On Disdaining the World

Praise of the monastic life that Erasmus wrote at twenty for someone else, and printed only long after he had left the monastery.

by Desiderius Erasmus90 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: De contemptu mundi
First published: 1521(aged 55)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

When the book finally appeared at Louvain in 1521, Erasmus put a preface in front of it disowning most of it. Friends, he complained, kept printing the pieces he had written as a boy to practise his style. This one he had written when he was barely twenty, at the insistence of a man named Theodoric, who wanted a letter persuading his nephew Jodocus to join him in the monastic life. Copies had since circulated under Erasmus's own name, although he had no nephew called Jodocus. He had written it to suit another man's taste, he said, and he let it be printed with a few words changed only because his friends threatened to publish it anyway. The letter, in Theodoric's voice, belongs to an old genre of Christian writing on contempt for the world. Life in the world is a sea full of hidden rocks; riches, pleasures and honours are bitter and fleeting; death takes the young along with the old. The cloister, by contrast, offers liberty, tranquillity and pleasure, and liberty above all, because every tie of ordinary life restrains a man, while a monk's rule binds only his body and leaves his soul free. Then, in its last chapter, the letter changes tone. Theodoric warns his nephew not to rush in, since many who throw themselves into the monastery as into a well with no way back come to regret it, and he recalls that monasteries were once simple retreats of good men. Scholars have asked whether Erasmus wrote that chapter at twenty or added it before printing. By then he had long since left the monastery at Steyn, and in 1517 he had obtained a definitive papal dispensation from his monastic vows.

Key concepts

What is “contempt of the world” in this book?

It is an old Christian theme: learning to despise the goods the world prizes, wealth, pleasure and honour, because they are bitter, fleeting and bind the soul. Contempt here does not mean hatred of people or of creation but refusing to let passing things rule one's life. The letter uses the theme to argue that the monastery is the surest place to live that refusal.

What kind of freedom does the monastery promise in On Disdaining the World?

Freedom of the soul. Every tie of ordinary life, the letter argues, restrains a man and makes him serve something outside himself. A monk's rule binds only his body, its hours, food and dress, and so leaves his mind free for God. The claim reverses the usual view that the cloister is a prison and the world is liberty.

What are true and false riches in the letter?

False riches are what the world calls wealth, money, possessions, rank, which cannot be kept and do not satisfy. True riches are goods of the soul and eternal life. The letter puts the choice in a string of short questions: do you want to live for ever? then live well. Do you love true riches? then throw away the false ones.

How does the letter use death to argue for the cloister?

It makes death concrete. The letter describes a dying body, warmth and life fleeing, a dark pallor on the lips, the eyes clouding, numbness spreading, and then the soul dragged alone before a stern court. Since death comes to the young as well as the old, the argument runs, it is folly to spend one's life on what death takes away.

Themes of the book

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

The Cloister as a Harbour

Is the monastery an escape from life or the only place where life is free? A letter written in an uncle's voice urges his nephew into the cloister, then warns him not to jump.

The world is a sea full of hidden rocks, and the uncle frets like a mother whose only son is sailing waters notorious for wrecks. Riches, pleasures and honours are false goods; death strikes the young as well as the old, and the letter makes the reader watch a body go cold. The cloister offers tranquillity and above all freedom, since a monk's rule binds the body and leaves the soul at liberty. Yet the last chapter cautions that many who hurl themselves in, as into a well with no way out, come to regret it.

religious life
monasticism
freedom
worldly life
death
tranquility
worldly goods
temptation
mortality

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Within this work

passages held: 90
distinct concepts: 184
by passages held, corpus-wide: #523

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: “death” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 11 pairings. 70 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
death	virtue	4
monasticism	virtue	3
religious life	solitude	3
asceticism	religious life	2
conscience	virtue	2
monasticism	religious vocation	2
religious vocation	virtue	2
asceticism	conscience	1
religious life	religious vocation	1
religious vocation	solitude	1
solitude	virtue	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)
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) you are here 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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