CHAPTER XVI.

I. ERASMUS DOES NOT DIE (1518).

The monks of Cologne were disappointed. Erasmus did not die. His illness turned out not to be the plague. After four weeks’ nursing at the good printer’s house, he was well enough to be removed to his own lodgings within the precincts of the college. Thence he wrote to Beatus Rhenanus in these words:--

_Erasmus to Beatus Rhenanus._[718]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Erasmus describes his illness.]

‘My dear Beatus,--Who would have believed that this frail delicate body, now weaker from increasing age, after the toils of so many journeys, after the labours of so many studies, should have survived such an illness? You know how hard I had been working at Basle just before.... A suspicion had crossed my mind that this year would prove fatal to me, one malady succeeded so rapidly upon another, and each worse than the one which preceded it. When the disease was at its height, I neither felt distressed with desire of life, nor did I tremble at the fear of death. All my hope was in Christ alone, and I prayed for nothing to him except that he would do what he thought best for me. Formerly, when a youth, I remember I used to tremble at the very name of death!...’

Had Erasmus fallen a victim to the plague and died at the house of Martins the printer, as the friar had reported, and the convivial monks had too readily believed, it does not seem likely that his death would have been as dark and godless as they fancied it might have been. As it was, instead of dying without lighted tapers and crucifix and transubstantiated wafer, or, in monkish jargon, ‘_sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus_,’ their enemy _still lived_, and the disappointed monks, instead of ill-concealed rejoicings over his death, were obliged to content themselves for many years to come with muttering in quite another tone, ‘It were good for that man if he had never been born.’[719]

II. MORE AT THE COURT OF HENRY VIII. (1518).

[Sidenote: The sweating sickness.]

[Sidenote: Death of Ammonius.]

While the plague had been raging in Germany, the sweating sickness had been continuing its ravages in England. Before More left for Calais it had struck down, after a few days’ illness, Ammonius, with whom Erasmus and More had long enjoyed intimate friendship. Wolsey also had narrowly escaped with his life, after repeated attacks. When More returned from the embassy he found the sickness still raging. In the spring of 1518 the court was removed to Abingdon, to escape the contagion of the great city; and whilst there, More, who now was obliged to follow the King wherever he might go, had to busy himself with precautionary measures to prevent its spread in Oxford, where it had made its appearance.[720]

[Sidenote: Greeks and Trojans at Oxford.]

Whilst at Abingdon, he was called upon, also, to interfere with his influence to quiet a foolish excitement which had seized the students at Oxford. It was not the spread of the sweating sickness which had caused their alarm; but the increasing taste for the study of Greek had roused the fears of divines of the old school. The enemies of the ‘new learning’ had raised a faction against it. The students had taken sides, calling themselves Greeks and Trojans, and, not content with wordy warfare, they had come to open and public insult. At length, the most virulent abuse had been poured upon the Greek language and literature, even from the university pulpit, by an impudent and ignorant preacher. He had denounced all who favoured Greek studies as ‘heretics;’ in his coarse phraseology, those who taught the obnoxious language were ‘_diabolos maximos_’ and its students ‘_diabolos minutulos_.’

More, upon hearing what had been passing, wrote a letter of indignant but respectful remonstrance to the university authorities.[721] He and Pace interested the King also in the affair, and at their suggestion he took occasion to express his royal pleasure that the students ‘would do well to devote themselves with energy and spirit to the study of Greek literature;’ and so, says Erasmus, ‘silence was imposed upon these brawlers.’[722]

[Sidenote: A foolish preacher at Court.]

On another occasion the King and his courtiers had attended Divine service. The court preacher had, like the Oxford divine, indulged in abuse of Greek literature and the modern school of interpretation--having Erasmus and his New Testament in his eye. Pace looked at the King to see what he thought of it. The King answered his look with a satirical smile. After the sermon the divine was ordered to attend upon the King. It was arranged that More should reply to the arguments he had urged against Greek literature. After he had done so, the divine, instead of replying to his arguments, dropped down on his knees before the King, and simply prayed for forgiveness, urging, however, by way of extenuating his fault, that he was carried away by the spirit in his sermon when he poured forth all this abuse of the Greek language. ‘But,’ the King here observed, ‘that spirit was not the spirit of _Christ_, but the spirit of _foolishness_.’ He then asked the preacher what works of Erasmus he had read. He had not read any. ‘Then,’ said the King, ‘you prove yourself to be a fool, for you condemn what you have never read.’ ‘I read once,’ replied the divine, ‘a thing called the “Moria.”’... Pace here suggested that there was a decided congruity between that and the preacher. And finally the preacher himself relented so far as to admit:--‘After all I am not so _very_ hostile to Greek letters, because they were derived from the Hebrew.’ The King, wondering at the distinguished folly of the man, bade him retire, but with strict injunctions never again to preach at Court![723]

So far, then, from More’s new position having extinguished his own opinions or changed his views, he had the satisfaction of being able now and then to advance the interests of the ‘new learning,’ and to act the part of its ‘friend at court.’

III. THE EVENING OF COLET’S LIFE (1518-19).

[Sidenote: The sweating sickness.]

The sweating sickness continued its ravages in England, striking down one here and another there with merciless rapidity. It was generally fatal on the first day. If the patient survived twenty-four hours he was looked upon as out of danger. But it was liable to recur, and sometimes attacked the same person four times in succession. This was the case with Cardinal Wolsey; whilst several of the royal retinue were attacked and carried off at once, Wolsey’s strong constitution carried him through four successive attacks.[724]

[Sidenote: Colet three times attacked by it.]

During the period of its ravages Colet was three times attacked by it and survived, but with a constitution so shattered, and with symptoms so premonitory of consumptive tendencies, as to suggest to him that the time might not be far distant when he too must follow after his twenty-one brothers and sisters, and leave his aged mother the survivor of all her children.

Meanwhile an accidental ray of light falls here and there upon the otherwise obscure life of Colet during these years of peril, revealing little pictures, too beautiful in their simple consistency with all else we know of him to be passed by unheeded.

The first glimpse we get of Colet reveals him engaged in the careful and final completion of the rules and statutes by which his school was to be governed after his own death. Having spent a good part of his life and his fortune in the foundation of this school, as the best means of promoting the cause which he had so deeply at heart, one might have expected that he would have tried, in fixing his statutes, to give permanence and perpetuity to his own views. This is what most people try to do by endowments of this kind.

No sooner do most reformers clear away a little ground, and discover what they take to be truths, than they attempt, by organising a sect, founding endowments, and framing articles and trust-deeds, to secure the permanent tradition of their own views to posterity in the form in which they are apprehended by themselves. Hence, in the very act of striking off the fetters of the past, they are often forging the fetters of the future. Even the Protestant Reformers, whilst on the one hand bravely breaking the yoke under which their ancestors had lived in bondage, ended by fixing another on the neck of their posterity. Those who remained in the old bondage found themselves, as the result of the Reformation, bound still tighter under Tridentine decrees: whilst those who had joined the exodus, and entered the promised land of the Reformers, found it to be a land of almost narrower boundaries than the one they had left. Freed from Papal thraldom it might be, but bound down by an Augustinian theology as rigid and dogmatic as that from which they had escaped.

If Colet did not do likewise, he resisted with singular wisdom and success a temptation which besets every one under his circumstances. That Colet strove to found no sect of his own has already been seen. If the movement which he had done so much to set agoing had produced its fruits--if a school or party had been the result--he had not called it, or felt it to be, in any way his _own_; he might call it ‘Erasmican’ in joke, and leave Erasmus indignantly to repudiate ‘that name of division;’ but Erasmus expressed the view of Colet as well as his own when he said to the abbot, ‘Why should we try to narrow what Christ intended to be broad?’

Perfectly consistent with this feeling, Colet did not now show any anxiety to perpetuate his own particular views by means of the power which, as the founder of the endowment, he had a perfect right to exercise. The truth was, I think, that he retained the spirit of free enquiry--the mind open to light from whatever direction--to the last, in full faith that the facts of Christianity--in so far as they are facts--must have everything to gain and nothing to lose from the discovery of other facts in other fields of knowledge. As I have before pointed out, the Oxford Reformers felt that they were living in an age of discovery and progress; they never dreamed that they had reached finality either in knowledge or creed; it would have been a sad blow to their hopes if they had been told that they had. They took a humble view of their own attainments, and had faith in the future.

[Sidenote: Colet settles the statutes of his school.]

In this spirit do we find Colet in these days of peril from the sweating sickness, and conscious that his shattered health must soon give way, settling the statutes of his school with a wisdom seldom surpassed even in more modern times.

First, with great practical shrewdness, instead of putting his school under the charge of ecclesiastics or clergymen, he intrusted it entirely ‘to the most honest and faithful fellowship of the _Mercers_ of London.’ As Erasmus expressed it, ‘of the whole concern, he set in charge, not a bishop, not a chapter, not dignitaries, but married citizens of established reputation.’[725] Time had been when Colet had regarded ‘marriage’ as almost an unholy thing. But he had seen much both of the church and the world since then; and as perhaps his faith in Dionysian speculations had lessened, his English common sense had more and more asserted its own. He had, as already mentioned, wisely advised Thomas More to marry. In his ‘Right fruitful Admonition concerning the Order of a good Christian Man’s Life,’ from which I have quoted before, he had said, ‘If thou intend to marry, or be married, and hast a good wife, thank our Lord therefor, for she is of his sending.’ So now he intrusted his school to ‘married citizens;’ and Erasmus adds, ‘when he was asked the reason, he said, that nothing indeed is certain in human affairs, but that yet amongst _these_ he had found the least corruption.[726]... He used to declare that he had nowhere found less corrupt morals than among married people, because natural affection, the care of their children, and domestic duties, are like so many rails which keep them from sliding into all kinds of vice.’[727]

In defining the duties and salaries of the masters of his school, he provided expressly that they might be married men (and those chosen by him actually were so);[728] but they were to hold their office ‘in no rome of continuance and perpetuity, but upon their duty in the school.’ The chaplain was to be ‘some good, honest, and virtuous man, and to help to teach in the school.’

Respecting the children he expressed his desire to be that they should not be received into the school until they could read and write fairly, and explained ‘what they shall be taught’ in general terms; ‘for,’ said he, ‘it passeth my wit to devise and determine in particular.’

Then, last of all, he added the following clause, headed, ‘Liberty to Declare the Statutes:’--

[Sidenote: Colet wisely gives power to alter the statutes.]

‘And notwithstanding these statutes and ordinances before written, in which I have declared my mind and will; yet because in time to come many things may and shall survive and grow by many occasions and causes which at the making of this book was not possible to come to mind; in consideration of the assured truth and circumspect wisdom and faithful goodness of the most honest and substantial fellowship of the Mercery of London, to whom I have committed all the care of the school, and trusting in their fidelity and love that they have to God and man and to the school; and also believing verily that they shall always dread the great wrath of God:--_Both all this that is said, and all that is not said, which hereafter shall come into my mind while I live to be said, I leave it wholly to their discretion and charity_: I mean of the wardens and assistances of the fellowship, with such other counsel as they shall call unto them--good lettered and learned men--_they to add and diminish of this book and to supply it in every default_; and also to declare in it every obscurity and darkness as time and place and just occasion shall require; calling the dreadful God to look upon them in all such business, and exhorting them to fear the terrible judgment of God, which seeth in darkness, and shall render to every man according to his works; and finally, praying the great Lord of mercy, for their faithful dealing in this matter, now and always to send unto them in this world much wealth and prosperity, and after this life much joy and glory.’[729]

This done, he wrote in the Book of Statutes the following memorandum:--‘This book I, John Colet, delivered into the hands of Master Lilly the 18th day of June 1518, that he may keep it and observe it in the school.’[730]

[Sidenote: Colet prepares his tomb at St. Paul’s.]

Having completed the statutes of his school, Colet turned his attention to a few other final arrangements, including certain reforms in the church of St. Paul’s.[731] He had already prepared a simple tomb for himself at the side of the choir of the great cathedral with which his labours had been so closely connected, and the simple inscription, ‘Johannes Coletus,’ was already carved on the plain monumental stone which was to cover his grave. Thus he was ready to depart whenever the summons should arrive. But the pale messenger came not yet.

Meanwhile Colet retained his interest in passing events. If he seemed to take little part in public affairs, it was not owing to his want of interest in them. It would almost seem that he sympathised much during this quiet season with Luther’s attack upon Indulgences, and was a reader of those of his works--chiefly pamphlets--which had reached England. This, however, rests only upon the remark of Erasmus, that he was in the habit of reading heretical books, declaring that he often got more good from them than from the Schoolmen;[732] and the further statement made incidentally by Erasmus to Luther, that there were in England some men in the highest position who thought well of his works.[733] His close retirement may be accounted for as well by his shattered health as by the circumstance that Bishop Fitzjames still lived in his grey hairs to harass him.

It was probably to secure a safe retreat in emergency beyond the jurisdiction of this bigoted bishop that Colet was building his ‘nest,’ as he called it, within the precincts of the Charterhouse--not in London, but at Sheen, near Richmond. Whether he ever really entered this ‘nest,’ so long in course of preparation, does not appear. Perhaps there was no need for it.

[Sidenote: Colet receives a letter from Marquard von Hatstein.]

Little as of late he had mixed himself up with public affairs, he was still looked up to by those who, through the report of Erasmus, recognised his almost apostolic piety and wisdom. Thus, in his quiet retirement, he received a letter from Marquard von Hatstein, one of the canons of Maintz, a connection of Ulrich von Hutten’s,[734] mentioned by Erasmus as ‘a most excellent young man;’[735] one of the little group of men who, under the lead of the Archbishop of Maintz, had boldly taken the side of Reuchlin against his persecutors--a letter which shows so true an appreciation of Colet’s character and relation to the movement which was now known as ‘Erasmian,’ that it must have been exceedingly grateful to the feelings of Colet, now that he had set his house in order, and was ready to leave in other hands the work which he himself had commenced.

_Marquard von Hatstein to John Colet._[736]

‘I have often thought with admiration of _your_ blessedness, who born to wealth and of so illustrious a family have added to these gifts of fortune manners and intellectual culture abundantly corresponding therewith. For such is your learning, piety, and manner of life, such lastly your Christian constancy, that notwithstanding all these gifts of fortune, you seem to care for little but that you may run in the path of Christ in so noble a spirit, that you are not surpassed by any even of those who call themselves “mendicants.” For they in many things simulate and dissimulate for the sake of sensual pleasures.

‘When recently the trumpet of cruel war sounded so terribly, how did you hold up against it the image of Christ! the olive-branch of peace! You exhorted us to tolerance, to concord, to the yielding up of our goods for the good of a brother, instead of invading one another’s rights. You told us that there was no cause of war between Christians, who are bound together by holy ties in a love more than fraternal. And many other things of a like nature did you urge, with so great authority, that I may truly say that the virtue of Christ thus set forth by Colet was seen from afar. And thus did you discomfit the dark designs of your enemies. Men raging against the truth, you conquered with the mildness of an apostle. You opposed your gentleness to their insane violence. Through your innocence you escaped from any harm, even though by their numbers (for there is always the most abundant crop of what is bad) they were able to override your better opinion. With a skill like that with which Homer published the praises of Achilles, Erasmus has studiously held up to the admiration of the world and of posterity the name of England, and especially of Colet, whom he has so described that there is not a good man of any nation who does not honour you. I seem to myself to see that each of you owes much to the other, but which of the two owes most to the other I am doubtful. For he must have received good from you: seeing that you are hardly likely to have been magnified by his colouring pen. You, however, if I may freely say what I think, do seem to owe some thanks to him for making publicly known those virtues which before were unknown to us. Still I fancy you are not the less victor in the matter of benefits conferred, since you have blessed Erasmus, a stranger to England, otherwise an incomparable man, with so many friends--Mountjoy, More, Linacre, Tunstal, &c....

‘Having commenced my theological studies, I have learned from the conversation and writings of Erasmus to regard you as my exemplar. I wish I could really follow you as closely as I long to do. I long, not only to improve myself in letters, but to lead a holier life. Farewell in Christ. VI. Cal. Maii, Anno MDXX.’ (should be probably 1519).[737]

IV. MORE’S CONVERSION ATTEMPTED BY THE MONKS (1519).

Erasmus was as much hated by the monks in England as by the monks at Cologne; but they found their attempts to stir up ill-feeling against him checkmated by the influence of More and his friends.

More’s father was known to be a good Catholic, and probably to belong, as an old man with conservative tendencies was likely to do, to the orthodox party. He himself was now too near the royal ear to be a harmless adherent of the new learning--as they had learned to their cost before now. He was so popular, too, with all parties! If only he could be detached from Erasmus and brought over to their own side, what a triumph it would be!

[Sidenote: More receives a letter from a monk.]

So an anonymous letter was written by a monk to More, expressing great solicitude for his welfare, and fears lest he should be corrupted by too great intimacy with Erasmus; lest he should be led astray, by too great love of his writings, into the adoption of his new and foreign doctrines!

The good monk was particularly shocked at the hints thrown out by Erasmus in his writings, that, after all, the holy doctors and fathers of the Church were fallible.

He took up the vulgar objections which the letter of Dorpius, and a still more recent attack upon Erasmus, by an Englishman named Edward Lee, had put into every one’s mouth, and tried to persuade More to be wise in time, lest he should become infected with the Erasmian poison.

More’s letter in reply to the over-anxious monk has been preserved.[738]

[Sidenote: His reply.]

He indignantly repelled the insinuation that he was in danger of contamination from his intimacy with Erasmus, whose New Testament the very Pope had sanctioned, who lived in the nearest intimacy with such men as Colet, Fisher, and Warham; to say nothing of Mountjoy, Tunstal, Pace, and Grocyn. Those who knew Erasmus best, loved him most.

Then turning to the charge made against Erasmus, that he denied the infallibility of the fathers, More wrote:--

[Sidenote: Alludes to Luther’s clinging by tooth and nail to Augustine.]

‘Do _you_ deny that they ever made mistakes? I put it to you--when Augustine thought that Jerome had mistranslated a passage, and Jerome defended what he had done, was not _one of the two_ mistaken? When Augustine asserted that the Septuagint is to be taken as an indubitably faithful translation, and Jerome denied it, and asserted that its translators had fallen into errors, was not one of the two mistaken? When Augustine, in support of his view, adduced the story of the wonderful agreement of the different translations produced by the inspired translators writing in separate cells, and Jerome laughed at the story as absurd, was not one of the two mistaken? When Jerome, writing on the Epistle to the Galatians, translated its meaning to be that, Peter was blamed by Paul for dissimulating, and Augustine denied it, was not one of them mistaken?... Augustine asserts that demons and angels also have material and substantial bodies. I doubt not that even _you_ deny this! He asserts that infants dying without baptism are consigned to physical torments in eternal punishment--how many are there who believe this now? unless it be that Luther, _clinging by tooth and nail to the doctrine of Augustine_, should be induced to revive this antiquated notion....’[739]

I have quoted this passage from More’s letter because it shows clearly, not only how fully More had adopted the position taken up by Erasmus, but also how fully his eyes were open to the fact, that the rising reformer of Wittemberg did ‘_cling by tooth and nail to the doctrine of Augustine_,’ and was likely, by doing so, to be led astray into some of the harsh views, and, as he thought, obvious errors of that Holy Father.

[Sidenote: But his own view not Pelagian.]

At the same time the following passage may be quoted as proof that, in rejecting the Augustinian creed, More and his friends did not run into the other extreme of Pelagianism.

He had told the monk at the beginning of his letter, that after he had shown how safe was the ground upon which Erasmus and he were walking in the valley, he would turn round and assail the lofty but tottering citadel, from which the monk looked down upon them with so proud a sense of security. So after he had disposed of the monk’s arguments, he began:--

‘Into what factions--into how many sects is the order cut up! Then, what tumults, what tragedies arise about little differences in the colour or mode of girding the monastic habit, or some matter of ceremony which, if not altogether despicable, is at all events not so important as to warrant the banishment of all charity. How many, too, are there (and this is surely worst of all) who, relying on the assurances of their monastic profession, inwardly raise their crests so high that they seem to themselves to move in the heavens, and reclining among the solar rays, to look down from on high upon the people creeping on the ground like ants, looking down thus, not only on the ungodly, but also upon all who are without the circle of the enclosure of their order, so that for the most part nothing is holy but what they do themselves.... They make more of things which appertain specially to the religious order, than of those valueless and very humble things which are in no way peculiar to them but entirely common to all Christian people, such as the vulgar virtues--faith, hope, charity, the fear of God, humility, and others of the kind. Nor, indeed, is this a new thing. Nay, it is what Christ long ago denounced to his chosen people, “Ye make the word of God of none effect through your traditions.”...

‘There are multitudes enough who would be afraid that the devil would come upon them and take them alive to hell, if, forsooth, they were to set aside their usual garb, whom nothing can move when they are grasping at _money_.

[Sidenote: More relates an anecdote.]

‘Are there only a few, think you, who would deem it a crime to be expiated with many tears, if they were to omit a line in their hourly prayers, and yet have no fearful scruple at all, when they profane themselves by the worst and most infamous lies?... Indeed, I once knew a man devoted to the religious life--one of that class who would nowadays be thought “most religious.” This man, by no means a novice, but one who had passed many years in what they call regular observances, and had advanced so far in them that he was even set over a convent--but, nevertheless, more careless of the precepts of God than of monastic rites--slid down from one crime to another, till at length he went so far as to meditate the most atrocious of all crimes--a crime execrable beyond belief--and what is more, not a simple crime, but one pregnant with manifold guilt, for he even purposed to add sacrilege to murders and parricide. When this man thought himself insufficient without accomplices for the perpetration of so many crimes, he associated with himself some ruffians and cutpurses. They committed the most horrible crimes which I ever heard of. They were all of them thrown together into prison. I do not wish to give the details, and I abstain from the names of the criminals, lest I should renew anything of past hatred to an innocent order.

‘But to proceed to narrate the circumstances on account of which I have mentioned this affair. I heard from those wicked assassins that, when they came to that religious man in his chamber, they had not spoken of the crime; but being introduced into his private chapel, they appeased the sacred Virgin by a salutation on their bent knees according to custom. _This being properly accomplished, they at length rose purely and piously to perpetrate their crime!_...

‘Now, I have not mentioned this with the view either to defame the religion of the monks with these crimes, since the same soil may bring forth useful herbs and pestiferous weeds, or to condemn the rites of those who occasionally salute the sacred Virgin, than which nothing is more beneficial; but because people trust so much in such things that under the very security which they thus feel they give themselves up to crime.

‘From reflections such as these you may learn the lesson which the occasion suggests. That you should not grow too proud of your own sect--nothing could be more fatal. Nor trust in private observances. That you should _place your hopes rather in the Christian faith than in your own_; and not trust in those things which you can do _for yourself_, but in those which you cannot do _without God’s help_. You can fast by yourself, you can keep vigils by yourself, you can say prayers by yourself--and you can do these things by the devil! But, verily, Christian faith, which Christ Jesus truly said to be in spirit; Christian hope, which, despairing of its own merits, confides only in the mercy of God; Christian charity, which is not puffed up, is not made angry, does not seek its own glory,--none, indeed, can attain these except by the grace and gracious help of God alone.

‘By how much the more you place your trust in those virtues which are common to Christendom, by so much the less will you have faith in private ceremonies, whether those of your order or your own; and by how much the less you trust in them by so much the more will they be useful. For then at last God will esteem you a faithful servant, when you shall count yourself good for nothing.’

That these passages prove that More and his friends had not set aside monasticism, or even Mariolatry, as altogether wrong, cannot be too clearly recognised. In an age of transition it is the _direction_ of the thoughts and aims of men which constitutes the radical difference or agreement between them, rather than the exact distance that each may have travelled on the same road. Luther himself had not yet in his hatred of ceremonies travelled so far as the Oxford Reformers, though in after years he went farther, because he travelled faster than they did. Upon these questions they were very much practically at one. And if here and there the three friends observed in Luther an impetuosity which carried him into extremes, much as they might differ from some of his statements, and the tone he sometimes adopted, their respect for his moral earnestness, and their perception of the amount of exasperation to which his hot nature was exposed, made them readily pardon what they could not approve. They had as yet little idea--though More’s letter showed that they had _some_--much less than Luther himself had--how practically important was the difference between them. For the moment their two orbits seemed almost to coincide. They seemed even to be approaching each other. They seemed to meet in their common hatred of the formalism of the monks, in their common attempt to grasp at the spirit--the reality--of religion through its forms and shadows. They had little idea that they were crossing each other’s path, and that ere long, as each pursued his course, the divergence would become wider and wider.

V. ERASMUS AND THE REFORMERS OF WITTEMBERG (1519).

[Sidenote: Luther protected by the Elector of Saxony.]

In the summer of 1518 Melanchthon had joined Luther at Wittemberg. During the remainder of that year the controversy on Indulgences was going on. Rome had taken the matter up. Luther had appeared before the Papal legate Cajetan, and from his harsh demand of simple recantation, had shrunk with horror and fled back into Saxony. The legate had threatened that Rome would never let the matter drop, and urged the Elector of Saxony to send Luther to Rome. But he had made common cause with the poor monk, and refused to banish him. Leo X. was afraid to quarrel with Frederic of Saxony, and under the auspices of Miltitz, aided by the moderation of Luther and the firmness of his protector, a little oil was thrown on the troubled waters. But in the spring of 1519, when the Papal tenths came to be exacted, murmurs were heard again on all sides. Hutten commenced his series of satirical pamphlets, and it became evident that the storm was not permanently laid, the lull might last for a while, but fresh tempests were ahead.[740]

It was during this interval of uncertainty that the first intercourse took place between Erasmus and the Wittemberg Reformers.

[Sidenote: Melanchthon’s opinion of Erasmus.]

Letters had already passed between Melanchthon and Erasmus; they had been known to one another by name for some years, and were on the best of terms. Thus Melanchthon, in writing to a friend of his in January 1519, spoke of Erasmus as ‘the first to call back theology to her fountain-head,’[741] and of Luther as belonging to the same school. He freely admitted how much greater was the learning of Erasmus than that of Luther, and when in March he received from Froben a copy of the ‘Method of True Theology,’ told Spalatin that ‘this illustrious man seemed to have touched upon many points in the same strain as Luther, for in these things,’ he said, ‘they agreed;’ adding, that Erasmus was ‘freer than Luther, because he had the assistance of real and sacred learning;’ and he mentioned this as an illustration of what he had just been saying, ‘that every good man thought well of their cause.’[742]

[Sidenote: Erasmus’s opinion of Melanchthon.]

Erasmus, on his side, also spoke in the highest possible terms of Melanchthon. He had great hopes from his youth that he might long survive himself, and if he did, he predicted that his name would throw that of Erasmus into the shade.[743]

Whilst, however, Erasmus thus freely acknowledged the friendship and merits of Melanchthon, he was careful not to commit himself to an approval of all that Luther was doing. And surely it was wise; for that his strong Augustinian tendencies were well known to the Oxford Reformers, has already been seen in More’s letter to the anonymous monk.

[Sidenote: What he says of Luther to Melanchthon.]

On April 2, 1519, in reply to a letter from Melanchthon[744] mentioning Luther’s desire of his approval, Erasmus wrote, that ‘while every one of his friends honoured Luther’s private life, _as to his doctrine there were different opinions_. He himself had not read Luther’s books. Luther had censured some things deservedly, but he wished that he had done so as happily as he had freely.’ At the end of this letter he expressed his affectionate anxiety lest Melanchthon should be wearing himself out by too hard study.[745]

[Sidenote: Luther writes to Erasmus.]

On March 28, Luther had written a letter to Erasmus, which probably crossed this on the way between Wittemberg and Louvain. It was a letter in which he had not made the slightest allusion to any difference of opinion between himself and Erasmus. On the contrary, he had spoken as though he held Erasmus in the greatest possible honour. He had spoken of his having a place, and ‘reigning’ in the hearts of all who really loved literature. He had been reading the new preface to the ‘Enchiridion,’ and from it and from his friend Fabricius Capito he had learned that Erasmus had not only heard but approved of what he had done respecting indulgences. And with much genuine humility he had begged Erasmus to acknowledge him, however ignorant and unknown to fame, buried as it were in his cell, _as a brother in Christ_, by whom he himself was held in the greatest affection and regard.[746]

[Sidenote: Erasmus replies to Luther.]

To this Erasmus, on May 30, replied, in a letter in which he _did_ address Luther as a ‘brother in Christ.’ He said he had not yet read the books which had created so much clamour, and therefore could not judge of them. He had looked into his Commentaries on the Psalms, was much pleased with them, and hoped they would prove useful. Some of the best men in England, even some at Louvain, thought well of him and his writings. As to himself, he devoted himself, as he had done all along, to the revival of good literature [including first and foremost the Scriptures]. And it seemed to him, he said, that more good would come of courteous modesty than of impetuosity. It was by this that Christ drew the world under his influence. It was thus that Paul abrogated that Judaical law, treating it all as typical. It were better to exclaim against _abuses_ of pontifical authority than against the Popes themselves. ‘May the Lord Jesus daily impart to you abundantly’ (he concluded) ‘of his own Spirit to his own glory and the public good.’[747]

Thus he seems to have said the same things to both Melanchthon and Luther.

In the same strain, also, he wrote to others _about_ them.

[Sidenote: What Erasmus says about Luther to others.]

To the exasperated monks, who charged him with aiding and abetting Luther in writing the books which had caused such a tumult, he replied that, as he had not read them, he could not even express a decided opinion upon them.[748]

To Cardinal Wolsey he wrote, that he had only read a few pages of Luther’s books, not because he disliked them, but because he was so closely occupied with his own. Luther’s life was such that even his enemies could not find anything to slander. Germany had young men of learning and eloquence who would, he foretold, bring her great glory. Eobanus, Hutten, and Beatus Rhenanus were the only ones he knew personally. If these German students were too free in their criticisms, it should be remembered to what constant exasperation they had been submitted in all manner of ways, both public and private.[749]

To Hutten, who was perhaps the most hot-headed of these German young men, and whose satire had already proved itself more trenchant and bitter than any in which Erasmus had ever indulged, he urged moderation, and said that for himself he had rather spend a month in trying to explain St. Paul or the Gospels than waste a day in quarrelling.[750]

[Sidenote: Erasmus is writing his ‘Paraphrases.’]

Erasmus was, in fact, working hard at his ‘Paraphrases.’ That on the Epistle to the Romans had been already printed in 1517, in the very best type of Thierry Martins, and forming a small and very readable octavo volume. Those on the next seven epistles[751] now followed in quick succession in the spring of 1519. How fully the heart of Erasmus was in his work is incidentally shown by the fact that, being obliged to write a pamphlet in defence of a former publication of his, he cut it short by saying that he had rather be working at the Paraphrase on the ‘Galatians,’ which he was just completing.[752] And Erasmus was preparing, in addition to these Paraphrases on the Epistles, others, at Colet’s desire, more lengthy, on the Gospels. Here was work enough surely on hand to excuse him from entering into the Lutheran controversy--work precisely of that kind, moreover, which he had told Luther that he was devoting himself to. It was the work which, when he was longing for rest, and his zeal for the moment was threatening to flag, Colet had urged him to go on with through good and evil fortune; and which he himself, in his letter to Servatius, had said he was determined to work at to the day of his death. It is clear that he was in earnest when he told Hutten that he ‘had rather spend a month in expounding St. Paul than waste a day in quarrelling.’

