AT WAR WITH HUMANISTS AND REFORMERS
1528-9
Erasmus turns against the excesses of humanism: its paganism and
pedantic classicism--_Ciceronianus_: 1528--It brings him new
enemies--The Reformation carried through at Basle--He emigrates
to Freiburg: 1529--His view concerning the results of the
Reformation
Nothing is more characteristic of the independence which Erasmus
reserved for himself regarding all movements of his time than the fact
that he also joined issue in the camp of the humanists. In 1528 there
were published by Froben (the chief of the firm of Johannes Froben had
just died) two dialogues in one volume from Erasmus's hand: one about
the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek, and one entitled
_Ciceronianus_ or _On the Best Diction_, i.e. in writing and speaking
Latin. Both were proofs that Erasmus had lost nothing of his liveliness
and wit. The former treatise was purely philological, and as such has
had great influence; the other was satirical as well. It had a long
history.
Erasmus had always regarded classical studies as the panacea of
civilization, provided they were made serviceable to pure Christianity.
His sincere ethical feeling made him recoil from the obscenity of a
Poggio and the immorality of the early Italian humanists. At the same
time his delicate and natural taste told him that a pedantic and servile
imitation of antique models could never produce the desired result.
Erasmus knew Latin too well to be strictly classical; his Latin was
alive and required freedom. In his early works we find taunts about the
over-precise Latin purists: one had declared a newly found fragment of
Cicero to be thoroughly barbaric; 'among all sorts of authors none are
so insufferable to me as those apes of Cicero'.
In spite of the great expectations he cherished of classical studies for
pure Christianity, he saw one danger: 'that under the cloak of reviving
ancient literature paganism tries to rear its head, as there are those
among Christians who acknowledge Christ only in name but inwardly
breathe heathenism'. This he writes in 1517 to Capito. In Italy scholars
devote themselves too exclusively and in too pagan guise to _bonae
literae_. He considered it his special task to assist in bringing it
about that those _bonae literae_ 'which with the Italians have thus far
been almost pagan, shall get used to speaking of Christ'.
How it must have vexed Erasmus that in Italy of all countries he was, at
the same time and in one breath, charged with heresy and questioned in
respect to his knowledge and integrity as a scholar. Italians accused
him of plagiarism and trickery. He complained of it to Aleander, who, he
thought, had a hand in it.
In a letter of 13 October 1527, to a professor at Toledo, we find the
_ebauche_ of the _Ciceronianus_. In addition to the haters of classic
studies for the sake of orthodox belief, writes Erasmus, 'lately another
and new sort of enemies has broken from their ambush. These are troubled
that the _bonae literae_ speak of Christ, as though nothing can be
elegant but what is pagan. To their ears _Jupiter optimus maximus_
sounds more pleasant than _Jesus Christus redemptor mundi_, and _patres
conscripti_ more agreeable than _sancti apostoli_.... They account it a
greater dishonour to be no Ciceronian than no Christian, as if Cicero,
if he should now come to life again, would not speak of Christian things
in other words than in his time he spoke of his own religion!... What is
the sense of this hateful swaggering with the name Ciceronian? I will
tell you briefly, in your ear. With that pearl-powder they cover the
paganism that is dearer to them than the glory of Christ.' To Erasmus
Cicero's style is by no means the ideal one. He prefers something more
solid, succinct, vigorous, less polished, more manly. He who sometimes
has to write a book in a day has no time to polish his style, often not
even to read it over.... 'What do I care for an empty dish of words, ten
words here and there mumped from Cicero: I want all Cicero's spirit.'
These are apes at whom one may laugh, for far more serious than these
things are the tumults of the so-called new Gospel, to which he next
proceeds in this letter.
And so, in the midst of all his polemics and bitter vindication, he
allowed himself once more the pleasure of giving the reins to his love
of scoffing, but, as in the _Moria_ and _Colloquia_, ennobled by an
almost passionate sincerity of Christian disposition and a natural sense
of measure. The _Ciceronianus_ is a masterpiece of ready, many-sided
knowledge, of convincing eloquence, and of easy handling of a wealth of
arguments. With splendid, quiet and yet lively breadth flows the long
conversation between Bulephorus, representing Erasmus's opinions,
Hypologus, the interested inquirer, and Nosoponus, the zealous
Ciceronian, who, to preserve a perfect purity of mind, breakfasts off
ten currants.
