Chapter IX (1)

DEFINITE BREACH WITH THE REFORMING PARTIES--HUTTEN'S
"EXPOSTULATIO" AND ERASMUS' "SPONGIA"

1520-1523

We have followed the course of Erasmus' thought during these first critical years, 1518 and 1519, when the purpose of the Lutheran movement was shaping itself into a definite policy. It could not be said that Luther had at the outset any "programme" whatever. His leadership was to be defined by the resistless logic of the events which were now following in swift succession, each leading to the next with compelling force. In 1518 Luther had gone as far as Augsburg to meet the papal legate Cajetanus, who had simply ordered him to retract. Luther had replied that he was ready to be instructed, but until better informed, he was _bound_ by the word of God and could not think otherwise than as he did. He had got safely out of Augsburg, but never again risked himself within the papal grasp. In 1519 he had accepted the challenge of John Eck of Ingolstadt, one of the most skilful disputants of the day according to the scholastic method, to meet him at Leipzig under the protection of Duke George of Saxony and there discuss the issues presented by the Theses. So long as the discussion had kept to the traditional lines of mediæval argumentation Luther had felt himself at a disadvantage. He had chafed under this feeling and finally had allowed himself to be entrapped into that magnificent burst of passion in which he had declared that in the writings of the condemned heretic, John Hus, there was much that was "right Christian and evangelical." For the first time and partly without his own will he had said that the papacy was not an essential element of the church organisation.

Henceforth there was no room for compromise. The papacy, now fairly aroused to the magnitude of the situation, replied in 1520, at Eck's prompting, with its last weapon, the bull of excommunication. This weapon fell absolutely harmless. The academic youth of Wittenberg, with Luther at their head, marched in festive procession to the Elstergate, kindled a bonfire, and threw into it the offending document. But this was not all. Papal bulls had often met this fate before, without serious loss of prestige for the authority which lay behind them. This time, however, not merely the bull in question, but also a copy of the Canon Law, the whole body of legal authority on which the power to issue bulls rested, was committed to the flames. That meant, not merely that Luther and all who supported him refused to obey this particular decree, but that they proposed to emancipate themselves, once for all, from the control of the whole system which it represented. With this step the Lutheran movement passed from the stage of Reformation to the stage of Revolution.

At this point the eminently constructive nature of Luther's genius began to display itself. He had not rejected one authority in order to escape all authority. He had not thrown aside one ecclesiastical order, to leave the Church without any order at all. In those splendid proclamations of the year 1520, "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church," the "Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany," and the "Freedom of the Christian Man," he unfolded his programme for a new and purified church order on the basis of the Christian state. Luther's apologists in Germany have sought to save him from the charge, dreadful to German ears, of being a revolutionist. Let us, citizens of a nation to which revolution has meant only the entrance into a larger and a better-ordered public life, admit frankly that the action of North Germany in the years following 1520 was, so far as church matters were concerned, revolutionary, and that only as such can it be justified or understood. True, it was defended then and has been defended ever since as being merely a return to an order of things once realised in the early Church. But when a body of institutions have held their own for a thousand years their overthrow cannot be disguised by any gentle figures of speech about mere reformation and restoration.

That the world of Europe in 1520 felt itself involved in a work of revolution is abundantly proved by the action of every party concerned. That the papacy should so regard it was self-evident. All reformation which should go beyond the stage of merely commending virtue and condemning vice must seem to it revolutionary. Its fundamental proposition was that all which was had, in its essence, always been, and that every innovation must therefore tend to destroy something essential to the very nature of the Church. From the moment when the papal government began at all to comprehend the meaning of the German revolt, it began to treat it as revolution.

More striking still, however, is the rapidity with which all the restless elements of society recognised that here was an idea closely akin to their own instinct of revolution. Hardly had Luther's first propositions, temperate and modest as they were, been put forth, when, in his immediate circle of influence, men were found who were ready to draw the last logical consequences from them. If it was true that men were justified in the sight of God solely by faith, then obviously there was no need of any mediating agency whatever. Away with all forms, priesthoods, ceremonies, and sacraments as so much useless rubbish piled up by centuries of wrong! If it was true that God's dealing with man was direct and not indirect, then why might not men look for immediate inspiration of the divine spirit as of old before all this machinery of priests and forms had been invented? If the word of God was not to be bound by a papacy, why let it be bound by an ancient book, in which, as was well known, there was a plenty of errors and falsities? Had God, then, ceased to communicate with man? All these questions were asked by men of thought and education; and the answers were not slow in coming. They came, as in times of great social unrest they always come, in the form of wild theories and passionate claims, none of which was quite without a basis of reason, but which, taken together, called up a ghastly spectre that could bear no other name than Revolution. The message of deliverance from the bondage of personal sin without the aid of a corrupt and greedy church establishment swelled rapidly into a summons to deliverance from every form of restraint and oppression. The men of theory, the Carlstadts and the Münzers, carried the word to the men of action and of suffering. From 1522 to 1524 the gospel of freedom through faith was being worked over to suit the needs of the vast peasant population of Middle and Western Germany. In 1524 and 1525 it burst out in the furious cry of these oppressed classes for equality of rights as the social expression of the equality of salvation. Subtle economic causes were, as always, at work and were leading in the same direction.

