I am delighted to hear of your good fortune, honoured sir, in at length securing your release from the time-wasting and tedious business of the court and deciding to occupy your old age in liberal studies. Duke Albert,² the from his chancellor,³ and what he told me was fully borne out by public repute. After that, I came lately to know of the more than heroic valour of Duke Frederick, not only from hearing our princes speak of him, but from 10 a letter and a present that he himself sent me.⁴

Heinrich Eppendorf,⁵ a gifted young man whose face...

The five letters translated here were exchanged by Juan de Vergara of Toledo (1492–1557; cf Ep 1277) and Diego López Zúňiga (d 1531; cf Ep 1128) between 1521 and 1523. They have been included here because of the information they provide about the controversy then raging between Erasmus and Zúňiga, who in 1520 had published a critique of Erasmus’ first edition of the New Testament (1516):Annotationes contra Erasmum Roterodamum in defensionem tmlationis Novi Testamenti(Alcalá: A.G. de Brocar). Zúňiga, an accomplished scholar in Greek and Hebrew, was a member of the team assembled by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros...

On 20 February 1521, Charles v authorized the first significant change in the Netherlands’ coinage since the monetary reforms of 1496-9: the striking of new gold réals, demi-réals, and Carolus florins; and new silver réals (double Carolus), demi-réals (single Carolus), and patards (or stuivers). No debasement was officially intended, all the former Burgundian-Hapsburg coins were left in circulation at their 1499-1500 rates, and the exchange rates on most foreign gold coins were similarly left unchanged. But the new silver patard (stuiver) in fact contained 3.2 per cent less silver than the former issues. That change, and more particularly the French...