Shortly after I placed this material on my
website, I sent emails to a number of website owners, suggesting that they
might want to correct their inclusion of Erasmus in their list of historical
gays. Dr. Rictor Norton, author of My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the
Centuries, kindly replied, and an
enlightening correspondence ensued. Here is that correspondence in its
entirety:
Dear Chris Crawford,
Thank you for your note about Erasmus. Have
you actually looked at my anthology _My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the
Centuries_, or are you just responding to the presence of Erasmus in the table
of contents published on the Web? The introduction to my book gives what I
think is a good overview of the historical context of the writing of gay love
letters, and deals with how to define "gay love letters", and also
puts the Erasmus letters in context with other love letters before and after
his period, which I think shows up the similarity and continuity of the
tradition and justifies his inclusion.
In any case, I enjoyed reading your website
arguing that "Erasmus was not gay", and here are some comments on
your arguments:
You are quite correct that there is no
external evidence that Erasmus was homosexual. All of the "evidence"
consists in interpretation and deducation from what he has written. I think the
issue of interpretation is more complex than you have treated it. For example,
you note that "on at least one occasion, Erasmus deliberately suppressed
an egregious homosexual reference, thereby violating his own strict standards
of textual integrity. It would have been easy to leave the reference in place,
but Erasmus risked scholarly condemnation to remove the reference. This is not
the act of a secret homosexual." It seems to me that the suppression of a
homosexual allusion could well be the act of a homosexual who is uneasy about
raising the issue, who may feel somewhat threatened in having to deal with the
subject and who takes the easy way out by simply burying it. This kind of
suppression or censorship has certainly been done by gay scholars (not simply
by straight anti-gay scholars) in modern times. It's hard to interpret exactly
why Erasmus might censor his material: I, for one, regard this as an indication
that he was certainly interested in the subject, and I find it hard to
understand why he would censor the reference if he did not have some kind of
emotional investment in the subject.
You acknowledge that Erasmus almost certainly
destroyed many of his letters, and you argue that he did not destroy his
letters to Servatius because he did not believe they could be used to suggest
that he was homosexual. But it seems to me that the obvious reason why he did
not destroy his letters to Servatius was because they were some of his most
cherished, prized possessions. They were testimonies of passionate love and to
have destroyed them would have been soul-destroying for Erasmus himself. All love
letters, whether gay or straight, no matter how damaging the evidence they
might supply, are typically preserved very carefully by the correspondents. I
feel that your explanation for his not destroying the letters does not take
into account some of the basic emotions of human nature. The other reason why
he would not destroy his letters to Servatius is that because they specifically
concern unrequited love and obviously are not invitations to lust.
That does not mean therefore that they are
not "gay love letters". They are passionate love letters sent by one
man to another, using the language of romantic love and passion. You have
exercised a kind of censorship by merely giving a "synopsis" of the
letters. But how on earth can a love letter be "summarized"? I think
if you quoted more of them at greater length, your readers would be better able
to recognize that they *are* gay love letters. Your view that people had a very
different concept of love in the sixteenth century from what we have today, is
really nonsense. And your claim that men addressed one another more
passionately then than they do today, is inaccurate. Erasmus's letters to
Servatius are by no means typical of Renaissance love/friendship between men.
Within the Renaissance period they resemble most closely the gay love letters
of Marsilio Ficino and Michelangelo, both of whom were accused by their
contemporaries of being sodomites.
I believe, as many others have, that even the
most virtuous love, if it is expressed in especially passionate terms of
longing, is probably grounded upon erotic desire, whether or not that desire is
acted upon. Erasmus's letters to Servatius are classic examples of what I
consider to be homoerotic longing. You seem to think that love letters can be
called "gay" only if the writers specifically engage in gay sex. Yet
the main point of all love letters, gay or straight, is that they deal with
*longing* rather than sexual acts. Most writers of love letters, straight or
gay, try not to admit that their longing has an element of lust, and they
typically discuss their love in terms of ideal virtue. Erasmus's love letters
to Servatius are no different in this respect. Marsilio Ficino's love letters
to Cavalcanti are similar in praising virtue, but Ficino at least admits that
even physical homosexual love is virtuous as long as it aims towards virtue
(which is the classical theory of Plato's dialogue _Phaedrus_). Ficino
emphasized that there was no essential difference between "amor" and
"amicitia": we are "naturally aroused for copulation whenever we
judge any body to be beautiful. . . . It often happens that those who associate
with males, in order to satisfy the demands of the genital part, copulate with
them."
