Appendix F
Editions of Works of Sir Thomas More in My Possession
A.D.
1516. (Dec.) Utopia (First edition).—‘Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reip. statu, deque nova Insula Vtopia authore clarissimo viro Thoma Moro inclytæ Civitatis Londinensis cive et Vicecomite, cura M. Petri Aegidii Antuerpiensis, et arte Theodorici Martini Alustensis, Typographi almæ Louaniensium Academiæ, nunc primum accuratissime editus.’
Without date, but containing a Prefatory Letter from Petrus Aegidius to Hier. Buslidius, dated MDXVI. cal. Novembris; and a Letter from Joannes Paludanus to Petrus Aegidius, dated calen. Decemb.
1518. Utopia (Second edition).—‘De Optimo Reip. statu deque nova Insula Vtopia, libellus vere aureus,’ &c. Also,
Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomæ Mori. Also,
Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Rot.
Basileæ apud Jo. Frobenium, mense Martio MDXVIII.
1518. Ditto ditto.
Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Novembri MDXVIII. (HANS HOLB. inscribed in the woodcut on the title-page).
1520. Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomæ Mori, Britanni, ad emendatum exemplar ipsius autoris excusa. (With some additional Epigrams, including More’s Letter to his Children.)
Basileæ apud Joannem Frobenium, mense Decembri M.D.XX.
1557. The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, sometime Lorde Chauncellorr of England, wrytten by him in the Englysh tongve.
1563. Thomæ Mori Angliæ ornamenti eximii Lucubrationes, ab innumeris mendis repurgatæ.
Basil, apud Episcopium F. 1563.
1566. Thomæ Mori Angli... Omnia, quæ hucusque ad manus nostras peruenerunt, Latina opera....
Lovanii, apud Joannem Bogardum sub Bibliis Aureis. Anno 1566.
1568. Doctissima D. Thomæ Mori clarissimi ac disertiss. viri Epistola, in qua non minus facetè quàm piè, respondet Literis Joannis Pomerani, hominis inter Protestantes nominis non obscuri.
Opusculum... ex Authoris quidem autographo emendato, dum viveret, exemplari desumptum, nunquam vero ante hac in lucem editum.
Lovanii, ex officina Joannis Fouleri. MD.LXVIII. (Not included in any of the above collections of More’s works.)
1588. Tres Thomæ... D. Thomæ Mori... Vita, authore Thoma Stapletono Anglo.
Dvaci, Ex officina Joannis Bogardi. M.D.LXXXVIII.
1612. Ditto ditto.
Coloniæ Agrippinæ, Sumptibus Bernardi Gualteri. MDC.XII.
(Stapleton had access to a collection of More’s papers, made by Harris, his private secretary, and has preserved Latin translations of his letters to his children, &c., not in the collected works.)
Footnotes
1 Mr. Lupton’s volume (Bell and Daldy, 1869) has a double interest. Apart from the interest it derives from its connection with Colet, it is also interesting as placing, I believe, for the first time, before the English reader, a full abstract of two of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings, to which attention has recently been called by Mr. Westcott’s valuable article in the Contemporary Review.
2 To avoid any charge of plagiarism I may also state, that a portion of the materials comprised in this volume has been made use of in articles contributed by me to the North British Review, in the years 1859 and 1860.
3 Where not otherwise stated, all references to these letters and to the collected works of Erasmus (Eras. Op.), refer to the Leyden edition.
4 See note on the date of More’s birth in Appendix C.
5 Of the First Edition. This has since been published by Mr. Lupton.
6 In a letter written in the winter of 1499-1500, Colet is spoken of as ‘Jam triennium enarranti,’ &c. See Erasmus to Colet, prefixed to Disputatio de Tædio et Pavore Christi, Eras. Op. v. p. 1264, A. Colet was in Paris, apparently on his way home from his continental tour, soon after the publication of the work of the French historian Gaguinus, De Orig. et Gest. Francorum. (See Eras. Epist. xi.) The first edition, according to Panzer and Brunet, of this work, was that of Paris. Prid. Kal. Oct. 1495. Colet may thus have returned home in the spring of 1496, and proceeded to Oxford after the long vacation. Erasmus states, ‘Reversus ex Italia, mox relictis parentum ædibus, Oxoniæ maluit agere. Illic publice et gratis Paulinas Epistolas omnes enarravit.’—Op. iii. p. 456, B.
7 He was ordained deacon December 17, 1497. Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 22 (Lond. 1724), on the authority, doubtless, of Kennett, who refers to Reg. Savage, Lond.
8 Erasmus Jodoco Jonæ: Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, C. ‘In theologica professione nullum omnino gradum nec assequutus erat, nec ambierat.’
9 ‘The degree of Master in Arts conferred also, and this was practically its chief value, the right of lecturing, and therefore of receiving money for lectures, at Oxford.’—Monumenta Academica; Rev. II. Anstey’s Introduction, p. lxxxix.
10 One of the statutes decreed as follows:—‘Item statutum est, quod non liceat alicui præterquam Bachilaris Theologiæ, legere bibliam biblice.’—Ibid. p. 394. That the word ‘legere,’ in these statutes, means practically to ‘lecture,’ see Mr. Anstey’s Introduction, p. lxxxix.
11 It is possible also that Colet’s mode of lecturing did not come within the meaning of the technical phrase, ‘legere bibliam biblice,’ which is said to have meant ‘reading chapter by chapter, with the accustomed glosses, and such explanations as the reader could add.’—Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge: by George Peacock, D.D., Dean of Ely. Lond. 1841, p. xlvi. n. See also Mr. Anstey’s Introduction, p. lxxi, on the doubtful meaning of ‘legere cursorie.’
12 See the remarkable letter of Bishop Grosseteste to the ‘Regents in Theology’ at Oxford—date 1240 or 1246—Roberti Grosseteste Epistolæ, pp. 346-7, of which the following is Mr. Luard’s summary:—‘Skilful builders are always careful that foundation stones should be really capable of supporting the building. The best time is the morning. Their lectures, therefore, especially in the morning, should be from the Old and New Testaments, in accordance with their ancient custom and the example of Paris. Other lectures are more suitable at other times.’—P. cxxix.
13 It would not be likely that statutes, framed in some points specially to guard against Lollard views, and probably early in the fifteenth century, should ignore the Scriptures altogether. Thus, before inception in theology, by Masters in Theology (see Mr. Anstey’s Introduction, p. xciv), three years’ attendance on biblical lectures was required, and the inceptor must have lectured on some canonical book of the Bible (Monumenta Academica, p. 391), according to the statutes. They also contained the following provision:—‘Ne autem lecturæ variæ confundantur, et ut expeditius in lectura bibliæ procedatur, statutum est, ut bibliam biblice seu cursorie legentes quæstiones non dicant nisi tantummodo literales.’—Ibid. p. 392. The regular course of theological training at Oxford may be further illustrated by the following passage from Tindale’s ‘Practice of Prelates.’ Tindale, when a youth, was at Oxford during a portion of the time that Colet was lecturing on St. Paul’s Epistles.
‘In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.... And when he taketh his first degree, he is sworn that he shall hold none opinion condemned by the Church.... And then when they be admitted to study divinity, because the Scripture is locked up with such false expositions and with false principles of natural philosophy that they cannot enter in, they go about the outside and dispute all their lives about words and vain opinions, pertaining as much unto the healing of a man’s heel as health of his soul. Provided yet... that none may preach except he be admitted of the Bishops.’—Practice of Prelates, p. 291. Parker Society.
What the biblical lectures were it is difficult to understand, for Erasmus wrote (Eras. Epist. cxlviii.): ‘Compertum est hactenus quosdam fuisse theologos, qui adeo nunquam legerant divinas literas, ut nec ipsos Sententiarum libros evolverent, neque quicquam omnino attingerent præter quæstionum gryphos.’—P. 130, C.
14 Ellis’s Letters, 2nd series, vol. ii. pp. 61, 62. Letter of Richard Layton and his Associates to Lord Cromwell, upon his Visitation of the University of Oxford, Sept. 12, 1535.
15 ‘Provinciam sumsisti... (ne quid mentiar) et negotii et invidiæ plenam.’—Eras. Coleto: Eras. Op. v. p. 1264, A.
16 ‘The Turks being in number five times more than we Christians.’ And again, ‘Which multitude is not the fifth part so many as they that consent to the law of Mahomet.’—Works of Tyndale and Frith, ii. pp. 55 and 74.
17 See British Museum Library, under the head ‘Garcilaso,’ No. 1445, g 23, being the draft of private instructions from Ferdinand and Isabella to the special English Ambassador, and headed, ‘Year 1498. The King and Queen concerning the correction of Alexander VI.’ The original Spanish MS. was in the hands of the late B. B. Wiffen, Esq., of Mount Pleasant, near Woburn, and an English translation of this important document was reprinted by him in the Life of Valdes, prefixed to a translation of his CX Considerations. Lond. Quaritch, 1865, p. 24.
18 Chap. v.
19 Chap. vi.
20 Chap. vii.
21 Chap. viii.
22 Chap. ix.
23 Chap. x.
24 Chap. xix.
25 Chap. xx.
26 Chap. xxii.
27 Chap. xxiii.
28 Chaps. xxiv. and xxv.
29 Chaps. xxvi.-xxxiv.
30 Chap. xxxvi.
31 Chap. xxxvii.
32 Villari, in his ‘Life and Times of Savonarola,’ book i. chap. iv., does not seem to me to give, by any means, a fair abstract of the ‘De Religione Christianâ,’ though his chapter on Ficino is valuable in other respects. I have used the edition of Paris, 1510.
33 ‘Chartism,’ chap. x. ‘Impossible.’
34 Pauli Jovii Elogia Doctorum Virorum: Basileæ, 1556, p. 145. The period of the stay of Grocyn and Linacre in Italy was probably between 1485 and 1491. They therefore probably returned to England before the notorious Alexander VI. succeeded, in 1492, to Innocent VIII. See Johnson’s Life of Linacre, pp. 103-150. And Wood’s Athen. Oxon. vol. i. p. 30. Also Hist. et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. ii. 134.
35 Eras. Op. iii. p. 455, F.
36 Erasmus Jodoco Jonæ: Op. iii. p. 455, F. Also Sir Henry Colet’s Epitaph, quoted in Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 7.
37 ‘Et libros Ciceronis avidissime devorarat et Platonis Plotinique libros non oscitanter excusserat.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, A.
38 Eras. Op. iii. p. 455, F. ‘Mater, quæ adhuc superest [in 1520], insigni probitate mulier, marito suo undecim filios peperit, ac totidem filias..., sed ex omnibus ille [Colet] superfuit solus, cum illum nosse cœpissem’ [in 1498].
39 See list of Colet’s preferments in the Appendix.
40 ‘Adiit Galliam, mox Italiam.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, A.
41 Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, A.
42 Ibid. p. 456, B. The words of Erasmus are the following:—‘Ibi se totum evolvendis sacris auctoribus dedit, sed prius per omnium literarum genera magno studio peregrinatus, priscis illis potissimum delectabatur Dionysio, Origene, Cypriano, Ambrosio, Hieronymo. Atque inter veteres nulli erat iniquior quam Augustino. Neque tamen non legit Scotum, ac Thomam aliosque hujus farinæ, si quando locus postulabat. In utriusque juris libris erat non indiligenter versatus. Denique nullus erat liber historiam aut constitutiones continens majorum, quem ille non evolverat. Habet gens Britannica qui hoc præstiterunt apud suos, quod Dantes ac Petrarcha apud Italos. Et horum evolvendis scriptis linguam expolivit, jam tum se præparans ad præconium sermones Evangelici.’
43 Savonarola’s first sermon in the Duomo at Florence was preached in 1491.—Villari, i. p. 122.
44 See Villari, i. 232. Anno 1494.
45 Lorenzo de’ Medici died in 1492; Pico and Politian in 1494. Colet left England early in 1494 probably, but as he visited France on his way to Italy, the exact time of his reaching Italy cannot be determined.
46 The influence of Savonarola on the religious history of Pico was very remarkable.
In a sermon preached after Pico’s death, Savonarola said of Pico, ‘He was wont to be conversant with me, and to break with me the secrets of his heart, in which I perceived that he was by privy inspiration called of God unto religion:’ i.e. to become a monk. And he goes on to say that, for two years, he had threatened him with Divine judgment ‘if he fore-sloathed that purpose which our Lord had put in his mind.’—More’s English Works, p. 9.
Pico died in November, 1494. The intimacy of which Savonarola speaks dated back therefore to 1492 or earlier.
According to the statement of his nephew, J. F. Pico, the change in Pico’s life was the result of the disappointment and the troubles consequent upon his ‘vainglorious disputations’ at Rome in 1486 (when Pico was twenty-three). By this he was ‘wakened,’ so that he ‘drew back his mind flowing in riot, and turned it to Christ!’ Pico waited a whole year in Rome after giving his challenge, and the disappointment and troubles were not of short duration. They may be said to have commenced perhaps after the year of waiting, i.e. in 1487, when he left Rome. He was present at the disputations at Reggio in 1487, and this does not look as though as yet he had altogether lost his love of fame and distinction. There he met Savonarola; and there that intimacy commenced which resulted in Savonarola’s return, at the suggestion of Pico, to Florence. (J. F. Pico’s Vita Savonarolæ, chap. vi.; Harford’s Life of Michael Angelo, i. p. 128; and Villari, i. pp. 82, 83.) In 1490, as the result of his first studies of Holy Scripture, according to J. F. Pico (being twenty-eight), he published his Heptaplus, which is full of his cabalistic and mystic lore, and betokens a mind still entangled in intellectual speculations rather than imbued with practical piety. He had, however, already burnt his early love songs, &c.; and it is evident the change had for some time been going on.
About the time when Savonarola commenced preaching in Florence, in 1491 (three years before his death, according to J. F. Pico), Pico disposed of his patrimony and dominions to his nephew, and distributed a large part of the produce amongst the poor, consulting Savonarola about its disposal (J. F. Pico’s Life of Savonarola, chap. xi. ‘De mira Hieronymi lenitate et amore paupertatis’), and appointing as his almoner Girolamo Benivieni, a devout and avowed believer in Savonarola’s prophetic gifts. This was doubtless the time when Pico was wont to break to Savonarola ‘the secrets of his heart;’ the time also to which J. F. Pico alludes when he speaks of him as ‘talking of the love of Christ;’ and adding, ‘the substance I have left, after certain books of mine finished, I intend to give out to poor folk, and fencing myself with the crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle, I purpose to preach of Christ.’—Vide infra, p. 153. In 1492, a few weeks after Lorenzo’s death, he wrote three beautiful letters to his nephew (Pici Op. pp. 231-236. Vide infra, pp. 153-156)—letters as glowing with earnest Christian piety as the Heptaplus was overflowing with cabalistic subtleties. His religion now, at all events, had the true ring about it. It belonged to his heart, not his head only. Then follow the remaining two years of his life when Savonarola exerted his influence (but without success) to induce him to enter a religious order. On Sept. 21, 1494, he was present at Savonarola’s famous sermon, in which he predicted the calamities which were coming upon Italy and the approach of the French army, listening to which Pico himself said that he ‘was filled with horror, and that his hair stood on end’ (narrated by Savonarola in his Compendium Revelationum); and lastly in November, as Charles entered Florence, Pico was peacefully dying. He was buried in the robes of Savonarola’s order and within the precincts of Savonarola’s church of St. Mark. In the light of Savonarola’s sermon, and the facts above stated, it can hardly be doubted that whilst, in one sense, brought about by the disappointment of his worldly ambitions, the change of life in Pico was at least, in measure, the result of his contact with the great Florentine reformer.
With regard to the history of Savonarola’s influence on Ficino’s religious character, the facts are not so easily traced. In early years he is said to have been more of a Pagan than a Christian. Before writing his De Religione Christianâ, he seems to have become fully persuaded of the truth of Christianity. The book itself shows this. And there is a letter of his (Ficini Op. i. p. 640, Basle ed.), written while he was composing it, during an illness, in which he says that the words of Christ give him more comfort than philosophy, and his vows paid to the Virgin more bodily good than medicine. He also says that his father, a doctor, was once warned in a dream, while sleeping under an oak tree, to go to a patient who was praying to the Virgin for aid.
But the religion of a man resting on dreams, and visions, and vows made to the Virgin, was not necessarily of a very deep and practical character. Superstition and philosophy were easily united without the heart taking fire. Schelhorn (in his Amœnitates Literariæ, i. p. 73) quotes from Wharton’s appendix to Cave, the following statement, ‘Rei philosophicæ nimium deditus, religionis et pietatis curam posthabuisse dicitur, donec Savonarolæ Florentiam advenientis eloquentiam admiratus, concionibus ejus audiendis animum adjecit, dumque flosculis Rhetorices inhiavit, pietatis igniculos recepit: reliquamque dein vitam religionis officiis impendit.’ Wharton does not give his authority. Fleury (vol. xxiv. p. 363) makes a similar statement; also Brucker (Historia critica Philosophiæ, iv. p. 52); also Du Pin; also Harford in his Life of Michael Angelo (i. p. 72) on the authority of Spondanus, who himself gives no contemporary authority. See also Mr. Lupton’s Introduction to Colet’s Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies of Dionysius, where the subject is discussed. I am informed, through the kindness of Count P. Guicciardini, of Florence, that in Ficino’s Apologia, which exists in the MSS. Stroziani of Libr. Magliabecchiana, class viii. cod. 315, he says of himself that ‘for five years he was one of the many who were deceived by the Hypocrite of Ferrara,’ whom he calls ‘Antichrist.’ The truth therefore seems to be that he was profoundly influenced by Savonarola’s enthusiasm, but only for a time.
47 Ficino’s editions of his translations of the Dionysian treatises on the ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Mystic Theology’ seem to have been published at Florence in 1492 and 1496.—Fabricii Bibliotheca Græca, vii. pp. 10, 11.
48 Herzog’s Encyclopædia, article on ‘Marsilius Ficinus.’
49 Mr. Harford, in his Life of Michael Angelo, vol. i. p. 57, mentions Colet, among others, as studying at Florence, and cites ‘Tiraboschi, vi. pt. 2, p. 382, edit. Roma, 4to. 1784.’ But I cannot find any mention of Colet in Tiraboschi, after careful search.
In opposition to the likelihood of his having been at Florence it may be asked, why Colet never alludes to it in his letters or elsewhere? In reply, it may be said that we have nothing of Colet’s own writing relating to his early life. All we know of it is derived from Erasmus, and the only allusion by Colet to his Italian journey which Erasmus has preserved is the passing remark that he (Colet) had there become acquainted with certain monks of true wisdom and piety.—Eras. Op. iii. 459, A. ‘Narrans sese apud Italos comperisse quosdam monachos vere prudentes ac pios.’ Whether Savonarola’s monks were amongst these is a matter of mere speculation.
