CHAPTER XV

[15]Cf. the letter to Beatus Rhenanus, pp.227-8.

[16]Ad. 2001 LB. II, 717B, 77 c. 58A. On the book which Erasmus holds in his hand in Holbein's portrait at Longford Castle, we read in Greek: The Labours of Hercules.

Erasmus at Louvain, 1517—He expects the renovation of the Church as the fruit of good learning—Controversy with Lefèvre d'Étaples—Second journey to Basle, 1518—He revises the edition of the New Testament—Controversies with Latomus, Briard and Lee—Erasmus regards the opposition of conservative theology merely as a conspiracy against good learning

When Erasmus established himself at Louvain in the summer of 1517 he had a vague presentiment that great changes were at hand. 'I fear', he writes in September, 'that a great subversion of affairs is being brought about here, if God's favour and the piety and wisdom of princes do not concern themselves about human matters.' But the forms which that great change would assume he did not in the least realize.

He regarded his removal as merely temporary. It was only to last 'till we shall have seen which place of residence is best fit for old age, which is already knocking'. There is something pathetic in the man who desires nothing but quiet and liberty, and who through his own restlessness, and his inability not to concern himself about other people, never found a really fixed abode or true independence. Erasmus is one of those people who always seem to say: tomorrow, tomorrow! I must first deal with this, and then ... As soon as he shall be ready with the new edition of the New Testament and shall have extricated himself from troublesome and disagreeable theological controversies, in which he finds himself entangled against his wish, he will sleep, hide himself, 'sing for himself and the Muses'. But that time never came.

Where to live when he shall be free? Spain, to which Cardinal Ximenes called him, did not appeal to him. From Germany, he says, the stoves and the insecurity deter him. In England the servitude which was required of him there revolted him. But in the Netherlands themselves, he did not feelat his ease, either: 'Here I am barked at a great deal, and there is no remuneration; though I desired it ever so much, I could not bear to stay there long'. Yet he remained for four years.

Erasmus had good friends in the University of Louvain. At first he put up with his old host Johannes Paludanus, Rhetor of the University, whose house he exchanged that summer for quarters in the College of the Lily. Martin Dorp, a Dutchman like himself, had not been estranged from him by their polemics about theMoria; his good will was of great importance to Erasmus, because of the important place Dorp occupied in the theological faculty. And lastly, though his old patron, Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards Pope, had by that time been called away from Louvain to higher dignities, his influence had not diminished in consequence, but rather increased; for just about that time he had been made a cardinal.

Erasmus was received with great complaisance by the Louvain divines. Their leader, the vice-chancellor of the University, Jean Briard of Ath, repeatedly expressed his approval of the edition of the New Testament, to Erasmus's great satisfaction. Soon Erasmus found himself a member of the theological faculty. Yet he did not feel at his ease among the Louvain theologians. The atmosphere was a great deal less congenial to him than that of the world of the English scholars. Here he felt a spirit which he did not understand and distrusted in consequence.

In the years in which the Reformation began, Erasmus was the victim of a great misunderstanding, the result of the fact that his delicate, aesthetic, hovering spirit understood neither the profoundest depths of the faith nor the hard necessities of human society. He was neither mystic nor realist. Luther was both. To Erasmus the great problem of Church and State and society, seemed simple. Nothing was required but restoration and purification by a return to the original, unspoilt sources of Christianity. A number of accretions to the faith, rather ridiculous than revolting, had to be cleared away. All should be reduced to the nucleus of faith, Christ and the Gospel. Forms, ceremonies, speculations should make room for thepractice of true piety. The Gospel was easily intelligible to everybody and within everybody's reach. And the means to reach all this was good learning,bonae literae. Had he not himself, by his editions of the New Testament and of Jerome, and even earlier by the now famousEnchiridion, done most of what had to be done? 'I hope that what now pleases the upright, will soon please all.' As early as the beginning of 1517 Erasmus had written to Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, in the tone of one who has accomplished the great task. 'Well then, take you the torch from us. The work will henceforth be a great deal easier and cause far less hatred and envy.Wehave lived through the first shock.'

Budaeus writes to Tunstall in May 1517: 'Was anyone born under such inauspicious Graces that the dull and obscure discipline (scholasticism) does not revolt him, since sacred literature, too, cleansed by Erasmus's diligence, has regained its ancient purity and brightness? But it is still much greater that he should have effected by the same labour the emergence of sacred truth itself out of that Cimmerian darkness, even though divinity is not yet quite free from the dirt of the sophist school. If that should occur one day, it will be owing to the beginnings made in our times.' The philologist Budaeus believed even more firmly than Erasmus that faith was a matter of erudition.

It could not but vex Erasmus that not everyone accepted the cleansed truth at once. How could people continue to oppose themselves to what, to him, seemed as clear as daylight and so simple? He, who so sincerely would have liked to live in peace with all the world, found himself involved in a series of polemics. To let the opposition of opponents pass unnoticed was forbidden not only by his character, for ever striving to justify himself in the eyes of the world, but also by the custom of his time, so eager for dispute.

There were, first of all, his polemics with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, or in Latinized form, Faber Stapulensis, the Parisian theologian, who as a preparer of the Reformation may, more than anyone else, be ranked with Erasmus. At the momentwhen Erasmus got into the travelling cart which was to take him to Louvain, a friend drew his attention to a passage in the new edition of Faber's commentary on St. Paul's epistles, in which he controverted Erasmus's note on the Second Epistle to the Hebrews, verse 7. Erasmus at once bought Faber's book, and soon published anApologia. It concerned Christ's relation to God and the angels, but the dogmatic point at issue hinged, after all, on a philological interpretation of Erasmus.

Not yet accustomed to much direct wrangling, Erasmus was violently agitated by the matter, the more as he esteemed Faber highly and considered him a congenial spirit. 'What on earth has occurred to the man? Have others set him on against me? All theologians agree that I am right,' he asserts. It makes him nervous that Faber does not reply again at once. Badius has told Peter Gilles that Faber is sorry about it. Erasmus in a dignified letter appeals to their friendship; he will suffer himself to be taught and censured. Then again he growls: Let him be careful. And he thinks that his controversy with Faber keeps the world in suspense: there is not a meal at which the guests do not side with one or the other of them. But finally the combat abated and the friendship was preserved.

Towards Easter 1518, Erasmus contemplated a new journey to Basle, there to pass through the press, during a few months of hard labour, the corrected edition of the New Testament. He did not fail to request the chiefs of conservative divinity at Louvain beforehand to state their objections to his work. Briard of Ath declared he had found nothing offensive in it, after he had first been told all sorts of bad things about it. 'Then the new edition will please you much better,' Erasmus had said. His friend Dorp and James Latomus, also one of the chief divines, had expressed themselves in the same sense, and the Carmelite Nicholas of Egmond had said that he had never read Erasmus's work. Only a young Englishman, Edward Lee, who was studying Greek at Louvain, had summarized a number of criticisms into ten conclusions. Erasmus had got rid of the matter by writing to Lee that he had not been able toget hold of his conclusions and therefore could not make use of them. But his youthful critic had not put up with being slighted so, and worked out his objections in a more circumstantial treatise.

Plate XVII. VIEW OF BASLE, 1548

Thus Erasmus set out for Basle once more in May 1518. He had been obliged to ask all his English friends (of whom Ammonius had been taken from him by death in 1517) for support to defray the expenses of the journey; he kept holding out to them the prospect that, after his work was finished, he would return to England. In a letter to Martin Lypsius, as he was going up the Rhine, he answered Lee's criticism, which had irritated him extremely. In revising his edition he not only took it but little into account, but ventured, moreover, this time to print his own translation of the New Testament of 1506 without any alterations. At the same time he obtained for the new edition a letter of approval from the Pope, a redoubtable weapon against his cavillers.

At Basle Erasmus worked again like a horse in a treadmill. But he was really in his element. Even before the second edition of the New Testament, theEnchiridionand theInstitutio Principis Christianiwere reprinted by Froben. On his return journey, Erasmus, whose work had been hampered all through the summer by indisposition, and who had, on that account, been unable to finish it, fell seriously ill. He reached Louvain with difficulty (21 September 1518). It might be the pestilence, and Erasmus, ever much afraid of contagion himself, now took all precautions to safeguard his friends against it. He avoided his quarters in the College of the Lily, and found shelter with his most trusted friend, Dirck Maertensz, the printer. But in spite of rumours of the plague and his warnings, first Dorp and afterwards also Ath came, at once, to visit him. Evidently the Louvain professors did not mean so badly by him, after all.

Plate XVIII. Title-page of the New Testament printed by Froben in 1520

But the differences between Erasmus and the Louvain faculty were deeply rooted. Lee, hurt by the little attention paid by Erasmus to his objections, prepared a new critique, but kept it from Erasmus, for the present, which irritated thelatter and made him nervous. In the meantime a new opponent arose. Directly after his return to Louvain, Erasmus had taken much trouble to promote the establishment of theCollegium Trilingue, projected and endowed by Jerome Busleiden, in his testament, to be founded in the university. The three biblical languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were to be taught there. Now when James Latomus, a member of the theological faculty and a man whom he esteemed, in a dialogue about the study of those three languages and of theology, doubted the utility of the former, Erasmus judged himself concerned, and answered Latomus in anApologia. About the same time (spring 1519) he got into trouble with the vice-chancellor himself. Erasmus thought that Ath had publicly censured him with regard to his 'Praise of Marriage', which had recently appeared. Though Ath withdrew at once, Erasmus could not abstain from writing anApologia, however moderate. Meanwhile the smouldering quarrel with Lee assumed ever more hateful forms. In vain did Erasmus's English friends attempt to restrain their young, ambitious compatriot. Erasmus on his part irritated him furtively. He reveals in this whole dispute a lack of self-control and dignity which shows his weakest side. Usually so anxious as to decorum he now lapses into invectives: The British adder, Satan, even the old taunt ascribing a tail to Englishmen has to serve once more. The points at issue disappear altogether behind the bitter mutual reproaches. In his unrestrained anger, Erasmus avails himself of the most unworthy weapons. He eggs his German friends on to write against Lee and to ridicule him in all his folly and brag, and then he assures all his English friends: 'All Germany is literally furious with Lee; I have the greatest trouble in keeping them back'.

Alack! Germany had other causes of disturbance: it is 1520 and the three great polemics of Luther were setting the world on fire.

Though one may excuse the violence and the petty spitefulness of Erasmus in this matter, as resulting from an over-sensitive heart falling somewhat short in really manlyqualities, yet it is difficult to deny that he failed completely to understand both the arguments of his adversaries and the great movements of his time.

It was very easy for Erasmus to mock the narrow-mindedness of conservative divines who thought that there would be an end to faith in Holy Scripture as soon as the emendation of the text was attempted. '"They correct the Holy Gospel, nay, the Pater Noster itself!" the preacher exclaims indignantly in the sermon before his surprised congregation. As if I cavilled at Matthew and Luke, and not at those who, out of ignorance and carelessness, have corrupted them. What do people wish? That the Church should possess Holy Scripture as correct as possible, or not?' This reasoning seemed to Erasmus, with his passionate need of purity, a conclusive refutation. But instinct did not deceive his adversaries, when it told them that doctrine itself was at stake if the linguistic judgement of a single individual might decide as to the correct version of a text. And Erasmus wished to avoid the inferences which assailed doctrine. He was not aware of the fact that his conceptions of the Church, the sacraments and the dogmas were no longer purely Catholic, because they had become subordinated to his philological insight. He could not be aware of it because, in spite of all his natural piety and his fervent ethical sentiments, he lacked the mystic insight which is the foundation of every creed.