Incidentally, you have not gone back far
enough in your search for the claim that Erasmus was homosexual (which you
incorrectly say was first made in 1933). This claim was made, for example, by
Havelock Ellis in his book _Sexual Inversion_ (first published in 1897, but see
the Philadelphia edition, 1922, page 31); and by Xavier Mayne in his book _The
Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life_
(published in Florence in 1908, pages 78 and 263). But admittedly this claim is
modern, and I think you are correct that Erasmus's contemporaries did not
consider him to be a homosexual (which in his day would be called a sodomite).
However, Erasmus's contemporaries did in fact think that he was sexually
different, and several contemporaries comment upon his conspicuous indifference
to women, which was felt to be not normal, even for someone who took a vow of
celibacy. (It is worth pointing out that "woman-hater" in previous
centuries was often used as a synonym for "man-lover".)
Your analysis of the Jacob Batt letters is
interesting. However, I think that we *can* draw one firm conclusion from them:
that Erasmus was afraid of being suspected of being Batt's lover. Whether or
not they had such relations is a separate issue (it could even be that both men
were homosexual, but were not lovers of each other). The point is that Erasmus
is worried about acquiring the public character of a sodomite merely because he
frequently goes to see Jacob Batt. It seems to me that this is evidence of a
hypersensitivity that is typically found among gay men who want their lives to
remain a secret, and is not often found among straight men. If a man was not a
homosexual, why would he be so afraid of being labelled a homosexual on such
slight grounds? I had not previously been aware of the Jacob Batt letters: but
reading your commentary on them makes me even more convinced that the
"Erasmus was gay" hypothesis is probably correct!
Best wishes, Rictor
Dear Dr. Norton,
I was so pleased to receive your scholarly,
well-reasoned letter; it was exactly the kind of criticism I was looking for.
Your comments elicited a great many reactions; I'll try to get through the
important ones.
No, I have not read your book. I had run
across it several times in my research browsing but the reviews I read
suggested that it was nothing more than a compendium of letters. I have already
ordered a copy and I expect to have it within a week.
You're quite right that Erasmus' editorial
censorship could be interpreted as an indication of a homoerotic inclination.
To make the point properly, I must gather a goodly number of such editorial
judgements on his part and look for any pattern. Perhaps such a pattern might
lend support to the 'Erasmus was gay' hypothesis; I don't know. In any case, a
single instance is not enough to establish any pattern, so I am abandoning that
point until I can come up with something useful. I will remove the reference
from my website.
I have several comments on your alternative
hypothesis that Erasmus balked at destroying the Servatius letters because he
cherished them as love letters. This doesn't jibe with two other facts. One is
that none of Servatius' letters to Erasmus were preserved. I should think that
a decision to retain letters as cherished mementos of a deep love would place
even more weight on keeping the partner's letters. The fact that he lost the
letters from Servatius but saved his letters to Servatius strongly suggests
that memento value was not a factor in Erasmus' decision. Indeed, Erasmus himself
wrote, "For as I was reading your very sweet letter, the effective proof
of your love towards me which I long for, I wept as I rejoiced and in the same
manner I rejoiced as I wept." Surely a letter this important to Erasmus
(if he were gay) would have been most carefully preserved -- but it's lost.
Apparently he didn't place much value on it.
A second fact that casts doubt on your
suggestion is that Erasmus saved just about everything he wrote. Erasmus wasn't
a celebrity until 1510, yet we have a large volume of his writings from before
that time. It appears Erasmus saved everything that he didn't purposefully
destroy.
Your second suggestion, that he didn't
destroy them because they specifically concern unrequited love and are not
invitations to lust, gets us into some rather tortuous logic. You seem to be
saying that he saved them because he did not feel that they were incriminating
-- that they could not be used against him to support an accusation of sodomy.
Yet you present the letters as the primary evidence of his homosexuality. The
only way out of this contradiction is to argue that people back then were too
dumb to figure out what we can figure out today. I don't buy that. If anything,
they were a lot quicker to vent their ill-will through the most unjustified
leaps of logic -- and there were plenty of people who bore Erasmus ill-will.