Erasmus in drawing Nosoponus had evidently, in the main, alluded to one
who could no longer reply: Christopher Longolius, who had died in 1522.
The core of the _Ciceronianus_ is where Erasmus points out the danger to
Christian faith of a too zealous classicism. He exclaims urgently: 'It
is paganism, believe me, Nosoponus, it is paganism that charms our ear
and our soul in such things. We are Christians in name alone.' Why does
a classic proverb sound better to us than a quotation from the Bible:
_corchorum inter olera_, 'chick-weed among the vegetables', better than
'Saul among the prophets'? As a sample of the absurdity of
Ciceronianism, he gives a translation of a dogmatic sentence in
classical language: 'Optimi maximique Jovis interpres ac filius,
servator, rex, juxta vatum responsa, ex Olympo devolavit in terras,'
for: Jesus Christ, the Word and the Son of the eternal Father, came into
the world according to the prophets. Most humanists wrote indeed in that
style.
Was Erasmus aware that he here attacked his own past? After all, was it
not exactly the same thing which he had done, to the indignation of his
opponents, when translating _Logos_ by _Sermo_ instead of by _Verbum_?
Had he not himself desired that in the church hymns the metre should be
corrected, not to mention his own classical odes and paeans to Mary and
the Saints? And was his warning against the partiality for classic
proverbs and turns applicable to anything more than to the _Adagia_?
We here see the aged Erasmus on the path of reaction, which might
eventually have led him far from humanism. In his combat with humanistic
purism he foreshadows a Christian puritanism.
As always his mockery procured him a new flood of invectives. Bembo and
Sadolet, the masters of pure Latin, could afford to smile at it, but the
impetuous Julius Caesar Scaliger violently inveighed against him,
especially to avenge Longolius's memory. Erasmus's perpetual feeling of
being persecuted got fresh food: he again thought that Aleander was at
the bottom of it. 'The Italians set the imperial court against me,' he
writes in 1530. A year later all is quiet again. He writes jestingly:
'Upon my word, I am going to change my style after Budaeus's model and
to become a Ciceronian according to the example of Sadolet and Bembo'.
But even near the close of his life he was engaged in a new contest with
Italians, because he had hurt their national pride; 'they rage at me on
all sides with slanderous libels, as at the enemy of Italy and Cicero'.
* * * * *
There were, as he had said himself, other difficulties touching him more
closely. Conditions at Basle had for years been developing in a
direction which distressed and alarmed him. When he established himself
there in 1521, it might still have seemed to him as if the bishop, old
Christopher of Utenheim, a great admirer of Erasmus and a man after his
heart, would succeed in effecting a reformation at Basle, as he desired
it; abolishing acknowledged abuses, but remaining within the fold of the
Church. In that very year, 1521, however, the emancipation of the
municipality from the bishop's power--it had been in progress since
Basle, in 1501, had joined the Swiss Confederacy--was consummated.
Henceforth the council was number one, now no longer exclusively made up
of aristocratic elements. In vain did the bishop ally himself with his
colleagues of Constance and Lausanne to maintain Catholicism. In the
town the new creed got more and more the upper hand. When, however, in
1525, it had come to open tumults against the Catholic service, the
council became more cautious and tried to reform more heedfully.
Oecolampadius desired this, too. Relations between him and Erasmus were
precarious. Erasmus himself had at one time directed the religious
thought of the impulsive, sensitive, restless young man. When he had, in
1520, suddenly sought refuge in a convent, he had expressly justified
that step towards Erasmus, the condemner of binding vows. And now they
saw each other again at Basle, in 1522: Oecolampadius having left the
monastery, a convinced adherent and apostle of the new doctrine;
Erasmus, the great spectator which he wished to be. Erasmus treated his
old coadjutor coolly, and as the latter progressed, retreated more and
more. Yet he kept steering a middle course and in 1525 gave some
moderate advice to the council, which meanwhile had turned more Catholic
again.
