Erasmus: Intellectual of the 16th Century 3030798593, 9783030798598

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Erasmus Intellectual of the 16th Century

Nathan Ron

Erasmus

Nathan Ron

Erasmus Intellectual of the 16th Century

Nathan Ron The University of Haifa Haifa, Israel

ISBN 978-3-030-79859-8    ISBN 978-3-030-79860-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In Loving Memory of My Parents

Preface

This book is an ethical assessment of Erasmus as an involved intellectual, i.e. “public intellectual,” a term used by social sciences researchers. The involved intellectual—sometimes regarded as the modern equivalent of the Biblical prophet—is the scholar who rises above the preoccupations of his own profession to engage with issues of public and social policy, and is thus involved in moral deliberations, criticism and protest. The book offers an ethical examination of Erasmus’s engagements in the spheres of politics and society, thus investigating the nature and degree of his public intellectuality. Despite this focal employment of a modern term of art, the analysis is not altogether ahistorical. I would not have dealt with Erasmus’s self-censorship in the face of the atrocities committed by the Spanish against indigenous peoples in the New World were it not for the fact that there were other contemporary responses, quite different than his (Las Casas, Montesinos, Vives). Nor would I critically judge Erasmus’s self-censorship in the face of the execution of Thomas More and John Fisher had he himself not been sternly judged by some of his contemporaries, such as Damian of Goes and others, for his public silence in the face of Henry VIII’s actions. Similarly, the issues of Erasmus’s significant conception of the public good (publica utilitas) and his principled objection to crusading initiatives are discussed within their contemporary historical frameworks. On the other hand, in this context I do not spurn a critical reference to the Vietnam war as an unnecessary war that Erasmus, the anti-crusade protagonist, would have harshly condemned had he been

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with us today. And when I mention the Vietnam war I have in mind also other unnecessary past and present bloody conflicts that I would wish my readers to have in mind as well. The variety of issues discussed in this book include Erasmus’s prejudiced thought concerning woman’s nature and her inferiority in comparison to man. Nevertheless, Erasmus should be credited for his innovative and non-conventional stance in favor of women’s education, a credit to be shared with Thomas More. All in all, Erasmus’s intellectual character, albeit faulty, stands out as multifaceted and total, one that precedes the modern public intellectual and, at the same time, also significantly prefigures it. It may require some audacity to consider him a Renaissance forerunner of Sartre and Chomsky, or the early modern precursor of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Leszek Kolakowski. Nevertheless, an intellectual spark with a certain resemblance to Voltaire, in terms of critical thinking and influence, has already been attributed to him, and Trevor-Roper identified Erasmianism as an subterranean stream that irrigated the intellectual garden of the Enlightenment. Haifa, Israel

Nathan Ron

Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to Prof. Erika Rummel whose learned and supportive guidance as well as good advices significantly benefited me with this book. My utmost gratitude is extended to Dr. Franz Posset—My Reuchlin mentor who read and scholarly commented on my Erasmus-Reuchlin chapter. I would like to thank my anonymous readers. Without their inquisitive eyes my manuscript would not have become this book. I am grateful to Phil Getz, senior editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for an ongoing relations of trust, considerate patience and professional efficiency. Aviva, my partner of many years, patiently endures my intellectual dealings with Erasmus. I owe her so much.

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Contents

1 Introduction: Prefiguring the Modern Intellectual?  1 2 The Public Good 13 3 An Intellectual Against Crusading 23 4 Erasmus on the Education and Nature of Women 37 5 In the Face of the Execution of Thomas More 49 6 In the Face of Francis I’s Foreign policy 57 7 In the Face of the Destruction of the Amerindians 65 8 Erasmus’s Turkophobic Bias 71 9 Erasmus and Reuchlin: The Jews and their Language 81 10 Conclusions: Only Sparks Fly Upward 97 Bibliography103 Index113 xi

Abbreviations

ASD CoE CWE Ep LB

Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969–) Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, vols. 1–3, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985–87). Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–). Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen, 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906–58) Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia. Edited by Jean Le Clerc. 10 vols. Leiden: Van der Aa, 1703–1706

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Prefiguring the Modern Intellectual?

Abstract  An ethical examination of any present or past persona, particularly if this character is himself of ethical or moral eminence, requires that a simple yet valuable test should be conducted, namely the test of living up to one’s principles. Attempting to hold on and live up to one’s professed principles requires no less effort and commitment than preaching them in the first place. This should be put to the test in the case of each and every involved intellectual. Each chapter deals with an issue that has explicit moral or ethical implications. These issues are very much secular or civilian. Hugh Trevor-Roper idealized Erasmus as a model of the independent intellectual. To some extent Erasmus was, but not to the degree that Trevor-Roper idealized his independence. Keywords  Intellectual • Secular • Presentism • Ethics • Racism • Trevor-Roper

The Ethical Test My former book, Erasmus and the “Other,” was criticized as flawed by presentism. Since this book may attract similar criticism, my preceded reply is given here: the past cannot totally be separated from the present, especially when dealing with intellectual history. Benedetto Croce’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_1

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conception that all history is contemporary history may sound crude to nuanced ears, yet it is not altogether wrong. To a certain degree at least, any study of the past is informed by the problems and needs or interests of the writer’s own time. Under the influence of Croce, E. H. Carr mocked both the presumption of objectivity and the almost religious conception of documents held by members of his profession. Carr did not dispute the need for historical accuracy, but he added: “I am reminded of Housman’s remark that ‘accuracy is a duty, not a virtue.’ To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function.”1 Carr elucidated an inescapable principle that philosophers such as Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger had argued for long before, namely, that the historian can see the past only through present glasses.2 Nevertheless, I have attempted, in this book, to follow a more balanced way, so that my present glasses, focused on Erasmus as an involved or public intellectual, should not make me overlook the norms and peculiarities of Erasmus’s time and place. Thus, although the book is fundamentally an ethical assessment of Erasmus’s stances on certain moral issues, it is not altogether ahistorical. The basis of my research is Erasmus’s writings, which I have scrutinized and studied. My use of modern or contemporary terms and standards to evaluate Erasmus as an involved (or uninvolved) intellectual provides an additional layer, albeit a significant one. It may also be thought of as a tool used for a better, if different, understanding of Erasmus’s stances on certain issues of a high moral significance. An ethical examination of any present or past persona, particularly if this character is himself of ethical or moral eminence, requires that a simple yet valuable test should be conducted, one which is rooted in the Judeo-­ Christian tradition, namely the test of living up to one’s principles. Indeed, the very preaching of non-consensual or unconventional teachings in sixteenth-­century Europe was potentially risky and demanded some daring from an intellectual, and Erasmus did occasionally put himself at such risk. Still, attempting to hold on and live up to one’s professed principles requires no less effort and commitment than preaching them in the first place. This should be put to the test in the case of each and every leader 1 2

 E. H. Carr, What is History (London: Pelican, 1964), 15.  Ibid., 21.

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who preaches values or principles, whether a religious, political, educational, or intellectual leader; be he Moses or Jesus, Mohammad or Buddha, Erasmus or Luther, Rousseau or Voltaire, Mahatma Gandhi or Mao Zedong, Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Notedly, when evaluating Erasmus one must not forget that he was socially and professionally vulnerable—he held no endowed chair, he had no real faculty position, he belonged to no religious order, he had no country, and he had no family. He lived off the fruits of his writing and at the pleasure of fickle patrons. Erasmus should be credited for living and acting as a kind of independent scholar, roughly speaking. Yet, precisely this alleged intellectual independence, as well as the high esteem and overall recognition that he earned, create the ethical expectations that are dealt with in this book, namely, that he would stand firmly for his principles and teachings, which to a certain degree he failed to do. After 1517, Erasmus’s intellectual focus shifted almost entirely to Biblical and theological work. He wrote fewer humanistic political and intellectual critiques and, as he increasingly focused on the threats of religious schism, became less concerned with the behaviors of leaders and more concerned about the fate of Christianity. However, extensive sources relating to Erasmus’s public intellectual activity still retain vital evidence for the researcher to sift through. Such are Erasmus’s massive correspondence, and the treatise “A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War Against the Turks” (Utilissima consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo, 1530), which covers a variety of issues, from warring with the Turks to peace and war in general and other matters concerning Church, state, and society. But most of all, Erasmus’s philosophia Christi, the set of moral values that dominated his thought and dictated his ethical and moral attitude, remained steadfast. Thus, the investigation of Erasmus’s engagement on issues of imperialism, war and peace, and other public issues, through the lens of Erasmus’s own set of values and through the observations and expectations of his contemporaries, is undoubtedly significant. Yet there is also another way of investigation, which can widen our perspective on Erasmus’s intellectual stances, namely, examining his engagements or disengagements on issues of politics and society through the lens of the modern term “public intellectual.” Employing modern terms in the analysis of early modern thought is of course no innovation of mine. The very term “intellectual” (as a noun) did not exist before the

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Dreyfus affair in 1890’s France.3 Nevertheless, applying it to Erasmus and other earlier personae is common and acceptable. The term “pacifism,” which is frequently used in relation to Erasmus, Anabaptists, and other Reformation figures, is another example.4 The term appeared in the French language (pacifisme) only in 1845, and for the first time in the English language (pacifism) in 1902. Using it in an early modern historical context may be considered anachronistic or an imposition of a modern outlook on patterns of thought that did not exist in sixteenth-century Europe.5 Nevertheless, the use of this term by scholars and writers dealing with Erasmus’s or the Anabaptist’s pursuit of peace is frequent and acceptable, due to the fact that the phenomenon is older than its name. Such is Racism. The earliest pieces of evidence for its existence according to the “Oxford English Dictionary” stem from 1880 and 1902.6 However, Racism as a historical phenomenon dates back to much earlier periods of history. In her important work The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018), historian Geraldine Heng convincingly argues against those historians of the Middle Ages and early modern Europe who ban the use of the term “race” and its derivatives. “Why call something race, when many old terms—‘ethnocentrism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘premodern discriminations,’ ‘prejudice,’ ‘chauvinism,’ even ‘fear of otherness and difference’—have been used comfortably for so long to characterize the genocides, brutalizations, executions, and mass expulsions of the medieval period? Not to use the term race would be to sustain the reproduction of a certain kind of past, while keeping the door shut to tools, analyses, and resources that can name the past differently […]”7 To reject use of “race,” Heng explains, is to destigmatize the impacts and consequences of laws, acts, practices, and institutions in the medieval period, leaving one unable to name them for what they are. Thus, the exclusion of the term “race” and its derivatives has facilitated the entrenchment and reproduction of a distinct type of historiography in and beyond  See n. 10.  Nathan Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” The European Legacy 19 (2014), 27–42. 5  Ronald G. Musto, “Just Wars and Evil Empire: Erasmus and the Turks,” in J. Monfasani and R. G. Musto (eds.), Renaissance Society and Culture (New York: Italica Press, 1991), 198. 6  Wulf D. Hund, Stefanie Affeldt, “‘Racism’ Down Under. The Prehistory of a Concept in Australia,” Australian Studies Journal 33/34 (2019/2020): 9–30 (12). 7  Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 23. 3 4

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the academy. I fully agree with Heng that historians have to grasp the ways in which homo europaeus emerges, inter alia, “through racial grids produced from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, and the significance of that emergence for understanding the unstable entity we call ‘the West’ and its self-authorizing missions.”8 Admittedly, who was (and still is) considered a brighter prototype of the homo europaeus than Erasmus? Furthermore, I accept Erika Rummel’s definition of Erasmus’s stance in favor of women’s education as “progressive.”9 Rummel writes that this idea was progressive by the standard of his time. I argue, it is deservedly defined progressive not only by the standard of his time but also by the standard of our time and our present norms; it was innovative and non-­ conventional in the sixteenth century, and it is also progressive in the context of our time. Sadly, there are still women in various societies and parts of the world who are thought of as unworthy of a literary education, or of any education at all. Another case in point is Erasmus’s toleration of heretics, namely his objection—with a few exceptions—to their execution, which is highly appreciated by scholars and writers. Why so? Surely due to the fact that such an attitude was innovative and non-conventional in sixteenth-­century Europe, but not less so because we judge this kind of tolerant attitude as progressive by our present norms and values. In other words, any normative evaluation or judgment of an ethical stance displayed by any historical protagonist cannot be detached from our modern and present points of views; such is my assessment of Erasmus’s political and social agenda, without ignoring the peculiarities of his time and its predominant norms. In his progressive thought in certain fields of intellectual inquiry, Erasmus influenced other and later writers and intellectuals. Craig R. Thompson may well be right in his positive assessment of the extent of Erasmus’s influence in creating a critical, untraditional climate of mind— unique by all standards. Thompson mentions Voltaire as perhaps the only writer and thinker in the modern world whose influence on his generation during his lifetime has been as widespread. Erasmus’s name is celebrated, by early modernists and modernists, as that of the exemplary scholar, the prince of humanists. But considering the limitations of his time regarding the freedom of thought and speech, to what degree was Erasmus an involved intellectual, i.e. public intellectual, if indeed he was one at all? 8 9

 Ibid., 24.  Erika Rummel, Erasmus on Women (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996), 3.

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Intellectuals in Public Life The term “intellectual,” as a noun, and the idea that intellectuals, not just as individuals but as a distinctive group or elite with a certain moral authority, should be engaged in public life, emerged in late nineteenth-century France as the country was shaken by the political and public storm of the Dreyfus affair.10 Julien Benda’s famous book, La Trahison des clercs (1927), translated into English as The Treason of the Intellectuals (1928), was written very much under the influence of the storm that shook France—Benda belonged to the Dreyfusards—and the moral protagonism displayed by a maverick intellectual, the novelist Emil Zola (1840–1902). Thus, Benda demanded that intellectuals be detached from political passions, namely, antisemitic, anti-proletarian and anti-democratic politics. What made these passions even worse, Benda argued, is that each of them was infected by the poison of nationalism.11 Benda ascribed the moral deterioration of his age to “the intellectual organization of political hatreds.”12 He warned against a politicization of the intellect and argued that intellectuals should not follow any herd nor descend on the town square, and thus betray their esteemed role as the mentors of society. If or when intellectuals decide to intervene in politics or public life, they should commit themselves to universal ideas and remain detached from political passions.13 According to a more activistic approach, the modern public intellectual should act as a critic and “rise above the partial preoccupation of one’s own profession—and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment, and taste of the time,”14 and “must engage in moral deliberations because 10  On the first usages of the word intellectual (as a noun) in nineteenth- to twentieth-­ century England, see Stefan Collini, Absent Minds. Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17–40, 255–260. For the first usages of the term in 1890’s France, see: Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France. De l’affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 2002), 10–12; Richard A.  Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 20. 11  Juien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington (New York: William Morrow, 1928), 23, 44. 12  Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, 27. 13  Ibid., 44–78. For a discussion, see Collini, Absent Minds, 279–300; Edward W. Said, Presentations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 4–7. For a survey of definitions and interpretations of general and public forms of the intellectual, see Barbara A.  Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good: Creativity and Civil Courage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 13–28. 14  Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post Modernity and Intellectuals (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 2. See also Jeremy Ahearne and Olive Bennet,

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all public and social policies that they routinely criticize have important moral dimensions.”15 Acceptedly, as an individual the involved or public intellectual, “has been with us for a very long time, even if we ignore the ancient world. His exemplars include figures such as Machiavelli, Milton, Locke, Voltaire and Montesquieu.”16 Should we not include Erasmus in such a list? According to Benda, Erasmus, just as Emmanuel Kant and Ernest Renan, was a moralist, indeed an intellectual—or clerk, in Benda’s original usage—who preached in the name of humanity or justice. For the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914–2003), Erasmus was a colossal intellectual in the history of ideas, the greatest intellectual hero of the sixteenth century, a cosmopolitan in an age of emerging nationalism, whose intellectuality influenced the Enlightenment movement.17 Trevor-Roper idealized Erasmus as a model of the independent intellectual amidst the polarized ideologies of the Cold War, and particularly admired Erasmus’s peculiar sceptic and nonpartisan position concerning Martin Luther and the reformation in the 1520s. Erasmianism played a significant role in

“Introduction,” in Jeremy Ahearne and Olive Bennet (eds.), Intellectuals and Cultural Policy (London: Routledge, 2007), 6; Frank Furedi, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? (New York: Continuum, 2nd edition, 2006), 32. 15  Amitai Etzioni, “Are Public Intellectuals an Endangered Species?” in Amitai Etzioni and Alyssa Bowditch (eds.), Public Intellectuals: An Endangered species? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 3. See also Collini, Absent Minds, 256. 16  Posner (ibid., 2) considers Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) “the first of the modern intellectuals, their archetype and in many ways the most influential of them all.” Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, “The Intellectual,” in Jacques Le Goff (ed.), Medieval Callings (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 181–210, identifies intellectuals in the Middle Ages as (p.181): “a category of men who ‘worked with words and with the mind’ […] men who did not live on revenues from land nor were constrained to work with their hands and who were conscious (in varying measure) of being different in this from the other categories of humankind.” These medieval scholars are not defined or treated as public intellectuals. In his discussion of intellectuals as social critics, Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1987), 36–39, points to a continuity from Biblical prophets onwards to modern intellectuals, such as Herzen, Gandhi, and Orwell. 17  Hugh R. Trevor Roper, “Desiderius Erasmus” in idem Men and Events: Historical Essays (New York: Hippocrene books, 1977), 35–60 (first published by Harper, 1957); idem, “The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment,” in idem, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change and other essays (London: Macmillan, 1967), 193–236.

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shaping Trevor-Roper’s philosophy of history, which centers on the principle that ideas are the basis of social and economic change.18 Was Erasmus really an independent intellectual? To some extent he was, but not to the degree that Trevor-Roper idealized his independence. As I show in this book, Erasmus did not fully live up to his professed principles. Despite his anti-war preaching, so eminent in his writings, he made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policy of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515). Furthermore, in the face of two tragedies of considerable moral and ethical significance, namely, Henry VIII’s execution of Erasmus’s beloved Thomas More and John Fisher and the atrocities committed by the Spanish against indigenous peoples in the New World, the prince of humanists preferred self-censorship to expressions of protest or criticism and did not step forward to reproach kings for their misdeeds or crimes. Thus, Erasmus was less independent an intellectual than the idealized figure Trevor Roper describes. James Tracy has written a book about Erasmus as a pacifist intellectual.19 For him Erasmus was a skilled political observer and intellectual. Tracy does not use the term intellectual beyond the book’s subtitle, but he conceptualizes Erasmus as a scholar whose pursuit of peace stemmed not only from his Christian outlook but also from his political awareness. Tracy portrays Erasmus as a keen observer of the contemporary politics to which he was connected intellectually and as a writer.20 Accordingly, Erasmus was not just an excellent scholar, but also a politically involved one, a public intellectual in modern terms. The possibility of waging a crusade against the Turks in his time was a constant cause of concern for Erasmus. The aftermath of such a crusade concerned him too. In his introduction to The handbook of a Christian soldier (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 1503) he doubted the feasibility of converting the Turks, at least if the works of William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c. 1270–1334), John Duns 18  John Robertson, “Intellectual History: ‘The Religious Origins of History,’” in Blair Worden (ed.), Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Historian (London and New York: Tauris, 2016), 138–139. See also idem, “Hugh Trevor-Roper, Intellectual History and ‘The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment,’” English Historical Review 124 (2009): 1389–1421. 19  James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 20  Ibid., 56, 125ff.

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Scotus (c. 1266–1308), Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), Alvarus Pelagius (c. 1275–1349), and other scholasticists were used for this purpose: But what do we suppose will happen if, when we have beaten them (for I do not suppose we shall slaughter them to a man), to persuade them to embrace Christianity we set before them works of Ockham and Durandus and their like, of Scotus and Gavriel and Alvaro? What will they think, what their feelings will be (for though nothing else, they are at least human beings), when they hear these thorny and impenetrable thickets of argument—instances, formalities, quiddities, relativities.21

Erasmus was a resolute opponent of the orthodox-scholastic theology, just as he was an innovative scholar endowed with a critical attitude and a considerable degree of distinctive skepticism. His criticism of scholasticists and scholasticism was always sharp and is a significant fundamental of Erasmus’s humanism, as well as of humanism in general. But in Erasmus’s case it is also an intellectual tool frequently used and indicating an early modern—if not entirely modern—attitude, sarcastically and eloquently expressed in his Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium id est Stultitiae Laus, 1509), a show case of sheer satire and profound (Neoplatonist) philosophy. Thus, Folly’s lashes are inflicted on many: “[…] those who are deaf to the voice of true religion and lacking in the gentler Christian virtues, among whom are sycophants, self-seekers, money-makers, pedants, scholastics, lawyers, theologians, superstitious worshippers of images and relics, courtiers and kings, worldly monks, and irreligious pontiffs […] a savage thrust at Julius II, the bellicose pope.”22 In the final section of the book irony drops away, and Erasmus presents stultitia bursting in the supreme ecstasy that marks the soul’s ascent to beatitude. Thus, Pauline elements of Erasmus’s philosophia Christi meet a Neoplatonist concept. The satire throughout most of the book is enjoyably pin-pointed, yet the intellectual depth of the last pages is profoundly impressive. It is Erasmus’s 21  CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 80–86 (letter to Paul Volz of August 1518): “Sed quid futurum arbitramur, si victis (neque enim vniuersos, opinor, ferro trucidabimus) vt Christum amplectantur, Occamos aut Durundos aut Scotos aut Gabrieles aut Aluaro proposuerimus ? Quid cogitabunt aut quid sentient (sunt enim et illi, vt nihil aliud, certe homines), vbi audierint spinosas illas et inextricabileis argutias de instantibus, de formalitatibus, de quidditatibus, de relationibus ?” Erasmus’s letter to Paul Volz became the introduction to the Enchiridion from 1518 onward. 22  Betty Radice in CWE 27, 81 (Introduction).

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intellectual alternative to barren scholasticism. And to think that all this was written in some seven days!23 To produce an improved text of the New Testament (NT), Erasmus compiled old Greek manuscripts of the NT, on the basis of which he produced a bilingual revised edition with a parallel Greek and Latin text, the first of its kind to be published in print (1516) and entitled Novum Instrumentum. In this work he demonstrated a daring treatment of the text that resulted in correction of the Vulgate, braking sacred conventions, and challenging the authority of former theologians who had engaged with the text. What could be more intellectual than this, both in the sense of scholarship but even more so, in terms of daring and challenging the old school?24 The first edition appeared in 1516, and four more followed in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Erasmus added a volume of annotations, which supplied extensive commentary and often disputed the adequacy of the Vulgate vis-à-vis the Greek source, calling attention to errors as well as to mistaken inferences made by theologians over the centuries. Erasmus’s NT of the 1519 edition was in front of Luther when he prepared his German translation of the NT. Luther’s remarks, in his own handwriting, on Erasmus’s annotations to the NT prove that Luther was more critical than appreciative of Erasmus’s work.25 William Tyndale, in his translation of the NT into English, utilized the 1522 edition of Erasmus’s Greek NT (as well as the Vulgate and Luther’s German translation). Tyndale’s translation was used by many subsequent English translations and was standardized in the King James Version in 1611. What a great Herculean labor ignited by the inspiring intellectual that Erasmus was. Obviously, these are just two of his intellectual achievements; perhaps the most significant (his NT) and most popular (Folly), but just e pluribus duo. Were Erasmus’s intellectual achievements all about scholarship? Daniel Ménager points out that even by modern standards Erasmus deserves the title of intellectual, which is to say that Erasmus should be  Clarence H. Miller in ASD IV-3 14 (Introduction).  On Erasmus’s NT endeavor, see Robert D.  Sider, “Introduction: Erasmus’ New Testament Scholarship: Its Origin and Development,” in Robert D. Sider (ed.), Erasmus on the New Testament (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 3–22; Alastair Hamilton, “Humanists and the Bible,” in Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 100–117 (especially 110). 25  Arnoud Visser, “Irreverent Reading: Martin Luther as Annotator of Erasmus,” Sixteenth Century Journal 48 (2017): 87–109. 23 24

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treated not just a fine scholar. Ménager points out that Erasmus refused to confine himself to one particular field and felt obliged to involve himself in issues that, at first glance, were none of his concern.26 Due to his polemical activities and involvement in debates (sometimes with obvious glee), regardless of personal cost, “Erasmus’s status cannot be reduced to either that of a theologian, as Budé conceived of him, or to that of a philologist, as he is sometimes classified today. In this respect, again, he prefigures the modern intellectual.”27 In the following chapters, the abovementioned view is put to the test. Each chapter deals with an issue that has explicit moral or ethical implications, both by sixteenth-century standards, in particular Erasmus’s worldview and thought, and by present day norms. The various issues are not theological or confessional in substance but of a moral or ethical core. In comparison to the essentially religious questions that Erasmus dealt with, these issues are very much secular or civilian—given, of course, that all of Erasmus’s moral or ethical responses or stances were fundamentally derived from a set of values that he defined as philosophia Christi and which were, of course, Christian in their essence. For this reason, I do not in this book address the mega-theological controversy that marked the rupture between Erasmus and Luther in 1524–1525, the famous debate on free will and salvation: whether the attainment of salvation requires faith alone (sola fide), as Luther ruled, or whether good works are also required, as Erasmus argued.28 The issues of this debate were essentially theological, pertaining to the salvation of the soul, and therefore it does not enter the scope of my work. Erasmus’s impressive care for and promotion of the public good, is presented in Chap. 2. His firm and admirable objection to crusading is presented in Chap. 3. Albeit sticking to traditional prejudices as to woman’s nature and inferiority in comparison to man, Erasmus should be credited for his innovative and non-conventional stance in favor of women’s education, a credit to be shared with Thomas More and discussed in Chap. 4. The next chapters are generally of a different thrust. In Chap. 5, Erasmus’s compliance and submissive response to the execution of Thomas 26  Daniel Ménager, “Erasmus, the intellectuals, and the Reuchlin Affair,” in Erika Rummel (ed.), Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 40. 27  Ibid., 44. 28  Erasmus published “On Free Will” (De libero arbitrio, 1524); Luther responded with “On the Bondage of the Will” (De servo arbitrio, 1525). Erasmus added a work (Hyperaspistes, 1526), but it drew much less attention.

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More is discussed. Erasmus preferred self-censorship, although he was expected by contemporaries to react differently. Chapter 6 investigates the fact that Erasmus made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policy of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515)—a sharp contradiction to Erasmus’s much cherished principle of Christian peace. Chapter 7 examines Erasmus’s negligible reaction to the destruction of the Amerindians in his time. In Chaps. 8 and 9, the cosmopolitanism and universalism that are attributed to Erasmus are examined in relation to his Turkophobic attitude, and in relation to his attitude to the Hebrew language. Erasmus’s Turkophobic bias, as well as his negative attitude to the Qur’an and its language, flaws his intellectual authority. No less so does his prejudiced resentment toward the Hebrew language, which can be sharply portrayed by situating Erasmus vis-à-vis another prominent intellectual of his day, Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522). Taking all these complexities into consideration—on the one hand, an impressive publica utilitas drive, a proclaimed objection to crusades, an innovative support of women education; on the other hand, Erasmus’s disturbing silence on several moral and ethical challenges—the portrait that emerges is of a multifaceted intellectual, faulty indeed, yet nevertheless a prefiguration or a forerunner of the public intellectual of modern times.

