Erasmus and the Age of Reformation Part 3

I am in fairly good health, so I shall have to strain every nerve this year (1501) to get the work we gave the printer published, and by dealing with theological problems, to expose our cavillers, who are very numerous, as they deserve. If three more years of life are granted me, I shall be beyond the reach of envy.'

Here we see him in a frame of mind to accomplish great things, though not merely under the impulse of true devotion. Already he sees the restoration of genuine divinity as his task; unfortunately the effusion is contained in a letter in which he instructs the faithful Batt as to how he should handle the Lady of Veere in order to wheedle money out of her.

For years to come the efforts to make a living were to cause him almost constant tribulations and petty cares. He had had more than enough of France and desired nothing better than to leave it. Part of the year 1500 he spent at Orleans. Adversity made him narrow. There is the story of his relations with Augustine Vincent Caminade, a humanist of lesser rank (he ended as syndic of Middelburg), who took young men as lodgers.

It is too long to detail here, but remarkable enough as revealing Erasmus's psychology, for it shows how deeply he mistrusted his friends.

There are also his relations with Jacobus Voecht, in whose house he evidently lived gratuitously and for whom he managed to procure a rich lodger in the person of an illegitimate brother of the Bishop of Cambray. At this time, Erasmus a.s.serts, the bishop (Antimaecenas he now calls him) set Standonck to dog him in Paris.

Much bitterness there is in the letters of this period. Erasmus is suspicious, irritable, exacting, sometimes rude in writing to his friends. He cannot bear William Hermans any longer because of his epicureanism and his lack of energy, to which he, Erasmus, certainly was a stranger. But what grieves us most is the way he speaks to honest Batt. He is highly praised, certainly. Erasmus promises to make him immortal, too. But how offended he is, when Batt cannot at once comply with his imperious demands. How almost shameless are his instructions as to what Batt is to tell the Lady of Veere, in order to solicit her favour for Erasmus. And how meagre the expressions of his sorrow, when the faithful Batt is taken from him by death in the first half of 1502.

It is as if Erasmus had revenged himself on Batt for having been obliged to reveal himself to his true friend in need more completely than he cared to appear to anyone; or for having disavowed to Anna of Borselen his fundamental convictions, his most refined taste, for the sake of a meagre gratuity. He has paid homage to her in that ponderous Burgundian style with which dynasties in the Netherlands were familiar, and which must have been hateful to him. He has flattered her formal piety. 'I send you a few prayers, by means of which you could, as by incantations, call down, even against her will, from Heaven, so to say, not the moon, but her who gave birth to the sun of justice.'

Did you smile your delicate smile, O author of the _Colloquies_, while writing this? So much the worse for you.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Allen No. 103.17. Cf. _Chr. Matrim. inst._ LB. V. 678 and _Cent nouvelles_ 2.63, 'ung baiser, dont les dames et demoiselles du dit pays d'Angleterre sont a.s.sez liberales de l'accorder'.

CHAPTER V

ERASMUS AS A HUMANIST

Significance of the _Adagia_ and similar works of later years--Erasmus as a divulger of cla.s.sical culture-- Latin--Estrangement from Holland--Erasmus as a Netherlander

Meanwhile renown came to Erasmus as the fruit of those literary studies which, as he said, had ceased to be dear to him. In 1500 that work appeared which Erasmus had written after his misfortune at Dover, and had dedicated to Mountjoy, the _Adagiorum Collectanea_. It was a collection of about eight hundred proverbial sayings drawn from the Latin authors of antiquity and elucidated for the use of those who aspired to write an elegant Latin style. In the dedication Erasmus pointed out the profit an author may derive, both in ornamenting his style and in strengthening his argumentation, from having at his disposal a good supply of sentences hallowed by their antiquity. He proposes to offer such a help to his readers. What he actually gave was much more. He familiarized a much wider circle than the earlier humanists had reached with the spirit of antiquity.

Until this time the humanists had, to some extent, monopolized the treasures of cla.s.sic culture, in order to parade their knowledge of which the mult.i.tude remained dest.i.tute, and so to become strange prodigies of learning and elegance. With his irresistible need of teaching and his sincere love for humanity and its general culture, Erasmus introduced the cla.s.sic spirit, in so far as it could be reflected in the soul of a sixteenth-century Christian, among the people. Not he alone; but none more extensively and more effectively.

