gite. All drew from taste and savour and perfume the images which serve to express mystical joy: they have a relish for the presence of God, they know it by experience, all excel in interpreting the nature and books in a symbolical sense. Symbolism is a method of considering each corporeal being as an image of the supernatural world. A nut is for Adam of St. Victor the symbol of Christ, the green envelope corresponding to his humanity, the shell meaning the wood of the cross, the stone his hidden divine nature. For Pierre de More the rose is a symbol of the martyrs, and Hugh of Saint-Victor sees in the dove an image of the Church. Not only the whole nature was deciphered in a mystical way, but also the Books of the Bible, the Epistles, of St. Paul, the treaties of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagita. Besides the literal sense of the Scriptures, and the doctrinal and theological sense, the mystics bring out everywhere a hidden symbolical or mystical sense: a delicate method, indeed, which was often fraught with danger, for the symbolical interpretation of a text very easily leads to explanations that are fantastic and false.

Herein lies the danger of mysticism. Symbolical interpretation of texts misled some mystics on the way to pantheism: they regarded the union of the soul and God as a fusion so intimate that it made of God and the soul one and the same being. This pantheistic mysticism is not Catholic, but heretic. It developed side by side with the Catholic mysticism, just as a rank weed grows up along with a choice flower in a fruitful soil. We need not add that to deny a fundamental distinction between the essence of God and the essence of man is to undermine the fundamental Catholic dogmas.

MAURICE DE WULF, Ph.D.,

Harvard University.

The matter in the life and character of Erasmus about which most controversy has been stirred is that of his exact attitude with regard to the religious innovations of his time.

How far was he responsible for the outbreak of the Reformation, and when, later, he became more conservative how far was he genuine in his protestations of fidelity to the Church? Certain it is that as an historical fact neither Catholic nor Protestant during his life were at all content with him, and to some extent this vague hostility has been maintained after his death.

I think that one key to his writings and mannerisms may be found, apart from his own temperament, in his individual history. He started with a bias against the monastic life, for the manner of his profession in the Augustinian Priory of Steyn was most irregular and scandalized the Pope, Leo X, when he was informed of it. The manner in which immature youths were then cajoled into various orders or almost kidnapped, at the instigation of parents or guardians, was one of the great scandals of the day, and moreover to a man of the fastidious temperament of Erasmus the experience of life in a religious house of the Low Countries must have been trying. The religious of the Low Countries were probably no worse than any others, that is to say scamps who were a scandal to their profession existed in all orders in every country; how could it be otherwise? but the folk of what we now call Holland and Belgium were coarser in their habits and tastes than the people of Italy. Erasmus was only by accident of birth a man of the Low Countries; in every other respect he belonged rather to any other land.

Let us remember that Erasmus found no serious fault with the Augustinians; he was merely bored and objected to some of the unpleasantness of their rule, such as fasting, midnight and early rising, and more legitimately felt that such a life was impossible for himself whose true vocation was scholarship.

The fact that the unpleasantness existed is rather a proof

Paper read at a Meeting of St. Thomas's Historical Society, London, February 5, 1923.

that these Augustinians were following their rule seriously, and at this time it is not necessary to say how vastly the scandals connected with the orders have been exaggerated. We hear comparatively little in contemporary grumbles about the failings of the seculars though in some places, and especially in England, the seculars were more open to criticism.

Erasmus also suffered much in health throughout his life. some sort of gastric trouble, and this often made him petulant and bitter; for a scholar of that period, especially for one who was courted by Popes and sovereigns and who was at one time the arbiter of the learned world, he was not inordinately vain and was, with rare exceptions, restrained in his polemical writings. We can think of many others, such as Poliziano in a rather earlier period who for vanity and bitter temper with downright scurrility, began where Erasmus left off. Erasmus, like all men of what is sometimes called the artistic temperament, was often perverse and at times delighted to shock the more old fashioned and was to this extent, at the mercy of his temperament, insincere. In other words what he wrote or said at a particular time he meant at that particular moment, and if at another place and at another time he wrote and spoke in an opposite cause he equally meant what he then said. Such temperaments are indisciplined, and if they be of sufficient importance in the world dangerous, but not necessarily humbugs or hypocrites. We may think of many examples in more modern times. Erasmus has suffered from the common confusion of thought between inconsistency and insincerity.

People have often made the mistake of not distinguishing between Erasmus's serious works and those which have acquired fame but were really thrown off as literary squibs or jests.

Consider his Luther correspondence; his De Libero Arbitrio; his correspondence with Melanchthon; with Lewis Ber; with the Dominican, Faber; his book Querula Pacis, Erasmus was a life long pacificist, a rare thing in those days; his Encomium Matrimoniae; the Enchiridion Militis Christiani; the Spongia Adversus Aspergines Hutteni, light but highly serious because Hutten's scurrility had to be stopped, and yet Erasmus regretted that extraordinary person's hostility, to mention no more, and compare these with the Encomium Moriae or the Colloquia or

Julius Exclusus if indeed, as is most probable, Erasmus must be credited with that naughty dialogue.

The Encomium was the result of a short stay at Sir Thomas More's house at Chelsea and was never intended to do more than amuse his host and other friends of Erasmus; its wide circulation and posthumous fame Erasmus never foresaw, but the Pope was one of the early readers who were the most pleased. It seems to me to be impossible to regard it as a serious attack on religion or the Catholic Church for it is obviously not serious about anything; even the title is equivocal and is meant to a considerable extent to convey the idea that the jests and satire on a blank obscurantism are as much in praise of Blessed Thomas More as in praise of Foly. Certain it is that the martyred Chancellor much enjoyed the book and his views are with difficulty distinguishable from those of Erasmus; more he expressed pleasure in reading the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, a work which disgusted Erasmus. So dangerous it is to apply our ideas of the convenances in discussing religious or semi-religious matters to the Sixteenth century.

The praise of Foly was in reality a satire of extremes,-in short of all kinds. The mania for sport, not of course precisely the same form which is worshipped in our own days, the futility of the mere bookworm, the tyranny and greed of kings and princes; it may well be that More's resistance to the royal tyranny in matters outside the civil power was strengthened by the views of his friend; all such subjects as well as the scholastics, the monks and the mendicants come under the review of Erasmus. These latter are made to appear very foolish at the Day of Judgment owing to their trust in the mere habit and observances of their respective orders and their neglect of faith and charity. Again, this goes no further than Blessed Thomas More who wrote, as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, to a young theologian: Erasmus only ridicules the superstitious use of ceremonies. There is no fear of the devil getting hold of you if you merely alter your dress, fear rather to lie and commit crimes.

The attack on the Grammarians or common schoolmasters was very much deserved and the need for reform in education was most pressing. Colet's foundation of St. Paul's school about

this time, 1511, came very happily; he was one of Erasmus's greatest friends and of a very similar type of mind. Colet, however, would be more modernist than Erasmus cared to be and was annoyed at his praise of the Aurea Catena.

The skit on Julius ii, for there is no concealment, was a protest against the political activities of a warlike though very great Pope. Foly attacks him as a territorial prince, but in his capacity as St. Peter's successor and Vicar of Christ there is no attack at all. Here again it is a matter of taste, and we must realise the kind of times and the state of society in the Sixteenth century.

There are some more pronounced attacks on purely religious matters in the Encomium and these had better been considered with the Peregrinatio Religionis in the Colloquies. Here also Erasmus was writing in a light strain partly from recollection, partly perhaps from some actual journal, but the publication did not take place earlier than five years after his actual pilgrimage.

The matters attacked by Foly are chiefly the following: the idea of attributing extraordinary virtues to certain shrines and thither making pilgrimages when a person's duty was rather at home; the transference of some pagan cultus to a Christian form (St. George as another kind of Hercules is the example given) and the evil of fictitious indulgences and pardons and especially of their sale. To take the last point first. It was a great abuse at the period and contributed largely to the blazing up of the Revolt in Europe. Erasmus was right and the practice was condemned and abolished at Trent. Nothing can be more severe than its condemnation by the Council. The previous point is capable of a wide solution and betrays the classical mind of Erasmus. It is not an uncommon accusation at the present time and clearness of thought is here most essential. If it be meant that many Saints have no other existence than as the heroes and demigods of antiquity the proposition is clearly absurd and erroneous; but if it be only intended to say that some parts of an ancient local cultus, in externals, have been transferred to the honour of a real Christian saint of the same locality then it is, I imagine, a fairly clear and harmless proposition. St. George is always unfortunate in literature and it is obvious that certain saints are, so to speak, much more established than others; who