es who were reviving the Greek culture, and with it arose the
idea of the dignity and worth of Man. To this movement Erasmus brought
the enthusiasm of his nature. Perhaps he did as much as any other to fan
the embers which grew into a flame called "The Reformation."

He constantly ridiculed the austerities, pedantry, priggishness and
sciolism of the old-time Churchmen, and when a new question came up, he
asked, "What good is there in it?"

Everything was tested by him in the light of commonsense. What end does
it serve and how is humanity to be served or benefited by it?

Thus the good of humanity, not the glory of God, was the shibboleth of
this rising party.

Erasmus gave lectures and taught at Cambridge, Oxford and London.

Italy had been the objective point of his travels, but England had, for
a time, turned him aside. In the year Fifteen Hundred, Erasmus landed at
Calais, saddled his horse, and started southward, visiting, writing,
teaching, lecturing, as he went. The stimulus of meeting new people and
seeing new scenes, all tended toward intellectual growth.

The genius monk made mendicancy a fine art, and Erasmus was heir to most
of the instincts of the order. His associations with the laity were
mostly with the nobility or those with money. He was not slow in asking
for what he wanted, whether it was a fur-lined cloak, a saddle, top
riding-boots, a horse, or a prayer-book. He made no apologies--but took
as his divine right all that he needed. And he justified himself in
taking what he needed by the thought that he gave all he had. He
supplied Sir Thomas More the germ of "Utopia," for Erasmus pictured
again and again an ideal society where all would have enough, and none
suffer from either want or surfeit--a society in which all would be at
home wherever they went.

Had Erasmus seen fit to make England his home, his head, too, would have
paid the forfeit, as did the head that wrote "Utopia." What an absurd
use to make of a head--to separate it from the man's body!

Italy received Erasmus with the same royal welcome that England had
supplied. Scholars who knew the Greek and Roman classics were none too
common. Most monks stopped with the writings of the saints, as South
Americans balk at long division.

Erasmus could illumine an initial, bind a book, give advice to printers,
lecture to teachers, give lessons on rhetoric and oratory, or entertain
the ladies with recitations from the Iliad and the Odyssey.