Abstract Erasmus praised contemporaries in books, letters, prefaces, and adagia. His public career was launched with an ostentatious work of praise, the Panegyricus ad Philippum Austriae (1504), in which he satisfied court expectations and literary tradition. He titled five works Encomium; one of them—the Moriae Encomium (Praise of Folly)—is by far his most popular book. This article examines his encomia and his interest in writing them. It identifies the models and conventions Erasmus inherited and recounts the trouble he took to make his encomia unique.

Abstract Many people in the Netherlands are familiar with the image of Erasmus, who has become a symbol of wisdom and independence of spirit in this country. Yet it is difficult to truly understand this thinker, in part because he constantly played with language and perspectives and enjoyed wrong-footing readers. At the same time, this playfulness in Erasmus is exactly what makes him so interesting, especially to today’s readers. The philosopher developed a way of thinking that appeals to modern-day people, who value their own individuality but also need shared values: the question of what binds us. This essay is an attempt to unravel Erasmus’ challenging thinking and his philosophical principles, in the expectation that his method of thinking could be helpful in the current discussion about the need for shared values.

Abstract Despite the clear attestation of Erasmus’ three-year period in Cambridge from 1511 to 1514, the reason for and nature of his stay—including whether he was also the official incumbent of the Lady Margaret’s professorship, created in 1502 as the first established chair at the university—are still contested. This paper argues that three issues have not been (sufficiently) taken on board in these discussions: namely, the statutes for the ‘lecture of sacred Theology founded by Margaret, Countess of Richmond’; the fact that in December 1512, Erasmus was paid to compose the epitaph for Lady Margaret’s tomb in Westminster Abbey; and the nature of Erasmus’ work whilst he was at Cambridge, which he describes in a letter as teaching ‘Greek and sacred literature’ (Ep. 296). Our new proposal is that Erasmus’ three-year stay in Cambridge began with an initial year in which he taught Greek, explored his opportunities, and prepared himself for the competition surrounding the election for the Lady Margaret’s professorship. Yet the Cambridge theologians did not support him in the election, and he ultimately lost to a competitor. Erasmus’ failure to secure the Lady Margaret’s professorship is closely related to his understanding of theology as ‘sacred literature’, which allows it to be compared to ‘the (good) literature’ and philosophy of Greek and Roman authors. His defeat constitutes its own episode in the series of tensions between Christian biblical humanism and what Erasmus saw as modernist scholastic theology.

Abstract Erasmus’ sceptical attitude towards the discipline of dialectic in his early writings is well known. In this article, I revisit Erasmus’ relationship with the arts of reasoning, tracing a trajectory from The Praise of Folly and De Copia to his final work, Ecclesiastes. Erasmus’ treatise on preaching, I suggest, develops a new approach to copious speech and writing by combining the resources of rhetoric and dialectic, in dialogue with the textbooks on the arts of discourse that had appeared in the 25 years since the composition of The Praise of Folly.

Abstract The article is a short introduction to the life-long gift-practice of Erasmus—the gifts he received, the gifts he gave, and the symbolic and moral meaning of the gift cycle of reception, gratitude, and reciprocation that pertained to a wide range of exchanges—from small objects to casks of wine to large gifts of money. His book dedications also belonged to that same gift cycle. His management of gifts was driven in part by necessity, as he needed funds and sometimes protection in order to pursue his studies and writing outside the normal framework of institutional structures. Gifts were a sign of his capacity to flourish within the community of friends (and donors) that he was able to draw around himself.