The Complaint of Peace
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~24,600 words · 117 passages
Cite this work
- APAErasmus. (n.d.). The Complaint of Peace. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/erasmus/the-complaint-of-peace
- MLAErasmus. "The Complaint of Peace." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/erasmus/the-complaint-of-peace.
- ChicagoErasmus. The Complaint of Peace. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/erasmus/the-complaint-of-peace.
What it is about
The Complaint of Peace (1517): Peace herself protests at being driven out everywhere.
Context and history
Written on the eve of the wars of religion, commissioned by a Burgundian chancellor who wanted an argument against war. Erasmus's point is that war between Christians is always a civil war — the argument that set half the continent against him. An English translation. Erasmus's Latin, which is what should be cited, is in the catalogue only in the anthology of epistles.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
translation of the Querela Pacis of Erasmus is reprinted from a rare old English version. It is probably the 1802 reprint of the translation made by T. Paynell but published anonymously. We are indebted to Mr. C. K. Ogden, editor of the Cambridge Magazine, for calling our attention to this quaint and timely publication and for furnishing the typewritten copy. (Peace speaks in her own person.) I certainly deserve no ill treatment from mortals, yet if the insults and repulses I receive were attended with any advantage to them, I would content myself with lamenting in silence my own unmerited indignities and man's injustice. But since, in driving me away from them, they remove the source of all human blessings, and let in a deluge of calamities on themselves, I am more inclined to bewail their misfortune, than complain of ill usage to myself; and I am reduced to the necessity of weeping over and commiserating those whom I wished to view rather as objects of indignation than of pity. For though rudely to reject one who loves them as I do, may appear to be savage cruelty; to feel an aversion for one who has deserved so well of them, base ingratitude; to trample on one who has nursed and fostered them with all a parent's care, an unnatural want of filial affection; yet voluntarily to renounce so many and so great advantages as I always bring in my train, to go in quest of evils infinite in number and shocking in nature, how can I account for such perverse conduct, but by attributing it to downright madness? We may be angry with the wicked, but we can only pity the insane. What can I do but weep over them? And I weep over them the more bitterly, because they weep not for themselves. No part of their misfortune is more deplorable than their insensibility to it. It is one great step to convalescence to know the extent and inveteracy of a disease.
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