What Did the Sibyl Say? Queering Erasmus

Abstract In the spring of 1509, Erasmus travelled from Rome to Naples with his sixteen-year-old pupil Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of St Andrews and son of the king of Scotland. They visited the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae, according to Beatus Rhenanus. ‘What the Sibyl said’, Johan Huizinga comments eerily, ‘we will never know’. This essay analyses Erasmus’ writings on sibylline texts and oracles, and his effusive memoirs of Alexander, who died at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. It examines the artistic vogue for Sibyls in Italy, including Michelangelo, and Erasmus’ relations with Cardinal Riario (Michelangelo’s patron) and his circle. By comparing the homosocial world of tutors and pupils, with the homoerotic culture of antiquities, it opens up a last unmentionable area of Erasmian biography: the luminous, ardent, secretive world of erotic love.