184 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacyexacted a price—he wanted the edition dedicated to his powerful friend Bernard von
Cles, Prince-Bishop of Trent and one of the inner circle of advisors who were still pull-
ing the strings of the Archduke.^4 Erasmus was obviously reluctant, but was encouraged
by the prospect Fabri dangled before him of receiving “a most elegant and valuable
gift” in return.^5 The Prince-Bishop was suitably grateful, and in due course sent a “little
gift of money”—not, of course, “as a reward, but as an expression of our sincere affec-
tion for you.”^6 The “little gift” was in fact centum aureos—a hundred gold Rhenish
florins, which would, in 1526, have paid a master craftsman’s wages for two years or—
rather dearer to Erasmus’s heart, one suspects—have purchased over 1850 liters of fine
rhenish red wine.^7
The dedicatory epistle^8 to von Cles serves as introduction and is dated 27 August
- Above all, Erasmus presents Irenaeus as a man of peace, who “fulfilled the prom-
ise of his name and became a stout defender of peace in the church.”^9 In that he is, of
course, picking up the word play developed by Eusebius in HE V.24.18, but there is
more to it than that.
He speaks with feeling in that dedicatory epistle of “those... who trouble the world
with their quarrels” (CWE xii, 290, 10–11), of “the present troubles in the church” (xii,
290, 15), of “the books that are now flying like weapons in both directions” (xii, 291,
18-19). The actions of “the peace-loving Irenaeus” in the Quartodeciman affair are
contrasted with “our belligerent Ptolemies” who now “on the flimsiest of pretexts are
quick to raise false charges of heresy and schism” (xii, 292, 66–68).
But Irenaeus brought to the task before him eloquence, learning, and a scriptural
piety. Erasmus is not sure whether Hae r. was written in Latin or in Greek; he is inclined
to think Irenaeus wrote in Latin, but was actually more comfortable with Greek. But
either way, “the flow of his language... is lucid, well-ordered, and logical” (xii, 291,
75–79); “he was familiar with all the liberal arts” (xii, 291, 83–84); and “fought against
a multitude of heretics” “relying only on the help of scripture” (xii, 295, 118–19). With
such a portrait it is little wonder that Erasmus proudly calls him “Irenaeum meum”
(Allen, vi, 385, 20).
But the Lord “knows how to use what is good and turn what is wicked to his glory
and the salvation of his church.” So it was that in the past “the exertions of schismatics
brought the faithful into a closer harmony, created, so to speak, a common battleline,
and the ungodly teaching of heretics forced them to study the holy mysteries of Scrip-
ture” (CWE xii, 302, 228–30 and 302, 239–303, 241).
For Erasmus in 1526, that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. For
1526 was not a good year for him. He had long been struggling to hold the middle
ground—sympathetic to many of the Reformers’ ideals and critical of the institution,
but unwilling to break with the church or to compromise what he saw as the funda-
mentals of Catholic faith. It was a difficult position to maintain, and in 1526 he was
being squeezed from both sides.
On the one side, he was under attack from hardline Catholics like Beda in Paris
and Latomus in Leuven, who thought him unorthodox. In 1525, for example, Latomus
published a series of works that attacked Erasmus, though not by name, while the
Leuven Dominicans were not so squeamish from the pulpit. In May 1526, Beda—the