Desiderius Erasmus

Erasmus' Familiar Colloquies grew from a small collection of phrases, sentences, and snatches of dialogue written in Paris about 1497 to help his private pupils improve their command of Latin. Twenty years later the material was published by Johann Froben (Basel 1518). It was an immediate success and was reprinted thirty times in the next four years. For the edition of March 1522 Erasmus began to add fully developed dialogues, and a book designed to improve boys' use of Latin (and their deportment) soon became a work of literature for adults, although it retained traces of its original purposes. The final Froben edition (March, 1533) had about sixty parts, most of them dialogues. It was in the last form that the Colloquies were read and enjoyed for four centuries. For modern readers it is one of the best introductions to European society of the Renaissance and Reformation periods, with lively descriptions of daily life and provocative discussions of political, religious, social, and literary topics, presented with Erasmus's characteristic wit and verve. Each colloquy has its own introduction and full explanatory, historical, and biographical notes. Volumes 39 and 40 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series – Two-volume set.

Erasmus' Familiar Colloquies grew from a small collection of phrases, sentences, and snatches of dialogue written in Paris about 1497 to help his private pupils improve their command of Latin. Twenty years later the material was published by Johann Froben (Basel 1518). It was an immediate success and was reprinted thirty times in the next four years. For the edition of March 1522 Erasmus began to add fully developed dialogues, and a book designed to improve boys' use of Latin (and their deportment) soon became a work of literature for adults, although it retained traces of its original purposes. The final Froben edition (March, 1533) had about sixty parts, most of them dialogues. It was in the last form that the Colloquies were read and enjoyed for four centuries. For modern readers it is one of the best introductions to European society of the Renaissance and Reformation periods, with lively descriptions of daily life and provocative discussions of political, religious, social, and literary topics, presented with Erasmus's characteristic wit and verve. Each colloquy has its own introduction and full explanatory, historical, and biographical notes. Volumes 39 and 40 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series – Two-volume set.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and everyday life. He therefore composed Paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text, vastly expanded to embrace the reforming `philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond all expectations, and were quickly translated into French, English, and other languages. The Paraphrase on Acts is the fifth volume of Paraphrases to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the Collected Works of Erasmus. The highly dramatic narrative of Acts offered Erasmus as paraphrast a treasury of golden opportunities. Its personae are kings, governors, high priests, communities of grace, and the ubiquitous and volatile mob. Here are the models to be emulated and to be avoided in both a reformed Europe and a reformed church. In the Paraphrase on Acts the splendour of popes is measured against the simplicity of St Peter, the pride of European kings warned against by the downfall of Herod . The Paraphrase on Acts commands attention also by its manifest efforts to rationalize biblical history. Erasmus persistently shows that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is nevertheless complemented by very human motivations. Moreover, the impressionistic framework of time and space in the biblical account is replaced in the Paraphrase on Acts by a careful definition of events by date and location - offering fascinating insights into the science of geography in Erasmus' day. The reader will recognize many of Erasmus' favourite theological themes, for example the sharp antithesis between faith and ceremonial works. But it is perhaps Erasmus' portrait of the Holy Spirit that will leave the deepest impression - a portrait in which images of fire turn imperceptibly but decisively into ontological realities and moral imperatives. Volume 50 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

In the tradition of "fool literature" produced by the ferment of new ideas that directly preceded the Protestant Reformation, Dutch priest, humanist, and scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) composed "The Praise of Folly" in 1509. Under Folly's mask, Erasmus boldly attacked the abuses of church and state, and pilloried the faults of those he saw around him: idle superstition, pedantry, religious hypocrisy, and human foolishness. In this elegant translation from the Latin by John Wilson, the reader can savour a great work of satire, which, in the classical tradition, chastises human beings for their follies and excesses, not with a rod but with a smile.

The Annotations of Erasmus are designed for those who wish to take the study of the Bible seriously. Erasmus himself declared as much: his Annotations were not written, he implied, to provide pleasant diversions or popular entertainment. They were a work of genuine biblical scholarship. They brought to bear on theological issues of the day the light of Scripture interpreted from its own historical and literary contexts -- often with disturbing clarity. They are, moreover, replete with that Erasmian irony that so effectively exposed the personal and institutional follies of all parties in the early years of the Reformation. Erasmus wrote annotations on all the New Testament books, but among them all the annotations on Romans must hold a special place. The Epistle to the Romans has been understood as the classic theological statement by the Apostle to the gentiles of the terms on which Divine grace embraced all human beings. Besides, centuries of reflection have made Romans a focus of debate on central theological issues -- for example, the relation of the Divine Persons, the predestination of the saints, the doctrine of justification. To such problems the sometimes tortured syntax of the Greek has often obscured the clarity sought from the divine Apostle. Erasmus understood that all discussion of Romans must rest upon a sure grasp of the author's intent. His task, therefore, in the Annotations on Romans was to clarify the text of the Epistle, and so to illuminate the vision of Paul. This translation reveals the annotations as a rich storehouse of methodological discussion and semantic analysis, and a fascinating witness to the theological debates of the early sixteenth century. Volume 56 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

