Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam :: CHAPTER IV PARIS THE "ADAGIA" THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS

CHAPTER IV PARIS THE "ADAGIA" THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS

CHAPTER IV PARIS--THE "ADAGIA"--THE "ENCHIRIDION MILITIS CHRISTIANI"--PANEGYRIC ON PHILIP OF BURGUNDY 1500-1506

His "deserted Paris," "that Gallic dung-heap," was calling to Erasmus, perhaps with the same siren voice that has drawn thither so many another homeless genius, and he went. He was, if we may believe his later wails, pretty well supplied with money, which he had turned into French coin. He is very careful to insist that he had not received this money in England, but if not, it is difficult to imagine where it could have come from. He was aware of a law forbidding the exportation of gold from the realm, but had been advised by his friends that this law applied only to English coin and so felt safe. The customs officers at Dover, however, took another view of the matter and left him nothing but the small amount allowed by law, nor could his connections in high quarters ever avail him to make good his loss.

An account of the affair, written, so Erasmus says, "unless he is mistaken," twenty-seven years afterward, brings this incident into direct connection with the earliest piece of writing in which Erasmus presented himself to the world in his true character. Speaking[49] of his mishap from the lofty position of a famous scholar before whose biting satire the great ones of the earth might well tremble a little, he gives himself great praise for not having taken immediate vengeance on the king and the country which had used him so badly, by writing something against them. He refrained partly because it seemed an unworthy thing to do, and partly because he would not be the means of bringing down the royal wrath upon his dear friends in England; and so, having no resources, he determined to publish something that might pay. He had nothing on hand, but by reading hard for a few days he "got together in haste quite a 'forest' of adages, thinking that a book of this sort, whatever its quality, would, by its very usefulness, go into the hands of students."

This account of the origin of the famous Adages of Erasmus seems in the main reasonable. It was in the strictest sense a bread-and-butter undertaking, calculated to meet a demand which every writer of that day must feel and for which there was no adequate supply. The scholar, no matter how great his claim to individuality, could not get on without continual references to classical literature. They were, so to speak, the certificates of his scholarship; they took the place of the references to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures by which the mediÆval scholar had at once supported his views and demonstrated his learning. Of course such decoration ought to come naturally as a result of the writer's own wide reading and profound reflection in the classic literature, and during the really great times of the Revival of Learning, while scholarship was confined to comparatively few men, and these men of really commanding powers, such had been the case. By the time of Erasmus, however, the new learning was falling rapidly into its second stage; it was becoming more widely diffused and, naturally, was drawing to itself ever more and more second-rate material. Learning was coming to be fashionable, and at just that stage all aids to a ready acquirement of at least the appearance of scholarship were sure to be in demand. It is an evidence of Erasmus' practical good sense that he was ready to advance his most serious purposes by contributing to this popularisation of learning.

Erasmus was always fond of telling how rapidly he worked, but in the present case we have every reason to believe that his work was hasty and experimental in the extreme. Nothing more unscientific in form can well be imagined than this collection of scattered sayings from the writings, chiefly, of classic authors. The method, practically unchanged in the many later editions, was simply to jot down at random some verse of poetry or some word having a peculiar meaning and then to give a very brief explanation of its origin and value; then if the occasion warranted, upon this as a text to write a little essay. In this personal and individual comment lies the real importance of the Adages, in giving us an idea of their author. It was this personal element also which appealed most strongly to those of his own time who were capable of valuing it, but it was not this which commended the Adages, probably, to the widest circle of readers. To the great mass of young students and to the increasing numbers of men everywhere who were trying their hands at Latin composition, the book was rather an encyclopÆdia of classical quotations, from which they could select the needed decorations of their style without the trouble of going to the original sources.

To these two lines of patronage the Adages owed their great and immediate popularity. The first edition was printed at Paris in 1500 and contained about eight hundred selections. As to the method of the future editions Erasmus gives us some information. When he saw that the book was received with gratitude by scholars and was apparently going to live, and moreover that publishers were vying with each other in printing it, he kept enriching it from time to time as his own leisure or the supply of available books gave him opportunity. What he regarded as the final edition was printed at Basel by Froben in 1523. After that he merely annotated previous editions, "rather as giving to others material for a future work than as really making a new book with proper care."[50] This first edition of the Adages was dedicated to Mountjoy. Without the later additions it must, one would think, have been as dry reading as could well be imagined, but the fact of its popularity is unquestionable. Edition after edition appeared with great rapidity, so that we are now able to record no less than sixty-two within the author's lifetime.

As for the pecuniary rewards which Erasmus may have had in view, there is no indication that they were immediate or considerable. The ethics of book-publishing were at that time in a highly rudimentary state. So far as one can see there was nothing to prevent any printer from putting forth any writing that by any chance got into his hands. Erasmus in a dedicatory letter to Mountjoy with a later edition[51] says that his reason for the new publication was that the earlier editions had been printed so badly that one might suppose the errors had been made intentionally. In another place[52] he says, with an unusual effort at accuracy, that the first edition of the Adages was published on the 15th of June, 1500, while he was absent from Paris. This date is certainly a very early one, and we have to bear in mind that Erasmus' object in giving it was to prove that he had got ahead of a rival compiler of proverbs who had accused him of stealing his thunder. It agrees, however, with our other indications. The most singular thing about it is that a young author, putting forth his first ambitious publication, should have been willing to absent himself from the place where the work was being done. The fact was, probably, that Erasmus was frightened half out of his wits by the presence of the plague in Paris, and this impression is strengthened by the pains he takes to convince his friend Faustus Andrelinus of his uncommon freedom from the vulgar emotion of fear. He was at Orleans and Faustus had urged him to come back to Paris; had even, so Erasmus says, called him a coward by the mouth of his own servant.

"This reproach would not be endured even if made against a Swiss soldier; against a poet, a lover of ease and quiet, it doesn't stick at all. And yet, in matters of this sort, to have no dread whatever seems to me rather the part of a log than of a brave man. When the fight is with an enemy that can be driven back, whose blows can be returned, who can be conquered by fighting, then if a man wants to seem brave, let him, for all I care. The Lernean Hydra, last and hardest of all the labours of Hercules, could not be overcome with steel but could be beaten by Greek fire; but what can you do against an evil that can be neither seen nor conquered? There are some things which it is better to run away from than to conquer. The brave Æneas did not go into battle with the sirens, but turned his helm far away from that shore of danger. 'But,' you say, 'there is no danger'—well, meanwhile I, on the safe side of danger, see a great many persons dying. I imitate the fox in Horace:—'I am alarmed at the footsteps, so many leading towards you and so few away.' In this condition of things I wouldn't hesitate to fly, not merely to Orleans, but to Cadiz or to the farthest of the far Orkneys; not because I am a timid person or of less than manly courage, but because I really do fear—not to die, for we are all born to die—but to die by my own fault. If Christ warned his disciples to flee from the wrath of their persecutors by straightway changing their residence, why should I not evade so deadly a foe when I conveniently can?"

Yet he is not happy at Orleans; the Muses grow chilly in that city of law-books; he means to come back, and meanwhile he begs Faustus to write a prefatory letter to his Adages, which he has just put forth. He asks this not for the merit of the work, for he does not flatter himself so far as not to see how poor it is—but the worse the goods the more they need recommendation. Faustus gave the letter and it duly appeared, but whether it did not just suit Erasmus, or whether he could not quite bear to have his work recommended by anyone, he saw fit later to declare that the printer had wormed it out of Faustus. Perhaps, too, Faustus had a little overdone it and in the extravagance of this festive person's praise Erasmus may have detected a little sting of sarcasm. In a letter to his friend and pupil, Augustinus, Erasmus reproves him for taking too flattering a tone towards himself and says, by the way,

"that exaggeration of Faustus, in which he says that in me alone is the very sanctuary of letters, was not so very delightful to me, both because extravagant praise suits neither my modesty nor my deserts and because such figures of speech are as a rule not believed and simply arouse envy. They are moreover akin to irony, just as what you wrote me, although in most flattering terms, did not really flatter me at all: 'O, most attentive teacher, I, thy devoted pupil, dedicate myself to thee; command me as thou wilt; naught that I have is mine, but all is thine!' All that kind of talk, it seems to me, ought to be kept as far as possible from a sincere attachment. For where there is real affection as there is, I think, between us, what use is there in such figures of speech? And where affection is insincere they are wont to be turned into a suspicion of malice. Therefore you would greatly oblige me if you would completely banish such exaggerations from your letters, that simple affection may find its proper language and that you may bear in mind that you are writing to an attached friend and not to a tyrant."

This sounds very fine and would impress one with a great sense of Erasmus' ingenuous nature, if one could forget that this is precisely the time when he was carrying on the correspondence with Battus and the Marchioness of Veere which we have already examined.[53] Indeed the years from 1500 to 1506 are the most perplexing in Erasmus' whole life. He was continually on the move, now at Paris, now at Orleans, again in the Low Countries, visiting this friend and that, with no regular source of income, yet somehow pulling himself through. During all this time there is hardly a letter which does not speak of him as the victim of a cruel fate. Of course it is always the fault of someone else, but human nature has not so greatly changed in four hundred years that we can afford to take his word for it that all his patrons had deserted him with no cause whatever on his part. To get the proper perspective for an understanding of the situation we must remind ourselves that Erasmus was as yet a very doubtful investment. His real individuality was hardly showing itself. He had positively rejected all proposals of regular occupation; he was making considerable demands on life, but he would take life only on his own terms.

The motive of Erasmus' wanderings in these early years of the century is not clear. More easily perceptible than any other is his fear of the plague and a nervous dread of other illness. When things went badly in one place he betook himself to another, but it is hard to find much principle even in his health-seeking. He speaks of finding relief in his native land and again writes that Zeeland is hell to him, he "never felt a harsher climate or one less suited to his poor little body." The bishop of Cambrai had long since failed him. The bishop's brother, the abbot of St. Bertin, formerly a great friend, was of no use; the Marchioness was herself in some mysterious trouble; Battus alone, his precious Battus, was quite true to him, but not able to do much for him. Altogether it seems most probable that the conspiracy of the fates against our scholar may have been nothing more than a common feeling of distrust toward a sturdy beggar, who had not yet proved his value and who was not inclined to put up with any half-way charity.