It was this personal lack in Erasmus which made him unable to understand the real grounds of the resistance of Catholic orthodoxy. How was it possible that so many, and among them men of high consideration, refused to accept what to him seemed so clear and irrefutable! He interpreted the fact in a highly personal way. He, the man who would so gladly have lived in peace with all the world, who so yearned for sympathy and recognition, and bore enmity with difficulty, saw the ranks of haters and opponents increase about him. He did not understand how they feared his mocking acrimony, how many wore the scar of a wound that theMoriahad made. That real and supposed hatred troubled Erasmus. He sees hisenemies as a sect. It is especially the Dominicans and the Carmelites who are ill-affected towards the new scientific theology. Just then a new adversary had arisen at Louvain in the person of his compatriot Nicholas of Egmond, prior of the Carmelites, henceforth an object of particular abhorrence to him. It is remarkable that at Louvain Erasmus found his fiercest opponents in some compatriots, in the narrower sense of the word: Vincent Dirks of Haarlem, William of Vianen, Ruurd Tapper. The persecution increases: the venom of slander spreads more and more every day and becomes more deadly; the greatest untruths are impudently preached about him; he calls in the help of Ath, the vice-chancellor, against them. But it is no use; the hidden enemies laugh; let him write for the erudite, who are few; we shall bark to stir up the people. After 1520 he writes again and again: 'I am stoned every day'.

But Erasmus, however much he might see himself, not without reason, at the centre, could, in 1519 and 1520, no longer be blind to the fact that the great struggle did not concern him alone. On all sides the battle was being fought. What is it, that great commotion about matters of spirit and of faith?

The answer which Erasmus gave himself was this: it is a great and wilful conspiracy on the part of the conservatives to suffocate good learning and make the old ignorance triumph. This idea recurs innumerable times in his letters after the middle of 1518. 'I know quite certainly', he writes on 21 March 1519 to one of his German friends, 'that the barbarians on all sides have conspired to leave no stone unturned till they have suppressedbonae literae.' 'Here we are still fighting with the protectors of the old ignorance'; cannot Wolsey persuade the Pope to stop it here? All that appertains to ancient and cultured literature is called 'poetry' by those narrow-minded fellows. By that word they indicate everything that savours of a more elegant doctrine, that is to say all that they have not learned themselves. All the tumult, the whole tragedy—under these terms he usually refers to the great theological struggle—originatesin the hatred ofbonae literae. 'This is the source and hot-bed of all this tragedy; incurable hatred of linguistic study and thebonae literae.' 'Luther provokes those enemies, whom it is impossible to conquer, though their cause is a bad one. And meanwhile envy harasses thebonae literae, which are attacked at his (Luther's) instigation by these gadflies. They are already nearly insufferable, when things do not go well with them; but who can stand them when they triumph? Either I am blind, or they aim at something else than Luther. They are preparing to conquer the phalanx of the Muses.'

This was written by Erasmus to a member of the University of Leipzig in December 1520. This one-sided and academic conception of the great events, a conception which arose in the study of a recluse bending over his books, did more than anything else to prevent Erasmus from understanding the true nature and purport of the Reformation.

Beginning of the relations between Erasmus and Luther—Archbishop Albert of Mayence, 1517—Progress of the Reformation—Luther tries to bring about arapprochementwith Erasmus, March 1519—Erasmus keeps aloof; fancies he may yet act as a conciliator—His attitude becomes ambiguous—He denies ever more emphatically all relations with Luther and resolves to remain a spectator—He is pressed by either camp to take sides—Aleander in the Netherlands—The Diet of Worms, 1521—Erasmus leaves Louvain to safeguard his freedom, October 1521

About the close of 1516, Erasmus received a letter from the librarian and secretary of Frederick, elector of Saxony, George Spalatinus, written in the respectful and reverential tone in which the great man was now approached. 'We all esteem you here most highly; the elector has all your books in his library and intends to buy everything you may publish in future.' But the object of Spalatinus's letter was the execution of a friend's commission. An Augustinian ecclesiastic, a great admirer of Erasmus, had requested him to direct his attention to the fact that in his interpretation of St. Paul, especially in that of the epistle to the Romans, Erasmus had failed to conceive the idea ofjustitiacorrectly, had paid too little attention to original sin: he might profit by reading Augustine.

The nameless Austin Friar was Luther, then still unknown outside the circle of the Wittenberg University, in which he was a professor, and the criticism regarded the cardinal point of his hardly acquired conviction: justification by faith.

Erasmus paid little attention to this letter. He received so many of that sort, containing still more praise and no criticism. If he answered it, the reply did not reach Spalatinus, and later Erasmus completely forgot the whole letter.

Nine months afterwards, in September 1517, when Erasmus had been at Louvain for a short time, he received an honourable invitation, written by the first prelate of the Empire, theyoung Archbishop of Mayence, Albert of Brandenburg. The archbishop would be pleased to see him on an occasion: he greatly admired his work (he knew it so little as to speak of Erasmus's emendation of the Old Testament, instead of the New) and hoped that he would one day write some lives of saints in elegant style.

The young Hohenzoller, advocate of the new light of classical studies, whose attention had probably been drawn to Erasmus by Hutten and Capito, who sojourned at his court, had recently become engaged in one of the boldest political and financial transactions of his time. His elevation to the see of Mayence, at the age of twenty-four, had necessitated a papal dispensation, as he also wished to keep the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the see of Halberstadt. This accumulation of ecclesiastical offices had to be made subservient to the Brandenburg policy which opposed the rival house of Saxony. The Pope granted the dispensation in return for a great sum of money, but to facilitate its payment he accorded to the archbishop a liberal indulgence for the whole archbishopric of Mayence, Magdeburg and the Brandenburg territories. Albert, to whom half the proceeds were tacitly left, raised a loan with the house of Fugger, and this charged itself with the indulgence traffic.

When in December 1517, Erasmus answered the archbishop, Luther's propositions against indulgences, provoked by the Archbishop of Mayence's instructions regarding their colportage, had already been posted up (31 October 1517), and were circulated throughout Germany, rousing the whole Church. They were levelled at the same abuses which Erasmus combated, the mechanical, atomistical, and juridical conception of religion. But how different was their practical effect, as compared with Erasmus's pacific endeavour to purify the Church by lenient means!

'Lives of saints?' Erasmus asked replying to the archbishop. 'I have tried in my poor way to add a little light to the prince of saints himself. For the rest, your endeavour, in addition to so many difficult matters of government, and at such an earlyage, to get the lives of the saints purged of old women's tales and disgusting style, is extremely laudable. For nothing should be suffered in the Church that is not perfectly pure or refined,' And he concludes with a magnificent eulogy of the excellent prelate.

