More’s legal studies.Grocyn, Linacre, and More all in London.More lectures on the ‘De Civitate Dei.’
During the years devoted to his legal curriculum, he had been wholly absorbed in his law books.
Closely watched by his father, and purposely kept with a stinted allowance, as at Oxford, so that ‘his whole mind might, be set on his book,’ the law student had found little time or opportunity for other studies. But being now duly called to the bar, and thus freed from the restraints of student life, his mind naturally reverted to old channels of thought. Grocyn and Linacre in the meantime had left Oxford and become near neighbours of his in London. Thus the old Oxford circle partially formed itself again, and with the renewal of old intimacies returned, if ever lost, the love of old studies. For no sooner was More called to thebar than he commenced his maiden lectures in the church of St. Lawrence,[245]in the Old Jewry, and chose for a subject the great work of St. Augustine, ‘De Civitate Dei.’
His object, we are told, in these lectures was not to expound the theological creed of the Bishop of Hippo, but the philosophical and historical[246]arguments contained in those first few books in which Augustine had so forcibly traced the connection between the history of Rome and the character and religion of the Romans, attributing the former glory of the great Roman Commonwealth to the valour and virtue of the old Romans; tracing the recent ruin of the empire, ending in the sack of Rome by Alaric, to the effeminacy and profligacy of the modern Romans; defending Christianity from the charge of having undermined the empire, and pointing out that if it had been universally adopted by rulers and people, and carried out into practice in their lives, the old Pagan empire might have become a truly Christian empire and been saved,—those books which, starting from the facts of the recent sack of Rome, landed the reader at last in a discussion of the philosophy of free-will and fate.
Roper tells us that the young lawyer’s readings were well received, being attended not only by Grocyn, his old Greek master, but also by ‘all the chief learned of the city of London.’[247]
More a reader at Furnival’s Inn.More in Parliament.Demands of the King.More opposes the King’s demands;
More was indeed rising rapidly in public notice and confidence. He was appointed a reader at Furnival’s Inn about this time, and when a Parliament was calledin the spring of 1503-4, though only twenty-five, he was elected a member of it.
Sent up thus to enter public life in a Parliament of which the notorious Dudley was the speaker,[248]the last and probably the most subservient Parliament of a king who now in his latter days was becoming more and more avaricious, the mettle of the young member was soon put to the test, and bore it bravely.
At the last Parliament of 1496-7,[249]the King, in prospect of a war with Scotland, had exacted from the Commons a subsidy of two-fifteenths, and, finding they had submitted to this so easily, had, even before the close of the session, pressed for and obtained the omission of the customary clauses in the bill, releasing about 12,000l.of the gross amount in relief of decayed towns and cities.[250]Now all was peace. The war with Scotland had ended in the marriage of the Princess Margaret, whom More had seen in the royal nursery a few years before, to the King of Scots. But by feudal right the King, with consent of Parliament,[251]could claim a ‘reasonable aid’ in respect of this marriage of the Princess Royal, in addition to another for the knighting of Prince Arthur, who, however, in the meantime, had died. This Parliament of 1503-4 was doubtless called chiefly to obtain these ‘reasonable aids.’ But with Dudley as speaker the King meant to get more than his strictly feudal rights. Instead of the two ‘aids,’ he put in a claim (so Roper was informed[252]) for three-fifteenths! i.e. for half as much again as he had askedfor to defray the cost of the Scottish war. And Dudley’s flock of sheep were going to pass this bill in silence! Already it had passed two readings, when ‘at the last debating thereof,’ More, probably the youngest member of the House, rose from his seat ‘and made such arguments and reasons there against,’ that the King’s demands (says Roper) ‘were thereby clean overthrown.’ ‘So that’ (he continues) ‘one of the King’s Privy Chamber, named Maister Tyler,[253]being present thereat, brought word to the King, out of the Parliament House, that a beardless boy had disappointed all his purpose.’
and successfully.
Instead of three-fifteenths, which would have realised 113,000l.[254]or more, the Parliament Rolls bear witness that the King, with royal clemency and grace, had to accept a paltry 30,000l., being less than a third of what he had asked for![255]
Henry VII. offended with More.
No wonder that, soon after, the King devised a quarrel with More’s father (who, by the way, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the subsidy),[256]threw him into the Tower, and kept him there till he had paid a fine of 100l.No wonder that young More himself was compelled at once to retire from public life, and hide himself from royal displeasure in obscurity.[257]
III. THOMAS MORE IN SECLUSION FROM PUBLIC LIFE (1504-5).
More and Lilly think of becoming monks or priests.
Compelled to seek safety in seclusion, More shut himself up in his lodgings near the Charterhouse with William Lilly, another old Oxford student, a contemporary of Colet’s, if not of More’s, at Oxford, who having spent some years travelling in the East, had recently returned home fresh from Italy. More seems to have shared with him the intention of becoming a monk or a priest.[258]
It was possibly not the first time his thoughts had turned in this direction; but he had hitherto gone cautiously to work, taking no vow, determined tofeel his way, and not to rush blindly into what he might afterwards repent of.
More thinks of entering the Charterhouse.Escapes a royal trap laid for him.
He had now taken to wearing an ‘inner sharp shirt of hair,’ and to sleeping on the bare boards of his chamber, with a log under his head for a pillow, and was otherwise schooling, by his powerful will, his quick and buoyant nature into accordance with the strict rules of the Carthusian brotherhood.[259]
It was a critical moment in his life. Soon after his father had been imprisoned and fined, having some business with Fox, Bishop of Winchester, that great courtier called him aside, pretending to be his friend, and promised that if he would be ruled by him, he would not fail to restore him into the King’s favour. But Fox was only setting a trap for him, from which he was saved by a friendly hint from Whitford,[260]the bishop’s chaplain. This man told More that his master would not stick to agree to his own father’s death to serve the King’s turn, and advised him to keep quite aloof from the King. This hint was not reassuring, but it may have saved More’s life.
What would have happened to him had he been left alone with misadvising friends to give hasty vent to the disappointment which thus had crushed his hopes at the very outset of his career—whether the cloister would have received him as it did his friend Whitford afterwards, to be another ‘wretch of Sion,’ none can tell.
When Colet comes to London, More chooses him as his spiritual guide.More’s letter to Colet.More alludes to Colet’s preaching at St. Paul’s.
Happily for him it was at this critical moment that Colet came up to London to assume his new duties at St. Paul’s. More was a diligent listener to his sermons, and chose him as his father confessor. Stapleton has preserved a letter from More to Colet,[261]which throws much light upon the relation between them. It was written in October, 1504, whilst Colet, after preaching during the summer, was apparently spending his long vacation in the country. It shows that, under Colet’s advice, More was not altogether living the life of a recluse.
Colet had for some time been absent from his pulpit at St. Paul’s. As More was one day walking up and down Westminster Hall, waiting while other people’s suits were being tried, he chanced to meet Colet’s servant. Learning from him that his master had not yet returned to town, More wrote to Colet this letter, to tell him how much he missed his wonted delightful intercourse with him. He told him how he had ever prized his most wise counsel; how by his most delightful fellowship he had been refreshed; how by his weighty sermons he had been roused, and by his example helped on his way. He reminded him how fully he relied upon his guidance—how he had been wont to hang upon his very beck and nod. Under his protection he had felt himself gaining strength, now without it he was flagging and undone. He acknowledged that, by following Colet’s leading, he had escaped almost from the very jaws of hell; but now, amid all the temptations of city life and the noisy wrangling of the law courts, he felt himself losingground without his help. No doubt the country might be much more pleasant to Colet than the city, but the city, with all its vice, and follies, and temptations, had far more need of his skill than simple country folk! ‘There sometimes come, indeed,’ he added, ‘into the pulpit at St. Paul’s, men who promise to heal the diseases of the people. But, though they seem to have preached plausibly enough, their lives so jar with their words that they stir up men’s wounds, rather than heal them.’ But, he said, his fellow-citizens had confidence in Colet, and all longed for his return. He urged him, therefore, to return speedily, for their sake and for his, reminding Colet again that he had submitted himself in all things to his guidance. ‘Meanwhile,’ he concluded, ‘I shall spend my time with Grocyn, Linacre, and Lilly; the first, as you know, is the director of my life in your absence; the second, the master of my studies; the third, my most dear companion. Farewell, and, as you do, ever love me.’
