§ 69. REUCHLIN AND ERASMUS. 635
thon addressed to him a poem, " Erasmus the best and greatest," Erasmum optimum, maximum. His edition of the Greek New Testament appeared in 1516, ^d in 1518 his Colloquies, a collection of familiar relations of his experiences with men and things.
When persecution broke out in the Netherlands after Leo's issuance of his bull against Luther, Erasmus removed to Basel, where some of his works had already been printed on the Froben presses. At first he found the atmosphere of his new home congenial, and published one edition after the other of the Fathers, — Hilary 1523, Irenaeus 1526, Ambrose 1527, Augustine 1528, Epiphanius 1529, Chrysostom 1530. But when the city, under the influence of QEcolampadius, went Protestant and Erasmus was more closely pushed to take definite sides or was prodded with faithlessness to himself in not going with the Reformers, he withdrew to the Catholic town of Freiburg in Breisgau, 1529. The circulation of his Colloquies had been forbidden in France and burnt in Spain, and his writings were charged by the Sorbonne with containing 82 heretical teachings. On the other hand, he was offered thej-eilbat by Paul III., 1535^, but declined it on account of his age.
After the death of CEcolampadius, he returned to Baspl, 1535j broken down with the stone and catarrh. The last work on which he was engaged was an edition of Origen. He died calling out, " Oh, Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, have mercy on me," but without priest or extreme unction, — sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus, as the Dominicans of Cologne in their joy and bad Latin expressed it. He was buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel, carried to the grave, as his friend and admirer, Beatus Rhenanus, informs us, on the shoulders of students. The chief magistrate of the city and all the professors and students were present at the burial.
Erasmuswas the prince of Humanists and the most influential and useful scholar oXJiis age. He ruled with undisputed sway as monarch in the realm of letters. He combined brilliant genius with classical and biblical learning, keen wj.t and elegant taste. He rarely wrote a dull line. His exten-
636 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
sive travels made him a man of the world, a genuine cosmopolitan, and he stood in correspondence with scholars of all countries wlio consulted him as an oracle. His books had the popularity and circulation of modern novels. When the rumor went abroad tliat his Colloquies were to be condemned by the Sorbonne, a Paris publisher hurried through the press an edition of 24,000 copies. To the income from his writings and an annuity of 400 gulden which he received as counsellor of Charles V. — a title given him in 1516 — were added the constant gifts from patrons and admirers.^
Had Erasmus conhned himself to scholarly labors, though he secured eminence as the first classicist of his age, his influence might have been restricted to his time and his name to a place with the names of Politian of Italy and Bud;eus of France, whose works are no longer read. But it was otherwise. His labors had a far-i-eaching bearing on the future. Hewas a leading factor in the emancipation of the mind cf Europe from the bondage of ignorance and superstition, and he uncovered a lifeless formalism in religion. He unthawed the frost-bitten intellectual soil of Germany, The S2)irit of historical criticism which Laurentius Valla had shown in the South, he represented north of the Alps, and of Valla he spoke as " unrivalled both in the sharpness of his intelligence and the tenacity of his memory." ^ l^ut the sweep of his influence is due to the mediation of his pupils and-admirers, Zwingli, Q^colampadius and Luther.
Erasmus' break with the old mediaeval ecclesiasticism was shown in a fourfold way. He ^courgcd the monks for their ignorance, pride and uuchastity, and condemned tliat ceremonialism in religion which is without heart ;_Jiej2VAictised tlu? critical methodjn the treatment n£-Spriptm-e ; he issuedJJie first Greek New Testament ; he advocated the translation ol the Bible into thg^languages spoken inJua-day-
In almost every work that he wrote, Erasmus, in a vein of satire or in serious statement, inveighed against the hypocritical pretension of the monkery of his time and against the uselessness of hollow religious rites. In his edition of the New
» See Drummond, U. 2f;8. 2 Nichols, I. G4.