Erasmus (c. 1466-1536)

Key Dates

A Child of the Devotio moderna

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam on October 28, very probably in 1466, although some biographers choose 1469: he himself kept his age somewhat unclear, probably out of discomfort over the circumstances of his birth^[2]. He was an illegitimate child: his father Gerard, a citizen of Gouda, and his mother Margaretha^[3]. According to Erasmus' own account, his father became a priest only after his birth; Johan Huizinga, on the contrary, judges it probable that he already was one at the time of the liaison from which Erasmus was born^[4]. That original stain weighed on his ecclesiastical career; later he would need papal dispensations to escape its legal consequences^[5].

Sent from the age of nine to the Saint-Lebuin chapter school of Deventer, where masters from the Brothers of the Common Life taught, a center of the Devotio moderna, the movement of inward piety born in the Netherlands in the fourteenth century^[6], he absorbed there both the affective spirituality of the Imitation of Christ and the new taste for elegant Latin letters transmitted by the master Alexander Hegius. Orphaned - his mother died when he was thirteen, followed shortly by his father - he was placed by his guardians in the school of Bois-le-Duc, run by the Brothers^[7]. From that double formation - devotion of the heart and the culture of the humanities - came his whole vocation: to reconcile piety and learning.

The Canon of Steyn, a Priest "Despite Himself"

Around 1487, pushed by his guardians and by necessity more than by an inner vocation, Erasmus entered the monastery of the Augustinian canons regular of Steyn, near Gouda^[8]. He made his vows there and, in 1492, was ordained priest^[9]: the bishop of Cambrai, Hendrik van Bergen, soon made him his Latin secretary. But the cloister suffocated him: what he chiefly loved there was the library and the company of ancient authors.

Throughout his life, Erasmus kept the conviction that holiness is not measured by the religious habit. He summarized it in a famous sentence from the Enchiridion:

"The monastic state is not piety."

• Erasmus, Enchiridion militis christiani, 1503^[10]

The phrase, often quoted against him, does not condemn religious life itself: it refuses to confuse it with virtue, against a purely exterior devotion. This is already the program of the "philosophy of Christ": Christianity from within.

Paris, England and the Vocation of a Man of Letters

In 1495, Erasmus went to Paris to study theology at the College de Montaigu, a school famous for its austerity and discipline. There he encountered a late, formalist and quarrelsome scholasticism of which he would keep a sharp memory and which he later mocked^[11]. To earn a living, he became a tutor - which led him, in 1499, to make his first journey to England.

That crossing changed his life. At Oxford, he became close to John Colet, who showed him how to read Scripture not as a logician but as a believer; and it was at Lord Mountjoy's estate at Greenwich, during a walk to Eltham (1499), that he met Thomas More, the lay humanist, future martyr and saint, who became his lifelong friend^[12]. Erasmus owed to Colet his great intellectual conversion: the move from profane literature toward the theology of the sources, that of the Bible and the Fathers, in their original languages. Between 1511 and 1514, he would in fact teach Greek and theology at Cambridge, called there by the future cardinal-martyr John Fisher^[13].

Erasmus' work is colossal - the complete edition of his works alone fills dozens of volumes. Yet it obeys one aim: to bring Christendom back to the simplicity of the Gospel by correcting texts, educating minds and laughing at the faults of the age.

The Enchiridion and the "Philosophy of Christ"

As early as 1503, the Enchiridion militis christiani - the Handbook of the Christian Soldier - set out the heart of his thought^[14]. Against a religion reduced to rites, pilgrimages and material devotions, Erasmus proposed an interior piety, nourished by Scripture and turned toward the imitation of Christ. To name it, he took up and popularized a patristic expression that would run through all his work: the philosophia Christi, the "philosophy of Christ"^[15]. It was not a system, but a way of living the Gospel in daily life, open to layman and cleric alike.

From this philosophy came his horror of war between Christians. In a long development added to the Adages in 1515, then in the Querela Pacis ("The Complaint of Peace," 1517), he denounced war as unworthy of man and still more of the baptized. He condensed its folly in a famous adage:

"War is sweet to those who have not experienced it."

