onsdag 25 oktober 2017

Mercator and Geert Groote (excursus)


Both Gerhard Mercator and Gerhard Grote were invoking one St Gerhard as patron saint. He is celebrated on October 3 - same day when I spotted and answered Russell Grigg's hagiographic outburst for Luther. He was the first saint on the day, until St Therese of Lisieux took that place.

Russell Grigg is here claiming that Mercator was suspected of Lutheranism:

In 1544, the Catholic Inquisition charged 43 Louvain residents with ‘heresy’. Mercator was accused of ‘Lutheranism’, and of having written ‘suspicious letters’ to the friars at Mechelen.6 At the time, he was temporarily in Rupelmonde as executor of his recently deceased Uncle Gisbert’s estate. Nevertheless, he was declared a fugitive, arrested, and imprisoned in Rupelmonde Castle.

Despite a search by the authorities at Mechelen, no incriminating letters were found. Mercator’s friends at the University of Louvain petitioned strongly for his release, which finally happened after he had endured several months’ incarceration.


Mercator’s Projections
by Russell Grigg
https://creation.com/mercators-projection


True enough. But that does not make him a Lutheran, he was cleared. It is very clear (!) that part of the reason for the charge is that Lutheranism was as fearful a threat as Communism in the McCarthy era. In other words, people were being suspected for sometimes somewhat flimsy reasons. As Russell Grigg noted, Mercator was cleared. Inquisition was not quite like McCarthy system.

I am reminded of another exponent of Devotio Moderna (after he started studies in Paris anyway) who was also suspected of heresy. His disciples were going to use Mercator's projection a lot as missionaries. I am speaking of St Ignatius of Loyola. Though, as he was less into devotio moderna previous to studies, and as these were the result of his deal with the Inquisition, he had instead been suspected of being an Alumbrado - a kind of Spanish, half Catholic, Quaker.

There is perhaps another reason why Mercator was suspected of Lutheranism. He was according to wikipedia associated with Geert Grote, whom I mentioned at the head of this article. Geert Grote being founder of the Common Brethren, in which Geert Mercator was going to school. (There had been a vandalism making him contemporary of Mercator, I recall, but it has been fixed). Er, correction, the one he was associated with was actually Franciscus Monachus. My bad, I must have looked up Groote as a side note. We'll be back to that.

Now, Dutch Protestants have for some time been claiming Geert Grote was a kind of "proto-Protestant" (you may guess I consider him at least as much as a proto-Jesuit).

Thing is, this is getting out of fashion.

Check these pages (taken by screenshot):



Source : Piety in Practice and Print: Essays on the Late Medieval Religious Landscape, by Koen Goudriaan, pp.209-210, via Google Books.

So, the Brethren of the Common life, as influence in the case of Mercator's childhood, will not cut it to make Mercator reasonably suspect.

What about anti-Scholasticism?

Young scholars of that era often Latinized their names, and Gerard Kremer chose to call himself Gerardus Mercator Rupelmundanus, under which name he enrolled at the University of Louvain, and received a Master of Arts degree in humanities and philosophy in 1532. These studies were based on the teachings of Aristotle: e.g. that all matter was composed of earth, air, fire, and water, that there was no divine purpose in the affairs of man or nature, and that the universe never had a beginning and would never end. This presented something of a crisis of faith for Mercator—not so much of his faith in the Bible, but in what he had been taught.

He corresponded with and then visited a group of Franciscan friars in Antwerp and Mechelen, which reinforced his strong Christian convictions. He later wrote: “When I saw that Moses’ version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth of all philosophers and started to investigate the secrets of nature.” Surely a commendable approach today for those who heedlessly imbibe the anti-God and anti-scientific philosophy of Darwinism.


Was the University of Louvain asking students to believe in the eternity of the world because Aristotle had done so? I very much doubt it. Even for the Master of Arts' course he had taken.

If we go back a few centuries, St Thomas was certainly aware of Aristotle, was certainly accepting the four elements, and was also aware of but not accepting the position that the world was eternal. He was just saying "ok, we can't prove the world had a beginning, otherwise Aristotle would have found that proof, so we must take it on faith of the Bible that the world had a beginning". Insofar as Louvain a few centuries later was still a Catholic university, it arguably was still having theology and not philosophy as "queen of the arts" or "queen of the sciences", and therefore was still accepting Aristotle was wrong.

It can have given the training in philosophy with some empathy for the Aristotelic viewpoint, requiring students to internalise that this is what rational inquiry, unguided by divine revelation leads to. Such creationists who not only prove the world CAN be within Biblical time frame, but presume to prove it MUST be young, would obviously beg to differ about this. Nevertheless, there is a point in teaching what science says by itself, without the aid of revelation, and it seems University of Louvain was saying this for what they considered the best scientist to date, in generalities. Aristotle.

I guess, to Geert Mercator this was actually an approach he could for some time accept (how would he otherwise have had his master of arts) and came later to consider sinful. Imagine Jonathan Sarfati or someone else lecturing on Creation University of Sydney a preliminary course on what evolutionists used to believe back when they were in charge. And imagine one impatient student not getting this, finally, but, while understanding the purpose, nevertheless turning his back on Creation University of Sydney and getting around with some of the ones who say one should not even study evolution at all. That would be a fair guess, from my side, on the change of mind in Mercator.

Now, to be fair to myself, I was probably tired from answering a lot of presumed arguments against Catholicism from the Bible quotes in Russell Grigg's hagiographical work on Luther - the answer to which I will resume, and Geert Groote was mentioned in the article on Mercator:

At no time in his life did Mercator claim to be a Lutheran but there are many hints that he had sympathies in that direction. As a child, called Geert, he was surrounded by adults who were possibly followers of Geert Groote, who placed meditation, contemplation and biblical study over ritual and liturgy—and who also founded the school of the Brethren of the Common Life at 's-Hertogenbosch.


This should be conferred with the words in above quote from Koen Goudriaan.

There are other reasons why it is difficult to know why Mercator came before the Inquisition.

Some have presumed his Inquisitors (one of which had also been involved with Tyndale before his burning) were cynics, who didn't consider it too important whether the one burnt was guilty or innocent, provided the public thought him guilty:

It is no great matter whether those that die on this account be guilty or innocent, provided we terrify the people by these examples; which generally succeeds best, when persons eminent for learning, riches, nobility or high stations, are thus sacrificed.


Thus Ruard Tapper, as quoted from reference Brandt & Chamberlayne (1740) ... which seems to be, let's see: Brandt, Geeraert; Chamberlayne, John (1740), The History of the Reformation and Other Ecclesiastical Transactions in and about the Low-Countries., T. Wood, links to a page where I can read this (screenshot):



Yes, it seems to be somewhat suspect of Protestant bias and of calumny against Ruard Tapper.

Perhaps the real deal is, some Protestant in 1740 thought "it is no great matter whether those that we blame on this account be guilty or innocent, provided we terrify the people by these examples; which generally succeeds best when persons eminent for high stations in Papism, for learning, or for sanctity are thus sacrificed." In other words, the source given by some wikipedian about the one Inquisitor of Mercator (who found him innocent) is worthless. It is a piece of ruthless Protestant Propaganda.

So no, we still do not know why Gerhard Mercator was suspected. We do know, however, thanks to this, I had to look up Jacobus Latomus - the other Inquisitor at Louvain back in the day of Mercator, he died the year after trying Mercator, in 1544. And thanks to my looking him up, we do know that to him, the chief fault of Tyndale was NOT translating the Bible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobus_Latomus [Look it up.]

Either way, thanks, Grigg, for giving some time off from Luther. Mercator was a good Catholic, though briefly sucpected of the opposite, and I have known a man like Groote personally : Tom Zimmer, whom I met in Rome in 1986 (before the blasphemy in Assisi!) was certainly no Protestant. He was a pro-lifer, a creationist, very devout to some saints, and to certain promises given about certain post-Biblical prayers.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Marcellinus, Pope and Martyr
25.X.2017

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