The Household of Sir Thomas More

by Anne Manning

More and his favourite daughter are those of whom we first think when we try to recall some memories of the "Christian academy;" but their famous guests must not be forgotten. I cannot speak now of the soldiers and diplomatists, the priests and scholars, who pass across the scene so rapidly as we read the letters of the Chancellor himself or the memoirs of his son-in-law and his great-grandson. But two names stand out as famous above the rest, and as both among the closest of those friends whom More delighted to honour,—Erasmus the scholar and Holbein the painter.

Of Erasmus who shall speak in a few words? Are not the libraries of Europe full of his books, and are not his witticisms still repeated to-day as if they were but the new thoughts of the newest of moderns? The intellectual life of his age seems summed up in his person. It had no interest in which he did not mingle, nor any opinion which he did not weigh and test. If he held himself above its passions, it was simply because his was a keen critical nature, loving in its own fashion, but too cold to sympathise deeply with any combatant or to thrill with any passion. "He had no mind," said Miss Manning rather sharply, "to be a martyr, but only to suggest doubts which led braver men to be such."

"This worthy man," says his eighteenth century biographer, Jortin, "spent a laborious life in an uniform pursuit of two points: in opposing barbarous ignorance and blind superstition, and in promoting useful literature and true piety. These objects he attempted in a mild, gentle manner, never attacking the persons of men, but only the faults of the age. He knew his own temper and talents, and was conscious he was not fitted for the rough work of a reformer."

Jortin's, indeed, is the juster estimate. It was Erasmus's keen sight, not his want of moral courage, which prevented his being a martyr. He could not sympathise with the foreign reformers; he had no taste for antinomianism, still less for ignorance, and he saw that the Church abroad, with all its accretions,—which none ridiculed so wittily as he,—still preserved a treasure that the human mind could not afford to lose.

Erasmus was a lifelong friend of More. They had met originally in England while Henry VII. was still on the throne. Erasmus stayed at More's house, and together they discussed the wrongs and follies of the time. Encomium Moriæ—"The Praise of Folly"—was written by Erasmus under More's roof, and the title had a punning reference to the author's host. Later books, especially the great edition of the New Testament which made the sacred text, said More, "shine with a new light," had all of them the sanction of the faithful English friend. He had to suffer rough handling from the obscurantists of his day. Greek seemed to savour of heresy, just as now to some it seems a relic of mediævalism unworthy of the study of a scientific age. Erasmus, indeed, was in a position which has its parallel to-day. He stood boldly forth to fight for a large and liberal education, and for wide and rational methods of instruction, against those who would narrow the teaching of the young to a merely technical and professional training. He fought against the effort to sacrifice sound learning to utilitarian ends; and he found the warmest sympathy, and the best expression of his educational ideal, in the household of his English friend.

With More he bore reproach for a good cause. While the English lawyer pleaded for the study of Greek at the English universities, the Dutch scholar met the assaults of those who would check the publication of the New Testament in the original tongue. He was justly indignant at the treatment he received.

"There are none," he said, "that bark at me more furiously than those who have never even seen the outside of my books. When you meet with one of these brawlers, let him rave on at my New Testament till he has made himself hoarse. Then ask him gently whether he has read it. If he has the impudence to say yes, urge him to produce one passage that deserves to be blamed. You will find that he cannot. Consider, now, whether this be the behaviour of a Christian, to blacken a man's reputation, which he cannot restore to him again if he would. Of all the vile ways of defaming him, none is more villainous than to accuse him of heresy; and yet to this they have recourse on the slightest provocation!"

A Dominican friar at Strasburg, who had spitefully attacked Erasmus's Testament, was compelled to own that he had not read one word of it. "These men," exclaims Erasmus, "first hate, next condemn, and, lastly, seek for passages to justify their censures. And then, if any one opposes them, and calls them what they are, they say he is a disturber of the public peace; which is just as if you gave a man a blow in the face, and then bid him be quiet, and not make a noise about nothing."

But all through the babel of contending voices Erasmus kept his own course. He could neither be coerced to give up his liberal scholarship nor lured to ally with Luther and the Protestant doctors. To him the way of sound learning seemed the path of the Catholic Church. And here too he was of one mind with More. The Englishman had to meet dangers which never beset the foreign scholar, and he met them, it may be, as Erasmus would not have dared to do. But it cannot be doubted that in their opinions, as in their hearts, they were never really divided.