CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924029762170 THE AGE OF E OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY THE AGE OF ERASMUS LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND LONDON BY P. S. ALLEN, MA. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1914 A ac\w«i CONTENTS PAGE I. The Adwert Academy 7 II. Schools 33 III. Monasteries 66 IV. Universities . 102 V. Erasmus' Life-work 134 VI. Force and Fraud 167' VII. Private Life and Manners . . igo ; VIII. The Point of View 207 IX. Pilgrimages 225 X. The Transalpine Renaissance 252 XI. Erasmus and the Bohemian Brethren . 276 THE ADWERT ACADEMY The importance of biography for the study of history can hardly be overrated. In a sense it is true that history should be like the law and ' care not about very small things ' ; concerning itself not so much with individual personality as with funda- mental causes affecting the rise and fall of nations or the development of mental outlook from one age to another. But even if this be conceded, we still must not forget that the course of history is worked out by individuals, who, in spite of the accidental condensation that the needs of human life thrust upon them, are isolated at the last and alone — for no man may deliver his brother. In consequence, it is only in periods when the stream of personal record flows wide and deep that history begins to live, and that we have a chance to view it through the eyes of the actors instead of projecting upon it our own fancies and conceptions. One of the features that makes the study of the Renaissance so fascinating is that in that age the stream of personal record, which had been driven underground, its course choked and hidden beneath the fallen masonry of the Roman Empire, emerges again unimpeded and flows in ever-increasing volume. For reconstruction of the past we are no longer 8 THE AGE OF ERASMUS limited to charters and institutions, or the mighty works of men's hands. In place of a mental output, rigidly confined within unbending modes of thought and expression, we have a literature that reflects the varied phases of human life, that can discard romance and look upon the commonplace ; and instead of dry and meagre chronicles, rarely pro- ducing evidence at first hand, we have rich store of memoirs and private letters, by means of which we can form real pictures of individuals — approaching almost to personal acquaintance and intimacy — and regard the same events from many points of view, to perception of the circumstances that ' alter cases \ The period of the Transalpine Renaissance corre- sponds roughly with the life of Erasmus (1466- J 536) ; from the days when Northern scholars began to win fame for themselves in reborn Italy, until the width of the humanistic outlook was narrowed and the progress of the reawakened studies overwhelmed by the tornado of the Reformation. The aim of these lectures is not so much to draw the outlines of the Renaissance in the North as to present sketches of the world through which Erasmus passed, and to view it as it appeared to him and to some of his contemporaries, famous or obscure. And firstly of the generation that pre- ceded him in the wide but undefined region known then as Germany. The Cistercian Abbey of Adwert near Groningen, under the enlightened governance of Henry of Rees THE ADWERT ACADEMY 9 (1449-85), was a centre to which were attracted most of the scholars whose names are famous in the history of Northern humanism in the second half of the fifteenth century : Wessel, Agricola, Hegius, Langen, Vrye, and others. They came on return from visits to Italy or the universities ; men of affairs after discharge of their missions ; school- masters to rest on their holidays ; parish priests in quest of change : all found a welcome from the hospitable Abbot, and their talk ranged far and wide, over the pursuit of learning, till Adwert merited the name of an ' Academy ' . Earliest of these is John Wessel (11489), and perhaps also the most notable ; certainly the others looked up to him with a veneration which seems to transcend the natural pre-eminence of seniority. Unfortunately the details of his life have not been fully established. Thirty years after his death, when it was too late for him to define his own views, the Reformers claimed him for their own ; and in consequence his body has been wrangled over with the heat which seeks not truth but victory. His father, Hermann Wessel, was a baker from the Westphalian village of Gansfort or Goesevort, who settled in Groningen. After some years in the town school, the boy was about to be apprenticed to a trade, as his parents were too poor to help him further ; but the good Oda Jargis, hearing how well he had done at his books, sent him to the school at Zwolle, in which the Brethren of the Common Life took part. There, as at Groningen, he rose to the io THE AGE OF ERASMUS top, and in his last years, as a first-form boy, also did some teaching in the third form, according to the custom of the school. He came into contact with Thomas a Kempis, who was then at the monastery of Mount St. Agnes, half an hour outside Zwolle, and was profoundly influenced by him. The course at Zwolle lasted eight years, and there is reason to suppose that he completed it in full. He was lodged in the Parua Domus, a hostel for fifty boys, and we are told that he and his next neigh- bour made a hole through the wall which divided their rooms — probably only a wooden partition — and taught one another : Wessel imparting earthly wisdom, and receiving in exchange the fear and love of the Lord. In the autumn of 1449 he matriculated at Cologne, entering the Bursa Laurentiana ; in December 1450 he was B.A., and in February 1452, M.A. By 1455 he had arrived at Paris and entered upon his studies for the theological degree. Within a year he conceived a profound distaste for the philosophy dominant in the schools ; and though he persevered for some time, his frequent dissension from his teachers earned for him the title of ' Magister con- tradictions '. After this his movements cannot be traced until 1470, when he was at Rome in the train of Cardinal Francesco della Rovere. In the in- terval he studied medicine, and, if report be true, travelled far ; venturing into the East, just when the fall of Constantinople had turned the tide of Hellenism westward. In Greece he read Aristotle in the original, and learnt to prefer Plato ; in Egypt THE ADWERT ACADEMY n he sought in vain for the books of Solomon and a mythical library of Hebrew treasures. In 1471 his Cardinal-patron was elected Pope as Sixtus iv. The magnificence which characterized the poor peasant's son in his dealings with Italy, in his embellishment of Rome and the Vatican, was not lacking in his treatment of Wessel. ' Ask what you please as a parting gift', he said to the scholar, who was preparing to set out for Friesland. ' Give me books from your library, Greek and Hebrew', was the request. ' What ? No benefice, no grant of office or fees ? Why not ? ' ' Because I don't want them', came the quiet reply. The books were forthcoming — one, a Greek Gospels, was perhaps the parent of a copy which reached Erasmus for the second edition of his New Testament. After his return to the North, Wessel was invited to Heidelberg, to aid the Elector Palatine, Philip, in restoring the University, c. 1477. He was without the degree in theology which would have enabled him to teach in that faculty, and was not even in orders : indeed a proposal that he should qualify by entering the lowest grade and receiving the tonsure, he contemptuously rejected. So the Theological Faculty would not hear him, but to the students in Arts he lectured on Greek and Hebrew and philo- sophy. For some years, too, he was physician to David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, whom he cured of gout by making him take baths of warm milk. The Bishop rewarded him by shielding him from the attacks of the Dominicans, who were 12 THE AGE OF ERASMUS incensed by his bold criticisms of Aquinas ; and when age brought the desire for rest, the Bishop set him over a house of nuns at Groningen, and bought him the right to visit Mount St. Agnes whenever he liked, by paying for the board and lodging of this welcome guest. Wessel's last years were happily spent. He was the acknowledged leader of his society, and he divided his time between Mount St. Agnes and the sisters at Groningen, with occasional visits to Adwert. There he set about reviving the Abbey schools, one elementary, within its walls, the other more advanced, in a village near by ; and Abbot Rees warmly supported him. Would-be pupils besought him to teach them Greek and Hebrew. Admiring friends came to hear him talk, and brought their sons to see this glory of their country — Lux mundi, as he was called. Some fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles : ' doctor angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' ' Was Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and that was his only tongue : I have a fair knowledge of the three languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as a phantom : I have read him in Greece in his own words.' To Ostendorp, then a young man, but afterwards to become head master of Deventer school, he gave the counsel : ' Read the ancients, sacred and profane : modern doctors, with THE ADWERT ACADEMY 13 their robes and distinctions, will soon be drummed out of town.' At Mount St. Agnes once he was asked why he never used rosary nor book of hours. ' I try ', he replied, ' to pray always. I say the Lord's Prayer once every day. Said once a year in the right spirit it would have more weight than all these vain repetitions.' He loved to read aloud to the brethren on Sunday evenings ; his favourite passage being John xiii-xviii, the discourse at the Last Supper. As he grew older, he sometimes stumbled over his words. He was not an imposing figure, with his eyes somewhat a-squint and his slight limp ; and sometimes the younger monks fell into a titter, irreverent souls, to hear him so eager in his reading and so unconscious. It was not his eyesight that was at fault : to the end he could read the smallest hand without any glasses, like his great namesake, John Wesley, whom a German traveller noticed on the packet-boat between Flushing and London reading the fine print of the Elzevir Virgil, with his eyes unaided, though at an advanced age. On his death-bed Wessel was assailed with scepticism, and began to doubt about the truth of the Christian religion. But the cloud was of short duration. That supreme moment of revela- tion, which comes to every man once, is no time for fear. Patient hope cast out questioning, and he passed through the deep waters with his eyes on the Cross which had been his guide through the life that was ending. 14 THE AGE OF ERASMUS Of Rudolph Agricola we know more than of the others ; his striking personality, it seems, moved many of his friends to put on record their impres- sions of him. One of the best of these sketches is by Goswin of Halen (f 1530), who had been Wessel's servant at Groningen, and had frequently met Agricola. Rudolph's father, Henry Huusman, was the parish priest of Baflo, a village four hours to the north of Groningen ; his mother being a young woman of the place, who subsequently married a local carrier. On 17 Feb. 1444 the priest was elected to be warden of a college of nuns at Siloe, close to Groningen, and in the same hour a messenger came running to him from Baflo, claiming the reward of good news and announcing the birth .of a son. ' Good,' said the new warden ; ' this is an auspicious day, for it has twice made me father.' From the moment he could walk, the boy was passionately fond of music ; the sound of church bells would bring him toddling but into the street, or the thrummings of the blind beggars as they went from house to house playing for alms ; and he would follow strolling pipers out of the gates into the country, and only be driven back by a show of violence. When he was taken to church, all through the mass his eyes were riveted upon the organ and its bellows ; and as he grew older he made himself a syrinx with eight or nine pipes out of willow-bark. He was taught to ride on horseback, and early became adept in pole-jumping whilst in the saddle, an art which the Frieslanders of that age THE ADWERT ACADEMY 15 had evolved to help their horses across the broad rhines of their country. In 1456, when he was just 12, he matriculated at Erfurt, and in May 1462 at Cologne. But the course of his education is not clear, and though it is known that he reached the M.A. at Louvain, the date of this degree is not certain. He is also said to have been at the Univer- sity of Paris. Of his life at Louvain some details are given by Geldenhauer (f 1542) in a sketch written about fifty years after Agricola's death. The University had been founded in 1426 to meet the needs of Belgian students, who for higher education had been obliged to go to Cologne or Paris, or more distant universities. Agricola entered Kettle College, which afterwards became the college of the Falcon, and soon distinguished himself among his fellow-students. They admired the ease with which he learnt French — not the rough dialect of Hainault, but the polite language of the court. With many his musical tastes were a bond of sympathy, in a way which recalls the evenings that Henry Bradshaw used to spend among the musical societies of Bruges and Lille when he was working in Belgian libraries ; and on all sides men frankly acknowledged his intellectual pre-eminence as they marked his quiet readiness in debate and heard him pose the lec- turers with acute questions. By nature he was silent and absorbed, and often in company he would sit deaf to all questions, his elbows on the table and biting his nails. But when roused he was at once 16 THE AGE OF ERASMUS captivating; and this unintended rudeness neve: lost him a friend. There was a small band of trui humanists, who, as Geldenhauer puts it, ' had begui to love purity of Latin style ' ; to them he wa: insensibly attracted, and spent with them ove: Cicero and Quintilian hours niched from the stud] of Aristotle. Later in life he openly regrettec having spent as much as seven years over th( scholastic philosophy, which he had learnt to regarc as profitless. From 1468 to 1479 he was for the most part ir Italy, except for occasional visits to the North when we see him staying with his father at Siloe and, in 1474, teaching Greek to Hegius at Emmerich Many positions were offered to him already ; gifts such as his have not to stand waiting in the market- place. But his wits were not homely, and the world called him. Before he could settle he must see many men and many cities, and learn what Italy had to teach him. For the first part of his time there, until 1473, he was at Pavia studying law and rhetoric ; but on his return from home in 1474 he went to Ferrara in order to enjoy the better opportunities for learning Greek afforded by the court of Duke Hercules oi Este and its circle of learned men. His descrip- tion of the place is interesting : ' The town is beautiful, and so are the women. The University has not so many faculties as Pavia, nor are they so well attended ; but liter ae humaniores seem to be in the very air. Indeed, Ferrara is the home of the THE ADWERT ACADEMY 17 Muses — and of Venus.' One special delight to him was that the Duke had a fine organ, and he was able to indulge what he describes as his ' old weak- ness for the organs '. In October 1476, at the opening of the winter term of the University, the customary oration before the Duke was delivered by Rodolphus Agricola Phrysius. His eloquence surprised the Italians, coming from so outlandish a person : ' a Phrygian, I believe ', said one to another, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. But Agricola, with his chestnut-brown hair and blue eyes, was no Oriental ; only a Frieslander from the North, whose cold climate to the superb Italians seemed as benumbing to the intellect as we consider that of the Esquimaux. During this period Agricola translated Isocrates ad Demonicum and the Axiochus de contemnenda morte, a dialogue wrongly attributed to Plato, which was a favourite in Renaissance days. Also he com- pleted the chief composition of his lifetime, the De inuentione dialedica, a considerable treatise on rhetoric. His favourite books, Geldenhauer tells us, were Pliny's Natural History, the younger Pliny's Letters, Quintilian's Institutio Oratorio,, and selec- tions from Cicero and Plato. These were his travel- ling library, carried with him wherever he went ; two of them, Pliny's Letters and Quintilian, he had copied out with his own hand. Other books, as he acquired them, he planted out in friends' houses as pledges of return. In 1479 he left Italy and went home. On his 1669 g 18 THE AGE OF ERASMUS way he stayed for some months with the Bishop oi Augsburg at Dillingen, on the Danube, and there translated Lucian's De non facile credendis dela- tionibus. A manuscript of Homer sorely tempted him to stay on through the winter. He felt that without Homer his knowledge of Greek was incom- plete ; and he proposed to copy it out from beginning to end, or at any rate the Iliad. But home called him, and he went on. At Spires, in quest of manu- scripts, he went with a friend to the cathedral library. He describes it as not bad for Germany, though it contained nothing