Interpretations of Erasmus, c. 1750-1920: Man on his own (review)

Reviews 159 book is necessary. This is a slim book, largely because there are on average 630 words to a page, in a typescript small enough to cause the reader some discomfort. The author has been badly served by his publisher and the contents merit a more generous treatment. N o matter how persuasive the contents, the physical access to them must also be of concern to author, publisher, and reader. Margaret Burrell Department of French University of Canterbury Mansfield, Bruce, Interpretations of Erasmus, c. 1750-1920: Man on his own, Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1992; cloth; pp. x, 512; 12 plates; R.R.P. CAN$75.00. This is the second volume of Professor Mansfield's study of the interpretations of Erasmus from c. 1550 to 1920. The first volume was also published by Toronto University Press as Phoenix of his Age: interpretations of Erasmus c. 1550-1750 (1979). It continues the survey of the main interpretations of Erasmus where the first volume left off. The book is divided into two main parts, namely 'Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Revolution' and 'The Nineteenth Century and After', with Notes, a Bibliography, and an Index. The illustrations are mostly photographs of some famous nineteenth-century interpreters of Erasmus, and of their works. Mansfield's approach is a very apposite one: 'The work rests therefore on the assumption that there is a connection between the observers' own biographies and historical situations and their responses to the historical figure Erasmus's (p. 347). Thus he rightly points out that 'even where issues of scholarship are primary and the scholarly achievements are great..., Erasmus cannot be approached or interpreted without personal commitments, attachments, or antipathies entering in' (p. 361). For example, the 19th- and early 20thcentury liberal scholarship of Erasmus shared a bias which in essence was: 'Erasmus stood for a more open religion, for more critical scholarship, for a moretolerantsociety'. But Mansfied goes on to caution us that 'the limitations of this interpretation are apparent above all a certain shallowness—Erasmus's thought seems too sunny, too much of a piece, too free of ambiguities. A simplifying process has gone on. One may state the principle: in assessing rival interpretations of a historical figure and his influence, it is complexity that carried conviction' (pp. 373-74) For the 18th century, Werner Kaegi's harsh but just judgment applies equally to Erasmus: the philosophes 'cited Erasmus, but scarcely read him' (p. 15). The big exception, as always, was Gibbon, who, by proposing the theory of two reformations, one the commonly-understood one started by Luther, and the other the broader and more far-reaching reformation by Erasmus, gave 160 Reviews one of the crucial approaches to placing Erasmus in his proper context. But Gibbon was head and shoulders above the rest who wrote history in the 18th century. The German historians of the Enlightenment preferred Hutten, and above all Luther, to Erasmus, but one should not forget that Wieland introduced the notion of 'character' which was to obsess 19th-century writers. The Romantic age was to relish such a simplistic dichotomy between the simple but strong Luther and the sophisticated but weak Erasmus. Gottlob Wagner's dictum that 'every great man puts his stamp on the age. M e n on w h o m the age, to the contrary, puts its stamp are surely small and insignificant' (p. 76),typifies this approach. This was a standard Protestant interpretation. Erasmus showed the way, but was too timorous to pick up thefightfor the Reformation. Luther was a true reformer and champion of orthodoxy. There were, however, notable exceptions. Thus Ranke portrayed Erasmus as a journalist, a critic, and a shrewd connoisseur of public opinion. But even those who were not Protestant found it hard to avoid comparing Erasmus unfavorably with Luther. Thus Michelet 'responded unsympathetically to Erasmus' personality', for to him, as for many others, Luther's Reformation was 'the renaissance of the heart' (pp. 141-42). As Mansfield points out, 'the contrast between Luther, passionate, dominating, appealing to the masses, and Erasmus, prudent, timid, appealing to an 61ite, is predictable'. It is based on the idea that 'in Germany at least the Renaissance...