Chapter 11

A LIGHT OF THEOLOGY

1514-16

On the way to success and satisfaction--His Prior calls him back to Steyn--He refuses to comply--First journey to Basle: 1514-16--Cordial welcome in Germany--Johannes Froben--Editions of Jerome and the New Testament--A Councillor to Prince Charles: _Institutio Principis Christiani_, 1515--Definitive dispensation from Monastic Vows: 1517--Fame--Erasmus as a spiritual centre--His correspondence--Letter-writing as an art--Its dangers--A glorious age at hand

Erasmus had, as was usual with him, enveloped his departure from England with mystery. It was given out that he was going to Rome to redeem a pledge. Probably he had already determined to try his fortune in the Netherlands; not in Holland, but in the neighbourhood of the princely court in Brabant. The chief object of his journey, however, was to visit Froben's printing-office at Basle, personally to supervise the publication of the numerous works, old and new, which he brought with him, among them the material for his chosen task, the New Testament and Jerome, by which he hoped to effect the restoration of theology, which he had long felt to be his life-work. It is easy thus to imagine his anxiety when during the crossing he discovered that his hand-bag, containing the manuscripts, was found to have been taken on board another ship. He felt bereft, having lost the labour of so many years; a sorrow so great, he writes, as only parents can feel at the loss of their children.

To his joy, however, he found his manuscripts safe on the other side. At the castle of Hammes near Calais, he stayed for some days, the guest of Mountjoy. There, on 7 July, a letter found him, written on 18 April by his superior, the prior of Steyn, his old friend Servatius Rogerus, recalling him to the monastery after so many years of absence. The letter had already been in the hands of more than one prying person, before it reached him by mere chance.

It was a terrific blow, which struck him in the midst of his course to his highest aspirations. Erasmus took counsel for a day and then sent a refusal. To his old friend, in addressing whom he always found the most serious accents of his being, he wrote a letter which he meant to be a justification and which was self-contemplation, much deeper and more sincere than the one which, at a momentous turning-point of his life, had drawn from him his _Carmen Alpestre_.

He calls upon God to be his witness that he would follow the purest inspiration of his life. But to return to the monastery! He reminds Servatius of the circumstances under which he entered it, as they lived in his memory: the pressure of his relations, his false modesty. He points out to him how ill monastic life had suited his constitution, how it outraged his love of freedom, how detrimental it would be to his delicate health, if now resumed. Had he, then, lived a worse life in the world? Literature had kept him from many vices. His restless life could not redound to his dishonour, though only with diffidence did he dare to appeal to the examples of Solon, Pythagoras, St. Paul and his favourite Jerome. Had he not everywhere won recognition from friends and patrons? He enumerates them: cardinals, archbishops, bishops, Mountjoy, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and, lastly, John Colet. Was there, then, any objection to his works: the _Enchiridion_, the _Adagia_? (He did not mention the _Moria_.) The best was still to follow: Jerome and the New Testament. The fact that, since his stay in Italy, he had laid aside the habit of his order and wore a common clerical dress, he could excuse on a number of grounds.

The conclusion was: I shall not return to Holland. 'I know that I shall not be able to stand the air and the food there; all eyes will be directed to me. I shall return to the country, an old and grey man, who left it as a youth; I shall return a valetudinarian; I shall be exposed to the contempt even of the lowest, I, who am accustomed to be honoured even by the greatest.' 'It is not possible', he concludes, 'to speak out frankly in a letter. I am now going to Basle and thence to Rome, perhaps, but on my return I shall try to visit you ... I have heard of the deaths of William, Francis and Andrew (his old Dutch friends). Remember me to Master Henry and the others who live with you; I am disposed towards them as befits me. For those old tragedies I ascribe to my errors, or if you like to my fate. Do not omit to commend me to Christ in your prayers. If I knew for sure that it would be pleasing to Him that I should return to live with you, I should prepare for the journey this very day. Farewell, my former sweetest companion, now my venerable father.'

Underlying the immediate motives of his high theological aspirations, this refusal was doubtless actuated by his ancient, inveterate, psychological incentives of disgust and shame.[13]

* * * * *

Through the southern Netherlands, where he visited several friends and patrons and renewed his acquaintance with the University of Louvain, Erasmus turned to the Rhine and reached Basle in the second half of August 1514. There such pleasures of fame awaited him as he had never yet tasted. The German humanists hailed him as the light of the world--in letters, receptions and banquets. They were more solemn and enthusiastic than Erasmus had found the scholars of France, England and Italy, to say nothing of his compatriots; and they applauded him emphatically as being a German himself and an ornament of Germany. At his first meeting with Froben, Erasmus permitted himself the pleasure of a jocular deception: he pretended to be a friend and agent of himself, to enjoy to the full the joy of being recognized. The German environment was rather to his mind: '_My_ Germany, which to my regret and shame I got to know so late'.