Just as the papacy was quick to recognise the revolutionary meaning of the Lutheran propositions, so Luther recognised how essentially revolutionary were all these wider movements which, quite against his will, had made use of his initiative to gain headway for themselves. In his retreat on the Wartburg after the Diet at Worms he heard of the radical doings of Carlstadt and the prophets from Zwickau at Wittenberg. At once he saw the danger and hurried to meet it. He succeeded in purifying Wittenberg from the taint of fanaticism only to scatter its seeds far and wide over the land. Henceforth it became perhaps the most important and distinctly the most difficult problem of the Lutheran party to show to the world its conservative and constructive side, without withdrawing for a moment from its original position of hostility to the papal system.

And, finally, from the political side, the revolutionary tendencies of the Lutheran position were no less clearly visible. Luther's perfectly sound instinct had shown him from the first that the German people were not to be carried away by any abstractions of democracy. Nor, on the other hand, was there any hope of reviving the ancient authority of the emperor. Luther's appeal to the German nobility was based on the fact that whatever political virtue there was in Germany was to be found in its princes, and the response of the princes proved them equal to the emergency. The call to defend the new religion involved also the prospect of complete deliverance from all imperial control.

The full meaning of the Lutheran movement is, of course, far clearer to us than it could have been to anyone in the year 1520, and yet as early as 1525 every one of the points of view just indicated had been clearly recognised by every thoughtful observer. The tendencies were plain; the question was, how soon and how far would tendencies develop into facts.

In such a mortal strife as this where was there room for poor Erasmus? The answer to this question is the history of the seventeen remaining years of his life--years as full of activity as any that had gone before them. Protest as he might that this struggle was none of his, it is evident that it formed the real undertone of his thought and drew from him the utterances by which his character as a public man has ever since been estimated. We may, without unduly stretching the meaning of his changing attitude towards the reform, divide it into three stages. Until 1520 we feel the note of sympathy and the desire merely to restrain excesses. After that year, and increasingly as the economic and social results began to appear, we find the attitude of direct hostility becoming more pronounced. Finally, under the increasing pressure to justify himself in this hostility, we find Erasmus laying down in more formal shape his philosophical and theological position as against that of the Lutheran party.

EXIMIO THEOLOGO JO. LANGIO.

S. p. Vir optime. Lei me miseresceret, ni tam virulenter rem
gessisset, ita tractatur etiam a suis Anglis. Habet et Hispania
Leum alterum. Zuniga quidam edidit librum ut audio satis
virulentum adversus Fabrum ac me. Vetuerat Cardinalis Toletanus
defunctus. Eo mortuo prodidit sua venena. Opus nondum vidi. Id
caveat ne liber veniat in manus meas. Nescio quem finem hic
tumultus sit habiturus. Nam omnino res ad seditionem spectat,
a qua semper abhorrui. Si necesse est ut oriantur scandala,
certe a me [non] proficisci. Devotis animis conspirant isti,
ac summorum regum aulas oppugnant, ac vereor, ne expugnent.
De Philippo, Œcolampadio quod scio cognoveram ex aliorum
litteris. Utramque epistolam tuam accepi. Bene vale vir in
domino mihi colende.
LOVANII, postrid. Cal. Aug.
ERASMUS ex animo tuus.

TO THE DISTINGUISHED THEOLOGIAN JOHANNES LANGE.

GREETING.
MOST EXCELLENT SIR:
I should be sorry for Lee, if he had not been so violent in
the matter; so badly is he treated even by his own Englishmen.
In Spain there is a second Lee. A certain Zuniga has, I hear,
published a tolerably savage book against Faber and me. The late
Cardinal of Toledo had prohibited it, but now that the cardinal
is dead, he has given forth his poison. I have not seen the
work, and let him beware that it does not come into my hands! I
know not what will be the end of this disturbance. Everything
points towards revolution, a thing I have always abhorred. If
it must be that offences come, at any rate they shall [not]
come from me. Those people are conspiring with all their might;
they are besieging the courts of the most potent kings and I
fear they will overcome them. All that I know about Philip and
Œcolampadius I have learned from the letters of others. Both of
your letters I have received.
Farewell, beloved in the Lord.
Your most devoted
ERASMUS.
LOUVAIN, Aug. 2, [1521?].]

