hilmar m. pabel - erasmus, willem vorsterman, and the printing of st jerome's letters

Erasmus, Willem Vorsterman, and the Printing of St Jerome’s Letters

Hilmar M. Pabel*Burnaby, Canada

AbstractWillem Vorsterman was a leading printer in Antwerp in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. He printed two anthologies of the letters of St. Jerome, one in 1515, the other in 1533. Th ese deserve attention in connection with Erasmus of Rotterdam, the renowned humanist champion and editor of Jerome. In its preface, the fi rst anthology takes up the cause of humanist theology and invokes Erasmus’ authority on the eve of his celebrated edition of Jerome. His name adds value to the anthology. Th e second anthology does not refer to Erasmus at all; nevertheless it yields traces of his editorial infl uence.

KeywordsVorsterman, Erasmus, St. Jerome, humanism

Introduction

In 1515, Erasmus of Rotterdam took a new démarche into the world of public relations. His objective was the pre-publication advertisement of his edition of St Jerome; his medium was print. In May, he wrote three letters to Rome to secure ecclesiastical support for the edition. He informed Cardinals Raff aele Riario and Domenico Grimani as well as Pope Leo x that the edition would soon appear in print thanks to the presses of Johann Froben, who had no rival

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157006907X195712

Quærendo 37 (2007) 267-290 www.brill.nl/qua

* I am indebted to Werner Waterschoot and Bart Besamusca for providing me with the initial bibliographical orientation on Willem Vorsterman, to Rainer Henrich, Th omas Izbicki, and Hans Trapman for helping me with some references, and to Mechtilde O’Mara for checking some of my translations from Latin. Except for the prayer printed in the anthology of Jerome’s letters printed by Vorsterman in 1515 and the title of the anthology that he printed in 1533, I have modernized the spelling and punctuation in the Latin quotations. Abbreviations: Allen = Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen et al., 10 vols. (Oxford 1906-58); ASD = Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam 1969-); CSEL = Corpus Scriptorum

268 H.M. Pabel / Quærendo 37 (2007) 267-290

in publishing Christian books of superior quality.1 In August, Froben pub-lished these letters as well as an epistolary apology for Th e Praise of Folly, addressed to Maarten van Dorp, and a poem in praise of Schlettstadt, where Erasmus had visited in 1512. Th ese pieces constituted the fi rst published collec-tion of Erasmus’s letters, a collection combined with a series of texts on mili-tary campaigns against Turks and Muscovites under the volume title of Iani Damiani [. . .] elegeia. In this collection of letters, specifi cally the three letters to Rome, author and printer collaborated in promoting the scholarly reputa-tion of Erasmus and providing ‘elaborate advanced publicity – a publishers’ marketing blurb which specifi es precisely the form which the Jerome volumes will take.’2 Lisa Jardine observes: ‘In all three letters Erasmus conveys vividly his sense that he has earned the right, through his labours, to commercial ownership of the Jerome, and therefore the right to negotiate the profi t which might accrue from its publication.’3 Erasmus portrayed the edition not only as the product of more than Herculean labours but also as an editio princeps. Jerome, reborn in his edition, previously ‘was so much corrupted and muti-lated that one might think he was now not so much revised as published for the fi rst time (primum aeditus).’4

Th is claim resonates with hubris. Th e Erasmian edition that Froben printed in Basel in 1516 was a far cry from an editio princeps, even though, as the fi rst publication of Jerome’s opera omnia – in nine volumes, it represented an accomplishment in the history of print. Since 1467, when Sextus Riessinger printed the editio princeps in Rome, Jerome’s letters were published repeatedly throughout Europe. Incunabular editions appeared in Rome, Parma, Venice, Strassburg, Mainz, Nürnberg, and Basel. Th e 1497 edition produced by Nicolaus Kesler in Basel formed the basis of four French editions printed in the fi rst two decades of the sixteenth century – one in Paris (1512), and three in Lyon (1508, 1513, 1518). Furthermore, in Basel, Johann Amerbach, who had already printed editions of the collected works of Ambrose (1492) and Augustine (1506), was

Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna 1866-); CWE = Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto 1974-); NK = Wouter Nijhoff and M. E. Kronenberg, Nederlandsche Bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540, 3 parts (Th e Hague 1923-66).

CWE, vol 3, p. 108, ep. 335. Cornelis Augustijn, ‘Erasmus-Promotion anno 1515: die Erasmus-Stücke in Iani Damiani . . .

Elegia’, in: Augustijn, Erasmus: Der Humanist als Th eologe und Kirchenreformer (Leiden 1996), pp. 41-52; Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: Th e Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton 1993), p. 71 (quote).

3 Jardine, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 71.4 CWE, vol. 3, p. 89, ep. 333; Allen, vol. 2, p. 71, ep. 333.

H.M. Pabel / Quærendo 37 (2007) 267-290 269

preparing an edition of Jerome until his death on Christmas Day, 1513 termi-nated this project. His sons Basil, Boniface, and Bruno especially collaborated with Erasmus to produce the edition that Froben, Amerbach’s partner and successor, printed in 1516. Erasmus was immediately responsible for the fi rst four volumes – three volumes of letters and a volume of spuria – while the fi ve remaining volumes of Jerome’s scriptural scholarship fell to the Amerbach brothers with Erasmus as a sort of editor-in-chief.5

Despite the many preceding editions, 1516 represented a watershed in the history of editing Jerome. Erasmus successfully staked his proprietary claim on Jerome and emerged as the authoritative transmitter and interpreter of his letters.6 Two anthologies of Jerome’s letters, both printed in Antwerp by Willem Vorsterman and neglected by scholarship, can be incorporated into the printed record of the Erasmus-Jerome relationship. Th e fi rst of these appeared in 1515. Although it did not completely anticipate the Erasmian reinterpretation of the Church Father, the anthology fi rmly planted Jerome in the humanist camp, explicitly under the banner of Erasmus. Vorsterman printed the second anthol-ogy in 1533. Th is reprise evinces Erasmian traits without ever accrediting the consummate editor of Jerome.

Antwerp and Vorsterman

Already at the end of the fi fteenth century, Antwerp was the principal city of book production in the southern Low Countries.7 By the middle of the six-teenth century it ‘evolved into the most important printing centre in Europe after Venice and Paris.’ As ‘a printing production and distribution centre’, Antwerp along with Venice and Paris ‘dominated the international book trade.’8 Already at the end of the fi fteenth century with its leading printer at

5 Th e Correspondence of Johann Amerbach: Early Printing in its Social Context, ed. Barbara C. Halporn (Ann Arbor 2000), pp. 307-66; John C. Olin, ‘Erasmus and Saint Jerome: Th e Close Bond and Its Signifi cance’, in: Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 7 (1987), pp. 40-1.

6 Hilmar M. Pabel, ‘Credit, Paratexts, and Editorial Strategiesin Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Edi-tions of Jerome’, in: Cognition and the Book: Typologies of Formal Organisation of Knowledge in the Printed Book of the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl A. E. Enenkel & Wolfgang Neuber (Leiden 2005), pp. 227-43 = Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies, 4 (2004), pp. 227-43.

