Two Ways to Reform
Historians and philosophers disagree about Erasmus's reaction to the Reformation. Which method served mankind better: Luther's direct attack on the Church, or Erasmus's peaceful method of reform? When we think about it, we meet two different faces: the stubborn, iron-willed fighter who made action the means to his end, and the quiet, conciliatory man who drew his inspiration from feeling and thought. Luther was essentially a man of action; his decisions were carried out at once, and his writings were practical. The content of his ideas belonged to the early Middle Ages, and their results to the beginning of the modern age. Apart from his theology, his boldness and decision, with the help of German nationalism, founded the modern age. Luther spoke to his nation in German, in a manly and firm voice, and led the Germans to overthrow a world power. Erasmus wrote in an elegant style, in Latin, for the world and for a university-trained urban minority. His feelings were too sensitive for him to act firmly. In the days when Luther stirred war, he clung to peace and quiet. Erasmus was a moderate man who disliked the excess of radicalism. He had turned from action to thought, from reckless confidence to cautious skepticism. His breadth of mind was such that he saw truth and falsehood side by side, weighed both sides of a matter, tried to reconcile them, and was himself left caught between them.
Praise, Doubt and Caution
Erasmus approved and praised Luther's Ninety-five Theses. In March 1518 he sent copies to Colet and More, and wrote to Colet, "The court of Rome has thrown off shame. Can anything be more disgraceful than these indulgences?" In October of that year he wrote to another friend: "I hear that all good men support Luther, though his writings are said to be harsh and inconsistent. To my mind, his theses have pleased everybody, except a few who overlook the people's belief in purgatory. The absolute rule of the Roman Church is a plague on Christianity, though some shameless preachers speak well of it. Yet I do not know whether it is prudent to put a finger on this open wound, for that is the duty of princes. But I fear they will join the pope to share the spoils."
Erasmus now spent most of his time at Louvain. He helped found the language department of the university and took the chair of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 1519 Charles V granted him a pension, which Erasmus accepted on condition that it did not limit his bodily and intellectual freedom. But since he was human, this pension and what he received from Archbishop Warham and Lord Mountjoy were not without influence on his stance toward church reform. When Luther's revolt moved from condemning indulgences to rejecting popes and church councils, Erasmus was gripped by doubt and hesitation. He hoped that with the good will of a humanist pope the Church could be reformed. He still looked on the Church with respect and thought it a worthy foundation of social order and personal morals. Though he thought the theology of his time full of superstition, he considered society too weak to create more useful rites and beliefs by its own judgment, and held that the enlightened minority advance society's understanding by enlightening public opinion. He did not deny his role in preparing the ground for Luther's revolt.
His Praise of Folly, which had sharpened Luther's attack with its scorn for monks and theologians, was still passing from hand to hand across Europe. When the monks and theologians accused him of laying the eggs Luther hatched, Erasmus answered, "True, I laid a hen's egg, but Luther hatched a fighting cock." Luther had read the Praise of Folly and almost all Erasmus's writings, and told friends that the humanist's aim was simply to give a clearer shape to his intentions. In a respectful letter of March 18, 1519, Luther called Erasmus's friendship a treasure and implied he hoped for Erasmus's support.
Erasmus now had to choose between Luther and the Catholic Church, and either choice brought him difficulties. To reject Luther would be taken as cowardice and weakness; to fight the Church with Luther would cost him his pension and Leo X's protection against theologians opposed to reform, and force him to give up his own way of reforming the Church, by refining the thought and behavior of influential men. He believed his method had succeeded in winning to his ideas men like the pope, Archbishop Warham, Bishop John Fisher, John Colet, Thomas More, Francis I and Charles V. These men certainly opposed rejecting or weakening the Church, whose existence seemed to them inevitable for stability. But Erasmus thought they could be used to reduce superstition and oppression in the existing religious order, to reform and educate the clergy, to tame the monks and to spread intellectual freedom for the elevation of people's thought and understanding. To abandon this method for force, which would break up the unity of Christians, and to accept a theology of predestination that denied the virtue of good works, was madness to them and to Erasmus.
Erasmus still hoped to settle the differences of the parties if they would stop quarreling. So in February 1519 he urged Froben not to print Luther's works, which inflamed strife. In April he asked the elector Frederick to shelter Luther, who had committed no sin and was the target of others' sins. And on May 30 he answered Luther:
Dearest brother in Christ, your letter, full of wit and the Christian spirit, pleased me. My tongue cannot describe the stir your books have raised here. These people cannot be convinced that your books were not written with my help and that I am not the standard-bearer of your sect. I tell them I do not know you, have not read your books and so neither approve nor condemn them. I also advise them to read your books before making such an uproar about you. I remind them that the subjects you write on are not the kind to be debated from the pulpit; and since there is no doubt about the purity of your life, condemning you is out of place. But these words do not enter their ears or keep them from madness. I myself am the target of slander and hatred more than anyone, though the bishops all support me.
You have good friends in England, especially among the great there, and you have friends here too, myself above all. I must remind you that my profession is letters. As far as possible I busy myself with literary work and try to keep out of controversy. But I think a kind word does more with enemies than hatred and force. It seems to me fitting that you blame those who misuse the pope's power rather than the pope himself, and observe the same principle toward kings and princes. Ancient customs cannot be uprooted in a moment. Calm reasoning gets better results than quarrel. Avoid sedition. Stay cool and shun anger. I have seen your Commentary on the Psalms and am much pleased with it. Christ has given you his spirit for his own glory and for the betterment of the world.
Squeezed from Both Sides
Despite this cautious distance from Luther, the theologians of Louvain attacked and abused Erasmus as the instigator of Luther's revolution. On October 8, 1520, Aleander came to Louvain and published the papal bull excommunicating Luther, calling Erasmus the secret instigator of Luther's revolt. The scholars of the town, following Aleander, expelled Erasmus from the university (October 9, 1520). Erasmus went to Cologne and, as we have seen, defended Luther to Frederick, elector of Saxony (November 5). On December 5 he sent the elector the declaration known as Erasmus's Counsel, stating that Luther's demand to be tried by impartial judges was fair, that good men and lovers of the Gospel attacked Luther less, that the world needed a truth based on the Gospel alone, and that the need had gained so much force that it could not easily be put down.
He also wrote with the Dominican Johann Faber to Charles V, proposing that Charles, Henry VIII and Louis II of Hungary form an impartial court to examine Luther's claims. In another letter to Cardinal Campeggio (December 6) he asked fair treatment for Luther: "In my judgment, the more humane men are, the less they hate Luther. A few people have raised an outcry against him out of self-interest. No one has yet answered his claims or reproved him. With so many ill-living bishops, is it right to punish a man of clean life whose writings eminent and noble men admire? Their aim is only to destroy him and to wipe out the effect of his writings from men's minds, and this is possible only if his error is proved. If we seek truth, everyone must be able to state his opinion freely and without fear. If holders of certain opinions are rewarded and their opponents given up to torment, the truth will not be heard. Nothing is more hateful and foolish than the papal bull. It is hard to believe Leo X himself issued it, and those charged with spreading it made things worse. I know that opposing the pope is dangerous for princes, and I, above all when I can do nothing, cannot be bolder than princes. The corruption of the papal court may require deep and urgent reform, but I and men like me are not bound to take that responsibility. I personally would prefer things stay as they are than that revolution bring unforeseen results. I assure you that Erasmus has always been and will be a faithful follower of the Roman Church. But in my view, and many others', if hatred and spite are put aside, if matters are put in the hands of abler and better-informed men, and if the pope acts as he wishes and lets others not impose their wishes on him, the quarrel can easily be settled."
With his increasing attacks on the Catholic Church Luther closed the road of mediation to Erasmus, and in July 1520 his hostility to Rome went so far that he urged people to wash their hands in the blood of bishops and cardinals (the book's phrase, softened here). When Luther burned the papal bull, Erasmus expressed astonishment. On January 15, 1521, the pope in a letter expressed satisfaction at Erasmus's loyalty to the Roman Church and at the same time ordered Aleander to treat humanists courteously. As the Diet of Worms approached, a German prince summoned Erasmus to the Diet to support Luther, but Erasmus replied that it was too late. He was grieved at Luther's refusal to submit to Rome, which he thought was pushing reform forward, and feared a civil war in Germany. In February 1521 he wrote to a friend:
Everyone had realized that the Church suffered from the tyranny of certain men, and many were ready to reform it. This man has now taken a course against the Church that no one dares even to confirm his sound statements. Six months ago I warned him against hatred. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church has now turned many from him, and every day new offenses come from him.
