Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) was the illegitimate son of a priest, and he spent a good deal of his life managing the consequences. He was born at Rotterdam in the late 1460s – he was evasive about the exact year – as the second son of a cleric named Gerard and a physician’s daughter called Margaret. Both parents died while he was still a boy, and his guardians, having little else to do with him, settled him among the Augustinian canons at Steyn near Gouda. He was ordained priest in 1492, and spent much of his subsequent career getting away from the cloister and eventually out of the habit, from which Leo X dispensed him in 1517. He went to Paris in 1495, to the Collège de Montaigu, whose bad eggs and worse theology he never forgave; to England in 1499, where he found John Colet and Thomas More, then to Italy and Cambridge. He wrote the Moriae encomium at More’s house in 1509. In 1516 he published the Greek New Testament with his own Latin version beside it, which is the achievement he would have wanted remembered, and the Adagia, his ever-expanding collection of classical proverbs, made him the most widely read living author in Europe. When the Reformation came, he would neither join it nor condemn it wholesale; he quarrelled with Luther over the freedom of the will in 1524–25 and was distrusted by both parties for the rest of his life. He died at Basel on 12 July 1536.

The Colloquia began as a teaching aid and ended as a scandal. In Paris, in the later 1490s, Erasmus had written out sets of model phrases and short exchanges to drill his private pupils in spoken Latin: how to greet someone, how to decline an invitation, how to ask after a friend’s health. In 1518, Froben printed them at Basel without his permission – an octavo of eighty pages holding about a dozen exercises. Erasmus took the book over, and from the edition of March 1522 began replacing the phrase-lists with fully developed dialogues, enlarging it edition by edition until 1533. The result is one of the odder books of the century: a Latin schoolbook whose characters discuss inns, soldiering, marriage, funerals, relics, pilgrimage and the papacy, and which went on being set for schoolboys long after the Paris theologians condemned it in 1526 and the Church placed it on the Index. Naufragium first appeared in the edition of August 1523.

Naufragium is a conversation rather than a narrative: Antonius asks, and Adolphus, who has lately survived a wreck off the Dutch coast, answers. Our excerpt comes from the middle of it, with the mast sawn off and the hull holed, and it is almost entirely about what the passengers do with their religion when they believe they are about to drown. They sing the Salve Regina; they pour oil on the sea and pay it compliments; they promise pilgrimages, candles and monastic vows to saints whom they locate, very precisely, in particular churches. Adolphus reports all of it deadpan and Antonius supplies the commentary — and then, pressed on what he himself did, gives in two sentences the answer the whole catalogue has been preparing us for. The result is funny, but it is also an argument, and Erasmus keeps both of them running at once.

For the Colloquies in English with full annotation, see Craig R. Thompson’s translation in Collected Works of Erasmus39–40 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). The standard critical edition of the Latin is L.-E. Halkin, F. Bierlaire and R. Hoven, Colloquia, Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami I-3 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1972). Daniel Pettersson has read the whole of Naufragium aloud in three videos at https://latinitium.com/, which is worth an hour of anyone’s time. On Erasmus himself, Johan Huizinga’s Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (1924) remains the shortest good way into the topic.

This text is suited to upper intermediate readers of Latin (B2 level). Dialogue is in some ways kinder than continuous prose, as the clauses are short, the questions are brief, and the speakers interrupt each other. Thus, our analysis will not include identifying constructions that this level’s learners should be familiar with. The difficulty lies elsewhere: Erasmus writes a deliberately classicizing Latin thick with idiom and allusion, and he keeps reaching into technical registers for his jokes: Roman law, Roman religion, the liturgy. Three practical notes. An. is Antonius and Ad. is Adolphus. The Leiden text prints direct speech without quotation marks, so watch for inquit and for the colon that introduces a speech. And its orthography is early modern, so expect coeli for caeli, literae for litterae, caussam for causam, quum for cum, and nunquam and quidquid beside the classical forms.

TEXT

Erasmus of Rotterdam, Colloquia familiaria: Naufragium

Personae: ANTONIUS, ADOLPHUS

An. Quid interea vectores?

Ad. Ibi vidisses miseram rerum faciem: nautae canentes, Salve Regina, implorabant matrem Virginem, appellantes eam stellam maris, reginam coeli, dominam mundi, portum salutis, aliisque multis titulis illi blandientes, quos nusquam illi tribuunt sacrae literae.

