We have had occasion already to mention Reuchlin as a student of Greek; but in popularising the study of that language and literature he did little as compared with Erasmus and many others. In Hebrew, however, he was the teacher of the modern world. By personal instruction and by the compiling of grammars, reading-books, and a rudimentary lexicon, he became unconsciously the first who carried into effect the aspirations of Roger Bacon. And it is unquestionable that he owed the interest he felt in the sacred tongue in a large measure to the work of Pico della Mirandola. By this he was attracted to the study of the Cabbala; and in praise of the Cabbala his most voluminous works were written. Nor can his famous defence of the Rabbinic books be wholly dissociated from the consequences of Pico’s influence, though in this respect the debt he owed to his Jewish instructors must evidently be taken into account.
Reuchlin, it should be further noted, was wellnigh the first German Hebraist. Though in England, France, and Italy it has been easy to name scholars throughout the medieval period who had more or less knowledge of the language, such has not been the case as regards Germany. Yet this slowness to receive the New Learning was more than compensated by the ardour and thoroughness with which it was utilised when once its value had been recognised.
If the beginnings of a revival in Christian learning can be traced to Bacon and Grosseteste in the thirteenth century, there can be little doubt that the central figure of the whole movement is Erasmus. This is a commonplace: and when it has been set down, the difficulty of deciding how much detail should be added to the bare statement is very great. His personality cannot be adequately set forth within the limits of a single chapter. His career has been shortly traced elsewhere in this volume. The most that can be done here is to summarise the work done by him in reopening the long-closed pages of the Church’s early literature.
We have spoken already of what is usually accounted his greatest service in that department, the publication of the Greek text of the New Testament. But we have seen that his best work was not put into this. It was a hurried production; and the task of forming a really good Greek text of a set of documents, with so long and complex a history as the books which compose the New Testament, was a task beyond the powers of any individual. Many generations of textual critics were destined to collect materials and to elaborate theories before the principles on which the work must be done were formulated; and even in our own day perfection has not been attained.
Erasmus was far more at home, and far more successful, in dealing with patristic texts. His hero among Christian scholars was St Jerome. Before the close of the fifteenth century we find him giving expression to his desire that he might be enabled to improve the text of this Father’s works, and, in particular, that of his Epistles. In these, as is well known, there is a multitude of Greek and Hebrew quotations. Any one who has looked at, say, a twelfth century manuscript of the Letters will remember what a scene of confusion is certain to take place when the scribe is confronted with one of these passages. The best that one can hope for is an unintelligent imitation of the Greek uncial characters, upon which conjecture more or less scientific may be founded. Too often the copyist’s courage deserts him, and a blank is left. The earlier editions of Jerome were no better than the manuscripts. Erasmus is never tired of saying that before his time Jerome could not be read. Johann Amerbach the printer had set on foot the enterprise of a new issue of Jerome’s writings, and had engaged the services of Reuchlin and others to emend the text. Reuchlin’s work- which had to do more especially with the Greek and Hebrew quotations just mentioned-was, it seems, done more by conjecture than upon the authority of manuscripts. More successful was Johann Cono, a Dominican, of Nürnberg, who made use of such ancient copies as he could find. At Amerbach’s death the edition was incomplete. It was continued by his two sons in conjunction with Johann Frohen; and at this point Erasmus1 services were called in. In 1016 the work was published, and dedicated by Erasmus to Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. The prefaces to this and to the other editions of patristic texts which Erasmus superintended contain perhaps the most instructive expressions of his attitude as a Christian scholar which can readily be found. Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom among the Greeks, Cyprian, Hilary, Augustine, and Arnobius On the Psalms, among the Latins, all benefited by his critical care. He is the first, perhaps, who had a glimpse of the true greatness of Origen. One page of Origen, he says, is preferable to ten of Augustine: and yet such all-important books as the Commentary upon John and the tract On Prayer were unknown to him. Nothing is more conspicuous in him than the acuteness of his critical sense. In his preface to Hilary he dwells at some length upon the corruptions and interpolations of his manuscript authorities. His conjectural emendations are most noteworthy: one, the substitution of auxesin faciens for awes infaciens in the pseudo-Arnobius, is worthy of a Bentley. His sense of style is wonderfully keen: over and over again he detects and rejects tracts wrongly fathered on one or other of his authors. Not that he is free from error in these matters. He is not sure whether Irenaeus wrote in Greek or Latin: he identifies Arnobius, the author of a Commentary on the Psalms, with Arnobius the Apologist; and he is inclined to repudiate ChrysostonVs Homilies on the Acts, a genuine, though poor work of that Father’s. En revanche, he rightly pronounces the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum to be the production of an Arian; yet this work, by the irony of fate, had during the Middle Ages been far more widely disseminated under ChrysostonVs name among the Latins than anything that Chrysostom really wrote.
In the preface to Hilary is a passage which sums up the position of Erasmus towards the ancient and the scholastic learning far better than we could do it for ourselves. “We have no right to despise the discoveries or improvements which have originated in the minds of our contemporaries; yet it is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence, and an ungrateful one that rejects those to whose industry the Christian world owes so much. What would sacred learning be without the labours of Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jerome, Hilary, and Augustine? I do not hold that even the works of Thomas (Aquinas) or Scotus should be entirely set aside. They wrote for their age, and delivered to us much that they drew from the writings of the ancients and expounded most acutely. On the other hand, I cannot approve the churlishness of those who set so much store by authors of this class, that they think it necessary to protest against the providential revival of good literature all over the world. There are many kinds of genius: each age has its different gifts. Let every man contribute what he can, and let none envy another who does his best to make some useful addition to the common stock of knowledge.”
“To the ancients reverence is due, and in particular to those who are commended by holiness of life as well as by learning and eloquence; yet they are to be read with discretion. The moderns have a right to fair play. Read them without prejudice, but not without discrimination. In any case let us avoid heated contention, the bane of peace and concord.”
Such was the spirit in which Erasmus strove to work: and some words of his good friend and fellow-worker, Beatus Rhenanus, tell us something of the effect of his work on his own age. “He was sufficiently outspoken on the subject of sacred learning: for, to use his own words in a letter to a friend, he saw that more than enough was made of scholastic theology, and that the ancient learning was quite set at nought. Theologians were so much occupied with the subtleties of Scotus that the fountain-head of Divine wisdom was never reached by them....We begin, God be thanked, to see the fruit of these warnings. Instead of Hales and