CHAPTER XIV.

I. THE SALE OF INDULGENCES (1517-18).

While Erasmus in 1517 was hard at work at the revision of his New Testament, publishing the first instalment of his Paraphrases,[652] recommending the ‘Utopia’ and the ‘Christian Prince’ to the perusal of princes and their courtiers,[653] expressing to his friends at the Papal Court his trust that under Leo X. Rome herself might become the centre of peace and religion,[654]--while Erasmus was thus working on hopefully, preparing the way, as he thought, for a peaceful reform, Europe was suddenly brought, by the scandalous conduct of princes and the Pope, to the very brink of revolution.

[Sidenote: Leo X. wants money.]

Leo X. was in want of money. He had no scruple to tax the Christian world for selfish family purposes any more than his predecessors in the Papal chair; but times had altered, and he thought it prudent, instead of doing so openly, to avoid scandal, by cloaking his crime in double folds of imposture and deception. It mattered little that a few shrewd men might suspect the dishonesty of the pretexts put forth, if only the multitude could be sufficiently deluded to make them part with their money.

[Sidenote: Tenths and indulgences.]

A war against the Turks could be proposed and abandoned the moment the ‘tenths’ demanded to pay its expenses were safe in the Papal exchequer. If _indulgences_ were granted to all who should contribute towards the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, the profits could easily be devoted to more pressing uses. So, in the spring of 1517, the payment of a tenth was demanded from all the clergy of Europe, and commissions were at the same time issued for the sale of indulgences to the laity. Some opposition was to be expected from disaffected princes; but experience on former occasions had proved that these would be easily bribed to connive at any exactions from their subjects by the promise of a share in the spoil.[655]

Hence the project seemed to the Papal mind justified on Machiavellian principles, and, judged by the precedents of the past, likely to succeed.

[Sidenote: Satire on indulgences in the ‘Praise of Folly.’]

But the seeds of opposition to Machiavellian projects of this kind had recently been widely sown. More in his ‘Utopia,’ and Erasmus in his ‘Christian Prince,’ had only a few months before spoken plain words to people and princes on taxation and unjust exactions. Erasmus, too, in his ‘Praise of Folly,’ had spoken contemptuously of the _crime of false pardons_, in other words, of Papal _indulgences_.[656] And though Lystrius, in his recent marginal note on this passage, had explained that Papal indulgences are not included in this sweeping censure, ‘_unless they be false_, it being no part of our business to dispute of the pontifical power,’ yet he had almost made matters worse by adding:--

‘This one thing I know, that what Christ promised concerning the remission of sins is more certain than what is promised by men, especially since this whole affair [of indulgences] is of recent date and invention. Finally a great many people, relying on these pardons, are encouraged in crime, and never think of changing their lives.’[657]

How eagerly the ‘Praise of Folly’ was bought and read by the people has already been seen. New editions had recently been exceedingly numerous, for the notes of Lystrius had opened the eyes of many who had not fully caught its drift before. An edition in French had moreover appeared, and (Erasmus wrote) it was thereby made intelligible even to monks, who hitherto had been too deeply drowned in sensual indulgence to care anything about it, whose ignorance of Latin was such that they could not even understand the Psalms, which they were constantly mumbling over in a senseless routine.[658]

[Sidenote: Luther’s Theses.]

Silently and unseen the leaven had been working; and when, on October 31, Luther posted up his theses on the church-door at Wittemberg, defying Tetzel and his wicked trade, he was but the spokesman, perhaps unconsciously to himself, of the grumbling dissent of Europe.

[Sidenote: Other opposition to indulgences.]

Discontent against the proceedings of the Papal Court was not by any means confined to Wittemberg. It had got wind that the tenths and indulgences were resorted to for private family purposes of the Pope’s; that they were part of a system of imposture and deception; and hence they encountered opposition, political as well as religious, in more quarters than one.

[Sidenote: European princes bribed by a share in the spoil.]

[Sidenote: Opposition of German princes.]

