Latin would become entombed: Gathorne-Hardy, Public School Phenomenon, 30–31.
education of the common man: Commenting on the many “barbarous languages” in use, Erasmus (Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 26, 390) wrote that “it is important for scholars to confine themselves to those languages that have almost exclusively been used in learned writing. The reason is that they do not depend for their guarantee on ordinary people. The people are poor custodians of quality.”
failed to develop a broad social base: Louise Holborn, in “Printing and the Growth of a Protestant Movement in Germany from 1517 to 1524,” Church History, 11(2): June 1942, observes (125–26) that “none of the writings of the humanist groups had a decisive or even kindling effect on the people in general. The chief reason was that these writers wrote only for scholars and thus used the Latin language almost exclusively. Some of their writings were translated into German and in this form were read by larger groups,” but “their dignified skepticism and constantly critical tone did not kindle enthusiasm, while their rough satire awoke only a temporary exhilaration.” See also Smith, Erasmus (305), on Erasmus’s preoccupation with the training of an elite.
a letter sent from Dover: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, no. 218, to Andrea Ammonio, April 10 [1511], 155–157.
always received cordially: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, 298.
Erasmus lived in a room: For an overview of Erasmus’s time in Cambridge, see D. F. S. Thomson and H. C. Porter, Erasmus and Cambridge: the Cambridge Letters of Erasmus.
“nods and gestures”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, 187.
the everyday Erasmus: Or, as one writer put it, the letters show Erasmus “in slippers” (quoted in Thomson and Porter, Erasmus and Cambridge, 65).
“If you are in a position”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, no. 226, August 25, 1511, 169.
“everyone is running away”: Ibid., no. 278, October 31 [1513], 260.
“is a lonely place for me”: Ibid., no. 282, to Andrea Ammonio, November 28 [1513], 266.
“I cannot without anguish”: Ibid., no. 253, 214.
faring little better with his lectures: Ibid., no. 233, to Andrea Ammonio, October 16, 1511, 176–177; Thomson and Porter, Erasmus and Cambridge, 38–39.
“the most unbeatable”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, no. 237, to John Colet, October 29 [1511], 183.
“I often curse”: Ibid., no. 241, to Roger Wentford [November 1511?], 196.
several important manuscripts: Thomson and Porter, Erasmus and Cambridge, 47–48; Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, 217; Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 125–126; A. J. Brown, “The Manuscript Sources,” in Wallraff, Basel 1516, 130–131.
“inspired by some god”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, 253.
“half eaten away and mutilated”: These observations are from a dedicatory letter to the Jerome edition in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, no. 396, April 1, 1516, 260–261.
Erasmus had some reservations: Ibid., vol. 3, 63–68. This letter is the preface to Erasmus’s edition of Seneca’s Lucubrationes, published in August 1515.
the great gulf: See Mary Beard, “How Stoical Was Seneca?” in New York Review of Books, October 9, 2014 (available at www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/09/how-stoical-was-seneca/); Robin Campbell, introduction to Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, 7–26.
Gaining access to two ancient manuscripts: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, 65.
“brought philosophy down from heaven to earth”: Ibid., vol. 11, 104–105.
“How to Distinguish a Flatterer”: Ibid., vol. 2, 249–250.
dedicated the translation to Henry VIII: Ibid., no. 272 [July 1513], 250–252.
“how things are in Italy”: Ibid., no. 233 [October 16, 1511], 177.
Ammonio informed him: Ibid., no. 236, October 27, 1511, 179–182; no. 239, November 8, 1511, 188–190.
“What you tell me”: Ibid., no. 240, November 11 [1511], 192.
“in the ascendant”: Ibid., no. 247, November 28 [1511], 206–207.
liked to linger at his palace: Weir, Henry VIII, 11; Ridley, Henry VIII, 46.
The price of everything: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, no. 288, to Antoon van Bergen, March 14, 1514, 279.
“I cannot tell you”: Ibid., no. 265 [autumn 1512], 235.
Colet chastised the English clergy: Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, 142–157; Adams, Better Part of Valor, 65–66.
Colet boldly denounced: See Erasmus’s account in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 8, 242–243.
