ERASMUS. 176 ERASTIANS. dislike of extreme views, which made it difficult with cither pari . which, with all its to give up ... if in
- lnv v. .1 tiled into them.
- od the forces ous struggle; and i„ his ■ u " participation losis oi the worship- gladiator. Bui in the of Humanism he was easily the foremost The ran-.- of bis reading in 3, both Latin and Creek, was exl I uarily wide, and he was scarcely less familiar with t i romini n1 of the Latin and Greek -. IK- loved travel, and, being by nature a keen and thoughtful observer, of soi ial temper and vivacious conversation, had acquired a varied knowledge of men and manners in the frequent changes of made for the sake of more .]e opportunities of work and study. A mind so well stored and possessed of so gay and nimble a fancy might be expected to show remark- able powers of productivity, and in fact Eras- mus did compose -nine of his happiest and most characteristic things in an exceedingly short space of time. The / Horiw, for instance, was sketched during his journey from Italy, and written out from his notes in seven days during his stay in v ir Phomas More's house in London, Still, splendid as was his equipment, the amount and range of his intellectual activitj is little short of the marvelous. For he was by no means a genius, and his scholarly labors were accom- plished only by unremitting industry. Xo one did mure than In- I" restore ancient letters. He published editions oi the works of Aristotle and Demosthenes, ami translations of several of the plays of Euripides, of the greater part of Lucian, anil of tli.' or alia of Plutarch. II lited, either in whole or in part, lier Latin authors. 1 1- 1 in-", i icero, ami I. ivy. and, in addition, a ■I ristic writers. In 1505, preface to an edition oi Lorenzo Valla's Anno- l', the Vr»- Testament, la- maintained that a orrect translation of the Bible could he made only by a trained philologist, anil that, there was need ol n critical revision of the orig and of a new translation. Sub sequently, he decided to undertake this work him i If. .Mill in a hit,,- to Colet, dated Mai. 1512, . - that he ha- aln:ol collated Hie .Yew Nut with tin' ancient Greek manuscripts, ami annotated it in more than a thousand places! -ami' time he was actively engaged upon a new edition, in nine folio volumes, of Saint. Jerome. Froben, whose press at Basel became for a while, through the editorial peratiort of Erasmus, the most important in Europe, has , a vivid a. 'count of hi- ineo.-a lit work, 1 oi and about the print ing i inn these t b o i ere a pproaching complel ion. "In <i rank cruplc of call in- on him ami in llim al I -nine trine or other; one would tii to wheedle him out of an epigram, anolliei to ".'in immortality by a letter, ml -I mil iiinl ina n in l)i.| he I. I'll ..■ ' Dill I" ial lied II 9 a • lull' pii'l in « I ' I'loyments lie could riot, .- et n lit, he did, at odd momi he went to and from mass, anything to oblige." His correspondence was voluminous, so that at time- he hail to write forty letters in one day, ami often to men or women of high rank and dis- tinction, who were personally strangers to him. The medium of all his work was Latin, lie re- fused the position of public reader at Louvain because of his imperfect mastery of Dutch, though it was his native tongue. Of French he had some slight command, of English and Italian none. Lut Latin 'was still the colloquial language of scholars, ami the regular medium of formal com- munication. In the hands of Erasmus it has all the vitality of a living language, with a vocabu- lary drawn from many different sources, a syntax carefully classical, and a style wholly modern and individual, the charm of which is the expression Of the mail's own character. The best guide to the writings of Erasmus is the Bibliotheca Erasmiana, edited by the Uni- versity Library of Ghent (1803), of which a new edition is in progress. Under the same editor- ship a still more complete Bibliotheca Erasmiana, in ltimo form, has been appearing in parts since 1S'J7. There are editions of the complete works by Ueatus Rhenanus (9 vols.. Basel, 1540) and j". Le Clerc (10 vols., fol., Amsterdam, 1703-00). Erasmus himself collected many of his letters for publication, and in the years following his death several incomplete editions appeared. The more important later editions are those of Merula (Leyilen. 1607), the "London Edition' of 1642 (in 2 vols., fol.), and vol. iii. of Le Clerc. Selec- tions from the early letters have been published in an English translation by F. M. Nichols I vol. i., London, 1901). Attempts to fix the very uncertain chronology of Erasmus's life have In en made by Richter, Erasmus-Studien (Dres den, 1S91) ; Reich, Untersuchungen, etc. (Treves, 1896) ; and Nichols, as above. For the life of Erasmus, consult: Knight (Cambridge, 1726); Durand de Laur (Paris, 1872) ; Drummond (Lon- don. 1873) ; Froude, Lectures (London, 1894) ; Emerton (New York, 1809); Pennington (Lon- don, 1901). ERAS'MUS, Saint. A Syrian bishop of the third century, who is said to have suffered mar- tyrdom at Formia? (ancient form of Mola di Gae- ta) in Campania, during the reign of Diocletian, lie was one of the fourteen apotropeans, and June •1< is dedicated to him by the Roman Catholic Church. ERAS'TIANS. Properly, the adherents of the doctrines laid down by Erastus (q.v.) in his book on excommunication. As commonly used, how ever, particularly in England, the term is applied to those who would entirely subordinate Church government to the authority of the State, or maintain the authority of the civil magistrate over tin ascience, ami subject all ecclesiastical hoilies to his control, both in doctrine ami disci- pline. In i lie Westminster Assembly, 164:; 19, views similar to those of Erastus were advocated by the lawyers Selden, Saint John, ami While locke, and the clergymen Lightfool ami Coleman. During the conflict in the Church of Scotland ich resulted in tin- secession of the Lice Church 1833-34) the term Erastian was applied a- a reproai h to all « In. held that (he ( Ihurch had no power to nullify by law the operation of I" patronage but wa indignantly rejected by them. Consult Cunninj ham Historical Theology, ioi. ii. i Edinburgh, 1862).
