Erasmus of Rotterdam: Advocate of a New Christianity 9781442665712

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
One. Introduction
Part One. Erasmus’s Early Development
Two. Yearning for the “Golden Age”
Three. Historical Awareness
Four. Neoplatonism
Five. Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti
Fix. The Praise of Folly
Part Two. The Exegetical Theologian
Seven. The New Testament Scholar
Eight. The Paraphrast
Nine. How the Trinity Is Known
Ten. On the Doctrine of Creation
Eleven. On the Doctrine of God
Twelve. On the Doctrine of Justification
Thirteen. Handling of Doctrine
Part Three. In Conflict with the Church Reformers
Fourteen The Argument with Luther
Fifteen. Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel
Part Four. Erasmus’s Reform Ideas
Sixteen. The Question of Law
Seventeen. The Question of Peace
Eighteen. Erasmus’s Views on Women
Nineteen. Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Erasmus’s Works
Index of Scriptural Passages
General Index

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ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM Advocate of a New Christianity

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Erasmus of Rotterdam Advocate of a New Christianity

CHRISTINE CHRIST-VON WEDEL

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2013 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com ISBN 978-1-4426-4508-0

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer paper with vegetable-based inks. Erasmus Studies

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Christ-von Wedel, Christine Erasmus of Rotterdam : advocate of a new Christianity / Christine Christ-von Wedel. (Erasmus studies) Translation of: Erasmus von Rotterdam. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4426-4508-0 1. Erasmus, Desiderius, d. 1536. I. Title. II. Series: Erasmus studies B785.E64C47 2013

199’.492

C2012-908148-5

University of Toronto press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments 1

Introduction

ix 3

part one / erasmus’s early development 2

Yearning for the “Golden Age” Early Poems and Letters in the Monastery

19

3

Historical Awareness Antibarbari, Letter to Thomas Grey, Three Poems from 1499, Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum, Encomium matrimonii

25

4

Neoplatonism Enchiridion / Letters

45

5

Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti

55

The Praise of Folly

61

6

part two / the exegetical theologian 7

The New Testament Scholar Novum instrumentum / Methodus / Letters

79

vi Contents

8

The Paraphrast Paraphrases of the Gospels

9

How the Trinity Is Known Paraphrases and Annotations

111

1

On the Doctrine of Creation Paraphrase of John / Colloquia Puerpera, Problema, and Amicitia

125

11

On the Doctrine of God The Paraphrase of John’s Prologue

133

12

On the Doctrine of Justification Annotations and Paraphrases on Romans and Galatians

145

13

Handling of Doctrine The Explanation of the Apostles’ Creed

155

97

part three / in conflict with the church reformers 14

The Argument with Luther Letters / De libero arbitrio / Interpretations of Romans 9

167

15

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel Letters / Advice for the Council of Basel / Contra Pseudevangelicos

183

part four / erasmus’s reform ideas 16

The Question of Law 203 Annotation on I Corinthians 7:39 / Institutio matrimonii / Epistola de interdictu carnium / Letters / Epistola de delectu ciborum scholia / Responsio ad Phimostomum de divortio

17

The Question of Peace Institutio principis christiani / Querela pacis / Dulce bellum inexpertis / Consultatio de bello Turcico / Declarationes ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis

225

Contents vii

18

Erasmus’s Views on Women Christiani matrimonii institutio / De vidua christiana

237

19

Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity Purgatio / Ecclesiastes / Letters

251

Abbreviations

261

Notes

263

Bibliography

341

Index of Erasmus’s Works

361

Index of Scriptural Passages

363

General Index

367

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Acknowledgments

This is a revised and enlarged translation of my book Erasmus von Rotterdam: Anwalt eines neuzeitlichen Christentums, which was originally published in 2003 with LIT press in Münster, Germany. Following an Erasmus panel at the 2005 Renaissance Society of America conference held in Cambridge (UK), Hilmar Pabel suggested that I consider translating it into English. Intrigued by the possibility of revising and expanding the book to include my recent research on Erasmus’s sources and on the Reformers’ reception of his work (much of it already published in German in several omnibus volumes or journals), and encouraged by other colleagues, I began this project, which has taken the better part of two years to bring to completion. Many thanks are due first and foremost to Erika Rummel, who not only arranged my first contact with Ron Schoeffel at the University of Toronto Press, but whose constant and liberal support has advanced this project in all respects. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to Angela Roberts for her extensive assistance in copy-editing this English translation and in the general preparation of the manuscript for publication, which would have been impossible without a generous grant from the Freie Akademische Gesellschaft in Basel. I would also like to extend my thanks to the anonymous readers of UTP, who made many helpful hints and suggestions, and to Judith Williams for her careful copyediting, and to the departments of Handschriften und alte Drucke at the University of Basel Library and the Central Library of Zurich. Together with their friendly and helpful staff, the directors of these two important research institutions, Ueli Dill and Urs B. Leu respectively, did everything in their power to assist me as I sifted through their extensive sixteenth-century holdings.

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ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM Advocate of a New Christianity

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one

Introduction

Erasmus lives on today as a symbol of ideas that are intrinsic not only to modern concepts of education but also to the notion of a supranational European culture, to pacifism, to child-appropriate pedagogy, and to the merging of classical antiquity with Christianity. Schools are named after him, as is the famous inter-European education and training program, and many of his works – among them his most celebrated satire, The Praise of Folly – can now be read on the internet in full. Since 1969 specialists in Amsterdam have examined and edited his works anew and have compiled scores of critically detailed notes. In the Toronto-based project initiated by Ron Schoeffel, scholars continue to translate Erasmus’s Opera omnia for publication into English. Although these impressive editions are not yet completed, they have made considerable progress; indeed, they offer not only the best conditions for the continued study of Erasmus’s opus but their introductions and notes also contain many important new details and references. In addition, the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society organizes periodic lectures and sponsors an annual journal dedicated solely to encouraging new developments in Erasmus studies. In the twentieth century, particularly the years following the fivehundred-year jubilee of Erasmus’s birthday celebrated in the 1960s, Erasmian scholarship has focused on one previously neglected aspect of his thinking – his theology and praxis pietatis or piety. The ecumenical movement may claim rightfully to have rediscovered Erasmus as a theologian. Like the Reformers, he fought against the veneration of images (though he did not seek to abolish them), against indulgences, against simony, and against the general secularization of the church. He also proposed a liberalization of monastic vows and the rules for

4 Erasmus of Ro erdam

Lent, and he petitioned for an approval of divorce as well as for the authorization of priests’ marriage. He called for an evangelical and Scripture-based preaching, for a proper instruction in the Eucharist, and for a catechesis that included solemn confirmation of the baptismal promise. But he also sought to establish these changes and reforms at a measured and deliberate pace. Erasmus argued that practices in his own time, influenced – in his opinion – by centuries of ingrained error and habit, must be abandoned very slowly and carefully, “so that those who have been persuaded may desist voluntarily.”1 Taking the apostles (who did not immediately condemn the old Hebrew practices of sacrifice and circumcision in favour of their new rites) as his example, Erasmus sought to establish reforms not in opposition to but together with the church hierarchy. A schism was out of the question for Erasmus, and the unity of the church of Jesus Christ remained sacrosanct; he remained faithful to the Roman church until his death in 1536. Although he was branded a heretic in his lifetime both by the Roman Catholic strongholds in Paris, Cologne, and Louvain and by exponents of the new Protestant university in Wittenberg, by the last third of the twentieth century Erasmus was almost universally viewed as an exemplary representative and messenger of a free and open-minded Christianity founded on Scripture. Indeed, he continues to represent the ideals of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism alike and to stand for a harmonious, tolerant Christendom marked by a hopeful trust in God. This shift in perception has advanced the scholarship on Erasmus enormously, yet it has brought its own dangers. Just as Erasmus’s contemporaries distorted his theology to fit their counter-image of him as heretic, twentieth-century scholars have likewise misrepresented it as a direct precursor of modern Christian thought. Various aspects of Roland H. Bainton’s 1969 book Erasmus of Christendom, for example, evoke some of the best elements of American Protestantism at that time. Likewise, Léon Halkin’s 1987 book titled Erasme parmi nous recalls, in many regards, the liberal Catholic theology that became popular after the second Vatican Council. In making this point I am not seeking to diminish the accomplishments of these outstanding Erasmus scholars; rather, I wish to draw the attention of readers to my own possible biases. Modern research on Erasmus’s theological thinking has brought with it a wider awareness of Erasmus as a theologian, and yet, paradoxically, his status as theologian continues to be a disputed point. His exegetical work, in which he used philological methods to critically analyse the Bible, is accorded particular merit among scholars. In the original Greek texts and the early Latin translations that were available

Introduction 5

to him, he compared variants and sought the best or most accurate reading. The fruit of this work is his bilingual New Testament, where his annotations make abundant references to definitions of terms and to the tradition of commentaries, particularly those made by the Church Fathers. With these annotations he offered later generations of theologians a vetted text that could serve as a basis for their continuing theological work. This new philological approach stood in stark contrast to the dialectical method of Scholasticism, which weighed arguments for and against a hypothesis in order to arrive at the logical and incontestable conclusions on which the Scholastics built their enormous, dogmatic systems. Erasmus questioned the processes of Scholasticism, and characterized them as unnatural and unconducive to true piety. He continually harked back to the works of the Church Fathers, which he made more accessible in new annotated editions. With this project Erasmus supported a theology that consistently oriented itself towards Holy Scripture and directly addressed the lives of Christians without detouring into systematic dogma. Modern scholarship often takes a special interest in the sources cited by Erasmus, and there are many good monographs written on his Patristic sources.2 However, there is still much work to be done on the issue of Scholasticism’s impact on Erasmus as a theologian and thinker. Although it is generally accepted that despite his declared hostility towards the movement3 Erasmus often drew on Scholasticism, the question of whether or not the devotio moderna had a specific impact on him is still a matter of debate. Until now, modern scholarship has not concerned itself with the other possible medieval sources used by Erasmus. Much more is known about the impact of classical philosophy on his work and life.4 In fact, the enormous impact of classical rhetoric on Erasmus has been well researched, and the great works dedicated to the subject have strongly influenced our understanding of Erasmus today.5 Although there has already been a great deal of research conducted on the impact of Lorenzo Valla and the Italian Neoplatonists on Erasmus, further studies on the influence of Plato and the Stoics would also be helpful.6 In a nutshell, the large body of work on Erasmus’s theology attributes the following ideas to him: Christ, the word of God made human, is still at work in the biblical word. According to Erasmus, it was the task of the interpreter to make this word once again audible and potent. In order to do this the successful exegete must first have a solid understanding of the Bible text, and a thorough knowledge of the biblical languages and the historical circumstances of the text was the best

6 Erasmus of Ro erdam

foundation for this. Erasmus believed that, like classical orators, Christian preachers must accommodate their audiences. They must teach, admonish, and convince and are best able to do so when they imitate the classical orator and make use of classical culture as a whole. To this end theologians should also be fluent in classical poets, philosophers, and historians, particularly Cicero and Plutarch. Erasmus never openly contradicted ecclesiastical dogma (including the doctrine of the sacraments), but he often approached dogmatic problems with what his critics called levity. But for Erasmus everything had two sides, just as the cross of Christ represents for Christians a simultaneous abasement and exaltation of their lord: God is almighty, yet he gives humans the freedom to decide against him; human beings cannot comprehend God, yet the love of God is their highest duty; the church is corrupt, yet it is also the beloved and immaculate bride of God: such contradictions did not bother Erasmus and he did not attempt to resolve them. The theology of Erasmus is markedly Christocentric; it includes the doctrine of satisfaction yet emphasizes Christ as teacher and exemplar. Thus, the Gospel affects its reader inwardly and the reader emerges renewed, ideally disdaining the world and living increasingly for Christ. Just as the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were eventually abandoned after the coming of Christ, external ceremonies, sacrifices, and rites have no place in Erasmian piety. For Erasmus, sanctification was an inner act that affected external life, changing individuals and Christian society for the better and bringing about the reforms that he sought. Today there is consensus among Erasmus scholars on this issue. For the purposes of this study this consensus will be the foundation on which I shall build my research. In light of these insights this study asks how it was possible that Erasmus’s rather “innocent” theology could divide hearts and minds so strongly in his own time. For his friends he was the renovator of a pure theology, even a saint.8 High ecclesiastical dignitaries received Erasmus’s satirical remarks with good humour and supported him during his lifetime, while others branded him a heretic. Not surprisingly, the Scholastics of Paris, Cologne, and Louvain numbered among his fiercest opponents, but his detractors also included humanist scholars like Stunica, a highly educated collaborator on the Complutensian Polyglot Bible who, like Erasmus, also sought a philologically purified Bible text. The opposition of such scholars indicates that it was not merely Erasmus’s philological method that troubled his contemporaries, nor was it his reform proposals or his pointed criticism of Scholasticism that

Introduction 

caused such an intense reaction. The Reformers also distanced themselves from Scholasticism and adopted his philological method without exception; in doing so they established much more drastic reforms than Erasmus had ever advocated. Thus, when certain Reformers accused Erasmus of not going far enough – of being a coward – this was, from their point of view, a legitimate criticism. Yet many Reformers accused him of much worse: for some Erasmus was no less than a heretic. These differing evaluations of Erasmus could not have been due to the lack of a systematic approach in his theology. Otherwise Melanchthon, the distinguished author of systematic dogma, would have disapproved of Erasmus on principle. But Melanchthon was deeply reluctant to distance himself from Erasmus, and towards the end of his life he reconciled himself once more to the humanist’s work. Melanchthon demonstrated this reconciliation in no less remarkable a place than the second volume of Luther’s Latin works, which he published soon after the latter’s death. In it he suggested that Erasmus had taken offence only at Luther’s ferocity and that, in principle, the two were in agreement.9 Luther, however, saw the “diabolum incarnatum [the devil incarnate]” in Erasmus.10 This outrageous epithet dates from a letter written in the year 1534 when Erasmus was already an old man and Luther was fifty. The long letter is full of charges made against Erasmus, most of which are in line with what others had already said against him, including the charge that he was an untrustworthy scoffer who confused doctrine and lacked a firm point of view.11 According to Luther, Erasmus was little more than an Arian who saw Christ only as a moral exemplar.12 Luther’s other defamations fall within the range of his usual polemical rhetoric. Luther must have had some special reason for his use of the specific invective “diabolum incarnatum.” Indeed, he explains his motives clearly enough by quoting the words that formed part of a longer phrase in Erasmus’s 1523 introduction to his edition of Hilary of Poitiers: “we dare to call the Holy Spirit true God, proceeding from the Father and the Son, which the ancients did not dare to do.” Although Luther left out the original context for these words – which Alberto Pio, a sharpeyed Roman Catholic opponent, had already found opportunity to censure – it deserves greater attention.13 In his introduction Erasmus dealt with the assertions made by Hilary that were already considered questionable by many of his contemporaries. He pointed out that copyists softened or even cut out many of Hilary’s supposed errors14 and suggested that these copyists apparently

8 Erasmus of Ro erdam

sought to prevent anyone “from thinking that there are any errors in the works of the ancients.” But Erasmus objected to this practice, declaring, “God has willed that the happy state of freedom from error be reserved for the sacred books alone.”15 Erasmus was convinced that, because all men err, even the best theologians must be read critically and with caution. He asserted that their words had the right to be left intact just as the letters of Paul are left intact, and even went so far as to suggest that there might be passages that could be misunderstood in Paul.16 For his own part, Erasmus saw no reason to correct Hilary. He made allowances for the errors of the old scholars in questions of dogma because they did not have a long history of doctrinal expositions to draw upon.1 Indeed, they initiated such debates for future theologians. As Erasmus declared: Once faith was more a matter of a way of life than of a profession of articles. Soon necessity inspired the imposition of articles, but these were few, and apostolic in their moderation. Then the wickedness of the heretics made for a more precise examination of the sacred books, and intransigence necessitated the definition of certain matters by the authority of synods.18

For Erasmus this was not an entirely positive development; it could also be potentially dangerous and ruinous: “Finally faith began to reside in the written word rather than in the soul, and there were almost as many faiths as men.” This development led to Sophistic controversies among the Scholastics and to forced confessions of faith.19 Hilary of Poitiers was at the beginning of this development; in his time he courageously defended the divinity of the Son against the Arians, although not that of the Holy Ghost.20 Erasmus explained this omission: The reason was either that he thought at that time it was more important to defend the Son, whose human nature made it more difficult to win assent to the divinity of him who was also human – and the Arians were trying to rob him of divinity, whereas the question about the Holy Spirit had not yet been raised – or that it was the scrupulous concern of the ancients that, although they worshipped God devoutly, they nevertheless did not dare to make any pronouncements about him which were not explicitly set forth in the sacred books.21

Erasmus did not contest the fact that the orthodox Fathers called the Holy Spirit co-equal with God; he acknowledged that the doctrine

Introduction 9

of the Trinity could be deduced from the New Testament.22 He only wanted to demonstrate how reluctant the old theologians were to pronounce anything about God that the Holy Scripture did not explicitly teach. [We] rushed to such extremes of boldness that we have no scruples about dictating to the Son how he ought to have honoured his mother. We dare to call the Holy Spirit true God, proceeding from the Father and the Son, which the ancients did not dare to do, but on the other hand we have no scruples about driving him repeatedly out of the temple of our soul by our evil deeds, just as if it were our belief that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than a meaningless name.23

From a modern point of view Erasmus’s introduction to Hilary, combined with a fervent appeal to take the Church Fathers’ simplicity of faith and general saintliness as an example, seems unscholarly and even inconsistent. However, this inconsistency did not seem to disturb Luther, who made no mention of it. What seemed to more particularly outrage Luther was Erasmus’s attempt to understand Hilary within the context of his own time. Here Erasmus pursued a markedly historical approach in which the articles of faith were seen to evolve. He demonstrated that Hilary takes part in this development in the context of the fight against Arianism, and that the errors he is accused of are only errors from the point of view of later times. The articles in question were not even debated, much less established, in Hilary’s own time. Again, from a modern standpoint Erasmus’s line of argumentation is unexceptionable, though it could perhaps be more nuanced. The letters of Athanasius to Serapion emphasizing the oneness of the Trinity originate from the years 352–7. The real debate with the Homoiousians and the Pneumatomachians did not begin before 367, the same year that Hilary died. Thus, although he did not make any considerable contribution to the doctrine of the third person of the Trinity, Christianity owes its first overall view and first doctrinal treatment of scriptural quotations about filiation or eternal sonship to Hilary of Poitiers. It was established that the Holy Spirit is co-equal with God only in the following generation at the synod of Constantinople in 382. Modern historians of dogma would agree with Erasmus’s suggestion that the doctrine of the Trinity was developed through disputes with heretics and established after Hilary. However, Luther took offence at this historical approach and at Erasmus’s historically accurate insight that “we dare to call the Holy Spirit

1  Erasmus of Ro erdam

true God, proceeding from the Father and the Son, which the ancients did not dare to do.” As previously mentioned, Luther’s comment on this passage was particularly fierce: “Read this sentence and honour the devil incarnate!” he declared. In Luther’s eyes Erasmus’s outrageous passage deserved an equally outrageous reaction. This sentence provoked him to further declare “that he could no longer trust Erasmus, even if he would plainly confess Christ is God.”24 For, Luther explained, if the Trinity was only later inferred from Scripture then “the Christian religion would be based on human authority, and Erasmus wants to convince us of that. It amounts to nothing less than a proclamation that the common religion contains of fables.” Furthermore, Luther pointed out that despite having been admonished by many scholars Erasmus refused to emend this sentence in his work, and he accused Erasmus of impudence and ambiguity.25 It is clear that Luther read Erasmus thoroughly and understood his suggestion that the earliest Church Fathers did not deduce the concept of the Trinity from Scripture but that it was worked out by later theologians. This suggestion was unacceptable to him and he declared that it made him shrink from Erasmus as though from the devil. Luther identified Erasmus’s historical approach as the principal characteristic of his theology and the aspect that most distinguished him from others. He saw this approach as the main source of Erasmus’s detested ambiguity, a quality that modern thinkers tend to rate more highly as openness or tolerance or even as Christian humour.26 Long before the open breach developed between them over the dispute on free will in 1524, Luther already confessed that Erasmus’s ideas repelled him after reading the Paraclesis in 1516. In the Paraclesis, Erasmus seemed to pass over the doctrine of justification and to see nothing more than an exemplar and teacher in Christ.2 Luther made many accusations against the humanist, but it seems that nothing outraged him as much as that one sentence from the edition of Hilary. For Luther it was not simply an error or a lapse of judgment, it amounted to a discreditation of Erasmus’s entire work. For the purposes of this study, even if we do not agree with Luther in this judgment it may be nonetheless fruitful to follow his lead and to take Erasmus’s historical methodology as a starting point from which to approach his work.28 I will do so in four sections, all of which will attach particular importance to the sources Erasmus used – including both the well-known classical and the thus far unnoted medieval sources – and the impact that they had on his thinking. This study will also rely heavily on comparisons between Erasmus and his contemporaries.

Introduction 11

Although some chapters are particularly concerned with Erasmus’s relationship with Luther or with the Reformers of Zurich and Basel, the corresponding or contradicting ideas of those Reformers and of other contemporaries like Jacob Faber Stapulensis, Johannes Eck, or Louis Vives and Cornelius Agrippa are analysed in almost all chapters in order to more closely examine uniquely Erasmian ideas. I have maintained a chronological order as far as possible throughout the book, and the subtitles of every chapter hint at the works of Erasmus which are discussed therein. In part one, chapters 2–6, I deal with the development of Erasmus’s thinking leading up to the point at which he began to devote most of his time to New Testament scholarship, a task he described as the one “for which I was born.” Chapter 2 begins with Erasmus’s time in the monastery. His early letters and poems are analysed through comparison with classical patterns. These writings hint at a yearning for the Golden Age of classical poetry, which served as a distant vantage point from which he and the young monks of his acquaintance could view and judge their own times. Chapter 3 begins with Erasmus’s departure from the monastery to study in Paris. On this journey Erasmus brought with him a first draft (about 1494/5) of the Antibarbari. The chapter discloses how the young Erasmus, who searched for a credible balance between faith and knowledge, was already moving in the direction of his later vocation. In the 1495 letter of praise for Gaguin’s De origine Francorum, Erasmus still illustrates a traditional view of history as magistra vitae, but by 1497 in a letter to his pupil Thomas Grey he demonstrated an awareness of the mutability of culture in history, an awareness that not only influenced his view of Scholasticism but also had a considerable impact on his later theology. In the following years the poems he wrote made use of various themes and motifs from medieval mystery plays which demonstrate a deep interest in salvation history. Like many late medieval mystery plays, Erasmus began his account of salvation history with an intra-trinitarian conversation in heaven. In his Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum (1498) there is no trace of this interest in history. The work is marked by its disdain for the world and discussion of the unworthiness of men. On the other hand, the Encomium matrimonii, which was composed in the same year, is conspicuous for its joyful openness to the world. In this latter work, Erasmus uses historical awareness as the base for his arguments against celibacy, and contrasts the needs of the sixteenth century against those of the apostles’ and of the Church Fathers’ times. And in the 1503 Enchiridion (chapter 4), influenced by

12 Erasmus of Ro erdam

his English friends and by a reading of Origen, Erasmus develops a rather ahistorical Christian Neoplatonism which he later abandoned. Chapter 5 deals with Erasmus’s edition of Lorenzo Valla’s mid-fifteenth-century Collatio Novi Testamenti (1504). This work paved the way for the humanists’ philological-critical New Testament scholarship. Dame Folly in the Encomium Moriae, which was composed after a trip to Italy in 1509, is demonstrated in chapter 6 to be a figure from the Old Testament that was commonly depicted by commentators in the Middle Ages. As the author of Folly’s witty oration, Erasmus shows himself fit to manage the difficult task of renewing New Testament scholarship: he had the requisite boldness and impartiality as well as an exacting critical ability at his disposal. In part two, chapters 7–13, I explore Erasmus’s method of exegesis and the crucial aspects of his theology. Erasmus’s New Testament – his (1516–35) editions of the Greek text and his new translation into Latin and declaratory annotations – shocked his contemporaries. Lorenzo Valla had already shocked many with his treatment of the Vulgate (the manuscript copies and the translation of the Holy Text), which he criticized as a philologist would any other historical text. Erasmus was even bolder; he critically examined not just the Greek text of the Bible but also the biblical authors themselves, and with the introductory tract Methodus (1516) or Ratio seu methodus (1519) he unfurled a new methodology of biblical exegesis that promoted (besides the well-known campaign for skills in the biblical languages) historical skills and the loci-method, a method of excerpting that was particularly appropriate for historical research. Likewise, the editions of Erasmus’s New Testament had an enormous impact on Western theology. Although Erasmus’s hopes soon abated that this work, among others, would mark the beginning of a real Golden Age and a transformation of the bellicose Christianity of his time into a prosperous, well-educated, peaceful society, he did not resign himself. In chapter 7 I shall explore Erasmus’s continued publications in the field of biblical exegesis and the circumstances around his Paraphrases (1517–24), or renarrations of the Gospel. In chapter 8 I will establish how these Paraphrases demonstrate that Erasmus’s comments on the Gospel were influenced by his emphasis on history, since, in comparison with other exegetes of his time, Erasmus emphasized the narration of the historical facts to an astonishing degree. Chapter 9 deals with the knowledge of God. In contrast to old as well as contemporary theologians, Erasmus dealt with Natural Theology in a moderate and balanced way. He abstained from any form of proofs for God’s existence and warned his reader not to speculate on

Introduction 13

God but to be satisfied with the knowledge of God as he is revealed in Holy Scripture, which is a historical document that men can analyse. As discussed in chapter 10, Erasmus’s doctrine on creation reveals both his rejection of the Aristotelian suggestion that the world is eternal and his matter-of-fact views on natural phenomena and natural laws, as well as his astonishing repudiation of the magical patterns of thinking that were so widespread in his time. Even more astounding is his emphasis on the eternal begetting of God’s Son – discussed in chapter 11 – and his description of the Trinity as a conversing love community, an idea that he extracted from his famous interpretation of the logos in John’s prologue as sermo (colloquy or conversation) instead of verbum (word), which also reminds one of the intra-trinitarian conversation he described in one of the poems analysed in chapter 3. Here again comparison with his contemporaries’ doctrine of God serves to demonstrate Erasmus’s distinctive vision. Heiko Oberman’s research established that the doctrine of justification through faith alone was not an invention of the Reformers; however, the fact that Erasmus emphasized justification through faith alone after 1516 – though not in as exaggerated a way as Luther – is still not well known. It was perceived, however, by the Zurich Reformers, who, like Erasmus, reminded their followers that faith begets good works and is inseparable from sanctification. This forms the locus of the discussion in chapter 12. Consequently, as demonstrated in chapter 13, Erasmus taught in his Explanatio symboli – his 1533 explanation of the Apostles’ Creed – that faith transforms the whole human. This catechism differs significantly from others of the time because it does not offer ready-made answers, but motivates the catechumen to question and deepen his or her faith. In doing so Erasmus confronts the catechumen with the history of the ecumenical creeds and the christological disputes of the early church. With his explanation of the Apostles’ Creed Erasmus does not offer a dogmatic system; instead he offers his view of salvific history and of God’s revelation within the framework of historical time. In part three, chapters 14 and 15 examine Erasmus’s increasingly untenable position in the conflicts elicited by the Reformation movements. It is clear that at first Erasmus looked upon Luther benevolently, but after 1520 he increasingly feared that Luther might damage the studia humanitatis and he attempted to stay neutral. By 1524 he was forced to take a stand and to write against Luther, but in doing so Erasmus searched for a subject that could tolerate diverging opinions. Nevertheless, the quarrel between the two men hinted at the significant differences in both their character and theology. This difference makes up the

14 Erasmus of Ro erdam

central discussion in chapter 14. Chapter 15 continues to explore the Reformers of Zurich and Basel, many of whom identified themselves as pupils of Erasmus. Some of these were esteemed collaborators in his publications and were counted among his friends. The Reformers’ break with the church hierarchy and their quarrel over the Eucharist forced Erasmus to distance himself from his former friends. But they continued to quote him as their authority and were deeply influenced by his exegetical work. Part four, chapters 16–18, deals with Erasmian reform ideas. The canonical law (chapter 16) was highly controversial and hotly debated in the sixteenth century. His historical approach allowed Erasmus to break new ground in this field and to question the immutability of the so-called divine laws. They were considered eternal and unchangeable because they relied on the precepts of Christ, the apostles, or an ecumenical synod. Only human laws – those not based on the word of the Bible or on an ecumenical council – were deemed mutable. The Reformers restricted the divine laws to those prescribed in God’s word, but taught that they were immutable. By contrast, Erasmus questioned their immutability and declared, “God’s law is always the same, as God’s will is unchangeable, but it is differently formed according to times and persons.” This approach led him to call for a new legislation that accommodated his time, and many leading jurists followed suit. This had a significant impact on the question of whether or not Christian authorities could legitimately wage war, a question chapter 17 deals with in detail. The traditional view was that because in the Old Testament God ordered war, it must therefore be legal. Erasmus, who – as is well known – appealed strongly for peace, countered that such prescriptions became outdated the moment that Christ called for his followers not to resist evil. But even though he advised strongly against the waging of war, he could not, in the face of the conquered Christian brethren in Hungary, refrain from advising Christians to resist the Turks (although he did mitigate his call for war by stipulating the shedding of as little blood as possible). Erasmus’s view on women, as discussed in chapter 18, was also significantly influenced by his historical approach. He advised a modification of marriage laws with regard to marriage impediments, divorce, and the possibility of remarriage. Although Erasmus did not reject the subordination of the wife to her husband in principle, he did question it intrinsically. If not equal in rank, a wife was equal in merit, and men were well advised when they heeded the counsel of their prudent wives. For Erasmus, marriage was a highly valued state: the conjunction of male and female mirrored the unity of the divine and

Introduction 15

human nature of Christ. Accordingly, he suggested that in spiritually united partnerships the spouses should be equally educated. In short, Erasmus argued for the higher education of females and he sought to motivate women to use their skills and to act in public. The conclusion, chapter 19, returns to Luther’s suggestion that Erasmus’s historical approach formed the locus of his theology. It offers a space for a discussion of Erasmus’s last years and for his rebuttal to Luther’s reproach, which leads to the conclusion that it was his historical approach that distinguished him from other thinkers of the time, and that an investigation of his work, particularly through an exploration of his historical methodology, reveals his unique merits as a Christian theologian.

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Part One Erasmus’s Early Development

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wo

Yearning for the “Golden Age”

Early Poems and Letters in the Monastery When Erasmus entered the Augustinian convent at Steyn as a young orphan he had already finished his schooling. Although he later referred to his school days as “wasted time” and, with few exceptions, generally characterized his teachers as rigid and ineffective, he was nonetheless well trained in Latin and had gained a comprehensive base knowledge of classical literature and philosophy.1 Nearly all biographies on Erasmus agree that the sources pertaining to his life in the monastery do not hint at any deepening monastic piety but indicate, rather, his growing interest in classical studies. His correspondence reveals a young man who threw himself into an ardent study of classical literature and who admired the classical concept of friendship, seeking to revive it among his friends in the monastery. To that end, he wrote elegant verses in the classical style and composed highly stylized letters2 and orations.3 His efforts were focused on striving towards mastering classical eloquence and classical ideals.4 This man, who once declared that he had seen only civil war, hunger, and plague while in his twenties,5 dreamt of a utopia of peace, of the Virgilian Golden Age – a land of shepherds and nymphs where strife existed only in the form of singing competitions and the greatest pain was that of love. True love and friendship – even when regretted – were the goal and fulfilment of his dreams and possibly also of his real life. He rendered homage to the cult of friendship in letters written to Servatius Roger, his friend in the cloister, and in them his dreams and reality became artfully entwined. He wrote, for instance, “I am, if I may sing my own

2  Erasmus’s Early Development

praises, so constituted that I think nothing in this life to be preferable to friendship.” The young Erasmus did not want to cease loving even when rejected (as he was by Servatius).6 These letters and poems are often read as autobiographical testimonies of a sentimental, homoerotic love for Servatius; however, this approach is problematic.7 Scholars avoid interpreting Ovid’s Amores or Virgil’s second Eclogue biographically for good reason; likewise, with Erasmus, who imitated the classical poets, a simple biographical interpretation of his writings from this period is full of potential pitfalls. It is clear that in this period Erasmus aligned himself with a yearning for a Golden Age and with a long and – in his time – newly revived tradition of pastoral poetry.8 However, it is impossible to know which part of his writings were an imitatio and which were a true reflection of his personal experience; which represented allegorical play and which were in earnest. What is more certain is that Erasmus conflated this yearning for an idyllic era of pastoral love with a cult of dedicated friendship. He contrasted the drab and monotonous everyday life of the cloister with his fantasies, and the values of the Golden Age of classical literature with those of his own “barbaric” times. The poems Carmen bucolicum and Oda amatoria9 (both of which have been interpreted by scholars biographically) employ the same technique. They revisit classical themes and explore them from a new perspective. The Carmen bucolicum, for instance, draws on the tragic tale of Polyphemus and Gunifolda/Galatea from Ovid’s Metamorphoses,10 and the Oda amatoria is inspired by the homoerotic love of Menalcas and Amyntas from Virgil’s third Eclogue. However, Erasmus’s versions of these poems do not treat Ovid’s and Virgil’s original protagonists Galatea and Menalcas but instead an imaginary young lover and Amyntas, respectively. Erasmus’s versions are multilayered and humorous revisions of the original stories. In Erasmus’s adaptation of the story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for instance, a young lover sighs with unrequited love for Gunifolda/Galatea who he believes loves Polyphemus, the Cyclops. But any reader familiar with the original knows that Gunifolda/Galatea abhorred cloddish Polyphemus and was in love with Alcis (who was later turned into a river in order to avoid Polyphemus’s jealous persecution). Although Gunifolda/Galatea mourns the end of her affair with Alcis, the lovers are symbolically reunited when she throws herself into the ocean from which she was born and into which the river Alcis flows. The Oda amatoria alludes to Virgil’s third Eclogue in the same manner. In Virgil’s telling Menalcas sings of his passionate love for the boy

Yearning for the “Golden Age” 21

Amyntas, but later recasts his song for use in a singing competition and adapts the words of love he wrote for Amyntas into a praise of Phyllis and his patron Pollio. Menalcas further degrades the original love song by ending it with silly riddles. In Erasmus’s version, Amyntas, who narrates the tale, is offended and warns that he will reject any acts of repentance or renewed courtship from Menalcas, and scornfully declares “and I will not care a whit.”11 With this Erasmus, half in earnest, half in jest, juggles with the classical themes of the pastoral idylls. However, Erasmus’s poems are not usually understood in this way by scholars; they are instead read as direct biographical records of the unrequited love Erasmus may or may not have had for Servatius. Further proof of this homoerotic love has been read into his highly stylized love letters in which Servatius is described as the “intimate beloved” whom Erasmus valued “more than my very eyes and life and in a word, myself.”12 Although Erasmus’s poems are often interpreted as absolute reflections of the emotions he describes in his letters, it is equally possible to read these documents in another way. It is striking, for instance, how many diverse stylistic formulations are used in the letters to evoke examples of unrequited love, and how the correspondence ultimately ends with advice to the receiver to devote himself to his studies. In this light they can also be read less as romantic epistles or love letters than as exhortations to study or as experiments in artful variations of expression.13 Indeed, letters full of exuberant flattery and affectionate outpourings were not uncommon among other learned men in the period. For example, in a letter dated to 1516 the Zurich Reformer Huldrych Zwingli admits that he cannot sleep without having read something from his dear Erasmus, “For (if the phrase be permitted) you are the favourite companion with whom we must first have some conversation, if we are to get off to sleep.” Zwingli speaks of “giving himself over” to Erasmus and calls himself his slave: I have made you, though late in the day and on a lower level, the offering that Aeschines made to Socrates. Should you not accept a gift so unworthy of you, I will go one better than the Corinthians when repulsed by Alexander, and say that I never made such an offer before and never will again. If even so you do not accept me, it will have been benefit enough to have been rejected by you, for nothing so makes a man set his life to rights as finding he has not satisfied people like yourself. For whether you will or no, I shall (I hope) be a better person when you return me to myself, after having made such use as you can of your very humble servant.14

22 Erasmus’s Early Development

Rather than offerings of romantic love it seems just as likely that Erasmus, by writing poetry and exchanging letters with Servatius, sought to revive the Golden Age of classical literature not only in myth but also in the cloister’s everyday life. By using the high-flown language of flattery and admiration in their letters, Erasmus and his correspondents played with different ways to evoke the complete despair and suffering of unrequited love that Catullus had so artfully put to verse.15 During Erasmus’s first years in the monastery, his close friendships and classical studies were of the highest importance; indeed, they seemed to make his life among the monks bearable.16 These interests were an escape from hard reality into a world of dreams, but they were more than mere escapism; here the poet found a distant vantage point from which he could survey and judge his own times. For the classical poets (as Virgil suggested in his fourth Eclogue) the Golden Age was a myth that they hoped could be newly realized in the coming era. However, for Erasmus and his friends in the cloister it was more than just a forward-looking myth; it was also history – the history of classical poetry. Virgil, Statius, Horace, and Lucan are forgotten and despised, Erasmus lamented; “Once there was no flourishing realm under the shining round of Phoebus’ course, there was no island, through which Calliope, her mind full of poetry, did not make her way on her lovely feet.” 17 The power of poetry is associated not only with the age of the mythic singer Orpheus, but also with the times of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Statius, and Lucan.18 For Erasmus and his circle the classical poets lived this myth of the Golden Age, but their time was also seen to be past, and gone with them was the Golden Age of poetry: “Learned poems lie trampled underfoot. Calliope, the shining light of the Pegasean choir, is everywhere scorned and banished. She lives among inaccessible crags.”19 Nonetheless, this could be cause for hope as well as despondency, for if the Golden Age was an actual historical era it could also be revived in “barbaric” times.20 “Know that skill which is rare draws malice upon itself, but it will overcome and conquer,” sang a friend in the poem against the “barbarians” co-written with Erasmus in 1489.21 Bygone classical culture provided Erasmus and his circle with a mirror that they could hold up to their own times, and it brought them hope for a revival of the Golden Age of poetry. However, to speak of a burgeoning historical consciousness in these young monks who were interested in classical learning would be inaccurate, for they did not yet differentiate between myth and history. They believed that the past, whether it was myth or actual history, could still be revived in

Yearning for the “Golden Age” 23

the present, and they did not yet reflect upon the means of reviving the values of a past culture. But – however superficially – they did begin to refer to the rise and fall of cultures and to be conscious of the passage of historical time. In good monastic fashion the transience of the individual, and death, which puts an end to all things, is the main theme of Erasmus’s personal poems from this period, so much so that some scholars believe that his time in the cloister was characterized by a fear of death. Although death is a major theme in his writings from this period, it is pure conjecture to conclude that Erasmus tortured himself with a fear of death and eternal judgment and that his literary studies were merely a means of overcoming this fear.22 Although his writings often deal with death, the works dating from his time in the monastery show no trace of anxiety. Yet it cannot be denied that the problem of death – knowing that everything passes – plays a significant role in nearly all of the surviving poetry written by Erasmus in the cloister and, after 1490, in the few pious meditations he wrote.23 Of the twenty-three poems that Harry Vredeveld attributes to Erasmus’s time in the cloister, death and transience are mentioned in seven24 and are the theme of eleven;25 only in five are death, dying, and transience not spoken of at all.26 Erasmus writes, for example: Just so, my sweet friend, just so the flower of our lifetime, youth, hastens away, alas, and fails, never to be recovered. Beauty dies, the nimble strength of the body dies, and suddenly the force and vitality of the mind fail. Then age, sad and full of griefs, rushes upon us … The joys of life are already about to go away, never to return, and their places will be taken by hardship and death.27

But rather than losing himself in this despair, the young monk, who clearly knew his Catullus and Horace, concluded that it was essential to “seize, sweet friend, the days of our youth.”28 Everything in this world is transient: Erasmus experienced this early in his life and perhaps internalized the lesson. But his concluding message – Carpe diem! – is hardly one of fear. In faithful monastic style he also entreated his fellow monks to despise this transient world and to put their trust in God, who will bestow eternal life. He contrasted “the bitter day of death” to “the joys of the heavenly Jerusalem”29 and urged his readers to have patience in the face of worldly transience: “Bear with equanimity the icy winter which succeeds the warm season, and let the days and nights

24 Erasmus’s Early Development

come and go in succession, until God brings the race to its close and, removing all sorrow, makes you happy forever in heaven.”30 Whether one looks at the poems or at the De contemptu mundi and Oratio funebris in funere Bertae de Heyen (both written in the monastery), one finds Erasmus continually advising his readers to despise the transient joys of the world and to strive for the everlasting treasures of wisdom and benevolence while placing trust in God.31 “The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment; and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.”32 Erasmus brought this experience and certainty of faith with him from the cloister into the world when his exceptional Latin and elegant writing style secured him the position of secretary to the bishop of Cambrai in 1493. The post brought with it the promise of a journey to Italy. Although the trip never materialized, the bishop arranged for the young monk, who was ordained priest in 1492, to study theology in Paris.

hree

Historical Awareness

antibarbari, Letter to Thomas Grey, Three Poems from 1499, precatio ad virginis filium jesum, encomium matrimonii In 1495 Erasmus brought a first draft manuscript of the Antibarbari with him to Paris. It was a dialogue that built on his and Cornelius Gerard’s poem Dialogus adversus Barbaros, which was directed at those who denigrated the study of pagan literature, the “barbarians” in the title.1 In his ardent defence of a classical education against monastic anti-intellectualism, Erasmus cited the Church Fathers Jerome and Augustine without ever acknowledging their views on the formative quality of asceticism. He did not show sympathy for their struggle to reconcile secular knowledge and Christian piety, nor did he examine his own conscience as Jerome did and ask himself, are you a Ciceronian or a Christian?2 For Erasmus, unlettered religion “has something of stupidity, which is violently distasteful to those who know letters.”3 Nonetheless, he earnestly sought to maintain a balance between faith and knowledge, or as Cornelis Augustijn put it, Erasmus asked himself, how “can one be both a cultured man and a Christian without doing violence to one’s conscience?”4 Later in England he wrote down the second part of the Antibarbari and collected material for a third and fourth book. These works were lost when he misplaced the manuscripts somewhere in Italy. Erasmus reworked and published the extant first part of the book in 1520, but as late as 1535 he continued to lament the lost manuscripts.5 An early version of the Antibarbari dated to around 1494/5 has also survived. In this version Erasmus had not yet found a true combination of faith and knowledge. The possibility that humanist learning may not

26 Erasmus’s Early Development

only complement but also serve piety and faith is barely mentioned. The question of whether the prize for excellence should be awarded to the man who uses his erudition for the glory of Christ was only added in the published version of 1520.6 But this idea, which Erasmus formulated continually after his first trip to England and which would serve as a motto for his later work, was easy to adapt to the dialogue; indeed, the Antibarbari is an early indication of Erasmus’s later inclinations. In 1494 Erasmus praised a classical education for its own sake and claimed that it led towards virtue and moderation. He not only relied on famous examples like Socrates but also – with humanist self-consciousness – on his own life experience. Consequently, the principal speaker in the work admits the following: I confess that as a boy I was a proper smatterer, and thought highly of myself when I had scarcely taken a sip, as they say, of these studies. Now after so many years – for I am entering on my twenty-ninth – I am less and less satisfied with myself every day, and I embrace that saying of Socrates’, “one thing only I know, that I know nothing.”7

Erasmus also acknowledged the views of his opponents: “there is an incompatibility between pure religion and consummate learning. Piety rests on faith, erudition uses arguments for investigation, and calls the facts into question.”8 But he did not doubt that erudition was valuable in and of itself: “So while Christ, the greatest and best of disposers, allocated to his own century in a special way the recognition of the highest good, he gave the centuries immediately preceding a privilege of their own: they were to reach the thing nearest to the highest good, that is, the summit of learning.”9 Erasmus acknowledged that erudition was open to abuse – after all, a scholar could also behave badly – but he also suggested that erring scholars were preferable to “barbarians” who do evil; he argued that scholars at least knew what it meant to act virtuously and could therefore change their behaviour accordingly.10 For Erasmus, learning was a great advantage that was not incompatible with Christianity and was, in fact, pleasing to God. This is the central message of the 1494/5 dialogue. Upon his arrival in Paris, Erasmus immediately sought contact with the local humanists. He wrote a letter introducing himself to Robert Gaguin, the leader of the Paris humanists, and was quickly accepted into the circle.11 Gaguin had recently finished writing his De origine Francorum, which had just been submitted to the printer. He provided the young scholar with his first opportunity to publish and invited Erasmus

Historical Awareness 2

to contribute a letter in praise of the author. And what did the young Erasmus have to say in praise of a historian in 1495? Very little of consequence, as it turns out; Erasmus’s letter is conventional. It describes the historian as saving the noble deeds of the ancestors from oblivion;12 “fides” and “eruditio” constitute his best qualities.13 (“Fides” in this case meant nothing more than simple trustworthiness.) The historian must be trustworthy – this was particularly important for Erasmus – so that a reader would accept the facts presented as true.14 But for the young Erasmus, Gaguin’s erudition was an even more important quality for the historian. In his letter he emphasized how the author’s great literary abilities could render even the most trivial events significant.15 This is all Erasmus had to say about the duty of the historian in 1495; he wrote nothing about critical inquiry or cultural empathy for the values of the past. Erasmus’s letter for Gaguin’s De origine Francorum reflects a common humanist view of history as magistra vitae, the well-known motto of Cicero’s De oratore.16 The biographies of both heroes and antiheroes among historical figures were meant to inspire virtuous acts. History did not aim at imparting historical consciousness;17 its purpose was not to make readers aware of the changes brought about by time or of the distance separating them from the events of antiquity, but rather to encourage them to imitate the noble acts of the archetypal ancient heroes. Erasmus said nothing more on the subject. At this period in his life his interest in the Golden Age of poetry and his appreciation for the themes of transient joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, which he emulated in his own poems, seem not to have influenced his understanding of history, or are not apparent in his praise of Gaguin, at any rate. It is probable that Erasmus had not yet developed a consciousness of history’s course. Only two years later Erasmus wrote a letter to his friend and pupil Thomas Grey in which an awareness of the changing course of time is more evident. In this letter, which Allen has dated to August 1497, Erasmus introduced his pupil to Greek mythology and to his evaluation of the Scotist theology taught at the university in a manner that was both witty and learned. He referred to the legendary sleep of Epimenides, an orphic theologian who lived in Athens and Crete around 500 BC, and who – the legend goes – slept in a cave for fifty years. Erasmus wryly commented that the Scotists of his day read a parchment covered with the hairsplitting philosophy of this old Greek and declare him an oracle. But Epimenides was lucky – Erasmus continues sarcastically – for he awoke in the end, while the Scotists continue to sleep.18

28 Erasmus’s Early Development [Epimenides] awoke, then rubbing his eyes, which were still drowsy with sleep, and came out of the cave, uncertain whether he was awake or dreaming. Observing that the entire appearance of the surrounding district had changed, inasmuch as after all those years the river beds had altered, the trees had been cut down in one place and replaced by a new growth in another, plains had risen into hills and hills sunk into plains, and even the entrance to the cave itself was transformed by overgrowing moss and brambles, Epimenides began to doubt even his own existence. He went to his city and there found everything new: he could not recognize the walls, the streets, the coinage, the very people; dress, behavior, speech, all were altered. Such is the mutability of human affairs.19

Using this as his example, Erasmus made clear to his pupil not only that everything changes, even cult, ritual, and language, but also that the Scotist theologians were speaking the language of yesterday. Although it was common in humanist circles to mock the “barbaric” Latin of the Scholastics, in this letter it is only a marginal theme. Here Erasmus expressed his view on the transience of earthly things not just on a personal level but also as it affected culture. In his view, at the turn of the fifteenth century the language, thought, and piety of the Scholastics were no longer suited to the times. Unlike his early poems, here he did not compare the present with the myth of a distant and longed-for past, but rather contrasted his own time with an outmoded past. Erasmus was about thirty years old when he wrote this letter to Grey. Twenty years later, Luther – also thirty years old – wrote his theses against Scholastic theology. Unlike Erasmus, Luther did not mock the Scholastics but treated them as serious adversaries who must be combated directly. He used rigid terms to describe Scholastic doctrine and often introduced his dissent by declaring “it is wrong”; “it is absurd”; “it is a delusion”; “it cannot be”; “it is not true that …”; and by asserting that it was “in vain” to make logic out of faith. Luther rejected the Scholastics out of hand, together with all of Aristotelian philosophy.20 They were described as useless and even dangerous and their doctrines were heretical and wrong. For Erasmus, traditional Scholastic theology was of little use and perhaps even ridiculous but not inherently wrong, heretical, or dismissible in principle. These sentiments are not found anywhere in his letter to Thomas Grey. Although Erasmus later alluded continually to the Scholastic method as unsuitable for his theological approach, in 1499 he wrote to John Colet that Scholasticism obscured and left “silent, impoverished, and in rags” what the pure theology of the Church Fathers had

Historical Awareness 29

clarified. At the same time he complained that instead of leaving all to God’s omnipotence, Scholastic theology boldly described the rational rules by which God should administer his mysteries.21 However, this did not make Scholasticism heretical in Erasmus’s eyes; indeed, when it suited him, he quoted the Scholastics himself. He did not wish to dismiss the dialectical method entirely or to supplant it with a better one; he only sought to reduce Scholasticism’s excessive influence. By 1499 he wrote, it “is not that I condemn their learned studies, I who have nothing but praise for learning of any sort.”22 In 1519, after Luther’s direct attack on the Scholastics, Erasmus further confessed, “my efforts do not aim at expelling Thomas or Scotus from the universities in disgrace or driving them out of their ancient inheritance. This is not within my powers; and if it were, I am not so sure that it would be desirable, unless we could see some school of thought [doctrinae genus] ready to hand which would be better than they.” For Erasmus, it would have been enough if “theology gets more sensible treatment” and if theologians would simply adhere to the Gospels.23 In 1520 he took the same line: “Even so, I would rather see correction here than destruction, or at least toleration, until some better approach to theology [theologiæ ratio] is forthcoming.”24 Erasmus wrote this after his own Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam (Short Method to Arrive at True Theology) was first published in 1516 and revised and enlarged in 1519. The work was widely accepted by scholars and by 1519 was being widely used – for example, in the schools of Zurich.25 He was conscious that his method could not totally supplant the Scholastic one, nor did he consider himself to be the man who could replace this established logic with a better one. Unlike the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus did not believe that he was capable of this. As far as Erasmus was aware of them, he was not convinced by Valla’s attempts to refutate Aristotelian philosophy through linguistic analysis.26 An awareness of his own modest ability in this field held him back from making any similar attempts.27 Instead, Erasmus contented himself with pointing out the defects of the Scholastics and on emphasizing the merits of the Church Fathers. To that end, in his own editions and Annotationes of the New Testament he attempted to make the work of the Church Fathers more accessible. His philological-historical exegesis was groundbreaking, but he did not create a new dialectical method or come up with new ways to do without Scholastic logic; indeed, he did not even attempt a frontal attack on the Scholastic method. He only attempted to assign it to its proper place.

3  Erasmus’s Early Development

For example, in a letter to Jodocus Jonas Erasmus defended Thomas Aquinas, who drew on both Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers in writings like the Catena Aurea. In 1520 Erasmus lamented that Thomas Aquinas had not lived in an age more suited to his talent and diligence.28 When Erasmus grappled with the Scholastic tradition in his Annotationes he dealt specifically with the Glossa ordinaria, the Catena aurea of Thomas, the Four Books of Sentences by Peter Lombard, and the Commentaries of Peter Comestor, Hugo St Victor, and Nicolas of Lyra.29 All of these works strove towards a literal exegesis of the Bible, and Erasmus knew what to extract from the Scholastic tradition and what was worth discussing in his Annotationes. Although he usually quoted from these theologians in order to criticize them, he clearly thought them worth discussing. In 1522 he outlined his view of the Scholastics in the Letter to the Pious Reader that prefaced his Paraphrase of Matthew: I don’t agree at all with those who think that the unlearned layman should be kept away from the Holy Scriptures and that the sanctum is only open to the few who have studied Aristotelian philosophy, and that for years. For the present I will not fight with those who assume that they are especially suited to reading and expounding the arcane volumes because their mind has been trained in human disciplines. One may practise them for a certain time judiciously and with a sober mind, but not get old in them or allocate to them more importance than they are entitled to.30

Like an old dress that had gone out of fashion, Erasmus put Scholasticism away on a shelf and mocked its outmoded style, but when it suited him he still liked to dust it off and borrow an accessory or two. In 1497 Erasmus already felt that the approach of the Scholastics was antiquated. Nonetheless, as his later works show, he acquired a solid understanding of their work. As a student he was already critical of contemporary theology and did not honour his theological instructors as teachers of a true divinity. He found them ridiculous men “whose brains are the most addled, tongues the most uncultured, wits the dullest, teachings the thorniest, characters the least attractive, lives the most hypocritical, talk the most slanderous and hearts the blackest on earth.”31 He scolded and mocked them and, like Valla and many other humanists, exposed them as being both specious and out of touch; but he did not see them as serious adversaries. Why should he fight against a theology that, in his eyes, had already had its day? He did not seek

Historical Awareness 31

to identify and combat what he considered to be wrong; instead he pointed out and mocked what was outdated and sought to benefit from those parts that were still useful: “I would not have you mistakenly infer that what I have just written was directed against theology itself, to which, as you are aware, I have always been deeply devoted. I merely wished to make a joke at the expense of a few quasi-theologians of our own day.”32 Here Erasmus used the very simple historical argument that Scholasticism had had its day and was no longer suitable for new times. In his criticism of the Scholastics, for the first time Erasmus proved himself to be a thinker with a historical consciousness. In 1499, approximately two years after his letter to Thomas Grey, Erasmus wrote three poems that remain virtually unstudied in the field of Erasmus scholarship.33 These poems form an important part of my study, for they demonstrate not only how much Erasmus’s thoughts on salvation history were still rooted in the Middle Ages, but also the extent to which he already understood and adopted interesting and continuing theological themes while in Paris. Harry Vredeveld categorized these writings as poems that Erasmus wrote for casual or friendly poetic contests with his friends Gillis van Delft and Fausto Andrelini, who were also devoted humanists. With these friends Erasmus could write freely and did not have to take into account the tastes or thematic preferences of a patron. In fact, he never published these poems himself. This is perhaps not astonishing considering that even today they are striking in their strange, aesthetically unconvincing conflation of late medieval pious topics with classicizing humanist style – a combination that Erasmus later repudiated.34 These poems deal with themes of Marian praise, the incarnation of the Word, signs of Jesus’ death, and Christ’s descent into hell, and in them Virgil, Horace, Catullus, and Ovid are imitated at every turn. Erasmus later distanced himself from the manner in which, as a young man, he had handled the substance of these themes – much in these poems is based on traditions outside of the Bible and the Church Fathers. In Paean divae Mariae atque de incarnatione verbi, Erasmus used classical formulations to create a kind of summary of salvific history (Heilsgeschichte).35 He also summarized the Gospel as salvation history much later in the 1535 Ecclesiastes, where he closely adhered to the Bible except in one reference to the fallen angels.36 But here he indulged in a whole heavenly scene beginning with the fall of Lucifer, whom God the Father replaced with humankind. Inevitably, human beings fall as well and a fascinating conversation ensues in heaven between God the Father and his Son. Erasmus could have drawn on Isaiah 14:12 or, better yet, on

32 Erasmus’s Early Development

Origen and the whole tradition that followed him,37 for descriptions of the fall of Lucifer, but for the conversation between God the Father and Son there was no equally distinguished tradition to draw upon. Erasmus asked, “What was the Father to do about this great rebellion?” and he formulated the following response in allusion to Genesis 6:6: “Certainly the kind maker was displeased with what he himself had made [Plasmatis certe proprii benignum paenitet plasten].” Erasmus further imagined God sighing to himself: “‘Behold, while I was proceeding to restore heaven by means of earth, alas the progenitor of death, destroyed both one and the other by a similar downfall.’” God declares that he has no pity for Satan, who rightly suffers an eternal punishment for what he brought upon himself. But in the case of human beings the matter is different – they were seduced. God thus concludes that one who sins because he has been deceived cannot be saved by his own will, and therefore humankind must be saved in a different way.38 The Son then takes action and “the inexhaustible fountain of unending wisdom brought forth the secret riches hidden in his Father’s heart.” In a long speech, using well-known comparisons made by the Church Fathers, he explains how humans could be saved: flesh must be redeemed through flesh; perdition came to humans through a tree and it must be restored in the same way, and so forth. He concludes that humanity can only be saved through the incarnation of God: “Agreeing with the words spoken so persuasively by his Son, the Father said: ‘Let him who proposes the just plan likewise put it into action by giving the help needed.’”39 For the modern reader this conversation between two persons of the Trinity in which God the Father appears perplexed and rudderless is a strange text. One cannot even suggest that Erasmus might have been seeking a more popular audience with this scene, since the poem is full of complicated allusions to classical poetry and is written in an elegant style that even in its own time could have been read and understood easily only by the very well educated. But this content might not have disturbed Erasmus’s contemporaries with its familiarity. They were used to even more theologically questionable material. Rupert of Deutz (1080–1129), for example, had already alluded to a Soliloquy between the three divine persons40 and hinted at an exclusive intra-trinitarian council formed to discuss the issue of salvation.41 In a later sermon by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) on Psalm (85) 84, which is rich with allegorical imagery, the characters of Truth and Mercy urgently discuss the fate of fallen humanity; Peace intervenes, and in the end Justice also joins in with her opinion. But here, God alone acts as sovereign judge.42

Historical Awareness 33

Writers of devotional books, which were widespread throughout medieval Europe, adopted both the motifs of an intra-trinitarian council and a council involving the allegorical daughters of God.43 A trial on the subject of fallen humanity featuring God the Father and his Son as actors has been a common topos in vernacular spiritual poetry and mystery plays since the first quarter of the fourteenth century.44 The allegorical daughters of God also often appeared as prosecutor and defendant.45 The Erlösung, a spiritual poem originating in Hessen, served as a paradigmatic example for many of these plays.46 In it God the Father is depicted as a wrathful being whose outrage with humankind must be assuaged by his daughter, Mercy. The figures of Justice and Truth fight against her: the punishment must occur, they declare, and Peace again pleads with Mercy for clemency.47 God asks all of them how he can satisfy their different needs.48 Ultimately, it is the Son who finds a way out of this conundrum: “The Father’s wisdom and counsel … look, he was so compelled by great clemency and fervent love that he provided his great understanding and found the solution.”49 Die eerst Blijschap van Onzer Vrouwen, a Netherlandish mystery play written around 1447 in Brabant and known to have been staged continuously until at least 1560, contains an even more dramatic and theologically questionable scene.50 This play first shows only the sisters Mercy, Justice, and Truth engaged in debate. They then turn to the angels and attempt to convince them to sacrifice themselves for humanity.51 After the angels refuse their request, they turn to the Trinity. The Father reacts with alarm: “What shall I do,” he asks, “without annoying one of the sisters?” He must live up to his supreme and divine power and please all of them.52 In the conversation that follows, the figure of Mercy entreats the Son: “No one but you can shelter humanity.”53 God the Father then declares to his hesitating Son: “Dat mij leed es, dat iken heb gemaakt [I am sorry that I made humankind].” But the Son, as a mediator between the Father and Holy Spirit, must now mediate as much between God and humankind as between God and the sisters. All the characters beseech the Son to act54 until he finally declares that he will abide by the will of his Father.55 In comparison with this text the poem of Erasmus seems tame, even theologically pure. Although it cannot be definitely proven, it is likely that Erasmus knew either the text from Brabant or similar texts, for they were widespread throughout Europe and publicly performed everywhere.56 Interestingly, Erasmus proclaimed in 1522 that he “does not condemn” those plays performed in the churches.57 In any case, Erasmus certainly made use of the popular imaginings of a divine intra-trinitarian council that preceded the incarnation.

34 Erasmus’s Early Development

Erasmus adopted the variant in which the Son proposes the incarnation, while in his famous hymn Nun freut euch lieben Christen gemein Luther makes God the initiator: “He reflected on his own mercy,” and ordered his Son to begin his redemptive work, which the Son obediently executed.58 But Lutherans may also know the variant in which the Son, after a long exchange in the council with the daughters of God, initiates the redemption himself. This is the essence of the drama by Lucas Mais, Ein Schöne vnnd newe Comedien von der wunderbarlichen vereinigung Göttlicher gerechtigkeit und barmherzigkeit (1562).59 The imagery of the divine colloquy was retained in German hymn books up to the twentieth century in a verse by Paul Gerhardt, who put the following words in God’s mouth: “‘Go my child and look after the children which I delivered to punishment and wrath …’ To which the Son replies: ‘Yes Father, yes, from the bottom of my heart; impose your burden, and I will carry it.’”60 Gerhardt’s contemporary, the Jesuit Friedrich of Spee, also composed a Trinitarian disputation. In it God the Father discourages his Son from following through with his plans for human redemption, but in the end Christ’s great love for humankind prevails.61 Although not as pronounced as in Spee’s poem, Erasmus also adopted a dramatic version in which Father and Son discuss the issue. In it the Son is not simply an obedient servant; instead he contributes the essential new idea and actually becomes the Word of God. In this poem Erasmus already names the Son in the Patristic tradition “sermo numinis,” the “colloquy” or “conversation” or “speech of divinity.”62 In 1519 in the Prologue of John, Erasmus translated “λόγος” as “sermo,” not “verbum” as it is traditionally translated in the Vulgate: “In the beginning was the conversation and the conversation was with God.” And although he was strongly opposed by traditionalists, Erasmus remained adamant in this translation to the last edition of his New Testament.63 Although Erasmus expressed dissatisfaction with these poems later on, the theme of the Trinitarian conversation continued to absorb him.64 One could say the same of the poem Carmen de monstrosis signis Christo moriente factis, which deals with the earthquake and the eclipse of the sun – the “ominous signs” that occurred at the hour of Christ’s death. In the beginning of the poem Erasmus uses Horatian formulations to describe these events (which seemed to portend the end of the world) as if he had experienced them himself.65 “Ah, if only nature does not collapse in terror at this rupture of her ancient laws … if only the darkness of the underworld does not tear open the barrier of the earth and wrap the light of heaven in dark shadows and gloom … if only hell does

Historical Awareness 35

not oppress and confound all creatures in shapeless shadows” is his horror-stricken cry. “Tomorrow, believe me, will see nothing left of this universal frame.”66 The godless people have “dared to kill God [Deum perdere]. The one who with his powerful hand made heaven and earth, who made the sea and all things, is now on the cross, his body torn and pierced, already overspread with the pallor of death. Alas, life has cruelly perished and is dead [vita … mortua].67 That true Sun has set.”68 Erasmus asks why the world should not grieve with God (“condoleant deo”) bereft of its father (“orbata patre”)? And indeed it does, which is why a sudden darkness extinguishes the daylight:69 “O blind nation … you alone have minds so brazenly blind as not to know that the one you kill is God.”70 It is striking how on the one hand the earthquake and the eclipse appear as a breach of the laws of nature, but on the other the earth and the sun grieve as if they had human emotions. In other contexts it is clear that for Erasmus nature passively follows the laws of its creator,71 but here the earth and sun are able to transgress the laws of nature by mourning. Why does Erasmus pick up this idea? The poem certainly does not require the line; arguably, it might even be more coherent without it, since no explanation is needed for the cosmos’s reaction to God’s death. However, it is striking here that God’s creations still have compassion after his death, since, according to Athanasius, it is more logical that, bereft of their creator and sustainer, they no longer have the capacity to feel and should be either extinct or nearly extinct, and thus the eclipse was a natural result of the suffering of its creator.72 There is a second remarkable notion here, that it is God himself, the creator and the Father, who dies and is not differentiated from the Son. To speak so bluntly about the death of God has been controversial since the very beginnings of Christianity. Depending on the intended audience or addressee, the Church Fathers alternately highlighted or played down the motif of God’s death or of a crucified God. Tertullian wrote against Marcion of Sinope that it is Christian to believe in the death of God,73 but he also wrote against Praxeas that “it is enough to say Christ, God’s Son, is dead and even that only because it is written so.”74 And Origen argued against Celsus that only the human Jesus, not God, was crucified.75 Thus, it became common to differentiate very carefully between the humanity of Christ, which could be subdued under suffering, and his divinity, which was inviolable.76 In October 1499, only a few months after composing this poem (according to Vredeveld’s dates), Erasmus discussed these problems with John Colet. He insisted that Christ not only suffered and wept tears, but that he even feared

36 Erasmus’s Early Development

death like other men. In 1503 he published a short essay summarizing this discussion. The essay demonstrated how familiar Erasmus was with the Patristic and Scholastic traditions on this issue. In the essay he was cautious enough to allocate Christ’s ability to suffer only to the human nature of God’s Son.77 But in this poem he wrote boldly of God’s demise and even dared to speak of the paradox of the “dead life” of a world that in mourning God’s death rushed towards its own demise, and ultimately, against all expectations, prevailed because not “only does he not come to destroy what is firm but rather that he might strengthen what is weak.”78 His death is life; this is how Erasmus boldly interpreted Paul’s statement about “the foolishness of the cross” from I Corinthians 1:18. Erasmus was not alone in this idea during the late Middle Ages. In the Sterzinger Spiele, for example, one often finds the phrase “God suffers.”79 But even more interesting is an insertion in the Ahlsfelder Passionsspiel. Although we do not know for certain when the play was written, it was certainly staged in 1511. In it the allegorical figures of the Moon and the Stars perform during the death of Christ. They are outraged not only with the people who put God’s Son to death – which is also more than hinted at by the figure of the Sun in Erasmus’s poem – but they also feel pity for their creator. “Oh God, eternal creator …” declares the Moon, “now I see you suffer death, I am so sad and I abandon my supernatural light.” And of Jesus’ denouncers they cry, “you killed your God so outrageously.”80 Again, we see here the same nonchalance in speaking of God as dead, but we also find characteristics similar to Erasmus’s poem where the planets suffer with their creator, the murderers of God are reviled, and the cosmic signs are supernatural. Although formally Erasmus’s poem is written in a learned humanist style, in content it borrows heavily from late medieval popular motifs. It is clear that Erasmus did not adopt these motifs indiscriminately, merely for colourful effect; indeed, he could have used many far more dramatic motifs found in the late medieval mystery plays, motifs like the figure of Herod or the foot race between Peter and John. Instead, Erasmus selected motifs whose content he could retain and use later. In the Paraphrases he does not speak of the heavenly bodies as mourning, but he does personify the sun and the earth. Both figures cannot bear to see such a crime committed, they despise the wickedness of humans and scold their hardheartedness.81 Erasmus never ceased to write of God’s death; as late as 1533 in his Explanatio symboli he wrote, “we piously say that God suffered and died.”82

Historical Awareness 3

His third poem, the Easter epic Carmen heroicum de solemnitate paschali, also relied heavily on motifs formed in the medieval mystery plays and particularly amplified Christ’s descent into hell. For Josef Kroll, the eminent scholar of the Descensuskampf, the myths of the descent into hell constitute the most important part of the Easter and Passion plays.83 These are matters that are not addressed in the Bible. For this reason Erasmus later distanced himself from such elaborations and explained that it was enough for a Christian to believe that Christ was born, died, and is risen.84 However, the main motifs had already been developed by the first centuries of Christianity in the Apocryphal Nicodemus-Evangelium and in the old liturgy. During the Middle Ages very little was added. The moment when the light of Christ suddenly breaks into the underworld and shines upon all the dead assembled together there hoping for salvation is described in the Nicodemus-Evangelium. In that moment Satan boasts to Hades, lord of the underworld, that he brought a man named Jesus to the cross, a man who called himself the Son of God, cast out demons, and healed the sick. Hades is alarmed. He fears that if Jesus – who snatched Lazarus from his grasp – comes to the underworld, he will snatch other souls away too. He pleads with Satan not to let Jesus into hell, but it is too late; thunder claps and a great voice commands, “lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in” (Psalm 24:7). Though Satan barricades the entrance to hell, the gates collapse after the call resounds for a third time, the fetters of the dead are broken, and Satan finds himself enchained. Hades confesses that this intruder is the king of glory, and he turns on Satan, declaring: when you wanted this king dead, you caused your own death! Christ orders Hades to guard Satan until his Parousia and guides the just out of hell in triumph.85 Erasmus adopted much of this version, including the breaking in of light as a first sign of Christ’s triumph,86 the smashing of the gates, the liberation of the inhabitants of the underworld,87 the defeat of the enemy,88 and the guiding of the just in triumph to heaven.89 However, the motifs Erasmus adopted are much less remarkable than those he omitted or reshaped. Nothing remains, for instance, of the liturgical parts of the Nicodemus-Evangelium. The question before the gates of hell according to Psalm 24:7 – “who is this King of Glory” – and the response – “the Lord strong and mighty” – are missing. Also missing are the prescient hopes of the prophets and the battle between the underworld and divine might. The spawn of hell do not rise up in resistance

38 Erasmus’s Early Development

but flee like cowards. This is an old motif, of course, but with Erasmus there is not even a whisper of rebellion. The dogs of hell weep and the terrible pack of hounds kept by Lucifer rush headlong to their own ruin.90 In Erasmus’s version, Hades is not a shrewd governor of the underworld who, after trying in vain to save himself, eventually accepts his fate and executes Christ’s orders. In Erasmus’s poem he does not know what to do.91 From old prophecies Hades has a notion of what will come and he fearfully envisions Jesus’ powerful deeds. He recognizes that Jesus has outwitted him and that he himself provided the temptation: he was deceived when he saw Jesus weak, hungry, in pain, and at last dead, and he recognized his error too late. Hades sees himself as the powerless underdog who must admit that he was defeated with his own weapons.92 Thus, according to Erasmus’s version, the governor of hell is not a powerful, near-omnipotent adversary of God and his followers; he is ridiculous, and cowardly, a frail old ruler who allowed himself to be duped and whose cohort is weak and dull. The poet does not fear Hades but pities him: “What was your reaction then, Pluto, when you saw such things? How did you growl when you beheld hell suddenly illuminated by such unheard-of light and saw, before your eyes, all the underworld thrown into confusion by such dazzling flashes?”93 Ambrosius also used the outwitting motif that Erasmus employs in his Paraphrase of the Temptation in Luke.94 It is also found in the mystery plays, where Lucifer and Satan are often given human characteristics. They are no longer depicted as terrifying, but become understandable and sometimes even laughable. In the Low German mystery play Redentiner Osterspiel, Lucifer and Satan have human characteristics. They quarrel and make up like teenagers; they devise all sorts of unsuccessful tricks to thwart Christ’s redemption; they release a sinful priest from the underworld because Lucifer cannot stand the smell of holy water clinging to him.95 Even more ridiculous is an episode in the Vierten Erlauer Spiel in which a pair of unrestrained lovers is refused admittance because even in hell their lust is unbearable to behold.96 In the late Middle Ages there was a pervasive fear of hell, but it seemed to co-exist with a liberating humour about Satan’s spawn and their ridiculous antics. Satan was given human characteristics and the devils were – especially in French plays – usually comically afraid to return to hell to face their master after their unsuccessful missions.97 Erasmus relied heavily on this tradition in his own poem. All three poems adopt motifs of “salvation history” from the great mystery plays of the Middle Ages. They reflect “salvation history” as a

Historical Awareness 39

coherent chronology, but like the plays they do not avoid envisioning biblical events in the present. The sunrise of Easter day becomes the uplifting light of the world. In it Erasmus envisioned the very maker of light and him who “is born and is about to drive away the mists of dreadful night.”98 The poet is also a witness to the tumult of the elements: “What whirlwind, raging so fiercely, what massive tremor suddenly shakes everything?” he asks fearfully, and sighs: “My mind, too, is shaken by no small fear, and pallor overspreads my face.”99 What happened once becomes a reprisable myth, which like the liturgy envisions the salvation and makes it accessible. This kind of formulation may be simply a question of style, but it is also strongly reminiscent of the ahistoric thinking of the Middle Ages. The choice of motifs is deliberate and bold: the road to salvation is cast as a Trinitarian colloquy occurring after the fall of humans. God himself dies on the cross and God’s adversary is outwitted; thus God abandons himself to mortality to become a part of history. With a sure hand Erasmus adopted motifs from medieval mystery plays that culled the deepest Christian truths. Despite potential objections he did not eschew such motifs. God, the lord of history, simultaneously becomes a part of history and takes part in it. He becomes transient, but at the same time he is life – “dead life.” As the victor, God rescues long-dead historical figures from the underworld. Thus they take part in God’s life, which did not shrink from death and became, as did their own lives, a part of human history. Viewed in this light, history can no longer be seen as a lowly discipline because it shares in God’s glory. But did Erasmus accept this conclusion? In the beginning, at least, he did not do so expressly. Although later he was very interested in politics and surprisingly well informed about current affairs,100 his early letters do not touch on the events of his day or on historical incidents. In the letters that survive dated to before 1500 he said nothing, for instance, about the looming Turkish threat or about the rivalry between the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and the French King Louis XII, nor is there any mention of the “discovery” of the Americas. Erasmus’s letters reflect only what was personally important to him. This is also demonstrated in Erasmus’s 1499 theological tract Precatio ad virginis filium Jesum, which was written in the form of a prayer to Jesus for his patron Anna van Borssele and does not reveal a deeper interest in God’s unique historical involvement with humankind or even with the historical Jesus. Erasmus wrote and prayed to his Redeemer: “With prostrate, suppliant soul I adore you, saviour of the human race,

4  Erasmus’s Early Development

Jesus Christ, at once Son of God and of the Virgin. You are the true undying light, utterly unbounded by time, flowing forth in an indescribable manner from the Father, the source of all light. Together with the bond of the Holy Spirit …”101 The prayer begins with this Trinitarian reference and ends with another. It relies heavily on the New Testament hymns of Christ, especially Colossians 1:12–20. The cosmic Christ who creates, sustains, and renews everything is addressed in prayer. “Unfettered by time, you are the author of time,” declared Erasmus, and with “your health-giving rays you cause all things to flourish and gain new life: you give them birth and nourishment, you are the origin and goal of all things that come into existence.”102 However, Erasmus did not entirely dispense with the historical Jesus. He hinted strongly at the “32 years” that Christ endured “for the sake of a worthless slave.”103 He continued to devise formulations in praise of Jesus’ life on earth, which brought justification and redemption for humankind.104 But these phrases of praise do not serve to assign to the world and its history a relevance and dignity of its own. On the contrary, Christ was not only “not of the world” (John 17:14), he was hated by it, and according to Precatio, Christ himself “hated” the world.105 Consequently, the world is as a chimera and the praying man desires to be transformed and to participate in the grace and spirit of God; humankind is recognized as blind, rotten, and irremediably corrupt and worthless (“putrem hanc et coruptissimam carnem”), and its merits non-existent or even bad (“quae vel nulla sunt, vel mala”).106 Erasmus prays for the grace to live alone in Christ, dead to himself and to the world.107 To do so it was necessary to turn one’s gaze away from this temporal world and towards the timeless eternal creator, the sustainer, and the saviour whose life on earth served to attract fallen humans and lead them from the temporal world to eternity. As long as he lived, Erasmus’s piety incorporated an element of detachment from the world, related to an absolute trust in the love of the saviour who refuses “no one the rays of” his “life-giving grace.”108 For Erasmus, nothing was so bad that Christ could not transform it into good: “And so let everything else be thrown into confusion, let everything become topsy-turvy, as long as you do not remove yourself from me.” Because of Christ he disdains everything, including the world and its history: “Finally, for you alone let me hold all things in contempt, so that you alone may in turn be everything for me: compared to you all things are as nothing, and in you everything that is exists.”109

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Another of Erasmus’s early works, the Encomium matrimonii, said to have been composed in 1498 but first published in 1518, seems completely different. It contains a reference to historical thinking and is characterized by a distinct openess to the world. The Encomium takes the form of a letter in which marriage is praised highly. It suggests that, in contrast to celibacy, marriage is natural, “honourable,” and “sanctified.”110 Although this small work created strong opposition when it was published, Erasmus adopted it unchanged as an example of a “suasoria” in his De conscribendis epistolis. He also composed a “dissuasoria,” a much shorter and more conventional argument against marriage.111 In the Praise of Marriage a sensuous and worldly-wise Renaissance thinker (reminiscent of Lorenzo Valla) expresses his views.112 What is natural is boldly proclaimed to be holy and worthy. A young English nobleman and heir, whom the author wants to persuade to enter into the state of marriage, is encouraged to secure his immortality through his progeny. It’s important, Erasmus declares, to enjoy one’s wife and the bond of body and soul with her.113 He declares that the celibacy of Christ need not be imitated; on the contrary, it exceeds the common ability of human nature,114 and humans would do better to hold to the laws of nature since, “if anyone does not obey it, he should not even be considered human, much less a good citizen.” Nature demands the joining of man and woman and the procreation of children,115 Erasmus continued. “Indeed, let the apostles be imitated by apostolic men.” He argued that the situation of the apostles was much different and that they were not examples for the young men of his day because times had changed. He also pointed out that some of the apostles had wives and suggested that the reader should not be disquieted because Christ blessed the eunuchs who made this sacrifice for heaven’s sake (Matthew 19:12). According to Erasmus, the sentence in the Gospels “pertains to those times” when the apostles had to be free from worldly ties in order to travel throughout the known world and endure persecution, but “nowadays conditions and times are such that you would not find anywhere a less defiled purity of morals than among the married.”116 Furthermore, he declared that celibacy was oftentimes only a pretext for shocking immorality. Erasmus thus makes a case for the marriage of clerics117 although, naturally, he also knew that the Church Fathers praised celibacy, a fact that he brushed aside with the following words: “However, let us make allowance for the fervour of those times [Verum donetur hic ardor illis temporibus].”118

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The Praise of Marriage emphasized the willing submission of ourselves to nature, in order to savour its whole sweetness and abandon misogamic asceticism. Erasmus notes changes in time and the temporality of human values. The time of the apostles was different from that of Erasmus and his readers, and humans can and should adapt to their historical circumstances and joyfully follow the call of their nature. By contrast, the Precatio praised the “timeless author of time” and showed the way from transience to eternity; thus, it was necessary to die to the world, to recognize it as an illusion and to turn away from it. In Erasmus’s body of work both an openness towards and a disdain for the world had a valid place. The coexistence of these two concepts – openness and disdain – in Erasmus’s work may surprise the twenty-first-century historian. Indeed, the Praise of Marriage shows no sense of a consciousness of sin; instead, the doctrine of original sin, which was connected to sexuality, is explicitly rejected.119 By contrast, in the Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum the consciousness of one’s own worthlessness was emphasized to an almost astonishing degree,120 and is comparable to the tracts of late medieval theologians like Johannes of Paltz and Johannes von Staupitz, as Berndt Hamm has recently interpreted them.121 In the Precatio the consciousness of sin and the worthlessness of humans are not simply radicalized as they were by other thinkers, they are described in absolute terms. In Erasmus’s text, humankind is not only spoken of as a “worm” (Psalm 27:7), but here humans feel unworthy not because they look with terror upon their countless sins and inadequacies, but because they look upon the endless goodness of Christ. Christ alone creates existence, he is the “origin and goal of all things,”122 and beside him everything is void. Erasmus addressed his Redeemer in the tradition of Augustine: “what is to grow apart from you other than to tend towards nothingness?”123 In the face of Christ’s benignity humankind is worthless, a mere nothing. Humankind is not only a sinner dependent on God’s forgiveness and mercy to find release from its sins, it is and remains totally dependent on its Redeemer in every way. The contribution of humans to their own redemption through Christ is as little spoken of as their contribution to creation. Everything is Christ’s work alone. Using bold metaphors reminiscent of the mystic texts written by medieval monks,124 Erasmus visualized how Christ, without the cooperation of humanity, forcibly dragged humankind back to his Father: “ravish them to the heights of your own nature; ravished, you lighten them, lightened, you transform them.”125 In an even bolder metaphor,

Historical Awareness 43

Erasmus declared that Christ is the “enchanter and magician” who refashions body and soul, and he prays to him: “Come quickly, then, and transform me totally through the hidden enchantments of your Spirit and the elixirs of your grace … Take away this rotten, irremediable corrupt flesh … so that, no longer alive, as it were, for myself, I may breathe through you, and live in you and for you alone.”126 Erasmus demonstrated this total transformation from death to life using a multitude of images. He made no reference to any gradual process that allows one, after the gift of grace, to ascend step-by-step through human effort and exercises of piety towards God. This is not to say that in 1499 for Erasmus there was no way to perfection. In his view anyone who became more similar to Christ would naturally become more and more perfect;127 however, this metamorphosis was owed to Christ alone: “Therefore, most gentle Jesus, so that you may in your mercy make this poor creature, such as he is, perfect, I give myself and place myself in your hands, so that you may restore me with you and you with me to myself, you who are the highest of all goods, ever to be adored with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”128 In this pre-Reformation tract, which was written for the laity in 1499 and published in 1503, there is no place for a “fear of last judgement, hope for reward, or any sense of merit.”129 Erasmus’s sentiments are far from the late medieval notion of acquiring merit. Among the late medieval forms of piety – except for prayer, since the whole tract is a prayer – Erasmus hints only at the sacraments and even then only at their grace. Like the encouragement and instruction received through the Holy Scriptures they further strengthen the praying man, who is transformed into and through Christ. The human being stumbles continually and is continually righted by Christ; even if a sinner already stands at the abyss of perdition Christ opens to him or her “the refuge of live-giving repentance.”130 In contrast to other contemporaneous texts, no precondition, contrition, or deeper repentance is spoken of at all, nor is the judgment mentioned. Instead of a late medieval piety of merit, one may, with regard to Erasmus, speak more accurately of a piety of receiving or of rapture that emerged by the end of the sixteenth century. At best, humanity’s contribution is its reception of Christ’s work.

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our

Neoplatonism

enchiridion / letters In 1503 the well-known and frequently quoted Enchiridion militis christiani (the dagger for a Christian soldier) appeared for the first time, together with the Precatio ad virginis filium Jesum. It was written shortly after the Precatio and was also intended for lay readers. In it advancement towards God by means of a metaphorical ladder is spoken of. The ladder begins with self-knowledge and humans must climb the rungs step by step. The underlying premise of this type of Jacob’s Ladder imagery was that Christ will only draw close those who draw close to him. Erasmus declared: … raise yourself as on the steps of Jacob’s ladder from the body to the spirit, from the visible to the invisible, from the letter to the mystery, from sensible things to intelligible things, from composite things to simple things. In this way, the Lord will draw nigh in his turn to the one who draws nigh to him, and if you will attempt to the limit of your powers to rise out of your moral darkness and the tumult of the senses, he will obligingly come forth to meet you from his inaccessible light and unimagined silence, in which not only all the tumult of the senses, but also the forms of all intelligible things fall silent.1

This is not necessarily evidence that Erasmus was influenced by the previously mentioned, late medieval concept of a “piety of merit.” The Jacob’s Ladder imagery he used was derived from an entirely different tradition and had little to do with the memory scale or “Stufendenken” that was characteristic of the late Scholastics’ “pious theology.”

46 Erasmus’s Early Development

According to the Enchiridion, the principal requirement for advancement towards God was self-knowledge above true repentance or other acts of piety.2 Augustine of Hippo also encouraged the cultivation of a self-knowledge that, with the help of rationality, should bring out the truth, which in its turn “ignites the light of rationality.”3 Likewise, for Bernard of Clairvaux self-knowledge was the beginning and end of contemplation.4 Indeed, in the late Middle Ages self-knowledge was required everywhere, though not necessarily as an instrument for intellectual refinement. It was seen as a tool for the humble exploration of the conscience that should work towards achieving contrition and repentance. John Calvin later formulated this idea in his Institutio: “the total sum of nearly the whole sacred doctrine consists of these two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”5 Erasmus understood the concept of self-knowledge differently and he dispensed with the goal of exploring one’s conscience for the purpose of confession. In his view it was necessary to be aware of oneself in order to conquer oneself. He wrote: “Therefore, the only road to happiness is first to know yourself and then not to act in anything according to the passions but in all things according to the judgment of reason.”6 Humanity faces a decisive battle pitting body against soul. According to the Enchiridion the devout must mortify their flesh in order to recognize themselves as composites made up of a godly soul and an animalistic body. The capacity for divinity is found in the soul so “that we can soar past the minds of the angels and become one with God.”7 The unworthy man depicted in the Precatio is the reverse of the optimistic Platonic idea of man in the Enchiridion.8 Erasmus quotes from Phaidon and Phaidros and from the Timaios,9 and equates the mortal and the immortal soul fragments of Plato with the earthly and heavenly men according to I Corinthians 15:47–9. Whereas Paul speaks only of Adam and Christ and of the transient and resurrected man, Erasmus’s use of these terms alludes “not only to Christ and Adam, but to all of us.” They applied to humans already on the earth, to the outer and inner human, to the carnal passions, which one must work to eliminate, and the spiritual abilities, with which one can look up to God.10 Arguably, in the Enchiridion humankind is aware of its fallen and depraved nature and the need to rely on the grace of faith.11 But humankind’s spirit, Erasmus affirms, has “a likeness of the divine nature,” for the creator imprinted in mortals “the eternal law of goodness, drawn from the archetype of his own mind.”12

Neoplatonism 4

For the author of the Enchiridion, this law was eternal and not subject to transformation, and it was on these eternal laws alone that one’s ambition ought to be focused. What is transient and earthly ought to be abandoned by humans, and like all earthly things the history of humankind was meaningless. According to the Enchiridion, the history of humankind together with the history of salvation could only hint through allegory at the eternal law that every human should find in him- or herself. The cross of Christ fades to a metaphor for one’s own internal battle with depravity:13 “When you have chastised your flesh and crucified it with its vices and concupiscences, with none to oppose you, peace and tranquillity will be yours to be free to see the Lord, to ‘taste and see how sweet is the Lord.’”14 In 1503 Erasmus spoke of humankind’s inherently godly soul. It was essential that one become aware of it and, with God’s help, make it the ruler of one’s life. He saw self-knowledge as the first step on this path, for through self-knowledge humanity can come to know God and ascend towards him. The notion that God the creator can be recognized or known through his work – that is, through humans, his creations – is an old and commonly held belief in the West. However, it is not an original Judeo-Christian concept but has its roots in Hellenistic and late Jewish writing. Traces of it are also found in the New Testament, for instance in Romans 1:19–20, Colossians 1:15–17, and in the Aeropagite sermon of Paul in Acts 17. In the early church the idea that humankind could recognize God without godly revelation quickly gained importance. Tertullian had already taken it upon himself to demonstrate that proof of God’s existence is found in God’s works and in the human soul. He was convinced that the thoughts and feelings of the soul are naturally Christian. “O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae!” he exclaimed emphatically.15 Scholastics like Peter Abelard valued human rationality so highly that they compared philosophy with the testimony of the prophets. Just as Christians received their name from Christ so too is human logic, according to Abelard’s reasoning, named after the divine logos because human logic in the majority of cases seems to soar naturally towards Christ.16 In the first half of the fifteenth century, one of the boldest ambassadors for this brand of optimism was Raimundus Sabundus. His Theologia naturalis was reprinted in new editions towards the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. An abstract written in dialogue form brought him widespread popularity in this period.17 Although in 1559 his works – together with those of Erasmus

48 Erasmus’s Early Development

– appeared on the index of banned books because of concerns about pantheism, interest in them did not cease.18 Like Thomas and Bonaventure before him, Raimundus enthusiastically – arguably influenced by Augustine19 – granted that besides the Holy Scriptures or “liber scripturae” there existed the “liber creaturarum” or the book of creation written by God’s hand, which could also guide one, perhaps even better and more securely, to the knowledge of God and to salvation. Indeed, Raimundus preferred it to the Holy Scripture not just because the laity could read in the book of creation or because heretics had not distorted it, but because in it everything could be proven by experience and he felt that it was in accordance with all creation and the nature of humans.20 Humankind is depicted with extraordinary dignity; it is the principal character (“principaliter littera”) of the book of creation.21 Thus all knowledge of God begins with self-knowledge, and beginning with self-knowledge humans can climb as though they were on a spiritual ladder towards God. But by the same token, they can also climb down and degenerate into beasts.22 It is neither certain nor probable that Erasmus knew the work of Raimundus Sabundus. Yet Raimundus’s ideas were widespread and had become common property. What is more certain, however, is that Erasmus read at least some works by the Florentine Platonists Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola before he wrote the Enchiridion.23 They too required self-knowledge24 and believed that God could be known through creation. And they used, without hesitation, the old metaphor of the ladder that guides one to God.25 Whereas Raimundus emphasized that only those who were illuminated by God and liberated from original sin could read the Book of Creation correctly and raise themselves up to God,26 this was not so for the Neoplatonists. In Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man the philosopher finds in the “visible signs of nature” “the unseen of God.”27 He declared that if a human being cultivated his “rational abilities” he would become “a heavenly being,” and if he cultivated his “intellectual abilities” he would become “an angel and a son of God.” But if the human, “unsatisfied from the fate of all creatures, retreats into the centre of his oneness, and so will become one spirit with God in the unique darkness of the Father, who rises above everything, then he will preside over all [omnibus antestabit].”28 Such ideas were not limited to Florence. When John Colet read Ficino’s letters from 1495 he noted that “as the soul stands in relation to the body, so does the spirit stand to the soul, and so, finally does God stand to the spirit. The soul ought to rise from the sub-celestial to the celestial and then to the supra celestial.”29

Neoplatonism 49

Erasmus was greatly influenced by this tradition when he composed the Enchiridion, which differs significantly from the Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum. Erasmus wrote the Precatio around 1499 just before he travelled to England, and the Enchiridion just after his trip to England under the guidance of Jean Vitrier, who was then warden of the Franciscan convent in Saint-Omer. The scholar André Godin30 has noted how impressed Erasmus was by Vitrier, who warmly recommended the works of Origen to him. In the Enchiridion the impact of this Church Father, who limited the relevance of biblical history to an allegorical reading of the text, is considerable: Erasmus constantly spiritualizes and allegorizes. The Enchiridion is the result of the combined impact of Origen on his thinking and the influence of the Platonists that Erasmus met with in England. Upon initiating his studies in Paris, Erasmus had entered the Collège Montaigu, which was run in a spirit of rigid and devoted monasticism. He could not bear it for long and soon moved into a more liberal student house where he earned his living as a tutor for the sons of rich men. For these pupils Erasmus conceived his earliest pedagogic works, which he later expanded and revised. His pedagogical writings were later widespread and commonly used as textbooks in both old and new educational institutions. They exerted an enormous influence on the following generations of teachers and students and provided Europe with a lively teaching practice that replaced the old punitive approach and showed greater empathy for pupils’ abilities. Erasmus offered pupils Latin schoolbooks in the form of colloquies through which they learned – in a playful and informal way – both elegant Latin and Christian behaviour and thinking. It is no wonder that his noble pupils adored their master. In 1499 one of them invited Erasmus to England and introduced him to the highest echelons of English society. He found in England “a climate at once agreeable and extremely healthy” and “a scholarship … profound and learned and truly classical, in both Latin and Greek.” Here he met John Colet, whose “combination of learning, eloquence, and moral integrity” he praised enthusiastically.31 In England he was also introduced to Grocyn, whose “universal scope” astonished him, and to Linacre with his “clever or profound or sophisticated … mind,” and finally to Thomas More, in whose character he found that “nature” had never created “anything kinder, sweeter, or more harmonious.” “It is marvellous,” he exclaimed, “to see what an extensive and rich crop of ancient learning is springing up here in England.”32 In England, Erasmus joined a large circle of like-minded people who admired his ingenuity and supported him generously. For the first

5  Erasmus’s Early Development

time since his stay in the cloister Erasmus was free of financial worries and was even able to save. He was invited to noble homes and mingled in aristocratic circles where he could discuss all sorts of philosophical or theological questions in a merry atmosphere that brought to mind the spirit of the Florentine Academy. He found that peppering conversations with his trademark wit did not attract disapproval in this circle but rather encouragement. His new friends were not secluded scholars, they were urbane, practical men who were engaged in public life and had influence at the royal court: during an informal stroll, Thomas More unexpectedly and unceremoniously introduced Erasmus to the royal princes. Here, the Golden Age seemed no longer a dream but a reality. In a long poem Erasmus gave thanks for being so warmly received at court and asked, what if the ancients had known Henry VII? Would they not have believed that they found Zeus himself in the form of a man? For Erasmus, the English king was his “Apollo, the father of the Golden Age.”33 Erasmus revived the Golden Age not just through this poetic homage, but also in a letter written to his friend Fausto Andrelini in the summer of 1499. Even in his private correspondence where there was no need to flatter, he referred to the Golden Age in England: “Why are you so complacently burying your wit among French dunghills while you turn into an old man?” he asked his friend. “There are in England nymphs of divine appearance, both engaging and agreeable, whom you would certainly prefer to your Camoenis.”34 Interestingly, Erasmus refers here not to the well-known Muses (as it is usually translated), but to the “Camenae,” old Roman water deities whose cult was forgotten and superseded by the Muses when Greek learning became fashionable in Rome. He urged Fausto to leave those questionable deities behind and turn to Tudor England where, as in the Golden Age, nymphs would receive him “with kisses.” After the Wars of the Roses a new era of peace seemed to settle in the English kingdom, and Erasmus enjoyed this spirit of optimism to the fullest. To Erasmus and his friends it seemed to be a time in which knowledge and education, not just nobility of birth, gained influence in the king’s council. Furthermore, it was not just any style of education that was gaining influence at court, it was the humanist style of education that Erasmus had admired since childhood. Here the classics were read and studied ardently; indeed, some of his new friends, like Grocyn, had even mastered Greek, a language of which Erasmus knew almost nothing and that he instantly resolved to learn. In England he became acquainted with a persuasive mixture of classical antiquity and

Neoplatonism 51

Christendom, of Christian beliefs and Platonic philosophy. This philosophia christiana greatly attracted Erasmus, who until now had put Christian beliefs in a classical form but had not yet reconciled them. In Colet he admired a theologian who combined “learning, eloquence, and moral integrity.”35 Erasmus wanted to revive the exemplary theology of the Church Fathers in mainland Europe as his friends in England had done,36 but he wanted to do so in a deeper and more critical way. He first sought to learn Greek well in order to have a better understanding of the New Testament: “My mind is burning with indescribable eagerness … to acquire a certain limited competence in the use of Greek, and thereby go on to devote myself entirely to sacred literature.”37 Erasmus opened his heart to these new influences, though he was already more than thirty years old and at an age where one does not easily learn new customs and ideas. Interestingly, Erasmus was also able to retain some critical distance from these exemplary and inspiring men. His correspondence attests to his particular criticism of John Colet.38 This criticism has formed the basis for John B. Gleason’s study, which argues against the influence of Colet on Erasmus and convincingly demonstrates that Colet could not have influenced Erasmus’s exegetical philological-historical method.39 But this does not necessarily mean that Erasmus’s English friends did not influence him at all. It is no accident that besides Colet and More, Erasmus named in his letter to Robert Fisher dated to 5 December 1499 only two Neoplatonic thinkers as outstanding erudites: Grocyn, who had studied in Italy and lectured in 1501 on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and Linacre, who had just finished his translation of Proclus.40 He reported to Colet that when he listened to him speak he seemed to hear “Plato himself.”41 Although this was a common rhetorical catchphrase at the time,42 it is surely significant that Erasmus compared Colet with Plato and not with Cicero or Jerome, to name only two more obvious and equally honourable variants. Gleason does not deny that Platonism impressed Colet, but he also does not pursue the topic any further. In fact, Colet’s compendium on The Celestial Hierachies of Dionysius clearly demonstrates his deep interest in Platonism. Colet’s late work stood for a Platonizing Christendom devoid of any historical anchor,43 and reminds one strongly of Erasmus’s view of Christ in the Enchiridion where the Son of God is described as a teacher and exemplar and as eternal love, but not as the saviour who suffered in a certain time and place. The later works of Colet are full of spiritualizing biblical exegesis and allegories. There is reason to believe that Colet’s earlier work was more or less similar in tone and that Erasmus at that time admired his method.

52 Erasmus’s Early Development

Of course, Erasmus had had contact with Florentine Platonism before 1499. In 1498 Gaguin, his friend and promoter in Paris, had already translated the second letter of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola to his nephew Giovanfrancesco into French. But Erasmus’s enthusiastic references to the Platonic Academy were made only after his trip to England.44 In any case, at the turn of the century Erasmus turned with conviction to a form of Platonizing theology which did not hint at salvation history, much less use a historical-critical approach. Florentine Platonism, which attracted so many of his contemporaries, must have also attracted Erasmus, or he would not have embraced the Platonic concept of man in his Enchiridion so willingly. In the Enchiridion humans have a divine soul and carry in them the eternal law of God. This Platonist idea of humans corresponds with a completely ahistorical treatment of biblical history. The life of Christ is not spoken of in its historical dimension. In the Precatio ad Jesum – his prayer to the eternal transcendent Lord, the author of time who is unfettered by time – Erasmus, in keeping with the late medieval tradition, still praised Christ as the holy lamb who was mingled with flesh and who suffered on earth.45 But in the Enchiridion a meditation on the cross which envisions the eternal suffering in time is dismissed as “vulgi more” and is, at most, a preliminary piety. There it is not essential to comprehend the cross of Christ as a historical fact, but to emulate it in one’s own life by mortifying the passions.46 Christ the crucified is and remains only a timeless exemplary. In the Enchiridion, Erasmus turned the history of Christ into a timeless idea. According to the Enchiridion the words of Christ are equivalent to the archetype, the “logos of the Father,” which humans can and must internalize.47 The victory is not gained “once and for all,” as is traditionally formulated in the Precatio ad Jesum,48 it is necessary to continually capture it afresh with Christ’s help and in Christ’s discipleship.49 With the Enchiridion Erasmus had put his finger on the pulse of the time. The first edition had little impact, but the second edition in 1518 became one of the most widely read books of pious edification.50 By consistently applying to piety a Neoplatonic differentiation between flesh and spirit, Erasmus overcame the gap between the contemplative and the active life, which by the late Middle Ages had become increasingly palpable.51 He created a guide for a new form of religious living. The medieval disdain for the world, which had led to ascetic monasticism, had by this time lost its attraction. By the late Middle Ages new monasteries were no longer being founded and those already established attracted fewer new members. Instead, the lively piety of laymen

Neoplatonism 53

began to change ecclesiastical life. At this time more parish churches were built and countless new orders for laymen established. However, this new lay piety still relied heavily on traditional ideals: pilgrimages, relics, and the cult of saints continued to be central aspects of Christian culture. Although laymen who lived in the world embraced this new piety, its activities and meetings were still removed from worldly life: the holy was still separate from the profane world. Erasmus offered a new approach that did not separate the active from the contemplative life and instead reconciled the holy with the profane. He differentiated between a life of the flesh and a life of the spirit, both of which could be enacted inside or outside an official church space. Erasmus argued that it is a life lived in the discipleship of Christ that sanctifies Christians. If performed in a fleshly way, meditation on a shard of the True Cross, wearing a monk’s robe, or even reading the Bible was not beneficial. In the Enchiridion, Erasmus insisted that one might read a saga allegorically with more benefit than the Holy Scripture literally, for “the Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6:63).52 His ideal exercises of piety were not confined to difficult pilgrimages or special saints’ days, but relied on regular prayer and reading of the Bible: activities that could be practised anywhere and at any time. The Enchiridion is addressed to a courtier and armourer whose profession is referenced in the title of the essay (which translates as “dagger”). Erasmus does not advise the armourer to abandon his worldly profession in order to be able to spend more time in church. Instead, he invites him to meditate piously in his workshop and at his worktable. The armour that he forges should remind the courtier of his spiritual armour and motivate him to perform increasingly pious works. The Enchiridion propagated a new form of worldly piety in which the pious do not flee from the tangible world to the sacred, but instead remain in the world to which they are born, fighting to overcome the flesh while pressing on to obtain the things of the spirit. Erasmus applied all things to and geared everything towards the example of Christ. Almost every profession is inherently good, he declared, but the pious man must first ask himself why he engages in it. One might answer that he does so to support his family. But Erasmus persists: “But why do you have a family? That you may win it over to Christ?” If so, you “are on the right track.”53 In Erasmus’s view, the Christian must learn to spiritualize his worldly life through the decisions made in his daily life and in the tangible world.

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ive

Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti

Although he still struggled with financial insecurity, Erasmus continued with the ideas and plans he had first formed in England, to learn Greek so that he could better comment on the New Testament. At the end of the Enchiridion he declared that he had already begun to read Paul in Greek and to annotate the text: Certainly it is a bold venture. None the less, relying on heaven’s help, I shall earnestly try to ensure that, even after Origen and Ambrose and Augustine and all the commentators of more recent date, I may not appear to have undertaken this task without any justification or profit. Second, I shall try to cause certain malicious critics, who think it the height of piety to be ignorant of sound learning, to realize that, when in my youth I embraced the finer literature of the ancients and acquired, not without much midnight labour, a reasonable knowledge of the Greek as well as the Latin language, I did not aim at vain glory or childish selfgratification, but had long ago determined to adorn the Lord’s temple, badly desecrated as it has been by the ignorance and barbarism of some, with treasures from other realms, as far as in me lay; treasures that could, moreover, inspire even men of superior intellect to love the Scriptures.1

Here, in no uncertain terms, Erasmus announces his plans to restore the old theology. Above all he sought to restore and interpret the New Testament so that even his most erudite and most demanding coevals would approve, but first he had to secure his own income. To this end he published the Collectanea adagiorum in 1500, a collection of classical proverbs and the nucleus of his Adagia that he developed throughout his life into a tremendous collection of classical wisdom. With this

56 Erasmus’s Early Development

collection he offered his contemporaries, and following generations of Latin readers, an extremely readable treasure trove of classical education. The Adagia was used everywhere and furthered a cultivated literary style that was rich in metaphors and peppered with quotations. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, without the aid of grammar books and dictionaries, the study of ancient Greek was an arduous task for a man who was also struggling to earn an income. In the summer of 1504 Erasmus had not yet written the commentary on Paul when he came across Lorenzo Valla’s mid-fifteenth-century manuscript Collatio Novi Testamenti in the library in Park near Louvain. In this work, Valla doubted that Jerome had translated the Vulgate,2 and through comparison with Greek manuscripts he found many errors in the thousandyear-old canonical translation. Erasmus was thrilled. During his school days Alexander Hegius had introduced him to the ideas of Valla;3 he had also read Valla in the monastery and as a student in Paris, and he had warmly recommended Valla’s Elegantiae latinae linguae – a manual of language, style, and meaning – to his friends.4 Moreover, in Paris in 1498 he had borrowed De inventione dialectica from Robert Gaguin.5 Valla’s fondness for naturalism, his claim for utilitas, his polemics against the Scholastics, insofar as their clumsy Latin and their unworldliness were concerned, were the common property of all humanists. Erasmus immediately detected the importance of Valla’s Collatio for theological scholarship and decided to publish it. He saw in this work much more than just another voice joining the chorus of those who bemoaned a debased Christianity and tried to bring it closer to a real Christian life. Nor was it simply the ideas of one of those who merely tried to recall Scholasticism from its all too quixotic discourses. This work dealt with the fundamental text of church and theology – the Holy Scripture. Valla criticized the Vulgate, the canonical Latin version of the New Testament, and this had enormous consequences that were recognized immediately by Erasmus. For example, in his note on II Corinthians 7:10 Valla challenged the accepted doctrine of penance by repudiating the translation of μετάνοια (repentance or contrition) with poenitentia (penance).6 Indeed, the “small details” that the philologist Valla dealt with had “important corollaries,” as Erasmus wrote in the letter of dedication for his edition.7 Valla’s method was revolutionary. As a grammarian he dealt with the Vulgate as he would deal with any other ancient text. He was aware that this text, which contained God’s word and which the church recited daily in liturgy, was a translation from a particular time, formulated under particular circumstances, and was in the following centuries

Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti 5

altered and probably distorted by copyists. His annotations were based on a comparison with the original Greek text; using philological and historical methods he scrutinized and criticized the Vulgate – the accepted version of God’s word. Of course, the Middle Ages were not without their philological or historical inquiry into the Holy Text. The understanding of the sensus litteralis or sensus historicus was also at the heart of Scholastic exegesis. The Scholastics first sought an accurate meaning of the literal sense, before advancing to the moral, allegorical, and anagogical interpretations of a holy phrase, but in his annotations Valla not only abstained from making wider interpretations, he also handled philological inquiry in a completely different way. For traditional theologians it was not just the content of the Bible that was sacrosanct but also the form of the text. The biblical verse “till heaven and earth pass away, no jot or tittle shall pass away from the law”8 seemed to confirm that the authors of the New Testament had deliberately selected each phrase and comma. The same held true for the translation of Jerome, which by that time had become sanctified through centuries of church use. The sense of a word might be concealed, but no one had ever called into question whether or not it made sense. Valla rejected the notion that Jerome was the translator of the Vulgate, and he tinkered with the text as if it were a student’s translation exercise. If he questioned the form of the Holy Writ as it had been handed down then it seemed obvious that he might also question the content. For who could still believe that the content of sacred text was inspired by the Holy Spirit if its form was not? To question the form of Holy Scripture was not only a critique of its copyists, but also a severe critique of the saints who had recited it faithfully and the church that had accepted the text of the Vulgate for centuries. Erasmus knew full well what he was stirring up with the publication of this edition: “I am inclined to believe that the most unpleasantly hostile demonstrations of all will be made by those who stand most to profit, that is, the theologians,” he declared. “They will say it is intolerable presumption in a grammarian who has upset every department of learning to let his impertinent pen loose on Holy Scripture itself.” Fortunately, he could point to Nicolas of Lyra as one example of an accepted Scholastic theologian who had also used, as far as was possible in his time, the original text of the Bible.9 For Erasmus, Valla’s method was not just helpful; it was “indispensable.”10 Erasmus developed the method even further and came up with his own distinctive historical approach. The ahistorical Platonizing piety

58 Erasmus’s Early Development

that is evident in the Enchiridion was demoted to merely a phase. Later, Erasmus continued to propound an internalized and intra-worldly piety and sought to contrast heaven and earth, divine and human things, spirit and flesh. Christ was still very much at the centre of his theology, but he developed a different approach. In his later works, Erasmus continued to represent Christ as eternal wisdom, as a heavenly teacher, and as an exemplar to change humans and to draw them to himself, but he also resolutely emphasized that Christ was a human being who had lived in a defined place and time, that “he thirsted, he hungered, he was afflicted, he died, eyes saw him, ears heard him, hands touched him.” As his perception of Christ changed so too did Erasmus’s perception of humanity. In his later works Erasmus did not need to establish humanity’s dignity on the basis of a divine soul or godlike spirit. In his Paraphrase on John, for instance, Erasmus emphasized that humankind’s dignity was justified simply through Christ’s humanity: “And it is not surprising if a human being is somehow reshaped to share in the divine nature, when the divine word humbled himself for this reason, to put on our flesh … And so that his honour [dignitas] for the human race might be everlasting, he still dwells in us, divinity clothed in human flesh and, in flesh now glorified, sitting at the right hand of the Father almighty.”11 Erasmus’s new self-assigned task, to purify the New Testament by emending the text according to the best accessible manuscripts, needed time. It was not enough to know just a little Greek; an exceptional knowledge of the language was necessary to evaluate the variants in manuscripts. Erasmus also had to acquire broad historical knowledge and to refine his skills as an editor, particularly in the collating of text variants that he collected not only from Greek manuscripts of the New Testament but also from the quotations and translations of the Church Fathers.12 He undertook this project without dictionaries, grammar books, or modern editions and also – except for the last stages in Basel – without assistants. Only after studying the subject for ten years did Erasmus dare to publish a first tentative edition of his efforts. During these ten years of study he made long visits to England and to Italy and established a useful network of associates on whom he could draw for advice. With his enlarged edition of the Adagia, now a compilation of thousands of proverbs, Erasmus made a name for himself throughout Europe as an editor and translator of the classics. His reputation was such that in 1505 the (second-rate) University of Turin promoted him to doctor after only fifteen days.13

Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti 59

It is uncertain how much serious work for his edition of the New Testament Erasmus completed in Italy. No accounts have survived from this time14 and none of the Greek manuscripts he used for his edition are of Italian origin. Not until his return from Italy in 1509 did Erasmus start to collate Greek manuscripts, first in England and later in Basel.15

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ix

The Praise of Folly

It was on his return from Italy, while he travelled over the Alps on horseback, that Erasmus developed his idea for The Praise of Folly. The text, which he was still writing while a guest in Thomas More’s house in 1509 and which he eventually published in 1511, records the wonder he felt at the rich colours and scents of spring in the mountains. The allegorical figure of Folly describes her birthplace as a garden of Adonis where miraculous ambrosial flowers and aphrodisiacal herbs grow.1 She calls this wonderful place the “Islands of the Blest” where the Golden Age reigns and “where everything grows unsown, untilled. Toil, old age, and sickness are unknown there.”2 In this text Erasmus used the myth of the Golden Age to create a critical distance from his own era, but this time he did not seek to contrast the barbarism of monks and Scholastics with the Golden Age of poetry, or to flee from a hostile world into a dreamland. Now he used this imagery to question scholarship itself: “But the innocent folk of the Golden Age had no learning to provide for them and lived under the guidance of nothing but natural instinct.” He questioned not only dialectics and natural sciences, in which he was only casually interested, but also grammar and rhetoric: “What need had they of grammar when all spoke the same language … ? They had … no place for rhetoric where no one was out to make trouble for his neighbour … But as the innocence of the Golden Age gradually fell away, the branches of learning were invented by those evil spirits [malis geniis] … to torment the wits of men – indeed, it only takes a single system of grammar to provide continuous torture for life.”3 Dame Folly sees erudition, including the disciplines of bonae literae, which Erasmus highly admired and followed himself, as a consequence of historical change and as a development in history, not as a

62 Erasmus’s Early Development

gift of God’s Heilsgeschichte. Instead, erudition is described as the bitter fruit of the history of perdition that was brought about through human decadence. However, it is not this new view of the Golden Age that makes The Praise of Folly such fascinating reading. It is the boldness with which Erasmus ridicules everything, including himself, by revealing all humankind and its institutions to be foolish. Although I concede that I am not the first to do so, I would like to explore this aspect of the treatise before I turn to my main examination of the overlooked biblical prototype used for the figure of Dame Folly. Erasmus claimed that The Praise of Folly dealt with “many charges” that could be applied to himself.4 For instance, Dame Folly speaks about authors of books and declares that they seek immortality, which she says may do for those who simply rant on petty topics; she pities the erudite scholars “for their continuous self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay aside, take up, rephrase … and are never satisfied. And their futile reward, a word of praise from a handful of people, they win at such a cost – so many late nights, such loss of sleep … and so much sweat and anguish.”5 But Erasmus pursued a larger aim in The Praise of Folly than simply to laugh at himself. He sought to judge the “lives of men,”6 and to do this he used the character of Folly, who sings her own praises and claims to be “the true donor of all good gifts.”7 This same Folly “creates societies and maintains empires, officialdom, religion, law courts, and councils – in fact the whole of human life is nothing but a sport of folly.”8 She justifies her pretensions by distancing herself from the world and by observing humanity from the safe vantage point of a mountaintop. She asks her audience to share her observations in their minds. The birth of humans is an ugly and foolish spectacle where humans are abused as children, toil as adults, and ultimately die wretched. She asks, what could possibly make men act a part in this play?9 But this is only the first promontory in her climb. Erasmus’s Dame Folly continues to travel higher up the mountain to the peak of Olympus, where she looks down with the Greek gods (who are tipsy on nectar) as though from the balcony of a great theatre, to the earth where men play their roles. She exclaims at their absurdities: there one longs for the wife who does not return his affections, and here another marries a woman for her dowry without a moment’s hesitation. She calls attention to those sellers in the market who lie and try to cheat their customers, and laughs at how men play, quarrel, love, romp, and die like an excited swarm of mosquitoes.10 For Dame Folly everything has

The Praise of Folly 63

two sides and takes on a new appearance – like the Sileni of Alcibiades – according to one’s distance from the object, “so that what is death at first sight … is life if you look within, and vice versa, life is death. The same applies to beauty and ugliness, riches and poverty, obscurity and fame, learning and ignorance, strength and weakness, the noble and the baseborn, happy and sad.”11 The message is this: Whoever gains enough distance from himself and his time can see the ambiguity of the world and laugh at it. Through the figure of Dame Folly, Erasmus used humorous insights (anticipating early twentieth-century ideas about individual psychology) to expose the human soul and its abysses. For instance, humans hide their inferiority behind inflated self-esteem and a craving for recognition; the more inferior they are, the higher their arrogance climbs.12 But Dame Folly reminds the reader that such vices have two sides and that it is also necessary “for a man to have a good opinion of himself and to give himself a bit of a boost to win his own self-esteem before he can win that of others.”13 According to Erasmus a thirst for glory could be important, since men would not have produced art or inventions without it.14 For him the frowned-upon passions were sometimes indispensable and “in fact these emotions not only act as guides to those hastening towards the haven of wisdom, but also wherever virtue is put into practice they are always present to act like spurs and goads as incentives towards good deeds.”15 He argued that a man without passions and emotions, as the Stoics would have us be, is a “kind of marble statue of a man, devoid of sense and any sort of human feeling … who wouldn’t flee in terror from a man like that as a monstrous apparition, deaf as he is to all natural feelings, and no more moved by love or pity or any emotions?”16 For Erasmus this was true even for wisdom and for the bonae literae which guided one towards wisdom. As previously mentioned, in the Gouda-manuscript of the Antibarbari from 1494/5, in youthful high spirits, Erasmus declared that he had a distaste for “unlettered [sine litteris]” religion.17 In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus reformulated the same idea: “it is quite clear that the Christian religion has a kind of kinship with folly in some form, though it has none at all with wisdom.”18 This quotation is taken from the last part of the book, which has been the focus of most scholarly work, and is a subject to which I shall return at the end of this chapter. Scholars divide The Praise of Folly into three parts. In the first part, which has formed my discussion up to this point, Dame Folly changes her point of view continually, speaking in turns as the mouthpiece of

64 Erasmus’s Early Development

folly and of wisdom. In it she constantly mocks the reader and hints at the uncertainty and subjectivity of all judgments. The second part is less ambiguous. It is pure satire in the style of the Greek writer Lucian and a sharp criticism of Erasmus’s time, particularly of the church and the universities. With these passages, Erasmus rightly feared that he would be reproached as an imitator of Lucian.19 In the last part, Dame Folly acts as a theologian and bombards the reader with quotations from the Bible. Thus Dame Folly plays completely different roles throughout the work. In the first part she is both the jester figure from late medieval carnival or Shrovetide (who is open to the world and full of the joy of life) and a more complicated character known since the eleventh century as Marcolf, the foolish companion of wise King Solomon. By the fourteenth century Marcolf was already a well-documented iconographic figure and by the end of the century the roles of fool and king were often interchanged, with Marcolf depicted as the wise counsellor who holds King Solomon back from foolery; thus, the fool becomes a wise man and vice versa. This is exactly the role that Erasmus gives to his own Dame Folly.20 At the beginning of the manuscript she is the foolish counsellor who can deter the wise from foolery, but by the middle of her speech Dame Folly also becomes a satirist, who pretends to be a goddess but speaks nonsense. She evokes Lucian’s god Saturn, who also spoke nonsense, though he was much more modest than Erasmus’s Folly. In the Saturnalia Saturn boasts only about his reign over the Saturnalian feast, not over the whole of humankind or over the hearts of his devotees.21 Dame Folly plays as many roles as Erasmus uses sources and traditions. In the Commentary of Listrius, a commentary on the Encomium Moriae that Erasmus oversaw and in parts wrote by himself, he alluded to many different classical and academic medieval sources so that his contemporaries would better enjoy reading his work.22 Late medieval folkloristic references were common knowledge at the time and did not need any further explanation. His contemporary readers associated the evils of sin, infirmity, and self-contentment with the figure of Folly, but she was also associated with vitality and, of course, with the jester’s special licence to speak truth to power. In order to fully understand Erasmus’s intentions in The Praise of Folly, the modern reader must be familiar not only with the great works of classical literature and the late medieval chapbooks, but also with another important reference which, although now largely unknown, was well known in Erasmus’s day.23 The personification of a boastful figure of Folly was not, as generally assumed, the creation of Erasmus.24 This

The Praise of Folly 65

figure was already prominent in the Proverbs of Solomon, which were composed around the first half of the fourth century before Christ.25 In the sixteenth century the Proverbs were very popular and were published separately in small pocket editions, and Erasmus strongly recommended them to his readers.26 In the Proverbs, Folly – a foolish woman – addresses the reader. In Hebrew she is named ‫;אשת כסילות‬27 in the Septuagint, the earliest Greek version from the middle of the second century before Christ, she is γυνὴ ἄφρων; and in the Vulgate, “mulier stulta.” The English translation of the most important verses is as follows: A foolish woman is clamorous; she is simple and knoweth nothing. For she sitteth at the door of her house on a seat in the high places of the city, to call passers by who go rightly on their ways: “Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither.” And as for him that lacketh understanding, she saith to him, “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.28

It is interesting to note that in this verse the foolish woman acts in a manner that is very similar to the more prominent figure of Wisdom. Wisdom also prepares a meal and, although she sends her maidens to invite those who pass by the city’s castle to her table, she initially uses the very same words as Folly: “Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither!” As for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mixed. Forsake the foolish and live, and go in the way of understanding.”29

Although Erasmus’s depiction of Dame Folly as a scholar who speaks from a lectern could be seen as objectionable, the artist Hans Holbein the younger also portrayed her in line with the long-standing tradition of the “mulier stulta” of the Proverbs as a professor at a lectern. Moreover, Rabanus Maurus, a Carolingian scholar who remained famous throughout the Middle Ages, wrote: This woman is heresy, of course the opposite of wisdom, which sings about her mysteries in a higher tune. But also she sits in the court of her house, which means: between the scholars of falsehood, because she uses deceit to introduce the miserable men into the inner temples of perfidy.

66 Erasmus’s Early Development She sits on a seat, because she requires a lectern for her preaching, it is the lectern of pestilence in which no blessed man wishes to sit.30

In the carnival festivities of French and Burgundian towns at the beginning of the sixteenth century the personified figure of “Folie” likewise acted as a satiric preacher of repentance and boasted that she governed over the whole world.31 Since Dame Folly was a figure so universally known and understood, neither Erasmus nor Listrius found it necessary to refer to the biblical and carnivalesque examples in their Commentary of the Praise of Folly. Indeed, Erasmus often liked to conceal his sources and he even recommended that others also do so occasionally.32 Tradition had long connected chapter 9 of the Proverbs with Acts 4:13, in which it is said that Peter and John “were unlearned and ignorant men.”33 By the fifth century Salonius Viennensis, a bishop of Geneva who died c. 450, had already placed the maidens of wisdom on a par with the apostles in his In parabolas Salomonis expositio mystica, and in the twelfth century the influential and oft-read Honorius Augustudinensis also adopted this explanation. These writers asked why the apostles are called maidservants, and declared that it was because of their ignorance, frailty, and poverty that the apostles were elected to preach the evangelium.34 In the Encomium Moriae Erasmus transforms this formulation into the idea that the Saviour sought to operate “by the folly of the cross and through his simple, ignorant apostles [per Apostolos idiotas et pingues].”35 Like the allegorical figures of Folly and Wisdom in the Proverbs and in the late medieval tradition of fools, the characteristics of Folly and Wisdom are hardly distinguishable in the apostles. The late medieval court jester was the only one among all of the king’s wise counsellors who could speak the truth,36 and the ignorant apostles were likewise the only ones among the educated scribes who preached the truth; their roles became interchangeable. This sentence about the apostles is quoted from the last part of The Praise of Folly, in which Dame Folly acts as a theologian. She does this – not surprisingly – with humour, but she goes even further, and it is through theology that humour and Dame Folly find their proper justification. Using the Gospels as her source, Dame Folly defends her statement that all men are fools and that she alone rules them as their goddess. As she claims smugly in the middle of her speech: “I’m worshipped with truest devotion when all men everywhere take me to their hearts, express me in their habits, and reflect me in their life … The entire world is my temple.”

The Praise of Folly 6

In the satirical second part of The Praise of Folly, Dame Folly has much to say about the contemporary successors of the apostles. She begins by scolding their intolerance, which even she, who otherwise enjoyed the jester’s licence, was not immune to: Then there are the theologians, a remarkably supercilious and touchy lot. I might perhaps do better to pass over them in silence without stirring the mud of Camarina or grasping that noxious plant, lest they marshal their forces for an attack with innumerable conclusions and force me to eat my words. If I refuse they’ll denounce me as a heretic on the spot, for this is the bolt they always loose on anyone to whom they take a dislike.37

Folly wants nothing to do with such delusion. For her only two sorts of delusion exist: One kind is sent from hell by the vengeful furies whenever they let loose their snakes and assail the hearts of men with lust for war, insatiable thirst for gold, the disgrace of forbidden love, parricide, incest, sacrilege, or some other sort of evil, or when they pursue the guilty, consciencestricken soul with their avenging spirits and flaming brands of terror. The other is quite different, desirable above everything, and is known to come from me. It occurs whenever some happy mental aberration frees the soul from its anxious cares and at the same time restores it by the addition of manifold delights.38

Nevertheless, Dame Folly counts theologians among her pupils, even though they will have none of it. She goes on to say that they are in her debt, for they are happy “in their self-love,” and fancy that they “dwell in third heaven,” looking down on the rest of humankind with pity as if they were “cattle crawling on the earth.”39 As regards their self-satisfaction, which they share with all human beings, Dame Folly identifies theologians with good grace as her children. But when they persecute or seek to accomplish their goals by force and coercive measures, she curses their intolerance and opposes them with Christ’s “gentleness, patience [tolerantia] and contempt of life.”40 Dame Folly goes on to explain the origin of theologians’ intolerance. She suggests that theologians created their own logical system with “distinctions,” “newly coined expressions,” and “strange sounding words,” which are far removed from the language of Jesus and his apostles: “The apostles baptized wherever they went, yet nowhere did they teach the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism.”

68 Erasmus’s Early Development

They “would have been intellectually quite incapable of grasping a single quodlibet of Scotus.” According to Dame Folly, the apostles affected their audience through their way of life and through their miracles. By contrast, she suggests that the Scholastics arrogantly seek to define the deepest mysteries, which should be adored rather than explained.41 She goes on to declare that theologians believe the church relies “on the props of their syllogisms” and they “set up as the world’s censors, and demand recantation of anything which doesn’t exactly square with their conclusions.”42 Their logic of language is so sharp and cutting that Folly recommends the following: And in my opinion Christians would show sense if they dispatched these argumentative Scotists and pigheaded Ockamists and undefeated Albertists along with the whole regiment of sophists to fight the Turks and Saracens instead of sending those armies of dull-witted soldiers, with whom they’ve long been carrying on war with no result. Then, I think, they’d witness a really keen battle and a victory such as never before.43

Here Dame Folly uses a very different mode of speech. She makes no rhetorical distinctions and prefers to mingle everything together, spouting “a hotchpotch of words [verborum farraginem effuderim]”44 that allows her to create new connections. Folly mingles Scholastic polemics – using logical arguments to define the true doctrine – with the disputes of powerful rulers – using arms to establish territorial government. And indeed the popes set the precedent for this by using both weapons. Even so, according to Moria, war is something so monstrous that it befits wild beasts rather than men, so crazy that the poets even imagine that it is let loose by Furies, so deadly that it sweeps like a plague through the world, so unjust that it is generally best carried on by the worst type of bandit, so impious that it is quite alien to Christ.45

In short, war is so impious that it really has nothing to do with Christ (“vt nihil cohaereat cum Christo”). That is why Dame Folly dabbles in the role of an exegete and rejects the traditional interpretation of Luke 22:36b: “if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” In doing so she rejects the most important text used to justify the doctrine that Christians may wage war. Later she also questions “what authority there was in the Scriptures for ordering heretics to be burnt instead of refuted in argument [disputatione].” Folly’s answer is always the same:

The Praise of Folly 69

the arguments for such actions are so silly that they cannot convince even her.46 Folly does not hold back in her attack. Just as she rejects the right of Christians to wage war,47 so too does she reject their right to punish heretics with death. This is particularly bold, since to oppose the persecution of heretics was to oppose the canonical and imperial law. Thus, Folly directly challenges the powers in the Holy Roman Empire and their institutions. She does not question the right of the church to persuade heretics by means of arguments in order to save them, but she declares that the church may not combat them with coercive measures. The church should not dispute with heretics as the Scholastics do, with violent language, threats of damnation, or disputes in universities. Folly insists on emulating Christ and his apostles, who, instead of pronouncing death sentences, convinced people through their way of living and through miracles, who taught in love, consoled, were peacemakers, interpreted the Holy Scriptures, prayed, begged with tears, and – if necessary – died for Christianity. This is the only way that Christians should dispute with heretics.48 With these formulations Erasmus uses Dame Folly to question, for the first time, violence against heretics and to oppose the long-sanctioned canonical doctrine established by Thomas Aquinas that heresy is not a wrong belief arising from simple ignorance, but a wrong belief arising from pride, ambition, and chimerical illusion. By Aquinas’s definition it was both a sin and a crime against the crown. He argued that if counterfeiting is punishable by death then heresy should also be punishable by death, because heresy is worse: it is a crime that corrodes souls. According to Aquinas, if the church is to care for the flock that Christ entrusted to it, it must excommunicate heretics who do not recant and deliver them to the secular authorities to receive a just punishment of death.49 Aquinas’s argument was in accord with both canonical and imperial laws and with legal practice.50 Erasmus was already questioning the persecution of heretics in 1508/9, long before entire regions went over to Protestantism and the debate on tolerance became an urgent question. The fifth Lateran council did not discuss the new philosophical heresies before December 1513 or the censorship of books before 1515.51 Erasmus himself was not yet suspected of heresy, nor had Johann Schlechta called Erasmus’s attention to the Bohemian Brethren.52 Whether or not Erasmus already felt personally provoked to initiate a debate on tolerance at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was clear that the figure of Folly in the Proverbs of Solomon was acting in character when she insisted on

 Erasmus’s Early Development

discussing heresy. For Dame Folly the question was an urgent one because tradition had long ago identified her as a heretic.53 As long as she sings her own praise – the praise of folly – she also implicitly sings the praise of heresy. As long as she proclaims that all men are fools – and she does so continually – she also proclaims that all men are heretics. She deliberately describes the pride and ambition of the theologians, which, in addition to ignorance, were the very same vices with which Thomas Aquinas charged heretics, and she declares: “illusion, deception, and ignorance … it’s human.”54 Furthermore, she adds that there is no one who “doesn’t suffer from some form of insanity [non aliquo insaniae genere teneatur].”55 In a letter to his friend Martin van Dorp written in 1515, Erasmus, in defence of The Praise of Folly, declared that if one read Jerome in the same critical spirit as his opponents read the Encomium Moriae they would, in the works of this “most Christian of all Fathers, find a hundred places open to objection” and “grounds for labelling him a heretic,” to say nothing of Cyprian and Lactantius. He suggested, moreover, that with all due caution one could even call Christ himself a “heretic,” considering “how he brought in a new kind of teaching, very different from all the current convictions of wise and foolish alike.”56 Later in the third part of The Praise of Folly, Dame Folly declares – inspired by Jeremiah – that all men are fools before the wisdom of God: “To God alone he allowed wisdom, leaving folly to all mankind.”57 Erasmus goes even further; citing a phrase from Paul, he dares to ascribe a measure of foolishness even to God: “‘God’s foolishness’ [quod stultum est Dei / μωρὸν τοῦ θεοῦ], he says, ‘is wiser than men’ (I Corinthians 1:25a).” Erasmus also infers that “Paul attributes some folly even to God [Deo quoque nonnihil stultitiae tribuit].”58 For her interpretation of this verse, Folly refers to Origen without, of course, giving the source text. In his commentary on the Song of Solomon, Origen had combined the verse in question with I Corinthians 1:21, in which Paul names “the foolishness [μωρία] of the preaching” that announces Christ’s cross. Origen declared, “We are nothing, and He discarded his nature and took the form of a servant. We are a stupid and ignorant folk, and He became the foolishness of preaching, that the foolishness of God would be more wise than men.”59 In his interpretation of Jeremiah 10:14 Origen also referred to I Corinthians 1:25. He wrote that the world cannot contain the wisdom of God, since the wisdom of the world, even the wisdom of Paul, Peter, and the other apostles, is nothing but foolishness before God. In short, compared with the divine wisdom, which goes beyond

The Praise of Folly  1

the scope of our world, whatever wisdom came to the world can only be considered foolishness.60 Origen may have inspired Erasmus here, but Erasmus’s interpretation of I Corinthians 1:25 is much bolder than his source. Origen tried to mitigate the potentially shocking phrases about God’s foolishness and the foolishness of the apostles, which seemed to be the consequence of Jeremiah’s suggestion that the wisdom of all men becomes foolishness without exception. He suggested that only in the light of God’s wisdom – e contrario – can the portion of wisdom that God allotted to the world be seen as foolishness, and only thus can human wisdom become a kind of foolishness. Erasmus, on the other hand, strengthened the potential offence of the text. Folly takes the genitive in “quod stultum est Dei / μωρὸν τοῦ θεοῦ” as possessive and declares without hesitation that Paul allocates to God a measure of foolishness, and the foolishness of the apostles is not only obvious before God but also before men. Folly adroitly turns wisdom and foolishness into relative terms; thus, the profusion of her quotations taken from Paul makes them ambiguous and ambivalent. For instance, Folly emphasizes that Paul numbered himself among the “fools” and declared, “We are fools for Christ’s sake,” and that he demanded whoever “thinks himself wise must become a fool to be truly wise.”61 In The Praise of Folly, Dame Folly declares, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world” and “‘God chose to save the world through folly’, since it could not be redeemed by wisdom.”62 in the light of Christ’s death on the cross the terms “wisdom” and “foolishness” become almost interchangeable. Thus, God’s Son was made something of a fool in order to help the folly of mankind, when he assumed the nature of man and was seen in man’s form; just as he was made sin so that he could redeem sinners. Nor did he wish them to be redeemed in any other way save by the folly of the cross and through his simple ignorant apostles …63

God accommodates himself to humans; therein lies both his foolishness and the dignity of humankind. But according to The Praise of Folly, human beings cannot reciprocate or adapt themselves to God to become wise. At best, in rare moments of mystical rapture humans might lose themselves in God.64 But in order to reach this stage, the pious person must pay a high price. Like the disciples of Plato he must turn his back on all things corporeal and on all passions. Even the love

2 Erasmus’s Early Development

for his parents, children, and friends must be wrenched from his heart. If he loves his father, then it can be only as a man “in whom is reflected the image of the supreme mind.”65 Although nobody can deny that it is pious to love God’s image in one’s fellow human, the mystic as described by Dame Folly resembles the stonehearted Stoic, which she lampooned in the first part of her speech.66 She points out that mystics often act like madmen and seem completely out of their minds, like St Bernard, who famously drank oil instead of wine and did not even notice it.67 Erasmus seems to have taken this amusing anecdote in the legend of St Bernard from a Holbein illustration. In the winter of 1515/16 Oswald Myconius lectured in Basel on Froben’s new edition of The Praise of Folly. The Holbein brothers were among Myconius’s students and were given permission to illustrate the book. Myconius later showed the illustrations to Erasmus, who was delighted with them.68 One of Hans Holbein’s illustrations depicted the unnamed mystic that Dame Folly had spoken of in the 1516 edition of the Encomium as St Bernard, who – engrossed in pious reading – drank oil instead of wine. It was only in the following editions that Erasmus inserted a more direct allusion to this legend, probably inspired by this clever illustration. One notes that although the mystic who practises fasting and sleep deprivation is so rapt that he does not know what he is doing,69 he is not quite rapt enough to suppress his corporeal needs. In Erasmus’s hands the joke becomes a personal one, for he famously tended carefully to his own delicate stomach; and his letters often contain detailed descriptions of his gastric troubles, which bothered him to the point of making him unable to observe the rules of Lent. Erasmus was not merely anxious to avoid drinking oil instead of wine, he also paid very careful attention to the sort of wine he drank: as he grew older only the best would do, and he usually preferred good Burgundy.70 Folly remains true to herself. As a theologian she does not lose her wit; she argues with humour and still acts the role of the foolish woman in the Proverbs of Solomon. When Erasmus described the love delirium of the mystic he referred explicitly to Plato. Plato, he argues, explained “that the madness of lovers [furor amantium] is the highest form of happiness. For anyone who loves intensely lives not in himself but in the object of his love, and the further he can move out of himself into his love [in illud demigrat], the happier he is.”71 Erasmus refers here to the Phaidros, the dialogue in which Socrates does not – as Lysias did – reject the madness of lovers as contrary to reason, but proclaims the love delirium as a divine gift that bestows the highest beatitude on the

The Praise of Folly  3

lover.72 The lover who – disregarding convention – draws as near as possible to his beloved boy is attracted by the beauty of his beloved, which reminds him of divine beauty and compels him to imitate his god.73 Like Plato, Erasmus links the heavenly beatitude of the mystic to the delirium of erotic love. In this context his Folly once more clearly demonstrates who she is: the seductive foolish woman of the Proverbs of Solomon who – as the Proverbs demonstrate – offers herself by inviting young men to “stolen waters” and “bread to eat in secret” – an allusion to her sexuality. As in the first part of The Praise of Folly, jest and sincerity are artfully mingled together to become indistinguishable from one another in the last part. This combination of opposites finds its justification in Christ’s cross where he is simultaneously humiliated and exalted, the judged and the judge, the condemned and the Saviour, and in his light folly is transformed into wisdom.74 Erasmus inventively connected and intermingled the γυνὴ ἄφρων of Proverbs 9 with the Pauline term μωρία from I Corinthians 1 by giving the γυνὴ ἄφρων the name μωρία.75 The Church Fathers had already equated the personified wisdom in Proverbs with Christ, the eternal logos. Erasmus does the same, connecting the persona of the γυνὴ ἄφρων with μωρία. In this manner the apostles seem to be foolish and wise at the same time – an idea already well established in the tradition – and Christ likewise seems to be wisdom and folly combined. Christ as the foolish woman of Proverbs, who like wisdom offers herself for consumption, gives way to new associations. However, Erasmus is prudent enough not to allude expressly to the Eucharist in The Praise of Folly. He only refers very covertly to Christ’s “boundless charity” in which he spent his “very life-blood” on behalf of his “flock.”76 Essentially, all that Dame Folly has to say about the sacrament is that the spiritual and corporeal uses must be differentiated and that the signs of the Mass represent the death of Christ and call the listener to his discipleship.77 Even if Erasmus does not explicitly connect Folly with the Eucharist, some readers could have interpreted it this way, especially considering the foolish woman’s call to water and bread in the Proverbs of Solomon. Likewise, the careful reader may have reflected on the guests of the foolish woman who like Christ are guided into the realm of the dead, though as followers of Christ they revive and through death find eternal blessedness. Indeed, for Moria “this life of ours is nothing but a sort of death” and only the deceased begin to live.78 The idea that in Christ wisdom and folly are interchangeable, if not synonymous, is a very bold one for the sixteenth century – so bold that even Erasmus could not allow the character of Folly to pronounce it explicitly; however, any

4 Erasmus’s Early Development

reader as bold in his or her thoughts as the author could easily follow Erasmus’s line of thinking. He wrote that everything surely points in the same direction: all mortals are fools, even the pious. Christ too, though he is the wisdom of the Father, “was made something of a fool himself [quodammodo stultum esse factum] in order to help the folly of mankind, when he assumed the nature of man and was seen in a man’s form.”79 The Nicene Creed declares “homo factus est.” Erasmus changes this into “quodamodo stultum esse factum” – a bold formulation indeed! Linking the Pauline μωρία with γυνὴ ἄφρων of the Proverbs of Solomon allowed Erasmus to depict the divine wisdom, which can sometimes seem to be folly in the eyes of humans, with both humanity and ironic alienation. Out of an abstract comes a concrete, out of a barren word comes an attractive woman. As a woman the Erasmian figure of Folly can err even when she acts in the role of wisdom. This allows her to express ideas that no one else would risk proclaiming in either a theological or a philosophical debate. Thus, as Erasmus explained in his dedicatory letter to potential critics, Dame Folly once on the stage must speak as befits her character. He reminded his readers that to be rebuked by Folly is not dishonourable,80 since, as all human beings do occasionally, Dame Folly can also lose her head and go too far. That is exactly what she does in the second part of her speech when she denounces the intolerance of the theologians and the church hierarchy. Here she crosses the line and instead of going on with a speech in her own praise, she becomes so enraged by the denunciations of heresy that she accuses theologians, popes, bishops, monks, and priests alike. Erasmus points it out himself and declares that his Folly is afraid people might believe she was “writing satire, when [she] should be delivering a eulogy.”81 Perhaps unsurprisingly, this part of The Praise of Folly was sharply criticized. Contemporaries of Erasmus like Alberto Pio and Jacobus Stunica bristled at its content and at the bold polemics against church and theology.82 Today, modern scholars criticize its form, and point out that the work disintegrates into completely heterogeneous parts: first, the secular figure of Folly/Wisdom, then a satire, and finally the Christian idea of Folly/Wisdom. In the middle section of the book, Dame Folly loses her fascinating ambiguity and is nothing but a univocal critic.83 From their point of view, Erasmus’s contemporaries were fully justified in their critique of the satirical content, which attacked the power of the church and its teaching authority. Erasmus later had trouble defending himself against these critiques, especially since he was compelled to answer their accusations in a scientific, rational

The Praise of Folly  5

manner without resorting to rhetorical defences.84 But in contrast to modern critics, his contemporary critics did not blame him for incoherence; on the contrary, even Van Dorp praised the eloquent form of the whole work.85 It seems that for those who were well versed in the Bible the person of the “mulier stulta” – the figure of Folly in the Proverbs of Solomon, who merged with the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs and integrated the Moria of Paul – furthered the unity of the work. But using literary personification is often a tricky business. The Proverbs of Solomon demonstrate that clearly. The seductive “mulier stulta” comes dangerously near to her sister, Wisdom. Not only do they use nearly identical words in their invitations, they both praise themselves despite the fact that Wisdom had warned earlier, “be not wise in thine own eyes.”86 Like the author of the Proverbs, Erasmus comes dangerously close to the very limit of possibilities offered by a literary personification. That Dame Folly, acting true to her part, dares to allocate a bit of folly even to Christ and proclaims that the preview of future heavenly bliss is nothing more than a delusion was too much for Erasmus’s friend Martin van Dorp. He warned Erasmus that pious readers would not tolerate it and suggested that Erasmus lessen the outrage by also writing a praise of Folly’s more illustrious sister, Wisdom.87 Erasmus did not comply with van Dorp’s request. In The Praise of Folly Erasmus is an extremely bold theologian. As in the poems from 1499, he ventures to deal here with the deepest mysteries of divinity and guides his readers to the very limits of human understanding without going beyond its borders. He does not lose himself in esoteric fantasies or in logical speculations, and he admits that ultimately not all questions can be answered or resolved with human intellect. In The Praise of Folly humans are fallen creatures, driven by passions, self-satisfaction, and a thirst for glory. Whatever humankind begins – be it the most pious work – ends in inconsistency and error. Indeed, human beings can do nothing except abandon themselves to their nature and do what it demands of them. In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus seems far removed from the faith in humankind that he demonstrated in his Enchiridion, where humans could return to their divine origin on a straight ladder. For the foolish human the obstacles on the way to God are insurmountable. It is God who seeks to make the way passable by descending to humanity’s foolishness and by becoming human and dying. In The Praise of Folly pious works of all kinds are mocked. Not just pious ceremonies like the cult of saints, the office prayers, and pilgrimages, but also the spiritual way of the mystics and pious rapture, antiquated Scholasticism, and the bonae literae are called into question.

6 Erasmus’s Early Development

In 1514 Erasmus inserted a little paragraph dealing with the “experts in three tongues” and their philological aims; one of them Dame Folly affectionately calls “my friend Erasmus.”88 But behind all of this mockery lies a steady faith in the Creator who seeks to redeem humans through the folly of the cross – not excepting even Erasmus, who dares sport with the biblical personifications of Wisdom and Folly. Through this work Erasmus emerges as an extremely critical and humorous character who challenges everything and is willing to risk speaking on delicate issues. He does not eschew criticism of monasteries, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or violence against heretics, and he offers a stinging critique of academics in all faculties. It seems that no taboos existed for him. Secular and ecclesiastical authorities are mocked equally, holy traditions are lampooned, and not even God’s word is spared questioning. In fact, he suggests that mockery finds its roots in God’s word because it bears witness to God’s place in human history: God became a man and was drawn into human ambiguities, and God died and committed the handing down of his deeds to the traditions of foolish humankind. In his willingness to redeem the world God committed himself to human frailty and this “folly” permits humans to laugh at their own.

Part Two The Exegetical Theologian

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even

The New Testament Scholar

novum instrumentum / methodus / letters In order to produce the most authentic New Testament text possible, Erasmus began a critical analysis of manuscripts in Greek and Latin and of early translations and quotations of the Church Fathers. This text was to be the foundation for a new translation of the New Testament into Latin that would allow readers to more easily apply the nearly one-and-a-half-thousand-year-old text to their present lives. Erasmus was well prepared for this task: he had excellent language skills and was well trained in the historical development of meaning in specific contexts. He was aware that the biblical authors had not learned their Greek from Demosthenes, but had used the “Koine.”1 And he had practised his skills as a translator on the work of several Greek authors with some success.2 In The Praise of Folly he had demonstrated impartiality and an exacting critical ability that allowed him to question even the most holy traditions. As he saw it, God had delivered his word to humans in a specific and transient historical situation; indeed, Dame Folly informed her pupils that the biblical tradition depended upon “simple, ignorant apostles.”3 Even when not using Dame Folly as his mouthpiece, Erasmus insisted that the apostles were mere men.4 He often proclaimed that God’s word alone contained absolute truth and that – unlike human speech – it alone could not err because Christ himself was the teacher. However, he questioned the idea that a mystery lay hidden behind every line of Holy Scripture.5 He argued that the authors of the New Testament made human errors and as children of their own time they necessarily wrote for their contemporaries.6

8  The Exegetical Theologian

What Erasmus was planning was much more than what Valla had already accomplished. Valla had used only one Greek source text for his critique of the Vulgate. Erasmus, by contrast, compared several Greek manuscripts – though not always what we now know to be the best ones – and was bold enough to correct even the Greek texts when he found a better variant in an early Latin translation. Jerry Bentley has studied the textual criticism of Erasmus thoroughly and concluded that Erasmus greatly surpassed his predecessors in this task. Bentley emphasized that Erasmus was a “much more acute observer and astute critic than any of his predecessors in textual scholarship.” Erasmus was himself aware of how much he had surpassed the work of Valla and Faber Stapulensis, though he freely admitted that they had paved his way.7 Erasmus had tirelessly compared all of the Greek and Latin manuscripts he could find, as well as many quotations and interpretations by the Church Fathers. In 1514 he described his work in a letter to Servatius Roger, who had attempted to call him back to the cloister: I have also revised the whole of the New Testament from a collation of Greek manuscripts and ancient manuscripts and have annotated over a thousand places, with some benefit to theologians … For I have made up my mind [nam mihi decretum est] to give up my life to sacred literature. These then are the concerns upon which I am bestowing my leisure and my busy hours alike.8

Aside from one short trip to Paris, Erasmus remained in England between 1509 and 1514, first as a guest in Thomas More’s house, then at Queen’s College in Cambridge and later in London; still, he struggled to earn a steady income. At Cambridge, Erasmus lectured with little success and even less monetary reward, though his patron, Archbishop William Warham, had bestowed the living of Aldington on him as a benefice.9 The benefice was explicitly given as a stipend without obligations tying the holder to Aldington, but the income it produced did not suffice for Erasmus’s living expenses and he continued to struggle for patrons and for fame with new editions and works. In these years he published further editions of The Praise of Folly and the Adagia as well as works like De duplici copia verborum, the Parabolae, and translations or editions of Lucian, Plutarch, and Seneca. Although he always worried about his livelihood while in England and was often ill and impeded by the wars of Henry VIII, he continued to work tenaciously on his Novum instrumentum. Despite the fact that

The New Testament Scholar 81

this work could not earn him a direct benefit, he saw it as a task intended for him by God: “I have revised my New Testament by great exertions … Such is the fate for which I was born.” “It is no good fighting against the gods,” he confessed, while revising his Novum instrumentum for the second edition.10 He must have been virtually obsessed with this project and likely also with his edition of the letters of Jerome, about which he wrote, “my mind is so excited at the thought of emending Jerome’s text, with notes, that I seem to myself inspired by some god.”11 When Erasmus arrived in Basel in August 1514 and met Johannes Froben, who would become his unfailing friend and printer, he had in his luggage drafts of his Novum instrumentum, his Greek and Latin New Testament, and of his edition of Jerome’s letters. What Erasmus accomplished throughout his life with his editions of the Church Fathers and of the New Testament was and still is admirable. He scrutinized a cornucopia of text variants and developed rules for emendation, using them consistently and critically with both aptitude and empathy. Many of his rules of emendation have stood the test of time, particularly the lectio difficilior, an axiom that suggests that the more difficult or less obvious reading of a text is preferable because it is more likely that the copyist simplified rather than complicated the text.12 Erasmus prefaced Jerome’s works with a biography of the Church Father. From the beginning he laid bare the high value he placed on history, which for him had an unsurpassable dignity compared with legends, diverting though they were. He conceded that although earlier biographers inserted fictitious tales to edify and morally uplift their readers in good faith, he sought to stick only to the historical truth, for “Although an artist may represent ever so much of the brilliance and light of a jewel, an imitation certainly never reaches a jewel’s genuine sparkle. Truth has its own power matched by no artifice.”13 Erasmus not only used his historical skills for biographical and editorial tasks, but also presented historical analysis as a skill that all theologians and interpreters of the Gospel should cultivate. For Erasmus, the only way to understand the wording used by the evangelists within the context of their time was through a philological-historical approach. He had already demonstrated this belief in his first annotations on the Gospel of Matthew. The fact that Matthew began his Gospel with the words “Βίβλος γενέσεως” – the book of Christ’s descent – and used these words as a quasi-title, Erasmus saw as an act motivated by the customs of the prophets and the old world where it was common to begin stories with a genealogy. In his next note, Erasmus suggested that Matthew, having his contemporaries in mind as target readers, began his genealogy

82 The Exegetical Theologian

with Abraham instead of Adam (as Luke did) because his readers were Hebrews not gentiles. The Church Fathers and others also used such arguments sparingly, but in this note Erasmus was particularly exploring the elements that pointed to the historical circumstances and – as he often did – significantly enlarged the Patristic references.14 In Erasmus’s eyes the evangelists were historical witnesses, and therefore interpreters must treat their texts, first and foremost, as historical sources. In his dedicatory letter prefacing the Novum instrumentum (the 1516 version of his New Testament which after 1519 he called Novum testamentum) Erasmus wrote the following: “If Christ’s sayings survived in Hebrew or Syriac, handed down, that is, in the same words in which he first uttered them, who would not love to think them out for himself and to weigh up the full force and proper sense of every word and even every letter?” But he pointed out that the spoken words of Jesus had not been handed down in their original terms, and the Greek texts of the evangelists are the closest thing we have to them. For Erasmus it was thus imperative to restore the Greek text as much as possible and then interpret it within the context of its time in order to best deduce what Christ originally meant.15 This was considered a shocking project. Lorenzo Valla had already horrified much of Christendom by scrutinizing the Vulgate as a philologist would any other historical text,16 and Erasmus pushed the envelope even further by not only scrutinizing the manuscript copies and the translation of the Holy Text but also critically examining the Greek text of the Bible and the biblical authors themselves. Alarmed, people asked – and still ask in some cases with regard to historical and philological critiques of biblical texts – does such an approach question God’s authority? Erasmus himself was far too immersed in his project to show any concern for such fears. His attitude is clearly demonstrated in an exchange of letters with Johannes Eck dating from 1518. The letters deal with the modified quotation of Micah in Matthew 2:6. Shocked, Eck wrote that Erasmus’s allegation in his notes to the Novum instrumentum – namely that Matthew quoted from memory and thereby erred – was unfathomable to Christian ears.17 He declared that if one allowed the authority of Holy Scripture to waver then everything could be cast into doubt.18 For Erasmus this was not a serious concern, and he replied to Eck: Nor, in my view, would the authority of the whole Scripture be instantly imperiled, as you suggest, if an evangelist by a slip of memory did put one name for another, Isaiah for instance instead of Jeremiah, for this

The New Testament Scholar 83 is not a point on which anything turns. We do not instantly form a low opinion of the whole of Peter’s life because Augustine and Ambrose affirm that he suffered a few lapses even after he had received the Spirit from heaven … But perhaps it is not for us to dictate how that Spirit shall tune the instrument that he makes of his disciples … He was present in them so far as pertained to the business of the Gospel, but with this limitation, that in other respects he allowed them to be human none the less. I would not wish to say this because I think the apostles ever did make mistakes, but because I deny that the presence of some mistake must needs shake the credit of the whole of Scripture.19

Erasmus defended his view and refused to engage with the concerns raised by Eck; nor did he show any consideration for such queries later.20 In the following years he even went so far as to paraphrase the New Testament. He retold the Bible text and wove an inconspicuous commentary into it, thus creating an easily accessible and understandable biblical book of meditations. He began with the letters of the apostles and later on even risked retelling the Gospels using reformulations of Christ’s words. With these alterations he hoped the Gospels would speak afresh to the lives and concerns of contemporary readers. In his letter of dedication to the Paraphrase of Luke he mused, “The language of the gospel is simple and artless … The evangelists leave out so much and mention so much in few words; in how many passages the order does not fit, and in how many they seem to disagree among themselves.”21 Erasmus could speak on the issue in a casual way because the artless style and inconsistencies of the Gospels were no reason for him to doubt their veracity. Instead, as proof of the continuing power of the Gospels, he declared that while the works of philosophers who carefully avoided contradictions were forgotten and the overblown writings of historians collected dust on library shelves, the simple and unadorned Gospel was still read everywhere. In 1531 he explained, as had Augustine, that discrepancies in the Bible should be viewed in a positive light: they awakened readers from their lethargy and “the apparent absurdity is signalling to us to examine a hidden mystery,” for “the heavenly Spirit whose inspiration gave birth to the Holy Scriptures cannot falter and knows nothing of deceit.”22 Through the many bitter controversies that developed around his Novum testamentum, Erasmus soon learned that Eck was not the only one alarmed by his notes referring to the discrepancies between the evangelists. Yet in later editions he was adament that the apostles were “but men, certain things they did not know and sometimes they erred.

84 The Exegetical Theologian

And Peter was rebuked and instructed by Paul, even after he had received the Holy Spirit.”23 Erasmus emphasized that according to Romans 12:3, God distributes only a certain measure of faith, and that the spiritual gifts – including the gift of tongues, which was interpreted as competency in languages – could not be continuously at one’s disposal. In short, the apostles did not work wonders everywhere.24 In Erasmus’s eyes, the apostles were men and – unlike Christ – only men. The Holy Spirit guided them, but they used a human language and speech that, because of its human source, was susceptible to error. Theirs was the language of a certain time and was intended for that time, which is why it was essential for Erasmus to scrutinize carefully – as scholars do other historical documents – the literal text of Holy Scripture in order to reveal its true content. For this task Erasmus developed a completely new method that he first published in 1516 as Methodus and revised and enlarged in 1519 as Ratio seu methodus, one of the three introductory works of his Novum testamentum. He started his Methodus by explaining that the interpretation of Holy Scripture required much more than mere scientific method. Readers should not only understand the text, they should be changed by it: “That shall be your first and only purpose, that your prayer, that alone pursue, that you will be changed, raptured, inspired, and transformed into that which you are learning.”25 In order to be captivated by the Bible the reader must first understand it. One must either learn the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew or be dependent on a competent translation.26 Consequently, through countless corrections Erasmus attempted to revise the wording of the Vulgate – the commonly used Latin translation of the Bible – into a form of Latin that was best suited to his time. According to Erasmus, however, the theologian and student of Holy Scripture ideally needed much more than just aptitude in the pertinent languages; several ancillary sciences such as dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, astronomy, geography, and nature study were also required.27 It is important to note that although Erasmus still named dialectic as a critical auxiliary skill for the theologian, he omitted logic. Logic was not a qualification for the Erasmian theologian, for “Christ clothed nearly everything in the form of parables” but he never mentioned “primary and secondary intentions” or “amplifications” or other syllogistic forms. He never used “entities” or “quiddities” or even “esseities”; thus, the Scholastic arsenal was unnecessary.28 However, Erasmus did require that readers be able to imagine the surroundings in which the biblical tales took place. They must acquire, above

The New Testament Scholar 85

all, historical knowledge not only of the places but also of the circumstances, the conventions, and the culture of the time of Jesus and the apostles: “If we studied from the works of historians not only the geographical position but also the origin, customs, institutions, religion, and genius of the nations, where the deeds of the apostles took place or to whom they wrote, then it is marvellous to say how much light, not to say life, is shed on the reading.”29 Students of theology must therefore not only have linguistic skills, but also must understand the concept of terms and the forms of language and style; in short, they must be proficient in all the instruments of classical rhetoric and be able to detect an allegory or a parable and find out what such things mean and how they serve a certain text. According to Erasmus, readers of the Bible also needed clear guidelines for their study. It was essential “that our beginner is given summaries of Christ’s precepts based first of all on the Gospels and then on the apostolic letters, so that he has everywhere secure fixed points30 to which he can refer the rest.”31 Erasmus deals here with Christ’s visible effect on his disciples. In the disciples Christ established a new community that was completely dependent upon heaven and that disdained the world, fearing “neither tyranny, nor death, nor the devil, and trusting alone in Christ’s protection.”32 The goal was to find a new life through Christ rather than through study of the doctrines of faith. According to Erasmus, the student must study the whole context of Christ’s life and meditate on his history.33 The common application of the four senses of interpretation was not sufficient. Students of the Bible had to do more than just apply the common literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical interpretations to the reading. They must also go into the details (“in singulis”) to ask: What nuances are in the text? What differences? What literary method is used (“qui gradus sint, quae differentiae, quae tractandi ratio”)? In other words, the study of the literal and historical sense must be deepened and the text read with historical awareness, since “there are passages which are meant to apply solely to the disciples and their time, others apply to all; certain allowances are made for the feelings of those times and some are to be laughed at with irony.”34 The student had to be in the habit of quoting accurately, so as not to take quotations out of context, and to be diligent in avoiding manipulating the meaning of God’s word to fit his or her own preconceived notions.35 Like a classical rhetorician, the student must understand “the origin of what is said, by whom it is spoken, to whom it is addressed, the time, occasion, and terminology, what preceded and what follows

86 The Exegetical Theologian

it.” Moreover, the student had to be aware that every author has his own special wording. For instance, the evangelists often used Hebrew terms and phrasing, and “the divine spirit has its own language.”36 In the Copia, a manual for Latin style first published in 1512, Erasmus had already pointed out that terms have their own unique histories and may have different meanings depending on the time and context in which they are used.37 Unintelligible passages should therefore be explained on the basis of clear passages, for which Erasmus recommended his loci-method, a system in which the student collects quotations and ideas, particularly on parallel and opposing topics, and arranges them under two hundred to three hundred keywords. Erasmus was certain that Jerome and Augustine also employed some version of this highly effective method. He suggested that with such a collection of loci the student would have “a good resource at hand, if there were an occasion to debate or explain anything.”38 Rudolf Agricola had also recommended this method of study earlier, but with little success. Agricola’s book was not published until 1515 and became widespread only after 1539.39 It was Erasmus who propagated the idea in 1512, and it was quickly disseminated throughout Europe and established in schools.40 In fact students, lecturers, and preachers, at least until the second half of the century, did collect their quotations in similar loci-books – though usually under fewer keywords than were suggested by Erasmus. The popularity of this practice is demonstrated by the extant handwritten collections of Heinrich Bullinger, Rudolf Gwalther, Heinrich Pantaleon, and Christian Wurstisen, just to name a few.41 Outstanding printed examples of such collections include the encyclopedic works of Konrad Gessner and Josias Simler in Zurich, who classified their material, as Erasmus recommended, according to opposites and affinities; Gessner, for example, divided animals into different classes.42 In his Methodus Erasmus also applied this system to biblical exegesis. The Scholastics sought to systematize exegetical material in a hierarchical order in which everything derived from God’s being. By contrast, the locimethod did not seek to systematize at all. Anything could be collected under an indefinite passel of theological topics, “locos aliquot theologicos,”43 in order that it might be always at one’s fingertips and usable in new contexts and to make new connections. The loci were not to be the goal of theological work, but to function as valuable instruments for Erasmus’s new historical exegetical method. Essentially, Erasmus recommended to the theologians of the future a methodology based on historical inquiry. Theologians must obtain the necessary skills in the

The New Testament Scholar 8

source languages and must scrutinize the time and circumstances in which passages were written in order to finally advance to the stage of a critical analysis of the sources, after which they might collect and classify their excerpts under keywords. This ensured that they understood their material within its given context and could attempt to interpret it as impartially as possible. With this method Erasmus turned the theologian into a historian, but he demanded more than just historical research from theologians. They were not to simply discover what happened in the time of Christ and what the words of Jesus meant in their own era, or which part of the biblical message was relevant for the apostles in their own time; they were also supposed to ask themselves what the relevant message was for all eras and for the present time in particular. According to Erasmus this was the main goal of historical research. The theologian must deduce and identify from the history of Christ’s life that which is exemplary and obligatory and which guides towards eternal blessedness. Of course, this did not mean that the scholar had to use logical categories to attempt to distil eternal truths and dogmas. For Erasmus, the Gospel appeals not merely to the rational abilities of its readers but also to their hearts.44 The essential point was that the message of Christ could not be detached from its unique context to appeal to all times. It depended on the fact that “He who was God became man, and He who was immortal became mortal.” It also depended on witnessing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He is “the wisdom which once and for all makes foolish all the wisdom of this world,” explained Erasmus in the Paraclesis.45 This wisdom can only be gathered out of the writings of the evangelists who witness, in a time-dependent form, the incarnate God and his actions on earth (today one might say that they were witnesses to the historical Jesus as God’s Son), and in order to understand their testimony, historical knowledge was absolutely crucial. Thus, interpreters of the Gospels had to use their erudition assiduously to scrutinize words and phrases46 and therefore needed, apart from their philological skill, knowledge of the time and circumstances in which the text was composed and of the people to whom it was originally addressed. This is why it was important for Erasmus to investigate when the books of the New Testament were written. He discussed the authorship of the Epistles and denied that Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.47 The result of this was that he valued the Epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians more highly.48 That is not to say that Erasmus had a lack of respect for the later apostolic Epistles, though he found several questionable statements in them,49 but

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Revelation reminded him so much of Cerinthos’s millenarianism that he asked himself if it might have actually been written by this heretic. Revelation had value for him only as a source text for the history of the early church: “This book is scarcely suited to help us find truth because it consists entirely of allegories; however, it contributes significantly to the history of the early church.” For Erasmus, if read critically, Revelation could also be a noble jewel – although perhaps not quite the noblest – as he pointed out in one of his annotations to the New Testament.50 Erasmus’s work was by no means complete with the publication of the Novum instrumentum in 1516, together with the introductory works, among them the Methodus. He continued to revise his work throughout his life and by 1519 he had already published a second edition. From that point he entitled the work Novum testamentum, and it contained a new and much bolder revision of the Vulgate with expanded notes for each new edition. His last revision was published in 1535, one year before his death. For more than two hundred years this text formed the foundation of critical exegesis in the West. Later editions of the New Testament, like that of Henricus Stephanus edited by Theodore Beza, are based on Erasmus’s work, and Erasmus’s notes remained indispensable for generations of theologians. Johann Jakob Wettstein, for instance, was still using Erasmus’s version for his critical edition in 1751/2.51 Although in 1558/9 the Catholic Church put all of Erasmus’s writings on the Index librorum prohibitorum, Rome soon had to reverse its decision and allow “purified” editions. Erasmus’s Novum testamentum thus remained in continual use.52 Many of his new interpretations and his proposals for a correct translation still influence contemporary versions of the New Testament. Erasmus’s translation of εὐδοκία in Luke 2:14 and εὐδοκειˆνˆ in Matthew 17:5 are particularly famous. He understood εὐδοκία as God’s good will towards men or reconciliation, instead of the good will of men and εὐδοκειˆνˆ respectively. The Vulgate translated Luke 2:14 as “Gloria in altissimo Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis,” which means: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will. Erasmus turned “hominibus bonae voluntatis” into “in hominibus bona voluntas.” Accordingly, the American Standard Version formulates the passage as “in whom he is well pleased.” Regarding Matthew 17:5, the Vulgate had and still has “Hic est filius mihi dilectus in quo mihi complacui” and the New Jerusalem Version translates it as “This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour.” Erasmus turned “in quo mihi complacui” into “in quo mihi bene complacitum est,” and the American Standard Version formulates it – again in line

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with Erasmus’s understanding – as “in whom I am well pleased.” Erasmus’s translation allows for the interpretation that God is reconciled with humans (Luke 2:14) through his beloved Son (Matthew 17:5), an interpretation which was already favoured by the Zurich Reformers.53 The Reformers studied Erasmus’s edition of the New Testament with enthusiasm. It was the base text for all of their translations into the vernacular and the foundation for their commentaries. Luther not only used Erasmus’s Greek text for his German Bible, but his translation is, as Stephan Veit Frech has demonstrated, also based on Erasmus’s Latin translation and dependent on Erasmus’s extensive notes, as is his Commentary on Galatians, as Cornelis Augustijn has noted.54 Max Lienhard detected that in the first chapter of Corinthians Zwingli consistently adopted the Erasmian translation of the Bible text in all twenty passages where Erasmus deviated from the Vulgate, and used the Annotationes in his commentary on I Corinthians 1.55 A comparison of the whole text of this letter and a cursory look at all of Zwingli’s New Testament commentaries clearly demonstrates that Zwingli adopted Erasmus’s Latin translation and used his Annotationes.56 Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor as Antistes, returned to the wording of the Vulgate more often, but usually only when Erasmus’s version deviated from it for stylistic reasons. He adopted all of the theologically significant variants used in Erasmus’s Novum testamentum. In the first chapter of Romans, Bullinger formulated different variants only when Erasmus rephrased a whole sentence. In such cases Bullinger often conflated Erasmus and the Vulgate, always adopting Erasmus’s important new terms like the verses Romans 1:18–21 and 29.57 Diana Clavuot-Lutz, who examined the whole letter to the Romans, came to the same conclusion.58 Further evidence for Bullinger’s reliance on Erasmus is that he quoted from the 1535 edition in his locicollection, which he began accumulating in 1534. We also know that Bullinger owned the 1522 edition of Erasmus’s New Testament since it has survived with his ex libris.59 In 1539 Froschauer edited a Latin Bible with a foreword written by Bullinger: in this Bible the translation of the Old Testament is by Sebastian Münster, and the translation of the New Testament is by Erasmus. In 1543 the Zurich Reformers published their own Latin translation of the Old Testament, which was mostly the work of Leo Jud. For the New Testament they reprinted the text of Erasmus with only a few theologically insignificant corrections.60 Calvin also often referred to Erasmus. In his study on Calvin’s commentaries T.H.L. Parker suggests that the Reformer always used the translation and the Annotationes from Erasmus’s 1535 Novum

9  The Exegetical Theologian

testamentum. However, Parker also refers to discrepancies between the two texts. In the whole Latin text of the New Testament he found 148 deviations from Erasmus’s translation. For an era in which systematic citation was mostly imprecise, and for a critical theologian who could use many other Bible editions as sources (such as the Complutensis or the editions from Colinaeus and, after 1546, Stephanus), these deviations are relatively negligible, particularly as only four of the variants are of theological significance.61 The theologians of the sixteenth century used Erasmus selectively and critically but liberally nonetheless. But had his readers merely copied him as an infallible authority they would not have used the Novum testamentum as he intended, for Erasmus saw his New Testament editions as unfinished manuals that needed continual revision. He did not want to impose his own interpretation of the Bible text, but to offer an instrument that would allow readers to form a competent judgment of their own. “I have added annotations of my own, in order in the first place to show the reader what changes I have made, and why,”62 he declared, and went on to explain in discussion with Faber Stapulensis, “I thought it legitimate, especially in ‘annotations’, to rehearse the different views of different people, and I chose to introduce my own on the principle that each person should be free to make his own judgment and that nobody’s opinion should be condemned in advance.”63 Erasmus’s New Testament was a useful tool for following generations. Thanks to him they had a secure Greek text to hand with a competent translation into Latin for their commentaries. And for their further interpretations they had the relevant quotations of the Church Fathers. Although, from a modern point of view, Erasmus’s text and hermeneutic are often deficient, he successfully established a method of biblical criticism for his immediate contemporaries and for those who came later. The Reformers used Erasmus’s New Testament and Annotations (and later his Paraphrases)64 in an eclectic way; likewise, they used his locimethod in a way that was suited to their purposes. What for Erasmus was a helpful instrument in his new historical exegesis was used by the Reformers to achieve their dogmatic goals. It was a small but remarkable step. Instead of collecting exegetical material under a number of topics in order to have at hand a resource of wisdom for any occasion and context, the Reformers applied the loci-method to a theological ordering system and employed the topics or keywords to create a new systematic order. The first to do this was Philipp Melanchthon in Wittenberg. In 1521 he composed his Loci communes, and Zwingli soon followed

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suit with his Commentarius de vera et falsa religione in 1525. Their systems differed from the conventional order for dogmatic articles, which was traditionally God – creation – fall – incarnation – redemption – grace – sacraments – eschatology. By contrast, Melanchthon began his Loci with “De hominis viribus” – the ability of man65 – and Zwingli began his with the categories God and mankind, followed by evangelium and penance, which in turn were followed by law and sin (traditionally subordinated under the category of the fall).66 From a Scholastic point of view this was utter confusion. Bullinger also arranged his Summa christenlicher Religion differently. He began with Holy Scripture and then dealt with God, sin, law, grace, and faith in that order.67 Theologians skilled in the Erasmian loci-method no longer felt obliged to logically deduce everything from a first cause and to order it accordingly. They varied their structure and, according to their aims, consulted their loci-collections to arrange their store of knowledge. How this knowledge was arranged was user-defined. The only condition was that the collection be easily accessible. Melanchthon revised his Loci communes several times. In 1535 he again adjusted them to fit a more traditional scheme that began with De Deo.68 Even in Protestant circles, a strict and authoritative systematic approach to dogma was soon re-established; this was not at all in the spirit of Erasmus. On 28 May 1525, Zwingli claimed that Erasmus had declared to him after reading his Commentarius: “My dear Zwingli, what do you write that I have not written before?”69 Erasmus’s verdict on the first edition of Melanchthon’s Loci communes was equally positive. In September 1524 he wrote to the young professor in Wittenberg informing him that he had read the Loci completely, and he added courteously that although he already had respect and affection for Melanchthon’s talents, his respect had increased after reading the Loci. However, he went on to speak of his doubts and objections to the collection and concluded: “Video dogmatum aciem pulchre instructam adversus tyrannidem Pharisaicam [I perceive a fine army of principles marshalled to fight the tyranny of the Pharisees].”70 This sentence may remind the modern reader of the regiment of Sophists that Dame Folly was eager to send to fight against the Turks and Saracens.71 Erasmus would have assumed that Melanchthon knew The Praise of Folly, and this sentence suggests that although he may have approved of Melanchthon’s fight against the Pharisees (the Scholastics) in principle, he doubted the effectiveness of fighting them in this style. In the following sentences Erasmus was clearer: “But there are some points among them, to speak frankly, which I do not follow, and some of a kind which, even were it safe to

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do so, I would rather not profess publicly for conscience’ sake, some such that, if I did profess them, it would do no good.”72 And finally, he wrote: “You will say, why then did you not immediately take me up on those points of disagreement? Because I was in favour of a policy of restoring the liberty of the gospel [renovandae libertatis Evangelicae].”73 Erasmus sent his Diatribe de libero arbitrio sive collatio with this letter to Wittenberg. In this work, which Erasmus wrote against the Lutheran doctrine of predestination, he petitions the reader to turn away from a fixation on dogma.74 Erasmus is even more pointed in his last letter to Melanchthon. Gravely ill, he wrote in 1535: “The man who hands on the doctrines of Christian faith [regulae fidei catholicae] takes on a hard task. If he is inconsistent in any point, his authority wavers in all points.”75 This constituted a polite but categorical rejection of every type of dogmatic system. Erasmus intended something quite different with his loci-method. He wanted to collect and sift through biblical material and to have at hand a personalized manual that was well suited to his historical approach and could also be used for new inquiries. Erasmus was already the acknowledged leader of classical erudition in Europe, but with his Novum instrumentum he also became the focus of scientific study in theology.76 His fame was widespread, and it was not just a handful of elite scholars who admired him; he also became famous in the political sphere. He was already an honorary councillor at the court of Brussels to the future Emperor Charles V. The pope was likewise delighted to have the Novum instrumentum dedicated to him and promised to support Erasmus’s projects. By 1515 the pope had granted Erasmus a dispensation that exempted him from his monastic vows and allowed this illegitimate son of a priest to receive benefices.77 In 1517 Francis I, King of France, promised lucrative benefices if Erasmus would return to Paris,78 and England also used similar means to try to lure Erasmus back to its shores.79 In this period Cardinal Ximenes attempted to attract Erasmus to the University of Alcalá,80 as did the Duke of Saxony to the University of Leipzig.81 Erasmus believed that his youthful dreams were finally coming true. Everything seemed to be changing for the better. Contrary to expectation, the young King Francis I, after his bloody victory in Marignano, had made peace with Pope Leo. Likewise, Henry VIII and Francis I seemed to aspire to true Christian philosopher-kingship. They supported new humanist studies, appointed humanistically educated counsellors at their courts, and took an interest in the new biblical theology. The Emperor Maximilian and his grandson Charles also supported the studia humanitatis that Pope

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Leo had long espoused. The Golden Age seemed to be just around the corner.82 In February 1517, at about fifty-one years of age, Erasmus confessed to his young friend Wolfgang Capito, one of the later Reformers of Strasburg, that he was too old to cling any longer to life and that he had too often learned that nothing can be desirable on earth compared with heavenly joys. Yet, he declared, he would like to be young again, for “I perceive we may shortly behold the rise of a new kind of golden age.” At this moment in time, as he saw it, heaven had changed the minds of the princes so radically that they seemed eager for peace and concord. Francis I looked to avoid conflicts and to uphold Christianity. Charles, Henry, and Maximilian had given up their armament and seemed on the point of forming an indissoluble bond of peace, “high moral standards and Christian piety, the reformed and genuine study of literature and the liberal disciplines may be partly reborn and partly find new lustre.” Everything seemed to work towards this goal with the same fervour. The sciences were re-emerging through the studium humanitatis of the Scots, Danes, and Irish and through the medical advances practised by Leoniceno in Rome, Leoni in Venice, Cop and Du Ruel in France, and Linacre in England; civil law was practised by Budé in Paris and Zasius in Germany; and mathematics was studied by Glarean in Basel. Erasmus declared that, by contrast, the situation in theology was dire, but also that there “too I am confident of success, as soon as knowledge of the three tongues proceeds to secure public recognition in the universities, as it has already begun to do.” For Erasmus, Faber Stapulensis played an important part in this renewal, to which he had contributed by paving the way.83 Erasmus was not the only one in the 1510s who thought that his ideas of reform would have an enormous impact. Nobody imagined that names like Luther and Zwingli would one day personify the intellectual revolution happening in Europe at this time. Everyone expected the long-desired reform to come from Erasmus, and everyone wanted to be connected with him. Eck could not praise him enough. He declared “that almost all scholars are convinced Erasmians.”84 The young Reformers also sought Erasmus’s attention. Through his friend Glarean, Zwingli had an opportunity to visit Erasmus. In April 1516 he thanked the master for his reception by letter. Its content is remarkable: Zwingli not only praised the brilliance of Erasmus’s learning and his promotion of theology and the studia humanitatis, but also the ardent love for God and men which animated Erasmus, as well as his “charming kindness,”

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his “generous nature,” the “courtesy of his character,” and “his well regulated life.”85 He drew a very attractive portrait of the aging humanist, which complied with the ideal of men that Erasmus had propagated in his own pedagogical writings and which he had tried to realize in his own life and to convey for posterity. It is perhaps no surprise then that Erasmus happily admitted the young admirer to his inner circle of friends. Many praised him effusively in those years: He was called the “light of the world”86 and the “rarest glory of the Muses,”87 but very few encomia would have delighted him as much as Zwingli’s clever praise. In 1519 Luther was likewise unrestrained in his praise for the humanist, despite the fact that two years earlier he had confided to Johannes Lang, the Augustinian eremite and later Reformer of Erfurt, that he disapproved of Erasmus and feared that he did “not enough emphasize Christ and God’s grace.” In this point, Luther believed that Erasmus ranked far behind Faber Stapulensis and that human things would always be much more important for him than divine things.88 Such undifferentiated denunciations demonstrate that Luther was already prejudiced against Erasmus by 1517. While the often-cited letter of Spalatin from 1516 demonstrates a real and verifiable difference between Luther and Erasmus in their interpretations of the Pauline understanding of law and original sin,89 Luther’s letter to Johannes Lang scorns Erasmus as a theologian categorically. Luther spoke of Erasmus as a theologian whose ambitions and lifestyle he detested and despised. Nevertheless, in 1519 he contacted Erasmus and tried to gain the respect and attention of the famous humanist. It seems that by 1519 no serious theologian could ignore Erasmus. Luther wrote to the aging humanist, “for who is there in whose heart Erasmus does not occupy a central place, to whom Erasmus is not the teacher who holds him in thrall.” Erasmus was his “glory and hope.”90 However, Luther’s words did not seem to impress Erasmus. He answered two months later and in a very reserved manner.91 Even before the edict of Worms threatened his plans for reform, Erasmus had to abandon his grand hopes for the new Golden Age that he had announced so enthusiastically in February 1517. A Golden Age of peace and scholarship was clearly not afoot as he had hoped. By the spring of 1518 Erasmus was already lamenting the unrestrained tyranny of the pope and the monarchs. And by autumn he sighed, “what a topsy-turvy world we live in! Out of men we make gods and turn priesthood into tyranny. The princes, together with the pope, and I dare say the Grand Turk as well, are in league against the well-being of the common people. Christ is out of date; it is Moses we follow now.”92

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In May 1521 Emperor Charles had joined forces with Leo X against Francis I and waged war over the dominion of Northern Italy. In 1522 Erasmus dedicated the Paraphrase on Matthew to Charles V, explaining that as prince Emperor Charles was not a teacher but a defender of the faith, and thus the Paraphrase applied particularly to him as a secular prince whose task it was to “protect or amend or propagate the religion of the gospel.” Erasmus advised Charles particularly “not to forget that no war can be undertaken for so just a cause or fought with such moderation that it will not bring with it a vast horde of crimes and calamities, and further, that the largest share of these evils falls upon harmless people.”93 Meanwhile, a catastrophe had already been set into motion: Charles V and Henry VIII, in league with the pope, were now at war with Francis. Christendom was split apart and Erasmus declared that “moral standards” are “corrupted, and there are these great dissensions in men’s thinking that now reduce all things to chaos.”94 There was not much left for Erasmus to hope for. However, there was still one dream that had not yet vanished for him: inspiration for a better world might still be found in the Gospels. To that end Erasmus proclaimed, “where can we better seek refuge than … in the pure springs of Holy Scripture, of which the Gospels are the purest and most unsullied part?” The New Testament is a “gospel of peace first as reconciling us to God and secondly as uniting us among ourselves in mutual concord.”95 By 1523 it was unclear whether or not the princes were again prepared to heed this exhortation. Undeterred, Erasmus began with his Paraphrase on Mark, which he dedicated to Francis I in December 1523 while Francis was waging a fierce war over Northern Italy. Erasmus addressed a striking essay on peace to the king. He conceded the monarch’s right to bear arms but emphasized that for Christians its use was limited. In other words, a king’s sword may only serve public peace and order, not his imperial ambitions.96 He went on to explain that Christ combined in his person both spiritual and secular government, though on earth he only exemplified the spiritual, and that kings must therefore emulate the one who “spent himself entirely on his own people [Ille se totum impendit suis].”97 In August 1523, in the dedicatory letter of his Paraphrase on Luke written to Henry VIII, Erasmus boasted that the princes of Europe read his Paraphrases Charles was often seen reading the Gospel; Ferdinand frequently took up the Paraphrase of John that was dedicated to him; and Christian of Denmark was said to read keenly from the Paraphrase

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of Matthew.98 Unfortunately, the political fruits of this reading were nowhere to be seen. According to Erasmus, the Gospel had already proven its hidden potency in the first centuries of the millennium: despite resistance, the message of Christ was disseminated everywhere through a handful of men. By the sixteenth century, Europe had rich and powerful Christian princes, bishops, and scholars, but the realm of Christ was shrinking. If “we could find the reason for this, perhaps we should more quickly find a remedy,”99 Erasmus lamented. The war in Northern Italy did not end with a reasonable arbitration or the sage renunciation of violence that Erasmus had hoped for but instead with the capture of Francis and the appalling sack of Rome. The knights rebelled, there was discontent among the starving peasants, and the Reform movements in Wittenberg and Zurich were leading to open riots. Erasmus would have had good reason to declare his work of reform a failure at this point, but he did not. He held firm to his ideas and continued to support them diligently and with the whole force of his eloquence. Between 1524 and 1529 in Basel he not only composed pamphlets and apologies but also more significant works. During this time he added new material to the Adagia and published many new Colloquia. He addressed tracts like Institution of Christian Matrimony, The Sermon on Mercy, On Praying to God, On Confessing Sins, and a Letter of Comfort in Adversity to laypersons or moderately educated nuns. Moreover, he worked on editions of Latin classics and continued his editions of the Church Fathers. In 1526 he published the complete works of Irenaeus and in 1527 of Ambrose, but his main task was still to expand and revise his notes on the New Testament. Although he no longer had to attend to every detail by himself – since his printer Froben supported him as much as possible and he was also assisted by amanuenses and well-known scholars like Beatus Rhenanus – it is admirable how efficient Erasmus was in these years.

eight

The Paraphrast

Paraphrases of the Gospels Erasmus addressed the Paraphrases to laymen. These re-narrations of the New Testament, which he interspered almost imperceptibly with running commentary, were composed beween 1517 and 1524 and had an enormous impact. They appeared in numerous editions and were translated into several vernacular languages.1 Erasmus’s historical approach also affected these edifying books. In his Paraphrases of the Gospels (edited in 1522 and 1523), he challenged his broad audience with significant historical considerations by writing from the evangelists’ point of view to explain to the readers why they wrote the Gospels. For example, in Erasmus’s Paraphrase, Matthew, who was regarded as the first evangelist and an eyewitness to Christ’s life, begins with a basic lecture on the good news that guides all people to eternal beatitude.2 Erasmus’s Matthew explains how he felt compelled to write down what others had only ever spoken of in order to secure the oral tradition and to keep the message of the Gospel from being altered in its retelling. Matthew argues presciently that in the future some people will trust a book more than a sermon, and that he wanted to write down everything that is conducive to salvation because a written message is easier to disseminate.3 But in the Paraphrases Matthew says nothing about a divine inspiration or commission from God. Likewise, Mark the evangelist also does not refer to his divine inspiration in Erasmus’s Paraphrases. The Paraphrase of Mark begins with a simple lesson in salvation history – namely, that the faith of the Old Testament was specific to its time. Certainly, Moses and the prophets proclaimed a more confident and more solid message than all the

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philosophers and lawgivers of the pagan non-believers, “but it was only for one nation and, out of consideration for the time, wrapped in figures and shadows. It merely prepared men for the recognition of the truth, and it was not effective enough to provide for their complete salvation.”4 In the Paraphrases Erasmus does not seek to justify God’s infallible word by arguing that the authors of Holy Scripture were inspired by the Holy Spirit, though he does not deny their inspiration as a fact and sometimes even refers to it.5 To Erasmus, the credibility of the Gospel depended not on the evangelists’ divine inspiration but on the message that they witnessed: “and let no one doubt the faithfulness of this promise: it is God who proclaims it, not some human being. Nor is his emissary Moses or one of the prophets, but the Son of God, Jesus Christ himself, who has come down from heaven for the sake of our salvation.”6 For Erasmus, the person of Christ was evidence enough for the truth of the Gospel. Erasmus’s historical approach differed inherently from the tradition initiated by Eusebius7 and built upon by the Reformers, which claimed that the Christian faith had existed since the beginning of the world. In the view of Zwingli, the message of I Corinthians 10:1–4 was that “the faith of the Jews in the past and the faith of Christians nowadays is one and the same.”8 For Zwingli, proof of this could be found in Paul, who said that all the patriarchs were baptized in Moses; they all ate the same food and drank the same drink from the spiritual rock that was Jesus Christ. What is significant is how Erasmus interpreted these verses for himself. In his interpretation the gifts conferred through Christ to the patriarchs were a “foreshadowing” of humanity’s baptism, and “Christ was at that time rehearsing among them things that for us he has openly and truly performed.”9 Zwingli, on the other hand, taught that the Old Testament already contained the whole of Christian doctrine. In 1528 he proclaimed that not only the New but also the Old Testament was full of proofs of the Trinity.10 In 1539 Heinrich Bullinger devoted a whole work, Das der Christen gloub von anfang der wält gewärt habe, to this issue. The title of the 1542 translation by Myles Coverdale also serves as a good abstract for its content: The olde fayth, an euydent probacion out of the holy scripture, that the christen fayth (which is the right true olde and vndoubted faith) hath endured sens the begynnynge of the worlde.11 Bullinger pointed out that “the total of our Christian faith” is contained in the narration of the creation.12 Adam already had “ein glouben und erkanntnuß unseres Herrn Christi ghept [a faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ]” and “was aware of his true divine and human nature.”13 Of course, for the Zurich Reformers the Old Testament law was

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also a curse, and the old covenant had to be replaced by the new. Yet they did not retreat from their conviction that the faith of the elect is one and the same and has been so since the beginning of time. Luther pointed more clearly to the difference between the Old and the New Testaments. For him the Old Testament contained the law of mortality, while God’s promises were found only in the New Testament.14 However, for Luther it was also absolutely necessary that God’s word be eternal and that it suit all times and all humans: “For, though the persons, locations and ceremonies differ in the passage of time, piety and wickedness are the same through all centuries.”15 Luther spoke in 1520 about the “reychtumb des selben glaubens [the abundance of the same faith].”16 In his 1544 foreword to the translation of the Old Testament, Luther explicitly distances himself from interpreters like Jerome, Origen, and “other great men” who looked to the Old Testament only in its spiritual sense.17 In the Enchiridion Erasmus had also postulated that one should look first and foremost for spiritual meaning in the Old Testament,18 but for Luther there were already men during Moses’ time “who understood the meaning of the law and that it required impossible things.” In other words, they recognized their sin through the law and yearned for the coming of Christ.19 In a sermon from 1527 he proclaimed – as the Reformers in Zurich also did – that Adam’s faith was the same as his own, “for time causes no difference of faith [Denn die zeit macht keine unterscheid des glaubens]. The faith is the same from the beginning of the world until its end.”20 Erasmus assessed the Old Testament differently; for him it contained only certain truths. “The Father was known to the Jews; but it was only after the Son assumed human nature, was seen on earth mingling with human beings, and was taken up again into heaven, and after the Spirit was sent from heaven to renew the minds and tongues of all, that the world at last knew clearly one God in three persons.” This was Erasmus’s interpretation of the 84th (83) psalm in his De amabili ecclesiae concordia.21 In the same year, 1533, he declared in his Explanatio symboli (Explanation of the Creed) that the men of the Old Testament may have known that only one God and creator existed, but that God did not truly reveal himself until he appeared and acted upon earth in the historical life of Christ. Even then he “showed his divine nature by his actions to a greater extent than he expressed it in words.”22 According to Erasmus, just as the revelation of God has its own development and history, so too does faith. Consequently, he put the following words in John the Evangelist’s mouth: “But so it seemed best to God, in order for the gospel faith to be more firmly set, that it be imparted to the human

