stood the affair. Yet I suspect that Briselot* the suffragan bishop of Cambray and Hochstratten have conspired with Eg- mond/ not so much against me as against Luther. . . .
188. ERASMUS TO JOHN FISHER. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.
Erasmi opera (1703), iii. 511. Louvain, October 17, 1519.
John Fisher (i4S9?-iS3S), made Bishop of Rochester 1504. For many years connected with Cambridge University. In May, 1520, he preached against Luther, and in 1523 wrote two books against him. C/. English Historical Review, c. 657, 659. Fisher was put to death by Henry for refusing to recognize the king as head of the Church. Life by Bridgett, and in Dictionary of National Biography,
. . . [The first part of this letter is on various enemies of Erasmus, and on the death of Colet.] . . . The Elector Frederic of Saxony has written to me twice* in answer to my one epistle. Luther is protected by him alone. He writes that he has given himself to the cause rather than to the person of Luther, and that he does not propose that in his dominions innocence should be oppressed by the malice of those who seek their own profit and not that of Jesus Christ . . . [Follows a high eulogy of Frederic for declining the imperial crown which he might have had.]
189. ULRICH VON HUTTEN TO EOBAN HESS AT ERFURT. E. Bocking: Hutteni opera (Leipsic, 1859-66), i. 313.
Steckelberg, October 26, 15 19.
Ulrich von Hutten (April 21, 1488- August or September, 1523), had been forced by his father to enter the Benedictine monastery of Fulda in 1499, but escaped six years later, and wandered to various universities in wretched health and dire poverty for eight years. In 1513 his brilliant defence of his cousin, John von Hutten, who had been murdered by Duke Ulrich of Wiirtemberg, made him prominent He visited Italy 1515-7. In 1516 he published the second series of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum in defence of Reuchlin. He embraced Luther's cause with fervor, chiefly for patriotic reasons. His plan
'John Bris«lot (tSeptember xx, 1520), studied at Paris, D. D. 1502. He was a Carmelite, Suffragan Bishop of Cambray, and in his last years confessor of Prince Charles of Spain. Allen, iii. 4.
sNicholaa Baechem of Egmond in Holland, studied at Louvain, then taught. IDoctor of theology 1505, became a Carmelite in 1507 at Malines. In 15 10 he returned to Lonvain, where, except for the year 1517 at Brussels, he spent the rest of his life until his death on August 24, 1526. He was dean of the faculty iS^o and 1524, and inquisitor from X53i>6. He was the most decided enemy of Erasmus and Luther. De Jongh, xs^flf.
- No. 145. The second letter is not extant. For Erasmus* letter, cf. supra, no. 141.
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