User:Rick Jelliffe/sandbox/Thought of Erasmus

Thought and views

Biographers, such as Johan Huizinga, frequently draw connections between many of Erasmus' convictions and his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for females, opposition to inconsiderate rules notably institutional dietary rules, a desire to make education engaging for the participants, interest in classical languages, horror of poverty and spiritual hopelessness, distaste for friars begging when they could study or work, unwillingness to be under the direct control of authorities, laicism, the need for those in authority to act in the best interest of their charges, a prizing of mercy and peace, an anger over unnecessary war especially between avaricious princes, an awareness of mortality, etc.

Manner of thinking

Erasmus had a distinctive manner of thinking, a Catholic historian suggests: one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony with "a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing". "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral."

Erasmus has been called a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker, notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general; who nevertheless should be taken very seriously as a pastoral and rhetorical theologian, with a philological and historical approach—rather than a metaphysical approach—to interpreting Scripture and interested in the literal and tropological senses. French theologian Louis Bouyer commented "Erasmus was to be one of those who can get no edification from exegesis where they suspect some misinterpretation."

A theologian has written of "Erasmus’ preparedness completely to satisfy no-one but himself." He has been called moderate, judicious and constructive even when being critical or when mocking extremes.

Manner of expression

Erasmus often wrote in a highly ironical idiom, especially in his letters, which makes them prone to different interpretations when taken literally rather than ironically.

• Erasmus himself chided Ulrich von Hutten's claims that Erasmus was a Lutheran, saying that von Hutten had not detected the irony in Erasmus' public letters enough.
• Antagonistic scholar J.W. Williams denies that Erasmus' letter to Ammonius "let your own interests be your standard in all things" was in obvious jest, as claimed by those more sympathetic to Erasmus.
• Erasmus' aphoristic quote on the persecution of Reuchlin "if it is Christian to hate Jews, we are all abundantly Christians here" is taken literally by Theodor Dunkelgrün as being approving of such hatred; the alternative view would be that it was sardonic and challenging.

Terence J. Martin identifies an "Erasmian pattern" that the supposed (by the reader) otherness (of Turks, Lapplanders, Indians, Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a foil against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized."

• In de bello Turcico, Erasmus metonymizes that we should "kill the Turk, not the man.[...]If we really want to heave the Turks from our necks, we must first expel from our hearts a more loathsome race of Turks: avarice, ambition, the craving for power, self-satisfaction, impiety, extravagance, the love of pleasure, deceitfulness, anger, hatred, envy."

Erasmus' literary theory of "copiousness" makes a virtue of utilizing a large stockpile of tropes and symbolic figures, without modern disclaimers of their reality or qualms about the cumulative impact.

• When Erasmus wrote of 'Judaism,' he most frequently (though not always) was not referring to Jews: instead he referred to those Catholic Christians of his time, especially in the monastic lifestyle, who mistakenly promoted excessive external ritualism over interior piety, by analogy with Second Temple Judaism.
  • "Judaism I call not Jewish impiety, but prescriptions about external things, such as food, fasting, clothes, which to a certain degree resemble the rituals of the Jews."
  • Erasmus' counter-accusation to Spanish friars of "Judaizing" may have been particularly sharp and bold, given the prominent role that some friars with the Spanish Inquisition were playing in the lethal persecution of some conversos.

Pacifism

Peace, peaceableness and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus' writing on Christian living and his mystical theology: "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity" At the Nativity of Jesus "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace.":

He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself

— Method of True Theology, 4

Erasmus was not an absolute Pacifist but promoted political Pacificism and religious Irenicism. Notable writings on irenicism include De Concordia, On the War with the Turks, The Education of a Christian Prince, On Restoring the Concord of the Church, and The Complaint of Peace. Erasmus' ecclesiology of peacemaking held that the church authorities had a divine mandate to settle religious disputes, in an as non-excluding way as possible, including by the preferably-minimal development of doctrine.

In the latter, Lady Peace insists on peace as the crux of Christian life and for understanding Christ:

I give you my peace, I leave you my peace" (John 14:27). You hear what he leaves his people? Not horses, bodyguards, empire or riches – none of these. What then? He gives peace, leaves peace – peace with friends, peace with enemies.

— The Complaint of Peace

A historian has called him "The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace".

Erasmus' emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of medieval lay spirituality as historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) puts it: "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. “Christianity” in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."

War

See also: Erasmus § The Complaint of Peace (1517)

Historians have written that "references to conflict run like a red thread through the writings of Erasmus." Erasmus had experienced war as a child and was particularly concerned about wars between Christian kings, who should be brothers and not start wars; a theme in his book The Education of a Christian Prince. His Adages included "War is sweet to those who have never tasted it" (Dulce bellum inexpertis from Pindar's Greek.)

He promoted and was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, and his wide-ranging correspondence frequently related to issues of peacemaking. He saw a key role of the Church in peacemaking by arbitration and mediation, and the office of the Pope was necessary to rein in tyrannical princes and bishops.

He questioned the practical usefulness and abuses of Just War theory, further limiting it to feasible defensive actions with popular support and that "war should never be undertaken unless, as a last resort, it cannot be avoided." In his Adages he discusses (common translation) "A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war", which owes to Cicero and John Colet's "Better an unjust peace than the justest war."

Erasmus was extremely critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church. He described these princes as corrupt and greedy. Erasmus believed that these princes "collude in a game, of which the outcome is to exhaust and oppress the commonwealth". He spoke more freely about this matter in letters sent to his friends like Thomas More, Beatus Rhenanus and Adrianus Barlandus: a particular target of his criticisms was the Emperor Maximilian I, whom Erasmus blamed for allegedly preventing the Netherlands from signing a peace treaty with Guelders and other schemes to cause wars in order to extract money from his subjects.

One of his approaches was to send, and publish, congratulatory and lionizing letters to princes who, though in a position of strength, negotiated peace with neighbours: such as to King Sigismund I the Old of Poland in 1527.

Erasmus "constantly and consistently" opposed the mooted idea of a Christian "universal monarch" with an over-extended empire, who could supposedly defeat the Ottoman forces: such universalism did not "hold any promise of generating less conflict than the existing political plurality;" instead, advocating concord between princes, both temporal and spiritual. The spiritual princes, by their arbitration and mediation do not "threaten political plurality, but acts as its defender."

Intra-Christian religious toleration

Portrait of Erasmus, after Quinten Massijs (1517)

He referred to his irenical disposition in the Preface to On Free Will as a secret inclination of nature that would make him even prefer the views of the Sceptics over intolerant assertions, though he sharply distinguished adiaphora from what was uncontentiously explicit in the New Testament or absolutely mandated by Church teaching. Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian as well as non-sectarian. To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention "earthly, beastly, demonic" and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melanchthon's view, Erasmus taught charity not faith.

Certain works of Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration of private opinions and ecumenism. For example, in De libero arbitrio, opposing certain views of Martin Luther, Erasmus noted that religious disputants should be temperate in their language, "because in this way the truth, which is often lost amidst too much wrangling may be more surely perceived." Gary Remer writes, "Like Cicero, Erasmus concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors."

Erasmus' pacificism included a particular dislike for sedition, which caused warfare:

It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition.

— Letter to Martin Bucer

Erasmus had been involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of heresy. Erasmus wrote Inquisitio de fide to limit what should be considered heresy to fractiously agitating against essential doctrines (e.g., those of the Creed), with malice and persistence. As with St Theodore the Studite, Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy, or for dissent on non-essentials: "It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him." The Church has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares.

Nevertheless, he allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists, to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order—whether heretic or orthodox—but noted (e.g., to fr:Noël Béda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent Donatists: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the Münster rebellion not because of their heretical views on baptism. Despite these concessions to state power, he suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).

