DEFINITE BREACH WITH THE REFORMING PARTIES--HUTTEN'S
"EXPOSTULATIO" AND ERASMUS' "SPONGIA"
1520-1523
We have followed the course of Erasmus' thought during these first
critical years, 1518 and 1519, when the purpose of the Lutheran
movement was shaping itself into a definite policy. It could not
be said that Luther had at the outset any "programme" whatever.
His leadership was to be defined by the resistless logic of the
events which were now following in swift succession, each leading
to the next with compelling force. In 1518 Luther had gone as far
as Augsburg to meet the papal legate Cajetanus, who had simply
ordered him to retract. Luther had replied that he was ready to
be instructed, but until better informed, he was _bound_ by the
word of God and could not think otherwise than as he did. He had
got safely out of Augsburg, but never again risked himself within
the papal grasp. In 1519 he had accepted the challenge of John
Eck of Ingolstadt, one of the most skilful disputants of the day
according to the scholastic method, to meet him at Leipzig under the
protection of Duke George of Saxony and there discuss the issues
presented by the Theses. So long as the discussion had kept to the
traditional lines of mediæval argumentation Luther had felt himself
at a disadvantage. He had chafed under this feeling and finally
had allowed himself to be entrapped into that magnificent burst
of passion in which he had declared that in the writings of the
condemned heretic, John Hus, there was much that was "right Christian
and evangelical." For the first time and partly without his own will
he had said that the papacy was not an essential element of the
church organisation.
Henceforth there was no room for compromise. The papacy, now fairly
aroused to the magnitude of the situation, replied in 1520, at Eck's
prompting, with its last weapon, the bull of excommunication. This
weapon fell absolutely harmless. The academic youth of Wittenberg,
with Luther at their head, marched in festive procession to the
Elstergate, kindled a bonfire, and threw into it the offending
document. But this was not all. Papal bulls had often met this fate
before, without serious loss of prestige for the authority which lay
behind them. This time, however, not merely the bull in question, but
also a copy of the Canon Law, the whole body of legal authority on
which the power to issue bulls rested, was committed to the flames.
That meant, not merely that Luther and all who supported him refused
to obey this particular decree, but that they proposed to emancipate
themselves, once for all, from the control of the whole system which
it represented. With this step the Lutheran movement passed from the
stage of Reformation to the stage of Revolution.
At this point the eminently constructive nature of Luther's genius
began to display itself. He had not rejected one authority in order
to escape all authority. He had not thrown aside one ecclesiastical
order, to leave the Church without any order at all. In those
splendid proclamations of the year 1520, "The Babylonian Captivity of
the Church," the "Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany," and
the "Freedom of the Christian Man," he unfolded his programme for a
new and purified church order on the basis of the Christian state.
Luther's apologists in Germany have sought to save him from the
charge, dreadful to German ears, of being a revolutionist. Let us,
citizens of a nation to which revolution has meant only the entrance
into a larger and a better-ordered public life, admit frankly that
the action of North Germany in the years following 1520 was, so far
as church matters were concerned, revolutionary, and that only as
such can it be justified or understood. True, it was defended then
and has been defended ever since as being merely a return to an order
of things once realised in the early Church. But when a body of
institutions have held their own for a thousand years their overthrow
cannot be disguised by any gentle figures of speech about mere
reformation and restoration.
That the world of Europe in 1520 felt itself involved in a work
of revolution is abundantly proved by the action of every party
concerned. That the papacy should so regard it was self-evident. All
reformation which should go beyond the stage of merely commending
virtue and condemning vice must seem to it revolutionary. Its
fundamental proposition was that all which was had, in its essence,
always been, and that every innovation must therefore tend to destroy
something essential to the very nature of the Church. From the moment
when the papal government began at all to comprehend the meaning of
the German revolt, it began to treat it as revolution.
More striking still, however, is the rapidity with which all the
restless elements of society recognised that here was an idea closely
akin to their own instinct of revolution. Hardly had Luther's first
propositions, temperate and modest as they were, been put forth,
when, in his immediate circle of influence, men were found who were
ready to draw the last logical consequences from them. If it was true
that men were justified in the sight of God solely by faith, then
obviously there was no need of any mediating agency whatever. Away
with all forms, priesthoods, ceremonies, and sacraments as so much
useless rubbish piled up by centuries of wrong! If it was true that
God's dealing with man was direct and not indirect, then why might
not men look for immediate inspiration of the divine spirit as of old
before all this machinery of priests and forms had been invented? If
the word of God was not to be bound by a papacy, why let it be bound
by an ancient book, in which, as was well known, there was a plenty
of errors and falsities? Had God, then, ceased to communicate with
man? All these questions were asked by men of thought and education;
and the answers were not slow in coming. They came, as in times of
great social unrest they always come, in the form of wild theories
and passionate claims, none of which was quite without a basis of
reason, but which, taken together, called up a ghastly spectre that
could bear no other name than Revolution. The message of deliverance
from the bondage of personal sin without the aid of a corrupt and
greedy church establishment swelled rapidly into a summons to
deliverance from every form of restraint and oppression. The men of
theory, the Carlstadts and the Münzers, carried the word to the men
of action and of suffering. From 1522 to 1524 the gospel of freedom
through faith was being worked over to suit the needs of the vast
peasant population of Middle and Western Germany. In 1524 and 1525 it
burst out in the furious cry of these oppressed classes for equality
of rights as the social expression of the equality of salvation.
Subtle economic causes were, as always, at work and were leading in
the same direction.
Just as the papacy was quick to recognise the revolutionary meaning
of the Lutheran propositions, so Luther recognised how essentially
revolutionary were all these wider movements which, quite against his
will, had made use of his initiative to gain headway for themselves.
In his retreat on the Wartburg after the Diet at Worms he heard of
the radical doings of Carlstadt and the prophets from Zwickau at
Wittenberg. At once he saw the danger and hurried to meet it. He
succeeded in purifying Wittenberg from the taint of fanaticism only
to scatter its seeds far and wide over the land. Henceforth it became
perhaps the most important and distinctly the most difficult problem
of the Lutheran party to show to the world its conservative and
constructive side, without withdrawing for a moment from its original
position of hostility to the papal system.
And, finally, from the political side, the revolutionary tendencies
of the Lutheran position were no less clearly visible. Luther's
perfectly sound instinct had shown him from the first that the German
people were not to be carried away by any abstractions of democracy.
Nor, on the other hand, was there any hope of reviving the ancient
authority of the emperor. Luther's appeal to the German nobility
was based on the fact that whatever political virtue there was in
Germany was to be found in its princes, and the response of the
princes proved them equal to the emergency. The call to defend the
new religion involved also the prospect of complete deliverance from
all imperial control.
The full meaning of the Lutheran movement is, of course, far clearer
to us than it could have been to anyone in the year 1520, and yet
as early as 1525 every one of the points of view just indicated had
been clearly recognised by every thoughtful observer. The tendencies
were plain; the question was, how soon and how far would tendencies
develop into facts.
