Selections from Erasmus: Principally from his Epistles Part 1

Selections from Erasmus.

by Erasmus Roterodamus.

PREFACE

The selections in this volume are taken mainly from the Letters of Erasmus. Latin was to him a living language; and the easy straightforwardness with which he addresses himself to what he has to say, whether in narrating the events of every-day life or in developing more serious themes, makes his works suitable reading for beginners. To the rapidity with which he invariably wrote is due a certain laxity, princ.i.p.ally in the use of moods and tenses; and his spelling is that of the Renaissance. These matters I have brought to some extent into conformity with cla.s.sical usage; and in a few other ways also I have taken necessary liberties with the text.

In the choice of pa.s.sages I have been guided for the most part by a desire to ill.u.s.trate through them English life at a period of exceptional interest in our history. There has never been wanting a succession of persons who concerned themselves to chronicle the deeds of kings and the fortunes of war; but history only becomes intelligible when we can place these exalted events in their right setting by understanding what men both small and great were doing and thinking in their private lives. To Erasmus we owe much intimate knowledge of the age in which he lived; and of none of his contemporaries has he given us more vivid pictures than of the great Englishmen, Henry VIII, Colet, More, and many others, whom he delighted to claim as friends.

With this purpose in view I have thought it best to confine the historical commentary within a narrow compa.s.s in the scenes which are not drawn from England; and to leave unill.u.s.trated many distinguished names, due appreciation of which would have overloaded the notes and confused the reader.

The vocabulary is intended to include all words not to be found in Dr.

Lewis's _Elementary Latin Dictionary_, with the exception of (1) those which with the necessary modification have become English, (2) cla.s.sical words used for modern counterparts without possibility of confusion, e.

g. _templum_ for _church_; (3) diminutives--a mode of expression which both Erasmus and modern writers use very freely--as to the origin of which there can be no doubt.

Mr. Kenneth Forbes of St. John's College has kindly gone through the whole of the text with me, and has given me the benefit of his long experience as a teacher. I am also obliged to him for most valuable a.s.sistance in the preparation of the notes.

LONGWALL, COTTAGE, OXFORD. June 1908.

In a second edition I have been able to incorporate a few of the corrections and suggestions made by reviewers and friends. My thanks are especially due to the Warden of Wadham and to Mr. Hugo Sharpley, head master of Richmond Grammar School, Yorks.

23 MERTON STREET, OXFORD. June 1, 1918.

LIFE OF ERASMUS

Erasmus of Rotterdam was born on October 27, probably in 1466. His father belonged to Gouda, a little town near Rotterdam, and after some schooling there and an interval during which he was a chorister in Utrecht Cathedral, Erasmus was sent to Deventer, to the princ.i.p.al school in the town, which was attached to St. Lebuin's Church. The renewed interest in cla.s.sical learning which had begun in Italy in the fourteenth century had as yet been scarcely felt in Northern Europe, and education was still dominated by the requirements of Philosophy and Theology, which were regarded as the highest branches of knowledge. A very high degree of subtlety in thought and argument had been reached, and in order that the youthful student might be fitted to enter this arena, it was necessary that he should be trained from the outset in its requirements. In the schools, in consequence, little attention was paid to the form in which thought was expressed, provided that the thought was correct: in marked contrast to the cla.s.sical ideal, which emphasized the importance of expression, in just appreciation of the fact that thought expressed in obscure or inadequate words, fails to reach the human mind. The mediaeval position had been the outcome of a reaction against the spirit of later cla.s.sical times, which had sacrificed matter to form. And now the pendulum was swinging back again in a new attempt to adjust the rival claims.

The education which Erasmus received at Deventer was still in thraldom to the mediaeval ideal. Greek was practically unknown, and in Latin all that was required of the student was a sufficient mastery of the rudiments of grammar to enable him to express somehow the distinctions and refinements of thought for which he was being trained. Niceties of scholars.h.i.+p and amplitude of vocabulary were unnecessary to him and were disregarded.

From a material point of view also education was hampered. Printing was only just beginning, and there were few, if any, schoolbooks to be had.

