The Spanish Polemic on Colonisation
Part 1: Erasmus, Luther and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (4)
Sepúlveda and Erasmus
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda became part of the third main current of what is called “humanism”: the Italian variant. His credentials as a “humanist” have been challenged, but as Richard Tuck pointed out, really he is a perfect specimen of the type.
Sepúlveda, born in 1490, studied at the university of Alcalá and then got a scholarship for further study in Italy, at the Spanish College in Bologna. There he became one of the leading translators of Aristotle. He also proved to be an able writer who could produce impressive short books on topical issues. “I spent 22 years in Italy,” he later explained to Philip II, “8 years in Bologna studying at the Spanish College, and 14 years in Rome in the service of the Pope.” (31) But he did not serve the Pope only. Sepúlveda was always looking out for a chance to serve Spain and Spain’s king, the emperor Charles V. His first book (leaving aside translations) was a dialogue where a Spanish soldier discusses some events from his country’s military history and justifies the pursuit of glory.
But it could be difficult serving the Pope while remaining friends with the emperor. As a Spaniard resident in Rome, Sepúlveda had an uncomfortable time in 1527, when the city was sacked by Spanish troops. Afterwards, with both pope and emperor anxious to heal the breach, he did what he could to help. For example, in 1529 he wrote an exhortation to Charles V, calling on him to commit himself to a war against the Turks. Two years later he produced a book on The Rite of Marriage and Dispensation, which ends with a brief reference to King Henry VIII’s application for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the emperor’s aunt. (32) The central argument presented in Henry’s favour was that, since Catherine had previously been married to Henry’s brother Arthur, she should not have been allowed to marry Henry, and Pope Julius II had erred when he gave her a dispensation to do so. Sepúlveda says briskly that the pope is the duly appointed, fully competent, final authority on the question of marriage dispensation. He can give any dispensation he likes, and there is no appeal against his judgment, then or ever after.
One of the threads that can be seen running through Sepúlveda’s early writings is a controlled criticism of Erasmus. Sometimes he criticises the ideas without mentioning their source, for example when confronting Christian pacifism. In The Complaint of Peace (1516) Erasmus denounced the bloody wars between Christians as a travesty of Christianity. Christ, he said, had come on earth as the Prince of Peace and had consistently preached peace to his disciples, telling them to put up their swords even when their lives were threatened. Let the kings, not to mention popes, cardinals, bishops and priests, prove that they were Christians! If they absolutely needed to fight, then they ought to have a war against the Turks, though it would be better to find peaceful ways of dealing even with those as fellow human beings. “I urge (all Christians)... to unite with one heart and soul, in the abolition of war and the establishment of perpetual and universal peace.” (33) These thoughts found an echo in Spain. Several Spanish writers produced works in the same vein, and a decade later, according to Sepúlveda, there were convinced pacifists among the students at the Spanish College in Bologna.
Sepúlveda, in his dialogue on the pursuit of glory (Gonsalus, 1523), deliberately chooses as his key speaker a Spanish soldier who has won distinction in a war against the French. The soldier, named Gonzalo, speaks mainly about glorious incidents in the centuries-long struggle against the Moors, but at intervals his partners in the dialogue insist on recalling his own fine achievements in a war between Christians. Confronting the (unnamed) writers who despise the pursuit of glory and claim that it is unchristian, Gonzalo says that what is valid for the monk is not valid for the soldier. “The monk bears affronts with absolute patience; he will not take vengeance or even say a word against those who commit injustice against him; if anyone threatens him with injury he should simply flee, not try to respond with arms. That is what is honest for the monk, that is what is glorious, that is what is worthy of praise. But would any general worthy of the name approve this behaviour in an able-bodied soldier? Or rather, who would not revile such a man and denounce him as a betrayer of the soldier’s duty and honour? “But it is pious and in conformity with the doctrine of the Gospel not to resist those who do us evil”: I admit this, and I say it is the best and most appropriate for perfection in piety; but this perfection is least of all desirable in the soldier, in whom a fierce, haughty and indomitable spirit, ready to face any violence, is what is mainly required. Accordingly, we should accept that it is enough for the soldier to comply with the general precepts of the Christian religion...
If anyone expects that literary scholars or statesmen will achieve anything great not only without desiring other things but even without the hope of glory, it seems to me like demanding that a cargo ship should travel the high seas without sails, using only oars...
Do these people want to brand the human race as vain and stupid for stimulating men’s spirits to try to achieve glory, encouraging them with incentives which take various forms but all point in the same direction?... Would it not be better to revere and praise the wisdom of those who understood that the appetite for glory is implanted and innate in all the most noble and excellent spirits, and who reserved whatever was most exalted, whatever would most strongly motivate spirits of that kind, as the recompense for the most illustrious actions?...
It seems anti-religious and contrary to the public good to say that the appetite for glory, which has its place in the sequence of virtues, is contrary either to religion or to the public good.” (34)
Some of these arguments are re-elaborated in the exhortation to Charles V to fight the Turks, and especially in Sepúlveda’s most ambitious attack on Christian pacifism, Democrates (1535). In these works, where the more or less explicit target is Luther, Erasmus is not mentioned, but his ideas are confronted nonetheless. However, there were times when it was impossible not to mention the man’s name. Shortly after Luther replied to Erasmus on free will, Sepúlveda, probably at the pope’s urging, produced a book on the same subject.
In the foreword Erasmus is given some carefully measured praise. He has defended Catholic doctrine against Luther learnedly and acutely, but unfortunately he has been “too restrained, not to say shrinking and timid”. (35) Besides, by drawing exclusively on the Bible and the Christian writers he has omitted an important part of the subject. Just because the issue concerns religion, that does not mean we can forget about the Greeks! The philosophers as well as the theologians have something to contribute here, and all the resources of culture must be brought to bear against Luther, particularly on this point: his other doctrines have been refuted adequately, but the denial of free will “latently threatens not only the Christian religion but every kind of divine worship, the freedom of human beings, and all laws, human and divine”. (36)
Sepúlveda then develops his argument with reference to Greek philosophy. Against the inconsistent Stoics, who denied free will theoretically but (being less shameless than Luther) could not avoid smuggling it back into their thinking, he relies on the great anti-determinist Aristotle, for whom “man is the originator and cause of his actions”. (37) Only on this basis can human reason have any worth. “What use is reason if, having considered any number of possibilities, you can no more affect your given destiny than a stone can rise in the air?” (38) The philosophical mode of argument is so well established in the first two books that it continues fairly fluently even when, in the final book, he turns to consider passages from the Scriptures.
Erasmus is mentioned only occasionally, usually positively. Luther, on the other hand, is referred to with fierce hostility. He is portrayed as personally depraved and for practical purposes atheistic, a conscious enemy of the Christian religion, who will go to all lengths to damage it, no matter what else he damages in the process. His ideas are noxious to the state as well as to the Church. While Sepúlveda’s crowning argument is essentially that of Erasmus, it is much more sharply expressed. The fight against Luther is a fight for “hearth and household gods”, religion and human liberty. Without free will all laws would be superfluous and life would be a farce; virtues would be extinguished, and praise and blame would disappear; and “I do not see by what means the power of deliberation could continue maintaining the human condition in men”. (39)
On the surface, then, the author is fairly kind to Erasmus and certainly does not imply that he has contributed to Luther’s misdeeds. But the foreword also contains an astonishing attack on Germany’s “humanism”. What happened was that the Germans had learned advanced Latin and Greek from infected sources (from “certain frivolous men”), and it was this which ultimately left them vulnerable to Luther. Without naming Erasmus, the Italianised Spaniard sees a continuum of Erasmianism and Lutheranism.
“I am prepared to state firmly what some people may find surprising: it was through the study of eloquence and the humanities that this most pernicious plague was transmitted to the Germans... In effect, while the Germans, relying on tradition and the most serious disciplines, kept addressing fundamental questions and seeking solid knowledge of those, not hollow charlatanism and the pleasures of discourse, they produced acute mathematicians, penetrating philosophers, and very respectable, honest, pious theologians. They possessed not only sound knowledge but also exemplary customs, ideal for educating men and inculcating true piety. But afterwards, when once they had abandoned these good disciplines, certain frivolous men began cultivating a more advanced knowledge of the Latin and Greek language and the potentialities of expression. Some people of bad and depraved character appeared who, reading malign and impious writers, easily assimilated all their impiety and cynicism and showed themselves much more inclined to the worst vices of conduct than to the virtues of eloquence... The oratorical capacity they acquired was not much, but such as it was, they began to use it to abolish all religiosity.” And this was the origin of Lutheranism. (40)