erasmvs roteroda m.

v s sacrae theolo
giae professor reverendissimo pa
TRI AC DOMINO DOMINO GV LI ELMO
VVARAMO ARCHIE P I SCOPO CAN*
TVARIENSI TOTIVS ANGLIAE
PRIMATI ET EIVSDEM RE G N I
CANCELLA RIO SVMMO
S. D.

Anta Temper fuit Iitccraru apud cthm'cos quoq; ueneratio,

Guliclrrtc prxfulum decus, SC uirtutum ac littcraru antiftes,
ut difeiplinarum omnium origines.haud alrjs cj> dps autho
_ ribusconfccrandas ducerent: eaqj cum primis cura fummis
acflorentiffimis regibus digna uidcretur, fi exccllcnrium uiroru libros,
quo pluribus ufui cllc poflent, in diuerfas linguas tranfFcredos curarct:
hinc uidclicet SC fibi ucrifTimam ccrtiftimamq; laudem , SC regno prxcF
puum ornamenttam accefturum rati, fi bibliothecam, cp optimisfimul
SC emendariflimis codicibus poftcritati tradcrcnt. Nee ullam grauiore
iadturam acciderc pofTe iuduabanc.cp fi quid ex id genus opibus inter-
cidiffet.Proinde nc qui fuis ingcnrjs.fuifqj uigilrjs, tantopcrc dc morta^
Iibus uniuerfis meriti fuifter.t. horn memoria, iniuria temporu nihil no
oblitterantium intermorerct, autliores ipfos ftatuis ac pidturis expreft-
fos, paffim in porticibus ac bibliothccis ponebant, qua certe licuit.illos
abintcritu uindicantcs.Tumcorundcm apophthegmata.marmori,
xriq; pafTim infculpta.mortalium oculis ingcrcbant.Libros ingenti re^
demptos precio.magnacp fide ucl religione potius deferiptos, ccdrinis
inclufoscapfulistum ccdri fucco oblitos.in templis reponebant,partim
ut rei tarn facrx tamq? diuinx cuftodia.no alrjs cp ipfis numinibus con-
crcderctur.partim ne quid fitus aut caries ilia monumenta uiriaret.qux
fola principum gloriam a (itu caricq; queunt aftercre, SC impune inters
morcren*ur, quxprxftant omnibus immortalitatcm. Fucrunt qui ncc
haccontenti diligentia,codices ecu thefaurum incomparabilcm.in altif-
fimis terrx Iatebris rcconderent, tanta cura.ut nec inccndrjs, ncc bclloru
a i procellis.

Dedicatory letter, Erasmus to William Warham, Ep 396

Hieronymi opera 1 (Basel: Froben 1516)
Offentliche Bibliothek, University of Basel
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 2

Erasmus' dedicatory letter to Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury,

primate of England and lord chancellor of the realm, serves as the general
preface to the edition of Jerome. Warham (i456?-i532) had been archbishop
of Canterbury since 1503 and lord chancellor since 1504, although Cardinal
Wolsey had succeeded him in the latter office at the end of 1515, a change
Erasmus apparently was unaware of when he wrote this dedication.
Erasmus first met him during his second visit to England in 1505, and he
dedicated to him at that time his translation of Euripides' Hecuba (Ep 188)
and subsequently his translation of Euripides' Iphigenia (Ep 208). Warham
remained a warm friend and a generous patron. In 1512 he granted Erasmus
a yearly pension from a parochial benefice at Aldington in Kent (See Allen
Ep 235 introduction). The dedication is a mark of Erasmus' high regard for
and gratitude to the English prelate. He had originally thought of offering
the edition to Pope Leo x, but more appropriately he dedicated the Greek
and Latin New Testament, which appeared earlier that year, to the Roman
pontiff. These two remarkable works, which are so closely related, thus
appeared under the protection and auspices of men of the highest authority.
We have discussed this dedication in our introduction. Suffice it to say
here that Erasmus presents a justification for his edition of Jerome as well as
a panegyric of the saint's superior qualities as a Christian scholar and
author. He also recounts the story of his long and difficult labours in editing
and restoring the text of Jerome's works and briefly describes the first four
volumes of the edition, which he had taken as his special province. The letter
is an apt and informative introduction to the great work that follows.
The dedicatory letter is Ep 396 in Allen and cwe.
 DEDICATORY LETTER

ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM, DOCTOR OF DIVINITY,

TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER AND LORD, WILLIAM WARHAM,
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND
AND LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF THE SAID REALM,
GREETING

So great was the veneration always accorded to literature even by pagans,

William, paragon of prelates and champion of the virtues and of sound
learning, that they supposed the origins of all the liberal arts should be
ascribed to the gods alone as their inventors, and the most powerful and
prosperous monarchs thought no concern more becoming to them than to
arrange for the translation of works of outstanding authors into various
tongues, that more men might enjoy them. This was, they thought, the way
to secure the truest and most lasting renown for themselves and a special
ornament for their kingdoms, if they bequeathed to posterity a library
equipped with most accurate copies of the very best authors; nor did they
think a more serious loss could befall them than the destruction of any of
their riches in this kind. They were concerned therefore that the memory of
those whose gifted natures and whose exertions had done so much for the
whole human race should never succumb to the attacks of time that effaces
all things; and so they placed statues and pictures of the authors themselves
everywhere in cloister and library, to protect them from oblivion at least as
far as in them lay. Further, they had the maxims of great authors inscribed
everywhere in marble or bronze and set them up for all men to see; they
bought their works at vast expense and had them faithfully and almost
religiously copied, enclosed them in chests of cedar wood and rubbed them
with cedar oil, then laid them up in their temples. For this there were two
reasons: something so sacred, so divine, should not be entrusted for
safekeeping to any but the gods themselves, and no neglect or decay must
be allowed to spoil the only monuments which can keep neglect and decay
from the glory of princes, nor should works be allowed to die defenceless
which confer immortality on all men.
For some even this degree of care was not enough, and they laid up
their books like some incomparable treasure in storehouses deep under
ground, intending by these precautions to protect them from destruction by
fire or by the storms of war, which so often confound everything sacred and
profane, that they might survive at least for the benefit of posterity. They
 DEDICATORY LETTER
5

perceived of course, those princes distinguished no less for wisdom than for
royal state, that it was barbarous for the corpses of the dead to be so carefully
embalmed sometimes with unguents and spices and woad to preserve them
from decay, when their preservation served no purpose since they could no
longer reproduce the features or figure of the deceased, which even a statue
of stone can do, and to take no such care to preserve the relics of the mind.
And so they thought it far more appropriate to transfer that solicitude to the
books of great men, in which they live on for the world at large even after
death, and live on in such fashion that they speak to more people and more
effectively dead than alive. They converse with us, instruct us, tell us what
to do and what not to do, give us advice and encouragement and consolation
as loyally and as readily as anyone can. In fact, they then most truly come
alive for us when they themselves have ceased to live. For such is my
opinion: if a man had lived in familiar converse with Cicero (to take him
as an example) for several years, he will know less of Cicero than they
do who by constant reading of what he wrote converse with his spirit every
day.
Now if such honour was paid even to works of superstition like the
books of Numa and the Sibyl,1 or to volumes of human history as was
customary in Egypt, or to those that enshrined some part of human wisdom
such as the works of Plato and Aristotle, how much more appropriate that
Christian princes and bishops should do likewise by preserving the writings
of men inspired by the Holy Spirit, who have left us not so much books as
sacred oracles! And yet somehow it happened that in that field our ancestors
did singularly little. We may not think much, I grant you, of the loss of pagan
authors, the only result of which is that we are less well informed or less
eloquent, but not less virtuous. But think of the admirable and really saintly
authors bequeathed to us by Greece, that seat of learning, or its rival Italy, by
Gaul, once such a flourishing home of culture, or Africa with all its
originality, or Spain with its tradition of hard work. How impressive was
their recondite learning, how brilliant their eloquence, how holy their lives!
And yet, I ask you, how few of them survive, preserved more by accident
than by any help from us! And those survivors, how foully mutilated, how
badly adulterated, how full throughout of monstrous errors, so that to
survive in that condition was no great privilege! For my part, far as I am from
despising the simple piety of common folk, I cannot but wonder at the
absurd judgment of the multitude. The slippers of the saints and their
drivel-stained napkins we put to our lips, and the books they wrote, the
most sacred and most powerful relics of those holy men, we leave to lie
neglected. A scrap of a saint's tunic or shirt we place in a gilded and
bejewelled reliquary, and the books into which they put so much work, and
 DEDICATORY LETTER 6

