HEROES OF THE REFORMATION.

I.--Martin Luther (1483-1546). THE HERO OF THE REFORMATION. By Henry Eyster Jacobs, D.D., LL.D.

II.--Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). THE PROTESTANT PRECEPTOR OF GERMANY. By James William Richard, D.D.

III.--Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). THE HUMANIST IN THE SERVICE OF THE REFORMATION. By Ephraim Emerton, Ph.D.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Heroes of the Reformation

EDITED BY
Samuel Macauley Jackson
PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY, NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY

Διαιρέσεις χαρισμάτων, τὸ δὲ αὐτὸ πνεῦμα.
DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS, BUT THE SAME SPIRIT.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS BY HOLBEIN. ORIGINAL IN THE LOUVRE.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS
OF ROTTERDAM

BY
EPHRAIM EMERTON, PH.D.
WINN PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

O Erasme Roterodame, wo wiltu bleiben? Sieh, was vermag die ungerecht tyranney der weltlichen gewahlt, der macht der finsternuss? Hör, du ritter Christi, reith hervor neben den herrn Christum, beschüz die wahrheit, erlang der martärer cron. A. DÜRER'S DIARY, 1521.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1899

COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

PREFACE

A complete and satisfactory life of Erasmus of Rotterdam still remains to be written. Its author will have to be a thorough student of the classic literatures, a theologian familiar with every form of Christian speculation, a historian, to whom the complicated movement of the Reformation is altogether intelligible, an educator, a moralist, and a man of humour. Only to such a person--if such there ever were--could the writing of this life be a wholly congenial task. The subject has been approached by different writers from all the points of view indicated, but no biography has yet shown the whole range or value of Erasmus' varied activities.

The limitations of the present volume have fortunately been clearly defined by the title of the series in which it forms a part. Its function is to deal with Erasmus as a factor in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. With the very peculiar and often elusive personality of the man it has to do only in so far as it serves to suggest an explanation of his attitude towards the world-movement of his time. I say "suggest an explanation" rather than "explain," because, with all diligence, I cannot hope to have made clear all of the many problems involved in the inquiry. At every stage of the study of Erasmus one has to ask first what he believed himself to be doing, then what he wished others to believe he was doing, then what others did think he was doing, and finally what the man actually was doing. And all this has to be learned chiefly from his own words and from his reports of the words of others.

His life was full of strange incongruities, and any story of his life which should seek to cover these incongruities by any fictitious theory of consistency would but ill reflect the truth. And yet, with all its pettinesses and weaknesses, its contradictions and its comings-short of natural demands upon it, this life has, after all, an element of the heroic. If there be a heroism of persistent work and cheerful endurance, of steady exclusion of all distractions, of refusal to commit oneself to anything or anybody which might impede one's chosen line of duty, then we may gladly admit Erasmus into the choice company of the Heroes of the Reformation.

Such a distinction would vastly have amused him. He would have seized his pen and dashed off to some friend, who would spread the word, some such disclaimer as this: "Well, of all things in the world, now they are calling me a hero! If you never laughed before, laugh now to your heart's content. I a hero! a man afraid of my shadow,--a man of books, a hater of conflict, a man, who, if he were put to the test would, I fear, follow the example of Peter and deny his Lord. And, not content with this, they add 'of the Reformation.' I, who never, by word or deed, drunk or sober, gave so much as a hint of belonging to any of their accursed 'movements'! Well, no man can strive against the Fates."

I have chosen the chronological method because it serves best to illustrate the development of the man in his relation to his time. Such selections from Erasmus' writings have been chosen for detailed examination as bear most directly upon the main objects of the book. It has seemed wiser to make them long enough to show their true meaning rather than to use a greater number of mere scraps, which might in almost every case be contradicted by other scraps. So far as possible the merely controversial has been avoided. For example, I have barely alluded to the prolonged discussions with Archbishop Lee, the Frenchman Bedda, the Spaniard Stunica, and the Italian prince of Carpi. The detail of these controversies tends rather to confuse than to illuminate the point of chief interest to us. Yet no treatment of Erasmus could escape entirely the tone of controversy. He set that tone himself and the student of his writings inevitably falls into it.

The translations have been kept as close to the originals as was consistent with a freedom of style somewhat corresponding to Erasmus' own. It would be hopeless to attempt, by any paraphrasing whatever, to improve upon the freshness and vivacity of the author.

My thanks are due to many friends for kind assistance and suggestion, but especially to my colleague, Professor Albert A. Howard of the Latin department of Harvard University, to whose careful revision the accuracy of the translations is chiefly due.

References to the Leyden edition of Erasmus' works in 1703-1706 are given simply by volume, page (column), and division of the column, as, e. g., iii.¹, 157-B.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE iii

INTRODUCTION xiii

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xxiii

CHAPTER I.

SCHOOL AND MONASTERY. 1467-1490 1

CHAPTER II.

PARIS AND HOLLAND. 1492-1498 26

CHAPTER III.

FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 1498-1500 62

CHAPTER IV.

PARIS--THE "ADAGIA"--THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS CHRISTIANI"--PANEGYRIC ON PHILIP OF BURGUNDY. 1500-1506 87

CHAPTER V.

RESIDENCE IN ITALY--THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY." 1506-1509 122

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND (1509-1514)--THE NEW TESTAMENT--THE "DE COPIA VERBORUM ET RERUM." 179

CHAPTER VII.

BASEL AND LOUVAIN--THE "INSTITUTIO PRINCIPIS CHRISTIANI." 1515-1518 218

CHAPTER VIII.

BEGINNINGS OF THE REFORMATION--CORRESPONDENCE OF 1518-1519 268

CHAPTER IX.

DEFINITE BREACH WITH THE REFORMING PARTIES--HUTTEN'S "EXPOSTULATIO" AND ERASMUS' "SPONGIA." 1520-1523 336

CHAPTER X.

