| Popis: |
Writing in 1532, the elderly Erasmus reflected on the hazards of marriage and parenthood: friendship, he concluded, is the prime source of comfort in human life, praecipuum humanae vitae solatium, ‘but even there trust is rare and inconstancy is common’. Given the span of acquaintance covered by the eleven volumes of correspondence collected by P. S. Allen in his Erasmi epistolae, Erasmus had plenty of opportunity to test this rather pessimistic view. Indeed, one suspects that it derived as much from his own touchiness as from the unreliability of his friends. Few of his friendships have received so much attention as that which he established with Thomas More, a relationship which lasted some thirty-six years, from Erasmus’ first visit to England in 1499 down to More's execution on 6th July 1535, and indeed until Erasmus’ own more domestic death in Basel almost exactly a year later. From an early date this was seen as a model friendship, something to be celebrated in the Republic of Letters. As we shall see, its religious implications were to prove more complex; but for much of the twentieth century More and Erasmus were conveniently paired as representatives of Christian humanism, a perception reinforced by More's canonization in 1935. |
