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An international journal concerned with the history of the Reformation and its significance in world affairs, published under the auspices of the Verein für Reformationsgeschichte and the Society for Reformation Research

Board of Editors Jodi Bilinkoff, Greensboro/North Carolina – Gérald Chaix, Nantes – David Cressy, Columbus/Ohio – Michael Driedger, St. Catharines/Ontario – Mark Greengrass, Sheffield – Brad S. Gregory, Notre Dame/Indiana – Scott Hendrix, Princeton/New Jersey – Mack P. Holt, Fairfax/Virginia – Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Tucson/Arizona – Thomas Kaufmann, Göttingen – Ernst Koch, Leipzig – Ute Lotz-Heumann, Tucson/ Arizona – Janusz Małłek, Toruń – Silvana Seidel Menchi, Pisa – Bernd Moeller, Göttingen – Carla Rahn Phillips, Minneapolis/Minnesota – Heinz Scheible, Heidel- berg – Heinz Schilling, Berlin – Anne Jacobson Schutte, Charlottesville/Virginia – Christoph Strohm, Heidelberg – James D. Tracy, Minneapolis/Minnesota – Randall C. Zachman, Notre Dame/Indiana

North American Managing Editors Brad S. Gregory – Randall C. Zachman

European Managing Editor Ute Lotz-Heumann

Vol. 104 · 2013

Gütersloher Verlagshaus Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte

Internationale Zeitschrift zur Erforschung der Reformation und ihrer Weltwirkungen, herausgegeben im Auftrag des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte und der Society for Reformation Research

Herausgeber Jodi Bilinkoff, Greensboro/North Carolina – Gérald Chaix, Nantes – David Cressy, Columbus/Ohio – Michael Driedger, St. Catharines/Ontario – Mark Greengrass, Sheffield – Brad S. Gregory, Notre Dame/Indiana – Scott Hendrix, Princeton/New Jersey – Mack P. Holt, Fairfax/Virginia – Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Tucson/Arizona – Thomas Kaufmann, Göttingen – Ernst Koch, Leipzig – Ute Lotz-Heumann, Tucson/ Arizona – Janusz Małłek, Toruń – Silvana Seidel Menchi, Pisa – Bernd Moeller, Göttingen – Carla Rahn Phillips, Minneapolis/Minnesota – Heinz Scheible, Heidel- berg – Heinz Schilling, Berlin – Anne Jacobson Schutte, Charlottesville/Virginia – Christoph Strohm, Heidelberg – James D. Tracy, Minneapolis/Minnesota – Randall C. Zachman, Notre Dame/Indiana

Europäische Redaktion Ute Lotz-Heumann

Nordamerikanische Redaktion Brad S. Gregory – Randall C. Zachman

Vol. 104 · 2013

Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mitarbeiter der Redaktion – Editorial Assistant Dr. des. Christian Jaser Humboldt-Universität Berlin Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften Das Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte erscheint jährlich in einem normalerweise 320 Seiten umfassenden Aufsatzband und einem ca. 192 Seiten umfassenden Literaturbericht (Beiheft). Manuskripte aus Europa werden per E-Mail erbeten an Prof. Dr. Ute Lotz-Heumann, ulotzh@ email.arizona.edu (Postadresse: Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, University of Arizona, Douglass 307, PO Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721-0028, USA). Manuskripte aus Nordamerika werden per E-Mail erbeten an Prof. Dr. Randall C. Zachman, [email protected] (Postadresse: 130 Malloy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA). Es werden nur Original-Beiträge aufgenommen. Es wird empfohlen, rechtzeitig vor Abschluss des Manuskripts bei der jeweiligen Redaktion Merkblätter zur formalen Gestaltung der Beiträge anzufordern. Besprechungsexemplare aus Europa und Nordamerika werden erbeten an Prof. Dr. Markus Wriedt, Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Abteilung für Abendländische Reli- gionsgeschichte, Alte Universitätsstraße 19, D-55116 Mainz. The Archive for Reformation History appears annually in one volume consisting usually of 320 pages containing the essays and a supplement volume consisting of 192 pages containing the literature review. Manuscripts and communications concerning editorial matters originating in North America should be sent by e-mail to Professor Randall C. Zachman, [email protected]. His postal address is 130 Malloy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. Manu- scripts and communications originating in Europe should be sent by e-mail to Professor Ute Lotz-Heumann, [email protected] (postal address: Division for Late Medieval and Re- formation Studies, University of Arizona, Douglass 307, PO Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721- 0028, USA). Only original manuscripts are accepted. Authors’ guides for the preparation of manuscripts are available from either the North American or the European managing editors. Books, journal articles, and offprints for review originating in North America or Europe should be sent to Professor Markus Wriedt, Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Abteilung für Abend- ländische Religionsgeschichte, Alte Universitätsstraße 19, 55116 Mainz, Germany.

ISBN 978-3-579-08464-0 ISSN 0003-9381 Copyright © 2013 by Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh, in der Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, München Die Zeitschrift und alle in ihr enthaltenen einzelnen Beiträge und Abbildungen sind urheber- rechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfäl- tigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Satz: SatzWeise, Föhren Druck und Einband: Hubert & Co., Göttingen Printed in Germany www.gtvh.de Inhalt

Editorial ...... 7

Christopher Boyd Brown, Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg: The Eccle- siastes and the De doctrina christiana ...... 9 Friedemann Stengel, Reformation, Renaissance und Hermetismus: Kontexte und Schnittstellen der frühen reformatorischen Bewegung ...... 35 Charlotte Methuen, “And your daughters shall prophesy!” Luther, Reforming Wo- men and the Construction of Authority ...... 82 Margaret Arnold, “To Sweeten the Bitter Dance”: The Virgin Martyrs in the Luther- an Reformation ...... 110 Christopher W. Close, Estate Solidarity and Empire: Charles V’s Failed Attempt to Revive the Swabian League ...... 134 Ulrike Ludwig, Erinnerungsstrategien in Zeiten des Wandels: Zur Bedeutung der Reformation als Generationserfahrung im Spiegel sächsischer Leichenpredigten für adlige Beamte ...... 158 Bridget Heal, „Zum Andenken und zur Ehre Gottes“: Kunst und Frömmigkeit im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum ...... 185 Federico Zuliani, I libertini di Giovanni Calvino: Ricezione e utilizzo polemico di un termine neotestamentario ...... 211 A. Katie Harris, “A known holy body, with an inscription and a name”: Bishop Sancho Dávila y Toledo and the Creation of St. Vitalis ...... 245 Chris R. Langley, “Diligence in his ministrie”: Languages of Clerical Sufficiency in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Scotland ...... 272 Celeste McNamara, Conceptualizing the Priest: Lay and Episcopal Expectations of Clerical Reform in Late Seventeenth-Century Padua ...... 297

Editorial

Mit dem vorliegenden Jahrgang des Archivs für Reformationsgeschichte wird ein in den letzten Jahren sowohl auf europäischer als auch auf nordamerikanischer Seite er- folgter Redaktionswechsel endgültig abgeschlossen. Wir möchten deshalb die Gele- genheit ergreifen, unseren Vorgängern, Heinz Schilling als europäischem Herausgeber sowie Susan C. Karant-Nunn und Anne Jacobson Schutte als nordamerikanischen Herausgeberinnen, für ihre herausragenden Verdienste um die Zeitschrift herzlich zu danken. Wir verstehen ihre langjährige erfolgreiche Tätigkeit als Ansporn und He- rausforderung, die Arbeit am ARG in ihrem Sinne und mit den gleichen hohen An- sprüchen an die wissenschaftliche Qualität der Beiträge fortzusetzen. In Kürze wird das Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte auch auf anderer Ebene in eine neue Phase seiner Geschichte eintreten: Die Leser des ARG werden mit Beginn des Jahres 2014 die Möglichkeit erhalten, auch in elektronischer Form auf die Zeitschrift zuzugreifen. Das Gütersloher Verlagshaus wird mit dem Verlag de Gruyter zusammen- arbeiten und das Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte sowie den Literaturbericht unter www.degruyter.com sowohl Einzelbeziehern als auch Bibliotheken online zugänglich machen. Wir erwarten, dass auch die zurückliegenden Jahrgänge des ARG sukzessive im de Gruyter Journal Archive verfügbar werden. Den Verlagsverantwortlichen, insbesondere Diedrich Steen, danken wir sehr für ihr Engagement in dieser Sache. Das Reformationsjubiläum im Jahr 2017 wirft bereits vielfältig seine Schatten vo- raus und macht damit deutlich, dass das Interesse der historischen und kirchenhis- torischen Forschung am Reformationsgeschehen sowohl in Europa als auch in Nord- amerika und in anderen Teilen der Welt ungebrochen ist. Als Herausgeber des Archivs für Reformationsgeschichte möchten wir sowohl Untersuchungen zu den religiösen, spirituellen und geistesgeschichtlichen Ursprüngen der Reformbewegungen des 16. Jahrhunderts als auch Forschungen, die die protestantischen und katholischen Refor- mationen in einen größeren politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Kontext stellen, Raum bieten. Zugleich sieht das ARG es als seine Aufgabe, die „Weltwirkungen“ dieser Prozesse, sowohl jenseits des 16. Jahrhunderts als auch jenseits Europas – nicht zuletzt auf dem amerikanischen Kontinent und in Asien – immer im Blick zu behal- ten. Dieses integrative Verständnis von Reformationsgeschichte, das sowohl den Pro- testantismus als auch den Katholizismus, sowohl kirchen- als auch allgemeinhistori- sche Forschungen einschließt, wird unsere Tätigkeit als Herausgeber leiten.

