CHAPTER VIII

BEGINNINGS OF THE REFORMATION--CORRESPONDENCE OF 1518-1519

On many accounts, the residence at Louvain ought to have been one of the most satisfactory of Erasmus' life. He was in the midst of a congenial activity not limited by any prescribed duties, free from great anxiety about money, secure at any moment of some honourable appointment if he chose to accept it, in fairly good health, and with working powers quite undiminished by advancing years.

In the year 1518 there can be no question that the name of Erasmus was the most widely known and honoured among European scholars. His New Testament with its display of learning and its revelation of a new principle of criticism, had demonstrated his character as a serious thinker upon the most important questions of religious faith and practice. If we seek to define this principle we shall be unable to fix it by any categories of philosophy or of theological precedent. In the last analysis we are brought back every time to the principle of common sense working upon the accepted dogmatic bases of the existing church system.

His freedom of speech had always been kept carefully within the bounds of doctrinal orthodoxy. He could safely defy his critics to point to a single instance of anything that might by any reasonable interpretation be described as heresy. He knew that in his criticism, so far as it had gone, he was supported by the best opinion of the men of enlightenment everywhere, and relying upon this support he could put on the confident tone of a man who feels himself on the winning side.

The generation in which Erasmus had grown up to his fiftieth year was eminently one of progress in every form of enlightenment and expansion. He was twenty-five when Columbus discovered America and gave the first impulse to that intoxicating sense of limitless possibility which from time to time has seized upon a generation of men and carried it on to great triumphs--but always also to disappointments more keenly felt than its successes. Along with the discovery of the earth had gone with equal, even with more rapid pace, the discovery of man. The ban which throughout the Middle Ages had lain upon the human spirit as individual, with powers of its own and the right to use them, was rapidly being lifted. The cunning plebeian who had learned how to mix the subtle ingredients of gunpowder and put it into the hands of his fellow-plebeians, had taught the world an argument against the rights of princes, more potent than all the philosophers from Marsiglio of Padua down had been able to furnish. That other plebeian group who had lit upon the marvellously simple device of multiplying copies of writings by means of movable types, had opened up possibilities of education and therefore of achievement, whose end the imagination of man could not compass.

At first, doubtless, this vast outlook into the unknown had terrified as well as fascinated the world. All established institutions whose claim to existence rested upon an undisputed tradition, trembled lest their foundation should be shaken. Princes dreaded the union of the long-oppressed peasants and citizens with gunpowder in their hands. The guardians of the treasure of thought which had come down from the past shuddered at the spreading of "dangerous" ideas broadcast through the land by the busy printing-press.

But gradually these apprehensions had been allayed. The social revolution threatened by gunpowder was delayed as has been so far that which is threatened by dynamite. Economic laws would not be broken and the forces of discontent, active during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, had been gradually brought into an apparent harmony with the forces of order and tradition. Once more the great leading powers had come out of a long conflict victorious, though modified. The state-governments had overcome the attacks of constitutionalism, and seemed to be more independent of control than ever. The monarchy of Francis I., of Henry VIII., and Charles V. seemed to have beaten down every opposition, but it had also learned its lessons. If it would control the public life of its several states, it must itself meet the evident demands of its subjects, so far as it could do so without abandoning its own supreme prerogative. So the papacy, threatened by the aggressive constitutionalism of the fifteenth-century councils, had overcome that danger and during the lifetime of Erasmus had seemed to recover more than its ancient prestige. But it had purchased this recovery by vast adjustments to conditions it could not change. It, too, in its turn had become "enlightened" and gone so far into the prevailing liberalism of thought that it had deprived it of its sting. It might well seem an idle task to turn the weapons of the "higher criticism" against a papacy which was itself supporting the cause of critical learning with every resource at its command.

No greater proof of this apparent readjustment of opposing forces could be offered than the dedication of Erasmus' New Testament, the ripest product of the critical scholarship of the time, to Pope Leo himself. It was a bold stroke, but it paid. The unstinted approval of the pope gave Erasmus a backing worth more to him at the moment than any praise of scholars like himself. But it bound him also the more firmly to an allegiance he dared not break, lest the form of success most precious to him in life should be endangered.

We have spoken of the constitutional opposition to the papacy by the fifteenth-century councils. Parallel with this and often combined with it had gone an opposition growing out of national interests. This, too, the papacy seemed to have overcome by the same policy of adjustment. It had allowed the largest scope to national control of the Church consistent with its supreme leadership, and had even given emphasis to the national idea by pushing to the utmost its claim to be one among the powers of Europe. The whole political activity of the papacy during this most active generation was based upon a recognition of the national states and a steady aim to gain their recognition in turn for its own well developed sovereignty. A pope's "niece" or "nephew" was as good a _parti_ for a royal house as the offspring of any princely family in Europe.

So complete, apparently, was this adjustment of all the forces of European society that the great outbreak of the Lutheran reform movement was a complete surprise and an incredible shock to all established institutions. The historian can, indeed, trace with perfect continuity the lines of development which centre in that wonderful movement, when a monk, in an obscure town in the remote north of Germany, drew the eyes of all Europe to himself by gathering up into one passionate expression the long-suppressed protest against the tyranny of the dominant church system. But, on the surface of things, in the year 1517, there was little to point to this historic continuity. To all appearance the great impulse of Wiclif in England had died out with the suppression of open Lollardry just a hundred years before. John Hus, the spiritual heir of Wiclif, had been sacrificed at Constance in 1415 to a combination of forces, some of which were to prove themselves in reality the stoutest allies of the ideas he represented. True, the fires at Constance had kindled a flame in Bohemia, which defied all efforts of pope and emperor to put it out until dissensions within the party of revolt scattered and quenched the material on which it fed. But after the Council at Basel (1431-1443) the great readjustment carried Bohemia, too, along into the general scheme of conciliation. At that moment a party, henceforth to be known as the party of enlightenment, seized upon the papacy, and with Thomas Parentucelli (Nicholas V., 1447-1455) began that series of humanistic popes, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II., 1458-1464), Giuliano delle Rovere (Julius II., 1503-1513), and Giovanni de' Medici (Leo X., 1513-1521), who were ready to sacrifice all other interests to the aggrandisement of their personal power and the advancement of a higher cultivation and refinement of life.

It must be said that in the things men cared most about in the two generations before the year 1517, the government of the Church was such as suited the peoples of Europe. It was an easy-going system. It did not call for any application of the new spirit of inquiry to the prevailing institutions in Church and State. It was not insisting upon any too rigid morality either in the clergy or in the laity. Nor, on the other hand, was it overzealous in pressing its own claims too far. There is a grim sense of humour in the attitude of the Church towards its own institutions, so long as their existence was not threatened and no diminution of revenue was in sight. All the system asked was to be let alone. The Church knew that many of its claims had come to be absurd. Nowhere was this so well understood as in Italy and above all at Rome. So frank a "heathen" as Leo X. was not likely to insist too eagerly upon ideas or practices which he knew to be mere superstitions of the vulgar--not likely, that is, to press these matters until they were attacked.

If, on the other hand, they should be attacked, would this papacy be thorough-going enough in its enlightenment and its indifference to let them go, or would it rally to their defence all the forces of reaction? That was the problem of the Reformation period. If one approaches it from the side of enlightenment, one is at once impressed with the vast opportunity opened to the papacy. It had already adjusted itself to so many changes, it had so often found ways of taking the sting out of ideas and movements which seemed to threaten its very life, that sanguine men, like Erasmus, might well feel encouraged to hope that it would once more rise to the occasion. The world of Europe was filled with friendly criticism of its forms and methods; but as yet there had been few voices raised against its existence.

Dante, in his treatise on a single government for the world (_de Monarchia_), still clings to the mediæval conception of a twin administration of Christendom, only with the religious side distinctly subordinated to the temporal. Even Wiclif and Hus had been led to defy the papacy only by the logic of events; hostility to a papal organisation of church life was not an essential part of their original programme. Even Marsiglio of Padua had reserved to the papacy a wide sphere of activity, limited only by constitutional rights of governments and peoples. The literature of the conciliar period, covering the first half of the fifteenth century, does not succeed in casting off the spell of the papal idea, but aims to check and control its dangers to the public welfare. A constitutional papacy was the ideal of that time, not a Church without a papacy. All these attacks the mediæval system had met with amazing success. It had dealt its blows sparingly, but with great effect. Where its enemies had been backed up by powerful interests, as was Wiclif in England, it had seemed to fail and had bided its time. Where it could itself combine with other interests against them, as against Hus at Constance, it had hit hard and with precision.

It may be said with some certainty that if the papacy of the second half of the fifteenth century had been inclined to meet criticism half-way, criticism would not have turned into hostility. As one looks over the field of European society and politics in the two generations before 1517 one fails to find anything that can be called an anti-Roman "party." By "party" we mean here a nucleus of organisation with a programme or "platform" of its own towards the accomplishment of which it bends its chief efforts. In that sense, there was no party in Christendom which aimed at the overthrow of the papal system.

On the other hand it might be said that there was no great public interest in Europe which was not more or less directly threatened by the papacy and likely, therefore, at any inopportune moment, by some slip in the papal policy or even by the mere insistence of the papacy upon some point it could not give up, to be turned from apparent friendliness to open opposition. First among these public interests was the principle of nationality. The papacy had, as we have seen, apparently adjusted itself to this opposition, but this adjustment was obviously unstable. How great a strain would it bear? To what lengths of concession could the papacy afford to go in recognising the right of kings to manage the affairs of their kingdoms without interference? Were there questions of religion, or of public morals so obviously beyond the sphere of temporal control, that any conceivable papacy must cling to the right of final judgment in them or go to the wall? When in the year 1341 the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, had claimed for himself the divine right to declare a certain princess divorced from an inconvenient husband, that he might marry her to his son and bring her dowry to increase the Bavarian estates, there was an almost universal cry of horror at this assault upon a sacred prerogative of the Church. How would it be now, two hundred years later, if a king, let us say of England, should find it convenient to divorce a wife and marry another for no reason but that he willed it so? Could the papacy afford to pay the price of acquiescence, or could it better afford to lose for ever the allegiance of England? That was the kind of question presented to the papacy from the side of the national states.

