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ERASMUS’ EARLY LIFE 579 The course of his early life can be traced without difficulty ; but it is not possible to assign dates to many of the incidents mentioned, since we have to rely largely on Erasmus’ estimates of his own age, and not only was he uncertain as to the date of his birth, but in the calculation of times he is extremely inaccurate. Statements of date therefore in this early period, which are based merely on calculations of Krasmus’ age without external corroboration, cannot be accepted as having much weight. He first went to school at Gouda under Peter Winckel’, when little more than four years old, according to his own evidence”. One of his schoolfellows was a certain Jan Dierixsoen de Backer®, who was perhaps a brother of the Franciscus Theodorici Goudanus of Ep. 10, and who afterwards became sacristan of the neighbouring town of Woerden and father of the first Dutch martyr to the Reformation, Joannes Pistorius; another was, probably, William Herman ™. After a few years, according to the interpretation usually placed on Beatus Rhenanus’ narrative, he was sent away from home to the cathedral school at Utrecht, where he was a chorister under Jacob Obrecht“; and thence he passed, under his mother’s care, to the school attached to St. Lebuin’s church at Deventer, in which some of the teachers were Brethren of the Common Life. Of his Deventer schooldays little is known, except that he was a pupil of Hegius and that he once saw Rudolph Agricola, for the only time in bis life”. They were brought to a sudden end by an outbreak of plague to which his mother succumbed ; and shortly afterwards, as the plague continued, he and his brother Peter were recalled to their father at Gouda. The date of Erasmus’ going to Deventer can be definitely fixed as not later than 1475; for in the Æxomologesis ® he recalls an incident arising out of a sermon there, and adds that it occurred in the year of Jubilee. This agrees with his statement that he was in his ninth year when he was sent to Deventer™; if 1466 be accepted as the year of his birth. But with other information which he contributes—that he saw Agricola when he was nearly twelve”, that he was in his thirteenth year when his mother died”, and that when he left the school he was fourteen years old!—it is by no means in 5 See for example i. p. 2. 26 n. T Itis perhaps Winckel’s school that he describes in Adag. ‘Sicula aula’ (quoted by Kimmel, Erasmus in Deventer, in Jahrb. f. Philol. und Püdagogik, cx, 1874, p. 316); ‘qualem puer ego cognoui cuiusdam (plagosi magistelli) re et nomine #poudtou” I cannot interpret the Greek into any name connected with Erasmus; nor can I trace the adage in question. 5 « Vix quatuor annos egressum,’ ii. 30. ° ‘Cum (Erasmo) parenti optimo vetus hospitium ac summa necessitudo in adulescentia fuerat ; vna enim domi in literis triuialibus perdiscendis militauerunt.’ Io. Pistorii Vita, per Gul. Gnapheum Hagiensem, 1525; ed. P. Fredericq in Corpus documentorum inquisitionis Neerlandicae, part 4, p. 408. 0p. 128; 11 See iv. gn.; but v. infra. 12 See i. p. 2. 4 seq. 13 (Olim quum admodum puer agerem Dauentriae, audiebam .. .; erat autem iubilaeum,’ LB. v. 153 Fr. 14 ¢Vbi nonum ageret annum,’ ii. 32. In Adag. 339 he describes himself as ‘admodum adhuc puer, when at Deventer. 15 ‘ferme duodecim annos natus,’ NN 2220" 16 ‘relicto filio iam annum decimum tertium agente,’ ii. 41. 17 Dauentriam reliqui quatuordecim natus annos,’ Lond. y. 32, LB. 405.
