| Sumario: | Erika Rummel has questioned why Erasmus in Opus de conscribendis epistolis attacks his predecessors in both the medieval and humanist traditions to which he is deeply indebted. This reconsideration of Erasmus' often combative guide to letter writing places it in the context of a mixed northern European reception of Quattrocento epistolary theory as recorded by the early sixteenth-century humanists Heinrich Bebel, Jodocus Badius Ascensius, and Johannes Despauterius. Humanist substitution of classical “elegantiae” for contemporary formulas of greeting, address, and signature could challenge professionals and offend patrons. Condemning the rigidity of both medieval and Ciceronian letter writing, Erasmus describes a rich epistolary rhetoric that avoids impressing the letter's recipient with either the ignorant barbarity or the pseudo-intellectual immodesty of the writer.
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