1.
The reference to St. Paul in this paragraph alludes to 1 Corinthians xiii, 4-8 but is inexact.
   On Martin Dorp and the circumstances of Erasmus's letter, see the third section of the introduction, p.49. Erasmus, having just returned from England, was on his way to Strasbourg and Basle. This letter was first printed by Froben at Basle in August 1515 with three other important letters. All four were considerably expanded versions of what had actually been sent. However, even if we do not know the length of the original letter, Erasmus's references to sickness and fatigue have a touch of the conventional disclaimer about them.
  The letter to Dorp has regularly been printed as an appendix to the Folly from 1516. Like the Folly, it underwent a series of additions and corrections during Erasmus's lifetime.

2.
Thraso is the boasting soldier of Terence's Eunuch who hopes to attract his girl by vaunting his prowess. Pyrgopohynices was the name of Plautus's boastful soldier. Homer's attack on Thersites is in the Iliad (2, 215 ff.). Aristotle's disrespect for Plato and Socrates rests only on calumny and conjecture. Aeschines was an orator of the fourth century B.C. accused by Demosthenes of accepting bribes. Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul and governor of Macedonia, was accused by Cicero of peculation and maladministration in 55 B.C. The other victims of Cicero mentioned are Vatinius, with whom Cicero was reconciled after a political dispute, Sallust, who opposed him at Milo's trial for murder in 52 B.C. and Antony, against whom Cicero wrote the Philippics in 44 B.C. Petrarch wrote his invective Against a Doctor to defend himself against attack. Lorenzo Valla carried on a sustained battle with his fellow-humanist Poggio in the fifteenth century. Politian's dispute on Latin usage with the Florentine Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala took place in the late fifteenth century.
  Vigilantius' late fourth-century attack on the cult of martyrs' relics and miracles is today known only through Jerome's attacks on him. St. Jerome also attacked Jovinian for denying the value of celibacy and Rufinus for defending Origen after Jerome had come to regard him as heretical.
  In this letter, now signed with his own name, Erasmus preserves echoes of Folly's voice. The abjuration of the pursuit of fame as pagan and the denunciation of Christians who confuse immortality with posthumous reputation and a taste for the arts suggest that Erasmus, while no doubt sincere, is concerned that the image he is projecting should in some degree accord with the paradoxes of the final pages of the satire. Deprecatory remarks about his education and talent fit into the same mould. But the burden of his apologia is clear: he uses his learning in the interests of good, and he does not attack individuals by name, as Dorp had attacked him. Julius II is not named in the Folly, as Erasmus' calls it. The list of classical and modern precedents for personal attacks fills a prefatory function here analagous to the list of mock encomia in the letter- preface to More.

3.
On the Enchiridion and The Education of the Prince, see the Introduction (pp. 37-8) and note 115, p. 175. The reference Plato and drinking-matches alludes to the Symposium. The line from Horace is quoted from the Satires (I, I,24-5) and the reference to Lucretius alludes to the de rerum natura, I, 935 ff.
  Erasmus's defence of his Folly contains some special pleading. He is trying to win Dorp's support in the controversy which the publication of the Greek New Testament is bound to raise. In claiming that he is reasonable and sweet-tempered, that he has been misjudged and that the Folly does not go beyond the Enchiridion, Erasmus is admitting to less than the whole truth. In quoting Plato, Horace and Lucretius, he is protecting himself behind a little Folly-like banter.
  Dorp's letter explained Augustine's advice (in the de doctrina christiana) to have recourse to the Greek sources by the absence at that date of any officially received Latin text of scripture. Since Augustine's day the Greek text, too, had probably become corrupt. Dorp was worried about what Erasmus's Greek text, with its revelations of the Vulgate's inadequacies, would do to the authority of scripture and, by later calling Augustine a 'dialectician', he showed that he wished to use his authority in an anti-humanist sense.
  Erasmus, however, knew that Augustine also taught in the de doctrina christiana both the necessity of consulting Hebrew and Greek texts and the necessity of grammatical correction. He therefore here unnecessarily mentions the de doctrina christiana, as if announcing his intention of making Dorp's weapon boomerang on him. In his reply, Dorp juggles with quotations to try to turn Jerome's authority against Erasmus.
  The idea that truth requires to be wrapped in fable if it is to be understood by the simple is neoplatonist. It is exploited later in the century by Dorat and Ronsard.

4.
On the mixture of truth and falsehood in Erasmus's account of the circumstances of the Folly's composition, see the Introduction (pp. 48-9). Erasmus always attributed his trouble with kidney stone to the wine he had had to drink while staying at Venice with Aldus in 1507-8. The Areopagites were members of the Areopagus, the Athenian political council which was also a bench of judges, later proverbial for its severity. Atella was the town from which the improvised, masked and often licentious 'Atellan' farces took their name. The reference to Plato alludes to the beginning of the Phaedrus.

5.
Folly deals with national characteristics in chapter 43. On the mud of Camarina, See note 100, P.153.

6.
The quotation about wounding the delicate ear with sharp-edged truth comes from Persius (Satires, I, 107). 'Hierapicra' is a wonder-working but bitter drug. The reference to St. Paul alludes to 2 Timothy iv, 2. The anecdote concerning Pyrrhus is narrated by Plutarch in his Life of Pyrrhus. Cicero discusses humour towards the end of the second book of the de Oratore and Quintilian in the Institutio oratoria (6, 3). Julius Caesar's willingness to forgive is remarked on by Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars.

7.
The description of Vespasian's face derives from Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars. Davos is the slave of Horace who told him during the Saturnalia what he felt to be the truth about him (Satires, 2,7)

8.
Julia Eustochium took a vow of virginity at the age of eighteen in A.D. 383, the date of St. Jerome's treatise for her. She later directed a convent at Bethlehem. Apelles was the celebrated Greek painter mentioned by Folly (ch. 45, p.136). Nepotian was a young officer of the imperial guard who became a monk. Jerome wrote to him in 394 at his request and, on his early death of fever, he wrote a consolatory letter to his uncle. Rusticus was a monk who corresponded with Jerome from Gaul.
  Erasmus is quite aware that Folly included among her followers more than that proportion of theologians corresponding to the proportion of criminals in the human race and more than 'several' kings. He now justifies himself by arguing that the higher the rank, the fewer to be found to fill it worthily, so ironically twisting the theologians' tails again.
  He now goes on tellingly to name the people who have not taken offence. In his letters of the winter 1517-18, when he can add Leo X to the list, he will make more of this argument. For William, Lord Mountjoy, see the Introduction (p. 35). The Archibishop of Canterbury was Erasmus's patron, William Warham.

9.
Alexander of Villedieu's thirteenth-century grammar or Doctrinale in rhymed hexameters was a much-used medieval textbook printed a hundred times before 1500. At the end of his treatise on education de pueris ... instituendis (1529), Erasmus is not far from paying it a compliment, perhaps because he must have known it at Deventer. The Catholicon of the thirteenth-century Dominican John Balbi of Genoa was a Biblical encyclopaedia printed as early as 1460 and called Summa grammaticalis valde notabilis, quae Catholicon nominatur. The Mammetrectus was a glossary on the Bible, the lives of the saints and other devotional writings. compiled by one Marchesinus of Reggio of very uncertain date. It was printed in 1470.

10.
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (I380-I459), whose invective Lorenzo Valla Erasmus has already referred to (see note 2 p.214), spent his life as a layman in the service of the Roman curia and unearthed unknown manuscripts of many important ancient authors. He was devoted to classical studies but, like many of the humanists, also wrote works of history. His collection of largely indecent satirical material known as the Facetiae and aimed particularly at monks and priests was widely translated by 1500.
  Giovanni Pontano (I429-1503) was the Latinist president of the academy which later bore his name. His voluminous writings included a series of lively Lucianic dialogues. Dorp's reply to Erasmus particularly objected to his invocation of Poggio and Pontano models.
  Erasmus goes on to allude to Juvenal's well-known obscenities, to the anti-Christian passages of Tacitus (Annales, 15, 44) and Suetonius (Life of Nero), to Pliny's materialism and to Lucian's flippant treatment of religious beliefs.
  The absurd title of 'Magister Noster' refers to the end of chapter 52 of Folly. The first of Ulrich von Hutten's Letters of Obscure Men(1515) makes considerable play of it.

