Erasmus – Christian Humanist

October 1, 1983
Lakeland

Why talk about people and times of 500 years ago? I am aware that, as illustrated in the brief readings, history captures the interest of very few persons. So perhaps I am being self-indulgent or irrelevant to use my October Sundays to speak of the Reformation. In a world where the political tensions throw menacing shadows on the prospects for survival and justice, why take time to think about the Reformation and Renaissance? Why take your time when there are vital current issues by the dozen, even though 1983 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther?

To understand a little of the conflicts of power in times past and how the conflicts were resolved is to become more aware of confrontations in our day. To look at such men as Erasmus and Luther and others is to become sensitive to human nature in all times – strengths and frailties, courage and cowardice, bigotry and understanding, generosity and narrowness, belligerence and peacemaking, reason and passion, love and hate. When we see such qualities mixed in the same historical persons, we may come to understand that there are no super saviors. Sir Galahad without fear and without reproach was a myth. To understand this about human nature may make us less confident that the leaders have all the answers which will save this troubled world, and more assertive of our own reasons and judgments.

The Reformation and Renaissance overlapped. There had been dissidents opposing certain practices of the Holy Roman Church long before Erasmus and Luther were energizing forces. Savonarola, John Hus, John Wycliff, were warning signals that the authority of the pope and magnificence of the Church would sooner or later be questioned and challenged.

The Renaissance had been born and fostered for at least a couple centuries, before the time of Erasmus and Luther. There had been a revival of classic Greek and Roman learning. Art and sculpture again became treasured possessions of culture. The wealthy families and the Vatican competed to become patrons of the great artists – DaVinci, Michelangelo, Ghiberti, many others. Instead of a fixed focus on the afterlife, there developed a greater appreciation of the promises, rewards, and pleasure in this life, at least for the wealthy and powerful.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and many scholars, bearing priceless classical manuscripts and art, fled to Italy, further stimulating the revival of learning.

The Age of Exploration had begun. New geographical discoveries were stimulating inquiry, curiosity and adventure. Aztec and Peruvian gold enriched the royal coffers of Spain.

Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized communication. Without the printing press neither Erasmus nor Luther could have been such agents of mammoth social and religious change.

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam 10/26/1466. He was the illegitimate son of a priest. Little is known about his father. The novelist Charles Reade speculated a good deal in THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH. Erasmus’ mother may have been a servant. Erasmus was always sensitive about the conditions of his birth, although he never denied his illegitimate origins.

In his early schooling, there was some influence of Renaissance Humanism. [CJW note: Brethren of the Common Life] When he was 16 he joined an Augustinian order in Steyn. Unlike Luther, who entered an Augustinian monastery to save his soul, Erasmus entered because the monastery had a fine library – he wanted good books.

Because he was illegitimate, Erasmus needed papal dispensation to enter the priesthood [CJW note: received it and was ordained in 1492]. On the basis of his devotion and literary work throughout the rest of his life, he secured dispensation from saying mass or performing other sacraments. He hated fish and, pleading truthfully, bad digestion, was dispensed from meatless days.

One of his early essays while still in the monastery was a defense of classic learning - “pagan” as it was called, answering those who insisted that the only proper learning was in the study of Christian dogma and Church history. Erasmus wrote, “You tell me we should not read Virgil because Virgil is in hell. Do you think many Christians are not in hell whose works we read? It is not for us to discuss whether the pagans before Christ were damned. But I conjecture that they are saved or no one is saved. If you want to reject everything pagan you will have to give up the alphabet and the Latin language, and all the arts and crafts.”

Erasmus was unhappy in the monastery – but how to get out? Most scholars did not have salaries from a university. They depended on patrons who would provide them with a living while their studies and writings proceeded. The prior of the monastery was able to situate Erasmus as the secretary of the Bishop of Cambrai. That Erasmus was illegitimate did not cause any difficulty for the Bishop, because he himself was one of the 36 illegitimate children of John, the Lord of Bergen.

For the rest of his life, Erasmus lived on patronage and some income from his writings. In those days, to secure these benefits, one had to write elaborate, flattering dedications to the patron – if one wanted to remain in his favor. Erasmus was no exception. His historical skills extolled his patrons in ways that, to say the least, inflated the virtues of the patrons, usually quite untruthfully. We would call it hypocrisy at best, and lies at worst. But friends apologized that Erasmus was writing what the Prince or the Cardinal ought to be, not what he was. This is a weak defense. Erasmus never had the courage of a Luther or a John Hus.

His succession of patrons made him perennially a traveler. He studied and lectured at the University of Paris. He visited England 3 times, staying 5 years (1509-14); the third visit ... he was a close friend of such distinguished Christian Humanists as Thomas More, John Fisher, John Colet.

Erasmus’ literary production [CJW note: thoughtful, rational] made him the intellectual of Europe. Over the years his influence was such that some called him the “second pope.”

Later there was a saying, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.” Nevertheless, before his life was over he was despised by Luther and accused by the Roman Catholics of fracturing Christendom.

He spent most of his life studying and writing. He never made impassioned speeches. Because of many qualifications in his writing, it was difficult, as time went on, to discover whether he supported the Reformers or the Catholic Church.

His most famous work was IN PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Erasmus had visited Rome, saw the luxurious and decadent life of many cardinals and the Pope. Leaving Rome, on his way to England, he traversed the Alps, reflecting on the horseback journey the contradictions he had witnessed.

