I. THE SALE OF INDULGENCES (1517-18).
While Erasmus in 1517 was hard at work at the revision of his New
Testament, publishing the first instalment of his Paraphrases,[652]
recommending the ‘Utopia’ and the ‘Christian Prince’ to the perusal of
princes and their courtiers,[653] expressing to his friends at the Papal
Court his trust that under Leo X. Rome herself might become the centre of
peace and religion,[654]--while Erasmus was thus working on hopefully,
preparing the way, as he thought, for a peaceful reform, Europe was
suddenly brought, by the scandalous conduct of princes and the Pope, to
the very brink of revolution.
[Sidenote: Leo X. wants money.]
Leo X. was in want of money. He had no scruple to tax the Christian world
for selfish family purposes any more than his predecessors in the Papal
chair; but times had altered, and he thought it prudent, instead of doing
so openly, to avoid scandal, by cloaking his crime in double folds of
imposture and deception. It mattered little that a few shrewd men might
suspect the dishonesty of the pretexts put forth, if only the multitude
could be sufficiently deluded to make them part with their money.
[Sidenote: Tenths and indulgences.]
A war against the Turks could be proposed and abandoned the moment the
‘tenths’ demanded to pay its expenses were safe in the Papal exchequer. If
_indulgences_ were granted to all who should contribute towards the
building of St. Peter’s at Rome, the profits could easily be devoted to
more pressing uses. So, in the spring of 1517, the payment of a tenth was
demanded from all the clergy of Europe, and commissions were at the same
time issued for the sale of indulgences to the laity. Some opposition was
to be expected from disaffected princes; but experience on former
occasions had proved that these would be easily bribed to connive at any
exactions from their subjects by the promise of a share in the spoil.[655]
Hence the project seemed to the Papal mind justified on Machiavellian
principles, and, judged by the precedents of the past, likely to succeed.
[Sidenote: Satire on indulgences in the ‘Praise of Folly.’]
But the seeds of opposition to Machiavellian projects of this kind had
recently been widely sown. More in his ‘Utopia,’ and Erasmus in his
‘Christian Prince,’ had only a few months before spoken plain words to
people and princes on taxation and unjust exactions. Erasmus, too, in his
‘Praise of Folly,’ had spoken contemptuously of the _crime of false
pardons_, in other words, of Papal _indulgences_.[656] And though
Lystrius, in his recent marginal note on this passage, had explained that
Papal indulgences are not included in this sweeping censure, ‘_unless they
be false_, it being no part of our business to dispute of the pontifical
power,’ yet he had almost made matters worse by adding:--
‘This one thing I know, that what Christ promised concerning the remission
of sins is more certain than what is promised by men, especially since
this whole affair [of indulgences] is of recent date and invention.
Finally a great many people, relying on these pardons, are encouraged in
crime, and never think of changing their lives.’[657]
How eagerly the ‘Praise of Folly’ was bought and read by the people has
already been seen. New editions had recently been exceedingly numerous,
for the notes of Lystrius had opened the eyes of many who had not fully
caught its drift before. An edition in French had moreover appeared, and
(Erasmus wrote) it was thereby made intelligible even to monks, who
hitherto had been too deeply drowned in sensual indulgence to care
anything about it, whose ignorance of Latin was such that they could not
even understand the Psalms, which they were constantly mumbling over in a
senseless routine.[658]
[Sidenote: Luther’s Theses.]
Silently and unseen the leaven had been working; and when, on October 31,
Luther posted up his theses on the church-door at Wittemberg, defying
Tetzel and his wicked trade, he was but the spokesman, perhaps
unconsciously to himself, of the grumbling dissent of Europe.
[Sidenote: Other opposition to indulgences.]
Discontent against the proceedings of the Papal Court was not by any means
confined to Wittemberg. It had got wind that the tenths and indulgences
were resorted to for private family purposes of the Pope’s; that they
were part of a system of imposture and deception; and hence they
encountered opposition, political as well as religious, in more quarters
than one.
[Sidenote: European princes bribed by a share in the spoil.]
[Sidenote: Opposition of German princes.]
Unhappily, the Pope had reckoned with reason on the connivance of princes.
Their exchequers were more than usually empty, and they had proved for the
most part glad enough to sell their consciences, and the interests of
their subjects, at the price of a share in the spoil. Had it been
otherwise the Papal collectors would have been forbidden entrance into the
dominions of many a prince besides Frederic of Saxony! The Pope offered
Henry VIII. a fourth of the moneys received from the sale of indulgences
in England, and the English Ambassador suggested that one-third would be a
reasonable proportion.[659] When in December 1515 the Pope had asked for a
tenth from the English clergy, he had found it needful to abate his demand
by one-half, and even this was refused by Convocation on the ground that
they had already paid six-tenths to enable the King to defend the
patrimony of St. Peter, and that the victories of Henry VIII. had removed
all dangers from the Roman See;[660] and no sooner was there any talk of
the new tenth of 1517, than the Papal collector in England was immediately
sworn, probably as a precautionary measure, not to send any money to
Rome.[661] Prince Charles, in anticipation of the amount to be collected
in his Spanish dominions, obtained a loan of 175,000 ducats. The King of
France made a purse for himself out of the collections in France,[662]
and by the Pope’s express orders paid over a part of what was left direct
to the Pope’s nephew Lorenzo,[663] for whom it was rumoured in select
circles that the money was required. The Elector of Maintz also received a
share of the spoil taken from his subjects.[664] The Emperor had made
common cause with the Pope, in hopes of attaining thereby the realisation
of long-indulged dreams of ambition, and all Europe would have been thus
bought over;[665] had not the princes of the empire unexpectedly refused
to follow his leading, and to grant any taxes on their subjects without
their consent.[666]
[Sidenote: Political condition of Europe.]
[Sidenote: Political scandals.]
These facts will be sufficient to show that the question of Papal taxation
was becoming a serious political question. The ascendency of ecclesiastics
in the courts of princes had, moreover, again and again been the subject
of complaint on the part of the Oxford Reformers. These Papal scandals
revealed a state not only of ecclesiastical, but also of political
rottenness surpassing anything which had yet been seen. Church and State,
the Pope and the Emperor, princes and their ecclesiastical advisers, were
seen wedded in an unholy alliance against the rights of the people.
Ecclesiastical influence, and the practice of Machiavellian principles,
had brought Christendom into a condition of anarchy in which every man’s
hand was against his neighbour. The politics of Europe were in greater
confusion than ever. Not only was the Emperor in league with the Pope
against the interests of Europe, but he was obtaining money from England
under the pretext of siding with England against France and Prince
Charles, while he was at the same moment making a secret treaty with
France and preparing the way for the succession of Charles to the empire.
The three young and aspiring princes--Henry, Francis, and Charles--were
eyeing one another with shifting suspicions, and jealously plotting
against one another in the dark. Europe in the meantime was kept in a
chronic state of warfare. Scotland was kept by France always on the point
of quarrelling with England. The Duke of Gueldres and his ‘black band’
were committing cruel depredations in the Netherlands to the destruction
of the peace and prosperity of an industrious people.[667] Franz von
Sickingen was engaged in what those who suffered from it spoke of as
‘inhuman private warfare.’[668] Such was the state of Germany, that, to
quote the words of Ranke, ‘there was hardly a part of the country which
was not either distracted by private wars, troubled by internal divisions,
or terrified by the danger of an attack from some neighbouring
power.’[669] The administration of civil and criminal law was equally bad.
Again, to quote from the same historian, ‘The criminal under ban found
shelter and protection; and as the other courts of justice were in no
better condition--in all, incapable judges, impunity for misdoers, and
abuses without end--disquiet and tumult had broken out in all parts.
