In an era such as our own, which may be thought to be in the grip of a value-shift no less bewildering and of changes in systems of transport and communication no less disturbing, the northern European renaissance must necessarily represent a historical paradigm of interest and importance. The attitudes of Erasmus, in constant and ironic pursuit of peace, stability, sanity and social advance, represent a serious and perhaps increasingly attractive choice from among the values and programmes with which we are confronted. Looking back over the course of renaissance history, we may feel that Europe had to pay dearly for the failure of its spiritual and temporal leaders to heed Erasmus's advice. If, instead of returning to England to write the "Praise of Folly," Erasmus had stayed in Rome where Leo X was shortly to be elected to the papal throne, it is difficult to suppose that Rome's reaction to Luther would not have been different.