Several reasons for the recent increase of interest suggest themselves. Erasmus, for all his tortuous subtlety and waspish irony, produced an extremely intelligent and articulate response to what was perhaps the fundamental value-shift in modern European history. In a world suddenly bereft of its medieval moorings, a new and intoxicating vision of man's potentialities had opened up. Predictably, the results ranged from a theological backlash of unprecedented severity to the wild milleniarist expectations of such figures as Charles de Bouelles and Guillaume Postel. They included the reformation and the rise of national consciousness in northern Europe, and were not diminished either by the exploitation of the newly discovered printing press or the wave of economic prosperity and inflation which spread eastwards from Spain as western European economies reacted to the influx of precious metals from the new world.