Based primarily on Inquisition trial records from all parts of the Italian peninsula, this study vividly illustrates the broad diffusion of Erasmus's ideas in Italy. Silvana Seidel Menchi's protagonists are not the sophisticated intellectuals previously linked to the "prince of humanists," but rather the shoemakers and druggists, goldsmiths and carpenters, weavers and soldiers, notaries and schoolmasters, priests and friars, physicians and students whose reading of Erasmus's works and acceptance of his message both enriched and complicated their lives. Italian Erasmians, like all Italian philo-Protestants, confronted an implacable adversary, the Roman Church and its Inquisition. Hence theirs was a destiny of marginalization and persecution.
This innovative study makes a major contribution to our understanding of sixteenth-century Italian and European history in two important areas: the reception of Erasmus and the social dimensions of the Reformation.