Quinten Matsys, The Ill-Matched Couple, 1520-25, National Gallery, Washington.
By Karel Vereycken, August 2024.
Summary
Introduction
A. Making our values great again
Cynical jokes or Socratic dialogue?
What is Christian humanism?
Petrarch and the “Triumph” of Death
The Age of GoodLaughter
Sebastian Brant, Hieronymus Bosch and The Ship of Fools
B. Quinten Matsys’ Early Life and biography
From blacksmith to painter
Duchy of Brabant
Training: Bouts, Memling and Van der Goes
Getting started in Antwerp and abroad
C. Selected Works and thematics
The Virgin and the Child, « Divine Grace » and « Free Will«
The Saint Anne Altarpiece
A New Perspective
Cooperation with Patinir, Dürer and Leonardo
The Erasmus Connection
Thomas More’s Utopia
Pieter Gillis and « The Friendship diptych«
The Da Vinci Connection (I)
D. The Art of Erasmian Grotesque
In religious paintings
Misers, Bankers and Money-changers, the Fight against Usury
The Da Vinci Connection (II)
The Art of Grotesqueper se
The metaphor of the “Ill-matched Lovers”
Leonardo’s baby: “The Ugly Duchess”
E. Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
In the early XVIth Century, Quinten Matsys (1466–1530), emerged as a major painter in Antwerp where he worked for over 20 years creating numerous works, among which profound religious triptychs, amazingly detailed portraits and some of the most hilarious satirical works in the history of painting.
To do honor and do justice to this badly well-known artist, we will explore and highlight here his Erasmian spirit and some of his most mind-provoking artistic contributions.
Quinten Matsys.
At the turn of the century, attracting talents from all over the continent as a magnet, Antwerp, and with some 90,000 inhabitants, had become a growing port and trade center, outdoing the Medici’s dominated Brugge in importance.
Unfortunately, today, large international publishing houses, such as Taschen, for reasons yet unclear, seem to have condemned this highly remarkable artist to oblivion. For all those reasons, one finds hardly mention of Matsys’ name. It only appears in a short chapter dealing with the “Antwerp school”, at the end of Les Primitifs flamands et leur temps (656 pages, Renaissance du Livre, 1994). Even worse, not a single of his works is presented and only two mentions of his name appear in L’art flamand et hollandais, le siècles des primitifs (613 pages, Citadelles et Mazenod, 2003).
The good news is that since 2007, the Ghent Interdisciplinary Centre for Art and Science is working on a new « catalogue raisonné » of his work. That of Larry Silver (Phaedon Press, 1984) is mostly unavailable or/and became largely unaffordable. What remains is the one of Andrée de Bosque (Arcade Press, Brussels, 1975), with very few color prints. As a consolation, readers can access Harald Brising’s 1908 doctoral thesis, in a reprint version of 2019.
To honor and do some justice to this artist, we will attempt to explore in this article some questions left unanswered so far. To what extent did Erasmus’ work directly inspired Matsys, Patinir and their circle? What do we know about the exchanges between this group and prominent Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer? What influence did the Erasmian artist exert on his foreign correspondents? Erasmus wasn’t really a fan of what was called “religious” paintings in those days, preferring agapic action for the common good to passive devotion of holy images.
As Belgian art critic Georges Marlier (1898-1968) pointed out in 1954, in his well documented book, while Erasmus respected and honored holy paintings if they evoked real religious sentiment, love and tenderness, that didn’t prevent him from thinking that:
“the real imitation of Christ and his Passion consists in mortifying the leanings that are warring against the mind rather than whining about the Christ as if it were an object of pity.” (p. 163)
Quinten Matsys. In the past, for good reasons this painting was named The Hypocrites, in modern times The Praying Monks.
Our previous inquiries into the works of both Erasmus and Dürer have familiarized us with Matsys’ age and its challenges, a subject we can not redevelop here at full length, but which gives the author some solid grounds to accomplish this task.
A. Getting our values straight
1. Cynical jokes or Socratic dialogue?
« Tussen neus en lepel », Dutch proverb meaning literally « between nose and spoon », i.e. « between one thing and another. »
Many modern viewers, with untrained eyes and minds steeped in a culture of abusive wokism and pessimism, lack the moral and intellectual integrity to understand the jokes, irony and metaphors which were the very essence of cultural life in the Low Countries of that time.
Lost in their own cultural prejudices, in looking at a painted face, they miss the visual puns the artist is making, trying instead to establish its identity as if the subject was a portrait. They pay obsessive (eventually useful) attention to “secret” and symbolic meanings of iconographic details hoping that their sum will somehow allow them to arrive at a sort of meaning.
We will look here afresh at Erasmus’, Matsys’ and Leonardo’s “grotesques,” which are not “cynical jokes” showing a “lack of tolerance” towards “ugly”, “sick”, “abnormal” or “different” people, as the accusation goes, but caricatures and jokes aimed to free our minds!
Erasmus and his three main followers Rabelais, Cervantes and Shakespeare, are the real if rarely recognized incarnations of “Christian humanism” and good laughter as a powerful political weapon to educate people’s characters, was not yet outlawed at their time.
2. What is Christian Humanism?
The thrust of Erasmus‘ educational and political programme was the promotion of docta pietas, learned piety, or what he termed the “Philosophy of Christ”. It can be summarized as a “wedding” between the humanist principles summarized in Plato’s Republic and the agapic notion of man transmitted by the Holy scriptures and the writing’s of those early fathers of the Church as Jerome and Augustine who saw Plato as their imperfect precursor.
In a complete phase shift and break with feudal “blind” faith putting man’s hope uniquely in his salvation by Christ in a putative existence after death, for christian humanism, man’s nature is good and therefore the origin of evil is not man himself or some outside “Devil”, but those vices and moral afflictions Plato basically identified in his Republic centuries before being turned by the christian humanists into the famous “Seven Capital Sins” that had to be overcome by the “Seven Capital Virtues.”
The Seven Deadly Sins and the las four things (Death, Jugement, Heaven and Hell), c. 1500, painted table, Hieronymus Bosch, Prado, Madrid.
As a reminder, these deadly sins are:
Pride, (Superbia, hubris) as opposed to Humility (Humilitas);
Greed(Avaricia) as opposed to Charity (Caritas, Agapè);
Wrath(Ira, rage) as opposed to Patience (Patientia);
Envy(Invidia, jealousy) as opposed to Kindness (Humanitas);
Lust(Luxuria, fornication) as opposed to Chastity (Castitas);
Gluttony(Gula) as opposed to Temperance (Temperantia);
Sloth(Acedia, melancholy, spleen, moral laziness) as opposed to Diligence (Diligentia).
Isn’t it quite telling for our own times that these sins (affections preventing us from doing the good), and not their opposing virtues, have tragically been consecrated as the very basic values guaranteeing the well-functioning of the current “Neo-liberal” financial system and its « rules-based » world order!
“Private vices make public virtue”, argued Bernard Mandeville in his 1705’s The Fable of the Bees. It is the dynamics of particular interests that stimulate the prosperity of a society, according to this Dutch theorist who inspired Adam Smith, and for whom “morality” only invites lethargy and provokes the misfortune of the city.
It is greed and perpetual pleasure-seeking and not the Common Good that have been proclaimed to be man’s essential motives, according to the dominant school of British Empiricism: Locke, Hume, Smith and consorts.
“Charity,” “Care” and “Humanitarian” aid have been reduced to a despicable and increasingly rare Lady-do-rightly activity allowing the current system to perpetuate its criminal existence. Oligarchical and banking families’ “charities” and “foundations” have even become the oligarchy’s tool to impose their perpetual dominance.
3. Petrarch and the “Triumph of Death”
Women looking in a mirror, surprised by Death and the Devil, 1515, engraving of Daniel Hopfer.
Christianity, as all major humanist religions, relentlessly labor to shake up those wasting their lives in sinful behavior by showing them how their behavior is both dramatic and even ridiculous in light of the extreme shortness of individual physical existence.
Dürer made this the core theme of his three famous Meisterstiche (master engravings) who have to be interpreted and cannot be understood but as one single unity: Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in His Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514).
In each of these engravings one can find an hourglass, metaphor for the inexorable march of time. Saint Jerome is often depicted with an hourglass (time) and a skul (mortality), a metaphor for vanitas. Erasmus made of these concepts his personal banner together with the moto: “Concedi Nulli » which refers to death saying that nobody will escape her grip, underlining even more the inexorable nature of human mortality. In that sense, the Christian Renaissance, was a mass movement for spiritual immortality, both against religious superstition and against the revival of Greco-Roman paganism.
Illustration of Petrarch’s Triomph of Fame over Death.
Petrarch’s triumphs are “concatenated,” so that the Triumph of Love (over Mankind and even Gods) is itself triumphed over by another allegorical force, the Triumph of Chastity. In its turn, Chastity is triumphed over by Death; Death is overcome by Fame; Fame is conquered by Time; and even Time is ultimately overcome by Eternity, the Triumph of God over all such worldly concerns.
Since death will “triumph” at the end of our ephemeral physical existence, the fear of death and the fear of God should help man concentrate to contribute something immortal to future generations rather than get lost in the labyrinth of earthly pleasures and pains that Hieronymus Bosch’s (1450-1516) depicted with great irony in his Garden of Earthly delights (1503-1515), .
Leonardo, whose far advanced scientific-religious sentiment was considered a heresy by many in Rome, expressed with some anger in his notebooks that many men and women didn’t merit the beautiful human body God gave them.
“How many people there are who could be described as mere channels for food, shit factories, fillers of latrines, for they have no other purpose in this world; they do nothing even remotely worthwhile; all that remains after them is a load of shit.”
4. The Age of “Good Laughter”
Dictionaries have it that people have a “good laugh” when they find amusing and funny a situation that was at first upsetting. In short, good laughter is the reward of a true creative process when the “agony” of looking for solutions ends with finding one. That can be for scientific and practical questions but also in the development process of one’s personal identity. The storm and the clouds are gone and full light brings a new perspective.
Erasmus, « grotesque » self-portrait.
For the Christian humanists, through the “mirror-effect” intrinsically inherent to a “Socratic dialogue” (which starts by accepting what you know not – called docta ignorantia by Cusanus), man has and can be freed from these “sinful” afflictions, because man’s free will can be mobilized to bring him to act in accordance to his real (good) nature, that of dedicating himself and getting his ultimate pleasure in accomplishing the common good in service of the others, including in economic activities.
By claiming that man’s life on earth is fully predetermined by God, Luther’s denied the existence of the free will, and made man totally irresponsible for his own deeds. That viewpoint was the exact opposite of that of Erasmus who had started calling on the Church to curb their financial abuses such as the famous “indulgencies” longtime before Luther was brought on the scene.
All of Erasmus’ writings where put on the index of forbidden literature for Catholics. They remained on that list till 1910.
The Christian Humanists were firmly committed to elevate our souls to the highest realm of moral and intellectual beauty by freeing us from our earthly attachments — not by inflicting guilt feelings or moral orations and the lucrative business of fear from hell, but by laughter!
Laughter can ruin the authority of the powerful and the tyrants. Therefore, it is the most devastating political weapon ever conceived. For the evil forces, truth-seeking laughter, of the sort promoted by Erasmus and his followers, had and remains to be ignored, slandered and as much as possible eradicated and replaced with melancholy, obedience and submission to in advance justified narratives and doctrines of painful scholastic constipation.
5. Sebastian Brant, Hieronymus Bosch and The Ship of Fools
Sebastian Brant, ink drawing by Dürer.
Years before Erasmus published his In Praise of Folly (written in 1509 and first published in Paris in 1511), the Strasbourg humanist poet and social reformer Sebastian Brant(1558-1921), opened the of the gates of such Socratic laughter with his Narrenshiff (The Ship of Fools, published in 1494 in Basel, Strasbourg, Paris and Antwerp), a hilarious satirical work illustrated with engravings of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and later Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). 73 of the 105 illustrations for the original edition were produced by Dürer.
The Ship of Fools took Europe by a storm. Brant was not only a satirist but a well educated humanist who had notably translated Petrarch’s poems.
“Genre-painting,” wrote Georges Marlier in 1954 and more recently the American art historian Larry Silver, depicting aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities, was born with Quinten Matsys (One should rather say with the Erasmian paradigm we just identified).
Portrait of a man. A self-portrait? Portrait of a woman. His sister Catherine?
While there were some notable exceptions in XVth century Flanders (such as Jan van Eyck’s portrait of cardinal Nicolo Alberghati, 1431, Vienna), images of more ordinary women and men, wealthy tradesman and bankers, suddenly appeared as sovereign individuals to be portrayed for their own merits rather than as donors praying while assisting at a religious scene. Dürer made an engraving of « a cook and his wife. »
Of course, times had changed and so had the client-base of painters. The orders came much less from the religious orders and wealthy cardinals in Rome and increasingly more from wealthy bourgeois out to embellish their homes and eager to offer their portraits to friends.
The expansion of the Antwerp market that made paintings available as a middle-class luxury product is a well-studied phenomenon, and research has confirmed Ludovico Guicciardini’s claim that there were at least 300 active painters’ workshops in Antwerp by the 1560s.
Brant’s Ship of Fools, was a real turning point and game changer of the day, the prelude of a new paradigm. It marked the beginning of a long arch of creativity, reason and education through healthy laughter whose echo resonated loudly until the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1569. That élan was ony halted when Charles Vth resurrected the Inquisition in 1521 by plublishing his decrees (“placards”) forbidding ordinary citizens from reading, commenting and discussing the Bible.
The Ship of Fools is divided in 113 sections, each of which, with the exception of a short introduction and two concluding pieces, treats independently of a certain class of fools or vicious persons; and we are only occasionally reminded of the fundamental idea by an allusion to the ship. No folly of the century is left uncensored. The poet attacks with noble zeal the failings and extravagances of his age, and applies his sword unsparingly even against the dreaded Hydra of popery and monasticism.
The book opens with the denunciation of the first fool, one which turns away from the study of all the wonderful books in his possession. The third one (out of 113), not far away, is greed and avarice.
Coherent with this, is Hieronymus Bosch’s partly lost triptych. Modern research has established that Bosch’s Ship of Fools (Louvre, Paris), eventually painted before Brant wrote his satire, was the left panel of a triptych whose right panel was The Death of the Miser (National Gallery, Washington).
Interesting here, is the fact that there is no fatality in this painting and that what people become, a fool or a wise man, depends on each person’s personal decision, a doctrine quintessential to the convictions of the Brothers of the Common Life with whom Bosch, without being a member, had major affinities. Even the miser, until his last breath, can choose between looking up to Christ or down to the devil!
We ignore the theme of the central panel which is lost. But we do know that the backsides of the two lateral panels folded together complete the image of a Door-to-door salesman (before mistakenly called The return of the prodigal son) also depicted on the outside panels of Bosch’s triptych of the Hay wagon, showing kings, princes and popes running after a wagon full of hay (a metaphor for money).
The theme of a peregrinating peddler was very popular among the Brothers of the Common Live and the Devotio Moderna for whom individual responsibility and choice was decisive for each person to save above all himself with some help of God.
For Augustine, man is permanently confronted with an existential choice. Either he takes the bumpy, difficult road moving him to a spiritually more elevated position and closer to God, or he goes down the easy way by attaching himself to earthly passions and affections. The beauty of man and nature, warns Augustine, can and should be fully enjoyed and celebrated under condition they are understood as a mere “foretaste of divine wisdom” and not as purely earthly pleasures. The peddler as found in Bosch and Patinir is therefore a metaphor of mankind fighting to remain on the right road and in the right direction.
Bosch will populate his paintings with deprived men and women running like brainless animals behind little fruits as cherries and beys, metaphors for extremely ephemeral earthly pleasures unable to offer any real durable satisfaction.
Homo Viator, always going from one place to the next. Illustration for Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly by Hans Holbein the Younger.
The peddler advances “op een slof en een schoen” (on a slipper and a shoe) i.e., he has abandoned his house and has left the created world of sin (we see a bordello, drunkards, etc.), and all material possessions. With his “staff” (a symbol of Faith) he succeeds in repelling the “infernal dogs” (Evil) that try to hold him back. Such metaphorical images are not personal outbursts of the exuberant imagination of Bosch, but a common image very much used in that period. An illumination of a fourteenth-century English psalm book, the Luttrell Psalter, features exactly the same allegorical representation.
The same theme, that of a homo viator, the man who detaches himself from earthly goods, is also recurrent in the art and literature of this period, particularly since the Dutch translation of Pèlerinage de la vie et de l’âme humaine (pilgrimage of life and the human soul), written in 1358 by the Norman Cistercian monk Guillaume de Degulleville (1295-after 1358).
If the three surviving images on the panels of the Bosch triptych (the Ship of fools, the Miser and the Peregrinating peddler) are hard to connect when analysed separately, their coherence appears strongly once one identifies this overriding concept.
Today, an imaginative, creative painter could try to find out what Bosch’s lost panel would have looked like, the theme certainly having focused on the origin of evil (going from a ship of fools to the death of the miser).
B. Quinten Matsys, biographical elements
With this in mind, and knowing what were the stakes at that time, we can now examine more profoundly Matsys’ life and some of his works.
1. From Blacksmith to painter
Quinten Matsys, bronze medal with self-portrait.
One of four children, Quinten Matsys was born in Leuven to Joost Matsys (d. 1483) and Catherine van Kincken sometime between April 4 and September 10, 1466. Most early accounts of Matsys’ life are composed primarily of legends and very little contemporary accounts exist of the nature of his activities or character.
According to the Historiae Lovaniensium by Joannes Molanus (1533-1585), Matsys was born in Leuven between April 4 and September 10, 1466, as one of four children of Joost Matsys (d. 1483) and Catherine van Kincken.
Most accounts of his life blend fact and legend. In reality, there are very few clues as to his activity or character.
In Leuven, Quinten is said to have had modest beginnings as an ironworker. Legend has it that he fell in love with a beautiful girl who was also being courted by a painter. As the girl much preferred painters to blacksmiths, Quentin quickly abandoned the anvil for the paintbrush.
In 1604, chronicler Karel Van Mander states that Quintin, stricken with an illness since the age of twenty, “was in the impossibility to earn his bread” as a blacksmith.
Van Mander reminds us that in Antwerp, during « Shrove Tuesday » celebrations,
“… the brothers who cared for the sick would go around town, carrying a large carved and painted wooden torch, distributing engraved and colored images of saints to the children; so they needed a large number of them. It so happened that one of the confreres went to see Quentin and advised him to color some of these images, with the result that Quentin tried his hand at the job. From this tiny beginning, his talent became apparent, and from then on he began to paint with great enthusiasm. In no time at all, he made extraordinary progress and became an accomplished master.”
(Karel Van Mander, The Book of Painters, 1604)
Antwerp, etching on zinc, by Karel Vereycken, 2011.
In Antwerp, in front of Our Lady’s cathedral at the Handschoenmarkt (glove market), one still can find the « putkevie » (a decorated wrought iron gate on a well) said to be made by Quinten Matsys himself and depicting the legend of Silvius Brabo and Druon Antigoon, respectively the names of a mythical Roman officer who liberated Antwerp from the oppression of a giant called Antigoon who would harm the trade of the city by blocking the entrance of the river.
The inscription on the well reads: “Dese putkevie werd gesmeed door Quinten Matsijs. De liefde maeckte van den smidt eenen schilder.” (« The ironwork for this well was forged by Quinten Matsys. Love made the blacksmith a painter. »)
Documented donations and possessions of Quinten’s father Joost Matsys indicate that the family had a respectable income and that financial need was not the most likely reason for which Matsys turned to painting.
Virgin and Child Enthroned, 1505, Quinten Matsys.
Although no evidence exists documenting Quinten Metsys’ training before his enrolment as a free master in the Antwerp painter’s guild in 1491, his brother Joos Matsys II’s design project in Leuven and their father’s activities suggest that the young artist first learned how to draw and transfer his ideas to paper from his family and that they first exposed him to architectural forms and their creative deployment.
His earlier works in particular clearly suggest that he had training as an architectural draughtsman. In his 1505 Virgin and Child Enthroned, the divine titular characters are seated on a gilded throne whose gothic tracery echoes that in the window on the parchment drawing and the limestone model for the St Peter’s project to which his brother was assigned at around the same time.
What we do know for sure is that the artist produced some magnificent bronze medaillons representing Erasmus, his sister Catarina and himself.
Around 1492, he married Alyt van Tuylt, who gave him three children: two sons, Quinten and Pawel, and a daughter, Katelijne. Alyt died in 1507 and Quentin remarried a year later. With his new wife Catherina Heyns, they had ten more children, five sons and five daughters. Shortly after their father’s death, two of his sons, Jan (1509-1575) and Cornelis (1510-1556), became painters and members of the Antwerp Guild.
2. The Duchy of Brabant
Leuven.
Leuven, at that time, was the capital of the Duchy of Brabant which extended from Luttre, south of Nivelles to ‘s Hertogenbosch. It included the cities of Aalst, Antwerp, Mechelen, Brussels and Leuven, where in 1425, one of the first universities of Europe saw the light.
Five years later, in 1430, together with the Duchies of Lower Lotharingia and Limburg, Brabant was inherited by Philip the Good of Burgundy and became part of the Burgundian Netherlands.
Jacob Fugger the Elder, the richist man of the world of his time.
Then, when Matsys was around 11 years old, in 1477, the Duchy of Brabant fell under Hapsburg rule as part of the dowry of Mary of Burgundy to Spanish king Charles V. The subsequent history of Brabant is part of the history of the Hapsburg « Seventeen Provinces » increasingly under the control of such Augsburg banking families as the Fuggers and Welsers.
Erasmus and Matsys epoch was a glorious period of the “Renaissance in the North” but also marks the continuous efforts of these banking families’ to “buy up” the papacy and achieve world hegemony. The imperial geopolitical sharing of the entire world among the Spanish Empire (run by Venetian bankers) and the Portuguese Empire (run by Genovese bankers), a deal formalized by the Treaty of Tordesillas, endorsed in 1494 in the Vatican by Pope Alexander VI Borgia, opened the gates to colonial subjugation of people and countries, fueled by a highly questionable sense of cultural superiority.
Following the never-ending state bankruptcies of these financial oligarchs, the Low Countries fell prey to economic looting, military dictatorship and fanaticism. By demonizing Luther, increasingly committed to creating an opposition outside the Catholic church, the oligarchy avoided successfully those urgent reforms called for by the Erasmians to eradicate abuses and corruption inside the Catholic church. Rome’s refusal to accept Henry VIII’s demands for divorce, were part of an overall strategy to plunge the entire European continent in “religious wars,” that only ended with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
3. Training: Bouts, Van der Goes and Memling
The early triptychs, painted by Matsys, gained him a lot of praise and got historians to present him as one of the last “Flemish Primitives”, in reality a nickname given by Michelangelo to intrinsically slander and discredit all non-Italian art considered “Gothic” (barbarian), or “primitive” in comparison to Italian art whichh immitated the immortal antique style.
In 1476, one year after his father’s death, Albrecht reportedly left Leuven, perhaps to complete his training with a master outside the city, most probably Hugo van der Goes (1440-1482), whose influence on Aelbrecht Bouts, but also on Quinten Matsys, seems to have been direct.
Van der Goes, who became the dean of the Painting guild of Ghent in 1474 and died in 1482 in Red Cloister close to Brussels, was a vehement follower of the Brother’s of the Common Life and their principles. As a young assistant of Aelbrecht Bouts, and getting training from Van der Goes, Matsys could have discovered what was the cradle of Christian humanism at that time.
Van der Goes‘s most famous surviving work is the Portinari Triptych (Uffizi, Florence), an altarpiece commissioned for the church of Sant’Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence by Tommaso Portinari, the manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank.
The raw features of the shepherds (expressing the three states of spiritual elevation identified by the Brothers of the Common Life) in van der Goes’s composition made a deep impression on painters working in Florence.
Quinten Matsys, portrait of Jacob Obrecht.
Matsys is also considered as a possible pupil of Hans Memling(1430-1494), the latter being a follower of Van der Weyden and a leading painter in Brugge.
Memling’s style and that of Matsys, in certain aspects, are hard to distinguish.
While the Flemish art historian Dirk de Vos inscribed, in his 1994 catalogue of Hans Memling’s work, the portrait of the musician and composer Jacob Obrecht (1496, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), as a very late work by Hans Memling, current experts, among which Larry Silver, agreed in 2018, that in reality, it is far more likely that the portrait is the earliest known work of Quinten Matsys.
Obrecht, who was a major influence on polyphonic Renaissance music, had been named choirmaster of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp in 1492. Erasmus served as one of Obrecht’s choirboys around 1476.
Obrecht made at least two trips to Italy, once in 1487 at the invitation of Duke Ercole d’Este I of Ferrare and again in 1504. Ercole had heard Obrecht’s music, which is known to have circulated in Italy between 1484 and 1487, and said that he appreciated it above the music of all other contemporary composers; consequently he invited Obrecht who died from the plague in Italy.
Already in the 1460s, Erasmus teacher in Deventer, music composer and organist Rudolph Agricola, had travelled to Italy. After studying civil low in Pavia and attending lectures by Battista Guarino, he went to Ferrare where he became a protégé of the Este court.
Around 1499 Leonardo made a drawing of Ercole’s daughter, Isabella d’Este, according to some to be the person painted in the Mona Lisa.
Isabella d’Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre, Paris.Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vince, Louvre, Paris.
4. Getting started in Antwerp and abroad
Matsys was registered in Leuven in 1491, but the same year he was equally admitted as a master painter in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp where, at the age of twenty-five, he decided to settle. In Antwerp, as said before, he depicted the choirmaster Jacob Obrecht in 1496, his first known work, and several Virgin and Child devotional paintings.
After that, since the Liggeren (painting guild records) don’t report any information about Matsys activity in the Low Countries for a period of several years, it remains very tempting to imagine Matsys going on an eventual trip to Italy. There, he could have met great masters among which Leonardo da Vinci, who lived in Milan between 1482 and 1499 and returned to Milan in 1506 where he met his pupil Francesco Melzi(1491-1567) who later accompanied him to France. Matsys could also have traveled over the Rhine to Strasbourg or Colmar. He eventually could have traveled to Nuremberg where he could have met Albrecht Dürer which he seems to have known longtime before the latter came to the Netherlands in 1520.
Dürer was sent by his parents to Alsace to be trained in the art of engraving by Martin Schongauer(1450-1491). But when he arrived in Colmar in the summer of 1492, Schongauer had died. From Colmar the artist traveled to Basel, where he made designs for the woodcut illustrations for books and discovered the impressive engravings of Jacob Burgkmair(1473-1531) and Hans Holbein the Elder (1460-1524). He then went to Strasbourg in 1492 where he met and made the portrait of the erudite humanist poet and author Sebastian Brant already mentioned above.
C. Selected Works
1. The Virgin and the Child, Divine Grace and the Free Will
Quinten Matsys, Virgin and Child, Brussels.Quinten Matsys, Virgin and Child, Rotterdam.
In 1495, Matsys painted a Virgin and Child (left) (Brussels). Even while still very normative, Matsys already “enriches” devotion with less formal scenery of daily life. The child, playfully exploring new physical principles, clumsily tries to turn the pages of a book, while a very serious Virgin sits herself in an elaborated niche of Gothic architecture, probably chosen to fit with the building or house where the work would end up being exposed.
Another Virgin and Child (right) (Rotterdam) of Matsys goes even further in this direction. It shows a quite happy caring young mother with a playful child, underlying the fact that Christ was the son of God but now had become human.
On a display close to the viewer, a loaf of bread and a cup of milk-soup with a spoon, undoubtedly the daily scene for most inhabitants of the Low Countries trying to feed their children.
Gerard David, Madonna and Child with the Milk Soup, 1520, Brussels
Another “Madonna and child with the milk soup,” (Brussels) this one painted in 1520 by Matsys’ friend, the painterGerard David (1460-1523), literally shows a young mother teaching her child that the backside of a spoon is not the best tool to transfer milk soup to one’s mouth.
One outstanding feature of many virgins of these period, be it by Quinten Matsys (Virgin and Child, Louvre, 1529, Paris) or Gerard David (Rest on the flight into Egypt, National Gallery, Washington), is the image of the child trying, with great difficulties, to get a hold on a fruit, be it a cherry or a grape of raisin.
Gerard David, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c. 1510, National Gallery, Washington.Quinten Matsys, Virgin and Child, Louvre, Paris.Quinten Matsys, Virgin and Child, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
In 1534, in his Diatribe on the Free Will, Erasmus also used this metaphor on the fragile equilibrium to be considered in the proportion between the operations of the free will (which, alone, separated from a higher purpose, can become pure arrogance) and those of divine grace (which alone can be misunderstood as a form of predestination).
To make that point clear with an image, Erasmus paints a very simple metaphor, but of extreme tenderness and beauty:
“A father has a child still incapable of walking; it falls; the father pulls him up while the child makes hectic moves and struggles to keep his balance; he shows him a fruit in front of him; the child strives to grab it, but because the weakness of its limbs it would quickly fall if the father did not stretch out his hand to support and guide his walking.
Thus, guided by his father, the child arrives at the fruit that the father willingly puts in his hands as a reward for his effort. The child would never have risen if the father had not lifted him up; he would never have seen the fruit if the father had not shown it to him; he could not have advanced had the father not supported his feeble steps; and he would not have reached the fruit if his father had not put it into his hands.
What will the child claim as his own acts in this case? Hence, one cannot say he did not do anything. But there is no reason to glorify his strength, since he owes to his father everything that he is.”
In short, free will, yes, but without pretending that man can do it alone.
2. Saint Anne Altarpiece
The painted « portico » on the flat panel formed one single unity with the three dimensional original frame, lost today.
In Antwerp, Matsys’ activity made a major step forward with the first important public commissions for two large triptych altarpieces: the beautiful Lamentation quite inspired by Roger Van der Weyden’s Deposition of the cross (Prado, Madrid) and the Saint Anne Altarpiece (1507–1509) and was painted for the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Leuven and signed “Quinte Matsys screef dit.” (Quinten Matsys wrote this).
The content and narrative of the painting was of course entirely dictated to the painter by the commissioners willing to decorate their dedicated chapel of the Church. The central panel depicts the history of the family of St Anne – the Holy Kinship – inside a monumental building crowned by a truncated dome and arcades that offer a wide view on a mountainous landscape.
The altarpiece depicts five scenes from the life of Anne, the Virgin’s mother and her husband Joachim. The various members of the saint’s family appear on the central panel. The key event in the life of Anne and her husband Joachim, namely that they will become the parents of the Virgin Mary while they thought themselves incapable of having children, is depicted in the left and right panels of the triptych.
The Chaste Kiss
The Virgin’s “immaculate” conception, depicted as a chaste kiss between the couple in front of the Golden Gate of the Jerusalem city wall, was already a very popular subject matter painted before by Giotto and later by Dürer.
chaste meeting between Anne and Joachim at Jerusalem’s Golden GateGiotto’s versionDirk Bouts, Virgin and Child.
The “chaste kiss” as a metaphor for the immaculate conception of the Virgin, was well received by the public. As a result, it was rapidly transposed to the immaculate conception of Christ himself. Hence, the sudden appearance of paintings showing Mary “kissing” her baby as close as on the lips.
The cycle on the Altarpiece ends with Anne’s death depicted on the inside right panel where she is surrounded by her children and Christ giving his blessings.
Despite the impressive scale and the conventional narrative, Matsys sought to create a more intimate feeling of contemplation. An example of this is the figure of the small cousin of Jesus in the left corner, who playfully gathers beautiful illuminations around him and, now fully focused, tries to read them.
3. A new perspective
In two other articles, I have underscored the fact that both Jan Van Eyck and Lorenzo Ghiberti, were quite familiar with “Arab optics”, in particular the works of Ibn al-Haytham (known by his Latinized name Alhazen).
During the Renaissance, at least two “schools”, after opposing each other, ended up completing each other respecting the best way to represent “space” in art. For one school, centered on Alberti, space could be reduced to a “central” vanishing point, i.e. a purely mathematical geometrical construction. For the other, that of Roger Bacon, Witelo and later Kepler, one had to start from the physiognomy of both eyes and how they produce the image of space in the mind. Van Eyck and Ghiberti used both approaches employing either the one-eyed « cyclopic » Alberti model denounced by Leonardo, or the « bi-focal » Alhazen approach.
Since the cyclopic approach has been decreed to be the only “mathematical” and therefore the only “scientific” way to represent space, the bi-focal approach was slandered as being full of “errors” or purely intuitive and “non-scientific”. Among those accused, most paintings of the “Flemish Primitives”
In 2010, Jochen Ketels and Maximiliaan Martens investigated Matsys’s 1509 Saint AnneAltarpiece and the impressive italianate portico on the central panel to be understood as a visual element integrating the entire work in a three-dimensional wooden frame currently lost (see images above).
“When we directed our photographic lamps to the central panel, they reported, the raking light revealed something that hadn’t been mentioned in the literature at all: incised construction lines in the coffered vaults of the architecture.” Infra-red also brought to light the existence of “a complicated set of drawn construction lines, both freehand as well as aided ones, created with several tools and techniques. Not only has such a complex construction system not been observed in Northern paintings of this period, Matsys must have used a mathematically based procedure to construct the complex loggia.”
(…) “To design the contours of the truncated dome and its decoration, Matsys hardly used any lines, but preferred points” (…) “to the bottom of the capital, Matsys added a few separated letters, presumably a ‘z’, ‘e’ or ‘c’ and ‘l’ or ‘e’. Because of their position close to the element, and the fact that e.g. Piero della Francescahad already used a similar system with numbers and letters in his drawings in De Prospectiva Pingendi (On the perspective of paintings, about 1480), there are reasons to assume a link with the outline or the composition of the column.”
Study of Dürer, after Piero della Francesca. What Dürer calles Piero’s « transfer » method would become the basis for projective geometry, the key science that made possible the industrial revolution.
In this respect, it is noteworthy that one of the rare persons, in contact with Matsys at one point or another, which had read and studied Piero della Francesca’s treaty on perspective was none-other than Albrecht Dürer, whose own Treatise on human proportion builds on Piero’s groundbreaking achievements.
The investigators also verified Matsys’ use of the central vanishing point perspective by employing the “cross-ratio” method. Astonished, they demonstrate that “Matsys shows his competence in matters of perspective, equal to Italian renaissance standards” and was “very correct, indeed.”
Till now, it was taken for granted that the science of perspective only reached the Low Countries after Jan Gossaert’s trip to Rome in 1508, while Matsys’s, showing his masterful and extensive knowledge of science of perspective, started composing this oeuvre as early as 1507.
4. Matsys’ cooperation with Patinir, Dürer and Leonardo
One last note regarding this painting, the mountainous landscape behind the figures, already akin to the typical, eerie landscapes produced years later by Matsys’ friend Joachim Patinir 1480-1524, another badly known giant in the history of painting.
Felipe de Guevara, a friend and artistic assessor to both Charles V and Philip II, mentions Patinir in his Commentaries on Painting (1540) as one of the three greatest painters, alongside Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck.
Antwerp.
Portrait de Joachim Patinir, par Albrecht Dürer.
A final note on this painting: the mountainous landscape behind the figures already resembles the typical, disquieting landscapes produced by Matsys’s close friend Joachim Patinir (1480-1524), another little-known giant in the history of painting.
Yet Patinir’s authority was no mean feat. Felipe de Guevara, friend and artistic advisor to Charles V and Philip II, mentions Patinir in his Commentaries on Painting (1540) as one of the three greatest painters in the region, alongside Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck.
Patinir ran a large studio with assistants in Antwerp. Among those under the triple influence of Bosch, Matsys and Patinir are:
Cornelis Matsys (1508-1556), son of Quinten, who married Patinir’s daughter;
Herri met de Bles (1490-1566), active in Antwerp, possible nephew of Patinir;
Lucas Gassel (1485-1568), active in Brussels and Antwerp;
Jan Mostaert (1475-1552), painter active in Haarlem;
Frans Mostaert (1528-1560), painter active in Antwerp;
Jan Wellens de Cock (1460-1521), painter active in Antwerp;
Matthijs Wellens de Cock (1509-1548), painter-engraver active in Antwerp;
Jérôme Wellens de Cock (1510-1570), painter-engraver, who, with his wife Volcxken Diericx, founded In de Vier Winden, probably the largest engraving workshop north of the Alps at the time, employing Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
It is generally accepted that Matsys painted the figures in some of Patinir’s landscapes. According to the 1574 Escorial inventory, this was the case for The Temptations of Saint Anthony (1520, Prado, Madrid).
One is tempted to think that this collaboration between friends worked both ways, with Patinir creating landscapes for Matsys’ works and at his request, a reality that somewhat challenges the persistent myth of a Renaissance presented as the cradle of modern individualism.
The fact that Matsys and Patinir were very close is confirmed by the fact that, after Patinir’s untimely death (at age 44), Matsys became the guardian of his two daughters. It’s also interesting to note that Gerard David, who became Bruges’ leading painter after Memling, became a member of the St. Lucas guild in Antwerp in 1515 jointly with Patinir, which gave him legal access to the booming Antwerp art market.
Modern art historians tend to present Patinir as the “inventor” of landscape painting, claiming that for him religious subjects were mere pretexts for the development of landscapes that were the true protagonists, much as Rubens painted Adam and Eve only because we wanted to paint nudes.
Eventually true for Rubens but dead wrong for Patinir, whose “beautiful” landscapes, as art historian Reindert L. Falkenberg documented in depth, were nothing but a sophisticated sort of deceptive trick of the devil attracting souls to attach themselves to earthly pleasure…
Visit of Dürer to Antwerp, painting by Henri Leys, 1855, Antwerp.
Albrecht Dürer
A unique source of information is Dürer’s diary of his visit to the Low Countries. Why did Dürer come to the Low Countries? One of the explanations is that following the death of his main patron and order giver emperor Maximilian I, the artist came in an effort to get his pension confirmed by Charles V.
Dürer arrived in Antwerp on August 3, 1520 and visited Brussels and Mechelen where he was received by Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), aunt of Charles V, who sometimes lent Erasmus a sympathetic ear, in charge of administering the Burgondian Low Countries as long as Charles was to young.
Palace of Margaret of Austria in Mechelen.Court of Hieronymus van Busleyden in Mechelen.
In 1504, de’ Barbari met Dürer in person in Nuremberg and the pair discussed the canon of human proportions, a core subject of the latter’s research.
Hence, an unpublished draft version of Dürer’s own treatise on the subject reveals that he thought the Italian was holding back on him:
“…I find no one who has written anything about how to make a canon of human proportions except for a man named Jacob, born in Venice and a charming painter. He showed me a man and a woman which he had made according to measure, so that I would now rather see what he meant than behold a new kingdom… Jacobus did not want to show his principles to me clearly, that I saw well”
(as quoted in Levinson Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art).
By March of 1510 de’ Barbari was in the employ of Archduchess Margaret in Brussels and Mechelen. In January 1511, he fell ill and made a will, and, in March, the Archduchess gave him a pension for life on account of his age and weakness. He was dead by 1516, leaving the Archduchess with his stock of 23 engraving plates. But when Dürer asked her to provide some of de’ Barbari’s writings on human proportion, she politely declined his request.
Dürer, sketchy portrait of Erasmus in 1520 in Antwerp, Louvre, ParisLucas Van Leyden, sketch by Dürer.Old man of Antwerp, Dürer.
The artist’s diary reveals nevertheless that he was often entertained by his local colleagues. In Antwerp, « I went to see Quinten Matsys in his house, » wrote Dürer in his journal.
In the same city, he makes a portrait sketch of Lucas van Leyden (1489-1533), and the famous portrait of the 93 year old bearded old man who became the model for his St. Jerome.
He met Erasmus at least three times, and sketched a wonderful portrait of him showing mutual complicity. Erasmus placed an order with him since the humanist needed a large number of portraits to send to his correspondents throughout Europe. As his diary indicates, Dürer sketched Erasmus several times in charcoal during these meetings and used them for an engraved portrait of him six years later.
After the death of his wife, Patinir married Johanna Noyts. On 5 May 1521, he invited Albrecht Dürer to his wedding. How and when that friendship started, or if it was just opportunistic, is not known. The master of Nuremberg sketched Patinir’s portrait and called him « der gute Landschaftsmaler » (« the good landscape painter »), creating a new word for what became a new genre.
Jan Provoost, Death and the Miser, c. 1515, Groeningenmuseum, Brugge.
One figure that could have mediated the encounters between intellectuals and craftsmen, was the poet, Latin teacher and philologist Cornelis de Schrijver (Grapheus)(1482-1558), a collaborator of Erasmus printer Dirk Martens. In 1520, he became secretary to the city of Antwerp.
Printers and editors played a key role in the Renaissance as they where the key middlemen between intellectuals, erudites and scholars on the one side, and illustrators, engravers, painters and craftsmen on the other side.
Just as Erasmus and many other humanists, Dürer is also said to have been the guest of Quinten Matsys in the latter’s fabulous house in the Schuttershofstraat, decorated with Italianate decorations (festoons of leaves, flowers or fruit) and grotesques (decorative and symmetric network of lines and figures).
An idealized representation of the Dürer-Matsys encounter (with Thomas More and Erasmus looking on) can be seen in a painting of Nicaise de Keyser (1813-1887) at the Royal Museum of Arts of Antwerp.
Another scene, an 1889 drawing by Godfried Guffens (1823-1901) shows the Antwerp Alderman Gerard van de Werve receiving Albrecht Dürer presented to him by Quinten Matsys.
When Charles V returned from Spain and visited Antwerp, Grapheus wrote a panegyric to welcome his return. But in 1522, he was arrested for heresy, taken to Brussels for interrogation and imprisonment. As a result, he lost his position as secretary. In 1523, he was released and returned to Antwerp, where he became a Latin teacher. In 1540, he was reinstated as secretary of the city of Antwerp.
Quentin Matsys’ own sister Catherine and her husband suffered at Leuven in 1543 for what had become the capital offense of reading the Bible since 1521: he being decapitated, she allegedly buried alive in the square before the church.
Because of their religious convictions, the Matsys children left Antwerp and went into exile in 1544. Cornelis ended his life somewhere abroad.
5. The Erasmus connection
Thomas More, portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, National Gallery, London. Erasmus, portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger.
In 1499, Thomas More and Erasmus met in London. Their initial meeting turned into a lifelong friendship as they continued to correspond on a regular basis during which time they worked collaboratively to translate into Latin and have printed some of the works of the Assyrian satirist, Lucian of Samosata (c. 125-180 AD), erroneously called « The Cynic. »
Erasmus translated Lucian’s satirical text The Dependant Scholarand had it send to his friend Jean Desmarais, a Latin teacher at the University of Louvain and a canon at Saint Peter’s Church in that city.
Lucian blasts scholars that sell their soul, mind and body to the ruling oligarchy:
“The elite of Rome are their friends. They dine sumptuously, and call for no reckoning. They are lodged splendidly, and travel comfortably — nay, luxuriously — with cushions at their backs, and as often as not a fine pair of creams in front of them. And, as if this were not enough, the friendship they enjoy and the handsome treatment they receive is made good to them with a substantial salary. They sow not, they plough not; yet all things grow for their use.”…
In a real manifesto against voluntary servitude, Lucian goes after their personal corruption and the real reasons for their selling out:
“And now for the true reason, which you will never hear from their lips. Voluptuousness and a whole pack of desires are what induce them to force their way into great houses. The dazzling spectacle of abundant gold and silver, the joys of high feeding and luxurious living, the immediate prospect of wallowing in riches, with no man to say them nay,— these are the temptations that lure them on, and make slaves of free men; not lack of the necessaries of life, as they pretend, but lust of its superfluities, greed of its costly refinements. And their employers, like finished coquettes, exercise their rigors upon these hapless slaves of love, and keep them forever dangling in amorous attendance; but for fruition, no! never so much as a kiss may they snatch. To grant that would be to give the lover his release, a conclusion against which they are jealously on their guard. But upon hopes he is abundantly fed. Despair might else cure his ardent passion, and the lover be lover no more. So there are smiles for him, and promises; always something shall be done, some favor shall be granted, a handsome provision shall be made for him,— someday. Meanwhile, old age steals upon the pair; the superannuated lover ceases from desire, and his mistress has nothing left to give.”
It was through his meeting with Erasmus that Thomas More got introduced to Erasmus’ friend, Pieter Gillis (1486-1533), a fellow humanist and town secretary of Antwerp. It was Erasmus who suggested that Gillesmeet Thomas More. The meeting took place in Antwerp in 1515, when More was sent on a diplomatic mission by King Henry VIII to settle some major international commercial disputes.
Gillis, who started as a seventeen year-old proofreader in Dirk Martens print shop in Leuven, met Erasmus in 1504. The humanist gave him the advice to study further and they kept in contact. Printer Martens had edited in Leuven several humanist’s books, most notably those of Denis the Carthusian (1401-1471) and Rudolphus Agricola’s De inventione dialectica (1515) the higher-education manual most widely bought, and used in schools and universities throughout Europe.
Just as More and Erasmus, Gilles was an admirer of the latter’s teacher at the Deventer school of the Brothers of the Common Life, Agricola, a great pedagogue, musician, builder of church organs, a poet in Latin and the vernacular, a diplomat, a boxer and a Hebrew scholar towards the end of his life.
Gillis‘ house in Antwerp was an important meeting place for humanists, diplomats and artists with international allure. Quinten Matsys is also a gladly seen guest. Gilles also recommended the painterHans Holbein the Younger, who had illustrated ErasmusIn Praise of Folly, to the court of England, whereThomas More received him delighted. His brother Ambrosius Holbein (1494-1519), would later illustrate Erasmus’ and More’s Utopia.
6. Thomas More’s Utopia
Pages of Utopia with the alphabet invented by Pieter Gillis.
