The Desiderius Erasmus Collection

Rosie Perera said:

He was one of the most important figures in the the Protestant Reformation.

Funny, I think of him as an influential philosopher as it was his philosophy that influenced the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. [;)]

From Wikipedia: "In a letter to Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Luther objected to Erasmus’ Catechism and called Erasmus a "viper,", "liar," and "the very mouth and organ of Satan.""

Reminds me a bit of the required Washington State history course - my friend in Seattle was taught Chief Joseph was a bad guy; I was taught he was a hero. Do you think the difference might be that my school was divided only by a river from the reservation in which Chief Joseph was buried?

From the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

2. Life and Works

Erasmus was a native of the Netherlands, born at Rotterdam in the
county of Holland on 27 October of some year in the late 1460s; 1467
now seems to be the year that most biographers prefer. Erasmus'
own statements on the year of his birth are contradictory, perhaps
because he did not know for certain but probably because later in life
he wanted to emphasize the excessively early age at which his guardians
pushed him and his elder brother Pieter to enter monastic life, in
order to support his efforts to be released from his monastic
vows. If the year of his birth remains unclear, the circumstances are
not. He was born out of wedlock, the second son of, a priest named
Roger who spent several years in Italy, learned Greek and humanistic
Latin, and supported himself there as a copyist or scribe before
returning to parish life in or near Rotterdam, and Margaret, the
daughter of a physician and perhaps a widow. The existence of two sons
suggests that the relationship between Roger and Margaret was not
casual but an example of the concubinage that was common among the
clergy in many parts of medieval Europe. The two sons were not
neglected but received the attention of both parents. Their early
education was at Gouda, a town near Rotterdam. When Erasmus was nine
years old and Peter probably twelve, their father sent them to one of
the largest and best Latin grammar schools in the Netherlands, located
at Deventer and owned by the chapter clergy of St. Lebwin's
church. Contrary to many older biographies, this school was not
“a school of the Brethren of the Common Life.” The
Brethren, a semi-monastic society of laymen, did have a community in
Deventer and operated a youth hostel for boys from other towns who came
to study there but did not control the school. The two boys did
not live at the hostel. Their mother moved to Deventer to provide a
home for her sons. Erasmus probably attended St. Lebwin's
from 1475 to 1484. Although in later years he made light of the
school as an institution still stuck in the “barbarism” of
the Middle Ages, it was an excellent school for that period, and
Erasmus probably laid the foundations of his fine Latin style there.
Toward the end of Erasmus' study there, a teacher who had
considerable interest in the new humanistic studies flourishing in
Italy, Alexander Hegius, became headmaster. Erasmus never had Hegius as
a teacher, since the headmaster taught only the boys in the most
advanced form; but he must have heard him lecture to the entire school
on feast days, and he vividly remembered a lecture given by
Hegius' friend Rudolf Agricola, the first significant humanist
active in the Netherlands, who had spent many years studying in Italy.
Despite his habitual belittling of St. Lebwin's school,
Erasmus himself in an autobiographical letter of 1524 acknowledged the
role of Hegius and his ablest Latin teacher, Johannes Synthen, in
introducing “something of a higher standard as literature”
into the school (CWE 4:405).

In addition to imparting a love of humanistic studies, St.
Lebwin's school may have been one source of Erasmus'
lifelong conviction that religion must be experienced inwardly rather
than in formal ceremonies and must be expressed in daily living rather
than in dogmas and liturgies. The older literature on Erasmus often
attributed this religious spirit to his education in “the schools
of the Brethren of the Common Life,” but recent scholarship has
demonstrated that at this period, the Brethren were not very deeply
committed to education or interested in classical antiquity or any
other intellectual matters (Post 1968:576–579). Johannes Synthen,
Erasmus' grammar-teacher at Deventer, was one of the Brethren,
but in the chapter-school he was employed as a teacher, just as other
Brethren supported themselves in the town by labor in manual trades.
Erasmus' non-dogmatic and anti-ceremonial religiosity probably is
a product of the Dutch spiritual milieu of his boyhood, but there is
little in that religiosity that suggests a close relation to the
Brethren. The most famous book to come out of that movement, The
Imitation of Christ, is often interpreted as a source of
Erasmus' earliest spiritual publication, the
Enchiridion, but in fact the books are very different. The
Imitation is clearly directed toward persons called to the
contemplative life, monks and nuns and semi-monastic groups like the
Brethren. It devalues material goals and is profoundly
anti-intellectual, as were the Brethren. Erasmus'
Enchiridion, on the contrary, was directed toward the
spiritual life of ordinary laymen pursuing secular careers in the
secular world who needed spiritual guidance (Tracy 1972:65).

Erasmus' studies at Deventer ended abruptly when plague struck
the city about 1483. His mother died of the infection, and apparently
their father called his sons back to Gouda. Their father soon fell
victim to the same plague, leaving his two sons and a small inheritance
in the hands of three guardians. Erasmus later depicted these guardians
as unfeeling men who merely wanted to get the boys off their hands by
pushing them into a monastery. Erasmus at age 14 to 16 (a quite normal
age to begin university study) wanted to go to a university, but
instead was sent with his brother to a grammar school at 's
Hertogenbosch that really was conducted by the Brethren of the Common
Life. The highest level of study there did not go up to the level the
brothers had already completed at Deventer. Erasmus regarded this
period as a total waste. Eventually the guardians decided that since
the two boys had only a small inheritance and, being born out of
wedlock, were not eligible for an ordinary career as secular priests or
for membership in many professions, entry into a monastery was their
only realistic option. Erasmus bitterly resented the pressure to become
a monk, feeling too young to resist but having no real calling to the
monastic life. Eventually Pieter, the elder, gave in. The younger
brother, now isolated, also agreed, entering Augustinian Canons Regular
at Steyn near Gouda. He began his novitiate about 1487, when he might
have been 16 but may have been nearly 20. At the end of the novitiate,
he took his final vows and thus was bound to the Steyn monastery for
life.

Although Erasmus later claimed that he found monastic life almost
unbearable, he actually found some compensating advantages. He was no
longer an isolated orphan but a member of a supportive community.
Unlike the intellectually drab environment of the mediocre school at
's Hertogenbosch, the monastery at Steyn included at least some
members who shared his interest in classical literature and encouraged
his intellectual longings. His first prose work of any length,
De contemptu mundi (On Contempt of the World), was written in
the monastery and presented a generally favorable picture of monastic
life, though the first edition, not published until 1521, contained
later additions that warned strongly against encouraging boys to enter
a monastery at an excessively early age. Monastic life limited his
freedom to determine his own activities, but he did have opportunities
for study. His negative feelings about his life in a community where
most of his fellows had no interest in his literary aspirations
inspired another book, Antibarbarorum liber (Book Against the
Barbarians), originally written as a letter to a scholarly friend
in another monastery about 1489, then transformed into a dialogue about
1494, and after much further revision, finally published in 1520. Even
in its earliest version, this work suggests that Erasmus felt cramped
by his surroundings. Nevertheless, in 1492, he agreed to be ordained as
a priest.

By the time of his ordination, Erasmus seems to have been eager to
leave the monastery. Ordination may have beens part of his strategy to
get out in spite of the permanent obligation imposed by his vows. He
already was identified as an intelligent and widely read monk with an
outstanding Latin style. Sometime after his ordination, probably in
1493, Erasmus left the monastery on temporary assignment to serve as
secretary to Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai. Officially, this
assignment was temporary. But as his life worked out, he never went
back, not even when, many years later, the prior wrote a letter
ordering him to return. He carefully arranged for his departure
to be legally authorized: by his own prior at Steyn, by the general of
his order, and by the bishop who ordained him. His new master, who had
family ties to the aristocracy, was ambitious and closely linked to the
holders of political and ecclesiastical power. He anticipated an
early call to Rome to become a cardinal. That plan was the reason why
he wanted a Latin secretary known for a superb Latin style that would
pass muster even in Rome.

For Erasmus, the prospect of a visit to Italy was alluring, but the
greatest advantage was release from the tedium of the monastery.
Although Bishop Henry was attentive, he was a politician and a
courtier, not an intellectual or spiritual leader. His household moved
about frequently, and Erasmus soon complained of the unsettled nature
of life at court and the lack of time for study. In the end, Bishop
Henry's hopes of becoming a cardinal collapsed because of
political changes at Rome, and he lost interest in his talented
secretary. Erasmus persuaded the bishop to send him to study theology
at Paris, the most celebrated theological faculty in Europe. By the
fall of 1495, Erasmus was at Paris, living in the strictest and most
ascetic institution in the university, the Collège de
Montaigu.

Life at Montaigu was harsh, and for Erasmus, almost intolerable. Poor
students were expected to do menial labor in addition to attending to
their studies. The conditions were so harsh, the facilities so filthy,
and the diet so sparse that Erasmus blamed his later digestive ailments
on the foul food at Montaigu. He fell seriously ill and returned for a
time to the court of his bishop and even paid a visit to his monastic
brethren at Steyn. When he returned to Paris, he left Montaigu and
found private lodgings.

Even before he began his studies at Paris, Erasmus had expressed
hostility to the traditional scholastic theology based on questions,
disputations, and reliance on Aristotle. Although a leading expert on
the Paris theologians has speculated that Erasmus never seriously
undertook the lengthy process of qualifying for a degree in theology,
his letters from his early years there do reflect attendance at
lectures that he regarded as dull, worthless, and presented in
abominable (that is, medieval) Latin (for example, Ep 64, CWE
1:137–138). Surely in his first year, when he resided in the tightly
disciplined community at Montaigu, he must have participated regularly
in the formal academic exercises. But Paris also had an active literary
life and had been thoroughly exposed to the humanistic culture of
Italy. The city and the court had a substantial circle of humanists.
The outstanding figure in this circle was Robert Gaguin, a writer and
translator of mainly historical books and a senior professor of canon
law, an astute man frequently employed by the king for diplomatic
missions, and a distinguished monk who was the general of a small
monastic order, the Trinitarians. Erasmus quickly established contact
with him. Gaguin recognized Erasmus' outstanding Latin style, and
when in 1495 a blank page needed to be filled at the end of his book on
the history of the Franks, he invited his new friend to write a letter
praising the book. This letter was the first writing by Erasmus to
appear in print (Ep 45, CWE 1:87–91), the first of many. Erasmus formed
friendships with other humanists, both Italian and French, and
published two volumes of Latin poems by himself and one of his
fellow-monks at Steyn.

Although Erasmus still longed for the title (but not the theological
ideas) of a Paris doctorate, he drifted away gradually from serious
pursuit of a degree. His real interests were the study of classical
literature and his own ambitions to be a Latin poet. Nevertheless, his
later writings, especially those directed against Martin Luther, show
considerable familiarity with the theologians and scholastic traditions
taught at Paris. In a letter of 1498, he still expressed a desire to
take a doctorate in theology but now wanted to do this at Bologna
(where the theological curriculum was far less demanding and drawn-out)
rather than at Paris (Ep 75, CWE 1:151). In that same letter, he
complained that Bishop Henry had become slow to pay the promised
subsidy to support his studies. Both through correspondence and on
visits to the Netherlands, he sought new patrons, but with only limited
success. Erasmus had to earn money as a tutor to wealthy young students
at Paris. His reputation for excellent Latin style and mastery of
ancient literature must have helped him win paying customers, including
an English aristocrat who became his patron for the rest of his life,
William Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Erasmus did not want to become a
teacher, but he was very good at it, attracting youths who grew up to
be patrons and friends, and producing simple versions of several
textbooks that later in his career were published in revised versions
and became highly successful throughout Europe, including a practical
guide effective letter-writing, a paraphrase of Lorenzo Valla's
masterly guide to classical Latin style, the Elegantiae,
an early form of his Colloquies, his own guide to writing
classical Latin, De copia, even a guide to good manners for
young students.