In such a mortal strife as this where was there room for poor
Erasmus? The answer to this question is the history of the seventeen
remaining years of his life--years as full of activity as any that
had gone before them. Protest as he might that this struggle was
none of his, it is evident that it formed the real undertone of his
thought and drew from him the utterances by which his character as
a public man has ever since been estimated. We may, without unduly
stretching the meaning of his changing attitude towards the reform,
divide it into three stages. Until 1520 we feel the note of sympathy
and the desire merely to restrain excesses. After that year, and
increasingly as the economic and social results began to appear,
we find the attitude of direct hostility becoming more pronounced.
Finally, under the increasing pressure to justify himself in this
hostility, we find Erasmus laying down in more formal shape his
philosophical and theological position as against that of the
Lutheran party.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ERASMUS TO JOHANNES LANGE.
EXIMIO THEOLOGO JO. LANGIO.
S. p. Vir optime. Lei me miseresceret, ni tam virulenter rem
gessisset, ita tractatur etiam a suis Anglis. Habet et Hispania
Leum alterum. Zuniga quidam edidit librum ut audio satis
virulentum adversus Fabrum ac me. Vetuerat Cardinalis Toletanus
defunctus. Eo mortuo prodidit sua venena. Opus nondum vidi. Id
caveat ne liber veniat in manus meas. Nescio quem finem hic
tumultus sit habiturus. Nam omnino res ad seditionem spectat,
a qua semper abhorrui. Si necesse est ut oriantur scandala,
certe a me [non] proficisci. Devotis animis conspirant isti,
ac summorum regum aulas oppugnant, ac vereor, ne expugnent.
De Philippo, Œcolampadio quod scio cognoveram ex aliorum
litteris. Utramque epistolam tuam accepi. Bene vale vir in
domino mihi colende.
LOVANII, postrid. Cal. Aug.
ERASMUS ex animo tuus.
TO THE DISTINGUISHED THEOLOGIAN JOHANNES LANGE.
GREETING.
MOST EXCELLENT SIR:
I should be sorry for Lee, if he had not been so violent in
the matter; so badly is he treated even by his own Englishmen.
In Spain there is a second Lee. A certain Zuniga has, I hear,
published a tolerably savage book against Faber and me. The late
Cardinal of Toledo had prohibited it, but now that the cardinal
is dead, he has given forth his poison. I have not seen the
work, and let him beware that it does not come into my hands! I
know not what will be the end of this disturbance. Everything
points towards revolution, a thing I have always abhorred. If
it must be that offences come, at any rate they shall [not]
come from me. Those people are conspiring with all their might;
they are besieging the courts of the most potent kings and I
fear they will overcome them. All that I know about Philip and
Œcolampadius I have learned from the letters of others. Both of
your letters I have received.
Farewell, beloved in the Lord.
Your most devoted
ERASMUS.
LOUVAIN, Aug. 2, [1521?].]
The group of letters cited above reflect an agitated, nervous
uncertainty of mind on Erasmus' part. They are filled largely with
negations, so arranged as to balance each other with considerable
success. They leave on our minds the impression of a dual
personality: on the one hand a man childishly sensitive to abuse
and fancying that every misdirected shaft of the popular wit or
feeling was aimed at him; on the other hand, a man of wide and clear
vision, with an outlook over the whole field of human interests and
with a perfectly sound comprehension of the ultimate principles by
which these interests must be regulated. His chief source of
difficulty was his failure to admit the distinctions between the
destructive and the constructive forces of the reform. While Luther
was using all his energies to make clear to the world that what
he aimed at was reconstruction, Erasmus persisted in confounding
in one sweeping condemnation all the elements of disturbance he
saw abroad in the world. As he had connected Luther and Reuchlin
in his declarations of ignorance and hostility, so, as time went
on, he mingled Lutherans, Anabaptists, Zwinglians, and all the
swarm of popular agitators in his indictments. Yet he constantly
lets it appear that he knew as well as anyone the deep-seated
distinctions in the reforming groups. He chose to confuse them in his
public utterances, in order to keep himself right with that great
Establishment which was the mortal enemy of them all.
Meanwhile the practical problem of the Lutheran reform was shaping
itself rapidly in accordance with the whole previous development of
the German people. The death of the Emperor Maximilian was an event
of slight importance, excepting as it opened the way for one of those
great electoral contests, which from time to time came to remind
the German nation of its own peculiar political character. We must
dismiss once for all the fancy that the elected emperor resembled,
except in the vaguest fashion, the great hereditary monarchs of
England, France, or Spain. So far as his imperial quality was
concerned, he had long since become the merest anachronism. He was
emperor of nothing but a title; and he owed his title to a group of
princes whose liberties he was bound to respect, even to the point
of self-destruction. Territorially, he might be strong or weak,
according to the personal sovereignty which he held before he became
emperor. Politically he had as much weight as he could personally
command, and no more. He might be a German or he might not.
The electoral canvass of 1519-20 was the most elaborate the empire
had ever seen. The kings of Spain, France, and England were all, at
one time or another, among the candidates. A German national party,
which saw the hope of the nation in a policy of separation from all
"imperial" interests, was eager for a purely German emperor and put
forward as its candidate the venerable Frederic, Prince-Elector of
Saxony, the immediate sovereign of Luther. If Frederic had acted
promptly and put himself decidedly at the head of this German
national party it seems as if he might have been elected. He
hesitated, declined on grounds of personal distrust, and finally gave
his electoral vote for that one among the foreign candidates who
seemed least likely to abuse the constitutional privileges of the
German princes.
Charles V., grandson of Maximilian through that Archduke Philip
to whom Erasmus had written his panegyric in 1504, grandson also
of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain through their daughter Joanna,
grandson again of that Mary of Burgundy who had carried the Low
Countries as her most precious dower to her husband Maximilian, was
a youth of twenty, a German only by virtue of a strain of badly
diluted Habsburg blood, educated under Spanish influence in the Low
Countries, ignorant of the German tongue, and totally unsympathetic
with the character and traditions of the German people. The very
conception of the German state as a loose federation of practically
independent principalities was utterly foreign to his training and
his inheritance.
The election of Charles V. gave courage to all defenders of the
existing church order. As to his personal orthodoxy there could be no
question whatever. Nor was there any more reason to doubt his loyalty
to the traditions of his family as to the duty of a Christian ruler
toward the institutions of what passed for Christianity. If there
had been any room for question on these points, it would have been
removed by Charles's action in the Low Countries in the very first
years of the Lutheran revolt. He had taken hold of the matter with
a strong hand and demonstrated his loyalty by prompt action against
heretical books and persons. His first great public declaration of
policy, however, was at his first appearance on German soil at the
famous Diet at Worms in 1521. It was, properly, regarded as a piece
of liberality that Luther was invited to come personally to Worms and
defend himself before the emperor and the legate of Pope Leo X., that
same Aleander who had been a fellow-worker with Erasmus in the Aldine
workshop at Venice. Luther was already a condemned heretic. The only
question was whether the Empire as such would ratify the action of
the pope and lend its arm to enforce the papal decrees.
Luther's journey from Wittenberg and his appearance in Worms were a
demonstration of his popularity throughout Northern Germany. Charles
V., youth as he was, was too clever a politician to offend too
deeply at this outset of his reign a whole people whose services he
might at any moment sorely need. He heard Luther with patience, he
respected his safe-conduct, and let him return to Saxony in safety;
but he published as the formal decision of the Diet the Edict of
Worms, wherein Luther was declared in the ban of the Empire as he was
already in the ban of the Church, and his books were condemned to be
burned wherever found.
