But the fame of his Adages had preceded Erasmus, and he felt secure of his welcome, since Scipio Carteromachos, his quondam friend of Bologna, was now in Rome ready to trumpet forth the praises of the new literary celebrity who was coming to the seat of the Christian world and the home of the Renaissance. To Carteromachos he had no doubt written previous to his arrival to secure for him necessary lodgings, and his mind was at ease on that score. Just at that moment, however, Carteromachos had little leisure to attend to his friend and to bestow on him the courtesies that the occasion demanded and which one learned man would naturally extend to another who was a stranger to his surroundings. His pupil Galeotto della Rovere had recently died, a youth of much promise, nephew of Pope Julius; but place was immediately made for Carteromachos in the suite of the Pope's favorite, Cardinal Alidosi, and with him he was compelled to depart almost at once, for the Pope had entrusted to that Cardinal the government of his turbulent city of Bologna, a mission which admitted of no delay. He reached Bologna on March 7, 1509.*

23

All of the biographers of Erasmus have tried to find in his writings some account of his feelings on first beholding Rome. Did he hasten to prostrate himself at the tomb of the Apostles? Did he seek to trace the footsteps of the early martyrs, and devoutly fall on his knees within the precincts sacred to their memory? His writings are mute on the subject. We find no laudatory allusions to the city's greatness, no note of admiration for her monuments of either pagan or Christian art. The past seems to have little attraction for him, but what does concern him is the men of the present and their splendid abilities along the lines of his own personal attainments. Two years afterwards another monk, footsore and weary because he had walked from Wittemberg in Saxony to Rome, entered the city by the same gate as Erasmus and, stopping before the convent attached to the church of Santa Maria del Populo, knocked at the door thereof and announced himself as Brother Martin, bearing a message from his Vicar-General, John Staupitz, to the General of the Order in Rome. And Rome was all unconscious of the fact that within her gates that day she harbored Martin Luther. Köstlin says that the devotion of a pilgrim inspired him as he arrived at the city which he had long regarded with holy veneration. When he came in sight of her, he fell upon the earth, raised his hands, and exclaimed, "Hail to thee, Holy Rome." She was truly sanctified, he declared afterwards, through the blessed martyrs and their blood which had flowed within her walls. And the next day, when he said Mass, he was filled

23 We are following the chronology of Nolhac, but are free to confess that his dates in this instance do not commend themselves to us. If Erasmus reached Rome at the end of February and spent some days in the company of Carteromachos, how could the latter be in Bologna on March 7th? The distance to be covered was at the least estimate two hundred and eighty miles. Travel was by horse over roads that were poor and unsafe, and hence possible only in the daytime. A large retinue, such as the Cardinal would in those circumstances naturally have with him, would hardly travel more than forty miles daily, so that it is difficult to place Carteromachos in Rome at the end of February to meet Erasmus, to stay with him a few days, and yet to be at Bologna on March 7th. However, except for the matter of accuracy, it is not very important for us in this place.

with the ardor and exaltation of an Apostle Paul. What a difference in the coming of the two followers of St. Augustine-the one full of zeal and fervor for the work of the Master, the other equally zealous, but in how different a way!

99 24

And many years afterwards, when his less spiritual part had been acidified by anxiety and physical danger, Luther, indignant with himself, tells us "how he had run like a crazy saint on a pilgrimage through all the churches and catacombs and had believed what turned out to be a mass of rank lies and impostures." And Erasmus' comment made likewise in after years was, "Rome? there is no Rome, except her ruins and rubbish, the scars and vestiges of her former disasters. Take away the Pope and the Cardinals, what then would be Rome?" " How inconsistent the greatest of men can become at times! Both Luther and Erasmus forgot that in spite of possible lies and imposture, in spite of the worldliness of Popes, Cardinals, and other ecclesiastics—and no doubt it existed-in spite of possible corruption attending the administration of the Church's vast temporal domain-and no contemporary court was free from it-in spite of the thousand and one things which might serve to dull the fervor of the devout and spiritually minded, yet withal, Rome was still Rome. Her catacombs were still the same catacombs where our Christian forefathers gathered to adore the Savior of mankind, her Coliseum still pointed aloft to remind them of her glorious past, her very soil that had drunk the blood of the martyrs was the same soil they were treading, and the spiritual part of Luther recognized the fact and made him fall upon his knees. It mattered not if at the same time her sacred precincts were the abode of the unworthy, if worldlings even desecrated her holy places; she was still that spot of the entire earth where organized Christianity had found its permanent home, where the deposit of truth which the Redeemer had promised to leave with us had been treasured sacredly; and if some claim that superstition has added to that deposit something more than they are prepared to accept, they readily admit that no slightest grain or atom of the original deposit is or ever has been lost, from the very earliest days down to the present. So Luther's impulse to salute the venerable city was a true one, and does him honor. How was it with Erasmus? His error was in considering that the Pope and the Cardinals were Rome, and that if they were taken away there would be no Rome left. He must have been aware that Clement V had been compelled to leave Rome and dwell in France, in obedience to the mandate of a haughty and ambitious king, Philip IV of that country, and that that Pope and six of his successors had dwelt there during sixty-eight years. He must also have been aware that, by gift and purchase, Avignon was just as much a part of the Papal States as Rome, and that the Papal Court was just as brilliant at Avignon as it had ever been at Rome, thronged as it was with the poets and scholars of all Europe. But there was only one, and could in the nature of things be only one, Rome, and when St. Catherine of Siena came to Avignon and implored the Pope to return to Rome we can easily acquit her of any worldly motive. She was only voicing the universal wish that the 24 Köstlin, Martin Luther, p. 60. 25 LB, Vol. I, col. 1016F.

successor of Peter, of Linus, of Cletus, of Clement, and others of the illustrious line of Pontiffs, many of whom sealed their fidelity to their faith with their blood, should return to the spot hallowed by their sacrifice. If there were not a stone left upon a stone, Rome would still be Rome, the cradle of the early Church, the shrine, through the ages, of our Christian faith and our Christian traditions.

