PARIS--THE "ADAGIA"--THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS
CHRISTIANI"--PANEGYRIC ON PHILIP OF BURGUNDY
1500-1506
His "deserted Paris," "that Gallic dung-heap," was calling to
Erasmus, perhaps with the same siren voice that has drawn thither
so many another homeless genius, and he went. He was, if we may
believe his later wails, pretty well supplied with money, which he
had turned into French coin. He is very careful to insist that he
had not received this money in England, but if not, it is difficult
to imagine where it could have come from. He was aware of a law
forbidding the exportation of gold from the realm, but had been
advised by his friends that this law applied only to English coin and
so felt safe. The customs officers at Dover, however, took another
view of the matter and left him nothing but the small amount allowed
by law, nor could his connections in high quarters ever avail him to
make good his loss.
An account of the affair, written, so Erasmus says, "unless he is
mistaken," twenty-seven years afterward, brings this incident into
direct connection with the earliest piece of writing in which
Erasmus presented himself to the world in his true character.
Speaking[49] of his mishap from the lofty position of a famous
scholar before whose biting satire the great ones of the earth might
well tremble a little, he gives himself great praise for not having
taken immediate vengeance on the king and the country which had
used him so badly, by writing something against them. He refrained
partly because it seemed an unworthy thing to do, and partly because
he would not be the means of bringing down the royal wrath upon his
dear friends in England; and so, having no resources, he determined
to publish something that might pay. He had nothing on hand, but
by reading hard for a few days he "got together in haste quite a
'forest' of adages, thinking that a book of this sort, whatever
its quality, would, by its very usefulness, go into the hands of
students."
[49] _Catalogus lucubrationum_, _op._ i.
This account of the origin of the famous Adages of Erasmus seems in
the main reasonable. It was in the strictest sense a bread-and-butter
undertaking, calculated to meet a demand which every writer of
that day must feel and for which there was no adequate supply. The
scholar, no matter how great his claim to individuality, could not
get on without continual references to classical literature. They
were, so to speak, the certificates of his scholarship; they took
the place of the references to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures
by which the mediæval scholar had at once supported his views and
demonstrated his learning. Of course such decoration ought to come
naturally as a result of the writer's own wide reading and profound
reflection in the classic literature, and during the really great
times of the Revival of Learning, while scholarship was confined to
comparatively few men, and these men of really commanding powers,
such had been the case. By the time of Erasmus, however, the new
learning was falling rapidly into its second stage; it was becoming
more widely diffused and, naturally, was drawing to itself ever
more and more second-rate material. Learning was coming to be
fashionable, and at just that stage all aids to a ready acquirement
of at least the appearance of scholarship were sure to be in demand.
It is an evidence of Erasmus' practical good sense that he was
ready to advance his most serious purposes by contributing to this
popularisation of learning.
Erasmus was always fond of telling how rapidly he worked, but in
the present case we have every reason to believe that his work was
hasty and experimental in the extreme. Nothing more unscientific
in form can well be imagined than this collection of scattered
sayings from the writings, chiefly, of classic authors. The method,
practically unchanged in the many later editions, was simply to jot
down at random some verse of poetry or some word having a peculiar
meaning and then to give a very brief explanation of its origin and
value; then if the occasion warranted, upon this as a text to write
a little essay. In this personal and individual comment lies the
real importance of the Adages, in giving us an idea of their author.
It was this personal element also which appealed most strongly
to those of his own time who were capable of valuing it, but it
was not this which commended the Adages, probably, to the widest
circle of readers. To the great mass of young students and to the
increasing numbers of men everywhere who were trying their hands at
Latin composition, the book was rather an encyclopædia of classical
quotations, from which they could select the needed decorations of
their style without the trouble of going to the original sources.
To these two lines of patronage the Adages owed their great and
immediate popularity. The first edition was printed at Paris in 1500
and contained about eight hundred selections. As to the method of the
future editions Erasmus gives us some information. When he saw that
the book was received with gratitude by scholars and was apparently
going to live, and moreover that publishers were vying with each
other in printing it, he kept enriching it from time to time as his
own leisure or the supply of available books gave him opportunity.
What he regarded as the final edition was printed at Basel by Froben
in 1523. After that he merely annotated previous editions, "rather
as giving to others material for a future work than as really making
a new book with proper care."[50] This first edition of the Adages
was dedicated to Mountjoy. Without the later additions it must, one
would think, have been as dry reading as could well be imagined, but
the fact of its popularity is unquestionable. Edition after edition
appeared with great rapidity, so that we are now able to record no
less than sixty-two within the author's lifetime.
[50] _Catalogus lucubrationum_, i.
As for the pecuniary rewards which Erasmus may have had in view,
there is no indication that they were immediate or considerable. The
ethics of book-publishing were at that time in a highly rudimentary
state. So far as one can see there was nothing to prevent any printer
from putting forth any writing that by any chance got into his hands.
Erasmus in a dedicatory letter to Mountjoy with a later edition[51]
says that his reason for the new publication was that the earlier
editions had been printed so badly that one might suppose the errors
had been made intentionally. In another place[52] he says, with an
unusual effort at accuracy, that the first edition of the Adages was
published on the 15th of June, 1500, while he was absent from Paris.
This date is certainly a very early one, and we have to bear in mind
that Erasmus' object in giving it was to prove that he had got ahead
of a rival compiler of proverbs who had accused him of stealing his
thunder. It agrees, however, with our other indications. The most
singular thing about it is that a young author, putting forth his
first ambitious publication, should have been willing to absent
himself from the place where the work was being done. The fact was,
probably, that Erasmus was frightened half out of his wits by the
presence of the plague in Paris, and this impression is strengthened
by the pains he takes to convince his friend Faustus Andrelinus of
his uncommon freedom from the vulgar emotion of fear. He was at
Orleans and Faustus had urged him to come back to Paris; had even, so
Erasmus says, called him a coward by the mouth of his own servant.
