taken over
by the secular colleges of Navarre and Sorbonne, but in the old style.

The general traditionalism had not prevented humanism from penetrating
Paris also during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Refinement
of Latin style and the taste for classic poetry here, too, had their
fervent champions, just as revived Platonism, which had sprung up in
Italy. The Parisian humanists were partly Italians as Girolamo Balbi and
Fausto Andrelini, but at that time a Frenchman was considered to be
their leader, Robert Gaguin, general of the order of the Mathurins or
Trinitarians, diplomatist, French poet and humanist. Side by side with
the new Platonism a clearer understanding of Aristotle penetrated, which
had also come from Italy. Shortly before Erasmus's arrival Jacques
Lefevre d'Etaples had returned from Italy, where he had visited the
Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Ermolao
Barbaro, the reviver of Aristotle. Though theoretical theology and
philosophy generally were conservative at Paris, yet here as well as
elsewhere movements to reform the Church were not wanting. The authority
of Jean Gerson, the University's great chancellor (about 1400), had not
yet been forgotten. But reform by no means meant inclination to depart
from the doctrine of the Church; it aimed, in the first place, at
restoration and purification of the monastic orders and afterwards at
the extermination of abuses which the Church acknowledged and lamented
as existing within its fold. In that spirit of reformation of spiritual
life the Dutch movement of the _devotio moderna_ had recently begun to
make itself felt, also, at Paris. The chief of its promoters was John
Standonck of Mechlin, educated by the brethren of the Common Life at
Gouda and imbued with their spirit in its most rigorous form. He was an
ascetic more austere than the spirit of the Windesheimians, strict
indeed but yet moderate, required; far beyond ecclesiastical circles his
name was proverbial on account of his abstinence--he had definitely
denied himself the use of meat. As provisor of the college of Montaigu
he had instituted the most stringent rules there, enforced by
chastisement for the slightest faults. To the college he had annexed a
home for poor scholars, where they lived in a semi-monastic community.

To this man Erasmus had been recommended by the Bishop of Cambray.
Though he did not join the community of poor students--he was nearly
thi