The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

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Of Ellenbog's official duties occasional mention is made in his
letters. As Steward he has to visit the tenants of the monastery; in
the autumn he journeys about the country buying wine. We hear of him
at Westerhaim, on the river Iller, settling a dispute among the
fishermen. On one of his journeys to fetch wine from Constance, at the
hospice there he fell in with a man who could fire balls out of a
machine by means of nitre, and who boasted that he could demolish with
this weapon a certain castle in the neighbourhood. Over supper they
began to argue, the artillerist maintaining that nitre was cold, and
that the explosion which discharged the balls was caused by the
contrariety between nitre and sulphur; Ellenbog contending that nitre
was hot, and supporting this view by scraps remembered from his
father's scientific conversation.

The general life of the Abbey is also reflected. Ottobeuren lay on one
of the routes to Italy, and so they had plenty of visitors bringing
news from regions far off: a Carthusian, who had been in Ireland and
seen St. Patrick's cave; a party of Hungarian acrobats with dancing
bears; a young Cretan, John Bondius, who had seen the labyrinth of
Minos, but all walled up to prevent men from straying into it and
being lost. A great impression he made, when he dined with the Abbot;
he was so learned and polished, and spoke Latin so well for a Greek.
In 1514 Pellican, the Franciscan Visitor, passed on his way south, and
had a talk with Ellenbog, which was all too short, about Hebrew
learning. Next year came Eck, the theologian, the future champion of
orthodoxy, returning from Rome. Eck's mother and sisters were living
under the protection of the abbey--it is not clear whether they were
merely tenants, or whether they were occupying lay quarters within its
walls, as did Fernand's at St. Germain's in Paris. At any rate, Eck
came and made himself agreeable. He preached twice before the
brethren; and when he left, he promised to send them the latest news
from America. In 1511 a copy of Vespucci's narrative of his voyage had
been lent to the monastery, and had been read with great interest.

A grave question arose whether the new races discovered in the West
were to be accounted as saved or damned. Ellenbog quotes Faber
Stapulensis' statement that nothing could be more bestial than the
condition of the Indians whom da Gama had discovered in 1498 in
Calicut, Cannanore, and Ceylon; it was to be feared that the Indians
of the West were no better. In writing to Ellenbog six months later to
say that he had no clear opinions on the question, Eck uses an
interesting expression: 'To ask what I think is like looking for
Arthur and his Britons.'[16] The reference is to the Arthurian legend
and the long-expected, never-fulfilled, return of the great king; but
the humanists usually leave the whole field of mediaeval romance
severely alone.

[16] Arcturum cum Britannis exspectatis. For another allusion
to Arthur, see Pace, _De Fructu_, p. 83.

One September morning, when the dew was still heavy, Ellenbog went out
with some brethren to gather apples. At the top of the orchard[17] one
of them called out that he had found 'a star'. It was a damp white
deposit on the grass, clammy and quivering, cold to the touch, very
sticky, with long tenacious filaments. Ellenbog had never seen
anything like it, but he found out that the peasants and the shepherds
believed such things to be droppings from shooting stars,[18] if not
actually fallen stars, and that they were thought to be a cure for
cancer. His letter describing it is to ask the opinion of a friend who
was a doctor, that is to say, the scientist of the age.

[17] ortus.
[18] stellae emuncturam et purgamentum.

The affairs of Ellenbog's family often appear. His father had been a
great collector of books, which he had corrected with his own hand,
and which at his death he had wished to be kept together as a common
heirloom for the whole family. A great many of them were medical, and
therefore it had seemed good that the enjoyment of the books should go
to Ulrich, the son who was studying medicine at Siena. On his way
home, after completing his course, Ulrich died; and Nicholas composed
a piteous appeal on behalf of the books, bewailing their fate that
after ten years of confinement their hope of being used had come to
nothing. Onofrius was the only brother from whom might be hoped a
younger generation of Ellenbogs, one of whom might study medicine.
Elizabeth's children were Geslers, and so apparently did not count.

