Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 14:1 (Spring 1993)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

TrinJ 14:1 (Spring 1993) p. 79

Book Reviews

The Edition of St. Jerome. The Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 61. Ed., trans., and annotated by James F. Brady and John C. Olin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 336 pp. $85.00 cloth.

J. C. Olin of Fordham University has once again put students of the Reformation in his debt by his recent translation of selections from Erasmus’s most important achievement in the field of patristic scholarship: the 1516 Edition of Saint Jerome’s works. The importance of this work which is the latest addition to the Collected Works of Erasmus is manifold in that the documents presented to us in this volume not only reveal Erasmus’s ability as a critical biographer of Jerome (A.D. 340?-420), the Latin-speaking Church Father and principal translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible; but they also manifest the heart of Erasmus’s sixteenth century programme of Church reform and theological renewal, a programme inspired in large measure by the piety and scholarship of Saint Jerome. These factors combine to make Olin and Brady’s endeavor a most important and revealing piece of translation. It is a veritable mine of treasure previously buried in Erasmus’s Latin tomes. Pupils of Patristic thought and students of the Reformation will not regret tracking down vol. 61 of Erasmus’s collected works. For it contains precisely what we need most: editions and translations of primary sources.

J. C. Olin is hardly a new name to the field of Reformation studies. On the contrary, this irenic Catholic scholar is on his own ground, so to speak, particularly in studies pertaining to Erasmus’s life and mission. Olin’s invaluably useful, Erasmus, Christian Humanism, and the Reformation (Fordham University Press, 1965, 3d ed., 1987), is still available in paperback. This highly praised work presents English translations of some of the most important primary source documents of Erasmus’s career, including his famous letters to Martin Dorp (the great critic of Erasmus’s New Testament and of his immortal work, Praise of Folly) and to Justus Jonas (Luther’s close friend and colleague); the Paraclesis to Erasmus’s 1516 New Testament; and the first biographical sketch of Erasmus himself written by Beatus Rhenanus in 1540.

Olin’s 1969 work, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (Harper & Row), has just come back in print under Fordham Press. This work is chiefly a documentary collection focusing on the key figures of the spontaneous (non-reactionary) Catholic reform movement from 1490 to 1550. Included are selections from Savonarola, John Colet, Erasmus, Jacques Lefevre, Gasparo Contarini, and Ignatius of Loyola, all under Olin’s editorship. This book’s value is found in the clear documentation it gives to the...