‘London: 10 Calend. Novembris’[1504].[262]
More buries himself in his studies with Lilly.
Surrounded as he was by Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, More soon began to devote his leisure to his old studies. Lilly, too, had returned home well versed in Greek.He had spent some years in the island of Rhodes, to perfect his knowledge of it.[263]Naturally enough, therefore, the two friends busied themselves in jointly translating Greek epigrams;[264]and as, with increasing zeal, they yielded to the charms of the new learning, it is not surprising if the fascinations of monastic life began to lose their hold upon their minds. The result was that More was saved from the false step he once had contemplated.
He had, it would seem, seen enough of the evil side of the ‘religious life’ to know that in reality it did not offer that calm retreat from the world which in theory it ought to have done. He had cautiously abstained from rushing into vows before he had learned well what they meant; and his experience of ascetic practices had far too ruthlessly destroyed any pleasant pictures of monastic life in which he may have indulged at first, to admit of his ever becoming a Carthusian monk.
Still we may not doubt that, in truth, he had a real and natural yearning for the pure ideal of cloister holiness. Early disappointed love possibly,[265]added to the rude shipwreck made of his worldly fortunes on the rock of royal displeasure, had, we may well believe, effectually taught him the lesson not to trust in those ‘gay golden dreams’ of worldly greatness, from which, he was often wont to say, ‘we cannot help awaking when we die;’ and even the penances and scourgings inflicted by way of preparatory discipline upon his ‘wanton flesh,’ though soon proved to be of no greatefficacy, were not the less without some deep root in his nature; else why should he wear secretly his whole life long the ‘sharp shirt of hair’ which we hear about at last?[266]
So much as this must be conceded to More’s Catholic biographers, who naturally incline to make the most of this ascetic phase of his life.[267]
More disgusted with the cloister.
But that, on the other hand, he did turn in disgust from the impurity of the cloister to the better chances which, he thought, the world offered of living a chaste and useful life, we know from Erasmus; and this his Catholic biographers have, in their turn, acknowledged.[268]
IV. MORE STUDIES PICO’S LIFE AND WORKS. HIS MARRIAGE (1505).
More appears to have been influenced in the course he had taken, mainly by two things:—first, a sort of hero-worship for the great Italian, Pico della Mirandola; and, secondly, his continued reverence for Colet.
More translates the life and works of Pico.Pico’s warm piety and zeal.A layman to the end.
The ‘Life of Pico,’ with divers Epistles and other ‘Works’ of his, had come into More’s hands. Very probably Lilly may have brought them home with him amongst his Italian spoils. More had taken the painsto translate them into English. He had doubtless heard all about Pico’s outward life from those of his friends who had known him personally when in Italy. But here was the record of Pico’s inner history, for the most part in his own words; and reading this in More’s translation, it is not hard to see how strong an influence it may have exercised upon him. It told how, suddenly checked, as More himself had been, in a career of worldly honour and ambition, the proud vaunter of universal knowledge had been transformed into the humble student of the Bible; how he had learned to abhor scholastic disputations, of which he had been so great a master, and to search for truth instead of fame. It told how, ‘giving no great force to outward observances,’ ‘he cleaved to God in very fervent love,’ so that, ‘on a time as he walked with his nephew in an orchard at Ferrara, in talking of the love of Christ, he told him of his secret purpose to give away his goods to the poor, and fencing himself with the crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle to preach of Christ.’ It told how he, too, ‘scourged his own flesh in remembrance of the passion and death that Christ suffered for our sake;’ and urged others also ever to bear in mind two things, ‘that the Son of God died for thee, and that thou thyself shall die shortly;’ and how, finally, in spite of the urgent warnings of the great Savonarola, he remained a layman to the end, and in the midst of indefatigable study of the Oriental languages, and, above all, the Scriptures, through their means, died at the early age of thirty-five, leaving the world to wonder at his genius, and Savonarola to preach a sermon on his death.[269]
The Works of Pico.