So again from the point of view of the advancing thought of the day;--how far could the papacy safely go in meeting this advance? Men were moving on step by step from one audacious thought to another, until it was beginning to seem as if there were no limit to the speculation of this awakened human spirit. The Church had grown great upon a system of thought in which the institution, the established order, the class, the tradition, had been everything, and the individual had been nothing. It had been a man's first duty, not to have ideas of his own, but to take those which were offered to him by the highest prevailing authority. So far all opposition to this method of thought had been effectually silenced. John Hus had declared that the essence of the Church lay in its being the assembly of believers acknowledging Christ alone as its head. Hus had been disposed of, and again the papacy had risen triumphant. The same men who had pressed most eagerly the condemnation of Hus were at that moment aiding his cause by putting forward a theory of church life which thrust the papacy into the background and would have brought into its place a legislature of national churches as the true expression of the will of Western Christendom. That opposition too had been overcome.

But now a more subtle development of individualism was beginning to make itself felt. The Church had thus far succeeded in keeping itself before the world as the one sole and sufficient medium of salvation for sinful man. It had developed a vast and imposing system of mediation between man and God by its priesthood, its ceremonies, its philosophy of morals, and its elaborately conducted methods of bookkeeping with the consciences of the faithful. Indeed, so elaborate had this soul-saving machinery become that the wear and tear of it threatened the durability of its parts. An immense proportion of its energy had to be devoted to keeping the system going. What now would happen if somehow it should be made clear to the Christian conscience that there was a shorter way to salvation, a more direct, a less expensive, and, more than all, a better-established way? How far would the Church dare to carry its policy of going half way toward such an idea as that?

The test upon this point came in the revival of all that group of notions which, for lack of a better term, we express by the word "Augustinianism." Setting aside all refinements of theology for the moment, the word Augustinian represents to us the conception of the individual human soul as a sinful thing, thrown out in all its nakedness and isolation upon an angry sea of retribution, from which nothing can save it but the arbitrary action of the grace of God. Here was individualism indeed! We have seen how the Church had got on with the æsthetic individualism of the Renaissance--with its sham heathenism, its theatrical exploiting of antiquity to justify a license which affronted all true Christian self-respect, and yet, after all, its readiness to conform itself to all existing forms of social and religious organisation. From such individualism as this the Church had little direct injury to fear. It laughed with it and at it and used it for its purposes. Poggio Bracciolini, the most foul-mouthed blackguard of the second generation of Italian Humanists, spent his life as papal secretary without fear and without reproach.

Strange collocation of ideas, that the same impulse which drove these unchecked scoffers into an æsthetic defiance of literary tradition should have forced Luther and Calvin into a death-struggle with the whole existing church order! The Church had tolerated the individualism of taste; how far could it tolerate the individualism of the soul? The one had declared that the salvation of the human mind was to be found by going back to the unfailing sources of culture in the Greek and Latin classics. The other was to declare that the only salvation of the soul was to be found by overleaping all the vast accumulation of forms and traditions of the past thousand years and going straight back to the early proclamations of the divine grace through faith in Christ alone.

* * * * *

While Erasmus was studying, writing, planning, and travelling, with Louvain as the centre of his manifold activities, the great assault was gathering its force in a quarter of the world from which it might least have been expected. The north of Germany lay almost entirely beyond the circle of vision of Erasmus and such as he. The Universities of Leipzig and Erfurt, the most important of the Saxon schools, had thus far contributed little to the advance of general culture. They were still mainly under the influence of the scholastic traditions, guided by such men as those who had been made the butts of the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_. The University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederic of Saxony, was just in time to gain for its chairs some of the first-fruits of the revived classical spirit, which men like Reuchlin and Rudolf Agricola had imported into Germany from the Italian fountainhead. The call of Martin Luther in 1508 from the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt to a professorship of theology at Wittenberg, while it cannot be described as a demonstration in favour of the New Learning, brought a young man into active professional work who was already familiar with the new spirit of study and who was likely to apply it to his theological teaching, without being seduced by its æsthetic charm. The invitation of Philip Melanchthon four years later to teach Greek was a more pronounced declaration that Wittenberg was to look forward and not back in setting the tone of its instruction. Melanchthon was a promising youth of twenty-one, a relative and pupil of Reuchlin and recommended by him for this place. He was already well known as an accomplished Grecian, an amiable, but decided personality, destined to be through a lifetime of contention the balance-wheel of the Lutheran party.

It cannot be our purpose to rehearse here the familiar story of Luther's early career. Friends and enemies alike have done their utmost to set before us the engaging but often mysterious personality of the man. Our only interest can be to review very briefly such aspects of his development as may serve to illustrate the similarities and the differences between his course and that of Erasmus and thus prepare us to understand the connection of the latter with the reform movement of Luther. If our earlier judgments as to the youth of Erasmus are correct we shall have to believe that Luther's years of apprenticeship were far more truly years of hardship and struggle than were his. Poverty, stern discipline, and unsatisfied desire left their lifelong marks upon a physical constitution none too strong, but could not crush the inherent cheerfulness and courage which proved his dominant characteristics.

We seek in vain through the record of Luther's earlier years for indications of that stormy, passionate zeal for improvement in the conditions about him which almost any student of the later reform would suppose to be the moving impulse of his character. Conformity to the demands of his immediate surroundings is as marked a trait with him as were resistance and restlessness with Erasmus. He goes and does as he is bidden. He enters a monastery of his own free will and conforms with painful exactness to the requirements of the rule. Even long after he has begun to lead the fight against the limitations of the existing order, he continues to wear the dress and to live in the cloister of the local Augustinians. The impulse to the Lutheran reform cannot, therefore, be found in any restless impatience of personal limitation on Luther's part. It must be sought in some great, overpowering conviction which drove him out of the attitude of conformity into the attitude of resistance.

This overmastering impulse came in the form of that Augustinian proposition we were just now examining--the proposition that the salvation, or, better still, the justification, of a man's soul was to come, not through any institution, nor through the due performance of anything whatever, but through the direct act of the grace of God, and, furthermore, that the only condition of receiving such grace was an honest opening of the soul to its action,--or, in theological language, "faith." Luther was not a great "theologian," as that word was used, in reverence by some and in ridicule by others. He had not worked himself out into clearness by a scholastic process, and whenever he tried to defend himself by scholastic methods, he was almost sure to confuse himself in contradictions and exaggerations. His clearness of vision came rather by an indefinable process of revelation and self-realisation, and then it became his life-problem to interpret to others what had brought such abundant illumination and satisfaction to himself. The boldness of Luther was not that of a man defiant by nature, who enjoys the game of give and take, but rather that of a man who puts off the moment of his attack until he can do so no longer, and then lets himself go, driven from behind, as it were, by a will greater than his own and against which he is powerless.

With a nature and a method like this Erasmus could never have had much sympathy. Compare their two views of Italy. We have seen Erasmus seeking there the rewards of scholarship, cultivating the society of learned men, playing the rôle of the famous scholar himself, making himself acceptable to the powers that were, getting out of Italy what he could--then coming away and letting all the shafts of his biting satire play upon this society where he has been feeling himself at home. He could eat the bread and take the pay of Aldus, and then hold him up to the laughter of the world.

Luther went to Italy at almost the same time on an errand from the Saxon Augustinians to the general chapter at Rome. He travelled as a monk, stopping at the houses of his order along the way. At Rome he visited all the shrines of the saints, like the most pious of pilgrims. He was almost sorry, he says, that his parents were living, so many were the advantages offered to the souls of the departed at these altars of divine grace. He performed his commission, went back to his place, and continued for seven years longer to fulfil his duties as monk, priest, and teacher, without any outward show of hostility to the Roman system. Only in his preaching and writing, one can trace the steady advance of confidence in his guiding principle of "faith" as the one sufficient guarantee of a life "justified" or "adjusted" to the divine requirement. He did not seek the fight; he waited in his place until the battle sought him out and then he dared not refuse the challenge.

Compare again the animating principle of these two men. If it be true that faith alone is the sufficient basis of all justification before God, then it would seem to follow that the individual will has little to do with determining the fate of man either here or hereafter. Superficially viewed, this doctrine seems to place man within the circle of a kind of blind fatalism. Such reproaches have been heard ever since the days of Augustine, whenever this subject has been prominently before men's minds. "Has Christianity brought us out of the old fatalism of the Greeks only to plunge us into a new fatalism, as hard, but not as picturesque, as the old one?" was asked in Augustine's own time. Nor had the Augustinian party ever failed to draw more or less strictly the evident conclusion from its own premises. It had always insisted that the will of man was not morally free, but was enslaved by a certain principle of evil, which had entered into man with the "fall of Adam" and been transmitted from father to son ever since.

Now the Church had always regarded Augustine as one of its greatest ornaments. He was one of the "four Fathers" upon whom, as upon four pillars, rested its majestic structure. Yet in practice, the Church had never lived up to the doctrine of the enslaved will. When, in the ninth century, the Saxon Gottschalk, spiritual progenitor of the Saxon Luther, had turned his unpractised logic upon this subject and had worked out to a conclusion the doctrine of a double predestination, the Church, through its ablest representative, Hincmar of Rheims, had promptly flogged him and shut him up for life where he would do no harm. So far as the Church had ever formulated its views on the matter, it had been "Semi-Pelagian." It recognised in human justification both the grace of God and the will of man, but did not draw with absolute clearness a conclusion as to the preponderance of one over the other. In fact the Church had done something better than to speculate. It had acted. It had evolved a marvellous system of justifying agencies, administered by itself, and had said to its members, in practice if not in theory, "Do these things and you shall be saved." While this excellent machinery worked, there was obviously no occasion for any good Christian to worry about the conditions of justification, and in fact, from the ninth to the fifteenth century, the Augustinian doctrines are not once brought prominently before the world for discussion. It was only when men began once more to doubt whether the church method of doing specific things and getting certificates for them was, after all, the only way, or even the best way, to find one's adjustment with God, that this whole group of subjects began, once more, to demand their attention. The doctrine of the enslaved will, narrow and revolting though it may seem to the larger thought of our time, was the opening gate through which a way might be found into that very same largeness of view. The world learns slowly and the dim vision of to-day becomes the flooding glory of a newly risen to-morrow.

