the Devotio Moderna spread: Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806, 41–42; Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550, 96–98; Albert Hyma, The Youth of Erasmus, 125.
left a deep mark: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 125.
barbarous: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 404.
there was a small house: Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals, and Place in History, 7; Israel, The Dutch Republic. A photo of a house built on the site appears in Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, opposite p. 52.
“between the banks”: Smith, Erasmus, 4.
a tall bronze statue: Nicolaas van der Blom, “The Erasmus Statues in Rotterdam,” Erasmus in English, 6: 5–9, June 1973. I am obliged to Jan van Herwaarden of the Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies in Rotterdam for showing me, and explaining the history of, the statue.
The confusion: A. C. F. Koch, The Year of Erasmus’ Birth. On the circumstances of Erasmus’s birth and early childhood, see his autobiographical sketch, Compendium Vitae Erasmi Roterodami, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 400–410; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 51–58; Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence, 21; Léon-E. Halkin, Erasmus: A Critical Biography, 1; Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation, 5–6; Smith, Erasmus, 5–7; Jan van Herwaarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus, 511–515.
“longed for” in Latin: Huizinga (Erasmus, 6) notes that he first used the full form of his name, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, in 1506.
his first few years: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 404; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 63. On Gouda, see Israel, Dutch Republic, 114, 119.
was less distinguished: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 62–63; P. S. Allen, The Age of Erasmus, 34. As these accounts note, Erasmus during these years apparently spent some time as a choirboy in Utrecht.
“Greasy of mouth and palate”: Quoted in R. J. Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist, 1467–1500, 31.
remained a medieval town: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 67–69. For general information on life in medieval towns, see Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages, 191–196; Joseph Gies and Frances Gies, Life in a Medieval City, 30–31. Deventer’s population is given in Israel, Dutch Republic, 114.
high rates of crime and violence: J. R. Hale, Renaissance Europe, 1480–1520, 26–27.
most rudimentary sanitation: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 69; Bishop, Middle Ages, 194–195.
once a fortnight: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 69.
most highly urbanized region: Israel, Dutch Republic, 14–16, 113–118; James D. Tracy, Erasmus of the Low Countries, 10–11. Erasmus’s remark about “many towns” appears in “Auris Batava,” in William Barker, ed., The Adages of Erasmus, 371–374.
Fernand Braudel: Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, 479.
was at or below sea level: Israel, Dutch Republic, 9–18, 106, 111.
established commercial ties abroad: Ibid., 16.
most articulate spokesman: Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, 272–273.
its first printing press: Jozef Ijsewijn, “The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries,” in Itinerarium Italicum, 238; Israel, Dutch Republic, 44.
ships were constantly putting in: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 67.
there was St. Lebwin’s: Tracy, Growth of a Mind, 26; Allen, Age of Erasmus, 35.
passport to a better life: Kristian Jensen, “The Humanist Reform of Latin and Latin Teaching,” in Jill Kraye, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 63–64.
curriculum in the lower grades: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 85; Tracy, Growth of a Mind, 21–29; Allen, Age of Erasmus, 36; Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 404; “the most barbarous book”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 26, 592–593.
“horrific shrieks of pain”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 26, 341 (Erasmus is here writing of classrooms in general); uncouth manners: vol. 26, 324, 325.
The torments inflicted: Ibid., 325.
The students themselves: Ibid., 331. Erasmus’s opposition to corporal punishment appears at 293.
the language had constantly evolved: Ijsewijn, “Coming of Humanism,” 195; Jensen, “Humanist Reform of Latin,” in Kraye, Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 75–76.
“secret natural force”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 9, 294.
easy to spot: Albert Hyma, The Brethren of the Common Life, 66, 109–111.
dominant institution in northern Europe: Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 163, 178, 185; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 5–6; Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation, 30; Hale, Renaissance Europe, 218ff; Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, 151ff.
what one could eat: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 41–42.
were all rampant: Bishop, Middle Ages, 232.
one of every three women: Clifford R. Backman, The Worlds of Medieval Europe, 348.
an array of customs: For an overview of medieval piety, see Francis Rapp, “Religious Belief and Practice,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 7, 203–219.
Veneration of the saints: Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 155ff, 178, 191.
shrines to the saints: Ibid., 191ff; “The Pilgrim’s Guide to St. James of Compostella,” in Mary-Ann Stouck, ed., Medieval Saints: A Reader (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1999), 313–314; Bishop, Middle Ages, 149. Hale, in Renaissance Europe (40), observes that probably more pilgrims were on the move in this period than ever before or since.
quality of its relics: Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion, 22–53; MacCulloch, Reformation, 18–19; Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Ages, 167.
the most venerated figure: MacCulloch, Reformation, 18–21; Bishop, Middle Ages, 145.
the Mass: MacCulloch, Reformation, 10–14.
monasteries grew wealthy: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 5–6.
large packs of hounds: See Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39, 509.
one of the most famous tales: The tenth story of the third day.
Peter Waldus: Williston Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 305–307.
John Wyclif: Ibid., 377–381.
Jan Hus: Ibid., 381–385. For more on Hus, see my chapter 20.
