CHAPTER XVII

ERASMUS AT BASLE

1521-9

Basle his dwelling-place for nearly eight years:
1521-9--Political thought of Erasmus--Concord and peace--Anti-war writings--Opinions concerning princes and government--New editions of several Fathers--The _Colloquia_--Controversies with Stunica, Beda, etc.--Quarrel with Hutten--Eppendorff

It is only towards the evening of life that the picture of Erasmus acquires the features with which it was to go down to posterity. Only at Basle--delivered from the troublesome pressure of parties wanting to enlist him, transplanted from an environment of haters and opponents at Louvain to a circle of friends, kindred spirits, helpers and admirers, emancipated from the courts of princes, independent of the patronage of the great, unremittingly devoting his tremendous energy to the work that was dear to him--did he become Holbein's Erasmus. In those late years he approaches most closely to the ideal of his personal life.

He did not think that there were still fifteen years in store for him. Long before, in fact, since he became forty years old in 1506, Erasmus had been in an old-age mood. 'The last act of the play has begun,' he keeps saying after 1517.

He now felt practically independent as to money matters. Many years had passed before he could say that. But peace of mind did not come with competence. It never came. He never became truly placid and serene, as Holbein's picture seems to represent him. He was always too much concerned about what people said or thought of him. Even at Basle he did not feel thoroughly at home. He still speaks repeatedly of a removal in the near future to Rome, to France, to England, or back to the Netherlands. Physical rest, at any rate, which was not in him, was granted him by circumstances: for nearly eight years he now remained at Basle, and then he lived at Freiburg for six.

Erasmus at Basle is a man whose ideals of the world and society have failed him. What remains of that happy expectation of a golden age of peace and light, in which he had believed as late as 1517? What of his trust in good will and rational insight, in which he wrote the _Institutio Principis Christiani_ for the youthful Charles V? To Erasmus all the weal of state and society had always been merely a matter of personal morality and intellectual enlightenment. By recommending and spreading those two he at one time thought he had introduced the great renovation himself. From the moment when he saw that the conflict would lead to an exasperated struggle he refused any longer to be anything but a spectator. As an actor in the great ecclesiastical combat Erasmus had voluntarily left the stage.

But he does not give up his ideal. 'Let us resist,' he concludes an Epistle about gospel philosophy, 'not by taunts and threats, not by force of arms and injustice, but by simple discretion, by benefits, by gentleness and tolerance.' Towards the close of his life, he prays: 'If Thou, O God, deignst to renew that Holy Spirit in the hearts of all, then also will those external disasters cease.... Bring order to this chaos, Lord Jesus, let Thy Spirit spread over these waters of sadly troubled dogmas.'

Concord, peace, sense of duty and kindliness, were all valued highly by Erasmus; yet he rarely saw them realized in practical life. He becomes disillusioned. After the short spell of political optimism he never speaks of the times any more but in bitter terms--a most criminal age, he says--and again, the most unhappy and most depraved age imaginable. In vain had he always written in the cause of peace: _Querela pacis_, the complaint of peace, the adage _Dulce bellum inexpertis_, war is sweet to those who have not known it, _Oratio de pace et discordia_, and more still. Erasmus thought rather highly of his pacifistic labours: 'that polygraph, who never leaves off persecuting war by means of his pen', thus he makes a character of the _Colloquies_ designate himself. According to a tradition noted by Melanchthon, Pope Julius is said to have called him before him in connection with his advice about the war with Venice,[18] and to have remarked to him angrily that he should stop writing on the concerns of princes: 'You do not understand those things!'

Erasmus had, in spite of a certain innate moderation, a wholly non-political mind. He lived too much outside of practical reality, and thought too naïvely of the corrigibility of mankind, to realize the difficulties and necessities of government. His ideas about a good administration were extremely primitive, and, as is often the case with scholars of a strong ethical bias, very revolutionary at bottom, though he never dreamed of drawing the practical inferences. His friendship with political and juridical thinkers, as More, Budaeus and Zasius, had not changed him. Questions of forms of government, law or right, did not exist for him. Economic problems he saw in idyllic simplicity. The prince should reign gratuitously and impose as few taxes as possible. 'The good prince has all that loving citizens possess.' The unemployed should be simply driven away. We feel in closer contact with the world of facts when he enumerates the works of peace for the prince: the cleaning of towns, building of bridges, halls, and streets, draining of pools, shifting of river-beds, the diking and reclamation of moors. It is the Netherlander who speaks here, and at the same time the man in whom the need of cleansing and clearing away is a fundamental trait of character.

Vague politicians like Erasmus are prone to judge princes very severely, since they take them to be responsible for all wrongs. Erasmus praises them personally, but condemns them in general. From the kings of his time he had for a long time expected peace in Church and State. They had disappointed him. But his severe judgement of princes he derived rather from classical reading than from political experience of his own times. In the later editions of the _Adagia_ he often reverts to princes, their task and their neglect of duty, without ever mentioning special princes. 'There are those who sow the seeds of dissension between their townships in order to fleece the poor unhindered and to satisfy their gluttony by the hunger of innocent citizens.' In the adage _Scarabeus aquilam quaerit_ he represents the prince under the image of the Eagle as the great cruel robber and persecutor. In another, _Aut regem aut fatuum nasci oportere_, and in _Dulce bellum inexpertis_ he utters his frequently quoted dictum: 'The people found and develop towns, the folly of princes devastates them.' 'The princes conspire with the Pope, and perhaps with the Turk, against the happiness of the people,' he writes to Colet in 1518.

He was an academic critic writing from his study. A revolutionary purpose was as foreign to Erasmus as it was to More when writing the _Utopia_. 'Bad monarchs should perhaps be suffered now and then. The remedy should not be tried.' It may be doubted whether Erasmus exercised much real influence on his contemporaries by means of his diatribes against princes. One would fain believe that his ardent love of peace and bitter arraignment of the madness of war had some effect. They have undoubtedly spread pacific sentiments in the broad circles of intellectuals who read Erasmus, but unfortunately the history of the sixteenth century shows little evidence that such sentiments bore fruit in actual practice. However this may be, Erasmus's strength was not in these political declamations. He could never be a leader of men with their passions and their harsh interests.

His life-work lay elsewhere. Now, at Basle, though tormented more and more frequently by his painful complaint which he had already carried for so many years, he could devote himself more fully than ever before to the great task he had set himself: the opening up of the pure sources of Christianity, the exposition of the truth of the Gospel in all the simple comprehensibility in which he saw it. In a broad stream flowed the editions of the Fathers, of classic authors, the new editions of the New Testament, of the _Adagia_, of his own Letters, together with Paraphrases of the New Testament, Commentaries on Psalms, and a number of new theological, moral and philological treatises. In 1522 he was ill for months on end; yet in that year Arnobius and the third edition of the New Testament succeeded Cyprian, whom he had already annotated at Louvain and edited in 1520, closely followed by Hilary in 1523 and next by a new edition of Jerome in 1524. Later appeared Irenaeus, 1526; Ambrose, 1527; Augustine, 1528-9, and a Latin translation of Chrysostom in 1530. The rapid succession of these comprehensive works proves that the work was done as Erasmus always worked: hastily, with an extraordinary power of concentration and a surprising command of his mnemonic faculty, but without severe criticism and the painful accuracy that modern philology requires in such editions.

Neither the polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. But the two are linked inseparably as the _Colloquies_ prove.

What was said about the _Moria_ may be repeated here: if in the literature of the world only the _Colloquies_ and the _Moria_ have remained alive, that choice of history is right. Not in the sense that in literature only Erasmus's pleasantest, lightest and most readable works were preserved, whereas the ponderous theological erudition was silently relegated to the shelves of libraries. It was indeed Erasmus's best work that was kept alive in the _Moria_ and the _Colloquies_. With these his sparkling wit has charmed the world. If only we had space here to assign to the Erasmus of the _Colloquies_ his just and lofty place in that brilliant constellation of sixteenth-century followers of Democritus: Rabelais, Ariosto, Montaigne, Cervantes, and Ben Jonson!

When Erasmus gave the _Colloquies_ their definite form at Basle, they had already had a long and curious genesis. At first they had been no more than _Familiarium colloquiorum formulae_, models of colloquial Latin conversation, written at Paris before 1500, for the use of his pupils. Augustine Caminade, the shabby friend who was fond of living on young Erasmus's genius, had collected them and had turned them to advantage within a limited compass. He had long been dead when one Lambert Hollonius of Liége sold the manuscript that he had got from Caminade to Froben at Basle. Beatus Rhenanus, although then already Erasmus's trusted friend, had it printed at once without the latter's knowledge. That was in 1518. Erasmus was justly offended at it, the more so as the book was full of slovenly blunders and solecisms. So he at once prepared a better edition himself, published by Maertensz at Louvain in 1519. At that time the work really contained but one true dialogue, the nucleus of the later _Convivium profanum_. The rest were formulae of etiquette and short talks. But already in this form it was, apart from its usefulness to latinists, so full of happy wit and humorous invention that it became very popular. Even before 1522 it had appeared in twenty-five editions, mostly reprints, at Antwerp, Paris, Strassburg, Cologne, Cracow, Deventer, Leipzig, London, Vienna, Mayence.

At Basle Erasmus himself revised an edition which was published in March
1522 by Froben, dedicated to the latter's six-year-old son, the author's godchild, Johannes Erasmius Froben. Soon after he did more than revise. In 1523 and 1524 first ten new dialogues, afterwards four, and again six, were added to the _Formulae_, and at last in 1526 the title was changed to _Familiarium colloquiorum opus_. It remained dedicated to the boy Froben and went on growing with each new edition: a rich and motley collection of dialogues, each a masterpiece of literary form, well-knit, spontaneous, convincing, unsurpassed in lightness, vivacity and fluent Latin; each one a finished one-act play. From that year on, the stream of editions and translations flowed almost uninterruptedly for two centuries.

Erasmus's mind had lost nothing of its acuteness and freshness when, so many years after the _Moria_, he again set foot in the field of satire. As to form, the _Colloquies_ are less confessedly satirical than the _Moria_. With its telling subject, the _Praise of Folly_, the latter at once introduces itself as a satire: whereas, at first sight, the _Colloquies_ might seem to be mere innocent genre-pieces. But as to the contents, they are more satirical, at least more directly so. The _Moria_, as a satire, is philosophical and general; the _Colloquia_ are up to date and special. At the same time they combine more the positive and negative elements. In the _Moria_ Erasmus's own ideal dwells unexpressed behind the representation; in the _Colloquia_ he continually and clearly puts it in the foreground. On this account they form, notwithstanding all the jests and mockery, a profoundly serious moral treatise and are closely akin to the _Enchiridion militis Christiani_. What Erasmus really demanded of the world and of mankind, how he pictured to himself that passionately desired, purified Christian society of good morals, fervent faith, simplicity and moderation, kindliness, toleration and peace--this we can nowhere else find so clearly and well-expressed as in the _Colloquia_. In these last fifteen years of his life Erasmus resumes, by means of a series of moral-dogmatic disquisitions, the topics he broached in the _Enchiridion_: the exposition of simple, general Christian conduct; untrammelled and natural ethics. That is his message of redemption. It came to many out of _Exomologesis_, _De esu carnium_, _Lingua_, _Institutio christiani matrimonii_, _Vidua christiana_, _Ecclesiastes_. But, to far larger numbers, the message was contained in the _Colloquies_.

The _Colloquia_ gave rise to much more hatred and contest than the _Moria_, and not without reason, for in them Erasmus attacked persons. He allowed himself the pleasure of ridiculing his Louvain antagonists. Lee had already been introduced as a sycophant and braggart into the edition of 1519, and when the quarrel was assuaged, in 1522, the reference was expunged. Vincent Dirks was caricatured in _The Funeral_
(1526) as a covetous friar, who extorts from the dying testaments in favour of his order. He remained. Later sarcastic observations were added about Beda and numbers of others. The adherents of Oecolampadius took a figure with a long nose in the _Colloquies_ for their leader: 'Oh, no,' replied Erasmus, 'it is meant for quite another person.' Henceforth all those who were at loggerheads with Erasmus, and they were many, ran the risk of being pilloried in the _Colloquia_. It was no wonder that this work, especially with its scourging mockery of the monastic orders, became the object of controversy.

* * * * *

Erasmus never emerged from his polemics. He was, no doubt, serious when he said that, in his heart, he abhorred and had never desired them; but his caustic mind often got the better of his heart, and having once begun to quarrel he undoubtedly enjoyed giving his mockery the rein and wielding his facile dialectic pen. For understanding his personality it is unnecessary here to deal at large with all those fights on paper. Only the most important ones need be mentioned.

Since 1516 a pot had been boiling for Erasmus in Spain. A theologian of the University at Alcalá, Diego Lopez Zuñiga, or, in Latin, Stunica, had been preparing Annotations to the edition of the New Testament: 'a second Lee', said Erasmus. At first Cardinal Ximenes had prohibited the publication, but in 1520, after his death, the storm broke. For some years Stunica kept persecuting Erasmus with his criticism, to the latter's great vexation; at last there followed a _rapprochement_, probably as Erasmus became more conservative, and a kindly attitude on the part of Stunica.

No less long and violent was the quarrel with the syndic of the Sorbonne, Noel Bedier or Beda, which began in 1522. The Sorbonne was prevailed upon to condemn several of Erasmus's dicta as heretical in
1526. The effort of Beda to implicate Erasmus in the trial of Louis de Berquin, who had translated the condemned writings and who was eventually burned at the stake for faith's sake in 1529, made the matter still more disagreeable for Erasmus.

It is clear enough that both at Paris and at Louvain in the circles of the theological faculties the chief cause of exasperation was in the _Colloquia_. Egmondanus and Vincent Dirks did not forgive Erasmus for having acridly censured their station and their personalities.

More courteous than the aforementioned polemics was the fight with a high-born Italian, Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi; acrid and bitter was one with a group of Spanish monks, who brought the Inquisition to bear upon him. In Spain 'Erasmistas' was the name of those who inclined to more liberal conceptions of the creed.

In this way the matter accumulated for the volume of Erasmus's works which contains, according to his own arrangement, all his _Apologiae_: not 'excuses', but 'vindications'. 'Miserable man that I am; they just fill a volume,' exclaimed Erasmus.

Two of his polemics merit a somewhat closer examination: that with Ulrich von Hutten and that with Luther.

[Illustration: XXI. MARTIN LUTHER AS A MONK]

[Illustration: XXII. ULRICH VON HUTTEN]

Hutten, knight and humanist, the enthusiastic herald of a national German uplift, the ardent hater of papacy and supporter of Luther, was certainly a hot-head and perhaps somewhat of a muddle-head. He had applauded Erasmus when the latter still seemed to be the coming man and had afterwards besought him to take Luther's side. Erasmus had soon discovered that this noisy partisan might compromise him. Had not one of Hutten's rash satires been ascribed to him, Erasmus? There came a time when Hutten could no longer abide Erasmus. His knightly instinct reacted on the very weaknesses of Erasmus's character: the fear of committing himself and the inclination to repudiate a supporter in time of danger. Erasmus knew that weakness himself: 'Not all have strength enough for martyrdom,' he writes to Richard Pace in 1521. 'I fear that I shall, in case it results in a tumult, follow St. Peter's example.' But this acknowledgement does not discharge him from the burden of Hutten's reproaches which he flung at him in fiery language in 1523. In this quarrel Erasmus's own fame pays the penalty of his fault. For nowhere does he show himself so undignified and puny as in that 'Sponge against Hutten's mire', which the latter did not live to read. Hutten, disillusioned and forsaken, died at an early age in 1523, and Erasmus did not scruple to publish the venomous pamphlet against his former friend after his demise.

Hutten, however, was avenged upon Erasmus living. One of his adherents, Henry of Eppendorff, inherited Hutten's bitter disgust with Erasmus and persecuted him for years. Getting hold of one of Erasmus's letters in which he was denounced, he continually threatened him with an action for defamation of character. Eppendorff's hostility so thoroughly exasperated Erasmus that he fancied he could detect his machinations and spies everywhere even after the actual persecution had long ceased.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Melanchthon, _Opera, Corpus Reformatorum_, XII 266, where he refers to _Querela pacis_, which, however, was not written before 1517; _vide_ A. 603 and I p. 37.10.

CHAPTER XVIII

CONTROVERSY WITH LUTHER AND GROWING CONSERVATISM

1524-6

Erasmus persuaded to write against Luther--_De Libero Arbitrio_:
1524--Luther's answer: _De Servo Arbitrio_--Erasmus's indefiniteness contrasted with Luther's extreme rigour--Erasmus henceforth on the side of conservatism--The Bishop of Basle and Oecolampadius--Erasmus's half-hearted dogmatics: confession, ceremonies, worship of the Saints, Eucharist--_Institutio Christiani Matrimonii_: 1526--He feels surrounded by enemies

At length Erasmus was led, in spite of all, to do what he had always tried to avoid: he wrote against Luther. But it did not in the least resemble the _geste_ Erasmus at one time contemplated, in the cause of peace in Christendom and uniformity of faith, to call a halt to the impetuous Luther, and thereby to recall the world to its senses. In the great act of the Reformation their polemics were merely an after-play. Not Erasmus alone was disillusioned and tired--Luther too was past his heroic prime, circumscribed by conditions, forced into the world of affairs, a disappointed man.

Erasmus had wished to persevere in his resolution to remain a spectator of the great tragedy. 'If, as appears from the wonderful success of Luther's cause, God wills all this'--thus did Erasmus reason--'and He has perhaps judged such a drastic surgeon as Luther necessary for the corruption of these times, then it is not my business to withstand him.' But he was not left in peace. While he went on protesting that he had nothing to do with Luther and differed widely from him, the defenders of the old Church adhered to the standpoint urged as early as 1520 by Nicholas of Egmond before the rector of Louvain: 'So long as he refuses to write against Luther, we take him to be a Lutheran'. So matters stood. 'That you are looked upon as a Lutheran here is certain,' Vives writes to him from the Netherlands in 1522.

Ever stronger became the pressure to write against Luther. From Henry VIII came a call, communicated by Erasmus's old friend Tunstall, from George of Saxony, from Rome itself, whence Pope Adrian VI, his old patron, had urged him shortly before his death.

Erasmus thought he could refuse no longer. He tried some dialogues in the style of the _Colloquies_, but did not get on with them; and probably they would not have pleased those who were desirous of enlisting his services. Between Luther and Erasmus himself there had been no personal correspondence, since the former had promised him, in
1520; 'Well then, Erasmus, I shall not mention your name again.' Now that Erasmus had prepared to attack Luther, however, there came an epistle from the latter, written on 15 April 1524, in which the reformer, in his turn, requested Erasmus in his own words: 'Please remain now what you have always professed yourself desirous of being: a mere spectator of our tragedy'. There is a ring of ironical contempt in Luther's words, but Erasmus called the letter 'rather humane; I had not the courage to reply with equal humanity, because of the sycophants'.

In order to be able to combat Luther with a clear conscience Erasmus had naturally to choose a point on which he differed from Luther in his heart. It was not one of the more superficial parts of the Church's structure. For these he either, with Luther, cordially rejected, such as ceremonies, observances, fasting, etc., or, though more moderately than Luther, he had his doubts about them, as the sacraments or the primacy of St. Peter. So he naturally came to the point where the deepest gulf yawned between their natures, between their conceptions of the essence of faith, and thus to the central and eternal problem of good and evil, guilt and compulsion, liberty and bondage, God and man. Luther confessed in his reply that here indeed the vital point had been touched.

_De libero arbitrio diatribe_ (_A Disquisition upon Free Will_) appeared in September 1524. Was Erasmus qualified to write about such a subject? In conformity with his method and with his evident purpose to vindicate authority and tradition, this time, Erasmus developed the argument that Scripture teaches, doctors affirm, philosophers prove, and human reason testifies man's will to be free. Without acknowledgement of free will the terms of God's justice and God's mercy remain without meaning. What would be the sense of the teachings, reproofs, admonitions of Scripture
(Timothy iii.) if all happened according to mere and inevitable necessity? To what purpose is obedience praised, if for good and evil works we are equally but tools to God, as the hatchet to the carpenter? And if this were so, it would be dangerous to reveal such a doctrine to the multitude, for morality is dependent on the consciousness of freedom.

Luther received the treatise of his antagonist with disgust and contempt. In writing his reply, however, he suppressed these feelings outwardly and observed the rules of courtesy. But his inward anger is revealed in the contents itself of _De servo arbitrio_ (_On the Will not free_). For here he really did what Erasmus had just reproached him with--trying to heal a dislocated member by tugging at it in the opposite direction. More fiercely than ever before, his formidable boorish mind drew the startling inferences of his burning faith. Without any reserve he now accepted all the extremes of absolute determinism. In order to confute indeterminism in explicit terms, he was now forced to have recourse to those primitive metaphors of exalted faith striving to express the inexpressible: God's two wills, which do not coincide, God's 'eternal hatred of mankind, a hatred not only on account of demerits and the works of free will, but a hatred that existed even before the world was created', and that metaphor of the human will, which, as a riding beast, stands in the middle between God and the devil and which is mounted by one or the other without being able to move towards either of the two contending riders. If anywhere, Luther's doctrine in _De Servo Arbitrio_ means a recrudescence of faith and a straining of religious conceptions.

But it was Luther who here stood on the rockbed of a profound and mystic faith in which the absolute conscience of the eternal pervades all. In him all conceptions, like dry straw, were consumed in the glow of God's majesty, for him each human co-operation to attain to salvation was a profanation of God's glory. Erasmus's mind after all did not truly _live_ in the ideas which were here disputed, of sin and grace, of redemption and the glory of God as the final cause of all that is.

Was, then, Erasmus's cause in all respects inferior? Was Luther right at the core? Perhaps. Dr. Murray rightly reminds us of Hegel's saying that tragedy is not the conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict between right and right. The combat of Luther and Erasmus proceeded beyond the point at which our judgement is forced to halt and has to accept an equivalence, nay, a compatibility of affirmation and negation. And this fact, that they here were fighting with words and metaphors in a sphere beyond that of what may be known and expressed, was understood by Erasmus. Erasmus, the man of the fine shades, for whom ideas eternally blended into each other and interchanged, called a Proteus by Luther; Luther the man of over-emphatic expression about all matters. The Dutchman, who sees the sea, was opposed to the German, who looks out on mountain tops.

'This is quite true that we cannot speak of God but with inadequate words.' 'Many problems should be deferred, not to the oecumenical Council, but till the time when, the glass and the darkness having been taken away, we shall see God face to face.' 'What is free of error?' 'There are in sacred literature certain sanctuaries into which God has not willed that we should penetrate further.'

The Catholic Church had on the point of free will reserved to itself some slight proviso, left a little elbow-room to the consciousness of human liberty _under_ grace. Erasmus conceived that liberty in a considerably broader spirit. Luther absolutely denied it. The opinion of contemporaries was at first too much dominated by their participation in the great struggle as such: they applauded Erasmus, because he struck boldly at Luther, or the other way about, according to their sympathies. Not only Vives applauded Erasmus, but also more orthodox Catholics such as Sadolet. The German humanists, unwilling, for the most part, to break with the ancient Church, were moved by Erasmus's attack to turn their backs still more upon Luther: Mutianus, Zasius, and Pirckheimer. Even Melanchthon inclined to Erasmus's standpoint. Others, like Capito, once a zealous supporter, now washed their hands of him. Soon Calvin with the iron cogency of his argument was completely to take Luther's side.

It is worth while to quote the opinion of a contemporary Catholic scholar about the relations of Erasmus and Luther. 'Erasmus,' says F. X. Kiefl,[19] 'with his concept of free, unspoiled human nature was intrinsically much more foreign to the Church than Luther. He only combated it, however, with haughty scepticism: for which reason Luther with subtle psychology upbraided him for liking to speak of the shortcomings and the misery of the Church of Christ in such a way that his readers could not help laughing, instead of bringing his charges, with deep sighs, as beseemed before God.'

The _Hyperaspistes_, a voluminous treatise in which Erasmus again addressed Luther, was nothing but an epilogue, which need not be discussed here at length.

Erasmus had thus, at last, openly taken sides. For, apart from the dogmatical point at issue itself, the most important part about _De libero arbitrio_ was that in it he had expressly turned against the individual religious conceptions and had spoken in favour of the authority and tradition of the Church. He always regarded himself as a Catholic. 'Neither death nor life shall draw me from the communion of the Catholic Church,' he writes in 1522, and in the _Hyperaspistes_ in
1526: 'I have never been an apostate from the Catholic Church. I know that in this Church, which you call the Papist Church, there are many who displease me, but such I also see in your Church. One bears more easily the evils to which one is accustomed. Therefore I bear with this Church, until I shall see a better, and it cannot help bearing with me, until I shall myself be better. And he does not sail badly who steers a middle course between two several evils.'

But was it possible to keep to that course? On either side people turned away from him. 'I who, formerly, in countless letters was addressed as thrice great hero, Prince of letters, Sun of studies, Maintainer of true theology, am now ignored, or represented in quite different colours,' he writes. How many of his old friends and congenial spirits had already gone!

A sufficient number remained, however, who thought and hoped as Erasmus did. His untiring pen still continued to propagate, especially by means of his letters, the moderating and purifying influence of his mind throughout all the countries of Europe. Scholars, high church dignitaries, nobles, students, and civil magistrates were his correspondents. The Bishop of Basle himself, Christopher of Utenheim, was a man after Erasmus's heart. A zealous advocate of humanism, he had attempted, as early as 1503, to reform the clergy of his bishopric by means of synodal statutes, without much success; afterwards he had called scholars like Oecolampadius, Capito and Wimpfeling to Basle. That was before the great struggle began, which was soon to carry away Oecolampadius and Capito much further than the Bishop of Basle or Erasmus approved. In 1522 Erasmus addressed the bishop in a treatise _De interdicto esu carnium_ (_On the Prohibition of eating Meat_). This was one of the last occasions on which he directly opposed the established order.

