Folly, however, does not stop here; she applies her lash to the bishops themselves, "who run more after gold than after souls, and think they have done enough when they make a theatrical display of themselves, as Holy Fathers, to whom adoration is due, and when they bless or anathematise." The daughter of "the Fortunate Isles" has the hardihood even to attack the Court of Rome, and the pope himself, who, spending his time in diversion, leaves Peter and Paul to perform his duty. "Are there," says she, "more formidable enemies of the Church than those impious pontiffs, who, by their silence, allow Jesus Christ to be destroyed, who bind him by their mercenary laws, falsify him by their forced interpretations, and strangle him by their pestilential life?"[101] [101] "Quasi sint ulli hostes Ecclesiæ perniciosiores quam impii pontifices, qui et silentio Christum sinunt abolescere et quæstuariis legibus alligant et coactis interpretationibus adulterant et pestilente vita jugulent." (Ibid.) Holbein appended to the Praise of Folly, most grotesque engravings, among which the pope figures with his triple crown. Never, perhaps, was a work so well adapted to the wants of a particular period. It is impossible to describe the impression which it produced throughout Christendom. Twenty-seven editions were published in the lifetime of Erasmus; it was translated into all languages, and served more than any other to confirm the age in its antisacerdotal tendency. But to this attack by popular sarcasm, Erasmus added the attack of science and erudition. The study of Greek and Latin literature had opened up a new prospect to the modern genius which began to be awakened in Europe. Erasmus entered with all his heart into the idea of the Italians, that the school of the ancients was that in which the sciences ought to be studied, that, abandoning the inadequate and absurd books which had hitherto been used, it was necessary to go to Strabo for geography, to Hippocrates for medicine, to Plato for philosophy, to Ovid for mythology, and to Pliny for natural history. But he took a farther step, the step of a giant, destined to lead to the discovery of a new world, of more importance to humanity than that which Columbus had just added to the old world. Following out his principle, Erasmus insisted that men should no longer study theology in Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, but go and learn it from the Fathers of the Church, and, above all, from the New Testament. He showed that it was not even necessary to keep close to the Vulgate, which swarmed with faults, and he rendered an immense service to truth, by publishing his critical edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, a text as little known in the West as if it never had existed. This edition appeared at Bâsle in 1516, the year before the Reformation. Erasmus thus did for the New Testament what Reuchlin had done for the Old. Theologians were thenceforth able to read the word