50 See marginal note on his ‘Romans,’ in the Cambridge University Library, MS. Gg. 4, 26, leaf 3a, in which he refers to him—‘Hec Mirandula,’ and cites a passage from Pico’s Apologia, Basle edition of Pici Opera, p. 117. There is also a long and almost literal extract from Pico in the MS. on the ‘Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,’ in the St. Paul’s School Library. See Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 161.
51 See an extract from Ficino in Colet’s MS. on ‘Romans,’ leaf 13b. Another is pointed out by Mr. Lupton, p. 36, n.
52 ‘Quem ego sermonem ab eo memini, qui colloquentes audiverat, jam tum patri meo renunciatum, cum adhuc nulla proditionis ejus suspicio haberetur.’—Thomæ Mori ‘Latina Opera,’ Lovanii, 1566, fol. 46. As to the authorship of the history of Richard III. see Mr. Gairdner’s preface to Letters of Richard III. and Henry VII. vol. ii. p. xxi. As More was born in February, 1478, there is no difficulty in accepting the authenticity of this incident, which, when 1480 was assumed as the date of More’s birth, seemed quite impossible, as More would only have been three years old when it occurred, and could not have remembered the conversation.
53 Roper, Singer’s ed. p. 3. Morton was not made a cardinal till 1493.
54 Roper, p. 4.
55 Ibid.
56 Colet probably left Oxford for the Continent about 1494. The most probable date of More’s stay at Oxford was 1492 and 1493. This leaves 1494 and 1495 for his studies at New Inn, previous to his entry at Lincoln’s Inn, in February, 1496.
57 Eras. Op. iii. p. 477, A. Speaking of More, Erasmus writes: ‘Joannes Coletus, vir acris exactique judicii, in familiaribus colloquiis subinde dicere solet, Britanniæ non nisi unicum esse ingenium.’
58 Stapleton’s Tres Thomæ, Colon. 1612 ed. chap. i. pp. 155-6. ‘Hanc ob causam sic ei necessaria subministravit ut ne quidem teruncium in sua potestate eum habere permitteret, præter id quod ipsa necessitas postulabat. Quod adeò strictè observavit, ut nec ad reficiendos attritos calceos, nisi à patre peteret, pecuniam haberet.’ See also Eras. Op. iii. p. 475, A, respecting his father’s motive.
59 Stapleton’s Tres Thomæ, Colon. 1612, p. 156.
60 ‘Juvenis ad Græcas literas ac philosophiæ studium sese applicuit adeo non opitulante patre... ut ea conantem omni subsidio destitueret ac pene pro abdicato haberet, quod a patriis studiis desciscere videretur, nam is Britannicarum legum peritiam profitetur.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 475, A.
61 ‘Sic voluit pater qui eum ad Græcarum literarum et philosophiæ studium omni subsidio destituit, ut ad istud (i.e. English Law) induceret.’—Stapleton’s Tres Thomæ, p. 168.
62 XII. February,—11 Henry VII. Foss’s Judges of England, v. p. 207.
63 Vide supra, p. 1, n.
64 Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, B. ‘Nullus erat liber, historiam aut constitutiones continens majorum, quod non evolverat.’
65 Eras. Epist. App. ccccxxxvii.
66 Eras. Epist. xi.
67 ‘Ut tribuatur lapsui memoriæ in evangelista gravatim audio. Qui si spiritu sancto inspiratus scripsit, memoria falli non potuit, nisi et ille etiam falli potuerit, quo ductore scripsit. Dicit mihi Ezechiel: Quocunque ibat spiritus, illuc pariter et rotæ elevabantur sequentes eum.’—Annotationes Ed. Leei in annotationes Novi Testamenti Desiderii Erasmi. Basil. 1520, pp. 25, 26. Lee studied at Oxford during a portion of the time of Colet’s residence there. Knight states that he was sent to St. Mary Magd. College (the college where Colet is supposed to have taken his degree of M.A.) in 1499.—Knight’s Erasmus, p. 286.
68 ‘Quod dicis (non est nostrum definire, quomodo spiritus ille suum temperârit organum) verum quidem est, sed spiritus ipse in Ezechiele definivit: Rotæ non elevabantur nisi sequentes spiritum.’—Annotationes Edvardi Leei, p. 26.
69 Aquinas, Summa, pt. 1, quest. i. article x.
70 Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man, chap. ‘On the Four Senses of the Scriptures.’
71 Preface to the Five Books of Moses.
72 Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man, chap. ‘On the Four Senses of Scripture.’ That Tyndale was at Oxford during Colet’s stay there (i.e. before 1506), see the evidence given by his biographers. It appears that he was born about 1484. Fox says ‘he was brought up from a child in the University of Oxford,’ and there is no reason to suppose that he removed to Cambridge before 1509. See Tyndale’s Doctrinal Treatises, xiv. xv. and authorities there cited.
73 Sir Thomas More in a letter to the University of Oxford (Jortin’s Erasmus, ii. App. p. 664, 4to ed.) complains of a Scotist preacher because ‘neque integrum ullum Scripturæ caput tractavit, quæ res in usu fuit veteribus [this was the old method revived by Colet]; neque dictum aliquod brevius e Sacris literis, qui mos apud nuperos inolevit [the scholastic method]; sed thematum loco delegit Britannica quædam anilia proverbia.’ [The practical result of the textarian method when pushed to its ultimate results.]
74 Eras. Jodoco Jonæ: Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, C. ‘Nullus erat illic doctor vel theologiæ vel juris, nullus abbas, aut alioqui dignitate præditus, quin illum audiret, etiam allatis codicibus.’
75 Eras. Coleto: Eras. Op. iii. p. 40, F. Epist. xli.
76 ‘Tamen certe multum ac diu rogatus a quibusdam amicis, et eisdem interpretantibus nobis Paulum fidis auditoribus, quibuscum pro amicicia quod in superiorem epistolæ partem scriptum est a nobis communicavi, adductus fui tandem ut promitterem, quod est ceptum modo me perrecturum, et in reliquam epistolam quod reliquum est enarrationis adhibiturum.’—Cambridge University Library MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 27b.
77 A copy of Colet’s exposition of ‘Romans,’ with corrections apparently in Colet’s handwriting, is in the Cambridge University Library; MS. Gg. 4, 26. A fair copy, apparently by Peter Meghen, is in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS. No. 355.
Amongst the ‘Gale MSS.’ in Trinity Library, Cambridge, is a MS. (O. 4, 44) said to be Colet’s, containing short notes or abstracts of the Apostolic Epistles. Through the kindness of Mr. Wright I had a copy taken of this MS., but on close comparison of passages with the Annotationes of Erasmus, I was obliged to conclude that the writer had before him an edition of the latter not earlier than that of 1522. This MS. cannot, therefore, have been written by Colet. Possibly it may have been written by Lupset, Colet’s disciple. The copy in the Trinity Library is in a later hand.
78 This appears to have been the character also of the Expositions of Marsilio Ficino. See Fragment on ‘Romans.’—Ficini Opera, ed. 1696, pp. 426-472.
79 The names of Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine are mentioned, but incidentally, and without any quotations of any length being given from them.
80 ‘—est ex vehementia loquendi imperfecta et suspensa sententia.’—MSS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 23, in loco. Rom. ix. 22.
81 ‘Ita Paulus mira prudentia et arte temperat orationem suam in hac epistola, et eam quasi librat tam pari lance, et Judeos et Gentes simul, etc.’—Ibid. fol. 26.
82 MSS. Gg. 4, 26, fols. 59b, 61a.
83 Ibid. fol. 60. ‘Sed ille homo magno animo, fide, et amore Christi, fuit paratus non solum ligari,’ &c.
84 Ibid. fols. 42-45 (in loco, Rom. xiii.). In these pages Colet compares with great care the information to be collected from passages in the Epistle to the Romans and in the Acts of the Apostles with what is recorded by Suetonius, and admires St. Paul’s ‘sapientissima admonitio opportune sane adhibita.’—Ibid. fols. 42b and 43a. Again, at fol. 44a, Colet says, ‘Hæc autem refero ut magna Pauli consideratio et prudentia animadvertatur; qui cum non ignoravit Claudium Cesarem tenuisse rempublicam, qui fuit homo vario ingenio et improbis moribus, &c.’...
85 In his exposition of Romans (chap. iv.) he says:—‘Sed caute circumspicienda sunt omnia Pauli, antequam de ejus mente aliqua feratur sentencia. Nunquam enim censuisset revocandum ad ecclesiam fornicatorem illum, quem tradidit Sathanæ in prima Epistola ad Corinthios, si peccatoribus post baptismum nullum penitendi locum reliquisset.’—Ibid. fol. 6b.
86 It would be difficult in short quotations to give a correct impression of the doctrinal standpoint assumed by Colet in his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. But it may be interesting to enquire, whether any connection can be traced between his views and those of Savonarola, on this point.
Now Villari states that a ‘fundamental point’ in Savonarola’s doctrine was his ‘conception of love, which he sometimes says is the same as grace,’ and that it was through this conception of love that Savonarola, ‘to a certain extent,’ explained the ‘mystery of human liberty and Divine omnipotence.’—Villari’s Savonarola and his Times, bk. i. c. vii. p. 110.
Whether there be any real connection between Savonarola’s teaching and the following passages from Colet’s exposition, I leave the reader to judge.
‘Wherefore St. Paul concludes, men are justified by faith, and trusting in God alone by Jesus Christ, are reconciled to God and restored into grace; so that with God they stand, and remain themselves sons of God.... If He loved us when alienated from Him, how much more will He love us when we are reconciled; and preserve those whom He loves. Wherefore we ought to be firm and stable in our hope and joy, and, nothing doubting, trust in God through Jesus Christ, by whom alone men are reconciled to God.’—MS. fol. 5. After speaking of that grace which where sin had abounded did much more abound unto eternal life, Colet proceeds:—‘But here it is to be noted that this grace is nothing else than the love of God towards men—towards those, i.e. whom He wills to love, and, in loving, to inspire with His Holy Spirit; which itself is love and the love of God; which (as the Saviour said, according to St. John’s Gospel) blows where it lists. But, loved and inspired by God, they are also called; so that accepting this love, they may love in return their loving God, and long for and wait for the same love. This waiting and hope springs from love. This love truly is ours because He loves us: not (as St. John writes in his 2nd Epistle) as though we had first loved God, but because He first loved us, even when we were worthy of no love at all; but indeed impious and wicked, destined by right to eternal death. But some, i.e. those whom He knew and chose, He also loved, and in loving called them, and in calling them justified them, and in justifying them glorified them. This gracious love and charity in God towards men is in itself the calling and justification and glorification.... And when we speak of men as drawn, called, justified, and glorified by grace, we mean nothing else than that men love in return God who loves them.’—MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 6.
Again: ‘Thus you see that things are brought about by a providing and directing God, and that they happen as He wills in the affairs of men, not from any force from without (illata)—since nothing is more remote from force than the Divine action—but by the natural desire and will of man, the Divine will and providence secretly and silently, and, as it were, naturally accompanying (comitante) it, and going along with it so wonderfully, that whatever you do and choose was known by God, and what God knew and decreed to be, of necessity comes to pass.’—MS. fol. 18.
The following passage is from Colet’s exposition of the Epistle to the Corinthians (MS. 4, 26, p. 80). ‘The mind of man consists of intellect and will. By the intellect we know: by the will we have power to act (possumus). From the knowledge of the intellect comes faith: from the power of the will charity. But Christ, the power of God, is also the wisdom of God. Our minds are illuminated to faith by Christ, “who illumines every man coming into this world, and He gives power to become the sons of God to those who believe in His name.” By Christ also our wills are kindled in charity to love God and our neighbour; in which is the fulfilment of the law. From God alone therefore, through Christ, we have both knowledge and power; for by Him we are in Christ. Men, however, have in themselves a blind intellect, and a depraved will, and walk in darkness, not knowing what they do.... Those who by the warm rays of his divinity are so drawn that they keep close in communion with Him, are indeed they whom Paul speaks of as called and elected to His glory,’ &c.
For the Latin of these extracts see Appendix (A).
In further proof that Colet’s views (like Savonarola’s) were not Augustinian upon the question of the ‘freedom of the will,’ may be cited the following words of Colet (see infra, chap, iv.): ‘But in especial is it necessary for thee to know that God of his great grace hath made thee his image, having regard to thy memory, understanding, and free-will.’ Probably both Colet and Savonarola, in common with other mystic theologians, had imbibed their views directly or indirectly from the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius and the Neo-Platonists.
87 ‘Ex quodam nostro studio et pietate in homines... non tam verentes legentium fastidium, quam cupientes confirmacionem infirmorum et vacillantium.’—Fol. 22b.
88 MS. Gg. 4, 26, fols. 13b to 15a.
89 Ibid. fol. 3b.
90 Ibid. fols. 28b and 29.
91 Ibid. fol. 29.
92 MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 30b.
93 Ibid. fol. 59b. ‘Elicienda est dulci doctrina prompta voluntas non acerba exaccione extorquenda pecunia nomine decimarum et oblacionum.’
94 Ibid. fol. 60a.
95 See particularly fol. 27 and 61b.
96 MS. Gg. 4, 26, fol. 3a.
97 Ibid. fol. 7b.
98 Ibid. fol. 15b. Ioannes Baptista Mantuanus, general of the Carmelites, an admirer of Pico.—See Pici Opera, p. 262.
99 ‘Ibi se totum evolvendis sacris auctoribus dedit.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456 B.
100 ‘... conatique sumus quoad potuimus divina gratia adjuti veros illius sensus exprimere. Quod quam fecimus haud scimus sane, voluntatem tamen habuimus maximam faciendi.’—ffinis argumenti in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos. Oxonie.
101 Cambridge University Library, MSS. Gg. 4, 26, p. 62, et seq., and printed in Knight’s Life of Colet, App. p. 311.
102 In the volume of manuscripts marked 355.
103 ‘In quibus mihi videtur tanta caligo ut totus ille sermo contentus in ipsis tribus capitulis appareat esse ille abyssus super cujus faciem dicit Moises tenebras fuisse.’
104 ‘Non me latet plures esse sensus, sed unum persequar cursim.’
105 ‘... universa simul creasse sua eternitate.’
106 ‘In principio (i.e. eternitate) creavit Deus cœlum (formam) et terram (materiam).’
107 ‘... inanis et vacua.’
108 ‘Terra (materia) erat inanis et vacua (hoc est sine solida et substantiali entitate) et tenebræ, &c. (i.e. tenebrosa fuit materia, &c.).’
109 ‘Vide quam bellè pergit ordine, significans summariam creacionem copulationemque formæ cum materia.’
110 ‘... forma et terminacio rerum.’
111 ‘Quæ sequuntur in Moyse est repetitio et latior explicacio superiorum, ac speciatim distinctio earum rerum quas primum generatim complexus est. Tu aliud si sentis fac nos te queso participes. Vale.’
112... ‘Particulatim res aggreditur, et mundi digestionem ante oculos ponit, quod sic facit meo judicio, ut sensus vulgi et rudis multitudinis quam docuit racionem habuisse videatur.’
113 See quotation from Chrysostom to a similar effect: Summa, prima pars, lxvii. art. iv. conclusio. After speaking of the views of Augustine and Basil, Aquinas says:—
‘Chrysostomus (Homil. 2 in Gen. circa medium illius tom. i.) autem assignat aliam rationem quia Moyses loquebatur rudi populo qui nihil nisi corporalia poterat capere, quem etiam ab idololatria revocare volebat,’ &c.
114 ‘... Et hoc more poetæ alicujus popularis, quo magis consulat spiritui simplicis rusticitatis, fingens successionem rerum operum et temporum cujusmodi apud tantum Opificem certè nulla esse potest.’
115 ‘Crassiter et pingue docenda fuit stulta illa et macra multitudo.’
116 ‘(1) Moysen digna Deo loqui voluisse. (2) In rebus vulgo cognitis vulgo satisfacere. (3) Ordinem rerum servare. In primis populum ad religionem et cultum unius Dei traducere.’
117 ‘Partim quia sex numero facile in rebus homini in mentem venire possunt.’
118 ‘Maxime... ut imitacio divina (quem, more poetæ, finxit sex dies operatum esse, septimo quievisse) populum septimo quoque die ad quietem et contemplacionem Dei et cultum adduceret.’
119 ‘Nunquam dierum numerum statuisset, nisi ut illo utilissimo et sapientissimo figmento, quasi quodam proposito exemplari populum ad imitandum provocaret, ut sexto quoque die diurnis actibus fine imposito, septimo in summa Dei contemplatione persisterent.’
120 ‘Salve Radulphe, ac cum salute puto te rediisse quod tibi opto. Quatuor ut arbitror dies transiisti: ego interea vix unum Moysaicum diem transii. Immo tu elaborâsti in die sub sole; ego hoc tempore in nocte et tenebris vagatus sum, nec vidi quo eundum esset: nec quo perveni intelligo. Sed incepto pergendum erat, ac tandem inveni exitum ut poteram. In quo difficili errore, videor mihi apud Moysen magnum errorem deprehendisse. Nam quum cujusque diei opus concluserat hiis verbis, Et factum est vespere et mane dies unus, secundus, tercius, non addidisset dies sed nox pocius una, secunda, et tercia, propterea quod inchoante vespere deinde mane sequente, est necesse quod intercedat inter antecedens vesper et subsequens mane nox sit. Dies enim incipit mane, vesperi terminatur. Sed maxime profecto quæ Moyses scribens in dies distinxerat, noctes appellâsset magis, propterea quod offuse sint tantis tenebris ut nihil possit nocti videri similius quam dies Moysaicus. Quas nocturnas tenebras cum opinione aliqua lucis conati sumus discutere, fortasse nos quoque tenebrosi tenebras auximus, noctesque produximus. Attamen prestat nos recte facere voluisse, ac quicquid est quod egimus, si tibi obscurum videatur infunde tum aliquid luminis tui, ut et nos videas, utque nos eciam simul tecum Moysen videre possimus.’
121 ‘More boni piique poetæ.’
122 ‘Homunculorum cordi consuleret.’
123... ‘A sua sublimitate degenerent.’
124 ‘Honestissimo et piissimo figmento simul inescare et trahere eos ut Deo inserviant.’
125 For the above abstracts of these interesting letters I am mainly indebted to the kind assistance of my friend Henry Bradshaw, Esq., of King’s College, Cambridge, who has also furnished me with the following description of the manuscript.
