Erasmus was a man not known for his commercial insights and entrepreneurial spirit. Gospel and opulence were mutually exclusive in his thought. In fact: in the Praise of Folly (1509), Erasmus shows the wealth of cardinals and popes to be despicable. He considers them completely opposite to the lifestyle of Christ. 'They spurn Christ for their cause and are unfaithful to him by their pernicious walk of life' (209). In his Colloquia familiaria of 1518, he denounced the laziness of the clergy accepting prebends: a 'donation' that came from church property, usually a fixed interest. Erasmus denounced the economic system, which so privileges the rich that it leads to indulgence. That system should be overhauled.
As a young scholastic theologian, Adrianus Florentii, later Pope Adrian VI argued much the same way. Following St John, he compared canons to mercenaries, who are not guided by the amor amicitiae towards Christ, the love of friends not marked by self-interest. But later he does become a canon in Leuven himself, and several prebends follow, in Goedereede, Utrecht and Anderlecht. Adrian must have accumulated a huge fortune, all the more so because, as Inquisitor in Spain, he also received 3,000 gold ducats a month. A multimillionaire. Apparently he did not see the economic system of prebends as the cause of many ills in the church; the very system that reformers and humanists like Erasmus were so critical of.
Now in sermo 50 Augustine says that money is a neutrum. Money is bad if it stirs up even more greed in rich people, thus leaving them in a barren isolation. Money is good if people use it to practice mercy and do good things for others. Adrian belongs to the latter category. Indeed, the prebend system enabled him, living very austere himself, to reform the church. To ensure good formation of the clergy, he bought property in Leuven in 1502 to found a college; in 1511, a large estate to found a second college. Finally, in his will of 1523, he founded the present-day papal college. It was intended as a training institute for priests; and a model for seminaries such as the councillors of the Council of Trent a few decades later sought to have established in every diocese. Adrian thus contributed to church reform thanks to the economic system it embraced. That the system funded church reform is thus traceable to his integrity and authenticity as a Christian.
But he seems to make two fallacies. He generalises in his policies his personal attitude to life and neglects that fellow canons thought only of themselves. And he neglects the socio-economic dynamic that his distant successor Pope John Paul II pithily articulated in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 5 (1987) that there can be economic structures on the basis of which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, without any individual being able to do anything about it.
But we must also honestly face some facts as far as Erasmus is concerned. When he was in need of money, he grabbed a canonry in Kortrijk with both hands. So his autonomy was guaranteed by his participation in the prebendary system that he so detested. More than that: he needed privileges from the medici popes Leo X and Clement VII to be able to accept prebends and ecclesiastical dignities, to freely dispose of his possessions. More sharply than Adrian, Erasmus criticised the socio-economic system of prebends within the church itself. More sharply than Adrian, he continued to take into account the fact that the ecclesiastical structures could lead to inertia and arrogance among the clergy. But paradoxically, from 1516 onwards he obtained the freedom to develop his criticism in Laus Stultitiae and his Colloquia thanks to a prebend and the privileges of the very Medici popes he had to accommodate, to please, and who, out of greed, did not want to change the economic structures in the church at all. These very privileges made him completely dependent for his freedom on a socio-economic system he had despised and mocked.
In short: Safeguarded from financial worries by his close anchoring in the prebend system, Adrian's autonomy was guaranteed. His prosperity, personal austerity and integrity and authenticity as a Christian made him able to found reforming institutions. Erasmus had no less integrity than Adrian. But he was more vulnerable than Adrian. On the one hand, he wanted to be less dependent on the prebend system. This was to his credit. But on the other hand, he needed a canonry and the support of popes to survive.
Which is just to say that church history can be a mirror for economists. By which I just want to say that church history can be a mirror for economists. If only because Erasmus and Pope Adrian prove that, to keep the will free, one does need a financial basis. And that it depends on personal integrity whether money is good. This is where Erasmus and Adrian find each other. With different budgets and each in their own way: they carried out church and society reform.
- Professor