Supports the cause of Reuchlin.
He wrote, therefore, elegant and flattering letters to the Cardinal Grimanus, the Cardinal St. George, and Pope Leo,[502] describing the labours in which he was engaged, the noble assistance which the little fraternity at Basle were giving, and which could not have been got in Italy nor anywhere else; alluding in flattering terms to the advantages offered at Rome, and the kindness he had there received on his former visit; but describing in still more glowing terms the love and generosity of his friends in England, and declaring ‘with that frankness which it becomes a German to use,’ that ‘England was his adopted country, and the chosen home of his old age.’[503] He also took the opportunity of strongly urging the two cardinals to use their utmost influence in aid of the cause of Reuchlin. He told them how grieved he was, in common with all the learned men of Germany, that these frivolous and vexatious proceedings should have been taken against a man venerable both on account of age and service, who ought now in his declining years to be peacefully wearing his well-earned laurels. And lastly, in his letter to the Pope, Erasmus took occasion to express his hatred of the wars in which Europe had been recently involved, and his thankfulness that the efforts of his Holiness to bring about a peace had at last been crowned with success.
Peace between England and France.
Death of Louis XII. and accession of Francis I.
Peace had indeed been proclaimed between France and England, while Erasmus had been working at Basle, but under circumstances not likely to lessen those feelings of indignation with which the three friends regarded the selfish and reckless policy of European rulers. For peace had been made with France merely to shuffle the cards. Henry’s sister, the Princess Mary (whose marriage with Henry’s ally, Prince Charles, ought long ago to have been solemnised according to contract), had been married to their common enemy, Louis XII. of France, with whom they had just been together at war. In November, Henry and his late enemy, Louis, were plotting to combine against Henry’s late ally, King Ferdinand; and England’s blood and treasure, after having been wasted in helping to wrest Navarre from France for Ferdinand, were now to be wasted anew to recover the same province back to France from Ferdinand.[504] On the first of January this unholy alliance of the two courts was severed by the death of Louis XII. The Princess Mary was a widow. The young and ambitious Francis I. succeeded to the French throne, and he, anxious like Henry VIII. to achieve military glory, declared his intention, on succeeding to the crown, that ‘the monarchy of Christendom should rest under the banner of France as it was wont to do.’[505] Before the end of July he had already started on that Italian campaign in which he was soon to defeat the Swiss in the great battle of Marignano—a battle at the news of which Ferdinand and Henry were once more to be made secret friends by their common hatred of so dangerous a rival![506]
These international scandals, for such they must be called, wrung from Erasmus other and far more bitter censure than that contained in his letter to the Pope. He was laboriously occupied with great works passing through the printing-press at Basle, but still he stole the time to give public vent to his pent-up feelings. It little mattered that the actors of these scandals were patrons of his own—kings and ministers on whose aid he was to some extent dependent, even for the means wherewith to print his Greek New Testament. His indignation burst forth in pamphlets printed in large type, and bearing his name, or was thrust into the new edition of the ‘Adagia,’ or bound up with other new editions which happened now to be passing through Froben’s press.[507] And be it remembered that these works and pamphlets found their way as well into royal courts as into the studies of the learned.
Satire upon Kings.
What could exceed the sternness and bitterness of the reproof contained in the following passages?—
‘Aristotle was wont to distinguish between a king and a tyrant by the most obvious marks: the tyrant regarding only his own interest; the king the interests of his people. But the title of “king,” which the first and greatest Roman rulers thought to be immodest and impolitic, as likely to stir up jealousy, is not enough for some, unless it be gilded with the most splendid lies. Kings who are scarcely men are called “divine;” they are “invincible,” though they never have left a battlefield without being conquered; “serene,” though they have turned the world upside down in a tumult of war; “illustrious,” though they grovel in profoundest ignorance of everything noble; “Catholic,” though they follow anything rather than Christ.
‘And these divine, illustrious, triumphant kings ... have no other desire than that laws, edicts, wars, peaces, leagues, councils, judgments, sacred or profane, should bring the wealth of others into their exchequer—i.e. they gather everything into their leaking reservoir, and, like the eagles, fatten their eaglets on the flesh of innocent birds.
‘Let any physiognomist worth anything at all consider the look and the features of an eagle—those rapacious and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel jaws, that stern front ... will he not recognise at once the image of a king?—a magnificent and majestic king? Add to this a dark ill-omened colour, an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this type who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even uttered in jest.... At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the senate yields, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way, neither right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity, avail. And thus while there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the rest.... Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men the type of royalty—not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food; but carnivorous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and, with its great powers of doing harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it.’[508]