An. Quid illi cum mari, quae nunquam, opinor, navigavit?

Ad. Olim Venus agebat curam nautarum, quia nata credebatur ex mari: ea quoniam desiit curare, suffecta est huic matri non virgini Virgo mater.

An. Ludis.

Ad. Nonnulli procumbentes in tabulas adorabant mare, quidquid erat olei effundentes in undas, non aliter illi blandientes, quam solemus irato principi.

An. Quid aiebant?

Ad. O clementissimum mare, o generosissimum mare, o ditissimum mare, o formosissimum mare; mitesce, serva: huiusmodi multa occinebant surdo mari.

An. Ridicula superstitio. Quid alii?

Ad. Quidam nihil aliud, quam vomebant, plerique vota nuncupabant. Aderat Anglus quidam, qui promittebat montes aureos Virgini Walsingamicae, si vivus attigisset terram. Alii multa promittebant ligno crucis, quod esset in tali loco; alii rursum, quod esset in tali loco. Idem factum est de Maria Virgine, quae regnat in multis locis; et putant votum irritum, nisi locum exprimas.

An. Ridiculum: quasi divi non habitent in coelis.

Ad. Erant, qui se promitterent fore Carthusianos. Erat unus, qui polliceretur se aditurum divum Iacobum, qui habitat Compostellae, nudis pedibus et capite, corpore tantum lorica ferrea tecto, adhaec cibo emendicato.

An. Nemo meminit Christophori?

Ad. Unum audivi non sine risu, qui clara voce, ne non exaudiretur, polliceretur Christophoro, qui est Lutetiae in summo templo, mons verius quam statua, cereum tantum, quantus esset ipse. Haec quum vociferans quantum poterat identidem inculcaret, qui forte proximus assistebat illi notus, cubito tetigit eum ac submonuit: Vide quid pollicearis: etiamsi rerum omnium tuarum auctionem facias, non fueris solvendo. Tum ille voce iam pressiore, ne videlicet exaudiret Christophorus: Tace, inquit, fatue; an credis me ex animi sententia loqui? Si semel contigero terram, non daturus sum illi candelam sebaceam.

An. O crassum ingenium! Suspicor fuisse Batavum.

Ad. Non; sed erat Zelandus.

An. Miror, nulli in mentem venisse Paulum Apostolum, qui ipse olim navigarit, et fracta navi desilierit in terram. Is enim haud ignarus mali didicit miseris succurrere.

Ad. Pauli nulla erat mentio.

An. Precabantur interim?

Ad. Certatim. Alius canebat, Salve Regina; alius, Credo in Deum. Erant, qui peculiares quasdam preculas habebant, non dissimiles magicis, adversus pericula.

An. Ut afflictio facit religiosos! Rebus secundis nec Deus, nec divus quisquam nobis venit in mentem. Quid tu interea? Nulli divorum nuncupabas vota?

Ad. Nequaquam.

An. Cur ita?

Ad. Quia non paciscor cum divis. Quid est enim aliud, quam contractus iuxta formulam, Do, si facias: aut, Faciam, si facias: Dabo cereum, si enatem: Ibo Romam, si serves.

An. At implorabas alicuius divi praesidium?

Ad. Ne id quidem.

An. Quam ob rem autem?

Ad. Quia spatiosum est coelum. Si cui divo commendaro meam salutem, puta sancto Petro, qui fortasse primus audiet, quod adstet ostio; priusquam ille conveniat Deum, priusquam exponat caussam, ego iam periero.

An. Quid igitur faciebas?

Ad. Recta adibam ipsum Patrem, dicens, Pater noster, qui es in coelis. Nemo divorum illo citius audit, aut libentius donat quod petitur.

ANALYSIS

An. Quid interea vectores? Ad. Ibi vidisses miseram rerum faciem: nautae canentes, Salve Regina, implorabant matrem Virginem, appellantes eam stellam maris, reginam coeli, dominam mundi, portum salutis, aliisque multis titulis illi blandientes, quos nusquam illi tribuunt sacrae literae.

Notes:

1) vectores – “the passengers.” A vector is anyone who is carried rather than doing the carrying, so the word quietly separates the paying passengers from the crew. The sailors in this sentence are busy; the passengers have nothing to do but be religious.

2) Ibi vidisses miseram rerum faciem – “there you would have seen a pitiable state of affairs.” The potential subjunctive drags Antonius into the scene as an imagined spectator, which is the basic manoeuvre of the whole colloquy: Adolphus never simply reports, he stages.

