Part 8 (1/2)

As it turned out, he was to spend four years (1517-21) at Louvain His life was now beco more stationary, but because of outward circu all those years whether he should go to England, Ger at last to find the brilliant position which he had always coveted and never had been able or willing to grasp

The years 1516-18 may be called the cul crowds surrounded hily prepared for soreat to happen and they looked to Erasmus as the man! At Brussels, he was continually bothered with visits from Spaniards, Italians and Germans anted to boast of their intervieith him The Spaniards, with their verbose solemnity, particularly bored hiies hich the Gerun already on his first journey to Basle in 1514 'Great Rotterdamer', 'ornament of Germany', 'ornament of the world' were some of the simplest effusions Town councils waited upon him, presents of wine and public banquets were of common occurrence No one expresses himself so hyperbolically as the jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg 'I am pointed out in public', he asserts, 'as the reatest hero, you great Jove' is a li writes in 1516, 'account it a great glory to have seen Eras but Eras Capito Ulrich von Hutten and Henry Glareanus both iine themselves placed beside Erasmus, as Alcibiades stood beside Socrates And Beatus Rhenanus devotes to him a life of earnest admiration and helpfulness that was to prove of yrics There is an element of national exaltation in this German enthusiasm for Erasmus: it is the violently stimulated mood into which Luther's ill fall anon

The other nations also chih a little later and a little more soberly Colet and Tunstall promise him immortality, etienne Poncher exalts him above the celebrated Italian humanists, Ger any authors but Erasmus, and Budaeus announces that all Western Christendolory manifested itself in different ways Almost every year the runantly, as he his were ascribed to hist others the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_

But, above all, his correspondence increased i since past when he asked More to procure hi in to hi him to reply A forle note written by Erasht an introduction fro to address him In this respect Erasmus was a man of heroic benevolence, and tried to anshat he could, although so overwhelmed by letters every day that he hardly found time to read them 'If I do not answer, I seeht was intolerable

We should bear in , at that time, occupied more or less the place of the newspaper at present, or rather of the literary monthly, which arose fairly directly out of erudite correspondence It was, as in antiquity--which in this respect was imitated better and more profitably, perhaps, than in any other sphere--an art Even before 1500 Erasmus had, at Paris, described that art in the treatise, _De conscribendis epistolis_, which was to appear in print in 1522 People wrote, as a rule, with a view to later publication, for a wider circle, or at any rate, with the certainty that the recipient would show the letter to others A fine Latin letter was a gehbour Erasmus writes to Budaeus: 'Tunstall has devoured your letter to me and re-read it as many as three or four times; I had literally to tear it from his hands'

Unfortunately fate did not always take into consideration the author's intentions as to publicity, sehtheir destination, as did Servatius's letter to Erasmus in 1514 'Do be careful about letters,' he writes more than once; 'waylayers are on the lookout to intercept them' Yet, with the curious precipitation that characterizes him, Erasmus was often very careless as to what he wrote Froe he preserved and cared for his letters, yet nevertheless, through his itinerant life, many were lost He could not control their publication As early as 1509 a friend sent him a manuscript volume of his own (Erasmus's) letters, that he had picked up for sale at Rome

Erasmus had it burnt at once Since 1515 he himself superintended the publication of his letters; at first only a few important ones; afterwards in 1516 a selection of letters froer collections till, at the end of his life, there appeared a new collection almost every year No article was so much in demand on the book market as letters by Erasmus, and no wonder They were models of excellent style, tasteful Latin, witty expression and elegant erudition

The semi-private, semi-public character of the letters oftenWhat one could say to a friend in confidence ht possibly injure when many read it Erasmus, who never are how injuriously he expressed hiement Manners, so to say, had not yet adapted the, which increased the publicity of the written word a thousandfold Only gradually under this new influence was the separation effected between the public word, intended for the press, and the private co and is read only by the recipient