Lectures and lessons still justified their name 'readings'; for the boys sat in cla.s.s crowded round their master, diligently copying down the words that fell from his lips, whether he were dictating a chapter in grammar, with its rules of accidence and syntax, or at a later stage a pa.s.sage from a Latin author with his own or the traditional comments.

Their canon of the cla.s.sics was widely different from ours; instead of the simplified Caesar or Ovid that is now set before the schoolboy, Terence occupied a princ.i.p.al position, being of the first importance to an age when the learned still spoke Latin. Portions of the historians were read, for their worldly wisdom rather than for their history; Pliny the Elder for his natural science, and Boethius for his mathematics; and for poetry Cato's moral distiches and Baptista of Mantua, 'the Christian Vergil.'

In this atmosphere Erasmus's early years were spent; but from some of his masters he caught the breath of the new life that came from Italy, and this he never lost. By 1485, shortly after he had left Deventer, both his parents were dead, and a few years later he was persuaded to enter the monastery of Steyn, near Gouda, a house of Augustinian canons. The life there was uncongenial to him; for though he had leisure to read as much as he liked, his temperament was not suited to the precision and regularity of religious observance. An opportunity for escape presented itself, when the Bishop of Cambray, a powerful ecclesiastic, was inquiring for a Latin secretary. Erasmus, who had already become very facile with his pen, obtained the post and for a year or more discharged its duties.

At length in 1495 he persuaded the Bishop to fulfil a desire which he had long cherished, and send him with a stipend to a University. He went to Paris and began reading for a Doctor's degree in Theology. But the course was too cramping, and he therefore used his opportunity to educate himself more widely; eking out the Bishop's grant by taking pupils. It was a hard life, and his health was delicate; but he did not flinch from his task, doing just enough paid work--and no more--to keep himself alive and to buy books. In 1499 one of his pupils, a young Englishman, Lord Mountjoy, brought him to England for a visit, and in the autumn sent him for a month or two to Oxford. There he fell in with Colet, a man of strong character and intellect, who was giving a new impulse to the study of the Bible by historical treatment. Colet's enthusiasm encouraged Erasmus in the direction to which he was already inclined; and when he returned to Paris in 1500, it was with the determination to apply his whole energy to cla.s.sical learning, and especially to the study of Theology, which in the new world opening before him was still to be the queen of sciences. For the next four years he was working hard, teaching himself Greek and reading whatever he could find, at Paris or, when the plague drove him thence, at Orleans or Louvain. By 1504 his period of preparation was over, and the fruitful season succeeded. His first venture in Theology was to print in 1505 some annotations on the New Testament by Lorenzo Valla, an Italian humanist of the fifteenth century with whose critical temperament he was much in sympathy.

Shortly afterwards a visit to England brought him what he had long desired--an opportunity of going to Italy. He set out in June 1506, as supervisor of the studies of two boys, the sons of Henry VII's physician.

After taking the degree of D.D. at Turin in September he settled down at Bologna with his charges and worked at a book which he had had in hand for some years, and of which he had already published a specimen in 1500.

To this book, the _Adagia_, he owed the great fame which he obtained throughout Europe, before any of the works on which his reputation now rests had been published. Its scheme was a collection of proverbial sayings and allusions, which he ill.u.s.trated and explained in such a way as to make them useful to those who desired to study the cla.s.sics and to write elegant Latin. In these days of lexicons and dictionaries the value of the _Adagia_ has pa.s.sed away; but to an age which placed a high value on Latinity and which had little apparatus to use, the book was a great acquisition. It was welcomed with enthusiasm when Aldus published it at Venice in 1508: and throughout his life Erasmus brought out edition after edition, amplifying and enlarging a book which the public was always ready to buy.

From Venice Erasmus went on to Rome, where he had a flattering reception, and, though a northerner, was recognized as an equal by the humanists of Italy. He was pressed to stay, but the death of Henry VII brought him an invitation to return to England, in the names of Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his old patron Mountjoy, who was loud in his praises of the 'divine' young king.

