The Manual of the Christian Knight

Written to reform one rough armourer, it told every layman that devotion lives in the heart and needs no monastery.

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Enchiridion militis Christiani
First published: 1503(aged 37)
Original language: Latin

Overview

The wife of an armourer at the Burgundian court wanted her husband to give up his rough way of life, and in 1501 Erasmus wrote a book for him on how a Christian should live. Erasmus was given a sword in return; according to the Leuven university library, neither man made much use of his present. The Latin title plays on a Greek word that means both handbook and dagger, a weapon small enough to carry everywhere. The argument is that a layman needs no cloister to be devout. Every Christian is a soldier in a lifelong war against his own vices, armed with prayer and with knowledge of Scripture, and his rule is to climb from what is seen to what is unseen: from the body to the soul, from the letter of a text to its spirit, from the ceremony to the love it is meant to express. Erasmus took that ladder from Plato as readily as from Saint Paul. Fasting, pilgrimages and relics, he argues, are worth nothing without the inner change they exist to serve, and wearing a monk's habit does not make a man devout. Jean Vitrier, a Franciscan friar he admired, urged him to rework the text, and it appeared at Antwerp in 1503 in a small volume of his shorter pieces, where it made little stir. In 1518 Froben reissued it in Basel with a long new preface, a letter to Paul Volz, abbot of the Alsatian monastery of Hugshofen, and only then did it go through edition after edition and into several languages. An English version printed in London in November 1533 is attributed to William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible. In 1559 the first papal Index of Prohibited Books banned it along with everything else Erasmus had written.

Key concepts

What does “enchiridion” mean in the Manual of the Christian Knight?

Enchiridion is a Greek word meaning both a handbook and a small dagger, something kept in the hand. Erasmus chose it on purpose: the book is a short guide to Christian living and also a weapon a layman can carry everywhere in his war against vice. The double sense sets the tone of the whole manual, in which piety is a daily fight rather than a profession.

What are the two weapons of the Christian soldier?

Prayer and knowledge, meaning above all knowledge of Scripture. Erasmus pairs them because each fails alone: prayer, which Paul bids us practise without ceasing, lifts the mind to God, while knowledge furnishes it with the right convictions. A soldier facing the whole host of vices, led by seven chief captains, needs both at once.

What does Erasmus mean by the inner and outer person?

He divides the human being into body and soul, or in Paul's terms flesh and spirit. The body is visible and mortal, the soul invisible and akin to God. Knowing this division is the beginning of the Christian's war, because it shows where the enemy stands: not outside, but in the flesh's resistance to the spirit.

What is the rule of rising from visible to invisible things?

It is the central precept of the manual: always use visible things, which are imperfect or indifferent in themselves, as steps toward invisible ones. Applied to religion, a ceremony, a relic or a fast is good only when it leads to the love and change of life it stands for. Kept as an end in itself, the visible becomes a substitute for the very piety it was meant to serve.

Themes of the book

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

The War Within

What does it take for an ordinary layman, not a monk, to live as a Christian? The manual answers that he is already a soldier, and the enemy is inside his own walls.

Every Christian fights a lifelong war against his vices, whose seven chief captains lead a whole host. He needs two weapons, prayer and knowledge of Scripture, and he must know himself: the division of the human being into body and soul, flesh and spirit, decides where the battle lies. Subduing the flesh is the hardest thing if one counts only on one's own strength, the easiest if one looks to God. The book is small enough to carry everywhere, as its title's double meaning of handbook and dagger promises.

spiritual warfare
temptation
sin
self-discipline
self-knowledge
reason
moral psychology
lust
perseverance

Enter a dialogue

From the Seen to the Unseen

Are ceremonies, relics and pilgrimages worth anything in themselves? Erasmus's rule is to climb always from what is visible to what is invisible, and to judge every practice by where it leads.

The body is a ladder to the soul, the letter of Scripture to its spirit, the ceremony to the love it is meant to express. Erasmus took that ladder from Plato as readily as from Paul. People kiss the saints' relics and ignore the best relics the saints left, the example of their lives; they want to be buried in Saint Francis's habit, which will profit them nothing if their lives were unlike his. Against those who called his standard impossibly high, he points to Plato, who described a commonwealth no city had ever reached.

religious ritual
religious practice
biblical interpretation
scripture
spirituality
hypocrisy
charity
virtue

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 295
distinct concepts: 451
by passages held, corpus-wide: #250

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: “charity” and “christian ethics”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 89 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
charity	christian ethics	4
christian ethics	virtue	4
sin	temptation	4
sin	virtue	4
christian ethics	temptation	3
scripture	sin	3
scripture	spirituality	3
scripture	temptation	3
spirituality	virtue	3
temptation	virtue	3
virtue	wealth	3
charity	scripture	2
christian ethics	sin	2
christian ethics	spirituality	2
christian ethics	wealth	2
scripture	virtue	2
charity	spirituality	1
charity	virtue	1
charity	wealth	1
christian ethics	scripture	1
spirituality	temptation	1
spirituality	wealth	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) you are here 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)
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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