history of the +English Reformation supplies a strange commentary on these words. + +But the first few years of the new reign (1509-1513), which coincide with +the third and longest sojourn of Erasmus in England, were a time in which +high hopes might not seem unreasonable. While Italy was ravaged by war and +the rest of Europe was in uneasy ferment, England remained peaceful and +prosperous. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life were indeed the +motive forces of the court; but alongside of these was a real desire for +reform, and a real if very imperfect attempt to cultivate the nobler arts +of peace, to establish learning, and to purify religion. Colet's great +foundation of Saint Paul's School in 1510 is one of the landmarks of +English history. Erasmus joined the founder and the first high master, +Colet and Lily, in composing the schoolbooks to be used in it. He had +already written, in More's house at Chelsea, where pure religion reigned +alongside of high culture, the Encomium Moriae, in which all his immense +gifts of eloquence and wit were lavished on the cause of humanism and the +larger cause of humanity. That war was at once a sin, a scandal, and a +folly was one of the central doctrines of the group of eminent Englishmen +with whom he was now associated. It was a doctrine held by them with some +ambiguity and in varying degrees. In the Utopia (1516) More condemns wars +of aggression, while taking the common view as to wars of so-called +self-defence. In 1513, when Henry, swept into the seductive scheme for a +partition of France by a European confederacy, was preparing for the first +of his many useless and inglorious continental campaigns, Colet spoke out +more freely. He preached before the court against war itself as barbarous +and unchristian, and did not spare either kings or popes who dealt +otherwise. Henry was disturbed; he sent for Colet, and pressed him hard on +the point whether he meant that all wars were unjustifiable. Colet was in +advance of his age, but not so far in advance of it as this. He gave some +kind of answer which satisfied the king. The preparations for war went +forward; the Battle of Spurs plunged the court and all the nation into the +intoxication of victory; while at Flodden-edge, in the same autumn, the +ancestral allies of France sustained the most crushing defeat recorded in +Scottish history. When both sides in a war have invoked God's favour, the +successful side is ready enough to believe that its prayers have been +answered and its action accepted by God. + +Erasmus was now reader in Greek and professor of divinity at Cambridge; +but Cambridge was far away from the centre of European thought and of +literary activities. He left England before the end of the year for Basel, +where the greater part of his life thenceforth was passed. Froben had made +Basel the chief literary centre of production for the whole of Europe. +Through Froben's printing-presses Erasmus could reach a wider audience +than was allowed him at any court, however favourable to pure religion and +the new learning. It was at this juncture that he made an eloquent and +far-reaching appeal, on a matter which lay very near his heart, to the +conscience of Christendom. + +The Adagia, that vast work which was, at least to his own generation, +Erasmus's foremost title to fame, has long ago passed into the rank of +those monuments of literature "dont la reputation s'affermira toujours +parcequ'on ne les lit guere." So far as Erasmus is more than a name for +most modern readers, it is on slighter and more popular works that any +direct knowledge of him is grounded on the Colloquies, which only ceased +to be a schoolbook within living memory, on the Praise of Folly, and on +selections from the enormous masses of his letters. An Oxford scholar of +the last generation, whose profound knowledge of humanistic literature was +accompanied by a gift of terse and pointed expression, describes the +Adagia in a single sentence, as "a manual of the wit and wisdom of the +ancient world for the use of the modern, enlivened by commentary in +Erasmus's finest vein." In its first form, the Adagiorum Collectanea, it +was published by him at Paris in 1500, just after his return from England. +In the author's epistle dedicatory to Mountjoy he ascribes to him and to +Richard Charnock, the prior of Saint Mary's College in Oxford, the +inspiration of the work. It consists of a series of between eight and nine +hundred comments in brief essays, each suggested by some terse or +proverbial phrase from an ancient Latin author. The work gave full scope +for the display, not only of the immense treasures of his learning, but of +those other qualities, the combination of which raised their author far +above all other contemporary writers, his keen wit, his copiousness and +facility, his complete control of Latin as a living language. It met with +an enthusiastic reception, and placed him at once at the head of European +men of letters. Edition after edition poured from the press. It was ten +times reissued at Paris within a generation. Eleven editions were +published at Strasburg between 1509 and 1521. Within the same years it was +reprinted at Erfurt, The Hague, Cologne, Mayence, Leyden, and elsewhere. +The Rhine valley was the great nursery of letters north of the Alps, and +along the Rhine from source to sea the book spread and was multiplied. + +This success induced Erasmus to enlarge and complete his labours. The +Adagiorum Chiliades, the title of the work in its new form, was part of +the work of his residence in Italy in the years 1506-9, and was published +at Venice by Aldus in September, 1508. The enlarged collection, to all +intents and purposes a new work, consists of no less than three thousand +two hundred and sixty heads. In a preface, Erasmus speaks slightingly of +the Adagiorum Collectanea, with that affectation from which few authors +are free, as a little collection carelessly made. "Some people got hold of +it," he adds, (and here the affectation becomes absolute untruth,) "and +had it printed very incorrectly." In the new work, however, much of the +old disappears, much more is partially or wholly recast; and such of the +old matter as is retained is dispersed at random among the new. In the +Collectanea the commentaries had all been brief: here many are expanded +into substantial treatises covering four or five pages of closely printed +folio. + +The Aldine edition had been reprinted at Basel by Froben in 1513. Shortly +afterwards Erasmus himself took up his permanent residence there. Under +his immediate supervision there presently appeared what was to all intents +and purposes the definitive edition of 1515. It is a book of nearly seven +hundred folio pages, and contains, besides the introductory matter, three +thousand four hundred and eleven headings. In his preface Erasmus gives +some details with regard to its composition. Of the original Paris work he +now says, no doubt with truth, that it was undertaken by him hastily and +without enough method. When preparing the Venice edition he had better +realized the magnitude of the enterprise, and was better fitted for it by +reading and learning, more especially by the mass of Greek manuscripts, +and of newly printed Greek first editions, to which he had access at +Venice and in other parts of Italy. In England also, owing very largely to +the kindness of Archbishop Warham, more leisure and an ampler library had +been available. + +Among several important additions made in the edition of 1515, this essay, +the text of which is the proverbial phrase "Dulce bellum inexpertis," is +at once the longest and the most remarkable. The adage itself, with a few +lines of commentary, had indeed been in the original collection; but the +treatise, in itself a substantial work, now appeared for the first time. +It occupied a conspicuous place as the first heading in the fourth Chiliad +of the complete work; and it was at once singled out from the rest as of +special note and profound import. Froben was soon called upon for a +separate edition. This appeared in April, 1517, in a quarto of twenty +pages. This little book, the Bellum Erasmi as it was called for the sake +of brevity, ran like wildfire from reader to reader. Half the scholarly +presses of Europe were soon employed in reprinting it. Within ten years it +had been reissued at Louvain, twice at Strasburg, twice at Mayence, at +Leipsic, twice at Paris, twice at Cologne, at Antwerp, and at Venice. +German translations of it were published at Basel and at Strasburg in 1519 +and 1520. It soon made its way to England, and the translation here +utilized was issued by Berthelet, the king's printer, in the winter of +1533-4. + +Whether the translation be by Richard Taverner, the translator and editor, +a few years later, of an epitome or selection of the Chiliades, or by some +other hand, there are no direct means of ascertaining; nor except for +purposes of curiosity is the question an important one. The version wholly +lacks distinction. It is a work of adequate scholarship but of no +independent literary merit. English prose was then hardly formed. The +revival of letters had reached the country, but for political and social +reasons which are readily to be found in any handbook of English history, +it had found a soil, fertile indeed, but not yet broken up. Since Chaucer, +English poetry had practically stood still, and except where poetry has +cleared the way, prose does not in ordinary circumstances advance. A few +adventurers in setting forth had appeared. More's Utopia, one of the +earliest of English prose classics, is a classic in virtue of its style as +well as of its matter. Berners's translation of Froissart, published in +1523, was the first and one of the finest of that magnificent series of +translations which from this time onwards for about a century were +produced in an almost continuous stream, and through which the secret of +prose was slowly wrung from older and more accomplished languages. +Latimer, about the same time, showed his countrymen how a vernacular +prose, flexible, well knit, and nervous, might be written without its +lines being traced on any ancient or foreign model. Coverdale, the +greatest master of English prose whom the century produced, whose name has +just missed the immortality that is secure for his work, must have +substantially completed that magnificent version of the Bible which +appeared in 1535, and to which the authorized version of the seventeenth +century owes all that one work of genius can owe to another. It is not +with these great men that the translator of this treatise can be compared. +But he wrought, after his measure, on the same structure as they. + +It is then to the original Latin, not to this rude and stammering version, +that scholars must turn now, as still more certainly they turned then, for +the mind of Erasmus; for with him, even more eminently than with other +authors, the style is the man, and his Latin is the substance, not merely +the dress, of his thought. When he wrote it he was about forty-eight years +of age. He was still in the fullness of his power. If he was often +crippled by delicate health, that was no more than he had habitually been +from boyhood. In this treatise we come very near the real man, with his +strange mixture of liberalism and orthodoxy, of clear-sighted courage and +a delicacy which nearly always might be mistaken for timidity. + +His text is that (in the translator's words) "nothing is either more +wicked or more wretched, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war." War was shocking to Erasmus alike on every side +of his remarkably complex and sensitive nature. It was impious; it was +inhuman; it was ugly; it was in every sense of the word barbarous, to one +who before all things and in the full sense of the word was civilized and +a lover of civilization. All these varied aspects of the case, seen by +others singly and partially, were to him facets of one truth, rays of one +light. His argument circles and flickers among them, hardly pausing to +enforce one before passing insensibly to another. In the splendid +vindication of the nature of man with which the treatise opens, the tone +is rather that of Cicero than of the New Testament. The majesty of man +resides above all in his capacity to "behold the very pure strength and +nature of things;" in essence he is no fallen and corrupt creature, but a +piece of workmanship such as Shakespeare describes him through the mouth +of Hamlet. He was shaped to this heroic mould "by Nature, or rather god," +so the Tudor translation reads, and the use of capital letters, though +only a freak of the printer, brings out with a singular suggestiveness the +latent pantheism which underlies the thought of all the humanists. To this +wonderful creature strife and warfare are naturally repugnant. Not only is +his frame "weak and tender," but he is "born to love and amity." His chief +end, the object to which all his highest and most distinctively human +powers are directed, is cooperant labour in the pursuit of knowledge. War +comes out of ignorance, and into ignorance it leads; of war comes contempt +of virtue and of godly living. In the age of Machiavelli the word "virtue" +had a double and sinister meaning; but here it is taken in its nobler +sense. Yet, the argument continues, for "virtue," even in the Florentine +statesman's sense, war gives but little room. It is waged mainly for "vain +titles or childish wrath;" it does not foster, in those responsible for +it, any one of the nobler excellences. The argument throughout this part +of the treatise is, both in its substance and in its ornament, wholly +apart from the dogmas of religion. The furies of war are described as +rising out of a very pagan hell. The apostrophe of Nature to mankind +immediately suggests the spirit as well as the language of Lucretius. +Erasmus had clearly been reading the De Rerum Natura, and borrows some of +his finest touches from that miraculous description of the growth of +civilization in the fifth