The Tongue

A catalogue of what the tongue can do, from flattery to slander, sent to Poland as an antidote to a plague of words.

Latin, the original language

Original title: Lingua
First published: 1525(aged 59)
Original language: Latin

Overview

The title page of August 1525 announced the book as new and well suited to the times, and the times were loud with abuse. Conservative theologians had been attacking Erasmus in print for years, and his quarrel with Luther had just broken out. The book is about the tongue: what it is for, and how it goes wrong. Nature, Erasmus observes, left the ears always open but hid the tongue away as if in a cave, tied down by many bonds, and the Epistle of James tells every man to be swift to hear and slow to speak. From there he works through the failings of speech — chatter, boasting, betraying secrets, flattery, false oaths and lies, and above all calumny, the informer's art of ruining people with words — with an anecdote from antiquity for each. Beneath the stories runs a judgement on the present. The religious conflict, he writes, has so far gained nothing from burnings, mutilations and chains; it was a matter for bishops who could join learning in the Gospel with moderation of mind. He dedicated the book to Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, chancellor of the kingdom of Poland. If the common plague of the tongue had not yet reached Poland, he wrote, he congratulated the country on its good fortune; if any of the contagion had crept in, he was sending the antidote. A Polish translation appeared in 1542, its anonymous translator recasting the book in plainer terms for ordinary readers.

Key concepts

What is calumny, and why does Erasmus fear it most?

Calumny is the deliberate ruin of someone by false or twisted words, the informer's trade. Erasmus ranks it above chatter or boasting because it is aimed at a victim and can destroy a reputation, a livelihood or a life while the speaker risks nothing. He even anticipates his own calumniators, imagining how an informer would twist his remarks on confession into a charge against him.

What does “death and life are in the power of the tongue” mean here?

That the same organ can save or destroy, depending on how it is governed. Erasmus takes the line from Solomon's Proverbs and makes it the hinge of the book: a bad tongue is a world of evils, a good one a source of healing. The book's long list of failings is therefore matched by a remedy, a tongue ruled by a single, sincere heart.

What is garrulity in Erasmus's The Tongue?

Garrulity is compulsive chatter, talking for its own sake without judgement. Erasmus treats it as the first and commonest disease of the tongue and notes that even Cicero, who spent his life on eloquence, preferred a sensible person who could not speak well to a fool who talked fluently. Chatter matters because it opens the way to the worse failings: betraying secrets, boasting and slander.

Why is lying with Scripture the worst lie in The Tongue?

Because Scripture, for Erasmus, is the source and rule of eternal truth, so a lie drawn from it poisons the very standard by which lies are detected. He blames such misused texts for wicked doctrines and for the fires of dissension in the Church. A slander about a neighbour harms one person; a false reading of Scripture misleads everyone who trusts it.

Themes of the book

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

The Tongue Behind Its Gates

Why is the smallest organ of the body the one that does the most harm? Erasmus reads the answer in anatomy, Scripture and ancient anecdote, and finds it in the public quarrels of his own day.

Nature left the ears open and shut the tongue away behind teeth and lips, as if to repeat James's advice to be swift to hear and slow to speak. Speech shows the soul, as Socrates knew when he asked a handsome youth to speak so that he could see him. A tongue that changes shape like an octopus betrays a divided heart. Erasmus catalogues its failings, from chatter and betrayed secrets to flattery and the informer's calumny, and ends with the religious conflict, which burnings and chains, he says, have not healed.

speech ethics
self-control
slander
secrecy
silence
harmful speech
brevity
gossip
truthfulness
rhetoric

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 366
distinct concepts: 451
by passages held, corpus-wide: #205

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: “self-control” and “speech ethics”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 20 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
self-control	speech ethics	23
prudence	self-control	16
prudence	speech	14
prudence	secrecy	13
slander	speech ethics	10
conversation	rhetoric	8
prudence	speech ethics	8
rhetoric	speech ethics	8
prudence	rhetoric	7
secrecy	self-control	7
self-control	speech	7
rhetoric	self-control	5
rhetoric	slander	5
rhetoric	speech	3
secrecy	speech	3
conversation	prudence	2
conversation	self-control	2
self-control	slander	2
slander	speech	2
conversation	slander	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)
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) you are here 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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