There is one thing in the world which is constantly with us, and which
has probably continued unchanged throughout all ages of history: the
weather. Yet Erasmus' writings contain no traces of that delight in
brilliant sunshine which most Northerners feel, nor of that wonder at
the beauties of the firmament which was so real to Homer. He
frequently remarks that the weather was pestilent, that the winds blew
and ceased not, that the sea was detestably rough and the clouds
everlasting; but of the praise which accompanies enjoyment there is
scarcely a word. His utmost is to say that the climate of a place is
salubrious. He often describes his journeys. As he rode on horseback
across the Alps or was carried down the Rhine in a boat, he must have
had ample opportunity to behold the glories which Nature sometimes
spreads before us in our Northern clime, and lavishes more constantly
on less favoured regions. But the loveliness of blue skies and serene
air, the glitter of distant snows, the soft radiance of the summer
moon, and the golden architrave of the sunset he had no eyes to see.
Such indifference to the beauties of Nature admits, however, of some
explanation. With a scantier population than that which now covers the
earth, there was less agriculture and more of waste and unkempt
places not yet reduced to the service of mankind. Solitudes were
vaster and more complete. In a country so well cared for as England is
to-day, it is difficult to imagine how unpleasing can be the aspect of
land over which Nature still has the upper hand, how desolate and
dreadful the great mountain areas which men now have to seek at the
ends of the earth, where the smoke rises not and even the lone
goatherd has not penetrated. To-day our difficulty is to escape from
the thronging pressure of millions: we rarely experience what in the
sixteenth century must often have been felt--the shrinking to leave,
the joy of returning to, the kindly race of men. Ascham in the
_Toxophilus_ (1545), when discussing the relaxations open to the
scholar who has been 'sore at his book', urges that 'walking alone
into the field hath no token of courage in it'. But though this may
have been true by that time in the immediate neighbourhood of English
towns, it was not yet true abroad; for Thomas Starkey in his
_Dialogue_ (1538), almost as valuable a source as the _Utopia_,
praises foreign cities with their resident nobles by comparison with
English, which are neglected and dirty 'because gentlemen fly into the
country to live, and let cities, castles and towns fall into ruin and
decay'.
It is tantalizing, too, considering how abundant are Erasmus' literary
remains, that we get so little description of places from him. He
travelled far and wide, in the Low Countries, up and down the Rhine,
through France, southwards to Rome and Naples. He was a year in
Venice, three years at Cambridge, eight years at Basle, six at
Freiburg. What precious information he might have given us about these
places, which then as now were full of interesting buildings and
treasures of art! what a mine of antiquarian detail, if he had
expatiated occasionally! But a meagre description of Constance, a word
or two about Basle in narrating an explosion there, glimpses of
Walsingham and Canterbury in his colloquy on pilgrimages--that is
almost all that can be culled from his works about the places he
visited. When he came to Oxford, Merton tower had been gladdening
men's eyes for scarcely fifty years, and the tower of Magdalen had
just risen to rival its beauty; Duke Humfrey's Library and the
Divinity School were still in their first glory, and the monks of St.
Frideswide were contemplating transforming the choir of their church
into the splendid Perpendicular such as Bray had achieved at
Westminster and Windsor for Henry VII. But Erasmus tells us nothing of
what he saw; only what he heard and said. This lack of enjoyment in
Nature, lack of interest in topography and archaeology, was probably
personal to him. It was not so with some of his friends. More and
Ellenbog, as we have seen, could feel the beauty in the night
'Of cloudless climes and starry skies'.
Aleander in a diary records the exceptional brilliance of the planet
Jupiter at the end of September 1513. He pointed it out to his pupils
in the Collège de la Marche at Paris, and together they remarked that
its rays were strong enough to cast a shadow. Ellenbog enjoyed the
country, and Luther also was susceptible to its charms. Budaeus had a
villa to which he delighted to escape from Paris, and where he laid
out a fine estate. Beatus Rhenanus after thirty years retained
impressions of Louis XII's gardens at Tours and Blois and of a
'hanging garden' in Paris; and could write a detailed account of the
Fugger palace at Augsburg with its art treasures. Or think of the
painters. The Flemings of the fifteenth century had learnt from the
Italians to fit into their pictures landscapes seen through doors or
windows, gleaming in sunshine, green and bright. Van Eyck's 'Adoration
of the Lamb' is set in beautiful scenery; grassy slopes and banks
studded with flowers, soft swelling hills, and blue distances crowned
with the towers he knew so well, Utrecht and Maestricht and Cologne
and Bruges. Even in the interiors of Durer and Holbein, where no
window opens to let in the view, Nature is not left wholly
unrepresented; for flowers often stand upon the tables, carnations and
lilies and roses, arranged with taste and elegance. On the whole the
enjoyment of Nature formed but a small part in the outlook of that age
as compared with the prominence it receives in modern literature and
life; but we should be wrong in inferring that it was wholly absent.
To the men of the fifteenth century the earth was still the centre of
the universe: the sun moved round it like a more magnificent planet,
and the stars had been created
'to shed down
Their stellar influence on all kinds that grow'.
Aristarchus had seen the truth, though he could not establish it, in
the third century B.C. But Greek science had been forgotten in an age
which knew no Greek; and it was not till after Erasmus' death that an
obscure canon in a small Prussian town near Danzig--Nicholas
Copernicus, 1473-1543--found out anew the secret of the world. This
fruit of long cold watches on the tower of his church he printed with
full demonstration, but he scarcely dared to publish the book: indeed
a perfect copy only reached him a few days before his death. Even in
the next century Galileo had to face imprisonment and threats of
torture, because he would speak that which he knew. But when Erasmus
was born, the earth itself was but partially revealed. Men knew not
even whether it were round or flat; and the unplumbed sea could still
estrange. The voyages of the Vikings had passed out of mind, and the
eyes of Columbus and Vespucci had not yet seen the limits of that
western ocean which so long fascinated their gaze. Polo had roamed far
into the East; but as yet Diaz and da Gama had not crowned the hopes
which so often drew Henry the Navigator to his Portuguese headland.
In the world of thought the conception of uniformity in Nature,
though formed and to some extent accepted among the advanced, was
still quite outside the ordinary mind. Miracles were an indispensable
adjunct to the equipment of every saint; and might even be wrought by
mere men, with the aid of the black arts. The Devil was an
ever-present personality, going about to entrap and destroy the
unwary. Clear-minded Luther held converse with him in his cell; and
lesser demons were seen or suspected on every side. Thus in 1523 the
Earl of Surrey writes to Wolsey describing a night attack on Jedburgh
in a Border foray. The horses took fright, and their sudden panic
threw all things into confusion. 'I dare not write', he says, 'the
wonders that my Lord Dacre and all his company do say they saw that
night, six times, of spirits and fearful sights. And universally all
their company say plainly the Devil was that night among them six
times.' In that gaunt and bleak Border country the traveller overtaken
by night may feel a disquieting awe even in these days when the rising
moon is no longer a lamp to guide enemies to the attack. Four hundred
years ago, when it lay blood-stained and scarred with a thousand
fights, bearing no crops to be fired, no homesteads to be sacked, we
need not wonder if teams of demons swept down in the darkness and
drove through and through the trembling ranks.
Again, in 1552 Melanchthon writes thus to a friend: 'In some cases no
doubt the causes of madness and derangement are purely physical; but
it is also quite certain that at times men's bodies are entered by
devils who produce frenzies prognosticating things to come. Twelve
years ago there was a woman in Saxony who had no learning of books,
and yet, when she was vexed by a devil, after her paroxysms uttered
Greek and Latin prophecies of the war that should be there. In Italy,
too, I am told there was a woman, also quite unlearned, who during one
of her devilish torments was asked what is the best line of Virgil,
and replied, "Learn justice and to reverence the gods "'.[32] In this
second case it would seem that the Devil scarcely knew his own
business.
[32] _Aen._ 6. 620.
Sudden death descending upon the wicked was a judgement of heaven,
letting loose the powers of hell; and if the face of the corpse
chanced to turn black, there was never any doubt but that Satan had
flown off with the soul. Suspicions and accusations of witchcraft were
rife; and an old woman had to be careful of the reputation of her cat.
Wanderers among the mountains saw dragons; in the forests elves peeped
at the woodmen from behind the trees, and fairies danced beneath the
moon in the open places. The world had not been sufficiently explored
for the absence of contrary experience to carry much weight; and the
means for the dissemination of news were quite inadequate. In
consequence men had not learnt to doubt the evidence of their senses
and to regard things as too strange to be true. It was felt that
anything might happen; and as a result almost everything did happen.