in Greek, and only a few Latin manuscripts of any interest — a Livy and a Pliny, very old, but much injured and the texts corrupt — and nothing at all that could be called eloquence, that is to say, pure literature. When he had been a little while in Groningen, the town council bethought them to turn his talents and learning to some account. He was a fine figure of a man, who would make a creditable show ir conducting their business ; and for composing the elegant Latin epistles, which every respectable corporation felt bound to rise to on occasions, nc one was better equipped than he. He was retained as town secretary, and in the four years of hi: service went on frequent embassies. During th< first year we hear of him visiting his father at Siloe and contracting a friendship with one of the nuns 1 1 In view of Geldenhauer's testimony to Agricola's hig] character in this respect, we need not question, as does Goswii of Halen, the nature of this intimacy. THE ADWERT ACADEMY 19 to whom he afterwards sent a work of Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, which he had found in a manuscript at Roermond. Twice he visited Brussels on embassy to Maximilian ; and in the next year he followed the Archduke's court for several months, visiting Antwerp, and making the acquaintance of Barbiriau, the famous musician. Maximilian offered him the post of tutor to his children and Latin secretary to himself ; the town of Antwerp invited him to become head of their school. He might easily have accepted. He was not altogether happy at Groningen. His countrymen had done him honour, but they had no real appreciation for learning, and some of them were boorish and cross-grained. It was the old story of Pegasus in harness ; the practical men of business and the scholar impatient of restraint. His parents, too, were now both dead — in 1480, within a few months of each other — and such homes as he had had, with his father amongst the nuns at Siloe and with his mother in the house of her hus- band the tranter, were therefore closed to him. And yet neither invitation attracted him. Friesland was his native land ; and for all his wanderings the love of it was in his blood. Adwert, too, was near, and Wessel. He refused, and stayed on in his irksome service. But in 1482 came an offer he could not resist. An old friend of Pavia days, John of Dalberg, for whom he had written the oration customary on his installation as Rector in 1474, had just been appointed Bishop of Worms. He invited Agricola B 2 20 THE AGE OF ERASMUS for a visit, and urged him to come and join him living partly as a friend in the Bishop's household partly lecturing at the neighbouring University o Heidelberg. The opening was just such as Agricolc wished, and he eagerly accepted ; but circumstances at Groningen prevented him from redeeming his promise until the spring of 1484. For little mon than a year he rejoiced in the new position, whicr gave full scope for his abilities. Then he set oul to Rome with Dalberg, their business being tc deliver the usual oration of congratulation tc Innocent vm on his election. On the way back he feU ill of a fever at Trent, and the Bishop had tc leave him behind. He recovered enough to struggle back to Heidelberg, but only to die in Dalberg's arms on 27 Oct. 1485, at the age of 41. Few men of letters have made more impression on their contemporaries ; and yet his published writings are scanty. The generation that followed sought for his manuscripts as though they were oi the classics ; but thirty years elapsed before the De inuentione dialectica was printed, and more than fifty before there was a collected edition. Besides his letters the only thing which has permanent value is a short educational treatise, De formando studio, which he wrote in 1484, and addressed to Barbiriau — some compensation to the men of Antwerp for his refusal to come to them. His work was to learn and to teach rather than to write. To learn Greek when few others were learning it, and when the apparatus of grammar and dictionary had to he THE ADWERT ACADEMY 21 made by the student for himself, was a task to consume even abundant energies ; and still more so, if Hebrew, too, was to be acquired. But though he left little, the fire of his enthusiasm did not perish with him ; passing on by tradition, it kindled in others whom he had not known, the flame of interest in the wisdom of the ancients. Another member of the Adwert gatherings was Alexander of Heek in Westphalia, hence called Hegius (1433-98). He was an older man than Agricola, but was not ashamed to learn of him when an opportunity offered to acquire Greek. His enthusiasm was for teaching ; and to that he gave his life, first at Wesel, then at Emmerich, and finally for fifteen years at Deventer, where he had many eminent humanists under his care — Erasmus, William Herman, Mutianus Rufus, Hermann Busch, John Faber, John Murmell, Gerard Geldenhauer. Butz- bach, who was the last pupil he admitted, and who saw him buried in St. Lebuin's church on a winter's evening at sunset, describes him at great length ; and besides his learning and simplicity, praises the liberality with which he gave all that he had to help the needy : living in the house of another (probably Richard Paffraet, the printer) and sharing expenses, and leaving at his death no possessions but his books and a few clothes. And yet he was master of a school which had over 2000 boys. Rudolph Langen of Munster (1438-15 19) was another who was known at Adwert. He matricu- lated at Erfurt in the same year as Agricola, and 22 THE AGE OF ERASMUS was M.A. there in 1460. A canonry at Munster gave him maintenance for his life, and he devoted his energies to learning. Twice he visited Italy, ir 1465 and i486 ; and in 1498 he succeeded in estab- lishing a school at Munster on humanistic lines, and wished Hegius to become head master, but in vain, Nevertheless it rapidly rivalled the fame of Deventer, Finally, Antony Vrye (Liber) of Soest deserves record, since he has contributed somewhat to oui knowledge of Adwert. He also was a schoolmaster, and taught at various times at Emmerich, Campen, Amsterdam, and Alcmar. In 1477 he published a volume entitled Familiarium Eftistolarum Com- pendium, the composition of which illustrates the catholic tastes of the humanists ; for it contains selections from the letters of Cicero, Jerome, Symmachus, and the writers of the Italian Renais- sance. But he chiefly merits our gratitude for including in the book a number of letters which passed between the visitors to Adwert and their friends, together with some of his own. The pleasant relations existing in this little society may be illustrated by the fact that when Vrye's son John had reached student age, the Adwert friends sub- scribed to pay his expenses at a university ; and thus secured him an education which enabled him to become Syndic of Campen. A few extracts from their letters will serve tc show some of the characteristics of the age, its wide interest in the past, theological as well as classical its eager search for manuscripts, and the freedon THE ADWERT ACADEMY 23 with which its libraries were opened ; its concern for education, and its attitude towards the old learning ; and the extent of its actual achievements. The earliest of these letters that survive are a series written by Langen from Adwert in the spring of 1469 to Vrye at Soest. Despite the grave interest in serious study that the letters show, there are human touches about them. One begins : ' You promised faithfully to return, and yet you have not come. But I cannot blame you ; for the road is deep in mud, and I myself too am so feeble a walker that I can imagine the weariness of others' feet.' Another ends in haste, not with the departure of the post, but ' The servants are waiting to conduct me to bed '. Here is a longer sample : 1. Langen to Vrye : from Adwert, 27 Feb. (1469). ' Why do you delay so long to gratify the wishes of our devout friend Wolter ? With my own hand I have transcribed the little book of Elegantiae, as far as the section about the reckoning of the Kalends. I greatly desire to have this precious work complete ; so do send me the portion we lack as soon as you can. The little book will be my constant companion : I know nothing that has such value in so narrow a span. How brilliant Valla is ! he has raised up Latin to glory from the bondage of the barbarians. May the earth lie lightly on him and the spring shine ever round his urn ! Even if the book is not by Valla himself, it must come from his school. 24 THE AGE OF ERASMUS ' I write in haste and with people talking all round me, from whom politeness will not let me sit altogether aloof. But read carefully and you will understand me. At least I hope this letter won't be quite so barbarous as the monstrosities which the usher from Osnabruck sends you every day : they sound like the spells of witches to bring up their familiar spirits, or the enchantments " Fecana kageti ", &c, which open locks whoever knocks. Poor Latin ! it is worse handled than was Regulus by the Cartha- ginians. Forgive this scrawl : I am writing by candlelight.' We shall have other occasions to notice the admira- tion of the Northern humanists for Lorenzo Valla (t I 457)» t ne master of Latin style, and the audacious Canon of the Lateran, who could apply the spirit of criticism not only to the New Testament but even to the Donation of Constantine. 2. Vrye to Arnold of Hildesheim (Schoolmaster at Emmerich) : sa -l ue - Geran (geram in the tex is interpreted sanctus, and seems from a length discussion of it to be connected with yipoiv ar SCHOOLS 39 le/sds. 1 Philantropos (notice the quantities) is Christ, the Saviour. ' Bar Grece est Alius Latine.' ' Necten in Greco est venire Latine : vnde dicit Pristianus in primo minoris, antropos necten, i. e. homo venit.' (For this remarkable form I can only suggest rjvffeLv or -^keiv : -en is probably the in- finitive ; ne might arise from en ; and ct, through tt, from th.) Ymas is explained as nobis, not vobis. The construction of the distich is then given : ' Hail, sacred queen, whose son is the lover of men ; through thee divine and heavenly glory comes to us.' Again : ' Clauiculis firmis theos antropos impos et ir mis Figor ob infirmi cosmos delicta, patir mi.' Impos = in pedibus. Ir = a hand (probably ^eip, transliterated into hir, and h dropped) and mis is explained as = mei, according to the form which occurs in Plautus and early Latin. The lines are an address from Christ to God, and are interpreted : ' O my father, I God and man am fastened with hard nails in my feet and hands (upon the cross) for the sins of a weak world.' Another work dictated to Erasmus at Deventer was the metrical grammar of Eberhard of Bethune in Artois, composed in the twelfth century. Its name, Graecismus, was based upon a chapter, the eighth, devoted to the elementary study of Greek — a feature which constituted an advance on the 1 Cf. Gerasmus and Hierasmus as variations of the name Herasmus or Erasmus. 40 THE AGE OF ERASMUS current grammars of the age. A few extracts will show the character of the assistance it offered to the would-be Greek scholar. Quod sententia sit bole comprobat amphibolla, Quodque fides broge sit comprobat Allobroga. The gloss explains the second line thus : ' Dicitur ab alleos quod est alienum, et broge quod est fides, quasi alienus a fide ' ; and thus we learn that the Allobroges were a Burgundian people who were always breaking faith with the Romans. Constat apud Grecos quod tertia littera cima est, Est quoque dulce cimen, inde cimeterium ; Est vnmersale cata, fitque catholicus inde, . . . Cata breuis pariter, catalogus venit hinc. Die decas esse decern, designans inde decanum . . . Delon obscurum, Delius inde venit. Ductio sit gogos, hinc isagoga venit. Estque geneth mulier, inde genetheum. Here the confusion of c with t begins the mis- leading ; which is carried further by the gloss, ' Genetheum: locus subterraneus vbi habitant mulieres ad laborandum, et dicitur a geneth quod est mulier, et thesis positio, quia ibi ponebantur mulieres ad laborandum ' ; or ' Genetheum : absconsio subterranea mulierum'. SCHOOLS 41 Estque decern gintos, dicas hinc esse viginti, Vt pentecoste, coste valebit idem. Pos quoque pes tibi sit, compos tibi comprobat illud, Atque pedos puer est, hinc pedagogus erit. Die zoen animam, die inde zoecaisychen. This last word appears in eleven different forms in the manuscripts. The gloss interprets it plainly as ' vita mea et anima mea ' ; but without this aid it must have been unintelligible to most readers, espe- cially in such forms as zoychaysichen, zoycazyche, zoichasichen, zoyasichem. The ' breath of something better ' which Hegius and Zinthius brought was seen in the substitution of the Doctrinale of Alexander of Ville-Dieu, near Avranches [fl. 1200), as the school Latin grammar. This also is a metrical composition ; and it has the merit of being both shorter and also more correct. It was first printed at Venice by Wendelin of Spires (c. 1470), and after a moderate success in Italy, twenty-three editions in fourteen years, it was taken up in the North and quickly attained great popularity. By 1500 more than 160 editions had been printed, of the whole or of various parts, and in the next twenty years there were nearly another hundred, before it was superseded by more modern compositions, such as Linacre's grammar, which held the field throughout Europe for a great part of the sixteenth century. The number of Deventer editions of the Doctrinale is considerable, mostly containing the glosses of Hegius and Zinthius, which overwhelm 42 THE AGE OF ERASMUS the text with commentary ; a single distich often receiving two pages of notes, so full of typographical abbreviations and so closely packed together as to be almost illegible. This very fullness, however, probably indicates a change in the method of teaching, which by quickening it up must indeed have put new life into it ; for it would clearly have been impossible to dictate such lengthy com- mentaries, or the boys would have made hardly any progress. Thirty years ago in England a schoolboy of eleven found himself supplied with abridged Latin and Greek dictionaries, out of which to build up larger familiarity with these languages. Erasmus at Deventer had no such endowments. A school of those days would have been thought excellently equipped if the head master and one or two of his assistants had possessed, in manuscript or in print, one or other of the famous vocabularies in which was amassed the etymological knowledge of the Middle Ages. Great books are costly, and scholars are ever poor. The normal method of acquiring a dictionary was, no doubt, to construct it for oneself ; the schoolboy laying foundations and building upon them as he rose from form to form, and the mature student constantly enlarging his plan throughout his life and adding to it the treasures gained by wider reading. A sure method, though necessarily circumscribed, at least in the beginning. We can imagine how men so rooted and grounded must have shaken their heads over ' learning made SCHOOLS 43 easy ', when the press had begun to diffuse cheap dictionaries, which spared the younger generation such labour. Though they were scarcely ' for the use of schools ', it will repay us to examine some of the mediaeval dictionaries which lasted down to the Renaissance in general use ; for they formed the background of educational resources, and from them we can estimate the standards of teaching attained in the late fifteenth century. First the Catholicon, compiled by John Balbi, a Dominican of Genoa, and completed on 7 March 1286 ; a work of such importance to the age we are considering that it was printed at Mainz as early as 1460, and there were many editions later. Badius' at Paris, 1506, for instance, was reprinted in 1510, 1511, 1514. In his preface Balbi announces that his dictionary is to be on the alphabetical principle ; and, what is even more surprising to us, he goes on to explain at great length what the alphabetical principle is. Thus : ' I am going to treat of amo and bibo. I shall take amo before bibo, because a is the first letter in amo and b is the first letter in bibo ; and a is before b in the alphabet. Again I have to treat of abeo and adeo. I shall take abeo before adeo, because b is the second letter in abeo and d is the second letter in adeo ; and b is before d in the alphabet.' And so he goes on : amatus will be treated before amor, imprudens before impudens, iusticia before iustus, polisintheton before polissenus — the two last being from the Greek. 