Erasmus’ ethnological hierarchy of peoples and races

ABSTRACT

No comprehensive research of Erasmus’ ethnological mind has been published, so far. Erasmus’ attitudes toward Turks and Jews were discussed analytically but not synthetically or comparatively. An attempt to widen the ethnological scope and to define and classify Erasmus’ attitudes toward different non-Christian groups is presented here. Christian Europeans (populus Christianus) were at the top of Erasmus’ echelon. Second to them were ‘half-Christians’, i.e. Turks, or Muslims in general. Below them were Jews, and lower in the hierarchy were black Africans (Aethiopes). Yet, no one was unworthy of conversion to Christianity, even barbarians of the third kind – according to Bartolomé Las Casas’ sort – the most inferior barbarians, slaves by nature, as defined by Aristotle. According to Las Casas, these barbarians were too low to ask for God and were not candidates for conversion to Christianity. Erasmus’ believed that Barbarians of any kind deserved Christianity without being brutally forced to accept it. Yet, in practice, converts from Judaism to Christianity were rated, even by Erasmus, as lower than Christians. This, in addition to the principle that Christian peace excludes war against the Turks, is the very essence of Erasmus’ pax et concordia.

KEYWORDS:

• Erasmus
• Turks
• Muslims
• Jews
• ethnological hierarchy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Finn Fuglestad, The Ambiguities of History: The Problem of Ethnocentrism in Historical Writing (Oslo, 2005). In the first chapter (9–22), Fuglestad responds to H.R. Trevor Roper's Eurocentric (and ethnocentric) statement that black Africa had no history, expressed in a radio broadcast and later in his Rise of Christian Europe (London, 1965), 9: ‘Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa.’ On Eurocentrism, see also Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, 2011), 110–11; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Oxford, 2005), 15–34 (Eurocentrism dominating European attitudes toward native Americans in Latin America); Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, trans. Russel Moore (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), 72–3:

From that time on (i.e. the Renaissance - N. R.) Europeans become conscious of the idea that the conquest of the world by their civilization is a possible objective. They therefore develop a sense of absolute superiority […] From this moment on, and not before, Eurocentrism crystallizes.

Amin relies extensively on Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978) and on M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick, 1987). Bernal's thesis regarding the Afro-Asian roots of classical culture is integrated within the Afrocentric approach, which rejects the Eurocentric conceptualization of the West as the sole standard by which to evaluate other cultures, ignoring the significant contributions made by Africans to world civilization and human progress.

2 CWE 27, 282; ASD IV-1, 214: ‘Primum illud expendat Princeps vere Christianus, quantum intersit inter hominem paci ac benevolentiae natum animal, et inter feras ac belluas praeditioni, belloque natas: ad haec quantum intersit inter hominem, et hominem Christianum.’

3 CWE 66, 10; Ep 858: 83–84: ‘[…] sunt enim et illi, vt nihil aliud, certe homines […]’

4 CWE 27, 287; ASD IV-1, 218: ‘Citius fiat, ut nos degeneramus in Turcas, quam illi per nos reddantur Christiani.’

5 CWE 66, 11; Ep 858: 12–14: ‘[…] citius futurum est vt nos in Turcas degeneremus quam vt Turcas in nostras partes pertrahamus.’

6 Desiderius Erasmus, The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago and London, 1965), 323; CWE 40, 686; ASD I-3, 504:

Nuper in linteo quodam amplissimo vidi totum orbem depictum: illic didici quantula esset mundi portio, Christi religionem pure sincereque profitens: nimium Europae particula vergens ad occidentem: rursus altera, vergens ad Septemtrionem: tertia tendens, sed procul, ad Meridiem: ad Orientem vergentis quartae postrema videbatur Polonia. Reliquus orbis aut Barbaros habet, non ita multum a brutis animantibus differentes, aut schismaticos, aut haereticos, aut utrumque.

See R.J. Schoeck, ‘The Geography of Erasmus’, in Northern Humanism in European Context, 1469-1625, ed. F. Akkerman, A.J. Vanderjagt, and A.H. van Der Laan (Leiden, 1999), 200.

