§ 5. The Influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches

The portion of the Reformation which lay outside the Peace of Augsburg had another characteristic which distinguished it from the Lutheran Reformation included within the treaty—it owed much more to Humanism. Erasmus and what he represented had a greater share in its birth and early progress, and his influence appeared amidst the most dissimilar surroundings. Henry VIII. and Zwingli seem to stand at opposite poles; yet the English autocrat and the Swiss democrat were alike in this, that they owed much to Erasmus, and that the reformations which they respectively led were largely prompted by the impulse of Humanism. One has only to compare the Bishops’ Book and the King’s Book of the Henrican period in England with the many statements Erasmus has made about the kind of reformation he desired to see, to recognise that they were meant to serve for a reformation in life and morals which would leave untouched the fundamental doctrinal system of the mediæval Church and its organisation in accordance with the principles laid down by the great Humanist. The Bible, the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, with the doctrinal decisions of the first four Œcumenical Councils, were recognised as the standards of orthodoxy in the Ten Articles; and the Scholastic Theology, so derided by Erasmus, was contemptuously ignored. The accompanying Injunctions set little store by pilgrimages, relics, and indulgences, and the other superstitions of the popular religious life which the great Humanist had treated sarcastically. The two books alluded to above are full of instructions for leading a wholesome life. The whole programme of reformation is laid down on lines borrowed from Erasmus.

Zwingli was under the influence of Humanism from his boyhood. His young intellect was fed on the masterpieces of classical antiquity—Cicero, Homer, and Pindar. His favourite teacher was Thomas Wyttenbach, who was half a Reformer and half a pure follower of Erasmus. No man influenced him more than the learned Dutchman. It was his guidance and not the example of Luther which made him study the Scriptures and the theologians of the early Church, such as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom. The influence and example of Erasmus can be seen even in his attempts to create a rational theory of the Holy Supper. His reformation, in its beginning more especially, was much more an intellectual than a religious movement. It aimed at a clearer understanding of the Holy Scriptures, at the purgation of the popular religious life from idolatry and superstition, and at a clearly reasoned out scheme of intellectual belief. The deeper religious impulse which drove Luther, step by step, in his path of revolt from the mediæval Church was lacking in Zwingli. He owed little to Wittenberg, much to Rotterdam. It was this connection with Erasmus that created the sympathy between Zwingli and such early Dutch Reformers as Christopher Hoen, and made the Swiss Reformer a power in the earlier stages of the Reformation in the Netherlands.

The beginnings of the Reformation movement in France, Italy, and Spain were even more closely allied to Humanism.

If the preparation for reformation to be found in the work and teaching of mediæval evangelical nonconformists like the Picards be set aside, the beginnings of the Reformation in France must be traced to the small group of Christian Humanists who surrounded Marguerite d’Angoulême and Briçonnet the Bishop of Meaux. Marguerite herself and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, the real leader of the group of scholars and preachers, found solace for soul troubles in the Christian Platonism to which so many of the Humanists north and south of the Alps had given themselves. The aim of the little circle of enthusiasts was a reformation of the Church and of society on the lines laid down by Erasmus. They looked to reform without “tumult,” to a reformation of the Church by the Church and within the Church, brought about by a study of the Scriptures, and especially of the Epistles of St. Paul, by individual Christians weaning themselves from the world while they remained in society, and by slowly leavening the people with the enlightenment which the New Learning was sure to bring. They cared little for theology, much for intimacy with Christ; little for external changes in institutions, much for personal piety. Their efforts had little visible effect, and their via media between the stubborn defenders of Scholasticism on the one hand and more thorough Reformers on the other, was found to be an impossible path to persevere in; but it must not be forgotten that they did much to prepare France for the Reformation movement which they really inaugurated; nor that William Farel, the precursor of Calvin himself in Geneva, belonged to the “group of Meaux.”

If Humanism influenced the “group of Meaux,” who were the advance guard of the French Reformation, it manifested itself no less powerfully in the training of Calvin, who in 1536 unconsciously became the leader of the movement. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic students of the band of “royal lecturers” appointed by Francis I. to give France the benefits of the New Learning. He had intimate personal relations with Budé and Cop, who were allied to the “group of Meaux,” and were leaders among the Humanists in the University. His earliest book, a Commentary on the De Clementia of Seneca, shows how wide and minute was his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classical authors. Like Erasmus, he does not seem to have been much influenced by the mystical combination of Platonism and Christianity which entranced the Christian Humanists of Italy and filled the minds of the “group of Meaux”; and like him he broke through the narrow circle of elegant trifling within which most of the Italian scholars were confined, and used the New Learning for modern purposes. Humanism taught him to think imperially in the best fashion of ancient Rome, to see that great moral ideas ought to rule in the government of men. It filled him with a generous indignation at the evils which flowed from an abuse of absolute and arbitrary power. The young scholar (he was only three-and-twenty) attacked the governmental abuses of the times with a boldness which revived the best traditions of Roman statesmanship. He denounced venal judges who made “justice a public merchandise.” He declared that princes who slew their people or subjected them to wholesale persecution were not legitimate rulers, but brigands, and that brigands were the enemies of the whole human race. At a time when persecution was prevalent everywhere, the Commentary of the young Humanist pleaded for tolerance in language as lofty as Milton employed in his Areopagitica. He was not blind to the defects of the stoical morality displayed in the book he commented upon. He contrasted the stoical indifference with Christian sympathy, and stoical individualism with the thought of Christian society; but he seized upon and made his own the loftier moral ideas in Stoicism, and applied them to public life. Luther was great, none greater, in holding up the liberty of the Christian man; but there he halted, or advanced beyond it with very faltering step. Humanism taught Calvin the claims and the duties of the Christian society; he proclaimed them aloud, and his thoughts spread throughout that portion of the Reformation which followed his leadership and accepted his principles. The Holy Scriptures, St. Augustine, and the imperial ethics of the old Roman Stoicism coming through Humanism, were a trinity of influence on all the Reformed Churches.

The Reformation in Spain and Italy was only a brief episode; but in its short-lived existence in these lands, Humanism was one of the greatest forces supporting it and giving it strength. In both countries the young life was quenched in the blood of martyrs. So quickly did it pass, that it seems surprising to learn that Erasmus confidently expected that Spain would be the land to accomplish the Reformation without “tumult” which he so long looked forward to and expected; that the Scriptures were read throughout the Spanish peninsula, and that women vied with men in knowledge of their contents, during the earlier part of the sixteenth century.