The bishop, however, could no longer control the movement. A considerable number of the commonalty of Basle and the majority of the council, were already on the side of radical Reformation. About a year after Erasmus, Johannes Oecolampadius, whose first residence at Basle had also coincided with his (at that time he had helped Erasmus with Hebrew for the edition of the New Testament), returned to the town with the intention of organizing the resistance to the old order there. In
1523 the council appointed him professor of Holy Scripture in the University; at the same time four Catholic professors lost their places. He succeeded in obtaining general permission for unlicensed preaching. Soon a far more hot-headed agitator, the impetuous Guillaume Farel, also arrived for active work at Basle and in the environs. He is the man who will afterwards reform Geneva and persuade Calvin to stay there.

Though at first Oecolampadius began to introduce novelties into the church service with caution, Erasmus saw these innovations with alarm. Especially the fanaticism of Farel, whom he hated bitterly. It was these men who retarded what he still desired and thought possible: a compromise. His lambent spirit, which never fully decided in favour of a definite opinion, had, with regard to most of the disputed points, gradually fixed on a half-conservative midway standpoint, by means of which, without denying his deepest conviction, he tried to remain faithful to the Church. In 1524 he had expressed his sentiments about confession in the treatise _Exomologesis_ (_On the Way to confess_). He accepts it halfway: if not instituted by Christ or the Apostles, it was, in any case, by the Fathers. It should be piously preserved. Confession is of excellent use, though, at times, a great evil. In this way he tries 'to admonish either party', 'neither to agree with nor to assail' the deniers, 'though inclining to the side of the believers'.

In the long list of his polemics he gradually finds opportunities to define his views somewhat; circumstantially, for instance, in the answers to Alberto Pio, of 1525 and 1529. Subsequently it is always done in the form of an _Apologia_, whether he is attacked for the _Colloquia_, for the _Moria_, Jerome, the _Paraphrases_ or anything else. At last he recapitulates his views to some extent in _De amabili Ecclesiae concordia_ (_On the Amiable Concord of the Church_), of 1533, which, however, ranks hardly any more among his reformatory endeavours.

On most points Erasmus succeeds in finding moderate and conservative formulae. Even with regard to ceremonies he no longer merely rejects. He finds a kind word to say even for fasting, which he had always abhorred, for the veneration of relics and for Church festivals. He does not want to abolish the worship of the Saints: it no longer entails danger of idolatry. He is even willing to admit the images: 'He who takes the imagery out of life deprives it of its highest pleasure; we often discern more in images than we conceive from the written word'. Regarding Christ's substantial presence in the sacrament of the altar he holds fast to the Catholic view, but without fervour, only on the ground of the Church's consensus, and because he cannot believe that Christ, who is truth and love, would have suffered His bride to cling so long to so horrid an error as to worship a crust of bread instead of Him. But for these reasons he might, at need, accept Oecolampadius's view.

From the period at Basle dates one of the purest and most beneficent moral treatises of Erasmus's, the _Institutio Christiani matrimonii_
(_On Christian Marriage_) of 1526, written for Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, quite in the spirit of the _Enchiridion_, save for a certain diffuseness betraying old age. Later follows _De vidua Christiana_, _The Christian Widow_, for Mary of Hungary, which is as impeccable but less interesting.

All this did not disarm the defenders of the old Church. They held fast to the clear picture of Erasmus's creed that arose from the _Colloquies_ and that could not be called purely Catholic. There it appeared only too clearly that, however much Erasmus might desire to leave the letter intact, his heart was not in the convictions which were vital to the Catholic Church. Consequently the _Colloquies_ were later, when Erasmus's works were expurgated, placed on the index in the lump, with the _Moria_ and a few other works. The rest is _caute legenda_, to be read with caution. Much was rejected of the Annotations to the New Testament, of the _Paraphrases_ and the _Apologiae_, very little of the _Enchiridion_, of the _Ratio verae theologiae_, and even of the _Exomologesis_. But this was after the fight against the living Erasmus had long been over.

So long as he remained at Basle, or elsewhere, as the centre of a large intellectual group whose force could not be estimated, just because it did not stand out as a party--it was not known what turn he might yet take, what influence his mind might yet have on the Church. He remained a king of minds in his quiet study. The hatred that was felt for him, the watching of all his words and actions, were of a nature as only falls to the lot of the acknowledged great. The chorus of enemies who laid the fault of the whole Reformation on Erasmus was not silenced. 'He laid the eggs which Luther and Zwingli have hatched.' With vexation Erasmus quoted ever new specimens of narrow-minded, malicious and stupid controversy. At Constance there lived a doctor who had hung his portrait on the wall merely to spit at it as often as he passed it. Erasmus jestingly compares his fate to that of Saint Cassianus, who was stabbed to death by his pupils with pencils. Had he not been pierced to the quick for many years by the pens and tongues of countless people and did he not live in that torment without death bringing the end? The keen sensitiveness to opposition was seated very deeply with Erasmus. And he could never forbear irritating others into opposing him.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Luther's religiöse Psyche_, Hochland XV, 1917, p. 21.

CHAPTER XIX

AT WAR WITH HUMANISTS AND REFORMERS

1528-9

Erasmus turns against the excesses of humanism: its paganism and pedantic classicism--_Ciceronianus_: 1528--It brings him new enemies--The Reformation carried through at Basle--He emigrates to Freiburg: 1529--His view concerning the results of the Reformation

Nothing is more characteristic of the independence which Erasmus reserved for himself regarding all movements of his time than the fact that he also joined issue in the camp of the humanists. In 1528 there were published by Froben (the chief of the firm of Johannes Froben had just died) two dialogues in one volume from Erasmus's hand: one about the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek, and one entitled _Ciceronianus_ or _On the Best Diction_, i. e. in writing and speaking Latin. Both were proofs that Erasmus had lost nothing of his liveliness and wit. The former treatise was purely philological, and as such has had great influence; the other was satirical as well. It had a long history.

Erasmus had always regarded classical studies as the panacea of civilization, provided they were made serviceable to pure Christianity. His sincere ethical feeling made him recoil from the obscenity of a Poggio and the immorality of the early Italian humanists. At the same time his delicate and natural taste told him that a pedantic and servile imitation of antique models could never produce the desired result. Erasmus knew Latin too well to be strictly classical; his Latin was alive and required freedom. In his early works we find taunts about the over-precise Latin purists: one had declared a newly found fragment of Cicero to be thoroughly barbaric; 'among all sorts of authors none are so insufferable to me as those apes of Cicero'.

In spite of the great expectations he cherished of classical studies for pure Christianity, he saw one danger: 'that under the cloak of reviving ancient literature paganism tries to rear its head, as there are those among Christians who acknowledge Christ only in name but inwardly breathe heathenism'. This he writes in 1517 to Capito. In Italy scholars devote themselves too exclusively and in too pagan guise to _bonae literae_. He considered it his special task to assist in bringing it about that those _bonae literae_ 'which with the Italians have thus far been almost pagan, shall get used to speaking of Christ'.

How it must have vexed Erasmus that in Italy of all countries he was, at the same time and in one breath, charged with heresy and questioned in respect to his knowledge and integrity as a scholar. Italians accused him of plagiarism and trickery. He complained of it to Aleander, who, he thought, had a hand in it.

In a letter of 13 October 1527, to a professor at Toledo, we find the _ébauche_ of the _Ciceronianus_. In addition to the haters of classic studies for the sake of orthodox belief, writes Erasmus, 'lately another and new sort of enemies has broken from their ambush. These are troubled that the _bonae literae_ speak of Christ, as though nothing can be elegant but what is pagan. To their ears _Jupiter optimus maximus_ sounds more pleasant than _Jesus Christus redemptor mundi_, and _patres conscripti_ more agreeable than _sancti apostoli_.... They account it a greater dishonour to be no Ciceronian than no Christian, as if Cicero, if he should now come to life again, would not speak of Christian things in other words than in his time he spoke of his own religion!... What is the sense of this hateful swaggering with the name Ciceronian? I will tell you briefly, in your ear. With that pearl-powder they cover the paganism that is dearer to them than the glory of Christ.' To Erasmus Cicero's style is by no means the ideal one. He prefers something more solid, succinct, vigorous, less polished, more manly. He who sometimes has to write a book in a day has no time to polish his style, often not even to read it over.... 'What do I care for an empty dish of words, ten words here and there mumped from Cicero: I want all Cicero's spirit.' These are apes at whom one may laugh, for far more serious than these things are the tumults of the so-called new Gospel, to which he next proceeds in this letter.

And so, in the midst of all his polemics and bitter vindication, he allowed himself once more the pleasure of giving the reins to his love of scoffing, but, as in the _Moria_ and _Colloquia_, ennobled by an almost passionate sincerity of Christian disposition and a natural sense of measure. The _Ciceronianus_ is a masterpiece of ready, many-sided knowledge, of convincing eloquence, and of easy handling of a wealth of arguments. With splendid, quiet and yet lively breadth flows the long conversation between Bulephorus, representing Erasmus's opinions, Hypologus, the interested inquirer, and Nosoponus, the zealous Ciceronian, who, to preserve a perfect purity of mind, breakfasts off ten currants.

Erasmus in drawing Nosoponus had evidently, in the main, alluded to one who could no longer reply: Christopher Longolius, who had died in 1522.

The core of the _Ciceronianus_ is where Erasmus points out the danger to Christian faith of a too zealous classicism. He exclaims urgently: 'It is paganism, believe me, Nosoponus, it is paganism that charms our ear and our soul in such things. We are Christians in name alone.' Why does a classic proverb sound better to us than a quotation from the Bible: _corchorum inter olera_, 'chick-weed among the vegetables', better than 'Saul among the prophets'? As a sample of the absurdity of Ciceronianism, he gives a translation of a dogmatic sentence in classical language: 'Optimi maximique Jovis interpres ac filius, servator, rex, juxta vatum responsa, ex Olympo devolavit in terras,' for: Jesus Christ, the Word and the Son of the eternal Father, came into the world according to the prophets. Most humanists wrote indeed in that style.

Was Erasmus aware that he here attacked his own past? After all, was it not exactly the same thing which he had done, to the indignation of his opponents, when translating _Logos_ by _Sermo_ instead of by _Verbum_? Had he not himself desired that in the church hymns the metre should be corrected, not to mention his own classical odes and paeans to Mary and the Saints? And was his warning against the partiality for classic proverbs and turns applicable to anything more than to the _Adagia_?

We here see the aged Erasmus on the path of reaction, which might eventually have led him far from humanism. In his combat with humanistic purism he foreshadows a Christian puritanism.

As always his mockery procured him a new flood of invectives. Bembo and Sadolet, the masters of pure Latin, could afford to smile at it, but the impetuous Julius Caesar Scaliger violently inveighed against him, especially to avenge Longolius's memory. Erasmus's perpetual feeling of being persecuted got fresh food: he again thought that Aleander was at the bottom of it. 'The Italians set the imperial court against me,' he writes in 1530. A year later all is quiet again. He writes jestingly: 'Upon my word, I am going to change my style after Budaeus's model and to become a Ciceronian according to the example of Sadolet and Bembo'. But even near the close of his life he was engaged in a new contest with Italians, because he had hurt their national pride; 'they rage at me on all sides with slanderous libels, as at the enemy of Italy and Cicero'.

* * * * *

There were, as he had said himself, other difficulties touching him more closely. Conditions at Basle had for years been developing in a direction which distressed and alarmed him. When he established himself there in 1521, it might still have seemed to him as if the bishop, old Christopher of Utenheim, a great admirer of Erasmus and a man after his heart, would succeed in effecting a reformation at Basle, as he desired it; abolishing acknowledged abuses, but remaining within the fold of the Church. In that very year, 1521, however, the emancipation of the municipality from the bishop's power--it had been in progress since Basle, in 1501, had joined the Swiss Confederacy--was consummated. Henceforth the council was number one, now no longer exclusively made up of aristocratic elements. In vain did the bishop ally himself with his colleagues of Constance and Lausanne to maintain Catholicism. In the town the new creed got more and more the upper hand. When, however, in
1525, it had come to open tumults against the Catholic service, the council became more cautious and tried to reform more heedfully.

Oecolampadius desired this, too. Relations between him and Erasmus were precarious. Erasmus himself had at one time directed the religious thought of the impulsive, sensitive, restless young man. When he had, in
1520, suddenly sought refuge in a convent, he had expressly justified that step towards Erasmus, the condemner of binding vows. And now they saw each other again at Basle, in 1522: Oecolampadius having left the monastery, a convinced adherent and apostle of the new doctrine; Erasmus, the great spectator which he wished to be. Erasmus treated his old coadjutor coolly, and as the latter progressed, retreated more and more. Yet he kept steering a middle course and in 1525 gave some moderate advice to the council, which meanwhile had turned more Catholic again.

The old bishop, who for some years had no longer resided in his town, in
1527 requested the chapter to relieve him of his office, and died shortly afterwards. Then events moved very quickly. After Berne had, meanwhile, reformed itself in 1528, Oecolampadius demanded a decision also for Basle. Since the close of 1528 the town had been on the verge of civil war. A popular rising put an end to the resistance of the Council and cleared it of Catholic members; and in February 1529 the old service was prohibited, the images were removed from the churches, the convents abolished, and the University suspended. Oecolampadius became the first minister in the 'Münster' and leader of the Basle church, for which he soon drew up a reformatory ordinance. The new bishop remained at Porrentruy, and the chapter removed to Freiburg.

[Illustration: XXIII. ERASMUS'S RESIDENCE AT FREIBURG, 1529-31]

The moment of departure had now come for Erasmus. His position at Basle in 1529 somewhat resembled, but in a reversed sense, the one at Louvain in 1521. Then the Catholics wanted to avail themselves of his services against Luther, now the Evangelicals would fain have kept him at Basle. For his name was still as a banner. His presence would strengthen the position of reformed Basle; on the one hand, because, as people reasoned, if he were not of the same mind as the reformers, he would have left the town long ago; on the other hand, because his figure seemed to guarantee moderation and might attract many hesitating minds.

It was, therefore, again to safeguard his independence that Erasmus changed his residence. It was a great wrench this time. Old age and invalidism had made the restless man a stay-at-home. As he foresaw trouble from the side of the municipality, he asked Archduke Ferdinand--who for his brother Charles V governed the German empire and just then presided over the Diet of Speyer--to send him a safe conduct for the whole empire and an invitation, moreover, to come to court, which he did not dream of accepting. As place of refuge he had selected the not far distant town of Freiburg im Breisgau, which was directly under the strict government of the Austrian house, and where he, therefore, need not be afraid of such a turn of affairs as that at Basle. It was, moreover, a juncture at which the imperial authority and the Catholic cause in Germany seemed again to be gaining ground rapidly.

Erasmus would not or could not keep his departure a secret. He sent the most precious of his possessions in advance, and when this had drawn attention to his plan, he purposely invited Oecolampadius to a farewell talk. The reformer declared his sincere friendship for Erasmus, which the latter did not decline, provided he granted him to differ on certain points of dogma. Oecolampadius tried to keep him from leaving the town, and, when it proved too late for that, to persuade him to return later. They took leave with a handshake. Erasmus had desired to join his boat at a distant landing-stage, but the Council would not allow this: he had to start from the usual place near the Rhine bridge. A numerous crowd witnessed his embarkation, 13 April 1529. Some friends were there to see him off. No unfavourable demonstration occurred.

His reception at Freiburg convinced him that, in spite of all, he was still the celebrated and admired prince of letters. The Council placed at his disposal the large, though unfinished, house built for the Emperor Maximilian himself; a professor of theology offered him his garden. Anthony Fugger had tried to draw him to Augsburg by means of a yearly allowance. For the rest he considered Freiburg by no means a permanent place of abode. 'I have resolved to remain here this winter and then to fly with the swallows to the place whither God shall call me.' But he soon recognized the great advantage which Freiburg offered. The climate, to which he was so sensitive, turned out better than he expected, and the position of the town was extremely favourable for emigrating to France, should circumstances require this, or for dropping down the Rhine back to the Netherlands, whither many always called him. In 1531 he bought a house at Freiburg.

The old Erasmus at Freiburg, ever more tormented by his painful malady, much more disillusioned than when he left Louvain in 1521, of more confirmed views as to the great ecclesiastical strife, will only be fully revealed to us when his correspondence with Boniface Amerbach, the friend whom he left behind at Basle--a correspondence not found complete in the older collections--has been edited by Dr. Allen's care. From no period of Erasmus's life, it seems, may so much be gleaned, in point of knowledge of his daily habits and thoughts, as from these very years. Work went on without a break in that great scholar's workshop where he directs his famuli, who hunt manuscripts for him, and then copy and examine them, and whence he sends forth his letters all over Europe. In the series of editions of the Fathers followed Basil and new editions of Chrysostom and Cyprian; his editions of classic authors were augmented by the works of Aristotle. He revised and republished the _Colloquies_ three more times, the _Adages_ and the New Testament once more. Occasional writings of a moral or politico-theological nature kept flowing from his pen.

From the cause of the Reformation he was now quite estranged. 'Pseudevangelici', he contumeliously calls the reformed. 'I might have been a corypheus in Luther's church,' he writes in 1528, 'but I preferred to incur the hatred of all Germany to being separate from the community of the Church.' The authorities should have paid a little less attention at first to Luther's proceedings; then the fire would never have spread so violently. He had always urged theologians to let minor concerns which only contain an appearance of piety rest, and to turn to the sources of Scripture. Now it was too late. Towns and countries united ever more closely for or against the Reformation. 'If, what I pray may never happen,' he writes to Sadolet in 1530, 'you should see horrible commotions of the world arise, not so fatal for Germany as for the Church, then remember Erasmus prophesied it.' To Beatus Rhenanus he frequently said that, had he known that an age like theirs was coming, he would never have written many things, or would not have written them as he had.

'Just look,' he exclaims, 'at the Evangelical people, have they become any better? Do they yield less to luxury, lust and greed? Show me a man whom that Gospel has changed from a toper to a temperate man, from a brute to a gentle creature, from a miser into a liberal person, from a shameless to a chaste being. I will show you many who have become even worse than they were.' Now they have thrown the images out of the churches and abolished mass (he is thinking of Basle especially): has anything better come instead? 'I have never entered their churches, but I have seen them return from hearing the sermon, as if inspired by an evil spirit, the faces of all showing a curious wrath and ferocity, and there was no one except one old man who saluted me properly, when I passed in the company of some distinguished persons.'

He hated that spirit of absolute assuredness so inseparably bound up with the reformers. 'Zwingli and Bucer may be inspired by the Spirit, Erasmus from himself is nothing but a man and cannot comprehend what is of the Spirit.'

There was a group among the reformed to whom Erasmus in his heart of hearts was more nearly akin than to the Lutherans or Zwinglians with their rigid dogmatism: the Anabaptists. He rejected the doctrine from which they derived their name, and abhorred the anarchic element in them. He remained far too much the man of spiritual decorum to identify himself with these irregular believers. But he was not blind to the sincerity of their moral aspirations and sympathized with their dislike of brute force and the patience with which they bore persecution. 'They are praised more than all others for the innocence of their life,' he writes in 1529. Just in the last part of his life came the episode of the violent revolutionary proceedings of the fanatic Anabaptists; it goes without saying that Erasmus speaks of it only with horror.

One of the best historians of the Reformation, Walter Köhler, calls Erasmus one of the spiritual fathers of Anabaptism. And certain it is that in its later, peaceful development it has important traits in common with Erasmus: a tendency to acknowledge free will, a certain rationalistic trend, a dislike of an exclusive conception of a Church. It seems possible to prove that the South German Anabaptist Hans Denk derived opinions directly from Erasmus. For a considerable part, however, this community of ideas must, no doubt, have been based on peculiarities of religious consciousness in the Netherlands, whence Erasmus sprang, and where Anabaptism found such a receptive soil. Erasmus was certainly never aware of these connections.

Some remarkable evidence regarding Erasmus's altered attitude towards the old and the new Church is shown by what follows.

The reproach he had formerly so often flung at the advocates of conservatism that they hated the _bonae literae_, so dear to him, and wanted to stifle them, he now uses against the evangelical party. 'Wherever Lutherism is dominant the study of literature is extinguished. Why else,' he continues, using a remarkable sophism, 'are Luther and Melanchthon compelled to call back the people so urgently to the love of letters?' 'Just compare the University of Wittenberg with that of Louvain or Paris!... Printers say that before this Gospel came they used to dispose of 3,000 volumes more quickly than now of 600. A sure proof that studies flourish!'

CHAPTER XX

LAST YEARS

Religious and political contrasts grow sharper--The coming strife in Germany still suspended--Erasmus finishes his _Ecclesiastes_--Death of Fisher and More--Erasmus back at Basle:
1535--Pope Paul III wants to make him write in favour of the cause of the Council--Favours declined by Erasmus--_De Puritate Ecclesiae_--The end: 12 July 1536

During the last years of Erasmus's life all the great issues which kept the world in suspense were rapidly taking threatening forms. Wherever compromise or reunion had before still seemed possible, sharp conflicts, clearly outlined party-groupings, binding formulae were now barring the way to peace. While in the spring of 1529 Erasmus prepared for his departure from Basle, a strong Catholic majority of the Diet at Speyer got the 'recess' of 1526, favourable for the Evangelicals, revoked, only the Lutherans among them keeping what they had obtained; and secured a prohibition of any further changes or novelties. The Zwinglians and Anabaptists were not allowed to enjoy the least tolerance. This was immediately followed by the Protest of the chief evangelical princes and towns, which henceforth was to give the name to all anti-Catholics together (19 April 1529). And not only between Catholics and Protestants in the Empire did the rupture become complete. Even before the end of that year the question of the Lord's supper proved an insuperable stumbling-block in the way of a real union of Zwinglians and Lutherans. Luther parted from Zwingli at the colloquy of Marburg with the words, 'Your spirit differs from ours'.

In Switzerland civil war had openly broken out between the Catholic and the Evangelical cantons, only calmed for a short time by the first peace of Kappel. The treaties of Cambray and Barcelona, which in 1529 restored at least political peace in Christendom for the time being, could no longer draw from old Erasmus jubilations about a coming golden age, like those with which the concord of 1516 had inspired him. A month later the Turks appeared before Vienna.

All these occurrences could not but distress and alarm Erasmus. But he was outside them. When reading his letters of that period we are more than ever impressed by the fact that, for all the width and liveliness of his mind, he is remote from the great happenings of his time. Beyond a certain circle of interests, touching his own ideas or his person, his perceptions are vague and weak. If he still meddles occasionally with questions of the day, he does so in the moralizing manner, by means of generalities, without emphasis: his 'Advice about declaring war on the Turks' (March 1530) is written in the form of an interpretation of Psalm
28, and so vague that, at the close, he himself anticipates that the reader may exclaim: 'But now say clearly: do you think that war should be declared or not?'

In the summer of 1530 the Diet met again at Augsburg under the auspices of the Emperor himself to try once more 'to attain to a good peace and Christian truth'. The Augsburg Confession, defended all too weakly by Melanchthon, was read here, disputed, and declared refuted by the Emperor.

Erasmus had no share in all this. Many had exhorted him in letters to come to Augsburg; but he had in vain expected a summons from the Emperor. At the instance of the Emperor's counsellors he had postponed his proposed removal to Brabant in that autumn till after the decision of the Diet. But his services were not needed for the drastic resolution of repression with which the Emperor closed the session in November.

The great struggle in Germany seemed to be approaching: the resolutions of Augsburg were followed by the formation of the League of Schmalkalden uniting all Protestant territories and towns of Germany in their opposition to the Emperor. In the same year (1531) Zwingli was killed in the battle of Kappel against the Catholic cantons, soon to be followed by Oecolampadius, who died at Basle. 'It is right', writes Erasmus, 'that those two leaders have perished. If Mars had been favourable to them, we should now have been done for.'

In Switzerland a sort of equilibrium had set in; at any rate matters had come to a standstill; in Germany the inevitable struggle was postponed for many years. The Emperor had understood that, to combat the German Protestants effectively, he should first get the Pope to hold the Council which would abolish the acknowledged abuses of the Church. The religious peace of Nuremberg (1532) put the seal upon this turn of imperial policy.

It might seem as if before long the advocates of moderate reform and of a compromise might after all get a chance of being heard. But Erasmus had become too old to actively participate in the decisions (if he had ever seriously considered such participation). He does write a treatise, though, in 1533, 'On the sweet concord of the Church', like his 'Advice on the Turks' in the form of an interpretation of a psalm (83). But it would seem as if the old vivacity of his style and his power of expression, so long unimpaired, now began to flag. The same remark applies to an essay 'On the preparation for death', published the same year. His voice was growing weaker.

During these years he turned his attention chiefly to the completion of the great work which more than any other represented for him the summing up and complete exposition of his moral-theological ideas: _Ecclesiastes_ or, _On the Way to preach_. Erasmus had always regarded preaching as the most dignified part of an ecclesiastic's duties. As preachers, he had most highly valued Colet and Vitrarius. As early as
1519 his friend, John Becar of Borselen, urged him to follow up the _Enchiridion_ of the Christian soldier and the _Institutio_ of the Christian prince, by the true instruction of the Christian preacher. 'Later, later,' Erasmus had promised him, 'at present I have too much work, but I hope to undertake it soon.' In 1523 he had already made a sketch and some notes for it. It was meant for John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, Erasmus's great friend and brother-spirit, who eagerly looked forward to it and urged the author to finish it. The work gradually grew into the most voluminous of Erasmus's original writings: a forest of a work, _operis sylvam_, he calls it himself. In four books he treated his subject, the art of preaching well and decorously, with an inexhaustible abundance of examples, illustrations, schemes, etc. But was it possible that a work, conceived already by the Erasmus of 1519, and upon which he had been so long engaged, while he himself had gradually given up the boldness of his earlier years, could still be a revelation in 1533, as the _Enchiridion_ had been in its day?

_Ecclesiastes_ is the work of a mind fatigued, which no longer sharply reacts upon the needs of his time. As the result of a correct, intellectual, tasteful instruction in a suitable manner of preaching, in accordance with the purity of the Gospel, Erasmus expects to see society improve. 'The people become more obedient to the authorities, more respectful towards the law, more peaceable. Between husband and wife comes greater concord, more perfect faithfulness, greater dislike of adultery. Servants obey more willingly, artisans work better, merchants cheat no more.'