But meanwhile Erasmus was always at work. His real, permanent, and persistent interest was his own self-culture—not in any narrow or mean sense, but that he might be equal to the great demands he was preparing to make upon himself. Of all things he wished to make himself strong in Greek, and it is clear that he was dissatisfied with any teaching which thus far had been open to him. From this we ought not hastily to draw conclusions as to the badness of Greek teaching at Paris. Erasmus, like most men of original genius, was not a docile pupil. He knew intuitively, what it takes most of us a lifetime to find out, that every man must teach himself all that he ever really and effectively knows, and that this is especially true of all linguistic knowledge. Erasmus complains of his Greek teachers, but he did not sit down and wait for better ones. He went to work with such appliances as he had and read Greek books and gradually came to read them well. He learned Greek, in short, as he had learned Latin, by using it.

From time to time, however, he gave evidences of his progress in culture by some production intended for wider circulation. A specimen of such occasional writing is his Enchiridion militis christiani, a title which has almost invariably been rendered, "A Handbook of the Christian Soldier," but which bears equally well the meaning, "The Christian Soldier's Dagger." The essential point is that it was a something "handy," a vade mecum for the average gentleman who aimed to be a good Christian. Erasmus uses the word in both meanings at different times. Writing, according to his own reckoning, nearly thirty years afterwards,[54] Erasmus gives us an account of the origin of this treatise, which is interesting as showing how unsystematic were the motives which led, or which he imagined led, to the writing of many of his most famous works. He says "the thing was born of chance." He was at Tournehens to escape the plague then raging in Paris and there came into relations with a friend of Battus, a gentleman who was "his own worst enemy," a gay and reckless liver. This gentleman's wife was a woman of singular piety and in great distress for her husband's soul. She begged Erasmus to write something which might move him to repentance, but to be careful that this warning should not appear to come from her; for "he was cruel to her even to blows, after the manner of soldiers." So Erasmus noted down a few things and showed them to his friends, who approved them so highly that some time afterward at Louvain he employed his leisure in putting them into shape. For a while the book attracted little attention; but later it became one of the most popular and widely read of its author's more serious works. It was first printed in 1503 and after that ran through edition after edition with great rapidity. Naturally, it brought out also no little opposition; but that will explain itself when we have examined a little more carefully the aim and contents of the book.

Its object is especially to emphasise the difference between a true religion of the heart and an outward, formal religion of observances. It is divided into thirteen chapters of varying length, each headed with a caption rather vaguely indicating its contents. After a somewhat long introduction he proceeds to a definition of the human soul, following in the main the lead of the early Fathers, especially of Origen. He distinguishes between the soul of man and a something higher yet, which they describe as spirit. The body is the purely material, the spirit is the purely divine, but the soul, living between the two, belongs permanently to neither, but is tossed back and forth from one to the other according as it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The body is the harlot, soliciting to evil. "Thus the spirit makes us gods; the flesh makes us beasts; the soul makes us men." This distinction is again and again illustrated, and the chapter ends with a declaration of the true rule of Christian piety; viz., that every man see to it that he judge himself according to his own temptation.[55]

"One man rejoices in fasting, in sacred observances, in going often to church, in repeating psalms, as many as possible—but in the spirit. Now ask, according to our rule, what he is doing:—if he is looking for praise or reward, he smacks of the flesh—not of the spirit. If he is merely indulging his own nature, doing what pleases him, this is not a thing to be proud of, but rather to be feared. There is your danger. You pray and you judge the man who prays not; you fast and you condemn the man who eats. Whoever does not do as you do, you think is inferior to you. Look out that your fasting be not to the flesh! Your brother needs your help, but you meanwhile are mumbling your prayers to God and neglecting your brother's poverty: God will be deaf to such prayers as that.... You love your wife just because she is your wife; that is very little, for the heathen do the same. Or you love her only for your own pleasure; then your love is to the flesh: but if you love her chiefly because you see in her the image of Christ, piety, modesty, sobriety, chastity, then you love her not in herself, but in Christ—nay, you love Christ in her and so God in the spirit."

The book then goes on to more specific injunctions to the Christian life, always with the undernote of sincerity as the main thing. Here is a striking passage from the second canon of the eighth chapter:[56]

"Christ said to all men that he who will not take up his cross and follow after him is not worthy of him. Now you have no concern with dying to the flesh with Christ, if living in his spirit does not concern you. It is not yours to be crucified to the world, if living to God be not yours. To be buried with Christ is nothing to you, if rising in glory is nothing to you. Christ's humility, his poverty, his trial, his scorn, his toil, his struggle, his grief, are nothing to you, if you have no care for his kingdom. What more base than to claim for yourself the reward with others, but to put off upon a certain few the toil for which the reward is offered? What more wanton than to wish to reign with our Head, when you are not willing to suffer with him? Therefore, my brother, do not look about to see what others do and flatter yourself with their example;—a difficult thing indeed and known to very few, even to monks, is this dying to sin, to carnal desire and to the world. Yet this is the common profession of all Christians."

So again in the fourth canon:[57]

"You fast,—a pious work indeed to all appearance; but to what purpose is this fasting? Is it to save provisions or to seem to be more pious than you are? Then your eye is evil. Or do you fast to keep your health? Why then do you fear disease? Lest it keep you from pleasure? Your eye is evil. Or do you desire health that you may devote yourself to study? Then to what end is this study?—that you may get a church office? But why do you wish the office?—that you may live to yourself and not to Christ? Then you have wandered from the standard which the Christian ought to have set up everywhere. You take food that your body may be strong, but you desire this strength that you may be equal to the study of sacred things and to holy vigils:—you have hit the mark; but if you look after your health lest you lose your beauty and so be incapable of sensual pleasure, then you have fallen away from Christ and have set up another God for yourself.

"There are those who worship certain divinities with certain rites. One salutes Christopher every day, but only while he is gazing upon his image, and for what? because he has persuaded himself that he will thus be safe for that day from an evil death. Another worships a certain Rochus, and why? because he fancies he will drive the plague away from his body. Another mumbles prayers to Barbara or George, lest he fall into the hands of his enemy. This man fasts to Apollonia to prevent the toothache. That one gazes upon an image of the god-like Job, that he may be free of the itch. Some devote a certain part of their profits to the poor, lest their business go to wreck. A candle is lighted to Jerome to rescue some business that is going to pieces. In short, whatever our fears and our desires, we set so many gods over them and these are different in different nations; as, for example, Paul does for the French what Jerome does for our people, and James and John are not good everywhere for what they can do in certain places. Now this kind of piety, unless it be brought back to Christ instead of being merely a care for the convenience or inconvenience of our bodies, is not Christian, for it is not far removed from the superstition of those who used to vow tithes to Hercules in order to get rich—or a cock to Æsculapius to get well of an illness, or who slew a bull to Neptune for a favourable voyage. The names are changed, but the object is the same. You pray to God to escape a sudden death and not rather that he may grant you a better mind, so that whenever death overtakes you it may not find you unprepared. You never think of changing your way of life and yet you pray God to let you live. What then are you asking?—why, only that you may keep on sinning as long as possible. You pray for wealth and know not how to use wealth; so you are praying for your own ruin. If you pray for health and then abuse it, is not your piety impious?

"An objection will be made here by some 'religious' fellows, who look upon piety as a profession, or, in other words, by certain sweet phrases of blessing seduce the souls of the innocent, serving their own bellies and not Jesus Christ: 'What,' they will say, 'do you forbid the worship of the saints, in whom God is honoured?' Indeed I do not so much condemn those who do this from a certain simple superstition as those who, seeking their own profit, put forth things that might perhaps be tolerated with pure and lofty piety, but encourage for their own advantage the ignorance of the common people. This ignorance I do not in the least despise, but I cannot bear to have them taking indifferent things for the most important, the least for the greatest. I will even approve their asking Rochus for a life of health if they will consecrate their life to Christ; but I should like it still better if they would simply pray that their love of virtue may be increased through their hatred of vice. Let them lay their living and dying in God's hands, and say with Paul 'whether we live or whether we die, we live or die to the Lord.' ... I will bear with weakness, but, like Paul, I will show you a more excellent way."

It will be noticed that even thus early in Erasmus' moral appeal, he does not aim at destroying anything. Even for the worship of saints he has plenty of room in his thought, but he says:[58]

"the way to worship the saints is to imitate their virtues. The saint cares more for this kind of reverence than if you burn a hundred candles for him. You think it a great thing to be borne to your grave in the cowl of Francis; but the likeness of his garment will profit you nothing after you are dead, if your morals were unlike his when you were alive.... You pay the greatest reverence to the ashes of Paul, and no harm if your own religion is consistent with this. But if you adore these dead and silent ashes and neglect that image of him which lives and speaks and, as it were, breathes to this day in his writings, is not your religion preposterous? You worship the bones of Paul laid away in a shrine, but you do not worship the mind of Paul enshrined in his writings. You make great things of a scrap of his body seen through a glass case, but you do not marvel at the whole soul of Paul that gleams through his works.... Let infidels, for whom they were given, wonder at these signs, but do you, a believer, embrace the books of that man, so that, while you doubt not that God is able to do all things, you may learn to love Him above all things. You honour an image of the face of Christ, badly cut in stone or painted in colours, but far more honour ought to be given to that image of his soul which by the work of the Holy Spirit is made manifest in the Gospels.... You gaze with awe upon a tunic or a handkerchief said to be those of Christ, but you fall asleep over the oracles of the law of Christ."

With constant reference to Paul as the greatest of human teachers, Erasmus comes to the monastic life in some detail.[59]

"'Love,' says Paul, 'is to edify your neighbour,' and if only this were done, nothing could be more joyous or more easy than the life of the 'religious'; but now this life seems gloomy, full of Jewish superstitions, not in any way free from the vices of laymen and in some ways more corrupt. If Augustine, whom they boast of as the founder of their system, were to come to life again, he would not recognise them; he would cry out that he had never approved this sort of a life, but had organized a way of living according to the rule of the apostles, not according to the superstition of the Jews. But now I hear some of the more sensible ones say:—'We must be on our guard in the least things lest we gradually slip into greater vices.' I hear and I approve; but we ought none the less to be on our guard lest we get so bound up in these lesser things that we wholly fall away from the greater. The danger is plainer on that side, but greater on this. Look out for Scylla, but do not fall into Charybdis. To do those things is well, but to put your trust in them is perilous. Paul does not forbid us to make use of the 'elements,' but he would not have the man who is free in Christ made a slave to them. He does not condemn the law of works, but would have it properly applied. Without these things you will perchance not be a pious man, but it is not these that make you pious....

