ment, Erasmus finds fault with the meaning which Budé had given to the Greek word тαрaxoλoυ0ηxótt in the gospel of Luke i. 3. Like all really proficient scholars, Budé acknowledged his mistake, and was so far from being resentful that he even thanked Erasmus for setting him right and proceeded to bring forward further Greek quotations against himself. Together they labored to give a better translation of this verse; and in the second edition Erasmus omitted all reference to Budé's mistake. On the other hand, Budé criticized some of the annotations to the work, something which Erasmus did not relish at all, seeing which, and observing that Erasmus was becoming testy on the subject, Budé, in order to relieve the tension, withdrew his remark about "finespun arguments" as referring to the New Testament, and said that he was only referring to some of Erasmus' minor writings which, he frankly told him, would appear to posterity to have been falsely labeled, inasmuch as they smacked more of Erasmus than of their own title. Erasmus dissented vigorously and went on at great length to free himself from Budé's criticism, eliciting in return from Budé the following remark, which possibly contains considerable truth: "When I have heard others talking of them [your works], I have sometimes said that I missed in Erasmus a mind content with what is enough, since you had not been satisfied with being a man of much learning, but you must also be a man of much writing."

What Budé was alluding to here is not hard to guess. He was referring to the fact that Erasmus had not been satisfied to give an admirable Greek edition of the New Testament, considering his handicaps, and accompanying it with a fairly accurate Latin translation, but had added annotations of his own which might have been valuable for the understanding of the Sacred Text had he stopped there. But, as we have so often seen before, he could not refrain from injecting into these annotations his own personality; and, as a consequence, where we look for serious and dignified comment on the form and spirit of the text, we often find puerile and silly remarks on subjects that can by no stretch of the imagination be connected with a Greek edition of the New Testament. Lest this last statement may seem unwarranted, we will quote Drummond on this same point:

But the notes on the New Testament were by no means confined to questions of textual criticism. There was other matter in them which was sure to give offence, and which might seem to have been introduced on purpose to offend. They were made the vehicle, perhaps to an unwarrantable extent, for conveying the opinions of the writer upon the manners of the time, and especially for uttering sarcastic allusions to the various abuses which prevailed in the Church. In fact, the Encomium Moria was here repeated, only in a somewhat more serious form. And on many points-for example, on the dress of the priests and the ceremonies observed in public worship, on fasts and feasts, on the monastic life, on vows, penance, the worship of relics, on marriage and divorce,-opinions were expressed which, if they were not at variance with the authorized 8 Ibid., 435.

doctrines of the Church, were at all events in direct conflict with popular ideas, and with the teachings and practice of the most zealous upholders of the ecclesiastical system."

It may be assumed we are interested enough to give to Erasmus all the credit for literary achievement that is truly his. Much as we admire Drummond's work on Erasmus for its fine literary flavor, we cannot agree with him in ascribing to Erasmus more praise in the matter of getting out an early edition of the Greek New Testament than his deserts warrant. He asserts that, at the time Erasmus undertook to edit the New Testament in Greek, such was the ignorance of the monks that many of them did not know that there was any Greek or Hebrew original of the accepted Latin Vulgate. Such statements have been repeated from generation to generation by those who are too indolent or too partial to look up the real facts and print them, whether they make for or against their preconceived ideas. We hold no brief for the monks, but these very letters of Erasmus which we are engaged in studying disprove all such general and misleading statements. Of the large body of his friends everywhere, probably the majority were learned monks; and in this very work of the Greek New Testament Drummond must have forgotten about Kuno of Nuremberg, the Dominican monk who assisted Erasmus in the work, and of whom he said that he was "a man eminently reliable and diligent in investigating the matters which pertained to the restoration of authors, and particularly deserving of a long life spent in the service of good literature." Drummond must have forgotten also what Beatus Rhenanus said of Kuno, that "he was almost more learned in Greek than in Latin, and versed in the best authors." 10 Drummond must also have forgotten that it was a Franciscan monk in the person of Cardinal Ximenes who had printed the New Testament in Greek even before Erasmus, although he was not ready to issue the complete Bible until 1522. Froben, the Basle printer, had heard of this coming edition, which was called the Complutensian from being printed at Alcalá in Spain (the Latin name of which is Complutum), and informing Erasmus of the fact, he hastened to anticipate it by issuing that of Erasmus in 1516. The great haste necessary to accomplish this was reflected in the many typographical and other errors with which the first edition of Erasmus' Greek New Testament abounds. The Complutensian Bible was in direct contrast to this, occupying from 1502 to 1517 in its execution, and was the

Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 318-19.