In a letter to Cardial Lorenzo Campeggio, Erasmus lobbied diplomatically for toleration: "If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions (as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous misfortune, but one more endurable than war." But the same dedication to avoiding conflict and bloodshed should be shown by those tempted to join (anti-popist) sects:

"Perhaps evil rulers should sometimes be tolerated. We owe some respect to the memory of those whose places we think of them as occupying. Their titles have some claim on us. We should not seek to put matters right if there is a real possibility that the cure may prove worse than the disease."

— Erasmus, The Sileni of Alcibiades (1517)

Jews and Turks

The focus of most of his political writing was about peace within Christendom with almost a sole focus on Europe. In 1516, Erasmus wrote "it is the part of a Christian prince to regard no one as an outsider unless he is a nonbeliever, and even on them he should inflict no harm", which entails not attacking outsiders, not taking their riches, not subjecting them to political rule, no forced conversions, and keeping promises made to them.

In his last decade, he involved himself in the public policy debate on war with the Ottoman Empire, which was then invading Western Europe, notably in his book On the war against the Turks (1530), as the "reckless and extravagant" Pope Leo X promoted going on the offensive with a new crusade. Erasmus re-worked Luther's rhetoric that the invading Turks represent God's judgment of decadent Christendom, but without Luther's fatalism: Erasmus not only accused Western leaders of kingdom-threatening hypocrisy, he proposed a remedy: anti-expansionist moral reforms by Europe's disunited leaders as a necessary unitive political step before any aggressive warfare against the Ottoman threat, reforms which might themselves, if sincere, prevent both the internecine and foreign warfare.

Juan Luis Vives

In common with his times, Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term half-Christian for the latter. However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of antisemitic and anti-Moslem prejudice in his writings: Erasmus scholar Shimon Markish wrote that the charge of antisemitism could not be sustained in Erasmus' public writings, however historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam. Biographer James Tracy points to the antisemitic edge in Erasmus' uncharacteristically vituperative comments against Johannes Pfefferkorn during the Reuchlin affair: Erasmus felt Pfefferkorn had personally attacked him.

Erasmus claimed not to be personally xenophobic: "For I am of such a nature that I could love even a Jew, were he a pleasant companion and did not spew out blasphemy against Christ" however Markish suggests that it is probable Erasmus never actually encountered a (practicing) Jew.

Erasmus was not vehemently antisemitic in the way of the later post-Catholic Martin Luther; it was not a topic or theme of his public writing. In his Paraphrase on Romans, Erasmus voiced, as Paul, the "secret" that in the end times "all of the Israelites will be restored to salvation," and accept Christ as their Messiah, "although now part of them have fallen away from it."

Erasmus' pervasive anti-ceremonialism treated the early Church debates on circumcision, food and special days as manifestations of a cultural chauvinism by the initial Jewish Christians in Antioch. However his translation and publication of the complete works of John Chrysostom included the notorious sermons Adversus Judaeos which go further than deprecating re-judaizing tendencies but set the pattern for later Christian antisemitism by portraying Jews as collectively the murderers of Christ.

Unusually for a Christian theologian of any time, he perceived and championed strong Hellenistic rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the intellectual milieux of Jesus, Paul, and the early church: "If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament!"

On the subject of slavery, Erasmus characteristically treated it in passing under the topic of tyranny: Christians were not allowed to be tyrants, which slave-owning required, but especially not to be the masters of other Christians. Erasmus had various other piecemeal arguments against slavery: for example, that it was not legitimate to have slaves taken in an unjust war, but it was not a subject that occupied him.

Religious reform

Personal reform

Erasmus expressed much of his reform program in terms of the proper attitude towards the sacraments, and their ramifications: notably for the underappreciated sacraments of Baptism and Marriage (see On the Institution of Christian Marriage) considered as vocations more than events; and for the mysterious Eucharist, pragmatic Confession, the dangerous Last Rites (writing On the Preparation for Death), and the pastoral Holy Orders (see Ecclesiastes.) Historians have noted that Erasmus commended the benefits of immersive, docile scripture-reading in sacramental terms.

Sacraments

Johannes Œcolampadius by Asper (1550)

A test of the Reformation was the doctrine of the sacraments, and the crux of this question was the observance of the Eucharist. Erasmus was concerned that the sacramentarians, headed by Œcolampadius of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own in order to try to claim him for their schismatic and "erroneous" movement. When the Mass was finally banned in Basel in 1529, Erasmus immediately abandoned the city, as did the other expelled Catholic clergy.

In 1530, Erasmus published a new edition of the orthodox treatise of Algerus against the heretic Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century. He added a dedication, affirming his belief in the reality of the Body of Christ after consecration in the Eucharist, commonly referred to as transubstantiation, though Erasmus found the scholastic formulation of transubstantiation to stretch language past its breaking point.

By and large, the miraculous real change that interested Erasmus the author more than that of the bread is the transformation in the humble partaker. Erasmus wrote several notable pastoral books or pamphlets on sacraments, always looking through rather than at the rituals or forms: on marriage and wise matches, preparation for confession and the need for pastoral encouragement, preparation for death and the need to assuage fear, training and helping the preaching duties of priests under bishops, baptism and the need for that faithful to own the baptismal vows made for them.

Catholic reform

Institutional reforms

Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Erasmus, sketch: black chalk on paper, 1520.

The Protestant Reformation began in the year following the publication of his pathbreaking edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.

According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus' not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings; however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change."

In theologian Louis Bouyer's interpretation, Erasmus' agenda was "to reform the Church from within by a renewal of biblical theology, based on philological study of the New Testament text, and supported by a knowledge of patristics, itself renewed by the same methods. The final object of it all was to nourish[...]chiefly moral and spiritual reform[...]"

Erasmus, at the height of his literary fame, was called upon to take one side, but public partisanship was foreign to his beliefs, his nature and his habits. Despite all his criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church, especially at first he sided unambiguously with neither Luther nor the anti-Lutherans publicly (though in private he lobbied assiduously against extremism from both parties), but eventually shunned the breakaway Protestant Reformation movements along with their most radical offshoots.

"I have constantly declared, in countless letters, booklets, and personal statements, that I do not want to be involved with either party."

— Erasmus, Spongia (1523)

The world had laughed at his satire, The Praise of Folly, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work so far had commended itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters in the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.

Anti-fraternalism

Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus came to believe that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have: in the Enchiridion he controversially put it "Monkishness is not piety." At this time, it was better to live as "a monk in the world" than in the monastery.

Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption and careerism, and particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans): these orders also typically ran the university Scholastic theology programs and from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. The more some attacked him, the more offensive he became about their influence.

Alastor, an evil spirit: "They are a certain Sort of Animals in black and white Vestments, Ash-colour'd Coats, and various other Dresses, that are always hovering about the Courts of Princes, and [to each side] are continually instilling into their Ears the Love of War, and exhorting the Nobility and common People to it, haranguing them in their Sermons, that it is a just, holy and religious War.[...]"

Charon: "[...]What do they get out of it?"

Alastor: "Because they get more by those that die, than those that live. There are last Wills and Testaments, Funeral Obsequies, Bulls, and a great many other Articles of no despicable Profit. And in the last Place, they had rather live in a Camp, than in their Cells. War breeds a great many Bishops, who were not thought good for any Thing in a Time of Peace."

— Erasmus, "Charon", Colloquies

He was scandalized by superstitions, such as that if you were buried in a Franciscan habit you would go direct to heaven. crime and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year, the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries, respect for bishops, requiring work not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of Augustinian Canons,) the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies, and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.

However, he was not in favour of speedy closures of monasteries nor of larger reformed monasteries with important libraries: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.

These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant, and the lurid hyperbolic attacks in his half-satire The Praise of Folly were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, "what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief," such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.

He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of Baptism, and others such as the vows of the evangelical counsels, while admirable in intent and content, were now mainly counter-productive.

His main Catholic opposition, during had been from scholars in the mendicant orders, and after his lifetime scholars of mendicant orders have disputed Erasmus as hyperbolic and ill-informed. He purported that "Saint Francis came lately to me in a dream and thanked me for chastising them." A 20th century Benedictine scholar wrote of him as "all sail and no rudder." Erasmus did also have significant support and contact with reform-minded friars, including Franciscans such as Jean Vitrier and Cardinal Cisneros, and Dominicans such as Cardinal Cajetan the former Master of the Order of Preachers.

