by Desiderius Erasmus
Source: Carter Lindberg (editor), The European Reformations Sourcebook, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000, pp. 22-23.
Then there are the theologians, a remarkably supercilious and touchy lot… [T]hey interpret hidden mysteries to suit themselves: how the world was created and designed; through what channels the stain of sin filtered down to posterity; by what means, in what measure and how long Christ was formed in the Virgin’s womb; how in the Eucharist, accidents can subsist without substance … What was the exact moment of divine generation? Are there several filiations in Christ? Is it a possible proposition that God the father could hate his son? Could God have taken the form of a woman, a devil, a donkey, a gourd or a flintstone? If so, how could a gourd have preached sermons, performed miracles, and been nailed to the cross? …
These subtle refinements of subtleties are made still more subtle by all the different lines of scholastic argument, so that you’d extricate yourself faster from a labyrinth than from the tortuous obscurities of realists, nominalists, Thomists, Albertists, Ockhamists and Scotists ‐ and I’ve not mentioned all the sects, only the main ones. Such is the erudition and complexity they all display that I fancy the apostles themselves would need the help of another holy spirit if they were obliged to join issue on these topics with our new breed of theologian …
The whole tribe [of clergy] is so universally loathed that even a chance meeting is thought to be ill-omened ‐ and yet they are gloriously self-satisfied. In the first place, they believe it’s the highest form of piety to be so uneducated that they can’t even read. Then when they bray like donkeys in church, repeating by rote the psalms they haven’t understood, they imagine they are charming the ears of their heavenly audience with infinite delight. Many of them too make a good living out of their squalor and beggary, bellowing for bread from door to door, and indeed making a nuisance of themselves in every inn, carriage or boat, to the great loss of all other beggars. This is the way in which these smooth individuals, in all their filth and ignorance, their boorish and shameless behaviour, claim to bring back the apostles into our midst! …
Then the Supreme Pontiffs, who are the vicars of Christ: if they made an attempt to imitate his life of poverty and toil, his teaching, cross, and contempt for life, and thought about their name of Pope, which means Father, or their title of Supreme Holiness, what creature on earth would be so cast down?…
As if indeed the deadliest enemies of the Church were not these impious pontiffs who allow Christ to be forgotten through their silence, fetter him with their mercenary laws, misrepresent him with their forced interpretations of his teaching, and slay him with their noxious way of life!