1

 The Exegetical Theologian

race gradually, in proportion to the progress of the times and the capacity of humankind.”23 In Erasmus’s Paraphrase of John the evangelist explains why he wrote his Gospel. He asks himself whether the preaching and writing of the other evangelists was sufficient, and concludes that it was not. For, as John points out, the others reported at length on Jesus “in the flesh” – that is, about Jesus as a human being – but they were silent “on his divine birth, whereby in an indescribable fashion he is born from the Father without beginning.” The other evangelists adumbrated his divine nature “in a way that suited those times [pro temporum illorum ratione]” by narrating his miracles and resurrection, but “they held back from the outright appellation of God [manifesto dei cognomine temperantes].”24 Erasmus’s John goes on to explain that the other evangelists did this to avoid giving the “weak” and as yet “inexperienced” Jews an excuse to recoil from the Gospel on the grounds that for them merely the one and only God of Israel could lay claim to the name of God. Likewise, the evangelists sought to avoid encouraging gentile readers, upon hearing of the Trinitarian God, to imagine the three persons of the Trinity as three Gods and relapsing into polytheistic worship.25 It is clear that Erasmus argued historically in his Paraphrases, and he concluded that the evangelists wrote for their time and considered the mindset of their contemporaries. He even dared to say that these limitations were not indications of regrettable human weakness but expressions of God’s will. Luke was the only one of the evangelists who wrote a prologue for his Gospel; hence Erasmus did not have to invent new introductory reflections for him. Instead, he composed an extensive paraphrase of Luke’s introductory words. But for this Erasmus did not simply rely on his own interpretation, but collected and compiled other interpretations, particularly from Ambrose, who also pointed out that Luke’s style was historical.26 According to Ambrose, Luke followed the order of events chronologically27 and, in the manner of a historian, paid more attention to facts than to doctrine,28 seeking to reject false and apocryphal reports. Luke inquired into everything with a great deal of accuracy, but he did not write everything down.29 However, Ambrose did not write a systematic tract about Luke as a historian or emphasize Luke’s historical skills; instead he focused on God’s mercy and inspiration, which led Luke to fulfil what others had begun in vain.30 In the introduction to Luke’s Gospel and the interpretation of Luke 1:1–4, Ambrose’s sporadic remarks were interspersed with long-winded moral-allegorical digressions. The remarks penned by this Church Father were not overlooked

The Paraphrast 1 1

in the Middle Ages. Theophylact as well as Thomas Aquinas and the Glossa ordinaria of Nicolas of Lyra perpetuated Ambrose’s most important remarks. They pointed out that Luke mastered the historical style by seeking out apostolic witnesses and collecting what others omitted, and suggested that Luke felt obliged to add his Gospel to the others because he wanted to eliminate heretical and apocryphal material. He ordered the texts and chose whatever he deemed essential for the salvation of his readers.31 Erasmus was aware of this tradition, and in the notes for his Novum testamentum he intentionally aligned himself with it;32 but he also took this one step further. In his Annotations and in the Paraphrases he praised at length the critical historical work of Luke, who had not himself been an eyewitness of Jesus’ deeds, and analysed in an innovative way. Erasmus even tried to find out what motivated Luke to write his Gospel in this way. Erasmus begins his exploration with the suggestion that “secular history offers much delight and benefit and usually examines in particular the truthfulness of a narrative. But that is much more essential in regard to the evangelical narrative, which not only provides pleasure for a mind at leisure, but is necessary for true piety without which no one can obtain salvation.”33 This is the reason given by Erasmus in the Paraphrases for Luke’s account of his research work. First, he explains that the eyewitnesses who were elected and inspired by God preached the Gospel orally.34 But since that which is handed down orally can easily be altered, in order to avoid falsification and inept narration of the evangelical message by pseudo-apostles, Matthew – whom Erasmus believed to be one of the twelve disciples – and Mark – whom tradition identified as a pupil of Peter – wrote their Gospels with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: “For not all men preached the Gospel with the same sincerity; likewise, not all writers treat evangelical history with the same reliability.”35 Because human nature is inclined to corruption, it is natural that there were some errors in the narration; some took rumours for truth and others replaced conflicting material with legends that were contrary to the Holy Spirit. Like the medieval theologians, Erasmus suggests that Luke began to write in order to eliminate such problems, but he took these traditional arguments one step further.36 He has Luke discuss the dangers of oral dissemination, suggesting that Mark and Matthew included only what they judged sufficient and deliberately left out certain things to be written by others, choosing to fill in orally what was missing in their written texts.37 By making Luke intentional in his choice about what to include in his Gospel, Erasmus follows in the tradition that claimed the evangelists wrote down only

1 2 The Exegetical Theologian

what was essential for salvation.38 And again according to tradition, Erasmus’s Luke intentionally ordered the story chronologically and systematically.39 Because Luke was not an eyewitness of Christ’s deeds (only an eyewitness of Paul’s miracles and the dissemination of the Gospel), Erasmus attaches great importance to proving him a trustworthy historian. He emphasizes that Luke weighed what was correct and what was incorrect and retained only the accurate reports from eyewitnesses or sources whose authority was confirmed by miracles. Christ did not wander the earth for all time reconfirming the “truth,” so the miraculous signs that were seen to confirm the doctrines of the apostles declined in later years. These miracles were thus deemed to be necessary only in the first decades of Christianity. Erasmus’s Luke asserted that he had examined the truthfulness of reports, chose the best sources, consulted eyewitnesses as often as possible, and arranged his material in good order. In other words, he worked according to the rules of a historian as established by Thucydides40 and Lucian,41 which are now taken for granted by every modern historian. Erasmus’s ingenuity is demonstrated easily through a comparison with other contemporary interpreters. Luther, for instance, thought that the letters of Paul contained “mehr eyn evangelion,” more of the Gospel, than the reports of the synoptic evangelists, for they did not do much more than describe “the history” of Christ’s deeds, and he did not feel obliged to interpret Luke’s prologue.42 Zwingli did, but according to the edition of his lectures published posthumously by Leo Jud, he contented himself with briefly mentioning that Luke was the only evangelist to give an introduction to the content of his Gospel, and that the opportunity to write a Gospel was granted to Luke – who delved into details far more than his predecessors – from the very beginning. Zwingli only briefly hints at the historical implications of Luke (referring to verse 5, Zwingli suggests that Luke was a historian because he considered the chronology accurately) before directly declaring that the sum total of religion is to trust in God through Jesus Christ.43 Roman Catholic theologians also considered the historical significance of Luke’s Gospel. Eck, for instance, explored this issue not through an interpretation of the prooemium, but principally through reflections about the material peculiar to Luke. Eck made reference to the Church Fathers and explained that Mary instructed Luke, but he did not mention any serious historical research. For Eck, Mary does not teach Luke as an eyewitness but inducts him into “the mysteries of God’s kingdom,” which she first pondered in her own heart after being initiated by the angel who announced God’s will to her and later

The Paraphrast 1 3

by the angels who sang at Christ’s birth, by the prophecies of Simeon and Anna, and, of course, by listening to Christ’s words first-hand. Eck tells how at first Mary remained silent about her knowledge, but after Christ’s ascension she conveyed something of it to the apostles, particularly to Luke.44 The humanist Faber Stapulensis adopted traditional themes in his interpretation of Luke’s prologue: the apocryphal narratives that preceded Luke’s Gospel, the eyewitness sources, and the use of a convincing chronological order. But what he deduces from these factors is quite different from Erasmus’s interpretation. The fact that others also tried to write Gospels prompts Faber to refer to Ezekiel: “Indeed, it follows from the vision of Ezekiel that only four evangelists were provided not by human but by God’s choice.” In the tradition of the Middle Ages, Faber assigned the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 to the evangelists and pointed particularly to the sequence of them, which corresponds to the order of the Gospels. Luke – the third evangelist – wrote what was reported to him upon divine instruction, while the non-canonical authors used only research they conducted by themselves: “So Luke did not proceed to write the sacred story rashly or with human confidence, as certain others did, who for that reason have not been accepted. Luke wrote by God’s choosing.”45 For Erasmus, Luke was a responsible historian, but for Faber Stapulensis, Luke did not conduct research on his own impetus. Receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit, he only wrote down what eyewitnesses (who also depended on holy inspiration) reported. Erasmus did not repudiate the idea of divine inspiration; he also thought that the evangelists “were driven by the Holy Spirit [afflatu divini spiritus]” in writing down their Gospels,46 and that God used men whom he chose and directly inspired with his Spirit for the witness of revelation in the Scripture. Later when he was “dwelling on earth,” God revealed “to his disciples” what was necessary to achieve eternal salvation, and finally revealed “the things that he saw fit to disclose through the Holy Spirit to the same disciples, chosen for this purpose.”47 But for Erasmus this did not at all exclude the possibility that the evangelists worked, to the best of their knowledge, within the rules of human responsibility. In his Paraphrases all the evangelists present good reasons for writing their Gospels. The reasons they give are self-evident and need no transcendent justification. In the Paraphrases, Luke alone refers to his personal inspiration and even then only marginally.48 For Erasmus it was much more important to portray Luke as a reliable historian. It is vital in this case to differentiate between philological textual criticism and a historical approach to the texts. Faber Stapulensis was as

1 4 The Exegetical Theologian

careful and as interested in purifying the Bible text as Erasmus was. He anticipated Erasmus in examining variants in translations with great accuracy, and grounded his exegesis in a close study of the Greek text. But he was not interested in investigating the biblical text as a historical document; he read the New Testament as the timeless word of God. The Reformers also adopted a philological critique, but the majority refused to adopt Erasmus’s historical approach.49 For Erasmus, the message of the New Testament was, of course, timeless, but he also understood that it had been written down in a time-specific form. By contrast, Luther taught that because God chose Hebrew and Greek as the languages for his word – “the Holy Ghost wrote the Old and New Testament in these languages” – both these languages were inherently holy, not just Hebrew (the language God spoke in paradise): “So the Greek language may well be called holy, because it is before others chosen for the writing down of the New Testament. And from it as a fountain God’s word poured into all other languages through translation and sanctified them too.”50 For Erasmus on the other hand, the delicate history of handing down the Gospel began with oral tradition, was continued with the writing down of the message in Greek, and proceeded to contemporary translations. In the introduction to the Matthew Paraphrase he declared, “But the evangelists did not fear to write in Greek just because Christ spoke Aramaic. The Romans were not afraid to translate the apostolic speech into Latin, that is, to set it forth for the indiscriminate multitude.”51 The original Greek text was not inherently holy, it was a time-sensitive historical report that was not in and of itself the good message but merely a conduit through which the message could be handed down for posterity. For Erasmus, it was the task of interpreters to release the New Testament texts from their time-specific form and to reassert them according to the needs of their own time. In 1527 Erasmus defended his Paraphrases against Béda with the following words: “That was a suitable way of writing in the time of the apostles. For me as an interpreter who paraphrases, it is suitable to write differently, particularly in these times.”52 The philological text-criticism approach became an accepted method in Protestantism. Later, the Reformers consistently put the Gospel at the centre of their religious life and marginalized religious traditions to the point that Luther critiqued the scriptural canon. But even though they were critical theologians, the Reformers still hesitated to embrace Erasmus’s historical approach. The twentieth-century historian Wilhelm Maurer was well aware of this and praised the fact that Erasmus “was essentially aware of all external and internal criteria of a modern

The Paraphrast 1 5

historian,” while Luther did not think historically and remained dogmatic even when he borrowed Erasmian arguments.53 Together with his interest in a historically critical methodology, Erasmus demonstrated a new interest in the history of Jesus Christ as a historical fact. In his Ecclesiastes, at the end of his life, he was far removed from the disdainful attitude that he had taken towards the literal sense and history in the Enchiridion. In 1535 the New Testament consisted for him of “at the same time the history [historia], the doctrine, the precepts, the sacraments, and the affirmation of the promises, the grace and the highest possible example of piety. But nothing is more admirable, more lovable, more certain than the history. It contains the beginning, the development, and the end of our Saviour, including the deeds of the apostles which Luke narrated for us.”54 It is interesting to test whether or not Erasmus’s interpretation of the Gospel was in accord with this late declaration. Indeed, as it turns out, he interpreted with a degree of historical awareness that was astonishing for his time.55 In his Paraphrases, Erasmus stayed close to the text and, compared with other sixteenth-century theologians, used allegories moderately.56 That is not to say that Erasmus avoided allegories entirely; on the contrary, he almost always allegorized the miracles of Christ. However, on the whole he resisted rash moralizations and applying content to contemporary situations or introducing analogies into the text. This becomes especially clear when one juxtaposes his interpretations with those of his contemporaries, including Zwingli’s Brevis commemoratio and his Additamenta ad Matthaeum, Luther’s Sermones, Eck’s Christenliche außlegung, and Faber Stapulensis’s interpretation of Luke in his Commentarii initiatorii. In his Brevis commemoratio mortis Christi, Zwingli advised his readers not to meditate upon the death of Christ in a “fleshly” way, or to weep and cry. He reminded his readers of Christ’s rebuke to the daughters of Jerusalem: “do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). Instead, Zwingli suggested that “we must consider or better meditate, and think about why Christ died. Here we find the core of faith and love.”57 It was in this sense that Zwingli interpreted the Passion and developed a soteriological understanding of it – the pro nobis: “we have to learn that our salvation is completed in Christ and that we should not seek for it anywhere except in Christ.”58 He filled pages with moralizations and allegories, and he applied the content to his own time. He used, for example, all the metaphors belonging to the traditional allegory interpreting the water and blood from Jesus’ torso after his death (John 19:34): He juxtaposed Christ’s torso with that of

1 6 The Exegetical Theologian

Adam, declaring, “from the side of the sleeping Adam the church was built up and therefrom [Christ’s side] flows water washing away the sins of the world.” In the next sentence he referred to Noah’s Ark: “The door is open, and here is the asylum/shelter for all faithful.” And from this metaphor he hurried, in the same sentence, to speak of Jesus’ grave: “and open is the chamber/entrance of the stone where all that labor find rest, here the heart is open that we have nothing to doubt about his love.” He goes on to declare Christ as the source of mercy and the door through which his flock goes in and out, and finally invites his listeners to die to their sins and senses.59 Erasmus also hinted at the mystery of Christ’s water and blood, but he did so in a very restrained way, saying no more than that Christ’s death purifies us from sin and bestows on us eternal life: “For baptism consists in water” and “in blood is human life.” Nor did he forget to observe that it is unnatural when water and blood flows from a corpse.60 In Zwingli’s work, Pilate noticed that Christ was innocent and first tried to absolve him, but finally “by condemning condemned himself” to become the archetypical “fearful and unheeding judge.”61 The scribes and elders represent the flesh that fights against truth, and Judas is one of those who “involve themselves in sin, that they by no way can be called back.”62 Zwingli continually compared the condemnation of Christ with the condemnation of the evangelical Reform movement, and suggested that he himself, his fellow citizens, and his party in Zurich were calumniated by his compatriots, just as Christ was.63 He used polemic to connect his own time with that of Christ, comparing, for example, the friendship between Pilate and Herod with that of his political enemies, who put aside their disagreements in order to join together to fight against him; he also compared Judas’s betrayal with the treachery of his contemporaries in Zurich who accepted pensions from France, and declared that while at least something good came of Judas’s betrayal, nothing but misery and falsehood could come from the pension assets.64 Luther interpreted the text in a similar way in his sermons on the Passion. Like Zwingli he allegorized and polemicized at length. Luther compares the high priest who put Jesus under oath65 to the living God of the Jews in his own day, who, he says, call God holy and benign in order to make Christians believe that they honour God accurately; likewise, Luther declares that just as the high priest accused Christ of blasphemy, the pope accuses the faithful of heresy.66 And just as Christ was charged with insurrection, Luther and his followers, because of their preaching the Gospel, are being charged with sedition.67 Thus, Judas

The Paraphrast 1

becomes “the father of all monks,”68 and Luther and his followers, like Christ, suffer persecution from the whole world. Luther invites his listeners to recognize “in the Jews” “the demons who accuse” them, and to perceive that their “soul is born in sin” and that they deserve blame, and must die with Christ.69 Luther clearly did not shy away from allegories: the Kidron brook, translated by Luther as “dark beck,” foreshadows Christ’s death.70 Erasmus, by contrast, does not make much of the image; for him it is just a brook surrounded by cedars.71 For Luther, Malchus, the high priest’s servant, represents all the Jews in the Old Testament because his name means “king’s servant” and the folk of the Old Convenant were menial labourers.72 Erasmus mentions Malchus’s name without any comment.73 In Luther’s numerous sermons on the Passion between 1518 and 1538, I found only two that followed (at least in the beginning) the standard course of the evangelical narratives without jumping at once into extensive allegorizing and analogizing. These two sermons dealing with the history of the Passion are dated to 17 and 18 April 1538, but by the next day Luther had already laid aside the historical meaning of the Gospel to underscore that “we must insist on the beneficial character and the aim of the Passion.”74 In 1525 Luther formulated this idea more emphatically: “It makes a difference whether the Passion of Christ is just preached or whether its beneficial nature is proclaimed. The former is also preached by the devil, the second only by the Holy Spirit.”75 The goal in Luther’s sermons was his theology of the cross. By 1518 Luther challenged his listeners to become accountable for Christ’s Passion because Christ suffered for their sins, but he did not try to identify himself and his audience with the opponents of Jesus. Instead, he identified more closely with Christ’s plight; consequently, Jesus’ opponents were also Luther’s opponents and those of his listeners, and they are condemned accordingly and have nothing in common with the sermon’s audience.76 For Luther, the Passion makes us recognize both God’s love and ourselves.77 Whoever recognizes his own sin cannot identify with the tormentors of Christ, but instead suffers with Christ and proclaims with him “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”78 Contrary to Zwingli, in 1518 Luther wished “to weep with the weeping Christ and to suffer with the suffering Christ,” and in his later years he felt the indignity and pain suffered by Christ very deeply.79 On this point he is in agreement with one of his most unrelenting opponents, Johannes Eck, whose published sermons not only hinted at the atonement and satisfaction80 but also appealed to the emotions of his readers. Eck did not attempt to develop a narrative that merely

1 8 The Exegetical Theologian

followed the text; in order to stir up his listeners’ emotions he used long digressions to make the reader imagine him/herself in Mary’s position and to feel her pain, and he interspersed his sermon with the legends of saints like Veronica and Longinus.81 His dramatic descriptions of Jesus’ suffering included the suggestion that Jesus was affixed to the cross with blunt nails in order to increase his pain.82 His main aim with these passages was to encourage the reader to suffer with Christ, but for Eck there was also space for moral interpretation. The discussion between Peter and Jesus about the foot-washing83 leads Eck, for example, to the interpretation that Christians should obey the authorities even when they think the authorities are wrong.84 Nor does Eck shy away from polemic: his confessional polemic is moderate,85 but his anti-Semitic passages are abhorrent. He even revives the outrageous accusation that Jews murder Christian children and drink their blood as medicine.86 This shocking slur is unmitigated by his observation – shared with Erasmus87 – that Judas, according to Matthew 27:3, regretted his deed and was condemned because of his lack of trust in God’s mercy.88 Eck also emphasizes that Jesus asked his Father to forgive the Jews and that many converted after Peter’s speech at Pentecost.89 Faber Stapulensis’s interpretations are quite different. In his commentary on Luke he used no polemic at all; instead he strove for an accurate understanding of the literal sense of the text. Stapulensis proposed variants for the translation into Latin and examined text-parallels. However, he lacked a historical interest in the events of the Passion, probably because a philological treatment of the text was more suited to his soteriological and moralizing interpretations. Despite these differences, he shared with the three other interpreters the view that the scribes and Pharisees were, like Judas, the condemned sons of perdition whose perversity is incomprehensible. They are satanic enemies90 whose motivations it seems useless to trace. For Zwingli and Luther, the exponents of “double” predestination, this was not a difficulty, but for Faber Stapulensis distinguishing their guilt was important. Interpreting the prayer of the crucified, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), he emphasized that God wanted all humans to be saved (I Timothy 2:4). Stapulensis believed that one must differentiate between the Romans, who crucified Jesus unaware of who he was, and the Jews, who, in his view, acted intentionally and maliciously and who should have known from the law, the prophets, and all the signs that Jesus was the Messiah. Thus Stapulensis applied forgiveness to the ignorant heathens and denied it to the Jews,

The Paraphrast 1 9

although he left open the possibility that Jews might in the end convert and therefore be saved.91 Erasmus interprets the narratives of Christ’s Passion differently. In his paraphrase, the elders and scribes also act intentionally and maliciously, but even though Satan is behind their plot they and the other characters act in an understandable, even human way and are described as envious and afraid of losing their prestige and power.92 For Erasmus, Judas was simply overwhelmed by avarice, and Pilate was too weak93 to be a judge.94 As a “gentile Pilate did not entirely understand” Jesus’ “puzzling” statements.95 He sends Jesus to Herod to find “a possible way out of his diffculties.”96 Erasmus emphasized that all sorts of men were guilty of Christ’s death, not just the scribes, but all who participated: the servants, the rabble, and the Roman soldiers. The heathens also served the goal of Caiaphas, “who carried out a most sacred thing without knowing it. For he presided over the sacrifice without which no man can attain salvation.”97 For Erasmus, this idea was important. This quotation about Caiaphas’s sacrifice is not an exegesis of John 11:51–2, though it was certainly inspired by the passage; the quotation comes instead from the Paraphrase of Mark, to which Erasmus transferred this notion.98 The reader was not explicitly asked to identify himself with the opponents of Christ; instead the concept of the enemy was multifaceted. Erasmus emphasized that many of the guilty professed their faith in the crucified Christ after Peter’s sermon on Pentecost, and that Christ prayed on the cross for all his tormenters: “He was so far from avenging himself, so far from returning insult for insult, that he prayed to his Father for those at whose hands he was suffering undeservedly … He besought the Father not to take vengeance but to pardon the authors of so great a wrong.”99 It was essential to imitate him: “Let us behold our high priest, in his efficacious sacrifice expiating the sins of the nations of the whole world, paying for all generations on behalf of us all, if only we embrace in single-hearted faith what he freely offers us, acknowledging our own unrighteousness and lovingly praising his ineffable goodness towards us.”100 This interpretation of Christ’s prayer was the only lengthy aside (about a half column in LB or one page in CWE) that Erasmus made in the narration of the historical facts of the Passion. Usually, Erasmus allows himself just one, sometimes two or three, sentences for this purpose; for instance, he allows the criminal whom Jesus assured “today you will be with me in paradise” the exclamation: “How blessed it is to be joined to Jesus always, who always saves, provided only that gospel faith is there!”101 Or, in reference to Jesus’

11  The Exegetical Theologian

gentleness with his betrayer, he declares that Jesus is “teaching us to use the greatest gentleness with sinners, because we do not know whether they will at some time return to their senses. If they come to their senses we have won the salvation of our neighbours, if they do not, our gentleness will not be without its own reward.”102 Erasmus avoided polemic but he also went beyond the mere literal sense and made soteriological interpretations, sometimes moralizing, inserting allegorical asides that would be deemed questionable by modern standards.103 His main aim, however, was to depict Christ’s Passion as vividly and as realistically as possible, and in doing so he sought to make it comprehensible to his readers. Erasmus also showed interest in the structures, competences, and claims to power of the Roman administration.104 He put himself in the place of the protagonists and tried to understand their motives; this also applied to Jesus. Although the surrender of the Son of God remains a mystery, Jesus is otherwise seen as a human being whose course of action is generally understandable. The scribes, explained Erasmus, wanted to do away with Christ secretly. “But Jesus wanted his death to be widely known and marked by ceremony, and to match the Old Testament symbols.”105 He “thirsts” for the salvation of humankind,106 and “had determined to meet death willingly and freely.”107 It is made clear that God’s Son accomplishes his will alone,108 but he is also depicted as a human being who suffers, who is afraid, who sweats in agony, and who feels compassion for his tormenters.109 By the 1520s the Passion of Christ was no longer a timeless or a replicable drama that pitted God against Satan or flesh against spirit for Erasmus. It was a historical event that occurred at a certain time and under unique circumstances, and which Erasmus retold while keeping as close to the sources as possible. He was describing a historical fact that was relevant for his contemporaries and could be interpreted accordingly, but he also felt that first and foremost it should speak and be effective for and in itself.

nine

How the Trinity Is Known

paraphrases and annotations This chapter relies heavily on Erasmus’s paraphrase of John’s Prologue, which offers new insights into not only Erasmus’s view of the Trinity, but also his reluctance to define God’s being and his doubts about the capacity of human knowledge.1 In his paraphrase of the prologue of John’s Gospel, Erasmus professed a clear commitment to the doctrine of the Trinity. In his view the Trinity consisted of “three Persons distinct in particularity each of whom was truly God and yet there was only one God because of the one divine nature equally shared among the three.”2 The subject of the prologue is the second person in the Trinity, the Son who never departs from his father: He was of a nature undivided from the Father in such a way that he was with the Father in the particularity of his own person; and he was not attached to the Father as accident is attached to substance, but he was God from God, God in God, God with God, because of the nature of the divinity common to both. The two, equal in all things, were distinguished by nothing except the particularity of begetter and begotten, of utterer and utterance delivered.3

Erasmus pointed out that only John the Evangelist called Jesus God and that the Jews adored God for centuries without knowing either the Son or the Holy Spirit. Jesus, as long as he roamed the earth, for a long time would not allow his disciples to consider him anything more than just a man. Even after Christ’s ascension, the Holy Spirit did not reveal all to the disciples but only what was necessary for salvation and

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for the spread of the evangelical doctrine. It was the appearance of the Christological heresies that forced John to develop the doctrine of both natures of Christ.4 For Erasmus, this was factual – the result of studying the sources – and it affirmed his conviction that God was not only the master of history, but also part of it and revealed within it according to situation. But for all of those who did not share or understand this historical approach, these remarks must have been very confusing. Was Erasmus suggesting that the apostles did not confess the true faith in the Trinitarian God? Or that God was not Trinitarian and the Son was not equal to him? Even worse in the eyes of his detractors, Erasmus had identified the best biblical proof texts for the doctrine of Trinity as later insertions or mistaken translations. In his Novum instrumentum he even explained that the apostles almost never called Christ God or Son of God. Only later – distressed by the criticism levelled at him – did Erasmus declare that from many parts of the Gospel one can conclude that Christ was not only man but also God’s Son.5 Orthodox monks and Catholic theologians like Edward Lee and Noël Béda, as well as Protestant ones like Luther, were highly alarmed by his alleged antitrinitarian statements, and either doubted his orthodoxy or accused him of heresy.6 And in fact, the Antitrinitarians did use Erasmian interpretations for their own purposes,7 though they were very probably aware of what separated their beliefs from those of Erasmus. Throughout an omnibus volume of the Paraphrases, currently preserved in Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg), Erasmus’s formulations referring to the Trinity were crossed out and replaced with Unitarian terms by the Antitrinitarian Matthaei Torozkai in 1584.8 Erasmus’s suggestions must have appeared not only pointless but also dangerously ambiguous to all of those for whom faith remained the same since the beginning of time. But his remarks on the Trinity were not the only confusing comments that he made about God in his Paraphrase of John. Erasmus began his Paraphrase of John’s prologue by warning his readers in advance not to try to comprehend God in a speculative way, since humans must be content with what God reveals in his word: No one knows the Father as he really is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son has chosen to reveal him. And so to search out knowledge of the nature of God by human reasoning is recklessness; to speak of the things that cannot be set out in words is madness; to define them is sacrilege. But if it is granted to behold any part of these things, simple faith grasps it more truly than do the resources of human wisdom. And

How the Trinity Is Known 113 in order to achieve eternal salvation it is enough for now to believe about God those things that he himself has openly made known about himself in Holy Scripture …9

Erasmus held to his view that humans must be content with the knowledge of God that is granted to them through the revelation of Holy Scripture.10 The text cited above is also a pointed statement against the Scholastic penchant for definitions, even of God.11 Here Erasmus not only offered a general critique of the Scholastics, he also argued: Since the nature of God immeasurably surpasses the feebleness of human intelligence, however talented and acute that intelligence may otherwise be, its reality cannot be perceived by our senses, or conceived by our mind, or represented by our imagination, or set out in words. Yet even so traces of divine power, wisdom, and goodness cast a dim glow in the created universe. As a result parallels [similitudines] drawn from the things that we do in some fashion grasp with our senses and intelligence guide us towards a vague and shadowy knowledge of the incomprehensibles, so that somehow we gaze on them, as through a dream and mist. But whether one considers the angels or the machinery of the heavens or these lower bodies (not so familiar to our senses that we can fully understand even them), no parallel [similitudo] can be drawn from any created thing that in all respects squares with the structure and nature of the things knowledge of which such comparisons are employed to provide.12

By contrast, the Thomistic Scholastics were much more optimistic and taught that “God is manifest through certain likenesses which we find in his creatures.”13 The school of Aquinas was not the only one that taught this; Luther also wrote that for him the sinful man could contribute nothing to his own blessedness, though he could contribute to the knowledge of God. In Luther’s view human beings had at their disposal a natural rationality which enabled them to comprehend God’s greatness and even God’s mercy: “The natural light of reason suffices to make us recognize him as a benign, gracious, merciful, clement God. That is a great light.” For Luther, humans could understand that God is immortal, wise, just, and good without the revelation of the Holy Scripture, but when and if they are moved by God’s word then their eyes are opened to “the daily wonders of the big wide world.” Luther used, without compunction, the traditional idea of the world as a book of creation written by God’s hand14 and suggested that Christians should read the story of creation as though it were a “text or book,”

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and added: “So our house, yard, field, garden, and everything is full of the Bible.”15 Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli both used the traditional philosophical definition of God. In his De providentia dei Zwingli proved the omnipotence of God using Stoic terms,16 and Luther even offered a shortened form of the classic proofs of God’s existence.17 John Calvin also described the world as a sort of “mirror in which we can look at God,” and in the Confessio Belgica the world was described as being “like a marvellous book in which all creatures, big or little, are written like characters, to offer us God’s unseen being to look at.”18 In his Paraphrase of John, Erasmus contradicted many of his contemporaries and even himself, since in his earlier Enchiridion he had spoken of “the spirit, by which we reproduce a likeness of the divine nature” and deduced that the biblical revelation is “in agreement with the laws of nature.”19 However, in the Paraphrase he showed a great reluctance to draw conclusions about God from creation (although he does not completely abstain from them).20 He seemed to consider it “sacrilegious” and – in view of the weakness of the human intellect – even senseless to wish to investigate God’s being intellectually and to go beyond the revelation in the Holy Scripture, for which he had composed his Methodus to better study and understand it as a historical document. One might well ask whether with such inconsistencies Erasmus proved himself to be as ambiguous, contrary, and confused as (or even less trustworthy than) his contemporary Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. At least Agrippa had recanted his earlier works, while Erasmus republished his early Enchiridion in 1518 unchanged. Fifteen years after the first edition, it seems that Erasmus meant to leave it untouched as an example of a form of devotion that was widespread at a certain time in history.21 Agrippa plainly demonstrated how easily a man who had unlimited confidence in the potentially godlike powers of human reason could slip into deep scepticism. He published his De occulta philosophia (written in 1510) and De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatione invectiva of 1526 in quick succession. In De occulta philosophia Agrippa brought together from diverse sources notions from the Bible, Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, and Hermeticism to form a system of universal cosmosophic theology in which Natural Theology was of central importance: The world is tripartite, elementary, heavenly, and spiritual. In each case, the lower part is governed by the higher and receives the flow of its force in a way that even the archetype himself and highest artisan pours his almighty powers through the angels, the heaven, the stars, elements,

How the Trinity Is Known 115 animals, plants, metals, and stones into us, for whose use he formed and created all this. That is why the magicians not unreasonably believe that we may ascend through the levels; that is, through the singular worlds to that archetypical world, to the creator of all things or to the prime mover from whom everything has its existence and emanates.22

According to the De occulta philosophia, man can investigate and evaluate everything because he encompasses the whole world in microcosm, and furthermore “he comprehends and contains God himself [ipsum Deum concipit et continet].”23 But in De incertitudine et vanitate the human being knows almost nothing. Whether it concerns natural or other sciences, Agrippa posits that secure knowledge cannot be found through reason alone. Humans are completely dependent on God’s word, which cannot be understood with the intellect but only be apprehended by faith. Just as all the other avenues of knowledge are uncertain, so too is theological knowledge, regardless of whether it is Scholastic, exegetic, or prophetic theology; in short, “Nobody can say anything certain about God, unless he is enlightened by him.”24 Faith and science became incompatible antipodes. In the end, Agrippa concludes that all scholarship stems from the devil. In paradise the serpent promised knowledge to humankind so that we would be able to distinguish good from evil, and thus “anyone who wants to pride himself on his scholarship, may glory in that serpent. For nobody can possess knowledge unless this serpent whose doctrines are nothing but illusions favours him. The end is always evil.”25 Agrippa juxtaposed his works without connecting them, although he clearly imposed a ranking order on them. He spoke of his De occulta philosophia as “a work of his inquisitive youth” that he wanted “to revoke.”26 Erasmus, who exchanged a few short letters with Agrippa after 1530, only knew the late work De incertitudine et vanitate and even this only cursorily through a famulus who had read some passages to him aloud. On this basis Erasmus judged that Agrippa was somewhat confused, although he accurately criticized the bad and praised the good.27 It is fair to say that the two were poles apart in terms of mindset and lifestyle. How can one compare Agrippa’s womanizing and his chaotic existence (where folios and dog food were stored in the same place)28 with the fastidious routine of Erasmus, who surrounded himself with a select group of famuli and friends; the magician’s restless search for knowledge on the one hand with the tireless exegete’s search for the true philosophia Christi on the other? But in their spiritual development they can and should be compared, since Erasmus experienced

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an analogous change from a state of unconditional trust in the godlike rationality of human beings to a more humble self-deprecation. In his 1503 version of the Enchiridion, Erasmus envisioned humankind – in the tradition of Pico – as a creature who raises him/herself from the bodily to the spiritual sphere and climbs the rungs of Jacob’s ladder towards God.29 But by 1517, even before the nearly unchanged new edition of the Enchiridion was published in 1518, he suggested in reference to Romans 3:19–20 that self-knowledge leads one – particularly regarding the law – to the recognition of one’s own sin.30 He made such comments without being prompted by the biblical context. For example, regarding the verse James 1:17, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” he commented that whatever “portion of true knowledge [cogitationes] or of pure and sincere emotion [affectus] exists in us, it does not arise from ourselves – we are otherwise nothing except ignorant sinners.”31 Concerning the human capacity to comprehend God, Erasmus attached very little value to emotion and rationality. In this he was far removed from the anthropology of Thomas Aquinas, who ascribed to humans an inner light that enabled them to recognize God and that was much more efficient than Erasmus’s belief in the “traces of divine power” that are blinded by evil emotions.32 However, Erasmus did not adopt Agrippa’s scepticism. For evidence of his ideas it is worth exploring his texts thoroughly. Erasmus considerably restricts the natural knowledge of God, but he does not totally exclude it. It is at least possible that parallels or similarities (“similitudes”) deduced from creatures can lead to a weak and shadowy knowledge of God. Although Erasmus knows that nothing created can be compared with the divine, he is nonetheless ready to speak of parallels, and in the Paraphrase of John, to speak of God. He even used as his point of entry Seneca’s rational definition of God as “this highest mind, than which nothing greater or better can be conceived.”33 The well-educated among Erasmus’s readers knew that Seneca was not the only one to embrace this idea. Augustine and Boethius, and later Anselm of Canterbury – who used this definition as the basis for his ontological proof of God – also followed this line of thinking.34 Nevertheless, Erasmus was no advocate of the medieval proofs of God. Erasmus did not address his Paraphrases specifically, or even primarily, to an educated audience of theologians. He dedicated the evangelical narratives to secular princes and even recommended them expressly to illiterate people.35 For laymen he would have had to quote the proofs of God’s existence if he wanted to suggest that readers

How the Trinity Is Known 11

should keep them in mind, but Erasmus omitted these proofs. Furthermore, he prompted his readers “to direct all the mind’s zeal to loving the goodness of God rather than to looking upon or apprehending his sublimity.”36 Erasmus uses the Latin verbs suspicere and comprehendere. The latter clearly hints at philosophical understanding, but the former – suspicere – can mean alternatively to gaze admiringly or to view critically or conjecture. Since the verbs refer to the sublimitas of God, educated readers might even assume that this formulation contained a critique of the Scholastic proofs, for the proofs of God’s existence amounted to the demonstration of God’s being one with his sublimity or exaltedness, regardless of whether one began, like Thomas Aquinas, from the principle of causality, or like Anselm, from the greatness of God. Anselm argued that the concept of “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived of” is intellectually convincing and therefore exists as a notion. Furthermore, he argued that it was equally convincing that things which exist in reality are greater than those that exist only in the imagination. Consequently, if God did not exist in reality the notion of something beyond which nothing greater can be imagined would be meaningless. In short, the basic premise of Anselm’s proof of God in the Proslogion37 is that God must exist because this notion is immediately convincing. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus had a different approach to the proofs of God’s existence. They deduced from the principle of causality that a first or uncaused cause must exist. Thomas even dared to prove this first cause not only as an abstractum but also as a being, which envisages the movements of all things and sets them into motion.38 Duns Scotus did not use this line of argumentation, but he also insisted that because the first cause is necessarily without cause, it is superior. However one tried to prove God’s existence the end result was always God’s sublime majesty. Erasmus, on the other hand, was not interested in conceiving of God as sublime; he preferred to love God’s grace. In the Paraphrase of John he wrote: And so it is fitting for a human being to direct the mind’s zeal entirely to loving the goodness of God rather than to looking upon or apprehending his sublimity, of which not even cherubim or seraphim are fully capable. And though God cannot but be wonderful in all his works, he has nonetheless preferred us to regard him as lovable for his goodness rather than awesome for his greatness …39

However, it would be imprudent to conclude from this one sentence that for Erasmus the proofs of God were irrelevant. On other occasions

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he expressed himself more clearly, as, for example, in his Paraphrase of Romans. In Romans 1:19–20, Paul wrote the following basic text for all considerations on Natural Theology: “since what may be known about God is plain to them [the gentiles], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Erasmus interpreted this to mean that “God indeed, as he wholly is, can by no means be known by human intelligence; and yet these [who had come to know some truth] have attained the limits of human knowledge, although even this they owe to God. For they could not have attained it if God had not revealed it to them.” He continued, “Indeed, if God did not reveal this in the books of the prophets in which he seemed to be speaking only to the Jews, he has certainly revealed it in the miracle of this whole structure of the world.”40 Following Paul, Erasmus conceded the existence of natural revelation, but he does not mention “a book of creation.” He explained, “For even though God himself is invisible, nevertheless by the intellect he is seen in this world so marvellously created and so wonderfully administered.” Thus it was not necessary to have recourse to the concept of the prime mover or first cause. For Erasmus, the transience of the world, from which medieval thinkers drew the conclusion that there must be a cause without cause or prime mover, impeded the drawing of conclusions from the world to God: “Granted that the world has had a beginning and will have an end, nevertheless from its workmanship is seen the power of the creator.”41 While the Commentary on Romans ascribed to Thomas lists at this point the proofs of God,42 Erasmus avoided discussing a causal connection. Although he was not interested in the proofs of God, Erasmus drew upon Paul’s Letter to the Romans and did not completely exclude a vision of God that draws conclusions about the creator from the fact of creation. But he confined himself to what the Letter to the Romans suggests, the power (“virtus”) of the creator without beginning and end, and the divinity (“divinitas”) in which he in himself is the highest.43 Using Colossians 1:15–20, Erasmus explained that the invisible Father made himself known through his Son, “while he created this world through him and while he, by making him a man, made himself known to us.”44 The subordinate clauses are parallel: God revealed himself through the Son in the Creation and by becoming man through Incarnation, but he became known to us through the Incarnation. In the Ecclesiastes from 1535 Erasmus suggested that humans could only develop some “rudimenta” of the knowledge of God through conclusions drawn from

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Creation.45 In the Explanatio Symboli from 1533, he suggested that humans looking upon the world could only guess that God is the creator of the world because neither angels nor humans can perform such work.46 Using Romans 1:19–20, Erasmus did not completely exclude a natural knowledge of God, but he expressed himself very carefully, much more carefully than Luther, who once categorically declared that “God could and can from the beginning of creation and always be recognized.”47 In the Enchiridion, Erasmus had proclaimed that all human wisdom is distorted by error and uncertainty, but he also praised ratio – the power of reason – as divine.48 After 1515 he did not totally reject the idea of a natural knowledge of God or demonize it as Agrippa did, but he did warn his readers “to direct all the mind’s zeal to loving the goodness of God rather than to looking upon or apprehending his sublimity.” Erasmus called his readers to another, better task: to the love of God. He declared that such love takes possession of humans if they meditate on the history of the incarnated Son, which is, of course, not written down in the book of Creation49 but preserved in the Holy Scripture. Erasmus had made it his life’s work to restore the text of the Gospel as best he could and to interpret it in a way that was fit for his contemporaries. The goal of this was the love of God, the way to which, he felt, could only be found through the revelation in Holy Scripture on which Christians should concentrate. The revelation nonetheless remained in accord with nature.50 In his Paraclesis from 1515 Erasmus asked, “What else is the philosophy of Christ which he [Christ] himself calls rebirth than the restoration of the original good nature in us?”51 And he explained in a later note to Matthew 11:28–30 from 1519, “What is in accord with nature, is easy to endure. But nothing agrees more with the nature of men than the philosophy of Christ, which has almost the sole object of returning to the fallen nature its innocence and purity.”52 Here it is not fallen humanity that quasi-instinctively accepts and comprehends the suffering and death of Christ, it is the suffering and dying Christ and his doctrine that renew mortals and restore their fallen nature. But after Christ’s rebirth humanity’s nature is in accord with this philosophy, for his rebirth liberates humans in baptism not only from the sins committed but also from their inclination to mortal sin and restores them from foolishness to reason. Erasmus formulated it more plainly in his Ratio: “Our wisdom is foolishness, our purity is unclean. But Christ is all these things for us; he is justice and peace and wisdom. And he is this through the generosity of his Father who first and freely loved us and who himself granted freely that we might love him in return.”53 In concept, Erasmus has returned here to his Precatio

12  The Exegetical Theologian

ad Virginis filium Jesum from 1499, which has been previously discussed in this book.54 Both in his Paraphrase of John and afterwards, Erasmus was very cautious about formulating the idea that humans became quasi-gods. He only went so far as to say that it seemed right to God “to make God into a man, and to make mankind in a fashion into gods.” But he added the warning that “He revealed these things fully to no one of the ancients, though he did sometimes reveal to them some flashes of his light through angels and dreams and visions. For no mortal, however great, has ever seen God as he really is, except obscurely.”55 Jesus’ quote from Psalms 82(81):6 according to John 10:34, “Ye are gods,” did not tempt Erasmus to claim that humans can equal God.56 From his point of view humans become gods only after a fashion because they do not possess a divine nature; thus they become God’s children only “by adoption,”57 because God became human. Although he allowed for it in metaphorical usage, Erasmus clearly did not like to characterize humans as gods. In an Adagium he warned that among “Christians the name of God ought not to be given to any mortal man even in jest, and such extraordinary and disgusting flattery must be altogether unacceptable to our moral code.”58 In the Ecclesiastes from 1535 he again emphasized that it is only “through a mystic rebirth that we can share in his nature and become one with our head Christ.” In this later work he refused any sort of Platonizing speech about a divine part in humans. The philosophers, he explains, “err shamefully” when they suggest that a divine spark dwells in human beings.59 Erasmus had come a long way before he was able to distance himself so clearly from the philosophers. In 1503 his Enchiridion had characterized the human soul as divine.60 In his Paraphrase of Paul’s Areopagus speech in Athens he conceded to humans that God animated them with “a tiny bit of celestial breath [particulam aurae coelestis] through which we might resemble more closely our parent God himself and because of the similarity in nature might recognize him more easily. This was not granted to the other animals.”61 In the 1524 Diatribe the natural light of reason is obscured through the fall of humanity, but not totally extinguished. Erasmus repeats this explicitly in the Hyperaspistes from 1526. There the natural light of reason, through which the philosophers also comprehended God, is equated with the image of God. And Erasmus added, “Concerning the philosophers, I bear witness only to what Paul writes to the Romans, I wouldn’t dare to attribute so much to them if I did not have such a great authority for it.”62 Erasmus rightly pointed out that Luther also allocated something to Natural Theology.63 He could

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have said so with even more justification about the Zurich Reformers, since Zwingli openly allocated eternal blessedness to elect heathens in his Fidei ratio64 and proclaimed in De providentia that reason can reach divinity.65 Zwingli, for instance, praised Seneca and Plato, who drank “from one source, namely the nature and spirit of highest divinity.”66 Zwingli adopted the doctrine of the logos spermaticos (seminal divine principle) from the Church Fathers67 without hesitation and turned out to be a faithful pupil of Florentine Platonism, which evoked a mystical master doctrine shared by Plato and Moses.68 On this issue Erasmus was much more reserved. He did not want to allocate “true blessedness” to pagans.69 Admittedly, Erasmus did refer to Socrates’ virtue and puts into the mouth of a speaker in his Colloquium religiosum from 1525 the famous words: “I can hardly help exclaiming, St. Socrates, pray for us!”70 In the same Colloquium we read the following: “and perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of saints includes many not in our calendar.”71 But these are isolated statements made by fictive figures in the context of a colloquy. In a letter written the following year, Erasmus was more cautious and sought to leave open the question of whether God in his grace would redeem worthy pagans like Cicero.72 Zwingli’s successors approached the issue quite differently and willingly followed their leader. Bibliander, for instance, praised the heathens as confessors of Christian doctrine in his enthusiastically received inaugural lecture at the Schola Tigurina. Paraphrasing Plato, he proclaimed that God in his mercy and foresight leaves nothing untended and also gave his laws to the heathens; God inscribed them into their heart and in all times and in all nations there were people who recognized and interpreted them.73 Heinrich Bullinger also adopted the teachings of the Neoplatonic Florentine school. In his work De origine erroris (1539) he discussed the names of God, referring in this context to all relevant modern authorities on the philosophia perennis. In this tract he quotes, apart from Giovanni Pico dela Mirandola and Reuchlin, authors like Cardinal Bessarion, the pupil of Plethon, who harmonized Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies.74 Bullinger also cites Petrus Galatinus, the Franciscan who in his dialogue De arcanis catholicae veritatis (1518) undertook to prove the dogma of the Trinity and Incarnation using Kabbalistic assertions from the Tetragram.75 Among heathens who professed the philosophia perennis we find Orpheus (his song is quoted in a translation by the younger Pico), Pythagoras, Plato, Jamblicus, Justin Martyr, and, of course, Seneca and Cicero.76 For Bullinger, even Hermes Trismegistos (i.e., Mercurius) is an authority;77 he

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obviously knew Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum. Bullinger begins with an analysis of the names of God and refers to the two letters symbolizing the name of God on the temple of Apollo,78 summing up, “Jehovah is the name of the being existing by his own power, without beginning or end, in which ‘we live, and move, and have our being’ (Acts 17:28), as pious Aratos79 sings.” However, Bullinger’s attribution is wrong. It is the next sentence, Acts 17:29, that goes back to Aratos: “We are also His offspring.” In all probability, Bullinger read this originally in Erasmus’s New Testament but confused the sentences.80 Bullinger emphasized that Paul had appropriated this statement by the third-century BC astronomer and noted that God revealed his name to Moses, when he said “I was who I was, or I am who I am, as the Vulgate translates.” Bullinger explained that Aristotle agreed and Aristaeas had already proven that the heathens worshipped the only living God in Zeus,81 and he devotes a whole chapter to the assertion that the ancient pagans recognized the true God and invoked God in various names;82 this was also Zwingli’s belief.83 Here Bullinger uses Acts 17:28–9 as a biblical proof text. It is worth examining how Erasmus interpreted these verses. In 1516 he referred to the quotation of Aratos, remarking that Paul applied what Aratos said about Jupiter to the true God. Erasmus turned this argument on its head. The heathens had not conceived Jupiter as the true God; rather, Paul took Jupiter as a point of departure from which to proclaim the Father of Jesus Christ. Erasmus remarked that Paul may have used a quotation here and there to preach the Gospel, but asked, “what has that to do with those who in an affected and specious manner introduce the works not only of the poets and orators, but also of the Sophists, philosophers, mathematicians and even magicians into the doctrine of Christ, which should be simple and pure?”84 It is clear that Erasmus struggled to find a moderate and balanced means of dealing with the Natural Theology that was popular in his time. In his Explanatio Symboli from 1533 he advised his readers to put aside the humanae rationis argutias, yet spoke of “the innate judgment of reason, a certain spark of which remains even to this day in fallen mortals [scintilla quaedam residet etiamnum in prolapsis]” that allows the human intellect to agree with Holy Scripture. Erasmus does not define this spark as divine, but he also does not explicitly warn the reader from understanding it as such.85 In 1535 he bristled at any talk about a human participation in the divine spirit in the Ecclesiastes: “as if God would be some corporeal thing, which is divided and sprouts forth, so that anything created could be a part of God’s being.” He felt that humans were not divine,

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but that God gave them the capacity for knowledge. Therefore, Erasmus continued, “the old philosophers saw rightly that man has no better way of drawing nearer to the nature of eternal divinity than through the spirit and speech which the Greeks called nous or logos.”86 However, he was not far from this meaning when in his Paraphrase of John he formulated that “God had sprinkled in human hearts some tiny spark of percipient intelligence, but bodily passions and the darkness of sins had blinded it,” a state which no philosophy, not even the law and the prophets, could repair. It was God’s Son who came “to give eyes to all to acknowledge through the light of faith God the Father, who alone is to be worshipped and loved, and his only Son, Jesus Christ.”87 In 1523 Erasmus used strong terms to speak of the deep and impenetrable darkness of the world and of the sinners who are blind. God’s light constitutes the starting point for his argument because he wanted to emphasize the light which shines in the darkness. In contrast to Christ’s light, the darkness of humans can only be complete. When humankind and its responsibility are the starting point of his argument, Erasmus expresses himself differently; then the light of reason is only darkened, not completely extinguished. Obviously, both ways of speaking were possible and could coexist for Erasmus. In his Paraphrase of John Erasmus differed not only from the Scholastic tradition and from the Platonists, Pansophists, and representatives of a philosophia perennis, he also differed from Luther. That Luther gave somewhat more credit to the knowledge of God through creation than the older Erasmus is not the only difference between the two. The antagonism between them went far deeper. In a sermon from 1537 on the prologue of John as a source for the doctrine of Trinity, Luther explained that one must believe this: reason may be as prudent, acute and biting as can be, and yet nobody will understand or comprehend [the Trinity]. If we could comprehend it in our wisdom, God would not reveal it from heaven or demonstrate it in Holy Scripture. So you should comply with it and say that there is one eternal God, but three different persons, whether I can understand or comprehend it or not, for the Scripture, that is, God’s word, says so, and I stand by it.88

On this point Erasmus and Luther were in agreement: to draw conclusions from creation with respect to the Trinity was senseless. The mystery of the Trinity surpasses human intellect, but God revealed his Trinity in the Holy Scripture and it must therefore be grasped by

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faith. Both men taught that the Holy Spirit could open the heart to this mystery,89 but elsewhere the two theologians part ways. Luther drew a solid line, for instance, between faith and knowledge. He insisted that revelation can only be meekly received and that humans cannot apprehend or conceive of it. The discrepancy between revelation and reason remained irreconcilable even for the believer; “that is why you must not consult reason in this point, but rather trust the Holy Spirit, accepting what he speaks as the divine truth, and believing in his words, while blinding, yes, even putting out the eyes of reason.”90 Erasmus approached the topic differently, claiming that those who are touched by the Son – the light of the world – must not only receive the revelation obediently, but can – though only partly – envision it with their intellect; for the revelation is proportionate to one’s nature, which has been renewed by Christ. Erasmus explained in 1533 that the fall of humankind had corrupted its intelligence and led to the error that “we think things exist that do not” and vice versa, but faith “purifies the heart, that is, the mind and reason or the source of the soul.”91 Seen within the context of his time, the older Erasmus was teaching an astonishingly independent, balanced, and Christ-centred doctrine of the knowledge of God. By 1523 he had abandoned his early enthusiastic trust in the possibilities of a godlike human without completely separating reason and faith as Luther had done or indulging in the older Agrippa’s total resignation. The motive for this was not a greater trust in fallen humanity, but rather an unconditional trust in the lifechanging power of grace, which renewed the reborn believer in and through Jesus Christ and illuminated his or her intellect. For thinkers like Agrippa for whom there was only an either/or, or who, along with Luther, saw an insurmountable discrepancy between faith and reason that could only be overcome by blind obedience, Erasmus must have seemed confused if not irresponsibly ambiguous. Indeed, this was also the situation for his doctrine of Creation.

ten

On the Doctrine of Creation

paraphrase of john / colloquia puerpera, problema, and amicitia In 1523 Erasmus wrote at the beginning of the Paraphrase of John: And not only was there in this word of God the power of creating at his nod the entirety of things visible and invisible, but the life and vigour of all created things was also in him, so that through him every single thing would live by its own innate vigour and would protect itself, once the force of life was implanted, by continual procreation. For there is nothing idle or inactive in the great throng of creatures. Every grass and tree has its own life force implanted in it; every breathing thing has its own quality of mind. But just as in his providence he equipped everything he created with an implanted life force for the activity particular to each and for the perpetuation of its kind, so also he did not leave the lovely workmanship [fabrica] of this world without light.1

Luther expressed himself quite differently in an informal discussion that took place during the beginning of the 1530s. Fervent admirers of Luther who were invited to his hospitable table in Wittenberg wrote down every sentence that he uttered on these occasions. Although these so-called Tischreden should be taken with a large pinch of salt, they do paint a lively picture of the issues that were being discussed in Wittenberg at the time. According to this particular source, Luther declared that Erasmus did not esteem the work of God and his creatures: We have arrived at the dawn of future life, for we begin to recover knowledge of the creatures which we lost through Adam’s fall. Now we see the

126 The Exegetical Theologian creatures rightly, better than under papism. But Erasmus does not ask about that, he does not worry how the fruit (the embryo) is formed in the womb, prepared and made. And he has no respect for marriage, does not appreciate how wonderful it is. But we begin by the grace of God to apprehend the marvellous works of God even through the little flowers, if we think about how all powerful and benign God is. That is why we extol and praise and thank him. In his creatures we comprehend the power of his word, how great it is. When he spoke, it came into existence like the kernel of a peach. Though the kernel’s shell is very hard, it must open up when its time has come by way of the very smooth kernel, which is inside. Erasmus overlooks this and has no appreciation; he looks at the creatures like a cow at a new gate.2

Taken at face value, it is easy to demonstrate that this statement is a misrepresentation. In 1526 Erasmus wrote about marriage at length some years after Luther. This is a subject to which I will return in the last chapter of this study.3 Suffice to say at this point that the “little flowers” also have their proper place in Erasmus’s work. A quick glance at the Convivium religiosum or the Paraphrase of Matthew 6:28 demonstrates Erasmus’s boundless delight in creation.4 There lovely nature does nothing but proclaim the benignity of God, and in his Colloquium Puerpera and his Christiani matrimonii institutio Erasmus discusses “how the fruit (the embryo) is formed in the womb, prepared and made,” if not in original terms then at least in great detail.5 Erasmus published these works years before Luther’s statement was made, and they were read ardently in many places including Wittenberg. Whether Luther denigrated Erasmus here out of simple ignorance or deliberate spite shall be left an open question. What is of interest for our purposes is the grain of truth in Luther’s speech: that compared with the “papist” doctrine he had a new (and better) message that Erasmus lacked. Erasmus wrote that through Christ the logos, the creatures have life and vigour, “so that through him every single thing would live by its own innate vigour and would protect itself, once the force of life was implanted, by continual procreation.”6 This was, in fact, “papist,” if one understands the Scholastic doctrine to be strictly “papist.” Abelard had already explained that the seed “has the vigour of procreation in itself.”7 Scholastics like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham developed his ideas and spoke about unchangeable and comprehensible principles or laws of nature. Erasmus did not provide an accurate discussion of natural science, but he emphasized the “procreation” of nature and through this gave science greater freedom. Thinkers like Agrippa had

On the Doctrine of Creation 12

long since seized that freedom, and this must have terrified Erasmus. Agrippa conceived of the world as a rational and eternal animated being.8 As much as Erasmus accepted Aristotelian physics – his Colloquium Problema demonstrates this clearly – as a faithful Christian he could not accept the doctrine of the eternity of the cosmos. Accordingly, in 1533 he wrote the following in his Explanatio Symboli: So too, there are those who substitute nature for God. If nature is eternal and omnipotent, assumedly it is God; if it is not eternal and omnipotent, it is the servant of God and was created by God. (I think that one must make the same judgment in regard to secondary causes – although, in my opinion, it is more reverent to assign whatever nature or secondary causes do to the operation of God alone. If his action ceased, the sun would not be hot; everything would suddenly collapse.)9

In the Epicureus, Erasmus even asked himself whether it made sense to talk of nature in view of the existence of a creator at all.10 In his Ecclesiastes he explained that he would prefer those who do not distinguish between the miracles of God and natural causes to those who banish God totally from creation and search in all miracles for natural causes.11 Yet in 1535, one year before his death, Erasmus maintained that the whole of creation is subject to the lex naturae, the natural laws. Only the spiritual beings on which free will is bestowed (i.e, the angels and humans) did and do rebel. If it seems that the rest of creation violates the law, it does so only because it was drawn into Adam’s fall. Creation waits, as Romans 8:19 says, for the revelation of the children of God. Until then “it does not depart from God’s law.”12 God is the ruler of all movement in nature; Erasmus and Luther agree on more than just this pious sentiment. Both clearly distinguish between creation and the creator, who is sovereign and exists apart from and independent of his creation; both men also taught the creatio ex nihilo, a creation out of nothing; both taught that only God is eternal, that creation was not there before all ages, but that it had a beginning;13 and neither man embedded the Platonic theory of forms into his interpretations of John’s prologue. Instead, they both abstained from comparing God with a craftsman. It was common in the traditional commentaries of John to compare God with an artisan who animates lifeless material by giving it form. This comparison allowed Augustine and his successors to appropriate Platonic “ideas,” understanding them as the form the creator used.14 Erasmus did not abstain from characterizing the creator as opifex, or craftsman, in principle. In his paraphrase on Luke 1:35, for example,

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the angel refers to the Holy Spirit who will enable the Incarnation as “a heavenly craftsman [coelesti opifice]”;15 however, in his paraphrase of John 1 he makes no reference to the Platonic theory of forms. Only the use of the term fabrica for the constructed world is reminiscent of the craftsman topos, and Luther uses this comparison only in a negative way: “God the Father and God the Son together with the Holy Ghost do not desist from their works, as craftsmen … desist from their work … they do not cease to operate on their creation.”16 Both Erasmus and Luther clearly distanced themselves from Pansophistical and Platonic doctrines of creation. Yet, Erasmus was not ready to confess to the same childlike trust in the creator’s work that Luther, going against the zeitgeist, preached in 1537. Luther wrote the following in his exegeses of John 1:3–4: “So says our Lord Christ: ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’17 That is, the father is a creator who after he has begun to create all things, continues his work, governing his creatures and sustaining them, and so do I.” Up to this point Erasmus could have authored the quotation. But Luther continues: For we see every day with our eyes that new human beings, young children, are born to the world, who were not there before, new trees, new animals on earth, new fishes in the water and new birds in the air. And God does not cease to create and to nourish them until the last day. God Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost do not desist from their works … they work until the end, and before something comes to an end they create another in its place so that their creation continues to exist without interruption.18

Here nature has no autonomy, and nothing is said about the innate vigour of procreation; everything comes directly and anew from God’s hand. Luther does not concede any inherent capability to nature; all that exists depends directly on God’s permanent and ongoing power of creation. As David Löfgren has already noted, Luther scarcely differentiated between God as creator and God as sustainer of the world.19 By contrast, Erasmus does not shrink from hinting at the innate vigour of procreation, even while speaking through a young woman. In the Colloquium Puerpera a mother explains her full trust in God. She has, as she proclaims, delivered a son by God’s will and with God’s help. And she adds, “What could he [God] better do … than preserve by propagation what he created?”20 For Erasmus, God also sustains and governs the world: “the hairs on his disciples’ heads were numbered

On the Doctrine of Creation 129

by God, so that not a strand would be lost unless he willed it.” For Erasmus as for Luther, it is not enough to identify God as only the first cause;21 and yet for Erasmus nature still has its own life and the phenomena of nature can also be investigated and explained according to its own principles and laws. In the Colloquium Problema, Erasmus even risked a discussion of an independent explication of nature. He examined scientific problems in the realm of the Aristotelian system of gravity and abstained from theological hints concerning the creator.22 Only at the end of the piece does the colloquy offer a comparison between heaven and hell, which is clearly distinct from scientific argumentation and drawn out into a theological statement that is only metaphorically connected with the main theme.23 The dialogue-partners Curio and Alphius discuss the problems of gravity. Curiously, and indeed crucially, Curio challenges the Aristotelian explanations that Alphius provides with his own observations. The Colloquium does not refer to theological assertions; it motivates the reader to question natural phenomena and concedes that not all phenomena are explicable. At one point Alphius tergiversates and answers: “It’s not up to me to account for all of nature’s miracles. It has certain secrets we’re to marvel at, not comprehend.”24 However, in answering all the other questions he gives rational scientific explanations within the scope of Aristotelian physics and often starts or ends his answers with “in causa est” – the reason is.25 Even more interesting is the Colloquium Amicitia, where human friendship is not so strictly excluded from the discussion of the natural phenomena. This is because in this colloquy Erasmus is, as regards humans, only interested in natural friendship and sympathy. Christian charity, the friendship that is only possible for those who are reborn in Christ, is explicitly excluded here.26 This colloquy is interesting because it deals with the occurrence of sympathy and antipathy, hostility and attraction in nature – a favourite subject of the contemporary Neoplatonists and magicians that lay at the heart (so to speak) of their systems. Marsilio Ficino, for example, makes attraction the foundation of his magical doctrine. For him “tota vis magice [the whole vigour of magic]” lies in love.27 The magical art supports the natural forces of attraction; however, this art should be distinguished from any dealings with demons, which were also condemned by Ficino.28 Proper magic, so Pico claimed, is a servant of nature, a scientia naturalis – a natural science. It teaches one how “to accomplish wonderful works by mediating the powers of nature through mutual inclination and to its natural transitions.”29 The Florentines were not alone in adopting magical science; such ideas dominated the scientific thinking of the sixteenth century.30 But in Erasmus

13  The Exegetical Theologian

there is no trace of it. The Amicitia avoids every systematization, even any explanation of the natural phenomena listed that are derived from Aristotle and Pliny or are based on Erasmus’s own view and experience. One of the interlocutors in the colloquy asks which divinity might have advised nature to distribute hostility and friendship so mysteriously,31 a distribution which, if “astrologers are to be trusted,” may even be found in the stars.32 Erasmus was not content with a vague challenge to astrology. At the end of the colloquy he comes quickly to the point: “I tell you in a few words. Some people seek happiness by magic arts, some from the stars. I believe, for my part, that a person can find no surer road to happiness than avoiding the kind of life from which he instinctively [naturae sensu] recoils and by following that to which he is attracted (always excluding what is dishonourable).”33 Here Erasmus pleads for following one’s natural instincts. In a letter from 1519, Erasmus even pitted friendship against astrology. Many people, he explained, suggest that the stars can make you happy, but he believed simply that true friendship made one happy and hostility made one unhappy: “Let others,” he continues, “then watch the stars, if they will; in my view we should seek on earth what can make us happy or unhappy.”34 Erasmus’s rejection of vis magice is astonishing for its time, and one may well ask what caused him to disdain astrology and to lampoon demonism and alchemy in his colloquies Exorcismus sive spectrum and Alcumistica. It is true that the Bible, and by extension the Church Fathers and Thomas Aquinas, condemned magic in theory as well as in practice,35 but that did not hinder widespread interest in magical thinking during the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Whole regions were consumed by an obsessive belief in witches, and even the best-educated men of the century were not immune to these trends. For example, Melanchthon also practised astrology, and the nominalist Martinus Plantsch – himself a brave fighter against witch hunts, who in his Opusculum de sagis maleficis challenged the idea that the devil can practise black magic against God’s will – accepted the magical world-view of his time in principle.36 The works of theologians and philosophers as well as that of “experimental” scientists including Isaac Newton were marked by magical patterns of thinking.37 How then did Erasmus liberate himself? Interestingly, Erasmus refers neither to the Church Fathers, nor to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem. Ernst Cassirer suggested that Pico, who in principle held fast to the Neoplatonic magical world-view of the Renaissance, disliked astrology for ethical reasons; because he taught dignity and sought to preserve human free will, he could not at the same time teach

On the Doctrine of Creation 131

a dependence on the stars.38 It is possible that Erasmus also disdained astrology for this reason. He too assigned free will to humans, though he – compared with Pico and his own earlier work – minimized this freedom in 1524.39 For Erasmus, as for Pico, humans were not born human but had to become human.40 Fernand Roulier has convincingly argued that Pico rebutted astrology not in order to conserve human free will, but because it did not fit with his view of Christian religion.41 Whether or not Erasmus knew Pico’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, he certainly knew his Letters and his Conclusiones nongentae, his nine hundred theses,42 and there are some affinities between the two works but no more. Erasmus’s motives for disparaging astrology must have had a more fundamental basis; otherwise he would have openly refuted it as Pico did, and he did not. He may have simply believed that it was not necessary to demonstrate, for his own or for other people’s benefit, that the stars had no impact on human beings. What then was his motivation? Surely, not any new scientific insights. Nothing in his work points to a new mathematical-physical method or any other imaginable developments that displaced the traditional natural logic and liberated him from magical thinking. Both Colloquia dealing with natural phenomena remain completely dependent on Aristotle’s physics. The only new or exceptional aspect is his dismissal of any Neoplatonic systematizing. Freed from the magical zeitgeist, Erasmus saw his creator continually at work in Christ, the logos. This did not keep him from leaving created things their own laws in accordance with the God-given laws of nature; his view allowed him to deal matter-of-factly with known scientific knowledge and to enrich it with his own experience. It must remain open how Erasmus, had he been alive, would have reacted to the discoveries of Nicolaus Copernicus. According to a Tischgespräch in 1539, Luther rejected Corpernicus’s findings in favour of the traditional world-view in the book of Joshua where it is the sun rather than the earth that moves43 (as did Melanchthon, with some hesitation).44 Erasmus certainly re-edited some of the scientific works of Aristotle and of the medical philosopher Galen, and he was also willing to write an introduction to Georgius Agricola’s work De metallis, which revolutionized the world of mining engineering and geology. Erasmus was no scientist, he was a doctor of theology, but his doctrine of creation allowed him to remain open to a form of scholarship, like that of Agricola, which was based on observation. He could connect new discoveries with his faith in his creator. Perhaps it was this view of his creator that was the main difference between Erasmus and many of his contemporaries.

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On the Doctrine of God

The Paraphrase of John’s Prologue In his Paraphrase of John, Erasmus described God in the following way: He exists entire and eternal in himself, and as he himself is, so is his Son, forever coming to birth from him, everlasting from everlasting, almighty from almighty, all-good from all-good, in short God from God, neither secondary nor subordinate to his begetter, eternal word of the eternal mind, whereby the Father forever speaks with himself as in mystic thought …1

It is striking how explicitly Erasmus inserted here the Alexandrian idea of an eternal and continuous begetting and birth: “so is his Son, forever coming to birth from him [ab eo semper nascitur Filius].” Again later, he is the “eternal word of the eternal mind,” and later still, “there was never a time when he had not begotten for himself the Son. There was never a time when he had not brought forth for himself the allpowerful word.”2 The phrase “the eternal or continuous begetting of the Son” was used first by Origen, who was trying to express the perfection and immutability, the omnipotence and majesty of God. The idea that God could not be a father at some point was unacceptable for Origen, for then God would have been mutable. Thus, Origen suggested not only an eternal begetting but also an eternal creation.3 The church repudiated Origen’s thoughts about continuous creation, but appropriated the idea of an eternal begetting. The impact of this idea on the development of the Trinitarian dogma was enormous and could be used as a weapon against the Arians. Athanasius, for example, connected

134 The Exegetical Theologian

the idea closely with eternity and so proved that the Son was equal to the Father.4 In the Council of Nicæa the dogma was definitively formulated: “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.”5 The “only begotten Son” born “before all ages [ante omnia saecula]” need not, but can, imply an eternal begetting and birth. The formulation “light from light” evokes ancient spiritual imagery. Tatian, one of the earliest apologists, compared the begetting of the Son with a light source that gives light to others. He spoke of a torch that ignites other fires without losing its own illuminating power.6 Origen changed the imagery so that he could use it for the concept of eternal begetting. As a light continuously emits effulgence, so does God continuously bring forth his Son, for he is “brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.”7 In this formulation the image of light made history: the source of light – usually the sun – represents God the Father; its rays, the Son; and its warmth, the Holy Spirit. Many have used and to this day continue to use this simile, particularly in hymns.8 It is also found in the late editions of Melanchthon’s Loci communes,9 and Erasmus used it in his early work Precatio ad virginis filium Jesum from 1499, where he stayed completely within the compass of the traditional images and connotations of the term.10 But in the Paraphrase of John’s prologue Erasmus did not use the common images and terms or the traditional quotations from the Bible (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3) that Origen had already connected with the eternal begetting and that Melanchthon also later appropriated.11 Why did he not use them in his own interpretation? The reason may have been that through this metaphor Origen sought to demonstrate the perfection of God through the eternal begetting, whereas Athanasius wanted to prove that the Son was born before all ages and was equal to the Father. Erasmus believed the same,12 but he did not seek to explicate the Trinitarian dogma with imagery. These dogmata were long since taken for granted and he did not find it necessary to reiterate them. Furthermore, he was – as previously mentioned – scrupulous in using examples from creation as similes for the divine.13 In the Explanatio Symboli of 1533, for the sake of completeness, he listed all of the traditional Trinitarian comparisons with the natural world along with the sun imagery, but not without also hinting at their deficiencies.14 In the Paraphrase of John there was no need to refer to these images, and

On the Doctrine of God 135

Erasmus’s goal here was different in any case. For his purposes in this instance the metaphors were neither necessary nor supportive. Erasmus connected the continuous begetting with his understanding of the term λόγος as sermo – speech or colloquy, or conversation. This connection allowed him to develop a new and original interpretation of the text. According to Erasmus’s interpretation there was a continuous intra-trinitarian colloquy “whereby the Father forever speaks with himself as in mystic thought.”15 With this interpretation there suddenly arose an opportunity to think of God as a dynamic entity, as a continuously interacting Trinity rather than as an eternally constant and static being. This brings to mind the popular medieval metaphor of the divine council that Erasmus adopted in his 1499 poem Paean divae Mariae atqve de incarnatione verbi,16 but this time the impact was different. By connecting the metaphor with his interpretation of λόγος as sermo, Erasmus brought a new depth to the idea of the Trinity conversing with itself. It was no longer just an allegory but became an exegetical finding in the literal sense. What was merely a cheerful metaphor in the mystery plays and in the early poem of Erasmus, a dramatic envisioning of a naïve, anthropomorphic image describing the heavenly prehistory of the divine road to salvation, was now nothing less then the self-revelation of God. Erasmus explicitly declines any anthropomorphic understanding: “This is no birth in time, or word like a human word. There is nothing corporeal in God, nothing that is transient in the flow of time or fixed by the boundaries of space, nothing that is at all dependent on beginning, development, ageing, or any alteration.” Furthermore, God exists entire and eternal in himself, and as he himself is, so is his Son, forever coming to birth from him, everlasting from everlasting, almighty from almighty, all-good from all-good, in short God from God, neither secondary nor subordinate to his begetter, eternal word of the eternal mind, whereby the Father forever speaks with himself as in mystic thought …17

This new interpretation was preceded by a bitter debate over Erasmus’s translation of John 1:1 in his 1519 Novum testamentum, in which he changed the text of the Vulgate from in principio erat verbum to in principio erat sermo.18 Despite the furore, he bravely continued to publish this version. It was not commonly accepted, but Erasmus was undeterred. While today nearly all exegetes use the Erasmian sense of the term in their commentaries – as did, for example, Luther, Zwingli,

136 The Exegetical Theologian

and Bullinger in Erasmus’s own time – the common translation was and still is verbum or word. The bilingual New Testament published by Froschauer in 1535 and the Latin Zurich Bible from 1539, as well as the reworked edition of 1543, all adopt the Latin New Testament text of Erasmus, but exchange his sermo for the more traditional verbum.19 Apart from Zwingli, who also used the Erasmian translation in his lectures,20 only the radical Antitrinitarians adopted Erasmus’s translation, and Beza, the collaborator and successor of Calvin in Geneva, even dared, not without a note that made reference to Erasmus, to print sermo in the Stephanus-Bible.21 However, Zwingli along with Heinrich Bullinger and Martin Luther did adopt Erasmus’s vision of an everlasting colloquy. In 1547 Bullinger quoted Erasmus’s Paraphrase of John 1:1 word for word without comment.22 Likewise, Luther wrote in keeping with Erasmus that “according to this image God in his majesty becomes pregnant with a word or colloquy [wort oder gesprech], which God in his divine being conducts with himself and which contains his inner thought.”23 Luther’s formulation led the twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth to express Trinitarian ideas that appear to be Erasmian in origin, though Barth did not – as far as he was familiar with his work – esteem Erasmus at all.24 The image of the pregnant God – Luther also calls him “in heat” – accommodates the Erasmian train of thought very well. It is astonishing how close Luther’s interpretation from 1537 is to the paraphrase by Erasmus in 1523, while in his earlier interpretation from 1522 Luther used the more traditional framework.25 It is probable that Luther’s text of 1537 is heavily dependent on Erasmus.26 And yet the conclusion to which the whole argumentation of Erasmus leads is missing from Luther’s text. For Luther the term verbum or sermo for the Son is understood as a colloquy beyond comprehension or interpretation. It remains unintelligible and can only be accepted submissively by faith.27 Luther compared the colloquy that God has with himself to human passions like love and rage or pleasure and sorrow. As such emotions fill the hearts of men, so too does the word fill God.28 By contrast, Erasmus’s explication ended in describing God as a loving communicator who reveals himself. Erasmus explains the colloquy of God by giving a classic definition of language as a medium of communication and love. Through language the heart of the speaker is united with the heart of the listener: if we want the will of our heart to be known to someone, our wish is accomplished by nothing more surely or swiftly than by speech, which,

On the Doctrine of God 13 delivered from the innermost secret parts of the mind by way of the hearer’s ears, carries the heart of the speaker by an invisible energy into the heart of the hearer. And there is no other thing more effective for stirring up every movement of our hearts than speech.

There is nothing through which the soul can be more moved: “The term ‘word’ [sermo] is used because through him God, who in his own nature cannot be understood by any reasoning, chose to become known to us; and he chose to become known for no other reason than that from knowledge of him we might attain eternal bliss.”29 Jesus also revealed his love as the word incarnate: “Certainly the whole Gospel teaching, the whole life of Christ, breathes a new and marvellous love, but no one expresses this more than John the Evangelist, who, just as he was especially loved by the one who is eternal love …” Thus spoke Erasmus “to the pious reader” of the Paraphrase of John. He continued, explaining that John depicted two spheres, one heavenly and one earthly: In the heavenly sphere he puts God the Father, highest source of all good things, and joins to him the Son, through whom the Father creates, governs, and restores all things, and the Spirit, common to both, through whom the Father makes all things perfect. This sacred triad, firmly united within itself and returning into itself, is the prime example of absolute love and harmony.30

The intra-trinitarian colloquy shows God as the loving being per se. This is in contrast to the devil, who wants to be equal to God and to that end obtains an entourage of angels – albeit bad ones. However, the devil can have no triad “because he is a tyrant, loving to be alone and not permitting anyone to share his throne.”31 To the end of his life Erasmus envisioned the devil as a ridiculous, poor copy of God who, like humanity, was created good but turned away from God and changed God’s monarchy into a tyranny, and who is always used by God to purify good humans and punish the bad.32 That God reveals himself through the logos has been a commonplace of theology since the Greek Church Father Irenaeus first developed the idea.33 In his 1520 Apologia de in principio erat sermo Erasmus referred particularly to a text from the pseudo-Augustinian dialogue De cognitione verae vitae, which included a formulation suggesting that by conceiving the word God spoke thoughtfully with himself.34 Yet Erasmus could not find there more than a suggestion, for the little pseudo-Augustinian dialogue developed the idea in a way that Erasmus wanted to avoid.

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The author demonstrates the nature of the Trinity not “proprie” (properly) but “aenigmatice” (figuratively) as “ratione probante” (necessary and reasonable).35 He uses the traditional light simile36 that Erasmus ignored. He also adopts the comparison with human birth,37 and even more daringly, the details comparing it with human speech.38 The little dialogue clearly aims to guide its reader towards a blessed life in God. This was also Erasmus’s goal, of course, but for Erasmus, it is God who set the goal and it is God who fulfils it. By contrast, De cognitione verae vitae begins with man and guides him towards an understanding of God and thus towards bliss. Indeed, nature was endowed with reason for that purpose.39 The tract describes the path from humankind to God, whereas Erasmus’s Paraphrase of John outlines the path from God to humankind. Erasmus could not have found a connection to the eternal begetting in the dialogue; thus, it seems that this surprising notion must have originated with him.40 Of course, to define the Trinity as a community of love was not Erasmus’s own invention. In Augustine, the Spirit as the highest form of love also connects the Father with the Son.41 Richard of St Victor praised the Trinity as a community of love in a more original and consistent manner. For him, God had to be Trinitarian as long as he was love, since love wants to give itself over to a partner and to communicate its delight to a third person.42 It is unlikely that Erasmus knew Richard’s work, but it is probable that a formulation made by Bonaventure, which came from the same tradition, inspired him. Bonaventure wrote that God can “communicate to himself by having a beloved and a co-beloved” and “God has an offspring whom he loves most, the word is coequal with him which he begot from eternity. ”43 The monastic theology of Bonaventure is, in this regard, akin to that of Erasmus. The significance of the new interpretation of John 1:1 – the new understanding of the logos as continuously begotten anew and as a self-revealing colloquy of God – must be examined further in light of Erasmus’s view of God’s speech as an archetype of human speech. In 1525 he suggested, “As in sacred matters God the Father begets from himself his Son, so in us our mind is the source of our thoughts and speech; and as the Son proceeds from the Father, so in us speech proceeds from our mind.”44 It goes without saying then that this train of thought was obvious for Erasmus. But we must be cautious when using such passages as a key to his theology and his thinking in general, for Erasmus expressed this idea subtly. In the Paraphrase of John for instance, he refers only in passing to human speech or theological methodology

On the Doctrine of God 139

and confines himself to an interpretation of what was important for John; namely, the begetting of the Son as the word of God before all ages, his personal conjunction with God, and his intrinsic equality with God.45 The above-quoted passage, arguably the most specific and expressive statement by Erasmus about a correspondence of divine and human speech, comes from the Lingua, which deals with the usefulness and particularly with the misuse of language. This small paragraph is embedded in long lamentations about loquacity and the human addiction to calumny. It begins: “Now as God speaks most seldom and most briefly, so he speaks a truth both absolute and powerful.”46 Here, Erasmus seems to openly contradict the letter to the Hebrews, where the first verse states: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets.” This verse together with the subsequent verses could have offered Erasmus the perfect opening to develop a doctrine of logos or at least to hint at it, but one finds nothing of the kind when looking into his notes.47 The Paraphrase on Hebrews also presents nothing of interest on this matter. Although in it “the Son” of “the eternal Father” is characterized as “eternal speech,”48 Erasmus does not refer to an intra-trinitarian colloquy or to a correspondence between divine and human speech. Also, in the interpretation of Psalm 33, in which Erasmus refers to Hebrews 1:1, he does not refer to the pre-existent logos.49 Furthermore, in his annotation of I John 1:1 Erasmus does not allude to his doctrine of logos, though he does change the Vulgate’s verbum vitae to sermo vitae. Even more disappointing are his paraphrase of I John 1:1 and his notes and paraphrase on I Peter 1:23–5. In these passages he does not even change the word verbum into sermo consistently.50 But let us return, for the moment, to the small paragraph about God’s speech in Lingua. After the explanation that God spoke very seldom and most briefly, Erasmus continued: “God the Father spoke once and gave birth to his eternal Word [sermo].” With this sentence Erasmus clearly hints at the prologue of John but does not refer to the continuous begetting. The text continues: “He spoke again and with his almighty word [omnipotenti verbo] created the entire fabric of the universe.” Here one should note again that Erasmus does not use sermo continuously. He goes on: And again he spoke through the prophets, by whom he entrusted to us his simple words. Finally he sent his Son, that is the word clothed in flesh, and brought forth his concentrated word over this earth, compressing everything as it were, into one epilogue. He combined the pledge of silence

14  The Exegetical Theologian with the brevity of speech, adding to both qualities the highest and most powerful truth.51

In this, the most theologically meaningful paragraph of Erasmus’s essay on language, the eternal logos is depicted as a shortened and concentrated divine speech. In this way Erasmus transformed his own idea of the eternal logos to speak in agreement with the letter from James against garrulity and calumny. Furthermore, we should consider that in his Ratio, which was intended as a guide to the true method of theology, Erasmus never explicitly related human language to divine speech and never quoted the prologue of John. Apart from a vague and strongly platonizing reference in the Enchiridion,52 Erasmus explicitly stated his doctrine of the logos only in the paraphrase of John’s prologue, in the Apologia of his translation of John 1:1,53 and at the end of his life in the Ecclesiastes, where he depicts the whole of salvific history as an epic story.54 Here he provides a good summary of the content under the title “The self- revealing God”: Before all time, God the Father spoke to himself – as it were – through the Son in the presence of the Holy Spirit … But by creating the world through the Son he began to speak differently through the Son, and, so to speak, begot [genuit] the Son in a different way, because according to this highest philosophy to utter the word [verbum] is nothing but to beget the Son.55

Further on, Erasmus described how God revealed himself by accommodating human weaknesses and leading humans slowly, step by step, through the law and the prophets; finally, God spoke to them most intimately through his incarnated Son. Thus, “the word [verbum] which was God and was with God without beginning, became tangible to us and was placed before all our senses.” Just as God accommodated himself to humankind, so too did the apostles adapt to the capacity of their audience when they announced the Gospel. Erasmus suggested that the contemporary preacher should also accommodate his listeners in the same way.56 Here Erasmus does not use the term sermo for logos, but instead uses the traditional verbum; obviously, his logos-theology did not depend on the term. Just as the apostles accommodated themselves to their listeners, Erasmus accommodated himself in 1535 to his audience, and he most likely became aware that his translation had not gained popularity. In order to be understood and accepted he preferred to use the common verbum of the Vulgate again as well as the

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term sermo. In the first book of the Ecclesiastes, Erasmus uses the terms alternately. In the abstract of the fourth book, Erasmus – like others before and after him – formulated a logos-theology without using the term sermo. In the Ecclesiastes the whole argumentation amounts to a demonstration that the pre-existent logos was continuously operating. Erasmus sought to demonstrate that the logos not only existed before all ages, but that God the Father created the world through Christ. In Jesus Christ, God became human and he is constantly present and operating in Holy Scripture and in sermons (i.e., in the Christ-inspired words of men).57 In his other works Erasmus also constantly emphasized that Christ was present and operating, but only in his Paraphrase of John and in his Ecclesiastes does he refer to the pre-existing logos at length. The fact that Erasmus does not refer more often to a topos that is so compatible with his thinking and preferences, that he excludes it from his Ratio and only implicitly refers to it in his Paraclesis,58 is perhaps astonishing for modern historians. Erasmus himself hints at the reason why he was so restrained on this issue. He emphasized that the synoptic Gospels do not allude to the pre-existent logos,59 and as is well known in the New Testament, only the prologue of John and I John 1:1 refer to it. In the fourth book of the Ecclesiastes, Erasmus introduced a chapter in which he sums up his logos-theology as follows: “To speak about the highest mysteries of the divine nature, is hardly without danger for men. Certainly it should not be ventured by just anyone, on random occasions, in random places, or with random words.” And he reminded his reader that in Corinthians, Paul decided not to know “anything save Christ and him crucified.”60 Thus, even though considerations about the logos had a particular significance for Erasmus they only had a marginal place in his work, as for instance in his writings on the New Testament. Erasmus did not insert his logos-theology in his Ratio, but in his Paraphrase of John he emphasized it in a unique and prominent way.61 John’s prologue is a text that specifically encourages the Christ-centred, dynamic vision of the Trinity that Erasmus developed in the Paraphrase, which culminated in the concept of an intra-trinitarian community of love. That Erasmus refrained from systematizing his doctrine of the logos and using speculation as a foundation for his theology shows his integrity as an exegete. As much as his logos-theology might have accommodated his own personal humanist interests, he was disciplined enough not to give it more space than suggested by the New Testament text itself. A comparison of Erasmus’s vision of God and that of Zwingli in his De providentia dei points to the distinctive nature of Erasmus’s thought.