'But note', he continues, 'that 44 THE AGE OF ERASMUS in polissenus, s is the fifth letter and also the sixth, because s is repeated there. A repetition is therefore equivalent to a double letter ; and thus this arrange- ment will show when 1, m, n, r, s or indeed any other letter is to be doubled. And in order that the reader may find quickly what he seeks, whenever the first or second letter of a word is changed, we shall mark it with azure blue.' His preface ends with an appeal. ' This arrangement I have worked out with great labour; yet not I, but the grace of God with me. I entreat you therefore, reader, do not contemn my work as something rude and barbarous.' The most striking feature of the dictionary is its etymology. Almost every word is supplied with a derivation, often very far-fetched. Thus glisco is derived from ' glykis, quod est dulcis ; que enim dulcia sunt desiderare solemus ' : gliscere therefore is equivalent to desiderare, crescere, pinguescere and several other words. After this we are not surprised at the following account of a dormouse. ' Glis a glisco : quoddam genus murium quod multum dormit. Et dicitur sic quod sompnus facit glires pingues et crescere.' Here is another piece of natural history. ' Irundo ab aer dicitur : quia non residens sed in aere capiens cibos edat, quasi in aere edens.' There is simplicity in the following : ' Nix a nubes, quia a nube venit.' Again : ' Ouis ab offero vel obluo : quia antiquitus in inicio non tauri sed oues in sacrificio mactarentur. Priscianus vero dicit quod descendit a Greco . . . oys.' Besides his philology the good Dominican was also a theologian ; and SCHOOLS 45 when he comes to the words upon which his world was built, he cannot dismiss them as lightly as the snow. So Antichristus has two columns, that is to say a folio page : confiteor ij, conscientia 2J, ordo z\, virgo two columns. Much light is thrown on Balbi's work by the dic- tionary of his predecessor, Huguitio of Pisa, Bishop of Ferrara (f 1210). The title of this, Liber deriua- tionum, indicates its character. Instead of the alphabetical principle the words are arranged accord- ing to their etymology ; all that are assigned to a given root being grouped together. This made it necessary, or at any rate desirable, to find a derivation for every word ; and with ingenuity to aid this was done as far as possible. Besides deriva- tives even compounds came under the simple root ; and in consequence it must have been extremely difficult to find a word unless one already knew a good deal about it. It is no wonder that the book was never printed ; although it occurs frequently in the catalogues of mediaeval libraries. A few examples will suffice. Under capio are found capax, captiuus, capillus, caput with all its deriva- tives, anceps, praeceps, principium, caper, capus, caupo, cippus, scipio, (s)ceptrum ; and even cassis and catena. Similarly under nubo come nubes, nebula, nebulo, nix, niger, nimpha, limpha, limpidus. With such a book as one's only support it was clearly of the highest importance to be good at etymology ; with ouis, for instance, not to be troubled by Priscian's fanciful derivation from the Greek, but to know that 46 THE AGE OF ERASMUS it came from offero, and was therefore to be found under fero ; or again to look for hirundo under aer. Nor need we be surprised at the strange derivations upon which arguments were sometimes founded : that Sprenger, the inquisitor, could explain femina ' quia minorem habet et seruat fidem ' ; or the preacher over whom Erasmus' Folly makes merry, find authority for burning heretics in the Apostle's command ' Haereticum deuita'. We are now in a position to understand Balbi's performance in the Catholicon. From the apologetic tone of his preface it is clear that he felt Huguitio's work to be the really scientific thing, the only book that a scholar would consult : but evidently experi- ence had shown the difficulty of using it, and therefore for the weakness of lesser men like himself he reverted to the sequence of the alphabet. In cumbering himself with derivations, too, he shows that he knows his place. He may have had a glimmering that some of them were absurd ; and that Priscian with his reference to the Greek was a safer guide. But to a scholar brought up on Huguitio derivations were of the first importance ; and to leave them out would have been only another mark of inferiority. Beyond Huguitio we may go back to Papias, v a learned Lombard (fl. 1051), whose Vocabulary was still in use in the fifteenth century, and was printed at Milan in 1476. The editions of it are far fewer than those of the Catholicon ; a fact which presumably points to the superiority of the later work. Papias SCHOOLS 47 also used the alphabetical principle ; and his lengthy explanation of it, which lacks, however, the lucidity of Balbi's, probably implies that his predecessors had adopted the etymological arrangement by derivations, or the divisions of Isidore according to subjects. In a few cases he makes concession to etymology, by giving derivatives under their root, e. g. under ago come all the words derived from it : but he has regard to the weak, and places them also in their right alphabetical position. Not many derivations are given ; but one of them is well known. Lucus is defined as ' locus amenus, vbi multae arbores sunt. Lucus dictus Kara avrtypacnv, quia caret luce pro nimia arborum vmbra ; vel a colocando crebris luminibus (aliter uiminibus), siue a luce, quod in eo lucebant funalia propter nemorum tenebras.' This in the hands of Balbi becomes ' per contrarium lucus dicitur a lucendo ', or, as we say popularly, ' lucus a noh lucendo.' December, again, is derived from decern and imbres ' quibus abundare solet ' ; and so too the other numbered months. It is noticeable that Papias has some knowledge of Greek, for derivations in Greek letters occur, e. g. ' Acrocerauni : montes propter altitudinem & fulminum iactus dicti. Graece enim fulmen Kepawos ceraunos dicitur, et acra a/cpa sumitas ' ; and a great many Greek and Hebrew words are given trans- literated into Latin, ballein, fagein, Ennosigaeus. Like Balbi, Papias travels outside the limits of a mere dictionary, and his interests are not restricted to theology. Aetas draws him into an account of the 48 THE AGE OF ERASMUS various ages of the world, regnum into a view of its kingdoms. Carmen provokes 7 columns, 3 J folio pages, on metres ; lapis 2 columns on precious stones. Italy receives 2 columns, and f of a column are given to St. Paul. Contrariwise there is often great brevity in his interpretations : ' Samium locus est', 'heroici antiqui ', ' mederi curare'. His treatment of miraculum is interesting ; ' A miracle is to raise the dead to life ; but it is a wonder (mirabile) for a fire to be kindled in the water, or for a man to move his ears.' The next heading is mirabilia, for which his examples are taken from the ends of the earth. He begins : ' Listen. Among the Garamantes is a spring so cold by day that you cannot drink it, so hot at night that you cannot put your finger into it.' A fig-tree in Egypt, apples of Sodom, the non-deciduous trees of an island in India — these are the other travellers' tales which serve him for wonders. The alphabetical method did not hold its own without struggle. It prevailed in Robert Stephanus' Latin Thesaurus (1532), the most considerable work of its kind that had been compiled since the inven- tion of printing ; but Dolet's Commentaries on the Latin Tongue (1536), are practically a reversion to the arrangement by roots. Henry Stephanus' Greek Thesaurus (1572) and Scapula's well-known abridge- ment of it (1579) are both radical ; and as late as the seventeenth century this method was employed in the first Dictionary of the French Academy, which was designed in 1638 but not published till SCHOOLS 49 1694. That, however, was its last appearance. The preface to the Academy's second Dictionary (1700 and 1718), after comparing the two methods, says : ' The arrangement by roots is the most scientific, and the most instructive to the student ; but it is not suited to the impatience of the French people, and so the Academy has felt obliged to abandon it.' 1 The ordinary user of dictionaries to-day would be surprised at being called impatient for expecting the words to be put in alphabetical order. In mediaeval times there was one very real obstacle to the use of the alphabetical method, and that was the uncertainty of spelling. Both Papias and Balbi allude to it in their prefaces ; but it did not deter them from their enterprise. Even in the days of printing language takes a long time to crystallize down into accepted forms, correct and incorrect. You may see Dutchess with a t at Blenheim, well within the eighteenth century, and forgo has only recently decided to give up its e. In the days of manuscripts men spelt pretty much as they pleased, making very free even with their own names ; and uncritical copyists, caring only to reproduce the word, and not troubling about the exact orthography of their original, did nothing to check the ever-growing variety. Such licence was agreeable for the imaginative, but it made despair- ing work for the compilers of dictionaries. Some of their difficulties may be given as examples. In the early days of minuscule writing, when writing- 1 Cf. R. C. Christie, £tienne Dolet, ch. xi. 1669 £) 5 o THE AGE OF ERASMUS material was still scarce, to save space it was common to write the letter e with a reversed cedilla beneath it to denote the diphthongs -ae and -oe. In the Middle Ages the cedilla was commonly dropped, leaving the e plain ; and so mostly it remained until the sixteenth century revived the diphthong, or at least the two double letters. At all periods down to 1600, some hands are found in which it is impossible to distinguish between c and t ; and hence in mediaeval times, and even later, such forms as fatio, loto, pecieris, licterae are not infrequently found for facio, loco, petieris, litterae. An extreme example of the confusion which this variability must have caused is in the case of the fourteenth-century annalist, Nicholas Trivet, whose surname sometimes appears as Cerseth or Chereth. The doubling of consonants, too, was often a matter of doubt, and the Middle Ages, possibly again for reasons of space, used many words with single consonants instead of two — difncilimus, Salu- stius, consumare, comodum, opidum, fuise. The letter h was the source of infinite trouble. Some- times it was surprisingly omitted, as in actenus, irundo, Oratius, ortus — in the latter cases perhaps under Italian influence ; sometimes it appears un- expectedly, as in Therentius, Theutonia, Thurcae, Hysidorus, habundare, and even haspiratio ; or in abhominor, where it bolstered up the derivation from homo : or it might change its place from one consonant to another, as in calchographus, cartha. SCHOOLS 51 Papias found it a great trouble, and indeed was quite muddled with it, placing hyppocrita, hippo- manes among the h's, but hippopedes and several others under the i's, though without depriving them of initial h. In France, h between two short i's was considered to need support, and so we find michi, nichil, occurring quite regularly. The difficulty of i and y was met by the suppression of the latter ; so that though it sometimes appears unexpectedly, as in hystoria, it is only treated as i. Between f and ph there was much uncertainty ; phas, phanum, prophanus are well-known forms, or conversely Christofer, flenbothomari, Flegeton. B and p were often confused, as in babtizare, plasphemus ; and p made its way into such words as ampnis, dampnum, alumpnus. A triumph of absurd variation is achieved by Alexander Neckam, who begins a sentence ' Coquinarii quocunt '. With the increased learning of the Renaissance these varieties gradually disappear. The printers, too, rendered good service in promoting uniformity, each firm having its standard orthography for doubtful cases, as printers do to-day. The use of e for ae is abundant in the first books printed North of the Alps ; but it steadily diminishes, and by 1500 has almost vanished. In manuscripts, where it was easy to forget to add the cedilla, the plain e lasts much longer. There was also confusion in the reverse direction. Well into the sixteenth century the cedilla is often found wrongly added to words such as puer, equus, eruditus, epistola ; D 2 52 THE AGE OF ERASMUS in 1550 the Froben firm was still regularly printing aedo, aeditio ; and in the index to an edition of Aquinas, Venice, 1593, aenigma and Aegyptus, spelt in this way, are only to be found under e. Other forms of error persisted long. To the end of his life Erasmus usually wrote irito, oportunus ; in 1524 he could still use Oratius. The town of Boppard on the Rhine he styles indifferently Bobardia or Popardia : just as, much later, editors described the elder Camerarius of Bamberg as Bapenbergensis in 1583, as Pabepergensis in 1595. As late as 1540 a little book was printed in Paris to demonstrate that michi and nichil were incorrect. In such a state of flux we need not wonder that the mediaeval writers of dictionaries found the alphabetical arrangement not the way of simplifica- tion they had hoped, but rather to be full of pitfalls ; nor again that the men of the Renaissance thought the work of their predecessors so lamentably in- adequate. We shall do better to admire in both cases the brilliance and constancy which could achieve so much with such imperfect instruments. To complete our sketch of the books on which the scholars of the fifteenth century had to rely we may consider two more. The first is the great encyclopaedia of Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican friar (c. 1 190-1264). It was printed in 1472-6 by Mentelin at Strasburg, in six enormous volumes ; and no one can properly appreciate the magnitude of the work who has not tried to lift these volumes about. Vincent was not the first to attempt this SCHOOLS 53 encyclopaedic enterprise, for his work is based on that of another Frenchman, Helinand, who died in 1229. In his preface he states that his prior had urged him to reduce his Speculum to a manual ; being doubtless an old man, and appalled at these colossal fruits of his friar's industry. But this was too much for the proud author after all his labour. He did, however, consent to cut it up into portions. The Speculum naturale gives a description of the world in all its parts, animal and vegetable and mineral ; the Speculum doctrinale taught how to practise the arts and sciences ; the Speculum historiale embraced the world's history down to 1250 ; and the Speculum morale, which is perhaps not by Vincent, found room for the philosophies. But few libraries can have possessed this work in full. Our other book was much more compassable and more widely circulated. Its author was a certain Johannes Marchesinus, of whom so little is known that his date has been put both at 1300 and at 1466. Even the title of the book was uncertain. Marchesinus names it Mammotrectus or Mararae- tractus, which he explains as ' led by a pedagogue ' ; but a current form of the name was Mammothreptus, which was interpreted as ' brought up by one's grandmother '. The book consists of a commentary on the whole Bible, chapter by chapter ; and also upon the Legenda Sanctorum, upon various sermons and homilies, responses, antiphons, and hymns, with notes on the Hebrew months, ecclesiastical vest- ments, and other subjects likely to be useful to 54 THE AGE OF ERASMUS students in the Church, especial emphasis being laid on pronunciation and quantity. It was intended, Marchesinus tells us in his preface, for the use of the poor clergy, to aid them in writing sermons and in reading difficult Hebrew names ; and from the sympathy with which he enters into their troubles, it seems clear that he knew them from personal experience. From its scope the book might be expected to be as large as Vincent's Speculum, but in fact it can be printed in a quarto volume. It was not intended to compete with the great commentaries of Peter the Lombard, or Nicholas Lyra, or Hugh of St. Victor, which fill many folios. It was to be within reach of the poor parish priest, and so must not be costly. But the surprising part of the book is its triviality. With so little space available, one would have expected to find nothing admitted that was not important : but the fact is that it has nothing which is not elementary. There is nothing historical, nothing theological, only a few simple points of grammar and quantity. For example, in the story of Deborah, Judges iv, the commentary runs as follows : 2. Sisara : middle syllable short. 4. Debbora : middle syllable short. Prophetes masc, Prophetis fern. ; meaning, propheta. 10. Accersitis : last syllable but one long ; mean- ing, vocatis. 15. Perterreo, perterres ; meaning, in pauorem conuertere. Active. SCHOOLS 55 17. Cinei (the Kenites) : middle syllable long. 15. Desilio, desilis, desilii or desiliui : middle syllable short in trisyllables in the present ; meaning, de aliquo salire siue descendere festinanter. 21. clauus, masc, claui : meaning, acutum ferrum. malleus, masc, mallei : meaning, mar- tellus. tempus, neut. : meaning, pars capitis, for which some people say timpus. For Daniel vi, the story of Daniel in the lions' den, the commentary is even briefer : 6. surripuerunt : meaning, falso suggesserunt. Surripio, surripis, surrepsi (!) : meaning, latenter rapere, subtrahere, furari. 10. comperisset ; meaning, cognouisset. Com- perio, comperis, comperi : fourth con- jugation. 20. affatus : meaning, allocutus. From affor, affaris ; and governs the accusative. We must not exalt ourselves above the author. He is very humble. ' Let any imperfections in the book ', says his preface, ' be attributed to me : and if there is anything good, let it be thought to have come from God.' He gave them of his best, explain- ing away such as he could of the difficulties which had confronted him. But one can imagine the disgust of even a moderate scholar if, wishing to study the Bible more carefully, he could obtain access to nothing better than Mammotrectus, 56 THE AGE OE EKAS1YLU5 Though Erasmus has not much to tell us of his time at Deventer, a fuller account of the school may be found in the autobiography of John Butzbach (c. 1478-1526), who for the last nineteen years of his life was Prior of Laach. 1 Indeed, his narrative is so detailed and so illustrative of the age that it may well detain us here. He was the son of a weaver in the town of Miltenberg (hence Piemontanus) on the Maine, above Aschaffenburg. At the age of six he was put to school and already began to learn Latin ; one of his nightly exercises that he brought home with him being to get by heart a number of Latin words for vocabulary. After a few years he came into trouble with his master for laziness and truancy, and received a severe beating ; his mother intervened and got the master dismissed from his post, and Butzbach was removed from the school. An opportunity then offered for him to get a wider education. The son of a neighbour who had commenced scholar, returned home for a time, and offered to take Butzbach with him when he went off again to pursue his courses for his degree. The consent of his parents was obtained ; and the scholar having received a liberal contribution towards expenses, and Butzbach being equipped with new clothes, the pair set out together. The boy was now ten, and looked forward hopefully to the future ; but the scholar quickly showed himself in his true 1 Butzbach's manuscripts from Laach are now in the University Library at Bonn, but have never been printed. I have used a German translation by D. J. Becker, Regensburg, 1869. SCHOOLS 57 colours. He treated Butzbach as a fag, made him trudge behind carrying the larger share of their bundles, and when they came to an inn feasted royally himself off the money given to him for the boy, leaving him to the charity of the innkeepers. At the end of two months the money was spent, and they had found no place of settlement. Hence- forward Butzbach was set to beg, going from house to house in the villages they passed, asking for food ; and when this failed to produce enough, he was required to steal. The scholar treated him shame- fully and beat him often ; and as it was a well- known practice for fags, when begging, to eat up delicacies at once, instead of bringing them in, Butzbach was sometimes subjected to the regular test, being required to fill his mouth with water and then spit it out into a basin for his master to examine whether there were traces of fat. The scholar's aim was to find some school, having attached to it a Bursa or hostel, in which they could obtain quarters ; apparently he was not yet qualified for a university. They made their way to Bamberg, but there was no room for them in the Bursa. So on they went into Bohemia, where at the town of Kaaden the rector of the school was able to allot them a room — just a bare, unfurnished chamber, in which they were permitted to settle. Such teaching as Butzbach received was spasmodic and ineffectual, and after two years of this bondage he ran away. For the next five years he was in Bohemia in private service, longing for home, hating his durance among 58 THE AGE OF ERASMUS the heathen, as he called the Bohemians for follow- ing John Hus, but lacking courage to make his escape from masters who could send horsemen to scour the countryside for fugitive servants and string them up to trees when caught. However, at length the opportunity came, and after varying fortunes, Butzbach made his way home to Miltenberg, to find his father dead and his mother married again. For the substantial accuracy of Butzbach's narra- tive his character is sufficient warranty. He was a pious, honest man, and at the time when he wrote his autobiography at the request of his half-brother Philip, he was already a monk at Laach. But the picture of a young student's sufferings under an elder's cruelty can be paralleled with surprising closeness from the autobiography of Thomas Platter, mentioned above ; the wandering from one school to another, the maltreatment, the begging, the enforced stealing, all these are reproduced with just the difference of surroundings. Platter's account of his life at Breslau is worth quoting. ' I was ill three times in one winter, so that they were obliged to bring me into the hospital ; for the travelling scholars had a particular hospital and physicians for themselves. Care was taken of the patients, and they had good beds, only the vermin were so abundant that, like many others, I lay much rather upon the floor than in the beds. Through the winter the fags lay upon the floor in the school, but the Bacchants in small chambers, of which at St. Elizabeth's there were several hundreds. SCHOOLS 59 But in summer, when it was hot, we lay in the church- yard, collected together grass such as is spread in summer on Saturdays in the gentlemen's streets before the doors, and lay in it like pigs in the straw. When it rained, we ran into the school, and when there was thunder, we sang the whole night with the Subcantor, responses and other sacred music. Now and then after supper in summer we went into the beerhouses to beg for beer. The drunken Polish peasants would give us so much that I often could not find my way to the school again, though only a stone's throw from it.' Platter wrote his auto- biography at the age of 73, when his memories of his youth must have been growing dim ; but though on this account we must not press him in details, his main outlines are doubtless correct. On his return, Butzbach was apprenticed to Aschaffenburg, to learn the trade of tailoring ; and having mastered this, he procured for himself, in 1496, the position of a lay-brother in the Benedictine Abbey of Johannisberg in the Rheingau, opposite Bingen. His duties were manifold. Besides doing the tailoring of the community, he was expected to make himself generally useful : to carry water and fetch supplies, to look after guests, to attend the Abbot when he rode abroad (on one occasion he was thrown thus into the company of Abbot Tri- themius of Sponheim, whose work on the Ecclesiastical writers of his time he afterwards attempted to carry on), to help in the hay harvest, and in gathering the grapes. Before a year was out he grew tired of 60 THE AGE OF ERASMUS these humble duties, and bethought him anew of his father's wish that he should become a professed monk. He had omens too. One morning his father appeared to him as he was dressing, and smiled upon him. Another day he was sitting at his work and talking about his wish with an old monk who was sick and under his care. On the wall in front of his table he had fastened a piece of bread, to be a reminder of the host and of Christ's sufferings. Suddenly this fell to the ground. The old man started up from his place by the stove, and steadying his tottering limbs cried out aloud that this was a sign that the wish was granted. He had the reputa- tion among his fellows of being a prophet and had foretold the day of his own death. Butzbach accepted the omen, and obtained leave to go to school again. His choice was Deventer. One of the brethren wrote him an elegant letter to Hegius applying for admission ; and though, as he says, he answered no questions in his entrance examination (which appears to have been oral), on the strength of the letter he was admitted and placed in the seventh class, a young man of twenty amongst the little boys who were making a beginning at grammar. But he had no means of support except occasional jobs of tailor's work, and hunger drove him back to Johannisberg. There he might have continued, had not a chance meeting with his mother, when he had ridden over to Frankfort with the Abbot, given him a new spur. She could not bear to think of his remaining a Lollhard, that is a lay-brother, all his days; SCHOOLS 61 and pressing money privily into his hands, she be- sought the Abbot to let him return to Deventer. In August 1498 he was there again, was examined by Hegius, and was placed this time in the lowest class, the eighth, in company with a number of stolid louts, who had fled to school to escape being forced to serve as soldiers. There was reason in their fears. The Duke of Gueldres was at war with the Bishop of Utrecht. A hundred prisoners had been executed in the three days before Butzbach's return, and as he strode into Deventer to take up his books again, he may have seen their scarce-cold bodies swinging on gibbets against the summer sunset. The school- boy of to-day works in happier surroundings. Butzbach's career henceforward was fortunate. He was taken up by a good and pious woman, Gutta Kortenhorff, who without regular vows had devoted herself to a life of abstinence and self- sacrifice; taking special pleasure in helping young men who were preparing for the Franciscan or the reformed Benedictine Orders. For nine months Butzbach lived in her house, doubtless out of gratitude rendering such service as he could to his kind patroness. From the eighth class he passed direct into the sixth, and at Easter 1499 he was promoted into the fifth. This entitled him to admission to the Domus Pauperum maintained by the Brethren of the Common Life for boys who were intending to become monks ; and so he transferred himself thither for the remainder of his course. But he suffered much from illness, and five several 62 THE AGE OF ERASMUS times made up his mind to give up and return home — once indeed this was only averted by a swelling of his feet, which for a prolonged period made it impossible for him to walk. After six months in the fifth, and a year in the fourth class, he was moved up into the third, thus traversing in little over two years what had occupied Erasmus for something like nine. Butzbach was by temperament inclined to glorify the past ; in the present he himself had a share, and therefore in his humility he thought little of it. In consequence we must not take him too literally in his account of the condition of the school ; but it is too interesting to pass over. ' In the old days ', he says, ' Deventer was a nursery for the Reformed Orders; they drew better boys, more suited to religion, out of the fifth class, than they do now out of the second or first, although now much better authors are read there. Formerly there was nothing but the Parables of Alan (of Lille, fl. 1200), the moral distichs of Cato, Aesop's Fables, and a few others, whom the moderns despise ; but the boys worked hard, and made their own way over diffi- culties. Now when even in small schools the choicest authors are read, ancient and modern, prose and poetry, there is not the same profit ; for virtue and industry are declining. With the decay of that school, religion also is decaying, especially in our Order, which drew so many good men from there. And yet it is not a hundred years since our reformation.' He does not indicate how far back he was turning SCHOOLS 63 his regretful gaze ; whether to the early years of the fifteenth century when Nicholas of Cues was a scholar at Deventer, or to the more recent times of Erasmus, who was about three school-generations ahead of him. But of the books used there in the last quarter of the fifteenth century we can form a clear notion from the productions of the Deventer printers, Richard Paffraet and Jacobus of Breda. School-books then as now were profitable undertakings, if printed cheap enough for the needy student ; and Paffraet, with Hegius living in his house, must have had plenty of opportunities for anticipating the school's requirements. Between 1477 and 1499 he printed Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's De Senedute and De Amicitia, Horace's Ars Poetica, the Axiochus in Agricola's translation, Cyprian's Epistles, Pru- dentius' poems, Juvencus' Historia Euangelica, and the Legenda Aurea : also the grammar of Alexander with the commentary of Synthius and Hegius, Agostino Dato's Ars scribendi epistolas, Aesop's Fables, and the Dialogus Creaturarum, the latter two being moralized in a way which must surely have pleased Butzbach. Jacobus of Breda, who began printing at Deventer in i486, produced Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's De Senedute and De Officiis, Boethius' De consolatione fthilosophiae and De disciplina scholarium, Aesop, a poem by Baptista Mantuanus, the 'Christian Virgil', Alan of Lille's Parabolae, Alexander, two grammatical treatises by Synthius and the Efiistola mythologica of Bartholo- mew of Cologne. 64 THE AGE OF ERASMUS This last, as being the work of a master in the school, deserves attention ; and also for its intrinsic interest. As its title implies, it is cast in the form of a letter, addressed to a friend Pancratius ; and it is dated from Deventer 10 July 1489 — nine years before Butzbach entered the school. It opens with the customary apologies, and after some ordinary topics the writer, Bartholomew, says that he is sending back some books borrowed from Pancratius, including a Sidonius which he has had on loan for three years. At this point there is a transformation. Sidonius is personified and becomes the centre of a series of semi-comic incidents, which afford an opportunity for introducing various words for the common objects of everyday life ; and a glossary explains many of these with precision. There is a long and vivid account of the waking of Sidonius from his three years' slumber. The door has to be broken open, and Sidonius is found lying to all appearances dead. A feather burnt under his nose produces slight signs of life ; and when a good beating with the bar of the door is threatened, he at length rouses himself. Servants come in, and their different duties are described. They fall to quarrelling and become uproarious ; and in the scuffle Sidonius is hurt. A lotion is prepared for his bruises, and he is offered diet suitable for an invalid : boiled sturgeon, washed down with wine or beer, the latter being from Bremen or Hamburg. Afterwards the room is cleared up, and thus an opportunity is given to describe it. Then a table is SCHOOLS 65 spread for the rest of the party, and the various requisites are specified — tablecloth and napkins, pewter plates, earthenware mugs, a salt-cellar and two brass stands for the dishes. Bread is put round to each place, chairs are brought up with cushions ; and jugs of wine and beer placed in the centre of the table. Finally a basin is brought with ewer and towel for the guests to wash their hands, and as one o'clock strikes, dinner appears, and all sit down together, in- cluding the servants. After the meal a dice-box and board are produced ; but one of the guests demurs, and it is put aside. In the conversation that ensues it is arranged that Sidonius shall go back to his master next morning after breakfast. The servant who is to accompany him asks that they may go in a carriage ; but this is overruled, because of a recent accident in which one had been upset, and it is determined that a Spanish palfrey of easy paces shall be provided for Sidonius. At six supper is served ; and then the curtain falls, the letter re- lapsing into normal matters — inquiries for a Euclid, regrets at being unable to send to Pancratius Hyginus and the Astronomica of Manilius. It is clear that the object of the book, which is of no great length, was to give boys correct Latin words for the material objects of their daily life : something like Bekker's Gallus and Charicles on a small scale. In carrying out this idea Bartholomew of Cologne has provided us with a sketch of the world that he knew. E Ill MONASTERIES Erasmus was not fitted for the monastic life. This is not to say that he was a bad man. Few men outside the ranks of the holy have worked harder or made greater sacrifices to do God service. But his was a free spirit. His work could only be done in his own way ; and to live according to another's rule fretted him beyond endurance. His experience in the matter was not fortunate. In 1483 his mother died of plague at Deventer, whither she had accom- panied him. His father recalled him next year to Gouda, but died soon afterwards ; and his guardians then sent him with his elder brother to a school kept by the Brethren of the Common Life at Her- togenbosch — doubtless to a Domus Pauperum for intending monks, such as Butzbach entered at Deventer ; for in this connexion Erasmus describes the schools of the Brethren as seminaries for the regular orders. After two years they returned to Gouda, and Erasmus begged to be sent to a university; but no means were forthcoming, and the guardian prevailed upon the elder brother Peter to enter the monastery of Sion, near Delft. Erasmus held out for some time ; but he was without resources and the influences at work upon him were strong. One day he fell in with a school-friend, Cornelius of Woerden, MONASTERIES 67 who had recently entered the house of Augustinian canons at Steyn, near Gouda. In his loneliness any friend was welcome. He paid visits to Steyn and saw that the life there offered leisure and even possibilities of study ; Cornelius, too, seemed inclined to be a ready companion in literary pursuits. Urged by his guardian, invited by his friend, he gave way at length to the double pressure and entered Steyn. After a novitiate of a year, during which life was made easy to him, he took his canonical vows ; and soon began to repent of the step he had made. For about seven years he lived in what seemed to him a prison. There were, no doubt, good men amongst his fellow-canons. In all his diatribes against monasticism he was ready to admit that the Orders contained plenty of God-fearing souls, doing their duty honestly ; and the evidence shows clearly enough that this was correct. It