The Age of Erasmus. P. S. Allen
In consequence, as they can do so little, I am not very active.
'In addition to this I am trying to keep up my Latin and Greek (though they are fast slipping from me) and am beginning Hebrew, which I find very difficult: indeed to my surprise it costs me more effort than Greek did. However, I shall go on with it as I have begun: also because I like to have something new on hand, and much as I like Greek, its novelty has somewhat worn off. I have made up my mind to devote my old age, if I ever reach it, to theology. You know how I detest the barbarisms of those who fill the schools. On their side they are indignant with me for daring to question their decisions; but this will not deter me.
'My greetings to your host, Master Richard (Paffraet), and his wife.
'Worms, in great haste, on the third day of the week: as I have determined to call it, instead of our unclassical Feria secunda, tertia, &c., or the heathen names, Monday, Mars' day, Mercury's day, Jove's day.'
We may notice the anticipation of the Quakers, who in a similar way would only speak of first day and sixth month.
6. HEGIUS TO WESSEL; from Deventer <between 1483 and 1489>.
'I am sending you the Homilies of John Chrysostom, and hope you will enjoy reading them. His golden words have always been more acceptable to you than the precious metal itself from the mint.
'I have been, as you know, at Cusanus' library, and found there many Hebrew books which were quite unknown to me; also a few Greek. I remember the names of the following: Epiphanius against heresies, a very big book; Dionysius on the Hierarchy; Athanasius against Arius; Climacus.
'These I left behind there, but I brought away with me: Basil on the Hexaëmeron and some of his homilies on the Psalms; the Epistles of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles; Plutarch's Lives of Romans and Greeks, and his Symposium; some writings on grammar and mathematics; some poems on the Christian religion, written, I think, by Gregory Nazianzen; some prayers, in Latin and Greek.
'If there are any of these you lack, let me know and they shall come to you: for everything I have is at your disposal. If you could spare the Gospels in Greek, I should be grateful for the loan of it. You enquire what books we are using in the school. I have followed your advice; for literature which is dangerous to morality is most injurious.'
The library mentioned above was that of Nicholas Krebs († 1464), the famous Cardinal who took part in the Council of Basle and was the patron of Poggio. Cues on the Moselle was his birthplace, and gave him his name Cusanus. In his later years he founded a hostel, the Bursa Cusana, at Deventer, where he had been at school, and at Cues built a hospital for aged men and women, with a grassy quadrangle and a chapel of delicate Gothic; and there in a vaulted chamber supported by a central column he deposited the manuscripts, mainly theological but with some admixture of the classics, which he had gathered in the course of his busy life.
In 1496 we hear of another visit to it; when Dalberg, who was a prince of humanists, led thither Reuchlin and a party of friends on a voyage of discovery. Their course was from Worms to Oppenheim, where his mother was still living: by boat to Coblenz and up the Moselle to Cues: then over the hills to Dalburg, his ancestral home, and finally to the abbey of Sponheim, near Kreuznach, where they admired the rich collection of manuscripts in five languages formed by the learned historian Trithemius, who was then Abbot. Whether this gay party of pleasure also carried off any treasures from Cues is not recorded.
But lest this view of the Adwert Academy should appear too uniformly roseate, we will turn to the tradition of Reyner Praedinius (1510–59), who was Rector of the town school at Groningen, and whose fame attracted students thither from Italy, Spain, and Poland. He had in his possession several manuscripts of Wessel's writings, some of them unpublished; and he had been intimate with men who had known both Wessel and Agricola. One of these—very likely Goswin of Halen—as a boy had often served at table, when the two scholars were dining; and had afterwards shown them the way home with a lantern. He used to say that he had frequently pulled off Agricola's boots, when he came home the worse for his potations; but that no one had ever seen Wessel under the influence of wine. Wessel, indeed, lived to a green old age, but killed himself by working too hard.
Footnotes
[1] In view of Geldenhauer's testimony to Agricola's high character in this respect, we need not question, as does Goswin of Halen, the nature of this intimacy.
[2] particularibus studiis.
[3] victui necessaria, vt solent nostrates. Victus is commonly used in the technical sense of 'board'; but here the meaning probably is 'the usual outfit for a schoolboy'. Gebwiler, in 1530, required a boy coming to his school at Hagenau to be provided with 'a bed, sheets, pillow, and other necessaries'.
[4] diuersorium.
[5] capitiati.
[6] Of Inghen, first Rector of Heidelberg University (1386), the author of the Parua Logicalia.
[7] Scholastici, vt nos dicimus, artium.
II
SCHOOLS
Erasmus was born at Rotterdam on the vigil of SS. Simon and Jude, 27 October: probably in 1466, but his utterances on the subject are ambiguous. Around his parentage he wove a web of romance, from which only one fact emerges clearly—that his father was at some time a priest. Current gossip said that he was parish priest of Gouda; a little town near Rotterdam, with a big church, which in the sixteenth century its inhabitants were wealthy enough to adorn with some fine stained glass. There in the town school, under a master who was afterwards one of the guardians of his scanty patrimony, Erasmus' schooldays began, and he made acquaintance with the Latin grammar of Donatus. After an interval as chorister at Utrecht, he was sent by his parents to the school at Deventer, which, with that of the neighbouring and rival town of Zwolle, enjoyed pre-eminence among the schools of the Netherlands at that date. It was connected with the principal church of the town, St. Lebuin's; and doubtless among those aisles and chapels, listening perhaps to the merry bells, whose chimes still proclaim the quarters far and wide, he caught the first breath of that new hope to which he was to devote his whole life. The school was controlled by the canons of St. Lebuin, who appointed the head master; but, as at Zwolle, some of the teachers were drawn from that sober and learned order, the Brethren of the Common Life, whose parent house was at Deventer.
Of Erasmus' life in the school we have little knowledge. He tells us that he was there in 1475, when preachers came from Rome announcing the jubilee which Sixtus IV had so conveniently found possible to hold after only twenty-five years. From one of his letters we can picture him wandering by the river side among the barges, and marking the slow growth of the bridge of boats which it took the town of Deventer several years to throw across the rapid Yssel. He probably entered the lowest class, the eighth, and by 1484, when at the age of eighteen he left in consequence of the outbreak of plague mentioned in Hegius' letter to Agricola, he had not made his way above the third; thus giving little indication of his future fame. An explanation may perhaps be found by supposing that his time in the choir at Utrecht was an interlude in the Deventer period; but in any case the school in his time was still 'barbarous', to use his own word, that is, it was still modelled on the