It seems to me, therefore, that the attitude of Erasmus towards Luther was that, not of a coward, but of a man who knew what he was about.

VI. ELECTION OF CHARLES V. TO THE EMPIRE (1519).

On January 12, 1519, Maximilian had died. It is not within the scope of this history to trace the steps and countersteps, the plots and counterplots, the bribery and treachery--the Machiavellian means and devices--in which nearly every sovereign in Europe was implicated, to the detriment of both conscience and exchequer, and which ended in placing Charles V., then absent in Spain, at the head of the German empire. With the accession of the new emperor commenced a new political era, which belongs to the history of the Protestant Reformation, and not to that of the Oxford Reformers.

Erasmus was too hard at work at his Paraphrases to admit of his meddling in politics, even though he himself had an honorary connection with the court of the prince who was the successful candidate, and had written his ‘_Christian Prince_’ expressly for his benefit.

Colet was living in retirement, suffering from shattered health, too closely watched by the restless eye of his bishop to take any part in public affairs.[753]

Even More, though now a constant attendant upon Henry VIII., was probably not initiated into continental secrets, and even had he shared all the counsels of Wolsey, any part which he might play would be purely executive, and belong rather to the history of his own political career than to that of the fellow-work of the three friends. He probably had little or nothing really to do with Wolsey’s plottings to secure the empire for his master, in order that he might, on the death of Leo X., secure the Papal chair for himself. But there was one circumstance connected with the election of the Emperor of too much significance to be passed over in this history without distinct mention--the part which Duke Frederic of Saxony played in it; and this shall simply be alluded to in the words of Erasmus himself.

[Sidenote: Noble conduct of the Elector of Saxony.]

‘The Duke Frederic of Saxony has written twice to me in reply to my letter. Luther is supported solely by his protection. He says that he has acted thus for the sake rather of the _cause_ than of the person [of Luther]. He adds that he will not lend himself to the oppression of innocence in his dominions by the malice of those who seek their own, and not the things of Christ.’ And Erasmus goes on to say, that ‘when the imperial crown was offered to Frederic of Saxony by all [the electors], with great magnanimity he had refused it, the very day before Charles was elected. And’ (he writes) ‘Charles never would have worn the imperial title had it not been declined by Frederic, whose glory in refusing the honour was greater than if he had accepted it. When he was asked who he thought should be elected, he said that no one seemed to him able to bear the weight of so great a name but Charles. In the same noble spirit he firmly refused the 30,000 florins offered him by our people [_i.e._ the agents of Charles]. When he was urged that at least he would allow 10,000 florins to be given to his servants, “They may take them” (he said) “if they like, but no one shall remain my servant another day who accepts a single piece of gold.”’ ‘The next day’ (continues Erasmus) ‘he took horse and departed, lest they should continue to bother him. This was related to me as entirely reliable, by the Bishop of Liege, who was present at the Imperial Diet.’[754]

Well did the conduct of the Elector of Saxony merit the admiration of Erasmus. Would that Charles V. had merited as fully the patronage of the wise Elector!

It was a significant fact that, after all the bribery and wholesale corruption by which this election was marked, the only prince who in the event had a chance of success, other than Charles, was the one man who was superior to corruption, and would not allow even his servants to be bribed, who did not covet the imperial dignity for himself, but firmly refused it when offered to him--the protector of Luther against the Pope and the empire--the hope and strength of the Protestant Revolution which was now so rapidly approaching.

VII. THE HUSSITES OF BOHEMIA (1519).

While the election of the Emperor was proceeding the famous disputation at Leipzig took place, which commenced between Carlstadt and Eck, upon the question of grace and free-will, and was continued between Eck and Luther on the primacy of the Pope--that remarkable occasion on which, after pressing Eck into a declaration that all the Greek and other Christians who did not acknowledge the primacy of the Pope, were heretics and lost, Luther himself was finally driven to assert, probably as much to his own surprise as to that of his auditors, ‘that among the articles on which the Council of Constance grounded its condemnation of John Huss, were some fundamentally Christian and evangelical.’

[Sidenote: Luther finds he is a Hussite.]

Well might Duke George mutter in astonishment ‘_a plague upon it_.’ A few months later Luther himself, after pondering the matter over and over with his New Testament and Melanchthon, was obliged to exclaim, ‘I taught Huss’s opinions without knowing them, and so did Staupitz: we are all of us Hussites without knowing it! Paul and _Augustine_ are Hussites! I do not know what to think for amazement.’[755]

[Sidenote: Letter from Schlechta to Erasmus.]

[Sidenote: The Pyghards of Bohemia.]

Meanwhile, before Luther had come to the conclusion _that he himself_, with St. Augustine, was a _Hussite_, Erasmus had been in correspondence with Johannes Schlechta, a Bohemian,[756] on the religious dissensions which existed in Bohemia and Moravia, and with special reference to the _Hussite_ sect of the ‘_Pyghards_,’ or United Brethren.[757] Schlechta had informed Erasmus that, setting aside Jews and unbelieving philosophers who denied the immortality of the soul, the people were divided into three sects:--First, the Papal party, including most of the magistrates and nobility. Secondly, a party to which he himself belonged, who acknowledged the Papacy, but differed from other good Catholics in dispensing the Sacrament in both kinds to the laity, and in chanting the Epistle and Gospel at mass, not in Latin, but in the vulgar tongue; to which customs they most pertinaciously adhered, on the ground that they were confirmed and approved in the Council of Basle (1431).[758] Thirdly, the sect of the ‘Pyghards’ [or ‘United Brethren’], who since the times of John Zisca[759] had maintained their ground through much bloodshed and violence. These, he said, regarded the Pope and clergy as manifest ‘Anti-christs;’ the Pope himself sometimes as the ‘Beast,’ and sometimes as the ‘Harlot’ of the Apocalypse. They chose rude and ignorant and even married laymen as their priests and bishops. They called each other ‘brothers and sisters.’ They acknowledged no writings as of authority but the Old and New Testaments. Fathers and Schoolmen they counted nothing by. Their priests used no vestments, and no forms of prayer but ‘the Lord’s Prayer.’ They thought lightly of the sacraments; used no salt or holy water--only pure water--in baptism, and rejected extreme unction. They saw only simple bread and wine, no divinity, in the Sacrament of the Altar, and regarded these only as signs representing and commemorative of the death of Christ, who they said was in heaven. The suffrages of the saints and prayers for the dead they held to be vain and absurd, and also auricular confession and penance. Vigils and fasts they looked upon as hypocritical. The festivals of the Virgin, Apostles, and Saints, they said, were invented by the idle; Sunday, Christmas, Good Friday, and Pentecost they observed. Other pernicious dogmas of theirs were not worthy of mention to Erasmus. If, however (his Bohemian friend added), the first two of these three sects could but be united, then perhaps this vicious sect, now much on the increase, owing to recent ecclesiastical scandals, might, by the aid of the King, be either _exterminated_ or forced into a better form of creed and religion. Erasmus, he concluded, had now the whole circumstances of these Bohemian divisions before him.[760]

Here, then, Erasmus was brought into direct contact with the opinions of the very sect to which Luther was gradually approaching, but had not yet discovered his proximity.

The reply of Erasmus may be regarded, therefore, as evidence of his views, not only on the opinions and practices of the Hussites of Bohemia, but also as foreshadowing what would be his views with regard to the opinions and practices of Luther and the Protestant Reformers so soon as they should publicly profess themselves Hussites.

[Sidenote: Reply of Erasmus.]

‘You point out,’ (Erasmus wrote) ‘that Bohemia and Moravia are divided up into three sects. I wish, my dear Schlechta, that some pious hand could unite the three into one!’

The second party (Erasmus said) erred, in his opinion, more in scornfully rejecting the judgment and custom of the Roman Church than in thinking it right to take the Eucharist in both kinds, which was not an unreasonable practice in itself, though it might be better to avoid singularity on such a point. As to the ‘Pyghards,’ he did not see why it followed that the Pope was Antichrist, because there had been some bad popes, or that the Roman Church was the ‘harlot,’ because she had often had wicked cardinals or bishops. Still, however bad the ‘Pyghards’ might be, he would not advise a resort to violence. It would be a dangerous precedent. As to their electing their own priests and bishops, that was not opposed to primitive practice. St. Nicholas and St. Ambrose were thus elected, and in ancient times even kings were elected by the people. If they were in the habit of electing ignorant and unlearned men, that did not matter much, if only their _holy life_ outweighed their ignorance. He did not see why they were to be blamed for calling one another ‘brothers and sisters.’ He wished the practice could obtain amongst all Christians, if only the fact were consistent with the words. In thinking less highly of the Doctors than of the Scriptures--that is, in preferring God to man--they were in the right; but altogether to reject them was as bad as altogether to accept them. Christ and the Apostles officiated in their everyday dress; but it is impious to condemn what was instituted, not without good reason, by the fathers. Vigils and fasts, in moderation, he did not see why they rejected, seeing that they were commended by the Apostles; but he had rather that men were _exhorted_ than _compelled_ to observe them. Their views about festivals were not very different from Jerome’s. Nowadays the number of festivals had become enormous, and on no days were more crimes committed. Moreover, the labourer was robbed by so many festivals of his regular earnings.

As to the cure for these diseases of Bohemia: he desired _unity_, and expressed his views how unity could be best attained.

[Sidenote: Erasmus thinks the Church should be broad and tolerant.]

‘In my opinion’ (he wrote) ‘many might be reconciled to the Church of Rome if, instead of everything being defined, we were contented with what is evidently set forth in the Scriptures or necessary to salvation. And these things are _few_ in number, and the _fewer_ the easier for _many_ to accept. Nowadays out of one article we make six hundred, some of which are such that men might be ignorant of them or doubt them without injury to piety. It is in human nature to cling by tooth and nail to what has once been defined. The sum of the philosophy of Christ’ (he continued) ‘lies in this--that we should know that all our hope is placed in God, who freely gives us all things through his son Jesus; that by his death we are redeemed; that we are united to his body in baptism in order that, dead to the desires of the world, we may so follow his teaching and example as not only not to admit of evil, but also to deserve well of all; that if adversity comes upon us we should bear it in the hope of the future reward which is in store for all good men at the advent of Christ. Thus we should always be progressing from virtue to virtue, and whilst assuming nothing to ourselves, ascribe all that is good to God. If there should be anyone who would inquire into the Divine nature, or the nature (_hypostasis_) of Christ, or abstruse points about the sacraments, let him do so; only let him not try to force his views upon others. In the same way as very verbose instruments lead to controversies, so too many definitions lead to differences. Nor should we be ashamed to reply on some questions: “God knows how this should be so, it is enough for me to believe that it is.” I know that the pure blood and body of Christ are to be taken purely by the pure, and that he wished it to be a most sacred sign and pledge both of his love to us and of the fellowship of Christians amongst themselves. Let me, therefore, examine myself whether there be anything in me inconsistent with Christ, whether there be any difference between me and my neighbour. As to the rest, _how_ the same body can exist in so small a form and in so many places at once, in my opinion such questions can hardly tend to the increase of piety. I know that I shall rise again, for this was promised to all by Christ, who was the first who rose from the dead. As to the questions, with what body, and how it can be the same after having gone through so many changes, though I do not disapprove of these things being inquired into in moderation on suitable occasions, yet it conduces very little to piety to spend too much labour upon them. Nowadays men’s minds are diverted, by these and other innumerable subtleties, from things of vital importance. Lastly it would tend greatly to the establishment of concord, if secular princes, and especially the Roman Pontiff, would abstain from all tyranny and avarice. For men easily revolt when they see preparations for enslaving them, when they see that they are not to be invited to piety but caught for plunder. If they saw that we were innocent and desirous to do them good, they would very readily accept our faith.’[761]

It will be seen that the point of this letter turns not _directly_ upon the difference which Luther had discerned between himself and Erasmus (viz. that the one rejected and the other accepted the doctrinal system of St. Augustine), but rather upon questions involving the duty and object of ‘_the Church_.’ From More’s delineation of the Church of Utopia, it has been seen that the notion of the Oxford Reformers was that the Church was intended to be broad and tolerant, not to define doctrine and enforce dogmas, but to afford a practical bond of union whereby Christians might be kept united in one Christian brotherhood, in spite of their differences in minor matters of creed. In full accordance with this view, Erasmus had blamed Schlechta and his party, in this letter, not for holding their peculiar views respecting the ‘Supper,’ but for making them a ground for separation from their fellow-Christians. So also he blamed Schlechta (himself a dissenter from Rome) for his harsh feelings towards the ‘Pyghards’ and his wish ‘to exterminate’ them. So, too, whilst sympathising strongly with the poor ‘Pyghards’ in many of the points in which they differed from the Church of Rome, he blamed them for jumping to the conclusion that the Church was ‘Antichrist,’ and for flying into extremes. So, too, he blamed the Church herself, as he always had blamed her, for so narrowing her boundaries as to shut out these ultra-dissenters of Bohemia from her communion.

Now it is obvious that at the foundation of the position here assumed by Erasmus, and elsewhere by the Oxford Reformers, lay the conviction that many points of doctrine were in their nature uncertain and unsettled--that many attempted definitions of doctrine, on such subjects as those involved in the Athanasian Creed, in the Augustinian system, and in scholastic additions to it, were, after all, and in spite of all the ecclesiastical authority in the world, just as unsettled and uncertain as ever; in fact, mere hypotheses, which in their nature never _can_ be verified.

[Sidenote: The point at issue between the Oxford Reformers and those who held by the Augustinian system.]

Here again, therefore, was _indirectly_ involved the point at issue between Erasmus and Luther; between the Oxford and the Wittemberg Reformers. For the latter in accepting the Augustinian system still adhered, in spirit, to the scholastic or dogmatic system of theology. To treat questions such as those above mentioned as open and unsettled seemed to them to be playing the part of the sceptic. Luther was honestly and naturally shocked when he found Erasmus hinting that the doctrine of ‘original sin’ was in some measure analogous to the epicycles of the astrologer. He was equally shocked again when Erasmus, a few years after, treated the question of the Freedom of the Will as one insoluble in its nature, involving the old philosophical questions between free-will and fate.[762] And why was he shocked? Because the Augustinian system which he had adopted, treated these questions as finally concluded. And how were they concluded? By the judgment of the church based upon a verbally inspired and infallible Bible.

Luther did not indeed assert so strongly the verbal inspiration of the Bible, much less of the Vulgate version, as Dr. Eck and other Augustinian theologians had done; yet his standing-point obliged him practically to assume the truth of this doctrine, as it obliged his successors more and more strongly to assert it as the years rolled on. And so, whilst rejecting, even more thoroughly than Erasmus ever did, the ecclesiastical authority of the Church of Rome, yet it is curious to observe that, in doing so, Luther did not reject the notion of ecclesiastical authority in itself, but rather, amidst many inconsistencies, set up the authority of what he considered to be the _true_ church against that of the church which he regarded as the _false_ one. As a consistent Augustinian he was driven to assume, in replying to the Wittemberg prophets on the one hand and the scepticism of Erasmus on the other, that there is a true church somewhere, and that somewhere in the true church there is an authority capable of establishing theological hypotheses. He was not willing that the Scriptures should be left simply to the private judgment of each individual for himself. He even allowed himself to claim for the public ministers of his own church--‘the leaders of the people and the preachers of the word’--authority ‘not only for themselves but also for others, and for the salvation of others, to judge with the greatest certainty the spirit and dogmas of all men.’[763]

Not that Luther always consistently upheld this doctrine any more than Erasmus consistently upheld its opposite. Luther was often to be found asserting and using the right of private judgment against the authority of Rome, as Erasmus was often found upholding the authority of the Catholic Church and her authorised councils against the rival authority of Luther’s schismatic and unauthorised church. In times of transition, men _are_ inconsistent; and regard must be had rather to the direction in which they are moving than the precise point to which at any particular moment they may have attained. And what I wish to impress upon the reader is this--that not only Luther, but all other Reformers, from Wickliffe down to the modern Evangelicals, who have adopted the Augustinian system and founded their reform upon it, have practically assumed as the basis of their theology, first, the plenary inspiration of each text contained in the Scriptures; and, secondly, the existence of an ecclesiastical authority of some kind capable of establishing theological hypotheses; so that, _in this respect_, Luther and other Augustinian reformers, instead of advancing beyond the Oxford Reformers, have lagged far behind, seeing that they have contentedly remained under a yoke from which the Oxford Reformers had been labouring for twenty years to set men free.

[Sidenote: The power of St. Augustine.]

In saying this I am far from overlooking the fact, that the Protestant Reformers, in reverting to a purer form of Augustinian doctrine than that held by the Schoolmen, did practically by it bring Christianity to bear upon men with a power and a life which contrasted strangely with the cold dead religion of the Thomists and Scotists. I am as far also from underrating the force and the fire of St. Augustine. What, indeed, must not that force and that fire have been to have made it possible for him to bind the conscience of Western Christendom for fourteen centuries by the chains of his dogmatic theology! And when it is considered, on the one hand, that the greatest of the Schoolmen were _so loyal_ to St. Augustine, that some of their subtlest distinctions were resorted to expressly to mitigate the harshness of the rigid results of his system, and thus were attempts, not to get from under its yoke, but _to make it bearable_;[764] and, on the other hand, that the chief _reactions_ against scholastic formalism--those of Wickliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, the Portroyalists, the Puritans, the modern Evangelicals--were _Augustinian_ reactions; so far from _under_-estimating the power of the man whose influence was so diverse and so vast, it may well become an object of ever-increasing astonishment to the student of Ecclesiastical History.

At the same time, these considerations must raise also our estimate of the need and the value of the firm stand taken 350 years ago by the Oxford Reformers against this dogmatic power so long dominant in the realm of religious thought. It has been seen in every page of this history, that they had taken their standpoint, so to speak, _behind_ that of St. Augustine; behind even the schism between Eastern and Western Christendom; behind those patristic hypotheses which grew up into the scholastic theology; behind that notion of Church authority by which these hypotheses obtained a fictitious verification; behind the theory of ‘plenary inspiration,’ without which the Scriptures could not have been converted, as they were, into a mass of raw material for the manufacture of any quantity of hypotheses--behind all these--on the foundation of _fact_ which underlies them all.

The essential difference between the standpoints of the Protestant and Oxford Reformers Luther had been the first to perceive. And the correctness of this first impression of Luther’s has been singularly confirmed by the history of the three-and-a-half centuries of Protestant ascendency in Western Christendom. The Protestant movement, whilst accomplishing by one revolutionary blow many objects which the Oxford Reformers were striving and striving in vain to compass by constitutional means, has been so far antagonistic to their work in other directions as to throw it back--not to say _to wipe it out of remembrance_--so that in this nineteenth century those Christians who have desired, as they did, to rest their faith upon honest facts, and not upon dogmas--upon evidence, and not upon authority--instead of taking up the work where the Oxford Reformers left it, have had to begin it again at the beginning, as Colet did at Oxford in 1496. They have had, like the Oxford Reformers, to combat at the outset the theory of ‘plenary inspiration,’ and the tendency inherited along with it from St. Augustine, by both Schoolmen and Protestant Reformers, to build up a theology, as I have said, upon unverified hypotheses, and to narrow the boundaries of Christian fellowship by the imposition of dogmatic creeds so manufactured. They have had to meet the same arguments and the same blind opposition; to bear the same taunts of heresy and unsoundness from ascendant orthodox schools; to be pointed at by their fellow-Christians as insidious enemies of the Christian faith, because they have striven to present it before the eyes of a scientific age, as what they think it really is--_not_ a system of unverified hypotheses, but a faith in _facts_ which it would be unscientific even in a disciple of the positive philosophy to pass by unexplored.

VIII. MORE’S DOMESTIC LIFE (1519).

By the aid of a letter from Erasmus to Ulrich Hutten,[765] written in July 1519, one more lingering look may be taken at the beautiful picture of domestic happiness presented by More’s home. This history would be incomplete without it.

[Sidenote: More forty years old.]

[Sidenote: His first wife.]

The ‘young More,’ with whom Colet and Erasmus had fallen in love twenty years ago, was now past forty.[766] The four motherless children, Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John, awhile ago nestling round their widowed father’s knee, as the dark shadow of sorrow passed over the once bright home in Bucklersbury, were now from ten to thirteen years old. The good stepmother, Alice Middleton, is said to have ruled her household well, and her daughter had taken a place in the family circle as one of More’s children. There was a marked absence of jarring or quarrelling,[767] which in such a household bore witness to the goodnature of the mistress. She could not, indeed, fill altogether the void left in More’s heart by the loss of his first wife--the gentle girl brought up in country retirement with her parents and sisters, whom he had delighted to educate to his own tastes, in letters and in music, in the fond hope that she would be to him a lifelong companion,[768] and respecting whom, soon after his second marriage, in composing the epitaph for the family tomb, in which _she_ was already laid, he had written this simple line:--

‘Cara Thomæ jacet hic Joanna uxorcula Mori!’[769]

[Sidenote: His second wife.]

The ‘dame Alice,’ though somewhat older than her husband and matronly in her habits, ‘nec bella nec puella,’ as he was fond of jokingly telling her, out of deference to More’s musical tastes, had learned to sing and to play on the harp;[770] but, after all, she was more of the housekeeper than of the wife. It was not to her but to his daughter Margaret that his heart now clung with fondest affection.

[Sidenote: More’s true piety.]

More himself, Erasmus described to Hutten as humorous without being foolish, simple in his dress and habits, and, with all his popularity and success, neither proud nor boastful, but accessible, obliging, and kind to his neighbours.[771] Fond of liberty and ease he might be, but no one could be more active or more patient than he when occasion required it.[772] No one was less influenced by current opinion, and yet no man had more common sense.[773] Averse as he was to all superstition, and having shown in his ‘Utopia’ what were regarded in some quarters as freethinking tendencies, he had to share with Colet the sneers of the ‘orthodox,’ yet a tone of unaffected piety pervaded his life. He had stated times for devotion, and when he prayed, it was not as a matter of form, but from his heart. When, too, as he often did, he talked to his intimate friends of the life to come, Erasmus tells Hutten that he evidently spoke from his heart, and not without the brightest hope.[774]

[Sidenote: The children’s animals.]

[Sidenote: Their celebrated monkey.]

He was careful to cultivate in his children not only a filial regard to himself, but also feelings of mutual interest and intimacy. He made himself one of them, and took evidently as much pleasure as they did in their birds and animals--the monkey, the rabbits, the fox, the ferret, and the weasel.[775] Thus when Erasmus was a guest at his house, More would take him into the garden to see the children’s rabbit hutches, or to watch the sly ways of the monkey; which on one occasion so amused Erasmus by the clever way in which it prevented the weasel from making an assault upon the rabbits through an aperture between the boards at the back of the hutch, that he rewarded the animal by making it famous all over Europe, telling the story in one of his ‘Colloquies.’[776] Whereupon so important a member of the household did this monkey become, that when Hans Holbein some years afterwards painted his famous picture of the household of Sir Thomas More, its portrait was taken along with the rest, and there to this day it may be seen nestling in the folds of dame Alice’s robes.

[Sidenote: Their interest in his pursuits.]

If More thus took an interest in the children’s animals, so they were trained to take an interest in his pictures, his cabinet of coins and curiosities, and his literary pursuits. He did everything he could to allure his children on in acquiring knowledge. If an astronomer came in his way he would get him to stay awhile in his house, to teach them all about the stars and planets.[777] And it surely must have been More’s children whom Erasmus speaks of as learning the Greek alphabet by shooting with their bows and arrows at the letters.[778]

[Sidenote: Letter to his children in verse.]

Unhappily of late More had been long and frequently absent from home. Still, even when away upon an embassy, trudging on horseback dreary stages along the muddy roads, we find him on the saddle composing a metrical letter in Latin to his ‘sweetest children, Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John,’ which, when a second edition of his ‘Epigrams’ was called for, was added at the end of the volume and printed with the rest by the great printer of Basle[779]--a letter in which he expresses his delight in their companionship, and reminds them how gentle and tender a father he has been to them, in these loving words:--

Kisses enough I have given you forsooth, but stripes hardly ever, If I have flogged you at all it has been with the tail of a peacock!

* * * * *

Manners matured in youth, minds cultured in arts and in knowledge, Tongues that can speak your thoughts in graceful and elegant language:-- These bind my heart to yours with so many ties of affection That now I love you far more than if you were merely my children.

* * * * *

Go on (for you can!), my children, in winning your father’s affection, So that as now your goodness has made me to feel as though never I really had loved you before, you may on some future occasion,

* * * * *

Make me to love you so much that my present love may seem nothing!

What a picture lies here, even in these roughly translated lines, of the gentle relation which during years of early sorrow had grown up between the widowed father and the motherless children!

It is a companion-picture to that which Erasmus drew in colours so glowing, of More’s home at Chelsea many years after this, when his children were older and he himself Lord Chancellor. What a gleam of light too does it throw into the future, upon that last farewell embrace between Sir Thomas More and Margaret Roper upon the Tower-wharf, when even stern soldiers wept to behold their ‘fatherly and daughterly affection!’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: More’s character.]

This was the man whom Henry VIII. had at last succeeded in drawing into his court; who reluctantly, this summer of 1519,[780] in order that he might fulfil his duties to the King, had laid aside his post of under-sheriff in the city and his private practice at the bar; ‘who now,’ to quote the words of Roper, ‘was often sent for by the King into his traverse, where sometimes in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity, and such other faculties, and sometimes of his worldly affairs, he would sit and confer with him. And otherwhiles in the night would he have him up into the leads there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions, and operations of the stars and planets.

‘And because he was of a pleasant disposition, it pleased the King and Queen after the Council had supped for their pleasure commonly to call for him to be merry with them. Till he,’ continues Roper, ‘perceiving them so much in his talk to delight that he could not once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and his children (whose company he most desired), and to be absent from court two days together but that he should be thither sent for again; much misliking this restraint of his liberty, began thereupon somewhat to dissemble his nature, and so by little and little from his former mirth to disuse himself.’[781]

This was the man who, after ‘trying as hard to keep out of court as most men try to get into it,’ had accepted office on the noble understanding that he was ‘first to look unto God, and after God to the King,’ and who under the most difficult circumstances, and in times most perilous, whatever may have been his faults and errors, still

Reverenced his conscience as his King,

and died at last upon the scaffold, a martyr to integrity!

IX. THE DEATH OF COLET (1519).

Erasmus was working hard at his Paraphrases at Louvain, when the news reached him that _Colet was dead_! On the 11th September Pace had written to Wolsey that ‘the Dean of Paul’s had lain continually since Thursday _in extremis_, but was not yet dead.’[782] He had died on the 16th of September 1519.

[Sidenote: The grief of Erasmus on hearing of it.]

[Sidenote: His estimate of Colet’s character.]

When Erasmus heard of it, he could not refrain from weeping. ‘For thirty years I have not felt the death of a friend so bitterly,’[783] he wrote to Lupset, a young disciple of Colet’s. ‘I seem,’ he wrote to Pace, ‘as though only half of me were alive, Colet being dead. What a _man_ has _England_ and what a _friend_ have _I_ lost!’ To another Englishman he wrote, ‘What avail these sobs and lamentations? They cannot bring him back again. In a little while we shall follow him. In the meantime we should rejoice for Colet. He now is safely enjoying _Christ_, whom he always had upon his lips and at his heart.’[784] To Tunstal, ‘I should be inconsolable for the death of Colet did I not know that my tears would avail nothing for him and for me;’[785] and to Bishop Fisher, ‘I have written this weeping for Colet’s death.... I know it is all right with him who, escaped from this evil and wretched world, is in present enjoyment of that Christ whom he so loved when alive. I cannot help mourning in the public name the loss of so rare an example of Christian piety, so remarkable a preacher of Christian truth!’[786] And, in again writing to Lupset, a month or two afterwards, a long letter, pouring his troubles, on account of a bitter controversy which Edward Lee had raised up against him, into the ears of Lupset, instead of, as had hitherto been his wont, into the ears of Colet, he exclaimed in conclusion, ‘O true theologian! O wonderful preacher of evangelical doctrine! With what earnest zeal did he drink in the philosophy of Christ! How eagerly did he imbibe the spirit and feelings of St. Paul! How did the purity of his whole life correspond to his heavenly doctrine! How many years following the example of St. Paul, did he teach the people without reward!’[787] ‘You would not hesitate,’ finally wrote Erasmus to Justus Jonas, ‘to inscribe the name of this man in the roll of the saints although uncanonised by the Pope.’

[Sidenote: More’s estimate of Colet’s character.]

‘For generations,’ wrote More, ‘we have not had amongst us any one man more learned or holy!’[788]

The inscription on the leaden plate laid on the coffin of Dean Colet[789] bore witness that he died ‘to the great grief of the whole people, by whom, for his integrity of life and divine gift of preaching, he was the most beloved of all his time;’ and his remains were laid in the tomb prepared by himself in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

X. CONCLUSION.

[Sidenote: The fellow-work of the Oxford Reformers accomplished.]

With the death of Colet this history of the Oxford Reformers may fitly end. Erasmus and More, it is true, lived on sixteen years after this, and retained their love for one another to the last. But even _their_ future history was no longer, to the same extent as it had been, a joint history. Erasmus never again visited England, and if they did meet during those long years, it was a chance meeting only, on some occasion when More was sent on an embassy, and their intercourse could not be intimate.

[Sidenote: The Protestant Reformation a new movement under which theirs was submerged.]

The fellow-work of the Oxford Reformers was to a great extent accomplished when Colet died. From its small beginnings during their college intercourse at Oxford it had risen into prominence and made its power felt throughout Europe. But now for three hundred years it was to stop and, as it were, to be submerged under a new wave of the great tide of human progress. For, as has been said, the Protestant Reformation was in many respects a new movement, and not altogether a continuation of that of the Oxford Reformers.

As yet the ‘tragedy of Luther’ had appeared only like the little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand rising above the horizon. But scarcely had a year passed from Colet’s death before the whole heavens were overcast by it, and Christendom was suddenly involved, by the madness of her rulers, in all the terrors of a religious convulsion, which threatened to shake social and civil, as well as ecclesiastical, institutions to their foundations.

[Sidenote: The future course of the survivors could not alter the fellow-work of the past.]

How Erasmus and More met the storm--how far they stood their ground, or were carried away by natural fears and disappointment from their former standing-point--is well worthy of careful inquiry; but it must not be attempted here. In the meantime, the subsequent course of the two survivors could not alter the spirit and aim of the fellow-work to which for so many years past the three friends had been devoting their lives.

Their fellow-work had been to urge, at a critical period in the history of Christendom, the necessity of that thorough and comprehensive reform which the carrying out of Christianity into practice in the affairs of nations and of men would involve.

[Sidenote: Nature of the Reform urged by the Oxford Reformers.]

[Sidenote: Religious Reform.]

Believing Christianity to be true, they had faith that it would work. Deeply imbued with the spirit of Christianity as the true religion of the heart, they had demanded, not so much the reform of particular ecclesiastical abuses, as that the whole Church and the lives of Christians should be reanimated by the Christian spirit. Instead of contenting themselves with urging the correction of particular theological errors, and so tinkering the scholastic creed, they had sought to let in the light, and to draw men’s attention from dogmas to the facts which lay at their root. Having faith in free inquiry, they had demanded freedom of thought, tolerance, education.

[Sidenote: Political Reform.]

Believing that Christianity had to do with secular as well as with religious affairs, they had urged the necessity, not only of religious but also of political reform. And here again, instead of attacking particular abuses, they had gone to the root of the matter, and laid down the _golden rule_ as the true basis of political society. They not only had censured the tyranny, vices, and selfishness of princes, but denied the divine right of kings, assuming the principle that they reign by the consent and for the good of the nations whom they govern. Instead of simply asserting the rights of the people against their rulers in particular acts of oppression, they had advocated, on Christian and natural grounds, the equal rights of rich and poor, and insisted that the good of the _whole people as one community_ should be the object of all legislation.

[Sidenote: International Reform.]

Believing lastly in the Christian as well as in the natural brotherhood of nations, they had not only condemned the selfish wars of princes, but also claimed that the golden rule, instead of the Machiavellian code, should be regarded as the true basis of international politics.

Such was the broad and distinctively _Christian_ Reform urged by the Oxford Reformers during the years of their fellow-work.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Their demand for Reform, though listened to, refused.]

And if ever any reformers had a fair chance of a hearing in influential quarters, surely it was they. They had direct access to the ears of Leo X., of Henry VIII., of Charles V., of Francis I.; not to mention multitudes of minor potentates, lay and ecclesiastical, as well as ambassadors and statesmen, whose influence upon the politics of Europe was scarcely less than that of princes. But though they were courted and patronised by the potentates of Europe, _their reform was refused_.

The destinies of Christendom, by a remarkable concurrence of circumstances, were thrown very much into the hands of the young Emperor Charles V.; and, unfortunately for Christendom, Charles V. turned out to be the opposite of the ‘Christian Prince’ which Erasmus had done his best to induce him to become. Leo X. also had bitterly disappointed the hopes of Erasmus. When the time for final decision came, in the Diet of Worms the Emperor and the Pope were found banded together in the determination to refuse reform.

[Sidenote: Reform of Luther.]

In the meantime the leadership of the Reform movement had passed into other and sterner hands. Luther, concentrating his energies upon a narrower point, had already, in making his attack upon the abuse of Indulgences, raised a definite quarrel with the Pope. Within fifteen months of the death of Colet, he had astonished Europe by defiantly burning the Bull issued against him from Rome. And summoned by the Emperor to Worms, to answer for his life, he still more startled the world by boldly demanding, in the name of the German nation from the Emperor and Princes, that Germany should throw off the Papal yoke from her neck. For this was practically what Luther did at Worms.[790]

[Sidenote: Luther’s battle-cry at the Diet of Worms.]

The Emperor and Princes had to make up their minds, whether they would side with the Pope or with the nation, and they decided to side with the Pope. They thought they were siding with the stronger party, but they were grievously mistaken. Their defiance of Luther was engrossed on parchment. Luther’s defiance of _them_, and assertion of the rights of conscience against Pope and Emperor, rang through the ages. It stands out even now as a watershed in history dividing the old era from the new.

[Sidenote: The refusal of Reform followed by a period of Revolution.]

In the history of the next three centuries, it is impossible not to trace the onward swell, as it were, of a great revolutionary wave, which, commencing with the Peasant War and the Sack of Rome, swept on through the Revolt of the Netherlands, the Thirty Years’ War, the Puritan Revolution in England, and the foundation of the great American Republic, until it culminated and broke in the French Revolution. It is impossible not to see, in the whole course of the events of this remarkable period, an onward movement as irresistible and certain in its ultimate progress as that of the great geological changes which have passed over the physical world.

It is in vain to speculate upon what might have been the result of the concession of broad measures of reform whilst yet there was time; but in view of the bloodshed and misery, which, humanly speaking, might have been spared, who can fail to be impressed with the terrible responsibility, in the eye of History, resting upon those by whom, in the sixteenth century, the reform was refused? They were utterly powerless, indeed, to stop the ultimate flow of the tide, but they had the terrible power to turn, what might otherwise have been a steady and peaceful stream, into a turbulent and devastating flood. They had the terrible power, and they used it, of involving their own and ten succeeding generations in the turmoils of revolution.

APPENDIX A.

EXTRACTS FROM MS. Gg. 4, 26, IN THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, TRANSLATIONS OF WHICH ARE GIVEN AT PAGES 37, 38 OF THIS WORK.

_Fol. 4 b._ ‘Quapropter concludit Paulus justificatos ex fide, et soli deo confidentes per Jesum reconciliatos esse deo, restitutosque ad gratiam; ut apud deum stent et maneant ipsi filii dei, et filiorum dei certam gloriam expectent. Pro qua adipiscenda interim ferenda sunt omnia patienter: ut firmitas spei declaretur. Quæ quidem non falletur. Siquidem ex dei amore et gratia erga nos ingenti reconciliati sumus, alioquin eius filius pro nobis etiam impiis et contrariis deo non interiisset. Quod si alienatos a se dilexit, quanto magis reconciliatos et diligit et dilectos conservabit. Quamobrem firma et stabili spe ac letitia esse debemus, confidereque deo indubitanter per Jesum Christum; per quem unum hominem est ad deum reconciliatio. Nam ab illo ipso primo homine, et diffidentia, impietateque, et scelere ejusdem, totum humanum genus deperiit.

_f. 5 b._ ‘Sed hic notandum est, quod hec gracia nichil est aliud, quam dei amor erga homines; eos videlicet, quos vult amare, amandoque inspirare spiritu suo sancto, qui ipse est amor, et dei amor, qui (ut apud Joannem evangelistam ait salvator) ubi vult spirat. Amati autem et inspirati a deo vocati sunt, ut, accepto amore, amantem deum redament et eundem amorem desiderent et expectent. Hec exspectacio et spes, ex amore est. Amor vero noster est, quia ille nos amat, non (ut scribit Joannes in secunda epistola) quasi nos prius dilexerimus deum: sed quia ipse prior dilexit nos, eciam nullo amore dignos, siquidem impios et iniquos, jure ad sempiternum interitum destinatos. Sed quosdam, quos ille novit et voluit, deus dilexit, diligendo vocavit, vocando justificavit, justificando magnificavit. Hec in deo graciosa dileccio et caritas erga homines, ipsa vocacio et justificacio et magnificacio est: nec quicquid aliud tot verbis dicimus quam unum quiddam, scilicet amorem dei erga homines eos quos vult amare. Item cum homines gracia attractos, vocatos, justificatos, et magnificatos dicimus, nichil significamus aliud, quam homines amantem deum redamare.

_f. 18._ ... ‘aperte videas providente et dirigente deo res duci, atque ut ille velit in humanis fieri; non ex vi quidem aliqua illata, quum nichil est remotius a vi quam divina actio: sed cum hominis natura voluntate et arbitrio, divina providentia et voluntate latenter et suaviter et quasi naturaliter comitante, atque una et simul cum eo incedente tam mirabiliter, ut et quicquid velis egerisque agnoscatur a deo, et quod ille agnoverit statuitque fore simul id necessario fiat.

_ff. 79, 80._ ‘Hominis anima constat intellectu et voluntate. Intellectu sapimus. Voluntate possumus. Intellectus sapientia, fides est. Voluntatis potentia, charitas. Christus autem dei virtus, i.e. potentia, est, et dei sapientia. Per christum illuminantur mentes ad fidem: qui illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum, et dat potestatem filios dei fieri, iis qui credunt in nomine ejus. Per christum etiam incenduntur voluntates in charitatem: ut deum, homines, et proximum ament: in quibus est completio legis. A deo ergo solo per christum et sapimus et possumus; eo quod in christo sumus. Homines autem ex se intellectum habent cæcum, et voluntatem depravatam in tenebrisque ambulant et nesciunt quid faciunt....

‘Christus autem (ut modo dixi) dei virtus, et dei sapientia est. Qui sunt calidis radiis illius divinitatis acciti ut illi in societate adhereant, hii quidem sunt _tercii_ [1. Jews; 2. Gentiles; 3. Christians], illi quos Paulus vocatos et electos in illam gloriam, appellat: quorum mentes presentia divinitatis illustrantur; voluntates corriguntur; qui fide cernunt clare sapientiam christi, et amore ejusdem potentiam fortiter apprehendunt.’

APPENDIX B.

EXTRACTS FROM MS. ON I. CORINTHIANS. EMMANUEL COLLEGE MS. 3. 3. 12.

(_a_) ‘Deus autem ipse animi instar totus in toto est, et totus in qualibet parte: verumtamen non omnes partes similiter deificat (dei enim animare deificare est), sed varie, videlicet, ut convenit ad constructionem ejus, quod est in eo unum, ex pluribus. Hoc compositum eciam ex deo et hominibus, modo templum dei, modo ecclesia, modo domus, modo civitas, modo regnum, a _dei_ prophetis appellatur.... In quo quum Corinthei erant, ut videri voluerunt et professi sunt: sapienter sane Paulus animadvertens si quid laude dignum in illis erat, inde exorditur, et gracias agit de eo quod præ se ferunt boni, quodque adhuc fidei et ecclesiæ fundamentum tenent; ut hoc leni et molli principio alliciat eos in lectionem reliquæ epistolæ, faciatque quod reprehendit in moribus eorum facilius audiant. Nam si statim in initio asperior fuisset graviusque accusasset, profecto teneros adhuc animos et novellos in religione, presertim in gente ilia Greca, arrogante et superba, ac prona in dedignationem, a se et suis exhortationibus discussisset. Prudenter igitur et caute agendum fuit pro racione personarum, locorum et temporum: in quibus observandis fuit Paulus certe unus omnium consideratissimus, qui proposito fini ita novit media accommodare: ut quum nihil aliud quesierat nisi gloriam Jesu christi in terris, et amplificationem fidei ac charitatis, homo divina usus solertia nihil nec egit nec omisit unquam apud aliquos, quod ejusmodi propositum vel impediret vel retardaret. Itaque jam necessario correcturus quamplurima per literas in Corinthiis, qui, post ejus ab eis discessum, obliqua acciderant, acceptiore utitur principio et quasi quendam aditum facit ad reliqua, quæ non nihil amara cogitur adhibere, ut salutaris medicinæ poculum, modo ejus os saccharo illiniatur, Corinthii libenter admittant et hauriant. Quanquam vero Corinthii omnes qui fuerunt ex ecclesia christum professi sunt, in illiusque doctrina et nomine gloriati sunt: tamen super hoc fundamento nonnullorum erant malæ et pravæ edificationes partim ignorantia partim malicia superintroductæ. Fuerunt enim quidam parum modesti, idemque non parum arrogantes, qui deo et christo et christi apostolis non nihil posthabitis, ceperunt de lucro suo cogitare, ac freti sapientia seculari, quæ semper plurimum potuit apud Grecos, in plebe sibi authoritatem quærere, simulque opinionem apostolorum, maxime Pauli, derogare; cujus tamen adhuc apud Corinthios (ut debuit) nomen plurimum valuit. At illi nescio qui invidi et impatientes laudis Pauli, et suam laudem ac gloriam amantes, attentaverunt aliquid institutionis in ecclesia, ut eis venerat in mentem, utque sua sapientia et opibus probare potuerint, volueruntque in populo videri multa scire et posse ac quid exposcit christiana religio nihil ignorare, facileque quid venerat in dubium posse solvere et sententiam ferre. Qua insolentia nimirum in molli adhuc et nascente ecclesia molliti sunt multa, multa passi eciam sunt quæ ab institutis Pauli abhorruere. Item magna pars populi jamdudum et vix a mundo tracti in eam religionem quæ mundi contemptum edocet et imperat, facile retrospexit ad mundanos mores: et oculos in opes, potentiam, et sapientiam secularem conjecit. Unde nihil reluctati sunt, quin qui opibus valuerunt apud eos iidem authoritate valeant. Immo ab illis illecti prompti illorum nomina sectati sunt, quo factum fuit ut partes nascerentur et factiones ac constitutiones sibi diversorum capitum: ut quæque conventicula suum caput sequeretur. Ex quo dissidio contentiosæ altercationes proruperunt et omnia simul misere corruerunt in deterius. Quam calamitatem Corinthiensis ecclesiæ quorundam improbitate inductam, illius primus parens Paulus molestissime tulit, non tam quod conati sunt infringere suam authoritatem, quam quod sub malis suasoribus qui bene ceperint navigare in christi archa periclitarentur. Itaque quantum est ausus et licuit insectatur eos qui volunt videri sapientes, quique in christiana republica plus suis ingeniis quam ex deo moliuntur. Quod tamen facit ubique modestissime, homo piissimus, magis querens reformationem malorum quam aliquorum reprehensionem. Itaque docet omnem et sapientiam et potentiam a deo esse hominibus per Jesum christum, qui dei sui patris eterni virtus et sapientia est, cujus virtute sapiat oportet et possit quisque qui vere sapiat aliquid et recte possit; hominum autem sapientiam inanem et falsam affirmat: Item potentiam vel quanquumque quandam enervationem et infirmitatem: atque hec utraque deo odiosa et detestabilis, ut nihil possit fieri nec stultius nec impotentius, neque vero quod magis deo displiceat, quam quempiam suis ipsius viribus conari aliquid in ecclesia christiana: quam totam suum solius opus esse vult deus; atque quenquam in eo ex se solo suoque spiritu sapere, ut nulla sit in hominibus prorsus neque quod possunt bonitate, neque quod sapiunt fide, neque denique quod sunt quidem spe, nisi ex deo in christo gloriatio, per quem sumus in ipso, et in deo, a quo sane solo possumus et sapimus, et sumus denique quicquid sumus. Hoc in tota hac epistola contendit Paulus asserere: verum maxime et apertissime in prima parte: in qua nititur eradicare et funditus tollere falsam illam opinionem, qua homines suis viribus se aliquid posse arbitrantur, qua sibi confisi, tum deo diffidunt, turn deum negligunt. Quæ hominum arrogantia et opinio de seipsis, fons est malorum et pestis, ut impossible sit eam societatem sanam et incolumem esse, in qua possunt aliquid, qui suis se viribus aliquid posse arbitrantur. Secundum vero Pauli doctrinam, quæ est christi doctrina et evangeliis consona (siquidem unus est author et idem spiritus) nihil quisquam ad se ipsum, sed duntaxat ad deum spectare debet, ei se subjicere totum, illi soli servire, postremo ab illo expectare omnia et ex illo solo pendere: ut quicquid in christiana republica (quæ dei est civitas) vel vere sentiat, vel recte agat ab illo id totum credat proficisci, et acceptum deum referat.’--_Leaf_ a 4, _et seq._

(_b_) ‘Quod si quando voluerit quempiam preditum sapientia seculari, cujusmodi Paulus et ejus discipulus Dionysius Areopagita ac nonnulli alii veritates sapientiæ suæ, et accipere et ad alios deferre: profecto hi nunciaturi aliis quod a deo didicerint, dedita opera nihil magis curaverunt quam ut ex seculo nihil sapere viderentur; existimantes indignum esse ut cum divinis revelatis humana racio commisceatur: nolentes eciam id committere quo putetur veritati credi magis suasione hominum quam virtute dei.

‘Hinc Paulus in docta et erudita Grecia nihil veritus est, ex se videri stultus et impotens, ac profiteri se nihil scire nisi Jesum christum et eundem crucifixum: nec posse quicquam nisi per eundem ut per stulticiam predicationis salvos faciat credentes et ratiocinantes confundet.’--_Leaf_ 3, 4.

(_c_) ‘Idem etiam potentes non sua quidem potentia et virtute, sed solius dei per Jesum christum dominum nostrum, in quo illud venerandum et adorandum miraculum, quod deus ipse coierit cum humana natura; quod quiddam compositum ex deo et homine (quod Greci vocant “Theantropon”) hic vixit in terris, et pro hominum salute versatus est cum hominibus, ut eos deo patri suo revocatos reconciliaret: quod idem præstitit in probatione et ostensione virtutis defensioneque justiciæ usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis: quod deinde victa morte, fugato diabolo, redempto humano genere, ut liberam habeat potestatem, omnino sine adversarii querela, eligendi ad se quos velit, ut quos velit vocet, quos vocet justificet. Quod (inquam) sic victa et prostrata morte, mortisque authore, ex morte idem resurrexit vivens, ac vivum se multis ostendit, multisque argumentis comprobavit. Quod tum postremo cernentibus discipulis sursum ut erat deus et homo ascendit ad patrem, illic ex celo progressum sui inchoati operis in terris, et perfectionem despecturus, ac quantum sibi videbitur continuo adjuturus. Quod deinde post hæc tandem opportuno tempore, rebus maturis, contrariis deo rationibus discussis, longe et a creaturis suis exterminatis injusticia videlicet et ignorantia, in quarum profligatione nunc quotidie dei et sapientia et virtus in suis ministris operatur, operabiturque usque in finem. Quod tum (inquam) post satis longum conflictum et utrinque pugnam inter lucem et tenebras, deo et angelis spectantibus, tandem ille idem dux et dominus exercituum, qui, hic primus, bellum induxit adversariis et cum hostibus manum ipse conseruit, patientia et morte vincens, in subsidium suorum prelucens et prepotens, rediet, ut fugata malitia et stultitia, illustret et bona faciet omnia: utque postremo, resuscitans mortuos, ipsam mortem superet sua immortalitate, et absorbeat, ac victuros secum rapiat in celum, morituros a se longe in sempiternam mortem discutiat in tenebras illas exteriores, ut per ipsum in reformato mundo sola vita deinceps in perpetuum sapientia et justitia regnet.’--_Leaf_ b. 5.

(_d_) ‘Quamobrem non ab re quidem videtur factum fuisse a deo, ut illo vulgo hominum et quasi fæce in fundo residente longe a claritate posthabita, qui in tam altam obscuritatem non fuerint delapsi, prius et facilius a divine lumine attingerentur, qui fuerunt qui minus in vallem mundi miserique descenderunt, qui altius multo extantes quam alii, merito priores exorto justiciæ sole illuminati fuerunt; qui supra multitudinem varietatem et pugnam hujus humilis mundi, simplices, sui similes, et quieti, extiterunt, tanto propiores deo quanto remotius a deo distaverint. Quod si deus ipse est ipsa nobilitas, sapientia, et potentia; quis non videt Petrum, Joannem, Jacobum, et id genus reliquos, etiam antequam veritas dei illuxerat in terras, tanto aliis sapientia et viribus præstitisse, quanto magis abfuerint ab illorum stultitia et impotentia, ut nihil sit mirum, si deus, cujus est bonis suis, meliores eligere et accommodare, eos habitos stultos et impotentes delegerit, quando quidem revera universi mundi nobiliores fuerunt, a vilitateque mundi magis sejuncti, altiusque extantes: ut quemadmodum id terræ quod altius eminet, exorto sole facilius et citius radiis tangitur; ita similiter fuit necesse prodeunte luce quæ illuminaret omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum, prius irradiaret eos qui magis in hominibus eminuerint et quasi montes ad hominum valles extiterint. Ad alios autem qui sunt in imo in regione frigoris, nebulosa sapientia obducti, et tardius penetrant divini radii, et illic difficilius illuminant et citius destituunt, nisi forte vehementius incumbentes rarifecerint nubem et lenifecerint hominem ut abjectis omnibus quæ habet, evolet in christum. Quod si fecerit, tum emergit in conditionem et statum Petri ac talium parvulorum quos dudum contempserit, ut per eam viam ascendat ad veritatem qui ipse est christus qui dixit, “Nisi conversi fueritis et efficiamini sicut parvuli non intrabitis in regnum cælorum.” Qui parvuli, sine dubio, sunt majores illis qui magni in mundo reputantur, ac ideo jure a deo ad sua mysteria antepositi.’--_Leaf_ b. 8.

(_e_) ‘Angustis sane et minutis sunt animis qui hoc non vident, quique sentiunt de secularibus rebus contendendum esse, et in hisce jus quærendum suum; qui ignorant quæ sit divina justitia, quæ injustitia; quique etiam homunciones, quorum stultitia haud scio ridenda ne sit magis quam deflenda, sed certe deflenda; quoniam ex ea ecclesia calamitatem sentit, ac pæne eversionem. Sed illi homunciones perditi (quibus hoc nostrum seculum plenum est) in quibusque sunt etiam qui minime debent esse ecclesiastici viri, et qui habentur in ecclesia primarii. Illi (inquam) ignari penitus evangelicæ et apostolicæ doctrinæ, ignari divinæ justitiæ, ignari christianæ veritatis, soliti sunt dicere causam dei, jus ecclesiæ, patrimonium christi, bona sacerdotii, defendi a se oportere et sine peccato non posse non defendi. O angustia! O cæcitas! O miseria istorum, qui quum ineunt rationem perdendi omnia, non solum hæc secularia, sed illa quoque etiam sempiterna; quumque ipsa perdunt, putant se tamen eadem acquirere, defendere et conservare; qui ipso rerum exitu ubique in ecclesia homines, ipsis piscibus oculis durioribus, non cernunt quæ contentionibus judiciisque dispendia religionis, diminutio auctoritatis, negligentia christi, blasphemia dei, sequitur. Ea etiam ipsa denique, quæ ipsi vocant “bona ecclesiæ,” quæque putant se suis litigationibus vel tenere vel recuperare; quæ quotidie paulatim et latenter tum amittunt, tum ægre custodiunt, siquidem magis vi quam hominum liberalitate et charitate, quo nihil ecclesia indignius esse potest. In qua procul dubio eadem debet esse ratio conservandi quæ data fuerint quondam, quæ fuerit comparandi. Amor dei et proximi, desiderium celestium, contemptus mundanorum, vera pietas, religio, charitas, benignitas erga homines, simplicitas, patientia, tolerantia malorum, studium semper bene faciendi vel omnibus hominibus ut [in constanti] bono malum vincant, hominum animos conscitavit ubique tandem ut de ecclesia christi bene opinarentur, ei faveant, eam ament, in eam benefici et liberales sint, darentque incessanter, datisque etiam data accumulent, quum viderant in ecclesiasticis viris nullam avaritiam, nullum abusum liberalitatis suæ. Quod si qui supremam partem teneant in christiana ecclesia (id est sacerdotes) virtutem (quæ acquisivit omnia) perpetuo tenuissent adhucve tenerent; profecto si staret causa, effectus sequeretur, vel auctus vel conservatus, hominesque ecclesiastici non solum quieti possiderent sua; sed plura etiam acciperent possidenda. Sed quum aquæ (ut ait David) intraverant usque animos nostros, quumque cupiditatis et avaritiæ fluctibus obruimur, nec illud audimus, Divitiæ si affluant, nolite cor apponere, quumque neglecta illa virtute et justitia et studio conservandi amplificandique regni dei in terris, quod sacerdotio nec exposcenti nec expectanti ejusmodi acquisivit omnia, animos suos (proh nephas!) in illos appendices et pendulas divitias converterint, quod onus est potius ecclesiæ quam ornamentum, tunc ita illo retrospectu canes illi et sues ad vomitum, et ad volutabrum luti, infirmaverunt se amissa pulchra et placida conservatrice rerum virtute; ut quum vident recidere a se quotidie quod virtus comparavit, impotentes dimicant et turpiter sane confligunt inter se et cum laicis cum sui nominis infamia et ignominia religionis, et ejus rei etiam quam maxime quærunt indies majore dispendio ac perditione non videntes cæci, si qui [ ] acquisierit aliquid necessario ejus contrarium idem auferre oportere. Contemptus mundi mundanarumque rerum quem docuit christus comparavit omnia; contra earundem amor amittet et perdet omnia. Quis non videt quum virtute præstitimus, nos tunc bona mundi jure exigere non potuisse nisi quatenus tenuiter ad victum vestitumque pertineat quo jubet Paulus contenti simus. Quis (inquam) non videt multo minus nunc nos exigere debere, quum omnis virtutis expertes sumus, quumque ab ipsis laicis nihil fere nisi tonsa coma, et corona, capitio, et demissa toga, differimus, nisi hoc dicat quispiam (deridens nos), quum nunc sumus relapsi in mundum, quæ sunt mundi et partem nostram in mundo nos expostulare posse; ut non amplius dicamus, Dominus pars hæreditatis nostræ; sed nobis dicatur, Mercedem vestram recepistis. O bone deus, quam puderet nos hujus descensus in mundum, si essemus memores amoris dei erga nos, exempli christi, dignitatis religionis christianæ, professionis et nominis nostri.’--_Leaf_ d. 3-5.

(_f_) ‘Hic obstupesco et exclamo illud Pauli mei, “O altitudo divitiarum sapientiæ et scientiæ dei.” O sapientia admirabiliter bona hominibus et misericors, ut jure tua pia benignitas altitudo divitiarum potest appellari, qui commendans charitatem tuam in nobis voluisti in nos tam esse liberalis ut temetipsum dares pro nobis, ut tibe et deo nos redderemur. O pia, O benigna, O benefica sapientia, O os, verbum, et veritas dei in homine, verbum veridicum et verificans, qui voluisti nos docere humanitus ut nos divinitus sapiamus, qui voluisti esse in homine ut nos in deo essemus. Qui denique voluisti in homine humiliari usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis, ut nos exaltaremur usque ad vitam, vitam autem dei.’

APPENDIX C.

ON THE DATE OF MORE’S BIRTH.

The following correspondence in ‘Notes and Queries’ (Oct. 1868) may be considered, I think, to set at rest the date of Sir Thomas More’s birth.

No. 1 (Oct. 17, 1868).

‘Some months ago I found the following entries, relating to a family of the name of More, on two blank leaves of a MS. in the Gale collection, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The class mark of the volume is “O. 2. 21.” Its contents are very miscellaneous. Among other things is a copy of the poem of Walter de Biblesworth, printed by Mr. Thomas Wright in his volume of _Vocabularies_ from the Arundel MS. The date of this is early fourteenth century. The names of former possessors of the volume are “Le: Fludd” and “G. Carew;” the latter being probably Sir George Carew, afterwards Earl of Totness. The entries which I have copied are on the last leaf and the last leaf but one of the volume. I have added the dates in square brackets, and expanded the contractions:

‘“M{d} quod die dominica in vigilia Sancti Marce Evangeliste Anno Regni Regis Edwardi quarti post conquestum Anglie quartodecimo Johannes More Gent. maritatus fuit Agneti filie Thome Graunger in parochia sancti Egidij extra Crepylgate london. [24 April, 1474.]

‘“M{ed} quod die sabbati in vigilia sancti gregorij pape inter horam primam & horam secundam post Meridiem eiusdem diei Anno Regni Regis Edwardi quarti post conquestum Anglie xv{o} nata fuit Johanna More filia Johannis More Gent. [11 March, 1474-5.]

‘“M{d} quod die veneris proximo post Festum purificacionis beate Marie virginis videlicet septimo die Februarij inter horam secundam et horam terciam in Mane natus fuit Thomas More filius Johannis More Gent. Anno Regni Regis Edwardi quarti post conquestum Anglie decimo septimo. [7 Feb. 1477-8.]

‘“M{d} quod die dominica videlicet vltimo die Januarij inter horam septimam et horam octauam ante Meridiem Anno regni Regis Edwardi quarti decimo octauo nata fuit Agatha filia Johannis More Gentilman. [31 Jan. 1478-9.]

‘“M{d} quod die Martis videlicet vj{to} die Junij inter horam decimam & horam vndecimam ante Meridiem natus fuit Johannes More filius Johannis More Gent. Anno regni Regis Edwardi quarti vicesimo. [6 June, 1480.]

‘“Me{d} quod die lune viz. tercio die Septembris inter horam secundam & horam terciam in Mane natus fuit Edwardus Moore filius Johannis More Gent. Anno regni regis Edwardi iiij{ti} post conquestum xxj{o}. [3 Sept. 1481.]

‘“M{d} quod die dominica videlicet xxij{o} die Septembris anno regni regis Edwardi iiij{ti} xxij{o} inter horam quartam & quintam in Mane nata fuit Elizabeth More filia Johannis More Gent.” [22 Sept. 1482.]

‘It will be seen that these entries record the marriage of a John More, gent., in the parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and the births of his six children, Johanna, Thomas, Agatha, John, Edward, and Elizabeth.

‘Now it is known that Sir Thomas More was born, his biographers vaguely say, _about_ 1480 in Milk Street, Cheapside, which is in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate; that he was the son of Sir John More, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, who, at the time of his son’s birth, was a barrister, and would be described as “John More, gent.”; and that he had two sisters, Jane or Joane (Wordsworth’s _Eccl. Biog._ ii. 49), married to Richard Stafferton, and Elizabeth, wife to John Rastall the printer, and mother of Sir William Rastall (born 1508), afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench.

‘The third entry above given records the birth of Thomas, son of John More, who had been married in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and may be presumed to have lived in the parish. The date of his birth is Feb. 7, 1477-8; that is, according to modern reckoning, 1478, and therefore “_about_ 1480.” Oddly enough, the day of the week in this entry is wrong. It is Friday, which in 1477-8 was Feb. 6. But Thomas was born between two and three in the morning of Saturday, Feb. 7. The confusion is obvious and natural.

‘The second and last entries record the births of his sisters Johanna and Elizabeth. The former of these names appears to have been a favourite in the family of Sir John More, and was the name of his grandmother, the daughter of John Leycester.

‘I may add, that the entries are all in a contemporary hand, and their formal character favours the supposition that they were made by some one familiar with legal documents, and probably by a lawyer.

‘This remarkable series of coincidences led me at first to believe that I had discovered the entry of the birth of Sir Thomas More. But, upon investigation, I was met by a difficulty which at present I have been unable to solve. In the life of the Chancellor by Cresacre More, his great-grandson, the name of Sir Thomas More’s mother is said to have been “Handcombe of Holliwell in Bedfordshire.” This fact is not mentioned by Roper, who lived many years in his house, and married his favourite daughter, or by any other of his biographers. The question, therefore, is whether the authority of Cresacre More on this point is to be admitted as absolute. He was not born till nearly forty years after Sir Thomas More’s death, and his book was not written till between eighty and ninety years after it. We must take into consideration these facts in estimating the amount of weight to be attached to his evidence as to the name of his great-great-grandmother.

‘Were there then two John Mores of the rank of gentlemen, both apparently lawyers, living at the same time, in the same parish, and both having three children bearing the same names; or was John More, who married Agnes Graunger, the future Chief Justice and father of the future Chancellor? To these questions, in the absence of Cresacre More’s statement, the accumulation of coincidences would have made it easy to give a very positive answer. Is his authority to be weighed against them?

‘Stapylton’s assertion that Sir Thomas More had no brothers presents no difficulty, as they may have died in infancy. The entries which I have quoted would explain why he was called Thomas, after his maternal grandfather.

‘If any heraldic readers of “Notes and Queries” could find what are the arms quartered with those of More upon the Chancellor’s tomb at Chelsea, they would probably throw some light upon the question. Mr. Hunter describes them as “three bezants on a chevron between three unicorns’ heads.”

‘WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.

‘Trinity College, Cambridge.’

No. 2 (Oct. 31, 1868).

‘There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that Mr. Wright’s discovery has set at rest the perplexing question of the true date of Sir Thomas More’s birth. In the note in the Appendix to my “Oxford Reformers” I was obliged to leave the question undecided, whilst inclined to believe that the weight of evidence preponderated in favour of the received date--1480. What appeared almost incontrovertible evidence in favour of 1480 was the evidence of the pictures of Sir Thomas More’s family by Holbein. The most certainly authentic of these is the original pen-and-ink sketch in the Basle Museum. Upon Mechel’s engraving of this (dated 1787), Sir Thomas’s age is marked “50,” and at the bottom of the picture is the inscription, “Johannes Holbein ad Vivum delin.: Londini: 1530.” This seemed to be almost conclusive evidence that he was born in 1480. If Sir Thomas was born in Feb. 1478, according to the newly discovered entries, and was fifty when the picture was sketched by Holbein, the sketch obviously cannot have been made in 1530, but two or three years earlier.

