they are in the least just. Peter Richardotus, the magistrate's assistant, will lend his aid if you instruct him, and if you will make the necessary defense before the senate of Dole. Believe me, there is no danger here from the Sects. Not one says a disagreeable word to me, and I do not wish to have anybody in my house who might be infected with the new doctrines. Now, if God grants me any strength so that I may be able to reach Besançon, then Gilbert will be extremely necessary to me, for my other copyist knows no French. If you will show yourself herein to be the friend you always were, bound as I am to you, you will make me still more

But before he could receive an answer to this letter he became too helpless to go either to Brabant or Besançon, being confined absolutely to his bed, facts that we learn from his letter to Tillemann Giese, who had been Bishop of Culm, but was now Bishop of Emmeland. It was dated on the sixth day of June, 1536:

S. P. Your letter full of learning and genius made me greatly regret that I cannot respond to your wishes. Your Eberhardt will bring you back an account of my condition, confined as I am almost entirely to bed, and in such poor health that I am compelled to refrain completely from every sort of literary work, without which life would be unbearable even were I in the best of health. Hence, kindest of friends, if you receive no acknowledgment, at least you will pardon it to a dying man. Farewell. Your friend Erasmus of Rotterdam, with my own feeble hand."

We are quoting generously from these last letters of his in order to show what thoughts were in his mind during his final days on earth. We have another which does not lack interest, written to a certain fellow Imperial Councilor about a month before his death:

S. P. All good men are publicly indebted to you, most illustrious sir, who in your official position grasp the web of affairs with firm mind. For the chief characteristics of a sincere judge are that he shall restrain those who are evil, and protect the good from the injustice of the wicked. But on my own account I am indebted to you in that some time ago in the case of Goclen you brought it about that he got what was justly his, and that, with the same feeling towards him, you endeavored to ward off injustice from him. Such brawls do these Roman harpies create for us that neither among the French, nor the Scotch, nor even among ourselves, does a benefice fall out without its being accompanied by a litigation of several years. I would much desire that the English were at peace with the Pope. They have long ago seen to it, however, that the Roman Curia shall excite no litigations in their country. Although

28 Ibid., col. 1520B-C.

29 This letter did not appear in the Leyden edition of his works, but may be found in Salomon Hess' Erasmus von Roterdam nach seinem Leben und Schriften, Vol. II, p. 606.

the case of Goclen had its weak spot, yet the man himself, who by reason of his learning adorns and honors the dominions of the Emperor, is worthy of enjoying the favor of the judge. Now, since his cause is most just, how unseemly it is that such a man should be summoned from the public service to mingle in these turmoils, with the greatest detriment to studies, and not without loss of that respect whereby the Council has always greatly availed with the Brabanters. I hope that Goclen, by the assistance of his good friends, has already been restored to his study and his usual tranquillity; but, if this has not yet been accomplished, again and again I beg of you that you will continue to show him the good will that you have hitherto displayed in his behalf. By this service you will oblige all who foster liberal studies or cherish the authority of our Imperial Council. I shall say nothing about myself, since for a long time I have been in your debt. Farewell. Basle, May 29, 1536.* It would appear that Goclen had been named to a living to which there was another claimant, and that a lawsuit had been the result. The next letter, which was the last that Erasmus ever wrote, will explain this matter more fully. It was written to Goclen himself, who was the only intimate confidant that Erasmus now had on earth, and for whom he had been trying to obtain the friendly offices of men of position to help in the affair. It was written on the twenty-eighth of June, 1536, fourteen days before he died, and shows the mark of the bodily distress under which he was now laboring:

S. P. You tell me to write to the Chancellor for you, just as if I lived at Mechlin. Here hardly in four months does there turn up such a one that I might safely entrust a letter to him, or, indeed, any person whatsoever. If your letter had reached me during the book-fair, I might have been able to reply by the same means. But now, when will this letter reach you? I hope that your case will have issued from its trial favorably; yet I have written_[the Chancellor] anyway. When your letter was handed to me I was so ill that at no time in my life was I ever more so, and so much so that I was not even able to read for several days. That Antwerpian prebend never looked inviting to me, and even after you had won it I had an idea that something would happen. Now, if at present it looks favorable, I would nevertheless advise that you get rid of the parish for any decent offer. If you hold it in absentia, it will return you very little emolument; if you decide to live there, you will be living in a pestilential part of the city, eating in common, and sitting in chapter the whole of each day, pretending and quarreling. If you are in urgent need, you know that my money is yours.

Then without noticing the abruptness of his change of topic, he swings off on to his own troubles, and begins to give free rein to his suspicions:

30 Eras. Ep. (LB) col. 1520D-1521A.

I suspect that the author of these troubles of mine is the same man who suborned the Scaligers, the Dolets, and the Merulas against me. The fellow, who is as vindictive as a Jew, is not satisfied with attacking me, but he must also attack my friends." In Dolet's furious dialogue it is More whom he is assailing. He has some one at Liège who instigates him secretly and puts him up to all sorts of malicious tricks.

Then he makes another swift digression, according as new ideas throng his tired mind:

32

A certain Spaniard has by letter commended me to the heroine of Nassau " who is coming hither. You request me to write to her, but I know not where she is to be found, for you intimated that she was about to leave there. If you had really known how things were with me here, you would have answered her in my behalf that I had been compelled to leave Freiburg on account of my health, and with the object in view that, after seeing my Ecclesiastes through the press, I was going to betake myself to Besançon in order not to be outside the Emperor's dominions, but that my health becoming worse I was obliged to pass the winter here. Although I am here amongst friends that are most sincere, and such as I had not at Freiburg, yet on account of the dissensions about doctrines I would prefer to end my days elsewhere. Would that Brabant were nearer! I know not whether it was profitable to myself to commend your cause to the Chancellor, on account of Panormitanus, whom it is not expedient to alienate. I suppose that all of you, yourself, Rescius, Andreas, Lipsius, and Schetus, have received the letters which I sent you during the previous book-fair. Why was it necessary for Rescius to interpret the Greek Institutions translated from the Latin? It would have been more fitting for him to have translated Demosthenes, or Lucian, if the latter had anything chaste in him, or tragedies filled with serious thought, or authors of similar character, whence the elegance of the Greek language is learned. But he looks entirely to the money end, and is seriously imperiling that College. Farewell. Basle, June 28, 1536.** 31 He is again alluding to Aleander.

33

33 Probably Juliana of Stolberg, the mother of Prince William of Orange. 33 John Carondelet, Archbishop of Palermo, and President of the Privy Council of the Netherlands.

3 Eras. Ep. (LB) col. 1521A-1522B.

CHAPTER XXVI

DEATH OF ERASMUS: OPINIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES

After getting the Ecclesiastes off his hands, he had begun work on an edition of Origen; but death took him off before it was finished. So his close friend Beatus Rhenanus published it with a preface by himself, in which he gives a short abridgment of his departed friend's life and a few details about his death. These latter are scant indeed, but perhaps we may be able to reconstruct the scene in some measure. On his arrival at Basle from Freiburg, the Frobens had installed him in apartments close to their printing establishment, and this solely for Erasmus' convenience. Almost all his young amanuenses had left him for various reasons already mentioned, and their places were now filled by young men from the Froben office. One of his own, however, continued to give assistance, namely, Morellus Grineus, whom Sammarthanus' speaks of as having spent a good part of his youth in Erasmus' service. There was possibly one other copyist whom he alluded to as not being able to speak French. One or two aged women for the work of the kitchen probably completed the household, but undoubtedly Jerome Froben and Episcopius, with his wife Justina, were present to attend him in his dying moments. We shall give the account of his death in the words of Rhenanus, to whom we owe so much for the information he has given us about various periods of Erasmus' life:

Erasmus had returned from Freiburg to Basle in the previous year so that he might be present while his Ecclesiastes, or Method of Preaching, was passing through the press of Froben, and might also finish it there, for a part of the conclusion was still lacking; also for the purpose of improving by change of air the bad health from which he had begun to suffer at Freiburg. He had not left as if he were never to return, for he had lived there most agreeably under Ferdinand, King of the Romans, of Hungary, and of Bohemia, who by personal letter had earnestly recommended to the authorities of that town Erasmus' importance; and there for seven years he had not only been beloved by all the members of the University, but was also highly esteemed and regarded by the town council and the citizens. After he had been repeatedly invited to her court of Brabant by Maria the illustrious Queen of Hungary, who had even sent him money for traveling expenses, wishing to fulfill the promise he had more than once made her of returning to Lower Germany, he arranged to have all his belongings transferred from Freiburg to Basle and thence down the Rhine to Bra1 Elog. I, iii, p. 78.

bant when navigation should be favorable. After he had done this and the good season of the year was fast approaching, the arthritis, with which he had been afflicted at Freiburg, so confined him to his bed until nearly the following autumn that he rarely left his chamber, and only once was he outside of his room. And yet in such torturing of his limbs he never ceased to write whenever he felt the least respite, as is proved by his little commentary On the Purity of the Christian Church, and this present revision of Origen. But his powers diminishing little by little, for he had suffered almost a month with dysentery, he at length perceived that his end was near; and so, surrounded as ever by those visible and eminent testimonies to his Christian patience and his devout mind by which he witnessed that he had fixed his hope on Christ, crying out constantly, "Mercy, O Jesus, Lord deliver me, Lord make an end, Lord have mercy on me," and in the German language, "Lieber Godt," that is, "Dear God," on the twelfth of July near midnight, he died.' No other words did he utter, although having full use of his reason to the very last breath. There should be an entire absence in a Christian of all impatience in paying the debt due to nature, since the death of the pious is nothing but a passage to a better life, and those who die are not dead, but only precede us to where we desire to go, as . . . Tertullian puts it. A few days before he died, when Boniface Amerbach, Jerome Froben, and Nicholas Episcopius, who were his more intimate friends, were paying him a kindly visit, he reminded them, on their entering his bedchamber, of the three friends of Job, asking them where were their torn garments and the ashes that they were to sprinkle on their heads. Several months ago he was wont to predict that he would die this year, and he made the same prophecy even two or three days before his death. How general was the regret for him was indicated by the crowds that came to view the remains. He was carried on the shoulders of the students to the Cathedral and there honorably buried near the steps that lead to the choir, as it is called, on the left side of the edifice where there was a little chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. In the funeral procession were seen not only the Governor, but most of the Senators, and not a single one of the professors and students was absent. He was quite liberal during his life towards students in want and others who were worthy of help, as often as any came his way. The last wishes of this man did not differ from his usual goodness, for he made a will confirmed by the authority of Pope Clement, of the Emperor Charles, and of the Magistracy of Basle, in which he charged his heir, the most illustrious jurisconsul Boniface Amerbach, with the duty of distributing his goods to those It would seem that in his dying moments Erasmus fell into the language of his childhood and said in Dutch, "Lieve God," which sounded to the bystanders like their familiar "Lieber Gott," for there is no reason why in such a moment he should fall into the German tongue, which he has told us that he could not speak. Of course we have to remember that by Rhenanus and his contemporaries the present Holland was all considered Lower Germany, and we know that the Dutch language is of Germanic origin.