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Reaction to Revival: Robert Ridley’s Critique of Erasmus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Harvey
Margaret Harvey*
Affiliation:
Durham University
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Extract

Christian historians have found it hard to approve those who resist revival and resurgence in the Church and particularly in the period of the Reformation. It is often assumed too readily that sympathy with Renaissance biblical and patristic scholarship (resurgence par excellence) should have led honest scholars to Protestantism. Yet it did not always do so. Erasmus outstandingly did not fit this pattern but nor did many others, even among those who benefited from his scholarship and shared some of his concerns. Modern scholars have too often regarded such dissenting voices as at best conservative and at worst benighted or dishonest. Contemporaries were equally (or more) scathing about one another. It is very difficult therefore to give proper value to those who shared some but not all the tendencies which Erasmus epitomized yet were deeply critical of some of the conclusions to which these could lead.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 77 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008

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References

1 On these issues, see Rex, R., ‘The Role of English Humanists in the Reformation up to 1559’, in Amos, N. S., Pettegree, A., and Nierop, H. van, eds, The Education of a Christian Society: Humanism and the Reformation in Britain and the Netherlands (Aldershot, 1999), 19–40, esp. 30–1 Google Scholar.

2 See Rex, R., ‘Ridley, Robert (d. 1536?)’, ODNB Google Scholar. I owe my list of Ridley’s books to Dr Ian Doyle and Dr Rex; I examined all pages for marginal notes.

3 For the significance of this, see Leader, D. R., A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 1: The University to 1546 (Cambridge, 1988), 249–51 Google Scholar.

4 Rhodes, D.E., ‘The First Edition of Gildas’, The Library, ser. 6, 1 (1979), 355–60 Google Scholar; for the full history of the text, see Mommsen, T., MGHauctorum antiquissimorum chronica minora saec. IV-VII, 13.1 (Berlin, 1895), 10–19 Google Scholar.

5 A note perhaps in his hand in D[urham] C[athedral] L[ibrary], D VII. 2 (volumes 5, 6 of the works of Jerome), has Greek in vol. 6, fol. 135r.

6 See Rex, , ‘Ridley’, ODNB. The copy of Opus Eximium has not been foundGoogle Scholar.

7 Idem, The English Campaign against Luther in the 1520s’, TRHS, ser. 5, 39 (1989), 85–106, references to Ridley, 88, 97, 104; D’Alton, C. W., ‘The Suppression of Lutheran Heretics in England, 1526–29’, JEH 54 (2003), 228–53 Google Scholar, references to Ridley, 236, 247; D’Alton, , ‘Cuthbert Tunstal and Heresy in Essex and London, 1528’, Albion 35 (2003), 210–28 Google Scholar, references to Ridley, 219–20.

8 This paper is part of a larger study of Ridley’s Library which I am completing.

9 Jerome is now DCL, D VII, 1–4 (the set lacks vols 3 and 4 of this edition); D VII, 5 is the index; D VII, 6–11 is Augustine; D VII, 23–4 is Ambrose.

10 For sale by Morton-Smith, M. of Guildford in September 1960, XVIth Century Books Google Scholar, list 8, item 56, Erasmus, D. & Dedarationes ad censuras Lutetias vulgatas (Froben, Basel, 1532)Google Scholar with Ridley’s signature on the title page (as was typical).

11 What may be Tunstal’s library catalogue is discussed by Herendeen, W. H. and Bartlett, K. R., ‘The Library of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham: British Library Add 40,676’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 85 (1991), 235–96 with edition 262–96 Google Scholar.

12 For this I have found most helpful Bentley, J. H., Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1983)Google Scholar.

13 DCL, D VII 23, sig. AAS.

14 DCL, D VII 24, fol. ir (fratrum predkatorum has been erased and carmelitarum inserted above); see Humphries, K. W., The Friars’ Libraries, Corpus of British Library Catalogues (London, 1990), 188 Google Scholar: assigned to Ambrose.

15 DCL, D VII 1, part 2, fol. 130r.

16 Erasmus, D., Opera Omnia, ed. Lerclerc, J. (Leiden, 1705), vol. 6, col. 373 Google Scholar; Bentley, , Humanists and Holy Writ, 147 Google Scholar.

17 DCL, D VII 1, part 1, fol. 57r.

18 DCL, D VII 1, part 2, fol. 3r.

19 DCL, D VII 1, part 2, fol. 3.

20 DCL, D VII 1, part 2, fol. 3v.

21 Ridley owned Oxford, Bodleian Library, fol. Theta 651(1): J. Eck, De primatu Petri; bound in with T. Netter, Sacramentalia, both Paris 1521.

22 Ibid., fol. Theta 651(1) Book 1, ch. 1, fol. 41; D’Etaples, J. Lefevre (Faber Stapulensis), Commentarti initiatorii in quatuor evangelia (Simon Colin, Meaux, 1522), fols 175r/v, 216r/vGoogle Scholar.

23 DCL.PV 31:N. Gorran, Postilla..super epistolas (Henri Gran, Hagenau, 1502).

24 Cambridge University Library, Mss Add 7197, Dd 5 27.

25 DCL, D VII 4, fol. iv.

26 See n. 31 below.

27 Pollard, A. W., Records of the English Bible (Oxford, 1911), no. XIII, 124 Google Scholar.

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29 Comment on Lam. 3: 23: novi diluculo multa est fides tua, referred to in the margin of Ridley’s copy of Denys the Carthusian on the major prophets (Peter Quentel, Cologne, 1534), DCL, PV 5, fol. 276: novi secundum Erasmum contra Sutor disputantem nomen est non verbum. For Erasmus I have used Bodleian Library, Antiq.f. GS 1525. 2 (Froben, Basel, 1525), discussion is n13r/v with quotation m 4v.

30 Daniell, D., William Tyndale, a Biography (New Haven, CT and London, 1994), 110–49 Google Scholar; D’Alton, , ‘Cuthbert Tunstal’, 218–20 Google Scholar.

31 Printed in Pollard, Records, 122–5.

32 Bristol Reference Library, 177/SR 62 (various works of Cyril 1524, trans. George of Trebizond), fols 78V, 155, 158V, 162, 188.

33 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Theta fol. 651(1) title page to Eck.

34 Ibid., Fol. Theta 651(1), Book 1, fols 8v, 30, a text attributed first to Nicholas and then to Hormisdas.

35 Ibid., Fol. Theta 651 (1), Book 1, fol. 3 3.

36 Augustine, , De Doctrina Christiana, 2.25, ed. Green, W. M., CSEL 80 Sect. 6, part 6 (Vienna, 1963), 40 Google Scholar for the passage. Corpus luris Canonici, ed. A. Friedberg, 1 (Leipzig, 1879) at this canon quoted the variants and correct text in a note. DCL now lacks vol. 3 of the Augustine set, which has De Doctrina.

37 See additions to the index volume, DCL, D VII 5, fols 89, 216, 243, 321, 323.

38 DCL, D VII 1, part 2, fol. 197.

39 DCL, D VII 1, part 1, fol. 106v.

40 Cambridge, St John’s College, O.3.19: Operum Summa (Francois Regnault, Paris, 1516).

41 O.3.19, 2: fol. 22.

42 Lefèvre, J., In Novum Teslamentum, 2 vols (Henry Stephanus, Paris, c.1515, at Durham University Library Google Scholar, Routh 7.C.9), 2: fol. 200.

43 DCL, PV 7: Denys the Carthusian, Sermones de Sanctis (Peter Quentel, Cologne, 1532) at foot of fol. ccxxvii; for Thomas’s story, Summa Confessorum, ed. Broomfield, F., Analecta medievalia Namurcensia 25 (Louvain and Paris, 1968), 136–7 Google Scholar.

44 Rice, E. F., Stjerome and the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD and London, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

45 DCL, D VII 23, sig. AA5.

46 DCL, D VII 1, part 1, fol. 138.

47 DCL, D VII 1, part 1, fol. 20.

48 DCL, D VII 37, part 1, fol. 53.

49 DCL, D VII 1, part 1, fol. 2 v.