‘Now if it may be supposed that the sketch was made during the summer or autumn of 1527, I think it will be found that all other chronological difficulties will vanish before the newly discovered date.

‘1. More himself would be in his fiftieth year in 1527.

‘2. Ann Cresacre, marked on the sketch as “15,” would have only recently completed her fifteenth year, as, according to her tombstone, she was in her sixty-sixth year in Dec. 1577; and according to the inscription on the Burford picture she was born in 3 Henry VIII.

‘3. Margaret Roper, marked on the sketch “22,” would be born in 1505 or 1506, and this would allow of More’s marriage having taken place in 20 Henry VII. 1505, as stated on the Burford picture.

‘4. Sir Thomas would be forty-one in July, 1519, and this accords with Erasmus’s statement in his letter to Hutten of that date (_Epist._ ccccxlvii.)--“ipse novi hominem, non majorem annis _viginti tribus_, nam _nunc non multum excessit quadragesimum_.” He would be only one year past forty. Erasmus first became acquainted with More probably in the course of 1498, when (being born in February) he was in his twentieth year. The “viginti tribus” must in any case be an error.

‘5. John More, jun., marked “19” in the sketch, would be “more or less than thirteen” as reported by Erasmus in 1521. (_Epist._ dcv.)

‘6. More’s epigram, which speaks of “quinque lustra” (_i.e._ twenty-five years), having passed since he was “quater quatuor” (sixteen), and thus makes him forty-one when he wrote it, would (if he was born in 1478) give 1519 as the date of the epigram; and this corresponds with the fact, that the Basle edition of 1518 (_Mori Epigrammata_, Froben) did not contain it, while it was inserted in the second edition of 1520.

‘7. There is a passage in More’s “History of Richard III.,” in which the writer speaks of having himself overheard a conversation which took place in 1483.

‘Mr. Gairdner, in his “Letters, &c. of Richard III. and Henry VII.” (vol. ii. preface, p. xxi), rightly points out that, if born in 1480, More, being then only three years old, could not have remembered overhearing a conversation. But if born in Feb. 1478, he would be in his sixth year, and could easily do so.

‘On the whole, therefore, the newly discovered date dispels all the apparent difficulties with which the received date is beset, if only it may be assumed that the true date of the Basle sketch was 1527, and not (as inscribed upon Mechel’s engraving and upon the English pictures of the family of Sir Thomas More) 1530.

‘Since I published my “Oxford Reformers” I have obtained a photograph of the Basle sketch itself, which dispels this difficulty also, as it bears upon it _no date at all_.

‘The date, 1530, on the pictures appears to rest upon no good authority. Holbein, in fact, had left England the year before. I therefore have little doubt that the remarkable document discovered by Mr. Wright is perfectly genuine.

‘Should the arms quartered with those of More upon the Chancellor’s tomb at Chelsea prove to be the arms of “Graunger,” the evidence would indeed be complete.

‘FREDERIC SEEBOHM.

‘Hitchin.’

No. 3 (Oct. 31, 1868).

‘Mr. Wright will find the lineage of Sir Thomas More and his father discussed at some length in my “Judges of England,” vol. v. pp. 190-206; and I have very little doubt that the John More whose marriage is recorded in the first entry was the person who afterwards became a Judge (not Chief Justice, as Mr. Wright by mistake calls him), and that Thomas More, whose birth is recorded in the third entry, was the illustrious Lord Chancellor. The only difficulty arises from John More’s wife being named “Agnes daughter of Thomas Graunger;” but this difficulty is easily discarded, since Cresacre More, who wrote between eighty and ninety years after the Chancellor’s death, is the only author who gives another name, and his other biographer, who wrote immediately after his death, gives the lady no name at all.

‘John More married three times; and he must have been a very young man on his first marriage with Agnes Graunger (supposing that to be the name of his first wife), by whom only he had children.

‘I have stated in my account that there were two John Mores who were contemporaries at a period considerably earlier, one of Lincoln’s Inn and the other of the Middle Temple. Of the lineage of the latter there is no account; but of the former I have stated my conviction that he was the father of the John More whose marriage is here recorded, and consequently the grandfather of Sir Thomas More; and thus, as both the John Mores had originally filled dependent employment in Lincoln’s Inn, the modest description of his origin given by Sir Thomas in his epitaph, “familiâ non celebri, sed honestâ natus,” is at once accounted for.

‘EDWARD FOSS.’

No. 4 (Oct. 31, 1868).

‘Permit me to set your correspondent right in a minor particular, which he looks to as confirming his theory, though I trust he may be able to substantiate it otherwise. Mr. Wright says--“Milk Street, Cheapside ... is in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate:” it is not so, as several parishes intervene; Milk Street is _within_ the walls, whereas St. Giles’s is _without_. Mr. Wright might have seen this by the wording of his first quotation:--“in parochia Egidij extra Crepylgate;” the word “extra” implies beyond the walls. Milk Street is in the _ward_ of Cripplegate Within, not in the _parish_ of St. Giles Without, Cripplegate--a distinction not obvious to strangers.

‘A great part of the district now called Cripplegate _Without_ was originally moor or fen: we have a Moorfields, now fields no more; and a “More” or Moor Lane. I cannot suppose the latter to have been named after the author of “Utopia;” but as he really emanated from this locality, possibly his family was named from the neighbouring moor. The Chancellor bore for his crest “a Moor’s head affrontée sable.” I would not wish to affront his memory by adding more, but your readers will find something on this subject _antè_, 3rd S. xii. 199, 238.

‘A. H.’

No. 5 (Nov. 5, 1868).

‘I am indebted to your correspondents, Mr. Foss and A. H., for their corrections of two inaccuracies in my paper on Sir Thomas More. Fortunately, neither of these affects the strength of my case. It is sufficient that Milk Street and the church of St. Giles’, Cripplegate, are so near as to render it probable that a resident in the one might be married at the other. If, therefore, for “the same parish” I substitute “the same ward,” my case remains substantially as strong as before. My mistake arose from not observing that the map in Strype’s edition of Stow’s _Survey_, which I consulted, was a map of Cripplegate Ward, and not of the parish of St. Giles’.

‘Before writing to you, I had, of course, consulted Mr. Foss’s _Judges of England_, but found nothing there bearing upon the point on which I wanted assistance, viz., the name and arms of Sir Thomas More’s mother.

‘WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.

‘Trinity College, Cambridge.’

APPENDIX D.

ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES AND PREFERMENTS OF DEAN COLET, IN ORDER OF TIME.[791]

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of| Description of | Authority | Date of Appointment Preferment, &c. | | Avoidance ---------|-----------------------|------------------------|-------------- Aug. 6, |Rectory of St. Mary, |Reg. Norw. xii. f. 116, |Sept. 16, 1519 1485 | Denington, Suffolk | quoted by Kennett | per mortem | | | (?) |Prebend of Goodeaster, |Wharton, _de Decanis_, |Jan. 26, 1503 | in Collegiate Church | p. 234 | per resign. | of St. | | | Martin-le-Grand | | | | | (?) |Vicarage of St. Dunstan|Reg. Hill, Lond., quoted|Sept, 21, 1505 | and All Saints, | by Kennett | per resign. | Stepney | | | | | Sept. 30,|Rectory of St. |Reg. Episcop. apud ædes |End of 1493 1490 | Nicholas, Thyrning, | Bucdenæ, quoted by | | Hunts and Northampton| Kennett | | | | March 5, |Prebend of Botevant, in|Le Neve’s _Fasti_ | 1493-4 | Cathedral Church of | (1854), vol. iii. p. | | York | 176 | | | | |[During this interval, | | | Colet was apparently | | | on the Continent] | | | | | Dec. 17, |Deacon |Reg. Savage, Lond., | 1497 | | quoted by Kennett | | | | March 25,|Priest (by Knight said |Memorand. a Willi. | 1497-8 | to be on Feast of | Smyth, Lincoln, quoted| | ‘_St. Ann_,’ i.e. | by Kennett | | July 26, in error | | | probably for | | | ‘_Ann_unciation,’ | | | i.e. March 25) | | | | | 1501(?) |S.T.B. (Bachelor of |Anthony à Wood (sub anno| | Divinity) | 1501, on mere | | | conjecture, apparently| | | dating back from the | | | assumed date of the | | | D.D.), quoted by | | | Kennett | | | | 1502 |Prebend of Durnesford, |Wharton, _de Decanis_, | | in Cathedral Church | p. 234. | | of Salisbury | | | | | 1504 |S.T.P. (Doctor of |Ant. à Wood, sub anno | | Divinity) | 1504 (probably only | | | conjectured by Wood, | | | as there appears to be| | | no record at Oxford), | | | quoted by Kennett | | | | May 5, |Prebend of Mora, in |Reg. Hill. f. 51, quoted|Sept. 16, 1519 1505 | Cathedral Church of | by Le Neve, _Fasti_, | per mortem | St. Paul, London | ii. 411 | | | | 1505 (?) |Deanery of St. Paul’s, |Le Neve, ib. p. 411. |Ditto ditto | London | | | | | 1516 |Treasurership of |Reg. Cicestrense, quoted| | Chichester Cathedral | by Le Neve, i. 268 | | (Dean Colet?) | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------

APPENDIX E.

CATALOGUE OF EARLY EDITIONS OF THE WORKS OF ERASMUS IN MY POSSESSION.

A.D.

1506. D. Erasmi &c. Adagiorum Collectanea, Rursus ab eodem recognita atque aucta ... [also] Erasmi varia epigrammata.

In ædibus Joannis Barbier xviii. Martij M.DVI.

1506. D. Erasmi &c. Adagiorum Collectanea, Rursus ab eodem recognita atque aucta ... [but without the epigrams].

Ex ædibus Ascensianis pridie natalis dominici M.DVI.

1508. Erasmi Rot. Adagiorum chiliades tres, ac centuriæ fere todidem.

Venetiis in ædibus Aldi, mense Sept. MDVIII.

1511. Moriæ Encomium Erasmi Roterodami Declamatio.

Argentorati in ædibus M. Schurerii, mense augusto anno M.D.XI.

1512. Collectanea Adagiorum &c. Erasmi. Ex Tertia Recognitione. (With prefatory letter of Schurerius dated xiiii. Calendas Julii MDIX.)

Argentorati [Strasburg] stanneis calamis denuo exscripta in officina Matthiæ Schurerii, mense Junio anno M.D.XII.

1512. De ratione studii, &c.

Officium discipulorum ex Quintiliano.

Concio de puero Jesu, &c.

Expostulatio Jesu ad mortales.

Carmina scholaria.

Argentorati, Ex ædibus Schurerianis mense Julio M.D.XII.

1513. De Duplici Copia rerum ac verborum Commentarii duo. [A reprint of the first edition of Paris.]

Argentorat. M. Schurerius exscripsit, mense Januario M.D.XIII.

1514. De ratione studii, &c.

Officium discipulorum ex Quintiliano.

Concio de puero Jesu ad mortales.

Carmina scholaria.

Argentorati ex ædibus M. Schurerii, mense Augusto, anno M.D.XIIII.

1514. Parabolarum sive Similium liber. (Prefatory letter of Erasmus to Ægidius dated MDXIIII. Idibus Octobreis.)

Argentorati ex ædibus Schurerianis, mense Decembri MD.XIIII. (First edition?)

1514. Opuscula aliquot, Erasmo Rot. castigatore et interprete. Cato ... amplectens præcepta Mimi Publiani, Septem Sapientum celebria dicta, Institutum Christiani hominis, &c.

Colonie in edibus Martini Werdenensis, XII. Kalendas Decembres.

1514(?). De duplici Copia Verborum ac rerum commentarii duo. Ab Authore ipso diligentissime recogniti et emaculati atque in plerisque locis aucti.

Item Epistola Erasmi ad Jacobum Vuymphelingium Selestatinum.

Item Parabolæ, &c.

Argentorat. Schurerius.

1515. Enchiridion Militis Christiani. (Without the letter to Volzius.)

Lypsi in ædibus Valentini Schumans.. Sexto Calendae Septembris, M.D.XV.

1515. Enchiridion Militis Christiani. (Without the letter to Volzius.)

Disputatio de Tedio et Pavore Christi.

Exhortatio ad virtutem, &c.

Precatio ad Virginis filium Jesum.

Pæan virgini Matri, &c.

Obsecratio ad Mariam ...

Oratio in laudem pueri Jesu.

Enarratio allegorica in Primum Psalmum.

Carmen de casa natalitia pueri Jesu.

Carmina complura de puero Jesu.

Carmina de angelis.

Carmen Græcanicum Virgini sacrum Mariæ.

Argentorati apud M. Schurerium, mense Septembri, M.D.XV.

1515. Erasmi Roterodami Ennarratio in Primum Psalmum Davidicum.

Martini Dorpii ad eundem Epistola, de Moriæ Encomio, &c.

Erasmi ad Dorpium Apologia.

Louanii Theodoricus Martinus excudebat, Mense Octobr, MDXV.

1515. Cato Erasmi. Opuscula aliquot: Precepta Mimi Publiani; Septem sapientum celebria dicta; Institutum christiani hominis, &c.

Colonie in edibus Quentell. M.CCCCC.XV.

1516. Novum Instrumentum.

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii Hammelburgensis, Mense Februario Anno M.D.XVI.

1516. Collectanea Adagiorum, &c.

Argentorati M. Schurerius ... exscripsit, Mense Maio M.D.XVI.

1516. Enchiridion, &c. (containing the same matter as the Strasburg edition of 1515).

Argentorati apud M. Schurerium, Mense Junio, M.D.XVI.

1516. Institutio Principis Christiani ... cum aliis nonnullis, viz.:--Precepta Isocratis, &c.; Panegyricum gratulatorium, &c. ad Principem Philippum; Libellus Plutarchi de discrimine adulatoris et amici.

Louanii apud Theodoricum Martinum Alustensem, Mense Augusto, MDXVI.

1516. Erasmi Roterodami Epistolæ; ad Leonem X, ad Cardinalem Grimannum, ad Cardinalem S. Georgii, ad Martinum Dorpium. Ejusdem in laudem urbis Selestadii Panegyricum Carmen.

Lypsiæ impressit Valentinus Schuman. A.D. M.CCCCC.XVI.

1517. Aliquot Epistole saneque elegantes Erasmi Roterodami, et ad hunc aliorum eruditissimorum hominum, antehac nunquam excusæ præter unam et alteram. (Containing 39 letters.)

Lovanii apud Theodoricum Martinum, anno M.D.XVII. mense Aprili.

1517. Scarabeus, cum scholiis.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, Mense Maio, M.D.XVII.

1517. Bellum.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, Mense Aprili, M.D.XVII.

1517. De Octo Orationis Partium constructione Libellus ... Erasmo autore.

Basileæ; In officina Adæ Petri, mense Augusto, M.D.XVII.

1517. Enchiridion, etc. (containing the same matter as the Strasburg edition of 1515).

Argentorati apud M. Schurerium mense Novembri, M.D.XVII.

1517. In epistolam Pauli ad Romanos Paraphrasis. (First edition.)

Louanii Ex officina Theodo. Martin. Mense Novembri, M.D.XVII.

1518. Aliquot Epistolæ saneque elegantes Erasmi Roterodami, et ad hunc aliorum eruditissimorum hominum. (Containing 56 letters.)

In Aedibus Frobenianis apud inclytam Germaniae Basiliam; mense Januario, Anno M.D.XVIII.

1518. De Optimo Reip. Statu deque nova insula Vtopia libellus vere aureus ... Thomæ Mori.

Epigrammata ... Thomæ Mori.

Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Rot.

Basiliæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Martio M.D.XVIII.

1518. Enchiridion militis Christiani. (With prefatory letter to Volzius.)

Disputatiuncula de Pavore, &c. Jesu.

Jo: Coleti Responsio.

Basilius in Esaiam e Græco versus.

Epistola exhortatoria, &c.

Precatio ... ad Jesum.

Pæan ... virgini matri, &c.

Concio de puero Jesu.

Enarratio primi Psalmi.

Ode de casa natalitia pueri Jesu.

Expostulatio Jesu.

Hymni de Michaele, &c.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, M.D.XVIII. Quintili mense.

1518. Auctarium selectarum aliquot Epistolarum Erasmi Roterodami ad Eruditos, et horum ad illum.

Apud inclytam Basileam (Prefatory letter of Beatus Rhenanus dated XI. Calendas Septembreis M.D.XVIII.)

1518. Institutio boni et Christiani principis, &c.

Præcepta Isocratis, &c.

Panegyricus &c. ad Principem Philippum.

Libellus Plutarchi, &c.

Basileæ apud J. Frobenium, mense Julio MDXVIII.

Also, Plutarchi opuscula quædam D. Erasmo Rot. ... Philippo Melanchthone &c. interpretibus.

Basileæ apud J. Frobenium, mense Septembri M.D.XVIII.

1518. Querela Pacis undique gentium ejectæ ... also:--

In genere Consolatorio de Morte declamatio.

Lipsiæ ex ædibus Valentini Schumann, 1518.

1519. Ratio seu Compendium veræ Theologiæ.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Januario M.D.XIX.

1519. Paraclesis.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Februario M.D.XIX.

1519. Novum Testamentum omne, multo quam antehac diligentius ab Erasmo Rot. recognitum, &c. (Second edition.)

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frebenii, M.D.XIX. mense Martio.

1519. D. Erasmi Rot. in Novum Testamentum ab eodem denuo recognitum Annotationes.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Martio M.D.XIX.

1519. Collectanea Adagiorum, &c.

Argentorati M. Schurerius ... exscripsit mense Martio 1519.

1519. In Hymnum Aviæ Christi Annæ dictum ab Erasmo Roteradamo Scholia Jacobi Spiegel Selestadiensis.

In officina excusoria Segismundi Grim. Medici et Marci Vuyrsung, Augustæ Vindelicorum [Augsburg] M.D.XIX. quarto Non. Mar.

1519. D. Erasmi Rot. Apologia pro declamatione de laude matrimonii.

Apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Maio M.D.XIX.

1519. De ratione studii, &c. (Containing the same pieces as the edition of 1512.)

Argentorati Ex ædibus M. Schurerii, mense Junio M.D.XIX.

1519. In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas Paraphrasis per Erasmum Rot. recens ab illo conscripta et nunc primum typis excusa....

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Augusto M.D.XIX.

1519. Ex Novo Testamento Quatuor Evangelia jam denuo ab Erasmo Roter. recognita, emendata ac liberius versa, &c.

Lipsi ex officina industrii Valentini Schumanni. 1519. 15 Kalendas Novembris.

1519. Moriæ encomium iterum, pro castigatissimo castigatius, una cum Listrii commentariis, &c.

Basileæ in ædibus Jo. Frobenii, mense Novembri, M.D.IX.

1519(?). Erasmi Rot. Apologia, refellens suspiciones quorundam dictitantium dialogum D. Jacobi Latomi.... (To which is added, but in different type, the ‘Dialogus’ of Latomus.)

Basle. Froben. (The woodcut on the title-page has the inscription, HANS HOLB.)

1519. Enchiridion, &c. (Containing the same matter as the Basle edition of 1518.)

Coloniæ, apud Eucharium Cervicornum, MDXIX.

1519. D. Erasmi Rot. Opuscula, containing Paraclesis, Ratio seu Compendium veræ theologiæ, and Argumenta in omneis Apostolorum epistolas.

Lipsiæ apud Melchiorem Lottheaum. 1519.

1519. In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas Paraphrasis per Erasmum Roterodamum, recens ab illo conscripta, et nunc primum typis excusa.

Lypsiæ ex officina Schumanniana. 1519.

1520. Enchiridion Militis Christiani (with letter to Volzius). (At the end is added the Letter of Erasmus to John Colet, from Oxford, Eras. _Op._ v. p. 1263, and referred to supra, p. 133.)

Moguntiæ, apud Joannem Schœffer, M.D.XX. mense Januario.

1520. Paraphrases D. Erasmi in Epistolas Pauli Apostoli ad Rhomanos, Corinthios, et Galatas....

Basileæ, in æd. Frob. per Hieronymum Frob. Joan. Filium. Mense Januario MDXX.

1520. Paraphrases in Epistolam Pauli ad Ephesios, Philippenses et Colossenses et in duas ad Thessalonicenses....

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii, mense Martio MDXX.

1520. Paraphrases in Epistolas Pauli ad Timotheum duas, ad Titum unam et ad Philemonem unam.

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii, mense Martio MDXX.

1520. Annotationes Edovardi Leei in Annotationes Novi Testamenti D. Erasmi. (With the replies of Erasmus.)

Basileæ ex ædibus Joannis Frobenii, mense Maio M.D.XX.

1520. Annotationes Edovardi Leei in Annotationes Novi Testamenti D. Erasmi.

Basileæ ex ædibus Joannis Frob. xii. Calendas Augustas M.D.XX.

1520. De Ratione Studii, &c.

Officium Discipulorum ex Quintiliano.

Concio de puero Jesu, &c.

Expostulatio Jesu ad Mortales.

Carmina Scholaria.

Selestadii in ædibus Lazari Schurerii, mense Augusto, anno M.D.XX.

1520. Apologia Erasmi ... de ‘In principio erat Sermo.’

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, M.D.XX.

And also, with continuous paging,

Epistolæ aliquot eruditorum virorum ex quibus perspicuum quanti sit Eduardi Leei virulentia

Basileæ ex ædibus Joannis Frobenii, MDXX. mense Augusto.

1520. Parabolarum sive Similium Liber. Ex secunda recognitione.

Selestadii in ædibus Lazari Schurerii, mense Augusto M.D.XX.

1520. Adagia. Ex quarta Autoris recognitione.

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii, mense Octobri M.D.XX.

1520. Antibarbarorum D. Erasmi Rot. Liber unus.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, M.D.XX.

1520. D. Erasmi Rot. Epistola ad Cardinalem Moguntinum, qua commonefacit illius celsitudinem de causa Doctoris Martini Lutheri.

Selestadii in officina Schueriana, sumptu Nicolai Cuferii bibliopolæ Selestadiensis, M.D.XX.

1521. De duplici copia verborum ac rerum Commentarii duo.

De ratione studii.

De laudibus literariæ societatis, reipublicæ ac magistratuum urbis Argentinæ.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Februario, M.D.XXI.

1521. Parabolæ sive similia.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Julio M.D.XXI.

1521. De duplici Copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo.

De laudibus literariæ societatis, &c.

Epistola ad Wimphelingum.

Moguntiæ ex ædibus Joannis Schœffer, mense Augusto MD.XXI.

1521. Epistolæ D. Erasmi Roterodami ad diversos, et aliquot aliorum ad illum per amicos eruditos, ex ingentibus fasciculis schedarum collectæ.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, M.D.XXI. Pridie Cal. Septembris.

1522. Collectanea Adagiorum, &c.

Moguntiæ in ædibus Joannis Schœffer, Anno supra sesquimillesimum XXII. mense Februario.

1522. Enchiridion militis Christiani.

Argentinæ apud Joannem Knoblochium mense Februario MDXXII.

1522. Novum testamentum omne tertio jam recognitum.

Anno MDXXII. (Basle).

1522. D. Erasmi Rot. in novum testamentum ab eodem tertio recognitum Annotationes.

Basileæ M.D.XXII. mense Februario.

1522. Paraphrasis in Evangelium Matthæi, nunc primum nata et ædita, &c.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frob. mense Martio MDXXII.

1522. Querela Pacis.

Argentinæ apud Joannem Knoblouchum, mense Martio M.D.XXII.

1522. Ratio seu Methodus Compendio perveniendi ad veram Theologiam, postremum ab ipso autore castigata et locupletata. Paraclesis. (Also Letter from Hutten to Erasmus.)

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii, MDXXII. mense Junio.

1522. Moriæ Encomium, &c.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frob. mense Julio MDXXII.

1522. De Conscribendis Epistolis, recognitum ab autore et locupletatum.

Parabolarum sive similium liber ab autore recognitus.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frob. M.D.XXII. mense Augusto.

1522. Familiarium Colloquiorum Formulæ. (The Prefatory Letter to Froben’s Son is dated ‘pridie Calendas Martias, MDXXII.’)

(A reprint of the first edition of Basle.)

Argentorati expensis Joannis Knoblouchii et Pauli Getz. MDXXII. mense Octobri.

1522. De Conscribendis Epistolis Opus ... recognitum ab autore et locupletatum.

Argentorati ex ædibus Joannis Knoblouchii, MDXXII. mense Octobri.

1522. Ad Christophorum Episc. Basil. Epistola Apologetica de interdicto esu carnium, &c. cum aliis nonnullis novis, &c. (Containing Apologia contra Stunicam.)

Argentorati ædibus Joannis Knoblouchii MDXXII. octavo calendas decemb.

1522. Ad R. Christophorum Episcopum Basiliensem, epistola apologetica de interdicto esu carnium, &c.

In officina excusoria Sigismundi, Augustæ Vindelicorum [Augsburg], M.D.XXII.

1522. Paraclesis.

Augustæ Vindelicorum, MDXXII.

1522. Enchiridion Militis Christiani, which may be called in Englische the Hansom Weapon of a Christen Knight replenished with many Goodly and Godly Preceptes: made by the famous Clerke Erasmus of Roterdame, and newly corrected and imprinted.

Imprinted at London by Johan Byddell, dwellynge at the sygne of the Sonne, against the Cundyte in Fletestrete, where they be for to sell. Newly corrected in the yere of our Lorde god, M.CCCCC[X]*XII.

* This letter has evidently dropped out of its place in the printing.

1523. Enchiridion Militis Christiani.

Apud Sanctam Ubiorum Agrippinam, M.D.XXIII. In ædibus Eucharii Cervicorni, impensa et ære integerrimi bibliopolæ Godefridi Hittorpii civis Coloniensis, mense Martio.

1523. Paraphrasis in Evangelium Joannis Apostoli. (First edition.)

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Martio MDXXIII.

1523. Catalogus omnium Erasmi Lucubrationum, ipso autore, cum aliis nonnullis. (Containing Letters of Erasmus to Botzhem, and to Marcus Laurinus.)

Basileæ in ædibus Joannis Frobenii, mense Aprili M.D.XXIII.

1523. Enchiridion Militis Christiani.

Parisiis in ædibus Simonis Colinæi, Pridie Calendas Maii MD.XXIII.

1523. Enchiridion Militis Christiani. (With Letter to Volzius.)

Argentorati excudebat Joan. Knob. mense Octobri M.D.XXIII.

1523. Querela Pacis, &c.

Argent. J. Cnoblochus excudebat apud Turturem, mense Novembri MD.XXIII.

1523. Virginis Matris apud Lauretum Cultæ Liturgia, per Erasmum Roterodamum.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, Anno M.D.XXIII. mense Novembri.

1523. Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram Theologiam, postremum ab ipso autore castigata et locupletata.

Paraclesis, and letter from Hutten to Erasmus.

Basle. Froben. MDXXIII.

1523. Ad Christophorum episcopum Basiliensem epistola apologetica Erasmi Roterodami de interdicto esu carnium, &c.

Apud Sanctam Coloniam MD.XX.III.

1523(?). Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines Hutteni.

Without date or printer’s name.

1523 or 4. Precatio dominica ... opus recens ac modo natum et mox excusum. (Prefatory letter dated nono calend. Novemb. MDXXIII.)

Froben. Basle.

1524. De Octo orationis partium constructione libellus.

Parisiis in ædibus Simonis Colinæi, mense Januario MDXXIV.

1524. De libero Arbitrio ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΗ. (Bound with this copy is the De servo Arbitrio Mar. Lutheri, ad D. Erasmum Roterodamum. Wittembergæ, 1526.)

Basileæ apud Joan. Frob. mense Septemb. M.D.XXIIII.

1524. De Libero Arbitrio ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΗ, sive Collatio, D. Erasmi Roterod.

Antwerpiæ apud Michaelem Hillenium Hoochstratanum, mense Septemb. MD.XX.IIII.

1524. De immensa dei misericordia D. Erasmi Rot. Concio.

Virginis et Martyris comparatio per eundem. Nunc primum et condita et edita.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frob. mense Septemb. MD.XXIV.

1524. Tomus Primus Paraphraseon D. Erasmi Rot. in novum testamentum. (Containing the Paraphrases on the Four Gospels and the ‘Acts.’)

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium MDXXIV.

1524. 1. Exomologesis sive modus Confitendi, opus nunc primum et natum et excusum.

2. Paraphrasis in tertium Psalmum.

3. Duo diplomata Papæ Adriani sexti cum responsionibus.

4. Epistola de morte.

5. Apologia ad Stunicæ conclusiones.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frob. MD.XXIIII.

1524. D. Eras. Rot. Breviores aliquot Epistolæ, studiosis juvenibus admodum utiles. (Apparently a selection of Letters from the Basle collection of 1521.)

Parisiis. Apud Simonem Colinæum.

1526. Familiarium Colloquiorum opus ... recognitum, magnaque accessione auctum. (From p. 246 to p. 750 is all additional matter not included in the first edition. This edition is the first which contained the Vindication of the Colloquies, ‘D. Erasmus Roterodamus De utilitate colloquiorum, ad lectorem.’)

Basileæ apud Joan. Frob. mense Junio, M.D.XXVI.

1526. Erasmi Rot. Detectio præstigiarum cujusdam libelli germanice scripti, ficto authoris titulo, cum hac inscriptione, Erasmi et Lutheri opiniones de Cœna domini.

Norembergæ apud Joan. Petreium M.D.XXVI. mense Junio.

1526. Hyperaspistes Diatribæ ad versus servum Arbitrium Martini Lutheri.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frob. M.D.XXVI.

1526. Moriæ encomium, nunc postremum ab ipso religiose recognitum, doctissimique Gerardi Listrii commentariis illustratum.

Eucharius Cervicornus excudebat M.D.XXVI.

1526. Lingua, opus novum et hisce temporibus aptissimum. (Prefatory Letter of Erasmus dated Postridie Idus Augusti 1525.)

[Cologne.] Anno M.D.XXVI.

1527. Novum Testamentum. (Fourth edition.)

Basileæ in ædibus Jo. Frobenii. M.D.XXVII. mense martio.

1527. Hyperaspistæ liber secundus.

Anno M.D.XXVII. mense Novembri. (No name of printer or place where printed.)

1527. Hyperaspistæ liber secundus, opus nunc primum excusum.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, MD.XXVII.

1530. Utilissima consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo et obiter enarratus Psalmum XXVIII. per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Opus recens et natum et æditum.

Lutetiæ Parisiorum, mense Junio MDXXX.

1530. De Civilitate morum Puerilium per Des. Erasmum Rot. Libellus nunc primum et conditus et æditus.

Parisiis Expensis Christiani Wechel, MDXXX. mense Octobri.

1530. Lingua.

Apud sanctam Coloniam quarto Idus Novembris M.D.XXX.

1532. D. Erasmi Rot. Dilutio eorum quæ Judocus Clithoveus scripsit adversus declamationem suasoriam matrimonii.

Epistola de delectu ciborum, &c. In elenchum Alberti Pii brevissima scholia.

