Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

The former, in dealing in his “Annales” with the year 1528, complains of the effect on the religious world of the sceptical and critical manner of his contemporary. “Wherever Erasmus had expressed a wish, or even merely conveyed a hint, there Luther has broken in with all his might.”[719] He is here referring to the strictures contained in the Annotations of Erasmus on the New Testament, in particular on Math. xi., upon the fasts and feasts, marriage laws and practice of confession, on the heavy burden of prayers, the number of Decretals and the endless ceremonial rules.

The other, Peter Canisius, speaks of Erasmus in the Preface to his edition of the Letters of St. Jerome. He says that Erasmus is distinguished by the “fluency and richness of his literary style” and his “rare and admirable eloquence.” In polite literature he had undoubtedly done good service, but he should either have refrained from meddling with theology or have treated it with more reserve and fairness. No one before him had ventured to censure the Fathers, the Schoolmen and the theologians in so severe and overbearing a fashion, nor was one to be found more touchy when contradicted. “He has carried this so far that he is now made as little of in the Catholic as in the opposite camp. In his writings he paid more attention to the form than to the matter.” The following sentence is worthy of attention: “I know not by what spirit he was really led, for he dealt with the Church’s doctrine according to the theology of Pyrrhus [the sceptic].”[720]

What, we may ask in this connection, was the origin of the saying which became later so widely current: “Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched”?

It is first alluded to by Erasmus himself in 1523, where he informs a friend that this had been said of him by certain Franciscans; he adds, that he had indeed laid a hen’s egg, but that Luther had hatched out quite a different nestling.[721] In 1534 he speaks more definitely of the German Franciscans as the purveyors of this saying, and in particular of the Cismontane commissioner of the Order, Nicholas Herborn, who with the assistance of other Friars had caused a volume of sermons to be printed at Antwerp in which appeared “the favourite asseveration of the brethren,” viz.: “Erasmus is Luther’s father; he laid the eggs and Luther hatched out the chicks; Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Erasmus are the soldiers of Pilate who crucified Jesus.”[722]

Similar utterances were indeed current in Catholic circles. Canisius mentions that he had frequently heard a saying which agrees with the words in Leib: “Ubi Erasmus innuit, illic Lutherus irruit,”[723] and might be rendered: Where Erasmus merely indicated, Luther violently eradicated. So general was the feeling that the head of the Humanists had really paved the way for Luther’s action.

As we have frequently pointed out, Luther’s speedy and unhoped-for success is altogether inexplicable, unless his way had been prepared beforehand by others, and that particular kind of Humanism which Erasmus had been largely instrumental in furthering cannot but be regarded as one of the causes which contributed to the spread of Lutheranism.

It is true that Humanism in some regards presented an inspiring and attractive spectacle. The revival of classical learning, the union of which with Christian truth had been the original aim both of the Humanists and of the Church, who had encouraged them; the idea of liberty and of the rights of the individual; the criticism and revision of ecclesiastical studies; all this, within due limits, seemed to presage a spring-tide in the development of the Christian nations at the close of the Middle Ages. The sanguine dreamt of a happy amalgamation of the ancient faith with the new culture of an age which was striving mightily upwards in all that concerned citizenship. Yet even enthusiastic patrons of the Christian Humanism of the day could not praise all the ideas current among those of its representatives who looked up to Erasmus; in such quarters many were the grievances raised against the Church, it being urged that religion had been corrupted, and that a purer Christianity should be established on the model of the earlier ages, and minus the mediæval errors. Ideas such as these were distinctly revolutionary, especially when they had taken root in the heads of the masses in an even worse form. “It cannot as a matter of fact be denied,” says the French Academician P. Imbart de la Tour, “that the Humanists by their mode of criticising, accelerated the gathering of the revolutionary storm-clouds of the sixteenth century.”[724]

It was in the nature of an expiation that, along with Erasmus, many like-minded Humanists, following the example of their leader, deserted Luther’s cause, as soon as the air had been cleared by the master’s work against Luther and the denial of free-will. At the head of the German Humanists, Mutian, now an old man, welcomed the defence of free-will embodied in the “Diatribe.”[725] Zasius and Crotus, like Pirkheimer, returned to the Church. Others, especially those of Erfurt, were not to be separated from Luther, such were Justus Jonas, Johann Lang, Adam Kraft, Euricius Cordus, Draconites, Camerarius, Menius and Eobanus Hessus, who, however, wavered long.[726]