Erasmus, Apes of Cicero,

and Conceptual Blending

Kenneth Gouwens

In his Ciceronianus of 1528, Erasmus famously ridiculed as apes those

humanists whose imitations of Cicero were superficial. But what, exactly,
did the label mean? The present essay argues that the dialogues metaphorical apes are not just ornamental, but are integral to meaning, undergirding
and amplifying Erasmuss criticisms in ways heretofore unexplored. Methods developed in cognitive literary theory provide a framework for understanding how simian metaphors help to configure the connections that
Erasmus explicitly draws between Ciceronianism and paganism. Through
intertextual reading, one can see how this blending of conceptual metaphors is further complicated by descriptions of apes in a widely circulated
text that is less studied todaythe Adagiorum chiliades, in which Erasmus
gradually expanded glosses regarding monkeys to direct them against apelike scholars. The interplay of simian metaphors both within and between
these disparate texts is itself the process by which the author creates new
metaphors of thought.
This close reading of Erasmus will exemplify how cognitive theory can
inform historical writing. Randolph Starn has called for a genealogical
method of doing history, framed in terms of a shifting calculus of recurrent
tensions and simultaneous narratives. . . .1 While this discourse figures
For comments on multiple drafts of this essay, the author thanks Chanita Goodblatt,
Brendan Kane, Brian Roots, Sarah Ross, the anonymous readers for JHI, and especially
F. Elizabeth Hart.
1
Randolph Starn, Whos Afraid of the Renaissance? in The Past and Future of MedieCopyright  by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 71, Number 4 (October 2010)

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noveltysome new family connection and a new set of genesit also represents continuity.2 The present essay suggests a way to take Starns nonteleological approach a step farther by grounding the study of historical
change not in a genealogical metaphor but instead in semantic (and in this
sense cognitive) models of how metaphorical systems themselves evolve.
The cognitive revolution in the human sciences has been underway
for several decades, but its implications for the study of Renaissance culture
are only beginning to be explored.3 Literary scholars appropriations of
cognitive linguistics began over a quarter-century ago in response to George
Lakoff and Mark Johnsons Metaphors We Live By, which presented an
accessible case for rethinking metaphors importance in language and
thought.4 Subsequently, Lakoff has argued that [m]etaphor is the main
mechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform
abstract reasoning.5 Metaphorical language, then, is not just a whimsical
diversion from what matters; instead, it is a surface manifestation of conceptual metaphor, metaphor of thought, and as such is constitutive of
human understanding.6 More recently, the literary critic Mark Turner and
his collaborator, the linguist Gilles Fauconnier, have theorized that all
human cognition, from the seemingly banal to the flamboyantly innovative,
consists in the active (if largely unconscious) construction of new conceptual blends from already existing ones.7 As Turner summarizes the process,
blending consists in the mental operation of combining two mental packets of meaningtwo schematic frames of knowledge or two scenarios, for
exampleselectively and under constraints to create a third mental packet
of meaning that has new, emergent meaning.8
val Studies, ed. John van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994),
12947, at 137.
2
Starn, Whos Afraid of the Renaissance? 138.
3
E.g., F. Elizabeth Hart, The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies, Philosophy
and Literature 25 (2001): 31434; Mary Thomas Crane, Shakespeares Brain: Reading
with Cognitive Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 335; Crane,
Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in Shakespeares
Antony and Cleopatra, Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 117.
4
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
5
George Lakoff, The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, in Metaphor and Thought,
ed. Andrew Ortony, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 20251, at
244.
6
Ibid.
7
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the
Minds Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
8
Mark Turner, The Cognitive Study of Art, Language, and Literature, Poetics Today

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

Blends need not be consistent with one another for their invocation to
be meaningful; nor do they need to stay the same, and in fact, their everevolving changes are the rule and not the exception. Once created,
moreover, these packets of meaning become constituent elements for
subsequent blending and so leave traces of their features across genealogies
of thought and language. Thus, blending theory allows us to map the construction and transformation over time of meanings across the many
dimensions that ideas inhabit, including not only the history of literary
texts and genres (the realm in which this theory is currently being used in
literary studies), but also the history of ideas (the realm in which it will be
deployed here).
As we shall see, Erasmus draws upon existing metaphor systems to
create emergent blends in which invocations both of humans who ape, and
of apes who imitate humans, take on profoundly new significance. Many
of these blends constituent packets of meaning appear in the ancient
sources upon which he draws; others are commonplace in humanists discussions of literary imitation, human nature, or Christian piety; and still
others he takes from experience. By tracing the evolution of Erasmuss
accounts of apes and aping, we can see how particular blends lose relevance
while others that are gaining in cultural salience become dominant. Importantly, in the Ciceronianus Erasmus articulates a sophisticated new conceptual blend about aping that helps to refine his views on the relationship
between Ciceronian rhetoric and his reform ideal of the philosophia Christi.
Already at its moment of fullest articulation, however, that blend was losing
saliencesome of its elements falling into disuse, even as others contributed
to newly ascendant blends.
Three key constituent elements in the blending in the Ciceronianus,
themselves already integral to humanist thought, are: Humans are the
image and likeness of God; Humans are lords of animals; and Speech
is the distinguishing characteristic of humans. To these packets of meaning Erasmus adds two more that were well-established in Renaissance
debates about literary imitation: Good imitators are sons of Cicero,
and Bad imitators are apes of Cicero. Then, he furthers the blending
process by adding yet another packet: Christian, not pagan eloquence is
the true imitation of Cicero in the present age. The resultant, highly
complex blend in the Ciceronianus becomes more specific in definition
when set alongside Erasmuss Adages, where another conceptual blend
23 (2002): 920, at 10. For a more technical formulation, see Fauconnier and Turner,
The Way We Think, 3957.