Meanwhile, with the growth of Erass, too, had risen in the public estireat success of the _Enchiridion un about 1515, when the times were much riper for it than eleven years before 'The _Moria_ is ehest wisdom,' writes John Watson to him in 1516 In the same year we find a word used, for the first ti else how much Erasmus had become a centre of authority: _Eras to Johannes Sapidus More than a year later Dr Johannes Eck eenerally current term: 'all scholars in Germany are Erasmians,' he says But Eras in myself', he replies, 'why anyone should wish to be an Erasether, I hate those party nalory we all drudge, each for his part' But he knows that now the question is: for or against him! From the brilliant latinist and the man of wit of his prime he had becoe hinged He could not help beginning to feel himself the brain, the heart and the conscience of his tiht even appear to hi word or, perhaps, that he had already spoken it The faith in an easy triue and Christian meekness in a near future speaks from the preface of Erasmus's edition of the New Testament

How clear did the future look in those years! In this period Erase, which is on the point of dawning Perennial peace is before the door The highest princes of the world, Francis I of France, Charles, King of Spain, Henry VIII of England, and the eest ties Uprightness and Christian piety will flourish together with the revival of letters and the sciences As at a given signal the h standard of culture We olden one

But Eras It is heard for the last time in 1519; after which the dreaives place to the usual complaint about the badness of the times everywhere

FOOTNOTES:

[13] For a full translation of this important letter see pp 212-18

[14] The name Grunnius may have been taken from Jerome's epistles, where it is a nickname for a certain Ruffinus, whoain in a letter of 5 March 1531, LB X 1590 A

CHAPTER XII

ERASMUS'S MIND

Erasmus's mind: Ethical and aesthetic tendencies, aversion to all that is unreasonable, silly and cumbrous--His vision of antiquity pervaded by Christian faith--Renascence of good learning--The ideal life of serene harmony and happy wisdom--Love of the decorous and sly philological and moralistic--Freedom, clearness, purity, simplicity--Faith in nature--Educational and social ideas

What made Erasmus the man from whom his conte to catch the word of deliverance? He seemed to them the bearer of a new liberty of the e, a new har He was to them as the possessor of newly discovered, untold wealth which he had only to distribute

What was there in the reat Rotterdaative aspect of Erasmus'sunreasonable, insipid, purely forrowth of medieval culture had overburdened and overcrowded the world of thought As often as he thinks of the ridiculous text-books out of which Latin was taught in his youth, disgust rises in his us, Ebrardus and all the rest--as a heap of rubbish which ought to be cleared away But this aversion to the superannuated, which had become useless and soulless, extended ious life, full of practices, ceremonies, traditions and conceptions, from which the spirit seemed to have departed He does not reject theether: what revolts hi and right feeling But to his s, and with a delicate need of high decorunity, all that sphere of ceremony and tradition displays itself as a useless, nay, a hurtful scene of human stupidity and selfishness And, intellectualist as he is, with his conteious observances, after all, may contain valuable sentih his treatises, his letters, his _Colloquies_ especially, there always passes--as if one was looking at a gallery of Brueghel's pictures--a procession of ignorant and covetousimpose upon the trustful multitude and fare sumptuously themselves As a fixed motif (such ibe about the superstition that a person was saved by dying in the gown of a Franciscan or a Do, prescribed prayers, the observance of holy days, should not be altogether neglected, but they beco to God e repose our trust in theood of confession, indulgence, all sorts of blessings Pilgries are worthless The veneration of the Saints and of their relics is full of superstition and foolishness The people think they will be preserved fro the day if only they have looked at the painted i 'We kiss the shoes of the saints and their dirty handkerchiefs and we leave their books, their lected'

Erasmus's dislike of what seemed antiquated and worn out in his days, went farther still It coy and philosophy In the syllogistic systeenuity All syory were fundah he occasionally tried his hand at an allegory; and he never was mystically inclined

Now here it is just as much the deficiencies of his own mind as the qualities of the system which made him unable to appreciate it While he struck at the abuse of cerenation and well-aimed mockery, a proud irony to which he was not fully entitled preponderates in his condey which he could not quite understand It was easy always to talk with a sneer of the conservative divines of his tination hurt only those who deserved castigation and strengthened as valuable, but his ood as well as the bad in spite of him, assailed both the institution and persons, and injured without elevating them The individualist Erasmus never understood what it meant to offend the honour of an office, an order, or an establishment, especially when that institution is the most sacred of all, the Church itself

Eraser purely Catholic Of that glorious structure of medieval-Christian civilization with its mystic foundation, its strict hierarchic construction, its splendidly fitting sy but its load of outward details and ornament Instead of the world which Tho to their vision, Eras, and this he held up before his compatriots