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 far and wide, over the pursuit
of learning, till Adwert merited the name of an 'Academy'.

Earliest of these is John Wessel (d. 1489), and perhaps also the most
notable; certainly the others looked up to him with a veneration which
seems to transcend the natural pre-eminence of seniority.
Unfortunately the details of his life have not been fully established.
Thirty years after his death, when it was too late for him to define
his own views, the Reformers claimed him for their own; and in
consequence his body has been wrangled over with the heat which seeks