Where should we expect to find Erasmus, as we have been making acquaintance with him to the year 1518, on this great new question of human justification? Our answer must follow two main lines. First, as to the general notion of the freedom of the will, we may fairly conclude from all his moral teaching up to that time, that the idea of Luther in itself would be most repugnant to him. The whole tone of the Enchiridion, for example, is to emphasise the function of the individual conscience in determining action. The call to duty is imperative; the assumption is that man can do what he ought to do. The freedom of the will in human action is so completely assumed that there is no need of discussing it. The ultimate appeal is never to any outside power. If, on the one hand, Erasmus avoids all final reference to an ecclesiastical authority, so, on the other hand, he equally avoids reference to a theological "grace of God" which is to do our moral work for us. The same impression comes from a study of the Christian Prince. The prince is a "good prince," not because he is a special instrument in the hand of God, nor because he is a faithful servant of any church authority, but because he does his duty as a man, in the station to which he is called. He ought to do this thing or that simply because it is the right and the wise thing to do, tending most directly toward the welfare of his subjects and the interest of the prince himself. The Christian state is such because it tends toward a realisation of the teaching of Christ, not because it corresponds to any abstract ideal set for it by the church power or by any direct working of the divine agency.

Our second point of view is thus already suggested. In so far as the Lutheran position dealt with man as an individual being, responsible directly to God, without the need of any intervening human agency, in so far it could not fail to command the sympathy of whatever was most sound and most sincere in the thought of Erasmus. His moral appeal throughout is completely free from any really convincing reference to a highest church tribunal, whose decisions must be final. One can find plenty of passages in which he has, even before 1518, expressed his respect for the papal system; but it would be hard to think of any one of these as representing his really deepest convictions. Either they are purely conventional, having no bearing upon the issue of the Reformation, or they are evident "hedging," put in to guard their author against the suspicion of having gone too far on the way of criticism. It is always difficult to know which of his selves is the real self; but wherever in Erasmus' moral writing we seem to feel the ring of a sincere emotion, it is always when he is appealing to the essential manliness of man--never when he is making his apologies to the powers that be.

Again, it was plain, once for all, as early as 1518, that Erasmus had not in him the stuff out of which great leaders of men in critical times are made. No one would have acknowledged this more readily than he, and nothing could have been farther from the line of his ambition than such leadership. Even if we make large deductions from his account of the great positions he had declined, enough remains to make us quite sure that, if he had chosen, he might have held any one of many places, which, by their very importance, would have given him an effective leverage upon European affairs. Such influence lay within the field neither of his gifts nor of his desires. Such effect as he might have upon the course of events must come through the natural channel of his work as a scholar and a critic.

The difficulty of our problem is greatly increased by the almost hopeless complication of questions which entered into that one great demonstration we call the Reformation. Even at this distance of time it is impossible, without resorting to some rather large generalisation, to say in a single phrase what the issue of the Reformation was. Still less, of course, was such clear discrimination possible to one who stood, as Erasmus did, in the midst of these rapid and ever-shifting and often conflicting currents and was called upon to say just where his standing-ground was, or with which one of these currents he was willing to drift.

Luther nailed his Theses on Indulgences to the door of the Palace-Church at Wittenberg on the last day of October in the year 1517. When and where the news of this action reached Erasmus we do not know. It is impossible that it can have been more than a few weeks before he, in common with all intelligent persons, had read this first proclamation of a war that was to be to the death. The Theses attacked indulgences, but these were only the outward form under which the whole theory of a mechanical salvation was expressed. If the indulgence was wrong, not merely in practice, but in theory as well, then the whole church system, in so far as it was a soul-saving apparatus, was wrong too. Doubtless there was room for infinite refinements upon this simple deduction. The same thesis about indulgences had been put forth many times before. Men had come to the same conclusions by many different roads; but never yet had any one person travelled so many of these roads. In Luther there spoke the monk, who had tried faithfully the method of conformity; the priest, who had gone directly to the souls of men with the consolations of religious hope; the scholar, who had caught the gleam of that new light of reason which was changing the whole aspect of human thought; the patriot, who saw his fellow-countrymen victimised by a vast foreign oppression; and finally the man, who had worked through the awful problem of human sinfulness until he saw it clearly solved by reference to the common inheritance of humanity.

That is why Luther's appeal was heard. Everyone to whom it came found in it some echo of his own experience. From every part of Europe and from every human interest came almost immediately a response which showed that a voice had been heard for which men had long been waiting. The Theses were a temperate document. The tone of impatience, even of violence, that was to mark so much of Luther's later writing, was here as yet only suggested by a rare decision and certainty of utterance. Already Luther spoke as one who could not help it. At last the conflict had forced itself upon him, and for him, being the man he was, there was no alternative. The form of the Theses was that of a challenge to discussion. Luther put himself forward as a learner, who was prepared to change his view whenever a better one should appear. The replies, in so far as they were hostile, simply continued the discussion.

Probably there was no other man in Europe from whom a decisive word in his favour would have been so welcome to Luther as a word at this moment from Erasmus. Nor, on the other hand, was there a champion whom the existing system would more gladly have seen on its side. The word was not spoken, but neither did Erasmus array himself as yet frankly in opposition to Luther. Indeed we have no reason to believe that the issue in all its magnitude was clearly present to his thought.

Some things he saw only too clearly. His clever, analytical mind perceived that usages and forms might in themselves be innocent or even helpful, while the wrong use of them was harmful in the extreme. So his instinct was in every case to say: Let us amend the wrong use of these things, but let us not disturb the innocent and helpful practice itself. Whatever subject he touched called out at once this overfine discriminating power. He drew a picture of the thing he wanted to express and believed himself to be heightening the effect of this picture when he refined upon it until its outlines became obscured and the very effect he had aimed at was defeated. The art of fine distinctions was an admirable one. The question of the hour, however, was not to be solved in that way. The time had come when men were going down deep below these refinements and were about to ask the fatal question: whether forms and systems which could not bear the strain of daily use by plain human nature without gross abuses, were not better reformed out of existence once for all. Erasmus said, "Be good and all these evils will vanish." Quite true, but if all men were good there would be no need of institutions at all. The question was, whether the experiment had not been tried long enough, and that was the issue which Erasmus seems not to have grasped.

For the moment the discussion turned on the question of indulgences. On this subject Erasmus had made no utterance which could be understood as committing him on the theory as a whole. In the Praise of Folly he had ridiculed the grosser absurdities of the practice, especially the counting up of the days and years of redemption from Purgatory, as if salvation were a thing of the multiplication-table. The teaching of the Enchiridion was hopelessly against any such conception of moral regeneration. Anyone who had read Erasmus could not have a moment's doubt that the system of indulgences, as it was practised throughout Europe, must have been repulsive to him in the extreme. The idea that Erasmus could ever have invested a penny in such traffic for the advantage of his own soul or that of anyone dear to him, was grotesquely absurd. Moreover the circumstances of that special sale of indulgences in Germany which called out the wrath of Luther were such as must have seemed equally outrageous to Erasmus. The barefaced openness with which the Prince Elector of Mainz had lent himself to the papal exaction, on condition that half the plunder should go into his own pocket to pay for the _pallium_ which the papacy itself had just granted him, brought out into clearest relief the purely mercantile nature of the whole transaction. It required all the hair-splitting of all the schools to carry a man through the stages of that bargain and leave him at last with any tenderness whatever for the system that made it possible. Yet this was precisely the feat which Erasmus was apparently to perform.

We gain a glimpse at the working of his mind on this subject in the letter to Volzius, called forth by criticism of the Enchiridion, and dated in August, 1518[121]:

[121] iii.¹, 343-E.

"If anyone finds fault with the preposterous opinion of the vulgar, which gives to the highest virtues the lowest place and _vice versa_ and is specially shocked by unimportant evils and the reverse, then one is straightway called to account as if one favoured those evils which seem to him less than some other evil; or as if he were condemning certain good actions because he thinks others are even better. So if one teaches that it is safer to trust in good deeds than in the papal pardons, he is not condemning those pardons, but is giving the preference to what is more certainly in accord with the teaching of Christ. So also, if one thinks that they act more wisely who stay at home and look after their wives and children, than they who go running about to Rome or Jerusalem or Compostella, and that the money wasted in long and dangerous journeys were much more piously spent upon the worthy and honest poor, one is not condemning the pious impulse of those persons, but is only preferring what comes nearer to true piety. In truth it is not a fault of our times alone to attack certain evils as if they were the only ones, while we smooth over, as if they were not evils at all, others far worse than those we are abusing."

One feels here an allusion to that overemphasis on outward organisation which was to be Erasmus' great objection to the German reform. Instead of this he would have the true value of the institution so clearly brought out that it would counteract all tendency to abuse. This letter was one of the last pieces of Erasmus' writing at Basel before the long illness of which he speaks in the letter about his journey to Louvain. He had spent the year 1518 chiefly at Basel in tireless industry. He arrived at Louvain only, as we have seen, to break down again. It was 1519 before we find him drawn directly into the Lutheran controversy.

The letter to Volzius just quoted was printed as a preface to a new edition of the Enchiridion in 1518. The first step in the correspondence with Luther was taken by Luther himself in March, 1519, and seems to have been suggested by the very passage we have here made use of to show Erasmus' feeling about indulgences. Luther's tone in this first letter is eminently characteristic of his attitude during these early years of his public activity. It is modest and self-depreciating to a degree. Words fail him to express his admiration for the great scholar. It is really monstrous that they should not know each other, when he has so long been worshipping in silence.[122]

[122] i., 423-D.

"Who is there whose inmost being is not filled by Erasmus? Who is not being taught by Erasmus? In whom does not Erasmus reign?--I mean, of course, among those who have a true love of letters. For I am glad enough and I reckon it among the gifts of Christ, that there are many who do not approve of you. By this test I discern the gifts of a loving from those of an angry God, and I congratulate you that while you are most acceptable to all good men, you are equally disliked by those who would like to be thought the only great ones and the only ones to be accepted. But here am I, clumsy fellow, approaching you thus familiarly with unwashed hands and without formal phrases of reverence and honour, as one unknown person might address another. I beg you by your kind nature, lay this to the account of my affection or my inexperience. In truth, I whose life has been passed among the schoolmen, have not so much as learned how to address a truly learned man by letter. Otherwise, how I would have wearied you already with epistles! I would not have suffered you alone to speak to me all this time in my study. Now, since I have learned from Fabricius Capito that my name is known to you through my trifles about indulgences and learned also from your most recent preface to the Enchiridion, that my notions have not only been seen, but have also been accepted by you, I am compelled to acknowledge, even though in barbarous style, your noble spirit, which enriches me and all men.... And so, my dear and amiable Erasmus, if you shall see fit, recognise this your younger brother in Christ, indeed a most devoted admirer of yours, but worthy, in his ignorance, only to be buried in his corner and to be unknown to the same sky and sun with you."

