Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

A little treatise of 1533 on Preparation for Death[193] is interesting chiefly for the things it does not say. Its emphasis throughout is on the necessity of a Christian life as the true preparation for a Christian death. The very essence of Protestantism, the direct dealing of the human soul with its God, may be found here. Protest as Erasmus might his devotion to the forms of the Church, when he wrote this essay he was giving more aid and comfort to the enemy than if he had gone over to him with all his arms in his hands. Of course he explains away as much of the clearness of his statement as he can, but the words remain and his own practice went far to confirm them. He emphasises at every turn the duty of respect for traditions, but no man in the year 1533 could write as he does here of the nature of sacraments without knowing how his words would be interpreted. If the sacraments were, even quodammodo, "symbols" of the divine good will to men, then the whole objective, or, to speak technically, the "opus operatum" theory of the sacramental system was brought in question, and men would not stop until they had pushed this question to its rational issue. Here as elsewhere, if we would estimate the service of Erasmus to the Reformation, we must try to feel out of the windings of his rhetoric the impression he wished to leave uppermost in the reader's mind, and as to that we can hardly hesitate. Even a devout Catholic could not read carefully this appeal to the essentials of religion without feeling a diminished sense of the value of forms, and a wavering mind could hardly fail to be carried over pretty far towards the conclusion that forms so dangerous as these were better reformed out of existence.

The most important work of the Freiburg period was the great treatise on the Christian minister, to which Erasmus gave the title of Ecclesiastes, or The Gospel Preacher (concionator evangelicus). In its printed form the Ecclesiastes fills over one hundred and sixty folio pages and would make more than two volumes as large as this present one. Of all the evils in the existing church system, none had been more evident since the height of the Middle Ages than the neglect of preaching. The very first effort of the organised Lutheran party had been to restore the right balance between the sacramental and the moral aspects of church administration by emphasising the preaching and diminishing the importance of all sacramental observances. And this is precisely the position of Erasmus. He begins with a careful definition of the Church (ecclesia) as the assembly (concio) of Christians. Christ is the great preacher and every other ecclesiastes is only his representative and herald. The highest function of the preacher is that of teaching. At first the bishops were the sole teachers; now the teaching has passed to priests and monks, though it is a function far surpassing the dignity of kings.

As a model of the complete bishop Erasmus gives a very beautiful description of Warham, dwelling especially upon his great efficiency in a vast variety of duties, an efficiency made possible only by the strictest frugality of life and the rigid exclusion of all luxury and idle amusement.

This brief notice of the Ecclesiastes concludes our review of the writings of Erasmus, and this seems the fitting place to note what was the final judgment upon them of that Church to which he declared himself devoted and from whose teachings he insisted he had never departed by so much as a hair's breadth. It was not until the wave of the Catholic Reaction had begun to rise into a furious torrent that a definite policy of disapproval of Erasmus on the part of the Roman authorities took the place of the former leniency. Lists of books the reading of which was prohibited to good Christians were published in many parts of Europe by sovereigns, universities, inquisitors, or commissions from 1524 on.[194] Such lists were generally called "Catalogues." The papacy as such took no part in this process until the time of the Council of Trent. The earliest papal list or "Index" was published by Paul IV. in 1559. It was arranged in three classes, the first containing the names of authors who were, as it were, heretics by intention (ex professo), and all of whose writings were condemned, no matter whether they had any reference to religion or not. In the second class were names of authors some of whose writings had been shown to tend towards heresy or the superstitions of magic, etc. The third class comprised the titles of books, generally by anonymous writers, which contained specially dangerous doctrines.

In this first papal Index Erasmus takes a place of extraordinary prominence. Not only was he placed in the first class, but a special clause was added to his name: "with all his commentaries, notes, scholia, dialogues, letters, censures, translations, books, and writings, even when they contain nothing against religion or about religion." The Index of Paul IV. was, however, by no means generally accepted by the people of Europe. In many countries it was flatly rejected. The Council of Trent at its final session (1562-1563) took up the matter and appointed a commission to revise the harshest clauses. The result of this revision appears in the Index of Pius IV. in 1564. There Erasmus has been dropped from the first class and in the second appear only a few of his most doubtful works, the Colloquies, Praise of Folly, Christian Marriage, and one or two others. In 1590 Sixtus V. replaced him in the first class, and in 1596 Clement VIII. restored him again to the conditions of the Index of Trent.

Thus the fate of Erasmus after death was very much what it had been in his life. As honest Duke Frederick had said: "One never knows how to take him." The highest authority could not quite determine whether he was a thorough-going heretic or only heretical "north-north-west."

In the month of August, 1535, after a residence of six busy years at Freiburg, Erasmus returned to Basel. Once more, and for the last time, he has to account for a change of residence. At Freiburg he had been continually complaining of the place, his quarters, and the people; yet he says he had no fixed intention of leaving there permanently. He had been giving matter to the press during these six years without any special difficulty, but suddenly he discovers that his Ecclesiastes cannot be properly printed at Basel without his presence. He has suffered so much, he writes to the bishop of Cracow,[195] that he prefers to try a change of air even at the risk of death. He was carried in a covered carriage, "made for women," to Basel, "a healthful and pleasant city, whose hospitality I have enjoyed for many years. There, in expectation of my coming, a room suited to my needs had been prepared by my friends."

It is marvellous how the permanent instincts of his life assert themselves to the last. In October, 1535, he writes to a magistrate of Besançon: