Froben had at one time taken up the publication of the writings of Luther. On the fourteenth of February, 1519, he writes to Luther that he has made very large sales of Luther’s books in France, Spain, Italy, Brabant, and England.[93] This reference is to the first collection of Luther’s writings, which had been printed by Froben in October, 1518, and of which further impressions were made in August, 1519, and in March, 1520. After 1520, Froben prints no further books for Luther, although it is evident that an assured and increasing sale was being secured for these. It is probable that he was influenced to this decision by the counsels of Erasmus and in connection with his relations to Leo X. It seems evident that Froben, while not a bigoted Romanist, had not been attracted by the doctrines of the Reformers. Irrespective of his long personal association with Erasmus, it is probable that his own scholarly temperament and direction of thought would have brought him into sympathy rather with the views of the scholar of Rotterdam than with those of the monk of Wittenberg. He believed that the Church was to be set right not by being broken into fragments, but by being brought back to the teachings of its founders and of their successors, the Fathers, and he was prepared to do his part in this work of reform and of re-inspiration by devoting his life and his fortunes to the task of presenting to believers these teachings in accurate and accessible texts. Froben’s editions of the Scriptures, the works of S. Jerome and of S. Augustine and of other of the Fathers, and his issues of the books of Erasmus, to the production of which he devoted a lifetime of conscientious toil, constituted the publisher’s contribution to the settlement of the vexed questions which were bringing turmoil upon Europe and by which the Church was rent in twain. But the contest was too bitter, and the passions it had aroused were too fierce to make it possible for either the wisdom of the Fathers or the scholarship and wit of Erasmus to be of much present service in furthering a peaceable outcome. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. ERASMUS AND HIS BOOKS. 1467-1536.