Luther, now despairing of Erasmus's support, thrust him away as a timid peace-lover who "thinks all problems can be settled by kindness and good will."
Refuge in Basel
Meanwhile Aleander and the Louvain theologians, ignoring Leo X's instructions, kept attacking Erasmus on the charge of secretly following Luther. Weary of this, and hoping that under the shelter of the old Renaissance he could forget the Reformation, Erasmus went to Basel (November 15, 1521). Basel was then the stronghold of Swiss humanism; there Beatus Rhenanus edited and published Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, found Velleius Paterculus, and supervised the printing of Erasmus's translation of the New Testament. There lived printers and publishers, some of them, like Johann Amerbach and Johann Froben, scholars and researchers. Froben devoted himself so keenly to his publications that, in Erasmus's words, he left his family "honor and reputation instead of worldly goods." Dürer spent years of his life there, and Holbein painted the portraits of Froben and Bonifacius Amerbach masterfully and adorned the city's museum with his works. Seven years before settling in Basel, after a short visit, Erasmus was so charmed by its atmosphere that he described it in extravagant terms:
It is as if I were living in the refuge of the gods of poetry and speech, where a movement of scholars and sages is natural. Here no one is unfamiliar with Latin and Greek, and many know Hebrew. One excels in historical studies, one has reached mastery in theology, one is skilled in mathematics, another researches ancient texts, and another is trained in law. Fortune has never before let me live in such a perfect society. What pure friendship, what cheer and frankness are seen among these people!
At Basel Erasmus lived with Froben and served as his literary adviser, writing prefaces to his publications and editing the works of the Church Fathers. Holbein painted famous portraits of him there (1523–24): one still in the city, another presented to Archbishop Warham, now in the collection of the Earl of Radnor, and a third, now in the Louvre, one of Holbein's masterpieces. There we see the foremost humanist of the age in a thick woolen gown and a cap covering his ears, standing at his writing desk in middle age (he was fifty-seven, by the book's count), with the signs of exhaustion, ill health, grief and distress from his failure to reconcile the rigid parties of his age. The disheveled white hair escaping from the cap, the thin, stern lips, the delicate yet strong face, the thin sharp nose and the thick lashes falling on his weary eyes show the martyrdom of the Renaissance at the hands of the Reformation.
The Pope's Letter
On December 1, 1522, the new pope, Hadrian VI, wrote Erasmus a letter whose calm tone won the admiration of both parties:
It is for you to guide aright those who were led astray by Luther, and to keep firm in faith those still on the right path. It need not be said that I will receive these heretics with open arms, without their being punished under imperial law. You know my nature is incompatible with harshness. I am still the same you knew when we were schoolfellows. Come to me at Rome. Here the books you need will be at your disposal. Here you will have the chance to confer with me and other learned men. You will not regret accepting this invitation.
After an exchange of secret letters, Erasmus opened his heart to the pope:
His Holiness expects guidance from me and wishes to receive me. If my health permits, I shall gladly have the honor of visiting him. As for writing against Luther, I must say I do not have the learning for it. You imagine my word still has power. But alas, my popularity has turned to hatred. Once I was the sultan of letters, the shining star of the German sky, the high priest of learning, the champion of refined theology. Now my situation has changed. One party accuses me of favoring Luther on the pretext that I do not oppose him, and another reviles me because I oppose Luther. At Rome and in Brabant they take me for a heretic, a schismatic and an apostate. I am wholly opposed to Luther. Ill-wishers have seized on some of my words to prove I agree with him. I can offer hundreds of passages from Paul for which Luther is condemned.