CHAPTER 2

The Public Good

Abstract  The notion of the public good is a fundamental of Erasmus’s political thought and bound up in his intellectual authority. Courage, a major quality demanded of the involved intellectual today, was also displayed by Erasmus in writing in favor of public good, albeit with some severe exceptions. The kings’ financial demands of the common people must be moderate, to allow the poor to survive. If required to raise taxes, they should be progressive taxes, i.e., the rich should pay a greater share. Erasmus’s moral, as well as social and economic preference was that the prince will impose as little tax as possible on things such as corn, bread, beer, wine, clothes, and all the other things without which human life cannot be carried. Keywords  Public good • Folly • Courage • Taxes • Prince • Progressive The notion of publica utilitas, public good, is a fundamental of Erasmus’s political thought and bound up in his intellectual authority. His written promotion of the public good may be compared to the engagement of a modern intellectual in public affairs or political life. Courage, a major

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_2

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quality demanded of the involved intellectual today,1 was also displayed by Erasmus in writing in favor of public good, albeit with some severe exceptions, which I will discuss further on. The notion is particularly predominant in Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis Christiani, 1516).2 Here he expresses the idea that the prince should work to achieve the maximum good for the body politic; he should uphold the well-being of the governed Christians above all else. Elsewhere, in The Handbook of the Christian soldier (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 1503) Erasmus states: Nothing prevents you from holding the highest place in carrying out your princely functions while at the same time making no distinction of place in showing charity to your subjects. Consider that the essence of princely power is not to surpass others in wealth, but to be of service to the greatest number possible. Do not turn to your own advantage what belongs to the people, but give freely of your possessions and of yourself for the common good. The people owe you much, but you owe them everything.3

Thus, the common good must be a fundamental guideline for the ruler. He might be part of a dynasty, a legitimate king according to ancestry, nevertheless, he owes everything to his people. This sounds almost like an advocation of constitutional monarchy. In his Praise of Folly, Erasmus speaks through Folly, who stresses the same notion in a few sharp critical paragraphs dealing with kings: Their own concern is for a soft life, so in order to keep their minds untouched by care they give audience only to men who know how to say that they properly fulfil all the duties of a prince if they devote themselves to hunting and keep a stable of fine horses […] Picture the prince, such as some of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people’s advantage while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interest of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires. Then give him a gold chain, symbol of the concord between all the virtues 1  On courage and the modern public intellectual, see: Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good, 1, 4, 65–87. 2  On publica utilitas in Erasmus’s thought see James M. Estes, “Erasmus on Church and State,” Reformation, 21 (2016): 114–126. 3  CWE 66, 100. See also W. M. Southgate, “Erasmus: Christian Humanism and Political Theory,” History 40 (1955), 240–254 (249).

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[…] Add a scepter to symbolize justice and a wholly uncorrupted heart, and finally, the purple as an emblem of his overwhelming devotion to his people.4

Thus, the notion of the public good is expressed here by portraying a ruler who is driven by selfish condemnable urges, exactly the opposite of the required ones. Likewise, Erasmus’s criticism of Church and courtiers is striking. The courtiers are good for nothing: the most obsequious, servile, stupid and worthless of creatures, and yet they are bent on appearing foremost in everything. There is only one matter in which they have no pretensions: they are quite happy to go around displaying the gold, jewels, purple, and all the other emblems of virtue and wisdom on their persons while leaving any interest in what these symbolize to others […]5

Popes are reproached for spending resources on the purchase of their position, which once bought has to be protected by the sword, by poison, by violence of every kind. Erasmus was in Bologna on November 11, 1506 and watched when Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–1513) walked triumphantly into the city at the head of his troops.6 This event triggered his writing of a biting satire. In an anonymous dialogue, Julius Excluded from Heaven (Dialogus, Iulius exclusus e coelis, 1517), published after the Pope’s death, Erasmus lampooned the efforts of Julius, the cynic and arrogant

4  CWE 27, 136; ASD IV-3, 169: “[…] ipsi sese molliter curant neque quenquam ad aurem admittunt nisi qui iucunda loqui norit, ne quid animo sollicitudinis oboriatur. Se probe principis partes omneis implesse credunt, si venentur assidue, si bellos alant caballos […] Fingite mihi nunc (quales sunt nonnunquam) hominem legum ignarum, publicorum commodorum pene hostem, priuatis intentum commoditatibus, addictum voluptatibus, osorem eruditionis, osorem libertatis ac veri, nihil minus quam de reipublicae salute cogitantem, sed omnia sua libidine suisque vtilitatibus metientem. Deinde addite huic torquem auream, omnium virtutum cohaerentium consensum indicantem […] praeterea sceptrum, iusticiae et vndecunque incorrupti pectoris symbolum; postremo purpuram, eximiae cuiusdam in rempublicam charitatis indicium.” See Southgate, ibid. 5  CWE 27, 136; ASD IV-3, 170: “[…] quorum plerisque cum nihil sit addictius, seruilius, insulsius, abiectius, tamen omnium rerum primos sese videri volunt. Hac vna in re tamen modestissimi, quod contenti, aurum, gemmas, purpuram, reliquaque virtutum ac sapientiae insignia corpore circumferre, rerum ipsarum studium omne concedunt aliis.” 6  Epp 203, 205: 38–39; CWE, 27, xix.

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“warrior pope,” to enter heaven.7 The Pope is stopped at the gate by Peter, the first Bishop of Rome and thus the founder of the papacy. While Peter takes pride in his winning countless thousands of souls for Christ, having used his power for the benefit of many and bringing abundant blessings to them, Julius led many to destruction, and with all his triumphs benefitted no one, at least according to Peter, who expresses Erasmus’s sharp criticism. Pope Julius II in fact promoted the visual arts, rebuilt parts of Rome, began the new St. Peter’s, while famous Renaissance artists flourished under his papacy. Yet Erasmus, somewhat insensitive to plastic beauty, did not find it appropriate to give the Pope any credit for these achievements.8 Julius had also extended the sovereignty of the papacy over central Italy by means of diplomacy and war. In the dialogue, he boasts of his “Royal palaces, the most handsome horses and mules, hordes of servants, well-­ trained troops, dainty courtiers […] gold, purple, taxes; in fact, such is the wealth and splendour of the Roman pontiff that, by comparison, any king would seem a poor and insignificant fellow.”9 But Peter casts at Julius accusations of buying his position: “Shameless man […] bribery, fraud, and preoccupation with the things of the world made you pope, if indeed a man like you may be called pope.”10 Erasmus’s accusations were hurled, by implication, not only at Julius but at the general run of contemporary popes, and were intended to cause alarm and to demand an alternative. His dialogue aimed at stressing the contrast between the contemporary papacy and its apostolic origins, and to seek a solution in returning to apostolic simplicity rather than conducting legal or constitutional reforms.11 The fact that he never explicitly admitted to his authorship of Julius Exclusus, although the work appeared 7  For the text: Wallace K.  Ferguson (ed.), Erasmi Opuscula: A Supplement to the Opera Omnia (Springer Netherlands, 2013), 65–134; CWE, 27, 155–198. 8  One brief ridiculing mention is made by Peter/Erasmus in this context (CWE, 27, 197): “[…] and you yourself are a great architect, build some new paradise for yourself […]”. 9  Ferguson (ed.), Erasmi Opuscula, 995–1000: “Palatiis regalibus, equis et mulis pulcherrimis, famulitio frequentissimo, copiis instructissimis, satellitiis exquisitis […] auro, purpura, vectigalibus, vt nullus regum non humilis ac pauper videatur si cum Romani Pontificis opibus strepituque conferatur.”; CWE, 27, 192. 10  Ferguson (ed.), Erasmi Opuscula 1070–1076: “Audes, impudens […] te pecunia, te studia mortalium, te fraudes fecere Pontificem, si modo Pontifex is appellandus est.”; CWE, 27, 193–194. 11  James K. McConica “Erasmus and the ‘Julius’: A Humanist Reflects on the Church,” in C.  Trinkaus and H.A.  Oberman (eds.) The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 454–460; CWE, 27, 159, 166.

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after Julius had already passed away, may not have been a demonstration of courage on Erasmus’s part. However, although courage is one of the vital qualities required of a public intellectual,12 his silence as to his authorship was not altogether unwise. His criticism was as pointed and ridiculing as can be, and since it was hurled not just at Julius but at the contemporary papacy in general, it could have put him in danger. This justified Erasmus’s choice of anonymity, while the publication’s effectiveness was not really damaged: Luther used it for his anti-Papal campaign, it drew a large number of contemporary references, and thirteen editions appeared during its first four years as well as translations into German and English in the 1530s and, later, into French.13 But while he did not claim authorship, nor did Erasmus categorically deny it.14 I would dare to suggest that he even took some pleasure from remaining unidentified and allowing the guesswork around him to take place. Let us focus on kings. Although the kings Erasmus refers to are not mentioned by name, Erasmus does indicate that some are in power “today,” i.e. the fall of 1509, when Praise of Folly was written.15 Clearly, these criticisms were not cast at any of the great three kings—Charles V (1500–1558), Henry VIII (1457–1509), Francis I (1494–1547)—who were not yet in power when Erasmus wrote.16 Was he criticizing their predecessors? Louis XII (1462–1515) of France was a popular and successful king and would not seem to fit with Erasmus’s criticism.17 Nor would Charles V’s predecessor. But Emperor Maximilian (1459–1519) and Henry VII of England do seem to fit Erasmus’s critical description.18 Most probably, Folly’s stinging criticism of unfit ruling kings is not directed at any specific individual. Erasmus allows Folly, as his literary mouthpiece, inaccuracies and lack of seriousness in her talk. It is more appropriate to read in these  See n. 32.  CWE, 27, 162 nn. 64–68. 14  Ibid., 156–157. 15  Clarence H. Miller in ASD IV-3, 14 (introduction). 16  Henry VIII came to power in 1509. While Praise of Folly appeared in 1509, it is unlikely that already by this date the young fresh king would be so sharply criticized by Erasmus; furthermore, Erasmus came to have a high appreciation of and admiration for this monarch. 17  He was criticized, in a different context, by Erasmus for his Italian wars. See Chap. 6 nn. 10–11. 18  Since Henry VII died on 21 April 1509 and Praise of Folly was written in the fall of 1509, the possibility that the criticism has to do with this king is very much diminished. 12 13

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passages Erasmus’s general political outlook, i.e. his teachings relating to the Christian duties of the king, rather than as concrete charges laid against specific contemporary rulers. In other words, one should not consider this piece of critical writing as a personal attack by Erasmus against a certain king who undertook an unnecessary war or conducted a certain wrongdoing in the context of politics or foreign policy. The question therefore remains: how did Erasmus react, if at all, to political or foreign policy issues that contradicted his own convictions and were conducted by specific contemporary kings? Of special significance would be whether Erasmus protested against or criticized in his writings the warlike and expansionist foreign policy of any mighty European king of his era. The European kings whom Erasmus knew well and interacted with were Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, and the emperor Charles V. Erasmus did express a few harsh criticisms of these kings, as also of the pope, although he did not specify names or full titles. A few instances demonstrate this. In a letter of February 1518 to his English associate John Sixtin (Johannes Sixtinus, d. 1519), Erasmus expresses his criticism to the point of imagining a conspiracy between the pope and the emperor to obtain absolute power in the name of the public good: “The pope and the emperor have a new game on foot: they now use war against the Turks as an excuse, though they have something very different in mind. We have reached the limits of despotism and effrontery.”19 A letter of March 1518 to Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547) displays Erasmus’s sharp criticism as well as his concern with mentioning these kings by name: “Despotism has reached its peak. Pope and kings regard the people not as human beings but as beasts for market.”20 Here is a harsh assertion, Lutheran in its essence and style, and indeed, cast in the period when Erasmus still sided with Luther and his criticism of the Church. In his letter to John Colet (1467–1519) of October 1518, Erasmus repeats his grave censure of rulers—again, names are not mentioned—and Church, as well as the Turks, who all jointly conspire against the public good. “The princes, together with the pope, and I dare say the Grand 19  CWE 5, 300; Ep 775: 5–8: “Pontifex ac Princeps nouas agunt coemoedias, qui nunc bellum in Turcas praetexunt, cum multo aliud agatur. Venimus ad summam et tyrannidis et impudentiae.” Tracy, Politics, 114. 20  CWE 5, 34; Ep 796: 19–20: “Pontifex ac Reges populum non pro hominibus sed pro pecudibus empticiis habent.” See also, James D.  Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 113–115.

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Turk as well, are in league against the well-being of the common people.”21 Obviously, the pope referred to is Leo X and the emperor is Charles V. The fact that Erasmus did not mention specific names is an indication of his concerns for his own person; however it does not overshadow the explicit power of his critical remarks—sparse as they were. Again, in a letter of October 1521 to Nicolaas Everaerts (1461/62–1532), Erasmus cast a few words of sharp criticism at Charles V: “Someday perhaps our Charles will be heard to say, ‘I never thought that war was such a poisonous thing.’ That lesson of his will cost us dear.”22 Admitedly, as much as these critical passages are explicit, they are also exceptional and rare. Erasmus’s concern with the public good is also shown in his anti-war expressions. Two examples out of many will suffice. In A Complaint of Peace (Querela pacis, 1517) we read: Are you longing for war? First look at what peace and war are, the gains brought by one and the losses by the other; this will enable you to calculate whether there is anything to be achieved by exchanging peace for war. If it is something for admiration when a kingdom is prosperous throughout […] By contrast, if you have ever seen towns in ruins, villages destroyed, churches burnt, and farmlands abandoned and have found it a pitiable spectacle, as indeed it is, reflect that all this is the consequence of war.23

Impressively, the wellbeing of the people has clearly a very high priority in Erasmus’s mindset. In The Handbook of a Christian Soldier, Erasmus hopes that “[…] whatever the intentions of those who started it, we must pray that it may turn out well, not for a chosen few but for all in common.”24

21  CWE 6, 168; Ep 891: 31–32: “Principes vna cum Pontifice, et fortasse cum Turca, conspirant in fortunas populi.” 22  CWE 8, 313; Ep 1238: 70–72: “Fortasis olim dicet Carolus noster, ‘Nam putaram bellum rem esse tam pestiferam.’ Sed hoc dictum nimio nobis constabit.” 23  CWE, 27, 316; ASD IV-2 92: “Ad bellum gestis? primum inspice, cujusmodi res sit pax, cujusmodi bellum, quid illa bonorum, quid hoc malorum secum vehat, atque ita rationem ineas, num expediat pacem bello permutare. Si res quaedam admirabilis est, regnum undique rebus optimis florens [… ] Contra, si quando conspexisti ruinas urbium, dirutos vicos, exusta fana, desolatos agros […] cogita hunc esse belli fructum.” 24  CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 78–80 (introduction to Enchridion militis Christiani): “[…] quocunque consilio institutum precandum est, non ut paucis quibusdam, sed ut in commune bene vertat omnibus.”

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Thus, despite his famous anti-war preaching, Erasmus does hope for victory, and the public good is the reason for this. In A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War Against the Turks, also known as De bello Turcico, Erasmus shows his concern for common Christians by demanding that the kings ensure “that their financial demands of [the common Christian people] are moderate, to allow the poor to survive.”25 Erasmus warns rulers about the danger of a revolt against them since “[…] we see almost the whole burden falling on the peasants and the poorest classes.”26 Therefore, if required to raise taxes, they should be progressive taxes, to use the modern terminology, i.e., the rich should pay a greater share. This principle is stated in Education of a Christian Prince: “So if necessity requires some taxation of the people, then it is the good prince’s job to do it in such a way that the least possible hardship falls on the poor. For it is perhaps politic to summon the rich to austerity, but to reduce poor people to hunger and servitude is both very cruel and very risky.”27 Moreover, Erasmus even recommends that “When the need for a tax has passed, not only should the people’s burden be lifted but as far as possible, their expenditure during that previous period should be reimbursed in compensation.”28 As a rule, Erasmus’s moral, as well as social and economic preference was that “The good prince will therefore impose as little tax as possible on those things whose use is shared also by the poorest ranks of the people, such as corn, bread, beer, wine, clothes, and all the other things without which human life cannot be carried on.”29 Remarkably, the notion of the public good is expressed by referring to a

25  CWE 64, 254; ASD V-3 72: “[…] tamen ita moderandae sunt exactiones, ut tenui populo sit unde vivat.” 26  CWE 64, 254; ASD V-3 73: “[…] vidimus totam fere molem exactionum redisse ad agricolas ac tenuem plebeculam.” 27  CWE 27, 261; ASD IV-1 190: “Quod si necessitas flagitat exigi nonnihil a populo, tum boni principis est, id his rationibus facere, vt quam minimum incommodorum perueniat ad tenues. Nam diuites ad frugalitatem vocare fortassis expedit. At pauperes ad famem et laqueum adigi tum inhumanissimum est, tum parum tutum.” See Southgate, “Erasmus: Christian Humanism and Political Theory,” 251. 28  CWE 27, 261; ASD IV-1 190: “[…] cum sublata exigendi necessitate non modo tollendum esset onus populi, verum etiam sarciendum ac reponendum, quoad fieri possit superiorum temporum dispendium. 29  CWE 27, 262; ASD IV-1 190: “Quarum igitur rerum vsus infimae quoque plaebi communis est, has quam minimum grauabit bonus princeps veluti frumenti panis ceruisiae vini pannorum ac caeterarum item rerum, sine quibus humana vita non potest transigi.”

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just system of taxation; a progressive democratic piece of political thinking, not just by sixteenth-century standards, but by modern ones as well. However, the welfare of the poor was not Erasmus’s only concern. Aware of their grievances, he feared they might rise against the Church: “I can already hear some people yelling: ‘Let those rich, ignorant, pleasure-­ besotted abbots be plundered! And those bishops, who squander their princely fortunes!’ Revolutionary words!”30 Erasmus seeks to protect the bishops as he foresees the danger of a popular uprising, since not all the bishops are the same and the precedent of plundering the bad ones might open the door to indiscriminate plundering.31 Erasmus’s sincere concern for the public good, which he also expressed in his critical expressions concerning kings and popes—although, as noted above, rarely identified by their names—add much to his credit as an intellectual. Undoubtedly, Erasmus would not have joined the Jacobins of the French revolution, nor was he a Danton kind of intellectual. Yet, although Erasmus never abandoned the vita contemplativa, his expressions of a vita activa, relating to active worldly life, political in a certain sense, should not be underestimated. He integrated both patterns in his mind and writings. In this regard Erasmus should be celebrated as a prototype of modern public intellectuals who, “while devoted to vita contemplativa, are also intent on the vita activa.”32

30  CWE 64, 254; ASD V-3, 73: “lam quosdam audio vociferari: spolientur abbates opulenti, indocti, et luxu perditi, spolientur episcopi regias opes male prodigentes, spolientur canonici sacerdotiis onusti, et interim genio seruientes. O voces seditiosas!” 31  CWE 64, 254; ASD V-3 73. 32  Misztal, Intellectuals and the Public Good, 35 (not referring to Erasmus). On the combination of the contemplative (non-worldly) with the active (worldly) in Erasmus’s worldview, see Ross Dealey, The Stoic Origins of Erasmus’s Philosophy of Christ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 11, 44–45.

CHAPTER 3

An Intellectual Against Crusading

Abstract  Erasmus was successful in pushing some of his own issues onto the public agenda. Thus, in his time he considerably shaped the way we conceive and reflect on the figure of the modern public intellectual. Erasmus’s critical and non-conventional thinking is demonstrated, first and foremost, in the promotion of the public good, and closely linked to this was the raising of a clear and consistent voice against crusades. Indeed, Erasmus never ruled out a war against the Turks, but he opposed crusading, namely, a holy war, a campaign organized and sponsored by the Church against the Turks. Notedly, Erasmus’s virtues could not have materialized without a certain amount of courage, both public and personal, which is a prerequisite for such (public) intellectual activities. Keywords  Crusades • Indulgences • Turks • Muslims • War • Jerusalem Critical and non-conventional thinking, followed by judgment and involvement, in this sequence, are the norms and factors that elevated Erasmus from being merely a great scholar to the level of an active intellectual engaged in sixteenth-century European affairs. As an involved intellectual he was successful in pushing some of his own issues onto the public agenda. Thus, in his time he considerably shaped the way we conceive and reflect on the figure of the modern public intellectual. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_3

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Putting aside theology and confessional issues, Erasmus’s critical and non-conventional thinking, followed by judgment and involvement, reveal themselves, first and foremost, in a few of his major contributions: the promotion of the public good and, closely linked to this but quite unique to Erasmus in his time, at least as far as scholars were concerned, the raising of a clear and consistent voice against crusades.1 Another particular contribution is the call for women’s education. Notedly, Erasmus’s aforesaid virtues could not have materialized without a certain amount of courage, both public and personal, which is a prerequisite for such (public) intellectual activities. These virtues, elaborated in this book, are somewhat counterbalanced by Erasmus’s self-­ imposed censorship in certain cases, of no little ethical and moral significance, such as the destruction of the Amerindians and the execution of Thomas More. In both cases he preferred to censor himself and not to criticize the offenders or to protest against royal authorities—at least in More’s case, Erasmus was expected by his contemporaries to raise a moral voice of protest. Nevertheless, in judging Erasmus’s overall contribution to humanity, a tribute should be paid to the role he played as an involved intellectual, complex and multifaceted as it was. Erasmus’s De bello Turcico was written against the backdrop of the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1529, when the Turkish threat to the heart of Europe became a terrifying fact. Unlike Christian polemics against Islam, Erasmus’s moral goal in this treatise was to sound an alarm call to Christians to change their ways. Furthermore, a fundamental element of the treatise does not match classic anti-Islamic polemics, namely Erasmus’s reasoned and convincing opposition to the institution of crusade, that is, a holy war, a war initiated and sponsored by the Church, whether against the Turks or others. We have heard so often of crusading expeditions, of recovering the Holy Land; we have seen so often the red cross emblazoned with the triple crown, and the red chest beside it; we have heard so often the sainted sermons promising the earth; we have heard so often of doughty deeds and boundless hopes—and the only thing to triumph has been money. Therefore, since the proverb warns that it is quite shameful to trip over the same stone twice, 1  Norman Housley deals with a few more figures, first and foremost Petr Chelčický (c. 1390–c. 1460): Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe 1400–1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 160–189.

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how can we, who have been misled thirty times over, believe any more promises however splendid, when we have been blatantly fooled so often? This very question has almost led the public to reject indulgences altogether.2

It has been argued that Erasmus called for the Christian conquest of the Muslim world and the conversion of as many Muslims as possible.3 Accordingly, Erasmus supported a Christian war to free Constantinople, which, from 1517 onwards, by definition also meant the conquest of the Holy Land. Thus, for Erasmus’s war against the Turks was a just war, and in war bloodshed is inevitable. However, in light of Erasmus’s clear anti-­ crusade voice as presented here, to argue that Erasmus called for a crusade is simply wrong. The Christian war Erasmus proposed was a last refuge and subjected to various constraints. It is true that Erasmus never ruled out a war against the Turks, but he opposed crusading, namely, a holy war, a campaign organized and sponsored by the Church against the Turks. The intellectual that Erasmus was is sharply reflected in another telling reference. In De bello Turcico he expresses his fear of a Christian mob craving Turkish blood, and he says: If we are not allowed to flee, still less are we allowed to rush to arms. But the mass of Christians wrongly believes that anyone is allowed to kill a Turk, as one would a mad dog, for no better reason than that he is a Turk. If this were true, then anyone would be allowed to kill a Jew, but anyone who ventured to do that would not escape punishment under civil law. The Christian magistrate will punish Jews who break the laws of the state, to 2  CWE 64, 246–247; ASD V-3, 65–66: “Toties audiuimus cruciatam expeditionem, recuperationem terrae sanctae, toties vidimus rubram crucem, triplici corona insignitam, cum rubro scrinio, toties audiuimus sacrosanctas conciones omnia pollicentes, toties acta praeclara, spes amplissimas, nec aliud triumphatum est quam pecunia. Itaque, quum prouerbio moneamur, esse turpissimum bis ad eundem lapidem impingere, nos plus tricies falsi, qui possums fidere promissis quamlibet splendidis toties aperte delusi? Eadem res in totum prope alienauit animas hominum ab indulgentiis.” For Erasmus’s anti-crusade attitude as allegedly indicating moderation, see Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists, and the West (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967), 175; Schwoebel, R., The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk 1453–1517 (New York, St. Martin´s Press, 1967), 225. Despite his objection to the institution of crusade, Erasmus’s attitude toward Islam was not necessarily moderate. See Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus.” 3  Jan Van Heerwarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late Medieval Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 523: “Entirely in keeping with the ideology of the crusades, he summons the Christian world to conquer Islam by converting as many Muslims as possible.”

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which they are subject; but they are not put to death because of their religion, since Christianity is spread by persuasion, not force; it is sown like seed, not pushed down people’s throats […] Therefore any who believe that they will fly straight up to heaven if they happen to fall in battle against the Turks are sadly deluding themselves; you will reach heaven only if your conscience is pure, even if, for Christ’s sake, you offer your life when the tyrant summons you to worship idols.4

This brave and complex assertion is an exemplary demonstration of the voice of a daring intellectual: a determined stance against the bloodthirsty Christian mob, an emphasis on the issue of equality before the civil law regardless of religion or ethnic origin, an elaboration of non-forcible conversion as the only way to disseminate Christianity, and a light humor yet profound negation of joining a crusade as a means to reach heaven, as Erasmus illuminates the right and only way to find salvation of the soul (namely, correction of one’s life). Norman Housley points to Jacob Wimfeling (1450–1528) as the thinker who phrased the three different needs that dictated waging a crusade against the Turks: gloria, Christus and salus patriae. Thus, Housely explains that the term “Renaissance crusading” was no longer regarded as an oxymoron while “Defence of the homeland (salus patriae) was a natural reaction to the unprecedented Islamic threat to home and hearth.”5 Defending Europe by “liberating” Jerusalem? From an Erasmian point of view, i.e. from a moral-intellectual perspective, such a legitimization of the crusade was highly problematic. Erasmus, using persuasive arguments, shook the quasi-legitimacy of the idea of waging crusades. But there is more to Erasmus’s objection than just a false “salus patriae” argument. Indeed, an aggressive attack on the enemy’s home and deep territory, as opposed to fighting a defensive war to protect one’s own territories and 4  CWE, 64, 238; ASD V-3 58: “Quod si fugere non licet, minus licet ad arma procurrere. At christianorum vulgus perperam existimat, cuiuis licere Turcam non aliter occidere quam canem rabidum, non ob aliud nisi quia Turca est. Quod si verum esset, liceret cuiuis occidere Iudaeum, quod tamen si quis audeat, non effugeret poenam legum ciuilium. At magistratus christianus Iudaeos punit si quid delinquant aduersus leges publicas, quibus sese submiserunt, ob diuersam religionem non occiduntur, eo quod religio christiana suadetur, non cogitur, et inseritur, non obtruditur […] Proinde misere se fallunt, qui se credunt recta subuolaturos in coelum, si contingat in praelio aduersum Turcos cadere; nisi pura sit conscientia, nec si pro Christo ceruicem porrigas ad idololatriam vacanti tyranno, in coelum peruenies.” 5  Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 211.