English army departed: Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 33–39; Weir, Henry VIII, 162.
“We are shut in”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, no. 283, December 2 [1513], 272.
a long, impassioned letter: Ibid., no. 288, March 14, 1514, 278–283.
to arouse the public: Adams, Better Part of Valor, 90.
War, he maintained: “War,” in Augustine Through the Ages, Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 1991); Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Reevaluation, 96–97.
“on account of some fault”: Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 40, Article 1.
“Two armies advance”: Barker, Adages of Erasmus, 328–329; “forbad anyone,” 334; “why should you prefer,” 345; “the sure marks of Christians,” 346; “if they attack us,” 349; if “you have left nothing untried,” 352.
ran through the revised Adages: See Phillips, “Adages” of Erasmus, 35.
A mortuo tributum exigere: Barker, Adages of Erasmus, 119–124; Spartam nactus es, hanc orna, 183–191; Scarabaeus aquilam quaerit, 281–315.
Sileni Alcibiadis: Ibid., 241–268; “a divine being,” 244; “what a treasure,” 245.
had made enough progress: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, 292.
William Warham had arranged: Ibid., 216; Smith, Erasmus, 69–70.
As he boarded his boat: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 2, 292–293.
CHAPTER 12: THE GATE TO PARADISE
elected district vicar: Luther’s Works, vol. 48, no. 5, May 29, 1516, 14–16; like being the prior of eleven monasteries, no. 10, to John Lang, October 26, 1516, 28.
“This made my head split”: Ibid., vol. 54, “Table Talk,” no. 495, 85.
lectures were due to start: See Pauck, introduction to Luther: Lectures on Romans, xix–xx.
famous autobiographical fragment: Dillenberger, Martin Luther: Selections, 10–12.
led Reformation scholars to search: For a summary of the debate, see Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 141–147. The encyclopedia Religion Past and Present, in its entry on Luther, notes that the conjectured dates of Luther’s breakthrough fall into two groups—those favoring an early dating (between 1512 and 1515/1516) and a later group centered on 1518, with a consensus eventually forming that places his discovery in 1515/1516, with its consequences becoming clear between 1517 and 1520.
a remarkable scholarly find: Described in Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, xxi–xxiv; Friedenthal, Luther, 103.
considered indisputably his: Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 838.
most reliable sources of information: Günther Bornkamm, Paul, Paulus, xiv.
“The most profound work in existence”: T. Ashe, ed., The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1888), 228.
Paul, though, had a very different background: On the life of Paul, see Bornkamm, Paul; Michael Grant, Saint Paul; A. N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle; “Paul,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary.
“zealous” for the faith: Galatians 1:14.
three such journeys: See The Harper Atlas of the Bible (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 172–175; “Paul,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 188–189. For an evocative account of Paul’s journeys, see H. V. Morton, In the Steps of St. Paul.
he covered nearly ten thousand miles: Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social
World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 16–18.
“Five times I have received”: 2 Corinthians 11:24–27; For the sake of Christ, Philippians 3:8.
thorn in the flesh: 2 Corinthians 12:7; “Wretched man that I am!” Romans 7:24; “I do not do,” Romans 7:19.
went to Jerusalem: Some, including Bornkamm (Paul, 31ff), believe that this visit occurred before the first missionary journey. The principal account of the meeting is Galatians 2:1–10.
By lifting the requirement of circumcision: Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 2, 86.
arrived in Ephesus: The well-preserved ruins of this town give modern-day visitors a good sense of the world in which Paul moved.
“I am astonished”: Galatians 1:6; “let that one be accursed!” 1:9; “We ourselves are Jews,” 2:15–16; “under a curse,” 3:10; “for in Christ Jesus,” 3:26; “a yoke of slavery,” 5:1; “would castrate themselves!” 5:12; “For the whole law,” 5:14.
the Magna Carta of Christian liberty: See, for instance, Grant, Saint Paul, 96, 99; Bornkamm, Paul, 115.
“Do not be deceived!”: 1 Corinthians 6:9; “it is better to marry,” 7:9; condemned divorce, 7:12; “shameful” for women, 14:35; “If there is anything,” 14:35; “If I speak in the tongues,” 13:1–2.