The letter closes with an affectionate eulogy of Philip Melanchthon as the indispensable companion of his studies.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Luther's attitude at this critical moment. It was quite true that Erasmus was far beyond him in scholarly attainment and reputation. It was true also that the plain meaning of Erasmus' reference to indulgences in the preface to the Enchiridion was directly in accord with Luther's own position in the Theses. If he could be made now, in some more decided manner, to commit himself to Luther's cause, it would be a great point gained for reform.

Erasmus gave himself two months before answering these first advances of Luther. His reply is what we might, from our previous knowledge, have predicted. The letter appeals to him strongly[123]:

[123] iii.¹, 444-D

"Beloved brother in Christ, your letter was most acceptable, at once showing the subtilty of your genius and breathing the very spirit of Christ."

Then his own personality comes in and he is completely absorbed in the effect of Luther's action upon himself.

"I have no words to tell you what an excitement your books have raised here. Up to the present moment the false suspicion cannot be torn from the minds of these creatures that your works have been written by my assistance and that I am the standard-bearer of this 'faction' as they call it. Some think that a handle is given them for attacking sound learning, toward which they have a deadly hatred as an offence against Her Theological Majesty, for whom they care vastly more than they do for Christ,--and also for quashing me, whom they fancy to be of some avail in encouraging learning.

"The whole affair is carried on with shoutings, with insolent cunning, with slander and trickery, so that if I had not seen it--nay, even felt it myself, I would never have believed, on any authority, that theologians could be so insane. You might suppose it was a regular plague; and yet the poison of this evil began with a few and crept into the many, so that now a great part of this much frequented university is infected with this poisonous disease. I have sworn that you were totally unknown to me, that I had not yet read your books, and therefore that I neither approved nor disapproved anything in them. I only advised them not to keep bawling out so hatefully to the people about your books, which they had not yet read, but to await the judgment of those whose opinion ought to have most weight. I begged them to consider whether it was well to abuse before a promiscuous crowd things which ought more properly to be refuted in books or discussed by learned men, especially as there was but one opinion as to the excellence of the author's life. But nothing did any good;--so furious are they in their underhanded and scandalous discussions."

He, Erasmus, becomes at once the central point in his own field of vision. Luther has friends in England, even some in Louvain.

"But I keep myself, so far as I can, _integrum_ [shall we say 'uncompromised'?] in order that I may the better serve the reviving cause of letters; and I think a well-mannered reserve will accomplish more than violence, etc. We ought to keep an even temper, lest it be spoiled by anger, hatred, or vainglory; for in the very midst of a zeal for religion these things are apt to be lying in wait for us. I am not urging you to do all this, but just to keep on as you are doing. I have glanced over (_degustavi_) your commentaries on the Psalms; they appeal to me greatly and I hope they will be of great value."

We have omitted a string of commonplaces about moderation and gentleness, which must have helped to make this letter rather cold comfort to Luther. If it meant anything to him, it meant that Erasmus really agreed with his views on indulgences and the state of the Church in general, but was already dreading the effect of putting these views boldly and clearly before the world. What Luther wanted in the spring of 1519 was not pious exhortation to keep his temper, but a grip of the hand and a frank word of approval. Whether Erasmus was going to have a bad time with the men of darkness at Louvain could not interest him. The question was: would Erasmus stand by him,--yes or no? and so far the answer was not encouraging. To one who knew the kind of language Erasmus was wont to apply to his opponents, it must have seemed grotesquely out of place for him to exhort Luther to gentleness of speech.

The dread of being charged with the authorship of Luther's works and of others similar in their purpose, seems to have been the one thing uppermost in the mind of Erasmus during these years 1518 and 1519. His correspondence is full of it. He took pains, in a fashion which he had never before shown, to set himself right with all the great persons with whom he had any connection.

The earliest in the group of apologetic letters brought out by the charge that Luther was only expressing Erasmus' ideas in somewhat bolder form is one written to Cardinal Wolsey in May, 1518.[124] Here begin the phrases afterwards to become so familiar:

[124] This is Leclerc's date. Stichart prefers Dec. 18, 1517.

"Luther is as unknown to me as he is to anyone, nor have I had leisure to turn over his books except here and there a page;--not that I shrank from the work, but that other occupations left me no time for it. And yet certain persons, as I hear, are saying that I have been helping him. If he has written well I deserve no praise; if otherwise I merit no blame--since in all his writings not so much as one jot is mine, and anyone can prove this who wishes to investigate it. The man's way of life is approved by all, and this is no slight argument in his favour, that his character is so sound that not even enemies can find anything to criticise. But even if I had ever so much time for reading him I cannot take upon myself to pronounce upon the writings of so great a man, even though nowadays boys are everywhere, with the greatest boldness, declaring this to be false and that to be heretical. At one time indeed I was a little hard upon Luther, fearing that some cause for enmity against sound learning might be given, and desiring not to see that cause burdened any further. For I could not help seeing how much enmity would be aroused if things were to be broken up from which a rich harvest was being reaped by priests and monks.

"There appeared first quite a number of propositions about papal indulgences; then one and another pamphlet about confession and penance. When I heard that certain persons were eager to publish these I seriously advised against it, lest they should be adding to the enmity against learning. There will be witnesses of this, even men who wish well to Luther. Finally there came a swarm of pamphlets; no one saw me reading them; no one heard me praising them or not praising them. For I am not so rash as to approve what I have not read, nor such a trickster as to condemn what I know nothing about,--though this is nowadays a regular practice of those who ought to know better. Germany has some young men who give great promise of learning and eloquence, through whose work I predict that she may some day have cause to boast as England is now boasting with the best of reasons. Of these no one is personally known to me except Eobanus, Hutten, and Beatus. These men are fighting with every form of weapon against the enemies of the languages and of sound learning, which all good men are favouring. I should admit myself that their freedom of speech was intolerable, did I not know in what shameful fashion they are annoyed both in public and in private. Their opponents allow themselves in public preaching, in schools, in banquets, to declaim anything they please in the most hateful, nay, in the most treasonable manner, before the ignorant multitude, yet think it an unbearable thing if one of these scholars dares to comment. Why! the very bees have stings to strike with when they are hurt and flies have teeth to defend themselves if they are attacked. Whence comes this new race of gods? They make 'heretics' of whom they will, but move heaven and earth if anyone calls them slanderers....

"I am in favour of these scholars in this sense: that I look rather to their virtues than to their vices. And when one considers how soaked in vice were those men who in Italy and France gave the first impulse to the revival of ancient learning, one cannot help favouring these men of ours whose characters are such that their theological censors would do well to imitate them rather than abuse them.

"Now whatever they write is suspected to be my work, even with you in England, if only men of affairs who come hither from there are telling the truth. Indeed, I confess frankly: I cannot help admiring their talent, but a too free pen I approve in no man. First Hutten sent out as a joke his _Nemo_; everyone knows the argument of it was mere folly, but the Louvain theologians kept saying it was my work, and they fancy themselves more sharp-sighted than Lynceus himself. Then came the _Febris_ [also by Hutten]; that was mine too! though the whole spirit and style of it differed from mine. Then appeared the _Oratio_ of Mosellanus in which he takes the part of the three languages against these tongue-lashers. They thought to make me smart for it, even when I had not yet heard that the _Oratio_ was in existence; as if whatever comes into the head of this man or that man to write, I must be accountable for it or as if I had not enough to do to defend what I have written myself. They are Germans; they are young men; they have pens; they are not wanting in ability; nor are there lacking those who irritate them by their hatred, nor those who spur them on, and then pour cold water on them.

"All these I have warned in my letters to keep their freedom within bounds; at all events not to attack the leading men of the Church, lest they provoke against learning the hostility of those very men through whose patronage it is standing up against its enemies and thus burden the defenders of polite letters with this enmity. But what can I do? I can warn, but I cannot compel. To moderate my own style is within my power, but not to answer for another's pen. The most ridiculous thing is that the recent work of the bishop of Rochester against Faber is ascribed to me, whereas the difference of style is as great as I am far removed from the learning of that divine prelate. Why! there were some who charged More's _Utopia_ upon me! whatever appears is mine, willing or no....

"I have never sent forth a work, and I never will, without putting my name to it. Some time ago I wrote for amusement my _Moria_, without malice though perhaps with more than enough freedom of speech. But I have always taken pains that nothing should go forth from me which could corrupt youth by its obscenity, or could in any way offend religion, or give rise to sedition or party violence, or make a single black line upon the good name of another. The sweat I have spent up to this time has been spent in aiding solid learning and in advancing the religion of Christ. All are thanking me for it on every hand, excepting a very few theologians and monks, who refuse to be made either better or more learned....

"If anyone cares to make the trial he will find Erasmus serving the See of Rome with his whole heart and especially Leo the tenth, to whose piety he is well aware how much he is indebted."

Precisely the same tone of nervous anxiety about himself appears in a letter to Cardinal Campeggio, the papal legate in England.[125] He assures him that, so far as in him lay, he has tried to maintain the cause of Christ and the Church. Of course he cannot please everyone, but he has been satisfied with the praise of the best men from Pope Leo down.

[125] iii.¹, 436.

"But see," he cries, "the perverse and ungrateful ill-will of some men. They do not trust to writings and arguments, but attack me with slanderous tricks. Whatever books come out in these days, in which anybody is too free with his pranks, they put it upon me. There appeared the _Nemo_--for that is the name of a certain silly book; they charged me with it and would have made out their case if the angry author had not appeared and claimed his work for himself. There came out certain foolish letters and there were plenty of people to say I had helped to write them. Finally there came--I know not with what parentage--a work of Martin Luther, an author as unknown to me as the most unknown person in the world; I have not yet read the book through and yet at the very beginning they kept saying it was my work, the truth being that not one stroke in it is mine."

He begs Campeggio to contradict these scandalous lies, and to rest assured that he never has written and never will write books of this sort. The cardinal's reply was as friendly and reassuring as could be wished, but may interest us especially because it makes no direct reference to the Lutheran movement.

