An imagined gathering
1520 · Basel, Switzerland
Erasmus gathers More, Machiavelli, and Copernicus around a Basel press and argues that the printed word will outlast every prince.
Erasmus has taken rooms above a Basel printing house, where his Greek New Testament and his editions of the Fathers are being set into type. The press clatters below while he talks, and he is delighted to show his guests the sheets coming off it.
More has come from England, Machiavelli from Florence, and Copernicus from Warmia, and each of them is engaged in a struggle the others only partly understand. Erasmus argues that the press has changed the terms of every argument, because an idea once printed cannot be called back. Machiavelli is skeptical: he notes that princes still have soldiers, and soldiers still have swords. They eat polenta, stewed carp, and fried sage leaves, and Erasmus promises to send each of them a printed book.
Host: Desiderius Erasmus
Thomas More — Erasmus's friend, in Basel while his own book is being printed.
Niccolò Machiavelli — Between appointments, doubtful that books can restrain a prince.
Nicolaus Copernicus — Whose manuscript on the heavens may one day go to this same press.
First course
a period dish
a period dish
First course
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Desiderius Erasmus
The new technology that let scholars like Erasmus reach a whole continent, and that made the Reformation possible.
Desiderius Erasmus
The humanist program of returning to original texts and languages, and the tools of editing and translation it produced.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's short book on how a new ruler should win and hold a state, and why it has been read as both a manual and a warning.
Nicolaus Copernicus
The claim that the Sun, not the Earth, sits at the center of the planetary system — and the slow, contested work of making it fit observation.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.