But his ardent spirit could not long be content with monastic life. He brought his attainments somehow to the notice of Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, the leading prelate at the court of Brussels; and about 1494 permission was obtained for him to leave Steyn and become Latin secretary to the bishop, who was then preparing for a visit to Rome. But the journey was abandoned, and after some months Erasmus found that even with occasional chances to read at Groenendael, the life of a court was hardly more favourable to study than that of Steyn. At the suggestion of a friend, James Batt, he applied to his patron for leave to go to Paris University. The bishop consented and promised a small pension; and in August 1495 Erasmus entered the “domus pauperum” of the college of Montaigu, which was then under the somewhat rigid rule of the reformer Jan Standonck. He at once introduced himself to the distinguished French historian and diplomatist Robert Gaguin (1425-1502) and published a small volume of poems; and he became intimate with Johann Mauburnus (Mombaer), the leader of a mission summoned from Windesheim in 1496 to reform the abbey of Château-Landon. But the life at Montaigu was too hard for him. Every Lent he fell ill and had to return to Holland to recover. He continued to read nevertheless for a degree in theology, and at some time completed the requirements for the B.D. After a year or two he left Montaigu and eked out his money from the bishop by taking pupils. One of these, a young Englishman, William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy (d. 1534), persuaded him to visit England in the spring of 1499.
Being without a benefice, he had no settled income to look to, and apart from the precarious profits of teaching and writing books, could only wait on the generosity of patrons to supply him with the leisure he craved. The faithful Batt had sought a pension for him from his own patroness, Anne of Borsselen, the Lady of Veere, who resided at the castle of Tournehem near Calais, and whose son Batt was now teaching. But as nothing promised at once, Erasmus accepted Mountjoy’s offer, and thus a tie was formed which led Mountjoy then or a few years later to grant him a pension of £20 for life. Otherwise the visit to England gave no hope of preferment; and in the summer Erasmus prepared to leave. He was delayed, and used the interval to spend two or three months at Oxford, where he found John Colet lecturing on the Epistle to the Romans. Discussions between them on theological questions soon convinced Colet of Erasmus’ worth, and he sought to persuade him to stay and teach at Oxford. But Erasmus could not be content with the Bible in Latin. Oxford could teach him no Greek, so away he must go.
In January 1500 he returned to Paris, which though it could offer no Greek teacher better than George Hermonymus, was at least a better centre for buying and for printing books. The next few years were spent still in preparation, supported by pupils’ fees and the dedications of books; the Collectanea adagiorum in June 1500 to Mountjoy, and some devotional and moral compositions to Batt’s patroness and her son. When the plague drove him from Paris, he went to Orleans or Tournehem or St Omer, as the way opened. From 1502 to 1504 he was at Louvain, still declining to teach publicly; among his friends being the future Pope Adrian VI. In January 1504 the archduke Philip gave him fifty livres for the Panegyric which “ung religieux de l’ordre de St Augustin” had composed on his Spanish journey; and in October, ten more, for the maintenance of his studies.
He had been working hard at Greek, of which he now felt himself master, at the Fathers (above all at Jerome), and at the Epistles of St Paul, fulfilling the promise made to Colet in Oxford, to give himself to sacred learning. But the bent of his reading is shown by the manuscript with which he returned to Paris at the close of 1504—Valla’s Annotations on the New Testament, which Badius printed for him in 1505.
Shortly afterwards Lord Mountjoy invited him again to England, and this visit was more successful. He found in London a circle of learned friends through whom he was introduced to William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester and other dignitaries. John Fisher (bishop of Rochester), who was then superintending the foundation of Christ’s College for the Lady Margaret, took him down to Cambridge for the king’s visit; and at length the opportunity came to fulfil his dream of seeing Italy. Baptista Boerio, the king’s physician, engaged him to accompany his two sons thither as supervisor of their studies. In September 1506 he set foot on that sacred soil, and took his D.D. at Turin. For a year he remained with his pupils at Bologna, and then, his engagement completed, negotiated with Aldus Manutius for a new edition of his Adagia upon a very different scale. The volume of 1500 had been jejune, written when he knew nothing of Greek; 800 adages put together with scanty elucidations. In 1508 he had conceived a work on lines more to the taste of the learned world, full of apt and recondite learning, and now and again relieved by telling comments or lively anecdotes. Three thousand and more collected justified a new title—Chiliades adagiorum; and the author’s reputation was now established. So secure in public favour did the book in time become, that the council of Trent, unable to suppress it and not daring to overlook it, ordered the preparation of a castrated edition.
To print the Adagia he had gone to Venice, where he lived with Andrea Torresano of Asola (Asulanus) and did the work of two men, writing and correcting proof at the same time. When it was finished, with an ample re-dedication to Mountjoy, a new pupil presented himself, Alexander Stewart, natural son of James IV. of Scotland—perhaps through a connexion formed in early days at Paris. They went together to Siena and Rome and then on to Campania, thirsty under the summer sun. When they returned to Rome, his pupil departed to Scotland, to fall a few years later by his father’s side at Flodden; Erasmus also found a summons to call him northwards.