10 Allen has gone to the trouble of seeing what this monk really accomplished, and tells us that "he studied under Aldus and John of Crete at Venice, and under Marcus Musurus and Scipio Carteromachos at Padua. He was sent by Aldus in 1505 to request Maximilian's patronage for the Neacademia. He became an eminent Greek scholar, and in 1507 published at Padua a translation of Basil's De diferentiis obolaç xal dπoorkoews, dedicated to Jodocus Gallus. In 1511, or perhaps earlier, he came to Basle and worked for Amerbach's press, helping with Jerome, and teaching Amerbach's sons Bruno and Boniface, who were joined in August, 1511, by Beatus Rhenanus. He brought a number of Greek MSS. from Italy, and published a translation of Gregory of Nyssa's philosophical works dedicated to Beatus, and an oration of Gregory Nazianzen dedicated to Thomas Truchses, besides an unpublished translation from Chrysostom."

result of the leisurely work of the scholars whom Cardinal Ximenes had assembled in his newly established University of Alcalá. Leo X also gave this edition of the Scriptures his pontifical sanction when it was published in 1522, so between the two editions honors were equal. Ximenes' object in issuing the polyglot Bible was, as he says in his preface, "to revive the languishing study of the Sacred Scriptures.' For this purpose he supplied his workers with the most accurate texts of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin originals then available, even sending to the Vatican library for some of its more ancient codices. His Bible also gives the Chaldaic Targum of the Old Testament, with an interlinear translation of the Greek version. The work was issued in six large volumes, the last volume containing also a Hebrew-Chaldaic dictionary, a Greek dictionary, and a Hebrew grammar. This great man was born in Spain in 1436, and died there in 1517, before he had the pleasure of seeing his monumental work in print. He was educated at the University of Salamanca and, having taken his degree of Doctor in canon and civil law, he went to Rome to practice his profession at the pontifical court. We note, in passing, the coincidence that another Spaniard was a prominent member of the Roman Curia at that particular period who was destined to bring eternal shame and reproach on the Church, of which he was later the unworthy head when he became Pope Alexander VI. Nevertheless, we may properly doubt that Rome was the sink of iniquity that some writers unctuously delight to enlarge upon. One man alone could darken the perspective of an entire century if he happened to be Pope, and that is what happened in the case of Alexander VI. Ximenes left Rome and went back to Spain, not to rail at the corruption which existed at the Roman court, but to enter a Franciscan monastery. There his piety, his love of learning, and his executive ability, were such that he was promoted from office to office in the Church, until at last he was advanced to the dignity of the cardinalate. He was loath to leave his humble cell and only under compulsion did he accept office at all. He was once reprehended by the Pope for dispensing with the external trappings of his cardinalitial rank, but would only consent to wear even the episcopal dress in such a way that the friar's habit underneath might remain visible. This is in such strong contrast to Erasmus that we feel it worthy of mention. Erasmus' action in the matter of his habit vividly reminds us of Jovinian, and Jovinian must have been well know to him, since it is St. Jerome who has handed down the anecdote. Jovinian had spent his youth in a monastery, where he had subjected his body to fasting, manual labor, and other ascetic practices; but, having lost his pristine fervor, he went to the other extreme, becoming a freethinker and eventually adopting the heresy of Helvidius. He left his monastery and went to Rome, where he tried to spread his peculiar ideas. These may be reduced to four, of which the last was Erasmus' favorite belief, viz., that abstinence from certain meats is unprofitable. Jovinian became decidedly sensual in his way of living, and, throwing off his monk's habit, clothed himself in the finest of garments, ate sumptuously, and drank only delicate wines. We draw no comparisons amongst these three men, Erasmus, Jovinian, and

Ximenes; but the thought occurs to us that self-sacrifice is instinctive in us in all ages, creeds, and nations, as an expression of love for God, and that it is the lovers of sacrifice and not the lovers of delicate food and purple raiment who have accomplished whatever has been worth while in behalf of Christianity.

But it was not Christian scholars alone who had become interested in printing the Bible in its original tongues; for we see that the Jews also took advantage of the printing art to commit to cold and unvarying type the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The first essay on their part was in 1477, but this embraced only a small portion of the Pentateuch. In 1488, however, they printed the entire text of all their received writings, and in a manner both thorough and creditable to their scholarship.

