ness that the efforts of his Holiness to bring about a peace had at last been crowned with success.

Peace had indeed been proclaimed between France and England, while Erasmus had been working at Basle, but under circumstances not likely to lessen those feelings of indignation with which the three friends regarded the selfish and reckless policy of European rulers. For peace had been made with France merely to shuffle the cards. Henry's sister, the Princess Mary (whose marriage with Henry's ally, Prince Charles, ought long ago to have been solemnised according to contract), had been married to their common enemy, Louis XII. of France, with whom they had just been together at war! In November Henry and his late enemy, Louis, were plotting to combine against Henry's late ally, King Ferdinand; and England's blood and treasure, after having been wasted in helping to wrest Navarre from France for Ferdinand, were now to be wasted anew to recover the same province back to France from Ferdinand.' On the 1st of January this unholy alliance of the two courts was severed by the death of Louis XII. The Princess Mary was a widow. The young and ambitious Francis I. succeeded to the French throne, and he, anxious like Henry VIII. to achieve military glory, declared his intention on succeeding to the crown, that "the monarchy of Christendom should rest under the banner of France as it was wont to do."2 Before the end of July he had already started on that Italian campaign in which he was soon to defeat the Swiss in the great battle of Marignano—a battle at the news of which Ferdinand and Henry were once more to be made secret friends by their common hatred of so dangerous a rival!3

These international scandals, for such they must be called, wrung from Erasmus other and far more bitter censure than that contained in his letter to the Pope. He was laboriously occupied with great works passing through the printing press at Basle, but still he stole the time to give public vent to his pent-up feelings. It little mattered that the actors of these scandals were patrons of his own-kings and ministers on whose aid he was to some extent dependent, even for the means wherewith to print his Greek New Testament. His indignation burst forth in pamphlets printed in large type, and bearing his name, or was thrust into the new edition of the "Adages," or bound up with other new editions which happened now to be passing through Froben's press. And be it remembered that these works and pamphlets found their way as well into royal courts as into the studies of the learned.

What could exceed the sternness and bitterness of the reproof contained in the following passages:

(1) Brewer, i., lxix. and ii., i. et. seq.

(3) Brewer, ii., liv.

VOL. VI.

(2) Brewer, ii., xxxviii.

(4) See Eras. Epist., App. xxvii., xxi. and xxiii.

N

"Aristotle was wont to distinguish between a king and a tyrant by the most obvious marks: the tyrant regarding only his own interest; the king the interests of his people. But the title of 'king,' which the first and greatest Roman rulers thought to be immodest and impolitic, as likely to stir up jealousy, is not enough for some, unless it be gilded with the most splendid lies. Kings who are scarcely men are called divine;' they are 'invincible,' though they never have left a battle-field without being conquered; 'serene,' though they have turned the world upside down in a tumult of war; 'illustrious,' though they grovel in profoundest ignorance of everything noble; Catholic,' though they follow anything rather than Christ.

"And these divine, illustrious, triumphant kings. have no other desire but that laws, edicts, wars, peaces, leagues, councils, judgments, sacred or profane, should bring the wealth of others into their exchequer-i.e. they gather everything into their leaking reservoir, and, like the eagles, fatten their eaglets on the flesh of innocent birds.

"Let any physiognomist worth anything at all consider the look and the features of an eagle-those rapacious and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel jaws, that stern front. will he not recognise at once the image of a king?-a magnificent and majestic king? Add to this a dark, ill-omened colour, an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this type who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the senate yields, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way, neither right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity, avail. And thus, while there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the rest. Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men the type of royalty-not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food; but carniverous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it."

Again :

"The office of a prince is called a 'dominion,' when in truth a prince has nothing else to do but to administer the affairs of the commonwealth.

"The intermarriages between royal families, and the new leagues arising from them, are called 'the bonds of Christian peace,' though almost all wars and all tumults of human affairs seem to rise out of them. When princes conspire together to oppress and exhaust a commonwealth, they call it a 'just war.' When they themselves unite in this object, they call it 'peace.'

"They call it the extension of the empire when this or that little town is added to the titles of the prince at the cost of the plunder, the blood, the widowhood, the bereavement of so many citizens."