The Epistle to the Romans: For an overview of its main points, see Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 838–850.
denounce the ungodly: Romans 1:26–32; “by patiently doing good,” 2: 6–8; “the hearers of the law,” 2:13; since all have sinned, 3:23–28.
has perplexed scholars: Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 844.
“do not persist in unbelief”: Romans 11:23.
should love one another: Romans 12:9–12; “Bless those who persecute you,” 12:14–16; If your enemies are hungry, 12:20; “Owe no one anything,” 13:8; “let every person be subject,” 13:1.
a follower writing in his name: The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3, 622–623.
“but fails in one point”: James 2:10; “is justified by works and not by faith alone,” 2:24; “What good is it,” 2:14–17; “Religion that is pure and undefiled,” 1:27.
the difference between the Pauline and Jamesian approaches: Grant, Saint Paul, 92.
Before leaving for Rome: The main source for the remainder of Paul’s life is Acts 20 to 28.
in the resulting vacuum: Grant, Saint Paul, 168–171, 186, 192; Jeffrey J. Bütz, The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity, 100, 171, 178; Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 2, 82–83.
was eventually included: According to The Anchor Bible Dictionary (vol. 3, 621), the epistle became part of the New Testament canon in the latter part of the fourth century.
Erasmus in the Enchiridion: Dolan, Essential Erasmus, 93.
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples: MacCulloch, Reformation, 108.
Luther had a copy of Lefèvre’s translation: Mullett, Martin Luther, 58; Pauck, introduction to Luther: Lectures on Romans, xxx. Preserved Smith, in “Luther’s Development of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Only,” Harvard Theological Review, 6(4): 413–414, October 1913, writes that it is “certain that Luther took his most famous doctrine bodily from Lefèvre.”
“The sum and substance”: Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, 3–5; “praise themselves in their hearts,” 3; the four stages of perdition, 25–26; the threefold way, 31; “separated unto the gospel,” 10.
Luther observes that Paul: Ibid., 101.
to offer a parable: Ibid.
it is either a “whole faith”: Ibid., 102–103; “So it has been determined,” 109.
always retain some inclination toward evil: Ibid., 114, 118–119.
the “thousand tricks”: Ibid, 121.
“to the foolish enterprise”: Ibid.
Man, Luther observed: Ibid.
finally found the idea: Mullett, in Martin Luther (60–61), points specifically to these verses in Romans as the place of Luther’s breakthrough. Alister McGrath in The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (162) and Smith in “Luther’s Development of the Doctrine of Justification” (420), though less specific, similarly date Luther’s breakthrough to 1515 or early 1516.
they had taught that original sin: Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, 128.
“O you fools”: Ibid., 129.
“I have been in the grind”: Ibid., 236.
foolish perverters: Ibid., 131, 129; iustitiarii, 266.
“every teaching that prescribes”: Ibid., 197; “who have turned the gospel,” 199.
“bitter and hard”: Ibid., 247.
seems to have omitted: See Pauck, introduction, Luther: Lectures on Romans, xviii, lxii.
CHAPTER 13: ANNUS MIRABILIS
causing Erasmus to wrench his back: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, 9–11.
Erasmus was astonished: Ibid., 12–15; Smith, Erasmus, 129–130, 136–137.
appended a prefatory address: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, 12.
this tidy town: On Basel, see Hans R. Guggisberg, Basel in the Sixteenth Century: Aspects of the City Republic Before, During, and After the Reformation, 3–11; Earle Hilgert, “Johann Froben and the Basel University Scholars, 1513–1523,” Library Quarterly, 41 (2): 141–161, April 1971; Smith, Erasmus, 138; Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 40, 1122–1123; Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, 56; Wallraff, Basel 1516, preface, x–xi.
start of a partnership: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61, xix.
“I seem to myself”: Ibid., vol. 3, 243–244.
took charge of the first four: Ibid., vol. 61, xxii; Rice, Jerome in the Renaissance, 118–130.
