FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES--NEW TESTAMENT PARAPHRASES--CONTROVERSIAL
AND DIDACTIC WRITINGS--REMOVAL TO FREIBURG--LAST REFORMATORY
TREATISES--RETURN TO BASEL--DEATH
1523-1536
With all Erasmus' anxiety to demonstrate in words his entire
independence of the rapidly organising reform parties and his
unswerving loyalty to the papacy, his action during these critical
years was as far as possible from timidity or half-heartedness. Of
this no better proof can be given than the repeated editions of his
Familiar Colloquies. The Colloquies, like the Adages, have a history
of their own. They were begun, probably, as early as the residence of
Erasmus in Paris,[166] about the year 1500, and consisted at first
of brief conversations on familiar subjects, arranged for the use of
beginners in Latin.
[166] Adalbert Horawitz, _Ueber die Colloquia des Erasmus von
Rotterdam_; in Raumer's _Historisches Taschenbuch_, 1887, pp.
53-121.
As years went on, these early experiments were extended, partly by
expansion, partly by addition. In 1523-24 appeared an edition,
practically complete, with a charming little dedication to the
author's namesake, John Erasmius Froben, the eight-year-old son
of the publisher. This dedication, we have a right to believe,
represents fairly the serious thought of Erasmus as to the real
meaning and purpose of his book.[167]
[167] i., 627.
The Colloquies were written to instruct by amusing. They touch
upon every class of society and upon every vice and weakness of
human nature. Some are sparkling with humour, some are too plainly
didactic to be very amusing, and some, especially the later ones,
are downright dull. As in the Praise of Folly, the sermon is heard
through all the rush of words and no one of these tales is quite
without its moral lesson. The subjects most welcome to Erasmus'
satire are of course the extravagances of monks and schoolmen and the
superstitions of religion. We have already quoted freely from some
of the more important for the knowledge of the writer's own life. A
brief survey of one or two of the more widely popular will indicate
the great range of interest and the keen human desire which commended
them to so large a circle of readers.
In The Abbot and the Learned Lady we have one of several proofs that
Erasmus regarded the education of women as desirable and profitable
to the community. The abbot reproves the lady because he finds Latin
books in her chamber. French or German he could bear with, but not
Latin.
"_Abbot._ 'I have sixty-two monks at home, but you will never
find a book in my chamber.' _Magdalia._ 'That's a fine lookout
for your monks.' _Ab._ 'I can stand books, but not Latin ones.'
_Mag._ 'Why so?' _Ab._ 'Because that tongue is not suited to
women.' _Mag._ 'I should like to know why.' _Ab._ 'Because it
is far from helpful in maintaining their purity.' _Mag._ 'Do
those French books, then, full of idle tales, make for purity?'
_Ab._ 'Then there is another thing.' _Mag._ 'Well, out with it,
whatever it is.' _Ab._ 'They are safer from the priests if they
know no Latin.' _Mag._ 'Oh! but there is least danger of all
from that quarter according to your practice, for you do all you
can to keep from knowing Latin.' _Ab._ 'People in general are of
my mind because it is such a rare and unusual thing for a woman
to know Latin.' _Mag._ 'Don't talk to me of the people, the very
worst source of good actions--nor of custom, the mistress of all
evils. Let us accustom ourselves to what is good, then what was
formerly unusual will become usual, what was rude will become
polished, and what was unbecoming will grow to be fitting.'
... _Mag._ 'What think you of the Virgin Mother?' _Ab._ 'Most
highly.' _Mag._ 'Was she not versed in books?' _Ab._ 'Quite so,
but not in these books.' _Mag._ 'What, then, did she use to
read?' _Ab._ 'The Canonical Hours.' _Mag._ 'According to what
form?' _Ab._ 'That of the Benedictine order.'"
The Youth and the Harlot brings us to perhaps the best illustration
of that freedom of language which was the most common charge against
the Colloquies. The argument is one employed previously by the Saxon
nun Roswitha in the tenth century in her comedy _Paphnutius_. An
edition of Roswitha had been published at Nuremberg in 1501, so that
Erasmus may well have taken his model at first-hand. The conversation
is of the slipperiest, and yet the impression conveyed is not that
of immoral or even of unmoral writing. It is simply the baldest
"realism" of treatment, and the issue is distinctly a moral one. As
in Roswitha the erring woman is won to virtue by the Christian faith,
so here she is reformed by arguments of a more practical sort. The
dig at the monks is not lacking. The youth has been on a journey to
Rome:
"_Sophronius._ 'I journeyed with an honest man and by his advice
I took with me not a bottle but a book, the New Testament
translated by Erasmus.' _Lucretia._ 'Erasmus! why they say he
is a heretic and a half!' _Soph._ 'Has his name got into this
place too?' _Luc._ 'No one is better known here.' _Soph._ 'Have
you ever seen him?' _Luc._ 'Never; but I should like to see
him. I have heard so many bad things about him.' _Soph._ 'From
bad men, I dare say.' _Luc._ 'Oh, no! from most reverend men.'
_Soph._ 'Who are they?' _Luc._ 'Oh! it won't do to say.' _Soph._
'Why not?' _Luc._ 'Because if you should blab and they should
hear it, I should lose a great part of my gains.' _Soph._ 'Don't
be afraid. I am mum as a stone.' _Luc._ 'Put down your ear.'
_Soph._ 'Stupid! Why need we whisper when we are alone? Doesn't
God hear us?... Well, by the eternal God! you are a pious harlot
to help along _Mendicants_ by your charity!'"
The Colloquies became the especial object of attack from all who
cared to assail the reputation of Erasmus. Typical was the action
of the Paris theological tribunal, the Sorbonne, which in 1526
condemned the book as dangerous to the morals of the young, and worse
still as containing the same errors as the works of Arius, Wiclif,
the Waldensians, and Luther. In presenting their case to the supreme
court, the "Parlement" of Paris, for its action, the theologians
of the Sorbonne review the steps already taken by the spiritual
authorities toward the suppression of the Colloquies. They had done
what they could, but now demand the aid of the temporal powers. King
Francis I. appears to have opposed the action of the Parlement, and
it was not until 1528 that the University as a body condemned the
book and forbade its students to read it.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE TO THE "COLLOQUIES OF ERASMUS,"
PUBLISHED AT AMSTERDAM, 1693.
PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS AND OTHERS.]
Equally unfavourable was Luther's judgment of the Colloquies. In his
Table-Talk he refers frequently to them as the most offensive to him
of all Erasmus' writings.[168]
[168] Luther's _Werke_, ed. Walch, xxii., 1612-1630.
"If I die I will forbid my children to read his Colloquies, for
he says and teaches there many a godless thing, under fictitious
names, with intent to assault the Church and the Christian
faith. He may laugh and make fun of me and of other men, but let
him not make fun of our Lord God!
"See now what poison he scatters in his Colloquies among his
made-up people, and goes craftily at our youth to poison them."
Another product of the years of greatest party stress were the Latin
Paraphrases of the New Testament books. No one of the serious
works of Erasmus was so widely influential as this. Erasmus began
his work on them immediately after the first publication of the New
Testament in 1516, and continued it at intervals during the next
seven or eight years. The timeliness of the Paraphrases is shown by
their immediate translation into the common tongues. Erasmus himself
says that they brought him very little odium, but abundant thanks.
In a preface addressed to the "Pious Reader"[169] he makes an ample
and admirable defence of bringing the Bible to the people both in the
form of paraphrases and of translations. "I greatly differ," he says,
"from those who maintain that the laity and the unlearned should be
kept from the reading of the sacred volumes, and that none should be
admitted to these mysteries except the few who have spent years over
the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of the schools."
[169] vii., _ad init._
There are two ways to this end: either all men must learn "the three
tongues," or else the Scriptures must be translated. Erasmus makes
the somewhat startling suggestion that, as the energy of the Roman
princes had compelled all the world to speak Greek and Latin, merely
to maintain their temporal Empire, it was quite within the bounds of
possibility for the princes of Christendom to compel all men to learn
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin that the eternal kingdom of Christ might be
spread over the whole earth. However, he realises that this is not
likely to happen very soon and meanwhile will be content if each may
know the Scripture in his own tongue:
"if the farmer, as he holds the plough, shall sing to himself
something from the Psalms; if the weaver, sitting at his web,
shall lighten his toil with a passage from the Gospels. Let the
sailor, as he holds the rudder, repeat a Scripture verse, and
as the mother plies the distaff, let a friend or relative read
aloud from the sacred volume."