Neither by land nor water were the ways safe: ... the husbandman, by whose
labours all classes were fed, was ruined; widows and orphans were
deserted; not a pilgrim or a messenger or a tradesman could travel along
the roads....’[670] Such, according to Ranke, were the complaints of the
German people in the Diet of Maintz in 1517, and the Diet separated
without even suggesting a remedy.[671]
[Sidenote: Erasmus meditates a journey southward, and then returning to
England.]
It was from a continent thus brought, by the madness of the Pope and
princes, to the very brink of both a civil and a religious revolution,
that Erasmus looked longingly to England as ‘out of the world, and perhaps
the least corrupted portion of it’[672]--as that retreat in which, after
one more journey southwards, to print the second edition of his New
Testament and ‘some other works,’ he hoped at length to spend his
declining years in peaceful retirement. The following portion of a letter
to Colet will also show how fully he saw through the policy of Leo X.,
hated the madness of princes, and shared the indignation of Luther at the
sale of indulgences.
_Erasmus to Colet._
[Sidenote: Erasmus on indulgences.]
[Sidenote: He sees through the Pope’s pretexts.]
‘I am obliged, in order to print the New Testament and some other
books, to go either to Basle, or, more probably, I think, to _Venice_:
for I am deterred from Basle partly by the plague and partly by the
death of Lachnerus, whose pecuniary aid was almost indispensable to
the work. “What,” you will say, “are you, an old man, in delicate
health, going to undertake so laborious a journey!--in these times,
too, than which none worse have been seen for six hundred years; while
everywhere lawless robbery abounds!” But why do you say so? I was
_born_ to this fate; if I _die_, I die in a work which, unless I am
mistaken, is not altogether a bad one. But if, this last stroke of my
work being accomplished according to my intention, I should chance to
return, I have made up my mind to spend the remainder of my life with
you, in retirement from a world which is everywhere rotten.
Ecclesiastical hypocrites rule in the courts of princes. The court of
Rome clearly has lost all sense of shame; for _what could be more
shameless than these continued indulgences_? Now a war against the
Turks is put forth as a pretext, when the real purpose is to drive the
Spaniards from Naples; for Lorenzo, the Pope’s nephew, who has married
the daughter of the King of Navarre, lays claim to Campania. If these
turmoils continue, the rule of the Turks would be easier to bear than
that of these Christians.’[673]
[Sidenote: ‘Julius de Cœlo exclusus.’]
Erasmus wrote to Warham in precisely the same strain,[674] and shortly
afterwards, on March 5, 1518, in a letter to More, he exclaimed, ‘The Pope
and some princes are playing a fresh game under the pretext of a horrid
war against the Turks. Oh, wretched Turks! unless this is too much like
bluster on the part of us Christians.’ And, he added, ‘They write to me
from Cologne that a book has been printed by somebody, describing “Pope
Julius disputing with Peter at the gate of paradise.” The author’s name is
not mentioned. The German press will not cease to be violent until some
law shall restrain their boldness, to the detriment also of us, who are
labouring to benefit mankind.’[675]
This satire, entitled ‘Julius de Cœlo exclusus,’ was eagerly purchased and
widely read,[676] and was one of a series of satirical pamphlets upon the
Papacy and the policy of the Papal party, for which the way had been
prepared by the ‘Praise of Folly’ and the ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.’
It was one of the signs of the times.
II. MORE DRAWN INTO THE SERVICE OF HENRY VIII.--ERASMUS LEAVES GERMANY FOR
BASLE (1518).
It was at this juncture--at this crisis it may well be called--in European
politics, that More was induced at length, by the earnest solicitations of
Henry VIII., to attach himself to his court under circumstances which
deserve attention.
[Sidenote: ‘Evil May-day.’]
In the spring of 1517, a frenzy more dangerous than that in which the men
of Coventry indulged had seized the London apprentices. Not wholly without
excuse, they had risen in arms against the merchant strangers, who were
very numerous in London, and to some of whom commercial privileges and
licenses had, perhaps, been too freely granted by a minister anxious to
increase his revenue. Thus had resulted the riots of ‘the evil May-day,’
and More had some part to play in the restoration of order in the city.
