The Spanish Polemic on Colonisation
Part 1: Erasmus, Luther and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda
SOURCES
I have used works by Erasmus that came my way at different places and times, eventually including some volumes of the Collected Works (CW) published in Toronto. Also, a selection of correspondence: Briefe, ed./tr. W Köhler (Leipzig 1938); Enchiridion Militis Christiani ed. Anne M. O’Donnell (Oxford 1981); The Complaint of Peace tr. T. Paynell (Chicago 1917); Paraclesis, included in El Enquiridion o manual del caballero cristiano tr. D. Alonso (Madrid 1932); on free will, O svobodné vůli tr. K. Korteová (Praha 2006); replying to Luther’s reply, Schutzschrift (Hyperaspistes) gegen Martin Luthers Buch “vom unfreien Willen” Teil I tr. O. H. Mehl (Ditzingen 1986); Ciceronianus, or A Dialogue on the Best Style of Speaking tr. I. Scott (New York 1908). The general view of Erasmus presented here is based on Marcel Bataillon’s Erasme et l’Espagne (Paris 1937). Translations are mine where the originals used are not in English.
Two books of Luther’s are referred to. Enslaved Will = De Servo Arbitrio / On the Enslaved Will, tr. Henry Cole (Camberwell Grove 1931). Murdering Peasants = Documents of Modern History ed./tr. E. J. Rupp and B. Drewery (London 1970), “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants”.
For Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the basic facts of his literary life are conveniently given in Aubrey Bell, Juan Gines de Sepúlveda (Oxford 1925). Most of his works were collected in Joannis Genesii Sepúlvedae cordubensis opera (Madrid 1780) in four volumes in Latin, currently online (Opera). But now his home town of Pozoblanco, near Córdoba, has sponsored his Obras Completas (OC) in 17 volumes. In those that I’ve seen the introductions are sometimes excellent, sometimes badly flawed. B. Cuart Moner, introducing the Exhortation to Charles V, says it contains “heavy artillery directed against Erasmus”. Sepúlveda condemns an unnamed writer who has said that Christians may not fight the Turks, declaring firstly that he must surely be in Turkish pay, and secondly that he’s a worse enemy of Christianity not only than all the heretics previously known but even than the Turks themselves. Moner assumes that this writer is Erasmus (OC Vol. 3, Pozoblanco 2003, pp. cccv, cccxi). But even if Erasmus is indirectly being got at, he is certainly not the direct target here. The heavy artillery is being pointed at Luther.
NOTES
(1) Menéndez y Pelayo: Genesii Sepúlvedae Cordubensis Democrates Alter, pp. 259-60.
(2) Sarkisyanz: Hitler’s English Inspirers, p. 9.
(3) Bataillon: Erasme et l’Espagne, pp. 78-9.
(4) General account based on Bataillon op.cit. pp. 80-2 and Erasmus: Paraclesis.
(5) Paraclesis, p. 455.
(6) Enchiridion, p. 108.
(7) Ibid., pp. 108-9.
(8) Ibid., p. 109.
(9) Ibid., p. 8.
(10) Ibid., p. 108.
(11) Ibid., p. 130.
(12) Bakhtine: L’oeuvre de François Rabelais, p. 23.
(13) CW Vol. 4, p. 263.
(14) See e.g. Briefe p. 219, “I believe those theses have been well received by everyone, except for the few items about Purgatory...” (to Johann Lang, 17/10/1518).
(15) Bataillon op. cit., p. 157.
(16) CW Vol. 1, p. 138.
(17) Quoted in Briefe, p. 337 – to Johann Caesarius, 16/12/1524.
(18) O svobodné vůli, p. 119.
(19) Ibid., pp. 119-121.
(20) Ibid., pp. 129-131.
(21) Ibid., pp. 233-7.
(22) Hyperaspistes, p. 11.
(23) Enslaved Will, p. 6.
(24) Ibid., p. 50.
(25) Ibid., p. 51.
(26) Hyperaspistes, p. 21.
(27) Murdering Peasants, pp. 122-4.
(28) Hyperaspistes, p. 21.
(29) Ibid., pp. 72, 36.
(30) Ibid., p. 62.
(31) Losada: Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, p. 574.
??? (32) cf. Part VI, pp. cxvii-cxx, of introduction to OC Vol. 6 by J. Pérez-Prendes Muňoz-Arraco.
(33) The Complaint of Peace, online version.
(34) OC Vol. 6, pp. 2243, 244, 246, 249.
(35) OC Vol. 15, p. 2.
(36) Ibid., p. 3.
(37) Ibid., p. 34.
(38) Ibid., p. 31.
(39) Ibid., p. 79.
(40) Ibid., p. 4.
??? (41) Cited in J. Solana Pujalte's introduction to OC Vol. 7, p. xxi.
(42) Ibid., p. xiii.
(43) Briefe, p. 333 – to Philip Melanchton, 6/9/1524.
(44) Ciceronianus, p. 119.
(45) Ibid., pp. 120, 129.
(46) Cited in OC Vol. 7, p. xxvii, notes 51, 58.
??? Ref to M.P.Gilmore?
(47) Ibid., p. 133.
(48) Ibid., p. 126.
(49) Ibid., p. 114.
(50) Ibid., p. 137.
(51) Ibid., p. 139.
(52) Ibid., p. 158.
(53) Ibid., p. 159.
(54) Ibid., p. 161.
(55) Opera Vol II pp. 467-8 (De Gestis Caroli V, lib. XV c. XXXI).
(56) Sepúlveda/Erasmus correspondence: OC Vol. 9, I, pp. 54-92.
(57) Bethell ed.: Cambridge History of Latin America Vol. 1, p. 515.
(58) Friede and Keen eds.: Bartolomé de Las Casas in History, p. 142.
(59) Bataillon, pp. 673-4.
(60) More: Utopia, tr. P. Turner, p. 61.
(61) Bell: Juan Gines de Sepúlveda, p. 17.
(62) Losada, op. cit., p. 154.
(63) Las Casas: History, p. 169.
(64) Losada: op. cit., pp. 237-8.
(65) OC Vol. 15, p. 225.
(66) OC Vol. 3, p. 40.