Collected works of Erasmus: patristic scholarship, the edition of St. Jerome (review)

Reviews 139 put the great humanist in the ranks of such visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena. The designation of Petrarch as 'the herald of modernity' (p. 153) both 'secularized' his work and dismissed his strenuous assertions of divine inspiration and prophetic vocation. In his own mind he saw no clash between being the heir of Ennius and of Vergil and being persecuted much as Christ was by those who would not heed His messages. The classical ideal of the poet 'enlightened by Apolline inspiration about national destiny' furnished a role for the Italian's art, but it was all produced by the conviction of conscience, and of his steadfastness of soul, as in his De contemptu mundi. For him there was never any schism between classical Rome's humanism and the sacred inspiration of Galilee, so focussed in his various meditations on Christ crucified. In moral philosophy his De remediis utriusquefortunae, a treatise on human happiness and unhappiness, and his De vita solitaria, a panegyric on solitude, are model texts at the centre of his work and thought and they speak out to the modern spirit Despite his passionate love of the writings of the ancients, and the perception and sympathy which enabled him rightly to interpret them, he never sought to establish or substitute any form of pagan ideal for the Christian. While this study is a relatively short one, it is remarkable for its enormous scholarship sotightlyborne and for its links with both patristic and Renaissance and Reformation thought and culture. A particular feature is the generous quoting, in translation, of many surprisingly phrased religious perceptions of the nature of love, of civic destiny, and of patriotic zeal. Quite certainly this study gives a new and dynamic dimension to that over-used yet so appropriate designation for Petrarch of 'Christian humanist'. J. S. Ryan Department of English University of N e w England Brady, James F. and John C. Olin, eds, Collected works of Erasmus: patristic scholarship, the edition of St. Jerome (Collected works of Erasmus, Vol. 61), Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1992; cloth; pp. xxxvii, 293; 14 illustrations; R.R.P. CAN$85.00. This is thefirstof two volumes on Erasmus's patristic scholarship to appear in the great Toronto edition of his works in English translation (CWE). That Jerome has pride of place is just in view of Erasmus's acute interest from his earliest days in this saint The editors, both formerly professors at Fordham University, have taken common responsibility, although the translation is Brady's primary undertaking and the editorial matter Olin's. The latter, doyen of Erasmus scholars in North America, has written the judicious introduction, the summation of a long scholarly endeavour on Erasmus's appreciation of Jerome. 140 Reviews The directors of the Toronto enterprise faced a dilemma over Erasmus's editorial works. These were central to his life's work and critical to the history of scholarship, not to mention the struggle for religious reform in his own time, but they could, for obvious reasons, be presented only selectively. The selections must be, in some sense, representative or indicative. Prefaces and letters of dedication reveal intention and method, perhaps surrounding conditions and circumstances, and require inclusion. With Erasmus, such documents never lack elements of autobiography and self-reflection, even tantalizing glimpses of a mind at odds with received wisdom: 'I think that the discerning reader perceives what I am keeping silent about and leaving for unspoken reflection' (p. 94). The Jerome edition offered modern editors something special, Erasmus's life of Jerome, in Olin's words 'a prime example of the development of modem historical methods within the context of Renaissance humanism' (p. xxiv). It is the longest and, for Renaissance scholarship, the most important document here. It was omitted from the Opera omnia of 1538-40 (Nasel) and 1703-6 (Leiden) and became readily available to scholars only with W . K. Ferguson's Erasmi opuscula in 1931. T w o prefatory letters, from the 1516 and 1524 editions respectively, both to Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury, one of Erasmus's more gracious patrons, have already appeared in the correspondence of C W...