"In the passage ... I compare the triumphal entries (triumphos) which, in my presence, Julius II. made first at Bologna and afterwards at Rome, with the majesty of the apostles who converted the world by divine truth and who so abounded in miracles that the sick were healed by their very shadow, and I give the preference to this apostolic splendour; yet I say nothing abusive against those [other] triumphs, although to speak frankly I gazed upon them not without a silent groan."
Two little notes to Servatius at this time are quite in the usual tone of Erasmian discontent. He says that his principal object in coming to Italy was to study Greek but "jam frigent studia, fervent bella" "studies are cold, but wars are hot,"—he will endeavour to fly back again very soon and hopes to see his friend the following summer. While wars are planning study takes a holiday. He makes an identical promise to another friend and was probably quite sincere in fancying that Italy, like every other place he had tried, was a failure. Evidently he was in trouble about his pupils. Writing to one of them twenty-five years afterward[71] he says:
"it was the fault of that fellow, whom you nickname the 'scarabeus,' not only that I had to leave you sooner than I had intended, but that the pleasure of our companionship was so embittered that if I had not been kept by a sense of duty, I could not have endured that monster for a month. I have often wondered that your cautious father could have been so thoughtless as to intrust his most precious treasures to a man who was scarce fit to keep swine, nay, who was of such feeble mind that he rather needed a keeper himself."
The whole affair is almost an echo of the trouble with the "old man" at Paris and would be too trifling for notice were it not almost the only incident in connection with Erasmus' residence of more than a year at Bologna which has come down to us. Of course the climate was bad and especially unsuited to his requirements.
The summer of 1507 found Erasmus still at Bologna. It was an exceptionally hot season—so he says—and the plague broke out with violence. It is apropos of this plague and an incident which he relates in connection with it, that we come once more to the famous letter, mentioned early in our narrative,[72] in which Erasmus begs to be released from the obligation of wearing the monastic dress. The letter is addressed to Lambertus Grunnius, a papal secretary at Rome, and contains, by way of introduction, that long series of details about the compulsory entrance into the monastery of a youth called Florentius, which has been generally accepted as a truthful narrative of the writer's own experience. We have already followed the indications of this letter with some care down to the point where Erasmus was safely invested with the monastic garb and had made up his mind to make the best of it. At this point, with one of those jumps so common in his style, he comes to the time of his Italian visit and continues:
"Some time afterward it happened that he went into a far country for the purpose of study. There, according to the French custom, he wore a linen scarf above his gown, supposing that this was not unusual in that country.[73] But from this he twice was in danger of his life, for the physicians there who serve during a plague, wear a white linen scarf on their left shoulder, so that it hangs down in front and behind, and in this way they are easily recognised and avoided by the passers-by. Yet, unless they go about by unfrequented ways they would be stoned by those who meet them, for such is the horror of death among those people, that they go wild at the very odour of incense because it is burned at funerals. At one time when Florentius was going to visit a learned friend, two blackguards fell upon him with murderous cries and drawn swords and would have killed him, if a lady fortunately passing had not explained to them that this was the dress of a churchman and not of a doctor. Still they ceased not to rage and did not sheathe their swords until he had pounded on the door of a house near by and so got in.
"At another time he was going to visit certain countrymen of his when a mob with sticks and stones suddenly got together and urged each other on with furious shouts of 'Kill the dog! Kill the dog!' Meanwhile a priest came up who only laughed and said in Latin in a low voice: 'Asses! Asses!' They kept on with their tumult, but as a young man of elegant appearance and wearing a purple cloak came out of a house, Florentius ran to him as to an altar of safety, for he was totally ignorant of the vulgar tongue and was only wondering what they wanted of him. 'One thing is certain,' said the young man: 'if you don't lay off this scarf, you'll some day get stoned; I have warned you, and now look out for yourself.' So, without laying aside his scarf, he concealed it under his upper garment."
Such is the cock-and-bull story with which Erasmus, we know not how many years later, amused the excellent Grunnius as a preface to his petition for a papal dispensation from the duty of wearing the monastic dress. It is too silly even for Mr. Drummond, who very properly says that it is quite too much to believe either that Erasmus would be in a plague-stricken city when he could get out of it, or that any Italian could be so blind as not to know a monk from a doctor! Certainly Erasmus would never wait to be pounded in the street before finding out what dress he might safely wear. The reply of Grunnius shows how the whole matter looked at Rome.
"My dearest Erasmus: I never undertook any commission more gladly than the one you have intrusted to me and scarcely ever succeeded in one more to my own mind. For I was moved not so much by my friendship for you, strong as that is, as by the undeserved misfortune of Florentius. Your letter I read from beginning to end to the pope in the presence of several cardinals and men of the highest standing. The most holy father was extremely delighted with your style and you would hardly believe how hot he was against those man-stealers; for greatly as he favours true piety, by so much the more does he hate those who are filling the world with wretched or wicked monks to the great injury of the Christian faith. 'Christ,' he says, 'loves piety of the heart, not workhouses for slaves.' He has ordered your permit to be made out at once and gratis too.... Farewell, and give Florentius, whom I regard as I do yourself, an affectionate greeting from me."
However much of truth or of fiction there may have been in this famous letter, we may be tolerably sure that Erasmus thought of it very much as he would of his Colloquies, as a piece of literary work with a purpose at the bottom of it. At the time he sent it, perhaps 1514, his views were well known to the papal circle, and the abuse of monks was far from unwelcome to the "enlightened" views of a monarchy as worldly as any in all Europe. Doubtless Erasmus knew his Rome well enough before he ventured to send such a fulmination as this into the midst of it.