Influence
It is difficult to gauge exactly how influential the Ecclesiastes was in the reform of preaching. It was certainly a popular text, going through four editions in the year between its first publishing and the death of Erasmus in 1536. Erasmus proposed in the Ecclesiastes that the Church institute a competence training program. Bishops would train priests in the arts of rhetoric, weeding out the poor speakers and instilling the proper tools and traits needed to speak effectively. Erasmus was not the only figure at the time to voice similar concerns, but the Council of Trent did refer to the Ecclesiastes while implementing reforms. The Ecclesiastes was never finished.
Read more about this topic: Ecclesiastes Of Erasmus
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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“... even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat from the hands of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O, Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of conscience!”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1907)