The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

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In connexion with this help and encouragement shown by Colet as Dean
to a foreign scholar, it is worth while to mention the visit to
London in 1509 of Cornelius Agrippa, the famous philosopher and
scientist, who had been sent to England by Maximilian on a diplomatic
errand, which he describes as 'a very secret business'. During his
stay, which lasted into 1510, he tells us that 'I laboured much over
the Epistles of St. Paul, in the company of John Colet, a man most
learned in Catholic doctrine, and of the purest life; and from him I
learnt many things that I did not know'. Erasmus was in England at the
time of this visit of Agrippa; but unfortunately he makes no allusion
to it, neither in his life of Colet, nor in his later correspondence
with Agrippa, nor, so far as I know, elsewhere in his works. If he had
done so, it might have solved a problem which is very curious in the
case of a public man of his fame and position, and of whom so much is
otherwise known. From the autumn of 1509, when he returned from Italy
and wrote the Praise of Folly in More's house in Bucklersbury, until
April 1511, when he went to Paris to print it, Erasmus completely
disappears from view. He published nothing, no letter that he wrote
survives, we have no clue to his movements. If it had been any one
else, we might almost conjecture that, like Hermonymus, he was in
prison. It was just during this period that Cornelius Agrippa was in
London. If either had mentioned the other, we should have a spark to
illumine this singular belt of darkness.

When Erasmus returned to Cambridge in 1511, he was already familiar
with the field in which he was going to work; but the precise order in
which his scheme unfolded itself, whether the Greek text was his first
aim or an afterthought, is not clear, his utterances being perhaps
intentionally ambiguous. During these three years in Cambridge he
refers occasionally to the 'collation' and 'castigation' of the New
Testament, so that evidently he was engaged with the four Greek
manuscripts, which, according to an introduction in his first edition,
he had before him for his first recension. One of these has been
identified, the Leicester Codex written by Emmanuel of Constantinople,
which, as already mentioned, was with the Franciscans at Cambridge
early in the sixteenth century.

By 1514 he was ready. In the last three years he had completed Jerome
and the New Testament, and had also prepared for the press some of
Seneca's philosophical writings, from manuscripts at King's and
Peterhouse; besides lesser pieces of work. A difficulty arose about
the printing. In 1512 he had been in negotiation with Badius Ascensius
of Paris to undertake Jerome and a new edition of the _Adagia_. What
actually happened is not known. But in December 1513 he writes to an
intimate friend that he has been badly treated about the _Adagia_ by
an agent--a travelling bookseller, who acted as go-between for
printers and authors and public; that instead of taking them to Badius
and offering him the refusal, the knavish fellow had gone straight to
Basle and sold them, with some other work of Erasmus, to a printer
who had only just completed an edition of the _Adagia_. Erasmus'
indignation does not ring true. It is highly probable that he was in
search of a printer with greater resources than Badius, who as yet had
produced nothing of any importance in Greek, and would therefore be
unable to do justice to the New Testament; and that accordingly he had
commissioned the agent to negotiate with a firm which by now had
established a great reputation--that of Amorbach and Froben, in Basle.
His attention had perhaps been aroused by a flattering mention of him
in a preface written in Froben's name for the pirated edition of the
_Adagia_, August 1513, to which Erasmus was referring in the letter
just quoted. Rumour had spread through Europe that Erasmus was
dead--it was repeated six months later in a book printed at
Vienna--and the Basle circle deplored the loss that this would mean to
learning.

There were other reasons for this choice, apart from the excellence of
the printers. Erasmus had never been happy in Paris. He had often been
ill beside the sluggish Seine, and had only found his health again by
leaving it. The theologians were still predominant there, and Louis
XII had a way of interfering with scholars who discovered any freedom
of thought. Standonck, for instance, the refounder of Montaigu, had
had to disappear in 1499-1500. For Erasmus to sit in Paris for two or
three years while his books were being printed, would have been at
least a penance. But Basle was very different. The Rhine, dashing
against the piers of the bridge which joined the Great and Little
towns, brought fresh air and coolness and health. The University,
founded in 1460, was active and liberally minded. The town had
recently (1501) thrown in its lot with the confederacy of Swiss
cantons, thereby strengthening the political immunity which it had
long enjoyed. Between the citizens and the religious orders complete
concord prevailed; and finally, except Paris, there was no town North
of the Alps which could vie with Basle in the splendour and number of
the books which it produced. This is how a contemporary scholar[21]
writes of the city of his adoption. 'Basle to-day is a residence for a
king. The streets are clean, the houses uniform and pleasant, some of
them even magnificent, with spacious courts and gay gardens and many
delightful prospects; on to the grounds and trees beside St. Peter's,
over the Dominicans', or down to the Rhine. There is nothing to offend
the taste even of those who have been in Italy, except perhaps the use
of stoves instead of fires, and the dirt of the inns, which is
universal throughout Germany. The climate is singularly mild and
agreeable, and the citizens polite. A bridge joins the two towns, and
the situation on the river is splendid. Truly Basle is [Greek:
basileia], a queen of cities.'