At the same time that Erasmus took this work to Froben, at Basle, to print, a book of a young Frenchman, who had recently fled from France to Basle, passed through the press of another Basle printer, Thomas Platter. It too was to be a manual of the life of faith: the _Institution of the Christian Religion_, by Calvin.

* * * * *

Even before Erasmus had quite completed the _Ecclesiastes_, the man for whom the work had been meant was no more. Instead of to the Bishop of Rochester, Erasmus dedicated his voluminous work to the Bishop of Augsburg, Christopher of Stadion. John Fisher, to set a seal on his spiritual endeavours, resembling those of Erasmus in so many respects, had left behind, as a testimony to the world, for which Erasmus knew himself too weak, that of martyrdom. On 22 June 1535, he was beheaded by command of Henry VIII. He died for being faithful to the old Church. Together with More he had steadfastly refused to take the oath to the Statute of Supremacy. Not two weeks after Fisher, Thomas More mounted the scaffold. The fate of those two noblest of his friends grieved Erasmus. It moved him to do what for years he had no longer done: to write a poem. But rather than in the fine Latin measure of that _Carmen heroïcum_ one would have liked to hear his emotion in language of sincere dismay and indignation in his letters. They are hardly there. In the words devoted to Fisher's death in the preface to the _Ecclesiastes_ there is no heartfelt emotion. Also in his letters of those days, he speaks with reserve. 'Would More had never meddled with that dangerous business, and left the theological cause to the theologians.' As if More had died for aught but simply for his conscience!

* * * * *

When Erasmus wrote these words, he was no longer at Freiburg. He had in June 1535 gone to Basle, to work in Froben's printing-office, as of old; the _Ecclesiastes_ was at last going to press and still required careful supervision and the final touches during the process; the _Adagia_ had to be reprinted, and a Latin edition of Origenes was in preparation. The old, sick man was cordially received by the many friends who still lived at Basle. Hieronymus Froben, Johannes's son, who after his father's death managed the business with two relatives, sheltered him in his house _Zum Luft_. In the hope of his return a room had been built expressly for him and fitted up as was convenient for him. Erasmus found that at Basle the ecclesiastical storms which had formerly driven him away had subsided. Quiet and order had returned. He did feel a spirit of distrust in the air, it is true, 'but I think that, on account of my age, of habit, and of what little erudition I possess, I have now got so far that I may live in safety anywhere'. At first he had regarded the removal as an experiment. He did not mean to stay at Basle. If his health could not stand the change of air, he would return to his fine, well-appointed, comfortable house at Freiburg. If he should prove able to bear it, then the choice was between the Netherlands (probably Brussels, Malines or Antwerp, perhaps Louvain) or Burgundy, in particular Besançon. Towards the end of his life he clung to the illusion which he had been cherishing for a long time that Burgundy wine alone was good for him and kept his malady in check. There is something pathetic in the proportions which this wine-question gradually assumes: that it is so dear at Basle might be overlooked, but the thievish wagoners drink up or spoil what is imported.

In August he doubted greatly whether he will return to Freiburg. In October he sold his house and part of his furniture and had the rest transported to Basle. After the summer he hardly left his room, and was mostly bedridden.

Though the formidable worker in him still yearned for more years and time to labour, his soul was ready for death. Happy he had never felt; only during the last years he utters his longing for the end. He was still, curiously enough, subject to the delusion of being in the thick of the struggle. 'In this arena I shall have to fall,' he writes in
1533. 'Only this consoles me, that near at hand already, the general haven comes in sight, which, if Christ be favourable, will bring the end of all labour and trouble.' Two years later his voice sounds more urgent: 'That the Lord might deign to call me out of this raving world to His rest'.

Most of his old friends were gone. Warham and Mountjoy had passed away before More and Fisher; Peter Gilles, so many years younger than he, had departed in 1533; also Pirckheimer had been dead for years. Beatus Rhenanus shows him to us, during the last months of his life, re-perusing his friends' letters of the last few years, and repeating: 'This one, too, is dead'. As he grew more solitary, his suspiciousness and his feeling of being persecuted became stronger. 'My friends decrease, my enemies increase,' he writes in 1532, when Warham has died and Aleander has risen still higher. In the autumn of 1535 he thinks that all his former servant-pupils betray him, even the best beloved ones like Quirin Talesius and Charles Utenhove. They do not write to him, he complains.

[Illustration: XXIV. CARDINAL JEROME ALEANDER]

In October 1534, Pope Clement VII was succeeded by Paul III, who at once zealously took up the Council-question. The meeting of a Council was, in the eyes of many, the only means by which union could be restored to the Church, and now a chance of realizing this seemed nigh. At once the most learned theologians were invited to help in preparing the great work. Erasmus did not omit, in January 1535, to address to the new Pope a letter of congratulation, in which he professed his willingness to co-operate in bringing about the pacification of the Church, and warned the Pope to steer a cautious middle course. On 31 May followed a reply full of kindliness and acknowledgement. The Pope exhorted Erasmus, 'that you too, graced by God with so much laudable talent and learning, may help Us in this pious work, which is so agreeable to your mind, to defend, with Us, the Catholic religion, by the spoken and the written word, before and during the Council, and in this manner by this last work of piety, as by the best act to close a life of religion and so many writings, to refute your accusers and rouse your admirers to fresh efforts.'

Would Erasmus in years of greater strength have seen his way to co-operate actively in the council of the great? Undoubtedly, the Pope's exhortation correctly represented his inclination. But once faced by the necessity of hard, clear resolutions, what would he have effected? Would his spirit of peace and toleration, of reserve and compromise, have brought alleviation and warded off the coming struggle? He was spared the experiment.

He knew himself too weak to be able to think of strenuous church-political propaganda any more. Soon there came proofs that the kindly feelings at Rome were sincere. There had been some question also of numbering Erasmus among the cardinals who were to be nominated with a view to the Council; a considerable benefice connected with the church of Deventer was already offered him. But Erasmus urged the Roman friends who were thus active in his behalf to cease their kind offices; he would accept nothing, he a man who lived from day to day in expectation of death and often hoping for it, who could hardly ever leave his room--would people instigate _him_ to hunt for deaneries and cardinals' hats! He had subsistence enough to last him. He wanted to die independent.

Yet his pen did not rest. The _Ecclesiastes_ had been printed and published and _Origenes_ was still to follow. Instead of the important and brilliant task to which Rome called him, he devoted his last strength to a simple deed of friendly cordiality. The friend to whose share the honour fell to receive from the old, death-sick author a last composition prepared expressly for him, amidst the most terrible pains, was the most modest of the number who had not lost their faith in him. No prelate or prince, no great wit or admired divine, but Christopher Eschenfelder, customs officer at Boppard on the Rhine. On his passage in
1518 Erasmus had, with glad surprise, found him to be a reader of his work and a man of culture.[20] That friendship had been a lasting one. Eschenfelder had asked Erasmus to dedicate the interpretation of some psalm to him (a form of composition often preferred by Erasmus of late). About the close of 1535 he remembered that request. He had forgotten whether Eschenfelder had indicated a particular psalm and chose one at haphazard, Psalm 14, calling the treatise 'On the purity of the Christian Church'. He expressly dedicated it to 'the publican' in January 1536. It is not remarkable among his writings as to contents and form, but it was to be his last.

On 12 February 1536, Erasmus made his final preparations. In 1527 he had already made a will with detailed clauses for the printing of his complete works by Froben. In 1534 he drew up an accurate inventory of his belongings. He sold his library to the Polish nobleman Johannes a Lasco. The arrangements of 1536 testify to two things which had played an important part in his life: his relations with the house of Froben and his need of friendship. Boniface Amerbach is his heir. Hieronymus Froben and Nicholas Episcopius, the managers of the business, are his executors. To each of the good friends left to him he bequeathed one of the trinkets which spoke of his fame with princes and the great ones of the earth, in the first place to Louis Ber and Beatus Rhenanus. The poor and the sick were not forgotten, and he remembered especially girls about to marry and youths of promise. The details of this charity he left to Amerbach.

In March 1536, he still thinks of leaving for Burgundy. Money matters occupy him and he speaks of the necessity of making new friends, for the old ones leave him: the Bishop of Cracow, Zasius at Freiburg. According to Beatus Rhenanus, the Brabant plan stood foremost at the end of Erasmus's life. The Regent, Mary of Hungary, did not cease to urge him to return to the Netherlands. Erasmus's own last utterance leaves us in doubt whether he had made up his mind. 'Though I am living here with the most sincere friends, such as I did not possess at Freiburg, I should yet, on account of the differences of doctrine, prefer to end my life elsewhere. If only Brabant were nearer.'

This he writes on 28 June 1536. He had felt so poorly for some days that he had not even been able to read. In the letter we again trace the delusion that Aleander persecutes him, sets on opponents against him, and even lays snares for his friends. Did his mind at last give way too?

On 12 July the end came. The friends around his couch heard him groan incessantly: 'O Jesu, misericordia; Domine libera me; Domine miserere mei!' And at last in Dutch: 'Lieve God.'

FOOTNOTES:

[20] See Erasmus's letter, p. 224.

CHAPTER XXI

CONCLUSION

Conclusion--Erasmus and the spirit of the sixteenth century--His weak points--A thorough idealist and yet a moderate mind--The enlightener of a century--He anticipates tendencies of two centuries later--His influence affects both Protestantism and Catholic reform--The Erasmian spirit in the Netherlands

Looking back on the life of Erasmus the question still arises: why has he remained so great? For ostensibly his endeavours ended in failure. He withdraws in alarm from that tremendous struggle which he rightly calls a tragedy; the sixteenth century, bold and vehement, thunders past him, disdaining his ideal of moderation and tolerance. Latin literary erudition, which to him was the epitome of all true culture, has gone out as such. Erasmus, so far as regards the greater part of his writings, is among the great ones who are no longer read. He has become a name. But why does that name still sound so clear and articulate? Why does he keep regarding us, as if he still knew a little more than he has ever been willing to utter?

What has he been to his age, and what was he to be for later generations? Has he been rightly called a precursor of the modern spirit?

Regarded as a child of the sixteenth century, he does seem to differ from the general tenor of his times. Among those vehemently passionate, drastically energetic and violent natures of the great ones of his day, Erasmus stands as the man of too few prejudices, with a little too much delicacy of taste, with a deficiency, though not, indeed, in every department, of that _stultitia_ which he had praised as a necessary constituent of life. Erasmus is the man who is too sensible and moderate for the heroic.

What a surprising difference there is between the _accent_ of Erasmus and that of Luther, Calvin, and Saint Teresa! What a difference, also, between his accent, that is, the accent of humanism, and that of Albrecht Dürer, of Michelangelo, or of Shakespeare.

Erasmus seems, at times, the man who was not strong enough for his age. In that robust sixteenth century it seems as if the oaken strength of Luther was necessary, the steely edge of Calvin, the white heat of Loyola; not the velvet softness of Erasmus. Not only were their force and their fervour necessary, but also their depth, their unsparing, undaunted consistency, sincerity and outspokenness.

They cannot bear that smile which makes Luther speak of the guileful being looking out of Erasmus's features. His piety is too even for them, too limp. Loyola has testified that the reading of the _Enchiridion militis Christiani_ relaxed his fervour and made his devotion grow cold. He saw that warrior of Christ differently, in the glowing colours of the Spanish-Christian, medieval ideal of chivalry.

Erasmus had never passed through those depths of self-reprobation and that consciousness of sin which Luther had traversed with toil; he saw no devil to fight with, and tears were not familiar to him. Was he altogether unaware of the deepest mystery? Or did it rest in him too deep for utterance?

Let us not suppose too quickly that we are more nearly allied to Luther or Loyola because their figures appeal to us more. If at present our admiration goes out again to the ardently pious, and to spiritual extremes, it is partly because our unstable time requires strong stimuli. To appreciate Erasmus we should begin by giving up our admiration of the extravagant, and for many this requires a certain effort at present. It is extremely easy to break the staff over Erasmus. His faults lie on the surface, and though he wished to hide many things, he never hid his weaknesses.

He was too much concerned about what people thought, and he could not hold his tongue. His mind was _too_ rich and facile, always suggesting a superfluity of arguments, cases, examples, quotations. He could never let things slide. All his life he grudged himself leisure to rest and collect himself, to see how unimportant after all was the commotion round about him, if only he went his own way courageously. Rest and independence he desired most ardently of all things; there was no more restless and dependent creature. Judge him as one of a too delicate constitution who ventures out in a storm. His will-power was great enough. He worked night and day, amidst the most violent bodily suffering, with a great ideal steadfastly before him, never satisfied with his own achievements. He was not self-sufficient.

* * * * *

As an intellectual type Erasmus was one of a rather small group: the absolute idealists who, at the same time, are thoroughly moderate. They can not bear the world's imperfections; they feel constrained to oppose. But extremes are uncongenial to them; they shrink back from action, because they know it pulls down as much as it erects, and so they withdraw themselves, and keep calling that everything should be different; but when the crisis comes, they reluctantly side with tradition and conservatism. Here too is a fragment of Erasmus's life-tragedy: he was the man who saw the new and coming things more clearly than anyone else--who must needs quarrel with the old and yet could not accept the new. He tried to remain in the fold of the old Church, after having damaged it seriously, and renounced the Reformation, and to a certain extent even Humanism, after having furthered both with all his strength.

[Illustration: XXV. ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 65]

* * * * *

Our final opinion about Erasmus has been concerned with negative qualities, so far. What was his positive importance?

Two facts make it difficult for the modern mind to understand Erasmus's positive importance: first that his influence was extensive rather than intensive, and therefore less historically discernible at definite points, and second, that his influence has ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more. Like Saint Jerome, his revered model, and Voltaire, with whom he has been occasionally compared, 'he has his reward'. But like them he has been the enlightener of an age from whom a broad stream of culture emanated.

[Illustration: XXVI. ERASMUS DICTATING TO HIS SECRETARY, 1530]

As historic investigation of the French Revolution is becoming more and more aware that the true history of France during that period should be looked for in those groups which as 'Centre' or 'Marais' seemed for a long time but a drove of supernumeraries, and understands that it should occasionally protect its eyes a little from the lightning flashes of the Gironde and Mountain thunderstorm; so the history of the Reformation period should pay attention--and it has done so for a long time--to the broad central sphere permeated by the Erasmian spirit. One of his opponents said: 'Luther has drawn a large part of the Church to himself, Zwingli and Oecolampadius also some part, but Erasmus the largest'. Erasmus's public was numerous and of high culture. He was the only one of the Humanists who really wrote for all the world, that is to say, for all educated people. He accustomed a whole world to another and more fluent mode of expression: he shifted the interest, he influenced by his perfect clarity of exposition, even through the medium of Latin, the style of the vernacular languages, apart from the numberless translations of his works. For his contemporaries Erasmus put on many new stops, one might say, of the great organ of human expression, as Rousseau was to do two centuries later.

He might well think with some complacency of the influence he had exerted on the world. 'From all parts of the world'--he writes towards the close of his life--'I am daily thanked by many, because they have been kindled by my works, whatever may be their merit, into zeal for a good disposition and sacred literature; and they who have never seen Erasmus, yet know and love him from his books.' He was glad that his translations from the Greek had become superfluous; he had everywhere led many to take up Greek and Holy Scripture, 'which otherwise they would never have read'. He had been an introducer and an initiator. He might leave the stage after having said his say.

His word signified something beyond a classical sense and biblical disposition. It was at the same time the first enunciation of the creed of education and perfectibility, of warm social feeling and of faith in human nature, of peaceful kindliness and toleration. 'Christ dwells everywhere; piety is practised under every garment, if only a kindly disposition is not wanting.'

In all these ideas and convictions Erasmus really heralds a later age. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries those thoughts remained an undercurrent: in the eighteenth Erasmus's message of deliverance bore fruit. In this respect he has most certainly been a precursor and preparer of the modern mind: of Rousseau, Herder, Pestalozzi and of the English and American thinkers. It is only part of the modern mind which is represented by all this. To a number of its developments Erasmus was wholly a stranger, to the evolution of natural science, of the newer philosophy, of political economy. But in so far as people still believe in the ideal that moral education and general tolerance may make humanity happier, humanity owes much to Erasmus.

* * * * *

This does not imply that Erasmus's mind did not directly and fruitfully influence his own times. Although Catholics regarded him in the heat of the struggle as the corrupter of the Church, and Protestants as the betrayer of the Gospel, yet his word of moderation and kindliness did not pass by unheard or unheeded on either side. Eventually neither camp finally rejected Erasmus. Rome did not brand him as an arch-heretic, but only warned the faithful to read him with caution. Protestant history has been studious to reckon him as one of the Reformers. Both obeyed in this the pronouncement of a public opinion which was above parties and which continued to admire and revere Erasmus.

To the reconstruction of the Catholic Church and the erection of the evangelical churches not only the names of Luther and Loyola are linked. The moderate, the intellectual, the conciliating have also had their share of the work; figures like Melanchthon here, Sadolet there, both nearly allied to Erasmus and sympathetically disposed towards him. The frequently repeated attempts to arrive at some compromise in the great religious conflict, though they might be doomed to end in failure, emanated from the Erasmian spirit.

Nowhere did that spirit take root so easily as in the country that gave Erasmus birth. A curious detail shows us that it was not the exclusive privilege of either great party. Of his two most favoured pupils of later years, both Netherlanders, whom as the actors of the colloquy _Astragalismus_ (_The Game of Knucklebones_), he has immortalized together, the one, Quirin Talesius, died for his attachment to the Spanish cause and the Catholic faith: he was hanged in 1572 by the citizens of Haarlem, where he was a burgomaster. The other, Charles Utenhove, was sedulous on the side of the revolt and the Reformed religion. At Ghent, in concert with the Prince of Orange, he turned against the narrow-minded Protestant terrorism of the zealots.

A Dutch historian recently tried to trace back the opposition of the Dutch against the king of Spain to the influence of Erasmus's political thought in his arraignment of bad princes--wrongly as I think. Erasmus's political diatribes were far too academic and too general for that. The desire of resistance and revolt arose from quite other causes. The 'Gueux' were not Erasmus's progeny. But there is much that is Erasmian in the spirit of their great leader, William of Orange, whose vision ranged so widely beyond the limitations of religious hatred. Thoroughly permeated by the Erasmian spirit, too, was that class of municipal magistrates who were soon to take the lead and to set the fashion in the established Republic. History is wont, as always with an aristocracy, to take their faults very seriously. After all, perhaps no other aristocracy, unless it be that of Venice, has ruled a state so long, so well and with so little violence. If in the seventeenth century the institutions of Holland, in the eyes of foreigners, were the admired models of prosperity, charity and social discipline, and patterns of gentleness and wisdom, however defective they may seem to us--then the honour of all this is due to the municipal aristocracy. If in the Dutch patriciate of that time those aspirations lived and were translated into action, it was Erasmus's spirit of social responsibility which inspired them. The history of Holland is far less bloody and cruel than that of any of the surrounding countries. Not for naught did Erasmus praise as truly Dutch those qualities which we might also call truly Erasmian: gentleness, kindliness, moderation, a generally diffused moderate erudition. Not romantic virtues, if you like; but are they the less salutary?

One more instance. In the Republic of the Seven Provinces the atrocious executions of witches and wizards ceased more than a century before they did in all other countries. This was not owing to the merit of the Reformed pastors. They shared the popular belief which demanded persecution. It was the magistrates whose enlightenment even as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century no longer tolerated these things. Again, we are entitled to say, though Erasmus was not one of those who combated this practice: the spirit which breathes from this is that of Erasmus.

Cultured humanity has cause to hold Erasmus's memory in esteem, if for no other reason than that he was the fervently sincere preacher of that general kindliness which the world still so urgently needs.

SELECTION FROM THE LETTERS OF ERASMUS

_This selection from the vast correspondence of Erasmus is intended to exhibit him at a few points in his strenuous and rather comfortless life, always overworked, often ill, and perpetually hurried--many of his letters have the postscript 'In haste' or 'I had no time to read this over'--but holding always tenaciously to his aim of steering a middle course; in religion between the corruption and fossilization of the old and the uncompromising violence of the new: in learning between neo-paganism on the one hand and the indolent refusal, under the pretext of piety, to apply critical methods to sacred texts on the other. The first letter has been included because it may provide a clue to his later reluctance to trust his feelings when self-committal to any cause seemed to be required of him, a reluctance not unnaturally interpreted by his enemies as an arrogant refusal to 'yield to any'._

_The notes have been compiled from P. S. and H. M. Allen's_ Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, _Oxford, 1906-47, by the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, and references are to the numbers of the letters in that edition_.

I. TO SERVATIUS ROGER[21]

[Steyn, _c._ 1487]

To his friend Servatius, greetings:

... You say there is something which you take very hard, which torments you wretchedly, which in short makes life a misery to you. Your looks and your carriage betray this, even if you were silent. Where is your wonted and beloved cheerful countenance gone, your former beauty, your lively glance? Whence come these sorrowful downcast eyes, whence this perpetual silence, so unlike you, whence the look of a sick man in your expression? Assuredly as the poet says, 'the sick body betrays the torments of the lurking soul, likewise its joys: it is to the mind that the face owes its looks, well or ill'.[22]

It is certain then, my Servatius, that there is something which troubles you, which is destroying your former good health. But what am I to do now? Must I comfort you or scold you? Why do you hide your pain from me as if we did not know each other by this time? You are so deep that you do not believe your closest friend, or trust even the most trustworthy; or do you not know that the hidden fire burns stronger?... And for the rest, my Servatius, what is it makes you draw in and hide yourself like a snail? I suspect what the matter is: you have not yet convinced yourself that I love you very much. So I entreat you by the things sweetest to you in life, by our great love, if you have any care for your safety, if you want me to live unharmed, not to be at such pains to hide your feelings, but whatever it is, entrust it to my safe ears. I will assist you in whatever way I can with help or counsel. But if I cannot provide either, still it will be sweet to rejoice with you, to weep with you, to live and die with you. Farewell, my Servatius, and look after your health.

II. TO NICHOLAS WERNER[23]

Paris, 13 September [1496]

To the religious Father Nicholas Werner, greetings:

... If you are all well there, things are as I wish and hope; I myself am very well, the gods be thanked. I have now made clear by my actions--if it was not clear to anyone before this--how much theology is coming to mean to me. A somewhat arrogant claim; but it ill becomes Erasmus to hide anything from his most loving Father. Lately I had fallen in with certain Englishmen, of noble birth, and all of them wealthy. Very recently I was approached by a young priest,[24] very rich, who said he had refused a bishopric offered him, as he knew that he was not well educated; nevertheless he is to be recalled by the King to take a bishopric within a year, although, apart from any bishopric even, he has a yearly income of more than 2000 _scudi_. As soon as he heard of my learning he proceeded in unbelievably affectionate fashion to devote himself to me, to frequent and revere me--he lived for a while in my house. He offered 100 _scudi_, if I would teach him for a year; he offered a benefice in a few months' time; he offered to lend me 300 _scudi_, if I should need them to procure the office, until I could pay them back out of the benefice. By this service I could have laid all the English in this city under an obligation to me--they are all of the first families--and through them all England, had I so wished. But I cared nothing for the splendid income and the far more splendid prospects; I cared nothing for their entreaties and the tears which accompanied them. I am telling the truth, exaggerating not at all; the English realize that the money of all England means nothing to me. This refusal, which I still maintain, was not made without due consideration; not for any reward will I let myself be drawn away from theological studies. I did not come here to teach or to pile up gold, but to learn. Indeed I shall seek a Doctorate in Theology, if the gods so will it.

The Bishop of Cambrai is marvellously fond of me: he makes liberal promises; the remittances are not so liberal, to tell the truth. I wish you good health, excellent Father. I beg and entreat you to commend me in your prayers to God: I shall do likewise for you. From my library in Paris.

III. TO ROBERT FISHER[25]

London, 5 December [1499]

To Robert Fisher, Englishman, abiding in Italy, greetings:

... I hesitated not a little to write to you, beloved Robert, not that I feared lest so great a sunderance in time and place had worn away anything of your affection towards me, but because you are in a country where even the house-walls are more learned and more eloquent than are our men here, so that what is here reckoned polished, fine and delectable cannot there appear anything but crude, mean and insipid. Wherefore your England assuredly expects you to return not merely very learned in the law but also equally eloquent in both the Greek and the Latin tongues. You would have seen me also there long since, had not my friend Mountjoy carried me off to his country when I was already packed for the journey into Italy. Whither indeed shall I not follow a youth so polite, so kindly, so lovable? I swear I would follow him even into Hades. You indeed had most handsomely commended him and, in a word, precisely delineated him; but believe me, he every day surpasses both your commendation and my opinion of him.

But you ask how England pleases me. If you have any confidence in me, dear Robert, I would have you believe me when I say that I have never yet liked anything so well. I have found here a climate as delightful as it is wholesome; and moreover so much humane learning, not of the outworn, commonplace sort, but the profound, accurate, ancient Greek and Latin learning, that I now scarcely miss Italy, but for the sight of it. When I listen to my friend Colet, I seem to hear Plato himself. Who would not marvel at the perfection of encyclopaedic learning in Grocyn?[26] What could be keener or nobler or nicer than Linacre's[27] judgement? What has Nature ever fashioned gentler or sweeter or happier than the character of Thomas More? But why should I catalogue the rest? It is marvellous how thick upon the ground the harvest of ancient literature is here everywhere flowering forth: all the more should you hasten your return hither. Your friend's affection and remembrance of you is so strong that he speaks of none so often or so gladly. Farewell. Written in haste in London on the 5th of December.

