The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 2082 to 2203, 1529. Collected Works of Erasmus by Desiderius Erasmus (review)

On April 17, 1529, Louis Berquin was burned at the stake. Condemned for heresy by the faculty of the Sorbonne, he would not renounce the evidence: his conviction that the Bible should be translated into French and his French translations of Erasmus’ Brevis admonitio de modo orandi, Encomium matrimonii, selected Colloquies, and Querela Pacis. Even dead Berquin was not done. Soon after his execution his French translation of Erasmus’ Enchiridion appeared.

By then Erasmus was in serious trouble, attacked in print in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany, shocked to learn his books were burned, and afraid for his life. He learned of Berquin’s execution by early May, a frightening sign of the dangers around him. He fled Basel, long his happy home, when it joined the Reformation. Volume 15 of the Collected Works of Erasmus (hereafter CWE) translates and annotates Erasmus’ correspondence in that turbulent year.

In 1529 books suffered death and indignity. Erasmus learned of a book nailed to a gibbet and another returned to a library, smeared with excrement (CWE 15.144, 145, 260). He wrote, “In this age nothing could be written without offending someone or other” (CWE 15.379). Horror filled his hyperbole: “No one, from the dawn of the church to the present time, has witnessed, or read, or heard about such tumults as we see, or rather, suffer, today.” And why so much suffering? In 1529 such a question was submitted to God. “I recognize in this the work of divine providence. He is testing his chosen ones, like gold in the refiner’s fire” (CWE 15.179). The fire came to his doorstep: “I am not safe from threats . . . from those who plot my physical destruction” (CWE 15.181).

By 1529 Basel had given Erasmus more religious fervor than he could bear. He saw iconoclasts spoil Basel’s churches. “I must flee the nest where I have felt at home for so many years. I am afraid that what happened to those saints, both male and female, is an omen of what will happen one day to me also” (CWE 15.139). Quarrels over scripture took up arms. It was time to go. But where?

He was “lured to England with lavish promises” and offered a rich annuity if he returned to the Netherlands. King Ferdinand invited him to Vienna and King Francis I to Paris, where Berquin burned. Anton Fugger promised him 100 gold florins for moving expenses and 100 more each year if he would move to Augsburg (CWE 15.247–48). The invitations were generous and tempting but Erasmus was old, unwell, and unwilling to travel far. Rather than a court or capital he chose Freiburg im Breisgau, not far from Basel, in safely Catholic Baden-Württemberg (CWE 15.245–46). The city gave him a house fit for an emperor and he returned to work.

CWE 15 brings into English the first half of volume 8 of P. S. Allen and Helen Allen’s indispensable Erasmi Epistolae (1934), and adds another letter, #2178A, unknown to the Allens. It is very well vetted volume, improved by the input of eminent Erasmians. Alexander Dalzell, its translator, also translated CWE 10, 11, and 12; its annotator, James M. Estes, also annotated CWE 9, 10, and 14. Their work on CWE 15 sustains the high standards set by the edition: clearly accessible English, keyed to the Latin editions of Leiden and Amsterdam, with reliable and extensive cross references, explanatory notes, and a thorough index. It is well designed, printed on acid-free paper, sewn, and jacketed.

Dalzell converts Erasmus’ impressive Latin into well-paced English. Estes’ notes identify names, explain otherwise obscure allusions to works and events, and connect the letters to Erasmus’ other works. When Erasmus writes formally, Dalzell translates formally; brusquely, brusquely; and colloquially, colloquially, sometimes substituting a current adage...