With 1517 begins a distinctly new period in Erasmus's life. The Reformation, under Luther's vehement leadership, seemed at first to he only the practical application of ideas which he had always proclaimed. Hitherto he bad been the critic, admired and dreaded; henceforth he was to be rather an apologist, not really trusted by either side, yet throwing his weight, unwillingly, now into one, now into the other scale. Personally he always refused to take sides. Ile remained a Catholic•, aml always so declared himself, though he associated much with the Reformers, among whom he counted many of his friends. lie continued his assaults on the evils and errors of the clerical powers, hut to be called a Lutheran drove him to fury. In the course of the Lutheran controversy Erasmus was drawn out especially by Ulrich von Mitten, once his most ardent ad mirer and follower, hut now so disappointed and irritated by his hesitancy that he could not re strain himself. In his Ey/Josh/MN° he charged Erasmus openly with concealing his real opin ions for fear of consequences, and Erasmus re plied in his Spongia Adrersus Asperginrs Hutteni (1523), declaring his respect for the Holy See, while at the same time he admits that he had opposed many of its extravagtnees. Urged on both sides to write something that would be de cisive as to his theological position. he replied with the treatise De Librro Arbitrio (1524). In this he inveighs against Luther. who replied with the polemical treatise De Servo Arbitrio (-want scream Des. Erasmum. Stung by Luther's invec tive. Erasmus answered in his Hyperaspist•s Dia tribe rontra serrum Arbitrivaan Lutbrri, in \Odell be complains of the violence and bitterness of Lu ther's attack in a manner no less violent and hitter.
Erasmus is often thought of as chiefly a pre cursor of the Reformation. And yet, in the sense in which the term is used of men like Luther and Calvin, he never was a reformer at all. Upon ignorance and superstition he waged unrelenting war; but it. was in the spirit of the humanist, not of the theologian, and the witty mockery of a Lucian was far more to his taste than the reli gious fervor of a Saint Augustine. Ile was the incarnation of cool, critical common sense, with an unshaken faith in the necessity and efficacy, alike in the secular and ecclesiastical sphere. of liberal studies and freedom of thought. It seemed to him inevitable that increase of knowledge would of itself bring about a peaceful reform of abuses in the Church. He had, too, the scholar's of extren \i v s. which made it oillicult for him tr side ,it. :nit with either party. and scholar's W•• all its openness t. net I eas. is Nt I loath to up torn cd•us/cratel the life of the past. it in ny W \ u. W t n be brdati ed into them.
In tact. In net, r really understood] the fort-es that were :dt wd rk is the religious struggle: and in has 1, t • r•, spt. king of his own participation in it. 1, i r s C.; r. etainorphosis of the worship ( r of the \Ins into a gladiator. But in the to his of Humanism he was easily the foremost A of us age. The range of his reading in , both Latin and Greek, was extraordi narily wide, and he was scarcely less familiar •sith tbe most prominent of the Latin and Greek I. Hier, Ile travel, and, being by nature a ke,.n and thoughtful iibserver, of social temper and ; ivaeious conversation, had acquired. a varied kn )N1 ledp• of men and manners in the frequent changes of residence, made for the sake of more favorable opportunities of work and study. A mind so well stored and possessed of so gay and nimble a fancy might be expected to show remark able powers of productivity, and in fact Eras mus did compose some of his happiest and most characteristic things in an exceedingly short space of time. The Encomium llorice, fin- instance, was sketched during his journey from Italy. and written out from his notes in days during his stay in Sir Thomas :Slore's house in London. Still, splendid is was as his equipment, the amount and range of his intellectual activity is little short of the marvelous. For he was by no means
a genius, and his scholarly labors were accom plished only by industry. No one did more than he to restore ancient letters. He published editions of the works of Aristotle and Di.mosthenes, and translations of several of the plays of Euripides. of the greater part of Lucian, •ind of the .11oralia of Plutareh. Ile edited, either in whole or in part. among other Latin authors, 'Terence. Cicero,. and Livy, and, in addition, a long series of patristic writers. In 15113, in the preface to an edition of Lorenzo tations to the Yea- Testament, he maintained that a correct translation of the Bible could be made only by a trained philologist, and that there was need of a critical revision of the orig inal Greek text and of a new. translation. Sub sequently, he decided to undertake this work him self: and in a letter to Colet, dated :\lay, 151:2, he says that he has already collated the New Testament with the ancient Greek manuscripts, and annotated it in more than a thousand places. \I. the same time he was actively engaged upon a new edition, in nine folio volumes, of Saint Jerome. Froben, press at Basel became for a while, through the editorial •o3peration of Erasmus, the most important in Europe, has left us a vivid acemint of his incessant study, and writing, in and about the printing bourse. ss hen these two works were approaching completion. "In the midst of all, visitors of rank would make no scruple of calling on hint and in ternipt ing him about some trifle or other; one would try to wheedle him out of an epigram, another to gain immortality by a letter. And how did he, the most easy, good natmed man in the world, yet on these oe•asions? Did he refuse? Did be manifest impatience? Ile was fully occu pied in writing- break off his employments he could not. Yet be did, at odd moments, as he went to and from mass, anything to oblige," His correspondence was voluminous, so that at times he had to write forty letters in one day, and often to men or women of high rank and dis tinction, who were personally strangers to him. The medium of all his work was Latin. He re fused the position of public reader at Louvain because of his imperfect mastery of Dutch, thbugh it was his native tongue. Of French he had some slight command, of English and Italian none. But Latin 'was still the colloquial language of scholars, and the regular medium of formal coin nmnieation. In the hands of Erasmus it has all the vitality of a living language. with a vocabu lary drawn from many different sources, a syntax carefully classical, and a style wholly modern and individual, the charm of which is the expression of the man's own character.
The best guide to the writings of Erasmus is the Ribliotheca Erasmiana, edited by the Uni versity Library of Ghent (1893), of which a new edition is in progress. Under the same editor ship a still more complete Bibliotheca Erasmiana, in 16mo form, has been appearing in parts since 1897. There are editions of the complete works by Beatus Rhenantis (9 vols.. Basel, 1540) and J. Le Clere (10 vols., fol., Amsterdam, 1703-06). Erasmus himself collected many of his letters for pnblieation, and in the years following his death several incomplete editions appeared. The more important later editions are those of .1\lerula (Leyden, 1607), the 'London Edition' of 1642 (in 2 vols., fol.), and vol. iii. of Le Clere. Selec tions from the early letters have been published in an English translation by F. M. Nichols (vol. i., London, 1901). Attempts to fix the very uncertain chronology of Erasmus's life have been made by Richter, Erasmus-Studien (Dres den, 1891) ; Reich, Untersuchungen, etc. (Treves, 1896) ; and Nichols, as above. For the life of Erasmus, consult: Knight (Cambridge, 1726) ; Durand de Lam. (Paris. 1872) ; Drummond (Lon don, 1873) ; Fronde, Lectures (London, 1894) ; Emerton (New York, 1899) ; Pennington (Lon don, 1901).