Your best counselors are those who propose moderation and gentleness. Monks who see themselves as guardians of the tottering Church turn away from the Church those who can keep it standing. Some think there is no way left but force. My view is otherwise. Force will start terrible bloodshed. The basic question is not what punishment heresy deserves, but what is the wise way to face it. If you want my opinion, find the root of the disease and drive from the Church those who cause it. Punish no one. Let what has happened be taken as God's chastisement. Proclaim a general pardon. If God forgives my sin, God's representative must forgive too. Those in power can prevent bloody revolution. If possible, control the press. Then let the world see and know that you have honestly set out to root out the corruptions that have grieved everyone. If His Holiness is willing to get at the roots of the corruptions I mention, he had better send trusted envoys through the realm of the Roman Church. After they confer with wise men in the various countries, the causes of people's disgust with the Church will be clear to you.
Poor Hadrian, whose good intentions outweighed his power, died of a broken heart in 1523. His successor Clement VII, like his predecessors, tried to bring Erasmus into the camp of Luther's opponents.
On Free Will, and the Answer
At last Erasmus bowed to the pope, but instead of abusing Luther and the Reformation, he raised an impartial, principled discussion of free will. In On Free Will (1524) he argued that he could not understand the mystery of man's moral freedom or reconcile it with the Creator's infinite knowledge and power. Yet no humanist could accept predestination and determinism without denying the great power and dignity of man and the meaning of his life in the world. This was another reason why the Reformation was incompatible with the Renaissance. To Erasmus, the belief that creatures of a God who punishes sin cannot help sinning was an absurd, baseless theory, and a blasphemy against Christ, "the heavenly Father of all men." In Luther's theology, the worst criminal is an innocent martyr whom fate drove to sin and whom God condemned to eternal torment. How can one who believes in predestination undertake anything constructive or work to improve human life? Erasmus recognized that man's moral fate is the product of many conditions he cannot change; yet man wants a freedom without which life would have no meaning or value. At all events, Erasmus concluded from his argument that we must admit our ignorance, and our inability to reconcile man's moral freedom with the Creator's infinite knowledge and power, leave the answer to the last judgment, and shun any assumption that makes man a puppet and God crueler than any tyrant in history.
Clement rewarded Erasmus with 200 florins for the treatise. Many Catholics who expected Erasmus to declare war on the Protestants were displeased with the conciliatory, philosophical tone of his book. Melanchthon, who had included the doctrine of predestination in his Loci Communes, changed his mind under Erasmus's argument and dropped it from his later works, still hoping that Protestants and Catholics could be reconciled. But Luther, after long delay, defended predestination fiercely in The Bondage of the Will (1525):
Human nature is like a beast of burden. When God rides it, it obeys God, and when Satan rides it, it goes Satan's way. Man cannot choose his rider. The riders contend to possess it. God, by his unchanging, eternal and certain will, has foreseen, decreed and made inevitable all things. Against his firm will, man's freedom of will is taken away.
It is notable that when Luther denied human free will he did not hold, like some eighteenth-century thinkers, to the reign of law and cause over the universe, nor, like many in the nineteenth, that human desires, and so the will, were products of heredity, environment and conditions of life. He denied it because he held that the Creator's infinite power produces all events in the world and all human acts, and that our salvation or condemnation therefore comes from God's will, not from our virtues or sins. Luther himself faced this bitter logic:
To know that the merciful and gracious God drives some people from him and condemns them to eternal damnation without cause is bitter and hard for sound reason and natural sense. Such a view seems cruel and intolerable, and many in the past have protested against it. Understanding this brought me such despair that I wished I had never been created. Man will not escape this fact by clever wit; natural sense must accept it, however hard. We must remember that if human understanding could grasp the justice of a God who consigns so many to eternal damnation without desert, then he could not be called God.
To understand the temper of the sixteenth century, it is enough to know that The Bondage of the Will was published seven times in Latin and twice in the vernacular within a year. It finally became one of the most important sources of Protestant theology. It was this work that led Calvin to predestination and the election of some for salvation or condemnation, and it was spread by his followers in France, Holland, Scotland, England and America. Erasmus replied with a two-volume work, Hyperaspistes ("The Defender," 1526–27), but Luther's thought suited the age's taste better.