3) nautae canentes, Salve Regina – the Salve Regina is the Marian antiphon sung at Compline, so familiar that Erasmus can drop the incipit untranslated and expect every reader to hear the tune. Note the detail that it is the sailors singing it, the professionals, not the panicking passengers.

4) stellam maris, reginam coeli, dominam mundi, portum salutis – four liturgical titles in asyndeton: star of the sea (from the hymn Ave maris stella), queen of heaven, lady of the world, haven of salvation. Two of the four are nautical, which is not accidental.

5) quos nusquam illi tribuunt sacrae literae – “titles which Holy Scripture nowhere assigns her.” This short relative clause is the hinge of the passage and the reason the Colloquia ended up on the Index. The criterion is scriptural warrant, applied without raising the voice: Erasmus does not say the titles are false, he says the Bible does not use them.

An. Quid illi cum mari, quae nunquam, opinor, navigavit? Ad. Olim Venus agebat curam nautarum, quia nata credebatur ex mari: ea quoniam desiit curare, suffecta est huic matri non virgini Virgo mater. An. Ludis.

Notes:

1) Quid illi cum mari – “what has she to do with the sea?” A brisk colloquial idiom (quid tibi cum…?) which Erasmus uses twice in this dialogue; earlier Antonius asks the same about Castor and Pollux. The construction is dative of the person plus cum and the thing.

2) quae nunquam, opinor, navigavit – “who never, I think, went to sea.” The opinor is beautifully placed: a parenthetic hedge that pretends to be cautious while making the observation unanswerable.

3) Olim Venus agebat curam nautarum, quia nata credebatur ex mari – “Venus used to look after sailors, because she was believed to have been born from the sea.” Venus marina, born of the foam, had genuine cults as protector of seafarers. Curam agere with the genitive is administrative language.

4) suffecta est – “was substituted.” Sufficere is the technical verb for electing a replacement into a vacant office, Roman and ecclesiastical alike. The joke is bureaucratic: the post fell vacant when Venus stopped doing the work, and was filled with Mary.

5) huic matri non virgini Virgo mater – “for this mother who was no virgin, a Virgin mother.” The sharpest sentence in the excerpt, and the most carefully built: the two figures are set in chiasmus, mater and virgo swapping places around the negative. Antonius’s one-word reply, Ludis – “you are joking” – was probably the only thing standing between Erasmus and the censor.

Ad. Nonnulli procumbentes in tabulas adorabant mare, quidquid erat olei effundentes in undas, non aliter illi blandientes, quam solemus irato principi.

Notes:

1) procumbentes in tabulas – “falling forward onto the planks.” Tabulae are the ship’s boards. The posture is that of liturgical prostration, performed on the deck of a sinking ship and directed at the water.

2) adorabant mare – “they worshipped the sea.” Blunt, and deliberately chosen: adorare is the verb for the worship owed to God. Erasmus is not describing a metaphor.

3) quidquid erat olei effundentes in undas – “pouring whatever oil they had onto the waves.” This was a real practice, not a devotional one: ancient and medieval seamen poured oil to flatten breaking water, and Pliny records divers doing it. Erasmus has deliberately set a piece of practical seamanship inside a sentence about worship so that the two become indistinguishable.

4) non aliter illi blandientes, quam solemus irato principi – “flattering it exactly as we are accustomed to flatter an angry prince.” Blandiri is the verb for coaxing, wheedling, paying court. The simile does double work: it explains the sailors and, in passing, says something about courts that Erasmus could not have said directly.

An. Quid aiebant? Ad. O clementissimum mare, o generosissimum mare, o ditissimum mare, o formosissimum mare; mitesce, serva: huiusmodi multa occinebant surdo mari.

Notes:

1) O clementissimum mare, o generosissimum mare, o ditissimum mare, o formosissimum mare – four superlatives in four parallel clauses with the noun repeated each time. These are not poetic epithets but the vocabulary of petition: clementissimus is how one addresses a sovereign, generosissimus and ditissimus flatter a patron’s birth and wealth. The sea is being lobbied.

2) mitesce, serva – “grow gentle, save us.” Two bare imperatives after all that ornament, and the collapse from ceremonial address to naked demand happens in three words.

