imprisoned, liberated, and while there he seems to have finally renounced Catholicism. But he feared the forces of disorder which lurked in Protestantism, and which seemed embodied in the Anabaptists. Hence at Orleans he composed a treatise against one of their favourite beliefs, the sleep of the soul between death and judgment. Conscious personal being was in itself too precious, and in the sight of God too sacred, to be allowed to suffer even a temporary lapse. But to serve the cause he loved was impossible with the stake waiting for him, its fires scorching his face, and kindly friends endangered by his presence. And so in the winter of 1534 he retired from France and settled at Basel.
Aeneas Sylvius had once described Basel as a city which venerated images, but cared little for science, and had no wish to know letters; and when he became Pope he founded there a University which effected a more marvellous change than he could have anticipated. Erasmus chose Basel as his residence from 1514 to 1529; and here his New Testament and his editions of the great Latin Fathers were printed by John Proben, who joined to the soul of an artist the enterprise of a merchant. When Proben died Erasmus forsook Basel; but as the end drew near he came back, just as Calvin was finishing his Institutio, to die in the city which had been the scene of his most arduous and fruitful labours. And if the zeal for learning at Basel was strong, the zeal for religion was no less. As early as 1517 Capito had refused to celebrate the Mass, and had preached in the spirit of Luther. Here (Ecolampadius had learned from humanism a sweet reasonableness that won the respect of Erasmus, yet ideas so radical that they placed him beside Zwingli at Marburg, and made him so preach against the images which the city used to venerate that the rabble hastened to insult and break them. Erasmus, who described the event in more than one letter, marvelled in his satirical way that "not a solitary Saint lifted a blessed finger" to work a protecting or retributory miracle that should stay or avenge the damage. Calvin did not reach the city which (Ecolampadius had changed till three years after his death; but the Reformer found it guided by men who were just as congenial: Oswald Myconius, the chief pastor and preacher, who, even amid notable differences, continued ever a personal friend and admirer; Simon Grynaeus, a learned Grecian, with whom he then and later discussed, as he himself tells us, how best to study, to translate, and to interpret the Scriptures; Sebastian Munster, professor of Hebrew, just seeing through the press his Biblia Hebraica, praised in public as Germanorum Esdras et Strabo, and affectionately known in private as "the Rabbi," a master at whose feet Calvin could sit without shame; Thomas Platter, once a poor and vagrant scholar, then professor of Greek, but now a printer from whose press the Institutio was soon to issue, though owing to financial straits not so soon as its anxious author would have liked. Besides the residents, famous visitors came to Basel: from Zurich Henry Bullinger, who was there just at