7 Werner Waterschoot, ‘Antwerp: Books, Publishing and Cultural Production before 1585’, in: Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, ed. Patrick O’Brien et al. (Cambridge 2001), p. 233.

8 Francine de Nave, ‘A Printing Capital in its Ascendancy, Flowering and Decline’, in: Antwerp: Story of a Metropolis: 16th-17th Century, ed. Jan Van der Stock (Ghent 1993), pp. 88, 90.


the time, Gerard Leeu, Antwerp was producing for a foreign, namely English, market in the book trade. David McKitterick reminds us: ‘In the sixteenth century, the imprints of books show that Antwerp was, with Paris, the most important overseas centre of book production for the English-speaking mar-ket.’9 Antwerp printers produced works in French, English, Danish, Spanish, and Italian. Although religious titles made up the lion’s share of the printed output in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century, Latin humanist works also achieved some prominence. In 1503, Dirk Martens printed Erasmus’s fi rst book of original writings, the Lucubratiunculae, a collection of texts that included the Enchiridion militis christiani.10 Did Erasmus want to make a con-spicuous debut as an author by having the Lucubratiunculae appear there after publishing in Paris the fi rst edition of the Adages in 1500 and an edition of Cicero’s De offi ciis in 1501?

According to Eugène Polain, Willem Vorsterman began printing in Ant-werp as early as 1499.11 In 1512, he gained admittance to the guild of St Luke as a master printer. After printing almost 400 works, he died in 1543.12 He and his contemporary Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten (d. 1558), who before 1546 could count more than 500 publications to his credit,13 dominated Antwerp’s printing industry in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. Vorsterman collabo-rated with Hillen and other printers and contracted out work to and took on work from colleagues within Antwerp and without. Commissions came his way to print for Cardinal Erard de la Marck, Bishop of Liège, and Emperor Charles v.14

Printing meant profi ts for Vorsterman. Th is was an ‘exceedingly successful businessman’ who reaped where others had sown, printing texts that already had successfully issued forth from other presses, and who liked to adorn texts

9 David McKitterick, ‘Histories of the Book and Histories of Antwerp’, in: Quaerendo, 35 (2005), pp. 9-10, 11 (quote).

10 De Nave, art. cit. (n. 8), p. 88.11 Eugène Polain, Essai bibliographique sur les éditions imprimées à Anvers, par Guillaume

Vorsterman demourant en la rue de la Chambre a lenseigne de la Lycorne d’or (Liège 1891), p. 1, no. 1; Polain, ‘Guillaume Vorsterman, imprimeur à Anvers (XVIe siècle)’, in: Bulletin de la Société Liégeoise de Bibliographie, 1 (1892-3), p. 8.

12 Anne Rouzet, Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraries et éditeurs des XV e et XVI e siècles dans les limites géographiques de la Belgique actuelle (Nieuwkoop 1975), p. 239.

13 Ibid., 95.14 Ibid., 239; Waterschoot, art. cit. (n. 7), p. 235; Polain, art. cit. (n. 11), p. 10; Michel Spanneut,

‘Autour d’une Bible fl amande de Vorsterman (1528-1529)’, in: De Gulden Passer, 38 (1960), p. 172.


with woodcuts because he knew that illustrated books sold well.15 A bon march-and,16 Vorsterman cast his nets very widely. Preferring the popular Gothic type, he printed a wide variety of texts in several languages: ‘chapbooks, devo-tional works, Bibles, ordinances, almanacs and one music book.’17 Like Hillen, Vorsterman printed for both sides of the confessional divide. In 1520, he printed Leo x’s bull (Exurge Domine) threatening Martin Luther with excom-munication (nk 1342), and in the following year Charles v’s Edict of Worms, which outlawed Luther (nk 1262). On 30 October 1522, he printed the fi rst edition of John Fisher’s Convulsio calumniarum Ulrichi Veleni Minhoniensis, a reply to the 1520 treatise by the Bohemian Lutheran Oldřich Velenský that argued St Peter had never been to Rome.18 At the request of Christian Peder-sen, the Danish convert to Lutheranism residing in the Low Countries, Vor-sterman printed eleven Lutheran works between 1529 and 1531, including Pedersen’s Danish translation of the New Testament in 1529 (nk 412).19 Reli-gious works enjoyed great demand, and Vorsterman aimed to meet it, espe-cially when it came to the Bible. He contributed to the ‘biblical exuberance’ in full swing in the Low Countries by the 1520s.20 Beginning in 1528, again and again Vorsterman turned out the Bible or the New Testament in Latin or mostly in Flemish. C. Augustijn has shown that the 1528 Flemish Bible had defi nite Protestant characteristics.21 Th e inquisition’s censure of this Bible did not stop Vorsterman from reprinting in 1534, 1544, and 1545 Bibles for Protes-tant customers.22 Ironically, the measure of the popularity of the works that he printed is that they survive in only a few copies in public depositories, if they survive at all.23

15 Rita Schlusemann, ‘Buchmarkt in Antwerpen am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in: Laien-lektüre und Buchmarkt im späten Mittelalter, ed. Th omas Kock & Rita Schlusemann (Frankfurt am Main 1997), p. 52.

16 Polain, art. cit. (n. 11), p. 12.17 Ibid.; Spanneut, art. cit. (n. 14), p. 172; Waterschoot, art. cit. (n. 7), p. 235 (quote).18 A. J. Lamping, Ulrichus Velenus (Oldřich Velenský) and his Treatise against the Papacy

(Leiden 1976), p. 152. In 1519, Velenský printed his Czech translation of Erasmus’ Enchiridion. See ibid., p. 51.

19 De Nave, art. cit. (n. 8), p. 89; Waterschoot, art. cit. (n. 7), p. 238; Spanneut, art. cit. (n. 14), p. 172; Post-Incunabula and their Publishers in the Low Countries, ed. Hendrik D. L. Vervliet (Th e Hague 1978), p. 34.

20 Spanneut, art. cit. (n. 14), p. 175.21 C. Augustijn, ‘De Vorstermanbijbel van 1528’, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 56

(1975), pp. 78-94.22 Polain, art. cit. (n. 11), pp. 11-12.23 Ibid., 14-15.


Erasmus occupied a minor place in Vorsterman’s publishing program. He began by covering the cost of a 1521 edition of the Enchiridion, printed in Antwerp by Jan Th ibault (nk 815). Four years later Vorsterman printed the De constructione octo partium orationis (nk 801) and the De contemptu mundi epistola (nk 806). He reprinted the latter work in 1536 (nk 807). In 1528 he published an edition of Erasmus’s letters (nk 0425), in 1530 an edition of the Colloquies (nk 2880), in 1533 the De civilitate morum puerilium (nk 2863), and perhaps in 1535 another edition of Erasmus’s letters (nk 2942). Beatus Rhenanus’s Vita Erasmi appeared in Antwerp in two separate editions in 1536, one printed by Jan Steels, son-in-law to Hillen, the other by Vorsterman. By contrast, Hillen, who produced more Latin books than Vorsterman, published Erasmus repeat-edly over a period of some twenty years. He published slightly more than one hundred editions from the earliest version of the Colloquies in 1518 (nk 0400) to a fourth printing of the Paraphrasis in elegantiarum libros L. Vallae in 1539 (nk 2965).

