17. Schlottmann, C. Erasmus Redivivus. Halle, 1883. A minute and scholarly investigation in Latin of Erasmus's relation to Rome and to Luther, the ulterior purpose being to compare Erasmus with Döllinger. See Church Quar. Rev., Jan., 1883, p. 480.

18. Jebb, R. C. Erasmus: the Rede Lecture. Camb. and Lond., 1890. A fresh statement by the brilliant Greek scholar of Trinity College, Dublin. 19. Richter, A. Erasmus-Studien. Dresd. and Leipz., 1891.

20. Dods, Marcus. Erasmus and other Essays. Lond., 1891. One of the best short studies in any language.

21. Porter, W. H.

22. Shaw, W. H. Phila., 1893.

Erasmus (Chancellor's Essay, 1893). Oxf., 1893.
Lectures on the Oxford Reformers, Colet, Erasmus, More.

Bibliotheca Erasmiana. Gaud., 1893.

23. Van der Hagen. 24. Froude, J. A. Life and Letters of Erasmus. Lond. and N. Y., 1894; 2d ed., 1895. Copious extracts from Erasmus's correspondence; one of Froude's books which can be unreservedly recommended.

25. Lezius, Friedrich. Zur Characteristic des religiösen Standpunktes des Erasmus. Güters., 1895. Shows that Erasmus was withheld from embracing the Reformation by personal characteristics, ascetic peculiarities, religious experience, and theological opinions. His conception of faith fell short of Luther's. An able and, in the main, reliable monograph. See below, p. 114.

26. Gem, S. Harvey. Erasmus and the Reformation: a warning against reunion with Rome. Lond., 1896.

27. Marseille, G. S. Erasme et Luther. Montaub., 1897. A discussion of the controversy on grace and free will.

28. Emerton, E. Erasmus, N. Y., 1899. The Heroes of the Reformation series. Edited by S. M. Jackson.

See also Lives by von Burigny, Halle, 1782; J. Gaudin, Zürich, 1789; J. Hess, 2 vols. Zür., 1790; N. Swart, Leid,, 1823; A. Müller, Hamb., 1828 (Erasmus in Rotterdam). Bibliographical Studies by F. L. Hoffmann, Leipz., 1862, and Brux., 1869. Essays, by H. Rogers, in Essays on Theol. Controversies, Lond., 1874, pp. 286 ff.; Quar. Rev., Lond., Jan., 1895; Froude's, Edinb. Rev., Jan., 1895; Erasmus and the Reformation, Temple Bar Mag., Jan., 1895; Erasmus in Italy, Eng. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1895; Erasmus and the Pronunciation of Greek, Nineteenth Century, Jan., 1896 (J. Gennadius).

CHAPTER XI.

ERASMUS.

ERASMUS was the incarnation of Humanism.

Its love of learning, its enthusiasm for Greek, its impatience with the corruptions of the Church and with monkish stupidity, ignorance, and vileness, its hesitation with regard to doctrinal reform-all the characteristics of Humanism were summed up in Erasmus. We shall speak of his life, then of his work as a moral reformer, after that of his work for learning and the New Testament, and lastly of his attitude toward the Reformation.

SKETCH OF
LIFE OF
ERASMUS.

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam, October 28, 1465,' the son of Gerard and Margaret. His father's name, from gieren, "to desire," was for the son Latinized into Desiderius, and Græcized afterward according to the custom of the time into Erasmus, just as Reuchlin became Capnio, and Schwartzerde Melanchthon. He was sent to the famous school at Deventer. His property being squandered, or partially squandered, by his guardians, he was at length, after infinite cajoling and persuading and threatening, initiated into the monastic life. He afterward got a permission from the pope to leave the monastery as private secretary for the bishop of Cambray. In 1492 he was permitted to pursue studies in Paris, where he received pupils in Greek. One of his pupils, Lord Montjoy, invited him to England, whither he went, probably in 1498. His chief residence was Oxford, where he had Linacre as his teacher in Greek, and the noble Colet, who inspired him with just views as to the interpretation of Scripture and the value of scholastic philosophy, and who had a beneficial influence on his whole character. No man ever changed his residence more often than Erasmus. He visited England five times; he went back to Paris; he lived in Louvain and other places in Belgium and Holland; he stopped for a time in Turin, Bologna, Venice, and Rome; but after the Catholics made it too hot for him in Louvain, he lived in Protestant Basel from 1521 to 1529, when he withdrew

1 The date of his birth is variously given, 1466, 1467, 1469. 1465 is favored by the statement of Rhenanus that Erasmus died in his seventieth year, as by his own statement (Ep. 207, Feb. 26, 1516), “I have entered my fifty-first year."

to Freiburg until 1535. Returning to Basel he died on July 12, 1536. After 1514 all his writings were published by Froben in Basel. Erasmus was of delicate health, often ill, sometimes suffering excruciating pain, but preserved amid his checkered and stormy career by perennial cheerfulness.

No one ever lashed ecclesiastical corruption more cuttingly and severely than Erasmus. The monks came in, perhaps, for the larger share of this, because he knew more of them. His case was not exceptional, at least in regard to the methods used to bring people under monastic vows. "The kidnaping of

HIS SHARP
PEN.

boys and girls who had either money, or rank, or talent, was a common method of recruiting among the religious orders of the fifteenth century. It is alluded to and sharply condemned by a statute of Henry IV, passed by the English Parliament. Erasmus appeals in a letter to the papal secretary's personal knowledge. The Pharisees, he says, compass sea and land to sweep in proselytes. They hang about princes' courts and rich men's houses. They haunt schools and colleges, playing on the credulity of children and their friends, and entangling them in meshes from which when they are once caught there is no escape.'