in which we have the best part of them still living and breathing, we
abandon to be gnawed at will by bug, worm, and cockroach.
Nor is it hard to guess the reason for this. Once the character of princes
had quite degenerated into a barbaric form of tyranny, and bishops had
begun to love their lay lordships more than the duty of teaching bequeathed
to them by the apostles, the whole business of instruction was soon
abandoned to a certain class, who today claim charity and religion as their
private trademark; sound learning began to be neglected, and a knowledge
of Greek, still more of Hebrew, was looked down on; to study the art of
expression was despised, and Latin itself so much contaminated with an
ever-changing barbarism that Latin by now was the last thing it resembled.
History, geography, antiquities, all were dropped. Literature was reduced
to a few sophistic niceties, and the sum of human learning began to be found
only in certain summary compilers and makers of excerpts, whose impu¬
dence stood in inverse proportion to their knowledge. And so they easily
allowed those old classic authors to fall out of use or, what is more like the
truth, they deliberately contrived their disappearance, for they now read
them in vain, lacking all things necessary for their understanding. They did,
however, make a few haphazard extracts from them which they mingled
with their own notes; and this made it even more in their interest that the old
authors should disappear, to save them from the charge of plagiarism or
ignorance. It was worth their while for Clement, Irenaeus, Poly carp,
Origen, Arnobius to fall out of use, that in their stead the world might read
Occam, Durandus, Capreolus, Lyra, Burgensis,2 and even poorer stuff than
that. So under their long and despotic rule such was the holocaust of
humane literature and good authors that a man who had meddled even
slightly with sound learning was expelled from the ranks of the doctors.
The result of this was the total loss of so many luminaries of the world,
whose names alone survive and cannot be read without tears; and if by some
chance any have escaped destruction, they are damaged in so many ways
and so much mutilated and adulterated that those who perished outright
might seem fortunate. Now this seems to me a perfectly monstrous fate for
all learned authors, but far more monstrous in Jerome than anywhere else,
whose many outstanding gifts deserved that he, even if no one else, should
be preserved complete and uncorrupted. Other authors have each a
different claim upon us; Jerome alone possesses, united in one package, as
the phrase goes, and to a remarkable degree, all the gifts that we admire
separately in others. Distinction in one department is a great and rare
achievement; but he combined overall excellence with being easily first in
everything separately, if you compare him with other authors, while if you
compare him with himself, nothing stands out, such is his balanced
 DEDICATORY LETTER
7

