Art and Artifice in Erasmus’ Convivium Profanum

Abstract

Of Erasmus’ six banquet pieces, the Convivium Profanum was the only one to appear in the earliest versions of the Colloquia. Unlike the others, therefore, it always retained much of the formulary quality that characterized the slender original collection, primarily a series of models after which schoolboys might fashion their conversational Latin. Yet even in Johannes Froben's unauthorized first printing of the pedagogical materials that Erasmus had composed twenty years earlier for use by his pupils at Paris, the purely formulaic matter is interspersed with considerable stretches of lively table talk, the full cast of participants in the convivium is introduced, and distinguishable personalities for the principal interlocutors have begun to be fashioned.