[21] Beatus Rhenanus, _Res Germanicae_, 1531, pp. 140, 1.

In 1513 the two greatest printers of Basle were in partnership, John
Amorbach and John Froben. Amorbach, a native of the town of that name
in Franconia, had taken his M.A. in Paris, and then had worked for a
time in Koberger's press at Nuremberg. About 1475 he began to print at
Basle, and for nearly forty years devoted all his energies to
producing books that would promote good learning; being, however, far
too good a man of business to be indifferent to profit. His ambition
was to publish worthily the four Doctors of the Church. Ambrose
appeared in 1492, Augustine in 1506, and Jerome succeeded. The work
was divided amongst many scholars. Reuchlin helped with the Hebrew and
Greek, and spent two months in Amorbach's house in the summer of 1510
to bring matters forward. Subsequently his province fell to Pellican,
the Franciscan Hebraist, and John Cono, a learned Dominican of
Nuremberg, who had mastered Greek at Venice and Padua, and had
recently returned from Italy with a store of Greek manuscripts copied
from the library of Musurus. Others who took part in the work were
Conrad Leontorius from the Engental; Sapidus, afterwards head master
of the Latin school at Schlettstadt; and Gregory Reisch, the learned
Prior of the Carthusians at Freiburg, who seems to have been specially
occupied with Jerome's Letters.

Amorbach's sons, Bruno, Basil, and Boniface, were just growing up to
take their father's place, when he died on Christmas Day, 1513. The
eldest, Bruno, was born in 1485, and easily paired off with Basil, who
was a few years younger. They went to school together at Schlettstadt,
under Crato Hofman, in 1497. In 1500 they matriculated at Basle; in
1501 they went to Paris, where in 1504-5 they became B.A., and in 1506
M.A. Bruno was enthusiastic for classical studies, and enjoyed life in
Paris, where he certainly had better opportunities, especially of
learning Greek, than he had at Basle; so his father allowed him to
stay on. Basil was destined for the law, and was sent to work under
Zasius at Freiburg. The youngest son, Boniface, 1495-1562, also went
to school at Schlettstadt; but when his time came for the university,
his father preferred to keep him at home under his own eye. He was
rather dissatisfied with Bruno, who as a Paris graduate had begun to
play the fine gentleman, and was spending his money handsomely, as
other young men have been known to do. The vigorous, straightforward
old printer had made the money himself by steady hard work, and he had
no intention of letting his son take life too easily. So he wrote him
a piece of his mind, in fine, forcible Latin.

JOHN AMORBACH TO HIS ELDEST SON, BRUNO, IN PARIS: from Basle, 23 July
1507.

'I cannot imagine, Bruno, what you do, to spend so much
money.[22] You took with you 7 crowns; and supposing that you
spent 2, or at the outside 3, on your journey, you must have
had 4 left--unless perhaps you paid for your companion, which I
did not tell you to do. Very likely his father has more money
than I have, but does not give it to him; no more do I give you
money to pay for other people. It is quite enough for me to
support you and your brothers, indeed more than enough.

Then, directly you reached Paris, you received 12 crowns from
John Watensne. Also you had 9 for your horse, as you say in
your letter. Also 9 more from John Watensne, which I paid to
Wolfgang Lachner at the Easter fair at Frankfort; also 15 at
midsummer. Add these together and you will see that you have
had 52 crowns in 9 months.

Perhaps you imagine that money comes to me anyhow. You know
that for the last two years I have not been printing. We are
living upon capital, the whole lot of us.[23] I have to provide
for my household.[24] I have to provide for your brother Basil,
and for Boniface, whom I have sent to Schlettstadt. I ought,
too, to do something for your sister: for several sober and
honourable men are at me about her, and I do not like to be
unfair towards her. So just remember that you are not the only
one.

