The complicated sixteenth century: Difference between revisions

This article, [https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/desiderius-erasmus Desiderius Erasmus | Catholic Answers Encyclopedia], offers a critical view of Erasmus and his humanism, which aligned him with Martin Luther in many respects. Erasmus never rejected the Church and, by the end of his life, he had distanced himself from Luther.  Erasmus's close friend, (Saint) Thomas More shared 16th century humanistic views, but never strayed from Church orthodoxy. We may assume that Erasmus' friendship with More grounded him more firmly in the Catholic faith, as many of his contemporaries such as William Tyndale<ref>Tyndale was an English protestant reformer who translated the Bible into English based on the earlier work of John Wycliff, whose anti-Catholic followers were called "Lollards."</ref>, Martin Luther, and others were not.  

In 1501, Erasmus issued, ''Enchiridion militis Christiani'', or "Handbook<ref>The word "handbook" may be an incomplete translation of ''Enchiridion'', which suggests a more complete "manual" or set of instructions rather than a "handbook".</ref> of the Christian Soldier." The work was at the quest of the wife of an errant soldier who begged a friend of Erasmus to help change her husband's behavior. The medieval notion of "chivalry<ref>From French "''chevalerie''" for horseman and ''chevaler'' for knight; the English term, ''cavalier'', is drawn from the same Latin root, ''caballarius'' for horseman. A warrior who owned a horse was of a higher social and economic class from regular soldiers, thus its conneciton with nobility.</ref>"  arose in the 12th century as a code of conduct for knights and noblemen and inspired a literary genre (such as the legend of King Arthur) as well as formal codes of behavior for military orders and for court life, generally. Chivarly was deeply intwined with Christianity, perhaps best seen in the  Teutonic Knights who venerated the Vigin Mary as patroness. By the time of Erasmus, and with the avent of gunpowder and large state armies, chivalry had morphed into ritualistic expressions of knighthood such as jousting, hunting, and heraldry, which consisted of displays of rank and pedigree through emblems, flags, and banners.   

  "God made man unarmed. But anger and re- venge have mended the work of God, and furnished his hands with weapons invented in hell. Christians attack christians with engines of destruction, fabricated by the devil, A cannon ! a mortar! no human being could have devised them originally; they must have been suggested by the evil one."<ref>Erasmus, [https://archive.org/details/complaintofpeace00eras/page/66/mode/2up?q=prosperous "The Complaint of Peace" (Internet Archive)], p. 66.  </ref>

By then, chilvary, had become a lifestyle or status measure more than a military strategy, with armies coming to be run by professional strategists using trained soldiers in wars between states. Chivalry had not devolved into the ridiculousness that Cervantes portrayed in ''Don Quixote'' a hundred years after Erasmus penned "Handbook," as knights on horses were formidable, especially against the unarmed, who, with or without Church rules offered plentful opportunity for mischief, such as that carried on by the husband of the woman who pleaded for help to Erasmus' friend.

While varied in interests and critiques, the consistencies in Erasmus' point of view converge from his core beliefs in Christian virtue, the Church, the Liturgy, the Virgin Mary, and the Word of God. He wanted the Bible to be available in secular languages, but he wanted young Christian men to be educated in Latin and Greek. He sympathized with the reformers' outrage at clerical abuse, but he refused to draw drastic lines between the Church and reform. He wanted peace, concord, learning and faith truly lived.

Unlike protestant reformers, when confronted with Church or other hypocrisy, Erasmus' impulse was to attack the hypocrisy, not its source. Of excessive veneration of relics of Saints, rather than attacking the form of worship, Erasmus made fun of the excesses while warning against iconoclasm and, what historian Eamon Duffy would later call "stripping of alters," or complete protestant removal of saintly relics, images, and veneration. Of abuses of the indulgence, which Luther is so famous for critizing (the "95 Theses" was actually titled,  "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences"), Erasmus retorts,  

  "I have never approved of (the Roman See's) tyranny, rapacity, and other vices about which of old common complaints were heard from good men. Neither do I sweepingly condemn ‘Indulgences,’ though I have always disliked any barefaced traffic in them.<ref>From ''Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni'', 1523</ref>

We can see each of these threads in ''Handbook'', as we will call it, which is part of why it was enormously popular and translated into variuos languages.