offices; he would
accept nothing, he a man who lived from day to day in expectation of
death and often hoping for it, who could hardly ever leave his
room--would people instigate _him_ to hunt for deaneries and cardinals'
hats! He had subsistence enough to last him. He wanted to die
independent.

Yet his pen did not rest. The _Ecclesiastes_ had been printed and
published and _Origenes_ was still to follow. Instead of the important
and brilliant task to which Rome called him, he devoted his last
strength to a simple deed of friendly cordiality. The friend to whose
share the honour fell to receive from the old, death-sick author a last
composition prepared expressly for him, amidst the most terrible pains,
was the most modest of the number who had not lost their faith in him.
No prelate or prince, no great wit or admired divine, but Christopher
Eschenfelder, customs officer at Boppard on the Rhine. On his passage in
1518 Erasmus had, with glad surprise, found him to be a reader of his
work and a man of culture.[20] That friendship had been a lasting one.
Eschenfelder had asked Erasmus to dedicate the interpretation of some
psalm to him (a form of composition often preferred by Erasmus of late).
About the close of 1535 he remembered that request. He had forgotten
whether Eschenfelder had indicated a particular psalm and chose one at
haphazard, Psalm 14, calling the treatise 'On the purity of the
Christian Church'. He expressly dedicated it to 'the publican' in
January 1536. It is not remarkable among his writings as to contents and
form, but it was to be his last.

On 12 February 1536, Erasmus made his final preparations. In 1527 he had
already made a will with detailed clauses for the printing of his
complete works by Froben. In 1534 he drew up an accurate inventory of
his belongings. He sold his library to the Polish nobleman Johannes a
Lasco. The arrangements of 1536 testify to two things which had played
an important part in his life: his relations with the house of Froben
and his need of friendship. Boniface Amerbach is his heir. Hieronymus
Froben and Nicholas Episcopius, the managers of the business, are his
executors. To each of the good friends left to him he bequeathed one of
the trinkets which spoke of his fame with princes and the great ones of
the earth, in the first place to Louis Ber and Beatus Rhenanus. The poor
and the sick were not forgotten, and he remembered especially girls
about to marry and youths o