The University of Paris is by the consent of the whole world the first of all universities; one may with reason call it the citadel of the Christian religion; hence it ought not to be allowed to anyone to assail its dignity in any manner whatsoever; and I will pay less attention in this apology to defending my unjustly attacked innocence than I will take care not to advance anything which might injure the authority of the Sorbonne.

15

Then he says that he appeals from the Sorbonne asleep to the Sorbonne awake, and proceeds to show how much he is in accord with that institution and that, where he does not seem to be in perfect agreement, it is due solely to misapprehension of his meaning. Occasionally he does admit that he has not spoken with exactness, but insists that he is entirely subject to the Church in all his words and acts. This was his final attitude towards the Sorbonne in the matter, and here we shall leave the subject, saying, however, that time has justified Erasmus in some of the contentions for which the Sorbonne condemned him, while, on the other hand, time has affirmed the judgment of that body on the main points of their censure. It will be sufficient justification in the reader's mind, for both Erasmus and the Sorbonne, to recall the fact that all these disputes took place long before the Council of Trent had formally defined such matters, for since that Council has fixed the tenets of Catholic belief it is no longer either permissible or useful to speculate on what are now articles of faith. The Church, regarded as merely a human institution, has the right to define the terms under which it will admit to its membership; and those who find such terms irksome are free to seek elsewhere for the spiritual consolation which she affords. Thus Erasmus has this justification for some of the errors with which he was charged, namely, that in his day the Church had not publicly, officially, and formally defined them. All that can be said on the subject is that he manifested bad judgment in speaking and writing contrary to the common sentiment which had become venerable by age and revered by tradition. In all times of religious action and reaction suspicion is very rife, optimism gives way to pessimism, doubt is easily engendered and the uneducated multitude wrested from their moorings. It was for the multitude that Lee, Stunica, Caranza, Sutor, Bedda, Alberto Pio, and most of the other antagonists of Erasmus, were solicitous, while Erasmus appealed to the fewer but more erudite members of the Church. Mistakes were made by both sides, as is usual in controversy; but, if we can acquit both sides of insincerity, their errors ought not now to count against them. The duty of deciding on that point we will leave to the reader.

Poor Bedda! Almost all we know of him has been told us by his enemies, and consequently needs to be discounted. We have already seen what a picture of him Erasmus has handed down in his anger. Following his lead, Rabelais, who does not seem to have had any personal acquaintance with him, exposed him to eternal ridicule by attributing to him the authorship of a work on the excellence of tripe, in 15 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 248.

16

allusion to a trait sought to be fastened on him by others of his enemies that he was a gourmand.' If he was overzealous and indiscreet at times, so also were Luther and Erasmus; but whereas these latter always looked for support and encouragement to kings and potentates, at times even shutting their eyes to glaring faults in their protectors, Bedda, on the contrary, did not fear to upbraid, with more sincerity than discretion, his hereditary sovereign, Francis I, for being too lax with the heretics of his kingdom, for which assurance he was sent into exile. His real justification lies in the fact that just at that moment the works of Erasmus were enjoying a sudden and widespread popularity in France, and among them were the Praise of Folly and the Colloquies, which had been republished there recently. These two books, containing, as we know, things of doubtful morality and execrable taste, were the proximate occasions for Bedda's zeal; and, from what we have already seen of them, justified his animosity, if not his lack of discretion. The Faculty of the University saw things much as Bedda did, or he could not have had so much influence over them; so it was a great triumph for Bedda and an equally great defeat for Erasmus that, on May 15, 1526, the Faculty proceeded formally to prohibit the reading of the Colloquies, especially to the young, because of the "erroneous, scandalous, and impious propositions contained in the book entitled Familiar Colloquies, by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, in the year of our Lord 1526, in which work the author, as though he were a pagan, ridicules, satirizes, and sneers at the Christian religion and its holy ceremonies and observances, tears them to shreds, and decrees that they must be changed." It is probable that Bedda was much similar in disposition and temperament to Erasmus, and could not endure criticism with equanimity. We are not sure that the colloquy 'Ix0uoparía appeared in the first edition of the Colloquies published in Paris in 1518, or in that published in 1522, but it was certainly in the one published at Paris in 1526. This colloquy, treating as it does of the daily life, food, etc., in the College of Montaigu, must have given terrible offense to Bedda, who had been recently the principal of that institution; and hence we can attribute some of his rancor for Erasmus to other more natural causes than pure fanaticism. Erasmus used the Colloquies to ridicule, attack, revile, excoriate, depreciate, and in every way to villify those who had the misfortune to displease him. It was a terrible engine of vengeance in his hands; and, if anyone is curious enough, let him observe in the Colloquies how Erasmus glutted his ire on Hutten by pillorying him as the braggart warrior in his The Soldier and the Carthusian; how he treated the kindly and courteous Andreas d'Asola by misrepresenting him in The Wealthy Miser; how he maligned Francis d'Hasselt and applied to him the filthy epithet of Merdardus.18 As for the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, we have the testimony of Erasmus' friend J. Louis Vives as to its quality, since he said in a letter to Erasmus:

17

16 See an article by E. H. Vollehin, La Grande Encyclopedie, in loco. 17 LB, Vol. IX, col. 929.

18 Almost every one of the characters ridiculed in the Colloquies is capable of identification, if one is curious enough to take the trouble.

