Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

Not the eyes of Lynceus, which could see through a stone wall, could penetrate the refinements of these people. And these difficulties are all increased by the multitude of the schools,

"so that one might sooner get out of a labyrinth than out of the windings of Realists, Nominalists, Thomists, Albertists, Occamists, Scotists. And these not all by any means, only the chief of them. In them all there is so much learning, so much refinement, that I should say the very apostles themselves would have to be of another spirit if they were compelled to discuss these matters with this new race of theologians. Paul knew something about faith; but when he says 'faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,' that is far from being a definition fit for a Magister; and though he knew well enough about charity, his definition and division of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians was by no means good dialectics." "The apostles knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has shown as philosophically as our theologians have done, how she was preserved from the sin of Adam? Peter received the keys, and from one who would not have given them to an unworthy keeper, but I doubt whether he ever reached the subtilty of knowing how one who has no knowledge can hold the keys of knowledge." "The apostles worshipped, but in spirit, following simply that apostolic rule:—'God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth'; but it does not appear that it was revealed to them that an image drawn with a crayon on the wall was to be worshipped, provided only it have two fingers held upright, hair flowing, and three rays in the halo about its head. For who can understand these things unless he has ground out six and thirty years in the study of physics and the superhuman notions of Aristotle and the Scotists?

"Meanwhile the actual words of the apostles are utterly neglected. While they keep up their fooleries in the schools, they fancy that, like Atlas in the poets, they are holding up the tottering Church with their syllogistic pillars, and what joy they take in moulding and remoulding Scripture according to their will as if it were made of wax; yet their own conclusions, if a few schoolmen have subscribed to them, they think more weighty than the laws of Solon or the decretals of popes, and like censors of the world, if anything does not square to the line with their conclusions implicit and explicit, they declare as by an oracle 'this proposition is scandalous; this is lacking in reverence; this smacks of heresy; this hasn't the right sound.' So that, by this time, neither Baptism, nor Gospel, nor Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor Augustine—nay, not even the most Aristotelian Thomas himself, can make a man a Christian unless the reckoning of these bachelors be added."

The same method of direct denunciation, with no special reference to the main thesis of Folly, is pursued in the case of the monks, or "religious," both titles false, Erasmus says, for the greater part of them are as far as possible from religion, and there is no kind of men whom you are more apt to meet in all places. They pride themselves upon their ignorance, carry the psalm-books they cannot read into the churches, and bray out their words as if they could thereby please the ear of God. Some of them crowd the taverns, waggons, and ships, showing off their poverty and filth and howling for alms. Yet the merry knaves try to pass themselves off as living the life of the apostles.

"What a joke it is that they do all things by rule, as it were by a kind of sacred mathematics; as, for instance, how many knots their shoes must be tied with, of what colour everything must be, what variety in their garb, of what material, how many straws' breadth to their girdle, of what form and of how many bushels' capacity their cowl, how many fingers broad their hair, and how many hours they may sleep. Now who cannot see what an unequal equality this is, when there is such a variety of persons and tastes? and yet with all this nonsense, they not only make light of others, but come to despise one another, and these men who profess apostolic charity make a terrible row at a dress girded in another fashion or at a colour a little darker in shade. Some of them are so very 'religious' that they wear no outer garment but one of hair-cloth, with soft linen underneath; others on the contrary wear linen without and woollen within. Others again would as soon touch poison as money, but meanwhile make free with wine and women. They are all trying not to agree in their manner of life; none of them to follow the example of Christ, but all to be different one from the other....

"The greater part of them have such faith in their ceremonies and human traditions that they think one heaven is not reward enough for such great doings, never that the time will come when Christ shall set all this aside and claim his rule of charity. One will show his belly stuffed with every sort of fish; another will pour out a hundred bushels of psalms; another will count up myriads of fasts and make up for them all again by almost bursting himself at a single dinner. Another will bring forward such a heap of ceremonies that seven ships would hardly hold them; another will boast that for sixty years he has never touched a penny except with double gloves on his hands; another wears a cowl so greasy and filthy that no sailor would think it decent. Another will boast that for eleven lusters he has led the life of a sponge, always fixed to the same spot; another will display his voice hoarse with much chanting; another a drowsiness contracted from solitary living; another a tongue palsied by long silence. But Christ will interrupt their endless bragging and will demand:—'whence this new kind of Judaism? One law and that my own I recognise, and that is the only thing I hear nothing about. In that day I promised openly and using no twisted parables, the inheritance of my Father, not to cowls and prayers and fastings, but to deeds of love.' And yet no one dares reproach those people, who belong, as it were, to another commonwealth—and especially the Begging Friars, because they know everybody's secrets through what they call 'confessions.'"

Erasmus more than hints that the friars had ways enough of playing fast and loose with the secrets confided to them, and, running together his assaults upon the schoolmen and the monks, shows up the scholastic preaching of the friars by some excellent specimens.

"I myself have heard one distinguished fool—I beg his pardon, a scholar I would say—who, in a famous sermon on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, in order to show his uncommon learning and please the ears of the theologians, took a quite new method, namely from the letters, syllables, and discourse itself and then from the agreement of nouns and verbs, of adjective and substantive, to the great admiration of some, but causing others to grumble in the words of Horace: 'what is all this rot about?'

"At last he got the thing down so fine, that he showed as plainly as any mathematician could chalk it out, that the mystery of the whole Trinity is expressed in the rudiments of grammar. This most highly theological person sweat away for eight months over that speech, so that the whole sight of his eyes ran into his wits and he is now as blind as a mole; but the creature cares naught for his eyesight and thinks his glory very cheaply bought.