7 Schoeck, ‘The Geography of Erasmus’, 200–1.

8 Erasmus objected to capital punishment for heretics, with a few important exceptions. Accordingly, two kinds of heresy were doomed to capital punishment. The first is manifest blasphemy, such as the negation of Jesus’ divine nature or the ascription of lies to the scriptures. The second kind of heresy warranting capital punishment was sedition against the political or the social-economic order of the state. See LB X 1576 (Epistola in Pseudevangelicos) and Roland H. Bainton, Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to Be Persecuted and How they Are to Be Treated. A Collection of the Opinions of Learned Men Both Ancient and Modern. An Anonymous Work Attributed to Sebastian Castellio (New York, 1965), 41. Erasmus harshly condemned schismatics and heretics: John Marshal, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 235–6. Bainton, Concerning Heretics, 41, referring to Erasmus’ rejection of Michael Servetus’ antitrinitarianism, posed the (rhetorical?) question: ‘One wonders whether Erasmus might not have approved of the execution of Servetus on the score of blasphemous heresy.’

9 It was published in March 1530, shortly after the Turks raised their siege on Vienna. See Michael J. Heath, Introduction to ‘A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War Against the Turks Including an Exposition of Psalm 28’ (Utilissima consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo, et obiter enarratus psalmus 28), in CWE vol. 64 (Expositions of the Psalms), 202–9. For the Latin text: ASD V-3, 32–82 (ed. A.G. Weiler).

10 Erika Rummel, ‘Secular Advice in Sacred Writings’, The European Legacy 19 (2014): 16–26. In ‘The Prospects for Holy War: A Reading of a “Consultation” from Erasmus’, Erasmus Studies 36 (2016): 199, Terence J. Martin argues that the treatise ‘[…] is a mock consultation […] a parody of the standard rhetorical conventions used in orations against the Turks’. This should be rejected, not just on the basis of Rummel's convincing research (ignored by Martin), but also due to the theological context of the treatise. Its full title is: Consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo, et obiter enarratus psalmus 28. It begins by citing Psalm 28, and presents an exegetical prologue in which other psalms are also cited. How can this be compared to mockery or parody?

11 Rummel, ‘Secular Advice in Sacred Writings’, 25.

12 CWE 64, 258–259; ASD V-3, 76:

Quid autem dicam de politia? Quae legume aequitas apud illos? Quidquid tyranno placuit, lex est. Quae Senatus auctoritas? Quae Philosophia locum illic habet? Quae Theologorum scholae? Quae sacrae conciones? Quae Religionis sinceritas? Sectam habent ex Judaismo, Christianismo, Paganismo et Arianorum haeresis commixtam. Agnoscunt Christum ut unum quempiam ex Prophetis […] Quid, quod pestilentem ac scelerosum hominem Machumetem Christo, in cujus nomine flectitur omne genu coelestium, terrestrium, et infernorum, praeferunt?

See also Ron, ‘The Christian Peace of Erasmus’, 32, 34–8.

13 CWE 64, 231; ASD V-3, 50: ‘Regnant irato Deo, pugnant adversum nos sine Deo, illi Mahometem habent propugnatorem, nos Christum.’

14 Cusanus’ ‘A Scrutiny of the Koran’ (Cribratio Alkorani, 1461) was basically an attempt to confirm Gospel truths through a critical reading and dismantling of the Qur’an's teachings by means of logical arguments. See Jaspar Hopkins, ‘Nicholas of Cusa's De Pace Fidei And Cribratio Alkorani’, in Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, trans. Jasper Hopkins, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN, 2001), 24 (Introduction); Hopkins, ‘The Role of Pia Interpretatio in Nicholas of Cusa's Hermeneutical Approach to the Qur’an’, in Concordia Discors: Studi su Niccolò Cusano e l’Umanesimo europeo offerta a Giovanni Santinello, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua, 1993), 251–73.

15 Vom Kriege widder die Tuercken, WA 30, II, 122. 26–28: ‘Also ists ein glaube, zusamen geflickt aus der Juden, Christen und Heiden glauben.’ See Adam S. Francisco, ‘Luther's Knowledge of and Attitude Towards Islam’, in The Routledge Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. Mona Siddiqui (London and New York, 2013), 137–8; Silke R. Falkner, ‘Preserved Spaces: Boundary Negotiations in Early-Modern Turcica’, in Encounters with Islam in German Literature and Culture, ed. James Hodkinson and Jeff Morrison (New York, 2009), 61.

16 Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto, 1996), 315; Michael J. Heath, Introduction to ‘A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War against the Turks Including an Exposition of Psalm 28’ (Ultissima consultatio de Bello Turcis inferendo, et obiter enarratus psalmus 28), in CWE 64 (Expositions of the Psalms), 205.

17 On the moral meaning of the war against the Turks: A.G. Weiller, ‘The Turkish Argument and Christian Piety in Desiderius Erasmus’ “Consultatio de Bello Turcis inferendo” (1530)’, in Erasmus of Rotterdam the Man and the Scholar, ed. Weiland J. Sperna and W. Th. M. Frijhoff (Leiden, 1988), 30–9.

18 CWE 64, 246; ASD V-3, 64. For Erasmus’ anti-crusading attitude as indicating his moderation, see Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists, and the West (Philadelphia, 2004), 175; Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk 1453-1517 (New York, 1967), 225. As I argue further on, Erasmus’ attitude toward Islam was not moderate, despite his objection to the institution of Crusade. On this issue, see Nathan Ron, ‘The Christian Peace of Erasmus’, The European Legacy 19 (2014): 27–42.

19 CWE 64, 231; ASD V-3, 50: ‘Gens est effeminata luxu, nec alia rem qua latrociniis formidanda.’

20 On Erasmus’ Muslims as ‘half-Christians’, see Bisaha, Creating East and West, 174–5; Timothy Hampton, ‘Turkish Dogs: Rabelais, Erasmus, and the Rhetoric of Alterity’, Representations 41 (1993): 62–3.

21 CWE 35, 433; ASD II-7, 39–40 (Adagia IV, i 1; no. 3001): ‘Atqui quos nos vocamus Turcas, magna parte semichristiani sunt […] Nos totam Asiam et Mricam ferro paramus extinguere, quum plurimi sint illic vel Christiani vel semichristiani.’

22 CWE 64, 233; ASD V-3, 52: ‘[…] illos primum esse homines, deinde semichristianos.’

23 CWE 64, 243; ASD V-3, 62:

Nam beatus Paulus nobis spem bonam ostendit, fore, ut aliquando Judaeorum pertinacissima natio ad idem ovile congregetur, ac nobiscum agnoscat unum Pastorem Jesum. Quanto magis id sperandum de Turcis reliquisque barbaris nationibus, quarum, ut audio, nulla colit Idola, sed dimidiatum habent Christianisimum.

24 Bisaha, Creating East and West, 175. Erasmus’ use of the term semichristiani ‘echoed Nicholas of Cusa's optimistic view that the Turks were “half Christians”’. On different meanings of semichristiani, as used by Luther: Scot H. Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via (Leiden, 1974), 240, 255.

25 CWE 27, 287; ASD IV-1, 218: ‘Primum hoc agamus, ut ipsi simus germane Christiani, deinde si visum erit, Turcas adoriamur.’

26 See Erasmus’ dedicatory letter to king Francis I, which became the introduction to Erasmus’ paraphrase on Mark, CWE, 49, 2–3; LB VII 150:

Et interim exsecramur ac devovemus Turcas. Quod autem spectaculum gratius exhiberi poterat Turcis, aut si qui sunt qui pejus volunt nomini Christiano, quam tres longe florentissimos totius Europae Monarchas exitialibus dissidiis inter sese committi? Vix mihi persuadeo, quenquam esse tam truculentum Turcam, qui plus malorum imprecetur Christianis, quam ipsi vicissim infligunt sibi.

