Work · Renaissance & Humanism
The Praise of Folly
Folly delivers a eulogy of herself – a satire on the Church and the learned.
Introduction
Erasmus wrote the Latin satire in 1509 at Thomas More’s house in London, after returning from Italy; it was printed in Paris in 1511. The Greek title “Moriae encomium” plays on More’s name. Folly (Stultitia) herself gives the speech: without her, she argues, there would be no love, friendship or happiness. Gradually the irony grows sharper and turns on theologians, monks, princes and popes. At the end Folly praises the “folly of the cross” of which Paul speaks, the Christian’s turning away from worldly wisdom. Hans Holbein the Younger drew marginal sketches in a copy owned by a Basel schoolmaster in 1515.
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