§ 71. ERASMUS. 415
His books were burned in Spain, and long after his death placed on the Index in Rome.
In his last word to his popish enemies who identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he writes: ‘ For the future I despise them, and I wish 1 had always done so; for it is no pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout defiance of divine and human laws, ‘ We ought to obey God rather than men.’ That was well said by the Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety ; only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye well.” }
His Works.
The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes : — |
I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvellous industry and enterprise.
He published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian.
He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516-1518; ed. ii. 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Treneus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1580), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the “Christian Demosthenes”), Origen (in Latin, 1586). He wrote the prefaces and dedications.
He published the Annotations of Laurentius Valla on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library.
1 Des. Erasmi Epistola ad quosdam impudentissimos Graculos (jackdaws). Op. IX. Pars II. (or vol. X.), p. 1745; Drummond, II. 265 sq.
416 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
The most important of his edited works is the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation.! |
II. Original works on general literature.
His “ Adages” (Adagia), begun at Oxford, dedicated to Lord Mountjoy, first published in Paris in 1500, and much enlarged in subsequent editions,” is an anthology of forty-one hundred and fifty-one Greek and Latin proverbs, similitudes, and sentences, — a sort of dictionary and commonplace-book, brimful of learning, illustrations, anecdotes, historical and biographical sketches, attacks on monks, priests, and kings, and about ten thousand quotations from Greek poets, literally translated into the Latin in the metre of the original.
“The Praise of Folly” (Hneomium Morice)* was written on a journey from Italy to England, and finished in the house of his congenial friend, Sir Thomas More (whose name in Greek means “ Fool”), as a jeu @esprit, in the manner of his favorite Lucian. It introduces Folly personified as a goddess, in ironical praise of the merits, and indirect ridicule of the perversities, of different classes of society. It abounds in irony, wit, and humor, in keen observations of men and things, and contains his philosophy of life. The wise man is the most miserable of men, as is proved by the case of Socrates, who only succeeded in making himself ridiculous; while the fool is the happiest man, has no fear of death or hell, no tortures of conscience, tells always the truth, and is indispensable to the greatest of monarchs, who cannot even dine
1 On this see the critical introductions to the New Testament; Scrivener’s Introd. to the Criticism of the N.T., 3d ed., pp. 429-434; Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Test., 3d ed., pp. 229-232; and Drummond, I. 308 sqq.
2 The last edition before me, Adagiorum Chiliades ... ex officina Frobenia, 1536, contains 1087 pages folio, with an alphabetical index of the Proverbs. See vol. II. of the Leiden ed. For extracts see Drummond, I. ch. X,
8 Μωρίας ᾿Εγκώμιον, id est Stultitice Laus, first printed 1510 or 1511. Op. IV. 405-507. There is a neat edition of the Encomium and the Colloquia by Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1829. Drummond (I. 184 sqq.) gives a good summary of the contents.