DOCTRINAL OPPOSITION TO THE REFORMATION--FREEDOM OF THE WILL--THE EUCHARIST--THE "SPIRIT." 1523-1527 380

CHAPTER XI.

FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES--NEW TESTAMENT PARAPHRASES-- CONTROVERSIAL AND DIDACTIC WRITINGS--REMOVAL TO FREIBURG--LAST REFORMATORY TREATISES--RETURN TO BASEL--DEATH. 1523-1536 420

INDEX 465

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

ERASMUS Frontispiece From the portrait by Holbein in the Louvre.

STATUE OF ERASMUS AT ROTTERDAM 2

HOUSE AT ROTTERDAM IN WHICH ERASMUS WAS BORN 4 From Knight's "Life of Erasmus."

PARISH CHURCH AT ALDINGTON, KENT 20 From Knight's "Life of Erasmus."

HOLBEIN'S STUDIES FOR THE HANDS OF ERASMUS 48

THOMAS MORE 64 From the drawing by Holbein in Windsor Castle.

JOHN COLET 70 From the drawing by Holbein in Windsor Castle.

HENRY VIII. AND HENRY VII. 77 Fragment of a cartoon by Holbein in possession of the Duke of Devonshire.

FRONTISPIECE AND TITLE-PAGE FROM "L'ÉLOGE DE LA FOLIE," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN IN 1715 124

ALDUS P. MANUTIUS 134 From an old print.

CARDINAL REGINALD POLE 146 From "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703.

CARDINAL PETER BEMBO 154 From "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703.

ERASMUS.--"FOLLY" AS PROFESSOR. 158 Holbein's illustrations to the "Praise of Folly"

A THEOLOGIAN.--A COUNCIL OF THEOLOGIANS. 162 Holbein's illustrations to the "Praise of Folly"

EVERYONE HAS HIS HOBBY.--PILGRIM FOLLY.--"FOLLY" CONCLUDES HER LECTURE. 166 Holbein's illustrations to the "Praise of Folly"

TITLE-PAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 1519 180

WILLIAM WARHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 184 From a painting by Holbein in the Louvre.

QUEEN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 190 From Knight's "Life of Erasmus."

JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER 195 From the drawing by Holbein in Windsor Castle.

CARDINAL XIMENES 200 From a portrait by C. E. Wagstaff, in the Florence Gallery.

DEVICE OF THE HOUSE OF FROBEN 205

DEVICE OF FROBEN 207

PORTRAIT OF FROBEN BY HOLBEIN. EPITAPH BY
ERASMUS--FACSIMILE OF HANDWRITING 232
From Knight's "Life of Erasmus."

BONIFACE AMERBACH OF BASEL 236 From "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703.

CHARLES V. 262 From an engraving by Bartel Beham, 1531.

PHILIP MELANCHTHON 280 From the drawing by Holbein in Windsor Castle.

FRONTISPIECE (ERASMUS SEATED) TO "ERASMI OPERA," PUBLISHED AT LEYDEN, 1703 296

ERASMUS WITH "TERMINUS" 315 From a woodcut by Holbein in the Basel Museum.

ERASMUS 334 From a copper engraving by Albert Dürer.

FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ERASMUS TO JOHANNES LANGE 342

ULRICH VON HUTTEN 364 From a contemporary woodcut.

BILIBALD PIRKHEIMER OF NUREMBERG 415 From an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, in "Erasmi Opera," published at Leyden, 1703.

TITLE-PAGE TO THE "COLLOQUIES OF ERASMUS," PUBLISHED AT AMSTERDAM, 1693 424 Portrait of Erasmus and others.

TITLE-PAGE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF THE "APOPHTHEGMS OF ERASMUS," TRANSLATED BY UDALL, 1542 450

INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF ERASMUS, AT BASEL 460 From Knight's "Life of Erasmus."

INTRODUCTION

The student of Erasmus is at first overwhelmed by the abundance of the material before him. A man who has left to posterity enough to fill eleven folio volumes would seem to have made a biographer unnecessary. Especially when two of these volumes are filled with personal letters, more than eighteen hundred in number, and addressed to some five hundred correspondents, it might well seem that the best biography would be a faithful transcript of what the man himself has given us. And, in fact, almost all that we know about Erasmus comes through himself. The singular thing is that with this great mass of material we know so little that is definite about him.

He lived in one of the most eventful periods of the world's history, and was in some kind of personal relation with its leading actors; and yet his life, from beginning to end, has not one event more important or stirring than a journey in winter, an attack of illness, a quarrel with some fellow scholar, or a change of residence. Our whole knowledge of his early life up to the period of production is derived from a very brief record made by himself many years afterward and made obviously with both a literary and a practical purpose.

His letters were largely collected and published by himself long after they were written, and were, so he himself tells us, freely altered for publication. Their chronology is hopelessly confused. Erasmus says that he supplied many of them with the day and year when he came to edit them. He was himself at all times curiously indifferent to the merely historical. It was always subordinate in his mind to the broadly human and philosophical. The letters must therefore be read with constant reference to their immediate purpose, and few of them are without purpose, though it would require a bold man indeed to be always sure just what it is. Luther's judgment upon them was unjustly severe: "In the epistles of Erasmus you find nothing of any account, except praise for his friends, scolding and abuse for his enemies, and that's all there is to it." The principles which governed Erasmus as editor of his own correspondence are indicated in a letter[1] of 1520 to Beatus Rhenanus.

[1] iii.¹, 552.

He represents himself as driven to edit them in order to check the publication of unauthorised editions, of which several had certainly appeared before 1519. He determined to make at least a selection and judiciously to modify the contents. "With this purpose I revised the collection. Some things I explained, which certain persons had interpreted unfavourably. Some, which I found had offended the oversensitive and irritable tempers of certain persons, I struck out. Some things I softened." But, after all, he says, as time went on, he repented him of his plan and urged Froben, to whom he had sent the "copy," to suppress it entirely or put it off to a more fitting time. But the work was so far along that Froben declared he would not throw away all that expense, and Erasmus just had to humour him. "I had to give way to him and incur myself perhaps the risk of my reputation in order to save him the risk of his money."[2]

[2] See also the long treatise, de conscribendis epistolis, i., 341-483.