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Apes are good imitators of the folly of pseudo-scholarsreverses the

direction of the Ciceronian-to-simian comparison. As simians bad
imitations of pseudo-scholars make for good satire, the apes rise
almost to the level of humans, but early modern conceptions of human
nature did not allow them to transgress that boundary. Controversial
from its inception, Erasmuss blend indicting the Ciceronians as paganizing apes rapidly lost its immediate meaningits cultural salience
giving way to other conceptual blends in which simians would figure less
prominently.
Cognitive literary theory provides a framework for understanding
Erasmuss creativity and his development as a thinker in a way that avoids
the pitfalls of approaches that privilege intentionality, deconstruction, or
social constructionism.9 Unlike traditional idealist approaches, it grounds
the study of intellectual change in current findings about how the mind
actually functions. By focusing upon the play of metaphor across genres,
one can trace the largely unconscious processes by which a mind creates
emergent meaning. Since those processes operate under constraints both
biological and cultural, they cannot exemplify the unmoored relativism
posited by postmodern theorists. Meanwhile, the fact that they operate
selectively, in explosively creative ways, belies theories that incline toward
social or materialist determinism. In short, the case of Erasmuss simian
metaphors will exemplify how cognitive theory provides a compelling new
way to appreciate the vital contributions that talented authors have made,
and continue to make, to the history of ideas.
I. HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Erasmuss invocations of monkeys, and by extension of humans whose
techniques of imitation resembled those of monkeys, must be understood
in the context of contemporaneous beliefs about the place of simians in the
order of creation. Only around 1700 did Europeans come to recognize the
hominoid great apes (e.g., gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans), but they
had been acquainted since antiquity with lesser ones, including Egyptian
baboons, tailed monkeys, and Barbary apes.10 Pliny the Elders Natural HisOn the relationships among these approaches see Crane, Shakespeares Brain, 335;
F. Elizabeth Hart, Matter, System, and Early Modern Studies: Outlines for a Materialist
Linguistics, Configurations 6 (1998): 31143.
10
H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: The
Warburg Institute, 1952), 15, 33132, and 33536. The present essay follows convention
in using ape and monkey synonymously as renderings of simia in texts written
before 1700.
9

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

tory provided an intriguing grab-bag of ape lore, such as Mucianuss curious claim that the tailed species have even been known to play at
draughts.11 What particularly struck many ancient authorities was the
propensity of apes to imitate humans in an awkward, unskilled way: a practice that could entertain, but could also be taken as an offensive pretense to
human status.12 Enniuss observation, quoted by Cicero, neatly summarizes
the unease that the comparison could evoke: how similar is the ape, a
most-foul beast, to us!13 Apes appeared with some frequency in the Middle
Ages both in the visual arts (e.g., marginal illustrations, architectural sculpture) and in written accounts (e.g., folk tales, encyclopedias).14 Bestiaries
claimed that the word simia arose from the animals strong likeness (similitudo) to humans, an etymology widely accepted despite Isidore of Sevilles
explicit rejection of it.15 Stories and interpretations varied, but on one point
there was little dissent: simians were inferior to humans not only in appearance and abilities, but also in dignity.
The special emphasis on human dignity in the Renaissance meant everclearer delineation of humans superiority over the beasts.16 An influential
precedent was Ciceros attribution to humans both of uniqueness and of a
capacity for moral improvementideas congenial to the voluntaristic strain
in Christian and especially Augustinian theology that humanists found so
attractive.17 Efforts to reconcile the classical and Christian views encountered obstacles, above all with respect to the role of divine grace in human
achievement, but in cases where the cognitive dissonance between the two
could be neither ignored nor adequately resolved, almost always the Christian view took precedence. Humanists differed from one another in how
they defined human exceptionalism and appropriated that tenet for their
own purposes. Whereas many followed Aristotle and Aquinas in seeing the
tripartite soul (memory, intellect, and will) as unique to humans, Lorenzo
Valla in his Dialectical Disputations (1439; later revised) drew the boundary elsewhere. According to Valla animals, like humans, had memory, intelPliny the Elder, Natural History, Books 811, trans. H. Rackham, 2d ed. (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 151 (8.215).
12
Ibid.; Strabo 15.699; Aelian 17.25.
13
Cicero, De natura deorum 1.97: simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis.
14
Janson, Apes, remains the best survey of this vast subject.
15
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 2.2.30.
16
Charles Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian: Three Versions of the Dignity of Man, in Renaissance Transformations of Late Medieval
Thought, ed. Trinkaus (Aldershot: Ashgate/ Variorum, 1999), 4: 6380; R. W. Serjeantson, The Passions and Animal Language, 15401700, JHI 62 (2001): 42544.
17
E.g., Cicero, De natura deorum 2.5466.
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lect, and will, and therefore were called animalia (ensouled). But humans,
created directly by God in his image and likeness, were distinct in being
immortal, and for Valla, this is the basis of human dignity.18 Erasmus would
deploy the assumption of human superiority over the beasts in his controversies with Luther. In Hyperaspistes II, published in the year before the
Ciceronianus, he suggested that a human whose will is enslaved is effectively reduced to the level of the beasts: there is little difference between
the natural appetite that we have in common with brute animals and a will
that is inborn in everyone but is so wrenched towards evil that it cannot
turn in any way towards the good.19 In short, humanists shared tenets
about human dignity encompassed two key packets of meaning that may
be conveniently described here in a form resembling that of propositional
logic: (i) Humans are [created in] the image and likeness of God; and (ii)
Humans are lords of the animals.
A third packet of meaning, deriving from a long tradition emphasizing
the particularity and power of human speech, would combine with these
two to form a new, complex blend. For pagans as well as Christians, the
inability of beasts either to speak or to understand speech consigned them
irrevocably to a level inferior to that of humans. Both Cicero and the early
Church Fathers asserted that eloquent speech had the power to make people better. The quality of ones speaking ability, moreover, was intricately
interrelated with internal disposition. It followed that by studying and imitating ancient models of eloquence, people could become more civilized
and, in so doing, distance themselves all the more from savages, who lacked
the ability to speak well, let alone from the beasts, who could not speak at
all. If the trope of the civilizing power of eloquence dated back at least
to Isocrates, Ciceros formulation of it was particularly influential in the
Renaissance. In his De oratore, for example, the interlocutor Crassus states
that the one point in which we have our very greatest advantage over the
brute creation is that we hold converse one with another, and can reproduce
our thought in word. Who therefore would not rightly admire this faculty,
and deem it his duty to exert himself to the utmost in this field, that by so
doing he may surpass men themselves in that particular respect wherein
chiefly men are superior to animals?20
Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian, 7677.
Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 77: 720
(hereafter cited as CWE). Cf. CWE, 76: 8283 (in De libero arbitrio [1524]) and 76: 190
(in Hyperaspistes I [1526]).
20
Cicero, De oratore, ed. and trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1: 25 (1.3233).
18
19

