l record flows wide and deep that history begins to live, and
that we have a chance to view it through the eyes of the actors
instead of projecting upon it our own fancies and conceptions.

One of the features that makes the study of the Renaissance so
fascinating is that in that age the stream of personal record, which
had been driven underground, its course choked and hidden beneath the
fallen masonry of the Roman Empire, emerges again unimpeded and flows
in ever-increasing volume. For reconstruction of the past we are no
longer limited to charters and institutions, or the mighty works of
men's hands. In place of a mental output, rigidly confined within
unbending modes of thought and expression, we have a literature that
reflects the varied phases of human life, that can discard romance and
look upon the commonplace; and instead of dry and meagre chronicles,
rarely producing evidence at first hand, we have rich store of memoirs
and private letters, by means of which we can form real pictures of
individuals--approaching almost to personal acquaintance and
intimacy--and regard the same events from many points of view, to
perception of the circumstances that 'alter cases'.

The period of the Transalpine Renaissance corresponds roughly with the
life of Erasmus (1466-1536); from the days when Northern scholars
began to win fame for themselves in reborn Italy, until the width of
the humanistic outlook was narrowed and the progress of the reawakened
studies overwhelmed by the tornado of the Reformation. The aim of
these lectures is not so much to draw the outlines of the Renaissance
in the North as to present sketches of the world through which Erasmus
passed, and to view it as it appeared to him and to some of his
contemporaries, famous or obscure. And firstly of the generation that
preceded him in the wide but undefined region known then as Germany.

The Cistercian Abbey of Adwert near Groningen, under the enlightened
governance of Henry of Rees (1449-85), was a centre to which were
attracted most of the scholars whose names are famous in the history
of Northern humanism in the second half of the fifteenth century:
Wessel, Agricola, Hegius, Langen, Vrye, and others. They came on
return from visits to Italy or the universities; men of affairs after
discharge of their missions; schoolmasters to rest on their holidays;
parish priests in quest of change: all found a welcome from the
hospitable Abbot, and their talk ranged fa