Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

In the year following he begins a letter to Pirkheimer thus[164]:

"From your pen, my dear Bilibald, I have never feared anything, having long tested your cautious considerateness and your persistent loyalty in friendship; but it did offend me to have Œcolampadius mixing up my name in his books without any reason, when he knows from me, that it is unpleasant to me to be named by him, more unpleasant to be abused, and most unpleasant to be praised. He keeps it up without end. I have never ascribed anything of this to my dear Bilibald; for many things grieve us which we can ascribe to no one. If I had some little doubt about your unusually long silence, that ought not to surprise you, considering the changeableness of human affections.... And I do not regret my little suspicions since they have brought me these longed-for letters."

Apparently Erasmus suspected that Pirkheimer had, after all, let Œcolampadius know that he was inclined to the spiritual view of the Eucharist. Farther on he writes:

"I said among friends that I could follow his opinion, if the authority of the Church would approve it; but I added that I could by no means differ from the Church. But by 'Church' I mean the consent of all Christian people.... How much the authority of the Church avails with others I know not, but it is so important to me that I could agree with Arians or Pelagians, if the Church should approve what they taught. Not that the words of Christ are not sufficient for me, but it is no wonder that I follow as interpreter the Church, upon the authority of which I believe in the canonical Scriptures. Others perhaps have more talent or more strength than I, but I rest nowhere so safely as in the certain judgment of the Church. Of reasons and argumentations there is no end."

In short, Erasmus had on this subject, as he had usually had on all controverted points, one opinion for his friends and another for the world. His array of "ifs" and "buts" was only a cover for his nervous dread of committing himself to something. His attitude on this question is throughout characteristic. If it meant anything, it would be a complete justification for the suspension of all thought on any speculative question. To say that one would be inclined to a belief if only the Church would approve it, is to emasculate one's own intelligence. It could not help things to say that the Church meant to him the consent of all Christian people. At that moment there was no consent of all Christian people, and the only conceivable way by which such consent could be reached was by a full and free comparison of the honest views of honest men, in order that essentials might be emphasised and non-essentials eliminated. It is a poor defence of the brightest and clearest mind of his day, to say that he refused to take his manly part in the clearing up of precisely those speculative questions about which discussion must necessarily arise. It was idle for him to talk about avoiding dissensions. The dissensions were there, and the real question was not how to suppress them, but how to solve them so that right-minded and intelligent men could know where they stood.

The worst thorn in Erasmus' side on this question was Conrad Pelicanus, one of the reformed preachers of Basel. The chief offence of Pelicanus was that he had sought to support his spiritual view of the Eucharist by declaring that Erasmus really believed just as he did. We have three letters of Erasmus to him, all of 1526, and each more violent than the other. Let us notice only the most decided of these expressions.

"It is my way when I am with learned friends, especially when there are present none of the weaker sort, to discourse freely on all kinds of subjects, for the purpose of making inquiries, sometimes to try them or for mental exercise, and perhaps I am more outspoken in this matter than I ought to be. But I will confess to the charge of murder, if any mortal has ever heard me say in jest or in earnest this word: that in the Eucharist there is merely bread and wine or that it is not the real body and blood of our Lord as some are now maintaining in their books. Nay, I call upon Christ himself to be my enemy, if that opinion ever found a lodgment in my mind. For if ever at any time any flighty thoughts have touched my mind I have easily thrown them off by considering the measureless love of God to me, and by weighing the words of Holy Scripture, which have compelled even Luther, whom you set above all schools, all popes, all men of sound doctrine, and councils, to profess what the Catholic Church professes though he is wont freely to differ from her....

"If I should confess to you as to a friend debauchery or theft, how utterly against all laws of friendship it would be if you were to babble it even to one person, to the peril of your friend. Now, when you are scattering abroad among all men the most dreadful of all charges, of things which my tongue, though a free one, has never uttered, nor my mind ever conceived, how can you be forgiven for what you are doing, my Evangelical friend? Did you think to abuse the authority of my name in order to enforce a belief you have yourself but lately begun to hold? I pray you, in the name of Christ, is that an Evangelical thing, to make so dreadful a charge against a friend in order to drag more persons into a new sect, as if we had not sects enough already? If your doctrine is a truly pious one, have you no other means of persuading men to it except this empty statement, that Erasmus agrees with you? But if my opinion is worth so much to you, why do you hold it of no account on the many points on which I differ from you?...