Release from the Cloister
He left England in July 1514 and, through fog and customs, made his way to the port of Calais. There he received a letter from the prior of his forgotten monastery at Steyn, who reminded him that his leave had long expired and that he had better return at once and spend the rest of his life in penitence and piety. The letter made him shudder, for under canon law the prior could call on the civil power to bring him back to his cell. Erasmus apologized, and the prior did not pursue the matter. But so that the affair should not trouble him again, the wandering scholar asked his influential friends in England to obtain for him from Pope Leo X an exemption from monastic obligations and vows.
The Greek New Testament
While these negotiations were under way, Erasmus went by way of the Rhine to Basel and gave to Froben, for printing and publication, the manuscript of his most important work: a critical edition of the Greek text of the New Testament with a new Latin translation and commentary. This work, born of love and a source of pride, was dangerous for both author and publisher: preparing the text had taken years, and printing and publishing it was difficult and costly; the Church might condemn any translation or emendation set against Jerome's Latin version, long accepted under the name Vulgate, and the sale of the book might not cover the cost of printing. By dedicating the book to Pope Leo X Erasmus removed one of the dangers. In February 1516 Froben at last published it. Erasmus had set his corrected Greek text and his own Latin translation face to face in parallel columns. Erasmus's Greek was limited, and so he shares with the typesetters the blame for the countless errors that crept into the text. As scholarship, this edition is inferior to the text that a group of scholars prepared in 1514 for Cardinal Ximenes, but that work was not available to the public until 1522. These two books mark the beginning of the humanists' attention to the literature of early Christianity and the start of critical study of the Bible, a field that reached the point in the nineteenth century of treating the Bible as a human document, the product of fallible human thought and pen.
The Annotations
Erasmus's notes were printed as a separate volume. They were written in clear, colloquial Latin intelligible to every graduate of the schools of the day, and they found many readers. The discussions, though in general within the framework of beliefs accepted by the Church, opened the way to many later discoveries. In the first edition he omitted the famous sentence called the "Johannine comma" from the First Epistle of John (5:7), which supports the Trinity; modern purified and reliable texts also omit it, since it is an addition of a later age. He printed the story of the woman taken in adultery from the Gospel of John (7:53–8:11) and the last twelve verses of Mark, but remarked that they might be interpolations. Repeatedly he brought out the difference between early Christianity and the Christianity of his own time. On the Gospel of Matthew (23:37) he wrote:
What would Jerome say if he saw the Virgin Mary's milk put on show for money and honored more than the holy body of Christ? What would he say if he saw these miraculous oils and these pieces of the True Cross, which have grown to the size of a big ship's timber? Here is the scourge of St. Francis, there the petticoat of the Virgin Mary, or the comb of St. Anne, put on display; and they are shown to the people not as aids to religion but as the essence and substance of religion; and all this comes from the greed of priests and the hypocrisy of monks, who play with the simplicity and purity of the people.
Since it was claimed that Matthew (19:12), where it speaks of those who "have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake," recommends the celibacy of monks, Erasmus wrote that we may count among this class also those who, through deceit or fear, have fallen into a celibate life, a life in which they are allowed to live irregularly but not to marry; hence, if they keep a mistress openly, they are Christian priests, but if they marry lawfully, they are burned. (The book also gives a further, harsher sentence of Erasmus on this point, which is not reproduced here.) And on First Timothy he wrote that priests are now very many, in flocks and troops of every kind, and it is plain that few of them are chaste; most have fallen into licentiousness and open debauchery; surely it would be better to allow those who cannot live celibate to take lawful wives, so as to prevent this foul and disastrous pollution.
Finally, in a note he added on Matthew (11:30), he reflected the basic belief of the great religious reformers, a return from the Church to Christ: truly the yoke of Christ would be easy and his burden light if petty human commands were not added to what he himself ordained. Christ gives us no commandment except that we love one another; for there is nothing in the world so bitter and hard that love cannot make it sweet and bearable. By the law of nature all things move easily, and nothing but the philosophy of Christ, whose purpose is to restore integrity and perfection to fallen nature, agrees with human nature. The Church has added to this philosophy many things, some of which could be removed without fanaticism: for example, all the philosophical opinions about the nature and distinction of the three persons of the Godhead; what laws and superstitions they have laid down about priestly dress; what fasts they have ordained; and what can we say about vows and oaths of monks, the authority of popes and the abuse of pardons and dispensations. Would that people would consent to let Christ rule by the laws of the Gospel and no longer seek to call human laws to their aid in strengthening their despotic and anti-intellectual rule. (The quotations are given in the book in shortened form, with omissions.)
