The next was, “Enchiridion” which was a ‘Handbook of the Christian Knight’ and acted as a guide to good living and was aimed at the educated laity of christendom. It also contained powerful attacks on the role of ritual and ceremony in the Catholic church and other superstitious practices. It became increasingly popular and was translated into many languages.
Then came, “The Praise of Folly” which was an out and out criticism on the Roman Catholic Church but Erasmus got away with this because he used the persona of ‘Folly’ to narrate so he wouldn’t be tried for heresy.
In, “Colloquies” Erasmus continued to damn the attitudes and behavior which was seen as not truly pious and the ceremonial rituals.
Finally, “The New Testament” was written and aimed to solve many problems that the vulgate had presented. Erasmus wrote his own copy with annotations and corrected all of the mistakes that the vulgate contained. For example, in the Vulgate Bible, John the Baptist told his listeners to ‘do penance‘ - which backed up the Church’s teaching on the subject. Erasmus‘ translation was to ‘change your mind‘ - implying not doing something but having an inner change of heart. The effect of this was to weaken the Church because it undermined the authority on which it was based. This was essential to the Christian Humanist way of life because if many more people can read the bible then power is taken away from the church. Life for every person in most countries was surrounded by the church and religion but now with the new copy many more people were able to have the direct relationship with God as many reforming parties wanted. It didn’t just shed light on to the flaws of the biblical texts, it also raised questions about the whole Catholic way and its practices. As finding truth and going back to old texts was a main priority for the humanists, this was a major achievement, “...we set the seal of our approval on any error or corruption, any omission which may subsequently arise by any means whatsoever through ignorance or presumption of scribes or through their incompetence, drunkenness or negligence.”- Erasmus.
There were other ways that humanism damaged the church including the “Donation of Constantine” that was a document found to be a fake and so undermining the entire Catholic Church. Supposedly it was issued by the fourth century and grants and his successors, as inheritors of , dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa, as well as the city of , with and the entire , while Constantine would retain imperial authority in the from his new imperial of . The text claims that the Donation was Constantine's gift to Sylvester for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him and miraculously curing him of . As this was found out to be a fraud big questions started to arise about the legitimacy of the church. The Church therefore should not have the power that it has in 1516 and this spurred ongoing investigations into the corruption of the church.
Continuing from above, there were continued questions about the corruption inside the church and although the humanists weren’t responsible directly for the criticizing they did join in. The big abuses were simony, pluralism and absenteeism. Simony was the buying and selling of church positions (benefices), pluralism was the holding of more than one benefice and leading on from that was absenteeism which was when a person did not reside in the diocese that they owned. Examples of people who suffered from all of these abuses are, the Archbishop of Sens, Albert the Archbishop of Mainz and probably the most well known Cardinal Wolsey. Among the higher clergy it wasn’t uncommon to have large houses, paintings, servants, fine food and a family. There were also monasteries and convents that were cashing in from the ability to work the land, produce food and wool and live a generally anticlerical life. There was also whats known as Renaissance Popes like Leo X who was educated by humanist teachers and loved the arts and syphoned funds for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. He loved everything lavish and was popular with secular rulers as well as those who were against the rigorous structure of the Catholic ways. “The new pope was nothing like Julius II...a protector of humanists, artists and scholars, he seemed to begin an ere of tolerance and generosity” - H.O.Evennett, NCMH.
The general public was either blissfully unaware of this situation or didn’t have the power to do anything. This is where the humanists came into play, Erasmus and others like him had the power and money to reach out and tell the world of the wrong doings of the church and he did so in many of his works that were able to be distributed to hundreds if not thousands of people with the development of the printing press.
Around 1450 the first usable movable type printing press was developed in Mainz, Germany and spread rapidly in many capitals and protestant sympathizing cities. It was the printing press that enabled all of the various philosophers to print their works and share it among the countries and spread their thoughts and ideas with as many people as they could. Erasmus would only have been able to copy his works by had a few times for a couple of people to read but with the printing press he was able to mass produce his books but most notably the new testament. There were many other attempts at reformation, using teachings from Jan Huss and John Wyclif, but they were not able to reach nearly as many people needed for a reformation and so this is why the printing press was such a key tool in allowing reformation to happen and especially in the time it did.
There is another side to the debate as the humanists gave the Catholic Church time and reason to reform themselves but this was a missed opportunity for the church. In Erasmus’ work he was very clear to make sure he did not directly attack the church, either by using the persona ‘Folly’ in “Praise of Folly” or by just pointing out the faults and allowing others to interpret them how they will. This was a key moment for the church to say ‘ok there are faults and we can work on them for the benefit of the people’. However no such actions were made and so reformation was inevitable. There were also Christian Doctrines that were actually reinforced by humanist study. For example the teaching that every person has free will is a very humanist idea, in that humanists believed in personal piety and they had the choice to do as they wanted in respect of religion. Another key area the Catholic Church missed was the printing press. The humanist scholars were using it to spread their ideas throughout the lands and many attacked the church but why did they not stop this or at least counter with material of their own ? There is no simple answer to this but it can be seen as the Catholic Church being too confident that they would stay powerful as they had done for over 600 years. The Church couldn’t see what a powerful weapon the printing press was and this is a reason why they undoubtably were weakened by the humanist ideas spreading.
In conclusion it is necessary to look back at the question posed and summarize the key points of the humanist ideas that weakened the authority of the church in the years before the reformation. The most important reason were the works of Erasmus and especially his new testament. This helped with one of the important aspects of humanist teachings to be closer to God with personal piety and not going directly through the Catholic Church to find salvation. The finding that the Donation of Constance was a fake was a big blow to the church and gave the humanists ammo to attack with and use to show how the church was a fraud and corrupt. The church was corrupt anyway with so many higher clergy committing abuses, many lower clergy weren’t fit for the job and the Renaissance Popes just had a good time and not tending to the appropriate godly activities. The printing press was the platform that gave humanism and many other religious sects the ability to share their ideas and thoughts and without it could never have got as far as they did. Then at last there are the missed chances of the church to reform early on and avoid the storm that they had to deal with in the years following. If they had only heeded the warnings given by Erasmus and other scholars then maybe the world would be shaped very differently to how it is today.