YEARS OF TROUBLE--LOUVAIN, PARIS, ENGLAND
1502-6
Death of Batt: 1502--First stay at Louvain: 1502-4--Translations
from the Greek--At Paris again--Valla's _Annotationes_ on the
New Testament--Second stay in England: 1505-6--More patrons and
friends--Departure for Italy: 1506--_Carmen Alpestre_
Circumstances continued to remain unfavourable for Erasmus. 'This year
fortune has truly been raging violently against me,' he writes in the
autumn of 1502. In the spring his good friend Batt had died. It is a
pity that no letters written by Erasmus directly after his bereavement
have come down to us. We should be glad to have for that faithful helper
a monument in addition to that which Erasmus erected to his memory in
the _Antibarbari_. Anna of Veere had remarried and, as a patroness,
might henceforth be left out of account. In October 1502, Henry of
Bergen passed away. 'I have commemorated the Bishop of Cambray in three
Latin epitaphs and a Greek one; they sent me but six guilders, that also
in death he should remain true to himself.' In Francis of Busleiden,
Archbishop of Besancon, he lost at about the same time a prospective new
patron. He still felt shut out from Paris, Cologne and England by the
danger of the plague.
In the late summer of 1502 he went to Louvain, 'flung thither by the
plague,' he says. The university of Louvain, established in 1425 to wean
the Netherlands in spiritual matters from Paris, was, at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, one of the strongholds of theological
tradition, which, however, did not prevent the progress of classical
studies. How else should Adrian of Utrecht, later pope but at that time
Dean of Saint Peter's and professor of theology, have forthwith
undertaken to get him a professorship? Erasmus declined the offer,
however, 'for certain reasons,' he says. Considering his great distress,
the reasons must have been cogent indeed. One of them which he mentioned
is not very clear to us: 'I am here so near to Dutch tongues which know
how to hurt much, it is true, but have not learned to profit any one'.
His spirit of liberty and his ardent love of the studies to which he
wanted to devote himself entirely, were, no doubt, his chief reasons for
declining.
But he had to make a living. Life at Louvain was expensive and he had no
regular earnings. He wrote some prefaces and dedicated to the Bishop of
Arras, Chancellor of the University, the first translation from the
Greek: some _Declamationes_ by Libanius. When in the autumn of 1503
Philip le Beau was expected back in the Netherlands from his journey to
Spain Erasmus wrote, with sighs of distaste, a panegyric to celebrate
the safe return of the prince. It cost him much trouble. 'It occupies me
day and night,' says the man who composed with such incredible facility,
when his heart was in the work. 'What is harder than to write with
aversion; what is more useless than to write something by which we
unlearn good writing?' It must be acknowledged that he really flattered
as sparingly as possible; the practice was so repulsive to him that in
his preface he roundly owned that, to tell the truth, this whole class
of composition was not to his taste.
At the end of 1504 Erasmus was back at Paris, at last. Probably he had
always meant to return and looked upon his stay at Louvain as a
temporary exile. The circumstances under which he left Louvain are
unknown to us, because of the almost total lack of letters of the year
1504. In any case, he hoped that at Paris he would sooner be able to
attain his great end of devoting himself entirely to the study of
theology. 'I cannot tell you, dear Colet,' he writes towards the end of
1504, 'how I hurry on, with all sails set, to holy literature; how I
dislike everything that keeps me back, or retards me. But the disfavour
of Fortune, who always looks at me with the same face, has been the
reason why I have not been able to get clear of those vexations. So I
returned to France with the purpose, if I cannot solve them, at any rate
of ridding myself of them in one way or another. After that I shall
devote myself, with all my heart, to the _divinae literae_, to give up
the remainder of my life to them.' If only he can find the means to work
for some months entirely for himself and disentangle himself from
profane literature. Can Colet not find out for him how matters stand
with regard to the proceeds of the hundred copies of the _Adagia_ which,
at one time, he sent to England at his own expense? The liberty of a few
months may be bought for little money.
