The Education of Children by Desiderius Erasmus

 Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger (1523)

In keeping with my desire to have texts (especially older texts) freely available, I have recently undertaken a modernization of an Early Modern English text found on Project Gutenberg.  This work is The Education of Children by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), a Catholic priest, theologian, social critic (and ecclesiastical critic, yet he remained in union with Rome), and humanist: his most famous work is The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium).  The Education of Children is not a theological or overtly Catholic work, instead being more of a long essay on Erasmus' personal opinion of the topic.  Erasmus advocates early education of children, even from infancy, decrying those who think children cannot handle much knowledge.  Among his views, he seems to advocate homeschooling or private tutoring over public schooling, and he encourages using play (such as archery) to teach.  He also sharply criticizes overly-harsh discipline and corporal punishment, instead suggesting a teaching style more akin to St. John Bosco: "Get the children to love you, and they'll follow you anywhere."

This version of the text is a modernized form of an English translation of Erasmus' original Latin by Richard Sherry (1506-1555), an English schoolteacher (at Magdalen College, Oxford), author, and translator, whose other translated works include St. Basil the Great's Letter to St. Gregory Nazianzus.  This translation was in Early Modern English, thus it is difficult to read today.  For that reason, I decided to modernize the text to make it more easily accessible (details of my modernization can be found in the "Modernizer's Note" in the file).  As an example of the vast differences in language, here is a sentence from §1, both in Sherry's English and in mine.

"Beside this some thinges be necessary to be knowẽ whẽ we be sũwhat elder, which by a certẽ peculier readines of nature, yͤ  tender age perceiueth both much more quickly, & also more esily thẽ doth yͤ elder, as yͤ first beginnings of letters, yͤ knowledge of tõges, tales & fabels of poetes."  [The e's above the y's are supposed to be superscript e's, but I cannot seem to get the processing to work.]

"Beside this some things be necessary to be known when we be somewhat elder, which by a certain peculiar readiness of nature, the tender age perceiveth both much more quickly, & also more easily than doth the elder, as the first beginnings of letters, the knowledge of tongues, tales & fables of poets."

I realize that my work is probably far from perfect, so if you find any errors, please do not hesitate to contact me (and please include the section number where the error is located).  I thank you in advance for reading this, and God Bless.

The Education of Children

De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii -- Liberi I-II

 A depiction of the marriage of Philology and Mercury from a manuscript at Oxford

 Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (more commonly known as Martianus Capella) was a pagan writer of the fifth century whose book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury) was a basis for the creation of a liberal arts education.  This work is encyclopedic, dealing with the seven liberal arts individually in information-packed books within a complex, allegorical frame story.  De Nuptiis is one of the most important texts in the history of education, and, since my goal is to be an educator, I am very interested in it.  The sad thing is, though this work was incredibly popular from the 5th to the 12th centuries, it is little-known now and thus difficult to find.  I am a fan of making knowledge easily and widely available (hence why I volunteer at Project Gutenberg through their Distributed Proofreaders project, helping to digitize out-of-copyright books into free e-books), and, while I would like to make a free English translation of this work, I do not know enough Latin to be able to do so.  What I can do, at the very least, is make the original Latin text easily available.

The Microsoft Word file embedded below is a transcription of the original Latin text (with its occasional Greek words as well) of the first two Books of De Nuptiis.  The edition I used is an 1836 edition with a copious running commentary (which I did not transcribe) edited by Ulricus Fridericus Kopp, found as a scan at The Internet Archive.  I hope someone finds this text of use.  If there is desire for it, I could also work on finding a way to make the text into an e-book as well.  I will post the other books of De Nuptiis in the same fashion once I have transcribed them.  If you find any errors, please let me know so that I can correct the file.  Once again, I hope someone finds this text useful, and thank you for reading.  God Bless.

Martianus Capella -- De Nuptiis -- Liberi I-II