Main object to be learned from its prefaces.
Now a careful examination of these prefaces cannot fail to establish the identity of the purpose of Erasmus in publishing the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ with that which had induced Colet, nearly twenty years before, to commence his lectures at Oxford.
During those twenty years the divergence between the two great rival schools of thought had become wider and wider.
The Italian school.
The intellectual tendencies of the philosophic school in Italy had become more and more decidedly sceptical. The meteor lights of Savonarola, Pico, and Ficino had blazed across the sky and vanished. The star of semi-pagan philosophy was in the ascendant, and shed its cold light upon the intellect of Italy.
Leo X. was indeed a great improvement upon Alexander VI. and Julius II.—of this there could be no doubt. Instead of the gross sensuality of the former and the warlike passions of the latter, what Ranke has well designated ‘a sort of intellectual sensualism,’ now reigned in the Papal court. Erasmus had indeed entertained bright hopes of Leo X. He had declared himself in favour of a peaceful policy; he was, too, an enemy to the blind bigotry of the Schoolmen. Nor does he seem to have been openly irreligious. His choice of Sadolet as one of his secretaries was not like the act of a man who himself would scoff at the Christian faith; though, on the other hand, this enlightened Christian was unequally yoked in the office with the philosophical and worldly Bembo. Under former Popes the fear of Erasmus had been ‘lest Rome should degenerate into Babylon.’ He hoped now that, under Leo X., ‘the tempest of war being hushed, both letters and religion might be seen flourishing at Rome.’[519]
Its sceptical tendencies.
At the same time he was not blind to the sceptical tendencies of the Italian schools. Thus whilst in a letter written not long after this period, expressing his faith in the ‘revival of letters,’ and his belief that the ‘authority of the Scriptures will not in the long run be lessened by their being read and understood correctly instead of incorrectly’—whilst thus, in fact, taking a hopeful view of the future—we yet find him confessing to a fear, ‘lest, under the pretext of the revival of ancient literature, Paganism should again endeavour to rear its head.’[520] The atmosphere of the Papal Court was indeed far more semi-pagan than Christian. With the revival of classical literature it was natural that there should be a revival of classical taste. And just as the mediæval church of St. Peter was demolished to make room for a classical temple, so it was the fashion in high society at Rome to profess belief in the philosophy of Pliny and Aristotle and to scoff at the Christian faith.[521]
The extent to which anti-Christian and sceptical tendencies were carried in the direction of speculative philosophy was shown by the publication in this very year, 1516, by Pomponatius, whom Ranke speaks of as ‘the most distinguished philosopher of the day,’[522] of a work in which he denied the immortality of the soul.[523] This philosopher was, in the words of Hallam, ‘the most renowned professor of the school of Padua, which for more than a century was the focus of atheism in Italy.’[524]
The Italian school Machiavellian in its politics.