How long the books were kept together is not known. One of them is now
in the University Library at Cambridge, and has been excellently
described in an essay by the late Robert Proctor. It consists of
several volumes bound together: Henry of Rimini on the Cardinal
Virtues, the Journey of a penitent soul through Lent, a treatise _de
diuina predestinacione_, and John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury,
_de oculo morali_--all of a definitely religious or moral character.
They are freely annotated by the father's hand, with marginalia which
throw light on his life and times, his dislike of the Venetians for
their anti-papal policy, his experiences as physician to the Abbey of
St. Ulrich in Augsburg, and the part that he played in the
introduction of printing there. On Lady Day, 1481, shortly after
Nicholas' birth, perhaps when he had lived just a week and seemed
likely to thrive, the father composed an address to his four living
sons--four being already dead--, and wrote it into this volume. He
adjures them to follow learning and goodness, and finally bids them
take every care of the books; and not let them be separated. This it
was which inspired Nicholas' appeal thirty years later, when Ulrich,
the son, was cut off, just as his eyes seemed about to follow his
father's up and down the pages.

Ellenbog's letters to his sister Barbara are amusing. She was four or
five years older than he, but being a woman had not had his
opportunities. He begins by trying to teach her Latin. But the
difficulties were many, and apparently she did not progress far enough
to write in the tongue. At any rate, Ellenbog copied none of her
letters into his book; a fact which is to be deplored both from her
point of view and from ours. One would like to know what reply she
made to some of his homilies. She invited him once to come and see her
at Heppach, with leave from her Abbess. He replies cautiously that, if
he comes, he hopes they will be able to talk without being overheard;
for Onofrius had been once, and when he made a rather coarse remark,
there had been giggles outside the door. In 1512 Barbara became
Prioress, and Ellenbog took the opportunity to lecture her at length
upon spiritual pride and the importance of humility; sweetening his
dose of virtue with a present of cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.

Once she let fall some regrets that she had brought nothing into her
convent, and was dependent on it for food and clothing; evidently she
would have liked some share of the patrimony which had been divided
between her married sisters and the brothers who remained in the
world. Nicholas' reply was that Heppach, like other monasteries, was
well endowed; she had given herself, and that was quite enough. In
1515 Barbara was elected Abbess; and received another discourse about
spiritual pride. John and Elizabeth wrote to Nicholas saying that they
had been invited to Heppach to salute the new Reverend Mother, and
suggesting that he should come too. But his plain speaking had had its
reward, no invitation had come for him. Under the circumstances, he
writes, he could not think of going; besides he had been there several
times before, and had found it very dull; it was clearly John's duty
to go, as he had not been once in twenty years, although his parish
was only three miles from Heppach. However the breach was healed, and
a proper invitation came for Nicholas; but the business of his
stewardship prevented him from accepting.

The relations with John, the parish priest of Wurtzen, are more
harmonious. There is a frequent exchange of presents, John sending
tools for wood-carving, and crayfish; which seem to have been common
in his neighbourhood, for Nicholas occasionally asks for them. The
only lecture is one passed on from Barbara. John had been created a
chaplain to Maximilian, an honorific title, with few or no duties; and
Barbara had feared that he might neglect the flock in his parish. On
another occasion Nicholas urges him to follow Elizabeth's advice, and
get an unmarried man to be his housekeeper. He had proposed to have a
man with a family; and Elizabeth was afraid for his reputation. John
was a frequent guest at Ottobeuren, and one of Nicholas' invitations
contains what is unusual among the humanists, an appreciation of the
charms of the country: 'Come,' he says, 'and hear the songs of the
birds, the shepherds' pipes and the children's horns, the choruses of
reapers and ploughmen, and the voices of the girls as they work in the
fields.'

By his younger relatives, Ellenbog did his duty unfailingly.
Elizabeth's eldest son, John Gesler, was at school at Memmingen. When
a new schoolmaster was appointed, Ellenbog wrote to bespeak his
interest in the boy, and to suggest the books that he should read:
Donatus' Grammar and the letters of Filelfo. At 14 he persuaded the
parents to send John to Heidelberg, and took a great deal of trouble
in arranging that the boy should be lodged with his own teacher, Peter
of Wimpina. When two years later Elizabeth grew anxious about John's
health and proposed to take him with her to some of the numerous
baths, which then as now abounded in Germany and Switzerland, it was
again Nicholas who made the arrangements; and in 1515, when John had
left Heidelberg, Nicholas proposed to exchange letters with him daily,
in order that he might not forget his Latin. In January 1515
Elizabeth's eldest daughter, Barbara, was married to a certain Conrad
Ankaryte. In December 1530 he writes to one of the nuns at Heppach to
announce that he has persuaded two girls, the children of this
marriage, to embrace the religious life. The elder, Anna, aged 13, was
forward with her education, as she was well acquainted with German
literature and was reading Latin with her father[19]; by the following
summer she would be ready to come to Heppach. For the younger, who was
not yet 7, he begged a few years' grace, though she was eager to come
at once. Truly children developed earlier in those days.

[19] quae legere literas vernaculae linguae satis expedite
nouit, nunc per patrem imbuitur Latinis.

The happiest time of Ellenbog's life began in the summer of 1522, when
after ten years' service he was allowed by the Abbot to resign his
Stewardship. His accounts were audited satisfactorily, and he was
discharged, to what seemed to him a riotous banquet of leisure. 'In
the quiet of my cell,' he wrote to his brother, 'I read, I write, I
meditate, I pray, I paint, I carve'. His interest in astronomy was
resumed, and he set himself to make dials for pocket use, on metal
rings or on round wooden sticks. The latter he turned for himself upon
a lathe; and for this work John sent him a present of boxwood,
juniper, and plane. By the New Year of 1523 he had made two sundials;
one which showed the time on five sides at once, he sent to John at
Wurtzen, the other to Barbara at Heppach. His cell looked South, and
thus he could study the movements of the moon and the planets, and
note the southing of the stars. He could turn his skill to profit,
too, and exchange his dials for pictures of the saints.

In 1525 his peace was broken by the Peasants' Revolt, which swept like
a hurricane over South Germany. Hostility to religion was not one of
its moving causes, but the monks were vulnerable, and had always been
considered fair game, especially by local nobles whom in the plenitude
of their power they had not troubled to conciliate. The peasants of
the Rhine valley had not forgotten the burning of Limburg, near
Spires, by William of Hesse in 1504. The abbey church had scarcely a
rival in Germany, and the flames burned for twelve days. With such an
example, and with their prey unresisting, the peasants were not likely
to stay their hands. At Freiburg they brought to his death Gregory
Reisch, the learned Carthusian Prior of St. Johannisberg, the friend
of Maximilian. Ellenbog enumerates four monasteries burned in his
neighbourhood during the outbreak--three by the peasants incensed
against their landlords, and one by a noble who bore it a grudge. When
the first attack came in April, Ellenbog was staying at the monastery
of St. George, at Isny, about twenty miles away. The peasants there
destroyed everything belonging to the monks that they could find
outside the walls, and threatened dire treatment when they should
force their way in; but mercifully the walls were strong, and held
out.

Ottobeuren was less fortunate. Being in the country, it had to rely
upon itself, and so fell an easy prey. The buildings were defaced, the
windows broken, the stoves and ovens wrecked, and all the ironwork
carried off. Scarcely a door remained on its hinges, and the furniture
of the rooms disappeared. The church was violated, its pictures
soiled, and its statues smashed; Christ's wounds should be wounds
indeed, hard voices cried, as axe and hammer rung over their pitiless
work. The library was emptied of its books. Walls and roofs and floors
were all that the monks found when they ventured back. Ellenbog,
however, fared better than many. A friendly brother had seized up some
of his books and papers and hidden them in the clock-tower; and the
abbey carpenter thinking this insecure had found them better cover,
presumably in his own house. The tempest over, calm soon returned. The
countryfolk, many of whom had remained friendly, began bringing back
spoil which they had wrested from wrongful possessors. Some of
Ellenbog's books were brought in; and as much as two years later he
recovered one of his astronomical instruments. He lost, however, a
number of his father's papers, which he had been on the point of
editing; a Hebrew Bible given to him by Onofrius; and the first two
books of his collection of his own letters. 'God knows whether they
will ever come back,' he wrote at the beginning of the third book; and
to him they never did. They are now safe at Stuttgart, though in
permanent divorce from the other seven books, which are in Paris.

Ellenbog was no coward. In the autumn the vineyards belonging to the
Abbey were to be inspected, and the due tithes of wine exacted. Unless
this were done the monks would suffer lack; so some one had to be
sent, in spite of the last mutterings of the revolt. One vineyard lay
at Immenstadt, some distance to the South, and thus Ellenbog at Isny
was already part way thither. Moreover, having served as Steward, he
would know what was required. The Abbot sent down a horse and bade him
go: though the roads were held by armed outlaws, who were reported to
be specially hostile to monks. He was afraid; but he summoned his
courage and went. If the Abbey seemed a haven before, when he came
back to it from the experiences of his ordination at Augsburg, this
time it was a refuge and strength against the fear that lurketh in
forests and the imagination of pursuing footsteps.

IV

UNIVERSITIES

In the autumn of 1495 Erasmus was at length at liberty to go to a
university. His patron, the Bishop of Cambray, gave him a small
allowance, and the authorities at Steyn were prevailed upon to
consent. His purpose was to obtain a Doctor's degree in Theology; and
so he entered the College of Montaigu at Paris, which had been founded
in 1388, but had fallen into decay and only recently been revived. In
1483 a certain John Standonck had volunteered to become Principal. By
his efforts the college buildings were restored; and by taking in rich
pupils he secured means to maintain the Domus Pauperum attached to the
College. He was an ardent, enthusiastic person, but rather lacking in
judgement; and starved his _pauperes_ in order to be able to have as
many as possible on the slender resources available. Erasmus, being
delicate and therewith fastidious, complained of the rough and meagre
fare--rotten eggs and stinking water; and with good reason, for it
made him ill, and he had to spend the summer of 1496 with his friends
in Holland.

Having established himself in the college he introduced himself to the
literary circle in Paris, through its head, Robert Gaguin, the aged
General of the Maturins, who had served on many embassies, to Spain,
to Italy, to Germany, to England. Gaguin had written much himself,
and had been one of the promoters of printing in Paris. To know him
was to be known of many. Erasmus began by addressing to him a poem and
some florid letters, and showed him some of his work. Then an
opportunity came to do him a service. Gaguin had composed a history of
the French, and it was just coming through the press. At the end the
printer found himself with two pages of the last sheet unfilled,
despite ample spacing out, and the author was too ill to lend any
help. Erasmus heard of the difficulty, and came to the rescue with a
long and most elegant epistle to Gaguin, comparing him to Sallust and
Livy, and promising him immortality. Time has turned the tables:
Gaguin's name lives, not because of his history, but because the young
and unknown Augustinian canon thought fit to court his acquaintance.

Once blooded with the printers, Erasmus went steadily on. In a few
months he published some poems of his own, on Christ and the
angels--_de casa natalitia Jesu_, a very rare volume, of which only
two copies are known. It was dedicated to a college friend, Hector
Boys, of Dundee, subsequently the first Principal of King's College,
Aberdeen, and historian of Scotland. It may be wondered what was
Erasmus' motive. A dedication of a book had a market value and usually
brought a return in proportion to the compliments laid on. Correctness
certainly required that the book should be sent to the Bishop of
Cambray. Boys was only a fellow-student, whose acquaintance Erasmus
had made at Montaigu. The explanation perhaps lies in the fact that
Bishop Elphinstone was then negotiating with Boys to come to Aberdeen;
in the newly-founded university Erasmus may have sighted hopes for
himself. The following year saw another volume produced by him; the
poems of his Gouda and Deventer friend, William Herman, with a few of
his own added. This time the Bishop of Cambray did not fail of his
due.

When Erasmus came to Paris, he was nearly 29, older by far than the
ordinary arts student, but not old for the theological course, which
lasted longer than the others. To reach the first step, the Bachelor's
degree, he had to attend a number of lectures; and very tedious he
found them. Theologians are apt to be conservative. The method of
instruction had not advanced far beyond the dictation of text and
gloss and commentary, which had been current before the days of
printing. Erasmus yawned and dozed, or wrote letters to his friends
making fun of these 'barbarous Scotists'. 'You wouldn't know me,' he
says, 'if you could see me sitting under old Dunderhead, my brows knit
and looking thoroughly puzzled. They tell me that no one can
understand these mysteries who has any traffic with the Muses or the
Graces. So I am trying hard to forget my Latin: wit and elegance must
disappear. I think I am getting on; maybe some day they will recognize
me for their own.' They did, and he proceeded B.D.; when is not known,
but probably by Easter 1498.

At the present day in England our systems are very set. A man
matriculates at a university and completes his course there: to change
even from one college to another is becoming almost unknown. Abroad,
however, things are more fluid, and students pass on from university
to university in search of the best teacher for special parts of their
course. So it was in Erasmus' time. A course of lectures attended in
one university could be reckoned in another; and thus men often
proceeded to their degrees within a short time of their matriculation.
Having taken his Bachelor's degree at Paris, Erasmus at once proposed
to convert it into a Doctor's in Italy; but one hope after another of
going there was disappointed. In 1506 he wished to take it in
Cambridge; but after obtaining his grace, he was offered a chance to
go to Italy as tutor to the sons of Henry VII's Italian physician. He
accepted with delight, and was made D.D. as he passed through Turin;
the formalities apparently requiring only a few days.

The art of reasoning is an excellent thing; and so long as man
continues to live according to reason, some training in this art will
continue to be a part of education. Indeed, an elementary knowledge of
it is as necessary as an elementary acquaintance with the art of
arithmetic. Both arts have this in common that though their feet walk
upon the earth, their heads are lost in the clouds. A moderate
attainment of them is indispensable to all; but their higher
developments can only be comprehended by the acutest minds. In the
Middle Ages the art of reasoning had been raised to such a pitch of
perfection that it entirely dominated the schools. Its exponents were
so proud of it that its bounds were continually extended; and it
became impossible to obtain a university degree without a high level
of proficiency in disputation. For his examination a candidate was
required to dispute with all comers--in practice this came to be a
small number of appointed examiners, three or four--on questions which
had been announced beforehand. It was not a hasty affair--time was
allowed for reflection, and the examination might easily last several
hours or even all day. But clearly readiness in debate was likely to
count in a man's favour, and so besides knowledge of standard authors
to be adduced in support of opinions--the Bible, the Fathers, the
mediaeval commentators, the Canon Law and the glosses upon it--it was
important to a candidate to be able to handle a question properly, to
divide it up into its different parts by means of distinctions, to
shear off side issues, to examine the various facets which it
presented when approached from different points of view; and all this
without hesitation, and of course in Latin.

In order to train candidates in this art, university and college
teachers gave frequent exhibitions of disputations, which from being
on any subject, de quolibet, were styled 'quodlibeticae questiones',
or 'disputationes'. A high dignitary presided, with the title of
'dominus quodlibetarius', and propounded questions, usually one
supported by arguments and two plain; and then the disputer, who
presumably came prepared, delivered his reply, clear cut into fine
distinctions and bristling with citations from recognized authorities.
Such work necessarily cost trouble and forethought, and the
hard-working teacher of the day, instead of printing his lectures on
philosophy or history or editing and commentating texts, gave to his
pupils in permanent form the quodlibetical disputations which the busy
among them had struggled to copy down into note-books, and over which
the inattentive, like Erasmus, had yawned.

These are some of the subjects disputed at Louvain, 1488-1507, by
Adrian of Utrecht; first as a young doctor, then as professor of
theology, and finally for ten years as vice-chancellor, before he was
carried away to become tutor to Prince Charles, and entered upon the
public career which led him finally to Rome as Adrian VI.

1488. Whether to avoid offending one's neighbour it is
permissible to break a vow or oath duly made.

1491. Whether one is bound to act on the command of a superior,
contrary to one's own opinion, knowing that in former days the
matter had been regarded as doubtful.

1492. Whether it is lawful to administer the Eucharist or to
confer the benefit of absolution on one who declares that he
cannot abstain from crimes.

1493. Whether of the two is more likely to be healed and
offends God the less, the man who sins from ignorance or
infirmity, or the man who sins of deliberate intent.

1495. Whether a priest who gives advice that tithes ought not
to be paid on the fruits of one's own labours, can receive
remission of his sin without undergoing severe punishment.

Whether transgression of human laws constitutes mortal sin.

1499. Whether prayer on behalf of many is as beneficial to the
individuals as if one prayed as long a time for each one.

1491. Whether it is permissible to give money to any
one to procure one a benefice by praising one's dignity and
merits to the provisor to the benefice.

Here are some of John Briard of Ath, a notable theologian, who was
subsequently Vice-chancellor of Louvain:

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