Letters to Radulphus.
1. Beginning (p. 195): ‘Miror sane te optime Radulphe quum voluisti...;’ ending (p. 199): ‘... fac nos te queso participes. Vale.’
2. Beginning (p. 199): ‘Parumper de reliquis diebus uti petis in calce Epistole. Facta mentione de materia et forma...;’ ending (p. 207); ‘... scribendi paululum levaverim. Vale.’
3. Beginning (p. 207): ‘Tercium nunc deinceps diem aggrediamur, memores semper...;’ ending (p. 222): ‘... leviter nos in hiis rebus lucubrasse. Vale.’
4. Beginning (p. 222): ‘Salve Radulphe, ac cum salute puto te rediisse quod tibi opto...’ breaking off at the end of the quire (p. 226): ‘... id licere facere docet Macrobius in Comen[tario edito]....’
⁂ These letters follow Colet’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, in the volume marked 355, in Corpus Christi College Library.
The Exposition is written in the handwriting of Colet’s scribe, Peter Meghen, the ‘monoculus Brabantinus,’ and there are corrections and alterations throughout, evidently by Colet himself.
The letters to Radulphus are merely bound with the other. Only two quires are now remaining: the handwriting is not the same, but similar.
126 The following appears to be the passage Colet was about to quote: ‘Aut sacrarum rerum notio, sub figmentorum velamine, honestis et tecta rebus et vestita nominibus enuntiatur; et hoc est solum figmenti genus, quod cautio de divinis rebus admittit.’—In Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. c. 2. The ‘aut’ with which the sentence begins refers to its being an alternative of two kinds of mythical writing, about which Macrobius has been speaking. I am indebted to Mr. Lupton for this reference.
127 The following passage from Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of Dionysius’s De celesti Hierarchiâ (pp. 12, 13) will show that he may have derived some of his thoughts from that source. ‘Thus led he forth those uninstructed Hebrews, like boys, to school; in order that like children, playing with dolls and toys, they might represent in shadow what they were one day to do in reality as men: herein imitating little girls, who in early age play with dolls, the images of sons, being destined afterwards in riper years to bring forth real sons:... “When I was a child,” says St. Paul, “I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” From childishness and images and imitations Christ has drawn us, who has shone upon our darkness, and has taught us the truth, and has made us that believe to be men, in order that we, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, may be changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord.”’...
‘In these foreshadowings and signs, metaphors are borrowed from all quarters by Moses—a theologian and observer of nature of the deepest insight—inasmuch as there are not words proper to express the Divine attributes. For nothing is fitted to denote God Himself, who is not only unutterable but even inconceivable. Wherefore he is most truly expressed by negations; since you may state what He is not, but not what He is; for whatever positive statement you make concerning Him, you err, seeing that He is none of those things which you can say. Still because a hidden principle of the Deity resides in all things, on account of that faint resemblance, the sacred writers have endeavoured to indicate Him by the names of all objects, not only of the better but of the worse kind, lest the duller sort of people, attracted by the beauty of the fairer objects, should think God to be that very thing which He is called.’
The above is Colet’s amplification of the passage in Dionysius (chap. ii.). The latter part of it is a pretty close rendering of the original.
128 ‘Heptaplus Johannis Pici Mirandulæ de Septiformi sex dierum Geneseos Enarratione.’
129 The first edition is without date, but the publisher’s letter at the commencement, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, shows that it was published during the lifetime of the latter, i.e. before 1492—probably in 1490.
130 The letter preceding the abstract of the ‘Celestial Hierarchy,’ in the Cambridge MS. Gg. 4, 26, is evidently a copy by the same hand as the letter to the Abbot of Winchcombe. Possibly the Abbot may be the person to whom it was addressed.
131 These treatises were:—1. ‘De Compositione Sancti Corporis Christi mistici.’—Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 26.
2. ‘On the Sacraments of the Church,’ printed with a very valuable introduction and notes, by the Rev. J. H. Lupton, M.A., from the MS. in the St. Paul’s School Library. (Bell and Daldy, 1867.)
3. A short essay in the Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 26, commencing ‘Deus immensum bonum,’ &c.
Mr. Lupton is publishing Colet’s abstracts of the ‘Celestial’ and ‘Ecclesiastical’ Hierarchy of Dionysius, from the MSS. at St. Paul’s School; and it will be seen how much use I have made in this chapter of his admirable translation. I have expressed in the preface to this edition the obligations I am under to Mr. Lupton for bringing to light these interesting MSS., and thus materially assisting in restoring some lost links in the history of Colet’s inner life and opinions.
132 Balthasar Corderius, in his prefatory observations to his edition of the works of St. Dionysius (Paris 1644), speaks of Dionysius as being the originator of the Scholastic Theology, and proves it by giving four folio pages of references to passages in the ‘Summa’ of Aquinas, where the authority of Dionysius is quoted.
133 Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 135, 136.
134 ‘God, who is one, beautiful and good—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: the Trinity which created all things—is at once the purification of things to unity, their illumination to what is beautiful, and their perfection to what is good.’—Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 15, 24.
135 ‘God created all things because He is good (p. 16); and because He is good, He also recalls to himself all things according to their capacity, that He may bountifully communicate himself to them.’
136 All after this is Colet’s own addition to what is said in Dionysius.
137 Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s Abstract of the Eccl. Hier. p. 92. In a short essay contained in the MSS. Gg. 4, 26, of the Cambridge University Library, entitled ‘De compositione sancti corporis Christi mistici, quæ est ecclesia, quæ sine anima ejus, Spiritu scilicet, dispergitur et dissipatur.’ Colet, after showing how men, if left to themselves, would wander apart and become scattered; and that the purpose of God is, that they should be united in one body the church by the Spirit, as by a magnet, goes on to say, ‘Predestinatum fuit hominem qui decidit a Deo retrahi ad Deum non posse quidem nisi per Deum factum hominem.... Mortuus est ut liberos faceret homines ad talem vitam, ut debita cujusque hominum in illius morte soluta, nunc desinentes peccare deinceps liberi sint justiciæ, ut non amplius maneamus in peccato,’ &c.—Ff. 70b, 71a.
138 Wilberforce, in his Doctrine of the Incarnation, third edition, 1850, thus expressed the modern sacerdotal theory. In the word Priest, in primitive languages, ‘the notion of the setting apart those who should act on man’s behalf towards God is everywhere visible.’—P. 229.
‘Now if Christ is still maintaining a real intercession (if He still pleads that sacrifice) then is there ample place for that sacerdotal system, by which some actual thing is still to be effected, and in which some agents must still be employed.’—P. 381. ‘We put the Priestly office under the law in a line with the ministerial office under the Gospel; we assert, that if the title of Priest could be given fitly to the first, it belongs also to the second.’—P. 383. ‘Any persons who discharge an office which has reference to God, and who present to Him what is offered by men, may be called Priests.’—P. 384.
139 See the same views expressed by Colet in his exposition of ‘Corinthians.’—Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaf g, 2.
140 Colet’s Abstract of the Ecc. Hier. ch. ii. s. 2. Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 61, 62. Colet writes a little further on:—‘The office of the bishop is, like Christ, to preach constantly and diligently the truth he has received. For he is, as it were, a messenger midway between God and men, to announce to men heavenly things, as Christ did.’—Pp. 63, 64.
141 ‘Through this bread and this cup, that which is offered as a true sacrifice in heaven is present as a real though immaterial agent in the church’s ministrations. So that what is done by Christ’s ministers below is a constituent part of that general work which the one great High Priest performs in heaven: through the intervention of his heavenly Head, the earthly sacrificer truly exhibits to the Father that body of Christ which is the one only sacrifice for sins; each visible act has its efficacy through those invisible acts of which it is the earthly expression, and things done on earth are one with those done in heaven.’—Wilberforce’s Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 372, 373.
142 Colet’s abstract of the Eccl. Hier. ch. iii. Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 78-94. Whilst not disapproving in others daily attendance ‘ad mensam Dominicam,’ Erasmus tells us that Colet did not make a daily habit of it himself.—Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, E.
143 Eccl. Hier. ch. ii. Colet speaks in his abstract (Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 65) of the Christian being ‘brought to the captain of the army, the bishop,’ that by the soldier’s oath, &c. ‘he may own himself a soldier of Christ.’ He concludes this section as follows:—
‘Such was the custom and ceremony of baptism and the washing of regeneration in the primitive church, instituted by the holy apostles, whereby the more excellent baptism of the inner man is signified. And this form differs very greatly from the one we make use of in this age. And herein I own that I marvel!... The apostles being fully taught by Jesus Christ, knew well what are convenient symbols and appropriate signs for the mysteries. So that one may suspect either rashness or neglect on the part of their successors in what has been added to or taken from their ordinances.’
Then follows a section on the ‘spiritual contemplation of baptism,’ in which occurs the passage beginning ‘Gracious God!’ &c.—Infra, p. 73. Eccl. Hier. ch. ii. s. 3, pp. 76, 77 of Mr. Lupton’s translation.
144 ‘Meanwhile the foster father who has undertaken the rearing of the child in Christ, gives a pledge and sacred promise, on behalf of the infant, of all things that true Christianity demands, viz. a renouncing of all sin, &c.... And this he says, not in the child’s stead, since it would be a fond thing for another to speak in place of one that was in ignorance; but when, in his own person, he speaks of renouncing, he professes that he will bring it to pass, so far as he can, that the little infant, as soon as ever it is capable of instruction, shall in reality and in his life utterly renounce, &c....
‘When the bishop, I say, hears him saying, “I renounce,” which means, as Dionysius explains it, “I will take care that the infant renounce,” &c.... Thus we see how in the primitive church, by the ordinance of the apostles, infants were not admitted unreservedly to the sacred rights, but on condition only that some one would be surety for them, that when they came to years of discretion they should thenceforward set before them in reality the pattern of Christ.
‘Mark thus how great a burden he takes upon himself who promises to be a godfather,’ &c.—Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of the Eccl. Hier. ch. viii. pp. 158, 159.
145 ‘Men execute the previous decisions of God, and by the ministry of men that is at length disclosed on earth,’ &c.—Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 149. ‘It must be heedfully marked, lest bishops should be presumptuous, that it is not the part of men to loose the bonds of sins: nor does the power pertain to them of loosing or binding anything.’... ’And if they do not proceed according to revelation, moved by the Spirit of God... they abuse the power given to them, both to the blaspheming of God and the destruction of the Church.’—Ibid. 150.
146 See Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, C and D.
147 Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of the Eccl. Hier. p. 83. This was a strictly Dionysian thought and one shared also by Pico. ‘The little affection of an old man or an old woman to Godward (were it never so small), he set more by than all his own knowledge as well of natural things as godly.’... He writeth thiswise [to Politian], ‘Love God (while we be in this body), we rather may than either know Him, or by speech utter Him.’—Life of Picus, E. of Mirandula, Sir Thomas More’s Works, p. 7.
To the same purport is the passage from Ficino, quoted by Colet in his MS. on the ‘Romans.’—Vide supra, p. 37.
148 Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 76, 77.
149 Ibid. p. 73.
150 Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 150, 151.
151 Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 90, 91. See also pp. 123-126, where Colet inveighs warmly against the nomination by secular princes of worldly bishops.
152 Camb. University Library, MS. Gg. 4, 26. There is a beautiful copy embodying these corrections in the hand of Peter Meghen, in the Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, MS. 3, 3, 12.
153 Emmanuel Col. MS. leaf e, 5: ‘Homo unus omnium divinissimus et consideratissimus.’ See also leaf k, 6.
154 Leaf a, 5. ‘Quod tamen facit ubique modestissime homo piissimus.’
155 ‘Velit ergo prudentissimus Paulus.’—Leaf k, 3.
156 Leaf k, 6, and p. 8.
157 In another place Colet writes, ‘Fuit illa græca natio illis argutiis versatilibus humani ingenii semper prompta ad arguendum et redarguendum.’—Leaf c, 2.
158 Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaf a, 4, and Appendix (B, a).
159 Abridged quotation. Leaf a, 5, and Appendix (B, a).
160 Emmanuel Col. MS. leaf a, 5, 6, and Appendix (B, a).
161 Leaf b, 4, and Appendix (B, b). See a very similar remark with reference to St. Paul and Dionysius in Joan. Fran. Pici Mirand. De Studio Div. et Hum. Philosophiæ lib. i. ch. iii. J. F. Pico was living when Colet was in Italy.
162 Appendix (B, c).
163 Appendix (B, d). Emmanuel Coll. MS. leaf b, 6, and b, 8.
164 ‘In these matters regard must be had to condition and strength.... It was thus that Moses taught the truth and justice of God, as it was brought down to the level of sensible things, and diluted for the ancient Hebrews. It was thus that Christ taught to the disciples what they were able to bear. It was thus, lastly, that Paul, both gently and sparingly gave to the Corinthians, as it were, milk instead of meat.... He spoke wisdom to the perfect, to the imperfect he accommodated as it were foolish, more humble and more homely things. With this design, also, he tolerated indulgently less perfect and less absolute morals for a time, dealing gently with them as far as was lawful, not thinking how much was lawful to himself, but what was expedient to others; not how much he himself could bear, but what was adapted to the Corinthians.’...—Leaf c, 7. See also leaf e, 6.
165 1 See Eras. Op. iii. p. 1263, and Ibid. p. 184, E. ‘1499 was the date of the 1st edition, which is comprised in eight pages, and forms the last treatise in a volume of ancient writers on astronomy, edited by Aldus. It is intituled, “Procli Diadochi Sphæra, Astronomiam discere Incipientibus Vtilissima, Thomâ Linacro Britanno Interprete.”’—Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 152.
166 In a letter from Politian to Franciscus Casa, there is a description of an ‘orrery’ made at Florence. The letter was written 1484.—Illustrium Virorum Epistolæ ab Angelo Politiano, n. 1523, fol. lxxxiii.
167 Luther’s Table Talk, ‘Of Astronomy and Astrology.’
168 So also in Pico’s Heptaplus the same kind of speculation is much indulged in.
169 Emmanuel Col. MS. 3, 3, 12, leaves d, 3 to d, 5, and Appendix (B, e). See also leaf n, 2.
170 Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, A.
171 Leaf g, 4.
172 Emmanuel Col. MS. Leaf i, 1 to leaf i, 3.
173 Leaf k, 7 and 8.
174 Leaves g, 5 to g, 7.
175 Emmanuel MS. Leaf f, 6, and Appendix (B, f).
176 ‘Plurimum tribuebat Epistolis Apostolicis, sed ita suspiciebat admirabilem illam Christi majestatem ut ad hanc quodammodo sordescerent Apostolorum scripta.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, F. See also this view supported by Erasmus in his Ratio Veræ Theologiæ. ‘Nec fortassis absurdum fuerit, in sacris quoque voluminibus ordinem auctoritatis aliquem constituere,’ &c.—Eras. Op. v. p. 92, C; and Ibid. p. 132, C.
177 Eras. Op. vi. p. 503, F; Annotationes in loco, Acts xvii. v. 34. The edition of 1516 does not mention the anecdote at all. Those of 1519 and 1522 mention it as having occurred ‘ante complures annos.’ Also see ‘Declamatio adversus Censuram Facultatis Theol. Parisien.’ Eras. Op. ix. p. 917 and Epist. mccv. The former was written in 1530 or 1531, and in it he says:—‘Is ante annos triginta, Londini in æde Divi Pauli,’ &c.: which gives the date of Grocyn’s lectures as some time before 1500 or 1501. The publication of the Paris edition of Dionysius, in 1498, may have called forth these lectures.
178 Jewell, however, mentions John Colet as believing that the Areopagite was not the author of these ancient writings.—Of Private Masse, ed. 1611, p. 8.
179 Vide supra, p. 82.
180 ‘Apostoli sermo... (qui in hoc loco artificiosissimus est)....’—MS. on 1 Corinthians, Emmanuel Coll. leaf a, 6.
181 The date of Erasmus’s coming to England may be approximately fixed as follows. Epist. xxix. dated 12th April, and evidently written in 1500, after his visit to England, mentions a fever which nearly killed Erasmus two years before. Comparing this with what is said in the ‘Life’ prefixed to vol i. of Eras. Op., Epist. vi. vii. and viii., dated 3 Feb., 4 Feb., and 12 Feb., seem to belong to Feb. 1498. Epist. vi. ix. and v. seem to place his studies with Mountjoy, at Paris, in the spring of that year. Epist. xxii. seems to mention the projected visit to England. Epist. xiv. ‘Londini tumultuarie,’ 5 Dec., is evidently written after he had been to Oxford and seen Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, and yet, comparatively soon after his arrival in England. It alludes to his coming to England, but gives no hint that he is going to leave England. In the winter of 1499-1500 he was at Oxford, intending to leave, but delayed by political reasons. He really did leave England 27 Jan. 1500. Whilst, therefore, it is just possible that Epist. xiv. may have been written in Dec. 1499, it is more probable that it was written in Dec. 1498, and that the first experience of Erasmus at Oxford had been during the previous summer and autumn. This seems to comport best both with Epist. vi. ix. v. and xxii., and also with the circumstances connected with his stay in England, mentioned in this chapter. See also the next note. The years attached to the early letters of Erasmus are not in the least to be relied on.
182 Coletus Erasmo: Eras. Epist. xi.
183 ‘Hic (at Oxford) hominem nosse cœpi, nam eodem tum me Deus nescio quis adegerat; natus tum erat annos ferme triginta, me minor duobus aut tribus mensibus.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, B. Erasmus, according to his monument at Rotterdam (Eras. Op. i. (7)) was born 28 Oct. 1467. Colet would be born, say, Jan. 1467-8, if three months younger, and would be ‘annos ferme triginta, in the spring of 1498.’ According to Colet’s monument he would be 31 at that date, as he died 16 Sept. 1519, and the inscription states ‘vixit annos 53.’—Knight’s Colet, p. 261.
184 Epist. xii. Sixtinus Erasmo.
185 Else how could Erasmus describe Colet’s style of speaking so clearly in his first letter to him?—Epist. xli.
186 ‘Virum optimum et bonitate præditum singulari.’—Eras. Epist. xi.
187 Coletus Erasmo: Epist. xi.
188 Eras. Epist. xli. Op. iii. p. 40, D.
189 ‘Dicebat Coletus, Caym ea primum culpa Deum offendisse, quod tanquam conditoris benignitate diffisus, suæque nimium confisus industriæ, terram primus prosciderit, quum Abel, sponte nascentibus contentus, oves paverit.’—Eras. Epist. xliv. Op. iii. p. 42, F. Compare MS. G. g. 4, 26, fols. 4-6 and 29, 30, and Erasmus’s Paraphrases, in loco, Hebrews xi. 4.
