cially to avenge Longolius's memory. Erasmus's perpetual feeling of
being persecuted got fresh food: he again thought that Aleander was at
the bottom of it. 'The Italians set the imperial court against me,' he
writes in 1530. A year later all is quiet again. He writes jestingly:
'Upon my word, I am going to change my style after Budaeus's model and
to become a Ciceronian according to the example of Sadolet and Bembo'.
But even near the close of his life he was engaged in a new contest with
Italians, because he had hurt their national pride; 'they rage at me on
all sides with slanderous libels, as at the enemy of Italy and Cicero'.

* * * * *

There were, as he had said himself, other difficulties touching him more
closely. Conditions at Basle had for years been developing in a
direction which distressed and alarmed him. When he established himself
there in 1521, it might still have seemed to him as if the bishop, old
Christopher of Utenheim, a great admirer of Erasmus and a man after his
heart, would succeed in effecting a reformation at Basle, as he desired
it; abolishing acknowledged abuses, but remaining within the fold of the
Church. In that very year, 1521, however, the emancipation of the
municipality from the bishop's power--it had been in progress since
Basle, in 1501, had joined the Swiss Confederacy--was consummated.
Henceforth the council was number one, now no longer exclusively made up
of aristocratic elements. In vain did the bishop ally himself with his
colleagues of Constance and Lausanne to maintain Catholicism. In the
town the new creed got more and more the upper hand. When, however, in
1525, it had come to open tumults against the Catholic service, the
council became more cautious and tried to reform more heedfully.

Oecolampadius desired this, too. Relations between him and Erasmus were
precarious. Erasmus himself had at one time directed the religious
thought of the impulsive, sensitive, restless young man. When he had, in
1520, suddenly sought refuge in a convent, he had expressly justified
that step towards Erasmus, the condemner of binding vows. And now they
saw each other again at Basle, in 1522: Oecolampadius having left the
monastery, a convinced adherent and apostle of the new doctrine;
Erasmus, the great spectator which he wished to be. Erasmus treated his
old coadjutor coolly, and as the latter progressed, retreated more and
more. Yet he kept steering a midd