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borders, could not have been considered a just war, neither legally nor morally. Furthermore, the crusade against the Turks planned by Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521) was not aimed only at forcing the Ottomans to withdraw from their European conquests and keeping them out of Europe, it was a holy war destined to “liberate” Jerusalem. Leo X sought a crusade, and worked, diplomatically and politically, to achieve it. During almost all his years in office he pursued a truce between the rulers of Europe and the formation of a united Christian force to launch a crusade headed by the Emperor, or alternatively the king of France, to take Constantinople and wipe out the Turkish menace of the Ottoman empire.6 Officially, this was not a crusade to take the Holy Land. However, in 1516/17 the Ottoman Turks defeated the Mamelukes and took Syria and Egypt, the Holy Land included. From this time on, Leo X’s increased efforts to wage a crusade against the Turks may well have referred to the conquest of the Holy Land, although no such goal was officially set. For Erasmus, the determined anti-crusading protagonist, this was unthinkable. Using weighty arguments, he shattered the quasi-­ legitimacy of this crusade, of any crusade, and of any indulgences to finance it.7 Erasmus harshly renounced the wrongdoings associated with the financing of past crusades, in particular, the selling of indulgences and accepting of donations in return for futile promises. The idea of defending Europe by “freeing” Jerusalem would have been harshly condemned and utterly rejected by Erasmus. He strongly denounced fundraising by selling indulgences and stressed that a great amount of the funds never reached their destination but found their way rather into the coffers of greedy popes, cardinals, monks and princes, while the rank and file was licensed to take plunder in lieu of pay.8 It should be remembered that Erasmus preached and wrote his anti-­ crusading teachings more than half a century after the fall of the second Rome. For him, this cataclysmic event was not a living memory but an established fact. As a peace-pursuing intellectual, he could not treat the  Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, III, 142–172.  See n. 2. 8  ASD V-3 64; CWE 64 246: “I am not unaware of the excuses many people make for this attitude. This charade, they say, has been played out too often by the Roman pontiffs, and the outcome has always been farcical: either nothing has been done or the situation has deteriorated. The money collected, they say, has stuck fast in the hands of popes, cardinals, monks, generals, and princes; the common soldiers are licensed to take plunder in lieu of their pay.” 6 7

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waging of a crusade against the Turks, in his own time, as a justified defensive war. In his pursuit of peace, to call such a war defensive, let alone a “holy war,” would be akin to defining the US’s war in Vietnam as a defensive war. It would not be too farfetched to assume that, had Erasmus flourished in the second half of the twentieth century, he would have treated the war in Vietnam in the same way that he treated the crusading initiatives of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In his Ecclesiastes or the Preacher: On the Art of Preaching (Ecclesiastes sive concionator evangelicus. De ratione concionandi, 1535), Erasmus mockingly criticizes the preacher Roberto Caracciolo of Lecce (1425–1495), who was known for his Turkophobic rhetoric and exhortation to wage a crusade, and who allegedly used to play spectacular tricks on his listeners in order or to instill the crusading spirit in them: A story that they tell about Roberto Caracciolo of Lecce is more shameless. He was using the great forcefulness of his oratory to urge princes and people against the Turks and other enemies of the Christian name, and when his address had boiled up to its highest pitch, he began to deplore the fact that none offered themselves as leaders for such a pious task and said, ‘If that is an obstacle, look at me: I shall not be afraid to cast off this habit of Francis and show myself to you a soldier or a general.’ And as he said this, he cast off his outer garment; underneath he was a soldier for all to see, with a long military cloak made of linen, and he was girt with a gigantic sword. In this outfit he preached for half an hour looking like a general. Asked by the cardinals with whom he had a familiar relationship what sort of precedent was this, he replied that he had done it to please a girlfriend, who had confessed to him intimately that there was nothing in Robert that she disliked except his religious habit. Then he said, ‘How could I dress to have you like me completely?’ ‘Like a soldier,’ she said. ‘So make sure you attend my sermon tomorrow.9

9  CWE 68, 812; ASD V-5 93–94 (Ecclesiastes III): “Improbius est quod narrant de Roberto Liciensi; qui magna dictionis vehementia principes ac populum adhortatus aduersus Turcas aliosque christiani nominis hostes, vbi ad summum impetum efferbuisset oratio, deplorare coepit, quod nulli se ad rem tam piam duces offerrent. ‘Si isthuc, inquit, obstat, ecce me qui nihil verebor hanc Francisci vestem abiicere et vel militem vel ducem vobis exhibere.’ Simulque cum dicto, summam vestem abiecit, intus plane miles erat, byssino sago, accinctus praelongo gladio. Hoc habitu dimidium horae sub persona ducis concionatus est. Accitus a Cardinalibus, quibuscum habebat familiaritatem, quid hoc esset noui exempli, respondit id esse factum in gratiam amicae, quae familiariter fuerat confessa nihil in Roberto displicere praeter vestem fraternam. Tum ille: ‘In quo cultu sum tibi totus placiturus?’ ‘In militari,’

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Of course, behind the scorn and ridicule expressed by Erasmus lies much more serious stuff: his hatred of war, and in particular his objection to crusade and to the crusading spirit, which the aforesaid story reflects. In his letter of 1517 to Wolfgang Faber Capito (c. 1478–1541), a colleague and humanist, Erasmus wrote: “Every vestige of true religion, of just laws, of civilized behaviour, of high moral standards and of liberal arts among the incessant clash of arms is either killed outright by a licentious soldiery, or at best is brought to the lowest ebb.”10 Thus, the intellectual lamented the horrible outcomes of war. Inter alia, what was very much his personal concern with the frightening state of inter arma silent musae resonates here. This was one of Erasmus’s greatest concerns. As Heiko Oberman explained, the one tolerance that Erasmus did advocate and work for was “the freedom of the Christian scholar to publish his findings regardless of schools and party alignment.”11 “It was Julius II who turned Erasmus into a pacifist,” argued Margaret Mann Phillips referring to the repulsion that Erasmus felt watching the triumph procession of the warrior-Pope in Bologna.12 Indeed, pacifism is often ascribed to Erasmus; but elsewhere I have shown that, although he decisively objected to crusades, it was the idea of Christian concord—peace by Christians and for Christians—that Erasmus really cherished.13 Erasmus’s texts are perhaps elusive or ambiguous concerning different issues, as his readers and researchers claim,14 but as far as crusades were concerned Erasmus’s rejection was sharp and unequivocal. In his De bello Turcico Erasmus expresses his opposition to the institution of crusade in general and to a crusade against the Ottomans in inquit. ‘Cras igitur fac adsis in concione.’” See also Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453–1505, 147. 10  Ep 541: “quicquid est verae religionis, quicquid bonarum legum, quicquid ciuilis disciplinae, quicquid proborum morum, quicquid honestarum artium, militari licentia inter assiduos armorum crepitus aut intermori prorsus aut certe frigere vehementer.” Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 174. 11  Heiko A.  Oberman, The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Falls, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 104. 12  Margaret Mann Phillips, The ‘Adages’ of Erasmus: a study with translations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 105. See n. 34. 13  Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” 27–42. 14  Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation (Princeton, 1924; reprint. New York: Harper, 1957), 115–116, 127–129. See also Erika Rummel, Erasmus (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 107: Luther called Erasmus an “eel, whom no one can grasp,” and similar evaluations are made by historians.

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particular.15 This principled objection to crusades, in particular to Pope Leo X’s plans of launching a crusade against the Turks, signifies a moral principle constantly and devotedly cherished by Erasmus, as opposed to many of his contemporaries.16 Erasmus’s objection to crusades is tightly linked to his philosophia Christi values, but no less so to his publica utilitas principle. It stemmed very much from his concern for the Christian population and from his fear that the kings and Pope would conspire to increase their power and wealth and turn their rule into a tyranny compared to which even Turkish rule would be preferable. In this context, he sharply criticizes the pope and the kings for treating people as if they were pieces of meat and not human beings.17 Later, in his De bello Turcico, he asserts: “[…] after a few trumped­up disturbances, pope, emperor, and Turk will make a treaty and betray Christendom.” 18 Erasmus was troubled by the prospect of Christian tyranny establishing itself under cover of an emergency situation, such as a crusade could provide: “while destroying the Turks’ tyranny, bringing a new tyranny, worse than the Turks’, upon ourselves.”19 Thus, Erasmus’s concern with kings and Pope conspiring against the people is raised here again. Erasmus never had the chance to read Ronald Symes’ The Roman Revolution (1939), but his fear of the rise of tyranny brings to mind Syme’s concerns as expressed against the stormy background of the rise of the Nazi regime and the eruption of a second world war: “The composition of the oligarchy of government therefore emerges as the dominant theme of political history, as the binding link between the republic and the Empire: it is something real and tangible, whatever maybe the name or theory of the constitution.” Even more dramatically, Syme observed: “In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade.”20 Erasmus used the term ditio, which  See n. 2.  For Erasmus’s anti-crusade attitude, see Bisaha, Creating East and West, 175; Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent, 225. 17  See Chap. 2 n. 20. 18  CWE 64, 263; ASD V-3 80: “[…] ita post fictos tumultus icto foedere prodant ditionem christianam pontifex, Caesar et Turca.” 19  CWE 64, 254; ASD V-3 72: “et dum Turcicam tyrannidem demolimur, in nos ipsos plus quam Turcicam tyrannidem accersamus.” 20  Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), vii, 7 (respectively). 15 16

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may well be translated as tyranny. One needs to remember that tyrannis and oligarchia do not essentially differ from each other according to Aristotle’s classification of regimes: in both forms the rulers use state power for the sake of themselves. Publica utilitas exists no more. His firm anti-crusade principle did not prevent Erasmus from wishing for victory over the Turks once such a war had been waged. In his letter to Paul Voltz of August 1518 (published as the preface to the 1518 edition of Handbook of a Christian Soldier), Erasmus discusses the preparations for the crusade. Although he doubts the sincerity of the initiators, he expresses his hopes for victory: “At this moment war is preparing against the Turks, and whatever the intentions of those who started it, we must pray that it may turn out well, for not a chosen few but for all in common.”21 His intellectual convictions did not blind him, and his common sense combined with his notion of publica utilitas guided him in such cases. Erasmus’s De bello Turcico was a moderate and reasonable response to the Turkish threat. It expresses Erasmus’s recognition of the need to fight, despite his deeply rooted hatred of bloodshed, soldiery and unnecessary wars. It is the position of a realistic intellectual, one who recognizes that sometimes defensive war is necessary. Researchers have debated the exact definition of Erasmus’s pursuit of peace and hatred of war, whether he ascribed to a moderate pacifism, a practical one, a “just war pacifism,” etc.22 Yet the exact title is of less importance than the recognition that, in addition to solid scriptural teachings, it is based on a non-dogmatic, common sense awareness of the horrible outcomes of war and an acceptance that at times war is unavoidable, a last refuge. This is well demonstrated by Erasmus’s objection to the pacifism of the Anabaptists. While criticizing the pacifism of the Anabaptists, Erasmus clarifies his position on the war against the Turks: For there are those who think that the right to make war is denied totally to Christians. I find this view too absurd to require refutation, although there has been no lack of people willing to contrive similar accusations against me, because in my writings I am lavish in my praise of peace and fierce in my detestation of war. But honest men reading my works will recognize, without any prompting from me, the manifest impertinence of such knavery. I 21  CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 78–80: “Adornatur iam bellum in Turcas, quod quocunque consilio institutum, precandum est, non vt paucis quibusdam, sed vt in commune bene vertat omiaibus.” See also n. 41 there. 22  Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” 26 nn. 1–4.

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teach that war must never be undertaken unless, after everything else has been tried, it cannot be avoided, because war is by its very nature such a plague that, even if undertaken by the most just of princes in the most just of causes, the wickedness of both officers and men means that it almost always does more harm than good.23

Thus, Erasmus demonstrates his combined position—a principled hatred of war with the comprehension of the need to wage war in certain cases— acknowledging the right of Christians to repel the Turks. Compared to the Anabaptists and to Luther’s call to refrain altogether from fighting the Turks (in 1529 he changed his mind following the Turkish siege of Vienna), Erasmus’s attitude was more balanced and responsive to reality. His refutation of the pacifist position that had been attributed to him indicates that he wanted to distance himself from the Anabaptists. Anabaptist pacifism was principally based on the doctrine of non-resistance that Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount, and which was later reiterated by the Church Fathers, particularly Tertulian. Erasmus, however, never advocated insubordination or disobedience; in other words, he never preached non-resistance. While Anabaptist pacifism was basically ideological, and therefore principled and absolute—including a refusal to resist the Turks in any way—Erasmus was not against war as such.24 Interestingly, Erasmus’s pursuit of peace influenced the Anabaptists’ conception of peace. Conrad Grebel (c. 1498–1526), the founder of the movement, and his followers were enthusiastic humanists and familiar with his works.25 Nevertheless, Erasmus refused to be 23  CWE 64, 233–234; ASD V-3 54: “Sunt enim qui in totum existimant christianis interdictum bellandi ius, quam opinionem arbitror absurdiorem quam vt sit refellenda, tametsi non defuerunt qui hinc mihi calumniam struerent, quod in lucubrationibus meis plurimus sim in laude pacis, ac bellorum detestatione; sed qui mea legunt integri, vel tacente me perspiciunt manifestam sycophantiae impudentiam. Doceo bellum nunquam suscipiendum, nisi quum tentatis omnibus vitari non potest, propterea quod bellum suapte natura res sit adeo pestilens, vt etiam si a iustissimo principe, iustissimis de causis suscipiatur, tamen ob militum ac ducum improbitatem fere mali plus adferat quam boni.” 24  Harold S. Bender, “The Pacifism of the Sixteenth Century Anabaptists,” Church History 24 (1955): 119–131. While Bender emphasizes the ideological and theological difference between the Anabaptists and Erasmus, Abraham Friesen draws attention to their similarity and to Erasmus’s influence on them in Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Great Commission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 22–23, 115–130. 25  Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 61, 177; Friesen, Erasmus, the Anabaptists, 22–23, 115–130.

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i­dentified with them and was harsh in his condemnation of their views. Fundamentally, he saw their doctrine that infants were not to be baptized as a dangerous deviation from ancient custom, discrediting them “for being deceived by error [rather] than led on by wickedness in this headlong dash towards their own perdition. Are they not content with the baptism that for fourteen hundred years has contented the Catholic Church?”26 They were harming the unity of the Church, a long kept and cherished Catholic tradition—a major concern for Erasmus. Arguably, on the issue of paedobaptism and the “unity of the Church,” Erasmus demonstrates here an orthodox and dogmatic attitude, which is a flaw in his intellectual authority. This casts some discredit on the status of the intellectual that he was, yet it should be understood as part of the complex and at times self-contradictory character of this multifaceted intellectual. Among the Anabaptists, some even claimed that life under Turkish rule was preferable to the yoke of the Christian kings or of the Pope. This view was also attributed to Luther by his rivals, given his relatively moderate and sometimes sympathetic statements about the Sultan and certain aspects of the Ottoman Empire.27 As for Erasmus, his problems with Pope Adrian VI, on the one hand, and with Lutherans on the other, led him in March 1524 to such a level of despair that death or emigration to the Ottoman Empire became possible options, at least rhetorically: “Personally I think death would be more tolerable than what I have to put up with, and had I known the stage this conspiracy had reached I would rather have gone to live among the Turks than move here.”28 This revelation is clearly overshadowed by Erasmus’s strong condemnation of the Anabaptist’s expressed preference for Ottoman rule over a Christian yoke: Nevertheless, other accursed voices are to be heard, claiming that it is easier to be a Christian under Turkish rule than under the Christian princes or the Roman pontiff. If such people speak from the heart, either they have no idea at all what it means to live under Turkish rule, or else they are themselves Turks at heart and are weary of the Christian faith. Seeing that the Scythians 26  CWE 65, 213 (On Mending the Peace of the Church); ASD V-3 312: “[…] errore falli, magis quam incitari malitia, vt ad istum modum in proprium ruant exitium. Non sufficit illis baptismus, qui mille quadringentis annis suffecit ecclesiae catholicae?” 27  Michael Heath, in CWE 64.257 n. 234. 28  CWE 10, 210;Ep 1433: 10–12: “Ego puto mortem esse leuiorem his quae patior. Et si nouissem statum huius coniurationis, maluissem ad Turcas demigrare quam huc.”

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and the Icthyophagi found the Roman empire’s yoke insufferable, shall we choose to place our necks beneath the Turkish yoke?29

If even the worst of barbarians preferred their liberty to the glorious civilization represented by Rome, will we, Christians, not fight for our liberty? There is no doubt that life under Turkish rule was unacceptable to Erasmus, unlike for some of the Anabaptists. Thus, while we have to describe the Anabaptists as uncompromising and principled pacifists, as far as Erasmus is concerned we need a different title: the non-dogmatic pacifist, the willing-to-fight intellectual. Erasmus levels the Anabaptists and then turns to the Lutherans. As regards preparations for a crusade, Erasmus sympathized with Lutheran claims about financial misdeeds, deception and embezzlement by clergymen and princes. What he rejected was the Lutheran arguments against fighting the Turks.30 In response to Luther’s arguments on the issue of war against the Turks, Erasmus opined: As for Luther’s argument, I would add that if it is not lawful to resist the Turks, because God is punishing the misdeeds of his people through them, then it cannot be permissible to call in a doctor during illness, on the grounds that God also sends diseases to cleanse his people. He also uses wiles of Satan to the same end, and yet we are commanded to resist them. It is therefore lawful also to fight off the Turks, unless God sends a clear sign to prohibit it.31

Brightly reasoned and analogized by a down to earth intellectual. Moreover, while Luther held the Turk to be not just God’s scourge but

29  CWE 64, 257–258; ASD V-3 75–76: “Exaudiuntur interim et aliorum voces abominandae, qui iactant esse tolerabilius agere christianos sub imperio Turcarum, quam sub christianis principibus ac sub pontifice Romano. Hoc genus homines si modo loquuntur ex animo, aut prorsus non intelligunt quid sit viuere sub Turcarum imperio, aut ipsi gerunt Tureicos animos, ac poenitet eos christianae professionis. Scythae et Ichthyophagi non ferebant iugum Romanae ditionis, et nos optabimus colla submittere iugo Turcarum?” 30  CWE 64, 246–248; ASD V-3 64–66. 31  CWE 64, 237; ASD V-3, 58: “Porro quod attinet ad Lutheri rationem, si ideo non est phas Turcis obsistere, quod per illos Deus castiget suorum malefacta, nee in morbis licebit accersere medicos, quod Deus et morbos immittat ad purgationem suorum. Quin ad idem abutitur Satanae malicia, cui tamen iubemur resistere. Fas est igitur et Turcas depellere, nisi Deus euidenti signa id fieri prohibeat.”

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also Satan’s envoy and an omen indicating the coming of judgment day,32 Erasmus did not use such terms in any of his anti-Turkish expressions— although he did not reject the concept of the Turks as God’s scourge sent by heaven to punish a sinful Christendom. The belief that the Turks were sent by heaven to punish sinful Christendom was common and shared among Catholics and Lutherans alike. A visual expression of that belief is depicted on the outer southern wall of the Graz cathedral in Austria. A restored fresco, called “a picture of God’s plagues” (Gottesplagenbild, also called Landplagenbild), painted by Thomas von Villach in 1485, demonstrates the three plagues that God inflicted upon the city of Graz in 1480: a famine caused by locusts, the Turkish invasion, which awoke fear and panic among locals, and a pestilence that struck the city. The picture expresses a plea to God to remove the plagues from the city.33 The Turks were regarded, just as were the locusts and the pestilence, as a disaster sent by heaven. The concept of the Turks as Gods’ scourge is essential in Erasmus’s De bello Turcico, where it is explained: “We have frequently taken the field against the Turks, but so far with little success; either because we have not abandoned the things that anger God and cause him to send the Turks against us, just as he sent frogs, lice, and locusts upon the Egyptians long ago.”34 Presumably, Erasmus chose these specific plagues to arouse his readers with sensations of revulsion and danger and to create a repulsive association between the Turks and these loathsome creatures. In general, Erasmus adds, the Turks rule because of God’s anger at Christendom.35 While Luther had developed the theme of nonresistance to the scourges of God (before he changed his mind), Erasmus the down to earth intellectual did suggest fighting the Turks. However, he insisted that in order to defeat the Turks the Christians must firstly reconcile themselves with God by amending their way of life (correctio vitae). 32  John W.  Bohnstedt “The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by Pamphleteers of the Reformation Era,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 58 (1968): 2–59 (23–26). 33  The ‘scourge of God’ concept and the plea for mercy are expressed by a text inscribed in the fresco: “[1480 Umb uns Fraunta]g der [schie]dung sind hie zu / Gr]a[tz gots plag drei] gewesen Haberschreckh / Türken und [pestilentz] und yede so grosz dasz / [dem] Menschn unerhörlich ist got sey uns gndi //.” 34  CWE 64, 220; ASD V-3, 38: “Frequenter arma mota sunt in Turcas, sed hactenus parum successit nobis, siue quoniam non abiecimus ea, quibus offensus Deus sic immittit Turcas in nos, quemadmodum olim Aegyptiis immisit ranas, cyniphes, et locustas.” 35  CWE, 64, 231; ASD V-3 52.

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Otherwise, the war against the Turks was doomed to be an exercise in futility. To conclude, Erasmus considered crusades and unnecessary wars in general as madness, the source of the biggest part of the evils that damage Christendom. Therefore, he came out against it in his writings. However, this intellectual was well aware of the necessities of reality. In his apology to Alberto Pio (1531) he proclaims that “the right to wage war must be given to Christians when utmost necessity requires so, or a remarkable benefit is the outcome of it, and an honest one.”36 The remarkable benefit that would justify war was, for him, the spreading of Christianity. Thus, he supported waging war against the Turks with the aim of Christianizing them afterwards. Once the Christians won the war, they should use apostles, scriptures and Theodosius-style decrees to bring about the conversion of the Turks.37 The insistence on attempting to convert the Turks to Christianity, even if not enforced by the sword, might not be considered as the pick of Erasmus’s intellectual achievements; however, Erasmus’s notion of crusades and everything around them as morally negative and condemnable should be intellectually admired. In this regard, his daring and consistent teachings of the value of pursuing peace makes him worthy of the title modern public intellectual.

 See Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” 11, n. 65.  See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 37–45 (‘Conversion or War’).

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CHAPTER 4

Erasmus on the Education and Nature of Women

Abstract  Although for a long period of time Erasmus shared with many the prejudice that women were incapable of learning or being taught, at a certain point—following Thomas More’s successful teaching experience with his daughters—a significant change took place in his educational thought, namely the recognition that women are capable of learning, whether literary or religious studies. Furthermore, he now raised a voice to enhance their education. Apparently, this non-conventional intellectual stance did not prevent him from sticking to old traditional prejudices about the inferior nature of women. Thus, the love of literature may provide protection to women from yielding to their natural failings. Education may serve as a means to secure women’s chastity, to assure spotless behavior and protect her honor. Keywords  Women • Education • Nature • Thomas More • Marriage • Husband In his review of my Erasmus and the “Other,” William Barker sarcastically complained that only one thing is missing in my critical account: Erasmus’s ambivalence towards woman, “surely a significant Other in Erasmus’s

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_4

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homosocial world.”1 So, here is the missing piece. More seriously, Erasmus significantly influenced the development of modern education through his educational writings, such as On the Education of Boys (De pueris instituendis, 1529), On Good Manners (De civilitate, 1530), and other writings.2 Not for nothing has Jean-Claude Margolin dubbed the prince of humanists the “Educator of Europe.” Regrettably, in his educational writings Erasmus refers only to men while completely ignoring the education of women.3 However, Erasmus was not against the education of women. Although for a long period of time he shared with many the communis opinio that women were incapable of learning or being taught, at a certain point in his life—following Thomas More’s successful teaching experience with his daughters—a significant change took place in Erasmus’s educational thought, namely the recognition that women are capable of learning, whether literary or religious studies. Furthermore, he now raised a voice to enhance their education. Apparently, this non-conventional intellectual stance did not prevent him from sticking to old traditional prejudices about the inferior nature of women. In Praise of Folly, the personified Folly describes woman as “[…] a stupid and foolish sort of creature but amusing and pleasant company all the same, and she could share his life, and season and sweeten his harsh nature by her folly […] As the Greek proverb puts it, an ape is always an ape even if clad in purple; and a woman is always a woman, that is, a fool, whatever mask she wears.”4 Does this represent Erasmus’s view on the nature of 1  William Barker, review of Nathan Ron, Erasmus and the “Other”: On Turks, Jews, and Indigenous Peoples (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), in Renaissance and Reformation 43 (2020): 273–276 (275). 2  For Erasmus’s main educational texts: CWE, vols. 23–24; Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 51–122. For modern research, see Jean-Claude Margolin, Érasme, précepteur de l’Europe (Paris: Julliard, 1995); idem, “Erasmus 1467?-1536,” Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education 23 1/2 (1993): 333–352; William Harrison Woodward, Desiderius Erasmus Concerning the Aim and Method of Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904; paperback edition, 2013); Christine Christ-Von Wedel, Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Portrait (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2020), 17–22. 3  J. K. Sowards, “Erasmus and the Education of Women,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 77–89 (77). 4  CWE 27, 95; ASD IV-3, 90: “[…] animal videlicet stultum quidem illud atque ineptum, verum ridiculum et suaue, quo conuictu domestico virilis ingenii tristiciam sua stulticia condiret atque edulcaret […] Quemadmodum iuxta Graecorum prouerbium simia semper est simia, etiam si purpura vestiatur, ita mulier semper mulier est, hoc est stulta, quamcunque personam induerit.”