"What, then, shall the Christian do? Shall he neglect the commands of the Church, despise the honourable traditions of the Fathers, and condemn pious observances? Nay, if he is a weakling he will hold on to these as necessary; if he is strong and perfect, he will observe them so much the more, lest through his wisdom he offend his weak brother, and slay him for whom Christ died. These things he ought to do and not leave the others undone.... Your body is clothed with the monkish cowl; what, then, if your soul wears an earthly garment? If the outer man is veiled in a snowy tunic, let also the vestment of the inner man be white like snow. You keep silence outwardly; see to it so much the more that your mind within is fixed in silent attention. You bend the knee of the body in the visible temple; but that is nothing if in the temple of the heart you are standing upright against God. You adore the wood of the cross;—follow much more the mystery of the cross. Do you go into a fast and abstain from those things which do not defile the man and yet not refrain from obscene conversation which defiles both your own conscience and that of others? Food is withheld from the body and shall the soul gorge itself upon the husks of the swine? You build a temple of stone; you have places sacred to religion; what profits it if the temple of the soul, whose wall Ezekiel dug through, is profaned with the abominations of the Egyptians?... If the body be kept pure and yet you are covetous, then the soul is polluted. You sing psalms with your bodily lips, but listen within to what your soul is saying: you are blessing with the mouth and cursing with the heart. Bodily you are bound within a narrow cell, but with your thoughts you wander over the wide earth. You hear the word of God with your bodily ear: hear it rather within."

So much for the monks. As to the general moral standards of his day Erasmus is equally clear and vigorous and is interesting especially from the comparison he makes with the morals of ancient times.[60]

"Turn the annals of the ancients," he bursts out, "and compare the manners of our time. When was true honour less respected? When were riches, no matter how gained, ever so highly esteemed? In what age was ever that word of Horace[61] more true—

'A dowried wife, friends, beauty, birth, fair fame,

These are the gifts of money, heavenly dame.'

When was luxury ever more reckless? When were vice and adultery ever more widespread or less punished or less condemned?... Who does not think poverty the last extreme of misfortune and disgrace?"

It is the cry, familiar to all ages, especially of course at times when civilisation has reached a high point, that all honour may be bought for money and place. It shows no especial acuteness on Erasmus' part, but it does prove his courage and his clear Christian insight. That he should fancy the heroes of the classic world to have been superior to the modern Christians of his own day was a natural part of the classic enthusiasm in which he lived. Nor can we doubt that it greatly strengthened the moral argument in his time to add these examples of purely non-Christian virtue to those furnished by the well-worn heroes of the Jewish past.

A very characteristic touch is found in Erasmus' reference to the prevailing rage for information, also a vice of an over-eager age.[62]

"Let me speak of another error. They call him a clever man and skilled in affairs who, catching at all kinds of rumours, knows what is going on all over the world: what is the fortune of the merchants, what the tyrant of the Britains is planning, what is the news at Rome, what is the latest happening in Gaul, how the Dacians and Scythians are getting on, what the princes are thinking about,—in short, the man who is eager to do battle about every kind of affairs among every race of men, that man they call wise. But what is more senseless, more foolish, than to be running after things remote, that have nothing to do with yourself, and not even to think of what is going on in your own heart and what belongs especially to you. You talk about the troubles in Britain; tell rather what is troubling your own heart,—envy, lust, ambition; how far these have been sent under the yoke,—what hope there is of victory,—how far the war is advanced,—how the plan of campaign is laid out. If in these things you are watchful, with eyes and ears well trained, if you are cunning and cautious, then indeed I will declare you to be a clever man."

A very interesting example of Erasmus' insistence upon the essential thing and his indifference to names and forms is in the chapter which describes the opinions worthy of the Christian. It has almost a socialistic ring, so sharply does he emphasise the duty of Christian charity.[63]

"You thought it was only monks to whom property was forbidden and poverty enjoined? You were wrong; both commands apply to all Christians. The law punishes you if you take what belongs to another; it does not punish you if you take what is yours away from your brother when he needs it; but Christ will punish both. If you are a magistrate the office should not make you more fierce, but the responsibility should make you more cautious. 'But,' you say, 'I do not hold a church office; I am not a priest or a bishop.' Quite so, but you are a Christian, are you not? See to it whose man you be, if you are not a man of the Church. Christ is come into such contempt in the world, that they think it a fine thing and a royal to have no dealings with him and despise a person the more, the more closely he is bound to him. Do you not hear every day some angry layman throwing in our faces as a violent reproach the words 'Clerk!' 'Priest!' 'Monk!' and that with the same temper and the same voice as if he were charging us with incest or sacrilege? Of a truth I wonder why they don't attack Baptism, or like the Saracens assault the name of Christ as something infamous. If they would say 'bad Clerk!' 'unworthy Priest!' 'impious Monk!' we could bear it as coming from those who were rebuking the character of the man and not the profession of virtue. But those who call the rape of virgins, the plunder of war, the gain and loss of money at dice deeds of glory, these people have no word to throw at another more full of contempt and shame than 'Monk!' or 'Priest!'—though it is clear enough what these people, Christians in nothing but the name, think of Christ.

