[98] i., 774-787.
[99] Modus orandi Deum, v., 1119-F.
[100] iii.¹, 137.
[101] iii.², 1528-A.
[102] If this means anything, it must mean without fees from students, for, supposing Erasmus to have held the Lady Margaret foundation, there was certainly a salary attached to his position.
[103] It is quite possible that the famous Grunnius letter, asking the papal dispensation from the monastic dress, was despatched to Rome at the same time that this letter to Servatius was written from the castle of Ham. The interesting manuscript discoveries of Professor Vischer of Basel[A] have led the learned finder to take a step beyond my suggestion of a strong resemblance between the form of this letter and that of the later Colloquies (see [p. 5]). He goes so far as to believe that both the letter and the reply to it were a deliberate fabrication of Erasmus after the whole matter of the dispensation had been settled. Its object was, he thinks, to cover up the traces of a previous negotiation with the papacy carried on through Ammonius and intended to free Erasmus once for all from any danger of being forced back again into the monastic life. Vischer's documents give us indeed a very satisfactory explanation of some of the mysterious allusions in the correspondence with Ammonius in 1516 and 1517. They show us plainly that Ammonius, who is here described by the pope as a papal "Collector," was not only the mediator in Erasmus' behalf, but was the papal agent in granting the dispensation issued in 1517. All this, however, does not make it even reasonably clear that the Grunnius letters were a pure fabrication. With all his shiftiness Erasmus would hardly have gone as far as that. These letters still remain, as to their date and precise interpretation, as mysterious as ever; and their value as history is not increased. Vischer's view that the especial occasion for Erasmus' anxiety about the dispensation was the tumult roused by his New Testament is a reasonable one.
[A] Vischer, W., Erasmiana. Basel, 1876.
[104] iii.¹, 141-C.
[105] iii., 1053-E.
[106] iii.¹, 154-C.