The most useful of his pupils at Paris was Lord Mountjoy. In the summer
of 1499 Mountjoy returned to England and invited Erasmus to accompany
him for an extended stay. He took his Dutch friend to court and let him
experience life on a wealthy rural estate, a novel experience for a man
who had always faced poverty. In the Netherlands, Erasmus had been an
obscure (even if talented) monk; in Paris, an impoverished student and
poet. But in England, he was received as the guest of a wealthy
nobleman and a published author of Latin poems. He visited Oxford,
where he met a wealthy and well-connected cleric, John Colet, who was
studying theology in his own headstrong way, scornful of traditional
scholastic theology and bold enough to present public lectures on the
Epistles of Paul that approached the New Testament as a literary text
rather than as a bundle of scholastic propositions. The two men became
friends, and Colet tried to persuade Erasmus to stay at Oxford and
present similar lectures on the Old Testament. Erasmus declined
this proposal, for he was convinced that he was unqualified to expound
Scripture. Unlike Colet, who knew no Greek and did not even know that
he needed it, Erasmus did not think it possible to do competent
exegesis solely on the basis of the Latin translation. Some older
biographies of Erasmus and of Colet claimed that this contact
with Colet was responsible for the transformation of Erasmus from a
classical scholar and aspiring poet into a serious theologian. This
claim is unfounded. Much as Erasmus liked Colet, he also recognized his
narrowness of outlook and lack of any deep understanding of how
humanist learning could revolutionize biblical studies. Recent
scholarship has concluded that “Colet had nothing to teach
Erasmus about scriptural exegesis at any stage” (Gleason
1989:233).

The unfounded claim that Colet exercised a decisive influence on the
transformation of Erasmus from an undirected enthusiast for classical
literature into a pioneering theologian and biblical scholar was based
on biographers' awareness of an apparently sudden change in
Erasmus soon after he got back from England early in 1500. During his
time in the monastery and also at Paris, Erasmus did show signs of
spiritual concern and a desire to relate his classical studies to his
Christian faith. Colet, happily ignorant of Greek and too stubborn to
recognize his own shortcomings, is an unlikely source of the
transformation that Erasmus experienced. Yet it does seem that while in
England, Erasmus began to realize that if he wanted to accomplish
anything significant in theology, he would have to master the Greek
language. English friends other than Colet may have played a
significant role in this development. In a letter to a former student
of his who was in Italy to study law, Erasmus extols his experience in
England and praises the remarkably advanced state of classical learning
there, “in both Latin and Greek.” While he praises the
Greekless Colet, he also mentions two other English humanists who had
spent extended periods in Italy and had engaged in serious study of
Greek, William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre (Ep 118, CWE 1:117–118).
Erasmus may have met another English humanist, William Latimer, who had
studied Greek at Florence along with Grocyn and Giovanni
de’Medici (the future Pope Leo X). Thus Erasmus' new
determination to master the Greek language, evident from shortly after
his return from England, may have been inspired by new English friends,
but not by Colet.

As an impoverished monk, Erasmus was not bashful about soliciting gifts
of money to support his studies. But when he was ready to cross the
Channel, English customs officers at Dover confiscated nearly all of
the cash he had received since the export of bullion was illegal. Thus
he arrived back in Paris to face penury even worse than usual. He
schemed with his friend Jacob Batt in the Netherlands how to extract more
money from a rich prospective patron, Anna van Borsselen,. In 1500 fear
of plague drove him from Paris. Initially he took refuge at
Orléans, but when the infection spread there, he decided to
return to the Netherlands. He went to Steyn and secured permission to
absent himself for another year of study, and he called on his
unreliable patron the bishop of Cambrai, but with little success.
Throughout this grim period, he never let his poverty stop him from
writing and studying. In 1500 he published a little book, Adagiorum
collectanea, an anthology of proverbs and sayings derived from
classical sources, a slim little volume with only 818 items, all taken
from Latin sources. Even in this primitive form, it was a book that
aspiring humanists, who wanted to flesh out their own writings with
passages taken from the ancients and thus appear to be more learned
than they really were, found useful. It sold and brought in a little
money.

Learning Greek now became Erasmus' most urgent goal. At Paris and
in Holland he was so impoverished that he could barely afford the Greek
texts and grammar books that he needed. There was only one active
teacher of Greek at Paris, a Byzantine exile. Erasmus found him to be
expensive, deficient in mastery of the ancient literary language, and
incompetent as a teacher. But with some help from his tutoring and the
aid of Greek books that he managed to buy (a Plato) or borrow from
friends (a Homer), Erasmus taught himself Greek by tediously
translating Greek books into Latin. He worked at Greek every day and by
late 1502 claimed that he was able to read and write the language.
Although he saw the necessity of Greek for a thorough understanding of
the Latin classics, he also emphasized its crucial role in
theology.

Both his determined effort to master Greek and his interest in editing
the writings of St. Jerome, the most learned of the ancient Latin
Fathers and the principal translator of the current Latin Bible,
suggest that Erasmus had become far more deeply committed to religion
than he had been. It is an oversimplification to say that he was
transformed from a secular poet into a spiritual Christian and a
biblical and patristic scholar. His early letters and his De
contemptu mundi, begun while he still lived at Steyn, show that he
had been concerned with spiritual matters from an early age. But after
his return from England in 1500, religion as well as the study of Greek
became more prominent in his thought. John Colet, who was very
religious in his own idiosyncratic way, might have had some influence;
but the two men really became close only during Erasmus' third
period of residence in England from 1509 to 1514. A much more plausible
inspiration of Erasmus' turn toward religion was a man whom he
met after he returned to the Netherlands for an extended stay
(1501–1505), mainly because he needed a patron who would subsidize his
studies. In 1501 at St.-Omer, Erasmus met Jean Vitrier, a combative,
reform-minded Franciscan friar who, despite many troubles with
religious authorities who resented his blunt denunciation of clerical
corruption, had become warden of the Franciscan convent there. Vitrier
eventually became a spiritual adviser to Erasmus. Vitrier was deeply
mystical, devoted to the teachings of St. Paul and to the early Greek
church, especially the patristic theologian Origen. At his urging,
Erasmus spent much time reading Origen's commentary on
Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Origen was especially attractive
both because of his early date (died about 253) and because he was one
of the creators of the contemplative, Bible-oriented theology that
prevailed in the patristic age, in contrast to the medieval
scholasticism based on quaestiones and use of Aristotelian
dialectic. Scholasticism was what had turned Erasmus away from the
study of theology. Now he found an alternative model, sanctified by its
early date and particularly attractive to a humanist scholar because it
involved linguistic and literary analysis of a text, the central
element in the humanists' intellectual method. Reading Origen
directed his attention to the spiritual meaning of the sacred text.

This new direction in theology also impressed Erasmus as practical,
concerned with the religious dimension of a Christian's life
rather than the abstruse issues debated by the theologians at Paris.
The initial expression of this new outlook was a guide to the Christian
life, Enchiridion militis christiani (Handbook of the Christian
Soldier), a little book addressed not to the monks and
contemplatives who had withdrawn from secular life (such as the
Brethren of the Common Life) but to a Christian layman who needed
spiritual guidance. Addressing a man with a military background,
Erasmus defines the true Christian life as constant warfare against
worldly temptation. In this struggle, the Christian can rely on two
weapons, prayer and knowledge, especially knowledge of Scripture.
Erasmus wrote this book with the encouragement of Vitrier, who urged
him to publish it. The first edition appeared early in 1503 in a small
collection of Erasmus' works. At first, as part of collections of
assorted works by Erasmus, it had only modest influence and sales.
Beginning in 1515, when it appeared from two different publishers as a
small separate book, and culminating with the definitive edition of
1518 to which Erasmus added an effective preface addressed to his
friend Paul Volz, the Enchiridion became not only a
best-seller but also a major influence on the spiritual life of
Christians. By the end of the sixteenth century, there had been more
than seventy editions of the Latin text, as well frequently reprinted
translations into most of the vernacular languages of Western and
Central Europe. Although its popularity has puzzled many modern
observers, its power may be linked to its author's own search for
his spiritual identity, his discovery of his true vocation as a
theologian. The Enchiridion marks the first clear step toward
a conception of Christian life and Christian faith that a decade later
Erasmus called philosophia Christi—originally in one of
the greatest and most popular of the new adages, “Sileni
Alcibiadis,” that he added to a revolutionary new edition of his
Adagia published in 1515, and then repeated in his preface
addressed to Paul Volz. The concept itself is not philosophical at all;
it is a religious affirmation that a true Christian must allow
Christ's spirit (or “philosophy”) to permeate every
facet of his life, that Christianity must become a way of life, not
just a set of formal doctrines and external ceremonies. The phrase had
roots in the Greek patristic authors whom he was studying when he wrote
the Enchiridion (Augustijn 1991:75).

After Erasmus finally realized that his hopes of significant patronage
from a wealthy woman he had cultivated, Anna van Bolrsselen, would
never be fulfilled, he moved to the university town of Louvain, where
the first edition of the Enchiridion was published. By this
time he had a reputation as a master of Latin style and an expert in
classical literature. The conservative theologian Adriaan Floriszoon
(the future Pope Adrian VI), chancellor of the university, persuaded
the city of Louvain to offer Erasmus a lectureship at the university;
but Erasmus declined, probably fearing that teaching would distract him
from his study of Greek. Floriszoon remained friendly, and there is
some evidence that Erasmus attended his theological lectures while
living in Louvain (Ep 1304, CWE 9:145). In 1505 Erasmus published his
first translation from Greek, some Declamationes by the
fourth-century rhetorician Libanius, and dedicated the book to the
wealthy and influential bishop of Arras, Nicolas Ruistre, obviously
still seeking a new patron. Ruistre was the person who arranged for
Erasmus to represent the university by delivering a formal oration of
welcome at Brussels in January 1504 to the ruler of the Netherlands,
Archduke Philip of Habsburg, upon his safe return from an extended
visit he and his wife Juana made in 1501 to Juana's parents, the
king and queen of Spain, followed by Philip's return by way of
Austria, where he spent time with his father, the Emperor Maximilian I.
The assigned genre was a panegyric in the classical style. Erasmus
found writing such a speech, which by reason of the genre was full of
unctuous and meaningless flattery, arduous and demeaning, but he needed
the cash reward that he knew he would receive and also wanted public
recognition. Erasmus probably spent most of 1504 at Louvain but by
December was back in Paris,.

One unexpected result of his time in Louvain was that while rummaging
through the library of a neighboring monastery, he came across an
almost unknown masterpiece of scholarship by Lorenzo Valla, probably
the ablest Italian humanist of the fifteenth century. This was the
Annotations on the New Testament, based on Valla's use
of Greek manuscripts to investigate some obscure portions of the
traditional Latin translation. This work had never been printed.
Erasmus already knew much about Valla and had even written an epitome
of his most influential book, the Elegantiae, a guide to the
writing of good (that is, classical) Latin. Valla's
Annotations were an example of his remarkable philological
skill and critical intellect, using manuscripts of the Greek New
Testament to resolve questions about certain biblical passages that
seemed corrupt or unclear in the traditional Latin Bible. Erasmus
concluded that in interpreting the sacred text, a critical-minded
grammarian could be a better exegete than a conventional theologian who
specialized in resolving scholastic questions rather than in teasing
out the meaning of a biblical text. While Valla's notes had
remained narrowly philological, Erasmus conceived a more far-ranging
approach that was a greater challenge to traditional exegesis (Tracy
1972:154–155). He prepared an edition of Valla's work and
published it at Paris in March 1505.

