Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus

Erasmus of Rotterdam is commonly regarded as the key public intellectual of the early decades of the 16th century. He has been given the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". He has also been called "the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance".

His reputation and the interpretations of his work have varied over time and by community. Many Catholics now recognize him as a sardonic but loyal reformer within the Church with an evangelical and pastoral spirituality that emphasized peace and mercy, while many Protestants approve of his initial support for (and, in part, inspiration of) Luther's initial ideas and the groundwork he laid for the future Reformation, especially in biblical scholarship.

However, at times he has been viciously criticized from all sides, his works suppressed, his expertise corralled, his writings misinterpreted, his thought demonized, and his legacy marginalized. Common characterizations are that, despite his lauded progressiveness, he could or should have gone further, or that, despite his claimed conservatism, he rashly went too far.

Overview

Holbein's studies of Erasmus's hands, in silverpoint and chalks, c. 1523 (Louvre)

Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men—St Augustine and Voltaire—whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus.

— W.S. Lily, Renaissance Types

Historian Lewis Spitz identifies four views of Erasmus' character and project:

• "a man of weak character whose timidity and weak will kept him from the consequences of his own premises;"
• "a devotee of reason who followed this natural light through storm and stress to the very end;"
• "as the forerunner of Luther, the John the Baptist of the evangelical revival;" or
• "a man with his own positive reform program, in part critical, for the most part constructive."

No man before or since acquired such undisputed sovereignty in the republic of letters[...] The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.

— 71. Erasmus, History of the Christian Church, vol 7, Philip Schaff

French biographer Désiré Nisard characterized him as a lens or focal point: "the whole of the Renaissance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century converged towards him." However,according to historian Erika Rummel, "Erasmus' role in the dissemination of ideas is therefore less that of a forerunner of the Reformation than that of a synthesizer of many of the currents of thought that fed into the Reformation."

Erasmianism

Not to be confused with Thomas Erastus § Erastianism.

(By the 1570s) "everyone had assimilated Erasmus to one extent or another."

— Christopher Ocker

Erasmians: Erasmus frequently mentioned that he did not want office nor to be the founder or figurehead of a sect or movement, despite his vigorous branding and self-promotion. Nevertheless, historians do identify de facto "Erasmians" (ranging from the early Jesuits to the early reformers, and both Thomas More and William Tyndale)—Christian humanists who picked up on some or other aspects of Erasmus' agenda.

Erasmianism: This has been described as a "more intellectual form of spiritualized Christianity" that is "an undercurrent of religious thought between Catholicism and Lutheranism." It had a notable influence in Spain. The near election of Reginald Pole as pope in 1546 has been attributed to Erasmianism in the electors. However, a precise definition is not possible; it is not, for example, a set of systematic doctrinal propositions. As with many eponymous movements, back-fitting the ideas of the movement onto the nominal originator may misrepresent them both.

French historian Jean-Claude Margolin has noted an Erasmian stream in French culture putting "the concrete before the abstract and the ethical before the speculative", though not without noting that it is not clear whether Erasmus influenced the French or vice versa.

Historian W. R. Ward notes that "the direst enemies of theosophy were always Erasmian Catholics and Calvinist Protestants who were trying to get the magic out of Christianity."

Erasmian Reformation: Some historians such as Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper have even claimed an "'Erasmianism after Erasmus,' a secret stream which meandered to and fro across the Catholic/Protestant divide, creating oases of rational thought impartially on either side." For some, this amounted to a third church: or even that "Luther's and Calvin's Reformations were minor affairs" compared to the Reformation of Erasmus and the humanists' which swept away the Middle Ages.

Erasmian liberalism: This has had an enduring run: described by philosopher Edwin Curley that "the spirit of Erasmian liberalism was to emphasize the ethical aspects of Christianity at the expense of the doctrinal, to suspend judgment on many theological issues, and to insist that the faith actually required for salvation was a simple and uncontroversial one."

Erasmus has frequently been described as "proto-liberal" (both, e.g., in the UK "Lloyd George" sense of liberalism as a form of conservatism that wants moderate but real reform to prevent immoderate and destructive revolution, or the ethical sense of socio-economic Socinianism)

Protestant historian Roland Bainton is quoted "no-one did more than Erasmus to break down the theory and practice of the medieval variety of intolerance." Other popular or scholarly writers have suggested that Erasmus' tolerant but idealistic agenda failed, certainly at the political level, evidenced by the wars and persecutions of the Protestant Reformation.

Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Gravi de pugna attributed to St Augustine, the Ad Herennium attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting Lorenzo Valla's work) the Donation of Constantine.

Educationalist

Erasmus has been variously called an "educator of educators", a "teacher of teachers" and a "professor of professors", but also a "pastor of pastors."

'Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education!' (R.R. Bolger) … with greater confidence it can be claimed that Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education in the sixteenth century. …It may also be claimed that Erasmus was one of the most important champions of women's rights in his century.