On the death of Henry VII. Lord Mountjoy, who had been companion to Prince Henry in his studies, had become a person of influence. He wrote to Erasmus of a land flowing with milk and honey under the “divine” young king, and with Warham sent him £10 for journey money. At first Erasmus hesitated. He had been disappointed in Italy, to find that he had not much to learn from its famed scholarship; but he had made many friends in Aldus’s circle—Marcus Musurus, John Lascaris, Baptista Egnatius, Paul Bombasius, Scipio Carteromachus; and his reception had been flattering, especially in Rome, where cardinals had delighted to honour him. But to remain in Rome was to sell himself. He might have the leisure which was so indispensable, but at price of the freedom to read, think, write what he liked. He decided, therefore, to go, though with regrets; which returned upon him sometimes in after years, when the English hopes had not borne fruit.
In the autumn he reached London, and in Thomas More’s house in Bucklersbury wrote the witty satire which Milton found “in every one’s hands” at Cambridge in 1628, and which is read to this day. The Moriae encomium was a sign of his decision. In it kings and princes, bishops and popes alike are shown to be in bondage to Folly; and no class of men is spared. Its author was willing to be beholden to any one for leisure; but he would be no man’s slave. For the next eighteen months he is entirely lost to view; when he reappears in April 1511, he is leaving More’s house and taking the Moria to be printed privily in Paris. Wherever they were spent, these must have been months of hard work, as were the years that followed. His time was now come. The long preparation and training, bought by privation and uncongenial toil, was over, and he was ready to apply himself to the scientific study of sacred letters. His English patrons were liberal. Fisher sent him in August 1511 to teach in Cambridge; Warham gave him a benefice, Aldington in Kent, worth £33, 6s. 8d. a year, and in violation of his own rule commuted it for a pension of £20 charged on the living; and the dedications of his books were fruitful. In Cambridge he completed his work on the New Testament, the Letters of Jerome, and Seneca; and then in 1514, when there seemed no prospect of ampler preferment, he determined to transfer himself to Basel and give the results of his labours to the world.
The origin of Erasmus’s connexion with Johann Froben is not clear. In 1511 he was preparing to reprint his Adagia with Jodocus Badius, who in the following year was to have also Seneca and Jerome. But in 1513 Froben, who had just reprinted the Aldine Adagia, acquired through a bookseller-agent Erasmus’ amended copy which had been destined for Badius. That the agent was acting entirely on his own responsibility may be doubted; for within a few months Erasmus had decided to betake himself to Basel, bearing with him Seneca and Jerome, the latter to be incorporated in the great edition which Johannes Amerbach and Froben had had in hand since 1510. In Germany he was widely welcomed. The Strassburg Literary Society fêted him, and Johannes Sapidus, headmaster of the Latin school at Schlettstadt, rode with him into Basel. Froben received him with open arms, and the presses were soon busy with his books. Through the winter of 1514-1515 Erasmus worked with the strength of ten; and after a brief visit to England in the spring, the New Testament was set up. Around him was a circle of students, some young, some already distinguished—the three sons of Froben’s partner, Johannes Amerbach, who was now dead, Beatus Rhenanus, Wilhelm Nesen, Ludwig Ber, Heinrich Glareanus, Nikolaus Gerbell, Johannes Oecolampadius—who looked to him as their head and were proud to do him service.
Though from this time forward Basel became the centre of occupation and interest for Erasmus, yet for the next few years he was mainly in the Netherlands. On the completion of the New Testament in 1516 he returned to his friends in England; but his appointment, then recent, as councillor to the young king Charles, brought him back to Brussels in the autumn. In the spring of 1517 he went for the last time to England, about a dispensation from wearing his canonical dress, obtained originally from Julius II. and recently confirmed by Leo X., and in May 1518 he journeyed to Basel for three months to set the second edition of the New Testament in progress. But with these exceptions he remained in proximity to the court, living much at Louvain, where he took great interest in the foundation of Hieronymus Busleiden’s Collegium Trilingue. His circumstances had improved so much, by pensions, the presents which were showered upon him, and the sale of his books, that he was now in a position to refuse all proposals which would have interfered with his cherished independence. The general ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff. Luther spoke to the people and the ignorant; Erasmus had the ear of the educated class. His friends and admirers were distributed over all the countries of Europe, and presents were continually arriving from small as well as great, from a donation of 200 florins, made by Pope Clement VII., down to sweetmeats and comfits contributed by the nuns of Cologne (Ep. 666). From England, in particular, he continued to receive supplies of money. In the last year of his life Thomas Cromwell sent him 20 angels, and Archbishop Cranmer 18. Though Erasmus led a very hard-working and far from luxurious life, and had no extravagant habits, yet he could not live upon little. The excessive delicacy of his constitution, not pampered appetite, exacted some unusual indulgences. He could not bear the stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace in the room in which he worked. He was afflicted with the stone, and obliged to be particular as to what he drank. Beer he could not touch. The white wines of Baden or the Rhine did not suit him; he could only drink those of Burgundy or Franche-Comté. He could neither eat, nor bear the smell of, fish. “His heart,” he said, “was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran.” For his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself and one for his attendant. And though he was almost always found in horse-flesh by his friends, the keep had to be paid for. For his literary labours and his extensive correspondence he required one or more amanuenses. He often had occasion, on his own business, or on that of Froben’s press, to send special couriers to a distance, employing them by the way in collecting the free gifts of his tributaries.