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Erasmus on Literature and Knowledge

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Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England

Part of the book series: Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature ((CKEML,volume 1))

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Abstract

‘What we desire is that nothing may stand forth with greater certainty than the truth itself, whose expression is the more powerful, the simpler it is’. Erasmus’ preface to his edition of the Greek New Testament makes a claim that is at once unexceptional and radical. He appears to be doing something entirely traditional: basing the claims to Christian ‘truth’ on scripture. But what does he mean by ‘scripture’? Scripture, he asserts, is a type of literature, and therefore embodies a distinctive form of knowledge. It requires understanding of languages; of history, geography, the human sciences; also of rhetoric and the figures of speech; and indeed a theory of mimesis or representation and an account of affect. This essay addresses the relationship between sacrae litterae and bonae litterae in a range of works from the Enchiridion (1501) to the Convivium religiosum (1522), looking especially at the New Testament works on literary meaning and the practice of Theology: Paraclesis (1516) and Ratio seu methodus verae theologiae (1518).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Aristotle, Poetics, pp. 4–5. Further refs follow the standard citation, here Aristotle, Poetics, 1447a.

  2. 2.

    Lucas, Aristotle: Poetics, p. 55. Aristotle uses the noun mīmēsis and the verb mīmeisthai interchangeably for all these artistic forms.

  3. 3.

    Aristotle, Poetics, 1447b.

  4. 4.

    Russell, Criticism in Antiquity, p. 43.

  5. 5.

    In Minnis & Scott, Medieval Literary Theory, pp. 277–313.

  6. 6.

    Javitch, ‘Assimilation of Aristotle’s poetics’.

  7. 7.

    Davies, Aldus Manutius, p. 20.

  8. 8.

    Javitch, ‘Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics’, p. 55.

  9. 9.

    Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, pp. 293–98.

  10. 10.

    Monfasani, ‘Erasmus and the philosophers’, p. 51, n. 18.

  11. 11.

    Husner, ‘Die Bibliothek des Erasmus’, p. 241.

  12. 12.

    Williams, Keywords, p. 184.

  13. 13.

    Foucault, L’ordre du discours, p. 24.

  14. 14.

    Greenblatt, ‘What Is the history of literature?’, p. 467.

  15. 15.

    Chomarat, Grammaire et Rhétorique, i, pp. 21–22.

  16. 16.

    Stock, Implications of Literacy, pp. 26–27.

  17. 17.

    Chomarat, Grammaire et Rhétorique, i. 20 and following.

  18. 18.

    Ep. 1 to Johannes von Botzheim, 23 January 1523; Opus epistolarum Erasmi, ed. Allen, i.9 (henceforth EE). The letter was subsequently used as a Preface to collected works editions of Erasmus in his lifetime and afterwards.

  19. 19.

    Reference to eloquentia in Valla is omnipresent; on its relation to theology see especially the Proemium to Book IV: Elegantiae linguae latinae, fo. lxxir.

  20. 20.

    Moss, Renaissance Truth, p. 47.

  21. 21.

    Chomarat, Grammaire et Rhétorique, ii, p. 1222.

  22. 22.

    Mack, History of Renaissance Rhetoric, p. 77.

  23. 23.

    Cummings, ‘Erasmus and the end of grammar’, pp. 265–66.

  24. 24.

    For the Ciceronian idea in a Renaissance context, see Mack, History of Renaissance Rhetoric, pp. 21–22.

  25. 25.

    Ocker, Biblical Poetics, p. 5.

  26. 26.

    Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible, pp. 40–41.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 97.

  28. 28.

    Ocker, Biblical Poetics, p. 179.

  29. 29.

    Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, pp. 3–10.

  30. 30.

    Ep. 15; Patrologia Latina, ed. J-P. Migne, 22: 356. This and further references are to the Patrologia Latina Database [PL].

  31. 31.

    Ep. 53; PL, 22: 540.

  32. 32.

    Nauta, In Defence of Common Sense, p. 45.

  33. 33.

    De copia verborum ac rerum, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Recognita (henceforth ASD). English translation in Collected Works, 24: 295 (henceforth CWE).

  34. 34.

    Ep. 844 to Johannes Eck, 15 May 1518; EE, iii.338; CWE, 6: 36.

  35. 35.

    Ep. 858 to Paul Volz, 14 August 1518; CWE, 6: 74.

  36. 36.

    EE, iii.363.

  37. 37.

    Erasmus, De libero arbitrio, in Erasmus von Rotterdam: Ausgewählte Schriften, iv.2.

  38. 38.

    English translation by Rupp, in Luther and Erasmus, p. 35.