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women? Of course, one should be very careful not to accept this reference at face value. The description is part of a ridiculing satirical declamation. What Erasmus puts in Folly’s mouth does not necessarily echo Erasmus’s view, sometimes the opposite is true. The same goes for his colloquies. As Erika Rummel noted, it is particularly difficult to discern Erasmus’s stance in these dialogues.5 Opposing sides express themselves on issues concerning women, such as marriage, and it is almost impossible to reliably identify Erasmus’s view, if there is one, by employing guesswork or making assumptions. Therefore, I leave the colloquies untreated and move to safer grounds, i.e. other works, in which Erasmus particularly dealt with or researched the issues of women’s place and roles in society, such as On the Institution of Christian Matrimony (Institutio Christiani matrimonii, 1526) and On the Christian Widow (De vidua Christiana, 1529). Of course, these works are not devoid of faults, rhetorical and otherwise,6 but as a rule, if one employs careful reading, they can provide sufficient substance to deal with the issue. Before treating these works, a significant letter that Erasmus sent in September 1521 to Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) must be discussed. In this letter, Erasmus’s enthusiastic support of women’s education, an unconventional view and practice at that time, is vividly expressed. According to Erasmus’s own evidence, he did not side with the idea of education for women until he had a sort of revelation. Much to his astonishment, Thomas More succeeded in giving a liberal education, i.e. a certain knowledge of Latin and studia humanitatis, to creatures of the feminine sex, namely More’s three daughters (and a fourth girl), “setting thereby a new precedent, which, if I mistake not, will soon be widely followed, so happy is the outcome.”7 Erasmus never saw anything so admirable: “There you never see one of the girls idle, or busied with the trifles that women enjoy.”8 The common belief was that the female sex has nothing to gain from such an education. Nor was Erasmus himself free of this prejudice in former days, as he admits in this letter. Indeed, More’s educational success made him change his mind, but not so far as the nature of women and her traditional place in society were concerned. Notedly, in 5   Erika Rummel (ed.), Erasmus on Women (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 3–4. 6  Ibid., 4–5. 7  CWE 8, 296; Ep. 1233: 51–53: “[…] nouo quidem hactenus exemplo, sed quod breui plures, nisi fallor, sint imitaturi: adeo feliciter succedit.” 8  Ibid.; ibid.: 73: “Nullam illic videbis ociosam, nullam ineptiis muliebribus occupatam.”

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the same letter he refers to woman’s natural failings: “For two things in particular are perilous to a girl’s virtue, idleness and improper amusements.”9 The love of literature may provide protection to women from yielding to their natural failings. Thus, education may serve as a means to secure women’s chastity, to assure spotless behavior and protect her honor. These are Erasmus’s observations. Education befits married women as well. Husbands do not have to worry “that if they have educated wives they will have wives who are less obedient.”10 Erasmus, a marriage expert who never experienced a day of married life, goes on reassuringly: “what makes wedlock delightful and lasting is more the good will between mind and mind than physical passion […] and a wife has more respect for a husband whom she acknowledges as a teacher also.”11 About two years later (December 1523), Erasmus wrote to Margaret Roper, Thomas More’s daughter, expressing his desire to get to know more learned women like Margaret and her sisters, who are rare and exceptional at present. In Germany, he adds, one can also find a few families who excel in the literary arts. He ends his letter by greeting Margaret and her sisters, almost the whole choir of More’s school.12 In 1526 Erasmus published On the Institution of Christian Matrimony, dedicated to Queen Catherine of Aragon, a work evaluated as profoundly serious and deeply researched.13 The issue of girl’s literary education is favorably referred to by Erasmus in this work. However, when doing so Erasmus expresses the view that a girl is less strong-minded than a boy: Some people consider that a girl’s education is complete if she has been shut away until her marriage and has never set eyes on a man or been seen by one; in the meantime she lives among foolish and inconsequential women, from whom she may imbibe more corruption than if she were living among men […] People in general consider it a waste of time to give girls a literary education, but wiser heads know that there is no better way to improve their 9  Ibid., 297; ibid.:106–107: “Etenim quum duabus rebus potissimum periclitetur puellaruni castitas, ocio ac lasciuis lusibus.” 10  Ibid., 297; ibid.:117–118: “[…] ne minus habeant morigeras, si doctas habeant.” 11  Ibid.,298 ; ibid.: 123–127: “Ad haec quum iucunditas firmitasque cuniugii magis ab animorum beneuolentia quam corporum amore profiscitur […] Magisque veretur maritum uxor quem agnoscit et praeceptorem.” 12  Ep. 1404: 23–28; Sowards, “Erasmus and the Education of Women”: 77–89 (81). 13  M. Heath, in CWE 69, 204 (introductory note).

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minds and safeguard their virtue […] It is certainly true that a growing girl will need more careful protection than a boy […] and she is less strong-­ minded […]”14

Quite surprisingly, Erasmus ignores More’s educational success with his daughters and recommends following Sirach’s conservative—to say the least—educational advice: “To learn how carefully a girl’s chastity must be safeguarded, listen to that wise man Sirach: ‘You have sons: train them and bend them to your will from their earliest years. You have daughters: protect their bodies and do not let them see you smile.’ […] in fact, if you truly love your daughters, that is why you will hide your smiles when you see them.”15 It seems as if Erasmus’s former enthusiasm for girls’ education, expressed in his letter to Budé, was somewhat weakened over time. His treatment of this significant issue is brief and lukewarm. Intellectually, It is unconvincing and a little disappointing. As for the nature of woman, Erasmus explains: “The female sex is particularly prone to two faults: women try to impress by their appearance, a failing that arises from their thirst for vain glory, and, second, they cannot suffer insults and are always eager for revenge. This imperfection is caused by the weakness of their reason and their ignorance of true superiority […] Thus a woman is governed by her feelings and judges success in life by externals.”16 Admitedly, this is not fundamentally different from the abovementioned scorn that Erasmus pours on women in Praise of Folly. It reveals the same attitude, at least as far as the nature of woman was 14  CWE 69, 423; ASD V-6, 236–237: “Sunt qui puellarum absolutam educationem existimant, si vsque ad nuptias sic inclusae teneantur vt nec aspieiant nee aspiciantur a viris, quum interim viuant inter stultas et ineptas mulierculas, vnde plus hauriunt corruptelae quam si cum viris agerent […] Vulgus ineptum existimant puellas institui literis, at qui sapiunt, comperiunt nihil esse vel conducibilius ad bonam mentern vel tutius ad pudoris custodiam […] Certe vigilantiorem custodiam requirit aetas puellae iam grandescentis quam pueri […] et animus est imbecillior.” 15  CWE 69, 424; ASD V-6, 238: “Vis autem audire quam anxia custodia debetur pudicitiae virginis, docet hoc nos sapiens ille Sirach: Filii, inquit, tibi suni? erudi illos, et curua illos a pueritia illorum. Filiae tibi sunt? serua corpus illarum, et non ostendas hilarem [aciem tuam ad illas […] Imo quoniam vere diligis filias tuas, ob hoc ipsum dissimulabis hilaritatem vultus erga illas.” 16  CWE 69, 400–401; ASD V-6, 219: “Duobus vitiis potissimum obnoxius est sexus muliebris. Appetit placere cultu; is affectus nascitur ex inanis gloriae siti. Deinde impatiens est iniuriarum auidusque vindictae. Hoc malum proficiscitur ab imbecillitate rationis et ignorantia verae celsitudinis […] Proinde mulier quoniam affectibus ducitur rebus externis metitur honestatem suam, et in his vinci non patitur.”

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c­ oncerned—physically, mentally and intellectually inferior to man. Thus, natural faults or weaknesses were the identifying marks of women. For example: “Superstition means a harsh inflexibility, and it tends to infect women more often than men. Of course, there are some trifling superstitions that a husband may as well tolerate until his wife knows better.”17 Concerning women’s traditional social and economic roles in society, Erasmus supports the conventional (Aristotelian) situation: “The husband goes out into the world, to the market-place, into government, to the provinces, to the counting-house, in order to increase their patrimony. The wife protects and manages their property, staying at home to take care of her youngsters and her household. Husband and wife govern the same little province, but each has a different role.”18 Woman’s natural inferiority in comparison to her husband carried with it absolute subordination to him: “Again, a husband may defer to his wife in the sense that sometimes he will swallow his pride, but he will never surrender his authority; he will be consistently friendly and obliging, but he will never grovel. Nature has ordained this, the Scriptures teach it […]”19 The same idea—natural determinism dictates physical and mental differences between the sexes, resulting in the obligation of woman to total submissiveness to her husband—is expressed by Erasmus, more than once, relying on the apostle Paul, who instructs: “‘You women,’ he says, ‘be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. For this very reason nature has endowed the male sex with a certain ruthlessness and fierceness, but the female with softness and gentleness.’”20 The role of a marriage expert played by Erasmus is refreshing. Thus, the scholar, who never married nor experienced any marital issue, declares himself different from those who exclusively keep a wife for the sake of 17  CWE 69, 312; ASD V-6, 150: “[…] ita superstitione nihil praefractius. Ea pestis foeminis quam viris est familiarior. Est tamen aliqua leuis superstitio ad quam aequum est virum conniuere donec proficiat vxor.” 18  CWE 69, 239; ASD V-6, 84: “Maritus foris vel in foro vel in republica vel in prouincia vel in negociatione versans auget patrimonium; uxor parta seruat ac dispensat, domi curans liberos teneros ac familiam. Eandem prouinciam gerunt maritus et uxor, sed habet suam vterque functionem.” 19  CWE 69, 364; ASD V-6, 191: “Rursum maritus sic obsecundet vxori vt supercilium aliquando deponat, autoritatern nunquam; saepe comem sese praebeat, abiectum nunquam. Hoc praescribit natura, idem docent sacrae literae […]” 20  CWE 69, 340; ASD V-6, 172: “Mulieres, inquit, subditae estote viris, sicut oportet, in Domino. Eoque natura toruum quiddam ac feroculum addidit maribus, blandum ac molle foeminis.”

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physical satisfaction. The specialist goes as far as the threshold of the wedding-­night bedroom, and even beyond: “Thus it is excellent advice that the first lovemaking between husband and wife should be made as easy as possible.”21 The bride should be reminded “not to instigate their lovemaking herself, as this may diminish his affection for her; on the other hand, she must not show herself too unwilling or forbidding when he suggests it.”22 Understandably, Erasmus’s Christian ideals dominate his imagined marriage bed, which resembles “[…] a temple of restraint and modesty. A bed that witnesses the joint prayers of husband and wife in the evening as they go to bed, and again when they rise in the morning, will also witness pleasures that are chaste and permissible.”23 As mentioned, Erasmus did not rely on his experience in married life or lovemaking in providing this advice. His advisory repertoire is based on accumulated experience found in scriptures and ancient sources, exemplarily mastered by him, combined with his Christian ideals and wishful thinking. One should not entirely dismiss his advice; a few significant innovations are expressed in them. These are twofold: Marriage can and should be a joyous bond, and this goal can be achieved by striving for a relationship between spouses founded on mutuality, conversation and persuasion. All in all, Erasmus signals an intention to be constructive towards womankind, although, as has been said, “he is none the less constrained by the social prejudices of the classical heritage as well as of his own time.”24 On the Christian Widow (1529) was written by Erasmus and dedicated to Mary, widow of Louis II king of Hungary who had died—falling from his frightened horse and drowning—in the battle of Mohács (summer 1526). The Turks, headed by Suleiman I, won and completed their occupation of Hungary. Louis was twenty, and Mary twenty-one when she became a widow. Erasmus was notified of the young widow’s enthusiasm for books in general and his paraphrases on the New Testament in particular and decided to dedicate to her a piece of his writing, with the hope that 21  CWE 69, 342; ASD V-6, 174: “Recte igitur consulunt qui monent vt primus sponsae cum sponso congressus careat omni molestia.” 22  CWE 69, 344; ASD V-6, 176: “Qua quidem in re monendae sunt virgines vt neque prouocent vltro sponsos suos ad coitum—minuit ea res amorem—neque petentibus nimium tetricas ac praefractas sese praebeant quorum illud.” 23  CWE 69, 388–389; ASD V-6, 210: “[…] sed sobrietatis potius ac pudicitiae templum. Idem lectulus conscius sit precum viro cum vxore communium, vesperi quum itur cubitum et mane quum surgitur, qui conscius est permissae castaeque voluptatis.” 24  M. Heath, CWE 69, 206 (introductory note).

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she would reward him. Thus, De vidua Christiana appeared. Mary thanked Erasmus with a precious goblet, which was not the kind of reward Erasmus had hoped to receive. A few years later, as regent of the Netherlands, Mary addressed Erasmus declaring herself willing to offer him a position and a place of residence in the lowlands.25 Among other things, On the Christian Widow includes assertions reflecting the natural inferiority of women in comparison to men. Thus, Erasmus finds it admirable that a mere girl could endure misfortunes that would make a grown man collapse: What grown man would not be thrown off balance by such a storm of evils? And yet it is upon you, a mere girl, that this savage, impious and cruel tempest has descended. The premature death of your father Philip, and soon afterwards of your father’s father and your mother’s father too, dressed you in mourning even as a little girl. Just recently you have bewailed your sister Isabella, an exile instead of a queen—and then dead instead of alive; and your other sister you have seen exchange the life of queen for that of widow.26

Thus, weeping and lamentation are women’s domain: “Who indeed is there of such a womanish disposition that she would not blush to lose control of herself and to let out unseemly cries of piteous lamentation once she has caught sight of a young woman such as you, of such birth, such upbringing, enduring this most cruel fortune with a brave, unbroken spirit?”27 Nevertheless, Erasmus reassures her, women do receive God’s attention as far as prayers and faith are concerned. Erasmus then degrades women by saying that it will be considered a shame for men not to do what is done by a woman.28 Women’s weaknesses are not regarded as hopeless: marriage and a husband’s authority can control the natural levity

25  This survey is based on Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, CWE, 66, 178–180 (introductory note). 26  CWE 66, 187; ASD V-6, 266: “Tanta malorum procella quem non virum deiiceret? At haec tempestas tam saeua, tam impia, tam atrox in te puellam incubuit. Philippi patris praematura mors, mox paterni maternique aui te paruulam adhuc pullatam reddidit. Nuper fleuisti Isabelam sororem, pro regina exulem, mox pro viua mortuam. Vidisti sororem alteram pro regina viduam.” 27  CWE 66, 188; ASD V-6, 266: “Quae vero tam muliebri est animo, quam non pudeat impotentius discruciari, miserandis lamentationibus indecoras voces emittere, modo te conspiciat puellam sic natam, sic educatam atrocissimam sortem forti infractoque animo perpeti?” 28  CWE 66, 219; 253 (respectively).

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occasioned by a wife’s youth and sex, and her idleness can be checked by the responsibilities of having a family.29 Erasmus refers to exemplary women who were superior to men: “If for a moment we focus on examples of religion and piety—well, it is a little embarrassing to say this, but none the less the fact is so plain that it is impossible to avoid doing so: the order of women offers more examples of religion and piety than that of men.”30 These excellent women, set down by Erasmus as models for widows, include Judith, Deborah, Naomi, Ruth, Anna, the mother of the Maccabees, and several other widows, some also Biblical but others from European history. Judith, the heroine who killed Holofernes—Erasmus stresses her modesty, wisdom and piety—is central among them. Interestingly, also in 1529, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), a priest and scholar, elaborated on the ideas of women’s excellence and superiority over men, ideas rarely expressed in print. This was in a tract titled Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex.31 Unsurprisingly, Judith, Erasmus’s heroine, plays a major role in Agrippa’s tract (alongside other Biblical women also discussed by both scholars). Agrippa was no stranger to Erasmus. The two never met but they exchanged a few letters during 1531–1533. Erasmus was familiar with some of Agrippa’s works and appreciated his literary talent. Unfortunately, their correspondence contains no mention of their respective ideas concerning women. Erasmus’s support of women’s education is expressed in this work, but differently than in his former works. Thus, Christ did not distinguish between the sexes as far as their ability for learning was concerned: “Christ, the sure author of all truth, explained to us concisely the celestial  CWE 66, 243–244.  CWE 66, 193; ASD V-6, 272: “lam si spectemus exempla, pudet dicere, sed tamen res dilucidior est quam vt inficiari liceat. Plura propemodum religionis ac pietatis exempla suppeditat foeminarum ordo quam virorum.” 31  For the Latin text: Henri Corneille Agrippa, De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus. Edition critique d’après le texte d’Anvers 1529. Préface de R. Antonioli. Etablissement du texte par Ch. Béné. Traduction de Mme O.  Sauvage. Notes de R.  Antonioli, Ch. Béné, M.  Reulos, O.  Sauvage. Sous la direction de R.  Antonioli (Genève: Librairie Droz S.A., 1990). English translation: Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Translated and edited with an introduction by Albert Rabil Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). For a discussion on Erasmus’s Judith, see Von Wedel, Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Portrait, 137–139. 29 30

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philosophy in such a way that no age, no sex, no temperament would be unsuited to his teaching as long as it presented a mind that was malleable, tractable, and ripe for learning. And God offers man what he needs to become teachable as long as he does not remove himself from heavenly grace.”32 The essence of women’s education, and Erasmus’s tone in referring to it, are different here from the humanistic vision portrayed in his letter to Budé. More’s educational achievement is ignored, and girls literary education is not dealt with at all. It is all about “celestial philosophy,” i.e. purely religious and confessional content. Livius or Tacitus are nonexistent here, and perhaps a priori one should not expect to find them in such a text. However, Erasmus’s stress on the ability of women to learn equally as men—albeit “celestial philosophy” or “divine wisdom” and not studia humanitatis—is quite impressive. Since Christ and the apostles admitted women into private conversation and even intimate familiarity, and prominent Church Fathers did the same in their letters and in their books and treatises, and they dealt with virgins, widows, and married women and dignified them, why should anyone think that the feminine sex is unable to be taught divine wisdom?33 Erasmus’s sincere belief in women’s education and his joyous satisfaction in witnessing it happening, is expressed in a letter he wrote in March 1529, after On the Christian Widow had already appeared, to his friend, the humanist Juan Vergara, whose learned sister was familiar with Erasmus’s books: I have received a welcome greeting from your sister Elizabeth which I return in the same kind. It is a joy to get fresh examples of the learning of her sex. We have a queen of England who is a famous learned woman and whose daughter Mary writes very Latin letters. Thomas More’s house is a veritable home of the muses. Mary, the Emperor’s sister takes delight in books: I recently dedicated my Vidua Christiana to her. She urgently requested this of me… The scheme of human affairs is turned topsy-turvy: monks hate books and women love them!34 32  CWE 66, 191–192; ASD V-6, 271: “Christus certissimus autor sic in compendium redactam philosophiam coelestem nobis explanauerit, vt nulla aetas, nullus sexus, nullum ingenium hominis non huius docile sit, modo mentem adferat mitem, obsequentem ac tractabilem. Atque hoc ipsum Deus praestat homini, per quod docilis redditur, modo ne se subducat benignitati numinis.” 33  CWE 66, 193. 34  Ep 2133: 102–111: “Ab Helisabetha virgine salutem lubens accepi, quam illi multo cum foenore vicissim opto. Bellum est eum sexum ad prisca exempla sese postliminio recipere. Habemus Angliae Reginam foeminam egregie doctam, cuius filia Maria scribit bene Latinas

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Thus, Erasmus’s belief in the need for women’s education was no mere whim. It can be clearly traced over the years from 1521 onwards. Referring to his On the Institution of Christian Matrimony and On the Christian Widow, Erika Rummel explained that such works represent cumulative wisdom and popular thought and declares: “It is questionable whether the appropriation and internalization of ideas found in these sources make them ‘Erasmian.’ They represent Erasmus’s views only in the sense that a Sunday sermon represents the views of the preacher, who believes in the scriptural message he delivers.”35 Analogously, it may be argued, Erasmus believed in the popular-conservative notions concerning the nature of woman and her roles in society, notions that he kept repeating throughout the years. He never rejected or stood out against them. All in all, his texts indicate a difference between Erasmus’s conservative-traditional views on the inferior nature of woman and his progressive stance that she is both capable and worthy of education. Did Erasmus distance himself from the traditional and conservative notions and adopt a more progressive attitude over the years? On the one hand, he continuously demonstrated a conservative attitude as far as women’s nature was concerned, nor did he stand against deeply rooted prejudices on this issue. On the other hand, he did move away from popular traditions, according to which women should not have anything to do with learning, whether religious and confessional studies or studia humanitatis. Thereby, he demonstrated non-conventionality and courage, which are predominant characteristics of any involved intellectual at any time. Intellectually, this marks a considerable achievement, which in the long run impacted important fields of enhancing universal education and of moving forward, indeed very slowly, toward women’s equal rights. Remarkedly, the praise for this intellectual achievement has to be shared with Thomas More.

epistolas. Thomae Mori domus nihil aliud quam Musarum est domicilium. Caesaris germana Maria Latinos codices habet in deliciis: cui nuper scripsi Viduam Christianam. Id effiagitarat a me quidam ecclesiastes illi charissimus. Scena rerum humanarum inuertitur; monachi literas nesciunt, et foeminae libris indulgent.” Sowards, “Erasmus and the Education of Women,” 81. 35  Rummel, Erasmus on Women, 4.

CHAPTER 5

In the Face of the Execution of Thomas More

Abstract  Damian of Goes, the Portuguese humanist and Erasmus’s admirer, was in Italy when he learned about John Fisher’s and Thomas More’s executions. He and other devotees expected an appropriate response from Erasmus. According to Damian, Erasmus was too silent about More. Thomas Cromwell saw to it that Erasmus received his income. The shrewd political operator may have thought it wise to keep the aged scholar in good humor lest he should rouse European opinion on the subject of More’s execution. Thus, the intellectual who was expected to say more, was satisfied with expressing his personal grief and regret about the hazardous road More had taken. In this ethical test, Erasmus preferred self-censorship to expressions of protest or criticism. Keywords  Thomas More • Henry VIII • Protest • Censorship • Damian • Cromwell Paul Johnson has explained how eighteenth-century secular intellectuals questioned “whether popes and pastors lived up to their precepts, of purity and truthfulness, of charity and benevolence?”1 Interestingly, this very question preoccupied earlier figures, such as Martin Luther, and Erasmus. 1  Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (New York: Harper Perennial; Revised edition, 2007), 2.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_5

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Yet why should they, who scrutinized Church and state prelates, not be put to the test themselves? Did they live up to their precepts? Thomas More certainly did. His case reflects an essential dilemma that intellectuals still face today: whether to remain as independent as possible, or to join the government and, in the process, risk a loss of intellectual freedom and, in extreme circumstances, even the loss of life.2 More joined and paid the ultimate price. Erasmus’s honorary nomination to (titular) councilor of the Emperor Charles V was a long way from More’s position as Lord High Chancellor. In terms of responsibility and risk, Erasmus’s position vis-à-vis his monarch, Charles V, was much less binding and burdensome than More’s commitment to Henry VIII. However, the Emperor was Erasmus’s patron, paid him an allowance (albeit irregularly and not an exceedingly high one), and Erasmus was committed to him by a personal oath: “There was one obstacle, war among the three kings. To one of them, Charles, I am actually bound by oath.”3 This created a commitment to the monarch that must have impacted upon Erasmus’s intellectual

2  J. H. Hexter, More’s Utopia, the Biography of an Idea (Princeton, 1952), 113–155 (especially p.  115). See also W.  M. Southgate, “Erasmus: Christian Humanism and Political Theory,” History 40 (1955), 254. 3  CWE 9, 385: 626–628; Ep 1342: 575–576: “Vnum obstabat, bellum inter tres Reges. Quorum uni, nempe Carolo, iureiurando etiam addictus sum.” On Erasmus’s loyalties to his patrons: Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus, 54–55, 159 n. 28; Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of his Life, Ideals and Place of History (New York: 1923; reprinted in 1962), 67–70. The financial income that Charles’s patronage rendered was irregular and insufficient from the outset, both because of the financial difficulties of the court and because of the poor financial management of Pierre Barbier, who was in charge of transferring the payments to Erasmus (once, Erasmus complained, Barbier extorted 100 florins from him). Still worse, Erasmus’s pension has not been paid for seven years! In the summer of 1517, about a year and a half after Erasmus was appointed as (honorary) advisor and became Charles’ protégé, his allowance had not yet been paid. Thus, the appointment was essentially a title of honor of which both Erasmus and the emperor could boast, but of little financial significance. Erasmus was forced to continue looking for sources of income. Three sources, which brought in a regular income of more than 400 florins of gold, had been available to Erasmus since 1517: a canon position in the cathedral of Courtrai in Burgundy, the position of rector in the Church of Aldington, in the County of Kent, and another English pension that has never been identified. Carlos Noreña, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 139, notes that Erasmus’s annual allowance from Charles V was 200 florins. But even so, it was irregular and insufficient. In addition, Erasmus had incomes from writing and gifts he received from friends and admirers. In 1522, living in Basel, Erasmus mentions his income—just over 400 gold florins per year, see Preserved Smith, Erasmus, 67–70, 258–259; Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation, 81–82, 92.

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independence. As far as criticizing monarchs or protesting against them, it posed restrictions that Erasmus only rarely dared to break. Erasmus yearned to join More under the patronage of Henry VIII, and certainly enjoyed a special relationship with this king.4 In light of this, his criticism of a royal idol was bound to be muted. He does, on occasion, express reluctance to endorse Henry’s warlike conduct, but he places the blame for this conduct on Henry’s councilors and the papal legate, presenting Henry VIII as a king who favored peace and was persuaded by others to fight.5 Henry’s pursuit of a divorce from Catherine of Aragon was of concern to Erasmus. He suggested various solutions, but by January 1530, after examining the different possibilities, concluded in favor of the king: “Only one possibility remains, that the marriage, even if it was a genuine marriage, might be dissolved in consideration of the public peace.”6 A few weeks later, Erasmus gave up all hope: “All we can do now is to pray to Heaven […] I am sorry that the king is entangled in such a labyrinth.”7 Some three years later, in a letter to Viglius Zuichemus (1507–1577), of May 1533, Erasmus wrote: “This business has been going on for the last eight years, and the King very properly feels a great weight on his conscience: though two hundred doctors have proved by Scripture and reasoning that his marriage never could have taken place under human or divine law.”8 Yet Erasmus’s last comment on the issue is worth noting. In a letter to Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552), of March 1535, he says: “if I had had Cochlaeus’ wealth of arguments I should have advised the King against the divorce.”9

4  On his special relationship and ties with England and Henry VIII, see: Cecil H. Clough, “Erasmus and the Pursuit of Early Patronage in 1517 and 1518,” Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 1 (1981): 126–140; Preserved Smith, Erasmus, 59–100; CoE, II, 178–181. 5  CoE, II, 179. 6  CWE 16, 138; Ep 2256: 56–57: “Tantum superest an res, etiam si fuit verum coniugium, sit dispensabilis ob publicam tranquillitatem.” See also CoE, II, 180. 7  CWE, 16, 189; Ep 2271: 1–2: “Superest orare superos […] Regem tali labyrintho inuolutum doleo.” See also CoE, II, 180. Erasmus repeated this reference in his letter to Damiao de Goes of July 1533 (Ep. 2846: 48–49; CoE, II, 115). 8  Ep. 2810: 16–19: “lam octo sunt anni quod agitur hoc negotium, et Rex non sine causa habet grauatam conscientiam, quum ducenti doctores Scripturis et argumentis probarint matrimonium illud nec humano nec diuino iure potuisse coire.” 9  Ep. 3001: 16–17: “In argumentando vigilanter agis negocium. Quod si fuissem ea instructus panoplia, ausus fuissem Regi dissuadere repudium.”