Ute Lotz-Heumann Brad S. Gregory – Randall C. Zachman Europäische Herausgeberin Nordamerikanische Herausgeber Editorial

After a change in both the European as well as the North American editorship of the Archive for Reformation History in recent years, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our predecessors for the excellent work they did as editors of this journal: Heinz Schilling as European Managing Editor, and Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Anne Jacobson Schutte as North American Managing Editors. We are very much in their debt, and can only hope to maintain the high standards they set for the journal during their tenure as editors. In addition to the change in editorship, there are further changes underway: The Archive for Reformation History will soon enter into a new phase of its pub- lishing history. We are delighted to announce that the Archive will be available in an online electronic form starting in early 2014. We are very excited about the ways in which this will increase both the visibility and accessibility of the journal, and are confident that this will be of great benefit both to our contributors and to our readers. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, our publisher, has made arrangements with de Gruyter to handle the electronic version of the ARH, and we expect that older volumes of the journal will gradually be made accessible on the de Gruyter Jour- nal Archive website. We are grateful to all who have helped to make this important development possible, especially Diedrich Steen of Gütersloher Verlagshaus. With the approach of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017, we are seeing yet again the abiding interest that the Reformation era gen- erates, both in Europe and North America, and more widely across the globe. As editors of the Archive for Reformation History, we are convinced that work on the religious, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of the sixteenth-century reform move- ments as well as research into the wider political, social and cultural contexts of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations lie at the center of our understanding of this world-changing era. We are delighted to see the excellent scholarship that expands and deepens our understanding of these issues, even as the reach of these investigations passes well beyond the sixteenth century and beyond Europe to the Americas and Asia. We are also very encouraged by the fact that this scholarship encompasses history and church history as well as scholarship on Protestantism and Catholicism. We look forward to bringing you some of the best of this scholarship in the Archive for Reformation History, including the articles in this volume.

Brad S. Gregory – Randall C. Zachman Ute Lotz-Heumann North American Managing Editors European Managing Editor Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg: The Ecclesiastes and the De doctrina christiana*

By Christopher Boyd Brown

John O’Malley describes Erasmus’ 1535 Ecclesiastes sive de ratione concionandi as “a major monument – perhaps the major monument – in the history of sacred rhetoric,” whose “only rival is the De doctrina christiana of Augustine.”1 But the “rivalry” between Erasmus’ and Augustine’s works on Christian preaching is not mere literary emulation within a shared genre. Rather, Erasmus self-consciously opposes Augustine’s effort to displace rhetoric from its classical civic and moral foundations before applying it in Christian teaching. Erasmus insists instead upon the heroic ethical figure of the classical orator as the model for the Christian preacher. The Ecclesiastes, published the year before Erasmus’ death, exemplifies his mature coolness toward Augustine, animated in particular by his dismissal of a Lutheran theology of preaching which drew on precisely those elements in Au-

* My thanks to Timothy Wengert and Robert Kolb for reading and commenting on drafts of this essay, and to James Hankins, who guided the earliest stages of this research. – Abbrevia- tions: Allen: Percy S. Allen et al. (eds.), Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, 12 vols., Oxford 1906–1958; ARG: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte; ASD: Erasmus, Opera Omnia, Amsterdam 1969-; CCSL: Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Turnhout 1953-; CR: Melanch- thon, Opera quae supersunt omnia, Corpus Reformatorum vols. 1–28, 1834–1860; CWE: Col- lected Works of Erasmus, Toronto 1974-; DDC: Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, in Joseph Martin (ed.): CCSL 32:1–167; D. W. Robertson, (tr.): On Christian Doctrine, Indianapolis 1958 (English translations are based on Robertson, modified by the author); Ecclesiastes: Eras- mus, Ecclesiastes sive de ratione concionandi (1535), in Jacques Chomarat (ed.): ASD V/4 and V/ 5 (since the Ecclesiastes has not yet appeared in the CWE, English translations are the author’s own); Emerton: Ephraim Emerton, (ed.): Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecen- to, Gloucester, MA 1964; ERSY: Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook; LB: Erasmus, Opera omnia, Louvain 1703–1706; LQ: Lutheran Quarterly, new series; LW: Luther’s Works: American Edition, 59 vols., St. Louis, Philadelphia/Minneapolis 1957-; Novati: Francesco Novati (ed.): Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, 4 vols. in 5, Rome 1891–1911; SM: Otto Clemen et al. (eds.): Supplementa Melanchthoniana: Werke Philipp Melanchthons, die im Corpus reformatorum vermisst werden, 5 vols., Lepizig 1910–1929, repr. Frankfurt 1968; WA: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kri- tische Gesamtausgabe, 61 vols., Weimar 1883-; WA Br: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Briefwechsel, 18 vols., Weimar 1906-; WA TR: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Tischreden, 6 vols., Weimar 1912– 1921. 1. John O’Malley, “Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: The Ecclesiastes of 1535,” in: ERSY 5 (1985), p. 29. 10 Brown gustine which Erasmus, using all the allusive techniques of humanist argument, rejected in his own homiletical handbook. Erasmus was notorious already among his contemporaries for his preference for Jerome over Augustine.2 Nonetheless, Charles Béné was able to argue that from Erasmus’ reading of the De doctrina christiana in the last years of the fifteenth century until the end of his life, Augustine remained the “master of Eras- mus’ thought,” the seminal influence upon his Christian humanism,3 of which the Ecclesiastes was the mature fruit.4 Debora Shuger similarly described the Eccle- siastes as a work fundamentally “based on Augustinian theory but worked out in far more detail than in the De doctrina christiana.”5 Jacques Chomarat questioned Béné’s appraisal, arguing that Augustine served Erasmus rather as a convenient authority amid conflict with theological oppo- nents than as a primary source of Erasmus’ own conceptions – a conclusion re- flected in Chomarat’s annotations for his edition of the Ecclesiastes.6 Viviane Mel- linghoff-Bourgerie argues that the “complexity” of Erasmus’ relation to Augustine and his works ultimately exposes an “insuperable abyss” between the two.7 Hilmar Pabel has sought to qualify this negative judgment by pointing to Eras- mus’ frequent appeal to Augustine’s exegesis. Erika Rummel quantifies an eight-

2. Luther to Spalatin, 19 October 1516, in: WA Br 1:70, no. 71 (LW 48:23–25) and Eck to Erasmus, 2 February 1518, in: Allen 3:211, no. 769 (CWE 5:291–2). Cf. Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Augustine and the Early Renaissance,” in: id., Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Rome 1956, p. 367; Arnoud Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620, Oxford 2011, pp. 34–36. 3. Charles Béné, Érasme et Saint Augustin ou influence de Saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Érasme, Geneva 1969, p. 424. On Béné, see Bruce Mansfield, Erasmus in the Twentieth Cen- tury: Interpretations c. 1920–2000, Toronto 2003, pp. 86–88. 4. See James Michael Weiss, “Ecclesiastes and Erasmus: The Mirror and the Image,” in: ARG 65 (1974), pp. 83–107; Robert G. Kleinhans, “Ecclesiastes sive de Ratione Concionandi,” in Ri- chard L. DeMolen (ed.): Essays on the Works of Erasmus, New Haven 1978, pp. 253–266; O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), pp. 1–29; Greg Kneidel, “Ars Praedicandi: Theories and Practice,” in Peter McCullough et al. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, Oxford 2011, p. 12; Peter Mack, A History of Renaissance Rhetoric, 1380–1620, Oxford 2011, pp. 98– 102. 5. Debora K. Shuger, Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance, Princeton 1988, p. 63. 6. Jacques Chomarat, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Érasme, 2 vols., Paris 1981, especially 1:167–79. See Mansfield (n. 3), pp. 165–173. Chomarat’s notes in ASD 5/4 and 5/5 often cite Cicero while neglecting a closer parallel in Augustine. See below, notes 71, 80, 126, 129, 132. 7. Viviane Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, “Érasme éditeur et interprète de Saint Augustin,” in Do- minique de Courcelles (ed.): Augustinus in der Neuzeit, Turnhout 1998, pp. 53–81, esp. pp. 56, 74. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 11 fold expansion in citations of Augustine in Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament between 1516 and 1535.8 Yet such numerical assessments fail to do justice to the allusive richness of Renaissance argument.9 As Timothy Wengert’s study of the exegetical dispute between Erasmus and the Lutheran Philip Mel- anchthon shows, the sharpest humanist polemic was often carried on through tacit recasting of an opponent’s arguments in parallel treatments of the same subject and pointed refusal to acknowledge an opponent by name.10 Erasmus was not, of course, ignorant of Augustine – his own edition of Augus- tine’s works appeared in 1527–28. Allusions to the De doctrina, as Béné shows, are woven throughout the fabric of the Ecclesiastes.11 Erasmus was aware that he was treading over much of the same ground that Augustine had covered in describing the formation and work of the Christian preacher. In the 1529 preface to his edition of Augustine, Erasmus had praised Augustine for his “resplendent eloquence” and incomparable “ability to teach.”12 Yet the limits of this encomium are shown by the Ecclesiastes’ refusal to follow the theological or rhetorical path to Christian eloquence that Augustine had laid out. Even where Erasmus is not explicitly critical of Augustine, his borrowings from the De doctrina demonstrate a fundamental reworking or even reversal of the Augustinian program along Ciceronian lines. Erasmus assigns the Scriptures a subsidiary place in Christian preaching, gives primary emphasis to the moral virtues of the preacher, and systematically assimilates Christian preaching not only to the tropes but to the ethic of Ciceronian civil rhetoric. Though Erasmus had earlier written differently on some of these matters, his verdicts of 1535 must not be too quickly assimilated to his earlier works.13 The Ecclesiastes has been