Soon the work for which he had come was in full swing. He was in his element once more, as he had been at Venice six years before: working hard in a large printing-office, surrounded by scholars, who heaped upon him homage and kindness in those rare moments of leisure which he permitted himself. 'I move in a most agreeable Museon: so many men of learning, and of such exceptional learning!'

Some translations of the lesser works of Plutarch were published by Froben in August. The _Adagia_ was passing through the press again with corrections and additions, and the preface which was originally destined for Badius. At the same time Dirck Maertensz, at Louvain, was also at work for Erasmus, who had, on passing through the town, entrusted him with a collection of easy Latin texts; also M. Schürer at Strassburg, who prepared the _Parabolae sive similia_ for him. For Froben, too, Erasmus was engaged on a Seneca, which appeared in 1515, together with a work on Latin construction. But Jerome and the New Testament remained his chief occupation.

Jerome's works had been Erasmus's love in early youth, especially his letters. The plan of preparing a correct edition of the great Father of the Church was conceived in 1500, if not earlier, and he had worked at it ever since, at intervals. In 1513 he writes to Ammonius: 'My enthusiasm for emending and annotating Jerome is such that I feel as though inspired by some god. I have almost completely emended him already by collating many old manuscripts. And this I do at incredibly great expense.' In 1512 he negotiated with Badius about an edition of the letters. Froben's partner, Johannes Amerbach, who died before Erasmus's arrival, had been engaged for years on an edition of Jerome. Several scholars, Reuchlin among others, had assisted in the undertaking when Erasmus offered himself and all his material. He became the actual editor. Of the nine volumes, in which Froben published the work in 1516, the first four contained Erasmus's edition of Jerome's letters; the others had been corrected by him and provided with forewords.

His work upon the New Testament was, if possible, still nearer his heart. By its growth it had gradually changed its nature. Since the time when Valla's _Annotationes_ had directed his attention to textual criticism of the Vulgate, Erasmus had, probably during his second stay in England from 1505 to 1506, at the instance of Colet, made a new translation of the New Testament from the Greek original, which translation differed greatly from the Vulgate. Besides Colet, few had seen it. Later, Erasmus understood it was necessary to publish also a new edition of the Greek text, with his notes. As to this he had made a provisional arrangement with Froben, shortly after his arrival at Basle. Afterwards he considered that it would be better to have it printed in Italy, and was on the point of going there when, possibly persuaded by new offers from Froben, he suddenly changed his plan of travel and in the spring of 1515 made a short trip to England--probably, among other reasons, for the purpose of securing a copy of his translation of the New Testament, which he had left behind there. In the summer he was back at Basle and resumed the work in Froben's printing-office. In the beginning of 1516 the _Novum Instrumentum_ appeared, containing the purified Greek text with notes, together with a Latin translation in which Erasmus had altered too great deviations from the Vulgate.

From the moment of the appearance of two such important and, as regards the second, such daring theological works by Erasmus as Jerome and the New Testament, we may say that he had made himself the centre of the scientific study of divinity, as he was at the same time the centre and touchstone of classic erudition and literary taste. His authority constantly increased in all countries, his correspondence was prodigiously augmented.

But while his mental growth was accomplished, his financial position was not assured. The years 1515 to 1517 are among the most restless of his life; he is still looking out for every chance which presents itself, a canonry at Tournay, a prebend in England, a bishopric in Sicily, always half jocularly regretting the good chances he missed in former times, jesting about his pursuit of fortune, lamenting about his 'spouse, execrable poverty, which even yet I have not succeeded in shaking off my shoulders'. And, after all, ever more the victim of his own restlessness than of the disfavour of fate. He is now fifty years old and still he is, as he says, 'sowing without knowing what I shall reap'. This, however, only refers to his career, not to his life-work.

In the course of 1515 a new and promising patron, John le Sauvage, Chancellor of Brabant, had succeeded in procuring for him the title of councillor of the prince, the youthful Charles V. In the beginning of 1516 he was nominated: it was a mere title of honour, promising a yearly pension of 200 florins, which, however, was paid but irregularly. To habilitate himself as a councillor of the prince, Erasmus wrote the _Institutio Principis Christiani_, a treatise about the education of a prince, which in accordance with Erasmus's nature and inclination deals rather with moral than with political matters, and is in striking contrast with that other work, written some years earlier, _il Principe_ by Machiavelli.