During the greater part of 1518, Erasmus was too much occupied by his own affairs—the journey to Basle and his red-hot labours there, and afterwards his serious illness—to concern himself much with Luther's business. In March he sends Luther's theses to More, without comment, and, in passing, complains to Colet about the impudence with which Rome disseminates indulgences. Luther, now declared a heretic and summoned to appear at Augsburg, stands before the legate Cajetanus and refuses to recant. Seething enthusiasm surrounds him. Just about that time Erasmus writes to one of Luther's partisans, John Lang, in very favourable terms about his work. The theses have pleased everybody. 'I see that the monarchy of the Pope at Rome, as it is now, is a pestilence to Christendom, but I do not know if it is expedient to touch that sore openly. That would be a matter for princes, but I fear that these will act in concert with the Pope to secure part of the spoils. I do not understand what possessed Eck to take up arms against Luther.' The letter did not find its way into any of the collections.

The year 1519 brought the struggle attending the election of an emperor, after old Maximilian had died in January, and the attempt of the curia to regain ground with lenity. Germany was expecting the long-projected disputation between Johannes Eck and Andreas Karlstadt which, in truth, would concern Luther. How could Erasmus, who himself was involved that year in so many polemics, have foreseen that the Leipzig disputation, which was to lead Luther to the consequence of rejecting the highest ecclesiastical authority, would remain of lasting importance in the history of the world, whereas his quarrel with Lee would be forgotten?

On 28 March 1519 Luther addressed himself personally to Erasmus for the first time. 'I speak with you so often, and you with me, Erasmus, our ornament and our hope; and we donot know each other as yet.' He rejoices to find that Erasmus displeases many, for this he regards as a sign that God has blessed him. Now that his, Luther's, name begins to get known too, a longer silence between them might be wrongly interpreted. 'Therefore, my Erasmus, amiable man, if you think fit, acknowledge also this little brother in Christ, who really admires you and feels friendly disposed towards you, and for the rest would deserve no better, because of his ignorance, than to lie, unknown, buried in a corner.'

There was a very definite purpose in this somewhat rustically cunning and half ironical letter. Luther wanted, if possible, to make Erasmus show his colours, to win him, the powerful authority, touchstone of science and culture, for the cause which he advocated. In his heart Luther had long been aware of the deep gulf separating him from Erasmus. As early as March 1517, six months before his public appearance, he wrote about Erasmus to John Lang: 'human matters weigh heavier with him than divine,' an opinion that so many have pronounced about Erasmus—obvious, and yet unfair.

The attempt, on the part of Luther, to effect arapprochementwas a reason for Erasmus to retire at once. Now began that extremely ambiguous policy of Erasmus to preserve peace by his authority as a light of the world and to steer a middle course without committing himself. In that attitude the great and the petty side of his personality are inextricably intertwined. The error because of which most historians have seen Erasmus's attitude towards the Reformation either in far too unfavourable a light or—as for instance the German historian Kalkoff—much too heroic and far-seeing, is that they erroneously regard him as psychologically homogeneous. Just that he is not. His double-sidedness roots in the depths of his being. Many of his utterances during the struggle proceed directly from his fear and lack of character, also from his inveterate dislike of siding with a person or a cause; but behind that is always his deep and fervent conviction that neither of the conflicting opinions can completely express the truth, that human hatred and purblindness infatuate men's minds. And with that conviction isallied the noble illusion that it might yet be possible to preserve the peace by moderation, insight, and kindliness.

In April 1519 Erasmus addressed himself by letter to the elector Frederick of Saxony, Luther's patron. He begins by alluding to his dedication of Suetonius two years before; but his real purpose is to say something about Luther. Luther's writings, he says, have given the Louvain obscurants plenty of reason to inveigh against thebonae literae, to decry all scholars. He himself does not know Luther and has glanced through his writings only cursorily as yet, but everyone praises his life. How little in accordance with theological gentleness it is to condemn him offhand, and that before the indiscreet vulgar! For has he not proposed a dispute, and submitted himself to everybody's judgement? No one has, so far, admonished, taught, convinced him. Every error is not at once heresy.

The best of Christianity is a life worthy of Christ. Where we find that, we should not rashly suspect people of heresy. Why do we so uncharitably persecute the lapses of others, though none of us is free from error? Why do we rather want to conquer than cure, suppress than instruct?

But he concludes with a word that could not but please Luther's friends, who so hoped for his support. 'May the duke prevent an innocent man from being surrendered under the cloak of piety to the impiety of a few. This is also the wish of Pope Leo, who has nothing more at heart than that innocence be safe.'

At this same time Erasmus does his best to keep Froben back from publishing Luther's writings, 'that they may not fan the hatred of thebonae literaestill more'. And he keeps repeating: I do not know Luther, I have not read his writings. He makes this declaration to Luther himself, in his reply to the latter's epistle of 28 March. This letter of Erasmus, dated 30 May 1519, should be regarded as a newspaper leader[17], to acquaint the public with his attitude towards the Luther question. Luther does not know the tragedies which his writings have caused at Louvain. People here think that Erasmus has helped him incomposing them and call him the standard bearer of the party! That seemed to them a fitting pretext to suppress thebonae literae. 'I have declared that you are perfectly unknown to me, that I have not yet read your books and therefore neither approve nor disapprove anything.' 'I reserve myself, so far as I may, to be of use to the reviving studies. Discreet moderation seems likely to bring better progress than impetuosity. It was by this that Christ subjugated the world.'

On the same day he writes to John Lang, one of Luther's friends and followers, a short note, not meant for publication: 'I hope that the endeavours of yourself and your party will be successful. Here the Papists rave violently.... All the best minds are rejoiced at Luther's boldness: I do not doubt he will be careful that things do not end in a quarrel of parties!... We shall never triumph over feigned Christians unless we first abolish the tyranny of the Roman see, and of its satellites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Carmelites. But no one could attempt that without a serious tumult.'