Your observation that I may have exercised a
kind of censorship by giving a synopsis of the letters rather than the real
thing is true, but my reasons were not editorial. I am concerned about
copyright issues; not being a professional scholar I am not familiar with the
precise meaning of "fair use" in a scholarly context, so I took a
rather conservative tack. If you believe that I would not be violating the law
by presenting all the letters in toto, I shall consult my attorney on the
matter and determine if I can in fact proceed with the full presentation.
Your strongest assertion is: "Your view
that people had a very different concept of love in the sixteenth century, from
what we have today, is nonsense." I am surprised at the strength of
conviction you express; surely the many, many examples I presented (of two men,
who have never met, expressing love for each other) should undercut some of
your certainty. I am so flummoxed by your statement that I strongly suspect
that you didn't come across those examples. They were in the essay
"Non-erotic love between men in the Renaissance"; did you see them?
You go on to say, "And your claim that
men addressed one another more passionately then they do today, is
inaccurate." Actually, I used the word 'hyperbole' in that instance, and
again, I thought that the examples I provided demonstrated my point. Do those
examples fail to support my claim? Do you consider them to be unrepresentative
of Erasmus' writing style?
I continue the blow-by-blow discussion: you
write "Erasmus' letters to Servatius are by no means typical of
Renaissance love/friendship letters between men." On this point, I cannot
argue with you, because I do not have familiarity with the general run of
Renaissance letters. And so I am happy to bow to your greater authority here.
But there's a problem. As I showed on the website, several Erasmus scholars
have written that the Servatius letters were in fact quite typical of the
times. Huizinga and Faludy make this point clearly; Hyma disagrees. From my own
familiarity with these three scholars, I'd put greatest weight on Huizinga and
least on Hyma. Thus, in deferring to authority, I find myself unable to accept
your belief. You must make your own judgement here -- but do you really want to
line yourself up against the likes of a scholar like Johan Huizinga? As an
aside, if you decide to brush up on Erasmus, I consider the Huizinga biography
the best, and I have quite a few. Nor is it overlong.
Here we come to your best point: that love
letters are in fact *love* letters, not *sex* letters, and that we cannot
expect a gay correspondent to put explicit sexual references into a love
letter. This seems entirely reasonable to me. However, there seems to be a
continuum here that we should consider. A gay love letter might not address
specific details of sexual performance, but it could include varying degrees of
reference to physical attraction: beautiful face, soft hands, whatever. Your
book provides us with a useful resource here: how many letters from assuredly
gay writers make reference to physical attraction? How often are physical
attributes mentioned? If we can compare the database of known gay letters with
the Servatius letters in this dimension, perhaps we can come up with some
useful information.
Thanks for pointing out the earlier
references to Erasmus' homosexuality. I had not noticed them because I was
searching in Erasmus literature, and your references come from a different
field entirely. I shall correct my web page.
But now I come to the sentence on which I
most strongly disagree with you: "However, Erasmus' contemporaries, did in
fact think that he was sexually different, and several contemporaries comment
on his conspicuous indifference to women, which was felt to be not normal, even
for someone who took a vow of celibacy."
I regret to flatly contradict you on one
point, and to strongly challenge you on two other points. The contradictable
point is "his conspicuous indifference to women." Please insert here
an appropriate exclamation of astonishment and incredulity. Here are just a few
quick anecdotes to the contrary. Erasmus' The Praise of Folly was such a hit that it was used in some schools. Hans
Holbein, while studying it, drew a number of sketches in the margins to
illustrate the material; they're so good that they have now become closely
associated with the book and indeed most editions include those illustrations.
In one, a man is distracted by a pretty girl as he walks across a public
square. He looks backward at her as he walks, and steps squarely into a basket
of bread offered by an old lady, who shrieks and screams. Holbein later told
Erasmus that he had modelled the man on Erasmus, and indeed, the man's clothing
is certainly similar to Erasmus' usual attire. Another illustration shows
Erasmus hard at work in his study. Upon examining it, Erasmus joked, "If
Erasmus were that handsome, he would have a wife!" A third example comes
from a letter to Fausto Andrelini written in 1499:
"...if you were fully aware of what
England has to offer, you would rush hither, I tell you, on winged feet, and if
your gout refused to let you go, you'd yearn to fly like Daedalus. For, to
touch on only one point among many, there are in England nymphs of divine
appearance, both engaging and agreeable, whom you would certainly prefer to
your Muses; and there is, besides, one custom which can never be commended too
highly. When you arrive anywhere, you are received with kisses on all sides,
and when you take your leave, they speed you on your way with kisses. The
kisses are renewed when you come back. When guests come to your house, their
arrival is pledged with kisses; and when they leave, kisses are shared once
again. If you should happen to meet, then kisses are given profusely. In a
word, wherever you turn, the world is full of kisses. If you too, Fausto, once
tasted the softness and fragrance of these same kisses, I swear you would yearn
to live abroad in England..."
