In Praise of Folly

do much better if instead of those dull troops and companies of soldiers with which they have

managed their war with such doubtful success, they would send the bawling Scotists, the most

obstinate Occamists, and invincible Albertists to war against the Turks and Saracens; and they

would see, I guess, a most pleasant combat and such a victory as was never before. For who is so

faint whom their devices will not enliven? who so stupid whom such spurs can’t quicken? or who

so quicksighted before whose eyes they can’t cast a mist?

But you’ll say, I jest. Nor are you without cause, since even among divines themselves there are

some that have learned better and are ready to turn their stomachs at those foolish subtleties of the

others. There are some that detest them as a kind of sacrilege and count it the height of impiety to

speak so irreverently of such hidden things, rather to be adored than explicated; to dispute of them

with such profane and heathenish niceties; to define them so arrogantly and pollute the majesty of

divinity with such pithless and sordid terms and opinions. Meantime the others please, nay hug

themselves in their happiness, and are so taken up with these pleasant trifles that they have not so

much leisure as to cast the least eye on the Gospel or St. Paul’s epistles. And while they play the

fool at this rate in their schools, they make account the universal church would otherwise perish,

unless, as the poets fancied of Atlas that he supported heaven with his shoulders, they underpropped

the other with their syllogistical buttresses. And how great a happiness is this, think you? while, as

if Holy Writ were a nose of wax, they fashion and refashion it according to their pleasure; while

they require that their own conclusions, subscribed by two or three Schoolmen, be accounted greater

than Solon’s laws and preferred before the papal decretals; while, as censors of the world, they

force everyone to a recantation that differs but a hair’s breadth from the least of their explicit or

implicit determinations. And those too they pronounce like oracles. This proposition is scandalous;

this irreverent; this has a smack of heresy; this no very good sound: so that neither baptism, nor

the Gospel, nor Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine, no nor most Aristotelian Thomas

himself can make a man a Christian, without these bachelors too be pleased to give him his grace.

And the like in their subtlety in judging; for who would think he were no Christian that should say

these two speeches “matula putes” and “matula putet,” or “ollae fervere” and “ollam fervere” were

not both good Latin, unless their wisdoms had taught us the contrary? who had delivered the church

from such mists of error, which yet no one ever met with, had they not come out with some university

seal for it? And are they not most happy while they do these things?

Then for what concerns hell, how exactly they describe everything, as if they had been conversant

in that commonwealth most part of their time! Again, how do they frame in their fancy new orbs,

adding to those we have already an eighth! a goodly one, no doubt, and spacious enough, lest

perhaps their happy souls might lack room to walk in, entertain their friends, and now and then

play at football. And with these and a thousand the like fopperies their heads are so full stuffed and

stretched that I believe Jupiter’s brain was not near so big when, being in labor with Pallas, he was

beholding to the midwifery of Vulcan’s ax. And therefore you must not wonder if in their public

disputes they are so bound about the head, lest otherwise perhaps their brains might leap out. Nay,

I have sometimes laughed myself to see them so tower in their own opinion when they speak most

barbarously; and when they humh and hawh so pitifully that none but one of their own tribe can

understand them, they call it heights which the vulgar can’t reach; for they say ’tis beneath the

dignity of divine mysteries to be cramped and tied up to the narrow rules of grammarians: from

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In Praise of Folly

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whence we may conjecture the great prerogative of divines, if they only have the privilege of

speaking corruptly, in which yet every cobbler thinks himself concerned for his share. Lastly, they

look upon themselves as somewhat more than men as often as they are devoutly saluted by the

name of “Our Masters,” in which they fancy there lies as much as in the Jews’ “Jehovah;” and

therefore they reckon it a crime if “Magister Noster” be written other than in capital letters; and if

anyone should preposterously say “Noster Magister,” he has at once overturned the whole body of

divinity.

And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and monks, most false in

both titles, when both a great part of them are farthest from religion, and no men swarm thicker in

all places than themselves. Nor can I think of anything that could be more miserable did not I

support them so many several ways. For whereas all men detest them to that height, that they take

it for ill luck to meet one of them by chance, yet such is their happiness that they flatter themselves.

For first, they reckon it one of the main points of piety if they are so illiterate that they can’t so

much as read. And then when they run over their offices, which they carry about them, rather by

tale than understanding, they believe the gods more than ordinarily pleased with their braying. And

some there are among them that put off their trumperies at vast rates, yet rove up and down for the

bread they eat; nay, there is scarce an inn, wagon, or ship into which they intrude not, to the no

small damage of the commonwealth of beggars. And yet, like pleasant fellows, with all this vileness,

ignorance, rudeness, and impudence, they represent to us, for so they call it, the lives of the apostles.

Yet what is more pleasant than that they do all things by rule and, as it were, a kind of mathematics,

the least swerving from which were a crime beyond forgiveness—as how many knots their shoes

must be tied with, of what color everything is, what distinction of habits, of what stuff made, how

many straws broad their girdles and of what fashion, how many bushels wide their cowl, how many

fingers long their hair, and how many hours sleep; which exact equality, how disproportionate it

is, among such variety of bodies and tempers, who is there that does not perceive it? And yet by

reason of these fooleries they not only set slight by others, but each different order, men otherwise

professing apostolical charity, despise one another, and for the different wearing of a habit, or that

’tis of darker color, they put all things in combustion. And among these there are some so rigidly

religious that their upper garment is haircloth, their inner of the finest linen; and, on the contrary,

others wear linen without and hair next their skins. Others, again, are as afraid to touch money as

poison, and yet neither forbear wine nor dallying with women. In a word, ’tis their only care that

none of them come near one another in their manner of living, nor do they endeavor how they may

be like Christ, but how they may differ among themselves.

And another great happiness they conceive in their names, while they call themselves Cordiliers,

and among these too, some are Colletes, some Minors, some Minims, some Crossed; and again,

these are Benedictines, those Bernardines; these Carmelites. those Augustines: these Williamites.

and those Jacobines; as if it were not worth the while to be called Christians. And of these, a great

part build so much on their ceremonies and petty traditions of men that they think one heaven is

too poor a reward for so great merit, little dreaming that the time will come when Christ, not

regarding any of these trifles, will call them to account for His precept of charity. One shall show

you a large trough full of all kinds of fish; another tumble you out so many bushels of prayers;

another reckon you so many myriads of fasts, and fetch them up again in one dinner by eating till

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In Praise of Folly

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