and their stern countenances, you would set down as St. Serapios and St. Pauls, but if you look more closely you will find to be mere rogues, gluttons, imposters, debauchees, robbers and tyrants." Then after hurling his brick he seeks shelter from the more or less justly indignant monks by plausibly adding: "Again you must take notice that nobody ought to be offended by this, since no one is mentioned by name. If any man be not of this quality, let him not deem these remarks to pertain to him; but if he recognize his fault herein, let him consider himself admonished." Again, after speaking of abbots and bishops as if they were as a class entirely bad, he hedges in this manner: "Whatever emolument, whatever honor, is due pious abbots or good bishops, let it be granted to them to the last farthing." And so he skillfully disarms the bad, who, he knows, will never admit their faults, and he makes friends to himself of the good, who, he equally well knows, are not impervious to praise. In his famous commentary on the proverb Dulce bellum inexpertis, which is a stern reprobation of the evils of war, we are carried away by the convincing nature of his arguments, in which he states that war is iniquitous whether waged by Pope or king; and, when he scores Pope Julius II for his campaign against Bologna and his quarrel with the Venetians, he has our sympathy. But when he seeks to make capital for himself by drawing invidious distinctions between Julius II and Leo X, we somehow become suspicious that the flattery is to advance the interests of Erasmus. He puts it thus: 18 How such things become a Christian Pontiff is not for men like me to say. But this I will say: his glory [that of Julius], however much it was, was connected with the destruction and misery of very many; while peace restored will bring more true glory to our Leo than his numerous wars throughout the whole world have procured for Julius, no matter how bravely they were stirred up, or how successfully they were waged.1 19 In his denunciation of sin and injustice, we miss, for some reason, the true note of sincerity. Two great men before his time had essayed the arraignment of the reigning Pontiff: St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Savonarola. Now Erasmus had neither the saintly life of the one nor the sublime fearlessness of the other to lend weight to his words. In this connection we may be permitted to quote a few sentences from Nolhac: 18 19 Florence left no profound traces in the soul of Erasmus. The memory of Savonarola was still living; and the victims of the reaction, the last friends of the great Dominican, treasured in the bottom of their hearts his heroic traditions. However, Erasmus 3001. Idem., margin. tit. Iulius 2 belli auidissimus. We must note that he did not venture a word against Pope Julius during that Pontiff's lifetime, for the edition of the Adagia printed by Aldus in 1508 is silent on the subject; and when he did assail him it was a perfectly safe procedure, since not only was that Pope now dead, but his powerful family, the della Rovere, from the different members of which Erasmus had received many favors, was no longer in the ascendant. only heard speak of him as a disturber and a revolutionary; and the few times that he has made mention of this episode of Florentine history prove that he did not dwell much upon it. Let us add that Savonarola, being a monk, was obnoxious in his sight. The three passages where there is found mention of the Savonarola affair relate to the turbulence of the Dominican Order of those times, and are, as a consequence, malevolent. We seek in vain the trace of a regret on the part of Erasmus for the abortive attempt of the Florentine monk, and are also more struck by the moral differences than by the moral analogies existing between these two men.' success. It is perhaps asking too much to demand of Erasmus that he measure up to the standard of a Bernard or a Savonarola; yet only men of spotless motives and undoubted probity of life ought to arrogate to themselves the right to pass judgment on the lives and motives of others. But to return to the Adages. The book was a marvelous and merited Issued at a time when there were no public libraries (nor were there to be for two or three centuries), the work supplied the place of hundreds of volumes, and was equivalent to a university education to any man who was fortunate enough to be able to buy it. For generations it was the one indispensable book for every student and scholar, the least of its advantages being the fact that every Greek quotation or proverb was translated into Latin, which very much facilitated a wider knowledge of both languages. From time to time during the rest of his life Erasmus added to the richness and diversity of the work, until at his death it contained more than four thousand proverbs. It stands, and always will stand, as a monument to his wonderful industry; and each fresh perusal of it only serves to increase our wonder that one man alone could accomplish so much. Of all his works this is the one that made the world his debtor, and no one grudges him the meed of praise. This one book alone would have secured for him permanently a front rank among the world's scholars. 