3) occinebant – “they were chanting.” Occanere is used of singing or croaking, and in augural language of a bird whose cry is an ill omen. Set against canentes of the sailors’ Salve Regina a few lines earlier, it is the uglier word for the same activity.

4) surdo mari – “to a deaf sea.” Erasmus is quoting himself: surdo canis, “you are singing to a deaf man,” is among the proverbs he collected in the Adagia. Readers of that book – which was most literate Europeans – would have heard the adage and understood that the prayers were wasted before Antonius said so.

An. Ridicula superstitio. Quid alii? Ad. Quidam nihil aliud, quam vomebant, plerique vota nuncupabant. Aderat Anglus quidam, qui promittebat montes aureos Virgini Walsingamicae, si vivus attigisset terram.

Notes:

1) Ridicula superstitio – “a ridiculous superstition.” Superstitio was a precise Roman term for religious observance gone wrong – excessive, misdirected, fearful – as against religio, which was observance properly ordered.

2) Quidam nihil aliud, quam vomebant – “some did nothing but vomit.” One of the great deflationary clauses in Renaissance Latin. Erasmus places it immediately after Antonius’s lofty verdict and immediately before the catalogue of vows, so that seasickness and devotion arrive in the same breath as two things people were doing on deck.

3) vota nuncupabant – “they were pronouncing vows.” Vota nuncupare is the formal Roman phrase for publicly declaring a vow to a god, used of magistrates entering office. The technical register matters: what follows is not loose prayer but contract-making, and Adolphus will say so outright before the passage ends.

4) montes aureos – “mountains of gold.” Another adage, aureos montes polliceri, which Erasmus collected at AdagiaI.ix.15 from Terence’s Phormio. It means to promise the impossible, and the reader is told the vow is worthless by the very choice of the proverb.

5) Virgini Walsingamicae – Our Lady of Walsingham, in Norfolk, the great Marian shrine of medieval England. Erasmus had been there himself, twice, and would publish his own account of the visit in the colloquy Peregrinatio religionis ergothree years later. The adjectival form built on a placename is characteristic: the Virgin is identified by her postcode.

Alii multa promittebant ligno crucis, quod esset in tali loco; alii rursum, quod esset in tali loco. Idem factum est de Maria Virgine, quae regnat in multis locis; et putant votum irritum, nisi locum exprimas. An. Ridiculum: quasi divi non habitent in coelis.

Notes:

1) ligno crucis, quod esset in tali loco – “to the wood of the Cross, the one in such-and-such a place.” Relics of the True Cross were distributed across hundreds of churches. The subjunctive esset marks the specification as the vower’s own, reported at second hand, and in tali loco repeated twice does the arithmetic silently: these men are vowing to different objects and believe they are different patrons.

2) quae regnat in multis locis – “who reigns in many places.” Regnat is the word devotion itself used; Erasmus simply declines to smooth over the plural. The grammar of local cult – Our Lady of this shrine, Our Lady of that – is made to sound like a woman holding several thrones at once.

3) votum irritum – “the vow void.” Irritus is the legal term for an instrument of no effect. The vocabulary has shifted entirely into the law of obligations, where it will stay.

4) nisi locum exprimas – “unless you specify the place.” Exprimere is to state expressly, as one names a party or a sum in a contract. The clause is the heart of the satire: the vow is treated as a document that fails for want of a correct address.

5) quasi divi non habitent in coelis – “as though the saints did not live in heaven.” Antonius answers the whole catalogue in eight words, and the argument is genuinely theological rather than merely mocking: a saint in heaven has no postal address, so a cult that depends on one has mislaid its own premises.

Ad. Erant, qui se promitterent fore Carthusianos. Erat unus, qui polliceretur se aditurum divum Iacobum, qui habitat Compostellae, nudis pedibus et capite, corpore tantum lorica ferrea tecto, adhaec cibo emendicato.

Notes:

1) Erant, qui se promitterent fore Carthusianos – “there were those who promised they would become Carthusians.” A generic relative with the subjunctive. The Carthusians were the most austere order in the Latin Church, which is the point: the vow is pitched at the maximum, from a man who expects to be dead within the hour.

2) divum Iacobum, qui habitat Compostellae – “St James, who lives at Compostela.” Habitat is the word Erasmus has been waiting to use. Present tense, indicative, ordinary: the saint is reported as a resident of a Spanish city in the way one might give a neighbour’s address.

3) nudis pedibus et capite – “barefoot and bareheaded.” Standard penitential pilgrim dress, with the ablative of description.

4) corpore tantum lorica ferrea tecto – “his body covered only by an iron mail-shirt.” A lorica is military armour; worn next to the skin as a penance it becomes a hairshirt in iron. Tantum is what makes it absurd – the only garment he promises to wear is the one designed to hurt.

5) cibo emendicato – “on begged food.” Emendicare, to obtain by begging, is a rare and unflattering compound. The whole vow is a package of escalating discomforts, assembled at speed by a man in a storm.

An. Nemo meminit Christophori? Ad. Unum audivi non sine risu, qui clara voce, ne non exaudiretur, polliceretur Christophoro, qui est Lutetiae in summo templo, mons verius quam statua, cereum tantum, quantus esset ipse.

Notes:

1) Nemo meminit Christophori? – “did nobody remember Christopher?” St Christopher was the patron of travellers and the saint whose image you looked at for protection on a journey; Antonius is asking the obvious question, and setting up the best story in the colloquy.

2) non sine risu – “not without laughing.” Litotes, and a stage direction: Adolphus tells us how to take what follows before he tells us what it is.

3) clara voce, ne non exaudiretur – “in a loud voice, so as not to go unheard.” The double negative is exact and is the whole joke in miniature. The man shouts because he thinks the difficulty is acoustic – a saint several hundred miles away might simply fail to catch it.

4) qui est Lutetiae in summo templo, mons verius quam statua – “the one at Paris at the top of the church, a mountain rather than a statue.” This is a real object: a colossal St Christopher some twenty-eight feet high, given by Antoine des Essarts in 1413 and standing just inside the west door of Notre-Dame until it was pulled down in 1785. Erasmus’s Parisian readers knew exactly which statue was meant, and mons verius quam statua was barely an exaggeration.

5) cereum tantum, quantus esset ipse – “a candle as big as himself.” Votive candles matched to a person’s height or weight were an ordinary offering. The correlative tantum… quantus keeps the measurement precise, and the precision is what makes the promise ridiculous.

Haec quum vociferans quantum poterat identidem inculcaret, qui forte proximus assistebat illi notus, cubito tetigit eum ac submonuit: Vide quid pollicearis: etiamsi rerum omnium tuarum auctionem facias, non fueris solvendo.

Notes:

1) Haec quum… identidem inculcaret – “when he kept drumming this out over and over.” Inculcare is to tread something in, hence to repeat until it sticks; identidem means again and again. Note quum for cum, the Leiden spelling, here with the subjunctive of circumstance.

2) qui forte proximus assistebat illi notus – “an acquaintance of his who happened to be standing nearest.” The word order is awkward in English and perfectly clear in Latin: notus, “a man known to him,” is held back to the end of the clause, so the figure materialises beside him as the sentence closes.

3) cubito tetigit eum ac submonuit – “nudged him with his elbow and quietly warned him.” The physical comedy is precise. Submonere, with its prefix of discretion, is to drop a word in someone’s ear for telling him he is overcommitting in public.

4) etiamsi rerum omnium tuarum auctionem facias – “even if you held an auction of everything you own.” Auctionem facere is the ordinary phrase for selling up at public auction, used in Roman law of liquidating an estate.

5) non fueris solvendo – “you would not be solvent.” A fossilised legal idiom: esse solvendo, with the gerund in the ablative, means to be in a position to pay. It is the language of the insolvency court, and it is being applied to a vow.

Tum ille voce iam pressiore, ne videlicet exaudiret Christophorus: Tace, inquit, fatue; an credis me ex animi sententia loqui? Si semel contigero terram, non daturus sum illi candelam sebaceam. An. O crassum ingenium! Suspicor fuisse Batavum. Ad. Non; sed erat Zelandus.

Notes:

1) voce iam pressiore, ne videlicet exaudiret Christophorus – “in a lower voice now, so that Christopher should not overhear, naturally.” This might be the funniest clause in the excerpt: he shouted so the saint would hear the promise and now whispers so the saint will not hear the retraction. Videlicet shows Adolphus’s dryness.

2) an credis me ex animi sententia loqui? – “do you suppose I am speaking in earnest?” Ex animi sententia is the formula of Roman sworn declaration, the phrase by which a man affirmed that he spoke according to his true judgement. He uses the language of the oath to deny that he was under one.

3) non daturus sum illi candelam sebaceam – “I shall not give him so much as a tallow candle.” Sebaceus, of suet or tallow, is the cheap kind; a cereus is wax. He has come down from a wax candle of his own height to not even a tallow dip, the anticlimax being measured in materials.

4) O crassum ingenium! Suspicor fuisse Batavum – “what a gross intellect! I suspect he was a Hollander.” Antonius reaches for a regional slur, and Erasmus is making a joke at his own expense: he was himself a Hollander, and had written up auris Batava, the proverbial Dutch ear, in the Adagia.

5) Non; sed erat Zelandus – “no; he was a Zeelander.” Adolphus deflects the insult one province to the south-west. The correction is delivered as though it settled something.

An. Miror, nulli in mentem venisse Paulum Apostolum, qui ipse olim navigarit, et fracta navi desilierit in terram. Is enim haud ignarus mali didicit miseris succurrere. Ad. Pauli nulla erat mentio.

Notes:

1) Paulum Apostolum, qui ipse olim navigarit, et fracta navi desilierit in terram – “Paul the Apostle, who himself once went to sea and, when the ship broke up, jumped ashore.” The reference is Acts 27, the wreck on Malta. The perfect subjunctives report Antonius’s grounds for the complaint rather than asserting them.

2) Is enim haud ignarus mali didicit miseris succurrere – “for he, being no stranger to trouble, learned to help the wretched.” This is Virgil: non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco, Dido to Aeneas at Aeneid 1.630. Erasmus shifts it from first person to third and from present to perfect, and hands a Carthaginian queen’s line to St Paul.

3) haud ignarus – litotes, and the marker of the quotation. A reader who knows the Aeneid hears Dido before the sentence is finished, which is the point: the saint best qualified to help shipwrecked men is identified by a tag from a pagan epic, and nobody on board even thought of him.

4) Pauli nulla erat mentio – “of Paul there was no mention.” Four words, flatly placed, and the whole argument of the passage rests on them. The one figure in Scripture with direct experience of shipwreck is the one nobody called. Erasmus adds no comment at all.

An. Precabantur interim? Ad. Certatim. Alius canebat, Salve Regina; alius, Credo in Deum. Erant, qui peculiares quasdam preculas habebant, non dissimiles magicis, adversus pericula.

Notes:

1) Certatim – “competitively.” A single adverb doing a great deal: they prayed as if racing each other.

2) Alius canebat, Salve Regina; alius, Credo in Deum – “one was singing the Salve Regina, another the Creed.” The Salve Regina comes back from the opening of our excerpt, now sung by passengers rather than crew, and set beside the Creed. The pairing is not innocent: an antiphon to the Virgin and the baptismal confession of faith are being used interchangeably, as noisemaking against danger.

3) peculiares quasdam preculas – “certain private little prayers.” Precula is a diminutive of precula/prex and is contemptuous. Peculiares means privately owned, each man with his own.

4) non dissimiles magicis – “not unlike magical ones.” The real charge, delivered in litotes. A prayer said for its efficacy against a specific peril, in a fixed form, privately possessed, is formally indistinguishable from a charm – and adversus pericula, “against dangers,” is exactly how an amulet would be described.

An. Ut afflictio facit religiosos! Rebus secundis nec Deus, nec divus quisquam nobis venit in mentem. Quid tu interea? Nulli divorum nuncupabas vota? Ad. Nequaquam. An. Cur ita? Ad. Quia non paciscor cum divis. Quid est enim aliud, quam contractus iuxta formulam, Do, si facias: aut, Faciam, si facias: Dabo cereum, si enatem: Ibo Romam, si serves.

Notes:

1) Ut afflictio facit religiosos! – “how affliction makes men religious!” Exclamatory ut with the indicative. The observation is affectionate as much as cynical, and it is the sentence that turns the catalogue into a general point about human beings rather than a complaint about sailors.

2) Rebus secundis nec Deus, nec divus quisquam nobis venit in mentem – “in good times neither God nor any saint comes into our minds.” Ablative absolute of circumstance, and note nobis: Antonius includes himself, which is why the line does not read as sanctimony.

3) Quia non paciscor cum divis – “because I do not make bargains with the saints.” Pacisci is the verb for striking a formal agreement, from the same root as pax and pactum. Adolphus’s objection is not that the saints are powerless but that this is the wrong kind of transaction to have with them.

4) contractus iuxta formulam – “a contract on a standard form.” Formula is the technical term for the set wording of a legal action. The vows are being classified as instruments drawn up to a template.

5) Do, si facias: aut, Faciam, si facias – “I give if you act; or, I will act if you act.” These are the schematic formulae of the Roman innominate contracts – do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias – which any reader with a term of law behind him would recognise instantly. Erasmus then supplies two worked examples in the same breath, Dabo cereum, si enatem and Ibo Romam, si serves, so that the candle and the pilgrimage to Rome take their places as consideration.

An. At implorabas alicuius divi praesidium? Ad. Ne id quidem. An. Quam ob rem autem? Ad. Quia spatiosum est coelum. Si cui divo commendaro meam salutem, puta sancto Petro, qui fortasse primus audiet, quod adstet ostio; priusquam ille conveniat Deum, priusquam exponat caussam, ego iam periero.

Notes:

1) Ne id quidem – “not even that.” Adolphus has refused to bargain; now he refuses to petition at all, which is a considerably more radical position and is delivered in three words.

2) Quia spatiosum est coelum – “because heaven is roomy.” The premise of the joke that follows, and it is doing real theological work: if the saints are in a place, the place has distances, and distances take time to cross.

3) commendaro – syncopated future perfect of commendare, for commendavero. Erasmus uses the contracted forms freely; the tense sequence here (commendaro… audiet… periero) lays the whole scenario out in the future, step by step, which is what makes it funny.

4) puta sancto Petro… quod adstet ostio – “say St Peter, who will perhaps hear first, since he is standing at the door.” Puta is the colloquial “say, for instance.” Peter is doorkeeper by way of the keys of Matthew 16:19, and Erasmus turns the metaphor into a floor plan: the saint nearest the entrance is the one who takes the message.

5) priusquam ille conveniat Deum, priusquam exponat caussam – “before he can get to God, before he can set out the case.” Both verbs are legal. Convenire with the accusative is to approach a person formally, and in the lawyers’ sense to proceed against them; causam exponere is to state a case before a court. Peter has become counsel, and the anaphora of priusquam enacts the delay it describes.

6) ego iam periero – “I shall already have perished.” The future perfect, placed last in the speech, and the grammar is the argument: by the time the intercession reaches the bench, the client’s death will lie in the past of that future moment. Adolphus has now refused to bargain and refused to petition, and Antonius asks the obvious next question.

An. Quid igitur faciebas? Ad. Recta adibam ipsum Patrem, dicens, Pater noster, qui es in coelis. Nemo divorum illo citius audit, aut libentius donat quod petitur.

Notes:

1) Quid igitur faciebas? – “what were you doing, then?” Three refusals have gone by – Nequaquam, Ne id quidem – and Antonius finally asks the constructive question. Igitur carries a trace of exasperation: the interrogation has been running one way for some time, and this turns it round.

2) Recta adibam ipsum Patrem – “I went straight to the Father himself.” Recta is adverbial (recta via), “by the direct road,” and it answers the spatial joke of the previous speech: if heaven is roomy and the intermediaries are slow, go straight to the destination.

3) dicens, Pater noster, qui es in coelis – the opening of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9), dropped in without introduction exactly as the Salve Regina was at the start of our passage. The two prayers frame the excerpt: the sailors open with an address to the Virgin that Scripture nowhere authorises, and Adolphus closes with the one prayer Christ is recorded as having taught. Note that in coelis picks up spatiosum est coelum from a few lines earlier – the same heaven, now addressed rather than mapped.

4) Nemo divorum illo citius audit – “none of the saints hears sooner than he does.” Comparative citius with the ablative of comparison illo. The claim is not that the saints cannot hear but that God hears faster, which demolishes the practice while leaving the doctrine standing.

5) aut libentius donat quod petitur – “or grants what is asked more gladly.” Libentius answers the whole economy of the passage. Every vow in it assumed a reluctant power that had to be paid, in candles, pilgrimages, iron shirts; the last words of the excerpt say that the one who actually answers does it willingly, and for nothing.

If you have ever promised something extravagant to get yourself out of a predicament, and then reconsidered the terms the moment the danger passed, Erasmus had your measure in 1523. He is not, in the end, against praying in a storm – only against itemising it. Mind the candle. 🕯️

Source:

Desiderius Erasmus. Colloquia familiaria: Naufragium. In: Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia, ed. Jean Leclerc, vol. I. Leiden, 1703.