Knowra In Praise of Folly In Praise of Folly A satirical essay by Desiderius Erasmus, published in 1511, in which Folly praises herself while exposing human vanity, social abuses, and corruption in the Church.
Erasmus : A Dutch Renaissance humanist and theologian whose scholarship and writings shaped European intellectual life. He wrote the essay and gives its satire the authority of a Christian humanist.
Personification : A figure of speech that presents an abstract idea or nonhuman thing as a person. Folly becomes the essay's speaker, able to praise and indict human behavior herself.
Pope Julius II : The head of the Catholic Church from 1503 to 1513, known for political and military ambitions and major artistic patronage. The essay's posthumously published dialogue Julius Excluded from Heaven also attacks his worldly papacy.
Thomas More : An English lawyer, statesman, and humanist author who wrote Utopia and served Henry VIII as lord chancellor. Erasmus composed the work during a visit to More, whose surname supplies the title's pun.
Martin Luther : A German theologian whose challenge to indulgence preaching in 1517 helped initiate the Protestant Reformation. Erasmus's criticism of Church abuses overlapped with reform debates, though he and Luther disputed theology and method.
Renaissance humanism : An intellectual movement that revived classical learning and applied it to education, ethics, and public life. The essay uses humanist learning to examine contemporary institutions and conduct.
Satire : A mode of writing that uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose faults and provoke criticism. The essay's mock praise uses satire to target private vices and public institutions.
Indulgence : In Catholic theology, a remission of temporal punishment for sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. Erasmus's criticism of religious abuses belongs to debates that included the sale and misuse of indulgences.
Basel : A city on the Rhine that became a major center of European printing and humanist scholarship. Johann Froben's Basel press issued the essay's first printed edition in 1511.
Protestant Reformation : A sixteenth-century movement that broke Western Christianity's unity and produced new Protestant churches. The essay appeared amid pressures for reform that intensified into a wider religious rupture.
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