For example, in 1500 there was an outbreak of crosses in two villages
not far from Sponheim; and next year the same thing happened at Liège.
They appeared on any clothing that was light enough of hue; coloured
crosses that no washing or treatment could remove. Men opened their
coats to find crosses on their shirts: a woman would look down at her
apron, and there, sure enough, was a cross. Clothes that had been
folded up and put away in presses, came out with the sacred sign upon
them. One day during the singing of the mass thirty men suddenly found
themselves marked with crosses. They lasted for nine or ten days, and
then gradually faded. It was afterwards remarked that where the
crosses had been, the plague followed. Such is Trithemius' account in
his chronicle: we may wonder how closely he had questioned his
informants.
It is difficult for us to conceive a world in which news spreads
mainly by word of mouth. Morning and evening it is poured forth to us,
by many different agencies, in the daily press; and though many of
these succumb to the temptation to be sensational, among the better
sort there is a healthy rivalry which restrains exuberance and
promotes accuracy. There is safety, too, in numbers. News which
appears in one paper only, is looked at doubtfully until it is
confirmed by the rest; but even unanimity amongst all papers will
scarcely at first win acceptance for what is at all startling and out
of the common, until time and the absence of contradiction may perhaps
corroborate. In practice men of credit have learnt not to see the
sea-serpent. For a picture of conditions in the sixteenth century we
must sweep all the newspapers away. Kings had their heralds and towns
their public messengers who took and of course brought back news.
Caravans of merchants travelled along the great trade-routes; and
their tongues and ears were not idle. Private persons, too, sent their
servants on journeys to carry letters. But even so news had to travel
by word of mouth; for even when letters were sent, we may be sure that
any public news of importance beneath the seals and wafers had reached
the bearers also.
But for what they told confirmation was not to be had for the asking.
Not till chance brought further messengers was it possible to
establish or contradict, and till then the first news held the field.
Rumour stalked gigantic over the earth, often spreading falsehood and
capturing belief, rarely, as in Indian bazars to-day, with mysterious
swiftness forestalling the truth. In such a world caution seems the
prime necessity; but men grow tired of caution when events are moving
fast and the air is full of 'flying tales'. The general tendency was
for them, if not to believe, at any rate to pass on, unverified
reports, from the impossibility of reaching certainty. In such a world
of bewilderment, sobriety of judgement does not thrive.
Two examples may show the difficulty of learning the truth. In 1477
Charles the Bold was killed at Nancy. That great Duke of Burgundy was
not a person to be hidden under a bed. Yet nearly six years later
reports were current that he had escaped from the battle and was in
concealment. Again, Erasmus, during his residence at Bologna in 1507,
made many friends. One of these was Paul Bombasius, a native of that
town, who became secretary to Cardinal Pucci, and lost his life at
Rome in May 1527, when the city was sacked by Charles V's troops;
another was the delightful John de Pins, afterwards diplomatist and
Bishop of Rieux. To him in 1532 Erasmus wrote asking for news of
Bombasius. The Bishop replied that he had heard a rumour of his death,
but hoped it was not true. Not till May 1535 could Erasmus report the
result of inquiries made through a friend visiting Bologna, that
Bombasius had fallen a victim to the Bourbon soldiery eight years
before.
That the movements of the stars should affect human life is not easy
to disprove even now, to any one who is determined to maintain the
possibility of it; but under the training of modern science scarcely
any one retains such a belief. Of the influence formerly attributed to
the planets, traces survive in such epithets as mercurial, jovial,
saturnine. Comets appearing in the sky caused widespread alarm, and
any disasters that followed close were confidently connected with
them. The most learned scientists observed the stars and cast
horoscopes: Cardan, for instance, published a collection of the
horoscopes of great men. The Church looked askance on astrology,
suspecting it of connexion with forbidden arts; but it could not
check the observance of lucky days and the warnings of the heavens.
Even a Pope himself, Julius II, deferred his coronation until the
stars were in a fortunate conjunction.
Every university student should be familiar with the story of Anthony
Dalaber, undergraduate of St. Alban's Hall in Oxford, which Froude
introduced into his _History of England_ from Foxe's _Book of
Martyrs_; it is the most vivid picture we have of university life in
the early sixteenth century. Dalaber was one of a company of young men
who were reading Lutheran books at Oxford. Wolsey, wishing to check
this, had sent down orders in February 1528 to arrest a certain Master
Garret, who was abetting them in the dissemination of heresy. The
Vice-Chancellor, who was the Rector of Lincoln, seized Dalaber and put
him in the stocks, but was too late for Garret, who had made off into
Dorsetshire. He took counsel with the Warden of New College and with
the Dean of Wolsey's new foundation, Cardinal College; and at length,
as they could find out nothing, being 'in extreme pensiveness', they
determined to consult an astrologer. They knew they were doing wrong.
Such inquiries were forbidden by the law of the Church, and they were
afraid; but they were more afraid of Wolsey. The man of science drew a
figure upon the floor of his secret chamber, and made his
calculations; at the end he reported that the fugitive was fled in a
tawny coat to the South-east. The trembling officials hastily
dispatched messengers to have the ports watched in Kent and Sussex,
hoping that their transgression might at least be justified by
success. They were successful: Master Garret _was_ caught--trying to
take ship at Bristol. It would need awesome circumstances indeed to
send a modern Vice-Chancellor through the night to inquire of an
astrologer.
In the realm of medicine, too, magic and the supernatural had great
weight, and claimed a measure of success which is not unintelligible
in these days, when the value of the will as an ally in healing is
being understood. Erasmus, suffering from the stone, was presented by
a Hungarian physician with an astrological mug, shaped like a lion,
which was to cure his trouble. He used it and felt better, but was not
sure how much to attribute to the lion. The famous Linacre, one of the
founders of the College of Physicians, sent to Budaeus, a French court
official and the first Greek scholar of the age, one gold ring and
eighteen silver rings which had been blessed by Henry VIII, and had
thus been made preservative against convulsions; and Budaeus presented
them to his womenkind. We need not take this to imply that he thought
little of them; more probably he reflected that convulsions are most
frequent among the race of babies, and therefore distributed them
where they would be most useful. Anyway, it was Linacre who sent them.
With such notions abroad, quackery must have been rife, and serious
medical practitioners had many difficulties to contend with. Some idea
of these may be gained from a letter written by Wolfgang Rychard, a
physician of high repute at Ulm, to a friend at Erfurt, whither he was
thinking of sending his son to practise. He asks his friend to inquire
of the apothecaries what was the status of doctors, whether they were
allowed by the town council to hire houses for themselves and to live
freely without exactions, as at Tubingen and universities in the
South, or whether they were obliged to pay an annual fee to the town,
before they might serve mankind with their healing art.
The feeble-minded and half-witted are nowadays caught up into asylums,
for better care, and to ensure that their trouble dies with them. Of
old it was thought that God gave them some recompense for their
affliction by putting into their mouths truths and prophecies which
were hidden from the wise; and thus the village soothsayer or witch
often held a strong position in local politics. But it is surprising
to find the Cardinal of Sion, Schinner, a clever and experienced
diplomatist, writing in 1516, with complete seriousness: 'A Swiss
idiot, who prophesies many true things, has foretold that the French
will surfer a heavy blow next month'; as though the intelligence would
really be of value to his correspondent.
But the prophet's credit varied with his circumstances. Early in the
sixteenth century a Franciscan friar, naming himself Thomas of
Illyria, wandered about through Southern France, calling on men to
repent and rebuking the comfortable vices of the clergy. A wave of
serious thought spread with him, and all the accompaniments of a
religious revival, such as the twentieth century saw lately in Wales.
As the 'saintly man' set foot in villages and towns, games and
pleasures were suddenly abandoned, and the churches thronged to
overflowing. His words were gathered up, especially those with which
he wept over Guienne, that 'fair and delicious province, the Paradise
of the world', and foretold the coming of foes who should burn the
churches round Bordeaux while the townsmen looked on helplessly from
their walls. For a time he retired to a hermitage on a headland by
Arcachon, where miracles were quickly ascribed to him. An image of the
Virgin was washed ashore, to be the protectress of his chapel. His
prayers, and a cross drawn upon the sand, availed to rescue a ship
that was in peril on the sea. When English pirates had plundered his
shrine, the waves opened and swallowed them up. Later on he withdrew
to Rome, where he won the confidence of Clement VII, and he died at
Mentone. But his fame remained great in Guienne. Half a century
onward, during the war of 1570, when from Bordeaux men saw the church
of Lormont across the river burning in the name of religion, the old
folks shook their heads and recalled the words of the saintly Thomas.