Protestant reform

The early reformers built their theology on Erasmus' philological analyses of specific verses in the New Testament: repentance over penance (the basis of the first thesis of the Luther's 95 Theses), justification by imputation, grace as favour or clemency, faith as hoping trust, human transformation over reformation, congregation over church, mystery over sacrament, etc. In Erasmus' view, they went too far, downplayed Sacred Tradition such as Patristic interpretations, and irresponsibly fomented bloodshed.

Increasing disagreement with Luther

Cranach (1520), Portraits of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon

Erasmus and Luther impacted each other greatly. Each had misgivings about each other from the beginning (Erasmus on Luther's rash and antagonistic character, Luther on Erasmus' focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.

Noting Luther's criticisms of corruption in the Church, Erasmus described Luther to Pope Leo X as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" while agreeing, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls" (e.g., the sale of indulgences) "are urgently needed." However, behind the scenes Erasmus forbade his publisher Froben from handling the works of Luther and tried to keep the reform movement focused on institutional rather than theological issues, yet he also privately wrote to authorities to prevent Luther's persecution. In the words of one historian, "at this earlier period he was more concerned with the fate of Luther than his theology."

In 1520, Erasmus wrote that "Luther ought to be answered and not crushed." However, the publication of Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Oct 1520) and subsequent bellicosity drained Erasmus' and many humanists' sympathy, even more as Christians became partisans and the partisans took to violence.

Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of Erasmus' own, and spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing his usual "small target" excuse, that to do so would endanger the cause of bonae litterae which he regarded as one of his purposes in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus declined to support him, the "straightforward" Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose.

However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus may have stemmed, not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To Philip Melanchthon in 1524 he wrote:

I know nothing of your church; at the very least it contains people who will, I fear, overturn the whole system and drive the princes into using force to restrain good men and bad alike. The gospel, the word of God, faith, Christ, and Holy Spirit – these words are always on their lips; look at their lives and they speak quite another language.

Catholic theologian George Chantraine notes that, where Luther quotes Luke 11:21 "He that is not with me is against me", Erasmus takes Mark 9:40 "For he that is not against us, is on our part."

Though he sought to remain accommodative in doctrinal disputes, each side accused him of siding with the other, perhaps because of his perceived influence and what they regarded as his dissembling neutrality, which he regarded as peacemaking accommodation:

I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.

— "On Free Will"

Dispute on free will

Main article: De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio

Further information: § On Free Will (1524)

By 1523, and first suggested in a letter from Henry VIII, Erasmus had been convinced that Luther's ideas on necessity/free will were a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized with friends and correspondents on how to respond with proper moderation without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda. He eventually chose a campaign that involved an irenical 'dialogue' "The Inquisition of Faith", a positive, evangelical model sermon "On the Measureless Mercy of God", and a gently critical 'diatribe' "On Free Will."

The publication of his brief book On Free Will initiated what has been called "The greatest debate of that era" which still has ramifications today. They bypassed discussion on reforms which they both agreed on in general, and instead dealt with authority and biblical justifications of synergism versus monergism in relation to salvation.

Luther responded with On the Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) (1525).

Erasmus replied to this in his lengthy two volume Hyperaspistes and other works, which Luther ignored. Apart from the perceived moral failings among followers of the Reformers—an important sign for Erasmus—he also dreaded any change in doctrine, citing the long history of the Church as a bulwark against innovation. He put the matter bluntly to Luther:

We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same Assertion you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before.

— Hyperaspistes I

Continuing his chastisement of Luther – and undoubtedly put off by the notion of there being "no pure interpretation of Scripture anywhere but in Wittenberg" – Erasmus touches upon another important point of the controversy:

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.

— Hyperaspistes, Book I

"False evangelicals"

In 1529, Erasmus wrote "An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals" to Gerardus Geldenhouwer (former Bishop of Utrecht, also schooled at Deventer.)

You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely. ...

Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers, applying the same critique he had made about public Scholastic disputations:

Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. [...]The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. [...]
I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. [...]
Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? [...]Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. [...]They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.

— Epistola contra quosdam qui se falso iactant evangelicos.

Other

Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:

• Ulrich von Hutten Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523) see below
• Martin Bucer Responsio ad fratres Inferioris Germaniae ad epistolam apologeticam incerto autoreproditam (1530)
• Heinrich Eppendorf Admonitio adversus mendacium et obstrectationem (1530)

However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic Melanchthon and Albrecht Duerer.

A common accusation, supposedly started by antagonistic monk-theologians, made Erasmus responsible for Martin Luther and the Reformation: "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." Erasmus wittily dismissed the charge, claiming that Luther had "hatched a different bird entirely." Erasmus-reader Peter Canisius commented: "Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch."

Philosophy and Erasmus

Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger and workshop

Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all, (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either.) Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician or grammarian rather than a philosopher. He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician Lucian. Erasmus' writings shifted "an intellectual culture from logical disputation about things to quarrels about texts, contexts, and words."

Classical

Erasmus syncretistically took phrases, ideas and motifs from many classical philosophers to furnish discussions of Christian themes: academics have identified aspects of his thought as variously Platonist (duality), Cynical (asceticism), Stoic (adiaphora), Epicurean (ataraxia, pleasure as virtue), realist/non-voluntarist, and Isocratic (rhetoric, political education, syncretism.) However, his Christianized version of Epicureanism is regarded as his own.

Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of epistemological (Ciceronian not Cartesian) Scepticism:

A Sceptic is not someone who doesn't care to know what is true or false…but rather someone who does not make a final decision easily or fight to the death for his own opinion, but rather accepts as probable what someone else accepts as certain…I explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the Church.

— Erasmus

Historian Kirk Essary has noted that from his earliest to last works Erasmus "regularly denounced the Stoics as specifically unchristian in their hardline position and advocacy of apatheia": warm affection and an appropriately fiery heart being inalienable parts of human sincerity; however historian Ross Dealy sees Erasmus' decrial of other non-gentle "perverse affections" as having Stoical roots.

Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul the seat of free will:

The body is purely material; the spirit is purely divine; the soul…is tossed back and forwards between the two according to whether it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The spirit makes us gods; the body makes us beasts; the soul makes us men.

— Erasmus

According to theologian George van Kooten, Erasmus was the first modern scholar "to note the similarities between Plato's Symposium and John's Gospel", first in the Enchiridion then in the Adagia, pre-dating other scholarly interest by 400 years.

Anti-scholasticism

Erasmus did not have a metaphysical bone in his frail body, and had no real feeling for the philosophical concerns of scholastic theology.

— Lewis W Spitz

He eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in Aristotle, in particular the curriculum and systematic methods of the post-Aquinas Schoolmen (Scholastics) and their frigid, counter-productive Aristoteleanism: "What has Aristotle to do with Christ?"

"They can deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, and knead it into what shape best suits their interest."

The Praise of Folly

Erasmus held that academics must avoid philosophical factionalism, in order to "make the whole world Christian." Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality, unless used moderately. And, by "excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation." "They are windbags blown up with Aristotle, sausages stuffed with a mass of theoretical definitions, conclusions, and propositions."

Philosophia Christi

(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's Philosophia Christiana.)

Erasmus approached classical philosophers theologically and rhetorically: their value was in how they pre-saged, explained or amplified the unique teachings of Christ (particularly the Sermon on the Mount): the philosophia Christi. "A great part of the teaching of Christ is to be found in some of the philosophers, particularly Socrates, Diogenes and Epictetus. But Christ taught it much more fully, and exemplified it better..." (Paraclesis) In fact, Christ was "the very father of philosophy" (Anti-Barbieri.)