Girolamo Savonarola: MacCulloch, Reformation, 90–92; Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, vol. 6, 17–54.
Geert Groote: Hyma, Brethren, 15–46; Israel, Dutch Republic, 41; introduction to The Imitation of Christ, xxxix–xliii.
some of his followers: Hyma, Brethren, 21–28.
Thomas à Kempis: Ibid., 32–34.
“The Kingdom of God”: Imitation of Christ, 53; Habit and tonsure, 24; run off to distant shrines, 215; Judgment Day, 4–6; one path to salvation, 76–77.
nearly fifty more editions: Ibid., liii; Thomas More . . . Ignatius Loyola: www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/innertravelers/thomas-kempis.html.
“Do not desire”: Imitation of Christ, 8–9.
was being imprinted: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 125–127.
Rodolphus Agricola: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 9, 294; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 113–116; Israel, Dutch Republic, 42–43; “Agricola, Rodolphus,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus.
“was one of the first”: Quoted in Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 48. See also Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, 38.
Alexander Hegius: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, 38; “Hegius, Alexander,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus.
Erasmus had been exposed: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 12, 36; Israel, Dutch Republic, 45.
hit by the plague: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 132; Koch, Year of Erasmus’ Birth, 30–31; Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 405, and vol. 1, 2.
CHAPTER 2: MINER’S SON
his lowly origins: See Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, (hereafter cited as Brecht, Martin Luther), 2, 9–10, 3.
one of Europe’s top producers: Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, 4.
the town of
Mansfeld: Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, 83; Brecht, Martin Luther, 10; Roper, Martin Luther, 5.
“they finally forced me”: Luther’s Works, vol. 54, “Table Talk,” 235, 157.
one of the most famous studies: Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History; “jealously ambitious” father, 255; “excessive harshness,” 28; “angry, and often alcoholic, impulsiveness,” 66; “suppressed rage,” 38; “he rebelled,” 74.
curtly dismissive: See, for instance, Brecht, Martin Luther, 6–7; Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death, 23; Richard Friedenthal, Luther: His Life and Times, 224–226; Ozment, Age of Reform, 223–231. Ozment (227) writes that “Erikson’s portrait of Luther’s father” is “demonstrably fabricated, and the weight of reliable historical evidence strongly indicates that Luther’s childhood was unhappy neither at home nor in school.”
Erikson himself acknowledged: Erikson, Young Man Luther, 50.
“use of repudiative”: Ibid., 247; “demonological preoccupation,” 232.
quickly worked his way up: Brecht, Martin Luther, 2–3; Oberman, Luther, 91; Roper, Martin Luther, 5; Friedenthal, Luther, 9. The smelting process is described at the Mansfeld Museum in nearby Hettstedt.
need to scrimp: Brecht, Martin Luther, 5; Oberman, Luther, 85.
ferocity of the mining world: Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, 6, 101ff.
outpost of early capitalism: Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther: Theology and Revolution, 23.
the entrepreneur: Oberman, Luther, 87.
“pernicious pests”: Agricola, De Re Metallica, 217.
Luther’s world abounded: Friedenthal, Luther, 10; Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, 19; Robert Herndon Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther, 10; Marius, Martin Luther, 26–28.
“We may not doubt”: Cited in Fife, Revolt of Martin Luther, 11.
presence of the Devil: Brecht, Martin Luther, 11–12. Heiko Oberman considered the Devil central to Luther’s thinking, as the title of his biography indicates (Luther: Man Between God and the Devil); see especially 102–107.
Hell, meanwhile: Bainton, Here I Stand, 20.
the judging Christ: Brecht, Martin Luther, 76–78; Fife, Revolt of Martin Luther, 13.
Nearly every church: Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, 135.
The violence in these depictions: Roper, Martin Luther, 10–11; Hale, Renaissance Europe, 26–28; Friedenthal, Luther, 340–341.
Salzburg municipal ordinance: Cited in Will Durant, The Reformation, 758.
a general obsession with death: Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Ages, 138ff. “No other epoch,” Huizinga writes, “has laid so much stress as the expiring Middle Ages on the thought of death.” See also Marius, Martin Luther, 28–30; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 310ff.
Anne, the mother of Mary: Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 181–182; Hale, Renaissance Europe, 238; Brecht, Martin Luther, 11.
an altarpiece honors: Accessible at www.neurorepair-2008.de/files/lutherstadt_en.pdf.
“in the pants”: Luthers Werke, Tischreden, vol. 5, no. 5537, 222.
CHAPTER 3: CANDLELIGHT STUDIES
Pieter Winckel: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, no. 447, to Lambertus Grunnius [August 1516], 6–32. This letter to a fictitious addressee describes Erasmus’s dealings with Winckel and his entry into the monastery; though the names are changed, it is considered a more or less reliable guide to this period of his life. Other details are provided by Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 128ff; Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe, 55–57.
“Time flies”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, 2.
“This incident”: Ibid., vol. 26, 326, 325.
fit for monastic life: R. R. Post, in his exhaustive The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, notes (660) that Erasmus’s comments accurately describe the situation at ’s Hertogenbosch.