The group of letters cited above reflect an agitated, nervous uncertainty of mind on Erasmus' part. They are filled largely with negations, so arranged as to balance each other with considerable success. They leave on our minds the impression of a dual personality: on the one hand a man childishly sensitive to abuse and fancying that every misdirected shaft of the popular wit or feeling was aimed at him; on the other hand, a man of wide and clear vision, with an outlook over the whole field of human interests and with a perfectly sound comprehension of the ultimate principles by which these interests must be regulated. His chief source of difficulty was his failure to admit the distinctions between the destructive and the constructive forces of the reform. While Luther was using all his energies to make clear to the world that what he aimed at was reconstruction, Erasmus persisted in confounding in one sweeping condemnation all the elements of disturbance he saw abroad in the world. As he had connected Luther and Reuchlin in his declarations of ignorance and hostility, so, as time went on, he mingled Lutherans, Anabaptists, Zwinglians, and all the swarm of popular agitators in his indictments. Yet he constantly lets it appear that he knew as well as anyone the deep-seated distinctions in the reforming groups. He chose to confuse them in his public utterances, in order to keep himself right with that great Establishment which was the mortal enemy of them all.

Meanwhile the practical problem of the Lutheran reform was shaping itself rapidly in accordance with the whole previous development of the German people. The death of the Emperor Maximilian was an event of slight importance, excepting as it opened the way for one of those great electoral contests, which from time to time came to remind the German nation of its own peculiar political character. We must dismiss once for all the fancy that the elected emperor resembled, except in the vaguest fashion, the great hereditary monarchs of England, France, or Spain. So far as his imperial quality was concerned, he had long since become the merest anachronism. He was emperor of nothing but a title; and he owed his title to a group of princes whose liberties he was bound to respect, even to the point of self-destruction. Territorially, he might be strong or weak, according to the personal sovereignty which he held before he became emperor. Politically he had as much weight as he could personally command, and no more. He might be a German or he might not.

The electoral canvass of 1519-20 was the most elaborate the empire had ever seen. The kings of Spain, France, and England were all, at one time or another, among the candidates. A German national party, which saw the hope of the nation in a policy of separation from all "imperial" interests, was eager for a purely German emperor and put forward as its candidate the venerable Frederic, Prince-Elector of Saxony, the immediate sovereign of Luther. If Frederic had acted promptly and put himself decidedly at the head of this German national party it seems as if he might have been elected. He hesitated, declined on grounds of personal distrust, and finally gave his electoral vote for that one among the foreign candidates who seemed least likely to abuse the constitutional privileges of the German princes.

Charles V., grandson of Maximilian through that Archduke Philip to whom Erasmus had written his panegyric in 1504, grandson also of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain through their daughter Joanna, grandson again of that Mary of Burgundy who had carried the Low Countries as her most precious dower to her husband Maximilian, was a youth of twenty, a German only by virtue of a strain of badly diluted Habsburg blood, educated under Spanish influence in the Low Countries, ignorant of the German tongue, and totally unsympathetic with the character and traditions of the German people. The very conception of the German state as a loose federation of practically independent principalities was utterly foreign to his training and his inheritance.

The election of Charles V. gave courage to all defenders of the existing church order. As to his personal orthodoxy there could be no question whatever. Nor was there any more reason to doubt his loyalty to the traditions of his family as to the duty of a Christian ruler toward the institutions of what passed for Christianity. If there had been any room for question on these points, it would have been removed by Charles's action in the Low Countries in the very first years of the Lutheran revolt. He had taken hold of the matter with a strong hand and demonstrated his loyalty by prompt action against heretical books and persons. His first great public declaration of policy, however, was at his first appearance on German soil at the famous Diet at Worms in 1521. It was, properly, regarded as a piece of liberality that Luther was invited to come personally to Worms and defend himself before the emperor and the legate of Pope Leo X., that same Aleander who had been a fellow-worker with Erasmus in the Aldine workshop at Venice. Luther was already a condemned heretic. The only question was whether the Empire as such would ratify the action of the pope and lend its arm to enforce the papal decrees.

Luther's journey from Wittenberg and his appearance in Worms were a demonstration of his popularity throughout Northern Germany. Charles V., youth as he was, was too clever a politician to offend too deeply at this outset of his reign a whole people whose services he might at any moment sorely need. He heard Luther with patience, he respected his safe-conduct, and let him return to Saxony in safety; but he published as the formal decision of the Diet the Edict of Worms, wherein Luther was declared in the ban of the Empire as he was already in the ban of the Church, and his books were condemned to be burned wherever found.

The Edict of Worms defined the official attitude of the Empire towards the reform from this time forth. It lacked nothing in clearness and finality. Henceforth, whoever within the limits of the Empire harboured either the man or his ideas was subject to immediate punishment. The question, however, still remained, how the Edict of Worms was to be enforced, and the answer to that question is the history of Germany and even of Europe for the next generation. Enough for our present purpose to say that the immediate pressure of political and military demands outside of Germany compelled the young emperor to postpone definite aggressive action against the Lutheran party until the course of events had separated the whole north of Germany from all but a nominal connection with the Empire. We are concerned with the action of Erasmus upon these events and their reaction upon his course of life.

Erasmus left Louvain in 1521. As to his motives in this change we are as much in the dark as about any of his former migrations. We know what his critics said about it and what he replied to their criticisms. They said he was afraid to stay in a country where heretics were being arrested every day and where, as he had all along been declaring, he was regarded as the head and front of this whole offending. He replied that this was pure nonsense, as could be clearly proved by the fact that after leaving Louvain he still lingered for several months in the Low Countries before taking up his journey to Basel. He went to Basel, he said, for the same reasons which had carried him thither before; namely, to superintend the publication of some of his works.

