Volume 4, Number 11 · July 1, 1965
The Great Erasmus
By Frances A. Yates
The Colloquies of Erasmus
translated by Craig R. Thompson
Chicago, 662 pp., $15.00
This book is fascinating reading now. How the Colloquies must have been devoured when first-rate journalism was a thing as yet unknown, a thing only just made possible by the then newborn art of printing. For a women's page on how to manage your husband read 'Marriage.' Or for an exposé of conditions in students hostels in Paris, read 'A Fish Diet.' Or for an up-to-date coverage of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury just before the Reformation, read 'A Pilgrimage for Religion's Sake.' What treasure of gold and silver and gems as big as eggs glitter in this dimly lighted shrine; what constant unhygienic kissing of unsavory relics; what comic patter by the guides; what sharp little vignettes—for instance, the crowd of old men from an almshouse rushing at the pilgrim on the narrow part of the road with St. Thomas's shoe to be kissed. The mystery of medieval Canterbury recedes as we make the pilgrimage with this most amusing man, who is as germ-conscious as any modern tourist in backward countries.
Review, 1972 words
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