Chapter XVI: I. Erasmus Does Not Die (1518) (1)

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.]