servatism in the revision of that work which the reverence due to the Scriptures demanded. That cannot be really understood as any opposition to learning, but rather to a fixed resolve on their part not to have the received and venerable text of the Scriptures rashly changed by Erasmus or any other man, without more authority to do so than such a single man's ipse dixit. But it is when he comes to speak of the monks that his artifice is most apparent, and here we give it in Drummond's words rather than in our own, for we are willing to confess to a little impatience when Erasmus begins to ride this pet obsession of his:

So, too, he was accused of having been formerly hostile to the order of preaching friars, whereas now he would persuade the world that he had never wished them ill. He had never been so mad as to wish ill to any order; and if it was right to hate all Dominicans because there are many bad men among them, it would follow that we must hate all orders, as there is none in which there are not a great many bad men.

28

Hutten stated bluntly that Erasmus had promised to write three dialogues against Luther, and Erasmus did not deny it but neatly deprived the statement of its onus by saying that he had not promised to write. against Luther, but on the Lutheran question. Then follows some special pleading which we will give in Drummond's synopsis:

And yet, if he were to write against Luther [it is Erasmus who is talking], he would be justified in so doing, seeing that he was never in league with him, but, on the contrary, had always dissuaded him from his undertaking. And supposing he had at one time been a supporter of Luther's, did it follow that he must approve of everything he should ever write? What if Luther should write against the Articles of Faith? Must he then be forbidden to write against him? And why should Hutten be so angry with those who write against Luther? If Luther's doctrine is true, it will acquire new brilliancy by contradiction, like gold purified by fire; but if it is false, it is well that all should oppose it. Will it subvert the entire Gospel to dispute with Luther whether every Christian is a priest, or whether all the works of the saints are sins? Not that he has any desire to enter into conflict with Luther, but he must answer Hutten's calumnies. On the contrary, he had resorted to every expedient, he had done and suffered everything; he had left the Emperor's dominions, and had refused the emoluments offered to him, in order to escape being drawn into this "gladiatorial arena." But Hutten, having falsely charged him with hostility to Luther, was obliged to invent a cause for it, and the reason he assigned was jealousy of Luther's fame, because his works were now more widely read than those of Erasmus. He did not envy Luther's fame, and he would rather be obscurer than any dog than enjoy such a reputation as his.

Neither had Erasmus uttered an uncertain sound regarding the * Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 133.

Roman See. Her tyranny, rapacity, and other vices, which are an old theme of complaint among all good men, he had never approved. He had nowhere entirely condemned indulgences, however much he abhorred the shameless way in which they were bought and sold. What his opinion was about ceremonies was clear from many passages in his works: but when had he ever execrated the canon law and the pontifical decrees? What Hutten might mean by "calling the Pope to order," he did not very well know; and here Erasmus gives his own view of the Papal supremacy. . . . "In the first place, he [Hutten] will admit, I suppose, that there is a Church at Rome. For a preponderance of bad people does not invalidate its character as a true Church; otherwise we should have no Churches whatever. I presume too it is orthodox; for in whatever proportion the impious may be mingled with the faithful, nevertheless the Church remains in the hands of the latter. Now, I suppose, he will set a bishop over this Church. This bishop he will allow to be a Metropolitan; seeing there are so many Archbishops in countries where no Apostle has ever been, while Rome has both Peter and Paul, beyond dispute two of the greatest. Now among Metropolitans what absurdity is there, if the first place be assigned to the Roman Pontiff? For as to the extravagant power which they have usurped for some centuries past, no one has ever heard me defend it." It is true, as Hutten says, and would it were possible to deny it, that Rome has been for many years the source of great evils to the world, but we have now a Pope from whom the best things may be expected, and if Hutten has declared war not on men, but on error, let him hasten to Rome and help this excellent Pope in his efforts for reform. "But Hutten has declared war on the Roman Pope and all his adherents." Has he declared war even on a good Pope?

