CHAPTER XII

THE STORM INCREASES: ANOMALOUS POSITION OF ERASMUS

As if to atone for the comfort he had given Luther's friends by these "axioms," Erasmus now seemed to react vigorously against him; and we are not surprised to see him consorting even with the hated Dominicans, so eager is he to avert from himself any suspicion of disloyalty to the Church. Let us read a little of his letter to Conrad Peutinger, a fellow Imperial Councilor, and also a close friend of Luther:

I was aware that you have very little time for reading anybody's letters, honored sir, nor have I myself much more time for writing any; but I am induced thereto by John Faber, a theologian of the Dominican Order, whom the more I observe the more I find to be a man far different from some others of his Order. For, besides his solid learning, his integrity of character, and his gentlemanly demeanor, I find him to be a man of great influence on account of his wisdom and good judgment. Frequently have we discussed between ourselves a method of putting an end to this tragedy of Luther without causing widespread tumult. . . . That affair has gone to greater lengths than I like, but I think the evil can still be remedied, and certainly it will be more amenable to cure than if it be any longer drawn out by additions to those by whom it was begun. I very much desire to see it remedied, lest the evil, which has been suppressed for a time, may break out again with greater virulence hereafter, as is wont to be the case with doctors, who drive away a fever with a draft without previously having purged the parts from which the fever originated, or who allow a wound to close without having sufficiently evacuated the pus. To some it would seem that it were best to quell the whole difficulty by violent measures, and from this Faber does not much dissent, only that he fears that severity might not be successful. He says that it is not enough to strive vigorously in the direction whither our desires invite us, but that many things are to be well considered. First, we must have such regard for the dignity and authority of the Roman Pontiff, whom all who love sincerely Christ rightly revere as His Supreme Vicar, so that the truth of the Gospel may suffer no loss. Nor do I doubt that it is the desire of our Leo at length to consider himself happy when he shall everywhere behold the teaching of his Leader flourishing. He [Faber] claims that what Luther deserves, or those who are his admirers, is not the sole consideration, but rather what is conducive to the restoration of public tranquillity. Who will put their hands to work against this evil, and with what

remedies will they cure it, is of great importance. Some people are mixing themselves in this matter who render the evil twice as bad by their foolish overzealousness, having regard not so much for the Pope's authority as for their own interests. In a word, they so behave that they injure literature and the languages quite as much as they harm Luther. . . . I perceive that the affair has been treated hitherto in a manner not at all to the liking of prudent men. Even if Luther had written nothing but what was true, yet he has written it in such a way as to make one think he grudged the truth its due. On the other hand, those who have opposed him have so conducted the matter publicly that, even if they had the very best cause, they would have harmed it by their injudicious patronage. Luther has been admonished to stop writing and to moderate his violence; but I hear that he is every day writing more savagely. Some have been advised to conduct the affair with more moderate measures, while others have so acted that they seem to be in collusion with Luther. . . It is not for such as I am to form a judgment about the Bulls of Pontiffs; but there are some who looked for that gentleness in the Bull which the papal legate has brought with him, worthy of the one who wields on earth the offices of a most tender Christ, and worthy of the mind of Leo himself, who has hitherto been most indulgent. However, they do not blame this on him, but on those who are his instigators. "Now even if," he [Faber] says, "the works of Luther were entirely extirpated by this savage method, and that even he himself were put out of the way, it is still to be feared that the trouble might be aggravated rather than ended; and for each one put away many might arise, so that the matter would terminate in conflict and schism." Briefly, this tempest requires some special means which will moderate the course of the affair, so that it will neither be overwhelmed by the waves, nor dashed to pieces on some rocky shore; and so that, as they say, while avoiding Scylla, it may not be hurled on Charybdis, but so cut the evil in two that this serpent may not be again able to revive. Therefore our Faber thinks that the entire matter ought to be left in the hands of judges who are learned, upright, and above suspicion; not that the Roman Pontiff is to be humbled and subjected to the judgment of anyone else, but that he [the Pope] will deem it an act of piety on the part of any man who is willing to fill such an office, after he has recognized that it will be conducive to the general tranquillity of the Christian religion. But of the wisdom of his plan he [Faber] will speak with you personally more at length; and if it meets with your approbation you will add thereto your own prudent counsel, so that something may be accomplished at the Diet of Worms which will win the praise of all good men. Although I do not doubt that John Faber will be most welcome to you on account of his own merits, yet I entreat you again and again that he may be all the more so by reason of my own personal commendation, for you could not oblige Erasmus so much by any other kindness. Now,

where are they who exclaim that Erasmus is unjust to that Order? Such an intellect, such an erudition, and such a character as his please me exceedingly, no matter what the habit.

Cologne, November 9, 1520.1

Farewell.

Just at this moment he received a letter from a Bohemian nobleman named Artlebus of Boskowitz, who had openly declared himself for Luther. In his letter he vigorously urges Erasmus to do the same, and gives the reasons for his action. What these reasons were we can gather from the reply of Erasmus, of which we shall give a synopsis. Having paid his respects in his usual manner to the monks without making the admissions about them that the preceding letter contains, he says that their attacks on Luther have been injudicious, and that it was hopeless to bring back to the fold the Bohemian separatists as long as the monks were allowed to manage things. But he blames those who have criticized the Pope, in that he deserved far more respect than he was accorded at their hands. Without going into the question of the supremacy of Rome he shows that the authority of that See over others is salutary, because it thus serves to restrain other bishops, and even princes, from oppressing their subjects. He stands up manfully for the present Pope, and insists that many things are done by the Roman Curia without the Pontiff's knowledge and desire. To the Bohemian nobleman's invitation to join with Luther he declares that he would readily do so were he able to convince himself that Luther was with the Catholic Church."

So we see that he was beginning to cast his anchor to windward in case Luther should be quelled. Expediency was now to be the keynote of his utterances. That is what he means when he says to Jonas, after the Diet of Worms: "And so with a certain holy craftiness must we yield to the times, not, however, to the betrayal of the treasure of evangelical truth, in which alone lies our hope of restoring the at present corrupt public morals." "

That he tempered his pen to suit his correspondent we learn from a letter to the devoutly Catholic Archbishop Warham:

Luther has excited fearful tumults; and I do not see any end, unless Christ will turn our indiscretion to a good account, just as the owl [of Pallas] was wont to render lucky the foolish plans of the Athenians. I wish that Luther had been silent entirely on certain topics, or that he had written of them in a different way. Now, I fear that in avoiding Scylla we may fall into a more pernicious Charybdis. If they should succeed who for the sake of their bellies and autocratic power dare everything, nothing remains but for me to write the epitaph of a Christ who will never come to life again. Gone is the flame of evangelical charity, gone is the little star of Gospel illumination, gone is the source of heavenly doctrine, so disgracefully do they fawn on princes and on those from whom they expect benefits, to the highest injury of Christian truth. For myself I so regulate every act that I do not entirely 1 Eras. Ep. 1156. "Ibid., 1183. Ibid., 1202, 11. 285-7. (May 10, 1521.)

abandon good literature or the glory of Christ; nor yet do I mix myself up in seditious proceedings. There shines forth good hope from the equitable kindness of our Leo, so that it might come about that he would consider the glory of Christ of greater moment than his own, or rather that he would then deem himself a happy Pontiff if he referred all things to His glory alone. . . . May 24, 1521.*

But at last the open hostility manifested towards him at Louvain by Egmondanus, Latomus, and Vincent the Dominican, was too much for him: he decided to leave the University and betake himself elsewhere, first to Anderlecht, and afterwards to Mechlin and Brussels, in each of which places he made a short stay. He alleged to Bernard Buchon that his reason for leaving Louvain was that he had long been sick there and went to the country for the purpose of regaining his health. Incidentally he gives us a list of the good friends he was leaving behind in the University, among whom are James Ceratinus, Hermann of Westphalia, Adrian, Rutger Rescius, Conrad Goclen, Adrian Barland, Melchior Trevir, and Louis Vives. But the real reason for his leaving Louvain was evidently that he would not write against Luther to satisfy Egmondanus and the rest, and this for many reasons that he mentions in a letter to his old Italian friend Bombace, who was now secretary to Cardinal Pucci at Rome. We give these reasons to the reader for what they may be worth, premising that some of them do, while others of them do not, commend themselves to us. Incidentally we might add that, from the internal evidence contained in this letter, Bombace had hinted that he somewhat expected Erasmus to have taken up the cudgels against Luther in behalf of Pope Leo. Erasmus proceeds as follows:

