Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

"Fishm.—'You're right, but all I got there was a body infected with the worst kind of humours and a plentiful supply of lice. But let me go on as I began. The college was at that time governed by John Standonch, a man whose disposition (affectum) you would not condemn, but in whom you would like to see more discrimination. For you couldn't help greatly approving his regard for the poor, mindful as he was of his own youth passed in extreme poverty. If he had so far relieved the poverty of youths that they might go on with honest study, yet not so far that abundance would have led to extravagance, he would have deserved praise. But he went into the thing with beds so hard, food so coarse and so scanty, vigils and work so severe that within a year the first trial brought many youths of excellent parts and of great promise, some to their deaths, some to blindness, some to madness and not a few to leprosy. Some of these I knew myself, and surely not one escaped danger. Now can't anybody see that that is cruelty to one's neighbour? And not content with this he put on (them) hood and cloak and took from them all animal food—and then he transferred such nursery-gardens as this into far-distant regions. If every one should indulge his impulses (affectus) as far as he did, the result would be that the like of these people would fill up the whole world. From such beginnings arose monasteries, which now threaten both kings and pontiffs. It is a pious deed to boast of bringing one's neighbour to piety, but to seek for glory by one's dress or one's food is the part of a Pharisee; it is piety to relieve the want of one's neighbours, and to see to it that they do not abuse the generosity of good men by excess, is good discipline. But to drive your brother by these things into sickness, into madness and death, that is cruelty, that is murder. The intention to kill is perhaps wanting, but the murder is there all the same. What forgiveness shall these men have then? The same as a physician, who, through notable lack of skill, kills a patient. Does anyone say:—"but no one forces them into this mode of life; they come of their own accord; they long to be admitted and are free to leave when they are tired of it"? Ah! An answer worthy of a Scythian. They do ask this, as youths who know what is good for them better than a man of years, full of learning and experience! Thus might one excuse himself to a famished wolf, after he had drawn him into a trap with bait. Can one who has put unwholesome or even poisonous food before a frightfully hungry man excuse himself by saying:—"Nobody compels you to eat; you have willingly and gladly devoured what was set before you"? Would he not properly reply:—"You have given me not food but poison"? Necessity is a mighty weapon; hunger is a terrible torment. So let them do away with that high-sounding phrase:—"the choice was free," for he who uses such torments is really using force. Nor has this cruelty ruined poor men alone; it has carried off many a rich man's son and corrupted many a well-born talent.'"

So Erasmus goes on to tell other details of student-life at Montaigu. In the depths of winter a bit of bread was given out for food and they were obliged to draw water from a polluted well. Some of the sleeping-rooms were on the ground-floor and in such close neighbourhood to the common resort that anyone who lived there was sure to get his death or a dangerous illness. Frightful beatings were inflicted even on the innocent, "in order, as they say, to take the ferocity out of them,—for so they call a noble spirit,—and break it down on purpose to make them fit for monasteries. How many rotten eggs were devoured there! What a quantity of foul wine was drunk!"

And then, having made his fishmonger say all the vile things about Montaigu that he can think of, Erasmus, true to his nature, begins to hedge. Perhaps these things have been corrected since, but this is too late for those who are dead or are carrying about the seeds of disease in their bodies. Nor does he say all this from any ill-will to the college, but only to warn against the corruption of youth through the cruelty of man under the disguise of religion. He protests that if he could see good results from the monastic life he would urge everyone to take the cowl. In fact, however, he seldom goes into a Carthusian house without finding there someone who is either gone silly or is a regular madman. There can be no doubt that the rules for the Collége Montaigu published by Master Standonch in 1501 were sufficiently harsh. They were so made in order to check the abuse of too great freedom for the very young boys admitted to such foundations. In confirmation of Erasmus' picture of the horrors of Montaigu we find regularly quoted Rabelais' famous passage[29] in which the youth Gargantua on his return from Paris combs cannon-balls out of his hair and thus gives occasion to his father and tutor for an attack upon this same "college of vermin" as the haunt of cruelty and wretchedness. When Rabelais wrote this passage he had not yet been at Paris. It is practically certain that he was acquainted with the writings of Erasmus, and the conclusion seems obvious that he borrowed his illustration directly from the Ichthyophagia.

This description of "Vinegar College" has been almost universally taken as a serious account of Erasmus' own experience in Paris, and probably it has its foundation of truth. The commonest laws of sanitary decency are a thing almost of our own day, and not much more can be said of the principles of proper food and care of the body. No one could expect much from a charity-school in the fifteenth century. But these stories must be considered in their context. They are introduced, not as actual autobiography, but as illustrations of one of Erasmus' favourite themes, the evils of monasticism, and especially they are made to bear on an idea which seems to have been almost an idée fixe with him,—that all the powers of religion and learning were in league to drive young men into monasteries. As before in his recollections of Deventer and Steyn, so now here in his memories of the Collége Montaigu, this spectre still, after thirty years, haunts his imagination. He forgets that he was enjoying the fruits of the devotion and self-sacrifice of the founders and interprets all their actions by this same governing motive. He had called his schools "seminaria" for monks; now he calls his Paris college a "plantarium" for the same kind of a crop.