The Edict of Worms defined the official attitude of the Empire
towards the reform from this time forth. It lacked nothing in
clearness and finality. Henceforth, whoever within the limits of the
Empire harboured either the man or his ideas was subject to immediate
punishment. The question, however, still remained, how the Edict
of Worms was to be enforced, and the answer to that question is
the history of Germany and even of Europe for the next generation.
Enough for our present purpose to say that the immediate pressure of
political and military demands outside of Germany compelled the young
emperor to postpone definite aggressive action against the Lutheran
party until the course of events had separated the whole north of
Germany from all but a nominal connection with the Empire. We are
concerned with the action of Erasmus upon these events and their
reaction upon his course of life.
Erasmus left Louvain in 1521. As to his motives in this change we
are as much in the dark as about any of his former migrations. We
know what his critics said about it and what he replied to their
criticisms. They said he was afraid to stay in a country where
heretics were being arrested every day and where, as he had all
along been declaring, he was regarded as the head and front of this
whole offending. He replied that this was pure nonsense, as could
be clearly proved by the fact that after leaving Louvain he still
lingered for several months in the Low Countries before taking up his
journey to Basel. He went to Basel, he said, for the same reasons
which had carried him thither before; namely, to superintend the
publication of some of his works.
The most detailed account of this interval between Louvain and Basel
is given in a long letter,[141] dated in 1523, to Marcus Laurinus,
dean of St. Donatian at Bruges. The tone of this letter is that which
had now become habitual with Erasmus, namely, of elaborate defence
against all charges, no matter from what source, which could in any
way affect his loyalty to the Roman Church on the one hand or to his
own principle of free criticism on the other. His especial grievance
is the charge of cowardice in leaving Louvain.
[141] iii.¹, 748.
"As long as I was at Louvain," he writes, "whenever I went to
Brussels or Mechlin, though I had promised to return within ten
days, those people, who are ashamed of nothing, would spread
a rumour that I had run away through fear. Then when I was
taking a holiday for my health at Anderlech, a place close by
Brussels, where the king's palace is, and often running back to
Louvain,--why then, I was in hiding! Frequently, I was at the
same moment down with a hopeless fever at Louvain and had fallen
from my horse and died of apoplexy at Brussels; and this at a
time when I was--thanks be to Christ!--never better in my life.
It was not enough to have killed the hapless Erasmus once for
all, but they must needs butcher him with so many diseases, slay
him with such a variety of tortures!
"I did not go to the assembly at Worms,--or as learned men are
now beginning to call it at 'Mutton-headtown,'--although I was
invited, partly because I did not wish to be involved in the
affair of Luther, which was then violently discussed; partly
because I easily foresaw that in such a great sewage of princes
and men of various races, the plague could not fail to appear as
it did at Cologne when the emperor was first there.
"When the emperor came back to Brussels, there was scarcely
a day that I did not ride through the market-place and past
the court and often I was about the court; in fact, I was
almost more a resident at Brussels than at Anderlech. I daily
paid my compliments to the bishops, though ordinarily I was
not overzealous in such matters. I dined with the cardinal. I
conversed with both nuncios; I visited ambassadors and they
called upon me at Anderlech. Never in my life was I less in
concealment, never more openly before the eyes of all men. And
meanwhile there were some among those babblers who wrote to
Germany that Erasmus was somewhere in hiding,--which I never
found out until I got here in Basel. And again when the emperor
was at Brussels with the king of Denmark, and Thomas, cardinal
of York, was there as ambassador of the king of England, you
know yourself, even if I had kept myself to your house, how much
in hiding I should have been; since you had all, or at least the
chief dignitaries of the court at your table and I was sitting
among them a welcome guest, as I believe, to them all. How often
I lunched or dined with the foremost men, even with the king of
Denmark, who wanted me as his daily table-companion! Where did I
not go riding, often in company with you! At what festivity of
the great people was I not present--now at the imperial court,
now in the family of the cardinal of York, now at one house, now
at another! Yet I often refused invitations; for I am by nature
a home-lover and my studies require a home-keeping life.
"In the same way that I was then hiding, I afterward ran away!
For six whole months I was getting ready for my journey to Basel
and that openly before all men. Why, the emperor's treasurer
paid over my pension before it was due, because I told him I was
going to Basel! Nor was the reason for my journey unknown, it
being the same for which I had already so often gone to Basel
before I became afraid of those heroes!... I was all ready to
start, waiting only to decide upon the road and to have a safe
escort. Meanwhile I had to collect money in divers places and
for this purpose spent six days at Louvain,--hiding there too,
of course, as my custom was,--at an inn where no guests ever
came, so that it is a most retired place! It is at the sign of
The Savage. By the purest accident there was there at the time
Jerome Aleander, with whom I lived on the most friendly terms,
sometimes sitting with him over literary talk until far into the
night. We agreed that if a safe escort should offer, we would
journey together. Returning after a few days I found Aleander
getting ready to start, just as I was.... It was my birthday and
that of the apostles Simon and Jude."
Having thus proved that up to the very moment of his departure he was
on the best of terms with everyone in the Low Countries from whom he
could have anything to fear, even with Aleander, the archfiend of the
Lutherans, Erasmus goes on to describe his journey. There is nothing
especially noteworthy in this description. It is the same old story
of dangers and wearinesses by the way, of German inns and German
stoves and the troubles they brought him. Yet in the little notes of
persons whom he met and how they received him we get some of the most
significant and attractive glimpses of the widespread relations of
Erasmus with every grade of scholarly activity. In these accounts of
journeys occur frequently the words _sodalitium_ and _fraternitas_.
At Strassburg Jacob Spiegel, an imperial secretary, presented him
to "the fraternity." From Schlettstadt "certain of the fraternity"
escorted him to Colmar. These words seem to refer to the group of
scholars in any city and give us a pleasant suggestion of the growing
comradeship of learning all through the northern centres of culture.
He tells us how warmly he was received at Basel by the bishop, the
magistrates, and other chief men of the church and the university.
Everybody knew that he was there, and yet
"those fools were spreading the story that I had gone over to
Wittenberg. Is there anything they would be ashamed of? My
health was fairly good at Basel until the rooms began to be
cold. When I found that this cold was unbearable to others, I
suffered a moderate fire to be built now and then, but this
good-nature cost me dear. Soon a vile rheum broke out and
thereupon followed the gravel."
Then his digestion went to pieces--until, what with one thing and
another, he was wretched enough "to suit even Nicholas Egmund," his
Carmelite terror at Louvain.
In spite of his pains, however, he went to work and kept at it so
steadily that within a short time he finished his annotations to
the third edition of the New Testament, and did the whole of his
Paraphrase of Matthew. This latter work he sent to the emperor, and
was informed that it had been received with great favour. The best
proof of this was, that at a moment when many pensions were being
taken away or cut down, he was promised that his should be maintained
and perhaps even increased. He takes this occasion to defend himself
against the charge of staying so long away from the emperor through
fear, as was alleged. The only thing he feared was that he might
be called upon to write against Luther "by one whose request could
not be denied. Not that I favoured that seditious affair, being as
I am a man who shrinks from all controversy by a certain instinct
of nature; so that if I might gain a landed estate by a lawsuit I
would rather lose my estate than push my claim." He goes on in this
strain at such length that one can hardly avoid the conclusion that
we are here touching upon the real reason of his leaving Louvain.
