A litle sheet or scrow of paper

Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco on the frontispiece of his main work, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611). From the DVD edition by Studiolum

Me genus et mores ornant, sermonis Iberi
Ast ego thesaurum. Fama loquatur opus.

I am adorned by ancient family and virtue; and I adorn
the thesaurus of Iberian language. Let Fame praise my work.

Yesterday we commemorated the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the first great Spanish thesaurus and etymological dictionary, Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco’s Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611). As mentioned, the critical edition of the dictionary (2006) was edited by Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra at the University of Navarra, and our job was not just to prepare its electronic version, but also the edition of its Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts. Accordingly, at the end of the work we greeted our colleagues with a short Latin text in which we examined where Covarrubias drew the Hungarian (!) parallels of some Greek and Latin words in the Spanish dictionary. We borrowed several idioms of our greeting from the Adagia of Erasmus, whose electronic edition was completed not much earlier by us. Now, at the occasion of the quadringentenarium, the fourth centenary we translate this essay to English as well. The Latin original was easily written at that time, but with the English version we had to cope. The translation of Erasmus is never easy. :)

Unde Covarrubias Hungaricè didicit? Operis mirae largitatis parumque auctoritatis Sebastiani Covarrubiae Thesaurum Linguae Hispanicae inscriptis editione in disco, ut dicitur, electronico peracta, in eo vocabula ex diversibus idiomatibus mutuata expetentes, ecce vocem Hungaricam cédulácska invenimus, quod Latinè schedulam dicitur. Res mira autem est, vocem ex sermone tam ab aliis remota ac incognita in opere auctoris Hispanici inveniri, adeo magis in hac peculiari raraque forma inflecta, cuius cognitio Sebastianum nostrum in lingua seminis Attilae valde peritus esse testatur; cédulácska scilicet forma diminutiva vocis cédula est. Ita enim auctor ait – sermo autem eius in transcriptione a viris illustribus eruditisque Ignatii Arellani et Raphaelis Zaphrae ad huius saeculi morem composta citatur: „CÉDULA. Es un pedazo de papel o pergamino donde se escribe alguna cosa. Del nombre schedula, graece σχήδιον, diminutivo de scheda, inde cédula. El polaco la llama cedulka, y el húngaro cédulácska, que conforman con nosotros y con el griego.” Haec ille. Quod autem Latinè tantum valet: SCHEDULA. Trunculus chartae sive pergamini in quo aliquod scribitur. Derivasse videtur e voce schedula, id est forma diminutiva vocis scheda, Graecè σχήδιον, unde in dialecto Regni Castellorum cédula dicitur. Idem Polonibus cedulka, Hungaribus cédulácska dicitur, quod non abest ab usu nostrorum Graecorumque.

How did Covarrubias know Hungarian? During the preparation of the DVD edition of Sebastian de Covarrubias’ astonishing in scope and no less prestigious Tesoro de la lengua española and by examining the words borrowed from various languages, we came across the Hungarian word cédulácska, which is an equivalent of the Latin word schedula. To find a term taken from such a remote and unknown language in the work of a Spanish author is already surprising in itself, but even more the fact that we find it in this peculiar inflected form, which proves that our Sebastian was familiar with the language of the clan of Attila: in fact, cédulácska is the diminutive for cédula. This is what the author writes, in the transcription adjusted to the standard of our age by the eminent and learned Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra: „CÉDULA. Es un pedazo de papel o pergamino donde se escribe alguna cosa. Del nombre schedula, graece σχήδιον, diminutivo de scheda, inde cédula. El polaco la llama cedulka, y el húngaro cédulácska, que conforman con nosotros y con el griego.” So much is the quote, which in English means: SLIP [OF PAPER]. A piece of paper or parchment, on which something is written. Probably comes from the Latin schedula, the diminutive for scheda, in Greek σχήδιον, which in Castilian means cédula. The Poles call it cedulka, while the Hungarians cédulácska, which does not differ from our use and that of the Greeks.

O donum mirissimum linguarum, peritia abundans idiomatum, quod voces adeo minutas non solùm Hungaricè, sed etiam Polonicè, et nescio an etiam Sinicè tam liberaliter interpretare videtur! Sed multa incredibilia, ut Erasmus in Adagiis, et suo ipsius indicio periit sorex. Sapienti enim haec constellatio sermonum sat ad aperiendum illam magni Calepini editionem, quae primùs notiones vocum ex lingua Polonica et Hungarica complexa est, nempe illam anno 1590 Basilea typis excusam. Unde, mehercle, haec leguntur: Schĕdŭlă, ae, f. p. diminutivum à scheda. σχήδιον. Gal. Petite charte ou tablette. Ital. Carticella, policetta breue. Germ. Ein zedelin, vitelin papier darauff man schreibt. Hisp. Cartezilla ò escriptura que se toma por nota. Pol. Czedulka. Vngar. Czedulatska. Ang. A litle sheet or serow [scrow] of paper. Cicero ad Cassium lib. 15. Haec de tertia jam epistola antè oppressit, quàm tu schedulam aut literam.

Oh, wonderful gift of languages, a superior skill of idioms, which translates so fluently even such marginal words not only to Hungarian, but to Polish, and perhaps, if necessary, even to Chinese! But too much is incredible says Erasmus in the Adagia, and the shrew was betrayed by its own noise. In fact, this constellation is enough for the philosopher to open that edition of the great Calepinus which, embracing for the first time the Polish and Hungarian equivalents of the words, was published in Basel in 1590. There you read: Schĕdŭlă, ae, f. p., diminutive for scheda. Greek σχήδιον. French Petite charte ou tablette. Ital. Carticella, policetta breue. Germ. Ein zedelin, vitelin papier darauff man schreibt. Span. Cartezilla ò escriptura que se toma por nota. Pol. Czedulka. Hung. Czedulatska. Eng. A litle sheet or serow of paper. Cicero to Cassius, Book 15: This is my third letter to you before you wrote me even a little slip or a single letter.