is, however, equally true that there were mediocrities among them, and even worse ; men with low standards and no ideals, who brought their fellows to shame. Vows in those days were indissoluble, except in rare cases ; as a rule it was only by flight and disappearance for ever that a man could escape social disgrace and the penalties threatened by the spiritual arm to a renegade monk. To-day, when orders can be laid down at the holder's will, the Church of England contains priests of whom it cannot get rid. The good, even when they rule, do not always lead ; nor are they always learned. Erasmus found the atmosphere of Steyn hopelessly distasteful. It e 2 68 THE AGE OF ERASMUS was not that he was prevented from study. His compositions of this period show a wide acquaintance with the classics and the Fathers ; and his style, though it had not yet attained to the ease and lucidity of his later years, has much of the elegance beyond which his contemporaries never advanced. The fact, too, that he left Steyn to become Latin Secretary to a powerful bishop implies that he must have had many opportunities for study and have made good use of them. But from what he says it is clear that the tone of the place was set by the mediocrities. We need not suppose that vice was rampant among them, to shock the young and enthusiastic scholar. There was quite enough to daunt him in the prospect of a life spent among the narrow-minded. Sinners who feel waves of repentance may be better house- mates than those who have worldly credit enough to make them self-satisfied. Fortunately all houses of religion were not alike, any more than colleges are alike to-day. Butzbach's lot was very different ; and it is a pleasant contrast to turn to his experiences at Laach, an important Benedictine abbey some miles west of Andernach. In the autumn of 1500, when he had been two years at Deventer, there appeared one day in the school the Steward of the Abbey of Niederwerth, an island in the Rhine below Coblenz. What the business was which had brought him from his own monastery, is not stated ; but he had also been asked to do some recruiting for the Benedictines at Laach. The Abbot there was nephew of the Prior at Niederwerth, MONASTERIES 69 and had taken this opportunity to extend his quest further afield. The Steward brought with him letters from the Abbot to the Rector of Deventer, now Ostendorp, and also to the Brethren of the Common Life, asking for some good and well-educated young men. The Rector's first appeal evoked no response ; so the Steward went on about his business. After three weeks he returned, having visited other schools, but bringing no one with him. Once more Ostendorp addressed the third and fourth classes in impressive words. But all seemed in vain. The students had paid their school fees for the half-year, and were ashamed to ask for them back from the Rector and other teachers — into whose pockets they appear to have gone direct. Their money paid for board and lodging would have been sacrificed also. It happened, too, to be exceptionally cold — not the weather in which any one would lightly set out on a journey. We must remember that the calendar had not yet been rectified, and that they were about ten days nearer to midwinter than their dates show. On occasions the whole school came together to hear the Rector — it was at such times, Erasmus tells us, that he heard Hegius. At one of these gather- ings during the Steward's second visit Butzbach was sitting next to two friends from his own part of the world, Peter of Spires and Paul of Kitzingen. They were above him in the school, having passed their entrance examination before the Rector with such credit that they were placed at once in the third class — a rare distinction — and Paul indeed at the end 70 THE AGE OF ERASMUS of his first half-year had come out top and passed into the second. The friends talked together of the life of the cloister, of the happiness of study amid the practice of holiness and in the presence of God. At the end Peter and Butzbach sought out the Steward and gave him their names : Paul, the brilliant leader of the trio, remained behind in the world, and became a professor at Cologne. Butzbach said farewell to the masters who had taught him, and to his various benefactors in the town, all of whom applauded his decision. On St. Barbara's Day, 4 Dec. 1500, the party set out, and were accompanied out of the town by students who swarmed about them like bees ; Butzbach, when they at length took leave, urging them to follow his example. Two days later they were at Emmerich, and after crossing the Rhine on the ice, so bitter was the frost, they were overtaken by the night at a convent and sought shelter. It proved to be a house of Brigittines, with separate orders of men and women. One of the party, a priest from Deventer, had a kinswoman among the nuns, but was not allowed to see her. On 8 December the feast of the Conception of the Virgin, as they passed through a village, the two priests asked leave to say a mass for themselves in the parish church ; and only with difficulty obtained it from the pfarrer in charge, so great was the jealousy between seculars and regulars. At night they found hospitality in a Benedictine house at Neuss, where Butzbach notes the peculiarity — which he discusses at length but MONASTERIES 71 is quite unable to explain — that no one could be accepted as a monk with the name of Peter. Next day the party was obliged to divide. Peter of Spires, who from the first had been ailing and easily tired, was suffering acute pain from a sore on his finger ; so Butzbach remained behind with him in a village, while the others went on to Cologne. After twenty-four hours the sufferer was no better ; and as sleep for either of them seemed impossible, they arose at midnight, hired a cart, and journeying under the stars, arrived at Cologne just as the gates were being opened. They rejoined their friends, and the whole party was entertained in the house of a rich widow, whose son, recently dead, had been a monk at Niederwerth. The Steward had business at Cologne ; so for two days the young men were free to wander about the town, looking into the churches and worried by the schoolboy tricks of the university students. Three days journeying brought them late at night and dead tired to Niederwerth. The aged Prior — he had been sixty years in the monastery — on learning their destination showed them great courtesy and kindness ; and when they had supped, insisted, despite all their protests, on washing their feet himself. Next day he showed them over the monastery, took them into the rooms where the brethren were at work, and explained what each of them had to do : ' just as though we were his equals,' says Butz- bach, on whom his modesty and friendliness made a deep impression. Indeed, his conversation greatly 72 THE AGE OF ERASMUS strengthened them in their determination to enter the religious life ; although he did not conceal from them the temptations which they might expect, from the Devil. On 17 December he gave them leave to proceed, and sent one of the monastery servants and a lay- brother to escort them. Their way lay through Coblenz ; and Peter as a weaker vessel was sent on, to go slowly ahead with the lay-brother, whilst the servant and Butzbach stopped in the town to execute some commissions. But they had under-estimated Peter's weakness. After a midday meal the second pair set out briskly, in the comfortable reflection that the others were already part-way to Laach. To their disgust as they crossed the bridge over the Moselle, they found Peter and his companion lolling outside an inn, unable to talk properly or to stand upright. The Prior's warning against the Devil had been speedily justified. Peter had been tempted to spend his last day of freedom in a carouse, and every penny he possessed had gone over a fine dinner and costly wines. To Butzbach this was the more serious, because he had given his purse to Peter to carry, and all that had gone too. Johannisberg still had strong ties for him. He had found peace there and made friends, and it was near his home. Many times, at silent moments as he journeyed along from Deventer, it had come into his head to wonder whether Laach too could give him peace, whether he could settle so far off. Now, if the old ties should be too strong MONASTERIES 73 to resist, thanks to Peter, he would have to set out on his way penniless. Sharp words brought the offenders to some measure of their senses ; but it was a dismal party that splashed along the muddy roads that December afternoon. Evening brought them to Safng, and hospitable reception in the house of George von Leyen, brother of the Prior of Niederwerth and father of the Abbot to whom they were going; and the parents' praises of their son's goodness and kindness were comforting to hear. Ten miles next morning brought them to Laach ; and when they came over the hill, and saw the great abbey with its towers and dome beside the lake, which even in winter could smile amid its woods, Butzbach felt that in all his travels he had seen no sight more lovely. Their guide led them straight into the church, and as Butzbach's eye glanced along the plain Romanesque columns, past the gorgeous tomb of the founder, to the dim splendours of the choir, the words of the familiar Psalm rose to his lips : ' Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi ; hie habitabo, quoniam elegi earn.' Peace had come to him at once, and he received it. After a generous meal in the refectory they were brought in to the tall, dignified Abbot ; and while they stood before him answering his questions, they felt that he had not been praised more highly than was his due. Abbot and Prior took them round the monastery ; the latter a busy little man in whom they could hardly recognize so exalted a dignitary. 74 THE AGE OF ERASMUS At the back they found the brethren busy with the week's washing. All crowded round them, full of questions and congratulations and pleasant laughter. For three days they were lodged in the guest- chambers, and then the Prior asked them whether they stood firm in their wish to enter the Order. On their assent he expounded to them the severities of the life, the self-abnegation that would be required of them, bidding them consider whether they could face it ; at the same time instructing them in all the customs and practices of the house. The dress was put upon them, they were led into the convent and cells allotted to them ; and told that till St. Benedict's Day (21 March) they would be on probation. Before the day came Peter's spirit faltered, and he went. But his weakness was not for long. He repented and found his peace in a Cistercian house near Worms ; and Butzbach's sympathy went with him, back to the Upper Germany which both loved. The time of probation was hard to Butzbach ; not because of the life, which the good Prior tempered to his tenderness, but through the temptations of the Devil, who seemed ever present with him. He was specially tormented with the thought of Johannis- berg, and the feeling that he had deserted it. But the wise heads in charge of him gave comfort and stablishment ; and he persevered. On the Founder's Day, 1501, he entered upon the novitiate, which was followed a year later by his profession ; and in 1503 he was sent to Treves and ordained priest. In the course of his numerous writings Butzbach MONASTERIES 75 gives sketches of many of the inmates of Laach. The senior brother at the time of his arrival was Jacob of Breden in Westphalia, a man of strong character and force of will. As a boy, when at school at Cleves, he was laughed at for his provincial accent ; and therefore determined henceforward to speak nothing but Latin, with the result that he acquired a complete mastery of it. He had at first joined the Brethren of the Common Life at Zwolle, then became a Benedictine in St. Martin's at Cologne, and came to Laach to introduce the Bursfeld reforms. So tender-hearted was he that he would not kill even the insects which worried him, but would catch them and throw them out of window. John of Andernach is mentioned as having appeared to the brethren after his death ; and he and Godfrey of Cologne are praised for their skill in astronomy. We hear of various activities among the monks. One is good at writing, another at dictating and correcting, another has taste in painting flowers and illuminating. Henry of Coblenz combined the offices of precentor, master of the robes, gardener, glazier and barber ; and also unofficial counsellor to the young, who frequently turned to him for sympathy. Antony of St. Hubert, besides the care of the refectory, was bee-master and hive-maker ; and a great preacher in German, though he had come to Laach knowing only his native French. At the end of the list came the lay-brothers and the pensioners (donati), one of whom was nearly 100. Shortly after his ordination Butzbach was 76 THE AGE OF ERASMUS appointed master of the novices, to superintend their education — which included learning the Psalter by heart — until the time of their profession. He protested his unfitness, but the Abbot held him to it neverthe- less. The standard of his pupils was low : many of them, though they came as Bachelors and Masters of Arts from the universities, he judged not so good as boys in the sixth form at Deventer. But he found lecturing in Latin difficult ; and so to make up his deficiencies he set himself to read all the Latin classics and Fathers that he could find. One day two young kinsmen of the Abbot were at dinner. They had been at Deventer and then at Paris, and were full of their studies. Butzbach as novice-master represented the humanities, and was called upon for a poem. Readiness was not his strong point ; as a preacher he never could overcome his nervousness. He asked leave to retire to his cell, and there in solitude wrung out some verses of compliment ; which found such favour that, to his regret, he was often called upon again. In 1507, when only thirty, he was made Prior, and thus became responsible for much of the management of the abbey. In spite of this he kept up his studies ; but only at the cost of great physical efforts, robbing himself of sleep and working through long hours of the night. To this period, 1507-9, belongs his most considerable undertaking, an Auctarium de scriptori- bus ecclesiasticis, which had its origin in his admira- tion for Trithemius. In his Johannisberg days, as we have seen, he had met the great historian-abbot, MONASTERIES 77 though in a humble capacity. His own Abbot shared with Trithemius the duty of making the triennial visitations of the Benedictine houses in that district ; and Butzbach, as the Abbot's servant, often rode with them. Trithemius noticed the young lay-brother who seemed so interested in study, and occasionally gave him a word of encouragement. Indeed it was the story of Trithemius' life — repeated with wonder by many lips — which had spurred Butzbach on to go to Deventer : how as a boy he had worked with his stepfather in the mill at Trittenheim, and at twenty- one was still labouring with his hands . One day he was carting material for a new pilgrimage-church on the hill, when the call came to him. He returned home, put up his horse and wagon, and without a word to any one walked off to Niederwesel to begin learning grammar amongst the little boys ; and yet in a short time he had risen to be Abbot, and had won a wide reputation. At Laach Butzbach for the first time set eyes on Trithemius' works. One of these was a Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis , printed by John Amorbach at Basle in 1494 — a sort of theological Who's Who, giving the names of authors ancient and modern with lists of their writings. Butzbach continued it with an Auctarium, into which he hooked almost every writer he could find, whether ecclesiastical or not. It is a large book, still remaining in manuscript at Bonn, as it was written out for him by two very inefficient novices. The date of its composition is abundantly indicated by the notes with which he 78 THE AGE OF ERASMUS terminates his notices of living authors : ' Viuit adhuc anno quo hec scribimus 158 ' or 159. 