able to enter with what would now be called advanced standing. Erasmus, who matriculated in his twentysixth year, became bachelor of theology (baccalaureus ad biblia) apparently in April, 1498, after five semesters. In preparation for this degree, he gave some sermons, and took a course in scholastic philosophy. This study, so deeply repugnant to Luther, aroused the mirth of the young Dutchman. Aquinas, in many respects the greatest of the schoolmen, was by this time little regarded, for his system, and the Realism which had flourished in the heyday of scholasticism, had since been superseded by Nominalism and the later philosophers, Occam, Biel, and Duns Scotus. The alignment was really different at the close of the Middle Ages from what it had been earlier. In the twelfth century the deepest questions of metaphysics had been mooted, for the implication of realism is pantheism; the implications of nominalism are materialism and individualism. In these latter days the dispute was not so much metaphysical as logical, a subtle sophistry engaged with the precise meanings of crabbed terms, and the defense of paradoxes. The disputants were intent rather on victory than on truth. The "modern" philosophy, as nominalism was then called, had been condemned by an edict of the Sorbonne in 1472, but had triumphed nine years later, when the edict was repealed. When Erasmus entered Paris, the Scotists were in power, being represented by the influential teachers John Tartaret and Thomas Bricot, and by the Franciscan preacher and reforming Vicar General, Oliver Maillard. The question most to the front at the time was the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, not yet officially adopted by the Church, but maintained in 1496 by the professors of the Sorbonne, whose opinions had but little less authority with the learned public than those of the Roman Curia. Erasmus,

1A. Renaudet: Préréforme et Humanisme à Paris, 1916, passim. A. Renaudet: "Érasme," in Revue Historique, cxi, 238 ff, 1912. P. Feret: La

who often spoke of this dispute as one of the most barren, was brought into the atmosphere of debate by the writings of his friend Gaguin, whose De intemeratæ Virginis conceptione was first published at Paris in 1489 and afterward reprinted often, once at Deventer in 1494.1

Let us hear what Erasmus has to say about his studies in scholastic philosophy. He is writing, in August, 1497,2 to his English friend and pupil, Thomas Grey:

I, who have always been a primitive theologian, have begun of late to be a Scotist-a thing upon which you, too, if you love me, should pray the blessing of Heaven. We are so immersed in the dreams of your compatriot-for Scotus, who, like Homer of old, has been adopted by divers countries, is especially claimed by the English as their own-that we seem hardly able to wake up at the voice of Stentor. Then, you will say, are you writing this in your sleep? Hush, profane man! you know nothing of theological slumber. In our sleep we not only write, but slander and wench and get drunk. . . . I used to think the sleep of Epimenides the merest fable; now I cease to wonder at it, having myself had the like experience.

Erasmus then goes on to tell the story of Epimenides, an ancient Rip van Winkle who, one day, in a cave, while making many discoveries about instances and quiddities and formalities, fell into a sleep which lasted forty-seven years.

For my part, I think Epimenides uncommonly fortunate in coming to himself even so late as he did, for most divines never wake up at all. . . . Look now, my Thomas, what do you suppose Epimenides dreamed of all these years? What else but those subtlest of subtleties of which the Scotists now boast? For I am ready to swear that Epimenides came to life again in Scotus. What if you saw Faculté de Théologie à Paris. Vol. 1, 1900. P. Delisle: La Faculté de Théologie à Paris. Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 1899, vol. xxxvi, pp. 325 ff. Workman: Christian Thought to the Reformation, 1911, p. 243. Bulæus: Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carlo Magno ad nostra tempora, 6 vols. 1665-73. H. Rashdall: Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, 1895.

1 Bibliotheca Belgica, s. v. Gaguin. 2 Allen, ep. 64; Nichols, ep. 59.

Erasmus sit yawning among those cursed Scotists while Gryllard is lecturing from his lofty chair? If you observed his contracted brow, his staring eyes, his anxious face, you would say he was another man. They assert that the mysteries of this science cannot be comprehended by one who has any commerce with the Muses and Graces. . . . I do my best to speak nothing in true Latin, nothing elegant or witty, and I seem to make some progress. . . . Do not interpret what I have said as directed against theology itself, which, as you know, I always have singularly culti vated, but as jokes against the theologasters of our age, unsurpassed by any in the murkiness of their brains, in the barbarity of their speech, the stupidity of their natures, the thorniness of their doctrine, the harshness of their manners, the hypocrisy of their lives, the violence of their language, and the blackness of their hearts.