Unhappily, the Pope had reckoned with reason on the connivance of princes. Their exchequers were more than usually empty, and they had proved for the most part glad enough to sell their consciences, and the interests of their subjects, at the price of a share in the spoil. Had it been otherwise the Papal collectors would have been forbidden entrance into the dominions of many a prince besides Frederic of Saxony! The Pope offered Henry VIII. a fourth of the moneys received from the sale of indulgences in England, and the English Ambassador suggested that one-third would be a reasonable proportion.[659] When in December 1515 the Pope had asked for a tenth from the English clergy, he had found it needful to abate his demand by one-half, and even this was refused by Convocation on the ground that they had already paid six-tenths to enable the King to defend the patrimony of St. Peter, and that the victories of Henry VIII. had removed all dangers from the Roman See;[660] and no sooner was there any talk of the new tenth of 1517, than the Papal collector in England was immediately sworn, probably as a precautionary measure, not to send any money to Rome.[661] Prince Charles, in anticipation of the amount to be collected in his Spanish dominions, obtained a loan of 175,000 ducats. The King of France made a purse for himself out of the collections in France,[662] and by the Pope’s express orders paid over a part of what was left direct to the Pope’s nephew Lorenzo,[663] for whom it was rumoured in select circles that the money was required. The Elector of Maintz also received a share of the spoil taken from his subjects.[664] The Emperor had made common cause with the Pope, in hopes of attaining thereby the realisation of long-indulged dreams of ambition, and all Europe would have been thus bought over;[665] had not the princes of the empire unexpectedly refused to follow his leading, and to grant any taxes on their subjects without their consent.[666]

[Sidenote: Political condition of Europe.]

[Sidenote: Political scandals.]

These facts will be sufficient to show that the question of Papal taxation was becoming a serious political question. The ascendency of ecclesiastics in the courts of princes had, moreover, again and again been the subject of complaint on the part of the Oxford Reformers. These Papal scandals revealed a state not only of ecclesiastical, but also of political rottenness surpassing anything which had yet been seen. Church and State, the Pope and the Emperor, princes and their ecclesiastical advisers, were seen wedded in an unholy alliance against the rights of the people. Ecclesiastical influence, and the practice of Machiavellian principles, had brought Christendom into a condition of anarchy in which every man’s hand was against his neighbour. The politics of Europe were in greater confusion than ever. Not only was the Emperor in league with the Pope against the interests of Europe, but he was obtaining money from England under the pretext of siding with England against France and Prince Charles, while he was at the same moment making a secret treaty with France and preparing the way for the succession of Charles to the empire. The three young and aspiring princes--Henry, Francis, and Charles--were eyeing one another with shifting suspicions, and jealously plotting against one another in the dark. Europe in the meantime was kept in a chronic state of warfare. Scotland was kept by France always on the point of quarrelling with England. The Duke of Gueldres and his ‘black band’ were committing cruel depredations in the Netherlands to the destruction of the peace and prosperity of an industrious people.[667] Franz von Sickingen was engaged in what those who suffered from it spoke of as ‘inhuman private warfare.’[668] Such was the state of Germany, that, to quote the words of Ranke, ‘there was hardly a part of the country which was not either distracted by private wars, troubled by internal divisions, or terrified by the danger of an attack from some neighbouring power.’[669] The administration of civil and criminal law was equally bad. Again, to quote from the same historian, ‘The criminal under ban found shelter and protection; and as the other courts of justice were in no better condition--in all, incapable judges, impunity for misdoers, and abuses without end--disquiet and tumult had broken out in all parts. Neither by land nor water were the ways safe: ... the husbandman, by whose labours all classes were fed, was ruined; widows and orphans were deserted; not a pilgrim or a messenger or a tradesman could travel along the roads....’[670] Such, according to Ranke, were the complaints of the German people in the Diet of Maintz in 1517, and the Diet separated without even suggesting a remedy.[671]

[Sidenote: Erasmus meditates a journey southward, and then returning to England.]

It was from a continent thus brought, by the madness of the Pope and princes, to the very brink of both a civil and a religious revolution, that Erasmus looked longingly to England as ‘out of the world, and perhaps the least corrupted portion of it’[672]--as that retreat in which, after one more journey southwards, to print the second edition of his New Testament and ‘some other works,’ he hoped at length to spend his declining years in peaceful retirement. The following portion of a letter to Colet will also show how fully he saw through the policy of Leo X., hated the madness of princes, and shared the indignation of Luther at the sale of indulgences.

_Erasmus to Colet._

[Sidenote: Erasmus on indulgences.]

[Sidenote: He sees through the Pope’s pretexts.]

‘I am obliged, in order to print the New Testament and some other books, to go either to Basle, or, more probably, I think, to _Venice_: for I am deterred from Basle partly by the plague and partly by the death of Lachnerus, whose pecuniary aid was almost indispensable to the work. “What,” you will say, “are you, an old man, in delicate health, going to undertake so laborious a journey!--in these times, too, than which none worse have been seen for six hundred years; while everywhere lawless robbery abounds!” But why do you say so? I was _born_ to this fate; if I _die_, I die in a work which, unless I am mistaken, is not altogether a bad one. But if, this last stroke of my work being accomplished according to my intention, I should chance to return, I have made up my mind to spend the remainder of my life with you, in retirement from a world which is everywhere rotten. Ecclesiastical hypocrites rule in the courts of princes. The court of Rome clearly has lost all sense of shame; for _what could be more shameless than these continued indulgences_? Now a war against the Turks is put forth as a pretext, when the real purpose is to drive the Spaniards from Naples; for Lorenzo, the Pope’s nephew, who has married the daughter of the King of Navarre, lays claim to Campania. If these turmoils continue, the rule of the Turks would be easier to bear than that of these Christians.’[673]

[Sidenote: ‘Julius de Cœlo exclusus.’]