book, which is one of the noblest contributions +of antiquity towards a real conception of the nature of the world and of +man. The progressive degeneration of morality, because, as its scope +becomes higher, practice falls further and further short of it, is +insisted upon by both these great thinkers in much the same spirit and +with much the same illustrations. The rise of empires, "of which there was +never none yet in any nation, but it was gotten with the great shedding of +man's blood," is seen by both in the same light. But Erasmus passes on to +the more expressly religious aspect of the whole matter in the great +double climax with which he crowns his argument, the wickedness of a +Christian fighting against another man, the horror of a Christian fighting +against another Christian. "Yea, and with a thing so devilish," he breaks +out in a mingling of intense scorn and profound pity, "we mingle Christ." + +From this passionate appeal he passes to the praises of peace. Why should +men add the horrors of war to all the other miseries and dangers of life? +Why should one man's gain be sought only through another's loss? All +victories in war are Cadmean; not only from their cost in blood and +treasure, but because we are in very truth "the members of one body," +"redeemed with Christ's blood." Such was the clear, unmistakable teaching +of our Lord himself, such of his apostles. But the doctrine of Christ has +been "plied to worldly opinion." Worldly men, philosophers following "the +sophistries of Aristotle," worst of all, divines and theologians +themselves, have corrupted the Gospel to the heathenish doctrine that +"every man must first provide for himself." The very words of Scripture +are wrested to this abuse. Self-defence is held to excuse any violence. +"Peter fought," they say, "in the garden,"--yes, and that same night he +denied his Master! "But punishment of wrong is a divine ordinance." In war +the punishment falls on the innocent. "But the law of nature bids us repel +violence by violence." What is the law of Christ? "But may not a prince go +to war justly for his right?" Did any war ever lack a title? "But what of +wars against the Turk?" Such wars are of Turk against Turk; let us +overcome evil with good, let us spread the Gospel by doing what the Gospel +commands: did Christ say, Hate them that hate you? + +Then, with the tact of an accomplished orator, he lets the tension relax, +and drops to a lower tone. Even apart from all that has been urged, even +if war were ever justifiable, think of the price that has to be paid for +it. On this ground alone an unjust peace is far preferable to a just war. +(These had been the very words of Colet to the king of England.) Men go to +war under fine pretexts, but really to get riches, to satisfy hatred, or +to win the poor glory of destroying. The hatred is but exasperated; the +glory is won by and for the dregs of mankind; the riches are in the most +prosperous event swallowed up ten times over. Yet if it be impossible but +war should be, if there may be sometimes a "colour of equity" in it, and +if the tyrant's plea, necessity, be ever well-founded, at least, so +Erasmus ends, let it be conducted mercifully. Let us live in fervent +desire of the peace that we may not fully attain. Let princes restrain +their peoples; let churchmen above all be peacemakers. So the treatise +passes to its conclusion with that eulogy of the Medicean pope already +mentioned, which perhaps was not wholly undeserved. To the modern world +the name of Leo X has come down marked with a note of censure or even of +ignominy. It is fair to remember that it did not bear quite the same +aspect to its contemporaries, nor to the ages which immediately followed. +Under Rodrigo Borgia it might well seem to others than to the Florentine +mystic that antichrist was enthroned, and Satan let loose upon earth. The +eight years of Leo's pontificate (1513-21) were at least a period of +outward splendour and of a refinement hitherto unknown. The corruption, +half veiled by that refinement and splendour, was deep and mortal, but the +collapse did not come till later. By comparison with the disastrous reign +of Clement VII, his bastard cousin, that of Giovanni de' Medici seemed a +last gleam of light before blackness descended on the world. Even the +licence of a dissolute age was contrasted to its favour with the gloom, +"tristitia," that settled down over Europe with the great Catholic +reaction. The age of Leo X has descended to history as the age of Bembo, +Sannazaro, Lascaris, of the Stanze of the Vatican, of Raphael's Sistine +Madonna and Titian's Assumption; of the conquest of Mexico and the +circumnavigation of Magellan; of Magdalen Tower and King's College Chapel. +It was an interval of comparative peace before a long epoch of wars more +cruel and more devastating than any within the memory of men. The general +European conflagration did not break out until ten years after Erasmus's +death; though it had then long been foreseen as inevitable. But he lived +to see the conquest of Rhodes by Soliman, the sack of Rome, the breach +between England and the papacy, the ill-omened marriage of Catherine de' +Medici to the heir of the French throne. Humanism had done all that it +could, and failed. In the sanguinary era of one hundred years between the +outbreak of the civil war in the Empire and the Peace of Westphalia, the +Renaissance followed the Middle Ages to the grave, and the modern world +was born. + +The mere fact of this treatise having been translated into English and +published by the king's printer shows, in an age when the literary product +of England was as yet scanty, that it had some vogue and exercised some +influence. But only a few copies of the work are known to exist; and it +was never reprinted. It was not until nearly three centuries later, amid +the throes of an European revolution equally vast, that the work was again +presented in an English dress. Vicesimus Knox, a whig essayist, compiler, +and publicist of some reputation at the time, was the author of a book +which was published anonymously in 1794 and found some readers in a year +filled with great events in both the history and the literature of +England. It was entitled "Anti-Polemus: or the Plea of Reason, Religion, +and Humanity against War: a Fragment translated from Erasmus and addressed +to Aggressors." That was the year when the final breach took place in the +whig party, and when Pitt initiated his brief and ill-fated policy of +conciliation in Ireland. It was also the year of two works of enormous +influence over thought, Paley's Evidences and Paine's Age of Reason. Among +these great movements Knox's work had but little chance of appealing to a +wide audience. "Sed quid ad nos?" the bitter motto on the title-page, +probably expressed the feelings with which it was generally regarded. A +version of the treatise against war, made from the Latin text of the +Adagia with some omissions, is the main substance of the volume; and Knox +added a few extracts from other writings of Erasmus on the same subject. +It does not appear to have been reprinted in England, except in a +collected edition of Knox's works which may be found on the dustiest +shelves of old-fashioned libraries, until, after the close of the +Napoleonic wars, it was again published as a tract by the Society for the +Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. Some half dozen impressions of +this tract appeared at intervals up to the middle of the century; its +publication passed into the hands of the Society of Friends, and the last +issue of which any record can be found was made just before the outbreak +of the Crimean war. But in 1813 an abridged edition was printed at New +York, and was one of the books which influenced the great movement towards +humanity then stirring in the young Republic. + +At the present day, the reactionary wave which has overspread the world +has led, both in England and America, to a new glorification of war. Peace +is on the lips of governments and of individuals, but beneath the smooth +surface the same passions, draped as they always have been under fine +names, are a menace to progress and to the higher life of mankind. The +increase of armaments, the glorification of the military life, the +fanaticism which regards organized robbery and murder as a sacred imperial +mission, are the fruits of a spirit which has fallen as far below the +standard of humanism as it has left behind it the precepts of a still +outwardly acknowledged religion. At such a time the noble pleading of +Erasmus has more than a merely literary or antiquarian interest. For the +appeal of humanism still is, as it was then, to the dignity of human +nature itself. + +J. W. Mackail + + + + +AGAINST WAR + + + + +DULCE BELLUM INEXPERTIS + + +It is both an elegant proverb, and among all others, by the writings of +many excellent authors, full often and solemnly used, Dulce bellum +inexpertis, that is to say, War is sweet to them that know it not. There +be some things among mortal men's businesses, in the which how great +danger and hurt there is, a man cannot perceive till he make a proof. The +love and friendship of a great man is sweet to them that be not expert: he +that hath had thereof experience, is afraid. It seemeth to be a gay and a +glorious thing, to strut up and down among the nobles of the court, and to +be occupied in the king's business; but old men, to whom that thing by +long experience is well known, do gladly abstain themselves from such +felicity. It seemeth a pleasant thing to be in love with a young damsel; +but that is unto them that have not yet perceived how much grief and +bitterness is in such love. So after this manner of fashion, this proverb +may be applied to every business that is adjoined with great peril and +with many evils: the which no man will take on hand, but he that is young +and wanteth experience of things. + +Aristotle, in his book of Rhetoric, showeth the cause why youth is more +bold, and contrariwise old age more fearful: for unto young men lack of +experience is cause of great boldness, and to the other, experience of +many griefs engendereth fear and doubting. Then if there be anything in +the world that should be taken in hand with fear and doubting, yea, that +ought by all manner of means to be fled, to be withstood with prayer, and +to be clean avoided, verily it is war; than which nothing is either more +wicked, or more wretched, or that more farther destroyeth, or that never +hand cleaveth sorer to, or doth more hurt, or is more horrible, and +briefly to speak, nothing doth worse become a man (I will not say a +Christian man) than war. And yet it is a wonder to speak of, how nowadays +in every place, how lightly, and how for every trifling matter, it is +taken in hand, how outrageously and barbarously it is gested and done, not +only of heathen people, but also of Christian men; not only of secular +men, but also of priests and bishops; not only of young men and of them +that have no experience, but also of old men and of those that so often +have had experience; not only of the common and movable vulgar people, but +most specially of the princes, whose duty had been, by wisdom and reason, +to set in a good order and to pacify the light and hasty movings of the +foolish multitude. Nor there lack neither lawyers, nor yet divines, the +which are ready with their firebrands to kindle these things so +abominable, and they encourage them that else were cold, and they privily +provoke those to it that were weary thereof. And by these means it is come +to that pass that war is a thing now so well accepted, that men wonder at +him that is not pleased therewith. It is so much approved, that it is +counted a wicked thing (and I had almost said heresy) to reprove this one +thing, the which as it is above all other things most mischievous, so it +is most wretched. But how more justly should this be wondered at, what +evil spirit, what pestilence, what mischief, and what madness put first in +man's mind a thing so beyond measure beastly, that this most pleasant and +reasonable creature Man, the which Nature hath brought forth to peace and +benevolence, which one alone she hath brought forth to the help and +succour of all other, should with so wild wilfulness, with so mad rages, +run headlong one to destroy another? At the which thing he shall also much +more marvel, whosoever would withdraw his mind from the opinions of the +common people, and will turn it to behold the very pure strength and +nature of things; and will apart behold with philosophical eyes the image +of man on the one side, and the picture of war on the other side. + +Then first of all if one would consider well but the behaviour and shape +of man's body shall he not forthwith perceive that Nature, or rather God, +hath shaped this creature, not to war, but to friendship, not to +destruction, but to health, not to wrong, but to kindness and benevolence? +For whereas Nature hath armed all other beasts with their own armour, as +the violence of the bulls she hath armed with horns, the ramping lion with +claws; to the boar she hath given the gnashing tusks; she hath armed the +elephant with a long trump snout, besides his great huge body and hardness +of the skin; she hath fenced the crocodile with a skin as hard as a plate; +to the dolphin fish she hath given fins instead of a dart; the porcupine +she defendeth with thorns; the ray and thornback with sharp prickles; to +the cock she hath given strong spurs; some she fenceth with a shell, some +with a hard hide, as it were thick leather, or bark of a tree; some she +provideth to save by swiftness of flight, as doves; and to some she hath +given venom instead of a weapon; to some she hath given a much horrible +and ugly look, she hath given terrible eyes and grunting voice; and she +hath also set among some of them continual dissension and debate--man +alone she hath brought forth all naked, weak, tender, and without any +armour, with most soft flesh and smooth skin. There is nothing at all in +all his