Printing Jerome, the standard bearer of humanism both south and north of the Alps, made good business sense. We can gauge his popularity bibliograph-ically in the early sixteenth century with the following statistic. In the period 1511-21, more editions of Jerome were printed in German-speaking territories than of Augustine – twenty-two editions versus seventeen, to be exact.24 In printing an anthology of Jerome’s letters in 1515 (nk 1075), Vorsterman fol-lowed close on the heels of Jan Berntsz who printed a volume entitled Epistole quaedam gloriosi Hieronimi in Utrecht in 1514 (nk 1074).

Th e 1515 Anthology

Vorsterman’s anthology had no explicit title. Th e title page advertised the pur-pose of the volume and served as table of contents (illus. 1). Nothing could be more useful for acquiring ‘divine eloquence’ or more appropriate for leading a good and happy life. Th e anthology consists of twelve brief familiar letters, various prefaces to the books of the Bible, a series of ten texts including the letter on the paschal candle addressed to the deacon Praesidius, and three texts aimed at the heretic Vigilantius, who assailed the cult of the saints: the letter to Vigilantius in which Jerome denied the accusation that he was a disciple of

24 Berndt Hamm, ‘Hieronymus-Begeisterung und Augustinismus vor der Reformation. Beobachtungen zur Beziehung zwischen Humanismus und Frömmigkeitstheologie (am Beispiel Nürnbergs)’, in: Augustine, the Harvest, and Th eology (1300-1650): Essays Dedicated to Heiko Augus-tinus Oberman in Honor of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Kenneth Hagen (Leiden 1990), pp. 131-2.


1. Title page of the Jerome anthology printed by Willem Vorsterman (Antwerp 1515). By permission of

Th e British Library (London), shelfmark: 3805.b.3.


Origen (ep. 61), the letter to the priest Riparius in which Jerome requested the writings of Vigilantius in order to refute him at length (ep. 109), and, fi nally, the polemic Adversus Vigilantium. Th e addition of the prefaces was innovative since they did not appear together in previously printed collections of all of Jerome’s letters. Erasmus similarly included the biblical prefaces in his edition. He would have appreciated the fact that with the exception of three biblical prefaces and the letter to Praesidius the Antwerp anthology included no works that he considered spurious. Modern scholarship has proven Erasmus wrong about this letter; it is now considered genuine.25

Some aspects of the anthology would likely have made Erasmus wince, however. On the verso of the title page, a woodcut presents Jerome standing in cardinal’s garb holding a processional cross in his right hand and the paw of his legendary lion in his left (illus. 2). Th e towering cardinal is fl anked by two short young men, one of whom identifi es himself on a scroll as a thief. Were these the merchants who, according to legend, stole the donkey of Jerome’s monastery, the merchants whom the lion much later accosted to clear himself of the suspicion that he had devoured the donkey?26 Th e title of every text in the edition acclaims its author as Blessed (or Saint) Jerome, Cardinal Priest. Th e printed predecessors and many manuscript collections of Jerome’s letters may have called Jerome a priest in individual headings, but references to him as a cardinal are rare, even if some printed editions included Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of Cardinal Jerome, in his chamber, removing a thorn from the lion’s paw.27 Of the several manuscript codices that I have examined, only one, from the fourteenth century, regularly calls Jerome a cardinal in its titles.28 Erasmus disdained the fanciful accretions that distorted Jerome’s biography. In his own Vita Hieronymi, a prominent component of his edition, Erasmus observes that the claim that Jerome ‘was made a cardinal priest is – forgive my saying so – surely

25 Germain Morin, ‘Un écrit méconnu de saint Jérôme: La “Lettre à Présidius” sur le cierge pascal’, in: Revue bénédictine, 8 (1891): pp. 20-7; G. Morin, ‘La lettre de saint Jérôme sur le cierge pascal: Réponse à quelques diffi cultés de M. l’abbé L. Duchesne’, in: Revue bénédictine, 9 (1892), pp. 392-7; G. Morin, ‘Pour l’authenticité de la lettre de S. Jérôme à Présidius’, in: Bulletin d’ancienne littérature et archéologie chrétiennes, 3 (1913), pp. 52-60; Stefan Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: prosopagraphische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart 1992), p. 170 and n. 182.

26 Eugene F. Rice, Jr., Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore 1985), p. 41.27 Th e woodcut appears in the following editions: Epistolare beati Hieronymi (Basel: Nicolaus

Kesler, 1492); Epistolarium sancti Hieronymi (Basel: Nicolaus Kesler, 1497); Aepistolae sancti Hieronymi (Lyon: Jacques Saccon, 1508). On the woodcut, see most recently David Hotchkiss Price, Albrecht Dürer Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith (Ann Arbor 2003), pp. 199-204.

28 Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. XIX, Cod. 14.


2. Woodcut of St. Jerome, verso of the title page of the Jerome anthology printed by Willem Vorsterman (Antwerp 1515).

By permission of Th e British Library (London), shelfmark: 3805.b.3.


false in my opinion. Not only had that splendour and dignity of the cardinals which we see today not yet come to be, but in those days, I believe, the name of cardinal had not even existed. Jerome himself acknowledges the title of priest in many passages, but cardinal never.’29 In the Vita, Erasmus ‘silently suppressed the lion’ and other legends, contenting himself with a blanket con-demnation of the ‘ridiculous tales of miracles and stories of the most shame-less falsity.’30

Th e woodcut in the Antwerp anthology exists within a devotional frame-work. Two classicizing couplets appear above the woodcut:

Inclyte pestiferas extingue Hieronyme fl ammasSevaque tartarei supprime bella Jovis.

Fac tua directe vestigia calle sequamurO decus eternum. Te duce tuta salus.

(Extinguish, o noble Jerome, the pestilential fl ames,And suppress the savage wars of hellish Jove.

Make us follow your footsteps directly on the uneven path,Oh eternal splendour. With you as our guide, our safety is assured.)

Something more liturgical, from the suff rages of the saints in Books of Hours,31 appears beneath the woodcut:

De sancto Hieronymo deuota oratio.

O Lampas ecclesie, o iubar singulare: doctor sapientie, decusque salutare: Inclyte Hieronyme, o doctor deo chare: In lacu miserie nos regere dignare. v.Ora pro nobis, gloriose pater Hieronyme. Ut digne effi ciamur promissione christi. Oremus.Deus qui nobis per beatum hieronymum confessorem sacerdotemque tuum scripture sancta veritatem ac mystica sacramenta revelare dignatus es: praesta quaesumus: ut cuius commemorationem agimus: eius semper et erudiamur doctrinis et meritis adiuuemur. Per.

