"'Jupiter Optimus Maximus, brandishing in his all-powerful right hand the three-forked fatal thunderbolt and by his nod alone doing what he will.' Everything that had happened in recent years, in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Africa, Greece, he declared had been done by the will of that man alone. All this was said at Rome, by a Roman, in the tongue of Rome, and with the Roman accent. But what had all this to do with Julius, the high-priest of the Christian religion, the vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter and Paul?—or with the cardinals and bishops, the vicegerents of the other Apostles? As to the topic he had undertaken to treat, nothing could be more solemn, more real, more wonderful, more lofty, or more suited to kindle emotion. Who, though he were endowed with but a very common kind of eloquence, could not with such an argument have drawn tears from men of stone? The plan of the discourse was this:—first to depict the death of Christ as sad and then by a change of style to describe it as glorious and triumphant—in order, of course, that he might give us a specimen of Cicero's δεινώσεως, by which he was able to carry away the emotions of his hearers at will.
"Hypologus:—Well, did he succeed?
"Bulephorus:—For my part, when he was working his hardest upon those melancholy feelings which the rhetoricians call πάθη, to tell the truth I was more inclined to laugh. I did not see a person in that whole concourse one whit the sadder, when he was piling up with the whole force of his eloquence the unmerited sufferings of the innocent Christ. Nor, on the other hand, did I see anyone the more cheerful when he was wholly occupied with showing forth His death to us as triumphant, praiseworthy, and glorious....
"Not to make more words about it, this Roman talked in such a very Roman fashion that I heard nothing about the death of Christ. And yet, because he was so eagerly striving after a Ciceronian diction, he seemed to the Ciceronians to have spoken marvellously. Of his subject he said hardly a word; he seemed neither to understand it nor to care for it. Nor did he say anything to the point nor rouse any emotion. The only reason for praising him was that he spoke like a Roman and recalled a something of Cicero. If such a discourse had been delivered by a schoolboy to his mates it might have been praised as an evidence of a certain talent; but on such a day, before such an audience, and on such a topic, I pray you, what sense was there in it?"
Among the cardinals two are especially mentioned as friendly to our traveller, Raffaelle Riario, nephew of Julius II., and the Venetian Grimani. If we may trust Erasmus' allusions, he was in the way of frequently going in and out at the houses of great men, but his character as a man of letters, whom it was their pride and pleasure to favour, seems to have been strictly maintained. In the great throng of followers of a princely establishment, one wandering scholar more or less made no great matter, and it would not do, from the words "hospitality" and "familiarity" to argue any very close personal intimacy.
What strikes one most forcibly is the almost total absence of anything like discussion on public affairs. The only topic on which Erasmus thinks it worth while to make any report is classical studies, and on this he gives us only brief detail. There is no indication that this visit to Rome had any decisive influence upon Erasmus' attitude towards the Church. That was already determined. Nothing could be more distinct than his declarations in the Enchiridion and now, quite recently, in the Adages. Rome could hardly fail to furnish him with new suggestions and illustrations, but it was as far from forcing him into any new attitude of opposition as it was from so influencing Luther on his visit a year later. Both saw many things which startled and shocked them, but Erasmus had already reached the limit of his critical development and Luther had hardly as yet begun to formulate his criticism of the Roman institution.
The only exception to the rule of exclusion from public affairs is found in the invitation of Cardinal Riario to write a dissertation on the subject of the proposed war against Venice. It was a most ticklish commission, and Erasmus' solution of it was more than Erasmian. He wrote two treatises, one for the war and the other against it, that those who were to pay their money might have their choice. He put more heart into the second, he says, but the advice of the first was followed. Both these treatises were lost, he tells us, by the treachery of some person. There was an unfounded rumour that the grim old soldier-pope, finding Erasmus' sentiments against war very little to his taste, sent for the author and warned him in future to let politics alone; but it is highly improbable that if Erasmus had had an interview with the pope, even under so untoward circumstances, he would have failed to make some mention of it.
Yet it would be far from true that Erasmus lived in Rome with his eyes shut. Numerous little allusions to Roman and Italian traits in his later writings show that he was here, as everywhere, very much of a human being, keenly alive to what was going on about him and mindful of its use on future occasions.
The young archbishop was soon recalled to Scotland, and four years afterward he met his death, fighting bravely by his father's side on the fatal field of Flodden. Before leaving Italy he desired to see Rome, and in his company Erasmus, who had meanwhile returned to Siena, went back again as learned guide and companion. They seem to have gone southward as far as Naples, but to have made only a flying visit even in Rome. Erasmus remained there after his pupil had left, and it is during this final visit that the question of a permanent residence begins to be discussed.
As to the possibility or probability that Erasmus would definitely settle at Rome, there is room for difference of opinion. If one may judge from his own allusions there was no country, in which he made any considerable stay, which did not at one time or another occur to him as a possible residence for his declining years, and on this general principle, why not Rome as well as another place? Our study of his character up to this point, however, should lead us at once to understand that, of all places in the world, Rome was least suited to his peculiar genius. Although he was quite capable of defending both sides of any argument, he could not be happy where he must either do this all the time or else commit himself without reserve to the dominant tone of a society which would eventually absorb him completely. Furthermore, the almost inevitable condition of a Roman residence was the holding of an ecclesiastical office and this, no matter how high it might be—the higher in fact the worse—was as far as possible from the line of Erasmus' ambition. Beatus says he was offered the very high function of papal penitentiary, with a hint that this might be a stepping-stone to higher dignities. When we consider the kind of official places filled by many of the Italian humanists, such an offer does not seem improbable. Less clear is one's feeling about a proposition made by the Venetian Cardinal Grimani that Erasmus should attach himself to his personal following and, presumably, continue to live the life of an independent scholar. Erasmus' account of his interview with the cardinal is worth while for us because of its many details. It was written in 1531, after the death of Grimani, and is given in a letter[81] apropos of a reference to the cardinal's services to the cause of letters, especially in maintaining so large and valuable a library.