[51] ii., _ad init._
[52] iii.¹, 57.
"This reproach would not be endured even if made against a Swiss
soldier; against a poet, a lover of ease and quiet, it doesn't
stick at all. And yet, in matters of this sort, to have no dread
whatever seems to me rather the part of a log than of a brave
man. When the fight is with an enemy that can be driven back,
whose blows can be returned, who can be conquered by fighting,
then if a man wants to seem brave, let him, for all I care. The
Lernean Hydra, last and hardest of all the labours of Hercules,
could not be overcome with steel but could be beaten by Greek
fire; but what can you do against an evil that can be neither
seen nor conquered? There are some things which it is better to
run away from than to conquer. The brave Æneas did not go into
battle with the sirens, but turned his helm far away from that
shore of danger. 'But,' you say, 'there is no danger'--well,
meanwhile I, on the safe side of danger, see a great many
persons dying. I imitate the fox in Horace:--'I am alarmed at
the footsteps, so many leading towards you and so few away.' In
this condition of things I wouldn't hesitate to fly, not merely
to Orleans, but to Cadiz or to the farthest of the far Orkneys;
not because I am a timid person or of less than manly courage,
but because I really do fear--not to die, for we are all born to
die--but to die by my own fault. If Christ warned his disciples
to flee from the wrath of their persecutors by straightway
changing their residence, why should I not evade so deadly a foe
when I conveniently can?"
Yet he is not happy at Orleans; the Muses grow chilly in that city
of law-books; he means to come back, and meanwhile he begs Faustus
to write a prefatory letter to his Adages, which he has just put
forth. He asks this not for the merit of the work, for he does not
flatter himself so far as not to see how poor it is--but the worse
the goods the more they need recommendation. Faustus gave the letter
and it duly appeared, but whether it did not just suit Erasmus, or
whether he could not quite bear to have his work recommended by
anyone, he saw fit later to declare that the printer had wormed it
out of Faustus. Perhaps, too, Faustus had a little overdone it and
in the extravagance of this festive person's praise Erasmus may have
detected a little sting of sarcasm. In a letter to his friend and
pupil, Augustinus, Erasmus reproves him for taking too flattering a
tone towards himself and says, by the way,
"that exaggeration of Faustus, in which he says that in me alone
is the very sanctuary of letters, was not so very delightful to
me, both because extravagant praise suits neither my modesty
nor my deserts and because such figures of speech are as a rule
not believed and simply arouse envy. They are moreover akin to
irony, just as what you wrote me, although in most flattering
terms, did not really flatter me at all: 'O, most attentive
teacher, I, thy devoted pupil, dedicate myself to thee; command
me as thou wilt; naught that I have is mine, but all is thine!'
All that kind of talk, it seems to me, ought to be kept as far
as possible from a sincere attachment. For where there is real
affection as there is, I think, between us, what use is there in
such figures of speech? And where affection is insincere they
are wont to be turned into a suspicion of malice. Therefore you
would greatly oblige me if you would completely banish such
exaggerations from your letters, that simple affection may find
its proper language and that you may bear in mind that you are
writing to an attached friend and not to a tyrant."
This sounds very fine and would impress one with a great sense of
Erasmus' ingenuous nature, if one could forget that this is precisely
the time when he was carrying on the correspondence with Battus and
the Marchioness of Veere which we have already examined.[53] Indeed
the years from 1500 to 1506 are the most perplexing in Erasmus' whole
life. He was continually on the move, now at Paris, now at Orleans,
again in the Low Countries, visiting this friend and that, with no
regular source of income, yet somehow pulling himself through. During
all this time there is hardly a letter which does not speak of him
as the victim of a cruel fate. Of course it is always the fault of
someone else, but human nature has not so greatly changed in four
hundred years that we can afford to take his word for it that all
his patrons had deserted him with no cause whatever on his part. To
get the proper perspective for an understanding of the situation
we must remind ourselves that Erasmus was as yet a very doubtful
investment. His real individuality was hardly showing itself. He
had positively rejected all proposals of regular occupation; he was
making considerable demands on life, but he would take life only on
his own terms.
[53] See p. 48 & _ff_.
The motive of Erasmus' wanderings in these early years of the century
is not clear. More easily perceptible than any other is his fear of
the plague and a nervous dread of other illness. When things went
badly in one place he betook himself to another, but it is hard to
find much principle even in his health-seeking. He speaks of finding
relief in his native land and again writes that Zeeland is hell to
him, he "never felt a harsher climate or one less suited to his
poor little body." The bishop of Cambrai had long since failed him.
The bishop's brother, the abbot of St. Bertin, formerly a great
friend, was of no use; the Marchioness was herself in some mysterious
trouble; Battus alone, his precious Battus, was quite true to him,
but not able to do much for him. Altogether it seems most probable
that the conspiracy of the fates against our scholar may have been
nothing more than a common feeling of distrust toward a sturdy
beggar, who had not yet proved his value and who was not inclined to
put up with any half-way charity.
But meanwhile Erasmus was always at work. His real, permanent, and
persistent interest was his own self-culture--not in any narrow or
mean sense, but that he might be equal to the great demands he was
preparing to make upon himself. Of all things he wished to make
himself strong in Greek, and it is clear that he was dissatisfied
with any teaching which thus far had been open to him. From this we
ought not hastily to draw conclusions as to the badness of Greek
teaching at Paris. Erasmus, like most men of original genius, was
not a docile pupil. He knew intuitively, what it takes most of us a
lifetime to find out, that every man must teach himself all that he
ever really and effectively knows, and that this is especially true
of all linguistic knowledge. Erasmus complains of his Greek teachers,
but he did not sit down and wait for better ones. He went to work
with such appliances as he had and read Greek books and gradually
came to read them well. He learned Greek, in short, as he had learned
Latin, by _using_ it.