Although his period in the Netherlands from 1501 to the end of 1504 was
a difficult time, when he was poor and had little success in his search
for patrons, it was also the period when he seriously began to define
his life's work. At Paris in the 1490s he was formally studying
theology, but he really dabbled in theology and focused his efforts
on classical Latin literature and writing Latin poetry. He was
adrift, his future direction still undefined. His visit to England in
1499–1500 probably did represent a step toward his future career as a
biblical and patristic scholar, and Colet did draw him toward biblical
studies, though the time in England may have been even more important
because of his contact with English Hellenists like Linacre and Grocyn.
His time back in the Netherlands contributed far more to his
redefinition of his future. The first great event was his encounter
with Jean Vitrier, who became a spiritual guide at a time when Erasmus
was spiritually troubled and whose influence reinforced a tendency to
conceive religion as a personal and inward experience. Vitrier had
already been a sharp critic of many current practices such as excessive
veneration of the saints, the clergy's financial exploitation of
gullible laymen, and the accumulation of great wealth by ecclesiastical
institutions. Erasmus had already arrived at some of the same opinions,
but Vitrier probably encouraged him to speak out. Finally, Vitrier was
an admirer of patristic authors considerably earlier than St. Jerome,
whom Erasmus had long admired. In particular, he exposed Erasmus to the
works of the first great Christian theologian, Origen. Vitrier pointed
Erasmus toward a new conception of theology, no longer as a
systematically demonstrated set of answers to broad speculative issues
discussed by specialists in the shop-talk of the university faculty but
as a practical guide to the religious life of devout Christians,
founded on the Bible and the Church Fathers.

The new Erasmian theology that was in gestation between 1500 and 1505
had one other principal characteristic. It involved the marriage of the
most advanced humanist modes of textual criticism (as advanced by
Valla) to the text of the Bible, chiefly in its original languages,
Hebrew and Greek. The new theology would require advanced linguistic
skills rather than skill in dialectical disputation. He also believed
that this new theology would be more like the theology of the early
Church Fathers than the scholastic theology of the universities. This
does not mean that in 1505 he had a fully developed program that
pointed clearly toward his later career, but he did already know that
he would have to continue the perfection of his Greek and must closely
study the patristic authors. His new spiritual orientation did not end
his devotion to the classics. He was a busy man, publishing editions of
ancient works like Cicero's De officiis, a work of moral
philosophy; the Disticha Catonis, a popular collection of
versified moral maxims from late antiquity; and the Mimes of
Publilius Syrus, a minor but popular Roman playwright famous for his
witty sayings. None of these editions was pathbreaking, but they may
have brought him some income from the original publishers and certainly
would enhance his reputation as a master of Latin style.

Sometime in the autumn of 1505, Erasmus left Paris for England, where
he stayed through the winter and spring of 1506. Reasons for this move
are purely speculative, but he may have thought that he had better
connections there in his search for patrons. During this visit he
established friendships with three learned and influential bishops,
Richard Foxe of Winchester, John Fisher of Rochester, and William
Warham, the archbishop of Canterbury, all of whom eventually did become
helpful patrons. There was another advantage, perhaps even more
essential for his future. He received from Pope Julius II a
dispensation (4 January 1506) absolving him from the impediment created
by his illegitimate birth to his holding an ecclesiastical benefice: in
other words, he could now lawfully hold benefices that would provide
the kind of ecclesiastical income that supported most university
professors and scholars. His closest personal connection during this
visit was with Thomas More, now established as a young barrister, who
had also been studying Greek. The two friends worked on translation of
several works of the ancient satirical poet Lucian, and they jointly
published these with a Paris publisher in 1506. Early in 1506, Erasmus
went to Cambridge and enrolled as a candidate for the doctorate in
theology.

But Erasmus did not settle in Cambridge. Through his friendships with
people at the royal court, he learned of an opportunity to fulfill his
ambition of visiting in Italy. The king's Italian physician
wanted a learned scholar to accompany his two sons to Italy and
supervise the first year of their studies at the University of Bologna.
As early as 1498, Erasmus had discussed moving to Bologna, where the
theological course was shorter, and taking his doctorate there (Ep 75,
CWE 1:151). Erasmus and his pupils stopped for two months in Paris to
allow him to supervise publication of several translations from Greek.
From Paris the travelers took an unusual route by way of Turin,
apparently because Erasmus had arranged in advance to receive his
doctorate there. The degree was truly rapid. The diploma, dated 4
September 1506, makes it clear that he had been given a formal oral
examination by members of the faculty of theology. He and his traveling
companions had been in Turin for about two or three weeks. He attended
no classes. Although in modern times often dismissed as an
“honorary degree,” in fact his doctorate was a genuine
academic degree awarded on the basis of his established reputation for
learning in theology and his study at Paris, all confirmed by the
genuine (but perhaps not very searching) oral examination administered
before the award was made. It was conferred by a small and
undistinguished school, but Turin was a lawfully recognized university.
Erasmus usually did not lay much emphasis on his doctorate, and he was
usually vague about its source. He preferred to emphasize his public
recognition as a theologian by three popes, but his Turin doctorate was
what gave him a legal right to speak and publish on theological
questions.

From Turin Erasmus and his pupils headed for Bologna, but since that
city was being besieged by the army of Pope Julius II, they turned
aside to Florence, where they spent only a few days. They then
completed their trip to Bologna, just in time to witness the formal
entry of Pope Julius into the conquered city at the head of his army
on 15 November 1506, a sight that the peace-loving Erasmus found
disgusting and inappropriate for a Christian bishop. Once he and his
two pupils were settled at Bologna, Erasmus formed friendships with
local humanists, consulted Greek manuscripts, and worked on
translations from Greek and on a new, vastly expanded edition of his
collection of ancient proverbs, the Adages. He remained in
Bologna for nearly all of 1507. Late in October, he wrote to the
greatest Italian publisher of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius of
Venice, seeking to have his translations of two plays of Euripides,
already published at Paris in 1506, reprinted by the Venetian
publisher. This Aldine edition appeared promptly, before the end of
1507. A further goal, perhaps from the first, was to have Aldus
publish the expanded edition of the Adages he had been
working on. Aldus was interested, and in the winter or early spring
of 1507 Erasmus left Bologna for Venice. There he worked amid the
bustle of the print shop for eight months on the new Adages,
surrounded by the cluster of classical scholars (including several
native Greeks) who constantly brought to his attention additional
Greek authors from whom he could extract new items. The revised
edition, issued in September, represented a revolutionary change. The
original edition at Paris in 1500 was a volume of 152 pages, including
818 proverbs. It was based entirely on texts available in Latin. But
the Aldine edition contained 3260 proverbs, with longer and more
scholarly commentaries; and since the press was the greatest center of
Greek linguistic and literary knowledge in Europe, the volume was not
only bigger but also immensely richer in Greek sources, providing
Western scholars with a resource such as had never existed before. It
confirmed and securely established Erasmus' reputation as a major
classical scholar. The book was a commercial as well as a scholarly
success. Aldus wanted Erasmus to settle in Venice. He did remain until
December, working on editions of the Roman dramatists Terence,
Plautus, and Seneca. Erasmus learned much from association with the
scholars around him, especially from access to Aldus' unrivalled
collection of Greek texts. No doubt his Greek improved. But his
greatest discovery was that his linguistic and literary knowledge even
on arrival was equal to that of any of the Aldine scholars. In 1531,
replying to the aspersions of his Italian critic Alberto Pio, he
declared his independence of the Italian scholarly world: “My
literary education owes nothing to Italy” (Phillips 1964:
68).

Late in 1508 Erasmus moved to the university town of Padua, where he
became tutor to two illegitimate sons of King James IV of Scotland. He
found Padua a more pleasant place to live than Venice, but the threat
of war caused group to move to the University of Siena before the end
of the year. Shortly after the beginning of Lent, Erasmus left on a
trip to Rome, where later he brought his pupils to spend Holy Week. The
group made a trip to Naples, after which the Scottish youths returned
home and Erasmus went back to Rome.

Erasmus' years in Italy are sparsely documented in his usually
rich correspondence, which preserves none of his own letters from the
spring of 1509 down to 1511. When he arrived in Rome in the late winter
of 1509, he found a warm welcome, for his publications, especially the
Aldine edition of the Adages and perhaps some of his
translations from Greek, had established his reputation as an able
classical scholar. He met many learned men in the papal curia,
including several cardinals. There was some talk of finding him
employment in one of the curial offices. Yet his general impression of
curial society was unfavorable; he found it to be a rich, indolent,
self-serving, and luxury-loving milieu. Many years later, in his
Ciceronianus, he recalled the sermons he heard there for their
inflated rhetoric and their offensive neglect of the central beliefs of
the Christian faith. Most of the papal secretaries he met impressed him
as essentially mere careerists, pagans, lacking a truly Christian
spirit.

Sometime after his return from Naples to Rome, news of the death of
Henry VII (21 April 1509) reached Rome. His former pupil Lord Mountjoy
wrote on 27 May praising the young new king, Henry VIII, as a potential
blessing to men of letters and urging Erasmus to settle in England,
reporting that Archbishop Warham of Canterbury promised to present
Erasmus with a benefice if he would settle in England. The accession of
a friendly young king who seemed interested in literature struck him as
an opportunity more attractive than a possible career at the papal
curia. He knew England well from his two earlier visits and had many
influential friends there. In July 1509 he left Rome for England, and
despite friendly invitations from later popes, he never went back.

On the long journey to England, Erasmus conceived and began writing
what still remains his best-known literary work, the satire The
Praise of Folly, which he completed in London while staying in the
home of his closest English friend, Thomas More. Its Latin title,
Encomium Moriae, was a pun on More's name
(moria was Greek for folly). His hopes of lavish patronage
from the new king, however, were not fulfilled; Henry VIII proved to be
more interested in Continental politics and war than in scholarship.
Eventually, thanks to the help of Bishop John Fisher, who was
chancellor of Cambridge University, he was appointed lecturer in Greek
and in divinity at Cambridge, where he moved late in the summer of
1511. He seems to have been given wide latitude on the subject of his
theological lectures, which were related to his editorial work on
patristic authors, especially St. Jerome. Erasmus had ample time for
literary work, not only on his study of Jerome's letters but also
on translations of St. Basil, Plutarch, and more of Lucian into Latin
but also on an edition of the Roman moralist Seneca. From his years at
Cambridge comes the first evidence since 1505 that he was at work on
the text of the New Testament. Much of the flood of scholarly
publication that he published in 1515 and 1516 at Basel represented
work he began while at Cambridge. Yet he was always unhappy there. He
missed the company of friends left behind at London: More, Colet, and
the Italian humanist Andrea Ammonio, Latin secretary to King Henry. He
found the company of Scotist and Thomist theologians, eager to
criticize his reform-minded friend Colet and suspicious of anyone who
studied the language of the schismatic Greeks, tiring. Cambridge seemed
isolated and “barbarous.” One pleasant activity was his
ability to help his wealthy friend John Colet carry out final
preparations for his new educational foundation, St. Paul's
School. He wrote several poems, prayers, and orations for the new
school, but his most important help was that at Colet's request
he wrote and published a textbook on how to develop a fine Latin style
(De duplici copia). It proved to be a great success not
only in the new school but also in hundreds of editions reprinted all
over Europe during the rest of the century. Also coming from his years
at Cambridge was a satirical dialogue that he never acknowledged,
harshly criticizing the recently deceased warrior-pope Julius II, whose
triumphant entry into the conquered city of Bologna he had witnessed in
1506, as a warmonger. This dialogue is discussed further in
section 3 below.

