of calumny, his talent for fulsome flattery to obtain money and presents, matched only by his malignant spite against adversaries, destroyed all proportions between his literary achievements and his character.[1] The leaders among the younger humanists who, when not fighting the theologians, devoted their energies to the composition of vapid verses and lewd poems, were Conrad Celtes, Eobanus Hessus, Crotus Rubianus, Conrad Rufus, Mutian, the dissolute Ulric of Hutten, the knight-errant of humanism, and a host of minor scribblers. In their school work they read the most profligate pagan poetry with their young pupils, and introduced a reign of unrestrained license at Erfurt and other universities and schools.
In Germany, as well as in Italy, this reaction in the renaissance took a special coloring from the circumstances of the melancholy period in which it occurred. From the beginning of the fourteenth century deplorable effects had been manifesting themselves in the Church. The authority of the Pope had been weakened, a great part of the clergy was steeped in worldliness; scholastic philosophy and theology had declined and terrible disorders were rife in political and civil life. The dangerous elements, which no doubt ancient literature contained, were presented to a generation intellectually and physically overwrought and in many ways unhealthy. It is no wonder, therefore, that some of the adherents of the new tendency
- ↑ A much kindlier view of Erasmus is taken in the highly interesting chapter on "Erasmus", in Gasquet's The Eve of the Reformation, pp. 155-207. There his attitude towards Luther and his loyalty to the Catholic Church are admirably set forth.
