Erasmus and His Amanuenses

This Margaret Mann Phillips lecture of 2018 examines Erasmus’s relationships with his amanuenses, building on the work of Franz Bierlaire (1968) and others. It especially considers when and why members of Erasmus’s familia appeared in print in his works. Mention of servants functioned in a variety of ways to allay the author’s responsibility for features of the text that might be criticized. Manuscript evidence also shows Erasmus working with his amanuenses in the preparation of publications and indexes in particular.