Our limits forbid us to go in detail into the several long and
bitter controversies in which Erasmus found himself engaged with
the defenders of the ancient faith. They begin with the publication
of his New Testament and continue for twenty years with little
interruption. They were without exception undertaken by unofficial
persons, representing the governing powers of neither Church nor
State. It was Erasmus' constant boast that all the really important
elements of European life were on his side and that the attacks
upon him were only so many reflections upon the highest authorities
themselves. There is truth enough in this boast to make it evident
that these controversies were a private matter between himself and
his immediate opponents; but it was plain also that at any critical
moment the powers that were might be enlisted against him.
The charges which caused him most anxiety may be reduced to two.
First, the accusation of scholarly inaccuracy, and second, the far
more difficult and wide-reaching accusation of heresy with all its
multitudinous meanings. As to the former charge of inaccurate
scholarship, Erasmus had two forms of defence. Sometimes he admitted
it and sought to explain it away by alleging hasty work and
defending himself by readiness to accept correction and to prepare
new editions of the faulty texts. He liked to represent himself as
a pioneer, breaking the way for others more learned than himself
and, he would venture to hope, stimulated to better things by his
example. Or, again, he would deny the truth of the criticism and
would then proceed to demonstrate at great length and, with all the
amenities common to literary controversy in his day, to demolish the
contentions of his opponent. In these discussions of purely literary
and scholarly themes, where his antagonists were really men of some
consideration, he kept his argument in the main to a reasonably high
standard. Where, however, they seemed to him men of small account he
descends to unmeasured personal abuse.
In the other kind of controversy called out by his attacks upon
ignorant and vulgar superstitions or upon the excesses of clerical
abuse, his method was somewhat different. Here he was always ready
to repay slander by slander, to exaggerate the personal element
both in attack and defence, and especially to insist that he was
absolutely sound in his doctrinal beliefs. To the former class of
controversies belong notably that with Edward Lee, later archbishop
of York, called out by the early edition of the New Testament, that
with Budæus, which was a liberal give-and-take of sharp criticism
on purely literary matters, and that with the Spaniard Stunica. To
the latter class belong such wranglings as his dealings with Natalis
Bedda of Paris, Nicholas Egmund of Louvain, and Gerhardt of Nymwegen,
the reformed preacher of Strassburg.
This controversial literature gives us but little insight into the
real thought of Erasmus. Its value for us is only in furnishing us
with evidence of his astonishing cleverness in winding his way out of
difficulties and his immense command of the language of vituperation.
Its study leaves one with an unpleasant sense of powers diverted for
the time from their most profitable exercise into issues which did
not tell with any great effect upon the final result of the scholar's
life.
The anxiety of Erasmus as to the reception of his works begins to
show itself from about the year 1526 in his dealing with the person
and the probable fate of Louis de Berquin. The story of this first
martyr to the reformed faith in France reflects better than any other
episode the course of events and ideas in the early stages of the
reformatory movement there. Berquin was a gentleman of Artois, a
man of liberal education, serious in his character, and moved from
the start to apply his learning to the remedy of obvious abuses in
the clerical life. Through Lefèvre he was led to the study of the
Lutheran leaders and became convinced that here he had found the true
way to liberty and recovery from the low condition of the dominant
religion. Like Erasmus he attacked principally those errors and
abuses which seemed to rest mainly upon ignorance and superstition
in those to whom the world had a right to look for learning and
enlightenment. The scholars of the Sorbonne, the heads of the French
ecclesiastical fabric and the leaders of French monasticism, were
at once alarmed. They began, early in the movement of the reform,
to bring every possible pressure upon the young, enlightened, and
would-be liberal king to act promptly and with decision against these
first threatening demonstrations of what they were ready instantly
to stamp as "heresy." For six years, from 1523 to 1529, Berquin was
subjected to one stage after another of a persecution which he was
too brave to avoid. His chief offence in the eyes of his theological
persecutors was that he had studied and translated into French, with
"blasphemous" commentaries, several of the most dangerous writings
of Erasmus and other alleged leaders of sedition. Twice arrested
and imprisoned, he was twice released by the special order of the
king, who seems to have taken his case very much to heart. Meanwhile
were occurring that series of unhappy events,--the Italian campaign
of 1525, the capture of Francis I., the treaty of Madrid, and the
negotiations following it,--which were driving the king inevitably
into the hands of the French clerical party. To save his kingdom and
his "honour" he was forced to make sacrifices, and a ready victim
was found in this man, who had defied the powers which were now
clamouring for a royal edict of persecution. The king withdrew his
protection and Berquin died upon the scaffold on the 17th of April,
1529.
The relations of Erasmus with Berquin began by a letter from the
latter written in 1526 and expressing the greatest admiration for the
learning and services to true religion of the man to whom he looked
up as his chief example. He assures Erasmus that the main object in
persecuting him had been to throw suspicion upon Erasmus' own works;
but that he had assured his judges that if anything in these works
seemed contrary to the faith it was the result of misunderstanding
or perversion of the original text. He exhorts Erasmus to write,
not casually, as he has already done to Bedda, but at length, with
arguments and with the authorities from Scripture, to refute these
calumnies.
This letter of Berquin[170] is a noble and touching appeal. Not a
word of complaint or of fear for himself, though he had just for the
second time barely escaped from the clutches of enemies who were
determined to destroy him. He appeals to Erasmus, not in his own
behalf, but in behalf of that truth which he found above all in the
writings of the man he was glad to call his master.
[170] iii.², 1713-F.
The reply[171] was as brief and cold as could well be.
[171] iii.¹, 884.
"I have no doubt that you are acting with the best of
intentions, most learned Berquin, but meanwhile you are bringing
upon me, who am too heavily burdened already, a weight of odium
by translating my books into the common tongue and bringing them
to the knowledge of theologians."
Two later letters[172] have the same tone of petulant self-interest
and cold indifference to the fate which he predicts if Berquin does
not moderate his attacks.
[172] iii.², 1132, 1133.
After Berquin's death he wrote to Pirkheimer,[173] giving an account
of the affair as he had heard it, and added:
[173] iii.², 1189-F.
"If he deserved this, I am sorry; if he did not deserve it, I am
doubly sorry. The real facts in the case are not quite clear to
me. I had no acquaintance with Berquin, except from his writings
and from the reports of several persons.... I always feared that
things would end with him as they have, and I never wrote to him
except to urge upon him to cease from contentions which could
only have an evil end."
The same story is repeated, with more detail, in a letter to
Utenhoven.[174]
[174] iii.², 1206. We are fairly well informed as to Berquin
through French sources, quoted, for example, by H. M. Baird,
History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, 1879, i., 130.
The account of Erasmus agrees strikingly with these other
sources, but it seems a little too much to reproduce it with all
its literary decoration as a history of Berquin's trial, as is
done by Mr. Drummond and in Haag, _France Protestante_, s. v.
In these letters there is not a word of real sympathy with the fate
of a man whose worst fault was the publication of Erasmus' own
writings! Not a word of honest admiration for his courage--only a
grudging admission that he was an honest fellow, but really too
obstinately determined upon ruining himself! Worst of all is the
shabby pretence that Erasmus had not really looked into the case of
Berquin and after all was not quite sure whether he had deserved his
punishment or not. Of all the triumphs of the Erasmian "If," none is
more complete or more significant than this.
For several years, from about 1523 on, Erasmus had been engaged in
personal controversy with individual theologians at Paris; but it
was not until 1525 that the Sorbonne Faculty as a body was brought
to act in the premises. A decree of that year condemned certain
passages in the translations of several of Erasmus' books. In 1526
another attack was made especially against the Familiar Colloquies
and the Paraphrases of the New Testament. The former were definitely
prohibited to students who were candidates for degrees. The decree of
the Faculty was arranged under thirty-two headings, each concerning
some special point of alleged divergence from the true teaching of
the Church. In his reply,[175] published in 1529, Erasmus takes up
these points one by one and fills over seventy printed folio pages
with specific answers. As to the style of his defence we are prepared
to anticipate it. His method is precisely that of Berquin,--to
declare that he is true to the real doctrine of the Fathers and
that his critics--not, of course, the learned Faculty itself--are
those who are in error. How these charges can really come from the
Faculty as a whole he cannot comprehend, but he proposes to appeal
from the Faculty asleep to the Faculty awake. He has made errors:
to err is human. But why condemn as error in him what the greatest
lights of the Church have said without reproof? When Augustine is
praising virginity he goes a little far in dispraise of marriage; is
it strange if Erasmus in defending marriage has seemed to have too
little respect for virginity?
[175] _Desiderii Erasmi Declarationes ad Censuras Lutetiae_,
etc., _IX._, 813-954.