11.
There is no mention of three theologians in Dorp's letter. P.S. Allen conjectures that the single adversary referred to may be John Briard, who was a leader of conservative theological opinion at Louvain but who approved the Novum Instrumentum on its publication. Erasmus was on cordial terms with him except for a short period early in 1519.

12.
Running through Erasmus's letter is the assumption, which he elsewhere makes explicit, that the contentiousness of the scholastics is connected with the barbarity of their Latin and their Aristotelian logic. What Erasmus earlier described as the 'rebirth' of liberal studies (or perhaps 'good learning': the Latin phrase bonae Iitterae which occurs frequently in the letter has no exact modern equivalent) was felt by him not only to open the way back to a more spiritual Christianity based on the values of the scriptures and the early Fathers, but also of itself to promote with elegance of style humanity of behaviour.
  This view of the moral benefits to be derived from the cultivation of bonae litterae, quite apart from the examples and values contained in classical literature, was widely shared by Erasmus's humanist contemporaries. Some of them, like Budé, who regarded humanitas as a quality of behaviour rather than a type of erudition, based their view on a passage of Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, 13, 17) which identifies humanitas with both the Greek educational ideal and learning and instruction in the liberal arts (artes liberales). The rebirth of bonae litterae which, at its narrowest, means classical studies, was felt by the humanists to be an event of immense cultural significance, a view to which our own use of the term 'renaissance' to describe Erasmus's period partly subscribes.

13.
The reference to Quintilian alludes to the fifth hook of the Institutio oratona. The phrase 'offensive to pious ears' was a quasi-official if relatively mild formula of ecclesiastical disapprobation (see note 106, p.162).

14.
The question of whether or not there were 'passions' in Christ is an ancient one. It was acute during the Christological disputes of the fifth century. In 1499 Erasmus had firmly maintained against Colet that Christ in his human nature was subject to fear. The prophet is Isaiah (lxiv, 6).

15.
Erasmus (see note 69, p. 120) is careful here to use the term furor for the sort of madness described by Plato which is ecstatic in that it takes people out of themselves. In Ficino's largely Plotinian commentary on Plato's Symposium, there is a four-fold divine furor which sets the soul on its quest for progressive reunification as it moves through the four degrees of creation towards the vision of God. The poetic (and musical) furor is the gift of the Muses, the religious furor of Dionysus, the prophetic furor of Apollo and the erotic furor of Venus. This theory, which was well known in the renaissance, gives Erasmus an impeccable precedent for accepting the morally elevating properties of some sorts of folly, even before he goes on to argue from the authority of St. Paul.

16.
The reference to St. Thomas may be to the Commentary on Matthew (xvii, 5). The prayer in which Erasmus refers to Christ in the terms mentioned is the Precatio ad Virginis Filium Jesum, certainly before 1499. Saint Jerome refers to Christ as a Samaritan in the homilies on Luke (xxxiv) and Paul says of Christ that he was made sin in 2 Corinthians v, 21. At Galatians iii, 13 the Vulgate has maledictum while Erasmus prefers exsecratio.

17.
David's sin with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, is recounted in 2 Samuel xi. Adagiorum Chiliades was the title given to the book of adages from the Aldine edition of 1508 to the Froben edition of 1523. Before 1508 the work was called Adagiorum Collectanea and from 1526 Adagiorum Opus. The 1536 edition reverts Chiliades. On the Silenus figure, see note 8, p.67 and note 50, p.103.

18.
Simonides of Ceos was a lyric and elegiac poet of the sixth century B.C. and Erasmus is referring to a passage about him in Plutarch. The Thessalians of northern Greece were considered dull-witted by their political and military rivals in the south. Cyprian and Lactantius were both orthodox early Christian apologists.

19.
'Smelling of heresy' (haeresim sapiens) is another technical formula of ecclesiastical condemnation.

20.
On the mud of Camarina, see note 100, p.153.
  This whole passage is noteworthy for several reasons. Erasmus willingly admits the inconsistency of his satire. He quite sincerely states his continuing belief in the primacy of piety over learning and faith over knowledge, but by 1515 he no longer feels the need to explore the possibility that these views invalidate his learned and humanistic theological work. He is much more confident and sure of touch. And he here reverses the letter's earlier disclaimers to accept the role of a senior scholar old enough to be Dorp's father. Dorp was exactly thirty and Erasmus not yet fifty.

21.
The 'first' Scotus was John Scotus Eriugena, the ninth-century neoplatonist philosopher with monist tendencies. Briton was a learned thirteenth-century Dominican theologian. Erasmus recounts his meeting with the Franciscan at greater length in his notes on Jerome.

22.
Origen is known to have taken up very late the study of Hebrew to help his study of scripture. On the significance of Erasmus's use of Augustine as an authority, see note 3, p.217. The Catalogue of Jerome was the treatise On Famous Men.
  Erasmus had earlier referred to the decrees of the 'Pontifical Senate' in a letter to Christopher Fisher of 1505. It is a Constitution of Clement V after the Council of Vienne (1311-12) ordaining the appointment of two teachers in each of the three languages Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaean in each of the four universities Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca. Greek was presumably omitted because the Constitution was aimed at promoting the conversion of the infidels, a category which did not include the schismatic Greeks.

23.
The first three heads of the dispute between Latins and Greeks listed by Erasmus involve complex issues. The fifth century had seen bitter disputes about the correct usages of the terms 'nature' and 'hypostasis' (which Latin theology came to translate as 'person') when applied to Christ and the Trinity. The Council of Chalcedon made it necessary after 451 to speak of one nature and three persons in God, but one person and two natures in Christ. Unhappily, the meaning of both terms was still shifting at the time of the definition and there are examples of orthodox thought expressed subsequendy in heterodox terminology and heterodox thought expressed in orthodox terminology.
  The Latins argued on the second point the procession of the Holy Spirit from Father and Son (adding the word Filioque to the Creed), which the Greeks rejected. It is a mark of Latin theology to reject the term 'generation' applied to the Holy Spirit and to insist on 'procession'. On the third point, the Latins attached much less importance than the Greeks to the function in the rite of consecration of the invocation to the Holy Spirit or 'epiclesis'. For centuries indeed the Roman rite contained no explicit epiclesis.

24.
On Jacques Lefèvre d'Éaples and Lorenzo Valla, see the Introduction (pp. 45, 36). Until shortly after the date of this letter, Erasmus's relations with Lefèvre were cordial, though scarcely intmate. There was however a dispute after the publication of the Novum Instrumentum and, when once Luther had been condemned, the group of reformers in the diocese of Meaux, led by Lefèvre as vicar general in spiritualibus to the bishop Guillaume Briçonnet,was never to trust Erasmus.

25.
On Erasmus and Leo X, see the Introduction (pp. 46-7).

26.
Jean Desmarais was rector of Louvain and had taught Gerard Lijster. who dedicated to him the commentary on Folly. Nevius was the principal of the Collège du Lis at Louvain and Nicholas of Beveren (also Nicholas of Burgundy) was the illegitimate son of Anthony of Burgundy (1421-1504) and a member of the powerful Veere family which had sporadically provided Erasmus with patrons. The abbot Menard of Egmond, praised by Cornelius Gerard for his antiquarian interests, had provided Dorp with a benefice. Erasmus mentions him warmly in 1516 when dedicating a minor work to one of his relations.