members that may seem to be ordained to war, or to any violence. I +will not say at this time, that where all other beasts, anon as they are +brought forth, they are able of themselves to get their food. Man alone +cometh so forth, that a long season after he is born, he dependeth +altogether on the help of others. He can neither speak nor go, nor yet +take meat; he desireth help only by his infant crying: so that a man may, +at the least way, by this conject, that this creature alone was born all +to love and amity, which specially increaseth and is fast knit together by +good turns done eftsoons of one to another. And for this cause Nature +would, that a man should not so much thank her, for the gift of life, +which she hath given unto him, as he should thank kindness and +benevolence, whereby he might evidently understand himself, that he was +altogether dedicate and bounden to the gods of graces, that is to say, to +kindness, benevolence, and amity. And besides this Nature hath given unto +man a countenance not terrible and loathly, as unto other brute beasts; +but meek and demure, representing the very tokens of love and benevolence. +She hath given him amiable eyes, and in them assured marks of the inward +mind. She hath ordained him arms to clip and embrace. She hath given him +the wit and understanding to kiss: whereby the very minds and hearts of +men should be coupled together, even as though they touched each other. +Unto man alone she hath given laughing, a token of good cheer and +gladness. To man alone she hath given weeping tears, as it were a pledge +or token of meekness and mercy. Yea, and she hath given him a voice not +threatening and horrible, as unto other brute beasts, but amiable and +pleasant. Nature not yet content with all this, she hath given unto man +alone the commodity of speech and reasoning: the which things verily may +specially both get and nourish benevolence, so that nothing at all should +be done among men by violence. + +She hath endued man with hatred of solitariness, and with love of company. +She hath utterly sown in man the very seeds of benevolence. She hath so +done, that the selfsame thing, that is most wholesome, should be most +sweet and delectable. For what is more delectable than a friend? And +again, what thing is more necessary? Moreover, if a man might lead all his +life most profitably without any meddling with other men, yet nothing +would seem pleasant without a fellow: except a man would cast off all +humanity, and forsaking his own kind would become a beast. + +Besides all this, Nature hath endued man with knowledge of liberal +sciences and a fervent desire of knowledge: which thing as it doth most +specially withdraw man's wit from all beastly wildness, so hath it a +special grace to get and knit together love and friendship. For I dare +boldly say, that neither affinity nor yet kindred doth bind the minds of +men together with straiter and surer bands of amity, than doth the +fellowship of them that be learned in good letters and honest studies. +And above all this, Nature hath divided among men by a marvellous variety +the gifts, as well of the soul as of the body, to the intent truly that +every man might find in every singular person one thing or other, which +they should either love or praise for the excellency thereof; or else +greatly desire and make much of it, for the need and profit that cometh +thereof. Finally she hath endowed man with a spark of a godly mind: so +that though he see no reward, yet of his own courage he delighteth to do +every man good: for unto God it is most proper and natural, by his +benefit, to do everybody good. Else what meaneth it, that we rejoice and +conceive in our minds no little pleasure when we perceive that any +creature is by our means preserved. + +Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were the very image of +himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide +for the wealth of all creatures. And this thing the very brute beasts do +also perceive, for we may see, that not only the tame beasts, but also the +leopards, lions, and other more fierce and wild, when they be in any great +jeopardy, they flee to man for succour. So man is, when all things fail, +the last refuge to all manner of creatures. He is unto them all the very +assured altar and sanctuary. + +I have here painted out to you the image of man as well as I can. On the +other side (if it like you) against the figure of Man, let us portray the +fashion and shape of War. + +Now, then, imagine in thy mind, that thou dost behold two hosts of +barbarous people, of whom the look is fierce and cruel, and the voice +horrible; the terrible and fearful rustling and glistering of their +harness and weapons; the unlovely murmur of so huge a multitude; the eyes +sternly menacing; the bloody blasts and terrible sounds of trumpets and +clarions; the thundering of the guns, no less fearful than thunder indeed, +but much more hurtful; the frenzied cry and clamour, the furious and mad +running together, the outrageous slaughter, the cruel chances of them that +flee and of those that are stricken down and slain, the heaps of +slaughters, the fields overflowed with blood, the rivers dyed red with +man's blood. And it chanceth oftentimes, that the brother fighteth with +the brother, one kinsman with another, friend against friend; and in that +common furious desire ofttimes one thrusteth his weapon quite through the +body of another that never gave him so much as a foul word. Verily, this +tragedy containeth so many mischiefs, that it would abhor any man's heart +to speak thereof. I will let pass to speak of the hurts which are in +comparison of the other but light and common, as the treading down and +destroying of the corn all about, the burning of towns, the villages +fired, the driving away of cattle, the ravishing of maidens, the old men +led forth in captivity, the robbing of churches, and all things +confounded and full of thefts, pillages, and violence. Neither I will not +speak now of those things which are wont to follow the most happy and most +just war of all. + +The poor commons pillaged, the nobles overcharged; so many old men of +their children bereaved, yea, and slain also in the slaughter of their +children; so many old women destitute, whom sorrow more cruelly slayeth +than the weapon itself; so many honest wives become widows, so many +children fatherless, so many lamentable houses, so many rich men brought +to extreme poverty. And what needeth it here to speak of the destruction +of good manners, since there is no man but knoweth right well that the +universal pestilence of all mischievous living proceedeth at once from +war. Thereof cometh despising of virtue and godly living; thereof cometh, +that the laws are neglected and not regarded; thereof cometh a prompt and +a ready stomach, boldly to do every mischievous deed. Out of this fountain +spring so huge great companies of thieves, robbers, sacrilegers, and +murderers. And what is most grievous of all, this mischievous pestilence +cannot keep herself within her bounds; but after it is begun in some one +corner, it doth not only (as a contagious disease) spread abroad and +infect the countries near adjoining to it, but also it draweth into that +common tumult and troublous business the countries that be very far off, +either for need, or by reason of affinity, or else by occasion of some +league made. Yea and moreover, one war springeth of another: of a +dissembled war there cometh war indeed, and of a very small, a right great +war hath risen. Nor it chanceth oftentimes none otherwise in these things +than it is feigned of the monster, which lay in the lake or pond called +Lerna. + +For these causes, I trow, the old poets, the which most sagely perceived +the power and nature of things, and with most meet feignings covertly +shadowed the same, have left in writing, that war was sent out of hell: +nor every one of the Furies was not meet and convenient to bring about +this business, but the most pestilent and mischievous of them all was +chosen out for the nonce, which hath a thousand names, and a thousand +crafts to do hurt. She being armed with a thousand serpents, bloweth +before her her fiendish trumpet. Pan with furious ruffling encumbereth +every place. Bellona shaketh her furious flail. And then the wicked +furiousness himself, when he hath undone all knots and broken all bonds, +rusheth out with bloody mouth horrible to behold. + +The grammarians perceived right well these things, of the which some will, +that war have his name by contrary meaning of the word Bellum, that is to +say fair, because it hath nothing good nor fair. Nor bellum, that is for +to say war, is none otherwise called Bellum, that is to say fair, than +the furies are called Eumenides, that is to say meek, because they are +wilful and contrary to all meekness. And some grammarians think rather, +that bellum, war, should be derived out of this word Belva, that is for to +say, a brute beast: forasmuch as it belongeth to brute beasts, and not +unto men, to run together, each to destroy each other. But it seemeth to +me far to pass all wild and all brute beastliness, to fight together with +weapons. + +First, for there are many of the brute beasts, each in his kind, that +agree and live in a gentle fashion together, and they go together in herds +and flocks, and each helpeth to defend the other. Nor is it the nature of +all wild beasts to fight, for some are harmless, as does and hares. But +they that are the most fierce of all, as lions, wolves, and tigers, do not +make war among themselves as we do. One dog eateth not another. The lions, +though they be fierce and cruel, yet they fight not among themselves. One +dragon is in peace with another. And there is agreement among poisonous +serpents. But unto man there is no wild or cruel beast more hurtful than +man. + +Again, when the brute beasts fight, they fight with their own natural +armour: we men, above nature, to the destruction of men, arm ourselves +with armour, invented by craft of the devil. Nor the wild beasts are not +cruel for every cause; but either when hunger maketh them fierce, or else +when they perceive themselves to be hunted and pursued to the death, or +else when they fear lest their younglings should take any harm or be +stolen from them. But (O good Lord) for what trifling causes what +tragedies of war do we stir up? For most vain titles, for childish wrath, +for a wench, yea, and for causes much more scornful than these, we be +inflamed to fight. + +Moreover, when the brute beasts fight, then war is one for one, yea, and +that is very short. And when the battle is sorest fought, yet is there not +past one or two, that goeth away sore wounded. When was it ever heard that +an hundred thousand brute beasts were slain at one time fighting and +tearing one another: which thing men do full oft and in many places? And +besides this, whereas some wild beasts have natural debate with some other +that be of a contrary kind, so again there be some with which they +lovingly agree in a sure amity. But man with man, and each with other, +have among them continual war; nor is there league sure enough among any +men. So that whatsoever it be, that hath gone out of kind, it hath gone +out of kind into a worse fashion, than if Nature herself had engendered +therein a malice at the beginning. + +Will ye see how beastly, how foul, and how unworthy a thing war is for +man? Did ye never behold a lion let loose unto a bear? What gapings, what +roarings, what grisly gnashing, what tearing of their flesh, is there? He +trembleth that beholdeth them, yea, though he stand sure and safe enough +from them. But how much more grisly a sight is it, how much more +outrageous and cruel, to behold man to fight with man, arrayed with so +much armour, and with so many weapons? I beseech you, who would believe +that they were men, if it were not because war is a thing so much in +custom that no man marvelleth at it? Their eyes glow like fire, their +faces be pale, their marching forth is like men in a fury, their voice +screeching and grunting, their cry and frenzied clamour; all is iron, +their harness and weapons jingling and clattering, and the guns +thundering. It might have been better suffered, if man, for lack of meat +and drink, should have fought with man, to the intent he might devour his +flesh and drink his blood: albeit, it is come also now to that pass, that +some there be that do it more of hatred than either for hunger or for +thirst. But now this same thing is done more cruelly, with weapons +envenomed, and with devilish engines. So that nowhere may be perceived any +token of man. Trow ye that Nature could here know it was the same thing, +that she sometime had wrought with her own hands? And if any man would +inform her, that it were man that she beheld in such array, might she not +well, with great wondering, say these words? + +"What new manner of pageant is this that I behold? What devil of hell hath +brought us forth this monster. There be some that call me a stepmother, +because that among so great heaps of things of my making I have brought +forth some venomous things (and yet have I ordained the selfsame venomous +things for man's behoof); and because I have made some beasts very fierce +and perilous: and yet is there no beast so wild nor so perilous, but that +by craft and diligence he may be made tame and gentle. By man's diligent +labour the lions have been made tame, the dragons meek, and the bears +obedient. But what is this, that worse is than any stepmother, which hath +brought us forth this new unreasonable brute beast, the pestilence and +mischief of all this world? One beast alone I brought forth wholly +dedicate to be benevolent, pleasant, friendly, and wholesome to all other. +What hath chanced, that this creature is changed into such a brute beast? +I perceive nothing of the creature man, which I myself made. What evil +spirit hath thus defiled my work? What witch hath bewitched the mind of +man, and transformed it into such brutishness? What sorceress