Arjo Vanderjagt's versatility and breadth of interests, his generosity to other scholars both as a teacher at the University of Groningen and as the founding editor of one of Brill's most successful series, are designed to make the choice of the contributors and the subject for a Festschrift a difficult task. The editors of Christian humanism have acquitted themselves admirably. The main theme, described as ‘frictions between Christian and pagan learning’, allows enough latitude for the twenty-eight papers, by scholars of distinction, to cover a vast range while remaining within the established boundaries. Even if, as Willemien Otten argues, secular humanism was hardly a threat to Christian theology, the reception of classical philosophical notions was almost inevitably affected by various filters. John of Wales, studied by Albrecht Diem, may have been exceptional in his intensive use of Valerius Maximus, but Jan Papy points out that Justus Lipsius' reception of Stoicism was strongly marked by his reading of Clement of Alexandria. The Stoicism of Volusenus was, as Alasdair MacDonald puts it, ‘manifestly indebted to Budaeus’, and that of Coornhert, discussed by Hans and Simone Mooij-Valk, was heavily modified by the ideas of Aristotle and Boethius. The revival of antiquity was frequently surprising. Volker Honemann demonstrates this in his study of the liturgical interests of the German humanists, and Coluccio Salutati's somewhat unexpected condemnation of the Stoic idea of virtue is stressed by István Bejczy. One of the most interesting pieces in this collection is Marcia Colish's study of a little known work by Juan Luis Vives, the De veritate fidei christianae in which Vives, normally associated with hatred of Islam, argues eloquently for the full Christianisation (and consequently for the assimilation into Spanish society) not only of the converted Jews but also of the converted Muslims. Certainly, Vives was inconsistent and self-contradictory in his attitude to Islam, but it is these contradictions that make his posthumous treatise so fascinating. Inconsistency, too, John North shows, is a characteristic of the astrological writings of Marsilio Ficino, incapable of deciding once and for all what to condemn or what to accept. From the section on science, which includes a fine article by Stephen Gersh, ‘The metaphysical unity of music, motion, and time in Augustine's De musica’, a paper on Nicholas of Cusa by Matthieu van der Meer, and a study of Copernicus' Praefatio in libros revolutionum by Marc van der Poel, Christian humanism passes to the theme of education. Rudolf Suntrup reconstructs the history of the Jesuit university in Osnabrück and Zweder von Martels examines the Eternal Edict of the founder of the academy of Groningen, Ubbo Emmius. Peter Raedts carries the theme to a more recent date in his discussion of the Middle Ages in Dutch meditations on their past, from Gerardt Brandt in the seventeenth century to the anachronistic figure of Willem Bilderdijk, who died in 1831. The consistently high quality of these elegant papers does credit to both the editors and the recipient of the collection.