am did not take at all kindly to this study and Erasmus was so
disappointed that he not only considered his money and trouble thrown
away, but also thought he had lost a friend.

Meanwhile he was still undecided where he should go in the near future.
To England, to Italy, or back to Paris? In the end he made a fairly long
stay as a guest, from the autumn of 1501 till the following summer,
first at Saint Omer, with the prior of Saint Bertin, and afterwards at
the castle of Courtebourne, not far off.

At Saint Omer, Erasmus became acquainted with a man whose image he was
afterwards to place beside that of Colet as that of a true divine, and
of a good monk at the same time: Jean Vitrier, the warden of the
Franciscan monastery at Saint Omer. Erasmus must have felt attracted to
a man who was burdened with a condemnation pronounced by the Sorbonne on
account of his too frank expressions regarding the abuses of monastic
life. Vitrier had not given up the life on that account, but he devoted
himself to reforming monasteries and convents. Having progressed from
scholasticism to Saint Paul, he had formed a very liberal conception of
Christian life, strongly opposed to practices and ceremonies. This man,
without doubt, considerably influenced the origin of one of Erasmus's
most celebrated and influential works, the _Enchiridion militis
Christiani_.

Erasmus himself afterwards confessed that the _Enchiridion_ was born by
chance. He did not reflect that some outward circumstance is often made
to serve an inward impulse. The outward circumstance was that the castle
of Tournehem was frequented by a soldier, a friend of Batt, a man of
very dissolute conduct, who behaved very badly towards his pious wife,
and who was, moreover, an uncultured and violent hater of priests.[5]
For the rest he was of a kindly disposition and excepted Erasmus from
his hatred of divines. The wife used her influence with Batt to get
Erasmus to write something which might bring her husband to take an
interest in religion. Erasmus complied with the request and Jean Vitrier
concurred so cordially with the views expressed in these notes that
Erasmus afterwards elaborated them at Louvain; in 1504 they were
published at Antwerp by Dirck Maertensz.

This is the outward genesis of the _Enchiridion_. But the inward cause
was that sooner or later Erasmus was bound to formulate his attitude
towards the religious conduct of the life of his day and towards
ceremonial a