The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

P >> P. S. Allen >> The Age of Erasmus

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

Of the foreign 'nations' at the universities of Italy none was more
numerous than the German, a title which embraced many nationalities of
the North: not merely German-speaking races such as the Swiss and
Flemish and Dutch, but all who could by any stretch of imagination be
represented as descendants of the Goths; Swedes and Danes, Hungarians
and Bohemians, Lithuanians and Bulgars and Poles. That they went in
such numbers is not surprising. The prestige of Italian teaching was
great and well-established, whereas their own universities were few
and scarcely more than nascent; indeed, when the Council of Vienne had
ordained the teaching of Greek and other missionary languages in 1311,
its injunctions went to France and Italy and England and Spain: but
Germany had no university to which a missive could be directed. From
Southern Germany, too, and Switzerland and Austria, the distance was
small, notwithstanding the obvious Alps and the difficulties of the
passes. Even Celtis, in spite of his denunciations, sent on his best
pupils to Italy. So there were many who brought home with them to the
North recollections of lofty condescension and of ill-disguised
contempt for the foreigner: insults that they burned to repay.

Italy might vaunt the glories of ancient Rome; but Germany also had
deeds to be proud of. Rome might have founded the World-empire; but
Charlemagne had conquered the dominions of the Caesars and made the
Empire Germanic. Classic antiquity, too, could not be denied to the
land and people whom Tacitus had described; and Germans were not slow
to claim the virtues found among them by the Roman historian. Arminius
became the national hero. German faith and honour, German simplicity,
German sincerity and candour--these are insisted upon by the
Transalpine humanists with a vehemence which suggests that while
priding themselves on the possession of such qualities, they marked
the lack of them in others. We may recall Ascham's horror of the
Englishman Italianated. Not that Germans could not make friends in
Italy. Scheurl loved his time at Bologna, and was eager to fight for
the Bentivogli against Julius II. Erasmus was made much of by the
Aldine Academy at Venice; and ten years later Hutten was charmed with
his reception there. But with many, conscious of their own defects[40]
and of the reality of Italian superiority, the charge of barbarism
must have rankled. To Luther in 1518 Italian is synonymous with
supercilious.

[40] Thus a worthy abbot in the Inn valley, writing to Erasmus
in 1523, manages to achieve a Latin letter, but apologizes
for only being able to write in German characters.

The rising German feeling expresses itself on all sides in the letters
of the humanists. A young Frieslander, studying at Oxford in 1499,
writes to a fellow-countryman there: 'Your verses have shown me what I
never could have believed, that German talents are no whit inferior to
Italian.' Hutten in 1516 writes of Reuchlin and Erasmus as 'the two
eyes of Germany, whom we must sedulously cherish; for it is through
them that our nation is ceasing to be barbarous'. Beatus Rhenanus, in
editing the poems of Janus Pannonius (d. 1472), says in his preface,
1518: 'Janus and Erasmus, Germans though they are and moderns, give me
as much satisfaction to read as do Politian and Hermolaus, or even
Virgil and Cicero.' Erasmus in 1518 writes to thank a canon of Mainz
who had entertained him at supper. After compliments on his host's
charming manners, his erudition free from superciliousness--if he
could have known Gibbon, he surely must have used those immortal words
of praise, 'a modest and learned ignorance'--and his wit and elegance
of speech, he goes on: 'One might have been listening to a Roman. Now
let the Italians go and taunt Germans with barbarism, if they dare!'
In 1519 a canon of Brixen in Tirol writes to Beatus: 'Would to God
that Germany had more men like you, to make her famous, and stand up
against those Italians, who give themselves such airs about their
learning; though men of credit now think that the helm has been
snatched from their hands by Erasmus.' This is how Zwingli writes in
1521 of an Italian who had attacked Luther and charged him with
ignorance: 'But we must make allowances for Italian conceit. In their
heads is always running the refrain, "Heaven and earth can show none
like to us". They cannot bear to see Germany outstripping them in
learning.' Rarely a different note is heard, evoked by rivalry perhaps
or the desire to encourage. Locher from Freiburg could call Leipzig
barbarous. Erasmus wrote to an Erfurt schoolmaster that he was glad to
see Germany softening under the influence of good learning and putting
off her wild woodland ways. But these are exceptions: towards
insolence from the South an unbroken front was preserved.

