Erasmus, Luther, Hus

[exiled]

Were these men labeled heretics because they called the church on the selling of indulgences, etc, or was it because they were leading people into a false religion, i.e. sola scriptura?
Any references to letters would be great.

 

[LilyM]

I’m afraid I can’t refer to any specific documents for you, but I do know that the Church made very clear pronouncements against the sale of indulgences shortly after Luther started raising the issue.

In any event it certainly never was permitted legally to sell them (although as a practical issue a blind eye may have been turned in view of the money needed for building of St Peters)

So obviously they took that particular criticism on board, and you know Luther et al went well beyond the legitimate criticism of the sale of indulgences.

 

[Contarini]

Were these men labeled heretics because they called the church on the selling of indulgences, etc, or was it because they were leading people into a false religion, i.e. sola scriptura?
Any references to letters would be great.

Erasmus was never condemned personally, although many of his writings (perhaps all?) were placed on the Index. As far as I know none of his ideas were specifically labeled heretical–the idea was more that he was too satirical and questioning in his attitude and that his books would lead impressionable students to challenge the Church’s authority. As far as I know Erasmus never questioned the Church’s authority to interpret Scripture–he simply tended to have a minimalist understanding of Church dogma and to emphasize the consensus of antiquity rather than the details of scholastic theology. As a matter of fact, during his lifetime he had pretty good relations with the Popes, and often called on his connections in the Curia to protect him from attacks by university theologians. As many 20th-century Catholic theologians have loved to point out, late medieval universities claimed a magisterial authority to decide what was and was not orthodox. The irony is that in the early 16th century they tended to be the “conservatives” in the Church–Rome was often more open to new ideas than Paris or Cologne or Louvain. After Trent the atmosphere at Rome changed significantly, but Erasmus was safely dead by then.

Luther’s biggest offense, it seems to me, was his criticism of Catholic sacramental theology. One ecclesiastical diplomat (Glapion I think) remarked at Worms in 1521 that some kind of accommodation could be reached with regard to all Luther’s works except for the *Babylonian Captivity *(which concerned the sacraments). That had to be recanted or there was no deal. Luther and his followers tended to see justification by faith as the main issue at stake, while the Catholics saw the sacraments as the most important issue.

I think the main reason Hus was condemned was ecclesiology–his view that the Church was the invisible company of the elect, which took away from the authority of the visible hierarchy.

Edwin