Part 14 (1/2)

From the period at Basle dates one of the purest and most beneficent moral treatises of Erasmus's, the _Institutio Christiani e_) of 1526, written for Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, quite in the spirit of the _Enchiridion_, save for a certain diffuseness betraying old age Later follows _De vidua Christiana_, _The Christian Widow_, for Mary of Hungary, which is as i

All this did not disarm the defenders of the old Church They held fast to the clear picture of Erasmus's creed that arose from the _Colloquies_ and that could not be called purely Catholic There it appeared only too clearly that, however ht desire to leave the letter intact, his heart was not in the convictions which were vital to the Catholic Church Consequently the _Colloquies_ were later, when Erasated, placed on the index in the lump, with the _Moria_ and a few other works The rest is _caute legenda_, to be read with caution Much was rejected of the Annotations to the New Testaiae_, very little of the _Enchiridion_, of the _Ratio verae theologiae_, and even of the _Exo Eras as he ree intellectual group whose force could not be estimated, just because it did not stand out as a party--it was not knohat turn he ht yet have on the Church He re of minds in his quiet study The hatred that was felt for hi of all his words and actions, were of a nature as only falls to the lot of the acknowledged great The chorus of enemies who laid the fault of the whole Refors which Luther and Zwingli have hatched' With vexation Erasmus quoted ever new specimens of narrow-minded, malicious and stupid controversy At Constance there lived a doctor who had hung his portrait on the wall merely to spit at it as often as he passed it Erasly compares his fate to that of Saint Cassianus, as stabbed to death by his pupils with pencils Had he not been pierced to the quick for ues of countless people and did he not live in that tor the end? The keen sensitiveness to opposition was seated very deeply with Eras others into opposing hiiose Psyche_, Hochland XV, 1917, p 21

CHAPTER XIX

AT WAR WITH HUMANISTS AND REFORMERS

1528-9

Erasaniss hih at Basle--He e the results of the Refor is more characteristic of the independence which Eras all movements of his time than the fact that he also joined issue in the camp of the humanists In 1528 there were published by Froben (the chief of the firues in one volume from Erasmus's hand: one about the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek, and one entitled _Ciceronianus_ or _On the Best Diction_, ie in writing and speaking Latin Both were proofs that Eras of his liveliness and wit The forreat influence; the other was satirical as well It had a long history

Erasarded classical studies as the panacea of civilization, provided they were made serviceable to pure Christianity

His sincere ethical feeling io and the immorality of the early Italian humanists At the same time his delicate and natural taste told him that a pedantic and servile imitation of antique models could never produce the desired result

Erasmus knew Latin too well to be strictly classical; his Latin was alive and required freedom In his early works we find taunts about the over-precise Latin purists: one had declared a newly found frag all sorts of authors none are so insufferable to reat expectations he cherished of classical studies for pure Christianity, he saw one danger: 'that under the cloak of reviving ancient literature paganis Christians who acknowledge Christ only in name but inwardly breathe heathenism' This he writes in 1517 to Capito In Italy scholars devote theuise to _bonae literae_ He considered it his special task to assist in bringing it about that those _bonae literae_ 'which with the Italians have thus far been al of Christ'

How it must have vexed Erasmus that in Italy of all countries he was, at the saed with heresy and questioned in respect to his knowledge and integrity as a scholar Italians accused hiiarisht, had a hand in it

In a letter of 13 October 1527, to a professor at Toledo, we find the _ebauche_ of the _Ciceronianus_ In addition to the haters of classic studies for the sake of orthodox belief, writes Erasmus, 'lately another and new sort of enemies has broken from their ambush These are troubled that the _bonae literae_ speak of Christ, as though nothing can be elegant but what is pagan To their ears _Jupiter optimus maximus_ sounds more pleasant than _Jesus Christus redereeable than _sancti apostoli_ They account it a greater dishonour to be no Ciceronian than no Christian, as if Cicero, if he should now cos in other words than in his tiion! What is the sense of this hateful swaggering with the name Ciceronian? I will tell you briefly, in your ear With that pearl-powder they cover the paganislory of Christ' To Erasmus Cicero's style is by noorous, less polished, more manly He who sometimes has to write a book in a day has no time to polish his style, often not even to read it over 'What do I care for an empty dish of words, ten words here and there mumped from Cicero: I want all Cicero's spirit'

These are apes at whos are the tumults of the so-called new Gospel, to which he next proceeds in this letter

And so, in the midst of all his polemics and bitter vindication, he allowed hi the reins to his love of scoffing, but, as in the _Moria_ and _Colloquia_, ennobled by an almost passionate sincerity of Christian disposition and a natural sense of measure The _Ciceronianus_ is aeloquence, and of easy handling of a wealth of arguments With splendid, quiet and yet lively breadth flows the long conversation between Bulephorus, representing Erasus, the interested inquirer, and Nosoponus, the zealous Ciceronian, who, to preserve a perfect purity ofNosoponus had evidently, in the er reply: Christopher Longolius, who had died in 1522

The core of the _Ciceronianus_ is where Eraser to Christian faith of a too zealous classicisanisaniss We are Christians in name alone' Why does a classic proverb sound better to us than a quotation fro the vegetables', better than 'Saul a the prophets'? As a saives a translation of a doge: 'Optimi maximique Jovis interpres ac filius, servator, rex, juxta vatum responsa, ex Olympo devolavit in terras,'

for: Jesus Christ, the Word and the Son of the eternal Father, ca to the prophets Most humanists wrote indeed in that style

Was Erasmus aware that he here attacked his own past? After all, was it not exactly the sanation of his opponents, when translating _Logos_ by _Sermo_ instead of by _Verbum_?

Had he not himself desired that in the church hymns the metre should be corrected, not to mention his own classical odes and paeans to Mary and the Saints? And was his warning against the partiality for classic proverbs and turns applicable to anything ed Erasht eventually have led him far from humanism In his combat with humanistic purism he foreshadows a Christian puritanism

As always his mockery procured him a new flood of invectives Bembo and Sadolet, the masters of pure Latin, could afford to ser violently inveighed against hiolius's ot fresh food: he again thought that Aleander was at the bottoainst ain He writes jestingly: 'Upon e my style after Budaeus'sto the example of Sadolet and Beed in a new contest with Italians, because he had hurt their national pride; 'they rage at me on all sides with slanderous libels, as at the enemy of Italy and Cicero'

There were, as he had said hi him more closely Conditions at Basle had for years been developing in a direction which distressed and alarht still have seereat admirer of Eras a refored abuses, but re within the fold of the Church In that very year, 1521, however, the emancipation of the ress since Basle, in 1501, had joined the Swiss Confederacy--was consummated

Henceforth the council was nuer exclusively made up of aristocratic eleues of Constance and Lausanne to ot more and more the upper hand When, however, in 1525, it had coainst the Catholic service, the council became more cautious and tried to reform more heedfully