Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

"I am now wholly absorbed in the Copia, so that it seems like a regular enigma to be in the midst of plenty [copia] and yet in the depths of want. And would that I might bring both to a conclusion at once; for I will quickly make an end of my Copia if only the Muses will favour my studies more than Fortune has up to the present time favoured my estate....

"In your offer of money I recognise your ancient good feeling toward me and I thank you with all my heart. But there is one phrase, though you use it in jest, that stings me to the soul:—'if you would beg humbly.' Perhaps you mean, and very properly, that to bear my lot with such impatience comes wholly from human pride, for, indeed, a gentle and Christian spirit makes the best of everything. Still more, however, I marvel how you put together humility and shamelessness: for you say, 'if you would beg humbly and make your demand shamelessly.' If, according to common usage, you mean by humility the opposite of arrogance, how are impudence and modesty to be put together? But if by 'humbly' you mean 'servilely' and 'abjectly' you differ very much from Seneca, my dear Colet, who thinks that nothing comes higher than what is bought with prayers, and that he does a far from friendly service who demands of his friend that lowly word, 'I beg you.' Socrates once said, conversing with some friends:—'I should have bought me a cloak to-day if I had had the money,' and Seneca says:—'he gave too late who gave after those words.' ...

"But now, I pray you, what could be more shameless than I, who have been a public beggar all this time in England? From the archbishop I have had so much that it would be more than infamous to take any more, even if he should offer it. From N. I have begged boldly enough, but as I asked without shame so has he without shame repulsed me. Why now I seem too shameless even to my dear Linacre, who, when he saw me going away from London with barely six angels in my pocket, and knew how feeble my health was, and that winter was coming on, yet eagerly warned me to spare the archbishop, to spare Mountjoy! But I will rather pull myself together and learn to bear my poverty bravely. Oh! that was a friendly counsel! This is why I especially loathe my fate, that it does not permit me to be a modest man. As long as my strength would carry me, it was a pleasure to hide my need—now I cannot do that unless I choose to neglect my life. And still I am not yet so lost to shame that I ask all things of everyone. From others I ask not, lest I get a refusal, but from you with what face, pray, can I ask? Especially since you yourself have none too much of this kind of goods. Yet, if it is boldness you like, I will end my letter with the very boldest clause I can. I cannot so put aside all shame as to beg of you with no excuse,—but I am not so proud as to refuse a gift, if such a friend as you should give it me willingly, especially in the present state of my affairs."

These selections from the English correspondence have made it clear that Erasmus in England was precisely what he had always been, a keen-sighted observer of men and things, a hater of all shams but his own, a sturdy beggar, a jovial companion and correspondent when he was in the mood, above all an independent liver and thinker, dreading any routine that was not self-imposed, but capable of steady and persistent work when he could put his time on congenial tasks. Of these labours, to which he devoted himself in England, the new edition of the Greek New Testament, or, as he preferred to call it, the "New Instrument," held the first place in his interest. It was not to be published until 1516, a year or more after he had left England, and Erasmus says that he consulted manuscripts in Brabant and Basel before printing; but it seems tolerably clear that a considerable part of the preparatory work was done at Cambridge. He writes to Colet,[93] as early as 1511: "I have finished the collation of the New Testament," by which he must mean that he had done all that he intended to do at it in England. In speaking of the work at Basel he refers to the great haste with which it was pushed, the object being, probably, on Froben's part, to get ahead of a similar undertaking reported to be under way in Spain. This latter work, to be known as the "Complutensian Polyglot," was going on under the direction of Cardinal Ximenes at Alcalá (Complutum). It was to include the whole Bible, and though the New Testament was completed in 1514 it was held back to appear with the rest in 1520. When Erasmus says[94] that he used "very many manuscripts in both languages, and those not the readiest to hand, but the most ancient and most correct," he is speaking after the standards of his day. In fact, recent scholarship has shown that he not only used very defective manuscripts of no great antiquity, but that he failed to make adequate use of the best one at his disposal.[95]

