Erasmus

by R. C. Jebb

Where was Erasmus to settle now? That was the great question for him. He decided it by going to Cambridge, on the invitation of Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, who was then Chancellor of the University. Rooms were assigned to him in Queens' College, of which Fisher had been President a few years before. In that beautiful old cloister at Queens', where the spirit of the fifteenth century seems to linger, an entrance at the south-east corner gives access to a small court which is known as the court of Erasmus. His lodgings were in a square turret of red brick at the south-east angle of the court. His study was probably a good-sized room which is now used as a lecture-room; on the floor above this was his bedroom, with an adjoining attic for his servant. From the south windows of these rooms—looking on the modern Silver Street—he had a wide view over what was then open country, interspersed with cornfields; the windings of the river could be seen as far as the Trumpington woods. The walk on the west side of the Cam, which is called the walk of Erasmus, was not laid out till 1684: in his time it was open ground, with probably no trees upon it. His first letter from Cambridge is dated Dec. 1510, and this date must be right, or nearly so. He says himself that he taught Greek here before he lectured on theology; and also that, after his arrival, the commencement of his Greek teaching was delayed by ill-health. Now he was elected to the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity in 1511, and in those days the election was ordered to take place on the last day of term before the Long Vacation. His residence, then, can hardly have begun later than the early part of 1511.

It is interesting to think of him—now a man of forty-four, but prematurely old in appearance—moving about the narrow streets or quiet courts of that medieval Cambridge which was just about to become the modern—a transformation due, in no small measure, to the influence of his own labours. Eleven of our Colleges existed. Peterhouse was in the third century of its life; others also were of a venerable age. Erasmus would have heard the rumour that a house of his own order, the Hospital of the Brethren of St John, was about to be merged in a new and more splendid foundation, the College of St John the Evangelist. Where Trinity College now stands, he would have seen the separate institutions which, after another generation, were to be united by Henry VIII.; he would have seen a hostel of the Benedictines where Magdalene College was soon to arise; the Franciscans on the site of Sidney Sussex, and the Dominicans on the site of Emmanuel. North of Queens' College, he would have found the convent of the Carmelites; and then, rising in lonely majesty—with no other College buildings as yet on its south side—the chapel of King's, completed as to the walls, but not yet roofed.

When Erasmus began his Greek lectures in his rooms at Queens', his text-book was the elementary grammar of Manuel Chrysoloras, entitled the 'Questions',—which had been the standard book all through the fifteenth century. He next took up the larger and more advanced grammar of Theodorus Gaza, published in 1495,—which he afterwards translated into Latin. We have a specimen of his own Greek composition at this period. In 1511 he went from Cambridge to visit the celebrated shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham in Norfolk—the same where, two years later, Queen Catherine gave thanks after the battle of Flodden. As a votive offering, he hung up on the wall a short set of Greek iambics, which are extant: they are to the effect that, while others bring rich gifts and crave worldly blessings, he asks only for a pure heart. There are some faults of metre, but the diction is classical and idiomatic: probably no one in Europe at that time, unless it were Budaeus, could have written better. When Erasmus revisited Walsingham a little later, he found that these verses had sorely puzzled the monks and their friends; there had been much wiping of eye-glasses; and opinions differed as to whether the characters were Arabic, or purely arbitrary. Erasmus did not get many hearers for his Greek lectures, and was rather disappointed; but some, at least, of his pupils were ardent; thus he describes Henry Bullock of Queens'—the 'Bovillus' of his letters—as 'working hard at Greek.' And the impulse which he gave can be judged from the rapid progress of the new learning at Cambridge. Writing to him in 1516—three years after he had left—Bullock says, 'people here are devoting themselves eagerly to Greek literature.' In a letter to Everard, the Stadtholder of Holland, in 1520, Erasmus says:—'Theology is flourishing at Paris and at Cambridge as nowhere else: and why? Because they are adapting themselves to the tendencies of the age; because the new studies, which are ready, if need be, to storm an entrance, are not repelled by them as foes, but received as welcome guests.' In another letter he remarks that, while Greek studies have been instituted in both the English Universities, at Cambridge they are pursued peacefully (tranquille),—owing, he says, to Fisher's influence. He is alluding to those struggles at Oxford between the adherents of the schoolmen and the new learning which came to a head in the 'Trojan' and 'Grecian' riots of 1519, and led to Wolsey's founding the readership of Greek. Oxford had been, in England, the great theological University of the middle ages, and the scholastic system died hardest there.

Erasmus taught Greek without any formal appointment, so far as we know, from the University; though Fisher, the Chancellor, may have arranged that he should receive a stipend. The first man formally appointed Greek reader was Richard Croke in 1519; who speaks, indeed, of Erasmus as having been 'professor of Greek,' but probably means simply lecturer. The official status of Erasmus was that of Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. The election to the Chair was then biennial. At the end of his term—i.e., in the summer of 1513—Erasmus was re-elected. This is a noteworthy fact. The electing body comprised the whole Faculty of Theology, regulars as well as seculars. The 'Praise of Folly' must by that time have been well-known here. If Erasmus was not universally acceptable to the schoolmen or to the monks of Cambridge, at any rate the general respect for his character and attainments carried the day.

When we try to imagine him in his rooms at Queens', we are not to picture him as a popular teacher, with the youth of the university crowding to learn from him; his life here was that of a recluse student, in weak health, whose surroundings were in some respects uncongenial to him, but who had a group of devoted pupils, and some chosen older friends. From 1508 to the end of his life he suffered from a painful organic disease, which obliged him to be careful of his diet. When he dined in the old College hall at Queens', above the west cloister—now part of the President's Lodge—the ghosts of the College benefactors, whose heads are carved on the oak wainscoting, would have been grieved if they could have known what he thought of Cambridge beverages; he writes to his Italian friend Ammonius—afterwards Latin Secretary to Henry VIII.—begging for a cask of Greek wine. His favourite exercise was riding; and he made frequent excursions. Meanwhile he accomplished a surprising amount of work. He was busy with the text of Seneca, with translations from Basil, with Latin manuals for St Paul's School, just founded by his friend Colet—and with much else. It was here that he began revising the text of Jerome's works. 'My mind is in such a glow over Jerome,' he writes, 'that I could fancy myself actually inspired.' But there is one labour above all that entitles those rooms in the old tower at Queens' to be reckoned among the sacred places of literature. It was there in 1512 that the Lady Margaret Professor completed a collation of the Greek Text of the New Testament. Four years later, his edition—the first ever published—appeared at Basle.

In 1513 Cambridge was visited by the plague, and nearly every one fled from it. During some months of the autumn, Erasmus had scarcely heard a foot-fall in the cloister beneath his rooms. At the end of the year, he finally left the University. Some of his reasons for going can be conjectured from his letters. They express disappointment with England; and they speak of poverty. It is well to observe the sense in which these complaints are to be understood. After 1510 Erasmus was never actually indigent. Archbishop Warham had offered him the Rectory of Aldington in Kent; Erasmus declined it, because he could not speak English—he never learned any modern language, and besides his own vernacular, spoke Latin only: then Warham gave him a pension from the benefice. Fisher and Mountjoy were also liberal. At Cambridge, with these resources, and the stipend of his Chair, it has been computed that his income must have been equivalent to about £700 at the present day. But his mode of living, though not profuse, was not frugal. Thus he himself enumerates the following heads of his expenditure;—servants ('famulorum')—the aid of amanuenses—the cost of keeping a horse, or horses (ιπποτροφἱá)—frequent journeys—and social or charitable obligations: he disliked, he says, to be penurious ('hic animus abhorrens a sordibus'). The fact seems to be that he had formed exaggerated hopes of what Henry VIII. would do for him. His immediate motive for departure, however, was probably the desire to supervise the printing of the Greek Testament. There was then no English press where such a work could be done so well as abroad. He had heard that Froben, the famous printer at Basle, was about to publish the works of Jerome; and to Basle he went. Another circumstance helped to decide him. Prince Charles,—afterwards the Emperor Charles V.,—had offered him the post of honorary privy-councillor, with a pension,—and this without binding him to live in the Netherlands. At this time Erasmus would have been welcomed in any country of Europe; Cardinal Canossa, the Papal legate, was anxious to secure him for Rome. At a later period, when his fame stood yet higher, Henry VIII. would have been glad to lure him back; but it was then too late.

So, in 1514, Erasmus left England—not to return, except for a few months in the following year. He was now forty-seven. Twenty-two years of life remained to him. The history of these years is essentially that of his untiring and astonishing literary activity. In his external life there is little to record beyond changes of residence,—from Basle to the University of Louvain in Brabant,—from Louvain back to Basle,—from Basle to Freiburg,—and once more to Basle, where, in 1536, he died. The clue to this later period is given by two threads, which are indeed but strands of a single cord,—his influence on the revival of learning, and his attitude towards the Reformation.

In the younger days of Erasmus the Italian cultivation of classical literature had attained its highest point, and was already verging towards decline. More than a century had passed since Petrarch had kindled the first enthusiasm. It requires some effort of the imagination for us to realise what that movement meant. The men of the fourteenth century lived under a Church which claimed the surrender of the reason, not only in matters of faith, but in all knowledge: philosophy and science could speak only by the doctors whom she sanctioned. When the fourteenth century began to study the classics, the first feeling was one of joy in the newly revealed dignity of the human mind; it was a strange and delightful thing, as they gradually came to know the great writers of ancient Greece and Rome, to see the reason moving freely, exploring, speculating, discussing, without restraint. And then those children of the middle age were surprised and charmed by the forms of classical expression,—so different from anything that had been familiar to them. Borrowing an old Latin word, they called this new learning humanity; for them, however, the phrase had a depth of meaning undreamt of by Cicero. Now, for the first time, they felt that they had entered into full possession of themselves; nothing is more characteristic of the Italian renaissance than the self-asserting individuality of the chief actors; each strives to throw the work of his own spirit into relief; the common life falls into the background; the history of that age is the history of men rather than of communities.

In the progress of this Italian humanism three chief phases may be roughly distinguished. The first closes with the end of the fourteenth century,—the time of Petrarch and his immediate followers,—the morning-time of discovery. Then, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the discovered materials were classified, and organised in great libraries; Greek manuscripts, too, were translated into Latin,—not that the versions might be taken as substitutes for the original, but to aid the study of Greek itself. The men of this second period were gathered around Cosmo de' Medici at Florence, or Nicholas V. at Rome. The third stage was that in which criticism, both of form and of matter, was carried to a higher level, chiefly by the joint efforts of scholars grouped in select societies or academies, such as the Platonic academy at Florence, of which Ficino was the centre. The greatest man of this time,—the greatest genius of the literary renaissance in Italy,—was Angelo Poliziano; he died in 1494, when Erasmus was twenty-seven.