Erasmus was still financially needy. In 1511 Archbishop Warham granted
him a valuable benefice, the parish of Aldington in Kent. Warham
declared that normally he disapproved appointment of non-resident
priests but in this case granted the appointment because it would
support Erasmus' outstanding scholarly work. Erasmus provided a
stipend for a substitute rector and drew the balance of the revenues as
an annual pension for the rest of his life. In the long run, he found
life at Cambridge too much to endure. In January 1514 he moved to
London. He realized that his hopes of generous royal patronage would
never be fulfilled, and London was a stopping-point on his way back to
the Netherlands. In July 1514, he crossed the Channel to the English
enclave at Calais. Awaiting him there was a letter from the prior of
his monastery at Steyn, ordering him to return to Steyn and resume his
life as a monk. Erasmus flatly refused. After first repeating his
standard story of being pushed reluctantly into the monastery at an
excessively early age, and claiming that his fragile health and his
experience living in the monastery proved that he was unsuited to
monastic life, he cited his Enchiridion and Adages as
contributions to religion and learning and described the scholarly
projects he had under way, including work on the New Testament and the
editing of St. Jerome, none of which could be completed at Steyn. From
Calais Erasmus visited friends and patrons in the Netherlands and
stopped for a time at the University of Louvain. His plan was probably
to establish his residence in the Netherlands. Although his English
benefice did not pay him enough to cover his total expenses, he
evidently (and correctly) estimated that fees from publishers who
wanted to print new Erasmian works and gifts from patrons, now that he
had attained a degree of fame, would allow him to live independently.
His immediate goal, however, was to go to Basel in order to visit the
publisher Johann Froben, who had reprinted the Aldine edition of the
Adages in 1513 and now had in his hands a vastly expanded
version of the same book. Erasmus knew that Froben had a team of
scholars preparing an edition of the complete works of St. Jerome and
probably wanted to arrange for the edition of Jerome's letters on
which he was working to be incorporated into that undertaking.

Erasmus set out from Louvain in August 1514, headed for Basel. This
trip up the Rhine marked a watershed in his life. He must have been
aware that he had finally gained substantial public recognition, but
now, as he traveled from city to city up the river, he was greeted in
many places, including important cities such as Trier, Mainz, and
Strasbourg, by leaders of the local humanist movement who gathered to
pay their respects and greet him as the greatest humanist scholar
Germany ever had. Erasmus was flattered by the attention. He may not
yet have become prosperous, but he was famous. This journey up the
Rhine marks the beginning of a decade when Erasmus was the most famous
writer in Europe, a clear example of the new power of the press, since
his writings, published by the leading firms of the Netherlands,
France, and now Basel, and reprinted again and again by lesser presses
from Britain to Poland, were the foundation of his fame. Although after
1520 the growing religious upheaval of the early Reformation somewhat
dimmed his reputation and eventually cost him some of his
following, he remained a celebrity for the rest of his life.

Johann Froben, the publisher he had come to meet, was one of the
greatest publishers of the century. Though not a scholar himself, he
was sympathetic to talented scholars and seems to have had the rare
knack of making money while publishing scholarly books. Basel, a
self-governing city with its own university and politically sheltered
by its recent entry into the powerful Swiss Confederation, had become a
major center for publishing, and Froben was its most distinguished
publisher. Froben recognized Erasmus' importance and went out of
his way to make him welcome. Erasmus had several matters to settle with
him when he arrived in mid-August, beginning with production of the new
and significantly enhanced edition of the Adages. Erasmus
enlisted himself in Froben's existing plan to publish the works
of St. Jerome, taking full responsibility for the correspondence and
agreeing to become the general editor for the whole project. He was
also at work on an edition of the works of the Roman Stoic philosopher
Seneca and a new edition of his own Enchiridion.

But Erasmus had also been pondering what to do with the results of
his years spent studying the New Testament, especially what should be
his next step after his publication (1505) of Lorenzo Valla's
Annotationes on the New Testament. Exactly what Erasmus
intended to publish on the New Testament is not clear. Probably he had
in mind an edition of the traditional Latin Vulgate text accompanied by
his own notes based on several Greek manuscripts. Perhaps he intended
merely to publish his notes. Sometime between his first meeting with
Froben in August 1514 and the publication of his New Testament in
February 1516, the scope of the project was immensely widened. Froben
may well have been the one who promoted the change, which transformed
what might have been an obscure edition of scholarly notes into a book
that (despite the flaws of the hastily completed first edition)
permanently changed the course of biblical studies. The new book,
published in late winter of 1516, was called Novum
Instrumentum, in later editions changed to Novum
Testamentum. It included the first published edition of the Greek
text of the New Testament, accompanied by a cautious revision of the
traditional Latin New Testament and by Erasmus' annotations
explaining how in specific passages, study of the Greek text clarified
the meaning of the Latin text. In later editions he more boldly
substituted his own new Latin translation, based on the Greek text, for
the cautious revision of the old version that he used in 1516. Froben
was not only an excellent printer but also a shrewd businessman. He
knew that if he moved fast, he could get a book onto the market before
the six-volume polyglot edition of the whole Bible then being produced
in Spain by a team of scholars generously financed by the
Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, Ximénes de Cisneros. The New
Testament part of that project was already in print before Erasmus
finished his own edition, but issues of censorship kept the volumes
locked in a warehouse until the Old Testament volumes had been printed
and final authorization for publication was received from the pope in
1521. By that time, Erasmus' New Testament was already available
in a much-improved third edition. Thus the bureaucratic controls in
Spain and Rome guaranteed that Erasmus' edition would become the
decisive force in New Testament scholarship. In any case, though the
Spanish scholars based at Alcalá had far more and far better
Greek manuscripts, they were bound by their patron to traditional
principles of exegesis. This meant that their edition was made obsolete
even before publication by Erasmus' humanistic methods of textual
criticism. The future of biblical studies belonged to the new
philological and critical methods developed by Erasmus, not to the
cautious and traditionalist approach of the Spanish scholars (Bentley
1983:70–193).

The publication of the New Testament in February 1516, shrewdly
dedicated to Pope Leo X and graciously received by him, followed later
that year by the first edition of a great nine-volume edition of the
works of St. Jerome, marks the summit of Erasmus' scholarly
career, confirming his status as the greatest scholar of his
generation. In the preceding year, Froben had brought out a new edition
of the Adages that added yet more proverbs to the
“thousands” already claimed in the title of the Aldine
edition of 1508. This new edition marks the beginning of a new literary
function for the Adages. In certain of the articles, the text
included not only the ancient source in its original language and a
relatively brief discussion of its meaning but also added a fairly long
essay in which Erasmus used the adage as a starting-point for
discussion of some issue of current interest that seemed related to the
adage and meaningful to Erasmus himself. A good example, added in 1515,
is Dulce bellum inexpertis, discussed below as an example of
Erasmus' pacifism. The Adages became not only a handy
tool for those who wrote in Latin but also a medium for expressing
Erasmus' opinions, and the book was another literary and
financial success, frequently reprinted throughout the century.

Despite his literary and scholarly success, Erasmus had no reliable
income except the modest annual payment from his English benefice. The
multiple reprintings of his books brought in little or no revenue.
Authorship brought in very limited income for the author, even in the
case of a widely circulated literary work like The Praise of
Folly or a textbook and literary book like the
Colloquies. Authors needed generous patrons; authors who were
priests might be given ecclesiastical benefices that paid a steady
annual income. After completing arrangements with Froben for his
several impending publications, Erasmus made a brief trip to England in
March 1515 and then proceeded to the Netherlands., where he
visited Louvain and then stayed close to the ducal court, fishing for
patrons. Jean Le Sauvage, chancellor of Burgundy, was probably the
person most responsible for the appointment of Erasmus as a ducal
councilor early in 1516, a position that was purely honorary but
theoretically yielded a substantial annual pension (though in fact,
since the government was usually short of money, Erasmus rarely
received payment). In response to this appointment, Erasmus wrote
a tract on The Education of a Christian Prince and dedicated
it to the youthful ruler Archduke Charles (the later Emperor Charles
V). At the urging of Le Sauvage, in 1517 he also published a book that
restated the anti-war sentiments expressed in the adage Dulce
bellum, called Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace). Le
Sauvage had a political goal since he was a leader of a court faction
that favored a cautious foreign policy of rapprochement with
France and avoidance of military adventures in Italy. There was a talk
of further ecclesiastical preferment, even suggestions that Erasmus
might be made bishop (non-resident, of course) of some diocese in
Sicily. More useful was Le Sauvage's gift of a canonry in the
cathedral at Courtrai, which Erasmus could exchange for an annual
pension. Like Aldington in England, Courtrai provided a modest but
reliable annual income for the rest of his life. The two benefices
together did not make him rich, but they ended his many years of
poverty.

In the summer of 1516, Erasmus made a short trip to London, where he
and his friend the expatriate Italian Andrea Ammonio drew up a petition
to the apostolic chancery in Rome seeking a papal dispensation to
guarantee his eligibility for his benefices. His petition sought relief
from certain legal disabilities: one, from the consequences of his
illegitimate birth as the son of a priest, which rendered him legally
ineligible to receive a benefice; second, his membership in a religious
order, which required him to reside at Steyn; and finally, his
obligation to wear the distinctive garb of the Augustinian Canons.
Dispensations granted by Pope Julius II in 1506 had addressed some of
these issues, but he wanted to be more certain of his legal status.
Perhaps also the letter from the abbot at Steyn in 1514, ordering him
to return to the monastery, made him apprehensive. In January 1517 Pope
Leo X issued two formal letters, one addressed to Ammonio and the other
to Erasmus himself, confirming the approval of his petition, absolving
him from guilt for any technical violations of church law, and
authorizing him to accept and hold ecclesiastical benefices, even
multiple ones. Pope Leo also sent a friendly personal letter to Erasmus
vaguely declaring that he had granted his petition and warmly praising
his character and his learning. This last letter, Erasmus promptly
published; the other two he kept private, as they were intended to be.
In April 1517, Erasmus made a quick trip to London so that Ammonio as
the pope's delegate could absolve him of any sin related to the
previous legal irregularity of his status.

Erasmus seems to have decided to make the Netherlands
his permanent home. He was now a famous man, especially
among the young humanists of Germany, who idolized him and looked upon
him as the person who was initiating a spiritual and institutional
renewal of Christendom. In early summer of 1517, as Archduke Charles
prepared to travel to Spain and take possession of Spain as successor
to his grandfather King Ferdinand, Erasmus decided not to accompany the
large delegation of officials from the Netherlands who would go with
the ruler. He chose to remain in the Netherlands and eventually decided
to settle at the University of Louvain. He knew that this move might be
risky. The faculty of theology was dominated by the same sort of
tradition-minded scholastic theologians he had learned to dislike at
Paris. Indeed, controversy threatened even before he had decided on a
place to settle. In 1514 Martin van Dorp, a candidate for a doctorate
in theology who also had some credentials as a humanist, had written
Erasmus expressing dismay at what the theologians regarded as the
flippancy and irreverence of The Praise of Folly. Still worse,
Dorp's letter interpreted Erasmus' plan to publish
annotations and corrections for a revision of the New Testament as a
dangerous and subversive undertaking that implied that the church had
erred for centuries by relying on a Latin Bible that Erasmus claimed
was full of errors. Only Erasmus' plan for an edition of the
works of St. Jerome received Dorp's praise. Erasmus shrugged off
criticism of the Folly by dismissing the book as a mere
trifle. But if even a theological candidate with good humanist
credentials regarded Erasmus' scriptural studies as subversive,
Louvain must have seemed a rather hostile environment. Dorp himself
changed his opinion, mainly because he was shamed into it by a
brilliant letter in defense of Erasmus written by Thomas More. In a
lecture delivered in 1516, Dorp endorsed Erasmus' opinions on
biblical criticism and the value of Greek. His seniors in the faculty,
who may have instigated his earlier letter, took revenge by refusing to
renew his certification to teach courses in theology during the
following year, though his status in the faculty soon recovered. The
whole incident, however, demonstrates that Louvain was not a very
welcoming place for a biblical scholar like Erasmus. Nevertheless, in
January 1517, six months before Prince Charles left for Spain, Erasmus
paid a brief visit to Louvain to assess the situation. While he was
often waspish as a writer, Erasmus knew how to be charming in person,
and the visit seems to have gone well. In August 1517, he did move to
Louvain. He matriculated in the faculty of theology as a doctor from
another university and later in the autumn was co-opted as an adjunct
member. This status did not mean that he taught theology, but he was
accepted as a fellow-theologian.

