The Education of a Christian Prince

Advice for the teenage Charles V: a king exists for his people, and should want to be loved rather than feared.

Latin, the original language

Original title: Institutio principis christiani
First published: 1516(aged 50)
Original language: Latin

Overview

Charles of Habsburg, grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and heir to Spain, was sixteen when Erasmus, recently made one of his councillors, wrote him a book on how to rule. Froben printed it in Basel in 1516, the year Thomas More finished Utopia. Its central claim is that a prince exists for his people and not the reverse, and that what separates a king from a tyrant is whose good he serves: the tyrant wants to be feared, the king to be loved. Everything depends on education. The prince's tutor must begin with him in the cradle, keep flatterers away from him, and teach him that the arts of peace — good laws, honest officials, the care of towns, bridges and aqueducts — count for more than conquest. Erasmus does not stay in generalities. The best source of revenue, he writes, is thrift; where taxes cannot be avoided, they should fall on foreign luxuries that only the rich buy, such as silk, purple cloth, pepper, perfumes and gems, rather than on what the poor need to live. Marriages between royal houses do not secure peace, as courts like to think, because a private quarrel between two princes over a marriage drags whole peoples into war. The final chapter treats war as the last thing a Christian prince should undertake. Machiavelli had written The Prince three years earlier, though it was not printed until 1532; modern readers often set the two books side by side, one advising that a ruler is safer feared, the other that he must be loved. Charles was elected emperor in 1519 and spent much of his reign at war with France.

Key concepts

What makes a ruler a tyrant in Erasmus's Christian Prince?

A tyrant rules for his own good, a king for his people's. The title, the crown and even the lawfulness of the succession do not decide it. Erasmus lists the marks: the king delights in his citizens' liberty, the tyrant binds everyone to him through laws and informers, and he welcomes factions among his subjects because their harmony is what he fears most.

What does Erasmus mean by a philosopher on the throne?

Not someone trained in logic or natural science, but someone who despises the false images of good things and steadily sees and pursues the true good. With that definition Erasmus can take up Plato's saying that states will be happy only when princes philosophise, and add that being a philosopher and being a Christian come in substance to the same thing.

Why does the book insist the prince is a Christian like everyone else?

Because at baptism the prince swore the same oath as every other Christian: to renounce whatever pleases Satan and displeases Christ. His rank gives him no separate, gentler version of the faith. Erasmus uses this to hold a ruler to the Gospel's standards, so that what is forbidden to a private Christian is not permitted to a prince.

Why does a prince need a tutor from the cradle?

Because a prince cannot be chosen but can be formed, and the mind is most open before habits harden. The tutor must fill the young prince with principles worthy of a ruler, keep flatterers away from him, and use every fable as a lesson: when the story of the blinded Cyclops is told, he should add that a prince with strength but no wisdom is just like Polyphemus.

What are the arts of peace in Erasmus's advice to princes?

They are the ordinary work of good government, which Erasmus ranks above conquest: making good laws, appointing honest officials, keeping taxes low, and building or repairing towns, bridges and aqueducts. A prince who does these things, he argues, deserves more praise than any victor, because he improves his country instead of wasting it.

Themes of the book

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

King or Tyrant

What separates a ruler from a tyrant when both wear the same crown? Erasmus answers that it is whose good he serves, and that the answer is decided long before he takes the throne.

A king delights in his citizens' liberty; a tyrant wants to be feared, and nothing alarms him like good citizens agreeing with one another. Since a prince cannot be chosen, he must be made: a tutor from the cradle, flatterers kept away, the fable of the blinded Cyclops told as a warning about strength without sight. Erasmus borrows Plato's hope that philosophers should rule, but his philosopher is no logician, only someone who sees through false goods and follows the true ones.

tyranny
political legitimacy
common good
kingship
political authority
justice
flattery
political education

Enter a dialogue

The Arts of Peace

What does a good ruler actually do all day, if not make war? The second half of the book descends from principles to revenue, laws, officials, alliances and the last resort of arms.

Erasmus wants government judged by what it builds: towns, bridges, aqueducts, honest magistrates, few and clear laws. Revenue should come first from the prince's own thrift; where taxes are needed, they should fall on silk, pepper, perfumes and gems, which only the rich buy. Marriages with distant royal houses, a favourite instrument of peace at court, he distrusts, because a private quarrel between kinsmen drags whole peoples into war. War itself comes last, after every other remedy has been tried.

taxation
public welfare
good governance
peace
war
corruption
public good
rule of law

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 193
distinct concepts: 305
by passages held, corpus-wide: #362

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: “political leadership” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
political leadership	virtue	11
political ethics	virtue	8
education	political leadership	7
common good	political ethics	6
common good	tyranny	5
education	political ethics	5
justice	political ethics	5
political ethics	tyranny	5
political legitimacy	virtue	5
common good	justice	4
political leadership	political legitimacy	4
political legitimacy	tyranny	4
justice	political leadership	3
justice	political legitimacy	3
common good	political leadership	2
common good	political legitimacy	2
education	justice	2
education	tyranny	2
justice	tyranny	2
justice	virtue	2
political ethics	political leadership	2
political leadership	tyranny	2
common good	virtue	1
education	political legitimacy	1
tyranny	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) you are here 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

— or open another of their works