Familiar Colloquies

Latin conversation drills that turned into comic scenes of inns, shipwrecks and pilgrimages, and were censured by the Paris theologians.

by Desiderius Erasmus2,173 passages held

Latin, the original language
English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Colloquia familiaria
First published: 1518(aged 52)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

In November 1518 Johann Froben of Basel printed a booklet of about eighty pages of model conversations for people who wanted to learn to speak Latin quickly. Erasmus had written them in the 1490s for his pupils in Paris; one of those pupils kept a copy, and the edition, prepared by the scholar Beatus Rhenanus, came out without Erasmus's knowledge. It sold so well that he took the book over, wrote a preface for a reprint in 1519, and went on adding to it until 1533, when it held some fifty dialogues. The phrasebook became a comedy of contemporary life. Travellers compare the inns of France and Germany, and a butcher and a fishmonger argue about the Church's rules on fasting. Passengers on a sinking ship shout prayers to every saint they can name, while one man quietly prays to God. In a dialogue added in 1523 a Catholic is surprised to learn that a Lutheran accepts every article of the Creed, and in another the Virgin Mary writes a letter thanking a reformer for sparing her the foolish requests of the faithful. The last colloquy, from 1533, argues that no one better deserves the name of Epicurean than Christ. In May 1526 the theology faculty in Paris censured the book as unfit for the young, because it mocked fasting, the veneration of the Virgin and the saints, and the life of monks. Erasmus answered that year with an essay on the usefulness of the colloquies, printed with them afterwards. Nathan Bailey's English translation appeared in 1725. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga judged that the colloquies stirred up more hatred than In Praise of Folly, because in them Erasmus attacked real people.

Key concepts

What exactly is a colloquy in Erasmus's Familiar Colloquies?

A colloquy is a short conversation between two or more speakers, written in everyday Latin so that pupils could learn to talk the language rather than only read it. The earliest ones are greetings and phrases; the later ones are complete comic scenes with characters, a setting and an argument. The form lets Erasmus put opinions in other mouths, so a colloquy can raise a question without a lecture.

Why did Erasmus think his Colloquies were useful for children?

Because, he argued, nothing is learned better than what is learned at play. Doctors let patients have some things they crave so that they will take the wholesome ones, and ancient teachers coaxed children with wafers. In the same way his dialogues lure the young toward elegant Latin and toward piety with scenes they enjoy, a harmless trick, he says, that cheats a person into his own profit.

What does superstition mean in the Familiar Colloquies?

Superstition is religion that trusts in outward deals and objects instead of God and a changed heart: vows to saints made in panic, relics such as the Virgin's milk, rules about food treated as more sacred than charity. The colloquies show it rather than define it. In 'The Shipwreck' a passenger promises Saint Christopher a candle as tall as himself and whispers that he would not pay for a tallow one.

Why does “The Epicurean” call a clear conscience the greatest pleasure?

Because, its speaker Hedonius argues, nothing is more wretched than a guilty conscience, so nothing is happier than a clear one. If Epicurus was right that the good life is the pleasant life, then those who live with a good conscience are the real Epicureans. The pleasures the world chases are short and bitter; the devout, who seem to mourn, in fact live delightfully.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Faith Without the Trappings

What is left of religion once the bargains with saints, the fasting rules and the relics are laughed away? The colloquies keep asking, scene after scene, and expect an answer from the reader.

On a sinking ship the passengers bargain with every saint they can name while one man prays to God and grabs the stump of the mast. A butcher and a fishmonger dispute the Church's rules on meat. A Catholic examines a suspected Lutheran and finds he accepts the whole Creed. Two friends die, one buried in friars and ceremony, one in quiet trust. Erasmus does not mock faith; he mocks what has grown over it, and his comedy keeps returning to the conscience as the place where religion lives.

religious satire
superstition
religious hypocrisy
prayer
religious practice
religious law
piety
conscience

Enter a dialogue

The Comedy of Daily Life

Why should a Latin phrasebook be about inns, quarrelling spouses and learned women? Because, Erasmus answered his critics, children learn best what they learn at play, and life itself is the best syllabus.

