Thus by an accident Germany gained the credit of being the first to assert this new principle, the importance of studying texts in the original, in the field where resistance is most resolute and victory is hardly won.  And now it was about to enter upon a still greater contest.  Erasmus’ New Testament encountered hostile criticism in many quarters:  conservative theologians made common cause with the friars in condemning it.  But at the very centre of the religion they professed, the book was blessed by the chief priests.  The Pope accepted the dedication, and bishops wished they could read the Greek.  Far otherwise was it with the impending struggle of the Reformation:  there the cleavage of sides followed very different lines.  Into that wide field we cannot now expatiate; but it is important to notice an element which the German Renaissance contributed to the Reformation, and which played a considerable part in both movements—­the accentuation of German national feeling.

At the middle of the fifteenth century Italy enjoyed undisputed pre-eminence in the world of learning.  The sudden splendour into which the Renaissance had blazed up on Italian soil drew men’s eyes thither more than ever; and to its ancient universities students from the North swarmed like bees.  To graduate in Italy, to hear its famous doctors, perhaps even to learn from one of the native Greeks brought over out of the East, became first the ambition, and then the indispensable requirement of every Northern scholar who could afford it; and few of Erasmus’ friends and colleagues had not at some time or other made the pilgrimage to Italy.  Consequence and success brought the usual Nemesis.  The Italian hubris expressed itself in the familiar Greek distinction between barbarian and home-born; and the many nations from beyond the Alps found themselves united in a common bond which they were not eager to share.  We have seen the kind of gibe with which Agricola’s eloquence was greeted at Pavia.  The more such insults are deserved, the more they sting.  We may be sure that in many cases they were not forgotten.  Celtis returning from Italy to Ingolstadt in 1492 delivered his soul in an inaugural oration:  ’The ancient hatred between us can never be dissolved.  But for the Alps we should be eternally at war.’  In other countries the feeling, though less acute, was much the same.  Thus in 1517 spoke Stephen Poncher, bishop of Paris, after his first meeting with Erasmus:  ’Italy has no one to compare with him in literary gifts.  In our own day Hermolaus and Politian have rescued Latin from barbarism; and their services can never be forgotten.  When I was there, too, I met a number of men of rare ability and learning.  But with all respect to the Italians, I must say that Erasmus eclipses every one, Transalpine and Cisalpine alike.’