In works such as his Enchiridion, The Education of a Christian Prince and the Colloquies, Erasmus developed his idea of the philosophia Christi, a life lived according to the teachings of Jesus taken as a spiritual-ethical-social-political-legal philosophy:

Christ the heavenly teacher has founded a new people on earth,…Having eyes without guile, these folk know no spite or envy; having freely castrated themselves, and aiming at a life of angels while in the flesh, they know no unchaste lust; they know not divorce, since there is no evil they will not endure or turn to the good; they have not the use of oaths, since they neither distrust nor deceive anyone; they know not the hunger for money, since their treasure is in heaven, nor do they itch for empty glory, since they refer all things to the glory of Christ.…these are the new teachings of our founder, such as no school of philosophy has ever brought forth.

— Erasmus, Method of True Theology

In philosopher Étienne Gilson's summary: "the quite precise goal he pursues is to reject Greek philosophy outside of Christianity, into which the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy with the risk of corrupting this Christian Wisdom."

Useful "philosophy" needed to be limited to (or re-defined as) the practical and moral:

You must realize that 'philosopher' does not mean someone who is clever at dialectics or science but someone who rejects illusory appearance and undauntedly seeks out and follows what is true and good. Being a philosopher is in practice the same as being a Christian; only the terminology is different."

— Erasmus, Anti-Barbieri

Theology of Erasmus

Three key distinctive features of the spirituality Erasmus proposed are accommodation, inverbation, and scopus christi.

In the view of literary historian Chester Chapin, Erasmus' tendency of thought was "towards cautious dulcification of the traditional [Catholic] view."

Accommodation

Historian Manfred Hoffmann has described accommodation as "the single most important concept in Erasmus' hermeneutic."

For Erasmus, accommodation is a universal concept: humans must accommodate each other, must accommodate the church and vice versa, and must take as their model how Christ accommodated the disciples in his interactions with them, and accommodated humans in his incarnation; which in turn merely reflects the eternal mutual accommodation within the Trinity. And the primary mechanism of accommodation is language, which mediates between reality and abstraction, which allows disputes of all kinds to be resolved and the gospel to be transmitted: in his New Testament, Erasmus notably translated the Greek logos in John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word" more like "In the beginning was Speech: using Latin sermo (discourse, conversation, language) not verbum (word) emphasizing the dynamic and interpersonal communication rather than static principle: "Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God": "He is called Speech [sermo], because through him God, who in his own nature cannot be comprehended by any reasoning, wished to become known to us."

The role models of accommodation were Paul, that "chameleon" (or "slippery squid") and Christ, who was "more mutable than Proteus himself."

Following Paul, Quintillian (apte diecere) and Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Erasmus wrote that the orator, preacher or teacher must "adapt their discourse to the characteristics of their audience"; this made pastoral care the "art of arts." Erasmus wrote that most of his original works, from satires to paraphrases, were essentially the same themes packaged for different audiences.

In this light, Erasmus' ability to have friendly correspondence with both Thomas More and Thomas Bolyn, and with both Philip Melanchthon and Pope Adrian VI, can be seen as outworkings of his theology, rather than slippery insincerity or flattery of potential patrons. Similarly, it shows the theological basis of his pacificism, and his view of ecclesiastical authorities—from priests like himself to Church Councils—as necessary mediating peace-brokers.

Inverbation

For Erasmus, further to accommodating humans in his Incarnation, Christ accommodated humans by a kind of inverbation: being captured in the Gospels in a way that one can know him better by reading him (in the awareness of the resurrection) than those who actually heard him speak; this will or may transform us.

Since the Gospels become in effect like sacraments, for Erasmus reading them becomes a form of prayer which is spoiled by taking single sentences in isolation and using them as syllogisms. Instead, learning to understand the context, genres and literary expression in the New Testament becomes a spiritual more than academic exercise. Erasmus' has been called rhetorical theology (theologia rhetorica.)

Scopus christi

Scopus is the unifying reference point, the navigation goal, or the organizing principle of topics. According to his assistant-turned-foe, Œcolampadius, Erasmus's rule was "nihil in sacris literis praeter Christum quaerendum" ("nothing is to be sought in the sacred letters but Christ".)

In Hoffmann's words, for Erasmus "Christ is the scopus of everything": "the focus in which both dimensions of reality, the human and the divine, intersect" and so He himself is the hermeneutical principle of scripture": "the middle is the medium, the medium is the mediator, the mediator is the reconciler." In Erasmus' early Enchiridion he had given this scopus in typical medieval terms of an ascent of being to God (vertical), but from the mid-1510s life he moved to an analogy of Copernican planetary circling around Christ the centre (horizontal) or Columbian navigation towards a destination.

What Erasmus contributes to discussions of the divinity of Christ is a counsel of restraint in metaphysical speculation, an accent on the revelatory breadth of the eternal Word of God, and an invitation to think of Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God. But the central impulse of the Christology of Erasmus is the affirmation of the full incarnation of Christ in human existence, abstaining as much as possible from docetic insulation of the divine from the struggles of human experience, in order to highlight the redemptive capacity of Christ for the transformation of human life. With that, the ethical capstone of Erasmus’ reflections on Christ centers on the responsibility to imitate Christ’s love for others, and thus for advancing the cause of peace in personal and social life.

— Terrence J. Martin, The Christology of Erasmus (Publisher's description[7])

One effect is that scriptural interpretation must be done starting with the teachings and interactions of Jesus in the Gospels, with the Sermon on the Mount serving as the starting point, and arguably with the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer at the head of the queue. This privileges peacemaking, mercy, meekness, purity of heart, hungering after righteousness, poverty of spirit, etc. as the unassailable core of Christianity and piety and true theology.

The Sermon on the Mount provides the axioms on which every legitimate theology must be built, as well as the ethics governing theological discourse, and the rules for validating theological products; Erasmus' philosophia christi treats the primary and initial teaching of Jesus in the first Gospel as a theological methodology.

For example, "peacemaking" is a possible topic in any Christian theology; but for Erasmus, from the Beatitude, it must be a starting-, reference- and ending-point when discussing all other theological notions, such as church authority, the Trinity, etc. Moreover, Christian theology must only be done in a peacemaking fashion for peacemaking purposes; and any theology that promotes division and warmongering is thereby anti-Christian.

Mystical theology

Another important concept to Erasmus was "the Folly of the Cross" (which The Praise of Folly explored): the view that Truth belongs to the exuberant, perhaps ecstatic, world of what is foolish, strange, unexpected and even superficially repellent to us, rather than to the frigid worlds which intricate scholastic dialectical and syllogistic philosophical argument all too often generated; this produced in Erasmus a profound disinterest in hyper-rationality, and an emphasis on verbal, rhetorical, mystical, pastoral and personal/political moral concerns instead.

Theological writings

Several scholars have suggested Erasmus wrote as an evangelist not an academic theologian. Even "theology was to be metamorphic speech, converting persons to Christ." Historian William McCuaig commented "I have never read a work by him on any subject that was not at bottom a piece of evangelical literature."

We may distinguish four different lines of work, parallel with each other, and complementary. First, the establishing and critical elucidation of the biblical texts; alongside it, the editions of the great patristic commentators; then, the exegetical works properly so called, in which these two fundamental researches yield their fruit; and finally, the methodological works, which in their first state constitute a sort of preface to the various other studies, but which—in return—were nourished and enlarged by them as they went along.

— Louis Bouyer

Apart from these programmatic works, Erasmus also produce a number of prayers, sermons, essays, masses and poems for specific benefactors and occasions, often on topics where Erasmus and his benefactor agreed.

He often set himself the challenge of formulating positive, moderate, non-superstitious versions of contemporary Catholic practices that might be more acceptable both to scandalized Catholics and Protestants of good will: the better attitudes to the sacraments, saints, Mary, indulgences, statues, scriptural ignorance and fanciful Biblical interpretation, prayer, dietary fasts, external ceremonialism, authority, vows, docility, submission to Rome, etc. For example, in his Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary (1503) Erasmus elaborated his theme that the Incarnation had been hinted far and wide, which could impact the theology of the fate of the remote unbaptized and grace, and the place of classical philosophy:

"You are assuredly the Woman of renown: both heaven and earth and the succession of all the ages uniquely join to celebrate your praise in a musical concord. [...]