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

Unsurprisingly, humanists focused upon how eloquent speech could

elevate humans rather than upon what the lack of it meant for animals.
Thus Petrarch, in a letter addressed to Tommaso da Messina, blazoned the
transformative power of reading the ancients aloud: I cannot tell you of
what worth are to me in solitude certain familiar and famous words not
only grasped in the mind but actually spoken orally. . . . When through the
power of an unusual sweet temptation I am moved to read them again, they
gradually take effect and transfigure my insides with hidden powers.21 He
recalled the stories of Orpheus and Amphion, who through outstanding
eloquence could inculcate gentleness and patience in all things, and he
referred in passing to Ciceros De inventione, which attributed the origins
of human civilization to one great and wise man who, on account of his
reasoned argument and oratorical talent, transformed his listeners from
being wild and savage to being kind and gentle.22
Humanists found further support in the Christian tradition for their
emphasis on speech as a distinguishing characteristic of humankind. Valla,
for example, pointed out that Lactantius had attributed at least some degree
of reason to animals. Valla speculated that they might initially have been
called aloga not because they lacked reason, but because they lacked
speech.23 And in the Latin text that Erasmus prepared to accompany his
Greek New Testament of 1516, he rendered logos in John 1:1 not as verbum (as the Vulgate had it) but instead as sermo: the word communicated,
meaning here that Christ is Gods perfect eloquence speaking to humansa
change consistent with earlier emphases on beautiful speech communicating wisdom to the hearer.24 For humanists, the imitation of ancient models
was a creative enterprise, the texts speaking to them and working change
within them.25 Reflexive copying missed the point, for only by making
ancient sententiae ones own could one reap their full benefit. Thus it was
no empty figure of speech when Erasmus derided certain Latinists as apes:
by imitating their exemplar indiscriminately or slavishly, they missed out
on the civilizing, humanizing encounter with antiquity that Renaissance
humanists championed. This complex blendi.e., Eloquence separates
the orator from lesser men just as the faculty of speech separates humans
Lett. 1.9, in Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, ed. and trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols.
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 197585), 1: 4950.
22
Cic., De inv. 1.2, trans. mine. Cf. the discussion of the prava virtutis imitatrix in 1.3.
23
Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian, 77.
24
On ordinary human speech in theology, see Hyperaspistes II (CWE, 77: 35355).
25
Peter Mack, Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance, Renaissance Studies
19 (2005): 121.
21

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from beastswould itself contribute significantly to the new blends that

emerge in the Ciceronianus.

II. APES AND IMITATIO BEFORE ERASMUS

Erasmus would also draw upon two crucial conceptual blends to which
Petrarch had given voice. Writing to Boccaccio (ca. 1366), Petrarch related
his hope that his amanuensis would develop a unique personal style, but
expressed concern that the youth delights in imitation, and at times is so
enraptured by another poets sweetness and so entangled, contrary to good
poetic practice, in the rules of such a work that he becomes incapable of
freeing himself without revealing the originals.26 In Petrarchs view, a composition ought to resemble its exemplar not as a painting does, where the
greater the similarity the greater the praise for the artist, but instead in the
way a son resembles his father.27 Thus, he writes, we may appropriate
anothers ideas as well as his coloring but we must abstain from his actual
words: for, with the former, resemblance remains hidden, and with the latter it is glaring. The former creates poets; the second, apes.28 Importantly,
Petrarch here contrasts two conceptual blends that would be integral to
Erasmuss emergent blends: (i) good literary imitators are sons of the
model; and (ii) bad literary imitators are apes of the model.
Of course, Petrarch was not the first or only writer to compare humans
to apes. The metaphorical use of simia, which can be traced to antiquity,
was frequent in the later Middle Ages.29 For example, the twelfth-century
satirical poet Johannes de Hauvilla called hypocrisy the ape of character;
and deep in Dantes Inferno the alchemist Capocchio refers to himself,
damningly, as an apt ape of nature.30 Boccaccio devoted a chapter of his
Genealogy of the Pagan Gods to refuting the charge that poets are merely
apes of the philosophers.31 It would have been less annoying, he says, had
Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, 3: 300302 (23.19), at 301.
Ibid. Cf. Seneca, Epistulae morales 84.8.
28
Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, 3: 302, alt.
29
Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard
R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 53840.
30
Dante, Inferno 29.13839.
31
Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogiae (Venice, 1494; repr. New York: Garland, 1976),
fol. 108v; Boccaccio on Poetry: Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books
of Boccaccios Genealogia Deorum Gentilium in an English Version with Introductory
Essay and Commentary, ed. and trans. Charles G. Osgood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930), 7880; notes, 17677 ( bk. 14, chap. 17); at 78.
26
27

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poets detractors instead called them apes of nature, since the poet tries
with all his powers to set forth in noble verse the effects, either of Nature
herself, or of her eternal and unalterable operation.32 He even concedes
that in their imitation of nature, poets really are apes; but their critics would
do better to try to make us all become apes of Christ.33 As H. W. Janson
convincingly demonstrated, Boccaccios positive valuation of ars simia
naturaeArt is the ape of nature, an expression immediately recognizable in cognitive terms as a conceptual metaphorwould prove widely
influential on Renaissance aesthetic theory.34
Yet Boccaccios partial rehabilitation of aping gained little if any
purchase in subsequent humanists debates regarding prose imitation.
Granted, around 1400, likening a Ciceronian stylist to a monkey could still
be imagined a compliment. In his Life of the Florentine chancellor Coluccio
Salutati, Filippo Villani praised him for his imitation of Ciceros familiar
letters: in the texture of his prose he has been so robust in dignity that he
has rightly been said to be an ape of Cicero.35 But Salutati himself, in the
course of defending poets from the charge that they are mere actors, presented simians less sympathetically:
Poets do not gesture but, rather, write what is to be conveyed by
gesture. Thus they differ as much from actors as men from apes,
for while apes frequently copy men and by a certain natural aptitude imitate many things men do, still they differ from men in such
a way that although man is one of the most beautiful living creatures and in the carriage of its body and in many activities the
monkey comes very close to having a likeness to man, the monkey
is one of the ugliest.36
Thus, in his discussion of aping, Salutati resembles Petrarch more than
he does Boccaccio. Above all, it was Petrarchs contrasting of a conceptual
Ibid., 79.
Ibid., 80.
34
Janson, Apes, 29093, calls Boccaccio (at 293) the originator of the Renaissance concept of ars simia naturae, as against the mediaeval simia veri with its invidious distinction
between reality and representational art, the forgery of reality.
35
For the Latin, see Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance (Davis, Calif.: Hermagoras Press, 1991), 8 n. 39; Martin L. McLaughlin, Literary
Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in
Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 78.
36
Salutati, letter to Pellegrino Zambeccari (May 14, 1399), trans. in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G.
Witt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 93114, at 94.
32
33

