Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  Accordingly, Jerome decided to jettison the Septuagint and work directly from what he called the Hebraica veritas, the “Hebrew verity.” Actually, the Hebrew Bible, like all ancient documents, had itself become corrupted. Jerome’s decision to use it as his foundation text was nonetheless a radical step for a Christian. That he was now working without papal sanction added to the boldness of the project. Begun around 390, it would occupy him for the next fourteen years. Jerome’s feel for Hebrew, his familiarity with the history and geography of the Holy Land, and his frequent conversations with Jewish scholars helped him capture the majesty and mystery of this complex work. In a preface to his commentary on Genesis, Jerome scornfully dismissed the legend of the Seventy and—anticipating attacks from traditionalists—preemptively denounced them as “filthy swine who grunt as they trample on pearls.”

  Those traditionalists were soon heard from—Augustine chief among them. Though some ten years younger than Jerome, the bishop of Hippo had already gained renown as a biblical commentator, and for two decades beginning around 394 or 395, the two men would keep up, across the Mediterranean, a correspondence that offers an exhilarating look at the impassioned debates taking place among the Fathers over Scripture and doctrine. In 403 Augustine wrote to Jerome that, while he had found nothing to object to in his translation of the Gospels, there was much in his version of the Old Testament that disturbed him. Augustine was especially upset by Jerome’s decision to base his translation on the suspect Hebrew text rather than on the Septuagint, which had “no mean authority,” since it was the one that the apostles themselves had relied on. Augustine told of a bishop in a nearby town who, when reading aloud from Jerome’s translation of Jonah, had come upon a word (he did not say which) that differed from the one that was familiar to the worshippers and which “had been chanted for so many generations in the church.” There arose “such a tumult in the congregation” that the bishop felt compelled to ask the opinion of some local Jewish residents. From this, Augustine added, “we . . . are led to think that you may be occasionally mistaken.”

  Jerome testily replied that since Augustine had approved of his revision of the New Testament, he should give him credit for his work on the Old as well, “for I have not followed my own imagination, but have rendered the divine words as I found them, understood by those who speak the Hebrew language.” Chiding Augustine for not supplying the offensive word so that he might defend himself, Jerome guessed that it was his translation of the Hebrew qiqayon as hedera (“ivy”) instead of the traditional cucurbita (“gourd”). Generations of Christians had grown up with the image of Jonah sitting on the ground, shielded from the sun by a gourd, but Jerome argued that the word in Hebrew signified a kind of shrub that had large leaves like a vine and that stood upright by its own stem. Had he used “gourd,” he wrote, he would have said what was not found in the Hebrew, and so he had instead used “ivy.”

  Jerome here showed the length to which he would go to get a single word right, whatever the consequences. Augustine, attentive to the needs of his congregation, focused on the furor that altering a single word of Scripture could cause. Where Jerome strove for linguistic precision, Augustine deferred to received authority and pastoral concerns. For years these two Fathers would spar over how best to translate and interpret Scripture, personifying in the process two models of Christian scholarship—Jerome being first and foremost a scholar while also a pious Christian, and Augustine being mainly a theologian whose readings were informed by deep scholarship. Their contrasting positions on the proper relationship between faith and learning uncannily foreshadowed the bitter fight that Erasmus and Luther would wage more than a millennium later.

  Over time, the virtues of Jerome’s translation of the Old Testament would become broadly recognized. It elevated the rough and sometimes coarse words of the Hebrew Scriptures into a form of lyric poetry; its narratives move at a brisk pace; its prophetic passages ring with admonitory thunder. But his translation had serious defects as well. As always, he worked quickly and at times carelessly. He claimed to have translated Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs in a mere three days. With his eyesight failing, he often dictated his translations to secretaries—hardly an ideal practice in dealing with sacred texts. As with the Gospels, Jerome indulged his love of variation, rarely using the same word twice, even when the context clearly called for doing so. And, while he was generally faithful to the Hebrew text, he did not hesitate to alter it when he thought clarification was needed.

