Erasmus, man of letters: the construction of charisma in print (review)

Reviews 263 Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus, man of letters: the construction of charisma in print, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993; cloth; pp. xii, 284; 28 illustrations; R.R.P. US$29.95. Lisa Jardine has produced a stunning re-evaluation of Erasmus and his circle of printers, proof readers, and editors. Shifting our attention from the intellectual content of works written or edited by Erasmus to the 'print event' constituted by their appearance and reappearance, Jardine is able to reveal the ways in which Erasmus orchestrated the propagation of his own image as a European man of letters. This turns out to be a matter of some importance, for constructed along with Erasmus's image, and the image of Northern humanism, was a picture of the European intellectual that remains of influence. This was 'a moment at which it became possible to claim that there was something which could be designated "European thought".' (p. 9). Thefirstchapter examines the contemporary portraits, woodcuts, and engravings of Erasmus by Metsys, Holbein, and Diirer. In it there is established a contrast between the durable image of the true Erasmus, something that can only be based on his literary output, and the ephemeral portrayal of his physical being, captured in portraits, but much less the real Erasmus. Even the portraits themselves are shown to have been intended by Erasmus and his friends, if not by the artists who produced them, to attest to this very attitude. In subsequent chapters, the creation and elaboration through manipulation of the new medium of printing of this image of Erasmus is traced with great verve and panache. Threefiguresprove central to the story that Jardinetells.First, there is St Jerome, refigured by Erasmus to serve as his own distant prototype. Involved in this refashioning is 'the strategic recuperation for the charismatic man of letters of the aura which had traditionally surrounded the portrait and the "life" of the holy man of conventional hagiography'. That amounts to 'the transition from "sacred" to "learned" as the grounds for personal spiritual salvation' (p. 59). Secondly, we come across Rudolph Agricola. If Jerome serves as Erasmus's prototype, then Agricola become the intellectual progenitor of both Erasmus and Northern humanism. Arftully, a genealogy is constructed. Agricola begat Hegius, Erasmus's teacher, who begat Erasmus. This is constructed to suggest personal contact between Agricola and Erasmus, though none occurred. Such personal connections were necessary 'for Erasmus's version of emerging humane 254 Reviews studies' (p. 93). As a result, the scholarly community still takes Erasmus's word for the seminal influence of Agricola's De inventione dialectica, though the evidence for it is all tainted by the fact that it was produced in order to construct a respectable pedigree for Erasmus and Northern humanism rather than to state a particular set of facts accurately (p. 98). The third figure w h o m w e encounter is Seneca, nearest Christian of the ancients. Erasmus's De copia emerges as a work designedtofilldie gap left by a lost work of Seneca's, and was to join Agricola's De inventione dialectica as a manual for a reformed Christian humanist rhetoric, freeing argumentation from scholastic logic. But again, Jardine's argument emerges not from any examination of the content of these works, but from reading material that is often little moretiiana highly sophisticated version of the publisher's 'puff for a book. In prefaces, letters, annotations, and notes, the Erasmus circle was busy spreading the message about its goals and its pedigree, and also promising more than the works themselves often delivered. A final chapter examines the Erasmus correspondence and P. S. Allen's m o d e m edition of it, the Opus epistolarum Erasmi. Jardine contrasts Allen's view that Erasmus's epistolae are an 'essentially unmediated source' (p. 171), valuable for their documentary function, to a view that stresses presence over sincerity or authenticity (p. 173). The complex and cunningly contrived publication of Erasmus's correspondence served to make him 'present' to all of Europe, adding his personal 'charisma' to the persuasive power of his other writings, in order to enhance the truth-effect that they could produce. This is a striking re-reading of...