[Sidenote: More’s embassy to Calais.]
Then, in August 1517, he was sent on an embassy to Calais with Wingfield
and Knight. Their mission ostensibly was to settle disputes between French
and English merchants, but probably its real import was quite as much to
pave the way for more important negotiations.
[Sidenote: Henry VIII. meditates giving up his French conquests.]
No sooner had English statesmen opened their eyes to the fact that
Maximilian had been playing into the hands of the French King against the
interests of England, than, with the natural perversity of men who had no
settled principles to guide their international policy, they began
themselves, out of sheer jealousy, once more to court the favour of the
sovereign against whom they had so long been fruitlessly plotting. They
began secretly to seek to bring about a French alliance with England,
which should out-manœuvre the recent treaty of the Emperor with France.
Thus, by a sudden and unlooked-for turn in continental politics, was
brought about the curious fact that, within a few months of the
publication of the ‘Utopia,’ in which More had advocated such a policy,
the surrender of Henry’s recent conquests in France was under discussion.
By February in the following year (1518) not only was Tournay restored to
France, but a marriage had been arranged between the infant Dauphin of
France and the infant Princess Mary of England. This of course involved
the abandonment, at all events for a time, of Henry’s personal claims on
the crown of France.[677] What share More had in the conversion of the
King to this new policy remains untold; but it is remarkable that within
so short a time his Utopian counsels should have been so far practically
followed, and that he himself should have been chosen as one of the
ambassadors to Calais to prepare the way for it.
[Sidenote: More’s Utopian counsels followed.]
It would be impossible here to enter into a detailed examination of the
political relations of England; suffice it to say, that a pacific policy
seems to have gained the upper hand for the moment, and that even Wolsey
himself seems to have admitted the necessity of so far following More’s
Utopian counsels as to cut down the annual expenditure of the kingdom, and
to husband her resources.[678]
It may have been only a momentary lull in the King’s stormy passion for
war, but it lasted long enough to admit of the renewal of the King’s
endeavours to draw More into his service, and of More’s yielding at last
to Royal persuasions.
[Sidenote: More drawn into court.]
Roper tells us that the immediate occasion of his doing so was the great
ability shown by him in the conduct of a suit respecting a ‘great ship’
belonging to the Pope, which the King claimed for a forfeiture. In
connection with which, Roper tells us that More, ‘in defence on the Pope’s
side, argued so learnedly, that both was the aforesaid forfeiture restored
to the Pope, and himself among all the hearers, for his upright and
commendable demeanour therein, so greatly renowned that for no entreaty
would the King from henceforth be induced any longer to forbear his
service.’[679]
What passed between the King and his new courtier on this occasion, and
upon what conditions More yielded to the King’s entreaties, Roper does not
mention in this connection; but that he maintained his independence of
thought and action, may be inferred from the fact that eighteen years
after, when in peril of his life from Royal displeasure, he had occasion
upon his knees to remind his sovereign of ‘the most godly words that his
Highness spake unto him at his first coming into his noble service--the
most virtuous lesson that ever a prince taught his servant--willing him
_first to look to God, and after God unto him_!’[680]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Henry VIII. rises again in the favour of Erasmus.]
Now that Henry VIII. had apparently changed his policy, now that he was
giving up his pretensions to the crown of France, and no longer talking of
invading her shores, now that he seemed to be calling to his counsels the
very man who, next to Colet, had spoken more plainly than anyone else in
condemnation of that warlike policy in which Henry VIII. had so long
indulged, now that Henry VIII. himself seemed to be returning to his first
love of letters and the ‘new learning,’ the hopes of Erasmus began once
more to rely upon _him_ rather than upon any other of the princes of
Europe. Erasmus had lost his confidence in Leo X. Prince Charles was now
going to Spain, leaving the Netherlands in a state of confusion and
anarchy, a prey to the devastations of the ‘black band,’ and for the
present little could reasonably be expected from him, notwithstanding all
the good advice Erasmus had given him in the ‘Christian Prince.’