IV. TO JAMES BATT[28]

Orléans [_c._ 12 December] 1500

... If you care sincerely what becomes of your Erasmus, do you act thus: plead my shyness before my Lady[29] in pleasant phrases, as if I had not been able to bring myself to reveal my poverty to her in person. But you must write that I am now in a state of extreme poverty, owing to the great expense of this flight to Orléans, as I had to leave people from whom I was making some money. Tell her that Italy is by far the most suitable place in which to take the Degree of Doctor, and that it is impossible for a fastidious man to go to Italy without a large sum of money; particularly because I am not even at liberty to live meanly, on account of my reputation, such as it is, for learning. You will explain how much greater fame I am likely to bring my Lady by my learning than are the other theologians maintained by her. They compose commonplace harangues: I write works destined to live for ever. Their ignorant triflings are heard by one or two persons in church: my books will be read by Latins, Greeks, by every race all over the world. Tell her that this kind of unlearned theologian is to be found in hordes everywhere, whereas a man like myself is hardly to be found once in many centuries; unless indeed you are so superstitious that you scruple to employ a few harmless lies to help a friend. Then you must point out that she will not be a whit the poorer if, with a few gold pieces, she helps to restore the corrupt text of St. Jerome and the true Theology, when so much of her wealth is being shamelessly dissipated. After dilating on this with your customary ingenuity and writing at length on my character, my expectations, my affection for my Lady and my shyness, you must then add that I have written to say that I need 200 francs in all, and request her to grant me next year's payment now; I am not inventing this, my dear Batt; to go to Italy with 100 francs, no, less than 100 francs, seems to me a hazardous enterprise, unless I want to enslave myself to someone once more; may I die before I do this. Then how little difference it will make to her whether she gives me the money this year or next, and how much it means to me! Next urge her to look out for a benefice for me, so that on my return I may have some place where I can pursue learning in peace. Do not stop at this, but devise on your own the most convenient method of indicating to her that she should promise me, before all the other candidates, at least a reasonable, if not a splendid, benefice which I can change as soon as a better one appears. I am well aware that there are many candidates for benefices; but you must say that I am the one man, whom, compared with the rest, etc., etc. You know your old way of lying profusely about Erasmus.... You will add at the end that I have made the same complaint in my letter which Jerome makes more than once in his letters, that study is tearing my eyes out, that things look as if I shall have to follow his example and begin to study with my ears and tongue only; and persuade her, in the most amusing words at your command, to send me some sapphire or other gem wherewith to fortify my eyesight. I would have told you myself which gems have this virtue, but I have not Pliny at hand; get the information out of your doctor.... Let me tell you what else I want you to attempt still further--to extract a grant from the Abbot. You know him--invent some modest and persuasive argument for making this request. Tell him that I have a great design in hand--to constitute in its entirety the text of Jerome, which has been corrupted, mutilated, and thrown into disorder through the ignorance of the theologians (I have detected many false and spurious pieces among his writings), and to restore the Greek.[30] I shall reveal [in him] an ingenuity and a knowledge of antiquities which no one, I venture to claim, has yet realized. Explain that for this undertaking many books are needed, also Greek works, so that I may receive a grant. Here you will not be lying, Batt; I am wholly engaged on this work. Farewell, my best and dearest Batt, and put all of Batt into this business. I mean Batt the friend, not Batt the slowcoach.

V. TO ANTONY OF BERGEN[31]

[Paris?] [16 March? 1501]

To the most illustrious prelate Antony, Abbot of St. Bertin, greetings:

... I have accidentally happened upon some Greek books, and am busy day and night secretly copying them out. I shall be asked why I am so delighted with Cato the Censor's example that I want to turn Greek at my age. Indeed, most excellent Father, if in my boyhood I had been of this mind, or rather if time had not been wanting, I should be the happiest of men. As things are, I think it better to learn, even if a little late, than not to know things which it is of the first importance to have at one's command. I have already tasted of Greek literature in the past, but merely (as the saying goes) sipped at it; however, having lately gone a little deeper into it, I perceive--as one has often read in the best authorities--that Latin learning, rich as it is, is defective and incomplete without Greek; for we have but a few small streams and muddy puddles, while they have pure springs and rivers rolling gold. I see that it is utter madness even to touch the branch of theology which deals chiefly with the mysteries unless one is also provided with the equipment of Greek, as the translators of the Scriptures, owing to their conscientious scruples, render Greek forms in such a fashion that not even the primary sense (what our theologians call the _literal_ sense) can be understood by persons ignorant of Greek. Who could understand the sentence in the Psalm [Ps. 50.4 (51.3)] _Et peccatum meum contra me est semper_,[32] unless he has read the Greek? This runs as follows: [Greek: kai hê hamartia mou enôpion mou esti diapantos]. At this point some theologian will spin a long story of how the flesh is perpetually in conflict with the spirit, having been misled by the double meaning of the preposition, that is, _contra_, when the word [Greek: enôpion] refers not to _conflict_ but to _position_, as if you were to say _opposite_, i. e., _in sight_: so that the Prophet's meaning was that his fault was so hateful to him that the memory of it never left him, but floated always before his mind as if it were present. Further in a passage elsewhere [Ps. 91 (92. 14)], _Bene patientes erunt ut annuncient_, everyone will be misled by the deceptive form, unless he has learned from the Greek that, just as according to Latin usage we say _bene facere_ of those who _do good to_ someone, so the Greeks call [Greek: eupathountas] (_bene patientes_) those who _suffer good to be done them_. So that the sense is, 'They will be well treated and will be helped by my benefactions, so that they will make mention of my beneficence towards them'. But why do I pick out a few trifling examples from so many important ones, when I have on my side the venerable authority of the papal Curia? There is a Curial Decree[33] still extant in the Decretals, ordaining that persons should be appointed in the chief academies (as they were then) capable of giving accurate instruction in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin literature, since, as they believed, the Scriptures could not be understood, far less discussed, without this knowledge. This most sound and most holy decree we so far neglect that we are perfectly satisfied with the most elementary knowledge of the Latin language, being apparently convinced that everything can be extracted from Duns Scotus, as it were from a cornucopia.

For myself I do not fight with men of this sort; each man to his taste, as far as I am concerned; let the old man marry the old woman. It is my delight to set foot on the path into which Jerome and the splendid host of so many ancients summon me; so help me God, I would sooner be mad with them than as sane as you like with the mob of modern theologians. Besides I am attempting an arduous and, so to say, Phaethontean task--to do my best to restore the works of Jerome, which have been partly corrupted by those half-learned persons, and are partly--owing to the lack of knowledge of antiquities and of Greek literature--forgotten or mangled or mutilated or at least full of mistakes and monstrosities; not merely to restore them but to elucidate them with commentaries, so that each reader will acknowledge to himself that the great Jerome, considered by the ecclesiastical world as the most perfect in both branches of learning, the sacred and the profane, can indeed be read by all, but can only be understood by the most learned. As I am working hard on this design and see that I must in the first place acquire Greek, I have decided to study for some months under a Greek teacher,[34] a real Greek, no, twice a Greek, always hungry,[35] who charges an immoderate fee for his lessons. Farewell.

VI. TO WILLIAM WARHAM[36]

London, 24 January [1506]

To the Reverend Father in Christ, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of England, many greetings from Erasmus of Rotterdam, Canon of the Order of St. Augustine:

... Having made up my mind, most illustrious prelate, to translate the Greek authors and by so doing to revive or, if you will, promote as far as I could theological studies--and God immortal, how miserably they have been corrupted by sophistical nonsensicalities!--I did not wish to give the impression that I was attempting forthwith to learn the potter's art on a winejar[37] (as the Greek adage goes) and rushing in with unwashen feet, as they say, on so vast an undertaking; so I decided to begin by testing how far I had profited by my studies in both languages, and that in a material difficult indeed, but not sacred; so that the difficulty of the undertaking might be useful for practice and at the same time if I made any mistakes these mistakes should involve only the risk of my talent and leave the Holy Scriptures undamaged. And so I endeavoured to render in Latin two tragedies of Euripides, the _Hecuba_ and the _Iphigeneia in Aulis_, in the hope that perchance some god might favour so bold a venture with fair breezes. Then, seeing that a specimen of the work begun found favour with persons excellently well versed in both tongues (assuredly England by now possesses several of these, if I may acknowledge the truth without envy, men deserving of the admiration even of all Italy in any branch of learning), I brought the work to a finish, with the good help of the Muses, within a few short months. At what a cost in exertion, those will best feel who enter the same lists.

Why so? Because the mere task of putting real Greek into real Latin is such that it requires an extraordinary artist, and not only a man with a rich store of scholarship in both languages at his fingertips, but one exceedingly alert and observant; so that for several centuries now none has appeared whose efforts in this field were unanimously approved by scholars. It is surely easy then to conjecture what a heavy task it has proved to render verse in verse, particularly verse so varied and unfamiliar, and to do this from a writer not merely so remote in time, and withal a tragedian, but also marvellously concise, taut and unadorned, in whom there is nothing otiose, nothing which it would not be a crime to alter or remove; and besides, one who treats rhetorical topics so frequently and so acutely that he appears to be everywhere declaiming. Add to all this the choruses, which through I know not what striving after effect are so obscure that they need not so much a translator as an Oedipus or priest of Apollo to interpret them. In addition there is the corrupt state of the manuscripts, the dearth of copies, the absence of any translators to whom one can have recourse. So I am not so much surprised that even in this most prolific age none of the Italians has ventured to attempt the task of translating any tragedy or comedy, whereas many have set their hand to Homer (among these even Politian[38] failed to satisfy himself); one man[39] has essayed Hesiod, and that without much success; another[40] has attempted Theocritus, but with even far more unfortunate results: and finally Francesco Filelfo has translated the first scene of the Hecuba in one of his funeral orations.[41] (I first learned this after I had begun my version), but in such a way that, great as he is, his work gave me courage enough to proceed, overprecise as I am in other respects.

Then for me the lure of this poet's more than honeyed eloquence, which even his enemies allow him, proved stronger than the deterrent of these great examples and the many difficulties of the work, so that I have been bold to attack a task never before attempted, in the hope that, even if I failed, my honest readers would consider even this poor effort of mine not altogether unpraiseworthy, and the more grudging would at least be lenient to an inexperienced translator of a work so difficult: in particular because I have deliberately added no light burden to my other difficulties through my conscientiousness as a translator, in attempting so far as possible to reproduce the shape and as it were contours of the Greek verse, by striving to render line for line and almost word for word, and everywhere seeking with the utmost fidelity to convey to Latin ears the force and value of the sentence: whether it be that I do not altogether approve of the freedom in translation which Cicero allows others and practised himself (I would almost say to an immoderate degree), or that as an inexperienced translator I preferred to err on the side of seeming over-scrupulous rather than over-free--hesitating on the sandy shore instead of wrecking my ship and swimming in the midst of the billows; and I preferred to run the risk of letting scholars complain of lack of brilliance and poetic beauty in my work rather than of lack of fidelity to the original. Finally I did not want to set myself up as a paraphraser, thus securing myself that retreat which many use to cloak their ignorance, wrapping themselves like the cuttle-fish in darkness of their own making to avoid detection. Now, if readers do not find here the grandiloquence of Latin tragedy, 'the bombast and the words half a yard long,' as Horace calls it, they must not blame me if in performing my function of translator I have preferred to reproduce the concise simplicity and elegance of my original, and not the bombast to which he is a stranger, and which I do not greatly admire at any time.

Furthermore, I am encouraged to hope with all certainty that these labours of mine will be most excellently protected against the calumnies of the unjust, as their publication will be most welcome to the honest and just, if you, most excellent Father, have voted them your approval. For me it was not difficult to select you from the great host of illustrious and distinguished men to be the recipient of this product of my vigils, as the one man I have observed to be--aside from the brilliance of your fortune--so endowed, adorned and showered with learning, eloquence, good sense, piety, modesty, integrity, and lastly with an extraordinary liberality towards those who cultivate good letters, that the word Primate suits none better than yourself, who hold the first place not solely by reason of your official dignity, but far more because of all your virtues, while at the same time you are the principal ornament of the Court and the sole head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. If I have the fortune to win for this my work the commendation of a man so highly commended I shall assuredly not repent of the exertions I have so far expended, and will be forward to promote theological studies with even more zeal for the future.

Farewell, and enrol Erasmus in the number of those who are wholeheartedly devoted to Your Fathership.

[Illustration: XXVII. PORTRAIT MEDAL OF ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 53

On the reverse his device and motto]

[Illustration: XXVIII. ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF ABOUT 57]

VII. TO ALDUS MANUTIUS[42]

Bologna, 28 October [1507]

To Aldus Manutius of Rome, many greetings:

... I have often wished, most learned Manutius, that the light you have cast on Greek and Latin literature, not by your printing alone and your splendid types, but by your brilliance and your uncommon learning, could have been matched by the profit you in your turn drew from them. So far as _fame_ is concerned, the name of Aldus Manutius will without doubt be on the lips of all devotees of sacred literature unto all posterity; and your memory will be--as your fame now is--not merely illustrious but loved and cherished as well, because you are engaged, as I hear, in reviving and disseminating the good authors--with extreme diligence but not at a commensurate profit--undergoing truly Herculean labours, labours splendid indeed and destined to bring you immortal glory, but meanwhile more profitable to others than to yourself. I hear that you are printing Plato[43] in Greek types; very many scholars eagerly await the book. I should like to know what medical authors you have printed; I wish you would give us Paul of Aegina.[44] I wonder what has prevented you from publishing the New Testament[45] long since--a work which would delight even the common people (if I conjecture aright) but particularly my own class, the theologians.

I send you two tragedies[46] which I have been bold enough to translate, whether with success you yourself shall judge. Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, William Latimer, Cuthbert Tunstall, friends of yours as well as of mine, thought highly of them; you know yourself that they are too learned to be deceived in their judgement, and too sincere to want to flatter a friend--unless their affection for me has somewhat blinded them; the Italians to whom I have so far shown my attempt do not condemn it. It has been printed by Badius, successfully as far as he is concerned, so he writes, for he has now sold all the copies to his satisfaction. But my reputation has not been enhanced thereby, so full is it all of mistakes, and in fact he offers his services to repair the first edition by printing a second. But I am afraid of his mending ill with ill, as the Sophoclean saying goes. I should consider my labours to have been immortalized if they could come out printed in your types, particularly the smaller types, the most beautiful of all. This will result in the volume being very small and the business being concluded at little expense. If you think it convenient to undertake the affair, I will supply you with a corrected copy, which I send by the bearer, _gratis_, except that you may wish to send me a few volumes as gifts for my friends.

I should not have hesitated to attempt the publication at my own risk and expense, were it not that I have to leave Italy within a few months: so I should much like to have the business concluded as soon as possible; in fact it is hardly ten days' work. If you insist on my taking a hundred or two hundred volumes, though the god of gain does not usually favour me and it will be most inconvenient to transport the package, I shall not refuse, if only you fix a horse as the price. Farewell, most learned Aldus, and reckon Erasmus as one of your well-wishers.

If you have any rare authors in your press, I shall be obliged if you will indicate this--my learned British friends have asked me to search for them. If you decide not to print the _Tragedies_, will you return the copy to the bearer to bring back to me?

VIII. TO THOMAS MORE[47]

[Paris?] 9 June [1511]

To his friend Thomas More, greetings:

... In days gone by, on my journey back from Italy into England, in order not to waste all the time that must needs be spent on horseback in dull and unlettered gossiping, I preferred at times either to turn over in my mind some topic of our common studies or to give myself over to the pleasing recollection of the friends, as learned as they are beloved, whom I had left behind me in England. You were among the very first of these to spring to mind, my dear More; indeed I used to enjoy the memory of you in absence even as I was wont to delight in your present company, than which I swear I never in my life met anything sweeter. Therefore, since I thought that I must at all hazards do _something_, and that time seemed ill suited to serious meditation, I determined to amuse myself with the _Praise of Folly_. You will ask what goddess put this into my mind. In the first place it was your family name of More, which comes as near to the word _moria_ [folly] as you yourself are far from the reality--everyone agrees that you are far removed from it. Next I suspected that you above all would approve this _jeu d'esprit_ of mine, in that you yourself do greatly delight in jests of this kind, that is, jests learned (if I mistake not) and at no time insipid, and altogether like to play in some sort the Democritus[48] in the life of society. Although you indeed, owing to your incredibly sweet and easy-going character, are both able and glad to be all things to all men, even as your singularly penetrating intellect causes you to dissent widely from the opinions of the herd. So you will not only gladly accept this little declamation as a memento of your comrade, but will also take it under your protection, inasmuch as it is dedicated to you and is now no longer mine but yours.

And indeed there will perhaps be no lack of brawlers to represent that trifles are more frivolous than becomes a theologian, or more mordant than suits with Christian modesty, and they will be crying out that I am reviving the Old Comedy or Lucian and assailing everything with biting satire. But I would have those who are offended by the levity and sportiveness of my theme reflect that it was not I that began this, but that the same was practised by great writers in former times; seeing that so many centuries ago Homer made his trifle _The Battle of Frogs and Mice_, Virgil his _Gnat_ and _Dish of Herbs_ and Ovid his _Nut_; seeing that Busiris was praised by Polycrates and his critic Isocrates, Injustice by Glaucon, Thersites and the Quartan Fever by Favorinus, Baldness by Synesius, the Fly and the Art of Being a Parasite by Lucian; and that Seneca devised the Apotheosis of the Emperor Claudius, Plutarch the Dialogue of Gryllus and Ulysses, Lucian and Apuleius the Ass, and someone unknown the Testament of Grunnius Corocotta the Piglet, mentioned even by St. Jerome.

So, if they will, let my detractors imagine that I have played an occasional game of draughts for a pastime or, if they prefer, taken a ride on a hobby-horse. How unfair it is truly, when we grant every calling in life its amusements, not to allow the profession of learning any amusement at all, particularly if triflings bring serious thoughts in their train and frivolous matters are so treated that a reader not altogether devoid of perception wins more profit from these than from the glittering and portentous arguments of certain persons--as when for instance one man eulogizes rhetoric or philosophy in a painfully stitched-together oration, another rehearses the praises of some prince, another urges us to begin a war with the Turks, another foretells the future, and another proposes a new method of splitting hairs. Just as there is nothing so trifling as to treat serious matters triflingly, so there is nothing so delightful as to treat trifling matters in such fashion that it appears that you have been doing anything but trifle. As to me, the judgement is in other hands--and yet, unless I am altogether misled by self-love, I have sung the praise of Folly and that not altogether foolishly.

And now to reply to the charge of mordacity. It has ever been the privilege of wits to satirize the life of society with impunity, provided that licence does not degenerate into frenzy. Wherefore the more do I marvel at the fastidiousness of men's ears in these times, who by now can scarce endure anything but solemn appellations. Further, we see some men so perversely religious that they will suffer the most hideous revilings against Christ sooner than let prince or pope be sullied by the lightest jest, particularly if this concerns monetary gain. But if a man censures men's lives without reproving anyone at all by name, pray do you think this man a satirist, and not rather a teacher and admonisher? Else on how many counts do I censure myself? Moreover he who leaves no class of men unmentioned is clearly foe to no man but to all vices. Therefore anyone who rises up and cries out that he is insulted will be revealing a bad conscience, or at all events fear. St. Jerome wrote satire in this kind far more free and biting, not always abstaining from the mention of names, whereas I myself, apart from not mentioning anyone by name, have moreover so tempered my pen that the sagacious reader will easily understand that my aim has been to give pleasure, not pain; for I have at no point followed Juvenal's example in 'stirring up the murky bilge of crime', and I have sought to survey the laughable, not the disgusting. If there is anyone whom even this cannot appease, at least let him remember that it is a fine thing to be reviled by Folly; in bringing her upon the stage I had to suit the words to the character. But why need I say all this to you, an advocate so remarkable that you can defend excellently even causes far from excellent? Farewell, most eloquent More, and be diligent in defending your _moria_.

IX. TO JOHN COLET[49]

Cambridge, 29 October [1511]

To his friend Colet, greetings:

... Something came into my mind which I know will make you laugh. In the presence of several Masters [of Arts] I was putting forward a view on the Assistant Teacher, when one of them, a man of some repute, smiled and said: 'Who could bear to spend his life in that school among boys, when he could live anywhere in any way he liked?' I answered mildly that it seemed to me a very honourable task to train young people in manners and literature, that Christ himself did not despise the young, that no age had a better right to help, and that from no quarter was a richer return to be expected, seeing that young people were the harvest-field and raw material of the nation. I added that all truly religious people felt that they could not better serve God in any other duty than the bringing of children to Christ. He wrinkled his nose and said with a scornful gesture: 'If any man wishes to serve Christ altogether, let him go into a monastery and enter a religious order.' I answered that St. Paul said that true religion consisted in the offices of charity--charity consisting in doing our best to help our neighbours. This he rejected as an ignorant remark. 'Look,' said he, 'we have forsaken everything: in this is perfection.' 'That man has not forsaken everything,' said I, 'who, when he could help very many by his labours, refuses to undertake a duty because it is regarded as humble.' And with that, to prevent a quarrel arising, I let the man go. There you have the dialogue. You see the Scotist philosophy! Once again, farewell.

X. TO SERVATIUS ROGER

Hammes Castle [near Calais],

8 July 1514

To the Reverend Father Servatius, many greetings:

... Most humane father, your letter has at last reached me, after passing through many hands, when I had already left England, and it has afforded me unbelievable delight, as it still breathes your old affection for me. However, I shall answer briefly, as I am writing just after the journey, and shall reply in particular on those matters which are, as you write, strictly to the point. Men's thoughts are so varied, 'to each his own bird-song', that it is impossible to satisfy everyone. My own feelings are that I want to follow what is best to do, God is my witness. Those feelings which I had in my youth have been corrected partly by age, partly by experience of the world. I have never intended to change my mode of life or my habit--not that I liked them, but to avoid scandal. You are aware that I was not so much led as driven to this mode of life by the obstinate determination of my guardians and the wrongful urgings of others, and that afterwards, when I realized that this kind of life was quite unsuited to me (for not all things suit all men), I was held back by Cornelius of Woerden's reproaches and by a certain boyish sense of shame. I was never able to endure fasting, through some peculiarity of my constitution. Once roused from sleep I could never fall asleep again for several hours. I was so drawn towards literature, which is not practised in the monastery, that I do not doubt that if I had chanced on some free mode of life I could have been numbered not merely among the happy but even among the good.

So, when I realized that I was by no means fit for this mode of life, that I had taken it up under compulsion and not of my own free will, nevertheless, as public opinion in these days regards it as a crime to break away from a mode of life once taken up, I had resolved to endure with fortitude this part of my unhappiness also--you know that I am in many things unfortunate. But I have always regarded this one thing as harder than all the rest, that I had been forced into a mode of life for which I was totally unfit both in body and in mind: in mind, because I abhorred ritual and loved liberty; in body, because even had I been perfectly satisfied with the life, my constitution could not endure such labours. One may object that I had a year of probation, as it is called, and that I was of ripe age. Ridiculous! As if anyone could expect a boy of sixteen, particularly one with a literary training, to know himself
(an achievement even for an old man), or to have succeeded in learning in a single year what many do not yet understand in their grey hairs. Though I myself never liked the life, still less after I had tried it, but was trapped in the way I have mentioned; although I confess that the truly good man will live a good life in any calling. And I do not deny that I was prone to grievous vices, but not of so utterly corrupt a nature that I could not have come to some good, had I found a kindly guide, a true Christian, not one given to Jewish scruples.

Meanwhile I looked about to find in what kind of life I could be least bad, and I believe indeed that I have attained this. I have spent my life meantime among sober men, in literary studies, which have kept me off many vices. I have been able to associate with true followers of Christ, whose conversation has made me a better man. I do not now boast of my books, which you at Steyn perhaps despise.

But many confess that they have become not merely more knowledgeable, but even better men through reading them. Passion for money has never affected me. I am quite untouched by the thirst for fame. I have never been a slave to pleasures, although I was formerly inclined to them. Over-indulgence and drunkenness I have ever loathed and avoided. But whenever I thought of returning to your society, I remembered the jealousy of many, the contempt of all, the conversations how dull, how foolish, how un-Christlike, the feasts how unclerical! In short the whole way of life, from which if you remove the ritual, I do not see what remains that one could desire. Lastly I remembered my frail constitution, now weakened by age, disease and hard work, as a result of which I should fail to satisfy you and kill myself. For several years now I have been subject to the stone, a severe and deadly illness, and for several years I have drunk nothing but wine, and not all kinds of wine at that, owing to my disease; I cannot endure all kinds of food nor indeed all climates. The illness is very liable to recur and demands a very careful regimen; and I know the climate in Holland and your style of living, not to mention your ways. So, had I come back to you, all I would have achieved would have been to bring trouble on you and death on myself.

But perhaps you think it a great part of happiness to die amid one's fellow-brethren? This belief deceives and imposes not on you alone but on nearly everyone. We make Christian piety depend on place, dress, style of living and on certain little rituals. We think a man lost who changes his white dress for black, or his cowl for a cap, or occasionally moves from place to place. I should dare to say that Christian piety has suffered great damage from these so-called religious practices, although it may be that their first introduction was due to pious zeal. They then gradually increased and divided into thousands of distinctions; this was helped by a papal authority which was too lax and easy-going in many cases. What more defiled or more impious than these lax rituals? And if you turn to those that are commended, no, to the most highly commended, apart from some dreary Jewish rituals, I know not what image of Christ one finds in them. It is these on which they preen themselves, these by which they judge and condemn others. How much more in conformity with the spirit of Christ to consider the whole Christian world one home and as it were one monastery, to regard all men as one's fellow-monks and fellow-brethren, to hold the sacrament of Baptism as the supreme rite, and not to consider where one lives but how well one lives! You want me to settle on a permanent abode, a course which my very age also suggests. But the travellings of Solon, Pythagoras and Plato are praised; and the Apostles, too, were wanderers, in particular Paul. St. Jerome also was a monk now in Rome, now in Syria, now in Antioch, now here, now there, and even in his old age pursued literary studies.

But I am not to be compared with St. Jerome--I agree; yet I have never moved unless forced by the plague or for reasons of study or health, and wherever I have lived (I shall say this of myself, arrogantly perhaps, but truthfully) I have been commended by the most highly commended and praised by the most praised. There is no land, neither Spain nor Italy nor Germany nor France nor England nor Scotland, which does not summon me to partake of its hospitality. And if I am not liked by all (which is not my aim), at all events I am liked in the highest places of all. At Rome there was no cardinal who did not welcome me like a brother; in particular the Cardinal of St. George,[50] the Cardinal of Bologna,[51] Cardinal Grimani, the Cardinal of Nantes,[52] and the present Pope,[53] not to mention bishops, archdeacons and men of learning. And this honour was not a tribute to wealth, which even now I neither possess nor desire; nor to ambition, a failing to which I have ever been a stranger; but solely to learning, which our countrymen ridicule, while the Italians worship it. In England there is no bishop who is not glad to be greeted by me, who does not desire my company, who does not want me in his home. The King himself, a little before his father's death, when I was in Italy, wrote a most affectionate letter to me with his own hand, and now too speaks often of me in the most honourable and affectionate terms; and whenever I greet him he welcomes me most courteously and looks at me in a most friendly fashion, making it plain that his feelings for me are as friendly as his speeches. And he has often commissioned his Almoner[54] to find a benefice for me. The Queen sought to take me as her tutor. Everyone knows that, if I were prepared to live even a few months at Court, he would heap on me as many benefices as I cared for; but I put my leisure and my learned labours before everything. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of all England and Chancellor of the Realm, a good and learned man, could not treat me with more affection were I his father or brother. And that you may understand that he is sincere in this, he gave me a living of nearly 100 nobles, which afterwards at my wish he changed into a pension of 100 crowns on my resignation; in addition he has given me more than 400 nobles during the last few years, although I never asked for anything. He gave me 150 nobles in one day. I received more than 100 nobles from other bishops in freely offered gifts. Mountjoy, a baron of the realm, formerly my pupil, gives me annually a pension of 100 crowns. The King and the Bishop of Lincoln, who has great influence through the King, make many splendid promises. There are two universities in England, Oxford and Cambridge, and both of them want me; at Cambridge I taught Greek and sacred literature for several months, for nothing, and have resolved always to do this. There are colleges here so religious, and of such modesty in living, that you would spurn any other religious life, could you see them. In London there is John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, who has combined great learning with a marvellous piety, a man greatly respected by all. He is so fond of me, as all know, that he prefers my company above all others'; I do not mention many others, lest I doubly vex you with my loquacity as well as my boasting.

Now to say something of my works--I think you have read the _Enchiridion_,[55] through which not a few confess themselves inspired to the study of piety; I make no claim for myself, but give thanks to Christ for any good which has come to pass through me by His giving. I do not know whether you have seen the _Adagia_,[56] printed by Aldus. It is not a theological work, but most useful for every branch of learning; at least it cost me countless labours and sleepless nights. I have published a work _De rerum verborumque copia_,[57] dedicated to my friend Colet, very useful for those who desire to speak in public; but all these are despised by those who despise all good learning. During the last two years, apart from much else, I have emended the _Letters_ of St. Jerome, obelizing what was false and spurious and explaining the obscure passages with notes. I have corrected the whole of the New Testament from collations of the Greek and ancient manuscripts, and have annotated more than a thousand passages, not without some benefit to theologians. I have begun commentaries on the _Epistles_ of St. Paul, which I shall complete when I have published these. For I have resolved to live and die in the study of the Scriptures. I make these my work and my leisure. Men of consequence say that I can do what others cannot in this field; in your mode of life I shall be able to do nothing. Although I have been intimate with so many grave and learned men, here and in Italy and France, I have not yet found anyone who advised me to return to you or thought this the better course. Nay, even Nicholas Werner of blessed memory, your predecessor, would always dissuade me from this, advising me to attach myself rather to some bishop; he would add that he knew my mind and his little brothers' ways: those were the words he used, in the vernacular. In the life I live now I see what I should avoid, but do not see what would be a better course.

It now remains to satisfy you on the question of my dress. I have always up to now worn the canon's dress, and when I was at Louvain I obtained permission from the Bishop of Utrecht to wear a linen scapular instead of a complete linen garment, and a black capuce instead of a black cloak, after the Parisian custom. But on my journey to Italy, seeing the monks all along the way wearing a black garment with a scapular, I there took to wearing black, with a scapular, to avoid giving offence by any unusual dress. Afterwards the plague broke out at Bologna, and there those who nurse the sick of the plague customarily wear a white linen cloth depending from the shoulder--these avoid contact with people. Consequently when one day I went to call on a learned friend some rascals drew their swords and were preparing to set about me, and would have done so, had not a certain matron warned them that I was an ecclesiastic. Again the next day, when I was on my way to visit the Treasurer's sons, they rushed at me with bludgeons from all directions and attacked me with horrible cries. So on the advice of good men I concealed my scapular, and obtained a dispensation from Pope Julius II allowing me to wear the religious dress or not, as seemed good, provided that I wore clerical garb; and in this document he condoned any previous offences in the matter. In Italy I continued to wear clerical garb, lest the change cause offence to anyone. On my return to England I decided to wear my usual dress, and I invited to my lodging a friend of excellent repute for his learning and mode of life and showed him the dress I had decided to wear; I asked him whether this was suitable in England. He approved, so I appeared in public in this dress. I was at once warned by other friends that this dress could not be tolerated in England, that I had better conceal it. I did so; and as it cannot be concealed without causing scandal if it is eventually discovered, I stored it away in a box, and up to now have taken advantage of the Papal dispensation received formerly. Ecclesiastical law excommunicates anyone who casts off the religious habit so as to move more freely in secular society. I put it off under compulsion in Italy, to escape being killed; and likewise under compulsion in England, because it was not tolerated there, although myself I should much prefer to have worn it. To adopt it again now would cause more scandal than did the change itself.

There you have an account of my whole life, there you have my plans. I should like to change even this present mode of life, if I see a better. But I do not see what I am to do in Holland. I know that the climate and way of living will not agree with me; I shall have everyone looking at me. I shall return a white-haired old man, having gone away as a youth--I shall return a valetudinarian; I shall be exposed to the contempt of the lowest, used as I am to the respect of the highest. I shall exchange my studies for drinking-parties. As to your promising me your help in finding me a place where I can live with an excellent income, as you write, I cannot conjecture what this can be, unless perhaps you intend to place me among some community of nuns, to serve women--I who have never been willing to serve kings nor archbishops. I want no pay; I have no desire for riches, if only I have money enough to provide for my health and my literary leisure, to enable me to live without burdening anyone. I wish we could discuss these things together face to face; it cannot be done in a letter conveniently or safely. Your letter, although it was sent by most reliable persons, went so far astray that if I had not accidentally come to this castle I should never have seen it; and many people had looked at it before I received it. So do not mention anything secret unless you know for certain where I am and have a very trustworthy messenger. I am now on my way to Germany, that is, Basle, to have my works published, and this winter I shall perhaps be in Rome. On my return journey I shall see to it that we meet and talk somewhere. But now the summer is nearly over and it is a long journey. Farewell, once my sweetest comrade, now my esteemed father.

XI. TO WOLFGANG FABRICIUS CAPITO[58]

Antwerp, 26 February 1516/17

To the distinguished theologian Wolfgang Fabricius Capito of Hagenau, skilled in the three languages, greetings:

... Now that I see that the mightiest princes of the earth, King Francis of France, Charles the Catholic King, King Henry of England and the Emperor Maximilian have drastically cut down all warlike preparations and concluded a firm and, I hope, unbreakable treaty of peace, I feel entitled to hope with confidence that not only the moral virtues and Christian piety but also the true learning, purified of corruption, and the fine disciplines will revive and blossom forth; particularly as this aim is being prosecuted with equal zeal in different parts of the world, in Rome by Pope Leo, in Spain by the Cardinal of Toledo,[59] in England by King Henry VIII, himself no mean scholar, here by King Charles, a young man admirably gifted, in France by King Francis, a man as it were born for this task, who besides offers splendid rewards to attract and entice men distinguished for virtue and learning from all parts, in Germany by many excellent princes and bishops and above all by the Emperor Maximilian, who, wearied in his old age of all these wars, has resolved to find rest in the arts of peace: a resolve at once more becoming to himself at his age and more fortunate for Christendom. It is to these men's piety then that we owe it that all over the world, as if on a given signal, splendid talents are stirring and awakening and conspiring together to revive the best learning. For what else is this but a conspiracy, when all these great scholars from different lands share out the work among themselves and set about this noble task, not merely with enthusiasm but with a fair measure of success, so that we have an almost certain prospect of seeing all disciplines emerge once more into the light of day in a far purer and more genuine form? In the first place polite letters, for long reduced almost to extinction, are being taken up and cultivated by the Scots, the Danes and the Irish. As for medicine, how many champions has she found! Nicholas Leonicenus[60] in Rome, Ambrose Leo of Nola[61] at Venice, William Cop[62] and John Ruell[63] in France, and Thomas Linacre in England. Roman law is being revived in Paris by William Budaeus[64] and in Germany by Ulrich Zasius,[65] mathematics at Basle by Henry Glareanus.[66]

In theology there was more to do, for up till now its professors have almost always been men with an ingrained loathing for good learning, men who conceal their ignorance the more successfully as they do this on what they call a religious pretext, so that the ignorant herd is persuaded by them to believe it a violation of religion if anyone proceeds to attack their barbarism; for they prefer to wail for help to the uneducated mob and incite it to stone-throwing if they see any danger of their ignorance on any point coming to light. But I am confident that here, too, all will go well as soon as the knowledge of the three languages [Greek, Latin and Hebrew] becomes accepted publicly in the schools, as it has begun to be.... The humblest share in this work has fallen on me, as is fitting; I know not whether I have contributed anything of value; at all events I have infuriated those who do not want the world to come to its senses, so that it seems as if my poor efforts also have not been ineffective: although I have not undertaken the work in the belief that, I could teach anything magnificent, but I wanted to open a road for others, destined to attempt greater things, that they might with greater ease ascend the shining heights without running into so many rough and quaggy places. Yet this humble diligence of mine is not disdained by the honest and learned, and none complain of it but a few so stupid that they are hissed off the stage by even ordinary persons of any intelligence. Here not long ago someone complained tearfully before the people, in a sermon of course, that it was all over with the Scriptures and the theologians who had hitherto upheld the Christian faith on their shoulders, now that men had arisen to emend the Holy Gospel and the very words of Our Lord: just as if I was rebuking Matthew or Luke instead of those whose ignorance or negligence had corrupted what they wrote correctly. In England one or two persons complain loudly that it is a shameful thing that _I_ should dare to teach a great man like St. Jerome: as if I had changed what St. Jerome wrote, instead of restoring it!

Yet those who snarl out suchlike dirges, which any laundryman with a little sense would scoff at, think themselves great theologians ... Not that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. It will not weaken the authority of the Scriptures or theologians if certain passages hitherto considered corrupt are henceforth read in an emended form, or if passages are more correctly understood on which up till now the mass of theologians have entertained delusions: no, it will give greater weight to their authority, the more genuine their understanding of the Scriptures. I have sustained the shock of the first meeting, which Terence calls the sharpest.... One doubt still troubles me; I fear that under cover of the rebirth of ancient learning paganism may seek to rear its head, as even among Christians there are those who acknowledge Christ in name only, but in their hearts are Gentiles; or that with the renascence of Hebrew studies Judaism may seek to use this opportunity of revival; and there can be nothing more contrary or more hostile to the teaching of Christ than this plague. This is the nature of human affairs--nothing good has ever so flourished but some evil has attempted to use it as a pretext for insinuating itself. I could wish that those dreary quibblings could be either done away with or at least cease to be the sole activity of theologians, and that the simplicity and purity of Christ could penetrate deeply into the minds of men; and this I think can best be brought to pass if with the help provided by the three languages we exercise our minds in the actual sources. But I pray that we may avoid this evil without falling into another perhaps graver error. Recently several pamphlets have been published reeking of unadulterated Judaism.

XII. TO THOMAS MORE

Louvain, 5 March 1518

To his friend More, greeting:

... First of all I ask you to entrust to the bearer, my servant John, any letters of mine or yours which you consider fit for publication with the alteration of some passages; I am simply compelled to publish my letters whether I like it or not. Send off the lad so that he returns here as quickly as possible. If you discover that Urswick is ill-disposed towards me perhaps he should not be troubled; otherwise, help me in the matter of a horse--I shall need one just now when I am about to go to Basle or Venice, chiefly for the purpose of bringing out the New Testament.[67] Such is my fate, dear More. I shall enact this part of my play also. Afterwards, I almost feel inclined to sing 'for myself and the Muses'; my age and my health, which grows daily worse, almost require this. Over here scoundrels in disguise are so all-powerful, and no one here makes money but innkeepers, advocates, and begging friars. It is unendurable when many speak ill and none do good.

At Basle they make the elegant preface added by Budaeus the excuse for the delay over your Utopia. They have now received it and have started on the work. Then Froben's father-in-law Lachner died. But Froben's press will be sweating over our studies none the less. I have not yet had a chance of seeing Linacre's _Therapeutice_,[68] through some conspiracy of the Parisians against me. Inquire courteously of Lupset on the Appendix[69] to my _Copia_ and send it.

The Pope and the princes are up to some new tricks on the pretext of the savagery of the war against the Turks. Wretched Turks! May we Christians not be too cruel! Even wives are affected. All married men between the ages of twenty-six and fifty will be compelled to take up arms. Meanwhile the Pope forbids the wives of men absent at the war to indulge in pleasure at home; they are to eschew elegant apparel, must not wear silk, gold or any jewellery, must not touch rouge or drink wine, and must fast every other day, that God may favour their husbands engaged in this cruel war. If there are men tied at home by necessary business, their wives must none the less observe the same rules as they would have had to observe if their husbands had gone to the war. They are to sleep in the same room but in different beds; and not a kiss is to be given meanwhile until this terrible war reaches a successful conclusion under Christ's favour. I know that these enactments will irritate wives who do not sufficiently ponder the importance of the business; though I know that your wife, sensible as she is, and obedient in regard to a matter of Christian observance, will even be glad to obey.

I send Pace's pamphlet, the _Conclusions on Papal Indulgences_,[70] and the _Proposal for Undertaking a War against the Turks_,[71] as I suspect that they have not yet reached England. They write from Cologne that some pamphlet about an argument between Julius and Peter at the gates of Paradise[72] has now been printed; they do not add the author's name. The German presses will not cease from their mad pranks until their rashness is restrained by some law; this does me much harm, who am endeavouring to help the world....

I beg you to let my servant sleep one or two nights with yours, to prevent his chancing on an infected house, and to afford him anything he may need, although I have supplied him with travelling money myself. I have at last seen the _Utopia_ at Paris printed, but with many misprints. It is now in the press at Basle; I had threatened to break with them unless they took more trouble with that business than with mine. Farewell, most sincere of friends.

XIII. TO BEATUS RHENANUS[73]

Louvain [_c._ 15 October] 1518

To his friend Rhenanus, greetings:

... Let me describe to you, my dear Beatus, the whole tragi-comedy of my journey. I was still weak and listless, as you know, when I left Basle, not having come to terms with the climate, after skulking at home so long, and occupied in uninterrupted labors at that. The river voyage was not unpleasant, but that around midday the heat of the sun was somewhat trying. We had a meal at Breisach, the most unpleasant meal I have ever had. The smell of food nearly finished me, and then the flies, worse than the smell. We sat at table doing nothing for more than half an hour, waiting for them to produce their banquet, if you please. In the end nothing fit to eat was served; filthy porridge with lumps in it and salt fish reheated not for the first time, enough to make one sick. I did not call on Gallinarius. The man who brought word that he was suffering from a slight fever also told me a pretty story; that Minorite theologian with whom I had disputed about _heceitas_[74] had taken it on himself to pawn the church chalices. Scotist ingenuity! Just before nightfall we were put out at a dull village; I did not feel like discovering its name, and if I knew I should not care to tell you it. I nearly perished there. We had supper in a small room like a sweating-chamber, more than sixty of us, I should say, an indiscriminate collection of rapscallions, and this went on till nearly ten o'clock; oh, the stench, and the noise, particularly after they had become intoxicated! Yet we had to remain sitting to suit their clocks.

In the morning while it was still quite dark we were driven from bed by the shouting of the sailors. I went on board without having either supped or slept. We reached Strasbourg before lunch, at about nine o'clock; there we had a more comfortable reception, particularly as Schürer produced some wine. Some of the Society[75] were there, and afterwards they all came to greet me, Gerbel outdoing all the rest in politeness. Gebwiler and Rudolfingen did not want me to pay, no new thing with them. Thence we proceeded on horseback as far as Speyer; we saw no sign of soldiers anywhere, although there had been alarming rumours. The English horse completely collapsed and hardly got to Speyer; that criminal smith had handled him so badly that he ought to have both his ears branded with red-hot iron. At Speyer I slipped away from the inn and took myself to my neighbour Maternus. There Decanus, a learned and cultivated man, entertained me courteously and agreeably for two days. Here I accidentally found Hermann Busch.

From Speyer I travelled by carriage to Worms, and from there again to Mainz. There was an Imperial secretary, Ulrich Varnbüler,[76] travelling by chance in the same carriage. He devoted himself to me with incredible assiduity over the whole journey, and at Mainz would not allow me to go into the inn but took me to the house of a canon; on my departure he accompanied me to the boat. The voyage was not unpleasant as the weather was fine, excepting that the crew took care to make it somewhat long; in addition to this the stench of the horses incommoded me. For the first day John Langenfeld, who formerly taught at Louvain, and a lawyer friend of his came with me as a mark of politeness. There was also a Westphalian, John, a canon at St. Victor's outside Mainz, a most agreeable and entertaining man.

After arriving at Boppard, as I was taking a walk along the bank while a boat was being procured, someone recognized me and betrayed me to the customs officer, 'That is the man.' The customs officer's name is, if I mistake not, Christopher Cinicampius, in the common speech Eschenfelder. You would not believe how the man jumped for joy. He dragged me into his house. Books by Erasmus were lying on a small table amongst the customs agreements. He exclaimed at his good fortune and called in his wife and children and all his friends. Meanwhile he sent out to the sailors who were calling for me two tankards of wine, and another two when they called out again, promising that when he came back he would remit the toll to the man who had brought him a man like myself. From Boppard John Flaminius, chaplain to the nuns there, a man of angelic purity, of sane and sober judgement and no common learning, accompanied me as far as Coblenz. At Coblenz Matthias, Chancellor to the Bishop, swept us off to his house--he is a young man but of staid manners, and has an accurate knowledge of Latin, besides being a skilled lawyer. There we supped merrily.

At Bonn the canon left us, to avoid Cologne: I wanted to avoid Cologne myself, but the servant had preceded me thither with the horses, and there was no reliable person in the boat whom I could have charged with the business of calling back my servant; I did not trust the sailors. So we docked at Cologne before six o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, the weather being by now pestilential. I went into an inn and gave orders to the ostlers to hire me a carriage and pair, ordering a meal to be made ready by ten o'clock. I attended Divine Service, the lunch was delayed. I had no luck with the carriage and pair. I tried to hire a horse; my own were useless. Everything failed. I realized what was up; they were trying to make me stop there. I immediately ordered my horses to be harnessed, and one bag to be loaded; the other bag I entrusted to the innkeeper, and on my lame horse rode quickly to the Count of Neuenahr's[77]--a five-hour journey. He was staying at Bedburg.

With the Count I stayed five days very pleasantly, in such peace and quiet that while staying with him I completed a good part of the revision--I had taken that part of the New Testament with me. Would that you knew him, my dear Beatus! He is a young man but of rare good sense, more than you would find in an old man; he speaks little, but as Homer says of Menelaus, he speaks 'in clear tones,' and intelligently too; he is learned without pretentiousness in more than one branch of study, wholly sincere and a good friend. By now I was strong and lusty, and well pleased with myself, and was hoping to be in a good state when I visited the Bishop of Liége and to return hale and hearty to my friends in Brabant. What dinner-parties, what felicitations, what discussions I promised myself! But ah, deceptive human hopes! ah, the sudden and unexpected vicissitudes of human affairs! From these high dreams of happiness I was hurled to the depths of misfortune.

I had hired a carriage and pair for the next day. My companion, not wanting to say goodbye before night, announced that he would see me in the morning before my departure. That night a wild hurricane sprang up, which had passed before the next morning. Nevertheless I rose after midnight, to make some notes for the Count: when it was already seven o'clock and the Count did not emerge, I asked for him to be waked. He came, and in his customary shy and modest way asked me whether I meant to leave in such bad weather, saying he was afraid for me. At that point, my dear Beatus, some god or bad angel deprived me, not of the half of my senses, as Hesiod says, but of the whole: for he had deprived me of half my senses when I risked going to Cologne. I wish that either my friend had warned me more sharply or that I had paid more attention to his most affectionate remonstrances! I was seized by the power of fate: what else am I to say? I climbed into an uncovered carriage, the wind blowing 'strong as when in the high mountains it shivers the trembling holm-oaks.' It was a south wind and blowing like the very pest. I thought I was well protected by my wrappings, but it went through everything with its violence. Towards nightfall a light rain came on, more noxious than the wind that preceded it: I arrived at Aachen exhausted from the shaking of the carriage, which was so trying to me on the stone-paved road that I should have preferred sitting on my horse, lame as he was. Here I was carried off from the inn by a canon, to whom the Count had recommended me, to Suderman's house. There several canons were holding their usual drinking-party. My appetite had been sharpened by a very light lunch; but at the time they had nothing by them but carp, and cold carp at that. I ate to repletion. The drinking went on well into the night. I excused myself and went to bed, as I had had very little sleep the night before.

On the following day I was taken to the Vice-Provost's house; it was his turn to offer hospitality. As there was no fish there apart from eel
(this was certainly the fault of the storm, as he is a magnificent host otherwise) I lunched off a fish dried in the open air, which the Germans call _Stockfisch_, from the rod used to beat it--it is a fish which I enjoy at other times: but I discovered that part of this one had not been properly cured. After lunch, as the weather was appalling, I took myself off to the inn and ordered a fire to be lit. The canon whom I mentioned, a most cultured man, stayed talking with me for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile I began to feel very uncomfortable inside; as this continued, I sent him away and went to the privy. As this gave my stomach no relief I inserted my finger into my mouth, and the uncured fish came up, but that was all. I lay down afterwards, not so much sleeping as resting, without any pain in my head or body; then, having struck a bargain with the coachman over the bags, I received an invitation to the evening compotation. I excused myself, without success. I knew that my stomach would not stand anything but a few sups of warmed liquor.... On this occasion there was a magnificent spread, but it was wasted on me. After comforting my stomach with a sup of wine, I went home; I was sleeping at Suderman's house. As soon as I went out of doors my empty body shivered fearfully in the night air.

On the morning of the next day, after taking a little warmed ale and a few morsels of bread, I mounted my horse, who was lame and ailing, which made riding more uncomfortable. By now I was in such a state that I would have been better keeping warm in bed than mounted on horseback. But that district is the most countrified, roughest, barren and unattractive imaginable, the inhabitants are so idle; so that I preferred to run away. The danger of brigands--it was very great in those parts--or at least my fear of them, was driven out of my mind by the discomfort of my illness.... After covering four miles on this ride I reached Maastricht. There after a drink to soothe my stomach I remounted and came to Tongres, about three miles away. This last ride was by far the most painful to me. The awkward gait of the horse gave me excruciating pains in the kidneys. It would have been easier to walk, but I was afraid of sweating, and there was a danger of the night catching us still out in the country. So I reached Tongres with my whole body in a state of unbelievable agony. By now, owing to lack of food and the exertion in addition, all my muscles had given way, so that I could not stand or walk steadily. I concealed the severity of my illness by my tongue--that was still working. Here I took a sup of ale to soothe my stomach and retired to bed.

In the morning I ordered them to hire a carriage. I decided to go on horseback, on account of the paving stones, until we reached an unpaved road. I mounted the bigger horse, thinking that he would go better on the paving and be more sure-footed. I had hardly mounted when I felt my eyes clouding over as I met the cold air, and asked for a cloak. But soon after this I fainted; I could be roused by a touch. Then my servant John and the others standing by let me come to myself naturally, still sitting on the horse. After coming to myself I got into the carriage.... By now we were approaching the town of St. Trond. I mounted once more, not to appear an invalid, riding in a carriage. Once again the evening air made me feel sick, but I did not faint. I offered the coachman double the fare if he would take me the next day as far as Tirlemont, a town six miles from Tongres. He accepted the terms. Here a guest whom I knew told me how ill the Bishop of Liége had taken my leaving for Basle without calling on him. After soothing my stomach with a drink I went to bed, and had a very bad night.... Here by chance I found a coach going to Louvain, six miles away, and threw myself into it. I made the journey in incredible and almost unendurable discomfort; however we reached Louvain by seven o'clock on that day.

I had no intention of going to my own room, whether because I had a suspicion that all would be cold there, or that I did not want to run the risk of interfering with the amenities of the College in any way, if I started a rumour of the plague. I went to Theodoric the printer's.... During the night a large ulcer broke without my feeling it, and the pain had died down. The next day I called a surgeon. He applied poultices. A third ulcer had appeared on my back, caused by a servant at Tongres when he was anointing me with oil of roses for the pain in the kidneys and rubbed one of my ribs too hard with a horny finger.... The surgeon on his way out told Theodoric and his servant secretly that it was the plague; he would send poultices, but would not come to see me himself.... When the surgeon failed to return after a day or two, I asked Theodoric the reason. He made some excuse. But I, suspecting what the matter was, said 'What, does he think it is the plague?' 'Precisely,' said he, 'he insists that you have three plague-sores.' I laughed, and did not allow myself even to imagine that I had the plague. After some days the surgeon's father came, examined me, and assured me that it was the true plague. Even so, I could not be convinced. I secretly sent for another doctor who had a great reputation. He examined me, and being something of a clown said, 'I should not be afraid to sleep with you--and make love to you too, if you were a woman....' [Still another doctor is summoned but does not return as promised, sending his servant instead.] I dismissed the man and losing my temper with the doctors, commended myself to Christ as my doctor.

My appetite came back within three days.... I then immediately returned to my studies and completed what was still wanting to my New Testament.... I had given orders as soon as I arrived that no one was to visit me unless summoned by name, lest I should frighten anyone or suffer inconvenience from anyone's assiduity; but Dorp forced his way in first of all, then Ath. Mark Laurin and Paschasius Berselius, who came every day, did much to make me well with their delightful company.

My dear Beatus, who would have believed that this meagre delicate body of mine, weakened now by age also, could have succeeded, after all the troubles of travel and all my studious exertions, in standing up to all these physical ills as well? You know how ill I was not long ago at Basle, more than once. I was beginning to suspect that that year would be fatal to me: illness followed illness, always more severe. But, at the very time when this illness was at its height, I felt no torturing desire to live and no trepidation at the fear of death. My whole hope was in Christ alone, and I prayed only that he would give me what he judged most salutary for me. In my youth long ago, as I remember, I would shiver at the very name of death. This at least I have achieved as I have grown older, that I do not greatly fear death, and I do not measure man's happiness by number of days. I have passed my fiftieth year; as so few out of so many reach this age, I cannot rightly complain that I have not lived long enough. And then, if this has any relevance, I have by now already prepared a monument to bear witness to posterity that I have lived. And perhaps if, as the poets tell, jealousy falls silent after death, fame will shine out the more brightly: although it ill becomes a Christian heart to be moved by human glory; may I have the glory of pleasing Christ! Farewell, my dearest Beatus. The rest you will learn from my letter to Capito.

XIV. TO MARTIN LUTHER

Louvain, 30 May 1519

Best greetings, most beloved brother in Christ. Your letter was most welcome to me, displaying a shrewd wit and breathing a Christian spirit.

I could never find words to express what commotions your books have brought about here. They cannot even now eradicate from their minds the most false suspicion that your works were composed with my aid, and that I am the standard-bearer of this party, as they call it. They thought that they had found a handle wherewith to crush good learning--which they mortally detest as threatening to dim the majesty of theology, a thing they value far above Christ--and at the same time to crush me, whom they consider as having some influence on the revival of studies. The whole affair was conducted with such clamourings, wild talk, trickery, detraction and cunning that, had I not been present and witnessed, nay, _felt_ all this, I should never have taken any man's word for it that theologians could act so madly. You would have thought it some mortal plague. And yet the poison of this evil beginning with a few has spread so far abroad that a great part of this University was running mad with the infection of this not uncommon disease.

I declared that you were quite unknown to me, that I had not yet read your books, and accordingly neither approved nor disapproved of anything in them. I only warned them not to clamour before the populace in so hateful a manner without having yet read your books: this matter was _their_ concern, whose judgement should carry the greatest weight. Further I begged them to consider also whether it were expedient to traduce before a mixed multitude views which were more properly refuted in books or discussed between educated persons, particularly as the author's way of life was extolled by one and all. I failed miserably; up to this day they continue to rave in their insinuating, nay, slanderous disputations. How often have we agreed to make peace! How often have they stirred up new commotions from some rashly conceived shred of suspicion! And these men think themselves theologians! Theologians are not liked in Court circles here; this too they put down to me. The bishops all favour me greatly. These men put no trust in books, their hope of victory is based on cunning alone. I disdain them, relying on my knowledge that I am in the right. They are becoming a little milder towards yourself. They fear my pen, because of their bad conscience; and I would indeed paint them in their true colours, as they deserve, did not Christ's teaching and example summon me elsewhere. Wild beasts can be tamed by kindness, which makes these men wild.

There are persons in England, and they in the highest positions, who think very well of your writings. Here, too, there are people, among them the Bishop of Liége, who favour your followers. As for me, I keep myself as far as possible neutral, the better to assist the new flowering of good learning; and it seems to me that more can be done by unassuming courteousness than by violence. It was thus that Christ brought the world under His sway, and thus that Paul made away with the Jewish Law, by interpreting all things allegorically. It is wiser to cry out against those who abuse the Popes' authority than against the Popes themselves: and I think that we should act in the same way with the Kings. As for the schools, we should not so much reject them as recall them to more reasonable studies. Where things are too generally accepted to be suddenly eradicated from men's minds, we must argue with repeated and efficacious proofs and not make positive assertions. The poisonous contentions of certain persons are better ignored than refuted. We must everywhere take care never to speak or act arrogantly or in a party spirit: this I believe is pleasing to the spirit of Christ. Meanwhile we must preserve our minds from being seduced by anger, hatred or ambition; these feelings are apt to lie in wait for us in the midst of our strivings after piety.

I am not advising you to do this, but only to continue doing what you are doing. I have looked into your Commentaries on the Psalms;[78] I am delighted with them, and hope that they will do much good. At Antwerp we have the Prior of the Monastery,[79] a Christian without spot, who loves you exceedingly, an old pupil of yours as he says. He is almost alone of them all in preaching Christ: the others preach human trivialities or their own gain.

I have written to Melanchthon. The Lord Jesus impart you His spirit each day more bountifully, to His own glory and the good of all. I had not your letter at hand when writing this.

XV. TO ULRICH HUTTEN[80]

Antwerp, 23 July 1519

To the illustrious knight Ulrich Hutten, greetings:

... As to your demand for a complete portrait, as it were, of More, would that I could execute it with a perfection to match the intensity of your desire! It will be a pleasure, for me as well, to dwell for a space on the contemplation of by far the sweetest friend of all. But in the first place, it is not given to every man to explore all More's gifts. And then I wonder whether he will tolerate being depicted by an indifferent artist; for I think it no less a task to portray More than it would be to portray Alexander the Great or Achilles, and they were no more deserving of immortality than he is. Such a subject requires in short the pencil of an Apelles; but I fear that I am more like Horace's gladiators[81] than Apelles. Nevertheless, I shall try to sketch you an image rather than a full portrait of the whole man, so far as my observation or recollection from long association with him in his home has made this possible. If ever you meet him on some embassy you will then for the first time understand how unskilled an artist you have chosen for this commission; and I am downright afraid of your accusing me of jealousy or blindness, that out of so many excellences so few have been perceived by my poor sight or recorded by my jealousy.

But to begin with that side of More of which you know nothing, in height and stature he is not tall, nor again noticeably short, but there is such symmetry in all his limbs as leaves nothing to be desired here. He has a fair skin, his complexion glowing rather than pale, though far from ruddy, but for a very faint rosiness shining through. His hair is of a darkish blond, or if you will, a lightish brown, his beard scanty, his eyes bluish grey, with flecks here and there: this usually denotes a happy nature and is also thought attractive by the English, whereas we are more taken by dark eyes. It is said that no type of eyes is less subject to defects. His expression corresponds to his character, always showing a pleasant and friendly gaiety, and rather set in a smiling look; and, to speak honestly, better suited to merriment than to seriousness and solemnity, though far removed from silliness or buffoonery. His right shoulder seems a little higher than the left, particularly when he is walking: this is not natural to him but due to force of habit, like many of the little habits which we pick up. There is nothing to strike one in the rest of his body; only his hands are somewhat clumsy, but only when compared with the rest of his appearance. He has always from a boy been very careless of everything to do with personal adornment, to the point of not greatly caring for those things which according to Ovid's teaching should be the sole care of men. One can tell even now, from his appearance in maturity, how handsome he must have been as a young man: although when I first came to know him he was not more than three and twenty years old, for he is now barely forty.[82]

His health is not so much robust as satisfactory, but equal to all tasks becoming an honourable citizen, subject to no, or at least very few, diseases: there is every prospect of his living long, as he has a father of great age[83]--but a wondrously fresh and green old age. I have never yet seen anyone less fastidious in his choice of food. Until he grew up he liked water to drink; in this he took after his father. But so as to avoid irritating anyone over this, he would deceive his comrades by drinking from a pewter pot ale that was very nearly all water, often pure water. Wine--the custom in England is to invite each other to drink from the same goblet--he would often sip with his lips, not to give the appearance of disliking it, and at the same time to accustom himself to common ways. He preferred beef, salt fish, and bread of the second quality, well risen, to the foods commonly regarded as delicacies: otherwise he was by no means averse to all sources of innocent pleasure, even to the appetite. He has always had a great liking for milk foods and fruit: he enjoys eating eggs. His voice is neither strong nor at all weak, but easily audible, by no means soft or melodious, but the voice of a clear speaker; for he seems to have no natural gift for vocal music, although he delights in every kind of music. His speech is wonderfully clear and distinct, with no trace of haste or hesitation.

He likes to dress simply and does not wear silk or purple or gold chains, excepting where it would not be decent not to wear them. It is strange how careless he is of the formalities by which the vulgar judge good manners. He neither insists on these from any, nor does he anxiously force them on others whether at meetings or at entertainments, although he knows them well enough, should he choose to indulge in them; but he considers it effeminate and not becoming masculine dignity to waste a good part of one's time in suchlike inanities.

Formerly he disliked Court life and the company of princes, for the reason that he has always had a peculiar loathing for tyranny, just as he has always loved equality. (Now you will hardly find any court so modest that has not about it much noisy ostentation, dissimulation and luxury, while yet being quite free of any kind of tyranny.) Indeed it was only with great difficulty that he could be dragged into the Court of Henry VIII, although nothing more courteous and unassuming than this prince could be desired. He is by nature somewhat greedy of independence and leisure; but while he gladly takes advantage of leisure when it comes his way, none is more careful or patient whenever business demands it.

He seems born and created for friendship, which he cultivates most sincerely and fosters most steadfastly. He is not one to be afraid of the 'abundance of friends' which Hesiod does not approve; he is ready to enter into friendly relations with any. He is in no way fastidious in choosing friends, accommodating in maintaining them, constant in keeping them. If he chances on anyone whose defects he cannot mend, he dismisses him when the opportunity offers, not breaking but gradually dissolving the friendship. Whenever he finds any sincere and suited to his disposition he so delights in their company and conversation that he appears to make this his chief pleasure in life. He loathes ball-games, cards and gambling, and the other games with which the ordinary run of men of rank are used to kill time. Furthermore, while he is somewhat careless of his own affairs, there is none more diligent in looking after his friends' affairs. Need I continue? Should anyone want a finished example of true friendship he could not do better than seek it in More.

In social intercourse he is of so rare a courtesy and charm of manners that there is no man so melancholy that he does not gladden, no subject so forbidding that he does not dispel the tedium of it. From his boyhood he has loved joking, so that he might seem born for this, but in his jokes he has never descended to buffoonery, and has never loved the biting jest. As a youth he both composed and acted in little comedies. Any witty remark he would still enjoy, even were it directed against himself, such is his delight in clever sallies of ingenious flavour. As a result he wrote epigrams as a young man, and delighted particularly in Lucian; indeed he was responsible for my writing the _Praise of Folly_, that is for making the camel dance.

In human relations he looks for pleasure in everything he comes across, even in the gravest matters. If he has to do with intelligent and educated men, he takes pleasure in their brilliance; if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their folly. He is not put out by perfect fools, and suits himself with marvellous dexterity to all men's feelings. For women generally, even for his wife, he has nothing but jests and merriment. You could say he was a second Democritus, or better, that Pythagorean philosopher who saunters through the market-place with a tranquil mind gazing on the uproar of buyers and sellers. None is less guided by the opinion of the herd, but again none is less remote from the common feelings of humanity.

He takes an especial pleasure in watching the appearance, characters and behaviour of various creatures; accordingly there is almost no kind of bird which he does not keep at his home, and various other animals not commonly found, such as apes, foxes, ferrets, weasels and their like. Added to this, he eagerly buys anything foreign or otherwise worth looking at which comes his way, and he has the whole house stocked with these objects, so that wherever the visitor looks there is something to detain him; and his own pleasure is renewed whenever he sees others enjoying these sights.

When he was of an age for it, he was not averse to love-affairs with young women, but kept them honourable, preferring the love that was offered to that which he must chase after, and was more drawn by spiritual than by physical intercourse.

He had devoured classical literature from his earliest years. As a lad he applied himself to the study of Greek literature and philosophy; his father, so far from helping him (although he is otherwise a good and sensible man), deprived him of all support in this endeavour; and he was almost regarded as disowned, because he seemed to be deserting his father's studies--the father's profession is English jurisprudence. This profession is quite unconnected with true learning, but in Britain those who have made themselves authorities in it are particularly highly regarded, and this is there considered the most suitable road to fame, since most of the nobility of that island owe their origin to this branch of study. It is said that none can become perfect in it without many years of hard work. So, although the young man's mind born for better things not unreasonably revolted from it, nevertheless, after sampling the scholastic disciplines he worked at the law with such success that none was more gladly consulted by litigants, and he made a better living at it than any of those who did nothing else, so quick and powerful was his intellect.

He also devoted much strenuous attention to studying the ecclesiastical writers. He lectured publicly to a crowded audience on Augustine's _City of God_ while still little more than a lad; and priests and elderly men were neither sorry nor ashamed to learn sacred matters from a youthful layman. For a time he gave his whole mind to the study of piety, practising himself for the priesthood in watchings, fastings and prayer, and other like preliminary exercises; in which matter he was far more sensible than most of those who rashly hurl themselves into this arduous calling without having previously made any trial of themselves. The only obstacle to his devoting himself to this mode of life was his inability to shake off his longing for a wife. He therefore chose to be a chaste husband rather than an unchaste priest.

Still, he married a girl,[84] as yet very young, of good family, but still untrained--she had always lived in the country with her parents and sisters--so that he could better fashion her to his own ways. He had her taught literature and made her skilled in all kinds of music; and he had really almost made her such as he would have cared to spend all his life with, had not an untimely death carried her off while still a girl, but after she had borne him several children: of whom there survive three girls, Margaret, Alice[85] and Cecily, and one boy, John. He would not endure to live long a widower, although his friends counselled otherwise. Within a few months of his wife's death he married a widow,[86] more for the care of the household than for his pleasure, as she was not precisely beautiful nor, as he jokingly says himself, a girl, but a keen and watchful housewife;[87] with whom he yet lives as pleasantly and agreeably as if she were a most charming young girl. Hardly any husband gets so much obedience from his wife by stern orders as he does by jests and cajolery. How could he fail to do so, after having induced a woman on the verge of old age, also by no means a docile character, and lastly most attentive to her business, to learn to play the cithern, the lute, the monochord and the recorders, and perform a daily prescribed exercise in this at her husband's wish?

[Illustration: XXIX. SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS FAMILY, 1527]

He rules his whole household as agreeably, no quarrels or disturbances arise there. If any quarrel does arise he at once heals or settles the difference; and he has never let anyone leave his house in anger. His house seems blest indeed with a lucky fate, for none has lived there without rising to better fortune, and none has ever acquired a stain on his reputation there. One would be hard put to it to find any agree as well with their mothers as he with his stepmother--his father had already given him two, and he loved both of them as truly as he loved his mother. Recently his father gave him a third stepmother: More swears his Bible oath he has never seen a better. Moreover, he is so disposed towards his parents and children as to be neither tiresomely affectionate nor ever failing in any family duty.

He has a mind altogether opposed to sordid gain. He has put aside from his fortune for his children an amount which he considers sufficient for them; the rest he gives away lavishly. While he still made his living at the Bar he gave sincere and friendly counsel to all, considering his clients' interests rather than his own; he would persuade most of them to settle their differences--this would be cheaper. If he failed to achieve this, he would then show them a method of going to law at the least possible expense--some people here are so minded that they actually enjoy litigation. In the City of London, where he was born, he acted for some years as a judge in civil causes.[88] This office is not at all onerous--the court sits only on Thursday mornings--but is regarded as one of the most honourable. None dealt with so many cases as he, nor behaved with such integrity; he usually remitted the charge customarily due from litigants (as before the formal entering of the suit the plaintiff pays into court three shillings, the defendant likewise, and it is incorrect to demand more). By this behaviour he won the deep affection of the City.

He had made up his mind to rest content with this position, which was sufficiently influential and yet not exposed to grave dangers. Twice he was forced into embassies; as he acted in these with great sagacity. King Henry VIII would not rest until he could drag More to Court. Why not call it 'drag'? No man ever worked so assiduously to gain admission to the Court as he studied to escape it. But when the King decided to fill his household with men of weight, learning, sagacity and integrity, More was one of the first among many summoned by him: he regards More so much as one of his intimate circle that he never lets him depart from him. If serious matters are to be discussed, there is none more skilled than he; or if the King decides to relax in pleasant gossiping, there is no merrier companion. Often difficult affairs require a weighty and sagacious arbitrator; More solves these matters with such success that both parties are grateful. Yet no one has ever succeeded in persuading him to accept a present from anyone. How happy the states would be if the ruler everywhere put magistrates like More in office! Meanwhile he has acquired no trace of haughtiness.

Amid all these official burdens he does not forget his old friends and from time to time returns to his beloved literature. All the authority of his office, all his influence with the King, is devoted to the service of the State and of his friends. His mind, eager to serve all and wondrously prone to pity, has ever been present to help: he will now be better able to help others, as he has greater power. Some he assists with money, some he protects with his authority, others he advances by introductions; those whom he cannot help otherwise he aids with counsel, and he has never sent anyone away disappointed. You might call More the common advocate of all those in need. He regards himself as greatly enriched when he assists the oppressed, extricates the perplexed and involved, or reconciles the estranged. None confers a benefit so gladly, none is so slow to upbraid. And although he is fortunate on so many counts, and good fortune is often associated with boastfulness, it has never yet been my lot to meet any man so far removed from this vice.

But I must return to recounting his studies--it was these which chiefly brought More and myself together. In his youth he chiefly practised verse composition, afterwards he worked hard and long to polish his prose, practising his style in all kinds of composition. What that style is like, I need not describe--particularly not to you, who always have his books in your hands. He especially delighted in composing declamations, and in these liked paradoxical themes, for the reason that this offers keener practice to the wits. This caused him, while still a youth, to compose a dialogue in which he defended Plato's Communism, even to the community of wives. He wrote a rejoinder to Lucian's _Tyrannicide_; in this theme he desired to have me as his antagonist, to make a surer trial of his progress in this branch of letters. His _Utopia_ was published with the aim of showing the causes of the bad condition of states; but was chiefly a portrait of the British State, which he has thoroughly studied and explored. He had written the second book first in his leisure hours, and added the first book on the spur of the moment later, when the occasion offered. Some of the unevenness of the style is due to this.

One could hardly find a better _ex tempore_ speaker: a happy talent has complete command of a happy turn of speech. He has a present wit, always flying ahead, and a ready memory; and having all this ready to hand, he can promptly and unhesitatingly produce whatever the subject or occasion requires. In arguments he is unimaginably acute, so that he often puzzles the best theologians on their own ground. John Colet, a man of keen and exact judgement, often observes in intimate conversation that Britain has only one genius: although this island is rich in so many fine talents.

[Illustration: XXX. ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 54]

He diligently cultivates true piety, while being remote from all superstitious observance. He has set hours in which he offers to God not the customary prayers but prayers from the heart. With his friends he talks of the life of the world to come so that one sees that he speaks sincerely and not without firm hope. Such is More even in the Court. And then there are those who think that Christians are to be found only in monasteries!... There you have a portrait not very well drawn by a very bad artist from a most excellent model. You will like it less if you happen to come to know More better. But for the time being I have prevented your being able to cast in my teeth my failure to obey you, and always accusing me of writing too short letters. Still, this did not seem long to me as I was writing it, and I know that you will not find it long drawn out as you read it: our friend More's charm will see to that. Farewell.

XVI. TO WILLIBALD PIRCKHEIMER[89]

Basle, 14 March 1525

To the illustrious Willibald Pirckheimer, greetings:

... I received safely the very pretty ring which you desired me to have as a memento of you. I know that gems are prized as bringing safety when one has a fall. But they say too, that if the fall was likely to be fatal, the evil is diverted on to the gem, so that it is seen to be broken after the accident. Once in Britain I fell with my horse from a fairly high bank: no damage was found to me or my horse, yet the gem I was wearing was whole. It was a present from Alexander, Archbishop of St. Andrews,[90] whom I think you know from my writings. When I left him at Siena, he drew it off his finger and handing it to me said: 'Take this as a pledge of our friendship that will never die.' And I kept my pledged faith with him even after his death, celebrating my friend's memory in my writings. There is no part of life into which magical superstition has not insinuated itself: if gems have some great virtue, I could have wished in these days for a ring with an efficacious remedy against 'slander's tooth.' As to the belief about falls, I shall follow your advice--I shall prefer to believe rather than risk myself.

Portraits are less precious than jewels--I have received from you a medallic and a painted portrait--but at least they bring my Willibald more vividly before me. Alexander the Great would only allow himself to be painted by Apelles's hand. You have found your Apelles in Albrecht Dürer,[91] an artist of the first rank and no less to be admired for his remarkable good sense. If only you had likewise found some Lysippus[92] to cast the medal! I have the medal of you on the righthand wall of my bedroom, the painting on the left; whether writing or walking up and down, I have Willibald before my eyes, so that if I wanted to forget you I could not. Though I have a more retentive memory for friends than for anything else. Certainly Willibald could not be forgotten by me, even were there no memento, no portraits, no letters to refresh my memory of him. There is another very pleasant thing--the portraits often occasion a talk about you when my friends come to visit me. If only our letters travelled safely, how little we should miss of each other! You have a medal of me. I should not object to having my portrait painted by Dürer,[93] that great artist; but how this can be done I do not see. Once at Brussels he sketched me, but after a start had been made the work was interrupted by callers from the Court. Though I have long been a sad model for painters, and am likely to become a sadder one still as the days go on.[94] I read with pleasure what you write, as witty as it is wise, on the agitations of certain persons who are destroying the evangelical movement, to which they imagine themselves to be doing splendid service: and I have much to tell you in my turn about this. But this will be another time, when I have more leisure. Farewell.

XVII. TO MARTIN LUTHER

Basle, 11 April 1526

To Martin Luther, greetings:

... Your letter has been delivered too late;[95] but had it arrived in the best of time, it would not have moved me one whit. I am not so simple as to be appeased by one or two pleasantries or soothed by flattery after receiving so many more than mortal wounds. Your nature is by now known to all the world, but you have so tempered your pen that never have you written against anyone so frenziedly, nay, what is more abominable, so maliciously. Now it occurs to you that you are a weak sinner, whereas at other times you insist almost on being taken for God. You are a man, as you write, of violent temperament, and you take pleasure in this remarkable argument. Why then did you not pour forth this marvellous piece of invective on the Bishop of Rochester[96] or on Cochleus?[97] They attack you personally and provoke you with insults, while my _Diatribe_[98] was a courteous disputation. And what has all this to do with the subject--all this facetious abuse, these slanderous lies, charging me with atheism, Epicureanism, scepticism in articles of the Christian profession, blasphemy, and what not--besides many other points on which I[99] am silent? I take these charges the less hardly, because in all this there is nothing to make my conscience disturb me. If I did not think as a Christian of God and the Holy Scriptures, I could not wish my life prolonged even until tomorrow. If you had conducted your case with your usual vehemence, without frenzied abuse, you would have provoked fewer men against you: as things are, you have been pleased to fill more than a third part of the volume with such abuse, giving free rein to your feelings. How far you have given way to me the facts themselves show--so many palpable crimes do you fasten on me; while my _Diatribe_ was not even intended to stir up those matters which the world itself knows of.

You imagine, I suppose, that Erasmus has no supporters. More than you think. But it does not matter what happens to us two, least of all to myself who must shortly go hence, even if the whole world were applauding us: it is _this_ that distresses me, and all the best spirits with me, that with that arrogant, impudent, seditious temperament of yours you are shattering the whole globe in ruinous discord, exposing good men and lovers of good learning to certain frenzied Pharisees, arming for revolt the wicked and the revolutionary, and in short so carrying on the cause of the Gospel as to throw all things sacred and profane into chaos; as if you were eager to prevent this storm from turning at last to a happy issue; I have ever striven towards such an opportunity. What you owe me, and in what coin you have repaid me--I do not go into that. All that is a private matter; it is the public disaster which distresses me, and the irremediable confusion of everything, for which we have to thank only your uncontrolled nature, that will not be guided by the wise counsel of friends, but easily turns to any excess at the prompting of certain inconstant swindlers. I know not whom you have saved from the power of darkness; but you should have drawn the sword of your pen against those ungrateful wretches and not against a temperate disputation. I would have wished you a better mind, were you not so delighted with your own. Wish me what you will, only not your mind, unless God has changed it for you.

XVIII. TO THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS[100]

Basle, _c._ March 1527

To the most skilled physician Theophrastus of Einsiedeln, etc., greetings:

... It is not incongruous to wish continued spiritual health to the medical man through whom God gives us physical health. I wonder how you know me so thoroughly, having seen me once only. I recognize how very true are your dark sayings, not by the art of medicine, which I have never learned, but from my own wretched sensations. I have felt pains in the region of the liver in the past, and could not divine the source of the trouble. I have seen the fat from the kidneys in my water many years ago. Your third point[101] I do not quite understand, nevertheless it appears to be convincing.

As I told you, I have no time for the next few days to be doctored, or to be ill, or to die, so overwhelmed am I with scholarly work. But if there is anything which can alleviate the trouble without weakening the body, I beg you to inform me. If you will be so good as to explain at greater length your very concise and more than laconic notes, and prescribe other remedies which I can take until I am free, I cannot promise you a fee to match your art or the trouble you have taken, but I do at least promise you a grateful heart.

You have resurrected Froben[102], that is, my other half: if you restore me also, you will have restored both of us by treating each of us singly. May we have the good fortune to keep you in Basle!

I fear you may not be able to read this letter dashed off immediately [after receiving yours]. Farewell.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, by his own hand.

XIX. TO MARTIN BUCER[103]

Basle, 11 November 1527

Best greetings:

You plead the cause of Capito with some rhetorical skill; but I see that, eloquent advocate as you are otherwise, you are not sufficiently well equipped to undertake his defence. Were I to advance my battle-line of conjectures and proofs, you would realize that you had to devise a different speech. But I have had too much of squabbling, and do not easily bestir myself against men whom I once sincerely loved. What the Knight of Eppendorff[104] ventures or does not venture to do is his concern; only that he returns too frequently to this game. I shall not involve Capito in the drama unless he involves himself again; let him not think me such a fool as not to know what is in question. But I have written myself on these matters. Furthermore, as to your pleading your own cause and that of your church, I think it better not to give any answer, because this matter would require a very lengthy oration, even if it were not a matter of controversy. This is merely a brief answer on scattered points.

The person who informed me about 'languages'[105] is one whose trustworthiness not even you would have esteemed lightly; and he thinks no ill of you. Indeed I have never disliked you as far as concerns private feelings. There are persons living in your town who were chattering here about 'all the disciplines having been invented by godforsaken wretches'. Certainly persons of this description, whatever name must be given them, are in the ascendancy everywhere, all studies are neglected and come to a standstill. At Nuremberg the City Treasury has hired lecturers, but there is no one to attend their lectures.

