A Newly Discovered Poem by Erasmus
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A previously unknown poem by Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) has come to light in Cambridge University Library’s copy of the first collected edition of his epigrams. The book in which it was found was printed not as a separate work, but as the third part of a collection superintended by Erasmus and mainly consisting of the writings of Thomas More. For the chief item in it was More’s Utopia, supplemented first by More’s epigrams, and then by those of Erasmus. The volume is therefore catalogued at Cambridge as De optimo reip. statu, deque noua insula Vtopia (Basel: Froben, March 1518; classmark Rel.c.51.3). It is continuously paginated, and in the final section an early Tudor hand has copied into the margins three poems, all of them expressly ascribed to Erasmus. The first of them, described as an epitaph on King Henry VII (and inserted on page 319), has hitherto been unknown to modern scholars. The other two poems (inserted on page 355) both relate to Henry VIII’s meeting with the Emperor Charles V at Calais in July 1520.
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2593-3019