ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM TO JODOCUS

JONAS, OF ERFURDT, GREETING.

WITH

ITH your earnest request, my worthy friend, that I would briefly portray for you, as in miniature, the life of John Colet, I will gladly comply; and the rather, from an impression that you are trying to find some eminent. pattern of religion by which to regulate your own course of life. I have been acquainted with many persons, my dear Jonas, whose high principles I greatly esteemed; but I must

1

Jodocus, or, as he afterwards preferred to call himself, Justus, Jonas, was born at Nordhausen in Saxony in 1493. After being at school in his native town, he entered the University of Erfurdt, where his merits were recognized by Eobanus Hessus, who prompted him to seek the acquaintance of Erasmus. With some companions, he made a long and toilsome journey for this purpose. He rose to become Rector of the University of Erfurdt; and it is through this connection that Erasmus addresses him as Erfordiensis. He accompanied Luther to Worms in 1521, and about the same time was appointed to a theological professorship at Wittemberg. There he married, defending himself from attacks on this score by a very outspoken Defensio pro conjugio sacerdotali, published in 1523. He was intimately connected with Luther and Melanchthon, and besides his theological treatises had some fame as a hymn-writer. One of his hymns, beginning

"Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält,"

was in Luther's Hymnarium of 1525. His Latin translation of a German Catechism is said to have been largely made use of by Cranmer for his English one published in 1548. He died October 9th, 1555, aged 63, leaving a son who bore the same name.-Reinhardi Commentatio (1731); Knappii Narratio de Justo Jona, 1817; Adami Vita Germanor. Theolog. p. 258.

B

own that I never yet saw any one in whose character I did not after all miss some trait of Christian sincerity, when compared with the single-mindedness of the two whom I am about to describe.

It was my fortune to become acquainted with the former of them at a town of Artois, commonly called St. Omer; at the time when the plague (in this respect, at least, of service to me), had driven me there from Paris.' The latter I met with in England, to which country I had been drawn by attachment to my patron Montjoy.2

If I give you two portraits instead of one, you will be the gainer; and to that, I know, you have no objection.

The first of the two was named Jehan Vitrier. He was

1 The most probable time to fix upon for this visit appears to be the summer of 1501, though Gaston Feugère in his Érasme (1874), p. 69, places it in 1502. But I prefer, on a point of this kind, to follow the authority of Seebohm (Oxford Reformers, 2nd ed. p. 164), whose work I shall often have occasion to refer to. Erasmus had been previously staying at Tournehem, a village near St. Omer, just off the road between it and Calais. The Château of Tournehem was the residence of Anna Bersala, Marchioness of Vere; whose son's tutor, Battus, was one of Erasmus's earliest friends.

2 This was in the spring or summer of 1498.—Oxf. Ref. p. 94. The Montjoy here referred to was William Blount, fourth Baron Montjoy of Thurveston, who succeeded to the title in 1485, and died in 1535. On the accession of Henry VIII. he was made Master of the Mint. He had been a pupil of Erasmus in Paris, and it was to him that Erasmus dedicated the first edition of his Adagia.

3 I may not be right in assuming that this was the native form of the name Latinized into Vitrarius. But as vitrarius is a silver-age word for " glazier," whence the French vitrier, it seemed natural to come to this conclusion. The late Professor de Morgan, with that humour of which he was such a master, advocated the retention of the Latin names by which early scholars chose to designate themselves. (Introd. to Arithmetical Books, 1847, p. 8.) And had it not seemed pedantic to write Joannes Coletus, I should certainly have retained Joannes

of the Franciscan order, having lighted on this way of life in his youth. And in no other respect, I should say, was he to be deemed inferior to Colet, than that, from the restrictions of his system, his sphere of usefulness was more limited. He was about forty-four years of age when our acquaintance began; and, unlike as our dispositions were, he became attached to me at once. With men of worth his influence was always very great, and many people of rank valued him most highly. In person he was tall and wellproportioned, of a happily constituted nature, high-spirited, yet most courteous withal. In his youth he had drunk deeply of the subtleties of Scotus. And without setting any great value on these, he yet did not wholly disparage them, as containing some things well put, though in uncouth phrase. But when he had the fortune to make acquaintance with Ambrose, and Cyprian, and Jerome, his relish for the other became very small in comparison. There was no writer on theology whose genius he more admired than Origen's. And on my objecting, that I was surprised to see him take pleasure in the writings of a heretic, I was struck with the animation with which he replied, that a mind, from which there had issued so many works, fraught with such learning and fervour, could not but have been a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit.

