Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/203

* ERASMUS. I?:. ERASMUS. 140(1. The materials for the history of his life are scanty and doubtful, being taken almost en tirely from his own writings. In spite of the obvious purpose of most of these materials to ex- plain or to conceal matters of personal experi- ence, they have been generally accepted by biog- raphers as historical, and thus a kind of Eras- inian legend has taken form, only partially cleared up by the labors of recent critical schol- arship. The fame of Erasmus rests upon his work as I be chief interpreter to the peoples of northern Europe of the great intellectual movement of the fifteenth century. The circumstances of his un- eventful life are of interest only as they illus- trate this great service, lie was, on his own statement, an illegitimate child, but Mas tender- ly eared for by his parents until their death, when he was about fourteen years old. They gave him the best attainable education at the famous school of Deventer, and left him a little property — sufficient, he says, if it had been hus- banded, to pay his way at a university. His guardians, however, took the more natural and safe course of placing him first at a school of the Brothers of the Common Life at Bois-le-Duc, where he spent, 'or rather wasted,' about three years, and then in the monastery of Canons Regular at Steyn, near Gouda. Here he spent ten years. He took priest's orders ; but left the monastery, never to return, in 1492 or 1403. For a short time he was at Paris. Then he began his career as an independent scholar, living by his pen and the favors it brought him, and continued this life till his death. With fre- quent intervals of wandering, he resided at Paris, Louvain, in England, at Basel, and Freiburg im Breisgau ; for three years he was in Italy (1506- 09). His chief attachments were in England and Basel. He was on terms of a certain inti- macy with John Colet, founder of Saint Paul's School; Thomas Linacre, founder of the London College of Physicians; William Grocyn, teacher of Greek at Oxford : and Thomas More, the great Chancellor. For a time he held a readership in Greek at Cambridge. His serious purpose to devote himself to the revival of 'Theology, the Queen of Sciences,' dates from his first acquaint- ance with these men in the last years of the cen- tury. Archbishop Warham, of Canterbury, gave him a substantial and permanent income. In Basel he was the intimate of a circle of reform- ing scholars who gathered about the famous pub- lisher John Froben. In Italy he was for a time a member of the 'familia' of the Venetian pub- lisher Aldus "Mauritius. His correspondence, in- cluding more than 1500 letters, shows him in re- lations with over 500 persons, many of them of the highest station. Down to the year 1517, when the Lutheran re- volt began, the work of Erasmus was largely in criticism of the existing Roman Catholic Church system and of the scholastic method in philos- ophy by which it was defended. In his Enchi- ridion Militia Christinni (The Manual or Dag- ger of the Christian Soldier, 1523) he lays down in didactic form the uselessness <>f forms in religion, as compared to the spirit of sin- cere apostolic piety. In his Adagia (1508), a collection of passages from classic authors, he adds to purely philological interpretation a run- ning commentary of moral reflection which gave to this work an immediate and permanent suc- cess. In the Colloquia (1524), a Beries of dia- logues on a variety of topics, then' run-, all tin. .ugh the same vein of serious comment on the ices an.l follies of priests, monks, philosophers, miracle and relic mongers, and all the other for- mal shams of the time. Even in the Encomium Marias (the Praise of fully; 1509), perhaps i he most biting, as it was doubtless the most popular, of his satirical writings, a fair examina- tion detects throughout a serious undertone of protest, still m. .re importanl was Erasmus's great contribution to critical scholarship in his edition of the deck New Testament, with a Latin translation in 1510. Though not the first to conceive I he plan of such an undertaking, Erasmus was first in the field, and might well reply to criticism of certain defects, that while others were carping he had dune I he work, and was quite content if only his service might point the way to other scholars. With 1517 begins a distinctly new period in Erasmus's life. The Reformation, under Luther's vehement leadership, seemed at first to be only the practical application of ideas which he had always proclaimed. Hitherto he had ben the critic, admired and dreaded; henceforth he was to be rather an apologist, not really trusted by either side, yet throwing his weight.' unwillingly, now into one. now into the other scale. Personally lie always refused to take sides. He remained a Catholic, and always so declared himself, though he associated much with the Reformers, among whom he counted many of his friends. He continued his assaults on the evils and errors of the clerical powers, but to be called a Lutheran drove him to fury. In the course of the Lutheran controversy Erasmus was drawn out especially by Ulrich von Hutten, once his most ardent ad- mirer and follower, but now so disappointed and irritated by his hesitancy that he could not re- strain himself. In his Erpostulatio he charged Erasmus openly with concealing his real opin- ions for fear of consequences, and Erasmus re- plied in his Spongia Adversus Aspergines Hull, ,<i (1523), declaring his respect for the Holy See, while at the same time he admits that he had opposed many of its extravagances. Urged on both sides to write something that would be de- cisive as to his theological position, he replied with the treatise De Libcm Arbitria (1524). In this he inveighs against Luther, who replied with the polemical treatise De Servo Vrbitrio contra xeriitm Des. Erasmum. Stung by Luther's invec- tive, Erasmus answered in his Eyperaspistes ltin- tribe contra servum Arbitrium Lutheri, in which he complains of the violence an.l bitterness of Lu- ther's attaekin a manner no lessviolent ami l.itt. i. Erasmus is often thought of as chiefly a pre- cursor of the Reformation. And yet, in the sense in which the term is used of men like Luther and Calvin, he never was a reformer at all. Upon ignorance and superstition he waged unrelenting war; but it was in the spirit of the humanist, not of the theologian, and the witty mockery of a Lucian was far more to his taste than the reli- gious fervor of a Saint Augustine. He was the incarnation of cool, critical common sense, with an unshaken faith in the necessity and efficacy, alike in the secular and ecclesiastical sphere, .if liberal studies and freedom of thought. It seemed to him inevitable that increase of knowledge would of itself bring about a peaceful reform of abuses in the Church. He had. too, the scholar's