Alardus Amstelredamus (1491–1544)

Alardus Amstelredamus is seen as a representative of ‘biblical humanism’. He prepared text editions, sometimes including his commentary, and wrote theological works, occasional poetry, and letters, which were often added as dedications to his own works and those of friends.

Little is known of his early years. He was born in Amsterdam and he was a relative of Meynard Man, the abbot of the Benedictine abbey at Egmond, which he visited several times on account of its rich library. Later, Alardus corresponded with the ‘oeconomus’ (housekeeper or manager) of Egmond Abbey, Arnoldus Montanus.

From 1511 to 1514 Alardus taught Latin in Alkmaar, first under the headmastership of Bartholomeus Coloniensis and subsequently, from 1513, under the famous pedagogue Johannes Murmellius. In 1514 he moved to Leuven to work as a proofreader for printer Dirk Martens, and to study theology. Here he came into contact with humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus, Martin van Dorp, Martinus Lipsius, Adriaan van Baarland (who became his patron), Gerardus Geldenhouwer, Conrad Goclenius, Frans van Craneveldt, and Nicolaus Clenardus.

In addition to carrying out correction and editing work for Martens and for other printers at Leuven, Alardus worked as a private teacher and was engaged in scholarly work. Leuven remained his home, despite a number of absences from the city. In 1517 he was ordained a priest in Amsterdam. From 1520 to 1521 he stayed in Antwerp after he had run into trouble with the University of Leuven over his announcement, without permission from the university authorities, that he intended to lecture on Erasmus’s Ratio verae theologiae at the newly founded—but not fully recognized—Collegium Trilingue. At Antwerp he worked for the printers Michael Hillen van Hoogstraten and Joannes Thibault. In 1529, 1531–2, and 1538–9, he stayed in Cologne to work on his edition of the collected works of Rudolphus Agricola. From 1539 to 1540, following his return to Leuven, he probably attended the theology classes of Ruard Tapper and Jacobus Latomus. In 1541 he stayed in Amsterdam, but the next year he was back in Leuven, where he died in 1544.

In the main, Alardus owes his fame to his editions of works by Erasmus and Agricola. He assisted Martens in publishing some of Erasmus’s works and for the Cologne printer Joannes Gymnicus he prepared an edition of Erasmus’s Paraphrasis in Elegantias Laurentii Vallae (1529), to which he added the Farrago (on the proper use of words in Latin) by his pupil Cornelius Crocus.

When still in Alkmaar, Alardus had come into the possession of a number of posthumous writings by Agricola. The publication of Agricola’s works would become his own life’s work. As early as 1515, he collaborated together with Van Dorp and Geldenhouwer on the publication of the first three books of Agricola’s De inventione dialectica with Martens. It culminated in his main work: a two-volume edition of Agricola’s collected works, Lucubrationes aliquot lectu dignissimae, published by Gymnicus in 1539. For this edition, Alardus travelled several times to Cologne for longer periods of time. As a source on Agricola’s life, he consulted the ‘teacher of Germany’ Philipp Melanchthon.

Alardus was an opponent of the Reformation. He applied himself increasingly to polemical works on the theological themes declared controversial by the Protestants, such as the value of good works, original sin, and the Eucharist, focusing on pastoral practice. In his appeal to Scripture and the Church Fathers, Erasmus’s influence is noticeable.

Alardus Amstelredamus’s correspondence network consisted of clergymen, administrators, schoolmasters, professors, and printers, many of whom were humanists in their own right, including famous correspondents like Erasmus, Petrus Nannius, and Cornelius Aurelius. Among his correspondents were many individuals he had met at Leuven, which at that time was the intellectual centre of, and the only university in, the Low Countries. Most of the letters that have survived are those exchanged with Erasmus and Martinus Lipsius, but this may be because during his lifetime Erasmus’s correspondence was saved, copied and published. A complete collection of of Lipsius’s letters has been preserved in copy in the Leuven convent of St Martins.

Other correspondents came from his native city Amsterdam—such as the priests Nicolaas Boelens, Theodorus Cantharus, and Martinus Nivenius, the physician and burgomaster Joannes Teyng, and the merchant and humanist Sybrant Occo, who had been educated at the Latin School of Alardus’s pupil Crocus—as well as from other cities in the province of Holland and neighbouring Utrecht, for example his old Alkmaar colleague Murmellius, head of the Latin School in Haarlem Jacob Meyster, and the Bishop of Utrecht George van Egmont.

Alardus had many contacts with the Cologne printers Franz Birckmann, his nephew Arnold Birckmann, Melchior von Neuss, and Johannes Soter, and with clergymen from that same city, such as Georg von Sayn-Wittgenstein, provost of St Gereon and secretary of the Archdiocese of Cologne, and Nicolaus Herborn, provincial of the Franciscan province of Cologne until 1520.

Of a dozen of his correspondents either very little is known, or they are known only from surviving letters in Alardus’s correspondence.