It is a tolerably safe principle that when Erasmus is especially
insistent he is trying to make the worse appear the better reason. He
insists that he was totally unfit for such work of controversy and
ends up by saying that in spite of all this he would have gone back
to meet the emperor if his disease had permitted. Indeed he tried
the journey, got as far as Schlettstadt, broke down completely, and
barely got back alive to Basel. By this time it was too late to see
the emperor, who was to sail for Spain about May 1st. So Erasmus
stayed a while longer at Basel, restless and fidgeting as usual. Now
it was a new dream of Italy that haunted him. He was, or believed
himself to be, or wished others to believe that he was, invited by
a host of distinguished well-wishers there to come and take up his
residence among them. In fact he made a journey to Constance with his
young friends Eppendorf and Beatus. They were charmingly entertained
by John Botzheim, a canon of the place, and we owe to this visit one
of the very few descriptions of natural scenery which Erasmus has
left us. He seems for once really to have been captivated by the
delightful situation of Constance, the beautiful lake, the course
of the Rhine, "holding islands in its smiling embrace," the falls
at Schaffhausen, and the towering Alps looking down upon the whole
scene. We may well believe that, at least when he wrote these words,
the sentiment of Italy was strong upon him. An escort, he says, was
just ready to start for Trent. "The Alps smiling down upon me close
at hand beckoned me on. My friends dissuaded me, but they would have
done so in vain, if the gravel, that potent orator, had not persuaded
me to go back to Basel and fly up into my nest again."
He remained three weeks at Constance in great suffering, took ship as
far as Schaffhausen, and so back as fast as he could ride to Basel. I
confess to a strong impression that these two trips, to Schlettstadt
and to Constance, were merely excursions, such as Erasmus was
constantly making from any point where he happened to be living, and
that he had no more intention of going to Italy in the one case than
of returning to Louvain in the other. Yet one would equally hesitate
to say that he had a fixed purpose of remaining permanently at Basel.
On his return Erasmus enjoyed a genuine sensation, which seems almost
to have marked an epoch in his life. This seemed the favourable
moment to open a package of choice Burgundy, sent to him some time
before by the episcopal coadjutor of Basel. "At the first taste it
did not wholly please the palate, but the night brought out the
native quality of the wine." He felt himself a new man. He had always
believed that his disease was brought on by vile sour and adulterated
wines, "worthy to be drunk by heretics, punishment fit for the worst
malefactor." He had tried Burgundian wines before, but they were
harsh and heating. This was just right, neither sweet nor sour, but
pleasant, and so on. He bursts out into a eulogy of Burgundy, that
happy land, "worthy to be called the mother of men, since thou hast
milk like this in thy breasts!" "I tell you, my dear Laurinus, it
would take little to persuade me to move over for good into Burgundy.
'For the wine's sake?' you ask. Why, I would rather migrate to
Ireland than try another attack of the gravel." This sends him off
again into declarations that he is everywhere a welcome guest.
The point of all this seems to be that he wishes to have it quite
clear that while it is on the one hand perfectly safe for him to
go or stay where he will, he is, on the other hand, equally free
from any permanent ties anywhere. Someone had reported that he had
bought a house and acquired the right of citizenship at Basel. This
he denies. To be sure, the house in which he is now living had been
offered him by some friends, but he has not accepted it. As for
citizenship, he has never so much as dreamed of it. "A certain person
of importance at Zürich has more than once written to offer me the
right of citizenship there. I wondered why he should do this, and
replied that I preferred to be a citizen of the world, rather than of
any one city."
Once set going on this subject it seems as if Erasmus could not stop.
He now pays his respects to those who reported, with some reason,
he says, that he was thinking of going to France. Having found the
secret of his disease in the badness of his wines, he begins to
wonder what will happen to him if, by reason of wars, he should be
unable to get his Burgundy direct. Perhaps, after all, it would be
wiser to go over into France, where he would at least be sure of
his wine. He even went so far as to get from the French king through
his ambassador at Basel a safe-conduct for the journey, and kept
reminding himself how fond he had always been of France--a fondness
which, by the way, he had shown by keeping out of France for now
about fifteen years. If he had only accepted that "magnificent offer"
of six years before, he would have been spared all these "tragedies"
with those stupid babblers at Louvain. Perhaps his health and his
fortunes might have been better too. It would be pleasant to be near
the borders of Brabant, so that he might run over and see his friends
there. But there was just one obstacle: the war between the three
kings. To Charles he was bound by an oath; to Henry and the whole
English people by ties of affection; to Francis also by irresistible
attachment on account of the king's interest in him. Of course it
would never do for so important a personage as Erasmus to offend two
of his royal friends by going to live with the third.
Why did he not come back to Brabant? He hears that there is there
just now a great scarcity of everything, but especially of French
wines, and besides "a sword has been given to certain violent men,
to whom one can be neither a colleague nor an opponent." There are
enemies in every direction.
"Rome has her Stunica; Germany has some who can't say a good
word of me. I hear that certain 'Lutherans,' as they call them,
are complaining because I am too gentle with the princes and
too fond of peace. I confess I would rather err on this side,
not only because it is safer, but because it is a more holy
cause. Everyone to his taste. There are those on the other side
who try to cast on me the suspicion of being in league with the
Lutherans."
Now each party seemed to Erasmus to be trying to catch him by
stirring him up against the other. They told him his books had been
burnt in Brabant by Hoogstraaten, hoping to make him write something
against the inquisitor which would drive him over definitely into the
Lutheran camp. Poor Botzheim at Constance wrote, _pene exanimatus_
("scared almost to death,"), that Erasmus' books had been publicly
condemned at Rome by papal order. These traps had been sprung in
vain. He had seen through the trick and kept his peace and the
truth had come out. Far from condemning him, the papal party at
Rome had done its best to win him to its service, even offering
him a considerable benefice if he would come. Then this again had
produced countercharges of bribery, which he very properly dismisses
by saying: "If I could have been drawn into this fight by bribes I
should have been drawn in long ago." Now he hears a third rumour,
worse than the other two: the pope has written some kind of a
pamphlet against him! but again he sees the trick; they want to make
him say something against the pope. Others say that Lutherans are
flocking to Basel to consult with him, some even that Luther is in
hiding there.
"Would that it were true that all Lutherans and anti-Lutherans
too, would come for my advice and agree to follow it; the
world would be far better off in my opinion. Many persons have
come hither to see and to salute me, sometimes in companies and
generally unknown to me; but never has one called himself a
Lutheran in my presence; it is not my business to make inquiries
and I am no prophet. Before this trouble broke out I was in
literary correspondence with almost all the scholars of Germany,
to me a most agreeable relation. Of these some have given me the
cold shoulder, some are quite estranged from me, and some are
my open enemies and seeking my ruin. Some were good friends of
mine, who are now more severe towards Luther than I could wish
and more than is good for their cause. I dismiss no one from my
friendship either because he is too friendly or too hostile to
Luther; each acts in good faith.
"Men have come to Basel who were said to be under suspicion
of being partisans of Luther, and I am ready to have this all
charged upon me, if a single one of them has ever come by my
invitation or if I have not protested to my friends that it
was exceedingly disagreeable to me. If persons of this or that
faction come hither, with what reason can this be laid upon me?