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Using rational arguments, Zwingli proves God to be inherently simple and immutable; as such, he is almighty, benign, and necessary. Zwingli also allocated these characteristics to the persons of the Trinity: Now, to get to the bottom of the problem, it follows that what is by nature good and in the highest measure good, and what is good at all is in itself good and must be true. The philosophers were aware of this already, when they ascribed truth to the good and simple. The one that exists [they said] must also be good. For it could not be good, if it were not also true, that means pure, sincere, lucid, intact, simple and immutable … It is certain that a simple and supreme good exists which is true, that is, pure and intact, because it alone is immutable. And conversely, because this supreme good is alone and solely immutable, it is certain that it is alone true, that is, pure and sincere etc. … and it must be almighty … for I shall not hesitate to demonstrate that what we ascribe to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as to the sole God and the divinity seems to originate from these sources. For in the Holy Scriptures the epithet almighty is given to the Father, grace and goodness is given to the Son, and truth to the Holy Spirit.62

Here the philosophical image of God defines the dogma of the Trinity. It is worthwhile to also compare Erasmus’s view with Melanchthon’s. In 1521 Melanchthon used the bold concept of his first Loci and abandoned a philosophical definition of God. He justified this omission with Erasmian arguments. Like the elder humanist, Melanchthon suggested that one should adore rather than investigate God’s mysteries, and he referred to Paul, who informed the Corinthians that God wanted to be known through the foolishness of preaching because the world could not know God by wisdom (I Corinthians 1:21). Melanchthon insists that the inquiries of the Scholastics are futile because it is essential to know the benefits of Christ and to know “what the law postulates, whence you may seek the strength to observe the law, and grace for sin and how you shall make the wavering mind stand against the devil, the flesh and the world, and how you consolate the afflicted conscience.”63 But in later editions he again inserted an article “De Deo.” Although he specifically wanted to stay away from the ancient pagans and deal only with revelation, Melanchthon used Plato’s “mutilated” description,64 which still distinctively shaped his image of God. Drawing on Plato, he declared that “God is an eternal spirit, that is a spiritual, reasonable and eternal essence, the cause of the good in nature, that is, true, good, just, almighty, and the creator of all good things.” This definition,

On the Doctrine of God 143

he explained, is “true and learned” but remains a human one. It is for this reason that he provides the following new definition, which, he confirms, is based on God’s revelation, and yet is, despite containing additional Christian content, still clearly based on Plato’s definition: “God is a spiritual, reasonable, and eternal essence, true, pure, just, full of mercy, totally free, of boundless power and wisdom, the eternal Father who bore the Son, his image, from eternity, and the Son the equally eternal image of the Father, and the Holy Spirit who emanates from the Father and the Son.”65 Of course, it would be too bold to suggest that Erasmus’s vision of God was no longer formed by the parameters of ancient Greek philosophy. His God also remained, in the sense of the classical Greeks, sole, eternal, and immutable.66 But Erasmus did begin to call God’s immutability into question and to blur the boundary between potentia absoluta (his absolute power) and potentia ordinata (his power over the ordered creation), a boundary that allowed traditional thinkers to combine the sole immutable creator with the sustainer of the transient and contingent world as revealed in the Holy Scriptures.67 These were, of course, only preliminary steps. He did not dare to speak about a verbal dispute between the divine persons as Friedrich Spee did one hundred years later,68 or even to develop a Process Theology. On the contrary, for Erasmus the Trinity was the proper example of a most intimate harmony. But in his interpretation of John’s prologue, Erasmus tried to define the dogma of the Trinity only through Christ the logos and independent of philosophical considerations. In doing so he did not eliminate the Greek philosophical impact that had dominated the Christian doctrine of God for 1500 years, but he did shake or at least question it. The sole, eternal, and immutable divine essence in three persons turns into a constantly renewed and conversing community of love that reveals itself voluntarily to humans in its love, and wants to be loved voluntarily by humankind in return. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Friedrich Spee, who fought bravely against torture and witch hunts in the seventeenth century, developed the vision of the intra-trinitarian colloquy into a verbal contention between Father and Son. It is reasonable that someone who, like Spee and Erasmus, could imagine a God who debates with himself in his own Trinity and who is not only the first mover but also allows himself to be moved, would also question the foundations of magical thinking. Is it not consistent that someone who rejected necessitas absoluta – through which, according to common Stoic doctrine, everything happens – also rejected the automatism of magical powers?69

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Erasmus never explained why he rejected magic, so we cannot do more than form the question. For Erasmus, John’s considerations about the logos contained the deepest mysteries concerning what God wants and does as far as it was revealed to humans – they revealed God as Trinity, as a love-community that speaks with itself. Creation emanates from this conversation and makes way for the history of humankind that was once endowed with freedom in paradise but falls. God reveals himself through the law and the prophets; he becomes man, dies, revives, and is present in his own church. Thus, the most profound mystery is not his immutability, his eternal and unalterable provision, but rather a conversation in love.

twe ve

On the Doctrine of Justification

annotations and paraphrases on romans and galatians Erasmus’s doctrine of justification, the doctrine of how humans are reconciled to God, was as disturbing for many of his contemporaries as his doctrine on God. Several critics accused him of Pelagianism – that is, they accused him of teaching that humans are basically good and therefore responsible for their own salvation, which could be achieved through asceticism and good works. Others charged him with Lutheranism and with denying that good works were related in any way to salvation. The doctrine of justification was in no way as clearly defined in the late Middle Ages as it was later on in the Reformed confessions – as justification by faith alone – or in the documents of Trent – as justification through God’s grace in cooperation with human will. In his polemic against Pelagius, Augustine – in agreement with Pauline theology – emphasized justification by faith: it is God’s grace alone through the satisfaction of Christ’s death that sanctifies and saves the faithful. Humans cannot themselves contribute anything to their salvation. Yet, Augustine also underscored – in accordance with the letter of James – that a Christian justified through God’s grace can be changed from a sinner into a righteous person and merit salvation when he/she seeks out and performs good works. Thus Augustine’s doctrine permitted different interpretations. The Scholastics reflected on the ratio of God’s grace to humankind’s response to it, and several schools of thought emerged. The Franciscans, for example, emphasized that God in his grace qualified and also obliged men to strive towards meritorious works. Thomas underscored God’s grace in these actions, but also explained that men had to respond to God’s offer. Duns Scotus and the

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Ockhamists emphasized that God bestowed a free will upon humans, who could (and had to) use it to decide either in favour of or against God’s will and act accordingly. Although humans had to contribute to the process, no one denied that it was ultimately God’s grace through Jesus Christ that formed the beginning and end of sanctification and salvation. The desire for sanctification dominated daily church life, and Christians were asked to be contrite, to follow God’s laws, and to perform good works in order to merit their justification. Erasmus became interested in the issue of justification only through his exegetical work. In his early works he did not address the topic. In the Precatio ad Virginis Filium Jesum justification is mentioned1 but not developed into a theme, and the Enchiridion makes no mention of it at all. In the Enchiridion, Erasmus promises the greatest prize to the bravest fighter2 and states that the cross of Christ is nothing but a path to virtue,3 asking: of what use is the sign of the cross if one does not fight under it?4 Erasmus even touches on the doctrine of satisfaction, though only in a casual and conventional way.5 He takes a completely different approach in his New Testament. In the 1516 Novum instrumentum he had already declared grace to be the key concept through which to understand Paul, explaining that “‘Grace’, too, is a Pauline word, a word Paul repeatedly emphasizes, desiring to exclude [carnal (added 1527)] reliance on the Mosaic law.”6 By referring to Romans 1:4, Erasmus alluded to God’s sanctifying work through Christ and emphasized that “Christ was a man who sacrificed himself for us, and is also God, by whose power we must be made holy [cujus virtute simus sanctifcandi].”7 He makes a significant point in his note on Romans 3:24: we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” He emphasized that “This redemption is, properly, the redemption of a captive, when a price has been paid for his freedom,”8 meaning that the captive’s ransom or bail has been paid by another. Erasmus clarified this notion with his famous translation of Romans 4:3, which he had used since 1516. He replaced reputatum est ei ad iustitiam (it was taken into consideration for his justification) in the Vulgate with imputatum est ei ad iustitiam (it was credited or reckoned).9 Faber Stapulensis had already suggested this replacement, but it was Erasmus who implemented it consistently and who influenced Protestantism with his interpretations. The Zurich Reformers used Erasmus’s translation and quoted him over Faber on this issue.10 In the note on Romans 4:6, where Erasmus again changed accepto fert in the Vulgate to imputat, he clarified: “λογίζεται, that is, ‘imputes’ or ‘counts to his credit’. However, to count to one’s credit is to regard as received what one has not yet

On the Doctrine of Justification 14

received. This, if I am not mistaken, is what law experts call acceptilatio [a formal discharge from a debt] [λογίζεται id est, imputat, sive acceptum fert. Est autem acceptum fert pro accepto habere quod non acceperis, quae apud Jureconsultos vocatur acceptilatio].”11 To list all of Erasmus’s notes insisting on justification without human merit or through faith alone would be a Sisyphean task; I will refer therefore only to the most important examples. In a note on Romans 1:7 Erasmus emphasized that grace is imputed without merits,12 and points out that Paul wished for the Romans to obtain grace. He called them beloved of God and called to be saints, but because someone can be called and loved on his own merit he [Paul] adds “grace”. Grace given brings forth forgiveness of sins, which in his customary way he [Paul] calls “peace”. For sin puts hostility between God and men. He called us, it was not we who sought him; he loved us first when we were hostile [to him]; he bestowed the gift of the Spirit upon those who deserved punishment; through the Spirit however, he bestowed forgiveness of sins and an abundance of gifts.13

In a 1527 note on Romans 1:17 Erasmus clarified what faith meant to him in this context. He wrote: Sometimes [the Scriptures] speak of the faith of God [fides dei] by which we trust [fidimus] in him rather than in man; it is said to be “of God” not only because it is directed towards him, but also because it is given by him; sometimes [the Scriptures speak of the faith] of both [God and man] as in “The righteous” shall live by faith [fides] – of God who does not deceive in what he has promised, and also of man who trusts [fidit] in God.14

In a 1535 note, Erasmus explained again that the term imputatio iustitiae meant a blessedness that occurs “not as result of works, but of the grace of God who (through faith) does not reckon up sins.” Abraham’s justification was through God alone, given before the circumcision and without requiring any good works. The grace was awarded gratis and the guilt erased.15 It is clear then that after 1516 Erasmus definitely taught a justification that was awarded by God’s grace through faith alone and without dependence on merits, virtues, or good works. He interpreted Paul accordingly in his 1517 Paraphrase on Romans. In the Argumentum he pointed out “that true righteousness and perfect salvation are conferred … without the help of the law, through the Gospel and faith alone in Jesus Christ … that true righteousness comes to no

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one through the Mosaic law (which they were observing in accordance with the flesh) but through faith [Verum iustitiam ac perfectam salutem citra legis auxilia per Euanglium ac solam fidem in Christum conferri … Per Legem Mosaicam, quam illi carnaliter observant, veram iustitiam nulli contingere, sed per fidem].”16 And in reference to Habakkuk 1:17 he explained that justification does not rely “on ceremonies of cult or law” but rather “comes from faith.” Only by faith can the righteous live.17 Paraphrasing Romans 2:10 Erasmus again emphasized that “glory, honour, and peace will be repaid equally to all who, through faith, have lived well.” In fact, Paul did not refer to faith – the verse reads only omni operanti bonum18 – but Erasmus inserted the phrase “through faith,” an indication that justification through faith was so important to him that he did not want to paraphrase the verse without making an allusion to it. The interpretation of Romans 3:22 reads: “Righteousness, I say, not of the law but of God, and this not through circumcision or through the ceremonies of the Jews but through faith to trust19 in Jesus Christ, through whom alone true righteousness is conferred … upon each and everyone who has faith in him [Justitia, inquam, non legalis, sed Dei, idque non per circumcisionem aut Judaicas ceremonias, sed per fidem ad fiduciam erga Jesum Christum, per quem unum vera justitia confertur … quicunque illi fidem habuerint].” Erasmus continued with a paragraph in which he denied any merit to not only those who obey the Mosaic laws and rites but also to those who obey natural justice: It [justification] is certainly not paid back to us as a reward earned through the observance of the Mosaic law or even through the observance of the law of nature. Rather it is given freely by the divine goodness … He does not forgive because they have merited it, but because he himself has promised [forgiveness] … he is the one and only author of human righteousness. And this he is without respect of persons for all who have faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.20

It is no wonder that Bullinger quoted from this paragraph and often praised Erasmus’s interpretation, in this case proclaiming: “Erasmus … haec sic concinauit bellissime” – Erasmus put this wonderfully well.21 Emphasizing the imputatio in 1517, Erasmus paraphrased Romans 4:3 as follows: And immediately because of the merit of faith [fidei; before 1521 Erasmus said “fiduciae”]22 he was considered righteous not from circumcision

On the Doctrine of Justification 149 which he had not yet received, but from his belief – and considered righteous not before men, but before God, who was the only witness to this transaction, and from whom he received credit for his trust as righteousness, although he had not fulfilled the righteousness of the Mosaic law. For it is properly said that credit is entered on account [imputari] or received [acceptum ferri] when the money has not actually been paid but nevertheless is considered as paid due to the kindness of the creditor.23

And in reference to Romans 4:5, Erasmus attributed the following words to Paul: But as for the gentiles who do not know the ceremonies of the law, or even Jews who abandon the servitude of the law for faith in Christ, these no longer labour as though by rule, but purely and simply trust in Christ who bestows as a free gift perfect righteousness even on the impious, all of whose sins he has taken away by his death. To these, I say, after the example of Abraham, faith offers this, that they are considered righteous, commended not for having observed the law, but for faith alone [sed solius fidei], to which no one is compelled but all are invited.24

In Galatians 3:6 Erasmus also replaced the word reputatio with imputatio and interpreted according to his Paraphrase of Romans.25 There the long discussion over Abraham’s trust in God’s promise – a promise which God gave (as Erasmus continually emphasized) before Abraham was circumcised – results in the following formulation: “The promise of God was free and it was established on the sole condition of faith [solaque fidei conditione]. Anyone who fulfills this condition maintains his right to the promise.”26 For Erasmus, justification is the Gospel. He has Paul say: “By the Gospel I mean justification through faith in Jesus Christ.”27 What Erasmus means by “the Gospel” is “free access to Christ himself”; Christ, “who sanctifies everything”; Christ “who desires that all men be saved” and who “raises up everything to himself.”28 For Erasmus, it is through pure faith that the good news is realized. The faith which comes from God29 is, as Erasmus points out in the Explanatio Symboli, much more than just accepting God’s promises as true: In this life the believer gives over his entire self, those connected with him, and all his possessions to the divine will, renouncing his own will in all things … Paul proclaims even that whatever is without faith is sin [Nam Paulus peccatum etiam esse pronuntiat, quidquid absque fide

15  The Exegetical Theologian est].30 Faith joins us to God the Father, faith joins us with Christ, the head; faith, through the Spirit of Christ, admits us to the number of sons of God.31

Like the Reformers, Erasmus believed that faith must be preceded by the awareness that no mortal can live up to God’s law. Erasmus paraphrases Romans 3:9 as “the whole world is equally guilty before God, since the law of Moses, when observed according to the letter, has not power to make any one at all righteous and innocent before God as judge.” It is useful only in “that through it everyone more clearly recognizes his own sin.”32 Erasmus translated the epistle to the Romans accurately and interpreted it to the best of his knowledge, but the diligent exegete also addressed the topic of the Pauline doctrine of justification when the Bible text did not call for it. In introductory remarks to the 1522 Paraphrase of Matthew where there was no Gospel text compelling him to address the subject, he referred to justification in this way: Just as God is not only the God of the Jews but is common to all, in the same way in which the sun is common to the whole world, so Jesus Christ his Son came to save all, died for all, rose for all, ascended into heaven for all, sent forth his Spirit to all … By his death the sins of our former lives are washed away in the sacred font once and for all, and our sins, for which the innocent Christ paid with his death once and for all, are not imputed to us, no matter how terrible … He does not demand from anyone the burden of the Mosaic law, only let there be present a lively faith that both promptly believes what is proclaimed and awaits with unwavering trust for what is promised.33

Later on, as confessionalism intensified and it became increasingly dangerous to abandon justification through merit, Erasmus held fast to his conviction. In De amabili ecclesiae concordia of 1533 he quoted Titus 3:5 as “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”34 Moreover, he declared that “faith is the gateway to the church; without faith, baptism is of no use. However, nobody imparts faith to himself, it is God’s gift, who allocates it to those he wants beforehand and draws them to Christ. For man, as far as he is a human being, is worldly and knows only the world.”35 Erasmus directed the declaration that “eternal blessedness is given not through works according to the law but gratis through faith”36 and that “no

On the Doctrine of Justification 151

human work is good enough to merit eternal salvation” against his detractor, Béda. But he also acknowledged that the faithful are inclined to good works and that such actions do have their own dignity.37 He insisted in another Apologia that “the evangelical grace which I call here God’s favor is given to faith alone [gratia Euangelica, quam illic voco Dei beneficium non datur sed soli fidei].” And he later asked, “Just because others teach wrongly about good works and satisfaction, are we not to be allowed for that reason to attribute to faith what is owed to it on the basis of Scriptural passages?”38 Although Béda associated Erasmus’s doctrine of justification with Lutheranism, Erasmus found many followers and like-minded theologians among Catholics. In Worms, Johann Gropper, the capitular of Cologne, and Gerard van Veltwyck, the imperial counsellor, were able to agree with the Strasburg Reformers Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito (as did Eck and Melanchthon later in Regensburg in 1541 with Gropper’s support) on a doctrine of justification using Erasmian terms, and to win the approval of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, the papal legate.39 After 1543 Gropper turned away from the unsuccessful religious colloquies but not from his Erasmus-like doctrine of justification. Although he no longer considered Protestant scruples, he disseminated his view of justification in his Capita of 1546 not only among scholars but also among laymen. In the following year it was even published in German translation. In this work he declared that justification could be attained without any merit through Christ alone. In this catechism Gropper did not shy away from speaking about justification through faith. He emphasized that Christ became man “in order to make us children of God through faith in him [uff das er uns durch den glauben an jn / kinder Gots mächte].”40 At the council of Trent in 1546, the debate on justification was subtle and sophisticated; however, an Erasmian concept of justification through faith alone did not gain approval.41 And yet in 1533 when Erasmus argued that Protestants and Roman Catholics did not differ on any unsurmountably fundamental questions of dogma and could easily unite if they would leave the Sophistic questions of free will aside, he could do so in good faith and had good cause for his assurance.42 The charges of Pelagianism, insofar as they were levelled at Erasmus as a theologian after 1515, must be challenged. He did, without a doubt, show some tendency towards Pelagianism in his Enchiridion, but in his Annotations and Paraphrases he clearly taught justification by faith alone. One could, however, charge him with rebutting the idea of original sin in his exegesis, a doctrine that had had a significant impact

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on the the doctrine of justification. In fact, by 1498 Erasmus had already rejected Augustine and his followers in earlier Western theology who connected original sin with sexual reproduction, and on this point he never changed his mind.43 Indeed, he had translated and interpreted Romans 5:12, like Pelagius, against the Vulgate and Augustine. Instead of the words “all sinned in Adam,” meaning that all humans are heirs of the original sin, he translated insofar; that is, all men were like Adam insofar as they sin. He emphasized that Paul did not speak here of original sin, but of the inclination towards committing sin as Adam had done, and that it was a matter of individual sin. Erasmus consequently rejected the doctrine that unbaptised children were condemned44 and adhered to his translation and interpretation of Romans 5:12 in all of his later editions.45 Erasmus did not challenge the idea that every man is a sinner, but he objected to the automatism in the Augustinian concept of original sin. This was clearly perceived by both his Catholic opponent, Lee, and by his protestant adversary, Luther. Luther made even stronger accusations against him. Erasmus was – like Luther – aware, as he expressed it in his Paraphrase of Galatians in 1519, “that the law is flesh, shadows, appearances, servitude, while the Gospel is spirit, light, truth, freedom.”46 In his 1534 edifying tract De praeparatione ad mortem he declared (emphasizing with John the Evangelist) that “‘through Moses was given the law’, that made known our wickedness, but ‘grace came through Jesus Christ’ who shared his righteousness with us.”47 But for Erasmus this was only one side of the question. For him Christ abrogated only the ceremonial and the outer law, not the whole law which is the law of love fulfilled by Christ and which must be observed by every Christian. This law is the foundation for sanctification, of growing holy according to God’s will, and is inseparable from faith since faith “begets good works, but these in turn nourish their parent.”48 In 1529, enraged by the Reformers in Basel and Zurich and intent on defending himself against the charge that he supported them, Erasmus declared that one should at least be able to discuss whether faith promotes works or works promote or even justify faith,49 though he himself had long since established in no uncertain terms that righteousness was given by faith not by merits: “nam soli fidei datur, non meritis operum.”50 But for Erasmus there was no doubt that without faith there is no hope for salvation, and faith necessarily brings about good works through love. That is why anyone who does not strive to do good works boasts vainly of his faith. And those who boast

On the Doctrine of Justification 153 about their faith when it is not joined with good works hope for salvation in vain.51

In Erasmus’s view, the letter of the Old Testament law was dead, but the spirit of the law still had to be observed. In 1533 he even formulated the following statement: The whole of the law agrees with our Gospel … However, the Gospel frees us from the obligation of the commandments only in that, because love has increased in us, we gladly do of our own free will what the Jewish people did through fear of punishment … Christ did not come into the world so that we might sin with impunity, but so that we might not sin at all, being reborn in him who knew no sin.52

However close Erasmus’s interpretation of the law was to that of Melanchthon and Zwingli – who also connected faith with sanctification53 – this statement offered Luther an opening to accuse him of works-righteousness and moralizing. Although in 1533 Erasmus was prepared to grant that Christians might distinguish between a “purifying” justification and a justification which effected good works,54 he was not really interested in the increasingly significant Lutheran differentiation between a primary justification, which was understood as a justification received and experienced by faith, and a secondary justification, which was the experience of righteousness through faith that in turn causes good works. He was much more interested in inculcating the idea that faith is dead without these good works.55

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thirteen

Handling of Doctrine

the explanation of the apostles’ creed Dealing with articles of faith (the doctrine of the Trinity, God, and justification) raises the question of systematic coherence and, more importantly, the question of whether Erasmus, who continually rejected the Scholastic teaching of his time and accepted the systematic work of Melanchthon only with deep reservation, offered any systematic coherence himself.1 Erasmus’s reservations about a dogmatically fixed theology were so strong that it was still possible in 1981 for Chomarat – even after the 1970s had rediscovered Erasmus as theologian – to question whether Erasmus was a theologian at all!2 Here it is important to ask what the term “theologian” means. If a theologian is a thinker who aspires at composing a timeless Summa or a confession that begins with God’s existence and deduces everything from God, ending with the order of state and church, then Erasmus was no theologian. But if we define a theologian as a scholar who attempts to bear witness to God’s revelation and to make it relevant for his own time, who believes that the world and its history, down to its most humble parts, can only be understood “by relating everything to God, in whom is the beginning, growth, and perfection of all things,”3 then Erasmus was a theologian of the first order. He was not one of those who supposed himself able to build everything on “causes and the principles,” as the “philosophers” do, but as a thinker who simply wanted to live in his faith, since “faith coming from God transcends the certitude of all the senses and of philosophical principles, there is no process of learning more reliable than faith.”4 Erasmus questioned theological systems, but he wanted and could not do without the articles of faith. In his view it was necessary not

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only to offer the possibility for all believers to read the Bible, but also to circulate and teach the most important doctrines of faith. He inspired others to write books for a broad audience on the Christian faith, on the Lord’s Prayer, on the articles of faith, and on the sacraments.5 And in his Ratio seu methodus he suggested that the student of Holy Scripture could learn dogma from concise “summaries or compendiums of the Gospels and the apostolic letters so that he may have a fixed goal to which he can refer every passage he reads.”6 Erasmus did not continue this statement with a Summa, but only with a short exemplary reference that does not, as one might expect, refer to an article de Deo or to the Trinity. Instead, he described the impact of the Holy Spirit. He described the new people whom Christ created, the reborn who live like angels even though they are flesh because they have been turned into new creatures through Christ.7 For Erasmus, only the effect of God operating in humans was worth mentioning. This focus on God’s actions alone was one of the few maxims Erasmus followed “methodically.” In the fourth book of his Ecclesiastes, Erasmus felt obliged to discuss the article de Deo, but in it he does not deal with God’s existence or being but rather with God’s hierarchia, his holy reign and order in heaven and on earth; his doings which operate in the “corpus Christi mysticum” and in the pious who do not rebel against his will but walk on earth in hope and faith.8 Of course, Erasmus did not omit the doctrine of the Trinity from his compendium, but it came only as an afterthought.9 Where Erasmus offered dogmatic approaches, he tried to deduce them consistently from God’s faith-creating actions as revealed in Jesus Christ, the tangible manifestation of God’s word or speech. He does so, for example, in his Explanatio symboli, his explanation of the Apostles’ Creed from 1533, which is followed by his interpretation of the Decalogue and a reference to the Lord’s Prayer. His Explanatio differs categorically from the countless interpretations of the Apostles’ Creed in early Protestant catechisms, where usually the head of the household (or a vicar or teacher) tests the pure faith of a child who answers with ready-made responses.10 In his Small Catechism, Luther continually asks the child: “What does this mean?” The correct response to the first article is: “I believe that God has created me and all that exists … protects me from all danger, and preserves and guards me against all evil; and he does all this out of pure paternal, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine; for all of which I am in duty bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. This is most certainly true.”11 Calvin’s questions are more precise, but the method is the same. Referring to the first article, among other things, he asks the

Handling of Doctrine 15

child: “How do you understand God’s almighty power?” The child responds: “Not, that he himself has power which he does not exert, but that he has everything under his control and in his hands. By his providence he governs the world, by his will he establishes everything and guides his creatures, as it seems best to him.” And again the teacher asks: “So you believe that God’s might is not idle, but you regard it as something that always keeps his hands on his work, so that nothing happens other than through him and on his command.” And the child affirms: “So it is.”12 The Protestant catechumen gives prescribed answers. Through this method he learns to competently confess his faith but not to question faith on his own or to delve into it and to deepen it for himself. In spite of all differences in content, the Reformers remained entrenched in the methodological and didactical tradition of late medieval catechisms. Their catechisms served to instruct the laity and yet dictated “what they had to learn”13 and did not stimulate spontaneous questions. Erasmus also wrote for a youth, albeit a mature youth who understood his humanistic Latin, but he also saw his work as a manual for catechists.14 Like the others he offered instruction through a system of questions and responses, but in his Explanatio symboli it is the catechumen who asks and the catechist who answers. His answers offer no definite confessions that make further questions redundant; on the contrary, they stimulate further meditation and new questions in the pupil whose faith was not meant to be confirmed or even tested once and for all, but encouraged to develop and mature over time. In Erasmus’s model the teacher cannot do more than stimulate continuative thought: “May the Lord help you grow into genuine maturity through my watering and planting.”15 In Erasmus’s Explanatio the catechist urges his pupil to rethink his considerations or statements and the pupil promptly questions them.16 For Erasmus, the questions have no end, and thus his catechumen confesses: “As I learn, I get thirstier for learning.”17 The Explanatio goes far beyond the scope of common catechisms, and in the end the teacher alludes to other relevant books.18 Obviously, Erasmus does not and cannot offer a definitive doctrine. He seeks instead to guide the pupil to maturity, and in the end the successful catechumen should be able to ask questions and think for himself. In the beginning the pupil is shy in asking questions, but he soon learns to ask more leading questions and eventually to raise objections. The starting point of the dialogue is the longing for salvation effected by God and the pupil’s thirst for learning.19 Erasmus’s dialogue seems to be guided by the accidental questions of the catechumen. Of course,

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this is a consciously constructed fiction since the work was carefully composed in a way that at once leads to Erasmus’s most important statement – that faith is a gift of God. It develops in each individual person and in the church, and is a lively and continuing effect of the spirit on earth that will be consummated only in heaven. As such, instruction in faith can only be spontaneous and developed through colloquy. At the beginning of the lesson the catechist declares: “Let us implore together the Lord’s mercy, so that by his inspiration you may ask prudent questions and I give salutary answers.”20 Erasmus puts such an emphasis on the fact that God alone initiated the work in his pupil and that he alone can perfect it that the youth asks whether an instruction by men can be useful at all. The answer is affirmative, for Christ commanded that we must make “disciples of all the nations!”21 For Erasmus, though it is God’s work, humans are charged with it. Thus, from the outset God eliminated all pride and boosted the mutual love through which humans support each other.22 Obviously, Erasmus fought on two fronts: he avoided the enthusiastic self-confidence that relied on direct inspiration and set aside tradition and magisterium, but he also fought against a retreat into stagnant dogmatism that attempted to define for all eternity what it regarded as correct. He had the enthusiasts and, by 1533, the hardened orthodoxy of both Protestants and Catholics in mind. In the first lesson of six, Erasmus’s catechumen reaches the main question of the tract and asks: “What is faith?”23 Erasmus uses the whole teaching unit to answer and also gives long and general explanations of what faith is in the following lessons.24 He begins the catechist’s response with an anthropological explanation, which is unusual for his work.25 He writes that the human soul consists of “intellect and will.”26 “By the former we decide what should be chosen, by the latter we seek what reason has indicated. The offence of the first human beings has impaired both these faculties.” For Erasmus, humans could no longer rely on these skills because their intellect deceives them,27 and through their corrupted will they seek “what is deadly rather than health-giving … Against this twin evil, the goodness of God has provided us with a twin remedy: faith, which purifies the heart, that is, the mind and reason or the source of the soul, and charity, which corrects the distorted will.” Faith “drives out all delusion, at least in what pertains to salvation. Charity removes evil desire, so that we may be inclined only to what God has prescribed. Faith gives orders, charity carries them out as a servant of faith.”28 Erasmus states at the outset that faith and charity belong together. Faith is existential; it engages all powers of the soul. It transforms the whole person and changes his/her actions: “In this life,

Handling of Doctrine 159

the believer gives over his entire self, those connected with him, and all his possessions to the divine will, renouncing his own will in all things. Even if a thousand deaths should threaten …”29 This faith has its foundation in revelation: “Faith … is a gift divinely infused into our minds, through which we believe without any hesitation that whatever God has handed down and promised to us in the books of both Testaments is the absolute truth.” This implies that the faithful must trust in God as the creator and lord of history in the past, as the sustainer who rules the world and his church in the present, and as the judge who will keep his promises of eternal life in the future.30 In other words, the temporal being must trust in God as the lord of time and eternity, and whoever has confidence in this idea cannot be shocked by anything. For Erasmus, faith protects and makes one fearless and resistant to all the attacks of the world and the devil. Faithful people even await their death with confidence because they know that God loves them and has prepared eternal blessing for them,31 and all their anxieties will be cast aside in full trust of God.32 The ultimate goal of this faith is to guide humans towards unification with God. Erasmus writes that the soul which “in baptism … is marked with the sign of the cross” becomes a “vessel of the Holy Spirit … and is sealed with the seal of faith – or rather, Christ has sealed it with his blood.” Everybody is invited to the kingdom where Christ, the bridegroom, joins the bride, his church. As is depicted in many medieval tracts, every individual partakes in this wedding33 and in “professing the faith, each and every soul is also united with Christ as its spouse.”34 The catechist emphatically proclaims: “How happy is the union that makes us one with God. To cling to him is highest and unparalleled happiness.”35 For Erasmus, faith begins as a gift of God. God endows his spiritual creatures with transformative faith mediated through other humans. In Christ, God unites with humans and vice versa and this unification between the faithful and God will be perfect in its eternal blessedness. Faith has its origin in the saving event, which in Erasmus’s view was nothing less than the revelation of God through Christ. God did not want to be alone, but created the heavenly and earthly world to share in his happiness. And after the fall of humankind, God revealed himself again and again through the law and the prophets, but humans abandoned him: At this point the mercy of God, which is above all his works, disclosed itself. Through this same Son, he graciously made himself known to us more closely and more intimately, so that challenged by favours so

16  The Exegetical Theologian numerous and so wonderful, we might, as a result, be swept into reciprocal love to him … Moreover he sent him not as an avenger but as a saviour, through whose death he might recall us to life.36

Ever since, God chose to reveal himself through his word. According to Erasmus this word was in accordance with the inherent rational judgment of humans, who, even after the fall, were not so completely corrupted that they could not agree to it.37 For Erasmus, the Apostles’ Creed ideally outlines the revelation. He declared that “because of its authority … [it] is called the Apostles’ Creed.” And it is “a statement embracing in few words what must necessarily be believed by all to gain eternal salvation.” It is a firm guideline that directs and corrects “all human opinions,” as well as “the errors of pagans, Jews, and heretics.”38 Erasmus emphasized the Trinitarian structure of the Apostles’ Creed. The revelation of the Trinity contains the whole of salvation history: prelude, main body, and the goal of the salvific drama.39 The Apostles’ Creed is a firm guideline, but it also has – as do salvation and the faith of individuals – its own history. By the second lesson the catechist has already introduced the pupil to historical-philological considerations that suggest the Apostles’ Creed was initially formed against a complicated historical backdrop and was only later formulated in the conventional wording. For instance, the pupil learns that the final version could have come into being only after the Athanasian Creed and Tertullian. Although the catechist deduced from the Athanasian Creed that the confession of the first Christians was shorter, he avoids the question of whether or not it became too long. Instead, he simply allows that the additions were necessary because of quarrels and because the creed needed clear explanations for uneducated persons to understand.40 In other words, the Apostles’ Creed also has a history, and anyone who does not know its history cannot fully understand or retrace its development correctly. In this way the catechist introduces the youth to the christological disputes since the time of the council of Chalcedon.41 Luther had no sympathy for this approach. In a letter to Amsdorf in 1534 he insinuated that as a catechist Erasmus does not pursue anything but to make his catechumens doubt and question the tenets of faith. Already in the beginning, before laying firm foundations, Erasmus burdens him with so many heresies and conflicting opinions with which the church

Handling of Doctrine 161 was troubled from the beginning, that he nearly establishes that nothing was ever certain in the Christian religion. What will an inexperienced mind which from the beginning is inundated with such examples and dangerous questions, think and do other than secretly run away from the Christian religion as from a plague or, if he dares, renounce it in public?42

Yet for Erasmus an introduction to the christological disputes was indispensable because certain sentences of the Creed originated through altercations with heretics.43 To deal with them was therefore of great benefit to the pupil, since they warned him from the outset against errors, and only in full knowledge of these disputes could he really understand and value the tenets of faith: “I recount the detestable blasphemies and the unholy names of their authors reluctantly, but this subject will profitably result in our holding what we hold more firmly, and in our returning thanks to God more fully, because he has deigned to unveil so great light to us.”44 Consequently, the catechumen confesses: “Yet, I have benefited from their insanity, since through them I have been made to see the truth more clearly and believe more firmly.”45 This examination of heresies allows the pupil to better understand what it means when it is said that Christ is both true God and true man; Erasmus emphasizes both. For him Christ suffered as a human in his body and soul, though he is and was God, so that one can “piously say that God suffered and died.”46 In the sixteenth century this was a bold formulation. Zwingli, for example, turned against such statements. He continually emphasized that Christ suffered only in his human, not his divine nature. In 1531 in his Fidei expositio he declared “we believe that under the governor Pilate Christ was crucified, yet he felt the bitterness of suffering only as man, not as God who, because he is ἀόρατος, meaning he is invisible, he is also ἀνάλγητος, meaning not subjected to suffering or injury.”47 There was a great reluctance to think of God as suffering. As previously mentioned, during his first trip to England Erasmus had already noted that John Colet was reluctant to think of Jesus in Gethsemane as a suffering man who shrank from death. At that time Erasmus integrated their discussion into a little tract. In it he admitted that only the human nature of Christ suffered48 and later on he differentiated between the natures of Christ,49 but he did not shrink from discussing the concept of a suffering God. Luther’s view of the two natures in Christ comes very near to that of Erasmus. Luther wrote in 1522 that “though the two natures are different, they still are one person, so that all that Christ does and suffers,

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certainly God has done and suffered, though it happened only to one nature.”50 In 1531, according to the well-documented notes of an anonymous writer, Luther formulated this idea again, this time with less precision and more drama. He emphasized that the divinity and humanity of Christ could not be separated and he crusaded against the Islamic protest: “The Turk says: you will not persuade me that someone is God who is born from a woman, comes down from heaven and lies for nine month in the womb of the Virgin Mary and shits and pisses in a cradle. Later on he dies on the cross like a thief and a rogue. And he is supposed to be a God?” For Luther, this is precisely who God must be, since he declared that he who does not believe in the humanity of Christ cannot find Christ’s divinity.51 For Erasmus it was most important that Christ was both God and man, and that God himself was born in Christ: first, because God revealed himself so lovingly to humans as one of them in order that they would love him in return;52 and second, because the unconditional trust in the Gospel, in God’s promises, originates from the fact that God became his own prophet in history.53 It is not just any man who testifies to God’s promises, it is God himself. For Erasmus, the dignity of humans depended on the very fact “that human nature is held in such great honour that it has been united with the divine person in Christ and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Before the incarnation the angels were placed above human beings, but after God became humans they abandoned this honour to man and refused to allow the seer John to prostrate himself before them as they had allowed Abraham to do.54 Erasmus emphasized God’s death on the cross: “In a word all philosophy, all consolation, all strength for the Christian mind are in the cross of Christ.”55 His theology of the cross not only embraced the doctrine of justification, it also contained a theology of discipleship: I have reminded you above, that the Lord came to earth not only to cleanse us from sin, but to show the road by which one must reach eternal glory, and to strengthen the weakness that inclines us to fall into sin again, we who are equally weak in the face of joy and sorrow … Whoever fixes his eyes with full faith on the crucified Christ is afraid to crucify him again somehow, whenever he commits those sins which Christ died to wash away.

And he will feel this all the more “when he reflects on how much the one who was free from every contact with evil suffered for us.”56 Such faithful trust in Christ’s cross and all the gifts that flow from it is given

Handling of Doctrine 163

by the Holy Spirit, which gives it not only to individuals but also to the church: “As the Holy Spirit is the ineffable bond by which the three Persons are inseparably joined to one another in eternal harmony, so too the same Spirit joins the spouse of Christ to her spouse by an indissoluble bond, uniting all the members of the mystical body in an eternal compact.”57 Erasmus did not provide a theological system; what he offered was his view of God’s revelation in history, which transcended the concept of history. In God’s revelation in history all parts of the early Christian creeds find their place, declaring God as the Trinitarian before all time and the loving creator, sustainer, and lord of the world. It witnesses the work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of humankind and the operation of the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of all the faithful, hinting at the promised eternity that is in God’s prophecies and which is prepared for all the faithful. In five lessons, Erasmus developed the Christian faith; in the sixth he dealt with the human response to the gift of faith – that is, with humanity’s obedience to God’s commandments. God’s commandments are embraced and contained in the double commandment of love: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”58 In his exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, Erasmus began with the catechumen’s subjective experience of faith, which is revealed as God acting through the pupil. He defined the content of faith as God’s actions in eternity and in the world, and its history as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. For Erasmus, prophecy and fulfilment were fundamental in Scripture: “Nothing is taught here that was not foreshadowed in various ways many thousand years before in the figures of the Mosaic law and foretold in the declarations of the prophets.” For example, it was foretold “that there is not a plurality of gods and that this world was created by one God.” Erasmus declares that even before the law was given, God was piously adored, but what the other prophets only saw from afar John could see face to face, since “the Lord himself was his own most reliable prophet,” who interpreted what the men of old saw “in outline through the riddles of the Old Law.” Also, Christ spoke “under the guise of parables” and not always “plainly” even to his disciples, he “showed his divine nature by his actions to a greater extent than he expressed it in his words … When the time of his death was pressing closer upon him, however, he plainly forewarned his disciples that he would be handed over to the gentiles to be mocked and crucified, but he consoled them with the promise that he would rise

164 The Exegetical Theologian

again on the third day.” Likewise, Christ foretold how “faith in the Gospel” would be disseminated throughout the whole world and the fate that would await the preachers of the Gospel; he also predicted that the Jews would reject the Gospel while the heathens would embrace it. But in the end, according to Paul’s words, “from Jews and gentiles there should be made one fold under one shepherd.”59 Christ did not even conceal “that the church would be assailed by diverse heresies, but not overthrown.” Of course, the law and the prophets foretold the coming of Christ in whom God revealed himself and “Since all things turned out just as they were predicted, to have any doubts about the Last Judgement and the rewards of the pious and impious seems to indicate the utmost blindness.”60 This approach to faith may rightly be called salvation-historical, though Erasmus himself did not use the term salvation history. Instead he spoke of a “salutifera fabula,” a “salvific drama” with “acts and the celestial scenes of this heavenly choragus.”61 This formulation, which Luther dismissed as frivolous, Erasmus affirmed explicitly as appropriate.62 For Erasmus it was not at all frivolous to link God’s actions with a drama. Indeed, the phrasing may remind the reader of Erasmus’s poem from 1499, Paean divae Mariae atqve de incarnatione verbi, which adopted motifs of salvation history taken from the medieval mystery plays.63 For Erasmus, God does not reveal himself independently of history; on the contrary, it was only in history that humans could find God. And it was in history that God revealed himself through humans whom he elected for the task of conveying his message in a way that was comprehensible for that particular time, until he became a historical person through his Son. For Erasmus, God accommodated himself perfectly to the comprehension of humans in Christ, and at the same time surpassed it in order to draw humans to him.

Part Three In Conflict with the Church Reformers

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ourteen

The Argument with Luther

letters / de libero arbitrio / Interpretations of Romans 9 By the summer of 1520 Erasmus had to admit that a division of Christendom was imminent. At first Luther did not seem to worry him, and he sent the Ninety-five Theses to Thomas More without comment.1 Erasmus had also complained about indulgences and saw no reason to criticize Luther on that point.2 After Luther refused to recant before Cajetan in Augsburg in the autumn of 1518, half of Germany hailed him as its new spiritual leader, but Erasmus remained calm and deliberate. He conceded to Johannes Lang (to whom Luther had earlier confided his aversion for Erasmus) that the Theses would please all good men, but he also questioned how prudent it was to touch upon this open wound in Christendom and suggested that it was a task better suited to the authorities. He could not understand why Eck opposed Luther so vehemently.3 By spring 1519 Erasmus began to fear that Luther’s actions might harm the studia humanitatis and that he might be unfairly lumped together with the Reformer.4 Nevertheless, he tried to remain open-minded to Luther personally, and he often went so far as to declare not only that Luther’s life was irreproachable but also that nobody who lived faultlessly and in a Christian way should be considered a heretic.5 He held to this statement even after the disputation of Leipzig where Luther denied that the decrees of general councils were binding. Afterward, in a letter from October 1519 to Albrecht of Mayence, Erasmus wrote: “It is a known fact that these men have condemned as heretical in Luther’s books things they read in the books of Bernard and Augustine as orthodox and even pious.” At that time he still believed in the efficacy of his cautionary advice that such issues should not be

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discussed in public but be restricted to debate among scholars.6 But by June 1520 Erasmus had resigned himself to the reality. Luther should have perhaps written more moderately and politely, but it was too late and his words could not be retracted. In a letter to the young Philipp Melanchthon, Erasmus lamented, “I can see that things are heading towards civil strife.”7 Erasmus constantly criticized what he considered Luther’s violent style, but he also emphasized that the real problem did not originate with Luther’s character, much less his alleged heresy, but from the godless lives of many clerics, the pride of certain theologians, and the tyrannical behaviour of many monks.8 And he pointed out that Luther’s adversaries responded to his violence in kind; the papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication, for instance, was certainly short on Christian benevolence.9 It is in this context that Erasmus advised Frederick the Wise, who had asked for his opinion on the Luther matter. Erasmus replied that Luther’s critics were not at all above reproach, while Luther “has no personal ambitions” and “should be the less subject to suspicion.” Erasmus pointed out that the struggle had not originated in Luther’s criticism of the church; the “matter has sprung from a tainted source, the hatred of literature and the claim for spiritual domination.” This advice, which Erasmus wrote for the elector prince and which is handed down to us through a pirated print as Axiomata, seems to have motivated Frederick to protect Luther later on.10 Erasmus’s fears that he would be drawn into these quarrels of faith were not baseless. In Louvain, where he was based at the time, his opponents defamed him as a Lutheran and took the opportunity to conflate Luther’s theology with biblical humanism. Erasmus lamented that his opponents denounced him as a heretic.11 He even suggested that Cajetan was persecuting the studia humanitatis at bottom.12 He saw that his own hard work on reform was in danger and felt himself personally attacked. In 1521 he withdrew from Louvain to the free imperial town of Basel. There he advised his printer, Froben, not to publish any more books by Luther.13 In his last letter to Zwingli, dated from March 1523, Erasmus wrote: “For I am under the impression that I have maintained almost all that Luther maintains, only without his violence and abstaining from some riddles and paradoxes.”14 Throughout his life Erasmus insisted that what separated him from Luther was not his dogma. He rejected Luther’s “paradoxes” – among which he specifically counted Luther’s doctrine of free will – but these were, in his view, subject to dispute and no reason for a division of the church.15 By 1523 Erasmus’s exalted position as the undisputed master of scholars in the whole of Europe was being challenged. The Lutherans

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accused him of using the Gospel too little. He “has taught nothing but rhetoric,” they proclaimed, while opponents from the Roman side suggested that Luther had copied his heretical ideas from Erasmus. He lamented: “My misdeeds amount to this: I am all for moderation, and the reason why I have a bad name with both sides is that I exhort both parties to adopt a more peaceable policy. Freedom I have no objection to, if it is seasoned with charity. But this mad-dog scurrility can produce nothing but sedition and bloodshed.”16 But Erasmus was well aware that he had much in common with the Reformers. In 1523 he declared: has anyone been a more active opponent in print of putting one’s trust in ceremonies; of superstition concerning food and liturgy and prayer; of those who give more weight to human inventions than to Holy Scripture, who value the decrees of man more than the commandments of God, who put more trust in the saints than in Christ himself; of academic theology, corrupted as it is by philosophic and scholastic quibbling, of the rash practice of laying down rules for every mortal thing; of the topsy-turvy judgements of the multitude?17

In the same letter he went on to explain what it was that separated him from them: I do condemn those who pour oil on the flames and are in a great hurry to remove by violent drugs a disease which has by now grown chronic over a thousand years and more, to the very great peril of the whole body. The apostles showed toleration to the Jews, who could not be weaned away from their ingrained taste for the Law, and the same, I believe, they would rightly show to these men who for so many centuries have accepted the authority of all those councils and popes and distinguished teachers, and find some difficulty in swallowing the new wine of this modern teaching.

Even in this case Erasmus used historical arguments, implying that it was essential to give time for the abuses that had grown up over centuries to die off in order to allow new, healthy sprouts to emerge.18 But Erasmus could not hold his neutral position between the warring parties for long. In 1524 he felt compelled to write against Luther, but in doing so he looked for a subject about which, in his view, Christians were allowed to hold diverging opinions.19 In 1527, three years after he had first defended the principle of free will against Luther, Erasmus was invited by Thomas More to write against the Reformer

1

 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

in Wittenberg once more. Erasmus declined, although he conceded that it was necessary to change Luther’s mind on only two points: his understanding of the law and his doctrine of sin. Luther taught that the law had no other significance than to make us aware of our sins. For him humankind was so corrupted by Adam’s fall that even the Holy Spirit could effect nothing but evil. In response, Erasmus asked, “But with what weapons will you throw a person to the ground if he accepts nothing but the Sacred Scriptures and interprets them according to his own rules?”20 This was Erasmus’s judgment of Luther’s doctrine, but he explained himself even further: If I treat the subject from the point of view of the monks and theologians, who attribute too much to man’s merits, because it is to their advantage to hold this opinion, clearly I speak against my conscience and knowingly obscure the glory of Christ. But if I govern my pen in such a way as to attribute some power to free will [ut aliquid tribuo libero arbitrio] but greater efficacy to grace [gratiae plurimum], I offend both sides, which was my experience with the Diatribe.21

Erasmus continued with a critical discussion of Augustine’s doctrine of free will and confessed to his good friend: “For myself, I should not be averse to the opinion according to which we can of our own natural powers and without particular grace acquire congruent grace, as they say, except that Paul opposed that view. For that matter not even the schoolmen accept this opinion.”22 In other words, Erasmus would have preferred to believe that God responds to human beings’ attempts – as long as they do their best – with a congruent grace that enables humans to accomplish good works meriting salvation. However, the Holy Scripture (Paul) looks on the issue differently; this was for Erasmus the crucial point against an effective free will. In June 1524 Erasmus published a tract called The Sermon on Mercy in which he, like Luther, postulated that if “there is nothing here that you can ascribe to your own merits, glorify God’s mercy.”23 But he ended his argument with the suggestion that through good works one can “obtain God’s mercy [extorquenda sit Dei misericordia].”24 In his attempt to discuss the issue with Luther through his Diatribe de libero arbitrio from September of the same year, Erasmus discussed the problem in more detail. He arrived at the conclusion that one must allocate almost everything to God’s grace and almost nothing to free will. Even the smallest vestige of human willpower derives from God’s mercy alone and is continually dependent on God’s care and grace: “The will … was depraved to the extent that

The Argument with Luther 1 1

it could not mend its ways by its own natural efforts, but lost its freedom and was compelled to serve sin … In the orthodox view human effort can, with the constant help of God’s grace, continue in goodness, yet never without a proclivity to evil due to the traces of the sin once implanted in it.”25 Erasmus argued in his Diatribe de libero arbitrio that in his inconceivable benevolence God calls repeatedly upon fallen and corrupt humanity to voluntary obedience and enables it to follow his call.26 Consequently, his interpretation of Psalm 33 declared that “God wants his elect to be saved, but to be saved in such a manner that they unite their own efforts with the divine will. He saves us through grace, but he wants us to seek that grace through our prayers, our tears, sighs, and almsgiving.”27 Erasmus saw quite clearly that an insistence on free will might limit God’s power. All the same, he felt that there were cogent reasons to maintain the doctrine. He wrote to More: There is the fear that with the removal of free will some might abandon their zeal for good works. So much for Scylla; but more forbidding is Charybdis directly opposite: attributing to our own strength what is owed wholly to the divine munificence. If the subject pertained to human affairs I might justly indulge my wit at this point. But in matters that treat of piety it is not prudent to play the rhetorician.28

For Erasmus this was no laughing matter; indeed, he believed that the processes of demoralization and godlessness had already commenced in the world. In his 1529 tract Contra Pseudevangelicos he wrote: “What is this new evangelical freedom but everyone doing and thinking what he likes and going unpunished.”29 He asserted with horror that I already fear that under this name many heathens will rise up who suppose that they are more liberal if they do not believe in heaven or hell or in the immortality of the soul, while they keep talking about a free conscience. Perfect piety has a quiet conscience, but so also does the greatest nefariousness. I would prefer an unquiet conscience continuously agitated by the seed of faith and never allowed to rest. To feel nothing is an incurable evil.30

One doubts that the Lutheran doctrine of free will actually encouraged immorality and atheism, but in Erasmus’s view this was a real danger threatening Europe and the res publica christiana that he had

1 2 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

wished to establish and had tirelessly campaigned for. This was not the only reason for Erasmus’s fight against the concept of double predestination, which taught that the salvation or damnation of human beings was preordained and which Erasmus judged to be the result of Luther’s rejection of free will. The other reason was more deeply rooted in and flowed from the heart of his faith. Luther’s doctrine of the enslaved will hurt him to the core because it challenged his personal view of God. He argued: Moreover, those who say that there is no such thing as free will, but that everything happens by absolute necessity are saying that God works not only good deeds in everyone, but bad ones too. It seems to follow from this that, just as man cannot on any account be called the author of good works, he cannot in any sense be called the author of bad ones either.

This view, Erasmus declared, “seems openly to attribute cruelty and injustice to God, a most abhorrent charge to Christian ears (for he would not be God, if any vice or imperfection were found in him).”31 In his Diatribe, Erasmus frequently revisited the idea that nobody could love a God who allowed evil and yet punished men for it.32 Of course, Luther also assigned perfection to God, but in contrast to Erasmus he judged that God’s perfection could be challenged if one abandoned the idea that God wants and effects everything. For him God became almost “ridiculous” if all things did not happen with absolute necessity according to his will. In his experience, to resist this notion was to feel God’s grace exceedingly near. Luther confessed that “he himself stumbled over this issue more than once and reached the abyss of desperation, so that he wished never to be born, before he comprehended how beneficial this desperation was and how near to grace.”33 If for Luther everything happened by necessity and by the will of God, then he had to abandon any contingency and to admit that God also created evil.34 There is no indication that Erasmus suffered from similar spiritual doubts. Certainly, he was ready to accept with trust both the delights and afflictions dealt from the hand of God, but he did so in the conviction that God guided his fate to the best end and with an awareness that God himself had suffered. It seems that Erasmus dealt with the question of theodicy only on this level.35 In his 1528 Epistola consolatoria, he wrote: When people see good Christians afflicted by disease, war, loss of possessions, exile, torture, and death, unbelievers say, “where is their God?”

The Argument with Luther 1 3 (Psalm 79 (78):10). If only this question were not also heard occasionally among Christians! But it is more serious when these sentiments resound within our hearts, sometimes even breaking out into blasphemy, when in our thoughts, overcome by sorrow and weariness, we call God cruel, unjust, lacking in concern for human affairs, and more kindly disposed towards the wicked than towards the good, since they usually enjoy greater success than those who live devoutly. In doing so we fail to understand that our Lord passed through suffering and shame to his glory, and we forget what Paul wrote to Timothy: “All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted in this world [in hoc seculo]” (II Tim. 3:12). If he had said nothing more we might have grown weary of unceasing affliction, but now he reveals his hope that suffering will soon come to an end and be followed by bliss when he says, “in this world.”36

For Erasmus, Christ’s suffering and death silenced any lingering questions about God’s justice. He inserted “in hoc seculo” (in this world or time) in the verse to Timothy quoted above. This insertion was important because it hinted at the hope that all “suffering will soon come to an end and be followed by bliss.”37 Apparently, Erasmus never questioned his salvation or the salvation of others. It seems that he was one of those exceptional people who – supported by an untroubled trust in God – did not have to pass through the crises of faith experienced by Luther and others. There is no sign that Erasmus was ever in much doubt about God’s grace and as a result he had none of the problems with the ratio of God’s justice to God’s grace that bothered many of the Reformers. It is likely that he would have answered with Anselm to the question of whether God can be just if he spares evil humans: by sparing, God changes the evil into good. That is the highest justice.38 Or as Erasmus put it: “God’s providence turned the sinful cunning of humans to the glory of his Son.”39 Erasmus explained over and over again that God turns the bad deeds of humankind into blessings. Accordingly, his interpretation of the pharaoh’s hardened heart in the book of Exodus serves to prove God’s grandeur, just as the condemnation of Christ serves in the end to redeem all of humankind.40 However, for Erasmus it was not important to prove God’s justice as free of conflict. As he boldly explained in his tract The Sermon on Mercy: “In God whose nature is perfect unity, there is nothing that conflicts with anything else; yet if we reflect on the things that happen to us, there appears to be a conflict between God’s justice and his mercy. Justice summons us to punishment, but mercy … triumphs over judgement like a conqueror.”41 Luther’s arguments on this score did not convince

1 4 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

Erasmus, and he had no sympathy for Luther’s crises of faith or for his concept of “deus absconditus” – the hidden side of God. For Erasmus this concept was not only unnecessary, it was unthinkable to imagine God as he had revealed himself in his word alongside a “hidden God,” or to imagine the revealed will of God, which does not want sinners to be condemned, alongside an “inscrutable will” which preordains a sinner’s damnation.42 By accusing Erasmus, in his 1525 tract De servo arbitrio, of suggesting universal salvation,43 Luther misrepresented the humanist but also hinted at the essential difference between their doctrines of God. Erasmus would not question God’s grace in order to save God’s justice and he was more inclined to the doctrine of universal reconciliation,44 though he never taught this openly. In his tract The Sermon on Mercy he denounced Origen’s doctrine of universal salvation as heretical, but also appreciated it as an example of a great trust in God’s grace.45 Nor does Erasmus eliminate judgment and its possible consequence, damnation, altogether. He did not try to explain it away; instead, in his Explanatio symboli from 1533, he pointed to the Last Judgment as an important article of faith. The reason for his emphasis on the Last Judgment is significant: it was not because he wanted to save God’s justice and eminence, but because it is through judgment that God awards the good and deters the bad from crimes.46 Thus, judgment does not originate in God’s justice but functions as a means of education stemming from God’s benign care for humankind. In his 1535 Ecclesiastes Erasmus did not shy away from cautiously hinting at God’s power and justice when interpreting the Last Judgment. But even there he did not argue that God’s justice and almighty power cause damnation: “Even hell and the crowd of impious spirits preach His unconquered power which nobody can resist, and the truth of His promises, the justice of His rewards, the benevolence towards those whom He saves from so many evils and elects to such a great blessedness.”47 Erasmus did not ignore the doctrine of the Last Judgment, but it did not affect his trust in God’s grace. His interpretation of the second request in the Lord’s Prayer is typical. Erasmus’s prayer is dogmatically correct: thy kingdom come “until your Son hands it over to you full and complete, after subduing all whom your eternal purpose had marked out for this kingdom.” But he adds for the future judgment this hopeful plea: “grant that none may defect from you and your Son and return to the tyranny of the devil.”48 The exegetical evidence prevented Erasmus from teaching universal reconciliation, but it did not prevent him from acquitting God of participation in any evil. If he wanted to remain true to his view of

The Argument with Luther 1 5

God, Erasmus had to grant contingency to humans and to deny God’s participation in any evil, and he had to continually defend free will in order to keep God free from any evil. He did this in his Diatribe with almost tiresome persistence, and continually denied “mera necessitas” or pure necessity, which he explained could not be harmonized with God’s demand to obey his commandments and to choose goodness.49 By contrast, Luther found it difficult even to speak about reconciliation for all or to accept encouragement like that found in I Timothy 2:4, where it is written that the saviour “will have all men to be saved.”50 In his Sendbrief an Hans von Rechenberg he declared that his conviction that nobody could be saved without faith was to be understood exclusively and that anyone who recoiled from God’s judgment could not have substantive faith.51 Although Erasmus supported his own view with copious biblical quotations and exegetical explanations, for the purposes of this study we will discuss only the most significant part of his debate. The most important proof for all theologians who abandoned the idea of free will and taught predestination was Romans 9:6–29. There Paul discusses the election of Israel and states that God loved Jacob and hated Esau when the twins were still in their mother’s womb. Paul explains – with reference to Exodus 9 – that God raised up the pharaoh to exemplify divine power and cause the divine name to be proclaimed throughout all the earth. The biblical argument concludes: “Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy and whom He will He hardeneth” (Romans 9:18). But for Erasmus it was not God who hardened the pharaoh’s heart. On the contrary, it was God who allowed the pharaoh extra time and reason to repent by punishing him over and over again with plagues. The pharaoh himself is guilty of causing his punishment through his own obduracy: “But God used this evil will of Pharaoh’s for his own glory and his people’s salvation.”52 For Erasmus the story of Jacob and Esau is likewise not a serious proof for double predestination. He believed that the story should not be understood literally, since God does not love and hate as humans do. Moreover, he argued that the text does not deal with eternal damnation, but with a temporal affliction. Erasmus was convinced that “this quotation serves not so much as a proof of necessity but rather to refute the arrogance of the Jews, who thought that the grace of the Gospel belonged exclusively to them because they were the posterity of Abraham.”53 In his Paraphrase of Romans, Erasmus did not pass over the difficulties. He commented on verse 15: “As if [Quasi]” – thus Erasmus phrased it in 1517, but in 1532 he was harder:

1 6 In Conflict with the Church Reformers So then [Quum], it is not by willing or exertion that salvation is attained, but by the mercy of God, for in vain do we desire, in vain do we strive, unless a willing God draws us to him. Moreover, he draws to himself whomever he chooses, even those who have merited nothing, and rejects those who are guilty of nothing.

In 1517 Erasmus continued: “Or rather, some part of it depends on our own will and effort, although this part is so minor that it seems like nothing at all in comparison with the free kindness of God.” But in 1532 he replaced the sentence with: “However, it does not follow that God is unjust to anyone, but that he is merciful toward many.” For, as he goes on to explain in 1532, No one is condemned except by his own guilt. No one is saved except by the kindness of God. Thus, he thinks those worthy whom he wished, but in such a way that if you have been drawn to him by his mercy, you have reason to give thanks; but if you have been abandoned to your own obduracy, you have no reason to complain.54

Such arguments were convincing and they carried weight even in Wittenberg. In his Commentary on Romans from 1532, Melanchthon explained that because it is said in Psalm 5:4 that God has no pleasure in wickedness, nobody should deduce from these verses that God wants and effects sins or forces the wills of men to sin. The delusional ideas of the Stoics about absolute necessity must be rebutted, and he declared with Erasmus that God draws to him only those who want to be drawn: “Trahit Deus, sed volentem trahit.”55 One can hardly claim, as Mahlmann does, that Melanchthon agrees here with Luther “in fact and in words.”56 In the Loci from 1521, Melanchthon espoused the absolute necessity of God’s will in everything, but by 1527 he had clearly changed his emphasis.57 In the Confessio Augustana (1530) and the Apologia (1531) he underscored that in secular affairs men can operate freely, a possibility that Luther barely conceded.58 After 1532 and against Luther’s conviction, Melanchthon, like Erasmus, emphasized that God does not cause or desire sin. He stated: “The cause of the contingency of our actions is the freedom of will,” and explicitely denied any absolute necessity.59 He abandoned the doctrine of two wills in God60 and conceded that human will could either turn freely away from God or freely agree to God’s will. He wrote that there were “three causes for a good deed: the word of God, the Holy Spirit and the human will which agrees and does not refuse the word

The Argument with Luther 1

of God.”61 It is perhaps too facile to associate the development of the doctrine of free will with humanism and the rejection of free will with the Reformation. In this, as in other points, there were exceptions in both camps: Lorenzo Valla questioned free will; the older Melanchthon, Theodor Bibliander, and Heinrich Bullinger in several passages supported it.62 The frontlines of the debate were not clearly drawn and did not depend on acceptance of a Pauline doctrine of justification or on an experience of total spiritual desperation. Melanchthon shared with Luther an experience of a crisis of faith. He wrote in his Apologia: “but terrified consciences waver and hesitate, and then seek and accumulate other works in order to find rest. Such consciences never think that they acquire merit de condigno, and they rush into despair unless they hear, in addition to the doctrine of the Law, the Gospel concerning the gratuitous remission of sins and the righteousness of faith.”63 Thus, Melanchthon negated any self-assurance, because it could be destroyed by the terrified conscience. By contrast, if he could have relied only on his own conscience and experience, Erasmus would have taught gratia de congruo, but he suppressed this possibility simply because Paul taught differently. Although Erasmus and Melanchthon had different personal motives, both were led by a systematic analysis of Romans 9 to disagree with Luther’s necessitas absoluta, not because they rejected predestination in principle – both used the term “predestination” and did not challenge the idea that God elected men to salvation64 – but because they both refused to impute evil to God in any form. Erasmus was ready to discuss any issue but that. Erasmus’s exegetical argumentation was – at least in the eyes of Melanchthon and Theodor Bibliander65 – not as foolish as Luther sought to depict it. But as soon as Erasmus abandoned exegetical arguments he was on shaky ground, and Luther was justifiably disappointed in Erasmus’s use of logical argumentation. Erasmus emphasized that free will was a gift of God’s mercy because it was God who first created will and then liberated and healed it.66 A part of God’s grace was for Erasmus that “he will not only let us have what is ours, but what is his he will command to be ours also.”67 But he did not argue on the basis of God’s love and mercy, which surpasses any logical necessity. He remained rooted in the traditional Scholastic mode of argumentation, and discussed the relationship of God’s foreknowledge and the contingency of human actions conventionally and in a way that is reminiscent of Jerome.68 Like Duns Scotus he referred to the difference between God’s absolute free will and his voluntas ordinata, God’s will as it is revealed to humans.69 Erasmus consulted the doctrine of secondary causes70 and

1 8 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

distinguished accurately – again like Duns Scotus – between an absolute necessity and a necessity that does not exclude free will.71 Erasmus must have been aware how questionable and unconvincing these conventional arguments were, particularly since they were arguments that speculated about God beyond what was revelated in Holy Scripture and that he had himself so persuasively defeated already.72 All the same he used them – perhaps because he did not have better ones at his disposal.73 His argumentation lagged far behind the clarity with which Melanchthon, in his 1540 tract Initia doctrinae physicae, demonstrated free will and gave reasons for contingency in the freedom of God’s will.74 In truth, Erasmus was not interested in a philosophical justification of free will and he continued to declare that he would have preferred to let the whole matter rest.75 Indeed, he confessed to Thomas More that he would have been content to teach a free will that could commend itself to God “without special grace de congruo.” But since this is not what Paul taught,76 Erasmus took up the question, studied the problems associated with it, and accommodated his opinion to the exegetical findings as he saw them. He did not shrink from using Scholastic arguments, but he surpassed them in his exegetical findings, if not in his reasoning. In his Schlußreden of 1523, Zwingli opposed the doctrine of free will and espoused strict predestination. In answer to the question “Why does God condemn?” he referred to Romans 9 and then declared rather impatiently: “I did not sit in his council.”77 In the de merito chapter of his 1525 Commentarius de vera et falsa religione, Zwingli redeveloped his doctrine. It shows clear traces of his reading of Erasmus’s Diatribe, which was published in September 1524. Zwingli worked on his Commentarius between December 1524 and March 1525, at which point, contrary to his writings in 1523, he wrote of his fear “to be forced to call God also the author of evil”78 and carefully avoided speaking about a divine preordination to evil. And yet he still refused to limit the concept of God’s providence. In his eyes a free will was impossible because God acts and operates through all79 and yet does not effect any evil but only good. However, Zwingli does not mention Luther’s “deus absconditus” or a hidden will in God who desires the death of sinners. In the same book, the chapter about God is a hymn to God’s abundant goodness, synonymous with his divinity, which “is being, as well as goodness.”80 Like Erasmus, Zwingli emphasized that God sought to reconcile all humans.81 One may well ask how Zwingli explained evil. The answer is that he simply explained it away. For Zwingli, because God can only do good, that which humans consider evil only seems evil in their eyes

The Argument with Luther 1 9

because they are subject to the law. God, on the other hand, is free and not subject to the law. By way of elucidation, Zwingli argued that although we abhor sexual promiscuity in humans, we grant it to animals because they are not subject to the same laws. But since God is not subject to any law, Zwingli declared that “what is damnable in us, is not evil in him,” and “what we think is noxious, is from another point of view useful.”82 Here Zwingli clearly differs from Erasmus. Although Erasmus’s image of the devil had something ludicrous about it, he did not simply pass over evil. Evil was for him a perverse, demonic, and human action and therefore very real and worrisome; for Erasmus, evil was the opposite of God, but God could in his benignity always turn evil into good. In 1525 Zwingli outlined the problem of will in a similar manner to Erasmus. On the one hand, one must preserve the concept of God’s power and avoid setting limits to his providence; on the other hand, humans should be motivated by the Gospel to live in accordance with God’s prescriptions and to work on their willpower.83 Zwingli sought only to deal with God’s providence. Quotations from the Bible that award merit to humans – and Zwingli did not deny that there are such passages – he claimed were only given for those who had weak faith and needed the carrot and the stick. Those who are really captured by the Gospel do not need any such encouragements.84 Zwingli added to his explanations: The pious do not quarrel, they teach each other in love … Just observe this: If we see that something is allotted to us through God’s mouth, something that can be ascribed only to him, then let us acknowledge the grace which he uses so abundantly on our behalf that he wants to give us what can be ascribed only to him. Let us not boast nor take away by quarrelling the evidence.85

For Zwingli there was no freedom of will. Although he differed on this point from Erasmus, his approach is in accord with Erasmus’s Diatribe, and Erasmus clearly inspired him to find new arguments. Zwingli’s Commentarius was so much in accord with Erasmus that he is said to have declared after reading it: “O dear Zwingli, what do you write, that I have not written before?”86 Whether Erasmus actually made that statement may be left an open question; well-informed contemporaries including Zwingli, in any case, believed that he did. In 1530 Zwingli developed his doctrine opposing free will in a broader form. At this time he did not present new arguments, but five years later he abandoned

18  In Conflict with the Church Reformers

the reservations that he had expressed after reading the Diatribe and wrote again about humans being condemned to sin.87 At first, Zwingli did not gain full approval for his doctrine of predestination in Zurich. Theodor Bibliander, his successor at the Schola Tigurina, deliberately replaced it with the doctrine of Erasmus, and Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in the position of Antistes, also questioned preordination to sin.88 Not until the second half of the century did the Calvinist doctrine of predestination gain wider acceptance in Zurich. Suppressing his own personal feelings on the subject, Erasmus aligned his doctrine of will with the accepted exegetical findings. He was not only ready to bring his doctrine of will in line with Paul’s theology, but also to subordinate his personal view to the consensus of the church. In the Diatribe he wrote: “And I take so little pleasure in assertions that I will gladly seek refuge in Scepticism whenever this is allowed by the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture and the church’s decrees; to these decrees I willingly submit my judgment in all things, whether I fully understand what the church commands or not.”89 In the Hyperaspistes he even explained: “But now that the church has defined them also, I have no use for human arguments but rather follow the decision of the church and cease to be a Sceptic.”90 These statements, which joined Scepticism with Christian beliefs,91 earned Erasmus the contempt of many Protestants. Luther inferred from them that Erasmus sought to subordinate men to the church – that is, to other humans – “without allowing them to use their own judgement” and that “he was indifferent to what anyone believed as long as peace was preserved in the world.” Luther further charged that whenever “his life, his good name, property or reputation was threatened,” Erasmus was ready to deny the truth. This was the accusation he levelled at Erasmus in 1525 in his harsh polemic De servo arbitrio.92 Erasmus took this judgment very badly and never forgot it. Many years later, shortly before his death, he referred to it again in his last letter to Melanchthon, dated 6 June 1536.93 In the Annotations of his New Testament it is clear that he tried to motivate his readers to judge independently by juxtaposing different interpretations. But even though his work clearly refuted Luther’s reproach and consistently demonstrated his independent, critical thought, Erasmus could not quietly overlook such unfounded invectives. Why did Luther’s aggressive statement wound Erasmus so deeply? It is plain that he was concerned for the faith of his readers when he engaged in discussion and pleaded for a reading that he believed to be in accord with the Gospel, even if the point was as controversial as his doctrine of justification had been.

The Argument with Luther 181

However, Luther’s third accusation, the accusation that Erasmus was a coward, was likely the point that injured him most. In that respect he really was vulnerable – a touch of cowardice was his weak spot. In 1526 the Hyperaspistes contained his answer to Luther’s De servo arbitrio. Here he explained that he was only a sceptic with regard to questionable interpretations. He was content to maintain whatever was clearly conveyed in Holy Scriptures and dogmatically defined by the church: “In Sacred Scripture, whenever the sense is clear, I want nothing to do with Scepticism … But on other points, about which asserters struggle and fight to death, I readily take refuge in the opinion of the Sceptics.”94 Some pages earlier he even suggested: “I think it is sufficiently clear from my writings how much I attribute to Sacred Scripture and how unwavering I am in the articles of faith. On these points I am so far from desiring or having a Sceptical outlook that I would not hesitate to face death to uphold them.”95 Yet there is good reason to question whether Erasmus was actually prepared to face martyrdom. As his friends attested, Erasmus awaited death on his sickbed piously and with dignity, but there is no evidence of a readiness to die before his time. His was not a particularly intrepid character, unless we agree with Huizinga that his journeys through the Alps and over the channel were a sign of his physical courage. Although Erasmus hated quarrels, after 1520 he spent much of his time on his apologiae. He fretted constantly over his good reputation, and a fear of being accused of heresy deeply worried him. To be fair, his fears were not mere fantasy. Many were burned at the stake in his time, and only by cultivating his good connections with dignitaries in Rome was he saved from persecution during his lifetime. By 1543 his works were already being burned, and even his admirers could not prevent his books from being placed on the index at the Council of Trent. His fears not only drew Erasmus into questionable polemical debates, which were not always free of personal insults and even defamation, they also provoked him to turn his back on good friends. He broke with Konrad Pellikan in the quarrel over the Eucharist and refused compassion to the fatally ill Hutten in Basel.96 He was no martyr and he admitted as much in 1521: “Not everyone has the strength needed for martyrdom. I fear that, if strife were to break out, I shall behave like Peter.”97 The fact that Erasmus was ready to accept the consensus of the church raises another question. Did he agree in 1524 with the late medieval conciliar movement or even with contemporary papalism?98 I would argue, not at all. In the Diatribe he explained his view: “Not that I would gauge the worth of my opinion by the number of votes or

182 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

the eminence of the speakers, as in human assemblies. I know it often happens that the more numerous side defeats the better one. I know that what the majority approves is not always the best.” Neither the “number of votes,” decided in councils whose authority the concilarists valued as superior to that of the Roman See, nor “the eminence of the speakers,” which was of prime importance for the papalists who only granted the pope authority to approve decisions, could be crucial for Erasmus. The most decisive factor in the form his beliefs took could only be the authority of Holy Scripture. Erasmus declared, “I concede that it is right for the authority of Holy Scripture alone to outweigh all the decisions of all mortals. But the debate here is not about Scripture itself … the quarrel is over its meaning.”99 In controversial questions of interpretation, however, Erasmus wanted to respect the consensus of the church; but not just single solutions put forth by councils or papal decrees, rather, the exegeses of centuries that he had tried to collect in his annotations and to give a new direction. This statement also conceals a harsh judgment of the Reformation. Erasmus suggested that the only question of faith that, in his view, separated the Reformers from the traditional church and the age-long consensus of Christians was not a question of the Scriptural text but merely a question of its interpretation. In other words, he felt that the Reformation, with all its painful consequences, was nothing more than a marginal quarrel between scholars. It is no wonder that Luther reacted indignantly. Although Luther did not formulate an answer to the Hyperaspites, in 1527 Erasmus felt defiant enough to give a second circumlocutory answer in the form of the Hyperaspistes II. By that time he had already quarrelled with his reform-minded friends in Zurich, Strasburg, and Basel.

i teen

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel

letters / advice for the council of basel / contra pseudevangelicos After 1525 Erasmus showed much less sympathy for Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Capito than for Luther. In 1530 he wrote that he wanted “to chase them away,” for he felt that without these troublemakers there might yet be a chance to heal the schism in the church.1 The dispute between Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Capito and the church concerned him personally. While living in Basel he was inevitably very close to what was happening in the Swiss Confederation and in Strasburg, and he felt that the Reformers’ break with the church was also a personal betrayal. All three Reformers were a part of his intimate circle; Johannes Oecolampadius, the Hebraist, had even assisted in the publication of his New Testament. In 1517 Oecolampadius had written to the esteemed humanist from the cloister in Weinsberg: Sometimes I forget my own humble state, carried away by my admiration for you, when I put to my lips that small, but sacred and very dear pledge of our friendship, the beginning of the Gospel according to St John, and with that in my hands, the most sacred oath a Christian can take, I devote myself to the name of Erasmus. I should have given it to my mother, did I not value you so much. I had hung it on my crucifix, before which I tell my beads, that I might commend you and your fortunes to Him (for so you asked, and so charity requires), and that your memory might not be parted from me even in my sacred moments.2

In the same year, Erasmus hoped that Capito, who was a preacher at the cathedral and a professor at the University of Basel at the time,

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would effect the reform of church and society that Erasmus so longed for.3 Erasmus initially tried to find a way of living with the Reformation trend that was growing in Basel.4 In 1521 the first reformed sermons were made in the city and the city council acted assertively, discharging Wilhelm Reubel, the city’s first Reformation preacher,5 and ordering the city’s priests to abstain from polemic and to preach only what Holy Scripture could prove.6 On 13 April 1522 – Palm Sunday – a local doctor invited several clerics to his home outside Basel for a meal of suckling pig.7 Their defence for breaking the fasting rules of Lent was that Erasmus (who had a pontifical dispensation from fasting during Lent because of his fish intolerance) also did so. Erasmus reacted immediately with the essay Epistola de interdictu carnium. Although he accused them of irresponsible actions that could only hurt the cause of the Gospel, in principle he conceded their demand for a release from the strict fasting rules.8 In the summer of 1524, Erasmus’s friend Oecolampadius, the acclaimed contributor to his New Testament, was called before the Basel city council for having fulminated against the adoration of images.9 The year before, in August 1523, despite the objections of both the university and the bishop, the council had permitted Oecolampadius and Guillaume Farel (who later acted as a Reformer in the western part of the Swiss Confederation) to engage in a public debate.10 By November 1524 the coadjutor of the bishop filed an official complaint, charging the council with a violation of the rights and privileges of the bishop by granting benefices, filling ecclesiastical functions, and requesting disputations.11 This complaint did not have much impact and it did not hinder the council from further similar actions.12 However, the situation became increasingly tenuous and further dangerous decisions were still pending. For instance, how would the council deal with married priests or with the publication of Karlstadt’s works, which denied transubstantiation and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist – works that even Luther disapproved of? The printer who had edited Karlstadt’s works had to answer to the council, and on 12 December 1524 a policy of book censorship was adopted in Basel, not least because Erasmus also complained of insults published in one of Farel’s books.13 In the eastern part of the Confederation, in the Klettgau, there was a peasant uprising, and in the mandated territory of Thurgau, where the local bailiff had arrested a Zwinglian preacher, tensions also escalated rapidly. The populace was outraged and when they were unable to liberate their preacher they entered into the charterhouse of Ittingen by force and burned it to the ground.14 More alarming news, auguring the later peasant uprising of April/May 1525, began to trickle in from the

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countryside around Basel.15 It seemed that, for the time being at least, all deals were off and all promises broken. The confederates insisted on a clear statement from Basel against Lutheran sympathies, particularly against Zurich, which was attempting to protect its Thurgovian comrades.16 The council was divided and requested Erasmus’s expert advice on how to deal with this crisis. Although Erasmus’s response is undated, it is probable that he answered in January 1525.17 In his response Erasmus focused on problems that not only concerned the aldermen but also touched his life personally: book printing, fasting rules, and the vows of priests and monks, with particular reference to the vow of chastity. First, he was himself dependent on printing and had already warned the council about the dangers of outspoken publications after slanderous critiques of his work were published and circulated; second, although he ate chicken broth during Lent with a pontifical dispensation, the men who had broken Lent cited him as their example; and finally, although he was formerly a monk, by this time Erasmus was living as a secular clergyman, also under papal dispensation. Thus, monks who abandoned their monasteries could also, with some justification, refer to him as an exemplar. In Basel nobody ever suggested that Erasmus broke his vow of celibacy, but he had been accused of having had love affairs as a student in Paris.18 On the issue of censorship Erasmus advised the council to forbid all anonymous publications and to censor slanderous and seditious pamphlets. He could not counsel them to suppress all Luther’s works because the council would also have had to forbid the works of Oecolampadius and thereby “much valuable work would have been lost [periret aliorum plurimorum vtilitas].” He suggested instead that the council concentrate on abolishing anything that might encourage sedition. This could also apply to the discussion of ceremonies, since whoever trusts too much in human rules sins just as completely as one who disdains all traditional and established manners and customs without which law and order in a political system cannot be sustained. For these reasons Erasmus advised the aldermen of Basel not to risk war with Zurich, but to encourage the confederated city to readmit the old form of Mass.19 Erasmus’s suggestions are in accordance with the instruction the council gave its deputy to the Tagsatzung on 9 January.20 Finally, Erasmus suggested that the pope be asked to allow the distribution of the Eucharist to the laity in both bread and wine;21 that the council not forbid the selling and eating of meat during Lent, as was common in Italy, and that – as long as no one rioted – people be left to follow their own consciences. For the rest, Erasmus suggested that the council ask

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the pope for new guidelines and that any one who felt a weakened conscience should request a dispensation from his bishop.22 On the issue of clerical celibacy, Erasmus advised that an ecclesiastical council decision supported with a pontifical decree or the agreement of the princes should be obtained. Suitable clergymen who could not live chastely should be allowed to marry. But this was not to be used as a free pass for the anchorless to leave the cloister, which, according to Erasmus, was a good place for weak persons in need of monastic discipline. Furthermore, the council should not tolerate those who proclaimed that every vow was a sin and who encouraged others to break their solemn promises.23 In essence, Erasmus’s advice was that the city council remain moderate, suppress every stimulus to riot, and wait and see if the new doctrine was revealed to be divinely inspired or not.24 It is obvious that Erasmus tried to mediate but he did so out of the public eye. Although he never sought political influence as a leader of a party or an influential group, he acted willingly as a counsellor and often interfered without being asked. For instance, in 1519 he gave Johannes Schlechta unsolicited advice on how to deal with the quarrelling religious parties in Bohemia and acted as an empathetic neutral mediator in a private letter that he soon published himself.25 Likewise, in December 1522 he imposed himself as an advisor on none other than the newly elected Pope Adrian VI.26 Unfortunately, his suggestions to the pope have not survived, but it is clear that acting as a behind-thescenes mediator was in accordance with Erasmus’s view of himself. Unfortunately for Erasmus, Zwingli’s actions soon threatened this discreet modus operandi. As we have seen, in 1516 Zwingli not only adored Erasmus as “the great philosopher and theologian,”27 he also constantly cited his New Testament and Paraphrases and thoroughly studied and disseminated Erasmus’s other works. An inventory dated to 1551 from the library of the Grossmünster in Zurich lists up to forty-six works by Erasmus, twenty-one of these from Zwingli’s own library.28 Between 1521 and 1523 Leo Jud, the friend and later colleague of Zwingli in Zurich, translated – with Zwingli’s active support – the following works by Erasmus into German: The Querela pacis, the Institutio principis christiani, the Enchiridion, the Expostulatio Jesu, and all the Paraphrases of the Apostolic Letters. Froschauer, the Reform printer, published most of these works in Zurich. At the Grossmünster school Oswald Myconius lectured not only on the Colloquies, but also on the Paraclesis and the Ratio seu methodus. In 1522 Zwingli repeatedly invited Erasmus to relocate to Zurich and even offered him citizenship there. And Erasmus, observing the

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel  18

situation from Basel, had good reason to believe that Zwingli would implement his beloved program of reform in Zurich.29 Erasmus could perhaps have overlooked that his young friend Zwingli defended the insult to the rules of fasting in Zurich, or in any case this was not a reason for him to break ties. But soon another issue arose between them that was more difficult for Erasmus to accept. Although he was personally quite amenable to reforms, the Bishop of Constance, Hugo of Hohenlandenberg, felt it was his responsibility to intervene when the Reformation movement grew in Zurich. These were the circumstances around which frictions between Erasmus and Zwingli developed. Erasmus was on the point of travelling to Constance in order to strengthen his connections with the court of the bishop and to win him over to the cause of his own form of biblical humanism, when he received Zwingli’s Apologeticus archeteles, a pamphlet dated to 22/23 August 1522. The pamphlet spoke out very strongly against intervention in Zurich by the See of Constance. By 8 September Erasmus had already reacted. He was horrified and wrote to Zwingli: I beseech you by the glory of the gospel – which I know you have at heart above all else, as all of us are bound to do who are enlisted under Christ’s name – if you publish anything in future, it is a serious task, and you must take it seriously. Do not forget modesty and the prudence demanded by the gospel. Consult scholarly friends before you issue anything to the public. I fear that defence of yours may land you in great peril, and even do harm to the church. In the little I have read there was much on which I wanted to see you put right. I do not doubt that with your sound sense you will take this in good part; for I write with the warmest affection for you, and late at night. Farewell.30

He was really outraged and, from his point of view, with good reason. At this time Erasmus was in bad health and had many additional grievances. In Rome, Jacobus Stunica, one of his more rancorous theological enemies – who had enjoyed a solid humanistic education and was himself an exegete – accused Erasmus of heresy and moved to start proceedings against him. Erasmus’s lifework was in danger. His New Testament was threatened with public burning and he was even calumniated at the emperor’s court.31 Erasmus had great hopes that his fellow countryman Pope Adrian VI, whom he knew to have personal integrity, would defend his good name; he also had high hopes of the Bishop of Constance and of the rulers, whom he had tried to motivate to advance his vision of a res publica christiana. He did this cautiously with

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his Paraclesis, Colloquies, and Paraphrases by advancing his arguments in non-academic language, making allowance for the complexity of the issues, and using humour to promote his values. He was in the middle of writing the Paraphrase of John – which he would dedicate to Ferdinand of Austria – when Zwingli intervened with Archeteles, which was full of polemical remarks, categorical assertions, and harsh condemnations. Erasmus felt that all of his efforts were in jeopardy. Instead of seeking to win over the bishop, Zwingli provoked him. He accused Hugo of the “greatest nefariousness” and suggested that the bishop obeyed men over God; in short, that he was on the side of Christ’s opponents.32 Erasmus was in an untenable position; he felt under obligation to both parties. Although it became more and more doubtful that he could effectively mediate under these circumstances, Erasmus felt, at any rate, that he had to prevent Zwingli from producing more damaging polemical pamphlets. It seems that Zwingli did not take Erasmus’s warning letter amiss, for he continued to stay in contact with Erasmus and his circle.33 But in November, Zwingli anonymously published his Suggestio deliberandi. In this work he attempted to incite the imperial estates against Pope Adrian VI and argued that the Roman See sought to brand Erasmus a heretic, while Erasmus’s only failing was an excess of clemency.34 While Erasmus simply hoped that Pope Adrian would support him and tackle the desired church reform to heal the growing division of the church, Zwingli continued to throw fuel on the fire with his aggressive tracts.35 Erasmus, in the meantime, had commended himself to the pope with a dedication and a letter, but had not yet received an answer.36 From his perspective, Zwingli had once again interfered thoughtlessly with his plans; Erasmus – obviously well informed about the authorship of the Suggestio deliberandi – was indignant. As soon as he read the work, he wrote a letter, dated to 9 December 1522: Greetings. It is like your generous self, my dear Zwingli, to take my zeal for your welfare in good part. But the advice I give to many people is a waste of time. I could easily stomach other men’s rashness if it did not weigh heavily on humane studies and on men of good will and on the cause of the gospel … Another piece of nonsense, utter rubbish, has appeared about the pope … If all Luther’s party are like this, I wash my hands of the whole lot of them. I never saw anything more mad than this foolish stuff.37

It is clear that Erasmus was already deeply annoyed with his friend even before Ulrich von Hutten caused a more serious breach between

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel  189

them. In 1520 Hutten, a nationalistic German knight, poet, and follower of Luther, had presented himself at the court of Ferdinand with a letter of recommendation from Erasmus. It soon became obvious that Hutten’s political ideas were not at all compatible with Erasmus’s as Hutten tried to unleash a Pfaffenkrieg – war against Rome. Erasmus did not simply disavow this brash undertaking; in 1523 he refused to receive Hutten in his home when Hutten arrived in Basel as a desperately ill refugee. Hutten later avenged himself with a nasty pamphlet in which he vilified Erasmus as a turncoat and an immoral faint-heart. In the end it was Zwingli who provided refuge for the terminally ill knight in Zurich.38 Notwithstanding these considerable frictions, the correspondence between Zwingli and Erasmus continued. Erasmus’s rebukes did not keep Zwingli from writing to him, nor was Erasmus kept from answering his letters by the fact that Zwingli’s books and portrait were burned and that he was denounced as a heretic by the followers of Rome.39 Unfortunately, the letters between Zwingli and Erasmus from this time have not survived, although Zwingli appears to have sent several to Basel.40 One of Erasmus’s responses to Zwingli, dated 31 August 1523, is extant in the collection of the Zurich Central Library. This letter demonstrates again how resilient the friendship between the two was. Erasmus conceded Zwingli’s criticism of him – apparently Zwingli had called Erasmus a vacillator – but defended himself. He answered that although it was true that he wanted compromise, he never would corrupt the truth of the Gospel; on the contrary, he would affirm it in any acceptable way.41 What seemed the final straw was not Zwingli’s criticism but a sentence written by Luther in a letter to Oecolampadius, which was reported back to Erasmus. Luther had warned Oecolampadius against Erasmus and declared that Erasmus “ought not to carry much weight in the things of the spirit.” Deeply offended, Erasmus demanded to know from Zwingli what sort of spirit they had in mind:42 “I should be glad to learn from you, dear Zwingli, my most learned friend, what this spirit may be,” for Erasmus could see no important difference between Luther’s theology and his own. He emphasized that nearly everything Luther taught, he himself had pleaded for, and he sighed resignedly, “I should like to see this doing a lot of good eventually.”43 It was the self-assurance with which the Reformers invoked the Holy Spirit for themselves and denied it to others that appeared to outrage Erasmus. This letter reveals Erasmus’s last wavering before he formed a definite opinion of the Reformers, and the angry and challenging questions to his younger friend soon turned to indictments. Although this letter is the last one surviving in the correspondence

19  In Conflict with the Church Reformers

between Zwingli and Erasmus, there must have been more. In September 1524 Erasmus complained to Melanchthon that Zwingli had sent a contemptuous reply to his friendly admonition.44 That appeared to have marked the end of their friendship. Looking back in 1528, Zwingli described the circumstances of their break. Erasmus had reportedly warned him “at that time when we still exchanged letters” against Luther’s paradoxes and had written (more or less): “You will see, Zwingli, what will come of these paradoxes which you so avidly defend affirming that Luther wrote them down with good reason” … The hostility Erasmus bears against us – if he is at all hostile against us – originates from my determined defence of Luther, especially in a long letter in which I dealt too harshly with the old man. Now that I realize how prudent Erasmus’s admonitions were, my eyes have been opened – but too late. For, by being too outspoken in my defence of one man, I offended the other more than I supposed. How stupid I was! Thereby I imprudently turned the one [Erasmus] into my prudent enemy, for the sake of a man [Luther] who is less conciliatory and less likely to be a friend than the one, against whom I defended him.45

However, this statement contains only half of the explanation. Erasmus not only disapproved of the boldness and the self-confidence of the Reformers, he also disliked the introduction of compulsory reforms in Zurich. These were supported by the city council against the will of church authorities and imposed on all citizens. This is why he advised the council of Basel to encourage Zurich to readmit the formula missae. He seemed to espouse the idea that everybody should be able to decide according to his or her own conscience and thus that the council should not impose a majority decision on all, or change anything ecclesiastical on its own without first consulting with the pope. Erasmus pleaded for the teaching authority of the church and for the freedom of every individual conscience, which should obey God before human beings. He assigned the task of mediating between the pope and the consciences of the citizens to the city council, but argued that the council should have no power of decision in questions of faith.46 Erasmus had no understanding of Zwingli’s Gemeindereform (congregational reform), which was also a reform of the city. He sharpened the consciences of the faithful with the Gospel and called on the consciences of the powerful in empire and church to reform and to heed their governmental duty as Christians. He worked tirelessly towards a reform of the church, but

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to enforce a reform against the will of the ecclesiastical authorities was unimaginable for him. Nor did he recognize the impact of Zwingli’s Gemeindeautonomie (congregational autonomy), or value the possibilities that this autonomy offered to reconstruct society politically and economically in a time of crisis. What happened in Zurich was for Erasmus simply sedition – he had no other term for it – from which no good could come. The revolt of the peasants who referred to the Reformers as their authority confirmed the misgivings that he had already expressed in his 20 June 1520 letter to Melanchthon, where he predicted “that things are heading towards civil strife.”47 Erasmus’s personal frustration with his former admirers was enormous and must have been painful. That they did not return the feeling but continued to approve him as a theological authority did not placate him; on the contrary, it angered him further. In the controversy over the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper he fought with all available means against being cited as their authority. Under the strain of this challenge his deep and cordial friendship with Konrad Pellikan48 finally came to an end. Pellikan, warden of the Franciscans in Basel and lecturer at the university, was a member of Erasmus’s inner circle which also included the jurists Amerbach and Cantiuncula, the philologian and editor Beatus Rhenanus, the theologians Ludwig Bär, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Wolfgang Capito, and the polymath Henry Glarean. This was the sodalitas Erasmiana that Erasmus proudly described in 1516: They all know Latin, they all know Greek, most of them Hebrew too; one is an expert historian, another an experienced theologian; one is skilled in the mathematics, one a keen antiquary, another a jurist. How rare this is, you know well. I certainly have never before had the luck to live in such a gifted company. And to say nothing of that, how open-hearted they are, how gay, how well they get on together! You would say they had only one soul.49

In this circle Erasmus felt he could speak freely and test his boldest ideas. Pellikan had studied the Paraphrases of Erasmus closely, and he confessed in October 1525 that when “I read these works, I often kissed the book and expressed my enthusiastic approval.”50 In it he found an interpretation of the Lord’s Supper that was very near to the symbolic doctrine of Oecolampadius and Zwingli.51 Not surprisingly, Zwingli confessed to Melanchthon in 1529 that Erasmus had inspired him in his interpretation of the Eucharist.52 In 1537 Pellikan – after 1526 the lecturer of the reformed Schola Tigurina in Zurich – still quoted the

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Paraphrases word by word in his Gospel Commentaries and added to the Erasmian interpretation of Matthew 26:26–9, declaring, “What words could be simpler, clearer, more pious and truthful in this place? And what more does a pious heart need, which is faithful and familiar with the Holy Scriptures? If only everybody would recognize that this is sufficient!”53 In 1525 Pellikan spread the word in Basel that Erasmus was in harmony with the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper as espoused by Oecolampadius, for he had obviously, in personal conversations within the circle of friends, heard much bolder ideas about the Eucharist from Erasmus than the humanist had ever dared to publish. Erasmus conceded that, from time to time, among his erudite friends – perhaps too naively, either seriously or in jest – he might have raised provocative questions in order to discuss them freely and “to try out a new idea,” but he had never doubted the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.54 Erasmus had good reason to defend himself in this way, and he made it clear in his response to Oecolampadius’s essay on the Eucharist, which the city council had submitted to Erasmus and his friends Ludwig Bär, Bonifacius Amerbach, and Cantiuncula for an expert opinion. Only one sentence of this response is handed down to us: “Right honourable lords of the Council, at the request of your excellencies I have read Johannes Oecolampadius’ book De verbis coenae Domini. In my opinion the work is learned, well written, and thorough. I would also judge it pious, if anything could be so described which is at variance with the general opinion of the church, from which I consider it perilous to dissent.”55 He wrote to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer: “Oecolampadius’ opinion would not offend me if it did not run counter to the consensus of the church. For if there is spiritual grace in the elements, I do not see what need there is for a body that is ‘imperceptible’ and could do no good if it were perceptible. Nevertheless, I cannot depart from the consensus of the church, nor have I ever done so.”56 If Erasmus had denied the real presence of Christ it would have constituted an abandonment of the Roman church. In regions that followed Rome he would have had to fear for his life and he would have certainly lost his influence on the leaders of the empire and church alike. No wonder then that he persevered by all means possible, through several letters and debates, to force Pellikan to revoke his statement, which he finally achieved. Whether it was this irksome conflict that moved Pellikan to leave Basel and to accept a call to lecture at the newly founded Schola Tiguriana in Zurich is uncertain; what is certain is that just after he moved to Zurich in 1526 an anonymous work was published which proclaimed that Erasmus and Luther interpreted the Eucharist in the same way

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as Zwingli and his colleagues in Zurich. With regard to Erasmus the statement was supported with convincing quotations.57 The author was Leo Jud, but Erasmus suspected Pellikan and he was deeply wounded by the perceived betrayal of his friend. Even without such meddling Erasmus had great difficulties holding his neutral position between the contesting parties, a position that had allowed him to render Reformers like Pellikan, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius a service. One of Erasmus’s admirers, Louis de Berquin in France, was arrested and accused of heresy inter alia for merely translating works by Erasmus. Erasmus himself anticipated that his books would be burnt as heretical works in Paris, but he was now also suspected of heresy in Spain and in Rome.58 Enraged, he wrote to Pellikan: “I am engaged in a fight to the death with the whole league of theologians.” And he indignantly declared: “If you wish to attract me into your party, you should show fruits of a different kind … And yet I would rather be torn limb from limb than profess a belief contrary to my conscience. I leave you and your friends to your consciences. It is only fair that you leave me to mine.”59 Soon afterwards, probably after Pellikan’s attempt to defend himself, Erasmus wrote: “There was nothing in your letter that I did not find deeply offensive. Farewell.”60 With this letter, dated to the spring of 1527, all personal contact between the two ceased for the time. Eight years later in 1535, Pellikan dared to contact Erasmus again and this time with success. Some days before Erasmus died, Pellikan visited his former friend. He sat for three hours beside the bed of the dying humanist. “We talked together like friends without any accusations,” he later remarked.61 It is unlikely that Erasmus would have been ready for such a gesture of friendship in the 1520s, for he could not and would not commit himself to one party, least of all the “seditious” party of the Reformers. He confessed in 1522: “Such is my hatred of dissension and my love of concord that I fear, if it came to the point, I should abandon some portion of the truth sooner than disturb the peace.”62 Unlike Luther, and despite Erasmus’s hard criticism, the Zurich Reformers never distanced themselves from Erasmus; on the contrary, they often emphasized their dependence on him.63 Bullinger, for instance, continually took inspiration from Erasmus. For the young Bullinger, Erasmus was the interpreter of the New Testament. In his Studiorum ratio he mentioned the Church Fathers and Zwingli as noteworthy commentators of the Old Testament, but in speaking of the New Testament he mentioned only Erasmus.64 Bullinger’s short work was written in 1528, and although Zwingli’s commentaries were not yet edited, Luther’s Commentary on Galatians and all the commentaries of Faber

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Stapulensis had been published years before and were available. Bullinger not only recommended Erasmus, but used him continually. In his commentaries, Bullinger adopted the Bible text of Erasmus and quoted his Annotations and Paraphrases explicitly, referring to him even more often. He named Erasmus as the main source in his forewords, and in the Commentary on Ephesians Bullinger referred only to Erasmus as an authority in his Argumentum.65 In the commentary itself, Bullinger cited Erasmus and his Paraphrases eighteen times explicitly; Jerome, sixteen times; “Ambrose” (Ambrosiaster),66 eleven times; Theophylact, seven times; Augustine, five times; Bucer, four times; and Tertullian, Leo the Great, Budé, and Megander each once.67 When Bullinger interpreted the letter to the Galatians, apart from Erasmus’s Annotations and Paraphrases, he could have consulted several other contemporary or Protestant commentaries. He himself enumerates these authors in his foreword: Luther, Valla, Faber Stapulensis, Megander, and Pomeranus (Johannes Bugenhagen). But in fact, Bullinger does not quote any of them in his commentary. Instead he explicitly quoted the following sources: Jerome, thirty-seven times; Erasmus, twenty-two times; “Ambrose” (Ambrosiaster), nineteen times; Augustine, ten times; Theophylact, seven times; Tertullian, three times; Cyprian and Vadian each twice; and Didymus Alexandrinus and Zwingli each once.68 Konrad Pellikan’s Commentaries on the Gospels from 1537 are so close to Erasmus’s Paraphrases that they are almost a revised edition: he copied Erasmus almost line for line.69 Even when the Zurich Reformers distanced themselves critically from Erasmus, as they did in their doctrines of the Lord’s Supper or in their ecclesiology, they continued to believe that they were merely travelling further along a path that Erasmus had paved, even though, paradoxically, as they saw it, the aging humanist was faint-hearted and shied away from the logical consequences of his own revolutionary exegesis.70 Leo Jud had translated all the Erasmian Paraphrases into German and together with Konrad Pellikan, who added a paraphrase of the Revelation,71 published them in a representative folio volume with illustrations, index, and register in 1541. They divided the Erasmian narratives into small passages and always printed the Bible text at the beginning to create an edifying biblical book that was reprinted in Zurich the following year in 1542 and again in 1552. In his Chronikon Pellikan commented: “The most pious work of the late Erasmus on the New Testament did not incur displeasure, in fact it also pleases us. That is why we wanted it to be published in Zurich in German. We do not believe or lecture anything which differs from that which the Apostolic doctrine handed

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down to us and the learned eloquence of Erasmus illustrated.”72 It is not surprising that the Zurich Reformers did not believe themselves to be at variance with Erasmus’s interpretation of the New Testament. They had studied him thoroughly and, in contrast to Luther and to several scholars of church history in the twentieth century, they judged that his works contained the most important tenets of reformed theology, as defined by the keywords sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola fide (exclusive reliance on Scripture, Christ alone, salvation by faith alone). The Reformers found references to sola scriptura in Erasmus’s Methodus from 1516 and in the Ratio (the revised and enlarged 1519 version), which was used as a schoolbook in Zurich.73 According to Erasmus, theologians were obliged to dwell particularly on the study of Holy Scripture and “to clarify dark phrases by comparing them with others,” for “from these sources flows the whole of theology, if it is true theology.”74 In 1519 Erasmus used lengthy exegetical examples to elaborate on how this method worked, and he reconfirmed that “the theologian derived his name from God, not from human opinions.”75 The principle of Solus Christus, of Christ being the one and only Redeemer, is repeated throughout Erasmus’s work, particularly in the Expostulatio Jesu, his early poem first published in 1515. In this poem Erasmus’s depiction of Christ as the only source of salvation was so convincing that upon reading it Zwingli confessed that he completely understood that Christ alone is humanity’s mediator and that the intercession of the saints was not necessary.76 The justification of faith alone was subject for consideration in chapter 12; suffice it to say here that Erasmus often sang the praises of faith (though not as often as Luther, and not with the same consequences regarding the doctrine of will) not only in his Annotations and Paraphrases77 but also in the Ratio seu methodus. In the latter he wrote long passages on his view of Paul’s doctrine of justification through faith and concluded that “our salvation is bestowed upon us in no other way than through justice which proceeds from faith,”78 and “so great is the power of faith that our virtue turns into vice, if it lacks faith.”79 No wonder that in the introduction to their German edition of the Bible – the famous so-called Zwingli Bible of 1531 – the Zurich Reformers did not hesitate to name Erasmus exclusively, along with Augustine, as their authority and to use him extensively without citation. Apart from a short apologetic beginning and end, some anti-papal passages, and abstracts of the biblical books, the whole text, which instructs the reader to read the Bible productively, proves upon closer inspection to be composed of summaries and even literal translations taken directly from Erasmus. Erasmus’s introductions to

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the Novum testamentum, the Paraclesis, the Ratio seu methodus, Apologia, and Enchiridion served as a blueprint. With Erasmian phrases, examples, and metaphors, the Zurich Reformers exhorted their readers to pray for God’s Holy Spirit, which alone can open Holy Writ. Furthermore, the readers were to avoid concupiscence in order to approach the reading with a free and unsoiled mind in which the eternal truth could be purely reflected; they were to set their hearts completely on God’s word and to humbly bow their heads to enter through the low door into his mysterious palace. The readers were to distrust their own judgment and let themselves be guided by God’s Spirit, particularly if a passage seemed incomprehensible or contradictory.80 This was followed by an appeal in which the reader was exhorted to try to understand a Bible word in its context and to ask when, from whom, to whom, how, at which time, and in which circumstances something was said. Augustine and Erasmus are named explicitly in this passage.81 The following three anti-papal paragraphs replaced Erasmus’s anti-Scholastic polemics and then the text returns to Erasmus’s original ideas by defending a free translation into the vernacular.82 After summaries of the biblical books, the introduction – like that of Erasmus, and to some extent using his exact words in translation – praises Christ as a teacher who came from heaven and who alone can proclaim certain truth and salvation. The introduction declares that Christ is the only one who grants what he teaches, and his doctrine – the doctrine of God’s Son who came into the world for that very reason – is a new and marvellous one. Everybody can understand what Christ teaches, which is why everybody must be able to read his words. Through Scripture he will speak to the life of all Christians and transform them. Above all, Christ’s promise to be with us even unto the end of the world is fulfilled by the Holy Scripture, through which he speaks to his followers.83 In short, the introduction of the Zurich Bible is a veritable collection of Erasmian ideas.84 In Basel, Erasmus could for some time longer hope to sustain his influence on the outward progress of church reform. The city council decreed mandates in 1527 and 1528 which, in accordance with the advice of Erasmus, required that “Everybody shall be free in regard of his faith and nobody shall be forced to attend a mass or to listen to this or that sermon, but that shall be left to everyone’s conscience.”85 But radicals on both sides were not content with the middle ground and the situation soon came to a head. On Easter 1528 several small incidents of iconoclasm took place. And the council tried to mediate again; in some churches the aldermen allowed images to be taken down. In others, particularly in the Basel Münster, there were orders to leave them. On

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel  19

Christmas 1528, twelve of the fifteen guilds demanded that the Mass be abandoned and that any “zwyspaltige predig” or ambivalent sermons should be forbidden. They explicitly rejected the argument that no one should be forced into faith, because only God can give faith. Just as a mother cannot use God’s guidance as an excuse when she does not look after her indecent daughter, they claimed, so a Christian government should not tolerate “false prophets.” A second argument advanced in favour of allowing freedom of worship was that theologians were not unified in these questions. This was also rejected on the basis that Christ preached in a way that everybody could understand.86 In February 1529 the guilds of Basel finally gained their objective. They armed their henchmen, banded together, repressed the council, and destroyed the remaining images first in the Münster, then in St Peter, the Predigerkirche, in St Alban, and in St Ulrich. They made sure that all aldermen who were loyal to the bishop were excluded from the council and replaced by partisans. All churches and monasteries obtained new civil administrators who collected income for the city in place of their episcopal predecessors. On the first of April the new reformed council decreed a Reformation Act. Besides the basic principles of evangelical preaching and an evangelical form of life, it contained many more of Erasmus’s suggestions, including the abolition of most holy days,87 public marriage (as a deterrent to secret marriages),88 the possibility of divorce and remarriage,89 and the promotion of schools.90 But it also contained much that Erasmus abhorred: the celebration of Mass and other ceremonies was forbidden and penalized91 and the city council reserved for itself the final say in matters of faith. It introduced a committee of examiners consisting of two preachers and four aldermen, which examined parsons before they were installed and controlled the doctrine and moral conduct of all preachers.92 It was now the council that designated two lecturers at the university, one for the New and another for the Old Testament. These daily lectures had to be attended by all priests even if they did not officiate.93 All citizens had to attend Sunday services, and all priests with benefices in Basel had to attend the daily services.94 There was no longer room for dissent in Basel. Punishment was imposed on all who taught anything that was different from what the aldermen in their “Christian zeal” thought to be right.95 The aldermen threatened the Anabaptists in particular with prison and capital punishment.96 It is not surprising that Erasmus was unwilling to remain in Basel under these circumstances; he decided to move. Oecolampadius tried to convince him to stay but did not succeed. Soon afterward, in April 1529, Erasmus moved to Freiburg in the Breisgau, a town

198 In Conflict with the Church Reformers

that was still under imperial protection. From there he commented on what had happened in Basel: They shook off the yoke of humane laws, but where are those who bow their neck under the sweet yoke of our Lord? In the meantime they replaced humane laws with other human ones, in fact, laws that were not humane enough. The names changed, for the laws are now called the Word of God, but the substance is not at all milder, so that many good people prefer a voluntary exile to their highly praised freedom.97

This reproof comes from the Contra Psevdevangelicos (edited at the turn of the year 1529/30). The work was not an abandonment of the Reformation in principle, since Erasmus noted that he had found some aspects of it praiseworthy. It was not the substance, but the method of promoting the cause that had alienated him. As a benevolent observer he believed that he could give advice on how the secession might be healed and how both sides might approach each other once again. He declared that fundamental Christian truths should be confessed unanimously on both sides, and everything else should be left to the conscience of the individual. In case of misuses the illness should be healed instead of amputating the sick limb. As for the rest, Erasmus suggested that among human beings there was always a need to make allowances. The real cause of the trouble – the corruption of the clergy – must be dealt with and God beseeched to unite all men in the evangelical truth.98 Thus, Erasmus implied that the origin of the schism was not the heretical doctrine of the Reformers but the corruption of the clergy. Erasmus raised no dogmatic questions in this work – in his view they were irrelevant to the schism of the church – but he did raise historical questions. He dealt with the self-perception of the Reformers and the fact, as he saw it, that they wanted to reshape everything following the model of the apostles. Erasmus’s view was that they were far from achieving their ideal: the apostles operated through sermons, miracles, and their own exemplary moral conduct. Contrary to the Reformers they did not apply force, nor did they rush things. Although Greek philosophy had long since discredited paganism, and the prophets of the Old Testament had already announced the Saviour – so that the ground was prepared for Christendom – the apostles did not break down the idols. Instead, they accomplished their doctrine slowly and subtly (“paulatim et sensim”). By contrast, the Reformers were impatient to change everything in only nine years and seemed to believe that Christ had abandoned his church for the hundreds of years of its existence before

Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel  199

the Reformation. They believed that the church interpreted the Holy Scriptures blindly and that the miracles of the saints were nothing but illusions.99 Erasmus allowed for the Reformers’ good will but he also asked what good had come of all this. In the Roman Catholic Church the most inflexible monks and theologians exerted even more influence than before, when they had been disdained by all reasonable people. Dissenters were now threatened with banishment, prison, and the stake; and nothing could be freely discussed any more. The outraged monks and theologians even “force us to believe, that human beings can do works of merit by themselves [de condigno], that our good works merit eternal life, that the Virgin Mary can order her son reigning with the Father to answer this or that prayer, and much more from which pious minds shrink.”100 Under Protestant governments, on the other hand, the clergy had lost all its liberty. They were subject to the secular administration, which tormented, killed, hanged, beheaded, and burned them without any compunction. Erasmus clearly held the Reformers’ impatience for change responsible for the retreat of Scholastic theology into dogmatism and for the developments which led to the bloody persecution of those dissenters branded as heretics and soon to the renewed efforts of the inquisition. In Protestant regions the former autonomy of the church gave way to closely controlled state churches with all the requisite dangers, particularly manifested in the persecution of dissenters. Erasmus was already predicting the calamities of confessionalism. He declared both sides responsible for this mess; for him the schism of the church was God’s answer to the sins of all Christians and the vice and stubbornness of both camps.101 Finally, Erasmus made the point that the Reformers’ attempt to reconstitute the purity of the early church was absurd because such a state never existed. Paul also wrote against false apostles, discord, sectarianism, quarrelling, and vice. As long as the church is part of this world, Erasmus declared, it must tolerate the evil mixed with the good. Through its encounter with heresy and discord the early church grew stronger and became enlightened because the church fought without violence and only with the sword of the Holy Spirit.102 “Like everything mortal,” Erasmus emphasized, “the church, too, has its beginning, its progression, and its consummation. Recalling it now to its beginning is as absurd as recalling an adult to the cradle and to infancy. Time and circumstances change the status of many things, yet often they turn them into something better.”103 Erasmus criticized the lack of historical awareness in the Reformers’ notions. Their claims of being able to put the wheel of history into reverse and reinstate the age of the apostles was, to the historical thinking of Erasmus, nothing short of absurd.

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Part Four Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

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ixteen

The Question of Law

Annotation on I Corinthians 7:39 / christiani matrimonii institutio / epistola de interdictu carnium / letters / epistola de delectu ciborum scholia / responsio ad phimostomum de divortio Although he was harsh in criticizing the Reformers’ ahistorical goal of re-establishing the time of the apostles, Erasmus was nowhere near ready to abnegate his belief that a reform of the church and Christian society was long overdue. He continued to campaign with all of his persuasiveness and eloquence to reach this goal. It was not enough for him to restore theology through his exegetical work. Theology was not to remain in a vacuum; it could and should renew believers. However, if believers were to be renewed, all of their institutions, their conventions, and their intercourse must also change. What Erasmus had in view was much more than just a new system of education. Besides a new pedagogy, a completely reformed Christian culture was required – including legislation. Erasmus continually contrasted divine revelation with human knowledge. In an annotation from 1519 on Matthew 11:29– 30 (often cited in Protestant propaganda) he differentiated between the divine order and human positive law. Here Erasmus lamented that people ignored the commands of God and followed human laws instead: “Christ’s law is inviting and easy, but it becomes onerous and difficult through the addition of human prescriptions and dogmas.”1 In the first years after the Reformation this note was translated into German and widely disseminated in pamphlet form.2 This is not surprising, considering that the note fitted well into the early Protestant discussion of law. In 1518 during the conflict over his Theses against indulgences, Luther still appealed to the pope and

2 4 Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

proclaimed solemnly that he had not written anything against the papal canons and decretals.3 But by July 1519 in his Theses for the Disputation of Leipzig he was already fighting against papal decrees, using the “wording of Holy Scripture and the decisions of Nicaea.”4 At the start he seemed to oppose only the doctrine of the primacy of the pope. This doctrine was highly controversial, and Luther was still in accordance with ecclesiastical decrees declaring any laws or doctrines that contradicted the Holy Scriptures or the doctrines of the Church Fathers invalid.5 But later in 1521 at the Diet of Worms he proclaimed before a large audience that only what Christ and the apostles taught constituted divine law and that everything else was merely human law that had no title to eternal validity.6 He also questioned any laws that were affirmed by councils. In Worms, Luther did not contrast secular with canonical law or define anew the lex aeterna, the eternal divine laws from which, in the conventional view, all laws should be derived,7 but he did refine what could be deemed to be divine within canon law and – in contrast to man-made laws – obligatory and unchangeable. With this suggestion Luther alluded publicly to a subject that was increasingly discussed in erudite circles and by Erasmus.8 There were countless old laws affirmed by the councils that were often violated with the tacit approval of society. In the common view, these laws could not be in accord with divine law, since common understanding suggested that divine laws should be in concordance with natural laws. Thomas Aquinas, for example, saw the natural law as participating (“participatio”) in the eternal law,9 which implied that divine laws as well as natural laws should be fair and make sense to every sound mind. Luther’s statement in Worms could have been interpreted by Erasmus as a campaign of sanity and reason against the traditional doctrine developed from the Church Fathers in which all laws that rely on the precepts of Christ, the apostles, or an ecumenical synod are divine and therefore eternal and unchangeable. Only human laws, those not based on the words of the Bible or on an ecumenical council, were deemed mutable. Even these should be in harmony with the divine law, but they could also accommodate different times and circumstances.10 In October 1520 Luther published his De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae. In it he went one decisive step further by calling papism a “babylonian reign ” – a demonic anti-reign. He not only contested the claim that the Roman ministry of Peter was a divine institution; he also rejected papism as an institution of human law.11 Erasmus, who had seen Luther as a partisan until then, was appalled and declared that Luther “has made the evil to all appearance incurable.”12 Rome issued a papal

The Question of Law 2 5

bull that threatened Luther with excommunication, but this did not seem to frighten him. In December 1520, together with his students, Luther burned the bull and the papal collection of decretals in Wittenberg and declared publicly that all canon laws that did not rely on the precepts of Holy Scripture must be abolished. After the Edict of Worms, in 1522, Luther edited his tract De votis monasticis. In this tract he not only – like others, including Erasmus – recommended a liberalization of monastic vows, he also denounced them as dangerous and godless. Because they were not found in Holy Scripture he suggested that they should be abolished as a ruinous invention of men.13 In another work from the same year entitled Wider den falsch genannten geistlichen Stand des Papsts und der Bischöfe, Luther emphasized again that to observe human rules was the same as “being unchaste.” Thus, everything that was not directly prescribed in the Bible was against God. Luther’s justification for this was that according to Deuteronomy 2:22, God forbade that anything be added to his commandments and that there were only two orders: the “order of God” and the “order of devil.”14 At that time Luther, along with Zwingli in Zurich, considered human laws not only inferior and mutable but also godless. No tradition, in his view – honourable and holy though it might be – or any accepted ecclesiastical consensus could legitimate non-biblical human laws. Herein lay the crucial difference between Luther and the established view of the old church. For Thomas Aquinas, human laws, like the human rationale that constituted them, were changeable and corrupt, and yet because the corrupt human intellect sprang from divine rationality, human laws must also derive from natural laws and natural laws, in turn, from God’s eternal law. When human laws deviated from natural law they were, in Aquinas’s view, no longer laws at all. In his opinion, human precepts in canon law were built upon natural principles and therefore unchangeable and absolutely obligatory. In their specific positive form they could and should be accommodated to suit different times and circumstances, though they always remained compulsory.15 The Reformers’ charge that canon law was godless had significant consequences. In 1522 during Luther’s absence (while he was living in exile at Wartburg castle) the township of Wittenberg created a new order based on “God’s word.” In broadly general declarations of intent it conferred the functions of the professional ecclesiastical courts – in particular the jurisdiction referring to marriage, together with the social and academic educational responsibilities of the ecclesiastical collegiates and the monasteries, as well as ordinances against begging – on a board of laymen consisting of two aldermen and one scribe.16 In 1523

2 6 Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

Luther formulated a more detailed order for the town of Leising. He justified it with the statement that all “internal and external” affairs of Christians must be instituted “according to the order and judgment of God’s truth and not according to human discretion.”17 Luther’s desire for legislation according to God’s word was connected with a deep abhorrence of professional legal scholarship. In the same year, in his work on secular government Luther declared that true Christians do not need judges and that those who quarrel “before court about their possessions and honour” are in any case “heathens under a Christian name.” But whether they are heathens or Christians who seek justice before a secular judge, love and natural law tip the scales. If you judge according to love you will decide and arrange everything without any books of law. Yet if you lose sight of love and nature, you will not hit the mark in a way that satisfies God, even if you have swallowed all books of law and all lawyers; the more you study them, the more they will mislead you. A right and good judgment must not and cannot be dictated on the basis of books, it must come out of a free mind as if no books existed. But such a free judgment is bestowed by love and natural law, which is full of reason. Books only give rise to quarrels and wavering judgments.18

It naturally followed that one ought to give serious consideration to such principles and to try to establish a biblical order in all civil legal areas. This was later attempted by some groups of rebel peasants and some Anabaptists who abandoned all laws that did not appeal to divine commandments, both in the ecclesiastical and the secular sphere. The claims made by the peasants are well known: they sought only to live according to “God’s word” and to “support divine law and the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” and therefore refused to deliver their taxes.19 Their demands would be formulated in the articles of 1525, but they did not win acceptance from the overlords and the rebellion was violently quelled. Luther was not alone among the erudites in his contempt for the law. In 1522 Claudius Cantiuncula, the professor of law in Basel and a friend of Erasmus, lamented the general resentment against law in this time of crisis. He complained that almost no one attended legal lectures any more, and that in every corner one heard declarations that the study of law was of no great use or that the laws were not in accordance with the Gospel. Many seemed to shrink from the difficulties of this issue and from the mountain of legal books.20 Erasmus was not the only one

The Question of Law 2

to observe this scholarly disdain for the law with great sorrow and to predict “civil strife.”21 By the end of 1523, even Luther noticed that a clarifying word or two was needed on the topic and he presented his doctrine of the two kingdoms; however, this did not prevent a peasant uprising. With his sermon and tract Von göttlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigkeit, also written in 1523, Zwingli narrowly averted similar revolts in the countryside around Zurich.22 Although both Reformers remained constant in their view that Christians should conform only to God’s word and that Scripture contained divine unchangeable law to be observed by all, they soon conceded that the commandments delivered by Christ in his Sermon on the Mount could not be adopted and strictly observed. In 1523 Luther distinguished between heavenly and earthly law and between private and public actions. The heavenly or spiritual government had to follow divine commandments without equivocation because they pertained to the soul, which is eternal and therefore not subject to change.23 His reasoning shows how ill-defined the argumentation around this issue was in 1523. He argued that secular authorities follow different norms and since secular governments ruled over transient external things they were entitled to use force. The individual Christian on the other hand, being subject to the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, had to suffer injustice without recourse to violence. Nevertheless, the duty of the civil government was to punish injustice.24 In other words, Luther granted the secular authorities the right to establish the human laws they needed. Although these laws should take their inspiration from divine law, governments were not obligated to abstain from the use of force even to the point of waging war. Christians as private individuals, however, had to abstain from violence. Zwingli argued the issue differently. He suggested that the commandments of the Old Testament were enforceable. The laws of the Old Testament that gave the government the right to use force also meted out – according to his terminology – human justice, and although they were imparted by God, humans were free to interpret them using the commandment of love as a guideline. In this way, Zwingli authorized the abolition of punishments like stoning, at least temporarily.25 Both Reformers held to a clear distinction between the immutable divine law and the changeable human law, but they limited the divine law to the New Testament commandments, which true Christians should observe willingly without necessarily being able to fulfil them perfectly. This is why a civil government that was not confined by these commandments was needed. Erasmus took a different path, which he makes particularly clear in an annotation on I Corinthians 7:39. He inserted this note in the 1519

2 8 Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

edition of his Novum testamentum and reworked it again in 1522. In it he spoke of the possibility of remarriage after separation and of legitimate reasons for divorce besides adultery. In doing so he argued against the consensus of the Church Fathers, schools, Constitutiones, and Decretales, and even against scriptural passages. Remarriage was forbidden by general consensus and was considered unthinkable for Christians because the commandments of Christ and of Paul rejected it, as demonstrated, for example, in Matthew 5:32: “whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” Or I Corinthians 7:10–11: “And unto the married I command (yet not I, but the Lord): let not the wife depart from her husband. But if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife.”26 By proposing a liberalization of the remarriage rules, Erasmus contradicted not just human but also divine law as it was widely interpreted in his time. However, Erasmus did not rush headlong into this reading. He emphasized that he had always tried to abide by the “unshaken and unyielding judgement of the Holy Church” and “of the scholars.” But he did not consider it a mark of contempt if someone – even an unlearned person (“idiota”) – deviated from the doctors and corrected errors, as long as that person presented something more reasonable.27 It is likely that Erasmus consciously chose to use the term “idiota” here, which is also used in Acts to refer to the simple apostles.28 With this term Erasmus tacitly reminded his reader of the apostles and of the right of the individual to contradict the majority if there is reasonable cause to do so, a right that was already required in the canonistic Glossa ordinaria.29 The influential fifteenth-century canonist Panormitanus (Nicolò de’Tudeschi) had already commented on this rule and it was used thereafter, together with the undisputed primacy of the Holy Scripture, as an effective weapon in the battle for the highest magisterium, the highest teaching authority of the church. Panormitanus suggested that the church could not err, but that it was possible that the true Christian faith, and with it the true church, could be preserved in one single person. His example was Jesus’ mother Mary, who stayed firm in her faith when all around her took umbrage at Jesus’ suffering. The idea was that faith, and with it the church, cannot be lost and cannot err as long as true belief rests in even one person.30 Erasmus did not claim that he as an individual was able to provide a better interpretation of the Bible or that he represented the position of the true church of faith in opposition to the centuries-old consensus

The Question of Law 2 9

of the institutional church. Whereas Luther claimed in Worms that he could not recant what he had already recognized as the theological truth, Erasmus never aspired to pass judgment on articles of faith, but merely to discuss a question of law; he did not seek to make a final decision, but only to open the subject to discussion.31 He knew very well that the teaching of the church was that a valid marriage could only be dissolved through the death of one partner.32 The church, which had decreed the marriage law, not only taught this, it had effectively established it. In Erasmus’s time the only other way a marriage could be dissolved was if it had not been legally consummated. The Middle Ages only knew a separation from table and bed; spouses could, at most, live separately, but they were not allowed to marry again. In his annotation Erasmus began to question this legal practice as well as the accepted definition of divine law. He explained: If good people have always been concerned to change for the better and if it is appropriate to adapt laws, like medicine, to the form and cause of the disease then we should, indeed, consider whether it would not be helpful to do so in this case too and if so, to consider whether it should not be permitted to dissolve certain marriages – not for paltry but for grave reason; not by anybody, but by ecclesiastical officials or appointed judges – and to allow both spouses to join again with whom they want, or at least the partner who did not provide the grounds for the divorce.33

Erasmus justified his suggestion by pointing out that the most important concern for all Christians must be to provide for and to help the weak, and that thousands who stumble into failed marriages could be saved from perdition simply by a divorce. “If that would be possible without violating the divine commandment,” certainly everybody would want to assist those living on the cusp of perdition in a bad marriage, Erasmus proclaimed. He began to set the commandment of love not only against human law but also against divine law.34 But of course this was not sufficient reason to overturn this established doctrine and to annul a divine law, and so he brought together a number of arguments that supported his opinion, some historical, some legal, and others exegetical. One of his historical arguments was a quotation from Origen, who listed other serious reasons for divorce besides adultery. Origen mentioned bishops who allowed remarriage, which was explicitly contrary to the divine and apostolical order, but he did not condemn these bishops because he acknowledged the reasons they had for doing so.35 More

21  Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

than a hundred years later “Ambrosius” allowed a remarriage after a legal divorce. Erasmus quotes Ambrosiaster, who justified permission to marry again after a divorce using Paul’s advice as a reference: “But if they cannot contain themselves, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn (I Corinthians 7:9).”36 Erasmus followed up these historical examples with a long discussion of canon law.37 Some of these were added to the annotation in 1522 and others not until 1527. The revisions demonstrate how momentous the annotation was for him. It is likely that Claudius Cantiuncula and Bonifacius Amerbach, his juridical friends in Basel, gave him the needed references. Erasmus’s long digressions on canon law might prompt the exhausted and confused reader to reflect that perhaps human decrees had outgrown the divine commandments and canon law had failed to create a distinct and clear legal practice. But ultimately, Erasmus’s verdict was this: Let others decide how much attention to pay to these authors. I quoted them on this issue so as not to appear incompetent to those who give rather more weight to canon law in dealing with these questions. For I wish the authority of the church could somehow or other come to the aid of those who are joined together unhappily and to the point of loss of salvation.38

One of Erasmus’s exegetical arguments is based on the previously mentioned advice of Paul in I Corinthians 7:9. This argument later became the most important point for Zwingli and Luther.39 Luther used another citation that was also quoted by Erasmus, the declaration of Christ (Matthew 19:12) that few people were meant to live like eunuchs.40 With both of these Bible quotations Luther later on justified the practice of divorce in Wittenberg and attempted to use these biblical proofs to reinterpret Christ’s and Paul’s words forbidding remarriage.41 For Erasmus there was yet another line of argumentation that was more important and effective: the inconsistencies in following Bible precepts. It was true that Christ permitted a man to leave his wife only if she had committed adultery (Matthew 5:32), but Erasmus remarked that Christ also prescribed many other things that Christians did not strictly observe. Erasmus pointed out that in many such cases general practice allowed for a more liberal interpretation of Christ’s clear words. With regard to swearing, for instance, it was the general practice to interpret Christ’s prohibition merely as a warning against careless swearing. Erasmus suggested that perhaps Jesus likewise only sought to warn against reckless or needless divorce. When Erasmus put

The Question of Law 211

Jesus’ words into the Jewish context of the time, everything points to the understanding that apart from adultery Jesus allowed other graver crimes, such as murder or necromancy, as equally just causes for divorce.42 Zwingli later defended the astonishingly generous divorce laws in Zurich with the same argument.43 The fundamental historical considerations of Erasmus, which are pervasive in his annotation, are even more significant. In principle, Erasmus concedes to the tradition that “nobody will be able to deny that the laws of Christ are the most just [multo aequissimas esse] and far surpass all, whether they are compared with natural or human law.”44 But he also asked himself what should be done if one of Christ’s prescriptions seems to be in obvious conflict with natural law: “Who has ever heard that a misfortune is punished if there is no guilt, and that even according to divine law?”45 In fact, this was often the case when, for instance, an innocent spouse was forced to continue to live with a criminal or the innocent party in a separation was not allowed to marry again. In such cases Erasmus argued that one should ask whether what is read in the Gospel and the apostolic letters about this matter, should not be interpreted differently. Here too let us be allowed to do what we do not fear to do in other passages of Holy Scripture. Let us investigate at what time, from whom, and on what occasion something is said. Then perhaps we will find the true and genuine meaning.46

Erasmus wanted to use his exegetical method to study the unchangeable divine laws. If one used this method, Erasmus declared, then soon it would become clear that Jesus prescribed chastity only to eunuchs, a state to which the ecclesiastical laws condemned all separated spouses. Jesus even hinted particularly at his own era by speaking of the eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. The kingdom of God called for the preaching of the Gospel to spread Christianity in the years during Christ’s life and directly after. This required undistracted preachers, and therefore the appeal to live chastely applied first and foremost to the needs of that time. In other words, there is (Erasmus formulates his words in reference to Ecclesiastes 3:5) a time to marry and a time to stay single.47 Erasmus pointed out that other biblical directives are also disregarded. For instance, the apostles’ instruction for all gentiles to abstain – as did the Jews – from eating or drinking blood and all strangled things (Acts 15:20) was by Erasmus’s time abandoned, and he argued that this did not diminish the importance of the apostles. In fact, to

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excuse the widespread disregard for this particular precept it might be convincingly argued that it had developed during the apostolic era as a concession to the Jews.48 For Erasmus, it was essential to understand the divine prescriptions within their historical context and to reinterpret them according to one’s own time (“ratio temporum”). Erasmus suggested here what he had already postulated in his Ratio:49 “And as it is not permissible to dispense with Holy Scripture, in which we have the surest rule of life, so it is the task of pious and prudent administrators to accommodate it [Holy Scripture] to the public mores.”50 In other words, because Christ sought salvation for all, one must interpret his words about divorce and remarriage in a way that is conducive to salvation. Therefore, what is granted to human laws – namely, that they should be enforced only insofar as they contribute to human salvation51 – should also apply to the prescription regarding divorce, which is traditionally counted as a divine law: it must be accommodated to suit the times. In his 1526 Christiani matrimonii institutio, Erasmus clarified his historical approach with regard to the impediments to marriage. He stated that the precepts of divine, civil, and ecclesiastical law differed in the complex question of marriage impediments. For instance, the children of Adam had to marry among themselves, and as a result the divine law at first allowed marriage within the second degree of kinship. Not until humankind had spread and sufficiently multiplied did marriage taboos widen to the fourth degree of kinship.52 For Erasmus, divine laws were also time-dependent. In the era after Christ the church prescribed more impediments, but from his sixteenth-century point of view the early bishops had developed some questionable rules that were appropriate only to the time when chastity was considered one of the highest moral values. For Erasmus, such laws were not ungodly because humans created them; on the contrary, human laws, even in spiritual concerns, were tolerable as long as they did not offend piety. He found that the traditional marriage laws created much confusion and grief, which is why he declared that “charity, which desires the good of all, may perhaps lead us to wish that an indulgent Mother Church, always attentive to the edification and not the destruction of her children, will allow some relaxation.”53 According to Erasmus the church had always adapted its laws54 and it must continue to do so by reinterpreting divine and human law and readjusting and renewing them according to the needs of the time.55 Because the church’s first duty is to care for the salvation of all and to support the weak, in questions of law the only important thing was to bring peace to conflicted consciences.56 With

The Question of Law 213

such arguments Erasmus not only called for a reform of law, but also questioned the axiom that positive divine laws were unchangeable and could not accommodate changes in time and situation. Because for Erasmus even rules that were divine could be questioned, he no longer needed to differentiate sharply between divine and human law. On the one hand, all positive laws could and should be accommodated to the historical situation, whether or not they were prescriptions of Christ or originated from other sources such as canon, Roman, or German law, or referred to civil or spiritual issues. On the other hand, such laws should also align themselves with divine justice. The development of Erasmus’s novel concept of law can easily be reconstructed. In his work on the New Testament he developed one of his most important exegetical principles and one of the main concerns of this study: to consider the effect of different times and different persons and to thoroughly observe these permutations in Scripture; in short, to consider the historical context of the New Testament.57 He had already suggested this explicitly in his 1516 essay Methodus, and in the Ratio of 1519 he deduced from this principle that it is not possible for humans to constitute laws for their everyday life that are in absolute accord with Christ’s life: “Popes establish laws as human beings for weak human beings, as it seems useful at the time, and even for men with different degrees of weakness.” Yet the archetype for human laws must nevertheless be derived from Christ: “From this light the sparks of human laws are taken, but a polished mirror reflects the radiance of eternal truth differently than steel, and a very clear spring reflects it differently than a dirty puddle.” The ecclesiastical laws should ideally, like a mirror or a spring, echo the Gospel more clearly. For the secular laws it is enough that they dimly reflect Christ’s life, but because they all transmute the reflected Gospel they should be evaluated according to the time, motive, and intention of their origin,58 since people can only reflect the Gospel indirectly and in various ways, according to time and circumstances. This means that Erasmus did not (like Ivo of Chartres and later the Lutherans) distinguish between what constituted unchangeable eternal laws that refer to salvation and have to be observed absolutely, and what constituted less important laws that are not needed for salvation and which can, as love requires, be accommodated and changed59 – all laws must be accommodated and can only indirectly refer back to Christ. For Erasmus, Christ’s lifetime and the era after the gift of the Holy Spirit when the church was still inexperienced and newly born (“rudis adhuc et nascentis ecclesiae”) had its own customs and

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manners, and this lifestyle could not be simply transferred to later eras. He underscored this by asking who would castrate himself for the sake of God’s kingdom today. Or sell his possessions? Or work miracles that the faithful are said to follow? Erasmus asked these questions and concluded in his Ratio that if one applied all the prescriptions from Christ’s time, “we would not be Christians today because those signs do not follow us.”60 In his note on I Corinthians 7:39 he wrote: “God’s kingdom calls for the preaching of the Gospel in order to relate it more closely to the various times” in which the Gospel is preached.61 Erasmus declared that times had changed, and he wrote in the Ratio that after the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ceased and the church achieved standing, “new laws were instituted, according to changing circumstances. Some of them seem to contradict Christ’s precepts if we do not harmonize the Scriptures by differentiating between times.”62 Over the years Erasmus applied such considerations to canon law and was convinced that the church not only may, but should, change its laws. In his Declarationes from 1532 he wrote against attacks from Leiden and Paris: “What the church has prudently and piously instituted may prudently and piously be changed into what is more serviceable at this time [mutet in id quod pro tempore magis expedit], and justly so because new causes have arisen.”63 In the same year he published Responsio ad Phimostomum de divortio containing his reflections on divorce. In it he wrote: The church has never been without the spirit of her Bridegroom, but it has seemed good to him to defer the clarification of certain matters until his own good time. I believe that the spirit of Christ was with the apostles, yet Peter was criticized by Paul, and dissension rose between Paul and Barnabas, although the Spirit itself never disagrees with itself.

He emphasized that it was likely that doctors and popes did not lack the Holy Spirit, and yet they contradicted themselves often and not just on minor points. It was not always offensive to say that the Holy Spirit emanated from the Father or, without knowing anything about transubstantiation, to believe in Christ’s presence during the consecration. Consequently, Erasmus believed that he could justly argue for an accommodation of the law concerning divorce.64 His readers may have asked themselves whether with such considerations Erasmus did not abet a form of catastrophic relativism. Like Luther, Erasmus’s adversaries in the Roman Catholic Church reproached him with eroding obedience to God’s word and questioning all orderly

The Question of Law 215

social life by relativizing the divine rules.65 However, Erasmus saw himself as devising a method to keep interpreters from violating the meaning of the Gospel. His intention was to warn Christians not to vitiate the heavenly philosophy of Christ with laws or usage … Let the holy anchor of evangelical doctrine be conserved, this anchor to which we may in this great darkness and human confusion flee … Let this firm foundation remain which will not give way to the breezes of opinions or the storms of persecution … Men can fall, but Christ cannot err … Therefore, above all let that which is prescribed be in accord with the evangelical doctrine and illumine and reflect the life of Christ.66

In other words, for Erasmus a rule was not cogently divine and unchangeable because it was, by chance, required or observed in the Pauline communities of the first century. It was divine because it was in accord with the life and doctrine of Christ as a whole. The jurists of Erasmus’s time adopted his historical approach and applied it in their own work. Hans Erich Troje pointed to Erasmus’s methodological, pedagogical, and practical approach, which not only had a significant impact on the law school in Bourges and on Erasmus’s own rules of emendation but also became authoritative for editions of classical and German law sources.67 In 1960 Guido Kisch analysed the wide-ranging reception of Erasmus’s thoughts on civil law. To my mind, this is a study that has not received enough attention.68 In his essay on Erasmus’s concept of law the distinguished Erasmus scholar C. Douglas McCullough passed over Kisch’s study because he found it unconvincing.69 One must acknowledge that Erasmus was no jurist – though he commented competently on law – nor did he write specific tracts on law, a fact that was also noted by Kisch.70 However, this did not hinder his jurist friend in Basel, Claudius Cantiuncula, and Ulrich Zasius, the famous professor of law at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, or Johann Oldendorp in Rostock from applying Erasmus’s exegetical method to their juridical work; especially since his approach was influenced by the ancient rhetoric and corresponded to the principles of Roman law (also influenced by ancient rhetoric). As is well known, Cicero cautioned that one must always consider the circumstances and ponder the time, place, occasion, and opportunity of an incident,71 and in Roman law penalties were meant to be adapted to different persons, locales, and circumstances.72 The most convincing proof of Kisch’s view that Erasmus had indeed made a substantial impact on the humanistic philosophy of justice and

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on the practice of law can be found in Cantiuncula. The professor at the University of Basel, syndic of the town council, and later member of the imperial law court stated explicitly that he applied what he had learned from Erasmus’s exegetical method to his own understanding of the law. In his Paraenesis of 1522, in which he developed a new legal method, Cantiuncula, like Erasmus, asked for human laws to be instituted according to the divine “archetype.”73 Cantiuncula explained that there were contradictions not only in the laws but also in the Bible and went on to argue that nobody should be offended by this fact or question the truth for that reason, but rather, like Erasmus, take account of all circumstances and use reason to overcome the difficulties.74 Cantiuncula also explicitly adopted Erasmus’s view of divine law. In his Oratio, which he published together with the Paraenesis, he explained that because humans on earth can never completely live according to Christ’s will and remain dependent on his mercy, “nobody should judge it as inequitable or pagan if we accommodate the guideline of the divine laws to the capacity of human weakness,” especially since Erasmus proved that the prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount must be interpreted hyperbolically.75 It was not just Cantiuncula but also Zasius, Alciati, Budé, and Amerbach – the best-known jurists of the time – who respected Erasmus, corresponded with the humanist, and studied his works.76 Erasmus’s new approach not only had an impact on their theoretical works, it also influenced their legal practice. It seems fitting at this point to briefly cite as an illustration the often-quoted introduction to the municipal charter of Freiburg, which was written under the aegis of Erasmus’s friend Zasius and which embodies Erasmian ideals: “According to the words of Emperor Justinian the status of men often changes with the passage of time and ages, and all actions, manners and customs, constitutions and characters cannot persist according to the old laws. It is therefore necessary to supply new laws replacing the old ones.”77 Bonifacius Amerbach was admittedly conservative and not easily prepared to overrule centuries-old legal practices and prescriptions, but interestingly, even he referred to Erasmus as a juridical authority.78 The degree to which he respected his older friend’s opinion on juridical matters is indicated in a letter dated to February 1530. Erasmus had requested an opinion from Amerbach concerning Henry VIII’s wish to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Erasmus admitted to ambivalence in the matter. On the one hand, he wanted to respect the just claim of the abandoned queen (who had borne Henry a daughter) to keep the marriage alive; on the other hand, Erasmus was interested in

The Question of Law 21

the possibility of avoiding a civil war, which would be likely if Henry died without a male heir. An heir could no longer be reasonably expected from his marriage with Catherine, but according to Erasmus, Henry could only cite his reluctant consummation of the marriage as a reason for divorce.79 It was not easy for Amerbach to answer his older and highly venerated friend; four amended versions of his answer to Erasmus have survived.80 It is clear that Amerbach did not take his task lightly, but he was forthright in his answer: the pope should not consent to the divorce. He found his best arguments against this divorce in Erasmus’s own works and he used them skilfully against the aging humanist. Amerbach was in agreement with Erasmus that the pope should not defy divine law without good reason. He also reminded Erasmus that he had himself proclaimed that a marriage formed under mutual consent was valid even without physical union. Thus, reluctant physical union could not be an adequate reason for divorce. Amerbach ended his precise legal opinion with the assertion that the pope’s power to separate is in abeyance when the marriage is legally constituted, unless important and just reasons call ipso iure for a divorce. In his letter to Erasmus, Amerbach added: “Nobody wrote about that more perfectly than you.” And in a marginal note he gave as his references Erasmus’s note to I Corinthians 7:39 and the Responsio ad annotationes E. Lei, in which he defended this note.81 Amerbach, the famous legal expert, in this instance cites Erasmus as an authority in canon law. Indeed, in his note on I Corinthians 7:39 Erasmus had cited, apart from Roman law sources, a cornucopia of medieval law books including Decretum Gratiani (1140), the Decretals of Gregory IX, the Liber sextus (about 1234 and 1298 respectively), the Decretals of Boniface VIII, the Clementines (after 1317), the Decretals or Extravagantes from John XXII, and the commentators Henry of Seusia or Hostenis (before 1200–70), Johannes Andreae (about 1270–1348), Nikolaus de’ Tudeschi or Panormitanus (1386–1445), and of course the relevant Sentences from Petrus Lombardus (1095–1160) and Durandus (1270–1334), and the Commentaries on them.82 Erasmus, an expert on canon law? Without a doubt he was no professional canonist and he must have relied heavily on Cantiuncula and Amerbach, his jurist friends in Basel, in quoting all of these sources. Yet to obtain a proper understanding of Erasmus’s thinking, particularly his attitude towards the Reformation, his interpretation of canon law is of the greatest import. By challenging questions of law he deepened his historical approach and in the process alienated many of his theologian contemporaries.

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Zwingli and Luther adapted the Erasmian concept of marriage law for use in Protestant regions. However, among his arguments they used only the exegetical ones and even those only insofar as they did not go against their strict differentiation between divine and human law and their view that divine laws should not be changed. Luther’s work De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, from 1520, also deals with marriage. In it Luther contested the concept of marriage as a sacrament by translating the term μυστήριον in Ephesians 5:32 as “mystery” instead of “sacrament,” as Erasmus had already done in 1516. This translation had enormous significance because the verse was the foundation for the traditional view of marriage as a sacrament.83 Luther also addressed the issue of remarriage. In principle, he proclaimed (in the context of discussing the Lord’s Supper) that “if we allow that one prescription of Christ is changed then we demolish all His rules.”84 He further declared, “far be it from me, yes, far indeed, to allow even one tittle to go unobserved or overlooked by the whole church.”85 Yet he also wondered “why they force a man to live a celibate life who is separated from his wife, and why they do not allow him to marry another.”86 But he did not plead, as Erasmus did, for the possibility of remarriage by asserting that different circumstances justified an accommodation in pastoral care. He preferred to question the so-called proofs from Scripture – Matthew 5:32 and I Corinthians 7:11 – or better yet to explain them away by combining them with others. He wrote: “If even Christ permits divorce in case of adultery, and nobody is forced to live a celibate life, and Paul prefers that we marry instead of burning, than it seems quite permissible for a man to marry another woman to replace the one he dismissed.” And he added, “if only this would be clearly discussed and cogently proved.”87 Luther was obviously uneasy about his argumentation. In 1527 he explained that divorce and remarriage should be allowed for the “heathens” but that Christians should not divorce.88 His argumentation from 1520 eventually prevailed in Protestantism. In 1524 Luther defended the legal practice in Wittenberg allowing divorce and remarriage by using the same arguments he had employed in 1520.89 Zwingli commented on canon law questions for the first time during Lent 1522 when he defended the previously mentioned supporters of Reformation in Zurich and Basel who openly broke with the fasting. He did this in his tract Von erkiesen vnd fryheit der spysen, using the same reference as Luther to Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32: “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it; that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you”

The Question of Law 219

and “everything that I command you you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it or take from it.” Or with Galatians 1:9: “If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.” He concluded that because the rules of Lent were not established in the Bible, Christians must be released from them. For “if one could not and should not add to the Old Testament, then one should do so even less to the New … How dare a man add to the Testament, to the covenant of God, as though he wanted to better it?”90 In the first years of the Reformation, Zwingli like Luther also refused to countenance any non-biblical laws that referred to spiritual issues, reasoning that only the divine precepts should be observed. All other laws established later were not only to be changed or altered as the tradition allowed, but rejected on principle. But according to a letter from 1523, Zwingli also supported the idea of allowing remarriage even though Christ did not explicitly mention it, simply because Paul advised the avoidance of fornication. He suggested that Paul’s prohibition in I Corinthians 7 referred only to unnecessary divorces; otherwise he would have mentioned the exception granted by Christ that one might separate in the case of fornication. Zwingli saw no contradiction between Paul and Christ. Paul did not allow divorce for minor causes; Christ allowed it in case of adultery. There is, Zwingli emphasized, no antithesis. He suggested a more thorough reading of Christ’s words against remarriage and reminded believers that according to Christ anyone who separates and remarries commits adultery, except in the case of a separation on account of adultery. He who divorces because of his wife’s adultery does not commit adultery, he argued, and may marry again. Zwingli noted, only as an aside, that in former times divorce was allowed, and he referred to Erasmus’s annotation on I Corinthians 7:39, which offered proof that divorce should be allowed not only in the case of adultery but also when one partner commits criminal acts. The letter demonstrates not only that Zwingli used Erasmus’s notes but also how difficult it was for him to plead the case for divorce and remarriage. He did not completely refuse the historical arguments made by Erasmus, but he was at obvious pains to find convincing biblical ones.91 Although both Zwingli and Luther provided new liberties for their churches and revolutionized traditional ecclesiastical law by erasing all human rules, they remained rooted in the traditional view of the divine law as unchangeable. In principle, that would have meant that Christian communities had to live within the biblical norms established in the era before the Constantinian shift. However, only a few radical Reformers

22  Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

were consistent enough to do so. Thomas Müntzer, for example, formulated his views in a letter to Melanchthon dated to March 1522 in which he reproached the Reformers of Wittenberg that they “erred, because they did not completely take over the customs of the apostles.”92 It was not easy for the Reformers to defend themselves against such reproaches. But Luther attempted to do so in his tract Against the Heavenly Prophets from 1525. In it he contrasted the Mosaic law of the Old Testament with the Gospel and defended Christian freedom, which in his view even superseded the Ten Commandments. If the Decalogue was still observed by Christians, he insisted it was only insofar as it was in accord with the natural law. For Luther, the era of the Law of Moses had come to an end.93 This was not the case with the laws laid down in the New Testament, a point that Luther conceded to the Radicals. But he also immediately set limits, exclaiming that only the precepts put into words by Christ were to be observed as law: “Don’t you hear? The word, the word, shall do it,” he emphatically declared. No Christian, in Luther’s view, should be allowed to appeal to Christ’s example over his words, like the “heavenly prophets” for whom Christ’s actions were an order how to live. He declared that whoever takes the life of Christ and the apostles as a benchmark for his own life was disseminating a new legalism: “Woe to you if you do not listen to God’s word bidding or forbidding something, if you turn away and do not observe his command, even if Christ himself would do something … say … that is of no concern to me, those are works for his own person.”94 Erasmus was not the only one to object to such a statement. Zwingli also taught that Christ’s life was an exemplar for every Christian: “Who says that he is in him [Christ], shall act as he acted.”95 As for the Anabaptists’ insistence that “we have to adapt ourselves in every regard to Christ,” Zwingli answered plainly: “Who denies that?”96 In his refutation of 1527 he countered the arguments of the Anabaptists with polished exegetical arguments of his own; once again, he could not do without historical references, but they only applied to the right understanding of Holy Writ in support of his exegetical arguments and did not refer to post-apostolic times. The Reformers as well as the Radicals interpreted the post-apostolic era either as an era of apostasy or as exemplary times that held to the unchanging rules of early Christianity, which always had to remain in the same form and wording. The debate between the Reformers and the Radicals was not whether and how far apostolic precepts in the Gospel should be accommodated to later times and formulated anew, the debate was only to determine which norms counted as unchangeable divine law and how these individual

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unchangeable rules were to be understood. For Zwingli, they comprised the whole law of the Old and the New Testament, which was condensed in the superior law of love, but not the precepts concerning ritual. For Luther it comprised all the words of Christ and the apostles that were relevant to salvation from which he derived preaching, the administration of sacraments, and the power of the keys. Luther and Zwingli contrasted their own understanding of Christian freedom with what they saw as the legalism of the Radicals. But in principle they could hardly deny the Radicals’ call to return to the evangelical norms of the first century. It was probably because of this difficulty that they could not do the Radicals justice, or refrain from morally defaming and persecuting them. By contrast, Erasmus, who also deeply disliked the Radicals (he once compared them with the Egyptian plagues),97 could face them with compassion instead of hatred. He emphasized that they were by no means all bad, and indeed that their innocent lives were exemplary.98 Returning once more to Erasmus, let us examine the crucial difference with regard to legislation between him, tradition, and the Reformers. As previously discussed,99 the violators of the laws governing Lenten fasting in Basel referred to Erasmus as an example for their behaviour. He felt it incumbent upon him to answer their accusations and to comment on their actions in a tract. In his Epistola de interdictu carnium from April 1522,100 for social reasons he sided with the Reformers who wanted to relax the rules of Lent, allow priests to marry, and abolish many feasts, but he reasoned in a completely different way from Zwingli and Luther. Although Erasmus also made reference to the differences between divine and human law,101 he did not conclude from this difference that human laws in spiritual affairs were ungodly. On the contrary, he felt that human laws could and should support piety. Yet because times, circumstances, and human customs varied, human laws might sometimes be at variance with their original intention and therefore must be changed. Of course, as long as they were human directives there would be no difficulty in changing them: “One must attribute much more to those laws which God constituted than to those which men established.”102 More important for Erasmus than the laws of Lent, which had to do with external things, was the law of charity: “Someone who breaks the rules of Lent throughout his whole life without necessity sins less than someone who vilifies and offends his neighbour because of food and drink, for he should, according to divine precept, love his neighbour not less than himself.”103 Erasmus not only established a hierarchy between human and divine laws, but also between Paul’s different instructions, which were

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considered divine and unchangeable laws according to the traditional definition. Erasmus explained that Paul consistently forbade avarice, ambition, ire, and envy and made it clear that those who practise these vices will not share in God’s kingdom. But when Paul forbids women to speak in church, Erasmus confessed that he could not in all honesty regard this an equally punishable offence.104 Erasmus makes his point more clearly in his 1532 Epistola de delectu ciborum scholia with which he defended his Epistola de interdictu carnium against harsh attacks. In it he examines laws that were once justifiable, and particularly singles out one directive from the apostolic canons that had become antiquated through the changing customs of humanity. It forbade clerics to have dealings in secular affairs like the attestations of testaments or pledges. In the sixteenth century this was an apostolic rule that clerics broke everywhere and at all levels. No one criticized them for it; on the contrary, because society needed legally trained clerics they were almost constantly in demand. But as Erasmus emphasized, this was not just a human, but an apostolic law. None other than the apostle Paul warned Timothy not to entangle himself in the affairs of this world.105 Erasmus wrote in his 1532 Responsio ad Phimostomum de divortio with reference to the note on I Corinthians 7 cited above: “Now I have shown that archbishops and Roman pontiffs have held different opinions, not only about matrimony but about other serious matters as well, and that an earlier opinion has been corrected by later reflection.”106 Furthermore, these “serious matters” concerned not only human laws. Erasmus detected that popes even changed “sacraments of the New Law, which Christ alone could institute.”107 In conclusion, he questioned the term “divine law” and suggested that it “may be that ‘divine law’ is a wider term and that many things come under the divine law which were not instituted by Christ.”108 Here the crucial difference between Erasmus on the one hand and tradition or the Reformers on the other becomes apparent. Tradition sharply distinguished between divine and human law; the Reformers restricted the divine law to biblical words and decidedly widened the gap between the two laws by denouncing the involvement of all human lawgivers in spiritual affairs as ungodly. Erasmus, by contrast, blurred the boundary between the two laws and argued that even apostolic laws in the New Testament were created for a certain time and place. They formed divine law for their time and according to their historical circumstances, but this fact did not imply that there was a straightforward, progressive development from old to new. Indeed, in the problematic question of divorce, he preferred the prescriptions of

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the Old Testament, which were more lenient: “It was a law of great humanity: it took into account the husband’s passionate nature and aversion and the wife’s right to freedom.”109 Erasmus considered God’s will to be eternal, God’s resolution unchangeable, and his word or speech, which he continuously begat, the same for all time. But he also believed that if God revealed his will to and through humans, then he must have also accommodated the form to their transient nature and to their time and situation. For this reason, according to Erasmus, the responsible exegete must search for the will of God in the precepts, adapt them to his own time, and reshape them for his contemporaries. In 1535 Erasmus wrote in his Ecclesiastes: “God’s law is always the same, as God’s will is unchangeable, but it is differently formed according to times and persons.”110

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eventeen

The Question of Peace

institutio principis christiani / querela pacis / dulce bellum inexpertis / consultatio de bello turcico / declarationes ad censuras facultatis theologiae parisiensis Just as Erasmus questioned the traditional understanding of divine law, he also questioned the traditional understanding of a just war. Like the definition of divine law, the accepted definition of a just war stemmed from Augustine, who suggested that wars could not be rejected in principle. For Augustine, the concept of a just war was demonstrated in the wars of the Old Testament. War that challenged injustice was good and this could include wars against heretics and even wars of conquest if legal governments waged them for cogent reasons. If the reasons for going to war were not a breach of God’s laws and if it was not a private war but one waged by a legal authority, warriors could engage in battle with a clear conscience. In Augustine’s view, just wars could even be conducive to peace.1 Later, according to Gratian, all wars that were waged in order to support the welfare of the state, to curtail mischief, and in the interests of the common good, as well as wars against heretics, were also classified as good.2 Likewise, for Thomas Aquinas all wars had to serve the common good. In such cases the government could use all means available as long as innocent civilians were not harmed.3 This definition of just war remained widely uncontested. The Reformers also held to it, and the jus belli was included in the confessional documents of the Protestant churches.4 But in his 1515 Institutio principis christiani Erasmus distanced himself openly from the canonical definition of a just war and from Augustine’s approval of war that may be waged occasionally and under

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certain circumstances. Erasmus played the authority of Christ and his apostles against the authority of Augustine5 and argued against wars in principle: “If the teaching of Christ does not always and everywhere attack warfare, if my opponents can find one passage approving war, then let us fight as Christians. The Hebrews were allowed to engage in war, but with God’s permission. But our oracle which constantly resounds in the Gospel makes us shrink from wars.” At this point Erasmus did not even want to countenance a war against the Turks – the “heretics”: “However, I do not think, either, that war against the Turks should be hastily undertaken, remembering first of all that the kingdom of Christ was created, spread, and secured by very different means.”6 It is difficult to understand today exactly what such a statement meant in 1515 when both the pope and the aging Emperor Maximilian were strongly pushing for war with the Turks. A victory over the Turks would have crowned the latter’s political career, which was already marked by many successful military feats, and Maximilian’s court poets were anticipating his triumph over the heretics in panegyrical poems.7 Later when Erasmus called for unity within the empire in the face of the looming Turkish threat, he was sure of gaining wide approval, but to directly question the war against the Turks at this moment was to pit himself against the zeitgeist and that was dangerous. Just how dangerous is demonstrated by the bull Exsurge domini that appeared some years later, which damned Luther inter alia because he was accused of suggesting that battling against the Turks amounted to battling against God, who sent them as punishment for our sins.8 These were not Luther’s exact words, but he did call the Turks “God’s rod and whip,”9 and statements like this were controversial during a time of widespread fear and in the face of the real threat of Turkish incursion.10 Whether Erasmus had good reasons for his extraordinary view, or whether this was nothing more than a delicate bookworm’s naïve longing for peace, is worth exploring.11 Indeed, the numerous editions of his irenic tracts up to this point are proof of it being more than mere naïveté. In the most famous of these, the Querela pacis from 1517, peace is a woman who desperately laments that among humankind she, like Christ, has no place to rest her head. It is likely that after the battle of Marignano on 13/14 September 1515, where firearms were used for the first time in large numbers, Erasmus was not alone in his search for peace or in his abhorrence of ruinous armed conflicts. Francis I eventually gained his victory in this battle, but not before twenty thousand soldiers were killed in action. It is no wonder that Erasmus called the new arms “infernal machines” and “such as no pagans with all their ferocity

The Question of Peace 22

and no barbarians invented.”12 And yet disarmament was not one of Erasmus’s first concerns. He worried chiefly about the men who used these arms. Like many of his contemporaries, Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, he detested mercenaries. He called them “a barbarian rabble, made up of all the worst scoundrels.”13 However, he did not want to lay blame only on them, for he also believed that the problem concerned all people. Although he believed that human nature was made for peace, it was true that people fought habitually. Scholars, priests, and members of the same family, as well as mercenaries, were sometimes in conflict; indeed, Erasmus admitted that every single person struggled internally with his or her passions. Perplexed, he asked, “But then what Fury appeared with such harmful powers, to scatter, demolish, and destroy them all and to sow an insatiable lust for fighting in the human heart?”14 In the adage Dulce Bellum inexpertis from 1515, Erasmus used a historical approach to try to find an answer to this. Beginning with prehistoric times he deduced from the unarmed, corporeal nature of human beings – in contrast to the various natural defences of beasts, like poison, horns, or claws – that humans are peaceable by nature. People, he suggested, first lived as vegetarians, but savage beasts attacked them and those who defended their fellow humans by slaughtering these beasts were considered brave and were chosen as leaders. Eventually, hunting down and even murdering humans turned into an honourable custom. And custom, as Erasmus assures his readers, has its own force so that what “might seem unnatural to us” was “considered a matter of duty” elsewhere. He pointed out that at Sardon it was once the “custom to beat up an aged parent,” and that it was held to be a fine thing that a virgin should become a common prostitute in the temple of Venus, and there were many other things more absurd than these that would be shocking to anyone if they were so much as mentioned here, so true is it that nothing is too villainous, or too cruel to gain approval if custom recommends it.15

Likewise, he argued that the waging of war became so customary that people “called it bellum ‘beautiful’ … and sought to make it a virtue.”16 The impulse to fight fellow human beings may have been thought a virtue, but in Erasmus’s eyes war was nothing “but murder and brigandage committed by many.”17 And when waged among Christians it flew in the face of Christ’s teaching, which “forbade anyone to resist evil”;18 Christ’s whole doctrine “teaches tolerance and love, so his whole life is a lesson in gentleness.”19 Erasmus felt obliged to

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ask how Christians could even develop the doctrine of a just war.20 In searching for an answer to this conundrum, Erasmus used a historical approach once again, and brought forth the following truly astonishing argument: “The first thing to creep in in this case was erudition” he explained, and quickly added that his beloved erudition was apparently ideal for confuting heretics, armed as they were with the writings of philosophers, poets and orators … Eloquence too, at first disguised rather than spurned, was later approved. Then, on the pretext of overthrowing heresy, an ostentatious love of controversy crept in, which was a major scourge to the church. Finally, things went so far that the whole of Aristotle was accepted into the heart of theology, and accepted to the extent that his authority was almost more sacred than that of Christ.

From Aristotle, the church learned that “human happiness” needs “bodily comforts and worldly goods,” and from Roman law that it is allowed “to meet force by force” and to wage war “providing it is just.”21 For Erasmus the doctrine of just war was rooted in a contamination of Christendom by pagan writers – in other words, a corruption of Christ’s teaching. Erasmus ended his historical overview of this development with a comparison between pagans and contemporary Christians who outclass even the pagans in their immoral and bellicose behaviour. He concludes: “after Christ ordered the sword to be put away, it is not proper for Christians to fight, except in the noblest of all battles against the most shameful enemies of the church, against love of money, against anger, against ambition, against fear of death.”22 Accordingly, in his Querela pacis Erasmus asked the princes of Europe to consider their Christian pledge, and he declared that as Christian governments they could not use the wars of the Old Testament to justify their actions. He admitted that the Jews called their God “Lord of hosts [exercituum] and of vengeance.” But he proclaimed that there “is a great difference between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, even though by his nature he is one and the same God.”23 If this difference was not rooted in the nature of God, it must be rooted in the history of God’s dealings with humankind. Erasmus believed that the rules of action could not be the same at all times in history; as a result he wrote consciously for Christian subjects in his own time living under a Christian government. This had important consequences for the concept of war. He concluded that princes could not be allowed to wage war and their subjects not allowed to engage in military service. For whoever “brings tidings of Christ brings

The Question of Peace 229

tidings of peace. Whoever preaches war preaches one who is the very opposite of Christ. Tell me, what induced the Son of God to come to earth if not his wish to reconcile the world with the Father, to bind men together with mutual and indestructible love, and finally, to make man his own friend?”24 For Erasmus, love excluded war in principle. The only exemption Erasmus granted in the Querela pacis was a defence against barbaric attacks in order to protect public order.25 He did not change his mind about crusading against the Turks, but decided that if there must be war it is better that it be against the Turks than among Christians; however, he notes that “Of course it used to be thought preferable, even in their [the Turks’] case, to win them over to the religion of Christ by teaching and by the example of good deeds and a blameless life rather than by mounting an armed attack.”26 Erasmus called for the princes to abstain from waging war, even if they had just cause, and instead to consider resigning their office.27 At the same time, Erasmus encouraged subjects to resist calls to arms and suggested that they should refuse military service.28 That was brave advice in 1517, but more interesting is how Erasmus reconciled it with Paul’s demand in Romans 13:1–7 (particularly verse 2): “Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” Erasmus reconciled this passage with his beliefs by making his readers aware that these verses were written by Paul for a Christian minority that existed under a government hostile to it. His Paraphrase of Romans, which he published in 1517, the same year as the Querela pacis, deals with the problem of Christian persecution in that time. However, in Romans 13 Paul does not refer to persecution at all; Erasmus added this thought himself. He could not interpret these verses without hinting at the historical situation of the author and of the early Christians in Rome to whom it was addressed. Because Paul was likely martyred some years later and obviously struggled with the Roman authorities, Erasmus suggested that his warning not to resist the “authorities” that “God has appointed” must have been meant conditionally. He expanded on this condition by explaining that rulers, although they mirrored God’s government, could only perform God’s mandate “utcunque,” in a manner of speaking. Insofar as they punished evil, their power came from God, and whosoever resisted a government that performed God’s charge also resisted God from whom all such authority derives. Just as the Mosaic law came from God and was accepted in its own time but became “outdated” once Christ came into the world, Erasmus declared that it was proper to honour the secular government “pro tempore,” for a time. One must always

23  Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

acknowledge that the government’s authority is rooted in time and circumstances and that all things must be classified into one of three hierarchical categories: first, the heavenly, which is above all others; second, the worldly, like concupiscence and sin, which must be avoided; and third, all the things in the middle, which are in themselves neither good nor evil. For Erasmus, state affairs belonged to this third sphere and Christians had to obey bad or heathen rulers only insofar as their rules pertained to this indeterminate class of things and with regard for “the necessary external order.”29 To understand the significance of Erasmus’s interpretation of this passage one need only compare it with Luther’s. Luther did not incorporate the historical context into his exegesis. He did not even go as far as Thomas Aquinas, who at least hinted at the martyrdom of Paul in order to account for the right to resistance as a last resort.30 Luther understood Paul’s admonition as an unquestionable and timeless divine directive and did not feel impelled to factor in the circumstances under which Paul established it or the Roman Christian community followed it. This is why he insisted on obedience to the authorities without any reservation.31 By contrast, for Erasmus, using this historical approach had an important effect on his understanding of the passage: he understood Paul’s admonitions as the result of time and circumstance and sought to accommodate them to his own era. Obviously, sixteenth-century social and political circumstances were quite different from those under the Roman emperors in the first century. In Erasmus’s time Christian governments ruled over Christian subjects and, according to Erasmus, these subjects, not the monarch, constituted the state. Although Erasmus generally thought in hierarchical terms,32 he also suggested that though the state could do without the monarch, the prince could not do without his subjects, who should ideally elect him themselves.33 Government and subjects were in equal measure indebted to Christian principles. A Christian ruler “should exercise his power within limits, remembering that he is a human being and a free man ruling over men who are also human and free and, finally, that he is a Christian ruler of Christians,” and the “people in their turn should defer to him only so far as is in the public interest.” For Erasmus, a declaration of war was always an infringement on the public interest. In such cases, the selfish desires of a prince should be “held in check by the combined will of the citizens.”34 Erasmus bound the politicians to the principle of Christian love, declaring that Christ did not come as a satrap but as one who reconciles.35 Before his death, Christ urged: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one

The Question of Peace 231

another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).36 He joined his followers through the sacraments into one body.37 According to Erasmus, Christ knew men only too well: he knew of their passionate desire for fame, wealth, and vengeance, which is why he “removed these passions completely from the hearts of his people, he absolutely forbade them to resist evil and ordered them to return good for evil and, if they could, pray for good for those who wished them harm.”38 These last sentences contain a clear reference to Matthew 5:39– 44. Erasmus also obliged the authorities who did not carry the sword in vain39 to love their enemies. In contrast to Luther and Zwingli, he did not accept a differentiation between private and public actions regarding the use of violence. Luther also cautioned that princes should avoid war as far as possible, to suffer injustice and to consider “how many innocent women and children become widows and orphans in a war.” But he also wrote in his 1523 treaty On Worldly Government that if a prince feels forced to wage war in order to protect his subjects “it is Christian and a work of love to choke, rob, and burn.”40 In his lectures in the Prophezey Zwingli used John the Baptist’s warning to the soldiers to “rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages”41 in order to rebut the Anabaptists’ categorical rejection of violence. He explained that they unjustly relied on the fact that Jesus refused worldly governance and that all Christians are part of the same body and are brothers. Likewise, the admonition not to fight evil with evil did not convince Zwingli of the merits of the Anabaptists’ stance. He argued that this would only apply if Christians could follow this directive; in short, that it was only an ideal. Entangled by their sins and passions, Christians needed further governance that both punished justly and waged just wars. In the service of governments Christians are not only permitted but indeed “have to kill and murder.”42 Leo Jud, who edited this text after Zwingli’s death, did not refer to Erasmus here, but because he had translated Erasmus’s peace tract into German he knew perfectly well that in his Querela pacis Erasmus had used nearly all the same arguments that Zwingli had rejected in the Anabaptists. In contrast to orthodox adversaries in Paris, Jud did not accuse Erasmus of undermining the public order (as Zwingli accused the Anabaptists), and in fact the Querela pacis did not argue against public order, nor did any of the later works of Erasmus. After the defeat of Mohács in 1526, Erasmus, like Luther, dealt again with the issue of war against the Turks. In 1526 the Turks devastated Hungary and by 1529 they stood before the city walls of Vienna. His

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Hungarian friends were greatly alarmed and informed Erasmus of what they had endured. In spring 1530, in the face of this dire situation, Erasmus published A most useful discussion concerning proposals for war against the Turks.43 In it Erasmus felt called upon to address the accusation that he promoted absolute pacifism and rejected war out of hand. He countered this belief indignantly, but perhaps not very convincingly: “But honest men reading my works will recognize, without any prompting from me, the manifest impertinence of such knavery.” He explained, “I teach that war must never be undertaken unless, after everything else has been tried, it cannot be avoided, because war is by its very nature such a plague that, even if undertaken by the most just of princes in the most just of causes, the wickedness of both officers and men means that it almost always does more harm than good.”44 This ambiguous formulation indicates the difficult situation in which Erasmus found himself. He felt, as he so often did, caught between a rock and a hard place: “I must briefly take issue with two sets of opponents,” he sighed. On one side he lamented the ignorant mob, which was too easily incited to war and called the Turks “dogs and enemies of the Christian name; it does not occur to them that, first of all, they are human beings and, what is more, half-Christian.” He believed that fellow humans should not be attacked without a legitimate cause, and that even when they were enemies they had a right to be respected as human and to be treated with as much good will as possible.45 In the adage Dulce bellum inexpertis he had already asked: “Do you think it is a Christian act to kill even the wicked – as we judge them to be, but who are still men whom Christ died to save – and so make a welcome sacrifice to the devil?”46 Here Erasmus touches on the idea that all people, even enemies, have a right to be respected as fellow human beings. This was an idea that his younger Spanish contemporary Franciscus de Victoria developed further in his 1532 lectures on the colonial wars, which was published only posthumously as De Jure belli Hispanorum in barbaros in 1557. He based the suggestion on natural law, and this later became the foundation of modern international law. On the other hand, Erasmus had to distance himself from pacifists who, like the Anabaptists, rejected any governmental authority. Erasmus refused their argument that the early Christians could do without any secular authorities, arms, or torture by saying: Well, although it was fitting that the church should arise initially from such foundations, there is no necessity for things to remain permanently the same. It grew through a series of miracles, which are not to be looked

The Question of Peace 233 for now. In any case, even then the peace of the church was to some extent safeguarded by the pagan magistrates, for no individual was permitted to kill a Christian.47

Here Erasmus brings up two well-rehearsed historical arguments: first, that the time and circumstances of the early church are gone and are no longer pertinent to those of the sixteenth century. Thus, new criteria have to be found for the reader’s own time since it is not tenable to adopt the lifestyle of the apostles without further analysis. Second, in the time of the apostles the secular authorities administered civil matters for the Christians and the early Christians could not have done without these authorities. Yet what Erasmus had to say about the civil authorities of his own time is, at first glance, disappointing. In 1530 he wrote only, “since there is no other way of keeping peace in a Christian state either, there is a need for secular magistrates who will deter criminals by fear of punishment if they will not observe laws and customs. If we grant the magistrate this power, we must also grant monarchs the right to make war.”48 Erasmus does not take pains to solve the problem systematically. He grants the right – though only very limited – of governments to administer forcible punishment and to wage war, and he simply calls on them to consult their conscience and not to repay evil with evil. He did not provide a definite argument that could relieve the magistrates of a decision. At any given time and in any concrete case they must consider anew what love requires: an abdication of force or a defence by force in order to protect threatened subjects. Until 1524 Erasmus spoke out against a war with the Turks.49 But in 1530 he finally called for war, addressing not only the directly affected Hungarians and Austrians but also all Christians. “It becomes your business [Tunc tua res agitur],” he proclaimed, and he called on the whole Christian West to resist.50 What Erasmus proposed had the dimensions of a world war in which all of Europe would unite to fight against the Sultan who dominated the East: “For although not every campaign against the Turks is legitimate and holy, there are cases when failure to oppose the Turk amounts to nothing less than the betrayal of Christendom to its most implacable foes and the abandonment of our brethren already enslaved beneath their foul yoke.”51 Erasmus had in mind the enslaved Christian brothers, the wretched individual victims of the Turks. It is likely too that Erasmus thought about his many friends and admirers in Hungary and about the young widow, Queen Mary, to whom he had dedicated his tract on widowhood after her husband was killed in the battle of Mohács.52 Faced with their suffering,

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Erasmus felt it imperative to call for war, but that did not mean that the commandment to love the enemy was abolished in his eyes. Indeed not, for Erasmus suggested fighting with “Christian clemency” under Christ’s eyes and “to involve as few as possible in the war and to finish it as quickly as possible, with the least possible bloodshed.”53 For the humanist, the best way was “to conduct an armed campaign in such a way that they [the Turks] will be glad to be defeated”54 – and ultimately convert to Christianity.55 It is easy to see why Alberto Pio accused Erasmus of being inconsistent on the question of war. But Erasmus easily defended himself, emphasizing that he had always advised against war and only permitted it when there was an “extreme necessity.”56 The faculty of the University in Paris criticized Erasmus more profoundly. It took offence at his interpretation of Luke 22:35–8, where Erasmus asked if there can be any reason to repay evil with evil after Christ forbade Peter to unsheathe his sword for his Lord.57 They correctly interpreted that Erasmus rejected all the church-sanctioned reasons for war.58 In addition, they deduced that Erasmus undermined all politics and contradicted both divine and natural law, which allowed war because God had commanded it in the Old Testament.59 This justification of the doctrine of just war on the basis of the Old Testament wars was a reasoning that Erasmus had explicitly rejected in 1517. Erasmus’s defence is revealing. He protested against the accusation of having rejected war out of hand; however, he insisted on a historical approach and refused to retract or mitigate his statement that what was binding in the Old Testament was not unconditionally binding for later eras. He declared succinctly: “The Jews were allowed much that is not allowed to Christians.”60 But he went one step further and charged the Paris faculty with being blind to the changing times. He accused them of maliciously removing the words he had written for Luke in his Paraphrase and of interpreting them as if he – Erasmus – had intended them to be considered for the sixteenth century. Erasmus protested that he had envisioned the words he wrote for Luke to be understood within the context of Luke’s time and to be taken only as relevant for that time, not for the time of the Old Testament, or for contemporary conditions. However, Erasmus clarified immediately that the words he put in Luke’s mouth, namely, that evil may not be rebuffed with evil, should also remain a guideline for later eras. He added that Augustine, who lived much later than Luke, refused to suppress the adoration of false gods by force of arms, though at that time Christians would have had the power to do so.61 In order to legitimate his pacifism, Erasmus

The Question of Peace 235

deliberately quoted Augustine, who was the chief witness for the doctrine of just war and who had explicitly allowed the waging of wars by referring to the Old Testament.62 He must have sorely tested the patience of the Paris faculty with this argument, especially considering that he did not even bother to address their main accusation that his pacifism infringed upon eternal, unchangeable, divine law. Their arguments were weighty, based as they were on the centuries-old consensus that God’s word as it was written down in Holy Scripture contained a timeless truth. Tradition allowed it to be interpreted and at the most amplified, but not changed. Instead of issuing an empathetic response to the understandable indignation of his fellow theologians, Erasmus retorted defiantly that the established justification of war through the Old Testament was only conditionally valid in his day, and that Luke’s words – in other words the directives of the New Testament – must also be accommodated to modern times. It seems that Erasmus refused to notice the insurmountable difficulties that his historical approach posed for his contemporaries. Showing no inclination to accommodate them, he set his own historically differentiated views against their dogmatically fixed convictions. He was not willing to depart from his historical approach at all – not even to save himself from accusations of heresy.

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eighteen

Erasmus’s Views on Women

christiani matrimonii institutio / de vidua christiana / abbatis et eruditae In Erasmus’s time the popular view of women fluctuated between an irrational fear of woman as a seductress or witch1 to exuberant praise of her as the crown of creation,2 a brazen hussy or a pure and devout virgin. One need only read Margaret of Navarre’s Heptaméron – written around 1542 and published posthumously in 1559 – to see what was possible or at least thinkable for some women in this period. The stories she collected bring together a handful of female archetypes: the passive object of a male seducer; the uncontrolled seductress who tricks and teases men; the self-denying woman, unfailingly loyal to her lover; and the exemplary and benign wife.3 The devout spirit of the royal author of these tales, full of sophisticated eroticism and wit, is above reproach. In the prologue she advises a daily reading of the Bible, which she calls the greatest delight for Christians, and the narrators attend Mass each day.4 In her own life, Margaret of Navarre (influenced by the circle of Meaux) demonstrated how self-reliant and determined women of means and status could shape their lives. But her tales and discussions about women also demonstrate the degree to which they accepted their legal and social subordination to men as natural and divinely ordained. In her book the female characters do not even question this double standard. Although the unbridled concupiscence of men is an issue of debate, and the female characters proclaim chastity as their highest virtue, they do not bristle at or decry the fact that men consider it a point of honour when they succeed in seducing them.5

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In scientific discourse, theologians, philosophers, jurists, and physicians – building on Aristotle’s definition of females as mutilated males6 – deemed women inferior creatures who were weaker than men both physically and mentally and in need of guidance. The notion that women are weak, not fully capable of holding rights and therefore needing to be protected, was adopted without hesitation from the Pandects by contemporary legal texts.7 Although Thomas Aquinas emphasized that God created humans as man and woman in his own image (Genesis 1:27), he nonetheless denied to women the total imago Dei.8 Zwingli adopted this tradition by commanding man first and foremost to protect and love his wife “because he [!] is the image of God.”9 Luther explicitly rejected the Aristotelian doctrine of the inferiority of women, but at the same time he declared that woman’s rationality was much more insecure than that of man and that therefore she was not entitled to the same honour and dignity.10 Although in private Luther appeared by all accounts to interact respectfully with his own wife, in his work he often made offensive and pejorative comments – from a modern point of view – on “inferior” females.11 The same tendency – although somewhat milder – can be found in the work of the celibate Erasmus.12 These traditional gender paradigms were deeply entrenched and difficult to shift. Even when leading intellectuals rejected them in principle, they often recurred in their work. In his 1522 tract on marriage Luther polemicized against celibate lifestyles and praised marriage as a divine order of creation and as God’s commandment.13 He justified marriage (which by the late Middle Ages had become a coveted and respected lifestyle option)14 as a God-given institution. And yet by rejecting marriage as a sacrament he cancelled its spiritual relevance. For Luther it was “an external, corporeal thing” and sexual intercourse was sin, although God remitted this original sin through his grace.15 The joy of marriage was for Luther the joy of obeying God even in a wearisome state and of living in an institution that God established.16 Luther preferred not to mention the “benefit and joy” of a loving husband and wife;17 marriage merely provided a means of living out a healthy sexuality and of raising children.18 For Luther, marriage remained an external and secular business, since, as he often emphasized, Christ and his apostles did not espouse it.19 In his Protestant world-view, Luther allocated a respectable role to women as housewives, but he did not improve their inferior civic status in public society other than by arguing for their basic education. Paradoxically, by abolishing the monasteries he removed one of the few opportunities for women to acquire a discrete higher education and activity.20

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Joan Luis Vives, the humanist and friend of Erasmus, did not challenge the notion of women’s inferiority at all, despite arguing vehemently for the higher education of girls. In order to effect a comparison with Erasmus’s tracts on women, it is worth having a closer look at Vives’s 1523 book on women’s education, which he wrote while serving as the tutor to Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary – later Queen Mary I – and also at his 1529 tract on marriage, which was written after Erasmus’s Institutio. Vives ascribed to woman the common canon of vices: she is by nature infirm, timid, avaricious, suspicious, complaining, jealous, confused, frivolous, superstitious, and garrulous.21 According to Vives, a careful education was useful to moderate these natural feminine vices, which unfortunately could never be completely erased.22 Furthermore, he declared that one must also tolerate women’s superstition, since only a few rare and perfect women can find real faith.23 He suggested that any program of study must be accommodated to female weaknesses, particularly to their volatility. They should only be allowed to read those authors who guide the mind towards virtue, and all frivolity was to be avoided. This meant that all the classical poets must be omitted from the female curriculum, not to speak of romances or chapbooks. Women were permitted only to read the Bible, the Church Fathers, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and Christian poets like Prudentius and Iuvencus.24 Furthermore, Vives declared that there was no need for a woman to acquire an eloquent manner of speaking, because it was proper for her to keep silent in public and at home.25 Likewise, the artes liberales were superfluous for a woman because her education applied only to the development of her virtues. She was the educator of her children only for the first years and Vives explicitly advised against her leading a school. She should only learn at home and for herself.26 In fact, a wife should only live for and in her husband, and if widowed she should dedicate her remaining years to the memory of her spouse.27 Erasmus and Vives refer to the same sources to argue their views on women: the Bible and Greek and Roman marriage tracts. Classical wisdom is omnipresent in the suggestions of both: Vives quotes Epiktetus, Xenophon, and Plato on one page of his octavo volume. Erasmus names as his main sources Xenophon, Aristotle, and Plutarch.28 Both authors refer to the same tradition and come from the same humanistic elite, and yet they make their points quite differently. First, let us address the similarities in the two humanists’ views on women. Erasmus had few objections to the overwhelming consensus that women were weaker and therefore more in need of male guidance. In his Christiani matrimonii institutio from 1526 he recorded that the apostle Paul prescribes,

24  Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

and nature and reason command, that wives submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22):29 “For this very reason nature has endowed the male sex a certain ruthlessness and fierceness, but the female with softness and gentleness,” he asserted, and going even further he declared that the female person is “inferior [inferioris est personae]” or, as translated in CWE, “of lower status.”30 Erasmus formulated this only two years after he had published the sensational Colloquium abbatis et eruditae in 1524, in which a humanistically educated young woman lampoons a stupid abbot who boasts to her of his privileges. With superior wit and intelligence she reduces his misogynist arguments to absurdities. Although Erasmus here describes woman as not merely capable of education but even wise, and quotes by name the exceptional daughters of the families More, Pirckheimer, and Blarer “who can rival any man,”31 he does not reject the commandment that wives must submit to their husbands. It is interesting to note the family names that Erasmus cites here. These are all respected humanist and bourgeois families. It is clear that Erasmus’s female ideal could be best realized in this social stratum. The real lives of the most popular of these daughters represented the forms of lifestyles that were possible at that time for women of this social class. Margaret, the eldest daughter of Thomas More, who seems to have been the model for the above-cited Colloquium, was, apart from being an outstanding translator and scholar, a wife and mother who headed a large household and played a prominent role as the mistress of a large number of maidservants and menials. The well-known sisters of Willibald Pirckheimer, the Nuremberg imperial councillor, were nuns. One of them, Charitas, was an educated abbess who was required to manage important administrative functions besides offering spiritual guidance to her sisters; she successfully resisted the abolition of her monastery in the Lutheran city. Margarete Blarer, the sister of the Constance patrician and Reformer Ambrosius Blarer, remained single. She evaded all attempts to marry her off and was an active supporter of the Reformation. Reformers of Upper Germany consulted her on a variety of issues. By citing these women as exemplars Erasmus demonstrated that his ideal woman was not necessarily limited to one type of life. His ideal could be realized in the cloister, in motherhood and marriage, or as a single woman. Erasmus not only composed a tract on marriage and widowhood, he addressed an essay to nuns as well in which he warmly recommended active charity from within the cloister.32 Although Erasmus referred to particular models of living in these tracts, the goal is the same for all: a life in the footsteps of Christ.

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Nevertheless, in Erasmus’s Institution of Christian Matrimony the wife’s principal duty was to subjugate herself to her husband. Erasmus does not question this hierarchy, though he notices how intrinsically disagreeable the submission might be for her. He emphasized that the privileged position of the husband did not entitle him to keep her “as a maidservant.” If Paul had intended this, he would have commanded that women should submit to their husbands “as their Lords,” but instead he wrote: “as to the Lord.”33 Thus, when the wife obeys her husband she honours Christ. Instead of interpreting the subjugation of the wife as the natural result of her supposed weakness, Erasmus reinterpreted it as following in the footsteps of Christ, who was obedient unto death (Philippians 2:8). Interpreting the role of wife in this way puts the husband under obligation. He must deal with his wife as Christ does with the church, as a head that does everything for the good of the body to which it is inseparably joined.34 Christ came not “to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45).35 Paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22–6, Erasmus suggested that husbands are superior to their wives not so that they may exercise tyranny over them, but rather that they “bestow on them with that love that Christ has bestowed and continues to bestow on his church. So far was he from repudiating her as adulterous and rebellious that he surrendered himself to death to purchase her salvation.”36 According to the Christiani matrimonii institutio, strictly speaking each must submit to the other, but for the sake of the “proper order of things” the dominant position of men is maintained even when the husband has a bad disposition and does not follow the example of Christ in caring for his wife. This dominance is not unconditional, however; just as in the case of obedience to the civil power,37 it is limited. Wives – and also children – have a right to resist if what a husband demands is against piety and public morals. In such cases his wife must not blindly obey; on the contrary, she must keep in mind that “we ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).38 But it was not just in extreme cases that the wife should take the initiative. According to Erasmus, she must also act if her husband makes bad decisions. This did not only apply to behaviour in the house, a domain that Erasmus allocated exclusively to the woman and where the husband may only interfere and exercise his authority over his wife in emergency cases;39 if in his profession or otherwise in his actions the husband goes astray, then his wife must – as gently as possible and without damaging his authority – rebuke her husband and he must listen to her: “You husbands must accept that the Lord says the same to you, whenever your wife’s advice affects your reputation or your

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welfare [salutem].” For a wife often has “advice worthy of a man [mascula consilia]” and “a man should not be ashamed to listen to good advice from his wife.” “There is nothing to prevent a wife teaching her husband a thing or two [Hac ratione nihil vetat quo minus et uxor doceat maritum].”40 Clearly, Erasmus did not reject the subordination of the wife to her husband in principle, but he reinterpreted it and in doing so intrinsically questioned it. A wife was, if not equal in rank, equal in merit. His ideas of hierarchy concerned not only gender but also social status. Before Christ everyone was equal since, as Erasmus reminds us, God made us equal in so many ways. He redeemed us by the same death, he washed us in the same blood, he justified us with the same faith, he refreshes us with the same Spirit, he strengthens us with the same sacraments, he honours us with the same name, calling us his brothers and the children of God, and he has summoned us all to share the same inheritance of heavenly life.41

Of more importance to Erasmus than any difference in rank was the basic consideration that according to Galatians 3:28 all men and women are one in Christ. Therefore the commandment that women must submit to men is relative. With regard to male dominance in marriage, Erasmus took the same position that he did with regard to the role of government in the state. He did not feel obliged to question the hierarchical models of his time, whether monarchic, republican, or – as in matrimony – gender-specific in nature. Obviously, in his view they were up to date, but they were not to be enforced unconditionally. Erasmus relativized them with the consideration that before God all humans are equal. Just as a prince must always remember “that he is a human being and a free man ruling over men who are also human and free,”42 so must a husband ask himself: “Can you consider her beneath you, when God accepts her as daughter, and Christ as a sister?”43 According to Erasmus, a wife should ideally be a partner and a friend to her spouse. Erasmus began his tract with praise for attraction, friendship, and love.44 Over and over he emphasized that the minds of the spouses must be in harmony; that the most important thing in marriage is that the souls conjoin.45 They should be united by equal devotion to God, “then no earthly misfortune – not poverty, nor illness, nor age – can impair our joyous partnership through life.”46 The foundation of love is the union in faith. Without this basis Erasmus could not imagine an intimate marital relationship. Therefore, he strongly advised against

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inter-faith marriages.47 Luther saw things differently. From his point of view the marital union was a secular matter and thus he saw no difficulty with inter-faith marriages.48 For Erasmus, the love between spouses reflected, as demonstrated in the Letter to the Ephesians 5:22–33, the love of Christ for his church. In verse 31 the letter quotes Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” The letter adds that “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” In his exegesis Erasmus emphasized mutual love. In the Institutio the bridegroom confidently encourages the bride: “But the authority nature has given to the husband, and which the apostles confirmed and sanctioned, will not harm you, our mutual affection will smooth every path.”49 There is no reference to a proviso in the love of the husband towards a subordinated spouse. On the contrary, the husband must love his wife just as Christ loved the church and thus should, if necessary, give his life for her, devote himself to her, and not shrink from “insult, scourging, and finally the cross” in her defence.50 Thus, dominion is turned into service. In The Colloquium Puerpera, Erasmus dared to upset the hierarchy. In it a young woman asks self-confidently: “which is weaker, the one who makes concessions to the other or the one to whom concession is made?”51 In the Institution of Matrimony Erasmus frankly advises that “the most honourable victory is that won by patience, and for a woman the best way to rule is through obedience.”52 In his colloquium Coniugium Erasmus even dared to advise women to tame their husbands as a tamer domesticates wild beasts.53 Vives interpreted marriage differently. He also referred, as do nearly all the authors of Christian marriage guidebooks, to Ephesians 5; he too emphasized that man shall love his spouse as Christ loved the church and must, if necessary, give his life in order to protect her. But for Vives this love is not a love between equals. What is important is that the husband is the head and the wife the body; the wife must honour her head obediently and the husband always consider that he is obliged to reign over his wife fairly: “He shall love her prudently and most powerfully: yet as a father a child.”54 And he may never “lose himself in love to the extent of forgetting that he is the man and chief of the house and of his wife.”55 By 1516 Erasmus had already challenged the view that the sacramental nature of marriage could be deduced from Ephesians 5:32. He argued that the Letter to the Ephesians speaks in this verse about a

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mystery, not about a sacramentum, since μυστήριον was wrongly translated in the Vulgate. Neither the New Testament nor the Church Fathers understood the sacrament of marriage in the sense of the current ecclesiastical doctrine.56 Accordingly, Erasmus rejected the traditional doctrine of the sacrament. He did not accept the idea of grace ex opere operato, upon consummation of a marriage.57 In his view, grace did not automatically follow marriage. The couple must first prove themselves capable of it. Erasmus argued that if a marriage breaks up, real union has never taken place, even if the marriage was legally consummated.58 In his view, it is sacramental grace that makes a marriage permanent. In the face of failing marriages he asked: “Would it not be better to say, what the devil, through his servants, has joined, let God, through his servants, put asunder?” Yet at the same time he could hold to the word of Jesus: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:9).59 Although Erasmus rejected the traditional doctrine of the sacrament of marriage, he did not deny the sacramental character of matrimony. On the contrary, he gave it a new, deep, and in his phrasing “sacramental” significance. For in contrast to Luther and Zwingli, Erasmus did not feel obliged to deny a matrimonial sacrament because the New Testament and the Church Fathers had not explicitly assigned a sacramental dignity to it. For Erasmus, marriage was an image, a gift, and an example of the “supreme mystery” of faith and was in this sense a sacrament. As God in his love for humankind took on human nature and became one with it, thus may man and woman unite and mirror this mystery of faith. In Christ “an indissoluble link was forged between the heavenly and the terrestrial, the eternal and the mortal, the visible and the invisible” and thus his “diverse natures come together in a single being.” The creator became creation and the giver of life was handed over to death. The conjunction of male and female, when “they are no longer two but one flesh” (Mark 10:8), is a manifestation of the unity of God and humans in Christ. As the divine nature embraces the human, so shall the masculine embrace the feminine so “that their life is based on partnership, not tyranny [ut aequa sit vitae societas, non dominatus].”60 God’s love, which motivated him to become human, and Christ’s love for his church are examples for spouses and promise a delightful mental and spiritual communion.61 In 1523 Erasmus had already developed this new sacramental interpretation of matrimony, which – as the conjunction of two souls – gave it a new dignity,62 but he elaborated on the concept only in 1526. Neither Vives, who did not challenge the traditional doctrine of sacraments, nor

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Luther or Zwingli, who rejected a sacrament of matrimony, adopted this interpretation. Luther held to his view that matrimony is holy only because God established it.63 For Zwingli, the simile of Christ as bridegroom and his church as bride, according to Ephesians 5:32, demonstrated only that the spouses, following the example of Christ, must mutually do and bear all. He did not aim to give matrimony a deeper spiritual significance as a community of love.64 The younger generation was more open-minded. Heinrich Bullinger, for instance, praised the delights of love,65 and in 1552, Melanchthon, like Erasmus, characterized matrimonial love between man and woman as a reflection of the divine and human nature of Christ.66 The historian may well ask how Erasmus came to his interpretation. As far as I know he was the first to relate matrimony to the two natures of Christ, but he was, of course, not the first to relate the two natures of Christ to the nuptial love between Christ and his church. It is well known, for instance, that Bernard of Clairvaux connected them in his interpretation of the Song of Songs,67 as did Origen.68 Obviously, Erasmus was so familiar with this comparison that he wrongly – but probably in good faith – suggested that it was used not only by the orthodox Fathers but also in the Bible.69 And yet Petrus Lombardus had good reason to refuse to relate the verses referring to matrimony from Ephesians 5 to the incarnation.70 By doing this Erasmus violated the text in a way that is unexpected in an exegete of his skill. It is interesting to note that although he presented the notion willingly in his Institution of Matrimony, he did not dare to put forward this comparison in his Paraphrase of the Letter to the Ephesians. In the former work this comparison served as a useful tool with which to elevate the value of matrimony,71 and with this comparison he was able to counterbalance the high value traditionally placed on celibacy. In monastic nuptial mysticism the conjunction of the divine and human natures of Christ was regarded as the most proper and the deepest union. The joining of Christ with his church, which represented the loving union of the virginal soul with its divine bridegroom, was a reflection of this.72 By directly relating matrimony to the two natures of Christ, Erasmus quasi-demoted monastic nuptial mysticism. At the same time he left the marital union its sacramental character and emphasized at the end of his chapter on the sacrament: “You married people must not be made downhearted by the lustre attaching to the professions of nun or priest; your calling has its own glories.”73 For Erasmus a sacramental union, as he understood it, was only achievable between partners with the same level of education, and thus he called upon men to teach their spouses if they had not received a

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Christian-humanistic education.74 In contrast to Vives, Erasmus did not limit the canon of learning for woman. It explicitly comprised the studia humanitatis and all artes liberales; in short, everything Erasmus recommended in De pueris instituendis for his male pupils.75 If possible, a woman should be able to independently read and interpret the Bible from the original Greek or Hebrew text. She should have the ability to make her house a microcosm of the philosophia Christi and a shelter for a Christian lifestyle which benefits all housemates, children as well as domestics. Erasmus respected the common zeitgeist regarding the upbringing of women only insofar as he insisted on the control of young women and on practising chaste, exemplary behaviour around them.76 In his 1529 book On the Christian Widow, addressed to the young, widowed Queen Mary of Hungary, Erasmus goes even further and suggests that adult women, particularly widows, should not be limited to the house. Erasmus explicitly refers her to a broader social circle: she should agitate for a program of reform and practise a Christian lifestyle outside her own household. The Christian widow must not only look after her own children but also her nieces and nephews, distant relatives, and acquaintances – in fact all Christians are recommended to her protection, since all members of Christ’s body are her brothers and sisters.77 With this work Erasmus offered widows a different model from Vives. The Spaniard restricted himself to classic exemplars like Valeria Messalina, who sought to sacrifice her whole life to the memory of her dead spouse, or to the New Testament Anna, who stayed in the temple praying day and night.78 Erasmus passed over most of these traditional heroines and (in addition to Anna) used as his exemplars of ideal widowhood the powerful women of ancient Israel, like the prophetess Deborah, “who excelled men in prudence and fortitude,”79 and more notably, Judith. Judith was the heroine of a legendary book from the time of the Maccabees. The book was included in the Septuagint and Erasmus regarded it as canonical. The enemy laid siege to Judith’s town, whose inhabitants were starving and thirsty. Since the elders could not find a solution to their troubles they promised the desperate citizens that they would surrender the town after five days, well aware that the enemy would plunder and destroy it. Judith, a young and beautiful widow, keenly rebuked the elders for their cowardice and determined to use her feminine wiles to free the town. She entered the enemy camp, seduced Holofernes, the captain of the besiegers, and beheaded the drunken man with his own sword. Horror-stricken at the death of their leader, the enemies fled in confusion and on Judith’s advice the Israelites hunted them down and collected rich booty. After the

Erasmus’s Views on Women 24

horrific deed was accomplished, Judith calmly returned to her house and continued with her pious and humble daily work. The Church Fathers created a topos of the brave and chaste woman from the figure of Judith.80 The Middle Ages allegorized her in art and literature as a figure symbolizing the victory of virtue over vices, of humility and chastity over pride, of the church over the Antichrist. The Renaissance adopted and perpetuated this interpretation,81 which Erasmus also used and which one must always keep in mind when considering discussions or depictions of Judith from this period.82 But Erasmus also considered the literal sense of the story. He quickly passed over the assassination and – like his scriptural source – praised Judith as a prototype of meek self-effacement, of virtuous manners, and of pious devotion. He also celebrated her active charity, which is not spoken of in the original source;83 moreover, he was utterly fascinated by her absolute authority over the men in her community. Enthusiastically, he imagined how she reprimanded the frightened elders and animated them with her trust in God: “Judith was a woman, a widow; she ruled over no territory and held no public office. Nonetheless the elders of the people did not hesitate to follow her advice.” He added that the “elders and the statesmen were reproved by a woman, and they endured it.” For Erasmus, this was a woman worthy of superlatives: “Here you may recognize the greatest bravery coupled with the greatest modesty, and the greatest wisdom with the greatest piety.”84 In his view, widows should model themselves on brave Judith and learn from her fervent engagement on behalf of her city, and from her moral authority over the elders whom she encouraged and to whom she gave new hope – she taught the helpless and gave clear and wise instruction to the hesitant.85 Erasmus’s depiction of Judith presents a stark contrast to Vives’s suggestion that widows would do better to remain confined in retired widowhood for the rest of their days.86 Erasmus did not dare to advise the young, widowed Queen Mary of Hungary to remain unwed87 (she remained a widow against the wishes of the House of Habsburg), but he did recommend that she engage in high politics and intervene at court against wars.88 At the end of his tract he entreats the widow queen: Go forth, then, illustrious woman, to uphold the standard of piety for all widows and all high-born ladies and, following in the footsteps of women who have been highly praised, be at once the teacher of the court of princes and an example of evangelical integrity. May it thus befall you with Judith and other noble matrons whose praises we have celebrated to enjoy your eternal Spouse Jesus Christ.89

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The ideal Erasmian woman was characterized by her chaste self-effacement, but when necessity demanded it she embraced her power and acted as public advocate of Christ’s cause. Erasmus never questioned her ability to do so: “it is a little embarrassing to say this, but none the less the fact is so plain that it is impossible to avoid doing so: The order of women offers more examples of religion and piety than that of men.”90 The widow’s piety should benefit all. Although they should be restrained and self-effacing, women should, if necessary, fly in the face of convention and even in the face of the prescription of Paul to submit to men. The wife in the Colloquium abbatis et eruditae threatens sternly: “If you are not careful, the net result will be that we’ll preside in the theological schools, preach in the churches, and wear your mitres.” And in answer to the abbot’s horror-stricken cry of “God forbid!” she tartly retorts, “No, it will be up to you to forbid. But if you keep on as you’ve begun, geese may do the preaching sooner than put up with you tongue-tied pastors. The world’s a stage that’s topsy-turvy now, as you see. Everyone must play his part or – exit.”91 In Erasmus’s eyes, his male contemporaries did not play their part on the world’s stage as they should. The magistrates had failed, the princes did not know how to keep peace, and the bishops led lives of decadence and depravity. Women, however, were quite ready and willing to engage in public life, and not just women of high or royal status like Mary, who as queen consort of Hungary successfully (and later as governor of the Netherlands with less success) campaigned for Erasmian reforms.92 During the troubles of the Reformation, women of all social strata bravely engaged themselves to the cause publicly and sometimes even physically. Female Anabaptists preached,93 and Angela of Grumbach published pamphlets against the professoriate of Ingolstadt.94 In 1522 many women, some of them reportedly in the advanced stages of pregnancy, burst into the council of Basel in order to plead for their reformed pastor.95 In Waldshut, women defended Balthasar Hubmair even by force of arms.96 And the nuns of Diessenhofen defended themselves against the reformed mob with stones, cudgels, and broomsticks. In the fierce tumults of Geneva, women shared in the bloodletting.97 And in the village of Benken in the countryside around Basel it was a woman who led iconoclasm.98 In spite of his fondness for Judith, Erasmus disapproved of such violent means – in men or women – but he tried, in the face of the upheavals of his time, to motivate women to act publicly and outside of their domestic sphere. It was important for him that society should develop a modern Gospel-centred lifestyle. Time and circumstances may determine who

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established the basis for it – man or woman – and which part they played. What did not change, in his view, was that all were responsible for God’s kingdom in equal measure and must campaign for it as best they can. Just as the preaching of God’s word and the legal order must accommodate changes in society, so too must the role of women, as outlined in the Gospel, be accommodated as a whole to the vicissitudes of time. If in the early Christian Pauline communities women had to keep silent, they should now be brave and engage themselves publicly when necessary for Christ’s sake.