We are not for a moment to suppose that the real audience to
which this reply was addressed was the Faculty of Paris asleep or
awake; it was the reading world. A more splendid advertisement
for the Colloquies than this theological prosecution could hardly
be imagined. Erasmus says[176] that a certain Parisian publisher,
upon the rumour, "perhaps started by the publisher himself," that
the Colloquies were about to be condemned, got out an elegant
handy edition of twenty-four thousand, and that it was at once in
everyone's hands.
[176] iii.², 1168-D.
In England, where Erasmus might have expected to find his best
defenders and his most sympathetic readers, the Colloquies were
condemned in the same year (1526) as at Paris.
A work which brought much later reproach upon its author was the
Institution of Christian Marriage, written in 1526 and dedicated to
Queen Katherine of England. Our interest in it is in the bearing
upon marriage of the changes in public sentiment wrought by the
Reformation; and especially in that whole great problem of the
relation between marriage as the foundation of human society and
the whole monastic and priestly limitation of it. Erasmus reaches
this point after a long and systematic review of the canonical
regulations as to marriage. He examines first the evil effect upon
society of the entrance into the monastic life of persons already
under the obligations of marriage, a thing which he says was never
favoured even in times most kindly disposed towards monasticism
itself unless with full consent of the other party.[177] That Erasmus
had not entire confidence even in the supervision of marriage by the
most responsible ecclesiastical authorities is shown by a striking
passage[178] in which he foreshadows the principle of civil marriage:
[177] v., 646-D.
[178] v., 651-F.
"It would in great measure do away with the controversies that
spring from words present and future, from marriage celebrated
and marriage consummated, from signs, nods, and writings, if
the heads of the Church would deign to decree that no marriage
should be considered complete (_ratum_) until each party, before
special magistrates and witnesses, in clear words, soberly and
freely, shall declare his marriage to the other party, and that
these words should be preserved in writing."
The great body of the essay is taken up with admirable injunctions
as to the conduct of married life and the education of children.
Erasmus avoids here any consideration of what was becoming one of
the burning questions of the day, the right of "reformed" monks or
priests to enter into lawful marriage, but returns at the very close
to the relation between marriage and the clerical life. The burden
of his thought here is the duty of parents and all concerned to make
sure that the youth proposing either to take orders or to become a
monk shall be quite clear as to his calling and perfectly free to
follow it or not.[179] Throughout this very attractive dissertation
there is a noticeable calmness of style, joined, however, with
entire clearness and decision upon the essential points. It is one
of the best illustrations of Erasmus' lifelong insistance upon the
higher value of the life of nature as compared with any life of mere
formalism.
[179] v., 724-A.
That Erasmus' silence on the question of clerical marriage was not
due to lack of thought on the subject is clear from a letter to C.
Hedio, Lutheran preacher at Strassburg in 1524, two years before the
treatise on Christian Marriage.[180]
[180] iii.¹, 845-E.
"And yet before all 'Papists'--as these people call them--I
have always freely declared that marriage should not be denied
to priests who shall be ordained in future, if they cannot be
continent, and I would say nothing else to the pope himself;
not because I do not prefer continence, but because I find
scarcely a man who preserves his continence. Meanwhile what use
is there of such a swarm of priests? I never persuaded anyone to
marriage; but neither did I ever stand in the way of anyone who
wished to marry."
Erasmus recognises the need of reform in every detail; he professes
agreement with every view of the reformers, but he will not advocate
any specific action, because it will open up some new outlet for
human frailty. To follow him would be to condemn the world, once for
all, to hopeless inactivity, simply because the world's business must
be done by finite human beings.
One naturally compares with this elaborate defence of natural and
wise living, in the Christian Marriage, another treatise also written
two years earlier, dedicated to the sisters of a nunnery near
Cologne and called A Comparison of the Virgin and the Martyr.[181]
The good ladies, it seems, had frequently sent Erasmus presents of
confectionery and had begged him to write something for them,--a very
pious desire, he says, but a poor choice of a man. He only wishes
that he could find in the fragrant stories of Holy Writ something to
refresh their minds as their little gifts have refreshed his body.
So he runs on with a page or two of pretty fancies about virginity
and then, in equally fanciful strain, about martyrdom. On the whole,
virginity has the advantage.
[181] _Virginis et Martyris Comparatio_, v., 589-600.
Comparing the spouse of Christ with the spouse of a mortal husband,
Erasmus dilates upon the vast superiority of the virgin state. If one
is not willing to believe this from the evidence of learned men, let
her
"call as a witness any one of those who are happily enough
married and ask her to tell the true history of her marriage.
You will hear things that will make you quite satisfied with
your own way of life. Then just put before yourself the example
of those who have married unhappily, of whom there is a vast
multitude, and think that what has happened to them might have
happened to you...."
This was written at the very time at which Erasmus was giving to
the world the completed text of his Colloquies! How shall we explain
these apparent contradictions? Precisely as we have explained the
account of the monastic life in the _De Contemptu Mundi_.[182]
Like that earlier essay, this too was a piece of literary display,
written, not to rouse opposition, but out of a largely conventional
impulse. We need not question for a moment the entire sincerity of
Erasmus in this kind of composition, as far as it went. It was only
the natural instinct of the man to counterbalance every opinion he
uttered and every effect he produced by putting forth something on
the other side of the same question--for every question has two
sides. There were doubtless purely conducted monasteries, and Erasmus
was bound to believe that the pleasant ladies who were kind enough
to feed him with candy were examples to their kind. To suppose,
however, that the phrases of ecstatic spiritual joy here offered came
from very deep down in his heart of hearts would place the spirit of
Erasmus in closer kinship with Bernard and à Kempis than we should
quite like to put it.
[182] See p. 20.
During precisely these years, from 1522 to 1529, we have a great
number of treatises, generally short, which illustrate this
more devotional and spiritual phase of his literary activity. A
characteristic specimen is the _Modus Orandi Deum_, "On the True
Way of Prayer,"[183] addressed to Gerome à Lasco, a Polish baron
and brother of the better-known John à Lasco. This is a systematic
inquiry into the nature, the purpose, and the limitations of
Christian prayer. It examines the questions: to whom we may pray,
what we may properly pray for, and how our prayers should be framed.
In regard to the first question, Erasmus discusses with great
skill some of the most delicate problems of his day. He examines
authorities on both sides as to the propriety of prayers to Christ
and concludes:
[183] v., 1099-1132.
"After diligently searching the sacred volumes, and supported
by the authority of our fathers, I do not hesitate to call the
Son of God true God and to direct my prayers to him, not with
the idea that the Son could give what the Father may deny, but
because I am persuaded that the Son wills the same and can do
the same as the Father wills and can do;--though the Father is
author and source of all things."
More difficult was the question of the invocation of saints. Erasmus
works his way up to a conclusion by a series of carefully prepared
stages. True, we ought to affirm dogmatically only such things as
are plainly declared in the Holy Scriptures; but we ought to respect
everything that has been handed down with the approval of pious men.
Now we know that the invocation of saints was practised by very early
orthodox Christians, therefore, while we cannot say that it is a
necessary article of faith, we may well bear with it. We know that
the saints when on earth were called upon to pray for other men; why
suppose them less capable of praying for us now that they dwell with
God in heaven?
As to the proper objects of prayer Erasmus makes a very elaborate
analysis,[184] but brings everything round finally to the standard of
the Lord's Prayer. The method is almost scholastic in its system and
its logical division, but it is eminently sensible and practical in
its content.
[184] v., 1122-F.
"We should pray for nothing that cannot be referred to one
of the seven divisions of the Lord's Prayer. Whatever we may
ask for which pertains to the glory of God, belongs to the
first clause: 'Hallowed be thy name.' Whatever refers to the
spread and realisation of the Gospel, belongs to the second:
'Thy kingdom come'; whatever to the observance of the divine
teaching, to the third: 'Thy will be done,'" and so on.
To illustrate the folly of absurd distinctions as to which divinities
might attend to which prayers, he tells a story of a certain man
at Louvain, simple rather than impious, who, after he had made his
devotions, used to run about among the various altars, saluting the
saints for whom he had an especial liking, and saying: "This is
yours, St. Barbara," and "Take this to yourself, St. Rochus," as if
he feared that the saints would fall to fighting over the special
prayers belonging to each.
A very modern, almost "evangelical" touch is found in a chapter on
extempore prayer.
"It would be very desirable if the whole service of religion,
hymns, instruction, and prayer, could be conducted in the
language of the people, as was formerly the case, and that all
should be so distinctly and clearly spoken that it should be
understood by all present. But there are many things in life
rather to be desired than hoped for. It is to be wished that
public worship should not be too prolonged, for there is nothing
worse than a surplus of good things, and that it should be
the same among all peoples of the Christian name. Nowadays,
what diversities in almost every church! nay, what pains have
been taken that one should not agree with the other! With what
tedious chants and prayers are some monks now burdened, and with
what joy do they escape from their dreary performance!"