As he rode hastily northwards, his active brain fell to composing a satire on the life he saw around him. He was a quick observer, and his personal charm had won him admission to the halls of the great; whilst bitter experience had shown him the life of the poor and needy. His satire, _The Praise of Folly_, cuts with no gentle hand into the deceits to which human frailty is p.r.o.ne and lays bare their nakedness. High and low, rich and poor, suffer alike, as Folly makes merry over them. There was much in the life of the age which called for censure, as there had been in the past and was to be in the future. On untrained lips censure easily degenerates into abuse and loses its sting: Erasmus with his gifts of humour and expression caught the public ear and set men thinking.

In England, where he spent the next years, 1509-14, Erasmus began the great work of his life, an edition of the New Testament and of the Letters of Jerome. His time was spent between Cambridge and London, and his friends did what they could for his support. Warham presented him with a living--Aldington in Kent--and then as Erasmus could not reside and discharge the duties of a parish priest, allowed him to resign and draw a pension from the living--in violation of his own strict regulation. Mountjoy gave him another pension, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, sent him to Cambridge and gave him rooms in Queens' College.

For a time he held the Professors.h.i.+p of Divinity founded in Cambridge, as in Oxford, by the Lady Margaret Tudor, mother of Henry VII. But teaching was not his gift. Others might inspire students from the teacher's chair: his talent could only enlighten the teacher through his books.

At length the time came to publish. By fortunate accident, if not by design, he came into relations with John Froben of Basel, who with the three sons of his late partner, John Amorbach, was printing works of sound learning with all his energy--especially the Fathers. In July 1514 Erasmus set forth, and after a triumphal progress through Germany, feted and welcomed everywhere, he settled at Basel to see Jerome and the New Testament through the press. By 1516 they were complete, and Erasmus had achieved--almost by an afterthought, for his first project had been a series of annotations like Valla's--the work which has made his name great.

Mark Pattison says of Erasmus that he propounded the problem of critical scholars.h.i.+p, but himself did nothing to solve it. By critical scholars.h.i.+p is meant the examination of the grounds on which learning rests. In youth we are uncritical, and accept as Caesar or Livy the books from which we read those authors; but with growing experience we learn that a copy is not always a true representation of its original; and with this, even though there is little perception of the changes and chances through which ma.n.u.scripts have pa.s.sed, the first lesson of criticism has been learnt.

The problem may be stated thus--In no single case does an autograph ma.n.u.script of a cla.s.sical author survive: for our knowledge of the works of the past we are dependent on ma.n.u.scripts written at a later date. Only rarely is there less than 300 years' interval between an author's death and the earliest ma.n.u.script now extant of his works; in a great many cases 1,000 years have elapsed, and in the extreme--Sophocles and Aristophanes--1,400. The question therefore arises, How far do our ma.n.u.scripts represent what was originally written? and it is the work of scholars to compare together existing ma.n.u.scripts, to estimate their relative value, and where they differ, to determine, if possible, what the author actually wrote.

The ma.n.u.scripts of the New Testament which scholars have examined and collated are now numbered by hundreds. Erasmus was content for his first edition with two lent to him by Colet from the library of St. Paul's Cathedral, and a few of little value which he found at Basel. And though for subsequent editions he compared one or two more, the work never reached a high standard of scholars.h.i.+p. He had done enough, however, for his age. Before Erasmus men were accustomed to read the New Testament in Latin; after 1516 no competent scholar could be content with anything but the Greek. But though the priority actually belongs to Erasmus, it must be stated that the Greek version had already been printed in January 1514 in a Polyglott Bible published under the orders of Cardinal Ximenes at Alcala in Spain. For definite reasons, however, this great edition was not put into circulation till 1520.

By this time Erasmus had attained his highest point. As years went on his activity continued unabated, his fame grew and his material circ.u.mstances reached a level at which he was far above want and could gratify his generous impulses freely. But a cloud arose which overshadowed him; and when it broke--long after Erasmus's death--it overwhelmed Europe. The causes which raised it up were not new. For centuries earnest and religious men--Erasmus himself among the number--had been protesting against evil in the Church. In December 1517 Martin Luther, a friar at Wittenberg, created a stir by denouncing a number of the doctrines and practices of the Church; and when the Pope excommunicated him, proceeded publicly to burn the Papal Bull with every mark of contempt. From this he was driven on by opposition and threatened persecution, which he faced with indomitable courage, to a position of complete hostility to Rome; endeavouring to shatter its immemorial inst.i.tutions and a.s.serting the right of the individual to approach G.o.d through the mediation of Christ only instead of through that of priests: the individual, as an inevitable consequence, claiming the right of private judgement in matters religious instead of bowing to dogma based on the authority of the Church from ages past.