1 Such a compilation, in so far as it deals with contemporary writers, might have had considerable value ; but unfortunately, like some of Trithemius' work, it is an uncritical performance and contains ridiculous blunders, which impair the credit of its statements when they cannot be checked. Industry and devotion to learning are not the sole qualifications for a scholar. But it was not altogether a happy time for Butzbach, even though he was honoured by corre- spondence with Trithemius. There were few among the monks who actually sympathized with his studies ; and from a certain section they brought him actual persecution. When, as Prior, he em- phasized before the brethren the section in Benedict's rule which enjoins to study, they mocked at him. ' No learning, no doubts ' said one. ' Much learning doth make thee mad ' said another. ' Knowledge puffeth up ' said a third ; and heeded not his gentle reply, ' but love edifieth '. They protested against his allowing the novices to read Latin poetry. They appealed to the Visitor and got the supplies of money for the library cut off ; even what he earned himself by saying masses for the dead was no longer allowed to be appropriated to him for the purchase of books. Finally when the visitation came round in 1509, they delated him for spending too much time on 1 = 1509. By a reverse process Bruno Amorbach writes 10507 for 1507. MONASTERIES 79 writing, to the neglect of the business of the monas- tery. But here they overreached themselves. The Visitors called for his books, opened them and saw that they were good — possibly they found their own names among the ecclesiastical writers. The Prior was acquitted, and the mouths of his enemies were stopped. One cause of dissension in monasteries at this period was the existence of an unreformed element among the monks ; though in Butzbach's time it had probably disappeared at Laach. Ever since the Oriental practice of monasticism spread into the West, Christendom has seen a continual series of endeavours towards better and purer ideals of human life. Of all the monastic orders the Benedictine (520) was the oldest and the most widely spread. But time had relaxed the strictness of its observance ; and indeed some of the younger orders, such as the Cluniac (910) and the Cistercian (1098), had their origins in efforts after a more godly life than what was then offered under the Benedictine rule, the strictness of which they sought to restore. In the fifteenth century reform of the monasteries was once more in the air. 1 In 1422 a chapter of the Benedictine houses in the provinces of Treves and Cologne met at Treves to discuss the question, which had been raised again at the Council of Constance, and to consider various schemes. The 1 At this point and again later about Chezal-Benoit I have made much use of Dom Berliere's Melanges d'histoire benedictine, 3 e serie, 1901. 80 THE AGE OF ERASMUS Abbot of St. Matthias' at Treves, John Rode, learning of the stricter code practised in St. James' at Liege since the thirteenth century, introduced it into his house ; borrowing four monks from St. James' to help him in the process. A few years later John Dederoth of Minden, Abbot of Bursfeld near Gottin- gen, after examining the new practice at Treves, decided to follow Rode's example, and carried off four brethren from St. Matthias' to Bursfeld. His influence led a number of neighbouring Benedictine houses to adopt the new rule ; and very soon a Bursfeld Union or Congregation was formed of monasteries which had embraced what Butzbach calls ' our reformation ', with annual chapters and triennial visitations. By the end of the fifteenth century there were more than a hundred constituents of the Congregation. The usual method of introducing the new practice was, as Rode and Dederoth had done, to borrow a number of monks from a house already reformed, who either settled in the new house or returned home when their work was done. As may be supposed, the reforms were not everywhere welcomed. A zealous Abbot or Prior returning with his band of foreigners was often met by opposition and even forcible resistance. When Jacob of Breden, Butzbach's ' senior brother ', came in 1471 with seven others from St. Martin's at Cologne to renew a right spirit in Laach, a number of the older monks resented it, especially when he was made Prior for the purpose* One cannot but sympathize with them . J acob was only MONASTERIES 81 : thirty-two, and it is a delicate matter setting one's elders in the right way. At length the seniors became exasperated and took to violence. Not content with belabouring him in his cell, they attacked him one night with swords, and he only escaped by leaping out of the dormitory window. The rest of his com- pany were ejected, and for three years found shelter in St. Matthias' at Treves, the parent house of the new rule; and it was not till 1474 that the Archbishop, (with the Pope's permission and the co-operation '.of the civil official of the district, forced his way into Laach and turned out the recalcitrants. \ But this movement for reform was not confined ko Germany nor to the Benedictines. In the begin- ning of the fifteenth century the house of Augustinian canons at Windesheim near Zwolle instituted for 'itself a new and stricter set of statutes, and soon gathered round it nearly a hundred houses of both 'sexes, forming the Windesheim Congregation : besides which, other monasteries bound themselves into smaller bodies to observe the new statutes. Thus, for instance, Erasmus' convent at Steyn was a member ! of the Chapter of Sion, with only a few others ; two f>f which were St. Mary's at Sion, near Delft, to which his brother Peter belonged, and St. Michael's at Hem, near Schoonhoven. The fame of Windesheim spread into France. In two successive years — 1496, 7 — parties were invited thence to reform French Benedictine houses. The first, headed by John Mauburn of Brussels, was brought in by the Abbot of St. Severinus' at Chateau-Landon nearFontainebleau. 1669 tt 82 THE AGE OF ERASMUS It was completely successful and Chateau-Lan- don was made the head of a new Chapter : after which Mauburn proceeded to reform the Abbey of Livry, a few miles to the north-east of Paris. The second mission, though promoted by influential men in Paris, had less result. St. Victor's, the Benedictine Abbey which the Bishop of Paris wished to reform, was one of the most important in his diocese ; and its inmates were averse from the proposed changes. For nine months the mission from Windesheim sat in Paris, expounding, demonstrating, hoping to per- suade. One of the party, Cornelius Gerard of Gouda, an intimate friend of Erasmus' youth, enjoyed himself greatly among the manuscripts in the abbey library ; but that was all. In August 1498 they went home, leaving St. Victor's as they had found it. The strenuous endeavours made at this time towards monastic reform from within may be illus- trated from the lives of Guy Jouveneaux (Juuenalis) and the brothers Fernand. Jouveneaux was a scholar of eminence and professor in the University of Paris. Charles Fernand was a native of Bruges, who, in spite of defective eyesight, which made it necessary for him regularly to employ a reader, had studied in Italy, had been Rector of Paris University, 1485-6, and had attained to considerable skill in both classical learning and music. John Fernand, the younger brother, also excelled in both these branches of study. Symphorien Champier, the Lyons physician, speaks of him with Jouveneaux as his teacher in MONASTERIES 83 Paris. Charles vm made him chief musician of the royal chapel. In 1479 Peter du Mas became Abbot of the Benedictine house at Chezal Benoit, which lay in the forests, ten miles to the South of Bourges. His first care was to restore the buildings, which had been partially destroyed during the English wars earlier in the century. When that was achieved, he set himself to reform the conditions of religious obser- vance, and for that purpose invited a band of monks from Cluny. His policy was continued by his successor, Martin Fumeus, 1492-1500, and a bull was obtained from Alexander vi in 1494 permitting the foundation of a Congregatio Casalina, which was joined by a large number of Benedictine houses in the neighbourhood : St. Sulpice, St. Laurence and St. Menulphus at Bourges, St. Vincent at Le Mans, St. Martin at Seez, St. Mary's at Nevers, and even by more distant foundations, St. Peter's at Lyons and the great Abbey of St. Germain des Pres at Paris. One point of the new practice, that Abbots should be elected for only three years at a time, struck at the prevailing abuse by which members of powerful families, non-resident and often children, were intruded into rich benefices, to the great detriment of their charges. 1 Consideration was also had of the rule adopted at St. Justina's at Padua, 1 Thus the family of d'llliers at this time almost monopolized the see of Chartres ; members of it holding the bishopric con- secutively for fifty years, the deanery for a hundred, the arch- deaconry and the rich abbey of Bona Vallis also for fifty. F 2 84 THE AGE OF ERASMUS the centre of reform in Northern Italy; and thus it was not till 1516 that the new ordinances were finally sanctioned by Leo x. About 1490, Jouveneaux, fired with enthusiasm by the success of du Mas' reforms at Chezal Benoit, determined to quit his professor's chair at Paris and take upon him the vows and the life of a monk under du Mas' rule ; and subsequently he was the means of bringing into the Congregation the Abbey of St. Sulpice at Bourges, being invited thither by John Labat, the Abbot, to introduce the new rule, and himself succeeding to the abbacy for a triennial period. A year or two after his retirement from the world, he was followed to Chezal Benoit by Charles Fernand, who subsequently went on to St. Vincent's at Le Mans. John Fernand also ended his days at St. Sulpice in Bourges. Charles Fernand is a personality who deserves more attention than he has received. Whilst he was in the world he enjoyed considerable esteem amongst the learned. He was a friend of Gaguin, and pub- lished a commentary on Gaguin's poem on the Immaculate Conception ; he also dedicated to Gaguin a small volume of Familiar Letters. But his most important literary work was done in the retirement of his cell : a volume of Monastic Conversations, composed at sundry times, and published in 1516 ; a treatise on Tranquillity (1512), in which he gives an account of the motives which led him to take the monastic habit ; and a Mirror of the Monastic Life (15 15), dwelling at length on the ideals that should MONASTERIES 85 be held before the eyes of novices and animate their lives when they were professed. Unfortunately his style is so excessively elegant, with wide intervals between words closely connected in sense, that he is difficult to read; and hence, perhaps, in some measure the neglect which has been meted out to him. Of his four Monastic Conversations the first and the last are concerned with the question whether monks should be allowed to read the books of the Gentiles, that is to say, the classics. He handles his theme sensibly and liberally. Piety, of course, is to come before eloquence, and there is to be choice of books. Anything of loose tendency is to be for- bidden, but he would encourage the reading of Cicero, Seneca, and Aristotle's Ethics. The last was only accessible to himself, he says regretfully, in Latin, because he knew no Greek — a loss which he greatly deplores, desiring to read the Greek Fathers. The third conversation is about the Benedictine rule, directed to the lawless monks who contended that they were only bound by the customs of the particular monastery they had entered, and not by the general ordinances of their founder. He combats at length, the contention that the world has grown old, and that latter-day men cannot be expected to undergo the rigorous fasts and penances achieved by St. Antony and St. Benedict. He is quite alive to the weakness of the age, to the need for improve- ment in the monasteries ; and the word Reformer is applied with praise to the leaders of the movement. 86 THE AGE OF ERASMUS This was before the days of Luther, though only just before. Incidentally, an argument is reported between a Christian and an agnostic. After their diverse opinions have been rehearsed, the Christian con- cludes with what is meant to be a crushing reply — certainly it silences his opponent : ' On your own theory you don't know what will happen after death. On mine you will prosper, if you believe ; if not, you will go to hell. Therefore safety lies in believing mine.' There are one or two glimpses of the life of the monks. At the end of one conversation, the other brother hears the bell ringing for prayers and runs off to chapel ; Fernand, being old and lame, will be forgiven if he is a little late, and not fined of his dinner. In other ways consideration was shown to him, and he was often sent to dine in the infirmary, not being expected with his toothless jaws to munch the dry crusts set before the rest of the house. This, it seems, was a custom which had been learnt from St. Justina's at Padua, to put out the stale crusts first, before the new bread, to break appetite upon : just as in the old Quaker schools a hundred years ago, children were set down to suet-pudding, and then broth, before the joint appeared ; the order being, 'No ball, no broth; no broth, no beef. We are in a position to view from the inside another Benedictine house at this period, that of Ottobeuren, near Memmingen, which lies about mid- way between Augsburg and the east end of the Lake MONASTERIES 87 of Constance. The source of our information is the correspondence of one of the brothers, Nicholas Ellenbog (or Cubitus) ; 890 letters copied out in his own hand, and only 80 of these printed. It is not so continuous a narrative as Butzbach's, but the picture that it gives is rather more pleasing. Nicholas' father was Ulrich Ellenbog, a physician of Memmingen, who graduated as Doctor of Medicine from Pavia in 1459, and became first Reader in Medicine at Ingolstadt. The letters introduce us to most of his children. One son, Onofrius, went for a soldier, became attached to Maximilian's train, and received a knighthood ; another, Ulrich, became M.D. at Siena, but died immediately afterwards ; another, John, became a parish priest. Of the daughters three remained in the world ; one, Elizabeth, married ; another, Cunigunde, died of plague caught in nursing some nuns. The fourth daughter, Barbara, at the age of nine entered the convent of Heppach, and lived there forty-one years, rising to be Prioress and then Abbess. We shall hear of her again. Nicholas Ellenbog, 1480 or 1481-1543, was the third son. After five years at Heidelberg, 1497-1502, in which he met Wimpfeling and was fellow-student, though a year senior, to Oecolampadius, he went off to Cracow, the Polish university, which was then so flourishing as to attract students from the west. Schurer, for example, the Strasburg printer, was M.A. of Cracow in 1494 ; and some idea of the con- dition of learning there may be gained from a book- seller's letter to Aldus from Cracow, December 1505, 88 THE AGE OF ERASMUS ordering ioo copies of Constantine Lascaris' Greek grammar. For some months Ellenbog heard lectures there on astronomy, which remained a favourite subject with him throughout his life. Then an impulse came to him to follow his father's footsteps in medicine, and at the advice of friends he went back across half Europe to Montpellier, which from its earliest days had been famous for its medical faculty. In the long vacation of 1502 he spent two months with a friend in the chateau of a nobleman among the Gascon hills, and on their return journey they stayed for a fortnight in a house of Dominican nuns. The sisters were strict in their observances, and gave a good pattern of the unworldly life, which attracted Ellenbog strongly. In 1503 he went home for the long vacation to Memmingen. On the way he was taken by the plague, and with difficulty dragged himself in to Ravensburg. For three months he lay ill, and death came very close. As its un- earthly glow irradiated the world around him, revers- ing its light and shade, the visions of the nunnery recurred. He vowed that if his life were still his to give, it should be given to God's service ; and on recovering he entered Ottobeuren. In his noviciate year he was under the guidance of a kind and sympathetic novice-master, who allowed him to study quietly in his cell to his heart's content ; and during this period he composed what he calls an epitome or breviary of Plato. Its precise character he does not specify, but its second title suggests that it may have been a collection of extracts from MONASTERIES 89 Plato : not from the Greek, for he had little acquain- tance with that yet, but presumably from such of Plato's works as had been translated into Latin. On Ascension Day, 1504, which appears from other indications to mean 15 August, he made his profession, and in September 1505 he went to Augsburg to be ordained as sub-deacon. Writing to a friend to give such news as he had gathered on this outing, he tells a story to convict himself of hasty judgement. During the ordination service he noticed that one of the candidates, a bold-eyed fellow who had been at several universities, and had been Rector at Siena, let his gaze wander over the ladies who had come to see the ceremony, instead of keeping it fixed on the altar. Ellenbog censured him in his mind, but later he noticed that as the man kneeled before the bishop with folded hands to receive unction, his eyes were filled with tears of repentance — others perhaps would have called it merely emotion. On his way back to Ottobeuren, Ellenbog arrived at a village, where he had counted on a night's rest, only to find it crowded with a wedding-party ; the followers of the bridegroom, who were escorting him to the marriage on the morrow, a Sunday. It was with great difficulty that he found shelter, in the house of a cobbler, who let him sleep with his family in the straw ; but it was so uncomfortable that before dawn he crept out and started on his way under the moon. In the half light he missed the road and found himself at the bride's castle ; where he learnt that her sister was just dead and the wedding 90 THE AGE OF ERASMUS postponed. As he passed in that evening through the abbey-gate, there was thankfulness in his heart that he was back out of the world and its petty disappointments . On Low Sunday, 1506, he was ordained priest at Ottobeuren, and celebrated his first mass. Some of his letters are to friends inviting them to be present, and adjuring them to come