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Let “no unpleasant smell offend the nostrils”: the role of the body in the rhetoric of Erasmus of Rotterdam

From the fundamental body and soul dualism in Plato and from the usual assumption that the mind is superior to the flesh present in Aristotle, Sallust, etc, the taming of the body occupies a significant partof the history of Western pedagogy. The same with Christianism and its new ethics governing sexuality, fasting, etc. In the Renaissance, the absolute confidence on the central role played by man led philosophers to underline their separation from the animalesque world. Besides, at the time when the notion of privacy was invented, while a very rapid urbanization process forced the coexistence of unknown people in shared environments, new social codes emerged, including hygienic ones. From the 16th century on any kind of secretion was forbidden, from spitting or blowing one’s nose on the sleeve to urinating or defecating in public. Body odor, body noises, and excretions of any kind were relegated not only to private life, but to a hidden place where no one would see, hear or smell them. Moreover, the usage of objects like the mirror and perfume, whose market was then greatly expanding, also brought the idea that those who had access to books should also enjoy new signs of elegance and urbanity. In this process, Erasmus plays one of the leading roles. His educational handbook De civilitate morum puerilium, for example, is full of rules for the containment of the body, its gestures, expressions and secretions. At the same time, for Erasmus the outer actions (such as speech, but also looks, that is, the social mask) are not superficial, but rather reveal the individual´s inner self. We will show how Erasmus relied on Quintilian's pedagogical proposals to defend aneducation that would allow the best of each individual to emerge in a conception of natura that is totally human : walking away from the instincts and becoming a civilized person is its goal. Moreover, in Erasmus´s rhetoric, there is an absolute identity between speech and speaker, aesthetics and ethics.Therefore, a body decorum (gestures, clothing, moves, facial expressions, speed of the steps) is a central part of the Erasmian education, along with the nutrition of the intellect brought about through the reading of the Classics. We will comment on texts by Erasmus in which he mentions odor as evidence of something else, both moral and stylistic, such as the “stinky fish” of the Colloques. And, by doing so, we will explore the traits of that Erasmian “rhetoric of heart” in which everything that is exterior displays one´s soul.