Part 11 (1/2)

In the years in which the Reforreat , the result of the fact that his delicate, aesthetic, hovering spirit understood neither the profoundest depths of the faith nor the hard necessities of human society He was neither reat proble was required but restoration and purification by a return to the original, unspoilt sources of Christianity A number of accretions to the faith, rather ridiculous than revolting, had to be cleared away All should be reduced to the nucleus of faith, Christ and the Gospel Forms, ceremonies, speculations should make room for the practice of true piety The Gospel was easily intelligible to everybody and within everybody's reach And the , _bonae literae_ Had he not himself, by his editions of the New Testament and of Jerome, and even earlier by the now famous _Enchiridion_, done most of what had to be done? 'I hope that what now pleases the upright, will soon please all' As early as the beginning of 1517 Eras Fabricius Capito, in the tone of one who has accoreat task 'Well then, take you the torch froreat deal easier and cause far less hatred and envy _We_ have lived through the first shock'

Budaeus writes to Tunstall in May 1517: 'Was anyone born under such inauspicious Graces that the dull and obscure discipline (scholasticism) does not revolt hience, has regained its ancient purity and brightness? But it is still reater that he should have effected by the saence of sacred truth itself out of that Cih divinity is not yet quite free from the dirt of the sophist school If that should occur one day, it will be owing to the beginnings ist Budaeus believed even more firmly than Erasmus that faith was a matter of erudition

It could not but vex Erasmus that not everyone accepted the cleansed truth at once How could people continue to oppose theht and so simple? He, who so sincerely would have liked to live in peace with all the world, found himself involved in a series of polemics To let the opposition of opponents pass unnoticed was forbidden not only by his character, for ever striving to justify himself in the eyes of the world, but also by the custoer for dispute

There were, first of all, his polemics with Jacques Lefevre d'etaples, or in Latinized forian, who as a preparer of the Reformation may, more than anyone else, be ranked with Eras cart which was to take hie in the new edition of Faber's commentary on St Paul's epistles, in which he controverted Erasmus's note on the Second Epistle to the Hebrews, verse 7 Erasia_ It concerned Christ's relation to God and the angels, but the dogical interpretation of Eras, Erasitated by the hly and considered hienial spirit 'What on earth has occurred to the ree that I aht,' he asserts It ain at once Badius has told Peter Gilles that Faber is sorry about it

Erasnified letter appeals to their friendshi+p; he will suffer hirowls: Let him be careful And he thinks that his controversy with Faber keeps the world in suspense: there is not a uests do not side with one or the other of them But finally the combat abated and the friendshi+p was preserved

Towards Easter 1518, Erasmus conteh the press, during a few months of hard labour, the corrected edition of the New Testament He did not fail to request the chiefs of conservative divinity at Louvain beforehand to state their objections to his work Briard of Ath declared he had found nothing offensive in it, after he had first been told all sorts of bad things about it 'Then the new edition will please you much better,' Erasmus had said His friend Dorp and James Latomus, also one of the chief divines, had expressed themond had said that he had never read Eraslish Greek at Louvain, had summarized a nuot rid of the et hold of his conclusions and therefore could not make use of thehted so, and worked out his objections in a more circumstantial treatise

[Illustration: XVII VIEW OF BASLE, 1548]

Thus Erased to ask all his English friends (of whom Ammonius had been taken from him by death in 1517) for support to defray the expenses of the journey; he kept holding out to them the prospect that, after his as finished, he would return to England In a letter to Martin Lypsius, as he was going up the Rhine, he answered Lee's criticis his edition he not only took it but little into account, but ventured, moreover, this time to print his own translation of the New Testament of 1506 without any alterations At the same time he obtained for the new edition a letter of approval froainst his cavillers

At Basle Erasain like a horse in a treadmill But he was really in his element Even before the second edition of the New Testament, the _Enchiridion_ and the _Institutio Principis Christiani_ were reprinted by Froben On his return journey, Erash the summer by indisposition, and who had, on that account, been unable to finish it, fell seriously ill He reached Louvain with difficulty (21 Septeht be the pestilence, and Erasion hiainst it He avoided his quarters in the College of the Lily, and found shelter with his most trusted friend, Dirck Maertensz, the printer But in spite of rus, first Dorp and afterwards also Ath came, at once, to visit him Evidently the Louvain professors did not mean so badly by hie of the New Testament printed by Froben in 1520]

