The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1-141 (1484-1500)

398 Pages·2002·21.974 MB·English

by  Desiderius Erasmus, R.A.B. Mynors, D.F.S. Thomson, Wallace K. Ferguson

COLLECTED WORKS OF ERASMUS
VOLUME 1
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THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
ERASMUS
LETTERS 1 TO 141
1484 TO 1500
translated by R. A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson
annotated by Wallace K. Ferguson
University of Toronto Press
The research costs of the Collected Works of Erasmus
have been underwritten by a Killam Senior Research Scholarship
awarded by the Killam Program of the Canada Council.
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press 1974
Toronto and Buffalo
Printed in Canada
ISBN cloth 0-8020-1981-1
ISBN paper 0-8020-6190-7
LC 72-97422
The Collected Works of Erasmus
The aim of the Collected Works of Erasmus
is to make available an accurate, readable English text
of Erasmus' correspondence and his
other principal writings. The edition is planned
and directed by an Editorial Board, an Executive Committee,
and an Advisory Committee.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Co-ordinating Editor
R.J. Schoeck, 1968 to 1970
B.M. Corrigan, University of Toronto
Literary Editors
R.A.B.Mynors, Oxford University
D.F.S. Thomson, University of Toronto
Historical Editors
Wallace K. Ferguson, University of Western Ontario
James Kelsey McConica CSB, University of Toronto
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Peter G. Bietenholz, University of Saskatchewan
B.M. Corrigan, University of Toronto
Wallace K. Ferguson, University of Western Ontario
Jean C. Jamieson, University of Toronto Press
Marsh Jeanneret, University of Toronto Press
James Kelsey McConica CSB, University of Toronto
RJ. Schoeck, Folger Shakespeare Library
R.M. Schoeffel, University of Toronto Press
D.F.S. Thomson, University of Toronto
Prudence Tracy, University of Toronto Press
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Roland H. Bainton, Yale University
Marcel Bataillon, College de France
CM. Bruehl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie
van Wetenschappen
Myron P. Gilmore, Harvard University
Etienne Gilson, Academie francaise
S.L. Greenslade, Oxford University
O.B. Hardison jr, Folger Shakespeare Library
Otto Herding, Universitat Freiburg
Werner Kaegi, Universitat Basel
Robert M. Kingdon, University of Wisconsin
Maurice Lebel, Universite Laval
Jean-Claude Margolin, Centre d'etudes superieures de la
Renaissance de Tours
Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University
Margaret Mann Phillips, University of London
Pierre Sage, Universite de Lyon and Universite Laval
Richard S. Sylvester, Yale University
Craig R. Thompson, University of Pennsylvania
J.B. Trapp, Warburg Institute
Contents
Illustrations
viii
Introduction
ix
Editors' Note
xxiv
Translators' Note
xxvii
Map showing the principal places mentioned in volume i
xxviii
LETTERS 1 TO 141
1
Money and coinage of the age of Erasmus
An historical and analytical glossary
with particular reference to France, the Low Countries
England, the Rhineland
and Italy
3u
Table of Correspondents
350
Bibliography
354
Abbreviations
356
Short title forms for Erasmus' works
357
Index
361
Illustrations
A birdseye view of Gouda and surroundings
10
Lorenzo Valla, translation of Demosthenes'Pro Ctesiphonte
30
Cornelis Gerard Mariad c 1494
80
Robert Gaguin
86
Jan and Hendrik van Bergen with their patron saints
100
Anna van Borssele
158
Adolph of Burgundy
180
Henry vin
194
Erasmus Adagiorum collectanea title page
256
Pico della Mirandola
262
The ryal or gold rose noble of Edward i v
319
The Burgundian-Hapsburg gold florin of St Philip
The fiorino d'oro or gold florin of Florence
The ecu d'or au soleil de Bretagne
321
Introduction
The correspondence of Erasmus constitutes a source of inestimable value,
not only for the biography of the great humanist himself, but also for the
intellectual and religious history of the northern Renaissance and the Refor-
mation. Myron Gilmore has recently called it 'perhaps the greatest single
source for the intellectual history of [Erasmus'] age/1 And Froude, in the
preface to his Life and Letters of Erasmus, wrote with his customary
enthusiasm: 'The best description of the state of Europe in the age
immediately preceding the Reformation will be found in the cor-
respondence of Erasmus himself. I can promise my own readers [he added]
that if they will accept Erasmus as their guide in that tangled period, they
will not wander far out of the way.'2 '
The volume of the correspondence is enormous,3 and its cumulative
effect fully justifies the claims that have been made for it. The letters are,
however, very unevenly distributed throughout their author's mature life.
Although Erasmus was an indefatigable letter-writer from his youth on,
only about fifteen per cent of his surviving letters were written before the
summer of 1514, at which time he was at least forty-five arid possibly two
or three years older. And of the letters addressed to him before that date
those that remain form an even smaller proportion of the extant total. That
even so many have survived is largely due to their having been included
in manuscript collections from which they were eventually published.
So, until Erasmus was well into middle age, or according to sixteenth-
* * * **
1 M.P. Gilmore Humanists and Jurists (Cambridge, Mass. 1963) 137
2 J.A. Froude Life and Letters of Erasmus (London 1894)
3 There are more than three thousand letters, of which some sixteen hundred
were written by Erasmus, the remainder by a representative cross-section of
educated European society.