I am not the gatekeeper of Basel and hold no magistracy here!
Hutten was here as a visitor for a few days and neither came to
see me nor did I visit him. And yet if it had depended upon me,
I would not have denied him an interview, an old friend and a
man whose wonderfully happy and genial talents I cannot even now
help admiring.... He could not do without a stove, on account of
his health, and I cannot bear one, and so the fact is, we did
not see each other."
He would not hesitate, he says, to receive Luther himself, and would
give him some wholesome warnings. There is good on both sides. "I
am not sure that either side can be put down without grave disaster
to many good things." If only it might be permitted him to be a mere
spectator of events! But here he is, pulled hither and yon by the
parties, each trying to make him declare himself squarely against the
other. While one party was accusing him of being the author of most
of the Lutheran writings, the other suspected him of having written
King Henry's famous answer to Luther. Upon this welcome text Erasmus
builds up a long story of his first acquaintance with this royal
treatise, a story as unimportant as the book itself. The outcome of
it all is that he is firmly convinced that the king wrote the book
with his own wits. "Even if he desired the help of scholars, his
court is filled with learned and eloquent men." Again they tell him
that four years ago he ought to have retired from the stage, content
with his great services to theology, his restoration of the true
sources of Christianity, etc. All this is very flattering, but he is
held to his work by a _choragos_ whose orders he dare not disobey.
Once more, he is charged with speaking too highly of the pope. What
he says of Leo is very well, but, they say, how can we be sure of
Leo's successor. Well, there have been good popes before Leo, and why
not after him? They say "Erasmus ought to declare: 'Thou, pope, art
Antichrist! you, bishops, are false leaders! that Roman see of yours
is an abomination to God!' and many other such things and worse."
This is the old Erasmian method, which he had consistently followed
from the beginning--to confine his criticism to evil men and refrain
from criticising institutions. If men were good, institutions would
be good.
Finally we come to the charge that Erasmus, in his paraphrase of the
ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, had allowed "a little
something" to the freedom of the human will. This is our first
encounter with a strictly dogmatic question, the one by which the
whole Lutheran position was to stand or fall. We have, however,
prepared ourselves for Erasmus' inevitable attitude on this point by
noting his insistence, throughout all his moral teaching, upon the
individual will as the dominant motive. For the moment he defends
himself only by declaring that in his Paraphrase he is merely
following all the best authorities in the Church from Origen to
Aquinas. He wrote the passage in question in 1517, before Luther had
appeared, so that it can in no way be thought of as an attack upon
him. Moreover, it is the mildest possible statement of a free-will
doctrine.
"_Some_ weight is to be given to our will and our endeavour,
but so little that in comparison with the grace of God it seems
to be as nothing. No man is condemned, except by his own fault;
but no one is saved, except by God's grace.... I saw on the
one hand Scylla luring us on to confidence in works, which I
believe to be the worst plague of religion. On the other hand I
saw Charybdis, a worse monster yet, by whom many are now being
attracted, who say: Let us follow our own lusts; whether we
torment ourselves or indulge our wills, what God has decreed
will happen all the same."
So his language has been moderate, and he has hoped simply to aid
men to virtue. The close of this letter is a really eloquent bit of
self-analysis.
"If any there be, who cannot love Erasmus because he is a feeble
Christian, let him think of me as he will. I cannot be other
than I am. If any man has from Christ greater gifts of the
Spirit and is sure of himself, let him use them for the glory of
Christ. Meanwhile it is more to my mind to follow a more humble
and a safer way. I cannot help hating dissension and loving
peace and harmony. I see how obscure all human affairs are. I
see how much easier it is to stir up confusion than to allay
it. I have learned how many are the devices of Satan. I should
not dare to trust my own spirit in all things and I am far from
being able to pronounce with certainty on the spirit of another.
I would that all might strive together for the triumph of Christ
and the peace of the Gospel, and that without violence, but in
truth and reason, we might take counsel both for the dignity of
the priesthood and for the liberty of the people, whom our Lord
Jesus desired to be free. To those who go about to this end to
the best of their ability Erasmus shall not be wanting. But if
anyone desires to throw everything into confusion, he shall not
have me either for a leader or a companion. These people claim
for themselves the working of the Spirit. Well, let people on
whom the divine spirit has breathed jump with good hopes into
the ranks of the prophets. That Spirit has not yet seized upon
me; when it does, then perhaps I too shall be counted as Saul
among the prophets."
In this long letter, written obviously with a view to publication,
we have epitomised, as Erasmus himself wished it to appear, the
story of his leaving Louvain and his attitude toward the chief
questions of the great reform. Nothing that we can add would be more
significant than the concluding paragraph. If only all men could see
both sides of every question as he did, and would join with him in
pious exhortation to everyone else to be good, he would be delighted
to be their leader and companion. This is only one of those numerous
"ifs"--though an unusually large one--by which Erasmus so often
saved himself in difficult places. It meant simply that he did not
propose to commit himself at all. The Laurinus letter was the reply
to numerous criticisms against the course of Erasmus in the years
between 1520 and 1523, years in which the various aspects of the
great reform movement were becoming more and more clearly defined. We
discern in it with great distinctness the view of Erasmus taken by
the leading spirits of the Lutheran party.
Nowhere is this Lutheran judgment of his position so vigorously
demonstrated as in his famous conflict with Ulrich von Hutten.
Hutten's personality was totally antipodal to that of Erasmus. Born
of a noble family in Würtemberg in 1488, Hutten received the training
of a soldier and took his part in the violent feuds which, in the
absence of a strong central government in Germany, were continually
wasting the energies and the resources of the great class of the
lower nobility. But Hutten was more than a soldier. He had early
come under the influence of Reuchlin, his countryman, and had given
himself with great zeal to the cause of learning. He had mastered
the technique of the scholar's profession, had made himself an
accomplished Latinist in both prose and verse, and had learned as
much Greek as was needed to decorate his Latin style. In his way
he was as marked an individual as Erasmus. He, too, was a homeless
man, an outcast from his family and his narrower Swabian fatherland,
a wanderer, seeking a living by methods even more precarious and
more questionable than Erasmus had employed, everywhere at home
if only the sun of princely or private favour would shine upon
him for the moment. But here the resemblance ends. Hutten let his
individuality carry him into wild and reckless living and finally to
ruin, but he did not let it alienate him from the great movements
of humanity going on about him. In the Reformation he was quick
to discern all those elements of social and economic change which
were sure to follow upon the religious appeal. What repelled and
estranged Erasmus, the man of peace, attracted and held Hutten, the
man of strife. In Luther's proclamation of a salvation by faith he
saw the hope of a social and religious reconstruction, in which,
inevitably, the religious system of the Middle Ages must go to the
wall. He was too little of a speculative genius to be drawn into the
logical extravagances of the radical party of Münzer and his like,
but the prospect of a glorious fight, with the weapons alike of the
intellect and of the flesh, filled him with a holy joy as it filled
Erasmus with a holy horror. Without waiting to consider or to make
certain whither it would lead him, he threw himself with passionate
energy into the Lutheran cause. Already he had made himself known,
admired, and feared by his part in the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_,
that merciless satire on the schoolmen which had done more than
any other one thing to draw the forces of light together into one
camp over against the forces of darkness. This contribution to what
others regarded as his own work did not, however, if we may take his
word for it, please Erasmus. He wanted to keep all the satirising
to himself, that it might be held within prudent limits. Thus his
earliest impressions of Hutten were not favourable. He seems to have
felt in him by "a certain instinct of nature," as he might have said,
an "unsafe" person. His early approach toward him is cautious. Hutten
sends him his works and begs for his friendship. Erasmus replies with
reserve, counsels him to keep out of fights, to devote himself to the
Muses, and to preserve his own dignity. Then we have the famous and
charming letter[142] in which Erasmus describes to Hutten the work
and character of Thomas More. But soon it is evident that Hutten is
getting out of all patience with Erasmus. The letters of 1518 and
1519, with their anxious balancing of views, were in circulation, and
had made upon this upright and downright fighting man the impression
of a trimming, fretful, petty spirit. In August, 1520, he writes to
Erasmus in a totally altered style.[143] He has now no time or temper
for compliments. In short, rapid sentences he puts the case to the
great man as one in which all shilly-shallying was out of place.