In fact, these early studies at the University were full of profit to Erasmus. He was at the centre of the best culture of the earlier time and the reviving spirit of the new classic learning was beginning to make itself felt. In his references to this experience it suited his purpose and his disposition always to throw contempt upon his teachers and upon all learning except that which seemed to him to reflect the glory of antiquity. Indeed, if he had been forced to content himself with the dry quibbling of the "Scotist" theologians who were still the dominant party at Paris, he would have found himself in dreary company enough. But we find no reason to think that there was any compulsion upon him to take any teaching he did not like. Greek had already begun to make its way as an attainable subject at Paris, and Erasmus was beginning to feel the charm which this, the choicest vehicle of human expression, was to exercise upon his whole life.

His first Paris residence was interrupted by illness, in consequence of which he returned for a time to the bishop of Cambrai. The bishop seems to have been willing to keep him indefinitely at his court, but not to have provided for his further maintenance elsewhere. With restored health Erasmus was back again at Paris and now, for the first time, on a really independent footing. For the moment he ceased to consider the question of patronage and began to give lessons to private pupils. Beatus, unquestionably prompted by Erasmus in all details, says that "the Englishmen at the university could find no one among the professors of liberal study in the whole place who was able to teach more learnedly or accustomed to teach more conscientiously." And then he goes on to make a comparison between this youth and the two best-known professors of literature at the time in Paris. One of these, Faustus Andrelinus, was evidently a type of the gay, reckless spirits who found in classic study an enjoyment purely intellectual and who used its moral standard as an excuse for all looseness of life. His manner of teaching was "popular" to the point of flippancy, designed rather to catch the applause of the crowd than to merit the approval of the learned. It is to Erasmus' credit that he did not allow his classic enthusiasm to carry away his judgment of this person. The other teacher, Gaguinus, was a more serious scholar, but not so far advanced and not yet regularly teaching publicly.

So it appears that, in spite of his doleful stories, our scholar had as usual been making the most of his time, and we come now happily to a point where evident facts and the testimony of other men can be made use of to show his growing value and power. There seems little reason to doubt that he was now a distinctly popular figure in academic circles. He was in steady demand as a private tutor for young men who could afford to pay well for his services. Among such youths Englishmen, then as ever since, were naturally most prominent, and it is through this relation to English pupils at Paris that the way was opened for Erasmus to many of the most interesting and important connections of his later life.

During this second Paris residence, Erasmus evidently got into some rather serious scrape, of which we get only vague suggestions in his correspondence. What it was and precisely the nature of the charges it brought upon him we cannot say. It seems to have had some connection with his relation to a mysterious personage, who has been supposed to be almost every possible person from the bishop of Cambrai down. Froude, in his hit-or-miss fashion, suggests that this person, whom Erasmus always refers to as senex ille, was the aged Marquis of Veere in Holland, son of a bastard of Duke Philip of Burgundy. Unfortunately for this theory, the Marquis of Veere was already dead and is of interest to Erasmus only on account of his charming widow, who at about this time begins to dawn on his horizon as a possible patroness. Beatus tells us with a word that Erasmus after his Montaigu experience went over (emigravit) to a certain noble Englishman who had with him two noble youths, of whom Beatus thinks Lord Mountjoy was one. This Mountjoy was certainly a pupil and afterward a faithful friend of Erasmus, and we have references to the "old man" in letters to Mountjoy which show plainly that the young nobleman was a confidant of the writer in the Paris unpleasantness, whatever that may have been. The same is also true of the other English youth whom Erasmus now met and learned to love, Thomas Grey, son of the Marquis of Dorset. An extract from a letter to him will give us an indication of how our scholar had got on in the art of vigorous expression. The letter[30] is dated at Paris, 1497 (?), and was evidently written soon after the trouble of which the old man is the alleged cause. It begins with extravagant expressions of affection for Grey. "Of the whole race of men none is dearer to me than you." He would have written him earlier, but dreaded to open up again the wound which he was just hoping would begin to heal.

"Nothing is more intolerable," he goes on, "than abuse in return for kindness. Would that I might drink so deep of the waters of Lethe that that old man and his insults might wholly flow forth out of my mind. As often as I think of him I not only fall into a rage, but I marvel that so much poison, so much envy, treachery and faithlessness could dwell in a human breast. So help me God! when I think of the scoundrelly soul of that man, the Poets, men so keen, so eloquent, in describing human nature, seem to me either never to have seen poison of this sort or to have been unequal to its description. For what panderer so false, what ruffian so boastful, what old man so ill-conditioned, or what monster so envious, so full of bitterness, so ungrateful, have they ever dared to depict, as this old humbug, who even sets up for a pietist and invents fine names for his very vices? You bid me not to be distressed, and indeed, my dear Thomas, I am bearing the thing patiently when you think how horrible it is. So unexpected misfortunes can but grieve one. How ever could I, in return for my frankness, my kindnesses, my faithfulness, my almost brotherly affection, expect from a man so venerable as he appeared, so noble as he boasted himself to be, so pious as he pretended, such extraordinary abuse? I supposed it to be basest ingratitude not to return favour for favour. I had read that there was a kind of men whom it was safer to offend than to oblige by kindness. I did not believe, until I had learned it by experience, that it was far more dangerous to do good to evil men than evil to good men. For when the ungrateful rascal found that he was under greater obligations to me than he could repay, he turned his attention away from literature, which he had been wretchedly tormenting up to that time, and bent all his energies to ruining me with his infamous tricks. And when he despaired of doing this by his actions (laboribus) he sought to crush me with his tongue steeped in the poison of hell, and he did it, too, as far as he could. That I am alive at all, that I have my health, I ascribe to my books, which have taught me to give way to no storm of fate. It is a blow to a man thus born to crime to find that he does but little harm.