27 CWE 66, 94; ASD V-8: ‘Adultere est, sacrilegus est, Turca est: exsecretur adulterum, non hominem, sacrilegum adspernetur, non hominem: Turcam occidat, non hominem.’

28 CWE 64, 242; ASD V-3, 62: ‘Si nobis succedere cupimus, ut Turcas a nostris cervicibus depellamus, prius teterrimum Turcarum genus ex animis nostris exigamus, avaritiam, ambitionem, dominandi libidinem, nostri fiducia, impietatem luxum, voluptatum amorem, fraudulentiam, iram, odium, invidiam.’

29 The meaning of religious toleration, as used in this essay, is equivalent to the condition of religious freedom, or religious pluralism, a condition which began to evolve in the sixteenth-century Europe. This differs from the medieval legal tolerantia, e.g. the certification given to Jews, permitting them to live in a designated place at a certain time. See Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the World (Princeton, 2003), 6; Hans R. Guggisberg, ‘The Defense of Religious Toleration and Religious Liberty in Early Modern Europe: Argument, Pressures and Some Consequences’, History of European Ideas 4 (1983): 36, 38. For tolerantia as a legal certification: Istvan Bejczy, ‘Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept’, Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997): 365–84.

30 See n. 25.

31 Romans, XIII, 4 ‘But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.’ Erasmus says (ASD V-3, 56; CWE 64, 235):

Besides, Paul appears to commend the sword which is used to punish the wicked and to reward the virtuous. Someone may quibble and say that here Paul is only referring to a pagan magistracy, to which he wanted Christians to submit, because if Christians were to seem to undermine the statutes and ordinances of the state, the Gospel would be brought into disrepute. My reply is that since, among Christians, there is no other way of keeping the peace, secular magistrates are necessary to deter criminals who do not observe the laws and customs of the state with the threat of punishment. Now, if we allow the magistrates this right, we must allow princes the right to make war. However, although I am quite convinced of this, I also think that all other expedients must be tried before war is begun between Christians […].

On Erasmus’ belligerent attitude toward the Turks: Ron, ‘The Christian Peace of Erasmus’, 34–8.

32 CWE 64, 265; ASD V-3, 81:

Illud in primis erat optabile, si liceat Turcarum ditiones ita subigere, quamadmodum Apostoli cunctas mundi nationes subegerunt Imperatori Christo: proximum esto votum, sub armis hoc pottissimum agere, ut se victos esse gaudeant. Ad id praecipue conducet, si viderint Christianismum non esse verba, sed in nobis conspexerint mores Evangelio dignos. Tum, si mittantur in messem integri Praecones, qui non quaerant quae sua sunt, sed quae Jesu Christi. Postremo, si qui nondum possunt allici, sinantur aliquamdiu suis vivere legibus, donec paulatim nobiscum coalescent. Sic olim Imperatores Christiani paulatim aboleverunt Paganismum. Initio patiebantur illos aequo cum nostratibus Jure vivere, sic ut neutri alteris facesserent negotium. Deinde, templis idololatrarum ademerunt sua privilegia. Postremo, victimas ab illis immolari palam, vetuerunt, mox omnem simulacrorum cultum submoverunt. Ita sensim invalescente nostra Religione, Paganismus extinctus est, et Christi trophea mundum universum occuparunt.

Erasmus finds no fault in Theodosius’ systematic persecution of pagans and heretics, particularly Arians. According to Erasmus, the Arians were not just heretics, blatant sacrilegious, but also rebels who threatened the political order; therefore, their persecution and execution was required and justified. Theodosius’ Imperial edicts, issued from February 380 onward, were essentially, as can also be concluded from their phrasing, nothing less than the expression of imposed Christianization on masses of populations. This was justified, and even glorified, by Erasmus. For the Theodosian edicts’ texts: Edward Peters (ed.), Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. Documents in Translation (Philadelphia, 1980), 42–7. See also Gerard Friell and Stephen Williams, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (London, 2005), 53–6; Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley, 1983), 13–32.