From time to time, however, he gave evidences of his progress in
culture by some production intended for wider circulation. A specimen
of such occasional writing is his _Enchiridion militis christiani_,
a title which has almost invariably been rendered, "A Handbook of
the Christian Soldier," but which bears equally well the meaning,
"The Christian Soldier's Dagger." The essential point is that it
was a something "handy," a _vade mecum_ for the average gentleman
who aimed to be a good Christian. Erasmus uses the word in both
meanings at different times. Writing, according to his own reckoning,
nearly thirty years afterwards,[54] Erasmus gives us an account of
the origin of this treatise, which is interesting as showing how
unsystematic were the motives which led, or which he imagined led,
to the writing of many of his most famous works. He says "the thing
was born of chance." He was at Tournehens to escape the plague then
raging in Paris and there came into relations with a friend of
Battus, a gentleman who was "his own worst enemy," a gay and reckless
liver. This gentleman's wife was a woman of singular piety and in
great distress for her husband's soul. She begged Erasmus to write
something which might move him to repentance, but to be careful that
this warning should not appear to come from her; for "he was cruel to
her even to blows, after the manner of soldiers." So Erasmus noted
down a few things and showed them to his friends, who approved them
so highly that some time afterward at Louvain he employed his leisure
in putting them into shape. For a while the book attracted little
attention; but later it became one of the most popular and widely
read of its author's more serious works. It was first printed in 1503
and after that ran through edition after edition with great rapidity.
Naturally, it brought out also no little opposition; but that will
explain itself when we have examined a little more carefully the aim
and contents of the book.
[54] _Catalogus lucubrationum_, i.
Its object is especially to emphasise the difference between a
true religion of the heart and an outward, formal religion of
observances. It is divided into thirteen chapters of varying length,
each headed with a caption rather vaguely indicating its contents.
After a somewhat long introduction he proceeds to a definition of
the human soul, following in the main the lead of the early Fathers,
especially of Origen. He distinguishes between the soul of man and
a something higher yet, which they describe as spirit. The body is
the purely material, the spirit is the purely divine, but the soul,
living between the two, belongs permanently to neither, but is tossed
back and forth from one to the other according as it resists or
gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The body is the harlot,
soliciting to evil. "Thus the spirit makes us gods; the flesh makes
us beasts; the soul makes us men." This distinction is again and
again illustrated, and the chapter ends with a declaration of the
true rule of Christian piety; viz., that every man see to it that he
judge himself according to his own temptation.[55]
[55] v., 20-D.
"One man rejoices in fasting, in sacred observances, in going
often to church, in repeating psalms, as many as possible--but
in the spirit. Now ask, according to our rule, what he is
doing:--if he is looking for praise or reward, he smacks of the
flesh--not of the spirit. If he is merely indulging his own
nature, doing what pleases him, this is not a thing to be proud
of, but rather to be feared. There is your danger. You pray
and you judge the man who prays not; you fast and you condemn
the man who eats. Whoever does not do as you do, you think is
inferior to you. Look out that your fasting be not to the flesh!
Your brother needs your help, but you meanwhile are mumbling
your prayers to God and neglecting your brother's poverty: God
will be deaf to such prayers as that.... You love your wife just
because she is your wife; that is very little, for the heathen
do the same. Or you love her only for your own pleasure; then
your love is to the flesh: but if you love her chiefly because
you see in her the image of Christ, piety, modesty, sobriety,
chastity, then you love her not in herself, but in Christ--nay,
you love Christ in her and so God in the spirit."
The book then goes on to more specific injunctions to the Christian
life, always with the undernote of sincerity as the main thing. Here
is a striking passage from the second canon of the eighth chapter:[56]
[56] v., 23-A.
"Christ said to all men that he who will not take up his cross
and follow after him is not worthy of him. Now you have no
concern with dying to the flesh with Christ, if living in his
spirit does not concern you. It is not yours to be crucified
to the world, if living to God be not yours. To be buried with
Christ is nothing to you, if rising in glory is nothing to you.
Christ's humility, his poverty, his trial, his scorn, his toil,
his struggle, his grief, are nothing to you, if you have no care
for his kingdom. What more base than to claim for yourself the
reward with others, but to put off upon a certain few the toil
for which the reward is offered? What more wanton than to wish
to reign with our Head, when you are not willing to suffer with
him? Therefore, my brother, do not look about to see what others
do and flatter yourself with their example;--a difficult thing
indeed and known to very few, even to monks, is this dying to
sin, to carnal desire and to the world. Yet this is the common
profession of all Christians."
So again in the fourth canon:[57]
[57] v., 26-D.
"You fast,--a pious work indeed to all appearance; but to what
purpose is this fasting? Is it to save provisions or to seem to
be more pious than you are? Then your eye is evil. Or do you
fast to keep your health? Why then do you fear disease? Lest
it keep you from pleasure? Your eye is evil. Or do you desire
health that you may devote yourself to study? Then to what end
is this study?--that you may get a church office? But why do
you wish the office?--that you may live to yourself and not
to Christ? Then you have wandered from the standard which the
Christian ought to have set up everywhere. You take food that
your body may be strong, but you desire this strength that
you may be equal to the study of sacred things and to holy
vigils:--you have hit the mark; but if you look after your
health lest you lose your beauty and so be incapable of sensual
pleasure, then you have fallen away from Christ and have set up
another God for yourself.