Gilles shared with More and Erasmus a great sensitivity to justice, as well as a typically humanist sensibility devoted to the search for more established sources of truth. As a matter of fact, he is best known as a character in Utopia, a famous book in whose first pages Thomas More presents him as a model of civility and a humanist who was both pleasant and seriousness:
“I often received during this stay [in Bruges], among other visitors and welcome among all, Pieter Gilles. Born in Antwerp, he enjoys great credit and a prominent position among his fellow citizens, worthy of the highest, for this young man’s knowledge and character are equally remarkable. He is indeed full of kindness and erudition, welcoming everyone liberally, but, when it comes to his friends, with such élan, affection, fidelity and sincere devotion, that one would find few men to compare with him when it comes to the things of friendship. Few also have his modesty, his lack of affectation, his natural good sense, so much charm in conversation, so much wit with so little malice.”
Entrance of house Den Spieghel, Antwerp, where Pieter Gilles lived in 1505
Thomas More’s most famous composition was of course his two-volume work entitled Utopia. It is a depiction of a fictional island that was not ruled by an oligarchy as most western states and empires, but ruled on the basis of the ideas of the good and the just Plato formulated in his dialogue, the Republic.
While Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly called for a reform of the Catholic Church, Erasmus’ and More’s Utopia, satirizing the corruption, greed, cupidity and failings they saw all around them, called for the reform of the State and Economy.
The whole idea of the book came to Thomas More whilst he was staying at the Antwerp residence of Gillis, Den Spieghel, in 1515.
In the first volume, entitled Dialogue of Counsel, it begins with correspondence between More himself and others, including Pieter Gillis. On his return to England in 1516, the English humanist wrote the main part of the work and the first edition was completed and edited by Erasmus and published in Leuven.
The first edition contained a woodcut map map of the island of Utopia, verses by Gillisand the “Utopian alphabet” the latter invented for the occasion, verses of Geldenhouwer, an historian and reformer educated by the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer and Grapheus, and Thomas More’s epistle dedicating the work to Gillis.
Several years after More‘s and Erasmus’ death, in 1541, Grapheus, with Pieter Gilles, published his Enchiridio Principis Ac Magistratus Christiani.
7. Pieter Gillis and the “Friendship Diptych”
Besides triptychs and religious paintings, Matsys also excelled in portraits. One of the most beautiful works of Matsys is the double portrait of Erasmus and his friend Gillis, painted in 1517. This friendship diptych would act as a “virtual” visit to their English friend Thomas More in London and they approached Quinten Matsys to carry out the two paintings as he was the leading Antwerp painter at that time.
Erasmus’ portrait was the first to be completed because the portrait of Gillis was constantly being delayed due to him falling ill during the sittings. The two men had told Thomas More about the paintings which may not have been a wise move as More constantly queried them as to the progress of the paintings and became very impatient to receive the gift. The two works were finally completed and were sent to More whilst he was in Calais.
Both learned educated men, although they are portrayed on separate panels, are presented in one continuous study area. Erasmus is busy writing and Pieter Gillis points to a book (not yet published) by the humanist, the Antibarbari, while he holds a letter from More in his left hand. The presentation in a study room makes one think of presentations of St. Hieronymus study room, who with his bible translation is an example for all humanists and whose work Erasmus had just published.
If you look closely, in the folds of Erasmus’ cloak you can just make out a purse. It could be that Erasmus wanted the artist to include this in order to illustrate his generosity. Erasmus and Gillis made a point of informing Thomas More that they had split the cost of the painting because they wanted it to be a present from them both. If you look at the two paintings side by side then one can see that Matsys has cleverly continued the bookcase behind the two sitters and this gives the impression that the two men depicted in the two separate panels occupy the same room and are facing each other.
It is interesting to look at the books on the shelves in the background. On the upper shelf of the Erasmus painting there is a book which has the inscription Novum Testament which alludes to Novum Testamentum Graece, the first published edition of the Greek New Testament produced by Erasmus in 1516.
On the lower shelf there is a stack of three books. The bottom tome has the inscription Hieronymus which refers to Erasmus’s edition of St Jerome; in the middle, there is a book with the inscription Lucian and refers to Erasmus and Thomas More’s collaboration in translating Lucian’s satirical Dialogues. The inscription on the book on top of these three is the word Hor, which originally read Mor. The first letter was probably altered during an early restoration, for besides Mor being the first letters of Thomas More’s surname they almost certainly refer to the satirical essays written by Erasmus whilst staying with Thomas More in his London home in 1509 and entitled Encomium Moriae (Praise of Folly). This collection of essays was considered one of the most notable works of the Renaissance.
We see Erasmus writing in a book. This depiction has been carefully thought out for the words one sees on the page paper are a paraphrase of St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the handwriting is a careful replication of Erasmus’s own hand, and the reed pen he holds was known to be Erasmus’s favorite writing tool.
Thomas More let his pleasure about these portraits be known in many letters, the paintings being executed, « with such a great virtuosity that all painters from Antiquity pale in comparison », while confessing once he would have preferred his image carved in (far more immortal) stone.
8. The Da Vinci connection (I)
Quinten Matsys, Virgin and Child, 1513, Poznan.Leonardo da Vinci, Saint Anne and the Virgin, 1503-1517, Louvre, Paris.
Several paintings clearly prove that Matsys and his circle had extensive knowledge and took some of their inspiration from some of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings and drawings without necessarily fully comprehending its full and far ranging scientific and philosophical content.
Such is clearly the case in the Virgin and child (1513, Poznan, Poland), literally presenting in front of a Patinir style mountain landscape, the gracious loving pose of Mary embracing the Christ with the latter embracing the lamb, directly a copy of Da Vinci’s Saint Anna and the Virgin (1503-1517), one of the works Leonardo had brought to Amboise in France in 1517.
As said before, it is not known how this “form” came to the attention of the master, be it prints, drawings or other.
Quinten Matsys, The Lamentation of Christ (1508-1511), Antwerp.
A second example can be seen in The Lamentation of Christ (1508–1511), a vast triptych painted for the chapel of the Carpenter Corporation in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). Both John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, which appear when the triptych is closed, were there patron saints.
The central scene of the open triptych, which is reminiscent of Rogier van der Weyden’sThe Descent from the Cross (1435 Museo del Prado, Madrid), is supported by the landscape. The religious drama is considered in detail and harmoniously staged.
Détail of Saint-John (left) in tears.
At the same time, Matsys approaches the great importance of the believers for the narration and the description. If the scene is conducive of reflection and prayer. Matsys uses the science of contrast. If some of the figures, especially the oriental heads, could have been inspired by the many exotic faces the painter would have seen around him in the world trade hub that was Antwerp in his days, the graceful faces of those struck with pain and sorrow are extremely beautiful.
In the middle panel, we see not the suffering, but the lament after the suffering. It depicts the moment at which Joseph of Arimathea comes to ask the Virgin for her permission to bury Christ’s body. Behind the central action is the hill of Golgotha, with its few trees, the cross and the crucified thieves.
The left wing panel shows the martyrdom of John the Evangelist and Salome presenting John the Baptist’s head to the Roman Jewish Client King Herod the Great.
The right hand panel is a scene of extraordinary cruelty, depicting St John, his body plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil. The saint, who is naked from the waist up, seems almost angelic, as if he were not suffering. Around him is a crowd of sadistic faces, ugly boors in garish clothes. The one exception to this rule is the figure of a young Flemish boy, maybe a representation of the painter himself, who is watching the scene from above in a tree.
Now the faces of those surrounding St John the Baptist and also the two main figures heating up the cauldron are directly taken or inspired by a drawing of Leonardo called the Five Grotesque Heads.
Flemish irony and humor gave a great welcome to that of Leonardo!
In Leonardo’s case, the faces even seem as breaking up in hilarious laughter, when looking at each other and at the central figure with a crown on his head. The leaves of the crown are not those of laurels to celebrate poets and heroes, but leaves of an oak tree. At that time, the anti-humanist and war mongering pope was Julius II, which Rabelais put in hell. Julius was a member of a powerful Italian noble family, the House of Della Rovere, literally “of the oak tree”…
Five grotesque heads, Leonardo da Vinci.
D. The Science of Erasmian Grotesque
1. In religious painting
The use of grotesque heads expressing the low passions that overwhelm and dominate evil persons was common practice in religious paintings to create contrast of expression.
In 1505, Dürer went to Venice and also to the university city of Bologna to learn about perspective and then journeyed further south to Florence, where he saw the work of Leonardo da Vinci and the young Raphael, and to Rome.
Christ Among Doctors, Dürer, Thyssen Bornemisza Collection, Madrid.
Christ Among the Doctors, 1506, was painted in Rome in five day’s time and reflects the influence of Leonardo‘s grotesques. Dürer was back in Venice early in 1507 before returning to Nuremberg in the same year.
Christ carrying the Cross, after 1510, Hieronymus Bosch, Ghent.
Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ carrying the cross (after 1510, Ghent) is another famous example. Christ’s head is surrounded by a dynamic group of grotesque “tronies” or faces. Was Bosch inspired by Leonardo and Matsys, or was it the other way around?
While the composition may seem chaotic at first glance, its structure is actually very rigid and formal. Christ’s head is positioned precisely at the intersection of two diagonals. The beam of the cross forms one diagonal, with the figure of Simon of Cyrene helping carry the cross at the top left, and with the “bad” murderer to the bottom right.
The other diagonal connects the imprint of Christ’s face on Veronica’s sudarium at the bottom left with the penitent thief, at the top right. He is attacked by an evil charlatan or a Pharisee and an evil monk, a clear allusion by Bosch to the religious fanaticism of his era. The grotesque heads remind us of the masks that are often used in passion plays as well as of Leonardo da Vinci’s caricatures.
By way of contrast, the softly modeled face of Christ is serene. He is the Suffering Christ, who has been abandoned by everyone and who shall triumph over all evil in the world. This representation ties in perfectly with the ideas of the Devotio Moderna.
Quinten Matsys, Christ carrying the Cross, 1510-1515, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Quinten Matsys, Ecce Homo, 1526, Venice.
Quinten Matsys, in his Ecce Homo’s (1526, Venice, Italy) cleary bases his work on the Bosch‘ tradition.
2. Misers, bankers, tax collectors and money-changers, the fight against usury
The Purchase Agreement (1515, Berlin), Quinten Matsys. A good « deal » between bankers, lawyers, theologians and misers on the one side, and a fool on the other side, maybe a contract for an « indulgence »?
Directly relevant to Erasmus’ and More’s religious, philosophical, sociological and political critique, and certainly with some relevance for today, Matsys’ denunciation of usury and greed.
Marlier keenly sketches how usurers and speculators became dominant players of Antwerp’s economic life.
« In the sixteenth century, the gradual replacement of the old corporate system by the new capitalist economy went hand in hand with a succession of crises, with the little people suffering most of all. While stock market speculation, currency manipulation and money trading helped build up considerable fortunes, they also impoverished and often ruined craftsmen and peasants. Enriched merchants and financiers took over industry, reducing workers to the status of proletarians. From now on, workers are subject to all the conditions of those who employ them. Wages were no longer respected, and unemployment often plunged families into misery.”
« The economic upheaval was accompanied by financial turmoil caused by the influx of precious metals from America to Spain. Huge banking operations were carried out in Antwerp, which became Europe’s major money market under Charles V. From the third decade of the century onwards, the purchasing power of currencies began to weaken, resulting in a steady rise in prices. Wages, on the other hand, remained static. Men of finance took possession of goods, erected monopolies and even seized land, squeezing tenants mercilessly. These were the new rich, against whom the poor and weak whispered, but whom the Emperor protected, because they alone were able to advance him the funds required by his European policy. Charles V had to submit to the draconian demands of his bankers, and the exorbitant interest payments prompted him to multiply taxes. He discounted the proceeds of future taxes and auctioned off certain treasury offices. The resulting abuses are easy to guess. Taxes were not levied directly by the government, but leased to private tax-collectors, who make themselves odious by their exactions. They have no mercy on the little people, from whom they take what little they have. »
Under those circumstances, notes Marlier, with everybody over their neck into debt and in urgent need for cash, usurers found a fantastic market to prosper.
The Misers (and their victims) (1520, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome), Quinten Matsys.
Abroad, the Fuggers and Welsers duly participated in the emerging trade of enslaved people from Africa.
Manillas used by the european bankers to buy slaves in Africa.
The Fuggers used their mines in Eastern Europe and Germany to producemanillas – metal objects of exchange that have gone down in history as a “slave trade currency” due to their use on the coasts of West Africa. The Welsers, in turn, attempted to establish a colony in what is now Venezuela and shipped more than 1,000 enslaved Africans to America. Meanwhile, in the homes of prosperous Augsburg citizens, enslaved people from India were forced to toil for their “masters”.
Thomas More and Erasmus exposed the rise of predatory and criminal financial abuse in their book Utopia. Erasmus, while not refusing the rise of modern entrepreneurial capitalism, denounces the abuses of financial greed.
“Christ, he said, did not forbid ingenious activity, but the tyrannical search for profit.”
Civil servants, he argued in his Education of a Christian Prince written for Charles V, should be recruited on the basis of their competence and merit, and not because of their glorious name or social status.
For Erasmus, (speaking through the mouth of Folly):
« The craziest and most despicable of all human classes is that of merchants. Constantly occupied with the vile love of gain, they use the most infamous means to satisfy it: lying lies, perjury, theft, fraud and imposture fill their entire lives. However, they believe themselves to be great people, because their fingers are laden with gold rings, and there are enough flatterers who don’t blush to give them the most honorable titles in public honourable titles in order to catch a piece of such ill-gotten acquisitions. »
Quinten Massys, Tax Collectors, late 1520s, oil on panel, 86 x 71 cm. Liechtenstein Collection, Vaduz.
One can, as Silver argues, on the basis of what’s written in the records and the fact that tax collection was outsourced to private individuals, rebrand Quinten Matsys’ painting, often referred to as The Misers, as the more « factually exact » name of Tax Collectors. However, that doesn’t change the fact the subject is precisely what exposes an old Netherlandish proverb of the period:
“A usurer, a miller, a money-changer, and a tax-collector are Lucifer’s four evangelists.”
While the municipal financial officer on the left seems « reasonable » since his face is not “grotesque”, the man sitting behind, in a strange turn of his arm protecting a leather purse, shows the grotesque, ugly face of greed, justified by what he declared and was noted in the records. The complicity between both men is the real ugliness of the story.
Money-changers, admits Silver, often performed the same role as bankers, citing economic historian Raymond de Roover. Moreover, the unrepresented fourth scoundrel, the miller (a target in Bosch’s and Brueghel’s paintings), was often castigated because grain prices became a chronic sore spot in eras of fluctuating commodity prices, as was true in just this period.
Quinten Matsys, The Money Changer and His Wife, 1514, Louvre, Paris.
Jacob Fugger (the Rich), by Lorenzo Lotto.
In a more “civilized” version of this metaphor, starting from the same theme, there is Matsys’ famous Banker (or Money Changer) and His Wife (1514, Louvre, Paris).
In a chapter of his opus majus Flemish Primitives entitled The Heirs of the Founders, Erwin Panofsky considers Matsys’ The Money Changer and his Wife to be a “reconstruction” of a “lost work by Jan van Eyck (a ‘painting with half-body figures, depicting a boss doing his accounts with his employee’), which Marcantonio Michiel claims to have seen in the Casa Lampugnano in Milan.”
Once again, it is not a double portrait of a banker of his wife, but a moralizing metaphor. While the banker, who has attached his prayer beads on the wall behind him, is cross-checking if the weight of the metal of the coins correspond to their nominal value, his wife, turning the pages of a religious hour book, throws a sad look at the greedy obsessions of her visibly unhappy husband.
In 1963, Georges Marlier wrote: « The painting in the Louvre has no satirical accent, but reflects a moral concern (…) The edifying intention was underlined by an inscription that appeared on the frame at the time, around the middle of the 17th century, when the painting was in the Stevens collection in Antwerp: ‘Stature justa et aequa sint podere’ (let the scales be just and the weights equal »(Leviticus, XIX, 35).”
The banker has, besides the scales he’s using, attached a pair of them to the wall behind him. For the Christian Humanists, the weight of material wealth is the opposite of that of spiritual richness. In Van der Weyden’s Last Judgment in Beaune, France, the painter ironically shows an angel weighing the resurrected souls, sending the heaviest of them… to hell.
Others speculate the banker’s wife is not completely unaffected by all the coins on the table but the attention of her eyes goes more to the hands of her husband than to the objects on the table. Piety or the pleasure of wealth? A fruit on the shelve (apple of orange), juste above her husband, might be a reference to the forbidden fruit but the estinguished candle on the shelve behind herself recalls the shortness of earthly pleasures.
Tax collector and his wife (1539, Prado, Madrid), Marinus van Reymerswaele.
When Marinus van Reymerswaele copies this theme, the woman’s temptation for the money on the table seems even bigger.
Detail with convexe mirror.
The convex mirror (who disappears in the copies made by Matsys’ followers), operating as a “mise en abîme” (a play in the play or a painting in a painting), shows a man (the banker?), reading himself a (religious?) book. The mirror not necesseraly shows some existing real space but can very will represent an imaginary time sequence outside that of the space-time of the main scene. It might show the banker in his future life, free from greed, reading a religious book with great fervor.
While the use of image of convex mirrors (whose optical laws were examined in depth by arab scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham and studied by Franciscans at Oxford such as Roger Bacon) reminds both Van Eyck’s Arnolfini couple (National Gallery, London) and Petrus Christus(1410-1475)Goldsmith in his workshop or Saint Eligius (1449, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), with a couple standing behind, Matsys’ painting, is a unique creation of its kind.
In terms of content, the painting could also be related to a common theme at that period, namely The Calling of Saint Matthew.
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
(Mt 9:9-13)
The above passage is probably autobiographical in that it describes the Matthew’s call to follow Jesus as an apostle. As we know, St. Matthew responded positively to Jesus’ call and became one of the Twelve Apostles.
The Calling of Saint-Matthew (1536, Alte Pincacoteca, Munich), Jan van Hemessen.
According to the Gospel, Matthew’s name was originally Levi, a tax collector serving Herod and therefore not very popular. The Romans forced the Jewish people to pay taxes. Tax collectors were known to cheat the people by charging more than required and pocketing the difference. Of course, once Levi accepted the call to follow Jesus, he was pardoned and given the name Matthew, meaning “Yahweh’s gift.”
The Calling of Matthew (1530, Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid), Marinus van Reymerswaele.
This theme of course could not but have pleased Erasmus, since it doesn’t insist on punishment but on positive transformation for the better. Both Marinus van Reymerswaele (in 1530) and Jan van Hemessen (in 1536), who copied and were inspired by Matsys, took up the subject as The calling of Saint-Matthew showing Jesus (on the right) calling on a tax collector to abandon his profession. In Van Hemessen’s painting we also see, just as in Matsys’ work, the wife of the tax-collector standing in front, also with her hand on an open book.
The good news is that, till now, the most generally accepted hypothesis as to the meaning of this painting is that it is an allegorical and moralizing work, on the theme of the vanity of earthly goods in opposition to timeless Christian values, and a denunciation of avarice as a cardinal sin.
3. The Da Vinci connection (II)
Leonardo da Vinci, five grotesque heads, around 1494, Windsor collection.
Quiten Matsys, détail of the right panel of Lamentation, 1508-1511, Antwerp Politically, to be noted, the Habsburg double-eagle Imperial flag waved by those executing Saint-John…
To sum it up, so far three elements of Matsys’ work have enabled us to establish his deep links with Italy and Leonardo.
1. His expertise knowledge of perspective, in particular that of Piero della Francesca, as demonstrated by the Italian-style marble vault appearing in the Altarpiece of Saint Anne.
2. His use of Leonardo’s grotesque heads, in his Triptych of the Lamentation of Christ.
3. His reworking of the Virgin’s pose from Leonardo’s Saint Anne and the Virgin, in his Virgin and Child at the Poznan Museum.
How this influence came about remains to be elucidated. Several hypotheses, which may complement each other, are possible:
1. At an early age, he traveled to Italy (Milan, Venice, etc.), where he may have established direct contact with Leonardo, or with one or more of his pupils.
2. He was able to exchange ideas and prints with other artists who had made such trips and had established contacts in Italy. Whether Dürer, who had his own contacts in Italy, might have acted as an intermediary is another hypothesis to be explored. Some of Dürer’s anatomical drawings are said to have been made after Leonardo. Jacopo de’ Barbari had painted a portrait of Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar who had helped Leonardo to read Euclid in Greek. Dürer had met Barbari in Nuremberg, but, as we saw above, their relationship soured.
Anatomical study (2017; Dresden notebooks) by Dürer, based on Leonardo.
Probable portrait of the young Leonardo, Verrocchio’s study for his David.
3. He was able to see reproductions made and distributed by Italian and northern artists. Although the original drawings and manuscripts were copied and sold by Melzi, Leonardo’s pupil, after his master’s death in Amboise in 1519, Leonardo’s influence on Matsys appeared as early as 1507.
Leonardo’s work captivated the attention of many in Europe. For example, a life-size replica of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco was purchased in 1545 by the Norbertine Abbey in Tongerlo, Belgum. Andrea Solario (1460-1524), a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, is said to have created the work with other artists. Recent research suggests that Leonardo may have painted parts of the replica himself. Professor Jean-Pierre Isbouts and a team of scientists from the Imec research institute examined the canvas using multispectral cameras, which can reconstruct the different layers of a painting and distinguish restorations from the original. According to the researchers, one figure in particular catches the eye. John, the apostle to Jesus’ left, is painted using a special “sfumato” technique. This is the same technique used to paint the Mona Lisa, and one that only Leonardo mastered, says Isbouts.
Similarly, Joos Van Cleve, in the lower part of his Lamentation (1520-1525), repeats the composition of Leonardo’s Last Supper, showing that the image was known to most northern painters.
Moreover, as Silver keenly points out, one of those same heads, a near-profile but reversed from its Leonardo model (the head on the left), reappears for the lustful old man in Matsys’ later “Ill-Matched Lovers » !
The fact that it appears as a mirror image might be the result of Matsys working from a print. The engraver copies the « positive » image, but whet it is prited it appears as « negative ». In other words, as a mirror image of the original.
Quinten Matsys: détail of « Ill-matched couple »inversion of the same imageGrotesque of Leonardo
But also a study by Leonardo of a (not grotesque) head of an Apostle for the Last Supper, shows features close to those used by Matsys.
A life-sized replica of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco, has been owned since 1545 by the Norbertijnen abbey in Tongerlo. Andrea Solario (1460-1524) a student of Da Vinci, would have created the work with fellow artists.
However, according to recent research, it seems that Da Vinci painted parts of the replica himself. Professor Jean-Pierre Isbouts, together with a team of scientists from Imec research institute, went over the canvas with multispectral cameras, that can reconstruct the different layers in a painting, and distinguish the restorations from the original.
One figure specifically catches the eye, according to Isbouts. John, the apostle on Jesus’ left side is painted with the special ‘sfumato’ technique. This is the same technique used to paint the Mona Lisa, and Da Vinci himself was the only artist that had mastered it, claims Isbouts.
