nce, 1517--Progress of the
Reformation--Luther tries to bring about a _rapprochement_ with
Erasmus, March 1519--Erasmus keeps aloof; fancies he may yet act
as a conciliator--His attitude becomes ambiguous--He denies ever
more emphatically all relations with Luther and resolves to
remain a spectator--He is pressed by either camp to take
sides--Aleander in the Netherlands--The Diet of Worms,
1521--Erasmus leaves Louvain to safeguard his freedom, October
1521

About the close of 1516, Erasmus received a letter from the librarian
and secretary of Frederick, elector of Saxony, George Spalatinus,
written in the respectful and reverential tone in which the great man
was now approached. 'We all esteem you here most highly; the elector has
all your books in his library and intends to buy everything you may
publish in future.' But the object of Spalatinus's letter was the
execution of a friend's commission. An Augustinian ecclesiastic, a great
admirer of Erasmus, had requested him to direct his attention to the
fact that in his interpretation of St. Paul, especially in that of the
epistle to the Romans, Erasmus had failed to conceive the idea of
_justitia_ correctly, had paid too little attention to original sin: he
might profit by reading Augustine.

The nameless Austin Friar was Luther, then still unknown outside the
circle of the Wittenberg University, in which he was a professor, and
the criticism regarded the cardinal point of his hardly acquired
conviction: justification by faith.

Erasmus paid little attention to this letter. He received so many of
that sort, containing still more praise and no criticism. If he answered
it, the reply did not reach Spalatinus, and later Erasmus completely
forgot the whole letter.

Nine months afterwards, in September 1517, when Erasmus had been at
Louvain for a short time, he received an honourable invitation, written
by the first prelate of the Empire, the young Archbishop of Mayence,
Albert of Brandenburg. The archbishop would be pleased to see him on an
occasion: he greatly admired his work (he knew it so little as to speak
of Erasmus's emendation of the Old Testament, instead of the New) and
hoped that he would one day write some lives of saints in elegant style.

The young Hohenzoller, advocate of the new light of classical studies,
whose attention had probably been drawn to Erasmus by Hutten and Capito,
who sojourned at his court, had recently b