You assemble a number of conjectures as to why I have not joined your church. But you must know that the first and most important of all the reasons which withheld me from associating myself with it was my conscience: if my conscience could have been persuaded that this movement proceeded from God, I should have been now long since a soldier in your camp. The second reason is that I see many in your group who are strangers to all Evangelical soundness. I make no mention of rumours and suspicions, I speak of things learned from experience, nay, learned to my own injury; things experienced not merely from the mob, but from men who appear to be of some worth, not to mention the leading men. It is not for me to judge of what I know not: the world is wide. I know some as excellent men before they became devotees of your faith, what they are now like I do not know: at all events I have learned that several of them have become worse and none better, so far as human judgement can discern.

The third thing which deterred me is the intense discord between the leaders of the movement. Not to mention the Prophets and the Anabaptists, what embittered pamphlets Zwingli, Luther and Osiander write against each other! I have never approved the ferocity of the leaders, but it is provoked by the behaviour of certain persons; when they ought to have made the Gospel acceptable by holy and forbearing conduct, if you really had what you boast of. Not to speak of the others, of what use was it for Luther to indulge in buffoonery in that fashion against the King of England, when he had undertaken a task so arduous with the general approval? Was he not reflecting as to the role he was sustaining? Did he not realize that the whole world had its eyes turned on him alone? And this is the chief of this movement; I am not particularly angry with him for treating me so scurrilously: but his betrayal of the cause of the Gospel, his letting loose princes, bishops, pseudo-monks and pseudo-theologians against good men, his having made doubly hard our slavery, which is already intolerable--that is what tortures my mind. And I seem to see a cruel and bloody century ahead, if the provoked section gets its breath again, which it is certainly now doing. You will say that there is no crowd without an admixture of wicked men. Certainly it was the duty of the principal men to exercise special care in matters of conduct, and not be even on speaking terms with liars, perjurors, drunkards and fornicators. As it is I hear and almost _see_, that things are far otherwise. If the husband had found his wife more amenable, the teacher his pupil more obedient, the magistrate the citizen more tractable, the employer his workman more trustworthy, the buyer the seller less deceitful, it would have been great recommendation for the Gospels. As things are, the behaviour of certain persons has had the effect of cooling the zeal of those who at first, owing to their love of piety and abhorrence of Pharisaism, looked with favour on this movement; and the princes, seeing a disorderly host springing up in its wake made up of vagabonds, fugitives, bankrupts, naked, wretched and for the most part even wicked men, are cursing, even those who in the beginning had been hopeful.

It is not without deep sorrow that I speak of all this, not only because I foresee that a business wrongly handled will go from bad to worse, but also because at last I shall myself have to suffer for it. Certain rascals say that my writings are to blame for the fact that the scholastic theologians and monks are in several places becoming less esteemed than they would like, that ceremonies are neglected, and that the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff is disregarded; when it is quite dear from what source this evil has sprung. They were stretching too tight the rope which is now breaking. They almost set the Pope's authority above Christ's, they measured all piety by ceremonies, and tightened the hold of the confession to an enormous extent, while the monks lorded it without fear of punishment, by now meditating open tyranny. As a result 'the stretched string snapped', as the proverb has it; it could not be otherwise. But I sorely fear that the same will happen one day to the princes, if they too continue to stretch _their_ rope too tightly. Again, the other side having commenced the action of their drama as they did, no different ending was possible. May we not live to see worse horrors!

However it was the duty of the leaders of this movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition. If they had handled the matter with sincerity and moderation, they would have won the support of the princes and bishops: for they have not all been given up for lost. And they should not have heedlessly wrecked anything without having something better ready to put in its place. As it is, those who have abandoned the Hours do not pray at all. Many who have put off pharisaical clothing are worse in other matters than they were before. Those who disdain the episcopal regulations do not even obey the commandments of God. Those who disregard the careful choice of foods indulge in greed and gluttony. It is a long-drawn-out tragedy, which every day we partly hear ourselves and partly learn of from others. I never approved of the abolition of the Mass, even though I have always disliked these mean and money-grabbing mass-priests. There were other things also which could have been altered without causing riots. As things are, certain persons are not satisfied with any of the accepted practices; as if a new world could be built of a sudden. There will always be things which the pious must endure. If anyone thinks that Mass ought to be abolished because many misuse it, then the Sermon should be abolished also, which is almost the only custom accepted by your party. I feel the same about the invocation of the saints and about images.

Your letter demanded a lengthy reply, but even this letter is very long, with all that I have to do. I am told that you have a splendid gift for preaching the Word of the Gospel, and that you conduct yourself more courteously than do many. So I could wish that with your good sense you would strive to the end that this movement, however it began, may through firmness and moderation in doctrine and integrity of conduct be brought to a conclusion worthy of the Gospel. To this end I shall help you to the best of my ability. As it is, although the host of monks and certain theologians assail me with all their artifices, nothing will induce me wittingly to cast away my soul. You will have the good sense not to circulate this letter, lest it cause any disturbance. We would have more discussions if we could meet. Farewell. I had no time to read this over.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, by my own hand.

[Illustration: XXXI. ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 60]

XX. TO ALFONSO VALDES[106]

Basle, 1 August 1528

To the most illustrious Alfonso Valdes, Secretary to His Imperial Majesty, greetings:

... I have learned very plainly from other men's letters what you indicate very discreetly, as is your way--that there are some who seek to make _Terminus_,[107] the seal on my ring, an occasion for slander, protesting that the addition of the device _Concedo nulli_ [I yield to none] shows intolerable arrogance. What is this but some fatal malady, consisting in misrepresenting everything? Momus[108] is ridiculed for criticizing Venus's slipper; but these men outdo Momus himself, finding something to carp at in a ring. I would have called _them_ Momuses, but Momus carps at nothing but what he has first carefully inspected. These fault-finders, or rather false accusers, criticize with their eyes shut what they neither see nor understand: so violent is the disease. And meanwhile they think themselves pillars of the Church, whereas all they do is to expose their stupidity combined with a malice no less extreme, when they are already more notorious than they should be. They are dreaming if they think it is Erasmus who says _Concedo nulli_. But if they read my writings they would see that there is none so humble that I rank myself above him, being more liable to yield to all than to none.

[Illustration: XXXII. ERASMUS'S DEVICE]

Now those who know me intimately from close association will attribute any vice to me sooner than arrogance, and will acknowledge that I am closer to the Socratic utterance, 'This alone I know, that I know nothing,' than to this, 'I yield to none.' But if they imagine that I have so insolent a mind as to put myself before all others, do they also think me such a fool as to profess this in a device? If they had any Christian feeling they would understand those words either as not mine or as bearing another meaning. They see there a sculptured figure, in its lower part a stone, in its upper part a youth with flying hair. Does this look like Erasmus in any respect? If this is not enough, they see written on the stone itself _Terminus_: if one takes this as the last word, that will make an iambic dimeter acatalectic, _Concedo nulli Terminus_; if one begins with this word, it will be a trochaic dimeter acatalectic, _Terminus concedo nulli_. What if I had painted a lion and added as a device 'Flee, unless you prefer to be torn to pieces'? Would they attribute these words to me instead of the lion? But what they are doing now is just as foolish; for if I mistake not, I am more like a lion than a stone.

They will argue, 'We did not notice that it was verse, and we know nothing about Terminus.' Is it then to be a crime henceforward to have written verse, because _they_ have not learned the theory of metre? At least, as they knew that in devices of this kind one actually aims at a certain degree of obscurity in order to exercise the guessing powers of those who look at them, if they did not know of Terminus--although they could have learned of him from the books of Augustine or Ambrose--they should have inquired of experts in this kind of matter. In former times field boundaries were marked with some sign. This was a stone projecting above the earth, which the laws of the ancients ordered never to be moved; here belongs the Platonic utterance, 'Remove not what thou hast not planted.' The law was reinforced by a religious awe, the better to deter the ignorant multitude from daring to remove the stone, by making it believe that to violate the stone was to violate a god in it, whom the Romans call Terminus, and to him there was also dedicated a shrine and a festival, the Terminalia. This god Terminus, as the Roman historian has it, was alone in refusing to yield to Jupiter because 'while the birds allowed the deconsecration of all the other sanctuaries, in the shrine of Terminus alone they were unpropitious.'[109] Livy tells this story in the first book of his _History_, and again in Book 5 he narrates how 'when after the taking of auguries the Capitol was being cleared, Juventas [Youth] and Terminus would not allow themselves to be moved.'[110] This omen was welcomed with universal rejoicing, for they believed that it portended an eternal empire. The _youth_ is useful for war, and _Terminus_ is fixed.

Here they will exclaim perchance, 'What have _you_ to do with a mythical god?' He came to me, I did not adopt him. When I was called to Rome, and Alexander, titular Archbishop of St. Andrews,[111] was summoned home from Siena by his father King James of Scotland, as a grateful and affectionate pupil he gave me several rings for a memento of our time together. Among these was one which had _Terminus_ engraved on the jewel; an Italian interested in antiquities had pointed this out, which I had not known before. I seized on the omen and interpreted it as a warning that the term of my existence was not far off--at that time I was in about my fortieth year. To keep this thought in my mind I began to seal my letters with this sign. I added the verse, as I said before. And so from a heathen god I made myself a device, exhorting me to correct my life. For Death is truly a boundary which knows no yielding to any. But in the medal there is added in Greek, [Greek: Ora telos makrou biou], that is, 'Consider the end of a long life,' in Latin _Mors ultima linea rerum_. They will say, 'You could have carved on it a dead man's skull.' Perhaps I should have accepted that, if it had come my way: but this pleased me, because it came to me by chance, and then because it had a double charm for me; from the allusion to an ancient and famous story, and from its obscurity, a quality specially belonging to devices.

There is my defence on _Terminus_, or better say on hair-splitting. And if only they would at last set a _term_ to their misrepresentations! I will gladly come to an agreement with them to change my device, if they will change their malady. Indeed by so doing they would be doing more for their own authority, which they complain is being undermined by the lovers of good learning. I myself am assuredly so far from desiring to injure their reputation that I am deeply pained at their delivering themselves over to the ridicule of the whole world by these stupid tricks, and not blushing to find themselves confuted with mockery on every occasion. The Lord keep you safe in body and soul, my beloved friend in Christ.

XXI. TO CHARLES BLOUNT[112]

Freiburg im Breisgau, 1 March 1531

To the noble youth Charles Mountjoy, greetings:

... I have determined to dedicate to you Livy, the prince of Latin history; already many times printed, but never before in such a magnificent or accurate edition: and if this is not enough, augmented by five books recently discovered; these were found by some good genius in the library of the monastery at Lorsch by Simon Grynaeus,[113] a man at once learned without arrogance in all branches of literature and at the same time born for the advancement of liberal studies. Now this monastery was built opposite Worms, or Berbethomagium, by Charlemagne seven hundred years and more ago, and equipped with great store of books; for this was formerly the special care of princes, and this is usually the most precious treasure of the monasteries. The original manuscript was one of marvellous antiquity, painted[114] in the antique fashion with the letters in a continuous series, so that it has proved very difficult to separate word from word, unless one is knowledgeable, careful and trained for this very task. This caused much trouble in preparing a copy to be handed to the printer's men for their use; a careful and faithful watch was kept to prevent any departure from the original in making the copy. So if the poor fragment which came to us recently from Mainz was justly welcomed by scholars with great rejoicing,[115] what acclamation should greet this large addition to Livy's _History_?

Would to God that this author could be restored to us complete and entire. There are rumours flying round that give some hope of this: men boast of unpublished Liviana existing, now in Denmark, now in Poland, now in Germany. At least now that fortune has given us these remnants against all men's expectations, I do not see why we should despair of the possibility of finding still more. And here, in my opinion at least, the princes would be acting worthily if they offered rewards and attracted scholars to the search for such a treasure, or prevailed upon them to publish--if there are perchance any who are suppressing and hiding away to the great detriment of studies something in a fit state to be of public utility. For it seems perfectly absurd that men will dig through the bowels of the earth almost down to Hades at vast peril and expense in order to find a little gold or silver: and yet will utterly disregard treasures of this kind, as far above those others in value as the soul excels the body, and not consider them worth searching for. This is the spirit of Midases, not of princes; and as I know that your character is utterly at variance with this spirit, I doubt not that you will most eagerly welcome this great gain. Now, there are chiefly two considerations which remove all possible doubt as to this half-decade's being genuinely by Livy: in the first place that of the diction itself, which in all features recalls its author: secondly that of the arguments or epitomes of Floras, which correspond exactly with these books.

And so, knowing that there is no kind of reading more fitting for men of note than that of the historians, of whom Livy is easily the chief (I speak of the Roman historians), particularly as we have nothing of Sallust beyond two fragments, and bearing in mind what an insatiable glutton, so to speak, your father has always been for history (and I doubt not that you resemble him in this also): I thought I should not be acting incongruously in publishing these five books with a special dedication to you. Although in this point I should not wish you to resemble your father too closely. He is in the way of poring over his books every day from dinner until midnight, which is wearisome to his wife and attendants and a cause of much grumbling among the servants; so far he has been able to do this without loss of health; still, I do not think it wise for you to take the same risk, which may not turn out as successfully. Certainly when your father was studying along with the present king while still a young man, they read chiefly history, with the strong approval of his father Henry VII, a king of remarkable judgement and good sense.

Joined to this edition is the Chronology of Henry Glareanus, a man of exquisite and many-sided learning, whose indefatigable industry refines, adorns and enriches with the liberal disciplines not the renowned Gymnasium at Freiburg alone, but this whole region as well. The Chronology shows the order of events, the details of the wars, and the names of persons, in which up till now there has reigned astonishing confusion, brought about through the fault of the scribes and dabblers in learning. Yet this was the sole guiding light of history! Without this Pole star our navigation on the ocean of history is completely blind: and without this thread to help him, the reader becomes involved in an inextricable maze, learned though he be, in these labyrinths of events. If you consider your letter well repaid by this gift, it will now be your turn to write me a letter. Farewell.

XXII. TO BARTHOLOMEW LATOMUS[116]

Basle, 24 August 1535

To Bartholomew Latomus, greetings:

... In apologizing for your silence you are wasting your time, believe me; I am not in the habit of judging tried friends by this common courtesy. It would be impudent of me to charge you with an omission which you have an equal right to accuse me of in turn.... The heads of the colleges are not doing anything new. They are afraid of their own revenues suffering, this being the sole aim of most of them. You would scarcely believe to what machinations they stooped at Louvain in their efforts to prevent a trilingual college being established. I worked strenuously in the matter, and have made myself accordingly very unpopular. There was an attempt to set up a chair of languages at Tournai, but the University of Louvain and the Franciscans at Tournai did not rest until the project was abandoned. The house erected for this purpose overlooked the Franciscans' garden--that was the cause of the trouble....

I have had a long life, counting in years; but were I to calculate the time spent in wrestling with fever, the stone and the gout, I have not lived long. But we must patiently bear whatever the Lord has sent upon us, Whose will no one can resist, and Who alone knows what is good for us.... The glory [of an immortal name] moves me not at all, I am not anxious over the applause of posterity. My one concern and desire is to depart hence with Christ's favour.

Many French nobles have fled here for fear of the winter storm, after having been recalled.[117] 'The lion shall roar, who shall not fear?' says the Prophet.[118] A like terror has seized the English, from an unlike cause. Certain monks have been beheaded and among them a monk of the Order of St. Bridget[119] was dragged along the ground, then hanged, and finally drawn and quartered. There is a firm and probable rumour here that the news of the Bishop of Rochester having been co-opted by Paul III as a cardinal caused the King to hasten his being dragged out of prison and beheaded--his method of conferring the scarlet hat. It is all too true that Thomas More has been long in prison and his fortune confiscated. It was being said that he too had been executed, but I have no certain news as yet.[120] Would that he had never embroiled himself in this perilous business and had left the theological cause to the theologians. The other friends who from time to time honoured me with letters and gifts now send nothing and write nothing from fear, and accept nothing from anyone, as if under every stone there slept a scorpion.

It seems that the Pope is seriously thinking of a Council here. But I do not see how it is to meet in the midst of such dissension between princes and lands. The whole of Lower Germany is astonishingly infected with Anabaptists: in Upper Germany they pretend not to notice them. They are pouring in here in droves; some are on their way to Italy. The Emperor is besieging Goletta; in my opinion there is more danger from the Anabaptists.

I do not think that France is entirely free of this plague; but they are silent there for fear of the cudgel....

Now I must tell you something about my position which will amuse you. I had written to Paul III at the instance of Louis Ber, the distinguished theologian. Before unsealing the letter he spoke of me with great respect. And as he had to make several scholars cardinals for the coming Council, the name of Erasmus was proposed among others. But obstacles were mentioned, my health, not strong enough for the duties, and my low income; for they say there is a decree which excludes from this office those whose annual income is less than 3,000 ducats. Now they are busy heaping benefices on me, so that I can acquire the proper income from these and receive the red hat. The proverbial cat in court-dress. I have a friend in Rome who is particularly active in the business; in vain have I warned him more than once by letter that I want no cures or pensions, that I am a man who lives from day to day, and every day expecting death, often longing for it, so horrible sometimes are the pains. It is hardly safe for me to put a foot outside my bedroom, and even the merest trifle upsets me.[121] With my peculiar, emaciated body I can only stand warm air. And in this condition they want to push me forward as a candidate for benefices and cardinals' hats! But meanwhile I am gratified by the Supreme Pontiff's delusions about me and his feelings towards me. But I am being more wordy than I intended. I should easily forgive your somewhat lengthy letter, if you were to repeat that fault often.... Farewell.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Servatius Roger (d. 1540), whom Erasmus came to know as a young monk soon after his entry into Steyn, became eighth Prior of Steyn; it was as Prior that he wrote to Erasmus in 1514 to urge him to return to the monastery, see pp. 11, 87 f., 212 ff.

[22] Juvenal, ix. 18-20.

[23] N. Werner (d. 5 September 1504), later Prior of Steyn.

[24] Probably James Stuart, brother of James IV of Scotland, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1497, aged about twenty-one at this time.

[25] Relative of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Took his doctor's degree in Italy, returned to England 1507.

[26] William Grocyn (_c._ 1446-1519), Fellow of New College, one of the first to teach Greek in Oxford.

[27] Thomas Linacre (_c._ 1460-1524), Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 1484. Translator of Galen. Helped to found the College of Physicians, 1518.

[28] James Batt (1464?-1502), secretary to the council of the town of Bergen.

[29] Anne of Burgundy, the Lady of Veere (1469?-1518), patroness of Erasmus until 1501-2, when she remarried.

[30] i. e. to replace Greek words either corrupted or omitted. Erasmus is here referring probably to the text of the _Letters_ of Jerome; he uses the same expression in his letter of 21 May 1515 to Leo X (Allen 335, v.
268 ff.): 'I have purified the text of the Letters ... and carefully restored the Greek, which was either missing altogether or inserted incorrectly'.

[31] Brother of Henry of Bergen (Bishop of Cambrai) and by this time Abbot of St. Bertin at St. Omer, where he was forcibly installed by his brother the bishop in 1493.

[32] 'And my sin is ever before me,' where _contra_ could be rendered as either 'before' or 'against'; the ambiguity is resolved by referring to the Greek, where [Greek: enôpion] = face to face with.

[33] Apparently a loose statement of the _Constitutions_ of Clement V, promulgated after the Council of Vienne, 1311-12, Bk. 5, tit. 1, cap. 1, in which for the better conversion of infidels it was ordained that two teachers for each of the three languages, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaean be appointed in each of the four Universities, Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca. Greek was included in the original list, but afterwards omitted.

[34] Probably George Hermonymus of Sparta.

[35] Cf. Juvenal, iii. 78. (_Graeculus esuriens_.)

[36] William Warham (1450?-1532) became Archbishop of Canterbury in
1503, Lord Chancellor of England, 1504-15, Chancellor of Oxford University from 1506. This letter forms the preface to _Hecuba_ in _Euripidis_ ... _Hecuba et Iphigenia; Latinae factae Erasmo Roterodamo interprete_, Paris, J. Badius, September 1506.

[37] [Greek: en tô pithô tên kerameian], i. e., to run before one can walk, to make a winejar being the most advanced job in pottery.

[38] Politian translated parts of Iliad, 2-5 into Latin hexameters, dedicating the work to Lorenzo dei Medici. Published by A. Mai, Spicilegium Romanum, ii.

[39] Nicholas de Valle translated the _Works and Days_ (_Georgica_), Bonninus Mombritius the _Theogonia_.

[40] Martin Phileticus.

[41] No. 3; his Funeral Orations were printed _c._ 1481 at Milan.

[42] Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) founded the Aldine Press at Venice,
1494.

[43] Published by Aldus, 1513.

[44] Published by Aldus, 1528.

[45] Published by Aldus, 1518, although projected in 1499.

[46] _Euripidis ... Hecuba et Iphigenia_ [in Aulide]; _Latinae factae Erasmo Roterodamo interprete_, Paris, J. Badius, 13 September 1506. Reprinted by Aldus at Venice, December 1507 (and by Froben at Basle in
1518 and 1524).

[47] Thomas More (1478-1535). This letter is the preface to the _Moriae Encomium_, published by Gilles Gourmont at Paris without date, reprinted by Schürer at Strasbourg, August 1511.

[48] The Greek 'laughing philosopher'.

[49] John Colet (1466?-1519), Dean of St. Paul's 1504, had founded St. Paul's School in the previous year (1510).

[50] Raffaele Riario (1461-1521), Leo X's most formidable rival in the election of 1513.

[51] Francesco Alidosi of Imola, d. 1511.

[52] Robert Guibé(_c._ 1456-1513), Cardinal of St. Anastasia and Bishop of Nantes (1507).

[53] Leo X.

[54] Wolsey.

[55] _Enchiridion militis Christiani_, printed in _Lucubratiunculae_,
1503.

[56] A new and enlarged edition under the title _Adagiorum Chiliades_, printed by Aldus in 1508.

[57] _De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo_, Paris, Badius, 1512.

[58] The Hebrew scholar, who adhered to the Reformation, 1523.

[59] F. Ximenes (1436-1517), confessor of Queen Isabella, Archbishop of Toledo, 1495, founded Alcalá University, 1500; he promoted the Polyglot Bible.

[60] (1428-1524), taught medicine at Ferrara and made translations from Aristotle, Dio Cassius, Galen and Hippocrates.

[61] (d. 1525) Professor of Medicine at Naples, and from 1507 at Venice; physician to Aldus's household, where he met Erasmus.

[62] (1466-1532), physician, astronomer and humanist; learned Greek with Erasmus in Paris. He was physician to the Court of Francis I.

[63] (1479-1537), Dean of the Medical Faculty at Paris, 1508-9, and Physician to Francis I.

[64] (1467/8-1540), the Parisian humanist, whose _Annotationes in xxiv Pandectarum libros_ were published by Badius in 1508.

[65] Ulrich Zäsi or Zasius (1461-1535) Lector Ordinarius in Laws at Freiburg from 1506 until his death.

[66] Henry Loriti of canton Glarus, usually known as Glareanus
(1488-1563), had an academy at Basle where he took in thirty boarders.

[67] Published at Basle, March 1519.

[68] A translation of Galen's _Methodus medendi_, not printed until June
1519. Lupset supervised the printing.

[69] This may be the _De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis_, composed in Italy. More writes to Erasmus in 1516 (Allen 502) that he has received part of the MS. from Lupset, but it was not published until
1529.

[70] Luther's _Theses_, posted 31 October 1517 and printed shortly afterwards at Wittenberg.

[71] The proposals for a crusade drawn up at Rome, 16 November 1517.

[72] The _Julius Exclusus_, an attack on Pope Julius II, who died 1513. Erasmus never directly denied his authorship, and More speaks of a copy in Erasmus's hand (Allen 502).

[73] Beat Bild (1485-1547), whose family came from Rheinau near Schlettstadt, became M. A., Paris, in 1505. He worked as a corrector at Henry Stephanus's press in Paris, with Schürer in Strasbourg, and from
1511 for fifteen years with Amerbach and Froben in Basle, where he edited and superintended the publication of numerous books.

[74] Haecceity, 'thisness', 'individuality', t. t. of Scotistic philosophy, cf. quiddity, 'essence'.

[75] I. e. the Literary Society of Strasbourg. A letter survives, addressed to Erasmus in the name of this Society, dated 1 September
1514, in which occur all the names mentioned here, with the exception of Gerbel's.

[76] A portrait drawing of Varnbüler by Albrecht Dürer is in the Albertina, Vienna; Dürer made also a woodcut from it.

[77] Hermann, Count of Neuenahr (1492-1530), a pupil of Caesarius, with whom he visited Italy in 1508-9. In 1517 he lectured in Cologne on Greek and Hebrew, and became later Chancellor of the University. Among his works is a letter in defence of Erasmus.

[78] _Operationes in Psalmos_. Wittenberg, 1519.

[79] James Probst or Proost (Præpositus) of Ypres (1486-1562).

[80] Ulrich Hutten (1488-1523), the German knight and humanist.

[81] Satires 2, vii. 96 (where however the gladiators are the subject, and not the artists, of a crude charcoal sketch).

[82] Sir Thomas More's portrait at the age of fifty was painted by Hans Holbein; it is now in the Frick Collection, New York. Two portrait drawings of him by Holbein are in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. See also p. 236, note 4.

[83] John More (1453?-1530), at this time a Judge of Common Pleas, promoted to the King's Bench in 1523.

[84] Jane Colt (_c._ 1487-1511).

[85] More's second daughter was Elizabeth; Alice was the name of his stepdaughter.

[86] Alice Middleton.

[87] A group portrait of Sir Thomas More with his entire family was painted by Hans Holbein about 1527-8 at More's house in Chelsea. It was commissioned from the artist at the recommendation of Erasmus. The original has been lost; see Plate XXIX and p. 260.

[88] More was elected Under-Sheriff, 1510.

