Netherlands outskirts in every sense--Movement of
_Devotio moderna_: brethren of the Common Life and Windesheim
monasteries--Erasmus's birth: 1466--His relations and name--At
school at Gouda, Deventer and Bois-le-Duc--He takes the vows:
probably in 1488

When Erasmus was born Holland had for about twenty years formed part of
the territory which the dukes of Burgundy had succeeded in uniting under
their dominion--that complexity of lands, half French in population,
like Burgundy, Artois, Hainault, Namur; half Dutch like Flanders,
Brabant, Zealand, Holland. The appellation 'Holland' was, as yet,
strictly limited to the county of that name (the present provinces of
North and South Holland), with which Zealand, too, had long since been
united. The remaining territories which, together with those last
mentioned, make up the present kingdom of the Netherlands, had not yet
been brought under Burgundian dominion, although the dukes had cast
their eyes on them. In the bishopric of Utrecht, whose power extended to
the regions on the far side of the river Ysel, Burgundian influence had
already begun to make itself manifest. The projected conquest of
Friesland was a political inheritance of the counts of Holland, who
preceded the Burgundians. The duchy of Guelders, alone, still preserved
its independence inviolate, being more closely connected with the
neighbouring German territories, and consequently with the Empire
itself.

All these lands--about this time they began to be regarded collectively
under the name of 'Low Countries by the Sea'--had in most respects the
character of outskirts. The authority of the German emperors had for
some centuries been little more than imaginary. Holland and Zealand
hardly shared the dawning sense of a national German union. They had too
long looked to France in matters political. Since 1299 a French-speaking
dynasty, that of Hainault, had ruled Holland. Even the house of Bavaria
that succeeded it about the middle of the fourteenth century had not
restored closer contact with the Empire, but had itself, on the
contrary, early become Gallicized, attracted as it was by Paris and soon
twined about by the tentacles of Burgundy to which it became linked by
means of a double marriage.

The northern half of the Low Countries were 'outskirts' also in
ecclesiastical and cultural matters. Brought over rather late to the
cause of Christianity (the end of the eighth century), they had, as