During the centuries of the previous age the oracles of the gentiles spoke of you in obscure riddles. Egyptian prophecies, Apollo’s tripod, the Sibylline books, gave hints of you. The mouths of learned poets predicted your coming in oracles they did not understand. [...]

Both the Old and the New Testament, like two cherubim with wings joined and unanimous voices, repeatedly sing your praise. [...]

Thus indeed have writers religiously vied to proclaim you, on the one hand inspired prophets, on the other eloquent Doctors of the church, both filled with the same spirit, as the former foretold your coming in joyful oracles before your birth and the latter heaped prayerful praise on you when you appeared."

— Erasmus, Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary (1503)

Legacy and evaluations

Holbein's studies of Erasmus's hands, in silverpoint and chalks, ca. 1523 (Louvre)

Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men—St Augustine and Voltaire—whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus.

— W.S. Lily, Renaissance Types

Historian Lewis Spitz identifies four views of Erasmus' character and project:

• "a man of weak character whose timidity and weak will kept him from the consequences of his own premises;"
• "a devotee of reason who followed this natural light through storm and stress to the very end;"
• "as the forerunner of Luther, the John the Baptist of the evangelical revival;" or
• "a man with his own positive reform program, in part critical, for the most part constructive."

Erasmus's reputation and the interpretations of his work have varied over time. Moderate Catholics recognized him as a leading figure in attempts to reform the Church, while Protestants recognized his initial support for (and, in part, inspiration of) Luther's ideas and the groundwork he laid for the future Reformation, especially in biblical scholarship. However, at times he has been viciously criticized, his works suppressed, his expertise corralled, his writings misinterpreted, his thought demonized, and his legacy marginalized.

Erasmus was given the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". He has also been called "the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance".

No man before or since acquired such undisputed sovereignty in the republic of letters[...] The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.

— 71. Erasmus, History of the Christian Church, vol 7, Philip Schaff

French biographer Désiré Nisard characterized him as a lens or focal point: "the whole of the Renaissance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century converged towards him." However,according to historian Erika Rummel, "Erasmus' role in the dissemination of ideas is therefore less that of a forerunner of the Reformation than that of a synthesizer of many of the currents of thought that fed into the Reformation."

Erasmianism

Not to be confused with Thomas Erastus § Erastianism.

Erasmians: Erasmus frequently mentioned that he did not want office nor to be the founder or figurehead of a sect or movement, despite his vigorous branding and self-promotion. Nevertheless, historians do identify de facto "Erasmians" (ranging from the early Jesuits to the early reformers, and both Thomas More and William Tyndale)—Christian humanists who picked up on some or other aspects of Erasmus' agenda.

Erasmianism: This has been described as a "more intellectual form of spiritualized Christianity" that is "an undercurrent of religious thought between Catholicism and Lutheranism." It had a notable influence in Spain. The near election of Reginald Pole as pope in 1546 has been attributed to Erasmianism in the electors. However, a precise definition is not possible; it is not, for example, a set of systematic doctrinal propositions.

French historian Jean-Claude Margolin has noted an Erasmian stream in French culture putting "the concrete before the abstract and the ethical before the speculative", though not without noting that it is not clear whether Erasmus influenced the French or vice versa.

Historian W. R. Ward notes that "the direst enemies of theosophy were always Erasmian Catholics and Calvinist Protestants who were trying to get the magic out of Christianity."

Erasmian Reformation: Some historians such as Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper have even claimed an "'Erasmianism after Erasmus,' a secret stream which meandered to and fro across the Catholic/Protestant divide, creating oases of rational thought impartially on either side." For some, this amounted to a third church: or even that "Luther's and Calvin's Reformations were minor affairs" compared to the Reformation of Erasmus and the humanists' which swept away the Middle Ages.

Erasmian liberalism: This has had an enduring run: described by philosopher Edwin Curley that "the spirit of Erasmian liberalism was to emphasize the ethical aspects of Christianity at the expense of the doctrinal, to suspend judgment on many theological issues, and to insist that the faith actually required for salvation was a simple and uncontroversial one."

Erasmus has frequently been described as "proto-liberal" (both, e.g., in the UK "Lloyd George" sense of liberalism as a form of conservatism that wants moderate but real reform to prevent immoderate and destructive revolution, or the ethical sense of socio-economic Socinianism)

Protestant historian Roland Bainton is quoted "no-one did more than Erasmus to break down the theory and practice of the medieval variety of intolerance." Other popular or scholarly writers have suggested that Erasmus' tolerant but idealistic agenda failed, certainly at the political level, evidenced by the wars and persecutions of the Protestant Reformation.

Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Gravi de pugna attributed to St Augustine, the Ad Herennium attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting Lorenzo Valla's work) the Donation of Constantine.

Educationalist

Erasmus has been variously called an "educator of educators", a "teacher of teachers" and a "professor of professors", but also a "pastor of pastors."

Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education! (R.R. Bolger) … with greater confidence it can be claimed that Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education in the sixteenth century. …It may also be claimed that Erasmus was one of the most important champions of women's rights in his century.

— J.K. Sowards

Erasmus was notable for his textbooks, his sense of learning as play, his emphasis on speech skills and promoting early classical-language acquisition).

According to scholar Gerald J. Luhrman, "the system of secondary education, as developed in a number of European countries, is inconceivable without the efforts of humanist educationalists, particularly Erasmus. His ideas in the field of language acquisition were systematized and realized to a large extent in the schools founded by the Jesuits..." Historian Brian Cummings wrote "for a hundred years Erasmus commanded the curriculum." In the 1540s, Ursulines founded schools in Rezatto, Brescia, "inspired by Erasmus's pedagogical programme..."

His system of pronouncing ancient Greek was adopted for teaching in the major Western European nations.

In England, he wrote the first curriculum for St Paul's School and his Latin grammar (written with Lily and Colet) "continued to be used, in adapted form, into the Twentieth Century." Erasmus' curriculum, grammar, pronunciation and de Copia were adopted by the other major grammar schools: Eton, Westminster, Winchester, Canterbury, etc. and the universities

Erasmus "tried to realize a practical goal: a modern education as preparation for administrators from the higher estates."

Erasmus was a key part of the humanist program to get Greek and Hebrew taught at the major Universities, inspired by Cardinal Cisneros' Trilingual College of San Ildefonso/Alcalá (1499/1509) and Bishop John Fisher's establishment of Greek and Hebrew lectures at Cambridge: the Trilingual Colleges at Louvain (1517) and Paris (1530) (where students included Loyola and Calvin) spawned programs in Zurich, Rome, Strasbourg and Oxford (c.1566). He has been described as "an unsuspected superspreader of New Ancient Greek."

Historian and Germanist Fritz Caspari saw education as the core of Erasmus' program:

"Erasmus hoped that the education of all individuals, especially of princes and nobles, in the spirit and disciplines of antiquity and Christianity would bring the rational element in them to full fruition. Ratio, reason, was in his mind almost synonymous with "goodness" and "kindness." The rule of reason, achieved through education,would therefore result in men's living together in universal peace and harmony in accord with the lessons of Christ's Sermon on the Mount."

— Frtz Caspari (1941)

Writer

The popularity of his books is reflected in the number of editions and translations that have appeared since the sixteenth century. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the enumeration of the works and their subsequent reprints. The greatest names of the classical and patristic world are among those translated, edited, or annotated by Erasmus, including Ambrose, Aristotle, Augustine, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cicero and Jerome.

Unveiling of a Dutch statue of Erasmus (1964)

In the Netherlands

In his native Rotterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus Bridge, Erasmus MC and Gymnasium Erasmianum have been named in his honor. Between 1997 and 2009, one of the main metro lines of the city was named Erasmuslijn. The Foundation Erasmus House (Rotterdam), is dedicated to celebrating Erasmus's legacy. Three moments in Erasmus's life are celebrated annually. On 1 April, the city celebrates the publication of his best-known book The Praise of Folly. On 11 July, the Night of Erasmus celebrates the lasting influence of his work. His birthday is celebrated on 28 October.