We have here an almost complete survey of the outward forms of the
religious life reduced to the simple standard of Christian common
sense. As a type of Erasmus' activity at this time nothing can serve
us better. He was fulfilling his mission as a preacher of simple
righteousness, and no clamours of criticism on the one side or the
other of the great conflict raging about him could drive him for a
moment from his fundamental position. He watched all the stages of
that struggle and drew out of the views of the several parties the
text for his continuous comment upon men and things. He held himself,
as he said, _integer_, "uncompromised," but he shows where his real
feeling was. The ruling order might get what comfort it could out
of the _Modus Orandi_ and similar treatises, but if the suggestions
therein contained could have been carried out, a something very
like the Protestant churches would have resulted. The authority of
Scripture as the standard of religious life; the Lord's Prayer as
the all-sufficient test of the forms of worship; the laity as the
essential element of the Christian community; the common language
as the only proper medium of communication in religious matters; a
worship of secondary powers so enfeebled by the limits of common
sense that it would surely fall away of itself--all this makes a
programme that is nothing less than Protestant in its essence.
Stripped of its academic decorations and its elaborate balancing of
values, this was a reforming tract of the first importance.
Of course Erasmus used all the trimming portions, both of this and of
all similar writings, to demonstrate his loyalty to tradition, but
the modern reader, like the "Lutheran" of that day, must see through
these to the real thought beneath and must share his impatience that
the man who could go so far could not be brought to take a step
farther and carry out these suggestions--or at least help others to
carry them out--into definite constructive action. The reply must
always be that the world has no right to demand of any man what is
not his to give.
So in alternations of calm religious reflection and composition with
violent controversial encounters, of painstaking scholarly editing
with keenest satirical writing, the residence of the aging scholar at
Basel drew to its end.
* * * * *
In the year 1529 Erasmus left Basel and went to Freiburg in the
Breisgau. Why he left Basel and why he chose Freiburg as his
residence are questions we can hardly hope to answer satisfactorily,
since they involve that whole very difficult subject of his personal
equation, to which we have not yet discovered any sufficient key.
Perhaps we may say this: that Basel had been an attractive residence
for him because its political and religious condition corresponded
pretty accurately to his own state of mind. The spirit of the place
was eminently one of toleration and good feeling. Even the violent
doctrines of the extreme radical party, the Anabaptists and all their
kin, were heard with patience, but were held in check and not allowed
to influence public action. If we could trust the extravagant eulogy
common just after his death[185] we should have to think of Erasmus
living at Basel as a kind of intellectual monarch, to whom
[185] i., _ad init._ _Epitaphia in Laudem Erasmi._
"there came not alone from Spain and France, but from the
farthest limits of the whole earth, not merely men of noble
birth but also the greatest monarchs of the world, popes,
emperors, kings, cardinals, bishops, archbishops, dukes,
chieftains, barons, and countless princes, rulers, magnates, and
governors of various degree, etc."
This is obvious nonsense; but we gain enough glimpses at his manner
of life at Basel to make us sure that Erasmus lived there in honour,
with every opportunity for congenial work and for association with
men of his own kind. His ordinary habits were those of a sober
scholar who was compelled by the natural demands of his profession
and by the limitations of feeble health to keep strictly within the
limits of careful and quiet living. He seems to have surrounded
himself with young men, table-boarders, who came to him as the
adviser of their studies. His relation to them is very prettily
sketched in a letter[186] to a young Frisian, one Haio Caminga, who
had applied for a place at his table. He gives the young man fair
warning that he will find a table set with learned conversation
rather than with choice delicacies,--as far from luxury as the table
of Pythagoras or Diogenes. The great productivity of this period
would of itself be sufficient evidence of a regular and quiet life.
Nor need we doubt that a great many visitors were led to Basel by
curiosity or sympathy to make the personal acquaintance of the famous
scholar.
[186] iii.², 1128.
One feels at once that this was just the atmosphere for Erasmus.
His only real grievance at Basel seems to have been his dread that
he might be held accountable for the opinions of someone with whom
he did not entirely agree. In the course of time, however, this
condition of unstable equilibrium grew more and more untenable. The
actual "Reformation" of the place could not be averted, and rather
than remain in a distinctly Protestant community Erasmus broke off
all his happy associations and wandered away again. He takes infinite
pains to assure everyone that he was not driven away, that he went
openly and with the good will of all concerned. His account of the
religious revolution shows that it was a very temperate kind of
revolution indeed. His friendly feelings are neatly expressed in a
bit of verse which he says he jotted down as he was entering his boat
to depart.
"_Jam, Basilea, vale, qua non urbs altera multis
Annis exhibuit gratius hospitium.
Hinc precor, omnia læta tibi, simul illud, Erasmo
Hospes uti ne unquam tristior adveniat._"
"And now, fair Basel, fare thee well!
These many years to me a host most dear.
All joys be thine! and may Erasmus find
A home as happy as thou gav'st him here."
At Freiburg he was well received by the magistracy and given a
sufficiently splendid lodging in an unfinished palace of the Emperor
Maximilian. He has, of course, doubts about his health, but thinks he
will stay a year, unless he is driven away by wars. In fact he kept
pretty well until the spring of 1530, when he was attacked by a new
and painful development of the disease from which he had so long been
suffering.
The references to this illness of 1530 occur generally in connection
with some allusion to the great Diet of Augsburg in that year.
Erasmus says that he was asked to go to this Diet by many leading
men, but expressly states that he was not asked by the emperor. His
illness gave him an excuse for not going. He says that he could
have done no good at Augsburg and we certainly need no assurance of
his to make this quite clear to us. By 1530 affairs had moved on
far beyond the point where the only advice he had ever had to give,
namely "be good and wise, and all our troubles will end at once,"
could be of any service. In the years from 1525 to 1529 the whole
North of Germany had become welded into a solid mass of resistance
to the Roman Catholic system. The Lutheran Reformation had passed the
stage of negative criticism and had entered upon that of constructive
organisation.
Once more we have to ask: Where was there room for poor Erasmus?
It was a pleasant fiction for him, in his comfortable quarters at
Freiburg, to imagine that he was really wanted at Augsburg, but who
in the world could have wanted him? The time for his "ifs" and "buts"
was past and the moment had come when men were ready to set all they
held dear upon the hazard of a doubtful war. The Diet at Augsburg
obeyed the emperor and renewed the formal condemnation of Luther and
his works. The Protestant princes promptly replied by the League of
Schmalkalden. Their attitude was simply one of readiness, not of
aggression. For the time it answered, and delayed the actual outbreak
of hostilities until long after the death of Erasmus.
It is evident that Erasmus had little faith in the Diet. He writes to
John Rinckius[187]:
[187] iii.², 1299-B-D.
"Friends have written me what is going on at the Diet. Certain
main propositions have been made: First, that the Germans shall
furnish troops against the Turks. Second, that the differences
of doctrine shall be remedied, if possible, without bloodshed.
Third, that the complaints of those who feel themselves wronged
shall be heard. To accomplish all this an ecumenical council of
three years would hardly suffice. What will be the issue I know
not. Unless God takes a hand in the game, I see no way out of
it. If the final decision is not agreed to by all the provinces,
the end will be revolution."
Then follows a minute description of his recent illness and again
allusions to his personal troubles.
"I have now for some time been anxious to go hence to some other
place. This town is fine enough, but not very populous, remote
from a river, well suited for study, an awfully dear place, the
people not particularly hospitable, they say, though so far
no one has given me any great annoyance. But I see nowhere a
quiet haven. I shall have to hold out here until the outcome
of the Diet is known. Some are predicting that action will be
taken first about pecuniary burdens, and that the question of
heresy will be postponed to a general council, and that the
priests, bishops, monks, and abbots who have been turned out and
plundered will be put off with words."
It is evident that Erasmus saw clearly the danger of the imperial
position. His shrewd sense told him that Charles was very far from
grasping the real extent of the German resistance. He writes to
Campeggio[188]:
[188] iii.², 1303-A.
"If the emperor is merely frightening his opponents by threats,
I can only applaud his forethought; but if he is really seeking
a war, I do not want to be a bird of evil omen, but my mind
shudders as often as I look at the condition of things which I
think will appear if war breaks out. This trouble is very widely
spread. I know that the emperor has great power; but not all
nations recognise his authority. Even the Germans recognise it
on certain conditions, so that they rather rule than obey; for
they prefer to command rather than be subservient. Besides it
is evident that the emperor's lands are greatly exhausted by
continual military expeditions. The flame of war is just now
stirred up in Friesland; its prince is said to have professed
the Gospel of Luther. Many states between the Eastern countries
and Denmark are in the same condition and the chain of evils
stretches from there as far as Switzerland.