[89] W. Pirckheimer (1470-1530), humanist. After studying law and Greek in Italy he settled at Nuremberg. Some of his works were illustrated by Dürer.

[90] Alexander Stewart (_c._ 1493-1513), natural son of James IV of Scotland, fell at Flodden. Erasmus was his tutor in Italy in 1508-9. For details of this ring see p. 247 f.

[91] Dürer made three portraits of him, two drawings (now in Berlin and in Brunswick) and an engraving.

[92] The Greek sculptor, _c._ 350 B. C. In a letter to Pirckheimer dated
8 January 1523-4 (Allen 1408, 29 n.) Erasmus appears dissatisfied with the reverse of the medal cast by Metsys in 1519. Extant examples all show a reverse revised in accordance with his suggestions.

[93] A drawing of Erasmus was made by Dürer in 1520 (now in the Louvre), and an engraving in 1526.

[94] Erasmus had his portrait painted by Holbein several times in 1523-4 and 1530-1. A number of originals and copies are still extant.

[95] Luther's letter, in which he evidently attempted to mitigate Erasmus's indignation against his _De Servo Arbitrio_ (The Will not free), which was a reply to Erasmus's _De Libero Arbitrio_ (On free Will), 1524. Luther's letter came 'too late' because Erasmus had already composed the _Hyperaspistes Diatribe adversus Servum Arbitrium Martini Lutheri_, Basle, Froben, 1526.

[96] John Fisher (1459?-1535).

[97] John Dobeneck of Wendelstein.

[98] i. e., the _De Libero Arbitrio_.

[99] Reading _reticeo_ for _retices_.

[100] Theophrastus Bombast of Einsiedeln (also known as Theophrastus of Hohenheim, whence his ancestors came), 1493-1541. The name Paracelsus may be a translation of Hohenheim, or may signify a claim to be greater than Celsus, the Roman physician. Appointed _physicus et ordinarius Basiliensis_ in 1527.

[101] Paracelsus had diagnosed the stone, from which Erasmus suffered, as being due to crystallization of salt in the kidneys.

[102] Froben died before the year was out.

[103] Martin Butzer (_c._ 1491-1551), later Bucer, a Dominican, who obtained dispensation from his vows in 1521 and adhered to the Reformation. At this time he was a member of the Strasbourg party, and this letter is probably an answer to a request for an interview for Bucer and other Strasbourg delegates on their way through Basle to Berne. He eventually became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge under Edward VI.

[104] Henry of Eppendorff, a former friend who followed Hutten on his quarrel with Erasmus.

[105] Erasmus stated in the _Responsio_ of 1 August 1530, that in the Reformed schools little was taught beyond _dogmata et linguae_ and it may be some such criticism, based on what he had heard from a reliable source (perhaps Pirckheimer at Nuremberg), to which Bucer had taken exception in his letter.

[106] Alfonso Valdes (1490?-1532), a devoted admirer of Erasmus, was from 1522 onwards one of Charles V's secretaries. He wrote two dialogues in defence of the Emperor.

[107] On this gem see Edgar Wind, 'Aenigma Termini,' in _Journ. of the Warburg Institute_, I (1937-8), p. 66.

[108] Greek god of ridicule.

[109] Livy, I, 55, 3. Livy refers to the clearing of the Tarpeian rock by Tarquinius Superbus (534-510 B. C.), involving the deconsecration of existing shrines, as a preliminary to the building of the temple of Juppiter Capitolinus. The auguries allowed the evacuation of the other gods, Terminus and Juventas alone refusing to depart.

[110] Livy, 5, 54, 7.

[111] See p. 66.

[112] Preface to _T. Livii ... historiæ_, Basle, Froben, 1531. Charles Blount (b. 1518), eldest son of William Blount, Lord Mountjoy.

[113] _c._ 1495-1541, Professor of Greek at Basle, 1529. He found the MS. containing Livy, Bks. 41-5, in 1527.

[114] Not 'illuminated.' Erasmus refers elsewhere (Allen 919. 55) to a codex as _non scripto sed picto_.

[115] The MS., now lost, containing Bks. 33, 17-49 and 40, 37-59, found in the cathedral library at Mainz, published in Mainz, J. Schoeffer, November 1518.

[116] (1498?-1570). Taught Latin and Greek at Freiburg and became head of a college there; in 1534 became the first Professor of Latin in the Collège de France. Retired to Coblenz in 1542.

[117] By the Edict of Courcy.

[118] Amos iii. 8.

[119] Richard Reynolds of the Bridgettine Syon College at Isleworth.

[120] More had been executed 6 July 1535.

[121] Lit. 'not even the peeping of an ass is safe.' This Greek proverb, used of those who go to law about trifles, refers to the story of a potter whose wares were smashed by a donkey in the workshop going to look out of the window. In court the potter, asked of what he complained, replied: 'Of the peeping of an ass.' See Apuleius, _Met._ IX., 42.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS. By Quentin Metsys. 1517. Rome, Galleria Corsini. _Facing p. 14_

One half of a diptych, the pendant being a portrait of Erasmus's friend, Pierre Gilles (Petrus Aegidius), town clerk of Antwerp. The diptych was sent to Sir Thomas More in London; the portrait of Gilles is now in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle.

II. VIEW OF ROTTERDAM at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Contemporary engraving, hand-coloured. _Facing p. 15_

III. PORTRAIT BUST OF JOHN COLET, Dean of St. Paul's (1467-1519). By Pietro Torrigiano. St. Paul's School, Hammersmith, London. _Facing p.
30_

John Colet, a close friend of Erasmus (see pp. 30-1), founded St. Paul's School. The artist, a Florentine sculptor, was active in London for many years and is best known for his effigies on some of the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey. The attribution of this bust is due to F. Grossmann
(_Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes_, XIII, July 1950), who identified it as a cast from Torrigiano's original bust on Colet's tomb (destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666) and also pointed out that Holbein's drawing of Colet in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (No.
12199) was made from the lost monument after Colet's death.

IV. PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS MORE (1477-1535). Dated 1527. By Hans Holbein. New York, Frick Collection. _Facing p. 31_

See also Holbein's drawing of Thomas More with his family, Pl. XXIX.

V. Pen and ink sketches by Erasmus. 1514. Basle, University Library (MS A. IX. 56). _Facing p. 46_

These doodles of grotesque heads and other scribbles are found in Erasmus's manuscript copy of the _Scholia to the Letters of St. Jerome_, preserved in the Library of Basle University and published by Emil Major
(_Handzeichnungen des Erasmus von Rotterdam_, Basle, 1933). Erasmus worked on this manuscript shortly after his arrival in Basle in August
1514. His edition of the _Letters of Jerome_ was published by Froben in
1516 (see p. 90).

VI. A Manuscript Page of Erasmus. Basle, University Library. _Facing p.
47_

See note on Pl. V.

VII. Title-page of the _Adagia_, printed by Aldus Manutius in 1508. _Facing p. 62_

The printing of this edition was supervised by Erasmus during his visit to Venice (see pp. 64-5). On this title-page is the emblem of the Aldine Press, which is found again on the reverse of Aldus's portrait medal
(Pl. IX).

VIII. VIEW OF VENICE, 1493. Woodcut. _After p. 62_

From Schedel's _Weltchronik_, Nuremberg, 1493.

IX. PORTRAIT MEDAL OF ALDUS MANUTIUS. By an unknown Venetian medallist. Venice, Museo Correr. _After p. 62_

On the reverse, the emblem adopted by Aldus in 1495 from an antique coin, an anchor entwined by a dolphin. The Greek inscription, [Greek: Speude bradeos] (Hasten slowly), is also of antique origin. Cf. Hill, _Corpus of Italian Medals_, 1930, No. 536.

X. A page from the printed copy of the _Praise of Folly_ with a drawing by Hans Holbein. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 63_

This copy of the _Laus Stultitiae_, which Holbein decorated with marginal drawings in 1515, belonged at that time to Oswald Myconius, a friend of Froben's. Apparently not all the drawings in the book are by Hans Holbein.

The drawing shows Erasmus working at his desk, fol. S. 3 recto. Above this thumbnail sketch there is a Latin note in the handwriting of Myconius: 'When Erasmus came here and saw this portrait, he exclaimed, "Heigh-ho, if Erasmus still looked like that, he would quickly find himself a wife!"'

XI. A page from the printed copy of the _Praise of Folly_ with a drawing by Hans Holbein. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 78_

See note on Pl. X. This is the last page of the book, fol. X. 4 recto; the drawing shows Folly descending from the pulpit at the close of her discourse.

XII. THE PRINTING PRESS OF JOSSE BADIUS. Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer,
1520-1. _Facing p. 79_

Josse Badius of Brabant had established in Paris the Ascensian Press
(named after his native place, Assche); he printed many books by Erasmus. See pp. 60, 79-83.

XIII. PORTRAIT OF JOHANNES FROBEN (1460-1527). By Hans Holbein. About
1522-3. Hampton Court, H. M. The Queen. _Facing p. 86_

On this portrait of Erasmus's printer, publisher and friend, see Paul Ganz, _The Paintings of Hans Holbein_, 1950, Cat. No. 33.

XIV. DESIGN FOR THE PRINTER'S EMBLEM OF JOHANNES FROBEN. Tempera on canvas, heightened with gold. By Hans Holbein. 1523. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 87_

The emblem shows the wand of Mercury, and two serpents with a dove, an allusion to the Gospel of St. Matthew, x. 16: 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.'

XV. THE HANDS OF ERASMUS. Drawing by Hans Holbein. 1523. Paris, Louvre. _Facing p. 102_

These studies were used by Holbein for his portraits of Erasmus now at Longford Castle (Pl. XVI) and in the Louvre (Pl. XXVIII).

XVI. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 57. Dated 1523. By Hans Holbein. Longford Castle, Earl of Radnor. _Facing p. 103_

The Greek inscription, 'The Labours of Hercules', alludes to Erasmus's own view of his life (see p. 125). On this portrait see P. Ganz, op. cit., Cat. No. 34.

XVII. VIEW OF BASLE. Woodcut. _Facing p. 134_

From the _Chronik_ by Johann Stumpf, 1548.

XVIII. Title-page of the New Testament, printed by Froben in 1520. Designed by Hans Holbein. _Facing p. 135_

XIX. THE ERASMUS HOUSE AT ANDERLECHT NEAR BRUSSELS. _Facing p. 150_

From May to November 1521 Erasmus stayed here as the guest of his friend, the canon Pierre Wichmann. The house was built in 1515 under the sign of the Swan. It is now a museum in which are preserved numerous relics of Erasmus and his age.

XX. The Room used by Erasmus as study during his stay at Anderlecht. _Facing p. 151_

XXI. PORTRAIT OF MARTIN LUTHER AS A MONK. Engraving by Lucas Cranach.
1520. _Facing p. 158_

XXII. PORTRAIT OF ULRICH VON HUTTEN (1488-1523). Anonymous German woodcut. _Facing p. 159_

XXIII. THE HOUSE 'ZUM WALFISCH' AT FREIBURG-IM-BREISGAU. _Facing p. 174_

When Erasmus arrived in Freiburg in 1529, he was invited by the Town Council to live in this house, which had been built for the Emperor Maximilian. See p. 176.

XXIV. PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL HIERONYMUS ALEANDER. Drawing. Arras, Library. _Facing p. 175_

One of the 280 portrait drawings collected in the codex known as the _Recueil d'Arras_.

XXV. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS. By Hans Holbein. 1531-2. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 190_

'Holbein may have painted this little roundel on the occasion of a visit to Erasmus at Freiburg' (P. Ganz, op. cit.).

XXVI. ERASMUS DICTATING TO HIS SECRETARY. Woodcut, 1530. _Facing p. 191_

The woodcut shows the aged Erasmus dictating to his amanuensis Gilbertus Cognatus in a room of the University of Freiburg. From _Effigies Desiderii Erasmi Roterdami ... & Gilberti Cognati Nozereni_, Basle, Joh. Oporinus, 1533.

XXVII. PORTRAIT MEDAL OF ERASMUS. By Quentin Metsys. 1519. London, British Museum. _Facing p. 206_

The reverse shows Erasmus's device, Terminus, and the motto _Concedo nulli_, both of which were also engraved on his sealing ring. For Erasmus's own interpretation see his letter, pp. 246-8. The Greek inscription means, 'His writings will give you a better picture of him'.

XXVIII. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS. After 1523. By Hans Holbein. Paris, Louvre. _Facing p. 207_

XXIX. THOMAS MORE AND HIS FAMILY. Pen and ink sketch by Hans Holbein,
1527. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 238_

'The portrait, probably commissioned on the occasion of the scholar's fiftieth birthday, shows him surrounded by his large family. It is the first example of an intimate group portrait not of devotional or ceremonial character painted this side of the Alps. At that time Thomas More was living in his country house at Chelsea with his second wife, Alice, his father, his only son and his son's fiancée, three married daughters, eleven grandchildren and a relative, Margaret Giggs. The artist, who had been recommended to him by his friend Erasmus, was also enjoying his hospitality.' (P. Ganz, op. cit., Cat. No. 175).

The original painting is lost; a copy by Richard Locky, dated 1530, is at Nostell Priory. The drawing was sent by More to Erasmus at Basle so as to introduce his family, for which purpose the names and ages were inscribed. In two letters to Sir Thomas and his daughter, dated 5 and 6 September 1530, Erasmus sent his enthusiastic thanks: 'I cannot put into words the deep pleasure I felt when the painter Holbein gave me the picture of your whole family, which is so completely successful that I should scarcely be able to see you better if I were with you.' (Allen, vol. 8, Nos. 2211-2).

Compare also Erasmus's pen portrait of Sir Thomas More in his letter to Hutten, pp. 231-9.

XXX. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS. Charcoal drawing by Albrecht Dürer, dated
1520. Paris, Louvre. _Facing p. 239_

Drawn at Antwerp, during Dürer's journey to the Netherlands. When he received the false news of the murder of Luther at Whitsuntide 1521, Dürer wrote in his diary: 'O Erasmus of Rotterdam, where art thou? Listen, thou Knight of Christ, ride out with the Lord Christ, defend the truth and earn for thyself the martyr's crown!'

XXXI. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS. Engraving by Albrecht Dürer, dated 1526. _Facing p. 246_

In his _Diary of a Journey to the Netherlands_, Dürer noted in late August 1520: 'I have taken Erasmus of Rotterdam's portrait once more', but he does not say when he took his first portrait. The earlier work is assumed to have been done one month before, and to be identical with the drawing in the Louvre (Pl. XXX). This drawing is mentioned by Erasmus himself in a letter to Pirckheimer of 1525 (p. 240); in an earlier letter to the same friend (1522) he says that Dürer had started to paint him in 1520. The second portrait drawing is lost; hence it cannot be proved that this second portrait was made in metal point--as is usually assumed--and not in charcoal, or that the engraving here reproduced was based on it.

XXXII. TERMINUS. Erasmus's device. Pen and ink drawing by Hans Holbein. Basle, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Print Room). _Facing p. 247_

_Frontispiece_: DECORATIVE PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS WITH HIS DEVICE, TERMINUS. Engraving by Hans Holbein, 1535.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For help in the collection of illustrations we are specially indebted to M. Daniel van Damme, Curator of the Erasmus Museum at Anderlecht and author of the _Ephéméride illustrée de la Vie d'Erasme_, published in
1936 on the occasion of the fourth centenary of Erasmus's death. For photographs and permission to reproduce we have to thank also the Frick Collection, New York (Pl. iv), the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basle (Pl. X-XI, XIV, XXV, XXIX, XXXII), the Library of Basle University (Pl. V-VI), and the Warburg Institute, University of London (Pl. iii). The photographs for Pl. II, VII, XVIII-XX and XXVI are by M. Mauhin, Anderlecht, those for Plates VIII and XVII by Dr. F. Stoedtner, Düsseldorf, and that for Plate IX by Fiorentini, Venice.

INDEX OF NAMES

Adrian of Utrecht, Dean, later Pope, 55, 131, 162

Agricola, Rudolf, 7

Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mayence, 140, 145

Aldus Manutius, 63, 64, 81, 207

Aleander, Hieronymus, 64, 124, 147, 149, 171, 184, 187

Alidosi, Francesco, 214n.

Amerbach, Bonifacius, 176, 186, 223n.

Amerbach, Johannes, 83, 90

Ammonius, Andrew, 37, 58, 67, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 90, 93, 94, 119, 123,
134

Andrelinus, Faustus, 21, 25, 26, 29, 47

Anna of Borselen, Lady of Veere, 27, 28, 35, 37, 38, 55, 62, 200-1

Asolani, Andrea, 64

Ath, Jean Briard of, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 229

Aurelius (Cornelius Gerard of Gouda), 11, 13, 14, 33, 44

Badius, Josse, 57, 60, 79, 81, 82, 83, 90, 133, 208, 219n.

Balbi, Girolamo, 20

Barbaro, Ermolao, 21

Batt, James, 18, 19, 27, 28, 37, 38, 47, 48, 49, 55, 200

Beatus Rhenanus, 39, 64, 83, 96, 119, 156, 177, 184, 186, 187, 223

Becar, John, 181

Beda (Noel Bedier), 120, 125, 157, 158

Bembo, 173

Ber, Louis, 186, 253

Berckman, Francis, 82, 83

Bergen, Anthony of, 85, 202

Berquin, Louis de, 158

Berselius, Paschasius, 229

Blount, Charles, 249

Blount, William, Lord Mountjoy, 27-8, 30, 35, 36, 37, 58, 59n., 67, 68,
79, 86, 87, 95, 184, 199, 215, 251

Boerio, Giovanni Battista, 60

Bombasius, Paul, 63

Bouts, Dirck, 3

Boys, Hector, 25

Brie, Germain de, 96

Bucer (Butzer), Martin, 177, 243

Budaeus, William, 94, 95, 96, 97, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 153,
173, 219, 221

Busch, Hermann, 224

Busleiden, Francis of, archbishop of Besançon, 55, 135

Busleiden, Jerome, 135

Cajetanus, 141

Calvin, 165, 167, 182

Caminade, Augustine, 37, 47, 48, 155

Canossa, Count, 86

Capito, Wolfgang Fabricius, 96, 132, 140, 165, 166, 171, 218, 243

Catherine of Aragon, 168

Charles V, 92, 95, 99, 145-6, 218

Charnock, prior, 31

Cinicampius, _see_ Eschenfelder

Clement VII, 184

Clyfton, tutor, 63

Cochleus, 241

Colet, John, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 56, 57, 58, 80, 81, 91, 92, 96,
104, 109, 141, 144, 154, 181, 200, 211, 215

Cop, William, 49, 61, 94, 219

Cornelius, _see_ Aurelius

Cratander, 85

David of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht, 16

Decanus, 224

Denk, Hans, 178

Dirks, Vincent, 137, 149, 157, 158

Dobeneck, John, _see_ Cochleus

Dorp, Martin van, 77, 94, 126, 131, 133, 134

Dürer, Albrecht, 148-9, 240, 224n.

Eck, Johannes, 98, 141

Egmond, Nicholas of (Egmondanus), 119, 133, 137, 148, 149, 158, 161

Egnatius, Baptista, 64

Episcopius, Nicholas, 186

Eppendorff, Henry of, 124, 159, 160, 243

Eschenfelder, Christopher, 186, 224

Étienne, _see_ Stephanus

Faber, _see_ Lefèvre

Farel, Guillaume, 166, 167

Ferdinand, archduke, 175

Ficino, Marsilio, 21

Filelfo, Francesco, 205

Fisher, John, bishop of Rochester, 58, 80, 92, 119, 181, 182, 214n.

Fisher, Robert, 26, 27, 34, 199

Flaminius, John, 225

Foxe, Richard, 58, 59

Francis I, 94, 99, 144, 145, 218-19

Frederick of Saxony, 139, 143, 147

Froben, Johannes, 83, 83, 87, 89, 90, 91, 134, 143, 156, 170, 182, 221,
223n., 243

Froben, Johannes Erasmius, 156, 183, 186

Fugger, Anthony, 176

Gaguin, Robert, 21, 24, 25, 26, 125

Gallinarius, 223

Gebwiler, 224

George of Saxony, 162

Gerard, Cornelius, _see_ Aurelius

Gerard, Erasmus's father, 6

Gerbel, 224

Gigli, Silvestro, bishop of Worcester, 93

Gilles, Peter, 66, 86, 92, 94, 107, 119, 133, 184

Glareanus, Henri (Loriti), 96, 219, 251

Gourmont, Gilles, 79, 80, 82, 209n.

Grey, Thomas, 23, 26

Grimani, Domenico, 66, 67n., 68, 214

Grocyn, William, 34, 58, 200, 208

Groote, Geert 3

Grunnius, Lambertus, 93

Grynaeus, Simon, 249

Guibé, Robert, bishop of Nantes, 215n.

Hegius, Alexander, 7

Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambray, 16, 17, 25, 27, 35, 38, 47, 55

Henry VII, 58, 67, 251

Henry VIII, 30, 37, 67, 84, 99, 144, 145, 146, 162, 182, 218, 251

Hermans, William, 11, 13, 16, 18, 26, 28, 38, 44, 47, 49

Hermonymus, George, 204n.

Holbein, Hans, 114, 121, 151, 232n., 236n.

Hollonius, Lambert, 156

Hoogstraten, Jacob, 145

Hutten, Ulrich von, 96, 118, 119, 125, 128-9, 140, 148, 159, 231

James IV, 66, 84

John of Trazegnies, 50n.

Julius II, 58, 62, 84, 93, 152, 217

Karlstadt, Andreas, 141

Lachner, 221

Lang, John, 141, 142, 144

Langenfeld, John, 224

Lascaris, Johannes, 64

Lasco, Johannes a, 186

Latimer, William, 58, 208

Latomus, Bartholomew, 251

Latomus, James, 133, 135, 149

Laurin, Mark, 229

Lee, Edward, 119, 122, 128, 133, 134, 135, 145, 157

Lefèvre d'Étaples, Jacques, 21, 119, 120, 132, 133

Leo, Ambrose, 219

Leo X, 66, 93, 94, 134, 140, 144, 146, 215, 218

Leonicenus, Nicholas, 219

Linacre, Thomas, 34, 58, 200, 208, 219, 221

Longolius, Christopher, 172, 173

Loriti, _see_ Glareanus

Loyola, Ignatius of, 189

Lupset, 221n., 222

Luther, Martin, 54, 96, 120, 128, 131, 135, 138, 139-50, 159, 161-5,
177, 178, 179, 209, 229, 240, 244

Lypsius, Martin, 125, 134

Lyra, Nicholas of, 57

Maertensz, Dirck, 66, 90, 92, 134, 156

Manutius, _see_ Aldus

Mary of Hungary, 168, 187

Maternus, 224

Matthias, 225

Maximilian, emperor, 84, 99, 141, 147, 176, 218, 219

Medici, Giovanni de', _see_ Leo X

Melanchthon, 145, 152, 165, 178, 180, 231

Metsys, Quentin, 92, 240n.

More, Thomas, 29, 30, 34, 35, 58, 69, 70, 92, 107, 119, 126, 127, 141,
146, 148, 153, 154, 182, 183, 200, 209, 221, 231-9, 252

Mountjoy, _see_ Blount

Musurus, Marcus, 64

Mutianus, 165

Neuenahr, Hermann Count of, 225, 226

Northoff, brothers, 26, 27

Obrecht, Johannes, 62

Oecolampadius, 157, 166, 167, 168, 174, 175, 180

Osiander, 244

Pace, Richard, 159, 222

Paludanus, Johannes, 131

Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 242

Paul III, 184, 185, 253

Peter Gerard, Erasmus's brother, 5-10

Phileticus, Martin, 205n.

Philip le Beau, 56, 59n.

Philippi, John, 58

Pico della Mirandola, 21

Pio, Alberto, 77, 158, 167

Pirckheimer, Willibald, 95, 165, 184, 239

Platter, Thomas, 182

Politian, 205

Poncher, Étienne, 94, 96

Probst (Proost), James, 231n.

Reuchlin, 90, 94, 128, 145

Reynolds, Richard, 252n.

Riario, Raffaele, 67, 214n.

Roger, _see_ Gerard

Rombout, 8

Rudolfingen, 224

Ruell, John, 219

Sadolet, 93, 94, 164, 173, 177

Sapidus, Johannes, 98

Sasboud, 15

Sauvage, John le, 92

Scaliger, 173

Schürer, M., 90, 209n., 223n., 224

Servatius Roger, 11, 12, 58, 59, 60, 62, 87, 93, 119, 197, 212

Sixtin, John, 31

Sluter, 3

Spalatinus, George, 139

Stadion, Christopher of, bishop of Augsburg, 182

Standonck, John, 21, 22, 38

Stephanus, Henricus, 223n.

Stewart, Alexander, archbishop of St. Andrews, 66, 67, 84

Stewart, James, 198n.

Stunica, _see_ Zuñiga

Suderman, 226, 227

Synthen, Johannes, 7

Talesius, Quirin, 184, 193

Tapper, Ruurd, 137

Theodoric, 228

Thomas à Kempis, 4, 54

Tunstall, Cuthbert, 58, 96, 97, 132, 162, 208

Urswick, 221

Utenheim, Christopher of, bishop of Basle, 166, 173

Utenhove, Charles, 184, 193

Valdes, Alfonso, 246

Valla, Lorenzo, 27, 57, 58, 90

Varnbüler, Ulrich, 224

Veere, _see_ Anna of Borselen

Vianen, William of, 137

Vincent, Augustine, 26

Vitrier, Jean, 50, 181

Vives, 161, 164

Voecht, Jacobus, 38

Warham, William, archbishop of Canterbury, 58, 59, 68, 81, 92, 95, 184,
204, 215

Watson, John, 98

Werner, Nicholas, 198, 216

William of Orange, 193

Wimpfeling, Jacob, 80, 166

Winckel, Peter, 8

Woerden, Cornelius of, 212

Wolsey, Cardinal, 31, 95, 137, 145, 215n.

Ximenes, F., archbishop of Toledo, 95, 130, 158, 218n.

Zasius, Ulrich, 96, 153, 165, 187, 219

Zuñiga, Diego Lopez, 158

Zwingli, Ulrich, 96, 177, 179, 180, 244