The Eve of the Reformation

To Pope Leo X. Erasmus also wrote, protesting against the cause of letters generally being made the same as that of Reuchlin and Luther. With the former movement he was identified heart and soul; with Luther and his revolt he had, he declared, no part nor sympathy. “I have not known Luther,” he says, “nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps ten or a dozen pages in various places. It was really I who first scented the danger of the business issuing in tumults, which I have always detested.” Moreover, he declares that he had induced the Basle printer, Johann Froben, to refuse to print Luther’s works, and that by means of friends he had tried to induce Luther to think only of the peace of the Church. Two years previously, he says, Luther had written to him, and he had replied in a kindly spirit in order to get him, if possible, to follow his advice. Now, he hears, that this letter has been delated to the Pope in order to prejudice him in the Pontiff’s eyes; but he is quite prepared to defend its form and expression. “If any one,” he says, “can say he has ever heard me, even at the table, maintain the teaching of Luther, I will not refuse to be called a Lutheran.” Finally, he expresses the hope that, if the opponents of letters have been trying to calumniate him, he may rely on the Pope’s prudence and the knowledge of his own complete innocence. “I, who do not wish to oppose even my own bishop, am not,” he writes, “so mad as to act in any way against the supreme Vicar of Christ.”181

As time went on, the position of Erasmus did not become more comfortable. Whilst the Lutherans were hoping that sooner or later something would happen to compromise the outspoken scholar and force him to transfer the weight of his learning to their side, the champions of Catholicity were ill satisfied that he did not boldly strike out in defence of the Church. To this latter course many of his English friends had strongly urged him, and both the king, Fisher, and others had set him an example by publishing works against Luther’s position, which they invited him to follow. The Pope, too, had on more than one occasion personally appealed to him to throw off his reserve and come to the aid of orthodoxy. They could not understand how he was able to talk of peace and kindness amidst the din of strife, and plead for less harsh measures and less bitter words against Luther and his adherents, when the battle was raging, and cities and peoples and even countries were being seduced by the German Reformer’s plausible plea for freedom and liberty. Those who believed in Erasmus’s orthodoxy, as did the Pope and his English friends, considered that no voice was more calculated to calm the storm and compel the German people to listen to reason than was his. Whilst the Reforming party, on the other hand, were doing their best to compromise him in the eyes of their opponents, Erasmus was most unwilling to be forced into action. “Why,” he writes, “do people wish to associate me with Luther? What Luther thinks of me, where it is a question of matters of faith, I care very little. That he doesn’t think much of me he shows in many letters to his friends. In his opinion I am ‘blind,’ ‘miserable,’ ‘ignorant of Christ and Christianity,’ ‘thinking of nothing but letters.’ This is just what I should expect,” he says, “for Luther has always despised the ancients.” As for himself, he (Erasmus) has always tried his best to inculcate true piety along with learning.182

To Œcolampadius, in February 1525, he wrote a letter of protest against the way some of Luther’s followers were doing all they could to associate his name with their movement. He does not wish, he says, to give his own opinion on the questions at issue; but he can tell his correspondent what the King of England, Bishop Fisher, and Cardinal Wolsey think on these grave matters. He objects to Œcolampadius putting Magnus Erasmus noster– “our great Erasmus” – in a preface he wrote, without any justification. “This naturally makes people suppose,” he adds, “that I am really on your side in these controversies,” and he begs that he will strike out the expression.183

This was no new position that Erasmus had taken up in view of the ever-increasing difficulties of the situation. Six years before (in 1519) he had written fully on the subject to the Cardinal Archbishop of Mentz. It was this letter which had been much misunderstood, and even denounced to the Pope as the work of a disloyal son of the Church. He, on the other hand, declared that he was not committed in any way to the cause of Reuchlin or Luther. “Luther is perfectly unknown to me, and his books I have not read, except here and there. If he had written well it would not have been to my credit; if then the opposite, no blame should attach to me. I regretted his public action, and when the first tract, I forget which, was talked about, I did all I could to prevent its being issued, especially as I feared that tumults would come out of all this. Luther had written me what appeared to my mind to be a very Christian letter, and, in replying, I, by the way, warned him not to write anything seditious, nor to abuse the Roman Pontiff, &c., but to preach the Gospel truly and humbly.” He adds that he was kind in his reply purposely, as he did not wish to be Luther’s judge. And, as he thought that there was much good in the man, he would willingly do all he could to keep him in the right way. People are too fond, he says, of crying out “heretic,” &c., and “the cry generally comes from those who have not read the works they exclaim against.”184