It was utterly untrue that he [Erasmus] was preparing to take flight to the victorious party. All he desired was tranquillity to do good as he had opportunity. What most offended him in Luther's writings was his abusive language and his arrogance, nor can Hutten deny that he wants moderation and gentleness. He [Erasmus] cannot persuade himself that the meek spirit of Christ dwells in that bosom from which flows so much bitterness. What right had he to say, for example, in his book in reply to the King of England, "Come, Master Henry, and I will teach you?" The King's book was in good Latin and contained marks of erudition; yet some thought such insolence wonderfully funny..

Erasmus had somewhere written that the truth should not be told on all occasions, and that the manner of telling it made a great difference, and this sentiment had excited the fury of Hutten, who declared that it ought to be thrust down his own throat. He [Erasmus] defended it, however, by the example of Christ, who, when he first sent forth the apostles to preach the Gospel, forbade them to make it known that he was the Christ.**

29 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 136-41.

As we have stated, Hutten was beyond all earthly regard for what Erasmus might say or do by the time the Spongia was published; but his death aroused no charitable feelings towards him in the breast of Erasmus. He tried his best to have Hutten's publisher Schott punished for printing Hutten's Expostulation, and now that his antagonist was dead he did not hesitate to speak ill of him in the preface to a later edition of the Spongia. Using a rhetorical figure of speech, he says he will not recount Hutten's faults, and then he proceeds to tell posterity what they were in the following very enlightening sentence:

I nowhere in my Spongia bring against him his licentiousness, of which not even the miserable disease from which he suffered could cure him, nor his fondness for women and gambling, his profuse extravagance, his debts, and his duns.

Thereupon Luther, whom he had so often accused of violence, naïvely asks, "If this is to use a sponge, what would he call reviling and abuse?" Eppendorff, who was a mutual friend to both, resented Erasmus' treatment of Hutten, and even went to the length of writing some expostulatory letters, but unfortunately these have not come down to us. A rather good reply to Erasmus' Spongia was made by an ex-Carthusian monk named Otto von Brunfels, of which several editions were published, much to the disgust of Erasmus, so Hutten was not entirely unavenged.

As he passes off the stage, Hutten leaves us with the impression of a very picturesque character. From his very earliest youth he was in rebellion against his environment, resembling in this respect Erasmus. But he was never actuated by altruistic motives any more than was Erasmus, yet differed from him in having implicit faith in the virtue of force. He was more a political than a religious reformer, and cared little what people believed, provided that they did not thereby replenish the coffers of the Roman court. His main object seemed to be expressed in the throwing off of all allegiance to the Roman See on the part of Germany; and he thought he saw in Luther the man to bring this about. As a powerful adjutant in this cause he looked to Erasmus for moral aid and encouragement, and when the latter refused to be identified openly with Lutheranism he was much disappointed, as we have already seen. In spite of his share in the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum and his other pasquinades, he does not seem to have been of much assistance to the cause of Luther, nor of much detriment to the cause of the Church. One thing he did do, however, in his unauthorized publication of Erasmus' letter, to which we have already referred: he put in type Erasmus' position on the supremacy of the Pope. The statement was made: from this time forward the great humanist, whose pronouncements on this and kindred subjects the world was awaiting, never wavered in his conviction that the occupant of the See of Peter was the head of the Church.

CHAPTER XV

ACCESSION OF CLEMENT VII: ERASMUS FINALLY WRITES

AGAINST

LUTHER PUBLICATION DELAYED: CORRESPONDENCE OF ERASMUS
AND LUTHER

On the fourteenth day of September in this same year of 1523, Pope Adrian died, after a short reign of twenty months. As we have already pointed out, Erasmus had been a disappointment to him. He had asked him to come to Rome, he had exhorted him to write against Luther, and the plan promised by Erasmus which was to end the Lutheran schism turned out to be nothing more tangible than a scheme to refer to a few learned men (that is, a Council) what all the learned men in the world could not decide. Adrian perceived that this was chimerical and probably put forth by Erasmus to forestall action on the part of the Pope, or of the Emperor, looking to his answering Luther, and which action could scarcely fail to be somewhat compulsory. Erasmus, in one of his letters to a friend, expresses surprise that Adrian was changed in his regard. Adrian had done a great service to him in silencing Stunica and some others of his opponents; but the Pope could not be deaf to the constant reports that reached him of the vacillating way in which Erasmus was acting towards the friends of Luther. But Adrian was snatched untimely away, and Erasmus breathed more easily.

