PART II. commentators on the Clementines had the hardihood to CHAP. V. assert, that Greek had never been included in the original decree that received the pontiff's signature1; but the testimony of Erasmus, and his comments on the motives that had led to the alteration, are satisfactory evidence that their assertion obtained no credence among scholars; and his letter to Christopher Fisher (in which his observations are to be found) is an interesting indication of the approach of the great struggle between the old theology and the new scholarship. thers begin to known. ence on the nent Human It is evident that the prejudices against Greek did not diminish as its literature, especially the patristic writings, began to be better known. An acquaintance with the early Threek faGreek fathers awakened in many only additional mistrust; be better and that acquaintance was now more easily to be gained. Traversari had translated portions of the writings of both St. Chrysostom and St. Basil; versions of the latter had also appeared from the competent hand of Theodorus Gaza; George of Trebizond had given to the world translations of some of the treatises of Eusebius. But the chief alarm Their influwas undoubtedly excited, not by the direct study of these and views of emisimilar writers, but by the tone of thought and occasional ists. bold expressions of those who were able to form their opinions on the subject without the aid of translations. Sentiments were now to be heard which sounded strangely in the ears of men who had been taught to regard Augustine as an infallible oracle. Vitrarius,—that noble Franciscan in whom, Vitrarius. and in whom alone, Erasmus could recognise a genius that might compare with that of Colet,-preferred Origen,-Arian though he was called,—to any of the other fathers; Erasmus Erasmus. himself, who entertained a decided preference for the Greek theology, declared that Jerome was worth the whole of the PART II. Colet. CHAP. V. Latin fathers; and even ventured to point out how far, by virtue of his long and arduous study of the Scriptures and his real knowledge of Greek, he was entitled to rank as an authority above Augustine, who knew but little of the language, and whose labours had been carried on amid the onerous duties of his episcopate'; Colet, though ignorant of Greek, shared the same views, and, of all the fathers, seems to have liked Augustine the least; Reuchlin confessed to an admiration for Gregory of Nazianzum far exceeding that which he felt for any of the oracles of the western Church?. True cause of It is hardly necessary to point out that none of the early Greek fathers could fairly be charged with the special heresy Greek fathers of the Greek Church, for they had lived and written long posite party. before the doctrine of the Filioque became a subject of dis Reuchlin. the dislike shewn towards the by the op Greek and the Latin theology con trasted. pute: nor can it be said that they gave countenance to the Reformers, by affording authority for rejecting the method of interpretation that characterised the medieval Church,-for, as is well known, it was this very same allegorising spirit, in the works of the Alexandrian fathers, that Porphyry singled out for special attack; nor did they necessarily encourage an appeal from the ceremonial traditions of the Romish Church, as countenanced by Isidorus and the Decretals, for Laud and Andrewes are to be found among their chief admirers in the Spirit of the seventeenth century. The gravamen of the charge against them, in the days of Erasmus, was, that they favored rebellion against the authority of Augustine. The theologian, as he turned their pages, found himself in a new atmosphere; he sought in vain for those expressions so familiar to the western. Church, the reflex of the legal ideas that dominated in the Roman mind,' merit,' 'forensic justification,' 'satisfaction,' 'imputed righteousness; he found little that favored the doctrine of predestination; while there was often discernible a tolerance of spirit, a diversity of opinion, and a wide sympathy with whatever was most noble in pagan philosophy, which fascinated the man of letters no less than it alarmed the dogmatist. Nor was it possible to deny that, compared with Augustine, these early Greek fathers stood for the most Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, p. 362. 2 Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, p. 99. PART II. part much closer to apostolic times, and were more nearly CHAP. V. related, not only chronologically but ethnically and geographically, to the most ancient Christian Churches; that some of them, a fact singularly calculated to win the reverence of mediæval minds, had lived, written, died, in that very land 'Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed sumed by the tinian party. that land for the recovery of which Christendom had so long and so unsuccessfully contended. It was thus that some even Position asventured to maintain that Augustine, and not Origen or Euse- anti-Augusbius, was the real schismatic, and such was the position taken up by those who at a later period advocated the doctrine of free-will. 