The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

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For the substantial accuracy of Butzbach's narrative 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. 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 autobiography
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
Trithemius 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 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 reputation 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; and
pressing money privily into his hands, she besought 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 schoolboy 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 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 , 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
difficulties. 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 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
Senectute_ and _De Amicitia_, Horace's _Ars Poetica_, the _Axiochus_
in Agricola's translation, Cyprian's Epistles, Prudentius' 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 1486, produced Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's _De
Senectute_ and _De Officiis_, Boethius' _De consolatione philosophiae_
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 _Epistola mythologica_ of
Bartholomew of Cologne.

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 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, including 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 relapsing 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.

III

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 accompanied 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 Hertogenbosch--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, 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 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, 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
gatherings 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 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 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
Butzbach, on whom his modesty and friendliness made a deep impression.
Indeed, his conversation greatly 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 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 Saffig, 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; hic habitabo, quoniam elegi eam.' 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. 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 Johannisberg, 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.

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