Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/10

 2 ERASMUS January quietly stepped from the medieval into the modern world. Essen- tially medieval as were the conditions of his life yet he seems essentially modern in the view that he took, and the contrast gives a touch of pathos to his story. In much that has been written about him his medieval background has been left out of sight : in the estimate of his character it is often forgotten how very modern he was. He was so very modern that the Reformation, transacting itself before his eyes, did not close his field of vision : he looked to the foundations of the coming age, to the solid pressure of training that was to form the type of theologian and scholar. This too is often forgotten, and he is, therefore, judged by us, as by his own equals, solely in reference to the Reformation. Thus as a result he is misunderstood : he is pictured as hiding behind his study window, peering into the riot of the market-place below and terrified of the bonfires kindled there. It is not everybody that enjoys a bonfire, and a point of view chosen deliberately and kept with strength is ascribed to mere timidity and indecision.^ Yet there is no man better able to speak for himself : letters which had a marketable value in their own day have an even greater value for us : the Colloquies and the Praise of Folly have not yet lost their original freshness and charm. It is best to let him speak for himself, and it is pleasant to think that English scholarship in the edition of the epistles by Mr. P. S. AUen and in the English translations by the late Mr. Nichols has made it easier for us to listen to him aright. Bom at Rotterdam, 27 October 1466 or 1467, in the house of his grandmother, with an unmarried mother, with a father who afterwards became a monk on hearing a false rumour of the mother's death, he inherited membership in a divided family on one side, and on the other his father's gaiety of disposition and love of manuscripts. His first school, entered at four years of age, was Gouda, but that was left for the post of choir-boy at Utrecht. At nine years he went to a more celebrated school at Deventer, where was the earliest foundation of the Brethren of the Common Lot : ^ Erasmus's school was one attached to a church ' The letter to Albert of Mainz, of a date probably 1517 and printed as part of preface to the Ratio Verae Theologiae (Allen, iii. 175, in part ; for a translation see Drummond, ii. 33f.)> is a good illustration of Erasmus's position in face of the Lutheran con- troversies. He feared to excite new disturbances which often turned out other than intended. Life has been used instead of Common Lot, but as the late A. W. Haddan pointed out {Remains, p. 412 ; cf. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, ii. 70), the brethren paid money into a common fund while not sharing a common life. The older term, used for instance in the translation of Ullmann's excellent book, is therefore the better one. The brethren were called ' CoUationarii ' because of the addresses they gave to their pupils. SecNichols, i. 18.
 * This is the older English translation of the native term ; of late years Common