Erasmus shared with most scholars of the Renaissance the cacoethes scribendi. He says of himself that his words were rather poured out than written. When he took his pen in hand it became an independent force, against which he had to contend lest it run away with him altogether, and it is one of his claims to greatness as a writer that on the whole he kept the mastery over it. This essentially literary quality must be constantly borne in mind by the historian and he must always be striving to fix the line where history ends and literature begins.

Again,--and here also Erasmus was eminently a Renaissance man,--he felt himself to be the centre of the world. In a sense that is, of course, true of every thinking man; but in Erasmus this newly awakened individual consciousness took on a form of acute personal sensitiveness which affected his relation to all persons and all things about him. Especially it reacted upon his writing. He could not be objective upon any question into which his personality entered ever so slightly. Whatever touched him as a man, as a scholar, a theologian, a churchman, or a citizen, began at once to lose its true perspective. He saw it only in its relation to himself, or at best to the cause of pure learning, which he always felt to be embodied in himself.

No writer upon Erasmus has failed to notice these qualities. The singular thing has been that, recognising them, the biographers have not tried in any consistent fashion to measure them as affecting the value of our sources of knowledge. It has generally sufficed to refer to them and then to treat the sources as pure historical information. Plainly the solution is not an easy one. If we should reject, for example, the letter to Grunnius[3] or the Colloquy on The Eating of Fish[4] as sources for Erasmus' early life, we should have very little left. If we should accept them as history we should be mingling fact and fancy in altogether uncertain proportions. The only safe method is, therefore, to try in each case to weigh the value of the text before us with fullest reference to all the circumstances.

[3] iii.¹, 1821.

[4] i., 787-810.

This rule applies as well to the treatises as to the letters, whenever the personal element enters into the account. Where no such issue can be raised, as, for example, in the purely philological essays or in the treatises against war, or in abstract moral or didactic writing, we are often forced to admire the vigour and decision of Erasmus' utterance. But if his personal judgment was assailed, as it frequently was, then even on a merely grammatical question his sensitive temper was readily roused to a kind of defence which we find very difficult to accept as a calm statement of fact.

Another source of confusion is Erasmus' amazing command of classic literature and his cleverness in utilising, not merely the forms, but at times the ideas and even the phrases of ancient authors. How much of what he says, for example, in his descriptions of persons, whether favourably or unfavourably, is really his own and how much borrowed is often quite impossible to discover. This borrowing or adapting is so much a habit that he obviously borrows from himself, using under similar circumstances what seem to have become almost formulas of his thought. He must be literary; he might be accurate.

Of contemporary biographical attempts we have almost nothing. Erasmus' younger friend, Beatus Rhenanus of Schlettstadt in Alsatia, one of the Basel circle of scholars, has left us two fragments, one a dedication to the Emperor Charles V. of the 1540 edition of Erasmus' works, and the other from the dedication to an edition of Origen in 1536 with Erasmus' revision. These two brief sketches fill but six printed folio pages. They are disfigured by elaborate panegyric, not only of Erasmus, but of the emperor as well, are obviously drawn from Erasmus' own account of himself, and contribute little original material to our knowledge.

In regard to his writings, Erasmus on two occasions made attempts to summarise his work, once in 1524 at the request of John Botzheim, a canon of the church at Constance, and again, during his residence at Freiburg, in reply to an inquiry from Hector Boëthius of the University of Aberdeen. The latter is a mere table of contents for a possible complete edition of his works, but the former includes a great deal of description of the circumstances under which many of the works were written. These descriptions are at times so trivial that they can hardly command our respect, and yet it would of course be impossible to deny that a work of great importance may have had a trivial suggestion. This longer catalogue gives us also a good many sidelights upon Erasmus' personality and movements. The general arrangement and division into volumes suggested by Erasmus himself were followed in the first Basel edition of 1540, and have been preserved in the Leyden edition of Leclerc in 1703-1706 which we have used.

That the following pages will give a clear and consistent impression of Erasmus' motive at each stage of his career is more than we can hope for. The best we can offer is an honest appreciation of his great service to the cause of reform, often in ways he little expected or desired, often very indirectly, and always without relation to any definite scheme of action. We may, however, fairly hope that as each occasion arises, we have so plainly set the possibilities before the reader that he may form an intelligent judgment as to the probability.

The most serious problem at every step is what weight to give to Erasmus' statements about himself. The only reasonable test is to be found in what he actually did. If, for example, he professes undying love for the city of Rome and an uncontrollable desire to end his days there; at the same time protests that everyone at Rome is longing to have him there, and yet takes no steps to go, we are forced to inquire what were the reasons which kept him away, and may have to conclude that all this was a bit of comedy arranged for some effect which we, as plain historians, should be glad to understand.

In applying these tests to Erasmus' declarations about the Reformation we find the largest scope for the critical method. All that is mysterious in his personality up to that time becomes doubly so when he finds himself--he would have us believe quite against his will--thrust forward into prominence as a rebel against the existing order. Several courses of action were open to him: First, and most obvious, to keep silent; second, to join with the party of reform, try to hold it to the essential things, and supply it with the weapons of learning which none could prepare so well as he; third, to denounce the reform, seek his safety in close alliance with Rome, and then try to moderate, as far as he could, the extremes of Roman abuse. No one of these methods commended itself wholly to his judgment or to his nature. He could not be silent; he would not lend himself to what he called "sedition"; and he neither could, nor did he quite dare, trust himself in the hands of the Church he professed to serve, lest he find his liberty of action restricted beyond endurance.

The world into which Erasmus was born was a world of violent contrasts. The papal system, having come victorious out of the struggle with the conciliar movement of the fifteenth century, seemed to control without resistance every current of ecclesiastical life and thought. Yet the deep and steady flow of sincere and simple faith best represented by the mystical writers, individual and associated, was gaining in force and was making Europe ready for a revolt they never even thought of. The spirit of modern science, which is nothing more than a desire to see things in their true relations, was making itself felt in invention and discovery and in the revelation of Man to himself as a being worth investigating. Yet over against this spirit of light and liberty hovers the dark shadow of the Inquisition and its kindred manifestations of an exclusive claim to the knowledge and control of the Truth. Vast political powers were contending for the possession of long-disputed territories, while within their borders great social and industrial discontents were gathering to a demonstration whenever the strain of these dynastic struggles should become unbearable.

There were men in this vast conflict of ideas to whom it was given to lead others along some visible and definable road to some determinable end: Thomas à Kempis along the way of faith to the haven of religious peace; Luther and Calvin along the way of doctrinal clearness through ecclesiastical revolution to deliberate reconstruction; Descartes through a single, all-inclusive philosophical proposition to ultimate certainty of thought; the great artists through "painting the thing as they saw it" to a new basis of æsthetic judgment. The special function of Erasmus in the Great Readjustment was, as he conceived it, to bring men back to the standards of a true Christianity by constant reference to the principles of ancient learning, and by an appeal to the tribunal of common sense. His activity took many forms; but he was always, whether through classical treatise or encyclopædic collection or satirical dialogue or direct moral appeal--always and everywhere, the preacher of righteousness. His successes were invariably along this line. His failures were caused by his incapacity to perceive at what moment the mere appeal to the moral sense was no longer adequate. His services to the Reformation were warmly recognised even by so violent an opponent as Hutten; his personal limitations were in danger of making those services of no avail, and there was the point where he and those with whom he ought to have worked parted company.

Our work divides itself naturally into two parts: First, the development of Erasmus up to the outbreak of the Lutheran Reformation in 1517, and second, his relation to the leading persons and ideas of the next twenty years. In treating the former period we shall examine the traditional story of Erasmus' early education, and shall illustrate by selections showing as fairly as may be what proved to be the dominant traits of his mind and character. In the second part we shall endeavour to show how the traits thus formed determined his attitude towards the unexpected demands of a new time.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

It would be idle to attempt here an Erasmian bibliography, since the elaborate undertaking of the University Library at Ghent in 1893[5] has placed the material available up to that date in a form accessible to every reader. The same editors are now engaged upon a still more stupendous enterprise, a bibliography,[6] in 16º form, giving complete titles of all known editions of every work. Begun in 1897, it thus far includes only the editions of the Adagia. I give here, therefore, only the sources likely to interest the general reader and especially such as I have consulted in the preparation of this volume.

[5] Bibliotheca Erasmiana; Repertoire des œuvres d'Érasme. Ghent, 1893.

[6] Bibliotheca Erasmiana; Bibliographie des œuvres d'Érasme. Ghent, 1897.

I have used constantly the Leyden edition of Erasmus' works[7] based upon the Basel edition of 1540. The arrangement is roughly according to the nature of the material. The editorial work is meagre and careless. The indexes are elaborately and exasperatingly useless. In the case of the letters, though the editor is perfectly conscious of false arrangement and dating, he leaves them as he finds them, and the reader is compelled to discover the inaccuracies for himself. Professor Adalbert Horawitz of Vienna was preparing to write a Life of Erasmus when he was interrupted by death in 1888. His preliminary studies[8] have supplied much new material and given us many valuable critical suggestions. In 1876 Professor W. Vischer of Basel, acting on the suggestion of Horawitz, published a series of very interesting documents which he had discovered in the Basel University Library, and which throw much light upon several obscure points in the life of Erasmus.[9] An article by the late Dr. R. Fruin,[10] which came to my knowledge after the completion of the manuscript, quite confirms my view of the utter untrustworthiness of Erasmus' accounts of his early life. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, first published in 1758-60, 2d ed., in 3 vols., 1808, is little more than a translation of Leclerc's _Vie d'Érasme_[11] which was published as a kind of résumé and advertisement at once of the Leyden Opera. Jortin gives, however, in addition, a good many documents and a mass of more or less relevant remarks.

[7] Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami opera omnia, emendatiora et auctiora, etc., ed. Johannes Clericus (Jean Leclerc), 10 vols., folio. Leyden, 1703-1706.

[8] Horawitz, Adalbert, Erasmiana; in Sitzungsberichte der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vienna, 1878-1885. Text and documents. Ueber die Colloquia des Erasmus; in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch. 1887.

[9] Vischer, Wilhelm, Erasmiana. Basel, 1876.

[10] Fruin, R., Erasmiana; in Bijdragen voor vaderlandsche geschiedenis en ouheidkunde, new series, x., 1880; 3d series, i., 1882.

[11] Jean Leclerc, Vie d'Érasme tirée de ses lettres, etc., in Bibliothèque choisie. Amsterdam, 1703 sqq., vols. i., v., vi., viii.

Of more recent biographies, that of R. B. Drummond[12] is, all things considered, the best; careful and serious, but showing the almost universal tendency to take Erasmus at his word, even while admitting his incapacity to tell the truth.

[12] Drummond, Robert B., Erasmus, his Life and Character as shown in his Correspondence and Works. 2 vols. London, 1873.

Durand de Laur[13] gives in his first volume a sketch of Erasmus' life with little critical sifting of evidence, and in the second an interesting examination of his achievements in the several lines of his activity.

[13] Durand de Laur, H., Érasme, précurseur et initiateur de l'esprit moderne. 2 vols. Paris, 1872.

Froude's _Life and Letters_[14] illustrates the author's familiar qualities,--his remarkable distinctness of view and his complete indifference to accuracy of detail.

[14] Froude, James Anthony, Life and Letters of Erasmus; lectures delivered at Oxford, 1893-94. London and New York, 1894.