“I believe that the writing”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, no. 396, to William Warham, April 1, 1516, 252–266; quote, 262.
a “Life of Jerome”: Ibid., vol. 61, 19–62. See also Harbison, Christian Scholar, 94; Rice, Jerome in the Renaissance, 130–136.
“Who ever drew Sacred Scripture”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61, 52–53.
preparing his material on the New Testament: For a description of Erasmus’s work on the New Testament in Basel, see the long note in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, 216–221; Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations, 18–26, 121; J. K. Elliott, “‘Novum Testamentum editum est’: The Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Erasmus’s New Testament,” Bible Translator, 67(1): 9–28, 2016. It is not exactly clear when Erasmus decided to undertake a new translation of the New Testament. Some argue that he began it while in England, prior to his trip to Basel; others believe that he embarked on it only after his arrival there. See Andrew J. Brown, “The Date of Erasmus’ Latin Translation of the New Testament,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 8(4): 351–380, 1984; H. J. de Jonge, “The Date and Purpose of Erasmus’s Castigato Novi Testamenti: A Note on the Origins of the Novum Instrumentum,” in The Uses of Greek and Latin: Historical Essays, A. C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye, eds., 97–110; H. J. de Jonge, “Erasmus’s Translation of the New Testament: Aim and Method,” Bible Translator, 67(1): 29–41, 2016; Mark Vessey, “Basel 1514: Erasmus’ Critical Turn,” in Wallraff, Basel 1516, 16–25. Erasmus himself would later write (Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 9, 311) that the idea for the new translation originated with members of the house of Froben, who pressed it on him; in so maintaining, however, he may have been trying to deflect responsibility for the controversial project.
the Complutensian Polyglot: Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 70–111; Metzger, Text of the New Testament, 96–98.
had a half-dozen codices: See Patrick Andrist, “Structure and History of the Biblical Manuscripts Used by Erasmus for His 1516 Edition,” 81–124, and Andrew J. Brown, “The Manuscript Sources,” 125–144, in Wallraff, Basel 1516.
Erasmus wrote to him: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3, no. 300 [August 1514], 5–8; the note on 7–8 offers information about the codices in question.
in a letter to Jacob Wimpfeling: Ibid., no. 3
05, 32.
a sudden trip to England: Ibid., vol. 3, 77.
“Froben is asking”: Ibid., vol. 3, no. 328, April 17, 1515, 79–82.
an ominous letter: Ibid., vol. 3, no. 304 [September 1514], 17–23.
a strongly worded (and long-winded) reply: Ibid., vol. 3, no. 337 [end of May] 1515, 111–139; “peevish pedantry,” 116; to offer “guidance,” 115; “poke fun at Greek,” 122; “abandon Christ,” 136.
annus mirabilis: Ibid., vol. 4, xi.
the revised New Testament: For an overview of Erasmus’s work on this project, see ibid., vol. 3, no. 373, “To the Reader,” 195–205 (the preface to his annotations), along with the introductory note.
Among the manuscripts: On the manuscripts of the New Testament used by Erasmus, see ibid., vol. 3, no. 384, “To Leo X” (the preface to his New Testament), including the introductory note, 216–224. See also the introduction by Andrew J. Brown to Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 6(2): 1–9.
Far more important: See Henk Jan de Jonge, “Novum Testamentum a Nobis Versum: The Essence of Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 35, part 2: 394–412, October 1984.
Where there were textual corruptions: Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 148–152; de Jonge, “Erasmus’s Translation of the New Testament,” Bible Translator, 37–40.
“they had learned Greek”: Quoted in Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations, 140.
were his annotations: For an extended analysis, see ibid., 89–121.
lack of consistency in translation: Ibid., 96.
in the first chapter of John: Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 6(6): 46.
Erasmus salted his annotations: See Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations, 31–33; Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 187–188; Smith, Erasmus, 172–173.
Ephesians 5:32: Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 6(9): 254. See also John B. Payne, Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments, 112–113.
Romans 5:12: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 56, “Annotations on Romans,” 139ff. For the Latin, see Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi, 6(7): 136–139. See also Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 170–172; Robert Coogan, Erasmus, Lee, and the Correction of the Vulgate: The Shaking of the Foundations, 35; Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 76, xxvii.
Fatal Discord Page 106