Travellers compare French and German inns; a wife who wishes she had married a mushroom gets advice from a friend whose marriage works; an abbot is shocked to find books in a lady's room, and the lady, Magdalia, out-argues him. In 'The Epicurean' a speaker argues that nothing is happier than a clear conscience, so the devout are the true pleasure-seekers. Erasmus defended the mixture plainly: teachers once lured children with wafers, and he lured them to good Latin and piety with scenes they enjoyed.

marriage
hospitality
education
friendship
humor
pleasure
moderation
rhetoric

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 2,173
distinct concepts: 1,598
by passages held, corpus-wide: #24

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “deception” and “satire”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 86 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
deception	satire	25
education	satire	19
marriage	virtue	17
friendship	hospitality	16
marriage	satire	16
religion	satire	14
education	virtue	13
hospitality	satire	12
religion	virtue	10
deception	marriage	8
education	marriage	8
satire	virtue	8
deception	religion	7
friendship	virtue	6
education	religion	5
marriage	religion	5
deception	hospitality	4
education	friendship	4
friendship	marriage	3
deception	education	2
hospitality	religion	2
deception	friendship	1
deception	virtue	1
hospitality	marriage	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1500 Adages (Adagia)
The work that first made Erasmus famous and the one he revised for longest, from 1500 until the year he died; Erasmus Against War began as one of its entries.
LA
1503 The Manual of the Christian Knight (Enchiridion militis Christiani)
The earnest twin of In Praise of Folly: when critics attacked the satire, Erasmus answered that it treats the same subject as this manual, only in a playful spirit.
EN
1504 Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria (Panegyricus ad Philippum Austriae ducem)
Erasmus's advice to a ruler, delivered as a speech of welcome; The Complaint of Peace and the essay on war later make its case for peace without the obligatory flattery.
LA
1511 In Praise of Folly (Moriae encomium)
A mock oration in Folly's own voice and Erasmus's most famous book; The Tongue of 1525 has been read as an attempt at a companion piece.
LAEN
1511 On the Method of Study (De ratione studii)
Part of the same English years' work as De copia, with which it was later printed; Erasmus's later The Education of Children moves the same programme back to infancy.
LA
1515 Erasmus Against War (Dulce bellum inexpertis)
The fullest essay on war in the Adages and the core of Erasmus's writings for peace; The Complaint of Peace restates its case two years later in Peace's own voice.
EN
1516 The Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis christiani)
Erasmus's one full treatise on government, in the old genre of advice books for rulers; The Complaint of Peace followed a year later.
LA
1517 The Complaint of Peace (Querela pacis)
A declamation in the voice of Peace, the device of In Praise of Folly turned to a serious purpose, and the most direct of Erasmus's several writings against war.
LAEN
1518 Familiar Colloquies (Colloquia familiaria) you are here LAEN
1518 In Praise of Marriage (De laude matrimonii)
A schoolroom piece that turned into a controversy: the first of three works on marriage, followed by The Institution of Christian Matrimony in 1526 and On the Christian Widow in 1529.
LA
1520 The Antibarbarians (Antibarbari)
The first statement of the cause Erasmus served all his life, classical learning as the ally of Christian faith, written before any of the books that made his name.
LA
1521 On Disdaining the World (De contemptu mundi)
The counterweight to everything Erasmus later wrote about monks, from The Manual of the Christian Knight to the Familiar Colloquies, and probably the earliest of his surviving prose works.
LA
1524 On Praying to God (Modus orandi Deum)
Pastoral rather than polemical, though written in the same year as On Free Will, his challenge to Luther; the first of the late handbooks on Christian practice that end with An Explanation of the Apostles' Creed.
LA
1525 The Tongue (Lingua)
Erasmus's fullest treatment of a theme that runs through all his writing, speech as the mirror of the soul, written in Basel in the middle of the polemics of the 1520s.
LA
1526 The Institution of Christian Matrimony (Christiani matrimonii institutio)
Commissioned through the English court and dedicated to its queen, it is Erasmus's main statement on the law and practice of marriage, where In Praise of Marriage had been a single persuasive letter.
LA
1528 The Ciceronian (Dialogus cui titulus Ciceronianus)
Satire aimed at fellow humanists rather than at theologians, unusual in Erasmus's later years; it first appeared in one volume with his dialogue on the pronunciation of Latin and Greek.
LA
1529 On the Christian Widow (Vidua christiana)
The last of Erasmus's writings on women's lives, after In Praise of Marriage and The Institution of Christian Matrimony, and like the second of those dedicated to a queen.
LA
1529 The Education of Children (De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis)
Dedicated to a prince's heir, like The Education of a Christian Prince, but concerned with every child's first years rather than with government; the most personal of Erasmus's books on schooling.
LAEN
1533 An Explanation of the Apostles' Creed (Explanatio symboli)
Erasmus's catechism, written for lay readers rather than theologians three years before his death.
LA

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