’s Hertogenbosch, from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572
Historic Cities Research Project http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il, The Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Brethren were not monks and took no vows, but they were loyal to the memory of their fourteenth-century founder, Geert Groete, who had drawn crowds with his impassioned preaching against lax ecclesiastical discipline and the corruption of the clergy. They observed a rule of sobriety and chastity that was at least as strict as that in many monasteries. More than a thousand pupils were housed in separate dormitories according to social rank and economic status, ranging from rich to poor. Gerard de Cremer was numbered straightaway among the poor students, making their way each day from the domus pauperum to the school beneath the twisted cathedral gargoyles that Hieronymus Bosch had known so well.
There he encountered the traditional three-branched humanist trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, all of which looked resolutely back toward the certainties and inspiration of the past. Poetry and philosophy came from Homer, Ovid, Plato, Aristotle, and other pagan authors, and theology from Christian divines such as Augustine, Origen, and St. Jerome. Geography, too, came from the distant past: In an age when knowledge of the world was increasing faster than ever before, Gerard and his classmates were pointed sternly toward the learning of Ptolemy and Pliny. All of it was sandwiched between two, sometimes three, daily celebrations of the Mass, and all of it was in Latin. That, not the crudity of workaday Flemish, was the language of the churchman and the scholar.
Among Gerard’s teachers was the grandly named author and playwright Georgius Macropedius – a man already with a dangerous reputation of his own for sympathizing with reformers. Macropedius’s character fitted well with the stern philosophy of the school. In his plays, which were often performed by his pupils for the townsfolk, only the rod and the lash saved boys from willfulness, whoring, theft, and a shameful death on the gallows. To the general approval of the rest of the cast, recalcitrant pupils were soundly whipped until they screamed, and when their mothers tried to intervene, much the same treatment was meted out to them.
That would have been the regime in many schools, at least as far as the pupils were concerned. There was little room for sympathy or consolation. Thus, when news came that Gerard’s mother had followed his father to the grave, the boy had to cope with it on his own. Her death, like that of her husband, did not merit any official record of its cause; death, like sickness, poverty, or disaster, was an ever-present threat. Within the space of two years, Gerard had lost both his parents, and Gisbert’s generosity and his own talents were all he could rely on.
He had clearly fitted in during his time in the ascetic world of the Brethren. Unlike Erasmus, he never complained later in his life of their harshness, and the rules that the Brethren applied to their traditional task of transcribing manuscripts show how diligently he learned their lessons. “You ought to attend in your copying to these things: that you make the letters properly and perfectly, that you copy without error, that you understand the sense of what you are copying, and that you concentrate your wandering mind on the task,” said their rulebook. The art of copying was virtually destroyed by the new flood of printed books by the time Gerard was studying at ’s Hertogenbosch, but as an adult he would become known throughout Europe for the precision of his engraved lettering and his obsession with accuracy, as well as for the single-minded concentration with which he applied himself to his books. He thrived on the traditional emphasis on ancient learning. Ptolemy, introduced to him by the teachers in the cathedral, would remain his scholastic guide and mentor throughout his life.
Gerard also drew some lessons from his great-uncle and from his own earlier life: that the Church had always been a source of support and stability in the confusing world in which he was growing up, and that Gisbert’s prosperity showed the material rewards that could come from not challenging the system openly. The Brethren were always careful to keep the sympathy for the reform movement which they had inherited from their founder within bounds that were acceptable to the Church authorities. In a town where dissent and dangerous opinions were common, Gerard no doubt saw the importance of discretion and the value of security. Inside the walls he had found scholarly disputation and strict discipline, symbolized by the monkish uniform of gray hooded gowns that the boys wore, “after the ancient usage of the Brethren,” but he had also found stability.
The old world of the Catholic Church had given him security, and for all the reformist leanings, the innovative thinking, and the fascination with new skills and techniques that would mark his adult life, he never lost his instinctive sense that stability would be found in the past, in the way things had always been.
Unlike many of the Brethren’s charges, however, Gerard still had no ambition for a prosperous and honorable career in the Church like his great-uncle’s. The small boy remarkable for the dedication with which he closeted himself with his books became a serious and sober eighteen-year-old, with the prospect of a life dedicated to study. University life, just as much as that of the cloister, could offer support and a place to belong. The rich endowments and charitable foundations of the forty-three colleges of the University of Leuven meant that, as an impoverished but talented student, he could be excused payment of any fees there.* Although there were no formal requirements for admission, a prospective student would have to convince the doctors of his college that he was adequately prepared for the demanding course of study that the university would provide.7 Gerard’s record of study at ’s Hertogenbosch, together with the patronage and recommendation of his uncle, would have been enough to do that. He was ready to take a place in the ancient university.
Chapter Five At the College of the Castle
JOINING THE UNIVERSITY of Leuven was a solemn moment, a commitment like joining a monastery. On August 29, 1530, Gerard de Cremer knelt before the rector, Pierre de Corte – a man who would later prove his courage and friendship by standing up to the Inquisition on his former pupil’s behalf – to take the oath of matriculation, the pupil’s hands clasped between the master’s in prayer and supplication. The university was a cosmopolitan place, with more than five thousand students and scholars from France, Germany, England, Scotland, and the farthest reaches of Europe – enough to create their own distinct community. The Faculty of Arts, which Gerard joined, was divided into four colleges scattered through the town. The Colleges of the Pig, the Lily, and the Hawk were all named after ancient houses in Leuven, while the College of the Castle, in the street that led up to the duke’s old residence, was where Mercator received his board and lodging and most of his tuition.
When Duke John IV of Brabant had applied for papal approval to found the university early in the fifteenth Century, Leuven, some twenty-five miles southeast of Rupelmonde, was in decline. Many of the weavers whose labors had made it prosperous had left for England, frightened by the latest spasm of riots and fighting, and attracted by the lure of better profits in the growing English wool trade. Other cities had flourishing universities: Bologna, Paris, and Oxford had been attracting students for two centuries or more, and similar institutions were opening all over northern Europe. France had twenty universities in the fifteenth century, and the German-speaking countries about the same. A new university in Leuven brought not only prestige to the duke but prosperity to the town.
By the early sixteenth century, its reputation was growing. Its former rector, Nicolas Vernulaeus,1 wrote a history of the university that described a peaceful academic town, with quiet fields and vineyards sheltered from the north winds by the hills around, and with well-swept and respectable houses – the very place, he enthused, for students seeking calm to pursue their studies. Even Erasmus had found it more congenial than the grammar school at ’s Hertogenbosch. Its students, he observed, were well taught, courteous, and mature. “No-one could graduate at Leuven without knowledge, manners, and age,” he declared. He had written to assure a friend: “Its agreeable and healthy climate is conducive to quiet and peaceful study; no other university can rival its intellectual life, nor the number and