Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism

(Martin Jones) #1
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.
Erasmian Humanism and Eucharistic Hermeneutics 97

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