These conclusions Erasmus abhorred. He was all for reform, but a violent severance with the past seemed to him a monstrous remedy. He always exercised, though he did not always claim, the right of thinking for himself; but he would never have dreamed of allowing the same freedom to the ignorant or the unlearned. The aim of his life was to increase knowledge, in the a.s.surance that from that reform would surely come; but to force on reform by an appeal to pa.s.sion, to settle religious difficulties by an appeal to emotion was to him madness.

The ideals of Erasmus and Luther were irreconcilable: and bitterness soon arose between them. From both sides Erasmus was a.s.sailed with unmeasured virulence. The strict Catholics called him a heretic, the Lutherans a coward. But throughout these stormy years he never wavered. At the end he was still pursuing the ideal which he had sought at the outset of his public career--reform guided by knowledge. He lived to see some of the disasters which he had dreaded as the result of encouragement given to lawless pa.s.sion--the Peasants' Revolt in 1525, and the Anabaptist horrors at Munster ten years later. If he could have foreseen the course of the next century, he would not have lacked instances with which to enforce his moral.

After 1516 Erasmus returned to England, and then after a few weeks settled in the Netherlands, first at the court of Brussels, where he had been appointed Councillor to the young Archduke Charles; and then at the University of Louvain. He was incessantly at work, a new edition of the New Testament being projected within a few weeks of the publication of the first. This appeared in 1519, after Erasmus had journeyed to Basel in the summer of 1518 to help with the printing. In the autumn of 1521 he determined to remove to Basel altogether, to escape the attacks of the Louvain theologians and to be near his printers. For the next few years he was at Froben's right hand, editing the Fathers in one great series of volumes after another, and unsparing of his health.

It was during this period that one of the best known of his works, the _Colloquia_, attained maturity. These were composed first in Paris for a pupil, as polite forms of address at meeting and parting. In their final shape they are a series of lively dialogues in which characters, often thinly disguised, discuss the burning questions of the day with lightness and humour. In all subsequent times they have been a favourite book for school reading; and some of Shakespeare's lines are an echo of Erasmus.

In 1529 religious dissensions drove him from Basel and he took refuge at Freiburg in the Breisgau, which was still untouched by the Reformation.

There he worked on, in the intervals of severe illness; his courage never failed him and he was comforted by the affection of his friends. In 1535 he returned again to Basel, to be at hand in the printing of a work on preaching, the _Ecclesiastes_, to which he had given his recent efforts; and there death, which for twelve years had not seemed far away, overtook him on July 12, 1536.

I. AN ORDINATION EXAMINATION

Non ab re fuerit hoc loco referre quid acciderit Davidi quondam episcopo Traiectensi, Ducis Philippi cognomento Boni filio. Vir erat apprime doctus reique theologicae peritus, quod in n.o.bilibus et illius praesertim dicionis episcopis profana dicione onustis 5 perrarum est. Audierat inter tam multos qui sacris initiabantur, paucissimos esse qui literas scirent.

Visum est rem propius cognoscere. In aula in quam admittebantur examinandi iussit sibi poni cathedram.

Ipse singulis proposuit quaestiones pro gradus quem 10 petebant dignitate; hypodiaconis futuris leviores, diaconis aliquanto difficiliores, presbyteris theologicas.

Quaeris eventum? Submovit omnes exceptis tribus.