29 CWE, vol. 61, p. 36.30 Rice, op. cit. (n. 26), p. 131; CWE, vol. 61, p. 23.31 Most of the collect of the prayer coincides with the suff rage of St Jerome in a Book of

Hours from France, c.1500, in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Ms. GkS 1612 4°, f. 23v.: ‘Deus qui nobis per beatum Hieronymum confessorem sacerdotemque tuum: scripture sancte verita-tem et mystica sacramenta revelare dignatus es: presta quesumus, ut cuius natalicia colimus


(A devout prayer concerning Saint Jerome.

Oh beacon of the Church, oh unique radiance, doctor of wisdom, wholesome splendour: noble Jerome, oh doctor dear to God, guide us please in [this] slough of misfortune.Pray for us, glorious father Jerome that we might be made worthy of the promise of Christ. Let us pray: Oh God, you who were pleased to reveal to us the truth and mys-tical sacraments of Sacred Scripture through Blessed Jerome the confessor and your priest, grant, we ask, that we who observe his commemoration might always be instructed by his teachings and helped by his merits. Th rough [Christ, our Lord. Amen.])

Th is devotional dimension of a volume whose preface confi gures it as a peda-gogical publication may be unprecedented in print. Th e incunable editions of Jerome along with the earlier sixteenth-century editions that I have seen did not begin with prayers. Neither did Erasmus’s edition.

Many previous printed editions supplied individual texts with summaries or argumenta. Th ese were the work of Teodoro de’ Lelli (d. 1466), who pre-pared the editio princeps printed in Rome not after 1467 but did not live to see its publication. Only one argumentum appears in the Antwerp anthology. It introduces the three anti-Vigilantian texts at the end of the volume. Th e editor did not borrow from Lelli, who provided an argumentum only for the Adversus Vigilantium, a summary that repeated the comment of Gennadius (d. c.496) in his De viris illustribus, a continuation of Jerome’s work of the same title. Gennadius conceded that Vigilantius, a priest from Gaul in charge of a parish in Barcelona, wrote from religious zeal and was eloquent, but he was also vain. No reliable scriptural exegete, he produced a distorted interpretation of the second vision of the prophet Daniel. He also uttered other trifl es. Lelli seems to have inserted into Gennadius’ account that Vigilantius contended that the relics of saints were not to be venerated and their vigils not to be observed.32

semper et eius erudiamur doctrinis, et meritis adiuvemur.’ See http://www.chd.dk/gui/gks1612_gui2.html (accessed on 17 October 2006). Th e entire suff rage appears in a French Book of Hours completed in 1557. See Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 314, 22v.-23r.

32 Th e editio princeps of Jerome’s letters has no printed foliation. Lelli’s argumentum can be located at Epistolarium sancti Hieronymi, 3 parts (Basel: Nicolaus Kesler, 1497), 1: f. g4r. Th e claim that Vigilantius rejected the veneration of relics and the keeping of vigils does not appear in the following critical edition: Hieronymi de viris inlustribus liber. Accedit Genadii Catalogus virorum inlustrium, ed. Wilhelm Herding (Leipzig 1924), p. 87.


By contrast, the editor of the Antwerp anthology vilifi ed Jerome’s opponent. Vigilantius was a Gallic priest, a drunk, a peddler of rags, and ‘a descendent of the Celtiberians, a son of brigands.’ A hothead (homo furiosi capitis), he was not only an Origenist but also ‘the author of his own heresies,’ which included the belief that Christ was a descendent of the devil according to the fl esh. Echoing Jerome’s letter to Vigilantius, the editor observed that the devil had never blasphemed Christ as he had done through the mouth of the Church Father’s adversary.33 Th e only thing that Erasmus’ argumentum to the Adversus Vigilantium had in common with the anthology was the refer-ence to Vigilantius’s Gallic origin. He mentions Vigilantius’s teaching against honouring the relics of martyrs and keeping vigil at their burial places. Yet instead of criticizing him, Erasmus reproaches Jerome for hurling abuse at Vigilantius.34

Th e preface to the anthology identifi es the main intended audience.35 Greet-ings go out to all eager novices in the liberal arts. Th e editor of the volume gladly off ers Jerome’s letters, selected with no small eff ort, to noble youths (iuvenes optimi) and bids farewell to his ‘most beloved young people’. It was their duty to disdain the verbal preeners ‘of our times’ along with the cheap imitators and wranglers and to take up, embrace, and venerate ‘the most rich and indeed salubrious fruits’ of these letters. Readers of the preface, young and old, encountered two main themes in the preface: the pre-eminence of theol-ogy and the excellence of Jerome.

A scholarly fl ourish of three references to antiquity inaugurates the preface. Aristotle in the opening line of the Metaphysics says that human beings by nature desire knowledge (980a); Cicero, the ‘great orator’, holds that everyone is ‘drawn and led to the desire for knowledge and understanding’ (De offi ciis, 1, 6, 18); Lactantius, the early fourth-century Christian Cicero, shows that ‘God made human nature most desirous of striving for the truth’ (Diviniae institutiones, 3, 1).36 If all of this is true, then what could we seek better or investigate more profi tably or know more advantageously than divine wisdom? Divina sapientia seems like humanist code for theologia. Everyone knows that it holds the ‘highest and most distinguished place among all the disciplines of the liberal arts that impart instruction for human life.’ It is the guide for

33 Epistolae Hieronymi (Antwerp: Willem Vorsterman, 1515), ff . 74v.-75r.34 Tertius tomus epistolarum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis (Basel: Johann Froben, 1516),

f. 55r.35 For the preface, see Epistolae Hieronymi, op. cit. (n. 33), f. A 2r.-A2v.36 CSEL, vol. 19, p. 178.


attaining eternal bliss and life’s most important teacher, indicating the way in which to live well, supplying an abundance of virtues, erasing every vice, destroying all sin. Liberating our minds from earthly and human desires, it enkindles and turns us towards ‘the desire and love of the highest good and of everlasting happiness.’ Could anything be learned and taught that is more use-ful, more magnifi cent, more salubrious than what Sacred Scripture teaches, what the holy oracles publish, and what the works of the saints hand down? Th ese, presumably theological, studies surpass the teaching of Plato, the elo-quence of Demosthenes, the subtlety of Aristotle, the sweetness of Isocrates, the best of worldly literature, the alluring charm of poets, the splendid orna-ments of orators, the contrivances and precepts of philosophers. No wonder true and divine wisdom shines in these studies, where, in accordance with Lactantius (Divinae institutiones, 1, 1), all is straightforward in speaking, sweet to the hearing, easy to be understood, and worthy to be undertaken.37 Here we have the ‘strongest defense of human life’, the ‘sure refuge for all’ against evil and life’s calamities.

