Erasmus's letters include many comments that
are inconsistent with the hypothesis that he was gay. One of the earliest was
in his first letter to Cornelis Gerard, a distinguished poet: "If by any
means it were possible, I should myself prefer to have an opportunity of
conversing with you face to face and enjoying your company at close quarters,
together with your embraces and most chaste kisses." Now, if you remove
the single word for 'most chaste', you have a solid piece of evidence in favor
of the disputed hypothesis. But that single word completely reverses the
implication of the sentence. Erasmus unambiguously asserts that his pleasure at
being with Cornelis is not erotic.
Another example comes from a letter to Jacob
Batt: "I will not allow that you are more ardently affectionate to me than
I to you, but I am firmly of the opinion that the warmth of our affection
should not become too heated."
In a letter to Willem Hermans cited earlier,
he speaks of himself in the third person: "Nevertheless he lives in
perfect blamelessness."
Writing to John Colet: "We give up
sleep, we study, we fast, we say our prayers, we observe celibacy; none of
these do we desire for their own sake, yet we still desire to do them."
The Epigramma Erasmi in Julium II was a
savagely satirical piece on Pope Julius II, so fierce in its attack that it was
not published for four hundred years. The conclusion of the piece is a
suggestion that the Pope was gay, presented with a nastiness that makes
Erasmus' attitudes towards homosexuality quite plain.
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