At first, Erasmus' relations with his new colleagues were at
least civil and in some cases friendly; Dorp was especially helpful. By
this period, Erasmus was an internationally recognized scholar.
Admiring letters arrived from humanists all across northern Europe, in
such numbers that he found it burdensome to reply. His own letters were
copied, collected, and published, often without his consent and
sometimes including remarks that he intended to be private. He had
himself begun publishing selected letters, and these letters were
prized not only for their content but also as examples of the finest
Latin style of the age. His fame also encouraged the reprinting of his
earlier publications, and it was from this period that the
Enchiridion became a best-seller. Erasmus himself became more
optimistic, and in February 1517, in a letter to his German humanist
friend Wolfgang Capito, he expressed a spirit of optimism about the
general state of Christian Europe. The three young rulers of Western
Europe seemed to be pursuing peace. The growth of interest in
humanistic studies and religious reform, in which he claimed “a
very humble part,” seemed to promise better times ahead, so that
“I perceive that we may shortly behold the rise of a new kind of
golden age” (Ep 541, CWE 4:261–268). His optimism was
tempered by awareness that there was still stubborn opposition by
reactionary monks and theologians, and a careful reading of the letter
shows that he saw the golden age as a possibility in the near future,
not something already achieved.

Even though he knew that the leading men among the theological
faculty still had reservations about his writings, Erasmus settled down
to work at his scholarly projects. His major task was preparation of a
revised edition of the New Testament since he was well aware that the
hurried edition of 1516 had many defects. He courteously asked his new
colleagues for suggestions to improve the revision. The general
consensus was favorable though rather vague. Yet everyone involved knew
that Erasmus was not the conventional Louvain theologian, and
eventually this latent tension led to a breakdown of the original
feeling of collegiality. A number of conflicts pitting humanists
against traditional academic theologians broke out in Germany and
influenced attitudes at Louvain, where the most famous of all humanists
now lived among a group of very conservative theologians. One such case
was the conflict between the theologians and mendicant friars of the
neighboring University of Cologne and the German humanist and
pioneering Hebrew scholar Johann Reuchlin that had been brewing since
1510. Erasmus respected Reuchlin's learning and resented
the disgraceful way he had been attacked by the Cologne Dominicans,
though he was cool to Reuchlin's interest in Hebrew and in Jewish
Cabalism. His sympathy for Reuchlin irritated many of his new
colleagues, and enthusiastic young German humanists who supported
Reuchlin associated his cause with Erasmus, mentioned Erasmus as a foe
of the Cologne Dominicans, and even published some friendly private
letters that he had written to Reuchlin, commiserating (very
cautiously) with his troubles. The youthful firebrands in Germany
viewed the case as involving not just suspicion of Jewish religion but
also as a premeditated attack on humanist learning in general. Erasmus
shared this suspicion, and while he avoided public involvement, he did
write confidential letters to several acquaintances at the Roman curia
urging that the pope should silence the German mendicants. Despite his
caution, his own relations with his peers at Louvain were in jeopardy,
since most of them took the side of Reuchlin's enemies.

In at least one case, Erasmus' attempt to foster good will
among his theological colleagues made tension worse in the long
run. Before starting a trip to Basel in May 1518 to supervise
publication of the revised New Testament, Erasmus carefully solicited
opinions and suggestions from his conservative colleagues. Several of
them, including Jean Briart, the conservative dean of the faculty,
replied that they found nothing objectionable. But a young and
presumptuous English doctoral candidate, Edward Lee, precipitated a
confrontation that ultimately disturbed relations. Lee rashly assumed
that Erasmus' polite request for opinions amounted to an
invitation for him to collaborate in making corrections, and he was
offended to learn that Erasmus had not incorporated his emendations.
Though at that stage of his career, Lee had only a limited mastery of
Greek and was still only a degree candidate, he began a series of
attacks that distracted Erasmus over a period of several years.
Erasmus' colleagues on the faculty and his friends in England
tried unsuccessfully to persuade Lee to desist. Erasmus complained to
the dean of the faculty, Briart, who did arrange a formal interview
between Erasmus and Lee in his presence to seek a resolution; but this
rather half-hearted effort failed, and the quarrel dragged on until
Briart's death in 1520. Although Lee was the
aggressor and disturber of peace, Erasmus was the one whose local
reputation suffered. No further action against Lee followed, even after
Lee, frustrated by his inability to find a local publisher at Louvain
for his complaints against Erasmus' biblical scholarship,
published his criticisms at Paris, thus making an internal quarrel
public.

Other issues also generated tension at Louvain. Ever since he
returned from working on the second edition of the New Testament in
Basel, Erasmus was deeply engaged in helping to carry out a plan to use
a large legacy for the founding at Louvain of a new institute, the
Collegium Trilingue, devoted to the teaching and study of the
three ancient languages (classical Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) that
biblical humanists like Erasmus deemed essential to the future study of
theology. Erasmus never made a secret of his conviction that trilingual
learning had become essential for the education of a competent
theologian; he prefixed to the 1516 New Testament an essay,
Paraclesis, that defended the application of Greek language
and textual criticism to biblical scholarship; and the second edition
(1518) contained a more complete statement of that conviction,
Ratio verae theologiae. Even when they appeared as part of his
biblical editions, these ideas were a potential challenge to the
theologians, for if trilingual study was essential for the training of
a competent theologian, then none of the Louvain theologians was truly
competent. Erasmus' involvement in the foundation of this new
trilingual institute right in their midst was a direct challenge;
indeed, not only the theologians but also many in the faculty of arts
resisted its foundation and its incorporation into the university. In
March 1519, one of the ablest of the Louvain theologians, Jacobus
Latomus, published a book flatly denying that trilingual knowledge was
necessary for a competent theologian. The book was not explicitly
directed against Erasmus, but no one doubted that its intention was to
refute him, his biblical prefaces, and the new Collegium
trilingue as well.

A troubling sign of increased tensions occurred earlier in 1519 when
the dean, Briart, speaking at the formal promotion of a doctoral
candidate, bitterly denounced Encomium matrimonii, a book that
Erasmus had written many years ago in honor of the marriage of his
friend Lord Mountjoy but had published only recently. Briart did not
explicitly name the suspicious book or its author, but he interpreted
its praise of marriage as heretical because by praising marriage, it
weakened the church's traditional preference for celibacy as the
ideal form of life for all Christians. Erasmus complained to
Briart personally, and the dean confessed that he had
misunderstood the intent of the little book. He agreed that since his
attack had been public, it was only fair to let Erasmus publish a
reply. Erasmus wrote a cautious Apologia that mentioned Briart
with great respect and carefully explained the innocence of his own
book. But the incident caused harm, for Briart's disciples
continued to snipe at Erasmus. At the same period, the publication of
several satirical works by German humanists against the anti-Erasmians
at Louvain made conditions very tense, even though Erasmus was not
complicit in their publication. Although he and Briart remained
formally civil, Erasmus suspected that Briart was secretly encouraging
attacks on him. Except for Dorp, who had become a loyal friend, and
perhaps a few others, the Louvain theologians were increasingly
hostile.

Just at this period, the most prominent irritant of all began to
manifest itself. This was the incipient religious upheaval set off in
Germany by Martin Luther's bold challenge to the practice of
indulgences. With remarkable rapidity, reform-minded young German
humanists (and many older ones also) who had become admirers of Erasmus
identified Luther's ideas and reform program with those of
Erasmus, regarding Luther and Erasmus as leaders of a single movement.
The emergence of Luther caused serious problems for Erasmus across a
broad front, including his situation in Louvain. The similarity between
Luther's ideas of theological method and those of Erasmus was
obvious; the differences, which existed from the very beginning, were
not. While Erasmus' humanist admirers enthusiastically identified
Luther's cause with Erasmus' ideas of reform, many of the
Louvain theologians saw the same similarities but drew opposite
conclusions. Theological conservatives like Briart, Latomus, and the
outspoken Carmelite theologian Nicolaus Baechem suspected that Erasmus
secretly favored Luther, that Luther's heretical doctrines were
derived from Erasmus' ideas, even that Erasmus was the real
author of the books published under Luther's name. Erasmus came
under intense pressure to join in their denunciation of Luther, but he
was unwilling to do so, claiming that he was so busy that he had read
none, or almost none, of Luther's publications. In reality, he
had read at least some of Luther's books with great interest and
had concluded that while Luther took extreme positions on some
questions and might have made some errors, there was much to be praised
in his works. In a private letter to Luther's main
protector, the Electoral Prince Frederick of Saxony, Erasmus implied
that the charges of heresy were not valid but were merely part of a
conservative plot to destroy recent progress in humanistic studies He
urged the Elector to resist pressure to surrender Luther into the hands
of his enemies, who would surely put him to death. Erasmus never
published this letter, but the Elector sent a copy to Luther and his
friends at Wittenberg, who promptly had it printed. This letter must
have been known to the Louvain theologians who were denouncing Erasmus
as a supporter of Luther and were demanding that he publicly dissociate
himself from the new heresy. Erasmus received a careful and polite
letter from Luther himself and sent a cautious reply that was friendly
but explicitly refused to endorse either side in the controversy. He
published both of these letters (written in March and May 1519) in a
collection of his correspondence. Indeed, Erasmus was involved in a
quiet effort to bring about a settlement of the crisis through
mediation among the ruling German princes when they met with the newly
elected Emperor Charles V at Cologne in November 1519. In conjunction
with a reform-minded Dominican friar, Johannes Faber, he drafted a
formal proposal to be laid before the princes, providing that a
mediatory commission be appointed to bring about a peaceful resolution
of the theological controversy. Erasmus traveled to Cologne to promote
this plan, which was well-intentioned but never had a chance of success
since no pope would ever surrender his authority to a commission. At
Cologne he also had a private interview with Luther's protector,
the Elector Frederick, who had asked to meet with him. Erasmus bluntly
criticized Luther's pugnacity and arrogance, but he did not
regarded him as a heretic and clearly opposed burning Luther's
books or turning him over to his enemies. Erasmus returned from Cologne
to Louvain, where hostility among the theologians was growing. The
faculty was preparing a formal condemnation of Luther's heresies,
and it was clear that if he wanted to avert suspicion of supporting
those heresies, he was expected to join in the attack. This he refused
to do.