As the gulf widens, Erasmus's protestations that he has nothing to do with Luther become much more frequent. Relations at Louvain grow ever more disagreeable and the general sentiment about him ever more unkind. In August 1519 he turns to the Pope himself for protection against his opponents. He still fails to see how wide the breach is. He still takes it all to be quarrels of scholars. King Henry of England and King Francis of France in their own countries have imposed silence upon the quarrellers and slanderers; if only the Pope would do the same!

In October he was once more reconciled with the Louvain faculty. It was just at this time that Colet died in London, the man who had, better perhaps than anyone else, understood Erasmus's standpoint. Kindred spirits in Germany still looked up to Erasmus as the great man who was on the alert to interpose at the right moment and who had made moderation the watchword, until the time should come to give his friends the signal.

But in the increasing noise of the battle his voice already sounded less powerfully than before. A letter to CardinalAlbert of Mayence, 19 October 1519, of about the same content as that of Frederick of Saxony written in the preceding spring, was at once circulated by Luther's friends; and by the advocates of conservatism, in spite of the usual protestation, 'I do not know Luther', it was made to serve against Erasmus.

It became more and more clear that the mediating and conciliatory position which Erasmus wished to take up would soon be altogether untenable. The inquisitor Jacob Hoogstraten had come from Cologne, where he was a member of the University, to Louvain, to work against Luther there, as he had worked against Reuchlin. On 7 November 1519 the Louvain faculty, following the example of that of Cologne, proceeded to take the decisive step: the solemn condemnation of a number of Luther's opinions. In future no place could be less suitable to Erasmus than Louvain, the citadel of action against reformers. It is surprising that he remained there another two years.

The expectation that he would be able to speak the conciliating word was paling. For the rest he failed to see the true proportions. During the first months of 1520 his attention was almost entirely taken up by his own polemics with Lee, a paltry incident in the great revolution. The desire to keep aloof got more and more the upper hand of him. In June he writes to Melanchthon: 'I see that matters begin to look like sedition. It is perhaps necessary that scandals occur, but I should prefer not to be the author.' He has, he thinks, by his influence with Wolsey, prevented the burning of Luther's writings in England, which had been ordered. But he was mistaken. The burning had taken place in London, as early as 12 May.

The best proof that Erasmus had practically given up his hope to play a conciliatory part may be found in what follows. In the summer of 1520 the famous meeting between the three monarchs, Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V, took place at Calais. Erasmus was to go there in the train of his prince. How would such a congress of princes—where in peaceful conclave the interests of France, England, Spain, the German Empire, and a considerable part of Italy, were representedtogether—have affected Erasmus's imagination, if his ideal had remained unshaken! But there are no traces of this. Erasmus was at Calais in July 1520, had some conversation with Henry VIII there, and greeted More, but it does not appear that he attached any other importance to the journey than that of an opportunity, for the last time, to greet his English friends.

It was awkward for Erasmus that just at this time, when the cause of faith took so much harsher forms, his duties as counsellor to the youthful Charles, now back from Spain to be crowned as emperor, circumscribed his liberty more than before. In the summer of 1520 appeared, based on the incriminating material furnished by the Louvain faculty, the papal bull declaring Luther to be a heretic, and, unless he should speedily recant, excommunicating him. 'I fear the worst for the unfortunate Luther,' Erasmus writes, 9 September 1520, 'so does conspiracy rage everywhere, so are princes incensed with him on all sides, and, most of all, Pope Leo. Would Luther had followed my advice and abstained from those hostile and seditious actions!... They will not rest until they have quite subverted the study of languages and the good learning.... Out of the hatred against these and the stupidity of monks did this tragedy first arise.... I do not meddle with it. For the rest, a bishopric is waiting for me if I choose to write against Luther.'

Indeed, Erasmus had become, by virtue of his enormous celebrity, as circumstances would have it, more and more a valuable asset in the great policy of emperor and pope. People wanted to use his name and make him choose sides. And that he would not do for any consideration. He wrote evasively to the Pope about his relations with Luther without altogether disavowing him. How zealously he defends himself from the suspicion of being on Luther's side as noisy monks make out in their sermons, who summarily link the two in their scoffing disparagement.

But by the other side also he is pressed to choose sides and to speak out. Towards the end of October 1520 the coronation of the emperor took place at Aix-la-Chapelle. Erasmus wasperhaps present; in any case he accompanied the Emperor to Cologne. There, on 5 November, he had an interview about Luther with the Elector Frederick of Saxony. He was persuaded to write down the result of that discussion in the form of twenty-twoAxiomata concerning Luther's cause. Against his intention they were printed at once.

Erasmus's hesitation in those days between the repudiation and the approbation of Luther is not discreditable to him. It is the tragic defect running through his whole personality: his refusal or inability ever to draw ultimate conclusions. Had he only been a calculating and selfish nature, afraid of losing his life, he would long since have altogether forsaken Luther's cause. It is his misfortune affecting his fame, that he continually shows his weaknesses, whereas what is great in him lies deep.

At Cologne Erasmus also met the man with whom, as a promising young humanist, fourteen years younger than himself, he had, for some months, shared a room in the house of Aldus's father-in-law, at Venice: Hieronymus Aleander, now sent to the Emperor as a papal nuncio, to persuade him to conform his imperial policy to that of the Pope, in the matter of the great ecclesiastical question, and give effect to the papal excommunication by the imperial ban.

It must have been somewhat painful for Erasmus that his friend had so far surpassed him in power and position, and was now called to bring by diplomatic means the solution which he himself would have liked to see achieved by ideal harmony, good will and toleration. He had never trusted Aleander, and was more than ever on his guard against him. As a humanist, in spite of brilliant gifts, Aleander was by far Erasmus's inferior, and had never, like him, risen from literature to serious theological studies; he had simply prospered in the service of Church magnates (whom Erasmus had given up early). This man was now invested with the highest mediating powers.

To what degree of exasperation Erasmus's most violent antagonists at Louvain had now been reduced is seen from the witty and slightly malicious account he gives ThomasMore of his meeting with Egmondanus before the Rector of the university, who wanted to reconcile them. Still things did not look so black as Ulrich von Hutten thought, when he wrote to Erasmus: 'Do you think that you are still safe, now that Luther's books are burned? Fly, and save yourself for us!'