Adrian VI, according as He was not at home in Sanuto in his diary quotes

Opinions differ on the character of Pope they emanate from one side or the other. Rome: he was a stranger in a strange land. a letter in which it is said that Adrian was "tenacious of his own, rarely giving and rarely accepting from others, and that no one could tell for whom he had regard. He was not moved by anger, nor amused with joking. He was not puffed up with his position, but, on the contrary, was very much cast down when the news of his election was announced to him.'

And no wonder he displayed such characteristics, for the outlook was appalling in this the very darkest hour of the Papacy. Where was he to look for help in his task of extirpating abuses, of reforming a Curia which flourished on corruption, and of correcting the glaring faults of his very own household? Abroad he had to restrain the rash and warlike kings of Europe who were longing to rush upon one another. He

1 See letter from Servus Frater Vincentius de Sancto Geminiano dated from Vittorio, Spain, March 10, 1522, and addressed to Cardinal de Flisco, at Rome, in I Diari di Marino Sanuto, Vol. XXXIII, col. 203. It seemed to be a rather unfriendly or rather negative description de vita et conditione Summi Pontificis Hadriani VI.

had to make headway against the threatened revolt of almost the whole of Germany, and to direct the attention of all to the common danger which was menacing Europe from the side of the Turks. Christendom had to be saved from both external and internal enemies, for if Adrian failed in this it would be all over with the Christian religion. But each king and petty princeling looked on the Pope as a tool to be used to subserve his own interests, and self was the order of the day. Could anything be more disheartening? And yet he was not discouraged, but, bracing himself manfully to adjust the spiritual forces of the Church to the task which had to be done, he called on all-Erasmus among the rest to assist in the work. He started laying the foundations for a new order of things, and, though he had barely touched the very beginnings when he was taken away, what he did in this regard was well and permanently done. And as von Höfler says in his life of this Pope:

It was for Adrian no slight triumph that, when Pope Paul III took up again the reforming of the Church in earnest, he confessed that this reform was to be accomplished on the principles which the Dutch Pope had laid down."

And he adds with truth that that fact is the best justification of Adrian's pontificate with regard to the Romans. He recognized that simony was rampant close at hand, and that all sorts of petty tyranny and extortion were being practised in the name of the Pope. He decided to reform and restore the Church according to the decrees of the Councils and the Canons. He appealed to the Cardinals and bishops to be the first to set a good example in the proposed work, and he indicated to the monasteries that had become lax that a house cleaning was needed. He pointed out to the world that if Rhodes and Hungary fell before the victorious Turk, European civilization and the Christian religion would be destroyed. It was a herculean task to accomplish results among these various clashing interests, angry passions, and selfish preferences that acted and reacted upon Adrian; but he kept his purpose inflexibly in view, refusing to be swerved therefrom, and, as Clerk described him, "stood unshakable like a rock in the sea beaten on all sides by the waves." All authorities agree that he was an earnest and sincere man, personally clean and of unblemished reputation; and we may justly assume that, had not death carried him off so soon, the history of the Reformation might have been differently written. In any case, the history of the Counter-Reformation dates from his pontificate.

On the nineteenth of November, 1523, a new Pope succeeded to the pontifical throne. This was Julius de' Medici, cousin of Leo X, and now by virtue of his position head of that aspiring and contentious house. Although he had early adopted the military profession, it was as a Knight of Jerusalem, an Order which united the characters of the soldier and the monk, the members of this Order taking the usual vows

2

.

Papst Adrian VI, p. 557.

"Pontifex, velut rupes in mari sita vndique petita fluctibus, mansit immobilis." (Clerk was Cardinal Wolsey's ambassador to the Roman court at this time.) Brewer, Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, Vol. III, part 2, 5092.