• Erasmus, Adages, Dulce bellum inexpertis, 1515^[16]

For Erasmus, peace was not a political opinion: it was the social face of the Gospel, the very opposite of the spirit of the world.

In Praise of Folly: Laughter in Order to Reform

In 1509, returning from Italy, Erasmus composed in a few days, in Thomas More's London house, the work that would make him immortal: the Moriae Encomium, In Praise of Folly, published in Paris in 1511^[17]. The title itself is a wink at his friend: Moria (Folly, in Greek) echoes the name More. Folly speaks in the first person and, under the pretext of praising herself, delivers a biting satire of all society: princes, courtiers, merchants, but above all ignorant monks, hair-splitting theologians and luxurious prelates.

The success was immediate: dozens of editions appeared during the author's lifetime. The satire, however, was never revolt: Erasmus mocked abuses in order to call for reform, not to overthrow the Church. It was the laughter of a physician, not of a rebel.

The Novum Instrumentum: The First Published Greek New Testament

The summit of his scholarly work appeared in Basel, from the press of Johann Froben, in March 1516: the Novum Instrumentum omne^[18]. It was the first published edition of the Greek text of the New Testament^[19], accompanied by a new Latin translation correcting the Vulgate on hundreds of points, and by a large apparatus of philological annotations. Erasmus applied the humanist method - ad fontes, "to the sources" - to the most sacred Book of Christendom.

The enterprise was risky: touching the text of the Vulgate, treated as untouchable for a thousand years, scandalized conservative theologians. But the influence was immense. Reissued and improved (1519, 1522, 1527, 1535), Erasmus' Greek text became the basis of the Textus Receptus, on which most later biblical translations would rely, including Luther's German Bible and the first English Bibles^[20].

Erasmus did not intend this treasure to remain the preserve of scholars. In the preface entitled Paraclesis ("Exhortation"), he issued a famous call for the universal reading of Scripture:

"I would like all the humblest women to read the Gospel, to read the epistles of Paul. And would that these texts were translated into all the languages of all peoples... Let the farmer sing some passage of them as he holds the handle of his plough, let the weaver hum some verses to the rhythm of his shuttle, let the traveler relieve the weariness of the road with such stories."

• Erasmus, Paraclesis, preface to the Novum Instrumentum, 1516^[21]

This page, often invoked later by the Reformers, remains perfectly Catholic in inspiration: it does not contest the authority of the Church; it asks that Scripture nourish the life of all the baptized.

The Church Fathers Returned to Europe

An indefatigable editor, Erasmus devoted a vast part of his work to patristics. In the same year, 1516, he published with Froben a major edition of Saint Jerome, the Father he admired above all - translator of the Vulgate and trilingual scholar in his own image^[22]. Editions of Saint Cyprian, Saint Hilary, Saint Irenaeus, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint John Chrysostom and Origen followed. Europe owes in large part to Erasmus and his circle the printed rediscovery of the Church Fathers - a patrimony that both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation would use abundantly^[23].

The Colloquies and Christian Education

Finally, Erasmus was an immense educator. His Colloquies (1518 and expanded editions), first designed as Latin exercises, became short satirical and moral dialogues of European reach^[24]. His treatise De civilitate morum puerilium (1530), on children's manners, was one of the continent's first manuals of civility. Everywhere the same conviction appears: the Church is reformed first by reforming souls, through letters and gentleness.

When, in 1517, an Augustinian monk of Wittenberg named Martin Luther posted his theses against indulgences, many thought Erasmus and Luther were fighting the same battle. The two men denounced the same abuses. For several years, Erasmus observed a prudent neutrality, refusing to condemn Luther while refusing to embrace him:

"I keep myself neutral as far as I may, so as to advance learning, which is flowering again, by my restraint rather than by passion or violence."

• Erasmus, letter to Luther of 1519^[25]

But pressure increased on both sides. Rome demanded that he speak; the Lutherans pressed him to join them. In 1524, Erasmus chose his side - and it was the side of the Church.