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In contrast to Erasmus, Juan Luis Vives (1492/3–1540), a prominent humanist and Erasmus’s close acquaintance, protested against the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. For this Vives paid dearly.10 He was initially confined to his house and later forced to leave England.11 In his last letter to Erasmus (May 10, 1534), Vives referred to the imprisonment of Thomas More and John Fisher (1469–1535) and expressed his general anxieties: “These are difficult times. We can neither keep silent nor speak up without risk to ourselves.”12 As for Erasmus’s reaction to More’s and Fisher’s execution by Henry VIII, the evidence reveals only muted expression of indignation and criticism. James McConica has shown that More and Erasmus were not estranged in their last years, as some believe, and therefore Erasmus’s restraint in protesting More’s execution should not be attributed to any decay of their friendship.13 While there is no evidence that Erasmus ever expressed indignation directly to the monarch, nor otherwise criticized the king, in his dedicatory preface to Ecclesiastes, Erasmus did at least mourn his English friends: Of how many of my most faithful friends have I not been robbed in these stormy days! Long since by the death of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; recently by that of William Mountjoy, of the Bishop of Rochester and of Thomas More, who was the chief magistrate of his country, whose heart was whiter than snow, a genius such as England never had before, nor ever will have again, a country by no means lacking genius.14 10  For an introduction to Vives’s life and works, see Charles Fantazzi (ed.), A Companion to Juan Luis Vives (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Carlos G.  Noreña, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague: Marinus Nijhoff, 1970). 11  Ep 2040: 35–40; Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, 145; James Kelsey McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics Under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 53–54. 12  Ep 2932: 28–29: “Tempora habemus difficilia, in quibus nec loqui nec tacere possumus absque periculo.” See Enrique González González, “Juan Luis Vives. Works and days,” in Fantazzi, A Companion, 54; Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, 145. 13  McConica, English Humanists, 289–290. 14  Ecclesiastae libri IV sive de ratione concionandi, Basle, Froben, August 1535. See Ep 3036. (Erasmus’s dedicatory preface to Ecclesiastes): 99–105: “Quid igitur hac tempestate crudelius, quae me tot spectatisimis amicis spoliauit? Pridem Guilhelmo Varramo, Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi, nuper Guilhelmo Montioio, Episcopo Roffensi, et Thoma Moro, qui fuit eius regni supremus iudex, qui pectus erat omni niue omni candidius, ingenium quale Anglia nec habuit unquam nec habitura est, alioqui nequaquam infelicium ingeniorum parens.”

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From this elegiac we read an assertion of More’s innocence, and thus implicit criticism of the executions, and by implication also of Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540), Henry VIII’s chief minister, was informed of this passage and it might have cost Erasmus dearly. He derived two pensions from England, and risking the monarch’s adverse reaction to his preface was risky.15 Damian of Goes (Damiao de Góis, 1502–1574), the Portuguese humanist and Erasmus’s admirer and friend, was in Italy when he learned about John Fisher’s and Thomas More’s executions.16 He and other devotees expected an appropriate response from the prince of humanists: “Your many learned friends here, with whom I have close intercourse, wonder why [you] do not commemorate the death of such dear and intimate friends with some writing.”17 Erasmus, Damian of Goes is saying, is too silent about More. In a letter of August 24, 1535, to Bartholomew Latomus (1490–1570), Erasmus describes the harsh situation and gloomy atmosphere in Henry’s kingdom. While the writing is critical, however, it does not directly criticize the king in any way: Some monks have suffered capital punishment, one of them a Bridgettine monk who was dragged on the hurdle, then hanged, and finally drawn and quartered. There is a persistent rumor here, probably true, that when the King discovered that the Bishop of Rochester [John Fisher] had been appointed to the college of cardinals by Paul III, he speedily had him led out of prison and beheaded. In this fashion did the King bestow upon him the red hat. It is all too true that Thomas More has been in a prison for some time, and his money confiscated and forfeited to the royal treasury. There has also been a rumor that he was put to death, but I have no certain information on that. I wish he had never become involved in this perilous business and had left a theological question to theologians. My other friends who occasionally used to honor me with letters and gifts now are too fearful

 See the preceding note to Ep 3036, upon which this paragraph is based.  Elizabeth Feist Hirsch, Damiao de Góis: The Life and Thought of a Portuguese Humanist, 1502–1574 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 82. On his connections with Erasmus: CoE, I, 113–117. 17  Letter of January 26, 1536—Ep 3085: 18–21: “Amici tui, quos hic habes plurimos et eruditos, quorum consuetudine familiariter utor, mirantur quod mortem tam cari et intimi amici scriptis non celebres tuis.” See Feist Hirsch, ibid. 15 16

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to write or send anything; neither do they receive anything from anybody— as if under every stone lay a sleeping scorpion.18

Erasmus does not directly blame the king and blames Thomas More for not leaving theology to the theologians: More played his own role in his arrest and execution, the king was doing what kings do. In another letter (August 31, 1535), this to the Polish bishop Peter Tomiczki (1464–1535), Erasmus expresses deep pain concerning the execution of his beloved friend, but again avoids overt recriminations against Henry VIII; instead, vaguely linking the execution to the currents of the time: What happened in England to the Bishop of Rochester and to Thomas More, the holiest and best pair of men England ever had, you will find out from a section of the letter which I am forwarding to you. In More I feel as if I had died myself; there was but one soul between us, as Pythagoras says. But such is the ebb and flow of human affairs.19

Erasmus adopts the tone of fatalism. The death of More is almost a fact of nature, invoking no criticism, no protest, merely an opportunity to reflect upon “the ebb and flow of human affairs.” It was probably Erasmus who arranged for Froben’s publication, in October 1535, of the anonymous The Faithful exposition of the death of Thomas More (Expositio fidelis de morte D. Thomae Mori), based on a former letter printed in July 1535. It is a key source for our knowledge of

18  Ep 3048: 50–63: “De quibusdam monachis sumptum est capitis supplicium, inter quos fuit quidam Brigittensis per humum tractus, mox suspensus, Denique corde reuulso in quatuor sectus partes. Hic constans et verisimilis rumor est, ubi rex cognouit Episcopum Roffensem a Paulo Tertio cooptatum in numerum Cardinalium, eo maturius productum e carcere truncasse capite. Sic ille dedit rubrum galerum. Thomam Morum iam pridem esse in carcere, facultatibus in regium fiscum redactis, nimis verum est. Ferebatur et is ultimo affectus supplicio, sed nondum certum habeo. Vtinam periculoso negocio se nunquam admisquisset, et causam theologicam cessisset theologis. Caeteri amici qui me subinde et literis et muneribus dignabantur, nunc metu nec scribunt nec mittunt quicquam neque quicquam a quoquam recipient, quasi sub omni lapide dormiat scorpius.” 19  Ep 3049: 160–164: “In Anglia quid acciderit Episcopo Roffensi, ac Thomae Moro, quo hominum iugo nunquam habuit Anglia quicquam sanctius aut Melius, ex fragment Epistolae quod ad te mitto cognosces. In Moro mihi videor extinctus, adeo mia psych iuxta Pythagoram duobus erat. Sed hi rerum humanarum aestus.” Some critical amazement at Erasmus’s reactions to his friends’ executions is expressed by Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation, 183.

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More’s trial, and devoid of any criticism of the king.20 It does contain some moral and political reflections concerning the tragic events, stating the grief they cause Erasmus, expressing regret for More’s and Fisher’s stubborn attitude, and making faint apologies for the king. The net result is that the “poor quality of this part of the letter makes it surprising that it should at any time have been attributed, as it was early and has been in recent times, to Erasmus himself.”21 Christopher of Stadion (1478–1543), who wrote to Erasmus (November 27, 1535) and praised him for his recent Ecclesiastes, criticized, by implication, the lack of explicit blame-laying in this book. When you write in the first part, folio 41, among other things: ‘Today we have magnates not different from Herod, magnates who make mockery of Christ and his doctrine. Equally, one should add that just as Herod decapitated John the Baptist, an innocent and holy man, because of Herodia, thus the king of England decapitated Fisher and More, two men of high integrity.’ Oh, most inhuman crime and unheard of in our time […] I have no doubt that they should receive the crown of the martyrs.22

Stadion, as others, thought that Erasmus had said too little.23 For his part, however, Erasmus was afraid he had already said too much concerning the execution of More and Fisher, and might be in trouble. The sincerity of Erasmus’s grief at More’s death should not be doubted, nor his own bad health (he died a year after More’s execution). E. E. Reynolds in The Trial of St. Thomas More is perhaps not wrong to wonder whether, “had he been in his full strength he would have written at greater length about his lost

20  For the text and introductory words, see Allen, Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, XI (Appendix), pp. 368–378. For a detailed interpretation: Henry de Vocht, “Acta Thomae Mori: History of the Reports of his Trial and Death with an Unedited Contemporary Narrative,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 7, (1947): 53–96. See also E. E. Reynolds, The Trial of St Thomas More (London: Burns and Oates, 1964), 3–10. 21  Allen, Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, XI, p. 368. 22  Ep 3073: 10–20: “Quum in primo libro, fo. 41, inter alia scribis: ‘Sunt et hodie mangnates quidam Herodi non dissimiles, qui Christum et eius doctrinam habent ludibrio,’ addendum erat: ‘Sicut Herodes Ioannem Baptistam, virum sanctum ac innocentum, propter Herodiadem decapitari fecit, ita rex Anglie duos, Roffensem ac Morum, viros integrrimos, concubinam.’ O facinus inhumanissimum ac nostro seculo inauditum… Non dubito quin coronam martyrium receperint.” 23  Ibid., n. 10.

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friend.”24 As he grew older, Erasmus became ever more concerned about his sources of income. This concern became pressing when his friends in charge of his Aldington pension were arrested. But Cromwell saw to it that Erasmus received his income. This shrewd political operator may have thought it wise to keep the aged scholar in good humor lest he should rouse European opinion on the subject of More’s execution.25 Cromwell had it right, the intellectual who was expected to say more, was satisfied with expressing his personal grief and regret about the hazardous road More had taken.

 Reynolds, The Trial of St Thomas More, 15.  Ibid., 14. See also CoE, II, 181.

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CHAPTER 6

In the Face of Francis I’s Foreign policy

Abstract  Despite his anti-war preaching, so eminent in his writings, Erasmus made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policy of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515). In a letter to Jean Grolier de Servières, Erasmus expresses his satisfaction with Francis’s victory in Italy and praises him for his recent victory and the conquering of Milan. Grolier was the chief French tax collector—a successful one—in northern Italy. Two potential patrons were on Erasmus’s agenda: Grolier and Francis. Thus Erasmus employed rhetoric that befitted the epistolary occasion: a rhetoric of abundant praise, while he kept his ideological convictions and elevated principles hidden. Keywords  Francs I • Italy • Marignano • Grolier • Patrons • Peace

Francis I of France is a peculiar case in point with regard to Erasmus’s responses to public affairs. Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), the prominent French humanist, reported in a letter (February 1517) to Erasmus that “[…] the king, inspired I hope, by the Goddess Minerva, observed that he had it in mind to attract picked men to his kingdom with generous offers,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_6

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and to set up in France what I may call a nursery-bed of scholars.”1 Erasmus was to head this collegium trilingue. According to Erasmus, Francis offered him “mountains of gold” to move him to Paris and preside over the college, but Erasmus rejected the offer, pleading age and commitment to Charles V, his king and patron. Instead, he recommended the Swiss humanist Henricus Glareanus.2 Francis’s high estimation and courtship of Erasmus are significant if we are to understand Erasmus’s reactions to this king’s foreign policy. Erasmus’s commitment to Charles V, the reason he gives for declining Francis’s generous offer to head the collegium in Paris, sheds light on Erasmus’s objection to a major step of Francis’s foreign policy: his alliance with the Ottomans. In his struggle against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, Francis took an exceptional step. He wove commercial and unprecedented military ties with the Ottoman Empire, ties which became in February 1536 an official alliance.3 Erasmus objected to this, as may be 1  Ep 522: 40–43: “[…] Rex Minervae, ut spero, numine afflatus ita infit, in animo sibi esse lectissimos viros in regnum suum praemiis opimis asciscere, ac seminarium ut ita dicam, eruditorum in Francia instituere.” For the relationships between Erasmus and Budé and other French humanists, see the correspondence between Erasmus and Budé translated into French and annotated: Madeleine de la Garanderie, La Correspondance d’Érasme et de Guillaume Budé (Paris: J. Vrin, 1967); idem, ‘Guillaume Budé,’ in CoE, I, 212–217; David O. McNeill, Guillaume Budé and Humanism in the Reign of Francis I (Genève: Droz 1975). On Erasmus’s relations with France in general and with Budé in particular, see Marie-­ Madeleine de la Garanderie, ‘Les relations d’Érasme avec Paris au temps de son séjour aux Pays-Bas méridionaux (1516–1521),’ in J. Coppens (ed.), Scrinium Erasmianum, I (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 29–53; A. Stegmannn, ‘Érasme et la France (1495–1520),’ in Actes du Colloque International réuni à Mons. Octobre 1967 (Mons: Centre universitaire de l’Etat, 1968), 275–297. 2  On 25 January 1515, Francis I was crowned. Shortly after the king announced his plan to establish an institute that would serve as a center of classical culture, namely a trilingual college (collegium trilingue) based on the college of Louvain. Assisted by Guillaume Budé, France’s senior humanists, and with the help of Étienne de Poncher, bishop of Paris, the king asked Erasmus to come to Paris and head the institute in return for what, as Erasmus described in a letter of April 1518, “mountains of gold.” Erasmus declined the offer. See: Epp 1342: 563–584; 1558: 300–308; Clough, “Erasmus and the Pursuit of Early Patronage in 1517 and 1518”: 131 and n. 26; Robert. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 136. 3  Nathan Ron, Erasmus and the “Other”: On Turks, Jews and indigenous Peoples (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 8–13; Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 110–111; De Lamar Jensen, “The Ottoman Turks in Sixteenth Century French Diplomacy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal (16) 1985: 451–470 (In particular p. 455 n. 17); Christine

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inferred from a few assertions.4 His objection stemmed from the fact that the alliance was directed against Charles V, who was not just Erasmus’s sovereign but also his patron.5 There was also an ideological issue, as he expressed it in his Education of a Christian Prince, namely his fundamental objection to political agreements.6 Erasmus’s objection to these ties was quite cursory and is expressed only in two of his letters.7 He did not exert himself to criticize or protest the move—unacceptable and outrageous to many, especially in the Emperor’s circles—which Francis took against Erasmus’s king and patron. Thus, Erasmus did not stand up for his conviction that allying with a Muslim enemy in order to coordinate an attack on a Christian Emperor was condemnable. Moreover, Francis’s move contrasted with the principle of Christian peace, which Erasmus constantly preached, a principle rooted in both a religious and a pragmatic point of view as well as the common sense understanding that, in order to defeat the Turks, Christians must unite. As far as personal courage is concerned, whether moral or political, in this case Erasmus demonstrated very little of it. As for Francis’s Italian war, the military campaign to conquer a large part of Italy was, by definition, in contradiction to Erasmus’s preaching. In his A Complaint of Peace, Erasmus argues: Can men believe themselves to be Christians if for some trifling injury they plunge a great part of the world into war? Christ commands the prince to be the servant of his people and to excel them only in being a better man and doing good to more. Yet there are men who are not ashamed to create ­widespread chaos simply in order to make some tiny little addition to the territories they rule.8 Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel: The Ottoman and French Alliance in the Sixteenth Century (London: Tauris, 2011), 117; Gilles M. Veinstein, “Histoire turque et ottomane,” L’annuaire du Collège de France 109 (2010): 679–704 (URL: http://annuaire-cdf.revues. org/207, 688); 140; André Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent trans. M. J. Reisz (New York: Saqi books and New Amsterdam books, 1992), 141–144. 4  See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 10–12. 5  See Chap. 5 n. 3. 6  See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 13; “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” 36–37. 7  A letter of May 1527 to Sigismund I of Poland (Ep 1819: 71–72), and another letter of February 1535 (Ep 3000: 56–570. In De bello Turcico (CWE, 64 249, 252 N. 216) Erasmus rejoices over the reunification of Francis and the other kings (Treaty of Cambrai, 1529). See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 10–11. 8  CWE 27, 302; ASD IV-2 74: “Et Christiani sibi videntur, qui ob quantumuis leuem iniuriolam magnam orbis partern in bellum pertrahunt? Praecipit, vt qui in suo populo sit

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According to Erasmus, Christian morality should serve as the ultimate guideline for the ruler. In his Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus explains: The good prince will never start a war at all unless, after everything else has been tried, it cannot by any means be avoided. If we all agreed on this, there would hardly ever be a war among men. In the end, if so pernicious a thing cannot be avoided, the prince’s first concern should be to fight with the least possible harm to his subjects, at the lowest cost in Christian blood, and to end it as quickly as possible.9

In the summer of 1515, shortly after ascending to the throne, Francis embarked on a military campaign in northern Italy. In September that year he won a decisive battle in Marignano, and shortly after he took over the duchy of Milan. In his Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus explicitly stated his reservations about attacking Italy: “The kingdom of France is by far and in every way the most prosperous of all; but she would have been still more prosperous had she refrained from invading Italy.”10 This does not refer to Francis but to the French kings who attacked Italy prior to him, namely Charles VIII and Louis XII. Erasmus denounced them for setting out on military missions to Italy. His denunciation is also found in the adage “Sparta is your portion; do your best for her” (Spartam nactus es, hanc orna).11 Another piece of evidence is Erasmus’s letter to Francis I (February 1517), in which he portrays the king as a guardian of peace and patron of letters. Seemingly, this ingratiating reaction, which followed Francis’s Italian victories, was inspired by the king’s wish to attract Erasmus to princeps, is ministrum agat nec alia re praecellat aliis, nisi quod melior sit et pluribus prosit. Et non pudet quosdam ob pusillam accessiunculam regni pomoeriis addendam tantos ciere tumultus?” 9  CWE 27, 282; ASD IV-1 213–214: “Bonus princeps nunquam omnino bellum suscipiet, nisi cum tentatis omnibus nulla ratione vitari potuit. Hoc animo si fuerimus, vix unquam existet inter vllos bellum. Denique si vitari non potest res tam pestilens, tum proxima cura fuerit principis, ut quam minimo suorum malo, quam minimo Christiani sanguinis impendio geratur, et quam potest ocysissime finiatur.” 10  CWE 27, 277; ASD IV-1, 207: “Est quidem Franciae regnum, rebus omnibus omnium multo florentissimum: at multo esset florentius, si ab Italia impetenda temperasset.” 11  Adagia, 1401 (2. 5. 1); CWE, 33, 237; CWE 27, 277 n. 8; Neil M.  Cheshire, and Michael J. Heath (trans.), Erasmus—The Education of a Christian Prince, ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge, 1997), 95 n. 165.

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Paris. In his letter, Erasmus expresses his hope for Christian peace—and his certainty that Francis will lead it. Notably, Erasmus does not express any reservation about the king’s wars, and he is far from condemning the king’s Italian war policy.12 In A Complaint of Peace, Erasmus praises Francis for his attempt to buy peace from the Swiss as an alternative to a military confrontation. “Francis, the most Christian king of France (and not in title alone), summons you hither; he is ready to buy peace, and sets aside consideration of his majesty in the interests of general peace, proving that true glory and royalty lie in the possible service to the human race.”13 Francis was willing to pay, at a certain point, but not in order “to buy peace,” nor as “service to the human race.” The treaty he was willing to sign with Milan’s Swiss mercenaries, and which failed to work out, was not an act of peace. Francis initiated it after he had already led his army to war, crossed the Alps and was not far from Milan. His readiness to make this treaty seems to have stemmed from a tactical wish to avoid battle, as well as to gain Swiss mercenaries’ support in the future, as the treaty affirmed.14 In another letter to Francis (December 1523), which serves as a preface to his paraphrase of the Gospel of Mark, Erasmus expresses his wish for a (Christian) peace, first and foremost. His general hope is that “[…] in the long continued storms of war there must be some quarter from which peace, like a spell of fine weather, would shine upon us.”15 This is followed by a reproach of the kings—all of them—who fight each other and thus make the Turks happy. Erasmus then complains: “Nor does any peace maker arise for the moment with the authority to put an end to these godless upheavals […]”16 He makes clear that he chooses to avoid involvement in any such conflict: “It is not for me to prejudice or promote the cause of any party by prematurely passing a Judgement of my own.”17 A

 Ep 533; CWE 4, 246–247.  ASD IV-2, 98; CWE 27, 321. 14  R.  J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 73; idem, Francis I, 43–44. 15  CWE 10, 113; Ep 1400: 5–7: “[…] in tam diutinis bellorum tempestatibus alicunde nobis affulgeret aliqua pacis serenitas.” 16  CWE 10, 113; Ep 1400: 34–35: “Neque quisquam interim exoritur pacificator, qui tam impios rerum motus autoritate sua componat […]” 17  CWE 10, 115; Ep 1400: 38–39: “Non est meum vllius partis causam meo praeiudicio vel grauare vel subleuare.” 12 13

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familiar Erasmus sitting-on-the-fence-stance, for which he was renown and criticized. Furthermore, in a letter (April 24, 1518) to Jean Grolier de Servières (1479–1565), Erasmus expresses his satisfaction with Francis’s victory in Italy and praises him for his recent victory and the conquering of Milan. Grolier was the chief French tax collector—a successful one—in northern Italy. He was also a man of letters and a well-known book connoisseur.18 Erasmus pursued his patronage, writing to him: “[…] for during your tenure of it you have redoubled the glory lately won by your prince on the field of arms […]”19 Francis’s victory in the battle of Marignano is explicitly praised here. Thus, Erasmus expresses his satisfaction with a military victory won by a Christian state, headed by Rex Christianissimus, over another Christian state. The contradiction between Erasmus’s anti-war writing, as demonstrated in A Complaint of Peace and other “pacifistic” works, and his praises of the Most Christian King triumphing over another Christian state, requires our attention.20 Apparently, the explanation lies in the context. Erasmus’s praise of Francis’s Italian war was expressed when Erasmus had but recently received Francis’s generous offer of patronship.21 Two potential patrons were on his agenda: Grolier, the financier who was also a renowned philanthropist, and Francis, whose courtship Erasmus did not altogether stop. Although not Erasmus’s first choice perhaps, he wanted to keep the option of Francis open. Thus Erasmus employed rhetoric that befitted the epistolary occasion: a rhetoric of abundant praise, while he kept his ideological convictions and elevated principles hidden. More generally, the impression received from reading Erasmus’s writings is of an almost complete separation between his calls for peace or Christian unity, which the kings blatantly violated, and his rhetorical references to these kings. One can hardly find criticism or condemnation of any  Ep 831. Grolier replaced his father in the same position, and fullfilled it, not continuously, from 1515 to1521. Later, he served in other senior positions in the French treasury, and was beside also a well-known bibliophile and patron of scholars, including Beatus Rennanus, Erasmus’s close associate (CoE, II, 136–137). 19  CWE, 5, 406; Ep 831: 72–73: “[…] in quo iamdiu sic versaris ut principi tuo nuper armis partam gloriam conduplicaris […]”. 20  On Erasmus’s conception of war between Christians as a civil war: Epp 1248: 27–29; 1238: 68–69. See: Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus,” 9–10. 21  See n. 159 (“mountains of gold”). 18

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royal misconduct on the grounds that it was opposed to the principle of Christian peace so cherished by Erasmus. On the contrary, Erasmus’s comparison of Francis with Julius Caesar—in the category of the greatest kings ever—was flattering to the French king.22 In Erasmus’s opinion, France was the purest Christian state,23 and despite Francis’s warlike obsession with Italy he deployed such phrases as “[…] towards your majesty and the most flourishing kingdom of France I am guided by a very special feeling.”24 There is a gap between Erasmus’s rhetoric of peace and his restraint in criticizing or publicly confronting warlike monarchs, stemming from a desire to maintain the personal ties he had weaved with Europe’s most prominent kings. At stake was not only Erasmus’s attempt to achieve the much desired patronship of Henry VIII, but also Francis’s offer to make him head of collegium trilingue in Paris, which Erasmus loved to reminisce about,25 as well as Charles V’s imperial patronage. In light of the gap between the ideal of Christian peace and his mundane human desires and constraints, it seems that Erasmus’s idealism was in practice somewhat flawed, even if we restrict ourselves to the context of 22  CWE 49, 3; LB VII, 149–150: “Praedicata est haec olim in Julio Caesare, praedicatur et hodie magno consensu gentium in Francisco.” 23  See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 131–132. 24  CWE 49, 11; LB VII (Dedication letter to Francis I, In Evangelium Marci Paraphrasis), 155–156: “Caeterum erga tuam Majestatem ac florentissimum Galliarum regnum singulari quodam ducor studio.” 25  In 1530, much thanks to Guillaume Budé, Francis appointed and financed five professors as “royal lecturers” for the benefit of the general public, so that anyone could attend and learn from them free of charge. Of the five, two were Greek teachers, two taught Hebrew, and one mathematics. Over the years, lecturers in other fields came in and the Collège de France developed. One goal was to undermine scholastic control: CoE I, 50 (Francis I); André Chastel, “François Ier et le Collège de France,” in André Chastel Culture Et Demeures En France Au XVIe Siècle (Paris: Julliard, 1989), 37–39; Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie, “Emergence de la notion de lecteur royal. Préfigurations du nouvel enseignement,” in Marc Fumaroli, Antonio Alvar Ezquerra et Marianne Lion-Violet (eds.), Les Origines du Collège de France (1500–1560), Actes du Colloque international, Paris, Décembre, 1995 (Paris, 1998), 3–18; James Veazie Skalnik, Ramus and Reform: University and Church at the End of the Renaissance, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Vol. LX (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press for Truman State University, 2002), 71–74; Lefranc’s pioneering works are relevant and often cited: Abel Lefranc, Histoire du Collège de France: depuis ses origines jusqu’à la fin du premier empire (Paris: Librairie Hachette 1893); idem, La fondation et les commencements du Collège de France, 1530–1542 (Paris: PUF, 1932), 27–58.

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his period and norms. When the ideal of Christian peace collided with the constraints of personal needs and interests, the seeker of Christian peace demonstrated a considerable degree of noncompliance with his values, not living up to his own principles. In certain cases, when his moral commitments required that he should confront the monarch, e.g., in the case of Francis’s wars in Italy, he preferred to remain silent and did not step forward to protest the king’s immoral deeds.

CHAPTER 7

In the Face of the Destruction of the Amerindians

Abstract  Erasmus must have known about the crimes the Spanish perpetrated in the New World. Juan Luis Vives knew. Bartolomé de las Casas published his Memorial of Remedies for the Indies already in 1516. He dispatched it to Adrian Florenz, the future Pope. Apparently, Adrian passed the essay to Erasmus, who was councilor for Charles. But even if Erasmus did not receive it directly from Adrian, given that Las Casas was spreading the news it is improbable that Erasmus did not know about it. A moral voice raised by Erasmus could have been significant and influential. By choosing not to raise a voice, Erasmus acted in the spirit of “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time” (Amos, 5, 13). Keywords  Spanish • Indians • Charles V • Vives • Las Casas • Moral

In Erasmus’s colloquy The Well To Do Beggars, the Amerindians play a role, but as no more than a side story. Indeed, they provided no subject matter for Erasmus in any of his writings.1

1  The well to do beggars (Πτωχοπλούσιοι, ptochoplousioi, 1524). For discussion, see Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 91–92.