In 1520, Luther made Erasmus' life at Louvain even more
difficult by publishing three brilliant but radical tracts that
repudiated the whole medieval ecclesiastical system. After reading the
first of these, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,
Erasmus realized that the opportunity for quiet doctrinal compromise no
longer existed. He remained convinced that Luther's most extreme
opponents, including many at Louvain, were really intending to destroy
not just the Saxon reformer but also the whole movement of humanist
reform. The university and the Habsburg government of the Netherlands
obviously expected him to join in the attack on Luther or else be
regarded as a supporter of heresy. If he stayed in Louvain, he would be
subject to constant attacks and perhaps to prosecution.

By 1521, however, he had another option. By that time, Johann Froben
in Basel had become his publisher of choice. Since his initial trip to
Basel in 1514, Erasmus had made several lengthy stays in that city to
work on forthcoming publications. He found in Froben's workshop a
remarkable collection of young collaborators, men learned in the
subjects on which Erasmus published, strongly favorable to him and to
the cultural, moral, and religious reforms he had promoted. These
employees of the press were the nucleus of a broader local humanist
community which also included some professors and students in the local
university and some of the better educated civic officials and local
businessmen The outstanding member of the Basel faculty of theology,
Ludwig Baer, had become a close friend, a useful consultant on
questions involving scholastic theology. Basel was also a safe place
for Erasmus. It was a self-governing city republic within the German
Empire, and in 1501 it also became a member of the powerful Swiss
Confederation. Located at the head of navigation on the Rhine river, it
had excellent commercial and cultural links with the most culturally
and economically advanced regions of Germany, extending all the way
north to the Netherlands. It had easy overland links to the west with
the Habsburg-ruled Franche-Comté and with the French capital.
Basel was an ideal location from which to observe, but remain aloof
from, the incipient religious and social upheaval that Luther had
unleashed, free from the political, ecclesiastical, and academic
pressures that he faced in Louvain.

In the autumn of 1521, Erasmus moved from Louvain to Basel, not
necessarily intending the move to be permanent. He lived there for
nearly eight years, from 1521 until the full conversion of the city to
the Protestant Reformation in the spring of 1529, when he felt morally
obligated, as a man determined to remain loyal (in his own way) to the
old church, to leave a city where open Catholic worship was suppressed.
He moved to the near-by city of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, also a university
town, which, being directly under Habsburg rule, was not in danger of
falling into the hands of the Protestants. He never made an irrevocable
commitment to either Basel or Freiburg, sometimes considering a move to
Rome, where three successive popes urged him to come and join in the
task of healing the schism. Some of his letters mentioned the
possibility of returning to France, to England, but especially to the
Netherlands. But even after he broke openly with Luther in 1524, he had
no intention of becoming an agent of the effort to suppress Luther and
his followers. Basel was a safe refuge, a place from which he could
still try to intervene in the interests of unity, peace, and moderate
reform. Most of this participation was through his continued writing,
producing a flood of new or revised editions of patristic texts,
classical authors, improved editions of the New Testament, and a series
of Paraphrases on the books of the New Testament that restated
the scriptural message (as he understood it) in his own words. Erasmus
did not move to Basel in order to hide from the problems of his age,
only to remove himself from daily encounters with a hostile environment
and in order to preserve his freedom to pursue his reform program in
his own way.

Almost as soon as Luther's opinions became a source of
conflict in the church, many people urged Erasmus to challenge Luther
publicly. Moving to Basel relieved the pressure to some extent, but
even there, he felt the pressure from friends and patrons who had
remained Catholic to speak out against Luther. The pressure came from
the Emperor Charles V and many of his officials who were Erasmus'
friends; from the emperor's younger brother Ferdinand, who
directed Habsburg (and Catholic) interests in the German empire; from
Duke George of Saxony, cousin (and dynastic rival) of Luther's
protector, the Elector Frederick; from three popes, Leo X, Adrian VI,
and Clement VII. All of these powerful men were generally favorable to
Erasmus and to the humanist reform program that he had defined. There
were widespread doubts about his loyalty to the old church, and these
and other patrons tried to persuade him that if he wanted to remove
those doubts, he must speak out. This was hard to do, since he never
believed that Luther was really a heretic. Yet he was alarmed by the
emerging division within the church and by the popular agitation and
social unrest in German and Dutch cities. Once he had read
Luther's three radical tracts of 1520, he began warning friends,
especially his own young humanist disciples who were attracted to
Luther, that they should be careful about embracing what seemed certain
to become a source of lasting division. In time, some of these warnings
got into print, sometimes with Erasmus' complicity. Finally, in
1524, he published an open attack on one central doctrine of
Luther's theology, De libero arbitrio (On Free Will),
beginning a public confrontation that will be discussed below.

Erasmus also opposed the variant form of Reformation that had
emerged in the cities of Switzerland and southwestern Germany under the
leadership of Huldrych Zwingli of Zürich, a former Erasmian
humanist. Zwingli's eucharistic docrtrine, which came to be
described as Sacramentarian, was especially offensive to Erasmus
because as he interpreted it, it held that there was nothing at all in
the communion except material bread and wine. It was also threatening
to him, because some of the young leaders who supported the
Sacramentarian position had been very close to him as assistants at
Froben's press. Indeed, his own tendency to interpret religious
ceremonies as essentially inward and spiritual rather than external and
material was akin to their own beliefs about the eucharist, and those
who had been especially close to him claimed that they had learned
their eucharistic doctrines from him. He bitterly resented what he
regarded as dishonest exploitation of past association in order to
present him as the author of their new heresy. Yet he also had to
concede that their views (which Luther denounced vehemently) were
plausible. When the city council of Basel in 1525 asked for his advice
whether a book that Johannes Oecolampadius, the leading local
Protestant preacher and a former colleague at the Froben press, had
published on the eucharist should be permitted to be sold, he replied
that he found the book “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” (Ep 1636, CWE 11:343–344); he
advised that it should not be sold at Basel. In 1526, a letter that he
sent to a conference of the Swiss cantons called to organize opposition
to the spread of Zwinglian doctrines again stated his objections to
Sacramentarian doctrine. It also included a clear statement of
the governing principle in his decision to remain loyal to the old
church despite his disagreement with many of its practices and despite
its many corruptions. This was the principle of consensus
omnium, the universal agreement that had prevailed throughout the
many centuries of Christian history on certain basic beliefs. This
general consensus must outweigh the personal conclusions of any
individual even if those conclusions seem reasonable and well grounded
in Scripture (summary in introduction to Ep 1708, CWE 12:198, and
Erasmus' own words on pp. 202–203; also Augustijn 1991:152–153,
and McConica 1969:2:77–99).

This declaration of his willingness to submit to the judgment of the
church was not enough to convince many conservative Catholic
theologians and monks of his loyalty, just as his public break with
Luther from 1524 failed to impress them or end their attacks. From at
least the time of Dorp's warning about the dangers of his
projected work in 1514, before the Lutheran heresy even existed,
Erasmus had faced the unremitting hostility of a number of determined
groups who accused him of heresy or at least of imprudent statements
that unsettled the beliefs of the faithful. Although Dorp himself
changed his opinion, most of his colleagues among the Louvain
theologians remained either suspicious or actively hostile. After the
emergence of Luther's doctrines, Erasmus' opinions were
constantly misinterpreted as veiled support for the Lutheran heresy.
Louvain became a source of many open attacks, the most vehement ones by
the Carmelite theologian Nicholas Baechem, the most effective ones by
Jacobus Latomus and, at the end of the 1520s, some younger Louvain
theologians. Paris, the most authoritative center of traditional
theology, became another center of attacks, led by the syndic
of its faculty of theology, Noël Béda, who from 1524,
acting on his own initiative, investigated the orthodoxy of
Erasmus' Paraphrases on Luke and subsequently, other
paraphrases. Béda combed through Erasmus' publications and
made lists of passages that he judged to be heretical or at least
likely to create scandal in the church. Erasmus soon learned what
Béda was doing and decided to forestall conflict by
corresponding directly with Béda and trying to defend his own
orthodoxy. The correspondence was reasonably civil at first, though
Béda soon made it clear that he did not recognize Erasmus as a
qualified theologian. By 1526, the veneer of courtesy expressed in
their earlier letters had worn very thin. Béda was not a
distinguished theologian, but he was a consummate academic politician
and had established a dominance over the Paris faculty that was seldom
challenged with success. In 1526 he published his notes criticizing the
statements he had found objectionable in Erasmus' publications.
Erasmus vigorously protested against what he regarded as dishonest and
slanderous attacks on his good name and even secured a royal order that
Béda's book should be suppressed. Béda was
relentless, pushing for his ultimate goal of securing a formal
condemnation of the Erasmian passages he had extracted. Finally, after
a lengthy series of hearings, in December of 1527 the faculty adopted a
condemnation of some of Erasmus' most important works, such as
his Paraphrases on the New Testament. Since the faculty knew
that the king would be angered by this action, the anti-Erasmian
leaders did not publish the condemnation and bided their time until
1531, when political conditions had changed. Béda was not the
only Paris theologian to publish books against Erasmus.

In addition to attacks from Paris and Louvain and also from some
German theologians, Erasmus learned that the mendicant orders in Spain
had been attacking him because a number of his religious works,
especially the Enchiridion, had been translated into Spanish
and had become popular. In this case, however, the grand inquisitor and
archbishop of Seville, Alonso de Manrique, had a favorable opinion of
Erasmus. He summoned the superiors of the mendicant orders and
commanded them to stop their members from attacking Erasmus in their
sermons; instead, if they truly believed that Erasmus' works were
harmful, he told them to meet in private and compile lists of any
heresies and errors and then present these lists before a special
inquisitorial commission that he would appoint. This commission met at
Valladolid in the summer of 1527 and held twenty-one sessions at which
various issues in Erasmus' works were debated. The mendicants
were unable to secure a condemnation, though there was also no formal
exoneration. Erasmus, who knew little about conditions in Spain, felt
compelled to write and publish anApologia against these
Spanish mendicants, acting against the advice of his supporters in
Spain. In the short run, the outcome in 1527 seemed to be a victory for
Erasmus, but by the early 1530s, the enthusiasm for Erasmus'
religious ideas in Spain was waning. A more conservative brand of
Catholicism gained the upper hand. By mid-century, it was dangerous
even to own a book by Erasmus.

Erasmus also found antagonists in Italy. After he left Italy in
1509, he always retained some friendly connections in the peninsula;
but his own memories of Italy, and especially of the curial society at
Rome, were unfavorable. These memories crop up at times in revised
editions of The Praise of Folly, the Adages, and
other works. These unfavorable memories of Italy are central to a
dialogue, Ciceronianus (1528), written in part out of
resentment against the sniping by some Italian humanists at the quality
of his own Latin prose. His critics, mostly humanists employed in the
papal bureaucracy, charged that his Latin was inferior to the style of
Cicero, the perfect model for good Latin. Erasmus, too, admired Cicero
and had edited several of his works. But he had developed a highly
personal style of Latin that in the opinion of his Italian critics was
deficient because it freely used words and constructions found in later
Latin authors but not in Cicero. The un-Ciceronian vocabulary included
plentiful use of words from ecclesiastical Latin and the Church Fathers
to express ideas not found in pre-Christian literature. In his
Ciceronianus Erasmus criticized and derided the rigid verbal
purism of the Ciceronians. The characters in the dialogue
regarded such strict purism as nonsense: the world has changed since
the time of Cicero, and language has to change with it.

Unwisely, Erasmus then turned to an evaluation of contemporary
writers in order to prove that it is possible to write good Latin
without being hobbled by an effort to ape Cicero's style. The
problem was that any contemporary author who was not mentioned and
praised felt left out. Even some who were included felt that the
recognition given in Ciceronianus was inadequate. Erasmus did
not intend to make invidious comparisons, but that was how many of his
peers perceived what he wrote. For example, one of his characters ranks
Guillaume Budé as inferior to Josse Bade as a writer of Latin.
Since Budé was the glory of contemporary French humanism and
Bade was essentially a publisher, with no great intellectual or
stylistic pretensions, this passage was taken to be a deliberate insult
to him and even to French scholarship in general. Budé himself
declared the matter unimportant, and Erasmus wrote an apologetic
letter. Budé was in fact deeply offended; he never answered
Erasmus' apologetic letter or any other letter that Erasmus sent
him (Betty I. Knott, “Introductory Note,” in CWE
27:331). Erasmus had omitted several others who thought that they
should have been mentioned. He had not realized when he decided to
discuss the writings of some contemporary humanists that his book would
be regarded as a sort of Who's Who of contemporary
authors.

Erasmus had not expected such complaints, for Ciceronianus
was aimed chiefly at the secretaries at the Roman curia. Here he did
intend to give offense, for in addition to ridiculing their narrow
conception of Latin style, he made it clear that he regarded their
enthusiastic embrace of ancient Rome as reflecting acceptance of the
moral and even religious values of pagan Rome, not just its forms of
language. He criticized the curial Ciceronians for avoiding
specifically Christian terms and for the habit of using circumlocutions
or openly pagan terms to discuss religious matters without committing
the sin of using words not found in Cicero. Most of them, he regarded
as Christians in name only, happy to take ecclesiastical incomes but
lacking any genuine faith.

Erasmus also became involved in an ugly controversy with an
influential Italian author who accused Erasmus of being the original
source of Luther's heresies. What made this challenge
particularly worrisome was that this critic was a man of high social
rank, fully conversant in classical and modern humanistic culture, and
politically connected to the highest ecclesiastical and political
authorities in Italy. He was Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi, the son of a
ruler of a small Italian principality and of a sister of the
philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. After his father's
premature death, his uncle Giovanni Pico supervised the boy's
education and engaged the humanist Aldus Manutius (the future Venetian
publisher) as his tutor. Dethroned and exiled by a conspiracy within
his own family, Pio studied at the University of Ferrara under the most
famous Aristotelian philosopher in Italy, Pietro Pomponazzi. During a
varied political career, he had been employed as a diplomat, including
time as the imperial ambassador at Rome. At the curia, he was close to
the Roman Academy, which had a reputation for neopaganism. Yet Pio
himself was noted for his Christian piety. Because of his pro-French
political connections, when the Emperor Charles V took military control
of Italy, Pio lost his claim to the principality of Carpi; and when the
imperial army conquered and plundered Rome in 1527, he fled to France.
This was a dangerous antagonist. Erasmus learned from friends at Rome
about 1525 that Pio was denouncing him at the curia. As he did with the
unfriendly Paris theologian Noël Béda about the same time,
Erasmus sought to head off conflict by writing directly to his accuser.
He declared that charges that he and other northern humanists were the
source of Luther's heresies were a mere smokescreen for the
desire of obscurantist theologians and monks to destroy the growth of
humanist studies and prevent a genuine reform of the church. He added
that people living comfortably at Rome had no idea of the chaotic
conditions in Germany and no right to criticize loyal Christians who
struggled to uphold the Catholic faith in a country that was in
turmoil.

In reply, Pio wrote a treatise in the form of a letter that amounted
to an accusation that Erasmus' ideas were virtually identical to
Luther's heresies and were in fact the source of those heresies,
and that if Erasmus wanted to be accepted as a genuine Catholic, he
must admit his own guilt and publicly recant the errors in his books.
Pio wrote this attack in 1526 but did not publish it until 1529, after
he had gone into exile at the French court. But it circulated earlier
in the tight-knit circle of intellectuals at the curia. By September
1526 Erasmus had received a manuscript copy directly from the author.
At almost the same time, Erasmus learned that he was also the target of
another attack at the curia, an anonymous work called Racha
that made accusations similar to Pio's and that he thought
(probably correctly) was the work of his former friend Girolamo
Aleandro. This work also circulated at the curia; it has never been
published. Erasmus dared to respond to Pio's manuscript but did
not dare to challenge Aleandro, who had become too powerful to be
confronted. Erasmus began his defense with a letter directly to Pope
Clement VII that reasserted his loyalty to the Roman church and
protested against scurrilous attacks against him that circulated within
the curia (Ep 1987, Basel, 3 April 1528, in Allen 7:378–379). He
finally learned that Pio had settled in Paris after he fled from Rome
and wrote him there, urging him to delay publication of his attack
until he could consider Erasmus' defense (Ep 2080, Basel, 23
December 1528, in Allen 7:544–545). His letter arrived too late;
Pio's Responsio was published at Paris in early January
1529. In March, Erasmus then published his own Responsio,
which denied that he had ever encouraged Luther. By June 1530, he
learned that Pio was preparing a second attack. Shortly after
Pio's death in 1531, the Paris publisher Josse Bade brought out
this book, an attempt to prove Pio's original charges by
reproducing parallel passages from Luther and Erasmus. Erasmus promptly
published an Apologia that accused Pio of publishing lies and false
citations

Even earlier, Erasmus had faced attacks by two Spanish scholars.
First was a series of attacks published by a Spanish philologist and
theologian, Jacobus Stunica (Diego López Zúñiga)
on the first edition of Erasmus' New Testament (1516). Having
never heard of Stunica, Erasmus initially dismissed his opinions as
unworthy of attention. But Stunica was a learned scholar, competent not
only in Latin and Greek but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic; he was
one of the team of scholars that Cardinal Ximénes brought
together to produce the great polyglot Bible published at
Alcalá. Stunica had written hostile notes not long after
Erasmus' New Testament came out in 1516, but when Erasmus heard
of his plan and complained to the cardinal, Ximénes warned
Stunica not to publish his criticisms. After the death of the cardinal
in 1517, Stunica felt free to return to the topic and in 1520 brought
out his Annotationes, directed against Erasmus' biblical
scholarship. He then moved to Rome, where he taught Greek in the
pontifical university. Erasmus published an Apologia (1520)
against these criticisms. So far, the opposing publications were
respectful. But Stunica was stubborn, and in 1522 he published at Rome
a vehement attack on Erasmus, Erasmi Roterodami blasphemiae et
impietates, which charged that the whole Erasmian program of
humanistic reform was heretical. Another exchange of hostile pamphlets
followed until the new pope, Adrian VI, imposed silence on Stunica.
After Adrian's early death, however, Stunica rushed three
additional attacks into print in 1523 and 1524. The next pope, Clement
VII, again imposed silence on him, acting at the request of Erasmus.
Erasmus published one additional Apologia in 1524 and much
later (1529) issued a final defense in a letter to a Dutch friend. The
second Spanish critic proved less troublesome. Sancho Carranza de
Miranda, a theologian who had relocated to Rome in 1522, published a
volume of criticisms of Erasmus; but this book was less hostile than
Stunica's and politely urged Erasmus to explain certain points
more clearly in order to silence critics. Erasmus published a fairly
courteous reply the same year (1522), and eventually the two men became
rather friendly.

Erasmus lived through many similar quarrels and devoted an enormous
amount of time and energy to reading these attacks and preparing and
publishing apologetic works in his own defense, in many cases leading
to a long series of back-and-forth polemical books. With a few of his
critics, he managed to maintain a spirit of courtesy, but with most of
them the debate soon degenerated into bitter attacks. Three of his
opponents, Lee, Stunica, and Béda, were the most troublesome
because they clung to him so persistently that he could not bring
the quarrel to a conclusion. Erasmus always felt obligated to defend
his good name and produce a refutation when he faced an attack, though
in some cases he did try to head off open controversy through a direct
approach to the critic.

Especially after his break with Luther in 1524, his quarrels with
fellow-Catholics were more troublesome to him than his controversies
with Protestants. Though he still had some positive things to say about
many individuals who supported the Reformation, he was now publicly
identified as their opponent and was not deeply troubled by their
attacks (with the exception of Luther's scurrilous accusation
that he was a non-believing hypocrite, an atheist). But the attacks by
Catholics were more difficult to cope with. He had publicly and
strongly asserted his identity as a loyal Catholic willing to accept
the doctrines and practices of the church and to recognize the
authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, though he was not willing to
refrain from criticizing practices and conditions that he found to be
unwholesome and harmful to genuine piety. He had no intention of
letting ultra-conservative monks and theologians drive him out of the
church to which he had declared his loyalty. What particularly enraged
him was that many of these Catholic critics were quite unimpressed by
his open rejection of Luther's major doctrines. In their
correspondence, Béda made it clear that Erasmus' defense
of free will and his rejection of Luther's extreme position on
man's dependence on grace made no difference to him; what he
expected from Erasmus was a complete cessation of his frank and public
criticism of abuses in the traditional church, a total repudiation of
his long-standing dream of a purified, spiritually reawakened church
that would be reformed gradually and peacefully from within the old
structures. In a sense, Béda and some other conservative critics
regarded the nuts and bolts of traditional religious observance, the
popular emphasis on external acts like pilgrimages, prayer to the
saints, use of images, and other external actions and observances as
more crucial to their conception of the Catholic faith than the big
theological issues on which Erasmus had attacked Luther, Zwingli, and
the other leaders of the Reformation. Yet for Erasmus himself, these
traditional acts of external observance, while not necessarily
practices to be rejected completely, were secondary matters and in many
cases had been abused by grasping, corrupt clergymen as devices to
exploit the simple, trusting faith of gullible believers.

The scholar who has most carefully analyzed these controversies that
involved Catholic rather than Protestant antagonists has concluded
that though Erasmus was well trained to undertake the task of emending
scriptural texts, his temperament made him unsuited for public
controversy. “He was proud of his achievements and sensitive to
criticism. He had moreover a sharp tongue and ready wit and did not
suffer fools gladly.” Though he was repeatedly involved in
conflicts, his performance as a controversialist was poor.
“Although Erasmus often adopts a superior tone, he is superior
to his opponents only in learning; in pettifogging, peevishness, and
intellectual pride he is their match” (Rummel 1989:1:
189–190).

Erasmus retained the loyalty of many moderate and pious humanists on
both the Protestant and the Catholic side of the religious divide.
Those humanists who shared his determination to remain loyal to the
traditional church despite its shortcomings continued to respect him
and seek his advice. In particular, they shared his hope that
eventually the divisions in Christendom could be patched up. As a
provisional solution for Germany, Erasmus was willing to grant de
facto toleration to those Protestants who accepted the major and
ancient beliefs of the church (which he tended to identify with the
brief text of the Apostles' Creed) and to ignore the lesser
issues on which agreement was impossible: better a stalemate with some
toleration for dissidents than a civil war. When the imperial diet at
Augsburg proclaimed for 1530 drew near, he corresponded with the papal
legate to the Diet, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, and frankly suggested
that this might be the only possible outcome.