The Last Years
Even then Erasmus did not stop trying to bring Protestant and Catholic thought closer. He urged his correspondents to be courteous and tolerant. He still hoped the Catholic Church would allow priests to marry and Communion in both kinds, hand part of its great estates to the civil authorities, and let each person interpret the disputed questions of the Eucharist, predestination, free will and the real presence according to his own taste and belief. He advised Duke George of Saxony to treat the Anabaptists humanely: "Burning offenders is unjust, except in case of sedition, for which the law prescribes death" (the book dates the letter 1524). Yet in 1533, from friendship or the weakness of age, he approved Thomas More's imprisonment of religious opponents. In Spain, where some humanists favored Erasmus, monks serving the Inquisition combed his works to accuse him of heresy (1527). Still, he did not cease to condemn the monks' immorality and the rigid dogmatism which, in his view, fueled the Reformation. In 1528 he said openly that "many monasteries of men and women have become centers of licentiousness" and "what is least seen in many monasteries is chastity." In 1532 he called monks beggars, seducers, instigators of heresy, thieves of inheritances and forgers of certificates.
While condemning the Reformation, Erasmus never ceased working to reform the Church. He could neither leave the Church nor watch it break up; as he said, "Until I find a better Church, I will not leave the one I have." When he heard that the emperor's Protestant and Catholic soldiers had sacked Rome (1527), he was horrified. He had hoped Charles V would bring Clement to terms with Luther, but now he saw pope and emperor at each other's throats. His despair deepened when reformers in a riot destroyed images in the churches of Basel (1529). A year before, he himself had condemned the worship of images: "People should be taught that they are only signs. If only these images did not exist, people would address their prayers to Christ himself. But moderation is good in everything." That was exactly Luther's belief. But he regarded the plundering of churches as a savage reaction opposed to freedom. He left Basel for Freiburg im Breisgau, a Catholic town in Austrian territory, where the authorities received him with much honor and gave him the unfinished palace of Maximilian I to live in. When his pension from the emperor reached him irregularly, the Fugger family undertook his support. But the monks and theologians of Freiburg attacked him as a hidden skeptic and chief instigator of German unrest. In 1535 Erasmus returned to Basel, where university delegates met him and Hieronymus Froben, Johann's son, took him into his house.
Erasmus was now sixty-five (the book's figure) and old age had dimmed his face. He suffered from stomach ulcer, diarrhea, weak digestion, gout and constant colds; the swollen hands in the portrait Dürer drew of him show the effects of his illness. He spent his last years at home, mostly lying in bed. The pain of illness and the repeated attacks of Protestants and Catholics took from him the cheer and good humor that had made friends love him, and left him peevish and sour. Even so, every day respectful letters came from kings, popes, priests, statesmen, scholars and financiers, and friends of learning made his house a place of pilgrimage. On June 6, 1536 severe diarrhea seized him. Though he knew his lamp of life was going out, he did not call a confessor to his bedside; and without religious ceremonies, still uttering the names of Mary and Christ, he died (June 12). The people of the city escorted his body in a splendid procession and buried it in the city's greatest church. Humanists, printers and bishops of Basel set a stone on his grave that still stands, telling of "his unrivaled mastery of all the sciences." In his will Erasmus left no inheritance for religious ends; he bequeathed all his possessions to care for the sick and aged, dowries for poor girls, and the education of talented youths.
The Verdict of Later Ages
Posterity has judged Erasmus's course according to the influence the Renaissance has had on its judges. In the heat of the religious revolution nearly all Christian parties thought him timid and a time-server. The reformers accused him of leading them to the brink, urging them to jump, and then stepping back. The Council of Trent called him an impious heretic and forbade Catholics to read his works. In 1758 Horace Walpole called him a parasite who could grasp truth but feared to speak it. By the late nineteenth century, when the dust of the wars of religion had settled, a learned and wise Protestant historian lamented that "violent events frustrated Erasmus's scholarly aims. In the end the gentle method is surer than any, and no factor is more effective for human progress than culture. Luther directed the sixteenth-century Reformation, but if that reform is to go on, there is no way except Erasmus's method," and a Catholic historian called Erasmus's method rational. In thought, Erasmus belonged to a later, more scientific and rational age. What he began, and what was blighted in the clash of religious revolution, was resumed at a more suitable time by the thinkers of the seventeenth century. Luther's appearance was inevitable; but when his work had borne fruit and the passion had cooled, people would turn again to Erasmus and the Renaissance, and under the shelter of mutual patience and tolerance would set to quiet, continual labor for enlightenment.