The most detailed account of this interval between Louvain and Basel is given in a long letter,[141] dated in 1523, to Marcus Laurinus, dean of St. Donatian at Bruges. The tone of this letter is that which had now become habitual with Erasmus, namely, of elaborate defence against all charges, no matter from what source, which could in any way affect his loyalty to the Roman Church on the one hand or to his own principle of free criticism on the other. His especial grievance is the charge of cowardice in leaving Louvain.

[141] iii.¹, 748.

"As long as I was at Louvain," he writes, "whenever I went to
Brussels or Mechlin, though I had promised to return within ten
days, those people, who are ashamed of nothing, would spread
a rumour that I had run away through fear. Then when I was
taking a holiday for my health at Anderlech, a place close by
Brussels, where the king's palace is, and often running back to
Louvain,--why then, I was in hiding! Frequently, I was at the
same moment down with a hopeless fever at Louvain and had fallen
from my horse and died of apoplexy at Brussels; and this at a
time when I was--thanks be to Christ!--never better in my life.
It was not enough to have killed the hapless Erasmus once for
all, but they must needs butcher him with so many diseases, slay
him with such a variety of tortures!

"I did not go to the assembly at Worms,--or as learned men are
now beginning to call it at 'Mutton-headtown,'--although I was
invited, partly because I did not wish to be involved in the
affair of Luther, which was then violently discussed; partly
because I easily foresaw that in such a great sewage of princes
and men of various races, the plague could not fail to appear as
it did at Cologne when the emperor was first there.

"When the emperor came back to Brussels, there was scarcely
a day that I did not ride through the market-place and past
the court and often I was about the court; in fact, I was
almost more a resident at Brussels than at Anderlech. I daily
paid my compliments to the bishops, though ordinarily I was
not overzealous in such matters. I dined with the cardinal. I
conversed with both nuncios; I visited ambassadors and they
called upon me at Anderlech. Never in my life was I less in
concealment, never more openly before the eyes of all men. And
meanwhile there were some among those babblers who wrote to
Germany that Erasmus was somewhere in hiding,--which I never
found out until I got here in Basel. And again when the emperor
was at Brussels with the king of Denmark, and Thomas, cardinal
of York, was there as ambassador of the king of England, you
know yourself, even if I had kept myself to your house, how much
in hiding I should have been; since you had all, or at least the
chief dignitaries of the court at your table and I was sitting
among them a welcome guest, as I believe, to them all. How often
I lunched or dined with the foremost men, even with the king of
Denmark, who wanted me as his daily table-companion! Where did I
not go riding, often in company with you! At what festivity of
the great people was I not present--now at the imperial court,
now in the family of the cardinal of York, now at one house, now
at another! Yet I often refused invitations; for I am by nature
a home-lover and my studies require a home-keeping life.

"In the same way that I was then hiding, I afterward ran away!
For six whole months I was getting ready for my journey to Basel
and that openly before all men. Why, the emperor's treasurer
paid over my pension before it was due, because I told him I was
going to Basel! Nor was the reason for my journey unknown, it
being the same for which I had already so often gone to Basel
before I became afraid of those heroes!... I was all ready to
start, waiting only to decide upon the road and to have a safe
escort. Meanwhile I had to collect money in divers places and
for this purpose spent six days at Louvain,--hiding there too,
of course, as my custom was,--at an inn where no guests ever
came, so that it is a most retired place! It is at the sign of
The Savage. By the purest accident there was there at the time
Jerome Aleander, with whom I lived on the most friendly terms,
sometimes sitting with him over literary talk until far into the
night. We agreed that if a safe escort should offer, we would
journey together. Returning after a few days I found Aleander
getting ready to start, just as I was.... It was my birthday and
that of the apostles Simon and Jude."

Having thus proved that up to the very moment of his departure he was on the best of terms with everyone in the Low Countries from whom he could have anything to fear, even with Aleander, the archfiend of the Lutherans, Erasmus goes on to describe his journey. There is nothing especially noteworthy in this description. It is the same old story of dangers and wearinesses by the way, of German inns and German stoves and the troubles they brought him. Yet in the little notes of persons whom he met and how they received him we get some of the most significant and attractive glimpses of the widespread relations of Erasmus with every grade of scholarly activity. In these accounts of journeys occur frequently the words _sodalitium_ and _fraternitas_. At Strassburg Jacob Spiegel, an imperial secretary, presented him to "the fraternity." From Schlettstadt "certain of the fraternity" escorted him to Colmar. These words seem to refer to the group of scholars in any city and give us a pleasant suggestion of the growing comradeship of learning all through the northern centres of culture.