To Pope Leo Erasmus wrote in regard to the second edition of his New Testament.[126] The first edition had been, he says, well received by all but very few. His description of these few critics is highly characteristic:

[126] iii.¹, 490.

"Some are too stupid to be convinced by reasonable argument; some too conceited to be willing to learn better; some too obstinate to give up their position, bad though it be; some too old to hope ever to do anything worth doing; some so ambitious that they cannot bear to seem to have been ignorant of anything; but all are men of such a kind, that it is not worth while to try for their approval. Indeed that was a clever saying of Seneca: 'There are people by whom it is better to be abused than praised.'

"Among these people there is scarce one who has read my books. They were afraid for their power, some even for their gain, if the world should begin to grow wiser. What they themselves really think I know not, but they try to make the uneducated crowd believe that a knowledge of the languages and what they call good letters are opposed to the study of theology, whereas there is no science to which they are a greater help and adornment. These men, born under the wrath of the Muses and the Graces, are fighting ceaselessly against learning, which in these our days is just rising to greater fruitfulness. Their chief hope of victory is in slanderous trickery. If they come out in books they simply betray their folly and ignorance. If they are met by reasoning, the evident truth overcomes them at once. So they confine themselves to making an uproar with the ignorant mob and among foolish women, who are easy to impose upon, especially under the pretext of religion, which these people are wonderfully clever in assuming. They put forth terrible words--'heresy!' 'Antichrist!' They keep declaring that the Christian religion is in danger and already toppling over, and pretend that they are holding it up on their shoulders; and in all these hateful charges they mingle the names of the languages and of polite literature. These horrible things, they say, have sprung from 'poetry'--for so they call whatever belongs to elegant learning--that is, whatever they themselves do not understand. Such nonsense as this they do not hesitate to blather out in public sermons, and then ask to be called heralds of apostolic doctrine! They abuse the name of the Roman pontiff and of the Roman see, a thing sacred to everyone, as it ought to be.

"By these trickeries they are preparing to assault the cause of letters, now just beginning to flourish, and also that purified theology which is learning to know once more its own true sources. Nothing is left untried; every sort of calumny is thought out against those by whose work these studies seem to be growing; and among these they reckon me. Now, how much of importance I have contributed I know not, but surely I have striven with all my might to kindle men from those chilling argumentations in which they had so long been frozen up, to zeal for a theology which should be at once more pure and more serious. And that this labour has so far not been in vain I perceive from this, that certain persons are furious against me, who cannot value anything which they are not able to teach and are ashamed to learn. But, trusting to Christ as my witness, whom my writings above all would guard, to the judgment of your Holiness, to my own sense of right, and the approval of so many distinguished men, I have always disregarded the yelpings of these people. Whatever little talent I have, it has been, once for all, dedicated to Christ; it shall serve his glory alone; it shall serve the Roman Church, the prince of that Church, but especially your Holiness, to whom I owe more than my whole duty.

"I might, if I had listened to other arguments, have been advanced to wealth and dignities; I can prove by the most solemn testimony that what I am saying is true. But this seemed to me a greater reward; I preferred to serve the glory of Christ, rather than my own. From a boy I have made it my care never to write anything irreligious or scurrilous or against authority. Or if I formerly chattered away a little too freely, after the habit of youth, certainly nothing becomes my present age but serious and holy things. No one was ever made one hair the blacker or the less religious by my writings; no disturbance has ever arisen or ever shall arise on my account. No malice of my accusers shall ever overcome this fixed determination of my mind. Let others see to it what they write; I am not judging the slave of another; let every man stand or fall to his own master. My only grief is that through the bitter controversies of some persons the peace of learning and of the Christian commonwealth is being endangered."

Here he seems to shift his ground from the attacks of the men of darkness to the Lutheran "tragedy."

"The affair seems no longer to be conducted with the weapons of argument, but the battle rages with violent abuse on both sides; biting pamphlets are the weapons and the uproar is swelling into madness, with mutual maledictions. There is no one, unless he were more than man, who does not sometimes slip, but these human lapses, if they are of such sort that we cannot wink at them, ought to be corrected with Christian charity. Now they are turning to evil even that which is rightly spoken, often that which they do not understand. With bitter words they make raw sores which might have been healed by Christian gentleness; they alienate by harshness men whom they might have kept by kindness. The word 'heresy' is straightway in their mouths, if at any point they differ or wish to seem to differ. If anything does not exactly suit them, they raise seditious cries among the rude and untaught people. These things, springing from slight beginnings, have often kindled a widespread conflagration, and it comes to pass that an evil, overlooked at first as of small account, increasing little by little, finally bursts forth into a serious disturbance of the peace of Christendom. Great praise is due to those excellent kings who have quieted the very beginnings of these dissensions, as Henry VIII. in England, and Francis I. in France. In Germany, because that country is divided up among so many little kings, the same cannot be done. Among us, since we have but just acquired our prince [Charles V. was elected emperor, June 28, 1519], great and excellent as he is, yet he is so far removed that, up to the present time, certain men are exciting tumults without reproof. I think, therefore, that your Holiness would be acting most acceptably to Christ if you should impose silence upon such contentions as these and should do for the whole Christian world what Henry and Francis have done, each for his own kingdom. Your piety is bringing the most powerful kings into harmony; it remains for you, by the same means, to restore to learning the peace which is its due. This will come to pass, if by your order they who cannot speak shall cease their babbling against polite learning, and they who have no tongues for blessing shall cease cursing those who are devoted to the tongues."

This letter rewards somewhat careful reading. Two ideas are obviously before the writer's mind: First, the cause of sound learning and its application to theology, the cause with which he identifies himself so completely that every attack upon it seems a personal assault upon him, and _vice versa_. Second, the Lutheran uprising, now beginning to show its possibilities of danger. Erasmus names no names, but the solemn warning to the pope as to the little flame that may grow to a consuming fire seems to point plainly enough to Luther, and the distinction so carefully drawn between Germany and the compact monarchies of France and England confirms this idea. It is a warning prophetic in its clearness of insight, but naïve to the point of childishness in its suggestions of a remedy. The new little emperor was not only _ingenti semotus intervallo_ from the field of Luther's activity, but the very constitution of Germany made it utterly out of the question that he could take any action whatever against Luther except by the consent of the prince who was his immediate sovereign. The "_reguli_," the "little kings" in Germany, had not bought their independence by centuries of conflict to suffer any such burnings at the stake and cutting-off of heads by any emperor as those capable youths, Henry and Francis, could command at will in London or Paris.

Nor was there any more promise in Erasmus' suggestion that the pope should order the parties in conflict to keep silence. The Leipzig disputation of Luther with John Eck in July of this same year (1519) was to bring out clearly that, after all, the real issue touched the papal authority, and when that was questioned it was idle to imagine that any papal action whatever could really affect the course of events.

There is a certain variation upon this suggestion in the dedication to Cardinal Campeggio of the paraphrases of certain epistles of Paul in 1519.[127] After a most flattering eulogy of Leo X. for his great interest in sound learning, Erasmus says:

[127] vii., 969.

"If a means of pacification is sought for, I think it might most easily be accomplished if the pope should command that each person prepare a statement of his own belief and set it forth, without abuse of opposing views, so that the madness of tongue and pen may be restrained, especially by those to whom such control belongs. But if there is a difference, as it often happens that our judgments differ like our tastes, let the whole contention be held within the limits of courtesy and not run over into mad excess. And if there be any point specially touching upon doctrine--for everything ought not to be dragged in, neck and heels, under the head of doctrine--let it be discussed by men who are thoroughly versed in the mysteries of the faith, who will not seek their own interests under the pretence of the faith and who will carry on the affair with prudent judgment, not with seditious disturbances."

Erasmus thinks he can easily persuade Campeggio and that the cardinal will easily persuade the excellent Leo. Where the superhuman beings are to be found who will carry out his innocent suggestions he does not say. We are bound to give him credit for any constructive ideas he may have had, and in all his writings there is nothing that comes much nearer to positive constructive planning than this.

If one may judge from the letter to Leo, Erasmus' early conception of the Lutheran movement was much like that which prevailed at Rome. It was a squabble of monks; Luther was an Augustinian, Tetzel a Dominican. Most monks were enemies of learning--Luther was a man of learning, but inclined to violence and not willing to keep the matter to a purely intellectual issue. He was, of course, right on many points, but was going too fast and was drawing after him many foolish people, who ought to be held in check by the established powers.

Quite the same tone appears in a long letter[128] to Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz, the papal agent in the German indulgence of 1517 and the principal clergyman in Germany. Erasmus takes the opportunity of acknowledging the gift of a loving-cup from the archbishop to go at length into the Lutheran question. He reaches it again through the medium of his own personal difficulties. For a time, he says, he had made peace with the "theologians" at Louvain. They were to hold their scandalous tongues; he was to do his best to keep his pen still. If only they had had the archbishop's cup to drink their mutual faith in, the agreement might have lasted longer. As it is, an unhappy letter, badly understood and worse interpreted, has brought on an attack more furious than ever. He begs to explain[129]:

[128] iii., 513-D.

[129] iii.¹, 514-A.

"In the first place, I have never had anything to do, either with the Reuchlin business or with the affair of Luther. Whatever Cabala and Talmud may be, they have never attracted me. Those contentions between Reuchlin and the followers of Hoogstraaten were most displeasing to me. Luther is to me unknown as the most unknown of men. His writings I have not had time to read, excepting that I have just barely skimmed over some of them."

It is very difficult to believe that these statements are true. Erasmus had interested himself in Reuchlin's affairs enough to write to two Roman cardinals in his behalf. He knew enough about Luther's writings to have convinced himself that their tone was too decided to suit him; if he had not read every word of them, he was thoroughly informed as to their contents. The motive of his denial appears in the next words:

"If he has written well, no praise belongs to me, if not there is nothing which can be laid to my charge.... I was sorry that the books of Luther were published and when first some writings or other of his began to be shown about, I did my best to prevent their publication, especially because I feared that some tumult would be caused thereby. Luther had written me a letter in what I thought a very Christian spirit and I answered, warning the man not to write anything seditious or insolent against the Roman pontiff, but to preach the apostolic doctrine with pure heart and in all gentleness. I did this politely that it might have the more effect. I added that there were some here who favoured him, that he might the more accommodate himself to their judgment. Now some have most stupidly interpreted these words as if I favoured Luther, whereas no one of those persons gave him any advice; I was the only one who warned him. I am neither the accuser of Luther, nor his patron, nor his judge. As to the man's spirit, I dare not judge him, for that is a most difficult matter, especially if I must judge him unfavourably.

