The thirteen essays (not counting the introduction) that constitute this volume address themes vital for the study of Erasmus and of the intellectual history of the Renaissance. They will initiate recruits into these fields of scholarship, while experts will benefit from the less commonly known data and interpretations. Scholars will immediately recognise the editor as an expert in the field of the contest between humanism and scholasticism in the sixteenth century but will likely miss a contribution from Erika Rummel apart from the introduction, all the while admiring her commitment to promoting the scholarship of others. The principle of organisation is geographical. We encounter humanists and their scholastic adversaries in Spain, Paris, Leuven and Italy.

Two essays at the beginning of the volume stand alone. John Monfasani's essay on ‘Criticism of biblical humanists in quattrocento Italy’ is not subsumed in the book's final section, ‘Critics of biblical humanism in sixteenth-century Italy’ obviously because it examines the fifteenth century, a period during which humanists, such as Lorenzo Valla and Giannozzo Manetti, laid ‘the groundwork’ for the ‘transformation’ of biblical studies in the sixteenth century (p. 37). Curiously, despite the title, Monfasani does not address the theme of the critique of biblical humanism, scholastic or otherwise, and thus his essay, although it provides readers with a solid survey of humanist biblical study, does not fit perfectly within the purview of the volume. The same can be said of the second unclassified essay, Daniel Ménager's survey of Erasmus' place within the controversy surrounding the German Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin. Neither general readers nor specialists in Erasmus or exegetical studies will glean much profit from this, the weakest contribution to the volume. The essay assumes that readers know what is meant by the Reuchlin affair and does not make any substantive connections between the controversy and biblical humanism. Similarly, Charles Fantazzi's analysis of the context and text of In pseudodialecticos (1520), Juan Luis Vives's ‘sally against the logicians of Paris’ (p. 93), tells us nothing of ‘The reaction against biblical humanism in Spain’, the rubric under which it appears, nor of humanist biblical research in general.

The other two essays on the Spanish situation are more successful. Erasmus scholars will be familiar with the data from Alejandro Coroleu's report on ‘Anti-Erasmianism in Spain’, yet the essay serves as a succinct introduction to the topic and rightly concentrates on the controversial effect that Erasmus' exegesis had on theology. Coroleu could have indicated, however, the extent to which we should consider Erasmus' critics, such as Diego López de Zúniga (Stunica) or the theologians that met in Valladolid in 1527, as scholastic theologians. Carlos del Valle Rodríguez does us the service of directing our attention towards a lesser-known humanist, Antonio Nebrija, an ardent exponent of studying the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek. Here is a theme that goes to the heart of the controversy between biblical humanists and scholastic theologians: the insistence on reading the Scriptures in their original languages versus the self-sufficiency and the (supposedly) divinely-inspired Latin Vulgate. A tantalisingly terse reference to Nebrija's ‘treatise against Reuchlin and Erasmus’ (p. 63) adumbrates a second theme evident in some other essays, namely, as Rummel points out, ‘that the battle lines between humanists and scholastics … are not clearly drawn’ (p. 12). Humanists could and did criticise each other too.

The last eight essays offer up solid scholarship and make for the most rewarding reading in the volume. Some necessarily engage with Erasmus' challengers and exegetical controversies. Guy Bedouelle sets the disagreement between Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Erasmus over the correct reading of Psalm viii.6/Hebrews ii.7 in the wider context of Lefèvre's biblical scholarship and attributes to his unwillingness to engage in polemics with his critics the scant scholarly interest in ‘his contribution to biblical humanism’ (p. 141). James Farge provides a profile of Noël Beda. This great bane of Erasmus among the theologians at the Sorbonne was not a ruthless reactionary but a principled and determined advocate of what he revered as Catholic tradition. Lacking formal theological education, biblical humanists aroused Beda's ire because they did not have an official mandate to make exegetical and theological pronouncements. Essays by Cecilia Asso, Marcel Gielis and Paolo Sartori rightly remind us of the central role played by the University of Leuven in the reaction to Erasmus' biblical scholarship. The humanist inclinations of some Leuven theologians were not enough for them to become Erasmians. Edward Lee could not accept Erasmus' philological method as a substitute for scholastic theology. Frans Titelmans's nuanced appreciation of eloquence stood athwart Erasmus' aspiration of polishing the Latin translation of the New Testament. The scholastic majority at Leuven insisted on the incompatibility of the humanist philological enterprise with the scholastic logic that served as the indispensable underpinning of doctrine. The Italian aristocrat Alberto Pio believed that humanism and scholasticism were compatible, but the former had its limits. It could, as Nelson Minnich relates, stimulate piety but needed to yield to ‘the divinely-invented scholastic method’ (p. 283) when it came to fathoming scriptural obscurities.

Arguably, the most fascinating essays are the two companions to Minnich's contribution, although they do not readily correspond to the theme of the critique of biblical humanism. In the volume's longest essay, Paul Grendler reviews the careers of six contemporaries of Erasmus, four Hebraists and two cardinals and thus enriches our knowledge of the Italian contribution to biblical humanism. One of the Hebraists, Agostino Giustiniani, met Erasmus in 1518, a year after falling victim to an attack that ‘showed Erasmus at his ill-tempered and nasty worst’ (p. 239). Erasmus objected to Giustiniani's appeal to cabbalistic, Talmudic and rabbinic sources in his annotations on the Psalms. The better-known Cardinal Cajetan, ‘bold, confident, and independent in his judgments’ (p. 260), in pointing out mistakes in the Vulgate and expressing opinions about the canon of the New Testament, resembled Erasmus as a controversial exegete. In Agostino Steuco, Ronald Delph shows us an astute Italian Hebraist, philologist and textual critic capable of blending ‘cutting edge scholarship and conservatism’ (p. 316). Steuco proposed several emendations to the Vulgate Old Testament while paradoxically clinging to the essential reliability of the Vulgate translation. His clashes with Erasmus were humanist in nature as he argued that the Vulgate approximated the original Hebrew more than the Septuagint and that it was the work of St Jerome. After reading this and other essays in the volume, readers might wonder whether humanists among themselves as much as scholastics arrayed against humanists marked the dawn of modern biblical scholarship with lively and acrimonious controversy.