ABSTRACT
On 29 March 1521 Cornelius Grapheus, the town secretary of Antwerp, finished his introduction to a previously unpublished treatise on Christian liberty by a fifteenthcentury critic of monastic vows. Grapheus’ words eloquently demonstrated the depth of his commitment to Christian humanism. Christianity, he asserted, had relapsed for the past 800 years into ‘a more than Egyptian servitude’, where manmade ordinances had replaced ‘Christ’s yoke’, and ‘human fables’ his promises of redemption. He deplored the closed-shop mentality of the theologians who denied the laity access to the Scriptures on the spurious grounds that they had no knowledge of the schoolmen and complicated the Gospel with subtleties of their own invention. In language reminiscent of Erasmus, he called for the translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular and for expository preaching so that ‘the philosophy of Christ’, which was common to all, might be available to all. Grapheus was full of optimism about the present age. Those devoted to Christian liberty could take heart for ‘everywhere good letters arise again, the Gospel of Christ has been reborn and Paul has come to life once more’.1