Not among all the people, it is true, for by writing in Latin he limited his direct influence to the educated cla.s.ses, which in those days were the upper cla.s.ses.

Erasmus made current the cla.s.sic spirit. Humanism ceased to be the exclusive privilege of a few. According to Beatus Rhena.n.u.s he had been reproached by some humanists, when about to publish the _Adagia_, for divulging the mysteries of their craft. But he desired that the book of antiquity should be open to all.

The literary and educational works of Erasmus, the chief of which were begun in his Parisian period, though most of them appeared much later, have, in truth, brought about a trans.m.u.tation of the general modes of expression and of argumentation. It should be repeated over and over again that this was not achieved by him single-handed; countless others at that time were similarly engaged. But we have only to cast an eye on the broad current of editions of the _Adagia_, of the _Colloquia_, etc., to realize of how much greater consequence he was in this respect than all the others. 'Erasmus' is the only name in all the host of humanists which has remained a household word all over the globe.

Here we will antic.i.p.ate the course of Erasmus's life for a moment, to enumerate the princ.i.p.al works of this sort. Some years later the _Adagia_ increased from hundreds to thousands, through which not only Latin, but also Greek, wisdom spoke. In 1514 he published in the same manner a collection of similitudes, _Parabolae_. It was a partial realization of what he had conceived to supplement the _Adagia_-- metaphors, saws, allusions, poetical and scriptural allegories, all to be dealt with in a similar way. Towards the end of his life he published a similar thesaurus of the witty anecdotes and the striking words or deeds of wisdom of antiquity, the _Apophthegmata_. In addition to these collections, we find manuals of a more grammatical nature, also piled up treasury-like: 'On the stock of expressions', _De copia verborum et rerum_, 'On letter-writing', _De conscribendis epistolis_, not to mention works of less importance. By a number of Latin translations of Greek authors Erasmus had rendered a point of prospect accessible to those who did not wish to climb the whole mountain. And, finally, as inimitable models of the manner in which to apply all that knowledge, there were the _Colloquia_ and that almost countless mult.i.tude of letters which have flowed from Erasmus's pen.

All this collectively made up antiquity (in such quant.i.ty and quality as it was obtainable in the sixteenth century) exhibited in an emporium where it might be had at retail. Each student could get what was to his taste; everything was to be had there in a great variety of designs.

'You may read my _Adagia_ in such a manner', says Erasmus (of the later augmented edition), 'that as soon as you have finished one, you may imagine you have finished the whole book.' He himself made indices to facilitate its use.

In the world of scholasticism he alone had up to now been considered an authority who had mastered the technicalities of its system of thought and its mode of expression in all its details and was versed in biblical knowledge, logic and philosophy. Between scholastic parlance and the spontaneously written popular languages, there yawned a wide gulf.

Humanism since Petrarch had subst.i.tuted for the rigidly syllogistic structure of an argument the loose style of the antique, free, suggestive phrase. In this way the language of the learned approached the natural manner of expression of daily life and raised the popular languages, even where it continued to use Latin, to its own level.

The wealth of subject-matter was found with no one in greater abundance than with Erasmus. What knowledge of life, what ethics, all supported by the indisputable authority of the Ancients, all expressed in that fine, airy form for which he was admired. And such knowledge of antiquities in addition to all this! Illimitable was the craving for and illimitable the power to absorb what is extraordinary in real life. This was one of the princ.i.p.al characteristics of the spirit of the Renaissance. These minds never had their desired share of striking incidents, curious details, rarities and anomalies. There was, as yet, no symptom of that mental dyspepsia of later periods, which can no longer digest reality and relishes it no more. Men revelled in plenty.

And yet, were not Erasmus and his fellow-workers as leaders of civilization on a wrong track? Was it true reality they were aiming at?

Was their proud Latinity not a fatal error? There is one of the crucial points of history.

A present-day reader who should take up the _Adagia_ or the _Apophthegmata_ with a view to enriching his own life (for they were meant for this purpose and it is what gave them value), would soon ask himself: 'What matter to us, apart from strictly philological or historical considerations, those endless details concerning obscure personages of antique society, of Phrygians, of Thessalians? They are nothing to me.' And--he will continue--they really mattered nothing to Erasmus's contemporaries either. The stupendous history of the sixteenth century was not enacted in cla.s.sic phrases or turns; it was not based on cla.s.sic interests or views of life. There were no Phrygians and Thessalians, no Agesilauses or Dionysiuses. The humanists created out of all this a mental realm, emanc.i.p.ated from the limitations of time.

