The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

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Fernand tells a story of violence at the monastery of Souillac, which
was closely connected with his own at Chezal-Benoit. When the Abbot
died, a monk of St. Martin's at Tours, who was a native of Souillac,
with the aid of a brother who was a court official, got himself put in
as abbot before the monks had time to elect. They appealed to the
king, but quite in vain; for instead of giving ear to their complaint
he sent down a troop of soldiers to support the invading Abbot. It was
a grievous time for the poor monks. The garrison did whatever they
pleased: imprisoned the faithful servants of the monastery, introduced
hunting-dogs and birds, roared out their licentious choruses to the
sound of lute and pipe, and gave up the whole day to games of every
sort, in which the weaker brethren joined. Those who refused to do so
or to violate their vows by eating flesh were insulted; and as they
held divine service, coarse laughter and clamour interrupted them.
Strict watch was kept upon them, too, lest they should speak or write
to any one of their injuries. We need not deplore the passing of such
'good old days'.

It is necessary to realize the certainty which in the sixteenth
century men allowed themselves to feel on subjects of the highest
importance; for nothing short of this intense conviction is adequate
to explain the ferocity with which they treated those over whom they
had triumphed in matters of religion. Burning at the stake was the
common method of expiation. The fires of Smithfield consumed brave,
humble victims, while Erasmus jested over the rising price of wood, In
France the Inquisition entrapped many men of literary distinction,
Louis de Berquin 1529, John de Caturce 1532, Stephen Dolet 1546; on
the charge of heresy or atheism which could only with great difficulty
be refuted. To kill a fellow-creature or to watch him put to death
would be physically impossible to most of us, in our unruffled lives;
where from year's-end to year's-end we hardly even hear a word spoken
in anger. In consequence it is difficult for us to understand the
indifference with which in the sixteenth century men of the most
advanced refinement regarded the sufferings of others. Between rival
combatants and claimants for thrones fierce measures are more
intelligible; especially in days when stone walls did not a prison
make--such a prison, at least, as the prisoner might not some day hope
to break. Things had improved somewhat since the Middle Ages. We hear
less of the varieties of mutilation, the blinding, loss of nose,
hands, breasts, which were the portion of either sex indiscriminately,
when the death-penalty had not been fully earned. But it was still
fashionable to suspend your adversary in a cage and torture him, or
to confine him for years in a dungeon which light and air could never
reach. The executions of heretics became public shows, carefully
arranged beforehand, and attended by rank and fashion; to whom to show
any sign of sensibility would have been disgrace. Impossible it seems
to believe. We must remember that the perpetrators of such noble acts
had persuaded themselves that they were serving God. They were as
confident as Joshua or as Jehu that they knew His will; and they had
no hesitation in carrying it out.

If you may take a man's life in God's name, there can be no objection
to telling him a lie. The violation of the safe-conduct which brought
Hus to Constance was a fine precedent for breaking faith with a
heretic. When Luther came to Worms to answer for himself before
Emperor and Diet, the Pope's representatives reminded Charles of the
principle which had lighted the fires at Constance and ridded the
world of a dangerous fellow. Fortunately Charles had German subjects
to consider, and the Germans had a reputation for good faith of which
they were proud. Let us credit him too with some generosity; he was
scarcely 21, and the young find the arguments of expediency difficult.
Anyway, Luther with the help of his friends got off safely. The
intrigues and subterfuges of diplomatists are still very often
revolting to honest men. But there is some excuse for them; they act
on behalf of nations, who have to look to themselves for protection
and can rarely afford to be generous and aboveboard. But so barefaced
a violation of faith to an individual before the eyes of the world
would no longer be tolerated, not even in the name of the Lord.

The following example will illustrate the ideas of the age about the
treatment of heretics; an example of faith continually broken and of
incredible cruelty. In 1545 the Cardinal de Tournon and Baron
d'Oppede, the first president of the Parliament of Aix, were moved to
extirpate that plague-spot of Southern France, the Vaudois communities
of Dauphine, who went on still in their wickedness and heresy. The
intriguers prepared a decree revoking the letters patent of 1544,
which had suspended proceedings against the Vaudois; and when the
keeper of the seals refused to present it to the king for signature,
by unlawful means they presented it through a secretary and unlawfully
procured the affixion of the seals. But this was a mere trifle:
greater things were to follow.