33 Cited from Bisaha, Creating East and West, 76 n. 231. A somewhat less gruesome description can be found in Piccolomini's letter of July 1453 to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa: Margaret Meserve, ‘From Samarkand to Scythia: Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance Geography and Political Thought’, in Pius II – ‘El Pìu Expeditivo Pontifice’. Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), ed. Zweder von Martels and Arjo J. Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 26.

34 For example: CWE 64, 221; ASD V-3, 38. See also Hampton, ‘“Turkish Dogs” Rabelais, Erasmus, and the Rhetoric of Alterity’, 62.

35 For this claim: Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Ollcot (Chicago, 1986), 142–3, which claims that Erasmus was indifferent to Jews, ‘a-Semitic’ in his attitude (based on the fact, among other arguments, that Erasmus did not write a specific book against Judaism or Jews). See also Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence, trans. J.C. Grayson (Toronto, 1991), 47–8, 80–1, 111.

36 Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 21.

37 CWE 27, 306; ASD IV-2, 80: ‘florent leges nusquam illibatior religio, nec commercio Judaeorum corrupta, velut apud Italos, nec Turcarum vel Maranorum vicina infecta.’

38 CWE 4, 279; Ep 549: 11–13: ‘Sola Gallia nec haereticis est infecta nec Bohemis schismaticis nec Iudeis nec semiiudeis Maranis, nec Turcarum confinio afflata.’

39 According to P.S. Allen (Ep 549 n. 12) Marranos were: ‘[…] the Spanish Jews who had baptized after Ferdinand's edict of 1492, but still adhered strictly to Judaism’. Marranos were ‘crypto-juifs d’origine hispanique’, according to I.S. Révah, ‘Les marranes’ in Révah, Des marranes a Spinoza (Paris, 1995; first published in 1957), 29, 54; Révah, ‘L’hérésie marrane dans l’Europe catholique du 15 e au 18 e siècle’, in Des marranes a Spinoza, 330–1. See also Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos; Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton, 2009), 227–8; Benzion Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources, 3rd ed. (Ithaca, 1999; first published in 1966), 205, 207; Cecil Roth, A History of Marranos (New York, 1959; first published in 1931), 68–77; Roth, ‘The Religion of the Marranos’, The Jewish Quarterly Review 22 (1931): 1–33. A definition emphasizing hybridity (‘[…] the Spaniard who was capable of containing and creating a series of alternative identities different from his or her original one’) is suggested by Stefania Pastore, ‘From “Marranos” to “Unbelievers”: The Spanish Peccadillo in Sixteen-Century Italy’, in Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe, ed. Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig (London, 2015), 81.

40 See, for example, Erasmus’ dedicatory letter of 1527 to João III, King of Portugal (Ep 1800: 236–40):

[…] the world will not be shaken by so many wars, or so many differences of ideas, and we will be free both of Judaism and paganism; and Christ will reign over us and under his standard we will prosper happily and peacefully. Finally, the limits of Christian rule will extend over distances.[…] nec tot bellis nec tot opinionum dissidiis concuteretur orbis, ac longius abessemus omnes et a Judaismo simul et a Paganismo; sed regnaret in nobis Christus, et sub illius vexillis fellici tranquillitate frueremur. Denique latius sese profferent Christianae ditionis pomeria.

41 Erika Rummel, Erasmus (London, 2004), 32. Regarding the ascription of anti-Semitic attitudes to Erasmus: Zagorin, How the Idea […], 54; Hilmar M. Pabel, ‘Erasmus of Rotterdam and Judaism: A Reexamination in Light of New Evidence’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 87 (1996): 9–37; James D. Tracy, Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley, 1996), 100–2; Heiko A. Oberman, The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI, 1994), 104–5; Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia, 1984), 5, 38–9; Guido Kisch, Erasmus’ Stellung zu Juden und Judentum (Tübingen,1969).