Refl ecting on this often, the editor thought of the famous men of his day who entrusted many works to the press. Th ese were eloquent and graceful, but they provided nothing relevant to leading a good and holy life, which ought to be most important of all. What, wondered the editor, could serve the needs of students? Could he fi nd anything that could ‘stroke the ears of readers with Ciceronian eloquence’ and that was replete with ‘true, solid, and holy teaching as well as wise sayings (sententiae)’? Th e ‘highly renowned works of the most blessed father and illustrious doctor Jerome’ sprang to mind. No one could come up with anything more graceful, pure, and benefi cial. Th e editor pro-ceeds to invoke the authority of Lorenzo Valla with a quotation of sorts from the preface to the fourth book of the Elegantiae: ‘What – and not even Valla refrains from saying so – could be more eloquent than our Jerome? What more like the father of eloquence? What more accomplished in oratory (magis ora-torium)? What more devoted to learning? What more perspicacious? What more magnifi cent?’ Valla originally wrote: ‘What can be more eloquent than Jerome himself ? What more accomplished in oratory? What – even if he often would like to hide this – more particular about speaking well, more devoted to learning, more perspicacious?’38 Th e editor adds that Jerome’s style is

37 Lactantius writes ‘omnia dictu prona’ (CSEL, vol. 19, p. 4) instead of ‘omnia dictu plana,’ as the anthology’s preface has it.

38 Lorenzo Valla, Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Turin 1962), vol. 1, p. 119.


concise and limpid, sparkles with Ciceronian purity, and abounds in apho-risms. ‘Furthermore, the sequence of topics is impressive, and one thing depends on another. Finally, whatever theme he takes up is either the end of the previous idea or the beginning of the following one.’

In support of this judgment, the ‘distinguished orator and poet Erasmus of Rotterdam’ says:

And if we Christians are more impressed by examples taken from Christians, I would not hesitate to off er Jerome as one to stand for the many. For his learning is so varied and profound that, in relation to him, others scarcely seem to swim (as one says) or to have had any education. Again, so great is his manner of speaking, so considerable his authority and acuity, so massive and manifold his apparatus of metaphors that you would say that compared with him the others are Seriphian frogs.

Th e reference to Erasmus is, as far as I know, the only appeal to his authorita-tive assessment of Jerome in an edition of the Church Father before the pub-lication of his own edition a year later in 1516. Th e quotation comes from the preface to the earliest version of the Adages and his fi rst printed book, the Adagiorum collectanea, which appeared in Paris in 1500.

Erasmus would have enjoyed being paired with Valla. As a young ‘humanist monk’39 at Steyn, he remarked to his friend and fellow monk Cornelis Gerard that ‘in the niceties of style I rely on Lorenzo Valla above all. He has no equal for intelligence and good memory.’ Erasmus warmly recommended Valla’s Elegantiae to Gerard and insisted that his friend overcome his aversion to Valla in order to become well versed in the Elegantiae.40 Out of the monastery and early in his scholarly career, Erasmus discovered and in 1505 published the editio princeps of Valla’s Annotations on the New Testament. Very likely the future exegete found in Valla’s grammatical analysis of the New Testament ‘his true personal vocation’.41

Erasmus might have been disappointed, however, with the quotation in the preface in the Antwerp anthology, since the preface does not quote Erasmus accurately, however.42 It represents Erasmus’s admiration for Jerome’s diction

39 Charles Béné, Érasme et Saint Augustin ou Infl uence de Saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Érasme (Geneva 1969), p. 28.

40 CWE, vol. 1, p. 31, ep. 20 (quote); p. 40, ep. 23; p. 54, ep. 29.41 Béné, op. cit. (n. 38), p. 197.42 For the original passage from Erasmus, see Allen vol. 1, pp. 292-3, ep. 126.


as ‘tanta phrasis’, not ‘tanta dicendi phrasis’. Was this a deliberate omission of a superfl uous reference to speaking (dicere)? Another omission occurs in the same fi nal sentence. As Erasmus explains in the Adages (I. v. 31), ‘Seriphian frogs’ was said of the dumb and of those completely inept at singing and speaking.43 Th e Seriphian frogs that he has in mind in the preface to the Collectanea are not unspecifi ed others, but ‘other theologians’. Th e omission of ‘theologians’ may have been a prudent one. Elsewhere in his preface Erasmus does not shy away from pointing out more explicitly the contrast between humanist rheto-ric and scholastic theology,44 but the editor of the Antwerp anthology does not pursue this strategy.

Erasmus’s commendation of Jerome’s eloquence and erudition was suffi -cient. And, presumably, it was worth quoting because ‘the distinguished ora-tor and poet’ wrote it. In advertising in humanist fashion the merits of Jerome to students of the liberal arts, the anthology allies itself with Europe’s rising humanist star. A quotation from the eminent collector of ancient proverbial wisdom lends support to the anthology. It helps supply the edition with authoritative humanist credentials.

Did, in addition, the editor and printer think it was appropriate to mention Erasmus because they knew that Erasmus was preparing an edition of Jerome? Th e preface is dated 16 March 1515, and Vorsterman printed the anthology on 8 April 1515 – before Erasmus published his letters to Rome. Did he know of the second edition of Erasmus’s De duplici copia verborum ac rerum that Mat-thias Schürer printed in Strassburg in December 1514? Th e book contained a letter to Jakob Wimpfeling in which Erasmus mentioned that he was prepar-ing editions of the New Testament and of Jerome’s letters.45 Printers with a keen commercial sense would presumably have been aware of works that authors and editors were brining to completion. In 1512, Josse Bade observed from Paris that printed editions of Jerome’s letters had all been sold and off ered Erasmus ‘fi fteen fl orins for the revision of the letters of St Jerome’.46 By 1515 might it have been common knowledge among printers that Erasmus was textually resuscitating Jerome? Without certain answers we are left to wonder whether knowledge of Erasmus’s editorial work inspired the invocation of his authority.

43 ASD, vol. II-1, p. 504.44 CWE, vol. 1, pp. 263-4, ep. 126.45 CWE, vol. 3, p. 32, ep. 305.46 CWE, vol. 2: pp. 232, 233, ep. 263.


Th e quotation from Erasmus reinforces Jerome’s literary superiority, the theme that the preface pursues to its end. If you want the seriousness of Crassus or of Fronto, the brevity of Crispus, the abundance of Cicero, the rich and fl orid style of Pliny and Symmachus, in short, the smoothness of a stream or the force of a torrent, you will easily fi nd this in Jerome alone. Here the editor probably had in mind a passage from the letter to Rusticus (ep. 125), in which Jerome mentions that he learned ‘the keenness of Quintil-ian, the fl owing style of Cicero as well as the seriousness of Fronto and the gentleness of Pliny’.47 Th e editor reviews some celebrated authors to make it clear to the zealous reader that Jerome should be preferred far and above the greatest of the fi rst-class authors. He mentions them in duets, where the sec-ond is superior to the fi rst: Democrates and Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, Hortensius and Cicero. Marcus Varro is distinguished for his profi ciency in Greek and Latin. ‘But,’ as the editor concludes his list of literary worthies and recalls a title from the volume’s opening prayer, ‘much more distinguished is that brightest beacon (lampas) of the Church, who (not to mention anything else) was well-versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.’ He was so adept at reading Latin books in Greek and Greek books in Latin that you would think he wrote as if he were dictating at break-neck speed. Naturally endowed with eloquence, he adapted his mental prowess to whatever he had to write in such a way that even his bitterest enemies pronounced him a wordsmith. Accord-ing to Augustine, Jerome attained a type of the most comprehensive knowl-edge of all things human and divine.48 ‘Th erefore,’ the editor recapitulates, ‘owing to his inspired eloquence, his unbelievable diversity of languages, and the extraordinary holiness of his life, he bested the record of all antiquity and of all ages.’