On 13 April 1545 the Baron entered the Vaudois territory at the head
of a body of troops, reinforced by the papal Vice-legate and a
fanatical mob of countryfolk. The inhabitants offered little
resistance, and soon villages were in flames on every side. At
Merindol the soldiers found only one inhabitant, a poor idiot; all the
rest had fled. The Baron ordered him to be shot. Above by the castle
some women were discovered hiding in a church; after indescribable
outrages they were thrown headlong from the rocks. Cabrieres being
fortified was prepared to stand a siege; but on a promise of their
lives and property the inhabitants opened the gates. Without a
moment's hesitation the Baron gave orders to put them all to death.
The soldiers refused to break plighted faith; but the mob had no
scruples and the ghastly work began. 'A multitude of women and
children had fled to the church: the furious horde rushed headlong
among them and committed all the crimes of which hell could dream.
Other women had hidden themselves in a barn. The Baron caused them to
be shut up there and fire set to the four corners. A soldier rushed to
save them and opened the door, but the women were driven back into the
fire with blows of pikes. Twenty-five women had taken shelter in a
cavern at some distance from the town. The Vice-legate caused a great
fire to be lighted at the entrance: five years afterwards the bones of
the victims were found in the inmost recesses.'[26] La Coste had the
same fate; the promise made and immediately violated, and then all the
terrors of hell. In the course of a few weeks 3000 men and women were
massacred, 256 executed, and six or seven hundred sent to the galleys;
while children unnumbered were sold as slaves. The offence of these
poor people was that they had been seeking in their own fashion to
draw nearer to the God of Love.

[26] R.C. Christie, _Etienne Dolet_, ch. xxiv.

But public morals ever lag behind private; and in the sixteenth
century private standards of truth and honour were not so high as they
are now. Here again we may find one main cause in the absence of
personal security. In these days of settled government, when thought
and speech are free, it is scarcely possible to realize what men's
outlook upon life must have been when walls had ears and a man's foes
might be those of his own household. In Henry VII's reign England had
not had time to forget the Wars of the Roses, and claimants to the
throne were still occasionally executed in the Tower. Even under the
mighty hand of Henry VIII ministers rose and fell with alarming
rapidity. When princes contend, private men do well to hold their
peace; lest light utterances be brought up against them so soon as
Fortune's wheel has swung to the top those that were underneath. In
matters of faith, too, it was supremely necessary to be careful; for
unguarded words might arouse suspicions of heresy, to be followed by
the frightful penalties with which heresy was extirpated. On great
questions, therefore, men must have kept their tongues and thoughts in
a strict reserve: candour and openness, those valuable solvents of
social humours, can only have been practised by the unwise.

Truth is one of those things in which to him that hath shall be given.
It is a common jest in the East that professional witnesses come daily
to the law-courts waiting to be hired by either side. The harder truth
is to discover, with the less are men content. With many inducements
to dissimulation and no great expectations of personal honesty, men
are likely to traffic with expediency and to be adept in justifying
themselves when they forsake the truth.

Some examples of this may be found in Erasmus' letters. When he was
in Italy in 1509, Henry VII died. His English patron, Lord Mountjoy,
was intimate with Henry VIII. A few weeks after the accession a letter
from Mountjoy reached Erasmus, inviting him to return to England and
promising much in the young king's name. The letter was in fact
written by Ammonius, an Italian, who afterwards became Latin secretary
to the king. He was recognized as one of the best scholars of the day;
and there can be no doubt that the letter was his composition.
Mountjoy was a sufficiently keen scholar to sit up late at night over
his books, and to be chosen as a companion to the young Prince Henry
in his studies; but such autograph letters by him as survive show that
he wrote with difficulty even in English, and it is impossible to
suppose that he would have kept an accomplished Latinist in his employ
merely to act as copyist to his effusions. Moreover, Erasmus, writing
a few years later, says that he recognized the letter as Ammonius'
work, not from the handwriting, which he had forgotten, but from the
style. Nevertheless he allowed it to be published in 1519 as his
patron's. Of his connivance in the matter there is actual proof; for
in 1517 he had the letter copied by one of his servant-pupils into a
letter-book, and added the heading himself. What he first wrote was:
'Andreas Ammonius Erasmo Roterodamo S.D.,' but afterwards he scratched
out Ammonius' name and wrote in 'Guilhelmus Montioius'. In a sense, of
course, he was correct; for the letter was written in Mountjoy's name.
But he cannot have been unaware that in an age which valued elegant
Latinity so highly, his patron would be gratified by the ascription.