And turning from the ‘Lifeof Pico’ to his ‘Works,’ and reading these in More’s translation, they present to the mind a type of Christianity, so opposite to the ceremonial and external religion of the monks, that one may well cease to wonder that More, having caught the spirit of Pico’s religion, could no longer entertain any notion of becoming a Carthusian brother.
It will be worth while to examine carefully what these works of Pico’s were.
Pico’s letter to his nephew.
The first is a letter from Pico to his nephew—a letter of advice to a young man somewhat in More’s position, longing to live to some ‘virtuous purpose,’ but finding it hard to stem the tide of evil around him. To encourage his nephew, he speaks of the ‘great peace and felicity it is to the mind when a man hath nothing that grudgeth his conscience, nor is appalled with the secret touch of any privy crime.’... ‘Doubtest thou, my son, whether the minds of wicked men be vexed or not with continual thought and torment?... The wicked man’s heart is like the stormy sea, that may not rest. There is to him nothing sure, nothing peaceable, but all things fearful, all things sorrowful, all things deadly. Shall we, then, envy these men? Shall we follow them, forgetting our own country—heaven, and our own heavenly Father—where we were free-born? Shall we wilfully make ourselves bondmen, and with them, wretched living, more wretchedly die, and at the last most wretchedly in everlasting fire be punished?’
Pico’s faith in Christianity.
Having warned his nephew against wicked companions, Pico proceeds to make evident allusion to the sceptical tendencies of Italian society. ‘It is verily a great madness’ (he says) ‘not to believe the Gospel, whosetruththe blood of martyrs crieth, the voice ofApostles soundeth, miracles prove,reason confirmeth, the world testifieth, the elements speak, devils confess!’[270]‘But,’ he continues, ‘a far greater madness is it, if thou doubt not but that the Gospel is true, to live then as though thou doubtest not but that it were false.’
Its reasonableness and harmony with the laws of nature.Pico on prayer.Pico on the Scriptures.
And it is worth notice, that the perception of the reasonableness of Christianity, and its harmony with the laws of nature, breaks out again a little further on. Pico writes to his nephew: ‘Take no heed what thingmanymen do, but [take heed]what thing the very law of nature, what thingvery reason, what thingour Lord himself showeth thee to be done.’
A little further on Pico points out two remedies, or aids, whereby his nephew may be strengthened in his course. First, charity; and secondly, prayer. With regard to the first he wrote:—‘Certainly He shall not hear thee when thou callest onHim, if thou hear not first the poor man when he calleth uponthee.’ With regard to prayer, he wrote thus:—‘When I stir thee to prayer, I stir thee not to the prayer that standeth in many words, but to that prayer which, in the secret chamber of the mind, in the privy-closet of the soul, with very affect speaketh unto God, and in the most lightsome darkness of contemplation, not only presenteth the mind to the Father, but also uniteth it with Him by unspeakable ways, which onlytheyknow that have assayed. Nor I care not how long or how short thy prayer be, but how effectual, how ardent.... Let no day pass, then, but thou once at the leastwise present thyself to God by prayer, and falling down before Him flat to the ground, with anhumble affect of devout mind, not from the extremity of thy lips, but out of the inwardness of thine heart, cry these words of the prophet: “The offences of my youth, and mine ignorances, remember not, good Lord, but after thy goodness remember me.†What thou shalt in thy prayer ask of God, both the Holy Spirit, which prayeth for us and eke thine own necessity, shall every hour put into thy mind, and also what thou shalt pray for thou shalt find matter enoughin the reading of Holy Scripture, which that thou wouldst now (setting poets, fables, and trifles aside) take ever in thine hand I heartily pray thee; ... there lieth inthema certain heavenly strength quick and effectual, which with marvellous power transformeth and changeth the readers’ mind into the love of God, if they be clean and lowly entreated.’ Lastly, he said he would ‘make an end with this one thing. I warn thee (of which when we were last together I often talked with thee) that thou never forget these two things; that both the Son of God died for thee, and that thou thyself shalt die shortly!’[271]
This, then, was the doctrine which Pico, ‘fencing himself with a crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle,’ purposed to preach!