These passages may serve to indicate what feelings were stirred up in the heart of Erasmus by the condition of international affairs, and in what temper he returned to England. The works in which they appeared he had left under the charge of Beatus Rhenanus, to be printed at Basle in his absence. And some notion of the extent to which whatever proceeded from the pen of Erasmus was now devoured by the public may be gained from the fact that Rhenanus,

(1) Eras. op. ii., pp. 870—2; and in part translated in Hallam's Literature of the Middle Ages, c. iv.

(2) Eras. op. ii. p. 775.

in April of this very year, wrote to Erasmus, to tell him that out of an edition of 1,800 of the "Praise of Folly," just printed by Froben, only 60 remained in hand.'1

3. RETURNS TO BASLE TO FINISH HIS WORKS.-FEARS OF THE

ORTHODOX PARTY. (1515.)

It will be necessary to recur to the position of international affairs ere long; meanwhile, the quotation we have given will be enough to show that, buried as Erasmus was in literary labour, he was alive also to what was passing around him—no mere bookworm, to whom his books and his learning were the sole end of life. As we proceed to examine more closely the object and spirit of the works in which he was now engaged, it will become more and more evident that their interest to him was of quite another kind to that of the mere bookworm.

Before the summer of 1515 was over he was again on his way to Basle, where his editions of Jerome and of the New Testament were now really approaching completion. Their appearance was anxiously expected by learned men all over Europe. The bold intention of Erasmus to publish the Greek text of the New Testament with a new Latin translation of his own, a rival of the sacred Vulgate, had got wind. Divines of the traditional school had already taken alarm. It was whispered about amongst them that something ought to be done. The new edition of the "Praise of Folly," with notes by Lystrius, had been bought and read with avidity. Men now shook their heads, who had smiled at its first appearance. They discovered heresies in it unnoticed before. Besides, the name of Erasmus was now known all over Europe. It mattered little what he wrote a few years ago, when he was little known; but it mattered much what he might write now that he was a man of mark.

While Erasmus was passing through Belgium on his way to Basle, these whispered signs of discontent found public utterance in a letter from Martin Dorpius,2 of the Louvain University, addressed to Erasmus, but printed, and, it would seem, in the hands of the public, before it was forwarded to him. He met with it by accident at Antwerp. It was written at the instigation of others. Men who had not the wit to make a public protest of this nature for themselves, had urged Martin Dorpius to employ his talents in their cause, and to become their mouthpiece.*

3

(1) Eras. Epist., App. xxi.

(2) Martinus Dorpius Erasmo. D. Erasmi, &c., Enarratio in primum psalmum, &c. &c. Louvain. Oct. 1515.

(3) See the commencement of the reply of Erasmus.

(4) "Martinus Dorpius instigantibus quibusdam primus omnium cœpit in me velitari. Scirem illum non odio mei huc venisse, sed juvenem tum, ac natura facilem, aliorum impulsu protrudi."—Erasmus Botzemo, b. vi.

Thus this letter from Dorpius was of far more importance than would at first sight appear. It had a representative importance which it did not possess in itself. It was the public protest of a large and powerful party. As such it required more than a mere private reply from Erasmus, and deserves more than a passing mention here; for it affords an insight into the plan and defences of a theological citadel, against which its defenders considered that Erasmus was meditating a bold attack.

"I hear" (wrote Dorpius, after criticising severely the "Praise of Folly "), "I hear that you have been expurgating the epistles of Saint Jerome from the errors in which they abound, and this is a work in all respects worthy of your labour, and by which you will confer a great benefit on divines. But I hear, also, that you have been correcting the text of the New Testament, and that you have made annotations not without theological value on more than one thousand places.''

Here Dorpius evidently quotes the words of the letter of Erasmus to Servatius, so that he too is silently behind the scenes, handing Erasmus's letter about amongst his theological friends,—perhaps himself inciting Dorpius to write as he does.