1

CHAPTER XX

ITALY ROME: FIRST DISPENSATION

Fortified by the letters of introduction which we make no doubt were freely offered to him along his route from Padua to Rome, and remembering also the numerous friendships which he had already made with persons who were now resident in the Eternal City, Erasmus must have been at no loss to renew his relations with many friends. He realized his own worth as the author of at least one famous work, besides a number of others of more or less reputation. As a consequence he sought the acquaintance of his peers in scholarship and fame, and, in addition, he aimed to cultivate the esteem and good wishes of all those who occupied positions of influence, with a mind alert to possible advantages which might accrue to himself. This was very natural and very necessary to him in his always dubious financial condition. But he was now in Rome where the minutest details of Church polity were scanned, and where the decisions were made that were to influence and control the deeds of countless millions all over Europe. Honors were awarded here with a lavish hand to the fortunate ones of the Church, and censures were similarly passed on those who had been unfortunate enough to merit them. Here all sorts of dispensations might be petitioned for and obtained, if they commended themselves to the judgment of the heads of the various congregations whose duty it was to investigate the details of such matters; and we need have no doubt that swiftness and dispatch could be elicited in the adjudication of these petitions if influence were brought to bear in the proper quarters. In other words, affairs at the pontifical court were adjusted much as they were at any other European court, and the favors of the great were eagerly looked for and coveted. Under such circumstances, we may assume that Erasmus left no means untried to advance his interests and make for himself friends from whom he might ask favors when the opportunity offered. And there were many things of this nature which lay next his heart, which we shall have to enter into most minutely presently. Meanwhile we shall examine the friends whom he made.

One who could be of the utmost assistance to him was Egidius of Viterbo. He had probably met him at Bologna in the suite of Pope Julius, when the Pontiff was retaking the city from the Bentivogli about eighteen months previously. Here is a man whose career is interesting as showing that, oligarchic as the Church government is, it is in the broadest sense a real democracy, and that the most lowly may aspire to its highest offices. Egidius Antonini was born at Viterbo in 1472, of poor but respectable parents, and was thus about six years younger than

Erasmus. He had an excellent and lively mind, and like Erasmus entered a monastery school, where in 1489, at the age of seventeen, he made his profession as an Augustinian monk. He was sent by his superiors to study philosophy, theology, and the kindred studies, to which he added a profound knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic, Turkish, and Persian. But that which served most to attract attention to him was his gift of oratory, and it was to his pulpit eloquence that he owed his summons from Pope Alexander VI to come to Rome and reside there permanently. Pope Julius II recognized his lofty and distinguished qualifications, and appointed him first Vicar-General of his Order in Italy, and afterwards made him General of the Order throughout Christendom.' That Pope appreciated his qualities so highly that he never left Rome without carrying Egidius with him, and it was when he was a member of the Pope's household that Erasmus made his acquaintance at Bologna, probably at the instance of Carteromachos. Julius sent him as Nuncio to Venice, and later to the King of Naples, in order to incite these powers to collect their forces against the Turks, and after this he employed his good offices in reclaiming the city of Perugia from open rebellion to ready obedience to the Pope's control. At the death of Pope Julius, the new Pope Leo X immediately made use of him in 1515 to act as his Nuncio to the German Emperor Maximilian, in order to induce him to make peace with the Venetians. Then he sent him as his envoy to the Duke of Urbino, and on this occasion he wrote him three letters in which he entirely laid aside his pontifical dignity and spoke with him as one friend to another, displaying in this the high value which he placed in his judgment. Clement VII also esteemed him most highly and exhorted him to give to the world some of the many works which he had written. He was selected to preach the sermon at the opening of the Lateran Council in 1512, an effort which aroused the admiration of the learned Sadoleti who heard it, while Bembo, who read it, called him the most illustrious light of the age. He was not only a great orator, but in addition to this he was a poet, a historian, and a philosopher, and so great was his reputation as a theologian that Paul III, while yet a Cardinal, made him his confessor. He was made a Cardinal by Leo X in 1517, and Bishop of Viterbo and Patriarch of Constantinople, by Clement VII in 1524. In the sack of Rome he lost his priceless library, a loss which was worse to him than any monetary loss would have been. It depressed him very much, and shortly afterwards he retired to Padua, where he spent his declining years in correspondence with the learned, among whom were Bembo, Sadoleti, and other leading literary men of that time. He died in 1532, aged sixty years, and was buried in the church of St. Agostino in Rome. His motto, which was placed in his titular church of St. Matthew after his death, was "Non quid sed qua mente operemur," not a bad motto for any man.'

1 Though he was the General of the Augustinian Order, he had no relation with the Canons Regular.

2

Lorenzo Cardella, Memorie storiche dei cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa, 10 vols. Rome, 1792-97.