He tells us how warmly he was received at Basel by the bishop, the magistrates, and other chief men of the church and the university. Everybody knew that he was there, and yet

"those fools were spreading the story that I had gone over to
Wittenberg. Is there anything they would be ashamed of? My
health was fairly good at Basel until the rooms began to be
cold. When I found that this cold was unbearable to others, I
suffered a moderate fire to be built now and then, but this
good-nature cost me dear. Soon a vile rheum broke out and
thereupon followed the gravel."

Then his digestion went to pieces--until, what with one thing and another, he was wretched enough "to suit even Nicholas Egmund," his Carmelite terror at Louvain.

In spite of his pains, however, he went to work and kept at it so steadily that within a short time he finished his annotations to the third edition of the New Testament, and did the whole of his Paraphrase of Matthew. This latter work he sent to the emperor, and was informed that it had been received with great favour. The best proof of this was, that at a moment when many pensions were being taken away or cut down, he was promised that his should be maintained and perhaps even increased. He takes this occasion to defend himself against the charge of staying so long away from the emperor through fear, as was alleged. The only thing he feared was that he might be called upon to write against Luther "by one whose request could not be denied. Not that I favoured that seditious affair, being as I am a man who shrinks from all controversy by a certain instinct of nature; so that if I might gain a landed estate by a lawsuit I would rather lose my estate than push my claim." He goes on in this strain at such length that one can hardly avoid the conclusion that we are here touching upon the real reason of his leaving Louvain. It is a tolerably safe principle that when Erasmus is especially insistent he is trying to make the worse appear the better reason. He insists that he was totally unfit for such work of controversy and ends up by saying that in spite of all this he would have gone back to meet the emperor if his disease had permitted. Indeed he tried the journey, got as far as Schlettstadt, broke down completely, and barely got back alive to Basel. By this time it was too late to see the emperor, who was to sail for Spain about May 1st. So Erasmus stayed a while longer at Basel, restless and fidgeting as usual. Now it was a new dream of Italy that haunted him. He was, or believed himself to be, or wished others to believe that he was, invited by a host of distinguished well-wishers there to come and take up his residence among them. In fact he made a journey to Constance with his young friends Eppendorf and Beatus. They were charmingly entertained by John Botzheim, a canon of the place, and we owe to this visit one of the very few descriptions of natural scenery which Erasmus has left us. He seems for once really to have been captivated by the delightful situation of Constance, the beautiful lake, the course of the Rhine, "holding islands in its smiling embrace," the falls at Schaffhausen, and the towering Alps looking down upon the whole scene. We may well believe that, at least when he wrote these words, the sentiment of Italy was strong upon him. An escort, he says, was just ready to start for Trent. "The Alps smiling down upon me close at hand beckoned me on. My friends dissuaded me, but they would have done so in vain, if the gravel, that potent orator, had not persuaded me to go back to Basel and fly up into my nest again."

He remained three weeks at Constance in great suffering, took ship as far as Schaffhausen, and so back as fast as he could ride to Basel. I confess to a strong impression that these two trips, to Schlettstadt and to Constance, were merely excursions, such as Erasmus was constantly making from any point where he happened to be living, and that he had no more intention of going to Italy in the one case than of returning to Louvain in the other. Yet one would equally hesitate to say that he had a fixed purpose of remaining permanently at Basel.

On his return Erasmus enjoyed a genuine sensation, which seems almost to have marked an epoch in his life. This seemed the favourable moment to open a package of choice Burgundy, sent to him some time before by the episcopal coadjutor of Basel. "At the first taste it did not wholly please the palate, but the night brought out the native quality of the wine." He felt himself a new man. He had always believed that his disease was brought on by vile sour and adulterated wines, "worthy to be drunk by heretics, punishment fit for the worst malefactor." He had tried Burgundian wines before, but they were harsh and heating. This was just right, neither sweet nor sour, but pleasant, and so on. He bursts out into a eulogy of Burgundy, that happy land, "worthy to be called the mother of men, since thou hast milk like this in thy breasts!" "I tell you, my dear Laurinus, it would take little to persuade me to move over for good into Burgundy. 'For the wine's sake?' you ask. Why, I would rather migrate to Ireland than try another attack of the gravel." This sends him off again into declarations that he is everywhere a welcome guest.

The point of all this seems to be that he wishes to have it quite clear that while it is on the one hand perfectly safe for him to go or stay where he will, he is, on the other hand, equally free from any permanent ties anywhere. Someone had reported that he had bought a house and acquired the right of citizenship at Basel. This he denies. To be sure, the house in which he is now living had been offered him by some friends, but he has not accepted it. As for citizenship, he has never so much as dreamed of it. "A certain person of importance at Zürich has more than once written to offer me the right of citizenship there. I wondered why he should do this, and replied that I preferred to be a citizen of the world, rather than of any one city."

