3,000 volumes more quickly than now of 600. A sure proof
that studies flourish!'

CHAPTER XX

LAST YEARS

Religious and political contrasts grow sharper--The coming
strife in Germany still suspended--Erasmus finishes his
_Ecclesiastes_--Death of Fisher and More--Erasmus back at Basle:
1535--Pope Paul III wants to make him write in favour of the
cause of the Council--Favours declined by Erasmus--_De Puritate
Ecclesiae_--The end: 12 July 1536

During the last years of Erasmus's life all the great issues which kept
the world in suspense were rapidly taking threatening forms. Wherever
compromise or reunion had before still seemed possible, sharp conflicts,
clearly outlined party-groupings, binding formulae were now barring the
way to peace. While in the spring of 1529 Erasmus prepared for his
departure from Basle, a strong Catholic majority of the Diet at Speyer
got the 'recess' of 1526, favourable for the Evangelicals, revoked, only
the Lutherans among them keeping what they had obtained; and secured a
prohibition of any further changes or novelties. The Zwinglians and
Anabaptists were not allowed to enjoy the least tolerance. This was
immediately followed by the Protest of the chief evangelical princes and
towns, which henceforth was to give the name to all anti-Catholics
together (19 April 1529). And not only between Catholics and Protestants
in the Empire did the rupture become complete. Even before the end of
that year the question of the Lord's supper proved an insuperable
stumbling-block in the way of a real union of Zwinglians and Lutherans.
Luther parted from Zwingli at the colloquy of Marburg with the words,
'Your spirit differs from ours'.

In Switzerland civil war had openly broken out between the Catholic and
the Evangelical cantons, only calmed for a short time by the first peace
of Kappel. The treaties of Cambray and Barcelona, which in 1529 restored
at least political peace in Christendom for the time being, could no
longer draw from old Erasmus jubilations about a coming golden age, like
those with which the concord of 1516 had inspired him. A month later the
Turks appeared before Vienna.

All these occurrences could not but distress and alarm Erasmus. But he
was outside them. When reading his letters of that period we are more
than ever impressed by the fact that, for all the width and liveliness
of his mind, he is remote from the great happenings of his time. Beyond