Erasmus wrote to Warham in precisely the same strain,[674] and shortly afterwards, on March 5, 1518, in a letter to More, he exclaimed, ‘The Pope and some princes are playing a fresh game under the pretext of a horrid war against the Turks. Oh, wretched Turks! unless this is too much like bluster on the part of us Christians.’ And, he added, ‘They write to me from Cologne that a book has been printed by somebody, describing “Pope Julius disputing with Peter at the gate of paradise.” The author’s name is not mentioned. The German press will not cease to be violent until some law shall restrain their boldness, to the detriment also of us, who are labouring to benefit mankind.’[675]

This satire, entitled ‘Julius de Cœlo exclusus,’ was eagerly purchased and widely read,[676] and was one of a series of satirical pamphlets upon the Papacy and the policy of the Papal party, for which the way had been prepared by the ‘Praise of Folly’ and the ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.’ It was one of the signs of the times.

II. MORE DRAWN INTO THE SERVICE OF HENRY VIII.--ERASMUS LEAVES GERMANY FOR BASLE (1518).

It was at this juncture--at this crisis it may well be called--in European politics, that More was induced at length, by the earnest solicitations of Henry VIII., to attach himself to his court under circumstances which deserve attention.

[Sidenote: ‘Evil May-day.’]

In the spring of 1517, a frenzy more dangerous than that in which the men of Coventry indulged had seized the London apprentices. Not wholly without excuse, they had risen in arms against the merchant strangers, who were very numerous in London, and to some of whom commercial privileges and licenses had, perhaps, been too freely granted by a minister anxious to increase his revenue. Thus had resulted the riots of ‘the evil May-day,’ and More had some part to play in the restoration of order in the city.

[Sidenote: More’s embassy to Calais.]

Then, in August 1517, he was sent on an embassy to Calais with Wingfield and Knight. Their mission ostensibly was to settle disputes between French and English merchants, but probably its real import was quite as much to pave the way for more important negotiations.

[Sidenote: Henry VIII. meditates giving up his French conquests.]

No sooner had English statesmen opened their eyes to the fact that Maximilian had been playing into the hands of the French King against the interests of England, than, with the natural perversity of men who had no settled principles to guide their international policy, they began themselves, out of sheer jealousy, once more to court the favour of the sovereign against whom they had so long been fruitlessly plotting. They began secretly to seek to bring about a French alliance with England, which should out-manœuvre the recent treaty of the Emperor with France. Thus, by a sudden and unlooked-for turn in continental politics, was brought about the curious fact that, within a few months of the publication of the ‘Utopia,’ in which More had advocated such a policy, the surrender of Henry’s recent conquests in France was under discussion. By February in the following year (1518) not only was Tournay restored to France, but a marriage had been arranged between the infant Dauphin of France and the infant Princess Mary of England. This of course involved the abandonment, at all events for a time, of Henry’s personal claims on the crown of France.[677] What share More had in the conversion of the King to this new policy remains untold; but it is remarkable that within so short a time his Utopian counsels should have been so far practically followed, and that he himself should have been chosen as one of the ambassadors to Calais to prepare the way for it.

[Sidenote: More’s Utopian counsels followed.]

It would be impossible here to enter into a detailed examination of the political relations of England; suffice it to say, that a pacific policy seems to have gained the upper hand for the moment, and that even Wolsey himself seems to have admitted the necessity of so far following More’s Utopian counsels as to cut down the annual expenditure of the kingdom, and to husband her resources.[678]

It may have been only a momentary lull in the King’s stormy passion for war, but it lasted long enough to admit of the renewal of the King’s endeavours to draw More into his service, and of More’s yielding at last to Royal persuasions.

[Sidenote: More drawn into court.]

Roper tells us that the immediate occasion of his doing so was the great ability shown by him in the conduct of a suit respecting a ‘great ship’ belonging to the Pope, which the King claimed for a forfeiture. In connection with which, Roper tells us that More, ‘in defence on the Pope’s side, argued so learnedly, that both was the aforesaid forfeiture restored to the Pope, and himself among all the hearers, for his upright and commendable demeanour therein, so greatly renowned that for no entreaty would the King from henceforth be induced any longer to forbear his service.’[679]

What passed between the King and his new courtier on this occasion, and upon what conditions More yielded to the King’s entreaties, Roper does not mention in this connection; but that he maintained his independence of thought and action, may be inferred from the fact that eighteen years after, when in peril of his life from Royal displeasure, he had occasion upon his knees to remind his sovereign of ‘the most godly words that his Highness spake unto him at his first coming into his noble service--the most virtuous lesson that ever a prince taught his servant--willing him _first to look to God, and after God unto him_!’[680]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Henry VIII. rises again in the favour of Erasmus.]

