Editing Erasmus (section)

===Manner of expression===
====Irony====
Erasmus often wrote in a highly ironical idiom,<ref name=martinirony/> especially in his letters,<ref group=note name=slippery>His mode of expression made him "slippery like a snake", according to Luther,{{cite journal |last1=Visser |first1=Arnoud |title=Irreverent Reading: Martin Luther as Annotator of Erasmus |journal=The Sixteenth Century Journal |date=2017 |volume=48 |issue=1|pages=87–109 |doi=10.1086/SCJ4801005 |hdl=1874/348917 |s2cid=31540853 |hdl-access=free }})</ref> which makes them prone to different interpretations when taken literally rather than ironically.

* Ulrich von Hutten claimed that Erasmus was secretly a Lutheran; Erasmus chided him saying that von Hutten had not detected the irony in his public letters enough.<ref name=tracey_sponge/>{{rp|27}} 
* Antagonistic scholar J. W. Williams denies that Erasmus' letter to Ammonius, "let your own interests be your standard in all things", was in apparent jest, as claimed by those more sympathetic to Erasmus.<ref name=williams>{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=W. J. |title=Erasmus the Man |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |date=1927 |volume=16 |issue=64 |pages=595–604 |jstor=30094064 |issn=0039-3495}}</ref>  
* Erasmus' aphoristic quote on the persecution of Reuchlin, "If it is Christian to hate Jews, we are all abundantly Christians here", is taken literally by Theodor Dunkelgrün<ref name=dunkel>{{cite journal |last1=Dunkelgrün |first1=Theodor |title=The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe |journal=The Cambridge History of Judaism |date=16 November 2017 |pages=316–348 |doi=10.1017/9781139017169.014|isbn=978-1-139-01716-9 }}</ref>{{rp|320}} and Harry S. May<ref name=may>{{cite journal |last1=May |first1=Harry S. |last2=ה' |first2=מאי<!--JSTOR landing page only gives this name in Hebrew script-->|script-title=he:ארסמוס והיהודים – מחקר פסיכו-היסטורי |title=Erasmus and the Jews – a Psychohistoric Reëvaluation |script-journal=he:דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות |journal=Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies |date=1973 |volume=1–2<!--JSTOR landing page gives both--> |pages=85–93 |jstor=23529114 |issn=0333-9068}}</ref> as being approving of such hatred; the alternative view would be that it was sardonic and challenging.

He frequently wrote about controversial subjects using the [[dialogue]] to avoid direct statements clearly attributable to himself.{{refn|group=note|"[...] of all Renaissance writers, Erasmus is the one who prefers the dialogue, with its avoidance of dogmatism, it balance and swing of debate, its insistence of friendship and communication."<ref name=cwe23/>{{rp|7}}  }} For Martin Luther, he was an eel,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wolfe |first1=Gregory |title=Erasmus is an Eel: Renaissance Humanist Hero |url=https://comment.org/erasmus-is-an-eel-renaissance-humanist-hero/ |website=Comment Magazine |language=en-CA |date=1 March 2012}}</ref> slippery, evasive and impossible to capture. 

====Copiousness====
Erasmus' literary theory of "copiousness" endorses a large stockpile of rich [[adages]], [[Analogy|analogies]], [[Trope (literature)|tropes]] and symbolic figures, which leads to compressed communication of complex ideas (between those educated in the stockpile) but some of which, to modern sensibilities, may promote as well as play off [[stereotypes]].

* Erasmus' lengthy collections of proverbs, the {{lang|la|Adagia}}, established a vocabulary he and his contemporaries then used extensively and habitually: according to philosopher Heinz Kimmerle,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mosima |first1=Pius |title=Remembering Professor Heinz Kimmerle |journal=Journal of World Philosophies |date=2016 |doi=10.2979/jourworlphil.1.1.16|doi-access=free }}</ref> it is necessary to know the explanations of various proverbs given by Erasmus' {{lang|la|Adages}} to adequately understand many passages in Erasmus' and Luther's written debate on free will (see below).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kimmerle |first1=Heinz |title=The Arguments of Erasmus in His Debate with Luther about Free Will |journal=Scriptura, Geist, Wirkung |date=8 April 2024 |pages=97–108 |doi=10.1515/9783111315348-006|isbn=978-3-11-131534-8 }}</ref> 
*When Erasmus wrote of 'Judaism', he most frequently (though not always) was not referring to Jews:<ref group=note>For Markish, Erasmus' "theological opposition to a form of religious thought which he identified with Judaism was not translated into crude prejudice against actual Jews", to the extent that Erasmus could be described as 'a-semitic' rather than 'anti-semitic'.{{cite web |title=Erasmus of Rotterdam |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/erasmus-of-rotterdam |website=Jewish Virtual Library |publisher=AICE |access-date=15 July 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715072502/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/erasmus-of-rotterdam |url-status=live }}</ref>  instead he referred to those Catholic Christians of his time, especially in the monastic lifestyle, who mistakenly promoted excessive external ritualism over interior piety, by analogy with [[Second Temple Judaism]]. 
** "Judaism I call not Jewish impiety, but prescriptions about external things, such as food, fasting, clothes, which to a certain degree resemble the rituals of the Jews."<ref>Erasmus, {{lang|la|Declarationes ad censuras Lutetiae}}, 1532.</ref>
** Erasmus' counter-accusation to Spanish friars of "Judaizing" may have been particularly sharp and bold, given the prominent role that some friars with the [[Spanish Inquisition]] were playing in the lethal persecution of some ''[[conversos]]''.{{refn|group=note|Historian Kevin Ingram suggests "The ''conversos'' also clearly reveled in Erasmus's comparison, in the {{lang|grc-Latn|Enchiridion}}, of Old-Christians mired in ceremonial practice to Pharisees who had forgotten the true message of Judaism, a statement they used as a counter-punch against Old-Christian accusations of ''converso'' Judaizing. The ''conversos'' conveniently ignored the anti-semitic aspect of Erasmus' statement."<ref name=ingram>{{cite thesis |last1=Ingram |first1=Kevin |title=Secret lives, public lies: the conversos and socio-religious non-conformism in the Spanish Golden Age |date=2006 |publisher=University of California San Diego |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6270j25z |language=en |access-date=4 January 2024 |archive-date=4 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240104082837/https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6270j25z |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|71}} }}

Terence J. Martin identifies an "Erasmian pattern" that the supposed (by the reader) otherness (of Turks, Lapplanders, Indians, Amerindians,{{refn|group=note|
"Erasmus discussed Amerindians and their way of life only as a tool, an analogy or parable, for those issues that consistently preoccupied his mind, namely the mores of the Christian Church."<ref name=ron1/>}} Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a [[Foil (narrative)|foil]] against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Martin |first1=Terence J. |title=Erasmus and the Other |journal=A Companion to Erasmus |date=25 January 2023 |pages=181–200 |doi=10.1163/9789004539686_012|isbn=978-90-04-53968-6 }}</ref> 
* In a 1518 letter to [[John Fisher]], Erasmus wrote: "The cunning of princes and the effrontery of the Roman curia can go no further; and it looks as though the state of the common people would soon be such that the tyranny of the Grand Turk would be more bearable."<ref name=letters594/>{{rp|70}}
* In {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}}, Erasmus personifies that we should "kill the Turk, not the man.[...] If we really want to heave the Turks from our necks, we must first expel from our hearts a more loathsome race of Turks: avarice, ambition, the craving for power, self-satisfaction, impiety, extravagance, the love of pleasure, deceitfulness, anger, hatred, envy."<ref group=note>Erasmus, {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}}, cited by Ron, Nathan, ''The Non-Cosmopolitan Erasmus: An Examination of his Turkophobic/Islamophobic Rhetoric'', ''op. cit.'' p 99: Ron takes this as an affirmation by Erasmus of the low nature of Turks; the alternative view would take it as a negative foil (applying the model of the parable of [[The Mote and the Beam|the mote and the beam]]) where the prejudice is [[Communication accommodation theory|appropriated]] in order to subvert it.</ref>