It was no great matter, and did no harm to any one. But it throws some
doubt on Erasmus' statement as to the scholarship of Henry VIII. When
Henry's book against Luther appeared in 1521, people said that Erasmus
had lent him a hand. In denying the insinuation Erasmus avers that
Henry was quite capable of doing the work himself, and adds that his
own suspicions of Henry's capacity had been dispelled by Mountjoy, who
when tutor to the young prince had preserved rough copies of Latin
letters written by Henry's own hand; and these he produced to convince
the doubter. Erasmus had a double motive in asserting Henry's
authorship, to play the courtier and to avoid provoking Luther; and
Mountjoy, as we have seen, is not above suspicion. But there is some
further evidence in support of them all, prince and patron and
scholar. Pace, Colet's successor at St. Paul's, speaks of hearing
Henry talk Latin quickly and readily; and Giustinian, the Venetian
ambassador, quotes a few remarks made to him by Henry in Latin by way
of greeting. Till more evidence is forthcoming, Erasmus must be let
off on this count with a Not proven.

Another example of scant regard for truth is his disowning of the
_Julius Exclusus_. This was a witty dialogue, in Erasmus' best style,
on the death of Pope Julius II. The Pope is shown arriving at the gate
of heaven, accompanied by his Genius, a sort of guardian angel, and
amazed to find it locked, with no preparation at all for his
reception. His amazement grows when St. Peter at length appears and
makes it plain that the gate is not going to be opened, and that there
is no room in heaven for Julius with his record of wars and other
unchristian deeds; whereupon there is a fine set-to, and each party
receives some hard knocks.

That Erasmus was its author there can be no doubt; for there is
evidence in two directions of the existence of a copy or copies of it
in his handwriting, and we cannot suppose that at that period of his
life, when he regularly had one or more servant-pupils in his employ,
he would have troubled to copy out with his own hand a work of that
length by another. There was nothing very outrageous in the dialogue,
nothing much more than there was in the _Moria_; but it was not the
sort of thing for a man to write who was so closely connected as
Erasmus was with the Papal see, and who wished to stand well with it
in the future. The _Julius_ appeared in print in 1517, of course
anonymously, and Erasmus was pleased with its reception; but he soon
found that people who were not in the secret were attributing it to
him. That would never do; so he set to work to repudiate it. The
friends that knew he exhorted to know nothing; the rest he endeavoured
to persuade that he was not the author, using many forms of
equivocation. He rises to his greatest heights in addressing
cardinals. To Campegio, then in London, he writes on 1 May 1519:

'How malicious some people are! Any scandalous book that comes
out they at once put down to me. That silly production, _Nemo_,
they said was mine; and people would have believed them, only
the author (Hutten) indignantly claimed it as his own. Then
those absurd Letters (of the Obscure Men): of course I was
thought to have had a hand in them. Finally, they began to say
that I was the author of this book of Luther; a person I have
hardly ever heard of, certainly I have not read his book. As
all these failed, they are trying to fasten on me an anonymous
dialogue which appears to make mock of Pope Julius. Five years
ago I glanced through it, I can hardly say I read it.
Afterwards I found a copy of it in Germany, under various
names. Some said it was by a Spaniard, name unknown; others
ascribed it to Faustus Andrelinus, others to Hieronymus Balbus.
For myself I do not quite know what to think. I have my
suspicions; but I haven't yet followed them up to my
satisfaction. Certainly whoever wrote it was very
foolish;'--that sentence was from his heart!--'but even more to
blame is the man who published it. To my surprise some people
attribute it to me, merely on the ground of style, when it is
nothing like my style, if I am any judge: though it would not
be very wonderful if others did write like me, seeing that my
books are in all men's hands. I am told that your Reverence is
inclined to doubt me: with a few minutes' conversation I am
sure I could dispel your suspicions. Let me assure you that
books of this kind written by others I have had suppressed: so
it is hardly likely that I should have published such a thing
myself, or ever wish to publish it.'

Not bad that, from the author of the _Julius_. A fortnight later he
wrote to Wolsey to much the same effect, instancing as books that had
been attributed to him Hutten's _Nemo_ and _Febris_, Mosellanus'
_Oratio de trium linguarum ratione_, Fisher's reply to Faber, and even
More's _Utopia_. As to the _Julius_ he says: 'Plenty of people here
will tell you how indignant I was some years ago when I found the book
being privately passed about. I glanced through it (I can hardly be
said to have read it); and I tried vigorously to get it suppressed.
This is the work of the enemies of good learning, to try and fasten
this book upon me.' Finally, to clinch his argument, he asseverates
with audacious ingenuity: 'I have never written a book, and I never
will, to which I will not affix my own name.'

