"MY DEAREST ERASMUS: I never undertook any commission more gladly than the one you have intrusted to me and scarcely ever succeeded in one more to my own mind. For I was moved not so much by my friendship for you, strong as that is, as by the undeserved misfortune of Florentius. Your letter I read from beginning to end to the pope in the presence of several cardinals and men of the highest standing. The most holy father was extremely delighted with your style and you would hardly believe how hot he was against those man-stealers; for greatly as he favours true piety, by so much the more does he hate those who are filling the world with wretched or wicked monks to the great injury of the Christian faith. 'Christ,' he says, 'loves piety of the heart, not workhouses for slaves.' He has ordered your permit to be made out at once and _gratis_ too.... Farewell, and give Florentius, whom I regard as I do yourself, an affectionate greeting from me." However much of truth or of fiction there may have been in this famous letter, we may be tolerably sure that Erasmus thought of it very much as he would of his Colloquies, as a piece of literary work with a purpose at the bottom of it. At the time he sent it, perhaps 1514, his views were well known to the papal circle, and the abuse of monks was far from unwelcome to the "enlightened" views of a monarchy as worldly as any in all Europe. Doubtless Erasmus knew his Rome well enough before he ventured to send such a fulmination as this into the midst of it. Of his other occupations at Bologna we know little. He does not appear to have been a regular student at the famous university, but rather to have worked by himself and to have got what help he could from a Greek teacher named Bombasius, with whom he had later some correspondence.[74] [74] Beatus Rhenanus, in his brief summary of Erasmus' life, says: "With the exception of the rudiments, he may truly be said to have been self-taught. For the journey into Italy ... was undertaken for the sake of visiting that famous land, not to take advantage of the professors there. At Bologna he heard no one of the public lecturers, but, satisfied with the friendship of Paulus Bombasius ... he devoted himself to his studies at home." "I never passed a more disagreeable year," he said long afterward; but we have learned the formula by this time and could hardly expect any other opinion from him of a year in which he had reached the goal of his desires, was free from all burdens except the oversight of two excellent pupils, was at one of the principal seats of learning, in as good health as usual and working away at several pieces of composition which he had undertaken of his own free choice. It is as certain that this was a profitable year to Erasmus as it is that he profited by those early monastic years of which he affected later to have only the gloomiest recollections.