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as well as the with the arguments used to discredit Dionysius, but his faith in Dionysius’
authenticity remained unshaken. 461
In the AntiLutherus a decade later, he is on the offensive against Valla and
Erasmus. 462 Curiously, Clichtove devotes some twenty pages (four chapters) to defending
Dionysius’ authority in a work designed to discredit Luther. What is the connection
between his offence and his defence? As we will see, Clichtove argues that Luther’s
theology is wrong because it disrupts the proper order of the world, which, for Clichtove,
is hierarchical. Dionysius, then, serves as a testimony to the fact that the Church has
always been hierarchical, and therefore ought to remain so. Consequently, Clichtove must
prove that Dionysius was indeed writing in the first century for Dionysius’ testimony to
be authoritative.
Motivating Clichtove’s turn from moderate reform to polemical defence was his
professed fear of disorder 463 —and it was disorder that he chiefly expected Luther’s ideas
461 Even in his preface to the 1515 edition of Dionysius’ work (i.e. after Valla’s critiques were published in
1505, but before Erasmus’ in 1516) he presents Dionysius as a true disciple of Paul: “At vero inter eos qui
post sanctorum eloquiorum scriptores caelestia nobis mysteria litterarum adminiculo tradiderunt, divinus
pater Dionysius Areopagita cum primis annumerandus est, a beatissimo quidem Paulo verae fidei
sacramenta edoctus.” Eugene Rice, The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Related Texts
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 350.
462 Clichtove’s attack on Erasmus was part of a larger conflict between Erasmus and the Faculty of
Theology at the University of Paris and even more broadly between Erasmus and his Catholic critics (as
Rummel argues in her book of the same title). The theolgians in Paris were notoriously ill-disposed towards
humanism, especially insofar as its philological program was perceived as an attack on the authority of the
Vulgate. More importantly, Rummel writes that Erasmus drew the ire of his Catholic critics by initially
“refus[ing] to take a clear stand” on Luther’s ideas, “pleading scholarly detachment”: “his unwillingness to
commit himself formally to one of the warring parties destroyed his credibility.” (Even when he did make a
public statement against Luther in his De libero arbitrio in 1524, he did not manage to rescue his reputation,
as “he was labelled a heretic by Catholics and a hypocrite by Lutherans.” Luther calls Erasmus “ubique
lubricus et flexiloquus,” and likens him to Proteus during their debate about free will (De servo arbitrio,
from 1525). WA18 601:34-35 and 602:1. Erika Rummel, Erasmus and his Catholic Critics, 2 vols.
(Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1989), 1. Rummel treats the conflict with Clichtove in Volume 2, 73-79; and the
conflict with the Sorbonne as a whole in Volume 2, 29-79. James K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early
Reformation France: The Faculty of Theology of Paris 1500-1543 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985).
463 Modern scholarship has observed that this fear of disorder permeates his entire oeuvre. See for instance
Massaut, "Thèmes ecclésiologiques.” An exchange between Kraus and Zemon Davis draws attention to
Clichtove’s unshakeable respect for hierarchy, as perceived through his relationship to his various patrons,
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