EPISTOLAE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM.*
IT is with no ordinary pleasure that we draw attention to this handsome and solid volume. The editor and the pub- lishers deserve our thanks for their courage in producing it, as well as for their zeal in the cause of learning. Their enterprise will gain the approbation of scholars, and it should earn the gratitude of those who, without claiming scholar- ship, are interested in historical and literary questions. Hitherto we have had no English rendering of these notorious Letters, which are oftener mentioned than quoted, and probably more quoted than read. The deficiency is not creditable to our general culture, since we cannot assume that they are read commonly in Latin ; and a knowledge of them is almost indispensable, not only for understanding the sixteenth century, but for appreciating some ecclesiastical institutions and problems of to-day. Their language is com- paratively easy to those who are familiar with the Missal and the Breviary; but the colloquial and technical vocabulary, as well as the lax and base construction, make it both puzzling and distasteful to those who have been introduced to Latin only through the Augustan writers. It is a great pity that the average schoolboy is not taught how to read the Vulgate as well as his Greek Testament. We think it would make his Latin easier to him, and more interesting. It would give him a clue to the facts and spirit of the Middle Ages, and • Epistolao Obscurorum Viro rum. The Latin Text. With an English Rendering, Notes, and an Historical Introduction by Francis Griffin Stokes, London Chatto and Windup. [Zs. net.) would thus open the way into a world that is not reached by the classical authors. If the international speech of educated Europe down to the seventeenth century could be recovered, as it might so easily, there would be no need to invent a barbarous jargon, out of the scrap-heap of current languages, under the pretence of getting a universal tongue. For the European world a universal language exists already. It is the basis of most vernaculars, and an ingredient of them all. To utilise it is to follow the way of history, of philology, of nationality, of civilisation, of science, of everything that is natural and right. The alternative is the way back to barbarism, because it would plunge us into a worse than mediaeval darkness, in which the ancient landmarks would be obliterated, as they were before, though without any chance of recovery ; for with the loss of humane speech, science, art, poetry, civilisation, would be corrupted, and in the end annihilated. We may be quite sure that if our modern languages were dethroned, their predecessors would soon be forgotten ; and with them would perish of necessity all genuine appreciation of the ancient world, on which our civilisation depends far more than we usually remember.
It is, then, ominous that these Letters of the Obscure should require translating. Four hundred years ago not only obscure and average persons, but professed obscurantists too, read and even wrote in Latin of a sort. In our own days the average educated person can hardly understand it, though he may have wasted from twelve to fifteen years upon it in school and college. Is it our intelligence, or our teachers, or our methods that are to blame ? However this may be, since these Letters required translating, we are grateful to Mr. Stokes for having translated them, and for doing it so well. Without com- mitting ourselves to all his renderings in detail, we can say that he gives an accurate version, which conveys not only the meaning but the spirit of the original, and, considering the matter and form of the Letters, this was by no means easy. Mark Pattison, indeed, thought the task insuperable : " To convey to the English reader some idea of the contents and
tone of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum is a thing impossible to be successfully done." Perhaps Mark Pattison overstated the difficulty ; at any rate Mr. Stokes has achieved a brilliant success, if the imitation of dunces and the transmutation of their stupidity may be so described. Though the Letters have not been given to us previously in English, there is a French translation of the first series, pub- lished in 1870, by M. Victor Develay, who has turned them into neat modern French. Mr. Stokes, more wisely as we think, has aimed at an older vocabulary and style, without straining either ; and by so doing, while not less accurate than M. Develay, he has gone much nearer to the spirit and form of the original. His translation does equal credit to his scholarship and to his tact. Besides translating, he has annotated industriously, explaining difficult words, verifying classical quotations, giving biographical information when- ever it is attainable. In all these directions his work is useful and sound; and it represents a vast quantity of labour, for which we tender him our grateful recognition. There is also an introduction of some sixty pages, in which Mr. Stokes gives an account of the period, of the causes and history of the Letters, and of the authorship. As they appeared anonymously, this has always been open to dispute. They were attributed first to Erasmus, but arc certainly not his. On his evidence, they were credited to three authors, of whom Ulrich von Hutten was always accepted for one. From internal evidence, two bands are discernible. These two were pronounced by Sir William Hamilton in 1831 to be Hutten and Crotus Rubianus ; and this judgment is confirmed by later research, fuller knowledge, and more rigorous methods. But though the actual writers are only two, it is possible that more contributors and inspirers collaborated in this colossal jest.
For a jest this strange literary adventure certainly was, and is : one of the broadest and most effective that was ever launched. It is also one of the most lasting, and its spirit has not wholly evaporated after nearly four hundred years. Time has not staled it, because the types in this " Dunciad" live on, mutatis mutandis, though, indeed, they are little changed in mentality and temper. These Letters played a great part in the battle between the old and the new learning. With The Praise of Folly and More's Utopia, they take us back into the very atmosphere of change and conflict
which was caused by the Renaissance, and which preceded till Reformation. Their immediate occasion was the attack on Jewish books, provoked by a renegade Jew named Pfefferkorn. utilised and fomented by the Dominicans, and opposed by Reuchlin, at that time the only Hebraist and Orientalist of any eminence in Europe. In the background was the larger struggle between Humanism and Scholasticism, to sum it up shortly, or between Hellenism and Mediaevalism. The old learning, if it should be so called, possessed the German Universities, and regarded ecclesiastical preferment as its monopoly. It was entrenched in the Religious Orders ; and therefore, in spite of cultivated Popes, it had overwhelm- ing influence at Rome, as the sequel proved. This faction was not only alarmed by the new study of Greek and the growing interest in Hebrew, but it was outraged by the revival of classical Latin, which was supported by young, witty, and no doubt aggravating admirers. The controversy was soon embittered far more seriously by Luther's denuncia- tion of indulgences and of the whole Roman system. Reuchlin found himself embroiled with a powerful Religious Order, which manipulated the Inquisition ; and both sides appealed to Rome. While the cause was dragging on some Letters of Illustrious Men in Favour of John Reuchlin, were circulated; and soon after, as a parody, the first series of these Letters of Obscure Men was issued. It was a satire on the Religious Orders, so far as they were concerned with education and University teaching. So true was the satire that the Letters were thought at first to be genuine and serious. We may therefore accept them as a tolerably fair presentation of what they describe. Hence their sting at the time, and the coyness with which they are handled now in certain quarters. The Religious Orders professed poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Orders themselves were not poor, but enormously rich. They were not too obedient to the ecclesiastical authorities or to their own rules, and many of their individual members were not chaste. The Letters are an amazing compound of pedantry, piety, pruriency, and profligacy, with abundant gluttony, and the most absurd ignorance, all washed down with oceans of beer and Germanic wines. The language, the habits, and the mentality of the personages drawn in these Letters are vouched for by many other witnesses, of whom Erasmus is the most important and not the least credible. Mr. Stokes has now given English readers a chance of judging about these matters for themselves. They are put for the first time into immediate contact with contemporary documents ; and, as we welcome Mr. Stokes's valuable contribution, we should not forget the admirable editions of Erasmus's Letters which are now being added to the literature of this period. The Latin text, collated and rearranged by Mr. Allen, and the English version by Mr. Nichols, so far as they are yet published, are worthy of the great and delightful scholar whose name they bear, and are an honour to English erudition.
Mr. Stokes gives a clear and an interesting narrative of the Reuchlin controversy in his introduction, though he is not altogether satisfactory in his historical estimates. " The revival of learning," he says, "was a transient phenomenon," and " the forces of the Renaissance had begun to wane " in the sixteenth century. Now the earlier Renaissance, especially in Italy, was more a revival of taste than of learning. The line of real scholars and the work of serious scholarship began north of the Alps. Erasmus himself was only on the border-line, but he was followed by Scaliger, Casaubon, and their successors. On another side the forces of the Renaissance had only just begun to work when they were destroyed by the Church. The killing of natural science, especially in Italy, is the worst crime of the ecclesiastical authority, and it delayed human progress by at least two centuries. When the Papacy is claimed as Humanist, we must remember that it only played with the Renaissance so long as it was an affair of art and of belles-lettres. When learning became serious and scientific, when knowledge was applied to Church history and Scripture and theology, we had the Papal reaction. From Leo X. the Papacy narrowed to Paul IV. and Pius V. If the Church preserved a few manuscripts, it destroyed infinitely more. It is highly probable that Gregory the Great burnt the Palatine Library ; it is quite certain that he exempted the Bible from the laws of grammar.
As we look back to the storm of the sixteenth century, two things stand out. If Erasmus bad been listened to, many crimes would have been spared. Both Roman Catholics and Protes- tants would have been saved from many follies, and from most of the grave difficulties which now confront them. Further, the Papal Church is now being confronted again, and from within, by the same difficulties which it evaded or stifled at Trent, and all in an aggravated form. So fatal is it to reject the light and to defy scholarship! The Church does not triumph over history.
Moreover, in Anti-Semitism, in the venomous and lying Bonne Presse, in several modern devotions, in the battle of Modernism and Scholasticism, we are witnessing a revival of many things which happened in the sixteenth century ; and we can still find personages not unlike those who are satirised in the Letters of the Obscure. On the orthodox side are still the violence and the scurrility which are more un- changing than the Faith. The Modernists have not yet produced anything similar to The Praise of Folly or to von Hutten's Letters ; though M. Houtin's volumes on La Question Biblique show that wit has not gone over to the side of authority, and M. Loisy's Quelques Lettres are not inferior to Pascal. In style and in irony they are of a finer mould than the Epislolae Obseurorum, whether of the sixteenth century or of the twentieth. As time has vindicated Erasmus against all the extremists, so perhaps it may be with the successor who has inherited so much of his mental attitude and so many of his literary gifts.
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