The next letter is a reply to a friend of his who had urged him to leave his contemplative and studious life, and to mix in political affairs, in which, as an Italian prince, lay his natural sphere. He replied, that his desire was ‘notso to embrace Martha as utterly to forsake Mary’—to ‘love them and use them both, aswell study as worldly occupation.’ ‘I set more’ (he continued) ‘by my little house, my study, the pleasure of my books, the rest and peace of my mind, than by all your king’s palaces, all your business, all your glory, all the advantage that ye hawke after, and all the favour of the court!’
Pico’s study of Eastern languages.
Then he tells his friend that what he looks to do is, ‘to give out some books of mine to the common profit,’ and that he is mastering the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic languages.[272]
Another letter to his nephew.
Then follows another letter to his nephew, who, in trying to follow the advice given in his first letter, finds himself slandered and called a hypocrite by his companions at court. It is a letter of noble encouragement to stand his ground, and to heed not the scoffs and sneers of his fellows.
These letters are followed by an exposition of Psalm xvi., in which Pico incidentally uses his knowledge of the Hebrew text and of Eastern customs.[273]
Pico’s verses.
All the foregoing are in prose; after them come More’s translations of some of Pico’s verses.
The first is entitled, ‘Twelve rules, partly exciting and partly directing a man in spiritual battle,’ and reminds one of the ‘Enchiridion’ of Erasmus. The second is named, ‘The twelve weapons of spiritual battle.’ The striking feature in both these metrical works is the holding up of Christ’s example as an incentive to duty and to love. Thus:—
‘Consider, when thou art movèd to bewroth,He who that was God and of all men the best,Seeing himself scorned and scourgèd both,And as a thief between two thievès threst,With all rebuke and shame; yet from his breastCame never sign of wrath or of disdain,But patiently endurèd all the pain!’
And again, after speaking of the shortness of life—
‘How fast it runneth on, and passen shallAs doth a dream or shadow on a wall.’
he continues:—
‘Think on the very lamentable pain,Think on the piteous cross of woeful Christ,Think on his blood, beat out at every vein,Think on his precious heart carvèd in twain:Think how for thy redemption all was wrought.Let him not lose, what he so dear hath bought.’
There is another poem in which the feelings of a lover towards his love are made to show what the Christian’s feelings ought to be to Christ; and lastly, there is a solemn and beautiful ‘Prayer of Picus Mirandola to God,’ glowing with the same adoration of
... ‘that mighty loveWhich able was thy dreadful majestyTo draw down into earth from heaven aboveAnd crucify God, that we poor wretches,weShould from our filthy sin yclensèd be!’
and the same earnest longing
‘That when the journey of this deadly lifeMy silly ghost hath finished, and thenceDeparten must,’ ...‘He may Thee find ...In thy lordship, not as a lord, but ratherAs a very tender, loving father!’
Pico’s enlightened piety.
I have made these quotations, and thus endeavoured to put the reader in possession of the contents of this little volume, which More in his seclusion was translating, because I think they throw some light upon the current in which his thoughts were moving, and because, whilst the name of Pico is known to fame as that of a great linguist and most precocious genius, his enlightened piety and the extent of the influence of his heroic example have scarcely been appreciated.