hath thus +turned him out of his kindly shape? I command and would that the wretched +creature should behold himself in a glass. But, alas, what shall the eyes +see, where the mind is away? Yet behold thyself (if thou canst), thou +furious warrior, and see if thou mayst by any means recover thyself again. +From whence hast thou that threatening crest upon thy head? From whence +hast thou that shining helmet? From whence are those iron horns? Whence +cometh it, that thine elbows are so sharp and piked? Where hadst thou +those scales? Where hadst thou those brazen teeth? Of whence are those +hard plates? Whence are those deadly weapons? From whence cometh to thee +this voice more horrible than of a wild beast? What a look and countenance +hast thou more terrible than of a brute beast? Where hast thou gotten this +thunder and lightning, both more fearful and hurtful than is the very +thunder and lightning itself? I formed thee a goodly creature; what came +into thy mind, that thou wouldst thus transform thyself into so cruel and +so beastly fashion, that there is no brute beast so unreasonable in +comparison unto man?" + +These words, and many other such like, I suppose, the Dame Nature, the +worker of all things, would say. Then since man is such as is showed +before that he is, and that war is such a thing, like as too oft we have +felt and known, it seemeth to me no small wonder, what ill spirit, what +disease, or what mishap, first put into man's mind, that he would bathe +his mortal weapon in the blood of man. It must needs be, that men mounted +up to so great madness by divers degrees. For there was never man yet (as +Juvenal saith) that was suddenly most graceless of all. And always things +the worst have crept in among men's manners of living, under the shadow +and shape of goodness. For some time those men that were in the beginning +of the world led their lives in woods; they went naked, they had no walled +towns, nor houses to put their heads in: it happened otherwhile that they +were sore grieved and destroyed with wild beasts. Wherefore with them +first of all, men made war, and he was esteemed a mighty strong man, and a +captain, that could best defend mankind from the violence of wild beasts. +Yea, and it seemed to them a thing most equable to strangle the +stranglers, and to slay the slayers, namely, when the wild beast, not +provoked by us for any hurt to them done, would wilfully set upon us. And +so by reason that this was counted a thing most worthy of praise (for +hereof it rose that Hercules was made a god), the lusty-stomached young +men began all about to hunt and chase the wild beasts, and as a token of +their valiant victory the skins of such beasts as they slew were set up in +such places as the people might behold them. Besides this they were not +contented to slay the wild beasts, but they used to wear their skins to +keep them from the cold in winter. These were the first slaughters that +men used: these were their spoils and robberies. After this, they went so +farforth, that they were bold to do a thing which Pythagoras thought to be +very wicked; and it might seem to us also a thing monstrous, if custom +were not, which hath so great strength in every place: that by custom it +was reputed in some countries a much charitable deed if a man would, when +his father was very old, first sore beat him, and after thrust him +headlong into a pit, and so bereave him of his life, by whom it chanced +him to have the gift of life. It was counted a holy thing for a man to +feed on the flesh of his own kinsmen and friends. They thought it a goodly +thing, that a virgin should be made common to the people in the temple of +Venus. And many other things, more abominable than these: of which if a +man should now but only speak, every man would abhor to hear him. Surely +there is nothing so ungracious, nor nothing so cruel, but men will hold +therewith, if it be once approved by custom. Then will ye hear, what a +deed they durst at the last do? They were not abashed to eat the carcases +of the wild beasts that were slain, to tear the unsavoury flesh with their +teeth, to drink the blood, to suck out the matter of them, and (as Ovid +saith) to hide the beasts' bowels within their own. And although at that +time it seemed to be an outrageous deed unto them that were of a more mild +and gentle courage: yet was it generally allowed, and all by reason of +custom and commodity. Yet were they not so content. For they went from the +slaying of noisome wild beasts, to kill the harmless beasts, and such as +did no hurt at all. They waxed cruel everywhere upon the poor sheep, a +beast without fraud or guile. They slew the hare, for none other offence, +but because he was a good fat dish of meat to feed upon. Nor they forbare +not to kill the tame ox, which had a long season, with his sore labour, +nourished the unkind household. They spared no kind of beasts, of fowls, +nor of fishes. Yea, and the tyranny of gluttony went so farforth that +there was no beast anywhere that could be sure from the cruelty of man. +Yea, and custom persuaded this also, that it seemed no cruelty at all to +slay any manner of beast, whatsoever it was, so they abstained from +manslaughter. Now peradventure it lieth in our power to keep out vices, +that they enter not upon the manners of men, in like manner as it lieth in +our power to keep out the sea, that it break not in upon us; but when the +sea is once broken in, it passeth our power to restrain it within any +bounds. So either of them both once let in, they will not be ruled, as we +would, but run forth headlong whithersoever their own rage carrieth them. +And so after that men had been exercised with such beginnings to +slaughter, wrath anon enticed man to set upon man, either with staff, or +with stone, or else with his fist. For as yet, I think they used no other +weapons. And now had they learned by the killing of beasts, that man also +might soon and easily be slain with little labour. But this cruelty +remained betwixt singular persons, so that yet there was no great number +of men that fought together, but as it chanced one man against another. +And besides this, there was no small colour of equity, if a man slew his +enemy; yea, and shortly after, it was a great praise to a man to slay a +violent and a mischievous man, and to rid him out of the world, such +devilish and cruel caitiffs, as men say Cacus and Busiris were. For we see +plainly, that for such causes, Hercules was greatly praised. And in +process of time, many assembled to take part together, either as affinity, +or as neighbourhood, or kindred bound them. And what is now robbery was +then war. And they fought then with stones, or with stakes, a little +burned at the ends. A little river, a rock, or such other like thing, +chancing to be between them, made an end of their battle. + +In the mean season, while fierceness by use increaseth, while wrath is +grown great, and ambition hot and vehement, by ingenious craft they arm +their furious violence. They devise harness, such as it is, to fence them +with. They invent weapons to destroy their enemies with. Thus now by few +and few, now with greater company, and now armed they begin to fight. Nor +to this manifest madness they forget not to give honour. For they call it +Bellum, that is to say, a fair thing; yea, and they repute it a virtuous +deed, if a man, with the jeopardy of his own life, manly resist and defend +from the violence of his enemies, his wife, children, beasts, and +household. And by little and little, malice grew so great, with the high +esteeming of other things, that one city began to send defiance and make +war to another, country against country, and realm against realm. And +though the thing of itself was then most cruel, yet all this while there +remained in them certain tokens, whereby they might be known for men: for +such goods as by violence were taken away were asked and required again by +an herald at arms; the gods were called to witness; yea, and when they +were ranged in battle, they would reason the matter ere they fought. And +in the battle they used but homely weapons, nor they used neither guile +nor deceit, but only strength. It was not lawful for a man to strike his +enemy till the sign of battle was given; nor was it not lawful to fight +after the sounding of the retreat. And for conclusion, they fought more to +show their manliness and for praise, than they coveted to slay. Nor all +this while they armed them not, but against strangers, the which they +called hostes, as they had been hospites, their guests. Of this rose +empires, of the which there was never none yet in any nation, but it was +gotten with the great shedding of man's blood. And since that time there +hath followed continual course of war, while one eftsoons laboureth to put +another out of his empire, and to set himself in. After all this, when the +empires came once into their hands that were most ungracious of all other, +they made war upon whosoever pleased them; nor were they not in greatest +peril and danger of war that had most deserved to be punished, but they +that by fortune had gotten great riches. And now they made not war to get +praise and fame, but to get the vile muck of the world, or else some other +thing far worse than that. + +I think not the contrary, but that the great, wise man Pythagoras meant +these things when he by a proper device of philosophy frightened the +unlearned multitude of people from the slaying of silly beasts. For he +perceived, it should at length come to pass, that he which (by no injury +provoked) was accustomed to spill the blood of a harmless beast, would in +his anger, being provoked by injury, not fear to slay a man. + +War, what other thing else is it than a common manslaughter of many men +together, and a robbery, the which, the farther it sprawleth abroad, the +more mischievous it is? But many gross gentlemen nowadays laugh merrily at +these things, as though they were the dreams and dotings of schoolmen, the +which, saving the shape, have no point of manhood, yet seem they in their +own conceit to be gods. And yet of those beginnings, we see we be run so +far in madness, that we do naught else all our life-days. We war +continually, city with city, prince with prince, people with people, yea, +and (it that the heathen people confess to be a wicked thing) cousin with +cousin, alliance with alliance, brother with brother, the son with the +father, yea, and that I esteem more cruel than all these things, a +Christian man against another man; and yet furthermore, I will say that I +am very loath to do, which is a thing most cruel of all, one Christian man +with another Christian man. Oh, blindness of man's mind! at those things +no man marvelleth, no man abhorreth them. There be some that rejoice at +them, and praise them above the moon: and the thing which is more than +devilish, they call a holy thing. Old men, crooked for age, make war, +priests make war, monks go forth to war; yea, and with a thing so devilish +we mingle Christ. The battles ranged, they encounter the one the other, +bearing before them the sign of the Cross, which thing alone might at the +leastwise admonish us by what means it should become Christian men to +overcome. + +But we run headlong each to destroy other, even from that heavenly +sacrifice of the altar, whereby is represented that perfect and ineffable +knitting together of all Christian men. And of so wicked a thing, we make +Christ both author and witness. Where is the kingdom of the devil, if it +be not in war? Why draw we Christ into war, with whom a brothel-house +agreeth more than war? Saint Paul disdaineth, that there should be any so +great discord among Christian men, that they should need any judge to +discuss the matter between them. What if he should come and behold us now +through all the world, warring for every light and trifling cause, +striving more cruelly than ever did any heathen people, and more cruelly +than any barbarous people? Yea, and ye shall see it done by the authority, +exhortations, and furtherings of those that represent Christ, the prince +of peace and very bishop that all things knitteth together by peace and of +those that salute the people with good luck of peace. Nor is it not +unknown to me what these unlearned people say (a good while since) against +me in this matter, whose winnings arise of the common evils. They say +thus: We make war against our wills: for we be constrained by the +ungracious deeds of other. We make war but for our right. And if there +come any hurt thereof, thank them that be causers of it. But let these men +hold their tongues awhile, and I shall after, in place convenient, avoid +all their cavillations, and pluck off that false visor wherewith we hide +all our malice. + +But first as I have above compared man with war, that is to say, the +creature most demure with a thing most outrageous, to the intent that +cruelty might the better be perceived: so will I compare war and peace +together, the thing most wretched, and most mischievous, with the best and +most wealthy thing that is. And so at last shall appear, how great madness +it is, with so great tumult, with so great labours, with such intolerable +expenses, with so many calamities, affectionately to desire war: whereas +agreement might be bought with a far less price. + +First of all, what in all this world is more sweet or better than amity or +love? Truly nothing. And I pray you, what other thing is peace than amity +and love among men, like as war on the other side is naught else but +dissension and debate of many men together? And surely the property of +good things is such, that the broader they be spread, the more profit and +commodity cometh of them. Farther, if the love of one singular person with +another be so sweet and delectable, how great should the felicity be if +realm with realm, and nation with nation, were coupled together, with the +band of amity and love? On the other side, the nature of evil things is +such, that the farther they sprawl abroad, the more worthy they are