Once set going on this subject it seems as if Erasmus could not stop. He now pays his respects to those who reported, with some reason, he says, that he was thinking of going to France. Having found the secret of his disease in the badness of his wines, he begins to wonder what will happen to him if, by reason of wars, he should be unable to get his Burgundy direct. Perhaps, after all, it would be wiser to go over into France, where he would at least be sure of his wine. He even went so far as to get from the French king through his ambassador at Basel a safe-conduct for the journey, and kept reminding himself how fond he had always been of France--a fondness which, by the way, he had shown by keeping out of France for now about fifteen years. If he had only accepted that "magnificent offer" of six years before, he would have been spared all these "tragedies" with those stupid babblers at Louvain. Perhaps his health and his fortunes might have been better too. It would be pleasant to be near the borders of Brabant, so that he might run over and see his friends there. But there was just one obstacle: the war between the three kings. To Charles he was bound by an oath; to Henry and the whole English people by ties of affection; to Francis also by irresistible attachment on account of the king's interest in him. Of course it would never do for so important a personage as Erasmus to offend two of his royal friends by going to live with the third.

Why did he not come back to Brabant? He hears that there is there just now a great scarcity of everything, but especially of French wines, and besides "a sword has been given to certain violent men, to whom one can be neither a colleague nor an opponent." There are enemies in every direction.

"Rome has her Stunica; Germany has some who can't say a good
word of me. I hear that certain 'Lutherans,' as they call them,
are complaining because I am too gentle with the princes and
too fond of peace. I confess I would rather err on this side,
not only because it is safer, but because it is a more holy
cause. Everyone to his taste. There are those on the other side
who try to cast on me the suspicion of being in league with the
Lutherans."

Now each party seemed to Erasmus to be trying to catch him by stirring him up against the other. They told him his books had been burnt in Brabant by Hoogstraaten, hoping to make him write something against the inquisitor which would drive him over definitely into the Lutheran camp. Poor Botzheim at Constance wrote, _pene exanimatus_ ("scared almost to death,"), that Erasmus' books had been publicly condemned at Rome by papal order. These traps had been sprung in vain. He had seen through the trick and kept his peace and the truth had come out. Far from condemning him, the papal party at Rome had done its best to win him to its service, even offering him a considerable benefice if he would come. Then this again had produced countercharges of bribery, which he very properly dismisses by saying: "If I could have been drawn into this fight by bribes I should have been drawn in long ago." Now he hears a third rumour, worse than the other two: the pope has written some kind of a pamphlet against him! but again he sees the trick; they want to make him say something against the pope. Others say that Lutherans are flocking to Basel to consult with him, some even that Luther is in hiding there.

"Would that it were true that all Lutherans and anti-Lutherans
too, would come for my advice and agree to follow it; the
world would be far better off in my opinion. Many persons have
come hither to see and to salute me, sometimes in companies and
generally unknown to me; but never has one called himself a
Lutheran in my presence; it is not my business to make inquiries
and I am no prophet. Before this trouble broke out I was in
literary correspondence with almost all the scholars of Germany,
to me a most agreeable relation. Of these some have given me the
cold shoulder, some are quite estranged from me, and some are
my open enemies and seeking my ruin. Some were good friends of
mine, who are now more severe towards Luther than I could wish
and more than is good for their cause. I dismiss no one from my
friendship either because he is too friendly or too hostile to
Luther; each acts in good faith.

"Men have come to Basel who were said to be under suspicion
of being partisans of Luther, and I am ready to have this all
charged upon me, if a single one of them has ever come by my
invitation or if I have not protested to my friends that it
was exceedingly disagreeable to me. If persons of this or that
faction come hither, with what reason can this be laid upon me?
I am not the gatekeeper of Basel and hold no magistracy here!
Hutten was here as a visitor for a few days and neither came to
see me nor did I visit him. And yet if it had depended upon me,
I would not have denied him an interview, an old friend and a
man whose wonderfully happy and genial talents I cannot even now
help admiring.... He could not do without a stove, on account of
his health, and I cannot bear one, and so the fact is, we did
not see each other."

He would not hesitate, he says, to receive Luther himself, and would give him some wholesome warnings. There is good on both sides. "I am not sure that either side can be put down without grave disaster to many good things." If only it might be permitted him to be a mere spectator of events! But here he is, pulled hither and yon by the parties, each trying to make him declare himself squarely against the other. While one party was accusing him of being the author of most of the Lutheran writings, the other suspected him of having written King Henry's famous answer to Luther. Upon this welcome text Erasmus builds up a long story of his first acquaintance with this royal treatise, a story as unimportant as the book itself. The outcome of it all is that he is firmly convinced that the king wrote the book with his own wits. "Even if he desired the help of scholars, his court is filled with learned and eloquent men." Again they tell him that four years ago he ought to have retired from the stage, content with his great services to theology, his restoration of the true sources of Christianity, etc. All this is very flattering, but he is held to his work by a _choragos_ whose orders he dare not disobey.

Once more, he is charged with speaking too highly of the pope. What he says of Leo is very well, but, they say, how can we be sure of Leo's successor. Well, there have been good popes before Leo, and why not after him? They say "Erasmus ought to declare: 'Thou, pope, art Antichrist! you, bishops, are false leaders! that Roman see of yours is an abomination to God!' and many other such things and worse." This is the old Erasmian method, which he had consistently followed from the beginning--to confine his criticism to evil men and refrain from criticising institutions. If men were good, institutions would be good.