And did their own times pa.s.s without being influenced by them? That is the question, and we shall not attempt to answer it: to what extent did humanism influence the course of events?

In any case Erasmus and his coadjutors greatly heightened the international character of civilization which had existed throughout the Middle Ages because of Latin and of the Church. If they thought they were really making Latin a vehicle for daily international use, they overrated their power. It was, no doubt, an amusing fancy and a witty exercise to plan, in such an international _milieu_ as the Parisian student world, such models of sports and games in Latin as the _Colloquiorum formulae_ offered. But can Erasmus have seriously thought that the next generation would play at marbles in Latin?

Still, intellectual intercourse undoubtedly became very easy in so wide a circle as had not been within reach in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Henceforth it was no longer the clergy alone, and an occasional literate, but a numerous mult.i.tude of sons of burghers and n.o.bles, qualifying for some magisterial office, who pa.s.sed through a grammar-school and found Erasmus in their path.

Erasmus could not have attained to his world-wide celebrity if it had not been for Latin. To make his native tongue a universal language was beyond him. It may well puzzle a fellow-countryman of Erasmus to guess what a talent like his, with his power of observation, his delicacy of expression, his gusto and wealth, might have meant to Dutch literature.

Just imagine the _Colloquia_ written in the racy Dutch of the sixteenth century! What could he not have produced if, instead of gleaning and commenting upon cla.s.sic Adagia, he had, for his themes, availed himself of the proverbs of the vernacular? To us such a proverb is perhaps even more sapid than the sometimes slightly finical turns praised by Erasmus.

This, however, is to reason unhistorically; this was not what the times required and what Erasmus could give. It is quite clear why Erasmus could only write in Latin. Moreover, in the vernacular everything would have appeared too direct, too personal, too real, for his taste. He could not do without that thin veil of vagueness, of remoteness, in which everything is wrapped when expressed in Latin. His fastidious mind would have shrunk from the pithy coa.r.s.eness of a Rabelais, or the rustic violence of Luther's German.

Estrangement from his native tongue had begun for Erasmus as early as the days when he learned reading and writing. Estrangement from the land of his birth set in when he left the monastery of Steyn. It was furthered not a little by the ease with which he handled Latin. Erasmus, who could express himself as well in Latin as in his mother tongue, and even better, consequently lacked the experience of, after all, feeling thoroughly at home and of being able to express himself fully, only among his compatriots. There was, however, another psychological influence which acted to alienate him from Holland. After he had seen at Paris the perspectives of his own capacities, he became confirmed in the conviction that Holland failed to appreciate him, that it distrusted and slandered him. Perhaps there was indeed some ground for this conviction.

But, partly, it was also a reaction of injured self-love. In Holland people knew too much about him. They had seen him in his smallnesses and feebleness. There he had been obliged to obey others--he who, above all things, wanted to be free. Distaste of the narrow-mindedness, the coa.r.s.eness and intemperance which he knew to prevail there, were summed up, within him, in a general condemnatory judgement of the Dutch character.

Henceforth he spoke as a rule about Holland with a sort of apologetic contempt. 'I see that you are content with Dutch fame,' he writes to his old friend William Hermans, who like Cornelius Aurelius had begun to devote his best forces to the history of his native country. 'In Holland the air is good for me,' he writes elsewhere, 'but the extravagant carousals annoy me; add to this the vulgar uncultured character of the people, the violent contempt of study, no fruit of learning, the most egregious envy.' And excusing the imperfection of his juvenilia, he says: 'At that time I wrote not for Italians, but for Hollanders, that is to say, for the dullest ears'. And, in another place, 'eloquence is demanded from a Dutchman, that is, from a more hopeless person than a B[oe]otian'. And again, 'If the story is not very witty, remember it is a Dutch story'. No doubt, false modesty had its share in such sayings.

After 1496 he visited Holland only on hasty journeys. There is no evidence that after 1501 he ever set foot on Dutch soil. He dissuaded his own compatriots abroad from returning to Holland.

