Erasmus and the Age of Reformation | Page 3

armies approached and he suffered
the hardships of the civilian population in a theatre of war; but his spirit
was unbroken. He died on 1 February 1945, a few weeks before his
country was set free.
G. N. CLARK
Oriel College, Oxford
April 1952

ERASMUS
and the Age of Reformation
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH
1466-88
The Low Countries in the fifteenth century--The Burgundian
power--Connections with the German Empire and with France--The
northern Netherlands outskirts in every sense--Movement of Devotio
moderna: brethren of the Common Life and Windesheim
monasteries--Erasmus's birth: 1466--His relations and name--At school
at Gouda, Deventer and Bois-le-Duc--He takes the vows: probably in
1488
When Erasmus was born Holland had for about twenty years formed
part of the territory which the dukes of Burgundy had succeeded in
uniting under their dominion--that complexity of lands, half French in
population, like Burgundy, Artois, Hainault, Namur; half Dutch like

Flanders, Brabant, Zealand, Holland. The appellation 'Holland' was, as
yet, strictly limited to the county of that name (the present provinces of
North and South Holland), with which Zealand, too, had long since
been united. The remaining territories which, together with those last
mentioned, make up the present kingdom of the Netherlands, had not
yet been brought under Burgundian dominion, although the dukes had
cast their eyes on them. In the bishopric of Utrecht, whose power
extended to the regions on the far side of the river Ysel, Burgundian
influence had already begun to make itself manifest. The projected
conquest of Friesland was a political inheritance of the counts of
Holland, who preceded the Burgundians. The duchy of Guelders, alone,
still preserved its independence inviolate, being more closely connected
with the neighbouring German territories, and consequently with the
Empire itself.
All these lands--about this time they began to be regarded collectively
under the name of 'Low Countries by the Sea'--had in most respects the
character of outskirts. The authority of the German emperors had for
some centuries been little more than imaginary. Holland and Zealand
hardly shared the dawning sense of a national German union. They had
too long looked to France in matters political. Since 1299 a
French-speaking dynasty, that of Hainault, had ruled Holland. Even the
house of Bavaria that succeeded it about the middle of the fourteenth
century had not restored closer contact with the Empire, but had itself,
on the contrary, early become Gallicized, attracted as it was by Paris
and soon twined about by the tentacles of Burgundy to which it became
linked by means of a double marriage.
The northern half of the Low Countries were 'outskirts' also in
ecclesiastical and cultural matters. Brought over rather late to the cause
of Christianity (the end of the eighth century), they had, as borderlands,
remained united under a single bishop: the bishop of Utrecht. The
meshes of ecclesiastical organization were wider here than elsewhere.
They had no university. Paris remained, even after the designing policy
of the Burgundian dukes had founded the university of Louvain in 1425,
the centre of doctrine and science for the northern Netherlands. From
the point of view of the wealthy towns of Flanders and Brabant, now

the heart of the Burgundian possessions, Holland and Zealand formed a
wretched little country of boatmen and peasants. Chivalry, which the
dukes of Burgundy attempted to invest with new splendour, had but
moderately thrived among the nobles of Holland. The Dutch had not
enriched courtly literature, in which Flanders and Brabant zealously
strove to follow the French example, by any contribution worth
mentioning.
Whatever was coming up in Holland flowered unseen; it was not of a
sort to attract the attention of Christendom. It was a brisk navigation
and trade, mostly transit trade, by which the Hollanders already began
to emulate the German Hansa, and which brought them into continual
contact with France and Spain, England and Scotland, Scandinavia,
North Germany and the Rhine from Cologne upward. It was herring
fishery, a humble trade, but the source of great prosperity--a rising
industry, shared by a number of small towns.
Not one of those towns in Holland and Zealand, neither Dordrecht nor
Leyden, Haarlem, Middelburg, Amsterdam, could compare with Ghent,
Bruges, Lille, Antwerp or Brussels in the south. It is true that in the
towns of Holland also the highest products of the human mind
germinated, but those towns themselves were still too small and too
poor to be centres of art and science. The most eminent men were
irresistibly drawn to one of the great foci of secular and ecclesiastical
culture. Sluter, the great sculptor, went to Burgundy, took service with
the dukes, and bequeathed no specimen of his art to the land of his birth.
Dirk Bouts, the artist of Haarlem, removed to Louvain, where his best
work is preserved; what was left at Haarlem has