Erasmus: a critical biography (review)

Short notices 305 worked out by the folklorist Thompson, the philosopher Bachelard, and the anthropologists Durand and Eliade. He happily indexes things such as ponds or woods and then decides whether they are similartoarchetypes of, say, the maternal or the dangerous. Metaphors, for that is what they are, isolated in this way allow for whatever recontextualization an inspired interpreter so chooses. Similarity in such a symbolic free-fall is not sufficient for representing past beliefs in general and the folkloric in particular. Whereas meanings are elusive,resemblancesare ubiquitous. Any two things can have properties in common. Looking for what seems similar over the longue duree can never account for former predictive or inductive practices at all. Only past inductive practices themselves can provide the basis for canons of similarity. Two apparendy similar folkloric myths, two Indo-European symbols, two magical discourses, two popular mentalites, are simply two-a-penny and prove absolutely nothing about the past. Resemblance is never obvious, natural, innate, ahistorical, simple, in the mind, or in the genes. Searching for the similar in time and space may be, in the end, all that the medievalist actually does, but it is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. Gallais' book may be impressive in its exuberence, but it is essentially a conservative argument that ignores the specifity of the past for the superficial ease of the archetype. In the end, the very assumptions that underlie the book are wrong and therefore one learns nothing from it about how medieval men and womentiioughtor imagined. It is the mind of Gallais we see, not theirs. Mark Pegg Department of History Princeton University Halkin, Leon-E., Erasmus: a critical biography, trans. John Tonkin, Oxford and Cambridge Mass., Blackwell, 1994; rpt; paper; pp. xv, 360; R.R.P. A U S $45.00 [distributed in Australia by Allen and Unwin]. This present edition is thefirstpaperback version of John Tonkin's excellent translation of Halkin's Erasme parmi nous (1987). One must stress that the text is lively and 'brings Erasmus among us again', as The Times averred, and shows us how its subject must have seemed to kindred spirits of his own day. Perhaps unfortunately, the English title does not reflect 306 Short notices sufficiendy on the way in which the originaltitleand text focussed on the relevance of its subject's life and work to wide audiences today. As Halkin stresses in this most mature work, Erasmus offered his contemporaries the chance for 'inward change', a return to a religion of love and demand for total committal of self, holding nothing back. Such a sophisticated treatment moves us far beyond such descriptions of him as 'finicky, peevish, spiteful, in his early years sycophantic to a nauseating degree', as one 1960s critic held. For, of course, 'Erasmus always returned to essentials, to inward religion, and to die Gospel'. This presentation of 'the Erasmian message ... of critical Christianity' is the Halkin achievement, as he shows how Erasmus combined 'an unceasing appeal to personal prayer' with merciless satire of dubious pilgrimages, relics, and imprudent vows. His very lively 'extentialist' view of religion clearly confused and frightened many of his contemporaries, whereas it now speaks most immediately to us; for example, as in his concepts of die emancipation of women, of the marriage state for ill-suited clerics, of possible divorce, and of various other practical reforms, alongside his more mystical philosophy of Christ. In short, Halkin maintains diat die satirist and reformer Erasmus is at one with the spiritual man, a passionate being whose life had a fundamental unity and speaks very clearly to our 'civilization in peril'. Certainly his European temper, reforming zeal, Christian humanism, and critical Christianity alike make him perhaps the most perdurable in his appeal of all the Reformation humanists. J. S. Ryan Department of English University of N e w England Herbert, Susan, Medieval cats, London, Thames and Hudson, 1995; clodi; 31 plates; R.R.P. AUS$29.99. Susan Herbert's five books are elegant variations on a single joke. And, it is a good joke. A painter by training, she produces exquisite picture books which insert cats into familiar artistic contexts. This volume lovingly recreates the art of...