The attacks upon them led the Brethren to reply.  In 1507 they composed an Apologia addressed to the King, to show that they were not without rule, without law and without obedience, and to defend the manner of their life.  This was printed at Nuremberg in 1507, and again in 1518; but of the original editions I have not been able to see a copy.  The attacks continued.  In 1512 another ponderous volume appeared, composed by Jacob Ziegler, the well-known Bavarian scientist, to demonstrate the falsity of their opinions.  What finally impelled the Brethren to court countenance from Erasmus is not clear; possibly the cool reception the Utraquists had had from Luther the year before, with the rather contemptuous suggestion that their style and opinions were more like Erasmus’ than his own.  The episode has escaped Erasmus’ biographers; and I cannot find any mention of it except an allusion in one of his letters, and a description in a treatise on the Brethren by Joachim Camerarius the elder (1500-1574).  Camerarius’ book was not published till 1605; but we can perhaps trace the source of his information.  From 1518 onwards he spent some years at Erfurt.  In January 1521 Erasmus describes the visit of the Brethren’s envoys as having occurred six months before; at Antwerp, according to Camerarius, where he may be traced in June 1520.  If we recall that it was in July that Draco came from Erfurt to pay his visit of homage, it seems quite likely that on his return he may have given to Camerarius the detailed record which the latter has preserved.

By that time Erasmus’ name was well known in Central Europe.  ’Both from Hungary and Bohemia’ he says in 1518 ’bishops and men of position write to thank me for my New Testament.’  Apart from the learned world there were others, too, who must have known him; for a Bohemian translation had just appeared of the new preface to his Enchiridion, a preface in which he had written with an almost Lutheran freedom about abuses in the Church, and had extolled the life of simple Christianity.  This was a book to appeal at once to the Brethren.  Another of his works which may have had its effect in attracting them was the Julius Exclusus.  This exquisitely witty satire dealt freely with the Pope and his office, the Pope whom the Brethren accounted no more than a simple priest; and though its licence was too bold for Erasmus ever to admit its authorship—­indeed, as we have seen, he consistently denied it—­, it was attributed to him on all sides, in company with others, his secret being on the whole well kept.  The Julius was translated into Bohemian, somewhere about this time:  but from the nature of it, a kind of book to which publishers as well as authors were loath to put their names, it cannot be definitely placed.  So it was, too, with the Moria, which had been translated by Gregory Hruby Gelenski, father of the scholar, Sigismund Gelenius; but of which no contemporary edition survives.