Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Ephraim Emerton

His correspondence during these three years, from 1515 to 1518, is full of references to the question of a permanent residence. To judge from these one would suppose him to be firmly fixed in the notion of a settlement for life. Now it is England, now Flanders, now Basel, now Paris, with ever and anon the distant thought of Italy rising in the background as a possibility. We should not be going far wrong if we were to describe this period as that in which Erasmus was enjoying to the full a newly acquired sense of power and value. Not until after the appearance of his New Testament in 1516 could he feel that he had demonstrated to the world at once the grasp of his scholarship and the deep seriousness of his purpose. It was probably true then, as it may not have been quite true when he was bidding on himself to Servatius two years before, that any country in Europe would be glad to have him, and almost on his own terms. He liked to feel himself a citizen of the world and was tasting the joys of a universal popularity, too great to last for ever.

Here and there we get glimpses of his way of life, which indicate a very considerable degree of prosperity. A letter[109] written to young Beatus and dated at Louvain in the autumn of 1518 gives a detailed account of his journey thither from Basel.

"I left Basel," he says, "in a languid and enervated condition, like a man who has not yet got on good terms with out-of-doors, so long had I been shut up in the house, and yet busied with incessant work. [This refers to a long illness which had kept him indoors through the summer.] The sail was not unpleasant, only that towards noon the heat of the sun was rather oppressive. We dined at Breisach,—the worst kind of a dinner. The stench was enough to kill you and the flies worse than the stench....

"Towards night we were turned out into a chilly town, whose name I didn't care to know, nor if I knew it, should I care to speak it. There I was just about killed."

Here follows a description, almost the same as that in the Diversoria, of the horrors of a German inn, always with the unlucky stove as the central figure.

"In the morning we were routed out of bed by the shouts of the sailors and I went on board ship without supper and without sleep. We reached Strassburg at about nine o'clock in the forenoon and were pretty well entertained there, especially as Schürer furnished the wine. A part of the fraternity was on hand and soon they all came to welcome us.... Thence we went on to Speier by horse and saw never a shadow of a soldier though dreadful rumours were abroad. My English horse was just about used up and scarcely got to Speier. That scoundrel of a blacksmith had so abused him that both his ears were burned with a hot iron. At Speier I took myself quietly out of the inn and went to my friend Maternus near by. There the dean, a man of learning and culture, entertained me for two days with great kindness. We met there by chance Hermann Busch. Thence we journeyed by carriage to Worms and Mainz. There happened into the same carriage a certain Ulrich, a secretary of the emperor, whose surname was Farnbul—as who should say, 'Fern-Hill.' He paid me the greatest attention on the journey and at Mainz would not suffer me to go to the common inn, but took me to the house of a certain canon and saw me to the boat when I started off. The weather was very agreeable and the voyage well enough only that the sailors tried to make it longer than was necessary, and the smell of the horses was unpleasant....

"At Boppard I was walking on the river-bank while they were locking up a boat and someone who knew me gave my name to the toll-collector. This man's name was Christopher and, I believe, Cinicampius, or in the vulgar tongue, Eschenfeld. It was marvellous how the fellow jumped for joy. He dragged me to his house and there on a little table, among his toll-receipts, lay the writings of Erasmus. He cries out that he is a blessed man, calls his wife, his children, and all his friends. To the clamorous boatmen he sends two jugs of wine and when they burst out into new clamours he sends some more, and promises that on their return he will remit the toll because they have brought him so great a guest. From here I was escorted as far as Coblenz by John Flaminius, head of a convent of women there, a man of angelic purity, of sound and sober judgment, and of unusual learning. At Coblenz Matthias, a chaplain of the bishop, took me to his house,—a young man, but of settled ways, of accurate Latin learning, and thoroughly trained in the law as well. There we had a merry supper. At Bonn the canon [one of his fellow-travellers] left us, in order to avoid the city of Cologne, which I also desired to avoid. My servant had, however, gone ahead thither with the horses; there was no safe person on the boat whom I could send after him, and I had no confidence in the sailors. On Sunday morning before six o'clock, in dismal weather, I arrived at Cologne, went to an hotel, gave orders to the servants to get a two-horse carriage, and called for breakfast at ten. I went to mass, but no breakfast! Nothing was done about the carriage. I tried to get a horse, for mine were of no use,—no result. I saw what was up; they were trying to keep me there. At once I ordered my horses to be got ready, packed one portmanteau and gave over the other to the innkeeper; then on my lame nag I hurried off to the Count of Neuenaar, a ride of five hours. He was staying at Bedburium and I spent five days with him so pleasantly and quietly that I got through a good part of my revision there; for I had brought with me a part of the New Testament."

From this point the real troubles of the journey began. Erasmus had suffered from boils at Basel and his two days of riding from Strassburg to Speier had aggravated them. Now he caught a heavy cold by foolish exposure to wind and rain in an open carriage. "Some Jupiter or evil genius robbed me, not of half my senses as Hesiod says, but of the whole; for one half he had stolen when I ventured into Cologne." The story is too long for our purpose and quite too minute for our taste, though as a study in pathological history it might interest a modern physician. The poor man's digestion was completely upset; his boils troubled him so that he did not know whether riding or driving was the worse. Finally, in the last stage, he found a four-horse carriage going to Louvain, got a place in it, and arrived there more dead than alive. Of course he was afraid of the plague, and, indeed, the first physician summoned quietly told the people of the house that he had the plague, promised to send a poultice, but came near him no more. Others were called and gave various opinions. A Jew doctor said he only wished he had as sound a body. One did one thing and one another until finally, "disgusted with doctors I commend myself to Christ the Great Physician." After this sensible conclusion, he began to grow better, was soon taking food, and at once began to work on his New Testament proofs. He had warned his friends not to come to see him, but they came and sat with him and so made the four weeks of his imprisonment pass quite happily.

This account of the journey from Basel to Louvain indicates with tolerable distinctness that Erasmus commanded considerable resources. He had more than one horse and at least one servant. The horses were shipped on the boat whenever he travelled by water, and apparently this was regarded as the safer way to travel. He speaks with especial relief of meeting no soldiers on the land journey. Carriages he seems to have hired; but he twice uses expressions which go to show that such carriages were not exclusively for the use of the hirer. He says that Ulrich Farnbul came by chance into the same carriage with him, and again on the last stage he himself gets into a carriage going to Louvain. It is too early to think of regular public conveyance, but apparently a traveller did not object to sharing his carriage and expense with another. Our interest is to observe that such travelling must have implied a large outlay and must have gone far to account for Erasmus' persistent complaints of poverty.

From Louvain Erasmus wrote back a semi-humorous little letter to his friend, the learned toll-gatherer of Boppard[110]: