Erasmus (1466-1536) personifies the renaissance at its peak – a priestly polyglot who, centuries before globalisation, shifted between different territories and environments, and who contributed to ethics, theology, biblical studies, and through work as a translator. He was also a formidable Latin prose stylist. He studied and taught at universities as far afield as Leuven, Oxford, Turin and Paris. It was also deeply involved with some of the key debates over issues like free will and the role of the church during the Reformation, along with his tussles with Martin Luther.
It is very surprising therefore to find, marked in the church of St Martin’s in Aldington near Ashford that for one year from 1511 the great man was vicar here. Was this a benefice simply given to him for financial reasons? He was certainly in Cambridge as a scholar, staying at Queens College over this period. While it might just be possible to commute between these two places today, with high speed rail, the journey in the early 16th century would have taken several days. Was he ever really in this place?
Certainly, the connection was one that was recorded and considered a meaningful one very early on. In `A Topographie or Survey of the County of Kent with Some Chronological, Historicall, and Other Matters Touching the Same, and the Several Parishes and Places Therein’ from Richard Kilburne (1605-1678) he refers under the entry for Aldington:
` In the time of King Hen. 8. There were two Parsons of this Parish much different for repute. Erasmus of Rote∣rodame, most eminent for Learning, and Richard Master, in∣famous for adhering to Elizabeth Barton (of this Parish) called the holy Maid of Kent) in treasonable practises, for which they two, and five others, were (by Parliament 25. Hen. 8. Cap. 12) attainted of Treason, and executed at Tiburne in Aprill in that year, and six others attainted of misprison of Treason.’ (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A47358.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1;view=fulltext)
Even more detail can be found in a lengthy article in the Dover Express and East Kent News from Friday 22nd August 1902:
`There hangs in the basement of the tower of Aldington Church a portrait of the celebrated Divine, Desiderius Erasmus, and close to it on a tablet is inscribed, “Erasmus, Rector of Aldington, March 11, 1511: after his portrait by Holbein in the Louvre, collated by Archbishop Warham. The portrait is given to the Church of Aldington in memory of its most famous Rector by George John Blomfield, M.A., Rector of Aldington, 1868—1894.” This inscription suggest the search for further information respecting the connection of Erasmus, the celebrated Reformer, with Aldington. Many of the biographical notices of Erasmus makes no mention at all of this phase of his life. Archbishop Warham was the great patron of Erasmus, who by his voluminous writings, and more especially by his publishing the Greek Testament with notes, is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched. Being somewhat migratory in his habits, Erasmus had come over to England and obtained several professorships at Cambridge University, but the stipends which they yielded were small, and he would take no fees from the students he taught: therefore with the object of inducing Erasmus to settle in England Archbishop Warham conferred on him the Rectory of Aldington, to which he was inducted on the 22nd March, 1511, the Rev. John Alan having vacated it, Erasmus having taken the oath of canonical obedience, undertook the cure of souls here, but he did not retain the living more than 15 months, for on the 31st July, 1512, the same Archbishop collated John Thorneton, D.D., Bishop of Dover, to the living, “on the resignation of Master Erasmus of Rotterdam.” and the Archbishop arranged that there should be paid out of the revenue of the Rectory of Aldington to Erasmus a pension of £20 a year. This pension was quite an exceptional thing, not to be taken as a precedent (although it has been so taken in the Benefices Resignation Act of modern times), and to justify his act in thus putting a burden on the future Rectors of Aldington, the Archbishop issued a mandate to “all sons of the Mother Church,” in which he said that it was contrary to his practice to impose pensions on any Church in his patronage, but he had determined to depart from the practice “in respect of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a man learned in Latin and Greek languages, and who as a shining star illuminates his times with his learning and eloquence. For whereas the Archbishop conferred on him the Church at Aldyngton, and he wishing to resign it, because he is unable to expound in English the Word of God to the parishioners, has requested the Archbishop to provide him with a yearly pension from the same. The Archbishop, therefore, considering his devotion to the study of letters and his love for the English which has caused him to forsake Italy. France, and Germany, where he might have become wealthy, and to resort to this country where he might pass the rest, of his life with his friends, decrees him a yearly pension of £20 out of the funds of the said parish Church of Aldyngton.” It appears from the view which Erasmus took of this transaction that he did not estimate the Archbishop’s benevolence very highly. Mr. Furley gives the following translation of Erasmus’s statement of the transaction:— “ If I reckon all that he (Archbishop Warham) was ready to give me. great was his liberality to me: it we take into account what I received; it is a very moderate amount. He conferred on me only one living, or rather, he did not give it me. but obtruded it upon me in spite of mv constant refusal, because the flock required that the pastor should be of the same nation, which condition I, being ignorant of the language, could not fulfil. When he converted it into a pension and found that I grudged to receive the money, which was collected from a people to whom I could be nothing but unprofitable, the excellent and pious man consoled me by saying. ‘What great service could you do if you were to preach to one country congregation? At present by your books you instruct all pastors with much more abundant fruit, and does it seem to you unworthy if a small portion of the Church income returns to you? T will take this care upon me: I will provide that nothing shall be wanting to that Church’. (http://www.dover-kent.com/VILLAGES/66-Aldington.html)
Parsonage Farmhouse, parts of which predate Erasmus’s time and which served as the rectory in 1511, were supposedly the place he stayed while in the parish (https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101071207-parsonage-farmhouse-aldington#.XxhspJ5KhPY). All of this is backed up the entries in for instance the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (`Richard Masters, Parson of Alyngton 15-14-1558’, Alfred Denton Cheney, Volume 10, 1904, 15-16). And yet, in other biographies of the great scholar, there is either categorical statement that he never took the position up, or that he never went to the place even after having done so (see Richard Jebb, `Essays and Addresses’, Cambridge University Press, 1907, who states that he was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and spent the years 1511 to 1514 in Cambridge, working on his Greek translation, avoiding an outbreak of the plague, and refusing the offer of the benefice while taking the money (342). The experience was enough to put him off the UK and ensure that after his departure, apart from one brief return visit, he never came back from the continent to live here.
It is probably best to simply speculate therefore about how one of the most influential intellectuals and scholars of the 16th century became somehow associated with a small village in Kent, and left at least something of a trace of their life there – even if it is not entirely clear whether they ever set foot in the place or not.