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nineteen

Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity

purgatio / ecclesiastes / letters This study developed from the public accusations Luther made against Erasmus in March 1534 in a published letter to Nikolaus von Amsdorf. As was described in the first chapter of this book, the Reformer accused Erasmus of seeking to destroy Christianity with his historical approach. The approach had led Erasmus to declare: “We dare to call the Holy Spirit true God, proceeding from the Father and the Son, which the ancients did not dare to do.”1 Erasmus received the published form of Luther’s accusatory letter in April 1534 and responded to it immediately with his Purgatio. In 1534 Erasmus was more than sixty years old and – for his time – a very old man. He had been living in Freiburg since 1529 but it had been difficult for him to leave Basel. While the clerics who were faithful to the Roman church had departed the city immediately after the Mass was banned, Erasmus hesitated and lingered in the city for more than two months. He was loath to abandon his best friends and an environment that agreed with him. By contrast, he never felt quite at home in Freiburg; he remained loyal to Froben, his publishing house in Basel, and messengers travelled constantly between the two cities with his instructions. In Freiburg he lived almost on-call. Not only did he expect his death, which he was prepared to accept trustfully from God’s hand at any moment, but he also waited and longed for an end to the general tumult.2 He prayed that peace might finally come to Europe and that Christians might overcome the schism. His hopes were not for the victory of one party but for the victory of truth.3 Only then would he decide on a permanent residence. The situation depressed him, and his

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letters are full of lamentations about the times. To his mind there was seldom an era so violent: six hundred Erinyes seem to have sallied forth from Hades! he declared. Neither the secular nor the clerical sphere seemed sane to him any longer. But he still believed that this evil could be remedied if secular and clerical authorities committed themselves to restoring evangelical piety. In his view, men who led pure lives and possessed unique erudition and good judgment could then function as an advisory body. This ideal council could advise as to which canon laws should be abandoned and which changed into recommendations. Furthermore, he felt that princes should entrust the spiritual guidance of their subjects to those persons who were well educated and experienced in interpreting God’s word and who had learned to teach, advise, console, rebuke, and refute.4 It is clear that Erasmus still believed in his program of reforms and that if the responsible persons were only trained well enough in God’s word everything might go better. In spite of his age and his suffering painful bilious attacks, Erasmus was prepared to contribute his part to healing the schism. During his years in Freiburg he published an astonishing number of works, more than twenty publications, among them ten first editions, including De vidua christiana, De pueris instituendis, De amabili ecclesiae concordia, and Explanatio symboli Apostolorum, to name only a few of the best-known from this period. Erasmus also revised and expanded older books like the Colloquia and the Adagia as well as the notes on his New Testament, and he continued to work on his editions of the Church Fathers. In these years he focused particularly on Chrysostomos and Basilius. When Erasmus answered Luther’s letter to Amsdorf within a few weeks of its publication, he was already ill and old, and dissatisfied with the events of his time – but he had not lost his mental buoyancy. His rebuttal was polite but energetic, pointing out that Luther’s “dogma was to teach nothing that was not expressly stated in the canonical scriptures. I myself find peace by following the judgment of the church in many matters. In this case Luther fights against his own dogma.”5 This statement requires some explanation: Luther had accused Erasmus of Arianism and, worse, of undermining Christian faith by proclaiming that the doctrine of Trinity was not found explicitly in Holy Scripture. Here Erasmus suggested that it was not he but Luther who had to refute the doctrine of the Trinity if he wanted to remain true to his principle of accepting only Holy Scripture. But Erasmus did not content himself with such subtle arguments. He soon tried to directly undermine the Lutheran principle “to allow only the bare, pure scripture [nudam et meram scripturam]” as an absolute rule. How is it, he asked, “that we

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gather today so much from Holy Scriptures of which the church for so many centuries knew nothing, though the scriptures remained the same”? The doctrine of Trinity is only one example, he declared. He pointed out that although the earliest Christians and Church Fathers believed only in a resurrection of the dead after the Last Judgment, now everyone believed that they would go to paradise immediately. There are countless further examples: Where do such ambiguities come from, Erasmus asked. Were not the early Christians also intelligent men who read the Holy Scriptures carefully?6 Erasmus accepted Luther’s accusation of ambiguity, others had also accused him of this and he did not necessarily consider it an evil:7 “As if the Holy Scriptures and the works of the orthodox teachers were not full of ambiguous terms!” he answered, and “what if all that was ever handed down to us is ambiguous? What if we do not have human words in which we can speak unequivocally about divine things?” Here Erasmus referred not only to the metaphorical terms that described God, like “lion, stone, lamb, and vine,” terms that Luther also believed ought to be interpreted, he also named the common anthropomorphical terms used in Holy Scripture to describe God’s actions, such as “hatred, love, rage, wrath, sorrow, and mercy,”8 terms that are often used in the Bible and which could not be passed over in contemporary theological discourse. Luther, like many others, also used these terms in his sermons, usually without explanation. Erasmus suggested that nobody, including Luther, could speak about God without employing ambiguous terms. Erasmus accepted his own ambiguity, since according to him God’s eternal and error-free word unavoidably became ambiguous when men preached it at different times, in different localities, and in different languages for different people. Erasmus sacrificed a great deal of his reputation by persisting in this conviction. He had been in step with the times when he first campaigned to release theology from the subtleties of Scholasticism. After some decades of resistance even the Scholastics adopted his philological approach to the Bible text and promoted the study of the Church Fathers.9 Everybody read the tracts that he wrote in his characteristically witty, humanist style. But the majority of spiritual leaders were nonetheless unwilling to do without clear articles of faith during this time of increasing confessionalization. Luther’s letter to Amsdorf is not only evidence of the all too human disagreements and prejudices between great thinkers and Christians, it also revealed the Reformer’s deep resentment of the “phenomenon” of Erasmus. Erasmus was a highly educated man who had dedicated most of his lifetime to the study of Holy Scripture, and although his

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New Testament was an indispensable instrument for the Reformers he did not want to deal with the consequences that, in Luther’s view, naturally followed a serious study of the Gospels. Luther must have asked himself why Erasmus was not ready to abandon his ambivalence and to make unequivocal declarations. Why was he not willing to proclaim articles of faith which defined Christian truth succinctly and in plain words? In this respect Luther had himself set an example for many, risking his own life in the process. Perhaps he thought he could expect the same from Erasmus. But by 1534 Luther had long been disappointed and had given up expecting anything of the sort from the great humanist.10 But, as this study has – I hope – made clear, Erasmus could never have committed himself to Luther’s terms, for in doing so he would have been betraying his life’s work.11 He had dedicated his life to the transmission of the Gospel message, most notably by attempting to restore the original Gospel text. He edited and commented on the New Testament according to the Greek manuscripts and republished the works of the Church Fathers. In his Paraphrases and edifying treatises he attempted, by building on the tradition of the Church Fathers, to allow the Gospel to speak for his time in an updated way. In his view, the transmission of the Gospel message had been initiated in an oral tradition. The writing down of the apostolic letters and the Gospel was the second step in the history of its transmission. It was afflicted with the problems of all traditions: human errors, linguistic inaccuracies, time-dependent prejudices, which had slowly crept into the texts of the biblical authors who remained – though inspired by the Holy Spirit – fallible human beings. Thus, Erasmus felt his work in establishing an accurate original text was not final. Interpreters had to ask themselves continually what a text meant for its own time. Likewise, the commentator or paraphrast had to accommodate texts to his or her own time. Up to his last days Erasmus worked on revisions of the New Testament, correcting the annotations and collecting new insights from the abundant treasures of tradition. Although it was not easy for him, Erasmus was always ready to change his opinion on a topic, even if he had advocated it publicly, and to ask all Christians to meditate on the Gospel afresh. He entreated his contemporaries to live a Christian life according to the Gospel. Yet, whether it was a question of legal affairs, high politics, or social issues, he never sought to give universally valid prescriptions. He believed that by using the Gospel as a guide every Christian had to act anew and accommodate him- or herself to his or her own time and circumstances. Opponents and friends alike pressed Erasmus to say what he really

Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity  255

meant, to create a quasi-authoritative key to his work. If he did not clarify what his point of view was before he died and if he would not make a definitive statement of articles of faith for posterity, there would be much confusion, warned Vives in 1526.12 Erasmus was neither willing nor able to heed this advice. He saw himself as a child of his time, a new time that abandoned traditions and went forward with new ideas. Even as a boy he felt compelled to pursue the new humanist studies that had only just begun to find their way into the schools and universities of Northern Europe. In the monastery, he dreamed of living in a Golden Age. And later, though he could have committed himself to earnest if not formal theological study in the manner of the Scholastics while in Paris,13 he lampooned the traditional lectures there as outdated. Instead of dedicating himself to “truth-finding” in disputation or to the systematization of dogmas, he developed an epoch-making humanist pedagogy for his pupils. In a poetry contest he adopted salvific historical themes from popular medieval mystery plays and cast them in new humanist forms. After his first visit to England, he claimed in his Enchiridion to adorn the temple of the Lord through his new studies, which was in his eyes dishonoured by too much “barbarism.” Even at that time he had a commentary on Romans in mind. In 1504 chance led him to Lorenzo Valla’s unpublished critical notes on the Vulgate. He saw immediately that a philological annotation of the New Testament was a new and timely task. He abandoned his old plans and accepted the challenge. In a herculean effort he learned Greek and acquired the necessary philological skills, and after twelve years of study he achieved his goal. He published his Novum instrumentum, and Europe praised him as the renewer of theology; indeed, he had earned this title. As the advocate of relevant Christian teaching he created a new humanist method with which to approach theology and began to paraphrase the New Testament for lay people in an accessible and popular style. He hoped to work together with like-minded scholars to renew theology and society. Sadly, this dream was not fulfilled. His lifetime was marked by wars, hatred, and quarrels. But Erasmus never abandoned his hope for reforms. In the commentaries to his proverbs, in his Colloquies, in his reform tracts, and in his vast correspondence throughout Europe he campaigned continually for a revived Christendom. He intervened in the debates of his time and offered his contemporaries many inspiring ideas with regard to the doctrine of God and Trinity, of justification, predestination, and will. It was his historical approach that drove the desire to adapt himself to his time, to question his own arguments, and to continually rethink

256 Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

whatever he had discerned in the Gospel according to new circumstances. But in an era of intensifying confessionalism, his interpretations were bound to fall increasingly behind the times. In the turbulent era of the Reformation and the Council of Trent no one had the time, energy, or presence of mind to question everything, or to meticulously take circumstances into account and decide on pressing problems in each case anew and guided by the spirit of Christian love. Both sides were seeking firm and unequivocal articles that would have maximum impact and longevity. Luther had long since broken away from Erasmus’s approach and in the Religious Colloquies the adherents of Erasmus could not prevail; they were soundly defeated at the Council of Trent. Yet, there were some exceptions to this rule. By the middle of the sixteenth century the works of Erasmus experienced a renaissance, not just in Basel, where the edition of his opera omnia was published in 1540/1, but also in Zurich. Besides the three complete editions of the Paraphrases in German, numerous Erasmian works were published for schools,14 and Erasmus remained an author in great demand. The Zurich translation of his Paraphrases, which was designed as an edifying biblical book, was widely read throughout the Holy Roman Empire and served as a model for English translations. In the Church of England, every parish was obliged by royal command to acquire the Paraphrases in the vernacular and to display them publicly.15 Minority churches like the Anabaptists and Antitrinitarians referred not only to Erasmus’s tolerance but also to his critical notes.16 His Colloquia continued to be used in schools and exerted a strong influence on the educated elite in Europe. Today in libraries countless extant examples of various Erasmus editions dating from the sixteenth up to the second half of the seventeenth century are proof of his lasting impact. Anyone studying the history of ideas attentively will always find in it new traces of Erasmian thinking. Modern scholars of pedagogy are aware of this fact, which is confirmed by the many educational institutes rooted in the humanistic tradition that are still named after Erasmus. But because his exegetical principles remained unstated, critical Bible scholarship seems scarcely to notice him despite the fact that modern historical-exegetical research has not only built on his preparatory work but also unconsciously taken over his exegetical rules. Of course, with the infallible hindsight of five centuries and continuing studies, scholars accuse him of occasionally neglecting those principles or of only going part way. He did not establish a chronology of the biblical texts and had almost nothing to say about source criticism. His was not a historical-critical method in the modern sense of the word,

Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity  25

which is why I speak of his historical approach and not of his historicalcritical theology. Nonetheless, the critical theologians of the eighteenth century built on the questions that Erasmus asked when dealing with the New Testament in requesting the origin of a passage, by whom it was spoken, to whom it was addressed, as well as the time, occasion, terminology, context, and message of a text. Furthermore, they adopted many of his corrections and bold interpretations that were so startling in the sixteenth century and are considered commonplace today. His annotated New Testament and his Paraphrases should be, along with the Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, and the Reformers, required reading for every historically minded exegete. It is to Erasmus’s credit that even today this is a far from dull exercise: his work remains rewarding and horizon-broadening reading. Erasmus’s exegetical writings are equally indispensable for the scholar of Reformation, the Council of Trent, and early confessionalism. The controversy over free will was not his only or his most important contribution to the theological debate of the sixteenth century. Indeed, many of the Reformers’ interpretations gain greater depth and are given broader context when viewed in comparison with those of Erasmus. Of course, the reverse is also true: the failings and the strengths of Erasmus as an exegete can only be seen when he is studied in comparison with the theology of his contemporaries. As he would have wished, Erasmus continues to offer insights not only for specialists but also for all intellectually active people. His Colloquies and his Praise of Folly are still fascinating reading more than five hundred years later. Erasmus lived for two more years after he penned his answer to Luther’s charges. He used this time to work on the Ecclesiastes, which he had been planning since 1522. Considering that he was not a preacher himself, it could not have been easy for Erasmus to complete this homiletic handbook in four parts. Nevertheless he did complete it, and Amerbach persuaded him to return to Basel to oversee the printing. Amerbach had, after some hard soul-searching and with Erasmus’s counsel,17 resolved to participate in the evangelical Lord’s Supper, which was then required for all the city’s inhabitants. But by that time a moderate interpretation of the Lord’s Supper had been introduced in Basel. Immediately after his decision Amerbach became the rector of the university, which was then experiencing a serious decline. It is likely that he did everything in his power to draw the highly esteemed Erasmus back to his city.18 Erasmus was warmly received in the hospitable house of Hieronymus Froben (son of Johannes) and there he attended to the last stages in publishing the book that would crown

258 Erasmus’s Reform Ideas

his life’s work. Indeed, the Ecclesiastes is much more than a traditional textbook on preaching: Erasmus applied the rules of classical rhetoric to the spreading of God’s message,19 and discredited the contemporary theme-sermons.20 He called for a responsible exegesis that was conscious of the historical distance from the biblical texts and interpreted them accurately in the context of their own time. “The power of time is so enormous,” he explained, that it mutates into another condition not only those things which are firmly established according to the opinion of those who established them, but also those which are solid in themselves. As if the malevolence of nature guarantees that there can be no definite knowledge that can be transmitted to posterity in written form with unquestionable reliability.

Everything is in flux: “where once was a mountain, is now a plain, or where once was a city, is now a lake.” Not even “trees or bushes” today “match with the descriptions of the ancients.”21 If one were to quote these words anonymously today, they might easily be mistaken for nineteenth-century or even more contemporary ideas. However, as the above passage demonstrates, by the sixteenth century, long before Darwin and Foucault, there was already a presentiment of the permutation of nature as well as culture. The exegete needs a great deal of background information and must draw on a rich experience to adequately understand the biblical texts. In this respect Erasmus was exemplary. At the same time, he suggested that preachers must adapt themselves to their contemporary audience, and pay close attention to “the circumstances of time, location and persons.”22 In other words, they must be aware of the passage of time and must search out the exact meaning of the author in order to promulgate the ideas anew. With the publication of Ecclesiastes Erasmus completed his life’s work. It complements his restored New Testament and the new exegetical method he applied to it. In the Ecclesiastes he provided a humanistic foundation for homiletics and once more fulfilled his role of contributor to the renewal of theology. He remained in Froben’s house, where he was cared for until his death. In his final illness he could not break away from his friends in Basel, the city he had left some years before when the Reformation was first introduced. By the time he returned, iconoclasm was over, the city was quiet, and the Reformation was consolidated. Although participation in the Reformed Lord’s Supper was obligatory for all inhabitants of the city, nobody dared to force Erasmus to accept it. However, it was still unthinkable to bring a Roman Catholic priest to Erasmus’s deathbed,

Conclusion: Erasmus as Advocate of a New Christianity  259

and the dying humanist would not receive Oswald Myconius, the Reformed Antistes, with whom he had once shared friendly intercourse. He died without clerical attendance. Luther cruelly remarked on the occasion that Erasmus died as he had lived, as an Epicurean who, without spiritual comfort, would go to hell.23 His friends also believed that Erasmus died as he had lived: with Christian patience and a pious mind, placing all his faith in Jesus Christ.24 Two years earlier he had written in his De praeparatione ad mortem that the dying man must not despair if a cleric is unable to attend him. In such cases the dying man must confess his sins to God and through prayer seek the grace of God.25 He must cling to Christ and trust in his salvation.26 According to the testimony of his friends, Erasmus died in this very manner. Beatus Rhenanus preserved his last words: “‘O Iesu, misericordia; Domine, libera me; Domine, fac finem; Domine, miserere mei’, et Germanica lingua ‘Lieuer Got’”27 – “‘O Jesus have mercy! Lord, release me, Lord, make an end, Lord, have mercy!’ And in his native language: ‘Dear God!’” Melanchthon did not doubt the account given by Erasmus’s friends. When he died in Wittenberg in 1560, twenty-four years after Erasmus, surrounded by his university colleagues and the clerics of the town, he sighed in prayer: “Domine, fac finem” – “Lord, make an end!” These were also Erasmus’s dying words, and according to the record of his death Melanchthon explicitly reminded his visitors that the great humanist had used the same words.28 Thus, a generation later Erasmus was still a pertinent exemplar and ideal. Three years earlier Melanchthon had written that Erasmus “lives on in his works,” particularly in his interpretation of the New Testament and in his Adagia.29 And in his old age Melanchthon continued to warmly recommend the works of Erasmus to the young,30 declaring that a great mental power was at work in Erasmus and he had in him outstanding virtues. And he gave great support to language studies, which are so necessary to the church and civil life. We shall keep him in grateful memory. We shall read him and thankfully celebrate his name.31

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Abbreviations

Allen ASD BRA

BSLK BSRK

Busa CChr SL CO CSEL CWE ERSY Ferguson Friedberg GCS H

Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. Ed Percy S. Allen. 12 vols (Oxford 1906–58). Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam 1969– ). Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Reformation in den Jahren 1519 bis Anfang 1534. Ed Emil Dürr and Paul Roth (Basel 1921– 50). Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen 1959). Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche. In authentischen Texten mit geschichtlicher Einleitung und Register. Ed E.F. Karl Müller (Leipzig 1903). S. Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia. Ed Roberto Busa (Stuttgart 1980). Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina (Tournhout 1954– ). Johannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia. Corpus Reformatorum vol 29 ff (Braunschweig 1863– ). Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna 1866– ). Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto 1974– ). Erasmus Society Yearbook (1980– ). Desiderii Erasmi Rotterodami opera omnia supplementum. Ed Wallace K. Ferguson (The Hague 1933; reprint Hildesheim 1978). Corpus Iuris Canonici. Ed Aemilius Friedberg. 2 vols (Leipzig 1879–81). Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Leipzig 1897– ). Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus: Ausgewählte Werke. Ed Hajo Holborn (Munich 1933).

262 Abbreviations HBBibl

HBBW LB MBW MCR MPG MPL MSt OS Reeve

SChr SS VD 16 WA Z

Heinrich Bullinger: Bibliographie. Vols 1 and 2 ed Joachim Staedtke and Erland Herkenrath; vol 3 ed Urs Leu and Sandra Weidmann (Zurich 1972– ) (Heinrich Bullinger Werke 1. Abt.). Heinrich Bullinger Briefwechsel. Ed Ulrich Gäbler et al. (Zurich 1973– ) (Heinrich Bullinger Werke 2. Abt.). Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami opera omnia. Ed Johannes Clericus (Leiden 1703–6). Melanchthons Briefwechsel. Ed Heinz Scheible (Stuttgart 1977– ). Melanchthons Werke. In Corpus Reformatorum vol 1 ff (Berlin 1834– ). Patrologia cursus completus: Series graeca. Ed Jacques Paul Migne (Paris 1866). Patrologia cursus completus: Series latina. Ed Jacques Paul Migne (Paris 1844). Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl: Studienausgabe. Ed Robert Stupperich. 7 vols, II,1 (Gütersloh 1978). Joannis Calvini Opera selecta. Ed Petrus Barth and Guilelmus Niesel (Munich 1926–74). Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: Facsimile of the Final Text (1535) with All Earlier Variants (1516, 1519, 1522, 1527). Ed Anne Reeve. “The Gospels” (London 1986); “Acts – Romans – I and II Corinthians” (Leiden 1990); “Galatians to Apocalypse” (Leiden 1993). Sources Chrétiennes (Paris 1943– ). Huldrych Zwinglis Werke. Ed Melchior Schuler and Johannes Schulthess. 10 vols (Zurich 1828–61). Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts. Ed Irmgard Bezzel (Stuttgart 1983–2000). Martin Luther: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 73 vols (Weimar 1883– 2009). Zwinglis sämtliche Werke. In Corpus Reformatorum vol 88 ff (Berlin 1834– ).

Notes

chapter one Introduction 1 Ecclesiastes ASD V-5 374:259–91, particularly 376:276–9. 2 Charles Béné Erasme et Saint Augustin ou influence de Saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Erasme (Geneva 1969); André Godin Erasme lecteur d’Origène (Geneva 1982); Max Schär Das Nachleben des Origenes im Zeitalter des Humanismus (Basel 1979); Ueli Dill Prolegomena zu einer Edition von Erasmus von Rotterdam “Scholia in epistolas Hieronymi” (Basel 2004); Hilmar M. Pabel Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Edition of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance (Leiden 2008); Arnoud Visser “Reading Augustine through Erasmus’ Eyes: Humanist Scholarship and Paratextual Guidance in the Wake of the Reformation” ERSY 28 (2008) 67–90; Hilmar M. Pabel “The Authority of Augustine in Erasmus’ Bibilical Exegesis” ERSY 29 (2009) 61–87. 3 Scholarship is still dependent on Christian Dolfen’s study Die Stellung des Erasmus von Rotterdam zur scholastischen Methode (Osnabrück 1936). The study by I. Bejczy does not deal specifically with the impact of Scholasticism on Erasmus. It deals rather cursorily with Erasmus’s view of the Middle Ages including Scholasticism and mainly reaffirms earlier insights: Istvàn Bejczy Erasmus and the Middle Ages: The Historical Consciousness of a Christian Humanist (Leiden 2001). 4 Walter Rüegg Cicero und der Humanismus (Zurich 1946); Charles Béné “Erasme et Ciceron” in Colloquia Erasmiana Turonensia II 571–9; Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle Christening Pagan Mysteries: Erasmus in Pursuit of Wisdom (Toronto 1981). 5 Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto 1977); Jacques Chomarat Grammaire et Rhétorique chez Erasme 2 vols

264 Notes to pages 5–8

6

7

8

9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

(Paris 1981); Jean-Claude Margolin Le prix des mots et de l’homme (London 1986); Kathy Eden “Rhetoric in the Hermeneutics of Erasmus’ Later Works” ERSY 11 (1991) 88–104; Manfred Hoffmann Rhetoric and Theology: The Hermeneutic of Erasmus (Toronto 1994); Gary Remer Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (Pennsylvania 1996). Jerry H. Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton 1983); Letizia Panizza “Valla’s De voluptate ac de vero bono and Erasmus Stultiae laus: Renewing Christian Ethic” ERSY 15 (1995) 1–25; Richard Joseph Schoeck “Erasmus and Valla: The Dynamics of a Relationship” ERSY 12 (1992) 45–63. Cf also Ivan Pusino “Der Einfluß Picos auf Erasmus” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 46 NF 9 (1928) 75–96. Alternatively, see Manfred Hoffmann Erkenntnis und Verwirklichung der wahren Theologie nach Erasmus von Rotterdam (Tübingen 1972) and in the previously quoted Rhetoric and Theology. Cf particularly, in the latter, 1 and 211–27. Hoffmann suggests that Erasmus developed a dogmatic system with dichotic and trichotic structures that was based on a method deduced from rules of rhetoric. Nausea to King Ferdinand 18 August 1536, Allen Ep 3139:89–103, particularly 100. Cf Bruce Mansfield Phoenix of His Age: Interpretations of Erasmus c. 155 –1750 (Toronto 1979) 8–11. From Philip Melanchthon 12 May [1536], Allen Ep 3120:1–48 and particularly Praefatio in tom 2 omnium operum Lutheri MCR 6 163 and Declamatio de Erasmo MCR 12 264–71. Cf also Heinz Scheible “Melanchthon zwischen Luther und Erasmus” in Heinz Scheible Melanchthon und die Reformation ed G. May et al. (Mainz 1996) 171–96. Timothy J. Wengert Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philipp Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Oxford 1998) emphasizes what separated Melanchthon from Erasmus. He envisions Erasmus as solely a moral theologian. Cf the critical reviews in ERSY 20 (2000) 47–61 by John B. Payne and Laurel Carrington. Luther to Nikolaus von Amsdorf [c. 11 March 1534], WA Br 7 Ep 2093:240. Ibid lines 50–64. Ibid lines 224–36. Ibid lines 224–36. Cf Erasmus to John Carondelet 5 January 1522/3, Allen Ep 1334:439–56 / CWE 9 259. Cf also Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 458:435 with notes 437–9. Allen Ep 1334:17–84. Ibid Ep 1334:84 / CWE 9 248. Ibid Ep 1334:95–110. Cf his discussion of Origen (to Nicholas of Diesbach 6 July 1527, Allen Ep 1844:20–34).

Notes to pages 8–19 265 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Allen Ep 1334:360–7 / CWE 9 257. Ibid lines 369–75 / CWE 9 257. Ibid lines 404–15. Allen Ep 1334:417–23 / CWE 9 258–9. Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Zur Christologie von Erasmus von Rotterdam und Huldrych Zwingli” in Harm Klueting and Jan Rohls eds Reformierte Retrospektiven: Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus 4 (Wuppertal 2001) 5–9. Allen Ep 1334:439–48 / CWE 9 259. Luther to Nikolaus von Amsdorf [c. 11 March 1534], WA Br 7 Ep 2093:239–42. Ibid lines 225–36. Cf Walter M. Gordon Humanist Play and Belief: The Seriocomic Art of Desiderius Erasmus (Toronto 1990). Luther to Nikolaus von Amsdorf [c. 11 March 1534], WA Br 7 Ep 2093:142–54. To my knowledge, no comprehensive study of this issue exists. In her brilliant short essay, Mechtilde O’Mara alludes to Erasmus’s “interest in history” and to his “awareness of the historical realities” in the Pauline letters, and P. Walter hints that Erasmus reflected on “the historicity of the Old and the New Testament and the intermediation of the Church.” In his early study on Erasmus’s approach to history, Peter G. Bietenholz confined himself to studying the biographies and the hints at historical events in Erasmus’s work. Cf Mechtilde O’Mara “Roman History in Some Paraphrases on Paul by Erasmus” in Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey eds Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) 111–26; Peter Walter Theologie aus dem Geist der Rhetorik: Zur Schriftauslegung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Mainz 1991) 255 and 79–94; Peter G. Bietenholz History and Biography in the Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Geneva 1966).

Chapter two Yearning for the “Golden Age” 1 Compendium vitae Allen I 48f; For the well-known biographical data I refer to Erika Rummel Erasmus ed Brian Davies OP, Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series (London/New York 2004) and Cornelijs Augustijn Erasmus: His Life, Works and Influence (Toronto 1991). 2 Cf the letters to Servatius Roger [1487/8], particularly Allen Epp 4–9; 11; 13; 15. 3 Cf the early poems ASD I-7 nos 1; 42; 50; 93–106; 109; 113; 114; 128; 135 and the Oratio for Berte van Heyen LB VIII 551–60.

266 Notes to pages 19–24 4 Cf besides the early poems the first manuscript of the Antibarbari ASD I-1 38–138. 5 De contemtv mvndi ASD V-1 56:473–58:504. 6 To Servatius Rogerus [1488], Allen Ep 13:18–30 / CWE 1 17. 7 Cf James D. Tracy Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley 1996) 22. 8 Cf Claude Longeon ed Le genre pastoral en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Saint-Etienne 1980). 9 ASD I-7 nos 102 and 103. 10 Metamorphoses L XIII 738–88. 11 ASD I-7 no 103:36 / CWE 85 248. 12 To Servatius [1487], Allen Ep 7 / CWE 1 9. 13 To Servatius [1488], Allen Ep 13:55–64; Ep 15. 14 Allen Ep 401:18–39 / CWE 3 272. 15 Cf for example Carmina 38. 16 Cf De contemtv mvndi ASD V-1 80:92–121. 17 Dialogus adversvs barbaros ASD I-7 no 93:69–80 / CWE 85 187. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid lines 137–44 / CWE 85 191. 20 Ibid lines 155–60 / CWE 85 193. 21 Ibid lines 165–72 / CWE ibid. 22 Cf Roland H. Bainton Erasmus of Christendom (New York 1969). He refers to a remark that is dated to 1518. In it Erasmus confesses to Beatus Rhenanus: “Iuvenis olim … ad nomen etiam mortis solebam inhorrescere” (Allen Ep 867:267). Bainton interprets this “Iuvenis olim” as the time Erasmus spent in the monastery and suggests that Erasmus feared that death would come to him before he could develop his virtues enough to deserve eternal life (18). This implies that Erasmus, many years later, had still not got over the death of his parents and that as a young monk he chose Virgil, Horace, Terence, Catullus, and Ovid as a means of preparing himself for a Christian death and to master his fear of God’s eternal judgment. 23 Cf particularly Epigramma de qvatvor novissimis ASD I-7 no 108; 114; 94. 24 ASD I-7 poems nos 100; 102; 103; 106; 93; 1; 117. 25 Ibid nos 99; 101; 109; 104; 105; 113; 114; 94; 95; 96; 108. 26 Ibid nos 42; 98; 128; 97; 107. 27 Elegia de mvtabilitate temporvm ASD I-7 no 104:13–24 / CWE 85 249. 28 Ibid no 104:28 / CWE 85 251. 29 Epigramma de qvatvor novissimis ASD I-7 no 108 / CWE 85 273. 30 Elegia de patientia ASD I-7 no 105:135–8 / CWE 85 261. 31 This despair of the world comes from the common human experience that everything is transient and will perish. It has little to do with the contempt for the world that is characteristic of the Devotio moderna and

Notes to pages 24–  26 of late medieval monastic theology. The early poems of Erasmus concluded from the experience of death that one should enjoy youth as long as there is time. Carpe diem! was the motto, not Pray to God! Neither the poems nor any other sources allow us to speculate on the deeper influence of the Devotio moderna. As I suggested in my dissertation, I am still not convinced that any specific influence of the Devotio moderna on Erasmus can be proven. However, I am in complete agreement with the conclusions of Augustijn. Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) 8–11 and also Cornelijs Augustijn “Erasmus und die Devotio moderna” in Cornelijs Augustijn Erasmus: Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer (Leiden 1996) 26–37. A different perspective is put forth by A.G. Dickens and Whitney R.D. Jones Erasmus the Reformer (London 1994) 8–11. 32 Isaiah 51:6.

CHapter Three Historical Awareness 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

ASD I-7 no 93. Hieronymus Ep 22 ad Eustochium 30 (MPL 22 416). Antibarbari ASD I-1 47:3–5 / CWE 23 25. Cornelis Augustijn Erasmus von Rotterdam: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Munich 1986) 27. Cf the introduction of Kasimierz Kumaniecki in ASD I-1 12. Antibarbari ASD I-1 93:9. Ibid 88:23–7 / CWE 23 66. For a more detailed analysis cf Christine Christv. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) 21–30. Kasimierz Kumaniecki gives a good abstract of the dialogue with many references to the literature in ASD I-1 15–21. Ibid 47:22–4 / CWE 23 25. Ibid 84:5 / CWE 23 61. Ibid 102:1–12. From Robert Gaguin [September 1595?], Allen Ep 43. The complimentary letter to Robert Gaguin’s De origine Francorvm [October 1495] Allen Ep 45:119–27. Ibid 150 lines 45–56 and 151 lines 101–38. Cf James S. Hirstein “Erasme, l’Histoire Auguste et l’histoire” in Jacques Chomarat, André Godin, and Jean-Claude Margolin eds Actes du Colloques International Erasme (Tours 1986) (Geneva 1990) 73.

268 Notes to pages 2 –31 15 Allen Ep 45:36–45 and 151 lines 92–100. 16 De oratore 2, 36. 17 Erich Meuthen‚ “Humanismus und Geschichtsunterricht” in August Buck ed Humanismus und Historiographie: Rundgespräche und Kolloquien (Weinheim 1991) 9. 18 Allen Ep 64:4–56. 19 Ibid 192 lines 57–66 / CWE 1 137. 20 Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam WA 1 224–6, particularly no 44–8. 21 Allen Ep 108:20–51 / CWE 1 203. 22 Ibid / ibid. 23 To Nicholas Beraldus 9 August [1519], Allen Ep 1002:8–15 / CWE 7 36. 24 To Louis Platz 31 July 1520, Allen Ep 1127:14–16 / CWE 8 18. 25 Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschiwegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 48. 26 Cf Hanna-Barbara Gerl Rhetorik als Philosophie: Lorenzo Valla (Munich 1974). 27 Cf to Natalis Béda 15 June 1525, Allen Ep 1581:125–9. 28 To Jodocus Jonas 13 June 1521, Allen Ep 1211:430–4 and to Hermann Busch 31 July 1520, Ep 1126:261–4. 29 Cf P.F. Hovingh’s introduction to the Annotationes ASD VI-5 34. 30 Paraphrases in Novum Testamentvm, Pio lectori LB VII (1*); cf the same wording in Paraphrasin in Ev. Matthaei (Basel, Froben, 1522) (me plurimum dissentire ab iis, qui laicos et illiteratos in totum putant submovendos a lectione sacrorum Voluminum: nec admittendos ad hac adyta, nisi paucos Aristotelica Philosophia, Scholasticaque Theologia multis annis detritos. Equidem in praesentia non digladiabor cum iis, qui hos potissimum judicant idoneos legendis et enarrendis Voluminibus arcanis, quod ingenium adferant humanis disciplinis exercitatum. Sit ita sane, modo eas per aetatem sobrie modiceque attigerint, modo ne in illis consenuerint, modo ne plus datis illis tribuant). 31 Allen Ep 64:90 / CWE 1 138. 32 Ibid lines 86–9 / CWE 1 138. 33 ASD I-7 no 110–12. Reedijk dated the poems earlier, to the year 1489. Vredeveld suggests, with good but not irrefutable reason, the year 1499. In any case, it is clear that Erasmus wrote them before 1500. They do not give any hint of an in-depth reading of Origen or of a new interest in Neoplatonism. 34 Ciceronianvs ASD I-2 635:26–639:5–13.

Notes to pages 31–3 269 35 ASD I-7 no 110. Here the term “Heilsgeschichte” is to be understood in a superficial sense as the history of salvation, a chronological sequence of salvific events. I will demonstrate in a later chapter that Erasmus later developed a heilsgeschichtlichen view that he, like K. v. Hofmann (in spite of the vast difference between them as theologians), also related to the terms “Weissagung und Erfüllung”: (prophecy and fulfilment). Cf below 163–4. 36 ASD V-5 320:192–324:249. 37 Cf ASD I-7 363, note on lines 110–12. For Origen, who, as far as I know, was the first to link this issue to Isaiah 14, cf De principiis I 5, 5 in Origenes vier Bücher von den Prinzipien ed Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp (Darmstadt 1976) 209. 38 Paean divae Mariae atqve de incarnatione verbi ASD I-7 no 110:173–92 / CWE 85 285–6. 39 Ibid no 110:193–232 / CWE 85 287–91. 40 In Genesim II (MPL 167 247). 41 De glorificatione Trinitatis IX 7 (MPL 169 187). 42 In festo annuntiationis Mariae, Sermo I de Ps 84 (MPL 183 387). 43 Cf Eduard Johann Mäder Der Streit der “Töchter Gottes”: Zur Geschichte eines allegorischen Motivs (Bern/Frankfurt 1971), particularly 25 and 30. 44 Wilhelm Creizenach Geschichte des neueren Dramas I (Halle 1893) 188. 45 Cf Die Erlösung: Eine Geistliche Dichtung des 14. Jahrhunderts ed Friedrich Maurer (Darmstadt 1964) 42– 7 and 8–9. For the Netherlands, Mittelniederländisches Osterspiel ed Julius Zacker in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum II (Leipzig 1842) 303–50. In this play from Maastricht, which is published based on a manuscript from the late fourteenth century, only the allegorical figures of Mercy and Truth quarrel. The Son does not act. Yet, God the Father speaks to or in himself: “Unse here zu sich sprach” or “in sich sprach” and “unse here zu sich selver” is formulated in the stage directions (ibid 303, 308, and 324). This phrasing is strongly evocative of later formulations by Erasmus. 46 Cf David Brett-Evans Von Hrotsvit bis Folz und Gengenbach: Eine Geschichte des mittelalterlichen deutschen Dramas (Berlin 1975) I 168. 47 Die Erlösung 40:475–47:656. 48 Ibid 47:665–78. 49 Ibid 48:699–710. 50 Vijf geestelijke toneelspelen der middeleeuwen ed Hubert Joseph Edmund Endepols (Amsterdam 1940) 44. 51 Ibid 106:1138–95. 52 Ibid 109:1204–16. 53 Ibid 111:1256.

2

 Notes to pages 33–5

54 Ibid 112:1276–32. 55 Ibid, particularly 114:1333–45. 56 Cf ibid 43; Die Erlösung ed Maurer 8; Achim Masser Bibel und Legendenepik des deutschen Mittelalters (Berlin 1976) 67 and note 38. 57 Paraphrases in Novem Testamentvm, Pio lectori LB VII (**3v) / CWE 45 21. 58 Luthers Lieder WA 35 424. 59 Cf Wolfgang F. Michael Das deutsche Drama der Reformationszeit (Bern 1984) 96. 60 Gesangbuch der Evangelisch-Reformierten Kircher der deutschsprachigen Schweiz (Zurich 1952) no 147. 61 Friedrich von Spee Güldenes Tugend-Buch ed Theo. G.M. van Oorschot (Munich 1968) 424. 62 Paean divae Mariae atque de incarnatione verbi ASD I-7 no 110:235. 63 For the translation of sermo as “colloquy” or “conversation” cf LB VII 499C and note 16 in CWE 46 16. There Erasmus paraphrases the second verse of the prologue of John as: The son is the “eternal word of the eternal mind, whereby the Father forever speaks with himself as in mystic thought” (Filius … aeternae mentis sermo aeternus, quo sibi semper velut arcana cogitatione loquitur Pater, etiam ante conditum hunc mundum”) 64 Cf below 135 65 Carmen de monstrosis signis Christo moriente factis ASD I-7 no 111:1–48. 66 Ibid lines 15–20 / CWE 85 301. 67 Such antithetic formulations were already known in the second century. The thirteen fragments of Melito from Sardis could have been a model for Erasmus’s poem (SChr 123 239:8–29). Cf also his Easter homily. (SChr 123 60–2). However, Erasmus could not have known these texts, since they were not discovered until the nineteenth century. Antitheses about the death of Christ, which were inspired by Philippians 2:6, remained popular. Augustine refers to them in his Easter sermons. Cf Sermo CLX (MPL 39 2060–1) and Sermo CLXI (MPL 39 2062). In the Middle Ages they were widespread and used at Easter in plays and in hymns; for example in the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes from Wipo with the phrasing “dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus.” Cf Josef Kroll Gott und Hölle: Der Mythos vom Descensuskampfe (Darmstadt 1963), particularly 27; 50; 138; 155. 68 Carmen de monstrosis signis Christo moriente factis ASD I-7 no 111:68–76 / CWE 85 305. 69 Ibid lines 79–86. 70 Ibid 96–100 / CWE 85 305. 71 Cf Ecclesiastes ASD V-5 322:207–9 and below. 72 Ep ad Epictetum contra Conrinthi haereticos 10 (MPG 26 1068).

Notes to pages 35–8 2 1 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Tertullian Adversus Marcionem II 16 (CSEL 47 356:20–2). Tertullian Adversus Praxean 29 (CSEL 47 285:7–8). Origen Contra Celsum VII 14 and 16 (MPG 11 1444). Cf Athanasius Contra Arianos III 34 (MPG 26 396). De taedio et pavore Christi LB V 1286C–1289D. Carmen de monstrosis signis Christo moriente factis ASD I-7 no 111:94 / CWE 85 304. Die geistlichen Spiele des Sterzinger Spielarchivs ed Walter Lipphard and Hans Gert Roloff (Bern 1981) I 53:22–54:53; 308:29; 312:154; 349:4 and 18–350:45. Das Drama des Mittelalters: Die lateinischen Osterfeiern und ihre Entwicklung in Deutschland: Die Osterspiele, die Passionsspiele, Weihnachts- und Dreikönigsspiele, Fastnachtsspiele ed Richard Froning (Darmstadt 1964) 795. Paraphrasis in Ev. Lvcae LB VII 463F; Paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei ibid 142D. ASD V-1 242:110 / CWE 70 287:3. Kroll Gott und Hölle 173. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 257:544–260, particularly 260:615–20. In De praeperatione ad mortem Erasmus makes Christ on the cross undergo terrible psychological turmoil, when he cries out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). There is no need for a special descent into hell. Christ on the cross has suffered hell already in his feelings of total despair and remoteness from God. This explains why even from hell the faithful can cry to God, as Jonah did in the belly of the whale. Erasmus consciously used and reinterpreted the old metaphor for the descent into hell (ASD V-1 354:336–355:362). Nevertheless, in order to appease his readers he sometimes alluded to the descent into hell in the traditional way (cf In Psalmvm quartvm ASD V-2 332:110–17 and Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 259:591–260:620) – as did Luther (cf Ein Sermon Von der kra der Hymelfart Christi WA 23 702–4; Sermo Der Heubt Artikel des Glaubens WA 37 65–7; Sermones 1538 WA 46 310–13 and Epistel Sanct Petri gepredigt und ausgelegt WA 12 367:17–369:30) and Melanchthon (cf Postilla MCR 24 742). Neutestamentliche Apokryphen I: Evangelien ed Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher (Tübingen 1959) 350–1. Carmen heroicum de solemnitate paschali ASD I-7 no 112:70–7 / CWE 85. Ibid lines 130–8; 196–219. Ibid lines 172–7. Ibid lines 268–74; 349–51. Ibid line 89 and lines 149–52. Ibid line 94. Ibid lines 111–27.

2 2 Notes to pages 38–42 93 Ibid lines 139–42 / CWE 85 315. 94 Cf ASD I-7 197 note 121. Ambrosius In Lucam 4 18–19 (CChr SL 14 112– 13). 95 Das Drama des Mittelalters ed Froning, particularly 191. 96 According to Helmut Arntzen Satire in der deutschen Literatur: Geschichte und Theorie (Darmstadt 1989) 77. 97 Cf Creizenach Geschichte des neueren Dramas I 202–3. 98 Carmen heroicum de solemnitate paschali ASD I-7 no 112:7–10 / CWE 85 307. 99 Ibid no 111:1–4 / CWE 85 301. 100 Cf James D. Tracy The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto 1978) 125. 101 Precatio ad virginis filium Jesum LB V 1210E / CWE 69 4. 102 Ibid 1211A / CWE 69 5. 103 Ibid 1213E–1214A / CWE 69 12. 104 Ibid 1214A–C. 105 Ibid 1214F. 106 Ibid 1212F–1213E, particularly 1213D / CWE 69 11. 107 Ibid 1213B. 108 Ibid 1210F / CWE 69 5. 109 Ibid 1215–16 / CWE 69 15. 110 ASD I-5 392:111–34, particularly 386 30–5 / CWE 25 130. 111 Cf De conscribendis epistolis ASD I-2 429–32. For further information on the Encomivm matrimonii, cf the introduction of Jean-Claude Margolin in ASD I-5 335–82. 112 Cf Laurentius Valla De voluptate in Opera (Basel 1540) 906–10. 113 ASD I-5 410:316–19. 114 Ibid 388:68–72. 115 Ibid 392:114–16 / CWE 25 134. 116 Ibid 400:198–232 / CWE 25 137. The same arguments were already made in the unauthorized print of Silberch from 1521, which goes back to an earlier manuscript. Cf Libellus de conscribendis epistolis / autore D. Erasmo. Cambridge, Silberch (1521), particularly 36r–37r. 117 ASD I-5 402:213–26. 118 Ibid 404:239 / CWE 25 138. 119 ASD I-5 398:190–7. Erasmus held to this view of original sin. Cf Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 622C, a text from 1526. 120 Cf above. 121 Cf Berndt Hamm “Wollen und Nicht-Können als Thema spätmittelalterlicher Bußseelsorge” in Berndt Hamm and Thomas Lentes eds

Notes to pages 42–6 2 3

122 123 124

125 126 127 128 129 130

Spätmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit zwischen Ideal und Praxis (Tübingen 2001) 111–46. He gives further references to Johannes of Paltz and Johannes von Staupitz. Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1211A / CWE 69 5. Ibid 1216A / CWE 69 15. Cf Georges Chantraine “Mystère” et “philosophie du Christ” selon Erasme: Etude de la lettre à P. Volz et de la “Ratio verae theologiae” (1518) (Namur 1981) and Michael Andrews Screech Ecstasy and “The Praise of Folly” (London 1980). (in tuam ipsius naturam sursum rapis, raptos attenuas, attenuatos transformas) Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1211A / CWE 69 5. Ibid 1213A–B / CWE 69 10. Ibid 1214D. Ibid 1216 / CWE 69 16. LB has in the last sentence “honorum” instead of “bonorum” (the highest of all honours); cf CWE 69 16 note 81. Cf Hamm “Wollen und Nicht-Können” 112. Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1211E–F / CWE 69 7.

Chapter Four Neoplatonism 1 Enchiridion H 88:21–33 / CWE 66 84. 2 In this text created before the Reformation, which seeks to guide the reader towards a Christian life, Erasmus speaks about confession only once. In doing so he pits formal confession before a priest against a private silent confession before God. In a wider context he disparages external works of piety, among which he also counts confession before a priest, and puts a higher value on internal piety. In the same context he quotes Psalm 50:19, which is the only reference to a contrite heart (Enchiridion H 86:6–21). 3 Augustine De vera religione 39, 72 (CChr SL 32 234:12–16.). 4 Bernard of Clairvaux De consideratione. l. II, 3 (Leclercq ed Opera III 414– 15). 5 Institutio CO 1, 27 (OS 1, 37). 6 Enchiridion H 46:22–4 / CWE 66 46. 7 Ibid 41:15–22 / CWE 66 41. 8 Some parts of the chapter De armis militiae Christianae remind one, only very marginally, of the Precatio. Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel1981) 56–9. 9 Enchiridion H 43 and 45.

2 4 Notes to pages 46–9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

Ibid 48:11–36 / CWE 66 47. Ibid 49:31–3. Ibid 52:28–31 / CWE 66 51; cf also ibid 57:16–18. Ibid 117:1–118:9. Ibid 51:33–52:3 / CWE 66 50. Cf Psalm 33:9. Tertullian Apologeticum 17 6 (MPL 1 433A). Abelard Theologia Christiana V (MPL 178 1139C) and Ep I Historia calamitatum 14 (MPL 178 355B). John Colet, for example, was also interested. Cf John B. Gleason John Colet (Berkeley 1989) 148. Raimundus Sabundus Theologia Naturalis seu Liber Creaturarum, reprint of the edition from Sulzburg 1852, ed Friedrich Stegmüller (Cannstatt 1966) 5*; 11*–20*. For the influence of his ideas on the Renaissance, cf Ernst Cassirer Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Darmstadt 1963) 57–9. Thomas Commentarius ad Romanos I, lec. 6 (116) (Busa 5 446); Bonaventura Collationes in Hexaemeron XIII, 12 ed Wilhelm Nyssen (Darmstadt 1964) 410 and Breviloquium II, 12 in S. Bonaventurae opera omnia ed Collegium A.S. Bonaventura (Quaracchi 1891), V (R.P. Aloysiia Parma) 230); Augustine De trinitate II (Proem) 1 (CChr SL 50 80:11–16.) and De trinitate XV, 20 (CChr SL 50a 516:40–57). Cf Raimundus Theologia Naturalis ed Stegmüller, particularly the prologue 26*–39*. Ibid 36*. Ibid, particularly Titulus I 3. To William Blount [June 1500], Allen Ep 126:127–138. Pico Heptaplus IV poem. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Opera ed Hieronymus Emser (Strasburg 1504) IX v–Xr. As Erasmus does later on (Enchiridion H 40:30), Pico uses as a reference verse 8 from the first chapter of the Song of Solomon, which the Vulgate translated as “Si ignoras te, o pulcra”; vgl. auch Ficino Theologia Platonica 12, cap. 5. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola De dignitate hominis ed Eugenio Garin (Bad Homburg 1968) 46 Raimundus Theologia Naturalis ed Stegmüller 38*. Pico della Mirandola De dignitate hominis ed Garin 44. Ibid 30. The marginalia are published by Sears Reynolds Jayne John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (Oxford 1963) 108. Cf André Godin Erasme lecteur d’Origène Travaux d’Humanisme et de Renaissance (Geneva 1982) and André Godin “The Enchiridion Militis Christiani: The Modes of an Origenian Appropriation” ERSY 2 (1982) 47–79.

Notes to pages 49–56 2 5 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

To John Colet [October 1499], Allen Ep 108:72 / CWE 1 204. To Robert Fisher 5 December [1499], Allen Ep 118:17–27 / CWE 1 235–6. De lavdibus Britanniae ASD I-7 no 4:47–52 / CWE 85 35. Allen Ep 103:10 / CWE 1 193. To John Colet [October 1499], Allen Ep 108:71 / CWE 1 204. Allen Ep 108. To James Batt 11 December [1500], Allen Ep 138:44–6 / CWE 1 296. For Erasmus’s Greek studies, cf Erika Rummel Erasmus as a Translator of the Classics (Toronto 1985) 3–20. Letters to John Colet [October 1499], Allen Epp 109–111. Cf De taedio et pavore Christi LB V 1263–92. John B. Gleason John Colet (London 1989) 93–125. Cf Allen Ep 118. Ibid line 21. Cf Gleason John Colet 111. Cf ibid 126–151. To William Blount [June 1500], Allen Ep 126:127–43. Precatio ad Virginis filivm Jesvm LB V 1210F–1212E. Enchiridion H 117:1–118:9. Enchiridion H 75:17–26. Precatio ad Virginis filivm Jesvm LB V 1210F. Enchiridion H 28:1–29:10 and 59:1–4. Cf Cornelis Augustijn Erasmus von Rotterdam: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Munich 1986) 42–3. Cf Thomas Lentes “Andacht und Gebärde: Das religiöse Ausdrucksverhalten” in Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky eds Kulturelle Reformation: Sinnformationen im Umbruch 1400–1600 (Göttingen 1999) 29–67. Enchiridion H 70:29–71:21. Cf ibid the whole Canon quartus (H 63–7) / CWE 66 63.

chapter five Erasmus’s Edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Collatio Novi Testamenti 1 Enchiridion H 135:19–33 / CWE 66 127. 2 Cf Valla’s notes in his Collatio in Novi Testamenti on I Corinthians 2:9 and Luke 16:2. Cf Laurentius Valla Opera (Basel 1540) 837 and 862. 3 Cf Albert Hyma The Youth of Erasmus (Ann Arbor 1930) 37. 4 To Cornellius Gerard summer [1489?], Allen Ep 20:102; Ep 23:73–110; Ep 29. 5 Allen Ep 67:4 and Ep 68. 6 Collatio in Novi Testamenti in Valla Opera 872. Valla declared: “Quare nihil dicunt qui super hunc locum disputantes, an tristitia idem sit quod

2 6 Notes to pages 56–9

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15

poenitentia, aiunt triplicem esse poenitentiam, unam quae est contritio, alteram quae est confessio tertiam quae est satisfactio. Quae sententia cum falsa sit, tum nihil est ad explanandam sententiam Pauli faciens.” Cf Jerry H. Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton 1983) 64. To Christopher Fisher [March] 1505, Allen Ep 182:132–40 / CWE 2 94–5. Matthew 5:18. Allen Ep 182:111–20 / CWE 2 93. Ibid 410:135. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 504A / CWE 46 23. For further information about Erasmus’s biblical editorial work see Bentley’s informative study Humanists and Holy Writ. Cf also Erika Rummel Erasmus’ “Annotations” on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto 1986). Cf Paul F. Grendler “How to Get a Degree in Fifteen Days: Erasmus’ Doctorate of Theology from the University of Turin” ERSY 18 (1998) 40–69. The manuscripts of the New Testament in Cambridge can no longer be referred to as proof. Cf the introduction of P.F. Hovingh in ASD VI-5 3, who quotes A.J. Brown “The Date of Erasmus’ Latin Translation of the New Testament” in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1984) 351–80. Cf Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ 125–9.

chapter six The Praise of Folly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 78:118. Ibid 115 / CWE 27 89. Ibid 110:727–41 / CWE 27 107. Ibid 68:54. Ibid 140:304–12 / CWE 27 124. Ibid 68:52. Ibid 74:63. Ibid 102:553–5 / CWE 27 102. Ibid 106:655–77. Ibid 134:194–237. Ibid 104:578–83 / CWE 27 102–3. Ibid 96:455–62. Ibid 94:432–96:454 / CWE 27 99. Ibid 102:556–8.

Notes to pages 59–66 2 15 Ibid 106:628–30 / CWE 27 104. 16 Ibid 106:631–40 / CWE 27 104. Cf Letizia Panizza “Valla’s De voluptate ac de vero bono and Erasmus’ Stultitiae laus. Renewing Christian Ethics” ERSY 15 (1995) 19. 17 ASD I-1 47:34 / CWE 23 25 no 32. In the 1520 edition Erasmus eliminated this sentence. He no longer agreed with this sentiment (ibid 47:23). 18 Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 189:141–3 / CWE 27 149. 19 Ibid 68:22–5. In fact, Luther later derogatively called Erasmus a “Lucian” (Luther to Nikolaus von Amsdorf [c. 11 March 1534], WA Br 7 30:59). 20 For further references and information on the late medieval examples, cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Das ‘Lob der Torheit’ des Erasmus von Rotterdam im Spiegel der spätmittelalterlichen Narrenbilder und die Einheit des Werkes” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987) 24–36. 21 Saturnalia 2. 22 Cf Austin Gavin and Thomas M. Walsh “The Praise of Folly in Context: The Commentary of Girardus Listrius” Renaissance Quarterly 24, 2 (1971) 193–209. 23 The following ideas are based on my essay “Torheit und Häresie” in Bernd W. Springer and Alexander Fidora eds Religiöse Toleranz im Spiegel der Literatur: Eine Idee und ihre ästhetische Gestaltung (Münster 2009) 103–16. 24 Cf the introduction in ASD IV-3 21. As far as I know, there are no references in the secondary literature that hint at the influence of this biblical prototype. 25 Christl Maier Die “fremde Frau“ in Proverbia 1-9: Eine exegetische und sozialgeschichtliche Studie (Freiburg/Göttingen 1995) 267. Cf also Gerlinde Baumann Die Weisheitsgestalt in Proverbien 1-9: Traditionsgeschichte und theologische Studien (Tübingen 1996) 57; 198–9. 26 Convivivm religiosvm ASD I-3 242:338. 27 Proverbs 9:13. The nomen rectum ‫( כסילות‬folly), a hapax legomenon, gives a specific designation of the nomen regens ‫( אשת‬woman). It is a gen. explicativus or epexegeticus: either a name: Woman Folly (personified) or adjectival: the woman of folly. 28 Proverbs 9:13–18. 29 Proverbs 9:1–6. 30 Rabanus Maurus Expositio in proverbia Salomonis 1 9 (MPL 111 711B–C: “Mulier stulta et clamosa plenaque illecebris, et nihil omnino sciens sedit in foribus domus suae, super sellam. Mulier autem haec haeresis est, contraria nimirum sapientiae, quae sua superius sacramenta cecinit. Sedit autem et ipsa in foribus domus suae, id est, in doctoribus falsitatis, quia in penetralia perfidiae miseros fallendo introducunt. Super sellam autem,

2 8 Notes to page 66

31

32 33 34

quia cathedram sibi praedicationis usurpat. Haec est cathedra pestilentiae, in qua beatus vir sedere detrectat.” Cf also the Glossa ordinaria: Walafridus Strabo Expositio in viginti primos psalmos Ps 1 (MPL 114 753B–C): “Via vero peccatorum est, de qua Psalmista alibi post talia subjungit: Haec via illorum scandalum ipsis. Et Dominus ait: Spatiosa via est quae ducit ad mortem. Cathedra autem pestilentiae perversam significat doctrinam, quae dupliciter fit: aut aperte ad scelera operum invitando, sicut Salomon in Parabolis ostendit dicens: Fili mi, si te lactaverint peccatores, ne acquiescas eis: si dixerint: Veni nobiscum, insidiemur sanguini, abscondamus tendiculas contra insontem frustra, etc. Aut in errorem inducendo, sicut ibi post aliqua sequitur, ubi et hanc cathedram sellam nominat dicens: Mulier stulta, et clamosa, plenaque illecebris, et nihil omnino sciens, sedit in foribus domus suae super sellam. Et post pauca: Aquae furtivae dulciores sunt, et panis absconditus suavior: quae absque dubio perversam significant doctrinam: haec namque omnia in tantum reprobi sectantur, et sectando divinae legis meditationem respuunt, et exsecrantur, ut, juxta Prophetam, odio habeant corripientem in porta, et loquentem perfecte abominentur, dicantque Deo: Recede a nobis, et scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus.” “Farce nouvelle nommée la folie des gorriers” and “Farce nouvelle tresbonne de Folle Bobance” in Recueil general des Sotties ed Emile Picot (Paris 1902) 143–75, particularly 27; 49; and 235–70. Cf also Donald Gwynn Watson “Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and the Spirit of Carnival” Renaissance Quarterly 32 (1979) 333–53, particularly 339, and ASD IV-3 23. Cf Ari Wesseling “Intertextual Play: Eramus’ Use of Adagias in the Colloquies” ERSY (2008) 2. The Vulgate has “homines sine litteris et idiotae”; Erasmus in his New Testament: “homines illiterati et idiotae.” Salonius Viennensis In parabolas Salomonis expositio mystica (MPL 53 974B– D) : “ VERANUS. De quibus ancillis dicit paulo inferius: Misit ancillas suas ut vocarent ad arcem, et ad moenia civitatis. SALONIUS. Ancillas vocat sanctos apostolos. VERANUS. Quare vocat eos ancillas? SALONIUS. Propter insipientiam, infirmitatem et paupertatem; idiotas enim, infirmos, pauperes et despectos elegit apostolos quos ad praedicandum misit in mundum, ut fideles populos vocarent ad arcem aeternae beatitudinis, et ad moenia coelestis Jerusalem.”

Notes to pages 66–

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54

 2 9

Cf also Béda Super parabolas Salomonis, 1 9 (MPL 91 966D): “ Misit ancillas suas, etc. Praedicatores infirmos ac despicabiles elegit, qui fideles populos ad superna patriae coelestis aedificia colligerent.” Honorius Augustudinensis used exactly the same words: “[The wisdom or the eternal logos Christ] calls the apostles maidservants. Why does she call them maidservants? Because of their ignorance, weakness, and poverty. For [Christ] chooses the faint, poor, and disdained apostles, sending them into the world to preach, in order that they might call the believing nations to the castle of eternal beatitude and the walls of celestial Jerusalem.” Honoris Augustodunensis Quaestiones in proverbia 9 (MPL 172 316–17): “Ancillas vocat, sanctos apostolos. Quare vocat eos ancillas? propter insipientiam, infirmitatem et paupertatem, quia idiotas, infirmos, et pauperes et despectos elegit apostolos, quos ad praedicandum misit in mundum, ut fideles populos vocarent ad arcem aeternae beatitudinis, et ad moenia Jerusalem coelestis.” Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 188:110–17 / CWE 27 148. Cf I Corinthians 1:18. Ibid 116:838–45. Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 144:381–146:385 / CWE 27 126. Ibid 116:873–118:880 / CWE 27 111. Ibid 146:387–90 / CWE 27 126. Ibid 184:20–2 / CWE 27 146. Ibid 146:390–154:484 / CWE 27 126; 128. Ibid 154:487–156:494 / CWE 27 126–9. Ibid 154:470–4 / CWE 27 129. Ibid 194:274 / CWE 27 153. Ibid 174:814–18 / CWE 27 139. Ibid 184:10–186:63, particularly 185:49 / CWE 27 146. Cf for further information below. Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 172:761–174:801. Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae ST3, qu 11, ar 1 and 3 in Roberto Busa ed Opera omnia 2 (Stuttgart 1980) 539–40 (Sth II,2, q. 11, a 1 and 3). Decr. Greg IX., lib 5, tit 7, c. 9–13; Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus ed Carl Mirbt (Tübingen 1934) nos 205; 340–4. As is well known, the “Peinliche Gerichtsordnung” from 1522 affirmed the legal practice; cf ibid no 423. Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta ed Josepho Alberigo et al (Bologna 1973) 605; 633. Cf in this book below. Cf above note. Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 110:707 / CWE 27 106.

28  Notes to pages

–2

55 Ibid 118:909 / CWE 27 112. It is impossible to determine whether the term “insania” refers specifically to heresy. However, the Church Fathers, particularly Jerome and Augustine, wrote continually about the “insania haeretica” or “insania Arianorum” or “insania Manichaeorum,” etc (cf for example MPL 25 315D; 30 45C; 39 1677; 44 521; 45 1431), as does the Transiturus bull of Pope Urban IV from 1264 (Quellen ed Mirbt 203 no 364). 56 Allen Ep 337:507–17 / CWE 3 127 and lines 558–62 / CWE 3 129. Cf Apologia ad Fabrvm Stapvlensem ASD IX-3 176. 57 Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 180:919–924 / CWE 27 142–3, cf Jeremiah 10:15. 58 Ibid 186:73 / CWE 27 147. 59 In Canticum Canticorum Hom II,3 (MPG 13 49A). Cf Michael Andrews Screech Ecstasy and “The Praise of Folly” (London 1980) 24. Cf I Corinthians 4:10; 3:18. 60 Hieronymi translatio homiliarum Origenis in Jeremiam Hom V, Jer 10:12 (MPL 25 631A–B). 61 Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 186:67–72 / CWE 27 147. 62 Ibid 186:85–7 / CWE 27 147. Cf I Corinthians 1:21 and 27. 63 Ibid 188:106–11 / CWE 27 148. 64 Ibid 192:233–67. 65 Ibid 191:200–9 / CWE 27 151. 66 Ibid 106:625–54. 67 Ibid 191:198–9. In his erudite and inspiring study, Screech evaluates the reference to St Bernard and, astonishingly, does not note that it was inserted after 1516. According to Screech’s thesis, Erasmus quoted Bernard as a mystic with the utmost respect (Ecstasy and “The Praise of Folly” 44–7). But none of Screech’s references are really convincing. In his note to Luke 1:28 Erasmus counts Bernard among the “otherwise pious and erudite men” who speculates in an odd manner about the words “gratia plena” (ASD VI-5 458:387–390). In the Ratio Erasmus deals with interpreters who misuse quotes from the Bible for jokes. Bernard is one of them (LB V 129A). The quotation from De amabili ecclesiae concordia seems to support Screech’s thesis. There Erasmus uses a comment of Bernard which praises monastic life, but he does not name Bernard and uses him only in passing. Erasmus argues that Christians cannot carry their crosses by themselves and that martyrs owe their strength not to their own resources, but to God’s grace alone. The theme is God’s blessing and a monastic life is only one example – and in Erasmus’s view certainly not the most important – of God’s grace (De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 292:189–206). Finally, in the Ecclesiastes Erasmus, with conspicuous reserve, counts the proverbial “mellifluous preacher” who addressed himself mainly to

Notes to page 2 281 “monks” among exemplary authors: “Serene and pleasant [festivus et iucundus]” and not slow to move hearts, he wrote “more by natural disposition than by the art of rhetoric” (ASD V-4 268:466–9 / LB V 857C). These quotations demonstrate the rather low regard in which Erasmus held the extremely renowned preacher, although he obviously wanted to be fair to his reputation as an outstanding person. Erasmus certainly knew De consideratione, the Sermons on the Song of Solomon, and some Homilies. He quotes them sometimes in a positive, sometimes in a negative way. As an exegete Bernard may not have convinced Erasmus, but Erasmus clearly respected Bernard’s piety. I examined: Allen Ep 858:507–15; Ep 1033:83; Ep 1173:174; Ep 1202:16; Ep 1206:109; Ep 1236:155–60; Ep 2285:119; ASD I-2 660:29; I-3 384:482; II-7 35:686; IV-1A 170:784; IV-3 124:984; V-1 76:994; 374; V-2 196:949; 280; V-3 54:424; 66; 68:79; 184:492; V-4, 268:466–9; 274:608; 318:924; 383:419; V-5 100; VI-5 434:146; IX-1 68:105; 480:46. I refer here to the most important quotations: Erasmus appraised Bernard as a second-rank author (Enarratio Psalmi 38 ASD V-3 196:948–51), but highlighted the pious fervour which compelled him to found monasteries in the desert (Ecclesiastes ASD V-4 383:419–21). For Erasmus, the monastic lifestyle propagated by Bernard was outdated (Allen Ep 858:513–98). Only in his first work, in De contemptu mundi, did Erasmus unreservedly praise his mystical and monastic theology (ASD V-1 75:977–99). Yet the thesis of Screech is understandable. He studied the positive view of the mystical rapture in The Praise of Folly and later on in Erasmus’s work and he convincingly worked out the traditional context. Bernard certainly was one of the best examples of this; however, Screech did not reflect on the possibility that the mystical ascension for the author of The Praise of Folly may have been a convincing but still human way to find God, and like all human efforts it must finally be a ridiculous and misguided path when God’s grace does not guide the wanderer. Erasmus later declares this explicitly: “Qui gradibus nituntur in altum, quo magis adscendunt, hoc magis lassescunt: at qui hos gradus adscendunt, quo longius eunt, hoc redduntur fortiores et alacriores. Unde tandem? Nisi quia res non est humanarum virium, sed benedictionis Divinae” (De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 292:193–6). 68 Cf Ernst Gerhard Rüsch Vom Humanismus zur Reformation: Aus den Randbemerkungen von Oswald Myconius zum “Lob der Torheit” des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1983) 3 and 74. 69 Encomivm Moriae 192:234–8 / CWE 27 152. 70 Cf particularly the letters to Servatius Rogerus 8 July 1514, Allen Ep 296:59–69, and to Marcus Laurinus 1 February 1523, Allen Ep 1342:461– 94.

282 Notes to pages 2–6 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87 88

Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 192:233–6 / CWE 152. Phaidros 245b–c. Ibid 253a–c. This interpretation seems to contest the euphemistic phrases Erasmus used to defend his Praise of Folly against Martin van Dorp. Van Dorp objected to Erasmus’s allocation of foolishness to Christ and to life in heaven (Allen Ep 304:28). Erasmus defended himself with the argument that he had not named the future life “madness” and had allocated foolishness to the apostles and Christ only in contrast to God’s wisdom. In fact, Erasmus did not call the afterlife “madness” but only the rapture of the mystic, who samples it for a moment without departing this life, except in spirit, and Erasmus explained appeasingly that even that was only in Plato’s sense. Erasmus can rightly argue that he did not call Christ and the apostles foolish in the common sense. But in his letter from 1515 he also adds that they had some weaknesses, as do all men. That is why this letter on first glance seems to contradict the accepted interpretation. But in fact the letter supports it, for “the whole sum of human felicity depends on Folly” (Allen Ep 337:449–73 / CWE 3 126). Van Dorp obviously interpreted Erasmus’s words as a mockery of the rapture of the mystics and thought that he ascribed foolishness to Christ and to the apostles. Although Erasmus modified his ideas, he carefully avoided a definite rebuttal of van Dorp’s interpretation. Cf above. Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 172:763 / CWE 27 138. Ibid 192:212–23. Ibid 104:608 / CWE 27 103. Ibid 188:106–9 / CWE 27 148. Ibid 69–70. Ibid 176:857 / CWE 27 140. Alberto Pio Praeter praefationem et operis conclusionem, XXIII libri in locos lucubrationum variarum D. Erasmi Roterodami (Paris 1531) 73v–82v; Jacobus Stunica Erasmi Roterodami blasphemiae et impietates (Rome 1522); cf Apologia ad blasphemias Jac. Stvnicae LB IX 366D–371E and the introduction to the Encomivm Moriae by Clarence H. Miller in ASD IV-3 26–9. Clarence Miller lists the modern critics of the form in ASD IV-3 18 note 27. Cf the letter to Abel Colster from 25 April 1533, Allen Ep 2800:58–60. Allen Ep 304:75. Proverbs 3:7. Allen Ep 304:29 and lines 73–5. Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 182:973–6 / CWE 27 144.

Notes to pages 9–84 283

chapter seven The New Testament Scholar 1 Note on Acts 10:38, LB VI 476 E. Cf Jerry H. Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton 1983) 181. 2 Cf above. 3 Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 188:111 / CWE 27 148. Cf I Corinthians 1:18. 4 To Charles V 13 January 1520, Allen Ep 1255:31. 5 Apologia H 169:1–3. 6 Note on Matthew 2:6, ASD VI-5 100:826–32 and Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497E–498D. 7 Cf Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ 176–9. 8 Allen Ep 296:155–60 / CWE 2 300. 9 Cf the introduction to letter 255 in Allen I. 10 (His fatis natus sum, mi Bouille, sed non oportet theomachein.) To Henry Bullock 22 February 1518, Allen Ep 777:21–3 / CWE 5 304; cf also Allen Ep 758:8–15 and Allen Ep 782:10. 11 To Andrew Ammonius 1 September [1513], Allen Ep 273:14–15 / CWE 1 253. 12 Cf Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ 153. 13 Ferguson 134–90; particularly 136, 73–5 / CWE 61 23. 14 Note on Matthew1:1, ASD VI-5 66. Cf for Matthew 1 Thomas Aquinas Catena aurea in Matthaeum. cap. 1 (Busa 5 129); Chrysostomos Homiliae in Matthaevm 1, 3 (MPG 57 17); also Aniani Interpretatio (MPG 58 981). Cf the note of P.F. Hovingh in ASD VI-5 67 n. 32–3. 15 To the reader [December] 1515, Allen Ep 373, particularly lines 170–203 / CWE 3 203–4. 16 Cf Max von Wolff Lorenzo Valla: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig 1893) 102–3. 17 From Eck 2 February 1518, Allen Ep 769:35–43. Cf note on Matthew 2:6, ASD VI-5 98:753–61 and the note for lines 753–888 of Hovingh ibid 99. 18 Allen Ep 769:43–5. 19 15 May 1518, Allen Ep 844:21–47 / CWE 6 28. 20 Cf below 234f. 21 To Henry VIII 23 August 1523, Allen Ep 1381:370–4 / CWE 10 73. 22 In Psalmvm 33 LB V 378B / CWE 64 294–5. Cf the references in CWE and Augustine De doctrina christiana l. II cap. 6,7 (CChr SL 32 35–6). 23 Note on Acts 10:38, LB VI 476E. Cf also Reeve (1986) 14 and note on Matthew 2:6, ASD VI-5 100:826–32. 24 Ibid 476E–F. Cf to Eck 15 May 1518, Allen Ep 844:72–81. Cf Erika Rummel Erasmus’ “Annotations” on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto 1986) 136–42.

284 Notes to pages 84–6 25 Methodus H 151:17–19 (Hic primus et unicus tibi sit scopus, hoc votum, hoc unum age, ut muteris, ut rapiaris, ut affleris, ut transformeris in ea, quae discis). 26 Ibid 151:25–152:32. 27 Ibid 153:20–7. 28 Ibid 155:13–16. 29 Ibid 153:31–154:9 (Iam si gentium, apud quas res gesta narratur sive ad quas scribunt apostoli, non situm modo verum etiam originem, mores, instituta, cultum, ingenium ex historicorum litteris didicerimus, dictu mirum quantum lucis et ut ita dicam, vitae sit accessurum lectioni). 30 The Latin text reads skopoi here. For the meaning of skopos in Erasmus’s writings, cf Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto 1977) 74–81. 31 Methodus H 156:14–18. What I have translated as “precepts” is in the original Latin “dogmata.” Erasmus cannot mean unquestionable doctrines of faith because he does not name any, not even the words of Christ. (Illud magis ad rem pertinet, ut tirunculo nostro Christi dogmata tradantur in summam redacta idque potissimum ex euangeliis, mox apostolorum litteris, ut ubique certos habeat scopos, ad quos cetera conferat). 32 Ibid lines 18–29 (qui nec tyrannidem timeret nec mortem, nec satanam unius Christi praesidio fretus). 33 Ibid 157:9–24. 34 Ibid 157:25–128:5 (Sunt, quae ad discipulos et illa tempora proprie pertineant, sunt, quae ad universos, quaedam dantur illorum temporum affectibus, nonnulla ceu per ironiam ridentur). 35 Ibid 158:6–11. 36 Ibid 158:22–32 / 291:13–34 (unde natum sit quod dicitur, a quo dicatur, cui dicatur, quo tempore, qua occasione, quibus verbis, quid praecesserit, quid consequatur) (Nam habet spiritus ille divinus suam quandam linguam). 37 Cf particularly cap 12: ASD I-6 52:504–10. 38 Methodus H 158:33–159:16 (Sive quid erit disserendum, aderit ad manum parata supellex, sive quid explicandum, facilis erit locorum collatio). 39 Cf Lisa Jardine “Distinctive Discipline: Rudolph Agricola’s Influence on Methodical Thinking in the Humanities” in Fokke Akkerman and Arie Johan Vanderjagt eds Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius 1444–1485: Proceedings of the International Conference at the University of Groningen 28–30 October 1985 (Leiden et al. 1988) 38–57. It was Erasmus who first praised Agricola as an outstanding author. Therefore, it is not astonishing that already by 1520 Cantiuncula knew and cited De inventione dialectica of Rudolph Agricola. Cf Claudius Cantiuncula Topica (Basel [1520]) Aiii and on the

Notes to pages 86–9 285

40 41 42

43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53

54

55

following pages: “De origine locorum deque ipsorum utilitate, ex Rudol. Agricola.” For the term in principle, cf Anthony Grafton “Les lieux communs chez les humanistes” in Elisabeth Décultot ed Lire, copier, écrire: Les bibliothèques manuscrites et leurs usages au XVIIIe siècle (Paris 2003) 31–42. Copia ASD I-6 258–69. In the Zentralbibilothek Zurich MS D 129 und MS D 2; in the Basler Universitätsbibliothek: Mscr A VII 66 and Mscr O III 28. Cf Urs B. Leu “Aneignung und Speicherung enzyklopädischen Wissens: Die Loci-Methode von Erasmus” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zurich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 327–42. Methodus H 158:34. Paraclesis H 144:35–145:3. Ibid 141:13–27 (Is qui deus erat, factus est homo, qui immortalis, factus est mortalis) (Praesertim cum hoc sapientiae genus tam eximium, ut semel stultam reddiderit universam huius mundi sapientiam). To Christopher Fisher [March] 1505, Allen Ep 182:141–57. To Matthew Schinner 16 December 1520, Allen Ep 1171:1–10 and to Henry VIII 23 August 1523, Allen Ep 1381:98. Ratio seu methodus H 211:16–17. Cf John William Aldridge The Hermeneutic of Erasmus (Zurich 1966) 64–86. Note on Hebrews 13:18, LB VI 1023D–124F. Note on Revelation 22:20, LB VI 1124F–1126 (Ad evincendum hoc liber non perinde valet, quum totus constet allegoriis, ad cognoscenda Ecclesiae primordia conducit plurimum). Cf Bentley Humanists and Holy Writ 214. Cf Silvana Seidel Menchi “Whether to Remove Erasmus from the Index of Prohibited Books: Debates in the Roman Curia 1570–1610” ERSY 20 (2000) 19–33, particularly 25; and Hubert Jedin Geschichte des Konzils von Trient vol 1 (Freiburg 1949) 129. Cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “L’influence d’Erasme sur l’antistès zurichois Henri Bullinger” in Emile M. Braekman ed Erasme et les théologiens réformés (Brussels 2005) 92–4. Stephan Veit Frech Magnificat und Benedictus Deutsch: Martin Luthers bibelhumanistische Übersetzung in der Rezeption des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Bern 1995) particularly 261–2; Cornelis Augustijn “Erasmus im Galaterbriefkommentar Luthers von 1519” in Cornelis Augustijn Erasmus: Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer (Leiden 1996) 53–70. I would like to thank the Institute for Swiss Reformation Research at the University of Zurich for allowing me to consult the still unpublished manuscript CR IX of the Exegetica of Zwingli.

286 Notes to pages 89–92 56 The small discrepancies in chapter 1 of Corinthians can be traced back to a lack of accuracy, since they do not refer to the interpretation of the text: in verse 10 nec instead of non; verse 21 posteaquam instead of postquam; verse 25 sapientior est hominibus instead of quam homines and verse 30 est instead of fuit and a difference in the order of words: a deo sapienta instead of sapientia a deo. For further proofs, cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität ed Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu (Zurich 2007) 147. 57 Heinrich Bullinger In Sanctissimam Pauli ad Romanos epistolam commentarius (Zurich 1533) 7r–34v, particularly 16v–19r and 30r. 58 Diana Clavuot-Lutz “Eleganter et breviter Erasmus exposuit: Auf Spurensuche in den Predigtkommentaren zum Römer- und zum Galaterbrief von Heinrich Bullinger” in Erasmus in Zürich ed Christ-von Wedel and Leu 193–222. 59 Cf the manuscript of the Zentralbibliothek Zurich: MS CAR I 153. 60 Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti (Zurich 1539); Biblia Sacrosancta (Zurich 1543). Cf Kurt Jakob Rüetschi “Erasmuslob und -tadel bei Rudolf Gwalther d. Ä.” in Erasmus in Zürich ed Christ-von Wedel and Leu 228–33. 61 Thomas H.L. Parker Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries 2nd ed (Edinburgh 1993) particularly 176, 167, 45, and 170. 62 To Leo X 1 February 1516, Allen Ep 384:59–61 / CWE 3 223. 63 Apologia ad Fabrum Stapvlensem ASD IX-3 94:297–300 / CWE 83 15. 64 Cf below 191–5. 65 Loci communes (1535) MCR 21 86. 66 Cf the Index locorum: Z III 638. 67 Heinrich Bullinger Summa Christenlicher Religion (Zurich 1558). 68 Loci communes (1535) MCR 21 255; 351; 607. 69 To Vadian Z VIII Ep 371 333:26–334:1. 70 To Philipp Melanchthon 6 September 1524, Allen Ep 1496:32–8 / CWE 10 379. 71 Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 154:470–4, cf above 68. 72 To Philipp Melanchthon 6 September 1524, Allen Ep 1496:38–41 / CWE 10 379. 73 Ibid line 46 / CWE ibid. 74 Cf below 180–2. 75 To Philipp Melanchthon 6 June 1536, Allen Ep 3127:16 (Magnum onus suscipit, qui fidei catholicae regulas tradit, in quibus nisi sibi constet, vacillat in omnibus illius autoritas). 76 Johan Huizinga Erasmus trans Werner Kaegi (Basel 1951) 103.

Notes to pages 92–8 28 77 From Leo X 10 July 1515, Allen Ep 338; Ep 339. 78 From William Budaeus 5 February [1517], Allen Ep 522; from William Cop 6 February [1517], Ep 523; from Germain de Brie 6 April [1516/17], Ep 569:240–7. 79 From William Warham 24 March [1517], Allen Ep 558:9–15. 80 From Louis Ber 11 May 1517, Allen Ep 582:9; to Thomas More [c.10 July 1517], Ep 597:47 and to Beatus Rhenanus 23 August [1517], Ep 628:53. 81 From Willibald Prickheimer February [1517], Allen Ep 527. Cf also Ep 582:6–9. 82 To Leo X 21 May 1515, Allen Ep 335:76–92; to Henry Afinius [February] 1517, Ep 542:1–6.; to Leo X [4 April 1516/17], Ep 566:31–40. 83 Allen Ep 541:1–75 / CWE 4 261–4. 84 2 February 1518, Allen Ep 769, particularly lines 20–4 / CWE 5 289. 85 Allen Ep 401 / CWE 3 271–3. 86 From George of Saxony [January 1517] Allen Ep 514:3 / CWE 4 183. 87 From Henry Bullock 4 May [1517], Allen Ep 580:27 / CWE 4 347. 88 Luther to Joh. Lang 1 March 1517, WA Br 1 Ep 35:15–20. 89 Allen Ep 501:49–72. 90 28 March 1519, Allen Ep 933:1 / CWE 6 281. 91 30 May 1519, Allen Ep 980. 92 Cf to John Sixtin 22 February [1518], Allen Ep 775:5–7; to William Warham 5 March 1518, Ep 781:25–31 and to John Colet 23 October 1518, Ep 891:29– 33 / CWE 6 168. 93 13 January 1522, Allen Ep 1255:85–116 / CWE 9 10. 94 To Ferdinand 5 January 1523, Allen Ep 1333:329–40 / CWE 9 241–2. 95 Ibid. 96 Allen Ep 1400:114–16. 97 Ibid lines 159–64 / CWE 10 119. 98 23 August 1523, Allen Ep 1381:20–8. 99 Ibid lines 389–96 / CWE 10 73.

chapter eight The Paraphrast 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The incomplete VD 16 already lists up to 60 editions (E 3320–84). Paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei LB VII 1B–E and 2C. Ibid 2C–D. Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci 157 C / CWE 49 13. Cf ibid LB VII 281B and in Psalmvm 33 LB V 378A–B. Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 157E–F / CWE 49 14. Eusebius Historia ecclesiastica 1,4 (MPG 20 75–9).

288 Notes to pages 98–1 1 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

In I ad Corinthios annotationes (cap 10) SS VI–2 161. Paraphrasis in Ep I ad Corinthios. LB VII 891D–E / CWE 43 130. Zwei Predigten Zwinglis in Bern Z VI/1 461:8–462:9. Cf HBBibl 104. Heinrich Bullinger Der alt gloub: Das der Christen gloub von anfang der wält gewärt habe (Zurich 1539) B4r–B5r. Ibid B6v. Cf also Bullinger’s foreword to the Latin Bible: Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti (Zurich, Froschauer, 1539) A2r and A3v. Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen WA 7 24:5–21. Archive for WA 2 34:18–21. Cf Johannes Kunze Erasmus und Luther: Der Einfluß des Erasmus auf die Kommentierung des Galaterbriefes und der Psalmen durch Luther 1519–1521 (Münster 2000) 193. Luther continuously quotes the prophets as fully valid witnesses of Christian faith. Cf, e.g., Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen WA 7 23:17–24. Biblia: Das ist die gantze Heilige Schrift ed D. Martin Luther, reprint of the Biblia of 1545 (Munich 1974) Vorrede I 8:4–9. Enchiridion H 70:13–30. Reprint of the “Biblia” (1545) 18–20. Declamationes in Genesin Mosi librum (1527) WA 24 100: 3–11 and lines 22–4. De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 262:130 / CWE 65 140: (Patrem noverant et Judaei, sed posteaquam filius adsumta natura humana in terris visus est, et cum hominibus versatus est, moxque receptus in coelum, emisso coelitus Spiritu innovante linguas ac mentes omnium, tum demum dilucide mundus agnouit.) Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 293:551–62 / CWE 70 351. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 498B / CWE 46 14. In 1534 Erasmus also conceded that the doctrine of Christ accords with that of the prophets, but this does not mean that it does not exceed their doctrine. He quotes Apocalypse 21:5: Christ makes “all things anew” (Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 471:804–49, particularly 848). Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497E / CWE 46 14. Ibid 498A–B. Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam prol. 1 (CChr SL 14 1:1–4). Ibid prol. 4 (CChr SL 14 3:49–52). Ibid prol. 7 (CChr SL 14 5:109–15). Ibid liber 1, 11 (CChr SL 14 7:33–6 and 12:179–95). Ibid liber 1,3 (CChr SL 14 7:33–45). Vgl. Theophylactus Enarratio in Ev. Lucae Praef. (MPG 123 691); Quinta pars Bibliae cum glossa ordinaria et expositione Lyrae litterali et morali continens quatuor evangelia (Basel 1498), (super proömium Lucae) s2r–v; Thomas Catena aurea secundum Lucam 1:1–4 (Busa 5 281).

Notes to pages 1 1–4 289 32 Cf note on Luke 1:1, LB VI 217C. 33 Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 279A–280A (In humanis historiis, quoniam ex cognitione rerum non mediocris capitur vel voluptas vel utilitas, in primis requiri solet narrationis fides. Sed hanc multo magis esse oportet in Euangelica narratione, quae non solum adfert oblectationem animi vacui, verum etiam necessaria est ad veram pietatem, sine qua nemo consequitur aeternam salutem). 34 Ibid 281A. 35 Ibid 281B (Porro quemadmodum non omnes pari sinceritate praedicabant Euangelium: ita nec pari fide qui scribunt, tractant historiam Euangelicam). 36 Ibid 281C–E. 37 Ibid 281C–D. 38 Ibid 281E. Cf Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 97E. 39 Ibid 282A and D. 40 History of the Peloponnesian War I 21–2. 41 Historia, particularly 47 and 48. 42 Epistel Sanct Petri gepredigt und ausgelegt WA 12 260:10–21. Cf also Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen WA 7 29:7–10. 43 Annotationes in Ev. Lucae SS VI,1 541. Cf also 542. 44 Johann Eck Christenliche außlegung der Evangelien (Ingolstadt 1532) XXXIIIr and XXXIVv. 45 Jacobo Faber Stapulensis Commentarii initiatorii in quatuor evangelia (Basel 1523) 182r–v (Verum ex sacra Ezechielis visione, quatuor duntaxat erant ordinaturi: non humana quidem, sed diuina sorte et electione) (Non ergo Lucas temere, et humana fiducia est aggressus: ut nonnulli aliorum, qui idcirco recepti non sunt, hanc sacram scribere historiam, sed sorte diuina). 46 Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 281B. Cf also in Psalmvm 33 LB V 378A–B. 47 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497D / CWE 46 14. 48 Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 281 C. 49 Concerning the humanists’ critique of the Reformers’ program of language studies and dogmatically focused curriculum, cf Erika Rummel The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany (Oxford 2000) 44. 50 Cf Von Anbeten des Sakraments des heiligen Leichnams Christi WA 11 456:2–3 and An die Rathherren aller Städte deutsches Lands WA 15 37:18–22. 51 Paraphrases in Novem Testamentvm, Pio lectori LB VII (**3v) / CWE 45 17. For the astonishing parallels between the sober views of Erasmus and Zerbolt, a devout writer from the fourteenth century, concerning the biblical languages, cf Wim François “Erasmus’ Plea for Bible Reading in the Vernacular: The Legacy of the Devotio Moderna?” ERSY 28 (2008) 109–13.