This little book, indeed, has a special significance in relation to the history of the Oxford Reformers. Whatever doubt may rest upon the direct connection betweentheirviews and those of Savonarola, there is here in More’s translation of these writings of a disciple of Savonarola, anotherindirect connection between them and that little knot of earnest Christian men in Italy of which Savonarola was the most conspicuous.
Position of the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence.
The extracts made and translated by More from Pico’s writings may also help us to recognise in the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence, by whose writings Colet had been so profoundly influenced, a vein of earnest Christian feeling of which it may be that we know too little. Like their predecessors of a thousand years before, they stood between the old world and the new. They were the men who, when the learning of the old Pagan world was restored to light, and backed against the dogmatic creed of priest-ridden degraded Christendom, built a bridge, as it were, between Christian and Pagan thought. That their bridge was frail and insecure it may be, but, to a great extent, it served its end. A passage was effected by it from the Pagan to the Christian shore. Ficino, the representative Neo-Platonist, who, as has been seen, had aided in its building, hadhimself passed over it. Savonarola too had crossed it. Pico had crossed it. It is true that these men may, to some extent, have Platonised Christianity in becoming Christian; but it will be recognised at once that the earnest Christian feeling found by More in Pico, so to speak, rose far above his Platonism.
More calls Savonarola a ‘man of God.’
That the life and writings of such a man should have awakened in his breast something of hero-worship[274]is, therefore, not surprising. That he should have singled out these passages, and taken the trouble to translate them, is some proof that he admired Pico’s practical piety more than his Neo-Platonic speculations; that he shared with Colet those yearnings for practical Christian reform with which Colet had returned from Italy ten years before. That a few years after this translation should be published and issued in English in More’s name was further proof of it. For here was a book not only in its drift and spirit boldly taking Cole’s side against the Schoolmen, and in favour of the study of Scripture and the Oriental languages, but as boldly holding up Savonarola as ‘a preacher, as well in cunning as in holiness of living, most famous,’—‘a holy man’—‘a man of God’[275]—in the teeth of the fact that he had been denounced by the Pope as a ‘son of blasphemy and perdition,’ excommunicated, tortured, and, refusing to abjure, hung and burned as a heretic![276]
Colet’s influence on More.
And if the fire of hero-worship for Pico had lit up something of heroism in More’s heart—somethingwhich yearned for the battle of life, and not for the rest of the cloister—so the living example of Colet was ready to feed the flame into strength and steadiness.
More marries under Colet’s advice.
The result was that, in 1505,[277]in spite of early disappointments, and, it is said, under Colet’s ‘advice and direction,’[278]More married Jane Colt, of New Hall in Essex, took a house in Bucklersbury, and gave up for ever all longings for monastic life.
V. HOW IT HAD FARED WITH ERASMUS (1500-5).
Soon after Colet’s elevation to the dignities of Doctor and Dean, a letter of congratulation arrived from Erasmus.
Colet had written no letter to him, and had almost lost sight of him during these years. It would seem that, after his departure from Oxford, Colet had given up all hopes of his aid. Nor had any other kindred soul risen up to take that place in fellow-work beside him, which at one time he had hoped the great scholar might have filled.
Erasmus had not forgotten Colet.The legal robbery of Erasmus at Dover.
But Erasmus on his side had not forgotten Colet. His intercourse with Colet at Oxford had changed the current of his thoughts, and the course of his life. Colet little knew by what slow and painful steps he had been preparing to redeem the promise he had made on leaving Oxford.
We left him making the best of his way to Dover,with his purse full of golden crowns, kindly bestowed by his English friends in order that he might now carry out his long-cherished intention of going to Italy. But the Fates had decreed against him. King Henry VII. had already reached the avaricious period of his life and reign. Under cover of an old obsolete statute, he had given orders to the Custom House officers to stop the exportation of all precious metals, and the Custom House officers in their turn, construing their instructions strictly to the letter, had seized upon Erasmus’s purseful of golden crowns, and relieved him of the burden, for the benefit of the King’s exchequer.[279]The poor scholar proceeded without them to cross to Boulogne.