"And yet, even if I did favour him as a good man, which his enemies admit him to be; or as an accused man, and that the laws permit even to sworn judges; or as a man oppressed and crushed down by those who, under some made-up pretext, are working all they can against pure learning, what ground of fault-finding against me were that, so long as I do not mix myself in the matter? In fine, it seems to me the part of a Christian to favour Luther, in this sense, that if he is innocent I do not wish him to be crushed by the factions of the wicked; if he is wrong I wish him to be set right, not ruined....

"But now certain theologians whom I know are neither warning nor teaching Luther, but are only with mad howlings reviling him before the people and tearing him in pieces with the most violent abuse and continually having in their mouths the words 'heresy!', 'heretic', 'heresiarch!', 'schism!', 'antichrist!' It cannot be denied that these clamours were raised among the people chiefly by men who had never seen the books of Luther. It is well proved that things are condemned by these people as heretical in Luther which in Bernard or Augustine are read as orthodox, nay, as pious words. I warned them at the beginning to abstain from clamour of this sort and to carry on the affair rather with writings and arguments. I said they ought not publicly to condemn what they had not read and carefully thought out, I will not say, understood. Then I told them it was unbecoming for theologians to carry anything through by violence, for their judgment ought to be of the most serious kind, and that it was not an easy thing to gain their point by raging against a man whose life was approved by everyone. Finally, that perhaps it was not a safe thing to touch upon such matters before a mixed crowd, in which there are many who greatly dislike the confession of secret sins and if these should hear that there are theologians who say one need not confess all faults, they will readily snatch at it and get a perverted notion. Now though all this must strike every man of spirit as it does me, yet from this friendly admonition they have conceived the suspicion that Luther's books are in great part mine, and produced at Louvain, whereas not one stroke in them is mine or published with my knowledge or my will. Still, acting upon this false suspicion and in spite of all denial, they have raised here disturbances more furious than I have ever seen in my life.

"Further, though the special function of theologians is to teach, I see many nowadays who are doing nothing but compelling men, bringing them to ruin or to silence, whereas Augustine, even in the case of the Donatists, who were not merely heretics but furious brigands, does not approve those who would merely compel, without also teaching them. Men to whom gentleness is a duty, seem to be simply thirsting for human blood, so eager are they to ensnare and ruin Luther. Now this is playing the butcher, not the theologian. If they want to show themselves great theologians let them convert the Jews, let them turn to Christ those who are strangers to him, let them mend the public morals of Christians, even more corrupt than those of Turks. What justice is there in leading him to punishment, who has now first proposed for discussion things which have always been discussed in all the schools of theologians? Why ought he to be persecuted, who begs to be instructed, who submits himself to the judgment of the Roman See and of the schools, which they call 'universities?' And if he refuses to trust himself in the hands of certain persons who would rather see him crushed than instructed, surely that is not strange."

For a man who was a total stranger to Luther and his books, Erasmus shows himself surprisingly well informed.

"Let us examine into the origin of the present troubles. The world is burdened with human devices, with the opinions and the dogmas of the schools, with the tyranny of the Mendicant Friars, who, though they are the servants of the Roman See, are making themselves a danger to the pope himself and even to kings, by their power and their numbers. When the pope is working for them he is more than a God; if he does anything contrary to their convenience, he is of no more account than a dream. I am not condemning them all; but very many are the kind of persons, who for the sake of power and gain are seeking to ensnare the consciences of men. With shameless effrontery they were beginning to leave out Christ entirely and to preach nothing but their own novel and impudent doctrines. About indulgences they were talking in a way that not even idiots could stand. Through this and many other things the vigour of apostolic teaching was gradually disappearing and it was likely to happen that things would go from bad to worse until that spark of Christian piety should be extinguished, from which the dying flame of Christian love might have been rekindled. The whole of religion was turning towards more than Jewish ceremonialism. Good men grieved over all these things. Even theologians who are not monks, and some monks, confessed to them in private conversation. These are the things, as I think, which first moved the heart of Luther to set himself boldly against the intolerable insolence of certain persons. For what else can I suspect of a man who is aiming at neither honours nor wealth? As to the propositions which they object to in Luther, I am not at present discussing them, but only the manner and the occasion of them.

"Luther dared to have doubts about indulgences, but others before him had made bold enough statements about these. He dared to speak rather unrestrainedly about the authority of the Roman pontiff; but others had shown little enough restraint in this matter, and among them especially Alvarus, Sylvester, and the cardinal of San Sisto. He dared despise the judgment of St. Thomas, but the Dominicans had almost set Thomas above the Gospels. He dared in the matter of the confessional to discuss certain scruples, but in this thing the monks have entangled the consciences of men without limit. He dared in part to despise the conclusions of the schools; but they had laid far too great weight upon these, and yet cannot agree upon them among themselves, but are always changing them, cutting out the old and putting in new. This was a pain to pious souls: to hear in the schools scarcely a word about the apostolic teaching, but to learn that the ancient sacred writers, long approved by the Church, were now quite antiquated, and to hear in public preaching seldom a word of Christ, but always of the power of the pope and the opinions of the moderns; to know that the whole discourse was filled with lust of gain, with flatteries, ambition, and deceit.

"I think the blame ought to be put upon these things, if Luther wrote a little too violently. Whoever defends the apostolic doctrine defends the pope, who is its chief herald, as the rest of the bishops are his heralds. All bishops stand in the place of Christ, but among them the Roman pontiff stands first. We must believe of him that he cares for nothing more than the glory of Christ, whose minister he boasts himself to be. They deserve very badly of him who ascribe to him things which he would not himself recognise and which are far from helpful to the flock of Christ. And yet some who are stirring up these disorders are not doing it out of love for the pope, but are abusing his authority for their own profit and power. We have, as I believe, a pious pope; but in the vast flood of affairs there are many things of which he is ignorant, which even if he would he cannot get at, but as Virgil says, the driver is 'swept along by the steeds and the car heeds not the rein.' He therefore is aiding the good-will of the pope, who exhorts him to those things that are especially worthy of Christ.

"It is no secret that there are persons who are stirring up his Holiness against Luther and against all who dare to murmur against their dogmas. But the great princes ought rather to consider what is demanded by the permanent will of the pope, than by a loyalty extorted by base means. What kind of people the authors of these dissensions are I could make perfectly clear, if I did not fear that while I am telling the truth I may seem to be uttering abuse. Many of them I know intimately; many have declared their quality by their writings, so that no mirror could more clearly reflect the image of their heart and life. Would that they who take up the Censor's rod to drive out of the Senate of Christians whomever they will, had drunk more deeply of the teaching and the spirit of Christ....

"I say these things the more freely because I stand in every way utterly apart from the case of Reuchlin and Luther. I should never care to write things of that sort, nor can I claim so much learning for myself as to defend what others have written, but I cannot help making this mystery plain: that those men [the opponents of Luther] are aiming at something quite different from what they pretend. They have long been unable to bear the idea of sound learning and the languages flourishing, the ancient authors coming to life, who were until just now lying covered with dust and eaten up by moths, the world called back to the original sources themselves. They tremble for their own emptiness, they are unwilling to appear ignorant of anything; they fear to lose something of their own authority. They have long been pressing upon this sore, and at last it has broken, for the pain could no longer be concealed. Before the books of Luther appeared they were most urgent in this thing, especially Dominicans and Carmelites, of whom I would that many were not more wicked than ignorant.

"When Luther's books came out they seized upon them as a handle and began to bring the cause of the languages, of sound learning, of Reuchlin and Luther, nay, even my cause also, together into one bundle,--making not only a bad exposition, but also a bad distinction. For, in the first place, what has sound learning to do with the question of faith, and, in the next place, what have I to do with the case of Reuchlin and Luther? But these people have cunningly mingled these matters together so as to involve in one common hatred all who cultivate sound learning. That they are not acting honestly is evident from this fact: they confess that there is no one among ancient or modern writers who has not made mistakes and they will make a heretic of anyone who obstinately defends himself; but why do they pass over the rest and so persistently examine into one or two? They are not disturbed because Alvarus and the cardinal of San Sisto and Sylvester Prierias have often erred; they say not a word of these because they are Dominicans. They cry out against Reuchlin alone because he is an enthusiastic lover of the languages; against Luther because they imagine him to be endowed with our learning, whereas he has but just barely touched it. Luther has written many things rather rashly than wickedly, and among these things they are especially enraged because he has little respect for Thomas Aquinas, because he is diminishing the revenue from indulgences, because he cares little for the begging Friars, because he pays less respect to the dogmas of the schools than to the Gospels, because he takes no account of human argumentations about disputed points. Intolerable heresies these are!

"But these things they pass over and make hateful charges to the pope, these men who are united and eager only in doing harm. Formerly the heretic was heard respectfully and absolved if he gave satisfaction, but if he persisted and was convicted, the extreme penalty was that he was not admitted to the communion of the Catholic Church. Now the charge of heresy is a different thing and yet, for some slight reason, no matter what, straightway their mouths are full of the cry: 'This is heresy!' Formerly he was a heretic who differed from the Gospels or the articles of faith or from something which had an authority equal to these. Now, if anyone differ from Thomas, he is called a heretic; nay, if he differ from some new-fangled logic, patched up but yesterday by any sophist of the schools. Whatever they do not like, whatever they do not understand, is heresy! to know Greek is heresy! to speak correctly is heresy! whatever they do not do is heresy! I confess that the charge of violation of the faith is a serious one, but not any and every question ought to be turned into a question of faith. They who deal with matters of faith ought to be far removed from every form of ambition, of money-making, of personal hatred, or of revenge. But what these people are chiefly concerned with, who can be in doubt? If once the reins of their greed are let loose, they will begin everywhere to rage against every good man. Finally they will threaten the bishops themselves and even the Roman pontiffs; and in fact you may call me a liar, if we are not seeing this done by some already. How far the order of the Dominicans will dare to go we may learn from Jerome Savonarola and the crime of Bern.[130] I am not bringing up again the bad name of that order, but I am only giving warning as to what we must look out for if they are to succeed in whatever they are bold enough to undertake. What I have said thus far has nothing to do with Luther's cause; I am speaking only of the manner and the danger of it. The case of Reuchlin the pope has taken upon himself. Luther's business is referred to the universities and whatever they may decide is no risk of mine."