29  Notes to pages 1 4–6 52 Supputatio errorvm censvris Beddae LB IX 658C (Sic pro illo tempore decebat apostolorum scribere, me Praphrasten decet aliter scribere, praesertim hisce temporibus). 53 Wilhelm Maurer “Luthers Verständnis des Neutestamentlichen Kanons” Fuldaer Hefte (Berlin 1960) 56–62. Cf John William Aldridge The Hermeneutic of Erasmus (Zurich 1966) 81. 54 Ecclesiastes ASD V-5 326: 303–7 (Ea similiter constat historia, doctrina, praeceptis, sacramentis, exhibitione promissiorum, gratia et exemplo pietatis omnium absolutissimo. Historia nihil admirabilius, nihil amabilius, nihil certius. Ea continet ortum, progressum et exitum Redemptoris vsque ad Acta Apostolorum). 55 For Irena Backus, who analysed the narratives about Christ’s family, the “additions of the historical background cannot be considered as anything more than an aesthetic device.” Cf Irena Backus “Jesus and His Family in Erasmus’ Paraphrases on Luke and John” in Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey eds Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) 161. In the same volume Jane E. Phillips, who accurately translated the second part of the Paraphrases of Luke, is more in line with my view. She suggests that Erasmus repositioned Luke as a historian and that the paraphrased Luke enlarges on the historical facts. For her, even Luke chapters 1–3, also analysed by Backus, “are expanded with, among other things, fuller historical contextualization and with typological connections made between events on the historical plane and the spiritual transformation being set in motion.” Cf Jane E. Phillips “The Speaking Voice in Erasmus’ Paraphrases on Luke” in ibid 134. 56 In the dedication of his edition of Hilary’s works, Erasmus confessed that allegorical interpretations had become questionable for him (to John Carondelet 5 January 1523, Allen Ep 1334: 629–35). Cf also Kathy Eden “Rhetoric in the Hermeneutics of Erasmus’ Later Works” ERSY 11 (1991) 88–104. 57 Brevis commemoratio mortis Christi SS VI, 2 1 (Cogitemus seu potius meditemur et expendamus cur Christus mortuus sit: hic se aperient venae fidei et caritatis). 58 Particularly ibid 47 (Nos hic discamus in Christo consummatum esse nostram salutem, nec ultra eam in aliis rebus extra Christum quaeramus). 59 Ibid 49 (Ex latere dormientis Adae ecclesia aedificatur, et illinc profluit aqua ad abluenda peccata totius mundi. Aperta est porta, ut illic asylum sit cunctis credentibus, et foramen petrae ubi requiem inveniunt quicunque laborant, illic cor patet, ut de charitate nihil dubitare queamus). For the traditional models for these metaphors see Christine Christ-von Wedel “Das Buch der Bücher popularisieren: Der Bibelübersetzer Leo Jud

Notes to pages 1 6–8 291

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

und sein biblisches Erbauungsbuch ‘Vom lyden Christi’ (1534)” Zwingliana 38 (2011) 35–52. Cf also SS VI,2 4 and 12–13 where Zwingli even seems to go beyond the traditional allegory of the foot-washing or the lamb of God. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 640F. Brevis commemoratio mortis Christi SS VI,2 39. Ibid 18; 34; cf also 26–7; 30–5. Ibid 27; 30; 32–3; 35. Additamenta ad Matthaeum 27 SS VI,1 475. Cf Matthew 26:63. Sermones 1529 WA 29 234–5. Sermones 1538 WA 28 304–5. Sermones 1529 WA 29 237:6–7. Sermones 1538 WA 46 299–301; Duo sermones de passione Christi WA 1 338:12–339:13; Sermones de Joannis 16–20 WA 28 304:6–305:5. Cf WA 28 204. Note to John 18:1, LB VI 407C–D, Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 629E / CWE 46 198. Sermo de Joannis 18 WA 28 253:6. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 630E. Sermones 1538 WA 46 286:9. Cf also Sermo de Joannis 18 WA 28 202:7–10. Sermones 1525 WA 17,1 72:8–9. Cf also Sermones 1538 WA 46 290. Cf Sermones de Joannis 16–20, WA 28 304:6–305; ibid 364:8–365:31. Fragmentum Lectionum Lutheri WA 1 336–40. Sermones 1525 WA 17,1 70:10–71:2. Mark 15:34b. Duo sermones de passione Christi WA 1 336:20–32; cf Sermones de Joannis 16–20 WA 28 323:9–324:8. Johann Eck Christenliche außlegung der Evangelien (Ingolstadt 1532) CLI r–v and CLVr. Ibid CLIIr–v; CLIIIIr–v; CLIVv; CLVv; and CLVIIr. Ibid CLIIIr. Cf John 13:6–10. Eck Christenliche außlegung, particularly CXXIXv; cf also CXXXIXv and CXLIIIv. Cf for example ibid CXXVr. Ibid CLr–CLIv and CXLVIIIr. Paraphrasis in Matthaevm LB VII 139A. Christenliche außlegung CXLVIIIv. Ibid CLIIIr–v. Jacob Faber Stapulensis Commentarii initiatorii in quatuor evangelia (Basel 1523) 109r–v; 269r and 272r. Cf concerning Eck: Christenliche außlegung

292 Notes to pages 1 9–11

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

CXLIIIr–v; CXLVr–CXLVIr; CLr–CLIv; concerning Luther: Sermones de Joannis 16–20 WA 28 304:6–305:5; concerning Zwingli: Brevis commemoratio mortis Christi SS VI,2 34. Commentarii 276r. Cf Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 258D and 267A; Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 636D. Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 267B–C. See Zwingli for a different interpretation: SS VI,2 39. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 635 B–D / CWE 46 206. Ibid 635F / CWE 46 207 Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 267C and D / CWE 49 170. Cf Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 593D–E. Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 462 A–D / CWE 48 218–19. Ibid 462E / CWE 219. Ibid 463F / CWE 221. Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 263 A / CWE 49 164. Cf for example ibid 450C. Cf also James D. Tracy Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley 1996) 112. Cf Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 458B–E. Ibid LB VII 448F / CWE 48 184. Ibid LB VII 450E / CWE 48 188. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 637B / CWE 46 209. Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 259E. Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 462A. Cf also Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci 261 E–F and 269A; Paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei 142A.

chapter nine How the Trinity Is Known 1 Regarding the cornucopia of proofs available for Erasmus’s doubts about the capacity of human knowledge, I refer the reader to my 1981 study entitled Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981). 2 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 498B / CWE 46 14. This and the following quotations should vitiate the preconception that Erasmus had an inclination towards Subordinationism. Cf John B Payne Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments (Richmond 1970) 30 and Richard Homer Graham “Erasmus and Stunica: A Chapter in the History of New Testament Scholarship” ERSY 10 (1990) 28–30, where it is at least admitted that Erasmus’s interpretations in the Paraphrases are orthodox, and on page 43, where

Notes to pages 111–13 293

3 4 5

6

7

8

9 10

11

Erasmus is put on the same level with the Reformers. Cf also the informative essay by James D. Tracy, “Erasmus and the Arians: Remarks on the Consensus Ecclesiae” Catholic Historical Review 67 (1981) 1–10. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 500A / CWE 46 17; cf also 498D–E and 499C. Ibid 498 B–C. Cf the extensive Apologia ad Jac. Stunicam LB IX 309D–311C, particularly B, and Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 456:382–434. Cf also note on Acts 2:22, LB VI 444D and Argumentum in epistolam ad Romanos LB VI 551–2. Cf above and, for example, Responsio ad notationes Ed. Lei LB IX 123; Prologvs in supputationes Beddae 446B and Adversus monachos quosdam Hispanos 1029 E–F. Cf Robert Coogan Erasmus, Lee and the Correction of the Vulgate: The Shaking of the Foundations (Geneva 1992) 70–81 and Peter G. Bietenholz Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe (Toronto 2009). Biblioteca Filialei Cluj a Academiei Republicii Romane, Anexa III. Signatur: U 62555. I am grateful to Mihály Balázs for his help in reading this volume. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497C–D / CWE 46 13–14. Cf Luke 10:22. Cf a text from 1533: De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 274:549–55 and Christine Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) particularly 76–7; 119, 124; 128. This could possibly reflect the influence of John Gerson, the former chancellor of the University of Paris, who fought against vain curiosity, or Contra vanam curiositatem as one of his books is titled. Indeed, Erasmus confessed to Béda in 1525 that as a young man he had read a little of Gerson and that it did not displease him. However, he did not have any works by this theologian in his library, an omission that he vowed to put right. In fact, Erasmus did not refer to Gerson in his works and apologies until after 1526, when he called him a theologian who, like himself, fought against a deformed theology. Thus, the suggestions made in the Paraphrase of John probably reflect the general and diffuse influence of Gerson on the devotional literature of the late Middle Ages. Cf 24 August 1525, Allen Ep 1596:17–18 and 13 March 1526, Allen Ep 1679:84; Supputatio errorum N. Beddae LB IX 556A; 568D; 594B; 648C; Ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis LB IX 828 and Declarariones ad censuras Colloquiorvm LB IX 946C; also Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 622C and more proofs as to Erasmus’s relationship to Gerson in Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam 34–5.

294 Notes to pages 113–15 12 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497A–B / CWE 46 13. Cf also in the Ecclesiastes ASD V-5 368:119–32. 13 Commentarius ad Romanos I, lec. 6 (117) (Busa 5 446–7) (est autem manifesta per quasdam similitudines in creaturis repertas). 14 Cf above. 15 Die sieben Bußpsalmen (1517), WA 19 205:27–206:13; Cf also WA 56 176:15– 22; WA 22 121:5–122:6 and WA 49 434:16–435:15; WA 56 174:11–19. 16 De providentia Dei Z VI,3 70–8. Cf Gottfried W. Locher Die Theologie Zwinglis im Lichte seiner Christologie (Zurich 1952) 54–61. 17 De providentia Dei Z VI,3 71; cf also SS VI,1 539; Römerbriefvorlesung (Scholia) WA 56 174:11–177.32, particularly 177:27–31. It should be emphasized that also for Luther the Trinity could not be understood with human reason. Cf Eine Schoene Oster predigt fur dem Churfursten zu Sachssen WA 46 541:40–542:6. 18 Catechismus ecclesiae Genevensis (1545) BSRK 119:1–3 and Confessio belgica (1561) ibid 233:13–16 (Est igitur mundus ipse veluti speculum quoddam, in quo eum possimus inspicere) (quandoquidem is coram oculis nostris est, instar libri pulcheririmi, in quo creaturae omnes, magnae minoresque, loco characterum sunt, qui nobis Dei invisibilia comtemplanda exhibent). 19 Enchiridion H 52:28–31 and 57:16–18 / CWE 66 51 and 55. 20 Cf below 116. 21 Cf the letter of introduction to Paul Volz from 1518 in which Erasmus puts the work in the time and circumstances of its genesis, particularly H 3:5–14; 4:20–8:15. 22 Agrippa von Nettesheim De occulta philosophia ed Perrone Compagni (Leiden 1992) 85:7–15 (Cum triplex sit mundus, elementalis, coelestis et intellectualis, et quisque inferior a superiori regatur ac suarum virium suscipiat influxum ita ut ipse Archetypus et summus Opifex per angelos, coelos, stellas, elementa, animalia, plantas, metalla, lapides, Suae omnipotentiae virtutes exinde in nos transfundat, in quorum ministerium haec omnia condidit atque creavit, non irrationabile putant magi nos per eosdem gradus, per singulos mundos, ad eundem ipsum achetypum mundum, omnium opificem et primam causam, a qua sunt onmia et procedunt omnia). 23 Ibid 507:14–509:21, particularly 508:20 (ipsum Deum concipit et continet). 24 Agrippa von Nettesheim De incertitudine declamatio ([Cologne] 1539) cap. XCVII, cf also cap. XCVIII–C (De deo enim sine eius lumine nemo rite quicquam effari potest, lumen autem illud est verbum dei per quod omnia facta sunt, illuminans omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum, dans illis potestatem filios dei fieri, quotquot receperunt et crediderunt ei). 25 Ibid cap. CI (In hoc ergo serpente glorietur, qui glorietur in scientia. Nemo siquidem possidere poterit scientiam nisi fauore serpentis, cuius dogmata non nisi praestigia sunt, et finis semper malus est).

Notes to pages 115–19 295 26 Ibid cap. XLVIII. 27 To Cornelius Agrippa 21 April 1533, Allen Ep 2796:1–6 and to Abel Colster 25 April 1533, Ep 2800:41–50. 28 Cf Willy Andreas Deutschland vor der Reformation: Eine Zeitwende (Stuttgart 1932) 585–94. 29 Enchiridion H 88:21–33. 30 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 786D. 31 Paraphrasis in Ep. Iacobi ASD VII-6 128:183–6 / CWE 44 142. 32 Commentarius ad Romanos I lec. 6 (116) (Busa 5 446). 33 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 498E–499A / CWE 46 15; Seneca Naturales quaestiones, introduction to book 1 in L. Annaei Senecae opera philosophica ed M.N. Bonillet (Paris 1830; reprint 1978) V 58:13–14. 34 Augustine De doctrina Christiana I, VII,7 (CChr SL 32 10); Boethius Consolationis philosophiae III, 10 ed Olof Gigon 2nd ed (Stuttgart 1969) 132; Anselm Proslogion 3 (MPL 158 228). 35 To Charles V 13 January 1522, Allen Ep 1255:101–3. 36 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 498B–C / CWE 46 13. 37 Proslogion, particularly 2 (MPL 158 227). 38 Summa theologiae Iq 2 a3 (Busa 2 187) and Summa contra gentiles I 13 (Busa 2 3–4) and the summary in the interpretation of Romans 1:19: Commentarius ad Romanos I lec 6 (115) (Busa 5 446). 39 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497B–C. 40 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 781D / CWE 42 17. I suggest that Erasmus formulated this carefully because he did not want to exclude the idea of translatio – that is, the transmission of Judeo-Christian ideas – which was so famous among humanists and was introduced by Clemens of Alexandria. This idea envisions that the Greeks knew the five books of Moses and that Plato and Aristotle culled their Judeo-Christian compatible ideas from the Torah. Cf Stromateis 1, 22 (MPG 8 889C–896A). It is not likely that Erasmus knew the work. It was not printed until 1550. Yet the idea of translatio was well known and widespread. 41 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 781D / CWE 42 17–18. Cf also Ennaratio Psalmi 33 ASD V-3 99. 42 Commentarius ad Romanos 1, 20 (117) (Busa 5 446–7). 43 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 781D; cf also in Psalmvm 33 LB V 372 D–E. 44 Note on Colossians 1:15, LB VI 885C (Caeterum per imaginem Filium aliquo modo promit sese, dum per illum condidit hunc mundum, dum per eum hominem factum nobis innotescit). 45 ASD V-5 372:192–4. 46 ASD V-1 238:959–62. 47 Römerbriefvorlesung (Scholia) WA 56 176:20–2.

296 Notes to pages 119–2 48 Enchiridion H 31:1–3 and 43:15–18. 49 In her marvellous study Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto 1977) 23, Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle paraphrased Erasmus’s interpretation as follows: “As omnipotent Lord he wished to publish his commands, and so he spoke creation into existence. Creatures would read his message in the admirable text of creation.” It seems that the omnipresent tradition of reading into the book of Creation may have led her to read into Erasmus’s formulation an idea that he did not express. Erasmus wrote in reference to the creation of angels and men: “so that from the wonders of creation and even from itself it might deduce the power, the holiness, and the goodness of its maker” (ut ex rebus mirifice conditis, atque etiam ex seipso potentiam, pietatem, ac bonitatem opificis colligeret) and “And for this reason chiefly he first delivered his word, so that through it he might become known to us in speaking, as it were, and so that through it, having become known by means of our wonder at the beauty of the workings of the universe, he might wind his way into our affections” (Atque hac ratione primum depromsit sermonem suum, per quem nobis veluti loquutus innotesceret: seseque per admirationem pulcherrimae machinae cognitum, in affectus nostros insinuaret). (Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499D–E and LB VII 500D–F / CWE 46 16). 50 Cf James D. Tracy “Erasmus the Humanist” in Richard L. DeMolen ed Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Quincentennial Symposium (New York 1971) 43, who for this reason regards Erasmus as an exponent of Natural Theology. Cf also the more differentiated view of Jean-Claude Margolin Recherches érasmiennes (Geneva 1969) particularly 40, and confirming my theses, Manfred Hoffmann “Erasmus on Church and Ministry” ERSY 6 (1986) 23. Cf also Albert Rabil, Jr Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian Humanist (Lanham 1993) 163. 51 Paraclesis H 145:5–7 (Quid autem aliud est Christi philosophia, quam ipse renascentiam vocat, quam instauratio bene conditae naturae?) 52 ASD VI-5 206:326–8 (Facile toleratur, quicquid est secundum naturam. Nihil autem magis congruit cum hominis natura quam Christi philosophia, quae pene nihil aliud agit quam vt naturam collapsam suae restituat innocentiae synceritatique.) 53 Ratio seu methodus H 234:7–10 (nostra sapientia stultitia est; nostra puritas impure est. At haec omnia nobis est Christus, et iustitia et pax et sapientia, idque ex largitate patris, qui prior et gratis dilexit nos et hoc ipsum gratis praestitit, ut illum redamemus). 54 Cf for example Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1213A–1216A. 55 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 505F / CWE 46 25.

Notes to pages 12 –22 29 56 Cf note on John 10:35, LB VI 384E and Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 586C–D. Cf in contrast the use of this quote by Pico della Mirandola in De dignitate hominis ed Eugenio Garin (Bad Homburg 1968) 32–4. 57 Ecclesiastes ASD V-4 38:91. Cf Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:5. 58 Adagivm I.i.69 Homo homini Devs ASD II-1 182:885–6 / CWE 31 115. 59 ASD V-4 38:81–3; Cf below 122–3 60 Cf above 45–8. 61 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 737C / CWE 50 110. 62 Hyperaspistes LB X 1324D / CWE 76 272. 63 Ibid. 64 Fidei expositio Z VI,5 131–2. 65 De providentia Dei Z VI,3 229:12–16. 66 Ibid Z VI,3 106:14–107:1 (ex uno fonte derivata sunt, nempe de summi numinis natura et ingenio). 67 Cf also for the following considerations Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 138–41. 68 Cf Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Opera ed Hieronymus Emser (Strassburg [1504]) FO I. Zwingli remarked on this paragraph “Plato misticus.” His exemplar is conserved in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich IV PP 15. 69 De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 282:834–50; cf Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) 91–3. 70 Convivivm religiosvm ASD I-3 254:710 / CWE 39 194. 71 Ibid 251:619 / CWE 39 192. 72 To John Vlatten [c. October] 1523, Allen Ep 1390:56–85. Cf also Hyperaspistes LB X 1487–8. Bietenholz interprets this differently: cf Peter G. Bietenholz Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden 1994) 409–12. 73 Theodor Bibliander Oratio ad enarrationem Esaiae (Zurich 1532) 17r. 74 Heinrich Bullinger De origine erroris libri dvo (Zurich 1539) 34r 75 Ibid 5v. 76 Ibid 33r–35v. 77 Ibid 10r. 78 Ibid 3v. 79 Aratos lived in the third century before Christ in Soli in Cilicia. His main work is a treatment of the astronomical work of Eudoxos. Cicero translated it into Latin.

298 Notes to page 122 80 Cf note on Acts 17:28, ASD VI-6 288 (LB VI 502 note 44). Cf Aratus Phänomena ed. Ernst Maass (Berlin 1893) 3:5. 81 Heinrich Bullinger, De origine erroris 4r: “ut iam vox Iehovah significet entem seu existentem suis uiribus, sine principio sine fine, in quo sumus, uiuimus et mouemur, ut pie canit Aratus Cilix, et subscriptorem habet suae terrae hominem Paulum Tarsensem. Hoc ipsum nomen prodit deus Mosi percontanti quo appelletur uocabulo. Dicit enim Exod. 3. cap. … Eram qui eram, uel ut nostri uulgati codices habent Sum qui sum. Aristoteles in libello quem de Mundo scripsit, Budaeo interprete, de nomine dei disputans, inter alia dicit, Vnus porro deus cum sit pluribus nominibus appellatus est, a suis utique effectibus denominatus, quorum specimen aedere ipse solet. … Et Aristaeas ille uir celeberrimus apud regem Ptolemaeum Philadelphi disserens caussamque Iudaeorum agens suasit illis libertatem concedi. Iudaeos enim unum deum colere, quem et Graeci uenerentur appellantes Ζῆνα [a variant for Zeus in the accusative case] quod omnibus uitae munera conferat. Author huius Josephus lib. Antiq. 12. cap 2. cuius uerba si quis requirat haec sunt: Nam cum multa saepius indagassem, aiebat Aristaeas, cognoui eos omnium factorem deum colere, quem nos Ζῆνα, id est Iouem nominamus, quod omnibus indulget ζῆν, id est uiuere.” The quotation is not from Josephus, who referred to Aristeas in his Antiquitates 12,2. It originates in the pseudo-epigraphic Letter of Aristeas. Cf Aristeas Philocratum epistola ed Paul Wendland (Leipzig 1900) 2 and 6 (paragraph 6 and 16). The Epistola ad Philocratem contains the legend of the genesis of the Septuaginta. It emphasizes the holiness and inviolability of the text. Already by 1502 a lawyer from Ingolstadt had translated or rather paraphrased it in German: Aristeas zu seinem Bruder Philocratem durch Dietherichen Reysach in Teütsch gewendt (Augsburg 1502). The Latin translation has Bullinger’s quotation, but not with the uncommon Greek variant for Zeus (“Aristeas ad Philocratem fratrem de LXXII Interpretibus Matthia Palmiero Pisano interprete” in Mikropresbytikon veterum quorundam Theologorum (Basel [1550]) 495). It seems that Bullinger quoted at second hand – the source was probably Theodor Bibliander, who might have known the Greek text. The text translated by Budé is a pseudo-Aristotelian work, which contains Peripatetic and old and new Stoic ideas. The quotation comes from the end (De mundo Aristotelis lib. I. Philonis lib. I. Gulielmo Budaeo interprete etc. (Basel 1533) 31). 82 De origine erroris 33r: “Gentes priscas unum uerum deum cognouisse, uarijsque appellasse nominibus, et quae nominum ratio sit.” 83 Praefatio editionis Pindari Z IV 870:10–16. 84 Note to Acts 17:28, ASD VI-6 288:511–15 (Verum Paulus id vno et altero fecit loco, idque pene cogente occasione praedicandi Evangelii. Quid

Notes to pages 122–  299

85 86

87 88 89 90 91

haec ad istos, qui coacte et affectate non solum poetarum et oratorum, sed omnium sophistarum, philosophorum, mathematicorum, denique et magorum litteras inuehunt in doctrinam Christi, quam simplicissimam ac purissimam oportebat esse.) ASD V-1 206:44 and 208:78–81 / CWE 70 239. ASD V-4 40:124–32 (quod perinde quasi Deus sit res corporea, sectilis aut propagabilis, existimarunt vllam rem creatam posse Dei portionem esse, sed tamen illud recte perspexerunt, hominem non alia re propius accedere ad naturam aeterni numinis, quam mente et oratione, quam Graeci νοῦν καὶ λόγον appellant). Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 500D–501A, particularly F / CWE 46 18. Eine Schoene Osterpredigt fur dem Churfursten zu Sachsen WA 46 541:40– 542:6. Cf ibid 543 and Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 612C. Eine Schoene Osterpredigt fur dem Churfursten zu Sachsen WA 46 545:15–22. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 208:50–68 / CWE 70 238.

chapter ten On the Doctrine of Creation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13

Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 500C–D / CWE 46 17–18. WA Tr 1 no 1160 574:7–19. Cf particularly page 242–6 in this volume. Convivivm religiosvm ASD I-3 231–5, particularly 232:23–4 and 235:112–24; Paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei LB VII 40E–F. Pverpera ASD I-3 453–69 and Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 708F– 710A. Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 500C / CWE 46 17, cf above note 1. Abaelard Expositio in Hexaemeron 3. dies (MPL 178 750C). “Mundus animal est rationale, immortale,” De occulta philosophia, cap. XXXVI in Cornelius Agrippa De occulta philosophia: Libri tres ed Perrone Compagni (Leiden 1992) 507:18–19. ASD V-1 234:835–9 / CWE 70 274. Epicvrevs ASD I-3 730:376. ASD V-5 314:66–75. ASD V-5 320:194–222 (Et tamen quoties creatura saevit in homines, quoniam id facit nutu conditoris a quo gubernatur, non recedit a lege diuina). Cf Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499D; 500A; Paraphrasis in acta apostolorum 737B; LB V 1091E; and Sermones de Joannis 16, WA 46 560:20; ibid 542:33–543:1. Cf also the discussion in Melanchthon (Initia doctrina Physicae MCR 13 376–80).

3

 Notes to pages 12 –3

14 Augustine Tractatus in Joannem I,17 (CChr SL 36 10) and Thomas Aquinas Super Evangelium Joanni cap. 1, lc 2 (Busa 6 232). Cf also Catena aurea in Joannem cap. 1, lc. 1 (Busa 5 367). 15 Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 290A. 16 Sermones de Joannis 16 WA 46 559:29–34; cf also ibid 561:15–32 and, concerning the refusal of the Platonic doctrine of ideas, Weihnachtspostille WA 10,I/1 195:14–196:17; for Erasmus Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 500D. Cf by contrast the Paraphrase on Paul’s speech on the Areopagus where he circumscribes humans as the work of God. There Erasmus emphasizes that God acts through humans like a craftsman with a tool (Paraphrasis in acta apostolorum LB VII 737B). 17 Cf John 5:17. 18 Sermones de Joannis 16 WA 46 559:22–34. 19 Cf David Löfgren Die Theologie der Schöpfung bei Luther (Lund 1960). 20 Pverpera ASD I-3 454:41–2 / CWE 39 592. 21 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 231:777–85 and 232:799–806 / CWE 70 272; cf Matthew 10:30. 22 Problema ASD I-3 713–19. There is only one exception. The question of what makes a body light or heavy is answered with the statement: God must answer why he made fire the lightest and earth the heaviest (719:86–8). 23 Ibid 719:225–39. 24 Ibid 718:190–1 / CWE 40 1064. 25 E.g. ibid 716:110,119,135; 717:164,167; 718:180. 26 Amicitia ASD I-3 709:305. 27 Marsilio Ficino Commentarius in Convivium Platonis de amore VI, 10 in Opera omnia (Basel 1576; reprint Turin 1962) II 1348. 28 De vita coelitus ibid I 566–8. 29 Apologia in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Opera omnia (Basel 1572) I 169 and Conclusiones 900 ibid 104–6 (quam facere opera mirabilia, mediantibus uirtutibus naturalibus, per applicationem earum adinuicem, et ad sua passa naturalia). Cf also Fernand Roulier Jean Pic de la Mirandole (1463– 1494): Humaniste, Philosophe, Théologien (Geneva 1989) 461–73. 30 Cf K. Goldammer’s article “Magie” in Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer eds Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie V 633. 31 Amicitia ASD I-3 700:1–7. 32 Ibid 708:260–1 / CWE 40 1045. 33 Ibid 709:298–301 / CWE 1046. 34 To Peter Zutpenius 10 August 1519, Allen Ep 1005 1–14 / CWE 7 43. Further important statements by Erasmus against magic are found in Inquisitio ASD I-3 366:86–8 and 725:173–7, and in Lingva ASD IV-1A 97:362–70. Cf also the liberal treatment of astronomy in the Gouda-manuscript of the Antibarbari: ASD I-1 45:10–14.

Notes to pages 13 –3 3 1 35 Cf Deutoronomy 18:9–12; Wisdom 17:7; Acts 8:9–25; 13:6–12; 19:9 and Origen Contra Celsum I, 24, 38, 60; II, 51; VI, 41 (MPG 11 701–5; 733 and 769–72); Athanasius of Alexandria Vita Antonii 78 (MPG 26 952); Irenäus Contra haereses 1, 13, 1 (MPG 7 577B–570A); cf Augustine De civitate Dei X, 9 (CChr SL 47 281:1–12) and Thomas Aquinas Summa contra gentiles III, 107, n 7 and 11 (Busa 2 96). 36 For Martinus Plantsch, cf Heiko Augustinus Oberman Werden und Wertung der Reformation (Tübingen 1977) 211–33. 37 Cf Brian Vickers ed Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge 1984) 13–17. 38 Cf Ernst Cassirer Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Darmstadt 1963) 121–6. 39 Cf . above 169–76 in this volume. 40 De pveris institvendis ASD I-2 31:21. 41 Roulier Jean Pic de la Mirandole 552. 42 De conscribendis epistolis ASD I-2 567:18; Spongia ASD IX-3 178:2292. 43 WA Tr 4 412 no 4638. Wolfgang Maaser deemed this quotation insignificant. He suggests that Luther liberated the sciences from dogmatic bondage by characterizing scientific knowledge as only probable. Maaser convincingly demonstrates that Luther characterized this knowledge, particularly the logical laws of mathematics, as only probable, but he does not prove that in doing so Luther liberated the sciences from biblical specifications. I think that, on the contrary, Luther with this suggestion of probability saved his biblicism. This way, he did not actively give the sciences freedom but could let the matter remain ambiguous. Cf Wolfgang Maaser “Luther und die Naturwissenschaften – systematische Aspekte an ausgewählten Beispielen” in Günter Frank and Stephan Rhein eds Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit (Sigmaringen 1998) 25–41. 44 Initia doctrina Physicae MCR 13 216–20, particularly 217. Cf Cornelis Augustijn “Melanchthons Suche nach Gott und Natur” in Frank and Rhein eds Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit 16 and 20 and Heinz Scheible Melanchthon: Eine Biographie (Munich 1997) 96–8.

Chapter eleven On the Doctrine of God 1 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499C / CWE 46 16. 2 Ibid 499C–D / CWE 46 16. Cf also 500B–D. And cf, as a contrast, the cautious discussion of the term sempiterna generatio in Petrus Lombardus Sententiae I 9 (MPL 192 546–9).

3 2 Notes to pages 133–6 3 Origen De principiis I, 2, 9; I, 2, 10 and III, 5, 3 in Origenes Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien ed Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp (Darmstadt 1976) 142:12–146:46 and 624:22–626:2. Cf Maurice Wiles “Eternal Generation” Journal of Theological Studies new series 12 (1961) 288. Cf also Augustine, for whom God also speaks through the logos as the immutable: De trinitate VII, 1, 1 (CChr SL 50 244:2430). 4 Cf Wiles “Eternal Generation” 284–90. 5 This is the translation of the Latin version used in the sixteenth century and still in use in the Catholic Church. The ecumenical translation of 1988 is formulated, in line with Erasmus, “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.” 6 Tatian Oratio ad Graecos 5 (MPG 6 817). 7 Origen De principiis I, 2, 7 in Origenes Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien ed Görgemanns and Karpp 137. Cf Hebrews 1:3. 8 I refer only to Thomas: Catena aurea in Joannem cap. 1 lc 1 (Busa 5 368). 9 Loci theologici (1543) MCR 21 615. 10 Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1210E–F. 11 Loci theologici (1543) MCR 21 615. In his note referring to Hebrews 1:3, Erasmus hints at the expression lumen de lumine (note on Hebrews 1:3, LB VI 983C). 12 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499A–D. 13 Ibid 497A–B. 14 ASD V-1 224:521–60. 15 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499C / CWE 46 16. 16 Cf above 31–2. 17 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 499C / CWE 46 16. 18 Cf August Bludau Die beiden ersten Erasmus-Ausgaben des Neuen Testamentes und ihre Gegner (Freiburg 1902) 60–1 and Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto 1977) 3–31. 19 Cf Novum Testamentum omne Latina versione, oppositum aeditioni uvlgari siue Germanice … ed Johannes Zwick (Zurich 1535); Biblia sacra vtriusque Testamenti … NOVUM … opera D. Eras. Rot. ultimo recognitum & aeditum ed Heinrich Bullinger (Zurich 1539) and Biblia sacrosancta … translata in sermonem Latinum (Zurich 1543). 20 Cf the forthcoming edition of Zwingli’s Exegetica for the Corpus Reformatorum edited by Max Lienhardt and Daniel Bolliger. It is noteworthy that the nineteenth-century editors tacitly recorrected sermo to verbum (SS IV,1 682). 21 Cf Novum D.N. Iesv Christi testamentum ed Theodor Beza ([Geneva], Oliva Roberti Stephani, 1556) 106. For more on the Antitrinitarians, cf Delio Cantimori Italienische Häretiker der Spätrenaissance trans Werner Kaegi

Notes to pages 136–  3 3

22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29 30

(Basel 1949) 421 and Irena Backus “Erasmus and the Antitrinitarians” ERSY 11 (1991) 53. Like Luther, Bullinger interpreted logos as sermo but used verbum/word in his translation: Heinrich Bullinger In Divinum Jesu Christi Domini nostri Evangelium secundum Joannem (Zurich 1543) Liber I, cap. 1. Cf also Martin Bucer Enarratio in Evangelion Johannis in Martini Buceri opera latina ed Irena Backus 2 (Leiden 1988) 21 and 23 and, in regard to Vermigli, Klaus Sturm Die Theologie Peter Martyr Vermiglis während seines ersten Aufenthaltes in Straßburg 1542–1547: Ein Reformkatholik unter den Vätern der reformatorischen Kirche (Neukirchen Vluyn 1971) 115; 222 note 170; 179. The allusion to Vermigli I owe to Emidio Campi. Heinrich Bullinger In Divinum … Evanglium secundum Johannem Liber I cap. 1 a3v; LB VII 498E–499C. Sermones de Joannis 16 WA 46 545:6–10. Karl Barth Die kirchliche Dogmatik I/1 (Zurich 1955) 179. Barth’s lack of interest in Erasmus was well known in Basel anecdotally. As my professor Werner Kaegi once told me, Barth very pointedly failed to appear at the Erasmus Jubilee held in 1969. For Karl Barth’s view of “humanism,” cf Karl Barth “Humanismus” Theologische Studien 28 (1950) 1–28. Weihnachtspostille WA 10,I/1 180:4–214:3. Those who not wish to acknowledge Luther’s dependence on Erasmus should at least consider the possibility of a shared source because apart from the idea of an eternal begetting, the texts of the two men also agree on the doctrine of the begetting of the Son being incomprehensible to human reason and therefore something that must be taken obediently on faith. The differences were discussed in detail above (Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497–499D and Sermones de Joannis 16 WA 46 541:40–542:6; 543:1–5; 548:15). John is the first to hint at Trinitarian dogmata (LB VII 497E–498A and WA 46 542:15–23). Both Luther and Erasmus inculcate them (LB VII 499A–500C and WA 46 541:4–11). The eternal begetting is not to be compared with a human begetting (LB VII 499A and C and WA 46 541:21–242:3). A comparison with human speech fails (LB VII 499C and E and WA 46 544:11–20); however, both try to compare the word with a mirror of the inner considerations (LB VII 499A–B and WA 46 543:34– 544:10). In 1522 Luther used only this metaphor (WA 10,I/1 187:9–188:17). No one besides God knows the colloquy God has with himself alone. God reveals himself only in the incarnate (LB VII 497C and 499C and WA 46 544:3–10). Particularly WA 46 543:1–5 and 547:6–8. Ibid 543:34–545:14, particularly 544:31–545:5. LB VII 499B / CWE 46 16 with note 16. Ibid 649–50 / CWE 46 226.

3 4 Notes to pages 13 –4 31 Ibid / CWE 46 227 32 Cf Ecclesiastes ASD V-5 318:142–64, particularly 142–4. 33 Irenäus Contra haereses II, IV 6 3 (MPG 7 987A–988B). Cf Boyle Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology 25. 34 De cognitione verae vitae XIV (MPL 40 1015); cf Apologia pro in principio erat sermo LB IX 119F–120A. 35 Ibid X (MPL 40 1013). 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid XI (1014). 38 Ibid XIV (1016). 39 Ibid I (1005) and XLVII (1032). 40 The eleventh catechesis of Cyril of Jerusalem might have directly or indirectly inspired Erasmus. It is not clear whether he knew the text. Cyril hints at the continuous begetting (11,4, MPG 33 693C–706A) and Christ is praised as the spoken word of God through whom he governs all. An intra-trinitarian colloquy is foreshadowed – though in an uncertain reading – when Cyril (as Erasmus also does later, in Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Hebraeos LB VII 1166F) refers in Hebrews 1:5 not to the incarnation but to the eternal begetting before all ages. The word of the father, he explains, is a speaking word. It says: “I speak the things which I have seen with my Father” (John 8:38; Catechesis 11,10 (MPG 33 701B–C)). And Cyril emphasizes “this day” in the phrasing of Hebrews 1:5: “This day I have begotten thee” is not subject to time, but eternal (Catechesis 11,5 (MPG 33 697A)). However, he does not refer to Revelation through the logos. 41 De Trinitate VII, 3, 6 (CChr SL 50 254:85–6) and VIII, 8–10 (CChr SL 50 287:12–291:17). 42 Richard of St Victor De Trinitate 3 14 (MPL 196 924C–925A). 43 Bonaventura Breviloquium cap. 2 (Opera (Leiden 1619) I, 9 and 10) (Deum se summe communicare, aeternaliter habendo dilectum et condilectum … quia Deum fatetur habere prolem, quam summe diligit, Verbum sibi coaequale, quod ab aeterno genuit). 44 Lingva ASD IV-1 296:96–8 / CWE 29 326. 45 LB VII 498E–499C; see above. 46 Lingva ASD IV-1 294:2 / CWE 29 323. 47 LB VI 984A. 48 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Hebraeos LB VII 1165F (sermo est aeternus). 49 Enarratio Psalmi 33 ASD V-3 99:179–229. 50 Cf referring to I John 1:1 LB VI 1071D–F and Paraphrasis in I Ep. Joannis ASD VII-6 257:5 and 258:18, referring to I Peter 1:25–5 LB VI 1043; cf also Paraphrasis in I Ep. Petri ASD VII-6 194:219–29. 51 Lingva ASD IV-1 294:19–26 / CWE 29 323.

Notes to pages 14 –2 3 5 52 Enchiridion H 75:14–24. 53 Particularly Apologia pro in principio erat sermo LB IX 119C. 54 In his study entitled “Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: The Ecclesiastes of 1535” ERSY 5 (1985) 19. John W. O’Malley considers even this display disappointing. 55 ASD V-5 370:178–83 (Ante omnia secula Deus Pater sibi, ut ita dicam, loquebatur per Filium praesente Spiritu sancto … At condito per Filium mundo, coepit aliter loqui per Filium et, vt ita loquar, alio modo genuit Filium, quando iuxta illam supremam philosophiam, Patri promere verbum suum nihil aliud est quam gignere Filium). 56 ASD V-5 372:206–91, particularly lines 206–19 and 256–9 (Iam enim Verbum quod erat Deus, apud Patrem Deum sine initio, factum est nobis contrectabile et omnibus expositum sensibus). 57 Cf, in addition to the quotations provided, ASD V-5 314:49–65 and 316:88– 131, and V-4 36:31–93. 58 Paraclesis H 140:36–141:3 (Certe solus hic e caelo profectus est doctor, solus certa docere potuit, cum sit aeterna sapientia, solus salutaria docuit unicus humanae salutis auctor, solus absolute praestitit, quicquid unquam docuit, solus exhibere potest, quicquid promisit). 59 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497E. 60 ASD V-5 370:145–56. Cf I Corinthians 2:2 (De sublimibus illis diuinae mysteriis, vix tutum est homini loqui. Certe non est phas quibuslibet nec apud quoslibet nec quouis loco nec verbis quibuslibet) (nihil sciebat nisi Jesum Christum et hunc crucifixum). 61 Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Zur Christologie von Erasmus von Rotterdam und Huldrych Zwingli” in Harm Klueting and Jan Rohls eds Reformierte Retrospektiven: Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus 4 (Wuppertal 2001) 1–23. 62 De providentia Dei Z VI,3 70:9–77:15, particularly 71:12–72:4, 73:7–14, 77:11–15 (Iam ut ad fontes penetremus, proximum ac necessarium est, ut, quod bonum natura est et in summo bonum est, et quicquid bonum est, ipsum est, idem verum sit. Quod et philosophi non ignorarunt, cum bono et uni verum ex aequo tribuerunt. Unum scilicet, quod sit, bonum esse oportere; bonum vero esse non posse, nisi idem verum sit, hoc est: purum, syncerum, dilucidum, integrum, simplex et immutabile … constat unum ac solum summum bonum verum, hoc est: simplex, purum ac integrum esse, quoniam idem solum est immutabile. Et e diverso, cum unum ac solum istud summum bonum sit immutabile, constat solum verum, hoc est: purum, syncerum etc. esse. …potens quoque omnium esse oportet … Istud interim ostendere non gravabimur, quod, quae patri, filio et spiritui sancto, uni tamen deo et numini tribuimus, originem ex

3 6 Notes to pages 142–6

63

64 65

66 67 68 69

fontibus istis habere videantur. Patri enim omnipotententia, filio gratia et bonitas, spiritui vero sancto veritas in sacris literis tribuuntur). Loci communes introduction MSt II,1 19:28–21:25 (Haec demum christiana cognitio est scire quid lex poscat, unde faciendae legis vim, unde peccati gratiam petas, quomodo labascentem animum adversus daemonem, carnem et mundum erigas, quomodo afflictam conscientiam consoleris). Cf in Erasmus: Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 497B–C; Paraclesis H 141:13– 27; Ratio seu methodus H 180:3–31; Encomivm Moriae ASD IV-3 186:85–90. These proofs come from works by Erasmus, which Melanchthon already knew in 1521. Cf, by contrast, the clearly different christological approach of Luther in a letter to Spalatin 12 February 1519, WA Br 1 Ep 145b:45–57. Cf the second book of Plato’s Politeia, particularly 379–83. Loci communes MSt II,1 199:7–200:8. Cf also 203:16–19 (Deus est essentia spiritualis, intelligens, aeterna, verax, bona, pura, iusta, misericors, liberrima, immensae potentiae et sapientae, Pater aeternus, qui Filium imaginem suam ab aeterno genuit, et Filius imago Patris coaeterna et Spiritus sanctus procedens a Patre et Filio). Cf Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 229:709–12; De libero arbitrio LB IX 1226F. De libero arbitrio LB IX 1231–1232E and 1242B. Friedrich von Spee Güldenes Tugend-Buch ed Theo. G.M. van Oorschot (Munich 1968) 424. Erasmus abandons, for example, an absolute necessity in De libero arbitrio LB IX 1227C–1229E; 1232A–E; 1242B–D; 1245C.

Chapter Twelve On the Doctrine of Justification Cf particularly Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum LB V 1214D. Cf particularly Enchiridion H 25, 25–34. Ibid 69:3–24. Ibid 24:19–22. Ibid 24:15; 106:7–8; 118:20. Note on Romans 1:5, LB VI 558C / Reeve (1990) 338 / CWE 56 19. Note on Romans 1:4, LB VI 556D / Reeve (1990) 339 / CWE 56 20. Note on Romans 3:24b, LB VI 576E / CWE 56 101. Romans 4:3, LB VI 578A and the note to Romans 4:3, 577F–578C / Reeve (1990) 359. 10 Cf Diana Clavuot-Lutz “Eleganter et breviter Erasmus exposuit: Auf Spurensuche in den Predigtkommentaren zum Römer- und zum Galaterbrief von Heinrich Bullinger” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 193–222. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Notes to pages 14 –5  3 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

LB VI 578D / CWE 56 109. LB VI 559C–D / Reeve (1990) 342. Ibid note to Romans 1:7, 559D / CWE 56 31. LB VI 562D–563 B / Reeve (1990) 345 / CWE 56 44. Note to Romans 4:9, LB VI 578E–F / Reeve (1990) 360 / CWE 56 110. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos, argumentum LB VII 775–6 / CWE 42 10. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 781B / CWE 42 17. Ibid 783D / CWE 42 20. CWE translates it as “through faith and trust.” Ibid 786E−787B / CWE 42 25. Heinrich Bullinger In Sanctissimam Pauli ad Romanos epistolam commentarius (Zurich 1533) 54v–55r; cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Zum Einfluss von Erasmus von Rotterdam auf Heinrich Bullinger” in Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz eds Heinrich Bullinger: Life – Thought – Influence (Zurich, Aug. 25–29, 2004 International Congress Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) (Zurich 2007) II 407–24. Cf CWE 56 44 note 2. Erasmus von Rotterdam In epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos paraphrasin (Basel 1518) 38; LB VII 788B–D / CWE 42 27. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 788E / CWE 42 27. Cf Ambrosiaster Commentarius in Ep. ad Romamos CSEL 81 (1) 128–31. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Galatas LB VII 953 / CWE 42 109–10. Ibid 954E / CWE 42 112 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 780D / CWE 42 16. Pio Lectori paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei LB VII (1*). Cf I Timothy 2:4 and John 6:44. ASD V-1 236:920–2. Cf Romans 14:23 (according to CWE translation, Paul proclaims that whatever is without faith is also a sin). ASD V-1 224:562–73 / CWE 70 261. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 786D / CWE 42 24. Paraphrasis in Ev. Matthaei LB VII 2B–C (Ut Deus non est tantum Judaeorum Deus, sed ex aequo communis omnium, quemadmodum Sol unus et idem est mundo communis, ita Jesus Christus huius Filius omnibus servandis venit, omnibus mortuus est, omnibus resurrexit, omnibus adscendit in coelum, omnibus suum emisit spiritum … Semel per illius mortem in sacro lavacro demerguntur universa peccata vitae prioris: nec imputantur quamlibet atrocia crimina … Non exigit a quoquam onus Legis Mosaicae, tantum adsit vivida fides, quae et promte credat quod annunciatur, et certa fiducia exspectet quod promittitur). De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 291:152.

3 8 Notes to pages 15 –3 35 Ibid 288:38–41 (Aditus in ecclesiam fides est, sine qua nihil prodest baptismus. At fidem nemo sibi largitur, Dei donum est, quo Deus quos vult praeuenit et ad Christum trahit. Nam homo, quatenus est homo, carnalis est, et nihil nisi mundum sapit). 36 Apologia ad notata per N. Beddam (in Lucam) LB IX 490E (Non per opera Legis, sed per fidem gratis donatur aeterna felicitas). 37 Suppvtatio errorvm N. Beddae LB IX 589F–590C (Nullum est opus hominis ita bonum, ut mereatur pramium vitae aeternae). 38 Apologia ad notata N. Beddae LB IX 476C and 482E (Obsecro si quid alii docuerunt de bonis operibus aut satisfactione secus quam oportet, idcirco nobis non erit fas ex sacrarum Litterarum sententiis fidei, quo illi debetur, tribuere). 39 Akten der deutschen Reichsreligionsgespräche im 16 Jahrhundert ed Klaus Ganzer et al (Göttingen 2000– ) II-1 588–94; III-1 288–94. Compare in particular De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 289–304. Cf Hubert Jedin Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte: Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge (Freiburg 1966) I 364–5. 40 Johannes Gropper Hauptartikel christlicher Unterrichtung zur Gottsäligkeit (Cologne 1547) BVr; cf also BIIIv; RVr; SIIr–v. 41 Cf Hubert Jedin Geschichte des Konzils von Trient vol 2 2nd ed (Freiburg 1951) 139–164. 42 De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 303:588–951, particularly 303:588, and 313:947–51. 43 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 622C. Cf also in this book 42. 44 Cf note on Romans 5:12, LB VI 585 B–C and the helpful notes from CWE 56 151–2. 45 Romans 5:12; ASD VI-3 70; note 13 and 14 on Romans 5:12, LB VI 585A– 590B. 46 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Galatas, argumentum LB VII 943–4 / CWE 42 95. 47 ASD V-1 374:833–5 / CWE 70 429. Cf John 1:17. 48 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 294:588–90 / CWE 70 352. 49 Contra Psevdevangelicos ASD IX-1 295:341–2. 50 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Galatas LB VII 961B. 51 Contra Psevdevangelicos ASD IX-1 295:342–6 (Sit hoc discutabile, vtrum bona opera gignant fidem an fides pariat bona opera, an bona opera iustificent necne, illud certe extra controuersiam est absque fide non esse cuiquam spem salutis et ex fide per charitatem necessario nasci bona opera, vt impudenter iactent fidem qui non student bonis operibus, ac frustra sibi promittant salutem qui fide gloriantur bonis operibus destituta). 52 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 302:858–67 / CWE 70 363.

Notes to pages 153–  3 9 53 Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Zur Christologie von Erasmus von Rotterdam und Huldrych Zwingli” in Harm Klueting and Jan Rohls eds Reformierte Retrospektiven. Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus 4 (Wuppertal 2001) 19–23. 54 De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 304:636. 55 Ibid lines 630–6 / LB V 500 C–D and in this book below 171.

Chapter Thirteen Handling of Doctrine 1 To Philip Melanchthon 6 June 1536, Allen Ep 3127:16–19. 2 Jacques Chomarat Grammaire et Rhétorique chez Erasme 2 vols (Paris 1981) I 20. 3 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 236:910–14 / CWE 70 278. 4 Ibid 236:918–22 / CWE 70 278. 5 Paraphrases in Novum Testamentvm Pio lectori LB VII (**3v). 6 Ratio seu methodus H 193:24–8.Cf also Methodus H 156:14-17 (Illud mea sententia magis ad rem pertinuerit, ut tirunculo nostro dogmata tradantur in summam ac compendium redacta, idque potissimum ex euangelicis fontibus, mox apostolorum litteris, ut ubique certos habeat scopos, ad quos ea quae legit conferat). 7 Ibid 193:28–194:32 and 156:17–157:8. 8 ASD V-5:1–48. 9 Ibid 316:88–100. 10 Cf the abundance of proofs in Ferdinand Cohrs Die evangelischen Katechismusversuche vor Luthers Enchiridion 5 vols (Berlin 1900–7). The only exception I know is the the Great Catechism of Leo Jud from 1534, which uses Erasmus’s Explanatio symboli as main source, as I show in a paper, “Leo Jud als Beispiel für die Erasmusrezeption zwischen 1516 und 1536.” This paper will be published soon in an edited volume of the series Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation / Studies in the Late Middle Ages, Humanism and the Reformation, edited by Volker Leppin, Amy Nelson Burnett, Berndt Hamm, Johannes Helmrath, Matthias Pohlig, and Eva Schlotheuber, with the title Basel als Zentrum des geistigen Austausches in der frühen Reformationszeit. 11 Der kleine Katechismus BSLK 510–11 / cf http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ schaff/creeds3.iii.iii.html 12 Catechismus ecclesiae Genevensis (1545) BSRK 118:40–8 (M. Quo sensu nomen illi omnipotentis tribuis? P. Non hoc modo potentiam ipsum habere, quam non exerceat: sed omnia ipsum habere sub potestate et manu:

31  Notes to pages 15 –6

13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35

providentia sua gubernare mundum, arbitrio suo omnia constituere: omnibus creaturis, prout visum est, imperare. M. Itaque non otiosam Dei potentiam fingis: sed talem esse reputes, quae manum operi semper admotam habeat: sic ut nihil, nisi per ipsum, eiusque decreto, fiat. P. Sic est). Cf Christoph Burger “Direkte Zuwendung zu den ‘Laien’ und Rückgriff auf Vermittler spätmittelalterlicher katechetischer Literatur” in Berndt Hamm and Thomas Lentes eds Spätmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit zwischen Ideal und Praxis (Tübingen 2001) 108. Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 448:150–2. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 236:904–5 / CWE 70 277. Cf particularly ibid 214:252–4; 236:902–9; 306:997. Ibid 292:546 / CWE 70 350. Ibid 320:447–51. Ibid 205:5–17. Ibid 206:29–31 / CWE 70 237. Matthew 28:19. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 206:16–22. Ibid 208:49 / CWE 70 238. Cf, besides the whole first lesson, particularly ibid 224:563–85; 226:616–35; 231:774–852; 236:910–85; 240:11–24; 287:405–7; 290:477–80; 294:586–96. Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) 69–71 and 122–3. Erasmus omits the traditional reference to a third power – the memory, which was of high importance with regard to the analogy with the Trinity since Augustine introduced it. Cf Augustine De trinitate X, 12 (CChr SL 50 332). Cf above. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 208:50–62 / CWE 70 238. Ibid 225:566–7 / CWE 70 261. Ibid 208:65–71 / CWE 70 239. Ibid 224:563–9. Ibid 231:775–6. On the analogy of the soul with the church as the bride of Christ, a common motif in the Middle Ages, cf Gerson “Tractatus secundus super Magnificat” in Opera omnia (Antwerp 1706) IV 249D; Dionysius Carthusianus “Ennaratio in canticum canticorum Salomonis” in Opera omnia (Montreuil 1898) 201 (Proömium), cf also Gesta Romanorum ed Hermann Oesterley (Berlin 1872) 369 (cap 78); and 633–4 (cap 231, app. 35). Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 211:150–68, particularly 162–3 / CWE 70 242–3. Ibid 212:200–1 / CWE 70 245.

Notes to pages 16 –4 311 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ibid 238:955–85, particularly 970–7 / CWE 70 280–1. Ibid 208:79–81. Ibid 210:127–36 / CWE 70 241–2. Cf the beginning of the second lesson, cf particularly ibid 215:272–98 and 218:358–60. Ibid 218:382–93. Ibid 247:256–367. Luther to Nikolaus von Amsdorf [c. 11 March 1534], WA Br 7 31:89–97 (Noster vero novus catechista hoc unum agit, ut suos catechumenos reddat dubios et dogmata fidei suspecta, dum statim in principio, omissis solidis fundamentis, tantum illis obiicit haereses et scandala opinionum, quibus ecclesia ab initio vexata est, ut paene definiat, nihil unquam fuisse in christiana religione certi. Istis vero exemplis et periculosis quaestionibus animus imperitus statim a principio obrutus, quid aliud cogitabit aut faciet, quam ut sese a religione christiana, tanquam peste, vel clam surripiat, vel, si ausus fuerit, palam detestetur?). Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 266:795–802. Ibid 247:257–60 / CWE 70 293. Ibid 252:368–9 / CWE 70 299. Ibid 242:110 / CWE 70 287. Fidei expositio Z VI,5 69:6–9. Cf also Zwei Predigten Zwinglis in Bern Z VI,1 464:5–465:5 and Fidei ratio Z VI,2 794:2–8 (Passum credimus Christum cruci suffixum sub preside Pilato, sed quod passionis acerbitatem homo sensit, non etiam deus, qui, ut es aoratos, hoc est invisibilis, sic est et analgetos, hoc est nulli passioni aut adfectioni obnoxious). De taedio et pavore Christi LB V 1286B–C. Cf Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 243:127–41 and ibid 251:362–6; also Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 503F–504E. Weihnachtspostille WA 10,I/1 150:21–3. Sermones de Joannis 6–8, WA 33 155–60, particularly 157:3–11. Cf Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 238:971–3. Cf ibid 293:559. Cf ibid 297:709–17 / CWE 70 357. Cf Revelation 19:10 and Genesis 18:2. Ibid 256:493–4 / CWE 70 304. Ibid 256:481–91 / CWE 70 304. Ibid 271:942–5 / CWE 70 323. Ibid 294:598–600; Luke 10:27. Cf Romans 11:25–7. Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 293:551–80 / CWE 70 351–2. Cf Peter G. Bietenholz History and Biography in the Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Geneva 1966) 26–8.

312 Notes to pages 164– 1 61 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 218:358–60 / CWE 70 251. 62 Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 452:283–453:306. 63 Cf in this book above 31–4.

chapter fourteen The Argument with Luther 1 5 March 1518, Allen Ep 785:37. 2 To John Colet 5 March 1518, Allen Ep 786:24. 3 17 October [1518], Allen Ep 872:12–23. Concerning the letters of Erasmus to Lang, cf Johannes Beumer “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Erasmus und Johannes Lang” in J. Coppens ed Scrinium Erasmianum II (Leiden 1969) 315–23. 4 To John Fisher 2 April 1519, Allen Ep 936:36–41 and to Thomas Wolsey 18 May [1519], Ep 967:68–104. 5 To Duke Frederic of Saxony 14 April 1519, Allen Ep 939:69–117. 6 Allen Ep 1033:82–4 / CWE 7 111. 7 To Philipp Melanchthon [before 21 June 1520], Allen Ep 1113:22 / CWE 7 313. 8 To Albertus Pius 10 October 1525, Allen Ep 1634:85–9. 9 To KonradPeutinger 9 November 1520, Allen Ep 1156:85. 10 Cf Ferguson 333–5 / CWE 71 106. 11 Cf to John Botzheim 30 January 1523, Allen I 24:36–25:7. 12 To Duke Frederic of Saxony 14 April 1519, Allen Ep 939:44–65. 13 To Albert of Brandenburg 19 October 1519, Allen Ep 1033:46–8 and to Albertus Pius 10 October 1525, Allen Ep 1634:50–5. 14 Allen Ep 1364:89–91 / CWE 10 84. 15 Cf De amabili ecclesiae concordia ASD V-3 303:588–96. 16 To John Blotzheim 30 January 1523, Allen I 30:7–10 / CWE 9 340. 17 Ibid 29:29–36 / CWE 9 340. 18 Ibid 30:26–33 / CWE 9 341. 19 Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981) 94–101. For an analysis of the quarrel over the concept of free will. 20 30 March 1527, Allen Ep 1804:49–56 / CWE 13 13. 21 Ibid lines 75–81 / CWE 13 15. 22 Ibid lines 91–5 / CWE 13 16. 23 De misericordia Domini LB V 571F / CWE 70 104. 24 Ibid 585C / CWE 70 132. 25 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1221D–F / CWE 76 23.

Notes to pages 1 1–5 313 26 Ibid 1244A–1245A. 27 Enarratio Psalmi 33 ASD V-3 130:345–7 / CWE 64 328. 28 To Thomas More 30 March 1527, Allen Ep 1804:96–101 / CWE 13 16. 29 Contra Psevdevangelicos ASD IX-1 294:307 (Nouam vero libertatem euangelicam: impune facere sentireque quod cuique libitum est). 30 Ibid 295:346–51 (Iam vereor ne sub isto nomine multi nobis oriantur pagani, quo magis etiam sint liberi, si nec coelum credant esse nec inferos, nec animos a morte corporis superesse. Atqui interim iactant liberatas conscientias. Perfecta pietas habet quietam conscientiam, sed habet summa impietas. At ego malim irrequietam conscientiam, quam fidei semen perpetuo timulans non sinat esse tranquillam. Insanabile malum est quod non sentitur). 31 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1245C–D / CWE 76 82. 32 Ibid 1217F–1218A; 1226B; 1228B–D; 1229A; 1230A; 1242F; 1246C–D. 33 De servo arbitrio WA 18 719:4–12. 34 Ibid 615:12–33; 709:10–22. 35 Cf Robert D. Sider “The Just and the Holy in Erasmus’ New Testament Scholarship” ERSY 11 (1991) 26. 36 Epistola consolatoria LB V 610F / CWE 69 192–3 (cf Psalm 79(78):10 and II Timothy 3:12) and Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 235: 881–99. 37 Epistola consolatoria LB V 611A / CWE 69 193. 38 Anselm Proslogion IX (MPL 158 232A–233A). 39 Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 631C / CWE 46 200 cf also Paraphrasis in Ev. Marci LB VII 267D. 40 Ibid LB VII 267D and Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos 808A–E. 41 De misericordia Domini LB V 584F / CWE 70 131. Cf James 2:13, and, concerning the motif of the content of God’s allegorical characters. 42 De servo arbitrio WA 18 685:25–686:2. 43 Ibid 708:4–7. 44 Cf Hyperaspistes LB X 1488C–D. 45 De misericordia Domini LB V 568C–D. 46 ASD V-1 288:429–32. 47 ASD V-5 314:43–5 and particularly 318:120–4 (Et ipse Tartarus et impiorum spirituum cohortes ipsa re predicant inuictam eius potentiam, cui nemo potest resistere, veritatem in promissis, iustitiam in praemiis, bonitatem in eos quos a tantis malis misericorditer seruauit et ad tantam felicitatem elegit). 48 Precatio dominica LB V 1222C–D / CWE 69 65. 49 De libero arbitrio LB IX 1226F; 1227D; 1227F–1229E; 1232A–D; 1241E; 1242B–D.

314 Notes to pages 1 5– 50 Cf Thomas Reinhuber Kämpfender Glaube: Studien zu Luthers Bekenntnis am Ende von De servo arbitrio (Berlin 2000) 213. 51 Über die Frage, ob auch jemand, ohne Glauben verstorben, selig werden möge WA 10,II 322-5. Cf also De servo arbitrio WA 18 686:4–13. 52 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1230F / CWE 76 48. 53 Ibid 1232F / CWE 76 53. 54 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 807E–F / CWE 42 55. 55 Enarratio epistolae ad Romanos MCR 15 981–2. 56 Cf the article “Prädestination” by Theodor Mahlmann in Theologische Realenzyklopädie 27 (Berlin 1997) 119–20. 57 Cf Heinz Scheible Melanchthon: Eine Biographie (Munich 1997) 151–3. Cf also Timothy Wengert Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philipp Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Oxford 1998) 142–5. 58 Confessio Augustana BSLK 73 and Apologia 311; De servo arbitrio WA 18 638:4–9. 59 Loci communes MSt II,1 255:30–256:15, particularly 255:30–7 (Constituta autem hac sententia, quod Deus non sit causa peccati nec velit peccatum, sequitur contingentiam esse, hoc est, non omnia, quae fiunt, necessario fieri. Quia enim peccatum ortum est a voluntate Diaboli et hominis nec factum est Deo volente, sic erant conditae voluntates, ut possent non peccare. Est autem causa contingentiae nostrarum actionum libertas voluntatis). Cf for Erasmus above note 49. 60 Loci communes MSt II,1 273:10. 61 Loci communes MSt II,1 270:19–271:5 (hic concurrunt tres causae bonae actionis, verbum Dei, Spiritus sanctus et humana voluntas assentiens nec repugnans verbo Dei). 62 Lorenzo Valla Über den freien Willen: De libero arbitrio (Latin with German translation) ed Eduard Keßler (Munich 1987). Cf Paul Oskar Kristeller Acht Philosophen der italienischen Renaissance (Weinheim 1986) 23. With regard to Zurich, cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 112–14. 63 Apologia BSLK 164 / The Book of Concord IV,II 20 (http://www.bookofconcord.org). 64 Explanatio symboli ASD V-1 282: 276–86; Loci theologici (1533) MCR 21 330–1. 65 Cf in this book 180. 66 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1244C. Cf also 1239B; 1241A–B. 67 Ibid 1240D–E / CWE 76 72.

Notes to pages 1

–8  315

68 Ibid 1231A–1232A. Cf Hieronymus Commentarius in Jeremiam Prophetam l V 26 (MPL 24 844 B). 69 Ibid 1232A. Cf Duns Scotus Quaestiones in librum primum Sententiarum dist 44 q 1 (Juxta editionem Wadding, XII tom. continentem a Patribus Franciscanis Opera omnia (Paris 1891–5) X 746–51). 70 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1231E. 71 Ibid 1232A–C. Cf Duns Scotus dist 39 q 5, 11 (Juxta ed. Wadding, 1891–5) X 619–24. 72 Cf above 112–14. 73 Cf in this book above 29. 74 Initia doctrina Physicae MCR 13 207–13. 75 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1215C–E; 1216C; 1218B–C. 76 Cf above note 170. 77 Schlussreden Z II 174–84; particularly 179:31–180:29. 78 De vera et falsa religione Z III 842:30–1. 79 Ibid 843:23–4. 80 Ibid 640:28–647:2, particularly 645:9 (Illud ergo esse tam est bonum, quam est esse). 81 Cf for example ibid 651:14–652:16. 82 Ibid 842:30–843:15 (Unde turpe apud illum non est, quod nobis turpe est) (et quae nos perniciosa esse arbitramur, alia parte proficua sunt). 83 Ibid 845:1–29. 84 Ibid 843:35–844:15. 85 Ibid 845:2–17 (Nam qui pii sunt, non contendunt, sed ex charitate docent … Modo simul istud observemus, quod si videamus dei etiam ore nobis tribui, quod nullius esse potest, quam dei, gratiam agnoscamus, qua ille tam effuse erga nos utitur, ut nos tribuat, quae eius solius sunt, non gloriemur, aut in contendendi argumentum rapiamus). 86 Zwingli to Vadian 28 May 1525 Z VIII Ep 371 333:26–334:8 (O bone Zuingli, quid scribis, quod ipse prius non scripserim!). 87 Cf De providentia Dei particularly Z VI,3 152:14–155:21 and 222:18– 223:6. 88 For the reception of Erasmus’s doctrine of free will, cf Christine Christvon Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 111–14. 89 Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1215D / CWE 76 7. 90 Hyperaspistes LB X 1258E / CWE 76 119. 91 Cf Erika Rummel Erasmus (London/New York 2004) 101–5 and Christ-v. Wedel Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam 108–11. 92 De servo arbitrio WA 18 605:1–20 (subiicias sine iudicio hominibus) (Summa, haec tua verba hoc sonant, apud te nihil referre, quicquid a quolibet, ubique credatur, modo pax mundi constet, licereque ob periculum vitae, famae, rerum et favoris, illum imitari qui dixit aiunt, aio, negant,

316 Notes to pages 18 –4

93 94 95 96 97 98 99

nego, et habere dogmata Christiana nihilo meliora, quoam philosophorum et hominum opiniones). Allen Ep 3127:5–12. Hyperaspistes LB X 1262D / CWE 76 127. Ibid 1258C / CWE 76 119. Cf in this book 189; 191-3. To Richard Pace 5 July 1521, Allen Ep 1218:32 / CWE 8 259. Cf in this book 169. Diatribe de libero arbitrio LB IX 1219–B / CWE 76 16.

Chapter fifteen Erasmus and the Reformers in Zurich and Basel 1 To [Lorenzo Campegio] 7 July 1530, Allen Ep 2341:10–15. 2 Allen Ep 563:20–7 / CWE 4 305. 3 To Wolfgang Capito 26 February [1517], Allen Ep 541, particularly lines 94–154. 4 I partly outlined the following explanation about the Basel Reformation in a paper given at a conference in Prague, entitled “Stadt und Intellektuelle,” 10–12 October 2006: Christine Christ-von Wedel “Das Selbstverständnis des Erasmus von Rotterdam als ‘Intellektueller’ im städtischen Kontext des 16. Jahrhunderts” Mĕsto a intelektuálové: Documenta Pragensia 27 (2008) 243–54. 5 Bonifacius Amerbach Die Amerbachkorrespondenz ed Alfred Hartmann (Basel 1943– ) II 388 Ep 879:18–20; Chronik des Fridolin Ryff ed Wilhelm Vischer and Alfred Stern (Leipzig 1872) Basler Chroniken I 33–4. Cf also Rudolf Wackernagel Geschichte der Stadt Basel III (Basel 1924) 328–9. 6 BRA I no 104 38; no 105 38–40; no 129 48–50. 7 Cf Rudolf Wackernagel Geschichte der Stadt Basel III (Basel 1924) 327–8. 8 De interdictv esv carnivm ASD IX-1 19–50, particularly 48:915–47. 9 Johannes Oekolampad Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads ed Ernst Staehelin (Leipzig 1927) I 299 (no 208). 10 Cf Ernst Staehelin Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads (Leipzig 1939) 250–4. 11 BRA I no 300 169:23–5: “Item nachdem sye ouch in bischofflichen geistlichen dingen ingriff beschehen mit bietten und verbietten von ding ze disputieren, den glouben betreffen, ouch mit verlihung pfrunden, investieren etc.” 12 Ibid no 386. 13 Ibid I no 311 178; to the town council of Basel October 1524, Allen Ep 1508. 14 Cf Alfred L. Knittel Die Reformation im Thurgau (Frauenfeld 1929) 73–9.

Notes to pages 184–9 31 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

BRA I no 152; 269; 271; 313. BRA I no 319. Cf Allen Ep 1539. To William Herman 14 December [1498], Allen Ep 83:34–6. Cf also Ep 81:16. Allen Ep 1539:75–101 / CWE 11 14. BRA I no 325. Accordingly, Erasmus believed that his advice had gained acceptance; cf letter to Simon Pistorius [c. 2 September] 1526, Allen Ep 1744:43–59. Allen Ep 1539:102–4. Ibid lines 105–14. Ibid lines 115–55. Ibid lines 156–9; cf Acts 5:38. 1 November 1519, Allen Ep 1039. Cf to Adrian VI 22 December 1522, Allen Ep 1329:11–13. Allen address of Ep 401 / CWE 3 271. Martin Germann Die reformierte Stiftsbibliothek am Großmünster Zürich im 16. Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der neuzeitlichen Bibliographie (Wiesbaden 1994) particularly 171 and 333–4. For the impact of Erasmus on Zurich, cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zurich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 77–165, here 79–92. Z VII Ep 236 582 / Allen Ep 1315 / CWE 9 186–7. To Peter Mosellanus 8 August 1522, Allen Ep 1305; from John Louis Vives 19 January 1522, Allen Ep 1256; to Marcus Laurinus 1 February 1523, Allen Ep 1342: 596–612. Cf Apologeticus Archeteles particularly Z I 314:27–318:32. Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” particularly 93–8. Suggestio deliberandi Z I 434-41, particularly 440:17– 441:5. Cf to Adrian VI 22 December 1522, Allen Ep 1329. To Adrian VI [c. September ] 1522, Allen Ep 1310. Z VII Ep 256 631–2 / Allen Ep 1327 / CWE 9 214. To Ulrich Zwingli 31 August [1523], Allen Ep 1384:59–61. Cf Markus Ries “Oswald Myconius in Luzern” in Bewegung und Beharrung: Aspekte des reformierten Protestantismus Festschrift für Emidio Campi (Leiden 2009) 18. Glarean to Zwingli 20 January 1523, Z VIII Ep 270 7:12 and 9:16–22. Cf Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 97.

318 Notes to pages 189–91 41 Allen Ep 1384:19–22. 42 Ibid lines 52–8 / CWE 10 83. Cf Luther to Joh. Oekolampad 20 June 1523, WA Br III Ep 626:12–25. 43 Allen Ep 1384:87–95 / CWE 10 84. 44 6 September 1524, Allen Ep 1496:120. 45 Zwingli to Ambrosius Blarer 4 May 1528 Z IX 451:17– 452:15 (Scito igitur, carissime frater, sententiam istam nobis ex Luteri paradoxis natam esse, de quibus Erasmus aliquando, cum adhuc epistolis inter nos ageremus, ad hunc ferme admonuit modum: “Visurus es, Zuingli, quid aliquando paradoxa ista paritura sint, quae tu tantopere defendis ex causa Luthero scribi.” … Simultas enim, quam Erasmus erga nos exercet, si modo exercet, hinc nata est, quod Luterum omnibus contra illum viribus defendi, et in primis epistola quadam prolixa, qua senem, acrius accepi. Nunc autem, cum ipse experiar, non pauca prudenter esse ab Erasmo cauta et praemonita, sero nimis oculos recipio, cum alterum importunius defendo tandemque alium offendo quam putaram, in testimonium scilicet stulticiae, alterum autem imprudens prudentem hostem eius causa facio, qui minus conciliari et amicus fieri potest quam is, apud quem patronum eius egi). 46 To the town council of Basel [c. January 1525], Allen Ep 1539:102–6. 47 Allen Ep 1113:24 / CWE 7 313 (Video rem ad seditionem tendere). 48 Cf, concerning the controversy over the Lord’s Supper and concerning Pellikan, Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 90; 101; 113; 115–37; 154–8; 161; 165 and the introduction to the Detectio praestigiarum by C. Augustijn in ASD IX-1 213–30. 49 To John Sapidus, Allen Ep 364:10–17 / CWE 3 (Ep 391A) 244. 50 Allen Ep 1638:32–6 / CWE 11 352. 51 Cf the paraphrase of Matthew 26:26–9: “instituit sacrosanctum illud symbolum mortis suae: ut subinde renovatum inter eos esset perpetuum monumentum immensae caritatis ipsius … Hoc autem symbolum arcanum duabus rebus consecravit … simulque spirituali quadam imagine referens ritus Mosaicae Legis, juxta quam nulla fiebat expiatio e peccatis, nisi per sanguinem hostiae: praeterea significans sese novum foedus Evangelicae professionis huiusmodi mysterio consecrare … Eam victimam, hoc foedus signis quibusdam mysticis commendari voluit animis suorum discipulorum, antequam immolaretur … Atque hoc signum inter suos milites sacrosanctum esse voluit … Nec Judam proditorem ab hoc sacro symbolo semovit … ille foederis signum accepit” (LB VII 133E–134 E); paraphrase of Luke 22:19: “Sub haec Dominus Jesus mystico symbolo suis consecraturus novum Testamentum accepit … Sed vos vobis huius meae erga vos caritatis memoriam frequenter renovabitis, facientes inter vos, quod nunc a me videtis fieri. Erit enim hoc sacrosanctum signum

Notes to pages 191–4 319

52

53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

foederis inter nos initi” (LB VII 450F–451A); paraphrase of Acts 2:42: “in sumendo symbolo foederis” (LB VII 674A). Köhler suggested in his brilliant work on the controversy over the Lord’s Supper that these interpretations should not be understood as symbolic. See Walther Köhler Zwingli und Luther: Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen 2 vols (Leipzig 1924) I 49–56. Here, for once, I cannot agree with him. To Caspar Aquila [12 October 1529] MBW Ep 830:7 (Cinglius mihi confessus est se ex Erasmi scriptis primum hausisse opinionem suam de coena domini). Konrad Pellikan In sacrosancta quatuor Evangelia et apostolorum acta (Zurich 1537), Commentarium. in Matthaeum (1537) 282-3 / Paraphrasis in Matthaevm LB VII 133E–134D (Hac expositione Erasmi, quid in hunc locum potuit simplicius clarius, religiosius, et verius dici, et nihilominus animo pio et fideli sacrisque literis imbuto sufficientius? Quae utinam, omnibus sufficientia uisa essent). To Konrad Pellikan [c. 15 October 1525], Allen Ep 1637: 44–53 / CWE 11 348. [c. October 1525], Allen Ep 1636 / CWE 11 344. 6 June 1526, Allen Ep 1717:50–6 / CWE 12 225–6. Cf also the letter to John Slechta 1 November 1519, Allen Ep 1039:118–29. Des Hochgelehrten Erasmi von Roterdam / und Doctor Luthers maynung vom Nachtmal unsers Herren Jesu Christi / neuwlich außgangen auff den XVIII. tag Aprellens ([Zurich] 1526). Cf letters from Louis Berquin 17 April 1526, Allen Ep 1692 and to Willibald Pirckheimer 6 June 1526, Allen Ep 1717:19–30. [c. 27 August 1526], Allen Ep 1737 / CWE 12 289. Allen Ep 1644:15–39 / CWE 12 490. Charles G. Neuert Jr (CWE 12 485) dates the letter convincingly to the 18th of March 1527. Illustrium et clarorum virorum epistolae ed Simon Abbes Gabbema (Harlinga 1669) 102. To John Botzheim 25 December 1522, Allen Ep 1331:22–4 / CWE 9 224. Cf Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 77–166. Heinrich Bullinger Studiorum ratio ed Peter Stolz (Zurich 1987) I 108. I used a later edition of Ephesians published in Zurich: Heinrich Bullinger In omnes apostolicas epistolas Commentarii (Zurich 1549) 404. This is the work of an unknown author, but attributed to Ambrose. Today he is cited as Ambrosiaster. Scholars suggest that in his edition of 1527 Erasmus had already challenged the authorship of Ambrose and cited the unknown author as Ambrosiaster (cf note 240 from Pieter Frans Hovingh in ASD VI-5 34). In fact, Erasmus still cited him in his notes as Ambrosius,

32  Notes to pages 194–5

67

68

69

70

71

72

though often critically (cf Annotationes LB VI 555C; 576F; 641C; 970C; 977E; 694C; 802C–D; 832C; 847C). Ibid. Erasmus is named: 406; 410; 431; 432; 435; 440; 445; 449, and quoted as paraphrast: 406; 407; 410; 413; 415; 426 2x; 428; 429; 447, Jerome: 411; 412; 414; 415; 416; 418; 423; 427; 432; 433; 434; 435; 438; 440; 444; 445, Ambrose (respectively Ambrosiaster): 404; 412; 416; 421; 426; 427; 436; 439; 440; 444; 446, Theophylaktos: 426; 427; 428; 432 2x; 436; 437, Augustine: 407; 417; 430; 442; 443, Bucer: 411; 414; 418; 432, Tertullian: 449, Leo: 430, Budé: 406, Megander: 435. Heinrich Bullinger In D. Apostoli Pauli ad Galatas, Ephesios, Philippen. Et Colossen. Epistolas Commentarij (Zurich 1535): Jerome 39x (8v; 9r; 13r; 143v; 16r; 17v; 25v; 26v; 30v; 31r; 33v; 34r; 42v; 44v; 46r; 47r; 52v; 55v; 61r; 68r; 70r; 71v; 72v; 73r; 75v; 76v; 82v; 86r; 93v; 99r; 99v; 100v; 101v; 106r; 106v; 107r; 108r), Erasmus 22x (by name 13v 2x; 15r; 34r; 39r; 46v; 47r; 62v; 70r; 109r, 11x as paraphrastes: 7v; 43r; 49r; 64v; 59r; 76r; 79v; 90r; 98v; 104r; 106v and once significantly as “noster interpres” 11v), Ambrose (Ambrosiaster) 18x (8v 2x; 17v; 22r; 25r; 26v; 44r; 44v; 47r; 55v; 57v; 60v; 65v; 77r; 82r; 88v; 91r; 92v; 105v), Augustine 10x (13v; 15r; 17r; 22r; 38r; 44v; 47r; 54r; 87v; 100r), Theophylact 7x (21r; 52r; 62r; 65v; 83v; 95v; 102r), Tertullian 3x (20v; 32v; 34v), Cyprian 2x (31r; 100v), Vadian 2x (9r; 33v), Didymus Alexandrinus once (73r) and also Zwingli only once (82r). Cf for further proofs Christine Christ-von Wedel “L’influence d’Erasme sur l’antistès zurichois Henri Bullinger” in Emile M. Braekman ed Erasme et les théologiens réformés (Brussels 2005) 78–80. Cf for example Pellikan In sacrosancta quatuor Evangelia et apostolorum acta, Commentarium in Evangelium secundum Joannem 2-4 and Paraphrasis in Ev. Joannis LB VII 498D–500B. For further proofs see Christine Christ-von Wedel (2007) 155–8. Cf particularly Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 115–37. In contrast to the dispute over the Lord’s Supper, the conflict over free will played only a secondary role in Zurich. Cf ibid 111–14. It was not composed by Leo Jud, as is still often suggested, but by Pellikan, as several sources prove: Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellikan ed Bernhard Riggenbach (Basel 1877), 131 and 139; Konrad Gessner Bibliotheca universalis (Zurich 1545), 184v; and Johannes Jud “Leben Leonis Judae” in Miscellanea Tigurina III:1 (Zurich 1724), 77. Cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “The Vernacular Paraphrases of Erasmus in Zurich” ERSY 24 (2004) 71. Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellikan 154 (sanctissimus sanctae memoriae D. Erasmi Roter. labor in Testamentum novum non displicuit, placuit enim et nobis, unde et Tiguro germanice loquentem prodire voluimus, nihil ab

Notes to pages 195–  321

73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82

83 84 85 86 87

88

hoc alienum credentes vel docentes, quod apostolica nobis tradidit doctrina et illustravit diserta Erasmi facundia). Zwingli to Beatus Rhenanus 22 February 1519 Z VII Ep 60 139:14. Methodus H 159:14–160:1 and 292:1–294:21 (optima ratio est interpretandi divinas litteras, si locum obscurum ex aliorum locorum collatione reddamus illustrem et mysticam scripturam mystica item scriptura exponat) (libris divinis, ex quorum fontibus universa scatet theologia, quae modo vere sit theologia). Ratio seu methodus H 305:14 (A divinis oraculis nomen habet theologus, non ab humanis opinionibus). ASD I-7 no 43; for Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen Zwingli: Z II 117:521. Cf below. Ratio seu methodus H 233:2–234:10 (salutem non aliter contingere quam per iustitiam, quae ex fide est) Ibid 237:17–238:28 and 242: 4–243:2, particularly 242:22 (Tanta fidei vis, ut virtus hac destituta vertatur in vitium). Die ganntze Bibel der vrsprünlichen Ebraischen vnd Griechischen waarheyt nach / auffs aller treüwlichest verteütschet (Zurich 1531) 2r third paragraph until 2v medium and Ratio seu methodus: H 178:19–180:34. Cf Die ganntze Bibel 2v third paragraph and Ratio seu methodus H 196:29– 201:34 and Enchiridion H 33:13–34:1 and 70:1–30; 71:7–11. Cf Die ganntze Bibel 3r second paragraph until 4r first paragraph and Apologia H 165:6–168:7, particularly 166:28–34; 169:9–23 and 170:19–21. Cf also Paraclesis H 142:10–20. Following the abstracts of the biblical books, compare 4r second paragraph until 5r below with Paraclesis H 140:8–142:36 and 145:27–149. For further information on the reception of Eramsus in Zurich refer to Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 77–165. BRA II no 740 720–1; III no 87 67; no 137 120. Cf Rudolf Wackernagel Geschichte der Stadt Basel III (Basel 1924) 490. BRA III no 291, particularly 199:1 and 201:1–24. Ibid III no 473 400; concerning Erasmus cf note on Romans 14:5 and note on Matthew 11:30; letter to John Slechta 1 November 1519, Allen Ep 1039:180–96 and De interdictv esv carnivm ASD IX-1 24:160–213. BRA III no 473 396; concerning Erasmus Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 651F, cf Christine Christ-von Wedel “‘Praecipua coniugii pars est animorum coniunctio’: Die Stellung der Frau nach der ‘Eheanweisung’ des Erasmus von Rotterdam” in Heide Wunder et al. eds Eine Stadt der Frauen: Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Baslerinnen im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit (13–17 Jh.) (Basel 1995) 136.

322 Notes to pages 19 –2 3 89 BRA III no 473 398; concerning Erasmus note to I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 144:773–190:619 and Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 668B. 90 BRA III no 473 400, cf also 386:4–9. 91 Ibid no 473 391. 92 Ibid 386–7. 93 Ibid 388. 94 Ibid 386–8; 395–6; 403. 95 Ibid 391:3–15, cf also 394:25. 96 Ibid 400–3. 97 Contra Psevdevangelicos ASD IX-1 293:282–7 (Excussum est iugum humanarum constitutionum, sed vbi sunt qui submiserunt ceruicem suaui iugo Domini? Et interim constitutiones humanae constitutionibus humanis, imo parum humanis, mutantur. Titulus modo mutatus est, vocantur enim verbum Dei, caeterum res adeo nihilo est mitior vt complures boni viri praeferant vltroneum exilium isti magnifice decantatae libertati). 98 Ibid 301:520–93. 99 Ibid 299:455–86. 100 Ibid 300:495–519 (Et credere cogimur quod homo gignit ex se opera meritoria, quod benefactis meretur vitam aeternam etiam de condigno, quod beata Virgo potest imperare Filio cum Patre regnanti vt exaudiat huius aut illius preces, aliaque permulta ad quae piae mentes inhorrescunt). 101 Ibid 302:535–7. 102 Ibid 302:558–65. 103 Cf ibid 304:623–6. Cf also letter to Nicholas Diesbach 6 July 1527, Allen Ep 1844:30–4. For the comparison of the development of the church with the ages of life, cf Nelson H. Minnich “Some Underlying Factors in the Erasmus-Pio Debate” ERSY 13 (1993) 40–2 (Porro cum ecclesia quemadmodum res caeterae mortalium omnes habet rudimenta, progressum et summam, nunc subito illam ad primordia reuocare nihilo sit absurdius quam virum adultum ad cunas et infantiam velle retrahere. Multa secum defert tempus et rerum status, multa commutauit in melius).

chatper sixteen The Question of Law 1 Note on Matthew 11:30, ASD VI-5 206:322–32; particularly 330–2 (ne Christi legem per se blandam ac leuem, grauem et asperam reddant humanarum constitutionum ac dogmatum accessiones). 2 VD 16 lists in vol 16 269 (E 3100–10) 10 different pamphlet editions from the year 1521 and one from 1523.

Notes to pages 2 3–6 323 3 Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute WA 1 529:30–530:3 (Primum protestor, me prorsus nihil dicere aut tenere velle, nisi quod in et ex Sacris literis primo, deinde Ecclesiasticis patribus ab ecclesia Romana receptis, hucusque servatis et ex Canonibus ac decretalibus Pontificiis habetur et haberi potest. Quod si quid ex iis probari vel improbari non potest, id gratia disputationis duntaxat pro iudicio rationis et experientia tenebo, semper tamen in his salvo iudicio omnium superiorum meorum). 4 Disputatio adversus criminationes D. Johannis Eccii WA 2 161:35–8. 5 Friedberg I 17 and 1009. 6 Cf Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute WA 1 533:15 and Disputatio Johannis Eccii et Martini Lutheri Lipsiae habita. 1519 WA 2 279:23– 6. Erasmus, aligning himself with this tradition, suggested: “Nam nemo poterit inficiari leges Christi multo aequissimas esse longeque praecellere, siue lege naturali siue cum humanis legibus conferantur.” Note to I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 158:10–11. Cf for Zwingli Von göttlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigkeit Z II 492. 7 Cf Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae II qu 91 a 1–4 (Busa 2 475–6). 8 Cf Heiko Augustinus Oberman Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents (Philadelphia 1981) 95 and 99–101. 9 Thus, Thomas Aquinas argued with tradition as well as the Reformers. Cf Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae 2 qu 91 a 2 (Busa 2 475). 10 Augustine Januario Ep 54 V-6 (MPL 33 202–3); cf Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae 2 qu 97 a 1 (Busa 2 483). 11 De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae WA 6 498:1–5. 12 To Louis Ber 14 May 1521, Allen Ep 1203:24–6 / CWE 8 212. 13 De votis monasticis WA 8 578:6–579:25. 14 Wider den falsch genannten geistlichen Stand des Papsts und der Bischöfe WA 10,II 120:30–121:4; 119:29–120:5; 138:33–139:36. 15 Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae II qu 95 a 2 (Busa 2 481). 16 Die Wittenberger und Leisinger Kastenordnung ed Hans Lietzmann (Bonn 1907) 4. 17 “Nachdem durch die gnade des allmechtigen gotes, aus offenbarunge Christlicher Euangelischer schriffte, wir nicht alleyne eyn bestendigen glauben, sunder auch gruntlich wissenn, entpfangen, das alle ynnerlicher vnd eusserliche vermogen der Christglaubigen, zu der ehre gottes, vnd liebe des nechsten eben Christen menschen, nach ordenunge vnd aufsatzung gotlicher warheit, vnd nicht nach menschlichem gutduncken, dienen vnnd gereichen sollen.” Ibid 11.

324 Notes to pages 2 6–9 18 Von weltlicher Oberkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei WA 11 259:17–24 and 279:25–34. 19 Heiko Augustinus Oberman, ed Die Kirche im Zeitalter der Reformation (Theologiegeschichte in Quellen vol 3) 3rd edition (Neukirchen Vluyn 1994) 127 and 134. 20 “non magnum operaepretium in legum studio esse situm; altera, leges prophanas esse et cum evangelio pugnantes. Tertia, sese rerum difficultatem et immensum librorum aceruum horrere fugereque.” Claudius Cantiuncula Oratio apologetica in patricinium iuris civilis (Basel 1522) a5r, more recently published in Guido Kisch Claudius Cantiuncula: Ein Basler Jurist und Humanist des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel 1970) 174. 21 Allen Ep 1113:24. 22 Cf Barbara Helbling “Erasmus als Referenz bei Zwinglis Gegnern in Zürich” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 66–70 and Gottfried W. Locher Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen 1979) 226–32. 23 Daß eine christliche Versammlung oder Gemeine Recht und Macht habe, alle Lehre zu urtheilen und Lehrer zu berufen WA 11 409:2–4. 24 Cf particularly Von weltlicher Oberkeit WA 11 249:9–250:35. 25 Von göttlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigkeit Z II 475–7; 483–90; particularly 488:19–489:5. Cf also Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen Z I 134. 26 Cf also Matthew 19:3–12. 27 Note to I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 144:777–86 (inconcusso et illabefacto iudicio sacrosanctae ecclesiae). 28 Acts 4:13. 29 Glossa ordinaria zu C.12 (Nicaena) D.31 in Decretum Gratiani cum glossis (Basel 1512) 32v (Unus potest contradicere toti universitati, si habet rationabilem causam). Cf Hermann Schüssler Der Primat der Heiligen Schrift als theologisches und kanonistisches Problem im Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden 1977) 30. 30 Ibid 175–80. 31 Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 146:79 7–810. 32 Ibid 146:786–91. The entrance into a cloister or apostasy of the partner was the only exception. 33 Ibid 146:791–7 (Caeterum si semper per hoc bonis viris cordi fuit opinionem in melius commutare et leges ceu pharmaca conuenit ad morborum habitum ac rationem accommodare, consideremus an hic expediat idem fieri, et si expedit, an liceat vt matrimonia quaedam dirimantur, non temere sed grauibus de causis, neque per quoslibet, sed per ecclesiae

Notes to pages 2 9–11 325

34

35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

44

45 46

47

praefectos aut iudices legitimos, et ita dirimantur, vt liberum sit vtrique cui velit iungi aut alteri certe, qui diuortio non dederit causam). Ibid 148, particularly line 814 (Primum igitur hoc est apostolicae pietatis omnium saluti quantum licet consulere et infirmis etiam ecclesiae membris sua cura sucurrere. Videmus autem tot hominum milia infelici coniugio sibi cohaerere cum exitio vtriusque, qui fortasse disiuncti seruari possent. Quod si fieri possit citra iniuriam diuini praecepti, optandum opinor omnibus piis; sin minus votum tamen ipsum pium arbitror, praesertim quum charitas optet nonnunquam et quae fieri non possunt). Ibid 148–51. Ibid 152:892–925, particularly 899. Ibid 154–8. Ibid 158:6–9 (Porro quantum his autoribus tribuendum sit, alii viderint. A me sunt in hoc producti, vt apud hos, qui illis plurimum tribuunt, non videar absurde fecisse, qui optarim aliqua ratione fieri, vt autoritas ecclesiae sucurrat infeliciter ac cum detrimento salutis cohaerentibus). De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae WA 6 559: 29–32 and Ordnung über ehelich sachen Z IV 187:6–12. Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 158:12. De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae WA 6 559:20–32. Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 170:180–250. To Berchthold Haller 4 December [1523], Z VIII 137–9. Cf Christine Christvon Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander” in Christ-von Wedel and Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich 144–6. Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 158:10–11 (Iam nemo poterit inficiari leges Christi multo aequissimas esse longeque praecellere, siue cum lege naturale siue cum humanis legibus conferantur). Ibid 158:20 (Aut quis unquam audiuit fortunam puniri, si absit culpa, paesertim lege diuina?). Ibid 160:43–8 (Quod si res pugnare videtur cum aequitate naturali, videndum est an secus interpretanda sint quae super hac re leguntur in Euangelicis et apostolicis literis. Liceat enim hic quod in aliis sacrae scripturae locis facere non veremur. Excutiamus quando, quibus, qua occasione dictum sit, et fortassis veram germanamque sententiam deprehendemus). Ibid 158:12–15 (Christus virginitatem non exigit, ne videatur cum natura pugnare, licet beatos pronunciet qui hoc possint capere, sed addit: propter regnum Dei. Regnum autem Dei vocat Euangelii praedicationem, vt hoc ipsum ad ea tempora magis pertineat. Est tempus nubendi, est tempus abstinendi a nuptiis).

