Laudator Temporis Acti

Erasmus, Complaint of Peace VI (tr. Betty Radice, with her notes):

My hopes have been dashed so often; where then shall poor Peace go now? Well, princes are powerful rather than learned, and moved more by their desires than by true rational judgment. I shall seek refuge in the company of scholars, for good learning makes men, philosophy makes superior men, theology makes holy men. Surely I shall be allowed to settle down amongst them after all my wanderings. But woe is me! Here too there is warfare, another kind and not so bloody, but just as insane. Scholar argues with scholar, and, apparently, factual truth is altered by a change of place; some dogmas don't cross the sea or climb over the Alps or swim the Rhine, and indeed, in the same seat of learning logicians war with rhetoricians and theologians argue with lawyers. Even in the same profession, Scotist battles with Thomist, Nominalist with Realist, Platonist with Peripatetic,²⁴ so fiercely that there is no agreement amongst them even on the smallest points, and often enough they fight with the utmost fury on the subject of goat's wool.²⁵ Then the heat of the debate mounts from argument to insult, from insults to fisticuffs, and if they don't settle the matter by daggers or spears they take to stabbing with poisoned pens, tear one another with barbed wit,²⁶ and attack each other's reputation with the deadly darts of their tongues.

24 Peripatetic] Ie Aristotelian

25 goat's wool] One of Erasmus' favourite expressions for trivial subjects of debate; Horace Epistles 1.18.15; Moria 84 and n22; Adagia i iii 53. For disputes between philosophers cf Moria 125-6.

26 barbed wit] Adagia in vi 87 (Dentata charta)

Quo me posthac conferam infelix, posteaquam toties fefellit spes? At Principes fortasse magni sunt potius quam eruditi, magisque ducuntur cupiditatibus, quam recto animi iudicio. Ad eruditorum greges confugiam, Bonae litterae reddunt homines, Philosophia plusquam homines, Theologia reddit divos. Apud hos certe dabitur conquiescere, tot circumactae ambagibus. Verum, proh dolor! en hic quoque bellorum aliud genus, minus quidem cruentum, sed tamen non minus insanum. Schola cum schola dissidet, et ceu rerum veritas loco commutetur, ita quaedam scita non traiiciunt mare, quaedam non superant Alpes, quaedam non tranant Rhenum, immo in eadem Academia cum Rhetore bellum est Dialectico, cum Iureconsulto dissidet Theologus. Atque adeo in eodem professionis genere, cum Thomista pugnat Scotista, cum Reali Nominalis, cum Peripatetico Platonicus, adeo ut ne in minutissimis quidem rebus inter hos conveniat, ac saepenumero de lana caprina atrocissime digladientur, donec disputationis calor ab argumentis ad convitia, a convitiis ad pugnos incrudescat, et si res pugionibus aut lanceis non agitur, stylis veneno tinctis sese confodiunt, dentata charta dilacerant invicem, alter in alterius famam letalia linguarum vibrant spicula.

Related posts:

• Odium Scholasticum
• You Lie!