Introduction

Abstract Renaissance humanists, such as Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam, rediscovered and embraced the classical legacy, conferring a new and heightened status on good books, or bonae litterae. The value of these good books was thought to lie not only in their content, their wisdom and eloquence, but also in their effect on Christian readers, their usefulness in instructing them in morality: right and wrong behavior, thoughts, and feelings. To highlight the moral interests of humanism is to see this literary and cultural movement less as a rupture with the medieval past and more as a continuing conversation and shift in emphasis about the value of writing: its efficacy in shaping readers.