When his work at Basle ceased for the time being, in the spring of 1516, Erasmus journeyed to the Netherlands. At Brussels he met the chancellor, who, in addition to the prince's pension, procured him a prebend at Courtray, which, like the English benefice mentioned above, was compounded for by money payments. At Antwerp lived one of the great friends who helped in his support all his life: Peter Gilles, the young town clerk, in whose house he stayed as often as he came to Antwerp. Peter Gilles is the man who figures in More's _Utopia_ as the person in whose garden the sailor tells his experiences; it was in these days that Gilles helped Dirck Maertensz, at Louvain, to pass the first edition of the _Utopia_ through the press. Later Quentin Metsys was to paint him and Erasmus, joined in a diptych; a present for Thomas More and for us a vivid memorial of one of the best things Erasmus ever knew: this triple friendship.

In the summer of 1516 Erasmus made another short trip to England. He stayed with More, saw Colet again, also Warham, Fisher, and the other friends. But it was not to visit old friends that he went there. A pressing and delicate matter impelled him. Now that prebends and church dignities began to be presented to him, it was more urgent than ever that the impediments in the way of a free ecclesiastical career should be permanently obviated. He was provided with a dispensation of Pope Julius II, authorizing him to accept English prebends, and another exempting him from the obligation of wearing the habit of his order. But both were of limited scope, and insufficient. The fervent impatience with which he conducted this matter of his definite discharge from the order makes it probable that, as Dr. Allen presumes, the threat of his recall to Steyn had, since his refusal to Servatius in 1514, hung over his head. There was nothing he feared and detested so much.

With his friend Ammonius he drew up, in London, a very elaborate paper, addressed to the apostolic chancery, in which he recounts the story of his own life as that of one Florentius: his half-enforced entrance to the monastery, the troubles which monastic life had brought him, the circumstances which had induced him to lay his monk's dress aside. It is a passionate apology, pathetic and ornate. The letter, as we know it, does not contain a direct request. In an appendix at the end, written in cipher, of which he sent the key in sympathetic ink in another letter, the chancery was requested to obviate the impediments which Erasmus's illegitimate birth placed in the way of his promotion. The addressee, Lambertus Grunnius, apostolic secretary, was most probably an imaginary personage.[14] So much mystery did Erasmus use when his vital interests were at stake.

The Bishop of Worcester, Silvestro Gigli, who was setting out to the Lateran Council, as the envoy of England, took upon himself to deliver the letter and to plead Erasmus's cause. Erasmus, having meanwhile at the end of August returned to the Netherlands, awaited the upshot of his kind offices in the greatest suspense. The matter was finally settled in January 1517. In two letters bearing the signature of Sadolet, Leo X condoned Erasmus's transgressions of ecclesiastical law, relieved him of the obligation to wear the dress of his order, allowed him to live in the world and authorized him to hold church benefices in spite of any disqualifications arising from illegitimacy of birth.

So much his great fame had now achieved. The Pope had moreover accepted the dedication of the edition of the New Testament, and had, through Sadolet, expressed himself in very gracious terms about Erasmus's work in general. Rome itself seemed to further his endeavours in all respects.

Erasmus now thought of establishing himself permanently in the Netherlands, to which everything pointed. Louvain seemed to be the most suitable abode, the centre of studies, where he had already spent two years in former times. But Louvain did not attract him. It was the stronghold of conservative theology. Martin van Dorp, a Dutchman like Erasmus, and professor of divinity at Louvain, had, in 1514, in the name of his faculty, rebuked Erasmus in a letter for the audacity of the _Praise of Folly_, his derision of divines and also his temerity in correcting the text of the New Testament. Erasmus had defended himself elaborately. At present war was being waged in a much wider field: for or against Reuchlin, the great Hebrew scholar, for whom the authors of the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_ had so sensationally taken up the cudgels. At Louvain Erasmus was regarded with the same suspicion with which he distrusted Dorp and the other Louvain divines. He stayed during the remainder of 1516 and the first half of 1517 at Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, often in the house of Peter Gilles. In February 1517, there came tempting offers from France. Budaeus, Cop, Étienne Poncher, Bishop of Paris, wrote to him that the king, the youthful Francis I, would present him with a generous prebend if he would come to Paris. Erasmus, always shy of being tied down, only wrote polite, evasive answers, and did not go.

