=1. Erasmus in the Index.=--The treatment accorded by the compilers of the Indexes of the 16th century to the writings of Erasmus is entitled to separate reference, if only because the variety of the successive prohibitions and classifications gives evidence of the difficulties experienced by the authorities of the Church in maintaining any consistency of policy in regard to the supervision of critical literature. The position of Erasmus among the leaders of thought of his time was, of course, in many respects exceptional. His varied and comprehensive attainments placed him among the first scholars of the world. He united with scholarship a keen sense of humour, an incisive and forcible literary style, and a courage of opinion which were not hampered by any large measure of reverence for authority or tradition. His writings, in their original Latin form, found their way in the first place to the educated circles of the upper classes and of the more liberal-minded of the ecclesiastics, while the versions in the vernacular which speedily followed, in both authorised and unauthorised editions, were taken up with cordial appreciation by all classes of readers throughout Europe. In fact, in popularity, as far as popularity is to be gauged by the extent of circulation, the books of Erasmus were surpassed only by the writings of Luther, while the range of their distribution --that is, the extent of the territory reached and the variety of the circles of readers by whom they were welcomed--must have been much in advance of anything attained by the writings of Luther. The attacks of Erasmus on the abuses which had grown up in the Church were of course a most important factor in bringing about the conditions that made the Reformation possible, and in fact inevitable; but Erasmus fought for reform within the Church of which he always held himself to be a dutiful son. He refused from the outset to take part with the Protestant assault on the authority of the Church universal, and his scholarship and influence were undoubtedly a most important influence in helping to maintain this authority against the fierce antagonism of the Lutheranism of Germany and the Calvinism of Geneva. And yet at the very time when the reformers of Wittenberg, in their keen disappointment that they were not to have in their long fight the co-operation of the great scholar who had so fully realised and so trenchantly assailed the evils against which they were revolting, were condemning the writings of Erasmus as unchristian and time-serving, the censors of Rome were placing these same books on the Index as constituting serious heresy. From Wittenberg, were hurled fierce denunciations of the trimmer, the time-server, the man who was sinning against the light; while from Rome came bitter charges of heresy against the insidious enemy of the true Faith, against the man who, trained in the Church, was using his scholarship to undermine its authority.