Widely regarded as the greatest of Montaigne's essays, this is an empassioned defence of Sebond's 15th century treatise on natural theology. He searches for the true meaning of faith while criticising the tendency of mankind to create God in their own image.

Erasmus' revolutionary Latin and Greek New Testament of 1516 was accompanied by annotations intended to be brief but which were already challenging and often discursive. This edition gives them with all their variants. The years 1519, 1523, 1527 and 1535 saw those notes grow and grow in number, size and importance. Some treat just those vital minutiae which led Aquinas, say, into error or folly when he ignored or neglected them: others form ever-expanding essays spreading over several pages and bringing Erasmus into the centre of controversy. Here, for the first time ever, the...

Clement Marot (1496-1544), a poet of distinction, is a unique witness to the effect of the Bible on French-speaking courts. He was admired by Francis I, protected by Margaret of Navarre, and by Renee, the French Duchess of Ferrara. His translations of the psalms came to dominate Huguenot worship, inspiring many imitators, not least in English. His commitment to Lutheran theology shines through his personal poetry--once his Scriptural allusions are recognised and interpreted. Clement Marot: A Renaissance Poet Discovers the Gospel is a fundamental expansion and recasting for an...

Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it. So says Michael A. Screech in his note to readers preceding this collection of fifty-three elegant and pithy essays. As Screech reveals, the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the god of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one.
But we are fortunate in our guide: drawing on his immense knowledge of the classics and of humanists like Erasmus and Rabelaiswho used Plato and Aristotle to interpret the Gospelsand incorporating the thoughts of Aesop, Calvin, Lucian of Samosata, Luther, Socrates, and...