"There are those who worship certain divinities with certain
rites. One salutes Christopher every day, but only while he is
gazing upon his image, and for what? because he has persuaded
himself that he will thus be safe for that day from an evil
death. Another worships a certain Rochus, and why? because he
fancies he will drive the plague away from his body. Another
mumbles prayers to Barbara or George, lest he fall into the
hands of his enemy. This man fasts to Apollonia to prevent
the toothache. That one gazes upon an image of the god-like
Job, that he may be free of the itch. Some devote a certain
part of their profits to the poor, lest their business go to
wreck. A candle is lighted to Jerome to rescue some business
that is going to pieces. In short, whatever our fears and our
desires, we set so many gods over them and these are different
in different nations; as, for example, Paul does for the French
what Jerome does for our people, and James and John are not
good everywhere for what they can do in certain places. Now
this kind of piety, unless it be brought back to Christ instead
of being merely a care for the convenience or inconvenience of
our bodies, is not Christian, for it is not far removed from
the superstition of those who used to vow tithes to Hercules in
order to get rich--or a cock to Æsculapius to get well of an
illness, or who slew a bull to Neptune for a favourable voyage.
The names are changed, but the object is the same. You pray to
God to escape a sudden death and not rather that he may grant
you a better mind, so that whenever death overtakes you it may
not find you unprepared. You never think of changing your way
of life and yet you pray God to let you live. What then are
you asking?--why, only that you may keep on sinning as long as
possible. You pray for wealth and know not how to use wealth; so
you are praying for your own ruin. If you pray for health and
then abuse it, is not your piety impious?
"An objection will be made here by some 'religious' fellows, who
look upon piety as a profession, or, in other words, by certain
sweet phrases of blessing seduce the souls of the innocent,
serving their own bellies and not Jesus Christ: 'What,' they
will say, 'do you forbid the worship of the saints, in whom God
is honoured?' Indeed I do not so much condemn those who do this
from a certain simple superstition as those who, seeking their
own profit, put forth things that might perhaps be tolerated
with pure and lofty piety, but encourage for their own advantage
the ignorance of the common people. This ignorance I do not
in the least despise, but I cannot bear to have them taking
indifferent things for the most important, the least for the
greatest. I will even approve their asking Rochus for a life
of health if they will consecrate their life to Christ; but I
should like it still better if they would simply pray that their
love of virtue may be increased through their hatred of vice.
Let them lay their living and dying in God's hands, and say with
Paul 'whether we live or whether we die, we live or die to the
Lord.' ... I will bear with weakness, but, like Paul, I will
show you a more excellent way."
It will be noticed that even thus early in Erasmus' moral appeal, he
does not aim at destroying anything. Even for the worship of saints
he has plenty of room in his thought, but he says:[58]
[58] v., 31-D.
"the way to worship the saints is to imitate their virtues. The
saint cares more for this kind of reverence than if you burn
a hundred candles for him. You think it a great thing to be
borne to your grave in the cowl of Francis; but the likeness
of his garment will profit you nothing after you are dead, if
your morals were unlike his when you were alive.... You pay the
greatest reverence to the ashes of Paul, and no harm if your own
religion is consistent with this. But if you adore these dead
and silent ashes and neglect that image of him which lives and
speaks and, as it were, breathes to this day in his writings, is
not your religion preposterous? You worship the bones of Paul
laid away in a shrine, but you do not worship the mind of Paul
enshrined in his writings. You make great things of a scrap of
his body seen through a glass case, but you do not marvel at
the whole soul of Paul that gleams through his works.... Let
infidels, for whom they were given, wonder at these signs, but
do you, a believer, embrace the books of that man, so that,
while you doubt not that God is able to do all things, you may
learn to love Him above all things. You honour an image of the
face of Christ, badly cut in stone or painted in colours, but
far more honour ought to be given to that image of his soul
which by the work of the Holy Spirit is made manifest in the
Gospels.... You gaze with awe upon a tunic or a handkerchief
said to be those of Christ, but you fall asleep over the oracles
of the law of Christ."
With constant reference to Paul as the greatest of human teachers,
Erasmus comes to the monastic life in some detail.[59]
[59] v., 36-A.
"'Love,' says Paul, 'is to edify your neighbour,' and if only
this were done, nothing could be more joyous or more easy than
the life of the 'religious'; but now this life seems gloomy,
full of Jewish superstitions, not in any way free from the vices
of laymen and in some ways more corrupt. If Augustine, whom they
boast of as the founder of their system, were to come to life
again, he would not recognise them; he would cry out that he
had never approved this sort of a life, but had organized a way
of living according to the rule of the apostles, not according
to the superstition of the Jews. But now I hear some of the
more sensible ones say:--'We must be on our guard in the least
things lest we gradually slip into greater vices.' I hear and
I approve; but we ought none the less to be on our guard lest
we get so bound up in these lesser things that we wholly fall
away from the greater. The danger is plainer on that side, but
greater on this. Look out for Scylla, but do not fall into
Charybdis. To do those things is well, but to put your trust
in them is perilous. Paul does not forbid us to make use of the
'elements,' but he would not have the man who is free in Christ
made a slave to them. He does not condemn the law of works, but
would have it properly applied. Without these things you will
perchance not be a pious man, but it is not these that make you
pious....