But the differences between Erasmus and the Louvain faculty were deeply rooted Lee, hurt by the little attention paid by Erasmus to his objections, prepared a new critique, but kept it from Erasmus, for the present, which irritated the latter and made him nervous In the meantime a new opponent arose Directly after his return to Louvain, Erasmus had taken iuue_, projected and endowed by Jerome Busleiden, in his testauages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were to be taught there Nohen Jaical faculty and a ue about the study of those three languages and of theology, doubted the utility of the fored hiia_ About the saot into trouble with the vice-chancellor hiht that Ath had publicly censured hie', which had recently appeared Though Ath withdrew at once, Erasia_, howeverquarrel with Lee assulish friends atte, ambitious compatriot Erasmus on his part irritated him furtively He reveals in this whole dispute a lack of self-control and dignity which shows his weakest side Usually so anxious as to decorum he now lapses into invectives: The British adder, Satan, even the old taunt ascribing a tail to Englishmen has to serve once ether behind the bitter er, Erass his Gerainst Lee and to ridicule hilish friends: 'All Gerreatest trouble in keeping them back'

Alack! Germany had other causes of disturbance: it is 1520 and the three great poleh one may excuse the violence and the petty spitefulness of Eras fro somewhat short in really manly qualities, yet it is difficult to deny that he failed coureat movements of his time

It was very easy for Erasmus to ht that there would be an end to faith in Holy Scripture as soon as the emendation of the text was attempted

'”They correct the Holy Gospel, nay, the Pater Noster itself!” the preacher exclaiation As if I cavilled at Matthew and Luke, and not at those who, out of ignorance and carelessness, have corrupted them What do people wish? That the Church should possess Holy Scripture as correct as possible, or not?' This reasoning seemed to Erasmus, with his passionate need of purity, a conclusive refutation But instinct did not deceive his adversaries, when it told theeht decide as to the correct version of a text And Erasmus wished to avoid the inferences which assailed doctrine He was not aware of the fact that his conceptions of the Church, the sacraer purely Catholic, because they had becoht He could not be aware of it because, in spite of all his natural piety and his fervent ethical sentiht which is the foundation of every creed

It was this personal lack in Erasrounds of the resistance of Catholic orthodoxy Hoas it possible that so h consideration, refused to accept what to him seehly personal way He, the ladly have lived in peace with all the world, who so yearned for synition, and bore enmity with difficulty, saw the ranks of haters and opponents increase about hi acrimony, how many wore the scar of a wound that the _Moria_ had made That real and supposed hatred troubled Erasmus He sees his enemies as a sect It is especially the Dominicans and the Carmelites who are ill-affected towards the new scientific theology Just then a new adversary had arisen at Louvain in the person of his comond, prior of the Carmelites, henceforth an object of particular abhorrence to him It is remarkable that at Louvain Erasmus found his fiercest opponents in some compatriots, in the narrower sense of the word: Vincent Dirks of Haarlem, William of Vianen, Ruurd Tapper

The persecution increases: the venom of slander spreads reatest untruths are impudently preached about hiainst theh; let him write for the erudite, who are fee shall bark to stir up the people After 1520 he writes again and again: 'I aht see himself, not without reason, at the centre, could, in 1519 and 1520, no longer be blind to the fact that the great struggle did not concern hiht What is it, that great commotion about matters of spirit and of faith?

The anshich Erasreat and wilful conspiracy on the part of the conservatives to suffocate good learning and norance triumph This idea recurs innumerable times in his letters after the middle of 1518 'I know quite certainly', he writes on 21 March 1519 to one of his German friends, 'that the barbarians on all sides have conspired to leave no stone unturned till they have suppressed _bonae literae_' 'Here we are still fighting with the protectors of the old ignorance'; cannot Wolsey persuade the Pope to stop it here? All that appertains to ancient and cultured literature is called 'poetry' by those narrow- that savours of a ant doctrine, that is to say all that they have not learned theedy--under these terinates in the hatred of _bonae literae_ 'This is the source and hot-bed of all this tragedy; incurable hatred of linguistic study and the _bonae literae_' 'Luther provokes those eneh their cause is a bad one And meanwhile envy harasses the _bonae literae_, which are attacked at his (Luther's) instigation by these gadflies They are already nearly insufferable, when things do not go ith them; but who can stand them when they triu else than Luther

They are preparing to conquer the phalanx of the Muses'

This ritten by Eras in Decereat events, a conception which arose in the study of a recluse bending over his books, didthe true nature and purport of the Reformation

CHAPTER XVI

FIRST YEARS OF THE REFORMATION

Beginning of the relations between Erasress of the Refor about a _rapprochement_ with Erasmus, March 1519--Erasmus keeps aloof; fancies he uous--He denies ever more emphatically all relations with Luther and resolves to remain a spectator--He is pressed by either camp to take sides--Aleander in the Netherlands--The Diet of Woruard his freedom, October 1521