Letter from Servatius.
On his arrival at the castle of Hammes, near Calais, where he had agreed to spend a few days with his old pupil and friend Lord Mountjoy, he found waiting for him a letter from Servatius, prior of the monastery of Stein, in Holland—the monastery into which he had been ensnared when a youth against his judgment by treachery and foul play.
It was a letter doubtless written with kindly feeling, for the prior had once been his companion; but still he evidently took it as a letter from the prior of the convent from which he was a kind of runaway, not only inviting, but in measure claiming him back again, reproachfully reminding him of his vows, censuring his wandering life, his throwing off the habit of his order, and ending with a bribe—the offer of a post of great advantage if he would return.
Erasmus return! No, truly; that he would not! But the very naming of it brought back to mind not only the wrongs he had suffered in his youth; the cruelty and baseness of his guardians; his miserable experience of monastic life; how hardly he had escaped out of it; his trials during a chequered wandering life since; but also his entry upon fellow-work with Colet; the noble-hearted friends with whom he had been privileged to come in contact; the noble work in which they were now engaged together. What! give up these to put his neck again under a yoke which had so galled him in dark times gone by! And for what? To become perchance the father-confessor of a nunnery! It was as though Pharaoh had sent an embassy to Moses offering to make him a taskmaster if he would but return into Egypt.
No wonder that Erasmus, finding this letter from Servatius waiting for him on his arrival at the castle of his friend, took up his pen to reply somewhat warmly before proceeding on his journey. His letter lies as a kind of waymark by the roadside of his wandering life, and with some abridgment and omissions may be thus translated:—
Erasmus to Servatius.
‘... Being on a journey, I must reply in but few words, and confine myself to matters of the most importance.
Erasmus alludes to his youth.
Erasmus hates the monastic life.
‘Men hold opinions so diverse that it is impossible to please everybody. That my desire is in very deed to follow that which is really the best, God is my witness! It was never my intention to change my mode of life or my habit; not because I approved of either, but lest I should give rise to scandal. You know well that it was by the pertinacity of my guardians and the persuasion of wicked men that I was forced rather than induced to enter the monastic life. Afterwards, when I found out how entirely unsuited it was for me, I was restrained by the taunts of Cornelius Wertem and the bashfulness of youth.... But it may be objected that I had a year of what is called “probation,” and was of mature age. Ridiculous! As though anyone could require that a boy of seventeen, brought up in literary studies, should have attained to a self-knowledge rare even in an old man—should be able to learn in one year what many men grow grey without learning! Be this as it may, I never liked the monastic life; and I liked it less than ever after I had tried it; but I was ensnared in the way I have mentioned. For all this, I am free to confess that a man who is really a good man may live well in any kind of life.
His ill health.
His works.