Letters: Erasmus to Rhenanus c. 15 October 1518, i

At the height of his fame, fall brought Desiderius Erasmus back to teach in Louvain. He didn't like the constant change much. In a letter to an old friend dated c. October 15, 1518, he describes miserable iterations of his frequent travel itinerary. He had come to Louvain by 1516, then, as now, a university town. But, unhappy with that role in that place, he would continue to travel to see if he could find a more suitable locale to do his work.

Mention must be made that this letter comes thru the transmission of Johann Huizinga's 20th century classic Erasmus and the Age of Reformation that first appeared in Dutch in 1924. It is Huizinga's choice of letters that were published with later editions of this penetrating biography, that also brings an emotional, psychological insight to the man. It seems suitable then to begin to look at this figure from a nearly interior point of view by including one of these sections where the great man simply suffers hardship and tells it in confidence.

The hardships of the journeys did make Erasmus sore, irritable, sick with fever. Of course, he would survive nearly twenty years more. Still it's easy to imagine him, bouncing on horseback or riding in a close packed carriage, thinking of his years, or, of thirty years before, when his parents had died of the plague, along with so many others he'd known since. Writing to his friend Beatus Rhenanus, a close follower and helper to Erasmus in all his work at that time, we get an intimate view here of the famous Dutch intellectual and Renaissance man stripped of much of the discerning subtlety that had made him famous. This also includes a river trip down the Rhine river.

"... Let me describe to you ... the whole tragi-comedy of my journey. I was still weak and listless, as you know, when I left Basle, not having come to terms witht the climate, after skulking at home so long, and occupied in uninterrupted labors at that. The river voyage was not unpleasant, but that around midday the heat of the sun  was somewhat trying. We had a meal at Breisach, the most unpleasant meal I have ever had. The smell of food nearly finished me, and then the flies, worse than the smell. We sat at table doing nothing for more than half an hour, waiting.... In the end nothing fit was served; filthy porridge with lumps in it and salt fish reheated not for the first time, enough to make one sick. ... a pretty story; that Minorite theologian with whom I had disputed heceitas had taken it on himself to pawn the church chalices. Scotist ingenuity! Just before nightfall we were put out at a dull village; I do not feel like discovering its name, and if I knew I should not care to tell you it. I nearly perished there. We had supper in a small room like a sweating-chamber, more than sixty of us, I should say, an indiscriminate collection of rapscallions, and this went on till nearly ten o'clock; oh, the stench and the noise, particularly after they had become intoxicated! Yet we had to remain sitting to suit their clocks." [p. 264]

Scotist ingenuity and heceitas refers cynically to the famed medieval scholiast and, the idea of Duns Scotus. Famous for among other things, coming up with the idea and proving for the Church, that there exists an essential, unique element that makes the individual itself. Erasmus can joke!

"In the morning while it was still quite dark we were driven from bed by the shouting of the sailors. I went on board without having either supped or slept. We reached Strasbourg before lunch at about nine o'clock; there we had a more comfortable reception ... as Schürer produced some wine.... Gerbel outdoing all the rest in politeness. Gebwiler and Rudolfingen did not want me to pay, no new thing with them. Thence we proceeded on horseback as far as Speyer; we saw no sign of soldiers anywhere, although there had been alarming rumours. The English horse completely collapsed and hardly got to Speyer; that criminal smith had handled him so badly that he ought to have both his ears branded.... At Speyer I slipped away from the inn and took myself to my neighbor Maternus. There Decanus, a learned and cultivated man, entertained me courteously and agreeably for two days." [p. 265]

From there he travels further on horseback north again to Worms and on to Mainz where his hosts, and Erasmus' journey, are more enjoyable. But by the time he gets to Cologne the weather had grown worse. He tries to set up a lunch and carriage and pair of horses for next day's travel. These all fall through and Erasmus strikes out on his own. This pattern would repeat. The rest of this letter, and others, will be continued later.
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Huizinga, Johan: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation  with a selection from the letters of Erasmus ; (reprint), Bibliobazaar, Charleston, SC, 2008


Since the original publication in 1924 by Charles Scribner's Sons, in New York, this book has gone thru numerous editions. It was translated for the 1924 edition into English by F. Hopman and was originally titled Erasmus of Rotterdam. The reprint I'm using seems exactly the same as the Dover (2001) and Harper  (1957) editions, but with different pagination and without an index. Without these other versions in front of me, I can't tell when the inclusion of the Erasmian letters occurred or what their date of publication is.