"There is not one Lord for bishops and another for civil rulers; both are vicegerents of the same Lord and both must render an account to him. The office of the Christian prince is not to excel others in wealth, but, as far as possible, to seek the advantage of all. Turn not what belongs to the public to your own profit, but spend whatever is yours, even yourself, for the public good. The people owe much to you, but you owe everything to them. High-sounding names, 'Invictus,' 'Sacrosanctus,' 'Majestas,' though your ears are forced to hear them, yet ascribe them all to Christ, to whom alone they belong. The crime of lÆsÆ majestatis, which others bring forward with frightful clamour,—let this be to you a very small matter. He alone violates the majesty of the prince who, under the name of a prince, does things contrary to law, cruel, violent, or criminal. Let no attack move you so little as one which touches you personally. Remember that you are a public person, and that it is your duty to think only of the public good. If you are wise consider, not how great you are, but how great a burden rests upon your shoulders. The greater danger you are in, so much the less seek indulgence for yourself, and choose the model for your administration, not from your fathers or from your partisans, but from Christ. What can be more absurd than that a Christian prince should set up Hannibal, Alexander, CÆsar, or Pompey as an example to himself?... Nothing is so becoming, so splendid, so glorious in kings as to attain as nearly as may be to the perfect likeness of Jesus, the supreme king, greatest and best.... 'Apostolus,' 'Pastor,' 'Episcopus,' these are names of duties, not of government; 'Papa,' 'Abbas,' are titles of love, not of dominion. But why should I go into this ocean of vulgar errors?"

The Enchiridion closes with five chapters of remedies against certain vices: lust, avarice, ambition, arrogance, and anger. These prescriptions have to us so obvious a sound that one easily overlooks their real importance. Their value consists in this: that in an age of formal righteousness they direct the conscience of the individual man straight back to the sources of all Christian living, to the plain teaching of Jesus and the plain argument of common sense. We ought to follow Scripture,—yes, but because Solomon kept a harem of concubines, that is no example for us. Peter denied the Christ for whom he afterward died; but that is no excuse for perjury. The Christian law is thus made plain to the individual conscience.

It has seemed worth while to go into the contents of this little book with more care than its extent might appear to warrant, because it is the earliest formulated expression of those principles of interpretation which form the basis of Erasmus' whole mature life and thought. It is for him, as it were, a programme, which he was to fill out in detail, in the long series of writings that now began to flow rapidly from his pen. In it he made his challenge to the world, yet with such moderation, such careful weighing and balancing of views, that he evidently hoped to win the support of all classes in what he began to feel was his life-work.

We are always told that Erasmus here in the Enchiridion began his unceasing warfare upon the monks; but if we read closely we see how carefully he guarded himself against direct assault upon this or any other established institution. Not the name "monk" was a reproach, but the name "bad monk." He even goes so far as to identify himself with the clerical order. It was well enough to fast or even to use images and relics, so long as one saw through the forms to the meaning underneath; but the moment a man found himself relying upon the forms, no matter who he was, pope, priest, or layman, that moment he was in danger.

Erasmus says that the Enchiridion attracted little attention at first, but afterward had a great sale. We can well believe that the full force of its criticism was not felt until the first stirrings of the Protestant Reformation brought men sharply face to face with the problems it had outlined. It cannot be called precisely a controversial book, yet the germs of the bitterest controversies of the Reformation time are contained in it. Erasmus professed the utmost reverence for the existing institutions of the Church, and there is nothing in his later life to make us doubt the sincerity of this profession. He was by nature averse to all the violence and confusion that must attend any great social change. But it was clear to him that his age had wandered far from the ideals of the founders of these institutions. His remedy was to point out to men how widely they had erred and to show them once more in plain and direct language the true foundations of the Christian life.

It is noticeable that with all his protests of respect, Erasmus nowhere urges the appeal to the existing order in the Church as final. Men may fast, worship saints, take vows, seek absolution; but their real salvation is to be found in none of these things. As this little book went out into the world in the year 1503, it remained to be seen which aspect of its teaching would prove the more effectual, whether its real meaning would penetrate alike to friends and enemies. Some light on this point may be gained from a letter[64] of Erasmus written in 1518 to his friend Volzius and afterward published as a preface to a new edition of the Enchiridion. In this letter he says that his work was criticised as unlearned, because it did not use the quibbling methods of the schools. But he was not trying "to train men for the prize-ring of the Sorbonne, but rather for the peace which belongs to the Christian." There is no lack of books on theology;

"there are as many commentaries on the 'Sentences' of Petrus Lombardus as there are theologians. There is no end of little summas, which mix up one thing with another over and over again and after the manner of apothecaries fabricate and refabricate old things from new, new from old, one from many, and many from one. The result is that there are so many books about right living that no one can ever live long enough to read them. As if a doctor should prescribe for a man in a dangerous illness that he should read the books of Jacobus À Partibus and all the likes of them and there he would find out how to mend his health."

There were books enough, Heaven knew! but not life enough to read them, and this multitude of quarrelling doctors were only obscuring the true art of living, which Christ meant to make plain and simple to all. These so-called philosophers are obstacles, not helps, to the true Christian life.

"They could never have enough of discussing in what words they ought to speak of Christ, as if they were dealing with some horrid demon, who would bring destruction upon them if they failed to invoke him in proper terms, instead of with a most gentle Saviour, who asks nothing of us but a pure and upright life."

Erasmus makes here the very practical and constructive suggestion, that

"a commission of pious and learned men should bring together into a compendium from the purest sources of the gospels and the apostles and from their most approved commentators, the whole philosophy of Christ, with as much simplicity as learning, as much brevity as clearness. What pertains to the faith should be treated in as few articles as possible; what belongs to life, also in few words, and so put that men may know that the yoke of Christ is easy and pleasant, not cruel; that they have been given fathers, not tyrants; pastors, not robbers; called to salvation, not betrayed into slavery.

