Folly

Excerpt from Luther’s 95 Theses and Erasmus’s “Praise to Folly”

Luther’s 95 Theses:

• 27 They are wrong who say that the soul flies out of Purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.

• 32 Those who believe that, through letters of pardon [indulgences], they are made sure of their own salvation will be eternally damned along with their teachers.

• 37 Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given by God, even without letters of pardon.

• 43 Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons.

• 44 Because by works of charity, charity increases, and the man becomes better; while by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment.

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• 45 Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgences of the Pope but the anger of God.

• 49 Christians should be taught that the Pope's pardons are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God.

• 50 Christians should be taught that if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the Preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes rather than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.

• 54 Wrong is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons than on it.

• 62 The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

• 66 The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men.

• 67 Those indulgences which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain.

• 68 Yet they are in reality most insignificant when compared to the grace of God and the piety of the cross.

• 86 … why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the single Basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with that of poor believers? …

Luther’s Address to the German Nobility:

t has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and

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monks are called the spiritual estate; princes, lords,

artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is

an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be

made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all

Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no

difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul

says (1 Cor.: 12), we are all one body, though each

member does its own work, to serve the others. This is

because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and

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are all Christians alike; for baptism, Gospel, and faith,

these alone make spiritual and Christian people.

As for the unction by a pope or a bishop, tonsure,

ordination, consecration, and clothes differing from those

of laymen—all this may make a hypocrite or an anointed

puppet, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. Thus we

are all consecrated as priests by baptism….

And to put the matter even more plainly, if a little

company of pious Christian laymen were taken prisoners

and carried away to a desert, and had not among them a

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priest consecrated by a bishop, and were there to agree to

elect one of them, born in wedlock or not, and were to

order him to baptise, to celebrate the mass, to absolve,

and to preach, this man would as truly be a priest, as if

all the bishops and all the popes had consecrated him.

That is why in cases of necessity every man can baptise

and absolve, which would not be possible if we were not

all priests….

[Members of the Church of Rome] alone pretend to be

considered masters of the Scriptures; although they learn

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nothing of them all their life. They assume authority, and

juggle before us with impudent words, saying that the

Pope cannot err in matters of faith, whether he be evil or

good, albeit they cannot prove it by a single letter. That is

why the canon law contains so many heretical and

unchristian, nay unnatural, laws….

And though they say that this authority was given

to St. Peter when the keys were given to him, it is plain

enough that the keys were not given to St. Peter alone,

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but to the whole community. Besides, the keys were not

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ordained for doctrine or authority, but for sin, to bind or

loose; and what they claim besides this from the keys is

mere invention….

Only consider the matter. They must needs

acknowledge that there are pious Christians among us

that have the true faith, spirit, understanding, word, and

mind of Christ: why then should we reject their word and

understanding, and follow a pope who has neither

understanding nor spirit? Surely this were to deny our

whole faith and the Christian Church….

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Therefore when need requires, and the Pope is a cause

of offence to Christendom, in these cases whoever can best

do so, as a faithful member of the whole body, must do

what he can to procure a true free council. This no one can

do so well as the temporal authorities, especially since

they are fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, sharing one

spirit and one power in all things,… Would it not be most

unnatural, if a fire were to break out in a city, and every

one were to keep still and let it burn on and on, whatever

might be burnt, simply because they had not the mayor's

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authority, or because the fire perchance broke out at the

mayor's house? Is not every citizen bound in this case to

rouse and call in the rest? How much more should this be

done in the spiritual city of Christ, if a fire of offence breaks

out, either at the Pope's government or wherever it may!

The like happens if an enemy attacks a town. The first to

rouse up the rest earns glory and thanks. Why then should

not he earn glory that decries the coming of our enemies

from hell and rouses and summons all Christians?

But as for their boasts of their authority, that no one

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must oppose it, this is idle talk. No one in Christendom

has any authority to do harm, or to forbid others to

prevent harm being done. There is no authority in the

Church but for reformation. Therefore if the Pope wished

to use his power to prevent the calling of a free council,

so as to prevent the reformation of the Church, we must

not respect him or his power; and if he should begin to

excommunicate and fulminate, we must despise this as

the doings of a madman, and, trusting in God,

excommunicate and repel him as best we may.

Erasmus “the Praise to Folly”

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of

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comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various

costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his

part, until the manager waves them off the stage?

Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor

go back in a different costume, so that he who has but

lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in

patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by

shadows; yet this play is put on in no other way….

[The disciplines] that approach nearest to common

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sense, that is, to folly, are held in highest esteem.

Theologians are starved, naturalists find cold comfort,

astrologers are mocked, and logicians are slighted….

Within the profession of medicine, furthermore, so far as

any member is eminently unlearned, impudent, or

careless, he is valued the more, even in the chambers of

belted earls. For medicine, especially as now practiced

by many, is but a subdivision of the art of flattery, no

less truly than is rhetoric. Lawyers have the next place

after doctors, and I do not know but that they should

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have first place; with great unanimity the philosophers—

not that I would say such a thing myself—are wont to

ridicule the law as an ass. Yet great matters and little

matters alike are settled by the arbitrament of these

asses. They gather goodly freeholds with broad acres,

while the theologian, after poring over chestfuls of the

great corpus of divinity, gnaws on bitter beans, at the

same time manfully waging war against lice and fleas. As

those arts are more successful which have the greatest

affinity with folly, so those people are by far the happiest

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who enjoy the privilege of avoiding all contact with the

learned disciplines, and who follow nature as their only

guide, since she is in no respect wanting, except as a

mortal wishes to transgress the limits set for his status.

Nature hates counterfeits; and that which is innocent of

art gets along far the more prosperously.

What need we say about practitioners in the arts? Self-love

is the hallmark of them all. You will find that they

would sooner give up their paternal acres than any piece

of their poor talents. Take particularly actors, singers,

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orators, and poets; the more unskilled one of them is,

the more insolent he will be in his self-satisfaction, the

more he will blow himself up…. Thus the worst art

pleases the most people, for the simple reason that the

larger part of mankind, as I said before, is subject to

folly. If, therefore, the less skilled man is more pleasing

both in his own eyes and in the wondering gaze of the

many, what reason is there that he should prefer sound

discipline and true skill? In the first place, these will

cost him a great outlay; in the second place, they will

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make him more affected and meticulous; and finally,

they will please far fewer of his audience….

And now I see that it is not only in individual men that

nature has implanted self-love. She implants a kind of it as

a common possession in the various races, and even

cities. By this token the English claim, besides a few other

things, good looks, music, and the best eating as their

special properties. The Scots flatter themselves on the

score of high birth and royal blood, not to mention their

dialectical skill. Frenchmen have taken all politeness for

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their province; though the Parisians, brushing all others

aside, also award themselves the prize for knowledge of

theology. The Italians usurp belles lettres and eloquence;

and they all flatter themselves upon the fact that they

alone, of all mortal men, are not barbarians. In this

particular point of happiness the Romans stand highest,

still dreaming pleasantly of ancient Rome. The Venetians

are blessed with a belief in their own nobility. The Greeks,

as well as being the founders of the learned disciplines,

vaunt themselves upon their titles to the famous heroes of

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old. The Turks, and that whole rabble of the truly

barbarous, claim praise for their religion, laughing at

Christians as superstitious….

[Next come] the scientists, reverenced for their beards

and the fur on their gowns, who teach that they alone are

wise while the rest of mortal men flit about as shadows.

How pleasantly they dote, indeed, while they construct

their numberless worlds, and measure the sun, moon,

stars, and spheres as with thumb and line. They assign

causes for lightning, winds, eclipses, and other

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inexplicable things, never hesitating a whit, as if they

were privy to the secrets of nature, artificer of things, or

as if they visited us fresh from the council of the gods. Yet

all the while nature is laughing grandly at them and their

conjectures. For to prove that they have good intelligence

of nothing, this is a sufficient argument: they can never

explain why they disagree with each other on every

subject. Thus knowing nothing in general, they profess to

know all things in particular; though they are ignorant even

of themselves, and on occasion do not see the ditch or the

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stone lying across their path, because many of them are

blear-eyed or absent-minded; yet they proclaim that they

perceive ideas, universals, forms without matter….

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Perhaps it were better to pass over the theologians in

silence, [for] they may attack me with six hundred

arguments, in squadrons, and drive me to make a

recantation; which if I refuse, they will straightway

proclaim me an heretic. By this thunderbolt they are wont

to terrify any toward whom they are ill-disposed.

They are happy in their self-love, and as if they already

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inhabited the third heaven they look down from a height

on all other mortal men as on creatures that crawl on the

ground, and they come near to pitying them. They are

protected by a wall of scholastic definitions, arguments,

corollaries, implicit and explicit propositions; … they

explain as pleases them the most arcane matters, such as

by what method the world was founded and set in order,

through what conduits original sin has been passed down

along the generations, by what means, in what measure,

and how long the perfect Christ was in the Virgin's womb,

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and how accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their

subject.

But those are hackneyed. Here are questions worthy of

the great and (as some call them) illuminated theologians,

questions to make them prick up their ears—if ever they

chance upon them. Whether divine generation took place

at a particular time? Whether there are several sonships

in Christ? Whether this is a possible proposition: God the

Father hates the Son? Whether God could have taken

upon Himself the likeness of a woman? Or of a devil? Of an

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ass? Of a gourd? Of a piece of flint? Then how would that

gourd have preached, performed miracles, or been

crucified?….

Coming nearest to these in felicity are the men who

generally call themselves “the religious” and “monks”—

utterly false names both, since most of them keep as far

away as they can from religion and no people are more in

evidence in every sort of place…. For one thing, they

reckon it the highest degree of piety to have no contact

with literature, and hence they see to it that they do not

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know how to read. For another, when with asinine voices

they bray out in church those psalms they have learned,

by rote rather than by heart, they are convinced that they

are anointing God's ears with the blandest of oil. Some of

them make a good profit from their dirtiness and

mendicancy, collecting their food from door to door with

importunate bellowing; nay, there is not an inn, public

conveyance, or ship where they do not intrude, to the

great disadvantage of the other common beggars. Yet

according to their account, by their very dirtiness,

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ignorance, these delightful fellows are representing to us

the lives of the apostles.