[142] iii.¹, 472.
[143] _Hutteni opera_, ed. Böcking, 1859, i., 367.
[Illustration: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.
FROM A CONTEMPORARY WOODCUT.]
"While Reuchlin's affair was all in a glow, you seemed to be in
a more weakly terror of those people [_istos_] than you ought
to have been. And now in Luther's case, you have been trying as
hard as you can to persuade his enemies that you were as far as
possible from defending the common good of the Christian world,
while they knew you really believed just the opposite. That does
not seem to be an altogether becoming thing to do.... You know
with what glee they are carrying about certain letters of yours
in which while you are trying to escape from blame, you are
putting blame on others in a hateful fashion enough. In the same
way you have been abusing the _Epistolæ obscurorum_, though you
admired them powerfully once; and you are damning Luther because
he has set in motion some things that ought not to have been
moved, when you yourself have been handling the same subjects
everywhere throughout your writings. And yet you will never make
them believe that you are not desirous of the same things. You
will just hurt us and at the same time will not pacify them. You
are irritating the more and rousing hatred by trying to hide a
thing so open as this."
We are quite prepared to understand how unwelcome to Erasmus such
direct and unequivocal language as this must have been. He had no use
for any argument that had not two sides to it. Events were moving
rapidly. While the affair of Luther was being tried at Worms in the
summer of 1521 Hutten was watching and planning for the social
overturn which he confidently expected, and out of which, he hoped,
a new Germany, regenerated in body and soul, was to arise. In the
winter of 1521-22 he drifted to Basel and spent some time there. As
yet there was no open breach between him and Erasmus. He seems to
have wished to meet him personally and to have met a flat refusal. In
the letter to Laurinus Erasmus declares that he was perfectly willing
to see Hutten, but as he could not endure a room with a stove in it,
and Hutten could not be in a room without a stove, an interview was
impossible! This silly story reappears in various other connections.
It is quite unworthy of serious examination, but was undoubtedly
a mere cover for some deeper cause. What this was may readily be
supplied. Writing to Melanchthon _after Hutten's death_,[144] Erasmus
says:
[144] iii., 817-B.
"As to my refusing Hutten an interview, the reason was not so
much the fear of exciting hostility; there was another thing
which, however, I did not touch upon in my _Spongia_. He was in
utter poverty and was seeking some nest to die in. Now I was
expected to take this '_miles gloriosus_,' pox and all, into
my house and with him that whole chorus of 'evangelicals' by
name--and nothing but the name."
We may be quite sure that here was Erasmus' real grievance. He might
pretend that he had never seen anyone at Basel who called himself
a Lutheran, but he knew that if he took Hutten into his house and
appeared on friendly terms with him, he could keep up this pretence
no longer. He knew also by a former experience that any expressions
favourable to Luther would be made the most of by Hutten. He could
not afford such a friend and he shut his door in his face.
Hutten's patience, never, we may believe, overmuch enduring, was at
an end. He made up his mind to make such a public attack upon Erasmus
as would compel him to speak out and thus commit himself once for all
on one side or the other. Erasmus heard of this intention and wrote
him a short letter[145] of expostulation, warning and threatening
him at once. In this letter he gives away his case as to the Basel
incident in the most complete fashion. He says:
[145] iii.¹, 790. Also in _Hutteni opera_, ed. Böcking, ii., 178.
"I did not refuse you an interview when you were here, but
begged you through Eppendorf, in the gentlest manner, that,
if it was only a complimentary visit, you would stay away, on
account of the enmity with which I have long been burdened even
to the risk of my life. What use is there in gaining enmity when
one cannot thereby be any help to one's friend?"
Then comes in the stove again.
Hutten was, as well he might be, rather more angered than appeased by
this missive, and soon printed his _Expostulatio cum Erasmo_.[146]
[146] _Hutteni opera_, ii., 180.
Erasmus had had to hear a good many bitter words in the years just
past, but never such stinging reproaches as these. Doubtless the
personal element played its part in adding a final goad to Hutten's
indignation; but the _Expostulatio_ is far from being a mere personal
reply to real or fancied wrongs. It is a scathing review of the whole
attitude of Erasmus towards the reform. The chief note of the charge
is cowardice, deceit, and time-serving. The underlying assumption
throughout is that Erasmus was really in sympathy with the whole
attack upon the church order from Reuchlin onwards. This assumption
is proved out of his own mouth. At every new stage of the reform he
was shown to have expressed approval, only to change approval into
condemnation as soon as there was a prospect that anything would be
done. So, on the other hand, Hutten shows Erasmus attacking all the
enemies of reform, the pope, Aleander, Hoogstraaten, and the rest,
and then changing his tone to a weak, snivelling flattery as soon
as he saw any danger in prospect. A few specimens will illustrate
the vigour and openness of Hutten's method. After the twistings and
turnings of Erasmus' style, his reads like a model of strength and
directness.
"Because of my health, or for some other reason, I could not be
away from my stove long enough to speak with you once or twice
in the whole fifty days I spent at Basel, though I would often
stand talking with friends in the midst of the market-place for
three hours at a time! Well, that is quite like your sincerity,
to take a perfectly simple thing and give it a false colouring
and to cover up the truth with an empty show.
"As I thought the matter over attentively several reasons
occurred to me why, perhaps, you might thus have fallen away
from yourself. First, your insatiable ambition for fame,
your greed for glory, which makes it impossible for you to
bear the growing powers of anyone else; and then the lack of
steadiness in your mind, which has always displeased me in you
as unworthy of your greatness and led me to believe that you
were terror-stricken by the threats of these men.... Finally I
explain it to myself by the pettiness of your mind, which makes
you afraid of everything and easily thrown into despair; for you
had so little faith in the progress of our cause, especially
when you saw that some of the chief princes of Germany were
conspiring against us, that straightway you thought you must
not only desert us, but must also seek their good-will by every
possible means."
Referring to Erasmus' charge that the Lutherans had set on foot a
rumour that Hoogstraaten had burned his books, in order to make him
write against the Church, Hutten says:
"Now, supposing it was our purpose to draw you into our party,
how could we hope to do it easily in this way, since it was
perfectly certain that you would never dare to do anything
against him or anybody else until you saw exactly how the land
lay--unless, indeed, Switzerland be so far from Brabant that we
could hope you would hear nothing from there for a whole year!
