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Erasmus and More: A Friendship Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Abstract
Writing in 1532, the elderly Erasmus reflected on the hazards of marriage and parenthood: friendship, he concluded, is the prime source of comfort in human life, praecipuum humanae vitae solatium, ‘but even there trust is rare and inconstancy is common’. Given the span of acquaintance covered by the eleven volumes of correspondence collected by P. S. Allen in his Erasmi epistolae, Erasmus had plenty of opportunity to test this rather pessimistic view. Indeed, one suspects that it derived as much from his own touchiness as from the unreliability of his friends. Few of his friendships have received so much attention as that which he established with Thomas More, a relationship which lasted some thirty-six years, from Erasmus’ first visit to England in 1499 down to More's execution on 6th July 1535, and indeed until Erasmus’ own more domestic death in Basel almost exactly a year later. From an early date this was seen as a model friendship, something to be celebrated in the Republic of Letters. As we shall see, its religious implications were to prove more complex; but for much of the twentieth century More and Erasmus were conveniently paired as representatives of Christian humanism, a perception reinforced by More's canonization in 1935.
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References
Notes
1 Enarratio Psalmi 38, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi (Amsterdam 1969—hereafter ASD) V-3 220: 859–61.
2 Richard, Marius, Thomas More: a Biography (London 1985) pp. 79, 445;Google Scholar the letter to Tomicki is Ep 3049 in Allen, P. S. (ed.), Erasmi epistolae (Oxford 1906–58—hereafter Allen) XI 217–22Google Scholar (for More see lines 163–4).
3 Ep 118 in Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto 1974—hereafter CWE) 1 236.
4 The visit is described in Ep 1341a, CWE 9 299.
5 ‘Dulce bellum inexpertis’, Adages IV.i.1 in CWE 35 408.
6 Hyperaspistes II in CWE 77 575.
7 A mirror or Glass to Know Thyself, cited in The Complete Works of St Thomas More (New Haven 1965–1997—hereafter CW) 3:i xxiv.
8 CW 3:i 5.
9 CWE 27 32.
10 CWE 7 19 (Ep 999).
11 Marius, Thomas More p. 95; Marius attempts to impose a rather inappropriate template of personal intimacy on what was essentially a meeting of minds.
12 CW 3:ii 234–5 (no. 204).
13 CWE 3 222 (Ep 384).
14 CW 3: ii 266–9 (no. 255) and note; the Spanish censure dates from 1584.
15 As late as September 1516, when he sends the final manuscript to Erasmus, More refers to the work as Nusquama. For the links between the Adagia and Utopia see Phillips, M. M., The Adages of Erasmus (Cambridge 1964) pp. 96–121.Google Scholar
16 ‘Facit imperiosum Morum timide loquentem’. Ep 3052 lines 28–9 in Allen XI 225–6; Goclenius had dedicated his translation of Lucian's Hermotimus to More, see Rogers, E. F. (ed.) The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton 1947) no. 113.Google Scholar
17 CW 15 140/41.
18 The issue is raised at CW 15 212–16.
19 The section is found in ASD V–3 192–98.
20 CW 15 289.
21 CW 15 302–304.
22 Ep 999, CWE 7 24.
23 Ep 2750 in Allen X 137, lines 115–18.
24 ‘Let them be held by a sort of superstitious worship of virtue; let them love her; let them desire to live with her, and refuse to live without her’. Epistulae Morales, tr. R. M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library) XCV. 35.
25 ‘Tametsi quaedam admixta sunt obiter quae faciunt ad bonos mores’. Ep 1301 in CWE 9 130. See also Epp 1296, 1299, 1300.