During his 5-year stay in England, he wrote IN PRAISE OF FOLLY (printed in 1511). The literary form has the goddess “Folly” ridiculing many respected human endeavors. Today, the style is clumsy but in his day, the book achieved widespread popularity. 40 editions were published in his lifetime, and who knows how many since.

Folly ridicules marriage. The philosophers are not spared. [quote from Durant] “The philosophers confound the confused and darken the obscure; they lavish time and wit upon logical and metaphysical subtleties with no result but wind; we should send them, rather than soldiers, against the Turks who would retreat in terror before such bewildering verbosity.”

Physicians and theologians are not spared. Some of the ritual mainstays of the Church, miracles and prodigies, shrines for healing, the worship of relics are [derided as] “bugbears of superstition.”

How did he get away with such devastating ridicule? Many theologians were upset. However, Pope Julius II did not bother him. [CJW note: our Dutch friend is with us again]. Julius was not interested in such things. Julius was a military pope, leading the armies of the papal states in the complex series of alliances and wars. Francis I (France), Henry VIII, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, all wanted power over Europe. Julius also initiated the building of magnificent St. Peter’s Cathedral. For many years, the wandering Erasmus was undisturbed. [CJW note: his religious writings did not bother the popes and cardinals – their interest was in other things]

Another distinctive literary and religion contribution of Erasmus was a new Greek translation of the New Testament. Up to then, the 4th century Latin translation of Jerome, a translation known as the Vulgate, had been the standard Bible for the Church.

Going back to available ancient manuscripts, Erasmus not only offered some fresh interpretations but asserted certain parts of the Vulgate were erroneous.

Two of Erasmus’ omissions caused considerable agitation. One of the mainstays for asserting the Trinity was a passage in 1st John 5:7 which, in the Vulgate, reads the “three are one.” Erasmus translated, the “three agree.” To us, this may be trivial, but to the scholastic theologians of that day, it was a monumental and radical change.

Then too, “ecclesia” which Jerome had translated as “church,” Erasmus translated as “congregation.” To the hair-splitter of that day, this was a severe weakening of the power and authority of the Church and its episcopal system. [CJW note: Linacre: “Either this is not the gospel or we are not Christians.”]

But Erasmus never supported Luther’s Reformation. He always believed there could be reform within the Church. His pacific nature shied away from conflict. He saw the many sides to most controversial issues. Perhaps he was a coward, as Luther called him. Nothing was more difficult for Erasmus than to say a plain “Yes” or a forthright “no” in a controversy. He did hedge. He saw various sides to questions, arguments to support either of differing views. His criticisms were frequently cloaked in satire.

Nevertheless, in many ways, Erasmus was ahead of his times. Ahead of our times in some ways.

In a time when heretics were tortured and burned at the stake, Erasmus took a more enlightened course. Although under pressure to support the church’s condemnation and excommunication of Luther, he did not join in the hue and cry. He wrote, “Let us not devour each other like fish. Why upset the world over paradoxes, some unintelligible, some debatable, some unprofitable? The world is full of rage, hate, and wars. What will be the end if we employ only papal bulls and the stake. It is not great feat to burn a man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.” [Bainton, p. 178]

In contrast to the dogmas of the Church that truth is that which the Church, through the Pope, proclaims, Erasmus believed that truth appears through dialogue. His love for the classic philosophers, particularly Plato and Socrates, was apparent in his belief that truth exists but arrives through the matching of minds in rational discourse.

Many of his moves from city to city were motivated because he detested dictatorship. When a Protestant dictatorship took over Geneva, Basel, or other places, Erasmus moved to where he thought greater freedom existed.

In a period when intense nationalism was the coming order [Bainton, p. 114], Erasmus dissented. When twice invited to become a citizen of Zurich, he answered, “I wish to be a citizen of the world, not of a single city.” He said more than once, “The whole universe is my fatherland.”

He hated war and was pacifistic in a time of constant war and bloodshed. He wrote, “sweet is war to him who has had no taste of it.” He believed disputes could be settled by mediation, not bloodshed. Replying to urgings that he approve the violence of the Reformation, he wrote, “I cannot be other than what I am ... I cannot but love peace and concord. I see the obscurity in all things human. I see how much easier it is to start rather than assuage a tumult.” [Bainton, p. 176]

Erasmus believed the test of a Christian was not creed, but conduct. When he was appalled at popes making cardinals and princes of their sons and nephews, and distributing the wealth of the church to family, he reminded the Pope, “Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep,’ not ‘Feed your sheep.’” He also wrote, “You will not be damned if you do not know whether the spirit proceeding from the Father and Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, mercy, faith, modesty....” [Bainton]

As his life drew near to its end, he felt that all he had written was extinguished in the wars of the Reformation. Before he died in 1536, his influence had waned. In 1559, the one-time friend Cardinal Caraffa, by this time Pope Paul IV, placed the writings of Erasmus under the ban of the Church.

The wild events of the Reformation had demonstrated that the pen of Erasmus was not mightier than the swords of Luther, the kings, and popes.

Yet many of his ideas did not die. George Williams of Harvard, a Reformation historian, describing what he calls the “Evangelical Rationalist,” finds that the ideas of Erasmus and Servetus were not only the forerunners of Socinianism ..., but also of the Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Unitarianism and Universalism, and of representative government. [CJW note: not that Erasmus was a Unitarian; Servetus tried to convert]

Stefan Zweig, in his biography, wrote this epitaph of Erasmus of Rotterdam: “Erasmus was forced to leave Louvain because it was too Catholic; he was forced to leave Basle because it was too Protestant. A free and independent mind, which refuses to be bound by any dogma and declines to join any party, never finds a home on earth.”