Qui his rebus praeesse solent existimarunt ingens Ecclesiae dedecus fore, si pro trecentis tres tantum initiarentur. 15 Episcopus, ut erat fervido ingenio, respondit maius fore dedecus Ecclesiae, si in eam pro hominibus admitterentur asini et omnibus asinis stolidiores. Instabant ii quibus hinc aliquid emolumenti met.i.tur, ut moderaretur sententiam, reputans hoc seculum non 20 gignere Paulos aut Hieronymos, sed tales recipiendos quales ea ferret aetas. Perst.i.tit episcopus, negans se requirere Paulos ac Hieronymos, sed asinos pro hominibus non admissurum. Hic confugiendum erat ad extremam machinam. Admota est. Quaenam? 'Si qua 25 coepisti' inquiunt 'visum est pertendere, salaria n.o.bis augeas oportet; alioqui sine his asinis non est unde vivamus.' Hoc ariete deiectus est erectus ille Praesulis animus.

II. A DOMESTIC AFFRAY

ERASMUS CHRISTIANO S. D.

Salve, mel Attic.u.m. Heri nihil scripsi, et consulto quidem; nam eram stomachosior. Ne roga in quem, in te inquam. 'Quid commerueram?' Verebar mihi insidias strui per te hominem argutissimum. Suspectam habebam illam tuam pyxidem, ne quid simile 5 n.o.bis afferret, quale ferunt Pandorae pyxidem Epimetheo; quam ubi recluseram, mihi ipsi succensebam qui fuissem suspiciosulus. 'Cur igitur ne hodie quidem scripsisti?' inquies. Eramus occupatissimi. 'Quid tandem negotii?' In spectaculo sedimus, sane iucundo. 10 'Comoedia' inquis 'fuit, an Tragoedia?' Utrumvis, verum nemo personatus agebat, unicus duntaxat actus, chorus sine tibiis, fabula nec togata nec palliata, sed planipedia, humi acta, sine saltatu, e cenaculo spectata, epitasis turbulentissima, exitus perturbatissimus. 15 'Quam, malum,' inquies 'mihi fabulam fingis?' Immo rem, Christiane, refero.

Spectavimus hodie matremfamilias c.u.m famula domestica fort.i.ter depugnantem. Sonuerat diu tuba ante congressum, convicia fort.i.ter utrinque regeruntur. Hic 20 aequo Marte discessum est, triumphavit nemo. Haec in hortis, nos e cenaculo taciti spectabamus, non sine risu. Sed audi catastrophen. A pugna conscendit cubiculum meum puella, concinnatura lectos. Inter confabulandum laudo fort.i.tudinem illius, quod voce 25 conviciisque nihil cesserit dominae; ceterum opta.s.se me ut quantum lingua valebat, tantundem valuisset et manibus. Nam hera, virago robusta ut vel athleta videri posset, subinde caput humilioris puellae pugnis contundebat.

'Usque adeone' inquam 'nullos habes ungues, 30 ut ista impune feras?' Respondit illa subridens sibi quidem non tam animum deesse quam vires. 'An tu putas' inquam 'bellorum exitus a viribus tantum pendere? Consilium ubique valet plurimum.' Roganti quid haberem consilii, 'Ubi te rursus adorietur,' inquam 35 'protinus caliendrum detrahe' (nam mulierculae Parisiorum mire sibi placent nigris quibusdam caliendris): 'eo detracto mox in capillos invola.'

Haec ut a me ioco dicebantur, itidem accipi putabam.

Atqui sub cenae tempus accurrit anhelus hospes; 40 is erat Caroli regis caduceator, vulgato cognomine dictus Gentil Gerson. 'Adeste,' inquit 'domini mei, videbitis cruentum spectaculum.' Accurrimus, offendimus matremfamilias ac puellam humi colluctantes.

Vix a n.o.bis diremptae sunt. Quam cruenta fuisset 45 pugna res ipsa declarabat. Iacebant per humum sparsa, hic caliendrum, illic flammeum. Glomeribus pilorum plenum erat solum; tam crudelis fuerat laniena.

Ubi accubuimus in cena, narrat n.o.bis magno stomacho materfamilias quam fort.i.ter se gessisset puella, 'Ubi 50 pararem' inquit 'illam castigare, hoc est pugnis contundere, illa mihi protinus caliendrum detraxit e capite.'

Agnovi me non surdae cecinisse fabulam. 'Id detractum'