“I greatly fear,” he writes shortly after, “for this miserable Luther; so angry are his opponents on all sides, and so irritated against him are princes, and, above all, Pope Leo. Would that he had taken my advice and abstained from these hateful and seditious publications. There would have been more fruit and less rancour.”185

Testimonies might be multiplied almost indefinitely from Erasmus’s writings to show that with Lutheranism as such he had no connection nor sympathy. Yet his best friends seem to have doubted him, and some, in England, suspected that Erasmus’s hand and spirit were to be detected in the reply that Luther made to King Henry’s book against him. Bishop Tunstall confesses that he is relieved to hear by the letter Erasmus had addressed to the king and the legate that he had had nothing to do with this violent composition, and, moreover, that he was opposed to Lutheran principles. In his letter on this subject, the bishop laments the rapid spread of these dangerous opinions which threaten disturbances everywhere. When the sacred ceremonies of the Church and all pious customs are attacked as they are, he says, civil tumults are sure to follow. After Luther’s book De abroganda Missa, the Reformer will quickly go further, and so Tunstall begs and beseeches Erasmus, by “Christ’s Passion and glory” and “by the reward” he expects; “yea, and the Church itself prays and desires you,” he adds, “to engage in combat with this hydra.”186

At length, urged by so many of his best friends, Erasmus took up his pen against Luther and produced his book De libero Arbitrio, to which Luther, a past master in invective, replied in his contemptuous De servo Arbitrio, Erasmus rejoining in the Hyperaspistes. Sir Thomas More wrote that this last book delighted him, and urged Erasmus to further attacks. “I cannot say how foolish and inflated I think Luther’s letter to you,” he writes. “He knows well how the wretched glosses into which he has darkened Scripture turn to ice at your touch. They were, it is true, cold enough already.”187

Erasmus’s volume on Free-will drew down on him, as might be expected, the anger of the advanced Lutherans. Ulrich von Hutten, formerly a brilliant follower of Erasmus and Reuchlin in their attempts to secure a revival of letters, was now the leader of the most reckless and forward of the young German Lutherans, who assisted the Reformer by their violence and their readiness to promote any and all of his doctrinal changes by stirring up civil dissensions. Von Hutten endeavoured to throw discredit upon Erasmus by a brilliant and sarcastic attack upon it. In 1523, Erasmus published what he called the Spongia, or reply to the assertions of von Hutten on his honour and character. The tract is really an apology or explanation of his own position as regards the Lutherans, and an assertion of his complete loyalty to the Church. The book was in Froben’s hands for press in June 1523, but before it could appear in September von Hutten had died. Erasmus, however, determined to publish the work on account of the gravity of the issues. It is necessary, if we would understand Erasmus’s position fully, to refer to this work at some considerable length. After complaining most bitterly that many people had tried to defame him to the Pope and to his English friends, and to make him a Lutheran whether he would or no; and after defending his attitude towards Reuchlin as consistent throughout, he meets directly von Hutten’s assertion that he had condemned the whole Dominican body. “I have never,” he says, “been ill disposed to that Order. I have never been so foolish as to wish ill to any Order. If it were necessary to hate all Dominicans because, in the Order, there were some bad members, on the same ground it would be needful to detest all Orders, since in every one there are many black sheep.” On the same principle Christianity itself would be worthy of hatred.188 The fact really is that the Dominicans have many members who are friendly to Erasmus, and who are favourable to learning in general, and Scripture study and criticism in particular.