Sed de aliis sexcentis quae Covarrubias ex dictionario Calepini exhaurivit, in sequenti editione Silvae nostris, Deo adiuvante, tractandum erit.

On the countless other examples exhausted by Covarrubias from the dictionary of Calepinus, we will write in a next issue of our Silva, if God wills it.

As well as here, in the Poemas of Río Wang.

The Calatrava

Today is the anniversary of the death of Erasmus of Rotterdam. After the death of Thomas More who affected him so much, Erasmus returned from Freiburg to Basel, the city he passionately loved and hated: to Basel where in 1521 the printer Frobenius had placed a mansion at his disposal so he could comfortably work; to Basel from where in 1529 the riots and the ultimate takeover of the Protestants forced him to leave. He returned in 1535 just for a short time before dying on a July 12, as today, in 1536.

In his fight against superstition, Erasmus denounced the supposed preventive or apotropaic virtues of images. In  The Praise of Folly he specially mentions that of Saint Christopher as an example for them. According to the tradition widespread in the contemporary Europe, just the sight of a statue or of a painting of the saint was able to preserve someone for the rest of the day from sudden death or, as they called it, “bad death”. Erasmus made fun of this belief:

“…These stories serve not only to pass away time but bring profit, especially to mass priests and pardoners. And next to these are they that have gotten a foolish but pleasant persuasion that if they can but see a wooden or painted Polypheme Christopher, they shall not die that day…” (The Praise of Folly, 40)

In the abundant iconography of Saint Christopher, the most curious portrait – certainly of Eastern Christian origins – is the one representing him with a dog’s head. As Louis Réau informs us in the Iconographie de l’art chrétien, this image is rooted in the 6th-century gnostic Acts of St. Bartholomew, but it might also have a certain contamination with the Egyptian god Anubis


The feast of my neighborhood was celebrated in this weekend, and precisely under the protection of Saint Christopher.

The Calatrava neighborhood of Palma is trying to revive its better times, as were the late 70s and early 80s, when an air of radical freedom, cultural and intellectual variety and a truly joyful street life permeated this corner as intensively as few other places in Spain. Just some months ago Jaume Franquesa published his book Sa Calatrava mon amour. Etnografia d'un barri atrapat en la geografia del capital (Calatrava, my love. Ethnography in a neighborhood trapped in the geography of the capital), a deep X-ray survey of the changes brought about by speculation and the real estate transactions in this ancient heart of Palma. An intelligent book, because the author knew how to get inside the houses, talk to families, seek testimonies from neighbors, reveal their feelings and unravel their contradictions, avoiding any temptation to simplify matters. The people appearing on these pages have lived a complete transformation of their neighborhood, have fought for their ideas, have had discussions among themselves and with the political and economic powers, but, above all, they managed to keep a real tradition of the fiesta and street life alive for many years. Today the neighborhood is quiet and somewhat sad.

One of the traditional rituals of the feast of Saint Christopher is to place his relic, which had stopped a plague, for veneration outside the front door of the church of Santa Fe, at the entrance of the neighborhood.



Almost all cars – there are not many – stop for receiving the blessing and a print representing Saint Christopher and to leave a small donation in return.



Inside the church, San Cristobalón, “Giant Saint Christopher”. He is so gigantic indeed that he uses a palm tree for support. Jesus, to prove that it was Him whom he had taken across the river, told him to nail down his staff which was immediately transformed into a palm tree laden with dates.




Erasmus would probably passionately love and hate La Calatrava.

La Calatrava

Hoy es el aniversario del fallecimiento de Erasmo de Rotterdam. Después de la muerte de Tomás Moro, que tanto le afectó, Erasmo volvió desde Friburgo a la ciudad de Basilea, con la que mantenía un tensa relación de amor y odio: la Basilea del impresor Froben que le había entregado en 1521 una mansión para que pudiera escribir a sus anchas, y a la vez la Basilea de los alborotos y algaradas protestantes en las calles, que le obligaron a marchar en 1529. Volvió en 1535 para morir allí al poco tiempo, un doce de julio, como hoy, de 1536.

En su combate contra la superstición, Erasmo denunció las supuestas virtudes preventivas o apotropaicas de las imágenes. Por ello menciona especialmente a San Cristóbal en el Elogio de la locura. Según era tradición muy extendida por toda Europa, la sola vista de una imagen del santo tenía poder para preservar durante todo un día de la muerte súbita o «mala muerte». Erasmo se burlaba de eso:

«…Y este ingenio fabulador no solo sirve para matar el aburrimiento de las horas, sino que lo aprovechan en su propio beneficio, sobre todo los curas y predicadores. Primos de éstos son los que tienen la estúpida, pero agradable, persuasión de que si logran ver una estatua o un cuadro de San Cristóbal, gigante como Polifemo, ese día no morirán…» (Elogio de la locura, 40)

Entre la abundante iconografía de San Cristóbal, la más curiosa —procedente del cristianismo oriental— es esta que vemos arriba y que lo representa como cinocéfalo. Nos informa Louis Réau, en la Iconografía del arte cristiano, de que la imagen deriva de los Hechos gnósticos de San Bartolomé (compuestos en el siglo VI). Podría tener también cierta contaminación del dios Anubis egipcio.