De libero arbitrio (1524)

He attacked Luther on the point he judged most dangerous: human freedom. In his Diatribe on Free Will (De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio), published in Basel in September 1524, Erasmus defended, against the Lutheran thesis, that man cooperates in his salvation through a will that grace awakens without destroying^[26]. He refused to lock God into a predestination that would make human responsibility an illusion. The tone remained moderate, almost hesitant - Erasmus himself said he was little inclined to categorical assertions - but the stake was decisive: the whole Catholic doctrine of grace and freedom was in question.

Luther's Answer: De servo arbitrio

Luther replied in December 1525 with a magnificently violent treatise, the De servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will), which he would regard as one of his best books^[27]. For him, the human will after sin is totally enslaved: it can do nothing for its salvation, which God alone accomplishes. Where Erasmus sees cooperation, Luther sees only servitude. The disagreement is not a matter of temperament but of substance: it touches the very nature of Redemption. The rupture between the two men is now definitive.

The following table summarizes the doctrinal opposition as it emerges from the two treatises:

The Hyperaspistes and the Consummated Rupture

Erasmus replied again, in two stages, with the Hyperaspistes ("The Defender," 1526-1527), maintaining his position without ever renouncing the Church^[29]. History will remember that in this confrontation, it was the moderate humanist who defended the Catholic faith concerning grace and free will - the doctrine that the Council of Trent would soon confirm solemnly against Protestantism^[30].

The Refusal of the Reformation

Erasmus' choice was not opportunistic. Despite his sharp criticisms of the clergy, despite the bridges people imagined between him and the Reformation, he never left the Roman Church and never signed any Protestant confession. He saw in Luther's revolt a threat of schism and war - the two evils he abhorred most. His motto could be this constant refusal of rupture: reform without tearing apart.

From Reformed Basel to Catholic Freiburg

The trial became concrete. Erasmus had settled in Basel, close to his friend Froben. But when the city officially passed to the Reformation in 1529 and Catholic worship was forbidden, Erasmus did not resign himself to it: he left the city and established himself in Freiburg im Breisgau, which remained Catholic and loyal to the Emperor^[31]. The gesture is eloquent: the old humanist preferred exile to denial. He would return to Basel only in 1535, to die there.

The Cardinalate Declined

Rome, far from condemning him, sought to honor him. In 1535, Pope Paul III, who was preparing Catholic reform and the future council, seriously considered making Erasmus a cardinal; he first offered him a benefice attached to the church of Deventer - an offer he left without follow-up^[32]. But Erasmus, old and ill, with no taste for court life, declined the honor. The fact alone says enough about the papacy's judgment of him at that time: not a heretic to be crushed, but a master to be rewarded.

A Catholic Death in Basel

Erasmus died in Basel on July 12, 1536, surrounded by his friends. According to his friend and biographer Beatus Rhenanus, his last words were in his mother tongue: "Lieve God" - "Dear God"^[33]; the historian Philip Schaff reports, on the basis of contemporary testimonies, that he repeated: "O Lord Jesus, have mercy on me!"^[34]. This faithful son of Rome was buried with great pomp in Basel Cathedral, the Munster, by then a Protestant church, where his tomb can still be seen. Contemporary accounts of his death show him expiring while invoking Christ, with neither a priest summoned nor last sacraments received recorded^[35]: in a Basel where Catholic worship had been forbidden since 1529^[36], at the end of a fulminating dysentery, this absence is explained without supposing any rupture. Much later, Gonzalo Ponce de Leon asserted (1595) that Erasmus would have died a Catholic after receiving the sacraments - an isolated and late testimony, noted by S. Seidel Menchi^[37], which carries little weight against the contemporary accounts. This fact, which Luther exploited after the event by depicting him as having died "like an Epicurean, without any comfort of God"^[38], proves neither rupture nor apostasy - Erasmus never renounced the Roman faith nor signed any separated confession.

That is the question that has followed his name for five centuries. It has often been summed up in one famous saying.

