The longed-for peace
20
May
Peace is not the absence of wars, as many people repeat, but with hearts full
of intrigue and intolerance, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote about this in his Querela Pacis, published in 1516. In addition to being a critique, it is also a satire on countries that defend peace and harmony by waging war.
The issue is so topical that in 2007 the Spaniards Consuelo Ramón Chornet and Javier Lucas Martin wrote the book “Querela pacis, perpetua A reivindicación del Derecho International” which follows Erasmus’ question and Hans Kelsen’s proposals that if we want to guarantee peace, the indispensable conditions, although insufficient, are the resources of international law and the institutions of multilateralism, starting with the UN.
There is also a thesis at USP by his Portuguese translator Marcos E. Melo dos Santos.
Using the philological methods of the pioneering Italian humanists, Erasmus helped lay the foundations for a historical-critical study of the past, including in his studies of the Greek New Testament and the Church Fathers. His writings contributed to the replacement of the old scholastic curriculum with a new humanist emphasis on the classics, but without omitting them.
Erasmus articulated his belief in the transformative power of education to shape human nature, promoting peaceful and social dispositions while discouraging negative and destructive desires, what today we might call “a culture of peace”.
Erasmus articulated his belief in the transformative power of education to shape human nature, promoting peaceful and social dispositions while discouraging negative and destructive desires, what today we might call “a culture of peace”.
He advocated the study of the “human letters” of classical and Christian antiquity that could help positively influence the mind, in contrast to scholastic argumentative logic or even the vengeful pride cultivated in young aristocrats through chivalric literature, the kind of novel composed of heroic deeds of battle, so common today in countries at war where manliness and pride in defending the “homeland” are emphasized.
Don Quixote de la Mancha cannot be properly read without understanding the madness of Alonso Quijano, a nobleman who goes mad after reading too many chivalric novels and then, together with his sidekick Sancho Panza, gets into absurd situations in a mixture of comedy and criticism.
It is at the same time a transition to the modern novel, where isolated heroes appear in modern novels, but are no less vain and “heroic”.
Peace must come from a culture of peace, “I will give you peace, but not as the world gives” (Jn 14:27).
Rotterdam, Erasmus (2020). A queixa da paz. Trad. Marcos E. Melo dos Santos. Brazil, São Paulo: Editora Gallipoli.