Less fortunate was a young Franconian herdsman, John Beheim, of
Niklashausen--a 'poor illiterate', Trithemius calls him. In the summer
of 1476, as he watched his flocks in the fields, he had a vision of
the gracious Mother of God, who bade him preach repentance to the
people. His fame soon spread, and multitudes gathered from great
distances to hear him. The nearest knelt to entreat his blessing,
those further off pressed up to touch him, and if possible, snatched
off pieces of his garments, till he was driven to speak from an upper
window. But his way was not plain. Instigated seemingly by others, he
began to touch things social: taxes should not be paid to princes, nor
tithes to clergy; rivers and forests were God's common gifts to men,
where all might fish or hunt at will. Such words were not to be borne.
The Bishop of Wurzburg, his diocesan, took counsel with the Archbishop
of Mainz; and the prophet was ordered to be burnt. But death only
increased his fame. Still greater crowds flocked to visit the scene of
his holy life, until in January 1477 the Archbishop had the church of
Niklashausen razed to the ground as the only means of suppressing this
popular canonization.
We make a great mistake if we allow ourselves to suppose that because
that age knew less than ours, because its bounds were narrower and the
undispelled clouds lower down, it therefore thought itself feeble and
purblind. By contrast with the strenuous hurry-push of modern life
such movement as we can see, looking backwards, seems slow and
uncertain of its aim; before the power of modern armaments how
helpless all the might of Rome! It is easy to fall into the idea that
our mediaeval forefathers moved in the awkward attitudes of
pre-Raphaelite painting, that their speech sounded as quaint to them
as it does to us now, and that it was hardly possible for them to take
life seriously. But in fact each age is to itself modern, progressive,
up-to-date; the strong and active pushing their way forward, impatient
of trifling, and carrying their fellows with them. A future age that
has leapt from one planet to another, or even from one system to
another sun and its dependants, that has 'called forth Mazzaroth in
his seasons, and loosed the bands of Orion', that has covered the
earth with peace as with a garment and pierced the veil that cuts us
off from the dead, will look back to us as groping blindly in
darkness. But they will be wrong indeed if they think that we realize
our blindness.
A still greater pitfall before us is that we read history not as men,
but as gods, knowing the event. The name of Marathon to us implies not
struggle, not danger, but triumph; and as we think of the little band
of Athenians defiling from the mountains and looking on the sea, with
the utmost determination we cannot quite enter into their thoughts. Of
how little avail must have seemed this handful of lives, their last
and best gift to Athens, against the might and majesty of Persia
afloat before them. We know of that runner and of the rejoicing that
broke out upon his words; and at the very opening of the scene the
darkness is pierced by a gleam they could not see, a gleam which for
us will not go out. Or think of Edwardes besieging the Sikhs in
Multan with his puny force, half of whom, when he began, were in
sympathy with the besieged. We know that the terrier's courage kept
the tiger in; and, conscious of that, we cannot really place ourselves
beside the young Engineer of 29, as with only one or two volunteers of
his own race round him he kept the field during those four burning
months in which British troops were not allowed to move. The tiger's
paw had crushed those whom he had hastened to avenge: he did not know,
as we know, that it was not to fall on him too.
There is the same difficulty with the course of years. With the
history of four centuries before our minds, only by sustained effort
of thought can we realize that the men of 1514 looked onward to 1600,
as we to-day look towards 2000, as to a misty blank. We hardly trouble
our heads with the future. The air is full of speculations, of
attempts to forecast coming developments, the growth, the improvement
that is to be. But we do not really look forward, more than a little
way. The darkness is too dense: and besides, the needs of the present
are very urgent. As we think of the sixteenth century, behind Henry
VIII's breach with Rome, behind Edward VI's prayer-books, waits the
figure of Pole, steadfast, biding his time; coming to salute Mary with
the words of the angel to the Virgin; coming, as he hoped, to set
things right for ever. And behind Pole are the Elizabethan settlement
and the Puritans; ineradicable from our consciousness. To the
Englishmen of 1514 Henry VIII was the divine young king whose prowess
at Tournay, whose victory at Flodden seemed to his happy bride the
reward of his piety: the name of Luther was unknown: Pole was an
unconsidered child. Into their minds we cannot really enter unless we
can think away everything that has happened since and call up a mist
over the face of time.