Away with this simple-heartedness of yours to some other world!
Our Germany knows no such morals as these.
"When the _Epistolæ obscurorum_ came out, you approved and
applauded more than anyone else; you gave the author a regular
triumph; you said there had never been discovered a more
complete way of attacking those people; that barbarians ought
to be ridiculed in barbarous language; and you congratulated us
on our cleverness. Before our fooleries were printed, you copied
some of them with your own hand, saying: 'I must send these to
my friends in England and France.' But soon after, when you saw
that the whole muck of the theologers were much disturbed and
that the hornets were stirred up in all directions and were
threatening ruin, you began to tremble, and lest suspicion might
fall upon you that you were the author or that you approved the
plan, you wrote a letter with that same candour of yours to
Cologne, trying to get ahead of the rumours and making a great
pretence of sympathy with them and regret at the affair and
saying many things against the whole business and abusing the
authors."
If Erasmus is such a man of peace, why, asks Hutten, does he now so
bitterly attack the reformers? Some people had long since accused him
of treachery, but at that time no one would believe them and Erasmus
was satisfied to put it all upon the Fates:
"a fine notion and, as we now see, truly Erasmian! You say
that, being the man you are, you must deal with Germans after
their own fashion. Well, this is not the way of Germans, but
of men whose fickleness and inconstancy are altogether foreign
to Germans, men who can be tossed about hither and thither by
every change of wind, with whom nothing is fixed, but everything
slippery and shifting with the changes of fortune. Get you to
Italy with such doings, to those cardinals whom you are now
taking under your wing, where everyone may live according to his
own morals and his own character! Or else get back to your own
French-Dutchmen, if, perhaps, this is a national vice and one
common to you and them!"
Referring to the use of the term "Lutherans," about which Erasmus was
so much distressed, Hutten says:
"Therefore, although I have never had Luther for my master or my
companion and am carrying on this business on my own account,
and although I am most terribly opposed to being counted in any
party whatever, nevertheless, since it is a fact that those who
are opposed to the Roman tyranny--among whom I desire above all
things to be reckoned--and those who dare to speak the truth
and who are turning back from human ordinances to the teaching
of the Gospel, are commonly called Lutherans, therefore I am
ready to bear the burden of this nickname, lest I seem to deny
my faith in the cause.... Now you know why I accept the name of
Lutheran, and anyone can see that for the same reasons you too
are a Lutheran, and that so much the more than I or anyone else
as you are a better writer and a more accomplished orator."
One may search the writings of Erasmus from beginning to end without
finding an utterance to compare with this in decision and clear-cut
discrimination of the truth. At great length and with the appearance
of entire sincerity Hutten warns Erasmus of the danger he is now in
of appearing to be only the hired man of the papacy. He may still, in
his heart, be true to his former convictions; but who will believe
it? All this bragging about his great friends at Rome with their
flattering offers can only confirm the Lutherans in their distrust of
him. If he will not be warned now, then let him go on
"to fulfil the hopes of those who have long been looking about
for a leader for the enemies of the truth. Gird yourself; the
thing is ripe for action; it is a task worthy of your old age;
put forth your strength; bend to the work! You shall find your
enemies ready! the party of the Lutherans, which you would
like to crush to earth, is waiting for the battle and cannot
refuse it. Our hearts are full of courage; we are sustained by
a certain hope and, relying upon our conscious rectitude and
honour, we will decline no challenge, no matter whither you may
call us. Nay, that you may see how great is the faith that is
in us, the more furiously you assault us, the keener you shall
find us in defending the cause of truth.... One half of you will
stand with us and be in our camp; your fight will be, not so
much with us as with your own genius and your own writings. You
will turn your learning against yourself and will be eloquent
against your own eloquence. Your writings will be fighting back
and forth with each other."
The Lutherans will trust in God and joyfully take up the encounter.
There can be no doubt that Hutten was uttering the voice of the
great Lutheran party, as it must now be called. Although called out
by a personal attack, the _Expostulatio_ keeps itself throughout on
higher than personal grounds. It is not an apology for Hutten; it is
a fierce outburst of honest indignation against a man who seemed to
be throwing away a noble mind and conspicuous gifts through lack of
courage and simple honesty. Hutten's expressions of admiration for
his opponent have the ring of absolute sincerity. He had admired him
above all other men, and his wrath is tempered by pain and honest
sorrow at his failure to lead where none could lead so well. If
Hutten made the mistake which so many have made since his time, of
asking from Erasmus a kind of service for which he was by nature
unfitted, it was a mistake which honours him who made it. The time
for balancing good and evil had gone. If anything was to be done, it
must be by the united action of all who were in substantial agreement
upon the great essential questions of the hour. There had been enough
of apologising and trimming, and this great word of Hutten was the
proclamation of what was inevitably to come.
When it came into Erasmus' hands he determined at once to reply, and
the result was the famous pamphlet which he called _Spongia adversus
aspergines Hutteni_, "a sponge to wipe out the bespatterings of
Hutten." It is a work twice as long as the _Expostulatio_, written,
so its author says, in six days during the month of July, 1523,
but not published until the autumn and after the death of Hutten,
which occurred August 29th. The _Spongia_ is as distinctly a work of
personal apology as the _Expostulatio_ was the opposite. It takes
up, one by one, the points made by Hutten and deals with them after
the fashion with which we are now so familiar that any extended
examination would in no way enlarge our understanding of Erasmus'
true position. The greater part of Hutten's charges he accepts in
one or another sense and then tries to take away their force. The
most common way of doing this is by showing that he has never really
been inconsistent with himself, but has only adapted himself for the
moment to given conditions lest the one great cause of pure learning
should suffer by too great zeal. Nowhere does Erasmus show himself
a more complete master of the word "if." He will admit everything
with an "if." Hutten has accused him of keeping on too good terms
with the pope after all the abuse which he has heaped upon things
papistical--very well, he has praised popes, but he has done this
because he believed them to be men who meant well to the cause of
Christ. If otherwise he would be the last to praise them.
Erasmus' analysis of the papal power here is a monument of his skill
in turning about words to suit his purpose.
"I have never," he says, "spoken inconsistently of the Roman
See. Tyranny, greed, and other vices, ancient grounds of
complaint common to all good men, I have never approved. Nor
have I ever totally condemned indulgences, though I have
always hated this shameless trade in them. What I think about
ceremonies, my books declare in many places. But when have I
abused the Canon Law or the papal decretals? Whatever he means
by 'calling the pope to order' I am not quite clear. I suppose
he will admit that there is a church at Rome; for the multitude
of its sins cannot cause it to be any the less a church--if this
is not so then we have no churches at all. And I assume that it
is an orthodox church; for if certain bad men are mingled with
the rest, yet the church abides in the good ones. And I suppose
he will allow that this church has a bishop, and that this
bishop is a metropolitan ... now then among metropolitans what
is there absurd in giving the first place to the Roman pontiff?
for this great power which they have been usurping to themselves
during several centuries, no one has ever heard me defend.