There is something heroic in Erasmus scorning to make money out of his
facile talents and enviable knowledge of the humanities, daring
indigence so as to be able to realize his shining ideal of restoring
theology.
It is remarkable that the same Italian humanist who in his youth had
been his guide and example on the road to pure Latinity and classic
antiquity, Lorenzo Valla, by chance became his leader and an outpost in
the field of critical theology. In the summer of 1504, hunting in the
old library of the Premonstratensian monastery of Parc, near Louvain
('in no preserves is hunting a greater delight'), he found a manuscript
of Valla's _Annotationes_ on the New Testament. It was a collection of
critical notes on the text of the Gospels, the Epistles and Revelation.
That the text of the Vulgate was not stainless had been acknowledged by
Rome itself as early as the thirteenth century. Monastic orders and
individual divines had set themselves to correct it, but that
purification had not amounted to much, in spite of Nicholas of Lyra's
work in the fourteenth century.
It was probably the falling in with Valla's _Annotationes_ which led
Erasmus, who was formerly more inspired with the resolution to edit
Jerome and to comment upon Paul (he was to do both at a later date), to
turn to the task of taking up the New Testament as a whole, in order to
restore it in its purity. In March 1505 already Josse Badius at Paris
printed Valla's _Annotationes_ for Erasmus, as a sort of advertisement
of what he himself one day hoped to achieve. It was a feat of courage.
Erasmus did not conceal from himself that Valla, the humanist, had an
ill name with divines, and that there would be an outcry about 'the
intolerable temerity of the _homo grammaticus_, who after having
harassed all the _disciplinae_, did not scruple to assail holy
literature with his petulant pen'. It was another programme much more
explicit and defiant than the _Enchiridion_ had been.
Once more it is not clear why and how Erasmus left Paris again for
England in the autumn of 1505. He speaks of serious reasons and the
advice of sensible people. He mentions one reason: lack of money. The
reprint of the _Adagia_, published by John Philippi at Paris in 1505,
had probably helped him through, for the time being; the edition cannot
have been to his taste, for he had been dissatisfied with his work and
wanted to extend it by weaving his new Greek knowledge into it. From
Holland a warning voice had sounded, the voice of his superior and
friend Servatius, demanding an account of his departure from Paris.
Evidently his Dutch friends had still no confidence in Erasmus, his
work, and his future.
In many respects that future appeared more favourable to him in England
than it had seemed anywhere, thus far. There he found the old friends,
men of consideration and importance: Mountjoy, with whom, on his
arrival, he stayed some months, Colet, and More. There he found some
excellent Greek scholars, whose conversation promised to be profitable
and amusing; not Colet, who knew little Greek, but More, Linacre,
Grocyn, Latimer, and Tunstall. He soon came in contact with some high
ecclesiastics who were to be his friends and patrons: Richard Foxe,
Bishop of Winchester, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and William
Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. Soon he would also find a friend whose
congenial spirit and interests, to some extent, made up for the loss of
Batt: the Italian Andrew Ammonius, of Lucca. And lastly, the king
promised him an ecclesiastical benefice. It was not long before Erasmus
was armed with a dispensation from Pope Julius II, dated 4 January 1506,
cancelling the obstacles in the way of accepting an English benefice.
Translations from Greek into Latin were for him an easy and speedy means
to obtain favour and support: a dialogue by Lucian, followed by others,
for Foxe; the _Hecuba_ and the _Iphigenia_ of Euripides for Warham. He
now also thought of publishing his letters.
Clearly his relations with Holland were not yet satisfactory. Servatius
did not reply to his letters. Erasmus ever felt hanging over him a
menace to his career and his liberty embodied in the figure of that
friend, to whom he was linked by so many silken ties, yonder in the
monastery of Steyn, where his return was looked forward to, sooner or
later, as a beacon-light of Christendom. Did the prior know of the papal
dispensation exempting Erasmus from the 'statutes and customs of the
monastery of Steyn in Holland, of the order of Saint Augustine?'