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Nevertheless, Erasmus must have known about their misfortune and the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish in the New World. A clue as to the harsh Spanish economic exploitation is found in another colloquy, “Fish Diet” (Iχθυoϕ´αγiα, 1526), where Lanio, the butcher, alludes to booty taken from certain Caribbean islands under Spanish rule: “[…] spoils were carried from them, but Christianity was not carried to them.”2 Craig R.  Thompson rightly observes that the passage demonstrates the only aspect of the new world of interest to Erasmus: exporting Christianity properly, without force.3 Moreover, Erasmus must have known about the colonial crimes since Juan Luis Vives, his very close colleague, unequivocally denounced them. In his On Concord and Discord in the Human Race (De concordia et discordia in humano genere, 1529), which he devoted to the Emperor, Vives condemned “[…] the deeds that are done in that New World by our people, who do not consider the Amerindians as human beings. To that injustice I intend to dedicate another work.”4 Unfortunately, this work was never written, but Vives’s moral courage as expressed in these words should be deservedly appreciated. Vives praised the love of peace of these Amerindians, which stood in complete contrast to Europeans, who possessed culture and religion but acted in a most criminal way. His empathy with the Amerindians and his criticism of the actions committed by the Christian conquerors were clear.5 One should bear in mind that Bartolomé Las Casas (c. 1484–1566) began to disseminate news about the atrocities in the New World well 2  ASD I-3 505: “Vidi, dididque illinc auectas praedas, Christianismum inductum non audiui.” Further on (505–506), Erasmus says: “[…] si gentes barbarae senserint se vocari non ad seruitutem humanam, sed ad libertatem Euangelicam, nec ad rapinam expeti […] vltro plus offerent, quam ab eis vlla vis queat extorquere.”—“If barbarian peoples would feel that they were not called to human servitude, but to the liberty of the Gospel; and they were not sought after to be exploited […] they would freely offer us more than the greatest violence can extort from them.” Gentes barbarae is a general term. Erasmus might have meant Amerindians, but Africans or Turks as well. 3  CWE 70, 728, n. 69. 4  Vives, De concordia et discordia in humano genere, V, 221: “[…] quae a nostris sunt hominibus in orbe isto novo acta, ut Indi illi non sint illis habiti pro hominibus, de qua iniquitate destinatus est mihi alio opere dicendi locus […]”; David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 111. 5  For his praise of the Indians, see Vives, De concordia et discordia in humano genere, V, 297. See also Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 93.

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before the well-known Valladolid debate (1550). Las Casas had arrived in Europe by the end of 1515 and began campaigning against Spanish wrongdoings in the New World, particularly in Cuba, where Las Casas himself was a settler (encomendero). On December 24, Las Casas visited the old and sick King Ferdinand (1452–1516) at his royal court in Plascencia and discussed with him the horrendous condition of the exploited indigenous people. The next year Las Casas published his Memorial of Remedies for the Indies (Memorial de remedios para las Indias, 1516), which related to the atrocities, in the context of the encomiendas and other issues, perpetrated by the Spanish against Cuban natives, practically in front of Las Casas’s own eyes. The essay called for correction and suggested a plan for the remedy of the Amerindians’ harsh conditions.6 Las Casas dispatched his essay to Adrian Florenz (1454–1523), the future Pope Adrian VI, who at that time was coregent (with Cardinal Ximénez), for young prince Charles, the future emperor. Apparently, Adrian passed the essay to Erasmus, who was councilor for Charles, and Thomas More may have received it from Erasmus. Accordingly, Utopia, which was published in 1516, was influenced by Las Casas’s work.7 But even if Erasmus did not receive it directly from Adrian, given that Las Casas was spreading the news in Europe, and that Vives knew what was going on in the New World, it is improbable that Erasmus did not know about it. Given, then, that Erasmus almost certainly knew what was taking place in the New World, his disregard of it is particularly regrettable. A moral voice raised by Erasmus could have been significant and influential. Notedly, Charles V was not just Erasmus’s emperor but also his patron, acquaintance and addressee. Moreover, nowhere was the reception of Erasmianism more wholehearted than in Spain, first under the religious 6  Text and translation to English: Victor N. Baptiste, Bartolomé de Las Casas and Thomas More’s Utopia: Connections and Similarities. Translation and Study (Culver City, California: Labyrinthos, 1990), 15–58. See Lawrence A. Clayton, Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 99–102; Rolena Adorno, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 63–64 and n. 7. See also F. P. Sullivan, Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolome de Las Casas. A Reader (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), 4. 7  Baptiste, Bartolomé de Las Casas and Thomas More’s Utopia, 1–10; Sullivan, Indian Freedom, 4; Clayton, Bartolomé de Las Casas, 99: “Erasmus was also one of Adrian’s students… Erasmus, a member of the royal council, read this interesting description, and lent it to his friend Thomas More.”

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leadership of Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros (1436–1517), and then under Charles V’s emperorship.8 Erasmus did not bind himself to disregard or pass over in silence the cruelty of the Turks against Christian-Europeans. On the contrary, he depicted genus Turcarum as a loathsome race characterized by exclusive mental deficiencies, and used the term Immanitas Turcarum to define the inhuman nature of the Turks.9 Following various Italian humanists, he emphasized the alleged inhuman essence of the Turks, their immanitas.10 Turkish essence, according to Erasmus, was human immorality at its worst. However, when it had to do with the cruelty of fellow Christians, who also happened to be the subjects of Erasmus’s emperor and patron, against non-Christians, Erasmus’s voice was practically unheard. Contrarily, a few moralists, Dominicans by their monastic affiliation, did react and in doing so achieved a certain impact on Imperial policy and legislation; Las Casas was not the only one to do so. In 1511, Antonio de Montesinos (c. 1475–1540) delivered a Sunday sermon to the indigenous inhabitants of the first Spanish city in the New World, on the island of Hispaniola. His sermon is considered the first moral outcry condemning the atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards against the locals and in particular their inhuman enslavement.11 Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1485–1546) was professor of theology at the University of Salamanca. In two lectures he gave in 1539, On the Amerindians (De Indis) and On the Right to War (De Iure Belli), Vittoria presented a comprehensive legal discussion of the right to engage in a “just war” and on the question of the legitimacy of European colonialism.12 His scholarly 8  See McConica, English Humanists, 35, who follows Marcel Bataillon, Erasme et l’Espagne (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Études Hispàniques, Fasc. XXI, 1937) ch. 4 and especially pp. 199 ff. 9  For example, CWE 64, 221; ASD V-3 38. 10  James Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Symposium on Byzantium and the Italians, 13th–15th Centuries 49 (1995): 122; Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 29–35. 11  Rolena Adorno, “The Polemics of possession: Spain on America, Circa 1550,” in Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster (eds.), Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 24; Idem, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative, 101, 107; Lupher, Romans in a New World, 58–60; Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and The Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1982), 30–35. 12  For the text (Latin and English) of Vitoria’s above mentioned lectures, see Ernest Nys (ed.), De Indis et De Iure Belli relectiones, trans. John Powley Bate (Washington D.C.:

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opposition to the oppression of the native Americans, which he expressed in the first of these works, was more moderate in nature and style than that of Las Casas. Nonetheless, it influenced the policy and legislation of the Spanish Crown pertaining to territories in the New World and its indigenous people. In 1542, Emperor Charles V issued the New Laws (Leyes Nuevas) intended to establish the better treatment and safeguarding of the indigenous peoples of the crown colonies in South America, essentially to protect them from being enslaved by Spanish settlers (Encomenderos). Although these laws did not abolish the Encomienda system, by which the Amerindians were enslaved, they did, to some extent at least, moderate it.13 If Erasmus were alive at that time he would have welcomed these laws—they were very much in the spirit of his worldview, condemning unnecessary violence and expressing a deep aversion to the brutality and bloodlust that characterized European mercenaries. The laws also matched his principled objection to Christianization by employing forceful coercion. By choosing not to raise a moral voice, Erasmus acted very much in the spirit of “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time” (Amos, 5, 13). However, this is exactly how an intellectual should not act. Whether by sixteenth-century or by present day standards, Erasmus’s choice marks a moral failure on his part, albeit one that he shares with many others.

Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917; reprint: University of Michigan, 2008). For a more up to date and critical English edition, see: Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (eds.), Vitoria: Political Writings—Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 231–327. On Vitoria and his thought and lectures (relectiones), see Adorno, “The Polemics of possession: Spain on America, Circa 1550,” 24–27; Idem, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative, 109–113; Lupher, Romans in a New World, 68–82; Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 60–61, 68–78. 13  See Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 106–108; Adorno The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative, 99–124; Frederic J.  Baumgartner, Declaring war in Early Modern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 67; CoE, III, 406.

CHAPTER 8

Erasmus’s Turkophobic Bias

Abstract  Erasmus gained a reputation as an intellectual who called for the unity of humankind and is generally considered tolerant toward different peoples and cultures. Certain proclamations won Erasmus the name of a devoted cosmopolitan. Pacifism has also been ascribed to him. Johan Huizinga glorified what he defined as “truly Erasmian,” namely, “gentleness, kindliness, moderation, a generally diffused moderate erudition.” Unsurprisingly, such an eulogy is made possible if one deducts from the balance Erasmus’s Turkophobic and Islamophobic—as well as anti-­ Jewish—attitudes, as Huizinga indeed did. In this chapter, Erasmus’s idealized and professed cosmopolitanism and universalism are situated vis-à-vis his Turkophobic attitude to emphasize the gap between professed convictions and actual prejudices, both ethnic and religious. Keywords  Universalism • Cosmopolitan • Turkophobic • Huizinga • Africa • Hierarchy Erasmus gained a reputation as an intellectual who called for the unity of humankind and is in general considered tolerant toward different peoples and cultures. Proclamations such as “this world, which we share, is the homeland of all human beings,” and “I have always been for the most part

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a man of stoic mind […] considering the whole world to be my homeland,”1 won Erasmus the name of a devoted cosmopolitan. Pacifism has also been ascribed to him; but elsewhere I have shown that, although he firmly objected to crusades, it was the idea of Christian concord—peace by Christians and for Christians—that Erasmus really cherished.2 In this chapter, Erasmus’s idealized and professed cosmopolitanism and universalism are situated vis-à-vis his Turkophobic attitude to emphasize the gap between professed convictions and actual prejudices, both ethnic and religious. We can begin with some of the standard praise showered upon Erasmus in modern times. Roland Bainton characterized Erasmus as an internationalist and cosmopolitan.3 Craig Thompson asserted that “Erasmian cosmopolitanism is a state of culture, an intellectual outlook in an individual who by education, experience, and taste is not only familiar with other peoples and cultures but values them.”4 Stephan Zweig (1881–1942), the famous writer and biographer, viewed Erasmus as a precursor of transnationalism who contributed immensely to the idea of a Europe united by one language, one religion, and one culture, in which conflicts and wars will exist no more.5 In a similar spirit of idealization, Johan Huizinga, a learned historian indeed, glorified what he defined as “truly Erasmian,” namely, “gentleness, kindliness, moderation, a generally diffused moderate erudition.”6 Unsurprisingly, such an eulogy is made possible if one deducts from the balance Erasmus’s Turkophobic and Islamophobic— as well as anti-Jewish—attitudes, as Huizinga indeed did. The appreciations of Erasmus as a cosmopolitan or universalist resulted from an idealized perception and a tendency, shared by many, to ignore Erasmus’s Eurocentric attitude, i.e., his judging of non-Christians by Christian-European values. Erasmus despised the Turks, their 1  Respectively: CWE, 27, 315 (A Complaint of Peace); CWE, 13, 363 (letter of Erasmus no.1885, of October 1527, addressed to Francisco de Vergara (died 1545). https://link. springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-6730-0_604-1. 2  Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus.” 3  Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York: Charles Scribner’s sons, 1969), 114, 118. 4  Craig R.  Thompson, “Erasmus as Internationalist and Cosmopolitan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 46 (1955): 168. 5  Stefan Zweig, Erasmus of Rotterdam, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Viking Books, 1934; repr. Plunkett Lake Press, 2015). It was originally written in German and published as Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam. 6  Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation, 194.

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achievements, and their religion at a time when the Ottoman Empire was at its peak under Sultan Suleiman I (the law giver; the Magnificent). As already shown by Heiko Oberman, Erasmus was impatient with the modern ideal of toleration, but since many Christians felt, and still feel, respect and esteem for him and his Biblical humanism, which he named philosophia Christi—intolerance, whether religious or ethnic, is not ascribed to him.7 Christine Christ-von Wedel is right in stating: “For Erasmus all human beings had a right to life, believers as well as non-believers.”8 However, Erasmus perceived Christian life as the highest degree of human existence. In his letter to Paul Volz of August 1518, which prefaces The Handbook of the Christian Soldier, Erasmus explains the need to make the Turks convert to Christianity: “for though nothing else, they are at least human beings.”9 A hierarchic conception is embedded in his perception of human kind. Such a conception is to be deduced from many of Erasmus’s assertions—quite a few are literally comparative—concerning Christians versus the “Other.” Thus, according to Erasmus, the Turks and the Jews, in comparison to other peoples enumerated by him, were the only ones not blessed with any virtue or quality and were defined only by their religion, i.e. by their religious arrogance.10 In his conceptual ethnological schema European Christians were, unsurprisingly, at the very top. Muslims/Turks came next, defined by Erasmus as “half-Christians,” mainly due to their theological recognition of Jesus as one of the prophets. Contrarily, Erasmus never defined the Jews as “half-Christians,” except those who converted to Christianity, and then he always used the term with a derogatory sense. Accordingly, the Jews should be graded lower than Muslims. Black Africans were positioned at the bottom. Africa or its natives are sporadically mentioned in Erasmus’s writings— always messaging negativity of one form or another. For example, “Libyan animal” (Libyca fera) and “African bird” (Afra avis) convey a sense of wildness or unusual appearance.11 “Africa,” according to one of these adagia, “always produces something negative.”12 Etienne Wolf, who has 7  Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 38–39. 8  Von Wedel, Erasmus of Rotterdam: A Portrait, 156. 9  CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 83–84: “sunt enim et illi, vt nihil aliud, certe homines.” 10  CWE 27, 117; ASD IV-3, 128; Ron, Erasmus and the “Other”, 116–117. 11  LB II 885C., III viii 8 LB II 886B; III vii 11. 12  III vii 9; LB II 885F.

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s­tudied Erasmus’s attitude toward “Africa,” observed that the variety of traits that Erasmus attributes to Africans includes infidelity, drunkenness, a tendency to rebellion, and extreme selfishness. Significantly, Wolf points out that, directly or indirectly, Erasmus frequently quoted these adages in his works, namely in his Colloquia, Ecclesiastes, Explanatio Symboli, De Pueris Instituendis, and in his letters. Consequently, one should deduce that Erasmus accepted these prejudices, and appreciated them as reflecting certain truths. Accordingly, it was not the Turks who formed the distinctive and negative embodiment of the “Other” in Erasmus’s writings, but the Jews and the Africans.13 Black Africans were believed to be the “sons of Ham,” who were cursed (Gen. 9: 20–27) and allegedly “blackened” by their sins. This explanation was advanced during the Middle Ages and became the single greatest and twisted justification for black slavery for generations. The idea of skin blackened by sin was shared by Erasmus, who explained in his Ecclesiastes: “Those who were previously Ethiopians, black because of their crimes, after discovering Jesus are no longer the person they used to be, and they were wrapped with the white wool of the sheep.”14 Thus, Erasmus considered the black skin of African natives a moral signifier as well as a physical hallmark. Notedly, the idea of a hierarchy of civilizations gained ground from the late Renaissance (i.e., late sixteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth).15 However, it seems that religious and ethnological rankings, such as Erasmus conceptualized, are to be discerned already a few decades earlier. In this context, one should also bear in mind Las Casas’s classification of barbarian peoples. Elsewhere, I have showed that Las Casas’s conception of barbarian peoples has a definite link to Erasmus’s 13  Etienne Wolf, “Érasme et l’Afrique: comment penser l’altérité,” Scholia 8 (1999): 96–103 (particularly, 101–103). 14  ASD V-4, 428: “[…] et qui prius erant Aethiopes nigri criminibus, exuunt veterem hominem et Christum induentes candido agni vellere amiciuntur.” See George Huntston Williams, “Erasmus and the Reformers on Non-Christian Religions and ‘Salus Extra Ecclesiam,’” in Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Seigel (eds.), Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of H.  Harbison (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 335; Wolf, “Érasme et l’Afrique,” 102. 15  Joan Pau Rubiés, “Were Early Modern Europeans Racist?” in Amos Morris-Reich and Dirk Rupnow (eds.), Ideas of Race in the Histoy of the Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 33–87 (particularly 36–37, 68); idem, “Comparing Cultures In the Early Modern World: Hierarchies, Genealogies and the Idea of European Modernity,” in R.  Gagné, S. Goldhill and G. E. R. Lloyd (eds.), Regimes of Comparatism: Frameworks of Comparison in History, Religion and Anthropology (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2018), 116–176.

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worldview and his conception of the human race.16 While Las Casas, the father of comparative ethnology, focused on the people of the New World, a number of Jesuit missionaries in the following years, from Jose de Acosta (c. 1540–1600) in Peru to Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) in the East Indies, employed comparative ethnology, in which the natural inferiority of black people was sharply fixated, and developed a more hierarchical model of such an ethnology reasserting the superiority of Europeans over others.17 Those researchers who nourish the notion that Enlightenment thinkers are the sole source of hierarchical and racial conception of human kind should reassess their dogmas. One might profitably read Guy G. Stroumsa, a prominent researcher of the Abrahamic religions, on the bleak vision of Ernest Renan (1823–1892) concerning Islamic monotheism. Stroumsa characterizes Renan’s views as reflecting a “deeply ingrained ambivalence on the part of many scholars stemming from a Christian background: in their view there had been a steady progression in the refinement of religious ideas from ancient Israel to Christ. From Jesus to Muhammad, however, there could only be regression. For them, the fact that Islamic monotheism seemed so pure actually reflected its inherent poverty and a lack of sophistication.”18 Sure enough, Stroumsa is thinking of scholars more modern than Erasmus; nevertheless, his characterization is also applicable to the case of Erasmus, as demonstrated in this chapter. A brief comment on the main historical source is required here. The study of Erasmus’s attitude toward Turks or Islam is primarily the study of his De bello Turcico. It was written against the background of the threat of Turkish invasion of the heart of Europe and the backdrop of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529.19 As Erika Rummel explains, this tract is a comparatively reliable source. Inter alia, Rummel compares De bello Turcico to Erasmus’s well-known Education of a Christian Prince, and points to the fact that De bello Turcico contains far more mentions of contemporary  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 77–96.  Rubiés, “Comparing Cultures In the Early Modern World,” 131. 18  Guy G. Stroumsa, The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 11–12. 19  The tract was published in March 1530, shortly after the Ottomans raised their siege of Vienna. See Michael. J.  Heath, Introduction to A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War against the Turks, Including an Exposition of Psalm 28 (Utilissima consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo, et obiter enarratus psalmus 28), in CWE 64 (Expositions of the Psalms), 202–209. For the Latin text: ASD V-3, 32–82 (ed. A. G. Weiler). 16 17

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personalities and events, while Education of a Christian Prince has many more Biblical references and is less attached to contemporary events.20 In order to portray the Turks as despicable and uncivilized barbarians, Erasmus emphasized their obscure and unknown origin, i.e., their inferior origin. In De bello Turcico, he speaks of the Turks as a race of cruel barbarians, their very origin obscure, and in order to stress this notion, he points to the rare mentions of Turks by the ancient writers.21 The issue of the Turks’ origin was much debated by the Italian humanists, who wrote about the Turks, mainly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and attributed to them either a Trojan or a Scythian origin.22 Erasmus was content with presenting ancient versions, without siding with any of the theories. His caution is indeed commendable, since the Turks came originally from much further east than Scythia.23 The Italian humanists paved the Turkophobic way for Erasmus. He and the Venetian humanist Giovanni Batista Cipelli (named also Egnazio, 1478–1553), exchanged letters for years and were close friends.24 Erasmus’s references to the obscure origin of the Turks were, to a large extent, based on Egnazio’s survey of the subject, which was written as part of a work called De Caesaribus libri tres and published by Aldo Manuzio in 1516.25 Egnazio’s work provided Erasmus with what he was looking for: evidence of the Turks’ unworthiness. 20  Erika Rummel, “Secular Advice in Sacred Writings,” The European Legacy 19 (2014): 16–26. See also Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 30. 21  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 47–60 (The Origin of the Turks). 22  See Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk 1453–1517 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967); Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists, and the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2008); Margaret Meserve, “Medieval Sources for Renaissance Theories on the Origins of the Ottoman Turks,” in B. Guthmüller and W. Kühlmann (eds.), Europa und die Türken in der Renaissance (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000; repr. De Gruyter, 2012), 409–426; Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders,” 128–130. 23  CWE 64, 221 n. 21. 24  Peter G.  Bietenholz and Thomas B.  Deutscher (eds.), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation Vols. I–III (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985–1987), I, 424. 25  H. Ehrenfried, Türke und Osmanenreich in der Vorstellung der Zeitgenossen Luthers. Ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung des deutschen Türkenschrifttums, unpublished PhD dissertation (The University of Freiburg Br., 1961); A. G. Weiler, “The Turkish Argument and Christian Piety in Desiderius Erasmus’s ‘Consultatio de Bello Turcis inferendo’ (1530),” in J. Weiland Sperna and W. Th. M. Frijoff (eds.), Erasmus of Rotterdam the Man and the Scholar (Leiden:

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The treatise De bello Turcico contains Erasmus’s only written references relating to the essence of Islam.26 His Islamophobic conceptualization is far from a serious intellectual treatment of the issue. Erasmus did not deal much with Islam, focusing rather on the Turks. The aforesaid paragraph is a rare exception that demonstrate an intellectual failure. Erasmus did not put any intellectual effort into researching or even reading the Qur’an or seriously getting to know Islam. Yet, his conclusions regarding Islam are decisive and unequivocal. Not a grain of dubito. Although not written as a polemic against Islam, Erasmus was following the method of medieval Christian polemicists in attacking Muhammad ad hominem and as a prophet, convinced that they could discredit Islam by discrediting Muhammad.27 De bello Turcico—although not a Christian polemic against Islam—does make use of degrading and harsh anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim rhetoric.28 By using the term Immanitas Turcarum Erasmus directed his readers to the alleged inhuman essence of the Turks, inferior to European-Christian human nature. Immanis is the lexical opposite of humanitas, the word that signifies the cultural ideal of Renaissance Europe. In humanist writings, immane genus replaced infideles as the preferred denigrating title for the Turks.29 Turkish essence, according to Erasmus, is human immorality at its worst. In The Handbook of a Christian Soldier he asserts: “He is an adulterer, a sacrilegious person, a Turk; one should abhor the adultery, not the man; show one’s aversion for the sacrilege, not the man; kill the Turk, not the man.”30 In his condemnation of Pope Julius II, Peter/Erasmus compares him to the Ottoman Sultan and denounces Turkish mentality Brill, 1988), 30–39; J.B. Ross, “Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio,” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 521–566. 26  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 30–31. 27  On Medieval Christian polemicists attacking Islam, and the practice of attacking it by degrading Muhammad: Daniel, Islam and the West, 100–130 (ch. III); Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Cruz, “Popular Attitudes Toward Islam in Medieval Europe,” in David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (eds.), Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 55–82 (66). See also John V. Tolan, Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019), 1–18. 28  Discussed in Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 29–35. 29  See Chap. 7 n. 9. 30  CWE 66, 94; ASD V-8: “Adultere est, sacrilegus est, Turca est: exsecretur adulterum, non hominem, sacrilegum adspernetur, non hominem: Turcam occidat, non hominem.”

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and mores: “What difference is there between you and the sultan of the Turks, except that you shelter behind the name of Christ? You have the same mentality, the same disgusting way of life […]”31 Rather than the physical Turk, it is his essence, condemned as immoral and inhuman, that should be annihilated. Converting the Turks to Christianity will have such an effect.32 Furthermore, the problem is a Christian inner issue in the sense that the Turk must be uprooted from Christian hearts, by way of a Christian correctio vitae. Noel Malcolm shows that “Eastern despotism” was basically a Western theory created by long-running hostile traditions toward Islam and the Ottoman Empire.33 Christian theology contributed immensely, in particular by incorporating rumours and unsubstantiated stories, which became accepted truths about Muhammad, his life and the Qur’an. Similarly, ethnographic inventions about Ottoman mores and government were uncritically transferred from one generation to another. This was not a uniform process. Yet, the sense of religious superiority and hostility were persistent. The notion of Raison d’État marked a change in how the Ottoman Empire was conceived. This was to the credit of certain sixteenth- and seventeenth-­ century writers, including Machiavelli in different sections of his works. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment marked a significant change. Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs (1756) headed a flow of literary and scholarly writing detached from the old patterns of Turkophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric.34 Thus, for Napoleon, Voltaire and Goethe, and for many other Europeans, Muhammad, the once distant but hated persona, became “a figure whose story and whose living legacy are a constant source of curiosity, worry, astonishment, and admiration.”35 When studying an issue, whether historical, cultural or other, be it bound up with Erasmus, Beethoven or (say) feudalism, a comparison may sometimes be of help (even if the study itself is not a comparative one). 31  CWE, 27, 196; Ferguson (ed.), Erasmi Opuscula, 1158–1161: “Quid enim inter te et Turcarum ducem, nisi quod tu Christi vocabulum praetexis? Certe mens eadem, consimiles vitae sordes […]” 32  On Erasmus’s wish to convert the Turks to Christianity, see Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 37–45. 33  Malcolm, Useful Enemies, 409–417 (conclusion). See also the studies mentioned in n. 32. 34  Malcolm, Useful Enemies, 397, 404, 407. 35  Tolan, Faces of Muhammad, 1. See also pp. 155–183 (Chapter Six: The Enlightenment Prophet—Reformer and Legislator).

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Examining Luther’s attitude toward Islam can sharpen our judgement of Erasmus’s stance. Intriguingly, Luther’s interest in Islam was quite unusual for the time and very different from Erasmus’s attitude.36 Luther argued that it was important to learn about Muhammad’s faith and to expose Christians to a religious rival who endangered Christendom. This could serve Christians in strengthening their faith and avoiding any interest in converting to Islam. However, Luther emphasized positive aspects of Islam: modesty in regard to clothing, food, housing, as well as worship, prayer, fasting, and religious gatherings. Luther also admired how the Turkish patriarchs kept their women subservient. Furthermore, Luther wrote the introduction to the Latin translation of the Qur’an published by Theodore Bibliander (Buchmann, 1509–1564). It was a translation of an Arabic manuscript, acquired in the twelfth century by Peter the Venerable (c. 1092–1156), abbot of Cluny, and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Peter hired the Englishman Robert of Ketton (fl. 1141–1157) to translate the manuscript into Latin. This translation was copied many times, and four hundred years later Luther was in possession of one of these versions. He entrusted it to Bibliander for publication. The outcome of Bibliander’s work was the first printed Latin translation of the Qur’an (Basel, 1543).37 All in all, on this specific issue, Luther demonstrated much greater intellectual awareness and activity than Erasmus. For this he deserves to be credited, both in terms of acting as a scholar-intellectual and as a public intellectual. In an interview marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, historian Lyndal Roper expressed her wish for “engagement with Islam, because Islam is perceived as a problem in Germany now, and that is where you can use Luther to say something very positive. Luther insisted that the Qur’an should be published.”38 Roper’s wish for dialog with Islam is the response one should expect from an intellectual, and Luther’s approach to Islam was indeed telling. His interest in Islam was, among other things, ethnographic, as expressed by his introduction to a publication of 1530 entitled Treatise on the Customs, Habits and Perversity of the Turks 36  My treatment of Luther is based on Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (New York: Random House, 2018), 373–378, and Tolan, Faces of Muhammad, 105–109. See also Adam S. Francisco, Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). 37  Roper, Martin Luther, 376–377; Tolan, Faces of Muhammad, 105–107. 38  Tamar Herzig and Zur Shalev, “A Conversation with Lyndal Roper,” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly [in Hebrew] 140 (2019): 113–114. See also Roper, Martin Luther, 376.

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(Tractatus de moribus, condicionibus et nequicia Turcorum), composed in 1481 by the Dominican monk Georgius de Hungaria (Georg von Muelbach, 1422–1502). This tract appeared over the years in various editions under the title A Booklet on the Rituals and Customs of the Turks (Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum). In his introduction to the booklet, Luther asserted that Muslims are superior to Christians in their customs and moral virtues, but since Christianity is more than just customs and virtues, it still transcends Islam.39 As shown here, Erasmus would not have given the Turks any credit for their customs and certainly not for their moral virtues—they had none, according to Erasmus. One would expect the prince of humanists to show less arrogance vis-a-vis non-Christian cultures, Islam and the Turks in this case, and to approach them with some degree of intellectual curiosity or openness. Such an intellectual quality Erasmus did not display.

 Ibid., 375; Tolan, Faces of Muhammad, 105–106; Malcolm, Useful Enemies, 38, 64, 141.

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CHAPTER 9

Erasmus and Reuchlin: The Jews and their Language

Abstract  The positioning of the two greatest intellectuals north of the Alps against each other, in this chapter, may generate some injustice to Erasmus since Reuchlin was unique in his sympathetic approach to the Jews and to their literary and cultural heritage. However, such a spotlight can facilitate a distinctive observation of Erasmus and a sharper comprehension of his prejudices concerning the Jews, their language and books— as much as to convince us to appreciate, with greater vigor, the outstanding intellectual and defender of the Jews that Reuchlin was. Thus, it should also disprove Oberman’s judgment of Reuchlin as an anti-Jewish thinker who advocated the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, or else their expulsion. Keywords  Reuchlin • Witzel • Hebrew • Jews • Antisemitism • Kabbalah Intellectuals and antisemitism have often gone hand in hand. Albeit more properly defined as anti-Judaism—theological in essence—the latter was galvanized in the early days of Christianity, and considerably advanced by the early Church Fathers “whose aggressive rhetoric helped transform anti-Jewish theological argument into what can be called antisemitic

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_9

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prejudice.”1 Throughout history, the longest hatred has taken new forms, new contents and found new kinds of promoters.2 Thus, the Enlightenment philosophers were not free of antisemitism, and modern antisemitism was enhanced by politicians, writers, journalists and other intellectuals. Nevertheless, the Church remained over the centuries a continuous and persistent source of antisemitism.3 So, why specifically bother about Erasmus’s antisemitism? Firstly, because our expectations of him, as regards tolerance and attitude toward “others,” were always high, as Heiko Oberman has explained.4 Secondly, because exceptional progressive values, such as cosmopolitanism or universalism were (undeservedly) ascribed to him by modern observers.5 Indeed, Shimon Markish acquitted Erasmus of antisemitism by emphasizing that he conceptualized Judaism metaphorically in order to signify categories of Christian misconduct and thus to admonish Christians for their misdeeds, such as making ἀδιάφορα (adiaphora), i.e. ceremonial and external rituals of religion, the essence of Christian belief. Thus, for Erasmus, Jewish, or Judaic, meant Mosaic law and rites, which Erasmus loathed, and when he raised the condemnation of being or becoming Jewish (or Judaic), he expressed his nightmare that Christians would become Jews in the sense of focusing on ceremonies and barren rituals rather than concentrating on piety and spirituality.6 This interpretation, often with different nuances, has been accepted by a number of researchers over the years.7 In more generalized phrasing, David Nirenberg 1  Guy G. Stroumsa, “From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism in Early Christianity,” In Maurice R.  Hayoun, Ora Limor, Guy G.  Stroumsa (eds.), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 20. 2  On antisemitism and the forms it took throughout history (selected researches): Robert S.  Wistrich (ed.), Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia (London: Routledge, 2013); idem, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010); idem, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1994); Shmuel Almog (ed.), Antisemitism Through the Ages, trans. Nathan H. Reisner (New York: Pergamon Press, 1988). 3  As the Catholic Church itself found it necessary to make clear and to introduce significant changes in its doctrine regarding “others,” Jews in particular. This was expressed in the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, of the Second Vatican Council, published in 1965. 4  See Chap. 8 n. 7. 5  See Chap. 8. 6  Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Ollcot (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 20–21. 7  See Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 127–140.

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adopted this interpretation, explaining his choice to use the term “anti-­ Judaism” rather than “antisemitism”: “Judaism is not only the religion of specific people with specific beliefs, but also a category, a set of ideas and attributes with which non-Jews can make sense of and criticize their world. Nor is ‘anti-Judaism’ simply an attitude toward Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging the world. It is in this broad sense that I will use the words of Judaism and anti-Judaism. And it is also for this reason that I do not use anti-Semitism, a word that captures only a small portion, historically and conceptually, of what this book is about.”8 However, Nirenberg does not refute the existence of antisemitism, nor the legitimacy of using the term. Indeed, he now admits that his refusal to define the relation between the two terms was perhaps mistaken: “It might have been better to answer explicitly in the book the question that a Holocaust survivor movingly put to me at a book party after publication: ‘Was I a victim of anti-Judaism or of antisemitism?’ The answer I tried to put forward on that occasion was ‘both’ (no opposition!). Antisemitism is our name for a particular form of anti-Judaism, one that emerged under specific political, economic, demographic, and other conditions we associate with modernity.”9 Accordingly, both antisemitism and anti-Judaism, as historical phenomena, exist side by side, and may be used also as legitimate terms. Here lies an intellectual problem. Essentially, an intellectual should live what he professes, yet Erasmus’s antisemitism undermines such cosmopolitan or universal pretensions. Principally, Erasmus’s alleged cosmopolitanism or universalism should be tested against his antisemitism. Since this has already been comprehensively done,10 the following is merely an instructive addition presenting Erasmus’s attitude to the Jews vis-à-vis Johannes Reuchlin’s, and from the perspective of the Hebrew language. Notedly, both personae were intellectuals who invested their intellectual genius not just in pure scholarship, but in a varied agenda of significant public affairs. Yet Reuchlin was a different kind of intellectual. Although he mocked the excesses of popular veneration and castigated the clergy for their ignorance and inability to study the Scriptures in their original 8  David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 3. 9  David Nirenberg, “Response to Comments on Review of ‘Anti–Judaism: The Western Tradition,’” Jewish History 28 (2014): 209. 10  On Erasmus and the Jews, see Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 121–166 (Part III).

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languages, and strongly criticized the quarrels of the various religious Orders on various doctrinal issues that were irrelevant to the spiritual well-­ being of the people, he never challenged the legitimacy of the Church. Nor was he critical toward the popes of his times, as Erasmus was; no criticism, such as Erasmus casts on popes in his Julius excluded from heaven or Praise of Folly, is found in Reuchlin’s writings or letters.11 Erasmus’s attitude toward the Hebrew language is important not just in itself but also for a more profound and comprehensive understanding of his repulsion of Jews and Judaism.12 Johannes Reuchlin (Capnio or Phorcensis) was very much the antithesis of Erasmus in this regard and their opposing mentalities have been rightly pointed out.13 The two knew each other quite well: they met once (in Frankfurt, April 1515), exchanged letters and enjoyed some scholarly cooperation. Erasmus’s high appreciation of Reuchlin is clearly discerned in his letter to Pope Leo X, of May 1515, whereby Erasmus refers to the “[…] outstanding man Johann Reuchlin of Pforzheim, who is almost equally at home in the three tongues, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and such a master in every field of learning besides that he can challenge the leaders. It is quite right that the whole of Germany should admire and venerate this man as its true phoenix and especial glory.”14 When Reuchlin died, Erasmus immediately composed his colloquy “The Apotheosis of that Incomparable Worthy John Reuchlin” (De incomparabili heroe Ioanne Reuchlino in divorum 11  Daniel O’Callaghan (ed. and trans.), The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-century Germany: Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel (Leiden; Boston: Brill 2013), 85; Franz Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522): A Theological Biography (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 38. 12  For Erasmus and the Hebrew language, see CWE 41, 432–433 and n. 34 (The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus: Methodus); Joanna Weinberg, “Weeping over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” in Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Elchanan Reiner, Adam Shear (eds.), Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press and Cincinnati: Hebrew Union Press, 2014), 146; Theodor Dunkelgrün, “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe,” in Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 316–348 (esp. 316–322). 13  Dunkelgrün, ibid., 321. 14  CWE 3, 109; Ep 335: 303–307: “Inter quos est eximius ille vir, loannes Reuchlinus Phorcensis, trium linguarum Graecae, Latinae et Hebraicae pene ex aequo peritus; ad haec in nullo doctrinae genere non ita versatus vt cum primis certare possit. Vnde merito virum hunc ceu phoenicem et vnicum suum decus tota suspicit ac veneratur Germania.”

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numerum relato, 1522), a glorification of Reuchlin’s trilingual mastership.15 Later, in his letters, Erasmus named Reuchlin the only German worthy of mention and a champion of bonae literae.16 The positioning of the two greatest humanists north of the Alps against each other, in this chapter, may generate some injustice to Erasmus, since Reuchlin was unique in his sympathetic approach to the Jews and to their literary and cultural heritage. However, such a spotlight can facilitate a distinctive observation of Erasmus and a sharper comprehension of his prejudices concerning the Jews, their language and books—as much as to convince us to appreciate, with greater vigor, the outstanding intellectual and defender of the Jews that Reuchlin was. Thus, it should also disprove Oberman’s judgment of Reuchlin as an anti-Jewish thinker who advocated the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, or else their expulsion. Oberman argued this on the basis of Reuchlin’s desire to have the Jews converted to Christianity; his criticism and denunciation of the Jews (on rare occasions); his approval of confiscating “the blasphemous parts” of the Talmud, to be put in Christian libraries.17 Nonetheless, according to Reuchlin, in his advisory report concerning the fate of the Jewish books that he submitted to Uriel von Gemmingen (1468–1514), the archbishop of Mainz: “The Jews are subjects of the Holy Roman Empire and are to be treated according to imperial law.” Thus, their property, namely their books, must not be confiscated, and since they are not members of the Church, their faith is their own business.18 The Jews are to be tolerated, as law-abiding co-residents of the Empire, even if they live in continuous error. They should be tolerated until they recognize the error of their belief and accept Christianity.19 No antisemitism nor anti-Jewishness is

15  ASD I-3 267–273; CWE 39, 244–255; Dunkelgrün, “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe,” 316–317. 16  CoE, III, 147–150; Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 862–864. 17  Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 24–31; Idem, The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 87–94. See also Thomas Kaufmann, “Einige Beobachtungen zum Judenbild deutscher Humanisten in den ersten beiden Jahrzehnten des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Dorothea Wendebourg, Andreas Stegmann u. Martin Ohst (eds.), Protestantismus, Antijudaismus, Antisemtismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 60–65. For a refutation of this judgement, see Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism,” 91 n. 7; Idem, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 11–12 n. 38. 18  Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 87, 92–93. 19  Daniel O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 85, 88–89.

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expressed by Reuchlin, and his positive attitude did not change and remained steadfast. Educated in Greek and Hebrew, as well as in Latin, Reuchlin was one of the first Christians to produce a Hebrew grammar and Lexicon, Basic Principles of the Hebrew Language (De rudimentis hebraicis, 1506). His Kabbalistic dialogues On the Wonder-working Word (De verbo mrifico, 1494) and The Practices of the Kabbalah (De arte cabalistica, 1517) were based on his study of Hebrew writings. He was the first to profoundly deal with the Jewish Kabbalah and transform it into his own Christian-Catholic Kabbalah.20 Contrarily, Erasmus rejected Kabbalah, of any sort, denounced Kabbalistic studies and did not want to have anything to do with Reuchlin’s praise of such scholarship. In a letter, of March 1518, to Wolfgang Faber Capito, Erasmus harshly condemns Jews in general and of Marranos in particular, while expressing, inter alia, his distaste of Kabbalah: I see them as a nation full of the most tedious fabrications, who spread a kind of fog over everything, Talmud, Kabbalah, tetragrammaton, Gates of Light, words, words, words. I would rather have Christ mixed up with Scotus than with that rubbish of theirs. Italy is full of Jews, in Spain there are hardly any Christians. I fear this may give that pestilence that was long ago suppressed a chance to rear its ugly head.21

Thus, in a few lines, Erasmus brings together the most hated objects of his soul: Jews, Marrnos, Judaism, Talmud, Kabbalah, and Christian scholasticism, represented by Duns Scotus. A Jew by the name of Calman was hired by Reuchlin in 1486. He taught Reuchlin the Hebrew alphabet and prepared a basic vocabulary list for him.22 In 1492 Reuchlin met Rabbi Jacob ben Jehiel Loans (d. 1505?), personal physician of Emperor Frederick III.  Loans became Reuchlin’s 20  Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 4–5; 95–98; 122–154; O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 82–85. 21  CWE 5, 347–348; Ep 798: 19–25: “Video gentem eam frigidissimis fabulis plenam nihil fere nisi fumos quosdam obiicere; Talmud, Cabalam, Tetragrammaton, Portas Lucis, inania nomina. Scoto malim infectum Christum quam istis neniis. Italia multos habet Iudaeos, Hispania vix habet Christianos. Vereor ne hac occasione pestis iam olim oppressa caput erigat.” See also Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 179; Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 863. 22  Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 1477–1505, ed. Stefan Rhein, Matthias Dall’Astra, and Gerard Dörner (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog 1999), letter no. 110; Erika Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” in Stephen G. Burnett and

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Hebrew teacher. In November 1500, Reuchlin wrote a letter, in Hebrew, to Loans informing him, in warm and emphatic words, about his success in possessing the Hebrew language, thanks to Loans.23 The letter testifies to the much amity and affection, perhaps even love, that Reuchlin felt toward his former teacher. Admittedly, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Erasmus writing such an affectionate letter, or a similar one, to a Jewish Rabbi. In 1514, Reuchlin published a letter in which he referred to Loans as “My Lord, dear master Jacob, my companion, and my good friend […] with deep longing I wish to see your blessed face to delight in the radiance of your bright countenance by hearing your most pure doctrine.”24 Furthermore, Reuchlin published the letter to Loans in an anthology that demonstrated correspondence with eminent Christian scholars, such as Erasmus, Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530) and others. Consequently, he was attacked by the famous convert Johann Pfefferkorn (1469–1523), who described the letter as an unbearable demonstration of Reuchlin’s love of Jews and Judaism. Nevertheless, Reuchlin republished the letter with a Latin translation in 1519. In his Rudiments of the Hebrew Language, Reuchlin praised “my teacher, in my opinion the powerfully learned Jacob Jehiel Loans, a Jew,” and “my most humane teacher, the excellent doctor.” As David Price observed, Reuchlin, very much against the current, had redefined the boundaries for Christian representation of Jews and Judaism.25 At the end of his service at the imperial court in Linz, Loans arranged for Reuchlin to receive a valuable Hebrew Bible manuscript as a farewell gift from the emperor, now known as Codex Reuchlin 1, or the “Reuchlin Bible.”26 Reuchlin was an enthusiastic connoisseur of Hebrew books. His rich library stored, inter alia, the first complete Hebrew Bible. This was published by Joshua Solomon ben Israel Nathan Soncino (d. 1493) in Soncino, Italy, at the Soncino Press in 1488. Some two to three

Dean Phillip Bell (eds.) Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Leiden, Boston: Brill: 2006), 4–5. 23  Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 1: 1477–1505, ed. Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999), letter no. 105. 24  David H.  Price, “Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism: Johannes Reuchlin and the Discovery of Hebrew,” Arthuriana 19 (2009): 82. 25  Ibid. 26  Ibid., 110–112; 201, 203; Oberman, The Impact of the Reformation, 92.

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hundred copies were printed. Reuchlin purchased one of them in Rome in 1492 for six gold coins—a year’s salary of a government clerk.27 While Erasmus formed his philosophia Christi downgrading the Old Testament and relying primarily on the New Testament, Reuchlin accepted the Old Testament as a foundational text for Christianity.28 Here is how Erasmus treated the Hebrew Bible. In a letter of November 1517, to Johannes Caesarius (1468–1550) referring to the so called Reuchlin affair, Erasmus expressed his repulsion of the Old Testament: “I would rather, if the New Testament could remain inviolate, see the entire Old Testament done with than to see the peace of Christendom torn to ribbons for the sake of the Jewish Scriptures.”29 In his letter of March 1518, Erasmus wrote to Capito: “If only the Church of Christians did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament! It is a thing of shadows, given us for a time; and now it is almost preferred to the literature of Christianity.”30 Reuchlin taught Greek at the University of Tübingen from 1481 to 1485, and from1519 to 1521 he taught Greek and Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt. A letter written in Hebrew sent to him in September 1520 by the Hebraist Friar Caspar Amman (1524–1450), testifies to Reuchlin’s prestige and success in teaching Hebrew to students, apparently to a large number of students, as can be deduced from the letter:

27  Posset, Respect for the Jews, 26 n.14; Reuchlin’s library had a few Yiddish items, such as Hebrew-Yiddish glossaries of the Hebrew Bible (Codices Reuchlin 8–9) and a Yiddish translation of Job, Proverbs, Psalms and a literary text for the feast of Purim (Codex Reuchlin 13). From the possession of these books alone one cannot assume that he actually read them. But Maniculae (signs of “little hands”), and a few other marginalia in Latin and in Hebrew that are probably Reuchlin’s and are found in Codex Reuchlin 8 [Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 201–202, 209–210, 214] could indicate that he read and understood the Yiddish—assuming that these maniculae are actually from his own hand (they could have been entered by a previous owner). So far, there are no studies on Reuchlin and Yiddish. It is not too farfetched to assume that he was familiar with fifteenth/sixteenth century Yiddish, which might not be all that removed from Early New High German. 28  Kaufmann, “Einige Beobachtungen,” 82. 29  CWE, 5, 181; Ep 701: 35–38: “Malim ego incolumi nouo testament vel totum Vetus aboleri quam Christianorum pacem ob Iudeorum pacem rescindi.” See Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 3, 7. 30  CWE, 5, 348; Ep 798: 25–27: “Atque vtinam Christianorum ecclesia non tantum tribueret Veteri Testamento! quod, cum pro tempore datum vmbris constet, Christianis litteris pene antefertur.” See Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books, 179.

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Life and peace and all the best upon the one who is the head of the educated, wise and discerning Christians in Germany. My lord and friend, I have heard that you teach the holy language in Ingolstadt, and already taught the grammar of the late and blessed Rabbi Moshe Kimhi. And now you interpret The Seven Penitential Psalms. Also, you teach the root of the compound words and the use of the auxiliary letters [in humanist Latin called litterae serviles]. I was also told that many sophisticated and pleasant students sit daily in front of you, kissing the hem [of your garment], happy to hear and learn the pure doctrine from you. Blessed are they and all those who hear you and see you and love you, and all those who protect you. Truly, their hearts are filled with joy and delight. I ask that you always carry on like that because you are doing something very good. May God give your honorable highness grace and strength to act and teach at the university for years to come—to His praise. In short, love the one who loves you.31

Reuchlin praised the Hebrew language as simple, unspoiled, holy, and concise, and as the language in which God communicated without a translator face to face. The Hebrew language “must be kissed tenderly and embraced with both arms.”32 Accordingly, the study of Hebrew should be promoted in order to achieve a better understanding of the original Word of God in the Scriptures, and thus one may discover the true and pure Christian faith. Following the Church Father Jerome, Reuchlin saw in the Hebrew language an entrance to God’s mysteries and therefore a means of grace, a “sacramentum.” According to Reuchlin’s ad fontes attitude, only the Jews draw from the original sources. Thus, he stated: “We Latin people drink from the swamp, the Greeks from the rivers, the Jews from the springs.”33 In order to preserve his aforesaid values and to enable further Hebraist studies, Reuchlin stood against Pfefferkorn and his Dominican sponsors, in a toxic polemical debate, known as “the Reuchlin affair” or “the

31  Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, vol. 4: 1518–1522, ed. Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2013), letter no. 391, p. 354. I am indebted to Dr. Franz Posset for drawing my attention to this letter (My translation of the letter to English was revised in cooperation with Dr. Posset). 32  In a letter to his brother. Cited in Franz Posset, Respect for the Jews. Foreword by Yaacov Deutch. Collected Works 4 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 46. 33  Posset, Respect for the Jews, 91, and 92, 201–210. See also O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 2.

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Pfefferkorn-Reuchlin affair.”34 The continuous, exhausting and risky struggle of Reuchlin in this significant campaign marks the pinnacle of his involvement in public life. By all means, this should be considered as a great endeavor of an exceptional intellectual. Notedly, among the several scholars whose advise the Emperor sought regarding the fate of the Jewish books, Reuchlin was the only expert who opposed Pfefferkorn’s initiative to destroy them.35 Erasmus, who unsurprisingly sided with Reuchlin in the heated controversy, later changed his stance and refrained from openly supporting him. “Ego nec Reuchlinista sum,” he declared, “I am no supporter of Reuchlin and not a part of any faction of people […]. I am a Christian and as such approve Christians.” 36 Stressing his independent mind on this controversy, he chose to remain passive, i.e. not to play the role of the involved or public intellectual. Thus, the public arena was left to Reuchlin’s intellectual display, explicitly supported by of some audacious intellectuals such as Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) and his co-­ authors of Letters of Obscure Men (Epistolae obscurorum virorum, 1515). Erasmus began studying Hebrew sometime in February 1500. A few years later (c. December 1504), he wrote a letter to John Colet staging a contrast between the Greek and the Hebrew language: “Therefore for nearly the past three years I have been wholly absorbed by Greek; and I do not think my efforts have been altogether wasted. I began to take up Hebrew as well, but stopped because I was put off by the strangeness of the language, and at the same time the shortness of life and the limitations

34  On the Pfefferkorn-Reuchlin affair: CoE, I, 146–149; Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 25–37; idem, The Impact of the Reformation, 103, 157–160; Erika Rummel, The Humanist-scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), 87–89; idem, The Case against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 52–53; Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books; Maria Diemling, “Historical Introduction,” in Johannes Pfefferkorn, The Jews’ Mirror (Der Juden Spiegel), trans. Ruth I. Cape (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), 7–32; Avner Shamir, Christian Conceptions of Jewish Books: The Pfefferkorn Affair (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2011); O’Callaghan, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books, 49–69, 91–96. 35  For the report (translated to English): Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, 86–97. See also CoE, III, 146. 36  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 152 n. 19.

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of human nature will not allow a man to master too many things at once.”37 This set-up reflects very well Erasmus’s attitude and the process he went through. He was emotionally repelled by the “strangeness” of the language, and made a rational decision, which he explained in terms of the limits of the human mind. Accordingly, using Erasmus’s own terms, one has to admit that Reuchlin’s intellect was less limited than Erasmus’s; thus, defining Reuchlin as “the greatest thinker of his time”38 may be correct. In his later life, Erasmus somewhat changed his mind: “I myself am in my forty-ninth year, and when I can, I come back to Hebrew, with which I formerly made some acquaintance long ago; there is nothing the human mind cannot achieve provided it has learned self-discipline and provided it greatly desires something.”39 At this stage of his life his didactic attitude concerning Hebrew had matured: he recommended theologians to study Hebrew as an important part of Biblical or theological studies, but he sharply clarified that Hebrew should not form part of the essential curriculum for the young students due to the risk which the study of Hebrew would hold for the tender Christian soul: it should be left “to the Jews and theologians. Besides, there is the risk that a boy might absorb some Judaism with his alphabet.”40 Since Erasmus never mastered the Hebrew language, other scholars, such as the Amerbach brothers, came to his aid when he needed help on Hebraic issues.41 For the Hebrew citations, particularly frequent in the Annotations (1516) to his edition of the New Testament, Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) was given the responsibility, as Erasmus explained in the preface to his work: “So in this department, when I was first publishing this work, I secured no little help from a man eminent for his knowledge of the three tongues no less than for his piety, which is as much as to say a true theologian, Joannes Oecolampadius of Weinsberg; 37  CWE 2, 87; Ep 181: 34–38: “Itaque iam triennium ferme literae Graecae me totum possident, neque mihi videor operam omnino lusisse. Coeperam et Hebraicas attingere, verum peregrinitate sermonis deterritus, simul quod nec aetas nec ingenium hominis pluribus rebus pariter sufficit, destiti.” 38   Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, “Jewish Life and Books Under Scrutiny: Ethnography, Polemics, and Converts,” in Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß (eds.), Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 17. 39  CWE 41, 432–433 (The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus: Methodus). 40  ASD I-4, 32 (De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronunciatione dialogus); CWE 26, 389 (The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue). 41  Weinberg, “Weeping over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 146.

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for I myself had not yet made enough progress in Hebrew to take upon myself the authority to decide.”42 Later, when Erasmus was accused of gross errors in his Hebrew, Oecolampadius fell out of his favor.43 Despite his recommendation to study Hebrew as a theological tool, and the trilingual ideal that he promoted and somewhat realized at the Trilingual College in Louvain, a clear dislike and sometimes downright distaste characterize Erasmus’s assertions regarding Hebrew. Although in his mind he accepted the theological need for Hebrew, his heart and soul was repulsed by and rejected it. Reuchlin’s love of the Hebrew language resulted in a conspicuously positive attitude, which he frequently expressed and which was unique to him. In his Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books (1511),44 his expert report as a jurist and a philologist to the Emperor Maximilian, Reuchlin begins with a survey of the blame cast on the Jewish books: “[…] that they were written to counter the Christians”; that they smear “Jesus, Mary […] the Apostles […] and our Christian Order”; that they cause “the Jews to stubbornly cling to Judaism.” To these accusations Reuchlin responded with the argument “that the Jews […] have a right to protection under the Imperial Law”; that “according to Imperial and Royal laws, no one may by forceful means [be retrieved of] his property”; that “such books were never repudiated or condemned either by canonical or secular law […]” Reuchlin agrees that that some books—literary works—may contain derisive expressions concerning Christianity. Nevertheless, Reuchlin points out, “each book has its own title, just as the author conceived it.” A literary work, Reuchlin argues, is the individual expression of its author and not necessarily a representation of the voice of his people.45 In his advisory report he argues that the books of the Jews should not be burnt: the Jews are the book carriers, copyists, and librarians, who preserve the books from which Christians can present the witness for their 42  CWE 3, 200; Ep 373: 72–76: “Hac igitur in parte, cum primum hoc opus aederemus, nonnihil adiuti sumus opera subsidiaria viri non solum pietate verum etiam trium peritia linguarum eminentis, hoc est veri theologi, loannis Oecolampadii Vinimontani; quod ipse in litteris Haebraicis nondum eo processeram vt mihi iudicandi sumerem autoritatem.” 43  As evident in a series of letters, see CWE 41, 773; Weinberg, “Weeping over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 146 n. 7. 44  Originally published as part of Doctor Johannsen Reuchlins Augenspiegel (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1511). 45  Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 17, 94.

