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Erasmus' Familiar Colloquies grew from a small collection of phrases, sentences, and snatches of dialogue written in Paris about 1497 to help his private pupils improve their command of Latin. Twenty years later the material was published by Johann Froben (Basel 1518). It was an immediate success and was reprinted thirty times in the next four years. For the edition of March 1522 Erasmus began to add fully developed dialogues, and a book designed to improve boys' use of Latin (and their deportment) soon became a work of literature for adults, although it retained traces of its original purposes. The final Froben edition (March, 1533) had about sixty parts, most of them dialogues. It was in the last form that the Colloquies were read and enjoyed for four centuries. For modern readers it is one of the best introductions to European society of the Renaissance and Reformation periods, with lively descriptions of daily life and provocative discussions of political, religious, social, and literary topics, presented with Erasmus's characteristic wit and verve. Each colloquy has its own introduction and full explanatory, historical, and biographical notes. Volumes 39 and 40 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series - Two-volume set.

Erasmus was a sixteenth century educator, theologian, satirist, and scholar and there have been a number of attempts to describe his intellectual development and to measure his greatness. However, Rabil believes that most interpretations of Erasmus and his work fail in analyzing Erasmus in a way consistent with all the source material on which such an interpretation must be based. The author argues that religion and humanism are the proper poles in relation to which Erasmus' intellectual development must be understood. In Rabil's own interpretation of Erasmus, he covers Erasmus' intellectual development as it relates to his editing of the New Testament in Greek, his translation of it into Latin, a look at the methodology in Erasmus' annotations and paraphrase of Romans, and a comparison of Erasmus and Luther on Romans. Rabil demonstrates that Erasmus' intellectual development occurred at every turning point, from his first poem in 1483 until he achieved a maturity of outlook in his edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516. Originally published in 1972 by Trinity University Press.