Jortin points out that the only thing which Erasmus specifically
denies is the publication of the _Julius_. As we have seen, an author
of consequence in those days rarely troubled to correct his own
proof-sheets. Erasmus left his _Moria_ behind in Paris for Richard
Croke to see through the press; More committed his _Utopia_ to
Erasmus, who had it printed for him at Louvain; Linacre sent his
translations of Galen to Paris by the hands of Lupset, who supervised
the printing. It is therefore quite probable that Erasmus did not
personally superintend the publication of the _Julius_; but until
students of typography can tell us definitely which is the first
printed edition, and where it was printed, we cannot be certain. But
besides this point of practice born of convenience, there was another
born of modesty. With compositions that were purely literary--poems
and other creations of art and fancy, as opposed to more solid
productions--the convention arose of pretending that the publication
of them was due to the entreaties of friends, or even in some cases
that it had been carried out by ardent admirers without the author's
knowledge. Printing, with its ease of multiplication, had made
publication a far more definite act than it was in the days of
manuscripts. In the prefaces to his early compositions, Erasmus almost
always assumes this guise. More actually wrote to Warham and to
another friend that the _Utopia_ had been printed without his
knowledge. Of course this was not true, but nobody misunderstood him.
Dolet's _Orationes ad Tholosam_ appeared through the hand of a friend,
but with the most transparent figments.

There was, therefore, abundant precedent for denying authorship. But
there is a difference between the light veil of modesty and clouds of
dust raised in apprehension. The publication of the _Julius_ certainly
placed Erasmus in a dilemma; he extricated himself by equivocation,
which barely escapes from direct untruth. It is possible that a public
man of his position at the present day might find himself driven to a
similar method of escape from a similar indiscretion.[27] But
experience has taught men not to write lampoons which they dare not
avow, and a more effective law of copyright protects them against
publication by pirate printers.

[27] An example of this may be seen in the new _Life of Edward
Bulwer, First Lord Lytton_, 1913, ii. 71-6. Bulwer-Lytton's
letter, 15 March 1846, denying the authorship of the _New
Timon_, might almost have been translated from Erasmus' to
Campegio, except that it goes further in falsehood.

VII

PRIVATE LIFE AND MANNERS

An interesting parallel is often drawn between Indian life to-day and
the life with which we are familiar in the Bible. The women grinding
at the mill, the men who take up their beds and walk, the groups that
gather at the well, the potter and his wheel, the marriage-feasts, the
waterpots standing ready to be filled, the maimed, the leper, and the
blind--all these are everyday sights in the streets and households of
modern India.

But we may also make an instructive comparison between India and
mediaeval, or even Renaissance, Europe. As soon as one gets away from
the railway and the telegraph--indeed even where they have already
penetrated--one still finds in India conditions prevailing which
continued in Europe beyond the Middle Ages. The customary tie between
master and servant, lasting from one generation to another, preserves
the community of interest which prevented the feudal bond from being
irksome. The modern severance of classes, the modern desire for
aloofness, has not yet come. The servants are an integral part of the
household, sharing in its ceremonies and festivities, crowding into
their master's presence without impairing his privacy, and following
him as escort whenever he stirs abroad. The child-marriage which we
condemn in modern India, was frequently practised in Europe in the
sixteenth century, when the uncertainty of life made men wish to
secure the future of their children so far as they could. The
foster-mothers with whom young Mughal princes found a home, whose sons
they loved as their own brothers, had their counter-part in these
islands as late as the days of the great Lord Cork. Walled cities with
crowded houses looking into one another across narrow winding alleys,
were an inevitable condition of life in sixteenth-century Europe
before strong central government had made it safe to live outside the
gates. Even the houses of the great were dark, airless, cramped, with
tiny windows and dim, opaque glass; such as one may still see at
Compton Castle in Devonshire or the Chateau des Comtes at Ghent.
Communications moved slowly along unmetalled roads or up and down
rivers. Carriages with two or four horses were occasionally used; but
the ordinary traveller rode on horseback, and needy students coming to
a university walked, clubbing together for a packhorse to carry their
modest baggage. These are features which may still be matched in many
parts of India.

