Erasmus, Desiderius
ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (1469?–1536), Dutch scholar, is called the "prince of humanists." Neither the date nor the place of Erasmus's birth is known with certainty; he was probably born in 1469 in Rotterdam (he styled himself Roterodamus).
Life and Works
Erasmus's life was wholly dedicated to scholarship. After his early education, mainly in the school of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer (1475–1483), his guardians sent him to the monastery of the Augustinian canons at Steyn. Ordained to the priesthood in 1492, he entered the service of Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, who gave him leave to study theology at the University of Paris (1495–1498). A visit to Oxford (1499–1500) brought him into the company of such kindred spirits as John Colet (1466?–1519) and Thomas More (1478–1535). Later he visited the cradle of the Renaissance, Italy (1506–1509), and made further journeys to England, including Cambridge, before settling in the Netherlands, at Louvain (1517–1521). There, at the height of his fame, he intended to devote himself quietly to the cause of classical and sacred literature.
But from 1518, Erasmus's labors were increasingly overshadowed by the Lutheran Reformation. He could not but welcome the addition of Martin Luther's voice to his own outspoken criticisms of ecclesiastical abuses, yet he distrusted Luther's aggressive manner, which he feared could only harm the cause of learning and piety. His friends and patrons finally induced him to challenge Luther in print. The ostensible theme of his De libero arbitrio (On free choice; 1524) was the freedom denied by Luther's necessitarianism, but more fundamentally the book was a warning against theological contentiousness.
In 1521, driven from Louvain by the hostility of the Dominicans to the new learning, Erasmus moved to Basel, home of publisher Johann Froben (c. 1460–1527). When Basel turned Protestant, he moved to Freiburg im Breisgau (1529–1535), but it was in Protestant Basel that he died without the ministrations of the old church, which later placed his books on the Index.
In response to the requests of his friends, Erasmus himself drew up a "catalog" of his numerous writings in nine divisions. The items vary widely in literary form, from letters to treatises, and in readership intended, from schoolboys to princes. But many of them can be distinguished by certain dominant themes. Some embody Erasmus's research on the language, literature, and wisdom of classical antiquity. Others apply the tools of classical scholarship to the original sources of Christianity, this being what is generally meant by "Christian humanism." In 1516, Erasmus brought out the first published edition of the Greek New Testament, which he furnished with a new Latin translation, notes, and prefaces, including the famous Paraclesis (a prefatory "exhortation" to study the philosophy of Christ). In the succeeding two decades, his series of editions of Greek and Latin fathers appeared, beginning with Jerome (1516) and ending with Origen (1536), his two favorites.
In a third group of writings, Erasmus exposed to mockery the moral failures and religious abuses of the day, notably, in his Moriae encomium (Praise of folly; 1511), some of the Colloquia familiaria (Familiar colloquies; 1st ed., 1518) and, if he did indeed write it, the anonymous pamphlet Julius exclusus e coelis (Julius [the warrior pope] shut out of heaven; 1517). Finally, to a fourth group of writings, which present Erasmus's own Christian vision, may be assigned the Enchiridion militis Christiani (Handbook [or weapon] for the Christian soldier; 1503), a powerful plea for an inward, spiritual, and moral piety that does not lean on outward religious observances. The strongly pacifist vein in Erasmus's piety is reflected in his Institutio principis Christiani (Instruction for a Christian prince; 1516) and especially in Querela pacis (The complaint of peace; 1517).
The Erasmian Program
A consistent humanistic program, in which learning assumes a moral and religious character, lends unity to Erasmus's many writings. The study of ancient languages and literature is propaedeutic to following the philosophy of Christ, which can be recovered in its purity only if the theologians will leave, or at least moderate, their endless squabbles and turn back to the sources of the faith equipped with the tools of the new learning. The program is not antitheological, but it is antischolastic: Moral utility, rather than dialectical subtlety and metaphysical speculation, becomes the test of genuine theology. Erasmus proposed a new ideal of the theologian as more a scholar than a schoolman, an ideal that made a profound impact on many who did not share the Erasmian view of the gospel, including the Protestants.
What Erasmus discovered in the New Testament was, above all, the precepts and example of Christ. To be a Christian is to enlist under Christ's banner. The philosophy of Christ is not speculation or disputation, but the good life—a philosophy not essentially different from the teaching of the best classical moralists, only conveyed with unique authority and made accessible to all. It would be a mistake, however, to reduce the Erasmian imitation of Christ to mere copying of an external model; in the scriptures, as Erasmus reads them, the Savior comes alive, and Christ's philosophy is nothing less than a dying and living in him.
The work of Erasmus marked an important stage in the course of biblical and patristic scholarship. It is true that his New Testament text rested on inferior manuscripts and had no lasting usefulness, but his biblical studies, even when vitiated by overeagerness to extract an edifying lesson from the text by means of spiritual exegesis, established a new emphasis on the human and historical character of the sacred text. No less historically important is the fact that he arrived, through his study of the Gospels, at a distinctive interpretation of Christianity and of religion generally.
Stormier religious personalities, such as Luther, have found the Erasmian outlook bland. They have judged Christian existence to be neither as simple nor as placid as Erasmus supposed, because God makes a Christian not by gently strengthening a feeble will but by putting to death a vigorous, arrogant will. But the recall of Christians to a simpler, more practical ideal of discipleship has continued to win friends for Erasmus among those who doubt the usefulness of the constant refinement of dogma.
Some have hailed the Erasmian dislike of dogmatism as one source of modern undogmatic Christianity, or even of religious skepticism. Historically, that is a correct estimate of his actual influence, or at least of one strand of it. No doubt, it must be qualified by Erasmus's own professed submission to the decrees of the church. But nothing he says has quite laid to rest the suspicion that, for him, the institutional church was not so much directly salvific as a condition of that outward order and peace without which scholarship and the gospel cannot flourish.
Bibliography
Erasmus published about one hundred writings, some of which were very popular and went through several editions. Many have been translated into English. An English translation of his voluminous correspondence and all the major writings is being published as Collected Works of Erasmus, 40–45 vols. projected (Toronto, 1974–). Erasmus samplers are The Essential Erasmus, translated and edited by John P. Dolan (New York, 1964), and Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus with the Life of Erasmus by Beatus Rhenanus, rev. ed., edited by John C. Olin (New York, 1975). Dolan has the Enchiridion, Moriae encomium, and Querela pacis; Olin includes the Paraclesis, perhaps the best statement of the Erasmian program. Other translations are Ten Colloquies of Erasmus (New York, 1957) and The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago, 1965), both translated and edited by Craig R. Thompson; The Education of a Christian Prince, translated and edited by Lester K. Born (New York, 1936); The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus, translated by Paul Pascal, edited by J. Kelley Sowards (Bloomington, Ind., 1968); and Erasmus-Luther: Discourse on Free Will, translated and edited by Ernst F. Winter (New York, 1961). An excellent biographical study is Roland H. Bainton's Erasmus of Christendom (New York, 1969), and a useful companion to Erasmus's writings is Essays on the Works of Erasmus, edited by Richard L. DeMolen (New Haven, Conn., 1978).
This is the complete article, containing 1,339 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