Finally we come to the charge that Erasmus, in his paraphrase of the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, had allowed "a little something" to the freedom of the human will. This is our first encounter with a strictly dogmatic question, the one by which the whole Lutheran position was to stand or fall. We have, however, prepared ourselves for Erasmus' inevitable attitude on this point by noting his insistence, throughout all his moral teaching, upon the individual will as the dominant motive. For the moment he defends himself only by declaring that in his Paraphrase he is merely following all the best authorities in the Church from Origen to Aquinas. He wrote the passage in question in 1517, before Luther had appeared, so that it can in no way be thought of as an attack upon him. Moreover, it is the mildest possible statement of a free-will doctrine.

"_Some_ weight is to be given to our will and our endeavour,
but so little that in comparison with the grace of God it seems
to be as nothing. No man is condemned, except by his own fault;
but no one is saved, except by God's grace.... I saw on the
one hand Scylla luring us on to confidence in works, which I
believe to be the worst plague of religion. On the other hand I
saw Charybdis, a worse monster yet, by whom many are now being
attracted, who say: Let us follow our own lusts; whether we
torment ourselves or indulge our wills, what God has decreed
will happen all the same."

So his language has been moderate, and he has hoped simply to aid men to virtue. The close of this letter is a really eloquent bit of self-analysis.

"If any there be, who cannot love Erasmus because he is a feeble
Christian, let him think of me as he will. I cannot be other
than I am. If any man has from Christ greater gifts of the
Spirit and is sure of himself, let him use them for the glory of
Christ. Meanwhile it is more to my mind to follow a more humble
and a safer way. I cannot help hating dissension and loving
peace and harmony. I see how obscure all human affairs are. I
see how much easier it is to stir up confusion than to allay
it. I have learned how many are the devices of Satan. I should
not dare to trust my own spirit in all things and I am far from
being able to pronounce with certainty on the spirit of another.
I would that all might strive together for the triumph of Christ
and the peace of the Gospel, and that without violence, but in
truth and reason, we might take counsel both for the dignity of
the priesthood and for the liberty of the people, whom our Lord
Jesus desired to be free. To those who go about to this end to
the best of their ability Erasmus shall not be wanting. But if
anyone desires to throw everything into confusion, he shall not
have me either for a leader or a companion. These people claim
for themselves the working of the Spirit. Well, let people on
whom the divine spirit has breathed jump with good hopes into
the ranks of the prophets. That Spirit has not yet seized upon
me; when it does, then perhaps I too shall be counted as Saul
among the prophets."

In this long letter, written obviously with a view to publication, we have epitomised, as Erasmus himself wished it to appear, the story of his leaving Louvain and his attitude toward the chief questions of the great reform. Nothing that we can add would be more significant than the concluding paragraph. If only all men could see both sides of every question as he did, and would join with him in pious exhortation to everyone else to be good, he would be delighted to be their leader and companion. This is only one of those numerous "ifs"--though an unusually large one--by which Erasmus so often saved himself in difficult places. It meant simply that he did not propose to commit himself at all. The Laurinus letter was the reply to numerous criticisms against the course of Erasmus in the years between 1520 and 1523, years in which the various aspects of the great reform movement were becoming more and more clearly defined. We discern in it with great distinctness the view of Erasmus taken by the leading spirits of the Lutheran party.

Nowhere is this Lutheran judgment of his position so vigorously demonstrated as in his famous conflict with Ulrich von Hutten. Hutten's personality was totally antipodal to that of Erasmus. Born of a noble family in Würtemberg in 1488, Hutten received the training of a soldier and took his part in the violent feuds which, in the absence of a strong central government in Germany, were continually wasting the energies and the resources of the great class of the lower nobility. But Hutten was more than a soldier. He had early come under the influence of Reuchlin, his countryman, and had given himself with great zeal to the cause of learning. He had mastered the technique of the scholar's profession, had made himself an accomplished Latinist in both prose and verse, and had learned as much Greek as was needed to decorate his Latin style. In his way he was as marked an individual as Erasmus. He, too, was a homeless man, an outcast from his family and his narrower Swabian fatherland, a wanderer, seeking a living by methods even more precarious and more questionable than Erasmus had employed, everywhere at home if only the sun of princely or private favour would shine upon him for the moment. But here the resemblance ends. Hutten let his individuality carry him into wild and reckless living and finally to ruin, but he did not let it alienate him from the great movements of humanity going on about him. In the Reformation he was quick to discern all those elements of social and economic change which were sure to follow upon the religious appeal. What repelled and estranged Erasmus, the man of peace, attracted and held Hutten, the man of strife. In Luther's proclamation of a salvation by faith he saw the hope of a social and religious reconstruction, in which, inevitably, the religious system of the Middle Ages must go to the wall. He was too little of a speculative genius to be drawn into the logical extravagances of the radical party of Münzer and his like, but the prospect of a glorious fight, with the weapons alike of the intellect and of the flesh, filled him with a holy joy as it filled Erasmus with a holy horror. Without waiting to consider or to make certain whither it would lead him, he threw himself with passionate energy into the Lutheran cause. Already he had made himself known, admired, and feared by his part in the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_, that merciless satire on the schoolmen which had done more than any other one thing to draw the forces of light together into one camp over against the forces of darkness. This contribution to what others regarded as his own work did not, however, if we may take his word for it, please Erasmus. He wanted to keep all the satirising to himself, that it might be held within prudent limits. Thus his earliest impressions of Hutten were not favourable. He seems to have felt in him by "a certain instinct of nature," as he might have said, an "unsafe" person. His early approach toward him is cautious. Hutten sends him his works and begs for his friendship. Erasmus replies with reserve, counsels him to keep out of fights, to devote himself to the Muses, and to preserve his own dignity. Then we have the famous and charming letter[142] in which Erasmus describes to Hutten the work and character of Thomas More. But soon it is evident that Hutten is getting out of all patience with Erasmus. The letters of 1518 and 1519, with their anxious balancing of views, were in circulation, and had made upon this upright and downright fighting man the impression of a trimming, fretful, petty spirit. In August, 1520, he writes to Erasmus in a totally altered style.[143] He has now no time or temper for compliments. In short, rapid sentences he puts the case to the great man as one in which all shilly-shallying was out of place.

