Page 615 [615]
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 Reforma¬
tion, 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 con¬
tributes—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 Püda¬
gogik, cx, 1874, p. 316); ‘qualem puer
ego cognoui cuiusdam (plagosi magi¬
stelli) 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 quatuor¬
decim natus annos,’ Lond. y. 32, LB.
405.