Reuchlin.

1

315

devoted himself to the study of languages with the express object of elucidating the Scriptures. In one characteristic sentence he gives us the secret of his great services: “Novum Testamentum graece lego, Vetus hebraice, in cujus expositione malo confidere meo quam alterius ingenio." At great cost, ever spending upon learning what he had gained by teaching, he acquired a knowledge of Hebrew from Jacob Jehiel Loans, and is said to have once paid ten gold pieces to a Jew for the explanation of a single phrase. Although his Rudimenta Linguae Hebraicae was preceded by the imperfect book of Pellican, he had a right to conclude it with the verse, "Exegi monumentum acre perennius." So great in that age was the ignorance of Hebrew, that he had to begin by a full and emphatic notice that Hebrew is read from right to left.3 His grammar was mostly derived from David Qimchi, but in the commentary on the seven penitential psalms he also consulted the works of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Saadia, Maimonides, Levi Ben Gerson, and the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos. He. frequently corrects the Vulgate in favour of the Hebraica Veritas. It is to be regretted that he should have wasted so much time over the delusions of Kabbalism, 5 and this had the further ill effect of exposing him to the fury of the priests, theologians, Dominicans, and Inquisitors. They were already suspicious of one who studied the language of the Old Testament, which they stupidly denounced as an accursed tongue. When Reuchlin lectured on it at Heidelberg he had to do so secretly. The collision with Pfefferkorn and Hoog

6

4

1 Beard, p. 43; see Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, 1871. Chairs for Oriental languages, with a view to missionary work, had been formed in 1311, but till Reuchlin's time they had not produced much fruit.

Universalem stipem quam discendo impendi, docendo acquisivi” Praef. (ad fratrem). His desire to find the literal sense is emphasised in his De Accentibus.

The first edition was published at Pforzheim in 1506.

When reproved for doing so he replied, "Quamquam Hieronynum veneror ut angelum et Lyram colo ut magistrum, tamen . . . veritatem adoro ut Deum" (Praef. Rudim. Hebr. lib. iii.).

De Verbo Mirifico, 1495; De Arte Kabbalistica, 1515. Erasmus wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz, "Cabbala et Thalmud, quidquid hoc est, meo animo nunquam arrisit" (Ep. 477). Luther spoke of his Jewish Alfanzerei.

Pfefferkorn, an apostate Jew, wanted to have the copies of the Talmud searched out and burnt. The Talmud has been almost as much persecuted as

straten embittered Reuchlin's declining years, which he might have spent so happily among his white peacocks in the peaceful retirement of Stuttgart. But this quarrel opened men's eyes to the presumptuous ignorance of a clergy who still claimed for their opinions an infallible authority. Even the coarse satire of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum emphasised the general conviction that the coming struggle between the Reformers and the Papacy was a struggle of knowledge against ignorance, of light against darkness, of freedom against a servility which was at once degrading and intolerable to the awakening conscience of mankind.1

4. But more than any man except Luther it was DESIDERIUS ERASMUS of Rotterdam, who in widening the knowledge of Scripture advanced the cause of the Reformation. In the person of this brilliant humanist and admirable theologian Greece rose from the dead with the New Testament in her hand." There is no one whose writings show a more distinct and decided emancipation from untenable traditions. His editio princeps of the New Testament (1516) "formed a great epoch in the history of Western Christendom, and was a gift of incalculable value to the Church." It was to it that the English martyr Bilney owed his conversion. Tyndale and Coverdale used it as well as Luther. It was from Erasmus that Tyndale borrowed his immortal answer to the theologian who had said, "We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's;" that "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plough to know more of Scripture than thou dost." For the Jews. Justinian condemned it in 533; it was burnt in 1244 and 1288; Julius III. in 1555; Paul IV. in 1559; Pius V. in 1566; Clement VIII. in 1599. In 1307 Clement V. had shown greater wisdom by founding professorships of Oriental languages in Paris, Salamanca, Bologna, and Oxford, in order to learn what the Talmud really was (Constt. Clementis V. in Conc. Viennensi, p. 277). Reuchlin said that to burn the book was a mere Bacchanten-argument. "On brûlait le Talmud et quelquefois le Juif avec le Talmud " (Vict. le Clerc, Disc. sur l'Hist. Lit. de France).

There was a story current, and by no means impossible, of a priest who thought that Greek and the New Testament were two recent heresies.

2 See Westcott, Hist. of Eng. Bible, pp. 26, 140, 203-205. By an order in Council in 1547, every English parish church was bound to have a copy of his Paraphrases (Hallam, Lit. of Eur. i. 373; Milman, Lat. Christianity, vi. 439).

Services of Erasmus.

317

in direct opposition to the prevailing hierarchical sentiment, in an age when even Luther could grow up to the age of twenty-six without having read a complete Bible, Erasmus had proclaimed the privilege of even the unlearned to read for themselves the messages of a Gospel which was proclaimed to Scythians, and slaves, and peasants, and women, no less than to Greeks and kings. 1 He had assailed immemorial custom in deploring the fact that “men and women chattered like parrots the Psalms and prayers which they did not understand." He had expressed the wish to see Christ honoured in all languages, to hear the Psalms sung by the labourer at the plough, and the Gospel read to poor women as they sat spinning at the wheel. "I should prefer," he said, "to hear young maidens talking about Christ than some who in the opinion of the vulgar are consummate Rabbis"; and he could claim it as the glorious result of his labours that "the veil of the Temple has now been rent in twain, and it is no longer a single High Priest who can enter into the Holy of Holies."2

reject the taunt of answer that in truth ability, the brilliancy

Erasmus had some right, then, to Stunica, Erasmus lutherissat, and to Lutherus erasmissat. The fame of his of his wit, the force of his learning, the vivacity and manliness of his Latin style, the mordant humour of his attacks upon a purblind yet autocratic theology, rendered the subsequent work of Luther more easy, and paved the way for the wide and immediate acceptance of his German Bible. Though Erasmus edited many of the Fathers 3 he helped to break down the extravagant belief in their authority. He freely and forcibly exposes the mistakes and ignorance of the

1 Praef. in Paraphr. Matth. How rapidly and thoroughly his hopes were fulfilled may be seen by the complaint of Cochlaeus (De Act. et Script. M. Lutheri, ad ann. 1522), that even cobblers and women, quilibet idiotae, knew the New Testament by heart, and carried it in their pockets.

