Where: KNAW Trippenhuis – Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam
When: 14 November 2025, 16:00 – 17:30
This lecture will explore Erasmus’ contribution to virtue politics in The Education of a Christian Prince, in particular its relationship to the work of the premier theorist of humanist virtue politics, Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494).
The fourteenth century experienced a wide-ranging collapse of political, educational, and religious authority in Christendom, which led to the emergence of a political reform movement described Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (2019). The humanist movement, the chief vehicle of virtue politics, taught that the reform of political authority depended on the recovery of antiquity, above all the revival of the virtues, spirituality, and practical wisdom of the ancients. Erasmus was a key figure in bringing this Italian tradition of politics to Northern Europe. This lecture will explore Erasmus’ contribution to virtue politics in ‘The Education of a Christian Prince’, in particular its relationship to the work of the premier theorist of humanist virtue politics, Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494).
About James Hankins
James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University and was until 2025 the founding General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library (102 volumes, Harvard University Press). He is the author, editor, or translator of some 30 books and some 200 articles on Renaissance philosophy, humanism, and political thought.
His Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University in 2019 and was named a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the Year. Hankins is a Corresponding Member of the British Academy and was the recipient in 2024 of its Serena Medal for Italian History. He was awarded the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award by the Renaissance Society of America in 2012. A second monograph on virtue politics, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena, was published by Harvard University Press in 2023. He is most recently the author of The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, vol. 1, with Encounter Books (2025).