190 ‘At ille unus vincebat omnes; visus est sacro quodam furore debacchari, ac nescio quid homine sublimius augustiusque præferre. Aliud sonabat vox, aliud tuebantur oculi, alius vultus, alius adspectus, majorque videri, afflatus est numine quando.’—Eras. Op. iii. 42, F.
191 Eras. Epist. xliv.
192 Erasmus Sixtino, Epist. xliv. Op. iii. p. 42, C.
193 See his colloquy, Ichthyophagia, in which he describes his college experience at Paris, especially his physical hardships. The latter are probably caricatured, and perhaps too much magnified for the description to be taken literally.
194 Erasmus to Lord Mountjoy: Epist. xlii. Oxoniæ, 1498.
195 ‘Beatus Rhenanus Cæsari Carolo.’—Eras. Op. i. leaf * * * 1.
196 Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, D and E.
197 Eras. Op. iii. pt. 1, p. 459, F.
198 ‘Siquidem magnum erat, Coletum, in ea fortuna, constanter sequutum esse, non quo vocabat natura, sed quo Christus,’ &c.—Ibid. p. 461, E.
199 See the following extract from the colloquy of Erasmus, ‘Pietas puerilis,’ edition Argent. 1522, leaf e, 4, and Basileæ, 1526, p. 92, and Eras. Op. i. p. 653.
‘Erasmus. Many abstain from divinity because they are afraid lest they should waver in the catholic faith, when they see there is nothing which is not called in question.
‘Gaspar. I believe firmly what I read in the Holy Scriptures, and the creed called the Apostles’, and I don’t trouble my head any further. I leave the rest to be disputed and defined by the clergy, if they please.
‘Erasmus. What Thales taught you that philosophy?
‘Gaspar. I was for some time in domestic service’ [as More was in the house of Cardinal Morton before he was sent to Oxford], ‘with that honestest of men, John Colet. He imbued me with these precepts.’ See Argent. 1522, leaf c, 4.
200 ‘Illic in collegio Montis Acuti ex putribus ovis et cubiculo infecto concepit morbum, h.e. malam corporis, antea purissimi, affectionem.’—Vita, prefixed to Eras. Op. i. written by himself. See the letter to Conrad Goclenius.
201 ‘A studio theologiæ abhorrebat, quod sentiret animum non propensum, ut omnia illorum fundamenta subverteret; deinde futurum, ut hæretici nomen inureretur.’—Vita, prefixed to Eras. Op. i.
202 See for this anecdote, Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, E and F.
203 ‘Tanquam afflatus spiritu quodam, “Quid tu, inquit, mihi prædicas istum, qui nisi habuisset multum arrogantiæ, non tanta temeritate tantoque supercilio definisset omnia; et nisi habuisset aliquid spiritus mundani, non ita totam Christi doctrinam sua profana philosophia contaminasset.”’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, F.
204 Summa, i. quest. 52, 53.
205 ‘Omnino decessit aliquid meæ de illo existimationi.’—Eras. Op. iii. pt. 1, 458, F.
206 See The Praise of Folly, Eras. Op. iv. p. 462, where the dogmatic science of the age is as severely satirised by Erasmus as the dogmatic theology of the Schoolmen. Thus Folly is made to say:—‘With what ease, truly, do they indulge in day-dreams (delirant), when they invent innumerable worlds, and measure the sun, moon, and stars, and the earth, as though by thumb and thread; and render a reason for thunder, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, without the least hesitation, as though they had been the secret architects of all the works of nature, or as though they had come down to us from the council of the gods. At whom and whose conjectures nature is mightily amused!’
207 Cresacre More’s Life of Sir Thomas More, p. 93.
208 Erasmi aliquot Epistolæ: Paris, 1524, p. 33. Eras. Op. iii. Epist. lxiii. 1521 ed. p. 291. Whether written in 1498 or 1499 is doubtful.
209 Erasmus Roberto Piscatori: Epist. xiv.
210 The incidents related in this section are taken from Disputatiuncula de Tædio, Pavore, Tristitiâ Jesu, instante Supplicio Crucis, deque Verbis, quibus visus est Mortem deprecari, ‘Pater, si fieri potest, transeat a me calix iste.’—Eras. Op. v, pp. 1265-1294.
211 Eras. Op. v. pp. 1291 and 1292.
212 ‘From this order, any one may perceive the reason of the four senses in the old law which are customary in the church. The literal is, when the actions of the men of old time are related. When you think of the image, even of the Christian church which the law foreshadows, then you catch the allegorical sense. When you are raised aloft, so as from the shadow to conceive of the reality which both represent, then there dawns upon you the anagogic sense. And when from signs you observe the instruction of individual man, then all has a moral tone for you.... In the writings of the New Testament, saving when it pleased the Lord Jesus and his Apostles to speak in parables, as Christ often does in the Gospels, and St. John throughout in the Revelation, all the rest of the discourse, in which either the Saviour teaches his disciples more plainly, or the disciples instruct the churches, has the sense that appears on the surface. Nor is one thing said and another meant, but the very thing is meant which is said, and the sense is wholly literal. Still, inasmuch as the church of God is figurative, conceive always an anagoge in what you hear in the doctrines of the church, the meaning of which will not cease till the figure has become the truth. From this moreover conclude, that where the literal sense is, then the allegorical sense is not always along with it; but, on the other hand, that where there is the allegorical sense, the literal sense is always underlying it.’—Colet’s abstract of the Eccl. Hier., Mr. Lupton’s translation, pp. 105-107; and see Mr. Lupton’s note on this passage.
213 Summa, pt. i. quest. 1, article x. Conclusio.
214 Eras. Op. v. pp. 1291 to 1294. This reply of Colet to the long letter of Erasmus does not seem to have been published in the early editions of the latter. Thus I do not find it in the editions of Schurerius, Argent. 1516, and again 1517. The earliest print of it that I have seen is that appended to the Enchiridion, &c. Basle, 1518.
215 Eras. Op. iii. Epist. lxv. Erasmus Fausto Andrelino, 1521 ed. p. 260.
216 ‘Torquatis istis aulicis.’—Eras. Op. v. p. 126, E.
217 Colet’s letter to Erasmus has been lost, but the above may be gathered from the reply of Erasmus.
218 Eras. Op. v. p. 1263.
219 It is possible that Colet himself had, at one time, thought of expounding the book of Genesis, but the manuscript letters to Radulphus appended to the copy of the MS. on the ‘Romans,’ in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, contain no allusion to any such intention.
220 Probably De la Pole. See Mr. Gairdner’s Letters and Papers, &c. of Richard III. and Henry VII. vol. i. p. 129, and vol. ii. preface, p. xl; and appendix, p. 377; where Mr. Gairdner mentions under date, 20th Aug. 14 Henry VII. (1499) a ‘Proclamation, against leaving the kingdom without license,’ and adds ‘N.B. clearly in consequence of the flight of Edmund De la Pole.’ If this prohibition extended through December, it fixes the date of this letter as written in the winter of 1499-1500.
221 Eras. Op. v. p. 1263. This letter is generally found prefixed to the various editions of the Disputatiuncula de Tædio Christi. And this is often appended to editions of the Enchiridion.
222 Epist. lxiv. Erasmus to Mountjoy, and also see Epist. xlii.
223 Eras. Op. iii. p. 26, E. Epist. xxix.
224 The fact that Erasmus saw Prince Edmund fixes the date of his departure from England to 1500, instead of 1499. He left England 27th Jan., and it could not be in 1499, for Prince Edmund was not born till Feb. 21, 1499.
225 See the mention of this incident in Erasmus’s letter to Botzhem, printed as Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Roterdami Lucubrationum, ipso Autore, 1523, Basil, fol. a. 6, and reprinted by Jortin, app. 418, 419.
226 For the verses see Eras. Op. i. p. 1215.
227 See Ep. xcii. and lxxxi.
228 ‘He [Tyndale] was born (about 1484) about the borders of Wales, and brought up from a child in the University of Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as specially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted; insomuch that he, lying there in Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College, some parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures.’—Quoted from Foxe in the biographical notice of William Tyndale, prefixed to his Doctrinal Treatises, p. xiv, Parker Society, 1848. Magdalen College is supposed to have been the college in which Colet resided at Oxford; as, according to Wood, some of the name of Colet are mentioned in the records, though not John Colet himself.
229 ‘How many years did he (Colet) following the example of St. Paul, teach the people without reward!’—Eras. Epist. cccclxxxi. Eras. Op. iii. p. 532, E.
230 In Colet’s epitaph it is stated ‘administravit 16;’ as he died in 1519, this will bring the commencement of his administration to 1504, at latest. See also the note in the Appendix on Colet’s preferments.
231 Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, p. 184.
232 Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, C.
233 Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, D.
234 Ibid. E. and F.
235 Walter Stone, LL.D., was admitted to the vicarage of Stepney, void by the resignation of D. Colet, Sept. 21, 1505.—Kennett’s MSS. vol. xliv. f. 234 b (Lansdowne, 978). He seems to have retained his rectory of Denyngton.
236 Eras. Op. iii. p. 465, E.
237 Ibid. E. and F.
238 Grocyn and Linacre had also removed to London. More was already there.
239 ‘Impense delectabatur amicorum colloquiis quæ sæpe differebat in multam noctem. Sed omnisillius sermo, aut de literis erat, aut de Christo.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 457. A.
240 Eras. Op. iii. p. 459, F.
241 Ibid. p. 457, A.
242 Ibid. p. 459, F.
243 Ibid. p. 456, E.
244 ‘Porro in suo templo non sumebat sibi carptim argumentum ex Evangelio aut ex epistolis Apostolicis sed unum aliquod argumentum proponebat, quod diversis concionibus ad finem usque prosequebatur: puta Evangelium Matthæi, Symbolum Fidei, Precationem Dominicam.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, D, E.
245 Grocyn was apparently rector of this parish up to 1517, when he vacated it.—Wood’s Ath. Oxon. p. 32.
246 Stapleton, p. 160.
247 Roper, Singer’s ed. 1822, p. 5.
248 Rot. Parl. vi. 521, B.
249 12 Henry VII. c. 12, also Rot. Parl. vi. p. 514.
250 12 Henry VII. c. 13.
251 See 3 Edward I. c. 36, and 25 Edward III. s. 5, c. 11.
252 Roper, p. 7.
253 Possibly, ‘our trusty and right well-beloved knight and counseller,’ Sir William Tyler, who had so often partaken of the royal bounty, being made ‘Controller of Works,’ ‘Messenger of Exchequer,’ ‘Receiver of certain Lordships,’ &c. &c. (see Rot. Parl. vi. 341, 378 b, 404 b, 497 b), and who was remembered for good in chap. 35 of this very Parliament.
254 A fifteenth of the three estates was estimated by the Venetian ambassador, in 1500, to produce 37,930l.—See Italian Relation of England, Camden Soc. p. 52. The amount of a ‘fifteenth’ was fixed in 1334, by 8 Ed. III. Blackstone (vol. i. p. 310) states that the amount was fixed at about 29,000l. This was probably the amount, exclusive of the quota derived from the estates of the clergy, which latter was estimated at 12,000l. by the Venetian ambassador in 1500. This being added would raise Blackstone’s estimate to 41,000l. in all. From this, however, about 4,000l. was always excused to ‘poor towns, cities, &c.,’ so that the nett actual amount would be about 37,000l. according to Blackstone, which agrees well with the Venetian estimate.
255 19 Henry VII. c. 32, Jan. 25, 1503, Rot. Parl. vi. 532-542. In lieu of two reasonable aids, one for making a knight of Prince Arthur deceased, and the other of marriage of Princess Margaret to the King of Scots, and also great expenses in wars, the Commons grant 40,000l. less 10,000l. remitted, ‘of his more ample grace and pity, for that the poraill of his comens should not in anywise be contributory or chargeable to any part of the said sum of 40,000l.’ The 30,000l. to be paid by the shires in the sums stated, and to the payment every person to be liable having lands, &c. to the yearly value of 20s. of free charter lands, or of 26s. 8d. of lands held at will, or any person having goods or cattalls to the value of x marks or above, not accounting their cattle for their plough nor stuff or implement of household.
256 John More was one of the commissioners for Herts.
257 This story is told in substantially the same form in the manuscript life of More by Harpsfield, written in the time of Queen Mary, and dedicated to William Roper.—Harleian MSS. No. 6253, fol. 4.
258 ‘Meditabatur adolescens sacerdotium cum suo Lilio.’—Stapleton, Tres Thomæ, ed. 1588, p. 18, ed. 1612, p. 161. See also Roper, pp. 5, 6.
259 Stapleton and Roper, ubi supra.
260 Richard Whitford himself, retiring soon after from public life, entered the monastery called ‘Sion,’ near Brentford in Middlesex, and wrote books, in which he styled himself ‘the wretch of Sion.’ See Roper, p. 8, and Knight’s Life of Erasmus, p. 64.
261 Stapleton, ed. 1588, p. 20, ed. 1612, p. 163.
262 That this letter was written in 1504 is evident. First, it cannot well have been written before Colet had commenced his labours at St. Paul’s; secondly, it cannot have been written in Oct. 1505, because it speaks of Colet as still holding the living of Stepney, which he resigned Sept. 21, 1505. Also the whole drift of it leads to the conclusion that More was unmarried when he wrote it. And he married in 1505, according to the register on the Burford picture, which, the correct date of More’s birth having been found and from it the true date of Holbein’s sketch, seems to be amply confirmed by the age there given of More’s eldest daughter, Margaret Roper. She is stated to be twenty-two on the sketch made in 1528, and so was probably born in 1506.
263 Mori Epigrammata: Basle, 1518, p. 6. See the prefatory letter by Beatus Rhenanus.
264 Ibid.
265 See Epigram entitled ‘Gratulatur quod eam repererit Incolumem quam olim ferme Puer amaverat.’—Epigrammata: Basle, 1520, p. 108, and Philomorus, pp. 37-39.
266 ‘From whence [the Tower], the day before he suffered, he sent his shirt of hair, not willing to have it seen, to my wife, his dearly beloved daughter.’—Roper, p. 91.
267 Walter’s Life of More, London, 1840, pp. 7, 8. Cresacre More’s Life of More, pp. 24-26.
268 ‘Maluit igitur maritus esse castus quam sacerdos impurus.’—Erasmus to Hutten: Eras. Op. iii. p. 75, c. Stapelton, 1612 ed. pp. 161, 162. Cresacre More’s Life of More, pp. 25, 26. Even Walter allows that his ‘finding that at that time religious orders in England had somewhat degenerated from their ancient strictness and fervour of spirit,’ was the cause of his ‘altering his mind.’—Walter’s Life of More, p. 8.
269 Sir Thomas More’s Works, pp. 1-34; and see the note on Pico’s religious history, and his connection with Savonarola, above, p. 19.
270 Compare this with the line of argument pursued by Marsilio Ficino in his De Religione Christianâ. Vide supra, p. 11.
271 This remarkable letter was written, ‘Ferrariæ, 15 May, 1492’ (Pici Op. p. 233), scarcely six weeks after Pico’s visit to the deathbed of Lorenzo de Medici.
272 This letter is dated in More’s translation M.cccclxxxxii. from Paris, in mistake for M.cccclxxxvi. from Perugia. See Pici Op. p. 257.
273 See More’s Works, p. 19, in loco, v. 6.
274 Stapleton, ed. 1612, p. 162. Cresacre More’s Life of Sir T. More, p. 27.
275 Sir T. More’s Works, p. 9.
276 There is a copy of this translation of More’s in the British Museum Library. ‘276, c. 27, Pico, &c., 4o, London, 1510.’ This is probably the original edition. More may have waited till Henry VIII.’s accession before daring to publish it.
277 This date of More’s marriage is the date given in the register contained on the Burford family picture; and as it is in no way dependent on the other dates, probably it rested upon some family tradition or record. It is confirmed by the age of Margaret Roper on the Basle sketch—22 in 1528. Vide supra, p. 149, n. 1.
278 Cresacre More’s Life of Sir T. More, p. 39.
279 Erasmus Botzhemo: Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Lucubrationum: Basle, 1523.
280 Epist. lxxxi. He arrived at Paris ‘postridie Calend, Februarias’ (p. 73, E.), i.e. Feb. 2, 1500.
281 Epist. iii. This letter is dated in the Leyden edition, 1490, and in the edition of 1521, p. 264, M.LXXXIX. (sic), but it evidently was written shortly after the illness of Erasmus at Paris in the spring of 1500. See also the mention of ‘Arnold’ in Epist. xxix. (Paris, 12 April) and a repetition in it of much that is said in this letter respecting Erasmus’s illness and intention of visiting Italy. See also Epist. dii. App.
282 ‘In Britannico littore pecuniola mea, studiorum meorum alimonia, naufragium fecit.’—Epist. xcii. p. 84 C.
283 ‘Tenuiter.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 73, F. Epist. lxxxi. and see also lxxx.
284 Erasmus to Battus: Epist. xxix. Paris, 12 April, probably in 1500. See also Epist. lxxx. ‘Græscæ literæ animum meum propemodum enecant: verum neque precium datur, neque suppetit, quo libros, aut præceptoris operam redimam. Et dum hæc omnia tumultuor, vix est unde vitam sustineam.’
285 Epist. xciv.
286 Epistolæ xxxvi. lxxvi. lxxi. (20 Nov.), lxxii. (9 Dec.), xciv. xcix. (11 Dec.), lxxiii. (11 Dec.), and lxxiv. seem to belong to this period of flight to Orleans. Epist. xv. and lxxvii. (14 Dec.), lxxviii. (18 Dec.), and xci. (14 Jan.), seem to mark the date of his return to Paris.
287 Epist. xcii. Paris, 27 Jan. 1500 (should be 1501).
288 Epist. xxxix.
289 Epist. ccccvii. App.
290 ‘Nec est in ullo mortalium aliquid solidæ spei, nisi in uno Batto.’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 48, C. Epist. liii.
291 Epist. xxx. 2 July [1501] seems to be the first letter written from St. Omer, where Erasmus was then staying with the Abbot. See also Epist. xxxix., where he speaks of having been terrified at Paris with the numbers of funerals. On 12 July and 18 July he writes Epist. liv.-lviii. (‘Tornaco’ evidently meaning the castle of Tornahens). Epist. lix. also was written about the same time. Epist. xcviii. 30 July, if written by Erasmus, shows he was still at St. Omer. All these letters seem to belong to the year 1501.
