The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 5: Letters 594-854 (1517-1518) translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson. annotated by Peter G. Bietenholz (review)

248Rocky Mountain Review 77ie Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 5: Letters 594-854 (15171518 ). Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson. Annotated by Peter G. Bietenholz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. 461 p. The editorial team put together to publish the Collected Works of Erasmus has the goal of making available "an accurate, readable English text of Erasmus' principal writings." The translators and editors of Volume 5 have certainly achieved their objective, providing for scholars and the general public a text that is not only readable but extremely well annotated. Moreover, they have given us a book that is commendable for its organization, documentation, illustrations, and a short but informative preface, which among other services discusses the principal repository of the letters (The Deventer Letter-book), Erasmus' letter-writing habits, and his pre-occupation with the re-editing of his New Testament translation. Before each letter there is a brief statement which identifies the writer's objectives, the issues discussed, the person addressed, and other letters which are in some way linked to the one at hand. In these days ofgeneral economic retrenchment, we should be very grateful to the University of Toronto Press and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for refusing to stint on this admirable work. As the preface indicates, this volume of Erasmus' letters, a total of 247, is rich in important personal and historical details that add significantly to the reader's knowledge of Erasmus, his contemporances, and his ten-month residence in Louvain from July 1517 until April 1518. By reading this volume alone, one could gain a good deal ofknowledge about Erasmus' personality. Indeed the letters give us a much more vivid portrait than most of the biographies. We find ample evidence of his celebrated talent for friendship; of his generosity toward other scholars such as Melanchthon; of the tension caused by his suspicion that he was taking too much time from clerical responsibilities for the sake of scholarship; of his strong disposition against serious wrongdoing; of his willingness to endure the pain ofcriticizing a friend for the sake of truth; and of his invincible faith in the truths of the gospel he translated so lovingly. Regrettably, one finds some tendencies which are in no way admirable: contentiousness, triumphalism (747), and traces of the same anti-Semitism that at the end of the century appear in The Merchant of Venice: "My life upon it he [Pfefferkorn, a Dominican and a converted Jew] had no other motive in getting himself dipped in the font than to be able to deliver more dangerous attacks on Christianity, and by mixing with us to infect the entire folk with his Jewish poison" (694). I hasten to add that such comments are the exception and that the extreme pressures and anxieties caused by the great issues of the age compelled even the best of people to discredit themselves occasionally. Some of the letters refer to these terrible struggles tearing apart the political and social structures of Europe on the eve of the Reformation. More than once Erasmus expressed apprehensions about travel in Germany, "which with all these robberies is in a worse state than hell itself (796). He was aggrieved, as usual, by the "malevolence," "barbarism," and "frenzied clamour" of hostile theologians and politicians who used pamphlets as their weapons (716); by "monks falsely so-called and vain talkers who look askance at humane studies" (620); and by the all too obvious weaknesses of many churchmen that threatened the loyalty of the most conscientious of Christians. Book Reviews249 Erasmus had some trying personal problems to deal with as well. His friend, Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, had challenged Erasmus in print over a theological point, and Erasmus was annoyed enough to counterattack in a short work titled Apologia ad Jacobum Fabrum Stapulensem. Erasmus insisted that it was "clearly an argument and not a quarrel" (597), but he kept referring to his grievances throughout the period covered by Volume 5. He was particularly anguished that a friend had given comfort and encouragement to his enemies, "those brutes who match us one against the other with the cunning of a true tyrant, being...