20 Erasme en Italie, p. 12. CHAPTER XIX ITALY: HOME OF ALDUS; PADUA; ARCHBISHOP OF SAINT ANDREW'S; SIENA The publishing of the Adagia did not end the relations between Erasmus and Aldus, for we find that he stayed on with him until December of that same year. Perhaps the reason which detained him was that Aldus was now engaged in issuing newer and better editions of Plautus and Terence, and we may remember that these were the favorite authors of Erasmus from his earliest schooldays. He also took this opportunity to give shape to what was eventually the work entitled De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo, which was eventually printed in Basle by Nicholas Brylingerus in 1511. The household into which Aldus had so hospitably introduced Erasmus is worthy of some notice before we leave Venice with the latter. Nolhac epitomizes it succinctly, so we shall quote his words: The household of Aldus was numerous: thirty-three persons in all, including the servants, according to the ancient custom. The wife of the printer, Maria Torresano d'Asola, whom he had married in 1499,1 had borne him his first son, the little Manuzio de'Manuzi, who used to play on Erasmus' knee. The father-in-law of Aldus, Andreas d'Asola, took part in the work of the establishment which he himself was to manage after the death of his illustrious son-in-law. Francesco and Federigo d'Asola, his sons, also worked in the printing office. An agreeable air of gaiety pervaded the place, for Aldus had a pleasing wit. He used to amuse himself by imitating in his talk the quavering speech of an old man. Erasmus still remembered ten years afterward the drawling and stammering fashion with which he used sometimes to address him: "Quomodo vales, Domine Erasme?" And thereupon, in a voice still more shrill, that of Erasmus, he would reply for him: "Si vales, ego valeo." "That is the way we shall speak when we are old," he was wont to say. And our Erasmus remarks with melancholy that Aldus quitted his friends much before the time when one really This famous household was the resort of all the scholars of the day, and no matter what his rank or nationality, no savant who made the grand tour to Italy returned without visiting the illustrious Aldine press and partaking of the hospitality of its owner. We have already seen how Thomas Linacre would not return to England without first calling 1 But Nolhac later gives 1505. Allen also gives the latter date. 2 Erasme en Italie, p. 33. on Aldus, and the course of many years had not staled the custom, for we see that Ulrich von Hutten in 1517 writes to Erasmus of his delightful visit to the celebrated printer. It was in 1495 that Aldus established his press in Venice, and already in 1500 he had formed his learned friends into a society which they called the Neacademia, to remind themselves of the famous Academy of Plato. The constitution of the society. was written in Greek, and it was forbidden to the members to converse in any other tongue. During its career the Aldine Academy counted among its members the following choice scholars: Prince Alberto Pio, Pietro Bembo, Marino Sanuto, Scipio Carteromachos, Erasmus, Jerome Aleander, Giambattista Egnazio, Marcus Musurus, John of Crete, sometimes called Gregoropoulos, Thomas Linacre, Demetrios Chalcondyles, John Lascaris, and many others. But of them all Aldus was the sun around which these literary planets revolved, and from which they drew light and warmth. Into him had penetrated the true spirit of the Renaissance, for he was perhaps the very first printer who recognized the fact that a book might be in itself a thing of beauty, in addition to enshrining in enduring type the immortal thoughts of the past. Hence it is that, during all the generations since his day, the Aldine editions have been sought for and treasured for themselves as the standards and models of the printer's art, and the epoch of Aldus and that of the Renaissance have become interchangeable terms. Concerning Erasmus' residence with Aldus, or rather with his wife's father, Andreas d'Asola, who was really the head of the household, there is an unpleasant episode, as, unfortunately, there is all too often in the story of Erasmus. Andreas d'Asola was a typical Italian, a scholar of high intellectual attainments, a man who was able after the untimely death of his brilliant son-in-law to continue successfully the printing establishment, and to hand it down unimpaired in fame and financial standing to the heirs of them both. Standing at the head of his numerous family of sons, grandsons, workers, servants, and dependents, it naturally devolved on him to furnish forth the daily table. The Italians are an abstemious race, and in no rank of Italian society is it the custom to overindulge in the pleasures of the table. Such abstemiousness is purely racial, arising from no feeling of parsimony, but rather from a conservatism resulting from the experience of generation after generation of a people who have found out what is best adapted to their racial and climatic needs. Compare their mode of eating with that of the more northern nations, such as the English, Dutch, and Germans; remember, furthermore, what Erasmus said of the food at Steyn and, later on of that at the College of Montaigu-and need we follow the distasteful subject any further? Were it not absolutely necessary for the elucidation of his character, one would willingly omit all account of his strange lack of taste in depicting the household of Aldus and Andreas d'Asola as one of disgusting and sordid miserliness. The table set might suffice for the modest wants of Aldus, of Aleander, and of the other inmates of the house, not to speak of the constant succession of illustrious guests from many lands who were drawn to Venice by the fame of the Aldine press; but it did not please Erasmus, who had evidently been accustomed to gratify himself with a more plentiful and elaborate fare. Many years after the death of Aldus he had the execrable taste, in one of his colloquies entitled Opulentia sordida, or The Wealthy Miser, to hold up to ridicule the household and relatives of his former friend, barely concealing their names, but caricaturing them most cruelly and with his wonted exaggeration. We give the colloquy in its entirety, as translated by Bailey, prefacing it with the note that by Synodium is meant Venice, Antronius stands for Andreas d'Asola, the father-in-law of Aldus, Orthrogonus is Aldus himself, Verpius is the malicious sobriquet that he fastens on Aleander, Strategus is possibly Seraphin, or some Greek employed in supervising the work of the Greek compositors. THE RICH MISER James and Gilbert Ja. How comes it about that you are so lean and meagre? You look as if you had lived upon dew with the grasshopper; you seem to be nothing but a mere skeleton. Gi. In the regions below the ghosts feed upon leeks and mallows; but I have been these ten months where I could not come at so much as them. Ja. Where is that, prithee? What, have you been in the galleys? Gi. No, I have been at Synodium. Ja. What, starved to death almost in so plentiful a country? Gi. It is true as I tell you. Ja. What was the occasion of it? What, had you no money? Gi. I neither wanted money nor friends. Ja. What the mischief was the matter then? Gi. Why, you must know I boarded with Antronius. Ja. What, with that rich old cuff? Gi. Yes, with that sordid hunks. Ja. It is very strange, methinks. Gi. Not strange at all; for by this sordid way of living they that have little or nothing to begin the world with scrape together so much wealth. Ja. But how came you to take a fancy to live so many months with such a landlord? Gi. There was a certain affair that obliged me to it, and I had a fancy to do likewise. Ja. But, prithee, tell me after what manner he lives. Gi. I will tell you, since it is a pleasure to recount the hardships one has sustained. Ja. It will certainly be a pleasure to me to hear it. Gi. Providence so ordered it that the wind sat full north for three months together, only it did not blow from the same point above eight days together; but I cannot tell the reason of it. Ja. How then could it blow north for three months together? Gi. Why upon the eighth day, as if by agreement, it shifted its station; where, after it had continued some seven or eight hours, then it veered to the old point again. Ja. In such a place as that your callico body had need have a good fire to keep it warm. Gi. We had had fire enough if we had but had wood enough. But our landlord Antronius, to save charges, used to grub old stumps of trees in the common, that nobody thought worth while to get but himself, and would get them by night. And of these, green as they were, our fire was commonly made, which used to smoke plentifully, but would not flame out; so that though it did not warm us at all, yet we could not say there was |