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...