— J.K. Sowards

Erasmus was notable for his textbooks, his sense of learning as play, his emphasis on speech skills and promoting early classical-language acquisition).

According to scholar Gerald J. Luhrman, "the system of secondary education, as developed in a number of European countries, is inconceivable without the efforts of humanist educationalists, particularly Erasmus. His ideas in the field of language acquisition were systematized and realized to a large extent in the schools founded by the Jesuits..." Historian Brian Cummings wrote "for a hundred years Erasmus commanded the curriculum." In the 1540s, Ursulines founded schools in Rezatto, Brescia, "inspired by Erasmus's pedagogical programme..."

His system of pronouncing ancient Greek was adopted for teaching in the major Western European nations.

In England, he wrote the first curriculum for St Paul's School and his Latin grammar (written with Lily and Colet) "continued to be used, in adapted form, into the Twentieth Century." Erasmus' curriculum, grammar, pronunciation and de Copia were adopted by the other major grammar schools: Eton, Westminster, Winchester, Canterbury, etc. and the universities

Erasmus "tried to realize a practical goal: a modern education as preparation for administrators from the higher estates."

Erasmus was a key part of the humanist program to get Greek and Hebrew taught at the major Universities, inspired by Cardinal Cisneros' Trilingual College of San Ildefonso/Alcalá (1499/1509) and Bishop John Fisher's establishment of Greek and Hebrew lectures at Cambridge: the Trilingual Colleges at Louvain (1517) and Paris (1530) (where students included Loyola and Calvin) spawned programs in Zurich, Rome, Strasbourg and Oxford (c.1566). He has been described as "an unsuspected superspreader of New Ancient Greek."

Historian and Germanist Fritz Caspari saw education as the core of Erasmus' program:

"Erasmus hoped that the education of all individuals, especially of princes and nobles, in the spirit and disciplines of antiquity and Christianity would bring the rational element in them to full fruition. Ratio, reason, was in his mind almost synonymous with "goodness" and "kindness." The rule of reason, achieved through education,would therefore result in men's living together in universal peace and harmony in accord with the lessons of Christ's Sermon on the Mount."

— Fritz Caspari (1941)

Writer

The popularity of his books is reflected in the number of editions and translations that have appeared since the sixteenth century. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the enumeration of the works and their subsequent reprints. The greatest names of the classical and patristic world are among those translated, edited, or annotated by Erasmus, including Ambrose, Aristotle, Augustine, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cicero and Jerome.

Unveiling of a Dutch statue of Erasmus (1964) in Nijmegen

Regional

In the Netherlands

In his native Rotterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus Bridge, Erasmus MC and Gymnasium Erasmianum have been named in his honor. Between 1997 and 2009, one of the main metro lines of the city was named Erasmuslijn. The Foundation Erasmus House (Rotterdam), is dedicated to celebrating Erasmus's legacy. Three moments in Erasmus's life are celebrated annually. On 1 April, the city celebrates the publication of his best-known book The Praise of Folly. On 11 July, the Night of Erasmus celebrates the lasting influence of his work. His birthday is celebrated on 28 October.

In Spain

Enquiridio o manual del caballero Christiano, translation by Alonso Fernandez, published by Miguel de Eguía (1528) into Spanish of Erasmus' Enchiridion

Erasmus became extraordinarily popular and influential in Spain, including in and around the talent pool (often from converso families) that formed the early Jesuits. There were at least 120 translations, editions, or adaptations of Erasmus' writings between 1520 and 1552, though not The Praise of Folly.

However, Erasmians and their associates faced, at times, extraordinary pushback from the theologians at Salamanca and Vallodolid, for being associated with the alumbrado and illuminist tendencies, with many (notably Ignatius of Loyola, who had lived in the house of publisher Miguel de Eguía at the time the Spanish edition of the Enchiridion was being published) resorting to exile rather than facing the Inquisition, house arrest, imprisonment or worse. However, at times the heads of the Inquisition were themselves Erasmians.

Erasmus faced a notable semi-secret trial in Valladolid in 1527, attended by numerous bishops, abbots and theologians. Its records still exist. It disbanded without condemning Erasmus as a heretic, as most of his contentious beliefs were regarded as respectable or useful by at least some important bishops, and the fanciful interpretations of the accusers did not stand up to scrutiny.

Historian Nathan Ron notes that the debate on the enslavement of Amerindians by Bartolomé de las Casas at Valladolid almost 30 years later was to some extent a re-run, both featuring Sepúlveda: "The arguments Sepúlveda raised against las Casas were essentially identical to those raised against Erasmus by Pío and by Diego López Zúñiga, a bitter rival of Erasmus, on the grounds of Erasmus’ alleged opposition to a “just war” and to war against the Turks."

