Editing Erasmus (section)

====Catholic reform====

=====Institutional reforms=====
[[File:Albrecht Dürer - Portrait of Erasmus - WGA07088.jpg|thumb|Albrecht Dürer, ''Portrait of Erasmus'', sketch: black chalk on paper, 1520]]
The [[Protestant Reformation]] began in the year following the publication of his [[Textus receptus|pathbreaking]] edition of the [[Novum Instrumentum omne|New Testament]] in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the [[Catholic Church|church]], from which [[Protestantism]] later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.

According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings;<ref group=note name="Dixon 2012">"Erasmus had been [[criticism of the Catholic Church|criticizing the Catholic church]] for years before the [[Protestant Reformers|reformers]] emerged, and not just pointing up its failings but questioning many of its basic teachings. He was the author of a series of publications, including a [[Novum Instrumentum omne|Greek edition of the New Testament]] (1516), which laid the foundations for a model of Christianity that called for a pared-down, internalized style of religiosity focused on Scripture rather than the elaborate, and incessant, outward rituals of the [[Christianity in the Middle Ages|medieval church]]. Erasmus was not a forerunner in the sense that he conceived or defended ideas that later made up the substance of the Reformation thought. [...] It is enough that some of his ideas merged with the later Reformation message." {{cite book |last=Dixon |first=C. Scott |year=2012 |title=Contesting the Reformation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i6kf0Tv_i1AC&pg=PA60 |publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell]] |page=60 |isbn=978-1-4051-1323-6 }}</ref> however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change."{{refn |group=note|"Unlike Luther, he accepted papal primacy and the teaching authority of the church and did not discount human tradition. The reforms proposed by Erasmus were in the social rather than the doctrinal realm. His principal aim was to foster piety and to deepen spirituality."
<ref name=rummel1>{{cite journal |last1=Rummel |first1=Erika |title=The theology of Erasmus |journal=The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology |series=Cambridge Companions to Religion |date=2004 |pages=28–38 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-reformation-theology/theology-of-erasmus/A1916A5FFA073EEC8D42C60E03F028E3 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/CCOL0521772249.005 |isbn=978-0-521-77224-2 |access-date=10 November 2023 |archive-date=10 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231110071325/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-reformation-theology/theology-of-erasmus/A1916A5FFA073EEC8D42C60E03F028E3 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|37}} }}

In theologian Louis Bouyer's interpretation,<ref name=bouyer1/> Erasmus' agenda was "to reform the Church from within by a renewal of biblical theology, based on philological study of the New Testament text, and supported by a knowledge of patristics, itself renewed by the same methods. The final object of it all was to nourish [...] chiefly moral and spiritual reform".<ref group=note>"Rigorously scientific biblical study must sustain an effort to renew the interior life, and the interior life must itself be at once the agent and the beneficiary of a renewal of the whole of Christian society." This went beyond the  {{lang|la|devotio moderna}}, which "was a spirituality of teachers"m</ref>

At the height of his literary fame, Erasmus was called upon to take one side, but public partisanship was foreign to his beliefs, nature, and habits. Despite all his [[Criticism of the Catholic Church|criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church]],{{refn|group=note|Writer Gregory Wolfe notes however "For Erasmus, the narrative of decline is a form of despair, a failure to believe that the tradition can and will generate new life."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wolfe |first1=Gregory |title=The Erasmus Option |journal=Image Journal |issue=94 |url=https://imagejournal.org/article/erasmusoption/ |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119230956/https://imagejournal.org/article/erasmusoption/ |url-status=live }}</ref>}} especially at first he sided unambiguously with neither Luther nor the anti-Lutherans publicly (though in private he lobbied assiduously against extremism from both parties), but eventually shunned the breakaway Protestant Reformation movements along with their most [[Radical Reformation|radical offshoots]].<ref name="Hoffmann 1989"/>

{{Blockquote|I have constantly declared, in countless letters, booklets, and personal
statements, that I do not want to be involved with either party.|source=Erasmus, ''Spongia'' (1523)}}

The world had laughed at his satire, ''[[The Praise of Folly]]'', but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work had commended itself to the religious world's best minds and dominant powers. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters among the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wallace|first=Peter G.|title=European History in Perspective: The Long European Reformation|year=2004|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=New York|isbn=978-0-333-64451-5|page=70}}</ref>

Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents of theological and political importance as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-[[Dionysius the Areopagite]], the {{lang|la|[[Gravi de pugna]]}} attributed to [[St Augustine]], the {{lang|la|[[Ad Herennium]]}} attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting [[Lorenzo Valla]]'s work)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Levine |first1=Joseph M. |title=Reginald Pecock and Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine |journal=Studies in the Renaissance |date=1973 |volume=20 |pages=118–143 |doi=10.2307/2857015 |jstor=2857015  |issn=0081-8658}}</ref> the [[Donation of Constantine]].

