Charles Trinkaus can be counted among the eminent intellectual and cultural historians of the Renaissance. This new collection of his articles brings together pieces published since 1982. The studies are concerned with Italian Renaissance humanists and philosophers who tended to affirm human capacities to shape earthly existence, despite the traditional limitations proposed by some scholastics and astrologers. Professor Trinkaus holds that, without abandoning their Christian faith, or their acceptance of physical influences from the cosmos, these writers, in their stress on human capacities, were responding to the vigorous activism of their contemporaries in all aspects of their existence. The final four papers also provide a series of reflections on the modern historiography of the Renaissance.

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." -Library Journal

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." -Library Journal

Erasmus' controversies with French, Italian, Spanish, and German critics on theological, social, philological, educational, and other matters are contained in volumes 71-84 of the Collected Works. CWE 76 includes two of his most important disputes with Luther, A Discussion of Free Will and the first part of the Hyperaspistes (usually translated as 'protector' or 'shield-bearer'). Erasmus writes in response to Luther's The Enslaved Will and rebukes Luther for what he considers his high-handed arrogance and his insulting charge that Erasmus is an atheist. In CWE 76, Hyperaspistes 1 deals with a number of general considerations in approaching the question of free will. In CWE 77, Hyperaspistes 2 examines in detail the biblical passages put forth in defence of free will in A Discussion of Free Will and Luther's refutation of that defence in The Enslaved Will. In these two volumes of bitter dispute with Luther, Erasmus shows once again that he is a humanist in his theology and a theologian in this humanism. Volume 77 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.