Erasmus does not mince his words. "The world," he says, "is full of these tricksters. When they hear of a lad of promise with wealthy parents they lay traps for him unknown to his relations. In reality they are no better than so many thieves, but they color their acts under the name of piety. They talk to the child himself of the workings of the Holy Spirit, of vocations which parents must not interfere with, of the wiles of the devil, as if the devil was never to be found inside a monastery. This truth comes out at last, but only when the case is past mending. The ears of all mankind are tingling with the cries of the wretched captives!"i Erasmus tells of the Collationary fathers, a "community who had nests all over Christendom, and made their living by netting proselytes for the religious orders. Their business was to catch superior lads, threaten them, frighten them, beat them, crush their spirits, tame them, as the process was called, and break them in for the cloister. They were generally very successful. They did this work so well that the Franciscans and the Dominicans admitted that without their help their orders would die out."

In one of his Colloquies Erasmus gives this advice to a girl bent on taking the veil. "You are now a free woman about to

' Erasm. Epis., app. 442; Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, Lond. and N. Y., 1894, pp. 5, 6.

make yourself voluntarily a slave. The clemency of the Christian religion has in great measure cast out of the world the old bondage, saving only some obscure footsteps in a few places. But there is nowadays found out under pretense of religion a new sort of servitude, as they now live indeed in many monas

ERASMUS ON

teries. You must do nothing there but by a rule, and NUNS AND MONKS. then all that you lose they get. If you offer to step but one step out of the door you're lugged back again just like a criminal that had poisoned her father. And to make the slavery yet more evident, they change the habit your parents gave you, and after the manner of those slaves in old time, bought and sold in the market, they change the very name given you in baptism. ... If a military servant casts off the garment his master gave him, is he not looked upon to have renounced his master? And do we applaud him that takes upon him a habit that Christ the Master of us all never gave him? He is punished more severely for changing it again than if he had a hundred times thrown away the livery of his lord and emperor, which is the innocence of his mind." The girl replies that it is said to be a meritorious work -entering a nunnery. "That is pharisaical doctrine. St. Paul teacheth us otherwise, and will not have him that is called free make himself a servant, but rather endeavor that he may be more free. And this makes the servitude the worse, that you serve many masters, and they most commonly fools, too, and debauchees; and besides that they are uncertain, being every now and then new."

1

It would appear from this that Erasmus was opposed to the very idea of the monastic life as immoral servitude, but he is not to be interpreted so strictly. "We military gospelers," says a monk in another Colloquy, "propound to ourselves four things: To take care of our stomachs; that nothing be wanting below; to have wherewith to live on; and lastly, to do what we list."" Erasmus compares favorably the serious discourse to be heard at the tables of leading laymen in England with the ribaldry of the monastic refectories.

Erasmus says that the monks teach obedience so as to hide that there is any obedience due to God. "Kings are to obey the pope. Priests are to obey their bishops. Monks are to obey their abbots. Oaths are exacted that want of submission may be punished as a perjury. It may happen, and it often does happen, that an abbot is a fool or a drunkard. He issues an order to the brotherhood in

'Johnson's Bailey's Colloquies of Erasmus, Lond., 1878, 2 vols., i, 233. Ibid., ii, 176.

the name of holy obedience. And what will such an order be? An order to observe chastity, to be sober, to tell no lies? No. It will be that a brother is not to learn Greek; he is not to seek to instruct himself. He may be a sot; he may go with prostitutes; he may be full of hatred and malice; he may never look inside the Scriptures. No matter. He has not broken any oath; he is an excellent member of the community, while if he disobeys such a command as this from an insolent superior there is the stake or dungeon for him instantly.' Erasmus says: "The New Testa

Christ says the Sabbath

There are

ment knows nothing of monastic vows. was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; and when such institutions do more harm than good there ought to be easier means of escaping them than are now provided. The Pharisees of the Church will break the Sabbath for an ox or an ass, but will not relax an inch of their rule to save a perishing soul. monasteries where there is no discipline, and compared with which brothels are both more sober and more chaste. There are others where religion is nothing but ritual, and these are worse than the first, for the Spirit of God is not in them, and they are inflated with self-righteousness. There are those, again, where the brethren are so sick of the imposture that they keep it up only to deceive the vulgar. The houses are rare, indeed, where the rule is seriously observed, and even in these few, if you look to the bottom, you will find small sincerity. . . . Young men are fooled and cheated into joining these orders. Once in the toils they are broken in and trained into Pharisees. They may repent, but the superiors will not let them go, lest they should betray the orgies they have witnessed. They crush them down with scourge and penance, the secular arm,' chanceries, and dungeons. Nor is this the worst. Cardinal Matteo said at a public dinner before a large audience, naming place and persons, that the Dominicans had buried a young man alive whose father demanded his son's release. A Polish noble who had fallen asleep in a church saw two Franciscans buried alive; yet these wretches call themselves the representatives of Benedict and Basil and Jerome. A monk may be drunk every day; he may go with loose women secretly or openly (qui scortatur clam et palam, nihil enim addam obscænius); he may waste the Church's money on vicious pleasures. He may be a quack or charlatan, and all the while be an excellent brother, and

Ep. 85; Froude, p. 68.

? The civil authorities often returned deserters to their monasteries in chains.