Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

them to Colet and More, and wrote to Colet: "The Roman Curia has

cast aside all shame. What is more impudent than these

indulgences?" `061985 In October he wrote to another friend:

-

I hear that Luther is approved by all good men, but it is said

that his writings are unequal. I think his Theses will please all,

except a few about purgatory, which they who make their living from it

don't want taken from them.... I perceive that the monarchy of the

Roman high priest (as that see now is) is the plague of Christendom,

though it is praised through thick and thin by shameless preachers.

Yet I hardly know whether it is expedient to touch this open sore, for

that is the duty of princes; but I fear that they conspire with the

pontiff for part of the spoils. `061986

-

For the most part Erasmus lived now in Louvain. He shared in

founding at the university the Collegium Trilingue, with

professorships in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In 1519 Charles V gave him

a pension. Erasmus made it a condition of acceptance that he was to

keep his independence of body and mind; but if he was human this

pension, added to those that he was receiving from Archbishop Warham

and Lord Mountjoy, must have played some part in molding his

attitude toward the Reformation.

As Luther's revolt passed from criticism of indulgences to rejection

of papacy and councils, Erasmus hesitated. He had hoped that Church

reform could be advanced by appealing to the good will of the humanist

pope. He still revered the Church as (it seemed to him) an

irreplaceable foundation of social order and individual morality;

and though he believed that the orthodox theology was shot through

with nonsense, he had no trust in the wisdom of private or popular

judgment to develop a more beneficent ritual or creed; the progress of

reason could come only through the percolation of enlightenment from

the instructed few to the emulous many. He acknowledged his share in

opening a path for Luther; his own Praise of Folly was at that

moment circulating by the thousands throughout Europe, pointing

scorn at monks and theologians, and giving sharp point to Luther's

blunt tirades. When the monks and theologians charged him with

laying the egg that Luther hatched, he answered, wryly: "Yes, but

the egg I laid was a hen, whereas Luther has hatched a

gamecock." `061987 Luther himself had read the Praise of Folly,

and nearly everything else published by Erasmus, and he told his

friends that he was merely giving more direct form to what the

famous humanist had said or hinted for many years past. On March 18,

1519, he wrote to Erasmus humbly and reverently, soliciting his

friendship and, by implication, his support.

Erasmus had now to make one of the pivotal decisions of his life,

and either horn of the dilemma seemed fatal. If he renounced Luther he

would be called a coward. If he associated himself with Luther in

rejecting the Roman Church he would not merely forfeit three

pensions and the protection that Leo X had given him against

obscurantist theologians; he would have to abandon his own plan and

strategy of Church reform through the improvement of minds and

morals in influential men. Already he had (he thought) made real

progress on this line with the Pope, Archbishop Warham, Bishop Fisher,

Dean Colet, Thomas More, Francis I, Charles V. These men, of course,

would never consent to renounce the Church; they would shrink from

disrupting an institution which in their view was inextricably

allied with princely government in maintaining social stability; but

they could be enlisted in a campaign to reduce the superstitions and

horrors in the prevailing cult, to cleanse and educate the clergy,

to control and subordinate the monks, and to protect intellectual

freedom for the progress of the mind. To exchange that program for a

violent division of Christendom into warring halves, and for a

theology of predestination and the unimportance of good works, would

seem to these men, and seemed to Erasmus, the way to madness.

He hoped that peace might still be restored if all parties would

lower their voices. In February 1519, he advised Froben to publish

no more of Luther's works, as being too inflammatory. `061988 In April

he wrote to Elector Frederick encouraging him to protect Luther as

more sinned against than sinning. `061989 Finally (May 30) he answered

Luther:

-

Dearest brother in Christ, your epistle, showing the keenness of

your mind and breathing a Christian spirit, was most pleasant to me. I

cannot tell you what a commotion your books are raising here. These

men cannot by any means be disabused of the suspicion that your

works are written by my aid, and that I am, as they call it, the

standard-bearer of your party.... I have testified to them that you

are entirely unknown to me, that I have not read your books, and

neither approve nor disapprove of your writings, but that they

should read them before they speak so loudly. I suggested, too, that

the subjects on which you have written are not of a sort to be

declaimed from pulpits, and that as your character was admitted to

be spotless, denouncing and cursing were not precisely in place. It

was of no use; they are as mad as ever.... I am myself the chief

object of animosity. The bishops generally are on my side....

For yourself, you have good friends in England, even among the

greatest persons there. You have friends here too- me in particular.