From the 1530s, historians note the start of a widespread disenchantment with Erasmus' approach: however his ideas and works were still circulating enough that even fifty years later Miguel Cervantes' "Erasmianism" may not have come from him having read any Erasmus directly.

In Poland

According to historian Howard Louthan "Few regions embraced Erasmus as enthusiastically as Poland, and nowhere else did he have such a concentration of allies positioned at the highest levels of society including the king himself."

In England

English translation Paraphrase of Erasmus, 1548

Statue (1870), Canterbury Cathedral

Erasmus influenced Catholic and Protestant humanists alike.

Historian Lucy Wooding argues (in Christopher Haigh's paraphrases) that "England nearly had a Catholic Reformation along Erasmian lines –but it was cut short by (Queen) Mary's death and finally torpedoed by the Council of Trent." The initial Henrican closure of smaller monasteries followed the Erasmian agenda, which was also shared by Catholic humanists such as Reginald Pole; however the later violent closures and iconoclasm were far from Erasmus' program.

After reading Erasmus' 1516 New Testament, Thomas Bilney "felt a marvellous comfort and quietness," and won over his Cambridge friends, future notable bishops, Matthew Parker and Hugh Latimer to reformist biblicism.

Both Lutheran Tyndale and his Catholic theological opponent Thomas More are considered Erasmians, and all three supported popular knowledge of scripture in the vernacular. One of William Tyndale's earliest works was his translation of Erasmus' Enchiridion (1522,1533). Following their deaths in 1536, Tyndale's English New Testament and anti-Catholic Preface was often printed (sometimes omitting Tyndale's name) in diglot editions paired with Erasmus' Latin translation and either his Paraclecis or his Preface to the Paraphrase of St Matthew.

In the reign of Edward VI, English translations of Erasmus' Paraphrases of the four Gospels were legally required to be chained for public access in every church. Furthermore, all priests below a certain scholastic level were required to have their own copy of the complete Paraphrases of the New Testament. This injunction was to an extent frustrated by delays in printing, but it is estimated that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 copies may have been printed between 1548 and 1553.

Erasmus' grammar, Adages, Copia, and other books continued as the core Latin educational material in England for the following centuries. The poet-rhetorician martyr Edmund Campion was educated at St Paul's School using Erasmus' textbooks and Latin curriculum. His works and editions (in translation) are regularly connected with William Shakespeare, to Shakespeare's education, inspirations and sources (such as the shipwreck scene in The Tempest.) John Locke rejected the idea that Erasmus had remained Catholic, but instead was the source for "an undogmatically reasonable Protestantism." Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, mentioned he first read of the shipwreck of Aristippus in the English translation of Erasmus' Apophthegmata. Scholars have noted Erasmus' influence on Jonathan Swift, particular that The Praise of Folly seems to have been the literary inspiration for A Tale of a Tub.

Historian of literature Cathy Schrank has written that Erasmus' reputation and status changed over the course of the English "Long Reformation" from "being presented as a proto-Reformer, to problematically orthodox, to irenic martyr." For some Restoration Anglicans, both those promoting enforced anti-extremism and latitudinarians, and into the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus' moderation represented "an alternative to the belligerent Protestantism that characterized English political and social discourse". It has been claimed that William of Orange's Toleration Act (1688) owed to Erasmus' inspiration.

By 1711, English Catholic poet and satirist Alexander Pope pictured Erasmus, following in a sequence of greats from Aristotle, Horace, Homer, Quintillian to Longinusas, ending a millennium of ignorance and superstition:

...
Much was believ'd, but little understood,
And to be dull was constru'd to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monks finish'd what the Goths begun.

At length Erasmus, that great injur'd name
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)
Stemm'd the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

For Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon, Erasmus was "the father of rational theology." An 1876 Edition of The Praise of Folly said of him "Erasmus was the most facetious man, and the greatest critic of his age. [...] Perhaps no man has obliged the public with a greater number of useful volumes than our author."

By 1929, G.K. Chesterton could write "I doubt if any thinking person, of any belief or unbelief, does not wish in his heart that the end of mediaevalism had meant the triumph of the Humanists like Erasmus and More, rather than of the rabid Puritans like Calvin and Knox."

Catholic

Maverick or orthodox?

Scholars have shifted from treating Erasmus primarily as a constitutional outsider to seeing him as a well-connected insider. Similarly, characterizations of his doctrinal beliefs in more recent times tend to demonstrate orthodox (and patristic) and mainstream (late medieval) provenance.

From his time (1493–1495) as Latin secretary to Henricus de Berghes, Bishop of Cambrai, Erasmus would have been well aware of that diocese' mandatory statutes Sacris ordinibus (1307) in-force on priests, which included literacy, age, residence and financial requirements, including taking an examination; themes which Erasmus continued to promote throughout his life. These statutes were further re-enforced by Henricus, especially in 1495 (i.e., in text Erasmus may have drafted) regarding the duties of benefice holders to look after their parishioners, on pain of excommunication.