* * * * *

In the meantime he received the news of the papal absolution. In connection with this he had, once more, to visit England, little dreaming that it would be the last time he should set foot on British soil. In Ammonius's house of Saint Stephen's Chapel at Westminster on 9 April 1517, the ceremony of absolution took place, ridding Erasmus for good of the nightmare which had oppressed him since his youth. At last he was free!

Invitations and specious promises now came to him from all sides. Mountjoy and Wolsey spoke of high ecclesiastical honours which awaited him in England. Budaeus kept pressing him to remove to France. Cardinal Ximenes wanted to attach him to the University of Alcalá, in Spain. The Duke of Saxony offered him a chair at Leipzig. Pirckheimer boasted of the perfections of the free imperial city of Nuremberg. Erasmus, meanwhile, overwhelmed again with the labour of writing and editing, according to his wont, did not definitely decline any of these offers; neither did he accept any. He always wanted to keep all his strings on his bow at the same time. In the early summer of 1517 he was asked to accompany the court of the youthful Charles, who was on the point of leaving the Netherlands for Spain. But he declined. His departure to Spain would have meant a long interruption of immediate contact with the great publishing centres, Basle, Louvain, Strassburg, Paris, and that, in turn, would have meant postponement of his life-work. When, in the beginning of July, the prince set out for Middelburg, there to take ship for Spain, Erasmus started for Louvain.

He was thus destined to go to this university environment, although it displeased him in so many respects. There he would have academic duties, young latinists would follow him about to get their poems and letters corrected by him and all those divines, whom he distrusted, would watch him at close quarters. But it was only to be for a few months. 'I have removed to Louvain', he writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 'till I shall decide which residence is best suited to old age, which is already knocking at the gate importunately.'

As it turned out, he was to spend four years (1517-21) at Louvain. His life was now becoming more stationary, but because of outward circumstances rather than of inward quiet. He kept deliberating all those years whether he should go to England, Germany or France, hoping at last to find the brilliant position which he had always coveted and never had been able or willing to grasp.

The years 1516-18 may be called the culmination of Erasmus's career. Applauding crowds surrounded him more and more. The minds of men were seemingly prepared for something great to happen and they looked to Erasmus as the man! At Brussels, he was continually bothered with visits from Spaniards, Italians and Germans who wanted to boast of their interviews with him. The Spaniards, with their verbose solemnity, particularly bored him. Most exuberant of all were the eulogies with which the German humanists greeted him in their letters. This had begun already on his first journey to Basle in 1514. 'Great Rotterdamer', 'ornament of Germany', 'ornament of the world' were some of the simplest effusions. Town councils waited upon him, presents of wine and public banquets were of common occurrence. No one expresses himself so hyperbolically as the jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg. 'I am pointed out in public', he asserts, 'as the man who has received a letter from Erasmus.' 'Thrice greatest hero, you great Jove' is a moderate apostrophe for him. 'The Swiss', Zwingli writes in 1516, 'account it a great glory to have seen Erasmus.' 'I know and I teach nothing but Erasmus now,' writes Wolfgang Capito. Ulrich von Hutten and Henry Glareanus both imagine themselves placed beside Erasmus, as Alcibiades stood beside Socrates. And Beatus Rhenanus devotes to him a life of earnest admiration and helpfulness that was to prove of much more value than these exuberant panegyrics. There is an element of national exaltation in this German enthusiasm for Erasmus: it is the violently stimulated mood into which Luther's word will fall anon.

The other nations also chimed in with praise, though a little later and a little more soberly. Colet and Tunstall promise him immortality, Étienne Poncher exalts him above the celebrated Italian humanists, Germain de Brie declares that French scholars have ceased reading any authors but Erasmus, and Budaeus announces that all Western Christendom resounds with his name.

This increase of glory manifested itself in different ways. Almost every year the rumour of his death was spread abroad, malignantly, as he himself thinks. Again, all sorts of writings were ascribed to him in which he had no share whatever, amongst others the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_.

But, above all, his correspondence increased immensely. The time was long since past when he asked More to procure him more correspondents. Letters now kept pouring in to him, from all sides, beseeching him to reply. A former pupil laments with tears that he cannot show a single note written by Erasmus. Scholars respectfully sought an introduction from one of his friends, before venturing to address him. In this respect Erasmus was a man of heroic benevolence, and tried to answer what he could, although so overwhelmed by letters every day that he hardly found time to read them. 'If I do not answer, I seem unkind,' says Erasmus, and that thought was intolerable.