to be +called evil, as they be indeed. Then if it be a wretched thing, if it be +an ungracious thing, that one man armed should fight with another, how +much more miserable, how much more mischievous is it, that the selfsame +thing should be done with so many thousands together? By love and peace +the small things increase and wax great, by discord and debate the great +things decay and come to naught. Peace is the mother and nurse of all good +things. War suddenly and at once overthroweth, destroyeth, and utterly +fordoeth everything that is pleasant and fair, and bringeth in among men a +monster of all mischievous things. + +In the time of peace (none otherwise than as if the lusty springtime +should show and shine in men's businesses) the fields are tilled, the +gardens and orchards freshly flourish, the beasts pasture merrily; gay +manours in the country are edified, the towns are builded, where as need +is reparations are done, the buildings are heightened and augmented, +riches increase, pleasures are nourished, the laws are executed, the +common wealth flourisheth, religion is fervent, right reigneth, gentleness +is used, craftsmen are busily exercised, the poor men's gain is more +plentiful, the wealthiness of the rich men is more gay and goodly, the +studies of most honest learnings flourish, youth is well taught, the aged +folks have quiet and rest, maidens are luckily married, mothers are +praised for bringing forth of children like to their progenitors, the good +men prosper and do well, and the evil men do less offence. + +But as soon as the cruel tempest of war cometh on us, good Lord, how great +a flood of mischiefs occupieth, overfloweth, and drowneth all together. +The fair herds of beasts are driven away, the goodly corn is trodden down +and destroyed, the good husbandmen are slain, the villages are burned up, +the most wealthy cities, that have flourished so many winters, with that +one storm are overthrown, destroyed, and brought to naught: so much +readier and prompter men are to do hurt than good. The good citizens are +robbed and spoiled of their goods by cursed thieves and murderers. Every +place is full of fear, of wailing, complaining, and lamenting. The +craftsmen stand idle; the poor men must either die for hunger, or fall to +stealing. The rich men either stand and sorrow for their goods, that be +plucked and snatched from them, or else they stand in great doubt to lose +such goods as they have left them: so that they be on every side +woebegone. The maidens, either they be not married at all, or else if they +be married, their marriages are sorrowful and lamentable. Wives, being +destitute of their husbands, lie at home without any fruit of children, +the laws are laid aside, gentleness is laughed to scorn, right is clean +exiled, religion is set at naught, hallowed and unhallowed things all are +one, youth is corrupted with all manner of vices, the old folk wail and +weep, and wish themselves out of the world, there is no honour given unto +the study of good letters. Finally, there is no tongue can tell the harm +and mischief that we feel in war. + +Perchance war might be the better suffered, if it made us but only +wretched and needy; but it maketh us ungracious, and also full of +unhappiness. And I think Peace likewise should be much made of, if it were +but only because it maketh us more wealthy and better in our living. Alas, +there be too many already, yea, and more than too many mischiefs and +evils, with the which the wretched life of man (whether he will or no) is +continually vexed, tormented, and utterly consumed. + +It is near hand two thousand years since the physicians had knowledge of +three hundred divers notable sicknesses by name, besides other small +sicknesses and new, as daily spring among us, and besides age also, which +is of itself a sickness inevitable. + +We read that in one place whole cities have been destroyed with +earthquakes. We read, also, that in another place there have been cities +altogether burnt with lightning; how in another place whole regions have +been swallowed up with opening of the earth, towns by undermining have +fallen to the ground; so that I need not here to remember what a great +multitude of men are daily destroyed by divers chances, which be not +regarded because they happen so often: as sudden breaking out of the sea +and of great floods, falling down of hills and houses, poison, wild +beasts, meat, drink, and sleep. One hath been strangled with drinking of a +hair in a draught of milk, another hath been choked with a little +grapestone, another with a fishbone sticking in his throat. There hath +been, that sudden joy hath killed out of hand: for it is less wonder of +them that die for vehement sorrow. Besides all this, what mortal +pestilence see we in every place. There is no part of the world, that is +not subject to peril and danger of man's life, which life of itself also +is most fugitive. So manifold mischances and evils assail man on every +side that not without cause Homer did say: Man was the most wretched of +all creatures living. + +But forasmuch these mischances cannot lightly be eschewed, nor they happen +not through our fault, they make us but only wretched, and not ungracious +withal. What pleasure is it then for them that be subject already to so +many miserable chances, willingly to seek and procure themselves another +mischief more than they had before, as though they yet wanted misery? Yea, +they procure not a light evil, but such an evil that is worse than all the +others, so mischievous, that it alone passeth all the others; so abundant, +that in itself alone is comprehended all ungraciousness; so pestilent, +that it maketh us all alike wicked as wretched, it maketh us full of all +misery, and yet not worthy to be pitied. + +Now go farther, and with all these things consider, that the commodities +of Peace spread themselves most far and wide, and pertain unto many men. +In war if there happen anything luckily (but, O good Lord, what may we say +happeneth well and luckily in war?), it pertaineth to very few, and to +them that are unworthy to have it. The prosperity of one is the +destruction of another. The enriching of one is the spoil and robbing of +another. The triumph of one is the lamentable mourning of another, so that +as the infelicity is bitter and sharp, the felicity is cruel and bloody. +Howbeit otherwhile both parties wept according to the proverb, Victoria +Cadmaea, Cadmus victorie, where both parties repented. And I wot not +whether it came ever so happily to pass in war, that he that had victory +did not repent him of his enterprise, if he were a good man. + +Then seeing Peace is the thing above all other most best and most +pleasant, and, contrariwise, war the thing most ungracious and wretched of +all other, shall we think those men to be in their right minds, the which +when they may obtain Peace with little business and labour will rather +procure war with so great labour and most difficulty? + +First of all consider, how loathly a thing the rumour of war is, when it +is first spoken of. Then how envious a thing it is unto a prince, while +with often tithes and taxes he pillageth his subjects. What a business +hath he to make and entertain friends to help him? what a business to +procure bands of strangers and to hire soldiers? + +What expenses and labours must he make in setting forth his navy of ships, +in building and repairing of castles and fortresses, in preparing and +apparelling of his tents and pavilions, in framing, making, and carrying +of engines, guns, armour, weapons, baggage, carts, and victual? What great +labour is spent in making of bulwarks, in casting of ditches, in digging +of mines, in keeping of watches, in keeping of arrays, and in exercising +of weapons? I pass over the fear they be in; I speak not of the imminent +danger and peril that hangeth over their heads: for what thing in war is +not to be feared? What is he that can reckon all the incommodious life +that the most foolish soldiers suffer in the field? And for that worthy to +endure worse, in that they will suffer it willingly. Their meat is so ill +that an ox of Cyprus would be loath to eat it; they have but little sleep, +nor yet that at their own pleasure. Their tents on every side are open on +the wind. What, a tent? No, no; they must all the day long, be it hot or +cold, wet or dry, stand in the open air, sleep on the bare ground, stand +in their harness. They must suffer hunger, thirst, cold, heat, dust, +showers; they must be obedient to their captains; sometimes they be +clapped on the pate with a warder or a truncheon: so that there is no +bondage so vile as the bondage of soldiers. + +Besides all this, at the sorrowful sign given to fight, they must run +headlong to death: for either they must slay cruelly, or be slain +wretchedly. So many sorrowful labours must they take in hand, that they +may bring to pass that thing which is most wretched of all other. With so +many great miseries we must first afflict and grieve our own self, that we +may afflict and grieve other! + +Now if we would call this matter to account, and justly reckon how much +war will cost, and how much peace, surely we shall find that peace may be +got and obtained with the tenth part of the cares, labours, griefs, +perils, expenses, and spilling of blood, with which the war is procured. +So great a company of men, to their extreme perils, ye lead out of the +realm to overthrow and destroy some one town: and with the labour of the +selfsame men, and without any peril at all, another town, much more noble +and goodly, might be new edified and builded. But you say, you will hurt +and grieve your enemy: so even that doing is against humanity. +Nevertheless, this I would ye should consider, that ye cannot hurt and +grieve your enemies, but ye must first greatly hurt your own people. And +it seemeth a point of a madman, to enterprise where he is sure and certain +of so great hurt and damage, and is uncertain which way the chance of war +will turn. + +But admit, that either foolishness, or wrath, or ambition, or +covetousness, or outrageous cruelty, or else (which I think more like) the +furies sent from hell, should ravish and draw the heathen people to this +madness. Yet from whence cometh it into our minds, that one Christian man +should draw his weapon to bathe it in another Christian man's blood? It is +called parricide, if the one brother slay the other. And yet is a +Christian man nearer joined to another than is one brother to another: +except the bonds of nature be stronger than the bonds of Christ. What +abominable thing, then, is it to see them almost continually fighting +among themselves, the which are the inhabitants of one house the Church, +which rejoice and say, that they all be the members of one body, and that +have one head, which truly is Christ; they have all one Father in heaven; +they are all taught and comforted by one Holy Spirit; they profess the +religion of Christ all under one manner; they are all redeemed with +Christ's blood; they are all newborn at the holy font; they use alike +sacraments; they be all soldiers under one captain; they are all fed with +one heavenly bread; they drink all of one spiritual cup; they have one +common enemy the devil; finally, they be all called to one inheritance. +Where be they so many sacraments of perfect concord? Where be the +innumerable teachings of peace? There is one special precept, which Christ +called his, that is, Charity. And what thing is so repugnant to charity as +war? Christ saluted his disciples with the blessed luck of peace. Unto his +disciples he gave nothing save peace, saving peace he left them nothing. +In those holy prayers, he specially prayed the Father of heaven, that in +like manner as he was one with the Father, so all his, that is to say, +Christian men, should be one with him. Lo, here you may perceive a thing +more than peace, more than amity, more than concord. + +Solomon bare the figure of Christ: for Solomon in the Hebrew tongue +signifieth peaceable or peaceful. Him God would have to build his temple. +At the birth of Christ the angels proclaimed neither war nor triumphs, but +peace they sang. And before his birth the prophet David prophesied thus of +him: Et factus est in pace locus ejus, that is to say, His dwelling place +is made in peace. Search all the whole life of Christ, and ye shall never +find thing that breathes not of peace, that signifieth not amity, that +savoureth not of charity. And because he perceived peace could not well be +kept, except men would utterly despise all those things for which the +world so greedily fighteth, he commanded that we should of him learn to be +meek. He calleth them blessed and happy that setteth naught by riches, for +those he calleth poor in spirit. Blessed be they that despise the +pleasures of this world, the which he calleth mourners. And them blessed +he calleth that patiently suffer themselves, to be put out of their +possessions, knowing that here in this world they are but as outlaws; and +the very true country and possession of godly creatures is in heaven. He +calleth them blessed which, deserving well of all men, are wrongfully +blamed and ill afflicted. He forbade that any man should resist evil. +Briefly, as all his doctrine commandeth sufferance and love, so all his +life teacheth nothing else but meekness. So he reigned, so he warred, so +he overcame, so he triumphed. + +Now the apostles, that had sucked into them the pure spirit of Christ, and +were blessedly drunk with that new must of the Holy Ghost, preached +nothing but meekness and peace. What do all the epistles of Paul sound in +every place but peace, but long-suffering, but charity? What speaketh +Saint John, what rehearseth he so oft, but love? What other thing did +Peter? What other thing did all the true Christian writers? From whence +then cometh all this tumult of wars amongst the children of peace? Think +ye it a fable, that Christ calleth himself a vine tree, and his own the +branches? Who did ever see one branch fight with another? Is