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Updated: June 23, 2025
This third age in the history of the Renaissance scholarship may be said to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed on the torch of learning to the northern nations. The publication of his Adagia in 1500 marks the advent of a more critical and selective spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining strength in the modern mind.
Was there, then, any objection to his works: the Enchiridion, the Adagia? The fact that, since his stay in Italy, he had laid aside the habit of his order and wore a common clerical dress, he could excuse on a number of grounds. The conclusion was: I shall not return to Holland. 'I know that I shall not be able to stand the air and the food there; all eyes will be directed to me.
It was a partial realization of what he had conceived to supplement the Adagia metaphors, saws, allusions, poetical and scriptural allegories, all to be dealt with in a similar way. Towards the end of his life he published a similar thesaurus of the witty anecdotes and the striking words or deeds of wisdom of antiquity, the Apophthegmata.
He had a sufficient number now, and the printers were eager enough about them, though the profit which the author made by them was not large. At the time when Erasmus took the Moria to Gourmont, at Paris, he had charged Badius with a new edition, still to be revised, of the Adagia. Why the Moria was published by another, we cannot tell; perhaps Badius did not like it at first.
He was in a fever of hurried work, about which he would often sigh, but which, after all, was congenial to him. The augmented collection of the Adagia had not yet been made ready for the press at Bologna.
The Enchiridion, collected with some other pieces into a volume of Lucubrationes, did not meet with such a great and speedy success as had been bestowed upon the Adagia. That Erasmus's speculations on true piety were considered too bold was certainly not the cause.
Significance of the Adagia and similar works of later years Erasmus as a divulger of classical culture Latin Estrangement from Holland Erasmus as a Netherlander Meanwhile renown came to Erasmus as the fruit of those literary studies which, as he said, had ceased to be dear to him.
First stay in England: 1499-1500 Oxford: John Colet Erasmus's aspirations directed towards divinity He is as yet mainly a literate Fisher and More Mishap at Dover when leaving England: 1500 Back in France he composes the Adagia Years of trouble and penury
All the particulars of classic reading which the year before he worked up in the new edition of the Adagia were still at his immediate disposal in that retentive and capacious memory. Reflecting at his ease on all that wisdom of the ancients, he secreted the juices required for his expostulation.
From the Adagia he promised himself the more profit, but that was a long work, the alterations and preface of which he was still waiting for Erasmus to send. He felt very sure of his ground, for everyone knew that he, Badius, was preparing the new edition. Yet a rumour reached him that in Germany the Aldine edition was being reprinted.
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