Samuel Knight's Life,[15] 1726, is still readable. It deals chiefly with the relations of Erasmus to England, and gives a great deal of "curious information" about persons incidentally connected with him.

[15] Knight, Samuel, The Life of Erasmus. Cambridge, 1726. With many valuable documents.

Other works likely to be of interest to the reader and student are:

Altmeyer, J. J., Les précurseurs de la Réforme aux Pays-bas. Brussels, 1886. Érasme et les hommes de son temps, vol. i., pp. 258-343.

Amiel, Émile, Un Libre-penseur du XVI siècle: Érasme. Paris, 1889.

Burigny, J. L. de, Vie d'Érasme. 2 vols. Paris, 1757.

Butler, Charles, Life of Erasmus. London, 1825.

Feugère, Gaston, Érasme,--Étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages. Paris, 1874.

Hartfelder, Karl, D. Erasmus von Rotterdam und die Päpste seiner Zeit; in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch, 1891.

Hartfelder, Karl, Friedrich der Weise und D. Erasmus von Rotterdam; in Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, etc., new series, iv., 1891.

Janssen, Joh., Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. Freiburg, 1879, and in repeated editions. On Erasmus in vol. ii.

Kämmel, H., Erasmus in Deventer; in Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, vol. cx.

Müller, Adolph, Leben des Erasmus. Hamburg, 1828.

Nolhac, Pierre de, Érasme en Italie; étude sur un épisode de la Renaissance avec douze lettres inédites d'Érasme. Paris, 1888.

Pennington, A. R., The Life of Erasmus. London, 1875.

Richter, Arthur, Erasmus-Studien. Dresden, 1891.

Seebohm, Frederic, The Oxford Reformers of 1498: Colet, Erasmus, More. London, 1867; 3d ed., 1887.

Staehelin, R., Erasmus' Stellung zur Reformation. Basel, 1873.

Stichart, F. O., Erasmus von Rotterdam, Seine Stellung zu der Kirche und zu den kirchlichen Bewegungen seiner Zeit. Leipzig, 1870.

Woltmann, A., Holbein und seine Zeit. Leipzig, 1866-68, 2 parts; 2d ed., 1874-76, 2 vols. English translation, Holbein and his Time. London, 1872.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

CHAPTER I

SCHOOL AND MONASTERY

1467-1490

In a letter[16] written by Erasmus, in 1520, to Peter Manius occurs a passage so characteristic of the writer that one can hardly have a better introduction to the study of his life. Manius had urged him to declare frankly that he was not a Frenchman but a German, in order that Germany might not be defrauded of so great a glory. Erasmus replies:

[16] iii.¹, 582-C.

"In the first place it seems to me to make little difference where a man is born, and I think it a vain sort of glorification when a city or a nation boasts of producing a man who has become great through his own exertions and not by the help of his native land. Far more properly may that country boast which has made him great than that which brought him forth. So far I speak as if there were anything in me in which my country might take pride. It is enough for me if she be not ashamed of me,--though indeed Aristotle does not wholly disapprove that kind of pride which may add a spur to the pursuit of a worthy aim.

"If there were any of this kind of pride in me I should wish that not France and Germany alone should claim me, but that each and every nation and city might go into the strife for Erasmus. It would be a useful error which should incite so many to worthy effort. Whether I am a Batavian or no is not even yet quite clear to me. I cannot deny that I am a Hollander, born in that region which, if we may trust the map-makers, lies rather towards France than towards Germany; although it is beyond a doubt that that whole region is on the borderland between the two."

Erasmus cared not where he was born and certainly was in no way identified with Rotterdam, his native place. He often speaks of "us" and "our people," referring to Low Germans generally, but he preferred to be called a citizen of the world, and his whole life is the illustration of this indifference. Though born a Dutchman, it has been doubted whether he could speak with readiness his native tongue, and it seems certain that no other modern language came as readily to his lips as did the speech of ancient Rome.[17] During a long life he was continually in motion, never resting more than a few years in any one place, always seeking more favourable conditions for the work he had in hand.

[17] I quite agree with Dr. A. Richter, Erasmus-Studien, 1891, that Erasmus cannot be accused of any contempt for the vulgar tongues or any lack of sympathy with common human life, but I do not find his arguments for a thorough command of any modern language altogether convincing. That he could speak French enough for travelling purposes and write it, as he says himself, "badly," is probable.

STATUE OF ERASMUS AT ROTTERDAM.

Holland, Belgium, England, France, Switzerland, were equally his homes, "ubi bene, ibi patria." If he had a preference of sentiment for any country it was possibly for England, but the demands of his work and the pressure of untoward circumstances carried him hither and yon, so that his visits to England seem rather like busy vacations in his arduous life. Patriotism, citizenship, loyalty to a place, seemed to him like so many limitations upon that dominant individuality which was the key-note of his character.

As he was indifferent to the place, so was he also to the time of his birth. It is even probable that he did not know precisely when he was born. At all events he nowhere tells us, excepting that the day was the 27-28th of October. As to the year we are left to later conjecture, and 1467, the date placed by the citizens of Rotterdam upon their monument to his memory, is as likely to be correct as any other.[18]

[18] The careful inquiry of Dr. Richter into the birth-year of Erasmus attempts to fix the year 1466 as the correct date, but rather succeeds in showing the hopeless confusion of our material, and the evident ignorance and indifference of Erasmus himself on the subject.

In regard to his family and the circumstances of his birth, Erasmus was also reticent to the point of obscurity. That he was born out of wedlock is clear. His enemies made what little they could out of the fact, and he never took the trouble to deny it. We may safely conclude that he cared as little to what family he belonged as to what land he owed his affection. Our actual knowledge on the subject is limited to the pathetic little opening paragraph of the very brief Compendium Vitæ, which he sent, under the impression of approaching death, to his intimate friend, Conrad Goclenius, Latin professor at the University of Louvain. "Nothing," he says in the letter accompanying it, "was ever more unfortunate than my birth, but perchance there will be those who will add fictions to the facts." "My father Gerard," he writes, "had secretly an affair with Margaret, daughter of a physician of Zevenberge, in the hope of marriage, and some say that they had plighted their troth (intercessisse verba)."

