Third Epistle to the Prince of Humanists

A Christian Humanist Manifesto in the Form of Letters

Erasmus of Rotterdam (“im Gehäus”), ca. 1538–40; Veit Specklin, blockcutter, after a design by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543)

Agapetos Mathetes to the Learned and Eloquent Prince of Humanists, Desiderius Erasmus:

Most gracious Mentor, how abundant your reservoir of kindness must be, for once again you have extended your graciousness by writing to me and offering your much valued advice along with your pointed reproofs. And while I still stand by the words of my first letter, namely that it is a gift and blessing to the one who receives reproofs in humility, I must admit that I no more deserve the particular reproofs contained in your last letter than I did your kind praise in the first.

Yet, I can tolerate your undeserved reproaches with the utmost equanimity, and that with a clear conscience. For I suspect—nay, I am fairly certain—it is impossible from your own vantage point to comprehend the full extent or nature of the current circumstances as they exist this side of that event you are calling the Protestant Schism.

I had hoped to write to you regarding my goals for a Christian humanism in my own post-modern age, but that exposition will necessarily have to wait until my next letter. Presently, it is needful for me to expand on my last letter in order to provide you with a fuller account of the developments in the West since your journey across that vast swinging bridge; plus, I want to provide you with reasons for settling down where I have in the landscape of Christendom. I trust my humble commentary will not only set your radiant mind at ease but also to expunge what appears to be impaired judgment about my conclusions.

Of course, there is no need for me to remind you how immensely aware you were of the moral degradation, doctrinal innovations, and political hubris exercised by the Church in the years leading up to “the Protestant Schism,” what today is known as the Reformation. You explicitly and repeatedly indicated as much in your correspondence with friends, in the Encomium, and in Querela Pacis. And how can you possibly forget how greatly your Colloquies set the defenders of the Church at arms against you in matters vital to their view of pure Catholicity? So says the notorious proverb, Erasmus laid the eggs which Luther hatched—even if you viewed Luther as having hatched a very different bird.

I know you were surprised and deeply disappointed to learn in my last letter the full extent of the breach that followed your departure to that majestic court of our blessed Savior; but what did you expect, beloved Mentor? Did you expect that your works would effect nothing? Were Julius Exclusus and Encomium Moriae penned merely as toys? Did not the Apostle Paul, that man of God and man of letters, writing to the Ephesian Christians, extol our God for his gracious and infinite power thus: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…”?

Pardon my saying so, but how is it possible one with so great an understanding could have been waylaid by such naiveté? By that same power at work within all of us Christians, your works sowed the seeds of reform even while you attempted to remain a spectator. The Christian piety you hoped your humanistic works would restore to the monasteries, to the schools, and to the Church in your own day was abundantly efficacious—although not in the apolitical manner in which you had hoped they would achieve it.

Notwithstanding, do not discount me, Teacher, as one unsympathetic to your consternations. Although you frequently lamented to Betus Rhenanus that had you known a day like this was coming, you would not have written so much nor would you have written in the manner you had, I for one do not blame you. You cannot be held responsible for your inability to know just how egregious would become the hubris of those caught up in the polemics. We all know you regarded bonae literae i.e., classical studies applied to pure Christianity, as the panacea of civilization and Church reform. We also know you frequently sounded warnings to those humanists who acknowledge Christ in name only but inwardly breathed heathenism. And, we know you repeatedly warned contenders on either side of the Schism to control their emotions so that reform could naturally run its course. But the consequences are out of our hands once the arrow is set to flight.

Like the inseparability of the wheat and the tares, the reform your works fostered was accompanied by folly where carnal men in holy garb hastened to break rather than bind. Men, unbathed in prayer and lacking patience, sowed discord and bred division. We all sorrow for the blood spilt in the name of conviction, but really we have no other choice than to rejoice in Providence i.e., corruption was confronted and the gospel was spread. And that is similarly what I ask of you in judging my decision to land where I have. As a soaring bird can see the entirety of a hill better than either man presently sitting at the base of opposite sides, believe this bird when I tell you hindsight is the closest we’ll ever get to whole sight. Even though you sat closer in proximity to the hill, I am privileged with a bird’s eye view of hindsight.

In your own day, were there not people on both sides of the Schism who displeased you? It is the same for me. And, although you sought diligently to “steer a middle course between two several evils,” were you not forced to choose which side of the border you would take up residence? It is the same for me. And, given these boundaries were lines you didn’t draw but were forced to navigate—you and I both would have drawn the lines differently were it up to us—you had to make a choice. So did I.

You wrote publicly to Luther in the Hyperaspistes, that you refused to be “an apostate from that Church which Luther labeled “the Papist Church.” Your reason was not that you were wholly on board with what then manifested itself as the Catholic Church—it was definitely not the Catholic Church for which the fathers, like Vincent of Lérins, advocated—but because “one bears more easily the evils to which one is accustomed.” You thus declared you would “bear with this Church, until you beheld a better, and it could not help bearing with you, until you yourself would become better.” Dearest Teacher, even though there are still those on both sides who displease, what else can a man in my circumstance do but to also choose what I believe to be the better of two partially-flawed opinions? Could I have found a third way? How arrogant would I have to be to believe I alone have any capacity to transcend this complex dispute, form the most correct position, and what? Start my own sect of followers? I would be no less deluded than those radical reformers in Munster

While I personally fail to find the exuberance some Protestants share in believing they have most certainly and completely aligned themselves with the indisputable truth of things as they exist, I could not bring myself to admit those innovations on which the Roman Church doubled-down and codified at the Council of Trent that followed your departure. What was only speculative theology in your day—many of the speculations you satirized in your writings—was codified by the Church in the years that followed. Were I to fall from heaven and land on earth as a Christian in your day, likely I would have sought the Church’s much-needed reform from within just as you taught. But given I landed on earth in the day I have, you must trust me when I say I believe I’ve chosen the better part.

Yet—and you can put me on the record for saying so—as much as I refuse to admit those innovations of the Roman Church, neither do I admit those innovations of the Protestants, especially those that arise from so much of their unconscious nominalism. And, as to the exact nature of my perspective, rest assured that I attempt to remain objective to whatever extent it is possible for homo sapiens, to give credit where credit is due and to give censure where censure is due; and as a Reformed Catholic, I am always reforming.

If you will allow it, perhaps these matters can keep for that day when we walk together on the other side of that vast swinging bridge and both see as eagles. Trust me when I say the issues are too extensive and too complicated to work out with any advantage to our purpose here; In the meantime, we can rejoice that there are many good Christians on sundry sides of our present controversies who are joyfully working together accomplishing much good for the cause of Christ.

For now, I will prepare a sketch of my goals for a renewed Christian Humanism to present in my next letter for your exacting critiques. Until I have the pleasure of hearing from you again,

I remain your humble student,

Agapetos Mathetes

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