The two points on which I wish to challenge
you are the two clauses about his contemporaries. I have never seen anything
from any of his contemporaries suggesting that he was sexually different or
conspicuously indifferent to women. In those days, vituperation was common and,
had such an accusation been made, it would have spread like wildfire and been
seized upon by his many enemies. In this case, I would surely have come across
at least one such reference. In the absence of any specific references from
you, I must regard your claim as incorrect.
On a happier note, I agree with you that
Erasmus was afraid of being suspected of being Batt's lover. You take this fear
as evidence that he was gay. Metaphorically speaking, you're not merely
presuming him 'guilty until proven innocent'; you're declaring 'guilty because
of fear of accusation'! (By the way, my use of the word 'guilty' applies only
the context of Erasmus' world view, not mine.) You ask, "If a man was not
a homosexual, why would he be so afraid of being labelled a homosexual on such
slight grounds?" I can give you two very solid reasons: first, justice in
those days was not administered as carefully as today; if you had enemies, a
criminal accusation could easily lead to a conviction regardless of your innocence.
Second, they burned sodomites! I'd be scared, too!
Erasmus' hypersensitivity that you describe
as common to gay men cannot be used as evidence of his homosexuality, because
Erasmus was hypersensitive about everything. All his biographers agree that he
had a whining quality, a thin skin, an obsessive fastidiousness.
Lastly, Erasmus had an especially good reason
to be overly careful -- he was under investigation at the time. The
investigation was instigated upon rumors of riotous living, but the
investigation was a fishing expedition. Anything untoward would have gone into
the grabbag of innuendo.
I am troubled that you would conclude by
stating that you are even more convinced that Erasmus was gay, when your
assault concentrated on my weakest points and sidestepped my strongest points.
Of course, I don't expect you to address every point made in that tangled
morass of a website. Perhaps I should have prioritized my arguements to make it
clearer. Here are just three of the strongest:
Erasmus' statement to Servatius: "And
unless I was mistaken, I was not altogether unaware what was the source of your
pain. I mean that person's shamelessness in hurling accusations against you
without justification or right." Doesn't this strike you as an explicit
denial of homoerotic intent?
Erasmus' vicious jibe at Julius II in the
ending of Epigramma. Inasmuch as Erasmus showed this piece to only a few
friends and kept it a blood secret, there would be no reason to flaunt an
anti-gay attitude. Clearly, this statement reflects his genuine attitude.
Doesn't that suggest that he wasn't gay?
Erasmus' many statements that the true basis
of love was a shared love for literature. What is wrong with accepting Erasmus
at his word? When Erasmus flatly declares that he must love anybody who loves
literature (and we know that he shared literary pursuits with Servatius) what
perversity of logic permits us to claim that his letters prove homoerotic love?
Well, there you have it. Egad, this letter is
oppressively long; I apologize for my plodding approach. I'll understand if you
can't find the time to address it in proper detail, but I would very much
appreciate some kind of response to the key points. If you don't mind (and I
gather from your copyright statement that you have no objections), I'd like to
include these letters in my website.
Best wishes,
Chris Crawford
Thanks for your note. I'm sorry not to have
replied earlier, but I have been extremely busy lately trying to meet a number
of deadlines before I go on holiday for three weeks from this Sunday.
I can't give you legal advice about
copyright. I understand that material goes into the public domain if the author
(in this case the translator) has been dead for 50 years, or in some
circumstances 70 years. The translations by Francis Morgan Nichols were
published in 1901, but I don't know when Nichols died, which would affect the
copyright situation. But I can't imagine there would be any problems if you
published several of the letters in full on the Internet. (There might be some
19th-century translations, that you could certainly publish without fear of
copyright violation.)