Life-size replica of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco, done before the master’s death, belonging to the Abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium since 1545.
Also Joos Van Cleve, in the lower section of his Lamentation (1520-1525), bases himself on Leonardo’s Last Supper, showing clearly the image was well-known to most painters in the North.
4. The Art of Grotesqueper se
Da Vinci’s work on “grotesque heads” dates at least from the early Milan period (1490s) and later when he started looking for a model to paint “Judas” in the Last Supper fresco (1495-1498). Leonardo reportedly used the likenesses of people in and around Milan as inspiration for the painting’s figures. When the painting was nearly finished, Leonardo still was lacking a model for Judas. It’s said that he loitered around jails and with Milanese criminals to find an appropriate face and expression for Judas, the fourth figure from the left and the apostle who ultimately betrayed Jesus. He advised artists to always carry a notebook to draw people around town, “quarreling or laughing or fighting”. He took note of outlandish faces on the piazza, because in another note recommending sketching strangers, he adds:
“Of monstrous faces I shall say nothing because they naturally stay in the mind.”
When the convent’s prior complained to Ludovico Sforza of Leonardo‘s « laziness » as he wandered the streets to find a criminal to base Judas on, Leonardo responded that if he could find no one else, the prior would make a suitable model… While the painting was being executed, Leonardo’s friend, the mathematician Lucia Pacioli, was around and in contact with the master.
For the Italian scientist, always keen to explore the dynamic of contrasts of nature, exploring the ugly was not only a game but inherent to the role of the artist:
“if the painter wishes to see beauties that would enrapture him,” Leonardo wrote in his notebook, « he is master of their production, and if he wishes to see monstrous things which might terrify or which would be buffoonish and laughable or truly pitiable, he is their lord and god.”
Italian scholarSara Taglialagamba notes that the grotesque, being abnormal or “out of norm”, in the works of Leonardo is conceived as “the opposite of balance and harmony” but “not to oppose beauty.”
The deformities that connote Leonardo’s figures affect both men and women, are present in the young and the old (although on the latter they are concentrated for the most part), spare no portion of the body, and are often combined to give the subjects even more bestial appearances.
Geometry of Human Proportions
From his side, Dürer, now accused of « racial profiling » took very seriously the issue of understanding human proportions, considered, especially with the discovery of Vitruviusbook De Architectura, as to offer the key to the right proportions for human architecture and urban planning. According to Vitruvius, « Beauty is produced by the pleasing appearance and good taste of the whole, and by the dimensions of all the parts being duly proportioned to each other. »
Dürer therefore measured all parts of the human body to establish harmonic relations among them. The variations in the proportions of faces and bodies, he concluded, obey the variations generated by geometric projections. They don’t change in terms of harmony but will appear different and even grotesque when projected from a different angle.
Both Leonardo and Dürer, and later Holbein the Younger in his painting The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery, London), became masters in the science of “anamorphoses”, I.e. geometrical projections from tangent angles making an image hardly recognizable for the viewer looking straight to the plane surface while the image can be understood when viewed from that surprising angle.
Having such masters of “serious” beautiful forms as Leonardo or Matsys suddenly engaging in outrageous cartoon drawing may look disturbing, while it should not. All cartoons are based on metaphorical thinking and so is all great art.
Renaissance art is often assumed to be orderly and reassuring but these faces succeed the uncompromising polemics of the gargoyles of the cathedral builders, the “monsters” in the margin of so many illuminated manuscripts that Bosch invited on the forefront and anticipate those of Rabelais, Goyaand Ensor. They are so distorted and out of the habitual norm that they get the label “grotesque” but they also make us smile when we, reluctantly and even with some anger, accept to look down on our own imperfections or those of our beloved we prefer not to see. We are not the icons we take for real that we see in the magazines.
In Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, the narrator (Folly personified), first identifies, among many other accomplishments, its own leading role in making things work that with pure logic, reason and intellect would fail, such as the ridiculous acts required to achieve human reproduction.
Hence, says Folly, “if all were thus wise you see how soon the world would be depopulated, and what need there would be of a second Prometheus, to plaster up the decayed image of mankind?”
Folly, with satirical irony, claims it is doing a great job helping especially older people to refuse dying off like animals:
“Of my gift it is, that you have so many old Nestors everywhere that have scarce left them so much as the shape of a man; stutterers, dotards, toothless, gray-haired, bald; or rather, to use the words of Aristophanes, « Nasty, crumpled, miserable, shriveled, bald, toothless, and wanting their baubles, » yet so delighted with life and to be thought young that one dyes his gray hairs; another covers his baldness with a periwig; another gets a set of new teeth; another falls desperately in love with a young wench and keeps more flickering about her than a young man would have been ashamed of. For to see such an old crooked piece with one foot in the grave to marry a plump young wench, and that too without a portion, is so common that men almost expect to be commended for it.
But the best sport of all is to see our old women, even dead with age, and such skeletons one would think they had stolen out of their graves, and ever mumbling in their mouths, « Life is sweet; » and as old as they are, still caterwauling, daily plastering their face, scarce ever from the glass, gossiping, dancing, and writing love letters. These things are laughed at as foolish, as indeed they are; yet they please themselves, live merrily, swim in pleasure, and in a word are happy, by my courtesy.”
5. The metaphor of the “Ill-matched Lovers”
Quinten Matsys, The Ill-matched Lovers
If Erasmus will blast with biting irony the corruption and madness of the Kings, Popes, Dukes and Princes, he will also expose with uncompromising irony the corruption affecting the common man, for example older men dropping their spouses to hook up with younger women, a practice, says Folly, “grown so common, that it is become the a-la-mode of the times.”
The pairing of unequal couples has a literary history dating back to antiquity when Plautus, a Roman comic poet from the 3rd–century BC, cautioned elderly men against courting younger ladies.
The « grotesque marriage » comes straight from the satirical literature, such as the above mentioned Ship of Fools (1494) of Sebastian Brant, which in its 52nd chapter tackles the « marriage-for-money » theme.
Besides In Praise of Folly, Erasmus dedicated in 1529 a colloquium to this theme titled The Unequal Marriage. (Box)
The Unequal Marriage
Gabriel. Do you know Lampridius Eubulus ?
Petronius. Yes ; there is not a better nor happier Man in the City.
Ga. Well, and do you know his Daughter Iphigenia too?
Pet. You have mention’d the very Flower of the Age.
Ga. She is so; but, do you know who she’s married to?
Pet. I shall know when you have told me.
Ga. She is married to Pompilius Blennus.
Pet. What, to that Hector, that us’d to talk Folks to Death in cracking of his bullying Tricks?
Ga. To the very Man.
Pet. He has been for a long Time very noted in this Town, for two Things chiefly, i.e. Lying and the Mange, which has no proper Name to it, tho’ indeed it has a great many.
Ga. A very proud Distemper, that won’t strike Sail to the Leprosy, the Elephantine Leprosy, Tetters, the Gout, or Ringworm, if there was to be an Engagement between them.
Pet. So the Sons of Esculapius tell us.
Ga. What Need is there, Petronius, for me to describe to you a Damsel that you are very well acquainted with ? altho’ her Dress was a great Addition to her native Beauty. My Petronius, you would have taken her for a Goddess, had you seen her. Every Thing in her and about her was graceful. In the mean Time out comes our blessed Bridegroom with his Snub-Nose, dragging one Leg after him, but not so cleverly neither as the Switzers do ; itchy Hands, a stinking Breath, heavyEyes, his head bound up with a Forehead-Piece, and a Running at his Nose and Ears. Other People wear their Rings on their Fingers, but he wears his on his Thighs.
Pet. What was in the Mind of the Lady’s Parents, to join such a Daughter to a living Mummy?
Ga. I can’t tell, except it was with them, as it is with many more, that have lost their Senses.
Pet. It may be he was very rich ?
Ga. He is very rich indeed, but it is in the Debts he owes.
Pet. What greater Punishment could they have inflicted upon the Maid, if she had poison’d her Grand-Fathers and Grandmothers, both of the Father’s and Mother’s Side ?
Ga. Nay, if she had scatter’d her Water upon the Grave of her Parents, it would have been a Punishment bad enough to have oblig’d her but to have given a Kiss to such a Monster.
Pet. I am of your Mind.
Ga. I look upon it a greater Piece of Cruelty, than if they had stripp’d their Daughter naked, and expos’d her to Bears, Lions, or Crocodiles : For these wild Beasts would either have spar’d her for her exquisite Beauty, or put her out of her Pain by a quick Dispatch.
Pet. You say right : I think this is what would have become Mezentius himself, who, as Virgil tells us,’bound dead Bodies to living ones, Hands to Hands, and Mouths to Mouths.’ But I don’t believe Mezentius himself would have been so inhuman as to have bound such a lovely Maid to such a Carcass as this : Nor is there any dead Body you would not chuse to be bound to, rather than to such a stinking one ; for his Breath is rank Poison, what he speaks is Pestilence, and what he touches mortifies.
This Erasmian theme of the “Ill-matched Lovers,” became quite popular. According to art historian Max J. Friedlander, Matsys was the first to propagate this theme in the Low Countries.
Matsys depicts this theme by showing an older man besotted by a younger, beautiful woman. He gazes at her adoringly, not noticing that she is stealing his purse. In reality, the grotesque ugliness of the man, blinded by his lust for the young woman, corresponds to the ugliness of his soul. She, blinded by her greed, appears superficially as a “nice” girl, but in reality is abusing the naive fool. But the viewer rapidly finds out that the money she steals from the old fool, goes directly in the hands of the jester standing behind her and whose face expresses a combination of both lust and greed. In final analysis, that’s the moral, all the gain goes neither to him nor to her, but to foolishness itself (The Jester). A situation reminiscent of Bosch’s 1502 painting The Conjurer.
Matsys’ painting raises the issue of “Mutually Assured Corruption,” where, just as in geopolitics, both sides think they are winning at the expense of the other in a zero sum game. From that standpoint, the “moralistic” lesson here goes far beyond simple cheating among partners.
As said before, what were considered so far as “sins” (lust and greed) by the Church, became a subject of laughter for the humanist with the painting offering a “mirror” allowing viewers to self-reflect and to improve their own character.
Albrecht Dürer, The Ill-Matched Couple, Metropolitan Museum, New York.
The theme already appears in a copper engraving of Dürer in 1495, with the girl opening her hand to get money from his purse into her own.
Old Man and a Young Woman, 1503, Jacopo de Barbari, Philadelphia.
And in 1503, Jacopo Barbari painted a similar subject, An old man and a young woman. (Philadelphia)
Cranach the Elder, who made a trip to Antwerp in 1508, and was visibly inspired by the Leonardo style grotesques of Matsys, started mass producing paintings on this theme (including the use of Matsys reworked grotesque of Leonardo!), clearly answering the growing demand of protestant Germany, a production continued by his son Cranach the Younger.
Cranach will make variations on the theme, often reducing the theme to only “lust” leaving “greed” (money grabbing) out of the picture.
Of course, the uglier and the older the man, and the younger and the more beautiful the lady, the more the resulting contrast creates an emotional impact by underscoring the shocking character of the event. Cranach will playfully inverse roles and show an old woman with her maid, seducing a handsome young gentleman.
The Ill-Matched Lovers, Jan Massys.
Quinten Matsys’ son, Jan Matsys, will do his own variation on the theme, adding a new social dimension, that of poor families using their daughters as bait to trap older rich gentlemen whose wealth and money will allow the family to have a living, a theme also Goya took up.
Already in one of Cranach’s versions, the rich man has in front of him a loaf of bread on the table. But what strikes in Jan’s version, is the mother, standing behind the old foolish man, staring at the bread and the fruits on the table. If the greed and the lust remain real, Jan points to a given context which cannot simply be laughed away.
None of them reproduced completely the pun crafted by Matsys and most loyal to the real spirit of Erasmus, that of foolishness coming out on top winning the game, a truly laughable situation ! The Triumph of Folly!
Also here, for the face of the old foolish man, Matsys was influenced by sketches of grotesque heads by Leonardo.
6. Leonardo’s baby, the “Ugly Duchess”
This allows us now to introduce maybe the most outrageous painting ever made, alternatively called the Old ugly woman or The ugly Duchess. Oceans of ink have been thrown on paper to speculate on her identity, her “disease” (Paget’s disease), her “gender”, most of the time to turn the eye of the viewer to a literal, “fact-based” explanation rather than enjoying and discovering the “mental” metaphor the artist paints, not on the panel, but in the mind of the viewer.
The painting has to be analyzed and understood with its pendant – an accompanying painting – which depicts an old man whose attention she solicits. In a surprise move, as a first approach, one can say that Matsys inverts the common gender roles here, since what we see is not an old man trying to seduce the girl, but an old woman trying to attract a rich old man.
–First, there is the old lady, whose physical state is ultimate decrepitude, who desperately tries to seduce an old rich man. Just as Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Old man and young boy (1490, Louvre, Paris), the person’s outside appearance prompts the audience to consider the relationship between internal and external beauty.
“Externally, writes one observer, based on her exquisite dress, jeweled accessories, and budding flower, this woman was theoretically beautiful. However, her internal beauty is reflected in her exaggerated and displeasing physical appearance.”
Once again, the obvious literary influence is Erasmus‘s essay In Praise of Folly (1511), which satirizes women who « still play the coquette », « cannot tear themselves away from their mirrors » and « do not hesitate to exhibit their repulsive withered breasts. » The woman’s clothes are rich. She is dressed to impress, including bulbous headgear that heightens her unusual features. Defying the modesty expected from older women during the Renaissance, she is wearing a low-cut, uncovered, and tightly laced bodice that emphasizes her wrinkly cleavage.
Jan Van Eyck, portrait of his wife, Margaret.
Her hair is concealed in the horns of a heart-shaped bonnet, over which she has placed a white veil, secured by a large, bejeweled brooch. However fine her attire, by the time this panel was painted in the early sixteenth century her clothes would have been many decades out of date, reminding those of Van Eyck’s portrait of his wife Margaret a century earlier, prompting laughter rather than admiration.
Her headdress had by then become an iconographic shorthand for female vanity, its horns compared to those of the devil or at best those indicating she was betrayed by her lovers (cornuto). She appears to be selling herself on her looks, for she holds a flower, often an advert for sex work in Renaissance art. It was in the tragic fate of the rose that the flight of time, and with its physical decay, found its most alarming illustration. Whether fresh or fragile, the rose, while calling for immediate pleasure, seems to protest that death is just around the corner.
Margarete Maultasch.
To identify the woman, several names are put forward. In the seventeenth century, the painting was misidentified as a portrait of Margarete Maultasch (1318-1369), who, having separated from her first husband Jean Henri de Luxembourg, remarried Louis 1er, Margrave of Brandenburg, after a thousand and one twists and turns, culminating in the couple’s excommunication by Clement VI. A complicated story in turbulent times, which earned Margarete the nickname “mouth-bag” (big mouth), or “prostitute” in Bavarian dialect. The problem is that other portraits of Margarete are known to exist, in which she appears most comely…
Defamed as the “ugliest woman in history,” she gained the nickname “The Ugly Duchess,.” In the Victorian era, this picture (or one of its many versions) inspired John Tenniel’s depiction of the Duchess in his illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). This entrenched the moniker and turned this figure into an icon for generations of readers.
The old man saying yes, no, or not now?
–Second, the old Man, whose fur-trimmed robe and visible gold rings, while not as demonstrably archaic or absurd as the costume of the Woman, nonetheless suggest conspicuous wealth, and his distinctive profile echoes the familiar profile of Europe’s leading merchant-banker of the fifteenth century, the late Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence.
After having played a key role as a patron of the arts and a backer of the Renaissance and the Council of Florence, became quite a disgusting figure. It has to be noted that in 1513 the warrior pope Julius II, a strong enemy of Erasmus, died and Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici became pope Leo X.
The figure has also been compared to the lost portraits of the early fifteenth century of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy.
Jacob Fugger.
But if one takes a second look, and forgets the woman’s breasts, the viewer realizes that her face is that… of an ugly man. Maybe the whole undertaking was a political statement and the faces were those of real people whose identity we’ve not yet discovered. They might be some hated politicians or theologians of those days, selling out one to the other in an elan of greed and lust. Maybe the old ugly prostitute was a reference to fugger banker Jacob the Rich, the eternal bankroller of the increasingly bankrupt Vatican ? For the moment, let’s accept we just don’t know.
The Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) saw Matsys double portrait and made in 1645 an engraving of it, adding the title “King and Queen of Tunis, invented by Leonardo da Vinci, executed by Hollar.”
Engraving from Wenceslaus Hollar
In periods of carnival, when people were allowed to do away with the rules of society for a couple of days, at least in the Low Countries and the Northern Rhine area, people had a lot of fun by shifting roles. Putting things upside down, poor peasants could dress up as rich merchants, laymen as clergymen, thieves as policemen, male as female and one and all the other way around.
The original concept of this metaphor seems to have come from Leonardo, who made a tiny sketch of an ugly woman, eventually a prostitute, remarkably with the horn bonnet and a tiny flower planted between her breasts, exactly the same attributes, metaphors and symbols employed later by Matsys in his work.
Old grotesque woman, National Gallery, Washington.
Francesco Melzi?
Leonardo’s pupil Melzi and other students or followers, as they did with many other of Leonardo’s sketches, seem to have copied Leonardo’s work and, amused, counter-posed the horny woman with a greedy, wealthy Florentine merchant. Did Melzi share or sell his sketches to others?
Various amusing versions of the theme are scattered around the world and figure in private and pubic collections.
Another sketch, either by Leonardo himself of his followers, shows a wild grotesque man with his hair raising up his head, with a series of grotesque looking scholars, including one looking like Dante! Leonardo, of course, who always signed his writings with the words “man without letters,” was a mere craftsman and never taken serious by those scholars Lucian exposed for having sold out to the establishment.
All these elements that what Matsys did was nothing “bizarre” or “extravagant,” but as someone sharing a “culture” of grotesque faces whose variations could be used to express the metaphorical puns of the humanist culture.
But of course, what made his old man and woman impact so huge, was the fact that what for Leonardo were nothing but rapid sketches in a notebook, became with Matsys life-size frighteningly hyper-realistic representations!
In the Queen’s Windsor Collection, there exists a red chalk drawing of the woman nearly exactly as she appears in Matsys work.
Francesco Melzi or another pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, done after original from Quinten Matsys, Royal Collection, Windsor.
Untill very recently, historians were convinced that Quentin Matsys had “copied” this drawing of around 1490 attributed to Leonardo which he enlarged to produce his oil painting. “So Leonardo designed this unique person, even to the wrinkled bosom emerging from her dress. All Matsys did was enlarge her in oils,” it is said.
However, recent research suggests it could have been the other way around! Either Melzi, or Leonardo himself, could have made the red chalk drawing starting from Matsys painting, either from a direct view, prints or reproductions. An Italian copying a Flemish painter, can you imagine?
Leading expert Susan Foister, Deputy Director and Curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British Painting at The National Gallery, London, who was also the curator of the museums 2008 exhibit “Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian,” told The Guardian at that time : « We can now say with confidence that Leonardo – or, at least, one of his followers – copied Matsys’s wonderful painting, not the other way around. This is a very exciting discovery. »
Foister said they had discovered that Matsys made amendments as he went along, suggesting he was creating the image all by himself rather than copying a model. Also, in the two Leonardo copies, the forms of the body and clothes are oversimplified and the woman’s left eye is not in its socket. « It was always assumed that a lesser known northern European artist would have copied Leonardo and it has not really been thought that it could have been the other way round, » said Foister. She added that both artists were known to be interested in ugliness and exchanged drawings « but credit for this masterful work belongs to Matsys ».
The conclusion writes itself. The “Seven Capital Sins” which More and Erasmus tried to eradicate five centuries ago have become the very axiomatic “values” of today’s “Western” system.
At the ground level, people are offered the “freedom” to sell out to lust, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, etc. — all of this packed as “diversity”, on condition they don’t call into question the speculative financial and war policies that is imposed on them from a tyrannical oligarchy on the top. And those pretending to defend « european » and « judeo-christian » values will lack any credibility if they don’t take up the fight against financial oligarchism so clearly exposed by Thomas More and Erasmus.
Erasmus would turn around in his grave if he knew that his name is mainly associated with a scholarship offered by the EU for pupils willing to study in other EU member states. As Belgian professor Luc Reychler has suggested, such scholarships should include a mandatory training period in Erasmus’ thoughts and especially his advanced concepts of peace building.
In short, to make a new renaissance a reality, we have to free our fellow citizens from fear. While unaware about such real dangers as nuclear war, they live in fear of threats they have been brought to imagine. For those like us longing for peace, time has come to take Erasmus’, Leonardo’s and Matsys’ vision of “good laughter,” very, very, very seriously.
In autumn 2017, a major exhibit organized at the University library of Leuven and later in Arlon, also in Belgium, attracted many people. Showing many historical documents, the primary intent of the event was to honor the activities of the famous Three Language College (Collegium Trilingue), founded in 1517 by the efforts of the Christian Humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1536) and his allies. Though modest in size and scope, Erasmus’ initiative stands out as one of the cradles of European civilization, as you will discover here.
Revolutionary political figures, such as William the Silent (1533-1584), organizer of the Revolt of the Netherlands against the Habsburg tyranny, humanist poets and writers such as Thomas More, François Rabelais, Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare, all of them, recognized their intellectual debt to the great Erasmus of Rotterdam, his exemplary fight, his humor and his great pedagogical project.
For the occasion, the Leuven publishing house Peeters has taken through its presses several nice catalogues and essays, published in Flemish, French as well as English, bringing together the contributions of many specialists under the wise (and passionate) guidance of Pr Jan Papy, a professor of Latin literature of the Renaissance at the Leuven University, with the assistance of a “three language team” of Latinists which took a fresh look at close to all the relevant and inclusively some new documents scattered over various archives.
“The Leuven Collegium Trilingue: an appealing story of courageous vision and an unseen international success. Thanks to the legacy of Hieronymus Busleyden, counselor at the Great Council in Mechelen, Erasmus launched the foundation of a new college where international experts would teach Latin, Greek and Hebrew for free, and where bursaries would live together with their professors”, reads the back cover of one of the books.
University of Leuven, Belgium.
For the researchers, the issue was not necessarily to track down every detail of this institution but rather to answer the key question: “What was the ‘magical recipe’ which attracted rapidly to Leuven between three and six hundred students from all over Europe?”
Erasmus’ initiative was unprecedented. Having an institution, teaching publicly Latin and, on top, for free, Greek and Hebrew, two languages considered “heretic” by the Vatican, was already tantamount to starting a revolution.
Was it that entirely new? Not really. As early as the beginning of the XIVth century, for the Italian humanists in contact with Greek erudites in exile in Venice, the rigorous study of Greek, Hebraic and Latin sources as well as the Fathers and the New Testament, was the method chosen by the humanists to free mankind from the Aristotelian worldview suffocating Christianity and returning to the ideals, beauty and spirit of the “Primitive Church”.