292 Eras. Op. iii. p. 52, E. Epist. lix.
293 Epist. lxii.
294 Erasmus to Botzhem: Catalogus Omnium Erasmi Lucubrationum: Basle, 1523, leaf b, 4.
295 Erasmus to Justus Jonas: Epist. ccccxxxv.
296 ‘Ea quum placerent etiam eruditis, præsertim Ioanni Viterio Franciscano cujus erat in illis regionibus autoritas summa.’—Letter to Botzhem, leaf b, 4. There can be no doubt that the John Viterius mentioned in this letter is the same person as the Vitrarius of the letter to Justus Jonas. See also Mr. Lupton’s introduction to his translation of Colet on Dionysius.
297 Eras. Epist. clxxiii.
298 Ibid. xciv.
299 Lucubratiunculæ aliquot Erasmi: Antwerp, 1503. Biogr. de Thierry Martins: par A. F. Van Iseghem: Alost, 1852, 8vo. See also Letter to Botzhem (Catalogus, &c.), fol. b, 4.
300 It is very difficult to fix the true dates of these letters, and to ascertain to what year they belong. Epist. ccccxlvi. App., from Louvain, mentions the death of Battus, and that the Marchioness of Vere had married below her. He speaks of himself as buried in Greek studies.
301 Eras. Op. iii. p. 94. Epist. cii. Dated 1504, but should be probably 1505.
302 See Erasmus Edmundo: Epist xcvi. ‘ex arce Courtemburnensi.’
303 The Panegyric upon Philip, King of Spain, on his return to the Netherlands. See Epist. ccccxlv. App. Erasmus Gulielmo Goudano.
304 More literally ‘The Pocket Dagger of the Christian Soldier.’ But Erasmus himself regarded it as a ‘Handybook.’ See Enchiridion, ch. viii. English ed. 1522. ‘We must haste to that which remaineth lest it should not be an “Enchiridion,” that is to say “a lytell treatyse hansome to be caryed in a man’s hande,” but rather a great volume.’
305 See especially chap. ii. Allegoria de Manna, Eras. Op. v. fol. 6-10, &c.
306 It is evident that Erasmus had not yet appreciated as fully as he did afterwards the historical method which Colet had applied to St. Paul’s Epistles to get at their real meaning and ‘spirit.’
307 Alfonso Fernandez, Archdeacon of Alcor, to Erasmus: Palencia, Nov. 27, 1527. Life and Writings of Juan de Valdès, by Benjamin Wiffen: London, Quaritch, 1865, p. 41.
308 The above is an abridged translation from the Enchiridion, ed. Argent. June, 1516, pp. 7, 8, which, being published before the Lutheran controversy commenced, is probably a reprint of the earlier editions. The editions of 1515 are the earliest that I have seen.
309 This letter was republished in the edition of some letters of Erasmus printed at Basle, 1521, p. 221, and see also Eras. Op. iii. Epist. ciii.
310 Letter to Fox, Bishop of Winchester. London, Cal. Jan. 1506. Eras. Op. i. p. 214.
311 Erasmus’s letter to Botzhem, Catalogus, &c. Basle, 1523, leaf b, 3.
312 Eras. Op. iii. p. 475, D.
313 The epigrams have no dates, and it is impossible, therefore, to say positively which of them were written during this period. The following translation of one of them from Cayley’s Life of Sir Thomas More, vol. i. p. 270 (with this reservation as to its date), may be taken as a sample:—
A squall arose; the vessel’s tossed;
The sailors fear their lives are lost.
‘Our sins, our sins,’ dismayed they cry,
‘Have wrought this fatal destiny!’
A monk it chanced was of the crew,
And round him to confess they drew.
Yet still the restless ship is tossed,
And still they fear their lives are lost.
One sailor, keener than the rest,
Cries, ‘With our sins she’s still oppress’d;
Heave out that monk, who bears them all,
And then full well she’ll ride the squall.’
So said, so done; with one accord
They threw the caitiff overboard.
And now the bark before the gale
Scuds with light hull and easy sail.
Learn hence the weight of sin to know,
With which a ship could scarcely go.
[For the Latin, see Epigrammata Thomæ Mori, Basilæ, 1520, pp. 72, 73.]
314 E. g.:—
‘T. Mori in Avarum.’
‘Dives Avarus Pauper est.’
‘Sola Mors Tyrannicida est.’
‘Quid inter Tyrannum et Principem.’
‘Sollicitam esse Tyranni Vitam.’
‘Bonum Principem esse Patrem non Dominum.’
‘De bono Rege et Populo.’
‘De Principe bono et malo.’
‘Regem non satellitium sed virtus reddit tutum.’
‘Populus consentiens regnum dat et aufert.’
‘Quis optimus reipub. status.’
315 Alluding to this time, Erasmus spoke of More as ‘Tum studiorum sodali.’—Letter to Botzhem, 1523, leaf b, 3.
316 See letter of Erasmus to Richard Whitford, Eras. Op. i. p. 265, dated May, ex rure (1506).
317 Lucian’s dialogue called Somnium he sent to Dr. Christopher Urswick, a well-known statesman (Eras. Op. i. p. 243); Toxaris, sive de Amicitiâ, to Fox, Bishop of Winchester (Ibid. p. 214); Timon to Dr. Ruthall, afterwards Bishop of Durham (Ibid. p. 255); De Tyrannicidâ, to Dr. Whitford, chaplain to Fox (Ibid. p. 267).
318 See an amusing account of this visit to Lambeth Palace in the letter to Botzhem (Catalogus, leaf a, 5); also Knight’s Life of Erasmus, p. 83.
319 See Knight’s Life of Erasmus, pp. 96-101. Adagia. Op. ii. 554. Epist. dccclxxiv. and dccccliii.
320 Eras. Op. iii. Epist. civ.
321 Epist. cv.
322 See his Colloquy, Diversoria.
323 Eras. Op. iv. p. 755. Erasmus to Botzhem, leaf a, 4.
324 Luther visited Rome in 1510, or a year or two later. Luther’s Briefe, De Wette, 1. xxi.
325 ‘Nullum enim annum vixi insuavius!’—Erasmus to Botzhem, leaf a, 4.
326 Eras. Ep. cccclxxxvi. App.
327 Epist. cccclxxxvii. App.
328 Eras. to Botzhem, leaf b, 8.
329 Mountjoy to Erasmus, Epist. x., dated May 27, 1497, but should be 1509.
330 It is difficult to fix the date of the arrival of Erasmus in England. He was at Venice in the autumn of 1508. (See the Aldine edition of his Adagia, dated Sept. 1508.) After this he wintered at Padua (see Vita Erasmi, prefixed to Eras. Op. i.); and after this went to Rome (ibid.). This brings the chronology to the spring of 1509. In April, 1509, Henry VIII. ascended the English throne. On May 27, 1509, Lord Mountjoy wrote to Erasmus, who seems to have been then at Rome, pressing him to come back to England (Eras. Epist. x., the date of which is fixed by its contents).
The letter prefixed to the Praise of Folly is dated ex rure, ‘quinto Idas Junias,’ and states that the book is the result of his meditations during his long journeys on horseback on his way from Italy to England. This letter must have been dated June 9, 1510, at earliest, or 1511, at latest. 1510 is the probable date (see infra, note at p. 204). The later editions of the Praise of Folly put the year 1508 to this letter; but the edition of August, 1511 (Argent.) gives no year, nor does the Basle edition of 1519, to which the notes of Lystrius were appended. So that the printed date is of no authority, and it is entirely inconsistent with the history of the book as given by Erasmus. The first edition, printed by Gourmont, at Paris, I have not seen, but, according to Brunet, it has no date. In the absence of direct proof, it is probable on the whole that Erasmus returned to England between the autumn of 1509 and June, 1510.
331 See the letter to More prefixed to the Praise of Folly.
332 Roper, p. 9.
333 See More’s letter to Dorpius, in which he mentions this visit.
334 Roper, p. 6.
335 Hall, ed. 1548, fol. lix.
336 Epigrammata Mori: Basil, 1520, p. 17.
337 Johnson’s Life of Linacre, pp. 179 et seq.
338 Vide infra, p. 380.
339 Stapleton, 1588 ed. pp. 26, 27.
340 Roper, p. 9.
341 More’s son John—nineteen in 1528, according to Holbein’s sketch—was probably born in 1509. More’s three daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cicely, were all older.
342 See the letter of Erasmus to Botzhem, ed. Basle, 1523, leaf b, 3, and Jortin, App. 428. Also Erasmi ad Dorpium Apologia, Louvain, 1515, leaf F, iv.
343 Argent. 1511, leaf D, iii., where occurs the marginal reading, ‘Indulgentias taxat.’
344 Argent. 1511, E, 8, and Eras. Op. iv. p. 457.
345 Argent. 1511, leaf E, viii., and Eras. Op. iv. p. 462.
346 Argent, 1511, leaf F, and Eras. Op. iv. p. 465.
347 Argent. 1511, leaf F, and Eras. Op. iv. p. 465.
348 Basle, 1519, p. 178 et seq., and Eras. Op. ix. pp. 466 et seq.
349 Basle, 1519, p. 181.
350 Basle, 1519, p. 183, and Eras. Op. iv. p. 468.
351 Basle, 1519, p. 183, and Argent. 1511, leaf F; which contains, however, only part of this paragraph.
352 Basle, 1519, p. 185. Argent. 1511, leaf F, ii., and Eras. Op. iv. p. 469.
353 Basle, 1519, pp. 185 and 186.
354 Ibid. p. 180.
355 This paragraph is not inserted in the edition Argent. 1511, but appears in the Basle edition, 1519, p. 192, and Eras. Op. iv. pp. 473, 474.
356 Argent. 1511, leaf F, viii. and Eras. Op. iv. p. 479.
357 Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, chap. ii. s. 1.
358 Erasmus Buslidiano: Bononiæ, 15 Cal. Dec. 1506, Eras. Op. i. p. 311.
359 Argent. 1511, leaf G, iii. Eras. Op. iv. p. 484.
360 Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, chap. ii. s. 1 (abridged quotation).
361 Moriæ Encomium: Argent. M.DXI. leaf G, iii. This edition contains all the above passages on Popes, and was published during the lifetime of Julius II., as he did not die till the spring of 1513.
362 Erasmus writes: ‘It was sent over into France by the arrangement of those at whose instigation it was written, and there printed from a copy not only full of mistakes, but even incomplete. Upon this within a few months it was reprinted more than seven times in different places.’—Erasmi ad Dorpium Apologia, Louvain, 1515.
See also Erasmus to Botzhem, where Erasmus says ‘Aderam Lutetiæ quum per Ricardum Crocum pessimis formulis depravatissime excuderetur.’ (First edition of this letter: Basle, 1523; leaf b, 4.) In the copy fixed to Eras. Op. i. ‘nescio quos’ is substituted for ‘Ricardum Crocum,’ who was not the printer, but the friend of More who got it published. (See Erasmus to Colet, Epist. cxlix. Sept. 13, 1511 (wrongly dated 1513), where Erasmus says of Crocus, ‘qui nunc Parisiis dat operam bonis literis.’ Erasmus was at Paris in April 1511. (See Epistolæ clxix., cx., and clxxv. taken in connection with each other.)) In a catalogue of the works of Erasmus (a copy of which is in the British Museum Library), entitled Lucubrationum Erasmi Roterodami Index, and printed by Froben, at Basle, in 1519, it is stated that the Moriæ Encomium was ‘sæpius excusum, primum Lutetiæ per Gormontium, deinde Argentorati per Schurerium,’ &c. The latter edition is the earliest which I have been able to procure, and it is dated ‘mense Augusti M.DXI.’ But the date of the first edition printed at Paris by Gourmont I have not been able to fix certainly. According to Brunet, it had no date attached.
After staying at More’s house, and there writing the book itself, he may have added the prefatory letter ‘Quinto Idus Junias,’ 1510, ‘ex rure,’ whilst spending a few months with Lord Mountjoy, as we learn he did from a letter to Servatius from ‘London from the Bishop’s house’ (Brewer, No. 1418, Epist. cccclxxxv., under date 1510), it is most probable that in 1511 Erasmus paid a visit to Paris, being at Dover 10 April, 1511; at Paris 27 April (see Epistolæ clxix., cx., and clxxv.); and thus was there when the first edition was printed. His letters from Cambridge do not seem to begin till Aug. 1511. See Brewer, Nos. 1842, Epist. cxvi.; and 1849, Epist. cxviii. No. 1652 belongs, I think, to 1513. Possibly No. 1842, Epist. cxvi., belongs to a later date; and, if so, No. 1849, Epist. cxviii., may be the first of his Cambridge letters, and with this its contents would well agree.
363 Brewer, No. 1418. Eras. Epist. App. cccclxxxv., and see cccclxxxiv., dated 1 April, London.
364 Brewer, No. 1478. Eras. Epist. cix. 6, Id. Feb., and it seems, in March 1511, Warham gave him a pension out of the rectory of Aldington. Knight, p. 155.
365 Brewer, No. 4427.
366 ‘A right fruitfull Admonition concerning the Order of a good Christian Man’s Life, very profitable for all manner of Estates, &c., made by the famous Doctour Colete sometime Deane of Paules. Imprinted at London for Gabriell Cawood, 1577.’—Brit. Museum Library.
367 In Sept. 1505. Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 265, and n. a.
368 ‘Insumpto patrimonio universo vivus etiam ac superstes solidam hæreditatem cessi,’ &c. Letter of Colet to Lilly, dated 1513, prefixed to the several editions of De Octo Orationis Partibus, &c.
369 The number of the ‘miraculous draught of fishes.’
370 Statutes of St. Paul’s School. Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 364. See also the letter from Colet to Lilly, prefixed to the Rudiments of Grammar, 1510. Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 124, n. r.
371 Eras. Op. iii. p. 457, c.
372 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 109.
373 Brewer’s Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII., vol. i. No. 1076, under date June 6, 1510.
374 Compare licenses mentioned in Brewer’s Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII. (vol. i. Nos. 1076, 3900, and 4659), with documents given in Knight’s Life of Colet, Miscellanies, No. v. and No. iii.
375 ‘De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis.’—Eras. Op. i. p. 505.
376 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 175, and copied from him by Jortin, vol. i. pp. 169, 170.
377 Take the following examples: ‘Revere thy elders. Obey thy superiors. Be a fellow to thine equals. Be benign and loving to thy inferiors. Be always well occupied. Lose no time. Wash clean. Be no sluggard. Learn diligently. Teach what thou hast learned lovingly.’—Colet’s Precepts of Living for the Use of his School. Knight’s Life of Colet. Miscellanies, No. xi.
378 Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, D.
379 This epigram and the above-mentioned prefaces are inserted by Knight in his Life of Colet (Miscellanies, No. xiii.), and were taken by him from what he calls Grammatices Rudimenta, London, M.DXXXIIII. in ‘Bibl. publ. Cantabr. inter MS. Reg.’ But see note 1 on the next page. They were in the preface to Colet’s Accidence.
380 See also the characteristic letter from Colet to Lilly, prefixed to the Syntax. The editions of 1513, 1517, and 1524 are entitled, Absolutissimus de Octo Orationis Partium Constructione Libellus. The Accidence was entitled, Coleti Editio unà cum quibusdam, &c.
381 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 126.
382 Eras. Epist. cxlix. Erasmus to Colet, Sept. 13, 1513 (Brewer, i. 4447), but should be 1511. See 4528 (Eras. Epist. cl.), which mentions the De Copiâ being in hand, which was printed in May 1512. (?)
383 De Ratione Studii Commentariolus: Argent. 1512, mense Julio, and printed again with additions, Argent. 1514, mense Augusto. The above translation is greatly abridged.
384 Eras. Epist. App. iv.
385 In 4 Henry VIII. (1513) Lord Chancellor Warham received 100 marks salary, and 100 marks for commons of himself and clerk—200 marks, or 133l. Brewer, i. Introduction, cviii. note (3).
386 Prefatory Letter of Beatus Rhenanus, prefixed to the edition of More’s Epigrammata, printed at Basle, 1518 and 1520.
387 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 370. Miscellanies, No. vi.
388 ‘Recte instituendæ pubis artifex.’ Preface of Erasmus to De Octo Orationis Partium Constructione, etc. Basle, 1517.
389 Colet to Erasmus, Sept. 1511, not 1513 (Brewer, No. 4448), for the same reason as Nos. 4447 and 4528.
390 Eras. Epist. cl. Brewer, p. 458. Dated October 29, 1513, but, as it mentions the De Copiâ being in hand, it must have been written in 1511.
391 John Ritwyse, or Rightwyse.
392 ‘Moreover, that Thomas Geffrey caused this John Butler divers Sundays to go to London to hear Dr. Colet.’—Foxe, ed. 1597, p. 756.
393 Ibid. p. 1162.
394 William Sweeting and John Brewster, on October 18, 1511.—Foxe, ed. 1597, p. 756.
395 Eras. Epist. cxxvii. Brewer, i. No. 1948.
396 Brewer, i. p. 2004.
397 Ibid. i. Introduction.
398 Brewer, i. p. 4312. Warham to Henry VIII.—a document referring to this convocation as held at St. Paul’s from Feb. 6, 1511 (i.e. 1512) to Dec. 17 following. This document is in many places wholly illegible, but these words are visible: ‘concessimus... [pro defensione ecclesiæ] Anglicanæ et hujus inclyti regni vestri Angliæ; necnon ad sedandum et extirpandum hereses et schismata in universali ecclesia quæ his diebus plus solito pullulant.’
399 That Colet preached in English, see the remark of Erasmus that he had studied English authors in order to polish his style and to prepare himself for preaching the gospel.—Eras. Op. iii. p. 456, B. It may also be inferred from the Lollards going to hear his sermons. In his rules for his school he directed that the chaplain should instruct the children in the Catechism and the Articles of the faith and the Ten Commandments in English.—Knight’s Life of Colet. Miscellanies, Num. v. p. 361.
400 Tyndale, p. 168 (Parker Society).
401 Eras. Op. iii. p. 460, D.
402 Erasmus to Werner: Eras. Ep. Lond. ed. lib. xxxi. Ep. 23. The person alluded to in this letter was clearly not James Stanley, as has sometimes been assumed.
403 Cooper’s Athenæ Cantab. p. 16. Also Philomorus, Lond. Pickering, 1842, pp. 55-57, and Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, p. 70.
404 Epigram ‘In Posthumum Episcopum.’
405 Epigram ‘In Episcopum illiteratum, de quo ante Epigramma est sub nomine Posthumi.’ There is no reason, I think, to conclude that More’s satire was directed in these epigrams against the Bishop of Ely. There may have been plenty of Scotists whom the cap might fit as well, or better. In the same year that Stanley was made Bishop of Ely, Fitzjames was made Bishop of London. The late Dean Milman (Annals of St. Paul’s, p. 120) shows, however, that Fitzjames was not unlearned, as he had been Warden of Merton and Vice-chancellor of Oxford.