The old bishop, who for some years had no longer resided in his town, in
1527 requested the chapter to relieve him of his office, and died
shortly afterwards. Then events moved very quickly. After Berne had,
meanwhile, reformed itself in 1528, Oecolampadius demanded a decision
also for Basle. Since the close of 1528 the town had been on the verge
of civil war. A popular rising put an end to the resistance of the
Council and cleared it of Catholic members; and in February 1529 the old
service was prohibited, the images were removed from the churches, the
convents abolished, and the University suspended. Oecolampadius became
the first minister in the 'Muenster' and leader of the Basle church, for
which he soon drew up a reformatory ordinance. The new bishop remained
at Porrentruy, and the chapter removed to Freiburg.
[Illustration: XXIII. ERASMUS'S RESIDENCE AT FREIBURG, 1529-31]
The moment of departure had now come for Erasmus. His position at Basle
in 1529 somewhat resembled, but in a reversed sense, the one at Louvain
in 1521. Then the Catholics wanted to avail themselves of his services
against Luther, now the Evangelicals would fain have kept him at Basle.
For his name was still as a banner. His presence would strengthen the
position of reformed Basle; on the one hand, because, as people
reasoned, if he were not of the same mind as the reformers, he would
have left the town long ago; on the other hand, because his figure
seemed to guarantee moderation and might attract many hesitating minds.
It was, therefore, again to safeguard his independence that Erasmus
changed his residence. It was a great wrench this time. Old age and
invalidism had made the restless man a stay-at-home. As he foresaw
trouble from the side of the municipality, he asked Archduke
Ferdinand--who for his brother Charles V governed the German empire and
just then presided over the Diet of Speyer--to send him a safe conduct
for the whole empire and an invitation, moreover, to come to court,
which he did not dream of accepting. As place of refuge he had selected
the not far distant town of Freiburg im Breisgau, which was directly
under the strict government of the Austrian house, and where he,
therefore, need not be afraid of such a turn of affairs as that at
Basle. It was, moreover, a juncture at which the imperial authority and
the Catholic cause in Germany seemed again to be gaining ground rapidly.
Erasmus would not or could not keep his departure a secret. He sent the
most precious of his possessions in advance, and when this had drawn
attention to his plan, he purposely invited Oecolampadius to a farewell
talk. The reformer declared his sincere friendship for Erasmus, which
the latter did not decline, provided he granted him to differ on certain
points of dogma. Oecolampadius tried to keep him from leaving the town,
and, when it proved too late for that, to persuade him to return later.
They took leave with a handshake. Erasmus had desired to join his boat
at a distant landing-stage, but the Council would not allow this: he had
to start from the usual place near the Rhine bridge. A numerous crowd
witnessed his embarkation, 13 April 1529. Some friends were there to see
him off. No unfavourable demonstration occurred.
His reception at Freiburg convinced him that, in spite of all, he was
still the celebrated and admired prince of letters. The Council placed
at his disposal the large, though unfinished, house built for the
Emperor Maximilian himself; a professor of theology offered him his
garden. Anthony Fugger had tried to draw him to Augsburg by means of a
yearly allowance. For the rest he considered Freiburg by no means a
permanent place of abode. 'I have resolved to remain here this winter
and then to fly with the swallows to the place whither God shall call
me.' But he soon recognized the great advantage which Freiburg offered.
The climate, to which he was so sensitive, turned out better than he
expected, and the position of the town was extremely favourable for
emigrating to France, should circumstances require this, or for dropping
down the Rhine back to the Netherlands, whither many always called him.
In 1531 he bought a house at Freiburg.
The old Erasmus at Freiburg, ever more tormented by his painful malady,
much more disillusioned than when he left Louvain in 1521, of more
confirmed views as to the great ecclesiastical strife, will only be
fully revealed to us when his correspondence with Boniface Amerbach, the
friend whom he left behind at Basle--a correspondence not found complete
in the older collections--has been edited by Dr. Allen's care. From no
period of Erasmus's life, it seems, may so much be gleaned, in point of
knowledge of his daily habits and thoughts, as from these very years.