He by no means approved of the system of life which he had entered by chance, or had been drawn into, in the inexperience of youth.1 I have repeatedly heard him say,

Vitrarius. Martin Tyndall, as it would be observed from the Preface, called him Vitrari.

1 The statutes of the Observant Friars were collected in a general chapter held at Barcelona in 1451. "Almost the first regulation,"

that to sleep, and wake, and return to sleep again, by the sound of a bell; to talk and leave off talking, to come and go, to eat and desist from eating, to do everything, in short, by man's injunction instead of by the rule of Christ, was the life of idiots rather than of religious men. Nothing, he would aver, was more unreasonable than equality among men so unequal; especially seeing that, buried beneath the rites and ordinances of man's invention, or even devoured with spleen, were often to be found minds of heavenly temper, minds born for better things. Yet at no time did he either counsel anyone else to change this way of life, or attempt anything of the kind himself, being ready to bear all things sooner than be a stumbling-block in anyone's way. In this too he would copy the example of his beloved Paul. There was indeed nothing so unreasonable that he would not cheerfully put up with in his desire for the preservation of peace.

He had so thoroughly learnt by heart the books of Holy Scripture, St. Paul's Epistles more particularly, that he had the words of his favourite St. Paul completely at his fingers' ends. At whatever passage you set him on, he would, after a moment's thought, go on right through the Epistle, without a single mistake. He remembered also considerable portions

says a modern editor of them, "is that no one under sixteen years of age shall be admitted as a novice. When we find that in 1358 the University of Oxford vainly endeavoured to prevent the abduction of young students, which had then become so frequent as to deter parents from sending their children to Oxford, this enactment appears utterly insufficient for the protection of the unwary. But even this is an improvement on the state of things indicated in a decretal of Alex. IV., which speaks of novices under fourteen years of age."-Monumenta Franciscana, vol. ii. (ed. by R. Howlett), p. xxiii.

of St. Ambrose. And it is almost past belief how much he recollected of other orthodox writers of antiquity as well. This advantage he owed in part to a naturally good memory, and in part to constant practice.

I once asked him, in the course of conversation, what his way of mental preparation was, before going into the pulpit. He answered, that it was his custom to take up St. Paul, and to spend the time reading him, till he felt his heart grow warm. He would continue thus engaged, with the addition of fervent prayers to God, till warned that it was time for him to begin.

As a rule, he did not divide his sermons under heads. Most preachers indeed do this, as if no other course were open to them; the result being, in many cases, a stiff and formal subdivision. And yet all this care about subdivision does but make the discourse cold and stiff, and lessen our confidence in the preacher by the artifice it betrays. But Vitrier would so link together the Epistle and Gospel2 that had been

1 Erasmus again refers to this subject in his Ecclesiastes. To see how widely the fashion prevailed, one need only open the Dormi secure at almost any page. For example, in the sermon for the 16th Sunday after Trinity, on St. Luke vii. 12 (the Son of the Widow of Nain), Death is first divided into (1) the natural, (2) the sinful, (3) the spiritual, (4) the eternal. Of these (1) is further classified as (a) general, (b) dreadful, (c) fearful, (d) terrible. (2) is next compared to (1) in respect of four common instruments of natural death, that is to say, (e) the sword, (f) fire, (g) missiles, (h) water; and so on, to the end. This is no exaggerated specimen.

2 In his Mediaval Preachers (1856), Introd. p. xli., Dr. Neale reminds us that "sermons preached to parish congregations were almost always based on the Gospel or the Epistle of the day. This custom," he adds, "in many parts of Europe acquired almost the force of a law ; and a remarkable relic of it still exists in a community which has preserved much of the husk of the earlier Church-the Swedish Establishment. Here the preacher is to this day compelled to take his text either from the Epistle or the Gospel."