Froben, MDXXXII.

1533. De sarcienda Ecclesiæ concordia, &c. (nunc primum typis excusa).

Basileæ ex officina Frobeniana, M.D.XXXIII.

1534. De preparatione ad mortem, nunc primum et conscriptus et æditus.

Accedunt aliquot epistolæ seriis de rebus, in quibus item nihil est non novum ac recens. (Containing, inter alia, Sir Thos. More’s Letter to Erasmus on resigning the chancellorship, and appended thereto his epitaph.)

Basileæ in officina Frobeniana per Hieronymum Frobenium et Nicolaum Episcopium, MDXXXIIII.

1536. Ecclesiastæ sive de ratione concionandi libri quatuor, opus recens, denuo ab autore recognitum.

Basileæ in officina Frobeniana per Hieronymum Frobenium et Nicolaum Episcopium, mense Augusto MDXXXVI.

1542. D. Erasmi Rot. in Novum Testamentum Annotationes ab ipso autore jam postremum sic recognitæ ac locupietatæ ut propemodum novum opus videri possit. (Reprint of the fifth and last edition.)

Basileæ in officina Frobeniana M.D.XLII.

APPENDIX F.

EDITIONS OF WORKS OF SIR THOMAS MORE IN MY POSSESSION.

A.D.

1516. (Dec.) Utopia (First edition).--‘Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reip. statu, deque nova Insula Vtopia authore clarissimo viro Thoma Moro inclytæ Civitatis Londinensis cive et Vicecomite, cura M. Petri Aegidii Antuerpiensis, et arte Theodorici Martini Alustensis, Typographi almæ Louaniensium Academiæ, nunc primum accuratissime editus.’

Without date, but containing a Prefatory Letter from Petrus Aegidius to Hier. Buslidius, dated MDXVI. cal. Novembris; and a Letter from Joannes Paludanus to Petrus Aegidius, dated calen. Decemb.

1518. Utopia (Second edition).--‘De Optimo Reip. statu deque nova Insula Vtopia, libellus vere aureus,’ &c. Also,

Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomæ Mori. Also,

Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Rot.

Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Martio MDXVIII.

1518. Ditto ditto.

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Novembri MDXVIII. (HANS HOLB. inscribed in the woodcut on the title-page).

1520. Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomæ Mori, Britanni, ad emendatum exemplar ipsius autoris excusa. (With some additional Epigrams, including More’s Letter to his Children.)

Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Decembri M.D.XX.

1557. The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, sometime Lorde Chauncellorr of England, wrytten by him in the Englysh tongve.

Printed at London, at the costes and charges of John Cawod, John Waly, and Richarde Tottell. Anno 1557.

1563. Thomæ Mori Angliæ ornamenti eximii Lucubrationes, ab innumeris mendis repurgatæ.

Basil, apud Episcopium F. 1563.

1566. Thomæ Mori Angli ... Omnia, quæ hucusque ad manus nostras peruenerunt, Latina opera....

Lovanii, apud Joannem Bogardum sub Bibliis Aureis. Anno 1566.

1568. Doctissima D. Thomæ Mori clarissimi ac disertiss. viri Epistola, in qua non minus facetè quàm piè, respondet Literis Joannis Pomerani, hominis inter Protestantes nominis non obscuri.

Opusculum ... ex Authoris quidem autographo emendato, dum viveret, exemplari desumptum, nunquam vero ante hac in lucem editum.

Lovanii, ex officina Joannis Fouleri. MD.LXVIII. (Not included in any of the above collections of More’s works.)

1588. Tres Thomæ ... D. Thomæ Mori ... Vita, authore Thoma Stapletono Anglo.

Dvaci, Ex officina Joannis Bogardi. M.D.LXXXVIII.

1612. Ditto ditto.

Coloniæ Agrippinæ, Sumptibus Bernardi Gualteri. MDC.XII.

(Stapleton had access to a collection of More’s papers, made by Harris, his private secretary, and has preserved Latin translations of his letters to his children, &c., not in the collected works.)

INDEX.

_Alcor, Alfonso Fernandez_, Archdeacon of, on the circulation of the ‘Enchiridion’ in Spain, 174

_Amerbach_, printer at Basle, 302. His sons, _id._

_Ammonius_, 223, 256, 270, 283, 284. Death of, 458. Describes More’s family, 256

_Aquinas_, the ‘Summa’ of, 108-110, 440. On Scripture inspiration, 33, 123. Erasmus and Colet on, 107 _et seq._

_Augustine_, Colet prefers Origen and Jerome to, 16, 41. Colet differs from, 36, 82. Luther’s adherence to, 404, 472. Eck charges Erasmus with not having read his works, 435 _et seq._ The power of his dogmatic theology, 494. Difference between the Augustinian standpoint and that of the Oxford Reformers, 494-497

_Baptista, Dr._, Erasmus takes his sons to Italy, 186

_Battus_, tutor to the Marchioness de Vere. Kindness to Erasmus, 164-167

_Bembo_, secretary to Leo X., 322

_Bishops_, promotion of, 226-230. Ignorance of some, 227

_Boville_, at Cambridge, Erasmus writes to, 399

_Cain_, conversation on sacrifice of, 97 _et seq._ Erasmus tells a story about, 99

_Chalcondyles_, 14

_Charles, Prince_ (Charles V.), invites Erasmus to Flanders, 279. Henry VIII. breaks faith with, 308. ‘Institutio Principis Christiani’ written for, 368. Connives at Indulgences, 422. Erasmus loses his faith in, 430. Election to the Empire, 482

_Charnock_, the Prior, head of the College of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford, 94. His reception of Erasmus, 96. Dines with Colet, Erasmus, &c., 97. Mention of, 102, 118, 165, 171

_Colet, Sir Henry_, 14, 113

_Colet, John_, ordained deacon, 2, _n._ His father, 14. His family, 15. His mother, 15, _n._, 251, 397. Graduates at Oxford in Arts, 15. Enters the Church, _id._ His preferments, _id._ Visits France and Italy, and what he studies there, _id._ At Florence (?), 17. Whether influenced by Savonarola, 18, 37, _n._, 158. Studies Pico and Ficino’s works, 21, 22. Returns to Oxford, 22. Lectures on St. Paul’s Epistles, 1, 32. His mode of interpretation not textarian, 33. Acknowledges human element in Scriptures, 34. Differs from St. Augustine, 36, 82. MS. on the ‘Romans,’ 33-42. Rejects theory of uniform inspiration of Scripture, _id._ Acquaintance with Thomas More, 24. First hears of Erasmus, 27. Conversation with a priest on St. Paul’s writings, 42. Letter to Abbot of Winchcombe, 45. On the Mosaic account of the Creation--theory of accommodation-- letters to Radulphus on, 43-58. Pico’s ‘Heptaplus,’ 59. Abstracts of the Dionysian writings, 60-77. On the object of Christ’s death, 67. On priests, 68. On the sacraments, 70. On sponsors, 71. On self-sacrifice, 74. On the Pope and ecclesiastical scandals, 75. Lectures on I. Corinthians, 78-89. Whether convinced that the Pseudo-Dionysian writings were spurious, 91. His warm reception of Erasmus, 95. His view of Cain and Abel’s sacrifices, 98. Erasmus’s admiration of his earnestness, 98. His position at Oxford, 101. His appreciation of Erasmus, _id._ Conversation with Erasmus on the Schoolmen, 102-112. Advice to theological students, 106. Discussion with Erasmus on Christ’s agony in the garden, 116-118. His love of truth, 121. On the theory of ‘manifold senses’ of Scripture, 122. On Scripture inspiration, _id._ Disappointed at Erasmus leaving Oxford, 126. Urges him to expound Moses or Isaiah, 128, 131. Left alone at Oxford, 133. Dean of St. Paul’s, 137, 138. His work in London, habits, preaching, &c., 139-142. More on his preaching, 148. He advises More to marry, 160. Preaches and practises self-sacrifice, 206-207. Succeeds to his father’s property, 206. Resigns living of Stepney, 208. Founds St. Paul’s School, 208-210. Colet’s gentleness and love of children, 211-215. Preface to his Grammar, 213. Advice to his masters, 214. Rejects Linacre’s Grammar, 216. Writes a Grammar, _id._ On the true method of education, 216-219. Letter to Erasmus, 218. Wants an under-schoolmaster, 220. Sermons liked by the Lollards, 222. Colet’s preaching, 225. Sermon to Convocation of 1512, 230 _et seq._ Completes his school, 250. Letter to Erasmus, 251. Erasmus in praise of Colet’s preaching and school, 253. Persecuted by Fitzjames, 254. Defended by Warham, _id._ Returns to his preaching, 255. Preaches against Henry VIII.’s wars, 261. Defended against Fitzjames by the King, 262. Ditto, ditto, again, Good Friday sermon, 264. His troubles about property--quarrel with his uncle, &c., 285. Visits St. Thomas’s shrine with Erasmus, 287 _et seq._ Letter to Erasmus--harassed by Fitzjames, 305. Sermon on installation of Cardinal Wolsey, 343. Procures release of a prisoner, 393. Letter to Erasmus on ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ &c., 394; ditto on Reuchlin’s speculations, 412. Attacked by sweating sickness, 461. Fixes statutes of his school, 462. His views on marriage, 464. Makes his will and prepares his tomb, 466. Interest in passing events, _id._ Letter from Marquard von Hatstein, 468. Colet’s retirement from public life, 482. Death of Colet, 503. Character of, 504. Colet’s MS. on Romans, extracts from, App. A; MS. on I. Corinthians, extracts from, App. B. Colet’s preferments, App. D.

_Colt, Jane_, More’s first wife, 160, 180, 193, 256, 498. Dies, 256. Epitaph, 498

_Convocation_ of 1512, 223 _et seq._ Colet’s sermon to, 230 _et seq._

_Coventry_, description of, 414. Mariolatry there, 416

_Croke, Richard_, at Paris gets first edition of the ‘Praise of Folly’ printed there, 204, _n._

_Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagit_, his writings, Colet studies, 16. Translated by Ficino, 21. Abstracts of his ‘Hierarchies’ made by Colet, 60-73. Influence of, on Colet, 41, 58, _n._, 82, 84, 91, 345. Grocyn rejects as spurious, 91

_Dorpius, Martin_, attacks Erasmus, 313. Reply of Erasmus, 316. Mention of, by Colet, 395

_Eck, Dr._, controversy with Erasmus, 434-437. Ditto with Luther, 484

_Education_, satire on prevalent modes of, 194, 211 _et seq._ Colet’s views on, 208, 214. Erasmus on the true method of, 217. Schoolmasters looked down upon, 220. In Utopia, universal, 353. Four-tenths of English people cannot read, 353

_Eobanus_, 480

‘_Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_,’ 407-411

_Erasmus_ at Paris, 28. Comes to Oxford, 94. Character and previous history, 94-96. Object in coming to Oxford, 96. His reception by Charnock and Colet, _id._ Converses on sacrifices of Cain and Abel, and tells a story about Cain, 99. Admires Colet, 101, 102. Delight with Oxford circle, 102. Conversation with Colet on the Schoolmen, 106-108. Studies Aquinas, 108. Falls in love with Thomas More, 113. Letter to More, 114. Delighted with England, 115. Conversation with Colet on the agony of Christ, 117-120. Theory of ‘manifold senses’ of Scripture, 121-125. Correspondence with Colet on leaving Oxford, 126-133. At Court, 126. Promises to join Colet someday, 133. Leaves Oxford, 133. With More visits the royal nursery, 134. Leaves England for Italy, 135. Robbed at Dover by the Custom House officers, 161. Cannot go to Italy on account of his poverty, 162. His troubles from poverty and ill-health, 163-165. Friendship with Battus and Marchioness de Vere, 164-166. ‘Adagia,’ 163. ‘Enchiridion,’ 165. Remembers his promise to Colet, 167-172. Letter to Colet, his works, poverty, study of Greek, admiration for Origen, 168. His ‘Enchiridion,’ 173. Its popularity, 174. Views expressed in it on free-will Anti-Augustinian, 175. Report of discussion on the ‘agony of Christ,’ 176. His ‘Adagia,’ 177. Preface to Valla’s ‘Annotations,’ 177-179. In England, a second time visits More, 180. Again starts for Italy, 183. Is to instruct the sons of Dr. Baptista, &c., 184. Letter to Colet and Linacre from Paris, 185. Visits Italy, 186-188. Description of German inns, 186. Quarrel with the tutor of his pupils, 187. Disappointed with Italy, 187. Returns to England to More’s home on the accession of Henry VIII., 188. The ‘Praise of Folly,’ 193-204. When first edition published, 204, _n._ Goes to Cambridge, 205. His views on schools, 210-212. His ‘De Copiâ Verborum,’ 216, 251. ‘On the true method of education,’ 217. Skirmishes with the Scotists, 219. Defends Colet’s school, 251. Epigram on battle of Spurs, 271. At Walsingham, 273. Work at Cambridge, 276. Leaves Cambridge, 279. Invited to the court of Prince Charles, 279. Letter to Abbot of St. Bertin against war, 280. Brush with Cardinal Canossa, 282. Intercourse with Colet, 284 _et seq._ Letter to Colet, 286. With Colet visits St. Thomas’s shrine, 288 _et seq._ Goes to Basle, 294. Letter to Servatius, 296 _et seq._ Accident at Ghent, 300. Reaches Maintz, 301. Strasburg, _id._ Reaches Basle, _incog._, 302. At Froben’s office, 234. Writes to England, 305. Returns to England, 306. Letters to Rome, 307. Supports Reuchlin, _id._ Satire upon kings, 309. Edition of 1,800 of ‘Praise of Folly’ sold, 312. On his way to Basle again, 312. Replies to attack from Dorpius, 316. Reaches Basle, 318. The ‘Novum Instrumentum’ and its prefaces--the ‘Paraclesis,’ &c., 321-335. St. Jerome, 335. ‘Institutio Principis Christiani,’ 365-377. ‘Paraphrases’ and other works, 392. Colet reads the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ and encourages him to go on, 394-397. Reception of the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ in other quarters, 398. By Luther, 402. Erasmus mentioned in ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,’ 408. Denounces international scandals and Indulgences, 420 and 425-426 and 433. Journey to Basle, 433. Arrival, 434. Attack from the plague, _id._ Correspondence with Eck, _id._ His labours at Basle, 438. Letter to Volzius, 438-440. Second edition of ‘New Testament’ and ‘Ratio Veræ Theologiæ,’ 442-454. His health gives way--ill at Louvain, 455. Does not die--letter to Rhenanus, 457. His opinion of Luther and Melanchthon, 477-481. Correspondence on the Hussites of Bohemia, 484 _et seq._ On ‘The Church’ and Toleration, 488-491. Grieves on the death of Colet, 503-504. His opinion of Colet’s character, _id._ Early editions of works of, App. E

_Ferdinand of Spain_, 260, 308, 361

_Ficino, Marsilio_, 9, 11-14, 19, 20, _n._, 39. His ‘De Religione Christiana,’ 11-12

_Fisher, Bishop_, Erasmus visits, 399. Erasmus writes to, 412, 431, 503

_Fisher, Christopher_, More’s host at Paris, 171, 177

_Fisher, Robert_, 116

_Fitzjames, Bishop of London_, zeal against heresy, 222-223, 230, 247. Promotions, 228. Mention of, 179. Hatred of Colet and his school, 241, 253. Tries to convict Colet of heresy, 254. Never ceases to harass him, 249, 306, 467

_Flodden_, Battle of, 272

_Florence_, Grocyn and Linacre at, 14. _See_ ‘Platonic Academy’

_Fox, Bishop of Winchester_, 147. Praises the ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ 398

_Froben, John_, his printing-press and circle of learned men at Basle, 302. Reception of Erasmus, 303, 304, 318, _n._ Mention of, in ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,’ 410

_Gerson_, ends the schism, 6. Persecutes Huss, &c.

_Giles’, Peter_, connection with the ‘Utopia,’ 381-382, 389

_Grocyn_, at Florence, 14. At Oxford, _id._ More studies under, 25. Opinion of Erasmus of, 115. Rejects Pseudo-Dionysian writings as spurious, 90, 91. Writes preface to Linacre’s translation of Proclus, 85. In London, 142, 149, 170. Patronises More’s lectures, 143. Goes with Erasmus to Lambeth, 183

_Grotius, Hugo_, rejects the Machiavellian theory of politics, 369

_Hatstein’s, Marquard von_, letter to Colet, 468

_Henry VII._, zeal for reform, and against dissent, 8. Presents Colet to the deanery of St. Paul’s, 138. Avaricious, 144, 161, 189, 190. More offends him by opposing a subsidy, 145, 147

_Henry VIII._, More and Erasmus visit, when a boy, 134. Accession of, 190. More’s verses on, _id._ His continental wars, 223. His ambition, 259. His first campaign, 223, 260. Colet preaches against it, but without offending Henry VIII., 261. Ditto, ditto, against second campaign, 262-272. Invades France, 270. Peace with France, 308. Evil results of his wars, 338. Connives at the Pope’s Indulgences, 422. Change in policy, 428. Draws More into his service, 429

_Heresy_, on the increase, 222, 223. Convocation for extirpation of, 223 _et seq._ Colet on, 238. Discussion on burning of heretics, 248. Colet accused of, 254

_Holbein, Hans_, woodcut by, in ‘Utopia,’ 389. Picture of More’s family, 500, and Appendix C

_Howard, Admiral_, 263. Death of, 269

_Hussites_ of Bohemia. Luther discovers that he is one, 485. Their opinions and sects, and Erasmus’s views on the same, 485-491

_Hutten, Ulrich_, 480, 497

_Indulgences_, sale of, 419. Erasmus denounces, 420, 426, 441. Luther denounces, 421. Princes bribed to allow of, 422

_Isabella_ of Spain, zeal for reform, 8. Persecutes, _id._

_Jerome_, Colet prefers to Augustine, 16, 41. Erasmus also, 435, 437. Follows his opinion on the cause of the agony of Christ, 118. Erasmus opposes it, 120. Colet adheres to it, 120. Erasmus quotes, against inspiration of the Vulgate translation, 317. Erasmus edits works of, 317, 319. Erasmus in praise of, 437

_Jonas, Justus_, Erasmus writes to, 504

_Julius II._, satire on, by Erasmus, 202, 203. His ambition, 258. Holy Alliance, 263. _Julius de cœlo exclusus_, 426, 427

_Kings_, satire of Erasmus on, 200, 309-311

_Latimer, William_, on the ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ 398

_Lee, Edward_, 470, 504

_Leo X._, a friend of Erasmus, and inclined to peace, 268. His intellectual sensualism, 321. Patronises the ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ 336. His Indulgences, &c., 418 _et seq._ Censure of Erasmus on, 433

_Lilly, William_, in companionship with More, 146, 149, 152, 181. His grammar, 148. Master of St. Paul’s School, 215, 250, 466. Had travelled in the East, 150, 250. Had a large family, 464, _n._

_Linacre_ at Florence, 14. At Oxford, _id._ Erasmus admires him, 116. Translation of Proclus’ ‘De Spherâ,’ 85. His Latin Grammar, 216. Letter of Erasmus to, 185

_Lollards_ attend Colet’s sermons, 222. Many abjure, _id._ Some burned, 223

_Lorenzo de’ Medici_, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18, 20, _n._, 59

_Louis XII._ of France, 259. At war with Henry VIII.; loses Tournay, &c., 272. Alliance with England. Dies, 308

_Lupset_, disciple of Colet’s, 504

_Luther_ reads the ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ 402, 407. His early history and rigid Augustinian standpoint, 404, 472. Erasmus’s opinion of, 478, 479. Finds out he is a Hussite, 484, 485. The Reform of, contrasted with that of the Oxford Reformers, 492, 497

_Lystrius, Gerard_, 303. Adds notes to the ‘Praise of Folly,’ 312, 313, 420

_Machiavelli_, his School of Politics. ‘The Prince’ and its maxims, 323, 324, 368, 369

_Mahometanism._ _See_ Turks

_Macrobius_, quoted by Colet, 57. Mentioned, 10, 58, 59

_Martins, Thierry_, printer at Antwerp, 167, _n._ At Louvain, 366, 379, 389, 419, _n._, 455, 458, 481

_Maximilian_, 259, 482

_Melanchthon_, Ode on Erasmus, 401, 402. Erasmus’s appreciation of, 476-478

_More, Thomas_, his early history, 23. Fascinating character, 25. Comes to Oxford, 25. His father’s strictness, 26. Erasmus meets him in London, 113. Erasmus falls in love with him, 114, 116. Visits royal nursery with Erasmus and Arnold, 134. His legal studies, 27, 142. Oxford friends join him in London, _id._ Lectures on St. Augustine’s ‘De Civitate Dei,’ 143. Reader at Furnival’s Inn--enters Parliament, 143, 144. Procures the rejection of part of a subsidy, 145. Offends Henry VII., 145, 146. Seeks retirement, _id._ In lodgings near the Charterhouse, 147. Colet’s influence on him, 148. He studies Pico’s Life and Works, 151-158. Erasmus visits him, 181. His satire upon monks and confession, _id._ Unrelenting hatred of the King’s avarice and tyranny--his epigrams, 182. Leaves the Charterhouse--marries, 159, 160. His home in Bucklersbury and three daughters, 193. Connection with Henry VIII., 190-192. His practice at the bar, and appointment as undersheriff, _id._ Erasmus visits him and writes the ‘Praise of Folly’ at his house, 193. More on Colet’s school, 251. Epigrams against French criticisms on the war, 260. Public duties, 256, 338. Writes History of Richard III., _id._ His first wife dies, _id._ His practice at the bar--second marriage, 337. Sent on an embassy, 343. Second book of ‘Utopia,’ 346-365. Introductory book to, 378-390. Attempt of Henry VIII. to make him a courtier, 380. Visit to Coventry--strange frenzy there, 414-418. Second embassy, 427. Enters Henry VIII.’s service, 429. At the court of Henry VIII., 458. Letter to the University of Oxford, 459. A monk attempts his conversion--More’s reply, 470-475. His character and domestic life, 497-502. Opinion of character of Colet, 504. Date of More’s birth, note on, Appendix C. Works of, App. F

_Morton, Cardinal_, zeal for reform, and against heretics, 8. More’s connection with, 24, 256, 386

_Moses_, Colet’s views on; his account of the Creation, 46 _et seq._ Colet urges Erasmus to lecture on Moses or Isaiah, 128, 131

_Mountjoy, Lord_, 94, 115, 134, 165, 170, 205, 295, 469, 471

_Neo-platonists_, 9-13, 39, 41, 61, 77, 158, 159

_Origen_, the works of, Colet studies, and prefers to those of Augustine, 16. Erasmus studies, 169. His method of allegorical interpretation, 174, 445

_Original sin_, allusion to, 403, 492

_Oxford Reformers of 1498._ (_See_ ‘Colet,’ ‘Erasmus,’ and ‘More.’) Difference between their standpoint and that of Luther and all Augustinian Reformers, 492-497. Nature of the Reform urged by, 506. Result of its rejection, 507-509

_Parliament_ of 1503-4. Subsidy opposed by More in, 145. Of 1514, 279. Of 1515, complaints of results of Henry VIII.’s extravagance and the wars, 338. Levy taxes on labourers, 268; and interfere with wages, 340-341. Statute on pasture-farming, 341. Rigid punishment of crimes, _id._ Eight years without a Parliament, 346

_Pico della Mirandola_, influenced by Savonarola, 19. Death of, 18-20. His ‘Heptaplus,’ 19, _n._, 59. More translates his life and works, 152-158. His faith in Christianity, and in the laws of nature, 154. On prayer, 154. On the Scriptures, 155. Study of Eastern languages, 156. His verses, 157. On the love of Christ, 152-157

_Platonic Academy_, 9, 13, 17, 19

_Plotinus_, 10, 14, 16, 41

_Pole, De la_, 133

_Politian_, 14, 18

_Pomponatius_, sceptical tendencies of, 323

_Popes_, satire of Erasmus on, 201, 426. Colet on, 74, 75

_Proclus_, 10

_Pyghards_, of Bohemia. _See_ Hussites

_Radulphus_ (who?), Colet’s letters to, 41-57

_Reuchlin_, mention of, 301. Erasmus supports, 307. His ‘Pythagorica,’ &c. Colet’s opinion of, 411, 413

_Rhenanus, Beatus_, 303, 304, 311, 312, 392, 432, 457

_Sacrifice_, Colet’s views on, 39, 206. Of Cain and Abel, conversation on, 97 _et seq._

_Sadolet_, secretary to Leo X., 321

_Sapidus, John_, escorts Erasmus to Basle, 302

_Savonarola_, influence of, 17-22. Do. on Colet (?) _id._ and 37, _n._ Whether any connection between his views and Colet’s, _id._ Indirect connection with the Oxford Reformers through More’s translation of Pico’s life and works, 158, 159

_Saxony, Frederic_, Elector of, protects Luther, 477-483. His noble conduct on election of Charles V., _id._

_Schlechta’s, Johannes_, of Bohemia, correspondence with Erasmus, 485-491

_Scriptures_, position of study of, at Oxford, 2. Do. plenary inspiration, 29. Interpretation textarian, _id._ Theory of ‘manifold senses,’ 31, 121-124. Aquinas on do., 30, 122. Tyndale’s account of, 30, 31. Scriptures practically ignored, 14. Colet’s mode of interpretation (_see_ Colet). The theory of accommodation, 52-57. ‘Manifold senses,’ Colet on inspiration, 124. Valla’s ‘Annotations,’ preface of Erasmus, 177. Pico on the Scriptures, 155. Colet translates portions of, 155. Dorpius maintains verbal inspiration of Vulgate version, 315. Eck also, 435. Erasmus rejects it, 317, 331, 436, 443. Advocates translation of, into all languages, 327. Method of study of, 329, 445. Difference between the Oxford and the Wittemberg Reformers on the inspiration of, 492-497

_Servatius_, prior of Stein monastery, Holland, correspondence with Erasmus, 295, 299

_Sherborn, Robert_, Bishop of St. David’s, 138

_Spalatin, George_, writes to Erasmus, 402

_St. Andrews_, Archbishop of, under Erasmus’s tuition, 184. Killed in battle of Flodden, 272

_St. Bertin_, Abbot of, 165. Letters of Erasmus to, 280. Erasmus visits, 299

_St. Paul’s School_, founded by Colet, 209. Salaries of masters, 209. Cost of, to Colet, 210. Completion of, 250. Jealousy against, 251. Statutes of, 463-466

_Sweating sickness_, 458, 461

_Taxation_, of clergy, for Henry VIII.’s wars, 247. Amount of a ‘tenth,’ _id._ _n._ Of labourers, 340. War taxes, 339. Erasmus on, 374-376. Amount of a ‘fifteenth,’ 145

_Tunstal_, More on an embassy with, 343. Erasmus writes to, 503

_Turks_, five times as numerous as Christians, 6, _n._ Threaten to overwhelm Christianity, 6. Defeat of the Moors in Spain, 7

_Tyndale_, describes position of Scripture study at Oxford, 3, _n._ Estimate of number of Mahometans and Christians, 6, _n._ On the scholastic modes of Scripture interpretation and the theory of ‘manifold senses,’ 31. At Oxford before Colet leaves, 136. Studies Scriptures there, _id._ Translates the ‘Enchiridion,’ 174

_United brethren_, of Bohemia. _See_ Hussites

_Utopia_, contents of second book of, 347-365. Introductory book of, 378-390

_Valla, Laurentius_, Erasmus studies the works of, and writes the preface to his Annotations of, 177

_Vere_, Marchioness de, aids Erasmus, 164-167

_Volzius_, abbot of monastery at Schelestadt, Erasmus’s letter to, 439

_Walsingham_, pilgrimage to, 269-272. Erasmus visits, 273-275

_Warham_, Erasmus visits, 184, 205. Gives Erasmus a pension, 205. Defends Erasmus against Fitzjames, 254

_Wars_, Colet’s sermons against Henry VIII.’s, 261, 264, 468. Erasmus against, 203, 280, 311. More’s ‘Utopian’ opinions on, 351

_Winchcombe_, Kidderminster, Abbot of, Colet’s letter to, 45

_Wolsey_, begins continental wars, 223. His rapid promotion, 229. Archbishop of York, 306. Installed Cardinal, 343. Lord Chancellor, 346

_Ximenes_, zeal for reform, and against dissent, 7

_Zisca, John_, 486

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Lupton’s volume (_Bell and Daldy_, 1869) has a double interest. Apart from the interest it derives from its connection with Colet, it is also interesting as placing, I believe, for the first time, before the English reader, a full abstract of two of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings, to which attention has recently been called by Mr. Westcott’s valuable article in the _Contemporary Review_.

[2] To avoid any charge of plagiarism I may also state, that a portion of the materials comprised in this volume has been made use of in articles contributed by me to the North British Review, in the years 1859 and 1860.

[3] Where not otherwise stated, all references to these letters and to the collected works of Erasmus (Eras. _Op._), refer to the Leyden edition.

[4] See note on the date of More’s birth in Appendix C.

[5] Of the First Edition. This has since been published by Mr. Lupton.

[6] In a letter written in the winter of 1499-1500, Colet is spoken of as ‘_Jam triennium enarranti_,’ &c. See _Erasmus to Colet_, prefixed to _Disputatio de Tædio et Pavore Christi_, Eras. _Op._ v. p. 1264, A. Colet was in Paris, apparently on his way home from his continental tour, soon after the publication of the work of the French historian Gaguinus, _De Orig. et Gest. Francorum_. (See Eras. Epist. xi.) The first edition, according to Panzer and Brunet, of this work, was that of _Paris_. Prid. Kal. Oct. 1495. Colet may thus have returned home in the spring of 1496, and proceeded to Oxford after the long vacation. Erasmus states, ‘Reversus ex Italia, mox relictis parentum ædibus, Oxoniæ maluit agere. Illic publice et gratis Paulinas Epistolas omnes enarravit.’--_Op._ iii. p. 456, B.

[7] He was ordained deacon December 17, 1497. Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 22 (Lond. 1724), on the authority, doubtless, of Kennett, who refers to _Reg. Savage, Lond._

[8] Erasmus Jodoco Jonæ: Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, C. ‘In theologica professione nullum omnino gradum nec assequutus erat, nec ambierat.’

[9] ‘The degree of Master in Arts conferred also, and this was practically its chief value, the right of lecturing, and therefore of receiving money for lectures, at Oxford.’--_Monumenta Academica_; Rev. II. Anstey’s _Introduction_, p. lxxxix.

[10] One of the statutes decreed as follows:--‘Item statutum est, quod non liceat alicui præterquam Bachilaris Theologiæ, legere bibliam biblice.’--_Ibid._ p. 394. That the word ‘legere,’ in these statutes, means practically to ‘lecture,’ see Mr. Anstey’s _Introduction_, p. lxxxix.

[11] It is possible also that Colet’s mode of lecturing did not come within the meaning of the technical phrase, ‘legere bibliam _biblice_,’ which is said to have meant ‘reading chapter by chapter, with the accustomed glosses, and such explanations as the reader could add.’--_Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge_: by George Peacock, D.D., Dean of Ely. Lond. 1841, p. xlvi. n. See also Mr. Anstey’s _Introduction_, p. lxxi, on the doubtful meaning of ‘legere _cursorie_.’

