To Pope Leo X. Erasmus also wrote, protesting against the cause of letters generally being made the same as that of Reuchlin and Luther. With the former movement he was identified heart and soul; with Luther and his revolt he had, he declared, no part nor sympathy. “I have not known Luther,” he says, “nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps ten or a dozen pages in various places. It was really I who first scented the danger of the business issuing in tumults, which I have always detested.” Moreover, he declares that he had induced the Basle printer, Johann Froben, to refuse to print Luther’s works, and that by means of friends he had tried to induce Luther to think only of the peace of the Church. Two years previously, he says, Luther had written to him, and he had replied in a kindly spirit in order to get him, if possible, to follow his advice. Now, he hears, that this letter has been delated to the Pope in order to prejudice him in the Pontiff’s eyes; but he is quite prepared to defend its form and expression. “If any one,” he says, “can say he has ever heard me, even at the table, maintain the teaching of Luther, I will not refuse to be called a Lutheran.” Finally, he expresses the hope that, if the opponents of letters have been trying to calumniate him, he may rely on the Pope’s prudence and the knowledge of his own complete innocence. “I, who do not wish to oppose even my own bishop, am not,” he writes, “so mad as to act in any way against the supreme Vicar of Christ.”[181]
As time went on, the position of Erasmus did not become more comfortable. Whilst the Lutherans were hoping that sooner or later something would happen to compromise the outspoken scholar and force him to transfer the weight of his learning to their side, the champions of Catholicity were ill satisfied that he did not boldly strike out in defence of the Church. To this latter course many of his English friends had strongly urged him, and both the king, Fisher, and others had set him an example by publishing works against Luther’s position, which they invited him to follow. The Pope, too, had on more than one occasion personally appealed to him to throw off his reserve and come to the aid of orthodoxy. They could not understand how he was able to talk of peace and kindness amidst the din of strife, and plead for less harsh measures and less bitter words against Luther and his adherents, when the battle was raging, and cities and peoples and even countries were being seduced by the German Reformer’s plausible plea for freedom and liberty. Those who believed in Erasmus’s orthodoxy, as did the Pope and his English friends, considered that no voice was more calculated to calm the storm and compel the German people to listen to reason than was his. Whilst the Reforming party, on the other hand, were doing their best to compromise him in the eyes of their opponents, Erasmus was most unwilling to be forced into action. “Why,” he writes, “do people wish to associate me with Luther? What Luther thinks of me, where it is a question of matters of faith, I care very little. That he doesn’t think much of me he shows in many letters to his friends. In his opinion I am ‘blind,’ ‘miserable,’ ‘ignorant of Christ and Christianity,’ ‘thinking of nothing but letters.’ This is just what I should expect,” he says, “for Luther has always despised the ancients.” As for himself, he (Erasmus) has always tried his best to inculcate true piety along with learning.[182]