"What, then, shall the Christian do? Shall he neglect the
commands of the Church, despise the honourable traditions of
the Fathers, and condemn pious observances? Nay, if he is a
weakling he will hold on to these as necessary; if he is strong
and perfect, he will observe them so much the more, lest through
his wisdom he offend his weak brother, and slay him for whom
Christ died. These things he ought to do and not leave the
others undone.... Your body is clothed with the monkish cowl;
what, then, if your soul wears an earthly garment? If the
outer man is veiled in a snowy tunic, let also the vestment of
the inner man be white like snow. You keep silence outwardly;
see to it so much the more that your mind within is fixed in
silent attention. You bend the knee of the body in the visible
temple; but that is nothing if in the temple of the heart you
are standing upright against God. You adore the wood of the
cross;--follow much more the mystery of the cross. Do you go
into a fast and abstain from those things which do not defile
the man and yet not refrain from obscene conversation which
defiles both your own conscience and that of others? Food is
withheld from the body and shall the soul gorge itself upon
the husks of the swine? You build a temple of stone; you have
places sacred to religion; what profits it if the temple of
the soul, whose wall Ezekiel dug through, is profaned with the
abominations of the Egyptians?... If the body be kept pure and
yet you are covetous, then the soul is polluted. You sing psalms
with your bodily lips, but listen within to what your soul is
saying: you are blessing with the mouth and cursing with the
heart. Bodily you are bound within a narrow cell, but with your
thoughts you wander over the wide earth. You hear the word of
God with your bodily ear: hear it rather within."
So much for the monks. As to the general moral standards of his day
Erasmus is equally clear and vigorous and is interesting especially
from the comparison he makes with the morals of ancient times.[60]
[60] v., 40-D.
"Turn the annals of the ancients," he bursts out, "and compare
the manners of our time. When was true honour less respected?
When were riches, no matter how gained, ever so highly esteemed?
In what age was ever that word of Horace[61] more true--
[61] Horace, _Epp._, i., 6, 36. Conington's translation.
'A dowried wife, friends, beauty, birth, fair fame,
These are the gifts of money, heavenly dame.'
When was luxury ever more reckless? When were vice and adultery ever
more widespread or less punished or less condemned?... Who does not
think poverty the last extreme of misfortune and disgrace?"
It is the cry, familiar to all ages, especially of course at times
when civilisation has reached a high point, that all honour may
be bought for money and place. It shows no especial acuteness on
Erasmus' part, but it does prove his courage and his clear Christian
insight. That he should fancy the heroes of the classic world to
have been superior to the modern Christians of his own day was a
natural part of the classic enthusiasm in which he lived. Nor can we
doubt that it greatly strengthened the moral argument in his time to
add these examples of purely non-Christian virtue to those furnished
by the well-worn heroes of the Jewish past.
A very characteristic touch is found in Erasmus' reference to the
prevailing rage for information, also a vice of an over-eager age.[62]
[62] v., 44-A.
"Let me speak of another error. They call him a clever man and
skilled in affairs who, catching at all kinds of rumours, knows
what is going on all over the world: what is the fortune of the
merchants, what the tyrant of the Britains is planning, what
is the news at Rome, what is the latest happening in Gaul, how
the Dacians and Scythians are getting on, what the princes are
thinking about,--in short, the man who is eager to do battle
about every kind of affairs among every race of men, that man
they call wise. But what is more senseless, more foolish, than
to be running after things remote, that have nothing to do with
yourself, and not even to think of what is going on in your own
heart and what belongs especially to you. You talk about the
troubles in Britain; tell rather what is troubling your own
heart,--envy, lust, ambition; how far these have been sent under
the yoke,--what hope there is of victory,--how far the war is
advanced,--how the plan of campaign is laid out. If in these
things you are watchful, with eyes and ears well trained, if you
are cunning and cautious, then indeed I will declare you to be a
clever man."
A very interesting example of Erasmus' insistence upon the essential
thing and his indifference to names and forms is in the chapter which
describes the opinions worthy of the Christian. It has almost a
socialistic ring, so sharply does he emphasise the duty of Christian
charity.[63]
[63] v., 47-D.
"You thought it was only monks to whom property was forbidden
and poverty enjoined? You were wrong; both commands apply to
all Christians. The law punishes you if you take what belongs
to another; it does not punish you if you take what is yours
away from your brother when he needs it; but Christ will punish
both. If you are a magistrate the office should not make you
more fierce, but the responsibility should make you more
cautious. 'But,' you say, 'I do not hold a church office; I am
not a priest or a bishop.' Quite so, but you are a Christian,
are you not? See to it whose man you be, if you are not a man
of the Church. Christ is come into such contempt in the world,
that they think it a fine thing and a royal to have no dealings
with him and despise a person the more, the more closely he
is bound to him. Do you not hear every day some angry layman
throwing in our faces as a violent reproach the words 'Clerk!'
'Priest!' 'Monk!' and that with the same temper and the same
voice as if he were charging us with incest or sacrilege? Of
a truth I wonder why they don't attack Baptism, or like the
Saracens assault the name of Christ as something infamous. If
they would say '_bad_ Clerk!' '_unworthy_ Priest!' '_impious_
Monk!' we could bear it as coming from those who were rebuking
the character of the man and not the profession of virtue. But
those who call the rape of virgins, the plunder of war, the
gain and loss of money at dice deeds of glory, these people have
no word to throw at another more full of contempt and shame
than 'Monk!' or 'Priest!'--though it is clear enough what these
people, Christians in nothing but the name, think of Christ.