In the same way, von Hutten had mistaken Erasmus’s whole attitude towards the Roman Church. He had charged him with being inconsistent, in now praising, now blaming the authorities. Erasmus characterises this as the height of impudence. “Who,” he asks, “has ever approved of the vices of the Roman authorities? But, on the other hand, who has ever condemned the Roman Church?”

Continuing, he declares that he has never been the occasion of discord or tumult in any way, and appeals with confidence to his numerous letters and works as sufficient evidence of his love of peace. “I love liberty,” he writes; “I neither can aid, nor desire to aid, any faction.” Already many confess that they were wrong in taking a part; and he sees many, who had thrown in their lot with Luther, now drawing back, and regretting that they had ever given any countenance to him.189 His (Erasmus’s) sole object has been to promote good letters, and to restore Theology to its simple and true basis, the Holy Scripture. This he will endeavour to do as long as he has life. “Luther,” he says, “I hold to be a man liable to err, and one who has erred. Luther, with the rest of his followers will pass away; Christ alone remains for ever.”

In more than one place of this Spongia, Erasmus complains bitterly that what he had said in joke, and as mere pleasantry at the table, had been taken seriously. “What is said over a glass of wine,” he writes, “ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief. Often at a feast, for example, we have transferred the worldly sovereignty to Pope Julius, and made Maximilian, the emperor, into the supreme Pontiff. Thus, too, we have married monasteries of monks to convents of nuns; we have sent armies of them against the Turks, and colonised new islands with them. In a word, we turn the universe topsy-turvy. But, such whims are never meant to be taken seriously, as our own true convictions.”

Von Hutten had complained that Erasmus had spoken harshly about Luther, and hinted that he was really actuated by a spirit of envy, on seeing Luther’s books more read than his own. Erasmus denies that he has ever called Luther by any harsh names, and particularly that he has ever called him “heretic.” He admits, however, that he had frequently spoken of the movement as a “tragedy,” and he points to the public discords and tumults then distracting Germany as the best justification of this verdict.190

Von Hutten having said that children were being taught by their nurses to lisp the name Luther, Erasmus declares that he cannot imagine whose children these can be; for, he says, “I daily see how many influential, learned, grave, and good men have come to curse his very name.”

The most interesting portion, however, of the Spongia is that in which, at considerable length, Erasmus explains his real attitude to Rome and the Pope. “Not even about the Roman See,” he says, “will I admit that I have ever spoken inconsistently. I have never approved of its tyranny, rapacity, and other vices about which of old common complaints were heard from good men. Neither do I sweepingly condemn ‘Indulgences,’ though I have always disliked any barefaced traffic in them. What I think about ceremonies, many places in my works plainly show… What it may mean ‘to reduce the Pope to order’ I do not rightly understand. First, I think it must be allowed that Rome is a Church, for no number of evils can make it cease to be a Church, otherwise we should have no Churches whatever. Moreover, I hold it to be an orthodox Church; and this Church, it must be admitted, has a Bishop. Let him be allowed also to be Metropolitan, seeing there are very many archbishops in countries where there has been no apostle, and Rome, without controversy, had certainly SS. Peter and Paul, the two chief apostles. Then how is it absurd that among Metropolitans the chief place be granted to the Roman Pontiff?”191

As to the rest, Erasmus had never, he declares, defended the excessive powers which for many years the popes have usurped, and, like all men, he wishes for a thorough apostolic man for Pope. For his part, if the Pope were not above all things else an apostle, he would have him deposed as well as any other bishop, who did not fulfil the office of his state. For many years, no doubt, the chief evils of the world have come from Rome, but now, as he believes, the world has a Pope who will try at all costs to purify the See and Curia of Rome. This, however, Erasmus fancies is not quite what von Hutten desires. He would declare war against the Pope and his adherents, even were the Pope a good Pope, and his followers good Christians. War is what von Hutten wants, and he cares not whether it brings destruction to cities and peoples and countries.

