THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
1495-9
The University of Paris--Traditions and schools of Philosophy
and Theology--The College of Montaigu--Erasmus's dislike of
scholasticism--Relations with the humanist, Robert Gaguin,
1495--How to earn a living--First drafts of several of his
educational works--Travelling to Holland and back--Batt and the
Lady of Veere--To England with Lord Mountjoy: 1499
The University of Paris was, more than any other place in Christendom,
the scene of the collision and struggle of opinions and parties.
University life in the Middle Ages was in general tumultuous and
agitated. The forms of scientific intercourse themselves entailed an
element of irritability: never-ending disputations, frequent elections
and rowdyism of the students. To those were added old and new quarrels
of all sorts of orders, schools and groups. The different colleges
contended among themselves, the secular clergy were at variance with the
regular. The Thomists and the Scotists, together called the Ancients,
had been disputing at Paris for half a century with the Terminists, or
Moderns, the followers of Ockam and Buridan. In 1482 some sort of peace
was concluded between those two groups. Both schools were on their last
legs, stuck fast in sterile technical disputes, in systematizing and
subdividing, a method of terms and words by which science and philosophy
benefited no longer. The theological colleges of the Dominicans and
Franciscans at Paris were declining; theological teaching was taken over
by the secular colleges of Navarre and Sorbonne, but in the old style.
The general traditionalism had not prevented humanism from penetrating
Paris also during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Refinement
of Latin style and the taste for classic poetry here, too, had their
fervent champions, just as revived Platonism, which had sprung up in
Italy. The Parisian humanists were partly Italians as Girolamo Balbi and
Fausto Andrelini, but at that time a Frenchman was considered to be
their leader, Robert Gaguin, general of the order of the Mathurins or
Trinitarians, diplomatist, French poet and humanist. Side by side with
the new Platonism a clearer understanding of Aristotle penetrated, which
had also come from Italy. Shortly before Erasmus's arrival Jacques
Lefevre d'Etaples had returned from Italy, where he had visited the
Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Ermolao
Barbaro, the reviver of Aristotle. Though theoretical theology and
philosophy generally were conservative at Paris, yet here as well as
elsewhere movements to reform the Church were not wanting. The authority
of Jean Gerson, the University's great chancellor (about 1400), had not
yet been forgotten. But reform by no means meant inclination to depart
from the doctrine of the Church; it aimed, in the first place, at
restoration and purification of the monastic orders and afterwards at
the extermination of abuses which the Church acknowledged and lamented
as existing within its fold. In that spirit of reformation of spiritual
life the Dutch movement of the _devotio moderna_ had recently begun to
make itself felt, also, at Paris. The chief of its promoters was John
Standonck of Mechlin, educated by the brethren of the Common Life at
Gouda and imbued with their spirit in its most rigorous form. He was an
ascetic more austere than the spirit of the Windesheimians, strict
indeed but yet moderate, required; far beyond ecclesiastical circles his
name was proverbial on account of his abstinence--he had definitely
denied himself the use of meat. As provisor of the college of Montaigu
he had instituted the most stringent rules there, enforced by
chastisement for the slightest faults. To the college he had annexed a
home for poor scholars, where they lived in a semi-monastic community.
To this man Erasmus had been recommended by the Bishop of Cambray.
Though he did not join the community of poor students--he was nearly
thirty years old--he came to know all the privations of the system. They
embittered the earlier part of his stay at Paris and instilled in him a
deep, permanent aversion to abstinence and austerity. Had he come to
Paris for this--to experience the dismal and depressing influences of
his youth anew in a more stringent form?
The purpose for which Erasmus went to Paris was chiefly to obtain the
degree of doctor of theology. This was not too difficult for him: as a
regular he was exempt from previous study in the faculty of arts, and
his learning and astonishing intelligence and energy enabled him to
prepare in a short time for the examinations and disputations required.