"Now then," he says, "that is precisely the purpose I was filled with when I wrote my Enchiridion. I saw the multitude of Christians corrupted, not only in their passions, but also in their opinions. I saw those who professed to be pastors and doctors generally abusing the name of Christ to their own profit,—to say nothing of those at whose nod the affairs of men are tossed hither and thither, but at whose vices, open as they are, it is hardly permitted to raise a groan. And in such a turmoil of affairs, in such corruption of the world, in such a conflict of human opinions, whither was one to flee, except to the sacred anchor of the Gospel teaching?

"I would not defile the divine philosophy of Christ with human decrees. Let Christ remain what he is, the centre, with certain circles about him. I would not move the centre from its place. Let those who are nearest Christ, priests, bishops, cardinals, popes, whose duty it is to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, embrace that most perfect part and, so far as may be, hand it on to the next in order. Let the second circle contain temporal princes, whose arms and whose laws are in the service of Christ.... In the third circle let us place the mass of the people as the dullest part of this world, but yet, dull as it is, a member of the body of Christ. For the eyes are not the only members of the body, but also the hands and the feet. And for these we ought to have consideration, so that, as far as possible, they may be called to those things which are nearer to Christ,—for in this body he who is now but a foot may come to be an eye.... So a mark is to be set before all, toward which they may strive, and there is but one mark, namely Christ and his pure doctrine. But if, instead of a heavenly mark you set an earthly one, there will be nothing towards which one may properly strive. That which is highest is meant for all, that we may at least attain to some moderate height.... The perfection of Christ is in our motives, not in the form of our life, in our minds, not in dress or food. There are some among the monks whom the third circle would scarcely accept,—I am speaking now of good ones, but weak. There are some, even among men twice married, whom Christ would think worthy of the first circle. It is no offence to any particular form of life if what is best and most perfect is put forth as a standard for all. Every kind of life has its own peculiar dangers and he who shows them up makes no reflection upon the institution, but is rather defending its cause."

This highly characteristic letter closes with a review of the early history and purpose of the monastic orders and emphasises still further Erasmus' point that he has no quarrel with monks as such, but only in so far as they set more value upon forms than upon the true following of Christ.

"I would have all Christians so live that those who alone are now called 'religious' should seem very little religious—and that is true to-day in not a few cases; for why should we hide what is open to all?"

His picture of the true monks, as Benedict and Bernard would have had them, must have seemed Utopian indeed. They were merely voluntary communities of friends, living

"in the liberty of the spirit according to the Gospel law, and under certain necessary rules about dress and food. They hated riches, they avoided all offices, even those of the church; they laboured with their hands, so that they might not only be no burden upon others, but might have a surplus to relieve distress; they dwelt upon mountain-peaks, in swamps, and sandy deserts."

Now let whoever will compare all this with the monks of his own day!

Things had moved very rapidly in the fifteen years since Erasmus had written the Enchiridion, but the tone of this defence is quite in harmony with that of the book itself. It is not loose and vulgar abuse of the "religious" orders, but rather a calm and consistent appeal to the one true standard of Christian life, namely to the teaching and example of Christ himself.

This is the great interest of this little manual of the Christian gentleman. It shows Erasmus as a clear-eyed critic of existing institutions, rather than as a man who had any definite scheme of reform to propose. Throughout the book there is but one concrete proposition: that a commission be appointed—by whom is not suggested—to reduce the substance of Christian faith and morals to such simple form that it could be understood by everyone. A very pretty and amiable suggestion indeed, but hardly suited to a moment when the irreconcilable nature of the great conflict between a religious system founded upon formalism and the simple morality of the Gospel was beginning to be more and more clearly felt.

In the year following the publication of the Enchiridion, while Erasmus was quietly going on with his studies, living where he could find a comfortable place for the moment, he was suddenly called upon to perform one of the very few public functions of his life. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, son of the Emperor Maximilian and administrator of the government in the Low Countries, was returning from a journey to Spain and France in the year 1504 and was to be received at Brussels with all fitting demonstrations of loyalty and affection. Among other things the community desired to show its appreciation of learning by inflicting upon the young man a public oration in as good style as they could pay for.

Erasmus was chosen for this task and fulfilled it with success if not with enthusiasm. His extravagant phrases of laudation, in which the prince is credited with almost more than human qualities, cannot interest us. They are purely conventional and can convince us neither of the prince's merit nor of the orator's insincerity. More important for us is the evidence that even through such formal surroundings, the originality of the man cannot fail to make itself here and there felt.

The oration was delivered in the ducal palace at Brussels. In its printed form it fills over twenty folio pages and can hardly have occupied less than three or four hours in delivery. One would imagine that even the divine virtues of the young prince could hardly have kept up his spirits while these ponderous paragraphs were being read to him, and it is certainly to be hoped that he was let off with an abbreviated edition. He may well have yawned over the tedious narrative of his journey to Spain and his magnificent reception in France, but he was, probably seldom privileged to hear such sound instruction as Erasmus dealt out to him from point to point of his discourse.[65]

"Even to-day," said the orator, "there are not wanting those who croak into the ears of kings such stuff as this:—'Why should you hesitate? Have you forgotten that you are a prince? Is not your pleasure the law? It is the part of kings to live not by rule but by the lust of their own hearts. Whatever any of your subjects has, that belongs to you. It is yours to give life and to take it away; yours to make or to ruin the fortunes of whom you will. Others are praised or blamed, but to you everything is honourable, everything praiseworthy. Will you listen to those philosophers and scholastics?... Seal your ears with wax, most noble Duke, against the fatal song of these Sirens; like Homer's Ulysses, or rather, like Virgil's Æneas, steer your course so far from their coast that the poison of their seductive voices may not touch the soundness of your mind."

"By what names we call you, it matters little to you, for you do not think yourself to be other than what Homer calls the 'shepherd of the people' or Plato its 'guardian.' You have discovered a new way to increase the revenues of your nobles and of yourself: by diminishing expense instead of increasing taxes. Oh! wonderful soul! you deprive yourself that your subjects may abound; you deny yourself that there may be the more for the multitude. You keep watch, that we may sleep in safety. You are wearied with continual anxieties, that your own may have peace. You wear your princedom, not for yourself, but for your land."

"The Astrologers declare that in certain years there appear long-tailed stars which bring mighty convulsions into human affairs, touching both the minds and the bodies of men with fatal force and terribly affecting rivers, seas, earth, and air. But no comet can arise so fatal to the earth as a bad prince, nor any planet so healthful as a blameless ruler."

The most striking part of the panegyric, however, is that which compares the virtues of peace with those of war. Here Erasmus makes his first great declaration of principles as to the absolute wickedness and folly of war and henceforth, during his whole life, he never failed to repeat and to emphasise them. We cannot account for this consistent attitude on any theory of personal timidity or even on the ground that the scholar's work demanded peace for its full development. This latter argument we do find in Erasmus, but it might equally well be turned in favour of war as furnishing those stirring episodes and kindling that enthusiasm for heroic deeds which have always been inspiring to literary genius. Erasmus was sincerely and profoundly impressed with the enormous waste of energy which war seemed to imply and believed with all his heart that the motives leading to it were almost invariably bad. In a day when the peoples of Europe were continually involved in wars and rumours of wars, it was an act of no little courage for this solitary scholar to stand before a great assembly of princes and plead the sacred cause of peace.

Considerable ingenuity is shown in his clever reply to the argument that peace is enervating to the ruler. Bravery, Erasmus says, is far easier in war, for we see that a very poor kind of man may show it there; but to govern the spirit, to control desire, to put a bridle upon greed, to restrain the temper,—that kind of courage is peculiar to the wise and good. Of all these peaceful virtues he declares Philip to be the model, and it is of little account to us whether this praise be well or ill applied. Our interest is in the growth of Erasmus' own ideas and the part they had in fitting him for the work he was to do. His description of the miseries of war is a really noble piece of eloquence and reason.

We shall have occasion again to refer to Erasmus' peace propaganda. Enough here that he had the courage to speak his mind under circumstances which might well have led a less manly orator to dwell upon the glory and profit of a warlike policy. His listener, involved as he was at that moment in as tangled a web of negotiations as ever European diplomacy had yet woven, must have smiled in his sleeve at this harmless pedantry of the worthy scholar. Certainly no action of his life up to that time or in the short years left to him can indicate any preference for peace for its own sake.

More grateful, doubtless, to the princely ears were Erasmus' prognostications of his future. He had no faith in astrology, but he seemed to see in the evident trend of European affairs an accumulation of powers in the hand of duke Philip, which was to be realised in the person of his son Charles. The orator lets himself go in laudation of Maximilian, Ferdinand, Joanna, and Philip himself, with confident prediction of a magnificent future. In fact Maximilian's career was a series of brilliant failures. Ferdinand was in continual dread of Philip and often in open hostility with him. Joanna was already showing traces of that hopeless insanity, aggravated it was said by the cruel frivolities of Philip, which was to taint the house of Habsburg to this day. Finally Philip was to die of disease within two years, without realising any of the schemes of aggrandisement to which his life was devoted.

But if Erasmus' prophecy was bad, his scheme of princely morals, as here laid down, was good, and it indicates clearly the bent of his serious thought. A man with his sense of humour—in other words, with his common sense—could not fail to see the discrepancy between the actual Philip and the being whom he had here depicted. When he came to publish his panegyric he found it necessary to defend himself against the charge of falsehood. In a letter[66] to his friend Paludanus, professor of rhetoric at Louvain, he goes at considerable length into the obligation of a writer of such things to tell the truth. He supports his own action by reference to classic panegyrists and lays down the general principle, that one can do more to help a prince by praising him for virtues he has not, than by blaming him for the faults he has.

"Just," he says, "as the best of physicians declares to his patient that he likes his colour and the expression of his face, not because these things are so, but that he may make them so. Augustine, so they say, confesses that he told many a lie in praise of emperors. Paul the apostle himself not infrequently employs the device of pious adulation, praising in order that he may reform."

The panegyric to Philip, in its published form, was dedicated to Nicholas Ruterius, bishop of Arras. In the dedicatory letter Erasmus professes that this kind of writing was distasteful to him, and defends himself again by the reflection that

"there is no way so effectual for improving a prince, as to present to him, under the form of praise, the model of a good prince,—provided only that you ascribe virtues to him and take faults away from him in such wise that you urge him to the one and warn him from the other."

We are led to believe that Prince Philip was graciously pleased to approve the discourse of Erasmus. Doubtless he was as quick as the orator himself to explain it in a Pickwickian sense wherever it verged too closely upon unpleasant facts. He gave him a handsome present and is said to have offered him a place in his service which Erasmus, as usual, declined.

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