Still, many of the diatribes which Erasmus permitted himself against the religious orders were not in any sense edifying, though there was much truth in his pungent satire; so that the papal legate Aleander did not hesitate to declare that the Dutch scholar had done more to undermine faith than even Luther, and he accused him of being the fomenter of all the troubles, of subverting the Netherlands, and all the Rhine district.  This may indeed have been the truth indirectly in spite of the certainty that Erasmus had no intention of playing into the hands of the Lutherans, whom he hated.  But he was a cynic, and a cynic’s eyes are not the best through which to see things.  The monks offended him, and he poured out upon them, not the vials of his wrath but the sharp vinegar of sarcasm.  His favourite, oft-recurring themes, the ignorance, immorality, and greed to be found in monasteries, the quarrelsomeness and worldliness of the friars would lead the unwary to suppose that there was not a religious community left where the rule was kept and the religious led commonly respectable lives.  But even a slight acquaintance with Erasmus shows us that he is incapable of justice towards monks and friars.  They loved scholasticism, the enemy which he considered himself born to slay, and there was war to the knife between him and all upholders of Scotus and Aquinas.  The monks of the Charterhouse, who died the death of martyrs rather than perjure themselves, win no meed of praise from Erasmus—­they were, forsooth, schoolmen; and the noble Friars-Observants who, when threatened with a living tomb in the river Thames, for the same cause, calmly replied that the road to heaven was as near by water as by land, are nothing to him, for did they not learn their theology of Duns Scotus.  Even Henry VIII. himself at one time begged the Pope’s favour for the Observants, saying that he could not sufficiently express his admiration for their strict adherence to poverty, for their sincerity, their charity, their devotion;* but they were Scotists, and Erasmus could not therefore admire them.

* Henry VIII. to Leo X., Add.  Ms. 15,387, f. 17; B.M.  Printed by Ellis, 3, 1st series, 165.

From his own showing it appears that the Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Emmaus in Holland led a good life, but he makes no honourable exception of them when he denounces other houses.  He complains of all monks that they are gluttons and wine-bibbers, utterly careless of their rule; yet his own plea for returning to the world after taking his vows is that his health would not stand the fasts and vigils, the long prayers and the fish diet, things which accord ill with a reputation for laxity.  In a letter to his former prior, he says:  “I left my profession, not because I had any fault to find with it, but because I would not be a scandal to the order.”  And again, “My constitution was too weak to bear your rule."* These are either empty phrases, or they mean that the life was a strict one.