In 1529, Erasmus lost his place of refuge in Basel. The city where
he had found the most physically and intellectually comfortable home he
ever had, like most German cities, was strongly attracted to Luther and
even more attracted to the more radical Zwinglian or Sacramentarian
version of the Reformation. Gradually, through the preaching of
Johannes Oecolampadius, a former collaborator of Erasmus at the Froben
press and a learned humanist, the citizens who supported the
Reformation grew in numbers and political influence. The city council
still wanted to prevent a total Protestant victory, but gradually it
made numerous concessions so that by the late 1520s, five of the six
parish churches were controlled by priests who supported the
Reformation. The council decreed that all citizens should have freedom
of conscience and no one should be compelled to attend either the
Catholic mass or the new Reformed services. This policy suited Erasmus,
but it did not suit the spirit of the age. Oecolampadius lamented
that even after several years when the Gospel was openly preached in
Basel, a large part of the population still accepted the mass and
supported the idolatrous observances associated with the cult of the
saints. He and his followers wanted the city to become exclusively
Protestant. Under intense public pressure, in January 1529 the council
decreed that a maximum of three masses per day might be celebrated in
the city and that a formal disputation between Protestant and Catholic
theologians should be held in May to resolve the religious
disagreements. The stalemate did not last even that long. Oecolampadius
had pressed for changes but wanted to avoid violence and was willing to
wait until the disputation planned for May. His followers, however,
were not. The city's guilds had become strong supporters of
religious change. To the horror of Erasmus and many of his friends, an
insurrection led by the guilds took the decision out of the
council's hands. In December, the guilds had petitioned the
council to approve legal establishment of the new Reformed church as
the religion of the city. The council had delayed a response. On 8
February, the guilds gave the city council an ultimatum. The following
day, while the council debated inconclusively, a mob of several
thousand people who had been waiting for a decision entered the
cathedral and several parish churches and began smashing the
“idols” (the images of the saints). At that point, the
twelve Catholic members of the council resigned, and that evening the
remaining councillors approved the guilds' demands. For two days
and two nights, the destruction of religious images continued. The mass
was abolished, and all citizens were required to receive the
Lord's Supper under the new Protestant forms. Most of the
substantial group of citizens who would have preferred to keep the old
religious observances conformed reluctantly. Erasmus' closest
friend, Bonifacius Amerbach, would not consider leaving his city but
stubbornly refused to attend the new communion services. All of the
canons of the cathedral chapter, including Erasmus' theologian
friend Ludwig Baer, moved to the near-by city of Freiburg, which was
controlled by Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg and hence remained safely
Catholic.

Erasmus viewed these events with dismay, both because of the
suppression of the old religion and because of the violence of the mob.
Life in Basel during this turmoil had become insupportable for him,
even though the magistrates assured him he would not be compelled to
conform. He could justify remaining in a city where both religions were
able to practice their faith, but not in a city that was legally
Protestant and had outlawed his own religion. He considered going back
to the Netherlands or even moving to Rome, but he knew that living in
either of these places would destroy the freedom to express his
opinions candidly that had attracted him to Basel in 1521. But he was
an old and sickly man who shrank from undertaking a long and exhausting
journey to either of these places. Although he considered other places
in Germany, he really had his eye on the near-by university town of
Freiburg-im-Breisgau, just sixty kilometers away. Because it was under
Habsburg control, Freiburg would not turn Protestant. Because its
overlord, Archduke Ferdinand, was favorable to him, he would be
sheltered from the Catholic extremists. Freiburg was also a university
town, where Erasmus knew that he had admirers among the faculty and the
students. Erasmus arranged a private conference with Oecolampadius,
whom he still respected as a scholar despite their growing alienation
on religious issues. Oecolampadius declared his continuing friendship
for Erasmus and urged him to remain in Basel, but to no avail. Erasmus
wanted to depart privately at a remote location for the trip down the
Rhine, but the city council insisted on his using the traditional
landing at the Rhine bridge. They wanted to demonstrate publicly that
he was leaving by his own choice and still had their good will. When he
arrived at the point of embarkation on 13 April 1529, hoping to depart
quietly, a large crowd of citizens and civic officials was waiting to
see him off.

When he reached Freiburg, Erasmus received a warm welcome. The city
council provided use of a large house. Since he still thought it likely
that he would eventually move elsewhere, Freiburg was an excellent
location, with easy access to the Habsburg-ruled Franche-Comté
and France to the west and easy travel down the Rhine to the
Netherlands. In 1531 he bought a house. Since he had the favor of
Archduke Ferdinand, he was treated with respect and was able to
continue writing and publishing as he wished. Yet there were
disadvantages to Freiburg. Although there was a local group of
humanists, the city was smaller than Basel and much less intellectual.
Freiburg had no local publishers comparable to Froben. He continued to
publish his new and revised works with the heirs of Froben at
Basel.

Erasmus lived at Freiburg for six years, from 1529 to 1535, and
continued his studies and writing. His love for peace and his
continuing if forlorn hope for reunification of the church produced
Liber de sarcienda ecclesiae condordia (On Restoring Unity in the
Church), published at Basel in 1533. The main point of this little
book is a plea for mutual tolerance on practices of secondary
importance and the prohibition of books likely to foment violence. Most
Protestant leaders denounced the book, which essentially endorsed a
somewhat relaxed but still basically unchanged Catholic religion. Its
greatest appeal seems to have been to the moderate Catholics who, like
the author, still believed that good-faith negotiation between men of
good will could restore religious unity. These moderate Catholics, many
of them still inspired by Erasmus, remained influential at Rome and in
many parts of the Catholic world for a decade after Erasmus'
death in 1536, but in the 1540s they gradually lost influence and were
eventually overwhelmed (or at least silenced) by conservative Catholics
who thought it better to restore traditional Catholicism without
compromise and to suppress heresy wherever they were strong enough to
do so. De sarcienda was rejected by the conservatives,
dismissed as just another example of Erasmus' religious
unreliability. His late works included a Christian catechism
based on the simplest and most ancient of the traditional statements of
faith, the Apostles' Creed. He also wrote a treatise on
preparation for death, Praeparatio ad mortem (1534), where he
maintained that the truly important preparation was not a set of
last-minute ceremonies around the deathbed but (as he had asserted long
before in his Enchiridion and in some of his
Colloquies) a process that goes on continuously throughout
each person's life. At Freiburg he also completed the longest of
all his works, Ecclesiastes, a manual on preaching that he had
promised friends he would write but had never managed to finish. He had
long charged that the old church had neglected preaching as well as its
other pastoral responsibilities, and this book was a response to the
need to make preaching one of the principal duties of priests. Erasmus
also continued to edit classical and patristic texts at Freiburg. He
published editions of Ptolemy's De geographia (1530),
the complete works of Aristotle (1531), and Suetonius' Lives
of the Twelve Emperors (1533); also patristic texts including new
editions of the works of St. John Chrysostom (1530) and St. Basil of
Caesarea (1532), and a first edition of the works of Origen (1536). In
1535, his last edition of the New Testament came off the Froben press.
Erasmus' health became increasingly feeble, but he kept working
almost to his final day.

Erasmus had never found Freiburg a very congenial place to live.
Although the leading local intellectual, Ulrich Zasius, was a warm
admirer, once they lived in the same town they did not become
particularly close. The patronage of Archduke Ferdinand made him secure
at Freiburg, but he knew that some local clergy and laymen were not
favorable to him. He had never made a firm decision to stay there
forever and still occasionally wrote of other places as possible future
destinations. He had continued to use the Froben press as his publisher
while he lived in Freiburg, but in 1535, as he prepared to bring out
his longest book, Ecclesiastes, he decided that he should be
physically present at the press as the final work went on. Sometime in
the summer of 1535, his closest friend at Basel, Bonifacius Amerbach,
travelled to Freiburg and brought his old friend back home. The move
was easier to accept because although the city was now legally
Protestant, the violent agitation of 1529 was long past. In 1534, the
city's religious leaders had been willing to make a private
theological compromise with Amerbach that convinced him that he could
receive the legally required Protestant communion with good conscience.
The religious situation at Basel seemed more acceptable if Amerbach was
comfortable with it. He resided in the home of his publisher,
Hieronymus Froben. Being in feeble health, he rarely went out. Despite
poor health, he continued to work on Ecclesiastes, the revised
edition of the New Testament, his edition of Origen, and several
shorter publications.

In several of his later publications, including De
sarcienda, his 1532 revisions of his Paraphrase on
Romans, and one of his very last short tracts, De puritate
tabernaculi, he seems to have moderated, but not wholly abandoned,
the optimistic strain that typified his earlier work, including his
earlier confidence in the power of education to make people morally
better. De puritate expressed a somewhat pessimistic view of
human nature and emphasized faith in God's grace (which had
always had an important place in his religious thought) even more than
in the past, and human powers aside from grace considerably less. He
seems to have regarded human sinfulness as more powerful than he had in
earlier works. Consciously or not, he now leaned a bit more in
Luther's direction than he had during their quarrel in the
mid-1520s. Although his opposition to the Reformation became more open
and harsh in works written after his conflict with Luther, and his
insistence that the unity of the church must be maintained at all
costs became stronger as the actual unity of the church
collapsed, he never believed that Luther was truly a heretic in
the same sense as the heretics condemned by the early church. In
person, he remained stubbornly Catholic, but in his own way. He
published the prayers, many of them expressing devotion to the saints,
that he had written over many years, and remained convinced that the
humanistic, tolerant, and moralistic Catholic reform program that he
had enunciated before anyone had heard of Martin Luther not only was
fully orthodox but also represented the only hope of bringing all
Christians back together without the violence of the religious wars
that he feared.

By June of 1536 it was clear that Erasmus was failing rapidly. Being
a Catholic living in a legally Protestant city, he did not have a
priest available to administer last rites, and there is no evidence
that he desired such ministrations, which he had always respected if
done in the right spirit but never considered very important. He died
during the night of 11–12 July. A whole host of ailments contributed to
his end, but dysentery was the immediate cause. In his last moments, he
commended his soul (in Latin, of course) to Mary and to Jesus, but his
very last words, according to a close friend who was present, was in the
language of his childhood, Dutch: “Lieve God!” Dear God!
His will of 1536 did not mandate use of his property (rather
considerable in his final years) to fund a full edition of all his
works, as his first will of 1527 had done; but Bonifacius Amerbach,
whom both wills appointed administrator of his estate, arranged for the
Froben firm to publish his collected writings, Opera omnia,
which appeared in a set of nine volumes in 1540. After bequests made to
personal servants and close friends, his will left part of the balance
to provide dowries for the marriage of poor girls, and all the rest for
the support of students at the University of Basel.

Super Tramp said:

My personal bias against Westcott & Hort has 90% to do with their occultic involvement rather than their scholarship

I have heard this accusation before. Without repeating the statements found in large numbers on the internet (mostly by KJV-only folks), can you point me to any reliable sources, preferably original to W&H or their contemporaries.

Please, please, please (and I'm not talking to Super Tramp now), let's not debate this issue here!!! I'm only asking for help in doing some research on the topic.

Graham Owen said:

I did my best to check this out a couple of years ago during a previous KJV only thread and as far as I can tell the occult links basis of truth is that one of them, I forget which one, briefly attended a society at Oxford (edit) Cambridge that had possible links to the occult. From memory there was no evidence that they were ever formal members however the 'truth' has been used as a way to discredit them and has grown...

I'm aware of the accusations in the last 20 years or so. I was asking about relevant sources contemporary to W & H, or even shortly after their deaths. I'm not that up on this issue, but so far I've not found any accusation nor evidence for such accusations prior to about 100 years after their deaths. But just because I haven't found them . . .

Graham Owen said:

he only reference that I have traced from near to the time this was all happening was in a book by Westcott's son which can be found here. He notes that his father "...ceased to interest himself in these matters...". 

Thanks for the source. FYI, the relevant information you refer to is on pp. 117-119.

Super Tramp said:

I did not mean to ignore you Richard.  All the family came to town for an early surprise birthday celebration for Nina. I've got people & cars stacked to the eaves, all weekend long.

Sounds like even more fun than Erasmus.Enjoy.

Super Tramp said:

I have run across a half dozen sources contemporary to their times . . .

Great! I've only seen the one: the autobiography from Westcott's son. Whatever else you've got, just point me in the right direction.

That is, when you're done enjoying your family time. No rush. They're not going anywhere.