As to me, my business is with literature. I confine myself to it as

far as I can, and keep aloof from other quarrels; but generally I

think courtesy to opponents is more effective than violence.... It

might be wiser of you to denounce those who misuse the Pope's

authority than to censure the Pope himself. So also with kings and

princes. Old institutions cannot be rooted up in an instant. Quiet

argument may do more than wholesale condemnation. Avoid all appearance

of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody. Do

not be excited over the noise you have made. I have looked into your

Commentary on the Psalms, and am much pleased with it.... Christ

give you His spirit, for His own glory and the world's good. `061990

-

Despite this cautious ambivalence the theologians of Louvain

continued to attack Erasmus as the fountainhead of the Lutheran flood.

On October 8, 1520, Aleander arrived, posted the papal bull

excommunicating Luther, and scored Erasmus as a secret fomenter of the

revolt. The pundits accepted Aleander's lead, and expelled Erasmus

from the Louvain faculty (October 9, 1520). He moved to Cologne, and

there, as we have seen, defended Luther in conference with Frederick

of Saxony (November 5). On December 5 he sent to the Elector a

statement known as the Axiomata Erasmi, to the effect that

Luther's request to be tried by impartial judges was reasonable;

that good men and lovers of the Gospel were those who had taken

least offense at Luther; that the world was thirsting for

evangelical truth (i.e., truth based solely on the Gospel); and that

such a mood, so widely spread, could not be suppressed. `061991 With

the Dominican Johann Faber he composed a memorial to Charles V,

recommending that Charles, Henry VIII, and Louis II of Hungary

should appoint an impartial tribunal to try Luther's case. In a letter

to Cardinal Campeggio (December 6) he urged justice for Luther:

-

I perceived that the better a man was, the less he was Luther's

enemy.... A few persons only were clamoring at him in alarm for

their own pockets.... No one has yet answered him or pointed out his

faults.... How, while there are persons calling themselves

bishops... whose moral character is abominable, can it be right to

persecute a man of unblemished life, in whose writings distinguished

and excellent persons have found so much to admire? The object has

been simply to destroy him and his books out of mind and memory, and

it can only be done when he is proved wrong....

If we want truth, every man ought to be free to say what he thinks

without fear. If the advocates of one side are to be rewarded with

miters, and the advocates on the other with rope or stake, truth

will not be heard.... Nothing could have been more invidious or unwise

than the Pope's bull. It was unlike Leo X, and those who were sent

to publish it only made things worse. It is dangerous, however, for

secular princes to oppose the papacy, and I am not likely to be braver

than princes, especially when I can do nothing. The corruption of

the Roman court may require reform extensive and immediate, but I

and the like of me are not called on to take a work like that upon

themselves. I would rather see things left as they are than see a

revolution that may lead to one knows not what.... You may assure

yourself that Erasmus has been, and always will be, a faithful subject

of the Roman See. But I think, and many will think with me, that there

would be a better chance of a settlement if there were less

ferocity, if the management should be placed in the hands of men of

weight and learning, if the Pope would follow his own disposition

and would not let himself be influenced by others. `061992

-

Luther made it more and more difficult for Erasmus to intercede

for him, since with each month the violence of his speech increased,

until in July 1520, he invited his readers to wash their hands in

the blood of bishops and cardinals. When news came that Luther had

publicly burned Leo's bull of excommunication, Erasmus confessed

himself shocked. On January 15, 1521, the Pope sent him a letter

expressing pleasure in his loyalty; at the same time Leo sent

instructions to Aleander to treat the humanist with every courtesy. As

the Diet of Worms approached, a German prince asked Erasmus to come to

Luther's help, but he replied that it was too late. He regretted

Luther's refusal to submit; such submission, he thought, would have

furthered the movement for reform; now he feared civil war. In

February 1521, he wrote to a friend:

-

Everyone confessed that the Church suffered under the tyranny of

certain men, and many were taking counsel to remedy this state of

affairs. Now this man has arisen to treat the matter in such a

way... that no one dares to defend even what he has said well. Six

months ago I warned him to beware of hatred. The Babylonian

Captivity has alienated many from him, and he daily puts forth more

atrocious things. `061993

-

Luther now abandoned hope of Erasmus' support, and put him aside

as a cowardly pacifist who "thinks that all can be accomplished with

civility and benevolence." `061994 At the same time, and despite Leo's

instructions, Aleander and the Louvain theologians continued to attack

Erasmus as a secret Lutheran. Disgusted, he moved to Basel (November

15, 1521), where he hoped to forget the young Reformation in the old

Renaissance. Basel was the citadel of Swiss humanism. Here labored

Beatus Rhenanus, who edited Tacitus and Pliny the Younger,

discovered Velleius Paterculus, and superintended the printing of

Erasmus' New Testament. Here were printers and publishers who were

also scholars, like Hans Amerbach and that saint among publishers,

Johann Froben(ius), who wore himself out over his presses and texts,

and (said Erasmus) "left his family more honor than

fortune." `061995 Here Durer lived for years; here Holbein made

breath-taking portraits of Froben and Bonifacius Amerbach- who

gathered the art collection now in the Basel Museum. Seven years

before, on an earlier visit, Erasmus had described the circle with

fond exaggeration:

-

I seem to be living in some charming sanctuary of the Muses, where a

multitude of learned persons... appears as a matter of course. No

one is ignorant of Latin, none of Greek; most of them know Hebrew.