In Spain

Enquiridio o manual del caballero Christiano, translation by Alonso Fernandez, published by Miguel de Eguía (1528) into Spanish of Erasmus' Enchiridion

Erasmus became extraordinarily popular and influential in Spain, including in and around the talent pool (often from converso families) that formed the early Jesuits. There were at least 120 translations, editions, or adaptations of Erasmus' writings between 1520 and 1552, though not The Praise of Folly.

However, Erasmians and their associates faced, at times, extraordinary pushback from the theologians at Salamanca and Vallodolid, for being associated with the alumbrado and illuminist tendencies, with many (notably Ignatius of Loyola, who had lived in the house of publisher Miguel de Eguía at the time the Spanish edition of the Enchiridion was being published) resorting to exile rather than facing the Inquisition, house arrest, imprisonment or worse. However, at times the heads of the Inquisition were themselves Erasmians.

Erasmus faced a notable semi-secret trial in Vallodolid in 1527, attended by numerous bishops, abbots and theologians. Its records still exist. It disbanded without condemning Erasmus as a heretic, as most of his contentious beliefs were regarded as respectable or useful by at least some important bishops, and the fanciful interpretations of the accusers did not stand up to scrutiny.

From the 1530s, historians note the start of a widespread disenchantment with Eradmus' approach: however his ideas and works were still circulating enough that even fifty years later Miguel Cervantes' "Erasmianism" may not have come from him having read any Erasmus directly.

In Poland

According to historian Howard Louthan "Few regions embraced Erasmus as enthusiastically as Poland, and nowhere else did he have such a concentration of allies positioned at the highest levels of society including the king himself."

In England

English translation Paraphrase of Erasmus, 1548

Statue (1870), Canterbury Cathedral

Erasmus influenced Catholic and Protestant humanists alike.

Historian Lucy Wooding argues (in Christopher Haigh's paraphrases) that "England nearly had a Catholic Reformation along Erasmian lines –but it was cut short by (Queen) Mary's death and finally torpedoed by the Council of Trent." The initial Henrican closure of smaller monasteries followed the Erasmian agenda, which was also shared by Catholic humanists such as Reginald Pole; however the later violent closures and iconoclasm were far from Erasmus' program.

After reading Erasmus' 1516 New Testament, Thomas Bilney "felt a marvellous comfort and quietness," and won over his Cambridge friends, future notable bishops, Matthew Parker and Hugh Latimer to reformist biblicism.

Both Lutheran Tyndale and his Catholic theological opponent Thomas More are considered Erasmians. One of William Tyndale's earliest works was his translation of Erasmus' Enchiridion (1522,1533). Following their deaths in 1536, Tyndale's English New Testament and anti-Catholic Preface was often printed (sometimes omitting Tyndale's name) in diglot editions paired with Erasmus' Latin translation and either his Paraclecis or his Preface to the Paraphrase of St Matthew.

In the reign of Edward VI, English translations of Erasmus' Paraphrases of the four Gospels were legally required to be chained for public access in every church. Furthermore, all priests below a certain scholastic level were required to have their own copy of the complete Paraphrases of the New Testament. This injunction was to an extent frustrated by delays in printing, but it is estimated that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 copies may have been printed between 1548 and 1553.

Erasmus' grammar, Adages, Copia, and other books continued as the core Latin educational material in England for the following centuries. His works and editions (in translation) are regularly connected with William Shakespeare, to Shakespeare's education, inspirations and sources (such as the shipwreck scene in The Tempest.) The poet-rhetorician martyr Edmund Campion was educated at St Paul's School using Erasmus' textbooks and Latin curriculum. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, mentioned he first read of the shipwreck of Aristippus in the English translation of Erasmus' Apophthegmata. Scholars have noted Erasmus' influence on Jonathan Swift, particular that The Praise of Folly seems to have been the literary inspiration for A Tale of a Tub.

Historian of literature Cathy Schrank has written that Erasmus' reputation and status changed over the course of the English "Long Reformation" from "being presented as a proto-Reformer, to problematically orthodox, to irenic martyr." For some Restoration Anglicans, both those promoting enforced anti-extremism and latitudinarians, and into the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus' moderation represented "an alternative to the belligerent Protestantism that characterized English political and social discourse". It has been claimed that William of Orange's Toleration Act (1688) owed to Erasmus' inspiration.

By 1711, English Catholic poet and satirist Alexander Pope pictured Erasmus, following in a sequence of greats from Aristotle, Horace, Homer, Quintillian to Longinusas, ending a millennium of ignorance and superstition:

...
Much was believ'd, but little understood,
And to be dull was constru'd to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monks finish'd what the Goths begun.

At length Erasmus, that great injur'd name
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)
Stemm'd the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

For Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon, Erasmus was "the father of rational theology."

By 1929, G.K. Chesterton could write "I doubt if any thinking person, of any belief or unbelief, does not wish in his heart that the end of mediaevalism had meant the triumph of the Humanists like Erasmus and More, rather than of the rabid Puritans like Calvin and Knox."

Catholic

Thomas Aquinas inspiring himself on Free Will from the writings of previous theologians such as Augustine. (1652)

Erasmus was continually protected by popes, bishops, inquisitors-general, and Catholic kings during his lifetime. He was a bishops' man: in constant contact, correspondence, patronage and direction with dozens at any time, and their Latin secretaries: for example, his book On Free Will was squeezed out of him by bishops, and strategized, discussed, vetted (his local bishop got him to remove some polemic material from it, for example) and promoted by them.

The following generation of saints and scholars included many influenced by Erasmian humanism or spirituality, notably Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, John of Ávila, and Angela Merici.

However, Erasmus attracted enemies in contemporary theologians in Paris, Louvain, Valladolid, Salamanca and Rome, notably Sepúlveda, Stúñica, Edward Lee, Noël Beda (who Erasmus had known in France in the 1490s, but who opposed Greek and Hebrew), as well as Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi, who read his work with dedicated suspicion. These were theologians, usually from the mendicant orders that were Erasmus' particular target (such as Dominicans, Carmelites and Franciscans), who held a positive "linear view of history" for theology that privileged recent late-medieval theology and rejected the ad fontes methodology. Erasmus believed the vehemence of the attacks on Luther was a strategem to blacken humanism (and himself) by association, part of the centuries-long power struggle at the universities between scholastic "theologians" and humanist "poets".

A particularly powerful opponent of Erasmus was Italian humanist Jerome Aleander, Erasmus' former close friend and bedmate in Venice at the Aldine Press and future cardinal. They fell out over Aleander's violent speech against Luther at the Diet of Worms, and with Aleander's identification of Erasmus as "the great cornerstone of the Lutheran heresy." They periodically reconciled in warm personal meetings, only to fall into mutual suspicion again when distant.

Erasmus spent considerable effort defending himself in writing, which he could not do after his death. He wrote 35 books defending against accusations by Catholic opponents, and 9 against Protestant opponents: an unanswered accusation of heresy or Nicodemism could cascade into trials and fatal unsafety.

Far from being a maverick in all aspects, several of Erasmus' "distinctive" ideas were entirely mainstream for the time, from the Fifth Council of the Lateran: the need for peace between Catholic princes before a war pushing back the Turks could be attempted (Session 9); the need for formal qualifications of preachers (Session 11) who should "foster everywhere peace and mutual love" rather than false miracles and apocalyptic predictions; the danger of unbalanced philosophical study and questions that promote doubt without attempting resolution (Session 8); the spurious independence of friars from local bishops, and the dereliction of duty by absentee bishops and cardinals.

The Council of Trent further addressed many of the controversies Erasmus had been involved with: including free will, accumulated errors in the Vulgate, and priestly training, and followed his call for a renewed positive focus on the Creed. Erasmus' major ethical complaint that a certain kind of scholasticism was "curiositas" (useless, vain speculation) and artificially divisive was endorsed in the 4 December 1563 Decree Concerning Purgatory which recommended the avoidance of speculations and non-essential questions. Trent reduced the number of sequences during the Mass to only four for certain special days: the large numbers and lengths of sequences, especially as found in German and French masses, and the need for verbal clarity were issues Erasmus had raised.

