Fifteenth-Annual Bainton Lecture:

Erasmus, the University o f Paris, and

the Pro f ession o f Theology*

by James K. Farge

the fall of 1495, Desiderius Erasmus seized the opportunity offered by the bishopIn of Cambrai to take leave-of-absence from his convent.' He told his prior and all his friends that he intended to study theology in Paris, and it was there that he was to reside for forty-eight of the next seventy-two months. After leaving Paris in 1501, Erasmus would return there only three more times: for about seven months in 1504-5, for the summer months of 1506, and finally for the spring of 1511.z Later, Guillaume Bud6 and other French humanists would try to attract him back to Paris; but, when members of the Paris Faculty of Theology began to censure his work, Erasmus chose to keep his distance.

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In this study we shall examine, first, Erasmus' activities in Paris between 1495 and 1501 and, second, his later controversies with the Paris theolo- gians. Then, after a brief look at the history of conflict between scholastic theology and humanism, our aim is to see what we can conclude-and what we cannot conclude-about Erasmus' relationship with the University of Paris and with the profession of theology as he and his contemporaries per- ceived it. Historians have generally taken at face value Erasmus' statement that he intended to study for a doctorate in theology at the University of Paris.3 P. S. Allen, L6on-E. Halkin, Charles Nauert, and others presume that Eras- mus had at least a bachelor's degree in hand when he left Paris in 1501.4 It is time to set such presumptions aside. Erasmus took no degree at all in Paris, nor do we have any basis for concluding that he really intended to do so. The Paris doctorate, demanding at least fourteen years of scholastic study and dis- putation, was not in his grasp.5 Nothing in Erasmus' life and letters indicates