The Age of Erasmus Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London

In these lectures the speaker argues that history comes alive when we listen to the individuals who lived it, rather than merely to grand forces. By treating biography as a window onto an era, the talks reveal how personal letters, memoirs, and everyday records of the Renaissance give us a richer, more intimate understanding of the past. The focus is on the flourishing of learning in the centuries surrounding Erasmus, when the flood of private documents began to flow again after centuries of silence.

The narrative centers on the vibrant community that gathered at the Cistercian Abbey of Adwert near Groningen, which functioned as an informal academy for scholars returning from Italy. Figures such as John Wessel, Agricola, and others are presented not as distant icons but as students, teachers, and travelers whose ambitions and conversations shaped Northern humanism. Their stories illustrate how a modest monastery became a crucible for ideas that would later echo across Europe, setting the stage for the intellectual storm of the Reformation.