Erasmus was born at Rotterdam on the vigil of SS. Simon and Jude, 27
October: probably in 1466, but his utterances on the subject are
ambiguous. Around his parentage he wove a web of romance, from which
only one fact emerges clearly--that his father was at some time a
priest. Current gossip said that he was parish priest of Gouda; a
little town near Rotterdam, with a big church, which in the sixteenth
century its inhabitants were wealthy enough to adorn with some fine
stained glass. There in the town school, under a master who was
afterwards one of the guardians of his scanty patrimony, Erasmus'
schooldays began, and he made acquaintance with the Latin grammar of
Donatus. After an interval as chorister at Utrecht, he was sent by his
parents to the school at Deventer, which, with that of the
neighbouring and rival town of Zwolle, enjoyed pre-eminence among the
schools of the Netherlands at that date. It was connected with the
principal church of the town, St. Lebuin's; and doubtless among those
aisles and chapels, listening perhaps to the merry bells, whose chimes
still proclaim the quarters far and wide, he caught the first breath
of that new hope to which he was to devote his whole life. The school
was controlled by the canons of St. Lebuin, who appointed the head
master; but, as at Zwolle, some of the teachers were drawn from that
sober and learned order, the Brethren of the Common Life, whose parent
house was at Deventer.
Of Erasmus' life in the school we have little knowledge. He tells us
that he was there in 1475, when preachers came from Rome announcing
the jubilee which Sixtus IV had so conveniently found possible to hold
after only twenty-five years. From one of his letters we can picture
him wandering by the river side among the barges, and marking the slow
growth of the bridge of boats which it took the town of Deventer
several years to throw across the rapid Yssel. He probably entered the
lowest class, the eighth, and by 1484, when at the age of eighteen he
left in consequence of the outbreak of plague mentioned in Hegius'
letter to Agricola, he had not made his way above the third; thus
giving little indication of his future fame. An explanation may
perhaps be found by supposing that his time in the choir at Utrecht
was an interlude in the Deventer period; but in any case the school in
his time was still 'barbarous', to use his own word, that is, it was
still modelled on the requirements of the scholastic courses, the
_literae inamoenae_, which from his earliest years he abhorred.
Zinthius (or Synthius), who was one of the Brethren, and Hegius
'brought a breath of something better', he tells us: but both of them
taught only in the higher forms, and Hegius he only heard during his
last year, on the festivals when the head master lectured to the whole
school together.
A few years later the school numbered 2200 boys. It is difficult to us
to imagine such a throng gathered round one man. There were only eight
forms, which must therefore have had on an average 275 in each; and
even if subdivided into parallel classes, they must still have been
uncomfortably large to our modern ideas. On the title-pages of early
school-books are sometimes found woodcuts which represent the children
sitting, like the Indian schoolboy to-day, in crowds about their
master, taking only the barest amount of space, and content with the
steps of his desk or even the floor. Some idea of the character of the
teaching may be derived from the experiences of Thomas Platter
(1499-1582) at Breslau about thirty years later. 'In the school at St.
Elizabeth', he says, 'nine B.A.'s read lectures at the same hour and
in the same room. Greek had not yet penetrated into that part of the
world. No one had any printed books except the praeceptor, who had a
Terence.[8] What was read had first to be dictated, then pointed, then
construed, and at last explained.'[9] It was a wearisome business for
all concerned. The reading of a few lines of text, the punctuation,
the elaborate glosses full of wellnigh incomprehensible
abbreviations; all dictated slowly enough for a class of a hundred or
more to take down every word. Lessons in those days were indeed
readings. For a clever boy who was capable of going forward quickly,
they must have been great waste of time.
[8] It is worth remarking that in the fifteenth century Terence
was regarded as a prose author, no attempt having been made
to determine his metres. As late as 1516 an edition was
printed in Paris in prose.
[9] Here, and later on, I follow Mrs. Finn's translation, 1839.
At Deventer Erasmus began with elementary accidence. The books which
he first mentions, _Pater meus,_ a series of declensions, and
_Tempora_, the tenses, that is the conjugations of the verb, were
probably local productions of a simple nature which never found their
way into print. From this he proceeded to the versified Latin grammars
which mediaeval authorities on education had invented to supersede the
prose of Priscian and Donatus; metre being more adapted to the
learning by heart then so much in fashion. 'Praelegebatur Ebrardus et
Joannes de Garlandia', he says: a line or two was read out by the
master and then the commentary was dictated--the boys writing down as
much as they could catch. Let us see the kind of thing. Here are some
extracts from the _Textus Equiuocorum_ of John Garland, an Englishman
who taught at Toulouse in the thirteenth century.
Latrat et amittit, humilis, vilis, negat, heret:
Est celeste Canis sidus, in amne natat.
'Firstly it is a thing that barks': three verses of quotation follow.
'Secondly it loses; canis being the name for the worst throw with the
dice': one verse of quotation.
'Thirdly it is something humble: David to Saul, "After whom is the
King of Israel come out? after a dead dog? after a flea?"
Fourthly it is something contemptible: Goliath to David, "Am I a dog
that thou comest to me with staves?"