Ever more emphatic do Erasmus's protestations become that he has nothing to do with Luther. Long ago he had already requested him not to mention his name, and Luther promised it: 'Very well, then, I shall not again refer to you, neither will other good friends, since it troubles you'. Ever louder, too, are Erasmus's complaints about the raving of the monks at him, and his demands that the mendicant orders be deprived of the right to preach.

In April 1521 comes the moment in the world's history to which Christendom has been looking forward: Luther at the Diet of Worms, holding fast to his opinions, confronted by the highest authority in the Empire. So great is the rejoicing in Germany that for a moment it may seem that the Emperor's power is in danger rather than Luther and his adherents. 'If I had been present', writes Erasmus, 'I should have endeavoured that this tragedy would have been so tempered by moderate arguments that it could not afterwards break out again to the still greater detriment of the world.'

The imperial sentence was pronounced: within the Empire (as in the Burgundian Netherlands before that time) Luther's books were to be burned, his adherents arrested and their goods confiscated, and Luther was to be given up to the authorities. Erasmus hopes that now relief will follow. 'The Luther tragedy is at an end with us here; would it had never appeared on the stage.' In these days Albrecht Dürer, on hearing the false news of Luther's death, wrote in the diary of his journey that passionate exclamation: 'O Erasmus of Rotterdam, where will you be? Hear, you knight of Christ, ride forth beside the Lord Christ, protect the truth, obtain the martyr's crown. For you are but an old manikin. I have heard you say that you have allowed yourself two more years, in which you are still fit to do some work; spend them well, inbehalf of the Gospel and the true Christian faith.... O Erasmus, be on this side, that God may be proud of you.'

It expresses confidence in Erasmus's power, but at bottom is the expectation that he will not do all this. Dürer had rightly understood Erasmus.

The struggle abated nowise, least of all at Louvain. Latomus, the most dignified and able of Louvain divines, had now become one of the most serious opponents of Luther and, in so doing, touched Erasmus, too, indirectly. To Nicholas of Egmond, the Carmelite, another of Erasmus's compatriots had been added as a violent antagonist, Vincent Dirks of Haarlem, a Dominican. Erasmus addresses himself to the faculty, to defend himself against the new attacks, and to explain why he has never written against Luther. He will read him, he will soon take up something to quiet the tumult. He succeeds in getting Aleander, who arrived at Louvain in June, to prohibit preaching against him. The Pope still hopes that Aleander will succeed in bringing back Erasmus, with whom he is again on friendly terms, to the right track.

But Erasmus began to consider the only exit which was now left to him: to leave Louvain and the Netherlands to regain his menaced independence. The occasion to depart had long ago presented itself: the third edition of his New Testament called him to Basle once more. It would not be a permanent departure, and he purposed to return to Louvain. On 28 October (his birthday) he left the town where he had spent four difficult years. His chambers in the College of the Lily were reserved for him and he left his books behind. On 15 November he reached Basle.

Soon the rumour spread that out of fear of Aleander he had saved himself by flight. But the idea, revived again in our days in spite of Erasmus's own painstaking denial, that Aleander should have cunningly and expressly driven him from the Netherlands, is inherently improbable. So far as the Church was concerned, Erasmus would at almost any point be more dangerous than at Louvain, in the headquarters of conservatism, under immediate control of the strict Burgundian government,where, it seemed, he could sooner or later be pressed into the service of the anti-Lutheran policy.

It was this contingency, as Dr. Allen has correctly pointed out, which he feared and evaded. Not for his bodily safety did he emigrate; Erasmus would not have been touched—he was far too valuable an asset for such measures. It was his mental independence, so dear to him above all else, that he felt to be threatened; and, to safeguard that, he did not return to Louvain.

Plate XIX. THE HOUSE AT ANDERLECHT WHERE ERASMUS LIVED FROM MAY TO NOVEMBER 1521

Plate XX. ERASMUS'S STUDY AT ANDERLECHT

FOOTNOTES:

[17]Translation on pp.229ff.

Basle his dwelling-place for nearly eight years: 1521-9—Political thought of Erasmus—Concord and peace—Anti-war writings—Opinions concerning princes and government—New editions of several Fathers—TheColloquia—Controversies with Stunica, Beda, etc.—Quarrel with Hutten—Eppendorff

It is only towards the evening of life that the picture of Erasmus acquires the features with which it was to go down to posterity. Only at Basle—delivered from the troublesome pressure of parties wanting to enlist him, transplanted from an environment of haters and opponents at Louvain to a circle of friends, kindred spirits, helpers and admirers, emancipated from the courts of princes, independent of the patronage of the great, unremittingly devoting his tremendous energy to the work that was dear to him—did he become Holbein's Erasmus. In those late years he approaches most closely to the ideal of his personal life.

He did not think that there were still fifteen years in store for him. Long before, in fact, since he became forty years old in 1506, Erasmus had been in an old-age mood. 'The last act of the play has begun,' he keeps saying after 1517.

He now felt practically independent as to money matters. Many years had passed before he could say that. But peace of mind did not come with competence. It never came. He never became truly placid and serene, as Holbein's picture seems to represent him. He was always too much concerned about what people said or thought of him. Even at Basle he did not feel thoroughly at home. He still speaks repeatedly of a removal in the near future to Rome, to France, to England, or back to the Netherlands. Physical rest, at any rate, which was not in him, was granted him by circumstances: for nearly eight years he now remained at Basle, and then he lived at Freiburg for six.

Erasmus at Basle is a man whose ideals of the world and society have failed him. What remains of that happy expectation of a golden age of peace and light, in which he had believed as late as 1517? What of his trust in good will and rational insight, in which he wrote theInstitutio Principis Christianifor the youthful Charles V? To Erasmus all the weal of state and society had always been merely a matter of personal morality and intellectual enlightenment. By recommending and spreading those two he at one time thought he had introduced the great renovation himself. From the moment when he saw that the conflict would lead to an exasperated struggle he refused any longer to be anything but a spectator. As an actor in the great ecclesiastical combat Erasmus had voluntarily left the stage.

But he does not give up his ideal. 'Let us resist,' he concludes an Epistle about gospel philosophy, 'not by taunts and threats, not by force of arms and injustice, but by simple discretion, by benefits, by gentleness and tolerance.' Towards the close of his life, he prays: 'If Thou, O God, deignst to renew that Holy Spirit in the hearts of all, then also will those external disasters cease.... Bring order to this chaos, Lord Jesus, let Thy Spirit spread over these waters of sadly troubled dogmas.'

Concord, peace, sense of duty and kindliness, were all valued highly by Erasmus; yet he rarely saw them realized in practical life. He becomes disillusioned. After the short spell of political optimism he never speaks of the times any more but in bitter terms—a most criminal age, he says—and again, the most unhappy and most depraved age imaginable. In vain had he always written in the cause of peace:Querela pacis, the complaint of peace, the adageDulce bellum inexpertis, war is sweet to those who have not known it,Oratio de pace et discordia, and more still. Erasmus thought rather highly of his pacifistic labours: 'that polygraph, who never leaves off persecuting war by means of his pen', thus he makes a character of theColloquiesdesignate himself. According to a tradition noted by Melanchthon, Pope Julius is said to have called him before him in connection with his advice about the war withVenice,[18]and to have remarked to him angrily that he should stop writing on the concerns of princes: 'You do not understand those things!'

Erasmus had, in spite of a certain innate moderation, a wholly non-political mind. He lived too much outside of practical reality, and thought too naïvely of the corrigibility of mankind, to realize the difficulties and necessities of government. His ideas about a good administration were extremely primitive, and, as is often the case with scholars of a strong ethical bias, very revolutionary at bottom, though he never dreamed of drawing the practical inferences. His friendship with political and juridical thinkers, as More, Budaeus and Zasius, had not changed him. Questions of forms of government, law or right, did not exist for him. Economic problems he saw in idyllic simplicity. The prince should reign gratuitously and impose as few taxes as possible. 'The good prince has all that loving citizens possess.' The unemployed should be simply driven away. We feel in closer contact with the world of facts when he enumerates the works of peace for the prince: the cleaning of towns, building of bridges, halls, and streets, draining of pools, shifting of river-beds, the diking and reclamation of moors. It is the Netherlander who speaks here, and at the same time the man in whom the need of cleansing and clearing away is a fundamental trait of character.

Vague politicians like Erasmus are prone to judge princes very severely, since they take them to be responsible for all wrongs. Erasmus praises them personally, but condemns them in general. From the kings of his time he had for a long time expected peace in Church and State. They had disappointed him. But his severe judgement of princes he derived rather from classical reading than from political experience of his own times. In the later editions of theAdagiahe often reverts to princes, their task and their neglect of duty, without ever mentioning special princes. 'There are those who sow the seeds ofdissension between their townships in order to fleece the poor unhindered and to satisfy their gluttony by the hunger of innocent citizens.' In the adageScarabeus aquilam quaerithe represents the prince under the image of the Eagle as the great cruel robber and persecutor. In another,Aut regem aut fatuum nasci oportere, and inDulce bellum inexpertishe utters his frequently quoted dictum: 'The people found and develop towns, the folly of princes devastates them.' 'The princes conspire with the Pope, and perhaps with the Turk, against the happiness of the people,' he writes to Colet in 1518.

He was an academic critic writing from his study. A revolutionary purpose was as foreign to Erasmus as it was to More when writing theUtopia. 'Bad monarchs should perhaps be suffered now and then. The remedy should not be tried.' It may be doubted whether Erasmus exercised much real influence on his contemporaries by means of his diatribes against princes. One would fain believe that his ardent love of peace and bitter arraignment of the madness of war had some effect. They have undoubtedly spread pacific sentiments in the broad circles of intellectuals who read Erasmus, but unfortunately the history of the sixteenth century shows little evidence that such sentiments bore fruit in actual practice. However this may be, Erasmus's strength was not in these political declamations. He could never be a leader of men with their passions and their harsh interests.

His life-work lay elsewhere. Now, at Basle, though tormented more and more frequently by his painful complaint which he had already carried for so many years, he could devote himself more fully than ever before to the great task he had set himself: the opening up of the pure sources of Christianity, the exposition of the truth of the Gospel in all the simple comprehensibility in which he saw it. In a broad stream flowed the editions of the Fathers, of classic authors, the new editions of the New Testament, of theAdagia, of his own Letters, together with Paraphrases of the New Testament, Commentaries on Psalms, and a number of new theological, moral and philological treatises. In 1522 he was ill for monthson end; yet in that year Arnobius and the third edition of the New Testament succeeded Cyprian, whom he had already annotated at Louvain and edited in 1520, closely followed by Hilary in 1523 and next by a new edition of Jerome in 1524. Later appeared Irenaeus, 1526; Ambrose, 1527; Augustine, 1528-9, and a Latin translation of Chrysostom in 1530. The rapid succession of these comprehensive works proves that the work was done as Erasmus always worked: hastily, with an extraordinary power of concentration and a surprising command of his mnemonic faculty, but without severe criticism and the painful accuracy that modern philology requires in such editions.

Neither the polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. But the two are linked inseparably as theColloquiesprove.

What was said about theMoriamay be repeated here: if in the literature of the world only theColloquiesand theMoriahave remained alive, that choice of history is right. Not in the sense that in literature only Erasmus's pleasantest, lightest and most readable works were preserved, whereas the ponderous theological erudition was silently relegated to the shelves of libraries. It was indeed Erasmus's best work that was kept alive in theMoriaand theColloquies. With these his sparkling wit has charmed the world. If only we had space here to assign to the Erasmus of theColloquieshis just and lofty place in that brilliant constellation of sixteenth-century followers of Democritus: Rabelais, Ariosto, Montaigne, Cervantes, and Ben Jonson!

