Editing Erasmus (section)

====Outsiders====
Most of his political writing focused on peace within [[Christendom]] with almost a sole focus on Europe. In 1516, Erasmus wrote, "It is the part of a Christian prince to regard no one as an outsider unless he is a nonbeliever, and even on them he should inflict no harm", which entails not attacking outsiders, not taking their riches, not subjecting them to political rule, no forced conversions, and keeping promises made to them.<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|50,51}}

In common with his times,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Howell |first1=Rob |title=Islam as a Heresy: Christendom's Ideological View of Islam |journal=Fairmount Folio: Journal of History |date=2003 |volume=5 |url=https://journals.wichita.edu/index.php/ff/article/view/73 |language=en}}</ref> Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies (and therefore competitors to orthodox Christianity) rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term ''half-Christian'' for the latter.{{refn|group=note|"...&nbsp;in large part half-Christian and perhaps nearer to true Christianity than most of our own folk." ''Letter to Paul Volz''<ref name=martin2024/>{{rp|32}}}}

However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of [[antisemitic]] and [[Islamophobia|anti-Muslim]] prejudice in his writings: historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=Erasmus' attitude to towards Islam in the light of Nicholas of Cusa's De pace fidei and Cribiatio alkorani |journal=Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval |date=2019 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=113–136 |doi=10.21071/refime.v26i1.11846 |s2cid=200062225 |url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7366141.pdf |access-date=15 July 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715072502/https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7366141.pdf |url-status=live }} Reviewed: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/erasmus-and-the-other-on-turks-jews-and-indigenous-peoples-nathan-ron-london-palgrave-macmillan-2019-xiv-196-pp-4164/A9692438D8CABC869D3344F1DFBA6C88 ''Renaissance Quarterly''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230729073149/https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/erasmus-and-the-other-on-turks-jews-and-indigenous-peoples-nathan-ron-london-palgrave-macmillan-2019-xiv-196-pp-4164/A9692438D8CABC869D3344F1DFBA6C88 |date=29 July 2023 }}</ref>

=====Turks=====
In his last decade, he involved himself in the [[On War Against the Turk|public policy debate]] on war with the [[Ottoman Empire]], which was then invading [[Ottoman wars in Europe#1526–1566: Conquest of the Kingdom of Hungary|Western Europe]], notably in his book ''On the war against the Turks'' (1530), as the "reckless and extravagant"<ref>{{cite web |last1=Withnell |first1=Stephen |title=A terrible pope but a patron of genius |url=https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-terrible-pope-but-a-patron-of-genius/ |website=Catholic Herald |date=25 April 2019 |access-date=27 April 2024 |archive-date=27 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240427055122/https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-terrible-pope-but-a-patron-of-genius/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Pope Leo X had in previous decades promoted going on the offensive with a new crusade.<ref group=note>"...&nbsp;the goal of {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}} was to warn Christians and the Church of moral deterioration and to exhort them to change their ways.&nbsp;... Erasmus' objection to crusades was by no means an overall opposition to fighting the Turks. Rather, Erasmus harshly condemned embezzlement and corrupt fundraising, and the Church's involvement in such nefarious activities, and regarded them as inseparable from waging a crusade." {{cite journal |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=The Non-Cosmopolitan Erasmus: An Examination of his Turkophobic/Islamophobic Rhetoric |journal=Akademik Tarih ve Düşünce Dergisi (Academic Journal of History and Idea) |date=1 January 2020 |url=https://www.academia.edu/67458204}} pp. 97,98</ref> Erasmus reworked Luther's rhetoric that the invading Turks represent God's judgment of decadent Christendom, but without Luther's fatalism: Erasmus not only accused Western leaders of kingdom-threatening hypocrisy, he reworked a remedy already decreed by the [[Fifth Council of the Lateran]]: anti-expansionist moral reforms by Europe's disunited leaders as a necessary unitive political step before any aggressive warfare against the Ottoman threat, reforms which might themselves, if sincere, prevent both the internecine and foreign warfare.<ref name=herwaarden>{{cite journal |last1=van Herwaarden |first1=Jan |title=Erasmus and the Non-Christian World |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=2012 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=69–83 |doi=10.1163/18749275-00000006}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|The idea that European peace and order was a precondition for successful crusades has a longer history: Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 called for the re-enacting of the [[Peace and Truce of God#Peace of God and Truce of God and chivalry and crusades|Truce of God]] for domestic peace.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bainton |first=Roland H. |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/963644630 |title=Christian attitudes towards war and peace: a historical survey and critical re-evaluation |publisher=Abingdon Press |year=1979 |orig-year=1st ed. 1960 |isbn=0-687-07027-9 |location=New York |oclc=963644630}}</ref>{{rp|111–112}} }}

