Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe by Peter G. Bietenholz (review)

To an outside observer at least, the place of Peter Bietenholz in Canadian historical scholarship could be summed up in two debts he mentions in the introduction to this book. The first is to the University Library Basel; that means to European historical scholarship, its languages, traditions, resources. The second is to the library of his own institution, the University of Saskatchewan, where he is professor emeritus in the Department of History. That represents the immediate scholarly community to which he belongs and, in part, his audience.

Encounters with a Radical Erasmus is a set of essays on the influence of Erasmus on individuals and situations in early modern times which might be considered ‘radical.’ Since the influence was mediated in different ways and came in different forms, each case raises distinctive issues of method and approach. Nevertheless, the questions all move in the same direction: what do the various radical strains in the culture owe to Erasmus? Taken together, they also pose the question: how far is the Erasmus recognized by radical observers the real Erasmus?

The first form is the culling of radical ideas from Erasmus’s texts, especially his writings related to the New Testament. Thus the young polymath from Strasbourg, Sebastian Franck, used discursive notes from Erasmus’s Annotations on the New Testament to challenge the church doctrines that the scriptural passages were conventionally supposed to support. Similarly, the antitrinitarians, in the eyes of most Christians the primary ‘heretics’ of the period, turned into a flat denial of the Trinity what in Erasmus was an assessing of different patristic expositions of texts conventionally but doubtfully used to affirm the doctrine.

The third essay returns to Franck, not now culling texts for a biblical-theological critique, but using Erasmus’s texts on war and peace to develop his own distinctive polemic on that subject. The case for religious toleration (dealt with in chapter 4 and, I imagine, more familiar territory for most readers) was made by reference to the broader theological positions taken by Erasmus, free will and the universal grace of God.

The fifth chapter makes a bridge between these studies of how radical authors used Erasmus’s texts and the essays in the second half of the book which identify Erasmus as a source for radical circles and movements more generally. It deals with Erasmus’s own most radical work, Praise of Folly. For Bietenholz the key to understanding that enigmatic work is its praise of the natural foibles and weaknesses of humankind. He has Erasmus, though dominantly Stoic in outlook, flirting with Epicureanism, which was at the time having something of a revival.

The essays in the book’s second half demonstrate that Erasmus continued as a source for, and an influence on, circles that might be deemed radical in France and England in the seventeenth century. The following sentence on John Locke characterizes such drawing from the Erasmian well: ‘Like so many before him, the English philosopher thus drew on Erasmus for his unconventional religious conventions.’ But, already pointing to his overall conclusion, Bietenholz makes clear that what in Erasmus was ambiguous, tentative, or exploratory could become in these writers dogmatic assertion.

Toward the end (chapter 9) there is a curious, even playful, essay relating Erasmus to the great literary works of the early modern era, from More’s Utopia to Ben Johnson. But, once again, enquiry is into the main question about how radical Erasmus was. Thus Rabelais was less ‘daring’ than Erasmus on some issues (say Mariolatry) and more so on others (say the monastic institution).

The conclusion deals exclusively with what I have just called the main question. The answer is complex but clear enough. On some issues, and on some occasions, the radical thinking coincided with Erasmus’s own intentions; on others he was engaged in scholarly exploration, and it was...