chapter 2 Calvin, , and Humanist

Greta Grace Kroeker

John Calvin arrived in Basel in early 1535 during his flight from Paris – the same journey that would eventually find him in Geneva. Desiderius Erasmus also ar- rived in Basel during 1535. Calvin had published his treatise on Seneca by then and was working on the Institutes of the Christian , but his was a career yet unforeseen. Erasmus was sick and frail. He was the greatest living human- ist, but his friends and colleagues were now mostly gone. Erasmus was often bedridden and rarely left his room in the house of Hieronymus Froben. Calvin was immersed in the humanist culture of Basel and interacted with some of Erasmus’s associates and proteges in the city, but the young Frenchman never met the aged titan. Calvin left Basel in the early spring; Erasmus too made plans to move on from Basel – but he developed dysentery and died in July 1536, just as Calvin was taking on more and more pastoral duties in Geneva. Did Erasmus and Calvin, though, share more than just the same city for a brief moment in 1535? This essay will argue that they did. In what follows, I will place Calvin and Erasmus together in the context of what should best be called a humanist theology. Understanding this shared theological heritage is important because it enhances our of the spiritual and intellectual circumstances that gave rise to the reformations in general, and Calvin in particular. Having then established a connection to humanist theology, I will explore the points of contact between Erasmus and Calvin in light of this shared foundation.

1 The Question of Humanist Theology

These aims immediately present a challenge: many scholars do not really agree that there was a “humanist theology” at all.1 Even those who concede that such

1 See, e.g., John Monfasani, “The Theology of Lorenzo Valla,” in his Greeks and Latins in Renaissance Italy: Studies on and in the Fifteenth Century (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), Essay XI. Although not specifically focused on the theological question, Monfasani also argues elsewhere that humanism should be interpreted as a common cul- tural inheritance of Protestants and Catholics in his from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, Variorum Collected Studies, Book 1057 (: Rutledge, 2016), esp. Essay VI, “Renaissance Ciceronianism and Christianity,” 361–79.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004419445_003 12 Kroeker a phenomenon existed struggle to find consensus on what, precisely, was its content.2 Below, I will propose a definition that helps to explain the theological priorities that many Protestants observably shared with those humanist theo- logians who declined to embrace the reformations. But first it is necessary to grasp the reasons for widespread discomfort with the very notion of “humanist theology.” Resistance to the notion rests on a durable historiography of Renaissance humanism that argues, mainly on the basis of early Italian humanists, that the movement was not interested in religion qua religion. In words, humanists were not attracted to the study of religion or theology as believ- ers but rather as something akin to “scientists,” as the term was subsequently understood. But what about the considerable evidence for religiosity among humanist luminaries? To account for this inconvenient material, historians like , Charles Trinkaus, and others were forced to bifur- cate humanism into two distinct branches. These branches – one “Italian” and “Classical” and the other “Northern” and “Christian” – influenced one another while pursuing distinctly different aims,3 or so the argument goes. This unfor- tunate oversimplification overlooks humanism’s evolution and the expansion of interests among humanists to address the most pressing issues of the day,

2 E.g., see Amos Edelheit, Ficino, Pico and Savonarola. The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/2–1498 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), where he writes: “The term ‘humanist theology’ which I use in this book, derives, as we have seen, from Garin’s dialectical and sensitive approach to hu- manism, and can also be found in the studies of Charles Trinkaus, Salvatore Camporeale, John O’Malley, and John D’Amico,” pp. 17–18, n. 39. Edelheit explains further, “Charles Trinkaus studied mainly the religious writings and expressions in the works of Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, and Lorenzo Valla, and coined for their religious views the term ‘rhetorical theology.’ Salvatore Camporeale, working mainly on Valla’s attitude to religion and its history, called it ‘teologia umanistica’. John O’Malley, working on sermons delivered in Rome in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, coined for them the term ‘Renaissance theology.’ All these names testify to a new kind of theology – essentially, to a new approach to religion, and especially to Christianity. I have chosen the term ‘humanist theology’ as more appropriate, since ‘rhetorical theology’ is somewhat limited to sermons and similar works of a popular nature, and ‘Renaissance theology’ may include non-humanist approaches, such as the the- ology practised by scholastic contemporaries of Ficino and Pico,” pp. 23–24, and n. 49. 3 One of the earliest examples of this was Robert Murray who wrote in 1920, “The Renaissance crosses the Alps, and the snows of the mountains mark the sign of the Cross on its brow.” Robert H. Murray, Erasmus & Luther: Their Attitude to Toleration (New York: Macmillian, 1920), 2. See also Charles Trinkaus, “In Our Image and Likeness:” Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall Jr., eds. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1948); Paul Oskar Kristeller and Eckhard Kessler, eds. Humanismus und Renaissance, 2 vols., trans. Renate Schweyen-Ott (München: Wilhels Fink Verag, 1981).