Hence we see that, contrary to the usual opinion, the ever-increasing attention which was being given to biblical studies was due entirely to the newly awakened desire for learning which had seized on the higher classes and which we call the Renaissance, and was not due to the Reformation, since Luther had not yet appeared on the scene. And to the printing-press must consequently be attributed this new interest in biblical study which entered in and underlay all the translations of the Sacred Scriptures which illustrated the sixteenth century. It is also a very general impression that Luther first translated the Bible into any modern language, but this impression is ill founded; for we find translations of the Sacred Scriptures into German, French, Dutch, Italian, and Bohemian, and all these translations made by writers before the year 1500, some of them before he was born, and the latest of them while he was yet a boy at Eisenach. So the statement of Drummond that "those who were interested in religion cared very little for learning, while most of those who were interested in learning cared not at all for religion," will not bear the scrutiny of modern investigation.11

Drummond gives some amusing instances of the inaccuracies of Erasmus in his New Testament, many of them being real blunders. A perusal of the work shows this to be very true; but we do not think this a very serious charge to be made against him as he was only human and corrected most of them in succeeding editions. However, what we cannot acquit him of is that, while admitting his errors generally, he defended them individually to the bitter end, and, in doing this, often used language that was, to say the least, undignified. Another peculiarity of his in the matter was to gauge the asperity of his retorts by the standing and reputation for scholarship of his antagonist. Thus to Budé or Faber Stapulensis he was gentleness itself, but woe betide the man of lesser reputation such as Lee or Stunica; there was no arrow in his well-filled quiver sufficiently piercing for such men.

Had he been content to write his New Testament from a purely scholarly point of view, we had been content to judge it from that same point of view. It would have been easy for him to do this, and the work would then have redounded to his eternal honor; but he allowed his prejudices to overrule his judgment. This was his fatal error, for, 11Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 309.

in yielding to his hatred of monks and theologians, he recklessly removed his work from the domain of accurate scholarship where it properly belonged, to that of empty but angry polemics, where nothing but enmity was to be gained. And the wonder is, not that he made enemies by his attacks, but that there were left any of the monks or theologians who, for the sake of good scholarship, would forgive him his cutting aspersions on their class. But the number of such is surprising, when we take into account the littleness of human nature in general and the fact that Erasmus had no high rank either of birth, character, or station to warrant his assumption of the position of censor morum of his brethren. In the circumstances it was rash temerity on his part to anger them by flinging broadcast the epithets with which he loved to characterize them, and which hurt the more by reason of the modicum of truth they contained. It is true that there were ignorant monks; it is true there were badly equipped theologians; it is true there were followers of the scholastic philosophy who sometimes busied themselves with problems that were absurd and undignified; but all monks were not ignorant, all theologians were not uneducated, all followers of the scholastic system were not triflers, any more than all the lawyers, doctors, judges, preachers, teachers, and the various classes of men and women whom he caricatured in the Praise of Folly were the unnatural types he delighted to portray. If then Érasmus, not carelessly, but with set purpose, wounded the amour propre of such people by statements which were not only not true but were especially meant to wound, he could not rightly complain when they resented his ridicule with every possible means in their power. And now in the New Testament he had not only repeated the degrading and contemptuous epithets so noticeable in the Praise of Folly, but had furnished in this work a surer and more deadly weapon of offense; and at the same time that he had assailed them more publicly in his annotations to the New Testament, he laid himself open to their more or less justly aroused anger. In offering this great work to the world he had uncovered all his batteries and had shown those whom his indiscretion had alienated how to strike him in the most vital spot. The faults which he pointed out in the Vulgate, instead of serving some useful purpose, only created suspicion of his own orthodoxy, not because they held to a belief in the absolute inspiration of every word in the Latin Vulgate, as has often been charged, but because that version of the Scriptures had been accepted and reverenced as the official version of the Church for so many centuries. Thus the criticisms leveled against his version, while not perhaps always logical, were still very natural; for at a time when very few scholars could read Greek it need not surprise us that most men, whether of the clergy or the laity, preferred to cling to the version hallowed by time and consecrated by Church usage rather than to adopt the very first translation that might be offered to them. As a consequence, when they saw what they considered to be attacks on the integrity of the Bible made by this irreverent and iconoclastic Dutchman, they defended it with reason, and sometimes without reason, for to them it was a case of "fearing the Greeks bearing gifts."