Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism

In 1504 Erasmus sent a copy of hisHandbookto his humanist colleague John

Colet, Dean of St Paul’s, together with an account of his general purpose in the

treatise:‘I composed it not in order to show off my cleverness or my style, but

solely in order to counteract the error of those who make religion in general

consist in rituals and observances...but who are astonishingly indifferent to

matters that have to do with true goodness. What I have tried to do, in fact, is

to teach a method of morals, as it were, in the manner of those who have

originatedfixed procedures in the branches of learning.’^4 It is important to

note here that Erasmus’s call to religious and moral reform depends on an

even more radical reform of the theory of knowledge along Platonic lines. The

humanist critique of medieval institutions and religious practice is founded

upon a critique of epistemology.‘I could see’, states Erasmus,

that the common body of Christians was corrupt not only in its affections, but in

its ideas...Abraham long ago dug wells in every country seeking veins of living

water; and when the Philistinesfilled them with earth they were dug anew by

Isaac and his sons, who, not content with restoring the old wells, dug new ones

besides...Nor are we quite free of Philistines nowadays, who get more pleasure

from earth than from fountains of living water.^5

The prescribed cure of the humanist was to be nothing less than a return back

to the sources—a radicalconversio ad fontes! In thefirst instance this was to be

a return to the wisdom of the ancients, and most especially to the Greeks. The

classical turn was not, however, an end in itself, but was plainly understood as

instrumental in preparation for the return to the living waters of the Sacred

Oracles of the Holy Scripture, and to their orthodox patristic interpreters.^6

Twelve years later, in 1516, Erasmus proved true to his admonition when he

published his Greek edition of the New Testament—theNovum instrumentum

omne—which, in its role astextus receptusfor the large majority of vernacular

studium(Basle: [Johannes Froben], 1521), republished (Strasbourg: Felicem, 1522). An English
translation of Erasmus’s original Latin text, attributed to William Tyndale, appeared in 1533:
A booke called in latyn Enchiridion militis christiani, and in englysshe the manuell of the christen
knyght replenysshed with moste holsome preceptes, made by the famous clerke Erasmus of
Roterdame(London: Wynkyn de Worde, for Iohan Byddell, 1533). See Douglas H. Parker,
‘The English“Enchiridion militis christiani”and Reformation Politics’,Erasmus in English 5
(1972), 16–21. While John Foxe maintained that Tyndale made this translation while a tutor in
Gloucestershire in the mid 1520s, David Daniell attributes the translation to Nicholas Udall: see
William Tyndale: A Biography(London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 72.
See Anne M. O’Donnell,‘Editing the Independent Works of William Tyndale’, in Erika Rummel
(ed.),Editing Texts from the Age of Erasmus(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 55.

(^4) Erasmus,Epistle181:53; quoted by Rummel,Erasmus Reader, 138.
(^5) From Erasmus’s prefatory epistle address to Paul Volz, Abbot of Hugshofen,Epistle181:53;
quoted by Rummel,Erasmus Reader, 138, 139.
(^6) ‘Sed in primis ad fontes ipsos properandum, id est graecos et antiquos’. Erasmus,De ratione
studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores(Paris: G. Biermant, 1511) inOpera omnia, vol. 2
(Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1969), 120.11.
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