Erasmus, Desiderius. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 2082 to 2203. Ed. James M. Estes and trans. Alexander Dalzell
Bibliographic record
Abstract
During the first seven months of 1529, the period covered by the letters in this volume, Erasmus seems to have resigned himself to many of the unhappy circumstances that had, over the previous decade or so, transformed him from the undisputed prince of humanists into an embattled and controversial figure.This is not to suggest that he in any way gave up on the causes that were dear to his heart, or that he took on a more conciliatory attitude to his critics of both the conservative Catholic and reform stripes.Far from it.The hopelessness and despair, however, so evident especially in the correspondence of the previous year, are replaced in this period with a sober sense of moving forward and making the best of a bad situation.This resignation is most visible in his decision, after at least eighteen months of deep brooding and strategic soulsearching, to leave his beloved Basel.He refers to the city in a number of letters as his "nest, " and makes clear his disappointment at leaving the place where he had spent one of the most productive periods of his life.Here he had worked closely with the printer and entrepreneur Johann Froben to disseminate his works across Europe, while benefitting from a house and garden at Froben's expense.Here he had a household full of bright and devoted young scholars, and a secure base in easy communication with all parts of Europe.Froben died in August 1527, and Erasmus continued to work with the firm, with his son Hieronymus at the helm of the business.As distressing as the death of the elder Froben was, it was not enough to make Erasmus leave Basel.Rather, it was the progress of the Lutheran reformation in that city, under the leadership of Johannes Oecolampadius, which made it impossible for him to remain in the city without seeming to give his support to the reform faction as it gained strength in 1527 and 1528.A series of iconoclastic riots and the abolition of the Mass in 1529 marked the triumph of the reformers, forcing Erasmus to decide once and for all on a new home.He had plenty of offers, both in foreign territories (England, France, Poland) and in German ones (Cologne, Aachen, Speyer).He settled on Freiburg im Bresgau, a small university town within the Hapsburg domains, but still close
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.043 | 0.016 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".