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Updated: May 8, 2025
Like other great teachers he wrote nothing, and we are indebted to his grateful pupil Arrian for what we have of Epictetus' discourses. Arrian wrote eight books of the discourses of Epictetus, of which only four remain and some fragments. We have also from Arrian's hand the small Enchiridion or Manual of the chief precepts of Epictetus.
'Now they have begun to nibble at the Enchiridion also, that used to be so popular with divines, Erasmus writes in 1526. For the rest it was only two passages to which the orthodox critics objected. I. p. 373; Renaudet, Préréforme 428. So the appellation had been in his mind for some time. Miles with Erasmus has no longer the meaning of 'knight' which it had in medieval Latin.
He may have also intended the book for his son Commodus, who however had no taste for his father's philosophy. The last reflection of the Stoic philosophy that I have observed is in Simplicius' Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. Simplicius was not a Christian, and such a man was not likely to be converted at a time when Christianity was grossly corrupted.
The best-known popular treatise of Pomponius was his Enchiridion, or Manual of the Law of Nations, containing a sketch of the history of Roman law and jurisprudence until the time of Julian. The study of grammar and rhetoric was pursued with much industry, but by persons of inferior mark.
Meanwhile, with the growth of Erasmus's fame, his earlier writings, too, had risen in the public estimation. The great success of the Enchiridion militis christiani had begun about 1515, when the times were much riper for it than eleven years before. 'The Moria is embraced as the highest wisdom, writes John Watson to him in 1516.
He explained to him his vague projects of action. Yarza listened attentively, and said: "Perhaps it will appear foolish to you, but I am going to give you a book I wrote, which I should like you to read. It's called Enchiridion Sapientiae. In my youth I was something of a Latinist. In these pages, less than a hundred, I have gathered my observations about the financial and political world.
'Both from Hungary and Bohemia' he says in 1518 'bishops and men of position write to thank me for my New Testament. Apart from the learned world there were others, too, who must have known him; for a Bohemian translation had just appeared of the new preface to his Enchiridion, a preface in which he had written with an almost Lutheran freedom about abuses in the Church, and had extolled the life of simple Christianity.
A great deal has been made by a Catholic critic of the fact that the book which checked Ignatius Loyola's "devotional emotions" was not Erasmus's Greek Testament, but his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, Christian Soldier's Manual. This mistake was unduly favourable to the saint. Froude did not mean to imply that it was the actual words of Scripture which had this effect upon Ignatius.
High or Low it was all the same to him. What excited his curiosity most was the Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus in Latin of course, and that he could easily read but almost equally exciting was a Greek and Latin vocabulary; or again, a very thin book in which he recognised the New Testament in the Vulgate.
"The sick man is not to be pitied when he has his cure in his sleeve" that is where they used to carry their books. One constant comparison is of books to friends. This is perhaps best worked out in one of the Epistles of Erasmus, which the "Enchiridion" omits: "You want to know what I am doing. I devote myself to my friends, with whom I enjoy the most delightful intercourse.
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