Prohibitions

A work of Erasmus censored, perhaps following the inclusion of some works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

By the 1560s, there was a marked downturn in reception: at various times and durations, some of Erasmus' works, especially in Protestantized editions, were placed on the various Roman, Dutch, French, Spanish and Mexican Indexes of Prohibited Books, either to not be read, or to be censored and expurgated: each area had different censorship considerations and severity.

Erasmus' work had been translated or reprinted throughout Europe, often with Protestantizing revisions and sectarian prefaces. Sometimes the works of Martin Luther were sold with the name of Erasmus on the cover.

Several of Erasmus' works, including his Paraphrases were banned in the Milanese and Venetian indexes of 1554.

Erasmus' works were to some extent prohibited in England under Queen Mary I, from 1555.

For the Roman Index as it emerged at the close of the Council of Trent, Erasmus' works were completely banned (1559), mostly unbanned (1564), completely banned again (1590), and then mostly unbanned again with strategic revisions (1596) by the erratic Indexes of successive Popes. In the 1559 Index, Erasmus was classed with heretics; however Erasmus was never judicially arraigned, tried or convicted of heresy: the censorship rules established by the Council of Trent targeted not only notorious heretics but also those whose writings "excited heresy" (regardless of intent), especially those making Latin translations of the New Testament deemed to vie with (rather than improve or annotate or assist) the Vulgate.

The Colloquies were especially but not universally frowned on for school use, and many of Erasmus' tendentious prefaces and notes to his scholarly editions required adjustment.

In Spain's Index, the translation of the Enchiridion only needed the phrase "Monkishness is not piety" removed to become acceptable. , Despite any Indexes, Charles V had The Education of a Christian Prince, which had been written for him, translated into Spanish for his son Philip II.

By 1896, the Roman Index still listed Erasmus' Colloquia, The Praise of Folly, The Tongue, The Institution of Christian Marriage, and one other as banned, plus particular editions of the Adagia and Paraphrase of Matthew. All other works could be read in suitable expurgated versions.

Because Erasmus' scholarly editions were frequently the only sources of Patristic information in print, the strict bans were often impractical, so theologians worked to produce replacement editions building on, or copying, Erasmus' editions.

The Jesuits received a dispensation from the Roman Inquisitor General to read and use Erasmus' work (not kept on the open shelves of their libraries), as did priests working near Protestant areas such as Francis de Sales.

Post-Tridentine

Early Dutch Jesuit scholar Peter Canisius, who produced several works superseding Erasmus', is known to have read, or used phrases from, Erasmus' New Testament (including the Annotations and Notes) and perhaps the Paraphrases, his Jerome biography and complete works, the Adages, the Copia, and the Colloquies: Canisius, having actually read Erasmus, had an ambivalent view on Erasmus that contrasted with the negative line of some of his contemporaries:

Very many people applied also to Erasmus, declaring: 'Either Erasmus speaks like Luther or Luther like Erasmus' (Aut Erasmus Lutherizat, aut Lutherus Erasmizat). And yet, we must say, if we would like to render an honest judgment, that Erasmus and Luther were very different. Erasmus always remained a Catholic. [...]Erasmus criticized religion 'with craft rather than with force', often applying considerable caution and moderation to either his own opinions or errors. [...]Erasmus passed judgment on what he thought required censure and correction in the teaching of theologians and in the Church.

— Peter Canisius, De Maria virgine (1577), p601

In contrast, Robert Bellarmine's Controversies mentions Erasmus (as presented by Erasmus' opponent Albert Pío) negatively over 100 times, categorizing him as a "forerunner of the heretics"; though not a heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri, who also had not read Erasmus, judged that Erasmus "died with the character of an unsound Catholic but not a heretic," putting it all in the context of a dispute between Theologians and Rhetoricians.

His patristic scholarship continued to be valued by academics, as were un-controversial parts of his biblical scholarship, though Catholic biblical scholars started to criticize Erasmus' limited range of manuscripts for his direct New Testament as undermining his premise of correcting the Latin from the "original" Greek.

The Jesuit mission to China, led by Matteo Ricci, adopted the approach of cultural accommodation linked to Erasmus. The early Jesuits were exposed to Erasmus at their colleges, and their positioning of Confucius echoed Erasmus' positioning of "Saint" Socrates.

Salesian scholars have noted Erasmus' significant influence on Francis de Sales: "in the approach and the spirit he (de Sales) took to reform his diocese and more importantly on how individual Christians could become better together," his optimism, civility, gentle anti-militantism that promoted "humility, penance, and asceticism" over sectarian violence, esteem of marriage. and, according to historian Charles Béné, a piety addressed to the laity, the acceptance of mental prayer, and the valuing of pagan wisdom.

A famous 17th century Dominican library featured statues of famous churchmen on one side and of famous "heretics" (in chains) on the other: those foes including the two leading anti-mendicant Catholic voices William of Saint-Amour (fl. 1250) and Erasmus.

By 1690, Erasmus was also, rather perversely, labelled as the forerunner of the heretical tendecies in the Jansenists.

From 1648 to 1794 and then 1845 to the present, the mainly-Jesuit Bollandist Society has been progressively publishing Lives of the Saints, in 61 volumes and supplements. Historian John C. Olin notes an accord of approach with the hitherto "unique" method, mixing critical standards and devotional/rhetorical purpose, that Erasmus had laid out in his Life of St Jerome.

By the 1700s, Erasmus' explicit influence on most Catholic thought had largely waned, though the humanist program remained a persistant undercurrent.

Soon after the Vatican I Council, Pope Leo X issued an encyclical Providentisssimus deus (1893) which taught several themes associated with Erasmus: notably that "in those things which do not come under the obligation of faith, the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent opinions, just as we ourselves are"; and that more exegetes, theologians and novices must master the original "Oriental" languages and be trained in Biblical exegesis including philology, quoting Jerome "To be ignorant of the Scripture is not to know Christ": he noted that Pope Clement V had instigated chairs of Oriental Literature in Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca (carried out in 1317.) This was followed by an apostolic letter Vigilantiae studiique (1902) which "warned that attacks on the Church are (now) generally based on linguistic arguments".

Twentieth century

A historian has written that "a number of Erasmus' modern Catholic critics do not display an accurate knowledge of his writings but misrepresent him, often by relying upon hostile secondary sources," naming Yves Congar as an example.

A major turning point in the popular Catholic appraisal of Erasmus occurred in 1900 with rosy Benedictine historian (and, later, Cardinal) Francis Aidan Gasquet's The Eve of the Reformation which included a whole chapter on Erasmus based on a re-reading of his books and letters. Gasquet wrote "Erasmus, like many of his contemporaries, is often perhaps injudicious in the manner in which he advocated reforms. But when the matter is sifted to the bottom, it will commonly be found that his ideas are just."

