No one is short on advice, though advisers may be short on listeners.
Advice’s effective motif: Be brief.
Desiderius Erasmus understood this. As one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance, he had a profound effect on Europe’s shifting educational values. He retranslated the New Testament from the original Greek for the first time in more than 1,000 years, helping to make the Bible more accessible to laypeople. So great was his influence upon the Reformation that a German monk was noted to have said, “Erasmus posuit ova, Lutherus eduxit pullos”—Erasmus laid the eggs, Luther hatched them.
‘A Handbook on Good Manners for Children’
Erasmus wrote political advice for princes, counting some of Europe’s greatest rulers among his pupils and admirers. As he aged, though, he felt it wasn’t enough to instruct leaders. He complained that people were losing their manners—the eternal opinion, probably, of every older generation. In 1530, he wrote “A Handbook on Good Manners for Children” to direct his pen at young people. As Eleanor Merchant writes in her recent translation (Preface Publishing, 2008), while previous discussions on manners were mixed into books about other subjects, Erasmus’s treatise was “the first book in western literature” to focus exclusively on “the question of how to behave in society.”It was important, Erasmus said, to inculcate good values at a young age—a novel idea at the time. At the core of the book’s educational program, Merchant explains, is Erasmus’s idea of “nobilitas,” the virtue of goodness. Nobilitas was attained by reading texts that transmitted ancient wisdom, conversing about them, and practicing the moral behaviors they described. As he wrote, “No one can choose their own parents, or where they come from, but everyone can shape their own character and behavior.”
The book opens with chapters on bodily habits, then moves to common social situations. Manners begin with the eyes: “The cultivated mind of a child is most evident from his expression.” Quick darting and eye-rolling are signs of mental instability. Glancing sideways indicates mischief. Winking at people is an inappropriate gesture best left “to tuna fish.” The forehead should be relaxed, not waggling “like a hedgehog.” The key to a controlled expression is eyes that are “steady, respectful, and well-set,” reflecting an “amicable mind.”
Humorous comparisons to animals abound when Erasmus is describing poor manners. Speaking with a nasal tone is the practice of “elephants.” Children who shake their head to ruffle their hair are like “frolicking horses.” Children who gulp down food are “storks.” All these metaphors express Erasmus’s lifelong hatred of barbarism. Rude, extravagant, and violent behaviors all detract from nobilitas.
In his chapter on the nose, we learn that the predecessor to “bless you” was to say “Christ help you” when others sneeze. To reinforce this divine assistance, Erasmus suggests that children raise their cap when hearing the expression said to another person.
Witty counsel abounds in every section. Regarding the face, he says, “The face should express cheerfulness, without the mouth disfiguring it nor expressing a lax mind.”
On posture, “Your shoulders should be balanced evenly, not like sail-yards, where one is raised and the other lowered.”
In church, “Make sure your eyes remain fixed on the preacher, and your ears likewise attend to him, whilst your mind concentrates on him with every reverence, as if you’re listening not to a man, but to God speaking to you through the mouth of a man.”
While playing, “Someone who concedes a game with good humor gains more honor than one who always insists on winning.”
More than a quarter of the book is devoted to table manners, that most complex of social rituals. How should you respond if offered a seat of honor at dinner? Politely decline, Erasmus says—children shouldn’t sit at the head of the table. But if the host keeps insisting, modestly accept so as to appear neither obstinate nor proud.
There are many funny tips: Do you throw scraps to dogs under the table? If so, you’re little better than a dog yourself. Some instructions are also surprisingly subtle. What if someone raises their cup to you, but toasts you in a teasing way that doesn’t express genuine praise? Erasmus’s advice is to respond by raising the cup to your lips, “sipping a little and giving the impression of drinking” without really doing so. In this way, he indicates, you can avoid the awkwardness that would follow from not accepting the toast while preserving your honor at the same time.
Nobility Over Barbarism
The “Handbook” was so influential, spawning so many imitators and variations, that it became something of a palimpsest for modern society: Few alive know anything about the original, 500-year-old text, but its traces are everywhere apparent underneath the cultural surface. Contemporary people have absorbed its principles without knowing it.This influence wasn’t apparent to the book’s author. Once Europe’s most celebrated living writer, Erasmus died hated and despised only a few years after the “Handbook” was written. As it turns out, his opinion that Europeans were becoming more ill-mannered wasn’t just an old man’s idle grievance.
Toward the end of his life, the religious divisions the Reformation had unleashed exploded into violence and bloodshed—the very barbarism Erasmus so loathed. His own nuanced scholarship had recognized valid points in Luther’s criticisms of the Catholic Church, while advocating for unified reform rather than sectarianism. For his neutrality, he was denounced on both sides: Rome declared him a heretic, while the Lutherans saw him as a traitor to the protestant cause. In the same year that he wrote the “Handbook,” his powerful protectors abandoned him. His intellectual disciples were persecuted, his French translator burned at the stake. He died feeling he had failed in his life purpose of championing reasonableness, civility, and culture.
