Erasmus and the Age of Reformation | Page 7

which afterwards he asks us to
believe he had felt from the outset. We may, of course, assume that the
supervision of his superiors prevented him from writing all that was in
his heart, and that in the depths of his being there had always existed
the craving for freedom and for more civilized intercourse than Steyn
could offer. Still he must have found in the monastery some of the good
things that his schoolfellow had led him to expect. That at this period
he should have written a 'Praise of Monastic Life', 'to please a friend
who wanted to decoy a cousin', as he himself says, is one of those naïve
assertions, invented afterwards, of which Erasmus never saw the
unreasonable quality.
He found at Steyn a fair degree of freedom, some food for an intellect
craving for classic antiquity, and friendships with men of the same turn
of mind. There were three who especially attracted him. Of the
schoolfellow who had induced him to become a monk, we hear no
more. His friends are Servatius Roger of Rotterdam and William
Hermans of Gouda, both his companions at Steyn, and the older
Cornelius Gerard of Gouda, usually called Aurelius (a
quasi-latinization of Goudanus), who spent most of his time in the
monastery of Lopsen, near Leyden. With them he read and conversed
sociably and jestingly; with them he exchanged letters when they were
not together.
Out of the letters to Servatius there rises the picture of an Erasmus
whom we shall never find again--a young man of more than feminine
sensitiveness; of a languishing need for sentimental friendship. In
writing to Servatius, Erasmus runs the whole gamut of an ardent lover.
As often as the image of his friend presents itself to his mind tears
break from his eyes. Weeping he re-reads his friend's letter every hour.
But he is mortally dejected and anxious, for the friend proves averse to

this excessive attachment. 'What do you want from me?' he asks. 'What
is wrong with you?' the other replies. Erasmus cannot bear to find that
this friendship is not fully returned. 'Do not be so reserved; do tell me
what is wrong! I repose my hope in you alone; I have become yours so
completely that you have left me naught of myself. You know my
pusillanimity, which when it has no one on whom to lean and rest,
makes me so desperate that life becomes a burden.'
Let us remember this. Erasmus never again expresses himself so
passionately. He has given us here the clue by which we may
understand much of what he becomes in his later years.
These letters have sometimes been taken as mere literary exercises; the
weakness they betray and the complete absence of all reticence, seem
to tally ill with his habit of cloaking his most intimate feelings which,
afterwards, Erasmus never quite relinquishes. Dr. Allen, who leaves
this question undecided, nevertheless inclines to regard the letters as
sincere effusions, and to me they seem so, incontestably. This
exuberant friendship accords quite well with the times and the person.
Sentimental friendships were as much in vogue in secular circles during
the fifteenth century as towards the end of the eighteenth century. Each
court had its pairs of friends, who dressed alike, and shared room, bed,
and heart. Nor was this cult of fervent friendship restricted to the sphere
of aristocratic life. It was among the specific characteristics of the
devotio moderna, as, for the rest, it seems from its very nature to be
inseparably bound up with pietism. To observe one another with
sympathy, to watch and note each other's inner life, was a customary
and approved occupation among the brethren of the Common Life and
the Windesheim monks. And though Steyn and Sion were not of the
Windesheim congregation, the spirit of the devotio moderna was
prevalent there.
As for Erasmus himself, he has rarely revealed the foundation of his
character more completely than when he declared to Servatius: 'My
mind is such that I think nothing can rank higher than friendship in this
life, nothing should be desired more ardently, nothing should be
treasured more jealously'. A violent affection of a similar nature

troubled him even at a later date when the purity of his motives was
questioned. Afterwards he speaks of youth as being used to conceive a
fervent affection for certain comrades. Moreover, the classic examples
of friends, Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, Theseus and
Pirithous, as also David and Jonathan, were ever present before his
mind's eye. A young and very tender heart, marked by many feminine
traits, replete with all the sentiment and with all the imaginings of
classic literature, who was debarred from love and found himself
placed against his wish in a coarse and frigid environment,