Las fiestas de mi barrio han sido este fin de semana. Y es justamente San Cristóbal quien les da amparo.

El barrio de La Calatrava de Palma intenta revivir tiempos mejores, como lo fueron a fines de los años 70 y principios de los 80, cuando un aire de libertad radical, de mezcla cultural e ideológica y de alegría verdaderamente callejera impregnaba estas esquinas como en pocos sitios de España. Hace unos meses Jaume Franquesa publicó un libro que es una radiografía profunda del cambio provocado por la especulación y por la necesidad de orden que conllevan las operaciones inmobiliarias en el corazón antiguo de Palma: Sa Calatrava mon amour. Etnografia d'un barri atrapat en la geografia del capital (Documenta Balear). Un libro inteligente porque ha sabido meterse dentro de las casas, hablar con las familias, buscar los testimonios de los vecinos, revelar sus sentimientos y desentrañar sus contradicciones, huyendo de cualquier tentación simplificadora. La gente que aparece en estas páginas ha vivido una transformación completa del barrio, han peleado por sus ideas, han discutido entre ellos y con las autoridades políticas y los poderes económicos pero, por encima de todo, consiguieron hacer durante años una auténtica filosofía de la fiesta y de la vida en la calle. Hoy el barrio es silencioso y algo triste.

Uno de los actos tradicionales de las fiestas de San Cristóbal es sacar delante de la puerta de la iglesia de Santa Fe, a la entrada del barrio, una reliquia suya que curó una epidemia de peste.



Casi todos los coches —pocos— que entran se paran a recibir la bendición. Con ella se entrega una estampa de San Cristóbal y se deja una limosna a cambio.



Dentro de la iglesia, San Cristobalón. Tan grande es que utiliza una palmera para apoyarse. Jesús, para probarle que era a él a quien había cruzado el río, le dijo que clavara en tierra su cayado. Al punto se transformó en una palmera cargada de dátiles.




Seguramente Erasmo también tendría una relación de amor y odio con La Calatrava.

Writ in water

Verba volant, scripta manent, said the ancients. But as they knew well how little scripta are worth if they are not backed by the gold cover of the intentions striving to realize them, therefore what we call “word cried in the wilderness” they linked, with an elegant oxymoron, to the very writing: in aqua scribere, “to write on water”.

Erasmus also knew this when he included the proverb In aqua scribis (1.4.56) among the ancient adagia on useless things – Aethiopem lavas, whitewashing the black man, Ferrum natare doces, teaching the iron to swim, Cribro aquam haurire, drawing water with a sieve, Parieti loqueris, speaking to the wall, and so on – which fill out more than half of Centuria 1.4 of his Adagia, and were translated with one collective phrase in the Hungarian Adagia of 1598 by János Baranyai Decsi: Haszontalan dolgot czeleködni – Doing idle things.

Erasmus illustrated this adage mostly from Greek sources. In Lucian’s Tyrant (21) Hermes warns Charon, the ferryman of the underworld: You are kidding or, as they say, writing on water if you hope any obulus from Micyllus, and Plato in Phaidros (276c) says about “the expert of truth, beauty and goodness” that he will not write with his pen on black water. What is more, Erasmus quotes a verse from the commentary of Aristophanes’ comedy The Wasps as a separate proverb: Ἀνδρῶν δὲ φαύλων ὄρκον εἰς ὕδωρ γράφε - The oath of an evil man should be written on water. He also quotes Latin authors, primarily Catullus (70,2-3):

…Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. …Whatever a woman says to her yearning lover it shall be written in the wind and on rapid water.

We have already seen that condemnatory ancient proverbs often got a positive tone precisely in Erasmus’ century. This happened to the metaphor of “writing on water” as well. Erasmus himself had no small part in this, as he stressed that our Lord Christ was mentioned to write only one single time, and even then – in the dust. In John 8:3-11, the story of the adulterous woman – read in the Mass exactly today – the Pharisees ask Jesus whether they should stone the woman as Moses had commanded.

“Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them: If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her: Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Photis Kontoglou: Christ writing in the dust, 1924

Renaissance humanists filled whole volumes with their conjectures about what Jesus wrote there in the dust. Several exegets pointed out that this scene contains a reference to Jeremiah 17:13: “Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.” But all of them agreed that whatever Jesus wrote, it was certainly no idle thing. On the contrary, it is also included in the statement in Mt 24:25: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

The metaphor of the word written on transient material but lasting forever thus became a favorite image in literature. Rudolf Wittkower describes in detail in his Born under Saturn how the idea of the “divinely inspired” artist, the artifex and poeta divus developed since the beginning of the 16th century, also incorporating several elements of sacrality which earlier had been reserved to God only. These included the above motif as well, which was used by the new poets – oh, vanity! – to symbolize the eternity of their own works. The new metaphor can be found expanded in Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599):

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Agayne I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray. “Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay. A mortall thing so to immortalize, For I my selve shall lyke to this decay, and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.” “Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devize, To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens wryte your glorious name. Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

With the spreading of the metaphor – and especially in and after Romanticism – it was already enough to quote the first half of the full image, the text written on a transient or unfathomable material, and this already evoked the idea of eternity just as naturally as it had evoked that of vanity for the ancients. “Write on the sky if everything is broken!”, wrote in the lager Radnóti, concentrating in one single phrase both elements of the motif.


However, the best example of the adage’s new interpretation is Keats’ epitaph in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. This bitter epitaph announces that the young poet, embittered by his evil enemies, only wanted to have written on his tomb: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

“This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a Young English Poet, Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”

English history of literature holds that this saying can be reduced to a verse in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster (1611) – All your better deeds Shall be in water writ – and alludes to the vanity of all noble efforts. However, if we also take into account the complete history of the adage from classical times through Erasmus to Spenser, then the inscription suggests just the contrary: the eternity of the poet’s oeuvre, triumphing over everything transitory and evil in this world.

Executio in effigie

Destroyers of books and blind executors of barbarous orders there were always. The damnatio memoriae of Erasmus in the 16th-century Indices librorum prohibitorum has reminded us of the fury of the unknown – but certainly Spanish – hand that left its trace in a copy of the Cosmographiae universalis (Basle, Heinrich Petri, 1550) of the Spanish Royal Library, now preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid (R/33638).

The editio princeps of this work of the geographer and Hebraist Sebastian Münster was published in German in 1544, dedicated to Emperor Charles V. It was the first modern geographic overview of the world, illustrated with views and descriptions of several cities. It had two more editions before this Latin one of 1550 in which the portraits of Erasmus were so abused. Then between 1550 and 1628 over twenty further editions appeared in six different languages. It was one of the bestsellers of the Renaissance. With a good sense of popularization, it offered a mix of historical, astronomical, cartographic, natural historical, folkloristic and every kind of other information in the description of the cities of the world. This edition of 1550 is very corpulent, of more than four hundred pages and nine hundred woodcuts, including the panoramic views of seventy-four cities.

The book was a collective work of a large number of authors and artists. These two portraits of Erasmus are attributed to Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch who followed faithfully the models set by Hans Holbein the Younger.


If in the earlier example of the censure of Erasmus we saw the deletion of his name for the posterity, here we see that of his face, a complete erasure of both the text and the image (it is impressive how his eyes were picked out and his mouth stitched up). We do not know when the destruction was committed, but probably not much after the promulgation of the infamous first Roman Index librorum prohibitorum romano of 1559.

Erasmus was not the only target of the attack in this copy of the work. All references to the Reformation, including the cities where it developed first, as well as some hints to the “superstitious” religiosity of the Spaniards (p. 61) or the persecution of the heretics by the Inquisition (p. 477) were cancelled in the same way, in order to do no harm to the Spanish readers.

However, similar attempts almost always fail. The book was read, and greedily at that, and the readers’ imagination healed all the wounds hit by the censure. Extremely mysterious and deeply suggestive is for example the comment left by a later hand (certainly after 1605, the publication of the Don Quijote) on the two sides of Erasmus’ portrait: “Sancho Panza” to the right and “and his friend d. Quijote” to the left.

Marcell Bataillon, the great scholar of Spain and the Renaissance appears to also have known this inscriptions, and he wrote about it in his fundamental work Érasme en Espagne (1937):

We cannot reconstruct the reflections that guided his pen when he wrote these enigmatic words. Was it an orthodox hand wishing the harsh hand of censure for the dialogues of Sancho Panza with his friend Don Quijote? Or rather a liberal spirit who enjoyed their tasty talks as a substitution for the prohibited Colloquia of Erasmus? It is impossible to know, and it is not even that much important to us. The mere association of ideas evoking the memory of the Don Quijote at the sight of a mutilated portrait of Erasmus is enough prove that the unknown reader perceived between Cervantes and Erasmus the same secret kinship presented here by us. (Erasmo y España, 1983, p. 799).

Executio in effigie

Destructores de libros y ciegos ejecutores de órdenes bárbaras los habido siempre y en todas partes. Hablando hace unos días de la damnatio memoriae de Erasmo en los sucesivos índices censores católicos hemos recordado la vesania con que se aplicó una anónima mano, con seguridad española, en un ejemplar de la Cosmographiae universalis (Basilea: Heinrich Petri, 1550) procedente de la Biblioteca Real y que ahora se conserva en la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (R/33638).

La editio princeps de esta obra del geógrafo y hebraísta Sebastian Münster apareció en 1544, en alemán, dedicada a Carlos V. Se trata de la primera obra moderna de vistas y descripciones corográficas de ciudades. Tuvo tres ediciones hasta esta versión latina de 1550, en la que vemos los maltratados retratos de Erasmo. Luego, entre 1550 y 1628 aparecieron más de veinte ediciones en seis lenguas distintas. Fue, sin duda, una de las obras de mayor éxito del Renacimiento. Mezclaba con buen tino divulgativo informaciones históricas, astronómicas, cartográficas, naturalistas, folklóricas... al paso de la descripción de las ciudades del mundo. Esta edición de 1550 es muy voluminosa, de más de mil doscientas páginas y unos novecientos grabados, incluyendo vistas panorámicas de sesenta y cuatro ciudades.

El libro fue un trabajo colectivo con participación de una gran cantidad de eruditos y artistas. Estos dos retratos de Erasmo se atribuyen a Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch que sigue fielmente sendos modelos de Hans Holbein el Joven.


Si en el ejemplo anterior sobre la persecución de Erasmo veíamos la cancelación de su nombre para la posteridad, aquí vemos la obliteración de su rostro: un borrado completo en texto e imagen (es impresionante cómo se le han sacado los ojos y cosido la boca). No sabemos cuándo se cometió el destrozo, pero es de imaginar que fue poco después de la promulgación del infausto primer Index librorum prohibitorum romano de 1559.

En este ejemplar, por supuesto, no es solo Erasmo quien sufrió el atentado. Toda referencia a la Reforma, incluidos aquellos lugares en los que se desarrolló primero, así como algunas alusiones a la religiosidad «supersticiosa» propia de los españoles (p. 61) o las persecuciones inquisitoriales de la herejía (p. 477) fueron tachadas para que los lectores hispanos no se contaminaran.

Pero estos empeños casi siempre fracasan. El libro fue leído y leído con avidez, rellenando con la imaginación los huecos y vacíos depositados por la censura. No deja de ser misteriosa, pero tremendamente sugerente, la anotación de una mano posterior (después, claro está, de 1605) que escribió a ambos lados de la efigie de Erasmo: «Sancho Panza» (a la derecha), «y su amigo d. Quijote» (a la izquierda).

Sobre ello reflexionó Marcel Bataillon:

Nos es imposible reconstruir las reflexiones que guiaban su pluma cuando trazó estas enigmáticas palabras. ¿Sería un ortodoxo que entregaba mentalmente a las severidades de la censura los coloquios de Sancho Panza y de su amigo don Quijote? ¿No sería más bien un espíritu libre que gozaba de sus sabrosas charlas como de un desquite por la prohibición de los Coloquios de Erasmo? Es imposible saberlo, y esto nos importa bien poco. La asociación de ideas que hizo surgir el recuerdo del Quijote en presencia de un Erasmo mutilado basta, por sí sola, para probarnos que ese desconocido percibía entre Cervantes y Erasmo el secreto parentesco que aquí afirmamos. (Erasmo y España, 1983, p. 799).

Nomen Erasmi

But why just Erasmus?

Erasmus was no Luther and no Calvin. He was a Catholic priest who never rejected his vocation, he condemned the teachings of Luther, he wrote spiritual mirrors for Christian couples, widows and knights, and in the last years of his life, when Basle, the bustling center of German Humanism became Protestant, he moved from there to the provincial but Catholic Freiburg, because, as he told, he could not live without the Eucharist. Why did the Expurgatory Index order to cancel just his name?

The Roman Index librorum prohibitorum, the List of Prohibited Books was first published in 1559 on the order of Pope Pius IV. Its birth was due not only to the insistence and assistance of the most conservative pope of the century who also wanted to suppress the Jesuit order because of their “excessive liberalism”, but also to the turn in the relations of religion and politics, church and reforms that followed in the 1550s. By this time, around the death of Charles V it had became clear that the Reformation threatens the unity and governability of the empire. “Heresy” turned into a political problem. A process of crystallization began, called “confessionalization” by modern historians, which by the end of the century broke Europe into sharply demarcated religious confessions and states preferring only the one or the other confession, thus creating the actors whose global clash – practically the very first world war – will be the focus of the following century.

While earlier one could be at once a good Catholic and a sympathizer of the new teachings, from the 1550s on everyone was forced by politics out of any shade of ambiguity and pressured into committing themselves to this or that side. And political power considered as most dangerous not those standing on the other side, but the ones who – as in the Flemish-Walloon jokes the immigrant “Belgians” do – attempted to maintain the fiction of unity, the dialogue and the rational balancing of arguments. And this movement, called “Irenism” from the Greek word εἰρήνη, “peace”, had Erasmus as its father and basis of reference.

The Roman Index. Inner frontispiece of the 1758 edition

In 1559 Erasmus had been dead for twenty-three years, but the popularity of his works was increasing, and they kept spreading in translations even outside the Humanist circles. Pius IV wanted to put an end to this with one stroke by including all the works of Erasmus in the Roman Index: Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus cum vniuersis Commentarijs, Annotationibus, Scholijs, Dialogis, Epistolis, Censuris, Versionibus, Libris, & scriptis suis, etiam si nil penitus contra Religionem, vel de Religione contineant. – “All the works of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam together with all his commentaries, notes, treatises, dialogues, letters, versions, books and writings, even if they do not contain anything against or about religion” From then on the only Catholic country where these works could be read was Spain, where Philip II, in an attempt to control the deeply anti-Spanish pope, reserved the right of publishing a separate Spanish Index, which was much more moderate than the Roman one. The Spanish Humanist Palmyreno could not stop to effusively expressing his gratitude:

May God give long life to the Great Inquisitor, as he was much more generous to the men of knowledge than the Pope. Because if he tore away from us the Adagia of Erasmus, like the Pope did in his catalog, truly I say that we would have sweated blood and water.

Marginal drawing of Folly by Hans Holbein in the first edition of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, 1515

The severity of the Roman Index was not tenable for long. Only some years after the death of the pope, in 1564 the Council of Trent promulgated a more moderate version which allowed several works of Erasmus. Then the papal “Index Congregation”, established in 1571, introduced a new category, that of the “cleaned books”. The specifications regularly published by the Congregation defined in detail the parts of books to be “expurgated” so that their lecture could be allowed. This specification was the Index expurgatorius, which was also referred to by our bookworm on the flyleaf of Alciato’s Emblemata, purified from the name of Erasmus in 1618.

Studies of Erasmus’ hands by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523. The confessional self-definition
of Holbein could be interpreted as ambiguous in the same way as that of Erasmus. We have
commented on this in our edition of the Retratos o Tablas de las Historias del
Testamento Viejo, originally published without the name of the artist.

Among the works of Erasmus there was only one treated in detail in the Index expurgatorius: the Adagia. The others were either forbidden or allowed in their entirety by the new Index. The Adagia, the monumental collection of ancient Greek and Latin proverbs provided with extremely detailed commentaries was, however, a book that was not recommendable either to ban or to allow. This work which in the intentions of its author presented the Classical world in an easy-flowing and conversational style, by then had became an indispensable schoolbook:

Aquí se an quemado en casa muchas obras de Erasmo y specialmente dos o tres vezes los Adagios. Agora con la licencia avida del Alexandrino, se duda si se podrían tornar a comprar los Adagios; y ya que fuesse lícito, si le parece cosa expediente hazerlo, porque estos lettores de casa dessean estos libros.

Here in our house they burned several works of Erasmus, mainly two or three copies of the Adagia. Now as [Cardinal] Alexandrino gave us permission, we are in doubt whether we can acquire the Adagia again, and if yes, whether You consider it opportune to buy it, as the local professors desire to have it so much. – writes Salmerón in 1560 from the Jesuit convent of Naples to their General Laínez.

Thus the Index Commission of the Council of Trent already in 1562 opted for the compromise to give commission to Gaspare a Fosso, Bishop of Reggio and the papal typographer Paolo Manuzio – son of the great Aldus Manutius – to produce a version of the Adagia purified from everything they judge as contrary to the Catholic faith. The new version was published in 1575, and since then the Catholic church permitted the use of this version only.

The 1575 “expurgated” edition of the Adagia. The name of Erasmus is missing from the frontispiece, just like from the text of the edition.

What did the editors judge as contrary to the Catholic faith?

First of all the name of Erasmus. With the confessionalization asserting itself, this name was so much surrounded by the suspicion of heresy and untrustworthiness that the editors found it better not to burden the future students with its knowledge. At the same time they transformed all the words in first person singular into first person plural or passive third person singular: for example they wrote invenimus “we find it so” or invenitur “it is found so” instead of the usual Erasmian invenio “I find it so”. By this they unconsciously acted in the spirit of Erasmus who considered the ancient proverbs as formulas of the collective wisdom of the Antiquity.

They omitted every reference to the Bible and the church fathers, mainly for a sharper demarcation of the secular and religious spheres, as most of these references had absolutely no odor of heresy. In this way they also omitted all those quotations illustrating the biblical use of proverbs: The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge, or We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.

They omitted the majority of witty political references, digressions of social criticism and hints to contemporary authors, books and persons which had so much enliven the work. In this way whole paragraphs or every third or fourth phrase of some articles, like of Aut regem, aut fatuum nasci oportere (Be born either a king or a fool), and even complete articles disappeared from the book.

Self-portrait of Erasmus on the margin of his commentaries to St. Jerome

Whoever works, also makes mistakes. This is how in the text there remained references pointing into the nothing – to articles completely omitted –, or hasty readings like for example clepsydra pestilentior (more pestiferous than hour-glass) instead of the correct clepsydra perstillantior (running down more quickly than sand in the hour-glass). These must have given plenty to think about to the Catholic reader who was not permitted any more to collate the suspicious readings with the original edition.

It is strange that the research of Erasmus and his censorship – for example Silvana Seidel-Menchi’s basic work, the Erasmus als Ketzer (1992) –, although referring to this purged edition of the Adagia, was never interested in detail of those ten thousands of changes which necessarily made the Catholic reception of Erasmus different from the Protestant one. A word-for-word comparison of the “Catholic text” with the original one and a detailed list of the differences was first undertaken by us in Studiolum in the first digital edition of the Adagia, which is at once the first complete edition of this work since the authoritative Leiden edition of 1703. Besides the complete Leiden text, the collation with the “Catholic edition” and the notes of the renowned French typographer-philologist Robert Estienne, first published in 1563, it also includes the contemporary translations of the Adagia. Thus for example the funnily archaic English translation of 1539/1545 by Richard Taverner, or the Hungarian edition of Joannes Decius Baronius from 1598 where the proverbs were not just translated, but replaced with their contemporary Hungarian equivalents.


In terms of the Index expurgatorius, after the publication of the expurgated Adagia in 1575 not only the acquisition of any other edition was banned, but the changes had to be introduced also in the existing ones. Our book of Alciato fell under the effect of this decree. True, the Emblemata is not identical with the Adagia, but it has much to do with it. Erasmus often remembers with respect about his friend Alciato in the articles of the Adagia, and in the emblems of Alciato very often the adages of Erasmus are transformed into “pictorial proverbs”, as it was pointed out by Francisco Sánchez in his commentaries throughout this book. The unknown censor executed in the text of these commentaries precisely what the Roman censors did in that of the Adagia: the deletion of the name of Erasmus. This is also a proof of a fact that emblem research seems to realize only recently: that in the 16th century the genres of the adages and emblems were largely considered identical.

This expurgation, however, even if fulfilling the requirements, was not worth much. The contemporaries exactly knew to whom they have to be grateful for the book which first opened them a window on the Classical world. And the Protestant countries kept publishing the Adagia, and even enlarging it with thousands of new proverbs. The copies of these editions could be also found in the libraries of most Catholic convents and dioceses, and we do not know any case when the name of Erasmus was deleted from them in the prescribed way. These volumes with their physical existence announce what John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and friend of Erasmus had foretold already at the beginning of the 1500s:

Nomen Erasmi nunquam peribit –
The name of Erasmus will never perish.

Nomen Erasmi

Pero ¿por qué justamente Erasmo?

Erasmo no era Lutero ni Calvino. Era un sacerdote católico que nunca abandonó su vocación, que condenó las enseñanzas de Lutero, escribió espejos espirituales para parejas cristianas, viudas y caballeros, y que en los últimos años de su vida, cuando Basilea, el agitado centro del humanismo alemán, se hizo protestante, emigró de allí hacia la provinciana pero católica Friburgo, pues, según sus palabras, no podía vivir sin la eucaristía. ¿Por qué, entonces, el Índice expurgatorio ordenó eliminar solo su nombre?

El Index librorum prohibitorum romano, la lista de los libros prohibidos, se publicó por primera vez en 1559 a instancias del Papa Pío IV. Su aparición se debía no solo a la insistencia y la exigencia del papa más conservador del siglo, que también quiso suprimir a la Compañía de Jesús por su «excesivo liberalismo», sino también al giro que había experimentado la relación entre política y religión, iglesia y reforma, desde 1550. Por entonces, hacia la muerte de Carlos V, era ya claro que la Reforma amenazaba la unidad y la gobernabilidad del Imperio. La «herejía» se había convertido en un problema político. Empezaba un proceso de cristalización, llamado «confesionalización» por los historiadores modernos, que a fines del siglo partió Europa en confesiones religiosas y estados nítidamente demarcados por su pertenencia a una confesión u otra, sentando las bases del conflicto global —de hecho, la primera guerra mundial— que recorrió todo el siglo siguiente.

Mientras que, al principio, uno podía ser buen católico y simpatizar a la vez con las nuevas enseñanzas, desde 1550 en adelante a todos se les exigió sin sombra de ambigüedad un compromiso con una u otra confesión. Y el poder político consideraba más peligrosos no a quienes estaban claramente en el otro lado, sino a aquellos que —como los «belgas» de los chistes flamenco-valones— intentaban mantener una ficción de unidad, de diálogo y de equilibrio racional de los argumentos. Y este movimiento, llamado «irenismo» (de la palabra griega εἰρήνη, «paz»), tuvo en Erasmo a su progenitor y piedra de toque.

El Index romano. Portada interior de la edición de 1758.

En 1559 hacía veintitrés años que Erasmo había muerto, pero la popularidad de sus obras iba en aumento y se iba difundiendo en traducciones que llegaban más allá de los círculos humanistas. Pío IV decidió poner fin de golpe a esta situación incluyendo todas las obras de Erasmo en el Index romano: Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus cum vniuersis Commentarijs, Annotationibus, Scholijs, Dialogis, Epistolis, Censuris, Versionibus, Libris, & scriptis suis, etiam si nil penitus contra Religionem, vel de Religione contineant. – «Todas las obras de Desiderio Erasmo de Rotterdam junto con todos sus comentarios, notas, tratados, diálogos, cartas versiones, libros y escritos, incluso si no contienen nada contra o acerca de la religión». Desde entonces, el único país en que podían leerse sus obras fue España, donde Felipe II, en su deseo de controlar a un papa profundamente anti-hispano, se arrogó el derecho de publicar un Index propio, muchó más moderado que el romano. El humanista aragonés Lorenzo Palmireno (1524-1579) no encontraba bastantes palabras para expresar su gratitud:

Dios conceda una larga vida al Gran Inquisidor pues él ha sido mucho más generoso con los hombres de entendimiento que el Papa. Porque si él aparta de nosotros los Adagia de Erasmo, como el Papa hizo en su catálogo, ciertamente digo que sudaríamos sangre y agua.

La Locura. Dibujo marginal hecho por Hans Holbein en la primera edición del Elogio de la Locura de Erasmo, 1515.

La severidad del Index romano no pudo sostenerse mucho tiempo. Pocos años después de la muerte del Papa, en 1564 el Concilio de Trento promulgó una versión más moderada que liberaba varias obras de Erasmo. A continuación, la Congregación papal del Index, establecida en 1571, introducía la nueva categoría de «libros limpios». Las especificaciones publicadas regularmente por la Congregación definían en detalle las partes de los libros que debían «expurgarse» de modo que su lectura fuera aceptada. Esta especificación fue el Index expurgatorius, al que nuestro gorgojo hizo referencia en las guardas de los Emblemata de Alciato, purificados del nombre de Erasmo en 1618.

Estudios de las manos de Erasmo por Hans Holbein, el Joven, 1523. Holbein, al igual que Erasmo,
mantuvo una actitud que se pudo interpretar como ambigua en su definición confesional.
Lo hemos comentado en nuestra edición de los Retratos o Tablas de las Historias
del Testamento Viejo, que se publicaron sin el nombre del artista

Entre las obras de Erasmo solo hubo una tratada en detalle en el Index expurgatorius: los Adagia. Las otras fueron o prohibidas o permitidas en su totalidad por el nuevo Index. Los Adagia, la monumental colección de antiguos proverbios griegos y latinos acompañados de comentarios tremendamente minuciosos, aparecía entonces como un libro que no era recomendable ni prohibir ni permitir. Esta obra, que en las intenciones del autor debía presentar el mundo clásico de una manera fácil y fluida, y con un estilo coloquial, se había convertido por entonces en un libro escolar indispensable.

Aquí se han quemado en casa muchas obras de Erasmo y specialmente dos o tres vezes los Adagios. Agora con la licencia avida del Alexandrino, se duda sí se podrían tornar a comprar los Adagios; y ya que fuesse lícito, si le parece cosa expediente hazerlo, porque estos lettores de casa dessean estos libros. – escribe Salmerón en 1560, desde el convento de los jesuitas en Nápoles, a su General Laínez.

De esta manera, la Comisión del Index del Concilio de Trento, ya en 1562 optó por el compromiso de encargar a Gaspare a Fosso, obispo de Reggio, y al impresor del Papa, Paolo Manuzio —nieto del gran Aldo Manuzio— una versión de los Adagia limpia de cuanto juzgaban contrario a la fe católica. La nueva versión se publicó en 1575, y desde entonces fue la única autorizada por Roma.

Edición «expurgada» de los Adagia. El nombre de Erasmo ha desaparecido del frontispicio, así como del mismo texto.

¿Qué era lo que aquellos censores juzgaban contrario a la fe católica?

Lo primero, el nombre de Erasmo. En aquel proceso de confesionalización, el nombre estaba tan marcado por sospechas de herejía y falta de fiabilidad que los editores consideraron mejor no cargar sobre los futuros estudiantes este peso. Para ello, además, tuvieron que transformar todas las sentencias de primera persona del singular en sentencias de primera persona del plural o en tercera persona pasiva del singular: por ejemplo, escribieron invenimus (encontramos), o invenitur (se ha encontrado) en lugar del habitual invenio (encuentro, hallo...) de Erasmo. De este modo, realmente estaban actuando con el mismo espíritu erasmiano, pues Erasmo veía los proverbios antiguos como fórmulas de sabiduría colectiva del pasado.

Omitieron todas las referencias a la Biblia y a los padres de la iglesia, fundamentalmente para separar tajantemente la esfera religiosa y la secular, aunque la mayoría de tales referencias no desprendían el más mínimo aroma a herejía. Por lo mismo, omitieron también todas las citas que comentaban el uso de proverbios en la Biblia: Los padres han comido uvas acerbas, y los hijos tienen dentera, o Tocamos para ti la flauta y no bailaste, cantamos endechas y no gemiste.

Eliminaron la mayoría de referencias que contuvieran agudezas políticas o digresiones de crítica social, y las menciones de autores, libros o personas contemporáneos, que tanto animaban el texto. De este modo, párrafos enteros o una de cada tres o cuatro frases de algunos artículos, como ocurre en Aut regem, aut fatuum nasci oportere (se nace rey o imbécil), y hasta artículos completos desaparecieron del libro.

Autorretrato de Erasmo en los márgenes de sus comentarios a San Jerónimo

Cualquier trabajo contiene errores. En éste quedaron referencias apuntando al vacío —a artículos eliminados por completo—, o lecturas apresuradas como la de clepsydra pestilentior (más pestilente que la clepsidra) en lugar de clepsidra perstillantior (más veloz que la caída del agua en la clepsidra). Sin duda, ello debía dar mucho qué pensar al lector católico, a quien no se le permitía cotejar las lecturas sospechosas con la edición original.

Es raro que en las investigaciones sobre Erasmo y su proceso de censura —por ejemplo el libro fundamental de Silvana Seidel-Menchi (1992)—, aunque se refieran a esta edición expurgada de los Adagia, nunca se hayan interesado a fondo en los diez mil cambios que hizo obligatoriamente la recepción católica y que la distancian tanto de la protestante. Una compulsa palabra por palabra del «texto católico» con el original y una lista detallada de las diferencias la elaboramos nosotros en Studiolum, en la primera edición digital de los Adagia que es, a la vez, la primera edición completa de esta obra desde la editio optima de Leiden 1703. Además del texto completo de Leiden, el cotejo con la «edición católica» y las notas del famoso impresor y filólogo francés Robert Estienne, publicadas inicialmente en 1563, incluimos también las traducciones contemporáneas de los Adagia. Así, por ejemplo, se encuentra aquí la curiosa traducción inglesa arcaica de Richard Tavernier (1539-1545), o la edición húngara de Johannes Decius Baronius, de 1598, donde los proverbios no van meramente traducidos sino sustituidos por sus equivalentes contemporáneos húngaros.

Según los términos del Index expurgatorius, tras la salida de los Adagia expurgados en 1575 no solo la pertenencia de cualquier otra edición quedó prohibida, sino que los cambios debían incorporarse también a las ya existentes. Nuestro ejemplar de Alciato sufrió todos los rigores de este decreto. Ciertamente, los Emblemata no son lo mismo que los Adagia, pero tienen mucho que ver. Erasmo menciona a menudo con respeto a su amigo Alciato en los artículos de los Adagia, y en los emblemas de Alciato aparecen con frecuencia los adagios de Erasmo transformados en «proverbios en imágenes», como destaca Francisco Sánchez, el Brocense, en sus comentarios a lo largo de este libro. El desconocido censor ejecutó en él con toda exactitud aquello que ordenaba Roma para los Adagia: la eliminación del nombre de Erasmo. Es la prueba de un aspecto que la investigación sobre los emblemas ha notado relativamente tarde: que en el siglo XVI el género de los adagios y el de los emblemas se consideraban muy similares.

Esta censura, con todo, y aunque se cumpliera escrupulosamente, no valió el esfuerzo. Los contemporáneos sabían exactamente a quien tenían que agradecer que se hubiera abierto por primera vez una amplia ventana al mundo clásico. Y los países protestantes siguieron publicando los Adagia, e incluso ampliándolos con miles de proverbios nuevos. Los ejemplares de estas ediciones podían encontrarse también en las bibliotecas de muchos conventos y diócesis católicas, y realmente no se sometieron los libros a una expurgación absolutamente metódica. La existencia física de estos ejemplares demuestra lo que anunció John Colet, deán de la Catedral de San Pablo en Londres y amigo de Erasmo, ya a principios de la centuria:

Nomen Erasmi nunquam peribit–
El nombre de Erasmo nunca morirá