Apologia qua respondet duabus inuectiuis Eduardi Lei, Responsio ad annotationes Eduardi Lei, Manifesta Mendacia, Responsio ad disputationem cuiusdam Phimostomi de divortio (review)

This is the thirtieth volume to be published in the critical (Amsterdam: ASD) edition of Erasmus's works, the fourth in the ninth order, the order devoted to Erasmus's responses to his critics. Three critics are addressed here: Edward Lee (1482-1544), Vincentius Theoderici (1481-1526), and Johannes Dietenberger (ca. 1475-1537).

The attack of Lee and that of Theoderici — whose work was collaborative and appeared under the pseudonym "Taxander" — were related. Erasmus met Lee in Louvain when the younger scholar came there to study Greek in 1517. The first edition of Erasmus's Greek New Testament had just appeared (1516). Their relations were initially cordial, but when Erasmus suggested that Lee read and offer suggestions related to his annotations to the Greek text (a new edition of which he was then preparing), Lee took him seriously and began to offer some. Relations quickly soured; Lee's suggestions (in his view, corrections) continued until a real hostility developed, and partisans of each in Louvain began to get involved. When Lee returned to England in 1520 he published his notes (not in England but in Paris), in which he accused Erasmus of having borrowed ideas from his work for the second edition of the New Testament (1519) without giving him credit. Erasmus immediately wrote an apologia and a response to Lee's notes. These appear, for the first time critically edited, in the present volume, both by Erika Rummel, who has written extensively on this phase of Erasmus's career (see Erasmus and his Catholic Critics, 2 vols. [1989]). Rummel writes in her introduction to the volume under review: "Neither man emerges unblemished from the controversy. Lee appears peevish and self-righteous, overestimating the merit of his own research and unappreciative of Erasmus's scholarship. Erasmus appears manipulative and less than forthright in his dealings with Lee. He himself admitted that he had used tricks and bribery in a vain effort to gain access to Lee's notes. He was, moreover, instrumental in the publication of a collection of letters, some of which denounced Lee in mean and spiteful terms" (6-7). Once back in England Lee began a long career of church and public service. He was sent on missions by Henry VIII to Austria, Spain, and the pope during the 1520s, supported the king's divorce and the Act of Supremacy, and from 1531 until his death served as Archbishop of York. Erasmus continued to look on Lee with suspicion until his own death.

Lee's supporters in Louvain generated yet another critique of Erasmus, also edited here by Rummel. Led by Vincentius Theodereci, who scoured Erasmus's New Testament for mistakes and preached sermons against him, they published Manifesta Mendacia in 1525. It contained two tracts and was dedicated to Lee, which immediately focused Erasmus's attention and ire. The authors accused him of false views regarding confession, celibacy, and fasting; of having inspired Luther's heretical views; and of praising Hutten and Oecolampadius. Erasmus dashed off a letter to the theologians of Louvain (Ep. 1582, CWE 11, 170-75). He also quickly composed a response to the attack, though he refrained from publishing it. It was published for the first time by Rummel in 1992 from an autograph manuscript in the Royal Library in Copenhagen and now here (Rummel has also translated the text into English in CWE 71, 116-31).

The last entry in this volume is Johannes Dietenberger's attack on Erasmus's view of divorce. It was published as an appendix to the debates between Lutherans and Roman Catholics during the Augsburg Reichstag in 1530. The focus of the attack (recently critically edited for the Corpus Catholicorum) is...