The marriage was delayed by the desire of Gerard's parents that one of their family of ten sons should be devoted to the Church and by the jealousy of the brothers lest their property be diminished. Meanwhile Gerard, "as desperate men are wont to do," took himself out of the way and wandered to Rome. Our Erasmus was born after his departure. The relatives, learning Gerard's whereabouts, sent him word that Margaret was dead, and the poor fellow, who had been earning his living as a copyist and decorator of manuscripts, sought refuge in ordination as a priest. On his return to Holland he discovered the fraud, but lived the short remnant of his days faithful to his priestly vows.

HOUSE AT ROTTERDAM IN WHICH ERASMUS WAS BORN. FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF ERASMUS."

One or two obscure references in later writings give some reason to think that Erasmus had an older brother, who figures also in the letter to Grunnius mentioned in the Introduction. This brother can interest us only as affecting the question of the relation between the father and mother of Erasmus. His appearance in the letter to Grunnius reminds one so strongly of the characters introduced by Erasmus in his Colloquies to serve as foils for the principal speakers, that one can hardly help suspecting a similar device here. At all events the brother is too shadowy a personage to warrant us in drawing from his previous existence any instructive conclusion as to the origin of Erasmus.

In spite of so unfavourable a start in life, the early years of the lad seem to have been as well sheltered and cared for as could be desired. The little Gerard, as tradition would have him called during his childhood, was early sent to school in Gouda (Tergouw), his father's native place, to an uncle, Peter Winckel by name, and served for some time before he was nine years old as choir-boy at the Cathedral of Utrecht.[19]

[19] A papal brief of the year 1517, found recently at Basel, is endorsed: Dilecto filio Erasmo Rogerii Roterodamensi clerico. The editor, W. Vischer, believes, on this evidence, that the family name of our scholar was Roger and his baptismal name Erasmus. He thinks it probable that Erasmus had been more frank in his statements to the Pope than he usually cared to be and had given his true name in the petition to which this brief is the answer.

He says of himself at this tender age, that he "made but little progress in those unattractive studies for which he was not made by Nature," but we are hardly warranted in drawing from this phrase the conclusion that he was ever a backward scholar.

At nine he was sent to the famous school at Deventer. His mother accompanied him and cared for him as before. Of the Deventer school Erasmus says that it was "as yet a barbarous place," by which he means that it had not yet been reformed in the direction of the New Learning. The boys had to learn their "pater meus,"[20] (?) to conjugate their verbs, and to master their Latin grammar in the text-books of Everard and John Garland. It was a dreary method and Erasmus' recollection doubtless made it seem worse than it really was. The error of it to his maturer mind was that it was rather practical than scientific, especially that it did not introduce the pupil from the outset to the models of Latin style, which the great classic authors alone could furnish. He looked back upon these, as indeed upon all his years of pupilage, as to a time of struggle and hardship. Yet the fact is that he was making rapid progress, and at the close of his four years at Deventer he found himself the equal in learning of many older lads.

[20] H. Kämmel, "Erasmus in Deventer," in Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Paedagogik, 1874, Bd. 110, p. 305, quotes from Wm. Bates, an English editor of Erasmus' Compendium Vitæ in 1687, the desperate conjecture that this phrase refers to some manual prepared by the father of Erasmus! I suspect--assuming that we have a correct text--that the reference is to some forgotten Latin phrase-book, beginning perhaps with the words "pater meus." "Tempora" can hardly refer to anything but the tenses of the grammar.

The head-master of Deventer at the time was a German, Alexander Hegius, from whom and from John Sintheim, one of the teachers, Erasmus says the school was beginning to get a glimmer of the great light, which, spreading from Italy, was enlightening the world. Erasmus' younger friend and biographer, Beatus Rhenanus, speaks of this Hegius as a man of very moderate learning, who knew no Greek at all, but says that he was open to the merits of the learning he did not share and gladly accepted the instruction of the younger German scholar, Rudolf Agricola, who had just returned from Italy fresh with the eager enthusiasm of that land of all promise. Erasmus fancied that the most he got out of his Deventer days was a "certain odor of better learning" which came to him from his older mates, who enjoyed the direct teaching of Sintheim, and from the occasional hearing of Hegius, who on feast days lectured to the whole school. There can be no doubt, however, that he had got on famously in Latin and made at least a beginning in Greek.[21] Beatus tells a very pretty story of Sintheim,--that having heard Erasmus recite, he kissed him and said, "Go on, Erasmus, you will some day reach the very summit of learning."

[21] See in ii., 166, 167, the adage, "quid cani et balneo."

After four years at Deventer an outbreak of the plague carried off the faithful mother and within a few weeks the father also, both just over forty years of age. Gerard, so Erasmus says, left a modest fortune, sufficient, if it had been properly husbanded, to provide for his own education at a university. The guardians, however, to whom he had intrusted his little property, the uncle Peter Winckel especially, were determined not to give the boy an academic training, but instead to turn him into the monastic life. Beatus speaks of Deventer as "a most prolific nursery of monks of every kind," and Erasmus employs this phrase, with every shade of anger and contempt, for the next institution in which his lot was to be cast.

This was a house of the so-called "Brethren of the Common Life" at 's Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc). This widespread organisation had for more than a century played a large part in the religious life of the Low Countries. Founded by one Gerard Groot of Deventer, about 1380, it had come into existence as above all else a protest against the dominant monasticism of the Middle Ages. It was not an "order" in the stricter sense; the brethren were not bound by irrevocable vows; they were not regularly chartered by the authority of the Church. It was a free association of men who simply came to live together, giving up their private property, in order that they might the more effectively, as they believed, live the life of the Spirit.

