The Antibarbarians

The surviving first book of a youthful defence of classical learning, left behind in Italy, lost, and printed thirty years late.

by Desiderius Erasmus195 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: Antibarbari
First published: 1520(aged 54)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

Erasmus planned the work in four books. The first would answer the pious enemies of classical learning. In the second a speaker would attack eloquence with all the weapons of eloquence, so effectively that John Colet, the dean of St Paul's in London, told Erasmus it had persuaded him to give rhetoric up. The third would answer the second, and the fourth would defend poetry. He began it as a young canon in the monastery at Steyn, near Gouda, recast it as a dialogue at Halsteren near Bergen op Zoom, where his employer, the bishop of Cambrai, had a country house. He showed it to Robert Gaguin, the senior humanist in Paris, who praised it without helping it into print. Leaving Italy in 1509, Erasmus deposited his revised drafts with his English friend Richard Pace, and through the carelessness of others they were lost. Only the first book came back to him, years later. He revised it again, and Froben printed it in Basel in May 1520 with a preface that tells the whole story, addressed to Johannes Sapidus, the schoolmaster at Sélestat. The other books never appeared. The surviving dialogue is set at a country house in Brabant where the young Erasmus has taken refuge from the plague, and where friends join him, among them Jacob Batt, secretary to the town of Bergen. Batt carries the argument. Those who call pagan literature a danger to faith, he says, are defending their own ignorance; everything the ancients did and said well was prepared by Christ for Christians to use.

Key concepts

Who are the “barbarians” in The Antibarbarians?

Not foreign invaders but educated Europeans who despise good letters: those who prefer crude Latin and school jargon to the classical authors and attack eloquence and poetry as dangers to faith. Erasmus calls them barbarians because they wreck the culture they inherited. In the dialogue his friends picture the champion of learning riding in triumph with the barbarian chiefs led in chains before his chariot.

What are “good letters” in Erasmus's defence of learning?

Good letters (bonae litterae) are the studies the humanists revived: the Latin and Greek classics, poetry, history, rhetoric and the elegant use of language. Erasmus argues that they are not ornaments but the tools for understanding anything written, the Bible and the Church Fathers included, so attacking them in religion's name harms religion itself.

Why does Batt say ignorance hides behind religion?

Because a show of piety is the easiest cover for not wanting to study. Some neglect learning out of honest simplicity, Batt grants, but others flee the labour and dress their idleness in the respectable name of religion, since no shade hides sloth better. Such men win authority with the simple by their solemn manner, and then call their ignorance holiness.

What role does Saint Jerome play in The Antibarbarians?

Jerome is the proof that a saint can be a scholar. The speakers recall that he mastered the writings of Cicero and Plato so thoroughly that he used them everywhere in his own work, without any harm to his faith. If the translator of the Bible drew on pagan learning, Batt argues, those who reject it in his name have misunderstood the Fathers they claim to defend.

Themes of the book

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

Learning and Its Pious Enemies

Is pagan literature a danger to Christian faith? Friends gathered at a country house away from the plague take up the question, and Jacob Batt turns it into a charge against those who ask it.

The enemies of good letters, Batt argues, are not unbelievers but men inside the Church: monks and schoolmasters who mask their laziness with the honest name of religion, since no shade covers sloth better. Compare the modesty and learning of the ancients with the arrogance and ignorance of the present, he says, and you would flee to the ends of the earth. Jerome kept his Cicero and Plato and used them everywhere; whatever the ancients did and said well was prepared by Christ for Christians to use.

education
classical learning
ignorance
anti-intellectualism
religion
hypocrisy
intellectual humility
humanism
christianity

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 195
distinct concepts: 250
by passages held, corpus-wide: #359

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: “education” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
education	virtue	25
classical learning	education	23
education	religion	21
education	rhetoric	18
education	ignorance	17
christianity	education	10
religion	virtue	9
education	intellectual humility	8
classical learning	religion	6
christianity	classical learning	5
ignorance	intellectual humility	5
classical learning	ignorance	4
classical learning	rhetoric	4
religion	rhetoric	4
classical learning	virtue	3
ignorance	rhetoric	3
ignorance	virtue	3
intellectual humility	virtue	3
christianity	ignorance	1
christianity	religion	1
christianity	virtue	1
ignorance	religion	1
intellectual humility	rhetoric	1
rhetoric	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) you are here 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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