If I can show you that the Latin translation has in it no errors or mistakes" (continued Dorpius), "then you must confess that the labour of those who try to correct it is altogether null and void. . . . . . I am arguing now with respect to the truthfulness and integrity of the translation, and I assert this of our Vulgate version. For it cannot be that the unanimous universal Church now for so many centuries has been mistaken, which always has used, and still both sanctions and uses this version. Nor in the same way is it possible that so many holy fathers, so many men of most consummate authority, could be mistaken, who, relying on the same version, have defined the most difficult points even in General Councils; have defended and elucidated the faith, and enacted canons to which even kings have bowed their sceptres. That councils rightly convened never can err in matters of faith is generally admitted by both divines and lawyers. . . . What matters it whether you believe or not that the Greek books are more accurate than the Latin ones; whether or not greater care was taken to preserve the sacred books in all their integrity by the Greeks than by the Latins ;-by the Greeks, forsooth, amongst whom the Christian religion was very often almost overthrown, and who affirmed that none of the gospels were free from errors, excepting the one gospel of John. What matters all this when, to say nothing of anything else, amongst the Latins the Church has continued throughout the inviolate spouse of Christ? What if it be contended that the sense, as rendered by the Latin version, differs in truth from the Greek text? Then, indeed, adieu to the Greek. I adhere to the Latin because I cannot bring my mind to believe that the Greek are more correct than the Latin codices.

"But it may be said, Augustin ordered the Latin rivulets to be supplied from the Greek fountain-head. He did so; and wisely in his age, in which neither had any one Latin version been received by the Church as now, nor had the Greek fountain-head become so corrupt as it now seems to be.

66

But you may say in reply, 'I do not want you to change anything in your codices, nor that you should believe that the Latin version is a false one. I only point out what discrepancies I discover between the Greek and Latin copies, and what harm is there in that?' In very deed, my dear Erasmus,

there is great harm in it. Because, about this matter of the integrity of the Holy Scriptures many will dispute, many will doubt, if they learn that even one jot or tittle in them is false, and then will come to pass what Augustin described to Jerome: 'If any error should be admitted to have crept into the Holy Scriptures, what authority would be left to them?' All these considerations, my dear Erasmus, have induced me to pray and beseech you, by our mutual friendship, by your wonted courtesy and candour, either to limit your corrections to those passages only of the New Testament in which you are able, without altering the sense, to substitute more expressive words; or if you should point out that the sense requires any alteration at all, that you will reply to the foregoing arguments in your preface."

Erasmus replied to this letter of Dorpius with singular tact, and reprinted the letter itself with his reply.

He acknowledged the friendship of Dorpius, and the kind and friendly tone of his letter. He received, he said, many flattering letters, but he had rather receive such a letter as this, of honest advice and criticism, by far.

He was knocked up by sea-sickness, wearied by long travel on horseback, busy unpacking his luggage; but still he thought it was better, he said, to send some reply, rather than allow his friend to remain under such erroneous impressions, whether the result of his own consideration, or instilled into him by others, who had overpersuaded him into writing this letter, and thus made a cat's-paw of him, in order to fight their battles without exposure of their own

persons.

He told him freely how and when the "Praise of Folly" was written, and what were his reasons for writing it, frankly and courteously replying to his criticisms.

He described the labour and difficulty of the correction of the text of St. Jerome a work of which Dorpius had expressed his approval. But he said, with reference to what Dorpius had written upon the New Testament, he could not help wondering what had happened to him-what could have thrown all this dust into his eyes!

"You are unwilling that I should alter anything, except when the Greek text expresses the sense of the Vulgate more clearly, and you deny that in the Vulgate edition there are any mistakes. And you think it wrong that what has been approved by the sanction of so many ages and so many synods should be unsettled by any means. I beseech you to consider, most learned Dorpius, whether what you have written be true! How is it that Jerome, Augustin, and Ambrose all cite a text which differs from the Vulgate? How is it that Jerome finds fault with and corrects many readings which we find in the Vulgate? What can you make of all this concurrent evidence-when the Greek versions differ from the Vulgate, when Jerome cites the text according to the Greek version, when the oldest Latin versions do the same, when this reading suits the sense much better than that of the Vulgate will you, treating all this with contempt, follow a version perhaps corrupted by some copyist! . . . . In doing so you follow in the steps of those vulgar divines who are accustomed to attribute ecclesiastical authority to whatever in any way creeps into general use. had rather be a common mechanic than the best of their number."

I