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blend about apish imitation with one concerning filiation that prepared the
way for subsequent authors to merge the two in the process of forming
new, more complex blends.
Toward the end of the Quattrocento, Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cortesi gave further definition to these Petrarchan blends and their interrelatedness. Having received from Cortesi a collection of contemporary letters
modeled on those of Cicero, Poliziano responded with a scathing critique
of Cortesis stylistic preferences: you generally do not approve of anyone,
as I understand it, unless he copies the features of Cicero. To me, the face
of a bull or a lion seems far more honorable than that of an ape, which
nonetheless is more like a man than they are.37 In Polizianos view, slavish
imitation of just one author militates against the expression of inner disposition, whereas eclecticism enables originality: You do not write like
Cicero, someone says. So what? I am not Cicero. Yet I do express myself,
I think.38
In response, Cortesi clarifies that he wishes to be similar to Cicero not
as an ape to a man but as a son to a father. For the ape, that ridiculous
imitator, mimics only the deformities and faults of the body in a sort of
depraved likeness. The son, however, reproduces the appearance, walk,
posture, motion, form, voice and finally the shape of his fathers body, but
still has something of his own in this likeness, something natural, something
different.39 Thus, the imitation of even a single author, if properly practiced, allows for individuation. Poliziano ought not to hinder him from
imitating Cicero, but instead should reproach me for my ignorance in that
I am unable to imitate him well, although I prefer to be a hanger-on and
ape of Cicero than the pupil or son of others.40 Cortesi was not consistent
in making this curious concession: in his dialogue Concerning Learned
Men, when criticizing Andrea Contrarios botched efforts at imitation, he
stated that Contrario was not Ciceros alumnus but instead his simia.41 The
negative connotations would continue, for example in Gianfrancesco Picos
letter of September 19, 1512 to the exemplary Ciceronian Pietro Bembo. In
advocating eclecticism, Pico notes that we should not be apes who choose
to imitate inferior qualities.42 Most historically consequential, however, is
37
Ciceronian Controversies, ed. Joann Dellaneva and trans. Brian Duvick (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid., 9.
40
Ibid., 11.
41
McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance, 22021.
42
Ciceronian Controversies, 27.

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the way that the two Petrarchan conceptual blends described above have
been subsumed into something new and more complex. The framework
from the packet of meaning, Good imitators are sons of Cicero, structures the resultant blend in which, by implication, bad imitators fall outside
the space that humans occupy.

III. ERASMUS ON IMITATION,

PRIMATES, AND FILIATION
The apes thus far described, while amusing in their injudiciousness, look
tame when posed alongside the ones that Erasmus pillories in his Ciceronianus. It must be emphasized that Erasmuss frequent references to pseudoscholars as apes of Cicero are not throwaway lines: on the contrary, they
are packets of meaning integral to his construction of innovative, highly
sophisticated conceptual blends. Moreover, the Ciceronianus is not just a
lighthearted roast of infelicitous stylists: it is alsoindeed, arguably primarilya grave indictment of the detrimental impact that Erasmus believed
flawed literary imitation was having upon the understanding and communication of Christian truth. With the tools of cognitive theory, we can gain
some access to the workings of Erasmuss mind as he thinks about this
critical issueto the process by which he appropriates conceptual metaphors, elaborates upon them, and subsumes them into even more sophisticated blends. This blending does not merely express new ideas: it actually
constitutes the dynamics of creativity itself.
Early in the Ciceronianus, Erasmus recapitulates with minor variations
the simian metaphors that Petrarch and Poliziano had deployed. Referring
to Italian and especially Roman Latinists, he says that the way those contemptible Ciceronian apes imitate is that they scrape up a few phrases,
idioms, figures, and rhythmical patterns from here and there and then
exhibit just a top surface or veneer of Cicero.43 That which is nearer to the
outward appearance of Cicero may not be the best, a point that the interlocutor Bulephorus illustrates thus: No animal is more like man in all its
physical features than the ape; if it had the power of speech in addition, it
could be taken for a man. Nothing is less like a man than a peacock or a
swan; but you would, I imagine, prefer to be a swan or a peacock rather
Erasmus, Ciceronianus, trans. Betty I. Knott, in CWE, 28: 369, alt.; Opera omnia
(Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1969), I2: 626 (hereafter cited as ASD).

43

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than an ape.44 Simians err by doing badly what humans do well, rather
than striving after and displaying an excellence proper to themselves.
Erasmus complements this Petrarchan blend (The bad literary imitator is an ape of the model) with the second detailed above (The good
literary imitator is a son of the model). He notes how fathers scold sons
of whom they are ashamed, and then suggests, This is the way Cicero
would probably feel towards those ridiculous apes, and this is the way we
ought to feel, we who are eager to be known as his true and worthy
sons.45 Here, a dissonance enters the blend: at first, Cicero is imagined
to scold apes as fathers scold wayward sons, but then Ciceros worthy
offspring are supposed to have the same feelings about these bad sons.
This slippage into sibling rivalry may betray Erasmuss vehemence toward
arch-Ciceronian peers, his animosity spurring him toward metaphorical incoherence. Whether or not that be so, Erasmus puts these blends to
constructive use by juxtaposing them with another, which is focused on
the failed imitators influence: they not only make fools of themselves and
annoy their betters but also cause collateral damage to Ciceros good
name and to the reputations of his faithful heirs:
Imitators of this kind ought to be equally odious to us and to
Cicero himselfto us, who are genuinely trying to follow Ciceros
example, because thanks to them we are made a laughing-stock
and a joke, as people look at their stupidity and judge us to be the
same; and to Cicero, since people receive a bad impression of him
. . . from imitators of this sort, just as unsatisfactory pupils spoil
the reputation of a good teacher, bad children of a good man. . . .46
Furthermore, these failed imitators create obstacles for the young in their
studies and in their moral development. . . .47 Only after the [i]ndecorous
uproar of certain apes has been despised can students proceed to imitate
Cicero in his totality.48 One must have inborn ability.49 But that ability
needs to be fostered by a responsible intellectual father (teacher) whose
guidance enables that natural talent of the son (pupil) to flourish. Thus,
CWE, 28: 398; ASD, I2: 649.
CWE, 28: 374; ASD, I2: 630.
46
CWE, 28: 373; ASD, I2: 629.
47
CWE, 28: 386, alt.; ASD, I2: 639.
48
Trans. mine; ASD, I2: 631. Cf. Horace, Ep. 1.19.1920.
49
ASD, I2: 63233, 656. Cf. Quintilian 10.2.12.
44
45

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Erasmus has added into the blending yet another conceptual metaphor:
Bad teachers are obstructors of the legacy of Cicero.
In sum, Erasmus has drawn upon previous formulations involving simians, imitation, and filiation so as to create a highly complex blend with
emergent meaning. Significantly, the course of innovation here described is
not one of unilinear progression. Instead, new conceptual systems have
arisen from Erasmuss ad hoc elaboration of existing blends: by juxtaposing
one with another and integrating elements from them, he has created an
innovative blend that increases the coherence and persuasive force of the
positions he takes in learned debates.

IV. PRIMATES, PATERNITY, AND PAGANISM

By adding still another packet of meaning, taken from his religious ideal of
the Philosophy of Christ, Erasmus renders this already complex blend
explosive. In the Ciceronianus he castigates those who use pagan vocabulary inappropriately to describe Christian rites and beliefs. Thus the interlocutor Bulephorus recounts a Good Friday sermon that he claims to have
heard in Rome. Replete with classical references, the sermon included nothing about Gods salvation of the world through the death of his only son;
not unlike the soporific apes whom Poliziano described, this preacher
said not a thing that was appropriate, and stirred no feelings.50 Fittingly,
this anecdote leads Bulephorus to inveigh against the Ciceronians, whom
he calls contemptible apes.51 In effect, the apish orator is by implication
a bad son not only of Cicero but of God, whose only begotten son all
Christians should seek to imitate. The stakes of failure could not be higher.
Erasmus is attentive to the lost opportunity resulting from this kind of
inappropriateness. Thus he laments the energies that the Flemish humanist
Christophe de Longueil put into imitating Cicero, not only because Longueils conception of imitation was flawed, but also because his implementation of it rendered him a less effective advocate of the faith.52 This
shortcoming is crucial for Erasmus, whose philosophia Christi emphasized
the persuasive power of Christian truth eloquently expressed. In the first
dedicatory letter to the Ciceronianus, he writes that our prime object is to
ensure that good letters proclaim the glory of Christ our Lord and God,
CWE, 28: 38586; ASD, I2: 63839.
ASD, I2: 639.
52
ASD, I2: 69697.
50
51

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JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS OCTOBER 2010

with all the richness, brilliance, and magnificence that Cicero displayed in
speaking of things pagan.53 Yet in this very dedication Erasmus expresses
religious concerns regarding the Ciceronians: There is . . . a suspicion of
something else afoot under cover of this name, and that is to make us
pagans instead of Christians. . . .54 He even portrays Christianity as necessary for eloquence: All Christian speech should have the savour of Christ,
without whom nothing is pleasing or impressive, useful or creditable, stylish or eloquent or learned.55 This savor is evident in epistolary valedictions
that highlight Gods love for those he has taken unto him as his children:
these valedictions perforce surpass even Ciceros both in words and in
meaning.56 Hyper-classicizing, on the other hand, evidences a grave flaw:
from what I hear, he writes late in the dialogue, there is at Rome a sort
of club of people with more culture than religion.57
The antitype of these apes is Jacopo Sadoleto, a Ciceronian Latinist
who had served as secretary to two popes. Erasmus praises Sadoleto for his
attentiveness to decorum. When addressing matters of the faith, he speaks
as Cicero probably would speak on such subjects if he were alive now,
that is, in a Christian manner on Christian topics. I can bear this kind of
Ciceronian. . . .58 Sadoleto thus exemplifies Erasmuss ideal orator whose
eloquence can persuade people toward what matters most of all: The mysteries of Christ should be handled not only with learning but with religious
feeling. . . . one must arouse emotions worthy of God, and that can only
happen if you have an intimate grasp of the subject you are treating.59 A
central goal of the dialogue, as Erasmus wrote in the first dedicatory letter,
is to show how we can genuinely represent Cicero, and combine his
supreme powers of expression with the faith of Christ.60
To sum up: the failed imitator is not only (i) an ape, and (ii) an unworthy heir or failed student, but also (iii) a proselyte for paganism rather than
for the philosophia Christi. These topoi occur repeatedly in the dialogue,
often in proximity to one another. The first two appear together in the
discussion of the doctrine of the fitting and appropriate that takes place
approximately a third of the way into the dialogue, soon after the first
CWE, 28: 337; ASD, I2: 600 (lett. of February 14, 1528, to Johann von Vlatten).
Ibid.
55
CWE, 28: 439; ASD, I2: 702.
56
CWE, 28: 37273; ASD, I2: 628.
57
CWE, 28: 432; ASD, I2: 694.
58
CWE, 28: 436: ASD, I2: 698.
59
CWE, 28: 438; ASD, I2: 701.
60
CWE, 28: 338; ASD, I2: 600. In his Life of Jerome, Erasmus similarly placed the
saints Ciceronian eloquence above that of Cicero himself. See Eugene F. Rice, Jr., Saint
Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 134.
53
54

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

mention of apes.61 The first and third topoi, regarding simian status and
paganism, are combined approximately two-fifths of the way through, in
the section beginning with the account of the Ciceronian sermon.62 Later,
they are deployed in reference to Longueil, in whose writings (according to
Erasmus) persuasio replaces fides, and the word Christian appears only
by an oversight.63
Toward the end of the dialogue, the three packets of meaning recur
close to one another.64 Apes make an encore appearance, alongside unworthy heirs, when Erasmus recounts the exchange between Cortesi and Poliziano. But in the closing summation, simian metaphors have yielded the stage
to blends comprising genealogy and paganism. Proper filiation from Cicero
is an internal matter, depending upon both innate ability and right judgment: What is the good of a son being like his father in physical feature if
he is unlike him in mind and character?65 Cicero was the supreme master
of the art of speaking and, for a pagan, a good man.66 But the purpose
of studying the basic disciplines, of studying philosophy, of studying eloquence, is to know Christ, to celebrate the glory of Christ.67 One must
beware above all that the current age not be led astray by the outward
show of the title Ciceronian and turn out not Ciceronian but pagan.68
By the conclusion of the Ciceronianus, the blending of the filial and
religious themes has taken on a life of its own: The failed imitator of
Cicero is a pagan. The discourse on apishness, which provided the conceptual glue that enabled the emergence of this new blend, is no longer
imperative for coherence in the ascendant conceptual framework. Thus at
precisely the moment that Erasmuss discourse on apish imitators receives
its most sophisticated articulation, it is already being supplanted by other
blends.

V. APES AND APING IN THE ADAGIA

In his Adages Erasmus glosses classical sayings about monkeys in ways that
offer a counterpoint to the apes in the Ciceronianus. From 1500 to 1536,
ASD, I2: 62831; CWE, 28: 37377. Ciceronis simii first appears on ASD, I2:
626; CWE, 28: 369.
62
ASD, I2: 63750; CWE, 28: 384400.
63
ASD, I2: 69298, at 697; CWE, 28: 43036, at 435.
64
ASD, I2, 7059; CWE, 28: 44348.
65
ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 448.
66
ASD, I2: 707; CWE, 28: 445.
67
ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 447.
68
ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 447.
61

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the compendium grew from 818 entries with brief glosses, to 4,251 entries,
many with extensive commentaries. The collection as a whole, as Margaret
Mann Phillips wrote, serves to recapture, in this handy portmanteau form,
the outlook and way of life of the classical world, through its customs,
legends, and social institutions, and to put within reach of a modern public
the accumulated wisdom of the past.69 Moreover, as Peter Mack recently
argued, its survey of usage has the effect of juxtaposing different philosophical and literary attitudes to life, and its rhetorical elaborations of
received ethical principles could . . . lead to new ways of answering questions of individual and public morality.70
To date, however, the adages about animals have received little serious
scrutiny. For Phillips, they show the Adages at its most frivolous and least
modern. They form a kind of Bestiary. . . .71 When viewed through the
lens of cognitive literary theory, however, Erasmuss changing uses of animal lore to describe human behavior may tell us quite a lotand this is
especially the case for the adages about monkeys, given the tightly policed
border between the simian and the human in Renaissance Europe.72 In ten
adages about monkeys that appear in the Adagiorum chiliades of 1508,
Erasmus firmly established the blend, Apes are good imitators of human
folly. By analyzing addenda to these simian glosses in revised editions
from 1515 to 1533, we can trace how the changes render their meanings
both darker and more pointed in application, giving rise to blends as unsettling as they are complex.
To be sure, the portrayals of apes even in the Adages of 1508 could
have done little positive for the animals image. In explaining the proverb
An ape is an ape, though clad in gold, Erasmus retells Lucians story
about an Egyptian king who taught some monkeys to dance, masked and
attired in scarlet. Initially compelling, the performance fell apart when a
spectator scattered nuts before the apes, who ceased dancing and fought
over them. Thus they instantly became monkeys again.73 Another adage,
Hercules and an ape, highlights a more insidious aspect of simian nature,
the capacity to hoodwink: whereas Hercules excels in strength, the
apes power lies in sneaky tricks.74 But if monkeys are ridiculous and
Margaret Mann Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus: A Study with Translations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 8.
70
Mack, Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance, 10 and 1.
71
Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus, 18.
72
Kenneth Gouwens, Human Exceptionalism, in The Renaissance World, ed. John
Jeffries Martin (London: Routledge, 2007), 41534.
73
Adagia I.vii.11; CWE, 32: 72; ASD, II2: 134. Cf. Lucian, Piscator 36.
74
Adagia III.v.9; CWE, 35: 71, alt.; ASD, II5: 300.
69

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

tricky in and of themselves, in the 1508 edition they more often serve the
purpose of holding the mirror up to human folly. Thus the proverb A
donkey among apes is taken to describe how someone dull-witted falls in
among satirical and insolent people who mock their hapless victim with
impunity.75 More seriously, as one sees in the adage An ape in purple,
the deception may consist in a veneer of cultured elegance that camouflages,
albeit incompletely, a foulness beneath. The phrase can be applied, says
Erasmus, to those whose true nature, though they may be wearing very
fine clothes, is obvious from their expression and character, as well as
to those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon them, or when
something nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with ornament from some
unconnected or external source.76
Already in 1508, Erasmus occasionally likens apes to pseudointellectuals. Thus the adage No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap
is [o]ften applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught
out.77 Similarly, A painted monkey, which refers directly to an ugly old
woman made up like a prostitute, can also illustrate an idea: for example,
if someone dresses up an immoral argument with rhetorical trappings so
that it seems honest.78 The two remaining images from 1508 point to the
simian as unable even to approach the boundary that separates it from the
human. Erasmus glosses The prettiest ape is hideous as referring to
things which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be compared
with even the lowest specimens of the class of things that possess any
merit. . . .79 And The tragical ape appears to be practically a simulacrum
of the human: Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a man
and more like a pale copy of one. . . .80
In subsequent expansions, Erasmus adds further shading to some of
these adages, directing their thrust at scholars of the type lampooned in the
Ciceronianus. Whereas in 1508 the gloss of An ape in purple ended with
the observation What could be more ridiculous? the 1515 edition continues: And yet this is a thing we quite often see in a household where they
keep monkeys as pets: they dress them up with plenty of finery to look as
much like human beings as possible, sometimes even in purple, so as to
Adagia I.v.41; CWE, 31: 421; ASD, II1: 11718.
Adagia I.vii.10; CWE, 32: 71, alt.; ASD, II2: 134.
77
Adagia I.x.31; CWE, 32: 247; ASD, II2: 931. Cf. CWE, 32: 375n: This adage should
surely run No aged monkey . . .; it is a doublet of I x 17.
78
Adagia III.vii.62; CWE, 35: 25354; ASD, II6: 45758.
79
Adagia II.v.54; CWE, 33: 26566; ASD, II3: 442.
80
Adagia II.viii.95; CWE, 34: 87; ASD, II4: 210.
75
76

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JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS OCTOBER 2010

deceive people who do not look carefully or have seen nothing like it
before. . . .81 Erasmus now ends the gloss by turning around the comparison: How many apes of this kind one can see in princes courts, whom
you will find, if you strip them of their purple, their collars and their jewels,
to be no better than any cobbler!82 Importantly, in this addendum Erasmus
refers to apelike courtiers with the rare masculine form (simios), which he
would use consistently when ridiculing apes of Cicero in the Ciceronianus. In so doing, he may well be following Horace, who used the masculine
simius to refer to an imitator lacking in creative imagination.83
The 1526 edition of the Adagia incorporated further significant
addenda. The entry Pretty monkey had initially appropriated Pindars
image of children petting and praising an ape, applying the image to cases
in which someone is praised falsely through flattery.84 Now, Erasmus
adds further lore drawn from Pliny, whose Natural History he had recently
edited for Froben (Basel, 1525): these animals have a particular self-love,
so that they are sensitive to praise, and take pleasure in mirrors, and enjoy
allowing their young to be touched, and themselves deprive their young
of life by means of embraces.85 Thus self-indulgence turns fatal, bringing
genealogy to an abrupt end. Also in 1526, Erasmus enhances the description, in No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap, of the slick-talker
who has misattributed a quotation. Being confronted with the textual
source, the blunderer further equivocates: It might happen by chance he
said that the same line should occur in different poets. 86 Finally, whereas
in 1515 (when glossing An ape in purple) Erasmus had described as simios those courtiers whose apparent elegance thinly concealed inadequacy,
here he adds the word simius in reference to the scholar who is as slippery
as he is sloppy.87
Erasmus made further noteworthy additions in the 1528 edition. To
An aged ape needs time, already applied to a deceiver eventually getting
CWE, 32: 71, alt.; ASD, II2: 134.
Ibid.
83
Horace, Sermones 1.10.1619; see Michael C. J. Putnam, Poetic Interplay: Catullus
and Horace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1. Cf. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 9.3.1213, where simius occurs amidst a dispute over filiation. Erasmus had
included the Controversiae in an edition of the younger Senecas works (1515; rev. ed.,
1529). Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 53839, cites two other
instances of simius, in Claudian and Johannes de Hauvilla, respectively.
84
Adagia III.v.89; CWE, 35: 119; ASD, II5: 340.
85
CWE, 35: 119, alt. On self-love, cf. Adagia I.iii.92.
86
CWE, 32: 247; ASD, II2: 438.
87
CWE, 32: 71; ASD, II2: 134.
81
82

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

his comeuppance, Erasmus appended a cautionary note: sooner or later

some accident brings hidden villainy [dissimulatam malitiam] into the
open.88 A second addendum extends the application of An ape in purple
beyond superficial courtiers to those who aim at a venerable appearance
with a long beard and a flowing gown. Augustine somewhere calls such
men rather neatly cloak-deep philosophers. 89
In sum, the apes of the Adages initially provide a ridiculous sideshow
or, more seriously, mock human folly by imitating it well. Increasingly,
however, Erasmus augments the prominence of the intention to deceive:
in particular, he likens to apes those would-be scholars who pretend to a
learnedness beyond their abilities. From the outset, he ridicules this imposture, but later he warns the pretenders that they will be caught out. Thus,
over time, the portrayals of diverting, mocking apes recede into the background, making way for apish pseudo-scholars whose imitation of their
betters, intended to mislead, is deeply dishonest. Since Erasmus revised the
Adages over the years in accordance with his current reading and with his
changing perception of a serious cultural crisis, he may not have been aware
of the shifting meanings of his appropriations of apesshifts heretofore
unnoted, in fact, by scholars of Erasmus. Yet through the lens of cognitive
theory, we can see how over the course of expansion the initial, fairly innocuous metaphors about apes imitating human folly sit increasingly uneasily
alongside emergent blends to which they have themselves become constituent packets of meaning: in particular, the complex blends Apes are good
imitators of the folly of pseudo-scholars, and, from a reversed perspective,
Pseudo-scholars are apes whose imposture will be discovered. These
blends juxtapose poignantly with the ones in the Ciceronianus. When apes
amuse through their awkward imitation of humans, they may evoke sympathy, inasmuch as their aspirations to rise above their station are doomed to
failure. By contrast, when apish humans use badly the superior nature with
which they have been gifted, they sink almost to a sub-human levela failing far more pernicious than anything of which simians are capable.
Toward the end of his life, Erasmus came to see both his reform ideal
and his reputation as being besieged from all sides. In Phillipss felicitous
turn of phrase, Never did a man have so many enemies, or so he felt.90
Spurned by those Catholics who thought his humanistic reform ideal misguided and viewed him as crypto-Protestant, he was rejected by Luther and
Adagia II.v.14; CWE, 33: 248; ASD, II3: 414.
CWE, 32: 71; ASD, II2: 134. Cf. Augustine, Epist. 1.1; Lucian, Piscator 37.
90
Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus, 143. (emphasis added)
88
89

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JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS OCTOBER 2010

his followers as a man who lacked the courage of his convictionsor, far
worse, one whose faith was only superficial. In a letter of early 1529, Erasmus forcefully asserted his Christian filiation: when tempted to vengefulness (he writes) he rejects thoughts that would lead him to place impious
hands on Mother Church, who has fed him with the word of God and has
nurtured and invigorated him with the sacraments.91 Being a faithful son of
the Churchwhich is, theologically, the bride of Christdoes not preclude
his likening himself to Hercules; but whereas Hercules had to sustain the
attack of only one animal at a time, Erasmus sees himself as assailed simultaneously by creatures great and small, ranging from lions and hydras to
gnats and fleas.92
Material added to the 1533 edition of the Adagia suggests a new intensity in his war on pseudo-scholars. He further glosses Hercules and an
ape with the well-known story about the brothers Perperi [sic, for Cercopians], whom Hercules tied together and hung up from his club. It is
said they were turned into apes [simios].93 Thus the masculine, used for
pretenders to learnedness, here reduces people to non-human status. Still
more hostile is the 1533 addition to A monkey with a beard, or with a
tail: Regulus called Rusticus the Stoics monkey [simium] as an insult,
as Pliny relates in his Letters, I think because it was supposed that he acted
the Stoic more with his beard and his cloak than in his morals.94 The
violence in this passage is only evident to one who knows that L. Junius
Arulenus Rusticus was executed under the emperor Domitianironically,
on the grounds of his adherence to Stoicism. By implication, then, scholarly
imposture is punished with death.
Ultimately, Erasmus would portray the arch-Ciceronians not as mere
proselytes for paganism, but instead as diabolically inspired combatants
against him. Shortly before his death in 1536, he wrote to Philipp Melanchthon:
There is a new faction which is creeping snakelike more extensively every day. I do not doubt that behind these instruments is
Satan, who would prefer all to be Ciceronian rather than Christian. Many thank me because they have imbibed from my writings,
Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen et al., 11 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 190658), 8: 11622 (lett. 2136, to Louis Ber, 30 March 1529), at
11920, lines 15559; trans. mine (hereafter cited as EE).
92
EE, 8: 117, lines 4650.
93
CWE, 35: 71; ASD, II5: 300.
94
Adagia III.v.79; CWE, 35: 11213, alt.; ASD, II5: 336. Cf. Pliny, Epist. 1.5.2.
91

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

of whatever kind, some spark of piety. Satan, envying Christ this

slight gain, is goading on those contemptible ones.95
Yet Erasmuss sophisticated blend regarding Christian eloquence was
already losing salience, as too was Ciceronianismand for related reasons.

VI. THE DECLINE FROM RELEVANCE

OF CICERONIAN APES
Already in the 1520s, at the point of its highest elaboration, Erasmuss ideal
of filiation from both classical and Christian antiquity was coming under
siege from the Reformation. For Luther, pagan philosophy and Christian
theology were fundamentally incompatible, and the doctrine of justification
by faith alone raised troubling questions about whether eloquence could
persuade people to the good. He urged the reading of Scripture not because
it could morally elevate but instead because it served to alert people to their
fallen condition and their need for God. For Luther, aping could still
mean flawed imitation, but the error had nothing to do with literary style:
people become apes of their fathers by imitating only their outward
works and not their faith, a fatal mistake that is the origin of all forms of
idolatry.96 Proper filiation from Christ there was, but a democratized filiation that extended (or was imputed) to all believers. Meanwhile, as doctrinal orthodoxy became paramount, Catholic theologians condemned
Erasmuss efforts to Christianize virtuous pagansor at least the virtuous
writings of pagans.
The conceptual blends of the Ciceronianus also soon lost salience in
literary method and theory, largely thanks to Petrus Ramus, who separated
the practice of oratory from the moral principles that Renaissance humanists had believed to inhere in that practice.97 His frontal assault upon Quintilians assertion that the perfect orator must be a good man, a claim
integral to Erasmuss philosophia Christi, meant that subsequent scholars
EE, 11: 334 (lett. 3127, 6 June 1536): Est nova factio, quae in dies serpit latius. Nec
dubium est, quin haec organa moveat Satanas, qui mallet omnes esse Ciceronianos quam
Christianos. Multi mihi gratias agunt quod e scriptis meis, qualiacunque sunt, aliquam
pietatis scintillam hauserint. Hoc lucelli Satanas Christo invidens instigat istos.
96
Martin Luther, Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan et al., 55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 195586), 4: 328. See Gouwens, Human Exceptionalism, 42122.
97
Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and
the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1986), 161200.
95

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could not simply take it as a given. Gabriel Harveys Ciceronianus (1577),

which advocated eclectic imitation along Ramist lines, labeled Roman
humanists apes or shadows or even bastard offspring of Cicero, thus
invoking Erasmuss simian and filial blends.98 But even Harvey, not always
the most astute cultural critic, recognized that the debate had become a
sideshow: those little crows and apes of Cicero were long ago driven from
the stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned. . . .99
A third, related factor was the growing discomfort of moderns regarding their scholarly forebears. As Europeans moved beyond the idealization
of antiquity to challenge its authority in fields ranging from literary excellence and philology to the means of gaining knowledge about the natural
world, the question of being either apes of Cicero or his direct and legitimate heirs lost salience: the supersession of the ancients perforce entailed a
decline in the impulse to trace ones lineage to them. That transformation
was already underway, to be sure, in the works of numerous humanists,
including Petrarch and Erasmus, who sought to counterbalance explicit
modeling on antiquity with assertions of creativity. Still, these eclectic imitators idealized literary imitation in which ones composition resembles its
model as a son does a father: a conceptual metaphor that betrays an atavism that would become highly suspect by the time of Montaigne. In short,
the contrasting of apish imitation with the more faithful and successful
filial kind could only become less meaningful as scholars became suspicious and perhaps anxious about acknowledging, let alone advertising,
their indebtedness to the ancients.

VII. CONCLUSION
Methods drawn from cognitive literary theory make possible a fresh
approach to understanding Erasmuss creativity and its historical significance. As he engaged current debates about imitation, classicism, human
nature, and religion, his interpretation of their interrelatedness both took
shape and found expression in the blending of conceptual metaphors. To
be sure, in formulating new syntheses, he could and did self-consciously
exploit his prodigious knowledge of classical and Christian literature. But
Gabriel Harvey, Ciceronianus, ed. Harold S. Wilson and trans. Clarence A. Forbes
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1945), 82.
99
Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor, ed. and trans. Mark Reynolds (http://comp.uark.edu/mrey
nold/rheteng.html; accessed May 21, 2009), 56.
98

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the dynamics by which he created emergent meaning from those elements

and others may best be understood not as the purposive construction of a
system, but instead as an ad hoc, largely unconscious process that could
have led to a vast range of outcomes. Delighting in language, Erasmuss
mind articulated extraordinarily rich conceptual metaphors and blended
them with one another in explosively creative ways. Focusing closely upon
the simian blends in his writings, the present essay explores that mind at
work and at playfunctions by no means clearly distinct from each other.
When the humanists mind picks up and blends conceptual metaphors,
unpredictable things happen. Significantly, in the Ciceronianus, complex
metaphors regarding simians help to enable the unexpected creation of a
robust blend in which apes need no longer be invoked: The failed imitator
of Cicero is a pagan.
The approach modeled in this case-study may contribute to current
discussions regarding how intellectual history is conceived and written. The
philosophia Christi of Erasmus, in which Christian belief is necessary for
that true eloquence which in turn elevates human character, has been criticized since its inception as lacking either philosophical or theological rigor.
Yet when viewed in cognitive terms, it may be seen to have an integrity
quite aside from its truth claims: that is, its articulation of metaphorical
coherence quite literally makes sense. On a grand scale, might not our
narratives of the construction and transformation of learned discourse be
usefully grounded in what is now known about human cognition and creativity? Insofar as a given authors writings influence how learned discourse
evolves, attention to conceptual blending will both enrich and sharpen our
understanding of the roles of individual, creative minds in shaping the
course of the history of ideas.
University of Connecticut.

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