[130] The reference is to a celebrated fraud perpetrated by the Dominicans of Bern to demonstrate their superiority over their Franciscan rivals. The fraud was detected and the ringleaders were burned alive, 1509.

The letter concludes with the now familiar protestations that he, Erasmus, has nothing whatever to do with the present troubles, but is merely giving a timely warning.

This letter to Archbishop Albert is the most important in the group we are now considering. It shows us practically every aspect of Erasmus' position in the year 1519, and suggests the numerous lines of comment thereon. The least convincing parts of it are those which refer to himself personally. These may be sufficiently explained by that joy in fancying himself persecuted which we have noted in him from the first. It needed but very slight foundations for him to build up a whole fabric of imaginary assaults, aimed at him because he was the one great source from which all intellectual energy might seem to flow. It was like his vanity to be vastly flattered if someone suggested that Luther could never have done what he had done without Erasmus' help, and he magnified that suggestion by saying it over and over to his numerous correspondents in every possible variation. The repeated declaration that he knew nothing about Luther or his books is too silly to deserve attention. He shows the most complete comprehension of what Luther was doing, and practically contradicts himself within the space of a few lines by stating that he has "taken a taste" of certain Lutheran books and been greatly attracted by them.

Another curious point is his insistence upon grouping Luther and Reuchlin together and setting himself over against them. In fact the points of view of these two men were at least as different as was that of Erasmus from either of them. Reuchlin was above all things a Humanist, a man of "the languages," and the "tragedy" in which he was concerned, his quarrel with the Dominicans of Cologne, had reference to the use which might properly be made of Hebrew by a sound Christian scholarship. All this was certainly very closely allied with the work of Erasmus and had no direct connection with that of Luther; yet Erasmus, furiously anxious not to seem to have anything in common with either, has no scruple in joining them together in one common reproach.

All this gives an effect of pettiness to Erasmus' attitude towards the Reformation and tends to obscure his actual service. So far as one can get at his real meaning, it is something like this: the real authors of the present troubles are the mysterious people whom he here continually refers to as "certain persons" or "those men," and whom he occasionally defines more specifically as the monks or the enemies of sound learning. Luther is right in calling attention to the evils of church life; he is not the first to do it, and Erasmus heartily agrees with him. "Those people" are attacking Luther because they feel, as well they may, that their rights and privileges are in danger, if men are going to listen to his criticism. They are catching, therefore, at every excuse to charge him with heresy. Erasmus affects to believe that pope, cardinals, and all good and reasonable men will see through these attempts and will hasten to save the Church by accepting what is valuable in this Lutheran criticism and acting upon it at once.

But,--and here is the line of distinction,--there was also in Luther's appeal an element of doctrine, an implication at least that the Church was false to its own teaching as to the direct relation between God and the soul of man. The consequences of this doctrinal implication were, as Erasmus must have felt at once, of the most far-reaching sort, and he was not prepared to follow them up. An unconditional declaration in Luther's favour would have seemed to commit him to the doctrinal as well as to the practical conclusions from Luther's premises.

This gives at least a shadow of reasonableness to his refinement of distinction between merely reading over the works of Luther and making such careful study of them as would enable him to attempt a reply. On the 23rd of September, 1521, he writes to Bombasius in Bologna[131]:

[131] iii.¹, 665-B.

"I am wholly occupied with revising my New Testament and some other works, trying like the bears gradually to lick into shape the crude product of my talents. But soon I hope to have more leisure. I have been trying hard to persuade Aleander to give me permission to read Luther's writings; for nowadays the world is full of sycophants and prize-fighters. He said emphatically he could not do this without a special permit from the pope; so I wish you would get this for me in the form of some kind of a brief. For I do not want to give a handle to these knaves, who would like nothing better."

His _bête noire_ at Louvain seems to have been a person called Egmund, a Carmelite monk, who may serve us as the type of "those persons" who were trying to identify Erasmus with the Lutheran cause. Writing[132] to the _Rector Magnificus_ of the University of Louvain, still in 1519, Erasmus says that this Egmund had been expressing the pious hope that as St. Paul had been converted from a persecutor to a doctor of the Church, so Erasmus and Luther might some day be converted.

[132] iii.¹, 537.

"What will become of these men? The one thing they want is to do harm in some way, and it offends them that I am not a Lutheran, as indeed I am not, except in so far as Luther serves the glory of Christ. I know that I am rather free of tongue, but yet no one has heard me approve the doctrine of Luther. I have never taken pains to read his books, excepting a few pages, and these rather skimmed than read. Your contentions against Luther I have always consistently favoured, but far more your writings, especially those of John Turenholtius, who, as I hear, has carried on the discussion in a scholarly way and without personalities."

He has not read Luther, yet he has steadily approved the Louvain contentions against him and especially the writings of a man of whom he knows only by hearsay that he writes in good temper!

"If his [Luther's] books were to be burnt, no one would find me any the sadder. I have written privately and said many things to prevent him from writing so seditiously, and yet I am called a Lutheran! If these jokes amuse your university, I am man enough to bear them; for I would rather do this than take revenge for them; but in my judgment the cause would be better served by other methods. Vincentius is charging me with the tumult in Holland, in which after a most foolish discourse, he came near being stoned to death; whereas the truth is I have never written to any Dutchman either for Luther or against him."

He writes to Mountjoy in the same year[133]:

[133] iii.¹, 538-C.

"While you are happy for so many reasons I am compelled to fight with certain monsters rather than men. By Hercules! I would like to try what eloquence might do, were it not that as I lay my hand upon the hilt a certain Christian modesty, like Pallas in Homer, seizes me by the hair and restrains me."

So far Erasmus had stood in an attitude of studied neutrality. We have to gather from his emphasis and from the undercurrent of his eloquence our impression as to the side on which his sympathies really lay. If the world could only have stood still long enough for his wise and cautious suggestions to affect the parties, all might yet have been well. Unhappily for the Erasmians of all times, the world moves, and it does not move strictly according to rule. Even while Erasmus was exhorting to mildness, events were forcing men into partisan attitudes which made his counsel of no avail. There were enough men who felt passionately the wrongs which he felt only academically, to force the discussion into the fighting stage. The more this becomes evident, the more clearly we see Erasmus moving over from the position of sympathetic neutrality towards the reforming party into that of suspicion and declared hostility.

In the correspondence we have just quoted, the weight of emphasis is on the provocation which the reformers had received. They were pretty violent, but their enemies were worse, and if the highest authority were to act at all, it would do better to compel the men of darkness to silence rather than the excellent Luther and his worthy followers. How far Erasmus, whether in 1519-20 or at any later time, really changed his opinion on any of the points at issue, will probably always remain a subject for controversy. We are concerned with the change of emphasis by which his final attitude was determined.

Two letters of 1519, one to Philip Melanchthon, in the centre of the Lutheran camp, and one to the Dominican Jacob Hoogstraaten, the head of the Inquisition at Cologne, will serve to show how evenly at this time Erasmus distributed the discipline he felt himself called upon to administer to the new and more tumultuous generation.

One can hardly help smiling at this passage from the letter to the gentle and peace-loving Melanchthon, by all means the sweetest-natured of all the Reformation champions. Erasmus makes him some very pretty compliments on his books and then goes on[134]:

[134] iii.¹, 431.

"But, if you will take advice from Erasmus, I wish you would take more pains in setting forth good learning than in attacking its enemies. They are indeed worthy of being assailed by good men with every sort of abuse, but, if I am not mistaken, we shall accomplish more in the way I advise. Besides, we ought to fight in such fashion that we may seem to be their superiors, not only in eloquence but also in modesty and in good breeding. Everyone here approves of Martin Luther's character, but there are divers opinions as to his beliefs. I myself have not yet read his books. Certain things he is right in calling attention to, but I wish he had done it as happily as he has boldly. I have written about him to Duke Frederic."

This letter to Frederic of Saxony,[135] wanting in our collection, emphasises as strongly as possible the excellence of Luther as a man, and, while disclaiming all interest in his doctrine, urges the Elector to defend him against his persecution.

[135] Karl Hartfelder, "Friedrich der Weise von Sachsen und D. Erasmus," in _Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte_, etc., N. F., iv., 1891.

Doubtless he was no less favourable to Luther than he was in the following year, when the Elector Frederic, finding himself at Cologne on imperial business, had an interview with Erasmus, of which his intimate counsellor and biographer Spalatin gives an account[136]:

[136] _Friedrichs des Weisen Leben und Zeitgeschichte_, von G. Spalatin, Jena, 1851, p. 164.

"There at Cologne the most learned Erasmus of Rotterdam was with the Elector, who talked with him on all kinds of subjects and asked him if he believed that Doctor Martin Luther had erred in his writing and preaching. Thereto he answered in Latin: 'Yes, on two points, namely, that he has attacked the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks.'"

Thereat the Elector laughed and he recalled the saying a year or so before his death (1525).

Luther contributes to our impression of this interview in his Table-talk:

"Doctor Martin said that the Elector Frederic of Saxony had an interview with Erasmus at Cologne in 1519 and had given him a cloak and said afterward to Spalatin: 'What kind of a man is Erasmus? one cannot tell where one stands with him.' And Duke George said, after his fashion: 'Plague take him! One never knows what he is at. I like better the way of the Wittenbergers; they say yes and no.'"[137]

[137] Walch, Luther's _Werke_, xxii., 1623-4.

The letter to Hoogstraaten, who had been the chief enemy of Reuchlin, was the boldest venture of Erasmus in this early stage of the Lutheran contest. It is a monument to the writer's skill in defending two sides of a question at once. It is dated in August, 1519, and begins[138]:

[138] iii.¹, 484.

"When I was reading, some time ago, the books in which your quarrel with Reuchlin is contained, I was often impelled to write to you, first by Christian love, then by the profession of our common studies and further by the special affection with which from a boy I have ever regarded your Order [!], and lastly by an uncommon attraction towards you, whom I understand to be a man of agreeable and courteous manners. That you are most eagerly devoted to our new studies, your writings clearly proclaim, which affect throughout refinement and elegance of diction and leave no doubt what your opinion is as to sound learning."

