CHAP. VIII. IV. ERASMUS VISITS THE SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM (1513). While Sir Arthur Plantagenet and Queen Katherine were going on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, to give thanks, the one for the defeat of the Scots, and the other for deliverance from shipwreck, Erasmus took it into his head to go on pilgrimage also. He had told his friend Ammonius, in May, that he meant to visit the far-famed shrine, to pray for the success of the Holy League, and to hang up a Greek Ode as a votive offering. He appears to have made the pilgrimage from Cambridge in the autumn of 1513, accompanied by his young friend Robert Aldridge,2 afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. It was probably this visit which Erasmus so graphically described many years afterwards in his Colloquy of the 'Religious Pilgrimage.' A.D. 1513. visits the of Wal The College of Canons, under their Sub-prior, main- Erasmus tained chiefly by the offerings left by pilgrims upon the shrine of Virgin's altar; the Priory Church, a relic of which still Our Lady stands to attest its architectural beauty; the small un- singham, finished chapel of the Virgin herself, the sea-winds whistling through its unglazed windows; the inner windowless wooden chapel, with its two doors for pilgrims' ingress and egress; the Virgin's shrine, rich in jewels, gold and silver ornaments, lit up by burning tapers; the dim religious light and scented air; the Canon at the altar, with jealous eye watching each pilgrim and his gift, and keeping guard against sacrilegious theft; the little wicket in the gateway through the 1 Eras. Epist. cxiv. Brewer, i. 1652. T 2 See mention of Aldridge in Eras. Epist. dcclxxxii. CHAP. A.D. 1513. The Greek outer wall, so small that a man must stoop low to pass through it, and yet through which, by the Virgin's aid, an armed knight on horseback once escaped from his pursuer; the plate of copper, on which the knight's figure was engraved in ancient costume with a beard like a goat, and his clothes fitting close to his body, with scarcely so much as a wrinkle in them; the little chapel towards the east, containing the middle joint of St. Peter's finger, so large, the pilgrims thought, that Peter must needs have been a very lusty man ; the house hard by, which it was said was ages ago brought suddenly, one winter time, when all things were covered with snow, from a place a great way off (though to the eyes of Erasmus its thatch, timber, walls, and everything about it, seemed of modern date); the concreted milk of the Holy Virgin, which looked like beaten chalk tempered with the white of an egg; the bold request of Erasmus, to be informed what evidence there was of its really being the milk of the Virgin; the contracted brows of the verger, as he referred them to the authentic record' of its pedigree, hung up high against the wall,-all this is described with so much of the graphic detail of an eyewitness, that one feels, in reading the 'Colloquy,' that it must record the writer's vivid recollections of his own experience. The concluding incident of the Colloquy,' whether Erasmus. referring to a future visit or only an imaginary one, evidently alludes to the Greek Ode mentioned in the letter to Ammonius. It tells how that, before they left the place, the Sub-prior, with some hesitation, modestly ventured to ask whether his present visitor was the same man who, about two years before, had hung up a votive tablet inscribed in Hebrew letters: for Erasmus CHAP. VIII. remarks, they call everything Hebrew which they cannot understand. The Sub-prior is then made to relate what great pains had been taken to read the Greek A.D. 1513. verses; what wiping of glasses; how one wise man thought they were written in Arabic letters, and another in altogether fictitious ones; how at length one had been able to make out the title, which was Latin written in Roman capitals-the verses themselves being in Greek, and written in Greek capitals. In reward for the explanation and translation of the Ode, the Colloquy' goes on to relate that the Sub-prior pulled out of his bag, and presented to his visitors a piece of wood cut from a beam on which the Virgin mother had been seen to rest. Whether this concluding incident related in the 'Colloquy' was a real occurrence or not, it, at all events, confirms the testimony of the Colloquy' itself to the fact that Erasmus made this pilgrimage in a satirical and unbelieving mood, and that his votive ode was rather a joke played upon the ignorant canons, than any proof that he himself was a worshipper of the Virgin, or a believer in the efficacy of pilgrimages to her shrine. CHAP. IX. Erasmus at Cambridge. CHAPTER IX. I. ERASMUS LEAVES CAMBRIDGE, AND MEDITATES LEAVING ENGLAND (1513-14). A.D. 1513. DURING the autumn of 1513 Erasmus made up his mind to leave Cambridge. He had come to England on the accession of Henry VIII. with full purpose to make it his permanent home.1 That his friends would try to bring this about had been his last entreaty on leaving England for his visit to Italy. They had done their best for him. They had found all who cared for the advance of learning anxious to secure the residence of so great a scholar in their own country. The promises were indeed vague, but there were plenty of them, and altogether the chances of a fair maintenance for Erasmus had appeared to be good. He had settled at Cambridge intending to earn his living by teaching Greek to the students; expecting, from them and from the University, fees and a stipend sufficient to enable him to pay his way. But the drudgery of teaching Greek was by no means the work upon which Erasmus had set his heart. It was rather, like St. Paul's tent-making, the price he had to pay for that leisure which he was bent upon devoting to his 1 Compendium, Vita Erasmi: Eras. Op. i. preface. work. real work. This work was his fellow-work with Colet. CHAP. IX. Apart from the aid he was able to give to his friend, by AD. 1513. taking up the cudgels for him at the University, and finding him teachers and schoolbooks for his school- His real for all this was done by-the-bye-he was labouring to make his own proper contribution towards the object to which both were devoting their all. He was labouring hard to produce an edition of the New Testament The New in the original Greek, with a new and free translation and St. of his own, and simultaneously with this a corrected edition of the works of St. Jerome-the latter in itself an undertaking of enormous labour. In letters written from Cambridge during the years 1511-1513, we catch stray glimpses of the progress of these great works. He writes to Colet, in August 1511, that he is about attacking St. Paul," and in July 1512, that he has finished collating the New Testament, and is attacking St. Jerome.2 To Ammonius, in the camp, during the French campaign of 1513, he writes that he is working with almost superhuman zeal at the correction of the text of St. Jerome; and shortly after the close of the campaign against France, he tells his friend that he himself has 'been waging no less fierce a warfare with the blunders ' of Jerome.' And now, with his editions of the New Testament and Jerome nearly ready for the press, why should he waste any further time at Cambridge? He had complained from the first that he could get nothing 1 Eras. Epist. cxvii. Brewer, i. fixes the date. 1847. 3 Eras. Epist. cxxix. Brewer, i. 4576. See also Brewer, i. 2013, which belongs to the same autumn. 2 Eras. Epist. cxv. Brewer, i. 4336. The allusion to the 'De 'Copia' (printed in May 1512), | Epist. cxli. Testament Jerome. |