"There is not one Lord for bishops and another for civil rulers;
both are vicegerents of the same Lord and both must render an
account to him. The office of the Christian prince is not to
excel others in wealth, but, as far as possible, to seek the
advantage of all. Turn not what belongs to the public to your
own profit, but spend whatever is yours, even yourself, for the
public good. The people owe much to you, but you owe everything
to them. High-sounding names, '_Invictus_,' '_Sacrosanctus_,'
'_Majestas_,' though your ears are forced to hear them, yet
ascribe them all to Christ, to whom alone they belong. The
crime of _læsæ majestatis_, which others bring forward with
frightful clamour,--let this be to you a very small matter. He
alone violates the majesty of the prince who, under the name
of a prince, does things contrary to law, cruel, violent, or
criminal. Let no attack move you so little as one which touches
you personally. Remember that you are a public person, and that
it is your duty to think only of the public good. If you are
wise consider, not how great you are, but how great a burden
rests upon your shoulders. The greater danger you are in, so
much the less seek indulgence for yourself, and choose the model
for your administration, not from your fathers or from your
partisans, but from Christ. What can be more absurd than that a
Christian prince should set up Hannibal, Alexander, Cæsar, or
Pompey as an example to himself?... Nothing is so becoming, so
splendid, so glorious in kings as to attain as nearly as may be
to the perfect likeness of Jesus, the supreme king, greatest
and best.... '_Apostolus_,' '_Pastor_,' '_Episcopus_,' these are
names of duties, not of government; '_Papa_,' '_Abbas_,' are
titles of love, not of dominion. But why should I go into this
ocean of vulgar errors?"
The Enchiridion closes with five chapters of remedies against
certain vices: lust, avarice, ambition, arrogance, and anger. These
prescriptions have to us so obvious a sound that one easily overlooks
their real importance. Their value consists in this: that in an age
of formal righteousness they direct the conscience of the individual
man straight back to the sources of all Christian living, to the
plain teaching of Jesus and the plain argument of common sense. We
ought to follow Scripture,--yes, but because Solomon kept a harem
of concubines, that is no example for us. Peter denied the Christ
for whom he afterward died; but that is no excuse for perjury. The
Christian law is thus made plain to the individual conscience.
It has seemed worth while to go into the contents of this little
book with more care than its extent might appear to warrant, because
it is the earliest formulated expression of those principles of
interpretation which form the basis of Erasmus' whole mature life and
thought. It is for him, as it were, a programme, which he was to fill
out in detail, in the long series of writings that now began to flow
rapidly from his pen. In it he made his challenge to the world, yet
with such moderation, such careful weighing and balancing of views,
that he evidently hoped to win the support of all classes in what he
began to feel was his life-work.
We are always told that Erasmus here in the Enchiridion began his
unceasing warfare upon the monks; but if we read closely we see how
carefully he guarded himself against direct assault upon this or any
other established institution. Not the name "monk" was a reproach,
but the name "bad monk." He even goes so far as to identify himself
with the clerical order. It was well enough to fast or even to use
images and relics, so long as one saw through the forms to the
meaning underneath; but the moment a man found himself _relying_ upon
the forms, no matter who he was, pope, priest, or layman, that moment
he was in danger.
Erasmus says that the Enchiridion attracted little attention at
first, but afterward had a great sale. We can well believe that the
full force of its criticism was not felt until the first stirrings
of the Protestant Reformation brought men sharply face to face
with the problems it had outlined. It cannot be called precisely a
controversial book, yet the germs of the bitterest controversies
of the Reformation time are contained in it. Erasmus professed the
utmost reverence for the existing institutions of the Church, and
there is nothing in his later life to make us doubt the sincerity
of this profession. He was by nature averse to all the violence and
confusion that must attend any great social change. But it was clear
to him that his age had wandered far from the ideals of the founders
of these institutions. His remedy was to point out to men how widely
they had erred and to show them once more in plain and direct
language the true foundations of the Christian life.
It is noticeable that with all his protests of respect, Erasmus
nowhere urges the appeal to the existing order in the Church as
final. Men _may_ fast, worship saints, take vows, seek absolution;
but their real salvation is to be found in none of these things.
As this little book went out into the world in the year 1503, it
remained to be seen which aspect of its teaching would prove the more
effectual, whether its real meaning would penetrate alike to friends
and enemies. Some light on this point may be gained from a letter[64]
of Erasmus written in 1518 to his friend Volzius and afterward
published as a preface to a new edition of the Enchiridion. In this
letter he says that his work was criticised as unlearned, because
it did not use the quibbling methods of the schools. But he was not
trying "to train men for the prize-ring of the Sorbonne, but rather
for the peace which belongs to the Christian." There is no lack of
books on theology;
[64] iii.¹, 337.
"there are as many commentaries on the 'Sentences' of Petrus
Lombardus as there are theologians. There is no end of little
_summas_, which mix up one thing with another over and over
again and after the manner of apothecaries fabricate and
refabricate old things from new, new from old, one from many,
and many from one. The result is that there are so many books
about right living that no one can ever live long enough to read
them. As if a doctor should prescribe for a man in a dangerous
illness that he should read the books of Jacobus à Partibus and
all the likes of them and there he would find out how to mend
his health."
There were books enough, Heaven knew! but not life enough to read
them, and this multitude of quarrelling doctors were only obscuring
the true art of living, which Christ meant to make plain and simple
to all. These so-called philosophers are obstacles, not helps, to the
true Christian life.
"They could never have enough of discussing in what words they
ought to speak of Christ, as if they were dealing with some
horrid demon, who would bring destruction upon them if they
failed to invoke him in proper terms, instead of with a most
gentle Saviour, who asks nothing of us but a pure and upright
life."
Erasmus makes here the very practical and constructive suggestion,
that
"a commission of pious and learned men should bring together
into a compendium from the purest sources of the gospels and the
apostles and from their most approved commentators, the whole
philosophy of Christ, with as much simplicity as learning, as
much brevity as clearness. What pertains to the faith should be
treated in as few articles as possible; what belongs to life,
also in few words, and so put that men may know that the yoke
of Christ is easy and pleasant, not cruel; that they have been
given fathers, not tyrants; pastors, not robbers; called to
salvation, not betrayed into slavery.
