‘My dear Beatus,—Who would have believed that this frail delicate body, now weaker from increasing age, after the toils of so many journeys, after the labours of so many studies, should have survived such an illness? You know how hard I had been working at Basle just before.... A suspicion had crossed my mind that this year would prove fatal to me, one malady succeeded so rapidly upon another, and each worse than the one which preceded it. When the disease was at its height, I neither felt distressed with desire of life, nor did I tremble at the fear of death. All my hope was in Christ alone, and I prayed for nothing to him except that he would do what he thought best for me. Formerly, when a youth, I remember I used to tremble at the very name of death!...’
Had Erasmus fallen a victim to the plague and died at the house of Martins the printer, as the friar had reported, and the convivial monks had too readily believed, it does not seem likely that his death would have been as dark and godless as they fancied it might have been. As it was, instead of dying without lighted tapers and crucifix and transubstantiated wafer, or, in monkish jargon, ‘sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus,’ their enemy still lived, and the disappointed monks, instead of ill-concealed rejoicings over his death, were obliged to content themselves for many years to come with muttering in quite another tone, ‘It were good for that man if he had never been born.’[719]
II. MORE AT THE COURT OF HENRY VIII. (1518).
The sweating sickness.
Death of Ammonius.
While the plague had been raging in Germany, the sweating sickness had been continuing its ravages in England. Before More left for Calais it had struck down, after a few days’ illness, Ammonius, with whom Erasmus and More had long enjoyed intimate friendship. Wolsey also had narrowly escaped with his life, after repeated attacks. When More returned from the embassy he found the sickness still raging. In the spring of 1518 the court was removed to Abingdon, to escape the contagion of the great city; and whilst there, More, who now was obliged to follow the King wherever he might go, had to busy himself with precautionary measures to prevent its spread in Oxford, where it had made its appearance.[720]
Greeks and Trojans at Oxford.
Whilst at Abingdon, he was called upon, also, to interfere with his influence to quiet a foolish excitement which had seized the students at Oxford. It was not the spread of the sweating sickness which had caused their alarm; but the increasing taste for the study of Greek had roused the fears of divines of the old school. The enemies of the ‘new learning’ had raised a faction against it. The students had taken sides, calling themselves Greeks and Trojans, and, not content with wordy warfare, they had come to open and public insult. At length, the most virulent abuse had been poured upon the Greek language and literature, even from the university pulpit, by an impudent and ignorant preacher. He had denounced all who favoured Greek studies as ‘heretics;’ in his coarse phraseology, those who taught the obnoxious language were ‘diabolos maximos’ and its students ‘diabolos minutulos.’
More, upon hearing what had been passing, wrote a letter of indignant but respectful remonstrance to the university authorities.[721] He and Pace interested the King also in the affair, and at their suggestion he took occasion to express his royal pleasure that the students ‘would do well to devote themselves with energy and spirit to the study of Greek literature;’ and so, says Erasmus, ‘silence was imposed upon these brawlers.’[722]
A foolish preacher at Court.
On another occasion the King and his courtiers had attended Divine service. The court preacher had, like the Oxford divine, indulged in abuse of Greek literature and the modern school of interpretation—having Erasmus and his New Testament in his eye. Pace looked at the King to see what he thought of it. The King answered his look with a satirical smile. After the sermon the divine was ordered to attend upon the King. It was arranged that More should reply to the arguments he had urged against Greek literature. After he had done so, the divine, instead of replying to his arguments, dropped down on his knees before the King, and simply prayed for forgiveness, urging, however, by way of extenuating his fault, that he was carried away by the spirit in his sermon when he poured forth all this abuse of the Greek language. ‘But,’ the King here observed, ‘that spirit was not the spirit of Christ, but the spirit of foolishness.’ He then asked the preacher what works of Erasmus he had read. He had not read any. ‘Then,’ said the King, ‘you prove yourself to be a fool, for you condemn what you have never read.’ ‘I read once,’ replied the divine, ‘a thing called the “Moria.”’... Pace here suggested that there was a decided congruity between that and the preacher. And finally the preacher himself relented so far as to admit:—‘After all I am not so very hostile to Greek letters, because they were derived from the Hebrew.’ The King, wondering at the distinguished folly of the man, bade him retire, but with strict injunctions never again to preach at Court![723]