At first Erasmus was friendly with Luther, but as he strongly disapproved of rebellion against the Church, he subsequently assailed Luther and the whole Protestant movement. He remained outside the group of radical reformers, to the end devoted to his favorite authors, simply a lover of good Latin.
Perhaps the chief reason why Erasmus opposed Protestantism was because he imagined that the theological tempest which Luther aroused all over Catholic Europe would destroy fair-minded scholarship—the very essence of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe—More in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself—remained Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen, did not become Protestant but adhered to the Roman Church.
[Sidenote: Decline of Humanism]
Gradually, as the sixteenth century advanced, many persons who in an earlier generation would have applied their minds to the study of Latin or Greek, now devoted themselves to theological discussion or moral exposition. The religious differences between Catholics and Protestants, to say nothing of the refinements of dispute between Calvinists and Lutherans or Presbyterians and Congregationalists, absorbed much of the mental energy of the time and seriously distracted the humanists. In fact, we may say that, from the second half of the sixteenth century, humanism as an independent intellectual interest slowly but steadily declined. Nevertheless, it was not lost, for it was merged with other interests, and with them has been preserved ever since.
Humanism, whose seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical "humanities"—Latin, Greek, and history—are still taught in college and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant intellectual interest of the sixteenth century.
ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: Humanism and the Renaissance of Art]
The effect of the revived interest in Greek and Roman culture, which, as we have seen, dominated European thought from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, was felt not only in literature and in the outward life of its devotees—in ransacking monasteries for lost manuscripts scripts, in critically studying ancient learning, and in consciously imitating antique behavior—but likewise in a marvelous and many-sided development of art.
The art of the middle ages had been essentially Christian—it sprang from the doctrine and devotions of the Catholic Church and was inextricably bound up with Christian life. The graceful Gothic cathedrals, pointing their roofs and airy spires in heavenly aspiration, the fantastic and mysterious carvings of wood or stone, the imaginative portraiture of saintly heroes and heroines as well as of the sublime story of the fall and redemption of the human race, the richly stained glass, and the spiritual organ music—all betokened the supreme thought of medieval Christianity. But humanism recalled to men's minds the previous existence of an art simpler and more restrained, if less ethereal. The reading of Greek and Latin writers heightened an esteem for pagan culture in all its phases.
Therefore, European art underwent a transformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While much of the distinctively medieval culture remained, civilization was enriched by a revival of classical art. The painters, the sculptors, and the architects now sought models not exclusively in their own Christian masters but in many cases in pagan Greek and Roman forms. Gradually the two lines of development were brought together, and the resulting union—the adaptation of classical art-forms to Christian uses—was marked by an unparalleled outburst of artistic energy.