  The most famous example came at Isaiah 7:14. In this passage, the Hebrew prophet assured the Judaean king that the disasters befalling his realm would soon give way to better times, with the Lord himself sending a sign: “A young woman will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” The Hebrew word for “young woman”—alma—is unambiguous. The Septuagint, however, gives it as parthenos— “virgin.” This is the version cited at Matthew 1:23. The birth of Jesus, it states, took place “to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanuel.’” This passage became the foundation text for the doctrine of the virgin birth. Had Jerome remained true to his philological principles, he would have translated Isaiah as prophesying that a puella—a young woman—would bear a child. But this would have undermined both Matthew and one of Jerome’s most fundamental beliefs, and so he translated from the Septuagint and used virgo, or “virgin.” And thus Isaiah would read in the Vulgate.

  Nearly sixty years old when the translation was done, Jerome would spend his remaining years contending with his many physical ailments, his dwindling resources, and the passing of close friends, including his beloved Paula. But he lost none of his zest for theological combat. From his remote outpost in Bethlehem, he became embroiled in a series of poisonous feuds that reflected the boundless bitterness of the era. In 416, a mob, inflamed by one of these controversies, invaded Jerome’s monastic compound, attacking its residents, killing a deacon, and setting fire to its buildings; in the chaos, Jerome’s precious library was destroyed. He escaped to a nearby tower and, despite his despondency and near blindness, somehow managed to resume his biblical studies. He was working on a commentary on Jeremiah when, in 420, the end finally came.

  The image of Jerome toiling away on his biblical commentaries in the face of poor health, financial hardship, and attacks from detractors inspired Erasmus as he pursued his own lonely program to renew Christian culture. Jerome’s insistence on using Greek manuscripts to revise the New Testament reassured Erasmus that he was on the right course in his own effort to learn Greek so that he could restore the pure crystalline springs of the Bible.

  Yet in his campaign to revive Jerome, there was much that Erasmus had to overlook. Jerome’s Dream, for instance. Its categorical rejection of pagan works contradicted Erasmus’s own strong belief in their value. Jerome’s letter to Eustochium championed the type of monkish severity that Erasmus had experienced, and turned his back on, at Steyn. Jerome’s strict orthodoxy, his violent attacks on heresy, his furious fights over small points of doctrine—all were alien to Erasmus’s own outlook.

  Most challenging of all was Jerome’s work as a translator. The Vulgate was his masterwork—his great contribution to Western civilization. How, then, to explain its many errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies? There were two mitigating factors Erasmus could cite. One was the widespread belief that Jerome was responsible for only part of the Vulgate. That he had revised the Gospels was clear from the preface he prepared for them. He wrote nothing comparable for the other books of the New Testament, and from this and other evidence, Renaissance-era scholars concluded that Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation had been translated by other, unknown hands. The Old Testament, by contrast, was fully Jerome’s work. (This assessment is shared by most modern-day scholars.)

  As for those parts that were Jerome’s responsibility, humanist scholars could point to the many faults
that had crept into the text during centuries of copying. In a document of such length and complexity, scribal blunders were inevitable and numerous. By the end of the eighth century, the Vulgate had become so riddled with errors and interpolations that Charlemagne—wanting a uniform text—asked his court scholar Alcuin to prepare a revision. Alcuin arranged for some well-preserved Latin manuscripts to be sent from England, and, using them as a foundation, he revised the Vulgate. With Charlemagne’s backing, this new version quickly became the standard edition. Its quality was very uneven, however. Because Alcuin knew little Greek and almost no Hebrew, his corrections were largely limited to spelling and grammar. What’s more, the broad demand for this revised text forced scribes to work at an accelerated pace that led to the undoing of many of his improvements.