The Peasant's War in Germany and his own ill-health combined to keep Erasmus confined to the city of Basel during 1525, but he was still able to maintain an active correspondence spanning all of Europe. In the preceding year, he had published De libero artbitrio/Freedom of the Will, his first open attack on the teachings of Martin Luther. Despite this public defence of Catholic doctrine, Erasmus was continually forced in his correspondence to reply to open or veiled attacks by Catholic critics. Erasmus directly addressed one of his critics, No+l BTda, of the Paris theological faculty, in the spring of 1525. BTda was preparing analyses of Erasmus' publications that would eventually form the basis for a formal condemnation. Erasmus' correspondence with BTda, intended to head off such a condemnation, continued past 1525 and became increasingly hostile in tone. That same year, Erasmus also followed up reports that an influential Italian humanist, Alberta Pio, Prince of Carpi, was circulating at the papal curia a manuscript accusing Erasmus of being the major source of Luther's errors. Again, he directly addressed his opponent in order to prove his orthodoxy and to urge (in vain) that no such attack be published. In both cases, however, despite his break with Luther and his public and private opposition to the Protestant leader Oecolampadius in Basel, he was unsuccessful in turning aside the hostility of his Catholic critics. Volume 11 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and everyday life. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text, vastly expanded to embrace the reforming `philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond all expectations, and were quickly translated into French, German, English, and other languages. This is the fourth volume of Paraphrases to be published in the New Testament Scholarship Series in the CWE. The volume includes the Paraphrases on the Pastoral Epistles and the Catholic, or General, Epistles, as well as the Paraphrase on Hebrews. These books, in the biblical text, address the central issues of the Christian life within the context of family, church, and community. The Paraphrases sharpen the accent of the biblical message, speaking in an idiom appropriate to the sixteenth century but also surprisingly relevant to our own age: they condemn, for example, every form of tyrannizing in the home and self-aggrandisement in the church; perhaps above all, the Paraphrases expose the social injustice (inevitable, Erasmus would have us believe) of those who have acquired great personal wealth. Erasmus also reformulates, and sometimes develops, some of the great theological themes already defined in earlier volumes of this series. Is sin congenital, or do we sin simply in `imitation' of Adam? How do the Hebrew Scriptures attest to the presence of divine grace in the world before the birth of Christ? What is faith if not a vision of eternal realities so sure that we can clearly recognize the things of this passing world as the shadows they are? These Paraphrases address the modern reader with the relevance of the moral issues they define and the perennial importance of the theological questions they raise. Erasmus clarified and interpreted biblical text with immense rhetorical skill. Volume 44 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pretensions, foibles and frailties, to mock theologians and monks and to praise the 'folly' of simple Christian piety. Erasmus's wit, wordplay and wisdom made the book an instant success, but it also attracted what may have been sales-boosting criticism. The Letter to Maarten van Dorp, which is a defence of his ideas and methods, is also included.

The final two volumes in the CWE contain an edition and translation of Erasmus's poetry. For Erasmus scholars this work affords the first opportunity to evaluate and analyse Erasmus' poems in English. And for those interested in Renaissance and Reformation poetry in general, these offer an intriguing look at the work of one of the towering figures of the period writing in a genre that was, for him, unusual. The annotations include a path-breaking commentary piece by Harry Vredeveld on Erasmus' most famous poem, `Poem on the Trouble of Old Age.' Another important feature is the appearance of the original Latin of each poem alongside the English translation. Volumes 85 and 86 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series – Two-volume set.

