No Peace Among Scholars

Erasmus, Complaint of Peace VI (tr. Betty Radice, with her notes): My hopes have been dashed so often; where then shall poor Peace go now? Well, princes are powerful rather than learned, and moved more by their desires than by true rational judgment. I shall seek refuge in the company of scholars, for good learning makes men, philosophy makes superior men, theology makes holy men. Surely I shall be allowed to settle down amongst them after all my wanderings. But woe is me! Here too there is warfare, another kind and not so bloody, but just as insane. Scholar argues with scholar, and, apparently, factual truth is altered by a change of place; some dogmas don't cross the sea or climb over the Alps or swim the Rhine, and indeed, in the same seat of learning logicians war with rhetoricians and theologians argue with lawyers. Even in the same profession, Scotist battles with Thomist, Nominalist with Realist, Platonist with Peripatetic,24 so fiercely that there is no agreement amongst them…