to around seven hundred pages, a hefty volume to be sure. Over the span of the next four editions, Erasmus’s text would be reprinted sixty-nine times, and though we don’t know exactly how many copies that represents, a conservative estimate is three hundred thousand, an incredible number for the sixteenth century. Erasmus’s first edition was dedicated to Pope Leo X. The reason was not deep affection on the part of Erasmus (who himself was a priest) but rather was a calculated attempt at damage control.