Over the last century, Erasmus's Catholic reputation has gradually started to be rehabilitated: favourable factors may include:

• the increasingly active modern historical and theological scholarship on Erasmus suggested chinks in the traditional partisan characterizations of Erasmus;
• the retirement of the Roman Index librorum prohibitorum in 1966;

John Fisher, after Hans Holbein

• increased support for a view of Erasmus that portrays him as a conservative endorsed by and responsive to the hierarchy as much as a maverick, with him voicing and crystallizing mainstream and respectable Catholic thought of his time as much as innovating; and to an extent resuscitating Victorine (the Canons Regular of St Victor) and Cappadocian and patristic approaches.
• his deep friendships and interactions with three Saint-Martyrs Thomas More, John Fisher, and Brigittine monk Richard Reynolds.
• his acknowledged or retro-fitted influence on perhaps five Doctors of the Church (Ignatius, Theresa of Ávila, John of Ávila, Canisius, de Sales), the positive normalization of his views in influential new orders such as the Jesuits, Oratorians, Redemptorists, Ursulines and Salesians, and an increasing list of exemplary Catholics whose views channel or parallel Erasmus', such as Bartolomé de las Casas' De unico vocationis modo (1537), and De la Salle's Decorum & Civility;
• the acceptance of St John Henry Cardinal Newman's "development of doctrine", to some extent a chick hatched from the egg of Erasmus' theological historicism and his appeal to tradition (sensus fidei fidelium) on the Eucharist;
• the reinvigouration of patristic ad fontes and a re-surfacing of several ideas associated with Erasmus (but ideas sometimes with a longer, forgotten patrimony, and sometimes from an even more problematic figure than Erasmus) by ressourcement and Communio theologians, such as
  • Henri de Lubac
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar, who ranked Erasmus with Augustine, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas as the great theologians/exegetes;
  • Oratorian Louis Bouyer, who wrote that the Method of True Theology (or Ratio) of Erasmus "represents, for the first time and in admirable fashion, the use of principles and methods entirely adequate to effect a really fruitful renewal of Catholic faith and theology;"
  • Joseph Ratzinger, whose famous Regensberg Address emphasized the fundamental influence of Hellenic philosophy on primitive Christianity.
  • For theologian George Chantraine, Erasus's so-called skepticism was actually a function of his belief that the Church defined doctrine not individual theologians.
• many of his themes are less controversial after being revisited by Popes: for example,
  • that all interpretation of Scripture should rest on the literal sense was taught by Pope Benedict XV's Spiritus paracletus (1920), and by Pope Pius XII Divino afflante spiritu (1943), which called for new vernacular translations, and Humani generis (1950);
  • his promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up, to an extent, by Pope John XXIII: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas; and
  • John Paul II's praise of the divine foolishness in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.
  • His kind of emphasis on correct disposition over ceremonialism found support in Pius XXII's Mediator dei (1947) which teaches 23. The worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior. [...] 24. But the chief element of divine worship must be interior.
  • His instrumentalist approach to Christian humanism has been compared to that of John Henry Newman and the personalism of John Paul II, but also has been criticized as treating the Church's doctrines merely as aids to piety.

The Catholic scholar Thomas Cummings saw parallels between Erasmus' vision of Church reform and the vision of Church reform that succeeded at the Second Vatican Council. Theologian J. Coppens noted the "Erasmian themes" of Lumen Gentium (e.g. para 12), such as the sensus fidei fidelium and the dignity of all the baptized. Another scholar writes "in our days, especially after Vatican II, Erasmus is more and more regarded as an important defender of the Christian religion." John O'Malley has commented on a certain closeness between Erasmus and Dei Verbum.

Historian Lisa Cahill's summary "Official Catholic Social Thought on Nonviolence" notes Erasmus (with Augustine, Aquinas and St Francis of Assisi) as most notable in the development of Catholic peace theory.

In 1963, Thomas Merton suggested "If there had been no Luther, Erasmus would now be regarded by everyone as one of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church. I like his directness, his simplicity, and his courage."

Notably, since the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil mass has included a Renewal of Baptismal Promises, an innovation first proposed by Erasmus in his Paraphrases.

In his 1987 collection The Spirituality of Erasmus of Rotterdam historian Richard deMolen, later a Catholic priest, called for Erasmus' canonization.

Protestant

Fictive gathering of notable theologians who "controverted prestigious superiors of the Roman church", at back 1. John Wycliffe, 2. Jan Hus, 3. Jerome of Prague, 4. Girolamo Savonarola; at table from left Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Bugenhagen, Johannes Oecolampadius, et al. (1650) Erasmus is not shown in this company.

Erasmus' Greek New Testament was the basis of the Textus Receptus bibles, which were used for all Protestant bible translations from 1600 to 1900, notably including the Luther Bible and the King James Version.

Protestant views on Erasmus fluctuated depending on region and period, with continual support in his native Netherlands and in cities of the Upper Rhine area. However, following his death and in the late sixteenth century, many Reformation supporters saw Erasmus's critiques of Luther and lifelong support for the universal Catholic Church as damning, and second-generation Protestants were less vocal in their debts to the great humanist.

Many of the usages fundamental to Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, such as the forensic imputation of righteousness, grace as divine favour or mercy (rather than a medicine-like substance or habit), faith as trust (rather than a persuasion only), "repentance" over "doing penance" (as used by Luther in the first theses of the 95 Theses), owed to Erasmus.

Late Luther hated Erasmus: "Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth...He is a very Caiaphas;" and "Whenever I pray, I pray a curse upon Erasmus." He attempted a Biblical analogy to justify his dismissal of Erasmus' thought: "He has done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab...I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work...to lead into the land of promise, is not his business..."

A historian has even said that "the spread of Lutheranism was checked by Luther's antagonizing (of) Erasmus and the humanists."

Erasmus corresponded cordially with Melanchthon until the end. In the view of some theologians or historians, in the decades following Erasmus and Luther's debate on free choice for salvation, Melanchthon himself gradually swang to a position closer to Erasmus' tentative synergism: in 1532 mentioning man's non-rejection of grace as a cause in conversion, and stating it more forcefully in his 1559 Loci. The issue caused a division in early Lutheranism, resolved by the Formula of Concord.

Erasmus' reception is also demonstrable among Swiss Protestants in the sixteenth century: he had an indelible influence on the biblical commentaries of, for example, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, all of whom used both his annotations on the New Testament and his paraphrases of same in their own New Testament commentaries.

A historian noted "perhaps the most serious blow that Erasmus delivered to Luther and Protestantism he landed indirectly through the person of Ulrich Zwingli." Huldrych Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed tradition, had a conversion experience after reading Erasmus' poem, "Jesus' Lament to Mankind", also titled "The Complaint of Jesus". Zwingli's moralism, hermeneutics and attitude to patristic authority owe to Erasmus, and contrast with Luther's.

Anabaptist scholars have suggested an 'intellectual dependence' of Anabaptists on Erasmus. According to Dr Kenneth Davis "Erasmus had copious direct and indirect contact with many of the founding leaders of Anabaptism [...] the Anabaptists can best be understood as, apart from their own creativity, a radicalization and Protestantization not of the Magisterial Reformation but of the lay-oriented, ascetic reformation of which Erasmus is the principle mediator."

For evangelical Christianity, Erasmus had a strong influence on Jacob Arminius, whose library featured many books by Erasmus, even though he did not dare name or quote him.

Erasmus' promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up by many kinds of Protestants.

Contemporary "radical orthdoxy" theologian John Milbank has been described as Erasmus revivivus: "First, both Milbank and Erasmus emphasize the necessity of linguistic mediation in articulating theological thought.[...]Second, they prefer a rhetorical approach to theology to dialectical one.[...]Third, at the heart of their theology is the mystery of Christ."

Intellectual

• Literary theorist Hans Urs von Balthasar listed Erasmus in one of three key intellectual "events" in the Germanic age:
  • Duns Scotus-William of Ockham-Francisco Suárez and Meister Eckhart-Nicholas of Cusa-Ignatius of Loyola
  • Martin Luther-Erasmus-Shakespeare
  • Kant-Hegel-Marx
• Political journalist Michael Massing has written of the Luther-Erasmus free will debate as creating a fault line in Western thinking: Europe adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.
• By the coming of the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus increasingly again became a more widely respected cultural symbol and was hailed as an important figure by increasingly broad groups.
• In a letter to a friend, Erasmus once had written: "That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all." Erasmus has been called a universalist rather than a nationalist, however he opposed the political universalism of unmanageably large or expansionary empires with "universal monarchs".
• Catholic historian Dom David Knowles wrote that a just appreciation of traditional Catholic doctrine was a necessary condition for appreciating Erasmus, "without which many otherwise gifted writers have repeated meaningless platitudes."
• According to two Dutch historians, "his legacy irreversibly inspired researchers to a hermeneutical approach that in the end could not but result in irrefutable attacks on the self-evident complete inerrancy of Holy Writ."