  The rise of the Scholastics added yet another layer of corruption. In support of their theological positions, they frequently cited passages from the Church Fathers. This gave rise to a new genre—the gloss—which featured blocks of Vulgate text surrounded by patristic citations. Over time, some of these citations were incorporated into the text itself, thus becoming an actual part of the Bible.

  In the first third of the thirteenth century, as Paris emerged as the capital of Christian scholarship, the trade in Bibles became concentrated there as well. On Rue Saint-Jacques, a dozen or so scribal workshops sprang up to meet the growing demand for Bibles. A single codex of the Vulgate based on Alcuin’s revision was selected as a master copy. This Paris Bible (as it came to be called) became the standard edition of the Church and as such the source of all dogmatic authority. Yet it was a thoroughly compromised version, featuring many patristic passages that had been incorporated from the margins. Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan whose knowledge of Greek was unmatched among medieval scholars, set out to document all of the errors in the Paris Bible; he found too many to count.

  Nonetheless, when Gutenberg in the early 1450s decided to print a Bible as his first full book, he used a Paris version as his text. The Gutenberg Bible in turn became the text for the many dozens of Bible editions printed through the end of the fifteenth century. So the printing press, while finally making it possible to produce uniform copies of the Bible, had the perverse effect of locking in all the corruptions and embellishments that had accumulated in it over the centuries.

  This, then, was the Latin Bible that Erasmus and other scholars faced at the start of the sixteenth century. By finding his way back to a purer version, Erasmus hoped to rejuvenate the faith. He knew how presumptuous such an undertaking might seem to others. “I am not unaware,” he wrote to a friend in the summer of 1501, “that the kind of study I have pursued appears to some men uncongenial, to others interminable or unprofitable, while to others again even impious.” This, however, had simply deepened his commitment to it. “If mankind refuses to endorse my purpose, I believe that God will both approve it and aid it. . . . And some day mankind too, or posterity at any rate, will give me its approval.”

  That letter was sent from Tournehem, near Calais, where Erasmus had gone from Paris to escape another outbreak of the plague. While there, he began writing an essay about the essentials of a truly Christian life. His first major work, it would prove a critical document in the movement to reform the Church, proposing a fresh spiritual vision for the emerging new Europe. Erasmus drafted it at the request of a pious woman in the area whom he had gotten to know. Her husband, a gun-foundry owner from Nuremberg, had become a spendthrift and a philanderer, and she asked Erasmus to write something that might help win him back. Erasmus agreed, and in preparation he began rereading Plato (focusing on Plato’s embrace of the ideal over the material), Paul (noting the Apostle’s preference for the spirit over the flesh), Origen (the great third-century Eastern Father), and Augustine.

  While thus engaged, Erasmus moved to a Benedictine monastery in nearby Saint-Omer. There, he became friendly with Jean Vitrier, the warden of a neighboring Franciscan convent. Vitrier had upset his fellow clerics with his readiness to disregard the rule of his order when it seemed to conflict with true piety. He disliked lengthy confessions, thought it unnecessary to rise during the night to say prayers, and rejected the idea that friars should dress differently from everyone else. During Lent, Erasmus—unable to hold out until the afternoon, when the main meal at the monastery was served—arranged to take a basin of soup. When he asked what Vitrier thought of this, Vitrier offered his support, telling him that “you would be doing wrong if you did not do this, and if for the sake of a morsel of food you had to break off your sacred studies and damage your health.” Impressed by Vitrier’s gentle spirituality, Erasmus tried to capture it in his essay, which he called Enchiridion Militis Christiani (“The Handbook of the Christian Soldier”).

  Enchiridion in Latin can mean not only a handbook but also a dagger, and Erasmus intended his book to serve as a weapon in achieving a truly devout life. He wanted to offer a simple “design for living” for Christians unable to carry around the Secunda secundae (the second part of the second part) of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. On the surface, the Enchiridion seems innocuous—even banal—offering advice on how to combat such sins as avarice, ambition, pride, anger, and, most important, lust. To subdue the flesh, Erasmus advised, one should avoid suggestive conversations, drink and eat with moderation, and flee all occasions on which the opportunity to act presents itself. Above all, one should read Scripture. “There is really no attack from the enemy, no temptation so violent, that a sincere resort to Holy Writ will not easily get rid of it.”

