were then searching men's hearts and troubling their souls. In the first place, of course, comes the important problem of Erasmus's real position as regards the Church itself and its authority. That he was outspoken on many points, even on points which we now regard as well within the border-line of settled matters of faith and practice, may be at once admitted, but he never appears to have wavered in his determination at all costs to remain true and loyal to the Pope and the other constituted ecclesiastical authorities. The open criticism of time-worn institutions in which he indulged, and the sweeping condemnation of the ordinary teachings of the theological schools, which he never sought to disguise, brought him early in his public life into fierce antagonism with many devoted believers in the system then in vogue. The publication of his translation of the New Testament from the Greek brought matters to an issue. The general feeling in England and amongst those best able to judge had been favourable to the undertaking, and on its first appearance Erasmus was assured of the approval of the learned world at the English universities. More wrote Latin verses addressed to the reader of the new translation, calling it "the holy work and labour of the learned and immortal Erasmus," to purify the text of God's Word. Colet was warm in its praises. Copies, he writes to Erasmus, are being readily bought and read. Many approved, although, of course, as was to be expected, some spoke against the undertaking. In England, as elsewhere, says Colet, "we have theologians such as you describe in your Moria, by whom to be praised is dishonour, to be blamed is the highest praise." For his part, Colet has, he says, only one regret that he did not himself know Greek sufficiently well to be able fully to appreciate what Erasmus had done, though "he is only 'Ibid., Ep. 216. too thankful for the light that has been thrown upon the true meaning of the Holy Scripture." Archbishop Warham writes what is almost an official letter, to tell Erasmus that his edition of the New Testament has been welcomed by all his brother bishops in England to whom he has shown it. Bishop Tunstall was away in Holland, where, amidst the insanitary condition of the islands of Zeeland, which he so graphically describes, he finds consolation in the study of the work. He cannot too highly praise it-not merely as the opening up of Greek sources of information upon the meaning of the Bible, but as affording the fullest commentary on the sacred text.1 Bishop Fisher was equally clear as to the service rendered to religion by Erasmus in this version of the Testament; and when, in 1519, Froben had agreed to bring out a second edition, Erasmus turned to Fisher and More to assist in making the necessary corrections." More defended his friend most strenuously. Writing to Marten Dorpius in 1515, he upbraided him with suggesting that theologians would never welcome the help afforded to biblical studies by Erasmus's work on the Greek text o the Bible. He ridicules as a joke not meriting a serious reply the report that Erasmus and his friends had declared there was no need of the theologians and philosophers, but that grammar would suffice. Erasmus, who has studied in the universities of Paris, Padua, Bologna, and Rome, and taught with distinction in some of them, is not likely to hold such absurd ideas. At the same time More does not hesitate to say that in many things he thinks some theologians are to be blamed, especially those who, rejecting all positive science, hold that man is born to dispute about questions of all kinds which have not the least practical utility "even as regards the pietas fidei, or the cultivation of sound morals." At great length More defends the translation against 'Ibid., Ep. 272. 2 Ibid., Ep. 474. the insinuations made by Dorpius, who evidently regarded it as a sacrilege to suggest that the old Latin editions in use in the Church were incorrect. St. Jerome, says More, did not hesitate to change when he believed the Latin to be wrong, and Dorpius's suggestion that Erasmus should have only noted the errors and not actually made any change would, had the same principle been applied, have prevented St. Jerome's work altogether. If it was thought proper that the Latin codices should be corrected at that time by Greek manuscripts, why not now? The Church had then an equally recognised version before the corrections of St. Jerome.1 There were, indeed, as might be expected, some discordant notes in the general chorus of English praise. For the time, however, they remained unheeded, and, in fact, were hardly heard amid the general verdict of approval, in which the Pope, cardinals, and other highlyplaced ecclesiastics joined. Erasmus, however, was fully prepared for opposition of a serious character. Writing to Cambridge at the time, he says that he knows what numbers of people prefer "their old mumpsimus to the new sumpsimus," and condemn the undertaking on the plea that no such work as the correction of the text of Holy Scripture ought to be undertaken without the authority of a general Council." It is easy to understand the grounds upon which men who had been trained on old methods looked with anxiety, and even horror, at this new departure. Scholarship and literary criticism, when applied to the pagan classics, might be tolerable enough; but what would be the result were the same methods to be used in the examination of the works of the Fathers, and more especially in criticism of the text of the Holy Scripture itself? Overmuch study of the writings of Thomas More, Epigrammata (ed. Frankfort, 1689), p. 284 seqq. ancient Greece and Rome had, it appeared to many, in those days, hardly tended to make the world much better even in high places pagan models had been allowed to displace ideals and sentiments, which if barbarous and homely, were yet Christian. Theologians had long been accustomed to look upon the Latin Vulgate text as almost sacrosanct, and after the failure of the attempt in the thirteenth century to improve and correct the received version, no critical revision had been dreamt of as possible, or indeed considered advisable. Those best able to judge, such as Warham and More and Fisher, were not more eager to welcome, than others to condemn and ban, this attempt on the part of Erasmus to apply the now established methods of criticism to the sacred text. Not that the edition itself was in reality a work of either sound learning or thorough scholarship. As an edition of the Greek Testament it is now allowed on all hands to have no value whatever; but the truth is, that the Greek played only a subordinate part in Erasmus's scheme. His principal object was to produce a new Latin version, and to justify this he printed the Greek text along with it. And this, though in itself possessing little critical value, was, in reality, the starting-point for all modern Biblical criticism. As a modern writer has said, "Erasmus did nothing to solve the problem, but to him belongs the honour of having first propounded it." It must, however, be borne in mind that the publication of Erasmus's New Testament was not, as is claimed for it by some modern writers, a new revelation of the Gospel to the world at large, nor is it true that the sacred text had become so obscured by scholastic theological disquisitions on side issues as almost to be forgotten. According to Mr. Froude, "the New Testament to the mass of Christians was an unknown book," when Erasmus's edition, which was multiplied and spread all over Europe, changed all this. Pious and ignorant men had come to look on the text of the Vulgate as inspired. "Read it intelligently they could not, but they had made the language into an idol, and they were filled with horrified amazement when they found in page after page that Erasmus had anticipated modern critical corrections of the text, introduced various readings, and re-translated passages from the Greek into a new version." The truth is that the publication of the New Testament was in no sense an appeal ad populum, but to the cultivated few. A writer in the Quarterly Review, commenting upon Mr. Froude's picture of the effect of the new edition on the people generally, is by no means unjust when he says, "Erasmus beyond all question would have been very much astonished by this account of the matter. Certain it is that during the Middle Ages the minds of the most popular preachers and teachers (and we might add of the laity too) were saturated with the sacred Scriptures." Loud, however, was the outcry in many quarters against the rash author. His translations were glibly condemned, and it was pointed out as conclusive evidence of his heterodoxy that he had actually changed some words in the Our Father, and substituted the word congregatio for ecclesia. The year 1519 witnessed the most virulent and per 1 Erasmus, p. 63. 2 Quarterly Review, January, 1895, p. 23. The question about Erasmus's translation of this word came up in the discussion between Sir Thomas More and Tyndale about the use made by the latter of the word congregation for Church in his version of the New Testament. More writes: "Then he asketh me why I have not contended with Erasmus, whom he calls my darling, all this long time, for translating this word ecclesia into this word congregatio, and then he cometh forth with his proper taunt, that I favour him of likelihood for making of his book of Moria in my house. . . . Now for his translation of ecclesia by congregatio his deed is nothing like Tyndale's. For the Latin tongue had no Latin word used before for the Church but the Greek word ecclesia therefore Erasmus in his new translation gave it a Latin word. . . . Erasmus also meant no heresy therein, as appears by his writings against the heretics." (English Works, pp. 421, 422.) |