In another direction the strong national feeling manifested itself; in
the study of German antiquity and the composition of histories.[41]
Maximilian, dipping his hands in literature, stimulated the
archaeological researches of Peutinger, patronized Trithemius and
Pirckheimer, and even instituted a royal historian, Stabius. Celtis
the versatile projected an elaborate _Germania illustrata_ on the
model of Flavio Biondo's work for Rome; and his description of
Nuremberg was designed to be the first instalment. As he conceived it,
the work was never carried out; but essays of varying importance on
this theme were produced by Cochlaeus, Pirckheimer, Aventinus and
Munster. The most ardent to extol Germany was Wimpfeling of
Schlettstadt, a man of serious temperament, who was prone to rush into
controversy in defence of the causes that he had at heart. His
education had all been got in Germany, and he was proud of his
country. His first effort to increase its praise was to instigate
Trithemius to put together a 'Catalogue of the illustrious men who
adorn Germany with their talents and writings'. The author's preface
(8 Feb. 1491) reveals unmistakably the animosity towards Italy: 'Some
people contemn our country as barren, and maintain that few men of
genius have flourished in it; hoping by disparagement of others to
swell their own praise. With all the resources of their eloquence they
trick out the slender achievements of their own countrymen; but
jealousy blinds them to the great virtues of the Germans, the mighty
deeds and brilliant intellects, the loyalty, enthusiasm and devotion
of this great nation. If they find in the classics any credit given
to us for valour or learning, they quickly hide it up; and in order to
trumpet their own excellences, they omit ours altogether. That is how
Pliny's narrative of the German wars was lost, and how so many
histories of our people have disappeared.'

[41] Cf. A. Horawitz in Sybel's _Historische Zeitschrift_, xxv.
(1871), 66-101; and P. Joachimsen, _Geschichtsauffassung und
Geschichtschreibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluss des
Humanismus_, pt. 1, 1910.

The book was sent to Wimpfeling, who collected a few more names and
added a preface of his own (17 Sept. 1492) in the same strain. 'People
who think that Germany is still as barbarous as it was in the days of
Caesar should read what Jerome has to say about it. The abundance of
old books in existence shows that Germany had many learned men in the
past; who have left carefully written manuscripts on oratory, poetry,
natural philosophy, theology and all kinds of erudition. All down the
Rhine you will find the walls and roofs of monasteries adorned with
elegant epigrams which testify to German taste of old. To-day there
are Germans who can translate the Greek classics into Latin; and if
their style is not pure Ciceronian, let our detractors remember that
styles change with the times. Mankind is always discontented, and
prefers the old to the modern. I can quite understand that our German
philosophers adapted their style to their audiences and their lofty
subjects. So foreign critics had better let this provocative talk
alone for ever.'

A few years later Wimpfeling edited a fourteenth-century treatise by
Lupold of Bebenburg entitled 'The zeal and fervour of the ancient
German princes towards the Christian religion and the servants of
God'; the intention of which clearly fell in with his desire. In his
preface, addressed to Dalberg, Agricola's patron, he tells a story
which explains a peculiarity occasionally found in mediaeval
manuscripts; of being written in sections by several different hands.
Some years before, the Patriarch of Aquileia was passing through
Spires. To divert the enforced leisure of a halt upon a journey, he
prowled round the libraries of the town; and in one discovered this
treatise of Lupold, which pleased him greatly. As he was to be off
again next morning, there was no time to have it copied, at least by
one hand: so the manuscript was cut up and distributed among a number
of scribes, and in the space of a night the desired copy was ready.
Subsequently Wimpfeling heard of the incident from one of the brethren
in the monastery, and obtained the original manuscript to publish.
When such things could happen, no wonder that some manuscripts are
imperfect and others have disappeared.

Wimpfeling's next endeavour to assert the glories of Germany was
completed in 1502; but did not appear till 1505. It was based upon the
work of a friend, Sebastian Murrho of Colmar (d. 1494). The title,
_Defensio Germaniae_ or _Epithoma Germanorum_, sufficiently explains
its purpose. After a brief account of Germany in Roman times--his hero
being not Arminius, but 'the first German king, Arioviscus, who fought
with Julius Caesar',--and fuller records of the Germanic Emperors
since Charlemagne, Wimpfeling comes to the praise of his own days;
the men of learning, the famous soldiers, the architects who could
build the great tower of Strasburg, the painters, the inventors of
printing and of that terrible engine the bombard. But nearest to his
heart lay a question debated then as now: to whom should rightfully
belong the western part of the Rhine valley, between the river and the
Vosges? It was there that his home lay, Schlettstadt, one of the
fairest cities of the plain. With all the 'zeal and fervour of the
ancient German princes' he sets out to prove that it must be German:
'where are there any traces' he cries 'of the French language? There
are no books in French, no monuments, no letters, no epitaphs, no
deeds or documents. For seven or eight centuries there is nothing but
Latin or German.' The cathedral of Spires, the fine monastery of St.
Fides in his native town, supply him with a further argument: would
the good Dukes of Swabia have lavished so much money, the substance of
their fathers, upon Gallic soil, to pour it out among the French? With
such arguments he convinced himself and others. Almost at the same
time Peutinger put out a little volume of 'Conversations about the
wonderful antiquities of Germany'; supporting Wimpfeling with further
evidence and concluding satisfactorily that French had never ruled
over Germans.