=====Anti-fraternalism=====
Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus came to believe that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Post |first1=Regnerus Richardus |title=The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism |date=1968 |publisher=Brill Archive |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|669}} in the ''Enchiridion'' he controversially put it "Monkishness is not piety."{{refn|group=note|{{lang|la|monachatus non est pietas}}, "Being a monk is not piety", but he adds "but a way of life that may be useful or not useful according to each man's physical make-up and disposition".<ref name=rummel1/>{{rp|36}} }} At this time, it was better to live as "a monk in the world" than in the monastery.{{refn|group=note|DeMolen claims: "It is important to recall that Erasmus remained a member of the Austin Canons all his life. His lifestyle harmonized with the spirit of the Austin Canons even though he lived outside their monastic walls."<ref name=demolen1/> Erasmus represents the anti-[[Observantism|Observantist]] wing of the canons regular who believed that the charism of their orders required them to be more externally focussed (on pastoral, missionary, scholarly, charitable and sacramental works) and correspondingly de-focussed on monastic severity and ceremonialism. 
}}

Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption and careerism, particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans). These orders also typically ran the university's Scholastic theology programs, from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. The more some attacked him, the more offensive he became about what he saw as their political influence and materialistic opportunism.

{{rquote|right|Alastor, an evil spirit: "They are a certain Sort of Animals in black and white Vestments, Ash-colour'd Coats, and various other Dresses, that are always hovering about the Courts of Princes, and [to each side] are continually instilling into their Ears the Love of War, and exhorting the Nobility and common People to it, haranguing them in their Sermons, that it is a just, holy and religious War. [...]"
Charon: "[...] What do they get out of it?"
Alastor: "Because they get more by those that die, than those that live. There are last Wills and Testaments, Funeral Obsequies, Bulls, and a great many other Articles of no despicable Profit. And in the last Place, they had rather live in a Camp, than in their Cells. War breeds a great many Bishops, who were not thought good for any Thing in a Time of Peace." |source=Erasmus, "Charon", ''Colloquies''}}

He was scandalized by superstitions (such as that if a person were buried in a Franciscan habit, they would go directly to heaven),{{refn|group=note|See the colloquy {{lang|la|Exequiae Seriphicae}}<ref name=bietenholz/>}} crime,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lusset |first1=Elizabeth |title='Non monachus, sed demoniacus': Crime in Medieval Religious Communities in Western Europe, 12th–15th Centuries |journal=The Monasric Research Bulletin |date=2012 |issue=18 |url=https://www.york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/documents/publications/The%20Monastic%20Research%20Bulletin,%20Issue%2018%20(2012).pdf |access-date=13 December 2023 |archive-date=13 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231213153028/https://www.york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/documents/publications/The%20Monastic%20Research%20Bulletin%2C%20Issue%2018%20%282012%29.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year; the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries; respect for bishops; requiring work, not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of [[Augustinian Canons]]); the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies; and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.

However, he was not in favour of speedy closures of monasteries, nor of closing larger reformed monasteries with important libraries: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.<ref name=pilgrimage>''A Religious Pilgrimage'', {{cite web |last1=Seery |first1=Stephenia |title=The Colloquies of Erasmus |url=https://it.cgu.edu/earlymodernjournal/vol1-no1/seery.html |publisher=Claremont Graduate University}}</ref>

These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant,<ref name=knowles>{{cite journal |last1=Knowles |first1=Dom David |title=Ch XI – Erasmus |journal=The Religious Orders in England |date=27 September 1979 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511560668.012}}</ref>{{rp|152}} and the lurid hyperbolic attacks in his half-satire ''The Praise of Folly'' were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, "what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief", such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.<ref name=gasquet/>

He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of baptism, and others such as the vows of the [[evangelical counsels]], while admirable in intent and content, were now mainly counter-productive.

However, Erasmus frequently commended the [[evangelical counsels]] for all believers, and with more than lip service: for example, the first adage of his reputation-establishing {{lang|la|Adagia}} was "Between friends all is common", where he tied common ownership (such as practiced by his order's style of poverty) with the teachings of classical philosophers and Christ.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Willinsky |first1=John |title=Make Haste Slowly: Aldus and Erasmus, Printers and Scholars |url=https://aldine.lib.sfu.ca/willinsky-make-haste-slowly |website=Aldus |publisher=Simon Fraser University}}</ref>

His main Catholic opposition was from scholars in the mendicant orders. He purported that "[[Francis of Assisi|Saint Francis]] came lately to me in a dream and thanked me for chastising them."<ref>Letter to Charles Utenhove (1523)</ref> After his lifetime, scholars of mendicant orders have sometimes disputed Erasmus as hyperbolic and ill-informed. A 20th-century [[Benedictine]] scholar wrote of him as "all sail and no rudder".<ref name=seaver/>{{rp|357}}

Erasmus did also have significant support and contact with reform-minded friars, including [[Franciscans]] such as Jean Vitrier and [[Cardinal Cisneros]], and Dominicans such as [[Cardinal Cajetan]], the former master of the [[Order of Preachers]].