More and more, too, as the doctrines of the reformers spread downward into all classes of society and outward over all countries, it became clearer and clearer to the established authorities that their real quarrel was not with this or that doctrinal quibble, nor with one or the other religious sect or social organisation, but with the underlying spirit of all these. It availed little that Erasmus rejected the doctrine of the Unfree Will, that he refused to be a Lutheran or a Zwinglian, an Anabaptist or a socialist. The powers threatened by all these felt, and rightly felt, that he stood for something more dangerous still,—a something without which none of the sects could have stood alone for a moment. That something was the spirit of criticism and of science based upon a first-hand knowledge of the sources of Christian truth.
The year 1525 marks a distinct reactionary movement. As, on the one hand, the social and economic disturbances were the severest strain on the new religious awakening, so, on the other hand, they were the final argument to convince the powers of conservatism that it was now or never with them. For a moment the Church had seemed to waver. In electing as pope Adrian VI., a Northerner, an intimate of the young emperor, a school-fellow of Erasmus, and well known as a man of enlightened and moderate views, the Roman Curia had seemed to cut itself loose from an exclusively Roman policy. That policy had more than once brought the papacy to the brink of ruin and was to do so more than once again, but for the moment reformers of all grades believed that a substantial progress had been made. The early action of Adrian had confirmed this belief; but the pressure was too great; the papacy was stronger than the pope. Adrian died in 1523 after a disappointing administration of a single year, and the proverbial swing of the papal pendulum brought to the chair of Peter once more an Italian—not indeed a Roman, but a man as completely identified with the curial policy as Adrian had been unfamiliar with it.
Giulio dei' Medici, nephew of the great Lorenzo, devoted from his earliest years to the ecclesiastical profession, a politician trained in the same school with Macchiavelli, and accepting the papacy as the natural culmination of his ambition, was precisely the kind of man to rally all the resources of the Church in defence of its imperilled traditions. In that rally, at this perilous crisis, no half-way allegiance could be useful. Whatever hopes might have been placed upon Erasmus by Leo and Adrian were by this time pretty effectually dissipated. The kind of sledge-hammer blows which the papacy of 1525 needed to have struck in its defence were certainly not to come from such an arm as this.
Yet there occurred no official breach with any of the great Catholic powers. On the accession of Clement VII. Erasmus sent him an early letter of congratulation. He almost repeats the language of similar addresses to former popes. Things have been going badly enough, but now the right man for the emergency has come. Especially the cause of learning may well expect the greatest things from a Medicean pope. He has resisted all pressure to take sides against the papacy, and yet Stunica is raging against him in Italy unpunished, to the disgrace of Rome and the injury of the papal name.
"[159] Believe me, most holy Father, whoever is hiring that play-actor, a man born for this kind of trickery, is doing a very poor service to the papacy or to the cause of the public peace; he is simply serving some private hatred and to that end making use of another's folly.... I have always submitted myself and all my works to the judgment of the Roman Church, not intending to resist, even if it should give a verdict unfavourable to me. For I will suffer everything rather than be a rebel; and therein I place my confidence that your Holiness' sense of justice will not permit me to be given up to the mad hatred of a few men.... The Emperor and the Lady Margaret are calling me back to Brabant. The French king is inviting me with mountains of gold to come to him. But nothing shall tear me from Rome but death,—or the gravel more cruel than death,—if only I can be sure that your justice will protect me against false accusations."
The familiar reference to the mountains of French gold, which have been serving their turn with him any time these ten years past, but which have no foundation in fact, serve to indicate the value of these declarations. It is unlikely that Erasmus had the least intention of going to Rome. The phrase about his call to Brabant appears again, somewhat elaborated, in a letter to Cardinal Campeggio, dated 1526, but almost certainly of even date (February, 1524) with the one to Clement just quoted. He speaks here of his very feeble health, which has compelled him to take a house by himself where he can have an open fireplace. He cannot leave in the winter, but is planning a vacation trip for the coming summer, and would gladly betake himself isthuc,—presumably to the German Diet at Nuremberg whither Campeggio was coming as papal legate. He goes on to say of how little use he can be under the circumstances, though he will gladly do what he can in the cause of peace. He promises Campeggio to come to the Diet if he can, at the same moment that he is assuring Clement that nothing shall tear him (avellere) from his beloved Rome, if he is able to move from Basel at all. If we doubt his intention to go to Rome we may be still more certain that a German Diet in 1524 was the very last place where he would have cared to show himself. This, by the way, was the Diet at which Campeggio was warned not to wear his cardinal's hat, and not to make the sign of benediction or of the cross.[160]
So far as we can ever say that Erasmus had intentions about his future, we may venture to believe that he meant to end his days at Basel. On one subject it was almost impossible for him to exaggerate, and that was the awful agony of his disease in its acute stages and the great weakness and depression in the interval. The wonder is that he could have kept so steadily at work and could so often, in the midst of his reproaches upon fortune and his enemies, display that keen, playful humour which was his greatest charm.
On one other doctrinal question, of vast importance in the history of the Reformation, we must examine the utterances of Erasmus; namely, on the question of the Eucharist. While the problem of the freedom of the will involved the most profound philosophical speculation, the eucharistic controversy had to deal with a matter which, viewed from one side, was a mere question of usage, but from another led at once into a region where blind faith was plainly set in opposition to human reason. From an early day the organised Church had seen the value of the ideas which had taken form in the service of the Eucharist and had insisted with absolutely unwavering determination upon the doctrinal formula which expressed them. First brought sharply before the mediæval world by the controversy of Paschasius in the ninth century, the issue was revived by Berengar of Tours in the eleventh, and all the ingenuity of the early scholasticism of Anselm's day was displayed in giving to the idea a foundation that could be neither misunderstood nor evaded. Thus crystallised into a philosophic reality by the great formulators of the thirteenth century, the crass statement of the Church had been questioned anew by Wiclif. Hus had, on this point, it is true, professed allegiance to the Church, but the Hussite party, by its passionate insistence upon the right of the laity to receive the Eucharist under both forms, had protested against the whole conception of the sacrament as a sacrifice. So also the tendency of the great mystical movement had been to accustom men's minds to a spiritual interpretation of outward forms.
That was the stage in which the Reformation found the whole subject of the Eucharist. Luther early became clear on two points: first, that the celebration of the Eucharist as a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, without any reference whatever to the individual communicant,—indeed, as was oftenest the case, without any lay communicant at all,—was an outrageous violation of every truly Christian conception of the institution, a mere piece of heathen idolatry. But, secondly, Luther still clung to the notion that a something mysterious and miraculous took place when the formula of benediction was duly uttered by the priest, and that this something must still be expressed in terms of the church tradition. "Hoc est corpus meum" must have some literal and physical meaning. Especially as he saw the "fanatics," who were not afraid to use their reason and take the consequences, going far ahead of him and repudiating all the mystery of the consecrated symbol, he found himself drawn more and more into sympathy with the traditional view. The Eucharist question thus became the test of distinction not only between Catholic and Protestant but between moderate and radical Protestant as well. Plain men like Landgraf Philip of Hessen, who wanted above all else to see all the forces of Protestantism united in one great assault, were shocked and puzzled to find that men who seemed to them to stand for precisely the same things were held apart by such a mere speculative problem as this.