[142] iii.¹, 472.

[143] _Hutteni opera_, ed. Böcking, 1859, i., 367.

"While Reuchlin's affair was all in a glow, you seemed to be in
a more weakly terror of those people [_istos_] than you ought
to have been. And now in Luther's case, you have been trying as
hard as you can to persuade his enemies that you were as far as
possible from defending the common good of the Christian world,
while they knew you really believed just the opposite. That does
not seem to be an altogether becoming thing to do.... You know
with what glee they are carrying about certain letters of yours
in which while you are trying to escape from blame, you are
putting blame on others in a hateful fashion enough. In the same
way you have been abusing the _Epistolæ obscurorum_, though you
admired them powerfully once; and you are damning Luther because
he has set in motion some things that ought not to have been
moved, when you yourself have been handling the same subjects
everywhere throughout your writings. And yet you will never make
them believe that you are not desirous of the same things. You
will just hurt us and at the same time will not pacify them. You
are irritating the more and rousing hatred by trying to hide a
thing so open as this."

We are quite prepared to understand how unwelcome to Erasmus such direct and unequivocal language as this must have been. He had no use for any argument that had not two sides to it. Events were moving rapidly. While the affair of Luther was being tried at Worms in the summer of 1521 Hutten was watching and planning for the social overturn which he confidently expected, and out of which, he hoped, a new Germany, regenerated in body and soul, was to arise. In the winter of 1521-22 he drifted to Basel and spent some time there. As yet there was no open breach between him and Erasmus. He seems to have wished to meet him personally and to have met a flat refusal. In the letter to Laurinus Erasmus declares that he was perfectly willing to see Hutten, but as he could not endure a room with a stove in it, and Hutten could not be in a room without a stove, an interview was impossible! This silly story reappears in various other connections. It is quite unworthy of serious examination, but was undoubtedly a mere cover for some deeper cause. What this was may readily be supplied. Writing to Melanchthon _after Hutten's death_,[144] Erasmus says:

[144] iii., 817-B.

"As to my refusing Hutten an interview, the reason was not so
much the fear of exciting hostility; there was another thing
which, however, I did not touch upon in my _Spongia_. He was in
utter poverty and was seeking some nest to die in. Now I was
expected to take this '_miles gloriosus_,' pox and all, into
my house and with him that whole chorus of 'evangelicals' by
name--and nothing but the name."

We may be quite sure that here was Erasmus' real grievance. He might pretend that he had never seen anyone at Basel who called himself a Lutheran, but he knew that if he took Hutten into his house and appeared on friendly terms with him, he could keep up this pretence no longer. He knew also by a former experience that any expressions favourable to Luther would be made the most of by Hutten. He could not afford such a friend and he shut his door in his face.

Hutten's patience, never, we may believe, overmuch enduring, was at an end. He made up his mind to make such a public attack upon Erasmus as would compel him to speak out and thus commit himself once for all on one side or the other. Erasmus heard of this intention and wrote him a short letter[145] of expostulation, warning and threatening him at once. In this letter he gives away his case as to the Basel incident in the most complete fashion. He says:

[145] iii.¹, 790. Also in _Hutteni opera_, ed. Böcking, ii., 178.

"I did not refuse you an interview when you were here, but
begged you through Eppendorf, in the gentlest manner, that,
if it was only a complimentary visit, you would stay away, on
account of the enmity with which I have long been burdened even
to the risk of my life. What use is there in gaining enmity when
one cannot thereby be any help to one's friend?"

Then comes in the stove again.

Hutten was, as well he might be, rather more angered than appeased by this missive, and soon printed his _Expostulatio cum Erasmo_.[146]

[146] _Hutteni opera_, ii., 180.