He spent five unhappy years in monastic seclusion (1486–1491), and conceived an utter
disgust for monkery. Ulrich von Hutten passed through the same experience, with the same negative
result; while for Luther monastic life was his free choice, and became the cradle of a new religious
life. Erasmus found relief in the study of the classics, which he pursued without a guide, by a secret
impulse of nature. We have from this period a number of his compositions in poetry and prose,
odes to Christ and the holy Virgin, invectives against despisers of eloquence, and an essay on the
contempt of the world, in which he describes the corruptions of the world and the vices of the
monks.
He was delivered from his prison life in 1491 by the bishop of Cambray, his parsimonious
patron, and ordained to the priesthood in 1492. He continued in the clerical profession, and remained
unmarried, but never had a parish.
He now gave himself up entirely to study in the University of Paris and at Orleans. His
favorite authors were Cicero, Terence, Plutarch, and Lucian among the classics, Jerome among the
fathers, and Laurentius Valla the commentator. He led hereafter an independent literary life without
a regular charge, supporting himself by teaching, and then supported by rich friends.^503 In his days
of poverty he solicited aid in letters of mingled humility and vanity; when he became famous, he
received liberal gifts and pensions from prelates and princes, and left at his death seven thousand
ducats. The title of royal counsellor of the King of Spain (Charles V.) brought him an annual income
of four hundred guilders after 1516. The smaller pensions were paid irregularly, and sometimes
failed in that impecunious age. Authors seldom received copy money or royalty from publishers
and printers, but voluntary donations from patrons of learning and persons to whom they dedicated
their works. Froben, however, his chief publisher, treated Erasmus very generously. He traveled
extensively, like St. Jerome, and made the personal acquaintance of the chief celebrities in church
and state.
He paid two important visits to England, first on the invitation of his grateful and generous
pupil, Lord Montjoy, between 1498 and 1500, and again in 1510. There he became intimate with
the like-minded Sir Thomas More, Dean Colet, Archbishop Warham, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishop
Fisher, and was introduced to King Henry VII. and to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. Colet
taught him that theology must return from scholasticism to the Scriptures, and from dry dogmas to
practical wisdom.^504 For this purpose he devoted more attention to Greek at Oxford, but never
attained to the same proficiency in it as in Latin. On his second visit he was appointed Lady
Margaret’s professor of divinity, and reader of Greek, in Cambridge. His room in Queen’s College
is still shown. The number of his hearers was small, and so was his income. "Still," he wrote to a
friend in London, "I am doing my best to promote sound scholarship." He had much to say in praise
of England, where he received so much kindness, but also in complaint of bad beer and bad wine,
and of his robbery at Dover, where he was relieved of all his money in the custom-house, under a
law that no one should take more than a small sum out of the realm.
Between his visits to England he spent three years in Italy (1506–1509), and bathed in the
fountain of the renaissance. He took the degree of doctor of divinity at Turin, and remained some
time in Venice, Padua, Bologna, and Rome. He edited the classics of Greece and Rome, with
specimens of translations, and superintended the press of Manutius Aldus at Venice. He entered
(^503) He calls himself, in his autobiographical sketch, "dignitatum ac divitiarum perpetuus contemptor."
(^504) J. H. Lupton: A Life of John Colet, D. D., Dean of St. Paul’s and Founder of St. Paul’s School. London, 1887.