On the Method of Study

A short letter on how to teach a boy Latin and Greek: few rules, the best authors, and from the very start.

Latin, the original language

Original title: De ratione studii
First published: 1511(aged 45)
Original language: Latin

Overview

Schoolmasters of the common sort, Erasmus complains, keep boys for years drilling the rules of grammar. He wanted the rules cut to the few that are really needed and the time spent reading the best authors instead. The occasion was a new school. In 1511 Erasmus was corresponding with John Colet, dean of St Paul's in London, who had founded St Paul's School two years earlier, and the exchange gave him the chance to set down a whole course of study in the form of a letter to a friend named Peter. Knowledge, it begins, is of two kinds, of things and of words; words come first in time, things first in importance, and a pupil who rushes to things without mastering words loses more time than he saves. Greek and Latin should be learned together, from the start. Erasmus even ranks the authors: Lucian, Demosthenes and Herodotus among Greek prose writers, Aristophanes, Homer and Euripides among the poets, and for Latin, Terence first, then Virgil, Horace, Cicero and Caesar. The letter then turns to the teacher, who should explain each text for its argument, its style and its moral, and set exercises such as a speech in praise of Socrates or against Julius Caesar. A shortened version was printed in Paris that October; he revised the text for a Strasbourg edition of 1514, and Froben later printed it in one volume with De copia, his manual of Latin style.

Key concepts

What are knowledge of things and knowledge of words?

They are Erasmus's two kinds of learning. Knowledge of words is command of language: vocabulary, grammar, style. Knowledge of things is what language is about: history, nature, morals, theology. Words come first in time, things first in importance. A student who hurries to things while neglecting language misreads his sources, so the shortcut ends in the longest detour.

Why does Erasmus send students to the Greek authors?

Because nearly all knowledge of things, in his view, must be sought from Greek writers, the sources from which Latin learning itself drew. Reading them directly is purer, quicker and more pleasant than drinking from later channels. That is also why he wants Greek and Latin learned together from the beginning rather than Greek added late, if at all.

How many grammar rules does Erasmus think a beginner needs?

As few as possible, provided they are the best. Erasmus grants that rules are necessary, but he has no patience with the common run of schoolmasters who keep boys for years drilling them. Once the essentials are learned, the pupil should move to speaking and to reading the best authors, where correct usage is absorbed far faster than from a rulebook.

What are commonplaces in On the Method of Study?

Commonplaces (loci) are headings under which a student files what he reads, such as virtues and vices or topics of argument, so that examples, sayings and arguments are ready when he writes. Erasmus counts them among the rhetorical tools a pupil should have at hand, along with the figures of style and forms of transition, because they help him both to judge a text and to imitate it.

Themes of the book

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

Words First, Things Above All

Where should a boy's education begin, and how fast can it go? Erasmus answers with a complete course in a few pages: language first, the best authors early, and a teacher who reads with his pupils.

All knowledge, the letter begins, is of things or of words; words come first in time, things first in worth, and whoever rushes to things without words loses more than he saves. So grammar rules should be few and good, and the time saved spent on reading, with Greek and Latin side by side, because nearly all knowledge of things must be drawn from the Greek springs themselves. Erasmus ranks the authors, then turns to the teacher, who explains each text for its argument, style and moral and sets exercises in argument.

education
pedagogy
rhetoric
curriculum
language learning
reading
composition
grammar
literary interpretation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 37
distinct concepts: 81
by passages held, corpus-wide: #691

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: “composition” and “pedagogy”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 14 pairings. 23 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
composition	pedagogy	5
composition	rhetoric	5
pedagogy	rhetoric	5
language learning	pedagogy	4
literary genre	literary pedagogy	3
education	language learning	2
friendship	literary pedagogy	2
literary genre	rhetoric	2
literary pedagogy	rhetoric	2
composition	language learning	1
education	literary pedagogy	1
education	pedagogy	1
education	rhetoric	1
friendship	literary genre	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) you are here 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)
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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