“garden of the Muses”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 17.
the conflict then raging: Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 15–17, 153; Israel, Dutch Republic, 27–30; Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom, 24. Erasmus’s own description can be found in Barker, Adages of Erasmus, 186.
burned down in 1549: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 407.
basic plan of the medieval cloister: www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-religion/medieval-monastery.htm.
“so much decayed”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 18.
followed a less severe regimen: Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe, 90.
the day was built around: See ibid., 93–94, for a typical day at the monastery.
nine have survived: None of the letters from Servatius has.
“If we cannot be together”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, no. 4 [c. 1487], 6.
“You surely know”: Ibid., no. 5 [c. 1487], 7.
“What is it that”: Ibid., no. 7 [c. 1487], 9, 11.
The few days: Ibid., no. 8 [c. 1487], 11.
When a letter finally arrived: Ibid., no. 9 [c. 1487], 14–15.
“Do not be ashamed”: Ibid., no. 15 [c. 1488], 19–22.
Some have dismissed them: Ibid., introductory note to letter no. 4. See also the introduction to vol. 85, xv.
A. L. Rowse: A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History: A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature and the Arts, 6–10.
“to accept the halter”: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 4, 21.
The joys of ancient literature: Ibid., vol. 1, no. 20, to Cornelis Gerard [May 1489?], 31, and vol. 4, no. 447, 18 (where Erasmus writes that he read these works “in furtive and nocturnal sessions”); Erika Rummel, Erasmus as a Translator of the Classics, 6; Halkin, Erasmus, 6; Hyma, Youth of Erasmus, 155.
abound in references: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, 28, 50; “bond of affection,” 27.
Carmen Buccolicum: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 85, xvii, 287ff.
a play by Terence: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 1, no. 31 [1489?], 57–60.
the Italian Renaissance meant: Margaret Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, 16–17; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 19–23.
ad fontes—to the sources: According to van Herwaarden (Between Saint James and Erasmus, 560–561), Erasmus used this phrase sparingly, but it aptly summed up his program: “The quest for pure sources was an absolute necessity” for him “in order to show others the path to true Christian godliness.”
Petrarch is best known: Nicholas Mann, “The Origins of Humanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 6, 9–10.
a “Dark Age”: As Charles G. Nauert Jr. notes in Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (3), the idea that for a thousand years prior to the Renaissance Europe was sunk in barbarism and superstition is now considered greatly exaggerated, but, he adds, Renaissance humanism did represent the emergence of a new culture.
father of Renaissance humanism: Mann, “Origins of Humanism,” in Kraye, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 6; Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, 21.
born in Arezzo, Tuscany: For details of Petrarch’s life, see Morris Bishop, Petrarch and His World.
The papal court became: For details about the deplorable conditions in Avignon under the popes, see Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 1, 59–83.
“the most dismal”: Quoted in Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 48.
the courtly conventions: “Petrarch,” in The Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th ed.
enamored of Cicero: Letters from Petrarch, trans. Morris Bishop, 292–293.
When foreign visitors appeared: Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 91.
creating a network: On Petrarch’s book-hunting zeal, see James Westfall Thompson, The Medieval Library, 524–527.
“No one can doubt”: Quoted in Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 91. See also Cambridge Modern History, vol. 1, The Renaissance, 549.
a paradox of history: L. D. Reynold and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 70–72; Cantor, Civilization of the Middle Ages,
146.
notoriously hard to penetrate: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve, 29–30.
got under way in earnest: Ibid., 23.
first modern tourist: Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 92.
“Who knows”: Letters from Petrarch, 295.
His first great find: Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 91–97.
the ecclesiastical library in that city: Letters from Petrarch, 295–296.
These gifted men: “The Speech on Behalf of Archias the Poet,” in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 158, 39.
“ambition is a universal factor”: Ibid., 35.
One phrase in Cicero’s speech: Ibid., 8. See also Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, 12–15.
tempered by his sorrow: Letters from Petrarch, 154.
had an early success: Mann, “Origins of Humanism,” in Kraye, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 9–10; Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 91. Petrarch’s manuscript of Livy’s history as edited by him is currently in the British Library.
he was in Rome: Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 113–125.
wandered amid the ruins: Letters from Petrarch, 63–66. See also Christopher Hibbert, Rome: The Biography of a City, 97–99.
so he moved: Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 125, 129–130, 144.
came up with the idea: Ibid., 160–171.
would prove even more consequential: Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, 22; Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 229–231. On the library at Verona, see Thompson, Medieval Library, 145–146.
he was shocked: Letters from Petrarch, 205–210; Cicero, “Selections from His Correspondence,” Selected Works, 58–100.
Cicero’s letters showed Petrarch: See the introduction to Letters from Petrarch, v–vi.
early expression of the individualism: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 98ff. As Burckhardt writes (319), the Italian humanists were “the advance guard of an unbridled individualism.”
“Just as the horse”: De finibus, II:13 (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 17, 127). See also Eugene F. Rice Jr. and Anthony Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460–1559, 87–89.
“O great man”: Letters from Petrarch, 153.
“on the Gospel alone”: Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 1, 2.
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