empty-handed, without the customary gifts. In these early years there was ample leisure for study. In 1505 he began Greek, and in 1508 Hebrew. He speaks of reading Aeneas Sylvius, Pico della Mirandola, Cyprian, Diogenes Laertius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Dionysius the Areopagite. He went on with his astronomy, and cast horoscopes for his friends. Binding books was one of his occupations ; and in 1509, when a press was set up in the monastery, he lent a hand in the printing. He was very fortunate in his abbot, Leonard Widemann, who had been Steward when he entered Ottobeuren, but was elected Abbot in 1508, and outlived him by three years, dying in 1546. Widemann called upon him for service. Immediately on election he made him Prior— at 28 — and only released him from this office after four years, to make him, though infinitely reluctant, serve ten years more as Steward. But if the Abbot knew how to exact compliance, he knew also how to reward. He gave Ellenbog every assistance in his studies, allowed him to write hither and thither for books, made continual efforts to procure him first a Hebrew and then a Greek MONASTERIES 91 Bible, wrote to Reuchlin to find him a converted Jew as Hebrew teacher, and in 15 16 built him a new library ; for which Ellenbog writes to a friend asking for verses to put under the paintings of the Doctors of the Church, which are to adorn the walls. As results of his studies we hear of him correcting the abbey service-books, where for stauros, a scribe with no Greek had written scayros, and explaining to the Abbot mistaken interpretations in the passages read aloud in the refectory during meals. One of these, in a book written by some one who had recently been canonized — some mediaeval doctor — illustrates the learning of the day ; deriving yaarpiixapyia, gluttony, from castrum and mergo, ' quod gula mergat castrum mentis,' because gluttony drowns the seat of reason. Of Ellenbog's official duties occasional mention is made in his letters. As Steward he has to visit the tenants of the monastery ; in the autumn he journeys about the country buying wine. We hear of him at Westerhaim, on the river Iller, settling a dispute among the fishermen. On one of his journeys to fetch wine from Constance, at the hospice there he fell in with a man who could fire balls out of a machine by means of nitre, and who boasted that he could demolish with this weapon a certain castle in the neighbourhood. Over supper they began to argue, the artillerist maintaining that nitre was cold, and that the explosion which dis- charged the balls was caused by the contrariety between nitre and sulphur ; Ellenbog contending 92 THE AGE OF ERASMUS that nitre was hot, and supporting this view by scraps remembered from his father's scientific conversation. The general life of the Abbey is also reflected. Ottobeuren lay on one of the routes to Italy, and so they had plenty of visitors bringing news from regions far off : a Carthusian, who had been in Ireland and seen St. Patrick's cave ; a party of Hungarian acrobats with dancing bears ; a young Cretan, John Bondius, who had seen the labyrinth of Minos, but all walled up to prevent men from straying into it and being lost. A great impression he made, when he dined with the Abbot ; he was so learned and polished, and spoke Latin so well for a Greek. In 15 14 Pellican, the Franciscan Visitor, passed on his way south, and had a talk with Ellen- bog, which was all too short, about Hebrew learning. Next year came Eck, the theologian, the future champion of orthodoxy, returning from Rome. Eck's mother and sisters were living under the protection of the abbey — it is not clear whether they were merely tenants, or whether they were occupying lay quarters within its walls, as did Fernandas at St. Germain's in Paris. At any rate, Eck came and made himself agreeable. He preached twice before the brethren ; and when he left, he promised to send them the latest news from America. In 1511 a copy of Vespucci's narrative of his voyage had been lent to the monastery, and had been read with great interest. A grave question arose whether the new races discovered in the West were to be accounted as MONASTERIES 93 saved or damned. Ellenbog quotes Faber Stapu- lensis' statement that nothing could be more bestial than the condition of the Indians whom da Gama had discovered in 1498 in Calicut, Cannanore, and Ceylon ; it was to be feared that the Indians of the West were no better. In writing to Ellenbog six months later to say that he had no clear opinions on the question, Eck uses an interesting expression : ' To ask what I think is like looking for Arthur and his Britons.' 1 The reference is to the Arthurian legend and the long-expected, never-fulfilled, return of the great king ; but the humanists usually leave the whole field of mediaeval romance severely alone. One September morning, when the dew was still heavy, Ellenbog went out with some brethren to gather apples. At the top of the orchard 2 one of them called out that he had found ' a star'. It was a damp white deposit on the grass, clammy and quivering, cold to the touch, very sticky, with long tenacious filaments. Ellenbog had never seen anything like it, but he found out that the peasants and the shepherds believed such things to be drop- pings from shooting stars, 3 if not actually fallen stars, and that they were thought to be a cure for cancer. His letter describing it is to ask the opinion of a friend who was a doctor, that is to say, the scientist of the age. The affairs of Ellenbog's family often appear. His 1 Arcturum cum Britannis exspectatis. For another allusion to Arthur, see Pace, De Fructu, p. 83. 2 ortus. 3 stellae emuncturam et purgamentum. 94 THE AGE OF ERASMUS father had been a great collector of books, which he had corrected with his own hand, and which at his death he had wished to be kept together as a common heirloom for the whole family. A great many of them were medical, and therefore it had seemed good that the enjoyment of the books should go to Ulrich, the son who was studying medicine at Siena. On his way home, after completing his course, Ulrich died ; and Nicholas composed a piteous appeal on behalf of the books, bewailing their fate that after ten years of confinement their hope of being used had come to nothing. Onofrius was the only brother from whom might be hoped a younger generation of Ellenbogs, one of whom might study medicine. Elizabeth's children were Geslers, and so apparently did not count. How long the books were kept together is not known. One of them is now in the University Library at Cambridge, and has been excellently described in an essay by the late Robert Proctor. It consists of several volumes bound together : Henry of Rimini on the Cardinal Virtues, the Journey of a penitent soul through Lent, a treatise de diuina predestinacione, and John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, de oculo morali — all of a definitely religious or moral character. They are freely annotated by the father's hand, with marginalia which throw light on his life and times, his dislike of the Venetians for their anti-papal policy, his experiences as physician to the Abbey of St. Ulrich in Augsburg, and the part that he played in the MONASTERIES 95 introduction of printing there. On Lady Day, 1481, shortly after Nicholas' birth, perhaps when he had lived just a week and seemed likely to thrive, the father composed an address to his four living sons — four being already dead — , and wrote it into this volume. He adjures them to follow learning and goodness, and finally bids them take every care of the books, and not let them be separated. This it was which inspired Nicholas' appeal thirty years later, when Ulrich, the son, was cut off, just as his eyes seemed about to follow his father's up and down the pages. Ellenbog's letters to his sister Barbara are amus- ing. She was four or five years older than he, but being a woman had not had his opportunities. He begins by trying to teach her Latin. But the difficulties were many, and apparently she did not progress far enough to write in the tongue. At any rate, Ellenbog copied none of her letters into his book ; a fact which is to be deplored both from her point of view and from ours. One would like to know what reply she made to some of his homilies. She invited him once to come and see her at Heppach, with leave from her Abbess. He replies cautiously that, if he comes, he hopes they will be able to talk without being overheard ; for Onofrius had been once, and when he made a rather coarse remark, there had been giggles outside the door. In 1512 Barbara became Prioress, and Ellenbog took the opportunity to lecture her at length upon spiritual pride and the importance of humility ; 96 THE AGE OF ERASMUS sweetening his dose of virtue with a present of cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Once she let fall some regrets that she had brought nothing into her convent, and was dependent on it for food and clothing ; evidently she would have liked some share of the patrimony which had been divided between her married sisters and the brothers who remained in the world. Nicholas' reply was that Heppach, like other monasteries, was well endowed ; she had given herself, and that was quite enough. In 1515 Barbara was elected Abbess ; and received another discourse about spiritual pride. John and Elizabeth wrote to Nicholas saying that they had been invited to Heppach to salute the new Reverend Mother, and suggesting that he should come too. But his plain speaking had had its reward, no invitation had come for him. Under the circumstances, he writes, he could not think of going ; besides he had been there several times before, and had found it very dull ; it was clearly John's duty to go, as he had not been once in twenty years, although his parish was only three miles from Heppach. However the breach was healed, and a proper invitation came for Nicholas ; but the business of his stewardship prevented him from accepting. The relations with John, the parish priest of Wurtzen, are more harmonious. There is a fre- quent exchange of presents, John sending tools for wood-carving, and crayfish ; which seem to have been common in his neighbourhood, for Nicholas MONASTERIES 97 occasionally asks for them. The only lecture is one passed on from Barbara. John had been created a chaplain to Maximilian, an honorific title, with few or no duties ; and Barbara had feared that he might neglect the flock in his parish. On another occasion Nicholas urges him to follow Elizabeth's advice, and get an unmarried man to be his house- keeper. He had proposed to have a man with a family ; and Elizabeth was afraid for his reputa- tion. John was a frequent guest at Ottobeuren, and one of Nicholas' invitations contains what is unusual among the humanists, an appreciation of the charms of the country : ' Come,' he says, ' and hear the songs of the birds, the shepherds' pipes and the children's horns, the choruses of reapers and ploughmen, and the voices of the girls as they work in the fields.' By his younger relatives, Ellenbog did his duty unfailingly. Elizabeth's eldest son, John Gesler, was at school at Memmingen. When a new school- master was appointed, Ellenbog wrote to bespeak his interest in the boy, and to suggest the books that he should read : Donatus' Grammar and the letters of Filelfo. At 14 he persuaded the parents to send John to Heidelberg, and took a great deal of trouble in arranging that the boy should be lodged with his own teacher, Peter of Wimpina. When two years later Elizabeth grew anxious about John's health and proposed to take him with her to some of the numerous baths, which then as now abounded in Germany and Switzerland, it was again 1669 q 98 THE AGE OF ERASMUS Nicholas who made the arrangements ; and in 1515, when John had left Heidelberg, Nicholas proposed to exchange letters with him daily, in order that he might not forget his Latin. In January 1515 Elizabeth's eldest daughter, Barbara, was married to a certain Conrad Ankaryte. In December 1530 he writes to one of the nuns at Heppach to announce that he has persuaded two girls, the children of this marriage, to embrace the religious life. The elder, Anna, aged 13, was forward with her education, as she was well acquainted with German literature and was reading Latin with her father 1 ; by the following summer she would be ready to come to Heppach. For the younger, who was not yet 7, he begged a few years' grace, though she was eager to come at once. Truly children developed earlier in those days. The happiest time of Ellenbog's life began in the summer of 1522, when after ten years' service he was allowed by the Abbot to resign his Stewardship. His accounts were audited satisfactorily, and he was discharged, to what seemed to him a riotous ban- quet of leisure. ' In the quiet of my cell,' he wrote to his brother, ' I read, I write, I meditate, I pray, I paint, I carve '. His interest in astronomy was resumed, and he set himself to make dials for pocket use, on metal rings or on round wooden sticks. The latter he turned for himself upon a lathe ; and 1 quae legere literas vernaculae linguae satis expedite nouit, nunc per patrem imbuitur Latinis. MONASTERIES 99 for this work John sent him a present of boxwood, juniper, and plane. By the New Year of 1523 he had made two sundials ; one which showed the time on five sides at once, he sent to John at Wurtzen, the other to Barbara at Heppach. His cell looked South, and thus he could study the movements of the moon and the planets, and note the southing of the stars. He could turn his skill to profit, too, and exchange his dials for pictures of the saints. In 1525 his peace was broken by the Peasants' Revolt, which swept like a hurricane over South Germany. Hostility to religion was not one of its moving causes, but the monks were vulnerable, and had always been considered fair game, especially by local nobles whom in the plenitude of their power they had not troubled to conciliate. The peasants of the Rhine valley had not forgotten the burning of Limburg, near Spires, by William of Hesse in 1504. The abbey church had scarcely a rival in Germany, and the flames burned for twelve days. With such an example, and with their prey unresisting, the peasants were not likely to stay their hands. At Freiburg they brought to his death Gregory Reisch, the learned Carthusian Prior of St. Johannisberg, the friend of Maximilian. Ellen- bog enumerates four monasteries burned in his neighbourhood during the outbreak — three by the peasants incensed against their landlords, and one by a noble who bore it a grudge. When the first attack came in April, Ellenbog was staying at the monastery of St. George, at Isny, about twenty G 2 ioo THE AGE OF ERASMUS miles away. The peasants there destroyed every- thing belonging to the monks that they could find outside the walls, and threatened dire treatment when they should force their way in ; but mercifully the walls were strong, and held out. Ottobeuren was less fortunate. Being in the country, it had to rely upon itself, and so fell an easy prey. The buildings were defaced, the windows broken, the stoves and ovens wrecked, and all the ironwork carried off. Scarcely a door remained on its hinges, and the furniture of the rooms disappeared. The church was violated, its pictures soiled, and its statues smashed ; Christ's wounds should be wounds indeed, hard voices cried, as axe and hammer rung over their pitiless work. The library was emptied of its books. Walls and roofs and floors were all that the monks found when they ventured back. Ellenbog, however, fared better than many. A friendly brother had seized up some of his books and papers and hidden them in the clock-tower ; and the abbey carpenter thinking this insecure had found them better cover, presumably in his own house. The tempest over, calm soon returned. The countryfolk, many of whom had remained friendly, began bringing back spoil which they had wrested from wrongful possessors. Some of Ellenbog's books were brought in ; and as much as two years later he recovered one of his astro- nomical instruments. He lost, however, a number of his father's papers, which he had been on the point of editing ; a Hebrew Bible given to him by MONASTERIES 101 Onofrius ; and the first two books of his collection of his own letters. ' God knows whether they will ever come back,' he wrote at the beginning of the third book ; and to him they never did. They are now safe at Stuttgart, though in permanent divorce from the other seven books, which are in Paris. Ellenbog was no coward. In the autumn the vine- yards belonging to the Abbey were to be inspected, and the due tithes of wine exacted. Unless this were done the monks would suffer lack ; so some one had to be sent, in spite of the last mutterings of the revolt. One vineyard lay at Immenstadt, some distance to the South, and thus Ellenbog at Isny was already part way thither. Moreover, having served as Steward, he would know what was required. The Abbot sent down a horse and bade him go : though the roads were held by armed outlaws, who were reported to be specially hostile to monks. He was afraid; but he summoned his courage and went. If the Abbey seemed a haven before, when he came back to it from the experiences of his ordination at Augsburg, this time it was a refuge and strength against the fear that lurketh in forests and the imagination of pursuing footsteps. IV UNIVERSITIES In the autumn of 1495 Erasmus was at length at liberty to go to a university. His patron, the Bishop of Cambray, gave him a small allowance, and the authorities at Steyn were prevailed upon to consent. His purpose was to obtain a Doctor's degree in Theology ; and so he entered the College of Montaigu at Paris, which had been founded in 13:88, -but had fallen into decay and only recently been revived. In 1483 a certain John Standonckhad volunteered to become Principal. By his efforts the college buildings were restored ; and by taking in rich pupils he secured means to maintain the Domus Pauperum attached to the College. He was an ardent, enthusiastic person, but rather lacking in judgement ; and starved his pauperes in order to be able to have as many as possible on the slender resources avail- able. Erasmus, being delicate and therewith fas- tidious, complained of the rough and meagre fare — rotten eggs and stinking water ; and with good reason, for it made him ill, and he had to spend the summer of 1496 with his friends in Holland. Having established himself in the college he intro- duced himself to the literary circle in Paris, through its head, Robert Gaguin, the aged General of the Maturins, who had served on many embassies, to Spain, to Italy, to Germany, to England. Gaguin UNIVERSITIES 103 had written much himself, and had been one of the promoters of printing in Paris. To know him was to be known of many. Erasmus began by addressing to him a poem and some florid letters, and showed him some of his work. Then an opportunity came to do him a service. Gaguin had composed a history of the French, and it was just coming through the press. At the end the printer found himself with two pages of the last sheet unfilled, despite ample spacing out, and the author was too ill to lend any help. Erasmus heard of the difficulty, and came to the rescue with a long and most elegant epistle to Gaguin, comparing him to Sallust and Livy, and promising him immortality. Time has turned the tables : Gaguin's name lives, not because of his history, but because the young and unknown Augus- tinian canon thought fit to court his acquaintance. Once blooded with the printers, Erasmus went steadily on. In a few months he published some poems of his own, on Christ and the angels — de casa natalitia Jesu, a very rare volume, of which only two copies are known. It was dedicated to a college friend, Hector Boys, of Dundee, subsequently the first Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, and historian of Scotland. It may be wondered what was Erasmus' motive. A dedication of a book had a market value and usually brought a return in proportion to the compliments laid on. Correctness certainly required that the book should be sent to the Bishop of Cambray. Boys was only a fellow- student, whose acquaintance Erasmus had made at io 4 THE AGE OF ERASMUS Montaigu. The explanation perhaps lies in the fact that Bishop Elphinstone was then negotiating with Boys to come to Aberdeen; in the newly-founded university Erasmus may have sighted hopes for him- self. The following year saw another volume pro- duced by him ; the poems of his Gouda and Deventer friend, William Herman, with a few of his own added. This time the Bishop of Cambray did not fail of his due. When Erasmus came to Paris, he was nearly 29, older by far than the ordinary arts student, but not old for the theological course, which lasted longer than the others. To reach the first step, the Bachelor's degree, he had to attend a number of lectures ; and very tedious he found them. Theologians are apt to be conservative. The method of instruction had not advanced far beyond the dictation of text and gloss and commentary, which had been current before the days of printing. Erasmus yawned and dozed, or wrote letters to his friends making fun of these ' barbarous Scotists ' . ' You wouldn't know me,' he says, ' if you could see me sitting under old Dunderhead, my brows knit and looking thoroughly puzzled. They tell me that no one can understand these mysteries who has any traffic with the Muses or the Graces. So I am trying hard to forget my Latin : wit and elegance must disappear. I think I am getting > .1 ; maybe some day they will recognize me for thei •• ,..■ vu.' They did, and he pro- ceeded B.D. ; when if not known, but probably by Easter 1498. UNIVERSITIES 105 At the present day in England our systems are very set. A man matriculates at a university and completes his course there : to change even from one college to another is becoming almost unknown. Abroad, however, things are more fluid, and students pass on from university to university in search of the best teacher for special parts of their course. So it was in Erasmus' time. A course of lectures attended in one university could be reckoned in another ; and thus men often proceeded to their degrees within a short time of their matriculation. Having taken his Bachelor's degree at Paris, Erasmus at once proposed to convert it into a Doctor's in Italy ; but one hope after another of going there was disappointed. In 1506 he wished to take it in Cambridge ; but after obtaining his grace, he was offered a chance to go to Italy as tutor to the sons of Henry vil's Italian physician. He accepted with delight, and was made D.D. as he passed through Turin ; the formalities apparently requiring only a few days. The art of reasoning is an excellent thing ; and so long as man continues to live according to reason, some training in this art will continue to be a part of education. Indeed, an elementary knowledge of it is as necessary as an elementary acquaintance with the art of arithmetic. Both arts have this in common that though their feet walk upon the earth, their heads are lost in the clouds. A moderate attainment of them is indispensable to all ; but their higher developments can only be comprehended by 106 THE AGE OF ERASMUS the acutest minds. In the Middle Ages the art of reasoning had been raised to such a pitch of perfec- tion that it entirely dominated the schools. Its exponents were so proud of it that its bounds were continually extended; and it became impossible to obtain a university degree without a high level of proficiency in disputation. For his examination a candidate was required to dispute with all comers — in practice this came to be a small number of appointed examiners, three or four — on questions which had been announced beforehand. It was not a hasty affair — time was allowed for reflection, and the examination might easily last several hours or even all day. But clearly readiness in debate was likely to count in a man's favour, and so besides knowledge of standard authors to be adduced in support of opinions — the Bible, the Fathers, the mediaeval commentators, the Canon Law and the glosses upon it — it was important to a candidate to be able to handle a question properly, to divide it up into its different parts by means of distinctions, to shear off side issues, to examine the various facets which it presented when approached from different points of view ; and all this without hesitation, and of course in Latin. In order to train candidates in this art, university and college teachers gave frequent exhibitions of disputations, which from being on any subject, de quolibet, were styled ' quodlibeticae questiones ', or ' disputationes ' . A high dignitary presided, with the title of ' dominus quodlibetarius ', and propounded UNIVERSITIES 107 questions, usually one supported by arguments and two plain ; and then the disputer, who pre- sumably came prepared, delivered his reply, clear cut into fine distinctions and bristling with citations from recognized authorities. Such work necessarily cost trouble and forethought, and the hard-working teacher of the day, instead of printing his lectures on philosophy or history or editing and commentating texts, gave to his pupils in permanent form the quodlibetical disputations which the busy among them had struggled to copy down into note-books, I and over which the inattentive, like Erasmus, had ■■ yawned. These are some of the subjects disputed at Louvain, 1488-1507, by Adrian of Utrecht ; first as a young doctor, then as professor of theology, and finally for ten years as vice-chancellor, before he was carried away to become tutor to Prince Charles, and entered upon the public career which led him finally to Rome as Adrian vi. 1488. Whether to avoid offending one's neighbour it is permissible to break a vow or oath duly made. 1491. Whether one is bound to act on the command of a superior, contrary to one's own opinion, knowing that in former days the matter had been regarded as doubtful. 1492. Whether it is lawful to administer the Eucharist or to confer the benefit of absolution on one who declares that he cannot abstain from crimes. 108 THE AGE OF ERASMUS 1493. Whether of the two is more likely to be healed and offends God the less, the man who sins from ignorance or infirmity, or the man who sins of deliberate intent. 1495. Whether a priest who gives advice that tithes ought not to be paid on the fruits of one's own labours, can receive remission of his sin without undergoing severe punishment. Whether transgression of human laws con- stitutes mortal sin. 1499. Whether prayer on behalf of many is as bene- ficial to the individuals as if one prayed as long a time for each one. 1491. Whether it is permissible to give money to the De praeparatione ad mortem (1534) in 1564 and 1786 ; and the Vidua Christiana (1529) in 1595. The envoys of the Brethren were perhaps wise enough to see that they had much to learn from the man who was courageous enough to preach caution and to let himself appear afraid. INDEX Aberdeen University, 103-4. accuracy, new standards of, 258-61. Adrian vi, 107. Agricola, R., 14-21, 25-9, 31, 32, 63. Agrippa, H. C, 143. Aldus, 126, 128, 129, 135-6, 151, 253, 262-3. Aleander, 112, 136, 209, 297. Alexander of Ville-Dieu, 41. alphabetical principle, 43, 47-9. America, 92. Amorbach : Ba., 147-9 : Bo., 147-9, I 5 I - l6 4. I 93, 278; Br., 147-51 ; J., IT, 146-51. Andreas, B., 129. Andrelinus, Faustus, 113, 186. Aquinas, 12, 255. Arnold of Hildesheim, 24. Arthurian legend, 93. Artlebus of Boskowitz, 296-8. Ascham, 156, 208, 256, 266. Asperen, destruction of, 172. astrology, 216-18. Augustinian Canons, reformed, -81 ; house at Oxford, 117. Balbi, J., 43 seq., 49. Balbus, H., 186, 281. Bartholomew of Cologne, 63-5. Basle, 146. Batt, J., 115-16, 130. Beatus Rhenanus, 154-8, 164, 278 ; his Res Germanicae, 146, 156, 275 ; extracts from his letters, 195, 210, 267, 268, 273. Beheim,J.,ofNiklashausen,220. Benedictines, at Neuss, 70 ; at Ottobeuren, 86 seq. ; at Oxford, 124 ; reformed, 61-2, 79-85- Bergen, Ant. of, abbot of St. Omer, 165, 176, 205. Bergen, Henry of, bp. of Cam- bray, 68, 102, 104, 176, 204. Bessel, B., 113. Black Band, 170-5. Bohuslaus of Hassenstein, 281- 2. Bondius, J., 92. books, supervision of, by others, 155, 159-61, 187. Boys, H., 103. Brassicanus, J. A., 280. Breslau, 35, 58, 279. Brethren of the Common Life, 69, 75 ; as teachers, 9, 25-6, 34, 61, 66. Briard, J., 108. Budaeus, 122, 135, 210, 218. Bursfeld reforms, 75, 80. 300 INDEX Burgundy, David of, bp. of Utrecht, n ; Philip of, bp. of Utrecht, 166. Butzbach, 21, 56-62, 68-79, 113, 201. Camerarius, J., 52, 293, 295. Canterbury ; Christchurch, 123- 4; pilgrimages to, 209,228-9. Catholicon, 43-6. Celtis, C, 265, 266, 269. Chateau-Landon, 81-2. Chezal-Benoit, 83-4. child-marriage, 116. Colet, 117, 127, 128, 130, 138, I 4 I -3. 175. 203, 229. Columbus, F., 280. Complutensian Polyglott, 263. Compostella, 231-2. Cono, J., 147, 151. Copernicus, N., 211. Cracow University, 87. Crete, labyrinth of Minos in, 92. Cues, library at, 30-1. Cusanus, N., 30. Dalaber, A., 217. Dalberg, John of, bp. of Worms, 19, 20, 31, 271. Dederoth, J., 80. Deventer school, 21, 30, 33-6, 39, 60-4, 69, 76 ; plague at, 2 7> 34 '■ printers, 63. Dominicans, 43, 52, 88, 146, 147, 238, 249, 290, 291. ' doole ', 192. Draco, J., 281, 293. Drolshagen, J., 38. Ebrardus, 36, 39-41. Eck, J., 92. Ellenbog : B., 87, 95-6, 99 ; J., 87, 96-7, 99 ; N., 87-101, 209, 210 ; U, 87, 92, 94-5, 201 ; U. jun., 87, 94. Emmanuel of Constantinople, 122. Eobanus of Hesse, 278-9. Erasmus, form of name, 39 n. ; early life, 11 ; at school, 21, 11 ; at Steyn, 66-8 ; in Paris, 102-5, 114-15, 139- 41 ; in England, 116-17, 130 ; at Oxford, 117, 128 ; at Cambridge, 120, 134, 137- 44 ; in Italy, 135-7 '> rumour of death, 145 ; at Basle, 158- 64 ; death, 164 ; labours for peace, 164-6 ; indifferent to Nature, 207-9 '• uses astrolo- gical mug, 218; pilgrimage to Canterbury, 229 ; apprecia- tions of, 265, 267-8 ; visitors to, 277-81 ; relations with the Bohemians, xi. Works. Adagia, 135-7, 144, 158, 165 ; Antibarbari, 281 ; compositions in Paris, 115 ; early poems, 103-4, 132 ; editions of the Fathers, 163 ; Enchiridion, 293 ; Efii- grammata, 280 ; Jerome, 138-40, 158, 280 ; Julius Exclusus, 184-9, 2 94 '• Moriae Encomium, 46, 143, 187, 294 ; New Testament, 11, 140, 158, 160-2, 263-4, 280 ; Paraphrases, 197 ; Querela INDEX 301 Pacts, 166 ; Seneca, 144, 158-9 ; translations into Bo- hemian from, 293-4, 298. Fabri, F., 238-51. families, length of, 202-4. Fernand, C, 82, 84-6, 92, 177 ; J-, 82, 84. Franciscans, 92, 144, 147 ; at Jerusalem, 238, 245. Frankfort, book-fairs at, 149, 153- Froben, J., 151-3, 158. Gaguin, 84, 102-3, *75- Garland, J., 36-9. Gebwiler, H., 26 n. Geldenhauer, G., 15, 16, 17, 18, 21. Gerard, Cornelius, 82, 165. Germany, national feeling in, 264-75 ; historical studies in, 268-75. Goswin of Halen, 14, 31-2. Greek, study of, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 27-30, 38-41, 43-8, 85, 88, 90, 91, 117, 120, 126, 127, 134, 137, 150, 151, 262-3 ; manuscripts, 11, 18, 30, 31, 147, 160-1. Grocin, W., 126-9, 2^3 • grossness, 205-6. Grynaeus, S., 160. Gueldres, 61, 165, 170-3. Hebrew, study of, 11, 12, 29, 30, 47, 54, 90, 91, 92, 100, 117, 147, 151, 263. Hegius, 16, 21, 25-30, 34-5, 41-2, 6 61, 63, 69. Heidelberg University, 11, 20, 28, 87, 97. Helinand, 53. Henry vm, scholarship of, 184. Herman, W., 21, 104, 165. Hermonymus of Sparta, 122, 134- Huguitio, 45. humanists, attitude towards mediaeval romance, 93 ; feel- ing towards Nature, 207-10. Hungarian acrobats, 92. Hus, 58, 179, 282. Hyrde, R., 198. India, religious condition of, 93- interpretations, 114. Irenicus, F., 272-4. Jacobus of Breda, 63. Johannisberg, Abbey of, 59, 60, 72, 74, 76. Jouveneaux, G., 82, 84. Kempis, Thomas a, 10. Koberger, A., 203-4. Kortenhorff, Gutta, 61. Kratzer, N., 142, 197. Kunig, H., 231-2. Laach, 68, 73-81. Langen, R., 21, 23. Lascaris, C, 88, 150. Latimer, W., 126-8. Lily, W., 126, 129. Limburg, burning of, 99. Linacre, 41, 126, 129, 187, 218, 253. Lollhard,' 60. 302 INDEX London, scholars in, 128, 130. Louvain University, 15, 107-8. Loyola, 245. Luther, 212, 267, 268, 275, 293 ; at Worms, 179 ; Eras- mus' attitude towards, 186, 298 ; love of nature, 210. Mammotrectus, 53-5. manuscripts, free lending of, 30, 136, 140-2, 160 ; free access to, 82, 271. Marchesinus, J., 53. Mary, Princess, 193, 197, 198. Mas, P. du, 83. Mauburn, J., 81-2. medicine, practice of, 218-19. Meghen, P., 141-2. Melanchthon, 212. Merton College, Oxford, ejec- tion of Warden, 176. Milanese rite, 288. morals, 204-5. More, T., 127, 129, 143, 197-8, 205, 229 ; Utopia, 187, 188, 201 ; matrimonial relations, 194-5 ; love of Nature, 209. Mormann, F., 25-6. news, dissemination of, 214-16. Oda Jargis, 9, 200. Oporinus, J., 193. Ostendorp, 12, 69. Ottobeuren, 86-101. Paffraet, R., 29, 63. Papias, 46-8, 49. Paris University, 10 ; lectures 145, 148-51 ; Montaigu Col- lege, 102 ; College de la Marche, 112, 210. Parr, Katherine, 192. Paston, Sir John, 194, 205. Pavia University, 16. Peasants' Revolt, 99-101. Pellican, C, 92, 147. Peter, name of, 71. Platter, T., 35, 58-9, 154. Poncher, S., 265. Praedinius, R., 31. Prague University, 281. press, early productions of, 254- prisoners, redemption of, 175. proofs, correction of, 159, 187. Quakers, 29, 86, 292. quodlibetical disputations, 105- 11. Reading Abbey, 123. Rees, Henry of, 8, 12. Reisch, G., 99, 147. remarriage, 192-5. Reuchlin, 31, 91, 122, 147, 195, 267. Rode, J., 80. Roper, M., 195, 198. Rychard, W., 219. St. Patrick's cave, 92, 226. Santiago de Compostella, 229, 231-2. Sapidus, J., 147, 206. Schinner, M., 219. Schlettstadt, 147, 154, 156-8, Tf\A TTO life INDEX 302 schools, books used in, 62-5, 257 ; numbers of, 154. Selling, W., 123, 141. Serbopoulos, J., 123. Shirwood, J., 124-6. Sion, near Delft, 66, 81. Sixtus iv, 10, 11, 34, 122. Slechta, J., 281-8. Souillac, 177. spelling, uncertainty in, 49-52. Spires, libraries at, 18, 271. Sprenger, 46. Standonck, J., 102, 145. Synthius, v. Zinthius. Thomas of Illyria, 219-20. Tournay, dispute over bishop- ric, 177. Trithemius, 31, 59, 76-8, 214, 269, 273 ; ' In praise of scribes ', 261-2. Trivet, Nic, 50. Turzo, J., 279. Urswick, C, 142. Utraquists, 285, 287, 289, 293. Valla, L., 23, 24, 27, 28, 115, 140-1, 262. Vaudois, 289 ; crusade against, 180-1. Veere, Lady of, 115, 131. Vienne, Council of, 118, 266. Vincent of Beauvais, 52. visits of ceremony, 276-81. Vrye, A., 22-5, 197, 201-2. Vrye, J., 22. Wesley, J., 13. Wessel, 9-13, 29-32, 200. Wimpfeling, 87, 269. Windesheim, 81. women, seclusion of, 196 ; education of, 196-200 ; posi- tion of, 200-2. Ximenes, 263. Zinthius, 34, 41-2, 63. Zwingli, 204, 268. Zwolle, 9, 10, 33, 34, 38. OXFORD : HORACE HART M.A, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY