humanities as not just essential to grasping the principles of theology, and as a
lead into the writings of the early church. He also sees their crucial importance
for the smooth running of the Christian state. Various views of the role of
humanities and Christian antiquity emerge from the fourteenth century
onwards, and Bullinger’s is what we might call‘the Northern Renaissance’
or‘Christian humanist’view.
Christian humanism, I should like to stress from the outset, is independent
of any confessional stance and can apply equally well to both Protestant and
Catholic scholars and theologians. Interestingly enough, during his period as
teacher in Kappel, Bullinger taught both sacred and profane letters and did not
hesitate to use the former to expound on the latter. In an entry to his Journal
orDiariumfor 1525, he says that for his lectures on the Epistle of Paul to the
Romans he regularly used the commentaries of Origen, Ambrose, Theophy-
lactus, Melanchthon, and chiefly Erasmus. Moreover, he also lectured in the
same year on Erasmus’sCopia verborumand on Erasmus’s exposition of the
proverbDulce bellum inexpertisso as to show living illustrations of theological
precepts.^2 What Bullinger and other Northern Renaissance humanists could
not admit, in contradistinction to some representatives of the earlier Southern
Renaissance whom I shall examine, was the idea that a treatise such asDulce
bellum inexpertiscould be viewed on the same level as a biblical precept, or
that a poet such as Homer or Virgil could be considered a theologian on the
same level as a church father. I shall now illustrate this use of pagan and
Christian sources by humanists on the basis of concrete examples.
In his unpublishedVon warer und falscher Leer, altem und nüwen glouben
und bruch der Eucharistien oder Mesz^3 of 1527, Bullinger states his view thus:
The very learned Erasmus has, with inexhaustible industry, handled the New
Testament in both Greek and Latin and translated it as the third to do so after
Valla and Faber Stapulensis, and he has banished courteously but with great force
all barbarism, sophistry, and scholasticism from theology and led it back to the
ancient languages and fathers. He also made their writings available to us in
elegant form, as did Beatus Rhenanus after him. It is thereforefitting that we
thank Erasmus from the bottom of our hearts for this great help and for his
constancy and labour. But we should thank God above all from whom we have all
that we possess and whom we would without doubt make very angry if we spoke
ill of the highly deserving Erasmus.^4(^2) See Heinrich Bullinger,Diarium (Annales vitae) der Jahre 1504– 1574 , in Emil Egli (ed.),
Quellen zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte herausgegeben vom Zwingliverein in Zürich,
vol. 2 (Basel: Buch und Antiquariatsbuchhandlung, 1904), 10.
(^3) Von warer und falscher leeris available in manuscript in St Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek
[Vadiana]: Ms. Msc.no. 376, 14 May 1527. Cf. also Joachim Staedtke,Die Theologie des jungen
Bullingers(Zurich: tv, 1962).
(^4) Bullinger,Von warer und falscher leer, fol. 88v.
34 Irena Backus