No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
As hero in the romance of scholarship, Desiderius Erasmus has few peers. His fame rests not alone upon his breaking with Scotism and Ciceronianism, but also upon the vigor and validity of the systems which he was instrumental in substituting. In England especially the effects of his doctrines culminated in far-reaching changes of church, state, and university. Most estimates of his career paint him as a Humanistic hero from the first—a master of disputation, a notable author, a scholar in Greek, an educator with theories full-formed, a torch-bearer of Humanism almost before the torch began to blaze.
1 Compare Samuel Knight, The Life of Erasmus, Cambridge: 1726, pp. 1-21; Frederic Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (reprint of the 3rd edition), London: 1896, p. 101; George Norcross, “Erasmus, the Prince of the Humanists,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1898, Washington: 1899, pp. 363-80; J. A. Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, New York: 1895, pp. 37 ff.; Emile Amiel, Un Libre Penseur du XVI me Siécle—Erasme, Paris: 1889, pp. 49-57. Full grounds for a more rational view came with Francis Morgan Nichols, The Epistles of Erasmus … English Translation, London: I; 1901; but cf. p. 104, where, in 1494, Nichols rates him as “already the most accomplished scholar of the time.” A truer appraisal of the facts is already broached in Ephraim Emerton, Desiderius Erasmus, New York, 1899, pp. 62, ff., but Emerton's shrewd, if at times seemingly captious, estimate was hampered in detail, and consequently in inferences, by lack of materials which began to appear, two years after his publication, in Nichols's admirable edition of the Epistles. Further progress in certain directions is discernible in William Harrison Woodward, Desiderius Erasmus, Concerning the Aim and Method of Education, Cambridge: 1904, pp. 10, ff. The Reverend T. M. Lindsay, “Englishmen and the Classical Renaissance,” Cambridge History of English Literature, New York, 1911, III, Ch. i, pp. 2-3, seems to return to the more enthusiastic and less considered view, in spite of his statements (p. 2) that Erasmus “had produced little or nothing” by 1499; “He was almost unknown and he had no sure prospects in life.” It might have been hoped that Kurt Schroeder's “Platonismus in der Englischen Renaissance vor und bei Thomas Eliot” (Palaestra, LXXXIII, Berlin: 1920), would throw light on the Erasmus of 1500; but Schroeder consulted none of the critical estimates of Erasmus published since 1894, when Froude's Life and Letters of Erasmus was printed in England, and ignored Nichols entirely. Following Froude, he dates the first visit as 1497 and (p. 39) continues, “um Griechisch zu lernen, reiste er nach Oxford und hörte Grocyn und Linacre.” With Schroeder's citations from the works of Erasmus and with his statement that “Bevor Erasmus 1497 nach Oxford kam, hatte er P[lato] studiert, und zwar in lateinischer Übersetzung,” the present study is not concerned. Henry Osborn Taylor's Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century, 1920, I, 152-82, contains a notable estimate of the place of Erasmus in Renaissance thought, but its contribution to the question of Erasmus's knowledge of Greek is nil, perhaps because the scale of the work admits little more than the statement (p. 159), “As Oxford possessed little Greek, he returned to Paris to resume its study.” When Erasmus had begun it, is not stated.
2 Nichols, Epistles, I, 5-103.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 Nichols, Epistles, I, p. 43.
5 Cf. Infra, pp. 101-102.
6 For a notice of this trait in the character of Erasmus, see Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. II, “Sexual Inversion,” 3rd ed., Philadelphia: 1918, p. 31. After the affair in the English boarding house, Erasmus seems to have learned the folly of committing all his thoughts to paper. A series of events took place at Stein which may or may not have involved William Herman, but which provoked talk and upon which, in 1498, Erasmus did not enjoy looking back. (Cf. Nichols, pp. 170, 173. The references by Erasmus, as given, may as well concern Stein as Paris.)
7 Nichols, I, p. 64.
8 Nichols's rendering, eloquence, is open to misinterpretation.
9 The only exception I can discover, which is not based upon inference, is the statement of Beatus Rhenanus, prefixed to the Basle edition (1536) of Origen, that at Deventer Erasmus “imbibed the rudiments of both languages.” (Nichols, p. 23.) Now the events of Erasmus's early life as set forth by Beatus Rhenanus do not agree in toto with the Compendium, a discrepancy which may be due to Beatus's having first met Erasmus at Paris between say, 1503 and 1507. These youthful incidents, then, Beatus learned from conversations with Erasmus (I assume the most direct transmission possible), and, full of admiration for a friend, he was not beyond touching up the account of those early years with an ascription of a knowledge of Greek.
10 Nichols, pp. 85-88.
11 Henry of Bergen was no mean figure. On February 11, 1495, the Milanese Ambassador in Flanders wrote from Bois-le-Duc that “His Majesty [Maximilian I] told me that this man [Sir Robert Clifford] when he was in England, divulged that this Duke of New York [Perkin Warbeck] was not the son of King Edward, but is the son of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy and the Bishop of Cambrai.” (Pollard, Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, I, 102.) Professor Pollard, in his Introduction, refers to this hypothesis cautiously, but does not entirely reject it.
12 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1895, I, 512, 515.
13 Rashdall, II, 620.
14 Ibid., p. 620. For a notice of the use of the rod as penance and punishment in the Augustinian Order, see the Reverend William M. Cooper, A History of the Rod, London: revised edition, N. D., pp. 79-80.
15 Rashdall, II, 500. Note 2 shows, however, that it is the Statutes of 1501 for Montaigu College which contain the provision, a possible academic sanction of a then-existing fact.
16 Nichols, I, 109.
17 Ibid., p. 115. Why Nichols so much distrusts Knight's identification does not exactly appear. Besides Nichols's references, I may add the allusion in the Paston Letters to “My Lord Haryngton, Lord Marcas son,” made Knight of the Bath in November, 1494. If the Thomas Greys are identical, the young man was at that time seventeen years old, not an unusual age for such an honor, considering his lineage. (Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, III, 384, and Note 1. Cf. Epistles, I, 128, note.)
18 The whole of this Epistle (49) is a palpable attempt to impress rural friends with the urban importance of Erasmus and his English connections, and to justify the extension of his leave from the monastery for study.
19 Nichols, I, 129-30.
20 Ibid. Cf. Hall's Chronicle, summer of 1497, when Mountjoy was present as a part of the force assembled in London to suppress the Cornish uprising.
21 Nichols, I, 130, ff. I cannot identify this old man, whom Erasmus accuses of being a spy in the pay of the English Crown. As for the identification with Eden, the Englishman with whom Erasmus stayed in 1511, such an “old feud” does not heal. The testimony finds a commentary in the testimony of Jacques de Vitry, fantastically exaggerated perhaps, respecting sexual immorality at the University of Paris some two hundred and fifty years earlier (Historia Occidentalis, Duai, 1596, pp. 277-79, a sentence or two from which is quoted by Rashdall, II, Part ii, pp. 690-91). There is little reason to believe that in Erasmus's day student life had completely changed its character, or more than acquired a new set of external appearances.
22 Rashdall, II, Part ii, p. 661; and I, pp. 144, ff. For the question of illegitimacy, cf. Vol. II, Part ii, p. 497, Note 1; a dispensation would have set all to rights and later did.
23 Woodward, Erasmus, Part I, Ch. I, “outline of the Life,” pp. 8-9. The rosy estimate of Dr. Norcross is still further afield.
24 Nichols, I, 162.
25 Ibid., pp. 175, ff
26 Ibid., pp. 194, ff.
27 Nichols, I, p. 424.
28 Oxford Reformers, p. 113.
29 Erasmus knew More's roommate, Arnold Edward. (Nichols, I, 235.)
30 Rashdall, Universities, II, Part ii, p. 559.
31 Ibid., pp. 479, f. Now Frewen Hall in New Inn Street.
32 He had already studied at Cambridge. Mountjoy is named in another reference of the period, a letter of John Pullan to Sir Robert Plumpton from London, 21 November, 1499: “Sir, this present day was new baresses made in Westmynster hall, and thether we brought Therle of Oxford … and afore other Lords, … whos names followeth; [thirteenth on the list], Lord Mountioy.” (Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Thomas Stapleton, Camden Society, First Series, IV, 143; and Pollard, Reign of Henry VII, I, 210.)
33 Nichols, I, 215. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (A History of the University of Oxford … to the Year 1530, London: 1886, p. 394), says that the feast “appears to have been given on the occasion of an inception in theology;” at Colet's left sat, says Erasmus, “the more modern theologian.” Such convivia seem to have formed a regular part of commencing bachellorhood. Thus, Walter Paston gave one in 1479. He was made “Baschyler” on Friday, June 7, and “I mad my fest on the Munday after.” Though Lady Harcourt's venison did not arrive, “my gestes hewld them plesyd with such mete as they had.” (Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, III, 248.) The feast may, however, have been a dinner in the hall; this might better account for the “mixed and nameless assembly.”
34 But Erasmus, on his visit to the Royal nursery at Eltham with More, “had for some years neither read nor written poetry.” (Nichols, I, p. 201.) The term poet must therefore be taken in its sense of poeta, makir, fabulist.
35 Ibid., p. 219.
36 Oxford Reformers, pp. 116, ff.
37 By a statute of Edward IV, re-enacted by Henry VII, taking any coin, English or foreign, out of the realm was prohibited. More and Mountjoy seem to have been aware of this provision only as affecting domestic coinage. It seems scarcely “strange that More should have misled his friend in this particular,” when one considers the ignorance of present-day lawyers in regard to the United States Customs.
38 Prior Charnock seconded Mountjoy's urging. Nichols, p. 243.
39 Nichols, I, p. 224.
40 Rashdall, II, Part ii, p. 459, note: “The Greek and Hebrew professorships ordered by the Council of Vienne in 1311 were actually founded.”
41 This conclusion is inevitable from the facts as presented. Dudley, in his Tree of the Commonwealth (Pollard, Reign of Henry VII, III, 210-12) laments the decay of preaching, grammar, and education in general, but especially at the universities. He falls afoul of “young schollers of tenne or twelue yeres of age,” “who must highlie be promoted wth an Archdeconry or prebend ere he can say his mattens.”