§ 69. REUCHLIN AND ERASMUS. 637
Testament, he frequently returns to these subjects. For example, in a note on Matt. 19 : 12 he speaks of the priests "who are permitted to fornicate and may freely keep concubines but not have a wife." ^ Nowhere is his satire more keen on the clergy than in the Praise of Folly. In this most readable book. Folly represented as a female, delivers an oration to an audience of all classes and conditions and is most explicit and elaborate when she discourses on the priests, monks, theologians and the pope. After declaring with consummate irony that of all clasges the theologians were the least dependent upon her, Folly proceeds to exhibit them as able to give the most exquisite solutions for the most perplexing questions, how in the wafer accidents may subsist without a subject, how long a time it required for the Saviour to be conceived in the Virgin's womb, whether God might as easily have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb or a stone as a man. In view of such wonderful metaphysics, the Apostles themselves would have needed a new illuminating spirit could they have lived again.
As for the monks, whose name signifies solitude, they were to be found in every street and alley. They were most precise about their girdles and hoods and the cut of their crowns, yet they easily provoked quarrels, and at last they would have to search for a new heaven, for entrance would be barred them to the old heaven prepared for such as are true of heart. As for the pope, Luther's language never pictured more distinctly the world-wide gulf between what the successor of St. Peter should be and really was, than did the biting sentences of Erasmus. Most liberal, he said, were the popes with the weapons of the Spirit, — interdicts, greater and lesser excommunications, roaring bulls and the like, — which they launch forth with unrestrained vehemence when the authority of St. Peter's chair is attacked. These are they who by their lusts and wickedness grieve the Holy Spirit and make their Saviour's wounds to bleed afresh.*'^ In the Enchiridion., he says, " Apostle, pastor and
1 For a number of quotations, see Froude, 123 sqq.
2 Compare Erasmus' disparaging remarks on the papacy on the occasion of the pageant of Julius II. at Bologna when an arch bore the inscription, "To Julius II., Conqueror of the Tyrant," Faulkner, p. 82 sqq.
638 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
bishop " are names of duties not of government, and papa, pope, and abbas, abbot, are titles of love. The sale of indulgences, saint worship and other mediaeval abuses came in for Erasmus' poignant thrusts.
In addition to his own Annotations and Paraphrases of the New Testament, he edited the first printed edition of Valla's Annotations, which appeared in Paris, 1505. It was his great merit to call attention to the plain meaning of Scripture and_to urge men "to venerate the living and breathing picture of Christ in the sacred books, instead of falling down before statues of wood and stone of him, adorned though they were with gold. What were Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Ockam compared with him, whom the Father in heaven called His beloved Son!" As for the Schoolmen, he said, " I would rather be a pious divine with Jerome than invincible with Scotus. Was ever a heretic converted by their subtleties!"!
The appearance of Erasmus' edition of the Greek Testament at Basel, 1516, marked an epoch in tlie study and understands ^ng of the Scriptures^ It was worth more for the cause of religion than all the other literary works of Erasmus put together, yea, than all the translations and original writings of all the Renaissance writers. The work contained a dedication to Leo X., a man whom Erasmus continued to flatter, as in the epistle dedicating to him his edition of Jerome, but who of all men was destined to oppose the proclamation of the true Gospel. The volume, 672 pages in all, contained the Greek text in one column and Erasmus' own Latin version in the other, together with his annotations. __It was hurried through the press in order^ to anticipate the publication of the New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglot, which was actually printed in 1514, but was not given to the public till 1520. , Tlie editor used three manuscripts of the 12th century, which are still preserved in the university library of Basel and retain the marginal notes of Erasmus and the red lines of the printer to indicate the corresponding pages of the printed edition. Erasmus did not even take the trouble to copy the manuscripts, but sent them, with
1 Paracusis ad lectorem, prefixed to Erasmus' Xeio Testament.