Yet he did not attain this object at Paris. His stay, which with
interruptions lasted, first till 1499, to be continued later, became to
him a period of difficulties and exasperations, of struggle to make his
way by all the humiliating means which at the time were indispensable to
that end; of dawning success, too, which, however, failed to gratify
him.
The first cause of his reverses was a physical one; he could not endure
the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid
bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted
the beginnings of his later infirmity. In the _Colloquia_ he has
commemorated with abhorrence Standonck's system of abstinence, privation
and chastisement. For the rest his stay there lasted only until the
spring of 1496.
Meanwhile he had begun his theological studies. He attended lectures on
the Bible and on the Book of the Sentences, the medieval handbook of
theology and still the one most frequently used. He was even allowed to
give some lessons in the college on Holy Scripture. He preached a few
sermons in honour of the Saints, probably in the neighbouring abbey of
St. Genevieve. But his heart was not in all this. The subtleties of the
schools could not please him. That aversion to all scholasticism, which
he rejected in one sweeping condemnation, struck root in his mind,
which, however broad, always judged unjustly that for which it had no
room. 'Those studies can make a man opinionated and contentious; can
they make him wise? They exhaust the mind by a certain jejune and barren
subtlety, without fertilizing or inspiring it. By their stammering and
by the stains of their impure style they disfigure theology which had
been enriched and adorned by the eloquence of the ancients. They involve
everything whilst trying to resolve everything.' 'Scotist', with
Erasmus, became a handy epithet for all schoolmen, nay, for everything
superannuated and antiquated. He would rather lose the whole of Scotus
than Cicero's or Plutarch's works. These he feels the better for
reading, whereas he rises from the study of scholasticism frigidly
disposed towards true virtue, but irritated into a disputatious mood.
It would, no doubt, have been difficult for Erasmus to find in the arid
traditionalism which prevailed in the University of Paris the heyday of
scholastic philosophy and theology. From the disputations which he heard
in the Sorbonne he brought back nothing but the habit of scoffing at
doctors of theology, or as he always ironically calls them by their
title of honour: _Magistri nostri_. Yawning, he sat among 'those holy
Scotists' with their wrinkled brows, staring eyes, and puzzled faces,
and on his return home he writes a disrespectful fantasy to his young
friend Thomas Grey, telling him how he sleeps the sleep of Epimenides
with the divines of the Sorbonne. Epimenides awoke after his forty-seven
years of slumber, but the majority of our present theologians will never
wake up. What may Epimenides have dreamt? What but subtleties of the
Scotists: quiddities, formalities, etc.! Epimenides himself was reborn
in Scotus, or rather, Epimenides was Scotus's prototype. For did not he,
too, write theological books, in which he tied such syllogistic knots as
he would never have been able to loosen? The Sorbonne preserves
Epimenides's skin written over with mysterious letters, as an oracle
which men may only see after having borne the title of _Magister noster_
for fifteen years.
It is not a far cry from caricatures like these to the _Sorbonistres_
and the _Barbouillamenta Scoti_ of Rabelais. 'It is said', thus Erasmus
concludes his _boutade_, 'that no one can understand the mysteries of
this science who has had the least intercourse with the Muses or the
Graces. All that you have learned in the way of _bonae literae_ has to
be unlearned first; if you have drunk of Helicon you must first vomit
the draught. I do my utmost to say nothing according to the Latin taste,
and nothing graceful or witty; and I am already making progress, and
there is hope that one day they will acknowledge Erasmus.'
It was not only the dryness of the method and the barrenness of the
system which revolted Erasmus. It was also the qualities of his own
mind, which, in spite of all its breadth and acuteness, did not tend to
penetrate deeply into philosophical or dogmatic speculations. For it was
not only scholasticism that repelled him; the youthful Platonism and the
rejuvenated Aristotelianism taught by Lefevre d'Etaples also failed to
attract him. For the present he remained a humanist of aesthetic bias,
with the substratum of a biblical and moral disposition, resting mainly
on the study of his favourite Jerome. For a long time to come Erasmus
considered himself, and also introduced himself, as a poet and an
orator, by which latter term he meant what we call a man of letters.
Immediately on arriving at Paris he must have sought contact with the
headquarters of literary humanism. The obscure Dutch regular introduced
himself in a long letter (not preserved) full of eulogy, accompanied by
a much-laboured poem, to the general, not only of the Trinitarians but,
at the same time, of Parisian humanists, Robert Gaguin. The great man
answered very obligingly: 'From your lyrical specimen I conclude that
you are a scholar; my friendship is at your disposal; do not be so
profuse in your praise, that looks like flattery'. The correspondence
had hardly begun when Erasmus found a splendid opportunity to render
this illustrious personage a service and, at the same time, in the
shadow of his name, make himself known to the reading public. The matter
is also of importance because it affords us an opportunity, for the
first time, to notice the connection that is always found between
Erasmus's career as a man of letters and a scholar and the technical
conditions of the youthful art of printing.
Gaguin was an all-round man and his Latin text-book of the history of
France, _De origine et gestis Francorum Compendium_, was just being
printed. It was the first specimen of humanistic historiography in
France. The printer had finished his work on 30 September 1495, but of
the 136 leaves, two remained blank. This was not permissible according
to the notions of that time. Gaguin was ill and could not help matters.
By judicious spacing the compositor managed to fill up folio 135 with a
poem by Gaguin, the colophon and two panegyrics by Faustus Andrelinus
and another humanist. Even then there was need of matter, and Erasmus
dashed into the breach and furnished a long commendatory letter,
completely filling the superfluous blank space of folio 136.[2] In this
way his name and style suddenly became known to the numerous public
which was interested in Gaguin's historical work, and at the same time
he acquired another title to Gaguin's protection, on whom the
exceptional qualities of Erasmus's diction had evidently not been lost.
That his history would remain known chiefly because it had been a
stepping stone to Erasmus, Gaguin could hardly have anticipated.
Although Erasmus had now, as a follower of Gaguin, been introduced into
the world of Parisian humanists, the road to fame, which had latterly
begun to lead through the printing press, was not yet easy for him. He
showed the _Antibarbari_ to Gaguin, who praised them, but no suggestion
of publication resulted. A slender volume of Latin poems by Erasmus was
published in Paris in 1496, dedicated to Hector Boys, a Scotchman, with
whom he had become acquainted at Montaigu. But the more important
writings at which he worked during his stay in Paris all appeared in
print much later.
While intercourse with men like Robert Gaguin and Faustus Andrelinus
might be honourable, it was not directly profitable. The support of the
Bishop of Cambray was scantier than he wished. In the spring of 1496 he
fell ill and left Paris. Going first to Bergen, he had a kind welcome
from his patron, the bishop; and then, having recovered his health, he
went on to Holland to his friends. It was his intention to stay there,
he says. The friends themselves, however, urged him to return to Paris,
which he did in the autumn of 1496. He carried poetry by William Hermans
and a letter from this poet to Gaguin. A printer was found for the poems
and Erasmus also brought his friend and fellow-poet into contact with
Faustus Andrelinus.
The position of a man who wished to live by intellectual labour was far
from easy at that time and not always dignified. He had either to live
on church prebends or on distinguished patrons, or on both. But such a
prebend was difficult to get and patrons were uncertain and often
disappointing. The publishers paid considerable copy-fees only to famous
authors. As a rule the writer received a number of copies of his work
and that was all. His chief advantage came from a dedication to some
distinguished personage, who could compliment him for it with a handsome
gift. There were authors who made it a practice to dedicate the same
work repeatedly to different persons. Erasmus has afterwards defended
himself explicitly from that suspicion and carefully noted how many of
those whom he honoured with a dedication gave nothing or very little.
The first need, therefore, to a man in Erasmus's circumstances was to
find a Maecenas. Maecenas with the humanists was almost synonymous with
paymaster. Under the adage _Ne bos quidem pereat_ Erasmus has given a
description of the decent way of obtaining a Maecenas. Consequently,
when his conduct in these years appears to us to be actuated, more than
once, by an undignified pushing spirit, we should not gauge it by our
present standards. These were his years of weakness.
