1 Froben first printed the Familiarum Colloquiorum Formulae, without the author's knowledge or permission, at Basel in November 1518. Included was the greater part of the material that evolved into the definitive version of the Convivium Profanum as Erasmus supplied revisions for the edition brought out by Thierry Martens at Louvain on March 1, 1519, and those by Froben in March and in July-August of 1522. It is noteworthy that this selection never bore a separate title in any early edition and that the running head ‘Convivium profanum’ was supplied for it only when Erasmus had begun to compose the Convivium Religiosum, a few introductory pages of which appeared in March 1522. Since these two symposia were the first to be published, and since the Convivium Religiosum followed its predecessor closely in the text, the running title ‘Convivium profanum’ suggests that the two colloquies are meant to be contrasting or, better, companion pieces.

2 In a letter ‘Studiosae iuventuti’ which he prefixed to the edition of March 1519, Erasmus, though disavowing the unauthorized 1518 printing, did admit that some two decades earlier he had ‘dictated I know not what trifles—dictasse nescio quas nugas’ as models for daily conversation along with some ‘convivial discourses—sermonihus convivialibus’ (Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, Vol. III: 2: Colloquia, ed. L.-E. Halkin, F. Bierlaire, R. Hoven [Amsterdam, 1972], p. 73). The ‘Brevis de copia praeceptio,’ actually an epilogue to the Convivium Profanum, bore its own separate title even in the 1518 edition. Erasmus had already expanded it in 1512, moreover, into the famous textbook De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum.

3 The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago and London, 1965), p. 599. Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent quotations are from the North-Holland and Thompson editions and will be followed simply by NH or T and page number, whether in the text or in the footnotes. Wherever a page reference to NH occurs, following a quotation in English, the translation is of material in the earlier editions and is my own.

4 ‘Melius nostri temporis theologi sentiunt, qui contend Stoicorum more disputare, vivendo ipsum etiam Epicurum vincunt’ (NH, p. 50).

5 As Thompson notes, in the colloquy ‘ (‘A Fish Diet’) there is an extended passage in which Erasmus expresses ‘his bitter recollection of the hard life at the Collège de Montaigu’ (T, p. 314).

6 NH, pp. 207-208. The Latin for the play upon the word ‘Sorbonne’ reads as follows:

‘AUGUSTINUS. Sed satis iam theologiae in convivio. In coena sumus, nonin Sorbona.

‘CHRISTIANUS. Quid vetat did Sorbonam, ubi bene sorbetur?

‘AUGUSTINUS. Sorbeamus igitur, non disputemus, ne nobis a sorbis dicatur Sorbona, non a sorbendo.’

7 The North-Holland editors note that the entire interpolation was censured by Nicholas Baechem of Egmond (NH, p. 207).

8 That Erasmus did not lose sight of his original goal of providing examples for correct speaking is evident from the fact that in making these changes he also managed to expand considerably the variations on formulae for extending invitations.

9 The revised answer to Christianus’ question concerning what Epimenides may have dreamed during his long slumber reads: ‘Quid aliud quam quae postea prodidit Scotus et huius farinae sodales? Sed bene cum Epimenide actum est, qui vel tandem ad se redierit. Multi theologi nunquam expergiscuntur a suis somnis’ (NH, p. 188).

10 After Christianus’ offer of paté de foie gras, Erasmus interpolates here an exchange in which a surprised Augustinus expresses a preference for turnips to such exotic dishes:

‘CHRISTIANUS. Don't expect Roman dainties.

‘AUGUSTINUS. What?

‘CHRISTIANUS. Artichokes, snails, tortoise, conger eels, toadstools, mushrooms, truffles.

‘AUGUSTINUS. I prefer a turnip to all of those’ (T, p. 602).

11 ‘Sans doute,’ comment the editors of the Colloquia, ‘le mot est il forgé par Érasme à partir de “barathrum,” surnom que l'on donne aux gloutons’ (NH, p. 45n).

12 T, p. 590. The sentiments of Christianus’ speech are derived from the sixth book of Plutarch's Quaestiones conviviales. In the preface to Sossius Senecio, Plutarch observes that Plato's banquets had two advantages: because the guests were temperate, no one felt indisposed on the following day, and they also had the pleasure afterwards of remembering not the food but ‘the topics of philosophical inquiry and discussion’ (Moralia, trans. Paul A. Clement and Herbert B. Hoffleit. Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1969], VIII, 453). Erasmus, who greatly admired the Moralia and translated some of them himself, had helped on the Aldine edition of thework during his stay in Venice in 1508. He echoes many Plutarchan ideas about what a symposium should be in his own colloquies, most notably in the Convivium Religiosum, where Eusebius is made to say, ‘So much piety do I find in [the Moralia] that I think it marvelous such Christian-like notions could have come into a pagan mind’ (T, p. 76). Erasmus’ own preference for temperate small gatherings of learned men to sumptuous banqueting is well known from his letters. In one of these he tells how the Bishop of Constance wanted to honor him with a great feast but was warned by a friend that Erasmus was an abstemious man who disliked such affairs: ‘Sed ab hospite submonitus est me hominem esse modici cibi, vel nullius potius; abhorrere tumultuosis conviviis’ (Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. and H. M. Allen and H. W. Garrod [Oxford, 1906-58], v, 214).

13 T, p. 599. In March 1522, incidentally, the speaker is addressed as Erasmius (‘Erasmi’) instead of Erasmus (‘Erasme’). Although this edition was dedicated to the author's godson, Johannes Erasmius Froben, who from this time on becomes a figure in some of the colloquies, there can be no doubt that Erasmus still intended the interlocutor to represent himself. In the same passage, for instance, he alludes to bis sojourn in Italy, and his sudden departure from the banquet is occasioned by an announcement that his dear friend Thomas More has arrived in the city.

14 Ibid. Erasmus’ aversion to fish and belief that it bred ‘bad humors’ was shared by at least one other Northern humanist of the period. In 1544, Roger Ascham wrote to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer asking exemption from the Lenten regulations for fasting and abstinence on the grounds that fish, as many ancient authorities attested, were harmful to scholars, such as he was, of a phlegmatic disposition (The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles [London, 1864-65], 1, 64-67).

15 By unanimous vote the assembled faculty declared ‘quod praedicti Libri lectio omnibus & maxime adolescentibus erat prohibenda, quoniam magis per hujusmodi lectionem sub eloquentiae acquirendae praetextu juventus corrumperetur quam institueretur, & quod omnibus mediis debitis esset enitendum ut hujusmodi Liber supprimeretur, & à finibus eliminaretur Christianorum’ (Desiderii Erastni Roterodami Opera Omnia, ed. Jacques Leclerc [Leiden 1703-06], IX, col. 930).

16 Ibid., col. 933.

17 It is Augustinus, protests Erasmus, who ‘Laudat vitam Epicuream, hortatur ad voluptates…. Quid autem flagitii est, si nugator Augustinus dicat se natura abhorrere ab esu piscium…. Utrum hoc est damnare consitutionem Ecclesiae, an potius indicare peculiarem quorundam corporum rationem? … Vides, lector, quid sit fidere schedis ab impends juvenibus porrectis, & in opere, quod totum variis constat personis, nullum habere personarum discrimen’ (ibid., cols. 933-934).

18 Erasmus, of course, might have taken refuge behind the fact that this is, after all, a ‘profane feast’ and therefore the views expressed in the dialogue, being those of merely worldly fellows, need not be given credit. But it is obvious from both the De Utilitate and the Declarations ad Censuras that he did regard this colloquy, along with the Convivium Religiosum, as expressing opinions that were very dear to him; hence his animated, if in large part disingenuous, defense of their content.

19 Erasmus mentions, for example, that rumors of the impending prohibition intensified the desire of the public to buy the Colloquia and thus caused the Parisian printer Colineus to bring out a ‘huge’ edition of the work in March of 1527 (Opera Omnia, ed. Leclerc, III: 2, col. 1168).

20 James D. Tracy has described Erasmus’ ideal of humanitas as involving a ‘critique of “ceremonies” ‘ because ‘the wrong kind of intellectual and religious formation—one which featured a multitude of rules strictly enforced—would produce men of harsh and violent temper’ (Erasmus: The Growth of a Mind [Geneva, 1972], p. 12).