If you search the web, you'll find Erasmus
included on lists of great gays from history. I speculate that such lists are
maintained as a matter of gay pride, a demonstration that all sorts of
excellent people were gay. Surely the general assertion is true, but on the
little detail of Erasmus, it's wrong. Erasmus was not gay. For some examples of
these claims, click here.
What's disturbing to me about this is that it
has much to do with politics and little to do with truth. I would not be
bothered to discover some proof that Erasmus really was gay; my concern is
solely with understanding the man, and I wouldn't get far down that path by
denying a historical truth. Unfortunately, there are those who don't take so
philosophical an approach; they subordinate intellectual integrity to political
preference. I recently experienced just how egregious this political intrusion
into academic truth can become. I stumbled across a website presenting the
"historical gays" list, including Erasmus, so I sent the owner of the
website a friendly email suggesting that he might want to polish it up a bit by
deleting Erasmus from the list. He wrote back disputing some of my claims. We
went back and forth a few times. Basically, without knowing anything at all
about Erasmus, he attacked my arguements. He appeared to be exercised about the
subject; my friendly tone and easygoing style were not reciprocated. The really
distressing thing about his approach was that he never actually addressed the
substance of my arguements themselves; for the most part, he ferociously
attacked my expertise or various sideshow issues. After just three cycles, he
declared that I had no standing to discuss the issue, and terminated the
discussion. Here's the kicker: this chap appears to be a professor of history
at an institution of higher learning. Doesn't do much for your confidence in
our educational system, does it? To see the entire discussion, click here.
What emerges from this is that we've got an
issue that has generated lots of hot air with almost nothing in the way of
solid analysis based on primary sources. Therefore, in the remainder of this
essay, I shall attempt to carry out that analysis. Supporting evidence, where
extensive, will be covered with hyperlinks.
The most important consideration here is the
danger of improper cross-cultural extrapolation. We tend to evaluate
information from other cultural contexts in the light of our own cultural
experience; this often leads to exquisitely incorrect conclusions. Indeed, the
very notion of "being gay" is an artifact of our culture and does not
apply to the cultural context in which Erasmus lived. Back then, homosexuality
was not so much a state as it was an event. For example, Michael Rocke in
"Forbidden Friendships" demonstrates that some 60% of Florentine
males during the 15th century participated in some form of homosexual act at
some point in their lives -- yet it would be profoundly misleading to conclude that
60% of Florentine males were gay. Most men seem to have engaged in just a few
encounters. A much smaller percentage of these men engaged in perennial
homosexual behavior. Moreover, these homosexual encounters were not always
romantic or even erotic in nature; for many young men, submitting to the
homosexual importunations of older men was a matter of 'paying dues' and
finding favor in a highly structured patriarchal society.
Moreover, homosexuality itself was not
precisely the target of moral opprobrium; anal intercourse with a woman was
treated as just as heinous a crime as anal intercourse with a man. In the
Renaissance moral order, complete celibacy was considered the moral ideal. Next
came sexual intercourse between husband and wife for the sole purpose of
procreation; ideally both partners -- especially the woman -- would find
copulation distasteful, but any pleasure they might experience was grudgingly
overlooked. A big step lower was procreative sex between unmarried partners;
while morally wrong, it was reluctantly accepted as well-nigh impossible to
prevent, given the many barriers to marriage. But much, much lower fell any
form of non-procreative sex. That was unnatural, an offense to God, a moral
outrage.
Thus, the statement that "Erasmus was gay",
or his inclusion in any list of historical gays, is intrinsically misleading, a
cultural extrapolation that simply doesn't apply. It would be more appropriate
to ask, "did Erasmus ever have sex with another man?" We have a
simple answer to that question: we have no evidence whatsoever that Erasmus
ever had sex with any other man. We are therefore reduced to asking indirect
questions about his state of mind, his attitudes, and his relationships. These
questions in turn can indicate a conducivity to the act rather than the act
itself. Thus, when we talk about Erasmus being gay, we must remember that we
have already drifted away from the core reality. It 's rather like inquiring
into somebody's attitudes about squid to determine if they've ever eaten calamari.
The best we can hope to achieve is to establish a likelihood; the truth itself
is quite beyond our reach. I'll proceed on this basis, but you should always
bear in mind this crucial shift in cultural context while reading this
material.
The first evidence in support of the 'Erasmus
was gay' hypothesis is a series of nine letters
from Erasmus to Servatius Rogerius, a fellow monk. They were all written in
1487-88, when Erasmus was 21 years old and new to the monastery. Supporters of
the 'Erasmus was gay' hypothesis interpret these as love letters.
The second factor cited in the claims for
Erasmus' homosexuality arises from his relationship with Thomas Grey, whom
Erasmus tutored while he was in Paris. Grey's guardian became angry with
Erasmus and terminated the relationship. The conjecture is that the guardian
suspected Erasmus of having homosexual designs upon young Grey. Herewith the details.
