More than a century before Grotius wrote his famous work on international law, his countryman Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam laid the foundations for the modern critique of war. In several writings, especially those published in the period 1515- 1517, the “prince of humanists”brilliantly and devastatingly condemned war not only on Christian but also on secular/rational grounds. His graphic depiction of the miseries of war, together with his impassionate plea for its avoidance, remains unparalleled. Erasmus argued as a moralist and educator rather than as a political theorist or statesman. If any single individual in the modern world can be credited with“ the invention of peace,”the honour belongs to Erasmus rather than Kant whose essay on perpetual peace was published nearly three centuries later.

Erasmus
  I. Introduction
  II. “The Invention of Peace”
  III. “War is sweet to those who do not know it”(1515)
  IV. “The Education of a Christian Prince”(1516)
  V. “Julius II excluded from heaven”(1517)
  VI. “The Complaint of Peace”(1517)
  VII. Conclusion

• Peter van den Dungen(Honorary Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford)