Coleridge reads Sepúlveda's "De Fato et Libero Arbitraria" (1526) in 1810

So, as I noted previously, we know that in May 1810 Coleridge was reading the 1780 four-volume collected edition of seventeenth-century Spanish Catholic humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1494-1573), or at least reading the fourth volume (title page above) of that edition. That vol collects together fourteen separate titles by Sepúlveda, concluding with De fato et libero arbitrio contra Lutherum libri tres (1526) and the Antapologia pro Alberto Pio, Principe Carpensi, in Erasmum Roterodamum (1531). The De Fato is an attack on Luther, and the Antapologia a more measured if still critical engagement with Erasmus, weighing in on the side of one of Erasmus's antagonists, Albert III of Carpi.

These are, it might seem, odd works for Coleridge to be reading. He generally wasn't particularly interested in Catholic theology, or the discourses of the Counter-Rreformation, and although he was not himself a Lutheran he had immense respect for Luther's writing, and praised him in the Biographia and elsewhere (according to E J Dahl ‘Luther was Coleridge's greatest hero and authority, and Coleridge considered that he had taken up his mantle as reformer and theologian’). Still: we know Coleridge was reading these two anti-Lutheran books, because in his Notebook for May 1810 he writes:

How interesting to read Sepulveda (Op. Vol 4 p.470) in a style worthy of Cicero, nay, more manly, yet equally elegantly, attribute all the miseries of Germany, their vices, infidelity, Lutheranism, to the Study, the pernicious study, of Eloquence & Belles Lettres—Item—his abuse of Erasmus for translating Lucian, & leaving the oddments of Aristotle untranslated or in barbarous Latin / Item / what great Mathematicians &c &c &c Germany produced before the restoration of Letters.!!!!!!—nothing since — [Kathleen Coburn (ed), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (5 vols: London: Routledge 1973) 3: 3809]

Here's page 470 of vol 4 (it's the third page of the De Fato, so STC didn't need to read very far into that volume to come across it):

Here's the relevant bit:

III. Sed antequam de iis rebus dico, quae propriae causae hujus esse videntur, non erit alienum, qui fons tantorum malorum, et quasi caput exstiterit, aperire, et de moribus et flagitiosis artibus Lutheri pauca breviter commemorare, ut a quibus initiis profecta nefaria scelestissimi hominis molitio vires paulatim sumendo processerit, intelligatur. Quo in loco illud pro comperto dicefe audeo et constanter affirmare, quod mirum cuipiam fortasse videbitur, studium eloquentiae humaniorumque litterarum Germanis hanc perniciosissimam pestem invexisse. ... Quamdiu enim Germania more patrio gravioribus disciplinis intenta, rebus rerumque solidae cognitioni, non verborum inani garrulitati ac sermonis lenociniis studebat, proveniebant in ea acutissimi mathematici, perspicaces philosophi, theologi gravissimi, honestissimi, religiosissimi: ut non modo sana doctrina, sed etiam optimis moribus ac exemplis ad homines instituendos, et vera religione imbuendos essent instructi. Postea vero quam his optimis disciplinis relictis, coeptum est a leviculis quibusdam hominibus Latini Graecique sermonis cognitioni, ac dicendi facultati accuratius indulgeri, provenere malo pravoque ingenio quidam, qui maledicorum impiorumque scriptorum commercio facile omnem impietatem caninamque maledicentiam imbiberent, seque ad morum pessima quaeque vitia multo etiam magis, quam ad eloquentiae virtutes dociles exhiberent. Itaque non hominum tantum, sed etiam Dei contemtores effecti, quantulamcumque dicendi facultatem comparaverant, hac ad omnem religionem tollendam abuti coeperunt: quorum partim jactatae voces, partim scripta sic Germanae juventuti latitans venenum infundebant, ut paulatim corruptos animos ad scelus impietatis concipiendum commodissime praeparaverint.

Which means:

But before I speak of these matters, and of their proper cause and relevance, it will not be off the point to mention he who was the source and fountainhead of so many evils; to outline, that is, the character and criminal practices of Luther, so that it can be clearly understood how, from small beginnings, his nefarious criminal enterprise was able gradually to grow in strength. At this point in my argument I dare to affirm what will, perhaps, seem extraordinary to some people, that this same pernicious plague was brought upon the Germans by the introduction into their culture of the Literae Humaniores and the study of eloquence [studium eloquentiae humaniorumque litterarum]. ... For as long as Germany followed her sober, native learning, studying the knowledge of true things, rather than the empty garrulousness of vain words and a shameless pimping-up of scholarship, then she produced the very sharpest mathematicians, the most clear-sighted philosophers, the most serious, honourable and religious theologians. They not only explored sound doctrine, but by the best customs and the best examples were able to educate people and instill in them true religion. Soon enough, however, the best of disciplines were abandoned, and this was because certain trivial men wanted to indulge in close study of Latin and Greek, after which there then emerged certain more evil and depraved people who by commerce with disreputable and evil books demonstrated how easily men can absorb all manner of impiety and rabid wickednesses, going from bad vices to worse ones much more than ever they learned the virtues that learning might have brought with it. And so they became contemptuous not only of men, but of God, and turned their small powers of eloquence to the utter destruction of every form of religion: partly just for the satisfaction of hearing the sound of their own voices, and partly to corrupt German youth with their writings, in which lay concealed the poison they were administering.

‘Pimping-up of scholarship’ looks like me being slangy, but it's literally what lenocinium means. So as STC notes, with amused astonishment: Sepúlveda straightforwardly says that the introduction of classical learning to Germany corrupted the nation and so led to Luther and Protestantism.

The reference to Erasmus, in the middle, is less to a specific passage, and more to criticisms Sepúlveda (himself a translator of Aristotle into Latin) makes several times: that Erasmus piddled around translating Lucian when he could have been adding to the glory of God by translating Aristotle. Here's a passage from early in the Antapologia (it's page 549 of the volume Coleridge was reading):

Primum, quod homo Graeca interpretandi studio deditus, Luciani fabellas, quarum cognitione Latini et theologi et philosophi sine ulla religionis aut morum jactura carere poterant, Latine expresseris diligenter, Aristotelis ne verbum quidem converteris, cum essent non pauca illius viri divini opera de philosophia, quae partim perperam, partim barbare conversa, Latinam orationem desiderabant.

Firstly, though you are a man learned in Greek, yet you give your time to the silly stories of Lucian, and diligently render them into Latin, when theologians and philosophers could perfectly well do without those, and yet you translate not one word of Aristotle into Latin, when no small number of that divine man's philosophical works remain untranslated or are only rendered into barbarous Latin.

We can't be certain as to why Coleridge was reading Sepúlveda in 1810, although it's surely likely that having wound-up The Friend in 1809, and starting to think of lecturing again to earn money, he was exploring Aristotle, and reading around the topic. Still, it was the Lutheran jibes that struck him, and it may be this strange little passage, in part, that led to Coleridge stressing in the Biographia how innately German, in language and thought, Luther's achievement was. As to whether Sepúlveda's Latin was at once more elegant and more manly than Cicero's: that you can judge for yourself.