Part 4 (1/2)

The lean years continued with Erasmus His livelihood remained uncertain, and he had no fixed abode It is remarkable that, in spite of his precarious uided rather by the care for his health than for his sustenance, and his studies rather by his burning desire to penetrate to the purest sources of knowledge than by his advantage Repeatedly the fear of the plague drives hies with Augustine Caminade; but when one of the latter's boarders falls ill, Eras from his youth at Deventer that ue, which in those days raged practically without intermission Faustus Andrelinus sent a servant to upbraid him in his name with cowardice: 'That would be an intolerable insult', Erasmus answers, 'if I were a Swiss soldier, but a poet's soul, loving peace and shady places, is proof against it' In the spring of 1501 he leaves Paris once hten ustine

He travelled first to Holland, where, at Steyn, he obtained leave to spend another year outside the monastery, for the sake of study; his friends would be ashamed if he returned, after soacquired some authority At Haarlem he visited his friend Williaain to pay his respects to the Bishop of Cambray, probably at Brussels Thence he went to Veere, but found no opportunity to talk to his patroness In July 1501, he subsided into quietness at the castle of Tournehes and goings he does not for a ht of his ideals of study Since his return froreat Father of the Church, and, especially, to learn Greek thoroughly 'You understand how much all this matters to my fame, nay, to my preservation,' he writes (from Orleans towards the end of 1500) to Batt But, indeed, had Erasht have had recourse to plenty of other expedients It was the ardent desire to penetrate to the source and to make others understand that impelled him, even when he availed himself of these projects of study to raise a little money 'Listen,' he writes to Batt, 'to what ift from the abbot (of Saint Bertin) You know the man's disposition; invent so Tell hirand, viz, to restore the whole of Jerome, however coled by the ignorance of divines; and to re-insert the Greek passages I venture to say, I shall be able to lay open the antiquities and the style of Jerome, understood by no one as yet Tell him that I shall want not a few books for the purpose, and moreover the help of Greeks, and that therefore I require support In saying this, Battus, you will be telling no lies For I really mean to do all this'

He was, indeed, in a serious mood on this point, as he was soon to prove to the world His conquest of Greek was a veritable feat of heroism He had learned the simplest rudiments at Deventer, but these evidently amounted to very little In March, 1500, he writes to Batt: 'Greek is nearly killing me, but I have no time and I have no ustine Caminade wants his Homer back which he had lent to him, Erasmus complains: 'You deprive me of my sole consolation in h I cannot understand hi at hi this he als which Petrarch had expressed a hundred and fifty years before? But he had already begun to study Whether he had a master is not quite clear, but it is probable He finds the language difficult at first Then gradually he ventures to call hiins with h his letters It occupies hies all his friends to procure Greek books for him In the autumn of 1502 he declares that he can properly write all he wants in Greek, and that extempore He was not deceived in his expectation that Greek would open his eyes to the right understanding of Holy Scripture

Three years of nearly uninterrupted study amply rewarded him for his trouble Hebrehich he had also taken up, he abandoned At that time (1504) he made translations froical studies, he taught it, ast others, to William Cop, the French physician-humanist A few years later he was to find little in Italy to improve his proficiency in Greek; he was afterwards inclined to believe that he carried es to that country than he brought back

Nothing testifies more to the enthusiasm hich Erasmus applied himself to Greek than his zeal to s Batt, he decided, should learn Greek But Batt had no tioes to Haarlem to visit Williaht a handbag full of books But he had only his trouble for his pains

William did not take at all kindly to this study and Erasmus was so disappointed that he not only considered his ht he had lost a friend

Meanwhile he was still undecided where he should go in the near future

To England, to Italy, or back to Paris? In the end he uest, fro summer, first at Saint Omer, with the prior of Saint Bertin, and afterwards at the castle of Courtebourne, not far off

At Saint Oe he was afterwards to place beside that of Colet as that of a true divine, and of a good monk at the same time: Jean Vitrier, the warden of the Franciscan monastery at Saint Omer Erasmus must have felt attracted to a man as burdened with a condemnation pronounced by the Sorbonne on account of his too frank expressions regarding the abuses of iven up the life on that account, but he devoted hiressed from scholasticism to Saint Paul, he had forly opposed to practices and ceremonies This in of one of Erasmus's most celebrated and influential works, the _Enchiridion militis Christiani_

Erasmus himself afterwards confessed that the _Enchiridion_ was born by chance He did not reflect that some outward circumstance is often made to serve an inward impulse The outward circumstance was that the castle of Tournehem was frequented by a soldier, a friend of Batt, a man of very dissolute conduct, who behaved very badly towards his pious wife, and as, moreover, an uncultured and violent hater of priests[5]

For the rest he was of a kindly disposition and excepted Erasmus from his hatred of divines The wife used her influence with Batt to get Eras her husband to take an interest in religion Erasmus complied with the request and Jean Vitrier concurred so cordially with the views expressed in these notes that Erasmus afterwards elaborated them at Louvain; in 1504 they were published at Antwerp by Dirck Maertensz

This is the outward genesis of the _Enchiridion_ But the inward cause was that sooner or later Erasious conduct of the life of his day and towards ceremonial and soulless conceptions of Christian duty, which were an eyesore to him