All this tempted Erasmus to give him some good advice; but then, on the other hand, he reflected that good advice is seldom acceptable and generally harms the adviser. The bishop of Cologne, however, had removed this scruple, and, if he tells the truth about Hoogstraaten, Erasmus thinks he may venture on some gentle admonition. At first he was dreadfully afflicted at Reuchlin's violence; but then friends told him that Reuchlin must have had terrible provocation, for that he was naturally the mildest of men. Then certain persons said hard things of Hoogstraaten, and finally, when Erasmus came to read him, he was compelled to say that he had liked him better before he began to defend himself. Then, a little while after, he had picked up "in another person's library" certain furious letters against Hoogstraaten and, little as these pleased him, he was able partly to excuse them, having read the pamphlets which had called them forth. He is not fighting Reuchlin's battle; rather Hoogstraaten's, for he is trying to tell him what will be for his advantage. If he answers that this is simply his office as inquisitor, very well; let him perform his office, but in such a manner that he may seem to everyone to be doing solely the service of Christ.

"Had you not done your duty when after so many years and such a storm of pamphlets you had persecuted a quite obscure man, who perhaps would never have been known at all, if you had not made him famous? and this after the Roman pontiff, learning that the affair was of such a kind that it was better to drop it than keep it in agitation any longer, had ordered silence. If any error dangerous to Christian piety appears, it is first to be carefully worked out by the discussions of learned men and then is to be reported to the bishop. When you have done that your part as inquisitor is done. You have made the inquiry and have brought it before the proper authorities. You are not called upon to stir up heaven and earth and to raise such tumults as these. Would that you had spent as much pains, as much money and time, in preaching the Gospel of Christ. If you had, I am greatly mistaken or Jacob Hoogstraaten would be a greater man than he is now, and his name would be far more honoured among all good men, or at least would be less hated. As it is, a great part of this hatred falls upon your Order, which, heavily burdened already by serious hostilities on many accounts, ought not to be weighed down by new ones."

Then follows a long defence of some words of Erasmus quoted by Hoogstraaten, without naming their author, but which seemed to draw him into the Reuchlin quarrel. "May Christ be as favourable to me as I am little favourable to the Cabbala!" He cares nothing for the Jews:

"Who is there among us who does not sufficiently hate this race of men? If it is a Christian thing to hate Jews, we are all good Christians enough! The one thing that makes all the trouble is the neglect of learning. You will be serving much better the cause, not only of the Dominican order, but also of Theology as a whole, if you will check by your authority the vacant abuse of certain persons who everywhere, in public and private discourses, in disputations, at banquets, and what is most serious, in public preaching are brawling against skill in the languages and against polite letters, mingling with their hatred of these, cries of 'Antichrist!' 'heresy!' and other violent words of this sort, whereas it is perfectly clear how greatly the Church is indebted to men skilled in languages and in eloquence. These studies do not hide the dignity of theology, but make it more plain; do not oppose it, but serve it. You would not straightway brand the art of music as heretical, if perchance some musician were to be apprehended as a backslider. The error of the man is to be condemned, but honour is still to be paid to his studies.... If Theology will join in doing honour to these studies she will in turn be adorned by them; but if she abuses and reviles them, I fear it will come to pass, as Paul says, that while they are assailing each other with mutual bites, they will simply be the death of each other."

In view of this correspondence of 1518-19 we may well consider here the much-discussed question of Erasmus' personal courage. Of all the charges brought against him on both sides that of timidity is the most frequent. Of all the explanations of his attitude toward the Reformation this is the most obvious and the most popular. If one can accept it, it settles promptly and once for all a multitude of perplexing questions. "Why did Erasmus not do or say this thing or that thing? He was afraid." In pursuance of our principle not to pretend to know the motive of every act of Erasmus' life, we shall not attempt to give one answer that will fit all cases, but shall venture to be a little Erasmian ourselves and try to view this matter from more than one side.

We shall have done our work but badly so far if we have not made it clear that Erasmus believed in his right to bring all human institutions to judgment at the bar of his own mind and conscience. Nothing which offended his own sense of right could be wholly acceptable to him. In so far he was an individual, and claimed his right as such. As an individual, with a mind and conscience of his own, he had a right, not only to have opinions upon every subject of human interest, but to express them. There was no call upon him, any more than upon a hundred others, to address himself thus to kings, princes, prelates, popes, inquisitors, and instruct them as to their duty in a great public crisis. He did this out of some impelling sense of duty and of right. If we may put any confidence in anything he ever said or did, we may rely upon this: that he felt himself the spokesman of a cause greater than himself,--the cause of a free and sane scholarship.

He was an individual, but of the fifteenth, not of the eighteenth century. The great word of deliverance to the modern mind, the "_cogito ergo sum_," had not yet been spoken. Man was still content to think of himself as hemmed in by standards of thought and action not created for him by his own mind, but given to him as a part of his human inheritance from the traditions of the past. No estimate of individual force can be complete without this limitation. If Erasmus had lived in the eighteenth century, he might have been a Voltaire; but he was not living in the eighteenth century. He saw where his time was out of joint, but he did not believe himself called upon to set it right. His function was only to point out the evils and, so far as he could, to appeal to those in authority to remedy them.

A man merely timid and nothing more could have found a far easier way to keep himself safe from any danger of persecution. He might simply have kept silent, and no one could have said it was his duty to speak out. It required a very considerable exercise of courage to say even as much as Erasmus was willing to say, in a day when Savonarola had so lately been done to death for merely attempting to set up in Florence a kingdom of Christ without the help of the pope. The arm of the Inquisition was long, its watch was vigilant, and its weapons were subtle. A man who valued merely his own peace of mind would hardly be likely to incur its displeasure. So far we may go in granting to Erasmus the quality of courage. He knew he was making enemies among powerful vested interests. If his principles of sound learning and reasonable criticism were to prevail, then, as he frequently said, the profits of a vast body of place-holders and traders in all sacred things were going to be diminished, and they would not suffer this without making a great demonstration of their power.

On the other hand, nothing was farther from his nature than any kind of open rupture with established forms of organisation. His hatred of war extended to the world of institutions. Revolution was abhorrent to him, because he thought its evils were greater than any advantage it might bring. The moment he fancied he saw this spectre of revolution, even in the far distance, he was impelled to modify and explain and warn until he had, for the moment, satisfied his sense of what was wise and prudent.

The genius of Erasmus was eminently critical, not constructive. His misfortune was to live at a crisis when the merely critical attitude would no longer serve. The struggle for new construction was beginning, and there was where Erasmus began to fail. Men were looking to him for leadership. Probably he grossly exaggerates the degree to which all the criticism of the day was charged upon him. That exaggeration was nothing more than we might expect from his nervous vanity and his uncontrollable impulse to make literature whenever he took pen in hand. Still it contains just this germ of truth: that the world of scholars felt his power and would have been glad to follow his lead if he had chosen to take a leader's place.

How natural the expectation was that Erasmus would do this we may see from an entry in the diary of Albert Dürer.[139] It was the year 1521. Luther on his return from Worms had been spirited away, no one knew whither. Rumours of his death were spread abroad and carried terror to his numerous followers. The simple-hearted painter who the year before had visited Erasmus in the Low Countries was overwhelmed with dismay. In the midst of his prosaic little jottings down of travels, paintings, presents, and petty bargainings he suddenly breaks out into a wail of despair:

[139] Albrecht Dürer's _Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederlande_. Ed. Fr. Leitschuh, 1884, pp. 83, 84.

"Ah God! is Luther dead; who will henceforth so clearly set forth the Gospel to us? Ah God! what might he not have written in the next ten or twenty years! Oh! all ye pious Christian men, help me earnestly to pray and mourn for this God-inspired man, and pray to God that he send us another enlightened man.

"Oh! Erasmus of Rotterdam, where art thou? Behold what the unjust tyranny of earthly power, the might of darkness, can do. Hear, thou champion of Christ! ride forth by the side of the Lord Christ; defend the truth; gain the martyr's crown! As it is, thou art but a frail old man. I have heard thee say thou hadst given thyself but a couple more years of active service; spend them, I pray, to the profit of the Gospel and the true Christian faith and believe me the gates of Hell, the See of Rome, as Christ has said, will not prevail against thee. And though thou becomest like thy master Christ and bearest shame from the liars of this world and so diest a little earlier, yet wilt thou so much the sooner pass from death unto life and be glorified in Christ. For if thou shalt drink of the cup he drank of, so wilt thou reign with him and judge with equity them that have done foolishness. O Erasmus! stand by us, that God may praise thee, as is written of David; for thou art mighty and thou canst slay Goliath; for God stands by the holy Christian churches, as he stands also among the Romans, according to his divine will."

Doubtless this heartfelt petition of the excellent Dürer represents the first impulse of many an honest soul who thought of Erasmus as a man straightforward as himself, and without any special knowledge of him jumped to the conclusion that here was the natural leader of a redeemed generation. No such illusion could long affect anyone who had come to know him in his true character.

It is somewhat difficult to imagine what Erasmus would have done if his personal safety had been seriously brought into question. It is not impossible that, if the issue of retraction or punishment had ever been squarely presented to him by any authority capable of enforcing its judgment, he might have risen to a higher plane of action than he was ever in fact called upon to reach. Such attacks as he had to meet were wholly from individuals, representing no recognised authority either of Church or State, and his defence was always that the highest persons in both these worlds had approved him. This judgment is at all events more favourable than Erasmus was sometimes inclined to demand for himself. Writing to Richard Pace in the critical year 1521 he says[140]:

[140] iii.¹, 651-C.

"What help could I give Luther, by making myself the companion of his danger, except that two men should perish instead of one? I cannot wonder enough at the temper in which he has written, and surely he has brought great enmity upon the friends of sound learning. He has given us many splendid sayings and warnings; but would that he had not spoiled his good things by his intolerable faults. But even if everything he wrote had been right, I had no intention of putting my head in danger for the sake of the truth. It isn't every one that has the strength for martyrdom, and I sadly fear that if any tumult should arise, I should follow the example of Peter. I obey the decrees of emperor and pope when they are right, because that is my duty; when they are wrong I bear it, because that is the safe plan. This I believe to be permitted even to good men if there is no hope of improvement."

There was precisely the point. Erasmus was ready to bear the ills of the world because he saw no power at hand disposed to remedy them. When others began to take the remedy into their own hands, then he could see in their efforts only riot, confusion, sedition, and all their attendant brood of horrors.