As I have shown, there is weak evidence to
suggest that, during his younger years, some people might have suspected that
Erasmus was gay. But we have not a scrap of evidence that, once he became
famous and a center of controversy, anybody ever accused him in this manner.
This is remarkable, because there were a great many people who threw every
possible accusation, now matter how absurd, at Erasmus: heresy, aiding and
abetting Luther, indecency, corrupting youth, lack of respect for the Church,
impiety, barbarous language (!), and so forth. Those were polemical times and
the things people said about each other in print make us blush. Here's an
extract from Julius Caesar Scaliger's "An Oration in Behalf of Cicero
against Erasmus", published in 1531, addressed to students of Latin in
Paris:
"Not
only must you check the boldness of this calumniator [Erasmus] but you must
destroy the fancy of others to imitate him. Avenge the most excellent of men
[Cicero] and his beneficent memory against the raileries of so evil-spoken a
man whose jealousy cannot be satisfied with insulting so illustrious a name.
Some day this beast, if you allow him to rail against the Prince of Letters
with such impunity, will hurl himself at you; and then the fury which he has
employed against you he will not abandon until he has more bitterly attacked
others. Challenge his intemperance, dispel his influence, bring to naught his
boldness, blot out his criminal declarations!"
Moreover, had Erasmus indeed been gay, there
would have been much more evidence in support of such accusations by the time
he became famous. Like any master of a house, Erasmus maintained a large number
of dependents who helped out with all manner of mundane tasks: copying out
letters, acting as amanuensis, cleaning up, and so forth. In Erasmus' case,
these would all be young men serving a kind of apprenticeship for a few years
before launching their careers. This would of course have been a delightful
situation for a gay Erasmus, but it would also have generated a large number of
potential witnesses against him. Moreover, he did not remain on good terms with
all of his old friends; would not a digruntled former lover have come forward
to make the accusation, or planted the accusation in one of the notorious
anonymous pamphlets so common in those days?
Certainly the best example comes from
Servatius Rogerius, Erasmus' purported first love. Servatius become prior of
the monastery Erasmus had left, and over the years he made repeated attempts to
assert his monastic authority over Erasmus and induce him to return to his
proper place in the monastery. Erasmus evaded Servatius' commands, stalling,
claiming he had not received letters, and all manner of other tricks to hold
Servatius at bay, even though they both knew that Servatius had every right to
demand that Erasmus return. Eventually Erasmus got papal dispensation for his
situation, which settled the matter. However, if Erasmus had indeed made
homosexual overtures to Servatius, Servatius would have known his secret, and
this knowledge would have supplied him with all the leverage he needed to force
Erasmus to obedience. Servatius could even have had the dispensations annulled.
But he never attempted any such thing, nor did any of his increasingly importunate
letters to Erasmus contain any veiled threats. Was it because he scrupled at
using so foul a ploy, or because he did not possess the leverage in the first
place? I believe that it was the latter.