Councils

Several of Erasmus' "distinctive" ideas were entirely mainstream for the time, from the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512-1517) (which Erasmus had been invited to attend as John Fisher's theologian):

• the need for peace between Catholic princes before a war pushing back the Turks could be attempted (Session 9);
• the need for formal qualifications of preachers (Session 11) who should "foster everywhere peace and mutual love" rather than false miracles and apocalyptic predictions;
• the danger of unbalanced philosophical study and questions that promote doubt without attempting resolution (Session 8);
• the spurious independence of friars from local bishops, and
• the dereliction of duty by absentee bishops and cardinals.

The Council of Trent further addressed many of the controversies Erasmus had been involved with: including free will, accumulated errors in the Vulgate, and priestly training, and followed his call for a renewed positive focus on the Creed. Erasmus' major ethical complaint that a certain kind of scholasticism was "curiositas" (useless, vain speculation) and artificially divisive was endorsed in the 4 December 1563 Decree Concerning Purgatory which recommended the avoidance of speculations and non-essential questions. For music and chant, Trent reduced the number of sequences during the Mass to only four for certain special days: the large numbers and lengths of sequences, especially as found in German and French masses, and the need for verbal clarity were issues Erasmus had raised. Despite these, the Council of Trent is frequently characterized as pushing back against the humanist program, for example by its ambiguous declaration that the Vulgate Latin bible text should be regarded as "authentic."

Many commentors, such as Catholic scholar Thomas Cummings, see parallels between Erasmus' vision of Church reform and the vision of Church reform that succeeded at the Second Vatican Council. Theologian J. Coppens noted the "Erasmian themes" of Lumen Gentium (e.g. para 12), such as the sensus fidei fidelium and the dignity of all the baptized. Another scholar writes "in our days, especially after Vatican II, Erasmus is more and more regarded as an important defender of the Christian religion." John O'Malley has commented on a certain closeness between Erasmus and Dei Verbum.

Papal teaching

Many of Erasmus' themes are now less controversial after being revisited by Popes: for example,

• Soon after the Vatican I Council, Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical Providentisssimus deus (1893) which taught several themes associated with Erasmus: notably that "in those things which do not come under the obligation of faith, the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent opinions, just as we ourselves are";
• In the same encyclical, Leo XIII taught that more exegetes, theologians and novices must master the original "Oriental" languages and be trained in Biblical exegesis including philology, quoting Jerome "To be ignorant of the Scripture is not to know Christ": he noted that Pope Clement V had instigated chairs of Oriental Literature in Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca (carried out in 1317.) This was followed by an apostolic letter Vigilantiae studiique (1902) which "warned that attacks on the Church are (now) generally based on linguistic arguments".
• that all interpretation of Scripture should rest on the literal sense was taught by Pope Benedict XV's Spiritus paracletus (1920), and by Pope Pius XII Divino afflante spiritu (1943), which called for new vernacular translations, and Humani generis (1950);
• his promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up, to an extent, by Pope John XXIII: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas; and
• John Paul II's praise of the divine foolishness in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.
• Erasmus' emphasis on correct disposition over ceremonialism found support in Pius XII's Mediator dei (1947) which teaches 23. The worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior. [...] 24. But the chief element of divine worship must be interior.
• His instrumentalist approach to Christian humanism has been compared to that of John Henry Newman and the personalism of John Paul II, but also has been criticized as treating the Church's doctrines merely as aids to piety.

Liturgical contribution

Notably, since the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil mass has included a Renewal of Baptismal Promises, an innovation first proposed by Erasmus in his Paraphrases.

Religious communities

Several of the Catholic religious reforms or changes had parallels in Erasmus' ideas. For example, the rise of non-mendicant societies such as the Jesuits, and changes to the rules relating to formal vows.

Supporters

Erasmus was continually protected by popes, bishops, inquisitors-general, and Catholic kings during his lifetime.

He was a bishops' man: in constant contact, correspondence, patronage and direction with dozens at any time, and their Latin secretaries: for example, his book On Free Will was squeezed out of him by bishops, and strategized, discussed, vetted (his local bishop in Basel got him to remove some polemic material from it, for example) and promoted by them. His relationship with his patron Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham was so close that Warham even wanted Erasmus to share his grave.

The following generation of saints and scholars included many influenced by Erasmian humanism or spirituality, notably Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, John of Ávila, and Angela Merici. Bartolomé de las Casas relied on several of Erasmus' arguments in his Valladolid debates against the "natural slavery" of Amerindians.

In 1517, writing to Thomas More, when working with Cuthbert Tunstall on the second edition of the New Testament, Erusmus noted that he had been offered a bishopric, the first offer of several, all rejected. Several sources comment that Erasmus had been offered a cardinalship at the end of his life as well.

