Acknowledgments
Versions of Chapters 2, 5, 6, and 7 were first published in Erasmus Studies. I thank Eric MacPhail, its editor, and its peer reviewers for many improvements. I am grateful to Brill for giving me an opportunity to put these pieces back on the anvil, as Erasmus would say. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 8, and 9 debut here.
Carol Ann Baxter, Eric MacPhail, Phil Regier, Rex Wallace, and peer reviewers for Brill helped remove blots, clogs, and errors from earlier drafts. The staff of the University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library assisted access to its enviable Erasmus collection, permitting me to examine books published by Erasmus in Basel, Strasbourg, and Paris. Particular thanks to Chloe Ottendorf, Ruthann Mowry, and Ana Rodriguez for their timely help at crucial junctures. For access to the 1508 Aldine edition of the Adagiorum chiliades I thank the Erasmussaal of the City of Rotterdam Library.
Four principals at Brill made this book possible. Arjan van Dijk, one of Erasmus’ best friends in the 21st century, invited the manuscript. Ivo Romein carefully shepherded it through peer review, revision, and publication, answering my questions and calming my nerves as we went along. With Erasmian willingness to take a risk, Professor Han van Ruler (Erasmus University Rotterdam) accepted Erasmus’ Miniatures for Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, a series I am grateful to join. Mia Tetangco, the production editor, gave the book every chance to mend its ways. I thank them all heartily.
There is no better home for an Erasmus book than with the publisher currently publishing new editions of the Erasmi Opera Omnia, so often cited in these pages. In his old age Erasmus dreamed of returning to Holland. This book is fortunate to be launched there.