  39. 39.

    Erasmi Roterodami Stultitiae laus…. A full list of editions of the Encomium Moriae is given by Clarence H. Miller in ASD, IV/i: 40–61.

  40. 40.

    Ciceronianus es, non Christianus; PL, 22: 416.

  41. 41.

    CWE, 61: 190.

  42. 42.

    ‘Anyone who is ignorant of eloquence is unworthy to speak of theology’: Valla, Elegantiae linguae latinae, fo. lxxiiv.

  43. 43.

    Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus: Ausgewählte Werke, p. 139.

  44. 44.

    English translation by Olin, Selected Writings of Erasmus, p. 98.

  45. 45.

    Rhetorica ad Herennium, p. 274. Lorenzo Valla’s rejection of Cicero’s authorship was accepted by Erasmus, but this textbook remained standard.

  46. 46.

    Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 12.10.69–72; v.318–20.

  47. 47.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 140; Olin, Selected Writings of Erasmus, pp. 98–99.

  48. 48.

    Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, VI, xxi; PL, 6: 713B.

  49. 49.

    Ep. 22 Ad Eustochium; PL, 22: 416.

  50. 50.

    LorenzoValla, Elegantiae linguae latinae, fo. lxxir-v.

  51. 51.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 141.

  52. 52.

    Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 100.

  53. 53.

    Luther , De servo arbitrio, in D. Martin Luthers Werke, WA 18.607.10.

  54. 54.

    WA 18.656.15.

  55. 55.

    Erasmus, De libero arbitrio, in Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Welzig, iv.10.

  56. 56.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 142.

  57. 57.

    Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 101.

  58. 58.

    Enchiridion Militis Christiani, caput VIII, canon V, in Opera Omnia, ed. Leclerc, LB, V: 29b.

  59. 59.

    CWE 66: 67–68.

  60. 60.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 140; Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 99.

  61. 61.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 141; Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 99.

  62. 62.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 144.

  63. 63.

    Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 103.

  64. 64.

    Camporeale, ‘Poggio Bracciolini’, p. 28.

  65. 65.

    First printed in Colloquia familiaria (Basel: Johannes Froben) of March, 1522, with only the introduction; the full text appeared in an edition by the same printer later in the same year, probably August.

  66. 66.

    Text in ASD I/iii.

  67. 67.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 146.

  68. 68.

    Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 105.

  69. 69.

    De copia, ASD, I/vi.; CWE, 24: 577.

  70. 70.

    Rigolot, ‘The rhetoric of presence’, p. 165.

  71. 71.

    Eden, Renaissance Rediscovery of Intimacy, p. 73.

  72. 72.

    Enchiridion, translated in CWE, 66: 72.

  73. 73.

    See the footnote in CWE, 66: 72.

  74. 74.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 149.

  75. 75.

    Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. Olin, p. 108.

  76. 76.

    For further discussion in relation to the Enchiridion, see Cummings, ‘Erasmus and the invention of literature’, pp. 34–36.

  77. 77.

    Ratio Verae Theologiae, in Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 190.

  78. 78.

    Quintilian was known in excerpts in the Middle Ages, but the full text was not disseminated until after Poggio Bracciolini’s ‘discovery’ of a manuscript in St Gallen. On changes between the medieval and Renaissance reception of Quintilian , see Ward, ‘Cicero and Quintilian’ , pp. 78–79.

  79. 79.

    Jeanneret, ‘Renaissance exegesis’, p. 40.

  80. 80.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 180.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., p. 224.

  82. 82.

    Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, p. 231.

  83. 83.

    Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Holborn, p. 238.

  84. 84.

    Ibid., p. 244.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., p. 260.

  86. 86.

    Ibid., p. 284.

  87. 87.

    ‘Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? quid Academiae et Ecclesiae? Quid haereticis et Christianis?’ De praescriptione haereticorum, VII; PL, 2: 20B.

  88. 88.

    Ep. 337 to Maarten van Dorp, Antwerp [May] 1515, EE, ii.101; CWE, 3: 124–25.

  89. 89.

    Encomium Moriae, ASD, IV/iii.192; CWE, 27: 152.

  90. 90.

    Adagia, III iii 1.

  91. 91.

    EE, ii.104; CWE, 3: 128.

  92. 92.

    Encomium Moriae, ASD, IV/iii.192–93; CWE, 27: 152.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, York, UK

    Brian Cummings

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  1. Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Subha Mukherji

  2. Department of Politics, University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Tim Stuart-Buttle

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Cummings, B. (2018). Erasmus on Literature and Knowledge. In: Mukherji, S., Stuart-Buttle, T. (eds) Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England. Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, vol 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71359-5_2

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