459, 60. SUMPTO … PUSILLO] This substantival use of a neuter adjective is confined in classical Latin to the nominative and accusative cases.
474. ALTERAM … PARTEM] sc. epistolae; i.e. the sketch of Colet.
489. HUNC] The person intended here must be not Scotus but Aquinas, who is the author of the Catena Aurea, a continuous commentary on the Gospels. This violation of the ordinary rule that hic refers to the nearer of two persons mentioned is necessitated by the appropriation of ille to Colet.
493. AFFECTUUM] Mr. Lupton translates 'unction'.
511. DECIDIT] 'settled,' 'left.'
516. APUD ITALOS] Mr. Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, 3rd ed. p. 22, conjectures that these Italian monks may have been Savonarola and his companions.
519. GERMANOS] Mr. Lupton conjectures that the Order of the Brethren of the Common Life, founded at Deventer by Gerard Groot in 1384, may be here intended. If this is correct, there is significance in the use of residerent, marking Colet's opinion, instead of resident; which would make the statement Erasmus' own: for Erasmus had been for two years at a school kept by the Brethren in Hertogenbosch and had not a high opinion of them.
542. COLLEGIA] Colet's censure of the colleges in the English universities must apply to the older institutions founded before the Renaissance. Erasmus is probably recalling here some utterance of the days before the foundation of Christ's (1506) and St. John's (1516) at Cambridge, and Corpus Christi (1516) at Oxford.
544. SCHOLIS PUBLICIS] Mr. Lupton rightly interprets this of the 'schools' at the universities, in which public lectures were given; and shows that as the lecturer had to hire the 'school' for his lecture, the competition for fees would necessarily be keen. Cf. also l. 576. The term is also used at this period for a school maintained publicly by a town.
548. UT CONFESSIONEM] Cf. ll. 133 seq.