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COLLECTED WORKS OF ERASMUS VOLUME 1 This page intentionally left blank 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 correspondence 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.