ome itself seemed to further his endeavours in all
respects.

Erasmus now thought of establishing himself permanently in the
Netherlands, to which everything pointed. Louvain seemed to be the most
suitable abode, the centre of studies, where he had already spent two
years in former times. But Louvain did not attract him. It was the
stronghold of conservative theology. Martin van Dorp, a Dutchman like
Erasmus, and professor of divinity at Louvain, had, in 1514, in the name
of his faculty, rebuked Erasmus in a letter for the audacity of the
_Praise of Folly_, his derision of divines and also his temerity in
correcting the text of the New Testament. Erasmus had defended himself
elaborately. At present war was being waged in a much wider field: for
or against Reuchlin, the great Hebrew scholar, for whom the authors of
the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_ had so sensationally taken up the
cudgels. At Louvain Erasmus was regarded with the same suspicion with
which he distrusted Dorp and the other Louvain divines. He stayed during
the remainder of 1516 and the first half of 1517 at Antwerp, Brussels
and Ghent, often in the house of Peter Gilles. In February 1517, there
came tempting offers from France. Budaeus, Cop, Etienne Poncher, Bishop
of Paris, wrote to him that the king, the youthful Francis I, would
present him with a generous prebend if he would come to Paris. Erasmus,
always shy of being tied down, only wrote polite, evasive answers, and
did not go.

* * * * *

In the meantime he received the news of the papal absolution. In
connection with this he had, once more, to visit England, little
dreaming that it would be the last time he should set foot on British
soil. In Ammonius's house of Saint Stephen's Chapel at Westminster on 9
April 1517, the ceremony of absolution took place, ridding Erasmus for
good of the nightmare which had oppressed him since his youth. At last
he was free!

Invitations and specious promises now came to him from all sides.
Mountjoy and Wolsey spoke of high ecclesiastical honours which awaited
him in England. Budaeus kept pressing him to remove to France. Cardinal
Ximenes wanted to attach him to the University of Alcala, in Spain. The
Duke of Saxony offered him a chair at Leipzig. Pirckheimer boasted of
the perfections of the free imperial city of Nuremberg. Erasmus,
meanwhile, overwhelmed again with the labour of writing and editing,
according to his wont, did n