Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI. CONCLUSION Looking back on the life of Erasmus, the question still arises, why has he remained so great? For ostensibly his endeavors ended in failure. He withdraws in alarm from the tremendous struggle which he rightly calls a tragedy. The sixteenth century, bold and vehement, thunders past him, disdaining his ideal of moderation and tolerance. Latin literary erudition, which to him was the
epitome of all true culture, has gone out as such. Erasmus, so far as regards the greater part of his writings, is among the great ones who are no longer read. He has become a name. But why does that name still sound so clear and articulate? Why does he keep regarding us, as if he still knew a little more than he has ever been willing to utter? What has he been to his age, and what was he to be for later generations? Has he been rightly called the precursor of the modern spirit?
Regarded as the child of the sixteenth century, he does seem to differ from the general tenor of his times. Among those vehemently passionate, drastically energetic, and violent natures of the great ones of his day, Erasmus stands as the man of too few prejudices, with a little too much delicacy of taste, with a deficiency, though not indeed in every department, of that stolticia which he had praised as a necessary constituent of life. Erasmus is the man who is too sensible
and moderate for the heroic. What a surprising difference there is between the accent of Erasmus and that of Luther, Calvin, and St. Teresa! What a difference also between his accent, that is, the accent of humanism, and that of Albrecht Dürer, of Michelangelo, or of Shakespeare. Erasmus seems, at times, the man who was not strong enough for his age. In that robust 16th century, it seems as if the oaken strength of Luther was necessary, the steely edge of Calvin,
the white heat of Loyola, not the velvet softness of Erasmus. Not only were their force and their fervor necessary, but also their depth, their unsparing, undaunted consistency, sincerity, and outspokenness. They cannot bear that smile which makes Luther speak of the guileful being looking out of Erasmus' features. His piety is too even for them, too limp. Loyola has testified that the reading of the Incredian Miletus Christiani relaxed his fervor and made his
devotion grow cold. He saw that warrior of Christ differently and the glowing colors of the Spanish Christian, medieval ideal of chivalry. Erasmus had never passed through those depths of self-reprobation and that consciousness of sin which Luther had transversed with toil. He saw no devil to fight with, and tears were not familiar to him. Was he altogether unaware of the deepest mystery, or did it rest in him too deep for utterance? Let us not suppose too quickly that we are more
nearly allied to Luther or to Loyola because their figures appeal to us more. If at present our admiration goes out again to the ardently pious and to spiritual extremes, it is partly because our unstable time requires strong stimuli. To appreciate Erasmus, we should begin by giving up our admiration of the extravagant, and for many this requires a certain effort at present. It is extremely easy to break the staff over Erasmus. His faults lie on the surface,
and though he wished to hide many things, he never hid his weaknesses. He was much too concerned about what people thought, and he could not hold his tongue. His mind was too rich and facile, always suggesting a superfluity of arguments, cases, examples, and quotations. He could never let things slide. All his life he grudged himself leisure to rest and collect himself, to see how unimportant, after all, was the commotion round about him. If only he went his
own way courageously. Rest and independence he desired more ardently of all things. There was no more restless and dependent creature. Judge him as one of the too delicate constitution who ventures out in a storm. His willpower was great enough. He worked night and day amidst the most violent bodily suffering,
with a great ideal steadfastly before him, never satisfied with its own achievements. He was not self-sufficient. As an intellectual type, Erasmus was one of a rather small group, the absolute idealists who, at the same time, are thoroughly moderate. They cannot bear the world's imperfections. They feel constrained to oppose. But extremes are uncongenial to them. They shrink back from action
because they know it pulls down as much as it erects. And so they withdraw themselves and keep calling that everything should be different. But when the crisis comes, they reluctantly side with tradition and conservatism. Here, too, is a fragment of Erasmus's life tragedy. He was the man who saw the new and coming things more clearly than anyone else, who must needs quarrel with the old, and yet could not accept the new. He tried to remain in the fold of the old church, after
having damaged it seriously, and renounced the Reformation, and to a certain extent even humanism, after having furthered both with all his strength. Our final opinion about Erasmus has been concerned with negative qualities so far. What was his positive importance? Two facts make it difficult for the modern mind to understand Erasmus's positive importance. First, that his influence was extensive rather than intensive, and therefore less historically
discernible at definite points. And second, that his influence has ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more. Like St. Jerome, his revered model, and Voltaire, with whom he has been occasionally compared, he has his reward. But like them, he has been the enlightener of an age from whom a broad stream of culture emanated. As historic investigation of the French Revolution is becoming more and more aware that the true history of France during that
period should be looked for in those groups which as center or Marius seem for a long time but a drove of supernumeraries and understands that it should occasionally protect its eyes a little from the lightning flashes of the Gironde and mountain thunderstorm. So the history of the Reformation period should pay attention, and it has done so for a long time to the broad central sphere permeated by the Rasmian spirit.
One of his opponents said, Luther has drawn a large part of the church to himself, Zwingli and Oecolampadius also some part, but Erasmus the largest. End quote. Erasmussen's public was numerous and of high culture. He was the only one of the humanists who really wrote for all the world, that is to say, for all educated people. He
accustomed a whole world to another and more fluent mode of expression. He shifted the interest. He influenced by his perfect clarity of exposition, even through the medium of Latin, the style of the vernacular languages, apart from the numberless translations of his works. For his contemporaries, Erasmus put on many new stops, one might say, of the great organ of human expression, as Rousseau was to do two centuries later. He might well think with some complacency
of the influence he had exerted on the world. Quote, from all parts of the world, he writes towards the close of his life, I am daily thanked by many, because they have been kindled by my works, whatever may be their merit, into his zeal for a good disposition and sacred literature, and they who have never seen Erasmus yet know and love him from his books. He was glad that his translations from the Greek had become superfluous.
He had everywhere led many to take up Greek and holy scriptures, which otherwise they would have never read. He had been an introducer and an initiator. He might leave the stage after having said his say. His word signified something beyond classical sense and biblical disposition. It was at the same time the first enunciation of the creed of education and perfectibility, of warm social feeling and of faith in human nature,
of peaceful kindness and toleration. Quote, Christ dwells everywhere. Piety is practiced under every garment. If only a kindly disposition is not wanting. End quote.
In all these ideas and convictions, Erasmus really heralds the later age. In the 16th and 17th centuries, those thoughts remained an undercurrent. In the 18th, Erasmus' message of deliverance bore fruit. In this respect, he has most certainly been a precursor and a preparer of the modern mind, of Rousseau, Herger, Pestolosi, and of the English and American thinkers. It is only part of the modern mind which is represented by all this.
To a number of its developments, Erasmus was wholly a stranger to the evolution of natural science, of the newer philosophy, of political economy, but insofar as people still believe in the ideal that moral education and general tolerance may make humanity happier, humanity owes much to Erasmus. This does not imply that Erasmus's mind did not directly and fruitfully influence his own times, although Catholics regarded him in the heat of the struggle as the
corrupter of the Church, and Protestants as the betrayer of the Gospel, yet his word of moderation and kindliness did not pass by unheard or unheeded on either side. Eventually, neither camp finally rejected Erasmus. Rome did not brand him as an archeretic, but only warned the faithful to read him with caution. Protestant history has been studious to reckon him as one of the Reformers. Both obeyed in this the pronouncement of a public opinion which was above parties and which continued
to admire and revere Erasmus. To the reconstruction of the Catholic Church and the erection of the evangelical churches, not only the names of Luther and Loyola are linked. The moderate, the intellectual, the conciliating have also had their share of the work. Figures like Melanchthon here, Satellite there, both nearly allied to Erasmus and sympathetically disposed towards him. The frequently repeated attempts to arrive at some compromise in the great religious conflict,
though they might be doomed to end in failure, emanated in the Erasmian spirit. Nowhere did that spirit take root so easily as in the country that gave Erasmus' birth. A curious detail shows us that it was not the exclusive privilege of either great party. Of his two most favored pupils of later years, both Netherlanders, whom, as the actors of the colloquy Astragalismus, the Game of Knuckle Bones, he has immortalized together, the one Quirin Telsius died for his
attachment to the Spanish cause and the Catholic faith. He was hanged in 1572 by the citizens of Harlem, where he was the burgomaster. The other, Charles Udenhove, was sedulous on the side of the revolt and the reformed religion. At Ghent, in concert with the Prince of Orange, he turned against the narrow-minded Protestant terrorism of the Zealots. A Dutch historian recently tried to trace back the opposition of the Dutch against the King of Spain to the influence of Erasmus's
political thought in his arraignment of bad princes. Wrongly, I think. Erasmus's political diatribes were far too academic and too general for that. The desire of resistance and revolt arose from quite other causes. The Gui were not Erasmus's progeny. But there is much that is Erasmian in the spirit of their great leader, William of Orange, whose vision ranged so widely beyond the limitations of religious hatred. Thoroughly permeated by the Erasmian spirit,
too, was that class of municipal magistrates who were soon to take the lead and to set the fashion in the established republic. Histories want, as always with an aristocracy, to take their faults very seriously. After all, perhaps no other aristocracy, unless it be that of Venice, had ruled a state so long, so well, and with so little violence. If in the seventeenth century the institutions of Holland, in the eyes of foreigners, were the admired models of prosperity,
charity and social discipline, and patterns of gentleness and wisdom, however defective they may seem to us, then the honor of all this is due to the municipal aristocracy. If, in the Dutch patriciate of that time, those aspirations lived and were translated into action. It was Erasmus' spirit of social responsibility which inspired them. The history of Holland is far less bloody and cruel than that of any of the surrounding countries. Not for naught did Erasmus praise,
as truly Dutch, those qualities which we may also call truly Erasmian. Gentleness, kindness, moderation, a generally diffused moderate erudition. Not romantic virtues, if you like, but are they less salutary? One more instance. In the Republic of the Seven Provinces, the atrocious executions of witches and wizards ceased more than a century before they did in all other countries. This was not owing to the merit of the Reformed pastors. They shared the popular
belief which demanded persecution. It was the magistrates whose enlightenment, even as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, no longer tolerated these things. Again, we are entitled to say, though Erasmus was not one of those who combated this practice, the spirit which breathes from this is that of Erasmus. Cultured humanity has cause to hold Erasmus's memory and esteem, if for no other reason than that he was the fervently sincere preacher of that general
kindliness which the world still so urgently needs. End of chapter 21. End of Erasmus and the Age of Reformation by Johann Huizinga. Translated by Frederick Jan Hopperman.
