Desiderius Erasmus

When a Parisian publisher in 1523 intended to reprint one of Erasmus’s popular paraphrases on the New Testament, he was forced to submit the work to the members of the theological faculty of the University of Paris. The influential syndic of the faculty, Noël Béda, took charge of the censorship and detected numerous unorthodox elements, particularly Lutheran tendencies. Béda was so shocked by what he had read that he extended his research to all the other paraphrases of Erasmus on the New Testament that he could get his hands on. In the following years, Erasmus attempted to prevent Béda from publishing his findings and to steer clear from a condemnation of his books by the Parisian theologians. He failed in both respects, despite the five polemical writings presented here in volumes 80 and 81 for the first time in translation , in which he attempted to refute Béda's objections. The mutual insurmountable incomprehension between the two scholars – exemplary of the contrast between scholastic and humanist approaches to the Bible in the early sixteenth century – is the common thread in this fierce and at times unsavoury quarrel.

Erasmus’s Annotations began as marginal comments in his own copy of the New Testament and were subsequently published in 1516 as a supplement to the Novum Instrumentum. His annotations were intended to justify his changes based on the Greek text. In each successive edition, published between 1516 and 1535, the Annotations grew in size and scope, providing Erasmus with the opportunity to defend his translations in the face of growing criticism from orthodox Catholic theologians. His notes reveal a man of the Renaissance, a man with a humanist instinct, and an obsessively humanist mind. This volume of the Collected Works of Erasmus notes the editorial changes made in the five editions and also provides the reader with information about the patristic, medieval, and contemporary sources consulted by Erasmus, and about the evolving relations with contemporary critics. This book highlights how Annotation on Acts played a pivotal role in the development of sixteenth-century biblical exegesis and mark a significant stage in the evolution of humanist biblical scholarship. The annotations in this volume intrigue with their method, delight with their apparent self-confidence, charm with their personal allusions whether laudatory or contemptuous, and illuminate the text of Acts for the modern reader.