Work went on without a break in that great scholar's workshop where he
directs his famuli, who hunt manuscripts for him, and then copy and
examine them, and whence he sends forth his letters all over Europe. In
the series of editions of the Fathers followed Basil and new editions of
Chrysostom and Cyprian; his editions of classic authors were augmented
by the works of Aristotle. He revised and republished the _Colloquies_
three more times, the _Adages_ and the New Testament once more.
Occasional writings of a moral or politico-theological nature kept
flowing from his pen.
From the cause of the Reformation he was now quite estranged.
'Pseudevangelici', he contumeliously calls the reformed. 'I might have
been a corypheus in Luther's church,' he writes in 1528, 'but I
preferred to incur the hatred of all Germany to being separate from the
community of the Church.' The authorities should have paid a little less
attention at first to Luther's proceedings; then the fire would never
have spread so violently. He had always urged theologians to let minor
concerns which only contain an appearance of piety rest, and to turn to
the sources of Scripture. Now it was too late. Towns and countries
united ever more closely for or against the Reformation. 'If, what I
pray may never happen,' he writes to Sadolet in 1530, 'you should see
horrible commotions of the world arise, not so fatal for Germany as for
the Church, then remember Erasmus prophesied it.' To Beatus Rhenanus he
frequently said that, had he known that an age like theirs was coming,
he would never have written many things, or would not have written them
as he had.
'Just look,' he exclaims, 'at the Evangelical people, have they become
any better? Do they yield less to luxury, lust and greed? Show me a man
whom that Gospel has changed from a toper to a temperate man, from a
brute to a gentle creature, from a miser into a liberal person, from a
shameless to a chaste being. I will show you many who have become even
worse than they were.' Now they have thrown the images out of the
churches and abolished mass (he is thinking of Basle especially): has
anything better come instead? 'I have never entered their churches, but
I have seen them return from hearing the sermon, as if inspired by an
evil spirit, the faces of all showing a curious wrath and ferocity, and
there was no one except one old man who saluted me properly, when I
passed in the company of some distinguished persons.'
He hated that spirit of absolute assuredness so inseparably bound up
with the reformers. 'Zwingli and Bucer may be inspired by the Spirit,
Erasmus from himself is nothing but a man and cannot comprehend what is
of the Spirit.'
There was a group among the reformed to whom Erasmus in his heart of
hearts was more nearly akin than to the Lutherans or Zwinglians with
their rigid dogmatism: the Anabaptists. He rejected the doctrine from
which they derived their name, and abhorred the anarchic element in
them. He remained far too much the man of spiritual decorum to identify
himself with these irregular believers. But he was not blind to the
sincerity of their moral aspirations and sympathized with their dislike
of brute force and the patience with which they bore persecution. 'They
are praised more than all others for the innocence of their life,' he
writes in 1529. Just in the last part of his life came the episode of
the violent revolutionary proceedings of the fanatic Anabaptists; it
goes without saying that Erasmus speaks of it only with horror.
One of the best historians of the Reformation, Walter Koehler, calls
Erasmus one of the spiritual fathers of Anabaptism. And certain it is
that in its later, peaceful development it has important traits in
common with Erasmus: a tendency to acknowledge free will, a certain
rationalistic trend, a dislike of an exclusive conception of a Church.
It seems possible to prove that the South German Anabaptist Hans Denk
derived opinions directly from Erasmus. For a considerable part,
however, this community of ideas must, no doubt, have been based on
peculiarities of religious consciousness in the Netherlands, whence
Erasmus sprang, and where Anabaptism found such a receptive soil.
Erasmus was certainly never aware of these connections.
Some remarkable evidence regarding Erasmus's altered attitude towards
the old and the new Church is shown by what follows.
The reproach he had formerly so often flung at the advocates of
conservatism that they hated the _bonae literae_, so dear to him, and
wanted to stifle them, he now uses against the evangelical party.
'Wherever Lutherism is dominant the study of literature is extinguished.
Why else,' he continues, using a remarkable sophism, 'are Luther and
Melanchthon compelled to call back the people so urgently to the love of
letters?' 'Just compare the University of Wittenberg with that of
Louvain or Paris!... Printers say that before this Gospel came they used
to dispose of 3,000 volumes more quickly than now of 600. A sure proof
that studies flourish!'