France and
Flanders, and Italy, learning to know many of the intellectual leaders
of the time. From 1509-14 he was in England, part of the time
lecturing at Cambridge. He then spent some {57} years at Louvain,
seven years at Basle and six years at Freiburg in the Breisgau,
returning to Basle for the last year of his life.

Until he was over thirty Erasmus's dominant interest was classical
literature. Under the influence of Colet and of a French Franciscan,
John Vitrier, he turned his attention to liberalizing religion. His
first devotional work, _The Handbook of the Christian Knight_,
perfectly sets forth his program of spiritual, as opposed to formal,
Christianity. [Sidenote: _Enchiridion Militis Christiani_, 1503] It
all turns upon the distinction between the inner and the outer man, the
moral and the sensual. True service of Christ is purity of heart and
love, not the invocation of saints, fasting and indulgences.

In _The Praise of Folly_ Erasmus mildly rebukes the foibles of men.
[Sidenote: 1511] There never was kindlier satire, free from the savage
scorn of Crotus and Hutten, and from the didactic scolding of Sebastian
Brant, whose _Ship of Fools_ [Sidenote: 1494] was one of the author's
models. Folly is made quite amiable, the source not only of some
things that are amiss but also of much harmless enjoyment. The
besetting silliness of every class is exposed: of the man of pleasure,
of the man of business, of women and of husbands, of the writer and of
the pedant. Though not unduly emphasized, the folly of current
superstitions is held up to ridicule. Some there are who have turned
the saints into pagan gods; some who have measured purgatory into years
and days and cheat themselves with indulgences against it; some
theologians who spend all their time discussing such absurdities as
whether God could have redeemed men in the form of a woman, a devil, an
ass, a squash or a stone, others who explain the mystery of the Trinity.

In following up his plan for the restoration of a simpler Christianity,
Erasmus rightly thought that a return from the barren subtleties of the
schoolmen to {58} the primitive sources was essential. He wished to
reduce Christianity to a moral, humanitarian, undogmatic philosophy of
life. His attitude towards dogma was to admit it and to ignore it.
Scientific enlightenment he welcomed more than did either the Catholics
or the Reformers, sure that if the Sermon on the Mount surv