When Erasmus gave theColloquiestheir definite form at Basle, they had already had a long and curious genesis. At first they had been no more thanFamiliarium colloquiorum formulae, models of colloquial Latin conversation, written at Paris before 1500, for the use of his pupils. Augustine Caminade, the shabby friend who was fond of living on young Erasmus'sgenius, had collected them and had turned them to advantage within a limited compass. He had long been dead when one Lambert Hollonius of Liége sold the manuscript that he had got from Caminade to Froben at Basle. Beatus Rhenanus, although then already Erasmus's trusted friend, had it printed at once without the latter's knowledge. That was in 1518. Erasmus was justly offended at it, the more so as the book was full of slovenly blunders and solecisms. So he at once prepared a better edition himself, published by Maertensz at Louvain in 1519. At that time the work really contained but one true dialogue, the nucleus of the laterConvivium profanum. The rest were formulae of etiquette and short talks. But already in this form it was, apart from its usefulness to latinists, so full of happy wit and humorous invention that it became very popular. Even before 1522 it had appeared in twenty-five editions, mostly reprints, at Antwerp, Paris, Strassburg, Cologne, Cracow, Deventer, Leipzig, London, Vienna, Mayence.

At Basle Erasmus himself revised an edition which was published in March 1522 by Froben, dedicated to the latter's six-year-old son, the author's godchild, Johannes Erasmius Froben. Soon after he did more than revise. In 1523 and 1524 first ten new dialogues, afterwards four, and again six, were added to theFormulae, and at last in 1526 the title was changed toFamiliarium colloquiorum opus. It remained dedicated to the boy Froben and went on growing with each new edition: a rich and motley collection of dialogues, each a masterpiece of literary form, well-knit, spontaneous, convincing, unsurpassed in lightness, vivacity and fluent Latin; each one a finished one-act play. From that year on, the stream of editions and translations flowed almost uninterruptedly for two centuries.

Erasmus's mind had lost nothing of its acuteness and freshness when, so many years after theMoria, he again set foot in the field of satire. As to form, theColloquiesare less confessedly satirical than theMoria. With its telling subject, thePraise of Folly, the latter at once introduces itself as a satire: whereas, at first sight, theColloquiesmight seem to be mere innocent genre-pieces. But as to the contents, they are more satirical,at least more directly so. TheMoria, as a satire, is philosophical and general; theColloquiaare up to date and special. At the same time they combine more the positive and negative elements. In theMoriaErasmus's own ideal dwells unexpressed behind the representation; in theColloquiahe continually and clearly puts it in the foreground. On this account they form, notwithstanding all the jests and mockery, a profoundly serious moral treatise and are closely akin to theEnchiridion militis Christiani. What Erasmus really demanded of the world and of mankind, how he pictured to himself that passionately desired, purified Christian society of good morals, fervent faith, simplicity and moderation, kindliness, toleration and peace—this we can nowhere else find so clearly and well-expressed as in theColloquia. In these last fifteen years of his life Erasmus resumes, by means of a series of moral-dogmatic disquisitions, the topics he broached in theEnchiridion: the exposition of simple, general Christian conduct; untrammelled and natural ethics. That is his message of redemption. It came to many out ofExomologesis,De esu carnium,Lingua,Institutio christiani matrimonii,Vidua christiana,Ecclesiastes. But, to far larger numbers, the message was contained in theColloquies.

TheColloquiagave rise to much more hatred and contest than theMoria, and not without reason, for in them Erasmus attacked persons. He allowed himself the pleasure of ridiculing his Louvain antagonists. Lee had already been introduced as a sycophant and braggart into the edition of 1519, and when the quarrel was assuaged, in 1522, the reference was expunged. Vincent Dirks was caricatured inThe Funeral(1526) as a covetous friar, who extorts from the dying testaments in favour of his order. He remained. Later sarcastic observations were added about Beda and numbers of others. The adherents of Oecolampadius took a figure with a long nose in theColloquiesfor their leader: 'Oh, no,' replied Erasmus, 'it is meant for quite another person.' Henceforth all those who were at loggerheads with Erasmus, and they were many, ran therisk of being pilloried in theColloquia. It was no wonder that this work, especially with its scourging mockery of the monastic orders, became the object of controversy.

Erasmus never emerged from his polemics. He was, no doubt, serious when he said that, in his heart, he abhorred and had never desired them; but his caustic mind often got the better of his heart, and having once begun to quarrel he undoubtedly enjoyed giving his mockery the rein and wielding his facile dialectic pen. For understanding his personality it is unnecessary here to deal at large with all those fights on paper. Only the most important ones need be mentioned.

Since 1516 a pot had been boiling for Erasmus in Spain. A theologian of the University at Alcalá, Diego Lopez Zuñiga, or, in Latin, Stunica, had been preparing Annotations to the edition of the New Testament: 'a second Lee', said Erasmus. At first Cardinal Ximenes had prohibited the publication, but in 1520, after his death, the storm broke. For some years Stunica kept persecuting Erasmus with his criticism, to the latter's great vexation; at last there followed arapprochement, probably as Erasmus became more conservative, and a kindly attitude on the part of Stunica.

No less long and violent was the quarrel with the syndic of the Sorbonne, Noel Bedier or Beda, which began in 1522. The Sorbonne was prevailed upon to condemn several of Erasmus's dicta as heretical in 1526. The effort of Beda to implicate Erasmus in the trial of Louis de Berquin, who had translated the condemned writings and who was eventually burned at the stake for faith's sake in 1529, made the matter still more disagreeable for Erasmus.

It is clear enough that both at Paris and at Louvain in the circles of the theological faculties the chief cause of exasperation was in theColloquia. Egmondanus and Vincent Dirks did not forgive Erasmus for having acridly censured their station and their personalities.

More courteous than the aforementioned polemics was the fight with a high-born Italian, Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi;acrid and bitter was one with a group of Spanish monks, who brought the Inquisition to bear upon him. In Spain 'Erasmistas' was the name of those who inclined to more liberal conceptions of the creed.

In this way the matter accumulated for the volume of Erasmus's works which contains, according to his own arrangement, all hisApologiae: not 'excuses', but 'vindications'. 'Miserable man that I am; they just fill a volume,' exclaimed Erasmus.

Two of his polemics merit a somewhat closer examination: that with Ulrich von Hutten and that with Luther.

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