MAGISTER NOSTER
To My Followers from Folly Speaks

The fun made of the MAGISTER NOSTER was to be notably exploited by the humanist Ulrich von Hutten's ironic attack on the scholastics in 1515, the Letters to Obscure Men, written to defend the humanist theologian Johannes Reuchlin. Reuchlin was a Hebraeist, the first of the humanists to provoke a concerted attack from the scholastics. After his death, Erasmus wrote a colloquy on his 'apotheosis' (1522). Erasmus had meanwhile quarrelled with Hatten who, having become a Lutheran, wished to turn the old Holy Roman Empire into an all-German kingdom and do away with any connexion with Rome. Against him Erasmus wrote his Sponge of 1523.