Erasmus never got over his contempt for Scotist subtleties. One of the men whom he knew at his College of Montaigu, who was, indeed, one of the heads of it in 1499, though he did not take his doctorate in theology until 1506, was the Scotchman, John Major. This scholar was much given to the sophistry Erasmus ridicules. One of his works was characterized by Melanchthon as follows: "Good heavens! What wagon loads of trifling! What pages he fills with disputes whether there can be horsiness without a horse, and whether the sea was salt when God made it." These specimens were no exaggerations. Major seriously discusses such questions as whether God could become. an ox or an ass, if he chose, and whether John the Baptist's head, having been cut off, could be in more than one place at a time. Erasmus was thinking of works like these when, in The Praise of Folly, he spoke of the barren scholastic tastes of the Scotch, and brought up, for derision, the question, suggested by Major, as to whether God could have redeemed mankind in the form of an animal or a gourd. It was such ridicule as this that turned the first name of Duns Scotus into a synonym for fool.

1 Hume Brown: Surveys of Scottish History, 1919, p. 127. On Major, Godet: Collège de Montaigu, 1912, 1 f; A. Clerval: Régistre des ProcèsVerbaux de la Faculté de Théologie de Paris, 1917, p. 5.

Erasmus began to lecture, presumably on the Bible, shortly after receiving his degree of baccalaureus ad biblia. One young man, who heard him about 1498, wrote thirty years later how much he had then admired his teacher's learning and modesty, his attainments in Latin, Greek, philosophy, and theology, his ardor in teaching, his candor in writing, and his piety.1 This pupil was Hector Boece, a young Scotchman, later the first principal of King's College, Aberdeen. Erasmus returned the affection and dedicated to him one of his first published writings, a short poem on The Hovel where Jesus was Born.2

Like Oxford and Cambridge, the University of Paris was divided into colleges, originally dormitories for poor students, in which instruction was given by tutors. The college entered by Erasmus was that of Montaigu, which, having been founded by Gilles Aycelin de Montaigu, Archbishop of Rouen, in 1314, had fallen into a senile decrepitude by the year 1483. It owed its rehabilitation to John Standonck (c. 1450-February 5, 1504), the son of a poor cobbler of Malines. As a boy Standonck studied with the Brothers of the Common Life at Gouda, matriculated at Louvain in 1469, and then went to Paris, where, by 1475, he had become regent of Montaigu. In 1490 he bought a little house in the Rue des Sept Voies (which corresponds to the present Rue Vallette) for the lodging and boarding of poor students. The numbers soon outgrew the narrow quarters, whereupon Standonck rebuilt a wing of the old College of Montaigu, on the site of the present Place du Panthéon at the intersection of the Rue Vallette. It was an ample, isolated, quasi-monastic cloister, with 1 May 28, 1528. Enthoven, ep. 62.

Carmen de casa natalia Jesu, first published 1496; LB. v. col. 1317; cf. Allen, ep. 47.

'On Montaigu and Standonck: Renaudet: Préréforme, p. 174; Godet: La Congrégation de Montaigu, 1912. Godet, in Archivum Franciscanum, ii, 1909; Imbart de la Tour: Les Origines de la Réforme, ii, 506, 548. Allen, i, p. 200, 166. Renaudet: "J. Standonck," Bulletin de la Société de l'Historie du Protestantisme Français, 1, vii (1908), 5 ff.

its own oratory, dormitories, library, refectory, and garden. The students were formed into a congregation limited in numbers to 86, of whom 72 were poor students in the arts course, 12 were theological students, and 2 were chaplains. The rule, imitated from that of the Brothers of the Common Life, was strict. The fasting was perpetual, though the theologs were allowed one third of a pint of cheap wine, mixed with water, at each meal. Precautions against vermin are suggestive, especially when compared with Rabelais's satirical reference to "the short-winged hawks of Montaigu." Flogging was a frequent punishment,2 though we never hear that Erasmus was subjected to it, as Loyola was. The Congregation existed in its constitution after February, 1495, but it did not move into its new quarters until May 17, 1496. After Erasmus had left the college, Standonck was banished from France and, on June 16, 1499, he put the institution in charge of John Major, whom Erasmus ridiculed, and of Noel Beda, whom he hated.

Standonck's reforming activities were not confined to Paris. He helped Henry of Bergen to found schools at Cambrai and at Malines, and with the assistance of Adrian of Utrecht he started a college at Louvain in the year 1500. In 1496 he was also busy with the reform of the Augustinian Canons. The General Chapter held at Windisheim under his inspiration and at the demand of the delegates from Château-Landon, appointed six monks as a committee of reform. One of these was John Mauburn, a good man with whom Erasmus was acquainted.3

All these connections with friends in the Netherlands made it natural that when Erasmus went to Paris he should first enter the Domus pauperum at Montaigu. There he had an unhappy time, and judged the methods severely. "Nowhere," he says bitterly, "do they form

1 The written rule (Godet, p. 52) dates from January 30, 1503, but it represents the earlier customs.

2 Henry Botteus to Erasmus, March 6, 1528, LB. App. ep. 347. 3 Allen, ep. 52.