While Henry VIII. had been wild after military glory, and had seemed ready
to sacrifice everything to this dominant passion, Erasmus had thought it
useless to waste words upon him which he would not heed; but the war being
over in September 1517, he had sent him a copy of the ‘Christian Prince,’
and encouraged his royal endeavours to still the tempests which during the
past few years had so violently raged in human affairs. Nor is it without
significance that in this letter to Henry VIII. we find him using warm
words in commendation of a trait of the King’s character, which Erasmus
said he admired above all others; viz. this,--that he delighted ‘in the
converse of prudent and learned men, _especially of those who did not know
how to speak just what they thought would please_.’[681]
Under other circumstances such words written to Henry VIII. might have
seemed like satire or perhaps empty adulation, but written as they were
while Henry was as yet unsuccessfully trying to induce More to enter his
service, and only a few months after the publication of the ‘Utopia,’ they
do not read like words of flattery.
When in writing to Fisher he had spoken of England as ‘out of the world,
or perhaps the least corrupted portion of it,’ he had honestly expressed
his real feelings at a time when, whilst continental affairs were in
hopeless confusion and anarchy, there were at least some hopeful symptoms
that a better policy would be adopted for the future by Henry VIII.
[Sidenote: Erasmus thinks More will serve the best of kings.]
It was strictly in accordance with the same feelings that, on hearing that
More had yielded to the King’s wishes, he wrote to him on April 24, 1518,
not to congratulate him on the step he had taken, but to tell him that the
only thing which consoled him in regard to it was the consideration that
he would serve under ‘the best of kings.’ And from this remark he passed
by a natural train of thought to speak of the dangers which would attend
his own projected journey southwards through Germany, and bitterly to
allude to the ‘_novel clemency_’ of the Dukes of Cleves, Juliers, and
Nassau, who had been secretly conspiring to disperse in safety the ‘black
band’ of political ruffians, at whose depredations they had too long
connived. Had their scheme been successful, it would have cast loose these
lawless ruffians upon society without even the control of their robber
leaders. But, as it was, the people took the matter into their own hands,
and disconcerted the conspiracy of their princes. The peasantry,
exasperated by constant depredations, and thirsting for the destruction of
the robbers, had risen in a body and surrounded them. A chance blast from
a trumpet had revealed their whereabouts, and in the _mêlée_ which
followed, more than a thousand were cut to pieces; the rest escaped to
continue their work of plunder.[682] It was not remarkable if, living in
the midst of anarchy such as this, Erasmus should envy the comparative
security of England, and even for the moment be inclined to praise the
harsh justice with which English robbers, instead of being secretly
protected and encouraged, were sent to the gallows.[683]
[Sidenote: Erasmus going to Basle.]
Erasmus had decided upon going to Basle, and in writing to Beatus
Rhenanus[684] to inform him that he intended to do so in the course of the
summer, ‘if it should be safe to travel through Germany,’ he spoke of the
condition of Germany as ‘_worse than that of the infernal regions_,’ on
account of the numbers of robbers; and asked what princes could be about
to allow such a state of things to exist.
‘All sense of shame,’ he wrote, ‘has vanished altogether from human
affairs. I see that the very height of tyranny has been reached. The Pope
and kings count the people not as men, but _as cattle in the market_.’
[Sidenote: Erasmus leaves Louvain for Basle.]
Once more, on May 1, Erasmus wrote to Colet before leaving for Basle, to
tell him that he really was going, in spite of the dangers of travel
through a country full of disbanded ruffians; to complain of the cruel
clemency of princes who spare scoundrels and cut-throats, and yet do not
spare their own subjects, to whom those who oppress their people are
dearer than the people themselves; and to reiterate his intention to fly
back to his English friends as soon as his work at Basle should be
accomplished. And then he ventured on the journey.[685]