mingling of all the supreme qualities. If you assay his mental endowments,
where else would you find such an enthusiastic student, such a keen critic,
such prolific originality? What could be more ingenious or diverting, if the
subject should call for something entertaining? If however you are looking
for brilliance of expression, on that side at least Jerome leaves all Christian
authors so far behind him that one cannot compare with him even those
who spent their whole time on nothing but the art of writing; and so
impossible is it to find any writer of our faith to compare with him that in my
opinion Cicero himself, by universal consent the leading light of Roman
eloquence, is surpassed by him in some of the qualities of a good style, as I
shall show at greater length in his life. For my part, I have the same
experience with Jerome that I used to have with Cicero: if I compare him
with any other author, however brilliant, that man suddenly seems as it
were to lose his voice, and he whose language has no rival in my admiration,
when set alongside Jerome for comparison, seems to become tongue-tied
and stammers. If you demand learning, I ask you, whom can Greece
produce with all her erudition, so perfect in every department of knowl-
edge, that he might be matched against Jerome? Who ever so successfully
united every part of the sum of knowledge in such perfection? Was there
ever an individual expert in so many languages? Who ever achieved such
familiarity with history, geography, and antiquities? Who ever became so
equally and completely at home in all literature, both sacred and profane? If
you look to his memory, never was there an author, ancient or modern, who
was not at his immediate disposal. Was there a corner of Holy Scripture or
anything so recondite or diverse that he could not produce it, as it were, cash
down? As for his industry, who ever either read or wrote so many volumes?
Who had the whole of Scripture by heart, as he had, drinking it in, digesting
it, turning it over and over, pondering upon it? Who expended so much
effort in every branch of learning? And if you contemplate his lofty
character, who breathes the spirit of Christ more vividly? Who has taught
him with more enthusiasm? Who ever followed him more exactly in his way
of life? This man, single-handed, could represent the Latin world, either for
holiness of life or for mastery of theology, if only he survived complete and
undamaged.
As it is, I doubt whether any author has had more outrageous
treatment. A good part of all he wrote has perished. What survives was not
so much corrupted as virtually destroyed and defaced, and this partly by the
fault of illiterate scribes whose habit it is to copy an accurate text inaccurately
and make a faulty text worse, to leave out what they cannot read and to
corrupt what they do not understand - for instance, the Hebrew and Greek
words which Jerome often brings in; but in a much more criminal fashion by
 DEDICATORY LETTER 8

sacrilegious men, I know not whom, who have deliberately cut down very
many passages, added some, altered many, corrupted, adulterated, and
muddled almost everything, so that there is hardly a paragraph which an
educated man can read without stumbling. What is more (and this is the
most pestilential way of ruining a text), as though it were not enough to have
put together so many idiotic blunders, showing equally ignorance and
inability to write, under the name of one who is equally a great scholar and a
great stylist, they have mixed in their own rubbish into his expositions in
such a way that no one can separate them. Ascribe a book to the wrong
author, and there are many indications that this is wrong; but if scraps are
intermingled, like darnel in wheat, where is the sieve that can screen them
out? That all this has happened I shall shortly demonstrate in the catalogue
of Jerome's works, and in the two prefaces and critical introductions of the
second volume.3
I was roused therefore, partly by this insufferable ill-treatment of so
eminent a Doctor of the church, on whose immortal works these worse than
Calydonian boars4 have wreaked their fury unpunished, and partly by
thoughts of the general advantage of all who wish to learn, whom I saw
debarred by these outrages from enjoying such a feast - I was roused, I say,
to restore to the best of my ability the volumes of his letters, which were the
richest in learning and eloquence and proportionately the worst corrupted,
although I well knew how difficult and arduous was the task I took in hand.
To begin with, the labour of comparing together so many volumes is very
tedious, as they know who have experience of working in this treadmill.
Often too I had to work with volumes which it was no easy business to read,
the forms of the script being either obscured by decay and neglect, or half
eaten away and mutilated by worm and beetle, or written in the fashion of
Goths or Lombards, so that even to learn the letter-forms I had to go back to
school; not to mention for the moment that the actual task of detecting, of
smelling out as it were, anything that does not sound like a true and genuine
reading requires a man in my opinion who is well informed, quick-witted,
and alert. But on top of this far the most difficult thing is either to conjecture
from corruptions of different kinds what the author wrote, or to guess the
original reading on the basis of such fragments and vestiges of the shapes of
the script as may survive. And further, while this is always extremely
difficult, it is outstandingly so in the works of Jerome. There are several
reasons for this. One is that his actual style is far from ordinary, starred with
epigrams, highlighted with exclamations, rich in devious and cunning
artifice, in pressing close-packed argument, in humorous allusions, some¬
times seeming to use all the tricks of the rhetorical schools without restraint,
and everywhere exhibiting the highly skilled craftsman. As a result, the
 DEDICATORY LETTER
9

further his style is from the understanding of ordinary people, the more
blunders it is defiled with. One man copies not what he reads but what he
thinks he understands; another supposes everything he does not under¬
stand to be corrupt, and changes the text as he thinks best, following no
guide but his own imagination; a third detects perhaps that the text is
corrupt, but while trying to emend it with an unambitious conjecture he
introduces two mistakes in place of one, and while trying to cure a slight
wound inflicts one that is incurable.
Besides all this, there is the astonishing way in which Jerome mixes
material of the most varied kinds. He even went out of his way to do this, but
with complete success. It was a kind of ambition and ostentation, if you like,
but of a pious and holy kind: to display his own resources with the object of
shocking us out of our lethargy and awaking his drowsy readers to study the
inner meaning of the Scriptures. There is no class of author anywhere and
no kind of literature which he does not use whenever he likes - sprinkling
here and there, pressing harder, ramming it home: Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
Chaldaean, sacred and profane, old and new, everything! Like a bee that
flies from flower to flower, he collected the best of everything to make the
honey stored in his works;5 he plucked different blossoms from every
quarter to adorn his chaplet; he put together his mosaic out of tesserae of
every colour. And of all these it was the most recondite materials that he
habitually wove in with the greatest readiness. There is nothing so obscure
in the meaning-within-meaning of the Prophets, in the hidden senses of the
whole Old Testament, in the Gospels or the Epistles, that he does not use as
though it were familiar, sometimes with such a sidelong glance that only a
well-instructed and attentive reader will catch the allusion. What is there in
the literature of the Hebrews or Chaldaeans, in rhetorical or geographical
textbooks, in poetry and medicine and philosophy, and even in books
written by heretics, from which he does not draw thread to weave into his
book? To understand all this, encyclopaedic learning is essential, even if the
texts were faultless; and what happens, do you suppose, when everything is
so damaged, so mutilated, so muddled that, if Jerome himself came to life
again, he would neither recognize his own work nor understand it?
And then there was a further handicap. The greatest part of the
authors upon whom Jerome drew as his sources have perished, and with
their support it might have been possible to repair somehow the results of
repeated damage or even loss: for this is, as it were, the sheet-anchor in
which scholars normally take refuge in their greatest difficulties. For since I
did not undertake this labour to secure either reputation or reward, I at least
was not so much moved by something that might perhaps have deterred
another man from setting his hand to any business of the kind. What is that?
 DEDICATORY LETTER 10

you will ask. I mean this: no other work brings a man more tedium and
weariness, and equally no work brings its author less repute or gratitude,
because, while the whole advantage of one's exertions is enjoyed by one's
reader, he fails to appreciate not only how hard one has worked for his
benefit but even how much he has gained, unless someone by chance were
to compare my work with the texts in current use. The reader wanders at
leisure over smiling fields; he plays and runs and never stumbles; and he
never gives a thought to the time and tedium it has cost me to battle with the
thorns and briars, while I was clearing that land for his benefit. He does not
reckon how long a single brief word may sometimes have tormented the
man trying to correct it, nor does he bring to mind how much I suffered in
my efforts to remove anything that might hold him up, how great the
discomforts that secured his comfort, how much tedium was the price of his
finding nothing tedious.
But I shall be tedious myself if I recount all the tedium I have endured
in this affair; so let me say just one thing, which is bold, but true. I believe
that the writing of his books cost Jerome less effort than I spent in the
restoring of them, and their birth meant fewer nightly vigils for him than
their rebirth for me. The rest any man may conjecture for himself. Why need
I mention here the ingratitude and ignorance of some men I could name,
who would rather have no changes whatever in the text of the best authors?
They do nothing themselves, and object noisily to the distinguished efforts
of others; men whose judgment is so crass that they find errors in what is
perfectly preserved and stylish elegance in the foulest corruptions, and
(what is worse) of such perversity that, while they do not grant scholars the
right to correct a faulty text by hard work, they allow some worthless fellow
to befoul and stultify and ruin the works of the greatest authors at his own
sweet will without a protest. And so it is inevitable that one should earn no
gratitude from the majority and win the resentment of this last class of men
even for the service one has done them. You may say that profit means
nothing to the noble soul, and that honour and glory are easily despised by
the good Christian. Yes: but even men of the highest character look for
gratitude if they have deserved it. Who can tolerate scandal and abuse in
return for doing good?
Of all this I was well aware; but I was moved by a great desire to rescue
Jerome, by the thought of being useful to those who have the Scriptures at
heart, and last but not least because your Highness approved and would
have it so, and you above all others gave me the impulse and unflagging
encouragement to undertake this. And so I despised all the difficulties, and
like a modern Hercules I set out on my most laborious but most glorious
campaign, taking the field almost unaided against all the monsters of error. I
 DEDICATORY LETTER 11

