Erasmus' revolutionary Latin and Greek New Testament of 1516 was accompanied by annotations intended to be brief but which were already challenging and often discursive. This edition gives them with all their variants. The years 1519, 1523, 1527 and 1535 saw those notes grow and grow in number, size and importance. Some treat just those vital minutiae which led Aquinas, say, into error or folly when he ignored or neglected them: others form ever-expanding essays spreading over several pages and bringing Erasmus into the centre of controversy.
Here, for the first time ever, the annotations are edited and dated. They now form an indispensable companion to Erasmus' letters as a major source of our knowledge of the nuances and development of his thought and scholarship.