Their chief occupation was the copying of sacred writings, but they professed to support themselves by manual labour. Without calling into question any of the teachings of the Church, their greater lights, Gerard himself, Thomas à Kempis, John Wessel, had given to them a deeper spiritual meaning. They had sought to emphasise rather the inner life of the individual than the outward, visible institutions of the Church. Naturally they had from the first been suspected by all those elements of the Church organisation which saw their future thus threatened; the regular orders, the Inquisition, the secularised priesthood, had each in its turn sought to check this growing protest against their peculiar interests. On the other hand, the communities in which the brethren had established themselves had come to value them as examples of piety and types of a virtue which did not tend to separate men too widely from the life of the world.

Now all this would seem to point precisely in the direction towards which all the thought of Erasmus naturally turned. Of the two early instructors who chiefly impressed him, Hegius and Sintheim, the latter was certainly of the Brethren. The school of Deventer, while probably not directly under their control, was profoundly influenced by them. Yet we find in his writings repeated reflections upon their houses as training-schools for the monasteries and upon themselves as enemies of sound learning and practical virtue.

At 's Hertogenbosch he spent--or, as he himself says, wasted--about three years. Yet he admits that at the end of that time he had made good progress, had acquired a ready style, and in some good authors was "satis paratus." We may be quite sure that he would not have exaggerated any attainments he might have made under such circumstances. His residence at 's Hertogenbosch was cut short by an illness, a quartan fever, as he describes it, to which he seems to have been subject. He was thrown back upon his guardians and, if we may believe his own later testimony, he found the whole world in a conspiracy to force him into the monastic life. The uncle Peter, whom he describes as a man of good outward reputation, but selfish, ignorant, and bigoted, was especially determined on this point. Erasmus makes what he can out of the ruin of his little fortune as a motive for getting rid of him, but rather spoils the force of his argument by representing Peter as upon principle devoted to getting his pupils into monasteries. "He used to brag about how many youths he had captured every year for Francis or Dominic or Benedict or Augustine or Bridget."

That the effort of the guardians was to persuade Erasmus to become a member of the Brethren of the Common Life is made probable by his use of the term "Fratres Collationarii." This was one of the popular names for the Brethren, derived from their peculiar practice of giving moral instruction by means of conferences (collationes). Erasmus includes them all in his sweeping denunciations of all schools and monasteries as "man-stealers." "Formerly," he says, "they were not monks at all; now they are a half-way kind of people, monks in what suits them, non-monks in what they don't like." "They have nested themselves in everywhere and make a regular business of hunting up boys to be trained." A clever lad of quick parts was an especial prize. "They ply him with torments, break him with threats, reproofs, and many other arts, and call this 'training.' Thus they mould him for the monastic life. If this is not 'man-stealing,' what is?"

One might have supposed that the more stupid the boy, the greater the reason for urging him to a life whose essence is described as stupidness; but Erasmus declares the opposite and makes himself the illustration. All these devices were tried upon him. Violence worked as badly with him then as ever afterward, and so one of the teachers, for whom he shows some real affection, was set to try the method of persuasion. Erasmus, however, declared that he was too young, that he knew neither the world nor himself, and that it seemed much wiser for him to pass some years yet in the study of good literature before making so important a decision. These were not bad people; they were simply ignorant men, shut up in a corner, always comparing themselves one with the other, but never with men of the world--what could be expected of them but narrowness and bigotry? In the reflected light of later years the great scholar saw himself already at fourteen the champion of pure learning as against the benumbing influence of the schools.

A final assault was made by one of the guardians. Erasmus and his elder brother--we are following the Grunnius letter--had prepared themselves by an agreement to stand by each other. The younger was to be spokesman and was very doubtful of the elder's firmness of purpose. The guardian came in all kindness to congratulate the boys on their good fortune in having, through his good offices, obtained a place among the canons. Erasmus thanked him kindly, but said, as he had said to his teacher, that they had decided not to venture upon this unknown way of life until they should have gained in years and knowledge. The guardian, instead of being pleased with the manliness of the answer, "flared up as if someone had struck him, could hardly keep his hands off them, and began to call names,"--"you recognise the voice of the monks," Erasmus adds slyly to the papal secretary. The end of it was that the guardian threw up his trust, declared that the boys' estate was all spent and they might see to it how they got on in the world. "Very well," Erasmus heard himself saying through his tears, "we accept your resignation and release you from all care of us."

Then the guardian sent his brother, a man famous for his gentle ways. He invited the lads into the garden, offered them wine, and with all gentleness entertained them with the marvellous charms of the monastic life. "Many a lie he told them of the wondrous happiness of that institution." At this the elder gave way, and this gives Erasmus a pretext for an assault upon the good name of his dead brother--supposing this brother to be a real person. He was a dull fellow, eager only for gain, sly, crafty, a wine-bibber and worse--"in short, so different from the younger that one might think him a changeling; for he had nothing in common with him but his evil genius."

Hereupon follows Erasmus' famous description of the pressure which finally drove him into the monastery. It is plainly a work of literary art, with little of the directness of simple truth; but we have no reason to doubt that it fairly represents one side of the impressions under which a youth of Erasmus' tastes and condition would naturally be brought. He describes it as a conspiracy deliberately set in motion by a hostile guardian, but one hardly needs this explanation to account for the fact that a lad in the year of grace 1483 should hear every manner of description of the monastic life. These things were in the air. To be a scholar had, up to that time, been almost the same thing as to be a monk, and if Erasmus desired to be a scholar, here was, apparently, the line of least resistance.

The youth was at that crisis which comes to every young man, when for the first time he is called upon to decide for himself, with such help as he can get from others, what course of life he ought to follow. He describes himself as just entering upon his sixteenth year, without experience of the world and by nature disinclined to everything but study; of frail body, though strong enough for mental occupation. He had passed all his life in schools and believed that the low fever, from which he had suffered more than a year, was the consequence of this narrow and dreary training. Deserted on every side, with no one to turn to,--was not this enough to break a tender youth like him?

