Summing up all that has been said, we must discount both the exaggerated charges brought against Erasmus, and the one-sided eulogies lavished upon him. A type of the unfair critic was Hieronymus Aleander, who was chiefly responsible for the violent attack made on Erasmus by Prince Albert Pius of Carpi. In 1521 Aleander declared: “Erasmus has written worse things against the faith than Luther”; he is of opinion that Erasmus had preached a real “intellectual revolt in Flanders and the Rhine-Lands.”[727] Equally exaggerated in the opposite direction is the statement ascribed to the Emperor Charles V, which must have been due to the glowing accounts given by the admirers of Erasmus, viz. that Erasmus had greatly reduced the number of Lutherans and achieved what Emperors, Popes, Princes and Universities had previously striven to do, but in vain. The allusion would seem to be to the great Humanist’s work against Luther’s denial of free-will.
What has been said tends to place in a true light a certain view which has been put forward in modern days. Thanks to a wrong interpretation of his antagonism to Luther’s principles and of his criticism of Catholic doctrine and practice, an attempt has been made to represent him as the “father of religious universalism” and of religion minus dogma. His bold schemes for renovation it is said paved the way for a great “renascence of Christianity” towards which we might well strive even to-day. As a matter of fact this “original creator in the domain of religion,” this “spokesman of modern religion,” never existed in Erasmus. It is a mere figment of the imagination of those who desire the complete reformation of religion and seek to shelter themselves behind the great Humanist. What is really strange is that such a deformation of the Erasmus of history has been attempted by certain Protestant theologians, whereas in Luther’s day Erasmus was denounced by Protestants as a free-thinker and unbeliever. There are other Protestant theologians, however, who candidly admit the futility of such efforts with regard to Erasmus.[728]
Catholics can see easily enough why the rise of Protestantism tended to bring back many Humanists, among them Erasmus himself, to a firmer and more clearly defined religious standpoint and to a more whole-hearted support of the Church. Erasmus, as stated above, frequently spoke of Luther’s work as a “remedy” (p. 249). It was a remedy above all for himself and for the more serious elements among his own party, whom the sight of the outward effects and internal consequences of the new teaching served to withdraw from the abyss towards which they were hurrying.