In Praise of Marriage

A letter urging one young man to marry, which Louvain's theologians read as an attack on the celibate life.

Latin, the original language

Original title: De laude matrimonii
First published: 1518(aged 52)
Original language: Latin

Overview

A young nobleman's mother has died, his grieving sister has entered a convent, and he alone can carry on his family; his friends have found him a well-born bride with a large dowry, and he hesitates. The letter that follows tells him to marry. Erasmus wrote it many years before it was printed, for his pupil Lord Mountjoy, as a model of the persuasive letter, and its arguments go well beyond what an exercise required. Marriage, it says, was the first of all institutions, founded by God in paradise, while everything else was added later as a remedy for fallen nature. Christ honoured it by working his first miracle at a wedding feast. Scripture commends the marriage bed and never so much as mentions celibacy. And a man owes his descendants the life he received from his ancestors, and a man who refuses to have children out of zeal for holiness treats as profane what God himself made holy. Erasmus printed it at Louvain in 1518, in a collection of his declamations. The next year Jan Briart, dean of the theology faculty there, denounced it at a doctoral ceremony as heretical, on the ground that praising marriage in this way undermined the Church's teaching that celibacy is the higher state. Erasmus answered with a defence of the declamation, and when Josse Clichtove, a Paris theologian, attacked it again some years later, he answered him too. Between 1518 and 1532 it went through many editions and translations and became one of the most discussed things he wrote.

Key concepts

Why is In Praise of Marriage written as a persuasive letter?

Because it began as a model of persuasion: Erasmus wrote it for his pupil Lord Mountjoy to show how a letter urges someone toward a choice. It therefore argues one side as forcefully as it can, addressing a particular young man and answering his hesitations. When theologians attacked it, Erasmus could reply that a rhetorical exercise is not a doctrinal ruling.

Why does the letter rank marriage above celibacy?

Because marriage is older and has God as its author. It was instituted in paradise before the fall, while other arrangements came later as remedies; Christ chose a wedding for his first miracle; and Scripture calls marriage honourable and the marriage bed undefiled while never even naming celibacy. On these grounds the letter treats marriage as the most sacred bond there is.

In what sense is marriage natural, according to this letter?

Every living kind is driven to save itself from extinction by producing offspring, and that cannot happen without some union of male and female. Erasmus finds the pattern everywhere, citing Pliny on trees in which a male tree leans its branches over the females. Dumb animals obey this law of nature, he says, while people who refuse it rebel like the giants of myth.

What does the letter mean by a debt to one's ancestors?

A man exists only because his ancestors passed life on to him, so he owes the same gift to those who come after. For the young man addressed, whose mother has died and whose sister has entered a convent, the debt is concrete: the hope of his whole family line rests on him. Refusing it out of zeal for holiness, Erasmus argues, is ingratitude disguised as piety.

Themes of the book

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

Older and Holier Than Celibacy

Should a young man who alone can carry on his family choose a wife or the cloister? The letter argues for marriage so strongly that theologians heard in it an attack on celibacy itself.

Marriage was founded not by Lycurgus, Moses or Solon but by God himself in paradise, and Christ honoured it at a wedding feast. Nature agrees: every living kind, even trees, shows something like marriage, and through children a mortal makes himself almost immortal. Scripture praises an honourable marriage and an undefiled bed and never so much as names celibacy. A man who received life from his ancestors owes it to his descendants, so refusing marriage for holiness' sake treats as profane what God made holy.

marriage
procreation
celibacy
nature
family
natural law
mortality
scripture

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 35
distinct concepts: 67
by passages held, corpus-wide: #705

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: “marriage” and “procreation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 7 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 34 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
marriage	procreation	10
celibacy	marriage	8
celibacy	procreation	7
family	marriage	5
celibacy	nature	4
family	procreation	4
marriage	religion	4
mortality	procreation	4
nature	procreation	4
celibacy	religion	3
marriage	mortality	3
procreation	religion	3
celibacy	family	2
marriage	nature	2
mortality	nature	2
celibacy	mortality	1
family	mortality	1
family	religion	1
nature	religion	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)
The book that carried Erasmus's views on fasting, pilgrimage and monks to far more readers than his devotional treatises ever reached.
LAEN
1518 In Praise of Marriage (De laude matrimonii) you are here 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

— or open another of their works