Opponents

However, Erasmus attracted enemies in contemporary theologians in Paris, Louvain, Valladolid, Salamanca and Rome, notably Sepúlveda, Stúñica, Edward Lee, Noël Beda (who Erasmus had known in France in the 1490s, but who opposed Greek and Hebrew), as well as Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi (and former student of Aldus Manutius), who read his work with dedicated suspicion. These theologians were usually from the mendicant orders that were Erasmus' particular target (such as Dominicans, Carmelites and Franciscans); they held a positive-going "linear view of history" for theology that privileged recent late-medieval theology and rejected the ad fontes methodology. Erasmus believed the vehemence of the attacks on Luther was a strategem to blacken humanism (and himself) by association, part of the centuries-long power struggle at the universities between scholastic "theologians" and humanist "poets".

A particularly powerful opponent of Erasmus was Italian humanist Jerome Aleander, Erasmus' former close friend and bedmate in Venice at the Aldine Press and future cardinal. They fell out over Aleander's violent speech against Luther at the Diet of Worms, and with Aleander's identification of Erasmus as "the great cornerstone of the Lutheran heresy." They periodically reconciled in warm personal meetings, only to fall into mutual suspicion again when distant.

Erasmus spent considerable effort defending himself in writing, which he could not do after his death. He wrote 35 books defending against accusations by Catholic opponents, and 9 against Protestant opponents: an unanswered accusation of heresy or Nicodemism could cascade into trials and fatal unsafety.

Catholic regional prohibitions

A work of Erasmus censored, perhaps following the inclusion of some works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Erasmus' peak posthumous influence, in the 1540s, was followed by a rapid marked downturn in reception.

Erasmus' work had been translated or reprinted throughout Europe, often with Protestantizing revisions and sectarian prefaces. Sometimes the works of Martin Luther were sold with the name of Erasmus on the cover. By around 1555, Erasmus' Latin books were no longer being printed under his name. From then, at various times and durations, various of Erasmus' works, especially in Protestantized editions, were placed on the various Roman, Dutch, French, Spanish and Mexican Indexes of Prohibited Books, either to not be read, or needing to be censored and expurgated: each area had different censorship considerations and severity.

• Several of Erasmus' works, including his Paraphrases were banned in the Milanese and Venetian indexes of 1554.

• Erasmus' works were to some extent prohibited in England under Queen Mary I, from 1555.

• For the Roman Index as it emerged at the close of the Council of Trent, Erasmus' works were completely banned (1559), mostly unbanned (1564), completely banned again (1590), and then mostly unbanned again with strategic revisions (1596) by the erratic Indexes of successive Popes.

• In Spain's Index, the translation of the Enchiridion only needed the phrase "Monkishness is not piety" removed to become acceptable. , Despite any Indexes, Charles V had The Education of a Christian Prince, which had been written for him, translated into Spanish for his son Philip II.

In the 1559 Roman Index, Erasmus was classed with heretics; however Erasmus was never judicially arraigned, tried or convicted of heresy: the censorship rules established by the Council of Trent targeted not only notorious heretics but also those whose writings "excited heresy" (regardless of intent), especially those making Latin translations of the New Testament deemed to vie with (rather than improve or annotate or assist) the Vulgate.

The Colloquies were especially but not universally frowned on for school use, and many of Erasmus' tendentious prefaces and notes to his scholarly editions required adjustment.

By 1896, the Roman Index still listed Erasmus' Colloquia, The Praise of Folly, The Tongue, The Institution of Christian Marriage, and one other as banned, plus particular editions of the Adagia and Paraphrase of Matthew. All other works could be read in suitable expurgated versions.

Because Erasmus' scholarly editions were frequently the only sources of Patristic information in print, the strict bans were often impractical, so theologians worked to produce replacement editions building on, or copying, Erasmus' editions.

The Jesuits received a dispensation from the Roman Inquisitor General to read and use Erasmus' work (not kept on the open shelves of their libraries), as did priests working near Protestant areas such as Francis de Sales.

Post-Tridentine suspicion

Early Dutch Jesuit scholar Peter Canisius, who produced several works superseding Erasmus', is known to have read, or used phrases from, Erasmus' New Testament (including the Annotations and Notes) and perhaps the Paraphrases, his Jerome biography and complete works, the Adages, the Copia, and the Colloquies: Canisius, having actually read Erasmus, had an ambivalent view on Erasmus that contrasted with the negative line of some of his contemporaries:

Very many people applied also to Erasmus, declaring: 'Either Erasmus speaks like Luther or Luther like Erasmus' (Aut Erasmus Lutherizat, aut Lutherus Erasmizat). And yet, we must say, if we would like to render an honest judgment, that Erasmus and Luther were very different. Erasmus always remained a Catholic. [...]Erasmus criticized religion 'with craft rather than with force', often applying considerable caution and moderation to either his own opinions or errors. [...]Erasmus passed judgment on what he thought required censure and correction in the teaching of theologians and in the Church.