The ravages of plague, the absence of sanitation, the recurrence of
famine and war, all combined in sixteenth-century Europe to produce an
uncertainty in the tenure of life, which modern India knows only too
well from all the causes except the last; but India does not follow
Europe in the resulting practice of frequent remarriage on both sides.
In Erasmus' day a marriage in which neither side had previously or
did subsequently contract a similar relation must have been quite
exceptional. A certain German lady, after one ordinary husband, became
the wife of three leading Reformers in succession, Oecolampadius,
Capito, and Bucer--almost an official position, it would seem. She
survived them all, and when Bucer died at Cambridge in 1551, was able
to return to Basle, to be buried beside Oecolampadius in the
Cathedral. Katherine Parr married four times. To her first husband,
who left her a widow at fifteen, she was a second wife; to her second,
a third wife; to her third, who was Henry VIII, a sixth; and only her
fourth was a bachelor.

The custom of the year's 'doole' after the death of husband or wife
was just at this period breaking down. In 1488 Edward IV declined a
new marriage for his sister, Margaret of York, the new-made widow of
Charles the Bold, on the ground that 'after the usage of our realms no
estate or person honourable communeth of marriage within the year of
their dool'. But Tudor practice was very different. For Mary, Queen of
France, who married her Duke of Suffolk as soon as her six weeks of
white mourning were out, there was some excuse of urgency; Henry, too,
in his rapid marriage with Jane Seymour had special reasons. But
Katherine Parr, when her turn to marry him came, was but a few months
a widow; and later, in being on with her old love, Thomas Seymour,
when her grim master was only just dead, she had no motive beyond the
wishes of lovers long delayed. The Princess Mary, however, considered
this latter action highly improper.

John Oporinus (Herbst), the Basle printer (1507-68), had a varied
experience; taking four widows to wife. At the age of 20 he
married--almost, it seems, out of a sense of duty--the widow of his
teacher, Xylotectus of Lucerne; an elderly lady who persecuted him
sorely, and once in a passion threw dirty water over him. After eight
years, two of which he had spent roving through Germany with
Paracelsus, she died, leaving her property to relations. Oporinus'
next widow had three children, girls, who grew up to share their
mother's expensive tastes. For nearly thirty years their extravagance
vexed him, though his wife had tact enough to keep from open quarrels.
Then one day he returned from the Frankfort fair to find her dead of
the plague. The same visitation, 1564, by carrying off first John
Herwagen the younger and then Ulrich Iselin, Professor of Law at
Basle, made two more widows, successively to bear Oporinus' name.
Herwagen's widow, Elizabeth Holzach, was a sweet woman, but died in
the fourth month of her new marriage, 17 July 1565. Iselin's was
Faustina, daughter of Boniface Amerbach, born in 1530. To her seven
children by Iselin, she added one for Oporinus, Emmanuel, born 25 Jan.
1568; but the father of 60 did not live six months to have pleasure in
his firstborn.

With such frequent changes the marriage-tie cannot have given the same
personal attachment that is possible at the present day: indeed such
unions can scarcely have seemed more lasting than the temporary
associations of friends. One need only recall the bargainings that
occur in the Paston Letters to realize that there was not much romance
about their marriages, at any rate beforehand. Thus wrote Sir John
Paston in 1473 of a suitor for his sister Anne: 'As for Yelverton, he
said but late that he would have her if she had her money; and else
not.'

Thomas More is rightly regarded as a man in whom the spirit burned
brighter and clearer than in most of his contemporaries; and yet his
matrimonial relations savour more of convenience or even of business
than of affection. For his first wife, we are told--and there is no
reason to doubt the story--, his fancy had lighted on an Essex girl,
the daughter of a country-gentleman; but on visiting her at home he
found that she had an elder sister not yet married. Feeling that to
have her younger sister married first would be a grief to the elder,
he 'inclined his affection' towards her and made her his wife in place
of his first choice. The interpretation that when he saw the elder
sister, he preferred her before the other, might be probable to-day:
to apply it to the story of More would be a case of that commonest of
'vulgar errors' in history,--judging the past by the ideas of the
present. For five or six years More lived with his girl-bride, whose
country training and unformed mind caused much trouble and difficulty
to them both. The unequal relation between them appears in a story
told by Erasmus; that More delighted her once by bringing home a
present of sham jewels, and apparently did not think it necessary to
undeceive her about them. Happiness came in time; but after bearing
him four children, she died. Within a month the widower came to his
father-confessor by night and obtained leave to be married next
morning. His new wife was a middle-aged lady of no charms--indeed she
seems to have been a regular shrew--who served him as a capable
housekeeper and looked after his children while they were young. But
she never engaged his affections; and it was his eldest daughter,
Margaret, who became the chosen partner of his joys and sorrows in
later years.

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