406 Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, p. 298; and Knight’s Life of Erasmus, p. 229.
407 Brewer, i. 4312.
408 A ‘tenth,’ of the clergy, produced in 1500 about 12,000l. See Italian Relation of England, C. S. p. 52. Four-tenths would be equal to about half a million sterling in present money.
‘If the King should go to war, he... immediately compels the clergy to pay him one, two, or three fifteenths or tenths... and more if the urgency of the war should require it.’—Ibid. p. 52.
409 ‘Senex quidam theologus et imprimis severus.’—Erasmi Annotationes, edit. 1519, p. 489; and edit. 1522, p. 558. ‘Senex quidam severus et vel supercilio teste theologus, magno stomacho, respondit.’—Erasmi Moriæ Encomium, Basle, 1519, p. 225.
410 See note of Erasmus in his ‘Annotationes,’ in loco Titus iii. 10; also the Praise of Folly, where the story is told in connection with further particulars. The exact coincidence between the two accounts of the old divine’s construction of Titus iii. 10 leads to the conclusion that the rest of the story, as given in the Praise of Folly, may also very probably be literally true. Knight, in his Life of Colet, concludes that as the story is told in the Praise of Folly, the incident must have occurred in a previous convocation, as this satire was written before 1512.—Knight, pp. 199, 200. But the story is not inserted in the editions of 1511 and of 1515, whilst it is inserted in the Basle edition of the Encomium Moriæ, November 12, 1519, published just after Colet’s death (p. 226). Nor is the first part of the story relating to Titus iii. 10 to be found in the first edition of the Annotationes (1516). The story is first told by Erasmus in the second edition (1519), published just before Colet’s death, and then without any mention of Colet’s name; the latter being possibly omitted lest, as Bishop Fitzjames was still living, its mention should be dangerous to Colet. It was not till the third edition was published (in 1522), when both Colet and Colet’s persecutor were dead, that Erasmus added the words, ‘Id, ne quis suspicetur meum esse commentum, accepi ex Johanne Coleto, viro spectatæ integritatis, quo præsidente res acta est.’—Annotationes, 3rd ed. 1522, p. 558.
411 Praise of Folly, 1519, p. 226.
412 There is an old English translation given by Knight in his Life of Colet (pp. 289-308), printed by ‘Thomas Berthelet, regius impressor,’ and without date. Pynson was the King’s printer in 1512 (Brewer, i. p. 1030), and accordingly he printed the Latin edition of 1511, i.e. 1512.—Knight, p. 271. Knight speaks of the old English version as ‘written probably by the Dean himself,’ but he gives no evidence in support of his conjecture.—See Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 199.
413 ‘Neque valde miror si clarissimæ scholæ tuæ rumpantur invidia. Vident enim uti ex equo Trojano prodierunt Græci, qui barbaram diruere Trojam, sic è tuâ prodire scholâ qui ipsorum arguunt atque subvertunt inscitiam.’—Stapleton’s Tres Thomæ, p. 166, ed. 1612; p. 23, ed. 1588.
414 Brewer, vol. ii. No. 3190. The true date, 1512, is clearly fixed by the allusion to the ‘De Copia,’ &c.—Eras. Epist. App. ccccvi.
415 Dated ‘M.DXII. iii. Kal. Maias: Londini.’
416 The first edition was printed at Paris by Badius. Another was printed by Schurerius (Argentorat.), January 1513. And, in Oct. 1514, Erasmus sent to Schurerius a revised copy for publication.
417 Eras. Op. iii. p. 460, D and E.
418 Ibid. p. 460, E.
419 3 Tyndale, p. 168 (Parker Society).
420 ‘The Seven Peticyons of the Paternoster, by Joan Colet, Deane of Paules,’ inserted in the collection of Prayer entitled ‘Horæ beate Marie Virginis secundum usum Sarum totaliter ad longum.’—Knight’s Life of Colet, App. Miscellanies, No. xii. p. 450.
421 Eras. Epist. cvii. Brewer, No. 3495, under date 1st Nov. 1512.
422 Eras. Epist. cxxviii. and cxvi.
423 ‘Written by Master Thomas More, then one of the undersheriffs of London, about the year 1513.’—More’s English Works, p. 35.
424 ‘Morus noster melitissimus, cum sua facillima conjuge... et liberis ac universa familia pulcherrime valet.’—Ammonius to Erasmus: Epist. clxxv. This letter, dated May 19, 1515, evidently belongs to an earlier date. It is apparently in reply to Epist. cx. dated April 27, from Paris, and written by Erasmus during his stay there in 1511.
425 The date of the death of More’s first wife it is not easy exactly to fix. Cresacre More says, ‘His wife Jane, as long as she lived, which was but some six years, brought unto him almost every year a child.’—Life of Sir T. More, p. 40. This would bring her death to 1511, or 1512.
426 Philomorus, p. 71.
427 See Brewer, i. preface p. xl et seq., and authorities there cited.
428 ‘In Brixium Germanum falsa scribentem de Chordigera.’ ‘In eundem: Versus excerpti e Chordigera Brixii;’ ‘Postea de eadem Chordigera;’ ‘Epigramma Mori alludens ad versus superiores: Aliud de eodem,’ &c.—Mori Epigrammata.
429 See the several epigrams relating to Brixius in Mori Epigrammata. For the wearisome correspondence which resulted from the publication of these epigrams and the ‘Antimorus’ of Brixius in reply, see Eras. Op. iii., index under the head ‘Brixius (Germanus).’ See also Philomorus, p. 71.
430 Eras. Op. iii. pp. 460, 461. See also ‘Richardi Pacei... de Fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur, liber.’ Basle, 1517, Oct. And Cresacre More’s Life of More, App.
431 Brewer, i. 3723.
432 Ibid. 3752, 3821.
433 Ibid. 3809.
434 Brewer, i. xlvii, and No. 3820. Edward Lord Howard to Henry VIII.
435 Eras. Op. iii. p. 461. Compare Enchiridion, ‘Canon VI.’
436 Colet, and Erasmus, and More, notwithstanding their very severe condemnation of the wars of the period, and wars in general, never went so far as to lay down the doctrine, that ‘All War is unlawful to the Christian.’
437 Eras. Op. iii. p. 461, A, E.
438 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 207, note quoted from Antiq. Britann., Sub. Wil. Warham, ed. Han. p. 306.
439 Brewer, Nic. West to Henry VIII. 3838.
440 Brewer, i. 3780.
441 Ibid. 3857. Sir E. Howard to Wolsey.
442 Henry VIII. to Cardinal Bainbridge. Brewer, i. 3876.
443 Brewer, i. 3876.
444 Ibid. 3903, Sir E. Howard to Henry VIII.
445 Ibid. 4005, Echyngham to Wolsey.
446 Brewer, i. 4019, Thomas Lord Howard to Wolsey; 4020, Thomas Lord Howard to Henry VIII.
447 Ibid. 4055, Henry VIII. to his ambassadors in Arragon.
448 Ibid. 4075, Fox to Wolsey.
449 Ibid. 3977, 5761.
450 Eras. Epist. cxix. Brewer, i. 4427, Erasmus to Ammonius.
451 Erasmi Epigrammata: Basle, 1518, p. 353; and Eras. Op. i. p. 1224, F.
452 De Deditione Nerviæ, Mori Epigrammata: Basle, 1518, p. 263, and ed. 1522, p. 98.
453 For the particulars mentioned in this section, it will be seen how much I am indebted to Mr. Brewer. See vol. i. of his Calendar, preface pp. l-lv, in addition to the particular authorities cited.
454 Eras. Epist. cxiv. Brewer, i. 1652.
455 See mention of Aldridge in Eras. Epist. dcclxxxii.
456 Compendium Vitæ Erasmi: Eras. Op. i. preface.
457 Eras. Epist. cxvii. Brewer, i. 1847.
458 Eras. Epist. cxv. Brewer, i. 4336. The allusion to the ‘De Copia’ (printed in May 1512) fixes the date.
459 Eras. Epist. cxxix. Brewer, i. 4576. See also Brewer, i. 2013, which belongs to the same autumn. Epist. cxli.
460 From the letters referred to by Brewer, i. p. 963, Nos. 5731 (Eras. Epist. clxv.), 5732, 5733, and 5734, it would seem that he had undertaken the education of a boy to whom he had been ‘more than a father.’ This does not prove that he was in the habit at Cambridge of taking private pupils, as possibly this boy was placed under his care somewhat in the same way as More had been placed with Cardinal Morton.
461 See Eras. Epist. cl. Brewer, i. 4528.
462 Eras. Epist. cxix. Brewer, i. 4427.
463 Brewer, i. 4428.
464 Eras. Epist. cxxxi. Brewer, i. 2001, under the date 1511. The allusion to the King of Scots, as well as the passage quoted, fix the date 1513. See also Eras. Epist. cxxix. Brewer, i. 4576.
465 Eras. Epist. cxxxi. Brewer, i. 2001.
466 5 Henry VIII. c. i.
467 Brewer, i. 4819. Notes of a speech in this parliament.
468 Eras. Epist. cxliv.
469 Compare More’s Epigrams, headed: ‘Populus consentiens Regnum dat et aufert,’ and ‘Bonum Principem esse patrem non dominum.’
470 Eras. Epist. cxliv. and published among ‘Auctarium Selectarum aliquot Epistolarum Erasmi,’ &c. Basil, 1518, p. 62. The above extracts are abridged in the translation.
471 Eras. Epist. cxliii.
472 Eras. Germano Brixio: Eras. Epist. mccxxxix.
473 Brewer, i. 4845, 5173, and 4727.
474 Eras. Epist. cxv. Eras. Op. iii. p. 107, D. Brewer, i. 4336.
475 Eras. Epist. cxv. Eras. Op. iii. p. 106, E and F.
476 Eras. Epist. cxv.
477 Eras. Op. iii. p. 785, A.
478 Eras. Op. iii. p. 785, A, C.
479 Ibid. p. 457, A. See also Eras. Epist. viii. App.
480 The companion of Erasmus was, according to the ‘Colloquy,’ ‘Gratianus Pullus, an Englishman, learned and pious, but with less liking for this part of religion than I could wish.’ ‘A Wickliffite, I fancy!’ suggested the other spokesman in the ‘Colloquy.’ ‘I do not think so’ (was the reply), ‘although he had read his books, somewhere or other.’—Colloquia: Basle, 1526, p. 597. In his letter to Justus Jonas, Erasmus mentions that Colet was in the habit of reading heretical books.—Eras. Op. iii. p. 460, A. It has been suggested also (Pilgrimages to Walsingham, &c. by J. G. Nichols, F.S.A. Westminster, 1849, p. 127), that as in the same letter he describes Colet as wearing black vestments (pullis vestibus), instead of the usual purple (Eras. Op. iii. p. 457, B.), hence the name ‘Pullus’ may in itself point to Colet. There is also an allusion by Erasmus in his treatise, ‘Modus Orandi,’ to his visit to the shrine of St. Thomas-à-Becket, in which he says, ‘Vidi ipse quum ostentarent linteola lacera quibus ille dicitur abstersisse muccum narium, abbatem ac cæteros, qui adstabant, aperto scriniolo venerabundos procidere ad genua, ac manibus etiam sublatis adorationem gestu repræsentare. Ista Joanni Coleto, nam is mecum aderat, videbantur indigna, mihi ferenda videbantur donec se daret opportunitas ea citra tumultum corrigendi.’—Eras. Op. v. p. 1119, F, and p. 1120, A. This allusion to Colet so accurately comports with what is said in the Colloquy of ‘Gratianus Pullus,’ that the one seems most probably suggested only as a nom de plume for the other. I am further indebted to Mr. Lupton for the suggestion that when Ammonius, writing to Erasmus (Epist. clxxv.), says ‘tuus Leucophæus salvere te jubet,’ he alludes to Colet: ‘Leucophæus’ being a Greek form of the same nickname as ‘Pullus’ might be in a Latin form. Mr. Lupton has also shown that ‘Gratian’ is a rendering of ‘John.’ See his introduction to his edition of Colet on the Sacraments of the Church, pp. 6, 7. So that the identification of Colet with the Gratianus Pullus of the Colloquy is now complete.
481 The lazar-house of Harbledown. See Dean Stanley’s Historical Memorials of Canterbury, ed. 1868, p. 243.
482 The colloquy from which the particulars given in this section have been obtained is entitled Peregrinatio Religionis ergo. It was not contained in the edition of 1522 (Argent.), but it was inserted probably in that of 1524 (which, however, I have not seen). It was contained in the Basle edition of 1526, which is probably a reprint of that of 1524, the prefatory letter at the beginning being dated Calen. Aug. 1524.
483 Eras. Ammonio: Eras. Epist. clix.
484 Eras. Epist. App. viii. There is a reference in the letter to Wolsey as ‘Episcopus Lincolniensis,’ and this confirms the correctness of the date, as Wolsey was translated to the Archbishopric of York Aug. 1514.—Fasti Eccl. Anglicanæ, p. 310.
485 Eras. Op. iii. p. 160, A.
486 Eras. Epist. clxxxii. Partly written at Antwerp, but finished at Basle, Aug. 29, 1514.
487 The letter is dated ‘Lovanii, A.D. mdxiiii. Kal. Aug.’
488 ‘Quo viro non alium habet mea quidem sententia Anglorum Imperium vel magis pium, vel qui Christum verius sapiat.’
489 Cato Erasmi. Opuscula aliquot Erasmo Roterodamo Castigatore et Interprete, &c. ‘Colonie in edibus Quentell. A.D. mcccccxv;’ and Ibid. ‘Colonie in edibus Martini Werdenensis xii. Kal. Dec. (1514?)’
490 Coletus Erasmo: Epist. lxxxv. App.
491 Ranke’s History of the Reformation, bk. ii. c. 1. See Erasmus’s mention of Reuchlin in the letter written this autumn to Wimphelingus, appended to the 2nd edition of De Copiâ. Schelestadt, 1514; and Eras. Epist. clxvii. and clxviii. As to his friendship with the Archbishop of Maintz, vide Epist. cccxxxiv.
492 See letter to Wimphelingus, Basle, xi. Kal. Oct. 1514, ubi supra, for these and the following particulars.
493 Eras. Op. iii. p. 1249; and see Epist. clxxiv. Erasmus to Leo X. p. 154, C and D.
494 Epist. dccccxxii. Eras. Op. iii. pp. 1054, 1055.
495 See the Life of Beatus Rhenanus, by John Sturmius, ‘Vita clarissimorum Historicorum.’ Buderi, 1740, pp. 53-62; and Eras. Op. iii. pp. 154, C, &c. (see Index under his name); and especially the prefatory letter from Erasmus to Beatus Rhenanus, prefixed to ‘Enarratio in Primum Psalmum, Beatus vir,’ &c. Louvain, 1515. There is also a mention of him worth consulting in Du Pin’s Ecclesiastical Writers, iii. p. 399.
496 Eras. Op. iii. p. 222, E; and the letter to Wimphelingus.
497 Erasmus to Mountjoy, Epist. clxxxii., and the letter above mentioned to Wimphelingus.
498 Epist. clxxxii.
499 Epist. Erasmi clix. and Epist. lxxxv. App.
500 Epist. lxxxv. App.
501 Epist. ad Wimphelingum.
502 Epist. clxvii. clxviii. and clxxiv.
503 Eras. Op. iii. p. 141, C and D.
504 Brewer, i. lxix, and ii. i, et seq.
505 Ibid. ii. xxxviii.
506 Brewer, ii. liv.
507 See Eras. Epist. App. xxvii. xxi. and xxiii. These letters are dated 1515; and, from the mention of the New Testament as not yet placed in Froben’s hand, this date would seem to be correct.
508 Eras. Op. ii. pp. 870-2; and in part translated in Hallam’s Literature of the Middle Ages, part I, c. iv. These passages are quoted from the explanation given in the Adagia of the proverb, ‘Scarabeus Aquilam quærit.’ They occur in the edition separately printed by Froben in large type and in an octavo form, entitled ‘Scarabeus:’ Basle, mense Maio, 1517, ff. 21-23.
509 Eras. Op. ii. p. 775. From the Adagia, ‘Sileni Alcibiadis.’
510 Eras. Epist. App. xxi. That this edition was printed in 1515, see mention of it in Erasmus’s letter to Dorpius, dated Antwerp, 1515, and published at Louvain, Oct. 1515.
511 Martinus Dorpius Erasmo: D. Erasmi, &c. Enarratio in Primum Psalmum, &c. &c. Louvain, Oct. 1515.
512 See the commencement of the reply of Erasmus.
513 ‘Martinus Dorpius instigantibus quibusdam primus omnium cœpit in me velitari.... Scirem illum non odio mei huc venisse, sed juvenem tum, ac natura facilem, aliorum impulsu protrudi.’—Erasmus Botzemo, Catalogus, &c. Basle, 1523; leaf b, 5.
514 Erasmus to Dorpius: D. Erasmi, &c. Enarratio in Primum Psalmum, &c. &c. Louvain, Oct. 1515.
515 Erasmus to Wolsey: Eras. Op. iii. p. 1565; App. Epist. lxxiv. wrongly dated 1516 instead of 1515.
516 In a letter prefixed to the Erasmi Epigrammata, Basle, 1518, Froben pays a just tribute to the good humour and high courtesy of Erasmus while at work in his printing-office, interrupted as he often was, in the midst of his laborious duties, by frequent requests from all kinds of people for an epigram or a letter from the great scholar.—Pp. 275, 276.
517 Erasmus Urbano Regio: Eras. Op. iii. p. 1554, App. Epist. liii.
518 In one place he even supplied a portion of the Greek text which was missing by translating the Latin back into Greek!
519 Epist. ad Car. Grymanum, prefixed to the Paraphrase on the Epistle to the Romans. Edition Louvain, 1517.
520 Erasmus Gwolfgango Fabricio Capitoni: Epist. ccvii. Op. iii. p. 189, 89, A, C, Feb. 22, 1516, from Antwerp, but probably the year should be 1518. See also his reference to the same pagan tendencies of Italian philosophy in his treatise entitled ‘Ciceronianus,’ and the letter prefixed to it.
521 Ranke’s History of the Popes, i. ch. ii. sec. 3.
522 Ubi supra.
523 See the authorities mentioned by Ranke, and also Hallam’s Literature of Europe, chap. iv. ed. 1837, p. 435.
524 Hallam, p. 436.
525 Moria, ed. 1511, Argent. fol. G. iii.
526 Hallam’s Literature of the Middle Ages, ed. 1837, p. 555, et seq.
527 Compare the satire on Monks in ‘Scarabeus,’ and the colloquy called ‘Charon,’ with the following passage, in which Erasmus alludes to the continental wars of Henry VIII.: ‘Id enim temporis adornabatur bellum in Gallos, et hujus fabulæ non minimam partem Minoritæ duo agebant, quorum alter, fax belli, mitram meruit, alter bonis lateribus vociferabatur in concionibus in Poetas. Sic enim designabat Coletum,’ &c. Eras. Op. iii. p. 460, F.
528 Compare the similar views expressed in the Enchiridion (Canon V.) fifteen years before.
529 Both the above passages are slightly abridged in the translation.—Novum Instrumentum, leaf aaa, 3 to bbb.
530 Id. leaf bbb to bbb 5. The quotations in this case also are abridged.
531 Novum Instrumentum: Annotationes in loco Acts vii. p. 382:—‘Et hunc locum annotavit Hieronymus in Libro ad Pammachium de Optimo Genere Interpretandi, qui secus habeatur in Genesi, ubi legitur quod Abraham emerit ab Ephron Etheo filio Saor juxta Hebron quadringentis drachmis speluncam duplicem, et agrum circa eam, sepelieritque in ea Saram uxorem suam; atque in eodem legimus libro postea revertentem de Mesopotamia Jacob cum uxoribus et filiis suis posuisse tabernaculum ante Salem, urbem Sichymorum, quæ est in terra Chanaan, et habitasse ibi et emisse partem agri, in quo habebat tentoria, ab Emor patre Sychem, centum agnis, et statuisse ibi altare et invocasse deum Israhel. Proinde Abraham non emit specum ab Emor patre Sychem, sed ab Ephron filio Saor, nec sepultus est in Sychem sed in Hebron, quæ corrupte dicitur Arboch. Porro duodecim patriarchæ non sunt sepulti in Arboch sed in Sychem, qui ager non est emptus ab Abraham sed a Jacob. Hunc nodum illic nectit Hieronymus nec eum dissolvit.’
532 In loco Mark ii. p. 299, where Erasmus writes:—‘Divus Hieronymus in libello de Optimo Genere Interpretandi indicat nomen Abiathar pro Achimelech esse positum, propterea quod libro Regum primo, capite 22, ubi refertur hujusce rei historia, nulla mentio hat Abiathar sed duntaxat Achimelech. Sive id acciderit lapsu memoriæ, sive vitio scriptorum, sive quod ejusdem hominis vocabulum sit Abiathar et Abimelech; nam Lyra putat, Abiathar fuisse filium Achimelech qui sub patre functus sit officio paterno, et eo cæso jussu Saulis comes fuerit fugæ Davidicæ.’
533 In loco Matt. xxvii. p. 290:—‘Annotavit hunc quoque locum divus Hieronymus in libro cui titulus de Optimo Genere Interpretandi, negans quod his citat ex Hieremia Matthæus, prorsus exstare apud Hieremiam, verum apud Zachariam prophetam, sed ita ut quæ retulit evangelista, parum respondeant ad Hebraicam veritatem, ac multo minus ad vulgatam editionem Septuaginta. Etenim ut idem sit sensus tamen inversa esse verba, imo pene diversa. Cæterum locus est apud Zachariam, cap. ii., si quis velit excutere. Nam res perplexior est quam ut his paucis explicari possit, et prope πάρεργον est. Refert Hieronymus Hieremaiam apocryphum sibi exhibitum a quodam Judæo factionis Nazarenæ in quo hæc ad verbum ut ab evangelista citantur haberentur. Verum non probat ut apostolus ex apocryphis adduxerit testimonium, præsertim cum his mos sit evangelistis et apostolis ut, neglectis verbis, sensum utcumque reddant in citandis testimoniis.’
534 See especially Novum Instrumentum, pp. 295, 290, 377, 382, 270.
535 Roper, 9.
| 1512 | £286,269 | |
| 1513 | 699,714 | |
| 1514 | 155,757 | |
| £1,141,740 | ||
| 1515 | £74,007 | |
| 1516 | 130,779 | |
| 1517 | 78,887 | |
| £283,673 |
See Brewer, ii. preface, cxciv.
537 6 Henry VIII. c. 24.
538 Ibid. c. 26.
539 6 Henry VIII. c. 1. The draft of this Act in the final form in which it was adopted when Parliament met again in the autumn, is in Wolsey’s handwriting.—Brewer.
540 Grafton, p. 104. Holinshed, ii. 835, under date 6 Henry VIII.
541 4 Henry VIII. c. 5, and 6 Henry VIII. c. 3.
542 6 Henry VIII. c. 5.
543 Lord Herbert’s History, under date 1521, ed. 1649, p. 108; and Grafton, pp. 1016-1018.
544 Brewer, i. Nos. 4019 and 4020.
545 4 Henry VIII. c. 2, and 6 Henry VIII. c. 6.
546 6 Henry VIII. c. 12.
547 Brewer, ii. 422 (7 May), 480, and 534; also Roper, 10.
548 Brewer, ii. 672, 679, 733, 782, 807.
549 Ibid. 672 and 733.
550 Ibid. 904 and 922.
551 Ibid. 1067.
552 ‘First after the Trinity come the Seraphic spirits, all flaming and on fire.... They are loving beings of the highest order, &c.’ Colet’s abstract of the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius. Mr. Lupton’s translation, p. 20.
553 Fiddes’ Life of Wolsey. Collections, p. 252, quoted from MS. in Herald’s office. Cerem. vol. iii. p. 219, &c. Brewer, ii. 1153.
554 Brewer, ii. 1335.
555 Eras. Epist. ccli. and App. lxxxvii.
556 Erasmus to Hutten, Epist. ccccxlvii. Eras. Op. iii. p. 476, F.
557 Utopia, 1st ed. T. Martins. Louvain [1516], chap. ‘De Fœderibus.’ Leaf k, ii.
558 Utopia, 1st ed. ‘De Re Militari.’ Leaf k, iii.
559 Utopia, 1st ed. Leaves m, iv. v.
560 More’s English Works: The Apology, p. 850.
561 Utopia, 1st ed. Leaf h, i.
562 Utopia, 1st ed. Leaf f, iii.
563 Ibid. chap. ‘De Urbibus,’ Leaf f, i.
564 I may be allowed to refer the reader to the valuable mention of ‘Utopia’ in the preface to Mr. Brewer’s Calendar of the Letters, &c. of Henry VIII. vol. ii. cclxvii et seq., where its connection with the political and social condition of Europe at the time is well pointed out.
565 In support of the abstract here given of the moral philosophy of the Utopians, see Utopia, 1st ed. Leaf h, ii. et seq.
For the following careful translation of the most material part of it, I am indebted to the Rev. W. G. Rouse, M.A.
‘The same points of moral philosophy are discussed by the Utopians as by us. They inquire what is “good” in respect as well of the mind as of the body, as also of external things; also, whether the title “good” be applicable to all these, or to the mental qualities alone. They discuss “virtue” and “pleasure.” But their first and principal topic of debate is concerning human “happiness”—on what thing or things they consider it to depend.
‘But here they seem more inclined than they should be to that party which advocates “pleasure,” as being that which they define as either the whole, or the most important part of human happiness. And, what is more surprising, they even draw arguments in support of so nice an opinion from the principles of religion, which is usually sombre and severe, and of a stern and melancholy character. For they never dispute about happiness without joining some principles drawn from religion to those derived from rational philosophy; without which, reason is, in their opinion, defective and feeble in the search for true happiness. Their religious principles are as follow. The soul is immortal, and, by the goodness of God, born to happiness. He has appointed rewards after this life for man’s virtues and good deeds—punishment for his sins. Now, though these principles appertain to religion, yet they think that they are led by reason to believe and assent to them. Apart from these principles, they unhesitatingly declare that no man can be so foolish as not to see that pleasure is to be pursued for its own sake through thick and thin; so long as he takes care only not to let a less pleasure stand in the way of a greater, and not to pursue any pleasure which is followed in its turn by pain.
‘For they consider “virtue” austere and hard to strive after; and they deem it the greatest madness for a man not only to exclude all “pleasure” from life, but even voluntarily to suffer pain without prospect of future profit (for what profit can there be, if you gain nothing after death, after having spent the whole of your life without pleasure, that is, in misery?).
‘But now they do not place happiness in the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure, but in that only which is honest and good. For they think that our nature is attracted to happiness, as to its supreme good, by that very “virtue” to which alone the opposite party ascribes happiness. For they define “virtue,” the living in accordance with nature; inasmuch as, to this end, we are created by God. They believe that he follows the guidance of nature who obeys the dictates of reason in the pursuit or avoidance of anything; and they say that reason first of all inflames men with a love and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom we owe it both that we exist, and that we are capable of happiness; and secondly, that reason impresses upon us and urges us to pass our lives with the least amount of care and the greatest amount of pleasure ourselves; and, as we are bound to do by the natural ties of society, to give our assistance to the rest of mankind towards attaining the same ends. For never was there a man so stern a follower of “virtue,” or hater of pleasure, who, whilst thus enjoining upon you labours, watchings, and discomfort, would not tell you likewise to relieve the want and misfortunes of others to the utmost of your ability, and would not think it commendable for men to be of mutual help and comfort to one another in the name of humanity. If, then, it be in human nature (and no virtue is more peculiar to man) to relieve the misery of others, and, by removing their troubles, to restore them to the enjoyment of life, that is, to pleasure—does not nature, which prompts men to do this for others, urge them also to do it for themselves? For a joyful life—that is, a life of pleasure—is either an evil—in which case, not only should you not help others to lead such a life, but, as far as you can, prevent them from leading it, as being hurtful and deadly; or, if it be a good thing, and if it be not only lawful, but a matter of duty to enable others to lead such a life—why should it not be good for yourself first of all, who ought not to be less careful of yourself than of others? For when nature teaches you to be kind to others, she does not bid you to be hard and severe to yourself in return. Nature herself then, in their belief, enjoins a happy life—that is, “pleasure”—as the end of all our efforts; and to live by this rule, they call “virtue.”
‘But, since nature urges men to strive together to make life more cheerful (which, indeed, she rightly does; for no man is so much raised above the condition of his fellows as to be the only favourite of nature, which cherishes alike all whom she binds together by the tie of a common shape), she surely bids you urgently to beware of attending so much to your own interest as to prejudice the interest of others. They think, therefore, that not only all contracts between private citizens should be kept, but also public laws, which either a good prince has legally enacted, or a people neither oppressed by tyranny, nor circumvented by fraud, has sanctioned by common consent for the apportionment of the conveniences of life; that is, the material of pleasure. Within the limits of these laws, it is common prudence to look after your own interests; it is a matter of duty to have regard for the public weal also. But to attempt to deprive another of pleasure in favouring your own, is to do a real injury. On the other hand, to deprive yourself of something in order that you may give it to another, that is indeed an act of humanity and kindness which in itself never costs so much as it brings back. For it is not only repaid by the interchange of kindnesses; but also the very consciousness of a good action done and the recollection of the love and gratitude of those whom you have benefited, afford more pleasure to the mind, than the thing from which you have abstained would have afforded to the body. And, lastly, God repays the loss of these small and fleeting pleasures with vast and endless joy; a doctrine of the truth of which religion easily convinces a believing mind.
‘Thus, on these grounds, they determine that, all things being carefully weighed and considered, all our actions, and our very virtues among them, regard pleasure and happiness after all as their object.’—Utopia, 1st ed. Leaf h, ii. et seq.
566 J. S. Mill’s Essay on Utilitarianism, p. 24.
567 Utopia 1st ed. Leaf i, i.
568 Leaf i, ii.
569 Leaf i, iii.
570 Leaf h, ii.
571 Leaves h, i. and ii.
572 Leaf l, iv.
573 Ibid.
574 Leaf m, ii.
575 Leaf m, i.
576 Leaf l, iii.
577 Leaf m, iii.
578 It is impossible not to see in this a ritualism rather of the Dionysian than of the modern sacerdotal type.
579 Utopia, 1st ed. ‘De Religionibus Vtopiensium.’
580 Epist. clxvii. Eras. Op. iii. p. 144, A.
581 Erasmus to Savage: Epist. clxxvi. June 1, 1516. Brewer, 1976.
582 ‘There is certainly a steadiness of moral principle and Christian endurance, which tells us that it is better not to exist at all than to exist at the price of virtue; but few indeed of the countrymen and contemporaries of Machiavel had any claim to the practice, whatever they might have to the profession, of such integrity. His crime in the eyes of the world, and it was truly a crime, was to have cast away the veil of hypocrisy, the profession of a religious adherence to maxims which at the same moment were violated.’—Hallam’s Literature of the Middle Ages, chap. vii. s. 31.
583 ‘Whatever may be thought of the long-disputed question as to Machiavelli’s motives in writing, his work certainly presents to us a gloomy picture of the state of public law and European society in the beginning of the sixteenth century: one mass of dissimulation, crime, and corruption, which called loudly for a great teacher and reformer to arise, who should speak the unambiguous language of truth and justice to princes and people, and stay the ravages of this moral pestilence.
‘Such a teacher and reformer was Hugo Grotius, who was born in the latter part of the same century and flourished in the beginning of the seventeenth.... He was one of those powerful minds which have paid the tribute of their assent to the truth of Christianity.’—Wheaton’s Elements of International Law: London, 1836, pp. 18, 19.
584 1st ed. leaf c, i.
585 1st ed. leaf d, ii. Eras. Op. iv. p. 567.
586 1st ed. leaf d, iii. Eras. Op. iv. p. 567.
587 Leaf d, iii.
588 1st ed. leaf f, ii. Eras. Op. iv. p. 574.
589 ‘Monarchia temperata,’ in the marginal reading.
590 Abridged quotation, 1st ed. leaf f, iv. Eras. Op. iv. p. 576.
591 Ibid.
592 1st ed. leaf g, iii. Eras. Op. iv. p. 579.
593 Leaf l, i.
594 1st. ed. leaf l, i. Eras. Op. iv. pp. 593, 594.
595 Ibid. Charles the Bold was the prince alluded to.
596 Eras. Op. iv. p. 595, et seq.
597 1st ed. leaf l, iv.
598 Leaf m, i.
599 Eras. Op. iv. 603.
600 1st ed. leaf o, i. Eras. Op. iv. pp. 607 et seq.
601 1st ed. leaf o, iii.
602 On August 5 he seems to have been in London, and to have written a letter from thence to Leo X. Eras. Epist. clxxxi. Brewer, ii. 2257.
On August 17 he writes from Rochester to Ammonius, that he is spending ten days there. Eras. Epist. cxlvi. Brewer, ii. 2283. And again on August 22. Eras. Epist. cxlvii. Brewer, ii. 2290. On the 31st he writes to Boville from the same place. Eras. Epist. cxlviii. Brewer, ii. 2321.
603 Erasmus to Ammonius: Epist. cxxxiii. Brewer, ii. 2323, without date.
604 Eras. Epist. lxxxvii. App. and ccxviii. Brewer, ii. 2409.
605 Erasmus Ægidio: Epist. cccxlv. November 18, 1518. The mention of St. Jerome as not yet finished (see Epist. ccxviii.; Brewer, 2409), fixes the date 1516. Brewer, ii. 2558.
606 Letter from More to Peter Giles, prefixed to ‘Utopia.’
607 Roper, pp. 9, 10. Eras. Op. iii. pp. 474, 476.
608 More to Erasmus: Eras. Epist. ccxxvii.
609 Roper, 10.
610 Erasmus to Hutten: Epist. ccccxlvii. Eras. Op. iii. p. 476, B.
611 Leaf b, 4.
612 Leaves b, iv to c, ii. These extracts are somewhat abridged and condensed.
613 Leaves d, ii. et seq. These extracts are somewhat abridged and condensed.
614 Eras. Epist. App. xliv. (Brewer, ii. 2748), in which Lord Mountjoy acknowledges the receipt of a copy sent by Erasmus, dated Jan. 4, 1516; i.e. 1517 in modern reckoning.
615 The extracts from the Utopia, translations of which are given in this chapter, have in all cases been taken from the first edition (Louvain, 1516), but very few alterations were made in subsequent editions. The first edition was published in Dec. 1516. I am indebted to Mr. Lupton for the suggestion that the publication of some letters of Vespucci at Florence, in 1516, may have suggested More’s use of that voyager’s name in his introductory book.
Erasmus, writing from Antwerp to More, March 1 [1517], says: ‘Utopiam tuam recognitam, huc quam primum mittito, et nos exemplar, aut Basilium mittemus aut Lutetiam.’—Epist. ccviii.
Erasmus sent it to Froben of Basle, by whom a corrected edition was published in March, 1518, and another in November of the same year. See Appendix F.
616 Eras. Epist. cclvi. Brewer, ii. 2000; from St. Omer; and see ccxxv. Brewer, ii. 1976.
617 Epist. clviii. Erasmus to Ammonius: June 5, 1514; in error for 1516.
618 More to Erasmus: Eras. Epist. lii. App. London, Feb. 25, 1516.
619 Eras. Epist. lxxxiv. App. Brewer, ii. 2941, dated ‘in die sancti Edwardi, in festo suæ [? secundæ] translationis, sive 13 Octobris, 1516.’ Probably ‘second translation of St. Edward,’ on June 20, 1516. The words ‘sive 13 Oct.’ are not found in the copy of this letter in Aliquot Epistolæ, &c. (Basle, 1518, pp. 249, 252), nor in the ed. of 1640. The earlier date seems to harmonise more with the contents of the letter than the later date.
620 Eras. Epist. lxxxvii. App. Brewer, ii. 2492.
621 Eras. Epist. Waramus Erasmo, cclxi. Aliquot Epistolæ, &c. Basle, 1518, p. 231.
622 Eras. Epist. ccxxi. App.
623 Thomæ Mori ad Monachum Epistola: Epistolæ aliquot Eruditorum Virorum. Basle, 1520, p. 122.
624 Erasmus to Boville, from the Bishop’s palace at Rochester, pridie calendas Septembris. Aliquot Epistolæ, &c. Basle, 1518, pp. 234-246. Eras. Epist. cxlviii. Brewer, ii. 2321. The above is only an abstract of this letter, and some of the quotations are abridged.
625 More to Erasmus: Epist. lxxxvii. App. dated Oct. 31, 1516.
626 Erasmus to Ammonius, from Brussels, December 29, 1516. Brewer, ii. 2709.
627 Epist. cclvi. June 1517; should be 1516. Brewer, ii. 2000.
628 Bearing date, Tubingen, Aug. 21, 1516. Eras. Op. iii. p. 1595. It was first printed probably at the back of the titlepage of ‘Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Roterodami.’ Basle, March 1518.
629 Œcolampadius Erasmo: Eras. Epist. ccxxxviii.; also cxix. App. and ccccxi.
630 Spalatinus Erasmo: Eras. Epist. xciv. App.
631 Luther’s Briefe. De Wette, i. 40, No. xxii.
632 Philippi Melanchthonis Vita Martini Lutheri, chap. v. ‘Vita ejus monastica.’
633 Philippi Melanchthonis Vita Martini Lutheri, chap. vi. vii.
634 Ranke refers to the period before 1516. See Hist. of Reformation, vol. i. bk. ii. ch. i.
635 Novum Instrumentum, folio, 433.
636 Luther to Spalatin: Luther’s Briefe. De Wette, No. xxii.
637 Luther an Joh. Lange: De Wette, No. xxix. p. 52.
638 More to Erasmus: Epist. lxxxvii. App. Eras. Op. iii. p. 1575, A and B.
639 Vol. i. Epist. 2.
640 Vol. i. App. 1.
641 Vol. ii. Ep. 9.
642 Vol. ii. Ep. 49.
643 Ibid. Ep. 68.
644 One of the best and most valuable essays on the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum will be found in No. cv. of the Edinburgh Review, March 1831.
645 Ranke’s History of the Reformation, bk. ii. chap. 1.
646 Epist. cxxxiii. App.
647 Ibid. ccccxxviii. App.
648 Ibid. ccxlvi. App.
649 ‘Sed, meo judicio, nulla via assequemur, quam ardenti amore et imitatione Jesu. Quare relictis ambagibus, ad brevitatem brevi compendio eamus: ego pro viribus volo.’ These sentences remind one of the conversation between Tauler and Nicholas of Basle, in the beautiful story of the Master and the Man, where the master says, ‘Verum est, charissime fili, quod ais. Adhuc enim durior mihi videtur esse hic sermo tuus.’ And the layman replies, ‘Et tamen ipse me rogasti, Domine Magister, ut compendiosissimum ad supremam hujus vitæ perfectionem iter tibi demonstrarem. Et certe securiorem ego, quàm sit ista, viam ad imitandum exemplar sacratissimæ humanitatis Christi nullam novi.’ Thauleri Opera, p. 16. Paris. 1623.
650 Foxe, ed. 1597, p. 887.
651 Thomæ Mori ad Monachum Epistola. Epistolæ aliquot Eruditorum Virorum: Basle, 1520, pp. 128, 129. The letter does not state exactly the date of this singular occurrence.
652 On the Romans: Louvain, 1517, at the press of Martins.
653 Erasmus to Cope, ccv. Brewer, ii. p. 2962. See also cciii. and cciv. and Erasmus to Henry VIII. cclxviii.
654 Erasmus to Cardinal Grymanus, prefixed to the Paraphrases on the Romans. Dated, Id. Nov. 1517.
655 Mountjoy to Wolsey: Brewer, ii. p. 1259; and Bishop of Worcester to Wolsey: ibid. No. 4179. Ranke’s Hist. of the Reformation, bk. ii. chap. 1.
656 One early edition, without date, has in the margin, ‘Fictæ pontificum condonationes vel indulgentiæ;’ and Lystrius, in his note on this passage, says, ‘Has vulgo vocant indulgentias.’ The marginal note in the Argent. edition of 1511 reads, ‘indulgentias taxat.’
657 Basle, ed. 1519, p. 141.
658 Eras. Epist. cclxiv. Aug. 29, 1517.
659 Bishop of Worcester to Wolsey: Brewer, ii. p. 4179.
660 Papers relating to the Convocation: Brewer, ii. p. 1312.
661 Ranke’s History of the Reformation, London, 1845, i. p. 333. Brewer, ii. p. 3160 and 3688.
662 Brewer, ii. p. 3818, and preface, ccv.
663 Ranke, p. 332.
664 Ibid. p. 333.
665 Ibid. p. 350.
666 Ibid. p. 356.
667 Erasmus to Beatus Rhenanus: Epist. clxiv. App. Brewer, ii. p. 3614. Ranke, p. 378.
668 Ranke, pp. 239 and 379.
669 Ibid. p. 359.
670 Ranke, p. 239.
671 Ibid. p. 241.
672 Erasmus to Fisher: cccvi. App. Brewer, ii. p. 3989.
673 Eras. Epist. App. cccv. Brewer, ii. p. 3992.
674 Eras. Epist. App. cclxix.
675 Epist. App. cclxv. Brewer, ii. p. 3991.
676 Ægidius to Erasmus: Epist. ccccxxxvi. Brewer, ii. p. 4238.
677 See Brewer’s preface to vol. ii. pp. cxlvii-clvii.
678 See Brewer, ii. cxlii-clxi (preface).
679 Roper, p. 11.
680 Roper, p. 48.
681 Epist. cclxviii.
682 Epist. App. cccxi. and cclxxxii. Brewer, ii. p. 4111.
683 Erasmus to Henry VIII.: Brewer, iii. No. 226.
684 March 13, 1518. Eras. Epist. App. cclxxiv. Brewer, ii. p. 4005.
685 Epist. ccxlvii. Brewer, ii. p. 4138. Eras. Epist. Basle, 1521, p. 217.
686 Eras. Epist. App. cclxxxiv.-v.
687 Ibid. App. cccv.
688 Eras. Op. iii. 401 E.
689 Eras. Epist. ccciii. first printed in Auctarium selectarum Epistolarum Erasmi, &c. Basle, 1518, p. 39.
690 Luther’s Briefe. De Wette. Epist. No. xxxvii.
691 Eras. Epist. ccciii.
692 Epist. ccclxxvi. dated May 15, 1518, and first printed at p. 45 of the Auctarium selectarum Epistolarum, &c. Basle, 1518.
693 Erasmus to More, App. cclxxxv. Brewer, ii. p. 4204; and in App. cclxxxiv. Ibid. ii. p. 4203.
694 Brewer, ii. p. 3991. Eras. Epist. App. cclxv.
695 Lucubrationum Erasmi Index: Frobenius, Basle, 1519.
696 Epist. cclxv. App. Brewer, ii. p. 3991. Dated March 5, 1518.
697 Eras. Epist. App. cccxi. Brewer, ii. p. 4110.
698 Adagia: Basle, 1520-21, p. 494. I have not seen the edition of 1517, but it is mentioned in Lucubrationum Erasmi Index; Basle, 1519.
699 Auctarium selectarum aliquot Epistolarum Erasmi, &c.: Basle, with preface by Beatus Rhenanus, dated xi. Calendas Septembris, 1518, and ‘Aliquot Epistolæ sane quam elegantes Erasmi Roterodami, et ad hunc aliorum eruditissimorum hominum.’ Basle, Jan. 1518. The latter includes Colet’s letter to Erasmus on the Novum Instrumentum. An edition, containing some of the letters of Erasmus and others, had also been printed by Martins at Louvain in April, 1517.
700 English translation. London: Jno. Byddell, 1522.
701 ‘Cur sic arctamus Christi professionem quam ille latissime voluit patere?’
702 These passages are condensed in the translation.
703 Erasmus to Laurinus: Epist. ccclvi. See Jortin, i. 140.
704 The Epistle at the beginning from Leo X. to Erasmus, bears date Sept. 1518. March 1519 is the date printed at the end.
705 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. p. 266.
706 Novum Testamentum, pp. 209, 93, 82, 83.
707 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. pp. 19, 20.
708 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. pp. 28, 29.
709 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. pp. 34, 35.
710 Ibid. p. 32.
711 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. p. 32. These passages are abridged in the translation.
712 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. pp. 35, 36.
713 Novum Testamentum, 2nd ed. p. 42.
714 Ibid. p. 61.
715 When, after the 3rd edition had been published and a 4th was in preparation, in 1526, a Doctor of the Sorbonne attacked the New Testament of Erasmus, he was able triumphantly to ask him, ‘what he wanted?’ His New Testament had already been ‘scattered abroad by the printers in thousands of copies over and over again.’ His critic ‘should have written in time!’—Erasmus to the Faculty of Paris. Jortin, ii. App. No. xlix. p. 492.
716 Eras. Op. iii. pp. 374, 375.
717 Eras. Op. iii. p. 432, D and E.
718 Eras. Epist. ccclvii.
719 Eras. Op. iii. 1490, D. Brewer, ii. Nos. 3670, 3671, dated Sept. 1517.
720 Brewer, preface, ccxi.
721 Jortin’s Life of Erasmus, App. p. 662-667.
722 Eras. Op. iii. p. 408, b.
723 Eras. Op. iii. p. 408.
724 Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII. ii. p. 127.
725 Eras. Op. iii. p. 457, E. See also Mr. Lupton’s Introduction to his edition of Dean Colet on the Sacraments of the Church, pp. 19 and 26.
726 Eras. Op. iii. p. 457, E.
727 Ibid. p. 459, A and B.
728 William Lilly was married and had several children. The sur-master, John Rightwyse, married his daughter. Mr. Lupton informs me, that in vol. iv. of Stow’s Historical Collections (Harleian, No. 450), fol. 58 b, is a Latin epitaph, in ten lines, by Lilly on his wife. Her name is spelt ‘Hagnes,’ and (if the reading be correct) they appear to have had fifteen children.
729 Knight’s Life of Colet. Miscellanies, No. v.
730 The original of this book with Colet’s signature is still preserved at the Mercers’ Hall.
731 Knight, p. 227. He drew up a body of statutes, which, however, were never accepted by the chapter.—Milman’s Annals of St. Paul’s, p. 124.
732 Eras. Op. iii. p. 460, A.
733 Ibid. p. 445, B.
734 Ibid. p. 751, E.
735 Strausz. Leipzig, 1858, vol. i. p. 123.
736 Epistolæ aliquot Eruditorum, &c. Appended to Apologia Erasmi, &c. Basil 1520, pp. 139, 140.
737 This letter possibly may not have reached England before Colet’s death; but it is most likely that the date is wrong, as so often is the case with these letters—the year not being often added by the writer himself at the time, but by some copyist subsequently.
738 ‘Epistola clarissimi viri Thomæ Mori, qua refellit rabiosam maledicentiam monachi cujusdam juxta indocti atque arrogantis.’—Epistolæ aliquot Eruditorum Virorum, &c. Basileæ, M.DXX. pp. 92-138. Also Jortin’s Life of Erasmus, Appendix.
739 ‘Nisi quod Lutherus fertur Augustini doctrinam mordicus tenens antiquatam sententiam rursus instaurare.’—p. 99.
740 For the above particulars see Ranke’s History of the Reformation, bk. ii. c. iii.
741 Melanchthonis Epistolæ: Bretschneider, i. p. 63, and p. 66.
742 March 1519, Bretschneider, i. p. 75.
743 Erasmus to Œcolampadius, 1518, Epist. cccliv.
744 Dated January 5, from Wittemberg. Bretschneider, i. p. 59.
745 Epist. ccccxi.
746 Luther’s Briefe. De Wette, vol. i. Epist. cxxx. p. 249.
747 Louvain, May 30, 1519. Eras. Epist. ccccxxvii.
748 Eras. Op. iii. p. 444, E and F.
749 Epist. cccxvii. May 8, 1519.
750 Epist. ccccxiii. Ap. 23, 1519.
751 Eras. Epist. Laurentio: Louvain, Feb. 1519, prefixed to the Basle edition of the Five Epistles, 1520.
752 Apologia pro Declamatione de Laude Matrimonii: Basil. 1519.
753 Colet seems even to have retired from the office of preacher before the King on Good Friday, which he had filled in 1510, 1511, 1512, 1513, 1515, 1516, and 1517. Brewer, ii. pp. 1445-1474. In 1518 the sermon was preached by the Dean of Sarum, p. 1477.
754 Epist. cccclxxiv. Erasmus to Fisher: Louvain, Oct. 17, 1519.
755 Ranke, bk. ii. c. iii. De Wette, i. No. ccviii. p. 425. That Luther had found a point of unison between himself and the Hussites, not only in their common opposition to Papal authority, but also in their common adoption of the severest views of St. Augustine, see ‘Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per Bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum.’ Mense Martio M.DXXI. Leaves Kk, ii. and iii. ‘Habes, miserande Papa, quid hic oggannias. Unde et hunc articulum necesse est revocare, male enim dixi quod liberum arbitrium ante gratiam sit res de solo titulo, sed simpliciter debui dicere, lib. arb. est figmentum in rebus, seu titulus sine re. Quia nulli est in manu sua quippiam cogitare mali aut boni, sed omnia (ut Viglephi articulus Constantiæ damnatus recte docet) de necessitate absoluta eveniunt.’ These articles were condemned as a part of the heresy of John Huss, of whom Luther in the same treatise had said:—‘Et in faciem tuam sanctissime Vicarie Dei, tibi libere dico, omnia damnata Joannis Huss esse evangelica et Christiana,’ &c. (Ibid. leaf Hh, iii.)
756 See Epist. ccccxii. Louvain, April 23, 1519.
757 History of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren. By the Rev. John Holmes. London, 1825, vol. i. chaps. i. and ii.
758 This middle party were called ‘Calixtines.’ See introduction to Holmes’s History, vol. i. p. 21, where the facts mentioned in this letter are detailed, very much in accordance with Schlechta’s account.
759 John Zisca was a Hussite. He died in 1424, nine years after the death of Huss, and on his monument was inscribed, ‘Here lies John Zisca, who having defended his country against the encroachments of Papal tyranny, rests in this hallowed place in spite of the Pope.’—Ibid. p. 20.
760 Epist. cccclxiii. Dated Oct. 10, 1519.
761 Epist. cccclxxviii. Dated Nov. 1, 1519. The letter is a long one, and these quotations are somewhat abridged in translation.
762 Luther replied:—‘Absint a nobis Christianis Sceptici.... Nihil apud Christianos notius et celebratius, quam assertio. Tolle assertiones et Christianissimum tulisti.... Spiritus Sanctus non est scepticus, nec dubia aut opiniones in cordibus nostris scripsit, sed assertiones, ipsa vita, et omni experientia, certiores et firmiores.’—De Servo Arbitrio Mar. Lutheri. Wittembergæ, 1526, pp. 7-12.
763 ‘Ideo alteram est judicium externum, quo non modo pro nobis ipsis, sed et pro aliis et propter aliorum salutem, certissime judicamus spiritus et dogmata omnium. Hoc judicium est publici ministerii in verbo et officii externi, et maxime pertinet ad duces et præcones verbi &c.’—De Servo Arbitrio Mar. Lutheri. Wittembergæ, 1526, p. 82.
764 See Mozley’s Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. Chap. x. Scholastic Doctrine of Predestination. And see the particular instance there given on the subject of infants dying in original sin, p. 307. ‘Being by nature reprobate, and not being included within the remedial decree of predestination, they were... [according to the pure Augustinian doctrine]... subject to the sentence of eternal punishment.... The Augustinian schoolman [Aquinas] could not expressly contradict this position, but what he could not contradict he could explain. Augustine had laid down that the punishment of such children was the mildest of all punishment in hell.’... Aquinas ‘laid down the further hypothesis, that this punishment was not pain of body or mind, but want of the Divine vision.’
765 Epist. ccccxlvii.
766 See note on the date, More’s birth, Appendix C.
767 Eras. Op. iii. p. 475, E.
768 Ibid. C and D. One is tempted to think that More intended to describe his first wife in the epigram, ‘Ad Candidum qualis uxor deligenda,’ very freely translated into English verse by Archdeacon Wrangham as follows:—
Far from her lips’ soft door
Be noise or silence stern,
And hers be learning’s store,
Or hers the power to learn.
With books she’ll time beguile,
And make true bliss her own,
Unbuoyed by Fortune’s smile,
Unbroken by her frown.
So still thy heart’s delight,
And partner of thy way,
She’ll guide thy children right,
When myriads go astray.
So left all meaner things,
Thou’lt on her breast recline,
While to her lyre she sings
Strains, Philomel, like thine;
While still thy raptured gaze
Is on her accents hung,
As words of honied grace
Steal from her honied tongue.
Quoted from Philomorus, p. 42.
769 More’s English Works, p. 1420.
770 Eras. Op. iii. p. 475, D and E.
771 Eras. Op. iii. p. 476, D, &c.
772 Ibid. p. 474, B.
773 Ibid. p. 474, E.
774 Ibid. p. 477, B.
775 Ibid. p. 474, E and F.
776 Colloquy entitled Amicitia.
777 Stapleton’s Tres Thomæ, p. 257.
778 Eras. Op. i. p. 511, E.
779 Mori Epigrammata: Basle, 1520, p. 110. The first edition was printed at Basle along with the Utopia in 1518, and does not contain these verses.
780 Mackintosh’s Life of Sir Thomas More, p. 73, quoting ‘City Records.’
781 Roper, p. 12.
782 Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, letter lxxx.
783 Epist. cccclxvii.
784 Ibid. cccclxx.
785 Epist. cccclxxi.
786 Ibid. cccclxxiv.
787 Eras. Op. iii. Epist. cccclxxxi., and Epistolæ aliquot Eruditorum Virorum: Basil. 1520, p. 46.
788 Ibid. p. 122. ‘Coletum nomino, quo uno viro neque doctior neque sanctior apud nos aliquot retro seculis quisque fuit.’
789 Ashmolean MSS. Oxford 77-141 a. I have to thank Mr. Coxe for the following copy of the inscription: ‘Joannes Coletus, Henrici Coleti iterum prætoris Londini filius, et hujus templi decanus, magno totius populi mœrore, cui, ob vitæ integritatem et divinum concionandi munus, omnium sui temporis fuit chariss., decessit anno a Christo nato 1519 et inclyti regis Henrici Octavi 11, mensis Septembris 16. Is in cœmeterio Scholam condidit ac magistris perpetua stipendia contulit.’
790 Luther in his famous speech at the Diet, after alluding to his doctrinal and devotional works, and offering to retract whatever in them was contrary to Scripture, emphatically refused to retract what he had written against the Papacy, on the ground that were he to do so, it would be ‘like throwing both doors and windows right open’ to Rome to the injury of the German nation. And in his German speech he added an exclamation, most characteristic, at the very idea of the absurdity of its being thought possible, that he could retract anything on this point:—‘Good God, what a great cloak of wickedness and tyranny should I be!’ See Förstermann’s Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchen-Reformation, vol. i. p. 70: Hamburg, 1842.