26 Ep 1697 in CWE 12 164–74.
27 Ep 2037 in Allen VII 460–67, lines 22–38; see also Ep 1704, and for Tunstall Epp 2226 and 2263.
28 CWE 40 621–50; for the two prayers see 633–4. The Icaromenippus was one of the dialogues translated by Erasmus.
29 Nicholas, Harpsfield, The life and death of Sr Thomas Moore, knight, ed Hitchcock, E.V. (EETS, London 1932) p. 209;Google Scholar McConica, J. K., ‘The Recusant Reputation of Thomas More’, in Sylvester, R. S. and Marc'hadour, G. P. (eds), Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More (Hamden 1977) 138–49.Google Scholar For the Marian developments see now Anne, Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (Aldershot 2002);Google Scholar Wizeman, W., The Theology and Spirituality of Mary Tudor's Church (Aldershot 2006)Google Scholar and ‘Martyrs and Anti-Martyrs and Mary Tudor's Church’ in Freeman, T. S. and Mayer, T. F. (eds), Martyrs and Martyrdom in England c. 1400–1700 (Woodbridge 2007) pp. 166–79;Google Scholar Eamon, Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London 2009).Google Scholar
30 The English Works of Sir Thomas More, ed. Campbell, W. E. (London 1931) p. 324.Google Scholar
31 Wizeman, Theology and Spirituality p. 79.
32 Sir Lucius Cary, Late Viscount of Falkland, His Discourse of Infallibility, with an Answer to it: And his Lordships Reply (London 1651) p. 161;Google Scholar Falkland makes a supremely Erasmian observation on the Counter-Reformation Church, ‘I do not believe all to be damned that they damne but I conceive all to be killed that they kill’. For Erasmus’ adoption as an Anglican see Gregory, R. Dodds, Exploiting Erasmus (Toronto 2009).Google Scholar
33 In fact two parallel editions, by J. Bogard and P. Zangrius, appeared at Louvain in that year, and both were reprinted in 1566.
34 Omnia latina opera (Louvain: P. Zangrius 1566) fol. Avi; the letter is no. 217 Google Scholar in Rogers, E. F. (ed.), The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton 1947).Google Scholar On the Buonvisi connection see Duffy, Fires of Faith p. 181.
35 Utopia, edited by George, M. Logan, Robert, M. Adams and Clarence, H. Miller (Cambridge 1995) p. 81.Google Scholar
36 CWE 33 286–90.
37 CWE 4 115 (Ep 481).
38 Ep 829 in CWE 5 400–2.
39 CWE 34 75.
40 The History of the Life (2nd edition, 2 vols, London 1767) I 130–31.Google ScholarPubMed
41 The History of the Life, I 180–82; Ep 103 in CWE I 193.
42 Ep 785 in CWE 5 327.
43 Ep 980 in CWE 6 391–93.
44 Ratio verae theologiae in H. and Holborn, A. (eds), Erasmus Ausgewälte Werke (Munich 1933; repr. 1964) p. 193;Google Scholar cf Paracusis, ibid. pp. 144–45.
45 De sarcienda ecclesiae concordia in ASD V-3 289:100–01.
46 Hyperaspistes I in CWE 76 86, 151; De Concordia in ASD V-3 304:625–30.
47 Epistola ad fratres inferioris Germaniae in ASD IX-1 422: 1098–1101; De Concordia in ASD V-3 301:513–15. For Lerna malorum, ‘A pile of troubles’ see Adagia I.iii.27.
48 Ecclesiastes in ASD V-5 338:536–38; Enarratio psalmi 38 in ASD V-3 157:388–89.
49 ASD V-3 306:714–307:746; for synkatabasis see 304:617.
50 In the same way Erasmus sees such coexistence as a means to converting the Turk, De bello Turcico in CWE 64 265.
51 See Yvonne, Charlier, Erasme et l'Amitié d'après sa Correspondence (Paris 1977) 305.Google Scholar
52 Ep 2522 in Allen IX 322:167–77.
53 A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, CW 6:1 416.
54 Confutation of Tyndale's Answer in CW 8:1 28.
55 CW 8:1 177, 179.
56 Ep 2659 in Allen X 31–4; on its publication see Ep 2831, More's last letter to Erasmus.
57 The life (see no. 29 above) p. 109.
58 Ep 2750 in Allen X 137:120–22.
59 Vives, Ep 2932; Koler, Ep 2953:24–46; Goclenius, Ep 3037:92–113.
60 Ep 3036:102–04.
61 So von Stadion, in response to the dedication of Ecclesiastes, regrets that Erasmus did not elaborate more on his allusion to Herod (i.e. Henry VIII); see also Ep 3085 from Damiâo de Gois.