acquired a mastery of Latin and also, we are told, of Greek, a language still almost unknown north of the Alps, which he probably picked up during a sojourn in Italy. His attainments marked him out as the object of his brothers' envy, and they conspired against him like another Joseph. Being unable to sell him to the Midianites, they desired to make him a priest, in order thus, as they hoped, to deprive him of his share in the family inheritance. Under their pressure, Gerard took holy orders. Before his ordination,1 the young man entered into a liaison with a widow named Margaret, the daughter of a physician in the neighboring village of Zevenberghen. The pair had two sons, Peter, born when his parents were both about twenty-five years old, and Erasmus,' three years younger. Not long before the birth of his second son Gerard deserted his mistress, perhaps on account of further persecution by his family, and went to Rome. In this polished but corrupt city, then under the rule of Paul II, he led a dissipated life, supporting himself by copying manuscripts, and sent his parents a letter with a picture of two clasped hands and the words, "Farewell, I shall never see you more." However, he later decided to return, perhaps in consequence of a letter from his family containing the false news that Margaret was dead. After his home-coming he took care of his children, but did not, apparently, live with their mother any longer.2 Soon after he had taken orders, probably, and perhaps In January, 1506, on account of his illegitimate birth, Erasmus got a dispensation from the pope to hold benefices. He there is described as born "of a bachelor and widow," which would dispose of the idea that he was the son of a priest, were it not that he was obliged later to get a second dispensation (1517) in which his defectus natalium is said to be that he was "born of an illicit and, as he fears, of an incestuous and damned union." This would imply that in the interval he had learned something more about his birth, and also that he was himself uncertain of its details.—Allen, iii, p. xxix, and ep. 518. Erasmus was probably born after his father was ordained. Charles Reade's great novel, The Cloister and the Hearth, is founded on the adventures of Gerard. during his absence, his second son was born and given the then common name of Erasmus, chosen, possibly, as a Greek rendering of his father's name. A little house in Nieuw-Kerk Street in Rotterdam bears the inscription saying that in it was born the great Erasmus, and this location may be considered the most likely one, though it is not altogether beyond doubt. Margaret may have gone there to hide her shame or, according to an early tradition, have been sent there by Gerard to conceal his sin.1 Erasmus always celebrated the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude (October 28th) as his birthday, but as to the year his accounts vary strangely. Several indirect references2-such as the statement that he met Colet when they were both just thirty (1499) and that he was fourteen years old when he left Deventer (1484)—point to the year 1469 as the one he had in mind, and that this is the true year is confirmed by early local tradition.3 1 This house was shown to visitors as the birthplace of Erasmus as early as 1540.-Brown: Calendar of State Papers, Venice, v, 222. In 1591 Fynes Moryson visited the house, and also noted that the wooden statue of Erasmus had been broken down by the Spanish soldiers in the Dutch war of independence. See his Itinerary, ed. 1907, pp. 107 ff. Cornelius Loos, a Dutchman who lived a little later, relates that the stone statue of Erasmus was erected after the Rotterdam fire of 1563, and was destroyed by Spanish soldiers in 1572. On the place of Erasmus's birth he says: "If we may credit the tradition of the fathers in these parts, his father was a parish priest in the neighborhood of Gouda, who in order to conceal his crime sent his pregnant servant to a neighboring city."-Cornelius Loos: Illustrium Germaniæ Scriptorum Catalogus, 1582, s. v. “Erasmus” (no paging). A copy of this rare book is at Cornell. Against this, however, may be placed a long MS. note to a written extract from Loos, now found in the town library of Gouda. The writer of this is unknown, but he declares that Erasmus's friend, Regner Snoy, had often heard Erasmus say that he was born at Gouda. This printed in Archief voor Kerkelijke Geschiedenis, xvi, 1845, p. 232. The fact that Erasmus took the surname "Roterodamus," however, shows that he regarded himself as a citizen of Rotterdam. J. Milton speaks of a bronze statue of Erasmus at Rotterdam. Defensio II pro Populo Anglicano, Works, 1805, v, 299. 2 LB. i, 921 f; viii, 561; Allen, ep. 940; and perhaps his speaking of his schooling at the age of thirteen, LB. ix, 810A. Furthermore, he says that he wrote his first epistle (Allen, ep. 1, put in 1484) when he was fourteen; see Allen, ep. 447, and LB. i, 347. * Cornelius Loos, loc. cit. This date is apparently accepted by the unknown annotator on Loos, cited above. But of twenty-three direct references to his age the first (made in 1506) gives the year 1466; the next two (made in 1516) give 1467; the next twelve (made during the years 1517-24) indicate 1466; and the last eight (made during the years 1525-34) point to 1464. In other words, the older he became the earlier he put the year of his birth. It has been suggested, with much plausibility,' that, whereas he knew the true year of his birth to be 1469, he made himself appear older in order to save the reputation of his father and to make it easier to get for himself certain ecclesiastical dispensations. At that time the union of a priest with a woman was considered a greater sin than the union of two unmarried lay persons, and the illegitimate child suffered under a heavier stigma. If Erasmus could make himself and his contemporaries believe that he had been born before his father took orders, he would have a powerful motive to do so. When he selected the year 1466 he may have appropriated the birth year of his brother, who was just three years older than himself.2 The boy's education began in his fifth year at the school of a certain Peter Winckel of Gouda. The studies were chiefly reading and writing Dutch, an unattractive sort of learning in which he made slow progress. About 1475 he was transferred to the famous school at Deventer. Both his parents died, probably of the plague, his mother in 1483, his father the following year. His mother had accompanied him to Deventer. His father left a small property, consisting partly of the valuable manuscripts he had copied, which was divided between the orphan boys. It was perhaps at some time during the school year at Deventer that Erasmus was withdrawn for a time and sent to the 1 P. Mestwerdt: Die Anfänge des Erasmus, 1917, pp. 178 ff. Several lists of references made by Erasmus to his age have been drawn up; the fullest will be found in Appendix I to this book. 2 In like manner Napoleon gave himself the birthday of his older brother in his marriage contract with Josephine. Cathedral school at Utrecht, where he was a chorister. He does not seem to have kept up his music in later life. Deventer had been a notable school for a century, having been founded in 1380 by Gerard Groot, the mystic who started the religious societies known as the Brethren of the Common Life. True to the traditions of its inception, the school emphasized religion, even encouraging the reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue as well as in Latin. Among its many famous graduates were Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa and Thomas à Kempis, the probable author of The Imitation of. Christ. At the time Erasmus entered it, the connection of the school with the Brethren of the Common Life was still organic, for the rector of that order, Egmond Ter Beek, was headmaster of the Florentius House there until his death in 1483. It is barely possible that he was the pedagogue spoken of by Erasmus as "both by name and nature a driveling_ram."1 There was also a master in the school who, in order to have an excuse for whipping the boy, trumped up a false charge against him, by which he almost broke his pupil's heart, brought on an attack of ague, and nearly dissipated his love of learning. The life of a poor schoolboy was, indeed, not an easy one. The memoirs of Butzbach and Platter tell how they were used as fags by the older boys, forced to beg, starved, beaten, scolded, and otherwise brutally abused both by their seniors and by the masters. At Deventer there was perhaps less whipping than elsewhere. The boys paid fines for speaking Dutch and for other breaches of the rules. They were encouraged to spy on one another and on the younger masters. The day was completely filled with a routine of appointed task, 1 This passage from the Adages quoted by Allen, i, p. 579. The word "Beek" is near enough to the Dutch bok (he-goat, or ram) to make the identification with the Kpioμvos barely possible. On the other hand, “Beek” means river in Dutch, and is so used by Erasmus in his epigram on the death of Arnold Beka's daughter.—LB. i, 1219. meal time and exercise, from four in the morning, when they rose, until eight or nine at night.1 Deventer was one of the largest schools. A little later it provided instruction for 2,200 boys. There were eight forms, each of which must have had an average of 275 pupils. The boys sat on the floor around the master, who dictated to them a Latin text, translated and commented on it, and heard them construe and parse yesterday's lesson. The principal study of the nine years at this school was Latin, though, as Erasmus assures us, "it was still barbarous. The Pater meus and the Tempora were read aloud to the boys, and the grammars of Eberard and John Garland were dictated to them." The Pater meus was an exercise book with paradigms of the declensions, the Tempora a similar manual for the conjugations. John Garland was thirteenth-century Englishman who had taught at Toulouse. His books were filled with riddling verses, such as Latrat et amittit, humilis, vilis, negat, heret: The answer is a dog, which barks, and loses (“dog” being the name of the lowest throw at dice), is humble, vile, denies like an apostate ("a dog returned to its vomit"), adheres; is the Dog Star, and swims (the dogfish). "Heavens!" exclaims Erasmus, "what a time that was when the couplets of John Garland were read out to the boys, accompanied by a prolix commentary! A great part of the school was employed in dictating, repeating, and saying by heart some silly verses." Other books used were the Floretus, a sort of abstruse catechism, the Cornutus, a treatise on synonyms, the grammatical works of Papias and Huguitio, and a 1 Allen: "A Sixteenth-century School," English Historical Review, x, 738 (1895). 2 De pueris instituendis, LB. i, 514F. Allen: The Age of Erasmus, 35 ff; Woodward: Erasmus Concerning the Aim and Method of Education, p. 102. Catalogus van den Incunabelen in de Atheneum-Bibliothek to Deventer. Door M. E. Kronenberg, 1917. |