The satire, coarse as it was biting, failed to
win the applause of the finer spirits, but raised a shout of laughter
from the students, and was no insignificant factor in adding to
contempt for the church. The first book of these _Letters_, published
in 1515, was followed two years later by a second, even more caustic
than the first. This supplement, also published without the writer's
name, was from the pen of Ulrich von Hutten.

[Sidenote: Hutten, 1488-1523]

This brilliant and passionate writer devoted the greater part of his
life to war with Rome. His motive was not religious, but patriotic.
He longed to see his country strong and united, and free from the
galling oppression of the ultramontane yoke. He published Valla's
_Donation of Constantine_, and wrote epigrams on the popes. His
dialogue _Fever the First_ is a {56} vitriolic attack on the priests.
His _Vadiscus or the Roman Trinity_ [Sidenote: 1520] scourges the vices
of the curia where three things are sold: Christ, places and women.
When he first heard of Luther's cause he called it a quarrel of monks,
and only hoped they would all destroy one another. But by 1519 he saw
in the Reformer the most powerful of allies against the common foe, and
he accordingly embraced his cause with habitual zeal. His letters at
this time breathe out fire and slaughter against the Romanists if
anything should happen to Luther. In 1523, he supported his friend
Francis von Sickingen, in the attempt to assert by force of arms the
rights of the patriotic and evangelic order of knights. When this was
defeated, Hutten, suffering from a terrible disease, wandered to
Switzerland, where he died, a lonely and broken exile. His epitaph
shall be his own lofty poem:

I have fought my fight with courage,
Nor have I aught to rue,
For, though I lost the battle,
The world knows, I was true!

[Sidenote: Erasmus, 1466-1536]

The most cosmopolitan, as well as the greatest, of all the Christian
humanists, was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Though an illegitimate
child, he was well educated and thoroughly grounded in the classics at
the famous school of Deventer. At the age of twenty he was persuaded,
somewhat against his will, to enter the order of Augustinian Canons at
Steyn. Under the patronage of the Bishop of Cambrai he was enabled to
continue his studies at Paris. [Sidenote: 1499-1509] For the next ten
years he wandered to England, to various places in Northern