In spite of the fact, then, that the actual work of publication was done at Basel, we may fairly count this great work as one of the fruits of the English period. Rightly to estimate the value of this service to the cause of a reasonable Christianity, we must consider for a moment the conditions of biblical scholarship in the year 1511. That the ultimate appeal in matters of Christian faith lay to the inspired word of the recognised canon of Scripture, no one doubted for a moment. True, the governing powers of the Church had insisted that alongside this source of truth there were two others of equal importance, the tradition of the Church and the authority of the Roman papacy; but Church and papacy had always been conceived of as expressing their own judgment through their interpretation of Scripture. Nothing which they could lay down could ever be in contradiction to the true teaching of the canonical writings. A modern mind would say, therefore, that nothing could have seemed more important to these interpreting agents than to know precisely what the writers whom they were interpreting had said and meant. One would think that every effort would have been made from the beginning to secure and maintain a version of the Scriptures in their original form, of such unquestionable accuracy that all deviations of interpretation could be anticipated and checked.

The immense prestige which the Roman government of the Church might thus have secured to itself was deliberately thrown away. Not only did the chief church authority do nothing itself to promote so practical and so profitable an undertaking, but it systematically checked the efforts of individuals and groups of scholars to contribute toward this end. It rested all its own interpretation upon a translation into Latin, the so-called Vulgata, which had been made by Jerome in the years just before and just after 400, and repeatedly declared by the Church to be the sole authorised version. This translation was, so far as the New Testament was concerned, a revision of earlier Latin versions carefully compared with the Greek originals. The Old Testament was translated from the original Hebrew with close reference to the Septuagint and the early Greek commentators. The obvious motive of the Church in clinging to this defective presentation of its own supreme authority was the motive of uniformity. The longer the correction of errors could be postponed, the more hope that no effective criticism of institutions resting, perhaps, on errors would arise.

Of all tendencies in human society none was so greatly and so justly dreaded by church authority as the tendency to criticism. And by criticism we do not mean a carping opposition. We mean only what the word properly denotes: inquiry into the exact facts about any given subject. In proportion as the great structure of ecclesiastical authority had grown more complicated, this nervous dread of free inquiry had increased. Nor was the central authority alone responsible for this state of mind. Every part of the church organisation had done its share to fix this notion of an unchanging uniformity upon the Christian world. The whole philosophy of the Middle Ages, which prided itself, above all else, upon being a Christian philosophy, had exhausted itself in giving a pseudo-scientific form to the most unscientific view of truth the world had ever seen.

The great service of Erasmus was, therefore, that he proposed to find out as nearly as he could what the writers of the New Testament had actually said. Of course his apparatus for this inquiry was still, from the point of view of modern science, very defective. He had no earlier scientific commentators to consult, with the single exception of Laurentius Valla, the Italian humanist, who a few years before had published annotations to the Greek text. His criteria of judgment had to be evolved from his own sense of accuracy as he went along. All that vast assistance to intelligent editing which in recent times has come from the cultivation of the historic sense was wanting to him. Nothing was farther from Erasmus' mind than any radical discussion of Christian doctrines. He continually declares his fixed determination to abide by the faith of the Church, and whatever adverse criticism he had to make was against evil practices which always seemed to him only perversions of the essential Christianity of apostolic times. So we are not to look to his New Testament for startling innovations. What gave offence to his enemies was the same quality which gave value to the book,—namely, the single effort to put things as they were. What the "men of darkness" who had come largely to control the practical working of religious affairs least of all desired was precise truth to facts. They were getting on comfortably with a version of truth which suited them very well, and were not inclined to see their precious ease invaded by any restless seeking for ultimate accuracy. They felt, and quite truly, that any jarring of the foundations might bring the whole structure of ceremonies and usages in which they were thriving, about their ears. Erasmus might protest as he would, but the instinct of self-preservation on the part of those who were enjoying the high places of the Church was rightly alarmed.