Three Movements in the Praise of Folly

Comedic Seduction; Tragic Satire; Transcendent Folly

I began my work on Erasmus with an introduction titled, Erasmus Solus Eclipsat, and followed it with A Brief Introduction to In Praise of Folly. In serial fashion, I intend to expand on those introductory essays by outlining the movements of the work (in this post) and then providing subsequent posts analyzing and annotating the Moriae Encomium.

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To begin, it will be helpful for the reader to know that I’ll be using one of the many updated versions of John Wilson’s 1668 translation because it is in the public domain. However, from time to time, I will reference the paragraph numbers of Mortimer J. Adler’s Great Books Series translation (translated by Betty Radice), mostly for cross referencing.

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An Allegory of Folly, Quentin Matsys (1510)

Careful readers of Erasmus’s Moriae Encomium will recognize three movements within Folly’s speech. These movements are not mechanistic or definite, as if Folly offers her audience three points and a poem, but they are real and they are distinctly felt in Folly’s shifting tone and emphases.

Part 1

The first movement takes up the first half of the work, beginning with Lady Folly’s playful, seductive introduction and concluding with a proclamation of her generosity and goodness, which, comparatively, sets her apart from the other gods: She proclaims, the gods are more like

monsters of divinity, as had more of the hangman than the god in them, and were worshiped only to deprecate that hurt which used to be inflicted by them: I say, not to mention these, I am that high and mighty goddess, whose liberality is of as large an extent as her omnipotence: I give to all that ask: I never appear sullen, nor out of humor, nor ever demand any atonement or satisfaction for the omission of any ceremonious punctilio in my worship: I do not storm or rage, if mortals, in their addresses to the other gods pass me by unregarded, without the acknowledgment of any respect or application: whereas all the other gods are so scrupulous and exact… ¹

In the Adler edition, the first movement runs from paragraphs 1-46.

Part 2

The second movement is Juvenalian social criticism. Folly shifts from her playful, carnivalesque nature to now speaking in a sharper, more satirical tone as she catalogs the sins and failures of fools and institutions. She says,

But lest I should seem to speak this with more of confidence than truth, let us take a nearer view of the mode of men’s lives, whereby it will be rendered more apparently evident what largesses I everywhere bestow, and how much I am respected and esteemed by persons from the highest to the lowest quality. For the proof whereof, it being too tedious to insist upon each particular, I shall only mention such in general as are most worthy the remark, from which by analogy we may easily judge of the remainder. ²

After enumerating the foolishness of the various estates—grammarians, rhetoricians, scholars, theologians, monks, preachers, princes, courtiers, bishops, popes, etc.—Folly winds down the second movement noting, “All this amounts to no less than that all mortal men are fools, even the righteous and godly as well as sinners.”³ In the Adler edition, the second movement runs from paragraphs 47-65.

Part 3

Folly’s third and final movement seems to balance the comedic (i.e., carnivalesque) and the tragic (i.e., biting satire) with the biblical and paradoxical Pauline foolishness (i.e., fools for Christ’s sake). Folly says, “But that I may not wear out this subject too far, to draw now towards a conclusion, it is observable that the Christian religion seems to have some relation to Folly, and no alliance at all with wisdom.”⁴ In the final section, Folly extols the madness and folly of Christianity, the true wisdom which appears foolish to the world. In the Adler edition, the third movement runs from paragraph 66 to the end of the encomium.

In sum, these three movements, taken together, are a rhetorical device which forms the reader’s moral imagination. Lady Folly draws in her listeners with playful seduction, exposes and sharply critiques the universal follies of society using biting satire, then concludes by pointing her audience to the philosophia Christi, the lived wisdom of the gospel—Christ imitated in humility and charity—which is foolishness to the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 1). The Praise of Folly isn’t sportive fiction Erasmus wrote just to pass the time on his trip to England (even though that’s how he presents the story in his letter to More); a careful reading suggests its a reimagined working of his Enchiridion presented to the wider world, but with a humane sense of mirth instead of the more serious tone he employed when writing the Enchiridion for the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

1. Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (New York: Peter Eckler Publishing Co., 1922), 177–178.

2. Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, 184.

3. Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, 308.

4. Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, 310-313