Prince and Tyrant

The Education of a Christian Prince was published by the Frozen Press in Basel, in May 1516 by Desideratum Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and was dedicated to Prince Charles on the occasion of his accession to the throne of Aragon and who was later to become Habsburg Emperor Charles V. The book was written only three years after Niccole Machiavelli (1469-1527) had written Prince (1513) though it was not published until 1532. Both of them responded to the political instability of the times but chose totally opposite poles, were from different schools of thought in humanism, pragmatism in composing their treatises on how to groom the ruler or good Christian prince for effective governance. These two thinkers discussed the same thing in strikingly different methods.

The education for the Christian prince is presented through a series of precepts or aphorisms addressed to the ruler. At the beginning of the book following the Greek political philosopher Xenophon, Erasmus proposes that ‘There is something beyond human nature, something wholly divine, in absolute rule over free and willing subjects’. The formal consent of the subject entitles the prince to exercise authority over the people. The subjects will submit themselves to the prince relying upon the prince’s disposition that all his action will be taken only for the communal good. On the other hand, tyranny is ruthlessly the authoritarian rule without the consent of the ruled and is the extreme form of governance against which the entire book is directed at.

Erasmus creates a binary relationship between the prince and the tyrant. The tyrant is the flipside of a prince.

According to Erasmus ‘ancestry’ or lineage is not a criterion to be a prince; he must be elected based on his wisdom, sense of justice, personal restraint, foresight and concern for the public well being. He says that the custom was prevalent among the barbarians and also in his own time. So, if a prince is not elected but born to rule, then proper upbringing will compensate for the supreme qualities of an elected prince. Thus the role of an educator or a teacher becomes important whose duty is to inculcate healthy thoughts and morality in prince from the age of his infancy. A prince can become a tyrant with his sudden access of power , refuse to accept any advise or giving attention to someone who is not worthy of and can be mislead . So the education is must for the prince who is born to rule, to govern justly and benevolently. The educator cultivates morals, ethics and the necessary qualities required for a prince so that the prince’s rule never degenerates into oppression or tyranny. This education ought to start from the birth. Erasmus says “One of the duties of the Christian prince is to educate his heir.” The people may not be able to choose their prince but at least they are in a position to make sure that he will rule justly being trained by great tutor, parents and nurse.

The Prince should not accept common people’s choice without evaluation. Erasmus says that the prince should avoid the degrading opinion and interest of common people as they are never pleased by the best thing. There is no option for a prince to gain wisdom by experience. This sort of wisdom is devastating for the state. So the prince has to depend on theoretical knowledge and as well as on older men for the knowledge the latter had gained by experience. Erasmus comments: “What is a mistake in other people is a crime in the prince.” The prince should be his own critic not paying any heed to the flatterer; on the other hand, a tyrant loves to be bestowed by flatterer. Distinguishing true praise from the flattery is also a princely act. The prince must avoid the charge of tyranny. To do so he must avoid all acts of aggression, and consistently act for the communal good, rather than for personal gain. War always brings misery to a prince’s subjects. When war becomes inevitable, it should be conducted in an economically and expeditiously in a limited way. Regarding taxation, Erasmus concludes that taxation can be done away with only if the prince curbs the expense of his personal lifestyle.

Erasmus notes that Christian theology attributes three principal qualities to God: total power, total wisdom and total goodness. He says that power without goodness is unmitigated tyranny and without wisdom it is destruction not governance. He mentions many tyrants like Palmaris, Mezentius, Dionysius , Nero, Caligula, Domitian, and so on. Mentioning Seneca, Erasmus says that difference between a tyrant and a king is in their action, not in their title. Tyrants only dream to satisfy their own ambitions, they give free citizens a lower status than what the common folk gives to the cattle they buy.

Erasmus repeatedly uses the analogy between the father’s conduct as head of the family and the prince as the head of the state. He goes on to say that no wild beast is more harmful than a tyrant. He adds that history shows no tyrant had been so well defended to stay in power for very long and whenever a state’s governance degenerated into tyranny, it soon meets its downfall. He makes another kind of analogy in which the prince is the heart within the organic body of the body politic. Within this analogy of the state as body politic, warfare and insurrection are said and identified with typical diseases and disintegrations of the body.

He points out that Christ himself distinguished between Christian and the pagan princes. Erasmus explains that ‘dominion’, ‘imperial authority’, ‘kingdom’, ‘majesty’, and ‘power’ are pagan terms. The ‘imperial authority’ of Christians is nothing other than administration, benefaction, and guardianship. In the body of the text, the precedents on which Erasmus bases his arguments are drawn from pagan and Christian sources, political writing of antiquity and also citing from memories. But he does not forget to mention the mastery of Christianity over other religions. For example, he says: “If Aristotle, who was a pagan and a philosopher too (and not as holy as he was learned even by their standards), painted such a picture, how much more is it necessary for one who is Christ’s representative to do so?” Again he says: “If a Hebrew king is instructed to learn a body of the law which provided only sketches and images of justice, how much more is it appropriate for a Christian prince to observe and follow the teaching of gospel?”

Erasmus was a life-long pacifist . He was naturally cautious and non-confrontational . Initially he was sympathetic with the points of Martin Luther’s criticism but soon he distanced himself from the Lutheran movement, though he never spoke out against it in a convincing manner. The Education of a Christian Prince includes a fervent plea for ‘universal peace’ , achieving peace at any cost.

Erasmus creates the image of the ideal ruler who would be contributing to the welfare and betterment of the society. He emphasizes that there is no redeeming features for a tyrant . He shows that prince is the ultimate source of sustenance . His representation of prince is very idealistic. As a political teacher he is very deficient. He is indeed a moral or ethical philosopher and in many cases not so practical as well.