"It would be very desirable if the whole service of religion, hymns, instruction, and prayer, could be conducted in the language of the people, as was formerly the case, and that all should be so distinctly and clearly spoken that it should be understood by all present. But there are many things in life rather to be desired than hoped for. It is to be wished that public worship should not be too prolonged, for there is nothing worse than a surplus of good things, and that it should be the same among all peoples of the Christian name. Nowadays, what diversities in almost every church! nay, what pains have been taken that one should not agree with the other! With what tedious chants and prayers are some monks now burdened, and with what joy do they escape from their dreary performance!"
We have here an almost complete survey of the outward forms of the religious life reduced to the simple standard of Christian common sense. As a type of Erasmus' activity at this time nothing can serve us better. He was fulfilling his mission as a preacher of simple righteousness, and no clamours of criticism on the one side or the other of the great conflict raging about him could drive him for a moment from his fundamental position. He watched all the stages of that struggle and drew out of the views of the several parties the text for his continuous comment upon men and things. He held himself, as he said, integer, "uncompromised," but he shows where his real feeling was. The ruling order might get what comfort it could out of the Modus Orandi and similar treatises, but if the suggestions therein contained could have been carried out, a something very like the Protestant churches would have resulted. The authority of Scripture as the standard of religious life; the Lord's Prayer as the all-sufficient test of the forms of worship; the laity as the essential element of the Christian community; the common language as the only proper medium of communication in religious matters; a worship of secondary powers so enfeebled by the limits of common sense that it would surely fall away of itself—all this makes a programme that is nothing less than Protestant in its essence. Stripped of its academic decorations and its elaborate balancing of values, this was a reforming tract of the first importance.
Of course Erasmus used all the trimming portions, both of this and of all similar writings, to demonstrate his loyalty to tradition, but the modern reader, like the "Lutheran" of that day, must see through these to the real thought beneath and must share his impatience that the man who could go so far could not be brought to take a step farther and carry out these suggestions—or at least help others to carry them out—into definite constructive action. The reply must always be that the world has no right to demand of any man what is not his to give.
So in alternations of calm religious reflection and composition with violent controversial encounters, of painstaking scholarly editing with keenest satirical writing, the residence of the aging scholar at Basel drew to its end.
In the year 1529 Erasmus left Basel and went to Freiburg in the Breisgau. Why he left Basel and why he chose Freiburg as his residence are questions we can hardly hope to answer satisfactorily, since they involve that whole very difficult subject of his personal equation, to which we have not yet discovered any sufficient key. Perhaps we may say this: that Basel had been an attractive residence for him because its political and religious condition corresponded pretty accurately to his own state of mind. The spirit of the place was eminently one of toleration and good feeling. Even the violent doctrines of the extreme radical party, the Anabaptists and all their kin, were heard with patience, but were held in check and not allowed to influence public action. If we could trust the extravagant eulogy common just after his death[185] we should have to think of Erasmus living at Basel as a kind of intellectual monarch, to whom
"there came not alone from Spain and France, but from the farthest limits of the whole earth, not merely men of noble birth but also the greatest monarchs of the world, popes, emperors, kings, cardinals, bishops, archbishops, dukes, chieftains, barons, and countless princes, rulers, magnates, and governors of various degree, etc."
This is obvious nonsense; but we gain enough glimpses at his manner of life at Basel to make us sure that Erasmus lived there in honour, with every opportunity for congenial work and for association with men of his own kind. His ordinary habits were those of a sober scholar who was compelled by the natural demands of his profession and by the limitations of feeble health to keep strictly within the limits of careful and quiet living. He seems to have surrounded himself with young men, table-boarders, who came to him as the adviser of their studies. His relation to them is very prettily sketched in a letter[186] to a young Frisian, one Haio Caminga, who had applied for a place at his table. He gives the young man fair warning that he will find a table set with learned conversation rather than with choice delicacies,—as far from luxury as the table of Pythagoras or Diogenes. The great productivity of this period would of itself be sufficient evidence of a regular and quiet life. Nor need we doubt that a great many visitors were led to Basel by curiosity or sympathy to make the personal acquaintance of the famous scholar.
One feels at once that this was just the atmosphere for Erasmus. His only real grievance at Basel seems to have been his dread that he might be held accountable for the opinions of someone with whom he did not entirely agree. In the course of time, however, this condition of unstable equilibrium grew more and more untenable. The actual "Reformation" of the place could not be averted, and rather than remain in a distinctly Protestant community Erasmus broke off all his happy associations and wandered away again. He takes infinite pains to assure everyone that he was not driven away, that he went openly and with the good will of all concerned. His account of the religious revolution shows that it was a very temperate kind of revolution indeed. His friendly feelings are neatly expressed in a bit of verse which he says he jotted down as he was entering his boat to depart.