エラスムスと人格の自由 : 『キリスト者の君主の教育』を中心として
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概要
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At the beginning of the sixteenth century, many peasants of southwest Germany and Switzerland were subjected to serfdom and deprivation of their personal freedoms, including freedom of movement, freedom to marry and forced (corvee) labor. Inspired by the new theology of the R formation, the common people began demanding the abolition of serfdom, justifying their appeal for redress of grievances by using the law of God as written in the Bible. They also appealed directly to the Reformers for a fair adjudication of their claims, but Martin Luther and his colleagues were not moved by such their zeal. However, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam had already taken a negative view of feudal servitude in his work, Institutio principis Christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince), even before the German Peasant War broke out in 1525. Some historians have argued that the German version of Erasmus' work influenced the ideological development of the peasants who rose up. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the historical background to the work and the characteristic features of the political and social ideas of Erasmus, in order to discover the rationale behind his severe criticism of serfdom, thus answering the question of why he openly expressed views radical enough to overturn the ideology of the traditional feudal order. Erasmus, a cleric who was respected for his spirit of concord and moderation, was interested in the realization of harmony among all of humankind through education based on reason and Christian brotherhood, and envisioned the realization of a peaceful world on Earth. Consequently, he concluded that serfdom was an obstacle to the fulfillment of vision and more fundamentally believed that personal freedom was necessary for salvation of the human soul, since rigid subordination via violence and fear disrupted the free human growth. Erasmus drew many of his ideas from the Greek and Latin classics, adapting them to the conditions of early modern society. That is why his ideas played such an important role in the birth of a new modernity.
- 2008-02-20