Probably he did. On 1 April 1506, Erasmus writes to him: 'Here in London
I am, it seems, greatly esteemed by the most eminent and erudite men of
all England. The king has promised me a curacy: the visit of the prince
necessitated a postponement of this business.'[8]
He immediately adds: 'I am deliberating again how best to devote the
remainder of my life (how much that will be, I do not know) entirely to
piety, to Christ. I see life, even when it is long, as evanescent and
dwindling; I know that I am of a delicate constitution and that my
strength has been encroached upon, not a little, by study and also,
somewhat, by misfortune. I see that no deliverance can be hoped from
study, and that it seems as if we had to begin over again, day after
day. Therefore I have resolved, content with my mediocrity (especially
now that I have learned as much Greek as suffices me), to apply myself
to meditation about death and the training of my soul. I should have
done so before and have husbanded the precious years when they were at
their best. But though it is a tardy husbandry that people practise when
only little remains at the bottom, we should be the more economical
accordingly as the quantity and quality of what is left diminishes.'
Was it a fit of melancholy which made Erasmus write those words of
repentance and renunciation? Was he surprised in the middle of the
pursuit of his life's aim by the consciousness of the vanity of his
endeavours, the consciousness, too, of a great fatigue? Is this the
deepest foundation of Erasmus's being, which he reveals for a moment to
his old and intimate friend? It may be doubted. The passage tallies very
ill with the first sentences of the letter, which are altogether
concerned with success and prospects. In a letter he wrote the next day,
also to Gouda and to a trusted friend, there is no trace of the mood: he
is again thinking of his future. We do not notice that the tremendous
zeal with which he continues his studies is relaxed for a moment. And
there are other indications that towards Servatius, who knew him better
than he could wish, and who, moreover, as prior of Steyn, had a
threatening power over him, he purposely demeaned himself as though he
despised the world.
Meanwhile nothing came of the English prebend. But suddenly the occasion
offered to which Erasmus had so often looked forward: the journey to
Italy. The court-physician of Henry VII, Giovanni Battista Boerio, of
Genoa, was looking for a master to accompany his sons in their journey
to the universities of Italy. Erasmus accepted the post, which charged
him neither with the duties of tuition nor with attending to the young
fellows, but only with supervising and guiding their studies. In the
beginning of June 1506, he found himself on French soil once more. For
two summer months the party of travellers stayed at Paris and Erasmus
availed himself of the opportunity to have several of his works, which
he had brought from England, printed at Paris. He was by now a
well-known and favourite author, gladly welcomed by the old friends (he
had been reputed dead) and made much of. Josse Badius printed all
Erasmus offered him: the translations of Euripides and Lucian, a
collection of _Epigrammata_, a new but still unaltered edition of the
_Adagia_.
In August the journey was continued. As he rode on horseback along the
Alpine roads the most important poem Erasmus has written, the echo of an
abandoned pursuit, originated. He had been vexed about his travelling
company, had abstained from conversing with them, and sought consolation
in composing poetry. The result was the ode which he called _Carmen
equestre vel potius alpestre_, about the inconveniences of old age,
dedicated to his friend William Cop.
Erasmus was one of those who early feel old. He was not forty and yet
fancied himself across the threshold of old age. How quickly it had
come! He looks back on the course of his life: he sees himself playing
with nuts as a child, as a boy eager for study, as a youth engrossed in
poetry and scholasticism, also in painting. He surveys his enormous
erudition, his study of Greek, his aspiration to scholarly fame. In the
midst of all this, old age has suddenly come. What remains to him? And
again we hear the note of renunciation of the world and of devotion to
Christ. Farewell jests and trifles, farewell philosophy and poetry, a
pure heart full of Christ is all he desires henceforward.
Here, in the stillness of the Alpine landscape, there arose something
more of Erasmus's deepest aspirations than in the lament to Servatius.
But in this case, too, it is a stray element of his soul, not the strong
impulse that gave direction and fullness to his life and with
irresistible pressure urged him on to ever new studies.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] A. 189, Philip le Beau, who had unexpectedly come to England because
of a storm, which obliged Mountjoy to do court-service.