"Now then," he says, "that is precisely the purpose I was
filled with when I wrote my Enchiridion. I saw the multitude
of Christians corrupted, not only in their passions, but also
in their opinions. I saw those who professed to be pastors
and doctors generally abusing the name of Christ to their own
profit,--to say nothing of those at whose nod the affairs of
men are tossed hither and thither, but at whose vices, open as
they are, it is hardly permitted to raise a groan. And in such a
turmoil of affairs, in such corruption of the world, in such a
conflict of human opinions, whither was one to flee, except to
the sacred anchor of the Gospel teaching?
"I would not defile the divine philosophy of Christ with human
decrees. Let Christ remain what he is, the centre, with certain
circles about him. I would not move the centre from its place.
Let those who are nearest Christ, priests, bishops, cardinals,
popes, whose duty it is to follow the Lamb wherever he goes,
embrace that most perfect part and, so far as may be, hand
it on to the next in order. Let the second circle contain
temporal princes, whose arms and whose laws are in the service
of Christ.... In the third circle let us place the mass of the
people as the dullest part of this world, but yet, dull as it
is, a member of the body of Christ. For the eyes are not the
only members of the body, but also the hands and the feet. And
for these we ought to have consideration, so that, as far as
possible, they may be called to those things which are nearer to
Christ,--for in this body he who is now but a foot may come to
be an eye.... So a mark is to be set before all, toward which
they may strive, and there is but one mark, namely Christ and
his pure doctrine. But if, instead of a heavenly mark you set
an earthly one, there will be nothing towards which one may
properly strive. That which is highest is meant for all, that we
may at least attain to some moderate height.... The perfection
of Christ is in our motives, not in the form of our life, in
our minds, not in dress or food. There are some among the monks
whom the third circle would scarcely accept,--I am speaking now
of good ones, but weak. There are some, even among men twice
married, whom Christ would think worthy of the first circle. It
is no offence to any particular form of life if what is best and
most perfect is put forth as a standard for all. Every kind of
life has its own peculiar dangers and he who shows them up makes
no reflection upon the institution, but is rather defending its
cause."
This highly characteristic letter closes with a review of the early
history and purpose of the monastic orders and emphasises still
further Erasmus' point that he has no quarrel with monks as such, but
only in so far as they set more value upon forms than upon the true
following of Christ.
"I would have all Christians so live that those who alone are
now called 'religious' should seem very little religious--and
that is true to-day in not a few cases; for why should we hide
what is open to all?"
His picture of the true monks, as Benedict and Bernard would have had
them, must have seemed Utopian indeed. They were merely voluntary
communities of friends, living
"in the liberty of the spirit according to the Gospel law, and
under certain necessary rules about dress and food. They hated
riches, they avoided all offices, even those of the church;
they laboured with their hands, so that they might not only be
no burden upon others, but might have a surplus to relieve
distress; they dwelt upon mountain-peaks, in swamps, and sandy
deserts."
Now let whoever will compare all this with the monks of his own day!
Things had moved very rapidly in the fifteen years since Erasmus
had written the Enchiridion, but the tone of this defence is quite
in harmony with that of the book itself. It is not loose and vulgar
abuse of the "religious" orders, but rather a calm and consistent
appeal to the one true standard of Christian life, namely to the
teaching and example of Christ himself.
This is the great interest of this little manual of the Christian
gentleman. It shows Erasmus as a clear-eyed critic of existing
institutions, rather than as a man who had any definite scheme of
reform to propose. Throughout the book there is but one concrete
proposition: that a commission be appointed--by whom is not
suggested--to reduce the substance of Christian faith and morals to
such simple form that it could be understood by everyone. A very
pretty and amiable suggestion indeed, but hardly suited to a moment
when the irreconcilable nature of the great conflict between a
religious system founded upon formalism and the simple morality of
the Gospel was beginning to be more and more clearly felt.
In the year following the publication of the Enchiridion, while
Erasmus was quietly going on with his studies, living where he could
find a comfortable place for the moment, he was suddenly called upon
to perform one of the very few public functions of his life. Philip,
Duke of Burgundy, son of the Emperor Maximilian and administrator of
the government in the Low Countries, was returning from a journey to
Spain and France in the year 1504 and was to be received at Brussels
with all fitting demonstrations of loyalty and affection. Among other
things the community desired to show its appreciation of learning by
inflicting upon the young man a public oration in as good style as
they could pay for.
Erasmus was chosen for this task and fulfilled it with success if
not with enthusiasm. His extravagant phrases of laudation, in which
the prince is credited with almost more than human qualities, cannot
interest us. They are purely conventional and can convince us neither
of the prince's merit nor of the orator's insincerity. More important
for us is the evidence that even through such formal surroundings,
the originality of the man cannot fail to make itself here and there
felt.
The oration was delivered in the ducal palace at Brussels. In its
printed form it fills over twenty folio pages and can hardly have
occupied less than three or four hours in delivery. One would imagine
that even the divine virtues of the young prince could hardly have
kept up his spirits while these ponderous paragraphs were being read
to him, and it is certainly to be hoped that he was let off with
an abbreviated edition. He may well have yawned over the tedious
narrative of his journey to Spain and his magnificent reception in
France, but he was, probably seldom privileged to hear such sound
instruction as Erasmus dealt out to him from point to point of his
discourse.[65]
[65] iv., 529-F.
"Even to-day," said the orator, "there are not wanting those who
croak into the ears of kings such stuff as this:--'Why should
you hesitate? Have you forgotten that you are a prince? Is not
your pleasure the law? It is the part of kings to live not by
rule but by the lust of their own hearts. Whatever any of your
subjects has, that belongs to you. It is yours to give life and
to take it away; yours to make or to ruin the fortunes of whom
you will. Others are praised or blamed, but to you everything is
honourable, everything praiseworthy. Will you listen to those
philosophers and scholastics?... Seal your ears with wax, most
noble Duke, against the fatal song of these Sirens; like Homer's
Ulysses, or rather, like Virgil's Æneas, steer your course so
far from their coast that the poison of their seductive voices
may not touch the soundness of your mind."
"By what names we call you, it matters little to you, for you
do not think yourself to be other than what Homer calls the
'shepherd of the people' or Plato its 'guardian.' You have
discovered a new way to increase the revenues of your nobles and
of yourself: by diminishing expense instead of increasing taxes.
Oh! wonderful soul! you deprive yourself that your subjects may
abound; you deny yourself that there may be the more for the
multitude. You keep watch, that we may sleep in safety. You are
wearied with continual anxieties, that your own may have peace.
You wear your princedom, not for yourself, but for your land."
"The Astrologers declare that in certain years there appear
long-tailed stars which bring mighty convulsions into human
affairs, touching both the minds and the bodies of men with
fatal force and terribly affecting rivers, seas, earth, and air.
But no comet can arise so fatal to the earth as a bad prince,
nor any planet so healthful as a blameless ruler."
The most striking part of the panegyric, however, is that which
compares the virtues of peace with those of war. Here Erasmus
makes his first great declaration of principles as to the absolute
wickedness and folly of war and henceforth, during his whole life,
he never failed to repeat and to emphasise them. We cannot account
for this consistent attitude on any theory of personal timidity or
even on the ground that the scholar's work demanded peace for its
full development. This latter argument we do find in Erasmus, but it
might equally well be turned in favour of war as furnishing those
stirring episodes and kindling that enthusiasm for heroic deeds which
have always been inspiring to literary genius. Erasmus was sincerely
and profoundly impressed with the enormous waste of energy which war
seemed to imply and believed with all his heart that the motives
leading to it were almost invariably bad. In a day when the peoples
of Europe were continually involved in wars and rumours of wars, it
was an act of no little courage for this solitary scholar to stand
before a great assembly of princes and plead the sacred cause of
peace.
Considerable ingenuity is shown in his clever reply to the argument
that peace is enervating to the ruler. Bravery, Erasmus says, is far
easier in war, for we see that a very poor kind of man may show it
there; but to govern the spirit, to control desire, to put a bridle
upon greed, to restrain the temper,--that kind of courage is peculiar
to the wise and good. Of all these peaceful virtues he declares
Philip to be the model, and it is of little account to us whether
this praise be well or ill applied. Our interest is in the growth
of Erasmus' own ideas and the part they had in fitting him for the
work he was to do. His description of the miseries of war is a really
noble piece of eloquence and reason.
We shall have occasion again to refer to Erasmus' peace propaganda.
Enough here that he had the courage to speak his mind under
circumstances which might well have led a less manly orator to dwell
upon the glory and profit of a warlike policy. His listener, involved
as he was at that moment in as tangled a web of negotiations as ever
European diplomacy had yet woven, must have smiled in his sleeve at
this harmless pedantry of the worthy scholar. Certainly no action
of his life up to that time or in the short years left to him can
indicate any preference for peace for its own sake.
More grateful, doubtless, to the princely ears were Erasmus'
prognostications of his future. He had no faith in astrology,
but he seemed to see in the evident trend of European affairs an
accumulation of powers in the hand of duke Philip, which was to be
realised in the person of his son Charles. The orator lets himself
go in laudation of Maximilian, Ferdinand, Joanna, and Philip
himself, with confident prediction of a magnificent future. In fact
Maximilian's career was a series of brilliant failures. Ferdinand
was in continual dread of Philip and often in open hostility with
him. Joanna was already showing traces of that hopeless insanity,
aggravated it was said by the cruel frivolities of Philip, which was
to taint the house of Habsburg to this day. Finally Philip was to die
of disease within two years, without realising any of the schemes of
aggrandisement to which his life was devoted.
But if Erasmus' prophecy was bad, his scheme of princely morals, as
here laid down, was good, and it indicates clearly the bent of his
serious thought. A man with his sense of humour--in other words, with
his common sense--could not fail to see the discrepancy between the
actual Philip and the being whom he had here depicted. When he came
to publish his panegyric he found it necessary to defend himself
against the charge of falsehood. In a letter[66] to his friend
Paludanus, professor of rhetoric at Louvain, he goes at considerable
length into the obligation of a writer of such things to tell the
truth. He supports his own action by reference to classic panegyrists
and lays down the general principle, that one can do more to help a
prince by praising him for virtues he has not, than by blaming him
for the faults he has.
[66] iv., 550.
"Just," he says, "as the best of physicians declares to his
patient that he likes his colour and the expression of his
face, not because these things are so, but that he may make them
so. Augustine, so they say, confesses that he told many a lie in
praise of emperors. Paul the apostle himself not infrequently
employs the device of pious adulation, praising in order that he
may reform."
The panegyric to Philip, in its published form, was dedicated to
Nicholas Ruterius, bishop of Arras. In the dedicatory letter Erasmus
professes that this kind of writing was distasteful to him, and
defends himself again by the reflection that
"there is no way so effectual for improving a prince, as to
present to him, under the form of praise, the model of a good
prince,--provided only that you ascribe virtues to him and take
faults away from him in such wise that you urge him to the one
and warn him from the other."
We are led to believe that Prince Philip was graciously pleased to
approve the discourse of Erasmus. Doubtless he was as quick as the
orator himself to explain it in a Pickwickian sense wherever it
verged too closely upon unpleasant facts. He gave him a handsome
present and is said to have offered him a place in his service which
Erasmus, as usual, declined.