In this special event - both an Erasmus Seminar and a Faculty Colloquium - Professor Amy Burnett from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln will discuss the role of the Alsatian humanist circle in advancing Erasmus’s reputation in Germany.
Abstract
Erasmus and the Alsatian Humanists
Erasmus’ journey up the Rhine to Basel in the summer of 1514 is often described as a “triumphal progress,” illustrating his international reputation. This characterization is based largely on Erasmus’s letter to Jakob Wimpfeling, written a month after his arrival in Basel and printed in the edition of De duplici copia published in Strasbourg in December 1514. Lisa Jardine has argued that this letter was part of Erasmus’s deliberate strategy to associate himself with the Strasbourg humanist sodality and so cannot be taken at face value. By describing the printing of Erasmus’s early works, this talk will reveal the importance of Wimpfeling’s circle for promoting Erasmus’s reputation in Germany in the years before 1514. These Alsatian humanists served as key mediators between Erasmus’s existing network in northwestern Europe and the broader network of humanists in Germany.
Bio
Amy Nelson Burnett is Paula and D.B. Varner University Professor Emerita of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on the dissemination of the Reformation in South Germany and Switzerland through print, preaching, and educational reform. She is the author of Debating the Sacraments: Print and Authority in the Early Reformation (2019) and co-editor, with Emidio Campi, of A Companion to the Swiss Reformation (2016). She is currently working on a study of the correspondence network that linked German humanists and reformers in the early sixteenth century, with Erasmus as its center.
Drinks afterwards.
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The Faculty Colloquia aim to cover the broad scope of Erasmus School of Philosophy (ESPhil), in analytic and continental philosophy as well as the history of philosophy. Speakers are free in their choice of the subject-matter of their talks, but they are requested to present a talk accessible to all philosophers, students notably included.
The Erasmus of Rotterdam Research Centre (ERRC) regularly organizes the so-called Erasmus Seminars, where we bring together academics who have an interest in Erasmus from their research. The content of the seminars is diverse, from discussions on recent publications to extensive lectures.
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