The Education of a Christian Prince is a Renaissance "how-to" book for princes, advising them on how to be a "good Christian" prince. The book was dedicated to Prince Charles, who would later become Habsburg Emperor Charles V. It was written by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516, the same year as Thomas More finished his Utopia and only three years after Machiavelli had written his antithetical advice book for princes Il Principe. The latter, however, was not published until 1532, 16 years later.
Erasmus stated that teachers should be of gentle disposition and have unimpeachable morals. A good education included all the liberal arts. Like the Roman educator Quintilian, Erasmus was against corporal punishment for unruly students. He stressed the student must be treated as an individual.
The text was written in part to secure Erasmus as position as Prince Charles's tutor.
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Erasmus was a philologist, grammarian, theologian, and rhetorician. He is considered a key contributor to the rhetorical tradition because of his humanist approach to pedagogy, literary critism, his own works (including letters), and oratory. The Education of a Christian Prince highlights rhetoric designed to furnish the best erudite practices for a young man in a critical religious and political position.
Rhetoric’s foundational structure, at the turn of the sixteenth century, would have consisted of classical teachings from names such as Isocrates, Aristotle, and Cicero. Some of their respective foci and contributions, of which Erasmus would have been keenly aware, are as follows:
Erasmus uses his knowledge of classical rhetoric in his writing. The ethos Erasmus sets forth within The Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis christiani), similar to the Isocratean manner of setting himself apart from potentially incompetent teachers, he shows a certain disdain “against the sophists.” Actually referring to Isocrates, Erasmus, in the preface of Christian Prince and addressing Charles the prince, he states, “[f]or he was a sophist, instructing some petty king or rather tyrant, and both were pagans”.[13] Erasmus’ use of logos and pathos immediately follow when he completes the eschewing of Isocrates: “I am a theologian addressing a renowned and upright prince, Christians both of us”.[14] Moreover, Peter Gay describes Erasmus as “a true classical spirit in his search for clarity and simplicity, a modern in complexity, an ancestor of the Enlightenment in his critical temper and pacific cosmopolitanism. But, above all, he was a Christian intellectual”.[15] And yet, while Cicero was considered the “patron saint of the Renaissance era” – a title that would become fundamentally problematic for a number of Christians because of pagan beliefs – Erasmus came to be known as the “prince of humanists” as many of his contemporaries esteemed him as “‘[a] man born to bring back literature.’”[16][17]
Erasmus’ stylistic form of writing was often compared to the standards set forth by Cicero (particularly the influence of his De Inventione); however, Erasmus’ primary goal for Christian Prince and all of his works, as he argued, was to be seen as ‘a Christian rather than a Ciceronian.’[18][19] Christian Prince is another example of Erasmus’ rhetorically stylistic mastery that serves as a testament to his ability to imbue the teachings of Christ (embodying Cicero's concept of "imitator"). For example, Christ told his disciples a parable of wheat and tares growing in the same field and that it was not their responsibility, but His, to separate the two (Matt. 13:24-43). Erasmus, a consummate rhetorician, managed to quell the concerns of many fellow Christians by “christianizing” pagan ideologies as part of his role in and contribution to the Renaissance humanist tradition. For according to Peter Bietenholz, and in concert with Aristotle’s idea of lexis (consisting of a pure knowledge of language), “[t]he humanist, first and last, is a rhetorician, a linguist. His professional devotion as well as skill is aligned to verba [words], not to res [things]. His real gesta, deeds, are verba, the words, and not res gestae, the actions of historical significance.”[20]
Erasmus indeed employs, primarily, deliberative and epideictic forms of rhetoric within Christian Prince, because it is a conduct book (also referred to as a courtesy book or advisory literature). At the time of its publishing, the conduct book was beginning to witness a change in its popularity as a bourgeoning genre though it can be seen in such classics as Plato’s Republic and, in Erasmus’ own time, with the likes of Machiavelli’s The Prince and Thomas More’s Utopia. Christian Prince serves as a guide for the teacher and the prince as well as all court personnel who might have any reason to speak to or with him and espouses Erasmus’ rhetorical approach to Christocentric political theories and pedagogical praxes which he refers to as the “philosophia Christi.” The concept of “philosophia Christi, ” Erasmus’ primary topoi in Christian Prince, is defined by Erika Rummel as “a life centered on Christ and characterized by inner faith rather than external rites”,[21] was introduced more than a decade prior to the publishing of Christian Prince in a similar body of work, The Handbook (or “Dagger”) of a Christian Soldier (Enchiridion Militis Christiani) (1504). At the conclusion of Christian Prince’s preface, Erasmaus, on the basis of “philosophia Christi,” admonishes the prince that "[a]mong the countless distinctions which under God your merit will win for you, it will be no small part of your reputation that Charles was a prince to whom a man need hesitate to offer the picture of a true and upright Christian prince without flattery, knowing that he would either gladly accept it as an excellent prince already, or wisely imitate it as a young man always in search of self-improvement".[13]
Throughout the Christian Prince treatise, Erasmus deftly invokes the knowledge, wisdom and ultimately, truth, to be gleaned from other great thinkers of antiquity such as Plato, Seneca, and Plutarch (who seems to have influenced Erasmus most) who will point the prince to Truth. Its very opening sentence begins with Erasmus positing that “[wisdom in itself is a wonderful thing…, and no kind of wisdom is rated more excellent by Aristotle than that which teaches how to be a beneficent prince; for Xenophon…rightly considers that there is something beyond human nature, something wholly divine, in absolute rule over free and willing subjects”.[22] However, Erasmus never recommends the pagan authors or their works singularly or in isolation because in the next breath, he makes a seamless rhetorical move to remind the prince that of all the requests King Solomon could have made when God told him he would grant whatever he asked, Solomon’s prayer was for wisdom to lead God’s people.
A similar rhetorical move can be found in a most noteworthy chapter of the treatise, “The Prince Must Avoid Flatterers,” in reverse. As Erasmus offers the pedagogue a recommended list of readings for the prince as student, he first lists “the proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and the Book of Wisdom” then “[n]ext the Gospels”.[23] The total number of biblical references here is seven. He then recommends works from pagan authors: three from Plutarch (Apophthegms, Moralia, Lives); writings from Seneca (no specific titles provided, but he does pluralize the suggestion); one from Aristotle (Politics); two from Cicero (Offices and Laws); and one from Plato (Republic, but because the work was lost at the time, he recommends Laws). The pagan number of works surpasses the number of biblical works. Erasmus justifies his dissoi logoi (arguing from two contrary accounts) approach here by persuading the prince to always apply the following caveat: “This writer whom you are reading is a pagan and you are a Christian reader; although he has many excellent things to say, he nevertheless does not depict the ideal of a Christian quite accurately, and you must take care not to think that whatever you come across at any point is to be imitated straight away, but instead test everything against the standard of Christ”.[24]
Even with offering an Augustinian-type approach (emphasizing the Christian prince’s ability to interpret pagan texts), Erasmus would continue to have strained relations with some Church Fathers regarding his rhetorical methodologies toward Truth. Despite this fact, Christian Prince “saw ten editions during Erasmus’ lifetime and was translated into a number of vernacular languages, which testifies to a general interest in the work”.[25]