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Erasmus's Use Of Rhetoric In Sacrifice

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During the Renaissance, there were seven subjects/skills that were considered essential for a free person to know, known as the liberal arts. Among those seven is the art of persuasive speaking and writing called rhetoric. Rhetoric became increasingly popular during this period and this could be seen through a lot of Renaissance works such as in “Letters of Catherine of Siena”, “Letters of Petrarch”, and “Erasmus, Julius Excluded from Heaven.” The three works all have one thing in common; it utilizes the art of persuasion. However, due to the fact that the authors have different motives and backgrounds, they ended up using different strategies to persuade their audiences. In “Letters of Catherine of Siena”, Catherine resorted to using the …show more content…

He could not use the same technique as Catherine because, like Petrarch, he had a different motive then her. While her purpose was to better the Catholic church, Erasmus’s purpose was to expose the wrongdoings of the church. Using the scare tactic in this situation would have not been appropriate because instilling fear only works when you want someone to perform a certain action and by showing them the consequences of not doing in they will be persuaded into doing it. However, in Erasmus’s case, he wants to persuade his audience into believing the church is corrupt. He also couldn’t rely on Petrarch’s technique because although it would’ve been persuasive, it was also risky. The Pope was a very influential and powerful figure, therefore by explicitly exposing the him to the public, Erasmus could’ve been severely punished. However, by using satire, his crime will be less severe and yet he could still get his point across the audience. In his pamphlet, Erasmus used mostly humor to criticizes Pope Julius II. For example, on page four, Erasmus pointed out that the Pope had the “belch and stink like a man just come from a drunken debauch and fresh from the a fit of vomiting,” (Erasmus, Julius Excluded From Heaven, pg. 4). Through this, you can see that the tone of the dialogue is very light and humorous. This strategy is the most effective in Erasmus’s case because he is trying to reach out to a broader audience than Petrarch and Catherine, therefore by making the tone less serious, it can attract more attention. If Erasmus had made it too political then people would’ve been less compelled to read it because the content would’ve dry and not as interesting. The dialogue had a lot of witty comments in it such as when Genius exclaimed, “Only listen to the bragging of the beast!” as a response to Julius talking about how he “[brought] goodly sums into the papal

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