ERASMUS

New Zealand Tablet, 30 January 1919, Page 34

ERASMUS

In a review of The Epistles of Erasmus, VoI. 111., translated from the original by Francis Morgan Nichols, Mr. Theodor© Maynard comments thus in the New Witness Among much in Fronde’s Life and Letters of Erasmus that is malicious and mendacious on© true thing stands out—the dictum that the student of the early part of the sixteenth century could hardly do better than to observe th© age through the eyes of Erasmus. To understand Ex*asxxxus is to uxxderstaxxd the difficulties which beset the Church, and the complex motives of the revolt against it. In the soul of the xxxaxx who was the xxxost importaxxt figure of the day the battle was begun, before it extended and convulsed Europe; and his exquisite balaxxce is the most exact measure of the histoxy of his time. It was the lot of hixxx who had the widest circle of friends in the world to go down to his death embittex’ed and worn by conflict with a countless host of foes. To both sides he was a Laodiceaxx. The Catholic Party clamored for aid from Erasmxxs and for a repudiation of Luther, which could be taken as an exculpatioxx of himself ; and the Protestaxxts never forgave hixxx for not joining their side after he had armed them for x-evolution. He was shot at froxxx before and behind. He had laid the egg that - Luther hatched, though, as he himself explained, the resultant bird was not of his rearixxg. The faix-y tale becaxxxe reversed, axxd what was to have beexx a sxvan scandalised the farmyard ixx the shape of a very ugly duckling ! The tragedy of Erasxnus was the failure of consistency. Ixx an age of violence few were able to uxxderstand how the scourge of degexxerate xxxoxxks ixx Moria and ixx the notes of his New' Testamexxt could be a satirist of clerical nxorals, not axx oppoxxent of the Church. His deixunciatioixs of corrxxption were never so hot as those of the saints, and his laxxguage sounds mild after the invective of St. Catherixxe of Siexxa. Pex'haps it was because he was not a saint hiixxself that his reform failed. He Avas too mxxch a man of the world to draw the world with him. Yet the world would have been wiser for listening to his advice. He saw clearly and with an amazing power of detachment w'hat should be done, but he was unable to be a partisan in the sense that the fanatics of the opposing groups demanded of him. His ownx position w r as discussed time and time again in letters to friends. To the Bishop of Tuy, in Gallicia, he wrote in 1520: “Luther’s party have urged me to join him, and Luther’s enemies have done their best to drive me to it by their furious attacks on me in their sermons. Neither have succeeded. Christ I know; Luther I kxxow not. The Roman Church I know, and death will not part me from it till the Church departs from Christ. I abhor sedition. Would that Luther and the Germans abhorred it equally. It is strange to see how the two factions goad each other on, as if they were in collusion. If any movement is in progress injurious to the Christian religion, or dangerous to the public peace or to the supx'emacy of the Holy See, it does not pxoceed from Erasmus. Time will show it.” Time did show it, but the present showed a xxxau who apparently couldn’t make up his mind. Once he jestingly said, “Others may be martyrs if they like,” axxd the world took the remark literally ; when all that Erasmus meant was that he wished to use what influence he possessed to compose the tumult, and not to give his name as a flag to either of the armies of disputants. To the end he hoped for peace, and was ixx constant communication with the Emperor and the Pope. Nobody would listen to him, though everybody asked his advice. Conciliation at one stage seemed practicable, and three succeeding Popes were ready to hear what the reformers had to say. But the Church’s too zealous henchmen and a Germany drunk with religious reaction made peace impossible, and Christendom thundered down to ruin.

