I'm posting these notes, first, to burden you with extra work (because this course is embarrassingly easy as it is) and second, to give you some guidance on the chapters you'll have read for class tomorrow.
First, the extra work: I'm giving you links to two other texts, the first a selection from Duns Scotus, a late medieval scholastic philosopher and theologian for whom Erasmus had a special contempt. I want you to get a flavor of what reading this guy must have been like. He was nicknamed "the Subtle Doctor" during the late medieval period; Erasmus called him hair-splitting. I don't think Erasmus's contempt was entirely warranted, because the Subtle Doctor was a thinker of acuity and influence, but he was, shall we say, not Erasmus's style.
Another excerpt: from the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis. This is the most important devotional work associated with a movement called the devotio moderna, which Augustijn describes in your reading. Erasmus attended school as a youth in Deventer, where this movement had substantial importance. Take a look at the first chapter or two, to get a sense of it.
Both Scotus and Thomas à Kempis were well known to the Reformation theologians, who responded to each in a variety of ways. Scotus was part of what would be called the via moderna (not to be confused with the devotio moderna), a designation given to a group of later scholastics who took a particular view of the problem of universals. This problem concerns the question of how the numerous individual examples of a group or species, such as "human beings," for example, come to embody the universal in their discrete, particular beings. In other words, how does the essence of humanity become embodied in individual humans? Come to think of it, is there an essential humanity to be so embodied? Or is the idea of such a universal essence merely a product of our minds, based on our observations? These were the questions that concerned the philosphers of the via moderna. The excerpt from Scotus given here is related to that question.
In contrast, Thomas à Kempis expresses a simple piety based on faith and humility, without elaborate intellectual pretensions. Some scholars argue that Erasmus was deeply influenced by this approach in some of his critiques of the scholastics, and in his advocacy of an interiorized piety. The Enchiridion, described in your reading, is a work of piety from Erasmus's early years that emphasizes the interior disposition of the Christian over the observance of ceremonies. This work would remain obscure for about twenty years, only to burst on the scene in the early 1520's when such questions as the importance of rituals became of crucial importance to the Reformers. At that time, many people who were attracted to Luther and, even more so, the Swiss reformers would claim Erasmus as a fellow-traveller.
I'll elaborate further in class tomorrow. Please come prepared to offer reactions and observations on these two texts as well as the assigned reading (remember, you don't have to crawl through these on-line texts in their entirety, just enough to get an impression).