Another possible arguement arises from the
circumstances surrounding the loss of support from his benefactor while he was
studying in Paris. The bishop who had sent him there stopped sending money;
could this have been due to the bishop discovering that Erasmus was gay? Check it out.
During the course of researching this issue,
I came upon some material that, in my opinion, constitutes the strongest
evidence in favor of the 'Erasmus was gay' hypothesis. Here
it is.
Against these four fragments of evidence we have
these seven negative arguements:
Second, nobody
during his time accused him of homosexuality. Given the polemical nature of
the times, the absence of such an accusation strongly suggests an absence of
any evidence.
Third, in his vast output, Erasmus never
published anything positive about homosexuality. He had plenty of opportunities
to exercise some editorial bias in his writings,
but when he did, all the bias was anti-gay.
Fourth, Erasmus had a golden opportunity to
indulge in homosexual relationships while he was in Italy,
yet he spurned it.
Fifth, Erasmus retained the respect and
esteem of a great many men, including many who demonstrated little tolerance
for deviation from accepted norms. Thomas More was Erasmus' best friend, and
More was prudish, morally rigid, and intolerant. It is inconceivable that More
would have kept Erasmus as a friend had he known that Erasmus was gay. It is
equally inconceivable that Erasmus could have kept More in the dark about his
sexual preferences if he were gay. Erasmus was at his best in free conversation
over a good meal, when the wine had loosened tongues just enough to let the wit
flow freely. It was widely known that his after-dinner comments were
considerably spicier than the more measured phrasings in his writings. Erasmus
spent many months with at More's home; I very much doubt that he could have
gotten through without some sort of slip.
Sixth, Erasmus plainly stated on many
occasions his criteria for loving another; they had
nothing to do with eroticism of any kind.
And finally, Erasmus on many occasions made comments that are not consistent with the 'Erasmus was gay'
hypothesis.
I have yet to find any biographer of Erasmus
who concludes that he was gay. His most antagonistic biographer, Father
Christopher Hollis, concludes "We cannot say that Erasmus was guilty, but
we can say that, if he had been guilty, he would nevertheless have denied
it.". Halkin (1993), commenting on the Servatius letters, concludes,
"This ardent friendship -- entirely platonic though it was -- revealed a
delicate temperament, a craving for tenderness ill-suited to the rigidity of
monastic rule." Schoek's conclusion is "Homosexuality is, while not
impossible, unlikely and in any case not proven."
My own conclusions are best presented as a
complete interpretation of the information presented here. When Erasmus entered
the monastery at Steyn, he was a scared kid on his own, unsure of who he was.
The only thing he really believed in was classical literature. He was also
lonely; he simply didn't fit into the social life of the monastery and couldn't
make friends with most of the monks. However, he did find one fellow who seemed
like-minded: Servatius Rogerius. He latched onto this friendship as if it were
a lifeline. He tried to express his feelings in a way that seemed appropriate
to a classical scholar, but it was unfamiliar to him and quite experimental.
Throw in the natural tendency of young men to overdo everything, and you end up
with the overwrought, artificial intensity of the Servatius letters. In later
years he looked back on these letters with some embarassment, seeing them as
rather juvenile, but he kept them because they evoked a wry remembrance of
younger, more intense days. He never bothered publishing them because they
were, after all, overly formal; they demonstrated some of the worst habits of
inexperienced letter-writers. Indeed, a number of his early letters that he did
permit to be published had the annotation: "Written as a young man"
as if to explain their clumsiness.
When he got to Paris, he quickly got himself
into hot water. His rejection of the ferociously spartan life at Montague
college raised suspicions that he had gone to Paris only to escape the
discipline of the monastery -- after all, he had been quite vocal about his
unhappiness with life at the monastery. The suspicions dogged him the entire
time he was in Paris. He found a much-needed friend in Fausto Andrelini, the
royal court poet, who was definitely a rake but also a humanist scholar. It's
quite likely that Fausto dragged Erasmus along in some rather wild carousings,
which Erasmus later regretted and which provided more grist for the rumor mill
back home. Thomas Grey's guardian was most likely concerned with this kind of
behavior, and indeed the confrontation between Erasmus and the guardian might
well have been triggered by a late-night drunken return home after a night's
carousing.
These experiences induced in Erasmus a
justified paranoia. They really were out to get him! He became suspicious and
resentful, and he blamed his inability to obtain financial support on the
whisperings of evil-doers at home. He was inordinately secretive about his
plans and activities, and went to great lengths to insure that no further
ammunition was provided to his enemies. This paranoia shows up in a variety of
overly defensive letters. It took years for him to outgrow this ugly period;
slowly the paranoia ebbed and his behavior became more normal.
Dr. Rictor Norton, author of My Dear Boy:
Gay Love Letters through the Centuries,
examined the material presented here and engaged me in a lively and quite
interesting discussion of the finer points. You may read this discussion here.
Another, less fair-minded scholar put in his
two-cents' worth here. It wasn't worth
two cents.