Erasmus admits that he knows many people who are ready to go some way in the Lutheran direction; but who would strongly object to the overthrow of papal authority. Many would rather feel that they have a father than a tyrant: who would like to see the tables of the money-changers in the temple overthrown, and the barefaced granting of indulgences and trafficking in dispensations and papal bulls repressed: who would not object to have ceremonies simplified, and solid piety inculcated: who would like to insist on the sacred Scriptures as the true and only basis of authoritative teaching, and would not give to scholastic conclusions and the mere opinions of schools the force of an infallible oracle. With those who think thus, says Erasmus, “if (as is the case) there is no compact on my part, certainly my old friendly feeling for them remains cemented by the bond of learning, even if I do not agree with them in all these things.”

But, he continues, it is not among these well-wishers of reform that von Hutten and Luther will find their support. This is to be found among the “unlettered people without any judgment; among those who are impure in their own lives, and detractors of men; amongst those who are headstrong and ungovernable. These are they who are so favourable to Luther’s cause that they neither know nor care to examine what Luther teaches. They only have the Gospel on their lips; they neglect prayer and the Sacraments; they eat what they like; and they live to curse the Roman Pontiff. These are the Lutherans.” From such material spring forth tumults that cannot be put down. “It is generally in their cups,” adds Erasmus, “that the Evangelical league is recruited.” They are too stupid to see whither they are drifting, and “with such a type of mankind I have no wish to have anything to do.” Some make the Gospel but the pretext for theft and rapine; and “there are some who, having squandered or lost all their own property, pretend to be Lutherans in order to be able to help themselves to the wealth of others.” Von Hutten wants me, says Erasmus, to come to them. “To whom? To those who are good and actuated by the true Gospel teaching? I would willingly fly to them if any one will point them out. If he knew of any Lutherans, who in place of wine, prostitutes, and dice, have at any time delighted in holy reading and conversation; of any who never cheat or neglect to pay their debts, but are ready to give to the needy; of any who look on injuries done to them as favours, who bless those who curse them – if he can show me such people, he may count on me as an associate. Lutherans, I see; but followers of the Gospel, I can discover few or none.”

Von Hutten had, in his attack, with much bitterness condemned Erasmus for not renouncing connection with those who had written strongly against Luther. Erasmus refused to entertain the notion. “There is,” he says, “the reverend Father John, Bishop of Rochester. He has written a big volume against Luther. For a long period that man has been my very special friend and most constant patron. Does von Hutten seriously want me to break with him, because he has sharpened his pen in writing against Luther? Long before Luther was thought of,” he says, “I enjoyed the friendship of many learned men. Of these, some in later years took Luther’s side, but on that account I have not renounced outwardly my friendship for them. Some of these have changed their views and now do not think much of Luther, still I do not cease to regard them as my friends.”

Towards the close of his reply, Erasmus returns to the question of the Pope. Von Hutten had charged him with inconsistency in his views, and Erasmus replies, “He who most desires to see the apostolic character manifested in the Pope is most in his favour.” It may be that one can hate the individual and approve of the office. Whoever is favourable to, and defends, bad Popes does not honour the office. He (Erasmus) has been found fault with for saying that the authority of the Pope has been followed by the Christian world for very many ages. What he wrote is true, and as long as the work of Christ is done may it be followed for ever. Luther wants people to take his ipse dixit and authority, but he (Erasmus) would prefer to take that of the Pope. “Even if the supremacy of the Pope was not established by Christ, still it would be expedient that there should be one ruler possessing full authority over others, but which authority no doubt should be free from all idea of tyranny… Because I have criticised certain points in the See of Rome, I have not for that reason ever departed from it. Who would not uphold the dignity of one who, by manifesting the virtues of the Gospel, represents Christ to us?” The paradoxes of Luther are not worth dying for. “There is no question of articles of faith, but of such matters as ‘Whether the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff was established by Christ:’ ‘whether cardinals are necessary to the Christian Church:’ ‘whether confession is de jure divino:’ ‘whether bishops can make their laws binding under pain of mortal sin:’ ‘whether free will is necessary for salvation:’ ‘whether faith alone assures salvation,’ &c. If Christ gave him grace,” Erasmus hopes that “he would be a martyr for His truth, but he has no desire whatever to be one for Luther.”