On his return to Paris he did not again lodge in Montaigu. He tried to
make a living by giving lessons to young men of fortune. A merchant's
sons of Luebeck, Christian and Henry Northoff, who lodged with one
Augustine Vincent, were his pupils. He composed beautiful letters for
them, witty, fluent and a trifle scented. At the same time he taught two
young Englishmen, Thomas Grey and Robert Fisher, and conceived such a
doting affection for Grey as to lead to trouble with the youth's
guardian, a Scotchman, by whom Erasmus was excessively vexed.
Paris did not fail to exercise its refining influence on Erasmus. It
made his style affectedly refined and sparkling--he pretends to disdain
the rustic products of his youth in Holland. In the meantime, the works
through which afterwards his influence was to spread over the whole
world began to grow, but only to the benefit of a few readers. They
remained unprinted as yet. For the Northoffs was composed the little
compendium of polite conversation (in Latin), _Familiarium colloquiorum
formulae_, the nucleus of the world-famous _Colloquia_. For Robert
Fisher he wrote the first draft of _De conscribendis epistolis_, the
great dissertation on the art of letter-writing (Latin letters),
probably also the paraphrase of Valla's _Elegantiae_, a treatise on pure
Latin, which had been a beacon-light of culture to Erasmus in his youth.
_De copia verborum ac rerum_ was also such a help for beginners, to
provide them with a vocabulary and abundance of turns and expressions;
and also the germs of a larger work: _De ratione studii_, a manual for
arranging courses of study, lay in the same line.
It was a life of uncertainty and unrest. The bishop gave but little
support. Erasmus was not in good health and felt continually depressed.
He made plans for a journey to Italy, but did not see much chance of
effecting them. In the summer of 1498 he again travelled to Holland and
to the bishop. In Holland his friends were little pleased with his
studies. It was feared that he was contracting debts at Paris. Current
reports about him were not favourable. He found the bishop, in the
commotion of his departure for England on a mission, irritable and full
of complaints. It became more and more evident that he would have to
look out for another patron. Perhaps he might turn to the Lady of Veere,
Anna of Borselen, with whom his faithful and helpful friend Batt had now
taken service, as a tutor to her son, in the castle of Tournehem,
between Calais and Saint Omer.
Upon his return to Paris, Erasmus resumed his old life, but it was
hateful slavery to him. Batt had an invitation for him to come to
Tournehem, but he could not yet bear to leave Paris. Here he had now as
a pupil the young Lord Mountjoy, William Blount. That meant two strings
to his bow. Batt is incited to prepare the ground for him with Anna of
Veere; William Hermans is charged with writing letters to Mountjoy, in
which he is to praise the latter's love of literature. 'You should
display an erudite integrity, commend me, and proffer your services
kindly. Believe me, William, your reputation, too, will benefit by it.
He is a young man of great authority with his own folk; you will have
some one to distribute your writings in England. I pray you again and
again, if you love me, take this to heart.'
The visit to Tournehem took place at the beginning of 1499, followed by
another journey to Holland. Henceforward Anna of Veere passed for his
patroness. In Holland he saw his friend William Hermans and told him
that he thought of leaving for Bologna after Easter. The Dutch journey
was one of unrest and bustle; he was in a hurry to return to Paris, not
to miss any opportunity which Mountjoy's affection might offer him. He
worked hard at the various writings on which he was engaged, as hard as
his health permitted after the difficult journey in winter. He was
busily occupied in collecting the money for travelling to Italy, now
postponed until August. But evidently Batt could not obtain as much for
him as he had hoped, and, in May, Erasmus suddenly gave up the Italian
plan, and left for England with Mountjoy at the latter's request.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Allen No. 43, p. 145, where the particulars of the case are
expounded with peculiar acuteness and conclusions drawn with regard to
the chronology of Erasmus's stay at Paris.