=====Jews=====
{{See also|Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus#Controversy on antisemitism}}
[[File:LuisVives.jpg|thumb|Juan Luis Vives]]

Erasmus perceived and championed strong [[#Classical|Hellenistic]] rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the [[Hellenistic Judaism#Cultural legacy|intellectual milieux]] of Jesus, Paul, and the early church: "If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament!"{{refn|group=note|name=OT|"If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament! It is a thing of shadows, given us for a time." ''Ep 798'' p. 305.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rummel |first1=Erika |title=Review of Opera Omnia. vo. V-2. Opera Omnia vol. V-3. Opera Omnia. II-4. |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |date=1989 |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=304–308 |doi=10.2307/2861633 |jstor=2861633 |s2cid=164160751  |issn=0034-4338}}</ref> For Erasmus, "the relative importance we should ascribe to the different books of the Bible" accorded to how much "they bring us more or less directly to knowledge of (Christ)", which gave priority to the New Testament and the Gospels in particular.<ref name=bouyer1/> "To Erasmus, Judaism was obsolete. To Reuchlin, something of Judaism remained of continuing value to Christianity."<ref name=dunkel/>}} Perhaps the only Jewish book he published was his loose translation of the first century Hellenistic-Judaic ''On the Sovereignty of Reason'', better known as [[4 Maccabees]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=842 / To Helias Marcaeus – 863 / From Jakob Spiegel |journal=The Correspondence of Erasmus |date=31 December 1982 |pages=2–105 |doi=10.3138/9781442681026-004|isbn=978-1-4426-8102-6 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781442681026-004/html}}</ref> 

Erasmus' pervasive anti-ceremonialism treated the early Church debates on circumcision, food, and special days as manifestations of cultural chauvinism by the initial Jewish Christians in Antioch.{{refn|group=note|"The Jews" (i.e. the earliest Jewish Christians in Antioch) "because of a certain human tendency, desire(d) to force their own rites upon everyone, clearly in order under this pretext to enhance their own importance. For each one wishes that the things which he himself has taught should appear as outstanding." Erasmus, ''Paraphrase of Romans and Galatians''<ref name=chester/>{{rp|321}} }}

While many humanists, from [[Pico della Mirandola]] to [[Johannes Reuchlin]], were intrigued by Jewish mysticism, Erasmus came to dislike it: "I see them as a nation full of most tedious fabrications, who spread a kind of fog over everything, Talmud, Cabbala, Tetragrammaton, Gates of Light, words, words, words. I would rather have Christ mixed up with Scotus<!--which? Duns Scotus?--> than with that rubbish of theirs."<ref name=letters594>{{cite book |last1=Erasmus |first1=Desiderius |title=The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 594–841 (1517–1518) |date=31 December 1979 |doi=10.3138/9781442681019|isbn=978-1-4426-8101-9 }}</ref>{{rp|347}}

In his ''Paraphrase on Romans'', Erasmus voiced, as Paul, the "secret" that in the end times, "all of the Israelites will be restored to salvation" and accept Christ as their Messiah, "although now part of them have fallen away from it".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=Jeremy |title=3. The Latin West: From Augustine to Luther and Calvin |journal=The Salvation of Israel |date=15 August 2022 |pages=50–70 |doi=10.1515/9781501764769-005}}</ref>

Several scholars have identified [[Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus#Controversy on antisemitism|cases]] where Erasmus' comments appear to go beyond theological [[anti-Judaism]] into slurs or approving to an extent certain [[anti-semitic]] policies, though there is some controversy.

=====Slaves=====
On the subject of slavery, Erasmus characteristically treated it in passing under the topic of tyranny: Christians were not allowed to be tyrants, which slave-owning required, but especially not to be the masters of other Christians.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kute |first1=David |title=Erasmus and the Ideal Ruler |url=https://davidkute.com/2019/12/26/396/ |date=26 December 2019}}</ref> Erasmus had various other piecemeal arguments against slavery: for example, that it was not legitimate to enslave people taken in an unjust war; but it was not a subject that occupied him. However, his belief that "nature created all men free" (and slavery was imposed) was a rejection of Aristotle's category of natural slaves.<ref name=ron1>{{cite book |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |chapter=Erasmus' and las Casas' Conception of Barbarian Peoples |title=Erasmus and the "Other" |date=2019 |pages=77–96 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-24929-8_6|isbn=978-3-030-24928-1 }}</ref>