326 Notes to pages 211–14 48 Ibid 160:74–161:81. 49 Cf in this book 85–7. 50 Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 148:807 (Et vt fas non est, diuinam scripturam quam certissimam habemus vitae regulam, abrogare, ita pii ac prudentis dispensatoris est, eam ad publicos mores accommodare). 51 Ibid 160:58–60. 52 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 637E. 53 Ibid 642B and 643A / CWE 69 278. 54 Responsio ad Phimostomvm de divortio LB IX 961. 55 Declarationes ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis LB IX 828 B–C. 56 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 643A–C. 57 Methodus H 158:22–7 and Ratio seu methodus ibid 198:33–199:1. 58 Ratio seu methodus H 203:20–204:9. Here Erasmus evokes the late medieval division into estates but relativizes them when he states in the 1518 introductory letter of the Enchiridion to Paul Volz that there is no reason to exclude any form of life from Christian perfection, adding that some monks can scarcely be counted under the most external circle (H 12:30–1) (Pontifices homines, et hominibus infirmis, atque adeo varie imfirmis, pro tempore praescribunt, quod videtur expedire) (Ab eodem lumine legum humanarum scintillae sumuntur, sed aliter relucet aeternae veritatis fulgor in levi tersoque speculo, aliter in ferro, aliter in limpidissimo fonte, aliter in lacuna turpida). 59 Decretum, Prologus (MPL 161 50A). 60 Ratio seu methodus H 200:1–16 (Alioqui Christiani non essemus hodie, quos haec signa constat non esse secuta). 61 ASD Vz-8 158:13 (Regnum autem Dei vocat Euangelii praedicationem, vt hoc ipsum ad ea tempora magis pertineat). 62 Ratio seu methodus H 201:13–20. Cf also in the note on I Corinthians 7:39, LB VI 696B–C. It was just not Erasmus’s goal to return to the “pure origins” of the church, and he saw the development of law in history not merely as a failure, as Wilhelm Maurer has suggested in his interesting essays: “Reste des kanonischen Rechts im Frühprotestantismus” in Wilhelm Maurer ed Die Kirche und ihr Recht (Tübingen 1976), particularly 162 and 157–68, and “Erasmus und das Kanonische Recht” in H. Junghans, I. Ludolphy, and K. Meier eds Vierhundertfünfzig Jahre Lutherische Reformation 1517–1967 Festschrift für Franz Lau (Göttingen 1967), particularly 224. Erasmus used the pure mores of the early church as a foil with which to contrast the bad mores of his own time and as an example of the direction in which law (in the sense of the Gospel) should be established, not as a definitive positive norm for his time. It seems that Maurer remained dependent on the remarks of Guido Kisch and

Notes to pages 214–16 32

63

64 65

66

67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74

Emile V. Telle and overlooked the fact that Erasmus had just charged the Reformers with asking the impossible by trying to turn back the clock and seeking to lead the church back to its origins (Contra Psevdevangelicos ASD IX-1 304:623–6). However, Maurer acknowledged the historical awareness of Erasmus’s dealings with the canonical law itself (pro mutato rerum statu novae leges sunt inductae, quarum aliquot viderentur cum Christi decretis pugnare, nisi distinctione temporum scripturas in concordiam redigamus). Declarationes ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis LB IX 828B–C (nec ulla irrogatur Ecclesiae iniuria, si quod ipsa prudenter et religiose instituit, ob causas enatas aeque prudenter et religiose mutet in id quod pro tempore magis expedit). Responsio ad Phimostomvm de divortio LB IX 961D–962C / CWE 83 169. The Paris Faculty accused Erasmus, who had declared that Christians should decide differently from the Israelites of the Old Testament in the question of whether wars are allowed, of “undermining the whole political system and deviating from natural and divine law” (enervat omnem politiam, et a lege naturali et a divina discrepat) (Cf LB IX 840E). Ratio seu methodus H 204:10–28 (Haec ideo dicta sunt, ne caelestem Christi philosophiam hominum vel legibus vel disciplinis vitiemus … servetur illa vere sacra ancora doctrinae euangelicae, ad quam in tanta rerum humanarum caligine confugere liceat … Maneat solidum illud et nulllis opinionum flatibus aut persecutionum procellis cessurum fundamentum … Homines labi possunt, Christus errare nescit … conspice … in primis, an quod paescribitur congruat cum euangelica doctrina, an sapiat referatque vitam Christi). Cf particularly Hans Erich Troje Die europäische Rechtsliteratur unter dem Einfluss des Humanismus (Frankfurt 1970). Guido Kisch Erasmus und die Jurisprudenz seiner Zeit: Studien zum humanistischen Rechtsdenken (Basel 1960). Kisch deals with Vives, Cantiuncula, Budaeus, Oldendorp, Alciatus, Zasius, and Amerbach. As far as I know only Wilhelm Maurer (cf above note 62) has built on Kisch’s insights. C. Douglas McCullough “The Concept of Law in the Thought of Erasmus” ERSY 1 (1981) 89–112. Kisch Erasmus und die Jurisprudenz seiner Zeit 60. Cicero De inventione II,12. Cf D 48, 19, 16, 1 (Corpus iuris civilis ed Theodor Mommsen 25th edition (Hildesheim 1993) I 866). Claudius Cantiuncula De ratione studii legalis Paraenesis (Basel 1522), more recently published in Kisch Claudius Cantiuncula 219–220. Ibid 256.

328 Notes to pages 216–19 75 Claudius Cantiuncula Oratio (Basel 1522) b4v–c1r (non debet iniquum aut ethnicum censeri, si divinarum legum amussim ad infirmitatis humanae captum aliqua ex parte moderemur). 76 Cf Anthony Grafton What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge 2007) chapter 2, particularly 69. 77 According to Marcel Senn Rechtsgeschichte: Ein kulturhistorischer Grundriss (Zurich 1997) 141. Cf also Johann Oldendorp Van radtslagende / wo men gute Politie vnd ordenunge / ynn Steden vnd landen erholden möghe (Rostock 1530), where Oldendorp also postulates that laws have to be changed according to the passage and changes of time and things (DIVv f). 78 Cf Hans-Rudolf Hagemann Die Rechtsgutachten des Bonifacius Amerbach: Basler Rechtskultur zur Zeit des Humanismus (Basel 1997), particularly 30 with note 163. I would like to thank the author for a helpful and clarifying conversation about the passages on legal history. 79 To Boniface Amerbach 16 January [1530], Allen Ep 2256:35–57. 80 From Boniface Amerbach 2 February 1530, Allen Ep 2267 cf introduction. 81 Ibid lines 40–123, particularly 70–3 with the note on line 73. 82 Note on I Corinthians 7:39, ASD VI-8 154–8. 83 Luther: De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae WA 6 550:22–4; Erasmus: Reeve (1993) 615; note on Ephesians 5:32, LB VI 855B–E. 84 De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae WA 6 503:13–15. 85 Ibid 505:33–506:2. 86 Ibid 559:27–9. 87 Ibid lines 29–32 (Si enim Christus divortium concedit in causa fornicationis et neminem cogit esse celibem, et Paulus magis velit nos nubere quam uri, videtur omnino admittere, ut in locum repudiatae aliam ducat. Quae res utinam plane discussa et certa esset). 88 In Genesin Declamationes WA 24 304–5. In 1527 he discussed the matter in light of his doctrine of two kingdoms. Thus he emphasized often, as Zwingli also did later on (Wer Ursache gebe zu Aufruhr Z III 409:1–13; De vera et falsa religione 762–763:5), that marriage was not a sacrament, though established by God, but an “external thing” (Vom ehelichen Leben WA 10,II 283:8; Ein Traubüchlein WA 30,III 74 and Von Ehesachen 1530 ibid 205:12–23. Cf also Johannes Heckel Lex Charitatis (Darmstadt 1973) 147). 89 Ein Sermon von der Beichte und dem Sakrament WA 15 559:3–561:23. 90 Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen Z I 134; translation from The Latin Works and the Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli Together with Selections from His German Works ed Samuel Macauley Jackson (New York 1912) vol I (1510–22) 110–11. Cf for the Zurich Reformers Christine Christ-von Wedel “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren” 141–6. 91 To Berchthold Haller 4 December [1523] Z VIII Ep 324 137:1–139:2.

Notes to pages 219–23 329 92 Thomas Müntzer Schriften und Briefe ed Franz Günther (Gütersloh 1968) 380–2, particularly 381:12–13. 93 Wider die himmlischen Propheten WA 18 80:15–81:17. With Gratian and most of his contemporaries, Luther, referring to Romans 1:19–20, sees the natural law as being in accord with God’s will. Regarding the widespread references to the natural law, cf the Corpus Iuris Canonici, which begins with the instruction that the natural law comprehends all that law and Gospel contain according to which one should do unto others as one would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12). The 8th distictio succinctly explains: Upon the natural law nobody may infringe (Decr I dist 5c1 and 8cII, Friedberg I 7 and 13). Christoph Strohm “Ius divinum et ius humanum” in Gerhard Rau, Hans Richard Reuter, and Klaus Schlaich eds Das Recht der Kirche (Gütersloh 1995) 147 suggests that in Protestantism it was Melanchthon who identified the natural law with the divine law against Luther. I disagree with him on this point. 94 Wider die himmlischen Propheten WA 18 114:15–117.12, particularly 116:28– 117:9. 95 Wer Ursache gebe zu Aufruhr Z III 380:22. Cf I John 2:6. 96 In catabaptistarum strophas elenchus Z VI,1 141:15–16. 97 To Guy Morillon 30 August 1534, Allen Ep 2965:8–10; to Cuthbert Tunstall [June 1523], Ep 1369:38–45; to ? [August 1533], Ep 2853:54. 98 To Alfonso Fonseca 25 March 1529, Allen Ep 2134:212–15 and to [Lorenzo Campegio] 7 July 1530, Ep 2341:15. 99 Cf above 184. 100 De interdicto esv carnivm ASD IX-1 19–50. 101 Ibid 35:477–8 and 483; 37:550–3 and 44:778. 102 Ibid 35:477–8 (Praeterea non arbitror quenquam esse, quin fateatur plus tribuendum legibus quas instituit Deus quam iis quas condunt homines). 103 Ibid 49:937–9 (Levius peccat qui totam vitam coenat absque necessitate quam qui ob cibum ac potum obtrectat ac mordet proximum, quem iuxta diuinum praeceptum non secus amare debeat quam seipsum). 104 Ibid 35:487–94. 105 ASD IX-1 78:376–86. Cf II Timothy 2:4. 106 Responsio ad Phimostomvm de divortio LB IX 961C / CWE 83 169. 107 Ibid 962B–C / CWE 83 171. 108 Ibid 965C / CWE 83 177. 109 Ibid 956D / CWE 83 156. 110 ASD V-5 320:190–1 (Lex Dei semper eadem est, quemadmodum Dei voluntas est immutabilis. Varie tamen exhibita est pro ratione temporum et personarum).

33  Notes to pages 225–

17. The Question of Peace 1 Cf De civitate Dei 15 4 and 19 7 (MPL 41 440–1 and 634); Contra Faustum 22 74 (MPL 42 447); Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 6 10 (MPL 34 781). 2 II causa 23 q I c. III–VII (Friedberg I 892–4). 3 Summa theologiae II (3) q 40 a 1 (Busa 2 579). 4 Cf Confessio Augustana BSLK 70; Confessio helvetica posterior (1562) BSRK 221:1–5. 5 Institvtio principis christiani ASD IV-1 215:512–21. 6 Ibid 218:606–17 / CWE 27 286–7. 7 Cf Dieter Mertens “Maximilians gekrönte Dichter über Krieg und Frieden” in Franz Josef Worstbrock ed Krieg und Frieden im Horizont des Renaissancehumanismus (Weinheim 1986) particularly 108–11. 8 Cf Vom Kriege wider die Türken WA 30,II 93. 9 The idea that God called Christians to penance through the Turks was also taught by Erasmus. Cf Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 31:13–36. 10 In fact, Luther militated only against a war with the Turks waged by the pope (cf Vom Kriege wider die Türken WA 30,II 94 and Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. WA 7 140:20–141:25). But he also said that true Christians should, after having repented and confronted the devil in themselves, by all means go under the banner of the emperor and wage war against the Turks as brave subjects (WA 30,II 107–48, particularly 115:23–5). He suggested this after the disastrous battle of Mohács, when Erasmus also changed his view. In 1530 Erasmus accused Luther of the same offence as the papal bull even though he had asked Amerbach for Luther’s essay against the Turks (Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 54:428; letter to Boniface Amerbach [March 1530], Allen Ep 2279:1–2). He also lampooned Luther’s work in a letter written at the end of June 1530 to George of Saxony. However, it seems that he had read only the beginning of Luther’s essay (Allen Ep 2338:41–8). 11 For the biographical situation and the circumstances of time, cf the very interesting introduction to the Querela pacis by Otto Herding in ASD IV-2 7–21. 12 Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 80:456 / CWE 27 306 and Adagivm II.vi.23 Bellum havd qvaqvam lachrymosvm ASD II-4 36: 429–30 / CWE 33 303. 13 Institvtio principis christiani ASD IV-1 214:478 / CWE 27 282. 14 Cf particularly Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 64:103–6 / CWE 27 296. 15 Adagivm IV.i.1 Dvlce bellvm inexpertis ASD II-7 18:198–215 / CWE 35 407–8. 16 Ibid 20:248 / CWE 35 409. 17 Ibid 21:269–73 / CWE 35 410.

Notes to pages 22 –32 331 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

Cf Matthew 5:39. ASD II-7 26:449–51 / CWE 35 417. Ibid / CWE 35 416. Ibid 28:492–513 / CWE 35 419–20. Ibid 30–2, particularly ll 613–17 / CWE 35 424. Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 70:225–8 / CWE 27 299; cf also Adagivm IV.i.1 Dvlce bellvm inexpertis ASD II-7 32:601–30. Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 70:237–41 / CWE 27 300. Ibid 90:671–3. Ibid 90:680-4 / CWE 27 314. Institvtio principis christiani 213–19 and Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 96:822–6. Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 90:664–7. Cf also ibid 87:613–14 and observe the text variants. Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Romanos LB VII 820B–E. Commentarius ad Romanos cap 13 (Busa 5 487). Römerbriefvorlesung (Glossa) WA 56 123:10–126:4. Cf particularly ibid 125:25 where Luther does not teach an obligation to obey a bad government with reference to the Roman emperor at the time of Paul, but feels constrained to prove it through references to Jeremiah. Cf Eberhard von Koerber Die Staatstheorie des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Berlin 1967) 42–7. Institvtio principis christiani ASD IV-1 203:118–30 and Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 88:643–5. Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 87:611–15 / CWE 27 312. Ibid 68:205–10. Ibid 72:267. Ibid 74:303–5. Ibid 74:305–9 / CWE 27 302. Cf Romans 13:4. Von weltlicher Oberkeit WA 11 276:27–277:21. Cf Luke 3:14, a text that Augustine had already used for the justification of just wars (Contra Faustum 22 74 (MPL 42 447)). Cf also the canonical law: II c 23 q I c IV (Friedberg I 893). Annotationes in Ev. Lucae SS VI,1 561–5. Heinz Holeczek “Friedensrufer Erasmus” in Erasmus von Rotterdam: Vorkämpfer für Frieden und Toleranz. Ausstellungskatalog Historisches Museum Basel (Basel 1986) 38 argued that this tract is a commissioned work and as such cannot be taken too seriously. Yet it is not certain that Erasmus was answering a demand of his patron and acquaintance, a jurist from Cologne named Johannes Rinck. Cf the introduction by A.G. Weiler in ASD V-3 5. However, even if this was the case, the same could

332 Notes to pages 232–3

44

45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52

53

be said about the Querela pacis, which was commissioned not by just any casual friend but by King Charles’s chancellor Le Sauvage, who asked Erasmus (who had been appointed counsellor to King Charles) to write a work on peace. As in the Panegyricus, Erasmus there conveyed an opinion that clearly did not conform to the Habsburg policy. There is no convincing reason to understand the request to wage war against the Turks as a concession to his commissioner, a concession which Erasmus would have made against his better knowledge, all the more so as he was not dutybound to Rinck. Cf also Dealy Ross, “The Dynamics of Erasmus’ Thought on War” ERSY 4 (1984) 53–67. Ross argues that Erasmus on the one hand propagated an absolute pacifism in the sense of the gospel (sic), and on the other hand constricted his pacifism and allowed a war against the Turks. However, the latter was more probably due to Erasmus’s realism, because society was at that time not able to tolerate absolute pacifism. Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 54:415–24 / CWE 64 234 (sed qui mea legunt integri, vel tacente me perspicuunt manifestam sycophantiae impudentiam). Ibid 52:393–8 / CWE 64 232–3. Cf also Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 68:758–73 and ibid 62:614–20. Adagivm IV.i.1 Dvlce bellvm inexpertis ASD II-7 38:798–802 / CWE 35 431. Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 56:469–77 / CWE 64 236. Ibid 56:444–52 / CWE 64 235. In the last instance, in a letter from 26 July 1524 to Nicholas Everard (Allen Ep 1469:204–12). After 1525 the view changes. Cf to Margaret of Valois 28 September 1525, Allen Ep 1615:32–5 and particularly to Christopher of Schydlowyetz 9 June 1529, Allen Ep 2177:34–7 and to William Blount, Lord Mountjoy 8 September 1529, Allen Ep 2215:14–16. Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 38:197–206 / CWE 64 220. To deny here any change of mind reinforces the meaning of the earlier suggestions. Yet I must agree with Weiler in emphasizing that the goal of Erasmus after 1515 and still in 1530 is the moral appeal to all Christians for repentance; thus, to win over the Turks through arbitration was a more effective way than by force of arms and would have been a convincing example of Christian love. Cf Introduction ASD V-3 24–7. Ibid 52:390–3 / CWE 64 232. Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Haben die ungarischen Erasmianer auf Erasmus einen Einfluß ausgeübt? Zur Frauen- und Friedensfrage im Werk des Humanisten” in Ulrich A. Wien and Krista Zach eds Humanismus in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen: Politik, Religion und Kunst im 16. Jahrhunderd (Cologne 2004) 135–54. Consvltatio de bello Turcico ASD V-3 56:461 / CWE 64 236 and 68:758–62.

Notes to pages 233–8 333 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ibid 82:368 / CWE 64 265. Ibid 62:614–20. Cf Responsio ad Albertum Pium LB IX 1192F; particularly 1193A. Paraphrasis in Ev. Lucae LB VII 453E. Cf Adagivm IV.i.1 Dvlce bellvm inexpertis ASD II-7 40:849–55. Declarationes ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis LB IX 840E. Ibid 842B (Omitto nunc disquirere quantum valeat exemplum a vetere Testamento ductum ad novum, cum Judaeis multa permissa sint, quae Christianis non licent). 61 Cf ibid 841A–842A. 62 Contra Faustum 22 74 (MPL 42 447).

chapter eighteen Erasmus’s Views on Women 1 Cf Jean Delumeau Angst im Abendland (Hamburg 1985) II 456–80. 2 Cf H. Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus ed Otto Schönberger (Würzburg 1997). This speech from 1509 was not published until 1529, yet from then on it was published frequently. It turns the evaluation around, and the common scolding speech – for which Delumeau gives an abundance of proofs – becomes a speech of praise that is valuable, however, only as a paradox contrasting with the common disdain for women. 3 Cf Marguerite de Navarre Heptaméron ed Renja Salminen (Geneva 1999). Cf particularly Nouv. 1; Nouv. 4; Nouv. 10; Nouv. 21; Nouv. 26; and Nouv. 28. 4 Ibid 8:249–85; 5:130; 107:5; 196:6. 5 Cf ibid 41:241–7; 44:78–84; 104:1186–1201; 328:128–36; and 365:194–201. 6 Cf Aristotle De generatione animalium II 3. 7 Cf Annalisa Belloni “Die Rolle der Frau in der Jurisprudenz der Renaissance” in Paul Gerhard Schmidt ed Die Frau in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden 1994) 64–78. 8 Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae t I q 92 a 1–4; particularly t I q 93 a. 4 (Busa 2 320–1). 9 De vera et falsa religione Z III 762:15–17. 10 Genesisvorlesung WA 42 53:22–5 and 51:34–52:21. 11 Cf Ingetraut Ludolphy “Die Frau in der Sicht Martin Luthers” in Vierhundertfünfzig Jahre lutherische Reformation 1517–1967 Festschrift für Franz Lau zum 60. Geburtstag ed H. Junghans, I. Ludolphy, and K. Meier (Göttingen 1967), particularly 210–14. 12 Cf particularly Paraphrasis in Ep. I ad Timothevm LB VII 1042B–1043B. Cf Erika Rummel ed Erasmus on Woman (Toronto 1996) 5.

334 Notes to pages 238–42 13 Vom ehelichen Leben WA 10,II 294:27–295:2. 14 Cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Digna Dei gratia clarissima anachorita” in Irene Gysel and Barbara Helbling eds Zürichs letzte Äbtissin Katharina von Zimmern (1478–1547) (Zurich 1999) 157–8, with proofs and references to literature. 15 Vom ehelichen Leben WA 10,II 283:8 and 304:6–12. 16 Ibid 294:27–297:26. 17 Ibid 299: 5–10. 18 Ibid 300: 23–301:4. 19 Von Ehesachen 1530 WA 30,III 205:14–17. 20 Cf Siegrid Westphal “Ende der klösterlichen Frauenbildung in der Reformation” in Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz eds Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung (Frankfurt 1996) I 149. About Luther: Christine Christ-v. Wedel “‘Praecipua coniugii pars est animorum coniunctio’: Die Stellung der Frau nach der ‘Eheanweisung’ des Erasmus von Rotterdam” in Susanna Burghartz, Dorothee Rippmann, and Katharina Simon Muscheid eds Eine Stadt der Frauen: Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Baslerinnen im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit (13–17 Jh.) (Basel 1995) 139. 21 Joh. L. Vives De officio mariti (Basel, Oporinus, [1542]) 25. 22 Ibid 27. 23 Ibid 30. 24 Ibid 88 and 99 and J.L. Vives De institutione feminae christianae ed C. Fantazzi and C. Matheeussen (Leiden 1996) I 42–52, particularly 50:17–52.5. 25 De officio mariti 90. 26 De institutione feminae christianae I 40:18–24. 27 Ibid II 214:15–216:11. 28 De officio mariti 19; Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 615D. 29 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 672D; cf also 673E and 697F. 30 Ibid 673E and 701E / CWE 69 340. 31 Abbatis et ervditae ASD I-3 407:151–6 / CWE 39 504. 32 Virginis et Martyris comparatio LB V 597D. 33 Cf Ephesians 5:22. 34 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 703C; 703E–F; 704B / CWE 69 397–9. 35 Ibid 703D. 36 Paraphrasis in Ep. ad Ephesios 5:22–6 LB VII 986F–987A / CWE 43 346. 37 With regard to the obligation of obedience to the government, cf Chrysostomos Homiliae in Ep. ad Ephesios 20 (MPG 62 136). 38 Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 704B / CWE 69 399. Cf Acts 5:29. 39 Ibid 689A. 40 Ibid 688F–689C / CWE 69 370 and 692D. Cf also ibid 694D–E.

Notes to pages 242–6 335 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Ibid 685C / CWE 69 362. Qverela pacis ASD IV-2 87:611–13 / CWE 27 311–12. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 685D / CWE 69 363. Ibid 616B–617C. Ibid. Ibid 677B / CWE 69 346. Ibid 640F–641A. Vom ehelichen Leben WA 10,II 283:8–12. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 677C / CWE 69 347. Ibid 702B / CWE 69 395–6. Pverpera ASD I-3 455:91 / CWE 39 593. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 688D / CWE 69 368. Conivgivm ASD I-3 304:116–27. De officio mariti 64–76 (Amat sapienter maritus uxorem, et quidem validissime: sed ut parens filium, caput corpus). Ibid 83 (Sed nec ita se unquam prudens maritus in amorem effundet, ut se uirum esse obliviscatur, et rectorem domus ac uxoris). Note on Ephesians 5:32, LB VI 855B–E. Cf Reeve (1993) 615. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 623F–624A. Cf Christ-v. Wedel “‘Praecipua coniugii pars est animorum coniunctio’” 133–4. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 620E. Ibid 651D / CWE 69 296. Ibid 620B–D / CWE 69 226. Ibid 624A. Liturgia virginis Lauretanae ASD V-1 105:293–301. Cf Gerta Scharffenorth Den Glauben ins Leben ziehen: Studien zu Luthers Theologie (Munich 1982) 143–7. De vera et falsa religione Z III 762–3. HBBW I 130:9–18. Der Ordinanden Examen MCR 23 XCVIII. Cf Sermones in Cantica Canticorum II 3 (MPL 183 790D). Cf In Canticum Canticorum I 40 and 43 (MPG 13 90C–91D and 98A–D). Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 452:270–5. Sententiae IV 26 7 (MPL 192 909). Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 619F. Cf Bernhard Sermones in Cantica Canticorum II 3 (MPL 183 790D–791A). Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 623B / CWE 69 232. Ibid 690F–691A. Cf ibid 710C–F; 712C; 713C–D; and particularly De vidua christiana LB V 749E. There Erasmus explicitly argues that girls should receive the same education as boys. Nonetheless, scholars continue to insist that Erasmus

336 Notes to pages 246–

76 77 78 79 80

81

82 83 84

was not interested in the education of women. Cf Anne M. O’Donnell “Contemporary Women in the Letters of Erasmus” ERSY 9 (1989) 70–1 and Katharina Fietze “Frauenbildungskonzepte im Renaissance-Humanismus” in Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz eds Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung (Frankfurt 1996) I 125. Christiani matrimonii institutio LB V 716 C–F. De vidua christiana LB V 735F / CWE 66 204. De institutione feminae christianae II 215 and 221. De vidua christiana LB V 735 F / CWE 204. The Church Fathers spoke about her lasting widowhood and her outstanding piety. They understood her brave deed as the triumph of faith through prayer and fasting over Holofernes’ lust. Accordingly, she became a typos of the church. Cf Origen In librum Judicum homilia IX,1 (GCS 7 518); Tertullian De monogamia 17, 1 (CChr SL 2 1252); Ambrosius De Elia et jejunio admonitio IX 29 (CSLE 32,2 428; MPL 14 707A); De officiis ministrorum XIII (MPL 16 169); De virginibus II IV 24 (MPL 16 213C); De viduis VII (MPL 16 245D–247B); Gratianus ad Ambrosium Ep I LXIII 29 (MPL 16 1197C–D) and Hieronymus ad Furiam Ep 54 16 (MPL 22 559); Apologia adversus libros Rufini I 18 (MPL 23 412C); Commentarius in Sophoniam Profetam (MPL 25 1337B) and the preface to the book Judith (MPL 29 40A). Only Chrysostomos, in the fourth chapter of his sixty-first Homilia in Joannem, briefly mentions Judith together with Deborah as an exemplar of a woman who had an energetic impact on men (MPG 59 340). It is likely that he inspired Erasmus, who edited the works of the Church Father in 1530. Rhabanus Maurus composed a whole commentary on Judith. He allegorized Judith solely as a typos of the church, which conquers Holofernes, who symbolizes the Antichrist and the subject of the devil Nebuchadnezzar (cf particularly MPL 109 539D–542A; 547D; 559 A). His interpretation gained widespread acceptance throughout the Renaissance. One of the most famous pieces of Renaissance art is the sculpture of Judith and Holofernes by Donatello, which he made around 1455 in Florence. Arguably, the most famous seventeenth-century version of this story is the oil painting (c.1614–20) by the celebrated female painter Artemisia Gentileschi, which now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. De vidua christiana LB V 744D–745A. Cf also ibid 742E. Ibid 738F–739A. Ibid 742E–F / CWE 66 215–16. Joseph C. Linck “Erasmus’ Use of Scripture in De Vidua Christiana” ERSY 11 (1991) 67–87 interprets differently. Linck emphasizes that in his paraphrase Erasmus depicted Judith as a chaste and pious woman and suggests that the humanist was not interested in

Notes to pages 24 –8 33

85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92

93 94

95 96 97 98

her deed. Erasmus did indeed praise Judith’s bravery and, as Linck emphasizes, allegorized the Holofernes episode: Judith fought against Holofernes as all women should fight against the devil. Erasmus also stressed that women should not compromise their chastity to serve their homeland (LB V 744D–F). Yet Linck’s conclusion is somewhat anachronistic. In the sixteenth century it was not surprising at all that Erasmus underscored Judith’s chastity, which the scriptural text also mentions. Even less astonishing is that he condemned murder and loss of one’s chastity as a legitimate means to an end. Any suggestion to the contrary would have been unthinkable at the time. What is surprising, and what I would like to emphasize, is how Erasmus depicted Judith as a woman who acts autonomously and who outclasses the male elders in her community. De vidua christiana LB V 742D. De institutione feminae christianae II 233:11–236:4. De vidua christiana LB V 733F. On Erasmus and Maria of Habsburg, cf Christine Christ-v. Wedel “Haben die ungarischen Erasmianer auf Erasmus einen Einfluß ausgeübt? Zur Frauen- und Friedensfrage im Werk des Humanisten” in Ulrich A. Vienna and Krista Zach eds Humanismus in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen: Politik, Religion und Kunst im 16. Jahrhunderd (Cologne 2004) 137–45. De vidua christiana LB V 728D–729B. Ibid 766C–D / CWE 66 257. Ibid 729B / CWE 66 193. Abbatis et ervditae 407:157–63 / CWE 39 504–5. Cf Katharine Walsh and Alfred A. Strnad “Eine Erasmianerin im Hause Habsburg: Die Königin Maria von Ungarn (1505–1558) und die Anfänge der Evangelischen Bewegung” Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft 118 (1998) 40–85, particularly 82. Cf Alice Zimmerli-Witschi Frauen in der Reformationszeit (Zurich 1981) 133–5. Angela von Grumbach Ein Christlich und ernstlich ermanung und geschri Fraw Regulen von Grupach ein geborne von Stauffen an die gantzen Universitet und hohe schuol zuo Jngelstat betreffend das wort Gottes (Basel, Andreas Cratander 1523). “Chronik des Fridolin Ryff” ed Wilhelm Vischer and Alfred Stern in Basler Chroniken I (Leipzig 1872) 34. Cf Zimmerli-Witschi Frauen in der Reformationszeit 127–8. Ibid 37. Cf Christ-v. Wedel “Digna Dei gratia clarissima anachorita” 155– 6. Paul Roth Durchbruch und Festsetzung der Reformation in Basel (Basel 1942) 10.

338 Notes to pages 251–5

chapter nineteen Conclusion 1 Cf above. 2 Cf for example letter to John Botzheim 13 August 1529, Allen Ep 2205:34– 58. 3 To Duke George of Saxony 30 June 1530, Allen Ep 2338:63–73. 4 To Julius Pflug 20 August 1531, Allen Ep 2522:20–51. 5 Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 462:574–7 (ipsius enim dogma est nihil asserendum quod non sit expressum in canonicis literis. Nam ipse fateor me in multis acquiescere iudicio ecclesiae. Hic igitur pugnat cum suo ipsius dogmate). 6 Ibid 459:474–88 (Sed Martinus nihil admittit nisi nudam et meram scripturam. Sed vnde nobis tam multa eruit e scripturis quae tot seculis ignoravit ecclesia, quum scriptura semper fuit eadem?). 7 Cf the introduction to the Pvrgatio by C. Augustijn in ASD IX-1 438. 8 Pvrgatio ASD IX-1 463:580–5 (Quasi sacri libri cumque his orthodoxorum monumenta non sint plena verbis ambiguis! Quod si ambiguum est quicquid translatitium est, nulla sunt humana verba quibus proprie loquamur de rebus diuinis) (Non iam loquor de typis, quibus omnia tribuuntur Deo, dum dicitur leo lapis, agnus, vitis etc., sed quum illi tribuitur odium, amor, ira furor, poenitentia, misericordia). 9 Cf Erika Rummel ed The Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden 2008), particularly 13. 10 C. Augustijn, from whom I adopted the characterization of Erasmus as a “phenomenon,” interprets this differently (ASD IX-1 438). The proofs that Luther felt he could no longer expect anything from Erasmus are so abundant, particularly in the Tischreden, that they do not allow one to think of the letter from 1534 as a last desperate attempt to convert Erasmus. One must nevertheless emphasize Augustijn’s view that in Luther and Erasmus “two different theologies” collided (437). His short suggestions on this issue point in the direction followed by this study. 11 To think here only of his often quoted “character defects” seems to me too simple. Erasmus was no martyr and he avoided public appearances because he was inhibited by a deeply rooted uneasiness and self-consciousness. Yet, in written form he did not lack boldness and was not about to retreat even when he was accused of heresy. 12 4 August 1526, Allen Ep 1732:9–28. Cf Cornelis Reedijk Tandem bona causa triumphat: Zur Geschichte des Gesamtwerkes des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1980). 13 Cf Jesse K. Sowards “The Youth of Erasmus: Some Reconsiderations” ERSY 9 (1989) 29.

Notes to pages 255–9 339 14 Cf Urs B. Leu “Erasmus und die Zürcher Buch- und Lesekultur” in Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 274–308. 15 For further information, cf Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey eds Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) and Gregory D. Dodds Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England (Toronto 2009). 16 Cf Darren Williamson “The ‘Doctor of Anabaptism’ and the Prince of Humanists: Balthasar Hubmaier’s Contact with Erasmus” ERSY 27 (2007) 37–58 and Christian Scheidegger “Die Täufer und Erasmus: Glauben und Leben zwischen konfessionellen Fronten” in Christ-von Wedel and Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich 243–73, cf. also Peter G. Bietenholz Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe (Toronto 2009). 17 Cf particularly from Boniface Amerbach 14 August 1531, Allen Ep 2519; from B. Amerbach [c. 22 March 1532], Ep 2630; to B. Amerbach 25 March [1532], Ep 2631. 18 Cf Cornelis Reedijk “Das Lebensende des Erasmus” Basler Zeitschrift 57 (1958) 44–52. 19 In his study Rhetoric and Theology: The Hermeneutic of Erasmus (Toronto 1994), Manfred Hoffmann compiled all conceivable parallels and resonances. 20 Cf John W. O’Malley “Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: The Ecclesiastes of 1535” ERSY 5 (1985) 13. 21 ASD V-4 254:181–7 (Accedit huc quod tanta vis est aetatis vt non solum illa quae constant artificum arbitrio, verum eam quoque quae per se solida sunt vertat in aliam speciem, quasi naturae invidia cauerit ne qua posset esse certa rerum notitia, quae literis ad posteros indubitabili fide transmitti posset, sed exigat experientiam peculiarem omnium. Nec solum ibi nunc campi sunt vbi olim fuit mons, ibi lacus vbi olim fuit ciuitas, ibi via strata vbi olim fuit palus, sed in ipsis arboribus atque herbis saepe non respondet veterum descriptio). 22 Ecclesiastes ASD V-4 64:583–5. 23 WA Tr 4 37:20–3. 24 Beatus Rhenanus to Hermann of Wied 15 August 1536, Allen I 53:29–48. 25 ASD V-1 376:903–7. 26 ASD V-1 380:8–20. 27 Allen I 53:33–5. 28 Vita et obitum Melanchthonis MCR 10 233. 29 Declamatio de Erasmo MCR 12 270. 30 Ibid 265.

34  Notes to page 259 31 Ibid 271 (Cum igitur in Erasmo, et vis ingenii magna fuerit, et fuerint in eo multae egregiae virtutes, et cum studia linguarum necessaria Ecclesiae et vitae civili, plurimum adiuverit, gratis mentibus eius memoriam conservemus, ipsius monumenta legamus, et grati eum celebremus).

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346 Bibliography Backus, Irena. “Jesus and His Family in Erasmus’ Paraphrases on Luke and John.” In Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey, eds Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) 151–74. Bainton, Roland H. Erasmus of Christendom (New York 1969). Barth, Karl. “Humanismus.” Theologische Studien 28 (1950) 1–28. Barth, Karl. Die kirchliche Dogmatik. 13 vols (Zurich 1932–67). Baumann, Gerlinde. Die Weisheitsgestalt in Proverbien 1–9: Traditionsgeschichte und theologische Studien (Tübingen 1996). Bejczy, Istvàn Pieter. Erasmus and the Middle Ages: The Historical Consciousness of a Christian Humanist (Leiden 2001). Belloni, Annalisa. “Die Rolle der Frau in der Jurisprudenz der Renaissance.” In Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed Die Frau in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden 1994) 55–80. Béné, Charles. “Erasme et Ciceron.” In Colloquia Erasmiana Turonensia II 571–9. Béné, Charles. Erasme et Saint Augustin ou influence de Saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Erasme (Geneva 1969). Bentley, Jerry H. “Erasmus’ Annotations in Novum Testamentum and the Textual Criticism of the Gospel.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 67 (1976) 33–53. Bentley, Jerry H. Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton 1983). Bernstein, Eckhard. “Erasmus and Pieter Gillis: The Development of a Friendship.” ERSY 3 (1983) 130–45. Beumer, Johannes. “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Erasmus und Johannes Lang.” In J. Coppens, ed Scrinium Erasmianum II (Leiden 1969) 315–23. Bietenholz, Peter G. Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe (Toronto 2009). Bietenholz, Peter G. Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden 1994). Bietenholz, Peter G. History and Biography in the Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Geneva 1966). Bludau, August. Die beiden ersten Erasmus-Ausgaben des Neuen Testamentes und ihre Gegner (Freiburg 1902). Bouyer, Louis. “Erasmus in Relation to the Medieval Biblical Tradition.” In G.W.H. Lampe, ed The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge 1969) II 492–505. Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke. Christening Pagan Mysteries: Erasmus in Pursuit of Wisdom (Toronto1981). Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke. Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto 1977).

Bibliography 34 Brett-Evans, David. Von Hrotsvit bis Folz und Gengenbach: Eine Geschichte des mittelalterlichen deutschen Dramas (Berlin 1975). Brown, A.J. “The Date of Erasmus’ Latin Translation of the New Testament.” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1984) 351–80. Burger, Christoph. “Direkte Zuwendung zu den ‘Laien’ und Rückgriff auf Vermittler spätmittelalterlicher katechetischer Literatur.” In Berndt Hamm and Thomas Lentes, eds Spätmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit zwischen Ideal und Praxis (Tübingen 2001) 85–109. Burke, Harry R. “Audience and Intention in Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ and Erasmus’ ‘Education of a Christian Prince.’” ERSY 4 (1984) 84−93. Burke, Peter. The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York 1969). Büsser, Fritz. Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575): Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Zurich 2004–5). Büsser, Fritz. Die Prophezei: Humanismus und Reformation in Zürich: Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge. Ed Alfred Schindler (Bern 1994). Cantimori, Delio. Italienische Häretiker der Spätrenaissance. Trans Werner Kaegi (Basel 1949). Carrington, Laurel. “Erasmus’ Lingua: The Double-Edged Tongue.” ERSY 9 (1989) 106–18. Carrington, Laurel. “The Writer and His Style: Erasmus’ Clash with Guillaume Budé.” ERSY 10 (1990) 61–84. Cassirer, Ernst. Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Darmstadt 1963). Chantraine, Georges. Erasme et Luther: Libre et serf arbitre (Paris 1981). Chantraine, Georges.“Mystère” et “philosophie du Christ” selon Erasme: Etude de la lettre à P. Volz et de la “Ratio verae theologiae” (1518) (Namur 1981). Chomarat, Jacques. Grammaire et Rhétorique chez Erasme. 2 vols (Paris 1981). Chomarat, Jacques. “Grammar and Rhetoric in the Paraphrases of the Gospels by Erasmus.” ERSY 1 (1981) 30–68. Chomarat, Jacques. “Pourquoi Erasme s’est il fait moine.” In Jacques Chomarat, André Godin, and Jean-Claude Margolin, eds Actes du Colloque International Erasme (Tours 1986) (Geneva 1990) 233–48. Chomarat, Jacques, André Godin, and Jean-Claude Margolin, eds. Actes du Colloque International Erasme (Geneva 1990). Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Digna Dei gratia clarissima anachorita.” In Irene Gysel and Barbara Helbling, eds Zürichs letzte Äbtissin Katharina von Zimmern (1478–1547) (Zurich 1999) 137–84. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Haben die ungarischen Erasmianer auf Erasmus einen Einfluß ausgeübt? Zur Frauen- und Friedensfrage im Werk des Humanisten.” In Ulrich A. Vienna und Krista Zach, eds Humanismus in Ungarn

348 Bibliography und Siebenbürgen: Politik, Religion und Kunst im 16. Jahrhunderd (Cologne 2004) 135–54. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Johannes Zwicks Underrichtung neu gelesen: Zum Verständnis von Schrift und Gesetz zwischen 1521 und 1524.” In Sigrid Lekebusch and Hans-Georg Ulrichs, eds Historische Horizonte: Vorträge der dritten Emder Tagung zur Geschichte des reformierten Protestantismus (Wuppertal 2002) 93–103. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Das ‘Lob der Torheit’ des Erasmus von Rotterdam im Spiegel der spätmittelalterlichen Narrenbilder und die Einheit des Werkes.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987) 24–36. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. Das Nichtwissen bei Erasmus von Rotterdam: Zum philosophischen und theologischen Erkennen in der geistigen Entwicklung eines christlichen Humanisten (Basel 1981). Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “‘Praecipua coniugii pars est animorum coniunctio’: Die Stellung der Frau nach der ‘Eheanweisung’ des Erasmus von Rotterdam.” In Heide Wunder ed in collaboration with Susanna Burghartz, Dorothee Rippmann, and Katharina Simon Muscheid Eine Stadt der Frauen. Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Baslerinnen im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit (13–17 Jh.) (Basel 1995) 125–49. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Zum Einfluss von Erasmus von Rotterdam auf Heinrich Bullinger.” In Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz, eds Heinrich Bullinger: Life – Thought – Influence. Zurich, Aug. 25–29, 2004 International Congress Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) (Zurich 2007) II 407–424. Christ-v. Wedel, Christine. “Zur Christologie von Erasmus von Rotterdam und Huldrych Zwingli.” In Harm Klueting and Jan Rohls, eds Reformierte Retrospektiven. Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus 4 (Wuppertal 2001) 1–23. Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “Das Buch der Bücher popularisieren: Der Bibelübersetzer Leo Jud und sein biblisches Erbauungsbuch ‘Vom lyden Christi’ (1534).” Zwingliana 38 (2011) 35–52. Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “Erasmus und die Zürcher Reformatoren: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger und Theodor Bibliander.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu, eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 77–165. Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “L’influence d’Erasme sur l’antistès zurichois Henri Bullinger.” In Emile M. Braekman, ed Erasme et les théologiens réformés (Brussels 2005) 73–98. Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “Das Selbstverständnis des Erasmus von Rotterdam als ‘Intellektueller’ im städtischen Kontext des 16. Jahrhunderts.” Mĕsto a intelektuálové: Documenta Pragensia 27 (2008) 243–54.

Bibliography 349 Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “Torheit und Häresie: Zum Moriae Encomium des Erasmus von Rotterdam.” In Bernd W. Springer and Alexander Fidora, eds Religiöse Toleranz im Spiegel der Literatur: Eine Idee und ihre ästhetische Gestaltung (Münster 2009). Christ-von Wedel, Christine. “The Vernacular Paraphrases of Erasmus in Zurich.” ERSY 24 (2004) 71–88. Clavuot-Lutz, Diana. “Eleganter et breviter Erasmus exposuit: Auf Spurensuche in den Predigtkommentaren zum Römer- und zum Galaterbrief von Heinrich Bullinger.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu, eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 193–222. Conroy, Donald Bernhard. The Ecumenical Theology of Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Study of the “Ratio verae theologiae” (Pittsburgh 1974). Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed Peter G. Bietenholz. 3 vols (Toronto 1985–7). Coogan, Robert. Erasmus, Lee and the Correction of the Vulgate: The Shaking of the Foundations (Geneva 1992). Coppens, Joseph, ed. Scrinium Erasmianum. 2 vols (Leiden 1969). Creizenach, Wilhelm. Geschichte des neueren Dramas. 5 vols (Halle 1893–1916). Dalzell, Alexander, Charles Binghamton, et al, eds. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis (New York 1991). Delumeau, Jean. Angst im Abendland (Hamburg 1985). DeMolen, Richard L. “Erasmus on Childhood.” ERSY 2 (1982) 25–46. DeMolen, Richard L., ed. Essays on the Works of Erasmus: In Honor of Craig R. Thompson (New Haven 1978). DeMolen, Richard L. The Spirituality of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Nieuwkoop 1987). DeMolen, Richard L., ed. Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Quincentennial Symposium (New York 1971). Devereux, Edward James. Renaissance English Translations of Erasmus: A Bibliography to 1700 (Toronto 1983). Dickens, Arthur Geoffrey, and Whitney Richard David Jones. Erasmus the Reformer (London 1994). Dill, Ueli. Prolegomena zu einer Edition von Erasmus von Rotterdam “Scholia in epistolas Hieronymi” (Basel 2004). Dodds, Gregory D. Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England (Toronto 2009). Dolfen, Christian. Die Stellung des Erasmus von Rotterdam zur scholastischen Methode (Osnabrück 1936). Eden, Kathy. “Rhetoric in the Hermeneutics of Erasmus’ Later Works.” ERSY 11 (1991) 88–104.

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Bibliography 353 Leu, Urs B. “Aneignung und Speicherung enzyklopädischen Wissens: Die Loci-Methode von Erasmus.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 327–42. Leu, Urs B. “Erasmus und die Zürcher Buch- und Lesekultur.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu, eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 274–308. Liechtenhahn, Rudolf. “Die politische Hoffnung des Erasmus und ihr Zusammenbruch.” In Gedenkschrift zum 400: Todestage des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1936) 144–65. Linck, Joseph C. “Erasmus’ Use of Scripture in De Vidua Christiana.” ERSY 11 (1991) 67–87. Locher, Gottfried W. Die Theologie Zwinglis im Lichte seiner Christologie (Zurich 1952). Locher, Gottfried W. Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen 1979). Löfgren, David. Die Theologie der Schöpfung bei Luther (Lund 1960). Longeon, Claude, ed. Le genre pastoral en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle (SaintEtienne 1980). Ludolphy, Ingetraut. “Die Frau in der Sicht Martin Luthers.” In H. Junghans, I. Ludolphy, and K. Meier, eds Vierhundertfünfzig Jahre lutherische Reformation 1517–1967. Festschrift für Franz Lau zum 60. Geburtstag (Göttingen 1967) 204–21. Maaser, Wolfgang. “Luther und die Naturwissenschaften – systematische Aspekte an ausgewählten Beispielen.” In Günter Frank and Stephan Rhein, eds Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit (Sigmaringen 1998) 25–41. Mäder, Eduard Johann. Der Streit der “Töchter Gottes”: Zur Geschichte eines allegorischen Motivs (Bern/Frankfurt 1971). Maier, Christl. Die “fremde Frau” in Proverbia 1-9: Eine exegetische und sozialgeschichtliche Studie (Freiburg/Göttingen 1995). Mansfield, Bruce E. Man on His Own: Interpretations of Erasmus c. 1750–1920 (Toronto 1992). Mansfield, Bruce. Phoenix of His Age: Interpretations of Erasmus c. 1550–1750 (Toronto 1979). Mansfield, Bruce E. “The Social Realism of Erasmus: Some Puzzles and Reflections.” ERSY 14 (1994) 1–23. Marc’hadour, Germain. “Erasmus: First and Best Biographer of Thomas More.” ERSY 7 (1987) 1–32. Margolin, Jean-Claude. Erasme: Le prix des mots et de l’homme (London 1986). Margolin, Jean-Claude. Erasme dans son miroir et dans son sillage (London 1987).

354 Bibliography Margolin, Jean-Claude. “Erasme et le problème social.” Rinascimento 23 (1973) 85–112. Margolin, Jean-Claude. Recherches érasmiennes (Geneva 1969). Marius, Richard. “Martin Luther’s Erasmus, and How He Got That Way.” ERSY 18 (1998) 70–88. Massaut, Jean-Pierre, ed. Colloque Erasmien de Liège: Commémoration du 450e anniversaire de la mort d’Erasme (Paris 1987). Masser, Achim. Bibel und Legendenepik des deutschen Mittelalters (Berlin 1976). Maurer, Wilhelm. “Erasmus und das Kanonische Recht.” In H. Junghans, I. Ludolphy, and K. Meier, eds Vierhundert Jahre Lutherische Reformation 1517– 1967. Festschrift für Franz Lau (Göttingen 1967) 222–32. Maurer, Wilhelm. “Luthers Verständnis des Neutestamentlichen Kanons.” Fuldaer Hefte (Berlin 1960). Maurer, Wilhelm. “Reste des kanonischen Rechts im Frühprotestantismus.” In W. Maurer, ed Die Kirche und ihr Recht (Tübingen 1976) 145–207. Maurer, Wilhelm. Das Verhältnis des Staats zur Kirche nach humanistischer Anschauung, vornehmlich bei Erasmus (Giessen 1930). McCallum-Barry, Carmel. “Why Did Erasmus Translate Greek Tragedy?” ERSY 24 (2004) 52–70. McConica, James K. Erasmus (Oxford 1991). McConica, James K. “Erasmus and the Grammar of Consent.” In J. Coppens, ed Scrinium Erasmianum (Leiden 1969). McCullough, C. Douglas. “The Concept of Law in the Thought of Erasmus.” ERSY 1 (1981) 89–112. McCutcheon, Elizabeth. “‘Tongues As Ready As Men’s’: Erasmus’ Representations of Women and Their Discourse.” ERSY 12 (1992) 64–86. Mertens, Dieter. “Maximilians gekrönte Dichter über Krieg und Frieden.” In Franz Josef Worstbrock, ed Krieg und Frieden im Horizont des Renaissancehumanismus (Weinheim 1986) 105–23. Meuthen, Erich. “Humanismus und Geschichtsunterricht.” In August Buck, ed Humanismus und Historiographie: Rundgespräche und Kolloquien (Weinheim 1991). Michael, Wolfgang F. Das deutsche Drama der Reformationszeit (Bern 1984). Minnich, Nelson H. “Some Underlying Factors in the Erasmus-Pio Debate.” ERSY 13 (1993) 1–43. Monfasani, John. “Erasmus, the Roman Academy, and Ciceronianism: Battista Casali’s Invective.” ERSY 17 (1997) 19–54. Nieden, Hans-Jörg, and Marcel Nieden, eds. Praxis Pietatis: Beiträge zu Theologie und Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit. Wolfgang Sommer zum 60. Geburtstag (Stuttgart 1999).

Bibliography 355 O’Donnell, Anne M. “Contemporary Women in the Letters of Erasmus.” ERSY 9 (1989) 34–72. O’Donnell, Anne M. “Mary and Other Women Saints in the Letters of Erasmus.” ERSY 11 (1991) 105–21. O’Malley, John W. “Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: The Ecclesiastes of 1535.” ERSY 5 (1985) 1–29. O’Mara, Mechtilde. “Roman History in Some Paraphrases on Paul by Erasmus.” In Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey, eds Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) 111–26. Oberman, Heiko Augustinus. Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents (Philadelphia 1981). Oberman, Heiko Augustinus, ed. Die Kirche im Zeitalter der Reformation. Theologiegeschichte in Quellen vol 3. 3rd edition (Neukirchen Vluyn 1994). Oberman, Heiko Augustinus. Werden und Wertung der Reformation (Tübingen 1977). Olin, John C. “Erasmus and Saint Jerome: The Close Bond and Its Significance.” ERSY 7 (1987) 33–53. Ozment, Steven Edgar. The Reformation and the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven 1975). Pabel, Hilmar M. “The Authority of Augustine in Erasmus’ Bibilical Exegesis.” ERSY 29 (2009) 61–87. Pabel, Hilmar M. “Erasmus’ Esteem for Cyprian: Parallels in Their Expositions of the Lord’s Prayer.” ERSY 17 (1997) 55–69. Pabel, Hilmar M. Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Edition of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance (Leiden 2008). Pabel, Hilmar M., and Mark Vessey, eds. Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002). Panizza, Letizia. “Valla’s De voluptate ac de vero bono and Erasmus’ Stultitiae laus: Renewing Christian Ethics.” ERSY 15 (1995) 1–25. Parker, Thomas H.L. Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Edinburgh 1993). Payne, John B. Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments (Richmond 1970). Pesch, Otto Hermann, ed. Humanismus und Reformatio: Martin Luther und Erasmus von Rotterdam in den Konflikten ihrer Zeit (Munich/Zurich 1985). Pfister, Rudolf. Die Seligkeit erwählter Heiden bei Zwingli (Biel 1952). Phillips, Jane E. “Food and Drink in Erasmus’ Gospel Paraphrases.” ERSY 14 (1994) 24–45. Phillips, Jane E. “The Gospel, the Clergy, and the Laity in Erasmus’ Paraphrase on the Gospel of John.” ERSY 10 (1990) 85–100. Phillips, Jane E. “The Speaking Voice in Erasmus’ Paraphrases on Luke.” In Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey, eds. Holy Scripture Speaks (Toronto 2002) 127–50. Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London 1949).

356 Bibliography Phillips, Margaret Mann. “Erasmus on the Tongue.” ERSY 1 (1981) 113–25. Piepho, Lee. “Erasmus on Baptista Mantuanus and Christian Religious Verse.” ERSY 14 (1994) 46–54. Pusino, Ivan. “Der Einfluß Picos auf Erasmus.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 46 NF 9 (1928) 75–96. Rabil, Albert, Jr. Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian Humanist (Lanham 1993). Reedijk, Cornelis. “Das Lebensende des Erasmus.” Basler Zeitschrift 57 (1958) 23–66. Reedijk, Cornelis. Tandem bona causa triumphat: Zur Geschichte des Gesamtwerkes des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1980). Reese, Alan W. “‘So Outstanding an Athlete of Christ’: Erasmus and the Significance of Jerome’s Asceticism.” ERSY 18 (1998) 104–17. Reinhuber, Thomas. Kämpfender Glaube: Studien zu Luthers Bekenntnis am Ende von De servo arbitrio (Berlin 2000). Remer, Gary. Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (Pennsylvania 1996). Ries, Markus. “Oswald Myconius in Luzern.” In Bewegung und Beharrung: Aspekte des reformierten Protestantismus. Festschrift für Emidio Campi (Leiden 2009) 1–20. Ross, Dealy. “The Dynamics of Erasmus’ Thought on War.” ERSY 4 (1984) 53–67. Roth, Paul. Durchbruch und Festsetzung der Reformation in Basel (Basel 1942). Roulier, Fernand. Jean Pic de la Mirandole (1463–1494): Humaniste, Philosophe, Théologien (Geneva 1989). Rudnytsky, Peter L. “Ironic Textuality in The Praise of Folly and Gargantua and Pantagruel.” ERSY 3 (1983) 56–103. Rüegg, Walter. Cicero und der Humanismus (Zurich 1946). Rüetschi, Kurt Jakob. “Erasmuslob und -tadel bei Rudolf Gwalther d. Ä.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu, eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 223–42. Rummel, Erika. The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany (Oxford 2000). Rummel, Erika. Erasmus. Ed Brian Davies, OP. Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series (London/New York 2004). Rummel, Erika. Erasmus and His Catholic Critics. 2 vols (Nieuwkoop 1989). Rummel, Erika. Erasmus’ “Annotations” on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto 1986). Rummel, Erika. Erasmus as a Translator of the Classics (Toronto 1985). Rummel, Erika. “God and Solecism: Erasmus as a Literary Critic of the Bible.” ERSY 7 (1987) 54–72.

Bibliography 35 Rummel, Erika, ed. The Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden 2008). Rummel, Erika, ed. Erasmus on Woman (Toronto 1996). Rüsch, Ernst Gerhard. Vom Humanismus zur Reformation: Aus den Randbemerkungen von Oswald Myconius zum “Lob der Torheit” des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1983). Schär, Max. Das Nachleben des Origenes im Zeitalter des Humanismus (Basel 1979). Scharffenorth, Gerta. Den Glauben ins Leben ziehen: Studien zu Luthers Theologie (Munich 1982). Scheible, Heinz. Melanchthon: Eine Biographie (Munich 1997). Scheible, Heinz. “Melanchthon zwischen Luther und Erasmus.” In Heinz Scheible Melanchthon und die Reformation. Ed G. May et al. (Mainz 1996) 171–96. Scheidegger, Christian. “Die Täufer und Erasmus: Glauben und Leben zwischen konfessionellen Fronten.” In Christine Christ-von Wedel and Urs B. Leu, eds Erasmus in Zürich: Eine verschwiegene Autorität (Zurich 2007) 243–73. Schmidt, Paul Gerhard, ed. Die Frau in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden 1994). Schoeck, Richard Joseph. “Erasmus and Valla: The Dynamics of a Relationship.” ERSY 12 (1992) 45–63. Schoeck, Richard Joseph. Erasmus grandescens: The Growth of an Humanist’s Mind and Spirituality (Nieuwkoop 1988). Schoeck, Richard Joseph. Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist. 2 vols (Edinburgh 1990–3). Schreiner, Klaus. “‘Defectus natalium’ – Geburt aus einem unrechtmäßigen Schoß.” In Ludwig Schmugge, ed Illegitimität im Spätmittelalter (Munich 1994) 85–114. Schulze, Manfred. Fürsten und Reformation: Geistliche Reformpolitik weltlicher Fürsten vor der Reformation (Tübingen 1990). Schüssler, Hermann. Der Primat der Heiligen Schrift als theologisches und kanonistisches Problem im Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden 1977). Screech, Michael Andrews. Ecstasy and “The Praise of Folly” (London 1980). Scribner, Robert W. “The Social Thought of Erasmus.” Journal of Religious History 6 (1970) 3–26. Seidel Menchi, Silvana. “Whether to Remove Erasmus from the Index of Prohibited Books: Debates in the Roman Curia 1570–1610.” ERSY 20 (2000) 19–33. Senn, Marcel. Rechtsgeschichte: Ein kulturhistorischer Grundriss (Zurich 1997). Sider, Robert D. “In Terms Quite Plain and Clear: The Exposition of ‘Grace’ in the Paraphrases of Erasmus.” Erasmus in English 15 (1988) 16–25.

358 Bibliography Sider, Robert D. “The Just and the Holy in Erasmus’ New Testament Scholarship.” ERSY 11 (1991) 1–26. Sowards, Jesse K. “The Youth of Erasmus: Some Reconsiderations.” ERSY 9 (1989) 1–33. Sperna, Weiland Jan, and Willem Th. M. Frijhoff, eds. Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Man and the Scholar (Leiden 1988). Springer, Bernd W., ed. Religiöse Toleranz im Spiegel der Literatur: Eine Idee und ihre ästhetische Gestaltung (Münster 2009). Staehelin, Ernst. Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads (Leipzig 1939). Strohm, Christoph. “Ius divinum et ius humanum.” In Gerhard Rau, Hans Richard Reuter, and Klaus Schlaich, eds Das Recht der Kirche (Gütersloh 1995) II 115–73. Sturm, Klaus. Die Theologie Peter Martyr Vermiglis während seines ersten Aufenthaltes in Straßburg 1542–1547: Ein Reformkatholik unter den Vätern der reformatorischen Kirche (Neukirchen Vluyn 1971). Tell, Emile V. “‘To every thing there is a season …’: Ways and Fashions in the Art of Preaching on the Eve of the Religious Upheaval in the Sixteenth Century.” ERSY 2 (1982) 13–24. Thompson, M. Geraldine. “The Range of Irony in Three Visions of Judgement: Erasmus’ Julius Exclusus, Donne’s Ignatius His Conclave, and Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead.” ERSY 3 (1983) 1–22. Tobriner, Alice. “The ‘Private Prayers’ of Erasmus and Vives: A View of Lay Piety in the Northern Renaissance.” ERSY 11 (1991) 27–52. Tracy, James D. “Erasmus and the Arians: Remarks on the Consensus Ecclesiae.” Catholic Historical Review 67 (1981) 1–10. Tracy, James D. Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley 1996). Tracy, James D. “Erasmus the Humanist.” In Richard L. DeMolen, ed Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Quincentennial Symposium (New York 1971) 29–47. Tracy, James D. “Humanists among the Scholastics: Eramus, More, and Lefèvre d’Etaples on the Humanity of Christ.” ERSY 5 (1985) 30–51. Tracy, James D. The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto 1978). Trapp, Joseph B. “Erasmus and His English Friends.” ERSY 12 (1992) 18–44. Trinkhaus, Charles “Erasmus, Augustine, and the Nominalists.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 67 (1976) 5–32. Trinkhaus, Charles, and Heiko Oberman, eds. The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden 1974). Troje, Hans Erich. Die europäische Rechtsliteratur unter dem Einfluss des Humanismus (Frankfurt 1970).

Bibliography 359 Vessey, Mark. “Erasmus’ Jerome: The Publishing of a Christian Author.” ERSY 14 (1994) 62–99. Vickers, Brian, ed. Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge 1984). Visser, Arnoud. “Reading Augustine through Erasmus’ Eyes: Humanist Scholarship and Paratextual Guidance in the Wake of the Reformation.” ERSY 28 (2008) 67–90. Vocht, Henry de. History of the Foundation and the Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense 1517–1550 (Leuven 1951). Vredeveld, Harry. “The Age of Erasmus and the Year of His Birth.” Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993) 754–809. Wackernagel, Rudolf. Geschichte der Stadt Basel. 3 vols (Basel 1907–24). Walsh, Katharine, and Alfred A. Strnad. “Eine Erasmianerin im Hause Habsburg: Die Königin Maria von Ungarn (1505–1558) und die Anfänge der Evangelischen Bewegung.” Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft 118 (1998) 40–85. Walter, Peter. Theologie aus dem Geist der Rhetorik: Zur Schriftauslegung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Mainz 1991). Watson, Donald Gwynn. “Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and the Spirit of Carnival.” Renaissance Quarterly 32 (1979) 333–53. Wengert, Timothy. Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philipp Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Oxford 1998). Wesseling, Ari. “Intertextual Play: Erasmus’ Use of Adagias in the Colloquies.” ERSY (2008) 1–27. Westphal, Siegrid. “Ende der klösterlichen Frauenbildung in der Reformation.” In Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz, eds Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung (Frankfurt 1996) I 135–54. Wiles, Maurice. “Eternal Generation.” Journal of Theological Studies new series 12 (1961) 284–91. Williamson, Darren. “The ‘Doctor of Anabaptism’ and the Prince of Humanists: Balthasar Hubmaier’s Contact with Erasmus.” ERSY 27 (2007) 37–58. Wolff, Max von. Lorenzo Valla: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig 1893). Worstbrock, Franz Josef, ed. Krieg und Frieden im Horizont des Renaissancehumanismus (Weinheim 1986). Wright, Nancy E. “French Medieval Drama and The Praise of Folly.” ERSY 4 (1984) 68–83. Zimmerli-Witschi, Alice. Frauen in der Reformationszeit (Zurich 1981).

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Index of Erasmus’s Works

Adagia, 55 – 56, 58, 80, 96, 120, 227 – 8, 252, 255, 259 Annotationes, 5, 12, 29 – 30, 81 – 4, 87 – 90, 96, 100 – 1, 107, 118 – 19, 122, 139, 146 – 7, 151 – 2, 180, 182, 194 – 5, 203, 207 – 11, 214, 217, 219, 222, 243 – 4, 252, 254 – 6 Antibarbari, 11, 25 – 6, 63 Apologia ad Fabrum Stapulensem, 90 Apologia de in principio erat sermo, 137, 140 Apologia, 89, 196 Axiomata, 168 Carmen buccolicum, 20 Carmen de monstrosis signis Christo moriente factis, 34 – 6, 270n67 Carmen heroicum de solemnitate paschali, 37 – 9 Christiani matrimonii institutio, 96, 126, 212, 239 – 46 Colloquia, 49, 96, 121, 126 – 31, 186, 188, 240, 243, 248, 252, 255 – 7 Compendium vitae, 19 Consultatio de bello Turcico, 232 – 4, 330n10, 332n50 Contra Pseudevangelicos, 171, 198 – 9

De amabili ecclesiae concordia, 99, 150, 252, 280n67 De conscribendis epistolis, 41 De contemptu mundi, 24, 281 De duplici copia verborum, 80, 86 De immensa Dei misericordia, 96, 170, 173 – 4 De praeparatione ad mortem, 152, 259, 271n84 De pueris instituendis, 246, 252 De vidua christiana, 246 – 8, 252 Declarationes ad censuras Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis, 214, 234 Dialogus adversus Barbaros, 25 Diatribe de libero arbitrio, 92, 120, 170 – 81 Dulce bellum inexpertis, 227 – 8, 232 Ecclesiastes, 31, 105, 118, 120, 122, 140 – 1, 174, 223, 257 – 8 Enchiridion, 11 – 12, 45 – 9, 51 – 3, 55, 58, 75, 99, 105, 114, 116, 119 – 20, 140, 146, 151, 186, 196, 255, 273n2, 326n58 Encomium matrinonii, 11, 41 – 3 Encomium Moriae, 3, 12, 61 – 76, 79 – 80, 91, 257, 280n67, 282n74

362

Index of Erasmus’s Works

Epistola consolatoria, 96, 172 Epistola de interdictu carnium, 184, 221 – 2 Epistolae, 11, 19 – 22, 26 – 31, 39, 50 – 1, 56, 70, 72, 74, 80, 82, 91 – 6, 115, 121, 130, 177, 181, 186 – 9, 191 – 3, 216 – 17, 251 – 2, 282n74, 330n10 Epistolam de delectu ciborum scholia, 222 Exomologesis, 96 Explanatio Symboli, 13, 36, 99, 119, 122, 124, 127, 134, 149, 156 – 64, 174, 252, 309n10 Expostulatio Jesu, 186, 195 Hyperaspistes I and II, 120, 180 – 2

Paean divae Mariae atque de incarnatione verbi, 31 – 4, 135, 164 Parabolae, 80 Paraclesis, 10, 87, 119, 141, 186, 188, 196 Paraphrases, 12, 30, 36, 38, 58, 83, 90, 95 – 105, 107, 109 – 14, 116 – 20, 123 – 6, 128, 133 – 44, 147 – 51, 175 – 6, 186, 188, 191 – 2, 194 – 5, 229, 234, 245, 254 – 7, 259, 290n55, 292n2, 296n49, 300n16, 318n51 poems, 11, 13, 19 – 28, 31 – 9, 50, 75, 135, 154, 195, 266n31 Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum, 11, 39 – 40, 42, 46, 49, 52, 119 – 20, 134, 146 Precatio dominica, 174

Institutio principis christiani, 186, 225 Querela pacis, 186, 226 – 31, 331n43 Lingua, 139 – 40 Methodus, 12, 84 – 8, 114, 195, 213 Modus orandi, 96 Novum Testamentum Erasmi, 5, 11, 12, 29, 34, 51, 55, 58 – 9, 79 – 84, 88 – 92, 101, 112, 145 – 6, 183 – 4, 186 – 7, 208, 252, 254 – 5, 257 – 9 Oda amatoria, 20 – 1 Opera omnia, 3, 256 Oratio funebris in funere Bertae de Heyen, 24

Ratio seu methodus, 12, 29, 84 – 8, 119, 140 – 1, 156, 186, 195 – 6, 213 – 14, 326n62 Responsio ad annotationes E. Lei, 217 Responsio ad Phimostomum de divortio, 214, 222 Supputatio errorvm N. Beddae, 104, 112, 151 Vidua christiana, 243, 246 – 9, 252, 335n75, 336n84

Index of Scriptural Passages

Genesis 1:27 2:24 6:6 18:2 25:23

238 243 32 162 (note 54) 175

Exodus 9:15–16 9:34

173 (note 40) 175

Deuteronomy 2:22 205 2:32 218 4:2 218 Joshua 10:12–13 Psalm 5:4 24:7 27:7 33 139, 171 33:9 50:19 79(78):10

131

176 37 42 47 (note 14) 273 (note 2) 173

82(81):6 84(83) 85(84):11

120 99 32

Proverbs 3:7 75 9:1–18 65–6, 69, 72–5, 277–8 (note 27) Ecclesiastes 3:5 211 Song of Solomon 1:8 274 (note 24) Isaiah 14:12 51:6

31 24

Jeremiah 10:15

70

Ezekiel 1:10

103

Micah 5:2–4

82

364

Index of Scriptural Passages

Habakkuk 1:17 148 Judith 1–16

246–8, 336 (note 80)

Matthew 1:1 2:6 5:18 5:32 5:39 5:39–44 6:28 7:12 10:30 11:28–30 17:5 19:3–12 20:28 26:26–9 26:63 27:46 28:19

81 79 (note 6), 82–4 57 208, 210, 218 227 (note 18) 231 126 329 (note 93) 129 (note 21) 119, 197 (note 87), 203 88–9 41, 208, 324 (note 26) 241 191–2 106 (note 65) 271 (note 84) 158 (note 21)

Mark 10:8 10:9 10:45 15:34b

244 244 241 107 (note 78)

Luke 1:1–4 1:28 1:35 2:14 3:14 3:38 10:22 10:27 22:19

100–3 280 (note 67) 127 88–9, 105 231 (note 41) 82 112–13 (note 9) 163 (note 58) 191 (note 51)

22:35–8 23:28 23:34

68, 234–5 105 108

John 1:1–2 13, 34, 111–12, 133–44, 303 (note 26) 1:3–4 125–31 1:17 152 (note 47) 5:17 128 (note 17) 6:44 149 (note 28) 6:63 53 8:38 304 (note 40) 10:34–5 120 11:51–2 109 13:6–10 108 (note 83) 13:34 231 17:14 40 18:1 107 (note 71) 19:34 105 Acts 2:22 2:42 4:13 5:29 5:38 8:9–25 13:6–12 15:20 17:22–31 17:27–9

112 (note 5) 191 (note 51) 66, 208 (note 28) 241 186 (note 24) 130 (note 35) 130 (note 35) 211 47 47, 122

Romans 1:4 1:7 1:17 1:18–21 1:19–20 1:29 2:10

146 147 147–8 89 47, 119–20, 329 (note 93) 89 148

Index of Scriptural Passages 365 3:9 3:19–20 3:22 3:24 4:3 4:5 5:12 8:15 8:19 9:6–29 11:25–7 12:3 13:1–7 14:23

150 116 148 146 (note 8) 146–9 149 152 120 (note 57) 127 175–8 164 (note 59) 84 229–31 149–50 (note 30)

Philippians 2:6 270 (note 67) 2:8 241 Colossians 1:12–20 40, 47, 118, 134 I Timothy 2:4

108, 149 (note 28), 175

II Timothy 2:4 222 (note 105) 3:12 173 Titus 3:5

150

Hebrews 1:1 1:3 1:5

139 134 304 (note 40)

James 1:17 2:13 2:14 3:1–12

116 173 (note 41) 145 140

II Corinthians 7:10 56

I Peter 1:23–5

139

Galatians 1:9 2:11 3:6 3:28 4:5

I John 1:1 2:6

139–41 220 (note 95)

I Corinthians 1 89 1:18–27 36, 66 (note 35), 70–1, 73–4, 79 (note 3), 142 2:2 141 (note 60) 3:18 70 (note 59) 4:10 70 (note 59) 7:9 210 7:10–11 208, 218 7:39 197 (note 89), 219 10:1–4 98 15:47–9 46

219 84 149 242 120 (note 57)

Ephesians 5:22–33 218, 240–5

Revelation 19:10 162 (note 54) 22:20 88 (note 50)

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General Index

Abelard, Peter, 47, 126 accommodation, 6, 14, 71, 140, 164, 204–5, 212–23, 230, 235, 239, 249, 254–5 Adam, 46, 82, 98–9, 106, 125, 127, 152, 170, 212 Adrian VI, 186–8 Agricola, Georgius, 131 Agricola, Rudolf, 86, 284n39 Agrippa Cornelius, 11, 114–16, 119, 124, 126–7 Albrecht of Mayence, 167 Alcalá, 92 Alciati, Andrea, 216 Aldington, 80 allegory, 20, 32–3, 36, 47, 49, 51, 53, 57, 61, 66, 85, 88, 100, 105–10, 135, 247, 269n45, 290n56, 291n59, 336n80, 336–7n84 Allen, 27 ambiguity, 10, 63–4, 71, 76, 112, 114, 124, 197, 253–4 Ambrose, 55, 83, 96, 100–1 Ambrosiaster, 194, 210, 319n66 Amerbach, Bonifacius, 191–2, 210, 216–17, 257, 330n10 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von, 160, 251–3

Anabaptists, 197, 206, 220, 231–2, 248, 256 Andrelini, Fausto, 31, 50 Angela of Grumbach, 248 Anna, 246 Anna van Borssele, 39 Anselm of Canterbury, 116–17, 173 Antitrinitarians, 112, 136, 256 Aratos, 122, 297 Arianism, 7–9, 133, 252 Aristaeas, 122, 298n81 Aristotelianism, 13, 28–30, 121, 127, 129–31, 228, 238, 295n40, 298n81 Aristotle, 122, 130, 228, 238–9, 295n40 astrology, 130–1 Athanasius, 9, 35, 133–4, 160 Augsburg, 167 Augustijn, Cornelis, 25, 89, 267n31, 338n10 Augustine, 25, 46, 48, 55, 83, 86, 116, 127, 138, 145, 152, 170, 194–5, 225–6, 235 Bainton, Roland H., 4, 266n22 Bär, Ludwig, 191–2 Barth, Karl, 136, 303n24

368

General Index

Basel, 11, 14, 58–9, 72, 81, 93, 96, 152, 168, 181–5, 190–3, 196–8, 206, 210, 215–18, 221, 248, 251, 256–8 Basilius, 252 Beatus Rhenanus, 96, 191, 259 Béda, Noël, 104, 112, 151 Benken, 248 Bentley, Jerry, 80 Bernard of Clairvaux, 32, 46, 72, 167, 245, 280n67 Bessarion, Cardinal, 121 Beza, Theodore, 88, 136 Bibliander, Theodor, 121, 177, 180, 298n81 Blarer, Ambrosius, 240 Blarer, Margarete, 240 Boethius, 116 Bonaventure, 48, 138 Boniface VIII, 217 Book of Creation, 48, 113–14, 118–19 Brabant, 33 Brussels, 92 Bucer, Martin, 151, 194 Budé, Guillaume, 93, 194, 216, 298n81 Bugenhagen, Johannes, 194 Bullinger, Heinrich, 86, 89, 91, 98, 121–2, 136, 148, 177, 180, 193–4, 245, 298n81, 303n21 Cajetan, Tommaso de Vio, 167–8 Calvin, John, 46, 89–90, 114, 136, 156–7 Cambrai, 24 Cambridge, 80, 276n14 canonical law, 14, 69, 204–5, 208, 210, 213–14, 217–18, 222, 252, 327n62, 329n93 Cantiuncula, Claudius, 191–2, 206, 210, 215–17, 284–5n39 Capito, Wolfgang, 93, 151, 183–4, 191

Cassirer, Ernst, 130 Catherine of Aragon, 216–17 Catullus, 22, 23, 31, 266n22 celibacy, 11, 41, 185–6, 245 censorship, 68–9, 184–5 ceremonial law, 6, 148–9, 152 ceremonies, 3–4, 6, 53, 75, 99, 148–9, 169, 185, 197 Charles V, 92–3, 95, 332n43 Chomarat, Jacques, 155 Christ’s cross, 6, 35–7, 39, 47, 52–3, 66, 71, 73, 76, 107–9, 141, 146, 159, 162–3 Christ’s death, 31, 34–7, 39, 71, 73, 87, 105–10, 119, 145, 149–50, 160– 3, 173, 241–2, 244, 270n67 Christian of Denmark, 96 Chrysostomos, 252, 336n80 church, 3–4, 6, 13, 47, 56–7, 64, 68–9, 74, 88, 106, 133, 144, 146, 150, 155, 158–60, 163–4, 168, 180–4, 187–8, 190–2, 196–9, 203, 205, 208–10, 212–14, 218–19, 228, 232–3, 241, 243–5, 247–8, 252–3, 256, 259, 265n28, 326–7n62, 336n80 Church Fathers, 5, 7–11, 25, 28–32, 35–6, 41, 49, 51, 58, 70, 73, 79–82, 90, 96–8, 102, 121–2, 130, 193, 204, 208, 239, 244, 247, 252–4, 257, 280n55, 336n80 Cicero, 6, 27, 51, 121, 215, 239, 297n79 classical literature, 3, 5–6, 10–11, 19–22, 25–6, 31–2, 49–51, 55–6, 58, 64, 85, 92, 96, 121–2, 136, 143, 198, 228, 239, 246, 258 Cluj-Napoca, 112 Colet, John, 28, 35, 48–9, 51, 161 Colinaeus, Simon, 90 Collège Montaigu, 49 Cologne, 4, 6, 151

General Index 369 conciliarism, 181-2 confessionalism, 108, 150, 199, 253, 256–7 confessions, 8, 145, 157, 160, 225 Constance, 187, 240 Contarini, Gasparo, 151 contrition, 43, 46, 56, 273n2 Cop, Guillaume, 93 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 131 Cornelius Gerard, 25 council, fifth Lateran, 69 Council of Chalcedon, 160 Council of Nicaea, 134, 204 Council of Trent, 145, 151, 181, 256–7 Coverdale, Myles, 98 creatio ex nihilo, 127 creation, 3, 13, 27, 35, 42, 46–8, 91, 98, 113–24, 135–44, 156, 159, 163, 172, 177, 237–8, 244, 296n49 Cyprian, 70, 194 Cyril of Jerusalem, 304n40 Darwin, Charles, 258 death of God, 35–7, 39, 161–2, 244 Deborah, 246, 336n80 Demosthenes, 79 descent into hell, 31, 37–9, 271n84 devil, 7, 10, 32, 37–8, 85, 107–10, 115, 130, 137, 142, 149, 174, 179, 205, 232, 244, 330n10, 336n80, 336–7n84 devotio moderna, 5, 266–7n31 Didymus Alexandrinus, 194 Diessenhofen, 248 dignity of man, 48, 58, 71, 130, 162 disdain for the world, 6, 11, 40, 42, 52, 85 disputation of Leipzig, 167, 204 divine law, 14, 203–23, 225, 230, 234–5, 237–8 divine soul, 46–8, 52, 58, 114–16, 119–21

divorce, 4, 14, 209–12, 214, 216–19, 222–3 doctrine of will, 6, 10 dogma, 5, 6–9, 13, 87, 90–2, 105, 121, 133–4, 142–3, 151, 155–64, 174, 181, 199, 203, 235, 252, 255, 303n26 Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, 217 Eck, Johannes, 11, 82–3, 93, 102–3, 105, 107–8, 151, 167 England, 11, 25–6, 49–52, 55, 58–9, 92–3, 161, 255–6 Epiktetus, 239 Epimenides, 27–8 eternal begetting, 13, 133–8, 303n26, 304n40 Eusebius, 98 Faber Stapulensis, 11, 80, 90, 93–4, 103–5, 108–9, 146, 194 Farel, Guillaume, 184 fasting rules, 3–4, 72, 184–5, 187, 218–19, 221 Fausto Andrelini, 31, 50 Ferdinand I, 95–6, 188–9 Ficino, Marsilio, 48, 122, 129 Fisher, Robert, 51 flesh and spirit, 46–7, 52–3, 58, 105– 6, 110, 152 Florence, 48, 50, 52, 121, 129, 336n81 Foucault, Michel, 258 four senses of interpretation, 57, 82, 85, 89, 105, 108, 110, 135, 247 Francis I, 92, 93, 95–6, 226 Franciscus de Victoria, 232 Frech, Stephan Veit, 89 Frederick the Wise, 168 free will, 6, 10, 127, 130–1, 146, 151, 153, 168–79, 257, 320n70 Freiburg, 197–8, 215–16, 251–2 Froben, Hieronymus, 251, 257–8

370

General Index

Froben, Johannes, 81, 96, 168 Froschauer, Christoph, 89, 136, 186 Gaguin, Robert, 11, 26–7, 52, 56 Galen, 131 Geneva, 66, 136, 248 George, Duke of Saxony, 92 Gerhardt, Paul, 34 Gerson, John, 293n11, 310n33 Gessner, Konrad, 86 Gillis van Delft, 31 Glarean, Heinrich, 93, 191 Gleason, John B., 51 God’s death, 34–6, 39, 162, 270n67 God’s omnipotence, 6, 29, 35, 58, 114, 118, 125–8, 133, 135, 139, 142–3, 157, 171, 174, 179 Godin, André, 49 Golden Age, 11, 12, 19–22, 27, 50, 61–2, 93–4, 255 Gouda-manuscript, 63, 300n34 grace, 40, 42–4, 46, 52, 91, 94, 105, 108, 117, 121, 124, 131, 142–3, 145–7, 151–2, 156, 159, 170–9, 216, 238, 259, 280–1n67 Gratian, 217, 225, 329n93 Gregory IX, 217 Grey, Thomas, 11, 27–8, 31 Grocyn, William, 49–51 Gropper, Johann, 151 Grumbach, Argula of, 248 Gwalther, Rudolf, 86 Halkin, Léon, 4 Hamm, Berndt, 42 Hegius, Alexander, 56 Henry of Seusia, 217 Henry VII, 50 Henry VIII, 80, 92–3, 95, 216–17, 239 Hermes Trismegistos, 121 hermeticism, 114–15, 121–3

Herod, 36, 106, 109 Hilary of Poitiers, 7–10, 290n56 Holbein, Hans, the younger, 65, 72 Homer, 22 Honorius Augustudinensis, 66, 279n34 Horace, 22–3, 31, 266n22 Hubmair, Balthasar, 248 Hugo of Hohenlandenberg, 187–8 Hugo St Victor, 30 Huizinga, Johan, 181 Hungary, 14, 231, 233, 246–8 Hutten, Ulrich von, 181, 188–9 images, 3, 184, 196–7 incarnation, 31–4, 52, 58, 87, 91, 98–99, 118–19, 121, 128, 137, 140, 149, 156, 162, 245, 304n40 indulgences, 3, 167 Ingolstadt, 248, 298n81 inspiration, 83, 97–8, 100–13, 158, 207 intra-trinitarian colloquy, 11, 13, 32–4, 135–44, 304n40 Irenaeus, 96, 137 Italy, 12, 24, 25, 51, 58–9, 61, 95–6, 185 Ittingen, 184 Iuvencus, 239 Ivo of Chartres, 213 Jacob’s ladder, 45, 48, 75, 116 Jamblicus, 121 Jerome, 25, 51, 56–7, 70, 81, 86, 99, 177, 194, 280n55 Johannes Andreae, 217 John XXII, 217 John, evangelist, 13, 34, 36, 66, 99– 100, 111–12, 137–9, 144, 152, 162–3 Jud, Leo, 89, 102, 186, 193–4, 231, 309n10, 320n71 Judas, 106–10

General Index 371 Judith, 246–8, 336–7n84 jus belli, 14, 68–9, 95, 207, 225–35 justification, 10, 13, 40, 145–53, 155, 162, 167, 180, 195, 255 Justin Martyr, 121 Justinian, 216 Kabbalism, 114, 121 Karlstadt (Andreas Bodenstein), 184 Kisch, Guido, 215, 326n62 Klausenburg, 112 Klettgau, 184 “Koine,” 79 Kroll, Josef, 37 Lactantius, 70 Lang, Johannes, 94, 167 Last Judgment, 43, 164, 174 laws of nature, 34–5, 41, 114, 126, 128–9, 131, 148 Lee, Edward, 112, 152 Leipzig, 92, 167, 204 Leising, 206 Leo the Great, 194 Leo X, 92–5 Leoni, 93 Leoniceno, 93 Lienhard, Max, 89 Linacre, Thomas, 49, 93 Listrius, 64, 66 loci-method, 12, 86, 89–92 Löfgren, David, 128 logos, 13, 34, 47, 52, 123, 126, 131, 135, 137–44 logos spermaticos, 121 Lombard, Peter, 30, 217 London, 80 Louis de Berquin, 193 Louis XII, 39 Louvain, 4, 6, 56, 168 Lucan, 22

Lucian, 64, 80, 102 Luke, 82, 100–3, 105, 234, 290n55 Luther, Martin, 7, 9–11, 13, 15, 28–9, 34, 89, 93–4, 99, 102, 104–8, 112–14, 119–20, 123–9, 131, 135–6, 152–3, 160–2, 164, 167–92, 195, 203–7, 209–10, 214, 218–21, 226, 230–1, 238, 243–5, 251–4, 256–9, 271n84, 277n19, 288n16, 294n17, 301n43, 303nn21,26, 329n93, 330n10, 331n31 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 227 magic, 13, 115, 129, 131, 143–4 Mahlmann, Theodor, 176 Mai, Lucas, 34 Marcolf, 64 Margaret of Navarre, 237 Marignano, 92, 226 Mark, 97, 101 marriage, 14–15, 41–2, 126, 197, 205, 209–12, 217–18, 238–45, 328n88 marriage impediments, 14, 212 marriage law, 14, 205, 209, 212, 218 marriage of priests, 4, 41 Martin van Dorp, 70, 75 Mary, 102–3, 108, 162, 199, 208 Mary I, 239 Mary of Hungary, 233, 246–8 Matthew, 81, 82, 97, 101 Maurer, Wilhelm, 104–5 Maximilian I, 39, 92–3, 226 McCullough, C. Douglas, 215 Meaux, 237 medieval sources, 5, 10–11, 31–9, 42, 46–8, 52, 64–6, 135, 157, 159, 164, 191, 217, 247, 255, 326n58 Megander, 194 Melanchthon, Philipp, 7, 90–2, 130– 1, 134, 142–3, 151, 153, 155, 168, 176–8, 180, 190–1, 220, 245, 259,

372

General Index

301n44, 329n93 Melito of Sardis, 270n67 Mohács, 231, 233, 330n10 More, Margaret, 240 More, Thomas, 49–51, 61, 80, 167, 169, 171, 178 Mosaic law, 6, 98–9, 108, 116, 123, 140, 144, 146–50, 152–3, 15, 163–4, 169–70, 179, 220 Moses, 95, 97–9, 121–2, 150, 152, 220, 295n40 Münster, Sebastian, 89 Müntzer, Thomas, 220 Myconius, Oswald, 72, 186, 259 mystery plays, 11, 33–9, 135, 164, 255 mysticism, 42, 71–3, 75, 120–1, 255 myth, 22, 28, 37 natural law, 13, 148, 204–6, 211, 220, 232, 234, 327n65, 329n93 natural theology, 12, 47, 113–24, 296n50 nature, 13, 34–5, 41–2, 46, 48–9, 56, 61, 75, 101, 119–20, 126–31, 142, 227, 237, 239–40, 243, 258 Neoplatonism, 5, 12, 45–53, 57–8, 114, 121, 129, 130–1, 268n33 New Testament manuscripts, 56, 58–9, 79–82, 254, 276n14 Newton, Sir Isaac, 130 Nicene Creed, 74 Nicolas of Lyra, 30, 57, 101 Oberman, Heiko, 13 Ockham, William of, Ockhamists, 126, 146 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 183–5, 189, 191–3, 197 Old Testament, 6, 12, 14, 89, 97–9, 104, 107, 110, 153, 193, 197–8, 207, 219–20, 223, 225, 228, 234–5, 327n65

Oldendorp, Johann, 215, 327n68, 328n77 Origen, 12, 32, 35, 49, 55, 70–1, 99, 133–4, 174, 209, 245, 268n33, 269n37 original sin, 42, 48, 94, 151–2 Orpheus, 22, 121 Ovid, 20, 31, 266n22 Paltz, Johannes of, 42 Panormitanus, 208, 217 Pantaleon, Heinrich, 86 Paris, 4, 6, 11, 24–6, 31, 49, 52, 56, 80, 92–3, 185, 193, 214, 231, 234–5, 255, 293n11, 327n65 Parker, Thomas H.L., 89–90 Paul, 8, 36, 46, 55–6, 70–1, 73–5, 84, 87, 94, 98, 102, 118, 120, 122, 141–2, 145–50, 152, 162, 170, 173, 175, 177–8, 180, 195, 199, 208, 210, 214, 218–19, 221–2, 229–30, 239, 241, 248, 300n16 peace, 14, 19, 50, 92–5, 193, 225–35, 248, 251, 331–2n43 pedagogy, 3, 5, 25–6, 49, 94, 203, 238–9, 246–7, 255–6, 335–6n75 Pelagianism, 145, 151–2 Pellikan, Konrad, 181, 191–5, 320n71 penance, 43, 45, 56, 91, 330n9 Peter, 36, 66, 70, 83–4, 101, 108–9, 181, 204, 214, 234 Peter Comestor, 30 Petrus Galatinus, 121 Petrus Lombardus, 30, 217 philosophia perennis, 121–3 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 48, 52, 106, 121, 129–31, 274n24 piety of merit, 43, 45 Pilate, 106, 109, 161 Pio, Alberto, 7, 74, 234 Pirckheimer, Charitas, 240 Pirckheimer, Willibald, 192, 240

General Index 373 Plantsch, Martinus, 130 Plato, 5, 46, 51, 71–3, 121, 142–3, 239, 282n74, 295n40, 297n68 Platonism, 5, 46, 48–9, 51–2, 57, 120–1, 123, 127–8, 142–3 Plethon, 121 Pliny, 130 Plutarch, 6, 80, 239 preaching, 4, 6, 70, 100, 106, 142, 197, 211, 213, 219, 221, 238–9, 257–8 predestination, 92, 108, 172, 175–80, 255 Proclus, 51 proofs of God’s existence, 12, 47, 114, 116–18 Prudentius, 239 Pseudo-Augustine, 137–8 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 51 Pythagoras, 121 Rabanus Maurus, 65, 277n30 Raimundus Sabundus, 47–8 Reformation and Reformers, 3, 7, 11, 13, 14, 89–90, 93, 98–9, 104, 106, 121, 145–6, 150–2, 167–99, 203, 205, 217–22, 225, 240, 248, 254, 256–9 Regensburg, 151 remarriage, 14, 197–212, 218–19 Reubel, Wilhelm, 184 revelation, 13, 47, 99, 103–4, 118–19, 124, 135, 142–3, 155, 159–60, 163, 203 rhetoric, 5, 61, 75, 84–5, 159, 171, 215, 248, 264n7 Richard of St Victor, 138 right to resistance, 229–30 Rome, 50, 88, 93, 96, 181, 187, 189, 192–3, 204, 229–30 Rostock, 215 Ruel, Jean, 93 Rupert of Deutz, 32

sacraments, 4, 6, 14, 43, 73, 91, 105, 156, 181, 184–5, 191–4, 218, 221–2, 231, 238, 242–5, 257–8, 328n88 Salonius Viennensis, 66, 278n34 salvific history, 11, 13, 31, 38–9, 47, 52, 62, 97–102, 104, 140, 144, 160, 163–4, 255, 269n35 sanctification, 6, 13, 53, 145–6, 149, 152–3 Sardon, 227 scepticism, 114, 116, 180–1 schism, 4, 183, 198–9, 251–2 Schlechta, Johann, 69, 186 Schoeffel, Ron, 3 Schola Tigurina, 121, 180, 191 Scholasticism, 5, 6–8, 11, 27–31, 36, 45, 47, 56–7, 61, 67–9, 75, 84, 86, 91, 113, 115, 118, 123, 126, 142, 145–6, 155, 169, 177–8, 199, 253, 255 Scotus, Duns, 29, 68, 117, 126, 145, 177–8 self-knowledge, 45–8, 116 Seneca, 80, 116, 121, 239 Servatius, Roger, 19–22, 80 Sileni of Alcibiades, 63 Simler, Josias, 86 Socrates, 26, 72, 121 Spalatin, Georg, 94 Spee, Friedrich, 34, 143 Statius, 22 Staupitz, Johannes von, 42 Stephanus-Bible, 88, 90, 136 Steyn, 19 Stoics, 5, 63, 72, 114, 143, 176, 298n81 Strasburg, 93, 151, 182–3 Stunica, Diego Lopez, 6, 74, 187 Synod of Constantinople, 9 systematic theology, 5, 7, 90–1, 155–6 Tatian, 134 Tertullian, 35, 47, 160, 194

374

General Index

theodicy, 172–3 Theophylact, 101, 194 Thomas Aquinas, 29–30, 48, 69–70, 101, 113, 116–18, 130, 145, 205, 225, 230, 238, 257 Thucydides, 102 tolerance, 4, 10, 29, 67–70, 74, 169, 199, 227, 256 Torozkai, Matthaei, 112 translatio, idea of, 295n40 translation, 4, 12, 34, 51, 56–8, 79–84, 88–90, 99, 104, 108, 112, 135–6, 140, 146, 152, 195–6, 208, 256–7, 270n63, 276n14, 303n21 Trinity, 9–11, 13, 32–4, 39–40, 98–100, 111–12, 121, 123–4, 133–44, 156, 160, 163, 252–3, 255, 294n17, 303n26, 304n40 Troje, Hans Erich, 215 Turin, 58 Turks, 14, 39, 68, 91, 95, 162, 226, 229, 231–4, 330nn9,10, 332nn43,50 two-natures doctrine, 8, 14, 35, 98–100, 161–2, 244–5 universal reconciliation, 174–5 Vadian, 194 Valeria Messalina, 246 Valla, Lorenzo, 5, 12, 29, 41, 55–7, 80, 82, 177, 194, 255 Veltwyck, Gerard van, 151 Venice, 93 Vienna, 231

Virgil, 19, 20, 22, 31, 266 Vitrier, Jean, 49 Vives, Juan Luis, 11, 239, 243–7, 255, 327n68 vows, 3, 92, 185–6, 205 Vredeveld, Harry, 23, 31, 35, 268n33 Walafridus Strabo, 278n30 Waldshut, 248 war, 14, 19, 67–9, 95–6, 172, 185, 189, 207, 217, 225–35, 330n10, 332n43 Warham, William, 80 Wettstein, Johann Jakob, 88 widowhood, 233, 246–8 Wittenberg, 4, 90–2, 96, 125–6, 170, 176, 205, 210, 218, 220, 259 women’s education, 238–40, 245–6 Worms, 94, 204–5, 151, 209 Wurstisen, Christian, 86 Xenophon, 239 Ximenes, Cardinal, 92 Zasius, Ulrich, 93, 215–16 Zurich, 11, 13–14, 21, 29, 86, 89, 96, 98–9, 106, 121, 136, 146, 152, 180, 182, 185–96, 205, 207, 211, 218, 256, 320n70 Zwingli, Huldrych, 21, 89–91, 93–4, 98, 102, 104–6, 121–2, 135–6, 141–2, 153, 161, 168, 178–80, 183, 186–95, 205, 207, 210–11, 218–21, 231, 238, 244–5, 291n59, 297n68, 328n88