You say that if it is true, as I suggested,
that Erasmus didn't destroy his letters to Servatius because he would
especially want to keep them as love-letters, then why didn't he keep
Servatius's letters to him? I don't know. Do we know that Erasmus kept
*anyone's* letters to him? Generally speaking, letters are never published
until after a person's death, and the people who act as that person's literary
executors are only authorized to publish letters written *by* that person, not
letters written *to* that person. That's a very commonly understood practice,
and explains why in the case of most famous people, we possess only one side of
the correspondence. But we can never really come to any final persuasive proof
about why some letters exist and others don't. It's partly the luck of the
draw.
I certainly am not as familiar with Erasmus's
life as you are, and if you cannot find any contemporary references to suggest
that Erasmus's failure to marry was remarked upon as being unusual, then my
sources must be mistaken.
Well, anyway, let me refer to your three
strongest arguments:
You say: "Erasmus' statement to
Servatius: "And unless I was mistaken, I was not altogether unaware what
was the source of your pain. I mean that person's shamelessness in hurling
accusations against you without justification or right." Doesn't this
strike you as an explicit denial of homoerotic intent?"
No, it doesn't quite strike me that way.
Remember, I am not suggesting that *Servatius* was gay, only that Erasmus
desired Servatius. The evidence would indicate that Servatius rejected the
strongly emotional demands that Erasmus seems to be placing upon his reciprocating
love. If a gay man is trying to gain the love of someone who isn't gay, he
would naturally express sympathy with that person's fear of being called a
shameless sodomite, or whatever. So Erasmus's statement to Servatius strikes me
as being careful and tactful, rather than an explicit denial of homoerotic
intent. The passage seems mainly to show that Erasmus is aware that Servatius
is not gay.
You say: "Erasmus' vicious jibe at
Julius II in the ending of Epigramma. Inasmuch as Erasmus showed this piece to
only a few friends and kept it a blood secret, there would be no reason to
flaunt an anti-gay attitude. Clearly, this statement reflects his genuine
attitude. Doesn't that suggest that he wasn't gay?"
No, I don't think so. Quite a few men are
quite happy to criticize other gay men for being notorious sodomites. If they
are making a political attack on someone, they will happy employ satirical
anti-gay epithets whether or not they themselves are also gay. Pietro Aretino
and Benvenuto Cellini both did this. Do you think that a man who calls another
man "a wanker", never masturbates himself?
You say: "Erasmus' many statements that
the true basis of love was a shared love for literature. What is wrong with
accepting Erasmus at his word? When Erasmus flatly declares that he must love
anybody who loves literature (and we know that he shared literary pursuits with
Servatius) what perversity of logic permits us to claim that his letters prove
homoerotic love?"
I do take Erasmus at his own word, insofar as
I am sure that there was a genuine cultural basis in much homosexual love (from
the time of Marsilio Ficino to Allen Ginsberg). But people usually idealize and
romanticize their erotic passions, to ensure that they can be expressed in a
framework of virtue rather than vice. Religious faith can also be "the
true basis" for love, but that doesn't rule out physical desire as well.
Many love-letters between men and women talk about basing their love in love
for Christ, but these men and women nevertheless unite in the marriage bed and
produce children, and it seems to me that their love-letters, despite the truth
of their Christian context, nevertheless prove heteroerotic intent.
Best wishes, Rictor
PS: Yes, you may publish both sides of our
correspondence!
Dear Dr. Norton:
I must say, I am at a loss to refute the
arguements you present in your email, so well are they argued. This doesn't
mean that I am convinced by them -- not by a long shot. I concede that they are
reasonable and plausible arguements; but one is not compelling and two others
serve only to render toothless my arguements against Erasmus being gay. I must
admit this is a subjective judgement on my part. But here are the specifics:
On the copyright issue, I'm not using F.M.
Nichol's translations because the translations in the Collected Works of
Erasmus (Toronto, ~1971 to present) are considered definitive. I suppose that I
should go to the trouble of requesting permission from University of Tortonto
Press, but I am dubious that they would give me an adequate permission, because
material on the web can spread completely out of control.
On the question of why Erasmus kept his own
letters but not Servatius', the situation is a bit messier than is typical for
letters. Erasmus wrote many of his letters as demonstrations of literary skill;
he considered this a valuable talent, and indeed, he escaped from the monastery
only because a bishop wanted him as his formal letter-writer. As early as his
Paris years we find him collecting old copies of his letters with a mind to
publishing them as examples of good literary style. However, at a later date he
complained that he had not written his earliest letters with the intent of
publishing them; he considered them to be exercises in style. Apparently, he
didn't start thinking about publication until at least ten years after he wrote
the Servatius letters.
He definitely kept letters from other
correspondents; his final publication of letters contains 3,000 letters, of
which only 1,600 are his own. However, his early years are poorly recorded.
After some research, I have discovered that all of his letters before about
1500, and certainly the Servatius letters, were not saved by Erasmus himself;
their source is known as the Deventer Letter-Book, a collection of manuscripts
that appears to have been made by Franciscus Theodoricus in response to a
request from Erasmus, then in Paris. The Letter-Book remained undiscovered in
the monastery at Deventer until a century later; only then were the Servatius
letters published. Thus, the rug is pulled out from underneath both our
arguements: Erasmus didn't bother to save any of those letters, either to or
from Servatius. Theodoricus did not save Servatius' letters because Erasmus had
asked him to save his own letters, not anybody else's. I believe that these new
facts do not lend support to either side of the thesis in hand.
On the reason for Erasmus' failure to marry,
the most obvious is that he was a priest, an Augustinian canon, to be precise.
Next we come to the Erasmus quote: "And
unless I was mistaken, I was not altogether unaware what was the source of your
pain. I mean that person's shamelessness in hurling accusations against you
without justification or right." You suggest that this is explainable by
positing Erasmus as gay and Servatius as not gay. And I agree that your
explanation is plausible. Still, it does seem strained to me; if Erasmus were
here giving Servatius emotional support against the accusations, why would he
proceed in the same letter to resume the importunations that underlay the
accusations? Moreover, if there were a monk in the monastery making such
accusations, and they had not been firmly refuted, would not those accusations
have come back to haunt Erasmus in his later years? I admit, I'm speculating
here, just as you are, and we both seem to agree that head-butting with
speculations is pointless.
I agree with your observation that gay men
feel no compunction about using anti-gay jibes when it suits their purpose. I
was uncertain at first, but my wife clinched the matter by observing that some
of the best 'dumb blonde' jokes are told by blondes. Scratch one arguement
against Erasmus being gay.
Your third arguement is also acceptable to
me, although we must apply it carefully. I concede that lovers could clothe
their love in noble ideals while still being, in fact, sexual lovers. There is
no inconsistency between such noble ideals and sexual love. Thus, my arguement
collapses: Erasmus' many assertions that the basis for love was a shared love
of literature cannot be taken as an arguement against the hypothesis that he
was gay. Of course, neither can it be taken as an arguement that he was gay.
But now I'd like to introduce a new
consideration into our discussion. I finally obtained a copy of your book and
read the first half of it. While reading it, I noticed something different
about the other love letters: they seemed to be more explicit about the erotic
nature of the relationship. So I set out to get a grip on this. Starting over,
I re-read each letter and noted every usage or term that was unquestionably
erotic in sense. Here's what I collected for the first 22 pages of letters (not
counting your prefatory notes to each set of letters):
11
references to 'fire' in describing feelings
29
references to the physical beauty of the correspondent
2
references to lust or explicit sexual desire
6
references to known classical gay couples
3
references to sleeping or bedding together
2
uses of the term 'suitor'
3
allusions to genitals
this adds up to 56 unquestionably erotic
references in 22 pages of letter-text. In the two pages of Erasmus' letters
that you provide, only one of these references appears: 'lovers', and that
reference is in fact incorrect. The Latin term in the letter is amantes, which
means 'close friends'. The Latin term used for a sexual lover is dilector. The
translation in The Collected Works of Erasmus translates the word as 'friends'.
Perhaps the discrepancy arises from the fact that, when Nichols was writing at
the turn of the century, the word 'lover' did not have the sexual connotations
it now carries.
If Erasmus' letters to Servatius were in fact
gay love letters, we would expect them to be substantially similar to the other
gay love letters you present. Yet Erasmus uses none of the terms that make
those gay love letters unquestionably gay. This seems to me to provide yet
another arguement against the hypothesis that Erasmus was gay. However, I have
a sinking certainty that you'll come up with a clever interpretation that pulls
the teeth out of this arguement, just as you have done with my other
arguements. I nervously await your riposte, although I understand from your
previous email that it might be a long time coming.
Best regards, Chris
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