Success and Criticism
These notes probably gave the book the success that astonished both author and publisher. The first edition sold out within three years, and a later revised edition was reprinted sixty-nine more times before Erasmus's death. The criticism of the book was also very sharp; critics exposed many of its errors; and Dr. Johann Eck, professor at Ingolstadt and Luther's chief opponent, called Erasmus's remark that the Greek of the New Testament is inferior to the works of Demosthenes absurd and shameful. But Pope Leo X looked on the work with favor, and Pope Hadrian VI asked Erasmus to do the same for the Old Testament; yet the Council of Trent rejected Erasmus's translation and declared Jerome's Vulgate the only authoritative Latin version of the Bible. Erasmus's New Testament soon lost its standing as scholarship, but as a matter of the history of ideas it remained an important event. His work smoothed the way for the translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages, which soon became universal.
A passage in the book's passionate preface reads: I wish that the weakest women might read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. I wish those sacred words were translated into every language, so that not only Scots and Irish but Turks and Saracens might read them. I wish the plowboy, following the ox and plow, might sing them to himself; the weaver, to the rhythm of the shuttle, murmur them under his breath; and the traveler, weary and downcast, relieve the tedium of the road by reading them. We may someday regret time spent on other studies, but happy is the man whom death finds at his study of the Bible. These sacred words show you the image of Christ preaching, healing, dying and rising so clearly, and give him such reality, that if he himself were present you might not see him better or more truly.
Other Editions and Honors
Erasmus, delighted with the capacity of Froben's press, published in November 1516 a critical text of Jerome, followed by revised classical texts and writings of the Church Fathers; and in the text of Seneca he corrected more than four thousand mistakes. These were a great service to scholarship. He rewrote the narrative of the New Testament in paraphrase (1517). Taking up such important tasks required him to live repeatedly at Basel; but a new attachment fixed his residence near the royal court at Brussels. At this time Charles was only king of Castile and ruler of the Netherlands and not yet Emperor Charles V; he was not yet fifteen, but his bright mind turned to varied and colorful interests, and it soon occurred to him that if the greatest writer of the age were among his personal counselors, the splendor of his court might increase. He ordered it so, and Erasmus, on his return from Basel (1516), accepted the honorary post with a small annual salary. At Courtrai a church post, along with the promise of a bishopric, was offered him, but he declined and remarked to a friend that they had dreamed a dream for him whose telling would amuse him. The universities of Leipzig and Ingolstadt invited him to teach, but he refused. Francis I tried to draw him away from Charles with a flattering invitation to join the French court; but Erasmus, in words that were models of courtesy, declined the request.
The Pope's Letter
Meanwhile Pope Leo X sent the requested dispensation to London. In March 1517 Erasmus went to London and received the pope's letter freeing him from monastic obligations and vows. Besides the official documents Leo had sent him a personal letter: Dear son, health and blessings! Your outstanding and excellent life and character, your rare learning and high merits, evident not only from the works of your studies, esteemed everywhere, but affirmed by the most learned men, and finally the letters of recommendation written to us by two of the most renowned princes, the king of England and the Catholic king [of France], convince us sufficiently to take you under our special and exclusive favor. We have therefore gladly granted your request and stand ready, whenever you wish or chance brings it about, to extend our kindness further, and we firmly believe that your holy labors, pursued with diligence for the public benefit, should be encouraged with adequate rewards to still higher efforts.
Perhaps this was a clever bribe to move Erasmus to behave better toward the Church, perhaps an honorable sign from a humanist and tolerant court; but in any case Erasmus never forgot these courtesies of the pope and, because of the patience and forbearance the Church had shown toward the sting of his criticisms, always found it hard to break with it.