This one excels in the study of history, that one is deeply versed

in theology, one is skilled in mathematics, another is a student of

antiquity, another is learned in the law. Certainly up to this time it

has never been my good fortune to live in such an accomplished

society.... What a sincere friendship prevails among them all, what

cheerfulness, what concord! `061996

-

Living with Froben, Erasmus acted as literary adviser, wrote

prefaces, edited the Fathers. Holbein made famous portraits of him

at Basel (1523-24). One is still there; another was sent to Archbishop

Warham, and is now in the Earl of Radnor's collection; the third, in

the Louvre, is Holbein's masterpiece. Standing at a table writing,

wrapped in a heavy fur-trimmed coat, hooded with a beret covering half

of each ear, the greatest of the humanists betrays in his premature

age (he was now fifty-seven) the toll taken by ill health, a

peripatetic life of controversy, and the spiritual loneliness and

grief brought on by his attempt to be fair to both sides in the

dogmatic conflicts of his time. Disheveled strays of white hair emerge

from the beret. Grim, thin lips; features refined but strong; a sharp,

ferreting nose; heavy eyelids almost closed on tired eyes; here, in

one of the greatest of all portraits, is the Renaissance slain by

the Reformation.

On December 1, 1522, the new pope, Adrian VI, wrote to Erasmus in

terms suggestive of the extraordinary influence with which both

sides credited him:

-

It lies with you, God helping, to recover those who have been

seduced by Luther from the right road, and to hold up those who

still stand.... I need not tell you with what joy I shall receive back

these heretics without need to smite them with the rod of the Imperial

law. You know how far are such rough methods from my own nature. I

am still as you knew me when we were students together.

Come to me in Rome. You will find here the books which you will

need. You will have myself and other learned men to consult with;

and if you will do what I ask you shall have no cause for

regret. `061997

-

After a preliminary exchange of letters pledging each other to

secrecy, Erasmus opened his heart to the Pope:

-

Your Holiness requires my advice, and you wish to see me. I would go

to you with pleasure if my health allowed.... As to writing against

Luther, I have not learning enough. You think my words will have

authority. Alas, my popularity, such as I had, is turned to hatred.

Once I was Prince of Letters, Star of Germany... High Priest of

Learning, Champion of a Purer Theology. The note is altered now. One

party says I agree with Luther because I do not oppose him; the

other finds fault with me because I oppose him.... At Rome and in

Brabant I am called heretic, heresiarch, schismatic. I entirely

disagree with Luther. They quote this and that to show we are alike. I

could find a hundred passages where St. Paul seems to teach the

doctrines which they condemn in Luther....

Those counsel you best who advise gentle measures. The monks-

Atlases they call themselves of a tottering Church- estrange those who

would be its supporters.... Some think there is no remedy but force.

That is not my opinion... there would be frightful bloodshed. The

question is not what heresy deserves, but how to deal with it

wisely.... For myself, I should say, discover the roots of the

disease. Clean out those to begin with. Punish no one. Let what has

taken place be regarded as a chastisement sent by Providence, and

grant a general amnesty. If God forgives my sins, God's vicar may

forgive. The magistrates may prevent revolutionary violence. If

possible, there should be a check on the printing presses. Then let

the world know and see that you mean in earnest to reform the abuses

which are justly cried out against. If your Holiness desires to know

what are the roots to which I refer, send persons whom you can trust

to every part of Latin Christendom. Let them consult the wisest men

they can find in the different countries; and you will soon

know. `061998

-

Poor Adrian, whose good intentions outran his powers, died

broken-hearted in 1523. His successor, Clement VII. continued to

urge Erasmus to enter the lists against Luther. When finally the

scholar yielded, it was with no personal attack on Luther, no

general indictment of the Reformation, but by an objective and

mannerly discussion of free will ( De libero arbitrio, 1524). He

admitted that he could not fathom the mystery of moral freedom, nor

reconcile it with divine omniscience and omnipotence. But no

humanist could accept the doctrines of predestination and

determinism without sacrificing the dignity and value of man or of

human life: here was another basic cleavage between the Reformation

and the Renaissance. To Erasmus it seemed obvious that a God who

punished sins that His creatures as made by Him could not help

committing, was an immoral monster unworthy of worship or praise;

and to ascribe such conduct to Christ's "Father in heaven" would be

the direst blasphemy. On Luther's assumptions the worst criminal would

be an innocent martyr, fated to sin by an act of God, and then

condemned by divine vengeance to eternal suffering. How could a

believer in predestination make any creative effort, or labor to

improve the condition of mankind? Erasmus confessed that a man's moral

choice is fettered by a thousand circumstances over which he has had

no control; yet man's consciousness persists in affirming some measure

of freedom, without which he would be a meaningless automaton. In

any case, Erasmus concluded, let us admit our ignorance, our

incapacity to reconcile moral freedom with divine prescience or

omnipresent causality; let us postpone the solution to the Last

Judgment; but meanwhile let us shun any hypothesis that makes man a

puppet, and God a tyrant crueler than any in history.

Clement VII sent Erasmus 200 florins ($5,000?) on receiving the

treatise. Most Catholics were disappointed by the conciliatory and

philosophical tone of the book; they had hoped for an exhilarating

declaration of war. Melanchthon, who had expressed predestinarian

views in his Loci communes, was favorably impressed by Erasmus'

argument, and omitted the doctrine in later editions; `061999 he, too,

still hoped for peace. But Luther, in a delayed response entitled

De servo arbitrio (1525), defended predestination uncompromisingly:

-

The human will is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it

wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes

as Satan wills. Nor can it choose its rider.... The riders contend for

its possession.... God foresees, foreordains, and accomplishes all

things by an unchanging, eternal, and efficacious will. By this

thunderbolt free will sinks shattered in the dust. `0619100

-

It is significant of the sixteenth-century mood that Luther rejected

free will not, as some eighteenth-century thinkers would do, because

it ran counter to a universal reign of law and causality, nor, as many

in the nineteenth century would do, because heredity, environment, and

circumstance seemed to determine, like another trinity, the desires

that seem to determine the will. He rejected free will on the ground

that God's omnipotence makes Him the real cause of all events and

all actions, and that consequently it is He, and not our virtue or our

sins, Who decides our salvation or damnation. Luther faces the

bitterness of his logic manfully:

-

Common sense and natural reason are highly offended that God by

His mere will deserts, hardens, and damns, as if He delighted in sin

and in such eternal torments, He Who is said to be of such mercy and

goodness. Such a concept of God seems wicked, cruel, and

intolerable, and by it many men have been revolted in all ages. I

myself was once offended to the very depth of the abyss of

desperation, so that I wished that I had never been created. There

is no use trying to get away from this by ingenious distinctions.

Natural reason, however much it is offended, must admit the

consequences of the omniscience and omnipotence of God.... If it is

difficult to believe in God's mercy and goodness when He damns those

who do not deserve it, we must recall that if God's justice could be

recognized as just by human comprehension, it would not be

divine. `0619101

-

Typical again of the age was the wide sale that this treatise On

the Slave Will had in the seven Latin and two vernacular editions

that were called for within a year. In the sequel this proved the

great source book of Protestant theology; here Calvin found the

doctrine of predestination, election, and reprobation which he

transmitted to France, Holland, Scotland, England, and America.

Erasmus answered Luther in two minor tracts, Hyperaspistes ( The

Defender ) I and II (1526-27), but contemporary opinion gave the

Reformer the better of the argument.

Even at this stage Erasmus continued his efforts for peace. To his

correspondents he recommended tolerance and courtesy. He thought

that the Church should permit clerical marriage and communion in

both kinds; that she should yield some of her vast properties to lay

authorities and uses; and that such divisive questions as

predestination, free will, and the Real Presence should be left

undefined, open to diverse interpretations. `0619102 He advised Duke

George of Saxony to treat the Anabaptists humanely; "it is not just to

punish with fire any error whatever, unless there be joined to it

sedition or some other crime such as the laws punish with

death." `0619103 This was in 1524; in 1533, however, moved by

friendship or senility, he defended the imprisonment of heretics by

Thomas More. `0619104 In Spain, where some humanists had become

Erasmians, the monks of the Inquisition began a systematic scrutiny of

Erasmus' works, with a view to having him condemned as a heretic

(1527). Nevertheless he continued his criticism of monastic immorality

and theological dogmatism as main provocatives of the Reformation.

In 1528 he repeated the charge that "many convents, both of men and

women, are public brothels," and "in many monasteries the last

virtue to be found is chastity." `0619105 In 1532 he condemned the

monks as importunate beggars, seducers of women, hounders of heretics,

hunters of legacies, forgers of testimonials. `0619106 He was all

for reforming the Church while deprecating the Reformation. He could

not bring himself to leave the Church, or to see her torn in half.

"I endure the Church till the day I shall see a better one." `0619107

He was dismayed when he heard of the sack of Rome by Protestant

and Catholic troops in the service of the Emperor (1527); he had hoped

that Charles would encourage Clement to compromise with Luther; now

Pope and Emperor were at each other's throats. A closer shock came

when, in a pious riot, the reformers at Basel destroyed the images

in the churches (1529). Only a year before, he himself had denounced

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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