How Praise of Folly drew on Ecclesiastes
A documented line of influence: Erasmus demonstrably engaged Solomon’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Ecclesiastes
Solomon · c. 250 BCE
BibleThe influenced
Praise of Folly
Erasmus · 1511
RenaissanceRelevance
7/10
On Praise of Folly’s page
- Folly's whole argument leans on Solomon — she cites "the number of fools is infinite" (Vulgate Eccl. 1:15) to claim Scripture itself confesses that folly rules
- Erasmus is reading Ecclesiastes against the grain: the somber book of "vanity of vanities" becomes Folly's favorite scriptural proof
- Read Solomon first and you'll catch the joke — Folly enlists the Bible's own wisdom to argue even its wisest king was a fool
On Ecclesiastes’s page
- Erasmus made Ecclesiastes his chief witness — the one book of Scripture Folly can call to the stand
- Folly opens her case for universal foolishness by quoting Solomon directly, including the Vulgate tag "stultorum infinitus est numerus" — "the number of fools is infinite"
- The audacity is the point: she turns the Bible's own wisdom literature into testimony that folly rules the world, and that even King Solomon was a fool