"The Egg Luther Hatched"

From the 1520s onward, the Franciscans hostile to humanism spread this saying: Erasmus had allegedly "laid the egg that Luther hatched." Erasmus himself reports it in a letter to Johannes Caesarius written from Basel on 16 December 1524, and answers it with this sharp retort:

"I laid a hen's egg; Luther hatched a bird of quite a different feather."

• Erasmus, letter to Johannes Caesarius, Basel, 16 December 1524^[39]

The remark says the essential thing. Yes, Erasmus criticized abuses, demanded a return to Scripture and ridiculed superstition; in that sense, he nourished the critical spirit of his age. But he never wanted the dogmatic rupture: neither the rejection of the papacy, nor the denial of free will, nor the destruction of the sacraments or religious life. What Luther hatched was not in Erasmus' egg.

The Posthumous Placement on the Index

Mistrust nevertheless survived his death. In the severe Index of Forbidden Books of Paul IV (1559), Erasmus was placed among the authors of the first class, that is, those whose entire work was prohibited^[40]. But that extreme judgment did not last: the Tridentine Index of 1564 (the Roman list of forbidden books, revised after the Council of Trent), promulgated by Pius IV in the more measured spirit of the council, lifted that blanket prohibition and moved to targeted censorship: Erasmus now appears in the second class (under the letter "D", with a cross-reference remaining in the first class under "E"); the Colloquies, the Moria (In Praise of Folly), the Lingua, the Christiani matrimonii institutio, the De interdicto esu carnium and the Paraphrase of Matthew translated into Italian by B. Tomitano remained prohibited in bulk; only the other works dealing with religion were forbidden pending expurgation by the faculty of theology of Paris or Louvain, while the Adages were permitted in the edition prepared by Paul Manutius^[41]. The Church thus distinguished what was fruitful in Erasmus from what could mislead.

The Judgment of the Church and of Historians

The Catholic reception of Erasmus, between criticism and defenses from 1515 to 1536, has been studied by Erika Rummel^[42].

Modern historians confirm this nuanced reading. Less a "forerunner" of the Reformation than a synthesizer of the many currents of thought that nourished it, Erasmus spread new ideas without ever drawing Luther's revolutionary conclusions from them^[43]. In Spain, the monumental inquiry of Marcel Bataillon showed how Erasmianism first nourished an interior Catholic reform before being stifled by inquisitorial suspicion^[44]. Erasmus remains what he always wanted to be: a Catholic reformer, neither schismatic nor courtier, whose fidelity was greater than the prudence of the censors.

There remains the gravest objection: Erasmus died in Basel with no contemporary account recording a priest summoned or last sacraments received - proof, some say, that he had broken with Rome. But, as seen above ("A Catholic Death in Basel")^[45], such a death, at the end of a fulminating dysentery in a city where Catholic worship was forbidden, proves neither rupture nor apostasy: Erasmus never renounced the Roman faith nor signed any separated confession.

Erasmianism, a Reform Without Schism

Erasmus' legacy was first that of a learned and peaceful Christianity, humanitas christiana: return to biblical and patristic sources, moral demand, horror of war between Christians, confidence in education. This ideal irrigated generations of Catholic humanists - from Thomas More to the biblical school of the Counter-Reformation - and, through its philological method, the whole modern science of Scripture. Those who today open a Greek New Testament are, without knowing it, heirs of the work begun in Basel in 1516.

Erasmus Today

Five centuries later, his name remains a symbol of dialogue and culture - even giving its name to the major European university exchange program. But for Church history, he remains above all this singular figure: a Catholic priest who dreamed of reform through intelligence and charity, who saw his century tear itself apart, and who chose, at the decisive moment, to remain in the barque of Peter rather than leave it.

• Christian Renaissance - the great movement of Catholic humanism of which Erasmus is the central figure.
• The Devotio moderna - the spirituality of the Brothers of the Common Life that formed the young Erasmus.
• Martin Luther - the reformer whom Erasmus first watched with hope, then opposed.
• John Calvin and Answers to Protestantism - for the doctrinal controversy over grace and free will.
• The Council of Trent - which solemnly confirmed the Catholic doctrine of free will defended by Erasmus.
• Saint Jerome - the Church Father whom Erasmus edited and admired above all.