Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

A paid speech of welcome to a returning prince, in which the praise keeps turning into advice about peace.

Latin, the original language

Original title: Panegyricus ad Philippum Austriae ducem
First published: 1504(aged 38)
Original language: Latin

Overview

Some courtiers will always tell a ruler that his pleasure is the law and that whatever his subjects own belongs to him. Erasmus told Philip the Handsome to stop his ears against them, as Ulysses stopped his against the Sirens. He said it in a speech of welcome at the ducal palace in Brussels on 6 January 1504, when the young archduke, ruler of the Low Countries and son of the Emperor Maximilian, came home from a long journey to Spain. The States of Brabant had engaged Erasmus for one of the few public speeches of his life. The genre demanded praise, and the speech supplies it at length, though Erasmus's letters from the months of writing complain that it occupied him day and night and that nothing is harder than writing against one's inclination. When it was printed at Antwerp later that year, Erasmus dedicated it to Nicolas Ruistre, bishop of Arras and a patron of scholars, and in the dedication presented it as exhortation as much as tribute: a portrait of the prince he hoped Philip would become. Its longest piece of advice concerns war. Courage in battle, Erasmus argues, can be found in very poor specimens of men; the rarer courage is the ruler's who governs his own appetites, and a prince who keeps his country at peace with its neighbours has done more than one who wins victories. It was his first full statement of an argument he went on making for the rest of his life. Philip went back to Spain in 1506 to take up the crown of Castile, and died there that September. In 1516 Erasmus wrote The Education of a Christian Prince for Philip's son Charles, the future emperor.

Key concepts

What is a panegyric, and why did Erasmus think one could teach?

A panegyric is a formal speech in praise of a ruler. Erasmus held that praise could work as instruction: by describing the prince as good, wise and peaceful, the speaker sets before him a portrait to live up to. The danger, which he admits in the speech itself, is that posterity may take the whole thing for flattery.

Why does the Panegyric rank peace above victory?

Because the fame of war is greater but the fruit of peace is better. Erasmus grants that people admire military glory, though not the wisest people. Peaceful government, ruled by moderation, justice and kindness, earns the approval of the best judges and actually improves the lives of the governed, while war, he says, should be taken up only when peace cannot otherwise be kept.

What does Agesilaus's answer about courage and justice mean in the Panegyric?

Asked which virtue mattered more, the Spartan king Agesilaus replied that courage would not even be needed if we held fast to justice. Erasmus quotes it to put justice first among a ruler's virtues: a just prince removes most of the occasions for fighting, so the warlike courage people expect of rulers becomes something to need rarely rather than to admire.

What is clemency in Erasmus's praise of Philip?

Clemency is the ruler's mildness: restraint in punishing and kindness in governing. Erasmus praises Philip for a temperament that seems born equally for peace or war, yet made for clemency and only trained for courage. Joined with justice and generosity, mildness is what his subjects have already experienced, and it is the virtue on which the speech wants Philip to stake his reputation.

Themes of the book

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

Praise That Gives Advice

Can a speech that must praise a prince also tell him what he ought to be? Erasmus tries, by praising Philip for virtues he hoped the young ruler would acquire.

Welcoming Philip home from Spain, Erasmus praises his journey, his family and his mildness, and keeps steering toward peace. Warlike glory, he argues, wins more fame but peaceful government is better, and courage in battle is shared with gladiators and pirates, while ruling one's own anger and appetites belongs only to a good and wise man. A prince who longs for war to show his valour is like a doctor who prays for plague to make his name. Behind the compliments stands a warning against courtiers who tell a ruler he is above the law.

political leadership
peace
virtue
flattery
clemency
political ethics
courage
war
rulership

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 164
distinct concepts: 243
by passages held, corpus-wide: #390

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: “peace” and “political leadership”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
peace	political leadership	10
peace	war	10
political leadership	virtue	10
fortune	virtue	7
peace	virtue	5
divine providence	fortune	4
divine providence	virtue	4
political leadership	war	4
clemency	political ethics	3
clemency	political leadership	3
fortune	political leadership	3
peace	political ethics	3
clemency	peace	2
divine providence	political leadership	2
fortune	peace	2
political ethics	war	2
clemency	virtue	1
political ethics	virtue	1
virtue	war	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) you are here 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)
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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