126 Containing Among Other Things the Remarkable Conclusion That in His
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126 BOEKBEOORDELINGEN/REVIEWS containing among other things the remarkable conclusion that in his New Testament commentaries and predestination doctrine Praedinius shows a strong affinity with such Protestant theologians as Oecolampadius, Bullinger, a Lasco, and Calvin. Thomas Elsmann pays attention to the Bremen reformer Albert Hardenberg (c. 1510-74) and his friend Johannes Molanus (t1583), the Ramist headmaster of the Schola Bremensis. However, he wrongly charac- terises the former-who in fact was a humanistically trained adherent of the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer-as reform humanist. The East Frisian farmer and uncompromising politician Hero Boyen (c. 1550-c.1620), writing in Latin, cousin by marriage, kindred soul, and friend to the Calvinist Ubbo Emmius, is brought into the limelight by J. Ensink. Advocating the estates' government in East Friesland, Boyen strongly opposed the Lutheran Count Enno III's absolutist aspirations, the notion of patria being his guiding principle. Drawing from the collection of humanist letters of the aristocratic Van Ewsum family in the Rijksarchief at Groningen (about 1,350 letters, 59 of which in Latin, 1531-72), A.H. van der Laan and Y. Kuik sketch the intel- lectual life of the erudite Johan van Ewsum (tl570), who by a contemporary was considered the equal of Praedinius. Two contributions regard the nor- thern humanist and Adwert-adept Fredericus Moorman (t1482), member of the Brethren of the Common Life. Until recently only two of his poems were known (addressed to Rudolph Agricola and Gansfort); they are preserved in the library of the Alsatian humanist Beatus Rhenanus at Sélestat. Cathrien Santing's suggestion (326) that these poems were present in the Adwert library in the 1540's and were presented to Rhenanus by Gansfort's bio- grapher Albert Hardenberg I can neither confirm nor refute on the basis of my own research on Hardenberg. P. Schoonbeeg (t) did a fine job in editing and annotating eighteen poems by Moorman from the Munich manuscript Clm 528. In spite of the extensive philological-historical annotations, however, the reader is still left with the question of what new light these poems can throw on Moorman as a Westphalian/Frisian humanist. Another two contributions concern rhetoric. Though seemingly an addendum to the 1988 Agricola volume, P. Mack's essay on the rhetorical aspect of Rudolph Agricola's synthesis of rhetoric and dialectic emphasizes the originality of Agricola's De inventione dialectica. J.A.R. Kemper offers an astute analysis of the rhetoric exercises executed by pupils of Ubbo Emmius, who was principal of the schola latina at Groningen from 1594 to 1614. The exercises have been preserved because Emmius used them as scrap paper. All in all this collection certainly breaks new ground after the major Gansfort studies of 1917 and 1933 by Van Rhijn. A 28-page bibliography enhances its significance as a reference book. Together with the 1985 and 1996 proceedings it will constitute a long-lasting authoritative trilogy on northern humanism. Wim Janse Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. LIX). E.J. Brill, Leiden/New York/Köln, 1996. ix + 375 pp. ISBN 90 04 10496 8. As readers of this journal will already know, Cornelis Augustijn, until 1993 Professor of Church History at the Free University of Amsterdam, is a major figure in Reformation scholarship, renowned especially for his work on Erasmus and Bucer. The volume under review is a collection of twenty short 127 studies of various aspects of Erasmus' life and thought that Prof. Augustijn published in the period 1969-92. The seven studies that were originally published in Dutch, French, or English have here been rendered into German. Otherwise, few changes have been made, the most noticeable being the replacement, where possible, of references to the old Leiden edition of Erasmus' works by ones to the new ASD edition. The usefulness of the volume has been enhanced by the inclusion of a bibliography, four indices (Erasmusschriften, Personen, Sachen, Autoren), and a list indicating when and where the individual pieces were originally published. The twenty studies are grouped into seven sections, each with its own subtitle. The first section, "Erasmus' geistigeEntwicklung," comprises two items in which Augustijn marshals the evidence for concluding that the Devotio Moderna had no deep or lasting influence on the young Erasmus who, as a friar in the cloister at Steyn, was already a humanist who had outgrown the piety characteristic of his native Netherlands. The two studies in the section "Das Neue Testament" describe (a) the publicity campaign by means of which Erasmus in 1515 prepared his public for the appearance in 1516 of the Novum Instrumentum and the edition of Jerome, and (b) the numerous and mostly positive references to Erasmus' Annotationes in Luther's commentary on Galatians (1519) which, among other things, help one understand why so many contemporaries thought that Luther and Erasmus were pursuing essentially the same program of ecclesiastical reform. The section "Haupt themen seiner Gedankenwelt" consists of three substantial essays: one on Erasmus' ecclesiology, in which the author explains why Erasmus could not be enthusiastic about the Roman Church of his day but also why he refused to leave it; one on Erasmus' currently much debated attitude toward the Jews (see below); and one on Erasmus' views (alongside those of Gerard Gelden- houwer) on religious tolerance. Under the title "Humanismus und Reformation" we have three studies dealing with the attitude of humanists toward the Reformation in the years 1518-1530. Crucial to Augustijn's analysis is a distinction between humanists in general and biblical humanists in particu- lar. Most of the former rejected Luther very early on, while most of the latter joined the Reformation and turned against Erasmus in the years after 1521. The case of the most notorious of those "turncoats," Ulrich von Hutten, is dealt with in the third study, which first appeared as the introduction to Augustijn's edition of Erasmus' Spongia for the ASD. Next, in a section entitled "Erasmus, die Schweizund die Glaubenspaltung," come an essay on Erasmus' crucial influence on Zwingli (and indeed on all the Upper-Ger- man/Swiss reformers); an introduction (again from the ASD) to Erasmus' De esu carnium, a work that alienated Catholics and reformers alike; and an account of Erasmus' conflict with Guillaume Farel. The longest section, "Luther und Erasmus," offers five essays, one on the De servo arbitria, one each on parts one and two of the Hyperaspistes, one on Luther's inability to under- stand Erasmus' theology, and a final one on German interpretations of Erasmus (both positive and negative) during his lifetime. Augustijn finds the essential difference between Erasmus and Luther not in their differing views on free will, an issue that was never all that important for Erasmus, but in their contrasting views of the relationship between scripture and the church, with Erasmus more and more inclined to ascribe to the church the decisive voice in the determination of the true meaning of scripture. The final section of the book, "Erasmus und Menno Simons," contains two essays arguing that Menno had a good knowledge of the theology of Erasmus and that certain essential features of his theology can be traced back to Erasmus. .