The Praise of Folly

Desiderius Erasmus, born about 1469, went to school at Gouda, Utrecht and Deventer. He became the most famous humanist of the Northern Renaissance. Erasmus travelled widely, and his thought was particularly influential in England, where he became a close friend of Thomas More. He died in Basle in 1536.


Betty Radice became joint editor of the Penguin Classics in 1964, and translated from the Latin, Greek and Italian. She was an honorary fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford. She died in 1983.
A.H.T. Levi was Buchanan Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews and has published extensively on the Renaissance.

Praise of Folly Preface to the 1993 Edition
Introduction
1. The importance of the Praise of Folly
2. Erasmus, scholastics, humanists and reformers
3. The Praise of Folly, Dorp and the spirituality of Erasmus
Select Bibliography
Praise of Folly
Prefatory Letter
Moriae Encomium, that is, the Praise of Folly
Letter to Maarten Van Dorp, 1515
Index

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Erasmus ranges from light-hearted jibes to vehement denunciation of the theologians and churchmen, monastic life and the condition of the Church, and then seriously expounds the virtues of the Christian way of life. This work is one of the best satirical classics of the Renaissance.

Erasmus searched for reconciliation between Faith and Reason, refusing not only the dogmas of Faith, but the dogmas of Reason as well.
Praise of Folly, still a masterpiece of slyly subversive wit, was in a sense the first best-seller, read covertly under desks and sniggered over by countless trainee monks and priests.
I am well aware that what I have had to say on the problem of peace is not essentially new. It is my profound conviction that the solution lies in our rejecting war for an ethical reason; namely, that war makes us guilty of the crime of inhumanity. Erasmus of Rotterdam and several others after him have already proclaimed this as the truth around which we should rally.
From the terrible hate storm of his age Erasmus has salvaged this intellectual gem, his faith in humanity, and on this small burning wick Spinoza, Lessing and Voltaire - and all Europeans past and present - could light their torch.