Still, now and again, a cordial feeling of sympathy for his native country stirred within him. Just where he would have had an opportunity, in explaining Martial's _Auris Batava_ in the _Adagia_, for venting his spleen, he availed himself of the chance of writing an eloquent panegyric on what was dearest to him in Holland, 'a country that I am always bound to honour and revere, as that which gave me birth. Would I might be a credit to it, just as, on the other hand, I need not be ashamed of it.' Their reputed boorishness rather redounds to their honour. 'If a "Batavian ear" means a horror of Martial's obscene jokes, I could wish that all Christians might have Dutch ears. When we consider their morals, no nation is more inclined to humanity and benevolence, less savage or cruel. Their mind is upright and void of cunning and all humbug. If they are somewhat sensual and excessive at meals, it results partly from their plentiful supply: nowhere is import so easy and fertility so great. What an extent of lush meadows, how many navigable rivers! Nowhere are so many towns crowded together within so small an area; not large towns, indeed, but excellently governed. Their cleanliness is praised by everybody. Nowhere are such large numbers of moderately learned persons found, though extraordinary and exquisite erudition is rather rare.'

They were Erasmus's own most cherished ideals which he here ascribes to his compatriots--gentleness, sincerity, simplicity, purity. He sounds that note of love for Holland on other occasions. When speaking of lazy women, he adds: 'In France there are large numbers of them, but in Holland we find countless wives who by their industry support their idling and revelling husbands'. And in the colloquy ent.i.tled 'The s.h.i.+pwreck', the people who charitably take in the castaways are Hollanders. 'There is no more humane people than this, though surrounded by violent nations.'

In addressing English readers it is perhaps not superfluous to point out once again that Erasmus when speaking of Holland, or using the epithet 'Batavian', refers to the county of Holland, which at present forms the provinces of North and South Holland of the kingdom of the Netherlands, and stretches from the Wadden islands to the estuaries of the Meuse.

Even the nearest neighbours, such as Zealanders and Frisians, are not included in this appellation.

But it is a different matter when Erasmus speaks of _patria_, the fatherland, or of _nostras_, a compatriot. In those days a national consciousness was just budding all over the Netherlands. A man still felt himself a Hollander, a Frisian, a Fleming, a Brabantine in the first place; but the community of language and customs, and still more the strong political influence which for nearly a century had been exercised by the Burgundian dynasty, which had united most of these low countries under its sway, had cemented a feeling of solidarity which did not even halt at the linguistic frontier in Belgium. It was still rather a strong Burgundian patriotism (even after Habsburg had _de facto_ occupied the place of Burgundy) than a strictly Netherlandish feeling of nationality. People liked, by using a heraldic symbol, to designate the Netherlander as 'the Lions'. Erasmus, too, employs the term. In his works we gradually see the narrower Hollandish patriotism gliding into the Burgundian Netherlandish. In the beginning, _patria_ with him still means Holland proper, but soon it meant the Netherlands. It is curious to trace how by degrees his feelings regarding Holland, made up of disgust and attachment, are transferred to the Low Countries in general.

'In my youth', he says in 1535, repeating himself, 'I did not write for Italians but for Hollanders, the people of Brabant and Flemings.' So they now all share the reputation of bluntness. To Louvain is applied what formerly was said of Holland: there are too many compotations; nothing can be done without a drinking bout. Nowhere, he repeatedly complains, is there so little sense of the _bonae literae_, nowhere is study so despised as in the Netherlands, and nowhere are there more cavillers and slanderers. But also his affection has expanded. When Longolius of Brabant plays the Frenchman, Erasmus is vexed: 'I devoted nearly three days to Longolius; he was uncommonly pleasing, except only that he is too French, whereas it is well known that he is one of us'.[4] When Charles V has obtained the crown of Spain, Erasmus notes: 'a singular stroke of luck, but I pray that it may also prove a blessing to the fatherland, and not only to the prince'. When his strength was beginning to fail he began to think more and more of returning to his native country. 'King Ferdinand invites me, with large promises, to come to Vienna,' he writes from Basle, 1 October 1528, 'but nowhere would it please me better to rest than in Brabant.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: V. Doodles by Erasmus in the margin of one of his ma.n.u.scripts.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VI. A ma.n.u.script page of Erasmus]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Allen No. 1026.4, cf. 914, intr. p. 473. Later Erasmus was made to believe that Longolius was a Hollander, cf. LBE. 1507 A.

CHAPTER VI

THEOLOGICAL ASPIRATIONS

1501

At Tournehem: 1501--The restoration of theology now the aim of his life--He learns Greek--John Vitrier--_Enchiridion Militis Christiani_