— Peter Canisius, De Maria virgine (1577), p601

In contrast, Robert Bellarmine's Controversies mentions Erasmus (as presented by Erasmus' opponent Albert Pío) negatively over 100 times, categorizing him as a "forerunner of the heretics"; though not a heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri, who also had not read Erasmus, judged that Erasmus "died with the character of an unsound Catholic but not a heretic," putting it all in the context of a dispute between Theologians and Rhetoricians.

His patristic scholarship continued to be valued by academics, as were un-controversial parts of his biblical scholarship, though Catholic biblical scholars started to criticize Erasmus' limited range of manuscripts for his direct New Testament as undermining his premise of correcting the Latin from the "original" Greek.

The Jesuit mission to China, led by Matteo Ricci, adopted the approach of cultural accommodation linked to Erasmus. The early Jesuits were exposed to Erasmus at their colleges, and their positioning of Confucius echoed Erasmus' positioning of "Saint" Socrates.

Salesian scholars have noted Erasmus' significant influence on Francis de Sales: "in the approach and the spirit he (de Sales) took to reform his diocese and more importantly on how individual Christians could become better together," his optimism, civility, gentle anti-militantism that promoted "humility, penance, and asceticism" over sectarian violence, esteem of marriage. and, according to historian Charles Béné, a piety addressed to the laity, the acceptance of mental prayer, and the valuing of pagan wisdom.

A famous 17th century Dominican library featured statues of famous churchmen on one side and of famous "heretics" (in chains) on the other: those foes including the two leading anti-mendicant Catholic voices William of Saint-Amour (fl. 1250) and Erasmus.

By 1690, Erasmus was also, rather perversely, labelled as the forerunner of the heretical tendecies in the Jansenists.

From 1648 to 1794 and then 1845 to the present, the mainly-Jesuit Bollandist Society has been progressively publishing Lives of the Saints, in 61 volumes and supplements. Historian John C. Olin notes an accord of approach with the hitherto "unique" method, mixing critical standards and devotional/rhetorical purpose, that Erasmus had laid out in his Life of St Jerome.

By the 1700s, Erasmus' explicit influence on most Catholic thought had largely waned, though the humanist program remained a persistent undercurrent.

Twentieth century reappraisals

A historian has written that "a number of Erasmus' modern Catholic critics do not display an accurate knowledge of his writings but misrepresent him, often by relying upon hostile secondary sources," naming Yves Congar as an example.

A major turning point in the popular Catholic appraisal of Erasmus occurred in 1900 with rosy Benedictine historian (and, later, Cardinal) Francis Aidan Gasquet's The Eve of the Reformation which included a whole chapter on Erasmus based on a re-reading of his books and letters. Gasquet wrote "Erasmus, like many of his contemporaries, is often perhaps injudicious in the manner in which he advocated reforms. But when the matter is sifted to the bottom, it will commonly be found that his ideas are just."

Over the last century, Erasmus's Catholic reputation has gradually started to be rehabilitated: favourable factors may include:

• the increasingly active modern historical and theological scholarship on Erasmus suggested chinks in the traditional partisan characterizations of Erasmus;
• the retirement of the Roman Index librorum prohibitorum in 1966;

John Fisher, after Hans Holbein

• increased support for a view of Erasmus that portrays him as a conservative endorsed by and responsive to the hierarchy as much as a maverick, with him voicing and crystallizing mainstream and respectable Catholic thought of his time as much as innovating; and to an extent resuscitating Victorine (the Canons Regular of St Victor) and Cappadocian and patristic approaches.
• his deep friendships and interactions with three Saint-Martyrs Thomas More, John Fisher, and Brigittine monk Richard Reynolds.
• his acknowledged or retro-fitted influence on perhaps five Doctors of the Church (Ignatius, Theresa of Ávila, John of Ávila, Canisius, de Sales), the positive normalization of his views in influential new orders such as the Jesuits, Oratorians, Redemptorists, Ursulines and Salesians, and an increasing list of exemplary Catholics whose views in part channel or parallel Erasmus', such as Bartolomé de las Casas' De unico vocationis modo (1537), De la Salle's Decorum & Civility, and Ven. Matteo Ricci's view on accommodation in missionary work.
• the acceptance of St John Henry Cardinal Newman's "development of doctrine", to some extent a chick hatched from the egg of Erasmus' theological historicism and his appeal to tradition (sensus fidei fidelium) on the Eucharist;
• the reinvigouration of patristic ad fontes and a re-surfacing of several ideas associated with Erasmus (but ideas sometimes with a longer, forgotten patrimony, and sometimes from an even more problematic figure than Erasmus) by ressourcement and Communio theologians, such as
  • Henri de Lubac
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar, who ranked Erasmus with Augustine, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas as the great theologians/exegetes;
  • Oratorian Louis Bouyer, who wrote that the Method of True Theology (or Ratio) of Erasmus "represents, for the first time and in admirable fashion, the use of principles and methods entirely adequate to effect a really fruitful renewal of Catholic faith and theology;"
  • Joseph Ratzinger, whose famous Regensberg Address emphasized the fundamental influence of Hellenic philosophy on primitive Christianity.
  • For theologian George Chantraine, Erasus's so-called skepticism was actually a function of his belief that the Church defined doctrine not individual theologians.

Post-Vatican II

Historian Lisa Cahill's summary "Official Catholic Social Thought on Nonviolence" notes Erasmus (with Augustine, Aquinas and St Francis of Assisi) as most notable in the development of Catholic peace theory.

In 1963, Thomas Merton suggested "If there had been no Luther, Erasmus would now be regarded by everyone as one of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church. I like his directness, his simplicity, and his courage."

In his 1987 collection The Spirituality of Erasmus of Rotterdam historian Richard deMolen, later a Catholic priest, called for Erasmus' canonization.

Protestant

Fictive gathering of notable theologians who "controverted prestigious superiors of the Roman church", at back 1. John Wycliffe, 2. Jan Hus, 3. Jerome of Prague, 4. Girolamo Savonarola; at table from left Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Bugenhagen, Johannes Oecolampadius, et al. (1650) Erasmus is not shown in this company.

Erasmus' Greek New Testament was the basis of the Textus Receptus bibles, which were used for all Protestant bible translations from 1600 to 1900, notably including the Luther Bible and the King James Version.

Protestant views on Erasmus fluctuated depending on region and period, with continual support in his native Netherlands and in cities of the Upper Rhine area. However, following his death and in the late sixteenth century, many Reformation supporters saw Erasmus's critiques of Luther and lifelong support for the universal Catholic Church as damning, and second-generation Protestants were less vocal in their debts to the great humanist.

Many of the usages fundamental to Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, such as the forensic imputation of righteousness, grace as divine favour or mercy (rather than a medicine-like substance or habit), faith as trust (rather than a persuasion only), "repentance" over "doing penance" (as used by Luther in the first theses of the 95 Theses), owed to Erasmus.

Late Luther hated Erasmus: "Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth...He is a very Caiaphas;" and "Whenever I pray, I pray a curse upon Erasmus." He attempted a Biblical analogy to justify his dismissal of Erasmus' thought: "He has done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab...I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work...to lead into the land of promise, is not his business..."

A historian has even said that "the spread of Lutheranism was checked by Luther's antagonizing (of) Erasmus and the humanists."

Erasmus corresponded cordially with Melanchthon until the end. In the view of some theologians or historians, in the decades following Erasmus and Luther's debate on free choice for salvation, Melanchthon himself gradually swang to a position closer to Erasmus' tentative synergism: in 1532 mentioning man's non-rejection of grace as a cause in conversion, and stating it more forcefully in his 1559 Loci. The issue caused a division in early Lutheranism, resolved by the Formula of Concord.

Erasmus' reception is also demonstrable among Swiss Protestants in the sixteenth century: he had an indelible influence on the biblical commentaries of, for example, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, all of whom used both his annotations on the New Testament and his paraphrases of same in their own New Testament commentaries.

A historian noted "perhaps the most serious blow that Erasmus delivered to Luther and Protestantism he landed indirectly through the person of Ulrich Zwingli." Huldrych Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed tradition, had a conversion experience after reading Erasmus' poem, "Jesus' Lament to Mankind", also titled "The Complaint of Jesus". Zwingli's moralism, hermeneutics and attitude to patristic authority owe to Erasmus, and contrast with Luther's.

Anabaptist scholars have suggested an 'intellectual dependence' of Anabaptists on Erasmus. According to Dr Kenneth Davis "Erasmus had copious direct and indirect contact with many of the founding leaders of Anabaptism [...] the Anabaptists can best be understood as, apart from their own creativity, a radicalization and Protestantization not of the Magisterial Reformation but of the lay-oriented, ascetic reformation of which Erasmus is the principle mediator."

For evangelical Christianity, Erasmus had a strong influence on Jacob Arminius, whose library featured many books by Erasmus, even though he did not dare name or quote him.

Erasmus' promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up by many kinds of Protestants.

Contemporary "radical orthdoxy" theologian John Milbank has been described as Erasmus revivivus: "First, both Milbank and Erasmus emphasize the necessity of linguistic mediation in articulating theological thought.[...]Second, they prefer a rhetorical approach to theology to dialectical one.[...]Third, at the heart of their theology is the mystery of Christ."

Intellectual

• Literary theorist Hans Urs von Balthasar listed Erasmus in one of three key intellectual "events" in the Germanic age:
  • Duns Scotus-William of Ockham-Francisco Suárez and Meister Eckhart-Nicholas of Cusa-Ignatius of Loyola
  • Martin Luther-Erasmus-Shakespeare
  • Kant-Hegel-Marx
• Political journalist Michael Massing has written of the Luther-Erasmus free will debate as creating a fault line in Western thinking: Europe adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.
• By the coming of the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus increasingly again became a more widely respected cultural symbol and was hailed as an important figure by increasingly broad groups.
• In a letter to a friend, Erasmus once had written: "That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all." Erasmus has been called a universalist rather than a nationalist, however he opposed the political universalism of unmanageably large or expansionary empires with "universal monarchs".
• Catholic historian Dom David Knowles wrote that a just appreciation of traditional Catholic doctrine was a necessary condition for appreciating Erasmus, "without which many otherwise gifted writers have repeated meaningless platitudes."
• According to two Dutch historians, "his legacy irreversibly inspired researchers to a hermeneutical approach that in the end could not but result in irrefutable attacks on the self-evident complete inerrancy of Holy Writ."

Character attacks

Writers have often explained Erasmus' failure to adopt their favoured position as manifesting some deep character flaw. In historian Bruce Mansfield's words, "a smallness of character in Erasmus stood in the way of his greatness of mind."

Luther's antipathy to Erasmus has continued to more recent times in some Lutheran teachers:

Oh how Erasmus placed honor above truth! To seek honor is a human frailty. To ever permit it to go to the point of placing honor and for that matter friendship, expediency, or anything else, above truth is to be blinded by the devil himself and to set a snare for others to be entrapped in his delusions. Such delusions Erasmus would support in pride, weakness, vacillation, and false love for peace and harmony." "Erasmus, the Judas of the Reformation" "this cultured and eloquent theological midget

— Otto J. Eckert (1955)

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) explained "His inborn vanity and self-complacency were thereby increased almost to the point of becoming a disease; at the same time he sought, often by the grossest flattery, to obtain the favour and material support of patrons or to secure the continuance of such benefits." According to Catholic historian Joseph Lortz (1962) "Erasmus remained in the church...but as a half Catholic...indecisive, hesitating, suspended in the middle." English Jesuit scholar C. C. Martindale wrote "Erasmus really disliked men personally."

A 1920s American historian wrote "Erasmus's ambitions, fed by an innate vanity which at times repels by its frank self-seeking, included both fame and fortune" yet pulls back on another historian's view that his "irritable self-conceit, shameless importunity,...may lead one to a sense of contempt for the scholar", pointing out the reality of Erasmus' dire poverty in Paris. Another 1920s British historian wrote "one feels nauseated when one reads the great scholar's choice Latin that embalms a beggar's whine without the beggar's excuse of absolute need to justify or palliate it[...] There is no doubt as to where Dante would have placed Erasmus" (i.e. in the outer circle of Hell, with vacillators) A Victorian Scottish biographer of Tyndale contrasted Erasmus' weak constitution with the "more masculine energy" of Luther and Tyndale. An inter-war Anglican historian judges "He is a worm, a pigmy, a sheep able only to bleat when the gospel is destroyed[...] Erasmus was a book-man and an invalid.”

In the 20th century, various psychoanalyses were made of Erasmus by practitioners: these diagnosed him variously as "supremely egotistic, neurasthenic, morbidly sensitive, volatile, variable, and vacillating, injudicious, irritable, and querulous, yet always[...] a baffling but interesting chararacter"; a "volatile neurotic, latent homosexual, hypochondriac, and psychasthenic"; having "a form of narcissistic character disorder," a spiritualized, vengeful, "paranoid disposition" driven by "injured narcissism", "repeated persecutory preoccupations...(with) delusional states of paranoia toward the end of his life", repressed anger directed "father figures such as prelates and teachers," needing a "sense of victimization"

Huizinga's biography (1924) treats him more sympathically, with phrases such as: a great and sincere need for concord and affection, profoundly in need of (physical and spiritual) purity, a delicate soul (with a delicate constitution), fated to an immoderate love of liberty, having a dangerous fusion between inclination and conviction, restless but precipitate, a continual intermingling of explosion and reserve, fastidious, bashful, coquettish, a white-lier, evasive, suspicious, and feline. Yet "compared with most of his contemporaries he remains moderate and refined."

Polemicist Harry S. May remarkably compared Erasmus in psychohistory to Adolf Hitler: "as Christ became his protagonist, the authoritarian fuehrer principle was born in him." "His own kind of self-produced isolation[...]made Erasmus the loneliest man of the Humanist era." "Unaware or not, Erasmus — like all Jew haters in the centuries to come — hated Jews for the things he did not possess: health, affluence, learning, and ethnic solidarity."