ABSTRACT

The ‘Arms versus Letters’ debate, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries attained the status of a learned catchphrase, grew out of a classical Latin dialectic between the merits of arms and laws, emblematic of which is the Ciceronian epigram ‘cedant arma togae’ (‘let arms yield to the gown’ or perhaps, ‘let violence yield to peace’), and also out of a conventional opposition of fortitudo [strength] and sapientia [wisdom]. In the course of the Renaissance, it finds voice in a whole host of different literary genres – poems, novels and histories, military, legal, political, literary and educational treatises, courtesy books, epitaphs, eulogies, dedications and emblem books – attracting along the way some of the best minds including Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning) and Montaigne (Essais). 1 Treatises devoted exclusively to the subject range from the short, almost light-hearted Del paragone dell’arme e delle lettere by Stefano Guazzo to the 849 pages of Francisco Nuñez de Velasco’s Diálogos de contención entre la milicia y la ciencia.