He was a bad sailor, and the hardships of travel soon told upon his health. He was heart-sick also; as well he might be, for this unlucky loss of his purse had utterly disconcerted once more his long-cherished plans. On his arrival at Paris, after a wretched and dangerous journey,[280]he was taken ill, and recovered only to bear his bitter disappointment as best he could. Before he had yet recovered from his illness he wrote this touching letter to Arnold, the young legal friend of More, with whom a few weeks before he and More had visited the Royal nursery.
Erasmus to Arnold.[281]Erasmus gives up all hope of going to Italy.‘Salve, mi Arnolde. Now for six weeks I having been suffering much from a nocturnal ague, of a lingeringkind but of daily recurrence, and it has nearly killed me. I am not yet free from the disease, but still somewhat better. I don’t yetliveagain, but some hope of life dawns upon me. You ask me to tell you my plans. Take this only, to begin with: To mortify myself to the world, I dash my hopes. I long for nothing more than to give myself rest, in which I might live wholly to God alone, weep away the sins of a careless life, devote myself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, either read somewhat or write. This I cannot do in a monastery or college. One could not be more delicate than I am; my health will bear neither vigils, nor fasts, nor any disturbance, even when at its best. Here, where I live in such luxury, I often fall ill; what should I do amid the labours of college life?Cost of going to Italy.‘I had determined to go to Italy this year, and to work at theology some months at Bologna; also there to take the degree of Doctor; then in the year of Jubilee to visit Rome; which done, to return to my friends and then to settle down. But I am afraid that these things that Iwould, I shallnot be ableto accomplish. I fear, in the first place, that my health would not stand such a journey and the heat of the climate. Lastly, I reckon that I could not go to Italy, nor live there without great expense. It costs a great deal also to prepare for a degree. And the Bishop of Cambray gives very sparingly. He altogether loves more liberally than he gives, and promises everything muchmore largely than he performs. It is partly my own fault for not pressing him. There are so many who are evenextorting. In the meantime I shall do what seems for the best. Farewell.’
Erasmus to Arnold.[281]
Erasmus gives up all hope of going to Italy.
‘Salve, mi Arnolde. Now for six weeks I having been suffering much from a nocturnal ague, of a lingeringkind but of daily recurrence, and it has nearly killed me. I am not yet free from the disease, but still somewhat better. I don’t yetliveagain, but some hope of life dawns upon me. You ask me to tell you my plans. Take this only, to begin with: To mortify myself to the world, I dash my hopes. I long for nothing more than to give myself rest, in which I might live wholly to God alone, weep away the sins of a careless life, devote myself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, either read somewhat or write. This I cannot do in a monastery or college. One could not be more delicate than I am; my health will bear neither vigils, nor fasts, nor any disturbance, even when at its best. Here, where I live in such luxury, I often fall ill; what should I do amid the labours of college life?
Cost of going to Italy.
‘I had determined to go to Italy this year, and to work at theology some months at Bologna; also there to take the degree of Doctor; then in the year of Jubilee to visit Rome; which done, to return to my friends and then to settle down. But I am afraid that these things that Iwould, I shallnot be ableto accomplish. I fear, in the first place, that my health would not stand such a journey and the heat of the climate. Lastly, I reckon that I could not go to Italy, nor live there without great expense. It costs a great deal also to prepare for a degree. And the Bishop of Cambray gives very sparingly. He altogether loves more liberally than he gives, and promises everything muchmore largely than he performs. It is partly my own fault for not pressing him. There are so many who are evenextorting. In the meantime I shall do what seems for the best. Farewell.’
What was he to do? It was clear that he did not know what to do. The worst of it was that the unfortunate loss of the price of many months’ leisure,[282]not only obliged him to postponesine diehis project of visiting Italy, but also to spend a large portion of his time and strength for the next few years in a struggle almost for subsistence. For the wolf must in some way or other be kept from the door; and Erasmus waspoor!
Poverty of Erasmus.His Greek studies.Erasmus visits Holland.
For a few months he struggled on at Paris, living in lodgings with an old fellow student ‘sparingly,’[283]hard at work at a collection of Greek and Latin proverbs—hisAdagia—partly in order to raise the wind, partly to improve himself in Greek. Sometimes borrowing and sometimes begging, whatever money came to his hands went forthwith first in buying Greek books and then in clothes.[284]Later in the year, the prevalence of the Plague in Paris drove him to Orleans. He would have gone to Italy, but he had not the means.[285]In December he returned to Paris to continue his struggling life.[286]In a letter written in January, 1501, on the anniversaryof his misfortune at Dover, he described himself ‘as having now for a whole year been sailing under a stormy sky against the waves and against the winds.’[287]To add to his troubles, the Plague again broke out in Paris; and, terrified by the number of funerals passing his door, the poor scholar fled from the city to spend a few weeks in his native country.[288]During his stay in Holland he visited the monastery at Stein,[289]where in early years he had tasted the bitters of the monastic life. Neither there nor elsewhere in Holland did he find a resting-place.
Princess of Vere and Battus.
Fortunately for him, one true friend at least turned up, willing and able to enter into sympathy with him. This was Battus, tutor to the Marchioness of Vere. Erasmus had already corresponded with him from Paris, pouring out his troubles to him, and declaring that he had no other hope but in him alone.[290]Kept away from Paris by the Plague, and finding not even a temporary home in Holland, he at last found a refuge for a while from his fears and cares in a visit to the castle of Tornahens,[291]the residence of the Marchioness of Vere and of Battus. It had the additionalattraction of being near to St. Omer, where lived a former patron of Erasmus, the Abbot of St. Bertin.
Erasmus would like to visit Colet again.
Whilst staying with Battus he wrote to a friend, that he sometimes thought of returning to England to spend a month or two more with Colet, in order to confer further with him on some theological questions. He knew well, he said, how much good he should gain from doing so, but he could not get over the unlucky experience of his last voyage. As to his journey to Italy, that, too, was knocked on the head. He told his friend that he longed to visit Italy as ardently as ever, but it was out of the question; for, according to the adage of Plautus, ‘Sine pennis volare haud facile est.’[292]
Writes his ‘Enchiridion.’
Battus also wrote to Lord Mountjoy to tell him with what pleasure he had embraced Erasmus, but, ‘alas, how ill-treated and spoiled!’ He told him how he had been commiserating Erasmus on his ill-fortune in England, and how the philosopher had smiled and bade him put a good face on it, He did not regret having visited England; he cared more for the friends he had found in England than for all the gold of Crœsus. Battus concluded by telling Lord Mountjoy how Erasmus had described to him the courtesy of the Prior Charnock, the learning of Colet, the good nature of More, the virtues of his noble patron.[293]It was during this visit to St. Omer, in the summer of 1501, that Erasmus wrote his ‘Enchiridion.’
There happened to be staying in the castle a lady, a friend of Battus, who had a bad husband. The latter, whilst holding other divines at arm’s length, took to Erasmus. The wife, thinking that he possibly might have some influence over her husband, begged him,without betraying that it was at her instigation, to write something which might produce in him some religious impressions.[294]The ‘Enchiridion’ was the result, of which more will be said by and by.
John Vitrarius.
It was at St. Omer also that Erasmus became acquainted with John Vitrarius—a second John Colet in the earnestness of his Christian zeal against the corruptions of the church and vices of the clergy, in his love for St. Paul, in his outspoken preaching, and even in his manner of preaching, in his dislike of the Scholastic subtlety of Scotus, and even in his preference for Ambrose, Cyprian, Jerome, and Origen over Augustine. Erasmus ever afterwards linked the names of Colet and Vitrarius together, and admitted them both deservedly into his calendar of uncanonised saints.[295]The ‘Enchiridion’ was submitted to the judgment of Vitrarius, and obtained his approval.[296]