Monday, September 26, 2005

Emeric Crucé

In her, "A Brief History of the Quest for Peace: Pacifism and Just War Theory in Europe from the 16th to the 20th Centuries," Grace G. Roosevelt (d. 1994), granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, Rousseau scholar, and former Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Humanities in the General Studies Program at New York University, divides the European peace movement into two branches: first, there is the pacifist branch (which, she says, stems from Erasmus, without mentioning the Anabaptists); and second, there is the movement for international law (which, she claims, evolved out of just war theory).
After Erasmus, she mentions Emeric Crucé, a French monk who taught in Paris and authored a treatise on universal peace entitled The New Cyneas: Discourse on Opportunities and Means for Establishing a General Peace and Freedom of Trade Throughout the World, which was published in 1623 with a second edition in 1624. The plan he presented for peace was unprecedented because it sought to include non-Christians in world governance: “Crucé's plan aimed to include not only European rulers but the Emperor of the Turks, the Jews, the Kings of Persia and China, the Grand Duke of Moscovy (Russia) and monarchs from India and Africa.” He was not an absolute pacifist, in that he held that the order imposed by his world government should be backed with armed force. More detail can be found on
Sanderson Beck’s site, where a synopsis of Crucé's work finishes as follows: “Crucé concluded with a description of the horrors of war that are caused by the sins of arrogance and cruelty. With little provocation thousands of men clash with each other, resulting in slaughter, dismemberment, and misery. Then innocent people are massacred, women violated, and temples profaned; famine and pestilence follow. Crucé exhorted us to renounce arrogance and cruelty so that wars will cease.”

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