cannot think that Hercules consumed as much energy in taming a few

monsters as I did in abolishing so many thousand blunders. And I conceive
that not a little more advantage will accrue to the world from my work than
from his labours which are on the lips of all men. To start with, by comparing
many copies, early copies especially, and sometimes adding my conjectures
as the traces of the script suggested, I have removed the blunders and
restored the correct reading. The Greek words, which had been either
omitted or wrongly supplied, I have replaced. I have done the same with the
Hebrew also; but in this department what I was less able to manage for
myself I have achieved with the assistance of others, and especially of the
brothers Amerbach, Bruno, Basilius, and Bonifacius, whom their excellent
father Johannes Amerbach equipped with the three tongues as though they
were born expressly for the revival of ancient texts. And in this they have
even outstripped their father's wishes and expectations, thinking nothing
more important than the glory of Jerome and for his sake sparing neither
expense nor health. For my part I was very grateful for their help, having
only dipped into Hebrew rather than learnt it. And yet I saw to it that the
keen reader should find nothing lacking even if I lacked it myself, and what
fell short in my own capacity has been fully supplied out of the resources of
others. Why should I be ashamed to do in the defence of such an author
what the greatest monarchs do without shame in the recovery, and even the
destruction, of paltry towns?
I have added a summary to each treatise or letter, opening the door, as
it were, to those who wish to enter. And then, since not everyone is blessed
with such wide linguistic and literary knowledge, I have thrown light on
anything that might hold up a reader of modest attainments by adding
notes, hoping to achieve a double purpose: first, to make such an eminent
author, who hitherto could not be read even by men of great learning,
accessible to those whose learning is but small, and second, that it may not
be so easy in future for anyone to corrupt what other men have restored. Not
content with this, the pieces wrongly circulating under Jerome's name,
many of them such that their author is clearly not Jerome but some botcher
as witless as he is impudent, I have not cut out, in order that a reader whose
appetite is greater than his taste might run no risk of disappointment (to put
it more bluntly, so that every donkey may find its thistle6), but exiled to a
suitable place, although in themselves they deserve no place at all. Next, I
divided the whole corpus (I speak of the section which I took for my own
province) into four volumes. In the first I have grouped together his pieces of
moral instruction by exhortation and example, because what deals with the
ordering of life deserves attention first. The second I have divided into three
classes, into the first of which I have put certain things that show some
 DEDICATORY LETTER 12

degree of culture and are worth reading, but are falsely ascribed to Jerome;
into the next, things which are not his, but carry an author's name in their
headings; the third class is a kind of cesspool into which I have thrown the
supremely worthless rubbish of some impostor, I know not whom, of whom
it may fairly be doubted which is the greater, his inability to write, his
ignorance, or his impudence. At least, whoever he was, he seems to me to
deserve public execration for the rest of time; and he must have had a very
low opinion of the intelligence of posterity if he hoped that there would
never be anyone who could distinguish the ravings of a half-witted noisy
fellow from the works of a man of the highest eloquence, learning, and
sanctity. The third volume I have allotted to his works of controversy and
apologetics, those, that is, which are devoted to refuting the errors of
heretics and the calumnies of his opponents. The fourth I have kept for the
expository works, I mean the explanations of Holy Scripture.
With something of the same zealous intentions I have lately produced
a New Covenant equipped with my annotations, and I decided that the
dedication of that work should be shared by Leo the supreme pontiff and
your Highness, that my new undertaking might come before the public
protected and recommended by the names of the whole world's two
greatest men. But Jerome, recalled to the light from some sort of nether
region, I prefer to dedicate to you alone, either because I owe you without
exception everything I have, or because you always have a special concern
for Jerome's reputation, perceiving with your usual wisdom that after the
writings of the evangelists and apostles there is nothing more deserving of a
Christian's attention. For my part I would gladly believe that Jerome himself
takes some pleasure in the thought that his restoration to life in the world
has the authority of your most favourable name, for he is no more the
greatest of theologians than you are second to none among bishops whom
all admire. He mastered to such good effect the whole cycle of knowledge in
its completeness, and you likewise have blended in a wonderful harmony
the full circle of a bishop's virtues.
In all other respects the agreement is admirable. I have one anxiety,
that my limited powers may fail to do justice to Jerome's importance or to
your eminent position; for nowhere do I feel more clearly how small my
talent is than when I am striving to make some sort of response to your
exalted virtues and your unbounded goodness to me. But what was I to do,
bound to you as I am by so many and such great obligations that if I sold
myself into slavery I should not be in a position to repay any part of my debt?
I have done what bankrupts often do, making a token payment to bind
themselves yet more irrecoverably, and thus proving that it is the means and
not the will they lack; they are ill-starred rather than dishonest debtors, and
 DEDICATORY LETTER 13

for this very reason often secure the good will of a jury, because they are not
so much ungrateful as unfortunate. In such cases the only means of showing
gratitude is to be a frank and cheerful debtor, and to acknowledge one's debt
is the first step towards paying it. Or rather, to compare a situation even
more like mine, I have followed the example of those who would rather raise
a fresh loan than go to prison for nonpayment, and have borrowed from
Jerome the wherewithal to repay you. Though why should it any longer look
like something borrowed rather than my own? — real estate often passes
from one ownership to another by occupation or prescriptive right. In any
case, in this line of business Jerome himself has laid down a principle for me
in his preface to the books of Kings, repeatedly calling that work his, because
anything that we have made our own by correcting, reading, constant
devotion, we can fairly claim is ours.7 On this principle why should not I
myself claim a proprietary right in the works of Jerome? For centuries they
had been treated as abandoned goods; I entered upon them as something
ownerless, and by incalculable efforts reclaimed them for all devotees of the
true theology.
It is a river of gold, a well-stocked library, that a man acquires who
possesses Jerome and nothing else. He does not possess him, on the other
hand, if his text is like what used to be in circulation, all confusion and
impurity. Not that I would dare assert that none of the old corruptions, no
traces of his previous ruined state, remain; I doubt if Jerome himself could
achieve that without the aid of better manuscripts than I have yet had the
chance to use. But this with all my zeal I have achieved, that not many now
remain. And if I have done nothing else, at least my attempt will spur on
some other men not to accept hereafter indiscriminately whatever they may
find in their books, however badly corrupted by one impostor after another
or masquerading under some false title, and read it and approve it and cite it
as an oracle. I only wish that all good scholars would devote all their forces to
the task of restoring as far as possible to its original purity whatever in the
way of good authors has somehow survived after such numerous ship¬
wrecks! But I should not like to see anyone enter this field who is not as well
equipped with honesty, accuracy, judgment, and readiness to take pains as
he is with erudition; for there is no more cruel enemy of good literature than
the man who sets out to correct it half-instructed, half-asleep, hasty, and of
unsound judgment.
If only all princes were of the same mind as you - if they would let go
these wars with all their madness and their misery, and devote themselves
to the task of adorning their generation with the arts of peace, firing the zeal
of learned men to these most salutary labours by suitable rewards! Very
soon we should see all the world over what has come to pass in these few
 DEDICATORY LETTER 14

years in your native England. For many years she has been strong in
manhood and in wealth; and lately she has become so well endowed, has
achieved such distinction, and so blossomed forth in religion, justice,
gracious living, and last but not least in all the study of the classics (and all
this your doing!), that this remote island can serve as a spur even to the most
civilized regions in their pursuit of the highest things.
Farewell in Christ Jesus, most illustrious prelate, and may he preserve
you in health and wealth as long as possible for the increase of religion and
the advancement of humane studies.
Basel, 1 April 1516