[12] See the remarkable letter of Bishop Grosseteste to the ‘Regents in Theology’ at Oxford--date 1240 or 1246--_Roberti Grosseteste Epistolæ_, pp. 346-7, of which the following is Mr. Luard’s summary:--‘Skilful builders are always careful that foundation stones should be really capable of supporting the building. The best time is the morning. Their lectures, therefore, especially in the morning, should be from the Old and New Testaments, _in accordance with their ancient custom_ and the example of Paris. Other lectures are more suitable at other times.’--P. cxxix.

[13] It would not be likely that statutes, framed in some points specially to guard against Lollard views, and probably early in the fifteenth century, should ignore the Scriptures altogether. Thus, before inception in theology, by Masters in Theology (see Mr. Anstey’s _Introduction_, p. xciv), three years’ attendance on biblical lectures was required, and the inceptor must have lectured on some canonical book of the Bible (_Monumenta Academica_, p. 391), according to the statutes. They also contained the following provision:--‘Ne autem lecturæ variæ confundantur, _et ut expeditius_ in lectura bibliæ procedatur, statutum est, ut bibliam biblice seu cursorie legentes quæstiones non dicant nisi tantummodo literales.’--_Ibid._ p. 392. The regular course of theological training at Oxford may be further illustrated by the following passage from Tindale’s ‘Practice of Prelates.’ Tindale, when a youth, was at Oxford during a portion of the time that Colet was lecturing on St. Paul’s Epistles.

‘In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.... And when he taketh his first degree, he is sworn that he shall hold none opinion condemned by the Church.... And then when they be admitted to study divinity, because the Scripture is locked up with such false expositions and with false principles of natural philosophy that they cannot enter in, they go about the outside and dispute all their lives about words and vain opinions, pertaining as much unto the healing of a man’s heel as health of his soul. Provided yet ... that none may preach except he be admitted of the Bishops.’--_Practice of Prelates_, p. 291. Parker Society.

What the biblical lectures were it is difficult to understand, for Erasmus wrote (Eras. Epist. cxlviii.): ‘Compertum est hactenus quosdam fuisse theologos, qui adeo nunquam legerant divinas literas, ut nec ipsos Sententiarum libros evolverent, neque quicquam omnino attingerent præter quæstionum gryphos.’--P. 130, C.

[14] Ellis’s _Letters_, 2nd series, vol. ii. pp. 61, 62. Letter of Richard Layton and his Associates to Lord Cromwell, upon his Visitation of the University of Oxford, Sept. 12, 1535.

[15] ‘Provinciam sumsisti ... (ne quid mentiar) et negotii et invidiæ plenam.’--Eras. Coleto: Eras. _Op._ v. p. 1264, A.

[16] ‘The Turks being in number five times more than we Christians.’ And again, ‘Which multitude is not the fifth part so many as they that consent to the law of Mahomet.’--_Works of Tyndale and Frith_, ii. pp. 55 and 74.

[17] See British Museum Library, under the head ‘Garcilaso,’ No. 1445, _g_ 23, being the draft of private instructions from Ferdinand and Isabella to the special English Ambassador, and headed, ‘Year 1498. The King and Queen concerning the correction of Alexander VI.’ The original Spanish MS. was in the hands of the late B. B. Wiffen, Esq., of Mount Pleasant, near Woburn, and an English translation of this important document was reprinted by him in the Life of Valdes, prefixed to a translation of his _CX Considerations_. Lond. Quaritch, 1865, p. 24.

[18] Chap. v.

[19] Chap. vi.

[20] Chap. vii.

[21] Chap. viii.

[22] Chap. ix.

[23] Chap. x.

[24] Chap. xix.

[25] Chap. xx.

[26] Chap. xxii.

[27] Chap. xxiii.

[28] Chaps. xxiv. and xxv.

[29] Chaps. xxvi.-xxxiv.

[30] Chap. xxxvi.

[31] Chap. xxxvii.

[32] _Villari_, in his ‘Life and Times of Savonarola,’ book i. chap. iv., does not seem to me to give, by any means, a fair abstract of the ‘_De Religione Christianâ_,’ though his chapter on Ficino is valuable in other respects. I have used the edition of Paris, 1510.

[33] ‘Chartism,’ chap. x. ‘Impossible.’

[34] _Pauli Jovii Elogia Doctorum Virorum_: Basileæ, 1556, p. 145. The period of the stay of Grocyn and Linacre in Italy was probably between 1485 and 1491. They therefore probably returned to England before the notorious Alexander VI. succeeded, in 1492, to Innocent VIII. See Johnson’s _Life of Linacre_, pp. 103-150. And Wood’s _Athen. Oxon._ vol. i. p. 30. Also _Hist. et Antiq. Univ. Oxon._ ii. 134.

[35] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 455, F.

[36] Erasmus Jodoco Jonæ: _Op._ iii. p. 455, F. Also Sir Henry Colet’s Epitaph, quoted in Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 7.

[37] ‘Et libros Ciceronis avidissime devorarat et Platonis Plotinique libros non oscitanter excusserat.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, A.

[38] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 455, F. ‘Mater, quæ adhuc superest [in 1520], insigni probitate mulier, marito suo undecim filios peperit, ac totidem filias ..., sed ex omnibus ille [Colet] superfuit solus, cum illum nosse cœpissem’ [in 1498].

[39] See list of Colet’s preferments in the Appendix.

[40] ‘Adiit Galliam, mox Italiam.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, A.

[41] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, A.

[42] _Ibid._ p. 456, B. The words of Erasmus are the following:--‘Ibi se totum evolvendis sacris auctoribus dedit, sed prius per omnium literarum genera magno studio peregrinatus, priscis illis potissimum delectabatur Dionysio, Origene, Cypriano, Ambrosio, Hieronymo. Atque inter veteres nulli erat iniquior quam Augustino. Neque tamen non legit Scotum, ac Thomam aliosque hujus farinæ, si quando locus postulabat. In utriusque juris libris erat non indiligenter versatus. Denique nullus erat liber historiam aut constitutiones continens majorum, quem ille non evolverat. Habet gens Britannica qui hoc præstiterunt apud suos, quod Dantes ac Petrarcha apud Italos. Et horum evolvendis scriptis linguam expolivit, jam tum se præparans ad præconium sermones Evangelici.’

[43] Savonarola’s first sermon in the Duomo at Florence was preached in 1491.--Villari, i. p. 122.

[44] See Villari, i. 232. Anno 1494.

[45] Lorenzo de’ Medici died in 1492; Pico and Politian in 1494. Colet left England early in 1494 probably, but as he visited France on his way to Italy, the exact time of his reaching Italy cannot be determined.

[46] The influence of Savonarola on the religious history of Pico was very remarkable.

In a sermon preached after Pico’s death, Savonarola said of Pico, ‘He was wont to be conversant with me, and to break with me the secrets of his heart, in which I perceived that he was by privy inspiration called of God unto religion:’ i.e. to become a monk. And he goes on to say that, for _two years_, he had threatened him with Divine judgment ‘if he fore-sloathed that purpose which our Lord had put in his mind.’--More’s _English Works_, p. 9.

Pico died in November, 1494. The intimacy of which Savonarola speaks dated back therefore to 1492 or earlier.

According to the statement of his nephew, J. F. Pico, the change in Pico’s life was the result of the disappointment and the troubles consequent upon his ‘vainglorious disputations’ at Rome in 1486 (when Pico was twenty-three). By this he was ‘wakened,’ so that he ‘drew back his mind flowing in riot, and turned it to Christ!’ Pico waited a whole year in Rome after giving his challenge, and the disappointment and troubles were not of short duration. They may be said to have commenced perhaps after the year of waiting, i.e. in 1487, when he left Rome. He was present at the disputations at Reggio in 1487, and this does not look as though as yet he had altogether lost his love of fame and distinction. There he met Savonarola; and there that intimacy commenced which resulted in Savonarola’s return, _at the suggestion of Pico_, to Florence. (J. F. Pico’s _Vita Savonarolæ_, chap. vi.; Harford’s _Life of Michael Angelo_, i. p. 128; and Villari, i. pp. 82, 83.) In 1490, as the result of his first studies of Holy Scripture, according to J. F. Pico (being twenty-eight), he published his _Heptaplus_, which is full of his cabalistic and mystic lore, and betokens a mind still entangled in intellectual speculations rather than imbued with practical piety. He had, however, already burnt his early love songs, &c.; and it is evident the change had for some time been going on.

About the time when Savonarola commenced preaching in Florence, in 1491 (three years before his death, according to J. F. Pico), Pico disposed of his patrimony and dominions to his nephew, and distributed a large part of the produce amongst the poor, consulting Savonarola about its disposal (J. F. Pico’s _Life of Savonarola_, chap. xi. ‘_De mira Hieronymi lenitate et amore paupertatis_’), and appointing as his almoner _Girolamo Benivieni_, a devout and avowed believer in Savonarola’s prophetic gifts. This was doubtless the time when Pico was wont to break to Savonarola ‘the secrets of his heart;’ the time also to which J. F. Pico alludes when he speaks of him as ‘talking of the love of Christ;’ and adding, ‘the substance I have left, after certain books of mine finished, I intend to give out to poor folk, and fencing myself with the crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle, I purpose to preach of Christ.’--Vide infra, p. 153. In 1492, a few weeks after Lorenzo’s death, he wrote three beautiful letters to his nephew (Pici _Op._ pp. 231-236. Vide infra, pp. 153-156)--letters as glowing with earnest Christian piety as the _Heptaplus_ was overflowing with cabalistic subtleties. His religion now, at all events, had the true ring about it. It belonged to his heart, not his head only. Then follow the remaining two years of his life when Savonarola exerted his influence (but without success) to induce him to enter a religious order. On Sept. 21, 1494, he was present at Savonarola’s famous sermon, in which he predicted the calamities which were coming upon Italy and the approach of the French army, listening to which Pico himself said that he ‘was filled with horror, and that his hair stood on end’ (narrated by Savonarola in his _Compendium Revelationum_); and lastly in November, as Charles entered Florence, Pico was peacefully dying. He was buried in the robes of Savonarola’s order and within the precincts of Savonarola’s church of St. Mark. In the light of Savonarola’s sermon, and the facts above stated, it can hardly be doubted that whilst, in one sense, brought about by the disappointment of his worldly ambitions, the change of life in Pico was at least, _in measure_, the result of his contact with the great Florentine reformer.

With regard to the history of Savonarola’s influence on _Ficino’s_ religious character, the facts are not so easily traced. In early years he is said to have been more of a Pagan than a Christian. Before writing his _De Religione Christianâ_, he seems to have become fully persuaded of the truth of Christianity. The book itself shows this. And there is a letter of his (Ficini Op. i. p. 640, Basle ed.), written while he was composing it, during an illness, in which he says that the words of Christ give him more comfort than philosophy, and his vows paid to the Virgin more bodily good than medicine. He also says that his father, a doctor, was once warned in a dream, while sleeping under an oak tree, to go to a patient who was praying to the Virgin for aid.

But the religion of a man resting on dreams, and visions, and vows made to the Virgin, was not necessarily of a very deep and practical character. Superstition and philosophy were easily united without the heart taking fire. Schelhorn (in his _Amœnitates Literariæ_, i. p. 73) quotes from Wharton’s appendix to Cave, the following statement, ‘Rei philosophicæ nimium deditus, religionis et pietatis curam posthabuisse dicitur, donec Savonarolæ Florentiam advenientis eloquentiam admiratus, concionibus ejus audiendis animum adjecit, dumque flosculis Rhetorices inhiavit, pietatis igniculos recepit: reliquamque dein vitam religionis officiis impendit.’ Wharton does not give his authority. Fleury (vol. xxiv. p. 363) makes a similar statement; also Brucker (_Historia critica Philosophiæ_, iv. p. 52); also Du Pin; also Harford in his _Life of Michael Angelo_ (i. p. 72) on the authority of Spondanus, who himself gives no contemporary authority. See also Mr. Lupton’s _Introduction_ to Colet’s _Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies of Dionysius_, where the subject is discussed. I am informed, through the kindness of Count P. Guicciardini, of Florence, that in Ficino’s _Apologia_, which exists in the MSS. _Stroziani_ of _Libr. Magliabecchiana_, class viii. cod. 315, he says of himself that ‘for five years he was one of the many who were deceived by the Hypocrite of Ferrara,’ whom he calls ‘Antichrist.’ The truth therefore seems to be that he was profoundly influenced by Savonarola’s enthusiasm, but only for a time.

[47] Ficino’s editions of his translations of the Dionysian treatises on the ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Mystic Theology’ seem to have been published at Florence in 1492 and 1496.--Fabricii _Bibliotheca Græca_, vii. pp. 10, 11.

[48] Herzog’s _Encyclopædia_, article on ‘Marsilius Ficinus.’

[49] Mr. Harford, in his _Life of Michael Angelo_, vol. i. p. 57, mentions Colet, among others, as studying at Florence, and cites ‘_Tiraboschi_, vi. pt. 2, p. 382, edit. Roma, 4to. 1784.’ But I cannot find any mention of Colet in Tiraboschi, after careful search.

In opposition to the likelihood of his having been at Florence it may be asked, why Colet never alludes to it in his letters or elsewhere? In reply, it may be said that we have nothing of Colet’s own writing relating to his early life. All we know of it is derived from Erasmus, and the only allusion by Colet to his Italian journey which Erasmus has preserved is the passing remark that he (Colet) had there become acquainted with certain _monks_ of true wisdom and piety.--Eras. _Op._ iii. 459, A. ‘Narrans sese apud Italos comperisse quosdam monachos vere prudentes ac pios.’ Whether Savonarola’s monks were amongst these is a matter of mere speculation.

[50] See marginal note on his ‘Romans,’ in the Cambridge University Library, MS. Gg. 4, 26, leaf 3_a_, in which he refers to him--‘_Hec Mirandula_,’ and cites a passage from Pico’s _Apologia_, Basle edition of _Pici Opera_, p. 117. There is also a long and almost literal extract from Pico in the MS. on the ‘Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,’ in the St. Paul’s School Library. See Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 161.

[51] See an extract from Ficino in Colet’s MS. on ‘Romans,’ leaf 13_b_. Another is pointed out by Mr. Lupton, p. 36, _n._

[52] ‘Quem ego sermonem ab eo memini, qui colloquentes audiverat, jam tum patri meo renunciatum, cum adhuc nulla proditionis ejus suspicio haberetur.’--Thomæ Mori ‘_Latina Opera_,’ Lovanii, 1566, fol. 46. As to the authorship of the history of Richard III. see Mr. Gairdner’s preface to _Letters of Richard III. and Henry VII._ vol. ii. p. xxi. As More was born in February, 1478, there is no difficulty in accepting the authenticity of this incident, which, when 1480 was assumed as the date of More’s birth, seemed quite impossible, as More would only have been three years old when it occurred, and could not have remembered the conversation.

[53] Roper, Singer’s ed. p. 3. Morton was not made a cardinal till 1493.

[54] Roper, p. 4.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Colet probably left Oxford for the Continent about 1494. The most probable date of More’s stay at Oxford was 1492 and 1493. This leaves 1494 and 1495 for his studies at New Inn, previous to his entry at Lincoln’s Inn, in February, 1496.

[57] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 477, A. Speaking of More, Erasmus writes: ‘Joannes Coletus, vir acris exactique judicii, in familiaribus colloquiis subinde dicere solet, Britanniæ non nisi unicum esse ingenium.’

[58] Stapleton’s _Tres Thomæ_, Colon. 1612 ed. chap. i. pp. 155-6. ‘Hanc ob causam sic ei necessaria subministravit ut ne quidem teruncium in sua potestate eum habere permitteret, præter id quod ipsa necessitas postulabat. Quod adeò strictè observavit, ut nec ad reficiendos attritos calceos, nisi à patre peteret, pecuniam haberet.’ See also Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 475, A, respecting his father’s motive.

[59] Stapleton’s _Tres Thomæ_, Colon. 1612, p. 156.

[60] ‘Juvenis ad Græcas literas ac philosophiæ studium sese applicuit adeo non opitulante patre ... ut ea conantem omni subsidio destitueret ac pene pro abdicato haberet, quod a patriis studiis desciscere videretur, nam is Britannicarum legum peritiam profitetur.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 475, A.

[61] ‘Sic voluit pater qui eum ad Græcarum literarum et philosophiæ studium omni subsidio destituit, ut ad istud (i.e. English Law) induceret.’--Stapleton’s _Tres Thomæ_, p. 168.

[62] XII. February,--11 Henry VII. Foss’s _Judges of England_, v. p. 207.

[63] Vide supra, p. 1, _n._

[64] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, B. ‘Nullus erat liber, _historiam_ aut constitutiones continens majorum, quod non evolverat.’

[65] Eras. Epist. App. ccccxxxvii.

[66] Eras. Epist. xi.

[67] ‘Ut tribuatur lapsui memoriæ in evangelista gravatim audio. Qui si spiritu sancto inspiratus scripsit, memoria falli non potuit, nisi et ille etiam falli potuerit, quo ductore scripsit. Dicit mihi Ezechiel: Quocunque ibat spiritus, illuc pariter et rotæ elevabantur sequentes eum.’--_Annotationes Ed. Leei in annotationes Novi Testamenti Desiderii Erasmi._ Basil. 1520, pp. 25, 26. Lee studied at Oxford during a portion of the time of Colet’s residence there. Knight states that he was sent to St. Mary Magd. College (the college where Colet is supposed to have taken his degree of M.A.) in 1499.--_Knight’s Erasmus_, p. 286.

[68] ‘Quod dicis (non est nostrum definire, quomodo spiritus ille suum temperârit organum) verum quidem est, sed spiritus ipse in Ezechiele definivit: Rotæ non elevabantur nisi sequentes spiritum.’--_Annotationes Edvardi Leei_, p. 26.

[69] Aquinas, _Summa_, pt. 1, quest. i. article x.

[70] Tyndale’s _Obedience of a Christian Man_, chap. ‘On the Four Senses of the Scriptures.’

[71] Preface to the Five Books of Moses.

[72] Tyndale’s _Obedience of a Christian Man_, chap. ‘On the Four Senses of Scripture.’ That Tyndale was at Oxford during Colet’s stay there (i.e. before 1506), see the evidence given by his biographers. It appears that he was born about 1484. Fox says ‘_he was brought up from a child in the University of Oxford_,’ and there is no reason to suppose that he removed to Cambridge before 1509. See Tyndale’s _Doctrinal Treatises_, xiv. xv. and authorities there cited.

[73] Sir Thomas More in a letter to the University of Oxford (Jortin’s _Erasmus_, ii. App. p. 664, 4to ed.) complains of a Scotist preacher because ‘_neque integrum ullum Scripturæ caput tractavit, quæ res in usu fuit veteribus_ [this was the old method revived by Colet]; neque dictum aliquod brevius e Sacris literis, qui mos apud nuperos inolevit [the scholastic method]; sed thematum loco delegit Britannica quædam anilia proverbia.’ [The practical result of the textarian method when pushed to its ultimate results.]

[74] Eras. Jodoco Jonæ: Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, C. ‘Nullus erat illic doctor vel theologiæ vel juris, nullus abbas, aut alioqui dignitate præditus, quin illum audiret, etiam allatis codicibus.’

[75] Eras. Coleto: Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 40, F. Epist. xli.

[76] ‘Tamen certe multum ac diu rogatus a quibusdam amicis, et eisdem interpretantibus nobis Paulum fidis auditoribus, quibuscum pro amicicia quod in superiorem epistolæ partem scriptum est a nobis communicavi, adductus fui tandem ut promitterem, quod est ceptum modo me perrecturum, et in reliquam epistolam quod reliquum est enarrationis adhibiturum.’--Cambridge University Library MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 27_b_.

[77] A copy of Colet’s exposition of ‘Romans,’ with corrections apparently in Colet’s handwriting, is in the Cambridge University Library; MS. Gg. 4, 26. A fair copy, apparently by Peter Meghen, is in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS. No. 355.

Amongst the ‘Gale MSS.’ in Trinity Library, Cambridge, is a MS. (O. 4, 44) said to be Colet’s, containing short notes or abstracts of the Apostolic Epistles. Through the kindness of Mr. Wright I had a copy taken of this MS., but on close comparison of passages with the _Annotationes_ of Erasmus, I was obliged to conclude that the writer had before him an edition of the latter not earlier than that of 1522. This MS. cannot, therefore, have been written by Colet. Possibly it may have been written by Lupset, Colet’s disciple. The copy in the Trinity Library is in a later hand.

[78] This appears to have been the character also of the Expositions of Marsilio Ficino. See Fragment on ‘Romans.’--Ficini _Opera_, ed. 1696, pp. 426-472.

[79] The _names_ of Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine are mentioned, but incidentally, and without any quotations of any length being given from them.

[80] ‘--est ex vehementia loquendi imperfecta et suspensa sententia.’--MSS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 23, _in loco_. Rom. ix. 22.

[81] ‘Ita Paulus mira prudentia et arte temperat orationem suam in hac epistola, et eam quasi librat tam pari lance, et Judeos et Gentes simul, etc.’--Ibid. fol. 26.

[82] MSS. Gg. 4, 26, fols. 59_b_, 61_a_.

[83] Ibid. fol. 60. ‘Sed ille homo magno animo, fide, et amore Christi, fuit paratus non solum ligari,’ &c.

[84] Ibid. fols. 42-45 (_in loco_, Rom. xiii.). In these pages Colet compares with great care the information to be collected from passages in the Epistle to the Romans and in the Acts of the Apostles with what is recorded by Suetonius, and admires St. Paul’s ‘sapientissima admonitio opportune sane adhibita.’--Ibid. fols. 42_b_ and 43_a_. Again, at fol. 44_a_, Colet says, ‘Hæc autem refero ut magna Pauli consideratio et prudentia animadvertatur; qui cum non ignoravit Claudium Cesarem tenuisse rempublicam, qui fuit homo vario ingenio et improbis moribus, &c.’...

[85] In his exposition of Romans (chap. iv.) he says:--‘Sed caute circumspicienda sunt omnia Pauli, antequam de ejus mente aliqua feratur sentencia. Nunquam enim censuisset revocandum ad ecclesiam fornicatorem illum, quem tradidit Sathanæ in prima Epistola ad Corinthios, si peccatoribus post baptismum nullum penitendi locum reliquisset.’--Ibid. fol. 6_b_.

[86] It would be difficult in short quotations to give a correct impression of the doctrinal standpoint assumed by Colet in his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. But it may be interesting to enquire, whether any connection can be traced between his views and those of Savonarola, on this point.

Now _Villari_ states that a ‘fundamental point’ in Savonarola’s doctrine was his ‘_conception of love_, which he sometimes says is the _same as grace_,’ and that it was through this conception of love that Savonarola, ‘to a certain extent,’ explained the ‘mystery of human liberty and Divine omnipotence.’--Villari’s _Savonarola and his Times_, bk. i. c. vii. p. 110.

Whether there be any real connection between Savonarola’s teaching and the following passages from Colet’s exposition, I leave the reader to judge.

‘Wherefore St. Paul concludes, men are justified by faith, and trusting in God alone by Jesus Christ, are reconciled to God and restored into grace; so that with God they stand, and remain themselves sons of God.... If He loved us when alienated from Him, how much more will He love us when we are reconciled; and preserve those whom He loves. Wherefore we ought to be firm and stable in our hope and joy, and, nothing doubting, trust in God through Jesus Christ, by whom alone men are reconciled to God.’--MS. fol. 5. After speaking of that _grace_ which where sin had abounded did much more abound unto eternal life, Colet proceeds:--‘But here it is to be noted that this _grace_ is nothing else than the _love_ of God towards men--towards those, i.e. whom He wills to love, and, in loving, to inspire with His Holy Spirit; which itself is love and the love of God; which (as the Saviour said, according to St. John’s Gospel) _blows where it lists_. But, loved and inspired by God, they are also _called_; so that accepting this love, they may love in return their loving God, and long for and wait for the same love. This waiting and hope springs from _love_. _This love truly is ours because He loves us_: not (as St. John writes in his 2nd Epistle) as though we had first loved God, but because He first loved us, even when we were worthy of no love at all; but indeed impious and wicked, destined by right to eternal death. But some, i.e. those whom He knew and chose, He also loved, and in loving called them, and in calling them justified them, and in justifying them glorified them. This gracious love and charity in God towards men is _in itself_ the calling and justification and glorification.... And when we speak of men as drawn, called, justified, and glorified by _grace_, we mean nothing else than that men _love in return God who loves them_.’--MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 6.

Again: ‘Thus you see that things are brought about by a providing and directing God, and that they happen as He wills in the affairs of men, not from any force from without (_illata_)--since nothing is more remote from force than the Divine action--but by the natural desire and will of man, the Divine will and providence secretly and silently, and, as it were, naturally accompanying (_comitante_) it, and going along with it so wonderfully, that whatever you do and choose was known by God, and what God knew and decreed to be, of necessity comes to pass.’--MS. fol. 18.

The following passage is from Colet’s exposition of the Epistle to the Corinthians (MS. 4, 26, p. 80). ‘The mind of man consists of _intellect_ and _will_. By the _intellect_ we know: by the _will_ we have power to act (_possumus_). From the knowledge of the intellect comes faith: from the power of the will charity. But Christ, the power of God, is also the wisdom of God. Our minds are illuminated to faith by Christ, “_who illumines every man coming into this world_, and He gives power to become the sons of God to those who believe in His name.” By Christ also our wills are kindled in charity to love God and our neighbour; in which is the fulfilment of the law. From God alone therefore, through Christ, we have both knowledge and power; for by Him we are in Christ. Men, however, have in themselves a blind intellect, and a depraved will, and walk in darkness, not knowing what they do.... Those who by the warm rays of his divinity are so drawn that they keep close in communion with Him, are indeed they whom Paul speaks of as called and elected to His glory,’ &c.

For the Latin of these extracts see Appendix (A).

In further proof that Colet’s views (like Savonarola’s) were not Augustinian upon the question of the ‘freedom of the will,’ may be cited the following words of Colet (see _infra_, chap, iv.): ‘But in especial is it necessary for thee to know that God of his great grace hath made thee his image, having regard to thy memory, understanding, and _free-will_.’ Probably both Colet and Savonarola, in common with other mystic theologians, had imbibed their views directly or indirectly from the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius and the Neo-Platonists.

[87] ‘Ex quodam nostro studio et pietate in homines ... non tam verentes legentium fastidium, quam cupientes confirmacionem infirmorum et vacillantium.’--Fol. 22_b_.

[88] MS. Gg. 4, 26, fols. 13_b_ to 15_a_.

[89] Ibid. fol. 3_b_.

[90] Ibid. fols. 28_b_ and 29.

[91] Ibid. fol. 29.

[92] MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 30_b_.

[93] Ibid. fol. 59_b_. ‘Elicienda est dulci doctrina prompta voluntas non acerba exaccione extorquenda pecunia nomine decimarum et oblacionum.’

[94] Ibid. fol. 60_a_.

[95] See particularly fol. 27 and 61_b_.

[96] MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 3_a_.

[97] Ibid. fol. 7_b_.

[98] Ibid. fol. 15_b_. _Ioannes Baptista Mantuanus_, general of the Carmelites, an admirer of Pico.--See Pici _Opera_, p. 262.

[99] ‘Ibi se totum evolvendis sacris auctoribus dedit.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456 B.

[100] ‘... conatique sumus quoad potuimus divina gratia adjuti veros illius sensus exprimere. Quod quam fecimus haud scimus sane, voluntatem tamen habuimus maximam faciendi.’--_ffinis argumenti in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos._ Oxonie.

[101] Cambridge University Library, MSS. Gg. 4, 26, p. 62, _et seq._, and printed in Knight’s _Life of Colet_, App. p. 311.

[102] In the volume of manuscripts marked 355.

[103] ‘In quibus mihi videtur tanta caligo ut totus ille sermo contentus in ipsis tribus capitulis appareat esse ille abyssus super cujus faciem dicit Moises tenebras fuisse.’

[104] ‘Non me latet plures esse sensus, sed unum persequar cursim.’

[105] ‘... universa simul creasse sua eternitate.’

[106] ‘In principio (i.e. eternitate) creavit Deus cœlum (formam) et terram (materiam).’

[107] ‘... inanis et vacua.’

[108] ‘Terra (materia) erat inanis et vacua (hoc est sine solida et substantiali entitate) et tenebræ, &c. (i.e. tenebrosa fuit materia, &c.).’

[109] ‘Vide quam bellè pergit ordine, significans summariam creacionem copulationemque formæ cum materia.’

[110] ‘... forma et terminacio rerum.’

[111] ‘Quæ sequuntur in Moyse est repetitio et latior explicacio superiorum, ac _speciatim_ distinctio earum rerum quas primum _generatim_ complexus est. Tu aliud si sentis fac nos te queso participes. Vale.’

[112] ... ‘Particulatim res aggreditur, et mundi digestionem ante oculos ponit, quod sic facit _meo judicio_, ut sensus vulgi et rudis multitudinis quam docuit racionem habuisse videatur.’

[113] See quotation from Chrysostom to a similar effect: _Summa_, prima pars, lxvii. art. iv. conclusio. After speaking of the views of Augustine and Basil, Aquinas says:--

‘Chrysostomus (Homil. 2 in Gen. circa medium illius tom. i.) autem assignat aliam rationem quia Moyses loquebatur rudi populo qui nihil nisi corporalia poterat capere, quem etiam ab idololatria revocare volebat,’ &c.

[114] ‘... Et hoc more poetæ alicujus popularis, quo magis consulat spiritui simplicis rusticitatis, fingens successionem rerum operum et temporum cujusmodi apud tantum Opificem certè nulla esse potest.’

[115] ‘Crassiter et pingue docenda fuit stulta illa et macra multitudo.’

[116] ‘(1) Moysen digna Deo loqui voluisse. (2) In rebus vulgo cognitis vulgo satisfacere. (3) Ordinem rerum servare. In primis populum ad religionem et cultum unius Dei traducere.’

[117] ‘Partim quia sex numero facile in rebus homini in mentem venire possunt.’

[118] ‘Maxime ... ut imitacio divina (quem, more poetæ, finxit sex dies operatum esse, septimo quievisse) populum septimo quoque die ad quietem et contemplacionem Dei et cultum adduceret.’

[119] ‘Nunquam dierum numerum statuisset, nisi ut illo utilissimo et sapientissimo figmento, quasi quodam proposito exemplari populum ad imitandum provocaret, ut sexto quoque die diurnis actibus fine imposito, septimo in summa Dei contemplatione persisterent.’

[120] ‘Salve Radulphe, ac cum salute puto te rediisse quod tibi opto. Quatuor ut arbitror dies transiisti: ego interea vix unum Moysaicum diem transii. Immo tu elaborâsti in die sub sole; ego hoc tempore in nocte et tenebris vagatus sum, nec vidi quo eundum esset: nec quo perveni intelligo. Sed incepto pergendum erat, ac tandem inveni exitum ut poteram. In quo difficili errore, videor mihi apud Moysen magnum errorem deprehendisse. Nam quum cujusque diei opus concluserat hiis verbis, _Et factum est vespere et mane dies unus, secundus, tercius_, non addidisset dies sed _nox_ pocius _una_, _secunda_, et _tercia_, propterea quod inchoante vespere deinde mane sequente, est necesse quod intercedat inter antecedens vesper et subsequens mane nox sit. Dies enim incipit mane, vesperi terminatur. Sed maxime profecto quæ Moyses scribens in dies distinxerat, noctes appellâsset magis, propterea quod offuse sint tantis tenebris ut nihil possit nocti videri similius quam dies Moysaicus. Quas nocturnas tenebras cum opinione aliqua lucis conati sumus discutere, fortasse nos quoque tenebrosi tenebras auximus, noctesque produximus. Attamen prestat nos recte facere voluisse, ac quicquid est quod egimus, si tibi obscurum videatur infunde tum aliquid luminis tui, ut et nos videas, utque nos eciam simul tecum Moysen videre possimus.’

