§ 69. REUCHLIN AND ERASMUS. 631
the hostility of that scholar who, after Hutten's death, directed against his memory the shafts of his satire. He joined Franz von Sickingen in standing ready to protect Luther at Worms. Placed under the ban, he spent most of his time after 1520, till his death, in semi-concealment at Schlettstadt, Basel and at Ziirich under the protection of Zwingli.
Hutten's life at Cologne and in Rome gave him opportunity enough to find out the obscurantism of the Dominicans and other foes of progress as well as the conditions prevailing at the papal court. In 1517, he edited Valla's tract on the spurious Donation of Constantino and, with inimitable irony, dedicated it to Leo X. In ridicule and contempt it excelled everything, Janssen says, that had been written in Germany up to that time against the papacy. As early as 1513, Hutten issued epigrams from Italy, calling Julius II. "the corrupter of the earth, the plague of mankind."^ His Latin poem, the Triumph of Reuchlin, 1518, defended the Hebrew scholar, and called for tierce punishment upon Pfefferkorn. It contained a curious woodcut, representing Reuchlin's triumphal procession to his native Pforzheim, and his victory over Hoogstraten and Pfefferkorn with their four idols of superstition, barbarism, ignorance and envy.^
The 10 Upistles of the Unfamed Men, written first in Latin and then translated by Hutten into Germaj?, with genial and not seldom coarse humor, demanded the restriction of the pope's tyranny, the dissolution of the convents, tlie appropriation of annates and lands of abolished convents and benefices for the creation of a fund for the needy. The amorous propensities of the monks are not spared. The author called the holy coat of Treves a lousy old rag, and declared the relics of the three kings of Cologne to be the bodies of three Westphalian peasants. In the 4th letter, entitled the Roman trinity, things are set forth and commented upon which were found in three's in Rome. Three things were considered ridiculous at Rome : the example of the ancients, the papacy of Peter and
1 Strauss, I. 99 sqq.
2 Booking, III. 413-448. Geiger : Beuchlin, p. 522, gives a facsimile of the picture.
632 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
the last judgment. There were three things of which they had a superabundance in the holy city: antiquities, poison and ruins; three articles were kept on sale: Christ, ecclesiastical places and women; three things which gave the Romelings pain: the unity among the princes, the growing intelligence of the people and the revelation of their frauds ; three things which they disliked most to hear about: a general council, a reformation of the clerical office and the opening of the eyes of the Germans ; three things held as most precious: beautiful women, proud horses and papal bulls. These were some of the spectacles which Rome offered. Had not Hutten himself been in Rome, when the same archbishop's pall was sold twice in a single day ! Tlie so-called " gracious expectations," which the pope distributed, were a special mark of his favor to the Germans.^ Hutten's wit reached the popular heart, drew laugliter from the educated and stirred up the wrath of the self-satisfied advocates of the old ways. As a knight, he touched a new chord, the national German pride, a chord on which Luther played as a master.
What Reuchlin (lid for Hebrew learning, Erasmus, whq^was twelve years hisjunior, accomplished for Greek learning and more. He established the Greek pronunciation which goes by his name; he edited and translated Greek classics and Church Fathers and made them familiar to northern scholars, and he furnished the key to the critical study of the Greek Testament, the magna cJiarta of Christianity. He was the contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and was an invaluable aid to the movement led by them through his edition of the New Testament, his renunciation of scholastic subtlety in its interpretation and his attacks on the ceremonial religiosity of liis age. But, when the time came for him to take open sides, he protested his aversion to the course which the Reformers had taken as a course of violence and revolution. He died in isolation, without a party. The Catholics would not claim him; the Protestants could not.^
1 Strauss : ITutten's Gesprnche, pp. 121-3, etc., 143.
2 Volume VI. of this History i^ives an t'Xtcnded survey of Erasmus' career, writings and theological opinions. He belongs to the Middle Ages as much