You may take it for sure that I cannot, and will not, give you
more than 22 or 23 crowns a year, or at the most 24. If you can
live on that at Paris, well: I will undertake to let you have
it for some years. But if it is not enough, come home and I
will feed you at my table. Think it over and let me know by the
next messenger: or else come yourself.

I have been told on good authority that in the town (lodgings,
as opposed to a college) one can live quite decently on 16 or
at most 20 crowns: also that sometimes three or four students,
or more, take a house or a room, and then club together and
engage a cook, and that their weekly bills scarcely amount to a
teston <1/5 of a crown> a head. If that is so, join a party
like that and live carefully.

Good-bye. Your mother sends her love.

Your affectionate father, John Amorbach.

[22] Bruno, satis admirari non possum quid agas vt tot pecunias
consumas.
[23] Consumimus omnes de capitali.
[24] Habeo prouidere domui meae.

No answer came back, and on 18 August John Amorbach wrote again. Think
of a modern parent waiting a month for an answer to such a
communication and getting none! It might quite well have come. But
posts were slow and uncertain; and when he wrote again, the father's
righteous indignation had somewhat abated. It was not till 16 October
that Bruno replied, but with a very proper letter. He was a good
fellow, and knew what he owed to his father. After expressing his
regrets and determination to live within his allowance in future, he
goes on: 'There is a man just come from Italy, who is lecturing
publicly on Greek. lecturing on Lascaris' Greek Grammar.> I have so long been wishing to
learn this language, and here at length is an opportunity. I have
plunged headlong into it, and with such a teacher I feel sure of
satisfying my desires, which are as eager as any inclinations of the
senses. So please allow me to stay a few months longer, and then I
shall be able to bring home some Greek with me. After that I will come
whenever you bid me.' Next summer he did return and settled down to
work in the press. It was well worth while, even for a scholar who was
eager to go on learning, and was inclined to grudge time given to
business: for with Jerome beginning and all the scholars whom we
mentioned coming in and out, Amorbach's house in Klein-Basel became an
'Academy' which could bear comparison with Aldus' at Venice. It was
worth Boniface's while, too, to take his course at Basle under such
circumstances; especially as in 1511 John Cono began to teach Greek
and Hebrew regularly to the printer's sons and to any one else who
wished to come and learn. It is worth noticing that not one of these
young men went to Italy for his humanistic education.

Amorbach's partner, John Froben, 1460-1527, was a man after his own
heart: open and easy to deal with, but of dogged determination and
with great capacity for work. He was not a scholar. It is not known
whether he ever went to a University, and it is doubtful whether he
knew any Latin; certainly the numerous prefaces which appear in his
books under his name are not his own, but came from the pens of other
members of his circle. So the division came naturally, that Amorbach
organized the work and prepared manuscripts for the press, while
Froben had the printing under his charge. In later years, after
Amorbach's death, the marked advance in the output of the firm as
regards type and paper and title-pages and designs may be attributed
to Froben, who was man of business enough to realize the importance of
getting good men to serve him--Erasmus to edit books, Gerbell and
Oecolampadius to correct the proofs, Graf and Holbein to provide the
ornaments. For thirteen years he was Erasmus' printer-in-chief, and
produced edition after edition of his works, both small and great; and
whilst he lived, he had the call of almost everything that Erasmus
wrote. It is quite exceptional to find any book of Erasmus published
for the first time elsewhere during these years 1514-27. A few were
given to Martens at Louvain, mostly during Erasmus' residence there,
1517-21, one or two to Schurer at Strasburg, one or two more to a
Cologne printer; but for one of these there is evidence to show that
Froben had declined it, because his presses were too busy. It is
pleasant to find that the harmony of this long co-operation was never
disturbed. Erasmus occasionally lets fall a word of disapproval; but
what friends have ever seen eye to eye in all matters?

When Froben died in October 1527 as the result of a fall from an upper
window, Erasmus wrote with most heartfelt sorrow a eulogy of his
friend. 'He was the soul of honesty himself, and slow to think evil of
others; so that he was often taken in. Of envy and jealousy he knew as
little as the blind do of colour. He was swift to forgive and to
forget even serious injuries. To me he was most generous, ever seeking
excuses to make me presents. If I ordered my servants to buy
anything, such as a piece of cloth for a new coat, he would get hold
of the bill and pay it off; and he would accept nothing himself, so
that it was only by similar artifices that I could make him any
return. He was enthusiastic for good learning, and felt his work to be
his own reward. It was delightful to see him with the first pages of
some new book in his hands, some author of whom he approved. His face
was radiant with pleasure, and you might have supposed that he had
already received a large return of profit. The excellence of his work
would bear comparison with that of the best printers of Venice and
Rome. Six years before his death he slipped down a flight of steps on
to a brickwork floor, and injured himself so severely that he never
properly recovered: but he always pretended that the effects had
passed away. Last year he was seized with a serious pain in his right
ankle, and the doctors could do nothing except to suggest that the
foot should be taken off. Some alleviation was brought by the skill of
a foreign physician, but there was still a great deal of pain in the
toes. However, he was not to be deterred from making the usual
journeys to Frankfort (in March and September for the book-fairs) and
rode on horseback both ways. We entreated him to take more care of
himself, to wear more clothes when it was cold; but he could not be
induced to give in to old age, and abandon the habits of a vigorous
lifetime. All lovers of good learning will unite to lament his loss.'

If Erasmus was fortunate in his printer, he was still more fortunate
in the friend and confidant whom he found awaiting him at Basle, Beat
Bild of Rheinau, 1485-1547, known then and now as Beatus Rhenanus, one
of the choicest spirits of his own or any age. His father was a
butcher of Rheinau who left his home because of continued ravages by
the Rhine which threatened to sweep away the town. Settling in
Schlettstadt, a free city of the Empire near by, he rose to the
highest civic offices, and sent his son to the Latin school under
first Crato Hofman and then Gebwiler. Beatus was contemporary there
with Bruno and Basil Amorbach, and staying on longer than they did,
rose to be a 'praefect' in the school, which a few years later,
according to Thomas Platter, had 900 boys in it. This number seems
large for a town of perhaps not more than four or five thousand
inhabitants; but it was equalled by the school at Alcmar in the days
of Bartholomew of Cologne, and by Deventer, as we have seen, it was
far surpassed. In 1503 Beatus went to Paris, and there overtook the
Amorbach boys who had two years' start of him; becoming B.A. in 1504
and M.A. in 1505, a year before Bruno. After his degree he stayed on
in Paris as corrector to the press of Henry Stephanus for two years;
and then returning home engaged himself in a similar capacity to
Schurer at Strasburg, also giving a hand with editions of new texts.
In 1511, attracted by the fame of the good Dominican, John Cono, he
went to Basle to work for the elder Amorbach and take lessons under
Cono with the sons. When Erasmus came, Beatus at once fell under his
spell, and subordinated his own projects to the requirements of his
friend's more important undertakings.

That indeed is Beatus' great characteristic throughout his life. He
was well off, for his father 'by the blessing of God on his ingenious
endeavour had arisen to an ample estate'; and thus the son was not
obliged to seek reward. He gave himself, therefore, unstintingly to
any work that needed doing for his friends, editing, correcting,
supervising; and usually suppressing the part he had taken in it. His
own achievements are nevertheless considerable. The bibliographers
have discovered sixty-eight books in which he had a capital share; and
though a large number of these appear to be mere reprints of books
printed in France or Italy--the law of copyright in those days was, as
might be expected, uncertain--, there is a residue in which he really
did original work: some notes on the history and geography of Germany
which he composed, and editions of Pliny's Natural History, Tacitus,
Tertullian and Velleius Paterculus--the latter having an almost
romantic interest from the fortunes of the manuscript on which it is
based. A measure of the confidence which Erasmus subsequently reposed
in both his judgement and his good faith is that in 1519 and 1521,
when he had decided to publish some more of his letters, he just sent
to Beatus bundles of the rough drafts he had preserved, and told him
to select and edit them at his discretion.

A sketch of Beatus, written at his death by John Sturm of Strasburg,
the friend of Ascham, gives a picture of the life he led at
Schlettstadt during his last twenty years: the plain, simple living in
the great house inherited from his father, without luxury or display,
attended upon by an old maidservant and a young servant-pupil, given
to friends but not allowing hospitality to infringe upon his work,
lapped in such quiet as to seem almost solitude; the daily round being
dinner at ten, in the afternoon a walk in his gardens outside the city
walls, and supper at six. Gentle and accommodating, modest and
diffident in spite of his learning, reluctant to talk of himself, and
slow to take offence--it is no wonder that he held the affections of
his friends. Well might Erasmus liken him to the blessed man of the
first Psalm, 'who shall be as a tree planted by the waterside.'

We have seen Beatus' enthusiasm for queenly Basle. Of his native town
he was not so proud; though it has good Romanesque work in St. Fides'
church and rich Gothic in the minster, and though Wimpfeling had just
built a beautiful Renaissance house with Italian designs round its bay
window and medallions of Roman Emperors on the pilasters. The school,
too, was famous throughout Germany; and Lazarus Schurer had started a
creditable printing-press. Yet to Beatus the minster is only 'rather
good, but modern', the Dominicans' house 'mediocre', the nuns'
buildings 'unhealthy', the people 'simple and resourceless, as you
would expect with vine-growers, and too fond of drinking'. 'There is
nothing remarkable here', he says, 'but the fortifications; indeed we
are a stronghold rather than a city. The walls are circular, built of
elegant brick and with towers of some pretensions.' What pleased him
as much as anything was that the ramparts were covered in for almost
the whole of their length, and thus afforded protection to the
night-guards against what he calls 'celestial injuries'.

One reason that we know Beatus so well is that his library has
survived almost intact, as well as a great number of letters which he
received. At his death he left his books to the town of Schlettstadt;
and there they still are, forming the major and by far the most
important part of the town library. It is a wonderful collection of
about a thousand volumes, some of them extremely rare; many bought by
him in his Paris days, some presents from friends sent or brought from
far with dedicatory inscriptions. Hardly a book has not his name and
the date when he acquired it, or other marks of his use. But they have
not yet come to their full usefulness, for there is no adequate
catalogue of them. In many cases their direct value has passed away.
No one wishes to read the classics or the Fathers in the texts current
in the sixteenth century; yet behind printed books lie manuscripts,
and from examination of manuscripts on which printed texts are based,
we can gather many useful indications to throw light on the tradition
of the classics, the gradual steps by which the past has come down to
us. Besides such texts there are multitudes of original compositions
of Beatus' own period, books of great value for the history of
scholarship; many of them requiring to be dated with more precision
than is attainable on the surface. It will be a signal service to
learning when a trained bibliographer takes Beatus Rhenanus' books in
hand and gives us a scientific catalogue.

These were some of the friends who were in Basle when Erasmus first
began to think of sending his work there to be printed. By the summer
of 1514 the preliminary negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded
and he set out. The story which he tells of his arrival is well known.
Amorbach was now dead; so he marched into the printing-house and asked
for Froben. 'I handed him a letter from Erasmus, saying that I was a
familiar friend of his, and that he had charged me to arrange for the
publication of his works; that any undertaking I made would be as
valid as if made by him: finally, that I was so like Erasmus that to
see me was to see him. He laughed and saw through the joke. His
father-in-law, old Lachner, paid my bill at the inn, and carried me
off, horse and baggage to his house.'

He was not at first sure whether he would stay: he might get the work
better done at Venice or at Rome. But the attractions of the printer's
house and circle were not to be resisted; and gradually, one after
another, the books which he had brought were undertaken by Froben, a
new edition of the _Adagia_, Seneca, the New Testament, Jerome. The
way in which the printing was carried out illustrates the critical
standards of the age. Erasmus was absent from Basle during the greater
part of the time when Seneca was coming through the press; and the
proofs were corrected by Beatus Rhenanus and a young man named Nesen.
Under such circumstances a modern author would feel that he had only
himself to thank for any defects in the book. Not so Erasmus. He boils
over with annoyance against the correctors for the blunders they let
pass. The idea that so magnificent a person as an editor or author
should correct proofs had not arisen. It was the business of the young
men who had been hired to do this drudgery; and all blame rested with
them. So far as the evidence goes, it was the same all through
Erasmus' life. In the case of one of his most virulent apologies
(1520) he says that he corrected all the proofs himself; but from the
stress he lays on the loss of time involved, it is clear that he
regarded this as something exceptional, and not to be repeated. With
the _Adagia_ published by Aldus (1508) he says that he cast his eye
over the final proofs, not in search of errors, but to see whether he
wished to make any changes. But in the main his books, like everybody
else's, were left to the care of others.

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