Erasmus Studies 35 (2015) 89–108 brill.com/eras
Book Reviews
∵ C.S.M. Rademaker, E. Kearns, A. Godin, and Ch. Béné (eds.) Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. v-7 De Immensa Dei Misericordia Concio (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 384 pp. isbn 9789004253001.
This volume in the Amsterdam edition (asd) of Erasmus’ Opera Omnia is the seventh volume in the fifth ordo, which is the ordo consisting of “religious” works, or, more specifically, the works pertinentium ad pietatem. This particular volume contains seven comparatively neglected works from Erasmus’ corpus, but, as the editors in their introductions make clear, there is much value in these works for students of Erasmus seeking a thorough understanding of his religious worldview. It is, simply insofar as it makes these works available to his students in high-quality edited versions, a welcome edition. More than that, the editors have provided us with detailed historical and textual introductions to the text, as we have become accustomed to with the series, setting each work both in the context of Erasmus’ life and in the broader milieu of early sixteenthcentury Christianity. The editors also offer an overview of the works’ various printed editions used for the compilation of the critical editions themselves, and often the subsequent printing and translation histories of the works, usually in order to demonstrate the importance these works had in the sixteenth century, even if they have not garnered that same amount of attention today. Moreover, in addition to the actual apparatus criticus, each editor provides brief analyses of formal and textual issues. The first two works in the volume—De immensa Dei misericordia concio, and Virginis et martyris comparatio—were published in the same year (1524) as the De libero arbitrio diatribe against Luther, and so at first blush we might be forgiven for not paying them due attention. But as C.S.M. Rademaker points out, both works, and especially the Sermon on the Infinite Mercy of God, were reprinted and translated several times in the first half of the sixteenth century (in Italy alone it was translated three times into the vernacular and published by three different houses). The De immensa Dei is a sermon composed by Eras-
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/18749275-03501004
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mus on the infinite mercy of God, printed first, it seems, by Froben in Basel in September of 1524. Christoph von Utenheim had asked Erasmus to write the sermon, and while not aimed explicitly at Luther (as was the Diatribe), Rademaker points out that Von Utenheim asks Erasmus to revise out a direct condemnation of the Lutherans in the treatise—and so presumably in an earlier instantiation it stood alongside the Diatribe in a more obvious thematic way. In any case, what we have now is a carefully revised treatise on a contemporary controversial topic. Dwelling on the infinite mercy of God, Erasmus implicitly rejects the staunch form of predestinarian theology of the Lutherans. Erasmus’ sola Dei misericordia is here—again, not explicitly, although the timing of the publication makes it quite clearly deliberate—pitted against Luther’s sola fide. Rademaker’s introduction contains a nice overview of the themes involved and their historical and theological significance, complete with an analysis of the structure of the sermon, comments on the text itself and the editions it is collated with, and the subsequent history and reception of the text (no doubt Luther did not approve, but three passages, according to Rademaker, also made their way onto the Index expurgatorius of Rome). The Virginis et Martyris Comparatio, also edited and introduced by Rademaker, consists of a revision and expansion of a letter Erasmus wrote (ep. 1346), probably in 1523, to the nuns of Cologne who looked after the relics of the Maccabean martyrs extolling the virtues of virginity and martyrdom. The expanded treatise was printed by Froben in 1524 along with the Sermon on the Infinite Mercy of God, and also alongside editions of Latin translations of the works of Josephus (4Maccabees, which digresses on the virtues of martyrdom using the Maccabean martyrs as prime examples, was thought to have been written by Josephus at this time). The edition of the work printed here aims to demonstrate the expansion of the text from its first instantiation as a letter to the Cologne nuns to the definitive version of the treatise printed in 1524 through the use of notes in the critical apparatus—a valuable exercise tracing Erasmus’ thought and technique. As with the Sermon on the Infinite Mercy of God, the apparatus contains abundant and helpful references to the sources (classical, biblical, Patristic) which Erasmus employs in the work. The Concio de Puero Iesu, edited by E. Kearns, was ostensibly written for use at St. Paul’s school, founded by John Colet in 1510, while Erasmus was in London. The school itself was founded with the purpose of educating children in Christian humanist learning. The boys were to read authors who have “eliquence joyned with widsome,” per Colet (159). For Erasmus, though, the child Jesus himself is identified with Wisdom which, as Kearns points out, links this work to the Moria. The ideas here, as in the Moria, are overtly Pauline, with significant resonance with the early chapters of 1 Corinthians: the text begins
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with an explicit distinction between sapientia Christi and sapienti mundi, and notes that Christ’s eloquence differs from that of Cicero. It continues with what amounts to a fascinating meditation on the virtues of childhood, grounded in Jesus’ teachings in this regard. From this perspective in particular the text should be of interest to students of Erasmus’ religious thought alongside his humanism, should one wish to force such a distinction. Formally, the concio is given in the voice not of Erasmus, but of a fellow pupil, making it unique among the conciones, according to Kearns. In addition, the Concio is a pedagogical sermon and, as Kearns points out, already begins to conform to the principles of preaching Erasmus would eventually lay out in the 1535 Ecclesiastes. Thus we have an array of interesting features in a comparatively short text, and, like the previous two pieces mentioned, the Concio enjoyed significant popularity during Erasmus’s lifetime (printed once a year in Strasbourg alone from 1512 to 1524). That the text defies strict categorization is reflected in the history of the printing of it—outlined in Kearns’ introduction—where it is found alongside various of Erasmus’ other texts even in the first half of the sixteenth century. The Disputatiuncula de taedio pavore tristicia Iesu, edited and introduced by André Godin, is an intriguing work from several perspectives. It comprises a polished recounting of an argument Erasmus ostensibly had with John Colet during his stay in England at the very end of the fifteenth century over Christ’s fear in the Garden of Gethsemane. The first version was not published, however, until 1503, and it is not exactly clear when Erasmus wrote it, and the development of the text itself has been disputed by scholars since Allen hazarded to explain how it came about (Godin recounts Allen’s and Fokke’s hypotheses in the introduction). In any case, as Godin points out (196), the disputatiuncula differs profoundly from the sort of scholastic disputation which might have been heard in the universities of the time (although this disputation was presumably held at the University of Oxford!). In form it is a more free-flowing conversation than a rigorous school debate. The focus of the “little dispute” is, primarily, the question of what, precisely, Christ feared in the Garden of Gethsemane (as recounted in the synoptic gospels). Colet has it that it would have been undignified for Christ to have feared his own death—a fear that even the martyrs apparently did not have—and that such fear would contravene his willingness to die for humankind, and so he must have feared something else (perhaps the impending destruction of the Jews, per several patristic authorities). Erasmus counters that the Chalcedonian decree demands that Christ, if he were indeed truly human, fear his own death, for fearing death is simply something that humans do. Fearing death, then, for Erasmus is not an emotional characteristic derivative of Adam’s fall, but is an essential quality of human beings. Among other reasons, it is an important text, and one not
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yet fully appreciated in Erasmus’ corpus, for understanding the development of his reception (or rejection) of certain aspects of Stoic doctrine, which makes it important also from the perspective of theological anthropology and of the history of the emotions. Furthermore, the range of patristic references, often employed in a quite complicated manner, is impressive, and Godin’s notes are indispensible here. The Paraclesis ad lectorem pium, edited here by Charles Béné, is perhaps the best known work of this volume on account of its having served as an introduction to Froben’s 1516 printing of the Novum Instrumentum, for its proposal to rehabilitate (as Béné puts it) the philosophy of Christ as something distinct from worldly philosophies (“elle exige seulement un cœur simple” 282), and for its advocacy for translations of the Bible into vernacular languages. At hardly more than ten modern pages, the Paraclesis is a bargain for all it contains, and one could argue that it is the most concise offering of the essence of Erasmus’ theological program. Also edited by Béné is the Commentarius in duos hymnos Prudentii, Erasmus’ evaluation of two lyrical poems qua liturgical hymns by the fourth-century poet Prudentius, one on Christmas and one on Epiphany, which Erasmus dedicated to Thomas More’s eldest daughter, Margaret Roper, in 1524. The dedication to Margaret comes as a returned favor for all the challenging letters the More sisters had written to Erasmus, and the context of the work has thus come to represent something of Erasmus’ involvement in applauding (and propagating) the education of women in early modern society (Margaret responded by translating Erasmus’ Pater noster into English in the same year). In any case, the commentaries themselves are running commentaries—Erasmus divides the hymns up into manageable chunks and elaborates on both the form and the content—replete, of course, with biblical and classical allusions (made clearer by Béné’s critical apparatus), with occasional specific digressions on turns of phrase, very much like his annotationes on the New Testament. They give us a glimpse of the breadth of Erasmus’ knowledge, and also of his appreciation of poetic forms and the Latin language, which latter we find more explicitly in works like the Ciceronianus. The only complaint this reviewer has—a minor one and not one which can be leveled uniquely at this volume in the series—is of a lack of an index of biblical references. We are told that the names of Bible books are omitted from the index nominum because of their frequent occurrence, but the usefulness of such a tool (especially in an edition of a writer whose pages are riddled with such references and allusions), and the comparative ease of its construction, should outweigh the burden of a few extra pages at the end of each volume. But again, this is a welcome edition and not only for students of Erasmus’ religious thought, for, like most of Erasmus’ works, the texts found here cannot
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be reduced to a single sphere of his thinking. They are valuable for a variety of reasons—whether for considerations of his classical learning, of his philosophical tendencies, or of his Latin style—and the editors have done an excellent job of convincing us of that, explicitly in their introductions, and implicitly in their painstakingly compiled notes to the texts. Kirk A. Essary Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Western Australia
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Erasmus Studies 35 (2015) 89–108
