Book: The Praise of Folly

Overview
Desiderius Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly (1511), composed in 1509 and dedicated to his friend Thomas More, is a razor-edged humanist satire that exposes the vanities and vices of European society while urging a return to sincere, Christ-centered living. Playing on More’s name and the Greek word for folly (moria), Erasmus animates Folly as a mock-orator who celebrates her own benefits to humankind, using humor to test the borders between worldly wisdom and true Christian insight. The result is a performance that amuses, unsettles, and finally pivots to a serious meditation on the gospel’s paradoxes.

Folly as Orator
Folly strides onto the stage like a festival entertainer, claiming that she brightens the world from cradle to grave. She boasts that self-love, flattery, and forgetfulness, her companions, grease social life, making friendship, romance, and marriage bearable. Scholars and poets thrive on her encouragement; princes feel bolder, and the old find consolation in her illusions. Speaking in the classical mode of the mock-encomium, she praises what is typically despised, turning common sense upside down to show how much of daily life depends on comfortable delusions. The tone is playful, but the play reveals truth: people prefer pleasing fictions to difficult virtue.

Targets and Critique
The comic blade sharpens as Folly surveys Europe’s institutions. Courtiers preen, lawyers multiply quarrels, merchants sanctify greed, and philosophers chase abstractions that smother judgment. Physicians promise cures while courting fees; rhetoricians worship style over substance. Most biting is the treatment of religious pretension. Pilgrimages degenerate into tourism for relics; rituals tilt into superstition; monks cling to rules that eclipse charity; prelates prize pomp, wealth, and jurisdiction more than pastoral care. Schoolmen parse speculative questions with dazzling ingenuity yet neglect the spirit of Scripture and the practice of love. Even popes are not spared: zeal for war and privilege can sit strangely with the Fisherman’s humility. The satire does not crudely demolish piety; it exposes how spiritual life curdles when outward forms replace inner renewal.

Christian Folly
After the laughter, the speech deepens. Folly argues that the gospel itself calls people to become “fools” for Christ, echoing Saint Paul’s reversal of values. By worldly standards, humility, patience, and charity look foolish; by divine measure, they are wisdom. The simple believer who trusts God, prays, and serves without calculation often grasps more of Christ than a subtle dialectician. Contemplation lifts the soul beyond syllogisms; the sacraments nourish when received with love rather than scrupulous hair-splitting. This “holy folly” does not scorn learning; it subordinates cleverness to charity, restrains pride, and measures theology by its power to transform life. The closing notes of rapture, edging toward mystical language, disclose Erasmus’s hope that Christianity can be renewed not by spectacle or controversy but by the quiet conversion of hearts.

Style and Legacy
The style blends Ciceronian wit, classical exempla, and lucid Latin with a performer’s timing. Irony lets Erasmus rebuke without shrillness, preserving room for self-recognition. The book became a sensation across Europe, cherished by reform-minded readers and resented by those it lampooned. Though frequently linked to the Reformation’s ferment, Erasmus remains a Catholic humanist here: he seeks pruning, not uprooting; clarity, not rupture. The Praise of Folly endures because its paradox holds: to see truly often looks like madness to the world, and laughter can be the shortest path to repentance.