§ 73. THE FREE-WILL CONTROVERSY. 433
Final Alienation.
The Erasmus-Luther controversy led to some further personalities in which both parties forgot what they owed to their cause and their own dignity. Erasmus wrote a bitter retort, entitled ‘“ Hyperaspistes,” and drove Luther’s predestinarian views to fatalistic and immoral consequences. He also addressed a letter of complaint to Elector John. The outrages of the Peasants’ War confirmed him in his apprehensions. He was alienated from Melanchthon and Justus Jonas. He gave up correspondence with Zwingli, and rather rejoiced in his death.! He spoke of the Reformation as a tragedy, or rather a comedy which always ended in a marriage. He regarded it as a public calamity which brought ruin to arts and letters, and anarchy to the Church.?
He was summoned to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, as a counsellor of the Emperor, but declined because he was sick and conscious of his inability to please either party. He wrote, however, to Cardinal Campeggio, to the bishop of Augsburg, and other friends, to protest against settling questions of doctrine by the sword. His remedy for the evils of the Church was mutual forbearance and the correction of abuses. But his voice was not heeded; the time for compromises and half measures had passed, and the controversy took its course. He devoted his later years chiefly to the
1 When he heard of it in 1531, he wrote to a friend, ‘‘ It is a good thing that two of their leaders have perished, — Zwingli on the battle-field, and CEcolampadius shortly after of fever and abscess.’’ — Op. III. 1422.
2 He gives a deplorable picture of the demoralizing effects of the Reformation in a letter to Geldenhauer in 1526, Opera X. 1578-1580, quoted in full in Latin and German by Dollinger, Die Reformation, I. 13-15. The Strasburg preachers, Capito, Bucer, and Hedio, tried to refute the charges in 1530. Erasmus again came out with the charge, among others, that luxury was never greater, nor adulteries more frequent, than among the self-styled evangelicals, and appeals in confirmation to admissions of Luther, Melanchthon, and Gcolampadius. Some of his last letters, discovered and published by Horawitz (Zrasmiana, 1885, No. IV. p. 44 sqq.), contain similar complaints,
4844 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 15380.
editing of new editions of his Greek Testament, and the writings of the church fathers.
Luther abandoned Erasmus, and abused him as the vainest creature in the world, as an enraged viper, a refined Epicurean, a modern Lucian, a scoffer, a disguised atheist, and enemy of all religion.! We gladly return from this gross injustice to his earlier estimate, expressed in his letter to Erasmus as late as April, 1524: ‘The whole world must bear witness ‘to your successful cultivation of that literature by which we arrive at a true understanding of the Scriptures; and this gift of God has been magnificently and wonderfully displayed in you, calling for our thanks.”
§ 74. Wilibald Pirkheimer.
BILIBALDI PIRKHEIMERI Opera politica, historica, philologica, et epistolica, ed. by M. Goldast, Francf., 1610, fol. With a portrait by A. Durer. His. Encomium Podagre was translated into English by W. Est, The Praise of the Gout, or the Gout’s Apology, a paradox both pleasant and profitable. Lond., 1617.
LAMPE: Zum <Andenken W. P.’s. Niirnberg, 1828. KARL HAGEN: Deutschlands literarische und relig. Verhiltnisse im Ref. Zeitalter. Mit besonderer Riicksicht auf Wilibald Pirkheimer. Erlangen, vol. I., 1841, pp. 188 sqq., 261 sqq., 2d ed. 1868. DOLLINGER: Reformation, vol. I., 161-174. Ὁ. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878, pp. 118 sq.; 227-235; 514-518. LocuHNER: Lebensldiufe beriihmter und verdienter Niirnberger, Nirnb., 1861. Rup. HAGEN: W. P. in seinem Verhdltniss zum Humanismus und zur Reformation, Nurnberg, 1882. Lig. P. DREws: Wilibald Pirkheimer’s Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., 1887 (138 pp.).
About this time, and after the Peasants’ War, the most eminent humanists withdrew from the Reformation, and followed Erasmus into the sheepfold of the mother church, disgusted with the new religion, but without being fully
1 In his letter to Link, March 7, 1529 (in De Wette, III. 426 sq.), he calls Erasmus ‘‘ d6eov, Lucianumque, Epicurum,” and ina letter to his son John, 1533 (De Wette, IV. 497), he says: ‘‘ Erasmus, hostis omnium religionum et inimicus singularis Christi, Epicuri Lucianique perfectum exemplar et idea.” Comp. his judgments in the Tischreden, LXI. 93-113 (Erl. ed.).