11l this the third and last of the volumes which stand as a noble monument to the scholarship of the late Mr. F. M. Nichols, the letters comprise the period from August, 1517, to September, 1518. Though the translation has not quite the same journalistic "snap that Froude managed to give to his version, it is far more faithful and accurate. We have none of those misleading condensations and little twists of phrasing with which Froude knew how to twist the writer's meaning. The connecting notes are the result of much research, but are given to make a point clear and not merely to make a point. This is the unembellished Erasmus. Here and there are trifling slips, as in the case where Guardiano Minoritarum is translated as "Warden" instead of "Guardian" of the Friars Minor, but these in no way detract from the value of the work. The only regret is that the translator did not live to complete the whole of the correspondence. The most exciting years of Erasmus's life are unaccounted for, as the third volume abruptly ends 18 years before his death. But the key to the later years is given, for the humanist was already in the midst of incessant controversy. The Friars, incensed by the stinging gibes of an ex-Augustinian at large, were his enemies; and a large number of the letters in the third volume concern the quarrel between Erasmus and Le Fevre. The thin-skinned scholar, always impatient of criticism, was naturally deeply hurt by the attack made upon him by an old friend, instigated, as he believed, by the monks. It is amusing to note that his resentment appeared to be very slight at first; but when Le FeVre's book was given an importance which Erasmus would not believe that it deserved, he gradually got more angry at its success, and replied at length, with a rejoinder which, in his own eyes, made an end of the theologian. To his friends he complacently announced that it was granted on all sides that victory had been with him; and, made good humored by this glory, he felt himself in a position to say generous things of his opponent. However, it is evident that the friends themselves, even when they admitted the superiority of the humanist's dialectic, were in some cases scandalised by the vindictiveness of his spirit. One of these, Bude, wrote a long letter to him full of a kindly and humorous good sense, but Erasmus could only say in reply: "I received on the first of September that prolix epistle of yours, written on the 12th of April, . . . but its contents are such that I know not whether it would not be better for the credit of both of us that it should be suppressed. . . . What will be thought if those sentences of yours should reach posterity?" Posterity, I imagine, would not be far wrong in thinking Erasmus a vain fellow, with all the petulance of vanity. The truth, moreover, is that several unpleasant characteristics were his. He sponged freely upon other people, and I do not think that in the matter of the authorship of Julius Exclusus he can be acquitted of downright lying. A large number of the letters in this book show the great man's part in a rather undignified episode. Afinius, a certain doctor, was inflamed with an ambition to receive a dedication from Erasmus, and approached him on the subject. The bargain was struckon condition that a present of two silver cups should be forthcoming. Erasmus's private opinion of Afinius was not very high, but cups were cups. Some correspondence, extending over a considerable period, passed. At first the letters were merely complimentary in the effusive style of the humanists, and Erasmus, though he made no mention of the present, yet evidently hoped that letters would recall the matter to the doctor's mind. However, as Afinius was "slow to part," hints which gradually grew broader and broader were dropped; and eventually Erasmus made no bones about it, but simply wrote to him in the strain of, "Where are those cups?" Finally: he actually sent his servant to bring them to him. No letter is extant acknowledging their receipt, but as a treatise on medicine was duly dedicated to Afinius we

may conclude that the cups eventually found their way to a certain lodging in Louvain. y '*: If Erasmus had imperfectionsand who is without themhe had them along with very definite virtues. He could lie about the authorship of a scurrilous squib, and yet try—as he sincerely did try—to serve the cause of truth/Moreover, if he "sponged" upon othershe, the writer of Spongia! —it was only because he was conscious of his gifts and their use to the world, and needed money to exercise them. His income was tolerably large, yet he was always..crying out for more. Good wine was necessary for his delicate stomach, and books, at a time when books were costly, for his studies. More than once he refused a benefice because the giving of it was tainted with Simony or because it would interfere, with Ins pursuit of learning. This was his one great passion. A pure enthusiasm for scholarship made him the undisputed prince of the commonwealth of letters. He hoped that baptised muses would redeem the world, and thought that -he could see, as he said in one of his letters, "a truly golden age arising." Almost every educated man in Europe gave him a veneration practically amounting to idolatry. It was an honor to be a correspondent of Erasmus, and a mild form of beatification to be one of His friends. So many and so varied were these, and so deep their devotion to him, that, we may be sure that under all the vanity there was not only charm but a true nobility of character. After dinner Erasmus Told Colet that what he was saying was blasmous; Whereupon Colet, with some heat, Requested him that last remark of his to repeat. (I gather this gem from Mr. Edmund Clerihew Bentley's Bio graph// for Beginners. But as the book is out of print I have never been able to obtain a copy, and consequently am obliged to quote from memory.) Whether this bit of biography is authentic I cannot say, but it is certain that, to take only English saints and scholars, Erasmus maintained to the end a firm friendship with Colet, Fisher, and More. To them, above all men, he unburdened himself. Their entreaties, more than anything else, moved him to make his belated attack upon Luther's determinism. He was weary with war and old. Nearly 20 years before he had wanted to retire from controversy, '"'to hold his tongue and go to sleep, or to sing a song to Christ and himself." It was not to be. Paul 111., ready for conciliation, and about to call a General Council to settle the affairs of Christendom, proposed adding a number of moderates to the Sacred College. Erasmus was to have been one of them, Fisher another. But the proposal enraged Henry VIII., who gave to the Bishop of Rochester a redder hat than the Pope could send. More went his hilarious way to martyrdom—and Europe was finally split in two. The great humanist lived just long enough to decline the honor of being a Cardinal and to see the ruin complete that he had always felt he could have avoided. With his death the end of a chapter in the world's history was reached and a page turned.