d, more congenial to him. Solemnly, in ancient
Roman guise, war is declared on the enemies of classic culture. O ye
Goths, by what right do you occupy, not only the Latin provinces (the
_disciplinae liberales_ are meant) but the capital, that is Latinity
itself?

It was Batt who, when his prospects with the Bishop of Cambray ended in
disappointment, helped to find a way out for Erasmus. He himself had
studied at Paris, and thither Erasmus also hoped to go, now that Rome
was denied him. The bishop's consent and the promise of a stipend were
obtained and Erasmus departed for the most famous of all universities,
that of Paris, probably in the late summer of 1495. Batt's influence and
efforts had procured him this lucky chance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Allen No. 16.12 cf. IV p. xx, and _vide_ LB. IV 756, where surveying
the years of his youth he also writes 'Pingere dum meditor tenueis sine
corpore formas'.

CHAPTER III

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

1495-9

The University of Paris--Traditions and schools of Philosophy
and Theology--The College of Montaigu--Erasmus's dislike of
scholasticism--Relations with the humanist, Robert Gaguin,
1495--How to earn a living--First drafts of several of his
educational works--Travelling to Holland and back--Batt and the
Lady of Veere--To England with Lord Mountjoy: 1499

The University of Paris was, more than any other place in Christendom,
the scene of the collision and struggle of opinions and parties.
University life in the Middle Ages was in general tumultuous and
agitated. The forms of scientific intercourse themselves entailed an
element of irritability: never-ending disputations, frequent elections
and rowdyism of the students. To those were added old and new quarrels
of all sorts of orders, schools and groups. The different colleges
contended among themselves, the secular clergy were at variance with the
regular. The Thomists and the Scotists, together called the Ancients,
had been disputing at Paris for half a century with the Terminists, or
Moderns, the followers of Ockam and Buridan. In 1482 some sort of peace
was concluded between those two groups. Both schools were on their last
legs, stuck fast in sterile technical disputes, in systematizing and
subdividing, a method of terms and words by which science and philosophy
benefited no longer. The theological colleges of the Dominicans and
Franciscans at Paris were declining; theological teaching was