Reuchlin's refusal to support them in their project for destroying Judaism by burning all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament a project to which they had been incited by Pfefferkorn, a converted Jew-put forth a resolute and malignant effort to get him convicted of heresy or force him to retract his published opinions. Finding that soft words and reasonable concessions were unavailing, he took up the contest in right earnest, and, being supported by the whole Humanist party, which rallied in defense of their chief, he at length succeeded, though not without passing through much anxiety and peril, in achieving a victory. By it the scale was turned against the adversaries of literature. The scholars vanquished the monks. In this conflict Reuchlin was efficiently aided by Francis of Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, both of them quite disposed, if it was necessary, to make use of carnal weapons against the hostile ecclesiastics. It was the alliance of the knights with the pioneers of learning. The Epistolæ obscurorum virorum, composed by Hutten and others, are a scornful satire upon the ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance of Hoogstraten and the monks.1 The applause that greeted the appearance of these letters, in which the monks are held up to merciless ridicule, was a significant sign of the progress of intelligence (1516).

The Humanists were slow in gaining a foothold in the universities. These establishments in Germany had been founded on the model of Paris. Theology had the uppermost seat, and the Scholastic philosophy was enthroned in the chairs of instruction. In particular, Paris and Cologne were the strongholds of the traditional theology. The Humanists at length gained admission for their studies at Heidelberg, Tübingen, and some other places. In 1502, the Elector Frederic of Saxony organized a university at

1 On this work see Baur, Kirchengeschichte, iv. 17, and Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, etc. (1853).

Wittenberg. This new institution, which declared Augustine to be its patron saint, was from the first favorable to Biblical studies, and gave a hospitable reception to the teachers of classical learning.1 Here was to be the hearthstone of the Reformation.

In other countries the cause of learning was advancing, and brought with it increased liberality, and tendencies to reform in religion. In 1498, Colet, the son of a wealthy London merchant who had been Lord Mayor of the city, had returned from his studies in Italy, and was expounding the Greek epistles of Paul at Oxford, to the delight of all who aspired after the "new learning," and the disgust and alarm of the devotees of the Scholastic theology. He was joined by Erasmus, then thirty years of age, of the same age as Colet, and not yet risen to fame, but full of ardor in the pursuit of knowledge, and glad to enter into the closest bonds of friendship and fellowship with the more devout, if less brilliant and versatile, English scholar. To them was united a young man, Thomas More, who was destined to the law, but whose love of knowledge and sympathy with the advancing spirit of the age, brought him into intimate relations with the two scholars just named.2 Colet, More, and Erasmus continued to be friends and fellow-laborers in a common cause to the end. Colet became Dean of St. Paul's, founded St. Paul's school at his own expense, and boldly, yet with gentleness, exerted his influence, not only in favor of classical and Biblical study, but also, not without peril to himself, against superstition and in behalf of enlightened views in religion. More followed the same path, and in his "Utopia" he has a chapter on the religions of that imaginary commonwealth, in which he represents that the

1 Von Raumer, Geschichte der Pædogogik, iv. 34.

2 At Oxford, as at Paris and elsewhere, the adversaries of the "new learning" united in a hostility to the study of Greek. It reminds one of the antipathy to the same study which existed among the conservative Romans when Cicero was a youth. Forsyth, Life of Cicero, i. 20.

COLET, MORE, AND ERASMUS.

77

people were debating among themselves "whether one that were chosen by them to be a priest, would not be thereby qualified to do all the things that belong to that character, even though he had no authority derived from the Pope." It was one of the ancient laws of the Utopians that no one should be punished for his religion, but converts were to be made to any faith only "by amicable and modest ways, without the use of reproaches or violence.” They made confession, not to priests, but to the heads of families. Their worship was in temples, in which were no images, and where the forms of devotion were carefully framed in such a way as not to offend the feelings of any class of sincere worshippers. In this work, as in the sermons of Colet, even such as were preached before Henry VIII., there was a plain exposure of the barbarities and impolicy of war. political and social science, there appear in the teachings of Colet and More, and of their still more famous associate, a humane spirit and a hostility to tyranny and to all oppressive legislation, which are not less consonant with the spirit of the Gospel, than they were in advance of the practice of the times.1

In reference to what we term

The foremost representative of Humanism, the incarnation, as it were, of its genius, was Erasmus.2 The preeminence which he attained as a literary man is what no other scholar has approached, unless it be Voltaire, whom he resembled in the deference paid to him by the

1 The relations of Colet, More, and Erasmus, and the characteristic work of each, are finely described in the truly interesting work of Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers of 1498 (London, 1869).

2 Opera, xi. vols., folio ed. (Clericus) 1703. There are lives of Erasmus by Le Clerc, Bayle, Knight, Burigny (Paris, 1757), Jortin (1758-60), Hess (Zurich, 1790), Adolf Müller (1828), by Erhard in Ersch und Grüber's Encyclopäd. (xxxvi.), and by others; a sketch by Nisard in his Études sur la Renaissance. These biographies are criticized by Milman in his interesting article on Erasmus, Quart. Rev., No. ccxi., reprinted in his Essays. Notwithstanding the unfavorable judgment of Johnson, Jortin's Life is anything but a "dull book." For a scholar, notwithstanding its want of plan and of symmetry, it is one of the most delightful of biographies.

great in worldly rank. Each was a wit and an iconoclast in his own way, but their characters in other respects were quite unlike.' The fame of Erasmus was rendered possible, in part, by the universal use of Latin, as the common language of educated men; a state of things of which his want of familiarity with Italian and English, although he had sojourned in Italy and lived long in England, is a curious sign. By the irresistible bent of his mind, as well as by assiduous culture, Erasmus was a man of letters. He must be that, whatever else he failed to be. His knowledge of Greek was inferior to that of his contemporary and rival, Budæus; he took no pains to give his style a classical finish, and laughed at the pedantic Ciceronians, who avoided all phraseology not sanctioned by the best ancient authority, and sometimes all words not found in their favorite author.3 He wrote hastily: "I precipitate," he says, "rather than compose." Yet the wit and wisdom and varied erudition which he poured forth from his full mind, made him justly the most popular of writers. He sat on his throne, an object of admiration and of envy. By his multifarious publications and his wide correspondence with eminent persons, ecclesiastics, statesmen, and scholars, his influence was diffused over all Europe. In all the earlier part of his career Erasmus struggled with indigence. His health was not strong and he thought that he could not live upon a little. His dependence upon patronage and pensions placed fetters upon him, to some extent, to the end of his life; yet he loved independence, frequently chose to receive the attentions of the great at a distance from them, and selected for his place of abode the city of Basel, where he was free alike from secular and ecclesiastical tyranny. Erasmus, by his writings and his entire per

"4

1 Coleridge has compared and contrasted them, The Friend, First Landing Place: Essay i.

2 Jortin, ii. 74.

8 Ibid., i. 152.

4 Ibid., i. 152.

sonal influence, was the foe of superstition. In his early days he had tasted, by constraint, something of monkish life, and his natural abhorrence of it was made more intense by this bitter recollection and by the trouble it cost him, after he had become famous, to release himself from the thraldom to which his former associates were inclined to call him back. In truth, he conducted a life-long warfare against the monks and their ideas and practices. His "Praise of Folly" and, in particular, the "Colloquies,” in which the idleness, illiteracy, self-indulgence, and artificial and useless austerities of "the religious," were handled in the most diverting style, were read with infinite amusement by all who sympathized with the new studies, and by thousands who did not calculate the effect of this telling satire in abating popular reverence for the Church. The "Praise of Folly" was written in 1510 or 1511, in More's house, for the amusement of his host and a few other friends. Folly is personified, and represented as discoursing to her followers on the affairs of mankind. All classes come in for their share of ridicule. Grammarians and pedagogues, in the fœtid atmosphere of their schoolrooms, bawling at their boys and beating them; scholastic theologians, wrangling upon frivolous and insoluble questions, and prating of the physical constitution of the world as if they had come down from a council of the gods-"with whom and whose conjectures nature is mightily amused;" monks, "the race of new Jews," who are surprised at last to find themselves among the goats, on the left hand of the Judge, faring worse than common sailors and wagoners; kings who forget their responsibilities, rob their subjects, and think only of their own pleasures, as hunting and the keeping of fine horses; popes who, though infirm old men, take the sword into their hands, and " turn law, religion, peace, and all human affairs upside down" - such are some of the divisions of mankind who are held up to ridicule.