Volumes 71-84 of the CWE contain Erasmus' controversies with a large number of critics on a host of issues, most of the main ones theological. Erasmus' Latin translation of the New Testament, a revised version of the Vulgate bible with copious annotations, which was published by Froben in 1516, initiated the arguments, attacks, and vilifications that plagued him for the last twenty years of his life. This volume, the first of the Controversies volumes to be published, centres on Erasmus' disputes with the conservative Catholic critics at the University of Louvain. Some of the principal controversies featured in this volume concern Erasmus' interpretation of Scripture and his editorial decisions about biblical annotations, his views on key matters such as marriage, celibacy, and the dissolute lives of the monks, and later on, his position vis-+-vis Luther. Professor Sowards, whose introductory essay on Erasmus and education in CWE 25 has become an indispensable guide on that subject, provides in this volume another important essay that sets the scene for the translations that follow. Volume 71 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

This is one of seven volumes that will contain the more than 4000 adages that Erasmus gathered and commented on, sometimes in a few lines and sometimes in full-scale essays. The notes identify the classical sources and indicate how Erasmus' reading and thinking developed over the quarter-century spanned by the eight revisions of the original work. Many of the proverbs cited by Erasmus are still in our common stock of speech. Volume 34 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Of all the church Fathers, Erasmus preferred St Jerome, for in him he found the perfect combination of 'bonae litterae' and 'philosophia Christi,' which were to become the two fundamental concepts of the Erasmian reform program. This volume is devoted to Erasmus' edition of the works of St. Jerome, including his letters and a variety of other writings, and, most important, Erasmus' Life of Jerome. As a work of patristic scholarship, this first critical biography of the saint was a major achievement, distinguished for its historical portrait of Jerome with all his faults and virtues, and free of the myths, legends, and stories that grew up around him in the Middle Ages. Originally published in 1516, the edition of the works of St Jerome consisted of nine folio volumes, the first four of which were Erasmus' chief responsibility. This selection from the edition, translated and annotated by James F. Brady and John C. Olin, is the first presentation of this outstanding work since the sixteenth century and makes available parts that are both important in themselves and representative of Erasmus' contribution. Extenstive introductions and notes by the editors provide full information about the texts. Volume 61 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

The period from April 1523 to December 1524 finds Erasmus still in Basel and still preoccupied above all with ‘the sorry business of Luther.‘ He knows that the efforts of his conservative Catholic detractors to prove that he had ‘laid the egg that Luther hatched‘ can be overcome only if he takes an unambiguous public stand against Luther, and friendly princes and prelates constantly urge him to do so. But he dreads the controversy that an attack on Luther will arouse and fears that the overthrow of Luther will entail the defeat of all wholesome reform. This reluctance to ‘enter the arena‘ against Luther is in large measure overcome by the attacks upon Erasmus by reforming zealots who interpret his reserved attitude towards Luther as secret collusion with the pope, motivated by cowardice and avarice. Starting in the spring of 1523, a ‘conspiracy‘ of Lutheran ‘lunatics,‘ many of them former friends, publishes a series of ‘wild and libellous‘ pamphlets' against Erasmus, of which Ulrich von Hutten's Expostulatio (answered by Erasmus' Spongia) is the first and most important. In the letters 1523-4, Erasmus' mounting anger at the authors of these attacks goes hand in hand with his slowly formed decision to publish a book against Luther on free will. When De libero arbitrio is published in September 1524, Eramsus describes it less as an attack on Luther, about whom his feelings are still ambivalent, than as a settling of accounts with Luther's ‘subversive, crazy, noisy‘ supporters. The reaction of Erasmus' Catholic patrons to the De libero arbitrio is gratifying, and the initial response from Wittenberg is muted. Word reaches Eramus that Luther will doubtless reply in a moderate tone. Not until the publication of the De libero arbitrio in December 1525 will Erasmus learn what a scourge Luther's ‘modernation‘ can be. Volume 10 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

When Erasmus published the Adages, his monumental collection of proverbs, he wrote in the Introduction that 'a knowledge of proverbs contributes to a number of things, but to four especially: philosophy, persuasiveness, grace and charm in speaking, and the understanding of the best authors.' This volume contains another 600 of the more than 4000 adages that Erasmus gathered and commented on, sometimes in a few lines and sometimes in full-scale essays. The notes identify the classical sources and indicate how Erasmus' reading and thinking developed over the quarter-century spanned by the eight revisions of the original work. Many of the proverbs cited by Erasmus are still in out common stock of speech. Volume 33 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated from Latin into French, German, English, and other languages. This volume is the third Paraphrase to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the CWE. In it Erasmus explores questions that have always been central to Christian self-understanding. Why is the cross folly to the wise of this world? In the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus hints broadly that the cause of human blindness lies in the arrogance of intellectual pretensions, the love of vain-glory, the lust for possessions, the fear of losing the supports that secure a comfortable way of life. Perhaps nothing will please the reader more the portraits of the chief characters in John's Gospels. We enjoy the simplicity of the lowly woman at the well, we understand the complexity of the distinguished Nicodemus. Above all, we are captured by the portrait of Christ himself. Upon the stage Erasmus has here designed, Christ appears first in the humility of a lowly artisan from a despised country; only to the discerning does his glory flash forth from his mortality, a mortality vividly etched in the scene on the cross. But in the last pages of the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus sets before us in sharp dramatic contrast the resurrected Christ glorious with a radiant holiness. Like Augustine in the City of God, Erasmus attempts to define the relationship between the two worlds in which the Christian lives - the heavenly and the spiritual, and the earthly and physical. Volume 46 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

Besides the celebrated Praise of Folly, Robert M. Adams has included the political "Complaint of Peace," the brutal antipapal satire "Julius Excluded from Heaven," two versions of Erasmus’s important preface to the Latin translation of the New Testament, and a selection both serious and comic of his Colloquies and his letters. Adams has made these selections to emphasize the humane, rather than the doctrinaire, side of the first and arguably greatest humanist. Critical commentary is provided in essays by H. R. Trevor-Roper, R. S. Allen, J. Huizinga, Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and Robert M. Adams. Also included are a Chronology of Erasmus’s life and a Selected Bibliography.

This final volume in the Literary and Educational Writings contains diverse woks spanning a generation. They demonstrate Erasmus' skill in applying classical rhetoric to contemporary Christian needs. Four are short rhetorical pieces; the next group illustrates facets of Erasmus' classical scholarship and includes several works that bear witness to Erasmus' friendship with Thomas More. The last and most expansive piece in the volume, the Lingua, has not previously been translated into English. This work represents Erasmus' growing criticism of his theological position by both Catholics and reformers. Volume 29 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

At the beginning of this volume, Erasmus leaves Louvain to live in Basel. Weary from the many controversies reflected in the letters of the previous volumes, he is also anxious to see the annotations to his third edition of the New Testament through Johann Froben’s press. Above all he fears that pressure from the imperial court in the Netherlands will force him to take a public stand against Luther. Erasmus completes a large number of works in the span of this volume, including the Paraphrases on Matthew and John, two new expanded editions of the Colloquies, an edition of De conscribendis epistolis, two apologiae against his Spanish detractors, and editions of Arnobius Junior and Hilary of Poitiers. But the predominant theme of the volume remains ‘the sorry business of Luther.’ The harder Erasmus persists in trying to adhere to a reasonable course between Catholic and reforming zealots, the more he finds himself ‘a heretic to both sides.’ His Catholic critics appear the more dangerous. Among them are the papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro, who is bent on discrediting him at both the imperial and papal courts as a supporter of Luther; the Spaniard Diego López Zúñiga, who compiles a catalogue of Blasphemies and Impieties of Erasmus of Rotterdam; and the Carmelite Nicholaas Baechem, who denounces Erasmus both in public sermons and at private ‘drinking-parties.’ Erasmus’ refusal to counsel severity against the Lutherans is motivated chiefly by concern for peace and the common good of Christendom, and not by any tender regard for Luther and the other reformers. Still, many of the letters in this volume testify to his growing aversion to the reformers, and we see him moving perceptibly in the direction of his eventual public breach with them. A special feature of this volume is the first fully annotated translation of Erasmus’ Catalogues Iucubrationum (Ep 1341 A), an extremely important document for the study of Erasmus’ life and works and of the controversies they aroused. Volume 9 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

‘A knowledge of proverbs contributes to a number of things,’ wrote Erasmus in his Introduction to the Adages, ‘but to four especially: philosophy, persuasiveness, grace and charm in speaking, and the understanding of the best authors…’ This volume contains the second 500 of the more than 4000 adages gathered and commented on by Erasmus, sometimes in a few lines and sometimes in full-scale essays. The notes identify the classical sources and indicate how Erasmus’ reading and thinking developed over the quarter-century spanned by the eight revisions of the original work. Many of the proverbs cited by Erasmus are still in our common stock of speech. Volume 32 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

This is the first of five volumes to appear in the section of the CWE devoted to Erasmus' spiritualia, works of spirituality that include such aspects of religion as piety, theology, and the practice of ministry. The volume begins with an introductory essay that provides the first comprehensive review of the content, sources, and style of Erasmus' many works dealing with piety. Volume 66 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.