Th e dedicatory letter in Erasmus’s edition of Jerome echoes the motif of Jerome as the culmination of ancient learning. Erasmus assures Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury, the edition’s patron: ‘Other authors have each a diff erent 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.’ No Christian author can rival Jerome for ‘brilliance of

47 CSEL, vol. 56, p. 131.48 Was the author of the preface thinking of Augustine’s comment in the De civitate Dei

(18, 43, CSEL, vol 40/2, p. 336): ‘. . . Hieronymus, homo doctissimus et omnium trium lin-guarum peritus, qui non ex Graeco, sed ex Hebraeo in Latinum eloquium easdem scripturas conuerterit’?


expression’. ‘So impossible,’ continues Erasmus, ‘is it to fi nd 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.’ When Erasmus compares any author, ‘however brilliant’, to Jerome, ‘that man seems as it were to lose his voice.’ Th e erudition of Greece cannot compare with Jerome, whose superiority is evident in all branches of knowledge: languages, history, geography, antiquities, literature, Scripture.49

Th e 1533 Anthology

In 1533, Vorsterman returned to Jerome. Th is time his title page supplied a title for the anthology: Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot, Argumentis, & Scholijs illustratae, ad maiorem studiosorum vtilitatem selectae (nk 3152). Consisting of sixteen texts, the second anthology was considerably less substantial than the fi rst, even if its announced target audience, students, was the same. Nine of the sixteen texts had appeared in 1515: the letters to Niceas (ep. 8), to Julian the deacon (ep. 6), to Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius (ep. 7), to Heliodorus urging him to take up the hermit’s life, (ep. 14), to Paul of Concordia (ep. 10), to Praesidius on the paschal candle, to Nepotian (ep. 52), to Heliodorus on the death of Nepotian (ep. 60), and the Adversus Vigilantium, the fi nal installment in 1515 and 1533. New to the Epistolae aliquot were the lives of Paul the fi rst hermit and of Malchus the captive monk and the letters to Innocent (ep. 1), Anthony (ep. 12), Eustochium (ep. 33), Marcella (ep. 23), and Asella (ep. 45). Th ese three last-mentioned letters to women represented a departure from the 1515 anthology, which apart from the biblical prefaces, included none of Jerome’s many letters to women.

Vortserman did not insert a preface in the 1533 anthology. Erasmus’s name appeared nowhere in the volume. Jerome’s reputation had to suffi ce for mar-keting purposes, perhaps along with the name of the printer which appeared on the title page. In 1515, Vorsterman had identifi ed himself only in the colo-phon of the edition.

Th e absence of Erasmus’s name did not mean his infl uence on the Epistolae aliquot was beyond detection. Th e full title recalls the Erasmian editions of Jerome. Th e title pages of the volumes that contained Jerome’s genuine letters

49 CWE, vol. 3, p. 259, ep. 396.


in the 1516 edition declared that the Church Father’s texts appeared una cum argumentis Des. Erasmi Roterodami – ‘along with the argumenta and scholia of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam’. At the head of the fi rst letter of the fi rst volume, a title made it clear that Jerome’s letters or epistolary treatises had been edited ab Erasmo Roterodamo sacrae theologiae professore et eiusdem argu-mentis ac scholiis illustratae – ‘by Erasmus of Rotterdam, professor of sacred theology, and elucidated by his argumenta and scholia.’50 Until 1533, indeed until Mariano Vittori’s edition of Jerome’s letters fi rst appeared in 1564-5, Eras-mus was the only person who supplemented the letters with argumenta and scholia. Further Erasmian editions of Jerome printed in 1524-6, 1533-4, 1536-7, 1553, and 1565 as well as printings of only his edition of the genuine letters and separate selections of the letters as edited by Erasmus reiterated the famous humanist’s editorial interventions. If bibliophiles and scholars in the 1530s saw an edition of Jerome that boasted argumenta and scholia, they would most likely expect credit for these to go to Erasmus. What would they fi nd if they looked inside the anthology printed by Vorsterman?

Th ose who valued Erasmus’s edition might be disappointed. Th e last four texts – the letters to Nepotian (ep. 52) and Heliodorus (ep. 60), the vita of Malchus, and the Adversus Vigilantium – were bereft of all commentary except for terse marginalia. An argumentum introduced the fi rst twelve texts, but it was not typographically set off from the scholia. In Erasmus’s edition, the dis-tinct genres of commentary as a rule occupied distinct spaces, except for some of the shorter letters, where one or more scholia appeared immediately after the argumentum. In the Antwerp anthology, it was for the most part not immediately obvious where the argumentum ended and the scholia began. Th e editorial commentary that prefaced the third text – the letter to Chromatius and company – constitutes the only exception to the rule of typographical confl ation. Although the commentary appeared as a continuous block of text, one can easily assume that the various section markings within that block separate one scholion from the next.

Did the editor of the anthology borrow from Erasmus? Th e argumenta in the anthology were independent compositions. Compare the argumentum to the letter to Niceas (ep. 8), the fi rst text in the anthology, with that of Erasmus:

50 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus (Basel: Johann Froben, 1516), f. 1r.


1533 anthology51 Erasmus52

Nicias clericus Aquileiensis cum Hieronymo dudum in Syriam pro-fectus fuerat. Verum paulo post ad patriam rediit. Queritur ergo Hiero-nymus ipsum tam cito prioris amici-tiae adeo negligentem: ut ne scribere quidem curet.

Niceas, a cleric from Aquilea, had recently set out with Jerome for Syria. But shortly thereafter he returned to his native land. Consequently, Jer-ome complains that he so quickly neglected an earlier friendship to the extent that he cared not even to write.

Expostulat cum Nitia hypodiacono Aqui-leiae, quod nihil scribat, velut immemor recentis amici. Exemplo Chromatii & Eusebii hortatur, ut aliquando scribat. Hic Nitias Hieronymo sodalis fuit deliciarum, & peregrinationum comes. Quamquam ad quem scripta sit epistola, e titulo liquet non ex ipsa.

He remonstrates with Niceas, a subdeacon of Aquilea for having written nothing, as if heedless of a new friend. Following the example of Chromatius and Eusebius, he urges him to write now and then. Th is Niceas shared with Jerome the same pleas-ures and accompanied him on his travels. Th e addressee of the letter, however, is evi-dent from the title, not from its contents.