"If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions
(as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous
misfortune, but one more endurable than war. In this condition
of things there is nowhere I would rather be than in Italy, but
the fates will have it otherwise."
No more clever summary of the situation than this can be imagined;
and yet the only practical suggestion in it, that some principle of
toleration for the sects might be discovered is a complete denial of
everything for which Erasmus pretended to stand. It would have been a
recognition of the right of revolution, and that was the one horror
which haunted all his dreams.
Indeed it was the irony of fate that the man who had spent his early
manhood in open attacks upon the Roman system, and his maturer years
in trying to make his peace with Rome, should now in his old age
find his really virulent critics on the side of the ancient faith.
The "sects," as he always contemptuously called them, were quite
content with the actual service he had done them and were only too
eager to claim him for their own. The one orthodox fold, in which he
steadfastly protested he belonged, was continually producing men who
made his life a burden with their reproaches.
As long as the Diet at Augsburg lasted, Erasmus continued to assure
his correspondents that he was under the orders of the emperor not to
leave Freiburg as he had intended to do. Then the winter began and
with it the ravages of the plague, "_nova lues_, formerly peculiar to
Britain, but suddenly spreading over all nations." Why he should have
been detained at Freiburg against his will he gives no intimation,
and, indeed, the whole story, appearing in letter after letter, seems
to show only his annual restlessness and desire to say why he did
not do something different from what he was doing. At one moment
he thinks he must go to France to get some wine. They say it is a
dreadful thing to die of hunger, but he really believes it is worse
to die of thirst. He really must get some drinkable wine.
During the summer of 1531 he went so far as to write to the
magistrates of Besançon, saying that even before leaving Basel he had
thought of moving to their city and now when Freiburg is beginning to
be a dangerous place, his thoughts are turning thither again.
Freiburg was plainly growing less attractive--or, let us say, was
furnishing more and more occasions of complaint. He had spent nearly
two years in the abandoned palace of Maximilian without knowing, if
we may believe his own story, whether he was the guest of the city,
or whether he was hiring the house wholly or in part, or, if he
was hiring it, who his landlord was or what he was to pay. When,
after two years, he was called upon to move at the end of three
months and to pay back rent for a year and a half, he affects to be
overwhelmed with surprise and indignation, and writes a two-column
letter to the Provost of Chur, at the far east end of Switzerland,
to explain.[189] The result was that he took the hasty, and, as it
seems to have appeared to himself, somewhat absurd step of buying a
house. He naturally begins the letter, in which he tells this news to
John Rinckius, with an enumeration of the disagreeables at Freiburg
and ends it by declaring that the house shall not keep him there if
things go as he wishes. His account of the affair may serve us as an
illustration of the unconquerable humour with which he faced life to
the last.[190]
[189] iii.², 1426-E.
[190] iii.², 1418-D.
"But now here is something for you to laugh at. If anyone should
tell you that Erasmus, now nearly seventy, had taken a wife,
wouldn't you make the sign of the cross three or four times
over? I know you would, and small blame to you. Now my dear
Rinckius, I have done a thing no less difficult and burdensome
and quite as foreign to my tastes and habits. I have bought a
house, a fine one enough, but at a very unfair price. Who shall
now despair of seeing rivers turn about and run up-hill, when
Erasmus, who all his life has made everything give place to
learned leisure, has become a bargain-driver, a buyer, a giver
of mortgages, a builder and, in place of the Muses, is now
dealing with carpenters and workers in iron, in stone, and in
glass. These cares, my dear Rinckius, which my soul has always
abhorred, have just about bored me to death. So far I am a
stranger in my own house, for, though it is spacious enough,
there is not a nest in it where I can safely trust my poor body.
One chamber I have built with an open fireplace and have boarded
it, floor and sides, but on account of the plastering I have not
yet dared to trust myself in it."
Five weeks later he writes[191]:
[191] iii.², 1419-F.
"This house I have bought makes me no end of trouble; and yet
there is not a place in the whole of it suited to my body."
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF THE
"APOPHTHEGMS OF ERASMUS," TRANSLATED BY UDALL, 1542.]
The biographer of Erasmus is tempted to draw a somewhat pathetic
picture of his last years; an aged man, broken with pain and
disappointment, rejected by all parties, without influence
in the world, living under continual fear of some unforeseen
disaster,--these form, indeed, the elements for a sufficiently
mournful description. And yet the end of Erasmus' course was such
as he had been deliberately planning for himself all his life long.
Isolation from all the various groupings of men upon great public
questions had been his avowed ideal, and he had reached it. He had
never aimed to form a "school" and he left no followers behind him.
On the other hand, his activities were practically unchecked by
advancing years. His intellectual output during his residence at
Freiburg was hardly inferior either in quantity or quality to that
of any earlier period of equal length. His correspondence falls off
somewhat in volume, but its style is as fresh and the variety
of persons to whom it is addressed continues as great as ever.
New friends take the place of those he has lost, and his personal
philosophy, always a cheerful one, remains to comfort him to the
last. He consoles himself by the friendship of individuals against
the slights of parties and their leaders.
The only falling off in Erasmus' productivity during the years from
1530 to 1535 is in the quality of originality. We are no longer
to expect a Praise of Folly or a new volume of Colloquies; but we
can only marvel at the vitality still evident in everything that
comes from his restless pen. His humour, unconquered by the growing
weaknesses of his flesh, flashes out with almost its old-time
brilliancy. His industry seems undiminished. He is seldom without a
piece of editorial work, and he is constantly being asked to write
dedications for works edited by others.
In 1532 he published his _Apophthegmata_ or Sayings of the
Ancients,[192] a work in some ways similar to the Adages, but showing
far less of the machinery of scholarship. These are pleasant little
stories, generally told in a few lines in anecdote form and designed
to carry some moral lesson. They are arranged in groups under the
name of the principal person mentioned as, for example, _Socratica_,
Diogenes Cynicus, Philip of Macedon, Demosthenes, and so forth.
Doubtless the material for this collection had long been gathering,
but the mere arrangement and revision of it was a work to tax
severely the patience and endurance of a man so enfeebled by physical
troubles as was Erasmus in 1532.
[192] _Apophthegmata lepideque dicta principum, philosophorum ac
diversi generis hominum_, etc., iv., 93-380.
A little treatise of 1533 on Preparation for Death[193] is
interesting chiefly for the things it does not say. Its emphasis
throughout is on the necessity of a Christian life as the true
preparation for a Christian death. The very essence of Protestantism,
the direct dealing of the human soul with its God, may be found here.
Protest as Erasmus might his devotion to the forms of the Church,
when he wrote this essay he was giving more aid and comfort to the
enemy than if he had gone over to him with all his arms in his hands.
Of course he explains away as much of the clearness of his statement
as he can, but the words remain and his own practice went far to
confirm them. He emphasises at every turn the duty of respect for
traditions, but no man in the year 1533 could write as he does here
of the nature of sacraments without knowing how his words would be
interpreted. If the sacraments were, even _quodammodo_, "symbols" of
the divine good will to men, then the whole objective, or, to speak
technically, the "_opus operatum_" theory of the sacramental system
was brought in question, and men would not stop until they had pushed
this question to its rational issue. Here as elsewhere, if we would
estimate the service of Erasmus to the Reformation, we must try to
feel out of the windings of his rhetoric the impression he wished
to leave uppermost in the reader's mind, and as to that we can
hardly hesitate. Even a devout Catholic could not read carefully this
appeal to the essentials of religion without feeling a diminished
sense of the value of forms, and a wavering mind could hardly fail
to be carried over pretty far towards the conclusion that forms so
dangerous as these were better reformed out of existence.
[193] _Liber quomodo se quisque debeat præparare ad mortem_, v.,
1293-1318.
The most important work of the Freiburg period was the great
treatise on the Christian minister, to which Erasmus gave the
title of _Ecclesiastes_, or The Gospel Preacher (_concionator
evangelicus_). In its printed form the _Ecclesiastes_ fills over one
hundred and sixty folio pages and would make more than two volumes
as large as this present one. Of all the evils in the existing
church system, none had been more evident since the height of the
Middle Ages than the neglect of preaching. The very first effort
of the organised Lutheran party had been to restore the right
balance between the sacramental and the moral aspects of church
administration by emphasising the preaching and diminishing the
importance of all sacramental observances. And this is precisely
the position of Erasmus. He begins with a careful definition of the
Church (_ecclesia_) as the assembly (_concio_) of Christians. Christ
is the great preacher and every other _ecclesiastes_ is only his
representative and herald. The highest function of the preacher is
that of teaching. At first the bishops were the sole teachers; now
the teaching has passed to priests and monks, though it is a function
far surpassing the dignity of kings.