I have been neither unaware nor forgetful of how much I owe to Leo's kindness to me, for it has been borne in on me in many ways. But I have not been quite so silent in his defense as you think. In the first place, I strove hard to prevent this tumult from arising, and, when it had arisen, I tried hard to calm it. Eventually I made an effort to have this wide-spread conflagration disturb as little as possible the tranquillity of the world. My effort had especial relation to the dignity of the Roman Pontiff, and to so finishing this tragedy that the evil, once repressed, should not burst out anew. When this endeavor was not sufficiently successful, by reason of the private cavilings of certain persons who were more intent on special than on public interests, I warned many, both by letter and personal exhortation, not to mix themselves up in this affair. Now there are many reasons why I have not hitherto done battle with Luther by publishing books against him. All these I need not recount here, but this is the principal one: that I have not had the leisure to read over what Luther has written, so busy am I in revising my own works. And you see what a voluminous writer he is; nor is he alone, for he has a hundred helpers. Nor indeed is it sufficient to read over his writings once, for they must • Ibid., 1205.

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be read and reread. And even this would be insufficient. Many here and there have written against him, some of whom I should have to peruse in order to perform thoroughly the task I had undertaken. And again, what perhaps I ought not to mention, while I am summoned to do this, there is not enough regard had for the proverb "every man to that for which he is best fitted." The business is full of danger, and I am more exercised in other fields of endeavor. Add to this, that it would be only fair to me, tired out as I am with the publishing of so many books, that I should be given a respite such that I might be permitted to enjoy my studies at leisure. My advancing years are demanding this, and my exhausting labors, spent hitherto in assisting the interests of general learning, are deserving of it. This affair is such a one that if I once enter on it the rest of my life will have to be given up to it. O my dear Bombace, it is easy to say, "Write against Luther," but to do this there are more things needed than for the building of a wagon, as Hesiod says. I see how various, how captious are the judgments of men, especially in this age, than which there has scarcely ever been a more contentious one. On many points the cisalpine universities differ from the transalpine ones. Moreover, the theologians of the same university say one thing in their public diatribes and books, but quite another in their actual conversations. At the same time it is very difficult to so temper your pen that you will have due regard for men's dignity, and, at the same time, not to do harm to the glory of Christ; that you will so please lay princes, as not to displease in any way Christ the Prince of all. Now, if this thing can be put an end to by books, such a swarm of books is coming out every day that there is no need of Erasmus. If there is need of clamorings, there is no lack of loud mouths. There have been more than enough firebrands everywhere; and in the edicts issued there has been nothing omitted that might inspire terror. But I fear that by such means the evil will merely be smothered for the present rather than extinguished, only to break out soon with greater violence, a thing which I would abhor and vehemently wish that it might not occur. No country more sincerely supports the pontifical dignity than mine; but the manner in which that dignity has been defended by some has made it hateful. If they had not lost their heads, the affair would not have reached the pass it has. Nay, even if now they would only keep silent for three months, Luther with all his books would fade from memory, and as far as he is concerned the world would run along without the least change. September 23, 1521."

Then he goes on to say that he had tried to obtain from Aleander the Pope's legate the privilege of reading Luther's works, but in vain, since Aleander would not grant it without special and direct permission from the Pope himself. He alleges that he was afraid to read them without. permission, lest some of his enemies might send to Rome the news that * τὸν ἵππον εἰς πεδίον. (See his Adage 782.) Eras. Ep. 1236.

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