In his own day a center of controversy, in the four hundred years since his death known too often solely as an apostle of mockery and irreverence, Erasmus can be seen today in a new light as a humanist whose concern is at once contemporary and Christian. The Essential Erasmus is the first single volume in English to show the full spectrum of the Renaissance man's thought, which is no less profound because it is expressed with the grace, wit and ironic detachment only a great writer can achieve.