Still he held out, and then began a new series of persecutions. "Monks and semi-monks, relatives, both male and female, young and old, known and unknown," were set upon him.

"Some of these," he says, "were such natural born fools that if it had not been for their sacred garments, they might have gone about as clowns with cap and bells. Others sinned through superstition rather than through any ill-will,--but what matters it whether one be choked to death by folly or by evil intention? One painted a lovely picture of monastic repose, picking out only the most attractive features;--why, the quartan fever itself might be made attractive after this fashion."

Another gave an overdrawn picture of the evils of this world--as if monks were not of this world! Indeed they do represent themselves as safe on board ship while all the rest of the world is struggling in the waves and must surely perish unless they cast out a spar or a rope. Another spread before his eyes the frightful torments of hell--as if there were no open road from the monasteries into hell!

Others sought to alarm him with "old wives' tales" of prodigies and monstrous visions. They praised the monkish communion in good works, "as if they had a superfluity of these, when really they need the mercy of God more than laymen." In short, there was no engine of any sort that was not set at work on the poor lad, and they spent upon him as much energy as would go to the taking of an opulent city. So he hung "between the victim and the knife," waiting for some god to show him a hope of safety, when by chance he met an old friend who had been from his earliest years an inmate of the monastery at Steyn, near Gouda. This Cantelius, or Cornelius, whom Erasmus describes as driven into the monastery partly by the love of ease and good living, partly as a last resort, because he had failed to make his fortune in Italy, conceived a mighty affection for the boy and joined in the chorus of exhortation. Especially, knowing his taste, he dwelt upon the abundance of books and the leisure for study until "to hear him one would suppose that this was not so much a monastery as a garden of the Muses." Erasmus returned this affection, "ignorant as yet of human nature and judging others by himself." Cornelius left no stone unturned, but still Erasmus resisted, until finally some "yet more powerful battering-rams" were applied. What these were he does not precisely say, but only enumerates again the loss of property and the pressure of his friends. At last, "rather tormented than persuaded," he goes back to Cornelius, "tantum fabulandi gratia,"--whatever he may wish to imply by that,--and consents to try the experiment, without, however, committing himself to remain permanently. His only condition was that he would not go to "the filthy, unwholesome place, unfit for oxen, which his guardian had recommended."

Still Erasmus cannot help fancying himself abused. He was charmingly treated; no duties were pressed upon him; everybody flattered him and coddled him to his heart's content. He had a capital chance to read all the "good literature" he wished, for Cornelius soon came to regard him as a kind of private tutor and kept him at it whole nights long, much to the injury, he says, of his poor little body. "After all," thought Erasmus, "this was what the selfish fellow wanted me here for." In a few months the friends had thus read through the principal Latin authors; so that this novitiate must have been for Erasmus a time of great profit along the very line for which he professed unlimited enthusiasm.

As the time drew near for putting off the secular and donning the "religious" garb, the same conflict is repeated. Erasmus, looking back upon his youth, says that his only ambition was for scholarship, pure and simple, and that, therefore, his natural wish was to go to a university. His experience in the monastery had made it clear to him that this was not the life he wished to lead, but precisely why, he does not satisfactorily explain. Reasons, indeed, he gives in plenty: his health was not good; he needed plenty of good food and at regular intervals; he could not bear to be broken of his sleep, and so forth. His delicate constitution was plainly a source of pride to him as evidence of a finer spirit than those about him possessed.

"All these things are a mere joke to the coarse-bred beasts who would thrive on hay and enjoy it. But skilled physicians know that this delicacy is the peculiarity of a specially refined body and of the rarer spirits, and prescribe for them food cooked so as to be digestible and eaten frequently but sparingly; whereas you will find others who, if you once fill them up, can hold out a long time without inconvenience, like vultures."

Especially against fish, Erasmus says, he had such a loathing that the very smell of it gave him a headache and fever.

These objections are highly trivial. They agree, for one thing, very ill with Erasmus' charges against monks, for of all things he accuses them most often of easy and luxurious living. There were ways enough, as he found out afterward for his own convenience, of getting around the burdensome requirements of the cloister and, on the other hand, out of these very restrictions there had gone forth many a vigorous leader of human thought and action. The fact is, probably, that Erasmus felt already stirring within him that restless impulse towards the free, unfettered development of his own individuality which was to be the guide and motive of his life. He accepted the monastery because under the circumstances there was nothing else to do; but it could not satisfy him.

Such, at all events, is the impression he desired to produce when writing this account. He says:

"In such a place learning had neither honour nor use. He [meaning himself] was not an enemy of piety, but had no liking for formulas and ceremonies in which pretty much their whole life consists. Besides, in an association like this, as a rule the dull of intellect are put to the front, half fools, who love their bellies more than letters. If any exceptional talent appears among them, one who is born for learning, he is crushed down lest he rise to distinction. And yet such creatures must have a tyrant, and it generally happens that the dullest and wickedest, if only he be of sturdy body, is of most account in the gang. Now then, consider what a cross it would be for a man born to the Muses to pass his whole life among such persons. There is no hope of deliverance unless, perchance, one might be set over a convent of virgins, and that is the worst slavery there is."

Here indeed we may see what was really troubling Erasmus. It was not any special hostility to the monastery. It was a dread of anything and anybody that could make any lasting claims upon him. The monastery simply came in for a larger share of his abuse because its claim upon him was more burdensome and more evident. It was not true that a man bred a monk could not rise to almost any distinction in almost any field. The times just before Erasmus were filled with examples of men who, through their own talent and energy, had made their monastic connection the ladder by which they had mounted to far-reaching usefulness. Even Luther, fiery spirit as he was, worked his way to liberty along the path of monastic conformity.

For Erasmus a thorough-going conformity to anything was an impossibility. Making all allowance for the effect of later experience upon his record of youthful feeling, we may well believe that he really felt at the moment of his struggle something of what he puts into his defence: