CHAP. X. his thankfulness that the efforts of his Holiness to bring about a peace had at last been crowned with success. A.D. 1515. Peace between England and France. Death of Louis XII. and accession of Francis I. Peace had indeed been proclaimed between France and England, while Erasmus had been working at Basle, but under circumstances not likely to lessen those feelings of indignation with which the three friends regarded the selfish and reckless policy of European rulers. For peace had been made with France merely to shuffle the cards. Henry's sister, the Princess Mary (whose marriage with Henry's ally, Prince Charles, ought long ago to have been solemnised according to contract), had been married to their common enemy, Louis XII. of France, with whom they had just been together at war. In November, Henry and his late enemy, Louis, were plotting to combine against Henry's late ally, King Ferdinand; and England's blood and treasure, after having been wasted in helping to wrest Navarre from France for Ferdinand, were now to be wasted anew to recover the same province back to France from Ferdinand. On the first of January this unholy alliance of the two courts was severed by the death of Louis XII. The Princess Mary was a widow. The young and ambitious Francis I. succeeded to the French throne, and he, anxious like Henry VIII. to achieve military glory, declared his intention, on succeeding to the crown, that the monarchy of Christen'dom should rest under the banner of France as it was 'wont to do.'" Before the end of July he had already started on that Italian campaign in which he was soon to defeat the Swiss in the great battle of Marignano--a battle at the news of which Ferdinand and Henry were 1 Brewer, i. lxix. and ii. i. et seq. 2 Ibid. ii. xxxviii. once more to be made secret friends by their common hatred of so dangerous a rival!1 These international scandals, for such they must be called, wrung from Erasmus other and far more bitter censure than that contained in his letter to the Pope. He was laboriously occupied with great works passing through the printing-press at Basle, but still he stole the time to give public vent to his pent-up feelings. It little mattered that the actors of these scandals were patrons of his own-kings and ministers on whose aid he was to some extent dependent, even for the means wherewith to print his Greek New Testament. His indignation burst forth in pamphlets printed in large type, and bearing his name, or was thrust into the new edition of the Adagia,' or bound up with other new editions which happened now to be passing through Froben's press. And be it remembered that these works and pamphlets found their way as well into royal courts as into the studies of the learned. CHAP. X. A.D. 1515. upon What could exceed the sternness and bitterness of Satire the reproof contained in the following passages?— 6 6 6 'Aristotle was wont to distinguish between a king ' and a tyrant by the most obvious marks: the tyrant regarding only his own interest; the king the interests of his people. But the title of "king," which the first and greatest Roman rulers thought to be immodest and impolitic, as likely to stir up jealousy, is not enough for some, unless it be gilded with the most 'splendid lies. Kings who are scarcely men are 1 Brewer, ii. liv. 2 See Eras. Epist. App. xxvii. xxi. and xxiii. These letters are dated 1515; and, from the men tion of the New Testament as Kings. СНАР. Х. A.D. 1515. called "divine;" they are "invincible," though they never have left a battlefield without being conquered; "serene," though they have turned the world upside down in a tumult of war; "illustrious," though they 'grovel in profoundest ignorance of everything noble; "Catholic," though they follow anything rather than 'Christ.' 6 And these divine, illustrious, triumphant kings have no other desire than that laws, edicts, wars, peaces, leagues, councils, judgments, sacred or profane, should bring the wealth of others into their exchequer i. e. they gather everything into their leaking reservoir, and, like the eagles, fatten their "eaglets on the flesh of innocent birds. 'Let any physiognomist worth anything at all con'sider the look and the features of an eagle-those rapacious and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of 'the beak, those cruel jaws, that stern front 6 'will he not recognise at once the image of a king?— a magnificent and majestic king? Add to this a 'dark ill-omened colour, an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream at 'which every kind of animal trembles. Every one 'will acknowledge this type who has learned how 'terrible are the threats of princes, even uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the senate yields, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are dumb, the lawyers 'assent, the laws and constitutions give way, neither ' right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity, avail. And thus while there are so many birds of sweet and 'melodious song, the unpleasant and unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the • rest. 6 Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed CHAP. X. to wise men the type of royalty-not beautiful, not A.D. 1515. musical, not fit for food; but carnivorous, greedy, ⚫ hateful to all, the curse of all, and, with its great 'powers of doing harm, surpassing them in its desire ' of doing it.'1 Again : 1 The office of a prince is called a "dominion," when in truth a prince has nothing else to do but to admi'nister the affairs of the commonwealth. 'The intermarriages between royal families, and the new leagues arising from them, are called "the bonds ""of Christian peace," though almost all wars and all 'tumults of human affairs seem to rise out of them. When princes conspire together to oppress and 'exhaust a commonwealth, they call it a just war." 'When they themselves unite in this object, they call it "peace." 6.66 66 They call it the extension of the empire when this or that little town is added to the titles of the prince ' at the cost of the plunder, the blood, the widowhood, 'the bereavement of so many citizens.'" These passages may serve to indicate what feelings were stirred up in the heart of Erasmus by the condition of international affairs, and in what temper he returned to England. The works in which they appeared he had left under the charge of Beatus Rhenanus, to be 1 Eras. Op. ii. pp. 870-2; and in | separately printed by Froben in part translated in Hallam's Litera- large type and in an octavo form, ture of the Middle Ages, part 1. c. iv. entitled 'Scarabeus:' Basle, mense These passages are quoted from the Maio, 1517, ff. 21–23. explanation given in the Adagia of the proverb, Scarabeus Aquilam 'quærit.' They occur in the edition 2 Eras. Op. ii. p. 775. From the Adagia, 'Sileni Alcibiadis.' CHAP. X. printed at Basle in his absence. And some notion of A.D. 1515. the extent to which whatever proceeded from the pen of Erasmus was now devoured by the public, may be gained from the fact that Rhenanus, in April of this very year, wrote to Erasmus, to tell him that out of an edition of 1,800 of the Praise of Folly' just printed by Froben, with notes by Lystrius, only sixty remained Rapid sale of the Erasmus returns to Basle. III. RETURNS TO BASLE TO FINISH HIS WORKS.-FEARS OF THE ORTHODOX PARTY (1515). It will be necessary to recur to the position of international affairs ere long; meanwhile, the quotations we have given will be enough to show that, buried as Erasmus was in literary labour, he was alive also to what was passing around him--no mere bookworm, to whom his books and his learning were the sole end of life. As we proceed to examine more closely the object and spirit of the works in which he was now engaged, it will become more and more evident that their interest to him was of quite another kind to that of the mere bookworm. Before the summer of 1515 was over he was again. on his way to Basle, where his editions of Jerome and of the New Testament were now really approaching completion. Their appearance was anxiously expected by learned men all over Europe. The bold intention of Erasmus to publish the Greek text of the New Testament with a new Latin translation of his own, a rival 1 Eras. Epist. App. xxi. That this edition was printed in 1515, see mention of it in Erasmus's letter to Dorpius, dated Antwerp, 1515, and published at Louvain, Oct. 1515. |