42 See Luther's ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’ (Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, 1543); WA, 53: 417–49. On Luther and the Jews, see Thomas Kaufmann, Luther's Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism, trans. Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes (Oxford, 2017), 8, 144–7; Kaufmann, ‘Luther and the Jews’ in Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnet (Leiden, 2006), 76–7, 90–2; Jerome Friedman, ‘Jews and New Christians in Reformation Europe’, in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, II, ed. W.S. Maltby (Saint Louis, 1992), 148–57; Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, 1–2 and notes 1–2; Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 94–124; Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther's Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, 1983), 131.

43 On Juan Luis Vives’ expressions in favour of the Amerindians and in denouncing the atrocities: Vives, De concordia et discordia in humano genere, V, 221, 297; David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Ann Arbor, 2003), 111. As for the contributions of Francisco de Vitoria (c.1485–1546), Antonio de Montesinos (? – 1545) and Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) to ease the yoke of the Spanish occupation on the Amerindians, see Rolena Adorno, ‘The Polemics of Possession: Spain on America, Circa 1550’, in Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic, ed. Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 21–36; Adorno, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative (New Haven, 2007), 99–124; Lupher, Romans in a New World; Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 106–8.

44 On this point: Nathan Ron, ‘Erasmus and Geography’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 3 (2014): 6–21; Kristine Louise Haugen, ‘A French Jesuit's Lectures on Vergil, 1582-1583: Jacques Sirmond Between Literature, History, and Myth’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 967–85 (p. 979 n. 38).

45 LB IX 805E: ‘Non enim sapiens fuit, qui primus ausus est per Oceanum navigare.’ See Ron, ‘Erasmus and Geography’, 6, 22.

46 Erasmus, The Colloquies of Erasmus, 195; CWE 39, 453: 24–32. See Ron, ‘Erasmus and Geography’, 6, 22.

47 ASD V-4, 428: ‘[…] et qui prius erant Aethiopes nigri criminibus, exuunt veterem hominem et Christum induentes candido agni vellere amiciuntur.’ See Etienne Wolf, ‘Érasme et l’Afrique: Comment penser l’Alterité’, Scholia 8 (1999): 102; George Huntston Williams, ‘Erasmus and the Reformers on Non-Christian Religions and “Salus Extra Ecclesiam”’, in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of H. Harbison, ed. Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Seigal (Princeton, 1969), 335.

48 Adagia, I iv 50; CWE, 31, 356–7.

49 William Barker, ed., The Adages of Erasmus (Toronto, 2001), 81.

50 ASD V-4, 148: ‘Nuper Aethiopiae Rex, quem vulgus appelat “Pretre Jan”, per oratorem suum submisit se sedi Romanae, nonnihil expostulans cum pontifice, quod ea gens, quum a fide Christi non sit aliena, tam diu fuerit a totius orbis pastore neglecta.’ On Prester John the man and the legend, see Meir Bar-Ilan, ‘Prester John: Fiction and History’, History of European Ideas 20 (1995): 291–8; Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh, 1991); C.F. Beckingham, ‘The Quest for Prester John’, Bulletin of The John Rylands Library 62 (1980): 290–310; C.E. Nowell, ‘The Historical Prester John’, Speculum 28 (1953): 435–45. On the African and Ethiopian context: E.D. Ross, ‘Prester John and the Empire of Ethiopia’, in Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur P. Newton (New York, 1968; first published in 1926), 174–94; on the linkage between the story of Prester John and Eldad the Danite, see Micha Perry, ‘The Imaginary War Between Prester John and Eldad the Danite and Its Real Implications’, Viator 41 (2010): 1–23.

51 Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians: The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa, Against the Persecutors and Slanderers of the Peoples of the New World Discovered Across the Seas, trans. and ed. Stafford Poole and C.M. DeKalb (Illinois, 1974), 28–53. See also Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, 126–37.

52 Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, ‘Religion and Race: Protestant and Catholic Discourses on Jewish Conversion in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in The Origins of Racism in the West, ed. Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 265–75 (especially 266, 271); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, 2001), 35–7. For a lucid summary of the subject: Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, ‘Jewish Life and Books under Scrutiny: Ethnography, Polemics, and Converts’ (Introduction), in Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß (Berlin, 2017), 12–14.