Th e two argumenta refer to Niceas’s geographical origins, his neglect of Jerome, and Jerome’s reproach, but structurally and verbally they are unrelated texts. Th e same is true when one compares the other argumenta in the anthology with their Erasmian counterparts. Typically, the two sets of argumenta empha-size diff erent details. Erasmus observes that a youthful Jerome wrote to Julian the deacon from the desert (scripsit iuvenis ex eremo). Th is is the only point that the anthology has in common with Erasmus, although it does not qualify Jerome as young and uses the present tense: ex eremo rescribit. Nor does it refer to Heliodorus as Jerome’s companion or to his letter as familiar and in some respects humorous. It begins by recalling Jerome’s sojourn in Syria and his urging his sister to remain a virgin. In another case, the anthology underlines the resistance to heresy on the part of Chromatius and company, but Erasmus does not mention this at all. To take a fi nal example, Erasmus sums up the life of Paul in a single sentence: ‘Concerning the birth, life, and death of Paul, the

51 Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot (Antwerp: Willem Vortserman, 1533), f. A2r.52 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 97v.


fi rst hermit (as it is believed), and how he was buried by St Anthony the monk.’ Th e anthology is interested in precise historical details. Jerome wrote the vita while he was in the East. Paul was born in Th ebes apparently in ad 230 and died at the age of 113. When he was fi fteen, he fl ed to the desert and remained there 98 years.53

Some of the anthology’s scholia, however, suggest an Erasmian provenance. In the letter to Niceas, Jerome recalls that Ennius, the Roman poet, identifi ed as Cascans those who belonged to an uncouth tribe in Italy. Erasmus, in a scholion on the passage, remarks that for the ancients cascus in the Sabine lan-guage meant ‘old’. After mentioning a line about the Cascans quoted from Ennius by Marcus Varro, he refers to a proverb in his Adages (I. ii. 62): Cascus cascam ducit id est vetulus vetulam – an old man marries an old woman. Th e anthology comments on the same passage: ‘Cascus in the Sabine language means old. Th us in Manilius: Cascus ducit cascam id est vetulus vetulam.’ Although Erasmus does not refer to the obscure poet Manilius in his scholion, he records in his commentary in the Adages that ‘Varro, however, quotes the adage as originating from a certain Manilius.’54 Jerome complains to Niceas: ‘Tu modo a nobis abiens, recentem amicitiam scindis potius quam dissuis’ – ‘In leaving me just now, you tear apart rather than unstitch a fresh friendship.’ Erasmus explains: ‘We unstitch bit by bit (paulatim); we tear apart suddenly (repente).’ Similarly, the anthology points out: ‘A tear separates a thing suddenly (repente), an unstitching gradually (paulatim).’55 A scholion in Eras-mus’s edition of the life of Paul defi nes hippocentaurs: ‘superne homines sunt, inferni equi’ – they are men in the upper part of the body, horses in the lower part. Th e anthology’s defi nition resembles that of Erasmus: ‘Hippocentaurus superne homo, inferne fi ngitur equus.’ Th e diff erence is that the anthology defi nes a singular hippocentaur and uses the verb ‘to fashion’ (fi ngere) instead of ‘to be’.56 When Jerome tells Paul, an old man of Concordia, ‘tu adulescentiam in aliena aetate mentiris,’ Erasmus marvels that Jerome uses the word mentiris, literally, you deceive, in a good sense to mean imitaris, you represent or resem-ble or imitate. Erasmus might agree with this translation: ‘you give the impres-

53 Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot, A3r., A4v., C2v.; Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, ff . 95v., 98r., 107v.

54 ASD, vol. II-1. p. 276.55 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 97v.; Divi Hiero-

nymi epistolae aliquot, f. A2r.56 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 107v.; Divi Hiero-

nymi epistolae aliquot, f. C2v.


sion of youth in an age foreign to it.’ Th e scholion in the anthology tersely notes: ‘Adolescentiam in aliena aetate mentiris id est imiatris.’57

Erasmus reads a passage from Jerome’s letter to Anthony the monk as ‘Decem iam (nisi fallor) epistolas plenas tam offi cii quam precum misi: cum tu ne nutum quidem facere dignaris.’ Jerome, impatient to hear from Anthony, complains: ‘Unless I am mistaken, I have already sent ten letters full of cour-tesy and entreaties, while you do not deign to make even a nod.’ Erasmus is aware that some codices have motum or mutum as well as nutum. He conjec-tures in his scholion that the passage originally read ne my quidem or ne mu quidem, meaning ne minimum quidem verbum, that is, ‘not even the least word.’ Th e anthology follows Erasmus’s conjecture and reads ne mu quidem. Th e argumentum explains that Jerome reproved Anthony’s pride because not once did he respond to his many letters; he off ered not even the least word in reply: ‘Antonium quondam monachum superbiae arguit quod ad multas Epis-tolas ipsius ne semel responderit imo ne mu quidem fecerit, Hoc est, ne min-imum verbum reddiderit.’58

More evidence that the editor of the anthology consulted Erasmus’s edition can be gleaned from apparent corrections of Erasmus in the anthology’s scholia on the letter to Paul of Concordia. In a litany of compliments on Paul’s good physical condition, Jerome, according to Erasmus, writes: ‘cani cum rubore discrepant’ – ‘your white hair contrasts with your ruddy complexion.’ Th e anthology insists that the correct reading is ‘cani cum robore discrepant’ not ‘rubore’. In other words, Paul’s white hair belies his strength. Isidore Hilberg, who produced the modern critical edition of Jerome’s letters, sustained Eras-mus’s reading.59 Towards the end of the letter, Jerome asks Paul to send him, among other works, the ‘history of Aurelius Victor’. Erasmus comments that Aurelius Victor was the thirteenth bishop of Rome. Th e anthology maintains that the passage refers to the ‘chronicle of Victor, a pagan not a Roman pontiff ,’ who wrote a ‘history from Trajan to Constantine.’60 In the 1516 edition,

57 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 59v.; Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot, f. D5r.

58 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 99r.; Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot, f. E5v. (argumentum), f. E6r. (reading). Isidore Hilberg read the passage as ‘cum tu ne muttum quidem facere dignaris’ – ‘while you do not deign to make even a murmur.’ See CSEL, vol. 54, p. 42.

59 CSEL, vol. 54, p. 37.60 Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, 60r.; Divi Hieronymi

epistolae aliquot, f. D5r.


Erasmus confused Pope Victor, the fourteenth bishop of Rome, who died at the end of the second century with the fourth-century Roman historian, Sex-tus Aurelius Victor, whose De caesaribus covered the period from Augustus to Constantius ii.61 His correction of the error appeared in 1533: ‘Sextus Aurelius Victor recorded the deeds of the emperors from Augustus to Th eodosius, and today his work survives in fragments.’62 It is impossible to say whether the anthology infl uenced Erasmus to correct the scholion or whether the editor of the anthology knew of Erasmus’s correction. Th e two editors could have, of course, worked independently on this score.

