It has long been understood that historians, literary critics, and art historians who write about past cultures use those cultures for present purposes, whether by turning Periclean Athens into an ideal for present-day America or the fall of the Roman empire into an ominous signal for modern empires. German humanists who sought refuge from Nazi Germany had, however, special reasons to use their cultural studies as a strategy of escape. Erich Auerbach in exile in Istanbul and Ernst Robert Curtius in “inner exile” in Bonn provided narratives of European literary history that minimized the contribution of their native culture, and in so reworking the narrative of Western literature, they were able to reshape their own identities. Their reconstructions of past cultures can thus be read as attempts at self-reconstruction. Ultimately, however, the attempt by such scholars to distance themselves from German culture often faltered on the very Germanness of their cultural reconstructions.

In his Eulogy of Florence (Laudatio Florentinae Urbis) Leonardo Bruni praised her constitution for giving first place to justice, “without which no city can exist or deserve the name.” Moreover, he said, “Not only citizens, but aliens as well are protected by this commonwealth. It suffers injury to be done to no man, and endeavors to see to it that everyone, citizen or alien, shall receive the justice that is owing to him.” During Brum's own tenure as chancellor of Florence, however, we hear of a Jewish banker who was ruined by the heaviest fine in the history of the city after a trial that one modern scholar has described as a monstrous miscarriage of justice.

There is such an abundance of documentary information about the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti that we necessarily are selective in our use of the primary sources: nearly 1,400 letters to and from the artist, more than three hundred published pages of his personal and professional ricordi, and an extensive correspondence among members of his immediate family. In addition to what they tell us about the artist and his commissions, these primary sources offer a rich and detailed picture of everyday life in Renaissance Italy. The following miscellany is offered as diverse glimpses into the world and work of Michelangelo, a sort of micro-historical view of a major historical figure.

Clarence Miller, the learned editor and commentator of Erasmus's Praise of Folly, made a challenging remark in a recent issue of Renaissance Quarterly. In discussing a collection of essays on the Moria and the Colloquies,he observes in conclusion that it is “very difficult to say much that is both new and true” about Erasmus's satire. With a view to the flood of secondary literature on the subject, his observation seems quite to the point.

I shall illustrate a number of basic textual ingredients in the Moria whose origin has escaped the attention of Erasmus specialists, namely, Dutch proverbs and expressions. More than once it is Folly herself that suggests she is going to quote from the vernacular.