This last point was immediately taken up by the Lutherans. Von Hutten, as it has already been said, had died before the publication of the Spongia, and the reply to Erasmus was undertaken by Otto Brunfels. He rejected Erasmus’s suggestion that nearly all that the Lutherans were fighting for were matters of opinion. They were matters of faith, he says, and no uncertainty could be admitted on this point. In order to make the matter clear, he enumerates a great number of tenets of Lutheranism which they hold to as matters of revealed certainty. For instance: that Christ is the only head of the Church; that the Church has no corporate existence; that the mass is no sacrifice; that justification comes by faith alone; that our works are sins and cannot justify; that good men cannot sin; that there are only two Sacraments; that the Pope’s traditions are heretical and against Scripture; that the religious state is from the devil; and several score more of similar points more or less important.

That Erasmus’s views upon the necessity of the Papacy expressed in the Spongia were not inconsistent with his previous position there is ample evidence in his letters, to which he himself appeals. Replying, for example, to one who had written to him deploring the religious differences in Bohemia, Erasmus declares that, in his opinion, it is needful for unity that there should be one head. If the prince is tyrannical, he should be reduced to order by the teaching and authority of the Roman Pontiff. If the bishop play the tyrant, there is still the authority of the Roman Pontiff, who is the dispenser of the authority and the Vicar of Christ. He may not please all, but who that really rules can expect to do that? “In my opinion,” he adds, “those who reject the Pope are more in error than they who demand the Eucharist under two kinds.” Personally, he would have allowed this, although he thinks that, as most Christians have now the other custom, those who demand it as a necessity are unreasonable and to be greatly blamed. Above all others, he reprobates the position of those who refuse to obey, speak of the Pope as Antichrist, and the Roman Church as a “harlot” because there have been bad Popes. There have been bad cardinals and bishops, bad priests and princes, and on this ground we ought not to obey bishop or pastor or king or ruler.192 In the same letter he rebukes those who desire to sweep away vestments and ceremonies on the plea that they may not have been used in apostolic times.

Later on, in another letter, he complained that people call him a favourer of Luther. This is quite untrue. “I would prefer,” he says, “to have Luther corrected rather than destroyed; then I should prefer that it should be done without any great social tumults. Christ I acknowledge; Luther I know not. I acknowledge the Roman Church, which, in my opinion, is Catholic. I praise those who are on the side of the Roman Pontiff, who is supported by every good man.”193

Again, the following year, writing on the subject of the invocation of Papal authority against Luther, he says: “I do not question the origin of that authority, which is most certainly just, as in ancient times from among many priests equal in office one was chosen as the bishop; so now from the bishops it is necessary to make choice of one Pontiff, not merely to prevent discords, but to temper the tyrannical exercise of authority on the part of the other bishops and secular princes.”194

The publication of Erasmus’s book against Luther and of his reply to von Hutten made little change, however, in the adverse feeling manifested against him by those who were most busily engaged in combating the spread of Lutheran opinions. As he wrote to King Henry VIII., the noisy tumults and discords made him long for the end of life, when he might hope at least to find peace.195 Luckily for him, he still retained the confidence of the Pope and some of the best churchmen in Europe. Had he not done so, the very violence of the attack against his good name might have driven him out of the Church in spite of himself. Kind words, he more than once said, would have done more for the cause of peace in the Church than all the biting sarcasm and unmeasured invective that was launched against Luther, and those who, like Erasmus, either were, or were supposed to be, associated with his cause. Luther was not delicate about the choice of his language when he had an enemy to pelt, but some of the preachers and pamphlet writers on the orthodox side were his match in this respect. In this way Erasmus puts the responsibility for “the tragedy” of Lutheranism upon the theologians, and in part especially upon the Dominicans and Carmelites. “Ass,” “pig,” “sow,” “heretic,” “antichrist,” and “pest of the world,” are terms named by Erasmus as samples of the epithets launched from the pulpit, or more deliberately set up in type, as arguments against Luther and himself.196