it represented,
stimulated Erasmus's satirical faculties. It is true that he flattered
the English national pride by an epigram on the rout of the French near
Guinegate, but soon he went deeper. He remembered how war had impeded
his movements in Italy; how the entry of the pope-conqueror, Julius II,
into Bologna had outraged his feelings. 'The high priest Julius wages
war, conquers, triumphs and truly plays the part of Julius (Caesar)' he
had written then. Pope Julius, he thought, had been the cause of all the
wars spreading more and more over Europe. Now the Pope had died in the
beginning of the year 1513.

And in the deepest secrecy, between his work on the New Testament and
Jerome, Erasmus took revenge on the martial Pope, for the misery of the
times, by writing the masterly satire, entitled _Julius exclusus_, in
which the Pope appears in all his glory before the gate of the Heavenly
Paradise to plead his cause and find himself excluded. The theme was not
new to him; for had he not made something similar in the witty Cain
fable, by which, at one time, he had cheered a dinner-party at Oxford?
But that was an innocent jest to which his pious fellow-guests had
listened with pleasure. To the satire about the defunct Pope many would,
no doubt, also gladly listen, but Erasmus had to be careful about it.
The folly of all the world might be ridiculed, but not the worldly
propensities of the recently deceased Pope. Therefore, though he helped
in circulating copies of the manuscript, Erasmus did his utmost, for the
rest of his life, to preserve its anonymity, and when it was universally
known and had appeared in print, and he was presumed to be the author,
he always cautiously denied the fact; although he was careful to use
such terms as to avoid a formal denial. The first edition of the
_Julius_ was published at Basle, not by Froben, Erasmus's ordinary
publisher, but by Cratander, probably in the year 1518.

Erasmus's need of protesting against warfare had not been satisfied by
writing the _Julius_. In March 1514, no longer at Cambridge, but in
London, he wrote a letter to his former patron, the Abbot of Saint
Bertin, Anthony of Bergen, in which he enlarges upon the folly of waging
war. Would that a Christian peace were concluded between Christian
princes! Perhaps the abbot might contribute to that consummation through
his influence with the youthful Charles V and especially with his
grandfather Maximilian. Erasmus states q