We should bear in mind that letter-writing, at that time, occupied more or less the place of the newspaper at present, or rather of the literary monthly, which arose fairly directly out of erudite correspondence. It was, as in antiquity--which in this respect was imitated better and more profitably, perhaps, than in any other sphere--an art. Even before 1500 Erasmus had, at Paris, described that art in the treatise, _De conscribendis epistolis_, which was to appear in print in 1522. People wrote, as a rule, with a view to later publication, for a wider circle, or at any rate, with the certainty that the recipient would show the letter to others. A fine Latin letter was a gem, which a man envied his neighbour. Erasmus writes to Budaeus: 'Tunstall has devoured your letter to me and re-read it as many as three or four times; I had literally to tear it from his hands.'

Unfortunately fate did not always take into consideration the author's intentions as to publicity, semi-publicity or strict secrecy. Often letters passed through many hands before reaching their destination, as did Servatius's letter to Erasmus in 1514. 'Do be careful about letters,' he writes more than once; 'waylayers are on the lookout to intercept them.' Yet, with the curious precipitation that characterizes him, Erasmus was often very careless as to what he wrote. From an early age he preserved and cared for his letters, yet nevertheless, through his itinerant life, many were lost. He could not control their publication. As early as 1509 a friend sent him a manuscript volume of his own (Erasmus's) letters, that he had picked up for sale at Rome. Erasmus had it burnt at once. Since 1515 he himself superintended the publication of his letters; at first only a few important ones; afterwards in 1516 a selection of letters from friends to him, and after that ever larger collections till, at the end of his life, there appeared a new collection almost every year. No article was so much in demand on the book market as letters by Erasmus, and no wonder. They were models of excellent style, tasteful Latin, witty expression and elegant erudition.

The semi-private, semi-public character of the letters often made them compromising. What one could say to a friend in confidence might possibly injure when many read it. Erasmus, who never was aware how injuriously he expressed himself, repeatedly gave rise to misunderstanding and estrangement. Manners, so to say, had not yet adapted themselves to the new art of printing, which increased the publicity of the written word a thousandfold. Only gradually under this new influence was the separation effected between the public word, intended for the press, and the private communication, which remains in writing and is read only by the recipient.

Meanwhile, with the growth of Erasmus's fame, his earlier writings, too, had risen in the public estimation. The great success of the _Enchiridion militis christiani_ had begun about 1515, when the times were much riper for it than eleven years before. 'The _Moria_ is embraced as the highest wisdom,' writes John Watson to him in 1516. In the same year we find a word used, for the first time, which expresses better than anything else how much Erasmus had become a centre of authority: _Erasmiani_. So his German friends called themselves, according to Johannes Sapidus. More than a year later Dr. Johannes Eck employs the word still in a rather friendly sense, as a generally current term: 'all scholars in Germany are Erasmians,' he says. But Erasmus did not like the word. 'I find nothing in myself', he replies, 'why anyone should wish to be an Erasmicus, and, altogether, I hate those party names. We are all followers of Christ, and to His glory we all drudge, each for his part.' But he knows that now the question is: for or against him! From the brilliant latinist and the man of wit of his prime he had become the international pivot on which the civilization of his age hinged. He could not help beginning to feel himself the brain, the heart and the conscience of his times. It might even appear to him that he was called to speak the great redeeming word or, perhaps, that he had already spoken it. The faith in an easy triumph of pure knowledge and Christian meekness in a near future speaks from the preface of Erasmus's edition of the New Testament.

How clear did the future look in those years! In this period Erasmus repeatedly reverts to the glad motif of a golden age, which is on the point of dawning. Perennial peace is before the door. The highest princes of the world, Francis I of France, Charles, King of Spain, Henry VIII of England, and the emperor Maximilian have ensured peace by the strongest ties. Uprightness and Christian piety will flourish together with the revival of letters and the sciences. As at a given signal the mightiest minds conspire to restore a high standard of culture. We may congratulate the age, it will be a golden one.

But Erasmus does not sound this note long. It is heard for the last time in 1519; after which the dream of universal happiness about to dawn gives place to the usual complaint about the badness of the times everywhere.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] For a full translation of this important letter see pp. 212-18.

[14] The name Grunnius may have been taken from Jerome's epistles, where it is a nickname for a certain Ruffinus, whom Jerome disliked very much. It appears again in a letter of 5 March 1531, LB. X 1590 A.