'I follow the doctrine of the Greek Church,' says Burnet, in the preface to his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, 'from which St. Austin departed and founded a new system.' of Augus ence. But the authority of the great African father, intertwined Permanence with the traditions of a thousand years, was not easily to tine's inflube set aside; and whether we consider the teaching of Luther or of Calvin, of the Romish or of the Lutheran Church, it must be admitted that Augustinianism has held its ground with remarkable tenacity. The educated few and the philosophic divine have from time to time risen in revolt against its sombre tenets; the eminent school of Platonists that graced the university of Cambridge in the seventeenth century, were distinguished by their advocacy of a different doctrine; but with the systematic theologian and the rigid dogmatist, not less than with the illiterate multitude, the traditional theory has always commanded by far the more ready assent. Eusebius. There is a story told by Eusebius, in his Præparatio story from Evangelica, concerning the deacon Dionysius Alexandrinus, which certainly had its moral for the theologians of Oxford and Cambridge in Erasmus's day. Dionysius, it seems, was in the habit of reading the works of heretical writers, being desirous of knowing the arguments of those from whom he dissented, in order that he might the more successfully refute them. An elder of the church however remonstrated with him on this practice, and pointed out the danger he ran of PART II. CHAP. V. becoming contaminated by the specious reasonings of error. Dionysius admitted the justice of the rebuke, and would have probably for ever turned aside from such literature, had he not been reassured by a dream from heaven (opapa ОεÓжEμπтOV), and heard a voice utter these words:—‘Examine whatever comes into thy hands; for thou art able to correct and to test all doctrine, and the foundations of thy faith were laid even in this manner'. Perhaps if this story could have been brought under the notice of those who, at this time, were denouncing the study of Greek in the universities of Germany, France, and England, it might have been not without avail in inducing them to reconsider the reasonableness of their opposition. But unfortunately the passage lay hid in that very literature which they so greatly feared; and the Grecian muse,-as, to use the expression of Argyropulos, she winged her flight across the Alps,-seems to have been regarded by the great majority as little better than an Greek studies evil spirit. Erasmus himself, ardent as was his love of regarded as learning, was well-nigh turned back in his youth from the pursuit of lore which might expose him to the imputation of heresy; he could not forbear giving expression to his surprise, on hearing Vitrarius praise Origen, that a friar should thus admire a heretic; to which the gentle Franciscan could only reply, that he would never believe that one who wrote with so much learning and fervent piety could be otherwise than divinely inspired. Even the application of a knowledge of Greek to the text of Aristotle was looked upon by Reuchlin's many with suspicion; and Reuchlin tells us that when he Basel. first attempted such a method of treatment at Basel, and begin to be heretical. experience at was already diverting large numbers from the disputations of the schools, he was vehemently assailed by the seniors of the university, who declared that to give instruction in the opinions of schismatic Greeks was contrary to the faith and 'an idea only to be scouted". It was precisely the same spirit 1 Πᾶσιν ἐντύγχανε οἷς ἂν εἰς χεῖρας λάβοις· διευθύνειν γὰρ ἕκαστα καὶ δοκιμάζειν ἱκανὸς εἶ, καί σοι γέγονε τοῦτο ἐξαρχῆς καὶ τῆς πίστεως αἴτιον. Hist. Eccles. lib. vII c. 7. Migne, xx 648. 2 Dedication to Cardinal Hadrian, prefixed to his De Accentibus et Orthographia, quoted by Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, p. 17. PART II. Prevalence of that was now beginning to manifest itself at Oxford. In CHAP. V. many cases, no doubt, those who were loudest in their outcries against Greek, would have been quite unable to prove, Pesame by the citation of a single passage, the existence of those ford. heretical tenets in the Greek fathers from which they professed to shrink with such alarm; and it may serve as evidence how little the much-vaunted logical training of those times availed to preserve the judgement from error, that the majority of the dialecticians at both Oxford and Cambridge saw no inaccuracy in the framing of a syllogism, which, having for its major premise the admitted heterodoxy of certain Greek authors, deduced from thence the necessity of excluding the whole body of Greek literature. At Oxford however, as we have already explained, these prejudices were most active; and it is in every way probable that the knowledge of this fact materially influenced Erasmus in his election between the two universities1, and decided him to make his first essay as a teacher of Greek in England, under the powerful protection of bishop Fisher at Cambridge. Erasmus. In entering upon the experiences that now befell the Character of great scholar, some attention to the peculiarities of his character will perhaps be of service, in enabling us to form our conclusions without injustice either to himself or to the university. It is impossible to deny to Erasmus the attribute of genius, though that genius was certainly not of the highest order, and sympathetic rather than creative in its manifestations. He could appreciate and assimilate with remarkable power whatever was best and most admirable in the works of others, and it would be difficult to name a scholar, whose influence has been equally enduring, gifted with a like capacity for recognising true excellence in whatever quarter it might appear. But nothing that Erasmus himself designed or executed, strikes us as of more than secondary merit. He left behind no such finely-wrought conception as the Utopia of More; he lacked altogether the prophetic instinct of Colet; in his boldest enterprise, his Novum Instrumentum, he was inspired by Valla; the most powerful passages of the Enco 1 See infra, p. 496, n. 3. |