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scholastic sects; popes, cardinals, and bishops–all are fiercely ridiculed. Particularly fierce is the attack on the monastic orders: they are “brainsick fools,” who have very little religion in them, yet are “highly in love with themselves, and fond admirers of their own happiness.” They behave as if all religion consisted in minute punctilio: “The precise number of knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct colours their respective habits, and what stuff made of; how broad and long their girdles,” and so on. “It will be pretty to hear their pleas before the great tribunal: one will brag how he mortified his carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish: another will urge that he spent most of his time on earth in the divine exercise of singing psalms: . . . another, that in threescore years he never so much as touched a piece of money, except he fingered it though a thick pair of gloves.” But Christ will interrupt: “Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, . . . I left you but one precept, of loving one another, which I do not hear any one plead that he has faithfully discharged.” Yet on earth these men are feared, for they know many secrets from the confessional, and often blab them when they are drunk.
Popes are not spared. They should imitate their Master by humility and poverty. “Their only weapons ought to be those of the Spirit; and of these indeed they are mightly liberal, as of their interdicts, their suspensions, their denunciations, their aggravations, their greater and lesser excommunications, and their roaring bulls, that fight whomever they are thundered against; and these most holy fathers never issue them out more frequently than against those, who, at the instigation of the devil, and not having the fear of God before their eyes, do feloniously and maliciously attempt to lessen and impair Saint Peter’s patrimony.”
It might be supposed, from such passages, that Erasmus would have welcomed the Reformation, but it proved otherwise.
The book ends with the serious suggestion that true religion is a form of Folly. There are, throughout, two kinds of Folly, one praised ironically, the other seriously; the kind praised seriously is that which is displayed in Christian simplicity. This praise is of a piece with Erasmus’s dislike of scholastic philosophy and of learned doctors whose Latin was unclassical. But it has also a deeper aspect. It is the first appearance in literature, so far as I know, of the view set forth in Rousseau Savoyard Vicar, according to which true religion comes
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from the heart, not the head, and all elaborate theology is superfluous. This point of view has become increasingly common, and is now pretty generally accepted among Protestants. It is, essentially, a rejection of Hellenic intellectualism by the sentimentalism of the North.
Erasmus on his second visit to England, remained for five years ( 1509-14), partly in London, partly at Cambridge. He had a considerable influence in stimulating English humanism. The education at English public schools remained, until recently, almost exactly what he would have wished: a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin, involving not only translation, but verse and prose composition. Science, although intellectually dominant since the seventeenth century, was thought unworthy the attention of a gentleman or a divine; Plato should be studied, but not the subjects which Plato thought worth studying. All this is in line with the influence of Erasmus.
The men of the Renaissance had an immense curiosity; “these minds,” says Huizinga, “never had their desired share of striking incidents, curious details, rarities and anomalies.” But at first they sought these things, not in the world, but in old books. Erasmus was interested in the world, but could not digest it in the raw: it had to be dished up in Latin or Greek before he could assimilate it. Travellers’ tales were discounted, but any marvel in Pliny was believed. Gradually, however, curiosity became transferred from books to the real world; men became interested in the savages and strange animals that were actually discovered, rather than in those described by classical authors. Caliban comes from Montaigne, and Montaigne’s cannibals come from travellers. “The anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders” had been seen by Othello, not derived from antiquity.
And so the curiosity of the Renaissance, from having been literary, gradually became scientific. Such a cataract of new facts overwhelmed men that they could, at first, only be swept along with the current. The old systems were evidently wrong; Aristotle’s physics and Ptolemy’s astronomy and Galen’s medicine could not be stretched to include the discoveries that had been made. Montaigne and Shakespeare are content with confusion: discovery is delightful, and system is its enemy. It was not till the seventeenth century that the systembuilding faculty caught up with the new knowledge of matters of
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fact. All this, however, has taken us far from Erasmus, to whom Columbus was less interesting than the Argonauts.
Erasmus was incurably and unashamedly literary. He wrote a book, Enchiridion militis christiani, giving advice to illiterate soldiers: they were to read the Bible, but also Plato, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. He made a vast collection of Latin proverbs, to which, in later editions, he added many in Greek; his original purpose was to enable people to write Latin idiomatically. He wrote an immensely successful book of Colloquies, to teach people how to talk in Latin about every-day matters, such as a game of bowls. This was, perhaps, more useful than it seems now. Latin was the only international language, and students at the University of Paris came from all over Western Europe. It may have often happened that Latin was the only language in which two students could converse.
After the Reformation, Erasmus lived first in Louvain, which maintained perfect Catholic orthodoxy, then in Basel, which became Protestant. Each side tried to enlist him, but for a long time in vain. He had, as we have seen, expressed himself strongly about ecclesiastical abuses and the wickedness of popes; in 1518, the very year of Luther’s revolt, he published a satire, called Julius exclusus, describing the failure of Julius II to get to heaven. But Luther’s violence repelled him, and he hated war. At last he came down on the Catholic side. In 1524 he wrote a work defending free will, which Luther, following and exaggerating Augustine, rejected. Luther replied savagely, and Erasmus was driven further into reaction. From this time until his death, he became increasingly unimportant. He had always been timid, and the times were no longer suited to timid people. For honest men, the only honourable alternatives were martyrdom or victory. His friend Sir Thomas More was compelled to choose martyrdom, and Erasmus commented: “Would More had never meddled with that dangerous business, and left the theological cause to the theologians.” Erasmus lived too long, into an age of new virtues and new vices–heroism and intolerance–neither of which he could acquire.
Sir Thomas More ( 1478-1535) was, as a man, much more admirable than Erasmus, but much less important as an influence. He was a humanist, but also a man of profound piety. At Oxford, he set to work to learn Greek, which was then unusual, and was thought to show a sympathy with Italian infidels. The authorities and his father objected,
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and he was removed from the university. Thereupon he was attracted to the Carthusians, practised extreme austerities, and contemplated joining the order. He was deterred from doing so, apparently by the influence of Erasmus, whom he first met at this time. His father was a lawyer, and he decided to follow his father’s profession. In 1504 he was a Member of Parliament, and led the opposition to Henry VII’s demand for new taxes. In this he was successful, but the king was furious; he sent More’s father to the Tower, releasing him, however, on payment of £100. On the king’s death in 1509, More returned to the practice of the law, and won the favour of Henry VIII. He was knighted in 1514, and employed on various embassies. The king kept inviting him to court, but More would not come; at last the king came uninvited to dine with him at his house in Chelsea. More had no illusions as to Henry VIII; when complimented on the king’s favourable disposition, he replied: “If my head should win him a castle in France it should not fail to go.”
When Wolsey fell, the King appointed More chancellor in his stead. Contrary to the usual practice, he refused all gifts from litigants. He soon fell into disfavour, because the king was determined to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, and More was unalterably opposed to the divorce. He therefore resigned in 1532. His incorruptibility when in office is shown by the fact that after his resignation he had only £100 a year. In spite of his opinions, the king invited him to his wedding with Anne Boleyn, but More refused the invitation. In 1534, the king got Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy, declaring him, not the Pope, the head of the Church of England. Under this act an Oath of Supremacy was exacted, which More refused to take; this was only misprision of treason, which did not involve the death penalty. It was proved, however, by very