For Erasmus, as for his inspirer, the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla (1403-1457), the « Philosophy of Christ » (agapic love), has to come first and opens the road to end the internal divisions of Christianity and to uproot the evil practices of greed (indulgences, simony) and religious superstition (cult of relics) infecting the Church from the top to the bottom, and especially the mendicant orders.
To succeed, Erasmus sets out to clarify the meaning of the Holy Writings by comparing the originals written in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, often polluted following a thousand years of clumsy translations, incompetent copying and scholastic commentaries.
Brothers of the Common Life
Geert GrooteThomas à KempisWessel Gansfort
My own research allows me to recall that Erasmus was a true disciple of the Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life of Deventer in the Netherlands, a hotbed of humanism in Northern Europe. The towering figures that founded this lay teaching order are Geert Groote (1340-1384), Florent Radewijns (1350-1400) and Wessel Gansfort (1420-1489), all three said to be fluent in precisely these three languages.
The religious faith of this current, also known as the “Modern Devotion”, centered on interiority, as beautifully expressed in the little book of Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), the Imitation of Christ. This most read book after the Bible, underlines the importance for the believer to conform one owns life to that of Christ who gave his life for mankind.
Rudolph Agricola
Rudolp Agricola, painted by Cranach.
Hence, in 1475, Erasmus father, fluent in Greek and influenced by famous Italian humanists, sends his son to the chapter of the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, at that time under the direction of Alexander Hegius (1433-1499), himself a pupil of the famous Rudolph Agricola (1442-1485) which Erasmus had the chance to listen to and which he calls a “divine intellect”.
Follower of the cardinal-philosopher Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464), enthusiastic advocate of the Italian Renaissance and the Good Letters, Agricola would tease his students by saying:
“Be cautious in respect to all that you learned so far. Reject everything! Start from the standpoint you will have to un-learn everything, except that what is based on your sovereign authority, or on the basis of decrees by superior authors, you have been capable of re-appropriating yourself”.
Erasmus, with the foundation of the Collegium Trilingue will carry this ambition at a level unreached before. To do so, Erasmus and his friend apply a new pedagogy. Hence, instead of learning by heart medieval commentaries, pupils are called to formulate their proper judgment and take inspiration of the great thinkers of the Classical period, especially “Saint Socrates”. Latin, a language that degenerated during the Roman Empire, will be purified from barbarisms.
With this approach, for pupils, reading a major text in its original language is only the start. An explorative work is required: one has to know the history and the motivations of the author, his epoch, the history of the laws of his country, its geography, cosmography, all considered to be indispensable instruments to put each text in its specific literary and historical context and allowing reading, beyond the words, the intention of their author.
Erasmus (left) and his friend Pieter Gilles, by Antwerp painter Quinten Metsijs.
This “modern” approach (questioning, critical study of sources, etc.) of the Collegium Trilingue, after having demonstrated its efficiency by clarifying the message of the Gospel, will rapidly travel over Europe and reach many other domains of knowledge, notably scientific issues! By uplifting young talents, out of the small and sleepy world of scholastic certitudes, this institution rapidly grew into a hotbed for creative minds.
For the ignorant reader who often considers Erasmus as some kind of comical writer praising madness which lost it after an endless theological dispute with Martin Luther, such a statement might come as a surprise.
Scientific Renaissance
Art and science for the people. The early 16th century was a time of early scientific education.
While Belgium’s contributions to science, under Emperor Charles Vth, are broadly recognized and respected, few are those understanding the connection uniting Erasmus with a mathematician as Gemma Frisius and his pupil and friend Gerard Mercator, an anatomist such as Andreas Vesalius or a botanist such as Rembert Dodonaeus.
Hence, as already thoroughly documented in 2011 by Professor Jan Papy in a remarkable article, the scientific renaissance which bloomed in the Netherlands and Belgium in the early XVIth century, could not have taken place if it were for the “linguistic revolution” provoked by the Collegium Trilingue.
Because, beyond the mastery of their vernacular languages (French and Dutch), hundreds of youth, by studying Greek, Latin and Hebrew, suddenly got access to all the scientific treasures of Greek Philosophy and the best authors in those newly discovered languages.
Remains of the old Louvain city wall. In the foreground, the Jansenius tower, in the background, the Justus Lipsius tower.
At last, they could read Plato in the text, but also Anaxagoras, Heraclites, Thales of Millet, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Galen, Vitruvius, Pliny the elder, Euclid and Ptolemy whose work they will master and eventually correct.
As the books published by Peeters account in great detail, during the first century of its existence, the Collegium Trilingue had a rough time confronting political uproar and religious strife. Heavy critique came especially form the “traditionalists”, a handful of theologians for which the Greeks were nothing but schismatics and the Jews the assassins of Christ and esoterics.
The opposition was such that Erasmus himself never could teach at the Collegium and, while keeping in close contact, decided to settle in Basel, Switzerland, in 1521.
Despite all of this, the Erasmian revolution conquered Europe overnight and a major part of the humanists of that period were trained or influenced by this institution. From abroad, hundreds of pupils arrived to follow classes given by professors of international reputation.
27 European universities integrated pupils of the Collegium in their teaching staff: among them stood Jena, Wittenberg, Cologne, Douai, Bologna, Avignon, Franeker, Ingolstadt, Marburg, etc.
Teachers at the Collegium were secured a decent income so that they weren’t obliged to give private lectures to secure a living and could offer public classes for free. As was the common practice of the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, a system of bursa allowed talented though poor students, including many orphans, to have access to higher learning. “Something not necessarily unusual those days, says Pr Jan Papy, and done for the sake of the soul of the founder (of the Collegium, reference to Busleyden)”.
Le Wentelsteen, last remaining staircase of the Collegium Trilingue. Crédit : Karel Vereycken
While visiting Leuven and contemplating the worn-out steps of the spiral staircase (wentelsteen), one of the last remains of the building that had a hard time resisting the assaults of time and ignorance, one can easily imagine those young minds jumping down the stairs with enthusiasm going from the dormitory to the classroom. Looking at the old shopping list of the school’s kitchen one can conclude the food was excellent with lots of meat, poultry but also vegetables and fruits, and sometimes wine from Beaune in Burgundy, especially when Erasmus came for a visit! While over the years, of course, the quality of the learning transmitted, would vary in accordance with the excellence of its teachers, the Collegium Trilingue, whose activity would last till the French revolution, gave its imprint in history by giving birth to what some have called the “Little Renaissance” of the first half of the XVIth century.
In France, the Sorbonne University reacted with fear and in 1523, the study of Greek was outlawed in France.
Marguerite de Navarre, reader of Erasmus.
François Rabelais, at that time a monk in Vendée, saw his books confiscated by the prior of his monastery and deserts his order. Later, as a doctor, he translated the medical writings of the Greek scientist Galen from Greek into French. Rabelais’s letter to Erasmus shows the highest possible respect and intellectual debt to Erasmus.
In 1530, Marguerite de Navarre, sister of King Francis, and reader and admirer of Erasmus, at war with the Sorbonne, convinced her brother to allow Guillaume Budé, a friend of Erasmus, to create the “Collège des Lecteurs Royaux” (ancestor of the Collège de France) on the model of the Collegium Trilingue. And to protect its teachers, many coming directly from Leuven, they got the title of “advisors” of the King. The Collège taught Latin, Hebrew and Greek, and rapidly added Arab, Syriac, medicine, botany and philosophy to its curriculum.
Dirk Martens
Dirk Martens.
Also celebrated for the occasion, Dirk Martens (1446-1534), rightly considered as one of the first humanists to introduce printing in the Southern Netherlands.
Born in Aalst in a respected family, the young Dirk got his training at the local convent of the Hermits of Saint William. Eager to know the world and to study, Dirk went abroad. In Venice, at that time a cosmopolite center harboring many Greek erudite in exile, Dirk made his first steps into the art of printing at the workshop of Gerardus de Lisa, a Flemish musician who set up a small printing shop in Treviso, close to Venice.
Back in Aalst, together with his partner John of Westphalia, Martens printed in 1473 the first book in the country with a movable type printing press, a treatise of Dionysius the Carthusian (1401-1471), a friend and collaborator of cardinal-philosopher Nicolas of Cusa, as well as the spiritual advisor of Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy and thought to be the occasional « theological » advisor of the latter’s court painter, Jan Van Eyck.
If the oldest printed book known to us is a Chinese Buddhist writing dating from 868, the first movable printing types, made first out of wood and then out of hardened porcelain and metal, came from China and Korea in 1234.
Replica of Martens’ printing press at the Communal Museum of Aalst.
The history of two lovers, a poem written by Aeneas Piccolomini before he became the humanist Pope Pius II, was another early production of Marten’s print shop in Aalst.
Proud to have introduced this new technique allowing a vast increase in the spreading of good and virtuous ideas, Martens wrote in one of the prefaces: “This book was printed by me, Dirk Martens of Aalst, the one who offered the Flemish people all the know-how of Venice”.
After some years in Spain, Martens returned to Aalst and started producing breviaries, psalm books and other liturgical texts. While technically elaborate, the business never reached significant commercial success.
Martens then moved to Antwerp, at that time one of the main ports and cross-roads of trade and culture. Several other Flemish humanists born in Aalst played eminent roles in that city and animate its intellectual and cultural life. Among these:
—Cornelis De Schrijver (1482-1558), the secretary of the City of Aalst, better known under his latin name Scribonius and later as Cornelius Grapheus. Writer, translator, poet, musician and friend of Erasmus, he was accused of heresy and hardly escaped from being burned at the stake.
—Pieter Gillis (1486-1533), known as Petrus Aegidius. Pupil of Martens, he worked as a corrector in his company before becoming Antwerp’s chief town clerk. Friend of Erasmus and Thomas More, he appears with Erasmus in the double portrait painted by another friend of both, Quinten Metsys (1466-1530).
—Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550), editor, painter and scenographer. After a trip to Italy, he set up a workshop in Antwerp. Pieter will produce patrons for tapestries, translated with the help of his wife the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius into Dutch and trained the young Flemish painter Bruegel the Elder who will marry his daughter.
Invention of pocket books
In Antwerp, Martens became part of this milieu and his workshop became a meeting place for painters, musicians, scientists, poets and writers. With the Collegium Trilingue, Martens opens a second shop, this time in Leuven to work with Erasmus. In order to provide adequate books to the Collegium, Martens proudly became, in the footsteps of the Venetian Printer Aldo Manuce, one of the first printers to concentrate on in-octavo 8° (22 x 12 cm), i.e. “pocket” size books affordable by all and which students could take home !
For the specialists of the Erasmus house of Anderlecht, close to Brussels,
“Martens innovated in nearly all domains. As well as in terms of printing types as lay-out. He was the first to introduce Italics, Greek and Hebrew letter types. He also generalized the use of ‘New Roman’ letter type so familiar today. During the first thirty years of the XVIth century, he also operated the revolution in lay-out (chapters and paragraphs) that gave birth to the modern book as we know it today. All this progress, he achieved in close cooperation with Erasmus”.
Thomas More’s Utopia
1516, pages from Thomas More’s Utopia, printed by Martens in Leuven. On the left, an imaginary map showing the island of Utopia. On the right, the equally imaginary Utopian alphabet.
In 1516, it was Dirk Martens who printed the first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia. Among the hundreds of editions he printed mostly alone, 61 books and writings of Erasmus, notably In Praise of Folly. He also produced More’s edition of the roman satirist Lucian and Columbus’ account of the discovery of the new world. In 1423, Martens printed the complete works of Homer, quite a challenge!
In 1520, a papal bull of Leo X condemned the errors of Martin Luther and ordered the confiscation of his writings to be burned in public in front of the clergy and the people.
For Erasmus, burning books didn’t automatically erased their their content from the minds of the people. “One starts by burning books, one finishes by burning people” Erasmus warned years before Heinrich Heine said that “There, were one burns books, one ends up burning people”.
Printers and friends of Erasmus, especially in France, died on the stake opening the doors for the religious wars that will ravage Europe for the century to come.
What Erasmus feared above all, is that with the Vatican’s brutal war against Luther, it is the entire cultural renaissance and the learning of languages that got threatened with extinction.
In July 1521, confronted with the book burning, the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer, who made his living with bible illustrations, left Antwerp with his wife to return to his native Nuremberg.
Thirty years later, in 1552, the great cartographer Gerardus Mercator, a brilliant pupil of the Collegium Trilingue, for having called into question the views of Aristotle, went into exile and settled in Duisbourg, Germany.
In 1521, at the request of his friends who feared for his life, Erasmus left Leuven for Basel and settled in the workshop of another humanist, the Swiss printer Johann Froben.
In 1530, with a foreword of Erasmus, Froben published Georgius Agricola’s inventory of mining techniques, De Re Metallica, a key book that vastly contributed to the industrial revolution of Saxen, Switzerland, Germany and the whole of Europe.
Conclusion
If certain Catholic historians try to downplay the hostility of their Church towards Erasmus, the fact remains that between 1559 and 1900, the full works of Erasmus were on the “Index Vaticanus” and therefore “forbidden readings” for Catholics.
If Thomas More, whom Erasmus considered as his twin brother, was canonized by Pius XI in 1935 and recognized as the patron saint of the political leaders, Erasmus himself was never rehabilitated.
Interrogated by this author in a letter, the Pope Francis returned a polite but evasive answer.
Let’s rebuild the Collegium Trilingue !
With the exception of the staircase, only a few stones remain of the historical building housing the Collegium Trilingue. In 1909, the University of Louvain planned to buy up and rebuild the site but the First World War changed priorities. Before becoming social housing, part of the building was used as a factory. As a result, today, there is no overwhelming charm. However, seeing the historical value of the site, we cannot but fully support a full reconstruction plan of the building and its immediate environment.
It would make the historical center of Leuven so much nicer, so much more attractive and very much more loyal to its own history. On top, such a reconstruction wouldn’t cost much and might interest private investors. The images in 3 dimensions produced for the Leuven exhibit show a nice Flemish Renaissance building, much in the style of the marvels constructed by architect Rombout II Keldermans.
Every period has the right to honestly “re-write” its own history, without falsifications, according to its own vision of the future.
It has to be noted here that the world famous “Rubenshuis” in Antwerp, is not at all the original building, but a scrupulous reconstruction of the late 1930s.
Op 10 september 2011, gaf Karel Vereycken van het Schiller Institute, de volgende presentatie voor een kleine groep vrienden van de LaRouche Studiegroep Nederland.
Het huidige globale financiële systeem is failliet en zal in elkaar zakken over de komende dagen, weken en maanden, als er niets gedaan wordt om het rotte economische paradigma van vrijhandel, globalisatie en monetarisme te verdelgen.
De weg uit de crisis betekent onmiddellijk brugpensioen voor Obama et de splitsing van banken (Glass-Steagall Act) als hefboom om terug een echt krediet systeem op te bouwen, in tegenstelling tot een geldsysteem. Het gaat erom echte investeringen te bemiddelen in de schepping van fysieke en menselijke rijkdom via grootschalige infrastructuur projecten en de creatie van hooggekwalificeerde en welbetaalde banen.
Kan dat gedaan worden? Ja, dat kan, maar de grootste uitdaging is niet de politieke uitdaging. De echte uitdaging die ons toekomt, is het leggen van de grondvesten van een nieuwe renaissance, een fundamentele wending, weg van het groene en malthusiaanse pessimisme, naar een cultuur die er naar streeft de creatieve vermogens van elke persoon, hier, in Afrika en elders, volledig te doen opbloeien.
Was dat ooit gedaan in verleden? Ja, en vooral vanwaar ik hier spreek, beroerd door een grote emotie. Misschien omdat ik het privilege heb een zeker inzicht te bezitten over de rol van enkele leidende figuren die in de XIVde eeuw Zwolle tot “neuronenversneller” van de Europese cultuur hebben gemaakt.
Vergun me het plezier om hier in het kort de geschiedenis te schetsen van een beweging van lekenbroeders en onderwijzers, de Broeders en Zusters van het Gemene Leven, die in feite de peetvaders zijn van onze geliefde Erasmus van Rotterdam.
Zoals heel dikwijls, begint alles met een persoon die beslist een einde te maken aan zijn eigen tekortkomingen, en daarom oprijst als een natuurlijke leider. Je wilt een leidinggevende persoon worden? Begin met je eigen boel op te kuisen vooraleer je gaat preken bij anderen!
Geert Groote, de stichter
Geert Groote, de stichter.
De geestelijke vader van de Broeders is Geert Groote, geboren in 1340 als zoon van een rijke textielhandelaar van Deventer, in die tijd, zoals Zwolle, Kampen en Roermond, een rijke handelsstad van de Hanze liga.
In 1345, na de internationale financiële krach, woekert de pest over heel Europa en bereikt onze gewesten in 1449-50. Meer dan 50 % van de bevolking verliest het leven en Groote, volgens sommige bronnen, verliest beide ouders.
Groote walgde voor de schijnheiligheid van de hordes van flagellanten die door de straten trekken. In plaats van openlijke zelfkastijding meent hij dat innerlijke boetedoening belangrijker is.
Groote heeft aanleg voor studeren en wordt snel naar Parijs gestuurd. Als hij 18 is, geeft men hem de titel van Magister Artium normaal alleen maar toereikbaar aan studenten ouder dan 20. Hij blijft acht jaar in Parijs maar maakt waarschijnlijk enkele uitstapjes naar Keulen en Praag.
Gedurende die periode assimileert hij alles wat men weten moest en kon op het gebied van Wijsbegeerte, Theologie, Geneeskunst, Kerkelijk Recht en Astronomie. Volgens sommigen leert hij Grieks, Latijns en Hebreeuws en beschouwd als een van de meest erudiete personen van zijn tijd.
Vervolgens krijgt hij een prebende van de kapittels van Aken (1368) en Utrecht (1371-1374). Op zevenentwintigjarige leeftijd wordt hij als diplomaat naar Keulen en naar het hof in Avignon in Frankrijk gestuurd om met paus Urbanus V een verschil te regelen tussen Deventer en de bisschop van Utrecht.
Groote’s hoofd, vol met kennis en successen, wordt groter en groter. Zijn beste vrienden, bewust van zijn talenten, zeggen hem vriendelijk op te passen en zich los te werken van de obsessie van het aardse paradijs. De eerste is Guillaume de Salvarvilla, de koormeester van Notre Dame in Parijs. De andere is Heinrich Eger von Kalkar (1328-1408) met wie hij studeerde in Parijs en die nu de nieuwe prior was van het Kartuizerklooster van Monnikshuizen bij Arnhem.
In 1372 is Groote doodziek, maar de priester van Deventer weigert hem, zolang hij niet afstand doet van zijn boeken over zwarte kunst, de laatste sacramenten toe te dienen. Vrezend voor zijn leven, verbrandt Groote koortsig al deze boeken op de markplaats van Deventer. Nu voelt hij zich stukken beter en begint te genezen. Hij beslist ook afscheid te nemen van het luxe leventje met erebanen waar hij weinig voor hoefde te doen en die hem veel geld opleverde.
Na deze bekering neemt Groote keiharde resoluties. In zijn Besluiten en voornemens schrijft hij:
Mijn leven wil ik ordenen op de eer en verheerlijking en de dienst van God en op het heil van mijn ziel. Geen enkel tijdelijk goed: noch zingenot, noch eer, noch tijdelijke goederen, noch wetenschap zal ik stellen boven het heil van mijn ziel… Mijn eerste voornemen is niet langer mijn hoop te vestigen in, of in de toekomst naar het verlangen van aardse winst; want hoe meer ik zal bezitten des te hebzuchtiger ik zal worden; en in tweede instantie, volgens de regels van de primitieve kerk, kan men niet tegelijkertijd winst halen uit meerdere voordelen [zowel uit het wereldlijke als het geestelijke]… Onder de wetenschappen van de heidenen, dient hun morele filosofie het minst vermeden te worden – want ze is dikwijls van groot nut en voordelig voor eigen studie en om anderen te beleren. Dat is zo omdat de wijste onder hen, zoals Socrates en Plato, alle filosofie doortrokken tot morele beschouwingen, en wanneer zij diepe onderwerpen aanspraken deden zij dat op figuurlijke en lichte wijze, met een klemtoon op hun moreel aspect…
Hij trekt zich terug bij de Kartuizers in Monnikshuizen. Maar na drie jaar zegt zijn voormalige schoolkameraad en vriend, de prior Eger van Kalkar aan Groote: “U kunt veel meer goeds doen door in de wereld te gaan preken, waarvoor God U groot talent heeft gegeven, dan hier te blijven in het klooster”.
Vooraleer aan de slag te gaan, doet Groote in 1378 een laatste reis naar Parijs om daar de boeken te kopen die hij nodig heeft. Volgens Pomerius maakte Groote die reis met zijn vriend van Zwolle, de toen al vermaarde schoolmeester Joan Cele (circa 1350-1417).
Jan van Ruusbroec, bron van inspiratie
De Vlaamse mystieker Jan van Ruusbroec
Onderweg bezoeken ze Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), de Vlaamse mystieker en prior van Groenendaal, een kluis aan de rand van het Zoniënwoud bij Brussel. Groote trachtte eerst diens originele geschriften “te verbeteren” maar schreef later in een brief: “Voor tijd en eeuwigheid zou ik ‘des priors voetschabel’ willen zijn, zo sterk is mijn ziel in liefde en eerbied met hem verenigd”. (Nota 1)
Terug in Deventer, spits Groote zich toe op studeren en preken. Eerst meld hij zich in 1379 bij zijn bisschop om tot diaken te worden gewijd. Als diaken krijgt hij het recht te prediken in heel het bisdom Utrecht (ruwweg het huidige Nederland boven de grote rivieren, met uitzondering van de Groningse Ommelanden).
Grote gaat al predikend rond door de Nederlanden en verzamelt vele volgelingen om zich heen. Zijn roem spreidt zich snel over de Lage landen en van overal komt men naar hem luisteren. Hij preekt eerst in Deventer, dan in Zwolle, Kampen, Zutphen en later in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Gouda, Delft en verder. Zijn succes was zo groot dat er binnen de kerk wel wat jaloersheid ontstond. Anderzijds is het ook begrijpelijk dat de wanorde binnen de westerse kerk, namelijk grote schisma tussen 1378 en 1417, Groote’s inspanningen bewerkstelligden.
Al vanaf 1374, schenkt hij het huis van zijn ouders aan een groep arme vrouwen die er samen willen gaan wonen en voorziet hen van een reglement: het eerste zusterhuis van de ???? is in Deventer geboren. Hij noemt hen de Zusters van het Gemene Leven, een concept ontwikkeld door Ruusbroec in verschillende van zijn werken zoals in de slotparagraaf van Vanden Blinckenden Steen:
Die mensche die ute deser hoocheit van Gode neder-ghesent wert inde werelt, hi es volder waerheit, ende rijcke van allen doechden. Ende hi en soeket sijns niet, maer Des-gheens eere diene ghesonden heeft. Ende daer-omme es hi gherecht ende warechtich in alle dinghen. Ende hi heeft eenen rijcken melden [milden] gront, die ghefondeert es inde rijcheit Gods. Ende daeromme moet hi altoes vloeyen in alle die-ghene die sijns behoeven; want die levende fonteyne des Heilich Gheests die es sine rijcheit diemen niet versceppen en mach. Ende hi es een levende willich instrument Gods daar Gode mede werct wt Hi wilt ende hoe Hi wilt; ende des en dreecht hi hem nit ane, maar hi gheeft Gode die eere. Ende daarom blijft hi willich ende ghereet alles te doene dat God ghebiedt; ende sterc ende ghenendich alt te dogene ende te verdraghene dat God op hem gestaedt. Ende hier-omme heeft hi een ghemeyn leven; want hem es scouwen [contemplatie] ende werken even ghereet, ende in beiden is hi volcomen.
Florens Radewijns, de doener
Latijnse School (Houtsnede van de XVIde eeuw)
Gedurende een van zijn eerste preken, rekruteert Groote Florens Radewijns (1350-1400). Geboren in Utrecht, studeerde deze in Praag waar ook hij Magister Artium werd op achttienjarige leeftijd. Groote stuurt hem eerst naar Worms om daar tot priester gewijd te worden.
In 1380 neemt Groote zelf met een groepje van tien leerlingen zijn intrek in het huis van Radewijns in Deventer. Dit huis zou later als ‘Heer Florenshuis’ of ‘Rijke Fratershuis’ bekend komen te staan: het eerste broederhuis. Het werd de uitvalsbasis van veel van Geert Groote’s activiteiten.
Wanneer Groote sterft in 1384 van de pest beslist Radewijns, de beweging die Groote uit te bouwen tot de Broeders en Zusters van het Gemene leven.
Al snel noemen ze zich de Devotio Moderna (Moderne Devotie).
Boeken en begijnhoven
Begijnhof van Kortrijk.
Kantklossen.
Een aantal sterke overeenkomsten bestaan er met de Begijnen die in het begin van de XIIIde eeuw ontstonden. (Nota 2)
De eerste begijnen waren onafhankelijke, alleenwonende, geestelijk diepbewogen vrouwen (zonder man noch regel) die in de wereld het geweldige avontuur aandurfden van een persoonlijke verhouding met God. (Nota 3)
Ze verlangden geen geloften, geen klooster en geen speciale band met de hiërarchie. Ze leefden niet van aalmoezen maar werkten zelf voor hun dagelijkse kost.
Nog meer dan voor de Begijnen staan boeken centraal in alle activiteiten van de Broeders en Zusters van het Gemene Leven.
Het overschrijven en maken van boeken is een voorname bron van inkomsten die tegelijkertijd het goede woord aan de grote massa kan brengen.
De Broeder- en Zusterhuizen spitsen zich toe op onderwijs en hun priesters of preken. Dankzij hun scriptorium en drukkerijen zal hun geestelijke literatuur en ook hun muziek zich ver verspreiden.
Congregatie van Windesheim
Om de beweging tegen ongerechte kritiek te beschermen, richt Radewijns een klooster op van reguliere kanunniken die de regel volgen van Augustinus. In Windesheim, tussen Zwolle en Deventer, op een stukje land van Berthold ten Hove, een van hun leden, wordt een klooster opgebouwd. Een tweede klooster, ditmaal voor vrouwen, komt er in Diepenveen bij Arnhem. De bouw van Windesheim nam meerdere jaren tijd in beslag en verschillende broeders leefden daar tijdelijk in hutten op de werf.
Toen in 1399 Johannes van Kempen, die ook bij Groote had gewoond in Deventer, de eerste prior werd van het klooster Agnietenberg bij Zwolle, kreeg de beweging een nieuw elan. Van Zwolle, Deventer en Windesheim, zwermde de nieuwe leden uit over de lage landen en de rest van noord-Europa om overal nieuwe godshuizen te vestigen.
Uitstraling van de Moderne Devotie via de Congregatie van Windesheim.
In 1412 kende de congregatie 16 kloosters en hun aantal rees tot 97 in 1500: 84 mannen- en 13 vrouwenpriorijen. Bovendien bestonden er talrijke kloosters van kanunnikessen, die niet formeel tot het kapittel van Windesheim behoorden, maar die een Windesheimer als rector hadden. Groenendaal en vele andere kloosters maakten vanaf 1394 deel uit van de Congregatie van Windesheim, slechts erkend door de bisschop van Utrecht in 1423.
A Kempis, Cusanus en Erasmus
Standbeeld van Thomas a Kempis in the English Convent van Brugge.
Sommigen geloven dat dit schilderij van Petrus Christus Cusanus’ vriend Dionysius de Kartuizer voorstelt. De vlieg op de rand van het kader is hier een symbool van de vergankelijkheid van het menselijk bestaan.
Johannes van Kempen was natuurlijk de broer van de wereldberoemde Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) die, na lange jaren leiding van de Broeders van het Gemene Leven, op 92 jarige leeftijd stierf in het klooster Agnietenberg van Zwolle. Behalve een relaas over het leven van Groote en de opkomst van de beweging schreef hij de Imitatione Christi (In navolging Christus), na de Bijbel, het meest gelezen boek ter wereld.
Zowel Rudolf Agricola (1444-1485) als Alexander Hegius (1433-1498), twee markante professors van Erasmus van Rotterdam en onvergelijkbare meesters van het Latijn, het Grieks en het Hebreeuws, werden in Deventer door de Broeders opgeleid en in Zwolle door Thomas a Kempis.
Ook Nicolaus Cusanus (1401-1464), die Agricola beschermde en na zijn dood, via een Bursa Cusana geld gaf om wezen en arme studenten op te leiden, werd mogelijkerwijs door de Broeders opgeleid. Wanneer Cusanus in 1451 naar de Nederlanden reist om daar de scheefgegroeide situaties recht te trekken, bezoekt hij de streek met Dionysius de Karthuizer (van Rykel) (1402-1471), een volgeling van Ruusbroec aan wie hij de opdracht geeft deze taak af te ronden. Geboren in Limburg, volgde ook Dionysius de Karthuizer school in Zwolle. (Nota 4)
Wessel Ganzevoort
Wessel Ganzevoort.
Een andere uitzonderlijke figuur was Wessel Ganzevoort (1419-1489) die samenwerkte met de Griekse kardinaal Bessarion, zelf een intieme medewerker van Cusanus voor het Oecumenische concilie van Ferrare-Firenze.
Gansfoort werd opgeleid in de door de Broeders geleide Sint Maartensschool van Groningen alvorens verder te studeren aan de Latijnse School van Groote’s vriend Joan Cele in Zwolle. Ook de eerste Nederlandse paus, Adrianus VI, werd opgeleid aan de Zwolse Latijnse school alvorens te studeren onder Hegius in Deventer. Vooraleer hij naar Rome ging, stond deze paus open voor de ideeën van Erasmus.
In een brief verzonden van Deventer schrijft Hegius aan Ganzevoort, wie hij de Lux Mundi (het licht der wereld) noemt:
Ik stuur U, zeer eerwaarde heer, de Homiliën van Johannes Crysostomus. Ik hoop dat hun lectuur U mag behagen. Gezien gouden woorden U altijd meer plezier deden dan gouden geldstukken. Ik ben, zoals u weet, in Cusanus’s bibliotheek geweest. Daar vond ik veel boeken die me helemaal onbekend waren… (…) Vaarwel, en als U wilt dat ik voor U iets doe, geef me een teken en beschouw de zaak als gedaan.
Rembrandt van Ryn
Rembrandt van Ryn, een talentvolle student van de Latijnse School.
Een blik op de vorming van Rembrandt bewijst dat ook hij een later product was van al deze inspanningen. In 1609 gaat Rembrandt, amper drie jaar oud, naar de basisschool waar jongens en meisjes leren lezen, schrijven en rekenen.
In de zomer beginnen de lessen om zes uur ’s morgens en om zeven in de winter. De lessen worden beëindigd om zeven uur ’s avonds. De lessen beginnen met bidden, het bespreken van passages uit de Bijbel en het zingen van psalmen. Het is daar dat Rembrandt een elegant handschrift ontwikkelt en meer dan een basisbegrip krijgt over godsdienst.
Gedurende die jaren trachten de Nederlanden te overleven. Het twaalfjarige bestand wordt gebruikt om het algemene goed to ontwikkelen en Nederland wordt één van de eerste landen waar iedereen de kans krijgt om te leren lezen, schrijven en rekenen.
Deze universele educatie voor zowel rijk als arm, zij het met enige tekortkomingen, was het geheim van de “Gouden Eeuw” en de belezenheid van Nederlandse immigranten in Amerika zal een eeuw later ook een voorname rol spelen gedurende de Amerikaanse revolutie.
Hoewel de meeste kinderen het secundair onderwijs aanpakten op twaalfjarige leeftijd, begon Rembrandt zijn opleiding op de Latijnse School van Leiden op zevenjarige leeftijd!
Daar leerde men, buiten retorica, logica en kalligrafie, niet alleen Grieks en Latijns maar ook Engels, Frans, Spaans of Portugees. In 1620, wanneer Rembrandt veertien jaar oud is, schrijft hij in als student aan de universiteit gezien toen geen wet jonge talenten kon weerhouden.
Als vak kiest hij niet Theologie, Rechten, Wetenschap of Geneeskunst, maar… Literatuur. Wilde Rembrandt Griekse en Hebreeuwse filologie en misschien Koptisch of Arabisch aan zijn brede cultuur toevoegen?
Men beseft dus, dat de Nederlanden, België inbegrepen, met Ruusbroec en Groote en later met Erasmus en Rembrandt, in een niet zo ver verleden, een bakermat was voor het soort humanisme dat de mensheid tot de grootste mogelijkheden kan verheffen. Hier falen om onze beweging uit te breiden is dus onmogelijk.
Karel Vereycken bij een bezoek aan het graf van Thomas a Kempis op de Agnietenberg bij Zwolle.
VOETNOTEN:
1. Geert Groote vertaalde in het Latijn op zijn minst drie van Ruusbroec’s werken die hij waarschijnlijk in Monnikshuizen voor het eerst had ontdekt. Hij stuurde het boek over het Tabernakel naar de cisterciënzers van Altencamp en naar zijn vrienden in Amsterdam. Toen de Brulocht werd aangevallen, nam hij persoonlijk de verdediging op van Ruusbroec. Dankzij het gezag van Groote werden de werken van Ruusbroec overvloedig gekopieerd en zorgvuldig bewaard. Ruusbroec’s leer werd gevulgariseerd in de geschriften van de Moderne Devotie en vooral in de Navolging van Christus.
2. In het begin van de XIIIde eeuw werden de begijnen beschuldigd van ketterij en vervolgd, behalve in de Bourgondische Nederlanden. In Vlaanderen werden ze vrijgesproken en kregen ze een officieel statuut. In feite genoten zij de bescherming van twee belangrijke vrouwen: Johanna en Margareta van Constantinopel, gravinnen van Vlaanderen. Zij organiseerden de stichting van de begijnhoven van Leuven (1232), Gent (1234), Antwerpen (1234), Kortrijk (1238), Ieper (1240), Rijsel (1240), Zoutleeuw (1240), Brugge (1243), Douai (1245), Geraardsbergen (1245), Hasselt (1245), Bergen (1248), Anderlecht (1252), Breda (1252), Diest (1253), Lier (1258), Tongeren (1257), Mechelen (1258), Haarlem (1262) en in 1271 deponeerde Jan I, graaf van Vlaanderen, persoonlijk de statuten van het Groot Begijnhof van Brussel. In 1321 schatte de Paus het aantal begijnen op 200.000.
3. Het poëtisch Platonisme van de Antwerpse begijn Hadewijch heeft een onmiskenbare invloed gehad op Jan van Ruusbroec.
4. Het eerste boek gedrukt in Vlaanderen door Erasmus’ vriend Dirk Martens, was Dionysius’ werk Een spiegel van de bekering van de zondaars in 1473.
Le triptyque Portinari de Van der Goes, les bergers
Le beau livre de l’historien néerlandais Bernhard Ridderbos, Schilderkunst in de Bourgondische Nederlanden (La peinture aux Pays-Bas bourguignon, Davidsfonds, Leuven 2015) est un régal pour les yeux et l’esprit.
Couverture du livre de Bernhard Ridderbos
Ridderbos, déjà irrité par l’habile campagne de propagande menée depuis des siècles par des banquiers italiens pour qui « la » Renaissance n’était qu’italienne et pour qui les fiammingo n’étaient que des « Primitifs », démarre son ouvrage en incendiant (non sans raison) une œuvre qui reste une référence, L’automne du Moyen Age (1919), de Johan Huizinga (1872-1945).
Pour cet historien néerlandais influant, recteur de l’Université de Leyden :
L’art de Van Eyck, dans sa capacité de figurer les choses saintes, a su atteindre un haut degré de détail et de naturalisme, marquant sans doute un point de départ sur le plan strict de l’histoire de l’art, mais signifiant en réalité une fin sur le plan historico-culturel. La tension extrême de l’imagination terrestre du divin fut atteint ici ; cependant, le contenu mystique de son imagination s’apprêtait à quitter ces images et à ne laisser les réjouissances qu’à la forme
Niant l’esprit clairement pré-renaissant des peintres flamands du début du XVe siècle, pour Huizinga, leur naturalisme n’était rien d’autre que « le déploiement ultime de l’esprit moyenâgeux tardif. »
Or, comme j’ai cherché à démontrer, en avril 2006, lors de mon exposé au Colloque international à la Sorbonne sur le thème de « La recherche du divin à travers l’espace géométrique », Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck et d’autres peintres flamands, qu’on présente assez souvent comme récalcitrant à utiliser les modèles perspectivistes développés par l’italien Leon Battista Alberti et comme en témoigne la présence assez imposante de miroirs convexes dans leurs œuvres (Volets Werl, Epoux Arnolfini), se sont inspirés des travaux mathématiques et géométriques complexes du grand scientifique arabe Ibn Al-Haytam.
Mieux connu en Occident sous son nom latin Alhazen, ses travaux d’optique, notamment sur la lumière et les miroirs convexes, se retrouvent dans les carnets de Léonard de Vinci, lecteur assidu des Commentaires de Ghiberti. *
Libéré de cette chape de plomb de l’autocensure, Ridderbos approfondit l’iconographie, les contextes économiques, sociaux et culturels. Sans égarer le lecteur dans un marécage de détails et d’hypothèses stériles, il nous offre des éclairages très intéressants sur le comment et le pourquoi des créations artistiques de cette époque.
Ceux parmi vous qui n’ont jamais pris le temps de lire ni l’œuvre monumentale d’Erwin Panofsky, ni les imposantes monographies publiées en Belgique par le Fonds Mercator d’Anvers relatant in extenso la vie des grands peintres flamands tels que Robert Campin, Rogier Van der Weyden, Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, Thierry Bouts, Hugo Van der Goes et Gérard David, remercieront Ridderbos pour non seulement en avoir extrait la quintessence, mais pour les avoir mis en relation les unes avec les autres.
Les commanditaires
En premier lieu, il montre à quel point les artistes étaient soumis à des « carnets de charges » très stricts. Un tel monastère, une telle guilde, un tel seigneur passait commande. Ils fixaient la taille de l’œuvre, le sujet et les personnes à représenter. Plusieurs théologiens, spécialistes du thème à traiter, furent parfois nommés pour conseiller et accompagner le peintre dans sa représentation de sujets religieux. L’artiste exécuta d’abord, sur son panneau, un dessin. Et ce n’est qu’une fois validé par le commanditaire, souvent après de nombreuses modifications, qu’il appliqua les couleurs. Gérard David, par exemple, a du changer l’ensemble des portraits des échevins sur son œuvre, suite à l’élection d’une nouvelle équipe…
Rivalités
Ensuite, Ridderbos indique comment les rivalités des uns et des autres, princes, églises, mais aussi Cités-Etats, souvent en quête de prestige (le fameux « soft power » de nos jours), ont profité à la vie artistique flamande. Princes, ducs, rois et banquiers étrangers se disputaient les peintres flamands pour fanfaronner et se mettre en avant.
Triptyque Portinari (1475), par Hugo van der Goes.
Pour monter en grade, un banquier des Médicis (Angelo Tani) commande un triptyque à Hans Memling, un Jugement dernier (1466-1473), largement inspiré de l’œuvre éponyme de Van Der Weyden pour l’Hospice de Beaune.
Lorsque son confrère (Tommaso Portinari, le fondé de pouvoir des Médicis à Bruges) l’apprend, il passe commande d’un autre triptyque, une Nativité (1475), bien plus grand et plus splendide encore chez Hugo Van der Goes. Ce « triptyque Portinari » sera dévoilé à Florence en 1483 et inspirera toute une série d’œuvres italiens, notamment celles du peintre italien Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Rogier Van der Weyden, après avoir travaillé pour la ville de Louvain, se voit offrir un bien meilleur salaire par la ville de Bruxelles, les deux villes cherchant à devenir la capitale de la région.
Lorsqu’il y peint pour l’Hôtel de Ville un grand retable sur la Justice (La Justice de Trajan et Herkenbald, ca. 1450), la ville de Louvain, pour ne pas être en reste, commandera plusieurs années après une œuvre semblable (La justice d’Otton III, 1473) à Thierry Bouts, provoquant à son tour une autre ville, celle de Bruges d’en commander un du même type (Le jugement de Cambyses, 1498) chez Gérard David, un disciple et proche de l’atelier de Van der Goes.
Ridderbos bien sûr ne se limite pas à tracer cette dynamique sociologique. Il analyse comment ces peintres vont dialoguer entre eux en reprenant à leur compte les apports techniques et iconographiques de leurs confrères. Tout en mobilisant le meilleur d’eux-mêmes, ils apportèrent des choses entièrement nouvelles. C’est un processus assez similaire à l’apport compositionnel d’un Ludwig van Beethoven montant lui-même « sur les épaules des géants » que furent avant lui Bach, Haydn et Mozart.
Van der Goes et la Dévotion moderne
Restes de l’Abbaye de Rouge Cloitre à Auderghem près de Bruxelles.
Dans le chapitre VII, page 179, l’auteur fait un effort particulier pour mettre en valeur l’œuvre d’Hugo Van Der Goes, un peintre remarquable qu’on a rangé un peu vite dans l’ombre de Van Eyck, Van der Weyden et Memling.
Probablement né vers 1440 à Gand, Van der Goes est reçu maître de la guilde des peintres de cette ville en 1467 et en devient le doyen en 1474. Trois ans plus tard, il est à l’apogée de la reconnaissance professionnelle et de la réussite sociale.
C’est alors qu’il abandonne la vie bourgeoise pour s’associer au grand mouvement de réforme appelé la Dévotion moderne. Pour ce faire, Van Der Goes devient frère lai auprès des Soeurs et Frères de la Vie commune, plus précisément ceux de l’abbaye du Rouge-Cloître (Rooklooster) dans la Forêt de Soignes près de Bruxelles. Il y jouit de certains privilèges, comme d’être autorisé à continuer à peindre.
Deventer
La Dévotion moderne sera avant tout un mouvement éducateur. Elle fonda notamment à Deventer une école renommée ouverte aux pauvres et aux orphelins. Rudolf Agricola et son successeur Alexandre Hegius y enseignent le grec et le latin à toute une génération d’humanistes dont le plus connu s’appelle Erasme de Rotterdam.
Le fameux cardinal-philosophe, mathématicien et juriste allemand, Nicolas de Cues (1401-1464) tenait en haute estime les efforts des enseignants de Deventer. En 1469, cinq ans après sa mort, sans doute en accord avec ses derniers vœux, une partie de son héritage ira abonder (de 1470 à 1682) un fond dédié, la Bursa Cusana, permettant à une vingtaine d’élèves, dont la moitié originaire de la ville natale de Cues, d’y parfaire leur instruction.
Le piétisme de la Devotion moderne, centré sur l’intériorité, s’articule le mieux dans le petit livre de Thomas van Kempen (a Kempis) (1380-1471), L’imitation de Jésus Christ. Celui-ci souligne l’exemple à suivre de la passion du Christ tel que nous l’enseigne l’Évangile, message repris par Erasme.
Van Der Goes, animé à titre personnel par l’esprit de cette démarche, apparaît ainsi, sans l’avoir connu, avec le peintre anversois Quinten Matsys, comme « le plus erasmien » des peintres flamands. Et à ce titre, il sera capable de faire transparaître dans ses œuvres une tension dramatique plus aiguë, traduite par l’animation et l’expressivité des personnages.
Les bergers
On pense immédiatement aux magnifiques bergers du Triptyque Portinari. Cette œuvre est commanditée par un des banquiers les plus riches de l’époque et pourtant, ce ne sont pas les trois Rois mages qui se trouvent au premier plan, mais d’humbles bergers arrivés bien avant eux et les premiers à reconnaître l’enfant pour ce qu’il est.
Se démarquant nettement de la façon dont le peintre italien Andrea Mantegna les avait dépeint vingt ans plus tôt, c’est-à-dire comme des pauvres hères en haillons, hirsutes, sales et édentés, Van der Goes souligne leur dignité et met en avant leurs transformations.
D’ailleurs, les expressions des bergers incarneraient les trois étapes spirituelles définies par un autre inspirateur de la Devotion moderne, le mystique flamand Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381) : la vie active, la vie intérieure et la vie contemplative où l’Homme entre en communion spirituelle avec Dieu. **
Le chapeau de Nicodème
La lamentation du Christ (après 1479), œuvre de Hugo van der Goes, Musée de Vienne.
Autre exemple, son tableau La lamentation du Christ (après 1479) actuellement au Musée de Vienne. De prime abord rien de bien révolutionnaire dans cette représentation. On y voit la mère du Christ retenue par Jean lorsqu’elle s’effondre sur la dépouille mortelle de son fils.
C’est sur l’avant plan que deux figures méritent notre attention. S’appuyant sur les Geestelijke Opklimmingen (Des ascensions spirituelles) écrit par Gerard Zerbold de Zutphen (1367-1398), un auteur de la Dévotion moderne proche de Groote, Ridderbos identifie leur rôle dans cette œuvre.
A droite, d’abord, on voit Nicodème coiffé d’une capuche rouge. Selon l’Evangile selon Saint-Jean, Nicodème a été un des premiers pharisiens devenus secrètement disciples de Jésus. Ici, on le voit en pleine crise, pour ne pas dire agonie existentielle, portant un regard effrayé sur son riche chapeau posé par terre.
Le chapeau de Nicodème, surmonté d’une couronne d’épines !
Or, lorsque l’on examine de plus près ce couvre-chef, on découvre qu’il est surmonté d’une couronne d’épines !
La métaphore est donc à l’image de la Dévotion moderne qui exigeait de chacun, non seulement de suivre fidèlement les rites, mais de « vivre à l’imitation du Christ », c’est-à-dire de s’élever à un tel niveau d’amour pour le Christ et l’humanité qu’on puisse offrir librement ses possessions, son patrimoine et même sa vie au vrai, au juste et au beau.
Enfin, pour compléter le tableau, à gauche, toujours au premier plan, la figure de Marie Madeleine, une autre disciple de Jésus qui le suit jusqu’à ses derniers jours.
Prostituée repentie, Marie Madeleine complète à merveille la métaphore en s’érigeant ici comme l’exemple même du travail d’introspection et d’auto-perfectionnement personnel qu’exigeaient les Sœurs et Frères de la Vie Commune.
Le message est fort : vous ne pouvez pas vous contenter d’adorer ou d’admirer le Christ ! Vous devez changer vos vies ! Un message qui n’a pas perdu de son actualité…
Détail du Triptyque Portinari de Hugo van der Goes.
Plaque commémorative au Rooklooster d’Ouderghem près de Bruxelles.
Notes:
* Ibn Al-Haytam (Alhazen) (965-1039) écrivit quelques 200 ouvrages sur les mathématiques, l’astronomie, la physique, la médecine et la philosophie. Né à Bassora, et après avoir travaillé sur l’aménagement des cours du Nil en Égypte, il se serait rendu en Espagne. Il aurait mené une série d’expériences très précises sur l’optique théorique et expérimentale, y compris sur la camera obscura (chambre noire), travaux qu’on retrouve ultérieurement dans les études de Léonard de Vinci. Ce dernier a pu lire les longs passages d’Alhazen qui figurent dans les Commentari du sculpteur florentin Ghiberti. Après que l’évêque de Reims Gerbert d’Aurillac (le futur pape Sylvestre II en 999) ramena d’Espagne le système décimal avec son zéro et un astrolabe, c’est grâce à Gérard de Crémone (1114-vers 1187) que l’Europe va accéder à la science grecque, juive et arabe. Ce savant se rendra 1175 à Tolède pour y apprendre l’arabe et effectuera la traduction de quelques 80 ouvrages scientifiques de l’arabe en latin, notamment l’Almageste de Ptolémée, les Coniques d’Apollonius, plusieurs traités d’Aristote, le Canon d’Avicenne, les œuvres d’Ibn Al-Haytam, d’Al-Kindi, de Thabit ibn Qurra et d’Al-Razi. Dans le monde arabe, ces recherches furent reprises un siècle plus tard par le physicien persan Al-Farisi (1267-1319). Ce dernier a rédigé un important commentaire du Traité d’optique d’Alhazen. En prenant pour modèle une goutte d’eau et en s’appuyant sur la théorie d’Alhazen sur la double réfraction dans une sphère, il a donné la première explication correcte de l’arc-en-ciel. Il a même suggéré la propriété ondulatoire de la lumière, alors qu’Alhazen avait étudié la lumière à l’aide de balles solides dans ses expériences de réflexion et de réfraction. Désormais la question se posait ainsi : la lumière se propage-t-elle par ondulation ou par transport de particules ?
** Voir à ce propos : Nadeije Laneyrie-dagen, L’invention du corps : La représentation de l’homme du Moyen Âge à la fin du XIXe siècle, Paris 1997, 52. ; Delphine Rabier, Les trois degrés de la vision selon Ruysbroeck l’Admirable et les Bergers du triptyque Portinari de Hugo van der Goes, in Studies in Spirituality, 27, p. 163-179, 2017.
Entretien de Karel Vereycken, en aout 2019, avec Jan Papy, professeur de littérature latine de la Renaissance à l’Université de Leuven (KUL), Belgique.
Le Collège des Trois Langues de Louvain (1517-1797)
Erasme, les pratiques pédagogiques humanistes et le nouvel institut des langues.
Sous la direction de Jan Papy, avec les contributions de Gert Gielis, Pierre Swiggers, Xander Feys & Dirk Sacré, Raf Van Rooy & Toon Van Hal, Pierre Van Hecke.
En Belgique, il y a un an, dans la vieille ville universitaire de Louvain, et ensuite à Arlon, une exposition très intéressante a échappé à notre attention.
Réunissant des documents historiques, gravures et manuscrits de la bibliothèque universitaire ainsi que de nombreuses pièces de l’étranger, du 19 octobre 2017 au 18 janvier 2018, l’évènement a voulu, à l’occasion du 500e anniversaire de sa fondation, retracer l’origine et mettre à honneur l’activité du fameux « Collège Trilingue » érigé en 1517 grâce aux efforts du grand humaniste chrétien Erasme de Rotterdam (1467-1536).
Quand on parle de civilisation européenne, c’est bien cette institution, bien que peu connue et de taille modeste, qui en fut l’un des artisans majeurs.
Car tout comme Guillaume le Taciturne (1533-1584), l’organisateur de la révolte des Pays-Bas contre la tyrannie habsbourgeoise, les visionnaires More, Rabelais, Cervantès et Shakespeare s’inspireront de son combat exemplaire, de sa verve et de son grand projet pédagogique.
Vitrail récent représentant Jérôme de Busleyden devant sa résidence à Mechelen. C’est là qu’il introduisit Erasme auprès de Thomas More.
L’occasion pour les Editions Peeters
de Louvain de consacrer à cet anniversaire un beau catalogue et
plusieurs recueils, publiés aussi bien en néerlandais, en français,
qu’en anglais, réunissant les contributions de plusieurs spécialistes
sous l’œil avisé (et passionné) de Jan Papy, professeur de littérature
latine de la Renaissance à l’Université de la ville, appuyé d’une
« équipe trilingue louvainiste » qui n’a pas épargné ses efforts pour
relire attentivement toutes les publications ayant trait au sujet et
explorer des sources nouvelles dans diverses archives d’Europe.
L’histoire de cet établissement humaniste en est une non seulement
d’une remarquable visée scientifique et pédagogique, mais aussi
d’efforts obstinés, voire de combats courageux, couronnés d’un succès
international sans précédent. Mettant à profit le legs de Jérôme de Busleyden (1470-1517),
conseiller au Grand Conseil de Malines, décédé en août 1517, Érasme
s’attela aussitôt à la création d’un collège où des savants de renommée
internationale prodigueraient un enseignement public et gratuit du
latin, du grec et de l’hébreu. Dans ce collège ‘trilingue’,
étudiants-boursiers et professeurs vivaient ensemble.
peut-on lire sur la jaquette du catalogue de plus de 200 pages.
Pour les chercheurs, il ne s’agissait pas de retracer de façon
exhaustive l’histoire de cette entreprise mais de répondre à la
question :
Quelle fut la ‘recette magique’ qui a permis d’attirer aussi
rapidement à Louvain entre trois et six cents étudiants venant de
partout en Europe ?
Portrait d’Erasme de 1517 par son ami le peintre anversois Quinten Metsys.
En tout cas, la chose est inédite, car, à l’époque, rien que le fait d’enseigner et en plus gratuitement, le grec et l’hébreu —considéré par le Vatican comme hérétique— est déjà révolutionnaire. Et ceci, bien que, dès le XIVe siècle, initié par les humanistes italiens au contact des érudits grecs exilés en Italie, l’examen des sources grecques, hébraïques et latines et la comparaison rigoureuse des grands textes aussi bien des pères de l’Eglise que de l’Evangile, est la voie choisie par les humanistes pour libérer l’humanité de la chape de plomb aristotélicienne qui étouffe la Chrétienté et de faire renaître l’idéal, la beauté et le souffle de l’église primitive.
Pour Erasme, comme l’avait fait avant lui Lorenzo Valla (1403-1457),
en promouvant ce qu’il appelle « la philosophie du Christ », il s’agit
d’unir la chrétienté en mettant fin aux divisions internes résultant de
la cupidité (les indulgences, la simonie, etc.) et des pratiques de
superstition religieuse (culte des reliques) qui infectent l’Eglise de
haut en bas, en particulier les ordres mendiants.
Pour y arriver, Erasme désire reprendre l’Evangile à sa source,
c’est-à-dire comparer les textes d’origine en grec, en latin et en
hébreux, souvent inconnus ou sinon entièrement pollués par plus de mille
ans de copiages et de commentaires scolastiques.
Frères de la Vie Commune
Wessel Gansfort, détail d’un portrait posthume peint récemment par Jacqueline Kasemier.
Mes recherches propres me permettent de rappeler qu’Erasme est un disciple des Sœurs et Frères de la Vie commune de Deventer au Pays-Bas. Les figures fondatrices et emblématiques de cet ordre laïc et enseignant sont Geert Groote (1340-1384), Florent Radewijns (1350-1400) et Wessel Gansfort (1420-1489) dont on croit savoir qu’ils maitrisaient précisément ces trois langues.
Le piétisme de ce courant dit de la « Dévotion Moderne », centré sur l’intériorité, s’articule à merveille dans le petit livre de Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), L’imitation de Jésus Christ.
Celui-ci souligne l’exemple personnel à suivre de la passion du Christ
tel que nous l’enseigne l’Evangile, message qu’Erasme reprendra.
Rudolphe Agricola.
En 1475, le père d’Erasme, qui maîtrise le grec et aurait écouté des humanistes réputés en Italie, envoie son fils de neuf ans au chapitre des frères de Deventer, à l’époque dirigé par Alexandre Hegius (1433-1498), élève du célèbre Rudolphe Agricola (1442-1485), qu’Erasme a eu la possibilité d’écouter et qu’il appelle un « intellect divin ».
Disciple du cardinal-philosophe Nicolas de Cues (1401-1464),
défenseur enthousiaste de la renaissance italienne et des belles
lettres, Agricola a comme habitude de secouer ses élèves en leur
lançant :
Soyez méfiant à l’égard de tout ce que vous avez appris jusqu’à ce
jour. Rejetez tout ! Partez du point de vue qu’il faut tout
désapprendre, sauf ce que, sur la base de votre autorité propre, ou sur
la base du décret d’auteurs supérieurs, vous avez été capable de vous
réapproprier.
Erasme reprend cet élan et, avec la fondation du Collège Trilingue,
le portera à des hauteurs inédites. Pour ce faire, Erasme et ses amis
appliqueront une nouvelle pédagogie.
Désormais, au lieu d’apprendre par cœur des commentaires médiévaux,
les élèves doivent formuler leur propre jugement en s’inspirant des
grands penseurs de l’antiquité classique, notamment « Saint Socrate »,
et ceci dans un latin purgé de ses barbarismes. Dans cette approche,
lire un grand texte dans sa langue originale n’est que la base.
Vient ensuite tout un travail exploratoire : il faut connaître
l’histoire et les motivations de l’auteur, son époque, l’histoire des
lois de son pays, l’état de la science et du droit, la géographie, la
cosmographie, comme des instruments indispensables pour situer les
textes dans leur contexte littéraire et historique.
L’art et la science au peuple. Le début du XVIe siècle a connu un engouement pour les sciences.
Cette approche « moderne » (questionnement, étude critique des sources, etc.) du Collège Trilingue, après avoir fait ses preuves en clarifiant le message de l’Evangile, se répand alors rapidement à travers toute l’Europe et surtout s’étend à toutes les matières, notamment scientifiques !
En sortant les jeunes talents du monde étroit et endormi des certitudes scolastiques, l’institution devient un formidable incubateur d’esprits créateurs.
Certes, cela peut étonner le lecteur français pour qui Erasme n’est
qu’un littéraire comique qui se serait perdu dans une dispute
théologique sans fin contre Luther. Si l’on admet généralement que sous
Charles Quint, les Pays-Bas et l’actuelle Belgique ont apporté leurs
contributions à la science, peu nombreux sont ceux qui comprennent le
lien unissant Erasme avec la démarche d’un mathématicien tel que Gemma Frisius, d’un cartographe comme Gérard Mercator, d’un anatomiste comme André Vésale ou d’un botaniste comme Rembert Dodoens.
Or, comme l’avait déjà documenté en 2011 le professeur Jan Papy dans un article
remarquable, en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas, la Renaissance scientifique
de la première moitié du XVIe siècle, n’a été possible que grâce à la
« révolution linguistique » provoquée par le Collège Trilingue.
Car, au-delà de leurs langues vernaculaires, c’est-à-dire le français
et le néerlandais, des centaines de jeunes, étudiant le grec, le latin
et l’hébreu, accèderont d’un coup, à toutes les richesses scientifiques
de la philosophie grecque, des meilleurs auteurs latins, grecs et
hébreux. Enfin, ils purent lire Platon dans le texte, mais aussi
Anaxagore, Héraclite, Thalès, Eudoxe de Cnide, Pythagore, Ératosthène,
Archimède, Galien, Vitruve, Pline, Euclide et Ptolémée dont ils
reprennent les travaux pour les dépasser ensuite.
Vestiges de l’ancienne muraille de Louvain. Au premier plan, la tour Jansénius, au deuxième, la tour Juste Lipse.
Comme le retracent en détail les œuvres publiées par les Editions Peeters,
dans le premier siècle de son existence, le collège dut traverser des
moments difficiles à une époque fortement marquée par des troubles
politiques et religieux.
Le Collège Trilingue, près du Marché aux poissons, au centre de
Louvain, a notamment dû affronter de nombreuses critiques et attaques de
la part d’adversaires « traditionalistes », en particulier certains
théologiens pour qui, en gros, les Grecs n’étaient que des schismatiques
et les Juifs les assassins du Christ et des ésotériques. L’opposition
fut telle qu’en 1521, Erasme quitte Louvain pour Bâle en Suisse, sans
perdre contact avec l’institution.
En dépit de cela, la démarche érasmienne a d’emblée conquis toute
l’Europe et tout ce qui comptait alors parmi les humanistes sortait de
cette institution. De l’étranger, des centaines d’étudiants y
accouraient pour suivre gratuitement les cours donnés par des
professeurs de réputation internationale. 27 universités européennes ont
nommé dans leur corps professoral d’anciens étudiants du Trilingue :
Iéna, Wittenberg, Cologne, Douai, Bologne, Avignon, Franeker,
Ingolstadt, Marburg, etc.
Le Wentelsteen, l’escalier du Collège Trilingue. Crédit : Karel Vereycken
Comme à Deventer chez les Frères de la Vie Commune, un système de bourses permet à des élèves pauvres mais talentueux, notamment les orphelins, d’accéder aux études. « Une chose pas forcément inhabituelle à l’époque, précise Jan Papy, et entreprise pour le salut de l’âme du fondateur (du Collège, c’est-à-dire Jérôme Busleyden) ».
En contemplant les marches usées jusqu’à la corde de l’escalier tournant en pierre (Wentelsteen),
l’un des rares vestiges du bâtiment d’alors qui a résisté à l’assaut du
temps et du mépris, on imagine facilement les pas enthousiastes de tous
ses jeunes élèves quittant leur dortoir situé à l’étage. Comme
l’indiquent les registres des achats de la cuisine du Collège Trilingue,
pour l’époque, la nourriture y est excellente, beaucoup de viande, de
la volaille, mais également des fruits, des légumes, et parfois du vin
de Beaune, notamment lorsque Erasme y est reçu.
Avec le temps, la qualité de son enseignement a forcément variée avec
celle de ses enseignants, le Collège Trilingue, dont l’activité a
perduré pendant longtemps après la mort d’Erasme, a imprimé sa marque
sur l’histoire en engendrant ce qu’on qualifie parfois de « petite
Renaissance » du XVIe siècle.
Erasme, Rabelais et la Sorbonne
Quitte à nous éloigner du contenu du catalogue, nous nous permettons
d’examiner brièvement l’influence d’Erasme et du Collège Trilingue en
France.
A Paris, chez les chiens de garde de la bienpensance, c’est la
méfiance. La Sorbonne (franciscaine), alarmée par la publication
d’Erasme sur le texte grec de L’Evangile de Saint Luc, fait interdire
dès 1523 l’étude du grec en France. En Vendée, à Fontenay-le-Comte, les
moines du couvent de Rabelais confisquent alors sans vergogne ses livres
grecs ce qui incitera l’intéressé à déserter son ordre mais pas ses
livres. Médecin, Rabelais traduit par la suite Galien du grec en
français. Et, comme le démontre la lettre de Rabelais à Erasme, le premier tient le second en haute estime.
L’Abbaye de Thélème, gravure au burin, d’après la description donnée par Rabelais dans Gargantua, son conte philosophique.
Dans son Gargantua (1534), esquissant les contours d’une Eglise du futur, Rabelais évoque le Collège Trilingue sous le nom d’abbaye de Thélème (Thélème = désir en grec, peut-être une référence à Désiré, prénom d’Erasme), un magnifique bâtiment hexagonal à six étages, digne des plus beaux châteaux de la Loire où l’on puisse retrouver, « les belles grandes librairies, en Grec, Latin, Hébrieu, François, Tuscan et Hespaignol, disparties par les divers estaiges selon langaiges », référence on ne peut plus claire au projet érasmien.
Marguerite de Valois, reine de Navarre. Soeur de François Ier, femme de lettres, poétesse, lectrice d’Erasme et protectrice de Rabelais.
Contre la Sorbonne, en 1530, le Collège Trilingue d’Erasme servira explicitement de modèle pour la création, à l’instigation de Guillaume Budé (ami d’Erasme), du « Collège des lecteurs royaux » (devenu depuis le Collège de France) par François Ier, avec les encouragements de sa sœur Marguerite de Valois reine de Navarre (1492-1549) (grand-mère d’Henri IV), poétesse, femme de lettres et lectrice d’Erasme.
Dans le même élan, en 1539, Robert Estienne est nommé imprimeur du roi pour le latin et l’hébreu, et c’est à sa demande que François Ier fit graver par Claude Garamont une police complète de caractères grecs dits « Grecs du Roi ».
Pour les mettre à l’abri des foudres des sorbonagres et des
sorbonicoles, François Ier déclare alors les lecteurs royaux conseillers
du roi. A l’ouverture, il s’agit de chaires de lecture publique pour le
grec, l’hébreu et les mathématiques mais d’autres chaires suivront dont
le latin, l’arabe, le syriaque, la médecine, la botanique et la
philosophie. Aujourd’hui, il aurait sans doute ajouté le chinois et le
russe.
Ce qui n’empêche pas qu’à peine un an après sa publication, en 1532, Pantagruel,
le conte philosophique de Rabelais déchaîne les foudres de la Sorbonne.
Accusé d’obscénité, en sus d’apostasie, Rabelais s’en tire de justesse
grâce à l’un de ses anciens condisciples, Jean du Bellay (1498-1560), diplomate et évêque de Paris, qui l’emmène à Rome à titre de médecin.
A son retour, les esprits calmés, la bienveillance de François Ier et
de Marguerite de Navarre, lui permettent de retrouver son poste à
l’Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon.
Si certains historiens de l’Eglise estiment qu’Erasme, à Louvain en
particulier, a exagéré et parfois même suscité des réactions hostiles de
la part de certains théologiens à son encontre, rappelons tout de même
que lors du Concile de Trente (1545-1563), l’œuvre complète d’Erasme,
taxée d’hérésie, fut interdite de lecture pour les catholiques et mise à
l’Index Vaticanus en 1559 où elle restera jusqu’en 1900 !
Si Thomas More, en qui Erasme voyait son « frère jumeau », a été
béatifié en 1886 par le pape Léon XIII, canonisé par Pie XI en 1935 et
fait saint patron des responsables de gouvernement et des hommes
politiques par Jean-Paul II en l’an 2000, pour Erasme, il va falloir
attendre.
Interrogé en 2015 au sujet d’un geste éventuel de réhabilitation en
faveur d’un chrétien qui a tant fait pour défendre le christianisme, sa
Sainteté le pape François, dans sa réponse écrite, a vivement remercié
l’auteur pour ses réflexions.
Reconstruisons le Collège Trilingue !
Reconstitution sous forme d’image numérique, sur la base de documents historiques, du Collège Trilingue de Louvain. Crédit : Visualisations Timothy De Paepe
Ce qui reste du Collège Trilingue aujourd’hui : au fond d’une cour, entourée de bâtiments plus récents et sans intérêt, une petite porte donnant sur la salle d’escalier et une façade refaite au début du XVIIe siècle.
Dans le catalogue de l’exposition, le professeur Jan Papy retrace également le destin qu’ont connu les bâtiments qui abritaient jadis le Collège Trilingue.
Il mentionne notamment la tentative d’un des recteurs de l’Université
Catholique de Louvain, de récupérer l’édifice en 1909, un projet qui
échoua malheureusement à cause de la Première Guerre mondiale.
Le bâtiment est ensuite transformé en dépôt et en logements sociaux. « Dans la chapelle du Collège Trilingue, on fume alors le hareng et la salle de cours sert d’usine à glace… »
Aujourd’hui, à part l’escalier, rien n’évoque la splendeur historique
de cette institution, ce qui fut forcément ressentie lors des
commémorations de 2017.
Jan Papy regrette, bien que l’Université ait célébré les 500 ans avec « tout
le faste académique requis », que l’ « on ne peut cependant s’empêcher
d’éprouver des sentiments équivoques à la pensée que cette même
Université n’a toujours pas pris à cœur le sort de cet institut
qu’Erasme avait appelé de ses vœux et pour lequel il avait tant œuvré ».
Les restes du bâtiment, certes, dans leur état actuel, n’ont pas grande « valeur »,
du point de vue « objectif ». Ce n’est qu’en fonction de l’attention
subjective que nous leur attribuons, qu’elles ont une valeur inestimable
et précieuse comme témoignage ultime d’une partie de notre propre
histoire.
Passage actuel (Busleydengang), à partir du Marché à poissons, vers le Collège Trilingue au centre de Louvain.
A cela s’ajoute que reconstruire le bâtiment, dont il ne reste pas
grand-chose, coûterait à peine quelque petits millions d’euros,
c’est-à-dire pas grand-chose à l’aube des milliards d’euros que brassent
nos banques centrales et nos marchés financiers. Des mécènes privés
pourraient également s’y intéresser.
Demain ? Reconstitution du portail d’origine donnant sur Collègue Trilingue à partir du marché à poissons. Crédit : Visualisations Timothy De Paepe
De notre point de vue, la reconstruction effective du Collège Trilingue dans sa forme originale, qui constitue en réalité une partie du cœur urbanistique de la ville de Louvain, serait une initiative souhaitable et incontestablement « un énorme plus » sur la carte de visite de la ville, de son Université, des Flandres, de la Belgique et de toute l’Europe. N’est-il pas un fait regrettable, alors que tous les jeunes connaissent les bourses Erasmus, que la plupart des gens ignorent les idées, l’œuvre et le rôle qu’a pu jouer un si grand humaniste ?
Des images en trois dimensions, réalisées dans la cadre de l’exposition sur la base des données historiques, permettent de visualiser un bel édifice, du même type que ceux construit par l’architecte Rombout II Keldermans à l’époque (Note), apte à remplir des missions multiples.
Crédit : Visualisations Timothy De Paepe
Enfin, chaque époque est en droit de « ré-écrire » l’histoire en fonction de sa vision de l’avenir sans pour autant la falsifier. Rappelons également, bien qu’on tende à l’oublier, que la Maison de Rubens (Rubenshuis) à Anvers, un Musée qui attire des milliers de visiteurs chaque année, n’est pas du tout le bâtiment d’origine ! Comme le reconnaît le site du Musée actuel :
La maison de Rubens reste sans doute inchangée jusqu’au milieu du
18e siècle, après quoi elle est entièrement transformée. Les façades sur
la rue sont démolies et reconstruites selon le goût de l’époque. La
demeure du XVIe siècle est aussi en grande partie remplacée par une
bâtisse neuve. Le bâtiment est confisqué par les Français en 1798 et
devient une prison pour les religieux condamnés au bannissement. La
maison est rachetée par un particulier après l’époque napoléonienne.
L’idée de faire de la maison un monument naît dans le courant du XIXe
siècle. La Ville d’Anvers en fait l’acquisition en 1937. Les années
suivantes seront mises à profit pour rendre autant que possible à la
demeure son aspect à l’époque de Rubens. Le musée Maison Rubens ouvre
ses portes en 1946. C’est la maison que vous visitez aujourd’hui.
L’annonce officielle d’une reconstruction du bâtiment pourrait
éventuellement se faire le 18 octobre 2020, date anniversaire du jour où
le Collège Trilingue ouvrait ses portes. Moi j’y serais !
Note: On pense à la Cour de Busleyden et le Palais de Marguerite d’Autriche à Malines ou à la Cour des marquis (Markiezenhof) de Bergen-op-Zoom
Statue du père Ferdinand Verbiest devant l’église de son village natal Pittem en Flandres (Belgique).
Le jésuite flamand Ferdinand Verbiest (1623 – 1688), né à Pittem en Belgique, a passé 20 ans à Beijing comme astronome en chef à la Cour de l’Empereur de Chine pour qui il élabora des calendriers, des tables d’éphémérides, des montres solaires, des clepsydres, un thermomètre, une camera obscura et même un petit charriot tracté par un machine à vapeur élémentaire, ancêtre lointain de la première automobile.
Verbiest, dont la volumineuse correspondance en néerlandais, en français, en latin, en espagnol, en portugais, en chinois et en russe reste à étudier, dessina également des cartes et publia des traités en chinois sur l’astronomie, les mathématiques, la géographie et la théologie.
Parmi ses œuvres en chinois :
Yixiang zhi (1673), un manuel pratique (en chinois) pour la construction de toutes sortes d’instruments de précision, ornée d’une centaine de schémas techniques ;
Kangxi yongnian lifa (1678) sur le calendrier de l’empereur Kangxi et
Jiaoyao xulun, une explication des rudiments de la foi.
En latin, Verbiest publia l’Astronomie européenne (1687) qui résume pour les Européens les sciences et technologies européennes qu’il a promu en Chine.
Bien que les jésuites d’Ingolstadt en Bavière travaillaient avec Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Verbiest, pour éviter des ennuis avec sa hiérarchie, s’en tient aux modèle de Tycho Brahé.
Son professeur, le professeur de mathématiques André Taquet, qui correspondait avec le collaborateur de Leibniz Christian Huyghens, affirmait qu’il refusait le modèle copernicien comme l’église l’exigeait, mais uniquement par fidélité à l’église et non pas sur des bases scientifiques.
Jusqu’en 1691, l’Université de Louvain refusait d’enseigner l’héliocentrisme.
Reconstruction de la mini-automobile à vapeur inventé par Verbiest.
Dans son traité, à part l’astronomie, Verbiest aborde la balistique, l’hydrologie (construction des canaux), la mécanique (transport de pièces lourdes pour les infrastructures), l’optique, la catoptrique, l’art de la perspective, la statique, l’hydrostatique et l’hydraulique. Dans le chapitre sur « la pneumatique » il discute ses expériences avec une turbine à vapeur. En dirigeant la vapeur produite par une bouilloire placé sur un petit charriot vers une roue à aubes, il rapporte d’avoir réussi à créer une auto-mobile rudimentaire. « Avec ce principe de propulsion, on peut imaginer pas mal d’autres belles applications », conclut Verbiest.
L’observatoire astronomique de la Cour impériale à Beijing, totalement rééquipé par le père Verbiest.
L’observatoire d’astronomie de Beijing, rééquipé par Verbiest avec des instruments dont il décrit le fonctionnement et les méthodes de fabrication, fut sauvé en 1969 par l’intervention personnelle de Zhou Enlai. Depuis 1983, cet observatoire qu’on nomme en Chine « le lieu où l’Orient et l’Occident se rencontrent », est ouvert à tous.
Évangélisation et/ou dialogue des cultures ?
Lorsqu’à partir du XIVe siècle la religion catholique cherchait à s’imposer comme la seule « vraie religion » dans les pays qu’on découvrait, il suffisait en général de quelques armes à feu et le prestige occidental pour convertir rapidement les habitants des pays nouvellement conquis.
Convertir les Chinois était un défi d’une toute autre nature. Pour s’y rendre, les missionnaires y arrivaient au mieux comme les humbles accompagnateurs de missions diplomatiques. Ils y faisaient aucune impression et se faisaient généralement renvoyer dans les plus brefs délais. L’estime pour la civilisation chinoise en Orient était telle que lorsque le jésuite espagnol Franciscus Xaverius se rend au Japon en 1550, les habitants de ce pays lui suggéraient : « Convertissez d’abord les Chinois. Une fois gagnés les Chinois au christianisme, les Japonais suivront leur exemple ».
Les trois grandes figures d’un siècle de missions jésuites en Chine : de gauche à droite : Matteo Ricci, Von Schall et Verbiest.
Parmi plusieurs générations de missionnaires, trois jésuites ont joué le temps d’un siècle un rôle décisif pour obtenir en 1692 la liberté religieuse pour les chrétiens en Chine : l’Italien Mattéo Ricci (1552-1610), l’Allemand Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1591 – 1666) et enfin le Belge Ferdinand Verbiest (1623 – 1688).
Pour conduire les Chinois vers le catholicisme, ils décidèrent de gagner leur confiance en les épatant avec les connaissances astronomiques, scientifiques et techniques occidentales les plus avancées de leur époque, domaine où l’Occident l’emportait sur l’Orient. Par ce « détour scientifique » qui consistait à faire reconnaitre la supériorité de la science occidentale, on espérait amener les Chinois à adhérer à la religion occidentale elle aussi jugé supérieure. Comme le formulait Verbiest :
Comme la connaissance des étoiles avait jadis guidés les mages d’Orient vers Bethléem et les jeta en adoration devant l’enfant divin, ainsi l’astronomie guidera les peuples de Chine pour les conduire devant l’autel du vrai Dieu !
Bien que Leibniz montrait un grand intérêt pour les missions des pères en Chine avec lesquelles il était en contact, il ne partagea pas la finalité de leur démarche (voir article de Christine Bierre sur L’Eurasie de Leibniz, un vaste projet de civilisation).
Ce qui est délicieusement paradoxale, c’est qu’en offrant le meilleur de la civilisation occidentale « à des païens », les pères jésuites, peu importe leurs intentions, ont de facto convaincu leurs intermédiaires qu’Orient et Occident pouvaient accéder à quelque chose d’universel dépassant de loin les religions des uns et des autres. Leur courage et leurs actions ont jeté une première passerelle entre l’Orient et l’Occident. A nous aujourd’hui d’en faire un « pont terrestre eurasiatique ».
Matteo Ricci
Mattéo Ricci (1552-1610)
Après avoir été obligé de rebrousser chemin dans plusieurs villes chinoises où il tentait d’engager l’évangélisation chrétienne, le père italien Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) se rendait à l’évidence que sans la coopération et la protection des plus hautes instances du pays, sa démarché était condamné à l’échec. Il se rend alors à Beijing pour tenter d’y rencontrer l’Empereur Wanli à qui il offre une épinette (petit clavecin) et deux horloges à sonnerie. Hélas, ou faut il dire heureusement, à peine quelques jours plus tard les horloges cessent de battre et l’Empereur appelle d’urgence Ricci à son Palais pour les remettre en état de marche. C’est seulement ainsi que ce dernier devient le premier Européen à pénétrer dans la Cité interdite. Pour exprimer sa gratitude l’Empereur autorise alors Ricci avec d’autres envoyés de lui rendre honneur. Mais à la grande déception du jésuite, il est seulement autorisé à s’agenouiller devant le trône vide de l’Empereur. Pour capter l’attention de l’Empereur, Ricci comprend alors que seule la clé de l’astronomie permettra d’ouvrir la porte de la muraille culturelle chinoise.
L’étude des étoiles et l’astrologie occupe à l’époque une place importante dans la société chinoise. L’Empereur y était le lien entre le ciel et la terre (comparable à la position du Pape, représentant de Dieu sur terre) et responsable de l’harmonie entre les deux. Les phénomènes célestes n’influent pas seulement les actes du gouvernement mais le sort de toute la société. A cela s’ajoute que l’histoire de la Chine est parsemée de révoltes paysannes et qu’une bonne connaissance des saisons reste la clé d’une récolte réussie. En pratique, l’Empereur était en charge de fournir chaque année le calendrier le plus précis possible. Sa crédibilité personnelle dépendait entièrement de la précision du calendrier, mesure de sa capacité de médier l’harmonie entre ciel et terre. Ricci, avec l’aide des Portugais, se concentre alors sur la production de calendriers et sur la prévision des éclipses solaires et lunaires et finit par se faire apprécier par l’Empereur. Le Pei-t’ang, l’église du nord, était la résidence de la Mission catholique à Beijing et deviendra également le nom de la bibliothèque de 5 500 volumes européens créé par Ricci.
Lorsque le 15 décembre 1610, quelques mois après le décès de Ricci, une éclipse solaire dépasse de 30 minutes le temps anticipé par les astronomes de la Cour, l’Empereur se fâche. Les astronomes chinois, qui avaient eu vent des travaux sur l’astronomie des Jésuites, demandent alors qu’on traduise d’urgence dans leur langue leurs œuvres sur la question. Un chinois converti par Ricci est alors chargé de cette tâche et ce dernier engage quelques pères comme ses assistants. De façon maladroite certains Jésuites font savoir alors leur opposition à des rites chinois ancestraux qu’ils jugent imprégnés de paganisme. Suite à une révolte de la population et des mandarins, en 1617 les Jésuites se voient estampillés ennemis du pays et doivent de se réfugier à Canton et Macao.
Adam Schall von Bell
Adam Schall von Bell (1591 – 1666)
C’est seulement cinq ans plus tard, en 1622, que le père Adam Schall von Bell (1591 – 1666), un jésuite de Cologne qui arrive à Macao en 1619, arrive à s’installer dans la maison de Ricci à Beijing.
Attaqué au nord par les Mandchous, les Chinois, non dépourvus d’un fort sens de pragmatisme, feront appel aux Portugais de Macao pour leur fournir des armes et des instructeurs militaires. Du coup, les pères Jésuites se retrouvent protégés par le ministère de la défense comme intermédiaires potentiels avec les Portugais et c’est à ce titre qu’ils obtiennent des droits de résidence. Lorsqu’en 1628, les calculs pour l’éclipse lunaire s’avèrent une fois de plus erronés, Schall est nommé à la tête de l’Institut impérial d’astronomie.
Tant de succès ne pouvait que provoquer la fureur et la jalousie des astronomes chinois et musulmans qui furent éloigné de la Cour et dont les travaux étaient discrédités. Ils feront pendant des années campagne contre Schall et les jésuites. Au même temps Schall se faisait tancer par ses supérieurs à Rome et les théologiens du Vatican pour qui un prêtre catholique n’avait pas à participer dans l’élaboration de calendriers servant l’astrologie chinoise.
Vu le faible nombre d’individus – à peine quelques milliers par an – que les pères jésuites réussissaient à convertir au christianisme, Schall se résout à tenter de convertir l’Empereur en personne. Ce dernier, qui découvre que Schall a des bonnes notions de balistique, le charge en 1636 de produire des canons pour la guerre contre les Mandchous, une tache que Schall accompli uniquement pour préserver la confiance de l’Empereur. Les Chinois perdent cependant la bataille et le dernier Empereur des Ming met fin à sa vie par pendaison en 1644 afin de ne pas tomber aux mains de l’ennemi. Les Mandchous
Les Mandchous reprennent sans sourciller les meilleures traditions chinoises et en 1645 Schall est nommé à la tête du bureau des mathématiques. L’Empereur le nomme également comme mandarin. En 1646 Schall reçoit et commence à utiliser les « Tables rudolphines », des observations astronomiques envoyés par Johannes Kepler à la demande du jésuite suisse missionnaire Johannes Schreck (Terrentius) lui aussi installé en Chine. Avec l’aide d’un élève chinois, ce dernier fut le premier à tenter de présenter au peuple chinois les merveilles de la technologie européenne dans un texte intitulé « Collection de diagrammes et d’explications des machines merveilleuses de l’extrême ouest ».
En 1655 un décret impérial ordonne que seules les méthodes européennes soient employées pour fixer le calendrier.
En Europe, les dominicains et les franciscains se plaignent alors amèrement des Jésuites qui non seulement pratiquent « le détour scientifique » pour évangéliser mais se sont livrés selon eux à des pratiques païens. Suite à leurs plaintes, par un décret du 12 septembre 1645, le pape Innocent X menace alors d’excommunication tout chrétien se livrant aux Rites chinois (culte des anciens, honneurs à Confucius). Après le contre-argumentaire du Père jésuite Martinus Martini, un nouveau décret, émis par le Pape Alexandre VII le 23 mars 1656, réconforte de nouveau la démarche des missionnaires jésuites en Chine.
Ferdinand Verbiest
Ferdinand Verbiest (1623 – 1688).
Ce n’est en 1658, qu’après un voyage rocambolesque que le Père Ferdinand Verbiest arrive à son tour à Macao. En 1660, Schall, déjà âgé de 70 ans, fait venir Verbiest – dont il connait les aptitudes en mathématiques et en astronomie — à Beijing pour le succéder. Les controverses alors se déchainent. L’Empereur Chun-chih était décédé en 1661 et en attendant que son successeur Kangxi atteigne la majorité, quatre régents gèrent le pays.
Ces derniers n’étaient pas très favorables aux étrangers. Les envieux chinois attaquent alors Schall, non pas pour son travail en astronomie, mais pour le « non-respect » des traditions chinoises, notamment la polygamie. Un des détracteurs dépose plainte au département des rites, et alors que Schall, ayant perdu la voix suite à une attaque vasculaire cérébrale, a bien du mal à se défendre, Schall, Verbiest et les autres pères se font condamner pour des « crimes religieux et culturels ». Schall est condamné à mort.
La « providence divine » fait alors en sorte que plusieurs phénomènes naturels jouent en leur faveur. Etant donné qu’une éclipse solaire s’annonçait pour le 16 janvier 1665, les régents mettent aussi bien les accusateurs de Schall que Schall lui-même au défi de la calculer. Schall et Verbiest emportent la bataille haut la main ce qui fait naître le doute chez les régents. Le procès fut rouvert et renvoyé devant la cour suprême. Cette dernière confirma hélas le verdict du tribunal. Nouvelle intervention de dame nature : une comète, un tremblement de terre et un incendie du Palais impériale inspirent les pires craintes chez les Chinois qui finissent par relâcher les pères de prison sans pour autant les innocenter.
A l’exception des « quatre de Beijing » (Schall, Verbiest, de Magelhaens, Buglio) qui restent en résidence surveillé, tous sont forcés à l’exil. Schall meurt en 1666 et Verbiest travaille sur des nouveaux instruments astronomiques.
L’Empereur Kangxi
L’Empereur chinois Kangxi (1654-1722)
C’est en 1667 que le jeune Empereur Kangxi prend enfin les commandes. Dynamique, il laisse immédiatement vérifier les calendriers des astronomes chinois par Verbiest et oblige Chinois et étrangers de surmonter leurs oppositions en travaillant ensemble. En 1668 Verbiest est nommé directeur du bureau de l’Astronomie et en 1671 il devient le tuteur privé de l’Empereur ce qui fait naitre chez lui l’espoir de pouvoir un jour convertir l’Empereur au Christianisme.
Comme Schall, Verbiest sera en permanence sous attaque des « marins restés à quai » à Rome. Pour se défendre, Verbiest envoi son coreligionnaire, Philippe Couplet (1623-1693) en 1682 en Europe. Ce dernier s’y rend accompagné d’un jeune mandarin converti, Shen Fuzong qui parlait couramment le latin, l’italien et le portugais. C’est un des premiers Chinois à visiter l’Europe. Il suscite la curiosité à Oxford, où on lui pose de nombreuses questions sur la culture et les langues chinoises.
L’audience à Versailles est particulièrement fructueuse. A la suite de l’entrevue qu’il a avec Couplet et son ami chinois, Louis XIV décide d’établir une présence française en Chine et en 1685, six jésuites*, en tant que mathématiciens du roi et membres de l’Académie des Sciences, seront envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV.
C’est avec eux que Leibniz, lui-même à l’Académie des Sciences de Colbert, entrera en correspondance.
Dans son Confucius Sinarum philosophus, le collaborateur de Verbiest Couplet se montre enthousiaste : « On pourrait dire que le système éthique du philosophe Confucius est sublime. Il est en même temps simple, sensible et issu des meilleures sources de la raison naturelle. Jamais la raison humaine, ici sans appui de la Révélation divine, n’a atteint un tel niveau et une telle vigueur. »
A Paris, Couplet publie en 1687 le livre (dédié à Louis XIV) qui le fait connaître partout en Europe : le Confucius Sinarum philosophus. Couplet est enthousiaste :
On pourrait dire que le système éthique du philosophe Confucius est sublime. Il est en même temps simple, sensible et issu des meilleures sources de la raison naturelle. Jamais la raison humaine, ici sans appui de la Révélation divine, n’a atteint un tel niveau et une telle vigueur.
Verbiest diplomate
A la demande de l’Empereur, Verbiest apprend la langue Mandchou pour lequel il élabore une grammaire. En 1674 il dessine une mappemonde et, comme Schall, s’applique à produire avec les artisans chinois des canons légers pour la défense de l’Empire.
Verbiest sert également de diplomate au service l’Empereur. Par leur connaissance du latin, les Jésuites serviront d’interprètes avec les délégations portugaises, hollandaises et russes lorsqu’elles se rendent en Chine dès 1676. Ayant appris le chinois, le jésuite français Jean-Pierre Gerbillon est envoyé en compagnie du jésuite portugais Thomas Pereira, comme conseillers et interprète à Nertchinsk avec les diplomates chargés de négocier avec les Russes le tracé de la frontière extrême-orientale entre les deux empires. Ce tracé est confirmé par le traité de Nertchinsk du 6 septembre 1689 (un an après la mort de Verbiest), un important traité de paix établi en latin, en mandchou, en mongole, en chinois et en russe, conclu entre la Russie et l’Empire Qing qui a mis fin à un conflit militaire dont l’enjeu était la région du fleuve Amour.
C’est lors de son séjour en Italie, de mars 1689 à mars 1690, que Leibniz s’entretient longuement avec le jésuite Claudio-Philippo Grimaldi (1639-1712) qui résidait en Chine mais était de passage à Rome. C’est lors de leurs entretiens qu’ils apprennent la mort de Verbiest. Ce dernier était tombé de son cheval en 1687 avant de mourir en 1688 faisant de Grimaldi son successeur à la tête de l’Institut impérial d’astronomie.
Comme Schall avant lui, la Chine offre à Verbiest des funérailles d’Etat et sa dépouille mortelle reposera aux cotés de Ricci et Schall à Beijing et en 1692, L’Empereur Kanxi, sans doute en partie pour honorer pour Verbiest, décrète la tolérance religieuse pour les chrétiens.
La querelle des Rites
La réponse du Vatican fut parmi les plus stupides et le mandement de 1693 de Monseigneur Maigrot fait exploser une fois de plus la « Querelle des Rites ». Il propose d’utiliser le mot « Tian-zhu »** pour désigner l’idée occidentale d’un Dieu personnifié, concept totalement étranger à la culture chinoise, d’interdire la tablette impériale*** dans les églises, interdire les rites à Confucius, et condamne le culte des Ancêtres. Et tout cela au moment même où Kangxi décrète l’Édit de tolérance.
Parmi les Jésuites et les autres ordres de missionnaires, les avis sont partagés. Ceux qui admirent Ricci et sont en contacts avec les élites sont plutôt favorables au respect des rites chinois. Les autres, qui essayent de combattre toutes sortes de superstitions locales, sont plutôt favorables au mandement.
Ce qui est certain, c’est que les Chinois n’apprécient guère que des missionnaires s’opposent à leurs rites et traditions. Un décret de Clément XI en 1704 condamnera définitivement les rites chinois. Il reprend les points du Mandement. C’est à ce moment qu’est instauré par l’empereur le système du piao : pour enseigner en Chine, les missionnaires doivent avoir une autorisation (le piao) qui leur est accordée s’ils acceptent de ne pas s’opposer aux rites traditionnels. Mgr Maigrot, envoyé du pape en Chine, refuse de prendre le piao, et est donc chassé hors du pays.
L’empereur Kangxi, qui s’implique dans le débat, convoque l’accompagnateur de Mgr Maigrot et le soumet à une épreuve de culture. Ce dernier ne réussit pas à lire des caractères chinois et ne peut discuter des Classiques. L’empereur déclare que c’est son ignorance qui lui fait dire des bêtises sur les rites. De plus, il lui prête plus l’intention de brouiller les esprits que de répandre la foi chrétienne. Et lorsque l’Empereur Yongzheng succède à Kangxi, il fait interdire le christianisme en 1724. Seuls les Jésuites, scientifiques et savants à la cour de Pékin, peuvent rester en Chine.
C’est contre la querelle des rites que Leibniz dirigea une grande partie de ces efforts. Cette fragilité d’une entente globale entre les peuples du continent eurasiatique à de quoi nous faire réfléchir aujourd’hui. Est-ce que la nouvelle querelle des Rites provoqué par Obama et les anglo-américains contre la Russie et la Chine servira une fois de plus au parti de la guerre de semer la discorde ?
Les tombes des jésuites venus en Chine sont localisées au Collège Administratif de Pékin (qui forme les cadres du Parti communiste de la ville). Les tombes de 63 missionnaires ont été réhabilitées, 14 portugais, 11 italiens, 9 français, 7 allemands, 3 tchèques, 2 belges, 1 suisse, 1 autrichien, 1 slovène et 14 chinois. Les trois premières sont celles de Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall von Bell et Ferdinand Verbiest.
L’auteur, Karel Vereycken, dans la cour du Collège Ferdinand Verbiest à Leuven en Belgique.
* Jean-François Gerbillon (1654-1707), Jean de Fontaney (1643-1710), Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), Louis Le Comte (1655-1728), Guy Tachard (1648-1712) et Claude de Visdelou (1656-1737).
** Peut-on désigner le Dieu des chrétiens par les termes tianzhu (du bouddhisme) ou tiandi (du confusianisme) ? Est-ce que pour les Chinois le mot Ciel (tian) contient également l’idée d’un principe suprême ?
*** Les Chinois plaçaient dans leurs églises, en symbole de sa protection, des tablettes calligraphiées offertes par l’Empereur.