Editing Erasmus (section)

====Heresy and sedition====
Erasmus had been privately involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of [[heresy]].{{refn|name=telemachus|group=note|Erasmus was criticized for initially being unwilling to take sides publicly, or to see some aspects of truth or pride in both sides, on many issues. He preferred to participate in controversies he generated himself, rather than the controversies of others. He invoked a story from [[Cassiodorus]], where the monk [[Saint Telemachus]] entered the arena of the Roman stadium to separate fighting gladiators, but was stoned by the crowd.<ref name=baker2006>{{cite journal |last1=Baker-Smith |first1=Dominic |title=Affectivity and Irenicism |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=2006 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=29–42 |doi=10.1163/187492706X00051}}</ref>}} Erasmus wrote {{lang|la|[[Colloquies#Inquisitio de fide (Inquisition of faith)|Inquisitio de fide]]}} to say that the Lutherans (of 1523) were not formally heretics: he pushed back against the willingness of some theologians to cry heresy fast in order to enforce their views in universities and at inquisitions.

For Erasmus, punishable heresy had to involve fractiously, dangerously, and publicly agitating against essential doctrines relating to Christ (i.e., blasphemy), with malice, depravity, obstinacy.{{refn |group=note|Historian Johannes Trapman notes "But who are in fact heretics? According to Erasmus not somebody who doubts a minor doctrinal point or even errs in some article. [...] For the protection of the commonwealth [...] heretics who are not only blasphemous but also seditious deserve the death penalty."<ref name=trapman/>{{rp|23}} Erasmus commended that the punishment of the early church for heresy was excommunication.}} As with St [[Theodore the Studite]],<ref>{{cite web |script-title=el:Αποστολική Διακονία της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος |url=https://apostoliki-diakonia.gr/en_main/catehism/theologia_zoi/themata.asp?cat=patr&main=EH_texts&file=11.htm |website=Apostolic Ministry of the Church of Greece}}</ref> Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy or for dissent on non-essentials: "It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him."<ref name=froude_life>Froude, James Anthony,
[https://archive.org/details/lifeandletterse02frougoog/page/n372 <!-- pg=359 quote=erasmus heretics kill. --> ''Life and letters of Erasmus: lectures delivered at Oxford 1893–4''] (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1894), p. 359</ref> The Church, he said, has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' [[parable of the wheat and tares]].<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|200}}

Erasmus' [[pacificism]] included a particular dislike for sedition, which caused warfare:

{{Blockquote|text=It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition.|source=Letter to Martin Bucer<ref name=huiz>{{cite book |last1=Huizinga |first1=Johan |last2=Flower |first2=Barbara |title=Erasmus and the Age of Reformation |date=1952 |publisher=HarperCollins |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22900/22900-h/22900-h.htm |access-date=15 July 2023}}</ref>}}

Erasmus allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order—whether heretic or orthodox—but noted (e.g., to [[Natalis Beda]]) that [[Augustine]] had been against the execution of even violent [[Donatist]]s: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the [[Münster rebellion]], not because of their heretical views on baptism.<ref name=trapman>{{cite journal |last1=Trapman |first1=Johannes |title=Erasmus and Heresy |journal=Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance |date=2013 |volume=75 |issue=1 |page=12 |jstor=24329313}}</ref> Despite these concessions to state power, Erasmus suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Remer |first1=Gary |title=Rhetoric and the Erasmian Defense of Religious Toleration |journal=History of Political Thought |date=1989 |volume=10 |issue=3 |page=385}}</ref>