The Rotterdam City Library contains the world's largest collection of works by and about Desiderius Erasmus (1469?-1536), perhaps Rotterdam's most famous son. The origin of this unique collection dates back to the seventeenth century when the city fathers established a library in the Great or St. Laurence Church. This bibliography of the Erasmus collection lists, for the first time, all of the Rotterdam scholar's works and most of the studies written about him from his time to the present day. The collection is of vital importance to Erasmus studies and has, in many cases, provided the basic material for editions of Erasmus's complete works. In addition to the unique sixteenth-century printings listed in this book, the collection includes many translations into Estonian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Hebrew, and other languages. The Rotterdam Library has acquired publications about Erasmus that cover such topics as his life, work and times; his contemporaries; his humanism, pedagogy, pacifism, and theology; his relationship to Luther and the Reformation; and his influence on later periods. The collection numbers (as of 1989) roughly 5,000 works divided as follows: 2,500 works by Erasmus himself, 500 works edited by him, and 2,000 books and articles about him. This bibliographic resource will be of great value to Erasmus scholars, philosophy researchers, and historians studying the path of philosophical and religious thought.

Johan Huizinga had a special sympathy for the complex, withdrawn personality of Erasmus and for his advocacy of intellectual and spiritual balance in a quarrelsome age. This biography is a classic work on the sixteenth-century scholar/humanist. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

In Publishing for the Popes, Paolo Sachet provides a detailed account of the attempts made by the Roman Curia to exploit printing in the mid-sixteenth century, after the Reformation but before the implementation of the ecclesiastical censorship.

This volume, edited by Natasha Constantinidou and Han Lamers, investigates modes of receiving and responding to Greeks, Greece, and Greek in early modern Europe (15th-17th centuries). The book's 17 detailed studies illuminate the reception of Greek culture (the classical, Byzantine, and even post-Byzantine traditions), the Greek language (ancient, vernacular, and 'humanist'), as well as the people claiming, or being assigned, Greek identities during this period in different geographical and cultural contexts. 0Discussing subjects as diverse as, for example, Greek studies and the Reformation, artistic interchange between Greek East and Latin West, networks of communication in the Greek diaspora, and the ramifications of Greek antiquarianism, the book aims at encouraging a more concerted debate about the role of Hellenism in early modern Europe that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries, and opening ways towards a more over-arching understanding of this multifaceted cultural phenomenon. 0.