As a model of the complete bishop Erasmus gives a very beautiful
description of Warham, dwelling especially upon his great efficiency
in a vast variety of duties, an efficiency made possible only by the
strictest frugality of life and the rigid exclusion of all luxury and
idle amusement.
This brief notice of the _Ecclesiastes_ concludes our review of the
writings of Erasmus, and this seems the fitting place to note what
was the final judgment upon them of that Church to which he declared
himself devoted and from whose teachings he insisted he had never
departed by so much as a hair's breadth. It was not until the wave of
the Catholic Reaction had begun to rise into a furious torrent that
a definite policy of disapproval of Erasmus on the part of the Roman
authorities took the place of the former leniency. Lists of books the
reading of which was prohibited to good Christians were published
in many parts of Europe by sovereigns, universities, inquisitors,
or commissions from 1524 on.[194] Such lists were generally called
"Catalogues." The papacy as such took no part in this process until
the time of the Council of Trent. The earliest papal list or "Index"
was published by Paul IV. in 1559. It was arranged in three classes,
the first containing the names of authors who were, as it were,
heretics by intention (_ex professo_), and all of whose writings
were condemned, no matter whether they had any reference to religion
or not. In the second class were names of authors some of whose
writings had been shown to tend towards heresy or the superstitions
of magic, etc. The third class comprised the titles of books,
generally by anonymous writers, which contained specially dangerous
doctrines.
[194] F. H. Reusch, _Der Index der verbotenen Bücher_, 1883, i.,
347-355.
In this first papal Index Erasmus takes a place of extraordinary
prominence. Not only was he placed in the first class, but a special
clause was added to his name: "with all his commentaries, notes,
_scholia_, dialogues, letters, censures, translations, books, and
writings, even when they contain nothing against religion or about
religion." The Index of Paul IV. was, however, by no means generally
accepted by the people of Europe. In many countries it was flatly
rejected. The Council of Trent at its final session (1562-1563) took
up the matter and appointed a commission to revise the harshest
clauses. The result of this revision appears in the Index of Pius
IV. in 1564. There Erasmus has been dropped from the first class
and in the second appear only a few of his most doubtful works, the
Colloquies, Praise of Folly, Christian Marriage, and one or two
others. In 1590 Sixtus V. replaced him in the first class, and in
1596 Clement VIII. restored him again to the conditions of the Index
of Trent.
Thus the fate of Erasmus after death was very much what it had been
in his life. As honest Duke Frederick had said: "One never knows how
to take him." The highest authority could not quite determine whether
he was a thorough-going heretic or only heretical "north-north-west."
In the month of August, 1535, after a residence of six busy years
at Freiburg, Erasmus returned to Basel. Once more, and for the last
time, he has to account for a change of residence. At Freiburg he
had been continually complaining of the place, his quarters, and
the people; yet he says he had no fixed intention of leaving there
permanently. He had been giving matter to the press during these
six years without any special difficulty, but suddenly he discovers
that his _Ecclesiastes_ cannot be properly printed at Basel without
his presence. He has suffered so much, he writes to the bishop of
Cracow,[195] that he prefers to try a change of air even at the risk
of death. He was carried in a covered carriage, "made for women,"
to Basel, "a healthful and pleasant city, whose hospitality I have
enjoyed for many years. There, in expectation of my coming, a room
suited to my needs had been prepared by my friends."
[195] iii.², 1511-C.
It is marvellous how the permanent instincts of his life assert
themselves to the last. In October, 1535, he writes to a magistrate
of Besançon:
"Almost incredible as it seems, I have left my nest and flown
hither, meaning to fly to you when I shall have recovered my
strength. The wintry September has compelled me to cast anchor
here and so we shall have to wait for the swallows. The pope
wants to gold-plate me whether I will or no, and has offered me
the provostship of Deventer now that the harpies are all got rid
of. But I am determined, though ten provostships were offered
me, not to take one of them.... Shall I, a dying man, accept
burdens which I have always refused?"
Just as he arrived at Basel he had written:
"What has happened in England to Fisher and More, a pair of men,
than whom England never had a better or a holier, you will learn
from the fragment of a letter which I send you. In More I seem
myself to have perished, so completely was there, as Pythagoras
has it, but one soul to both of us. Such are the tides of human
life!"
It is pleasant to believe that the last days of Erasmus were cheered
by the thought that his protestations of fidelity to the Roman
institution were not wholly unrewarded, though, as he says, there
were still men at Rome who were doing their best to blacken his fame.
He had welcomed the election of Paul III. in much the same language
as he had employed in regard to Leo X., Hadrian VI., and Clement
VII. He wrote to him at once, but we have, unfortunately, only the
brief reply of the pope. It is a very amiable and appreciative note,
recognising the value of Erasmus' services and expressing entire
confidence in their continuance. It is quite in harmony with his
whole career that these congratulations of the pope should have
come to him in Basel, now thoroughly converted into a Protestant
community, and in the midst of friends the most tried and true he
had ever had, all of them Protestants, but all willing to forget
differences in their common regard for the dying scholar.
We are not well informed as to the end of Erasmus' life. The last
letter in the collection of Le Clerc, perhaps the last he ever wrote,
is to his old friend Goclenius at Louvain, under date of June 28,
1536. He is among faithful friends, better friends than he had at
Freiburg, "but on account of differences in doctrine I would rather
end my life elsewhere. Would that Brabant were nearer!" Again he
repeats his declaration that he came to Basel only for a change of
air and was intending to go elsewhere as soon as he felt better. The
ruling passion was strong upon him even to his death.
The story of his last days comes to us through the excellent Beatus
Rhenanus, his devoted friend and admirer. The winter brought on
a terrible attack of gout, succeeded in the early summer by a
continuous dysentery which proved incurable. In spite of pain and
weakness he never lost a moment's opportunity of work, the witness
whereof is the treatise _De Puritate Ecclesiæ_ and the edition of
Origen. He was in the house of the son of his old friend Froben, the
intimates of his earlier residence were all about him, and evidently
were glad and proud to have him again in their midst.
We have no suggestion, in the eleven months of his stay at Basel,
of any personal dealings with the Roman clergy, nor of the presence
of any minister of religion at his death-bed. He had lived a
cosmopolitan of the earth; he died, so far as we know, a cosmopolitan
of the world to come--a Christian man trusting for his future to the
simple faith in right doing and straight thinking which had really
been his creed through life. His death occurred on the 12th of July,
1536. Protestant Basel claimed as her own the man who had turned his
back on her when she was working through her own religious problem,
but who had after all been drawn to her again by the subtle ties of a
sympathy he could not or would not openly acknowledge.
"How great was the public grief," says Beatus, "was shown by the
throng of people to take their last look at the departed. He was
borne on the shoulders of students to the cathedral and there
near the steps which lead up to the choir, on the left side of
the church, by the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, was honourably
laid to rest. In the funeral procession walked the chief
magistrate and many members of the council. Of the professors
and students of the University not one was absent."
The impression of Beatus' narration is confirmed by a letter[196] of
the Leipzig physician, Heinrich Stromer, written immediately after
the death of Erasmus to George Spalatin. He adds:
[196] Adalbert Horawitz, _Erasmiana_; in Sitzungsberichte der
Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, xcv., 608.
"The great scholar was completely absorbed in restoring the
Greek text of Origen, so that though his illness was extremely
painful, he would not give up till death itself wrested the pen
from his hand. His last words on earth, spoken in the midst of
his heavy groaning, were these: 'Oh, Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy upon me! I will sing of the mercy of God and of his
judgment.' And therein you can see the truly Christian spirit of
the man."
The last will of Erasmus, made in due form on the 12th of February,
1536, shows him to have been possessed of a comfortable property. He
appoints Boniface Amerbach general executor of all his estate. He
gives substantial legacies to several friends and servants, provides
for the sale of his library to John à Lasco, and finally directs his
executor to give the remainder to poor and infirm persons, especially
to provide dowries for poor girls and to help young men of good
promise.
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF ERASMUS, AT BASEL.
FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF ERASMUS."]
Expressions of grief and reverence for the great scholar came from
the men of all parties who could think of him as the prince of
learning and the advocate of right living. Only those who could not
forgive him his refusal to enter the ranks of any party failed to do
honour to his memory.