2 The Complutensian Polyglot was printed in 1514, but not published till 1520. The second edition of Erasmus's New Testament was published in 1518. In later editions (1522, 1527, 1535) he consulted the Complutensian. 3 Irenaeus, Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom and others.

4

Schoolmen.1 The Dominicans would allow no dissent from the decisions of Thomas Aquinas or Hugo of St. Cher; the Franciscans gave implicit allegiance to Nicolas of Lyra; the Augustinians were indignant if any man departed a hairsbreadth from the interpretation of St. Augustine. Erasmus does not hesitate to point out that Peter Lombard 2 and Aquinas made serious mistakes; that Hugo of St. Cher was full of grotesque misinterpretations; that even Augustine had left much to be done, and that no great teacher had ever claimed the authority which was then accorded to writings which were but human and full of glaring imperfections. 5 Nor is this all. He expressly repudiates the exegetic infallibility not only of the Pope but even of Churches. He never hesitates to reject a so-called "Scripture proof" when it seemed to him to be misapplied or untenable, nor to retain a Scripture phrase even though it might seem liable to abuse. His philological merits were of a high order, and his notes on many of the rarer words and phrases in the Greek Testament, may still be read with advantage. He sets aside theological quibbles and scholastic subtleties with the brief remark quae supra nos nihil ad nos, and his comments on "the commandments of men," on sacerdotal Pharisaism, on marriage dispensations, on the spirituality of true religion,

8

1 Pope expresses the popular view about Erasmus in the lines,

"At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
(The glory of the Priesthood and the shame,)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age
And drove the holy Vandals off the stage.'

7

2 See his note on the pudendus lapsus of the Master of the Sentences (Tapadeiyuarioai- rem habere cum sponsa) in Matt. i. 19 (see his notes on Rom. i. 4; 1 Cor. i. 10; 1 Cor. vii. 42; 1 Tim. ii. 21, v. 18, &c.).

3 He blames the confidence with which Aquinas "spoke of things which he did not understand" (see notes on 1 Cor. xiv. 11; Heb. xi. 37). Colet's disapproval joined to study of the Summa weakened Erasmus's original estimate of Aquinas. See Seebohm, Orf. Reformers, p. 110.

See his notes on Matt. v. 16, xix. 12; John v. 2; Acts xxvii. 12; 1 Tim. i. 18; 2 Tim. iii. 2 ; Tit. i. 7; 1 Pet. ii. 24.

5 Annott. in Luke ii. 35, 1 Tim. i. 7. On John v. 2, he says, "Eatenus debetur sanctis viris reverentia, ut siquid errarint, nam errant et sancti, citra personae contumeliam veritati patrocinemur.'

6 Annott in 1 Cor. vii. 39; 2 Cor. x. 8; 1 Tim. i. 7.

7 See on Matt. ii. 5; Rom. v. 12; Phil. ii. 6; 1 Tim. i. 17; 1 John v. 7, 20. 8 See his note on Matt. xxiv. 36.

on monkish divisions, on religious mendicancy, and on the non-existence of any earthly infallibility, were all contributions to the emancipation of the Church from the tyrannous burdens and false traditions of the days in which his lot

was cast.

In all this Erasmus showed a courage which, though it cost something in his as in every age, is often the best service. which any man can render to his own generation. It has been the fashion to sneer at his supposed timidity in not throwing himself heart and soul into the work of Luther.1 But the natures of Luther and Erasmus were antipathetic. Erasmus felt a constitutional dislike of Luther's methods, as well as a theological repulsion from many of his opinions.2 Personally he was shocked by Luther's roughness; intellectually he could attach no meaning to his chief watchword. Doubtless he was not wholly free from the feeling of selfinterest and the desire to avoid conflict. Luther charged him with wishing to walk upon eggs without crushing them, and among glasses without breaking them. But he never allowed these weaknesses to show themselves in the region of his most sincere convictions. It must not be forgotten that he willingly braved the intense hatred of a powerful and unscrupulous majority. Many a sermon was directed against him in his lifetime by enraged obscurantists, who, as is common with that class, had not even read the books which they so vehemently denounced. On one occasion, in his presence, a Carmelite preacher, in the violet hood and cap of a doctor, charged him with two out of the three sins against the Holy Ghost; namely, presumption, for having ventured to correct the Magnificat and the Lord's Prayer;—and the impugning of recognised truth, because, after hearing two preachers

1 He bravely took Luther's part for some time (Ep. 513), as even Luther admitted (De Wette, i. 241, 396.) Erasmus urged his schoolfellow Pope Adrian VI. to mildness and concessions, and he says, "Romae me faciunt Lutheranum," Ep. 667.

2 "Videor mihi fere omnia docuisse quae docet Lutherus, nisi quod non tam atrociter, quodque abstinui et quibusdam aenigmatibus et parodoxis.” Erasmus to Zwingli (Milman, Essays, p. 127).

3 See Ep. 417 (ad Campegium), A D. 1519.