The Complaint of Peace

In 1517 Erasmus wrote the Complaint of Peace

The Complaint of Peace

By Josselinpaul (Jos de Wit)

In 1517 the distinguished humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536) wrote The Complaint of Peace or Querela Pacis, as it was originally written in Latin, like most of the writing in that time in Europe. Querela Pacis is an allegory in which a personified Lady Peace comes to earth to investigate whether there is peace on earth among the humans.

Erasmus by that time was both a theology professor in Leuven and an advisor of the new sovereign of the Netherlands, Charles V of Habsburg, who was also king of Spain and somewhat later would become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. For decades there had been war going on in Europe, especially in Italy, where the French were trying to gain a foothold at the cost of the influence of the Habsburgs. In 1515 the young French king Francis I had won a resounding victory at the battle of Marignano, and the Habsburgs now were plotting for revenge. On the other side of the Channel king Henry VIII was greedily biding his time to collect the leftovers of the warspoils. So war was imminent in Europe and Erasmus felt as his duty to warn against the devastating consequences of war.

It was the firm belief of Erasmus that war was the worst curse that humans had brought on earth. He considered man as born with a natural inclination to act in a spirit of brotherhood towards his fellow humans and the goal of his life was to feed this inclination by translating and paraphrasing works that were inspired by this idea. These included not only works from the Christian tradition, but also from the classical virtue-ethics, like Cicero. He hated war so much that he wrote in Querela Pacis that it is better to have an unjust peace than a just war.
He saw his ethical ideas as a combination of Christian charity and classical philosophy, that’s why he dubbed it Philosophia Christi, the philosophy of Christ.

In Querela Pacis, Lady Peace states that peace and harmony are in the order of nature, even predators only kill for food, but not each other. By nature then, humans should also act without violence towards one another: See in how many ways nature learns us to harmonious! But she is not satisfied with showing us peace as attractive, she also wanted friendship to be not only attractive, but also needful. That is why she distributed the gifts of the body and the mind in a way that no human can live without the help of other humans, how minimal this might be. But the reality is quite different: she starts to look for peace among humans, but everywhere there is strife, conflict and open war. To her horror she discovers that even churchleaders are only to happy to brandish the sword instead of the holy water brush. Everywhere there is conflict, even in families and marriages. Yes, conflict reigns even the heart of humans: Man is fighting with himself; reason wages war with the emotions and one inclination is at war with another.
Small wonder humans cannot live in peace with one another. And humans do this notwithstanding their Christian duties and all the warnings of the great philosophers. She sees the root of all this evil in the false passions of man: ire, pride, stupidity, it is in the heart of man that war starts. We should therefore start peace on a small scale: be tolerant towards other people, don’t seek revenge if you are insulted. And if you really want to wage war, just ask people who have experienced it: you’ll quickly understand it has more disadvantages than advantages: dulce bellum inexpertis: war is nice for those that have no experience with it.

I have been giving courses on Erasmus for a long time and I used this text many times, for instance during workshops in the International Peace Week in September. But in 2017, 500 years after it had been published for the first time, I started as a teacher in humanist moral education on a primary school. We try to stimulate the moral development of children by offering different perspectives than their own referential background and so enhance their moral sensibility.
It appeared to me that Erasmus’ story would be very useful as a pedagogical instrument, just by asking what Lady Peace would think of our world if she came back to earth after 500 years. I offered them several creative possibilities to answer this question: a story, a poem, a rap, a comic, a drawing or a small piece of theatre. It quickly struck a chord and I have seen and heard many beautiful imaginations of Lady Peace coming back to earth. I shall now present some highlights of the latest round of these lessons in 2026.

The harvest consisted of a variety of forms: drawings, stories, some poems and comics. Most children mention Ukraine when Lady Peace arrives on earth. There is a lot of trouble over there. Generally speaking Holland is peaceful. But sometimes Lady Peace travels to Washington as well, where she fires, lasers or even kills Trump because he is war-mongering. Now and then she appears on a snowwhite cloud with snowwhite cloths, wings and doves around her, in other drawings she has a beautifully coloured dress, but not always. One girl drew her as being clothed in rags, with a bruised face, saying: I am tired, I can do nothing anymore, you’ll have to solve your own problems. War is associated with waste, pollution, loss, poverty, hunger, hatred and strife. Peace is associated with love and friendship, cleanliness, happiness and being good towards one another by giving compliments to each other for instance. One boy sees Lady Peace as sent by God to restore peace on earth. She seeks it by sending four kings to earth. The first three don’t succeed, because they use violence, only the last one starts talking and finally is succesful. Two kids wrote a story in which Peace strews a magic powder over the world, that makes everyone peaceful. Another boy tells how she learns us to accept that we are all different. In yet another story two girls describe how she meets Peter Pan from Neverland, who helps her to restore peace by singing with a beautiful voice. The last contribution I mention here is from a girl who drew a treasure map, how and where to find the treasure of peace.

So, more than 500 years after Erasmus brought her to life, Lady Peace is still not quite satisfied with how the world is treating her!