[121] ‘More boni piique poetæ.’

[122] ‘Homunculorum cordi consuleret.’

[123] ... ‘A sua sublimitate degenerent.’

[124] ‘Honestissimo et piissimo figmento simul inescare et trahere eos ut Deo inserviant.’

[125] For the above abstracts of these interesting letters I am mainly indebted to the kind assistance of my friend Henry Bradshaw, Esq., of King’s College, Cambridge, who has also furnished me with the following description of the manuscript.

_Letters to Radulphus._

1. Beginning (p. 195): ‘Miror sane te optime Radulphe quum voluisti ...;’ ending (p. 199): ‘... fac nos te queso participes. Vale.’

2. Beginning (p. 199): ‘Parumper de reliquis diebus uti petis in calce Epistole. Facta mentione de materia et forma ...;’ ending (p. 207); ‘... scribendi paululum levaverim. Vale.’

3. Beginning (p. 207): ‘Tercium nunc deinceps diem aggrediamur, memores semper ...;’ ending (p. 222): ‘... leviter nos in hiis rebus lucubrasse. Vale.’

4. Beginning (p. 222): ‘Salve Radulphe, ac cum salute puto te rediisse quod tibi opto ...’ breaking off at the end of the quire (p. 226): ‘... id licere facere docet Macrobius in Comen[tario edito]....’

⁂ These letters follow Colet’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, in the volume marked 355, in Corpus Christi College Library.

The _Exposition_ is written in the handwriting of Colet’s scribe, Peter Meghen, the ‘monoculus Brabantinus,’ and there are corrections and alterations throughout, evidently by Colet himself.

The _letters to Radulphus_ are merely _bound with_ the other. Only two quires are now remaining: the handwriting is not the same, but similar.

[126] The following appears to be the passage Colet was about to quote: ‘Aut sacrarum rerum notio, sub _figmentorum_ velamine, _honestis_ et tecta rebus et vestita nominibus enuntiatur; et hoc est solum figmenti genus, quod cautio de divinis rebus admittit.’--_In Somnium Scipionis_, lib. i. c. 2. The ‘aut’ with which the sentence begins refers to its being an alternative of two kinds of mythical writing, about which Macrobius has been speaking. I am indebted to Mr. Lupton for this reference.

[127] The following passage from Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of Dionysius’s _De celesti Hierarchiâ_ (pp. 12, 13) will show that he may have derived some of his thoughts from that source. ‘Thus led he forth those uninstructed Hebrews, like boys, to school; in order that like children, playing with dolls and toys, they might represent in shadow what they were one day to do in reality as men: herein imitating little girls, who in early age play with dolls, the images of sons, being destined afterwards in riper years to bring forth real sons: ... “When I was a child,” says St. Paul, “I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” From childishness and images and imitations Christ has drawn us, who has shone upon our darkness, and has taught us the truth, and has made us that believe to be men, in order that we, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, may be changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord.”’...

‘In these foreshadowings and signs, metaphors are borrowed from all quarters by Moses--a theologian and observer of nature of the deepest insight--inasmuch as there are not words proper to express the Divine attributes. For nothing is fitted to denote God Himself, who is not only unutterable but even inconceivable. Wherefore he is most truly expressed by negations; since you may state what He is not, but not what He is; for whatever positive statement you make concerning Him, you err, seeing that He is none of those things which you can say. Still because a hidden principle of the Deity resides in all things, on account of that faint resemblance, the sacred writers have endeavoured to indicate Him by the names of all objects, not only of the better but of the worse kind, lest the duller sort of people, attracted by the beauty of the fairer objects, should think God to be that very thing which He is called.’

The above is _Colet’s amplification_ of the passage in Dionysius (chap. ii.). The latter part of it is a pretty close rendering of the original.

[128] ‘Heptaplus Johannis Pici Mirandulæ de Septiformi sex dierum Geneseos Enarratione.’

[129] The first edition is without date, but the publisher’s letter at the commencement, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, shows that it was published during the lifetime of the latter, i.e. before 1492--probably in 1490.

[130] The letter preceding the abstract of the ‘Celestial Hierarchy,’ in the Cambridge MS. Gg. 4, 26, is evidently a copy by the same hand as the letter to the Abbot of Winchcombe. Possibly the Abbot may be the person to whom it was addressed.

[131] These treatises were:--1. ‘De Compositione Sancti Corporis Christi mistici.’--Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 26.

2. ‘On the Sacraments of the Church,’ printed with a very valuable introduction and notes, by the Rev. J. H. Lupton, M.A., from the MS. in the St. Paul’s School Library. (Bell and Daldy, 1867.)

3. A short essay in the Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 26, commencing ‘Deus immensum bonum,’ &c.

Mr. Lupton is publishing Colet’s abstracts of the ‘Celestial’ and ‘Ecclesiastical’ Hierarchy of Dionysius, from the MSS. at St. Paul’s School; and it will be seen how much use I have made in this chapter of his admirable translation. I have expressed in the preface to this edition the obligations I am under to Mr. Lupton for bringing to light these interesting MSS., and thus materially assisting in restoring some lost links in the history of Colet’s inner life and opinions.

[132] Balthasar Corderius, in his prefatory observations to his edition of the works of St. Dionysius (Paris 1644), speaks of Dionysius as being the originator of the Scholastic Theology, and proves it by giving four folio pages of references to passages in the ‘Summa’ of Aquinas, where the authority of Dionysius is quoted.

[133] Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 135, 136.

[134] ‘God, who is one, beautiful and good--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: the Trinity which created all things--is at once the purification of things to unity, their illumination to what is beautiful, and their perfection to what is good.’--Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 15, 24.

[135] ‘God created all things because He is good (p. 16); and because He is good, He also recalls to himself all things according to their capacity, that He may bountifully communicate himself to them.’

[136] All after this is Colet’s own addition to what is said in Dionysius.

[137] Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s Abstract of the _Eccl. Hier._ p. 92. In a short essay contained in the MSS. Gg. 4, 26, of the Cambridge University Library, entitled ‘De compositione sancti corporis Christi mistici, quæ est ecclesia, quæ sine anima ejus, Spiritu scilicet, dispergitur et dissipatur.’ Colet, after showing how men, if left to themselves, would wander apart and become scattered; and that the purpose of God is, that they should be united in one body the church by the Spirit, as by a magnet, goes on to say, ‘Predestinatum fuit hominem qui decidit a Deo retrahi ad Deum non posse quidem nisi per Deum factum hominem.... Mortuus est ut liberos faceret homines ad talem vitam, ut debita cujusque hominum in illius morte soluta, nunc desinentes peccare deinceps liberi sint justiciæ, ut non amplius maneamus in peccato,’ &c.--Ff. 70_b_, 71_a_.

[138] Wilberforce, in his _Doctrine of the Incarnation_, third edition, 1850, thus expressed the modern sacerdotal theory. In the word _Priest_, in primitive languages, ‘the notion of the setting apart those who should act _on man’s behalf towards God_ is everywhere visible.’--P. 229.

‘Now if Christ is still maintaining a real intercession (if He still pleads that sacrifice) then is there ample place for that sacerdotal system, by which some actual _thing_ is still to be effected, and in which some agents must still be employed.’--P. 381. ‘We put the Priestly office under the law in a line with the ministerial office under the Gospel; we assert, that if the title of Priest could be given fitly to the first, it belongs also to the second.’--P. 383. ‘Any persons who discharge an office which has reference to God, and who present to Him what is offered by men, may be called Priests.’--P. 384.

[139] See the same views expressed by Colet in his exposition of ‘Corinthians.’--Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaf g, 2.

[140] Colet’s Abstract of the _Ecc. Hier._ ch. ii. s. 2. Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 61, 62. Colet writes a little further on:--‘The office of the bishop is, like Christ, to preach constantly and diligently the truth he has received. For he is, as it were, a messenger midway between God and men, to announce to men heavenly things, as Christ did.’--Pp. 63, 64.

[141] ‘Through this bread and this cup, that which is offered as a true sacrifice in heaven is present as a real though immaterial agent in the church’s ministrations. So that what is done by Christ’s ministers below is a constituent part of that general work which the one great High Priest performs in heaven: through the intervention of his heavenly Head, the earthly sacrificer truly exhibits to the Father that body of Christ which is the one only sacrifice for sins; each visible act has its efficacy through those invisible acts of which it is the earthly expression, and things done on earth are one with those done in heaven.’--Wilberforce’s _Doctrine of the Incarnation_, pp. 372, 373.

[142] Colet’s abstract of the _Eccl. Hier._ ch. iii. Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 78-94. Whilst not disapproving in _others_ daily attendance ‘ad mensam Dominicam,’ Erasmus tells us that Colet did not make a _daily_ habit of it _himself_.--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, E.

[143] _Eccl. Hier._ ch. ii. Colet speaks in his abstract (Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 65) of the Christian being ‘brought to the captain of the army, the bishop,’ that by the soldier’s oath, &c. ‘_he may own himself a soldier of Christ_.’ He concludes this section as follows:--

‘Such was the custom and ceremony of baptism and the washing of regeneration in the primitive church, instituted by the holy apostles, _whereby the more excellent baptism of the inner man is signified_. And this form differs very greatly from the one we make use of in this age. And herein I own that I marvel!... The apostles being fully taught by Jesus Christ, knew well what are convenient symbols and appropriate signs for the mysteries. So that one may suspect either rashness or neglect on the part of their successors in what has been added to or taken from their ordinances.’

Then follows a section on the ‘spiritual contemplation of baptism,’ in which occurs the passage beginning ‘Gracious God!’ &c.--_Infra_, p. 73. _Eccl. Hier._ ch. ii. s. 3, pp. 76, 77 of Mr. Lupton’s translation.

[144] ‘Meanwhile the foster father who has undertaken the rearing of the child in Christ, gives a pledge and sacred promise, on behalf of the infant, of all things that true Christianity demands, viz. a renouncing of all sin, &c.... And this he says, _not in the child’s stead_, since it would be a fond thing for another to speak in place of one that was in ignorance; but when, in his own person, he speaks of renouncing, he professes that _he will bring it to pass, so far as he can_, that the little infant, as soon as ever it is capable of instruction, shall in reality and in his life utterly renounce, &c....

‘When the bishop, I say, hears him saying, “I renounce,” _which means, as Dionysius explains it_, “_I will take care that the infant_ renounce,” &c.... Thus we see how in the primitive church, by the ordinance of the apostles, infants were not admitted unreservedly to the sacred rights, but on condition only that some one would be surety for them, that when they came to years of discretion they should thenceforward set before them in reality the pattern of Christ.

‘Mark thus how great a burden he takes upon himself who promises to be a godfather,’ &c.--Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of the _Eccl. Hier._ ch. viii. pp. 158, 159.

[145] ‘Men execute the previous decisions of God, and by the ministry of men that is at length disclosed on earth,’ &c.--Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 149. ‘It must be heedfully marked, lest bishops should be presumptuous, that it is not the part of men to loose the bonds of sins: nor does the power pertain to them of loosing or binding anything.’... ‘And if they do not proceed according to revelation, moved by the Spirit of God ... they abuse the power given to them, both to the blaspheming of God and the destruction of the Church.’--_Ibid._ 150.

[146] See Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, C and D.

[147] Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of the _Eccl. Hier._ p. 83. This was a strictly Dionysian thought and one shared also by Pico. ‘The little affection of an old man or an old woman to Godward (were it never so small), he set more by than all his own knowledge as well of natural things as godly.’... He writeth thiswise [to Politian], ‘Love God (while we be in this body), we rather may than either know Him, or by speech utter Him.’--Life of Picus, E. of Mirandula, _Sir Thomas More’s Works_, p. 7.

To the same purport is the passage from Ficino, quoted by Colet in his MS. on the ‘Romans.’--Vide supra, p. 37.

[148] Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 76, 77.

[149] Ibid. p. 73.

[150] Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 150, 151.

[151] Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 90, 91. See also pp. 123-126, where Colet inveighs warmly against the nomination by secular princes of worldly bishops.

[152] Camb. University Library, MS. Gg. 4, 26. There is a beautiful copy embodying these corrections in the hand of Peter Meghen, in the Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, MS. 3, 3, 12.

[153] Emmanuel Col. MS. leaf e, 5: ‘Homo unus omnium divinissimus et consideratissimus.’ See also leaf k, 6.

[154] Leaf a, 5. ‘Quod tamen facit ubique modestissime homo piissimus.’

[155] ‘Velit ergo prudentissimus Paulus.’--Leaf k, 3.

[156] Leaf k, 6, and p. 8.

[157] In another place Colet writes, ‘Fuit illa græca natio illis argutiis versatilibus humani ingenii semper prompta ad arguendum et redarguendum.’--Leaf c, 2.

[158] Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaf a, 4, and Appendix (B, a).

[159] Abridged quotation. Leaf a, 5, and Appendix (B, a).

[160] Emmanuel Col. MS. leaf a, 5, 6, and Appendix (B, a).

[161] Leaf b, 4, and Appendix (B, b). See a very similar remark with reference to St. Paul and Dionysius in _Joan. Fran. Pici Mirand. De Studio Div. et Hum. Philosophiæ_ lib. i. ch. iii. J. F. Pico was living when Colet was in Italy.

[162] Appendix (B, c).

[163] Appendix (B, d). Emmanuel Coll. MS. leaf b, 6, and b, 8.

[164] ‘In these matters regard must be had to condition and strength.... It was thus that Moses taught the truth and justice of God, as it was brought down to the level of sensible things, and diluted for the ancient Hebrews. It was thus that Christ taught to the disciples what they were able to bear. It was thus, lastly, that Paul, both gently and sparingly gave to the Corinthians, as it were, milk instead of meat.... He spoke wisdom to the perfect, to the imperfect he accommodated as it were foolish, more humble and more homely things. With this design, also, he tolerated indulgently less perfect and less absolute morals for a time, dealing gently with them as far as was lawful, not thinking how much was lawful to himself, but what was expedient to others; not how much he himself could bear, but what was adapted to the Corinthians.’...--Leaf c, 7. See also leaf e, 6.

[165] 1 See Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 1263, and Ibid. p. 184, E. ‘1499 was the date of the 1st edition, which is comprised in eight pages, and forms the last treatise in a volume of ancient writers on astronomy, edited by Aldus. It is intituled, “Procli Diadochi Sphæra, Astronomiam discere Incipientibus Vtilissima, Thomâ Linacro Britanno Interprete.”’--Johnson’s _Life of Linacre_, p. 152.

[166] In a letter from Politian to Franciscus Casa, there is a description of an ‘orrery’ made at Florence. The letter was written 1484.--_Illustrium Virorum Epistolæ ab Angelo Politiano_, n. 1523, fol. lxxxiii.

[167] Luther’s _Table Talk_, ‘Of Astronomy and Astrology.’

[168] So also in Pico’s _Heptaplus_ the same kind of speculation is much indulged in.

[169] Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaves d, 3 to d, 5, and Appendix (B, e). See also leaf n, 2.

[170] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, A.

[171] Leaf g, 4.

[172] Emmanuel Col. MS. Leaf i, 1 to leaf i, 3.

[173] Leaf k, 7 and 8.

[174] Leaves g, 5 to g, 7.

[175] Emmanuel MS. Leaf f, 6, and Appendix (B, f).

[176] ‘Plurimum tribuebat Epistolis Apostolicis, sed ita suspiciebat admirabilem illam Christi majestatem ut ad hanc quodammodo sordescerent Apostolorum scripta.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, F. See also this view supported by Erasmus in his _Ratio Veræ Theologiæ_. ‘Nec fortassis absurdum fuerit, in sacris quoque voluminibus ordinem auctoritatis aliquem constituere,’ &c.--Eras. _Op._ v. p. 92, C; and _Ibid._ p. 132, C.

[177] Eras. _Op._ vi. p. 503, F; _Annotationes in loco_, Acts xvii. v. 34. The edition of 1516 does not mention the anecdote at all. Those of 1519 and 1522 mention it as having occurred ‘ante complures annos.’ Also see ‘Declamatio adversus Censuram Facultatis Theol. Parisien.’ Eras. _Op._ ix. p. 917 and Epist. mccv. The former was written in 1530 or 1531, and in it he says:--‘Is ante annos triginta, Londini in æde Divi Pauli,’ &c.: which gives the date of Grocyn’s lectures as some time before 1500 or 1501. The publication of the Paris edition of Dionysius, in 1498, may have called forth these lectures.

[178] Jewell, however, mentions John Colet as believing that the Areopagite was not the author of these ancient writings.--_Of Private Masse_, ed. 1611, p. 8.

[179] Vide supra, p. 82.

[180] ‘Apostoli sermo ... (qui in hoc loco _artificiosissimus_ est)....’--MS. on _1 Corinthians_, Emmanuel Coll. leaf a, 6.

[181] The date of Erasmus’s coming to England may be approximately fixed as follows. Epist. xxix. dated 12th April, and evidently written in 1500, after his visit to England, mentions a fever which nearly killed Erasmus _two years before_. Comparing this with what is said in the ‘Life’ prefixed to vol i. of Eras. _Op._, Epist. vi. vii. and viii., dated 3 Feb., 4 Feb., and 12 Feb., seem to belong to Feb. 1498. Epist. vi. ix. and v. seem to place his studies with Mountjoy, at Paris, in the spring of that year. Epist. xxii. seems to mention the projected visit to England. Epist. xiv. ‘Londini tumultuarie,’ 5 Dec., is evidently written after he had been to Oxford and seen Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, and yet, comparatively soon after his arrival in England. It alludes to his coming to England, but gives no hint that he is going to leave England. In the winter of 1499-1500 he was at Oxford, intending to leave, but delayed by political reasons. He really did leave England 27 Jan. 1500. Whilst, therefore, it is just possible that Epist. xiv. may have been written in Dec. 1499, it is more probable that it was written in Dec. 1498, and that the first experience of Erasmus at Oxford had been during the previous summer and autumn. This seems to comport best both with Epist. vi. ix. v. and xxii., and also with the circumstances connected with his stay in England, mentioned in this chapter. See also the next note. The years attached to the early letters of Erasmus are not in the least to be relied on.

[182] Coletus Erasmo: Eras. Epist. xi.

[183] ‘Hic (at Oxford) hominem nosse cœpi, nam eodem tum me Deus nescio quis adegerat; natus tum erat annos ferme triginta, me minor duobus aut tribus mensibus.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, B. Erasmus, according to his monument at Rotterdam (Eras. _Op._ i. (7)) was born 28 Oct. 1467. Colet would be born, say, Jan. 1467-8, if three months younger, and would be ‘annos ferme triginta, in the spring of 1498.’ According to Colet’s monument he would be 31 at that date, as he died 16 Sept. 1519, and the inscription states ‘vixit annos 53.’--Knight’s _Colet_, p. 261.

[184] Epist. xii. Sixtinus Erasmo.

[185] Else how could Erasmus describe Colet’s style of speaking so clearly in his first letter to him?--Epist. xli.

[186] ‘Virum optimum et bonitate præditum singulari.’--Eras. Epist. xi.

[187] Coletus Erasmo: Epist. xi.

[188] Eras. Epist. xli. _Op._ iii. p. 40, D.

[189] ‘Dicebat Coletus, Caym ea primum culpa Deum offendisse, quod tanquam conditoris benignitate diffisus, suæque nimium confisus industriæ, terram primus prosciderit, quum Abel, sponte nascentibus contentus, oves paverit.’--Eras. Epist. xliv. _Op._ iii. p. 42, F. Compare MS. G. g. 4, 26, fols. 4-6 and 29, 30, and Erasmus’s Paraphrases, _in loco_, Hebrews xi. 4.

[190] ‘At ille unus vincebat omnes; visus est sacro quodam furore debacchari, ac nescio quid homine sublimius augustiusque præferre. Aliud sonabat vox, aliud tuebantur oculi, alius vultus, alius adspectus, majorque videri, afflatus est numine quando.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. 42, F.

[191] Eras. Epist. xliv.

[192] Erasmus Sixtino, Epist. xliv. _Op._ iii. p. 42, C.

[193] See his colloquy, _Ichthyophagia_, in which he describes his college experience at Paris, especially his physical hardships. The latter are probably caricatured, and perhaps too much magnified for the description to be taken literally.

[194] Erasmus to Lord Mountjoy: Epist. xlii. Oxoniæ, 1498.

[195] ‘Beatus Rhenanus Cæsari Carolo.’--Eras. _Op._ i. leaf * * * 1.

[196] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 458, D and E.

[197] Eras. _Op._ iii. pt. 1, p. 459, F.

[198] ‘Siquidem magnum erat, Coletum, in ea fortuna, constanter sequutum esse, non quo vocabat natura, sed quo Christus,’ &c.--_Ibid._ p. 461, E.

[199] See the following extract from the colloquy of Erasmus, ‘_Pietas puerilis_,’ edition Argent. 1522, leaf e, 4, and Basileæ, 1526, p. 92, and Eras. _Op._ i. p. 653.

‘_Erasmus._ Many abstain from divinity because they are afraid lest they should waver in the catholic faith, when they see there is nothing which is not called in question.

‘_Gaspar._ I believe firmly what I read in the Holy Scriptures, and the creed called the Apostles’, and I don’t trouble my head any further. I leave the rest to be disputed and defined by the clergy, if they please.

‘_Erasmus._ What _Thales_ taught you that philosophy?

‘_Gaspar._ I was for some time in domestic service’ [as More was in the house of Cardinal Morton before he was sent to Oxford], ‘with that honestest of men, _John Colet_. _He imbued me with these precepts._’ See Argent. 1522, leaf c, 4.

[200] ‘Illic in collegio Montis Acuti ex putribus ovis et cubiculo infecto concepit morbum, h.e. malam corporis, antea purissimi, affectionem.’--_Vita_, prefixed to Eras. _Op._ i. written by himself. See the letter to Conrad Goclenius.

[201] ‘A studio theologiæ abhorrebat, quod sentiret animum non propensum, ut omnia illorum fundamenta subverteret; deinde futurum, ut hæretici nomen inureretur.’--_Vita_, prefixed to Eras. _Op._ i.

[202] See for this anecdote, Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 458, E and F.

[203] ‘Tanquam afflatus spiritu quodam, “Quid tu, inquit, mihi prædicas istum, qui nisi habuisset multum arrogantiæ, non tanta temeritate tantoque supercilio definisset omnia; et nisi habuisset aliquid spiritus mundani, non ita totam Christi doctrinam sua profana philosophia contaminasset.”’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 458, F.

[204] _Summa_, i. quest. 52, 53.

[205] ‘Omnino decessit aliquid meæ de illo existimationi.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. pt. 1, 458, F.

[206] See _The Praise of Folly_, Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 462, where the dogmatic science of the age is as severely satirised by Erasmus as the dogmatic theology of the Schoolmen. Thus Folly is made to say:--‘With what ease, truly, do they indulge in day-dreams (_delirant_), when they invent innumerable worlds, and measure the sun, moon, and stars, and the earth, as though by thumb and thread; and render a reason for thunder, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, without the least hesitation, as though they had been the secret architects of all the works of nature, or as though they had come down to us from the council of the gods. _At whom and whose conjectures nature is mightily amused!_’

[207] Cresacre More’s _Life of Sir Thomas More_, p. 93.

[208] Erasmi aliquot Epistolæ: Paris, 1524, p. 33. Eras. _Op._ iii. Epist. lxiii. 1521 ed. p. 291. Whether written in 1498 or 1499 is doubtful.

[209] Erasmus Roberto Piscatori: Epist. xiv.

[210] The incidents related in this section are taken from _Disputatiuncula de Tædio, Pavore, Tristitiâ Jesu, instante Supplicio Crucis, deque Verbis, quibus visus est Mortem deprecari, ‘Pater, si fieri potest, transeat a me calix iste.’_--Eras. _Op._ v, pp. 1265-1294.

[211] Eras. _Op._ v. pp. 1291 and 1292.

[212] ‘From this order, any one may perceive the reason of the _four senses_ in the old law which are customary in the church. The _literal_ is, when the actions of the men of old time are related. When you think of the image, even of the Christian church which the law foreshadows, then you catch the _allegorical_ sense. When you are raised aloft, so as from the shadow to conceive of the reality which both represent, then there dawns upon you the _anagogic_ sense. And when from signs you observe the instruction of individual man, then all has a _moral_ tone for you.... In the writings of the New Testament, saving when it pleased the Lord Jesus and his Apostles to speak in parables, as Christ often does in the Gospels, and St. John throughout in the Revelation, all the rest of the discourse, in which either the Saviour teaches his disciples more plainly, or the disciples instruct the churches, has the sense that appears on the surface. Nor is one thing said and another meant, but the very thing is meant which is said, and the sense is wholly literal. Still, inasmuch as the church of God is figurative, conceive always an _anagoge_ in what you hear in the doctrines of the church, the meaning of which will not cease till the figure has become the truth. From this moreover conclude, that where the literal sense is, then the allegorical sense is _not_ always along with it; but, on the other hand, that where there is the allegorical sense, the literal sense is always underlying it.’--Colet’s abstract of the _Eccl. Hier._, Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 105-107; and see Mr. Lupton’s note on this passage.

[213] Summa, pt. i. quest. 1, article x. Conclusio.

[214] Eras. _Op._ v. pp. 1291 to 1294. This reply of Colet to the long letter of Erasmus does not seem to have been published in the early editions of the latter. Thus I do not find it in the editions of Schurerius, Argent. 1516, and again 1517. The earliest print of it that I have seen is that appended to the _Enchiridion_, &c. Basle, 1518.

[215] Eras. _Op._ iii. Epist. lxv. Erasmus Fausto Andrelino, 1521 ed. p. 260.

[216] ‘Torquatis istis aulicis.’--Eras. _Op._ v. p. 126, E.

[217] Colet’s letter to Erasmus has been lost, but the above may be gathered from the reply of Erasmus.

[218] Eras. _Op._ v. p. 1263.

[219] It is possible that Colet himself had, at one time, thought of expounding the book of Genesis, but the manuscript letters to Radulphus appended to the copy of the MS. on the ‘Romans,’ in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, contain no allusion to any such intention.

[220] Probably De la Pole. See Mr. Gairdner’s _Letters and Papers, &c. of Richard III. and Henry VII._ vol. i. p. 129, and vol. ii. preface, p. xl; and appendix, p. 377; where Mr. Gairdner mentions under date, 20th Aug. 14 Henry VII. (1499) a ‘Proclamation, against leaving the kingdom without license,’ and adds ‘N.B. clearly in consequence of the flight of Edmund De la Pole.’ If this prohibition extended through December, it fixes the date of this letter as written in the winter of 1499-1500.

[221] Eras. _Op._ v. p. 1263. This letter is generally found prefixed to the various editions of the _Disputatiuncula de Tædio Christi_. And this is often appended to editions of the _Enchiridion_.

[222] Epist. lxiv. Erasmus to Mountjoy, and also see Epist. xlii.

[223] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 26, E. Epist. xxix.

[224] The fact that Erasmus saw Prince _Edmund_ fixes the date of his departure from England to 1500, instead of 1499. He left England 27th Jan., and it could not be in 1499, for Prince Edmund was not born till Feb. 21, 1499.

[225] See the mention of this incident in Erasmus’s letter to Botzhem, printed as _Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Roterdami Lucubrationum, ipso Autore_, 1523, Basil, fol. a. 6, and reprinted by Jortin, app. 418, 419.

[226] For the verses see Eras. _Op._ i. p. 1215.

[227] See Ep. xcii. and lxxxi.

[228] ‘He [Tyndale] was born (about 1484) about the borders of Wales, and brought up from a child in the University of Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as specially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted; insomuch that he, lying there in Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College, some parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures.’--Quoted from Foxe in the biographical notice of William Tyndale, prefixed to his Doctrinal Treatises, p. xiv, Parker Society, 1848. Magdalen College is supposed to have been the college in which Colet resided at Oxford; as, according to Wood, some of the name of Colet are mentioned in the records, though not John Colet himself.

[229] ‘How many years did he (Colet) following the example of St. Paul, teach the people _without reward_!’--Eras. Epist. cccclxxxi. Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 532, E.

[230] In Colet’s epitaph it is stated ‘administravit 16;’ as he died in 1519, this will bring the commencement of his administration to 1504, at latest. See also the note in the Appendix on Colet’s preferments.

[231] Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, p. 184.

[232] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, C.

[233] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, D.

[234] Ibid. E. and F.

[235] Walter Stone, LL.D., was admitted to the vicarage of Stepney, void by the resignation of D. Colet, Sept. 21, 1505.--Kennett’s MSS. vol. xliv. f. 234 b (Lansdowne, 978). He seems to have retained his rectory of Denyngton.

[236] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 465, E.

[237] Ibid. E. and F.

[238] Grocyn and Linacre had also removed to London. More was already there.

[239] ‘Impense delectabatur amicorum colloquiis quæ sæpe differebat in multam noctem. Sed omnisillius sermo, aut de literis erat, aut de Christo.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 457. A.

[240] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 459, F.

[241] Ibid. p. 457, A.

[242] Ibid. p. 459, F.

[243] Ibid. p. 456, E.

[244] ‘Porro in suo templo non sumebat sibi carptim argumentum ex Evangelio aut ex epistolis Apostolicis sed unum aliquod argumentum proponebat, quod diversis concionibus ad finem usque prosequebatur: puta Evangelium Matthæi, Symbolum Fidei, Precationem Dominicam.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, D, E.

[245] Grocyn was apparently rector of this parish up to 1517, when he vacated it.--Wood’s _Ath. Oxon._ p. 32.

[246] Stapleton, p. 160.

[247] Roper, Singer’s ed. 1822, p. 5.

[248] Rot. Parl. vi. 521, B.

[249] 12 Henry VII. c. 12, also Rot. Parl. vi. p. 514.

[250] 12 Henry VII. c. 13.

[251] See 3 Edward I. c. 36, and 25 Edward III. s. 5, c. 11.

[252] Roper, p. 7.

[253] Possibly, ‘_our trusty and right well-beloved knight and counseller_,’ _Sir William Tyler_, who had so often partaken of the royal bounty, being made ‘Controller of Works,’ ‘Messenger of Exchequer,’ ‘Receiver of certain Lordships,’ &c. &c. (see Rot. Parl. vi. 341, 378 b, 404 b, 497 b), and who was remembered for good in chap. 35 of this very Parliament.

[254] A fifteenth of the three estates was estimated by the Venetian ambassador, in 1500, to produce 37,930_l._--See _Italian Relation of England_, Camden Soc. p. 52. The amount of a ‘fifteenth’ was fixed in 1334, by 8 Ed. III. Blackstone (vol. i. p. 310) states that the amount was fixed at about 29,000_l._ This was probably the amount, exclusive of the quota derived from the estates of the clergy, which latter was estimated at 12,000_l._ by the Venetian ambassador in 1500. This being added would raise Blackstone’s estimate to 41,000_l._ in all. From this, however, about 4,000_l._ was always excused to ‘poor towns, cities, &c.,’ so that the nett actual amount would be about 37,000_l._ according to Blackstone, which agrees well with the Venetian estimate.

[255] 19 Henry VII. c. 32, Jan. 25, 1503, Rot. Parl. vi. 532-542. In lieu of two reasonable aids, one for making a knight of Prince Arthur deceased, and the other of marriage of Princess Margaret to the King of Scots, and also great expenses in wars, the Commons grant 40,000_l._ less 10,000_l._ remitted, ‘_of his more ample grace and pity, for that the poraill of his comens should not in anywise be contributory or chargeable to any part of the said sum of 40,000l._’ The 30,000_l._ to be paid by the shires in the sums stated, and to the payment every person to be liable having lands, &c. to the yearly value of 20_s._ of free charter lands, or of 26_s._ 8_d._ of lands held at will, or any person having goods or cattalls to the value of x marks or above, not accounting their cattle for their plough nor stuff or implement of household.

[256] John More was one of the commissioners for Herts.

[257] This story is told in substantially the same form in the manuscript life of More by Harpsfield, written in the time of Queen Mary, and dedicated to William Roper.--_Harleian MSS._ No. 6253, fol. 4.

[258] ‘Meditabatur adolescens sacerdotium cum suo Lilio.’--Stapleton, _Tres Thomæ_, ed. 1588, p. 18, ed. 1612, p. 161. See also Roper, pp. 5, 6.

[259] Stapleton and Roper, _ubi supra_.

[260] Richard Whitford himself, retiring soon after from public life, entered the monastery called ‘Sion,’ near Brentford in Middlesex, and wrote books, in which he styled himself ‘_the_ wretch of Sion.’ See Roper, p. 8, and Knight’s _Life of Erasmus_, p. 64.

[261] Stapleton, ed. 1588, p. 20, ed. 1612, p. 163.

[262] That this letter was written in 1504 is evident. First, it cannot well have been written before Colet had commenced his labours at St. Paul’s; secondly, it cannot have been written in Oct. 1505, because it speaks of Colet as still holding the living of Stepney, which he resigned Sept. 21, 1505. Also the whole drift of it leads to the conclusion that More was unmarried when he wrote it. And he married in 1505, according to the register on the Burford picture, which, the correct date of More’s birth having been found and from it the true date of Holbein’s sketch, seems to be amply confirmed by the age there given of More’s eldest daughter, Margaret Roper. She is stated to be twenty-two on the sketch made in 1528, and so was probably born in 1506.

[263] _Mori Epigrammata_: Basle, 1518, p. 6. See the prefatory letter by Beatus Rhenanus.

[264] Ibid.

[265] See Epigram entitled ‘_Gratulatur quod eam repererit Incolumem quam olim ferme Puer amaverat_.’--_Epigrammata_: Basle, 1520, p. 108, and _Philomorus_, pp. 37-39.

[266] ‘From whence [the Tower], the day before he suffered, he sent his shirt of hair, not willing to have it seen, to my wife, his dearly beloved daughter.’--Roper, p. 91.

[267] Walter’s _Life of More_, London, 1840, pp. 7, 8. Cresacre More’s _Life of More_, pp. 24-26.

[268] ‘Maluit igitur maritus esse castus quam sacerdos impurus.’--_Erasmus to Hutten_: Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 75, c. Stapelton, 1612 ed. pp. 161, 162. Cresacre More’s _Life of More_, pp. 25, 26. Even Walter allows that his ‘finding that at that time religious orders in England had somewhat degenerated from their ancient strictness and fervour of spirit,’ was the cause of his ‘altering his mind.’--Walter’s _Life of More_, p. 8.

[269] Sir Thomas More’s _Works_, pp. 1-34; and see the note on Pico’s religious history, and his connection with Savonarola, above, p. 19.

[270] Compare this with the line of argument pursued by Marsilio Ficino in his _De Religione Christianâ_. Vide supra, p. 11.

[271] This remarkable letter was written, ‘Ferrariæ, 15 May, 1492’ (Pici _Op._ p. 233), scarcely six weeks after Pico’s visit to the deathbed of Lorenzo de Medici.

[272] This letter is dated in More’s translation M.cccclxxxxii. from _Paris_, in mistake for M.cccclxxxvi. from _Perugia_. See Pici _Op._ p. 257.

[273] See More’s _Works_, p. 19, _in loco_, v. 6.

[274] Stapleton, ed. 1612, p. 162. Cresacre More’s _Life of Sir T. More_, p. 27.

[275] Sir T. More’s _Works_, p. 9.

[276] There is a copy of this translation of More’s in the British Museum Library. ‘276, c. 27, _Pico, &c._, 4{o}, _London_, 1510.’ This is probably the original edition. More may have waited till Henry VIII.’s accession before daring to publish it.

[277] This date of More’s marriage is the date given in the register contained on the Burford family picture; and as it is in no way dependent on the other dates, probably it rested upon some family tradition or record. It is confirmed by the age of Margaret Roper on the Basle sketch--22 in 1528. Vide supra, p. 149, n. 1.

[278] Cresacre More’s _Life of Sir T. More_, p. 39.

[279] Erasmus Botzhemo: _Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Lucubrationum_: Basle, 1523.

[280] Epist. lxxxi. He arrived at Paris ‘postridie Calend, Februarias’ (p. 73, E.), i.e. Feb. 2, 1500.

[281] Epist. iii. This letter is dated in the Leyden edition, 1490, and in the edition of 1521, p. 264, M.LXXXIX. (_sic_), but it evidently was written shortly after the illness of Erasmus at Paris in the spring of 1500. See also the mention of ‘Arnold’ in Epist. xxix. (Paris, 12 April) and a repetition in it of much that is said in this letter respecting Erasmus’s illness and intention of visiting Italy. See also Epist. dii. App.

[282] ‘In Britannico littore pecuniola mea, studiorum meorum alimonia, naufragium fecit.’--Epist. xcii. p. 84 C.

[283] ‘_Tenuiter._’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 73, F. Epist. lxxxi. and see also lxxx.

[284] Erasmus to Battus: Epist. xxix. Paris, 12 April, probably in 1500. See also Epist. lxxx. ‘Græscæ literæ animum meum propemodum enecant: verum neque precium datur, neque suppetit, quo libros, aut præceptoris operam redimam. Et dum hæc omnia tumultuor, vix est unde vitam sustineam.’

[285] Epist. xciv.

[286] Epistolæ xxxvi. lxxvi. lxxi. (20 Nov.), lxxii. (9 Dec.), xciv. xcix. (11 Dec.), lxxiii. (11 Dec.), and lxxiv. seem to belong to this period of flight to Orleans. Epist. xv. and lxxvii. (14 Dec.), lxxviii. (18 Dec.), and xci. (14 Jan.), seem to mark the date of his return to Paris.

[287] Epist. xcii. Paris, 27 Jan. 1500 (should be 1501).

[288] Epist. xxxix.

[289] Epist. ccccvii. App.

[290] ‘Nec est in ullo mortalium aliquid solidæ spei, nisi in uno Batto.’--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 48, C. Epist. liii.

[291] Epist. xxx. 2 July [1501] seems to be the first letter written from St. Omer, where Erasmus was then staying with the Abbot. See also Epist. xxxix., where he speaks of having been terrified at Paris with the numbers of funerals. On 12 July and 18 July he writes Epist. liv.-lviii. (‘Tornaco’ evidently meaning the castle of Tornahens). Epist. lix. also was written about the same time. Epist. xcviii. 30 July, if written by Erasmus, shows he was still at St. Omer. All these letters seem to belong to the year 1501.

[292] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 52, E. Epist. lix.

[293] Epist. lxii.

[294] Erasmus to Botzhem: _Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Lucubrationum_: Basle, 1523, leaf b, 4.

[295] Erasmus to Justus Jonas: Epist. ccccxxxv.

[296] ‘Ea quum placerent etiam eruditis, præsertim Ioanni Viterio Franciscano cujus erat in illis regionibus autoritas summa.’--_Letter to Botzhem_, leaf b, 4. There can be no doubt that the John Viterius mentioned in this letter is the same person as the Vitrarius of the letter to Justus Jonas. See also Mr. Lupton’s introduction to his translation of Colet on Dionysius.

[297] Eras. Epist. clxxiii.

[298] Ibid. xciv.

[299] _Lucubratiunculæ aliquot Erasmi_: Antwerp, 1503. _Biogr. de Thierry Martins_: par A. F. Van Iseghem: Alost, 1852, 8vo. See also Letter to Botzhem (_Catalogus, &c._), fol. b, 4.

[300] It is very difficult to fix the true dates of these letters, and to ascertain to what year they belong. Epist. ccccxlvi. App., from Louvain, mentions the death of Battus, and that the Marchioness of Vere had married below her. He speaks of himself as buried in Greek studies.

[301] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 94. Epist. cii. Dated 1504, but should be probably 1505.

[302] See Erasmus Edmundo: Epist xcvi. ‘ex arce Courtemburnensi.’

[303] The Panegyric upon Philip, King of Spain, on his return to the Netherlands. See Epist. ccccxlv. App. Erasmus Gulielmo Goudano.

[304] More literally ‘The _Pocket Dagger_ of the Christian Soldier.’ But Erasmus himself regarded it as a ‘Handybook.’ See _Enchiridion_, ch. viii. English ed. 1522. ‘We must haste to that which remaineth lest it should not be an “Enchiridion,” that is to say “a lytell treatyse hansome to be caryed in a man’s hande,” but rather a great volume.’

[305] See especially chap. ii. _Allegoria de Manna_, Eras. _Op._ v. fol. 6-10, &c.

[306] It is evident that Erasmus had not yet appreciated as fully as he did afterwards the _historical_ method which Colet had applied to St. Paul’s Epistles to get at their real meaning and ‘spirit.’

[307] Alfonso Fernandez, Archdeacon of Alcor, to Erasmus: Palencia, Nov. 27, 1527. _Life and Writings of Juan de Valdès_, by Benjamin Wiffen: London, Quaritch, 1865, p. 41.

[308] The above is an abridged translation from the _Enchiridion_, ed. Argent. June, 1516, pp. 7, 8, which, being published before the Lutheran controversy commenced, is probably a reprint of the earlier editions. The editions of 1515 are the earliest that I have seen.

[309] This letter was republished in the edition of some letters of Erasmus printed at Basle, 1521, p. 221, and see also Eras. _Op._ iii. Epist. ciii.

[310] Letter to Fox, Bishop of Winchester. London, Cal. Jan. 1506. Eras. _Op._ i. p. 214.

[311] Erasmus’s letter to Botzhem, _Catalogus, &c._ Basle, 1523, leaf b, 3.

[312] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 475, D.

[313] The epigrams have no dates, and it is impossible, therefore, to say positively which of them were written during this period. The following translation of one of them from Cayley’s _Life of Sir Thomas More_, vol. i. p. 270 (with this reservation as to its date), may be taken as a sample:--

A squall arose; the vessel’s tossed; The sailors fear their lives are lost. ‘Our sins, our sins,’ dismayed they cry, ‘Have wrought this fatal destiny!’

A monk it chanced was of the crew, And round him to confess they drew. Yet still the restless ship is tossed, And still they fear their lives are lost.

One sailor, keener than the rest, Cries, ‘With our sins she’s still oppress’d; Heave out that monk, who bears them all, And then full well she’ll ride the squall.’

So said, so done; with one accord They threw the caitiff overboard. And now the bark before the gale Scuds with light hull and easy sail.

Learn hence the weight of sin to know, With which a ship could scarcely go.

[For the Latin, see _Epigrammata Thomæ Mori_, Basilæ, 1520, pp. 72, 73.]

[314] E. g.:--

‘T. Mori in Avarum.’

‘Dives Avarus Pauper est.’

‘Sola Mors Tyrannicida est.’

‘Quid inter Tyrannum et Principem.’

‘Sollicitam esse Tyranni Vitam.’

‘Bonum Principem esse Patrem non Dominum.’

‘De bono Rege et Populo.’

‘De Principe bono et malo.’

‘Regem non satellitium sed virtus reddit tutum.’

‘Populus consentiens regnum dat et aufert.’

‘Quis optimus reipub. status.’

[315] Alluding to this time, Erasmus spoke of More as ‘Tum studiorum sodali.’--Letter to Botzhem, 1523, leaf b, 3.

[316] See letter of Erasmus to Richard Whitford, Eras. _Op._ i. p. 265, dated May, ex rure (1506).

[317] Lucian’s dialogue called _Somnium_ he sent to Dr. Christopher Urswick, a well-known statesman (Eras. _Op._ i. p. 243); _Toxaris, sive de Amicitiâ_, to Fox, Bishop of Winchester (_Ibid._ p. 214); _Timon_ to Dr. Ruthall, afterwards Bishop of Durham (_Ibid._ p. 255); _De Tyrannicidâ_, to Dr. Whitford, chaplain to Fox (_Ibid._ p. 267).

[318] See an amusing account of this visit to Lambeth Palace in the letter to Botzhem (_Catalogus_, leaf a, 5); also Knight’s _Life of Erasmus_, p. 83.

[319] See Knight’s _Life of Erasmus_, pp. 96-101. _Adagia._ _Op._ ii. 554. Epist. dccclxxiv. and dccccliii.

[320] Eras. _Op._ iii. Epist. civ.

[321] Epist. cv.

[322] See his Colloquy, _Diversoria_.

[323] Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 755. Erasmus to Botzhem, leaf a, 4.

[324] Luther visited Rome in 1510, or a year or two later. Luther’s _Briefe_, De Wette, 1. xxi.

[325] ‘Nullum enim annum vixi insuavius!’--Erasmus to Botzhem, leaf a, 4.

[326] Eras. Ep. cccclxxxvi. App.

[327] Epist. cccclxxxvii. App.

[328] Eras. to Botzhem, leaf b, 8.

[329] Mountjoy to Erasmus, Epist. x., dated May 27, 1497, but should be 1509.

[330] It is difficult to fix the date of the arrival of Erasmus in England. He was at Venice in the autumn of 1508. (See the Aldine edition of his _Adagia_, dated Sept. 1508.) After this he wintered at Padua (see _Vita Erasmi_, prefixed to Eras. _Op._ i.); and after this went to Rome (ibid.). This brings the chronology to the spring of 1509. In April, 1509, Henry VIII. ascended the English throne. On May 27, 1509, Lord Mountjoy wrote to Erasmus, who seems to have been then at Rome, pressing him to come back to England (Eras. Epist. x., the date of which is fixed by its contents).

The letter prefixed to the _Praise of Folly_ is dated _ex rure, ‘quinto Idas Junias,’_ and states that the book is the result of his meditations during his long journeys on horseback on his way from Italy to England. This letter must have been dated June 9, 1510, at earliest, or 1511, at latest. 1510 is the probable date (see _infra_, note at p. 204). The later editions of the _Praise of Folly_ put the year 1508 to this letter; but the edition of August, 1511 (Argent.) gives no year, nor does the Basle edition of 1519, to which the notes of Lystrius were appended. So that the printed date is of no authority, and it is entirely inconsistent with the history of the book as given by Erasmus. The first edition, printed by _Gourmont_, at Paris, I have not seen, but, according to Brunet, it has _no date_. In the absence of direct proof, it is probable on the whole that Erasmus returned to England between the autumn of 1509 and June, 1510.

[331] See the letter to More prefixed to the _Praise of Folly_.

[332] Roper, p. 9.

[333] See More’s letter to Dorpius, in which he mentions this visit.

[334] Roper, p. 6.

[335] Hall, ed. 1548, fol. lix.

[336] _Epigrammata Mori_: Basil, 1520, p. 17.

[337] Johnson’s _Life of Linacre_, pp. 179 _et seq._

[338] Vide _infra_, p. 380.

[339] Stapleton, 1588 ed. pp. 26, 27.

[340] Roper, p. 9.

[341] More’s son John--nineteen in 1528, according to Holbein’s sketch--was probably born in 1509. More’s three daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cicely, were all older.

[342] See the letter of Erasmus to Botzhem, ed. Basle, 1523, leaf b, 3, and Jortin, App. 428. Also _Erasmi ad Dorpium Apologia_, Louvain, 1515, leaf F, iv.

[343] Argent. 1511, leaf D, iii., where occurs the marginal reading, ‘Indulgentias taxat.’

[344] Argent. 1511, E, 8, and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 457.

[345] Argent. 1511, leaf E, viii., and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 462.

[346] Argent, 1511, leaf F, and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 465.

[347] Argent. 1511, leaf F, and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 465.

[348] Basle, 1519, p. 178 _et seq._, and Eras. _Op._ ix. pp. 466 _et seq._

[349] Basle, 1519, p. 181.

[350] Basle, 1519, p. 183, and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 468.

[351] Basle, 1519, p. 183, and Argent. 1511, leaf F; which contains, however, only part of this paragraph.

[352] Basle, 1519, p. 185. Argent. 1511, leaf F, ii., and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 469.

[353] Basle, 1519, pp. 185 and 186.

[354] Ibid. p. 180.

[355] This paragraph is not inserted in the edition Argent. 1511, but appears in the Basle edition, 1519, p. 192, and Eras. _Op._ iv. pp. 473, 474.

[356] Argent. 1511, leaf F, viii. and Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 479.

[357] Ranke, _Hist. of the Popes_, chap. ii. s. 1.

[358] Erasmus Buslidiano: Bononiæ, 15 Cal. Dec. 1506, Eras. _Op._ i. p. 311.

[359] Argent. 1511, leaf G, iii. Eras. _Op._ iv. p. 484.

[360] Ranke, _Hist. of the Popes_, chap. ii. s. 1 (abridged quotation).

[361] _Moriæ Encomium_: Argent. M.DXI. leaf G, iii. This edition contains all the above passages on Popes, and was published during the lifetime of Julius II., as he did not die till the spring of 1513.

[362] Erasmus writes: ‘It was sent over into France by the arrangement of those at whose instigation it was written, and there printed from a copy not only full of mistakes, but even incomplete. Upon this within a few months it was reprinted more than seven times in different places.’--_Erasmi ad Dorpium Apologia_, Louvain, 1515.

See also Erasmus to Botzhem, where Erasmus says ‘Aderam Lutetiæ quum per Ricardum Crocum pessimis formulis depravatissime excuderetur.’ (First edition of this letter: Basle, 1523; leaf b, 4.) In the copy fixed to Eras. _Op._ i. ‘_nescio quos_’ is substituted for ‘_Ricardum Crocum_,’ _who was not the printer, but the friend of More who got it published_. (See Erasmus to Colet, Epist. cxlix. Sept. 13, 1511 (wrongly dated 1513), where Erasmus says of Crocus, ‘qui nunc Parisiis dat operam bonis literis.’ Erasmus was at Paris in April 1511. (See Epistolæ clxix., cx., and clxxv. taken in connection with each other.)) In a catalogue of the works of Erasmus (a copy of which is in the British Museum Library), entitled _Lucubrationum Erasmi Roterodami Index_, and printed by Froben, at Basle, in 1519, it is stated that the _Moriæ Encomium_ was ‘sæpius excusum, _primum Lutetiæ per Gormontium, deinde Argentorati per Schurerium_,’ &c. The latter edition is the earliest which I have been able to procure, and it is dated ‘mense Augusti M.DXI.’ But the date of the first edition printed at Paris by Gourmont I have not been able to fix certainly. According to Brunet, it had no date attached.

After staying at More’s house, and there writing the book itself, he may have added the prefatory letter ‘Quinto Idus Junias,’ 1510, ‘ex rure,’ whilst spending a few months with Lord Mountjoy, as we learn he did from a letter to Servatius from ‘London from the Bishop’s house’ (Brewer, No. 1418, Epist. cccclxxxv., under date 1510), it is most probable that in 1511 Erasmus paid a visit to Paris, being at Dover 10 April, 1511; at Paris 27 April (see _Epistolæ_ clxix., cx., and clxxv.); and thus was there when the first edition was printed. His letters from Cambridge do not seem to begin till Aug. 1511. See Brewer, Nos. 1842, Epist. cxvi.; and 1849, Epist. cxviii. No. 1652 belongs, I think, to 1513. Possibly No. 1842, Epist. cxvi., belongs to a later date; and, if so, No. 1849, Epist. cxviii., may be the first of his Cambridge letters, and with this its contents would well agree.

[363] Brewer, No. 1418. Eras. Epist. App. cccclxxxv., and see cccclxxxiv., dated 1 April, London.

[364] Brewer, No. 1478. Eras. Epist. cix. 6, Id. Feb., and it seems, in March 1511, Warham gave him a pension out of the rectory of Aldington. Knight, p. 155.

[365] Brewer, No. 4427.

[366] ‘A right fruitfull Admonition concerning the Order of a good Christian Man’s Life, very profitable for all manner of Estates, &c., made by the famous Doctour Colete sometime Deane of Paules. Imprinted at London for Gabriell Cawood, 1577.’--Brit. Museum Library.

[367] In Sept. 1505. Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 265, and n. a.

[368] ‘Insumpto patrimonio universo vivus etiam ac superstes solidam hæreditatem cessi,’ &c. Letter of Colet to Lilly, dated 1513, prefixed to the several editions of _De Octo Orationis Partibus, &c._

[369] The number of the ‘miraculous draught of fishes.’

[370] Statutes of St. Paul’s School. Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 364. See also the letter from Colet to Lilly, prefixed to the _Rudiments of Grammar_, 1510. Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 124, n. r.

[371] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 457, c.

[372] Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 109.

[373] Brewer’s _Calendar of State Papers_, Henry VIII., vol. i. No. 1076, under date June 6, 1510.

[374] Compare licenses mentioned in Brewer’s _Calendar of State Papers_ of Henry VIII. (vol. i. Nos. 1076, 3900, and 4659), with documents given in Knight’s _Life of Colet_, _Miscellanies_, No. v. and No. iii.

[375] ‘De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis.’--Eras. _Op._ i. p. 505.

[376] Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 175, and copied from him by Jortin, vol. i. pp. 169, 170.

[377] Take the following examples: ‘Revere thy elders. Obey thy superiors. Be a fellow to thine equals. Be benign and loving to thy inferiors. Be always well occupied. Lose no time. Wash clean. Be no sluggard. Learn diligently. Teach what thou hast learned lovingly.’--Colet’s _Precepts of Living for the Use of his School_. Knight’s _Life of Colet_. _Miscellanies_, No. xi.

[378] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 458, D.

[379] This epigram and the above-mentioned prefaces are inserted by Knight in his _Life of Colet_ (_Miscellanies_, No. xiii.), and were taken by him from what he calls _Grammatices Rudimenta_, London, M.DXXXIIII. in ‘_Bibl. publ. Cantabr. inter MS. Reg._’ But see note 1 on the next page. They were in the preface to Colet’s _Accidence_.

[380] See also the characteristic letter from Colet to Lilly, prefixed to the _Syntax_. The editions of 1513, 1517, and 1524 are entitled, _Absolutissimus de Octo Orationis Partium Constructione Libellus_. The _Accidence_ was entitled, _Coleti Editio unà cum quibusdam_, &c.

[381] Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 126.

[382] Eras. Epist. cxlix. Erasmus to Colet, Sept. 13, 1513 (Brewer, i. 4447), but should be 1511. See 4528 (Eras. Epist. cl.), which mentions the _De Copiâ_ being in hand, which was printed in May 1512. (?)

[383] _De Ratione Studii Commentariolus_: Argent. 1512, mense Julio, and printed again with additions, Argent. 1514, mense Augusto. The above translation is greatly abridged.

[384] Eras. Epist. App. iv.

[385] In 4 Henry VIII. (1513) Lord Chancellor Warham received 100 marks salary, and 100 marks for commons of himself and clerk--200 marks, or 133_l._ Brewer, i. Introduction, cviii. note (3).

[386] Prefatory Letter of Beatus Rhenanus, prefixed to the edition of More’s _Epigrammata_, printed at Basle, 1518 and 1520.

[387] Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 370. _Miscellanies_, No. vi.

[388] ‘Recte instituendæ pubis artifex.’ Preface of Erasmus to _De Octo Orationis Partium Constructione_, etc. Basle, 1517.

[389] Colet to Erasmus, Sept. 1511, not 1513 (Brewer, No. 4448), for the same reason as Nos. 4447 and 4528.

[390] Eras. Epist. cl. Brewer, p. 458. Dated October 29, 1513, but, as it mentions the _De Copiâ_ being in hand, it must have been written in 1511.

[391] John Ritwyse, or Rightwyse.

[392] ‘Moreover, that Thomas Geffrey caused this John Butler divers Sundays to go to London to hear Dr. Colet.’--Foxe, ed. 1597, p. 756.

[393] Ibid. p. 1162.

[394] William Sweeting and John Brewster, on October 18, 1511.--Foxe, ed. 1597, p. 756.

[395] Eras. Epist. cxxvii. Brewer, i. No. 1948.

[396] Brewer, i. p. 2004.

[397] Ibid. i. Introduction.

[398] Brewer, i. p. 4312. Warham to Henry VIII.--a document referring to this convocation as held at St. Paul’s from Feb. 6, 1511 (i.e. 1512) to Dec. 17 following. This document is in many places wholly illegible, but these words are visible: ‘concessimus ... [pro defensione ecclesiæ] Anglicanæ et hujus inclyti regni vestri Angliæ; necnon ad sedandum et extirpandum hereses et schismata in universali ecclesia quæ his diebus plus solito pullulant.’

[399] That Colet preached in English, see the remark of Erasmus that he had studied _English_ authors in order to polish his style and to prepare himself for preaching the gospel.--Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 456, B. It may also be inferred from the Lollards going to hear his sermons. In his rules for his school he directed that the chaplain should instruct the children in the Catechism and the Articles of the faith and the Ten Commandments in _English_.--Knight’s _Life of Colet_. _Miscellanies_, Num. v. p. 361.

[400] Tyndale, p. 168 (Parker Society).

[401] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 460, D.

[402] Erasmus to Werner: Eras. Ep. Lond. ed. lib. xxxi. Ep. 23. The person alluded to in this letter was clearly not James Stanley, as has sometimes been assumed.

[403] Cooper’s _Athenæ Cantab._ p. 16. Also _Philomorus_, Lond. Pickering, 1842, pp. 55-57, and _Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, p. 70.

[404] Epigram ‘In Posthumum Episcopum.’

[405] Epigram ‘In Episcopum illiteratum, de quo ante Epigramma est sub nomine Posthumi.’ There is no reason, I think, to conclude that More’s satire was directed in these epigrams against the Bishop of Ely. There may have been plenty of Scotists whom the cap might fit as well, or better. In the same year that Stanley was made Bishop of Ely, Fitzjames was made Bishop of London. The late Dean Milman (_Annals of St. Paul’s_, p. 120) shows, however, that Fitzjames was not unlearned, as he had been Warden of Merton and Vice-chancellor of Oxford.

[406] _Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, p. 298; and Knight’s _Life of Erasmus_, p. 229.

[407] Brewer, i. 4312.

[408] A ‘tenth,’ of the clergy, produced in 1500 about 12,000_l._ See Italian Relation of England, C. S. p. 52. Four-tenths would be equal to about half a million sterling in present money.

‘If the King should go to war, he ... immediately compels the clergy to pay him one, two, or three fifteenths or tenths ... and more if the urgency of the war should require it.’--_Ibid._ p. 52.

[409] ‘Senex quidam theologus et imprimis severus.’--_Erasmi Annotationes_, edit. 1519, p. 489; and edit. 1522, p. 558. ‘Senex quidam severus et vel supercilio teste theologus, magno stomacho, respondit.’--_Erasmi Moriæ Encomium_, Basle, 1519, p. 225.

[410] See note of Erasmus in his ‘_Annotationes_,’ _in loco_ Titus iii. 10; also the _Praise of Folly_, where the story is told in connection with further particulars. The exact coincidence between the two accounts of the old divine’s construction of Titus iii. 10 leads to the conclusion that the rest of the story, as given in the _Praise of Folly_, may also very probably be literally true. Knight, in his _Life of Colet_, concludes that as the story is told in the _Praise of Folly_, the incident must have occurred in a _previous convocation_, as this satire was written _before_ 1512.--Knight, pp. 199, 200. But the story is not inserted in the editions of 1511 and of 1515, whilst it is inserted in the Basle edition of the _Encomium Moriæ_, November 12, 1519, published just after Colet’s death (p. 226). Nor is the first part of the story relating to Titus iii. 10 to be found in the first edition of the _Annotationes_ (1516). The story is first told by Erasmus in the second edition (1519), published just before Colet’s death, and then without any mention of Colet’s name; the latter being possibly omitted lest, as Bishop Fitzjames was still living, its mention should be dangerous to Colet. It was not till the third edition was published (in 1522), when both Colet and Colet’s persecutor were dead, that Erasmus added the words, ‘Id, ne quis suspicetur meum esse commentum, accepi _ex Johanne Coleto_, viro spectatæ integritatis, quo præsidente res acta est.’--_Annotationes_, 3rd ed. 1522, p. 558.

[411] _Praise of Folly_, 1519, p. 226.

[412] There is an old English translation given by Knight in his _Life of Colet_ (pp. 289-308), printed by ‘Thomas Berthelet, regius impressor,’ and without date. _Pynson_ was the King’s printer in 1512 (Brewer, i. p. 1030), and accordingly he printed the Latin edition of 1511, _i.e._ 1512.--Knight, p. 271. Knight speaks of the old English version as ‘written probably by the Dean himself,’ but he gives no evidence in support of his conjecture.--See Knight’s _Life of Colet_, p. 199.

[413] ‘Neque valde miror si clarissimæ scholæ tuæ rumpantur invidia. Vident enim uti ex equo Trojano prodierunt Græci, qui barbaram diruere Trojam, sic è tuâ prodire _scholâ_ qui ipsorum arguunt atque subvertunt inscitiam.’--Stapleton’s _Tres Thomæ_, p. 166, ed. 1612; p. 23, ed. 1588.

[414] Brewer, vol. ii. No. 3190. The true date, 1512, is clearly fixed by the allusion to the ‘De Copia,’ &c.--Eras. Epist. App. ccccvi.

[415] Dated ‘M.DXII. iii. Kal. Maias: Londini.’

[416] The first edition was printed at Paris by Badius. Another was printed by Schurerius (Argentorat.), January 1513. And, in Oct. 1514, Erasmus sent to Schurerius a _revised_ copy for publication.

[417] Eras. _Op._ iii. p. 460, D and E.

[418] Ibid. p. 460, E.

[419] 3 Tyndale, p. 168 (Parker Society).

[420] ‘The Seven Peticyons of the Paternoster, by Joan Colet, Deane of Paules,’ inserted in the collection of Prayer entitled ‘_Horæ beate Marie Virginis secundum usum Sarum totaliter ad longum_.’--Knight’s _Life of Colet_, App. _Miscellanies_, No. xii. p. 450.

[421] Eras. Epist. cvii. Brewer, No. 3495, under date 1st Nov. 1512.

[422] Eras. Epist. cxxviii. and cxvi.

[423] ‘Written by Master Thomas More, then one of the undersheriffs of London, about the year 1513.’--_More’s English Works_, p. 35.

[424] ‘Morus noster melitissimus, cum sua facillima conjuge ... et liberis ac universa familia pulcherrime valet.’--Ammonius to Erasmus: Epist.