Colloquiorum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Familiarum Opus Aureum

1740

Shoults Eb 1740 E

[London: Bonwicke, Ware, Ward, et al.]

Throughout his life Erasmus was loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. He did want change but not in the radical ways promoted by Luther. Often called the ‘Prince of Humanists’, Erasmus was keen ‘to effect a transformation of the spirit through language’ (Carrington, 2002). In contrast to Luther’s ‘violent invective’, Erasmus tried to hold the via media, the middle road; he was a moderate and was ‘filled with alarm’ (Pettegree, 2015) by some of Luther’s reformation philosophies. Despite the fact that Luther personally abused Erasmus in his de Servo Arbitrio, and thought it a work by a ‘lazy amateur’, he still made use of Erasmus’s revised translations of the New Testament. Some of Erasmus’ works were banned by Pope Paul IV (1555-59), but he continued to be published into the future as this 1740 edition of his Colloquies or Conversations attests.