"But Hutten will not endure a wicked pope;--why, that is what we
are all praying for, that the pope may be a man worthy of his
apostolic office. But, if he be not that, let him be deposed;
and by the same token, let all bishops be deposed who do not
duly perform their functions. But an especial plague of the
world has been flowing now for many years from Rome. Would
that it could be denied! Now, however, has come a pope who is
striving, as I believe, with all his might, to give back to us
that See and that Curia purified."
Yet Erasmus had been overwhelming the dead Leo, the source of this
pestilent flood, with every conceivable kind of flattery. Now he
abuses him, in order to make his point that things are all going to
be set right by the excellent Adrian. But this way of setting things
right is just what Hutten does not hope for, he says.
"Yet there are many reasons for this hope, and charity,
according to Paul, 'hopeth all things.' If Hutten were declaring
war upon evils, not upon men, he would hasten to Rome and help
this pope who is now trying to do the very same things he is
himself striving for. But Hutten has declared war upon the Roman
pontiff and all his followers.... The Romanists would like
always to have such enemies as Hutten."
If there was an honest Erasmus anywhere under this mass of words, it
seems pretty clear that he was for Hutten rather than against him.
That Erasmus had any such honest side one is tempted to doubt when
one reads his defence against the charge of trifling with the truth.
Hutten had accused him[147] of saying that the truth ought not always
to be spoken, and that a great deal depended upon how it was put
forth.
[147] _Expostulatio_, § 180.
"That blasphemous speech of yours," he had said, "ought to have
been thrust down your throat (my cause compels me to speak more
angrily than I would) if those had done their duty who are now
compelling heretics to recant or throwing them to the flames."
Erasmus could not deny the words, but replies[148]:
[148] _Spongia_, § 274, x., 1660-E, and _Hutteni opera_, ii., 306.
"When Christ first sent out the Apostles to preach the Gospel he
forbade them to declare that he was the Christ. If, then, the
Truth himself ordered that truth to be kept in silence, without
the knowledge of which there is no salvation to any man, what is
there strange in my saying that the truth ought sometimes to be
suppressed?"
Then he gives several similar illustrations of repression of truth by
silence on the part of Jesus, and goes on:
"If I had to defend the cause of an innocent man before a
powerful tyrant should I blurt out the whole truth and ruin
the case of the innocent man, or should I keep many things
silent? Hutten, a brave man and most zealous for the truth,
would, no doubt, speak thus: 'O most accursed tyrant, you who
have murdered so many of your fellow-citizens, is your cruelty
not yet sated, that you must tear this innocent man from their
midst?' Well, that is about as clever as the way in which some
are defending the cause of Luther, by raging against the pope
with seditious writings. Or if he [Hutten] were asking from a
wicked pope a benefice for some good man, he would write to
him after this style: 'O impious Antichrist, destroyer of the
Gospel, oppressor of civil liberty, flatterer of princes, thou
givest basely so many a benefice to wicked men and still more
basely sellest them, grant this one to this good man that all
may not fall into evil hands.' You smile, reader; but these
people are pleading the cause of the Gospel with no more caution
than that.... But what is more foolish than to call me back from
a place where I never was and to summon me to the very place I
am now in? He calls me back from the party of the wicked who
support the tyranny of the Romanists, who overturn the truth of
the Gospel, who darken the glory of Christ; but I have always
been fighting those very men. He summons me to his own side; but
as yet I am not clear where Hutten himself stands."
The whole aim of the _Spongia_ and its effect upon the world were
simply to make it perfectly plain that Erasmus would not take sides.
If the purpose of the _Expostulatio_ was to force him to do so, it
was a conspicuous failure. Nothing could be plainer than Erasmus'
own declaration[149]:
[149] _Spongia_, § 176, x., 1650-B, and _Hutteni opera_, ii., 291.
"in so many letters, so many books, and by so many proofs, I am
continually declaring that I am unwilling to be involved with
either party. I give many reasons for this determination, but
have not put forth all of them. And in this matter my conscience
makes no charge against me before Christ my judge. In the midst
of such confusion and danger to my reputation and my life I have
so moderated my judgments as neither to be the author of any
disturbance nor to help any cause which I do not approve. If
Hutten is enraged because I do not support Luther as he does, I
protested three years ago in an appendix added to my Familiar
Colloquies at Louvain, that I was totally a stranger to that
faction and always would be. I am not only keeping outside of it
myself, but I am urging as many friends as I can to do the same,
and I will never cease to do so. I mean by 'faction' the zeal of
a mind sworn as it were to everything that Luther has written or
is writing or ever will write. This kind of a sentiment often
imposes upon good men; but I have openly announced to all my
friends that if they cannot love me except as a Lutheran they
may have whatever feeling they like about me. I am a lover of
liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party."
Here once more Erasmus saves himself by a definition. If to be a
Lutheran were to swear to every word of Luther's, then, of course,
no man in his senses would confess to the party name. Erasmus knew
as well as anyone that parties for action were never formed by any
such test. Men joined a party because they were in general sympathy
with others and believed that the time for common action had come.
This common action was the thing he could not bear to think of. To
him it meant _confusiones_, _tumultus_, _tragœdias_, and all the
other horrors of open conflict. We leave the Hutten episode, closed
as it was by the untimely death of the brilliant, reckless genius
who had brought it on, with the feeling that Hutten's charge was
substantially true. Erasmus, with all the best part of him, was
fighting the Lutheran battle and knew he was doing it. He recoiled
before the fear of violence and then had to justify himself.
It would be interesting to know how far the definition of the papacy
as a metropolitan see among others represented a real opinion of
Erasmus. Probably it was a rhetorical conclusion; but it can hardly
have made the _Spongia_ a welcome visitor at Rome, and it is not
surprising that this passage was expurgated by the Roman censorship.
An incident of the year 1524 well illustrates the temper of Erasmus
at the time and also the decline in regard for him on the Lutheran
side. A certain Scotch printer at Strassburg had published some
writing of Hutten against Erasmus, probably the _Expostulatio_,
with offensive illustrations, and in a second edition had added an
invective by another author, in which "whatever one blackguard could
say of another" was said of Erasmus. What touched him especially
was that he was called a traitor to the Gospel, and charged with
having been hired for money to fight against it, and moreover was
accused of being ready to be pulled in any direction by the chance
of a crumb of bread. Erasmus wrote two very angry letters[150] to
the magistrates of Strassburg asking them to punish the printer, and
defending himself in his usual fashion from these charges.
[150] iii.¹, 793, 804.
Evidently nothing was done about it, for some time later
Erasmus wrote to Caspar Hedio, one of the Lutheran preachers at
Strassburg,[151] complaining of this neglect. His suggestions about
the way to treat an offending printer are amusing.
[151] iii.¹, 844.
"You say this Scotchman has a wife and little children. Would
that be thought an excuse if he should break open my money-chest
and steal my gold? I should say not; and yet he has done a thing
far worse than that. Or perhaps you think I care less for my
reputation than for my money. If he can't feed his children,
let him go a-begging. 'That would be a shame,' you say. Well,
aren't such actions as this a shame? Let him prostitute his wife
and snore away with watchful nose over his cups. 'Horrible,'
you say. And yet what he has done is more horrible still. There
is no law to punish with death a man who prostitutes his wife;
but everyone approves capital punishment for those who publish
slanderous writings."