s
in condemning it. But at the very centre of the religion they
professed, the book was blessed by the chief priests. The Pope
accepted the dedication, and bishops wished they could read the Greek.
Far otherwise was it with the impending struggle of the Reformation:
there the cleavage of sides followed very different lines. Into that
wide field we cannot now expatiate; but it is important to notice an
element which the German Renaissance contributed to the Reformation,
and which played a considerable part in both movements--the
accentuation of German national feeling.

At the middle of the fifteenth century Italy enjoyed undisputed
pre-eminence in the world of learning. The sudden splendour into which
the Renaissance had blazed up on Italian soil drew men's eyes thither
more than ever; and to its ancient universities students from the
North swarmed like bees. To graduate in Italy, to hear its famous
doctors, perhaps even to learn from one of the native Greeks brought
over out of the East, became first the ambition, and then the
indispensable requirement of every Northern scholar who could afford
it; and few of Erasmus' friends and colleagues had not at some time or
other made the pilgrimage to Italy. Consequence and success brought
the usual Nemesis. The Italian _hubris_ expressed itself in the
familiar Greek distinction between barbarian and home-born; and the
many nations from beyond the Alps found themselves united in a common
bond which they were not eager to share. We have seen the kind of gibe
with which Agricola's eloquence was greeted at Pavia. The more such
insults are deserved, the more they sting. We may be sure that in many
cases they were not forgotten. Celtis returning from Italy to
Ingolstadt in 1492 delivered his soul in an inaugural oration: 'The
ancient hatred between us can never be dissolved. But for the Alps we
should be eternally at war.' In other countries the feeling, though
less acute, was much the same. Thus in 1517 spoke Stephen Poncher,
bishop of Paris, after his first meeting with Erasmus: 'Italy has no
one to compare with him in literary gifts. In our own day Hermolaus
and Politian have rescued Latin from barbarism; and their services can
never be forgotten. When I was there, too, I met a number of men of
rare ability and learning. But with all respect to the Italians, I
must say that Erasmus eclipses every one, Transalpine and Cisalpine
alike.'

Of the foreign 'nations' at the universit