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
[Illustration]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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:
"What could such a mind and such a body do in a monastery? As
well put a fish into a meadow or an ox into the sea. When those
fathers knew this, if there had been a spark of true human love
in them, ought they not, of their own accord, to have come
to the aid of his youthful ignorance or thoughtlessness and
have advised him thus: 'My son, it is idle to make a hopeless
struggle; you are not suited to this way of life nor this way of
life to you; choose another while as yet no harm is done. Christ
dwelleth everywhere, not here alone; piety may be cultivated
under any garment, if only the heart be right. We will help you
to return to liberty under suitable guardians and friends, so
that in future you may not be a burden to us, nor we prove your
destruction.'[22] That would have been a speech worthy indeed
of pious men. But no one gave a word of warning; nay, rather,
they moved their whole machinery to prevent this one poor little
tunny from being drawn out of the net."
[22] Compare page 27.
Above all, he says, they worked upon his acute sense of shame. If he
should turn back now he would be disgraced in the sight of God and
man. His friends and guardians again joined in the cry and finally
"by baseness they conquered. The youth, with abhorrence in his
heart and with reluctant words, was compelled to take the cowl,
precisely as captives in war offer their hands to the victor to
be bound, or as conquered men go through protracted torments,
not because they will, but because it pleases their master. He
overcame his spirit, but no man can make his body over new. The
youth did as men in prison do, consoled himself with study as
far as it was permitted him;--for this had to be done secretly,
while drunkenness was openly tolerated."
It has seemed worth while to follow rather closely this account of
his early years, as given chiefly by Erasmus himself, partly because
it is almost our only source of information and partly because it
gives at the outset so good an illustration of his way of dressing up
every subject he touched to suit the occasion.[23] His biographers
have generally done little more than copy out the Grunnius letter
as an authentic record of his early experience, and its contents
have become the common property of our books of reference. It must,
however, be carefully studied in view of the circumstances under
which it was written and by comparison with the little we can learn
from other sources. Especially must all Erasmus' later criticism
of the monastic life be referred to one of his earliest literary
performances, the treatise, On the Contempt of the World (_de
contemptu mundi_), written, probably, while he was still at Steyn,
and when he was about twenty years old. This is an essay on the
charms of the monastery as compared to "the world." It purports to be
written by a monk to a nephew who was considering how his life should
be spent. Excepting in the concluding paragraph there is hardly an
indication of even a question as to the superiority of the solitary
life over the life of society. The tone throughout is serious to
the point of dulness. There is hardly a trace of the sparkle and
liveliness which marked most of Erasmus' later writing. He begins
with the same laboured comparison between human life and a troubled
sea which he later ridicules:--the sea with its storms, its hidden
rocks, its violent alternations, its siren voices luring the sailor
to destruction. There is danger on the land, but one is far nearer
to it on the sea. Life offers many joys, but none to compare with
safety. Earthly joys are so hedged about with miseries that they lose
their proper charm.
[23] On the question of the value of Erasmus' letter see note to
p. 223.
[Illustration: PARISH CHURCH AT ALDINGTON, KENT.
FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF ERASMUS."]
"Oh, bitter sweetness, so walled in before, behind and on
every side with wretchedness. I said just now that man was
coming to the condition of the brutes; but here I think the
brutes have greatly the advantage of us; for they enjoy freely
whatever pleasures they will. But man,--good God! how brief and
how low a thing is this tickling of the throat and the belly!"
Marriage is all very well for those who cannot live otherwise, but it
is a necessary evil. Earthly honours are vain and fleeting. If the
great king Alexander himself could look upon the present world he
would unquestionably warn us that even his unparalleled powers and
dignities were as nothing compared with the victory of the man who
knows how to govern himself. Death makes an end of all and does not
wait for all to come to maturity, but cuts down many in the flower of
their youth.
Then the argument turns to the positive attractions of the monastery
and these are chiefly three: liberty, tranquillity, and happiness.
As to the last two the line of defence is tolerably obvious; but to
represent the monastery as the abode of liberty required no little
ingenuity. Erasmus solved the difficulty by showing that all the
relations of human life were but so many restraints on personal
freedom, while the life in the monastery, imposing limits only upon
the body, allows the soul to enjoy the highest kind of freedom.