8. Hilmar M. Pabel, “Twenty-second Annual Margaret Mann Phillips Lecture: The Author- ity of Augustine in Erasmus’ Biblical Exegesis,” in: ERSY 29 (2009), pp. 61–87; Erika Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian, Toronto 1986, p. 59. On Erasmus’ silence or dismissal of Augustine’s exegesis on such distinctive points as grace, the law, or original sin, see John B. Payne, “Erasmus: Interpreter of Romans,” in: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 2 (1971), pp. 16–23. 9. E.g., Chomarat, Grammaire (n. 6), 1:171. Cf. Mellinghoff-Bourgerie (n. 7), pp. 58, 60– 61. 10. Timothy Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon’s Exege- tical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam, New York 1998. 11. See the tabulation in Béné (n. 3), pp. 443–446, affirmed by Jan den Boeft, “Erasmus and the Church Fathers,” in Irena Dorota Backus (ed.): The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, Leiden 1997, 2:539f. 12. Dedicatory letter to Alfonso Fonseca, Allen 8:147, 150, no. 2157. 13. E. g., Béné (n. 3) insists on the “Augustinian” continuity of Erasmus’ thought from the Antibarbari onward; Manfred Hoffmann, Rhetoric and Theology: The Hermeneutic of Erasmus, 12 Brown decisively shaped by Erasmus’ mature criticism of the Wittenberg Reformation as represented by Luther and Melanchthon and its own appropriation of Augus- tine,14 and must, therefore, be understood in light of its differences, express and implicit, not only from Augustine and from the Lutherans but also, in some cases, from earlier works by Erasmus himself.

I. THE DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA AND CLASSICAL RHETORIC

Both Erasmus and Augustine were inheritors of the classical rhetorical tradition, whose authors did not merely catalogue rhetorical techniques but described the education, character, and role of the orator as the ideal statesman, combining in his virtues eloquence and wisdom, Cato’s vir bonus dicendi peritus.15 The Western Middle Ages had treasured one side of this tradition, especially such prescriptive works as Cicero’s De inventione and Topica, and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium. The fifteenth-century rediscovery of complete texts of Cicero’s De oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria marked an epiphany in the knowledge of the full ancient tradition and a watershed in the development of Renaissance humanism.16 Augustine himself, educated in the later fourth century, had been conversant with the broader Ciceronian corpus.17 At its outset, the De doctrina invites comparison with Cicero’s Orator in undertaking a “great and difficult task.”18 Just as Cicero had endeavored to describe the ideal orator,19 so Augustine at the conclu-

Toronto 1994, pp. 55–60, harmonizes the Ratio verae theologiae and the Ecclesiastes; Robert W. Scribner, “The Social Thought of Erasmus,” in: Journal of Religious History 6 (1970–71), pp. 3– 26, is based solely on the earlier works. 14. On Erasmus’ simultaneous use and critique of Augustine’s DDC in the Antibarbari (ASD 1/1:35–138; CWE 23:19–122), see Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Christening Pagan Mys- teries: Erasmus in Pursuit of Wisdom, Toronto 1981, pp. 6–7. Cf. Mellinghoff-Bourgerie (n. 7), pp. 53–81. 15. Quintilian, Institutio, preface and 12.1; cf. 3.14.55; cf. H. I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 4th ed., Paris 1958, p. 4. 16. James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, Berkeley 1974, pp. 357–363. 17. Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, Göteborg 1967, pp. 553–569; Maurice Testard, Saint Augustin et Cicéron, Paris 1958, 1:8–9, 189–192, 217, 2:27–29. 18. “Magnum opus et arduum”: DDC 1.1.1 (CCSL 32:6); Cicero, Orator 10.33; see Ha- gendahl (n. 17), p. 558. The CCSL edition reads onus for opus with the minority of mss. of the DDC; cf. De civitate Dei, 1.pref (CCSL 47:1). 19. Cicero, Orator 2.7; De oratore 1.6.20; cf. Quintilian, Institutio 12.1.1. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 13 sion of his work can define his purpose as that of describing the ideal preacher: “the kind of man he ought to be who seeks to labor in sound doctrine, not only for himself, but also for others.”20 Most of the specific rhetorical precepts that Augustine presents are derived from Cicero. And like Cicero, Augustine seems to insist on the union of eloquence with wisdom. Yet the wisdom upon which Christian eloquence is founded, in Augustine’s account, is not the virtue or prudence of the orator but the sound interpretation of the Scriptures.21 The simplest classical enumeration of the parts of rhetoric had divided it into invention and elocution. Augustine recasts this distinction as one between the modus inveniendi – the proper exegesis of Scripture – and the modus proferendi – or Christian rhetoric.22 Exegesis replaces the classical systems of rhetorical invention for the Christian preacher.23 The De doctrina christiana undertakes a transformation of classical oratorical culture, not only by removing rhetoric from its civil context, but by “secularizing” it, stripping it of bombast and moral pretension alike.24 Eloquence, for Augustine, is neither inseparably united with virtue nor an inherently immoral seduction, but a neutral faculty, in medio posita.25 The Christian preacher for Augustine is not the heroic man of virtue proposed by Cicero and Quintilian, but a man who holds the teaching office as a servant of his fellows, not on the basis of his own virtue, but as a faithful interpreter of the authoritative Scriptural text.26 Though Augustine prefers that a Christian preacher should be a good man, whose life and teaching are in accord, nonetheless Augustine frankly admits that a wicked man

20. DDC 4.31.64 (CCSL 32:167). 21. DDC 4.5.7–8 (CCSL 32:120–121); Hagendahl (n. 17), pp. 726–729. 22. DDC 1.1.1, repeated at 4.1.1 (CCSL 32:6, 116); cf. Cicero, De oratore 2.27.120. 23. David W. Tracy, “Charity, Obscurity, Clarity: Augustine’s Search for a True Rhetoric,” in Richard Leo Enos et al. (eds.): The Rhetoric of St. Augustine of Hippo: De doctrina Christiana and the Search for a Distinctly Christian Rhetoric, Waco, TX 2008, p. 275; Karla Pollmann, Doctrina Christiana. Untersuchungen zu den Anfängen der christlichen Hermeneutik unter besonderer Be- rücksichtigung von Augustinus, De doctrina Christiana, Fribourg 1996. 24. R. A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, Notre Dame 2006, pp. 37–39; id., “Pagan- ism, Christianity, and the Latin Classics,” in: id., From Augustine to Gregory the Great, London 1983, no. V. Cf. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 2nd ed., Berkeley 2000, pp. 261–264; George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, Chapel Hill 1980, p. 159; Thérèse Sullivan, De doctrina Christiana liber quartus: A Commentary with a Revised Text, Introduction, and Translation, Washington, D. C. 1930, p. 4. 25. DDC 4.2.3 (CCSL 32:117). 26. For literature on the DDC, see Duane W. H. Arnold, Pamela Bright (eds.): De doctrina Christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, Notre Dame 1995; Enos et al. (eds.): The Rhetoric of St. Augustine (n. 23). 14 Brown may nonetheless be an effective and salutary preacher if only he teaches in accord with the Scriptures: “He who speaks wisely and eloquently, but lives wickedly, may benefit many students, although he is unprofitable to his own soul … they benefit many by preaching what they do not practice.”27 In the context of the long classical defense of rhetoric on the basis of the virtue of the orator, it is a shocking reversal. This aspect of Augustine’s work has seemed dangerous, “threat- en[ing] to sever efficacy from ethics altogether.”28 For Augustine, engaged against the Donatists as well as against the sophistic tradition, that was, nonetheless, precisely the point.29

II. THE DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA AND RENAISSANCE RHETORIC

Erasmus was not, of course, the first humanist to read either Cicero or Augustine. Cicero provided the humanists from Petrarch on with the model both for eloquent imitation and for humane education: the cycle of disciplines at the core of the studia humanitatis are those recommended by Cicero in the De oratore.30 Au- gustine’s influence upon the humanists was more subtle. Although John Monfa- sani has denied the significant influence of the De doctrina on Renaissance rhetoric, excepting only Augustine’s recasting of the Ciceronian officia oratoris to emphasize the munus docendi,31 Augustine had served as a model for generations of humanists. Though humanists like Petrarch were aware of Augustine’s criticism of ancient rhetorical culture in the Confessions,32 Augustine served them chiefly as a model of

27. DDC 4.27.59–60 (CCSL 32:163–164): “Nam qui sapienter et eloquenter dicit, vivit autem nequiter, erudit quidem multos discendi studiosos, quamvis animae suae sit inutilis … multis itaque prosunt dicendo quae non faciunt.” Cf. 4.29.62 (CCSL 32:165–7). 28. Kneidel (n. 4), p. 7. 29. On the relationship of the DDC to Augustine’s controversy with the Donatists, see Fre- derick H. Russell, “Persuading the Donatists: Augustine’s Coercion by Words,” in William E. Klingshirn, Mark Vessey (eds.): The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Marcus, Ann Arbor 1999, p. 125. 30. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, New York 1979, p. 22. 31. John Monfasani, “The De doctrina christiana and Renaissance Rhetoric,” in Edward D. English (ed.): Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina Christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages, Notre Dame 1995, pp. 172–188. Cf. Mack (n. 4), p. 28. Kristeller, “Augustine” (n. 2), p. 370, cites the DDC only once, in connection with Ficino’s notion of Platonic love. 32. Augustine, Confessions 4.2.2, 9.2.2, 1.17–19, 6.6 (CCSL 27:40f, 133f, 15ff, 79f); cf. Petrarch, Secretum,inOpera, Basel 1554; repr. Ridgewood, NJ 1965, 1:383–384. See Carol Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 15 classical eloquence devoted to Christian ends and as a theorist justifying that application.33 In Petrarch’s De sua ipsius et multorum ignorantia, he praises the power of eloquence in Ciceronian terms while calling on Augustine to defend its Chris- tian use.34 Cicero’s eloquence, he argues, is not harmful but exceedingly helpful to the Christian. Augustine himself is an example of one who from Cicero “filled his pockets and his lap with the gold and silver of the Egyptians”35 – an allegory also supplied by Augustine (Exodus 3:21–22, 11:2–3; 12:35–36).36 In the next generation of humanists, Coluccio Salutati invoked Augustine and the De doctrina not only to defend the (allegorical) reading of the classical poets by Christians but as a model for the Christian’s use of culture in general.37 Salutati quotes Augustine’s definition of eloquence as a neutral faculty and extends its application to other kinds of verbal art.38 Augustine himself he invokes in terms which identify him with Cicero: “Read Augustine On Christian Doctrine where he seems to touch the heights of eloquence, and certainly you will find the Cicero- nian tradition renewed in the style of that great man.”39 Of all Erasmus’ predecessors, Lorenzo Valla most fully anticipated the range of his interests, applying humanist philological techniques to the New Testament and writing on such religious questions as the freedom of the will and the sacraments.40 Fundamental to Valla’s humanism was the conviction that Christianity could best be reconciled with the classical tradition on the basis of ancient rhetorical culture.

Everhart Quillen, Rereading the Renaissance: Petrarch, Augustine, and the Language of Humanism, Ann Arbor 1998, p. 182ff, and Jerrold Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism, Princeton 1968, pp. 31–62. 33. Cf. Albert Rabil, Jr., “Petrarch, Augustine, and Classical Christian Tradition,” in: id. (ed.): Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, Philadelphia 1988, 1:111. 34. On Cicero, see Seigel (n. 32), pp. 31–62; on the DDC, ibid., p. 45. 35. Petrarch, De sua ipsius et multorum ignorantia,inOpera 2:1162. Translated in Cassirer et al. (eds.): The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, Chicago 1948, pp. 114–115. 36. DDC 2.40.60–1 (CCSL 32:75–76); cf. Origen, Letter to Gregory, in Henri Crouzel (ed.): Grégoire le Thaumaturge: Remerciment à Origène suivi de la lettre d’Origène à Grégoire, Paris 1969, pp. 188–191. 37. Salutati, Ep. 4.15, in Novati 1:301, 305f; Ep. 14.24, in Novati 4/1:224, 228–229; tr. Emerton, pp. 292, 297–298, 359, 375. See Marrou (n. 15), p 413; cf. Monfasani, “De doctrina” (n. 31), p. 175, and p. 183, n. 33. 38. Salutati, Ep. 14.23, in Novati 4/1:204; tr. Emerton, pp. 340–341; DDC 4.2.3 (CCSL 32:117). 39. Salutati, Ep. 4.15, in Novati 1:301; tr. Emerton, p. 292. 40. Cf. Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Hu- manist Thought, Chicago 1970, 1:103–170 and 2: 674–682; G. R. Evans, “Lorenzo Valla and the Theologians,” in: Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 38 (1987), pp. 436–441. 16 Brown

Valla’s De voluptate, with its surprising endorsement of Epicureanism over Stoi- cism as the philosophy closest to Christianity, may perhaps best be understood as a defense of the compatibility of Christianity and oratory.41 The discussion of utilitas and voluptas there draws upon Augustine’s discussion of things to be used or enjoyed in the first book of the De doctrina,42 and Valla portrays Christian rhetoric as the essential means of directing men to right use and enjoyment. The Christian speaker, like Cicero’s (or Augustine’s) orator, must know how to teach, delight and move if he is to win his audience from worldly delights.43 This Chris- tian eloquence is sister to civil eloquence, but sweeter.44 Valla presents a more straightforward argument in the preface to the fourth book of his Elegantiae linguae Latinae.45 Here, he refutes those who appeal to Jerome to argue that Christians should shun secular eloquence. In a few para- graphs, Valla touches on many of Augustine’s arguments for the Christian use of rhetoric. Rhetoric, grammar, and the languages are neutral in themselves, of great use when applied in the service of Christian truth.46 Valla reproaches Christian theologians who dismiss eloquence: their obligation as defenders of truth is too great. The fathers of the church were eloquent, as was Paul himself.47 On all these points, Valla takes the De doctrina as his guide in exhorting Christian use of classical rhetoric.48 The De doctrina figured prominently also in other corners of late medieval and Renaissance discourse about Christian rhetoric and preaching. The medieval ars praedicandi tradition, which Erasmus both criticized and drew upon, also ap- pealed to the De doctrina.49 Within Erasmus’ lifetime, the Franciscan poet laure- ate Thomas Murner had published his 1509 De Augustiniana Hieronymianaque

41. Seigel (n. 32), pp. 153–154. 42. Trinkaus (n. 40), 1:114–115ff. 43. Valla, De voluptate 3.27.2, in Maristella Lorch (ed.): De vero falsoque bono, Bari 1970, p. 137. Cf. DDC 4.13.29 (CCSL 32:136–7); 4.12.27 (CCSL 32:135); Cicero, Orator 21.69. Valla uses Cicero’s probare rather than Augustine’s docere. 44. Valla, De voluptate 3.27.3–4, ed. Lorch (n. 43), p. 137; cf. Seigel (n. 32), p. 159. 45. Valla, Opera Omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin, Torino 1962, 2:117–120. Cf. Seigel (n. 32), p. 154. 46. Cf. DDC 4.2.3 (CCSL 32:117), above, n. 25. 47. Valla, Opera (n. 45), 2:120; cf. DDC 4.6.10–7.21, 4.18.36, 20.39–21.50 (CCSL 32:122–131,142–143, 144–157). 48. Contra Monfasani, “De doctrina” (n. 31), p. 175. 49. Francis P. Kilcoyne, Margaret Jennings, “Rethinking ‘Continuity’: Erasmus’ Ecclesiastes and the Artes Praedicandi,” in: Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 21 (1997), pp. 5–24. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 17

Reformatione Poetarum,50 drawing so extensively on the De doctrina that about a third of the book is simply a concatenation of Augustinian extracts selected to prove Murner’s thesis that only Christian rhetoric is truly eloquent – though Mur- ner’s idiosyncratic work has prompted its most recent interpreter to conclude, finally, that it is a satire of both humanist and scholastic positions in contempor- ary debate.51 In comparison with the preceeding tradition, then, it is Erasmus’ coolness toward the De doctrina and its author that requires explanation.

III. ERASMUS, THE ECCLESIASTES,AND THE DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA

Erasmus was certainly aware of Valla’s Augustinian defense of Christian use of classical rhetoric, having issued his own abridgement of Valla’s Elegantiae.52 Among Erasmus’ favored metaphors for his use of classical culture in the Enchir- idion – and a leitmotiv of Béné’s interpretation – is that of “adorning the temple of God” with pagan riches.53 Béné points to the De doctrina, where Augustine refers to the Israelites taking spoils from Egypt.54 But Augustine makes no mention of their eventual use in the temple – and Erasmus seems in the Ecclesiastes deliberately to avoid Augustine’s allegorization of the Egyptian spoils.55 Rather, Erasmus’ image of adorning the temple is anticipated in Valla’s prefaces to the Elegantiae, where the Christian orator is exhorted, “Let us adorn the house of God.”56 But beyond and against the earlier humanist tradition in its embrace of Augustine’s “secularization” of the liberal arts, Erasmus insists from the beginning that all of the liberal disciplines “concern Christ.”57

50. Strassburg: Martin Flach, 1509. 51. Irena Backus, “Augustine and Jerome in Thomas Murner’s De Augustiniana Hieronymia- naque Reformatione Poetarum (Strasbourg, 1509),” in Leif Grane et al. (eds.): Auctoritas Patrum II. Neue Beiträge zur Rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Mainz 1998, pp. 13–25. 52. Epitome, ASD 1/4:207–332. On the debate over Erasmus’ use of Valla in his own Anno- tationes, see Mansfield (n. 3), p. 147. 53. Enchiridion 8.4 (LB 5:25; CWE 66:62); Cf. Enchridion 2 (LB 5:7; CWE 66:33). 54. See above, n. 36; Béné (n. 3), pp. 138–139; DDC 2.40.60–1 (CCSL 32:75–76); Béné (n. 3), p. 14, and index under “orner le temple du Seigneur.” 55. Erasmus mentions an unspecified mystical sense of the Exodus passage in Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:297, but in Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:110, otherwise parallel to DDC 2.40.60–1, Eras- mus does not refer to the Exodus. Béné (n. 3), p. 383, understands the passages simply as parallels. 56. Valla, Elegantiae IV pref., p. 120: “Nos ornemus domum Dei”; cf. above, n. 36. 57. Boyle, Christening (n. 14), p. 20; Erasmus, Antibarbari, ASD 1/1:110 (CWE 23:90). 18 Brown

As early as 1519, Erasmus had been urged to turn the principles of the Enchir- idion to the problem of Christian preaching. The task occupied Erasmus inter- mittently for sixteen years, and the 1535 Ecclesiastes was arguably the culmination of his life’s work, the last book he saw published.58 Erasmus gives the expansive plan of the work in his preface: “We have divided the substance of the argument into four books. In the first, we show the dignity of the preacher’s office and with what virtues he must be endowed. In the second and third we accommodate the teaching of the rhetoricians, logicians, and theologians to the use of preaching. The fourth as a sort of catalogue admonishes the preacher what themes he should seek from what places in Scripture.”59 Already the contrast with the De doctrina christiana is apparent. Augustine’s work, despite its allusions to Cicero’s treatises on the orator, had been organized around a division between the proper exegesis of Scripture and its communication by means of Christian rhetoric.60 Erasmus, on the other hand, gives first place to the role and character of the preacher. In the very titles of the works, Augustine directs attention to Christian teaching; Erasmus’ to the Christian preacher,61 par- allelling in a Christian context Cicero’s Orator, De oratore, and De optimo genere oratorum. When Erasmus does explicitly acknowledge Augustine as his predecessor, in the second and third books of the Ecclesiastes, it is in guarded, often critical and dismissive terms. Near the beginning of the second book, Erasmus writes, “Let us gather certain of the precepts of the rhetoricians which seem appropriate to the preaching office, which St. Augustine partially attempted [ex parte tentavit] in his work De doctrina christiana. Even if there were nothing left out of that book, nevertheless the requirements of a very different time demand that certain rules should be conveyed in more detail and, as it were, with a coarser Minerva.”62 Erasmus portrays Augustine’s discussion of ecclesiastical rhetoric as incomplete and ill-suited to the present. He therefore intends to treat the subject more fully, if with less artistic subtlety63 – a qualification which sounds a sarcastic note coming

58. For a detailed outline of the Ecclesiastes, see Hoffmann (n. 13), pp. 39–55. On its history of composition, see Weiss (n. 4), pp. 84–86; Kleinhans (n. 4), pp. 256–257; Chomarat, Gram- maire (n. 6), 2:1054–1056; Ecclesiastes 1, prefatory letter to Christoph von Stadion, ASD 5/ 4:29–30. 59. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:30. 60. See above, p. 12–13. 61. Gerald A. Press, “The Subject and Structure of Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana,” in: Augustinian Studies 11 (1980), pp. 101–107. 62. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:268. 63. See Erasmus, Adages 1.1.37, ASD 2/1:152ff (CWE 30:85–86). Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 19 on the heels of Erasmus’ criticism of Augustine’s style.64 More significant for Eras- mus’ reserve toward Augustine here than any quibbles about his Latinity was Erasmus’ own anti-Augustinian project to recover the Ciceronian ideal of the orator with all its moral and social connections and to apply it to the Christian preacher. Even on many of the minor points of connection between the Ecclesiastes and the De doctrina catalogued by Béné, there is significant alteration or disagreement.65 Like Augustine, and often following him, Erasmus recommends a curriculum of studies useful to the ecclesiastical orator, presents a system of rhetoric adapted to his needs, and describes his office. Cicero had undertaken a parallel project in describing the ideal civil orator in the De oratore. Erasmus works from both models, reaccommodating Augustine to the Ciceronian pattern, not as an inadvertent “limitation” but as a central part of his program.66 The curriculum that Erasmus proposes in books two and three of the Eccle- siastes is the antique paideia of rhetoric and literature. Erasmus would have the future preacher study some dialectic and a smattering of other disciplines: astron- omy, geometry, natural history, law – included within grammar, the foundation of rhetorical training.67 For Erasmus, knowledge of nature serves not only to eluci- date the obscure places in Scripture (as for Augustine) but also as a source of the preacher’s own creative eloquence.68 Grammar also includes history and poetry, and above all knowledge of the three languages: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, though Erasmus’ expectations for the preacher exceed Augustine’s own linguistic program.69 When the grammarian has laid the foundations of the student’s knowledge, he must progress to the study of eloquence. Erasmus describes four means of acquir- ing eloquence: natura, ars, imitatio, usus.70 Like Cicero and Augustine, he is cri-

64. Erasmus calls Augustine felix et argutus in his preaching but criticizes him for being insufficiently serious, for his frequent digressions, and for his fondness for rhyming prose, attrib- uted to “the character of his race”: Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:268. See also Visser, Reading Augustine (n. 2), pp. 36–38. 65. Béné (n. 3), pp. 387–424, 444–446. 66. Contra O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), e. g., pp. 19, 26, 28. 67. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:256. Cf. DDC 2.39.58 (CCSL 32:72); cf. DDC 2.26.40– 2.40.60 (CCSL 32:61–74). On grammar: Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:252, ASD 5/4:258. Cf. Mar- rou (n. 15), pp. 3–26. 68. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:256; cf. DDC 2.16.24 (CCSL 32:48–9). 69. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:248–258; cf. DDC 2.11.16 (CCSL 32:42). 70. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:260. Elsewhere, Erasmus identifies only natura, praecepta, exerci- tatio (p. 250) or natura, institutio, usus (p. 66). See Quintilian, Institutio 3.5.1 (not cited by Chomarat); cf. Cicero, De inventione 1.4.5. 20 Brown tical of extravagant claims for the effectiveness of mere precept and emphasizes the importance of natural ability. Quoting Augustine anonymously, Erasmus notes that rhetoric “is learned either quickly or never,” depending on natural endowment.71 Rhetorical precepts can, however be helpful to the ecclesiastical orator,72 and – in contrast to Augustine – a great deal of the Ecclesiastes, in the second and third books, is in fact devoted to presenting just such techniques. Erasmus makes lesser claims for imitation than does Augustine.73 He would have the future preacher listen to eloquent men, noting what is worthy of imitation. Demosthenes and Cicero are supreme models of language.74 Basil is first among ecclesiastical authors, followed by Chrysostom. Among the Latins, Eras- mus criticizes the obscurity of Ambrose and reproaches the Africanisms of Tertul- lian and Augustine in comparison with the Latinity of Jerome, who was unfortu- nately never engaged in preaching. Erasmus ends his catalogue with an exhortation “to seek an example from the best [writers].”75 Unlike Augustine and Valla, however, Erasmus’ list of models of eloquence excludes the Scrip- tures.76 Erasmus’ extensive discussion is thus much more closely bound to the tradition of prescriptive rhetoric than is Augustine’s. Following closely the order of the Ad Herennium, Erasmus begins by distinguishing the three genera of public speaking: forensic (forense), deliberative (suasorium), and epideictic or demonstrative (encomiasticum).77 Christian preaching belongs to the latter two genres, but especially to the genus suasorium,78 whose special goal is to urge persuasively to good

71. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:260; DDC 4.3.4 (CCSL 32:118). Augustine attributes the opinion to the “princes of Roman eloquence,” but the underlying passage from Cicero (cited exclu- sively in ASD 5/4:67) is De oratore 3.36.146, which speaks of the orator’s acquaintance with philosophy, not with rhetoric. Cf. Cicero, De oratore 3.31.123. On ingenium, cf. DDC 4.3.4 (CCSL 32:118); Cicero, De oratore 1.25.113. 72. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:250. 73. DDC 4.3.4–5 (CCSL 32:117–119). 74. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:264. 75. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:268; cf. Cicero, De oratore 2.22.90. 76. Erasmus does quote examples from the Bible in his catalogue of rhetorical figures in Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:48 ff. Cf. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:280. See below, p. 21. Erasmus’ coolness toward imitation speaks against interpreting his understanding of the imitatio Christi in light of rhetorical imitation: e.g., Hoffmann (n. 13), p. 139; Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Erasmus on Lan- guage and Method in Theology, Toronto 1977, p. 101. 77. On the tensions between Erasmus’ embrace of the classical genera here and his own practice and recommendations elsewhere, see John W. O’Malley, “Grammar and Rhetoric in the Pietas of Erasmus,” in: Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1998), p. 91. 78. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:270–274. See the discussion of the genera in John O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 22ff. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 21 morals. Whether or not such a concern exhausts Erasmus’ own full understanding of the philosophia Christi, it is central in his treatment of homiletics in the Eccle- siastes.79 Erasmus then discusses the three duties of the orator, taken from Cicero by way of Augustine (shown in the use of docere rather than probare): “Let the one speaking see to it that he teaches, that he delights, that he bends [his hearers].”80 Teaching is fundamental and prerequisite to delight or persuasion,81 though Eras- mus’discussion of delight is chiefly a warning against the use of scurrilous jokes by monastic preachers.82 Though he derives the notion of the three offices from Augustine, Erasmus does not link them with the three styles, which he discusses only briefly and rather critically later in the third book.83 Erasmus then distinguishes the parts of oratory, using the fuller five-part division instead of Augustine’s twofold structure.84 Like Augustine, Erasmus devotes most space to inventio, but rather than Augustine’s exposition of a system of Scriptural exegesis, Erasmus abridges the system found in the Ciceronian Rhetor- ica, discussing the application of status to preaching and listing commonplaces for argument; in the third book, he suggests means of amplification and figures for ornament, closely following the Ad Herennium.85 At the end of the third book of the Ecclesiastes, Erasmus turns finally to the interpretation of the Scriptures, in the course of enumerating rhetorical tropes to be used by the preacher. So far as it goes, Erasmus’ application of rhetoric to Biblical interpretation owes much to Augustine’s treatment in book three of the De doctrina, as Erasmus himself acknowledges.86 His principle for identifying places in Scripture which demand an allegorical understanding is similar to Au- gustine’s: “A trope is not to be sought, if the proper language has a pious and sound meaning, concordant with other places in Scripture.”87 He turns last to

79. See O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), pp. 24–26. 80. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:274. Cf. DDC 4.12.27 (CCSL 32:135); Cicero, Orator 21.69. On the use of docere as a mark of Augustine’s influence on Renaissance rhetorics, see Monfasani, “De doctrina” (n. 31), pp. 177–178. ASD 5/4:275 cites only Cicero here, though noting the alteration in vocabulary. 81. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:274. On the importance of the munus docendi, see Weiss (n. 4), pp. 97–99. 82. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:276–278. 83. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:162–164; contrast DDC 4.17.34 (CCSL 32:141). 84. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:279; Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:7. On Augustine, see above, pp. 12– 13. 85. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4 p. 280ff. 86. DDC 3.29.40–41 (CCSL 32:100–102); cf. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:218, 260. 87. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:182. Cf. DDC 3.10.14 (CCSL 32:86). 22 Brown the Regulae of Tyconius discussed by Augustine and presents them in summary form,88 though the similarities between certain of these and the Lutheran system of Biblical interpretation seems to have tempered Erasmus’ enthusiasm, as his comments on the rule “On the Promises and the Law” suggest.89 Erasmus emphasizes the spiritual sense of Scripture as moral interpretation that deliberately focuses its attention on Christian life rather than on dogmatic speculation.90 The third book ends with a return to the person of the preacher in a discussion of the discretion and judgment which Erasmus, following Quintilian, requires of the orator.91 The preacher must apply these virtues in order to accommodate his mode of speech to his audience in substance as well as style – as “some,” clearly the Lutherans, fail to do.92 The fourth book is a tabulation of possible themes (tituli) for preaching: an index materiarum, as Erasmus calls it – a tacit alternative to Melanchthon’s loci.93 Much as Erasmus’ discussion owes to the De doctrina christiana, it diverges from it – and in part from Erasmus’ own earlier treatment of the subject – on the very points that are central to Augustine’s description of Christian preaching.94 In the 1518 Ratio verae theologiae, Erasmus had defined the role of Scripture for the theologian much more prominently. There, Erasmus began by emphasiz- ing the necessity for purity of heart in approaching the Scriptures, combined with the use of humane erudition; the task of Scriptural interpretation was central because Scripture provides the model for Christian life and piety: “Since the whole doctrine of Christ intends for our life to be pious and holy, it is proper to derive the example for our actions from the divine books.”95

88. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:282–286. 89. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:282. 90. E. g., the Ratio verae theologiae, LB 5:75–138. Cf. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 24; Chomarat, Grammaire (n. 6), 2:1128; John S. Chamberlin, Increase and Multiply: Arts-of-Dis- course Procedure in the Preaching of Donne, Chapel Hill 1976, p. 74. 91. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:288–308, citing Quintilian, Institutio 3.3.5–6 (which has only iudicium). 92. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:306–308. See Weiss (n. 4), p. 95. Cf. Erasmus, De libero arbitrio, LB 9:1217–18, CWE 76:11–14. 93. Cf. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 24. See also Heinz Scheible, “Melanchthon zwischen Luther und Erasmus,” in August Buck (ed.): Renaissance – Reformation. Gegensätze und Gemein- samkeiten, Wiesbaden 1984, pp. 166–169; Wengert, Human Freedom (n. 10), pp. 59–60, and id., Philip Melanchthon’s “Annotationes in Johannem” in Relation to Its Predecessors and Contempor- aries, Geneva 1987, pp. 121–123. 94. Hoffmann (n. 13), e.g., pp. 61–63, 135, tends to interpret the Ecclesiastes as an expansion of the Ratio rather than attending to divergences between the two, though see p. 59. 95. Erasmus, Ratio, LB 5:105; Hoffmann (n. 13), p. 35. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 23

Although in the first book of the Ecclesiastes Erasmus alludes to the preacher’s role as expositor of Holy Scripture and dispenser of the Word,96 in his treatment of preaching itself in books two and three, Erasmus puts Scripture forward neither as the chief source of the preacher’s material, offering a system of invention instead, nor as a model for the preacher’s eloquence, instead recommending the classical orators and church fathers.97 The union between eloquence and wisdom that Augustine founds upon the study of the Scriptures – as eloquent as they are wise – is thus severed.98 Erasmus warns the preacher not to reproduce the obscurity of allegorical passages of Scripture in his preaching, appealing to Augustine.99 But for Augustine, the acknowledgement that Scripture contained obscure passages to exercise the reader was a caveat within his broader commendation of Scriptural eloquence as a model for the preacher. Erasmus’ hesitation to recommend the Scriptures is only peripherally concerned with their deviations from a Ciceronian standard.100 Rather, for Erasmus, as he asserted with increasing emphasis over the years following his dispute with Luther, Scripture has become a book that is not merely occa- sionally but fundamentally unclear and therefore an inappropriate model for imitation.101 For Erasmus, wisdom and eloquence are united not on the sacred page but in the character of the orator. The same qualities of character which make the Chris- tian preacher a good man are the foundation of his eloquence: “That pure and perfect habit of mind will supply of itself a skill with words worthy of sacred things, and an appropriate delivery, and fitting gestures, even to one who does not try to assume them.”102 Such a spontaneous link between wisdom and eloquence Augustine attributes only to the Scriptures themselves.103 The disagreement between Augustine and Erasmus on Christian preaching

96. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:36. 97. See above, nn. 74, 85. 98. Cf. DDC 4.6.9 (CCSL 32:122). See O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 22: “there is an unresolved ambiguity in Erasmus … on this basic issue of the relationship between rhetoric and the text-relatedness of preaching, and … he does not address the issue in a satisfactory way in the Ecclesiastes or elsewhere”; also Chamberlin, Increase and Multiply (n. 90), pp. 72–75. 99. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:260; DDC 4.8.22 (CCSL 32:131–132). 100. Hoffmann (n. 13), pp. 132–133. 101. Luther, De servo arbitrio, WA 18:606–609, LW 33:24–28; Erasmus, De libero arbitrio, LB 9:1216; CWE 76:8–9; and Hyperaspistes 1.64–71, LB 10:1299–1308; CWE 76:214–235, cited in ASD 5/5:261. Erasmus’ continuing work on clarifying parapharases and annotations for the New Testament does not at all contradict his rejection of Scriptural clarity. 102. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:247. 103. DDC 4.6.10 (CCSL 32:122–123); cf. Horace, Ars Poetica 311. 24 Brown thus goes much deeper than divergence on specific points of rhetorical precept. The details that Erasmus does draw from Augustine are placed in a radically new context as Erasmus assimilates the Christian preacher to the Ciceronian orator. The first book of the Ecclesiastes begins by making explicit the parallel between the office of the preacher and that of the secular orator. In terms deceptively re- miniscent of the De civitate Dei, Erasmus distinguishes a duplex politia, “external” and “ecclesiastical,” each of which has its peculiar ecclesiastes, or public speaker.104 Unlike Augustine’s two cities, however, Erasmus’ distinction is merely institu- tional, for both are subsumed in the respublica Christiana.105 Civil and ecclesiastical orators are not merely students of the same art of eloquence but look to the same end, namely, the peace of the respublica, and hold the same office.106 To be sure, the Christian preacher, “the herald of the divine will before the people and steward of heavenly philosophy,” has an office as much more dignified than that of the civil orator as Christ is greater than all earthly kings.107 But the close parallel between the two justifies not only Erasmus’ embrace of the classical system of rhetoric but above all Erasmus’ assimilation of the office, virtues, and role of the Christian preacher to those of the classical orator. Augustine had sought to shift attention from the person of the orator to the source of his authority – the Scriptures correctly interpreted. Erasmus returns decisively to Cicero’s emphasis on the speaker and his character. Thus, though the Ecclesiastes describes Erasmus’ hermeneutical approach, it is, as the title suggests, focused primarily on the formation of the interpreter (the ecclesiastes or concionator) and only seconda- rily on articulating a method of interpretation or of homiletics (ratio concionandi). The object of the first book of the Ecclesiastes is to praise the office of the Christian preacher: “the dignity, the purity, the bravery, the usefulness, the reward of the faithful preacher.”108 There is no greater charismatic gift than that of preaching, he writes, no office in all the hierarchy of the church superior in dignity.109 The preacher is compared in his vital role to the light, the rain, the dew. His office is superior to that of the king, who only restrains the wicked, whereas

104. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:35–36. 105. Scribner (n. 13), pp. 16–23. On the De civitate Dei, see R. A. Markus, Saeculum: His- tory and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, Cambridge 1970, revised ed. 1988. 106. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:36. Cf. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 26, where the association is taken as evidence of Erasmus’ failure to “fully liberate … himself from the political model”; Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform: Erasmus’ Civil Dispute with Luther, Cambridge, MA 1983, pp. 114–115. 107. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:36. 108. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:246. 109. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:36. Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 25 the preacher by his exhortation actually makes them virtuous.110 The dignity of his office should neither make the Christian orator proud nor cause him to des- pair.111 Erasmus praises the office in order to emphasize that the men who occupy it must be of the highest character and ability. Erasmus would have a combination of knowledge with intellectual and moral virtues, but the first and essential requi- site of the Christian preacher is a pure heart – an insistence central to Erasmus’ conception of Christian preaching:112 “Whoever therefore is equipping himself for such an excellent office as this, must be learned in many things: he must have a recondite understanding of the sacred books, an uncommon wisdom, a pure and brave spirit, instruction and practice in speaking and a ready fluency of tongue, with which to speak before the multitude. … Yet in my opinion, he should attend to nothing as more important or with greater care than that he should render his heart, the source of his speaking, as pure as is possible.”113 Erasmus follows Cicero in using the common vocabulary of rhetoric and of ethics to assimilate the practice of eloquence to moral virtue – especially prudentia.114 Erasmus’ dicendi prudentia comprehends the fullest range of rhetorical con- siderations –“what should be said … when to speak, before what audience, how, with what words, in what order, with what figures of speech, with what facial expressions, with what gestures”115 – but also such ethical ones as “judgment and discretion.”116 For Erasmus’ Christian orator, dicendi prudentia is a gift of the Holy Spirit, completing the natural endowment, and identified with “a pure heart” or “integrity of mind.”117 Without this, all the other skills of the preacher are pernicious118 – recalling Cicero’s warning against imparting eloquence to those who lack the virtues.119 Erasmus thus radically internalizes the source of the speaker’s authority. In- stead of Augustine’s emphasis on the content of preaching, based on a sound understanding of the Bible, Erasmus places the preacher’s knowledge of the Scrip-

110. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:168–169. 111. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:220. 112. Cf. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 14. See also Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:54, 68. 113. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:44. 114. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:66. Cf. Cicero, De oratore 3.14.55. 115. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:67. 116. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:270; cf. Hoffmann (n. 13), pp. 191–200; Weiss (n. 4), p. 97. On Erasmus’ parallel discussion in the Antibarbari, see Scribner (n. 13), p. 10. 117. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:68. 118. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:68. 119. Cicero, De oratore 3.14.55. 26 Brown tures alongside various internal qualities, giving first place to purity of heart.120 For Augustine, to be sure, the character of the preacher had served to commend his message to his audience;121 for Erasmus, it is necessary not only to set a moral example but because without purity of heart, the Christian orator cannot hope to understand the Scriptures.122 “Divine wisdom does not enter a mind stained with vices, nor deign to dwell in a body subject to sin.”123 Erasmus goes still further to insist that the effectiveness of preaching depends on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the preacher: “Nor can the tongue of the preacher be effica- cious, unless the spirit of Christ, dwelling in his heart, moves the plectrum of the mouth and adds a secret power to the words as they flow forth.”124 Augustine would have smelled the perilous subjectivity of Donatism.125 It is true that Erasmus elsewhere concedes that a vicious preacher who preaches the truth will do no harm to especially virtuous (aequiores) hearers. But this is not, as Chomarat characterizes it, Erasmus’ extension of the scholastic ex opere operato understanding of the sacraments to preaching; rather, Erasmus insists that the effect of truth spoken by a wicked man is dependant on the unusually righteous character of the hearers (in the terms of the sacramental discussion, an opus oper- antis).126 Erasmus is far from Augustine’s assertion that even a wicked man who teaches what the Scriptures teach may be effective and beneficial to his hearers because of the truth that he preaches.127 Béné argues, nonetheless, that Erasmus owes his emphasis on the moral qualities of the preacher to Augustine.128 From the first book of the De doctrina,he cites Augustine writing that “the mind should be cleansed so that it is able to see that light and to cling to it once it is seen.”129 Again, Béné invokes Augustine as the source of Erasmus’ argument for the primary and indispensable importance of

120. Erasmus’ identification of purity of heart as the scopus of the Christian preacher (Eccle- siastes 1, ASD 5/4:68) is an adaptation of John Cassian, Conferences 1.4.3, CSEL 13:10, though Cassian (Conferences 1.20.5, CSEL 13:31) sees preaching as a distraction. Cf. Boyle, Erasmus on Language (n. 76), p. 75, where the quotation is associated instead with the Deventer school. 121. DDC 4.27.59–60 (CCSL 32:163–164). 122. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:44. See Hoffmann (n. 13), pp. 89–91; Weiss (n. 4), p. 102. 123. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:44. Cf. Wisdom 1:4, a reference not noted by Chomarat. 124. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:42. 125. See above, n. 29. 126. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:184, likely has Augustine DDC 4.27.59 (CCSL 32:163–164) in mind (both citing Phil. 1:17–18 and Matt. 23:2); the parallel with Augustine is not noted by Chomarat, ASD 5/5:185, or by Béné (n. 3). 127. DDC 4.27.59–60 (CCSL 32:163–164); cf. 4.29.62 (CCSL 32:165–167). 128. Béné (n. 3), pp. 381–382. 129. DDC 1.10.10 (CCSL 32:12). Chomarat, Grammaire (n. 6), 1:170, rejects dependence Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 27 the virtue of the preacher.130 But in the first book of the De doctrina, Augustine is not speaking of the Christian preacher in particular, but of the matter [res] which is the subject of all Christian preaching. The mind of the Christian must be purged not so that the exegete or preacher can understand the Bible, but so that every Christian can be admitted at last to the enjoyment of the beatific vision. Erasmus echoes Augustine’s warning against waiting for direct illumination from the Spirit instead of attending to the Scriptures, but immediately admonishes the would-be reader of Scripture to purify his heart so that he may cooperate with the working of God.131 When Augustine does refer to the piety required of the Chris- tian exegete, he means submission to the authority of the Scriptures, which then, as he studies them, reveal precisely how far he comes short of the love of God and neighbor which the Scriptures prescribe.132 It is to this stage that the De doctrina is devoted, preceeding rather than presupposing the purgation of the Christian’s mind and heart.133 Erasmus’ transposition of Augustine’s description of the substance of Christian preaching to refer to the necessary qualities of the Christian orator himself reflects the identification that Erasmus makes between the Chris- tian speaker and his matter. Erasmus presses this point most strongly in the person of Jesus Christ himself whom he puts forward as the supreme model of the Christian preacher, summus ille ecclesiastes,134 not merely because of his preaching during his earthly ministry, but because he is himself the Speech of God the Father. Erasmus had controver- sially translated the Greek logos in the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel as sermo rather than as Jerome’s verbum.135 In the Ecclesiastes, Erasmus refers to Christ as upon Augustine here, but the parallel between Augustine’s purgandus est animus and Erasmus’ ut cor purgatissimum reddat strongly supports the connection (Béné (n. 3), p. 443). 130. Béné (n. 3), pp. 388–390; cf. Ecclesiastes 2, ASD 5/4:247ff. 131. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:107–108; cf. DDC, 1.pref.4–7 (CCSL 32:2–5). Weiss (n. 4), pp. 90–93, points out the parallels between Erasmus’ discussion of God-given and humanly cultivated qualities of the orator in the Ecclesiastes and his discussion of grace in the Diatribe against Luther. 132. DDC 2.7.9–10 (CCSL 32:36–37). Erasmus does adapt portions of this passage in Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:288, which is not correctly noted by either Béné (n. 3, p. 445) or Cho- marat (ASD 5/5:289). Chomarat conflates Augustine’s insistence that the Scriptures teach charity (DDC 1.36.40 and 1.50.44; CCSL 32:29, 31–32) with Erasmus’ insistence that the Scrip- tures be loved. 133. DDC 2.7.10–12 (CCSL 32: 37–39); cf. the similar transposition in Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:46. 134. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:36. 135. Erasmus, Annotationes in Iohannem, ASD 6/6:29–34. Cf. John F. D’Amico, “Human- ism and Pre-Reformation Theology,” in Rabil (ed.): Renaissance Humanism (n. 33), 3:372; Boyle, Erasmus on Language (n. 76), pp. 3–57, esp. p. 33. 28 Brown

“Verbum sive Sermo Dei.”136 Erasmus could appeal to a long patristic tradition; Augustine himself had compared the Incarnation to the act of speaking.137 But Erasmus goes a step further. Augustine had located the divine image in human ratio; Cicero (at least in his rhetorical works) claimed eloquentia or oratio as the faculty which distinguished humanity.138 Erasmus combines the two, as nous and logos.139 Ciceronian eloquence is thus set, in a Christian context, as the basis of man’s resemblance to God,140 an anthropology that leaves no place for Augustine’s evaluation of eloquence as a faculty merely neutral.141 As with the Father and the logos, so, for Erasmus, the image of the human speaker’s mind is his speech, “a faculty than which man has nothing more marve- lous or more powerful.”142 The character of the preacher determines the content and value of his speaking: “As is the heart of a man, so is his speech.”143 The good or evil use of rhetoric is dependent upon the character of the orator: “nothing is more healthful than speech which procedes from a healthy and pious mind … nothing more harmful than the talk breathed forth by a heart corrupted and in- fected by ungodly thoughts, base desires, and vice.”144 Erasmus christianizes the classical ideal of the vir bonus dicendi peritus.145 Erasmus’ theological analysis of the spiritual virtues of the Christian preacher and his adoption of the “political and moralistic” models of the Roman oratorical tradition do not, therefore, merely coexist, but are intimately related.146 For Au- gustine, what ultimately matters is not the sapientia of the preacher considered as an internal quality, but that the preacher speak sapienter, a matter of reliance on the external words of the Scriptures.147 Though Erasmus, too, offers instruction

136. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:37. 137. DDC 1.13.12 (CCSL 32:13). 138. DDC 1.22.20 (CCSL 32:16); Cicero, De inventione 1.4.5; cf. Cicero, De oratore 1.8.32–3. 139. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:40. 140. See Boyle, Erasmus on Language, (n. 76), pp. 39–42. 141. According to Béné’s tables (n. 3, p. 433ff), Erasmus never refers to the relevant passage (DDC 4.2.3, CCSL 32:117). 142. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:40; cf. Boyle, Christening (n. 14), p. 7. 143. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:42. Erasmus shifts the Biblical language (Matt. 12:34; Luke 6:45) from the heart’s possession of a treasure to the quality of the heart itself. 144. Ecclesiastes 1, ASD 5/4:42; cf. Isocrates, Antidosis 255; Boyle, Erasmus on Language (n. 76), p. 40. 145. Cf. Hoffmann (n. 13), p. 91, citing Erasmus’ quotation of Cato’s maxim in Apologia contra Latomi dialogum, LB 9:90; CWE 71:55; see above, n. 15. 146. Contra O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), p. 19. 147. DDC 4.5.7–8 (CCSL 32:120–121). Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 29 for the preacher in Biblical interpretation, for him the Christian orator was fundamentally the man of pure heart from which pure speech would flow. The Ci- ceronian orator, with his union of virtue and eloquence, is baptized as the Chris- tian preacher.148

IV. AUGUSTINE, THE ECCLESIASTES AND THE WITTENBERG REFORMATION

The mostly silent but omnipresent rivalry between Erasmus and Augustine in the Ecclesiastes parallels the rivalry between Erasmus and the Wittenberg reformers carried out on the same pages. Not only Erasmus’ admonition for prudence in teaching about the abrogation of the law and about justification by faith was directed against Lutheran teaching.149 Selective silence could be the strongest polemic.150 Erasmus’ joint conflict with Augustine and with Wittenberg in the Ecclesiastes was not due simply to Augustine’s general prominence in the Wittenberg Refor- mation.151 To be sure, Luther could identify his theology with Augustine’s, though he was elsewhere aware of divergences.152 Melanchthon ascribed to Luther a comprehensive knowledge of Augustine’s works and hailed Augustine as one who in substance agreed with the Wittenberg theology, to which Augustine himself had shown the way.153

148. Cf. Boyle’s interpretation of Erasmus’ Christian humanism in Christening (n. 14). 149. Ecclesiastes 3, ASD 5/5:306–307. 150. See Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe, New Haven, London 1980, p. 293. On the Ecclesiastes’ silence about justification as “the central issue of Christianity,” see Kleinhans (n. 4), p. 261. Cf. Wengert, Human Freedom (n. 10). 151. See Heiko A. Oberman, “Headwaters of the Reformation: Initia Lutheri – Initia Refor- mationis,” in id.: The Dawn of the Reformation, Edinburgh 1986, pp. 65–83; Bernhard Lohse, “Zum Wittenberger Augustinismus: Augustins Schrift De spiritu et littera in der Auslegung bei Staupitz, Luther und Karlstadt,” in Kenneth Hagen (ed.): Augustine, the Harvest, and Theology (1300–1650): Essays Dedicated to Heiko Augustinus Oberman in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday, Leiden 1990, pp. 89–109; Hans-Ulrich Delius, Augustin als Quelle Luthers: Eine Materialsamm- lung, Berlin 1984; on Melanchthon, see Timothy J. Wengert, “Philip Melanchthon and Augus- tine of Hippo,” in: LQ 22 (2009), pp. 249–267. 152. Luther to Johannes Lang, 18 May 1517, WA Br 1:98f, no. 41 (LW 48:41–42); cf. Preface to the Latin Writings, WA 54:186 (LW 34:337). 153. Melanchthon, preface to the second volume of the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s works (1546), CR 6:159; id., Declamatio de vita Augustini (1539), CR 11:454; cf. CR 6:167. 30 Brown

The De doctrina itself was an acknowledged but, at least on the face of it, relatively minor presence in Wittenberg. Luther’s early (ca. 1509) marginal notes on the De doctrina are not especially copious, though they attend particularly to Augustine’s appreciation of rhetoric.154 Luther’s explicit references to the De doctrina elsewhere appeal chiefly to Augustine’s exegetical rules or his distinctions between things and signs, use and enjoyment.155 In a 1537 academic address, however, Luther returns to Augustine’s defense of Christian rhetoric precisely in the context of distinguishing the power of the Word from natural human wisdom.156 There is some evidence that the Wittenberg reformers may have envi- sioned their own edition of the De doctrina, though none was ever in fact pro- duced.157 Perhaps most significant to the Wittenberg Reformation, however, is Augustine’s influence on Luther’s response to the “Enthusiasts,” who rejected the merely external Word in favor of the direct operation of the Spirit, by way of Augustine’s insistence in the De doctrina that God, who could have done every- thing through angels, has nonetheless willed to give his word to human beings through other human beings.158 Melanchthon’s use of the De doctrina was usually tacit.159 Nonetheless, it ex- ercised a determinative influence on his articulation of Lutheran homiletics along lines distinct from those of Erasmus.160 Prominent among Melanchthon’s bor-

154. WA 9:11–12. 155. See the list of citations, WA 56:39. On signs and things, see Last Words of David (1543), WA 54:63 (LW 15:308); on allegory, see Lectures on Galatians (1519), WA 2:551 (LW 27:311f.); Lectures on Genesis (1542), WA 43:662 (LW 5:88); on study of languages, The Adoration of the Sacrament (1523), WA 11:455f (LW 36:304); To the Councilmen of Germany (1524), WA 15:40 (LW 45:362–363); A Sermon on Keeping Children in School (1530), WA 30/ 2:547 (LW 46:232) 156. Oratio Lutheri composita in promotione Petri Palladii, WA 39/1:261–2, summarizing DDC 4.2.3 (CCSL 32:117). 157. The Wittenberg copy of Erasmus’ Opera Omnia Augustini, described by Peter Way, “A ‘Lutheran’ Copy of Erasmus’ Edition of St. Augustine,” in: LQ 14 (2000), pp. 373–408, is especially heavily annotated in vol. 9, containing the De doctrina as well as the De spiritu et littera. Luther’s preface to the first intended volume, an edition of Augustine’s De spiritu et littera, is edited in WA Br 12:387–388, no. 4306 (LW 60:35–44), and envisions more to come: “unum et alterum libellum S. Augustini edere.” 158. DDC 1.pref.6 (CCSL 32:4); DDC 4.16.33 (CCSL 32:141). For suggestive parallels, see, e.g., Luther, Lectures on Zechariah, WA 23:513 (LW 20:171); sermon of April 12, 1523, WA 11:95 (LW 69:335); Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, WA 47:228 (LW 22:527). Cf. n. 171. 159. Melanchthon, e.g., does not refer explicitly to the DDC in his 1539 oration on Augus- tine (CR 11:446–55), though the emphases on Augustine as a student of the liberal arts and preacher of Christian doctrine reflect that work. 160. Melanchthon’s homiletical works are edited by P. Drews and F. Cohrs in SM 5/2. Mon- Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg 31 rowings from Augustine was his development of the genus didacticum from Au- gustine’s definition of the teaching office of the orator.161 But Augustine’s influence on Melanchthon went much further. Melanchthon had begun, in his De Rhetorica of 1519, with an Erasmian attempt to assimilate preaching to classical civil rhetoric around the common goal of moral reform.162 He adopted, and con- tinued to use, Erasmus’ classicizing nomenclature for the sermon and the preacher (concio/concionator).163 But over the course of the 1520s, Melanchthon di- verged from Erasmus in separating the discussion of homiletics from civil rhetoric in a way parallel to Augustine’s approach in the De doctrina. The preacher and the orator make use of many (though not all) of the same rhetorical techniques, but their duties and roles are fundamentally distinct.164 That distinction is manifest particularly in Melanchthon’s increasing distancing of preaching from the classical genera, with the addition of the genus didacticum as only a first step. Finally, like Augustine, Melanchthon sets aside the division into genera as inappropriate for preaching, instead conflating the genera of sermons with the officia or munera of the preacher. In his 1529 De officiis concionatoris, Melanchthon identified the two officia of the preacher as teaching and exhortation and then discussed the genera of sermons in light of these duties. He not only rejects the forensic and demonstrative genera as inappropriate for preaching but in particular criticizes the overreliance of pre- Reformation preachers on the deliberative genus paraeneticum, dealing with morals rather than faith.165 Though Melanchthon does not entirely reject the delib- fasani’s verdict (“De doctrina” [n. 31], p. 176), that Melancthon’s homiletics never “mention Augustine, let alone show signs of his direct influence,” must be rejected. Uwe Schnell, Die homiletische Theorie Philipp Melanchthons, Berlin 1968, identifies the chief features of Melanch- thon’s homiletics but relates them only generally to the DDC, e.g., p. 77. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), pp. 223–224, 227–228, compares Melanchthon’s homiletics and the Ecclesiastes. 161. Monfasani, “De doctrina” (n. 31), p. 180. Melanchthon was influenced here by Ru- dolph Agricola’s discussion of the Augustinian officia oratoris in the De inventione dialectica: see ibid., pp. 178–79. The genus didacticum appears in Melanchthon’s general treatments of rhetoric as well: Elementa Rhetorices, CR 13:421. 162. Melanchthon, De rhetorica (1519); see Schnell (n. 160), pp. 60–63. 163. O’Malley, “Erasmus” (n. 1), pp. 15–16. 164. Schnell (n. 160), pp. 74–75. 165. Melanchthon, De officiis concionatoris (1529), SM 5/2:6–7. Cf. Augustine’s criticism of epideictic in DDC 4.25.55 (CCSL 32:160–161). On its cultivation by Italian preachers, see John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521, Durham, N. C. 1979. Melanchthon elsewhere acknowledges the genus iudiciale as appropriate for theological disputes, e.g., in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: see Timothy J. Wengert, “Melanchthon’s Interpretation of the Pauline Epistles,” in R. Ward Holder (ed.): A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, Leiden 2009, pp. 149–155, and UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE

Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Aufsatzband Jahrgang 104/2013

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Die führende internationale Zeitschrift zur Erforschung der Reformation und ihrer Weltwirkungen

Das Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (ARG) ist die führende internationale Zeitschrift zur Erforschung der Reformation und ihrer Weltwirkungen. Das ARG erscheint seit 1906 und wird inzwischen gemeinsam vom Verein für Reformationsgeschichte und der Society for Reformation Research herausgegeben. Das Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte erscheint jährlich mit einem Aufsatzband sowie (seit 1972) einem Beiheft Literaturbericht, das jeweils in etwa 800 kurzen Besprechungen alle wichtigen wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen über die Frühe Neuzeit erfasst und kritisch vorstellt.