Now that Henry VIII. had apparently changed his policy, now that he was giving up his pretensions to the crown of France, and no longer talking of invading her shores, now that he seemed to be calling to his counsels the very man who, next to Colet, had spoken more plainly than anyone else in condemnation of that warlike policy in which Henry VIII. had so long indulged, now that Henry VIII. himself seemed to be returning to his first love of letters and the ‘new learning,’ the hopes of Erasmus began once more to rely upon _him_ rather than upon any other of the princes of Europe. Erasmus had lost his confidence in Leo X. Prince Charles was now going to Spain, leaving the Netherlands in a state of confusion and anarchy, a prey to the devastations of the ‘black band,’ and for the present little could reasonably be expected from him, notwithstanding all the good advice Erasmus had given him in the ‘Christian Prince.’

While Henry VIII. had been wild after military glory, and had seemed ready to sacrifice everything to this dominant passion, Erasmus had thought it useless to waste words upon him which he would not heed; but the war being over in September 1517, he had sent him a copy of the ‘Christian Prince,’ and encouraged his royal endeavours to still the tempests which during the past few years had so violently raged in human affairs. Nor is it without significance that in this letter to Henry VIII. we find him using warm words in commendation of a trait of the King’s character, which Erasmus said he admired above all others; viz. this,--that he delighted ‘in the converse of prudent and learned men, _especially of those who did not know how to speak just what they thought would please_.’[681]

Under other circumstances such words written to Henry VIII. might have seemed like satire or perhaps empty adulation, but written as they were while Henry was as yet unsuccessfully trying to induce More to enter his service, and only a few months after the publication of the ‘Utopia,’ they do not read like words of flattery.

When in writing to Fisher he had spoken of England as ‘out of the world, or perhaps the least corrupted portion of it,’ he had honestly expressed his real feelings at a time when, whilst continental affairs were in hopeless confusion and anarchy, there were at least some hopeful symptoms that a better policy would be adopted for the future by Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: Erasmus thinks More will serve the best of kings.]

It was strictly in accordance with the same feelings that, on hearing that More had yielded to the King’s wishes, he wrote to him on April 24, 1518, not to congratulate him on the step he had taken, but to tell him that the only thing which consoled him in regard to it was the consideration that he would serve under ‘the best of kings.’ And from this remark he passed by a natural train of thought to speak of the dangers which would attend his own projected journey southwards through Germany, and bitterly to allude to the ‘_novel clemency_’ of the Dukes of Cleves, Juliers, and Nassau, who had been secretly conspiring to disperse in safety the ‘black band’ of political ruffians, at whose depredations they had too long connived. Had their scheme been successful, it would have cast loose these lawless ruffians upon society without even the control of their robber leaders. But, as it was, the people took the matter into their own hands, and disconcerted the conspiracy of their princes. The peasantry, exasperated by constant depredations, and thirsting for the destruction of the robbers, had risen in a body and surrounded them. A chance blast from a trumpet had revealed their whereabouts, and in the _mêlée_ which followed, more than a thousand were cut to pieces; the rest escaped to continue their work of plunder.[682] It was not remarkable if, living in the midst of anarchy such as this, Erasmus should envy the comparative security of England, and even for the moment be inclined to praise the harsh justice with which English robbers, instead of being secretly protected and encouraged, were sent to the gallows.[683]

[Sidenote: Erasmus going to Basle.]

Erasmus had decided upon going to Basle, and in writing to Beatus Rhenanus[684] to inform him that he intended to do so in the course of the summer, ‘if it should be safe to travel through Germany,’ he spoke of the condition of Germany as ‘_worse than that of the infernal regions_,’ on account of the numbers of robbers; and asked what princes could be about to allow such a state of things to exist.

‘All sense of shame,’ he wrote, ‘has vanished altogether from human affairs. I see that the very height of tyranny has been reached. The Pope and kings count the people not as men, but _as cattle in the market_.’

[Sidenote: Erasmus leaves Louvain for Basle.]

Once more, on May 1, Erasmus wrote to Colet before leaving for Basle, to tell him that he really was going, in spite of the dangers of travel through a country full of disbanded ruffians; to complain of the cruel clemency of princes who spare scoundrels and cut-throats, and yet do not spare their own subjects, to whom those who oppress their people are dearer than the people themselves; and to reiterate his intention to fly back to his English friends as soon as his work at Basle should be accomplished. And then he ventured on the journey.[685]