* * * * *
Let us ask once more in conclusion what was, precisely, the
contribution of this man to the work of the Reformation. If by
"Reformation" we mean only the work which Luther believed himself
to be doing, we must limit our answer to the somewhat scanty
acknowledgment he was ready to make of his indebtedness to Erasmus
as a scholar. But we have learned that Luther's own conception of
the Reformation movement was a very narrow and inadequate one. He
believed it to be limited to a purely religious revival on the basis
of a true understanding of Scripture. In reality it was the whole
great revolt of the human mind against arbitrary and conventional
limitations, and it is only when we study it in this light that we
can measure the influence of Erasmus upon it. First and most
important was his insistence, begun in the Enchiridion and continued
even through the _Ecclesiastes_, upon the principle of a sound, sane,
reasonable individual judgment, not in opposition to the prevailing
authority of tradition, but in interpretation of it. To be sure this
was no absolutely new thing in the world. It had been before men's
minds since the days of Petrarch, but it had never before found so
many-sided and so consistent an expression in the North. It had taken
three generations since Petrarch for the slower mind of the northern
peoples to ripen to the point of receiving this idea. They took it
now from Erasmus with enthusiasm. It came to them in his satire in
such form that the humblest reader could understand it. It spoke
to them in his serious treatises in language which appealed to the
scholar at once by its literary finish and by its enormous learning
and seriousness. The private judgment of the individual is really, no
matter how concealed, the tribunal to which the reader is continually
referred.
Closely akin to this is the appeal, the other distinguishing mark of
the Renaissance man, to the essential rightness of what is natural.
The mediæval ideal of morals had been that whatever was natural was
essentially wrong. It could be right only in so far as it was given
a formal guarantee by some recognised authority. Erasmus represents
human life throughout as being, of its very nature, in harmony with
the eternal law of morality. Especially family life in all its forms,
the natural and mutual duties of man and wife, the tender love and
care of children, the honourable uses of wealth in the service of the
state and of religion, the obligations of friendship, the natural
piety of the simple child of God, the dignity and responsibility
of rulers as the agents of a divine order among men, the supreme
duty of peace,--these are the constantly recurring subjects of his
well-trained pen. Even in his literary ideals the same general
principle of naturalness prevails. Style is an instrument to be
cultivated; it has a charm of its own worth the careful attention
of the scholar; but, after all, style is only a means of conveying
thought, and the object of it is to carry the highest thought in the
clearest and most direct fashion.
Now one may well ask: How is all this nobility and elevation of
purpose to be reconciled with the obvious personal limitations of
Erasmus' character? How does this profound interest in the welfare
of human society go with a self-centred, nervous dread of criticism
which rises at times to the hysterical point? How account for the
fear that the very ideas he seems most to cherish might be spread
abroad among the very people for whom they seem especially intended?
How explain the elaborate contradictions in his own accounts of the
motives that led to his most open actions? Such a personality, we
are tempted to say, is beneath our honest contempt. It is the very
negation of all the ideals of which the man tried to pose as the
champion.
The answer to this difficulty is that we find ourselves here before
the perpetual mystery of genius. Erasmus partially solved the
problem for us when he declared that while he was at work a certain
demon seemed to take possession of him and to carry him on without
his will. His pen seemed to have a volition of its own and to obey
the training of his years of practice by a certain instinct. Just as
his powerful will compelled his frail and suffering body to do the
bidding of his unconquerable spirit, so the literary impulse carried
him on to utterances far beyond the capacity of his personality to
realise in action. If Erasmus could have lived up to himself, he
would have been the greatest of men. Let us in our judgment of him
beware lest we make superhuman demands upon him. It is as idle as it
is unjust to ask that Erasmus should be both Erasmus and Luther at
once. Our narrative has not sought to cover up or to disguise the
repellent aspects of his outward attitude towards the Reformation.
May it on the other hand avoid the error of obscuring his immense
service to the cause with which his nature forbade him outwardly to
identify himself.
INDEX
A
Adages, first edition, 88-91;
Aldine edition, 136
Adrian, Hebrew teacher, 266, 267
Adrian VI., pope, 403
Agricola, Rudolf, 7
Albert of Mainz, 291;
letter to, 309-318
Aldus Manutius, 125;
correspondence with Erasmus, 134-137;
his printing-office, 138
Aleander, Girolamo, at Venice, 143;
at Louvain, 349
Alexander of Scotland, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 144, 146;
death, 153
Algerus, treatise on the Eucharist, 410
Amerbach, Boniface, executor, 460
Amerbach, the brothers, 236
Ammonius, Andreas, correspondence with Erasmus, 187-192, 262, 263
Andrelinus, Faustus, 41;
letter from Erasmus, 80;
writes a preface to the Adages, 93
_Apophthegmata_, 451
Aquinas, Thomas, Erasmus' and Colet's views of, 72
d'Asola, Andreas, 138-140
d'Asola, Francesco, 139, 141
Atensis, John, 264
Augsburg Confession, 401
Augsburg, Diet at, 444-448
Augustinianism, 278, 283-285, 380-383
Augustinus, pupil of Erasmus, 93
B
Badius, publisher at Paris, 134
Basel, residence in, 232-240, 347, 441-443, 456 _sqq._
Battus, James, 48;
correspondence with Erasmus, 48-58;
death, 61
Beatus Rhenanus, 239;
letter to, 241-246
Bedda, Natalis, 428
Berquin, Louis de, 428-432
Berlin, St., abbot of, 223
Besançon, letter to magistrate of, 456
Bois-le-Duc ('s Hertogenbosch), school at, 8
Bologna, visit to, 130-135
Botzheim, John, canon of Constance, letter to (_catalogus
lucubrationum_), 126;
visit to, 352, 356
Brethren of the Common Life, 8
Budæus, William, letter from, 248;
letter to, 251, 427
Busleiden, Jerome, founder of the College of the Three Languages, 265
C
Cambrai, bishop of and residence in, 6, 33, 41
Cambridge, life at, 193-195
Caminga, Haio, 443
Campeggio, Cardinal, letters to, 302, 405
Carteromachos, Scipio, 148
Charles I. of Spain (V. of Germany), makes Erasmus
a councillor, 253, 262;
elected emperor, 343-345;
holds the Diet at Worms, 345, 346
_Ciceronianus_, treatise on rhetoric, selection from, 149-151
Cinicampius (Eschenfeld), 243;
letter from Erasmus, 246, 247
Clement VII., pope, letter to, 404
Clyston, attendant of Erasmus' pupils, 125, 127, 136
Colet, John, 64, 65;
teacher at Oxford, 68;
founder of St. Paul's school, 70;
his character, 71-75;
invites Erasmus to teach at Oxford, 82-86;
correspondence of 1511(?)-1512, 195-200;
present at Canterbury "pilgrimage," 217
Collége Montaigu, 34-39
Comparison of the Virgin and the Martyr, 436, 437
_Compendium Vitæ_, 4
Complutensian Polyglot, 201
Constance, visit at, 352
Cop, William, 250
_Copia verborum et rerum_, dedication, 197;
analysis of, 208-214
Cornelius, companion of Erasmus at Steyn, 14
D
Dante, _De Monarchia_, 274
_De contemptu mundi_, treatise, 20-22, 28
Deventer, school at, 5-7
_Diversoria_, colloquy describing inns, 127, 226-231
Dorpius, Martin, criticises the Praise of Folly, 176, 264
Dürer, Albert, diary of, 333, 334
E
_Ecclesiastes_, 453, 454
Egmund, Carmelite at Louvain, 322, 428
_Enchiridion militis Christiani_, origin, 96, 97;
analysis of, 98-111;
preface to second edition, 111-115;
its teaching, 286
England, life in, 62-86, 179 _sqq._
_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_, 279, 363
Eppendorf, Henry, 352
Erasmus, nationality, 1-3;
birth, 3;
at Gouda, 5;
at Utrecht, 5;
at Deventer, 5-8;
at 's Hertogenbosch, 8, 9;
at Steyn, 15-23;
with the bishop of Cambrai, 26;
ordained priest, 33, n.;
at Paris, 33-40;
return to Cambrai, 41;
troubles at Paris, 42-47;
correspondence with Battus, 48-58;
visit to Tournehens, 54;
at Louvain, 61;
in England, 62-86;
at Orleans, 92;
views on war, 118, 128;
goes to Italy, 125;
Doctor's degree, 128;
in Bologna, 130-135;
life at Venice, 137-143;
at Padua, 144;
at Siena, 146;
at Rome, 146-156;
English residence (1509-1514), 179-217;
correspondence with Ammonius, 187-192;
"Professor" at Cambridge, 193-195;
literary work in England, 197-217;
letter to Servatius, 218-224;
journeys, 226-231, 241-246;
at Basel, 232-240;
called to Ingolstadt and elsewhere, 247;
offered a bishopric, 248;
called to Paris, 248-253;
made councillor of Charles V., 253-255;
settles at Louvain, 264;
his view of the Reform, 285-288;
view of indulgences, 292;
letter to Wolsey, 298-301;
to Campeggio, 302;
to Leo X., 303-307;
to Albert of Mainz, 309-319;
to Hoogstraaten, 326-329;
removal to Basel, 347;
letter to Laurinus, 347-361;
visit to Constance, 352;
contest with Hutten, 362-378;
the free-will controversy, 383-401;
the Eucharist controversy, 407-418;
relations with Berquin, 428-432;
life at Basel, 441-443;
goes to Freiburg in Breisgau, 444;
relation to Augsburg Diet, 444-448;
buys a house, 449;
his place in the Index, 454, 455;
return to Basel, 456;
death, 457-459;
last will, 460;
final estimate of, 460-463
Ernest of Bavaria, invites Erasmus to Ingolstadt, 247
Eschenfeld (Cinicampius), 243;
letter from Erasmus, 246, 247
Eucharist, history of, 407;
Luther's view, 407-409;
Erasmus on, 409-418
_Expostulatio cum Erasmo_ of Hutten, 366-372
F
Familiar Colloquies, 420-423;
attacked by the Sorbonne and by Luther, 424;
condemned at Paris and in England, 433
Ferdinand of Spain, 119
Fisher, Robert, 63
Francis I., King of France, calls Erasmus to Paris, 248-253
_Fratres Collationarii_, 10
Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony, letter to, 325;
interview with, 326;
imperial candidate, 344
Free will, the problem of, 381-384;
essay on, 384, 387-397;
Luther on, 398-401
Freiburg in Breisgau, residence at, 441-456
Froben, John, first acquaintance with Erasmus, 232;
character, 233-235
Froben, John Erasmius, 421
G
Gaguinus, 41
Gerard, father of Erasmus, 4
Gerhardt of Nymwegen, 428
Goclenius, Conrad, letters to, 4, 267, 458
Gouda, life at, 5
Grey, Thomas, 43
Grimani, Cardinal, 151;
receives Erasmus, 154-156;
letter to, 224
Grocyn, William, 64, 81
Groot, Gerard, 8
Grunnius, Lambertus, letter to, xiv, 4, 11, 19, 21, 130;
reply of, 132
H
Hedio, Caspar, letter to, 379
Hegius, Alexander, 6
Hermann, William, 23, 47
's Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), school at, 8
Hoogstraaten, Jacob, letter to, 326-329
Hutten, Ulrich von, 361-363;
controversy with Erasmus, 363-378;
letter from, 364;
the _Expostulatio_, 366-372;
Erasmus' _Spongia_, 372-378
I
"Index," papal, 454, 455
Indulgences, Luther's Theses on, 289-291;
Erasmus on, 292, 293
Inghirami, Tommaso, 149
Ingolstadt, call to, 247
Institution of Christian Marriage, 433-435
_Institutio Principis Christiani_, 255-262;
its teaching, 286
Italy, life in, 125 _sqq._
Ἰχθυοφαγία, colloquy of Erasmus, 35-40
J
Jerome, St., edition of, 68, 205
Joanna of Spain, 119
K
à Kempis, Thomas, 8
L
Lascaris, Johannes, 143;
letter to, 265
à Lasco, John, letter to, 417, 418
Laurinus, Marcus, letters to, 254, 347-361
Lee, Edward, 427
Leo X., dedication of New Testament to, 271;
letter to, 302
Linacre, Thomas, 64, 81, 199
Louvain, life at, 61, 264
Ludwig the Bavarian, emperor, 276
Luther, Martin, called to Wittenberg, 280;
his early development, 280-283;
Theses, 289-291;
letter from, 294;
letter to, 295-297;
his views disclaimed, 298 _sqq._;
Leipzig Disputation, 307, 337;
burns the papal bull and canon law, 337;
writings of 1520, 338;
confronts the radical party, 339-341;
at Worms, 345, 346;
letter on free will, 384-386;
treatise, _de servo arbitrio_, 398-401
Luther and Erasmus compared, 282, 283
M
Macchiavelli, Niccolo, _Il Principe_, 256
Manius, Peter, letter to, 1
Marburg Conference, 408
Margaret, mother of Erasmus, 4
Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, 405
Maximilian of Germany, 119
Melanchthon, Philip, called to Wittenberg, 280;
letter to, 325
More, Thomas, 64;
first meeting with Erasmus, 77, 78;
introduces Erasmus to the royal children, 79;
Utopia, 257
Mountjoy, Lord, pupil of Erasmus, 43;
invites him to England, 62;
second invitation (1509), 179-183
Münzer, Thomas, 340, 362, 398
Musurus, Marcus, 143, 144
N
Neuenaar, Count of, 244
New Testament, Greek, editing begun in England, 200-204;
dedicated to Pope Leo X., 271;
third edition, 351
O
_Opulentia sordida_, colloquy on life at Venice, 138-142
Orleans, life at, 92
P
Pace, Richard, at Ferrara, 145
Padua, life at, 144
Paraphrases of the New Testament, 424-426
Paris, university organisation, 34;
life in, 33-40, 42-47, 248-253
Parvus, William (Guillaume Petit), 248, 249
Paul III., pope, correspondence with, 457
Paul IV., pope, Index of, 454, 455
Pelicanus, Conrad, letters to, 416, 417
Philip of Burgundy, panegyric on, 116-121
Pirkheimer, Bilibaldus, letters to, 413, 414
Pius IV., pope, Index of, 455
Poncher, Stephen, Bishop of Paris, 250, 253
Popes, humanistic, 273
_Præparatio ad Mortem_, 452, 453
Praise of Folly, motive of, 158;
analysis of, 159-175;
apology to Dorpius, 176-178
R
Raphael, Cardinal of St. George, 226
Religious Pilgrimage, the, 215, 216
Reuchlin, John, 236-239, 310, 320
Rhenanus, _see_ Beatus
Riario, Raffaelle, cardinal, 151
Rome, life in, 150-156
S
Scaliger, Julius Cæsar, criticises Erasmus, 137, 235
"_Senex ille_," 42-46
Schmalkalden, League of, 445
Servatius, companion of Erasmus at Steyn, 23;
prior of Steyn, letter from Erasmus, 218-224
Siena, visit to, 146
Sintheim, John, 6
Sorbonne, the, attacks the Colloquies, 424, and the Paraphrases, 432
"Spirit," the, 388, 389;
Luther on, 399
_Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni_, 372-378
Standonch, John, 35
Steyn, monastery at, 14-20;
life at, 15-23
Stromer, Heinrich, letter to Spalatin, 459
Stunica, James Lopez, 355, 404, 427
T
The True Way of Prayer, 437-440
Tournehens, visit to, 54
Tunstall, Cuthbert, 263, 264
U
Utopia of Thomas More, 257, 261
Utrecht, life at, 5
V
Valla, Laurentius, 204
Veere, Anna, Marchioness of, 48;
visit of Erasmus to, 54;
letter to, 59, 60;
marriage of, 61
Venice, life at, 137-143
Volzius, letter to, 111-115
W
Warham, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, joins in calling
Erasmus to England, 183;
gives him the "living" of Aldington, 184-186;
character, 226, 454
Wessel, John, 8
Winckel, Peter, uncle and guardian of Erasmus, 5, 7, 9
Wittenberg University founded, 280
Wittenherus, Nicholas, prior of Steyn, 222
Wolsey, Thomas, letter to, 298
Worms, Diet at, 345, 346;
Edict of, 346
Transcriber's note
Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected. Original
spelling was kept. Variant spellings were made consistent when a
predominant usage was found.
Illustrations have been slightly moved so that they do not break
up paragraphs while remaining close to the text they illustrate.
Chapter headings and illustration captions have been harmonized
and made consistent so that the same expressions appear both in
text and in the lists of Contents and of Illustrations.
The following emendations were made:
Page 12: "text" replaced by "pretext" (this gives Erasmus a
pretext for an assault).
Page 39: "Icthyophagia" replaced by "Ichthyophagia" (he borrowed
his illustration directly from the _Ichthyophagia_).
Page 54: "noir" replaced by "noire" (a reference to his _bête
noire_).
Page 91: Footnote label [51]: location conjectured, not found
in the original.
Page 94, note 53: "p. 486-99" replaced by "p. 48 & _ff._" (See
p. 48 & _ff._)
Page 195, note 91: "p. 50 8 _ff._" replaced by "p. 50 & _ff._"
(by Mr. Mullinger in his History of the University of
Cambridge, p. 50 & _ff._)
End of Project Gutenberg's Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, by Ephraim Emerton