A work of very different calibre which appeared about this time was
the _Germaniae Exegesis_ of Francis Fritz, who Latinized his name into
Irenicus. Wimpfeling was growing grey when he had made his defence of
Germany: the new champion was a young man of 23, who had scarcely
emerged from his degree. The book was published in 1518; printed at
Hagenau by Anshelm at the cost of John Koberger, the great Nuremberg
printer, and fostered by Pirckheimer. In his later years Irenicus
became a Lutheran and displayed some dignity in refusing to sacrifice
his convictions to worldly interests; but at this time he was
enthusiastic and heady, and as a result his work is an uncritical
jumble. 'Puerile and silly' Erasmus called it, when he saw some of the
proof-sheets at Spires in 1518. 'A most unfortunate book', wrote
Beatus Rhenanus in 1525, 'without style and without judgement.' To
Aventinus in 1531 it was 'an impudent compilation from Stabius and
Trithemius, by a poor creature of the most despicable intelligence'.
But even a bad book can be a measure of the time, showing the ideas
current and the catchwords that were thought likely to attract the
reading public. It is much larger than Wimpfeling's Defence, and even
more miscellaneous; ranging over many aspects of Germany ancient and
modern. To us in the present inquiry its interest lies in the
frequency with which the excellence of Germany is asserted against
Italian sneers. The following specimen will illustrate this point, and
also explain Erasmus' epithets. In the chapter on the German language
(ii. 30) Irenicus is throughout engaged in refuting the charge of
German barbarism. 'It may be true', he says, 'that German is not so
much declined as Latin: but complexity does not necessarily bring
refinement. Germany is as rich in dialects as Italy, and to speak
German well merits high praise. Italian may be directly descended from
Latin; but German too has a considerable element of Latin and Greek
words. Guarino and Petrarch have written poetry in their vernaculars,
and so the Italians boast that their language is more suited to
poetry. But more than 1000 years ago Ovid wrote a book of German
poetry[42]; and Trebeta, son of Semiramis, is known to have been the
first person to compose in German.'

[42] Ovid, _Pont._ 4. 13. 19: Getico sermone.

In spite of such stuff, Pirckheimer, who saw the book in manuscript,
was delighted with it. 'You have achieved what many have wished but
few could have carried out. Every German must be obliged to you for
the lustre you have brought to the Fatherland.' After stating that he
had arranged with Koberger for the printing, he points out details
which might be improved: more stress might be laid on the connexion of
the Germans with the Goths, 'which the dregs of the Goths and
Lombards--by which I mean the Italians--try to snatch from us'; and
the universal conquests of the Goths might be more fully treated.
Finally he suggests that before publication the work should be
submitted to Stabius: 'the book deserves learned readers, and I should
wish it to be as perfect as possible.'[43]

[43] The letter is printed in Pirckheimer's _Opera_, 1610, p.
313: but is addressed wrongly, to Beatus Rhenanus.

This brief survey may close with a far more considerable work, the
_Res Germanicae_ of Beatus Rhenanus, published in 1531; from which we
have made some extracts above. The book is sober and serious, and the
subject-matter is handled scientifically; but in his preface Beatus is
careful to point out that German history is as important as Roman,
modern as much worth studying as ancient.

Such was the soil into which fell the seed that Luther went forth to
sow. When Tetzel came marching into German towns, with the Pope's Bull
borne before him on a cushion, and brandishing indulgences for the
living and the dead, when the coins were tinkling in the box, and the
souls, released by contract, were flying off out of purgatory, the
religious sense of thinking men was outraged by this travesty of the
Day of Judgement; but scarcely less were they angered to see the
tinkling coins, honest German money, flying off as rapidly as the
souls, to build palaces for the supercilious Italians. In the great
struggle of the Reformation the main issue was of course religious;
but even its leader could feel added bitterness in the knowledge that
this shocking traffic was ordained from Italy to benefit an Italian
Pope. If the sympathies of educated Germany had not already been
strongly moved in the same direction, it is conceivable that Luther's
intrepid protest might have lacked the support which carried it to
success.

XI

ERASMUS AND THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN

(A paper read before the third International Historical Congress, in
London, April 1913.)

Whatever may still be the troubles of the great, amongst men of
learning at any rate visits of ceremony are mercifully no longer in
fashion. At first sight one is inclined to find the cause of this in
an improved sense of the value of time. Modern inventions have taught
first the business man and then the world in general that time is
money. Improved communications with time-tables that may be relied
upon enable us to arrange our days in such a way as to be at least
more busy, if not more useful; and we have acquired a wholesome
respect for the time of others. But I do not think we should be right
in accounting for the change in this way. At all ages the scholar,
looking round him at tasks which exceed the capacity of a lifetime,
has been avaricious of the hours--'labuntur anni', 'pereunt et
imputantur' ever in his thoughts: and though the world of old moved
slower, the man of business has rarely belied his name. A more
plausible explanation is that the custom has died of surfeit. As
increased facilities of travel made the world smaller, the circle of
those that might be visited and saluted by the active grew boundless;
so that on both sides limits were desired. Another consideration is
that with new facilities came increased opportunities and hopes.
To-day we live in the happy consciousness that friends, however
distant, may be brought across the world to our doors by the urgencies
of business or pleasure; and thus no one knows what the coming year
may bring forth. In the sixteenth century men knew that opportunities
lost might never recur, and that they must seize or make them as best
they might.

At that time visits of ceremony were in great vogue. Officials and
scholars alike groaned under them. After a visit to the Court Erasmus
writes: 'If Pollio (a disguised name, as he was writing of a man who
afterwards became an intimate friend) has been with you, you will
understand what I suffered at Brussels; every day hosts of Spanish
visitors, besides Italians and Germans.' A little later he apologizes
to a correspondent for having given him a chilly welcome: 'just then I
had escaped from Brussels, quite worn out with the salutations of
these persistent Spaniards.' The custom was widespread. An English
graduate, studying for a time at Louvain, congratulates himself on
having escaped from it at Cambridge. Clenardus found it thriving at
Salamanca; Casaubon complained of it at Montpellier; in Oxford it was
even obligatory for intending disputants in the schools to pay formal
visits beforehand to their examiners.

In 1517 Erasmus' fame was at its zenith; and in consequence visitors
came to him from every side, some to seek counsel, others to adore.
His correspondence gives us many instances. In the spring of 1517,
when the Cardinal of Gurk attended Maximilian to the Netherlands, his
two secretaries, Richard Bartholinus of Perugia and Ursinus Velius, a
Silesian, prepared panegyrical verses with which to greet Erasmus if
they should have the good fortune to meet him. For some reason
Bartholinus alone came, and, presenting both the poems, elicited a
complimentary letter in reply. A more distinguished visitor received
less attention. In the summer of 1518 Erasmus was at Basle, printing
the notes to his second edition of the New Testament. The Bishop of
Pistoia, nephew of one of the most influential cardinals, and Papal
nuncio in Switzerland, also came to Basle. Wishing to see the great
scholar, he asked him to dinner. But Erasmus could not spare the time.
He declined, and in his place sent his friends, Beatus Rhenanus and
the young Amerbachs. Three times he made excuse; and at length the
Nuncio went on foot to seek in Froben's press the scholar who would
not come to him. What their conversation was we do not know; but
before leaving, the Nuncio ordered a copy of the Amerbach-Froben
Jerome to be sent to the binders and equipped with his arms and
adornments.

Later in the year the enthusiastic Eobanus of Hesse appeared in
Louvain. He had come from Erfurt where he was teaching, and the main
purpose of his journey was to see Erasmus. His _Hodoeporicon_,
printed on his return, describes his course in detail. With a young
companion, John Werter, also from Erfurt, he entered Louvain in the
evening. Next morning early they sent in their 'callow' verses to the
great man, and followed shortly themselves. Erasmus came down to greet
them at the door with a kindly welcome, and Eobanus describes a
banquet to which he invited them, entertaining them with serious talk
and light-hearted jest. But it was at no light cost to Erasmus' time:
for when his admirers left five days later, he had been cajoled into
writing six letters of compliment, two to the travellers themselves
and four more to friends at Gotha and Erfurt. But this was not the
only cost. Eobanus imbued others of the Erfurt circle with his
hero-worship; and next year came two more, Jonas and Schalbe, to
trouble Erasmus' leisure, when he was taking a spring holiday at
Antwerp, 'by the sea', and to bear off more letters to Erfurt. The
spirit that animated these visitors is shown in a letter of John
Turzo, bishop of Breslau, a man of Erasmus' own age. In 1518 Ursinus
Velius, the disappointed secretary of the Cardinal of Gurk, had become
canon of Breslau on Turzo's presentation; and had doubtless talked to
his patron of Erasmus' attractive gifts. 'I am most eager to visit
you' wrote the Bishop, from Breslau. 'If ever I had heard that you
were anywhere within a week's journey from here, I should have rushed
over at once: indeed I would have gone as far as Belgium, if only the
business of my office allowed. The men of Cadiz who journeyed to Rome
to see Livy were not more eager.'

A picture of the interruptions to which Erasmus was exposed is given
in a preface written in Froben's name for the new edition of Erasmus'
_Epigrammata_ combined with More's and with the _Utopia_, March 1518.
'Most of these verses' Froben is made to say 'were written not for
publication, but to give pleasure to friends; to whom he is always
very obliging. When he was here bringing out his New Testament and
Jerome, heavens! how he worked! toiling away untiringly day after day.
Never was any one more overwhelmed in composition; and yet certain
great persons thought themselves entitled to come and waste his time,
coaxing out of him a few lines of verse or a little letter. So
compliant was he that they made it very difficult for him. To refuse
seemed uncivil when they pressed him so. But to write when his mind
was intent elsewhere, and not a minute to spare from his labours----!
However, he did write, on the spur of the moment, turning aside for a
little to the groves of the Muses.'

Some other visitors can be traced in this period. John Alexander
Brassicanus, poet laureate, came from Tubingen in September 1520 and
saw Erasmus at Antwerp; whence in reply to a letter of self-introduction
he bore away a complimentary letter that he afterwards printed, and
the sound piece of advice, that if he wished to become learned, he
must never think himself so. More distinguished was Ferdinand
Columbus, the explorer's natural son and heir, who in October 1520,
on one of those journeys on which he gathered his famous library,
received at Louvain a copy of Erasmus' _Antibarbari_, with his name
inscribed in it by the author. A visitor to whom we must pay more heed
was John Draco, one of the Erfurt circle, who in July 1520 came to pay
homage at Louvain.

In the autumn of 1518 the agent of a Leipzig bookseller trading to
Prague received a letter to carry back with him and forward on to
Erasmus at Louvain. The writer was a certain Jan Slechta, a Bohemian
country gentleman, who was living at Kosteletz on the upper waters of
the Elbe, a few miles to the North-east of Prague. He was a man of
education and position. After taking his M.A. at Prague in 1484, he
had served for sixteen years as a secretary to King Ladislas of
Bohemia and Hungary; but about 1507, disgusted with the turmoils of
court life in that very troubled time, he had retired to his home, to
give his later years to the education of his son and the personal
management of his estates. The world of affairs had not extinguished
his love of learning. He was an intimate friend of Bohuslaus of
Hassenstein, scholar and traveller, and corresponded with him in
elegant Latin. Attracted by the reputation for eloquence won by the
notorious Hieronymus Balbus, he had persuaded him _c._ 1499 to come
and teach in Prague--a step which in view of Balbus' bad life he
afterwards deeply regretted. He was also the author of a dialogue on
the relations of body and soul, entitled _Microcosmus_; which with
characteristic modesty he kept for more than twenty years known only
to his intimate friends--indeed it was only in the last year of his
life that he composed a dedication for it, and it seems never to have
been printed.

The tone of Slechta's thoughts in his later years was grave and
serious; as well it might be. The two kingdoms, then but loosely
united, were torn with internal factions and racial jealousies; while
in church towers and over city gates the bells hung ready to proclaim
to the countryside the advent of that ever-present menace, the Turk.
In the priesthood men could mark much that was amiss; and the seamless
robe of Christ was rent with schism, the candle that Hus and Jerome
had lighted a century before, still burning clearly among less sober
heresies, which drew down on it, as upon themselves, spasmodic
outbursts of retributive violence. Uneasy sat the crown on Ladislas'
head; and when Death, coming as a friend, took it from him in 1516, it
was only to thrust this sad office upon a ten-year-old boy, who after
ten more years of childish government was miserably to perish at
Mohacz. No wonder that Slechta and his friends looked anxiously upon
the future. 'The times of Hus and Wycliffe which our grandfathers
detested, seem golden beside our own' wrote Bohuslaus to Geiler of
Kaisersberg--a member of that grave circle of Strasburg humanists,
with which, it may be noted in passing, our Bohemians had much in
common. The letters of Slechta contain two disquisitions, one on the
frailties of a celibate clergy, the other on the duties of a parish
priest; advocating reforms by which he hoped to check the continuous
growth of 'those unutterable heretics, the Pyghards': by whom he meant
the Bohemian Brethren.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18