In point of form the _Enchiridion_ is a manual for an illiterate soldier to attain to an attitude of er he will point out to him the shortest path to Christ He assumes the friend to be weary of life at court--a common theme of contemporary literature

Only for a few days does Erasmus interrupt the work of his life, the purification of theology, to comply with his friend's request for instruction To keep up a soldierly style he chooses the title, _Enchiridion_, the Greek word that even in antiquity meant both a poniard and a manual:[6] 'The poniard of the militant Christian'[7] He reminds him of the duty of watchfulness and enue is the beginning of wisdoeneral rules of the Christian conduct of life are followed by a number of remedies for particular sins and faults

Such is the outward frame But within this scope Erasmus finds an opportunity, for the first tiramme calls upon us to return to Scripture It should be the endeavour of every Christian to understand Scripture in its purity and originalTo that end he should prepare himself by the study of the Ancients, orators, poets, philosophers; Plato especially Also the great Fathers of the Church, Jeroe crowd of subsequent exegetists The arguion as a continual observance of ceremonies This is Judaic ritualisle verse of the psal of God and of oneself, and to draw a moral and line of conduct from it, than to read the whole psalter without attention If the ceremonies do not renew the soul they are valueless and hurtful 'Many are wont to count howto theh they owed Christ nothing else, they return to their for church' 'Perhaps you sacrifice every day and yet you live for yourself You worshi+p the saints, you like to touch their relics; do you want to earn Peter and Paul? Then copy the faith of the one and the charity of the other and you will have done more than if you had walked to Rome ten times' He does not reject formulae and practices; he does not want to shake the faith of the humble but he cannot suffer that Christ is offered a cult made up of practices only And why is it the monks, above all, who contribute to the deterioration of faith? 'I am ashamed to tell how superstitiously most of them observe certain petty ceremonies, invented by puny human minds (and not even for this purpose), how hatefully they want to force others to conform to them, how implicitly they trust them, how boldly they condemn others'

Let Paul teach them true Christianity 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty ith Christ hath ain with the yoke of bondage' This word to the Galatians contains the doctrine of Christian liberty, which soon at the Reformation was to resound so loudly Erasmatics of the Catholic Church; but still it is a fact that the _Enchiridion_ prepared ive up much that he still wanted to keep

The note of the _Enchiridion_ is already as to re it is that in this world the substance and the shadow differ so and that the world reverences those whoe of infatuation, routine and thoughtlessness prevents s in their true proportions He expresses it later in the _Praise of Folly_ and in the _Colloquies_ It is notthat inspired hi: Opinions worthy of a Christian, he laments the extremes of pride of class, national hostility, professional envy, and rivalry between religious orders, which keep men apart Let everybody sincerely concern hiold pieces in one night, and irl, compelled by poverty, sold her ave his own You say, what is that to hts And yet you, holding such opinions, consider yourself a Christian, who are not even a man!'

In the _Enchiridion_ of the militant Christian, Erass which he had nation, with sincerity and courage And yet one would hardly say that this booklet was born of an irresistible impulse of ardent piety

Erasmus treats it, as we have seen, as a trifle, composed at the request of a friend in a couple of days stolen froood of the first draft, which he elaborated afterwards) The chief object of his studies he had already conceived to be the restoration of theology One day he will expound Paul, 'that the slanderers who consider it the height of piety to know nothing of _bonae literae_, may understand that we in our youth embraced the cultured literature of the Ancients, and that we acquired a correct knowledge of the two languages, Greek and Latin--not without lory or childish satisfaction, but because, long before, we pre the temple of the Lord (which sonorance and barbarisn parts, so that also in noble minds the love of Holy Scripture may be kindled' Is it not still the Humanist who speaks?

We hear, moreover, the note of personal justification It is sounded also in a letter to Colet written towards the close of 1504, acco the edition of the _Lucubrationes_ in which the _Enchiridion_ was first published 'I did not write the _Enchiridion_ to parade ht correct the error of those whose religion is usually composed of more than Judaic cerelect the things that conduce to piety' He adds, and this is typically huive the reader a sort of art of piety, as others have written the theory of certain sciences'

The art of piety! Erasht have been surprised had he known that another treatise, written more than sixty years before, by another canon of the Low Countries would continue to appeal ently to the world than his manual: the _Imitatio Christi_ by Thomas a Kempis

The _Enchiridion_, collected with some other pieces into a volureat and speedy success as had been bestowed upon the _Adagia_ That Erasmus's speculations on true piety were considered too bold was certainly not the cause They contained nothing antagonistic to the teachings of the Church, so that even at the tihly suspicious of everything that Erasatorius_ of his work found only a few passages in the _Enchiridion_ to expunge Moreover, Erass of unsuspected Catholic tenor For a long tiians and monks A faht be found in every page of the _Enchiridion_ But the book only obtained its great influence in wide cultured circles when, upheld by Erasmus's world-wide reputation, it was available in a nulish, Czech, Geran to fall under suspicion, for that was the tile 'Now they have begun to nibble at the _Enchiridion_ also, that used to be so popular with divines,' Erasmus writes in 1526

For the rest it was only two passages to which the orthodox critics objected

FOOTNOTES:

[5] That this nies as Allen thinks possible and Renaudet accepts, is still all too uncertain; A 164 t I

p 373; Renaudet, Prereforme 428