Rumours of opposition.
While Erasmus was passing through Belgium on his way to Basle, these whispered signs of discontent found public utterance in a letter from Martin Dorpius,[511] of the Louvain University, addressed to Erasmus, but printed, and, it would seem, in the hands of the public, before it was forwarded to him. He met with it by accident at Antwerp.[512] It was written at the instigation of others. Men who had not the wit to make a public protest of this nature for themselves, had urged Martin Dorpius to employ his talents in their cause, and to become their mouthpiece.[513]
Thus this letter from Dorpius was of far more importance than would at first sight appear. It had a representative importance which it did not possess in itself. It was the public protest of a large and powerful party. As such it required more than a mere private reply from Erasmus, and deserves more than a passing mention here, for it affords an insight into the plan and defences of a theological citadel, against which its defenders considered that Erasmus was meditating a bold attack.
Letter from Dorpius.
‘I hear’ (wrote Dorpius, after criticising severely the ‘Praise of Folly’)—‘I hear that you have been expurgating the epistles of Saint Jerome from the errors with which they abound ... and this is a work in all respects worthy of your labour, and by which you will confer a great benefit on divines.... But I hear, also, that you have been correcting the text of the New Testament, and that “you have made annotations not without theological value on more than one thousand places.”’
Here Dorpius evidently quotes the words of the letter of Erasmus to Servatius, so that he too is silently behind the scenes, handing Erasmus’s letter about amongst his theological friends, perhaps himself inciting Dorpius to write as he does.
Dorpius asserts that there are no errors in the Vulgate.
‘... If I can show you that the Latin translation has in it no errors or mistakes’ (continued Dorpius), ‘then you must confess that the labour of those who try to correct it is altogether null and void.... I am arguing now with respect to the truthfulness and integrity of the translation, and I assert this of our Vulgate version. For it cannot be that the unanimous universal Church now for so many centuries has been mistaken, which always has used, and still both sanctions and uses, this version. Nor in the same way is it possible that so many holy fathers, so many men of most consummate authority, could be mistaken, who, relying on the same version, have defined the most difficult points even in General Councils; have defended and elucidated the faith, and enacted canons to which even kings have bowed their sceptres. That councils rightly convened never can err in matters of faith is generally admitted by both divines and lawyers.... What matters it whether you believe or not that the Greek books are more accurate than the Latin ones; whether or not greater care was taken to preserve the sacred books in all their integrity by the Greeks than by the Latins;—by the Greeks, forsooth, amongst whom the Christian religion was very often almost overthrown, and who affirmed that none of the gospels were free from errors, excepting the one gospel of John. What matters all this when, to say nothing of anything else, amongst the Latins the Church has continued throughout the inviolate spouse of Christ?... What if it be contended that the sense, as rendered by the Latin version, differs in truth from the Greek text? Then, indeed, adieu to the Greek. I adhere to the Latin because I cannot bring my mind to believe that the Greek are more correct than the Latin codices.
‘But it may be said, Augustine ordered the Latin rivulets to be supplied from the Greek fountain-head. He did so; and wisely in his age, in which neither had any one Latin version been received by the Church as now, nor had the Greek fountain-head become so corrupt as it now seems to be.
A single error would destroy the authority of the Bible.