Erasmus yearned to popularize the New Testament, to make the Bible and the understanding of Scripture available to everyone - to 'the farmer, the tailor, the mason, prostitutes, pimps, and Turks, ' in his words. He therefore composed paraphrases in order to simplify and explain Scripture. The Paraphrases were successful beyond his expectations and were quickly translated into French, German, English and other languages.

In them the words of the Apostle Paul provide the core of a text which is expanded to clarify Paul's argument, revealing its assumptions, suggesting its...

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...

The tranquil world reflected in Erasmus' early letters from Louvain gradually disintegrated in the years covered by Volume 7. In the letters of Volume 8, which spans the period of Erasmus' last fifteen months in the Netherlands and his move to Basel during 1520 and 1521, his situation worsens.

On the political front, the golden age of peace for which he had hoped is further destroyed by the war-mongering of Francis I, Henry VIII, Leo X and Charles V. In spiritual matters, Erasmus continues to be pressed harder to take a firm position for or against Luther. He persists in his earlier...

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.

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...

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 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...

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...

Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument of reform in society, church, and everyday life, and to this end he composed the Paraphrases, in which the words of Holy Scripture provide 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. Paraphrase on Luke is the second of two Luke volumes (Volume 47 forthcoming) and the sixth to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the Collected Works of...

The five pieces in this volume are among the twenty selected for inclusion in volumes 66-70 of the Collected Works of Erasmus, the series of spiritualia and pastoralia. Like many of the other works in this series, they represent an Erasmus that, despite the recent growth of interest in him, has remained largely unfamiliar - the Erasmus of the works 'pertaining to pietas.'

As Professor O'Malley's introduction makes clear, Erasmian pietas assumes an intrinsic relationship among spirituality, theology, and ministry, and the five works in volume 70 characteristically develop the...