incorrectly called "Zwingli"

tions for a new edition he wrote the fact to Pelargus and added:

Wherefore I ask you to send me your notes that I may see if they have anything useful to me. For it is not my intention to mix anything Lutheran in my writings. If you please to send them, do not bother to copy them, for I have secretaries who can read anything. However, if you should wish to copy them, I should be grateful. But do not undertake the labor until I have had a sample of your work and we have talked it over together.

The correspondence shows the good humor with which the greater man allowed the lesser to criticize his Folly and Colloquies; the break came when the lesser writer took umbrage at a published reference to himself and Mayr as having part in the tumults at Basle.

A philosopher and scientist famous in his own day and esteemed even now was Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, a man who stood outside of the two hostile camps of the Christian religion. The crowning labor of this versatile man was a defense of philosophic doubt, or rather an attack on the pretensions of learned men, and at the same time a plea for a simple biblical Christianity, entitled: An Oration on the Uncertainty and Vanity of Science and of Art and on the Excellence of God's Word. This he sent for an opinion to Erasmus, who professed to like it.1

With a brilliant circle of humanists in Southern France Erasmus was brought into contact by his publication of Josephus. Having heard of an important manuscript of this author in possession of George d'Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez and an officer of the King of Navarre, the great scholar wrote him asking to borrow it, in a letter dated November 19, 1531.2 It happened, however, that this codex had passed into the

1 On Agrippa see lives by H. Morley, 1856, and Prost, 1881. Some letters to Erasmus and Agrippa, not found elsewhere, are in H. C. Agrippa Opera, Lugduni, s.a., Lib. vi, epp. 31, 36; lib. vii, epp. 6, 9, 17, 18, 19, 38, 40, 1531-33.

Lond. xxv, 3; LB. ep. 1203 with the mistaken superscription "Episcopo Rivensi" (Bishop of Rieux) instead of "Episcopo Ruthenensi" (Bishop of Rodez).

possession of Jean de Pins, Bishop of Rieux, to whom d'Armagnac forwarded Erasmus's request, and wrote the latter of the fact. On January 28, 1532, De Pins replied to d'Armagnac that he would send the manuscript to the humanist had he not already promised to give it for printing to the publisher of Lyons, Sebastian Gryphius.1

But Erasmus was not thus to be foiled. He had already known De Pins at Bologna, some twenty-five years before, and accordingly on March 20, 1532, wrote him the letter2 of which part is here translated:

To me, certainly, that was no unlucky mistake which has given occasion to revive the memory of our pleasant intercourse and literary studies at Bologna. I thought that there was a Greek Josephus in possession of the Very Reverend Bishop of Rodez, but he has written that it is now in your possession, having returned to you by right of ownership. Your kindness, which I formerly learned to know and to try at close quarters, makes me hope that you will lend that volume for some months to Jerome Froben, who has decided to publish, with the aid of several learned men, that historian, who, in spite of his fame, has been wretchedly corrupted by the ignorance of copyists and of translators. . . . I should like to know what the oracle says about our friend Bombasius, for I have been able to hear nothing of him for many years.

This innocent epistle aroused the suspicions of the vigilant inquisitors of Southern France. Dolet has told how De Pins was called before the town council of Toulouse and forced to hear the letter read and translated to them.3 He himself describes the same experience in a letter written in reply to the last.*

SWEETEST ERASMUS: When your delightful and pleasant letter was brought to me, you would hardly believe the tumult that it created by falling into the hands of certain men who appear to look at you askance and to say evil about you. They tried secretly to

1 This letter first published by L. Thuasne in Revue des Bibliothèques, xv, 1905, pp. 203-208. It is dated "Toulouse." On Gryphius see article by R. C. Christie, Historical Essays by Members of Owens College, Manchester, 1902,

pp. 307-23.

2 Nimes MS., no. 215, fol. 168 verso. See text in Appendix II, p. 448.

3 Quoted by Thuasne, loc. cit., and see R. C. Christie: Dolet,2 1899, 66 ff. Nimes MS., 215, fol. 165 verso. See text in Appendix II, pp. 448 f.

smell out some way in which I could be either threatened or drawn out. But I think their only reason was that they have been too vehemently affected by the reproach of certain persons1 whom you attack in your books, and wound and harass too much, as they have complained both to me and to others. When these men hoped to find something important in your letter, as though Erasmus and De Pins were conspirators against the realm, they first made a great fuss and then while I, by chance, was absent from the city on a short vacation, they threw into prison the poor secretaries who had brought the letter from Paris, on the ground that these men sought to evade them and did not seem willing to deliver the letter at once into their hands. When they, smitten with madness though they were, had returned to good sense and moderation, they insisted on unsealing the letter in my presence and with my consent. When I readily consented and when they found that there was nothing in the letter except something about a certain Joseph, then you may believe that their faces fell and that they acted like men taken unawares. . . .

De Pins then goes on to tell how he had once procured the manuscript of Josephus from the heritage of Filelfo and Leonardo Giustiniani; how he had lent it to Peter Gylli, a scholar in the service of George d'Armagnac, how he had now promised to send it to Sebastian Gryphius at Lyons to be printed. He added that he heard that Bombasius had perished in the sack of Rome.

But in the meantime the manuscript had been returned by Gylli to George d'Armagnac, and by him forwarded to an obscure proof-reader of Sebastian Gryphius, one François Rabelais by name, with instructions to send it on to Erasmus when he got a reliable messenger. The opportunity came when Hilaire Bertulph, one of the humanist's secretaries and a man already known to the French court, visited Lyons.2 Rabelais, who had been studying Erasmus with admiration, seized this occasion. to write to him, partly to express his obligations, partly to disabuse the humanist of the idea that the book written by J. C. Scaliger was composed by Aleander. A part of his letter is here translated:3

1 I.e., the humanists attacked in the Ciceronianus. 2 A. Roersch: L'Humanisme Belge, 1910, pp. 75 ff.

3 Förstemann-Günther, ep. 182, dated November 30, 1532.