  Not even the most dutiful monk could object to such bromides. It is telling, though, that even here, Erasmus dwelled little on such sacramental acts as making a confession or going to Mass. Rather, he was calling on Christians to rely on their own faculties and resources. Elaborating, he offered a set of general rules for Christian living. The most important was the fifth—a way station in Erasmus’s spiritual development. Christians, he wrote, should “seek the invisible.” “The entire spiritual life consists of this: That we gradually turn from things whose appearance is deceptive to those that are real”—from “the pleasures of the flesh, the honors of the world that are so transitory, to those that are immutable and everlasting.” One may venerate the saints, but such reverence is meaningless unless one heeds “their greatest legacy, the example of their lives.” One may celebrate Mass daily, but “if you live as if this were only for your own welfare and have no concern for the difficulties and needs of your neighbor, you are still in the flesh of the sacrament.” People hang crosses about themselves and keep parts of the True Cross about their homes, but the true value of the cross “is in profiting from its many examples. You cannot say that a person loves Christ if he does not follow His example.”

  These passages carry unmistakable echoes of The Imitation of Christ. The Enchiridion shows how fully Erasmus had absorbed the principles of the Devotio Moderna while at Deventer and Steyn. Whereas Thomas à Kempis rejected learning as a snare, however, Erasmus embraced it as central to true spirituality. And while Thomas urged Christians to withdraw from the world so as to draw nearer to God, Erasmus was trying to define Christian piety in the world. In a seemingly innocuous passage that would later cause a storm, he declared: Monachatus non est pietas—“Monasticism is not piety.” Rather, it is “a kind of life that can be useful or useless depending on a person’s temperament and disposition.”

  True piety, Erasmus noted, could not be limited to a personal quest for salvation. It had to be directed outward, toward others: “Just as Christ gave Himself completely for us, so also should we give ourselves to our neighbor.” True charity consists not in making visits to churches, nor in the lighting of many candles, nor in the repetition of a number of designated prayers, but rather in “the edification of one’s neighbor, the attempt to integrate all men into one body so that all men may become one in Christ, the loving of one’s neighbor as one’s self.” Here, for the first time, Erasmus was describing his “philosophy
of Christ”—an ethical code based on the life and teachings of Christ.

  From a literary standpoint, the Enchiridion lacks the snap of Erasmus’s later works. His blithe appeal to willpower and his confident assertion that “there is no beast so ferocious” that it “cannot be tamed by human effort” suggest obliviousness of the dark, impulsive forces careening about the human psyche. Such a buoyant view of human nature would later bring Erasmus into sharp conflict with the brooding, pessimistic Luther.

  But it was precisely Erasmus’s belief in human capacity and potential that would make the Enchiridion stand out. It was not just monks who could achieve Christian holiness—lay Christians could, too. Such a statement posed a radical challenge to the Church’s conception of the clergy as a special sanctified caste. Erasmus was moreover arguing that true piety could be achieved not through the offices of the Church but through a genuine change of heart. “I would prefer that you really hate your evil deeds internally rather than enumerate them ten times before a priest,” he wrote. In extolling inner transformation over formal ritual, the Enchiridion pointed the way toward a new form of spirituality rooted in the individual rather than an institution. This vision would prove immensely popular with Europe’s new burghers in their quest for a purer, more personalized faith. The Enchiridion would go through more than fifteen printings by 1518 and more than one hundred by the end of the sixteenth century. It would be translated into English in 1518, Czech in 1519, German in 1520, Dutch in 1523, Spanish in 1525, and French and Italian in 1529. In the process, it would help establish Erasmus as the tribune of liberal religious reform in Europe.