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faith. Following the Church fathers, and Thomas Aquinas in particular, Reuchlin viewed the Jews and their books in their service-role to the Christian faith. He added that the conversion of the Jews to Christianity should be achieved by means of rational arguments, gently and kindly, with the help of God. Furthermore, he openly stated: “The Jew is as much a creature of God as I,”46 a statement that Erika Rummel defined “as liberal a statement about Jews as one can find in sixteenth century writings.”47 No less liberal is his paraphrase of 1 Cor 5: 12 that “The Jewish faith is none of our business.”48 Reuchlin made it clear in his pamphlet Defensio… Contra calumniatores suos Colonienses, that one should love one’s neighbor, including the Jews. He explained that he favors the Jews because the Church favors them by not considering them “heretics” and by tolerating them. He recognized the Jews as fellow citizens and added: “I know my adversaries are dismayed because I have called them [Jews] our fellow citizens. Now I would want them to go berserk even more, their guts may burst open because I say that the Jews are our brothers.”49 Again, in light of such positive expressions, it is difficult to understand how anyone, be it Oberman or anyone else, may ascribe any sort of anti-Jewishness to this German Catholic maverick. Erasmus did not care about the expulsion of the Jews from various European countries. Furthermore, he even praised France where “The law flourishes as nowhere else, nowhere has religion so retained its purity without being corrupted by commerce carried on by the Jews, as in Italy, or infected by the proximity of the Turks or Marranos, as in Hungary and Spain.”50 In contrast, Reuchlin feared that with the expulsion of the Jews they would no longer be available as a literary resource. In the preface of his Basic Principles of the Hebrew Language he complained about the 46  Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books, translated, edited with a foreword by Peter Wortsman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 80. 47  Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” p. 20. 48  Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42. 49  Johannes Reuchlin, Sämtliche Werke vol. 4-1[1505–1513], ed. Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers et al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999), 344: 19–22; Posset, Respect for the Jews, 42. See also Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin, 102. 50  CWE 27 306; ASD IV-2, 80 (A Complaint of Peace): “florent leges nusquam illibatior religio, nec commercio Judaeorum corrupta, velut apud Italos, nec Turcarum vel Maranorum vicina infecta.” See also Ep 549 11–13; Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 131–132, 141–145.

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­ ersecution of Spanish and German Jews, who subsequently were forced p to seek residence elsewhere and to turn to the Arab lands.51 Thus, the Jews would no longer serve as experts to be consulted and, without their presence, their Hebrew books would soon disappear. For the sake of demonstrating Reuchlin’s unique pro-Jewish attitude in comparison to other Hebraists, the Hebraism of another contemporary scholar should be taken into consideration here: Georg Witzel (Vuicelius, 1501–1573), was a priest and for a while a Lutheran theologian, but later returned to the Catholic Church. He studied Hebrew, most likely under the infamous convert from Judaism to Lutheranism, Antonius Margaritha (ca. 1490–1542),52 and enjoyed conversations with learned Jews throughout his life.53 Witzel wrote an eulogy titled In Praise of the Hebrew Language (Oratio in Laudem Hebraicae Linguae, 1534), in which the Hebrew language is utterly glorified.54 Witzel declares that since the Hebrew language is the older than Latin and Greek, and was created long before the name Greece or Latium existed, it is also more divine than Latin or Greek, Moreover, Jesus wanted to speak in Hebrew to the Hebrews—a language which by far excels all other languages. In order to reassure his readers that Christ’s spoken language was Hebrew, Witzel adds, “[…] I respond that at that time both languages [Aramaic and Hebrew] were one and the same to a degree that whatever he may have spoken, he has spoken in Hebrew.”55 Toward the adversaries of Hebrew, Witzel is firm and rude: “They themselves are neither Jews nor Christians, nor human persons, but piglets.”56 Witzel praises the study of theology, which should go hand in hand with the study of Hebrew, “just as a soldier in battle cannot last long without proper gear.”57 However, the true target of Witzel’s Hebraism is exposed in his own lines: “Perhaps you have seen once a [Christian] Hebrew expert. He stands firm like an iron wall in any conflict whenever he takes refuge with this language. How could a Christian win victory over a Jew without the

 Posset, Respect for the Jews, 46, n. 27.  According to a handwritten note in Margaritha’s Hebrew Psalter (Leipzig, 1533) which testifies to it. See Weinberg, “Weeping over Erasmus in Hebrew and Latin,” 148. 53  On Witzel’s scholarship and Hebraism, see: Posset, Respect for the Jews, 100–109. 54  Posset, ibid., ch. 4, 97–108 (Latin text and English translation by Franz Posset). 55  Ibid., 125–126. 56  Ibid., 143. 57  Ibid., 151. 51 52

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help of the holy language?”58 Thus, the purpose of studying Hebrew is to polemically win over the Jews—a convincing argument maybe, yet hardly a philosemitic one. Witzel continues by praising certain personae, among them Anthonius Margaritha,59 Luther’s guide and inspiration in hating the Jews. Notedly, Witzel’s exposition demonstrates how a protagonist of Hebraism reveals himself as practically anti-Jewish. This is not the case with Reuchlin. Such argumentation—the learning of Hebrew in order to polemically win over Jews—has no place in Reuchlin’s thought and writings. Indeed, Reuchlin stated that “The more hostile the Talmud is toward us, the better and more convincing is testimony taken from it, which supports our position and our Christian faith.”60 Undoubtedly, Reuchlin prioritized Christianity and was not blind to the missionary significance of Hebraism. Yet for him, unlike Witzel, the value of the Hebrew language was far from sheer polemical usages. Reuchlin’s memory was preserved and cherished by the Jewish leader Josel of Rosheim (c. 1480–1554/1555) in his chronicle, Sefer ha-­ miknah.61 With the controversy between Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin in mind, Josel praised Reuchlin as “one of the wise men of the nations,” and a “miracle within a miracle.” Due to Reuchlin’s efforts, the books of the Jews were returned to them “And God showed us a miracle within a miracle, to send a good man, Doctor Reuchlin, from the sages of the nations.”62 Chajim ben Bezalel (c. 1508–1588), a rabbi in Friedberg near Frankfurt, spoke of Reuchlin’s spirit as that of a wise Christian who was raised by God.63 Although in the opinions of contemporaries both Erasmus and Reuchlin reflected “two eyes of Germany,” as far as humanism and scholarship were concerned, Franz Posset is right in stating that “Reuchlin

 Ibid., 159.  Ibid., 193. 60  Recommendation whether to Confiscate…, 50; Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” 11. 61  For Josel of Rosheim and Sefer ha-miknah, see: Chava Fraenke-Goldschmidt, Adam Shear (eds.), and Naomi Schendowich (trans.), The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Elisheva Carlebach, “Between History and Myth: The Regensburg Expulsion in Josel of Rosheim’s Sefer ha-­ miknah in Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N Myers (eds.), Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England, 1998), 40–53. 62  Citations from Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), 9–10, 866. 63  Ibid., 10, 866–867. 58 59

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was not an Erasmian and Erasmus was not a Reuchlinist.”64 Their attitude toward the Jews, the Hebrew language and Hebrew books, demonstrate that. Erika Rummel notes that “Phrases stereotyping Jews as ‘perfidious’ or ‘murderous’ certainly grate on the ears of modern readers, but such expressions were as commonplace in sixteenth-century writings as ethnic and gender stereotyping was a generation ago in our own literature. It is with this caveat that I examine the attitudes of Reuchlin and Erasmus toward Jews and Judaism.”65 As for Erasmus’s attitude, one may agree with Rummel’s observation, but what about Reuchlin’s attitude? He was far as can be from poisonous terminology concerning the Jews. Clearly, the difference between Reuchlin and Erasmus, in this regard, is not a matter of style and rhetoric and it amplifies Reuchlin’s grandeur and gravitas as an intellectual. Furthermore, as an involved intellectual in the public sphere, Reuchlin stood out and displayed rare courage and devotion in struggling for the freedom of research as well as—by any standard—the freedom of religion, or perhaps more accurately a proto-freedom of religion. The freedom of the scholar to think, write and publish was cherished by Erasmus too, and very much so. However, the struggle for a (proto) freedom of religion boldly marks Reuchlin’s prominence as an involved intellectual. In this respect he was, in comparison to any other humanist, the most significant public intellectual of his time.

 Ibid., 27.  Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” 13.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusions: Only Sparks Fly Upward

Abstract  On facing certain ethical or moral challenges Erasmus demonstrated weaknesses that render his moral teachings somewhat defective. While Erasmus displayed a relatively tolerant attitude toward heretics, which had a considerable influence on Sebastian Castellio and other protagonists of the struggle for religious toleration, it was Reuchlin who dared to struggle for a (proto) freedom of religion for non-Christians, namely the Jews; the same Jews whose absence from any Christian state Erasmus considered a blessing, while Reuchlin valued their existence in Europe as a benefit to Christianity. We need to remember the universal rule (Job, 5:7) “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Only angels are free of human troubles. Intellectuals are no angels, and Erasmus was an intellectual. Keywords  Reuchlin • Intellectuals • Toleration • Freedom • Universalism • Hierarchy These lines are written as we approach the 500th anniversary of Reuchlin’s death. It provides a most appropriate opportunity to call to remembrance the involved intellectual that he was. Reuchlin stood out and displayed rare courage and devotion in struggling for the freedom of research as well as—by any standard—the freedom of religion, or perhaps more accurately a proto-freedom of religion. The freedom of the scholar to think, write © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_10

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and publish was cherished by Erasmus too, and very much so. However, the struggle for a (proto) freedom of religion boldly marks Reuchlin’s prominence as an involved intellectual. In this respect he was, in comparison to any other humanist, the most significant public intellectual of his time. In his analysis of intellectuals and academics in the modern age, Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) observed that the vast majority of intellectuals want and seek more space for themselves, fearing that their involvement in the affairs of the “other,” as opposed to indifferent acceptance of his existence, might reduce their own space and result in a commitment to troublesome duties, a restriction of their freedom of movement, and the exposing of their interests to the upheavals of fate—the very situations they wish to avoid.1 To be sure, Bauman did not refer to Erasmus. However, for the sake of a better evaluation of Erasmus, let us project Bauman’s frame of judgment on the prince of humanists: did he fear that his intellectual space might be reduced if he risked involvement in public affairs? Notedly, in this respect, Erasmus represented a now extinct type of “total intellectual,” one who does not separate between the personal and the public, in terms of space and message. Almost everything Erasmus wrote, irrespective of faults and biases, was not just for the public, i.e. particular elites, but for the improvement of the public and society in general. Such total intellectuals are rarely found in our time, and only very rarely within universities. Erasmus’s non-academic intellectuality is explicitly discerned in his concern with publica utilitas, which is focal in his political thought. Furthermore, in spite of repeating traditional prejudices on woman’s nature and her inferiority in comparison to man, Erasmus held, on the basis of Thomas More’s educational experience, innovative and progressive ideas about women’s education. As a result of his intellectual stances, Erasmus and his writings were harshly attacked. He had to fight bitter scholastic adversaries, such as the Parisian theologians, the powerful Franciscans and Dominicans and the Spanish inquisition, all of whom rejected his philosophia Christi.2 All of these considerations tip the scale in  Zygmunt Bauman, Culture in a Liquid Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011).  A full volume, LB IX, contains Erasmus’s responses to the many attacks on his theological interpretations. Thus, Erasmus was attacked by Noel Beda, a senior among the theologians of Paris, and responded with ‘Reckoning the errors in Beda’s criticism’ (Supputatio Errorum in Censuris Beddae): LB IX 515A-702D.  To the Spanish monks (the inquisition) who attacked him on certain issues, Erasmus responded: ‘A defense from several items of indict1 2

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favor of acknowledging Erasmus’s devotion—beyond pure scholarship— to a political thought that embodies progressive norms of social justice. However, there are a few counterarguments to consider. When Erasmus’s ideal of Christian peace collided with existing interests, such as maintaining connections with his patron-emperor, and with Francis I who courted him, then the preacher for Christian peace did not fully live up to his teachings. With but few exceptions, Erasmus did not protest against the warlike or expansionist foreign policy of the dominant European kings of his era, and at least once, he even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano. His self-censorship in light of Henry VIII’s execution of Thomas More was disappointing to his learned friends and followers and contradictory to their expectations. In their minds, Erasmus failed to fulfill the task of the morally oriented thinker who he considered himself to be. Furthermore, concerning the atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the New World, Erasmus’s self-censorship speaks volumes. Another intellectual bias—certainly from a modern point of view, but also in comparison to what some of his contemporaries thought—was that Erasmus, unlike intellectuals such as Machiavelli or Montaigne, or even in comparison to Martin Luther, did not give the Turks any credit for any of their customs, virtues or achievements—they had none, according to Erasmus. One would expect him to show less arrogance vis-a-vis non-­ Christian cultures, e.g. Islam and the Turks, and to approach them with some degree of intellectual curiosity. Such openness of mind Erasmus did not display. Stroumsa observes that in the study of cultures and religions “[…] from those of the native Americans to those of the Jews, from those of the Muslim world, of India, China, and Japan—European Christians could not be devoid of old and engrained prejudices and were often moved by the temptations of imperialism.”3 This observation may be applicable to Erasmus. Truly, the prince of humanists was far from the temptations of imperialism, but he was nevertheless captivated by the Islamophobic and ment presented by certain monks in Spain’ (Apologia adversus Articulos Aliquot, per Monachos Quosdam in Hispaniis Exhibitos): LB IX 1015D-1094A.  For a systematic account of Erasmus’s polemics, see Erika Rummel, Erasmus and his Catholic Critics, 1515–1536. 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De Graaf Publishers, 1989), as well as the various essays in Erika Rummel (ed.), Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008). 3  Guy G.  Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), 12.

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Judeophobic spirit of his time.4 This affects another aspect of Erasmus’s intellectual image, flawing the cosmopolitanism and universalism frequently ascribed to him by historians and other writers. Erasmus’s conception of universalism proclaims a significant reminder to moderns stuck on a misinterpreted notion of the exemplary tolerant humanist: Erasmus’s sixteenth-century European universalism was exclusively Christian. Turks/ Muslims and Jews were excluded and were not considered part of the European identity, Christian in essence, which began to evolve in early modern Europe.5 Although, ethnologically speaking, Erasmus does not openly present an orderly ethnological hierarchy, such an echelon can be reconstructed from his writings. A graded conception of the human race is embedded in his thought. Someone who sees in a certain group (European Christians) the pinnacle of God’s creation; a second group (Turks/Muslims) he defines as half-Christians; a third group (converts from Judaism to Christianity) half-Christians; a fourth group (black Africans) he conceptualizes as cursed humans whose black skin marks their moral inferiority and iniquity—is someone whose conception of humanity may be defined as hierarchical. This should not come as a surprise. Religiously, a hierarchical conception of faiths clearly existed in Medieval Europe. Accordingly, Christianity was the “best,” Islam was second to best, and Judaism was considered the “worst” of the three monotheistic religions.6 The move from a religious hierarchy to an ethnological one that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was gradual and expected, given the indicatory historical developments, particularly the enactment of the purity of blood laws in Spain and the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.7 Besides, one should not ignore the universality of  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 29–96; 122–164.  Piccolomini was the first to coin the term “European” as an adjective, marking the cultural distinction between East and West as opposing civilizations. See Denys Hay, Europe: the emergence of an idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957), 83–87; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West, 86. 6  Irven Resnick, “Conversion from the worst to the best: The relationship between medieval Judaism, Islam, and Christianity,” in Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli (eds.), Contesting Inter-­ Religious Conversion in the Medieval World (London and New  York: Routledge, 2017), 197–209. 7  On these laws: Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 137–138 (for bibliography—n. 34). For the Atlantic slavery trade and its sixteenth-century beginnings, see J. A. Rawley and Stephen D.  Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (revised edition, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 18–44; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (London and New York: Longman, 4 5

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human nature; thus, to racialize is—unfortunately—human.8 Admittedly, unprogressive observations on human kind, of various sorts, cross all boundaries. Generally speaking, intellectuals are no exception, nor were they in early modern Europe. The prophets of ancient Israel may well be pointed to as the first public intellectuals that we know, at least as far as social criticism is concerned.9 Michael Screech has explained how, in Erasmus’s thought, Jesus and Paul were perceived as acting prophets. In Erasmus’s mind, a prophet was a commentator on the Scriptures and one in whom the spirit of Jesus flowed, and, Screech adds, Erasmus considered himself such a prophet.10 I would add that to a certain degree, Erasmus, in his peculiar way, played a role similar to that which the Bible attributes to the prophet (Amos, 5, 10): “They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.” I refer to the above-mentioned attacks against Erasmus and the responses he published in fighting back.11 However, it should be noted that Erasmus only acted so when issues of theology or confessionalism were at stake. Otherwise, he was much more restrained or even non-­ responsive. On facing certain ethical or moral challenges he demonstrated weaknesses that render his moral teachings somewhat defective. While Erasmus displayed a relatively tolerant attitude toward heretics, which had a considerable influence on Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563) and other protagonists of the struggle for religious toleration,12 it was Reuchlin who dared to step further on and struggle for a (proto) freedom of religion for non-Christians, namely the Jews; the very same Jews whose absence from any Christian state Erasmus yielded and considered a blessing,13 while Reuchlin valued their existence in Europe as an advantage and benefit to Christianity. 1993). For the linkage between this trade and the evolvement of racism, see Walter D.  Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 15–16; David Theo. Goldberg, Racist Culture Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 24–26. 8  On the universalism of human racial conception and its naturality as Claude Lévi-Strauss observed, see Ron, ibid., 21–22, 77–78. 9  Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 37. 10  Michael Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1980), 228–229. 11  See n. 2. 12  Ron, Erasmus and the “Other,” 97–120. 13  Ibid., 131–132.

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When judging Erasmus, as well as other intellectuals, we need to remember the universal rule (Job, 5:7) “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Only angels are free of human troubles. Intellectuals are no angels, and Erasmus was an intellectual. Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) described Erasmus as “The original model of an intellectual in modern history […] a peace loving incendiary, philologist, and moralist, often vacillating; deeply engaged in the major conflicts of his time, but also withdrawn and careful, unwilling to go to extremes; one of the greatest promoters of the reform movement in religious life, yet one who never joined the Reformation; a gentle warrior, scholar, and satirist.”14 This estimation is not essentially different from Trevor-Ropers’ above mentioned praise,15 Yet Kolakowski, more aware of the failings and weaknesses of intellectuals, raised the necessary doubts and questions, observing that even today Erasmus’s historic role concerning Christianity—was he restorer or destroyer ?—remains controversial. Kolakowski expressed his insights on Bavarian radio in 1982, while this book was written in 2020–2021; nevertheless, the drive to investigate Erasmus’s role in history, not just as a Christian protagonist but as a multifaceted intellectual, is still relevant and perhaps even more so.

14  Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 42–43 (originally a lecture delivered over Bavarian Radio, 1982). 15  See Chap. 1 nn. 17–18.

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Sider, Robert D. 2020. Introduction: Erasmus’ New Testament Scholarship: Its Origin and Development. In Erasmus on the New Testament, ed. Robert D. Sider, 3–22. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Skalnik, James Veazie. 2002. Ramus and Reform: University and Church at the End of the Renaissance (Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Vol. LX), 71–74. Philadelphia: Penn State University Press for Truman State University. Southgate, W.M. 1955. Erasmus: Christian Humanism and Political Theory. History 40: 240–254. Sowards, J.K. 1982. Erasmus and the Education of Women. The Sixteenth Century Journal 13: 77–89. Stegmannn, A. 1968. Érasme et la France (1495–1520). In Actes du Colloque International réuni à Mons. Octobre 1967, 275–297. Mons: Centre universitaire de l’Etat. Stroumsa, Guy G. 1996. From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism in Early Christianity. In Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, ed. Maurice R. Hayoun, Ora Limor, and Guy G. Stroumsa, 1–26. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2010. A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2015. The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1993. The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History. London and New York: Longman. Sullivan, F.P. 1995. Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolome de Las Casas. A Reader. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Syme, Ronald. 1939. The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thompson, Craig R. 1955. Erasmus as Internationalist and Cosmopolitan. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 46: 167–195. Tolan, John V. 2019. Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Tracy, James D. 1977. The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Trevor-Roper, Hugh Redwald. 1967. The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment. In Religion, the Reformation and Social Change and Other Essays, ed. Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, 193–236. London: Macmillan. ———. 1977. Desiderius Erasmus. In Men and Events: Historical Essays. Edited by Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper. New  York: Hippocrene books, 1977, 35–60 (first published by Harper, 1957). Veinstein, Gilles M. 2010. Histoire turque et ottomane. L’annuaire du Collège de France 109: 679–704. URL: http://annuaire-­cdf.revues.org/207.

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Index1

A Acosta, Jose de, 75 ἀδιάφορα (adiaphora), 82 Adrian VI, Pope, 33 Africa, 73 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius, 45 Amerbach, 91 Amerindians, 12, 65 Amman, Caspar, 88 Anabaptists, 4 Antisemitism, 81 Aquinas, Thomas, 93 B Bainton, Roland, 72 Barbarian, 74 Bartolomé Las Casas, 66 Basel, 79 Bauman, Zygmunt, 98

Benda, Julien, 6 Bibliander, Theodore, 79 Biel, Gabriel, 9 Bishops, 21 Black Africans, 74 Bologna, 15 Budé, Guillaume, 11, 39, 57 C Caesarius, Johannes, 88 Calman, 86 Capito, Wolfgang Faber, 29 Carr, E. H., 2 Castellio, Sebastian, 101 Catherine of Aragon, 40 Censorship, 99 Chajim ben Bezalel, 95 Charles V, 17 Charles VIII, 60 Christopher of Stadion, 55

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. Ron, Erasmus, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4

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INDEX

Church Fathers, 81 Cipelli, Giovanni Batista, 76 Cisneros, Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de, 68 Cochlaeus, Johannes, 51 Colet, John, 18 Collegium trilingue, 63 Cosmopolitanism, 72 Courtiers, 15 Croce, Benedetto, 1 Cromwell, Thomas, 53 Crusades, 8, 24 Cuba, 67 D Damian of Goes, 53 Dreyfus, 6 Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, 8 E Education, 11 Enlightenment, 75 Ethical, 2 Ethiopians, 74 Everaerts, Nicolaas, 19

Grebel, Conrad, 32 Grolier de Servières, Jean, 62 H Hebraism, 95 Hebrew, 12 Heng, Geraldine, 4 Hierarchy, 73, 100 Hispaniola, 68 Holy Land, 25 Housley, Norman, 26 Huizinga, Johan, 72 Humanists, 76 Hungaria, Georgius de, 80 Hutten, Ulrich von, 90 I Indulgences, 25 Ingolstadt, 88 Involved intellectual, 23 Islam, 77

F Ferdinand, King, 67 Fisher, John, 8 Florenz, Adrian, 67 Francis I, 8 Frankfurt, 84 Freedom, 97 Froben, 54

J Jerome, 89 Jerusalem, 26 Jews, 73 Johnson, Paul, 49 Josel of Rosheim, 95 Joshua Solomon ben Israel Nathan Soncino, 87 Juan Vergara, 46 Judaism, 83 Judith, 45 Julius II, Pope, 15 Just war, 27

G Glareanus, Henricus, 58 Graz, 35

K Kabbalah, 86 Kabbalistic, 86

 INDEX 

Kant, Emmanuel, 7 Kings, 18 Kolakowski, Leszek, 102 L Latomus, Bartholomew, 53 Leo X, 19 Linz, 87 Loans, Jacob ben Jehiel, 86 Louis XII, 17, 60 Louvain, 92 Luther, Martin, 7 M Machiavelli, 78 Manuzio, Aldo, 76 Margaritha, Antonius, 94 Margolin, Jean-Claude, 38 Marignano, 12 Markish, Shimon, 82 Marranos, 93 Marriage, 40 Mary, widow of Louis II king of Hungary, 43 Maximilian, Emperor, 17 McConica, James, 52 Mercenaries, 61 Middle Ages, 74 Milan, 60 Mohács, 43 Montesinos, Antonio de, 68 More, Thomas, 8 Muhammad, 77 N New Testament (NT), 10 New World, 66 Nirenberg, David, 82

O Oberman, Heiko, 29 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 91 Old Testament, 88 Ottoman Empire, 33 Ottomans, 29 P Pacifism, 4 Paris, 61 Patron, 67 Pelagius, Alvarus, 9 Peter the Venerable, 79 Pfefferkorn, Johann, 87 Philosophia Christi, 3 Pio, Alberto, 36 Pirckheimer, Willibald, 87 Popes, 15 Popular uprising, 21 Presentism, 1 Prophet, 101 Πτωχοπλούσιοι, ptochoplousioi by Erasmus, 65n1 Publica utilitas, 12, 13 Public good, 11, 13 Public intellectual, 2 Q Qur’an, 78 R Race, 100 Racism, 4 Renan, Ernest, 7 Reuchlin, Johannes, 12 Reynolds, E. E., 55 Rhenanus, Beatus, 18 Robert of Ketton, 79

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Roberto Caracciolo of Lecce, 28 Rome, 16 Roper, Lyndal, 79 Roper, Margaret, 40 Rummel, Erika, 5 S Salvation, 26 Satan, 35 Scholasticism, 9 Scholasticists, 9 Scotus, John Duns, 8–9 Screech, Michael, 101 Scythia, 76 Scythian, 76 Sixtin, John, 18 Slave, 100 Slavery, 74 Soncino, 87 Stroumsa, Guy G., 75 Suleiman I, 43 Symes, Ronald, 30 T Talmud, 86 Tax, 20 Taxation, 20 Tertulian, 32 Thompson, Craig R., 5 Tolerance, 82 Toleration, 5 Tomiczki, Peter, 54 Tracy, James, 8 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 7

Tübingen, 88 Turkophobic, 12 Turks, 3 Tyndale, William, 10 U Universalism, 72 V Valignano, Alessandro, 75 Vienna, 32 Vietnam, 28 Viglius Zuichemus, 51 Villach, Thomas von, 35 Vita activa, 21 Vita contemplativa, 21 Vitoria, Francisco de, 68 Vives, Juan Luis, 52 Voltaire, 5 Voltz, Paul, 31 Vulgate, 10 W William of Ockham, 8 Wimfeling, Jacob, 26 Witzel, Georg, 94 Y Yiddish, 87n27 Z Zweig, Stephan, 72