It would take too long to tell you how they honored me out of the opinion they held of my talents. Not only do the heads of the nobility regard learning as proper for their rank and station, and cultivate it, leaving sordid things to the base, but the theologians of the University are especially noteworthy in that respect. You would hardly believe how frank they are, and how much better they interpret everything than many whom you know. It grieves them to be ignorant of anything, but they display no envy towards those who are well informed, and even encourage those who teach. ... If anyone brings before the Sorbonne a proposition woven out of airy figments, forthwith the assembly frowns and objects, and with hisses and clacking drives him from the conference.' 1o Eras. Ep. 1108, 11. 42-9, 73-6.

CHAPTER XVIII

LAST LETTER TO LUTHER; SOME WORKS OF ERASMUS IN SPAIN

In spinning the thread of the controversy between Erasmus and Bedda we have again been forced to anticipate, so we will now go back to the beginning of 1526, at which time Luther once more wrote him a letter, half jocose and half serious, in which he tried to soften the harshness of some of his utterances consequent on their clash over freewill. He had been very abusive towards Erasmus in the De seruo arbitrio, but he wrote just as he felt towards him. His favorite epithet for him was "that viper." Writing of Erasmus to Nicholas Hausmann in January of this year, he says:

That viper shall feel that his main arguments have been reached and attacked by me, nor shall it be made pleasant for him by any gentleness on my part. God grant that I am mistaken, but I know the disposition of the man, and that he will be an instrument of Satan unless God shall change him.1

There could be no possible approximation between two such men, the one grievously hurt in his intellectual pride, the other disappointed in his not unwarranted hope of assistance and encouragement. Luther had intimated that Erasmus was not a sincere Christian, and the latter resented it. In return he hinted that Luther was a hypocrite because, while he was proclaiming that he was a poor weak sinner, he was demanding that the whole world should do him honor. We shall here give Erasmus' reply to this last letter of Luther, since it will show better than any words of ours how matters stood between them:

Your letter reached me too late, but even had it arrived promptly it would not have moved me in the least. I am not of such a childish disposition that, after being subjected to such supreme insults, I can be amused by a couple of jokes, or softened with caressing flattery. The world has long known your character, but you have so tempered your pen that never hitherto have you written anything against any man so savagely or-what is far more detestable-more maliciously. It has occurred to you, forsooth, that you are a weak sinner, although elsewhere you all but demand to be regarded as God. You are a man, so you write, that is endowed with a vehement disposition, and you delight in a subject so remarkable. Why then did you not pour out your wonderful invective long since on the Bishop of Rochester, or Cochleus? both of whom inveigh against you by name, and burden you with reproaches, while my 1 De Wette, Luthers Briefe, Vol. III, p. 87.

Diatribe was only a courteous disputation. In such a discussion what need was there for so many scurrilous remarks, and so many wicked lies to the effect that I was an atheist, an Epicurean, and a sceptic in everything pertaining to the profession of a Christian; that I was a blasphemer and what not, in addition to other things. which you concealed? But I bear such things all the more patiently in that my conscience pricks me not in the slightest degree with regard to any one of those charges. If I did not feel as a Christian man should, concerning God and Holy Writ, I would not wish my life to be prolonged even unto to-morrow. If you had stated your case with your usual vehemence but had dispensed with your furious abuse, you would have provoked the enmity of fewer people; now it has gratified your feelings to occupy more than a third of your volume in satisfying your grudge. What a contrast in this respect you are to me is clearly shown by the fact that, while you charge me with so many open offenses, my Diatribe did not even touch on the things which all the world is aware of.

I suppose you think that Erasmus has no defenders, but there are more than you guess. Now it matters not at all what happens to us two, or at least to me who must die in a short time, even though the universal world applaud us, but this annoys every good man as well as myself that, by reason of that arrogant, shameless, and seditious disposition of yours, you disturb the whole world by your destructive dissension, that you expose good men, lovers of learning, to a few mad Pharisees, that you furnish equipment for those of abandoned and rebellious lives to indulge in riot, and, in a word, that you so treat the cause of the Gospel that you turn all things, whether sacred or profane, into turmoil, as if it were your especial wish that this tempest should not at length have a fortunate end, a thing for which I have ever striven. What obligation you are under to me, and what return you have made me, I will not touch on, for, whatever that is, it is a private matter. It is the public calamity and the irremediable confusion of everything that distresses me, and this we owe to nothing else than your ungovernable disposition, which cannot be guided by those who give you good advice, but yields readily to any and every clever trickster. I know not who such people are whom you have dragged up from the powers of darkness; but it is against those ungrateful wretches that you ought to sharpen your pen rather than against my kindly disputation. I would wish for you a better state of mind did not your present one delight you so much. You may wish for me anything you like, your state of mind excepted, unless the Lord shall change it for you. Basle, April, 1526.*

This was very tart and not at all the sort of thing which would please Luther; so, from this time on, all measures of conciliation, or even of accommodation, were out of the question. Whether intentionally or not, Luther had the advantage over Erasmus of keeping him on the Eras. Ep. 1688.