it in vain +that Paul so oft wrote, The Church to be none other thing, than one body +compact together of divers members, cleaving to one head, Christ? Whoever +saw the eye fight with the hand, or the belly with the foot? In this +universal body, compact of all those unlike things, there is agreement. In +the body of a beast, one member is in peace with another, and each member +useth not the property thereto given for itself alone, but for the profit +of all the other members. So that if there come any good to any one member +alone, it helpeth all the whole body. And may the compaction or knitting +of Nature do more in the body of a beast, that shortly must perish, than +the coupling of the Holy Ghost in the mystical and immortal body of the +Church? Do we to no purpose pray as taught by Christ: Good Lord, even as +thy will is fulfilled in heaven, so let it be fulfilled in the earth? In +that city of heaven is concord and peace most perfect. And Christ would +have his Church to be none other than a heavenly people in earth, as near +as might be after the manner of them that are in heaven, ever labouring +and making haste to go thither, and always having their mind thereon. + +Now go to, let us imagine, that there should come some new guest out of +the lunar cities, where Empedocles dwelleth, or else out of the +innumerable worlds, that Democritus fabricated, into this world, desiring +to know what the inhabitants do here. And when he was instructed of +everything, it should at last be told him that, besides all other, there +is one creature marvellously mingled, of body like to brute beasts and of +soul like unto God. And it should also be told him, that this creature is +so noble, that though he be here an outlaw out of his own country, yet are +all other beasts at his commandment, the which creature through his +heavenly beginning inclineth alway to things heavenly and immortal. And +that God eternal loved this creature so well, that whereas he could +neither by the gifts of nature, nor by the strong reasons of philosophy +attain unto that which he so fervently desired, he sent hither his only +begotten son, to the intent to teach this creature a new kind of learning. +Then as soon as this new guest had perceived well the whole manner of +Christ's life and precepts, would desire to stand in some high place, from +whence he might behold that which he had heard. And when he should see +all other creatures soberly live according to their kind, and, being led +by the laws and course of nature, desire nothing but even as Nature would; +and should see this one special creature man given riotously to tavern +haunting, to vile lucre, to buying and selling, chopping and changing, to +brawling and fighting one with another, trow ye that he would not think +that any of the other creatures were man, of whom he heard so much of +before, rather than he that is indeed man? Then if he that had instructed +him afore would show him which creature is man, now would he look about to +see if he could spy the Christian flock and company, the which, following +the ordinance of that heavenly teacher Christ, should exhibit to him a +figure or shape of the evangelical city. Think ye he would not rather +judge Christians to dwell in any other place than in those countries, +wherein we see so great superfluity, riot, voluptuousness, pride, tyranny, +discord, brawlings, fightings, wars, tumults, yea, and briefly to speak, a +greater puddle of all those things that Christ reproveth than among Turks +or Saracens? From whence, then, creepeth this pestilence in among +Christian people? Doubtless this mischief also is come in by little and +little, like as many more other be, ere men be aware of them. For truly +every mischief creepeth by little and little upon the good manners of men, +or else under the colour of goodness it is suddenly received. + +So then first of all, learning and cunning crept in as a thing very meet +to confound heretics, which defend their opinions with the doctrine of +philosophers, poets, and orators. And surely at the beginning of our +faith, Christian men did not learn those things; but such as peradventure +had learned them, before they knew what Christ meant, they turned the +thing that they had learned already, into good use. + +Eloquence of tongue was at the beginning dissembled more than despised, +but at length it was openly approved. After that, under colour of +confounding heretics, came in an ambitious pleasure of brawling +disputations, which hath brought into the Church of Christ no small +mischief. At length the matter went so farforth that Aristotle was +altogether received into the middle of divinity, and so received, that his +authority is almost reputed holier than the authority of Christ. For if +Christ spake anything that did little agree with our life, by +interpretation of Aristotle it was lawful to make it serve their purpose. +But if any do never so little repugn against the high divinity of +Aristotle, he is quickly with clapping of hands driven out of the place. +For of him we have learned, that the felicity of man is imperfect, except +he have both the good gifts of body and of fortune. Of him we have +learned, that no commonweal may flourish, in which all things are +common. And we endeavour ourselves to glue fast together the decrees of +this man and the doctrine of Christ--which is as likely a thing as to +mingle fire and water together. And a gobbet we have received of the civil +laws, because of the equity that seemeth to be in them. And to the end +they should the better serve our purpose, we have, as near as may be, +writhed and plied the doctrine of the gospel to them. Now by the civil law +it is lawful for a man to defend violence with violence, and each to +pursue for his right. Those laws approve buying and selling; they allow +usury, so it be measurable; they praise war as a noble thing, so, it be +just. Finally all the doctrine of Christ is so defiled with the learning +of logicians, sophisters, astronomers, orators, poets, philosophers, +lawyers, and gentles, that a man shall spend the most part of his life, +ere he may have any leisure to search holy scripture, to the which when a +man at last cometh, he must come infected with so many worldly opinions, +that either he must be offended with Christ's doctrines, or else he must +apply them to the mind and of them that he hath learned before. And this +thing is so much approved, that it is now a heinous deed, if a man presume +to study holy scripture, which hath not buried himself up to the hard ears +in those trifles, or rather sophistries of Aristotle. As though Christ's +doctrine were such, that it were not lawful for all men to know it, or +else that it could by any means agree with the wisdom of philosophers. +Besides this we admitted at the beginning of our faith some honour, which +afterward we claimed as of duty. Then we received riches, but that was to +distribute to relieve poor men, which afterwards we turned to our own use. +And why not, since we have learned by the law civil, that the very order +of charity is, that every man must first provide for himself? Nor lack +there colours to cloak this mischief: first it is a good deed to provide +for our children, and it is right that we foresee how to live in age; +finally, why should we, say they, give our goods away, if we come by them +without fraud? By these degrees it is by little and little come to pass, +that he is taken for the best man that hath most riches: nor never was +there more honour given to riches among the heathen people, than is at +this day among the Christian people. For what thing is there, either +spiritual or temporal, that is not done with great show of riches? And it +seemed a thing agreeable with those ornaments, if Christian men had some +great jurisdiction under them. Nor there wanted not such as gladly +submitted themselves. Albeit at the beginning it was against their wills, +and scantly would they receive it. And yet with much work, they received +it so, that they were content with the name and title only: the profit +thereof they gladly gave unto other men. At the last, little by little +it came to pass, that a bishop thought himself no bishop, except he had +some temporal lordship withal; an abbot thought himself of small +authority, if he had not wherewith to play the lordly sire. And in +conclusion, we blushed never a deal at the matter, we wiped away all +shamefastness, and shoved aside all the bars of comeliness. And whatever +abuse was used among the heathen people, were it covetousness, ambition, +riot, pomp, or pride, or tyranny, the same we follow, in the same we match +them, yea, and far pass them. And to pass over the lighter things for the +while, I pray you, was there ever war among the heathen people so long +continually, or more cruelly, than among Christian people? What stormy +rumblings, what violent brays of war, what tearing of leagues, and what +piteous slaughters of men have we seen ourselves within these few years? +What nation hath not fought and skirmished with another? And then we go +and curse the Turk; and what can be a more pleasant sight to the Turks, +than to behold us daily each slaying other? + +Xerxes doted, when he led out of his own country that huge multitude of +people to make war upon the Greeks. Trow ye, was he not mad, when he wrote +letters to the mountain called Athos, threatening that the hill should +repent except it obeyed his lust? And the same Xerxes commanded also the +sea to be beaten, because it was somewhat rough when he should have +sailed over. + +Who will deny but Alexander the Great was mad also? He, the young god, +wished that there were many worlds, the which he might conquer--so great a +fever of vainglory had embraced his young lusty courage. And yet these +same men, the which Seneca doubted not to call mad thieves, warred after a +gentler fashion than we do; they were more faithful of their promise in +war, nor they used not so mischievous engines in war, nor such crafts and +subtleties, nor they warred not for so light causes as we Christian men +do. They rejoiced to advance and enrich such provinces as they had +conquered by war; and the rude people, that lived like wild beasts without +laws, learning, or good manners, they taught them both civil conditions +and crafts, whereby they might live like men. In countries that were not +inhabited with people, they builded cities, and made them both fair and +profitable. And the places that were not very sure, they fenced, for +safeguard of the people, with bridges, banks, bulwarks; and with a +thousand other such commodities they helped the life of man. So that then +it was right expedient to be overcome. Yea, and how many things read we, +that were either wisely done, or soberly spoken of them in the midst of +their wars. As for those things that are done in Christian men's wars they +are more filthy and cruel than is convenient here to rehearse. Moreover, +look what was worst in the heathen peoples' wars, in that we follow them, +yea, we pass them. + +But now it is worth while to hear, by what means we maintain this our so +great madness. Thus they reason: If it had not been lawful by no means to +make war, surely God would never have been the author to the Jews to make +war against their enemies. Well said, but we must add hereunto, that the +Jews never made war among themselves, but against strangers and wicked +men. We, Christian men, fight with Christian men. Diversity of religion +caused the Jews to fight against their enemies: for their enemies +worshipped not God as they did. We make war oftentimes for a little +childish anger, or for hunger of money, or for thirst of glory, or else +for filthy meed. The Jews fought by the commandment of God; we make war to +avenge the grief and displeasure of our mind. And nevertheless if men will +so much lean to the example of the Jews, why do we not then in like manner +use circumcision? Why do we not sacrifice with the blood of sheep and +other beasts? Why do we not abstain from swine's flesh? Why doth not each +of us wed many wives? Since we abhor those things, why doth the example of +war please us so much? Why do we here follow the bare letter that killeth? +It was permitted the Jews to make war, but so likewise as they were +suffered to depart from their wives, doubtless because of their hard and +froward manners. But after Christ commanded the sword to be put up, it is +unlawful for Christian men to make any other war but that which is the +fairest war of all, with the most eager and fierce enemies of the Church, +with affection of money, with wrath, with ambition, with dread of death. +These be our Philistines, these be our Nabuchodonosors, these be our +Moabites and Ammonites, with the which it behooveth us to have no truce. +With these we must continually fight, until (our enemies being utterly +vanquished) we may be in quiet, for except we may overcome them, there is +no man that may attain to any true peace, neither with himself, nor yet +with no other. For this war alone is cause of true peace. He that +overcometh in this battle, will make war with no man living. Nor I regard +not the interpretation that some men make of the two swords, to signify +either power spiritual or temporal. When Christ suffered Peter to err +purposely, yea, after he was commanded to put up his sword, no man should +doubt but that war was forbidden, which before seemed to be lawful. But +Peter (say they) fought. True it is, Peter fought; he was yet but a Jew, +and had not the spirit of a very Christian man. He fought not for his +lands, or for any such titles of lands as we do, nor yet for his own life, +but for his Master's life. And finally, he fought, the which within a +while after forsook his Master. Now if men will needs follow the example +of Peter that fought, why might they not as well follow the example of +him forsaking his Master? And though Peter through simple affection erred, +yet did his Master rebuke him. For else, if Christ did allow such manner +of defence, as some most foolishly do interpret, why doth both all the +life and doctrine of Christ preach no other thing but sufferance? Why sent +he forth his disciples again tyrants, armed with nothing else but with a +walking-staff and a scrip? If that sword, which Christ commanded his +disciples to sell their coats to buy, be moderate defence against +persecutors, like as some men do not only wickedly but also blindly +interpret, why did the martyrs never use that defence? But (say they) the +law of nature commandeth, it is approved by the laws, and allowed by +custom, that we ought to put off from us violence by violence, and that +each of us should defend his life, and eke his money, when the money (as +Hesiod saith) is as lief as the life. All this I grant, but yet grace, the +law of Christ, that is of more effect than all these things, commandeth +us, that we should not speak ill to them that speak shrewdly to us; that +we should do well to them that do ill to us, and to them that take away +part of our possessions, we should give the whole; and that we should also +pray for them that imagine our death. But these things (say they) +appertain to the apostles; yea, they appertain to the universal people of +Christ, and to the whole body of Christ's Church, that must needs be a +whole and a perfect body, although in its gifts one member is more +excellent than another. To them the doctrine of Christ appertaineth not, +that hope not to have reward with Christ. Let them fight for money and for +lordships, that laugh to scorn the saying of Christ: Blessed be the poor +men in spirit; that is to say, be they poor or rich, blessed be they that +covet no riches in this world. They that put all their felicity in these +riches, they fight gladly to defend their life; but they be those that +understand not this life to be rather a death, nor they perceive not that +everlasting life is prepared for good men. Now they lay against us divers +bishops of Rome, the which have been both authors and abettors of warring. +True it is, some such there have been, but they were of late, and in such +time as the doctrine of Christ waxed cold. Yea, and they be very few in +comparison of the holy fathers that were before them, which with their +writings persuade us to flee war. Why are these few examples most in mind? +Why turn we our eyes from Christ to men? And why had we rather follow the +uncertain examples, than the authority that is sure and certain? For +doubtless the bishops of Rome were men. And it may be right well, that +they were either fools or ungracious caitiffs. And yet we find not that +any of them approved that we should still continually war after this +fashion as we do, which thing I could with arguments prove, if I listed +to digress and tarry thereupon. + +Saint Bernard praised warriors, but he so praised them, that he condemned +all the manner of our warfare. And yet why should the saying of Saint +Bernard, or the disputation of Thomas the Alquine, move me rather than the +doctrine of Christ, which commandeth, that we should in no wise resist +evil, specially under such manner as the common people do resist. + +But it is lawful (say they) that a transgressor be punished and put to +death according to the laws: then is it not lawful for a whole country or +city to be revenged by war? What may be answered in this place, is longer +than is convenient to reply. But this much will I say, there is a great +difference. For the evil-doer, found faulty and convicted, is by authority +of the laws put to death. In war there is neither part without fault. +Whereas one singular man doth offend, the punishment falleth only on +himself; and the example of the punishment doth good unto all others. In +war the most part of the punishment and harm falls upon them that least +deserve to be punished; that is, upon husbandmen, old men, honest wives, +young children, and virgins. But if there may any commodity at all be +gathered of this most mischievous thing, that altogether goeth to the +behoof of certain most vengeable thieves, hired soldiers, and strong +robbers, and perhaps to a few captains, by whose craft war was raised +for that intent, and with which the matter goeth never better than when +the commonweal is in most high jeopardy and peril to be lost. Whereas one +is for his offence grievously punished, it is the wealthy warning of all +other: but in war to the end to revenge the quarrel of one, or else +peradventure of a few, we cruelly afflict and grieve many thousands of +them that nothing deserved. It were better to leave the offence of a few +unpunished than while we seek occasion to punish one or two, to bring into +assured peril and danger, both our neighbours and innocent enemies (we +call them our enemies, though they never did us hurt); and yet are we +uncertain, whether it shall fall on them or not, that we would have +punished. It is better to let a wound alone, that cannot be cured without +grievous hurt and danger of all the whole body, than go about to heal it. + +Now if any man will cry out and say: It were against all right, that he +that offendeth should not be punished; hereunto I answer, that it is much +more against all right and reason, that so many thousands of innocents +should be brought into extreme calamity and mischief without deserving. +Albeit nowadays we see, that almost all wars spring up I cannot tell of +what titles, and of leagues between princes, that while they go about to +subdue to their dominion some one town, they put in jeopardy all their +whole empire. And yet within a while after, they sell or give away the +same town again, that they got with shedding of so much blood. + +Peradventure some man will say: Wouldst not have princes fight for their +right? I know right well, it is not meet for such a man as I am, to +dispute overboldly of princes' matters, and though I might do it without +any danger, yet is it longer than is convenient for this place. But this +much will I say: If each whatsoever title be a cause convenient to go in +hand with war, there is no man that in so great alterations of men's +affairs, and in so great variety and changes, can want a title. What +nation is there that hath not sometime been put out of their own country, +and also have put other out? How oft have people gone from one country to +another? How oft have whole empires been translated from one to another +either by chance or by league. Let the citizens of Padua claim now again +in God's name the country of Troy for theirs, because Antenor was sometime +a Trojan. Let the Romans now hardily claim again Africa and Spain, because +those provinces were sometime under the Romans. We call that a dominion, +which is but an administration. The power and authority over men, which be +free by Nature, and over brute beasts, is not all one. What power and +sovereignty soever you have, you have it by the consent of the people. And +if I be not deceived, he that hath authority to give, hath authority to +take away again. Will ye see how small a matter it is that we make all +this tumult for? The strife is not, whether this city or that should be +obeisant to a good prince, and not in bondage of a tyrant; but whether +Ferdinand or Sigismund hath the better title to it, whether that city +ought to pay tribute to Philip or to King Louis. This is that noble right, +for the which all the world is thus vexed and troubled with wars and +manslaughter. + +Yet go to, suppose that this right or title be as strong and of as great +authority as may be; suppose also there be no difference between a private +field and a whole city; and admit there be no difference between the +beasts that you have bought with your money and men, which be not only +free, but also true Christians: yet is it a point for a wise man to cast +in his mind, whether the thing that you will war for, be of so great +value, that it will recompense the exceedingly great harms and loss of +your own people. If ye cannot do in every point as becometh a prince, yet +at the leastways do as the merchantman doeth: he setteth naught by that +loss, which he well perceiveth cannot be avoided without a greater loss, +and he reckoneth it a winning, that fortune hath been against him with his +so little loss. Or else at the leastwise follow him, of whom there is a +merry tale commonly told. + +There were two kinsmen at variance about dividing of certain goods, and +when they could by no means agree, they must go to law together, that in +conclusion the matter might be ended by sentence of the judges. They got +them attorneys, the pleas were drawn, men of law had the matter in hand, +they came before the judges, the complaint was entered, the cause was +pleaded, and so was the war begun between them. Anon one of them +remembering himself, called aside his adversary to him and said on this +wise: "First it were a great shame, that a little money should dissever us +twain, whom Nature hath knit so near together. Secondly, the end of our +strife is uncertain, no less than of war. It is in our hands to begin when +we will, but not to make an end. All our strife is but for an hundred +crowns, and we shall spend the double thereof upon notaries, upon +promoters, upon advocates, upon attorneys, upon judges, and upon judges' +friends, if we try the law to the uttermost. We must wait upon these men, +we must flatter and speak them fair, we must give them rewards. And yet I +speak not of the care and thought, nor of the great labour and travail, +that we must take to run about here and there to make friends; and which +of us two that winneth the victory, shall be sure of more incommodity than +profit. Wherefore if we be wise, let us rather see to our own profit, and +the money that shall be evil bestowed upon these bribers, let us divide it +between us twain. And forgive you the half of that ye think should be your +due, and I will forgive as much of mine. And so shall we keep and +preserve our friendship, which else is like to perish, and we shall also +eschew this great business, cost, and charge. If you be not content to +forgo anything of your part, I commit the whole matter into your own +hands; do with it as you will. For I had liefer my friend had this money, +than those insatiable thieves. Methinks I have gained enough, if I may +save my good name, keep my friend, and avoid this unquiet and chargeable +business." Thus partly the telling of the truth, and partly the merry +conceit of his kinsman, moved the other man to agree. So they ended the +matter between themselves, to the great displeasure of the judges and +servants, for they, like a sort of gaping ravens, were deluded and put +beside their prey. + +Let a prince therefore follow the wisdom of these two men, specially in a +matter of much more danger. Nor let him not regard what thing it is that +he would obtain, but what great loss of good things he shall have, in what +great jeopardies he shall be, and what miseries he must endure, to come +thereby. Now if a man will weigh, as it were in a pair of balances, the +commodities of war on the one side and the incommodities on the other +side, he shall find that unjust peace is far better than righteous war. +Why had we rather have war than peace? Who but a madman will angle with a +golden fish-hook? If ye see that the charges and expenses shall amount +far above your gain, yea, though all things go according to your mind, is +it not better that ye forgo part of your right than to buy so little +commodity with so innumerable mischiefs? I had liefer that any other man +had the title, than I should win it with so great effusion of Christian +men's blood. He (whosoever he be) hath now been many years in possession; +he is accustomed to rule, his subjects know him, he behaveth him like a +prince; and one shall come forth, who, finding an old title in some +histories or in some blind evidence, will turn clean upside down the quiet +state and good order of that commonweal. What availeth it with so great +troubling to change any title, which in short space by one chance or other +must go to another man? Specially since we might see, that no things in +this world continue still in one state, but at the scornful pleasure of +fortune they roll to and fro, as the waves of the sea. Finally, if +Christian men cannot despise and set at naught these so light things, yet +whereto need they by and by to run to arms? Since there be so many +bishops, men of great gravity and learning; since there be so many +venerable abbots; since there be so many noble men of great age, whom long +use and experience of things hath made right wise: why are not these +trifling and childish quarrels of princes pacified and set in order by the +wisdom and discretion of these men? But they seem to make a very honest +reason of war, which pretend as they would defend the Church: as though +the people were not the Church, or as though the Church of Christ was +begun, augmented, and stablished with wars and slaughters, and not rather +in spilling of the blood of martyrs, sufferance, and despising of this +life, or as though the whole dignity of the Church rested in the riches of +the priests. Nor to me truly it seemeth not so allowable, that we should +so oft make war upon the Turks. Doubtless it were not well with the +Christian religion, if the only safeguard thereof should depend on such +succours. Nor it is not likely, that they should be good Christians, that +by these means are brought thereto at the first. For that thing that is +got by war, is again in another time lost by war. Will ye bring the Turks +to the faith of Christ? Let us not make a show of our gay riches, nor of +our great number of soldiers, nor of our great strength. Let them see in +us none of these solemn titles, but the assured tokens of Christian men: a +pure, innocent life; a fervent desire to do well, yea, to our very +enemies; the despising of money, the neglecting of glory, a poor simple +life. Let them hear the heavenly doctrine agreeable to such a manner of +life. These are the best armours to subdue the Turks to Christ. Now +oftentimes we, being ill, fight with the evil. Yea, and I shall say +another thing (which I would to God were more boldly spoken than truly), +if we set aside the title and sign of the Cross, we fight Turks against +Turks. If our religion were first stablished by the might and strength of +men of war, if it were confirmed by dint of sword, if it were augmented by +war, then let us maintain it by the same means and ways. But if all things +in our faith were brought to pass by other means, why do we, then (as we +mistrusted the help of Christ), seek such succour as the heathen people +use? But why should we not (say they) kill them that would kill us? So +think they it a great dishonour, if other should be more mischievous than +they. Why do ye not, then, rob those that have robbed you before? Why do +ye not scold and chide at them that rail at you? Why do ye not hate them +that hate you? Trow ye it is a good Christian man's deed to slay a Turk? +For be the Turks never so wicked, yet they are men, for whose salvation +Christ suffered death. And killing Turks we offer to the devil most +pleasant sacrifice, and with that one deed we please our enemy, the devil, +twice: first because a man is slain, and again, because a Christian man +slew him. There be many, which desiring to seem good Christian men, study +to hurt and grieve the Turks all that ever they may; and where they be not +able to do anything, they curse and ban, and bid a mischief upon them. Now +by the same one point a man may perceive, that they be far from good +Christian men. Succour the Turks, and where they be wicked, make them good +if ye can; if ye cannot, wish and desire of God they may have grace to +turn to goodness. And he that thus doeth, I will say doeth like a +Christian man. But of all these things I shall entreat more largely, when +I set forth my book entitled Antipolemus, which whilom when I was at Rome +I wrote to Julius, bishop of Rome, the second of that name, at the same +time, when he was counselled to make war on the Venetians. + +But there is one thing which is more to be lamented then reasoned: That if +a man would diligently discuss the matter, he shall find that all the wars +among us Christian men do spring either of foolishness, or else of malice. +Some young men without experience, inflamed with the evil examples of +their forefathers, that they find by reading of histories, written of some +foolish authors (and besides this being moved with the exhortations of +flatterers, with the instigation of lawyers, and assenting thereto of the +divines, the bishops winking thereat, or peradventure enticing thereunto), +have rather of foolhardiness than of malice, gone in hand with war; and +with the great hurt and damage of all this world they learn, that war is a +thing that should be by all means and ways fled and eschewed. Some other +are moved by privy hatred, ambition causeth some, and some are stirred by +fierceness of mind to make war. For truly there is almost now no other +thing in our cities and commonweals than is contained in Homer's work +Iliad, The wrath of indiscreet princes and people. + +There be those who for no other cause stir up war but to the intent they +may by that means the more easily exercise tyranny on their subjects. For +in the time of peace, the authority of the council, the dignity of the +rulers, the vigour and strength of the laws, do somewhat hinder, that a +prince cannot do all that him listeth; but as soon as war is once begun, +now all the handling of matters resteth in the pleasure of a few persons. +They that the prince favoureth are lifted up aloft, and they that be in +his displeasure, go down. They exact as much money as pleaseth them. What +need many words? Then they think themselves, that they be the greatest +princes of the world. In the meantime the captains sport and play +together, till they have gnawed the poor people to the hard bones. And +think ye that it will grieve them, that be of this mind, to enter lightly +into war, when any cause is offered? Besides all this, it is worth while +to see by what means we colour our fault. I pretend the defence of our +religion, but my mind is to get the great riches that the Turk hath. Under +colour to defend the Church's right, I purpose to revenge the hatred that +I have in my stomach. I incline to ambition, I follow my wrath; my cruel, +fierce and unbridled mind compelleth me; and yet will I find a cavillation +and say, the league is not kept, or friendship is broken, or something +(I wot not what myself) concerning the laws of matrimony is omitted. And +it is a wonder to speak, how they never obtain the very thing that they so +greatly desire. And while they foolishly labour to eschew this mischief or +that, they fall into another much worse, or else deeper into the same. And +surely if desire of glory causeth them thus to do, it is a thing much more +magnificent and glorious to save than to destroy; much more gay and goodly +to build a city than to overthrow and destroy a city. + +Furthermore admit that the victory in battle is got most prosperously, yet +how small a portion of the glory shall go unto the prince: the commons +will claim a great part of it, by the help of whose money the deed was +done; foreign soldiers, that are hired for money, will challenge much more +than the commons; the captains look to have very much of that glory; and +fortune has the most of all, which striking a great stroke in every +matter, in war may do most of all. If it come of a noble courage or stout +stomach, that you be moved to make war: see, I pray you, how far wide ye +be from your purpose. For while ye will not be seen to bow to one man, as +to a prince your neighbour, peradventure of your alliance, who may by +fortune have done you good: how much more abjectly must ye bow yourself, +what time ye seek aid and help of barbarous people; yea, and, what is more +unworthy, of such men as are defiled with all mischievous deeds, if we +must needs call such kind of monsters men? Meanwhile ye go about to allure +unto you with fair words and promises, ravishers of virgins and of +religious women, men-killers, stout robbers and rovers (for these be thy +special men of war). And while you labour to be somewhat cruel and +superior over your equal, you are constrained to submit yourselves to the +very dregs of all men living. And while ye go about to drive your +neighbour out of his land, ye must needs first bring into your own land +the most pestilent puddle of unthrifts that can be. You mistrust a prince +of your own alliance, and will you commit yourself wholly to an armed +multitude? How much surer were it to commit yourself to concord! + +If ye will make war because of lucre, take your counters and cast. And I +will say, it is better to have war than peace, if ye find not, that not +only less, but also uncertain winning is got with inestimable costs. + +Ye say ye make war for the safeguard of the commonweal, yea, but noway +sooner nor more unthriftily may the commonweal perish than by war. For +before ye enter into the field, ye have already hurt more your country +than ye can do good getting the victory. Ye waste the citizens' goods, ye +fill the houses with lamentation, ye fill all the country with thieves, +robbers, and ravishers. For these are the relics of war. And whereas +before ye might have enjoyed all France, ye shut yourselves from many +regions thereof. If ye love your own subjects truly, why revolve you not +in mind these words: Why shall I put so many, in their lusty, flourishing +youth, in all mischiefs and perils? Why shall I depart so many honest +wives and their husbands, and make so many fatherless children? Why shall +I claim a title I know not, and a doubtful right, with spilling of my +subjects' blood? We have seen in our time, that in war made under colour +of defence of the Church, the priests have been so often pillaged with +contributions, that no enemy might do more. So that while we go about +foolishly to escape falling in the ditch, while we cannot suffer a light +injury, we afflict ourselves with most grievous despites. While we be +ashamed of gentleness to bow to a prince, we be fain to please people most +base. While we indiscreetly covet liberty, we entangle ourselves in most +grievous bondage. While we hunt after a little lucre, we grieve ourselves +and ours with inestimable harness. It had been a point of a prudent +Christian man (if he be a true Christian man) by all manner of means to +have fled, to have shunned, and by prayer to have withstood so fiendish a +thing, and so far both from the life and doctrine of Christ. But if it can +by no means be eschewed, by reason of the ungraciousness of many men, when +ye have essayed every way, and that ye have for peace sake left no stone +unturned, then the next way is, that ye do your diligence that so ill a +thing may be gested and done by them that be evil, and that it be achieved +with as little effusion of man's blood as can be. + +Now if we endeavour to be the selfsame thing that we hear ourselves +called,--that is, good Christian men,--we shall little esteem any worldly +thing, nor yet ambitiously covet anything of this world. For if we set all +our mind, that we may lightly and purely part hence; if we incline wholly +to heavenly things; if we pitch all our felicity in Christ alone; if we +believe all that is truly good, truly gay and glorious, truly joyful, to +remain in Christ alone; if we thoroughly think that a godly man can of no +man be hurt; if we ponder how vain and vanishing are the scornful things +of this world; if we inwardly behold how hard a thing it is for a man to +be in a manner transformed into a god, and so here, with continual and +indefatigable meditation, to be purged from all infections of this world, +that within a while the husk of this body being cast off, it may pass +hence to the company of angels; finally, if we surely have these three +things, without which none is worthy of the name of a Christian +man,--Innocency, that we may be pure from all vices; Charity, that we may +do good, as near as we can, to every man; Patience, that we may suffer +them that do us ill, and, if we can, with good deeds overcome wrongs to us +done: I pray you, what war can there be among us for trifles? If it be +but a tale that is told of Christ, why do we not openly put him out of our +company? Why should we glory in his title? But if he be, as he is in very +deed, the true way, the very truth, and the very life, why doth all the +manner of our living differ so far asunder from the true example of him? +If we acknowledge and take Christ for our author, which is very Charity, +and neither taught nor gave other thing but charity and peace, then go to, +let us not in titles and signs, but in our deeds and living, plainly +express him. Let us have in our hearts a fervent desire of peace, that +Christ may again know us for his. To this intent the princes, the +prelates, and the cities and commonalties should apply their counsels. +There hath been hitherto enough spilt of Christian man's blood. We have +showed pleasure enough to the enemies of the Christian religion. And if +the common people, as they are wont, make any disturbance, let the princes +bridle and quail them, which princes ought to be the selfsame thing in the +commonweal that the eye is in the body, and the reason in the soul. Again, +if the princes make any trouble, it is the part of good prelates by their +wisdom and gravity to pacify and assuage such commotion. Or else, at the +least, we being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a +little move us. The bishop exhorteth us (if ever any bishop did Leo the +Tenth doth, which occupieth the room of our peaceable Solomon, for all his +desire, all his intent and labour, is for this intent) that they whom +one common faith hath coupled together, should be joined in one common +concord. He laboureth that the Church of Christ should flourish, not in +riches or lordships, but in her own proper virtues. Surely this is a right +goodly act, and well beseeming a man descended of such a noble lineage as +the Medici: by whose civil prudence the noble city of Florence most +freshly flourished in long-continued peace; whose house of Medici hath +been a help unto all good letters. Leo himself, having alway a sober and a +gentle wit, giving himself from his tender youth to good letters of +humanity, was ever brought up, as it were, in the lap of the Muses, among +men most highly learned. He so faultless led his life, that even in the +city of Rome, where is most liberty of vice, was of him no evil rumour, +and so governing himself came to the dignity to be bishop there, which +dignity he never coveted, but was chosen thereto when he least thought +thereon, by the provision of God to help to redress things in great decay +by long wars. Let Julius the bishop have his glory of war, victories, and +of his great triumphs, the which how evil they beseem a Christian bishop, +it is not for such a one as I am to declare. I will this say, his glory, +whatsoever it be, was mixed with the great destruction and grievous sorrow +of many a creature. But by peace restored now to the world, Leo shall get +more true glory than Julius won by so many wars that he either boldly +begun, or prosperously fought and achieved. + +But they that had liefer hear of proverbs, than either of peace or of war, +will think that I have tarried longer about this digression than is meet +for the declaration of a proverb. + + +FINIS + + + OF THIS VOLUME + WHICH IS EDITED BY JOHN W. MACKAIL + WITH TYPES & DECORATIONS + BY HERBERT P. HORNE + CCCIII COPIES WERE + PRINTED + + [Illustration: OPTIMUM + VIX SATIS] + + BY D. B. UPDIKE + AT THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS + BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS + IN THE MONTH OF + AUGUST + MCM + VII + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Against War, by Erasmus + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 39487.txt or 39487.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/4/8/39487/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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