Now which of these documents, the _de contemptu mundi_, written
at the time, or the Grunnius letter written perhaps thirty years
afterward, represents the true Erasmus as he was at the age of
twenty? If one tries to form an opinion from facts rather than from
words, one must feel that there is at least room for the question.
Erasmus speaks in the letter as if his intellectual life had been
utterly crushed by the discipline of the monastery, but on the other
hand there is every indication that he had all the opportunity for
study that he could desire. Even if we think of the _de contemptu
mundi_ as a mere piece of sophomoric composition, it shows a very
great acquisition, both of knowledge and of power, in a lad of
twenty. It cannot have been written to please any teacher, for he was
at this time under no regular instruction.
He was no longer at school, but was simply educating himself by
the only pedagogical method which ever yet produced any results
anywhere,--namely, by the method of his own tireless energy in
continuous study and practice. This essay shows a command of classic
literature in quotation and allusion quite inconceivable except as
a result of persistent study. Almost as much may be said of the
style. If it lacks much of the vivacity and personality of the
later Erasmus, it has already gained a very considerable degree
of correctness and force. The conclusion is irresistible that the
description of the charm of the monastery as a place of refuge from
the distractions of the world, and as affording leisure for the
higher life, is a fair reflection of Erasmus' own experience up to
that time. The monastery had served his purpose and now he was ready
for something wider and freer, but he could not justify his quitting
the monastic life without piling charges upon charges against the
institution that had tided over for him, as gently as its conditions
permitted, these years of helplessness.
Nor had his life been by any means a solitary one. He had formed an
intimate friendship with a certain William Hermann of Gouda and with
him "he spent," says Beatus, "days and nights over his books. There
was not a volume of the Latin authors which he had not thoroughly
studied. The time which their companions basely spent in games, in
sleep, in guzzling, these two spent in turning over books and in
improving their style."
Another friendship dating from this period was that with Servatius,
a fellow-monk and afterward prior of Steyn. No one of Erasmus'
correspondents seems to have stood nearer to his heart. The group of
letters addressed to him, probably just before and just after the
writer had left the monastery, show a warmth of affection and a real
desire for affection in return which bear every mark of sincerity.
Even long after their ways had parted for ever Erasmus writes to
Servatius with a respect which has no tinge of bitterness in it. If
his hatred of monasticism had been as furious as he would often have
men believe, hardly anyone would have been a more natural victim for
him than this prior of the house where he is popularly believed to
have suffered such a grievous experience.
So far as the two things which he always described as the requisites
of a happy life, books and friendship, could go, the life of Erasmus
at Steyn ought to have been a happy one.
Let us add one more contribution to the problem,--a letter[24]
written at the age of sixty to a certain monk who had grown restless
during the stirring time of the Reformation:
[24] iii.¹, 1024.
"I congratulate you on your bodily health, but am very sorry to
hear of your distress of mind.... I fear you have been imposed
upon by the trickery of certain men who are bragging nowadays,
with splendid phrases, of their apostolic liberty. Believe me,
if you knew more of the affair, your own form of life would be
less wearisome to you. I see a kind of men springing up, from
which my very soul revolts. I see that no one is growing better,
but all are growing worse, so far at least as I have made their
acquaintance, so that I greatly regret that formerly I advocated
in writing the liberty of the spirit, though I did this with a
good purpose and with no suspicion that a generation like this
would come into being....
"You have lived now so many years in your community without
blame, and now, as you say, your life is inclining toward its
evening--you may be eight or nine years my junior. You are
living in a most comfortable place, and in a most healthful
climate. You derive great happiness from the conversation of
learned men; you have plenty of good books and a clever talent.
What can be sweeter in this world than to wander in such meadows
and taste beforehand, as it were, the joys of the heavenly life?
especially at your age and in these days, the most turbulent and
ruinous that ever were. I have known some, who, deceived by the
phantom of liberty, have deserted their orders. They changed
their dress and took to themselves wives, destitute meanwhile,
living as exiles and hateful to their relatives to whom they
had been dear....
"Finally, my dearest brother in Christ, by our ancient and
unbroken friendship and by Christ I beg, I beseech, I implore
you to put this discontent wholly out of your mind; and to give
no ear to the fatal discourses of men who will bring you no
comfort, but will rather laugh at you when they have trapped
you into their snare. If with your whole heart you shall turn
yourself entirely to meditation on the heavenly life, believe me
you will find abundant consolation, and that little restlessness
you speak of will vanish like smoke."