Dermot Fenlon on the enlightenment club
Erasmus of Rotterdam George Faludy (Eyre and Spottiswoode £3.25) In 1702 the French traveller Bernard de Montfaucon described his visit to a monas- tery near Venice. He was shown the library where he noticed, ranged above the shelves on the right, the statues of Catholic theolo- gians; above the left-hand shelves stood those of famous heretics. The statue of Eras- mus, explained the monks, was sometimes moved from one side to the other. Mr Fal- udy, who relates this story, has a perceptive eye for detail, but a mind little given to re- solving ambiguities. He has a good sense of humour. If only he were a little less sure of being right all the time, he might even have discerned the same trait in Montfaucon's hosts. It is the sort of thing one might hope for in a biographer of Erasmus.
What we have here is an Erasmus resolute- ly pressed into service as the father of mod- ern humanism, the spiritual colleague of 'men such as France. Russell, Unamuno, Mann, Madariaga, Camus and Moravia, to mention only a few.' Even with the discreet omission of Mr Faludy himself, it still seems just a few too many; one is inclined to pause before so various a litany of modern men- tors. Can it be that Erasmus, mutatis mutan- dis. would have felt quite at his ease with the author of Dr Faustus or The Woman of Rome? Perhaps; who can say? Erasmus would surely have hesitated to elaborate so dramatically indiscriminate a canon? And he would surely have resisted, not the pro- cess of canonisation (Mr Faludy makes no secret of his vanity), but the attempt to draft him into alliance with the bien peasants who have claimed him as their own ever since?
Mr Faludy writes with insight, which comes of being a poet; and invention, which has the same provenance, but is less com- mendable in an historian. His insight is re- served for the personality of Erasmus, his ing vention, for the historical context. His his- tory is written for members of the Enlighten- ment Club, and there are only one or two favoured candidates in the sixteenth century. Catholics and Protestants are refused admis- sion, on a priori grounds; they are never actually interviewed; merely referred to, from time to time, as a benighted swarm of bigots milling around outside, It does not seem to occur to Mr Faludy that there is a kind of secular bigotry, and that it can inter- fere with historical understanding.
The orthodoxy of the enlightened has be- come so conventional as to pass unnoticed by all but a minority of Christians. One wonders whether the Christian, Erasmus, were he alive today, might not have em- ployed his irony at the expense of some of his more uncritical admirers, secular and reli- gious. There is something of an Erasmus industry among historians at the moment. Its business methods are uncritically adula- tory. Perhaps Erasmus would have found scope for amusement in all this, suspending (if we can imagine it) his self-regard.
But perhaps the Venetian monks under- stood him well enough.
Dermot Fenton is a Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge and University Lecturer in His- tory
Previous page