Th e convergences and divergences between Erasmus and the anthology appear to be relatively few. Th e anthology’s editor, as we have already seen in the case of the argumenta, was able to formulate his own interventions. Most of his scholia, usually briefer and fewer than those of Erasmus, comment on words or passages that Erasmus ignores. In the case where, in Jerome’s letter to Marcella on the death of Lea (ep. 23), a lemma in the anthology coincides exactly with an Erasmian lemma, the unidentifi able editor elucidates the passage in question diff erently. Th e common lemma is designatum consulem. Jerome lists his reasons for repeating the sad news of Lea’s passing. Th e third is to inform Marcella that the ‘consul elect, withdrawing from his era,’ was in hell, a reference to Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, who died about the same time as Lea. Erasmus and the anthology read the passage the same way: ‘Tertio, ut desginatum consulem de suis saeculis detrahentem, esse doceamus in tartaro.’ (Hilberg read ‘detrahentes’.) Erasmus explains that the designati had already been elected but had not yet assumed their offi ce. Th erefore Jerome adds ‘de suis saeculis detrahentem’ because the consul elect had died before the day of taking offi ce (ineundi magistatus dies) had arrived. Th e anthology’s editor writes that ‘owing to the throng of candidates for the consulate certain men were elected long before the Calends of January to avoid confusion at the time when the magistracy took eff ect (quando magistratus ineundus).’ Th ese designati, dressed in a garment embroidered with palm branches, paraded about as if they were already celebrated conquerors of the world: ‘Tales designati palmatum habitum portaverunt quo iam quasi Victores orbis incedebant illustres.’ Th e reference to the magistratus ineundus could be an Erasmian resonance; never-

61 Th e Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower & Antony Spawforth (3rd edn., Oxford 1996), p. 222, s. v. ‘Aurelius Victor, Sextus’ by Alexander Hugh McDonald and Antony Spawforth.

62 Divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis, opera omnia, 9 vols. (Paris: Claude Chevallon 1533-4), vol. 1, f. 48r. Th e fi rst volume of this revised edition was printed in 1533.


theless it was common in Latin to combine magistratus and inire to denote taking up elected offi ce. Th e anthology’s fi nal comment about the consuls elect corresponds to the following Erasmian scholion keyed to non palmatum consulem, a phrase that appears several sentences later in the letter when Jerome contrasts Lea’s humble stature with a consul in offi cial garb. Erasmus relates that the consular toga sported palm braches – Toga consularis palmas habebat – just as the toga of a triumphant general.63 Th e sartorial information is similar but presented diff erently, even if the mocking embellishment of the unknown editor sounds characteristically Erasmian.

Conclusion

Dirk Martens was not the only Antwerp printer with whom Erasmus collabo-rated. In 1519, he entrusted Michiel Hillen with the fi rst edition of his para-phrases on Paul’s epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.64 Defending himself in the same year against the charge that he tried to obstruct the publi-cation of Edward Lee’s critique of his edition of the New Testament, Erasmus recalled that when Hillen hesitated to print Lee’s book, ‘I told him in reply to get on with it; I was strongly in favour.’65 In 1520, Hillen printed Erasmus’s two rejoinders to Lee.66 Th ree years later, Erasmus specifi ed that Hillen’s 1523 print-ing of the Ratio verae theologiae should appear in the fi fth volume of his col-lected works.67 He, however, was not pleased when Hillen in 1533 printed a collection of Lenten sermons in which the author Nikolaus Ferber, a Francis-can, held Erasmus responsible for the onset of Protestantism. Erasmus denounced the book as ‘absolutely asinine’.68

Since Erasmus knew Antwerp’s leading printer, was he also aware of the city’s second most productive printer? He never mentioned Willem Vorsterman by name in his correspondence, but did he hear it mentioned on his trips to Antwerp? He certainly could have known of Vorsterman from the works he

63 J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London), p. 96; CSEL, vol. 54, p. 212; Omnium operum divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus primus, f. 70r. (scholia and Jerome’s text); Divi Hieronymi epistolae aliquot, f. E8r. (scholion), f. F1r. (Jerome’s text).

64 CWE, vol. 7, p. 131, introduction to ep. 1043.65 CWE, vol. 7, p. 152, ep. 1053.66 CWE, vol. 72, pp. xix-xx.67 CWE, vol. 9, p. 354, ep. 1341A.68 Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols.

(Toronto 1985-7), vol. 2, p. 17 (Ferber), p. 192 (Hillen); Allen, vol. 10, p. 346, ep. 2896.


printed. Vorsterman certainly knew who Erasmus was, and so did the editors of the Hieronymian anthologies that he printed.

If, as Jacques Derrida believes, prefaces ‘obey an occasional necessity’,69 then the necessity of the hour for the preface of the 1515 anthology of Jerome was, in line with Gérard Genette’s concept of a preface’s function, ‘to get the book read and to get the book read properly.’70 To achieve this purpose means, for Genette, to underline or even to enhance the ‘high value’ of the work that the preface brings to the reader’s attention.71 Th e anthology’s truly occasional pref-ace positioned the selection of letters within the increasingly fashionable humanist environment of reading Jerome. To read Jerome was a theological enterprise, a quest for divine wisdom. Th is humanist theological enterprise was fundamentally pedagogical, moral, and spiritual. Valla and, more recently, Erasmus were the champions of the humanist approach to Jerome. Erasmus, ‘the distinguished orator and poet,’ was arguably the most eminent of the many classical and fewer Christian authorities cited in the preface. Th e quotation from the preface to the fi rst edition of the Adages serves the purpose of the preface to celebrate the superiority of Jerome’s Christian learning and eloquence.

By 1533, Jerome needed no introduction or, to be more specifi c, no preface. We cannot tell whether the anthology that Vorsterman printed that year lacked a preface because of design, editorial fatigue, a printer’s haste to bring another book to market, or some other reason. Certainly Erasmus’s edition had suffi -ciently enhanced the humanist value of reading Jerome. While the editor of the 1533 anthology commented on the texts in his own way, at points, it seems, he borrowed from and even corrected Erasmus.

Printers were well aware that Erasmus’s name helped sell books.72 Th e value that his name added to the business of printing Jerome was evident in Vorster-man’s Antwerp not only in 1533 but also in 1515. Curiously, the earlier anthol-ogy appeared before Erasmus’s edition and before Froben printed Erasmus’s pre-publication advertisement. With adulation in Antwerp, did Erasmus need to advertise the merits of his Jerome? Vorsterman and his editor may have known already in the spring of 1515 what John Colet announced, expecting in June 1516 the edition of Jerome: ‘Nomen Erasmi nunquam peribit’ – ‘Th e name of Erasmus shall never perish’.73

69 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago 1981), p. 17, cited in Gérard Genette, Paratexts, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge 1997), p. 162.

70 Genette, op. cit., (n. 68), p. 197, emphasis in the original.71 Ibid., pp. 198, 201.72 Karine Crousaz, Érasme et le pouvoir de l’imprimerie (Lausanne 2005), p. 60.73 Ep. 423: Allen, vol. 2, p. 258; CWE, vol. 3, p. 312.

hilmar m. pabel - erasmus, willem vorsterman, and the printing of st jerome's letters

Documents

letters erasmus

letters of

erasmus of rotterdam

erasmus authority

collection of letters

anthology of jeromes

edition of st jerome

erasmuss letters